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 French economy is deteriorating, so much so, that the French themselves admit that the growth of 0.2% between July-September 2002 is worse than expected, according to Nicolas Claquin, economist at CCF bank.
“We can expect [the weakness] to continue at least until the start of 2003, confirming our forecast of gross domestic product growth of 1.4% next year. The government’s growth target (2.5%) for 2003 is too high.”
So far not a surprise deserving a mention on this blog – it is the ability of the French to manage an arrogant spin of their worsening economic situation that is astounding:
“The figure confirms that France is not immune from the slowdown affecting our European partners and the United States.”
Perhaps Mr Cavalier, a Credit Lyonnais eurozone economist, failed to notice that despite the other countries’ economic problems the French economy is doing still worse than Germany and Italy in the last quarter and far worse than the UK and the US.
Jul-Sep 2002
UK +0.8%
Germany +0.3%
Italy +0.3%
France +0.2%
US +1.3
But, of course, let’s blame it all on the Americans.
Samizdata Illuminatus occasionally has a turn of phrase that I can only envy:
“This bespeaks a political elite on the Continent of Europe that is increasingly aloof and out of touch with ordinary citizens. On one level, this is encouraging, because such arrogance usually comes before a fall from grace. However, it also suggests that if the situation is not tackled soon, the anger boiling up in Germany and elsewhere could turn ugly.”
I don’t know about Germany but I can report that to some extent the problem of an out of touch elite may be addressed in France. Unlike anywhere else in Western Europe the French presidential election in France this year produced a second round run-off between one right-wing sleazeball and a beyond the pale authoritarian populist. The Socialist Party candidate got less than one in five votes on such a low turnout that the abstention rate alone spoke of “a crisis for democracy”.
In Britain we’ve become so accustomed to hearing hyped up scaremongering every time a racialist candidate gets more than 500 votes in Blackburn, that we don’t realise that the scared commentators in France were, well… really scared.
Unlike Britain, most of Europe contains large numbers of people who actually know what it’s like to have soldiers kick down the door of their home, or a neighbour’s. → Continue reading: “Oui, premier ministre!”
Sunday 1st December starting 2:30pm from the place de la Bastille, a hundred French Libertarians intend to march on the Ministry of Finance at the quai de Bercy (about 2kms). I intend to join them and will be making a collection for the costs of the demo (hand-bills, megaphone, banners, hire-cars, etc.).
Last year 60 were expected and over 200 sympathisers turned up, after the Paris daily “Le Figaro” had carried a mention of the march on the front page the day before. The event is part of the world-wide walk for capitalism. I’m unaware of any plans for a march in London on that day, perhaps organisers could post details to Samizdata.
Readers will have noted my opposition to a British war against Iraq.
The war of words between the British Prime Minister and the French President is another matter.
One of the simple rules I have in life is that, on any issue, before knowing the facts, if there is a dispute between Jacques Chirac and anyone else (Al Gore, Pol Pot, Lady Thatcher, Satan or even Bill Clinton), I know who is in the wrong and lying through his teeth, and lacking in diplomatic finesse.
In 27 years I have yet to be wrong even once.
In 1975, Jacques Chirac presided over France’s worst ever budget deficit, trade deficit, social security deficit, unemployment rise and tax increases. He proudly announced that the economic crisis was over. It was soon over for him as he was sacked as Prime Minister.
In 1981, when the Socialist government actually managed to equal Mr Chirac’s earlier disastrous economic performance, he described it as “an un-precedented idiocy”…
In 1986, Jacques Chirac won an election to become prime minister on a platform of Thatcherite reforms. Within weeks he was describing Mrs Thatcher in public as “une c******”, a description that was extremely vulgar and biologically impossible for a woman.
In 1991, Jacques Chirac promised to fight against the Maastricht Treaty by campaigning for the “No” campaign. Within days he had declared himself first neutral, then thrown his enthusiastic support for the “Yes” campaign, claiming that he would be more important if the referendum was narrowly won with his support, then if it was defeated massively with his opposition.
In 1992 on the bicentenary of the execution of King Louis XVI, a group of royalists asked for permission to lay a wreath in the place de la Concorde. Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac tried (but failed) to prevent them from doing so. Having antagonised the royalists, Mr Chirac made no comment about the violent anti-royalists who attacked police and passers-by at the event.
In 1995, Jacques Chirac (now President) asked the mayor of Le Havre (a party colleague) not to play the Marseillaise at the opening of a new memorial. The mayor promptly cancelled the president’s invitation.
In 2002, Mr Chirac made 97 promises as part of his presidential re-election campaign. It will come as no surprise to learn that over 90% of them were calls for higher state spending or political correctness, or more eco-fascism.
Even the small steps being made in the right direction by Mr Chirac’s new prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin have either been in contradiction with Mr Chirac’s promises, or been the object public doubts expressed by the President.
Finally, on those areas where there has been some sense made by the French government this year: crackdown on terror networks, better security at the Channel tunnel, closing the Sangatte refugee camp, Mr Chirac hasn’t said a word.
I note that unlike Saddam Hussein, Mr Chirac actually has a sizable nuclear arsenal (the third largest in the world). He is certainly a bigger threat to free trade. I’m more optimistic that Chirac’s successor would be an improvement than that Saddam’s would be. And the best bit of all is that once removed there’s bound to be some pretext for locking Chirac up for a long time… and I haven’t even mentioned the corruption.
Leave Iraq to the US Mr Blair, liberate France now!
“Vive la France libre!”
Sometimes politicians blurt out the pure unvarnished truth even against their devious instincts. I cannot beat this gem from French farm minister Herve Gaymard, who on Tuesday brushed aside British complaints over farm subsidies, saying the Brits only wanted the EU to be a free trade zone.
As the saying goes, I do believe he’s got it!
Last Tuesday (Oct 11th) some of the world’s most influential free-market think-tanks met over dinner at Shepherd’s restaurant in Westminster, London. The occasion was the launch of a new French language libertarian think-tank called the Turgot Institute which will be based in Brussels, but aiming at the Francophone world.
Turgot, an 18th century economist and statesman, is generally credited with coining the expression “laissez-faire, laissez-passer” (there is an alternative claim). His economic reforms, blocked by established interests, were probably the last hope for France of avoiding the carnage of the French Revolution.
The think-tanks represented included: Centre for New Europe (Brussels), Institute for Economic Affairs (UK), Independent Institute, Cato Institute, Foundation for Economic Freedom, and Ludwig von Mises Institute (all US), also one Candian and one Flemish whose names I didn’t catch.
150 years ago this is the sort of gathering that would have launched a Communist group in a European country. More news on this development as it breaks.
Award-winning french author Michel Houellebecq is being victimized by Islamic groups in that country. It is well known to all who read their statements, interviews and translations of articles that these sorts of organization wish to bring Europeans under their medieval, violent and dismal religious law. It is just one more attempt in a campaign to turn the institutions of a liberal society against itself.
Fortuneately many others see this case as a travesty so Michel will have ample support from members of the french literary establishment.
If Islamists can’t handle his dismissal of the Koran’s literary style, tough. Let them publish their own counter critique and see if anyone wants to read it. If Michel thinks Islam is a silly religion, he is free to say so and others are free to listen or not as they choose. If he takes joy in the death of Palestinian terrorists…. well, we wouldn’t go along with that, now would we? I absolutely swear I take no more joy in the death of Palestinian fighters than Palestinians did in the death of my countrymen on 9/11.
… and we all know they are really nice people who wouldn’t dream of celebrating the deaths of our friends and relatives..
EDF is the state monopoly electricity company in France. It owns numerous private power companies around the world, especially in the UK. President Chirac proposes to keep EDF as a nationalized company at least until 2004 and to refuse foreign competition in France (the Socialists agree).
However, an interesting dissident is Nicolas Sarkhozy (Minister of the Interior and successful Mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly). He is reported as saying privately:
“I’m for the privatisation of EDF, but it’s not possible right now because we don’t know what it’s worth.”
The report appeared in Le Canard Enchaine, so it probably wasn’t an intentional leak on the part of the Minister.
One of the failings of the French libertarian/classical liberal politicians is that they don’t have a model for change that includes tackling unions and re-assuring voters about crime (most French libertarians talk of cutting public spending on police forces). What the ASI and Tim Evans refer to as “Micropolitics” and creating incentives for the bureaucrats to go along with reform is alien to French libertarians: they’re divided between executing them or sacking them without a pay-off.
Nicolas Sarkhozy is a conservative in a more Thatcherite mould: horribly compromising with corporatism at least 60 per cent of the time, but who also knows that the left is the common enemy.
It will take some sort of coalition between people like Sarkhozy and the French liberals to get reforms moving in France. The more I look at the French scene the more I feel the lack of a French Freedom Association and a French Adam Smith Institute. Their students could use a Paul Staines too.
Exactly a year before the assasination attempt on President Chirac the day before yesterday, I stood in a downpour at the corner of the avenue de Friedland on the place de l’Etoile at the top of the Champs Elysees. The exact spot of yesterday’s gunman in fact.
I picked the spot because it was at the top of the Champs Elysees where the parade vehicles sort themselves out. Because of the wet conditions and the roundabout of l’Etoile, the vehicles have to drive slowly, giving me a better view.
As the military parade began President Chirac was driven slowly, in an open topped vehicle which dropped speed even more to negotiate the bend before entering the Champs Elysees. M. Chirac is tall (well over six foot), towering over his bodyguard, he doesn’t wear a hat or cap, and as his convoy meandered past I remarked to myself that with a heavy calibre pistol any shooter would have fancied their chances of hitting M. Chirac several times at a distance of of about ten metres. I myself, never having fired any weapon, would probably have managed to miss.
Over the next couple of days I mentioned this to several French libertarians.
One can imagine my relief to discover that the gunman was a member of a white supremacist organisation which has no links to the French libertarian movement.
I would like to be able to assert with confidence that no libertarian in France would believe that assasinating Chirac would do no good. They are pretty cynical about the merits one politician versus another.
Unfortunately, Chirac is such a dreadfully corrupt character (financially, morally, intellectually) that I can’t think of anyone from his circles who wouldn’t be an improvement. I wouldn’t be able to put them off by saying “So and so could get in and he’d be worse…” So maybe it could have been one of ours. However, to quote the Jackal: “You see, gentlemen, your own efforts have not only failed but have queered the pitch for everyone else.”
Oh well, with any luck he’ll catch pneumonia next time there’s a downpour.
I agree with Brian(!): what is the rest of the world like, the UK is the fourth ‘freest’ economy? I recently came across the claim that 10 per cent of the French population (a quarter of the work-force) has civil servant status. This figure includes employees of public sector companies like EDF-GDF (electricity and gas company, which owns private power companies in the UK).
The good news is that even a modest proposal such as ‘natural wastage’: not replacing some of the bureaucrats who retire (at 55), has profound effects. The same is true of public spending: with over 1,000 taxes collected in France, it isn’t hard to find cost savings, just scrapping the 500 most expensive to collect would be a significant shift.
There are two kinds of reformers in France at the moment: the libertarians who want to change the system from ‘dirigisme’ to capitalism, and the European fanatics who want the French state to cut spending in order to keep the Euro afloat.
The French Libertarian forums are already trashing the new government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin. “They’re only cutting income tax by five percent!” Scandalous. They haven’t announced the immediate abolition of the protected status of civil servants. Imagine! Michel de Poncins – a speaker at the Libertarian International meeting in Paris, April this year – sums up the mood writing in French that “Rien n’a changé, tout est pareil” (Nothing’s changed, everything is the same).
It all reminds me of the arrival of Mrs Thatcher in the UK in 1979. Not only was the basic rate of income tax only cut by 3 percent, but VAT (sales tax) went up by almost double to 15 percent. There was no privatisation for years. Trade union reforms took five years to introduce. There were corporatists in the Cabinet!
There are three possible explanations for the new government programme:
1) Raffarin has an agenda which is more tactically cunning than the last botched effort at reform (Alain Madelin announced pension and state employee pay reforms and was removed after a week of street demonstrations in 1995).
2) Raffarin is a willing or unwilling stooge for the old corporatist clique who will block any meaningful reform.
3) Both of the above.
The joke is that whatever the conspiracy, events have a habit of running out of hand. M de Poncins latest book is appropriately enough called “Thatcher à l’Elysée”.
Jean-Marc Messier, the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, is facing the chop after running up huge debts in his sewage to film studio empire.
He’s a product of the French administrative elite that slips from running Edouard Balladur’s political office (former prime minister), to running a public utility, that somehow winds up privately owned with him in charge. This is not a unique story.
What is different is that Compagnie Generale des Eaux (as it was called) is one of the pioneers of private contracting of waste services, and road sweeping in the UK (operating as Onyx). The company also owns Connex, a private train operator in southern England and Southern Water. The group was renamed Vivendi after buying Canal Plus, the main pay-TV cable company in France. So far, J2M (as he likes to be known) was performing as a French business tycoon: the darling of the conservatives and left alike for being a model for French competition with the world.
However, J2M had the temerity to buy Seagram (the Canadian group which owned Universal studios) in 1998. In response to raised eyebrows among the French intelligentsia about French cultural protectionism, J2M said that the French cultural exception is dead. Now he is assailed by both US players (for his financial affairs) and left to hang by his French associates (who regard him as an Anglo-Saxon traitor).
I’m torn between sympathy for a French pro-free-trade businessman (!) and glee at the likely collapse of a political entrepreneur.
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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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