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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Singleton’s conclusion:
… it is not just fish where the EU is damaging us, but in financial services, manufacturing – indeed, its ever-increasing regulations impose unnecessary costs across the whole of our economy. Greenland, which retains free trade with the EU, shows that we can have the benefits of European exports, without the costs of its diktats. It’s surely time that we, too, said goodbye to Brussels.
Okay, cards on the table, Singleton is a sometime Samizdatista and a good friend of mine. But more pertinently, he is one of those free marketeers who is, unlike many of our breed, highly sensitive to mood, to atmospheres, to appearances, superficialities, surface trends, straws in the wind, stylistic nuances. He may not always be right about who is hot or who is cool (as opposed to merely who is right), but he is always thinking about such things. He is, after all, a paid journalist working for a major British broadsheet newspaper, who is trusted by that newspaper with editorial as well as writing responsibilities. When he writes stuff, he is typically wearing a suit. He is, in other words, the exact opposite of your typical old grump UKIPer. The significance of this piece of his about Greenland and the EU is not just in what it says, but in its timing. If Singleton reckons that now is a good time to be saying such things, that says something to me, as in something else besides what he is actually saying.
As still current Samizdatista Johnathan Pearce has often said here in recent months, especially in comments, something important just might be stirring in little old Blighty. It’s as if “we”, whoever exactly we are, have been sitting on our hands, waiting for Gordon Brown to depart, and then waiting to see how David Cameron would turn out (given that his mere words communicate so very little). Now we are beginning to learn, and now we are beginning to find our voices and to exert some actual pressure.
I rather like this habit of economists trying to put their own money on the line in making certain predictions. David Henderson has an item about it. It adds a certain frisson to the joustings between different camps. The most famous bet of all, of course, is the one between the late Julian L Simon and Paul Ehrlich. The latter lost his bet that the price of commodities would rise over a certain period (they did not) and he declined to accept another bet for another decade. Poor loser, I say.
I would have liked to have seen the odds back in 2008 that Obama would likely be only a one-term president, or that one, or possibly two, nations could be driven from the euro-zone by say, 2011/12.
Indeed.
The thing about Delingpole is not just the things he says, but the huge numbers of people he says them to, throughout not just the UK but the entire anglosphere. He said “climate science” was hooey to his massed readership, when saying that really counted for something. Now he is arguing for serious cuts, as in actual reductions, as in large reductions, in government spending, here in the UK, in the USA, and pretty much everywhere, at a time when that too needs to be said very loudly.
It is an odd feeling watching all the things I have have been banging on about for the last third of a century or so – about taxation, spending cuts, Hong Kong, the Asian Tigers, etc. – being banged on about by someone half my age and of several times my eloquence. Extreme jealousy mixed with extreme delight about sums it up. The former, I am getting over. The latter will last. I can remember when we used to dream of getting stuff like his in the Telegraph … blah blah.
So, well done Delingpole, and keep it coming.
I left this comment over on Tim Worstall’s blog yesterday, and I thought I might reproduce it here:
“While it is undoubtedly true that there are barriers to entry in certain fields that give the incumbent management the kind of “rent-seeking” powers you talk about, it strikes me that shareholders, over the long run, are hardly likely to tolerate payouts of massive salaries for crummy investment returns. Ironically, it is precisely the sort of mercantilist policies that the left supports – such as attempts to restrict foreign takeovers of “national champions” – that shield management from competition and hence, breed complacency.”
“There is a genuine, global market for talent, and in this globalised, increasingly fiercely competitive world, the pay for the top people will be high. Sure, we can and should remove barriers to entry, and one obvious way to do that would be to encourage small businesses to grow fast and challenge the supposed hegemony of Big Business; this means more free trade, not less; it means fewer regulations and lower, flatter taxes, not more of them, and so on.”
“In other words, if high pay for supposedly underperforming CEOs riles you, then we need more capitalism, not the sort of statist ideas propogated by the likes of Compass.”
For those who may not know, Compass is a leftist pressure group in the UK that tends to argue for such clever ideas as higher taxes, ever greater regulation of business, and so on.
Dr. Bernanke unfortunately does not understand economics, he does not understand currencies, he does not understand finance. All he understands is printing money. His whole intellectual career has been based on the study of printing money. Give the guy a printing press, he’s going to run it as fast as he can.
– Jim Rogers, investor and commentator, giving his considered view on Ben Bernanke, the current chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Too bad there already is an SQoTD for today, but here’s a classic bit I’ll copy and past for you anyway:
We are almost getting to the situation where we will be seeing unemployed environmentalists walking the streets. As with unemployed actors who describe themselves as “between jobs”, one might expect them to admit to being “between scares”.
That’s the EU Referendum man, Richard North, ruminating about how the environmental debate is now going quiet, and about how the forces of darkness are now going to have to find themselves a different line of bullshit to work with. “Biodiversity” won’t nearly suffice. How true. Although, as he’d be the first to remind us (I found that link in this), “climate” money is still being thrown around like there’s no tomorrow, and if that carries on there probably won’t be. Anyway … as I was saying. Between scares.
That phrase could really get around. It deserves to.
I know we keep banging on here about Steve Baker MP, but he really is excellent.
The thing about Baker is that he doesn’t just say the uncompromisingly libertarian things that he does say about economics and economic policy, and about, to quote the title of his talk, honest money and the future of banking. He is willing to be immortalised on video saying them, and therefore potentially to be heard saying them everywhere on earth. Amazing. Truly amazing.
This performance lasts just over forty minutes. I urge you to make the time to look at it and listen to it. If, like me, you have any sort of drum handy, I also urge you to do some banging on about it yourself.
– Richard Cobden (1804-1865), quoted at the Cobden Centre website. Quoted again by Steven Baker MP at the end of his presentation this morning to the Libertarian Alliance, and featured in his final slide, of which the above is my somewhat wonky photo.
Here:
In a fascinating 36 minute interview, Cobden Centre Radio’s very own Brian Micklethwait speaks to James Tyler, the Chief Executive of Tyler Capital and a member of our Cobden Centre advisory board.
I’ll surely have more to say about this, but busy day today. So suffice it to say, for now, click on this to listen to the mp3, or follow the top link to find it as a podcast.
My main general impression of James Tyler was what a good and thoughtful person he is, very much his own man in how he thinks about things and goes about things, yet in no way scornful of or unsympathetic towards others who take the road more travelled. If the propaganda fence to be got over is that Austrian economics, once you’ve been told about it by your resident lefty, is an excuse for billionaires to piss on everyone, then a man like Tyler is just the sort to get you thinking that it’s a whole lot better and more intelligent than that.
His central point was that nobody should have the kind of power over economic life that our current powers that be (“crony capitalism”) do now have.
Incoming from Sam Bowman of the Cobden Centre (and also the Research Manager and Blogmeister at the Adam Smith Institute – most recent blog posting here):
This Thursday 28th October, the world’s leading economist of the Austrian school – Jésus Huerta de Soto – will be giving the first annual Hayek Lecture on the topic “Financial Crisis and Economic Recession”. The lecture is a great chance to hear about the Austrian Business Cycle Theory from its leading living theorist. It’s free, no advance tickets are needed. It starts at 6:30pm and full details are available here.
That event has already been flagged up (although somewhat imperfectly!) here. The Cobden Centre head honchos are hoping for a good-to-bursting type turnout, to keep the buzz they are already creating buzzing along and buzzier. So if you can just show up, do. No compelling need to listen to everything that carefully, or not first time around, because unless things go badly wrong the event will be recorded. I will be going, and I expect to learn a lot.
And there’s more:
A conference is being put on in London on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th of November by the Positive Money campaign. The conference is not Austrian – there will be speakers from a range of intellectual viewpoints – but it will focus on the issues of money and banking and will have lectures from several Cobden Centre board members, including Toby Baxendale, James Tyler and Steve Baker MP. Full details are available here.
One of the things I most like about the Cobden Centre is how they cooperate so enthusiastically and helpfully with other groups which have broadly (rather than merely narrowly) similar agendas, that latter event being typical of this mind-fix.
This article by one of the Home Depot founders has been out for a few days, but I thought it would be good to put it up as it communicates, with a sort of barely suppressed rage, how businessfolk in the US feel patronised and insulted by the sort of policymakers in Washington, obviously starting with Obama.
And I would happily wager that there are a lot of business people who feel pretty much the same way about the UK, as well. I just wish we would have more entrepreneurs making these kind of comments.
Probably the most devastating take-down yet of the economist and leftist news columnist I have ever read. The man’s credibility is in total ruins. The stuff at the end about the housing bubble is the killer. Read the whole thing.
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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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