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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Two senior American politicians, one a Republican, one a Democrat, have sent a snotty letter to ExxonMobil in order to tell that firm that it should cease funding views that challenge the Green consensus. The effrontery of these twerps really takes the breath away. It further bolsters my view that many environmentalists, at least on the edges, are hostile to free speech and liberty more generally. If were a senior manager at this oil firm, I would reply by informing these characters over exactly what they can do with such letters. There is no longer any point pretending to be nice to these people.
The Wall Street Journal has a strong editorial here on the subject. Thanks to Reason’s Hit and Run blog for the pointer.
I count myself as a very fortunate man in many respects. I have a job I enjoy – most of the time, anyway. I am in decent health, have a lovely wife, no serious money troubles, and a supportive family. One of my greatest pieces of good fortune, I reckon, is to have been born in the county of Suffolk. Yes, it may not pulsate with the energy of London or New York, and East Anglia is a part of the world that is unlikely to become one of the great tourist sites of the world. But it has its charms: its ancient churches, pink-washed cottages, attractive seaside towns like Aldeburgh, and a heritage of art and literature that holds up well against all-comers. Gainsborough was a Suffolk man, while Charles Rennie Mackingtosh, whom one normally associates with the city of Glasgow, spent some time painting in Suffolk in the small seaside town of Southwold (which has a great little pier). I grew up in the country on a farm, and am probably the only person in my company who can claim to have driven a combine harvester, ploughed a 300-acre farm and shot game birds.
And of course Suffolk has the glory that was John Constable. There was a recent excellent exhibition of his works at the Tate. His Hay Wain (spellings of this picture seem to vary) is probably one of the most famous paintings of all time. Thousands of people have his prints on their walls and probably wonder what the scenes of Flatford Mill and the River Stour that Constable depicted look like now. The answer is that not much has changed in terms of the scenery, apart from roads and cars. The village of Dedham is pretty recognisable. One of Constable’s paintings is on the walls of the village’s main church.
It was a grand place to meet up with my parents for a pre-Christmas gathering in the area as I will be spending my Christmas in Malta. But one thing left a sour taste and that was the standard of service I received in a pub/restaurant in the area. It is fair to say that television chefs Gordon Ramsay or Nigella Lawson have no fear of competition from this part of the world. The food was indifferent, and the service and the staff so gormless that I began to wonder whether the old cruel saws about country folk being a bit simple might have some basis in fact.
U.S-based blogger Kim du Toit had a recent similar experience of British pub food and service. At a time when the pound is trading high against the U.S. dollar, it is already expensive for Americans to visit Britain on holiday so it hardly makes sense to make the situation worse by bad service. Constable Country, as the Suffolk-Essex borderland is known, is a well-trodden place for Americans, particularly older people who may have spent some time serving in the US Airforce during WW2 and the Cold War at the many bases dotted all over East Anglia. (The region was one big aircraft base, in fact. Here is a book I recommend for aircraft junkies.)
Anyway, Suffolk has that prince of beers, Adnams Ale. No further reasons to go there are needed, surely.
(Update, well, having thought this through I will name the establishment: The Marlborough, in Dedham high street. Let’s be clear, the place is fine in most respects, but the quality of service on Sunday was just not good enough.)
“Why hate someone for the color of their skin when there are much better reasons to hate them”.
Denis Leary, comedian, actor and champion of American firefighters and emergency workers.
One of the things that seems to bug people these days is expressions of how the world is getting better, wealthier, and happier. My recent comments on the glories of global capitalism flushed out some pretty stubborn adherents of fixed-wealth, mercantilist economics. Much of the attitudes I encountered in the comments are based on a profound pessimism about the ability of people to adapt to change, or even enjoy the challenges of change. Even so, in these gloomy times, it is good to have a clear statement about how good many developments now are. Allister Heath has noted that optimism is almost a taboo an attitude these days as admitting in Victorian times that one enjoyed sex. Anyway, pessimists be damned, read this by Allister:
For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology.
If you believe that such apparently outlandish claims cannot possibly be true, think again. In a book which will trigger intense controversy when it is published later this month, the acclaimed American economist Indur Goklany, former US delegate to the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change, demonstrates that on every objective measure of the human condition – be it life expectancy, food availability, access to clean water, infant mortality, literacy rates or child labour – well-being and quality of life are improving around the world.
A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, published by the Cato Institute, reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious
I love articles like this. It must drive the gloomongers nuts. And driving such people nuts is not just a pleasure, but a public duty.
Hope has become a commodity in short supply in the West. Even though more progress will always be required, our victories over famine and extreme poverty during the past two centuries are civilisation’s greatest achievement. It is time we took a well-deserved break from worrying about terrorism, rising crime, social dislocation and all our other problems to celebrate what we have actually got right.
Indeed.
John Scalzi, a science fiction writer whom I admire and learned about via the blogs, is giving free copies of his books to servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, leaving aside what one thinks of either military campaign, I think this is a grand idea, and I hope and trust that authors, film-makers and musicians do the same. These armed forces personnel are risking their lives and deserve a bit of comfort and support, particularly now when so many people, even “moulting hawks” like me, are doubting the wisdom of military intervention in the Middle East. We put them there, God help us.
Scalzi’s first book, Old Man’s War, is definitely worth a read, and the successor, The Ghost Brigades, is also pretty good. If you like Robert Heinlein or Peter Hamilton, for example, you will like Scalzi. I hope he is around for a long time to come. He writes hard science fiction with characters you believe in, can like and admire, warts and all.
(Thanks to Alex Knapp for the tip).
This looks like it would swallow up my entire living room wall:
Move out that old armoire and clear off the living room wall – it will soon be time to make room for that new 70-inch LCD television.
With 42-inch flat-panel TVs flying off retailers’ shelves this holiday season as prices dip below $1,000, brokerage house Sanford C. Bernstein said in a research note on Tuesday that 70-inch TVs could be the “right size” in 2009.
“We decided to investigate the optimal screen size for high definition viewing,” wrote analyst Jeff Evenson in the note. “We conclude that 65 inch to 75 inch is the right size for a 10 foot viewing distance.”
Mind you, given my income levels, I am happy to stick to my modestly-sized flatscreen for the forseeable future.
The late Milton Friedman was famous for many viewpoints but one that stands out for me was his admirably blunt statement that the purpose of a business is to make money for the people who own it, not to advance some social, environmental, religious or other agenda. Period. A publicly-quoted firm on the London Stock Exchange or Wall Street should focus on making money for its shareholders. In a competitive market – key proviso – such a purpose will tend to work, as Adam Smith said it would 230 years ago, in the interest of the consumer and worker:
Friedman wrote:
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system,” I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
The doctrine of corporate social responsibility is very much on the march in Britain. Companies are increasingly encouraged to do things to help the environment and help local communities. My own firm encourages its staff to devote some time to voluntary work and sets aside time and resources for that end. Now, I have no trouble whatsoever with a firm that, with the consent of its owners – shareholders – decides to back certain causes so long as the shareholders realise that such activity could affect their shares either positively or negatively. So long as it is made explicit and the owners are allowed to decide yes or no. The problem starts to arise however when this doctrine is forced upon the business owners by state regulation. This is not simply a problem that can face listed companies; it can also potentially affect firms that are not publicly listed but owned, say, by a private equity fund or an individual.
One problem, I think, is limited liability laws. Such laws, one might argue, create a bit of a “moral hazard” problem in that the firm’s owners are less mindful of the harmfulness or riskiness of their decisions than if they were subject to the conditions that used to prevail under the old English Common Law. Might the reason that we have so much focus on the supposed social responsibilities of business stem in part from the idea that limitied liability is a privilege that carries responsibilities? Purist free marketeers might say that the logical step is to remove the privilege, but would the ability of firms to operate on a large scale, with all the advantages that can bring, come to an end without limited liability?
I am not sure about the answers to all these questions, which is why I ask them. I know that some libertarians and classical liberals, such as Sean Gabb, have posed the argument that limited liability is inherently contrary to a consistent free market doctrine, and that the creation of large corporations with certain immunities has actually created businesses that are increasingly indistinguishable from government. On the other hand, one might envisage how constraints on corporate liability might emerge without state legislation, although I confess I am not sure how this would work.
Related thoughts here and here.
This recent posting of mine here referred to the wonders of global divisions of labour and the consequent availability of cheap goods and services that would have once been luxuries. The posting quoted an example about something as simple and evocative as exports of flowers (aaahhhhh) but of course it applies to anything: computer software, underwear, books, automobile components and furniture.
The ensuing comments were interesting (one of the reasons I like blogs with comment threads is that they give me ideas to write about). One argument, which I have heard several times, went something like this: globalisation and free trade is obviously grand in many ways and gives us all manner of goods unknown to our ancestors. However, the people who do best out of this tend to be smart people who can handle the rapid pace of change that globalisation brings. But not-so-smart folk, who are used to manual labour but not much up to anything else, will end up on the scrapheap. This is a bad thing as it erodes the social fabric, destroys established communities (such as Yorkshire mining villages, etc), and in particular, means that the sort of folk – mostly men – who used to expend their energy and pride on producing ships and material goods lose purpose in life, turn to crime, etc, etc. If they get jobs at all they tend to be worse-paid, “McJobs” which are demeaning to perform. Conclusion: globalisation has big losers as well as winners.
Superficially, this sort of argument carries a certain amount of force, but only lasts until one realises that this sort of line could be used not just to stop cheap imports from China and inflows of Polish construction site workers, but could, for example, be used to ban people in California from importing stuff from neighbouring Nevada, or ban a guy living in Paris from moving to Bordeaux because he is “stealing” a job from people who live in the French coastal town. In other words, when one realises that national borders are lines on a map, the perversity of protectionist economic arguments is manifest. Taken to its logical extreme, I am “taking” jobs from people in East London because I work in Canary Wharf but live in London’s central area of Pimlico.
The other sort of problem here is that it reminds me of how people still view work that involves physical objects, such as manufacturing, as being in some way more “real” than service-based jobs. It demonstrates the lingering Marxian view that wealth is not wealth unless you can drop it onto your foot. It is a view that also, I think, reflects a highly gloomy, if not disdainful, view of one’s fellows. Despite the difficulties involved and the wrench of closures of factories, millions of jobs have been created in countries like the United States that have replaced the old jobs, and many of those jobs are not the supposedly-terrible “McJobs” but jobs that have long-term career prospects. (Although folk that poke fun at “McJobs” tend to ignore several things, such as that such jobs are good entry-level jobs and people then move on to something else).
Here is an admirable debunking of the idea that free trade encourages a “race to the bottom” in terms of incomes. Another admirable paper by the late Murray Rothbard here.
Readers may wonder why I am bothering to write about this, given that protectionism is pretty discredited (I have yet to meet anyone who, when sober, takes Lou Dobbs seriously). But the easy charms of protection continue to seduce lawmakers and even quite intelligent interloctors on blog comment threads. Like ivy threatening to throttle a young plant, protectionism needs to be ruthlessly cut back by argument, over and over again.
A BBC journalist this morning informs us that the death in highly suspicious circumstances of a former Russian KGB official could lead to a “potential diplomatic incident” between Britain and Russia.
You think?
Last night, I went along to see the latest 007 movie along with my wife, as well as Perry de Havilland of this parish, regular Samizdata commentator and friend Julian Taylor, David Shaw and others. There had been so much media noise and excitement leading up to the film, starring Daniel Craig as Bond, that I just had to go and see it.
I am very glad that I did so. I am one of those folk who actually prefers the original Ian Fleming books to the films, and I have a consequent dislike of the nonsense of the Roger Moore films, and the excesses of gadgetry and sheer silliness that the film-makers imposed on the stories after the first two or three of the Sean Connery movies, which are my favourites. So the fact that the new film deliberately sought to be more hard-edged, less dependent on gimmickry and cheesiness, was a good development.
Daniel Craig has been a controversial choice for Bond. The Bond of the novels is a slim, dark-haired old Etonian, of Swiss-French and Scottish ancestry – with a hard streak, a weakness for beautiful women in distress and a belief in living life to the full. Craig does well to convey the hard side of Bond, but he tries a bit too hard, sometimes. He comes across as a sort of over-muscled army squaddie, who struts about the set rather than adopt the sort of feline grace of Fleming’s character. But there is no doubting that Craig – who says he loves the Fleming novels – has taken up the challenge of portraying Bond as not just some suave dude who can kill and seduce the girls, but who can also take risks and get hurt in the service of his cause – his country. And that is the unspoken message of this film, and very un-PC it is. Bond is a patriot (not much sign that he wants to work for the UN). He kills without the need to consult a post-traumatic stress disorder clinic, and is more likely to drink a large glass of bourbon instead. He gets cut, he gets beaten up, and he falls in love and learns the dangers of emotional involvement with ravishing brunettes (not that there is anything wrong with ravishing brunettes, ahem).
I thought the scene in the casino was the highlight, and even though the game was poker rather than baccarat – as in the story – the tension is built up nicely. The setting is nice, the actors who support Bond are pretty good, and the actress who plays Vesper is lovely – I can see why any red-blooded man can fall for her. The torture scene, taken from the original book, is pretty nasty, although the scene in the book is far nastier (it gave Raymond Chandler nightmares, apparently).
Some of the stunt/action scenes do not seem to add a great deal to the plot – such as the amazing scene at Miami airport – but they are incredibly well-done. For sheer excitement, the opening half-hour of the film cannot be beaten.
What is clear is that the film-makers, seeing how the Bond movies were mocked by the Austin Powers series of Mike Myers, have decided that our Jim is not going to put up with being a joke any more. Daniel Craig deserves a large, well-made vodka martini – made the right way, obviously – for playing 007 so well, and with such obvious conviction and relish.
Good review of the movie here.
The original Fleming novel is definitely worth a read. Meanwhile, Jim Henley has thoughts.
One final gripe: will the moviemakers ever get the casting right of Felix Leiter, Bonds’ CIA buddy? In the books, he is a fair-headed Texan, ex-Marine Corps with a wonderfully sardonic sense of humour.
(Update: here is my review of Simon Winder’s recent diverting if also irritating book about the James Bond phenomenon and post-war British history.)
The UK Olympic Games of 2012 are shaping up nicely to be the expensive, possibly corrupt affair that many of us crusty cynics claimed it would be over a year ago. There is only the grimmest of satisfaction to be gained from having been proved so emphatically correct. Given the history of publicly-financed construction projects in recent years, or even projects in which public finance is only a part, the predictions should not have been difficult (think of the Scottish Parliament, or Wembley Stadium, or the Channel Tunnel, to take just three).
The likely bill – to the taxpayer – of these Games is likely to be far higher than originally projected. It is almost certain that this fact was known to British politicians and sports-establishment types who lobbied to hold the Games in Britain over a year ago. If a company had bid for a contract with the same degree of financial acumen, probity and sense as the idiots in the UK public sector, rather long gaol terms, fines or hefty compensation packages might now be the order of the day.
We are remembering the late, very great Milton Friedman a lot at the moment, digesting his contributions to the fields of technical economics, monetary theory, politics, education and much else. But I think that his often disarmingly simple statements about the role of the state and the dangers of government will endure the longest, if only because they carry truths from the start of human history:
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
Finally, I can spend somebody else?s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I?m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
(Via David Farrar’s blog)
I think the Olympic Games falls into the final category. I do agree with Stephen Pollard on the possibly sensible idea of cancelling the Games, even at this stage. The lead article in the Times (UK), by contrast, is remarkable for its breezy indifference to the cost of the Games and the fact that the money for it will be screwed out of the pockets of people who regard the whole spectacle as an expensive joke.
Oh, and before any commenters of a pro-state sympathy start to wonder, no, I am not a sport-hater. I enjoy watching football, cricket and other sports, and play one or two sports myself (not very well, I will admit). However, I do not expect my fellows to support my enthusiasms. Is it too much to ask the same of others?
A few weeks back yours truly and Mrs P. decided to find out what all the hype was about and went to see the film Borat. I guess unless you have been living on the South Pole or some other remote part of planet Earth, you will not have heard of this film. Borat is a spoof “journalist” character created by Sasha Baron Cohen, the Jewish comedian who also created characters such as Ali G. The basic idea is that Borat goes to different places and countries and tricks folk into either revealing more about themselves and their views than they would otherwise do, or to simply make assholes of themselves. A few of his victims do misbehave although most seem to emerge with most, if not all, of their dignity intact.
I have mixed opinions about the film. Some parts of it were so funny that I laughed along with the rest of the cinema audience. He does want to send up the insanity of anti-Semitism, which seems to be the serious core of this film, if it has one at all. There is always the risk, I suppose, that some of the thicker viewers will not get the joke and think that anti-semitism has been legitimised by this movie, but you would have to be pretty dense to do so. Beyond that, though, I did not think the movie was all that funny, and not much beyond scatalogical humour of a basic sort. Part of the idea is to play on the natural desire of the victims – in this case, ordinary Americans – to be polite to strangers, even a crazy-looking chap with a big moustache claiming to come from central Asia. Some of the victims on the New York subway tell Borat to go away, but pretty much most of the victims put up with it up until the point when the behaviour gets too bad to ignore.
I guess if you want to see a film that makes you want to experience a deep fuzzy glow of superiority to supposedly simple redneck Americans, this is the movie for you. On the other hand, for comedy of genius that does not target the ordinary Joe but tries for genuine wit, I’ll be relying on my beloved Monty Pythons and Blackadder collection. And for the silly stuff, there is always Peter Sellers, Terry Thomas and those supremos, Laurel and Hardy. Their brilliance will never fade.
Richard North shares my opinion, although he is a bit harsher.
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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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