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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Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
– Mark Twain
I have just got back from sitting in a discussion about how far should journalists go in chasing a story. It is a good question to ask and not as easy to answer as one might think. Is a journalist justified, for example, in breaking and entering a person’s property without consent to obtain facts even if the story is one of supposedly major importance? Can a journalist eavesdrop on confidential phone calls between X and Y in order to get a story and does that story have to pass some sort of “public interest” test? In my own hazy thoughts on the matter, I tend to take the view that the public interest test has to be very rigorous indeed, ie, life has to be at stake. It is not enough to say that “X is a famous man who is interesting to lots of people” sort of yardstick. It has to involve the exposure of murderous, criminal behaviour by the person(s) being investigated to justify breaking into a private home or breaching a confidential document.
Of course, as the discussion unfolded, it became pretty clear that the world of the internet and blogs, that a lot of media laws, as well as the whole idea of journalism being a licenced profession, is under threat. On the whole, I think this is a good thing. If journalists want to form their own trade associations to promote best practice and carry emblems on their news channels or newspapers saying that Mr J. Pearce is a member of the Journalist Society, well and good. It will be rather like plumbers, electricians or bricklayers forming such bodies, bodies that stand for reputation and high standards. Miscreants can and will be thrown out. Being a member of such a club will be a big deal, except that it will not be a state-approved body, but a genuinely private one.
Anyway, the weather is too glorious for me to write further. Time to light the barbecue and open some wine.
What is your favourite passage from a novel?
I think mine is that superbly-written scene in Moonraker when Ian Fleming describes how Bond deals out a sequence of cards that in Bridge is known as a Yarborough and as a result, takes the villain Drax to the cleaners. I never thought that a writer could make the game of Bridge sound exciting, but Fleming achieved it.
For second place in this quiz, I think I have to go for the scene in Scoop when William Boot, the hapless correspondent, files his first despatch for the Daily Beast. I still grin whenever I think about it.
Sufferers from epilepsy might – just might – have a cure for their condition thanks to this piece of medical technology. I know one person who has epilepsy and it has had a hugely disruptive impact on her life (she is not allowed to drive, for instance).
As the late musician Ian Dury used to sing, there ain’t half some clever bastards.
Some people get disgusted – I guess it is the ‘yuck!’ factor – at the idea that a person can sell his or her own kidney for money, for example. We seem to live in an era of warped values about the donation and use of human body parts, as this article in Reason makes clear. It appears that in some jurisdictions, just about everyone is allowed to make money from the business of using human tissue and bone for medical purposes – except the people from whom the tissue and bone is taken (I think we can take it as read at a liberal blog like this that killing people for their body parts is wrong).
Virginia Postrel, the US-based writer, underwent surgery to give one of her own kidneys to a friend and made sure said friend is alive today (what a great woman Virginia is). As a classical free marketeer, Postrel does not understand why it is so terrible that such acts should be done for financial gain. She has a long and typically thoughtful piece on the subject here. She responds to those who fear that poor or gullible people might be led into selling their body parts out of financial desperation, but that is an argument about curbing poverty, not reducing human freedom. Ultimately, I own my body, and not the state, not the rest of the UK population, not Tony Blair, not god or the Great Cheese Monster in the sky. Of course, a “market in organs” may attract shysters and unscrupulous doctors, but as the Reason article I alluded to makes clear, there are plenty of shysters in the system now.
Of course, in a country like Britain where a lot of the population drink like fish, it is debatable whether anyone would want to buy our kidneys, or even take them for free.
Somehow, I do not think this line of argument is going to work with my employer. I know this sounds harsh, but aspects of Greenery are starting to resemble a form of mental illness.
For finance geeks and stock market punters, here is an article about the growing use of computer programmes to trade the equity, bond and other markets. Even as early as 1987, when equities fell dramatically – was it really nearly 20 year ago? – I vaguely recall reference to ‘programme-trading’, a process whereby orders to buy or sell a bunch of stocks was automated. Banks and hedge funds now use what are called algorithmic trading systems, which, in plain English, make use of recognisable patterns of behaviour that can be expressed mathematically in order to give out ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ signals in a market, spot trends, etc.
The usual worriers, not all of them anti-market people, may fret that all this mathematical wizardry, aided by the powers of modern computing, will make markets dangerously volatile, but as Iain Dey’s Telegraph article suggests, this does not appear to be the case. In recent years, in fact, global equity and bond markets have been pretty calm, although punctuated by the occasional sharp selloff, as happened in late February and early March. The last really big blowup was when Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt in 1998, triggering the meltdown of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund. When last year the fund Amranth nearly collapsed in the natural gas market, it hardly caused a wider ripple.
In fact, contrary to what the Will Huttons of this world might have us believe, the growing use of financial derivatives to offload risks seems to be making markets more, not less, able to deal with risk and ultimately, makes the whole financial system safer. That is not, of course to say that all is well. It is not. In Britain, a profligate government could yet put the market into a spin if the inflation problem gets worse (UK retail price inflation is nearly at 5%). House prices could, if interest rates rise as expected, take a nasty fallback. So there are gremlins in the systems. But the blame, as usual, should be pinned on the real culprits, and not computers or strange-sounding things like collateralised debt obligations.
Of course, this also explains why some of the best science graduates and post-graduates now work in the City, rather than making space rockets. Money talks.
(I have corrected the spelling of Iain Dey).
“My word, I’m not even a hundred yet.” The last line of Robert A. Heinlein’s masterpiece – arguably his finest book – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Much has been written about the science fiction maestro. Well, a lot is going to be said and written about the man at the upcoming conference to mark the centenary of his birth. The guest-list is pretty damn impressive, including one of America’s hot science fiction talents, John Scalzi. It seems sadly ironic that Heinlein, a man who wrote memorably about longevity and characters like Lazarus Long, is not still with us.
But his ideas and wonderful stories most decidedly are.
As sporting competitions go, it may not be one of the most visually enthralling, but the America’s Cup yachting race festival – held this year in Valencia in Spain – has to be up there as one of the most prestigious and oldest. Started in Victorian Britain, the prize to win he massive trophy got its name from the fact that, for more than 150 years or so, America managed to win the series of race matches without a break until, in 1983, the Australian-backed team led by skipper John Bertrand beat a yacht helmed by legendary US race maestro Dennis Conner.
I love the shape and design of 12-metre yachts, and the J-class yachts that were raced in the 1920s and 1930s are arguably some of the most beautiful creations to be struck from the hand of man. I often find that people who do not know much about sailing like to put prints of J-Class vessels on their walls. I think there is something about the aesthetic of such a racing boat that appeals to us in much the same way that a sleek aircraft does. In many respects the design of a modern yacht has a lot in common with the design of aircraft, so perhaps it is not surprising that some of the top aircraft designers, such as Thomas Sopwith, were keen sailors too.
Largely due to the lack of time and of course money, I do not do as much sailing as in my younger days but I hope to get in some time afloat later this year, possibly including the race around the Isle of Wight, part of the Cowes Week yatchting series. I always seem to return from a yachting holiday or race feeling absolutely knackered but also refreshed by getting completely away from the office. You love it or you hate it. For me, sailing is as addictive as nicotine or booze. I intend to take the shore-based Yachtmaster navigation course this winter and eventually go for the full ticket.
Anyway, I will be interested to see if the USA can win back the America’s Cup trophy this year. I do not think Britain stands much of a chance, unless some rich-as-Croesus character decides to fund a serious challenge for the trophy.
While watching a rather silly movie about volcanoes, starring Pierce Brosnan, I idly surfed the Web to see how many examples there have been of tectonic movements in the United Kingdom.
It turns out there have been quite a few, albeit not on the catastrophic scale recorded in the US west coast, or Japan, Greece, Turkey and Iran. But even in little ol Blighty, the earth has moved. The British Geological Survey website is worth a look. I was taken aback to see that there was even a minor tremor in Norfolk. Yes, Norfolk, home of turkeys, mustard and birthplace of Lord Nelson.
The other day I pulled a couple of quotations from this book, which I mostly liked although it has some annoying parts too. What got me wondering is why so-called US “liberal” academics are capable of writing penetrating and thoughtful pieces on certain areas of life but also clearly dumb as stumps on economics. Take this passage from Professor Hanley on page 72 and 73 of the book, where he defends racial quotas in universities:
“Suppose that a white male applicant loses out on a college place to a black male applicant, even though his SAT score was higher… I think the sense of unfairness here springs instead from the intuition that since the white student didn’t do anything wrong, and since his score was higher, he deserves the place ahead of the black student.”
“To which I say, bullcrap.”
This professor has a nice line in reasoned argument. Let’s go on.
“This is once again simply ignoring structural discrimination, if it’s not just plainly racist.”
Define “structural discrimination”, Professor. What is it? How can a person be discriminated against where no actual conscious human being has decided that Fred is going to get a fairer deal in a college admission than John? Structurual discrimination is a sort of catch-all expression that in fact simply says that over a long period of time, certain racial groups have underperformed in certain ways and that there might be factors that should be corrected. But for how long does the impact of this “structural discrimination” last? 10 years? 20? 100? What sort of empirical evidence does Prof. Hanley think will be needed to show that this is over and we can revert to the idea of treating people equally before the law, like those fuddy-duddies such as James Madison said should be the case? The Professor does not say, although he swears a lot and thinks that people who disagree with him are idiots. I guess he is so struck by his own moral grandeur that he cannot imagine anyone decent disagreeing. What a jerk.
He goes on:
“If we’re granting that the white student is a beneficiary of structural discrimination, then we can’t say that he is more deserving (of a college place). Desert is a matter of what you’ve done with what you’ve got. We have no prior reason to think that the white applicant has done more – so we have no reason to think that he has been unfairly done by.”
So presumably the honest thing for such a professor would be to give up the pretence of holding SAT or other education tests at all. Why not say this: “White folk are beneficiaries of former discrimination in their favour, even if the folk today are not to be blamed for what their ancestors did. As a result, no matter whether the white college applicant is a clever, conscientious person, he or she should be wiling to let people from racial groups we think are the victims of ancestral discrimination take first place in the queue. And if you disagree with that judgement, then you are an evil person and quite possibly a Republican.”
I take back what I said about this book and its author a day or so ago. He is not as smart or as funny as he first appeared (well, we all make mistakes). He is, in fact, a thug with a fancy academic title. Sadly, there are a lot of them.
Unlike some free marketeers, I do not have a visceral loathing of trade unions, although I can understand why some people do dislike them. With very large businesses, such as say, ICI or GM, it probably saves a lot of time and bother to negotiate pay and conditions through a union and its representatives.
So long as they do not try to form monopolies and freeze non-union members out of a company via a ‘closed shop’ or expect to be free of the ordinary tort liabilities of the Common Law, I think unions are often beneficial. They can provide services to their members like insurance or other benefits, help members with specific disputes, and occasionally their strikes for better pay and conditions do in fact help workers in vulnerable situations, such as where there are few other sources of work and an employer has a de-facto monopoly negotiation power – although such cases are pretty rare and do not last long in a properly free and efficient market place.
There is debate on whether employers really do have a structural upper hand in negotiating pay with employees and whether unions do anything useful to ‘correct’ that supposed imbalance. The economist W. Hutt was a notable skeptic on how much of an advantage employers actually have, if at all. Anyway, even if there is not a significant structural imbalance between the negotiating freedom of labour and employers, unions can smooth the pay negotiation path at times.
So there you have it. A member of the Samizdata writing crew, that band of capitalist oppressors, says that unions can be a force for good.
And then, as Stephen Pollard notes, the NUJ reminds us of why so many folk dislike unions and their antics. Sigh.
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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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