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]
|
All those cultural worriers fretting that lots of furriners are grabbing “our” jobs and generally messing up the scenery can rest a little easier. Soon, large parts of Europe will be positively depopulated. The disaster of the euro is helping to drive this trend.
“the story that truly captures the imagination comes courtesy of New York University’s Development Research Institute. It highlights the influx of Portuguese immigrants to Angola – an economy that has been growing by over 10 per cent a year since peace broke out in 2002 – and Mozambique, in a dramatic reversal of roles between erstwhile colony and ex-imperial power. There was a time when poor Africans flocked to southern Europe to better their lives; the opposite is now happening. Five hundred years after Vasco de Gama first landed in Mozambique, impoverished Portuguese are turning up in droves, begging for work permits. Six years ago, Angola issued 156 visas to Portuguese migrants. In the most recent year for which data is available, that number had exploded to 23,787; 100,000 Portuguese have moved to Angola, four times more than the traffic in the opposite direction. Other studies have shown a brain drain of Portuguese to Brazil and of Spanish youngsters – especially skilled graduates – to Latin America.”
“Portuguese workers in Angola now send home more cash to their families than Portuguese workers based in London. For millions of young people, Europe appears in terminal decline, while parts of Africa have emerged as a new Eldorado. The Eurozealots thought the single currency would turn old Europe into a new superpower; instead, it has catastrophically impoverished tens of millions of ordinary folk. It is time for an apology.”
Allister Heath.
“Listening to the candidates last night, it was clear that there is no pro-capitalist, pro-globalisation, low-tax, eurosceptic, outward looking party in France – there is no equivalent to the British Conservative party’s Thatcherite tendency. What passes for the centre-right in France is social-democratic and fanatically pro-EU; it is very different to the centre-right parties seen in English-speaking countries and many emerging markets. The “right-wing” eurosceptic candidate (who was crushed) is a protectionist who wants to tax the rich – and hates French workers who have moved to London. The only successful eurosceptics are the hard left who believe Brussels to be a capitalist plot and fascists who hate foreigners, the free market and multinationals.”
Allister Heath.
In the latest series of problems to hit the euro-zone, there are problems for the Dutch. Spain and previously, Italy, have been in the news for their economic woes. But France is the Big One. If this country – about the same in terms of wealth as the UK – votes for a socialist, with his promise to impose a 75% tax on those he deems rich, then the cafes, restaurants and schools in and around parts of London will ring even louder with the sounds of French accents than is the case already. The exodus of French people in recent years to these and other shores has been striking (they are not coming here for the weather). It is, if you like, a sort of French version of “Going Galt”, although I doubt any of the French political establishment has ever read Atlas Shrugged, nor cares.
I like France a lot and relish any chance to go there. In fact, during the two weeks of this year’s London Olympics, I am in the southwest of France, in a small town to the west of Montpelier. But I would not want, as a professional, to live in the country if it heads down a damagingly socialist path.
It is at first denied that any radical new plan exists; it is then conceded that it exists but ministers swear blind that it is not even on the political agenda; it is then noted that it might well be on the agenda but is not a serious proposition; it is later conceded that it is a serious proposition but that it will never be implemented; after that it is acknowledged that it will be implemented but in such a diluted form that it will make no difference to the lives of ordinary people; at some point it is finally recognised that it has made such a difference, but it was always known that it would and voters were told so from the outset.
– Yesterday (see below) I quoted a paragraph written by James Delingpole. The above paragraph, originally written to describe the onward march of the European Union, is quoted by Delingpole, in his book Watermelons (p. 45), to help him explain how AGW went from crankery to globally imposed policy. Delingpole found it in The Great Deception (p. 605) by Booker and North. They got it from a Times editorial, published on August 28, 2002.
Bill shock is what happens when you go abroad, let your phone download some emails, then return home to an enormous bill. It has happened to me and at least one other frequently traveling samizdatista. The BBC is reporting that the European Parliament’s Industry, Telecommunications, Research, and Energy Committee has just voted to cap the price of mobile data in order to prevent bill shock.
Which does not quite make sense. The problem of bill shock is not that the bill is too high, though it is surprising and arguably silly that the price of a gigabyte can vary by a factor of 1000 or more depending on where you are, but you are told the price in advance. The problem is that the bill is unexpected. If phone companies are guilty of something, it is that they make it difficult or impossible to detect that you are running up an enormous bill before it is too late.
A simple solution would be to use SMS to warn customers what is happening or to allow them to set a limit after which data stops working. And although the BBC article does not say so, this is exactly what was regulated in July 2010. This bit of regulation regulates a sensible solution to a real problem, even it it is not sensible that regulation was used to achieve it.
The rest of it, the arbitrary caps on prices of this and that, is just price fixing.
At a very pleasant party in a snowy London, on Saturday evening, I got chatting to a Greek man who has been living in the UK since 1985 and as I suppose was inevitable, the subject of Greece’s financial disaster came up. He and I agreed that the policymakers and various others who deceived their country into the euro should be put into jail. But then again, one of the problems of modern democracy is that far too many voters actually want to be deceived that 2+2 = 5, that it is possible to spend more than one earns, etc. When a whole country becomes locked into living a lie, as tends to happen when a large chunk of the electorate hopes to live off another chunk, honesty is a loser strategy for a politician. Had a Greek politician said in the years immediately prior to the euro’s launch that Greece was unlikely, ahead of the Universe suffering heat death, to ever qualify for euro membership, such a person would be damned.
So it is certainly true that some of the political class (and I include central bankers in that classification) deserve to be locked up for their lies. But remember, they lied because the punishments for telling lies about economics and finance have been non-existent in many countries for a long time. I think one of the last politicians who made a point of telling the unvarnished truth to voters was Margaret Thatcher, and at the time, she was regarded as evil and “uncaring”. Another fairly honest politician was the late Sir Keith Joseph, who was dubbed the “the mad monk” for his pains.
This book by Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, I think has obvious relevance to how a whole country can seek refuge from hard facts, as Greece seems to be doing. For a more impressionistic, sad-but-amusing tale of Greece and other countries’ financial blowups, Boomerang by Michael Lewis is an excellent page-turner. The chapter on Greece features some property speculator monks. Yes, monks.
Oh, I will get around to writing that “Iron Lady” review when I have the time.
They said it would never be agreed. Then they said it would never be launched. Then they said it would fail. When it was a success, the euro-haters still insisted that the single currency was a recipe for economic chaos and political instability. The phobes are proving to be wrong again. At a time when so much of Europe’s political leadership is in flux, the single currency is the steadying point in an uncertain and worrying world.
Imagine that the recent turbulence on the continent had occurred when Europe still traded in pre-euro currencies. What would have happened to the French franc when neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen forced the Prime Minister to quit? The franc would have plunged. What would have happened to the Dutch guilder when an anti-immigration party with a dead leader impelled itself into government? The guilder would have plunged too. Before a German election too close to call, even the stolid old mark would be gyrating. And instability in currency markets would be fuelling even more political chaos: a vicious, downward cycle.
That this has not happened is thanks to the euro. The single currency has taken all this political upheaval in its calm stride.
– From an anonymous editorial in the Observer headed “A tolerant euro”.
From 2002, in case you were wondering.
He wastes no time in twisting the knife of truth in this thrillingly irreverent talk. No, he probably will not ever be invited back.
O’Leary’s conference bio should have foreshadowed to organizers that they would not be getting the traditional, polite, boring PowerPoint presentation.
I enjoyed this thoughtful article in the Telegraph by Ronald Stewart-Brown on the ramifications of Britain’s leaving the EU. He seems to think it wouldn’t be too bad because an acceptable trade agreement would be fairly easy to come by. As he says:
We could negotiate at least as good access to other EU services markets as we have at present. We would no longer need to contribute towards the excessive levels of trade-distorting agricultural subsidy other EU member states dish out under the Common Agricultural Policy.
Personally, I wouldn’t be too sure about that – I think we could be in for a fair amount of vindictiveness. But that’s by the by. My real question is whether we need or, indeed, should want trade agreements at all. After all, if we can’t sell to them, how will they be able to sell to us?
One of the main arguments made in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the European Union is that such membership is the only way Britain can exert “influence” over European Union decision making. If we are on the outside “we” (whatever that might mean) will be ignored. So, goes the argument.
I suppose this presupposes that British influence is a “good thing”, something I find rather surprising because for many euro-federalists it seems that one of the primary attractions of the EU is its un-Britishness. But I digress.
Assuming they are being honest the question has to be: is it true? Do you have more influence by being inside the tent or outside?
There are some pretty compelling counter-examples. I think we can agree that Britain had much more influence by being outside Nazi Europe than inside. Ditto Britain and the Soviet Empire. The American War of Independence seems to have been a spectacular example: improving life both in the United States and the British Empire – by warning the British of the likely costs of being unduly oppressive.
But there are examples from other walks of life. Does anyone seriously think that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates would have had anything like the impact they have had by being corporate insiders?
A lot of this assumes that Britain is in the right. What if she’s not? What if Britain is wrong? Well, that’s fine too. If we discover that the EU is right that’s fine. All we have to do is to adopt EU policies. There’s no need for membership.
All of which rather puts me in mind of something that Natalie Solent wrote a few years ago, picked up here by Brian. The world needs diversity.
There’s another part to this that bugs me. To have influence pre-supposes disagreement. You can’t have influence over a decision if you and every other party to it already agree. And if there is disagreement that implies that influence can only be bought at the price of others going against their perceived interests. Now, that’s all very well if you’re dealing with a bunch of tribesmen who don’t have machine guns but in the case of Europe you’re not. You are dealing with countries that are just as modern and as powerful as you are. If you succeed in exercising your “influence” and by doing so make them go against their perceived interests that is at very least going to cause resentment and probably lead to some continental “influence” against your perceived interests.
Oh, and Happy New Year, by the way.
Ten years ago today a Guardian headline read Euro lobby demands stronger lead.
Lord Heseltine effectively accused Mr Blair of a lack of nerve as he dismissed the government’s five economic tests as a “protective barrier” behind which it could “cower in order to have apparently intellectually defensible reasons for putting things off”.
On the next day, 1 January 2002, the same newspaper reported on the launch of the Euro.
The mood was uniformly upbeat at parties, pageants and ceremonies bidding farewell to once-treasured marks, francs, pesetas and lire.
“Our countdown is leading towards a new era,” Wim Duisenberg, the Dutch president of the European Central Bank (ECB), declared in Frankfurt. “By using euros, we will give a clear signal of the confidence and hope we have in tomorrow’s Europe.”
On a day of highs, Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, hit the highest note. “We are witnessing the dawn of an age that the people of Europe have dreamed of for centuries: borderless travel and payment in a common currency,” he said in a new year message.
Mr Prodi marked the change by buying flowers in euros, not schillings, on a visit to Vienna. And in remarks that will alarm a British government watching uncomfortably from the sidelines, the former Italian prime minister pledged that the arrival of the euro in people’s pockets would lead “ineluctably” to more economic coordination – the great fear of sceptics.
Lest anyone be tempted to gloat, here is a final quote, this one dating only from a month or two ago, from Patrick Crozier of this parish:
How to stop worrying about “contagion”
Just remember that every country in the Western world already has the disease.
It’s been pretty quiet here today, and all the things I’m am personally working on need more working on before they’re ready. But, if it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, well, here are a thousand words:
I found this at the top of a piece by Daniel Hannan about how Britain might just be being pushed out of EUrope and back into the Anglosphere.
I won’t be holding my breath, but I have long thought this to be an attractive idea.
“Yes indeed, Britain is on the outside: left out of this idyll of anti-competitive regulation and tax harmonisation. I can remember when the greatest Eurosceptic nightmare was a “United States of Europe”. They should be so lucky. The United States of America has nothing like this ferociously imposed central control over the budgets of its member states. Nor does it require tax harmonisation among them. The states of the American union have independent tax systems: apart from federal income tax, the taxes that US citizens pay are determined by the states they are in. Some of those states have high property and death taxes – others (like Nevada, where the revenue from gambling pays for almost everything) have low ones. Some have sales taxes and specific duties which others do not. Hence the great American tradition of driving across state lines in order to buy cheaper alcohol.”
– Janet Daley.
|
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.
|
