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A few weeks ago in central London, I watched a group of protestors holding aloft anarchist signs as they demanded greater government spending. They seemed almost as confused as the fellow who tweeted me his denunciations of globalisation the other day – using a mobile device made in Korea and software written in California. – Douglas Carswell, Rebel, page 295. July 2nd, 2018 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 According to Lucian Armasu of Tom’s Hardware, in one week’s time I might no longer be able to link to Lucian Armasu of Tom’s Hardware and quote him like I’m about to do. Or have I misunderstood? I hope I have, because this sounds serious:
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I have heard of Julia Reda MEP before. She sits with the Greens in the EU Parliament but don’t hold that against her; she is actually a member of the Pirate Party. She is fighting the good fight. June 13th, 2018 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thanks to Brexit fruit is going to be left to rot in the fields. How can we cope without a reliable supply of cheap foreign labour and zero-hours contracts to cover the seasonal summer work? All this will push the cost onto society in the form of more expensive grocery bills. Meanwhile, those evil Capitalists at Amazon are exploiting cheap labour and forcing people to work zero-hours contracts to cover the seasonal winter work, pushing the cost onto society in the form of tax credits. June 6th, 2018 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Turkish cab drivers aren’t opposing Uber because it is bent. But because it is honest. – ‘Chester Draws’ commenting on the Continental Telegraph. June 5th, 2018 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I clicked on a link to an article about food marketing failures and came upon a notice that due to GDPR, the publisher just could not be bothered dealing with people from Europe for now. It turns out the even the Los Angeles Times thinks people from Europe are too much of a pain in the ass to talk to.
If they can not cope, what chance does a small US-based pizza restaurant with an online ordering system have, having been told that they have to comply with GDPR in case any customers from the EU visit? Things look set to get even worse for the Internet within the EU. But it is not just the EU. Amazon will stop shipping things to Australia because of a global sales tax. Trump seems very keen on tariffs. The UK does not appear to be in any hurry to turn into a small-state unilateral-free-trading nation after Brexit. In fact we are likely to have to choose between outright full-steam-ahead socialism and slowly-boiled-frog socialism at the next election. Governments really do like their borders. As Guy Herbert says: The nation state is still our biggest problem. June 1st, 2018 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Recently (by which I mean about six weeks ago), I ordered a 3D printer kit to be sent to me from China. It was much cheaper to order it directly from a seller in Shenzhen than via an intermediary like Amazon. Because I was in no real hurry to get it – and because I am cheap – I selected the cheapest shipping option – Europe Railway Priority Mail. My printer has clearly been coming via the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which joins the Trans-Siberian railway north of Mongolia. Given that it has taken over a month to get to Budapest, it has clearly not made the journey on a single train, even on the sections where this is theoretically possible, such as Beijing to Moscow. I give you my wonderful tracking information. I particularly like “Arrived in changsha chardonnay coagulation loading bays”. Also, let’s face it. “Get to Russia off sharply” is good advice for anyone. (Click to make the image larger).
May 23rd, 2018 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yes. Dominic Frisby tweets:
Get tickets here. More about the show here. I can confirm that this is a fun show, having already seen two earlier try-outs of it. One of these was in my own home, at my last Friday of the month meeting on April 27th. And earlier that week, I attended the very first try-out of this show (to check out what my Friday was likely to consist of), and greatly enjoyed it. That first outing was in the same venue, downstairs at the King’s Head, that tonight’s show will be at Despite the extreme contrast in the space he had available, Frisby then made his second try-out performance at my place work very well, because he is a good humoured, thinks-on-his-feet performer. Nevertheless, a bigger venue is certainly needed for the show to have its full effect. I’m thinking in particular of how successful competitors in the quiz, such as the lady I went with to the first show, get asked to sit themselves in different and more visible seats as they progress, none of which could happen in my postage stamp of a living room Nevertheless, Frisby seems to find early run-throughs at my place helpful, because he did a similar early run-through of his previous Edinburgh Festival show at my home, a couple of years ago, and now here he was inviting himself back to do this year’s show. Glad to be of assistance. Without giving away too much in the way of answers, I can tell you that Frisby’s questions all point to the subtleties and surprises and oddities of economic life, of the sort that are familiar to devotees of Austrian Economics, with its emphasis on the subjectivity of value and the way that economic decisions so often involve making sometimes rather strange bets about the future. The contrast in the price of this small but expensive house and that bigger but cheaper house; Fading Footballer A getting paid, counter-intuitively, more than Superstar Footballer B; that kind of thing. Frisby thus communicates an inquisitive and amused attitude to economic life that will likely draw at least some of the people who see this show in Edinburgh towards his more opinionated intellectual products. Who knows, some of these people may even end up reading this book? I wrote admiringly about it here. May 22nd, 2018 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Labour is now described as having an antisemitism problem. But those who talk like this are neglecting the fact that for many Corbynites antisemitism accomplishes something very important. It helps to drive out of the Labour Party all of those Labour supporters who think that the badness of antisemitism ought to be publicly talked about, instead of these Labourites silently or vocally caving in, for now, to the Corbynite project. And that, as far as the Corbynites are concerned, is a feature rather than a bug. We can see this process described in this piece, by “New Labour” (i.e. the kind of Labour that the Corbynites are determined utterly to destroy) Prime Minister Tony Blair’s senior shouter-down-the-phone, Alastair Campbell:
Campbell is right. The Corbynites do indeed hate Campbell and his ilk far more than they hate the Conservatives. The Conservatives, by allowing themselves to be lead by people like Theresa May, are bringing the day of glorious socialist triumph ever closer. Campbell and his sort are a far more immediate threat to Corbynism. So if antisemitism serves to cure Alastair Campbell of his tribal love of Labour, … good for antisemitism. As of now, the Corbynites are far more interested in establishing themselves in unchallengeable command of the Labour Party than they are in merely winning elections. Their thinking is that, sooner or later, capitalism will be hit by another crisis, and that at that point they’ll win a general election, and then the question will be: will there be any New Labour Alastair Campbell type bastards around to prevent them from turning Britain into Venezuela or worse? Meanwhile, they can agitate, do local activism, recruit the right sort of unswervingly loyal cadres, on the internet and in real life, and generally speed up the arrival of that crisis of capitalism and be ready for it. Having helped to bring about their crisis of capitalism, they can then blame capitalism for it and sweep to power. At some point during all this, Corbyn will step aside and be replaced by a younger, better dressed and better shaved personage, more emollient, more “centrist” in tone, in appearance more like Alastair Campbell. Britain as a whole will be fooled. That “crisis” general election will be duly won, and then the “project” can really begin. And an essential part of that process is clearing out backsliding scum like Alastair Campbell, who, if they hang about and continue to attend Labour events, might blow the gaff in time to stop all this. At the very least such persons will be an unwanted nuisance. Personally, I think that this is all a very long shot. But I wish it was a whole lot longer than it is. The other thing to be said about antisemitism is that eradicating it from the Corbynite clan will be impossible. The Corbynites may, any year now, once all the Blairites are flushed out or permanently silenced, tone it down in public, once that besuited and beshaven person steps forward. But they will still all be antisemites. May 11th, 2018 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
For [Adam] Smith, the dangers that natural liberty faces are not a result of the system of free markets itself, but of mankind’s flawed human nature, particularly the desire of those he called “merchants and manufacturers” (among others) to “rig the system.” The natural desire to “better our condition” motivates us to strive for a better life. This is the motivation that underlies the success of natural liberty. Yet this same natural desire also leads to cronyism and corruption when businesses and others use the power of government to procure for themselves “systems either of preference or of restraint.” In so doing, Smith said, they impose an “absurd tax on the rest of their fellow citizens,” retard growth, and increase inequality. As a result, free markets are neither self-establishing, nor self-sustaining. If we are to continue to reap the very real benefits of natural liberty, we must be prepared to defend against cronyism. May 10th, 2018 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Political and economic theories are never implemented in pure form, and their adherents are rarely impressed by politicians who claim to be inspired by them. That’s just par for the course. Marxists, however, are pretty much the only thinkers who accept no responsibility whatsoever for real-world approximations of their ideas. Third-Way advocates may have despaired over Blair, Hayekians can – and do – rant all day about Thatcher’s shortcomings, and ordoliberals have written scathing condemnations of Konrad Adenauer. But ask them whether they think those respective governments did more good than harm on balance; ask them whether they think those governments were preferable to the next likely alternatives – and you will get an unambiguous and unqualified “Yes!” as an answer. In contrast, hardly any contemporary Marxist would accept that whatever ‘real’ socialism is – surely, East Germany was at least closer to it than West Germany, North Korea is at least closer to it than South Korea, Venezuela is at least closer to it than Peru, Maoist China was at least closer to it than Taiwan, etc. And why would they? It works for them. Every other idea is judged by its necessarily crude, incomplete and imperfect real-world approximations, warts and all. Only Marxism has the luxury of being judged purely as a set of ideas, which something as mundane as real-world experience could never blemish. May 5th, 2018 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
This universe has finite resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting. Avengers: Infinity War spoilers below. → Continue reading: Samizdata movie spoiler quote of the day May 3rd, 2018 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
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