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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For a while now, I have reading about how the mighty U.S. economy, heavily in debt, with big budget deficits and a large current account black hole, is headed for the rocks. The dollar is on the skids, inflationary pressures are rising, the Fed has been putting up interest rates, the coming Social Security crunch… you know the drill. And some of these worries are to my mind justified, which explains why, with all the plan’s faults, I broadly applaud the efforts of President Bush to overhaul the state pensions system.
Is the situation really as grim as some of the jeremiads claim, however? This suitably wonkish article in the prestigious Foreign Affairs journal argues that things are not nearly as worrying as some might make out and that if anyone has cause for worry, it is Europe with its shrinking birth rates.
The article concudes with this paragraph, and it seems to hit the mark, in my view:
Only one development could upset this optimistic prognosis: an end to the technological dynamism, openness to trade, and flexibility that have powered the U.S. economy. The biggest threat to U.S. hegemony, accordingly, stems not from the sentiments of foreign investors, but from protectionism and isolationism at home
Indeed.
He may not be the sort of man who gets the attention of the ordinary citizen, or the sort of man one talks about down the Dog and Duck on a Friday night, but New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, wannabe Democrat politician and formidable lawyer, is making quite a name for himself as a legal terror of big Wall Street businesses, launching a flood of suits against insurers, brokerages, fund management companies and banks.
Some of his suits may have an element of justice behind them and no doubt he has calculated that bashing the Gordon Gekko classes makes for good copy and will no doubt endear him to the sort of folk who regard Michael Moore as a political seer. To the rest of us, however, who make a living in the financial markets, his zeal is troubling. Take the recent so-called “scandal” surrounding the case of mutual fund firms which allowed certain types of quick-fire trades to happen in and out of their funds. The activity, while not illegal, is considered harmful because it can damage the long term investments of ordinary investors. Well maybe, maybe not. I find it worrying, however, that the cumulative impact of Spitzer’s energies will be to push up the costs of doing business in the U.S. capital markets, and drive many smart would-be financiers into other fields.
We tend to forget that despite high-level scandals such as the collapse of energy giant Enron, the world economy has greatly benefitted from the efficiencies and new products driven by the entrepreneurs of the modern age. My worry about the whole raft of laws spawned in recent years, such as Sarbanes-Oxley or even the awful Patriot Act, is that financial innovation will be curbed. And as a result, many businesses will shun the public listed stock market and choose to go private instead if that is the way to avoid the glare of the Eliot Spitzers of this world.
Regulatory growth is not a sexy subject, I admit, but let’s not forget that the destruction of wealth and entrepreneurial morale will end up biting us in the economic behind if we don’t take a full regard to the effects.
I was on the road again today, or perhaps I should say ‘rail’. The US northeast is still very much in the deep freeze as one can see from this photo I took somewhere before Baltimore.
 Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.
The AMTRAK Acela train seemed to require more resets than a Microsoft Operating system. We were stopped a half hour on a siding while they attempted to ‘reset the air’; and later for problems in the lead locomotive. My ‘express’ train trip took nearly five hours from Penn Station NYC to Union Station DC and wrecked my plans for meeting up with some aerospace types in town. I will not complain too loudly though. The trains have normal AC power available for your laptops, you have enough legroom and arm room to actually type… and you can use your mobile phone.
As opportunity arises – I am now on another gig and my meter is running – I will catch up on a few photo stories left over from Manhattan.
Today is the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 1916 that income tax is a violation of the Constitution.
So the politicians had to change to Constitution.
I am working in Manhattan this week and next and will post a few longer stories as I get caught up with work after several days of mail server problems. In the interim, here is a quick bit of weather photo-blogging.
It has been snowing all day long, is still snowing, and is slated to continue doing so for some time to come. I snapped a few photos during a walkabout in the Upper West Side of Manhattan a short while ago. While we did have a White Christmas in Belfast this year, it was nothing like this.
 Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reservedOne day accumulations of this sort are more like what I grew up with in Western Pennsylvania. Ah, the glory of snow days!
After his oath to protect the Constitution of the United States President Bush made a speech in which he said he wished people in other nations to be free in their own way.
I hope he meant this, as the examples of the broad American way of freedom that President Bush gave in his speech were ‘the Homestead Act’, the ‘Social Security Act’ and ‘the G.I. Bill of rights’.
The Social Security Act (a government pyramid scheme) speaks for itself. As does free education for ex-servicemen (to call this the ‘GI Bill of Rights’ was an insult to the real Bill of Rights – rights as limits on government power, not excuses for it).
As for the Homestead Act – well this (in 1862 I believe) was an effort by President Lincoln to copy some of the ideas of Jefferson (as expressed in the North West Ordinance) of breaking up land into small farms. In the West it was a terrible mistake – as much of the land was not (and is not) environmentally suitable for farming (as opposed to the big ranches that would have naturally envolved). ‘Water mining’ and soil damage (remember the dust bowl of the 1930’s) were the result of the Homestead Act.
The Social Security Act at least was unconstitutional (or the Tenth Amendment does not mean a thing – and there is no need to list the powers of the fed government in Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution – as the “General Welfare” has been declared a power rather than what is actually the case, that “the common defence and general welfare” being the purpose of the powers).
In short, like most recent Presidents, Mr Bush does not have a clue about the document he swore to defend.
Oh well Presidents do not write their own speeches, and at least there was no plan to go to war with Lower Slobovia to make sure they have got a Social Security Act.
Nothing gets the political class to lying their faces off like the chance to spend your money on their legacy.
I saw it in Madison, Wisconsin when the new Frank Lloyd Wright convention center was being pushed through. The lies included (a) we will not build a new hotel next to this facility (it was built a year or two later (b) this facility will not block views/access to the lake it is built on (it does, in spades), and (c) this facility will not be a drain on the public purse (it requires a taxpayer subsidy ad infinitum.
I am seeing it again in Dallas, where the legacy project revolves around the Trinity River that runs through downtown Dallas. Jim Schutze, the excellent political writer for Dallas’ alternative newsweekly (the one with the sex ads) details the lies now on offer from the City of Dallas and its allies and puppets.
For example, recently arrived on my desk is the slickly produced special D magazine Trinity River edition, just out, called “The Trinity: How the river will change Dallas forever.” This magazine–a collection of preposterous whoppers, fibs, prevarications, exaggerations, subterfuge, propaganda and Orwellian doublespeak–is an omen of things just ahead.
The D magazine special edition goes on and on about the recreational amenities the Trinity River project will create: “…the Trinity River will accommodate small sailboats and paddle boats,” the magazine tells its readers. “More interestingly, a reverse-flow lake is planned with a 17-foot drop where it curves back to the river, creating rapids and a perfect whitewater course for winter kayaking competitions…
“But the most visible benefit will be on the Oak Cliff side, which will have easy access to downtown, great views and–most important of all–along the levee, direct entry into the country’s largest urban park.”
All of this is a lie.
Read it and weep.
And speaking of rain, so here I am in Los Angeles, having escaped dreary grey London for a while and…
…it has been pissing down with rain here for 11 days now! Wonderful.
There are a lot of big shiny 1940s-era aircraft zooming across our cinema screens at the moment. Yeh! We have had Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we are due to get the remake of The Flight of Phoenix, based on the wonderful old movie starring James Stewart, and I have just returned from watching The Aviator, starring Leonardo Di Caprio as mogul, test pilot and eccentric, Howard Hughes. It is a fine film, and makes a number of important points about the man himself, the nature of doing business in America in the mid-20th Century and the evolution of modern air travel.
The story is quite well known of how a rich young oil family son becomes a major player in the aviation industry, challenges rivals like PanAm, produces smash-hit movies, before descending into madness and solitude. Director Martin Scorcese has long been fascinated with Hughes’ tale and gets DiCaprio to convey the mixture of driving ambition, brilliant engineering skills, bravery and craziness. Hughes could be seen, from one vantage point as an almost Randian-style business hero, challenging rivals like PanAm, whose boss was played with appropriate menacing charm by Alec Baldwin.
There are two great scenes which get the pro-enterprise, unpretentious side of Hughes across. He drives with his then girlfriend, Katherine Hepburn, excellently played by Cate Blanchett, to see Hepburn’s family. At lunch, Hepburn’s mother, instantly declares to Hughes that “we are all socialists here”, and “I do hope you are not a Republican”, and Hughes, bless him, looking around the vast mansion and its grounds, is too dumbstruck at these comments to make a fast and smart reply. Recovering his composure, later Hughes tells the preening Hepburns that his favourite reading is technical engineering reports on planes, which of course has the welcome effect of shutting the ghastly Hepburns up.
In a later scene, set in 1947 when Hughes is fighting for the future of his airline TWA against the monopolistic ambitions PanAm in cahoots with the U.S. Senate, Hughes makes a number of fine points about competition and business risk-taking that almost got me cheering in the stalls. Hughes wins his battle and PanAm is forced to concede.
Hughes was a troubled man and spent the last two decades of his life in circumstances so lonely and depressed that it of course will colour one’s view of his life in the round. But I came away from the film feeling a certain admiration for Hughes in how he was willing to challenge the status quo. Long after people have forgotten corrupt U.S. senators and complacent airline bosses, they will remember the man who built and flew some amazing planes. I also cannot help but wonder whether people will think something similar in future about our contemporary airline boss and daredevil man of action, Britain’s own Richard Branson. We shall see.
At Joanne Jacobs I learned about another of these teacher/pupil ruckuses where the teacher would appear to have behaved very stupidly.
17 year old Ahmad Al-Qloushi disagreed with his teacher, Professor Jospeh Woolcock, about America being great. Ahmad Al-Qloushi thinks it is. His teacher, Professor Joseph Woolcock, on the other hand, said to Ahmad Al-Qloushi that he needed therapy for expressing such an obviously bonkers opinion. The story is already bubbling away on the internet and will surely spread. Al-Qloushi has put his version of the story out there, and however much the Professor may curse, he cannot now reverse this. The Professor has filed a grievance, whatever exactly that means, against Al-Qloushi, for putting his, the Professor’s, name out there, but out there it is and out there it will now remain.
Whenever I hear about disagreements like this, I always think to myself: well, maybe the guy is a bit crazy. Maybe, in this case, the essay was a bit bonkers. And maybe Al-Qloushi had said and done other crazy things which he is forgetting about, and this essay was just the final straw in a hayrick of craziness that we are not hearing about. So, I am especially interested that in addition to reading Al’Qloushi’s complaint, we can also read the offending essay. → Continue reading: The lefty Professor versus the Arab college Republican president
When people criticise ‘America’ for not giving more money to help with the horrendous calamity that has overwhelmed a large part of southern coastal Asia, they really need to keep in mind that, as mentioned on James Bartholomew’s site, private aid does not get counted and that far outwieghs US government aid. Moreover, money received from a nation-state cannot be charity as the money is not freely given, whereas willingly donated private funds are true charity.
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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