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.
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A close friend who recently bought a lovely property down in Cannes, France, invited Mrs Pearce and yours truly down for Christmas. How can one refuse? We did not. I rather like the old seaside town, with its 19th Century Belle Epoque hotels and small side-streets. The place is pretty civilised over Christmas: unlike the Film Festival season or the various financial services conferences held there during the year, the place was mostly filled by locals and there was a merciful lack of beer-swilling Brits. France likes to pride itself as being far more grown-up in its approach to alcohol than the British, and I think this is mostly accurate, having been to France many times to see the locals in action of an evening. This item, however, says the French go pretty “British” in their drinking habits over the New Year.
Meanwhile, France is of course joining the puritanical Anglosphere by banning smoking in all cafes and restaurants from next February. A shame: although I dislike tobacco smoke intensely, if I choose to enter a bar where the owner of said private property allows it, it is my problem, not his. I can choose to leave. No-one forces me to work in a bar or drink in one at gun point. One of the things I quite like about France is that despite it being a more bureaucratic nation than Britain in many ways – although that is passing – the French have always struck me as a fairly tolerant bunch on certain social issues (the Catholic influence, maybe, I am not sure).
It will be interesting to see whether the ban is enforced in all French premises. I rather doubt it.
I was sad to read this story as I got back into the office today – having resolutely refused to read much press over the holidays – about the death of Oscar Peterson, the jazz pianist. Jazz is not everyone’s cup of tea: some modern stuff is unlistenable, in my view, but this man crossed a lot of barriers with his wonderful blues style. I love his album, Night Train. I might just put it on the CD machine later.
And he died at the ripe old age of 82, proof, surely, that not all great musicians have to die young or mess up their talents by drugs or general over-indulgence.
An issue rumbling away in the business sections for the past few months, and likely to rumble on in the New Year, are the activities of what are called “sovereign wealth funds,” enormous funds, usually accumulated from government oil revenues and run by countries such as Norway. They are now major buyers of assets such as chunks of shares of banks like Citi, the US bank that has taken massive write-downs connected to the US sub-prime mortgage crisis. The question that comes up, especially when these funds are run by Middle Eastern governments or the Chinese, is whether their control of large parts of western firms poses some sort of “problem”. At this stage, I do not see it being a problem. As Sylvia Pfeiffer points out, these funds ultimately want what any intelligent investor wants: maximumum possible returns. I suppose that conspiracy theorists might wonder whether the Chinese, say, will deliberately run their acquisitions into the ground as part of some grand dastardly Blofeld-like plan to take over the world, but this strikes me as a bit unlikely. Perhaps more significant are issues such as protection of intellectual property rights and whether the companies that get taken over are as open about their accounts and profits as before. But again, it strikes me that as long as these new funds do not breach any regular laws against fraud or force, I do not see their activities as a problem.
The truth is, emerging economies in Asia, coupled with the petro-dollar wealth of the MidEast, parts of Asia, Russia and even Africa, is giving these funds a degree of market muscle that has taken some investment observers by surprise, but it should not do so. We are living through a major period of change in the economic clout of non-western states. We might as well learn to profit from it.
The Sunday Telegraph leads with this story about how there are reportedly more Roman Catholics living in Britain than Anglicans, based on figures for church attendance as well as census data. As a former Anglican and now atheist with a Catholic wife of decidedly liberal persuasions, I look upon this news item with a relaxed attitude. Part of the shift is down to the loss of nerve of the Anglican church, not to mention the impact of trends like mass immigration from eastern Europe, such as Poland. I am not a fan of the idea of national churches anyway – like the US Founding Fathers I support a separation of church and state – although I do believe that in certain respects, the Anglican church, and the wonderful hymns and literature it is associated with, is an often elevating part of British, and certainly English, culture. But the church was a political creation, remember, with all the faults that implies. Up until the middle of the 19th Century, recall, atheists, Dissenters, Catholics and Jews faced all manner of barriers to entering British public life, although in practice this meant that many non-Anglicans ended up driving the Industrial Revolution – like the Quakers – precisely because they had a hard time entering certain professions or going into politics. But this prejudice was still wrong even if the unintended consequences could be beneficial with the benefit of hindsight.
I am blogging this from the very decadently Catholic south of France, in Cannes. Just thought I would mention that.
The Great Before, by Ross Clark. Great little satire on a world after the Greens have taken over.
Bad Thoughts, by Jamie Whyte. Whyte is a philosopher and writer from New Zealand, now living in Britain. This book is a gem; he cuts through the fallacies and lazy thinking of the current age like a knife through butter.
Beau Brummell, by Ian Kelly. Wonderful and at times moving account of the greatest dandy who ever lived. The man who told gentlemen how to dress. I am still not sure I should wear a cravat to work, though. But I do believe that white tie and tails should be de rigeur for men who want to be taken seriously by the ladies.
Ray Kurzweill, the Singularity is Near. A challenging book, but one of those works that is essential reading for figuring out the direction that the world is heading along. The message overall is pretty optimistic.
The Not So Wild, Wild West, by Terry L. Anderson. A fascinating account of the American West and how society evolved. The basic point is that the frontier was more peaceful than the usual images from Hollywood suggest.
Die Trying, by Lee Child. The Jack Reacher thrillers are wonderful. I am delighted I came across him, thanks to reading the blog of Bob Bidinotto.
P.J. O’Rourke and his study of Adam Smith. O’Rourke, when he resists the urge to tell a gag every sentence, is surprisingly good on the great Scottish economist and philosopher.
Light this Candle, the story of Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut. Still in print – you may have to wait a bit for Amazon to get you the copy from its stock – this is one of the best accounts of the amazing men who made up the space programme. Shepard was hard as nails and a sometimes difficult man to deal with, but without his determination to be the best, the progress of the space program would have been far slower.
Enzo Ferrari, by Richard Williams. Splendid account of the man who helped create some of the goddam-sexiest, fastest and most desirable motor cars on the planet.
Dynasties: Fortune and Misfortune of the World’s Great Family Businesses, by David Landes. Landes is one of the most interesting writers on business and the process of getting wealthy in the world today.
How to Fly a Plane, by Nick Barnard. I want to do flying lessons when I get the time and the cash. This is a great book to introduce important concepts and has plenty of nice photos to whet the appetite. Now, can I buy an English Electric Lightning or P-51 on e-Bay?
I recently finished reading Jonathan Knee’s book, The Accidental Investment Banker, chronicling the period of 1994-2003 during which time our slightly jaundiced writer was working for two of the leading practitioners of mega-mergers and initial public offerings (IPOs), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. As someone who has worked on the fringes of this world here in London, I could relate to quite a lot of Knee’s account. At the heart of it is his argument that investment banks have gone from being supposedly impartial providers of advice for long-term clients to mercenary hired guns willing to pump up any stock, sell any junk bond, to the highest bidder. He wishes to see investment banking give up this sordid activity and resemble the ideals (please try not to laugh) of the legal and medical professions.
This is all written with passion and a lot of detail; if you want to know how Philip Purcell, the former head honcho of Morgan Stanley, plotted to remove rivals or vice-versa, or how investment banks can be open to conflicts of interest, this is the book for you. But at the end of this volume I had no real clear answer to the question as to why a self-declared liberal (in the American usage) like Knee soiled himself working for these ghastly banks doing their ghastly IPOs and mergers at all (sorry for my sarcasm). Or maybe those mega-buck salaries eased the pain a bit (now you are being very sarcastic, Ed). Frankly, to be rude, Knee comes across as a bit of a prig; also, I find his naivete about the world of modern finance frankly a bit hard to take. Banks want to make money and this should hardly be a shocker; if you expect Olympian standards of objectivity from an analyst about a stock that the same bank might be underwriting in an IPO, you should not be investing at all and make sure to get a second or third opinion first. And yes, while there was a lot of hubris in the 1990s IT boom, remember that without the entrepreneurial gusto that that “bubble” made possible, I would not now be typing these words on a laptop and putting them onto a blog. It would not have harmed Knee to have mentioned that point. One might as well write about the supposed evils of the 1840s railway boom in Britain while overlooking that it did, after all, make possible loads of fanstastic railways.
In fact, although there are delusional dreamers, shysters and dullards in any walk of life, I tend to find that investment bankers or hedge fund managers or private equity partners tend to be pretty straight folk on the whole; personally, I find such people to be more honest, hard-working and clever than politicians, although just as prone to the error of sometimes believing their own propoganda. I don’t think any of the people that Knee writes about could be as guilty of financial crookedness as the Britsh government has been over its shamefully under-priced bid for the London Olympic Games, for example, which have turned into the mother of all money pits. And Gordon Brown’s handling of public accounts while he was Chancellor, putting PFI projects’ liabilities off balance sheet, would have landed him in disgrace, as happened to Stan O’Neill, former head of Merrill Lynch, who was kicked out after his firm suffered massive write-downs over the US sub-prime mortgages fiasco. When things go wrong in investment banks, people get fired; in politics, they get another cabinet post.
To be fair to Knee, he does not offer any concrete solutions to the ills he claims have gripped investment banks and he also expresses doubt about the need for yet more regulation; in fact, he even concedes that the legislative reaction to the implosion of the 1990s stock bubble and various accounting frauds have arguably made the job of investment banking even worse in ways that are unlikely to benefit clients. On the other hand, he is far too gentle on Eliot Spitzer, who’s bout of lawsuits against financial players, while not without some justification, went too far and have played a part in damaging New York as a competitve place to do business, to the benefit of London.
If you buy a new BMW car, you can make a trip to the place near where these fine German machines are built, in southern Germany. These photos of the building where many of the cars are kept for their owners are impressive. One thing that people who criticise some of the horrendous modern architecture used to house people en masse in the 1950s, 60s and 70s tend to forget is that when these buildings are done right and with the needs of clients in mind, they work superbly.
Of course, some stunning cars have been made in very ordinary-looking places indeed. Like Aston Martin.
Brian Micklethwait has dug out some superb pictures of modern buildings via this guy. Amazing stuff.
Jack Straw, it is amazing to relate, has been touted as a potential Prime Minister. Who knows, if the implosion of the Brown government gets worse, he might still be in the running for the top job. So it might be useful to realise that among his gifts is one for sublime comedy:
The constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor has commented that when the history of this era is written, the last 10 years will be seen as heralding a “quiet revolution” in the way in which the UK is governed. He is correct.
Quiet or not, there have been major changes. In case our Jack needs a bit of assistance, here are some of them:
- Emasculation of the House of Lords
- Erosion of the right to trial by jury
- Removal of the double-jeopardy protection in court trials
- Extension of blasphemy laws
- Law enabling the creation of a centralised state database and ID card system
- The passing of more than 3,000 criminal offences
- Anti-social behaviour orders – many of which can be imposed without full due process of law
- Civil Contingencies Act, giving sweeping powers in the case of “national emergencies”
- Erosion of right to hold public demonstrations
- Erosion of rights of private property owners to use their premises as they seek fit: bans on smoking in pubs and restaurants, for example
- European Arrest Warrant
Okay, I think you get the general idea. And on the other side of the balance sheet, what can Straw suggest? He talks about the Freedom of Information Act and EU “human rights” legislation. The former is an improvement but hardly compensates for the list above; the latter is a mish-mash: some of the “rights”, as my sneer-quotes imply, are not rights in the classical liberal sense as acting as brakes on coercion, but rather entitlements, or claims, and which interfere with things like freedom of contract, etc.
The general thrust of policy over the past few years has been towards more regulation of personal behaviour in the fields of health, the environment, family upbringing, smoking and diet. About the only emphatic move in a libertarian direction is on the area of booze: 24-hour drinking; yet the government cannot get itself in a consistent frame of mind when it comes to drugs – and alcohol is a serious health hazard when consumed to excess – so we continue with a largely unwinnable war on drugs, which by the way operates to the detriment of our campaign to undermine the likes of the Taliban, etc, and the poppygrowing druglords of Asia, etc. On sex, yes, the government has lowered the age of gay sexual consent to 16 and permitted gay civil partnerships, but a properly liberal approach would be to get the state out of the business or regulating marriage completely.
Generally, an appalling record. The challenge for the Tories, if they have any gumption, is to reverse it, lock stock and barrel (oh, did I mention that the right to self defence is pretty much dead as well?).
Christopher Hitchens reckons the CIA should be scrapped for its many recent screwups, including the latest fiasco over the NIE report about Iran. I agree, although the question is largely academic: governments are not known for scrapping institutions that go awry. But the NIE fiasco – which actually might endanger our security since Iran is still trying to produce enriched uranium – does add to the impression that security services are in danger of becoming the problem, not the solution. And the recent issue surrounding alleged destruction of taped evidence of torture does not exactly square with an institution operating under the rule of law, as Andrew Sullivan has put it recently, although Sully has not drawn the logical inference that the CIA should be closed down.
Here is the crunch paragraph from the Hitchens piece. Read it all:
And now we have further confirmation of the astonishing culture of lawlessness and insubordination that continues to prevail at the highest levels in Langley. At a time when Congress and the courts are conducting important hearings on the critical question of extreme interrogation, and at a time when accusations of outright torture are helping to besmirch and discredit the United States all around the world, a senior official of the CIA takes the unilateral decision to destroy the crucial evidence. This deserves to be described as what it is: mutiny and treason. Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was after the grotesque estimate of continued Soviet health and prosperity that the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the CIA should be abolished. It is high time for his proposal to be revived. The system is worse than useless—it’s a positive menace. We need to shut the whole thing down and start again.
Question: should the same logic apply to MI-6?
The screenwriter, Tad Safran (whoever he is), has penned a rather coarse and unpleasant item about the physical pros and cons of British vs American women. It says something about the state of the Times (of London) that they would print this sort of thing at all. There may be some limited truth in his observation that women (or for that matter, men), spend different amounts of time on personal grooming and appearance. But in my experience of travelling to the States, I have seen enough examples, from both sexes, of scruffiness/smartness to reckon that his generalisations are BS.
This is a rather more uplifting study on the wonderful womenfolk of these Anglosphere nations.
Note: in my original item I said Safran was an actor, not a screenwriter. Mea culpa.
From our special correspondent:
“Party boss Ed “bulging eyes” Balls told a respectful yet cheerful gathering of tractor workers in Omsk that the 10-year plan to increase tractor production by 1000% between now and 2018 was achievable. “Men,” he said, his voice quavering slightly as the chill Siberian wind blasted through, “we can and will produce more tractors, of higher quality, over the next 10 years. Britain needs tractors. Tractors need Britain. It is true that despite our heroic efforts, and the massive, Soviet resources spent by Comrade Gordon, that tractor production continues to lag. But let us not be downhearted. We know that tractor production in the past has been held up by the capitalist sympathisers, wreckers and revisionists working for the late traitor, A. Blair. We can and will do better over the next 10 years.”
At least, that is what I thought he said. Maybe it was education instead…….
For some sanity on how to get the state out of education, check out this website.
Update: related thoughts on home schooling and education by David Friedman (son of the great Milton).
Another update: Fabian Tassano has been a tireless campaigner against the odious idea of keeping people in school until the age of 18. His new book is also very good.
This remark was made by some individual called jsbachUSA at the Guardian’s Comment is Free site:
But if the Arabs choose to attack Israel with conventional weapons and Israel loses, so be it. As the cliche goes those that live by force die by force. Even if Israel ceases to exist, as long as it doesn’t nuke the world in a spasm of anger in the process, Jews will still be welcome and prosper in many part of the world, just like they did for thousands of years. The end of the Israel mistake will not be a bad thing.
“Just like they did for thousands of years”.
Priceless.
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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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