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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Just over a year ago I spent a very happy few days in northern California, spending one very long and pleasant day in the state’s Napa Valley wine region. The region boasts some of the best wines in the world, including the now-famous wineries of Robert Mondavi. Mondavi’s wines caused a global sensation in the trade when, during a “blind tasting” in the early 1970s, wine critics rated his produce a notch above the competition from more exalted premises in Bordeaux and Burgundy. The horror!
This article very nicely draws out how the challenge of New World wines from California, Chile, Argentina (a magnificent producer of wine), South Africa, New Zealand and Australia has led to a fairly grumpy response from the traditional centres. This is perhaps understandable. The French produced some of the finest wines of all time, with only a bit of competition from the flowery Hocks and Moselles from Germany and the likeable Riojas in Spain and a few good ones from Italy. About 20-plus years ago, you could walk into a supermarket and choose from only a relatively limited range of wines, much of it fairly basic plonk. Globalisation has put some of the world’s most far-flung wine producers into the reach of Joe Public.
All we need now is a similar global “race to the top” in the production of effective hangover cures.
“It is a irresistible to note that nearly everyone, including the wealth creator, is inclined to see the world of inner being, of the heart and soul, as being at odds with the commercial. Wealth creators seem shy of their success. It is often said that the Englishman has always preferred to be seen as a gentleman than as a creative, industrious or commercial person.”
Richard D. North, Rich is Beautiful, (page 199).
I have long defended an American corporation, much hated by anti-globalisation types, greens, leftists, even many conservatives. While many seem to think that the mission of said corporation is to destroy all that is good in the world and to act as a back door through which America can destroy local colour and local traditions, I have found it hard to fault a company that sells hamburgers to people who voluntarily choose to consume them, that has introduced the concept of the public toilet to many parts of the world where the idea was lacking, and generally provides excellent customer service to go with its slightly questionable food. I have found it hard to see anything sinister in that.
But alas, in the Praça da Liberdade in Porto on Saturday, I discovered that those brave battlers against corporate domination of the world were right. For the era of concealment is over. McDonald’s restaurants are now established in most of the world, and they can finally allow their true ambitions and the true scope of their mission to become clear. The time for hiding is now, clearly, over.
I will confess that despite their obvious sinister ambitions, I quite like the new logo.
Well, I can not say this bad story came as a total surprise, given the near-total lack of respect for property rights and the rule of law in Africa:
South Africa says it will for the first time force a white farmer to sell his land under a redistribution plan.
The story goes on to say that the seizure is part of a drive to “redistribute” land to people who lost what was rightfully theirs as a result of the 20th Century apartheid regime. Hmmm. It seems to me that on an abstract level relating to rectification of previous injustices, there is some credibility to this idea. However, the big problem is that the people who will get chunks of this land are unlikely to have much to do with the people who were allegedly robbed of said land in the first place, assuming that such a claim can be validated. (Of course if there are people who could claim that they or their ancestors were robbed of what was rightly theirs, then I have no objection in principle to some restitution).
In practice, as we have seen all too clearly in nearby Zimbabwe, the spoils of any assault on white-owned farmland will go to the political hacks and cronies of the governing regime, and likely bring about a serious, possibly catastrophic loss of economic wealth and food in a part of the world, that is not, to put it mildly, greatly endowed with such things.
Perhaps the president of South Africa should put this book on his reading list. Or perhaps he should remember to heed his own words.
More than anything else, Africa needs stable, enforceable property rights, period, if it is clamber out of its current state. Sir Bob Geldolf and friends, please note.
Allan M.R. MacRae of Calgary, Canada points out something rather interesting that seems to have gone largely unreported in the mainstream media.
Here are verbatim quotes by Tony Blair from the September 15, 2005 Plenary Session of the Clinton Global Initiative Conference.
Tony Blair seems to have let the cat out of the bag on his new energy policy at the Clinton Global Initiative Conference last week. Blair said:
“I would say probably I’m changing my thinking about this [Kyoto treaty] in the past two or three years…
…The truth is no country is going to cut its growth or consumption substantially in the light of a long-term environmental problem…
…There is no way we are going to tackle this problem unless we develop the science and technology…
…Some people have signed Kyoto, some people haven’t signed Kyoto, right. That is a disagreement. It’s there. It’s not going to be resolved…
…I don’t think people are going, at least in the short term, going to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”
This must be a major disappointment to Kyoto enthusiasts, who say ten more Kyotos are needed for effective reduction of atmospheric CO2.
On July 12, 2005, on the subject of the Gleneagles Summit, I wrote the following to a number of colleagues:
“…we may now be at a point where many Euro politicians are realizing the science of Kyoto is bogus, but they are reluctant to admit they have been duped about global warming and have misled their public with scary stories for which there was no evidence – their new approach suggests a politically-correct “quiet exit” from Kyoto. We’ll see…”
Allan M.R. MacRae
I love the internet. I went from this, which I posted here, to this, to this, to this, to this:
. . . to this:
. . . . which is the work of Ha Qiongwen. Of this particular poster, Stefan Landsberger says:
The design reproduced above was at the root of Ha’s problems: why had he depicted a bourgeois woman instead of a female proletarian? Where was Chairman Mao? Why didn’t the poster praise the Chairman more explicitly? Every time the literature and arts world held a criticism session, he was dragged out as an object of public abuse. As a result, Ha was publicly beaten and humiliated more than thirty times.
Personally I think the Red Guards were on to something. I think these delightful and amazing Chinese propaganda posters and China’s current, rampantly aspirational and bourgeois rise towards superpowerdom are cause and effect.
I offered further thoughts along these lines in this ASI blog posting . This is the bit that is relevant:
I recently encountered, in a remainder shop, a big book containing hundreds of Chinese Communist propaganda posters, much like these ones. They depict a vivid and colourful fantasy world of industrial excellence and economic triumph, of collective progress and personal fulfilment, of joy. The people who now preside over China’s current economic miracle were teenagers when posters like these were at the height of their influence, and I think this is no coincidence. It makes perfect sense to me that the more imaginative and impressionable people brought up on imagery like this would turn away in disgust from the lumbering state centralism that these posters were intended to sell, once they realized that state centralism could never deliver such wonders, and instead switch to being enthusiastic pro-capitalists and even capitalist entrepreneurs. After all, only if China switched to capitalism could a real future like this be even hoped for, let alone rationally anticipated.
If you follow the link in that and scroll down to the bottom, you get to this:
Red Guards eat your hearts out.
(I now possess that book.)
Did Ayn Rand have anything to say about these Chinese posters? She should have.
Well, sort of…
Actually I have long taken a similar view that without the distortions of the Common Agricultural Policy, many farm would and should go out of business or at least change what they do. My guess is that it would mostly be those who concentrate on the high end ‘premium’ end of the market (such as pandering to the demand for ‘organic’ food) who would survive.
Remove the barriers to trade and let the agricultural economies of less developed parts of the world feed us. Does it really make sense to artificially keep so much of the First World under cultivation?
I have just moved into a new flat. As I am now living alone, and in my last arrangement I was not, I find that there are a lot of basic odds and ends that I need but which I don’t have already. I particularly need items for the kitchen.
One thing I needed was a microwave oven. While I did technically own a microwave oven already, that one is in Australia. So I went my local large Asda store, and looked for microwaves. They had a good, basic model of microwave oven on sale for £24.41. That is right, £24.41. (Excluding the VAT tax imposed by the British government, the price is even less – £20.77. That is well under 40 dollars). The prices of a great many electrical and electronic goods have collapsed over the last four or five years, but I still find it amazing. I can only have a modest meal in a London restaurant for that price, but somehow it is possible to make a microwave oven in China, ship it halfway round the world, bring it into a large London store, and sell it to me, while still making a profit, for such a miniscule price. The microwave oven I own that is still in Australia and that I bought in 1999 cost me more than three times as much. And through lower prices I am therefore more than $100 better off than I was in 1999, just through that one purchase.
There is not much to be said, other than:
Three cheers for free trade.
Three cheers for globalization.
Three cheers for the internet and other international communications networks, and the global supply chains and massive economies of scale that they bring.
Three cheers for container shipping, and the amazing logistical work that goes with it.
Three cheers for the industrialization of large swathes of Asia.
And, finally
Three cheers for Wal-Mart.
Surfing the cable television channel briefly on Friday lunchtime, I came across a CNBC programme about oil prices, in which a couple of analysts fielded email questions from the public about why prices are so high. One guy claimed that the price of oil – currently about 70 dollars a barrel – was grossly inflated by those evil speculators and the “real” price of oil was more like 40 dollars.
Okaaay, said one of the analysts. If that is the case, maybe the emailer should quit his or her day job and take up oil speculation if the “real” price of oil was far lower. Armed with this insight, the correspondent would make a killing, said the clearly rather bemused analyst. It is rare on television to see this sort of nonsense smashed out of the park in such a fashion. Certainly not likely on the BBC.
While on the subject of nonsense about the role of speculators and prices, this is worth a read.
Gordon Brown has written an excellent article in today’s Financial Times explaining why the old European Social Model is a relic of the past. He says that a new European Social Model needs to be created, one which is centred around free trade and flexible labour markets. He says that globalization is a race to the top and Europe has to be part of that race. Mr Brown’s comments follow a speech given by Peter Mandelson earlier in the week in which Mandelson mocked the French economy. Mandelson said the French government was engaged in a futile effort to build an economic “Maginot Line”.
It is great to have figures so associated with the Labour Party saying such good stuff, especially while the British have the Presidency of European Union.
Oh. My. God. I logged on to ePolitix.com this this morning and found this:
The Adam Smith Institute is working its magic yet again with the flat tax. Only last year it introduced the idea of a flat into the Westminster political sphere with the launch of Flat Tax: The British Case by Andrei Grecu, followed up by Flat tax for the UK. All the major parties have been looking at it: the Treasury censored their findings about the flat tax; the original said it would create a “mini-economic boom”. Flat tax may be the most radical think tank proposal for a decade, but I have a distinct feeling this is going to be on the statute books quite soon.
The European Union has agreed an “equitable” outcome with China over the vexed issue of whether the Chinese should be allowed to sell textiles to us at those oh-so unfair low prices. It looks like a pretty fudged deal to me, possibly not as draconian as the original quotas demanded by protectionist lobbies in Europe, but still a slap in the face for principled free trade.
While I have my concerns about China – it has a lousy record on human rights for starters – the development of the country’s economy along hopefully free market lines is surely one of the most positive developments of its kind in the world at the moment. Europe’s economy can only benefit in the long run if China becomes prosperous and hence generates a large middle class with a keen appetite for consumer goods and services.
And some of the poorest people in Europe surely stand to gain if they can buy garments for far less than the amount they would otherwise pay. If the case for free trade is to succeed, it is vital that this point is rammed home time and again.
Let Adam Smith have the last word on this from his Wealth of Nations:
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce
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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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