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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This is a weird story. From The Mail on Sunday, 2nd December 2006:
Estate agents secretly selling home details to tax inspectors
Snooping: tax officers can now find out exactly what your home is worth.
Government officials have been given access to a vast database of properties, revealing their sale prices and detailed floorplans, under a deal with the website Rightmove.co.uk.
The site, run by four of Britain’s biggest estate agents, contains information on 800,000 properties – and the contract, which runs until 2008, also gives inspectors access to old records.
The Valuation Office Agency – the department of HM Revenue & Customs that allocates a council tax band to every home in England and Wales – will be able to use the data to find out about improvements such as double-glazing and conservatories that may increase tax bills.
What’s weird is this: Property sales in Britain now involve a direct return to the Revenue as part of the new Stamp Duty Land Tax regime. And the Lands Registry has a definitive record of all such transactions, now online, which ought to be accessible to the Revenue. Unless the transaction is registered, you haven’t bought the property. And a house’s recent, actual, sale price is going to be pretty conclusive evidence of its valuation.
So why pay a website whose coverage can be at best partial? Either HMRC is wholly incompetent (possible). Or they think transactions are being under-declared in the hot market (difficult in most cases, when two sets of solicitors and bankers are involved). Or the Mail on Sunday is missing the point and HMRC is not targeting sellers but renters and landlords. Or this is a publicity exercise, and HMRC is engaging in its favourite hobby: public intimidation of the public.
Via the Adam Smith Institute blog I came across this excellent essay over at the LewRockwell site about South Park. Definitely worth a read. Of course it is not the first time that the outrageous but wonderfully sharp series has been noted for its libertarian, anti-puritan content. Blogger Andrew Sullivan even coined the phrase – I think – South Park Republicans. I doubt that the makers of the series would want to be seen dead with many modern self-styled conservatives, and I would love Parker and Stone to have a go at our own benighted David Cameron’s Tories. There was a whole book on the subject by Brian Anderson called South Park Conservatives, which I quite liked, although it had some flaws. Reason magazine had a recent nice article about the characters.
Of course, arguably PJ O’Rourke was ahead of them all with his Republican Party Reptiles, which is essentially a libertarian credo in most respects. The nearest we have in Britain to such a celebration of brash material wealth and fun, irreverence towards do-gooders of all forms is motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson.
One of the things that seems to bug people these days is expressions of how the world is getting better, wealthier, and happier. My recent comments on the glories of global capitalism flushed out some pretty stubborn adherents of fixed-wealth, mercantilist economics. Much of the attitudes I encountered in the comments are based on a profound pessimism about the ability of people to adapt to change, or even enjoy the challenges of change. Even so, in these gloomy times, it is good to have a clear statement about how good many developments now are. Allister Heath has noted that optimism is almost a taboo an attitude these days as admitting in Victorian times that one enjoyed sex. Anyway, pessimists be damned, read this by Allister:
For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology.
If you believe that such apparently outlandish claims cannot possibly be true, think again. In a book which will trigger intense controversy when it is published later this month, the acclaimed American economist Indur Goklany, former US delegate to the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change, demonstrates that on every objective measure of the human condition – be it life expectancy, food availability, access to clean water, infant mortality, literacy rates or child labour – well-being and quality of life are improving around the world.
A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, published by the Cato Institute, reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious
I love articles like this. It must drive the gloomongers nuts. And driving such people nuts is not just a pleasure, but a public duty.
Hope has become a commodity in short supply in the West. Even though more progress will always be required, our victories over famine and extreme poverty during the past two centuries are civilisation’s greatest achievement. It is time we took a well-deserved break from worrying about terrorism, rising crime, social dislocation and all our other problems to celebrate what we have actually got right.
Indeed.
New web portal LibertarianHome has a video of a brilliant American TV show called Bullshit! which demolishes the case for recycling. But, says the portal:
Despite the compelling evidence against recycling, Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth wants everyone to be forced to recycle. He attacks support for “the personal freedoms of citizens… this is a basic value that will need to be reviewed.”
Green on the outside, red on the inside.
The late Milton Friedman was famous for many viewpoints but one that stands out for me was his admirably blunt statement that the purpose of a business is to make money for the people who own it, not to advance some social, environmental, religious or other agenda. Period. A publicly-quoted firm on the London Stock Exchange or Wall Street should focus on making money for its shareholders. In a competitive market – key proviso – such a purpose will tend to work, as Adam Smith said it would 230 years ago, in the interest of the consumer and worker:
Friedman wrote:
When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the “social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system,” I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are–or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously–preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.
The doctrine of corporate social responsibility is very much on the march in Britain. Companies are increasingly encouraged to do things to help the environment and help local communities. My own firm encourages its staff to devote some time to voluntary work and sets aside time and resources for that end. Now, I have no trouble whatsoever with a firm that, with the consent of its owners – shareholders – decides to back certain causes so long as the shareholders realise that such activity could affect their shares either positively or negatively. So long as it is made explicit and the owners are allowed to decide yes or no. The problem starts to arise however when this doctrine is forced upon the business owners by state regulation. This is not simply a problem that can face listed companies; it can also potentially affect firms that are not publicly listed but owned, say, by a private equity fund or an individual.
One problem, I think, is limited liability laws. Such laws, one might argue, create a bit of a “moral hazard” problem in that the firm’s owners are less mindful of the harmfulness or riskiness of their decisions than if they were subject to the conditions that used to prevail under the old English Common Law. Might the reason that we have so much focus on the supposed social responsibilities of business stem in part from the idea that limitied liability is a privilege that carries responsibilities? Purist free marketeers might say that the logical step is to remove the privilege, but would the ability of firms to operate on a large scale, with all the advantages that can bring, come to an end without limited liability?
I am not sure about the answers to all these questions, which is why I ask them. I know that some libertarians and classical liberals, such as Sean Gabb, have posed the argument that limited liability is inherently contrary to a consistent free market doctrine, and that the creation of large corporations with certain immunities has actually created businesses that are increasingly indistinguishable from government. On the other hand, one might envisage how constraints on corporate liability might emerge without state legislation, although I confess I am not sure how this would work.
Related thoughts here and here.
This recent posting of mine here referred to the wonders of global divisions of labour and the consequent availability of cheap goods and services that would have once been luxuries. The posting quoted an example about something as simple and evocative as exports of flowers (aaahhhhh) but of course it applies to anything: computer software, underwear, books, automobile components and furniture.
The ensuing comments were interesting (one of the reasons I like blogs with comment threads is that they give me ideas to write about). One argument, which I have heard several times, went something like this: globalisation and free trade is obviously grand in many ways and gives us all manner of goods unknown to our ancestors. However, the people who do best out of this tend to be smart people who can handle the rapid pace of change that globalisation brings. But not-so-smart folk, who are used to manual labour but not much up to anything else, will end up on the scrapheap. This is a bad thing as it erodes the social fabric, destroys established communities (such as Yorkshire mining villages, etc), and in particular, means that the sort of folk – mostly men – who used to expend their energy and pride on producing ships and material goods lose purpose in life, turn to crime, etc, etc. If they get jobs at all they tend to be worse-paid, “McJobs” which are demeaning to perform. Conclusion: globalisation has big losers as well as winners.
Superficially, this sort of argument carries a certain amount of force, but only lasts until one realises that this sort of line could be used not just to stop cheap imports from China and inflows of Polish construction site workers, but could, for example, be used to ban people in California from importing stuff from neighbouring Nevada, or ban a guy living in Paris from moving to Bordeaux because he is “stealing” a job from people who live in the French coastal town. In other words, when one realises that national borders are lines on a map, the perversity of protectionist economic arguments is manifest. Taken to its logical extreme, I am “taking” jobs from people in East London because I work in Canary Wharf but live in London’s central area of Pimlico.
The other sort of problem here is that it reminds me of how people still view work that involves physical objects, such as manufacturing, as being in some way more “real” than service-based jobs. It demonstrates the lingering Marxian view that wealth is not wealth unless you can drop it onto your foot. It is a view that also, I think, reflects a highly gloomy, if not disdainful, view of one’s fellows. Despite the difficulties involved and the wrench of closures of factories, millions of jobs have been created in countries like the United States that have replaced the old jobs, and many of those jobs are not the supposedly-terrible “McJobs” but jobs that have long-term career prospects. (Although folk that poke fun at “McJobs” tend to ignore several things, such as that such jobs are good entry-level jobs and people then move on to something else).
Here is an admirable debunking of the idea that free trade encourages a “race to the bottom” in terms of incomes. Another admirable paper by the late Murray Rothbard here.
Readers may wonder why I am bothering to write about this, given that protectionism is pretty discredited (I have yet to meet anyone who, when sober, takes Lou Dobbs seriously). But the easy charms of protection continue to seduce lawmakers and even quite intelligent interloctors on blog comment threads. Like ivy threatening to throttle a young plant, protectionism needs to be ruthlessly cut back by argument, over and over again.
I sometimes watch nature programmes and often as not, the narrator(s) of such programmes will wax lyrical about the complexities, the marvels of the natural world. (Programmes such as The Blue Planet by David Attenborough). In moving over into the Man-made world, we often get similar sentiments of praise and wonderment at things like great buildings, bridges or even whole cities, but seldom is such language employed in looking at the area of human commerce.
All the more reason to savour expressions such as this, written over at the admirable Cafe Hayek blog a while back:
This winter morning I bought a bouquet of wildflowers from the supermarket. Its price was $5.99. The flowers are fresh, beautiful, fragrant – and from Ecuador.
Ponder this fact.
For a mere one hour and eight minutes of work, a minimum-wage worker in the United States can acquire a bouquet of fresh flowers grown in South America. In other words, for 68 minutes of working in the U.S., a minimum-wage worker can take home some of the beautiful fruits of the efforts of strangers in Ecuador who plant, tend, and pick flowers – of other strangers (where?) who make the protective packing material used for shipping the flowers – of yet other strangers who pilot the planes and drive the trucks that transport these flowers fresh from Ecuador to U.S. supermarkets – and of the countless other strangers who build the planes and trucks, who fuel the planes and trucks, who pave the runways and roads used by the planes and trucks, who feed the pilots and drivers, who insure airlines, trucking companies, and supermarkets against casualty losses, who wake up at pre-dawn hours to put the flowers into an attractive display in the supermarket.
These and millions of other strangers all worked — all cooperated — to make it possible for me and my family to enjoy a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers in the deep winter. And all for a mere $5.99.
The time you hear or read someone complaining about the supposed evils of global trade, remember sentiments such as that.
Today I received, from the Globalisation Institute, a press release, which began as follows:
Monday 6 November – A new report released today by the Globalisation Institute says that microfinance is not being taken seriously by the Department for International Development.
In October, it was announced that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to the founding father of microfinance, Dr Muhammad Yunus, who created the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. However, microfinance remains tiny in Africa and receives scant support or encouragement from DFID.
Okay, cards on the table. I am a big fan of the Globalisation Institute and of its bosses Alex Singleton and Tom Clougherty. I write quite frequently for the Globalisation Institute blog, my latest posting there, about mobile phones (which makes much of a comment at my blog by Michael Jennings on the subject), having gone up there only last Friday. Tonight, I am attending a Globalisation Institute do, to which I have been invited so that I can take photos. David Cameron will be present, and they want to be sure that his presence there is immortalised pictorially, so that they can blog about it and impress their many donors with their political plugged-in-ness. Very sensible.
But… and you could hear that word coming a mile off couldn’t you?… I have severe doubts about these latest pronouncements of theirs. → Continue reading: Memo to DFID – please do not take microfinance seriously
Every day or two I visit The Croydonian, and today The Croydonian links to an amazing report. Papua New Guinea is having a row with Australia, about an Australian evildoer who escape in a Papua New Guinea airplane, and Papua New Guinea is now threatening a range of nasty things against Australia, of which this, apparently, is the most nasty:
The most serious step being contemplated is the suspension of significant elements of Australian aid deemed not essential to PNG, the Herald understands.
Yes, you did read that right. Papua New Guinea is threatening to cut off aid, from Australia to Papua New Guinea! Imagine the consternation that must now be sweeping through the Australian aiding classes. They do not want us to help them any more! Worse: Perhaps they do not think we were helping.
Is this an idea whose time has come?
For those of you in London, there’s a free showing of a new film on Wednesday looking at "the dark side of environmentalism". I saw Tom Clougherty on the internet TV station 18 Doughty Street (view recording) discuss the film against some statist from the Green Party. Clougherty’s view was that while there is something of the Michael Moore about this film, it makes an important point. It’s about an underdeveloped town in Romania full of unemployment and poverty. Capitalists want to create jobs by building an environmentally-friendly mine, but Western environmentalists swoop in from overseas and try to force the locals to stay poor, saying that the locals are happy being poor. The showing is at One Great George Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3AA. Doors open at 6:30pm, the film starts at 6:45pm, there is a Q&A session at 7:50pm, and there is a drinks reception at 8:15pm. RSVP to iea@iea.org.uk. View the trailer here:
The film is also available on DVD from here.
If this deal goes ahead, it will be the largest example yet of an Indian firm buying a British one. How the world has turned, 60 years on from the end of the British Empire in India.
Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus Group Plc is set to recommend a 4.1 billion pound takeover by India’s Tata Steel Ltd as soon as Friday, sources close to the matter said.
Corus’ board met on Wednesday evening to rubber stamp the deal but is waiting until Tata’s board meets, which is expected on Thursday or Friday, before making an official announcement to its shareholders, the sources said.
It will be interesting to see how those anti-globalisation campaigners, who in the past were the same sort of folk to demand that the rich West gives aid to “Third World” nations like India, respond to Indian business purchases of British and other European firms. That is the trouble with fighting evil capitalists – one minute they are wearing pin-striped suits and speak in posh English accents, the next, something quite different. It must be very annoying.
I cannot have a situation where businesses close haphazardly.
– Rt Hon Alistair Darling MP, speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme about the Sub-Post Office network, and neatly demonstrating the dirigiste mentality of the Scottish Raj
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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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