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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A forceful article in the Times today stating that the pessimists are wrong. In Iraq, in Afghanistan and at home, the death-cultists of Islamism are on the run.
What is also clear that if this progress is lost, it will not be because of the lack of bravery or skill of the US, British and other allied forces. They have been magnificent. No, the weak link in the chain remains, in my view, the craven attitude of the domestic western populations to the constant demands from home-grown radical Islamists. The farcical treatment of Mark Steyn in Canada is a case in point.
What remains an issue for advocates of isolationist foreign policy – which is actually not a policy at all – is how any of the gains that the Times’ article talks about could have been achieved by adopting the equivalent of hiding under the bed with a bottle of whisky.
Up to a quarter of all adults are to be vetted to ensure they are not kiddie-abusing maniacs, as part of an effort to protect youngsters under the age of 16 in cases such as voluntary organisations and so on.
And people wonder why there is sometimes a shortage of volunteers for things like youth clubs and the like. The destruction of civil society, of the bonds of trust that are vital to such an organic, grass-roots cluster of non-state institutions, is remorseless and deliberate. This government, in its totalitarian way – I use that word quite deliberately – wants to make all human interactions subject to its tests. The consequences for the long term health of civil society, and of the ability of people to grow up normally, are ignored.
None of this is to say that the issue of child abuse is not serious, nor deserving of legal action to protect children from child abusers, who deserve the strongest punishment. I really do wonder, however, whose interests are served by the sort of vetting processes that the state is embarking upon. One hears examples of how adults are sometimes reluctant to help a kid because they are frightened they will get some sort of complaint later on. That cannot be good.
It is sometimes lazily assumed that this present Labour government is not “radical” like its predecessors. But that is only a superficial issue. In substance, this is arguably the most dangerously radical government in modern times in terms of its view of how individuals interact not just with the state, but with each other.
Danny Finkelstein has noticed something highly dubious about the coverage of the Zimbabwe catastrophe by BBC veteran foreign correspondent, John Simpson.
To put it bluntly, Simpson is an over-rated arse who seems to bend over backwards to present Mugabe’s actions in a favourable, or at least not unfavourable, light. I have found that too much of his coverage, while affecting the “Our brave correspondent in Godforsaken Country etc” often glides over serious problems and issues. He is often wheeled out by the Great and The Good as the example of the impartial British journalist, so much better than all those simplistic Americans with their strange ideas about right and wrong. Sorry, I am not buying it. For sure, unlike some people, I do not regard the BBC’s foreign coverage as an unmitigated evil, but stuff like this does not exactly help.
Thanks for Stephen Pollard for the tip.
As the US television journalist John Stossel points out, when politicians start calling for “windfall” taxes on oil or other evil firms for making “obscene” profits (which begs a question of what the right level is), they ignore the fact that such taxes will reduce dividends and shareholder returns, including those of pension funds. And the pension fund members – us ordinary Joes – lose out when politicians decide to come a-lootin’.
Part of the trouble is the vocabulary. “Windfall”, like “windfall apple”, implies that a good – such as a juicy apple – has fallen to earth and the acquirer of said has done nothing to earn it. It is, so the argument goes, just dumb luck that the chap who found the apple did so. And so, to switch to those Big Oil firms, there is no merit in clocking up monster profits when the oil price spikes. But this ignores the fact that oil firms and their investors took a risk in seeking to find, process and sell oil products and those risks could easily have gone wrong. We tend to forget how risky, both physically and economically, investing in oil is. When Brent crude was trading below $10 a barrel in the mid-90s, did those politicians who want to chase a few votes by bashing Big Oil cry any tears for the oil firms that were taking big losses at the time? No, of course they did not. And frankly, given that petrol is so heavily taxed in many major nations today, it is, to put it politely, rank hypocrisy for any politician to strike attitudes on the supposed venality of oil firms at all.
By the way, John Stossel is a marvel. If only we could have a few of him in the British television media.
I came across this from the online version of the German magazine, Der Spiegel (hat tip, Tim Worstall):
The scoundrels in Brussels have sold the European people a lot of things: a single market, the euro, the lifting of many border controls and, most recently, a binding global climate policy. These have all been good things, and they have helped make Europe an eminently livable continent. Despite the many dull moments and emotions that have been negative at best, the end result has been laudable.
“All good things” – oh really? The euro has not been a great success. Sure, it is a strong currency relative to the dollar at the moment, largely because of the Fed’s policy of printing money like it had forgotten all that sage advice from a certain late Professor M. Friedman, but the one-size-fits-all interest rate of the euro zone has proven a burden on the likes of enfeebled Italy, has boosted the Irish economy to boiling point, and now of course Ireland is in trouble, suffering a sharply contracting property and stock market. I am not sure how that impresses the Spiegel editors. For them, the whole project is going splendidly. As for the “binding” climate policy, I guess it does all rather depend on whether one accepts the thesis that Man-Made global warming is either happening; is happening at the speed some people claim, or justifies imposing heavy costs on industrial nations to correct it in ways that might affect other, more urgent human needs.
But this paragraph is the beaut, the one to savour:
Most of these improvements would have been held up, if not outright prevented, by referendums. Democracy doesn’t mean having unlimited confidence in citizens. Sometimes the big picture is in better hands when politicians are running it, and a big picture takes time.
Jeez.
What the hell is going on in Japan?
I’ve spent more than a decade working as a nightclub doorman. I’ve been involved in hundreds of violent incidents, including many away from the club. I can state unequivocally that in situations where some of these punks decide they’re going to pick on myself, or someone with me, with the intention of stealing our property, terrorising us or just for shits and giggles, on the occasions I’ve been armed, the situation has suddenly resolved itself when I produce a weapon.
A doorman, quoted at the blog of Rob Fisher, occasional commenter over these parts.
I have eased up a bit on “serious” blogging the last few days – I almost felt I had reached the point of mid-summer blog burnout – and have been too busy with other stuff, not least work. But I cannot resist linking to these fine folk who have set up a blog dedicated to the ferociously competitive world of barbecue food. God, I feel hungry already. No doubt those citizens of Jefferson’s Republic are gearing up for 4th of July. In a moment of transatlantic solidarity, may I ask commenters what sort of BBQ’s they will be doing on that day to give me some ideas?
I’ll be back to bashing Gordon Brown and the rest of them later, I promise.
“The fundamental story about consumer taste, in modern times, is not one of dumbing down or of producers seeking to satisfy a homogeneous least common denominator at the expense of quality. Rather, the basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at all levels of quality, high and low.”
– Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: how globalisation is changing the world’s cultures, page 127.
Tim Worstall provides a suitably terse response to the latest piece of economic illiteracy from leftie writer Richard Murphy, who is against admirable things like avoidance of high taxes, and who now is supporting measures to prevent, or at least hamper, investors from making money by “shorting” the shares of firms they think are likely to perform badly.
The practice of “shorting” seems to get a certain class of person all upset. Earlier this year, when the shares of HBOS, the UK banking group, came under pressure, the cry went up that those irresponsible wreckers called hedge funds were deliberately trying to destroy the firm to make a fast profit. What this ignores is that if there were not investors willing to temporarily borrow stock as part of their short-selling tactics, then this would reduce the total number of counterparties in a market, and reduce liquidity and efficiency in the pricing of shares, which is a bad thing. Illiquid markets – which can produce big jumps up or down in the prices of shares – are generally not good places to be in, particularly for smaller investors.
If I take a dim view of a company that I do not own, shorting lets me act on that view and maybe make some money out of it. Quite why this is so terrible, Mr Murphy does not bother to explain.
Some time ago, when I wrote about this topic, one sarcastic commenter moaned that I was insulting the intelligence of readers by trying to explain what “shorting” is. I reject that criticism since it s plainly obvious that even among supposedly intelligent people, the workings of the financial markets are mysterious. And what people do not understand, they fear.
The Irish “no” vote on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty has already had some positive effects, such as the lessening chances of the European major states attempting to create a tax cartel. Well, we can all hope, anyway:
France has dropped plans to push forward with tax harmonisation under its European Union presidency, following Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty.
Christine Lagarde, French finance minister, told the Financial Times that while the proposal for a common consolidated corporate tax base had not been abandoned altogether, Paris would no longer press other governments to back it over the next six months.
Yes, perhaps the French, rather than attempting to prevent some horrific “race to the bottom” on tax rates, should instead admit that tax competition, including that which comes from those dreadful offshore centres, is a good thing.
The comments ought to underscore just how serious are the consequences of creating an EU state and the benefits that exist from resisting that ambition.
Well, maybe I write these words in a spirit of optimism as the light pours through my window. Indulge me for a while.
Nice item on the writings of this wonderful author. I remember watching the TV series Shogun many years ago and remember how enthralled I was.
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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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