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Eugene Volokh, the head Volokh Conspirator, has a thoughtful post on the conceptual validity of intellectual property. Long, but worth a read if you are interested in the topic. I confess I haven’t fully digested it myself, but it seems pretty sound (his stuff generally is). September 12th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I will never again allow it to be said that reading the Guardian is a depressing experience. Not after reading the most eye-wateringly hilarious column in the entire history of British print journalism. The alleged author (because there is a fair chance that he was invented for comic effect) is someone called ‘Subcomandante Marcos’. No, I kid you not. Go and check the link yourselves if you don’t believe me. Apparently he is the ‘is the leading voice of the Zapatista movement’ and not a character from a Woody Allen film at all. Anyway, ‘El Subcomandante’ has a tub-thumping message for all us globalista gringos:
Hey, what about the transgendered?
They must have told him this was going to be read out at a student sit-in.
Nuanced. Balanced. Sophisticated. Definitely food for thought.
Mixed in with a dash of neurosis, a dollop of resentment and liberal sprinkling of schtoopidity.
Dead slaves are no good to us. We want live ones.
Stop laughing! I’ll have you know that the Guardian is a serious and highly-respected journal of record.
No, it’s very simple. You die and a gravedigger gets paid to bury you. What’s so complex about that?
Yes, Guardian journalists mostly.
But what about the rights of the monolithic minority? And you still haven’t included the transgendered. El Subcomandante is just a hate-speech spewing bigot.
I’m booking myself a fortnight in Cancun right now. This isn’t a political statement, it’s a travel guide.
Question for El Subcomandante: if you have all the creativity, intelligence and imagination then how come ‘they’ are above and you are below? Comprendez? Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been took, I’ve been had. This is actually a parody cooked up by some impish scribblers in the sub-editors department to catch the unwary and take some of their less regular readers for a ride. All I can say is, guys, well done. The trip was worth it. September 11th, 2003 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Dot com. The phrase is synonymous with failure and self-delusion. But some people are making money out of the internet, even if it is only the city slickers who set up this deal.
Well I don’t know what all that means, but it sounds to me like someone reckons that lastminute is doing some real business. My reaction to the story was to go myself to the lastminute.com website itself, which I’d never got around to doing before. A tenner for a theatre ticket? Hey, these guys are ticket touts! (Of the nice kind, who lost their bet.) I might have some of that myself, and then maybe I could write about it and double my theatre-going pleasure. Normally London theatre is nearer thirty quid, which is beyond what I’ll pay for something that only might be excellent. The internet continues to work its economic magic. It isn’t just for give-it-away pulpiteers like us. September 7th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
As mentioned by R. C. Dean in an earlier article, the fact that EU policy is a major contributor to poverty in the Third World is finally starting to attract the attention it deserves. Many of Samizdata.net’s contributors have written in the past about the true price of protectionism and just who pays it. Well now the The Centre for the New Europe has released a devastating paper that shows the claims of the Euro-statist elite to care for the world’s ‘have-nots’ for what they are: complete lies
The complete paper can be downloaded from the main CNE site  September 5th, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Grauniad (of all papers) continues its libertarian crusade for free trade, slamming the EU’s continued protectionism of ag markets:
Note the condescending tone of the EUnik leading the charge on this one. Is it something they actually screen for? Is it in the water in Brussels?
Perhaps the big plus for free traders in all this is that this issue is not being posed as multinational corporations v. defenseless working class slobs (as antiglobalism is usually set up in the US), or as noble social democracies v. the evil capitalist US, but rather is put forth as poor and starving people v. coddled and protected industry. Still, its a shame that it looks like the Doha round of negotiations will wither on the vine. September 5th, 2003 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Earlier in the week I heard Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute on the radio argue that Labor Day in the US should celebrate the achievements of man’s mind, rather than main’s muscles. For me, the most interesting bit of the show was when Binswanger pointed out that free trade benefits everyone. The interviewer jumped on this and pointed to the US’s huge “trade deficit” with China. Binswanger started to debunk this, but was cut off by a break for the adverts. Now he has an article up on Capitalism Magazine explaining his position, entitled: ‘Buy American’ is UN-American. He writes:
If you are still worried about America’s “trade deficit”, here’s something you should get your head around: each year, America exports exactly the same value as it imports. The “trade deficit” merely refers to part of trade – the current account of the balance of payments. It ignores completely the capital account of the balance of payments. Because successful countries tend to get a lot of investment coming into the country – which is recorded on the capital account – it looks superficially as though these countries have “deficits”, despite the fact that they continue to get richer. In short, a “trade deficit” is a meaningless term. September 5th, 2003 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just over a decade ago, the US and the EU conspired to conduct what has proved to be a very successful war against low-tax jurisdictions and banking secrecy. Under a fig-leaf of a campaign to eradicate ‘drug-dealing’ and ‘terrorism’ (but truthfully to maintain the integrity of their various state-welfare arranagements) they employed a combination of legislation, diplomacy and outright bullying to effectively hobble (and, in some cases, shut down) the Western offshore-investment industry. As expected, the EU went further in this war than the US where the ‘anti-money laundering’ regime metastasised into a ludicrous campaign against what they called ‘unfair tax competition’. Well, now the chicks are coming home to roost. Or, more accurately, they are flying the nest:
Western political elites are rather like heroin-addicts. No amount of argument, persuasion or reason will do anything to deter them from their narcotic fix. Lessons generally have to be learned the hard way. [My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.] August 24th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s an interesting titbit of news, which I just got from following a trackback to something else to this guy (and his blog). The Guardian is starting a blog devoted to the single issue of abolishing agricultural subsidies.
This is, you might say, lefties giving leftism a libertarian hook, to refashion one of Perry de Havilland’s most favoured memes. I say, good for them. I’ve always felt that in the long run (okay, the very long run), if libertarianism (okay, the Samizdata meta-context) were ever to triumph in the UK, it would be via the Guardian and by outflanking the traditional right, which has always had a lively sense of the revolutionary and hence to them regrettable nature of the free market. Guardianistas are trouble-makers first and only socialist centralists second and because this makes trouble for smug establishmentarians. If there’s libertarian (Samizdata meta … etc.) trouble to be made, they’ll make that too. The message is bound to get spread around in some very unlikely places, many of them very angry and hostile places for such a message, that state spending doesn’t work at achieving its publicly stated goals and most especially doesn’t work at making poor people richer. I expect a lot of regular Guardian readers to be angry about this. Good. August 18th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Financial Times in an editorial chastises the U.S. Federal Reserve bank chairman Alan Greenspan for encouraging speculators, such as those mysterious bodies called hedge funds, to snaffle up bonds recently by cutting interest rates to ward off deflation, only to find that bond prices dropped sharply once it appeared the economic situation in the U.S. was improving. (It is too early to say for sure that things are getting better in the world economy though. Certainly not in Continental Europe). I do not really have a quick way of picking through the rights and wrongs of the FT’s position. I think it is plainly daft that Greenspan, who remains one of the sharpest economic brains around, would have deliberately set out to con investors. What I do think this episode does, however, is reinforce in my mind the enormous risks of entrusting great economic powers to folk like Dr. Greenspan. In fact, the more highly regarded such men and women are, the more lethal the consequences when they slip up. Even many folk who consider themselves to be ardent free marketeers can get caught up in near religious reverence for the great central banker. Financial speculators hang on every word. The most bland of statements are parsed for some deeper meaning. I have spent too many hours than I care to remember trying to work out if the statement of X or Y actually suggests that inflation is likely to up, down, or whatever. The cult of the central banker is one of those belief systems of surprisingly short duration, by historical standards. Maybe in decades to come, we will look back on the era of Alan Greenspan and his ilk rather as we would that of the Medieval Popes. And we will be even more struck when we recall that Greenspan, when a young economics student and friend of Ayn Rand, urged a return to old-style private banking and the unfairly maligned Gold Standard. August 14th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Communist leaders plan to amend China’s constitution to formally enshrine the ideology of Jiang Zemin, the recently retired leader who invited capitalists to join the Communist Party. Despite sweeping economic and social changes, the political status of China’s entrepreneurs is still ambiguous. There have been no details of the possible changes although foreign analysts say they include the communist era’s first guarantee of property rights. Certain amendments are still needed to promote economic and social development, said the party newspaper People’s Daily. It said the changes were meant to cope with accelerating globalization and advances in science and technology. Jiang’s theory, the awkwardly named “Three Represents,” calls for the 67 million-member party to embrace capitalists, updating its traditional role as a “vanguard of the working class” and for the constitution to formally uphold property rights and the rights of entrepreneurs. As someone who has more than passing acquaintance with communism, I see this is as a big change indeed. Even under most dire oppression you cannot entirely stop people exchanging goods and services. And so it was in the countries of the former Communist bloc, although the private sector was not officially recognised, there were shades of grey in the ‘socialist worker economy’. Former Yugoslavia, for example, ventured furthest in its recognition of private enterprise and some semblance of property rights and in return relatively prospered. Also in practice, Poland and Hungary were kinder to their small landowners and tradesmen than the communist ideologues allowed. Nevertheless, there was no question of formally acknowledging property rights and any form of private enterprise by governments whose grasp of economics was based entirely on Marxism. It was one thing to tolerate existence of non-state markets and even benefit from them, but changing their opposition to individual’s property rights, so firmly embedded in political systems that were barely surviving, would have been a political, ideological and social suicide. (As a matter of fact, not changing it amounted to the same, just by other means: No, no, no, comrade, let’s not play with this (freedom of the press, speech, travel, association, trade, property rights etc) it has sharp edges and will cut your wrists, let’s just circle round the drain together, holding hands and singing the Internationale…) China’s development has been very different to that of Eastern Europe, politically and economically, although both were waving the Red Flag. The proposed change to the China’s constitution may amount to a symbolic amendment given that China’s entrepreneurs have driven its two-decade-old economic boom. But then, symbols can be very powerful. August 12th, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the more annoying things about modern large bookshops is that they divide the non-fiction books into a vast number of over-defined categories. This is not a huge difficulty if you are looking for a cookbook, or a book about trains, or a travel guidebook, as it is pretty clear what sections those books belong in. However, when we get to the social sciences things get hazy. If I am looking for (say) one of Ian Buruma‘s books on Asia (which are all worth a read, by the way), it is impossible to know whether the book in question will be on the shelves in “Asian History”, “Eastern culture”, “Travel writing”, “Sociology”, “Chinese History”, or one several other categories, even though if you look at all his books together they are clearly all have a very similar theme. It just does not fit into bookshop categorisation. This is fine if you are looking for a particular book. You just ask at the information counter, they look it up in the computer and they tell you where it is and whether they have any copies. However, if you are trying to find it without help it can be close to impossible. In any event, when I was wandering through my local branch of Books etc the other day, I found myself walking past a section I hadn’t noticed before, labelled “anti-globalisation”. That’s right, they had a section devoted to the works of Michael Moore, Noam Chomksy and the like. People who wanted to read such books can go straight to that section without having to be exposed to anything else. I’m sure they find this very convenient. Even better, the bookshop encourages its staff to recommend books to customers. They even go to the trouble of giving their staff members little cards on which they can write down their recommendations and attach them to the shelves in the store. This is a good practice, as it may help readers find books and it also makes it clear that the booksellers are people who like to read themselves. But, even so, I had personal issues with the anti-globalisation recommendations.  Ugh.  Save me. Seriously, I suspect that the number of people who have read Michael Moore and are not already aware of the existence of John Pilger and Noam Chomsky already is small (or perhaps I overestimate them). I think recommendations like this are better when they refer people who have read something well known to something that is both rather more obscure and also good. And Pilger and Chomsky are not especially obscure, however much I might wish it were so. However, in the chance that there might be anyone walking through the bookshop who might have discovered Michael Moore but not Pilger or Chomsky, I thought I had a duty to save them from this (and also there was a Samizdata post in it). Therefore, although it was a bit naughty of me I removed the little cards from the shelf and walked out with them. (Yes, okay, technically I stole them. However, sometimes the ends do justify the means). As I was walking out of the shop, it struck me that it would be kind of cool to get a few of the blank cards, write out a few book recommendations of my own, and then attach them to the shelves. However, when I thought about it some more, I realised I didn’t need anyone to supply me with a stock of blank cards. For I have the miracles of modern technology at my disposal, and I could produce some of my own. I could go back into the bookshop and leave something like this.  Or perhaps this.  The fun could be never ending. → Continue reading: Globalisation, bookshops, and the Anglosphere August 11th, 2003 | 56 comments - (Comments are closed)
People like David Attenborough or almost anyone connected with Population Connection (a group which used to be rather more directly called ‘Zero Population Growth’), are technocrats at heart. Problems are identified, analyzed by experts and their solutions to those problems are imposed via political interaction. It is simply ‘rule by expert’ and there is quite literally no limit to the areas of life which is beyond the overarching gaze of the men and woman with letters after their names. When such people are given access to political power, no limits to what they can make you do or not do. The experts are, after all, the best and thus know best, and if people will not be swayed by their words spoken from the position of superior knowledge, then they must be forced to comply via the political system. They are the new would-be aristocracy in the literal Greek sense of the word. In today’s Times of London (we do not link directly to The Times), David Attenborough, speaking for the Optimum Population Trust, demanded that the British state work to halve Britain’s population by establishing a ‘population policy’.
Indira Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping shared such views and enacted policies based on the realization that gentle prods will not stop people having children. Their views were based on crude pragmatism married with an honest understanding of the efficacy of coercive violence. People like David Attenborough however take a rather more lyrical utopian view of nature and ‘sustainable economics’ (which in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with economics) and thus are rather more grandiose in their objectives. They seek to limit people’s right to have children or to travel the world or engage in ‘wasteful’ or ‘harmful’ economic activity generally that is not approved of by…well, them, of course. They wish to restore balance and harmony. This sort of idealized view of nature and man’s place in it (or lack thereof) was something that would have gained approving nods not just from idyllic ruralist 18th and 19th century poets but also Heinrich Himmler. For these people there are no ‘market’ solutions caused by the social interaction of free people, because that would allow the possibility that free people may simply ignore the ‘wise words’ of The Best. In a political system, rather than a social system, there are only a few people who must be convinced and manipulated, and thus it through coercive collectivist politics that the new technocratic aristocracy seek to apply their ‘wisdom’. At least the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement are not trying to use the violence of state to make people comply. The same cannot be said of Sir David Attenborough and his collectivist ilk. August 3rd, 2003 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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