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 think Tory leader, windmill pioneer and attendee of uber-Chav celebrity bashes, David Cameron, might want to take a break from the social whirl and read this about the much-derided U.S. tax cuts of 2003:
In the nine quarters preceding that cut on dividend and capital gains rates and in marginal income-tax rates, economic growth averaged an annual 1.1%. In the 12 quarters–three full years–since the tax cut passed, growth has averaged a remarkable 4%. Monetary policy has also fueled this expansion, but the tax cuts were perfectly targeted to improve the incentives to take risks among businesses shell-shocked by the dot-com collapse, 9/11 and Sarbanes-Oxley.
This growth in turn has produced a record flood of tax revenues, just as the most ebullient supply-siders predicted. In the first nine months of fiscal 2006, tax revenues have climbed by $206 billion, or nearly 13%. As the Congressional Budget Office recently noted, “That increase represents the second-highest rate of growth for that nine-month period in the past 25 years”–exceeded only by the year before. For all of fiscal 2005, revenues rose by $274 billion, or 15%. We should add that CBO itself failed to anticipate this revenue boom, as the nearby table shows. Maybe its economists should rethink their models.
Britain’s Conservatives believed – at least during the 1980s when a certain Nigel Lawson was Chancellor – that cuts to marginal tax rates could actually generate more, not less revenue for the State, as well as being a good thing in its own right for widening economic liberty and reducing the bite taken out of the pockets of the citizenry. Now, I know that some libertarian purists out there might actually be suspicious about a measure that would raise more revenues, even if it is a good thing for individual taxpayers. I say let purity be damned. we know that politicians are not motivated much by supposed abstract concerns about the balance between the individual and the State these days, but the practical benefits of cutting tax rates should still resonate with our political classes. The Laffer Curve still operates, at least if you accept the WSJ article. Even current Chancellor Gordon Brown might wake up to the sort of facts that the Wall Street Journal is on about. It would be nice to think that the Tories would seize on such data, make a fuss, point out the benefits of flattening the tax code, simplifying it and cutting rates. Instead, unless I am missing out here, is silence.
Maybe the implosion of the current government means the opposition can afford to slump in the hammock during the back end of summer and wait. But it would be nice to think that they could be a tad more ambitious. Only a tad – I would not want our Dave to break into a sweat or anything.
American economist Thomas Sowell remains, in my view, one of the “must-read” authors for folk interested in the case for liberal markets and critiques of well-intentioned but hubristic social policy. In one of his books, The Vision of the Anointed, he hits upon a key fact that is so often ignored by writers making statements such as “X percent of the population own Y percent of the wealth”, and then proceed, in terms of great indignation, to argue for massive redistribution of wealth to rectify said terrible state of affairs. Sowell points out that what such statements miss out is that we are all getting older, our lives change, and as we do so, it is common for folk to pass from one wealth bracket to another:
“One common source of needless alarm about statistics is a failure to understand that a given series of numbers may represent a changing assortment of people. A joke has it that, upon being told that a pedestrian is hit by a car every 20 minutes in New York, the listener responded, “He must get awfully tired of that!” Exactly the same reasoning – or lack of reasoning – appears in statistics that are intended to be taken seriously.” (page 43).
I am still unconvinced of the isolationist argument vis Iraq that would have had Western militaries – and probably as a result civilians – quit the entire Middle East, and leave Saddam to wreak havoc as he has before, but my goodness, the case for non-interventionist foreign policy has never looked so good at the moment as the insurgency in Iraq gets worse. Jim Henley sums up the “do as little as possible” school of libertarian foreign policy as well as anyone:
If a war is worth years of struggle, billions squandered and thousands or tens of thousands of dead on both sides, why isn’t peaceful change worth as much? Why is it a “bold initiative” to announce a “generational struggle” to transform a region of the world through a war that might or might not achieve its ends, but preemptively absurd to launch a generational struggle to transform the same region through nonintervention, to instill liberalism and justice by exemplifying it? Because people might get killed? People get killed the other way. Because it might not work? Look around you. The other way isn’t working now.
My main problem with Jim’s argument is that setting an example to the dictatorships, thugocracies etc of that region would strike me as a fairly drawn-out, if not rank impossible, endeavour (that’s putting it politely, ed). We are talking about a process that might last thousands of years. And I am afraid that in the meantime, the various despots in that region might not quite get with the Enlightenment programme and develop a continued fondness for blowing infidels up. At best, I would say that such folk might, even at their craziest, be deterrable, which is why I think the libertarian world-view – if I can presume to call it that – should focus on deterrence, and forswear the temptations of what folk called pre-emptive action. But again – and Jim and others have to answer this question – does observing the niceties of national sovereignty always trump other considerations? For me, one of the clearest-cut examples of justified and smart pre-emption was the Israeli airforce’s bombing of the Iraqi nuclear facilties in the early 1980s. No doubt some libertarian “leave-well-alone” foreign policy commenters fulminated about that event at the time, in a way that may have echoes now in what is being written about Israel’s actions in Lebanon (see the posts below).
What to do?
There is now a very high chance that Eurotunnel, the Anglo-French consortium operating the Channel Tunnel rail-link between London and the continent, could be liquidated by this September, having failed to reach a key agreement earlier this week with creditors. The saga of how the operator would persuade a group of banks to let it restructure a huge pile of debt has been chugging along for months. Now there is a real risk that this marvel of civil engineering could be known as one of the biggest transport commercial flops in history. The free-marketeer in me says well, the venture was never based on fully commercial grounds in the first place. The folks concerned probably no doubt rightly thought that if the project was a flop, then the fortunate taxpayers of Europe would pick up the tab, just as they did with that other venture of high-tech wonder and dubious economics, Concorde. The romantic in me would be very sad to see this wonder of rail come to an end. I have used the Eurotunnel service several times, both for work and for short breaks to France in recent years. Every time I have marvelled at the smoothness of the service, only occasionally marred by delays in the English side of the operation, or by the odd rude French ticket inspector.
It certainly beats messing around in airport lounges, that is for sure.
More here on the arrest of Labour head fund-raiser Lord Levy over allegations about tapping up folk for party donations in return for peerages. (See Alex’s post immediately below this one). First question: is this really the silver bullet that might finish off Blair? He has shown incredible resilience in the face of a huge dollop of scandals since 1997: Bernie Ecclestone affair, Mandelson’s various transgressions, a delinquent and violent deputy Prime Minister; Cherie Blair’s interesting spending habits, David Blunkett’s abuse of office and manifest failings, the sheer uselessness of his successor, Charles Clarke; the suicide of government scientist David Kelley and the whole spin-doctoring of arguments about WMDs in Iraq. In less than 10 years, the Labour government has established a record for venality, corruption and rank incompetence that it took the Tories 18 years to acquire. Quite some achievement, of sorts. Of course, although its economic record is not quite as splendid as some would claim, the relatively-good performance of the economy under Gordon Brown has kept the government of the day in reasonably good shape.
But for how much longer can even this part of the Blair record be relied upon? Yesterday, the Bank of England warned in one of its regular publications that there remain significant risks in the UK financial system, particularly concerning the amount of debt and consumer borrowing there is. Our public finances are slipping deeper into the red despite what has been a relatively decent run of economic growth, so goodness knows how bad those finances could get if there were to be a serious slowdown, or some shock to the financial system.
As a side note, it would be churlish not to praise indefatigible digger-up of news about the Levy saga, blogger Guido Fawkes. If I were the publisher of Private Eye magazine, I would be worried about the competition. Guido has been all over this story for weeks.
“We continue to “mind the gap”. The subject has not lost its power to provoke and wound and illuminate. We still talk quite a bit about it in various ways: journalistic-facetious, or pretend-anthropological, or even old-fashioned snobbish. But that does not mean that we are at all comfortable with the subject. On the contrary, we are often decidedly uneasy when it is brought up, and we do not care for it when the question of class is described as “Britain’s dirty little secret”. We tend to be especially resentful when the Americans or the French describe Britain as uniquely class-divided.” (page 105)
“We are often told that deference has disappeared from modern Britain. Yet the adulation of the rich and famous is surely as fulsome as ever. In hotels, restaurants and aircraft – the sites of modern luxury – the new upper crust is fawned on as egregiously as old money in its Edwardian heyday. All that has changed is that the composition of the upper class has changed, as it has done roughly once a century since the Norman Conquest…..what has almost disappeared is deference towards the lower classes. Throughout the two world wars and the decades following both of them, the lower classes were widely revered for their courage in battle and their stoicism in peace. Values such as solidarity, thrift, cleanliness and self-discipline were regularly identified as characteristic of them. That is no longer the case.” (page 107)
Mind the Gap, by Ferdinand Mount 2003. Definitely food for thought, and despite the title, is not a plea for some sort of mushy egalitarianism. I thought about this book while reading the comment threads here bemoaning the rise of the middle class football fan as some supposed frightful imposition on a working man’s game. We still bother about class, it seems.
In case anyone missed it, here is a fine article summing up what I think is the truth behind the case of the three NatWest bankers who are to be extradited to the United States on charges related to the collapse of Enron. The author, business writer Jeff Randall, fingers what he sees as the reason why the banks have been so coy about defending their employees from the U.S. legal authorities.
Unlike Stephen Pollard, who huffs and puffs about how this controversy is largely a matter of anti-Americanism, I do not like the smell of this case at all. I think Pollard’s argument – which has its merits – misses the point of how one-sided the operation of U.S. extradition powers are. These men are not regarded by the British authorities of being guilty of any offence. The U.S. authorities appear not – to the best of my knowledge – to have given even the semblance of a prima facie case justifying the extradition of this trio. And yet as the article points out, while the U.S. can use these powers – supposedly justified by the War on Terror – Britain has no corresponding right to extradite alleged U.S. wrongdoers (powers associated with terrorism have a habit of branching out).
As with the British blogger Clive Davis, I am a pro-American who also thinks the U.S. authorities sometimes do a lousy job at treating what they should regard as their close allies. Okay, I can hear the comments coming that even if they did a great job, it would make no difference. I am not so sure. While I agree with Stephen Pollard that U.S. authorities are arguably right to get nasty on financial wrongdoings and are often tougher than we Brits, this use of extradition powers looks a step too far. It does not strike me as smart diplomacy or right law, and I hope, perhaps naively, that the British government shows rather more backbone on this case than hitherto.
Here is more on the story, and more here.
UPDATE: And of course let’s not forget the continuing outrage of the EU arrest warrant. I should have mentioned this fact earlier, in case our American readers think I am picking on them.
The June edition of technology, futurism and culture magazine Wired has a fascinating piece by Steve Silberman about growing government restrictions in the United States on home-chemistry kits and how this could bar children from learning from, and getting excited by, science. Instead, children are likely to increasingly encounter chemistry and science not up close in a lab and by playing around with kits, but via video or school labs where experiments are conducted in highly protected environments. I can see the thought process here: “If youngsters get home-kits to make chemical experiments, then the odd potential bin Laden brewing up a concoction in his bedroom could go out and try to blow people up.” Small-scale amateur rocketry has already experienced similar bans or restrictions on stuff like the fuel used (“some nut might shoot a plane out of the sky!”).
But the security services are missing the “Pack not a herd” point of Glenn Reynolds and others: namely, that in a rich civil society where lots of people have hobbies and interests including messing around with chemistry, physics and technology in their spare time, it creates a natural “social capital”, if you will, of people who can prove mighty useful in an emergency. The same edition of Wired magazine has an article on how companies like Proctor and Gamble use home-based scientists – what Wired calls “crowdsourcing” – to fix problems that their own in-house professionals take more time and a lot more money to solve. If I were a defence or security official, instead of treating all amateur scientists as potential trouble-makers, I’d co-opt them, issue prizes for new ideas, and so forth. I suppose this links to my point below about the value of X-Prize contests.
So by all means be vigilant in the fight against terror. But if geeky children want to learn more about chemistry at home, I think that is a healthy thing to be encouraged. Our ancestors, such as these fellows, who often arrived at scientific breakthroughs after exploring scientific ideas in a far less regulated environment than today, certainly would have agreed.
I have read Andrew Sullivan’s blog pretty much from the moment he started it. I have a natural sympathy for anyone who defies conventional stereotypes, and a man who is Catholic, gay and a small-government Reaganite conservative, a fan of Madonna and Michael Oakeshott certainly breaks more sterotypes than most. He has been magnificent in taking a stand on the issue of torture, for example. But even our heroes – and Sullivan is one in my eyes – have their feet of clay or views that I regard as stand-out dumb. And on the issue of cars, Sullivan (who does not drive) reverts to nannystatism in all its ugly glory. He endorses an article by Jonathan Rauch arguing that President Bush should press for an international pact to phase out the use of gasoline in cars over the next 30 years. Oh great. So do we humble, much-harassed motorists get a say in this? Don’t give me a line about how this would be ‘democratically’ decided. Oh yeah. Why not leave it to the market, already driving new alternatives to petroleum-based engines? If the real price of oil continues to be high, as it is at the moment, then we will get more hybrids, more hydrogen-powered cars, more innovations and new transport sources, without the need for some Grand International Treaty or 30-year deadline. If Bush did make such a pronouncement, how seriously would anyone take it? Would it not be regarded as the sort of ‘eye-catching initiative’ one has come to associate with our own Tony Blair.
A far better idea, in fact, would be to rely on innovation contests such as the X-Prize to encourage new technologies rather than go for a big Treaty with a deadline. Now that strikes me as the sort of idea a small-government advocate like Sullivan should be pushing.
I can understand the wish to reduce use of oil from the Middle East and curb C02 emissions. But in my gut I feel that Sullivan and others like him just don’t like cars very much and are mystified by most American’ love of a set of wheels (clue, Andrew – America is seriously BIG). Sullivan has lived in the States now for more than two decades, but I fear that in some way, the fella never really left this little damp island known as Britain.
I recently read This is Burning Man by Brian Doherty, chronicling the remarkable phenomenon of the Burning Man annual festival/event/blowout in the middle of the harsh Nevada desert. Despite the occasional slip into Sixties hippyspeak which might suggest a sort of communalistic mushiness, the book contained at its core the profoundly rational message that we can enjoy civil society by reducing the state to its barest minimum. Very subversive of statism, Doherty writes with obvious passion for the festival and affection for the often nutty but loveable characters who have developed the event. A great way to while away the hours while waiting to catch my delayed flight out of Nice after a business conference yesterday. Money quote:
“Any political virtue I saw in Burning Man always had to do with its avoidance of politics as I see it – the game of some people telling other people what to do. Burning Man to me was about liberty, and ordered anarchy, the inherent strength and possible joys of a civilisation in which all the “government” you need can be purchased in a freely chosen market.”
I may even go there one day and try and combine a Burning Man trip with a visit to the magnificent Reno air race festival. Yowza!
Like many folk, I get my fair share of free newspapers pushed through the letterbox. These publications live on advertising and in some cases are quite useful, full of details about local plumbers, plasterers, doctors, new restaurants and the like. In my central London neighbourhood of Pimlico, there are a few of these things floating around. I normally give them a cursory glance and either jot down any handy numbers or put the rag into the trash.
The Pimlico and Belgravia Eye has this interesting ad which definitely caught my eye (not available online):
The latest craze hits Pimlico, Victoria!. Experience the ultimate sense of self expression. Not only is it an alternative form of fitness, but it is an overall empowerment source for women. Whether you want to learn new moves for personal enjoyment or for professional career development, we have just the class for you… Students are from all walks of life, ages, shapes and sizes. The school is designed for all levels of experience – total beginners, professional dancers and even aspiring pole dancing performers.
Pole dancing – now associated with ’empowerment’ and ‘professional career development’. Say what you like about we stuffy Brits – there is none of that stuffyiness in deepest Pimlico.
Here is their, ahem, website.
This story about a drugs bust at a drive-thru restaurant may get some folk chuckling but I am not getting the joke. One of thousands of examples, in fact, of how the war on drugs is a waste of time, energy and law-enforcement talent. At a time when we live with the threat of terrorism, one would like to think that priorities were a touch different on both sides of the Atlantic.
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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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