We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The BBC, anticipating the upcoming school holidays in the UK – lasting several weeks – has a news item up about the soaring cost of providing facilities for children to give them something to do. The story does not address the crucial question of why the cost is soaring. Is it increased regulation of child-care staff, or what? But beyond that, there clearly is a problem here, particularly for youngsters who are entering their teens and quickly find themselves getting bored after the first flush of pleasure of having free time wears off. When I was a kid, I was incredibly lucky to be brought up in a part of the world where I could help my parents run our family farm. At the age of 13 or 14 I was allowed to drive some of the farm machinery during the annual harvest. Under current UK health and safety regulations, all this would be made illegal, I suspect. I was paid an actual weekly wage based on the hours I worked on the farm. I remember thinking how cool that was. Many of my mates at school had summer jobs of various kinds, played some sports, went biking up to the coast, etc.
It seems to me that in part of the discussion about what “should be done” about feral kids armed with knives, there ought to be a recognition that one of the main problems that young people face in and outside school is boredom. And that can be cured, possibly, by working. We have to overcome our strange squeamishness over the employment of minors in actual jobs. I think that the rules and regulatory burdens should be relaxed so that apprenticeships become much easier for an employer to provide. I think some, if not all, of the young tearaways who are so worrying policymakers might actually feel proud of having a job, of earning money, of being able to brag about this to their lazier friends.
And please, dear commenters, do not tell me that all this is optimistic pie-in-the-sky speculation. We have a significant problem in the UK of young people who are a, being forced to stay in school well beyond the age at which they wish and can learn anything, and b, denied the opportunity to work, and c, becoming attracted to the fake charms of gangs and violence. By rejecting our horror of teen-labour, we might help to fix some of these problems.
There is sometimes quite a lot in common between the world of professional sports and the investment and wealth management industries. When a talented individual leaves a bank or a football team, it can cause a lot of news and chatter in the industry, prompting fans or clients to change their bank or fret over whether their club has a shot at winning games. I have worked in the financial sector long enough to know that there is also a similar sort of pecking order with banking and sports: there are “league tables” of fund managers, for example. Getting a top ranking as a fund manager with an investment record for beating the S&P 500 can be like the equivalent of winning the Player of the Year award, scoring the most goals in a season, etc.
Which nicely brings me to the subject of a certain Mr Cristiano Ronaldo, the Manchester United forward who has made a very public, and much criticised, effort to leave for the warmer climes of Real Madrid, the famous Spanish team that has won the European Cup (now the European Champions League trophy), more times than any other club: 9 times. He is blessed with wondrous dribbling skills, is brave, fast, good with both feet, can head the ball, can float around the front of the pitch and has the ability to turn a game in a flash. He scored a hatfull of goals last season, and is undoubtedly one of the best players in the world.
He is also very well paid for his efforts. No argument from me on that: he is in a free market for talent and I do not begrude him a penny of his wages. But – and this is a rather big but – he has four years left to run on his contract at Old Trafford. Naturally, his manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, is very unhappy at the prospect of losing him, although a monstrous transfer fee would ease the pain and enable the club to buy in some new players. United has not been exactly a saint either in nabbing players from rivals before their contracts fall due.
But the recent comments that Ronaldo’s contract amounts to a form of slavery is stretching the use of language to breaking point, contrary to what Mick Hume, a self-described “red” both in political and sporting terms, says. If a person signs a contract to work for a bank or football team for a minimum of say, four years, he must serve that contract out, unless there was any clear proof that he signed under conditions of duress. A footballer who signs terms with a club binding him into a four-year contract is not selling himself into slavery. It is not as if Mr Ronaldo was kidnapped, frogmarched into the club and forced to play. It is not even as though he was starving, and so desperate for a job that he was prepared to do anything to get a job. Marxists of old like Mr Hume used to argue that workers, who had no reserves of cash to live off, were “coerced” into signing work contracts and hence exploited, an argument that might have just about held water in the early 19th century when thousands of people were living on the edge of starvation, but hardly applies now.
With bankers, it is quite common for executives to sign contracts stipulating that if they give notice to leave, they have to serve out at least six months “gardening leave” and a further period of not soliciting new clients before they can start at a new job. This sounds harsh, but banks have to protect their interests, since if there is an exodus of talent from Bank A to Bank B, the latter bank can grab some of the clients of the former bank who wish to stick with their old managers. For all I know, the same sort of things can apply in other industries.
It seems to me that the only way such terms can be likened to slavery is if there is some clear form of coercion involved in signing the contract, and some clear sign of violence or threats being employed to sustain such contracts. I see not examples in the case of the Portugese footballer.
Say what you like about our embattled UK prime minister, but he does at least have good taste in a place to relax on holiday: the Suffolk seaside town of Southwold. I am not sure if the locals will be thrilled at all the security types who will inevitably swarm all over the area, though.
Southwold is a charming, small place. It is the home of Adnams, the brewery of excellent beer. Now, my recommendation to Mr Brown and his family, in a spirit of generosity, is to pack the complete works of Ludwig von Mises in his luggage, visit the local pubs and go for some nice coastal walks. As a result of all this exercise, reading and drinking, he will return to Downing Street a wiser and better man.
Sizewell B nuclear power station is down the coast. You can actually see its massive dome from Southwold beach. I rather like it.
One word of caution to Mr Brown’s entourage: a lot of Suffolk folk have guns.
Flicking through the television sports channels yesterday morning, I came across the Red Bull air race series, with the latest heat run out of Detroit. Fantastic. In terms of sheer skill and eye-popping adrenalin entertainment, this race takes a lot of beating. It makes Formula 1 motor racing, for example, look positively tame, even though I have no doubt that the actual skills involved have a fair amount in common. For a start, the pilots will sometimes pull a G-force of up to 8 or 9 times, which is the sort of thing you associate with astronauts or jet fighter pilots, for which there is a need to wear a pressue suit to stop blacking out.
The race series is continuing in London soon. I am going to find out if I can get my hands on any tickets. It could be difficult.
Apologies if there is no link here – I am having a problem with this function today. A quick Google will bring it up: check out the great photos.
I was intrigued by this:
American movies have forgotten how to portray heroism, while a large part of their disappearing audience still wants to see celluloid heroes. I mean real heroes, unqualified heroes, not those who have dominated American cinema over the past 30 years and who can be classified as one of three types: the whistle-blower hero, the victim hero, and the cartoon or superhero. The heroes of most of last year’s flopperoos belonged to one of the first two types, although, according to Scott, the only one that made any money, “The Kingdom,” starred “a team of superheroes” on the loose in Saudi Arabia. What kind of box office might have been done by a movie that offered up a real hero?
Up to a point. There is no doubt that much of what James Bowman says here is true. John Wayne-style movies just do not seem to get made any more, but I am not sure that heroism is dying out completely. I love the film, Apollo 13, for instance, for its realistic portrayal of the mental as well as physical heroism involved in getting the Apollo craft safely back to Earth after the craft suffered a massive loss of oxygen.
His point about “superheroes” is true: I thought the recent Iron Man film had some heroic as well as downright funny moments. As for other stuff, the last James Bond film, Casino Royale, while also not totally realistic, was a much grittier, tougher 007 film than recently, has at its core the fact that Bond is a hero who takes on the baddies.
The trouble is that heroism is often idealised, but I don’t have a problem with this if it involves “supermen” characters, like the last Batman film, which was pretty heroic, not to mention 300, the re-telling of the doings of ancient Greece. Outside of Hollywood, there are all those heroic Hong Kong action movies. Not to mention a film that was actually called Hero. Some of the Japanese anime films also are full of strong, uplifting moral themes.
So I do not think the cupboard is bare. But Bowman does make a good set of points about the lack of “real-life” hero films. I suspect that if there is a dearth of heroic figures on screen, some of it is down to how people, in their revulsion against war in general – a perfectly normal reaction – have taken against the military virtues. But as I hope some of the examples show, there is more to heroism than courage under fire.
Where I think there is a real problem, which the article does not really touch on, is the lack of any heroic characters in movies about business. I keep banging on about this, but it is a real pity that almost all businessmen and women are potrayed as morally sleazy or downright evil. A shame: I regard some entrepreneurs and their willingness to take big risks as heroes.
Quiz: name your top 5 most heroic films, of any genre.
One mechanism for ensuring the individual does take responsibility for his or her health is social stigma. For many a year we have been enjoined to cease stigmatising the morbidly obese, the terminally drunk and skagheads, because it really isn’t their fault — and as a result an important means of combating these social ills has been thrown away. Stigmatising has a point; it is not just fun to shout abuse at fat people, it is socially useful too.
– Rod Liddle, who talks some sense, although he is a bit of a yob himself.
Update: some people have asked if I support all of his argument. I do not. For a start, obesity is not something one can define precisely; secondly, it can add to the generally authortarian, bullying atmsophere in which we live if it is deemed acceptable to make all kinds of fun of the largely-built, or whatever. But Liddle is quite correct to locate the issue of personal responsibility and to get away from the victim-culture angle that is so often exploited by the medical profession and their political friends
Apparently, the humourless twerps who lead many of the world’s main industrial nations got a touch of the vapours over these parting remarks from the President as he left the G8 cant-fest in Japan:
The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”
He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.
Oh please. Mr Bush, who I imagine is fed up to the back teeth at the preening hypocrisy, moral posturing and downright dishonesty of the Green lobby, has clearly decided that the US is not going to be ashamed of being an industrial nation. The constant calls by various environmental groups for the US and other major states to slash CO2 emmissions by more than a half by tomorrrow afternoon or whatever are unworkable, and they know it. The massive cost of shifting energy sources to supposedly cleaner ones could help to tip parts of the world economy into recession or make the existing slowdown even worse; the push for biofuels, for example, is, arguably, hurting poor people in countries that are traditionally highly dependent on grains etc for basic foodstuffs.
In case any commenters ask, no, I am not a climate change denier, but I do seriously doubt whether a massive cut in carbon emissions over the timescale demanded by some is going to work without causing havoc.
No, I am glad Mr Bush gave his rival leaders the verbal equivalent of a kick in the nuts. More please.
On that miraculous Saturday, therefore, when the Vulcan took to the skies again – there was perhaps only one regret – that the bomb bay was not filled with ordnance, with the destination Brussels via Westminster.
– EU Referendum. The author had been to watch the magnificent example of Cold War aviation take to the skies once more. Here’s a link to a site about this splendid aircraft.
I must admit I have tended to view Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo, the anti-capitalist book, as a committed socialist but not obviously a downright liar. If this scathing review of her recent book, The Shock Doctrine, is accurate, then she he has appallingly traduced the late Professor Milton Friedman, accusing him of holding attitudes that he did not actually hold, such as over the recent invasion of Iraq (she claims he was for it, in fact he opposed it). The book, according to the review, reveals that she cannot figure out what the difference between a classical liberal and a neo-conservative is, for example. As the reviewer, Johan Norberg makes clear, a lot of “shock” events, like terrorist attacks, wars and hyperinflation do not work in the interests of classical liberals, but quite the opposite. In Weimar Germany, inflation destroyed much the middle class, helping to pave the way for Hitler. Wars have been used by national leaders to justify big increases in government powers that are often not rescinded. And so on. Klein either knows this, or cannot be bothered to mention it as it does not fit into her thesis.
Anyway, read the review. It is superb.
Apologies: I got the woman’s surname wrong, now fixed.
That invaluable organisation, the Taxpayer’s Alliance, has worked out that the total cost of the various surveillance and data-gathering services favoured by the UK government is just under £20 billion, or about £800 per household. The figure is a total, not an annual sum. £20 billion is a huge figure, even in these times of inflated financial sums.
Now the question arises whether, if we really do face serious security threats – and I think we do – what else could that £20 billion have purchased that might actually have made us safer?
Of course, £20 billion could also enable quite a few tax cuts, but that is obviously hark heresy these days (sarcasm alert).
One of the more annoying features of tennis today – certainly in the Wimbledon Men’s Finals – is how the victor often feels the urge to climb up the side of the stand after he has been declared the winner to embrace his family, girlfriend, mistress, personal trainer, etc. Last night, after winning the thrilling match against Federer, Nadal did all this, and then tried to climb all over the stand. I thought, “Christ, the idiot is going to fall off”. It would have been a bit tragic had this marvellous player suddenly injured himself in this way.
In future, Rafa, keep off the bloody stands.
A report in the Daily Telegraph today over the Group of 8 gathering of political leaders in Japan carries this:
Mr Brown will call for the creation of a new international panel of experts – mirroring a similar panel for climate change – which will examine long-term trends in food supplies and offer advice to individual countries.
A panel of experts? Surely, the best judges of long term trends are those investors who have been putting their own and their clients’ money on the line. Those evil people – speculators – have a strong vested interest in getting these long-term trends right. I would rather listen to the famed investor and commodities writer Jim Rogers than a bunch of academics hired to form some form of panel.
He will also pledge to increase investment in agricultural research and push for an increase in aid to agricultural projects in the developing world. In total, Britain’s contribution to tackling higher food prices has now cost the Government more than £500m.
How about not spending taxpayers’ money on such ventures and instead, removing trade barriers and other trade restrictions, such as production quotas and the like?
As for encouraging research, there is no need for states to do this. Large companies in the agricultural sphere, such as Monsanto and Bayer do oodles of research already. These governments would do better to resist attempts to outlaw GM foods and other “frankenstein” technologies.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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