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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The leader in this week’s Spectator kicks off with this zinger of a paragraph:
When history comes to make a final judgment on the Blair government — and we can be forgiven for hoping that moment is not too much longer delayed — there is one key statistic by which to assess the Prime Minister’s performance. Since 1997 the Labour government has created no fewer than 700 new criminal offences. This is supposed to be an age of increasing peace and prosperity. Yet the Labour party has been in such a continuous panic about the behaviour and potential behaviour of the British people that it has found 700 new ways in which to proscribe courses of conduct. In case you are wondering how that compares with any previous administration, Labour is creating criminal offences at a rate ten times greater than that of any other government.
No further comment required, surely.
Earlier this year the British government overturned the old “double jeopardy” rule, that previously meant that a person could not be tried twice for the same offence. Today, Reuters reports that the first case of a man to face jurors for a second time for the same alleged crime is to go ahead.
This is another step down a slippery slope, precisely because the argument for ending the rule is so seductive at first glance. It is possible to sympathise with victims or relative of crime victims who see a person whom they think has gotten away with it. Many years ago in the course of my then job, I watched several court cases in my native East Anglia and saw people get away with crimes on technicalities. It was maddening.
But – the double jeopardy rule existed for a reason. If people can be repeatedly tried for the same crime, it creates a potential very bad and unintended consequence: police and the Crown Prosecution Service will become lazy in the preparation of cases. Why bother to get a case presented as powerfully as possible and with as much care if you think that if X gets acquitted, one can always have another go, and another, and another….?
The potential for abuse of power from double jeopardy is at the core of why the rule exists. The law in the United States was based on the English model. Hard cases, however appealing, make bad laws, as they say. This is a bad day for justice in Britain. There have been a lot of them lately.
Joel Kotkin, in a fine article at the Wall Street Journal, draws out these telling facts on the European economy’s lousy job-formation record in recent years:
Since the ’70s, America has created 57 million new jobs, compared with just four million in Europe (with most of those jobs in government). In France and much of Western Europe, the economic system is weighted toward the already employed (the overwhelming majority native-born whites) and the growing mass of retirees. Those ensconced in state and corporate employment enjoy short weeks, early and well-funded retirement and first dibs on the public purse. So although the retirement of large numbers of workers should be opening up new job opportunities, unemployment among the young has been rising: In France, joblessness among workers in their 20s exceeds 20%, twice the overall national rate. In immigrant banlieues, where the population is much younger, average unemployment reaches 40%, and higher among the young.
Kotkin goes on to contrast the lack of entrepreneurial (good French word, ironically) vigour in countries like France with that in the United States. There are plenty of other statistics to back up his points, but you get the general idea.
As the French rioting has gone on, I remain to be completely convinced that we are seeing some sort of European “intifada”, as a number of commenters on this blog and other blogs say. Islamist radicalism may not be the primary cause, though it is a contributing factor, no doubt. I do certainly see the frightening potential for radical Islamists to exploit the situation and turn it to their own ends. This may already be happening. But I think the primary problem has been a refusal of the EUropean political elites to realise that the Big Government, and a highly protected labour market is a recipe for disaster and alienation. Coupled with the slowing dynamic of a greying population, falling economic growth and so forth, you have a serious problem of a stagnant economy. For example, the article I cite goes on to point out that hundreds of thousands of young Europeans now work abroad, in the U.S. and in Britain, since the work opportunities are so much better. Left behind is an increasingly state-dominated workforce and a huge population of tax-eating bureaucrats and welfare recipients. Not a great foundation for social peace.
Magnus Linklater, meanwhile, points to a worrying trend in Britain of young thugs hurling stones, firing rockets and other projectiles at firefighters in the course of their work. There have been hundreds of these incidents, many of them hardly reported in the media. Only a few years ago, firefighters were heroes, widely praised by all. Now they are almost routinely attacked in the tougher parts of this country.
While trying to sort out my thoughts concerning the mayhem engulfing the huge public housing projects ringing Paris for the last week or more (11 days’ running) it struck me that one of the basic problems is just how dreadful is the style and character of the architecture of such places. Among the many contributory factors to the present dismal mood in poorer parts of France, it seems to me, is the relentlessly cheerless atmosphere of such places. Many of the buildings are vast tower blocks, without gardens or private enclosed spaces. Long walkways – ideal for muggers and drug dealers – connect the blocks. Without an organic sense of place, there is also a lack of spontaneous neighbourliness that is much easier to create in a terraced street.
I am not going to push this point too far. The terraced housing areas of north-west England were scenes of violence involving young Britons from different ethnic groups only a few years ago. If the French government were to demolish the greying monoliths tomorrow and replace them with low-rise homes, it would hardly represent a major advance towards solving the problems of that country. But I think it would have an effect. Perhaps someone should send a copy of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities to Jacques Chirac and his cabinet as a matter of urgency. Compared to some of the advice the French administration may be getting, they could do a lot worse.
Let’s not forget that one of the high priests of Modern Architecture, Le Courbusier, was Swiss (born just over the border from France), and had a huge impact on thinking about mass public housing for much of the 20th Century, and also influenced thinking in other parts of the world, including Britain. To be fair, though, I resist the fogeyish habit of damning big modern buildings across the board. I agree with fellow contributor Brian Micklethwait that there is good modern architecture that can work brilliantly and crappy modern architecture that does not. When it comes to mass housing, though, Modernism seems to be seriously unnattractive in every sense of the word.
(Correction: I originally said that Corbusier was French. He was not – by a matter of a few miles. Thanks to a commenter for setting me straight).
Meanwhile, here is a grim update on developments.
All over the UK tonight, the sky will be lit up with fireworks and the evening will reverberate with a lot of loud bangs as folk mark Guy Fawke’s Night. Here is a nifty website explaining all about the event, what is commemorated and why. I’ll be off to Battersea Park later this evening to enjoy the fun. I hope people use their common sense and don’t get hurt.
Here is an informative book about the early 17th Century plot to blow up Parliament and the subsequent anti-Catholic crackdown. There is also even something called the Gunpowder Plot Society.
When I was a student living in Brighton, I once went to nearby Lewes, a town that stages a massive series of processions and bonfires every year. It is pretty non-PC in that a lot of people have muttered that such an event, especially one that involves burning effigies of a 17th Century Pope, stirs up ugly prejudices. I can sympathise up to a point with the grumblers. When I went along to the event there was the smell not just of gunpowder in the air but quite a lot of aggressive body language on display (although that may have been due to the potent local ales). I am glad to say that, all this time on, anti-Popery hysteria is mostly a thing of the past in Britain (apart from the odd bit of nuttiness at Glaswegian local football matches between Celtic and Rangers). Alas, it lingers on in Northern Ireland.
Some time ago, a commenter on this site made such a telling point about how to “name and shame” advocates of UK ID cards that his post was reproduced on the main page of the blog. We live in an age where it may be necessary to fight a bit dirty to halt this wretched proposal in its tracks. I was reminded of how politicians may have a financial interest in the ID card venture when I read this article by the Spectator on the political demise of David Blunkett, former Home Secretary, who resigned as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions this week in grubby circumstances:
That David Blunkett infringed the rules by failing to consult Parliament’s advisory committee on his appointment as director of DNA Bioscience may seem a somewhat dry matter. But it is the nature of the appointment and his acquisition of shares in the company that say much about the culture of this Labour government. DNA Bioscience is a private company whose shares cannot be bought by the public through the stock exchange. When the company floats next summer, Mr Blunkett’s shares, which he has now disposed of, will, on current valuations of the company, rise from £15,000 to between £60,000 and £300,000. Were the company, which manufactures paternity-testing kits, to be awarded the contracts by the Child Support Agency for which it is expected to bid, Mr Blunkett stands to gain even more.
It has not escaped our notice that a company which tests for DNA might also appear to be in a good position to bid for government work in relation to David Blunkett’s great pet project: ID cards which will carry biometric information on every citizen in the country. We have argued all along that ID cards are both illiberal and a huge waste of money, and that they will cause inconvenience to the public while doing nothing to reduce crime or terrorism. Our concerns on those scores have not been answered. Yet now to discover that David Blunkett followed his resignation from the Home Office by scurrying off to a plum job in the DNA business puts the plans in an interesting light. Did it really not occur to David Blunkett that it might be inappropriate for a former Cabinet minister who has such an inside knowledge of the government’s use of forensic science to take a job and buy shares in a company well placed to bid for contracts? Ignorance of the finer points of ministerial etiquette is no excuse for what appears to be a serious conflict of interests.
How very interesting!
I have visited Paris many times and have always loved that city, warts and all. I proposed to my future wife there earlier this year. I have noticed, however, over the years of my going there that the place does not have that relaxed atmosphere that I recall when I first went there in my early teens. I could not always put my finger on it.
Well, people are definitely noticing that Paris is not “all right” now. U.S. blogger Roger L. Simon (who writes excellent crime fiction) has some thoughts about the wave of riots breaking out in the outer suburbs of the city. There is also plenty of food for thought via the wonderfully entitled Merde in France blog for some observations close to what is going on.
(UPDATE: link to this instead of the Merde in France site. The url has changed, as spotted by a commenter. Thanks. Mea culpa).
I watched the British Channel 4 news programme tonight, which devoted about five minutes to the mayhem, now in its seventh consecutive night. The report stated that at least 177 vehicles have been damaged, in some cases set on fire. Security services have been fired upon with guns. A primary school has been burned to the ground. This is the sort of thing one expects to read about in Iraq, or, perhaps the Watts area of LA back in the late 1960s. The Channel 4 programme skated over the possible reasons for the mayhem, also ignoring a number of salient facts about life in the area, such as the massive concentration of immigrants of mostly north African descent, the huge drug trade, the lack of assimilation into broader French society and the chronic and relentlessly high levels of youth unemployment.
This vast housing estates are totally in contrast with the elegant, touristy bits of Paris that you see in the travel brochures. I was chatting with fellow contributor Michael Jennings about this over lunch today and he actually makes a point of going to the less salubrious bits of cities like Paris to see what life is really like. I have often noticed, either during car journeys or while taking the Eurostar train, just how grimy and cheerless the environ developments are. These are not places a sane person should spend a lot of time in, given the choice.
Theodore Dalrymple wrote a fine piece about the outskirts of Paris a while back here. Definitely worth checking out.
I heartily hope that order can be restored before that great city starts resembling one of the more violent parts of a Victor Hugo novel.
“When government does, occasionally, work, it it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World (page 199).
I love the punchline.
It appears that prohibitionists in the United States are winding up the pressure against computer games for allegedly turning the nation’s young into violence-crazed monsters. This article in Wired nicely points to some of the absurdities involved in the position of would-be banners of such games like Jack Thompson. Another article here in libertarian monthly Reason makes an even stronger case against the moral panic brigade here.
This issue reminds me of an unusual book I read a few years ago, called Killing Monsters. The book makes the argument that children – and adults – often use games as ways of acting out roles in ways that can help them to overcome fears and grapple with issues, rather than as just passive recipients of violent messages while watching a movie. This is not psychobabble. Children have played games involving rough-house action, or staged plays, or dressed up as cowboys and fighters, since time immemorial. What the moral scolds of our present age tend to overlook is that with some modern computer games, the players get to shape the plot, even down to the point of adding their own ideas to how games should be run and developed.
As the Reason article points out, turnover of gaming has shot up enormously over the last decade in sales volume, from $3.2 billion in 1995 to $7 billion in 2003, while levels of youth violence in the United States have gone down. Whatever else may be going on to explain the drop in some categories of crime in the U.S., video games don’t seem to be making the problem worse.
In fact, computer games may even make us smarter.
It is often said by libertarians, or “radicals for capitalism”, to coin Ayn Rand’s phrase, that Big Business is often lousy at defending the market and in fact is only too happy to co-opt the State to make life hard for competitors. I was reminded of this fact when noted Libertarian Alliance author, Sean Gabb, made much of this point in a talk on Friday evening. It appears that the U.S. retailing giant WalMart may be guilty of this by lobbying for a rise in the U.S. minimum wage.
Debate continues as to what exactly is the impact of a minimum wage on the unemployment rate in a country, but in theory at any rate, raising the marginal cost of hiring a worker presumably makes it less likely that said persons will be hired, other things being equal. Marginal Revolution, the U.S. economics blog, has a take on the issue here. Other useful discussions at the Von Mises Institute here, and taking a more supportive view of such laws, is this paper here.
Even if one takes the assumption that minimum wage laws don’t always raise unemployment overall, the businesses that lobby for them may think they do, or think that by raising their would-be competitors’ costs, that it will strengthen their own market position. In short, there is nothing very altruistic about it.
And Walmart, to take this firm as an example, is also renowned as a beneficiary of eminent domain land-grabs. Funnily enough, this has become something of a cause celebre for parts of the left, who ironically, are relying on the same sorts of defences of property rights that I referred to a few days back on this site. It would be nice if the left embraced property rights as a cause. Stranger things have happened.
Here are the latest statistics on crime in Britain. Police statistics, according to this BBC report, show that violent crimes have gone up, while another survey shows that violent crimes are broadly stable. (The usual health warnings about statistics obviously apply). However you look at it, crime is high.
Regardless of what one thinks about the potentially civil libertarian worries about millions of CCTV cameras now scattered around the country, it hardly appears that they are very useful in deterring crime, which as far as I know, was the stated purpose for the things.
Heather “Momma Bear”, who has been an important figure in the early stages of the blog world, has died after a long battle against cancer. She has been a friend to a number of bloggers I know well, including fellow Pimlicoan Andrew Ian Dodge. She was quite a character. RIP.
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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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