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.
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The British government is preparing to launch a further assault on the English Common Law by eroding the presumption of innocence in jury trials involving certain categories of offence. In short, the government wants it to be possible for a defendant’s previous convictions to be made known to a jury unless there are compelling reasons in the eyes of a judge against it.
It does not take a lot of imagination to see why prosecutors and even the odd well meaning but deluded politician think this is a grand idea. It must be disheartening for a prosecutor to see a serial rapist, mugger or thief get off on a technicality and for the defendant’s nefarious past to be undisclosed to a jury. But – and it is a very big but – keeping previous convictions a secret except in certain conditions is designed to ensure that juries examine a criminal case on the facts as they are presented, and not by trying to guess the motives of the accused or rushing to a conclusion on the basis of a hunch.
Also, by withholding information about previous convictions, police and others are forced to present their evidence as strongly and as competently as possible. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies here. My fear is that prosecutors and others could become lazier and more slapdash in how they present evidence if they think that they can always shove X’s seedy past in front of a jury as part of the case.
I must say it is hard to summon up feelings of surprise or even anger any more at what our political classes are doing to the traditional checks and balances of our criminal code. To be fair, much of this process began long before Tony Blair, although this most authortarian of governments has set about destroying our liberties with a zeal not seen in decades. I hold little hope that the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats will offer much resistance, given their terror at being thought to be ‘soft on crime’.
And so we go on, changing processes of law in ways which will undoubtedly lead to more unsafe convictions. The present government, like all too many before it, is extraordinarily hostile to process and the understanding of the long-run bad consequences of interfering with constraints of law and custom.
The likelihood, of course, that all this messing around with the Common Law will reduce crime significantly is, I confidently predict, zero.
Earlier this week I received a telephone call at work which left me trembling with rage and disgust. Had I been asked to make a donation to Hamas or buy a Michael Moore DVD? Had a born-again Christian harangued me about my evil atheist views? Was I trying to get some data from our Paris office? Had I been told that my soccer team, Ipswich Town Football Club, was about to be merged with Norwich City FC?
No, it was none of these things. I had just been lectured about what I should consider paying for a house by a early twentysomething estate agent.
Now, like a lot of people, I realise that the process of buying a home can be stressful. I work in the London financial market, which is a pretty stressful place full of aggressive folk and also some of the smartest, nicest folk around, too. In my decade or more of working here, though, I have never encountered such a rancid mix of rudeness, patronising attitude, overlaying a rather obvious desire to grab my money as fast as possible. A very British set of character failings, in fact.
During my recent and wonderful trip to the United States, I used to chuckle at some of the real estate advertisements, with expressions such as “We don’t just sell houses, we sell dreams.” Smug Brits may laugh at such cheesy imagery and words, but frankly, I will settle for a bit of American cheesiness and cheery good manners over the British alternative every time.
The British government wants, so it says, to ‘modernise’ Britain’s gambling laws, which will, so it is said, make possible the creation of Las Vegas-style gambling resorts in all their lovely, gaudy, tacky glory.
Now, being one of those crazy libertarian types, I naturally take the view that if folk wish to waste their hard-earned wealth in gambling, whether it be on the horses, baccarat or a fruit machine, then it is none of the State’s business to prevent them. Gambling is after all a manifestation of Man’s love of taking risk in the hope of gain, something which is a part of the capitalist system and in fact a perfectly healthy part.
But it is ironic, is it not, that this change to gambling law is happening under the reign of Tony Blair, our preachy, puritanical, Prime Minister. Mr Blair is, so we are told, a devout Christian. Now, I realise that one cannot generalise about these matters, but I was not aware that gambling was something that Christians were particularly in favour of. So what is going on?
I have a vague theory, and I would of course like to know what commenters think about it. It is this: socialistic governments naturally repress and in some cases, crush, risk-taking behaviour of entrepreneurs. However, said governments dimly realise that the desire to take risks and profit from risks does not disappear. So instead, such governments offer citizens an alternative outlet for this risk-taking appetite, setting up things like national lotteries and so forth as a sort of general safety valve.
Or to put it another way – if we really allowed people to take risks in a wealth-creating fashion by slashing taxes and red tape, it would not be necessary to create a tacky gambling empire to satiate the desire for risk taking. Who needs the cheap thrill of gambling when one can hope to imitate the achievements of a great entrepreneur? Of course, I am not so naive to imagine that gambling will ever fade if the top rate of tax were to be halved tomorrow, but I would hope that some of that risk-taking drive would be channelled in a more productive, perhaps more useful, direction.
By the way, I once visited a casino in Vegas. My overall impression was that it was one of the most boring places I have ever visited, at least the gambling side, anyway. There were, other compensations, of course.
It will probably now be a widely accepted view that Saddam Hussein had no active weapons programme and was some way off from creating one. But that he intended to create one given a moment’s opportunity, is beyond doubt, and one reason why, given the increasingly porous nature of the sanctions regime, Saddam’s risk-taking behaviour and the corrupt oil-for-food programme of the UN, I felt war was the least-bad option.
Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan linked this week to a Reuters story about how mothballed nuclear facilities were stripped and spirited out of the country after the Coalition successfully invaded Iraq.
It is one of the most serious charges one can level at George W. Bush that he bungled the aftermath of the war and that the Coalition forces failed to secure sites such as nuclear facilities. It was, after all, supposed to be a central justification for the war that we were securing such sites and preventing weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. Stuff like this makes me wonder whether Bush and Co. really had a clue about what they were doing.
But it is also interesting to note that a Reuters story (that big fat commie news service) implicitly conceded that Saddam did have a nuclear programme. And if it were not for the bravery and brilliance of the Israeli airforce in 1981, he would have had one up and running some time ago.
I must say I am quite a sucker for the recent spate of films based on comic strips. I liked the Spiderman films, the Hulk, and even quite enjoyed the Batman films (the one with Michael Keaton, anyway). Well, another one off the conveyor belt is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
It has been panned by the critics, which is usually a promising sign given the nature of most snarky film reviewers these days, and I hugely enjoyed it. It has numerous fine qualities: WW2 fighter planes which can go underwater; futuristic aircraft carriers in the sky with great big Union Jacks on them; spiffy uniforms with Angelina Jolie wearing them; hot female journalists in classic 1930s garb with rakish hats and wavy hair (Gwyneth Paltrow), and big, biiiiiiig metal robots that do not talk but stomp menacingly around New York.
The film has no great ‘message’, I suppose, apart from showing how in the middle of the 20th century mankind, or at least the western bits of it, dreamed of a mechanised, high-tech future. The vision appears a bit comical to us now, but perhaps our age, with our interests in the Web and so on, will appear no less bizarre to generations hence.
But never mind all that highfalutin’ stuff. Go and see the film and have a feast of art deco kitsch with two of the most ravishing actresses now working. What’s not to like?
Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world.
It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm.
After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves.
Some may find the following comments to be unserious, in poor taste and reflecting the laddish tendencies of some Samizdata contributors. If you do reach such a conclusion, you will of course be dead right.
The great Tory MP, Spectator editor, game show contestant and budding novelist (does this man have no limitations?) Boris Johnson, has contributed greatly to the gaiety of national life through such jolly japes as hiring sacked BBC journalists like Andrew Gilligan or driving cars on Top Gear.
But surely among his greatest achievements was the identification of what in retrospect was obvious to all but which struck like a thunderclap at the time. In the mid 1990s, when “New Labour” was on the rise, our Boris, then a humble scribe for the Daily Telegraph, created what he called the Tottymeter. The Tottymeter aims to reflect the representation of attractive young women – preferably unnattached – in a political party. Blondes, redheads, brunettes – it does not matter. If your political party has a fair showing of the Fair Sex, then chances are that your party is headed for power rather than for Skid Row. Women, so he argued, are attracted to successful men. (Success rather than looks, given that the average political male is not exactly Sean Connery).
Serious types will sneer, saying I am showing a sexist attitude, suggesting that women do not have a serious reason for joining a party. But I think when looking at success in a field like politics, you can tell a lot from the sort of folk who are joining a party as well as those who are leaving it.
I found Boris Johnson’s thesis convincing. In the mid-1990s when I attended a Labour conference in the course of my job, I was struck by the relatively high number of pretty, and very ambitious young women. (Mind you, when the average young NuLab type opens their mouths, my interest disappears, even if they look like Gwyneth Paltrow).
I think one key contribution of bloggers to modern political reporting should be trying to record this phenomenon and indeed analyse it.
Conservative Party main financial spokesman, Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin, is a bright man, as I can attest – as well as being a very pleasant fellow – so he presumably has a valid reason for not spelling out what taxes he would like to cut or scrap, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. But a Tory administration must surely want to cut taxes at some point. Why else vote for them?
I trust and hope that Letwin’s coyness on the issue is not caused by the daft idea that any discussion of tax cuts is supposed to conjour up images of little old grannies left to sleep in the snow, no “schoolsanhospitals” and suchlike. Letwin needs to remember the old rule of not allowing political opponents dictate the terms of the debate. The Tories must break the false idea that tax cuts = End of Civilisation As We Know It. A little boldness can win dividends.
As the British Conservative Party starts its annual conference today, I am sure a lot of party activists and Members of Parliament will wonder how they can deal with the threat posed by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
The UKIP pushed the Tories into a miserable fourth place in last week’s parliamentary by-election in Hartlepool, a seat vacated after disgraced former Cabinet Minister, Peter Mandelson, went off to Brussels for a cushy job in the EU (no doubt a place well suited to his talents).
UKIP has reversed its policy of not standing in election contests against euro-sceptic Tories. This looks like quite a calculated gamble to me. It means they have gone from being a bunch of slightly eccentric nuisances, as far as the chattering classes are concerned, to something a bit more serious.
The Tories to my mind have lost their bearings in the last six months. The decision by leader Michael Howard to flirt with Bush-bashing anti-Americanism, even to the point of letting colleagues work for the wretched John Kerry, looks like an act of supreme folly. But closer to home, the European issue remains the one the Tories have to get right if they want to survive as a serious political force.
It is going to be an interesting week for the Tories. And I am also looking forward to how the conference is covered by the blogs.
Legal experts, property developers and lovers of liberty ought to be eagerly waiting for the outcome of a key US court ruling on what is known as the law of eminent domain. The ruling could kill off the practice in which property developers, in alliance with local politicians and bureaucrats, can push property owners from their possessions, seize the land and re-develop it, usually in the hope of grabbing higher tax revenues than was the case before.
I am not an expert on the fine print of this law as it applies in the United States, and readers ought to look at works such as the excellent book by Richard Epstein on the subject. What is clear, however, is that for years Americans, like Britons, Frenchmen, Germans and others, have been living in a world increasingly resembling the law of the jungle rather that of a liberal civil order when it comes to the treatment of property.
I honestly do not know how the ruling will turn out. Essentially, contestants in the case are arguing against the idea that eminent domain can be exercised on commercial grounds. Hard-line defenders of property will, of course, argue that eminent domain does not exist even if the supposed use of property is for something required for ‘public use’, such as a port, military airfield or highway.
Here is a thought – this ought to be a classic ‘left-wing’ sort of issue. It is actually a good issue for libertarians to try to use to convince socialist types that property rights, understood in their fullest sense, are a protection for the weak and vulnerable, not the other way round. The old man in his shabby cottage who refuses to sell up to Big Gleaming Corp. is as much a hero of the free market order as any Ayn Rand character or 19th Century industrialist in a frock coat.
Side observation: I would be interested to know if the hugely loss-making Channel Tunnel link could have been built without compulsory purchase. Somehow I very much doubt it.
Thanks to the excellent Anger Management blog for the pointer.
Last week I stated my hope that the UK Conservative Party was showing possible signs of courage, as well as smart political opportunism in voicing support for slashing, if not completely abolishing, inheritance tax. The posting triggered a lot of comments, most of them nice and supportive of my view, and only a few in support of the tax.
One commenter claimed that inheritance taxes were a good thing because they broke up rich dynasties which the commenter thought acted as a brake on economic dynamism.
Is this actually true? In the 19th Century, for instance, Britain was indeed a class-bound society in many ways and the richest families enjoyed a standard of living beyond the wildest dreams of the humblest farm labourer. But Britain was in many respects an astonishingly vibrant and upwardly-mobile society too, often in certain respects even more so than today. Sir Robert Peel, the great Tory Prime Minister of the 1840s, was the grandson of a humble cotton weaver. Richard Cobden, one of the great advocates of free trade, a Member of Parliament and hero of classical liberalism, rose from conditions of great poverty. The list of rags to riches folk in Victorian history is long and makes for wonderful reading (it also puts my generation to shame, frankly.) Rich families, either deriving their wealth from the land or from elsewhere, were simply incapable of hogging the whole economic pie and denying any entry points to others.
As the writer Jenny Uglow pointed out in her marvellous book, The Lunar Men, the brightest and best entrepreneurs circumvented the old ‘Anglican establishment’ entirely on their way to creating the world’s first true industrial nation.
All this is a long-winded way of saying that those who inherit wealth may gain a temporary advantage which appears ‘unfair’, but in an expanding economy with new ideas, opportunities and ventures springing up all the time, it is hard to see how a person who has not inherited such wealth can say he has been denied a chance to make a good life for himself. (This, by the way, is not the same as privileges created by the State to favour select groups over others. That is a different argument).
And of course in reality rich businessmen over the centuries have realised that it was in their own interests to encourage and widen opportunities for the less well off, which is precisely why they endowed so many schools, libraries, musical orchestras, art galleries and the like, as well as political and cultural causes of all kinds. The ‘rich dynasties’ of Britain certainly did not, as far as I can see, act as a serious drag on the country’s economy. If there was a drag factor, it was more to do with the slow rise of collectivist economic doctrine towards the latter stages of the 19th Century, and the rise of State power and influence, which did much of the damage.
A final thought: some folk may imagine that inheritance taxes are okay because the persons affected are dead, so they would not care. Well, quite apart from the contempt this shows for the wealth a person has sought to acquire during a lifetime, it also rather ignores a simple point, which is that many people view their life goals as not simply to make themselves rich and happy, but also to build a better and fuller life for their children and grandchildren. That desire is itself a powerful incentive to work hard and create wealth, and is a spur to growth and the transmission of socially beneficial values.
The British Conservative Party is contemplating making a pledge to sharply cut inheritance tax as part of their election manifesto commitment, as reported here. That is fine as far as it goes and does at least hold out a glimmer of hope that the Tories are willing to name the sort of taxes they want to cut, if not scrap entirely.
But of course, inheritance tax needs to be abolished in toto. All taxes are bad -some libertarians regard them as forms of licensed theft – but this is a particulary bad one. It taxes a person twice on the income already earned or the profits made, and hits the laudable desire of parents to bequeath wealth to their offspring to help in later life. If the Tories have the conjones to get rid of this tax, they should make it part of a broader policy of cutting, and drastically simplifying taxes on savings in particular.
Inheritance tax is borne out of a mindset that holds that wealth and opportunity is essentially fixed, so that if person X inherits a million pounds, that person in some way gets an ‘undeserved’ headstart in life against person Y. But in a world when opportunities are changing and expanding, no such ‘headstart’ exists. As the late libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick pointed out, to hold this view is to regard human life like an athletics race around a fixed circuit towards a pre-determined finish line. Clearly, if life were like that, then an athlete given a headstart or has an unfair advantage (this explains why drug use is such a heated issue in the Olympics). But real life is not at all like that. It is, as Nozick pointed out, about different people pursuing different ends.
Also, consider this – if I do not ‘deserve’ to inherit any money from my father, then neither do you deserve my father’s wealth, either. So socialists who insist on seizing that wealth are in fact seizing something they do not ‘deserve’ in any meaningful sense. The logical thing for such egalitarians to do would be to destroy the wealth.
Finally, there are many incidental, utilitarian reasons for opposing inheritance tax, including the fact that if the law was scrapped, it would force thousands of people to do something more productive with their time and brains than negotiate the shoals and reefs of the tax code. It also encourage a long-term point of view in that it opens up the goal of not just getting rich, but enjoying the idea of making one’s children and descendants rich as well.
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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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