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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This is a shame, since I have grown to greatly value Wikipedia and hope it does not get badly damaged:
Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopaedia, has been plunged into controversy after one of its most prolific contributors and editors, a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as a 24-year-old community college drop-out.
The editor, who called himself Essjay, was recruited by staff at Wikipedia to work on the site’s arbitration committee, a team of expert administrators charged with vetting content on the on-line “free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit”.
The open-source and on-line dictionary has been a roaring success in its brief life. I use it constantly both at work and in my spare time. I also consult other reference tools and would strongly advise people never to rely on just one source for the sort of information that Wikipedia and its rivals provide. But it is a shame that this character hoodwinked the site in this way. The best way for Wikipedia to handle this is put its hands up, admit the problem and deal with it.
Which is more than one could say about some organisations.
Last night was a magical one, and not just because I danced to some great music at the wedding of a sailing friend of mine. I also was able to stand outside and, glass of rather fine Armagnac in hand, watch the lunar eclipse in a crystal clear night sky. I have dabbled a bit in astronomy over the years, but this sort of thing might make me part with a few pounds and buy a proper telescope. Think of it: for a short while, the remains of the Apollo landing craft were bathed in orange.
Last Sunday I came across a gem of a job advertisement for HM Customs and Revenue and we discovered that as taxpayers, we are in fact “customers”, and the job of directing this happy enterprise went with a six-figure salary and no doubt, a final-salary pension. Ever since I have been tracking job ads in the public sector, and this weekend, I have another little cracker for you via the Sunday Times:
“A new era for adult social care services.”
A new era. Hold on to your wallets folks.
Director of adult services.
What, is this a porn company?
Up to 110,000 pounds.
Yowza!
Newcastle, recently designated a “science city” by the government, is a great city which in recent years has been transformed into one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the country”.
True. No longer famed for shipbuilding, Newcastle has been through a terrible economic time, but it has some top-class firms, like Sage, the accounting software business. The beer is good and cheap, and the local boys and girls amaze by their ability to go out on a wintry Friday night wearing hardly any clothes. Oh, and it has Newcastle FC, which last won a trophy back in the early Jurassic period.
Our population is ageing and changing – we need to plan for this now. It is critical that organisations across the city work together to better plan for and provide for these changing needs.
No. What the state needs to do is to withdraw from many activities and let people increasingly take control of their own lives and save up money to deal with rising longevity. This process was made rather harder by the present Labour government’s endless fiddling with the tax system, and most of all, its 5 billion-pound-a-year tax raid on corporate pension funds.
In other words, the job spec. here is for some head honcho to “co-ordinate” various efforts to confront the “problems” of a greying population. It seems to me that all this co-ordination will do will cost a lot of money for jobs like this one. People are living for longer – which is hardly a problem from many points of view. As people live longer and healthier lives, then job patterns would, in a free and unfettered market, adjust to deal with that.
£110,000 (US $214,000) is a very nice payout for a lot of bureaucratic hot air. If one multiplies such jobs, you can see why the increase in public sector jobs of more than 800,000 since 1997 has had no noticeable impact on the quality of public services in this country, and arguably, made them far worse.
George Soros, a man who can annoy with some of his less-than-brilliant pronouncements on public affairs, nevertheless is an investor of genius. Well, at least he was in the 80s and early 90s when, purely out of glorious avarice, of course, he helped push Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September, 1992. This event irreversibly damaged the reputation for competence of the then-Tory government of John Major and Chancellor Norman Lamont. Soros’s fortunes in the 1990s waxed, although he failed to exploit fully the 1990s dotcom boom and now prefers to travel the world dispensing advice. He is loathed by many on the right for his support for the Democrats. I saw him give testimony to a Treasury Select Commitee in the House of Commons a few years ago and felt that this was a brilliant financier who, like many men who are brilliant in one area, can be often rather silly in other areas (Einstein springs to mind).
But the beauty of open markets is, that even if you disagree with the views of a person, you can still trade with that person and make each other better off. Voltaire, when he travelled around England in the 18th Century, marvelled at the London Stock Exchange and how people of all religions could and did transact with one another. Well, Soros, a lefty financier, has just made the sort of deal that is likely to send those charming folk of the Democratic Undergound off the edge. Tee-hee.
How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.
– Robert A. Heinlein, one of the world’s great science fiction writers and moggie-lovers.
As regulars of this site will know, even the most ardent sports fans on this blog – Brian Micklethwait, Michael Jennings and yours truly – despise the Olympic Games. Or, more exactly, we despise how the Games in the UK are funded out of taxes, and despise the crooks, cretins and gullible fools who imagine that the benighted taxpayers of Britain are making some sort of “investment” by paying for the Games. The other evening, flicking through the channels, I saw Sebastian Coe, now a peer and a former Tory MP, go on about what a smashing “investment” the Games respresented, as if he was talking about a punt on the Nasdaq or a purchase of BMW bonds. That an alleged Tory should use the word “investment” to talk about something that could not stand up on commercial grounds and requires the looting powers of the state to function is depressing evidence of the calibre of Tories today. For all their faults, former Chancellors Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe or even Norman Lamont never insulted our intelligence by abusing the English language in this way.
It is possible that the Conservatives have made the crude calculation that the blasted Games, which surge in cost all the time, are going to happen anyway, will be an expensive mess, and the best thing to do is to make supportive noises, not appear to be grouchy, and pin any blame for cockups on the Labour government. From a narrow tactical angle, this is possibly sensible. There are some battles not worth fighting; while the cost of the Games could run above 10 billion pounds, the overalll size of UK public spending is several multiples of that and the Tories or any decent opposition must focus its attention on that. Although a huge figure, the cost of the Games represents a rounding error compared to the total public spending burden. Even so, it would be good to see the Tories flaying the government over the fiasco that this event threatens to become. Over at the Social Affairs Unit blog, the writer Jeremy Black makes some good points on what this government’s opponents should be doing.
Oh well, at least writing about this takes my mind off Ipswich Town FC’s miserable footballing year and England’s loss of the Ashes. Sigh.
As if the threat of being bullied and labelled a fattie is not enough, there is now the risk that the state and its agents will take a child into care if that child is deemed “obese”. Over the last few days, the press has carried reports of how a young boy, weighing in at a powerful 14-stone (196 lbs/ 89 kg), narrowly avoided such a fate.
My first instinctive belief is that the state has no business telling us about what should be the shape of our butts. In the case of children, responsibility lies with the parents, and there has to be real and sustained proof of neglect and abuse to trigger any form of intervention. In nearly all cases, my view is that the “cure” of taking an “obese” child into care will far worse than the supposed problem. Yes, extreme obesity, as measured in terms of excess fat vis a vis overall body shape, is not something to laugh at or dismiss. Although I have been lucky and born with a slim physique, I still try to build on that good fortune by keeping fit. There’s no doubt that many people in Britain are unhealthily overweight. Lack of exercise, sedentary lifestyles and the demise of hard, physical labour all have an effect. But while I would encourage folk to look after themselves, ultimately, what people choose to do with their lives is their business, not mine. In the case of this youngster, realising that he is overweight should be incentive enough to do something about it. His parents may not be the brightest lights in the harbour, but from what I have read, they plainly adore their son, although they probably could exert rather a stricter control over his diet.
As we have also found in so many cases, paternalistic state actions often start to “protect the kids” and end up spreading towards adults as well. I hope this young man learns to take pride in his own health and can look back in future to this time in his life as one where he learned to control his appetite and also realise how dangerous the state has become. There are plenty worse things than having a large tummy, that is for sure.
In the course of my day job, I have to give my boss a round-up of the Sunday business pages to keep track of all the latest news and features. Not surprisingly, the Sundays are full of stuff right now about Britain’s ‘super-rich’, such as those folk brokering lots of mergers and takeovers at the moment (see my post below defending private equity). Well, the socialist looters among us will be thrilled to know that the enemies of personal enrichment are alive and kicking. Here is a job ad in the Sunday Times:
“HM Revenue & Customs. Make a real difference, take our information to a new level” (I liked that bit)
“Attractive six-figure package – central London”
I am sure it is very attractive.
“You probably know HM Revenue & Customs as the people who collect tax but there’s far more to it than that”
I bet there is. Go on, we are dying to know.
“We play a vital role in law enforcement and protecting society”
Yep. When Gordon Brown fucked the UK pensions system, it was all about protecting society.
“90,000 work within HMRC, and we have over 40 million customers (taxpayers, claimants and others)
“Customers” – that is beautiful. And we ‘customers’ of VAT, income tax, inheritance tax, stamp duty, national insurance (tax), etc, are being cared for by 90,000 caring, sharing, hugging, cuddly people. Terrific.
“In every sense we have a huge responsibility for society and the economy, so customer focus sits at the heart of everything we do”
I do not know who writes these adverts, but the Comedy Central Channel is always in need of new blood. Hire this person immediately.
When I read the following column by Will Hutton, lambasting private equity firms for daring to take over big UK companies like supermarket J. Sainsbury or whoever, I laughed out loud. Here is his lead paragraph in Friday’s Guardian:
It is time to come to the defence of the public limited company, one of the great Enlightenment gifts to western civilisation. Increasingly capital, in the quest for higher returns to make vast personal fortunes, is going private to escape the demands of public accountability on stock markets. If uninterrupted, the long-term adverse consequences of this privatisation of capital for our economy, society and democracy will be profound.
Rubbish. Firms that are floated on the London Stock Exchange, Nasdaq or the Martian 250 are privately owned, Will. They are not owned by the state. True, limited liability laws, as the libertarian writer and friend of mine, Sean Gabb, likes to point out, present serious issues in terms of the gap between ownership, responsibility and control (I wrote about this topic a while ago). But to argue that private equity shops like Apax, Carlyle or Texas Pacific – those evil Amerikans – are taking what should be ‘public’ into grubby ‘private’ hands is economic illiterate nonsense. Firms exist to make a profit, Will. As Milton Friedman trenchantly put it without hint of apology to the gods of ‘social responsibility’, a company’s job is to make a profit for their owners, not to further whatever corporatist/fascist/socialist/ist agenda that happens to attract the gaze of Guardian editorialists.
Why the current wave of hysteria about private equity? It is being fuelled by two things: fear and envy. Fear of the power of these sometimes shadowy firms to buy up famous companies with great wodges of debt finance, or leverage, as the finance geeks put it. Envy, because of the large bonuses that the private equity honchos pay themselves and the often high profits they make in turning firms around. And of course no story about private equity can be written without referring to the Masters of the Universe lampooned by Oliver Stone in Wall Street or portrayed in books with such objective titles like Barbarians at the Gate.
In the main, what these firms do is target cash-rich firms that are run by often lazy executives who have presided over crappy business decisions. Take the meltdown of Marconi a few years ago, one of Britain’s most famous companies. That was a listed company. The destruction of value and jobs in that company remains, in my mind, one of the most disgraceful episodes in British corporate history and who knows, it might have been saved from making big errors had a private equity fund been in charge, rather than deluded executives. Private equity firms helped stymie Deutsche Börse’s foolish bid for the London Stock Exchange 2 years ago, and have turned around businesses. They typically buy and hold a firm for 5 years or more, take a hands-on approach to running firms before spinning them off to another buyer or floating them in an IPO. So Will Hutton should spare us sentimental guff about how limited liability firms floated on the stock exchange represent the perfect model of doing business or something that Adam Smith or Voltaire would exalt. They are merely one of the many ways in which economic activity manifests itself. As interest rates rise and the economic cycle turns, some of the excesses of leveraged buyouts will fade and private equity transactions will decline. No doubt Will Hutton will forget everything he has written and go back to bashing listed firms for their “short-termist” fixation with pleasing shareholders, or whatever.
As mentioned several times in these pages, by the way, one additional reason why listed firms go private is because their bosses prefer not to have to put up with onerous reporting requirements under US and other laws, like the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley rules. If Hutton or other big government advocates are worried about the migration of companies off the listed stock market, they might like to remember that point.
Right, my rant of the day is over. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Update: have slightly amended the text about Marconi, just to reinforce the point. One commenter, Bryan Appleyard, has argued that firms become “cultural” forces, as if released from the laws of supply and demand. I have heard some odd attacks on private ownership and M&A before, but that is a new one. Companies that have been taken over by private equity include the Automobile Association, Kwik Fit, Debenhams, various property firms, HEA, the US health chain, and many more. I don’t really see how the cultural issue makes a bit of difference to the folk who work in them or buy their products.
I’d also add that I think some of these private equity deals are in danger of coming unstuck, and no doubt much gloating and gnashing of teeth will occur when or if this happens. It is partly a function of low interest rates and the impact this has on asset prices. Monetary growth is strong at the moment and this is one of the ways in which money supply growth comes out. Another lesson from Friedman to remember.
Via the Norman Geras blog (and in turn via Glenn Reynolds), is a long letter that challenges head-on the disgraceful spectacle of Iran’s conference of December 2006 to “debate” whether the Holocaust existed. Good. It is a letter that reminds us that thousands, maybe millions, of Iranians do not subscribe to the same claptrap as its leaders. It is welcome and important that such views get an airing. I hope it happens a great deal more often.
Sometimes you see a set of numbers and they really make you sit up and gasp:
Last year, more than 350 companies went public in Europe, selling $86
billion of stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the U.S.,
235 companies raised $48 billion in IPOs. In 1999, 507 companies went
public in the U.S., selling a combined $63.93 billion of stock. Not one of the 10
largest stock issues of 2006 was listed in New York.
Nice work, Messrs Sarbanes, Oxley and Spitzer.
Bryan Appleyard has a terrific piece in defence of 4×4 vehicles, often dubbed as “Chelsea Tractors” on account of their often being driven by well-heeled west Londoners in the narrow streets of said neighbourhood rather than being driven in muddy village lanes. He says what I suspect has been the obvious point, which is that class hatred and the current puritanical culture explains what fires the dislike of these vehicles. The amount of petrol consumed per mile has, I expect, not got a lot to do with it.
These cars have become emblems of all our environmental crimes. They represent 7.5% of the UK car market and 100% of British car loathing. The very idea that in town, or even in the country, anybody should use a car in which all four wheels are driven is regarded as a crime comparable to logging the rainforests or clubbing seals. Across Europe, owners of 4x4s
(or, as they are also called, Sports Utility Vehicles, or SUVs) have become eco-pariahs, malevolent planet-warmers. If you happen to be sitting in a Range Rover Sport, a BMW X5 or, worst of all, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo S in London, it is best not to catch the eyes of any pedestrian.
I can sympathise, however, with some, not all, of the annoyance that these vehicles provoke. Their drivers are often terrible, imagining that their being surrounded by massive lumps of metal means they are somehow absolved from the rules of the road. They gobble up a lot of parking space, which is at a premium in highly-taxed London. They have a higher centre of gravity than most cars and yet some drivers do not adjust their driving to take account of this. And I occasionally do wonder quite why a person needs such a large vehicle to take little Johnny to school or do the shopping.
But whether I think people should or should not “need” to have such a vehicle is beside the point. I have an opinion, but the Greenies want to use the coercive power of the state to limit our motoriing ambitions, and I very much doubt that concern for the welfare of the planet has much to do with it.
Talking of politics of envy and massive City salaries, this article is worth a look.
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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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