This is a pretty decent check-list for suspected bad science from blogger Eric Raymond. It is the sort of thing that it would be useful for trainee and even experienced journalists to learn.
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The internet has been buzzing for a while about the incident of a woman, Emma West, who, as shown in a video, shouted abuse at people on a tram. It is not exactly clear from the clip what might have led to this, but regardless, it is pretty nasty and a young child sits nearby as she delivers these words. She has, according to reports, been subsequently arrested and charged. Some people out there in the blogosphere are outraged by this turn of events – that West has been dealt with by the authorities, I mean. Initially, the libertarian in me agreed wholeheartedly, regarding this as an appalling attempt to enforce codes of conduct, including speech, in public places. It does make me deeply uneasy and I wonder whether the law would have come down like a ton of bricks on her had she just left, say, litter on the floor. The blogger Old Holborn expresses such a view, for instance. Some people seem to suggest, in fact, that people like this woman have been provoked beyond endurance by the impact of mass immigration. Well maybe, although as a supporter of the freedom of people to move from A to B – so long as they do not expect state benefits – I don’t see why immigration should be halted because it offends people like this woman. After all, given that she lives in London, and that it is, thankfully, a cosmopolitan city and one of the financial capitals of the planet, she will have to face up the chance of meeting lots of foreign-looking folk on a fairly regular basis, immigration or not. I had second thoughts about this business, however, when I considered that under the old Common Law (which libertarians often praise), and other laws too, an offence of “breach of the peace” might apply to this woman’s conduct; such a situation should, perhaps, involve no more than a rap over the knuckles from a magistrate and told to be of good behaviour. The same used to apply to people who got very drunk and disorderly, etc. This would not have anything specifically to do, as such, with being politically correct, as far as I can see. (There may have been elements of PC-ness in this case, of course.). The issue would be simply whether her behaviour was deemed likely to cause disorder, and of what the risk of that really was. Also, from a property rights point of view, if a train/other service is run by a private company, say, then I would argue that the train company should be free to decide such matters, just as, in a perfect liberal world, pubs and clubs and other such places could so decide. (Alas, such principles have already been partly destroyed as in the outlawing of smoking in privately owned commercial premises). If I own, say, a theatre, and I saw a customer shout abuse of any kind at another in the bar, then I’d be within my rights as the owner of said property to kick the people out and if necessary, ban him/her from re-entering. The context is also important in such cases, or it can be. It is one thing, maybe, to trade insults with someone in a fairly open place; it is another business if you are on a confined space such as a train carriage or small office and have to hear such abuse, in close proximity. The smaller the space, the more good manners matter. Indeed, think of how the word “civility” and “civic” run together – manners are a function of having to live close to one’s fellows. Institutions such as navies, where people have to sleep cheek by jowl, understand this point almost instinctively – hence all the seemingly petty rules. These are issues where a healthy civil society is one in which certain behaviours are internalised, reducing the need for rules on such conduct to be enforced by things like police. We should not need to legislate so that mothers do not swear in front of their young children while verbally attacking strangers, or dumping litter on the pavement, or spitting, or urinating in public. And to a degree, the fundamental problem is that this internalisation of moral conduct has been hit by a variety of forces, including the Welfare State, breeding an often oafish, whining sense of entitlement. And it also leads me to the view that one of the most effective ways to restore civility is through private, non-state ownership of public spaces. By the way, on a related topic, I can recommend Edward Shils’ classic, The Virtue of Civility. December 5th, 2011 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
Let us fisk this:
Nice piece of snark, which I do not demur from.
That may be true. I have not checked. However, the fact that Spain’s public finances went down the toilet so fast does not quite suggest that the Spanish public sector was a model of mean-minded prudence.
No, they should have been facing up to the fact that a vast number of mal-investments were caused by a decade of under-priced credit, and that there was no way that such a build-up of bad investments can be unwound painlessly. Seeking to hold off the pain by increasing public spending (and hence scaring the hell out of the global bond market) is hardly likely to achieve the desired effect.
That may be true in crudely political terms; after having enjoyed the fat years, those who have done so are not likely to enjoy a lean period. However…
Well, it seems a bit glib to assume, as Keynesians like Professor Krugman do, that the inflation will prove to be temporary… Riiiight… One key problem for the eurozone, as he ought to know, is that labour markets in much of the region are so heavily regulated that getting a meaningful adjustment in wages and prices is hard, and yet this has to happen if countries such as Greece and Germany are to co-exist under the same currency area without strife. The same issue, of course, would apply if the whole region were to adopt, say, an inelastic system of real money instead of fiat money issued by a central bank or banks. Another point for Professor Krugman to remember is that in some member nations, such as France, there has been double-digit percent unemployment for the young long before anyone had heard about sub-prime or credit crunches. And Europe’s record for wealth and job creation, compared to that of the US prior to the crunch, has been and remains lamentable. December 2nd, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
““Green” will never be quite the same after Obama. When Solyndra and its affiliated scandals are at last fully brought into the light of day, we will see the logical reification of Climategate I & II, Al Gore’s hucksterism, and Van Jones’s lunacy. How ironic that the more Obama tried to stop drilling in the West, offshore, and in Alaska, as well as stopping the Canadian pipeline, the more the American private sector kept finding oil and gas despite rather than because of the U.S. government. How further ironic that the one area that Obama felt was unnecessary for, or indeed antithetical to, America’s economic recovery — vast new gas and oil finds — will soon turn out to be America’s greatest boon in the last 20 years. While Obama and Energy Secretary Chu still insist on subsidizing money-losing wind and solar concerns, we are in the midst of a revolution that, within 20 years, will reduce or even end the trade deficit, help pay off the national debt, create millions of new jobs, and turn the Western Hemisphere into the new Persian Gulf. The American petroleum revolution can be delayed by Obama, but it cannot be stopped.” November 30th, 2011 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
“For what it’s worth, I have yet to meet a British eurosceptic who is enjoying the economic turmoil on our doorstep. It is plainly in our interest that the eurozone-which takes 40 per cent of our exports, and comprises our allies and friends-should flourish. That’s precisely why we are alarmed at the readiness of eurocrats to sacrifice their peoples’ prosperity so as to keep their monetary union together. Not that Norman Davies is much interested in what eurosceptics actually think. One of the oddities of the whole debate is that euroenthusiastic commentators who are quick to spot prejudice in others when it comes to racism, sexism or xenophobia are quite unable to detect it in themselves when it comes to people who don’t share their Weltanschauung. (By the way, Professor Davies, one uses nouvel before a masculine noun beginning with a vowel – le nouvel an, but le nouveau franc. When loftily dismissing people as anti-Europeans, it’s a good idea to get your own French right.)” – Daniel Hannan, MEP, having a go, among others, at the historian Norman Davies. November 25th, 2011 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is hard to keep up with the unfolding events of the eurozone debt crisis. Earlier this week, the auction by the German government of 10-year bonds, which is an event normally garnering only specialist coverage, made big news. It was, in the words of several news-sites, a disaster, with only some of the paper being bought. With impeccable timing, therefore, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the UK-based free market think tank, held a panel debate last night around the question of whether the euro has a future. And an interesting collection of folk were on display: Prof Philip Booth, Editorial & Programme Director, IEA; William Cash, Conservative MP for Stone and a long-standing eurosceptic and loather of most things around the European Union; Ed Conway, Economics Editor, Sky News, Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher and Walton, and finally, and in my view, most memorably, John Stevens, a former member of the European Parliament. Stevens was memorable because, while he made some good arguments (such as that return to the drachma would cause severe problems for the Greeks in some ways), he also repeated a mistaken old argument that I occasionally hear from pro-EU/euro types. The argument goes something like this: Small states (like the old city-states of Italy or wherever) cannot thrive on their own and need to be part of a bigger country. The European Union enables its members to punch with a heavier weight than alone. The old glories of Renaissance Italy only serve as a reminder of how small states lose their edge to bigger entities. And with China and India on the rampage, we need to stick together, despite the odd problem of making the project work. Okay, that is a bit of a paraphrase, but in essentials that is what Stevens said last night. Like others in the audience, I smelled something a bit fishy about it. For a start, is it really the case that the prosperity of small states/principalities/whatever – like 15th Century Milan – could not be sustained alone and that these places had to merge or be taken over by a much bigger entity in order to survive? (It is not as if modern Italy, which was only unified 150 years ago, is an economic colossus as a result of said unification). Take Hong Kong, for instance. In geographic terms, it is tiny compared with the Chinese mainland and for reasons most Samizdata regulars will be familiar with, Hong Kong has been one of the great economic success stories since the Second World War. (For sure, it was a British colony until 1997 but plenty of other places were colonies and they did not thrive). The same goes for Singapore. Or to travel back in time a bit: the UK – hardly a big country – Switzerland (ditto) or the Netherlands. In the latter example, the Dutch were so lacking in room that rather than conquer a bunch of neighbours, they reclaimed land from the sea. The Swiss seem to be doing rather well, despite the pressures on their discreet banking sector. In fact, places such as Switzerland are a standing reproach to Transnational Progressivists generally. And in any event, what all these examples of economically successful small states show is that they can survive and thrive so long as they can trade in a global marketplace, exploiting a wide division of labour. It is not necessary – pace Stevens and his allies – to create a centralised institution such as the EU or anything else in order for this trading to occur. So long as different jurisdictions recognise each other’s rules, trade can proceed. In that sense, any regulatory system that takes hold is a “bottom-up” phenomenon, not one imposed from above. It should also be noted that if, by any chance, the eurozone does fracture, with some of the “northern” euro member countries operating a stronger currency than in the “south”, then this might ultimately work to the benefit of the people for whom the single currency was purportedly designed: the citizens of EU member states. As an aside, I was pleased that Prof Booth last night pointed out that for economic liberals/libertarians, the issue that really counts is whether the arrangements we arrive at really do mean more, rather than less, movement of goods, services and people. Or, in other words, more freedom, period. No classical liberal can be happy at the prospect of a eurozone collapse being followed by a descent into autarky, protectionism and xenophobia. Here, by the way, is an interesting book on the folly of empires. November 25th, 2011 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
“At times, Gingrich, who’s written more than 150 book reviews on Amazon.com, sounds like a guy who read way too much during a long prison stretch.” – Gene Healy. He’s not a fan. November 23rd, 2011 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Telegraph has an article defending the idea that general practitioners can and sometimes do out-earn the banking business. Of course, people have not traditionally gone into the medical field looking to make millions, although some innovators of medical patents, for instance, may have done just that. Generally speaking, I take the view that so long as doctors are operating in a free market, then what they receive is a matter of indifference to me. Good luck to those who do well, I say. If we had a genuine market in healthcare, then the high salaries paid to the best doctors would, in time, attract bright people to become doctors rather than say, derivatives traders, or whatever. Of course, this is not the present situation. With many doctors, their pay is partly driven by their membership of a restricted profession and in the case of the UK, by the money spent by the taxpayer. And as for bankers, or at least some of them, they too benefit from the privileged access to central banking funding of their employers, from bailouts, from barriers to entry erected by regulators, and so on. So if people in Wall Street and the City do get sniffy about how much the men and women in white coats sometimes get paid, remember, they are not quite operating in a free market world, either. November 22nd, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Our own Perry de Havilland had Cameron more or less figured out in January, 2006. I have had no reason, and neither has Perry, to change my mind about him. November 21st, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“As the Church of England keeps telling us how much it shares the aims of the St Paul’s protestors, I notice an advertisement in the Financial Times. The Church Commissioners need a chief operating officer. He will be paid a `six figure salary’, says the advertisement, to manage their `£5 billion multi-asset portfolio’. There is no mention of anything Christian, or even anything ethical. The language is all management-speak. The ideal candidate will have a `proven track record of driving continuous and consistent operational performance’. The job’s responsibilities include `to build and maintain internal controls and process and to lead a no-surprises culture’. Although it is pretty hard to reconcile a `no-surprises culture’ with the mystery of the Incarnation, one must admit that it might have come in useful in dealing these various `occupations’. As well as St Paul’s, there is no one else outside Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield Cathedrals. You have only to study the websites of the various Occupy groups across the country to see that they, too, stick to a no-surprises culture. Events include Palestine Solidarity Campaign rallies, performances by Billy Bragg, strikers’ benefit gigs, meetings of the Anti-Cuts Alliance. They are not forerunners of a Second Coming: they are the usual suspects. There is nothing unchristian about rounding them up (caringly, of course).” I like the point about Billy Bragg. He’s in danger of becoming a “national treasure”. November 18th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yes, I know that there might be some room for doubt here, but an example I came across in the news pages of CityAM today clearly highlights how so-called environmental taxes are hurting the economy and costing jobs, often in areas already in dire straits:
Personally, I think risking 600 jobs is pathetic. If the AGW alarmists are really that good, they should be looking to risk millions. They need to raise their game. Sorry for the sarcasm, but you can see why this blog, along with others, gets angry about the lying and bad faith of those “scientists” who exaggerate their doomongering, and the politicians who embrace their ideas. It has consequences for actual lives. November 17th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across this note in one of the notes I get from banks and law firms. I am not sure of the source, but it was allegedly said by the mother of Karl Marx:
Of course, Marx spent a lot of his life living off the capital as generated by other people. A familiar pattern. November 11th, 2011 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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