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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As any reader of this blog would have realised by now, the French political establishment is viewed with varying levels of disdain. I yield to no-one in my loathing of French President Jacques Chirac, who, let us not forget, would probably be an inmate of a jail for corruption were it not for the immunity from prosecution afforded to the holder of his office.
But as proud individualist and opponent of all attempts to lump people together under a single banner, I regard attempts to attack someone for being ‘French’ no better than doing so for being, say, American. Yet the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto does precisely this regarding Democratic wannabe Commander in Chief John Kerry. His constant snipes at Kerry for being “French-looking” are bigoted nonsense.
Well Mr Taranto, I would like to point out that many of the ideals enshrined in the US Constitution, which presumably is revered by the Wall Street Journal, originated in France. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Bastiat, Condorcet, Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Toqueville, all giants of classical liberalism, were all French.
James Taranto’s “Best of the Web” column used to be a must-read for its snappy and often hilarious takes on the various media comments of the day. Alas, he seems to be little more than a cheerleader for George Bush these days. Maybe Taranto’s talents, which are considerable, could be put to better use.
In a Reuters interview (not available yet on the Web) with Luigi Spaventa, the former head of the Italian stock market watchdog, Consob, he says stock markets should refuse to list firms such as stricken food group Parmalat whose ownership structure spreads into murky offshore centres, such as the Cayman Islands.
If a stock market is allowed to run its own affairs, then of course there is nothing wrong in it banning a would-be listed firm on the grounds of its ownership structure. But it is surely a different matter when it comes to a government regulator telling investors that a firm is so dodgy that they cannot put their own wealth into it via an exchange. Surely caveat emptor (“let the buyer beware”) applies here.
In any event, I wonder if crossed the mind of this old regulator that one key reason why so many firms domicile their business affairs in offshore centres is to avoid the crushing taxes imposed by European nation states?
I think Samizdata’s readership is ahead of me already on that one.
The growing examples of Western firms outsourcing or “offshoring” jobs, including hi-tech ones in software, to locations such as India has triggered a certain amount of bleating in parts of the commentariat as well as some excellent responses, such as at the blog Catallarchy. What this does show, however, is that those nations best able to cope with the ever-shifting sands of the global economy are those with the ability to harness skills to best effect.
For some time, we self-deprecating Brits have tended to downplay the extent to which we can still punch our economic weight in such a harshly competitive world economy. Well, this entertaining book, Backroom Boys, by Francis Spufford (never heard of him before, BTW) is a pleasurable, if sometimes maddening account of how the British scientists have pioneered or collaborated in a range of economic fields, such as the early space race of the 1950s and 1960s, computer games, the supersonic jet plane Concorde, and perhaps most significant for our present lives – mobile phones.
What I particularly liked about Spufford’s book is how he got under the skin of how scientists work and co-operate with one another. He nailed home the point that in scientific establishments, both in the public and private sector, what counts for a scientist is not necessarily big money, but the respect of one’s peers. For a scientist, you are respected as much for the ideas you share with your peers as to how many times you get your face on the front of Time magazine. In short, he says scientists operate an intellectual “gift economy” where altruism pays.
The book also shows how British scientific efforts, often “hobbled” by supposed lack of funds, often had to adapt and employ more nimble ways of research while their better-funded American rivals could just bully ahead. The best example, of course, is the contrast between Britain’s puny efforts to launch its own space programme, including the Black Arrow rocket programme, and the various endeavours of NASA. (I wonder how many readers know Britain had this programme? I certainly did not).
The story of how Concorde, a collaborative Anglo-French venture came into being and was supported by the taxpayer before eventually being drawn into the maw of privatised British Airways was instructive. Libertarian purists will, of course, blanche at the idea of such a plane being created with tax funds in the first place. I side with them, but I could not help noticing that Concorde came into its own as part of an overall business package when BA became a private business. There is a lot of interesting description in the book about the “halo” effect, whereby a luxury, loss-making entity like Concorde is kept within a business to make the whole operation more appealing. Spufford also reflects about the nature of luxury goods and how they are priced. It may seem irrational that a Concorde seat costs X times more than that of a seat on a Boeing 747, but making the seat so costly was part of the cachet, like the cost of a Rolex watch or an Aston Martin sports car.
Perhaps in a moment of rare hubris, Spufford ends his book speculating about the now-fated Beagle 2 Mars project. He dreams that a “British suitcase is on Mars”. Oh well, you cannot win ’em all.
U.S.-based music download business Napster, which is now a paid-for service after its chastening battles in the law courts against the music companies, is extending its services to European customers, according to this report. Well, when it comes to stirring up a hornet’s nest of controversy, few subjects generate more angry buzzes than the case for or against the right to download music on the net, in my experience.
If the record companies ever thought that Napster would vanish without trace, they were deluding themselves. Personally, while I have my questions about the intellectual property right aspects to Napster-style downloading technology, there is no doubt that it has thrown traditional business models into the dustbin. But does it mean the death of music recordings, orchestras, book authors and film-makers? I don’t really think so.
As a related point, there is an interesting article here on the website of science fiction publishing house Jim Baen, making a good point about how downloading can, in the medium to long run, raise rather than cut book sales. I suppose that the argument works for music and possibly films as well.
I suppose it had to happen. Italian legislators, no doubt hoping to look useful in the wake of the near-collapse of Italian food group Parmalat, say they need new laws to prevent the kind of abuses that have dragged the firm into the mire.
Yep, that’s the spirit. What we need is a “overhaul”, a “sweeping new set of powers”, a new super-agency with “wide-ranging” powers to prevent such things happening again.
They never learn, do they? If the public authorities had been doing their job in the first place, ie, enforce the laws preventing fraud and theft, then Parmalat would be chiefly known for its milk cartons, and not as a firm which is doomed to be known as Europe’s Enron. But I guess where there’s muck, there’s brass, as we Brits say. The firm may be teetering on the brink, but at least politicians can see the bright side and pass some impressive new laws and bolster their wonderful reputations.
This book has been out for a couple of years, but such is my backlog of reading material (it seems to be common problem among us libertarians) that I have only just got round to reading this enthralling and at times harrowing account of how a group of dare-devil British mountaineers, inspired by the challenge of the Himalayas, mixed high-altitude adventure and spying activity against the Chinese during the mid-1950s. If you love books on central Asian geo-politics, mountaineering and some appallingly good rude words, you will like this story.
Sydney Wignall, a Welsh mountaineering enthusiast, very nearly died from maltreatment at the hands of the Chinese PLA after he and his fellow mountaineers were kidnapped at gunpoint during an expedition to Tibet. Without giving away any essentials, the book, written in a sort of Kiplingesque style, rams home the utter horror of what has happened in Tibet and against its people as a result of the Chinese incursions since the end of the Second World War.
This book is a timely reminder of what a disgusting thing communism is and what it can do to people. It also tells, however, tales reflecting the very best of human character and spirit, not least among ordinary Chinese people caught up in the collective madness of Mao’s totalitarian order. It also makes me want to visit the Himalayas one day.
The trial of American businesswoman Martha Stewart is shortly about to get underway. I am, on the basis of what I have read about the charges brought against her, unconvinced she was guilty of insider trading, and in fact deeply disturbed that prosecutors have chosen to go ahead with this case on the basis of what looks like thin evidence, as described in detail in this article in Reason magazine.
I have a problem with insider trading as it is defined by lawmakers in the United States, Europe, and in certain other parts of the world. In all too many cases, insider trading is so loosely defined that any entrepreneur with a quick dialing finger and fast ability to spot information – surely a praiseworthy thing – could, according to some definitions, be found guilty of insider trading. Insider trading has become rather similar to anti-trust in this regard, in that capitalist-bashing lawmakers can use it to cut down the successful.
I do not see any relief coming soon from our legislators. Insider trading is often a way for politically ambitious legislators and public prosecutors to make a name for themselves. And even in those cases where a chief executive or other senior business person has acted wrongly, one usually finds that the act in question amounted to fraud, theft or some other crime already covered in company and in our existing Common law. For example, if say, CEO Fred Smith uses information obtained in secret and in a way that violates his own company’s rules, he should be sacked for breaking company rules and the terms of his contract. No broader insider trading law is necessary.
Also, there is no reason why, for example, a market like the Nasdaq exchange could not stipulate that all listed firms adhere to certain standards of corporate behaviour. Exchanges which let companies do what they want may have to pay a “reputational price” in that some investors will choose to migrate to more upright exchanges. This happens to a certain extent already, because stock exchanges in countries with loose regulations and opaque reporting standards – as has been the case in parts of Latin America, for example – lose out to exchanges like the Dow Jones our own FTSE. In fact, globalisation is forcing a “race to the top” in terms of corporate behaviour as stock market leaders around the world seek to attract capital. The market wins again. (By the way, the collapse of Italian food group Parmalat has helped underscore the reputational damage to a whole country – in this case Italy – when a firm is thought to have behaved wrongly).
On a more economically theoretical basis, insider trading, even if one could definite it clearly, usually poses no actual “harm” either to the broader investor if one accepts that capital markets are typically highly efficient in these days, when price anomalies are usually exposed in seconds in this electronic age.
Time to put insider trading laws under the spotlight, and hopefully, in the dustbin.
He was not a ‘show biz personality’. He did not appear in Hello magazine. He did not share his view with us about the case for toppling Saddam, and as far as I am aware, has not greatly troubled the front pages of the world’s newspapers with drunken antics. He was, boringly, one of the finest, toughest sportsmen of the age. And boy, could he use a cricket bat.
Steve Waugh, cricketing colossus, has finally quit the field.
Maybe mankind, even in these dumbed-down days, can take only so much dreck. That, in my ‘umble opinion, is one lesson we can reasonably draw from figures showing a fall in the sales of Hollywood-made movies in north America. Yes, Lord of the Rings 3, Finding Nemo and some others have proven a big hit, but all too often the formula of big action movie has proven a dud.
Of course, certain factors are involved here. Remaking comic strips into films is bound, after the early flurry of excitement, to leave audiences cold. DVD sales and rentals may also be playing a part, though heaven knows it is difficult to work out if there is a direct cause and effect.
I would be willing to bet, though, that one factor which Hollywood film executives are missing is the changing demographic profile of our culture. All too many films are still pitched at teens and twentysomethings, but surely as populations age, as they are in parts of the West, film producers need to take account of a more mature audience.
The Peter Weir historical drama movie, Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe and based on two seafaring novels by the late Patrick O’Brien, was my favourite of the year, and much better than I had come to expect of literary screen adaptations. It has not shot the lights out at the box office, but deserved to do so.
Or maybe films made in Asia and elsewhere are going to pick up the slack from Hollywood over the long term. We live in interesting times.
After returning to the office for a few hours, I spent the usual wasted minutes deleting scores of spam emails from my inbox. I expect the same goes for most of this blog’s readers. Anyway, in a continuation of my festive spirit and seasonal good cheer, here is a link to a rather amusing collection of ideas for knocking off the spammers, courtesy of those ubergeeks at Wired Magazine.
In conversation with Perry de Havilland of this parish some while back, he likened spammers to horse thieves. Horse stealers were dealt with harshly for threatening the very economic viability of the regions in which they acted, since horses were vital to life prior to modern locomotion. The Internet is just as vital now, so the argument runs.
Hang the spammers? Well, I am sure quite a few of us have thought on these lines. The Wired article has less draconian solutions. Enjoy.
Italy is of course renowned for its great public architecture, its dazzling roster of artists and sculptors, its fantastic food and wine, elegantly-dressed citizens and of course some of the most crooked politicians on the planet. Well, last week, during a trip to Malta when I had a chance to surf over some television channels, I realised that there is an even greater glory of Italian culture – its tv shows.
OK, I am being only half-serious, but Italian television is so funny, so crass, so brassy, and so choc-full of dazzingly gorgeous women and cheesy male presenters that I grin whenever I think about it. You cannot fail to feel good and be amused by it.
One of the things I dislike about much British television is just how depressing it is. Our terrible soap operas, with their tragic sense of life and victim culture, are the worst, but much else is also awful. Not so with Italian television.
Of course it is brazenly vulgar and silly. The moral scolds of the far left and far right would loathe it. But such folk, who share more in common than they would like to admit, miss the point that a certain amount of vulgarity is a sign of health, a suggestion of a level of dynamism in a culture. And judging by Italian tv, Italy is in rude good health.
And of course much of it is owned by the arch-villain of the Guardianista classes and my favourite Italian politician, Silvio Berlusconi. Belissimo!!!!
(Mind you, this guy takes a different view)
I am a bit surprised there has not been more attention paid in the blogworld to the recent demise of Italian food group Parmalat, one of the country’s largest businesses employing more than 35,000 people. The firm, due to problems centering around its debt and some allegedly dodgy investment decisions, is on the brink of falling down a deep black hole.
Now, there are certain specific features of the story that pertain only to Italy and Italians. But more broadly, this saga also reminds us of how, in the higher reaches of the corporate world, accounting standards are falling short. In fact, there appear to be no standards at all.
I am sure readers will recall how the American model of capitalism was mocked for its supposedly laissez-faire nature at the time of the Enron, WoldCom and other collapses. A certain smug tone was detected in the pages of European newspapers. Well, now we have a prime example of Enronitis in Europe. Of course, European business shenanigans have been legion – witness the Byzantine affairs of French banking group Credit Lyonnais, for example. And the accounting practises of the European Commission are also a wonder to behold.
Maybe Parmalat will, however, instill a little humility among editors of European business news channels. There’s always hope.
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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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