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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I have linked to Tim Worstall quite a bit lately and make no excuses for doing so again. He has a good piece about the current economic issues and ponders whether the latest risk factor is that of carbon-reducing measures worsening the economic outlook. It is afactor to consider, for sure. If the EU or other groups of countries slap tariffs on “naughty” carbon emitters, it could have quite a severe impact.
Former UK Chancellor Nigel Lawson has a new book out on global warming issues. For all that he made some errors during his time at 11 Downing Street, his sharp analytical brain is rather more impressive than that of the current office-holder. This looks like a good study of the subject.
David Selbourne is one of those intellectual figures who swims in similar currents to that of John Gray: mixing a sort of gloomy, conservative (small c) dislike of much modern culture and public life; a sort of grumpy dislike of the inevitably messy impact of individual liberty combined with a sort of authortarian desire for those in power to somehow rein in all this terrible individualist excess and take us back to say, 1950. Tim Worstall, well known around here, subjects his latest article to a fairly gentle fisking.
Here is the original piece by Selbourne. It follows a similar, arguably even more incoherent rant in the Spectator last week (sorry, I could not get the link to work, so you will have to trust me). Here he goes:
To expect the fulfilment by the citizen of his or her duties is no impertinence. It is essential to liberal democracy. Indeed, government ministers today speak hesitantly of a need for “constitutional renewal” or for a more “contractual” relationship between citizen and state. Under it, the performance of civic duties would be made a condition for the gaining of rights, many of the latter now routinely and shamelessly exploited by rich and poor alike.
As Tim puts it:
To return to a feudal system in which I owe duties to My Noble Lords in return for whatever rights they might see fit to grant me? Fuck that quite frankly.
Quite. Feudalism is actually a polite word for what this character wants to impose. A society in which freedoms are handed over like sweets in return for the prior performance of duties might be known as something rather ruder, like fascism.
Or maybe the problem could be more easily solved if Selbourne was honest about what he understands the definition of “rights” to be. In the classical liberal sense, a right is nothing more than a prohibition on the initiation of force against a person and his or her property; under socialism, the term “right” has been debauched into a claim on things such as the “right” to “free” schooling, which means that someone else be coerced into paying for the latter. The former negative definition of a right implies no such zero-sum game.
Selbourne must surely have heard of Isiah Berlin’s famous attempt to unscramble this confusion.
Hollywood illiberals such as George Clooney and Michael Moore made a career of sneering at the ageing Charlton Heston, which was almost enough to make me join the NRA. True, many of Heston’s conservative views might be as dated as his movies. But a willingness to take up arms for human freedom is one reason why we still don’t live on the planet of the apes.
– Mick Hume, reflecting on the stance on the right to bear arms that was taken by the late, great Charlton Heston. Here is a wonderful tribute to Heston by the US actor, Richard Dreyfus. Dreyfus is a ‘liberal’ in the American usage; his comments show real class and generosity of spirit.
This appeared in the Daily Telegraph today, in an article describing the tensions inside the UK Labour government, assailed from its own ranks over issues like taxes on alcohol, imprisonment without trial and other matters:
Behind the scenes, things are even worse. With no clear direction from above, Cabinet ministers are at each other’s throats. I am reliably informed that, after one recent Cabinet meeting, Jack Straw threatened to punch Ed Balls during a row about who was responsible for youth crime. The Justice Secretary came back to his department fuming that he had never been spoken to so rudely by a colleague in public and that he was not going to put up with it.
Fistfights in the cabinet? Well, if you elect thugs, thuggery will break out eventually.
Obama’s speeches frequently include passages that flatter their listeners who aren’t quite intelligent enough to realize how shallow his thinking actually is into thinking that they are more intelligent than they are.
– Stephen Bainbridge. Ouch.
This is a must-visit for fans of 007 and his literary creator. There are a few events this year to mark what would be Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday, 28 May, which also happens to be my own birthday, by weird coincidence. Sebastian Faulks is bringing out a new Bond novel on that day. Most of the attempts to carry on the character by other writers have not really worked, although Kingsley Amis had a good shot at it. I quite enjoy Faulks’ writings, so this might be good. Let’s face it, the movie-makers have already used up all the original Fleming story lines so they could use some decent new ones without too many corny one-liners or implausible villains.
There has been a lot of comment this week about a House of Lords report on the benefits, or otherwise, of mass immigration to the UK as far as the economics is concerned. It did not address the cultural aspects, such as the influx of large numbers of people from fundamentalist Islamic states or people with other, very different traditions to those of the existing population. It talked about the impact on the economy. The general conclusion is that in the long run, there is a very small, positive impact on growth but no real impact overall on GDP per head. And for some parts of the existing workforce, the impact is bad: lower wages, or no work at all.
The Sunday Telegraph, in its leader column, broadly endorses this analysis. What bothers me, however, is this: if immigrants are ‘taking’ a certain number of jobs (our old friend, the Lump of Labour Fallacy, is at it again), why not recommend say, a drastic pro-emigration policy for say, 25 per cent of the population, or even half? I mean, if there are “too many” people in the UK, why not go for a massive reduction? Indeed, if you take the argument to extremes, you could argue that we would be fabulously rich if the population were reduced to say, 100,000 or one million.
But that would remove all the benefits of a large population, which the immigrant-bashers overlook: the skills, or ‘human capital’ that a large population makes available. The silliness of the complaints about all those foreigners ‘taking’ ‘our’ jobs is not just the Lump of Labour Fallacy, however, which by extension is part of the closed-system thinking one associates with socialism and many other collectivistic doctrines.. It is also the unspoken assumption, rarely explicitly spelled out, that there is some sort of optimum, or “just about right” level of population for a given geographic area. But how do the noble Lords or even a mere economist figure out how many people in a country is right or wrong? And as a commenter said, I believe on this site, some months ago, you do not hear about Tescos or Vodafone moaning about “too many customers” putting pressures on their services.
Of course, some commenters will insist that the cultural implications of mass immigration from the Islamic world, say, outweighs what economic benefits there might be, but that is a separate issue.
The recent scary share price fall in HBOS, the UK banking group, prompted alarm that hedge funds and other naughty speculators were deliberately bad-mouthing the company in order to make its shares drop, and profit from that fall. There may be some truth in this: the UK financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, is checking this case, although my confidence that the FSA will find anything has not been improved by the watchdog’s almost total uselessness over the Northern Rock affair. But as this article points out, the supposedly demonic practice of “shorting” a company is often a good thing. If investors can make a profit by a company they think is headed for trouble, it can light a fire under the complacent/useless/criminal/other executives of that company.
It all sounds a bit like witchcraft to the economic non-expert. What the bejeesus is shorting? Simply, it is the practice of borrowing something like a company’s shares in the expectation they will fall in price, then selling them, repurchasing them at a cheaper price a couple of days later, and pocketing the difference. Short-selling used to be mainly done by hedge funds who borrowed shares, bonds and other things from banks. But through derivatives like spread-betting accounts, contracts for difference and warrants, even your average Joe Punter can do this, although they would be wise to realise the risks. Numero Uno risk is that the market will not fall as the punter expects, so the investor, be he Nobel Prize winner or retired executive trading stocks in Surrey, should limit their losses by buying a pre-arranged clause to close off a bet.
Making money when a market falls. How cool is that?
Poor Roma. The Italian football team – which is actually pretty good – has so far not had a good time of it against Manchester Utd. And with Ronaldo, the Portugese ace forward scoring a hatful of goals for ManU, the pain gets worse. Even more so when this young man, who hails from the island of Madeira, not only possesses incredible skill on the ball, but relishes sticking the ball between an opponent’s legs (known as “nutmegging”), flicking the ball in such a way as to bamboozle a defender, etc. Electrifying stuff to watch. Ronaldo, to an extent that many highly-paid players do not, understands that football these days is competing for wallets and time with all manner of entertainment.
But some of those who come up against him do not like it very much. I can sympathise, up to a point. But I do not think this man sets out to grind his opponents’ faces into the dust. It simply his way of playing the game. If the current generation of footballers cannot take it when a winger players coruscating football, god knows how they would have handled the late George Best, who used to take on opponents for fun, even put his foot on the ball to take a breather, then make a face and challenge them like a matador (he could also play a bit).
This sort of stuff does raise issues of sportsmanship, though. There is a fine line, not always easy to draw, between outrageous skill on the one hand and taking the mickey out of an opponent, on the other. Sport, as Brian noted the other day, can tell us a bit about life in general. Great skill is something to marvel at, but we generally do not like taking the piss. But on this occasion, I do not think that the arguably best footballer of our times is doing that. I was far too young to have seen Best, Pele or Di Stefano in their prime, but I am grateful, even as a supporter of another team, to watch this wizard weave such magic.
The reasons why people upset their neighbours continue to grow:
A weightlifter has been fined £70 for exercising too loudly. Giran Jobe, 36, was charged with 47 breaches of a noise abatement order after neighbours complained that his two-hour training sessions with dumbbells left them unable to sleep. A council team investigating complaints about noise from his top-floor flat in Margate, Kent, found that at times the level hit 100 decibels – as loud as a rock concert.
I have not come across this reason for neighbour annoyance before. Anyway, in my experience, the most irritating thing about going to a gym – as I do at least twice a week if possible – is the pounding, Chavvy music that these businesses insist in piping into the rooms. There seems to be some assumption that you get better exercise if there is lots of noise assaulting the ears. Maybe it is to do with the idea that certain sounds encourage quick exercise: there might even be academic studies proving the link between a raised exercise rate and music. I suppose this makes sense; anyway, dancing is one of the best exercises of the lot. Although the JPearce dance technique is unlikely to catch on anytime soon, you will no doubt be relieved to know.
Here’s this gem from Reuters:
Cuba seeks more user-friendly socialism
There is something almost pathetic about the following paragraph from Reuters, as if the ability of people to trade with one another is some sort of wonderful present given by Father Christmas, rather than an extension of the basic right of every human to sustain life and flourish happily:
Bans on the sale of computers, DVD players and other products have been lifted, and Cubans who can afford it can now stay at tourist hotels and buy a cellphone.
Agriculture is being decentralized, farmers can decide for themselves what supplies they need and the prices paid to them are rising to boost food production.
Seriously, these steps represent real progress. If the reforms are real, it clearly makes sense for the US and other countries to lift sanctions against the country. A sharp dose of free trade should put a stake in the heart of the failed Marxist experiment in that island for good.
Meanwhile, let’s hope sanity eventually returns across the Atlantic in Zimbabwe. Surely, one of the great lessons of the 20th century, continuing to this day in Cuba, Zimbabwe or for that matter, Venezuela, is that state central planning is a disaster, whether applied to agriculture or anything else.
The Royal Air Force marks its 90th birthday today. There will be a flypast over central London at 1pm, so if readers have a digital camera, keep it nearby.
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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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