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‘Petrol Price Rise Announced’ blares the BBC Headline:
So it isn’t a ‘price rise’ at all. It’s a tax increase I think the public has a right to be told in less ambivalent terms. September 25th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the two and a half years since George W. Bush took office, 2.7 million Americans have lost their jobs. The vast majority (2.5 million) have occurred in manufacturing, prompting the President to announce a bold, innovative new program to boost manufacturing employment. He’s going to – drum roll, please – appoint a manufacturing czar [the proposed formal title: Assistant Commerce Secretary for Manufacturing and Services]. It’s a classic political move. If a president wants to make it look like he’s doing something, but has no idea what to do, he appoints a ‘czar’. However, a ‘Manufacturing Czar’ will do nothing to help the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs. President Nixon started the trend in 1973 by appointing John Love as Energy Czar. Of course, his appointment did nothing to help solve the energy “crisis”, leading President Carter to up the ante and create the Department of Energy. That didn’t accomplish anything either, other than create a gigantic new bureaucracy. Since then, we’ve been blessed with Drug Czars, Heath Care Czars, Aids Czars, and Privacy Czars, to name just a few. President Clinton even appointed a ‘Counter-Intelligence Czar’ just before he left office, charged with developing:
We saw how well that worked on September 11, 2001. → Continue reading: Wishing upon a Czar September 20th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Our friend Sean Gabb is no stranger to radio or TV broadcasting. Indeed, so commonplace are his incisive contributions to both that Sean himself appears to regard them as somewhat mundane. But yesterday was different. Yesterday, Sean travelled the studios of BBC Radio Oxford to take part in a phone-in debate on law and order. One of the other studio guests was none other than Tony Martin. As Sean himself says:
If it is possible to be incandescent with envy then I am. As is his custom, Sean has written about his afternoon with Tony Martin:
Sean has a gift for commentary which few can emulate. This article, as with so many of his other writings, has all the solemn dignity and moving power of a hymn. His melancholy conclusions alone deserve the widest possible audience if only as a chronicle of these troubled times. Seldom has the phrase ‘read it and weep’ been quite so literal. [Update: I think ‘whoops’ is the appropriate phrase. I drafted this and posted it up without realising that Brian was doing exactly the same thing only marginally sooner. But even duplication can be quite instructive as both Brian and I live up to our respective reputations of him being optimistic and me being pessimistic in response to precisely the same article.] September 19th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
When the Olympic games were held in Sydney in 2000, a number of public viewing areas were set up in public spaces throughout the city. Giant video screens were erected, and large crowds gathered to watch sports events and enjoy the atmosphere. Like in Britain, liquor licensing laws in Australia are quite strict in that if you enter a bar and buy an alcoholic drink, you must consume it on the premises of the bar. Although you have bought it, you are not permitted to walk off with it. During the games, a few portable bars were actually set up in the public spaces with the video screens. However, in order to comply with local liquor laws, certain relatively small areas of the public spaces were designated as alcohol drinking areas and barriers were erected to cordon people in these areas off from everybody else. On top of this, people in these areas were only sold drinks in cans or plastic cups. (These enclosures were quickly nicknamed “playpens”, on the basis that drinkers were being treated like small children). The dangers of broken glass were considered sufficiently great that people were not allowed to buy drinks in glasses or glass bottles. This was all very paternalistic, in the way that alcohol licensing laws in the English speaking world often are. This past weekend, I happened to be in Germany. When I visited the Kurfürstendamm, the main shopping street of what once was West Berlin, I discovered that some kind of event was happening, declaring itself to be the “Global City 2003” festival. Now any city that is sufficiently insecure that it feels the need to declare itself to be a “global city” or a “world city” actually isn’t one. There are plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do in Berlin (including some of the most magnificent museums of cultural treasures anywhere) but when it comes down to it the city is not London, Tokyo, or New York. And the “Global City” festival was not all that global. There was a ferris wheel and a few other rides. A catwalk had been set up in the middle of the street and there were some fashion shows. A stage had been set up and there was some live music. There were stalls selling souvenirs of various kinds. However, the most important thing was clearly eating and drinking, and this was done in a very German way. → Continue reading: The benefits of beer glass ownership September 10th, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
And so, as the great heat swamp of Old London Town finally begins to subside towards the cold dark wetness of autumn, which for some of us is a very great relief, we in England can begin to think of Christmas. Oh yes, we can dream of Yuletide hymns, rich puddings with brandy sauce, and gifts under the evergreen tree of renewed pagan life. And what better a gift idea could there be, for this ancient festival of change, than a brand new book by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr, the current holder of the flame of Herr Hayek, Von Mises, and Murray N. Rothbard? No other gift idea comes close, in my humble opinion. And if you agree, you might want to slip over to the Mises Blog for hot-off-the-press details from the man himself. Best of all, for intellectual pygmies, such as myself, the book, Speaking of Liberty, apparently comes in at under 500 pages, and is formed from a collection of Rockwell’s best speeches integrated into a cohesive whole, to create his personal manifesto on politics and economics. As I’m trying to cure myself of impulsiveness, I paused for almost a whole nanosecond before deciding whether to attempt to get hold of a copy. And then I read this:
Followed by this:
Sold, to the gentleman in the black slip-on sandals. September 9th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m reading a law paper by Eben Moglen whilst sitting on a bed with sunlight pouring in the windows… [oops, I spoke too soon. Here come the rain. This is Ireland.] In short, he explains why Copyright is dead meat. Although written in 1999 it is still relevant. The death throws of Copyright will require a few more decades to play to their final denouement, but there is little doubt of that end. To say I agree is an understatement. I’ve expressed my thoughts on this many times over the years, for example in this 1995 article. As I said then and in more depth in 1999, Copyright depends on the embodiment of ideas in physical form. It is a creature of Gutenberg’s invention. In the 21st Century we are moving on towards something else. I’m about as likely to project correctly what that “something else” is as would a writer in the first decades of the printed word so I won’t even try. And here comes the sun again… September 6th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
By the end of today I will have been on BBC radio of various sorts twice. I just did a little spot on a Radio 2 talk show about taxes for or against. Guess which I was. I played the consumer electronics card. This is the one that says that since quality in things like computers and music boxes has in recent years skyrocketed and prices have sunk like so many stones dropping out of the sky, but that in the public sector this great stuff hasn’t happened, private sector hurrah public sector bah. Governments are catastrophically bad at spending money. The rapacity of governments in collecting money and the damage that does had already been covered, by George Trefgarne. As usual in this sort of radio, I could have done better and I could have done worse. You land a few punches, give a few tried and tested memes a bit of a dust-over and maybe give some less familiar ones an outing. In among that you do some unnecessary um-ing and aah-ing and waffling. Then you put the phone down and get on with your life, which in my case now means boasting about having done this on Samizdata. And then, tonight at 8pm, I will be contributing to a Radio 4 programme called “The Commission”. → Continue reading: A BBC radio day September 3rd, 2003 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Guessedworker, I am very far from being an idealist, I am however an ideologue in that I am a consistent advocate of the doctrine of pure anarcho-libertarianism. You are quite right that the dogmas of the liberal left are a menace and they need to be refuted, I spend much time doing that whenever I encounter such people, especially the marxoid greens who abound. However also a threat to liberty are the equally pernicious dogmas of the social conservatives, of which you are an advocate. I do not think that the state should be supporting or oppressing any groups at others expense. You may not want to sort out the laudable traits in people but I certainly do and the only way to do this meaningfully is to allow the market to work. There has been nothing like a free market in personal behaviour and self expression for the last forty years. There has been instead a mixture of on the one hand repression and on the other hand state subsidy of fecklesness. This looks to you like a free market because you haven’t the first idea of what a free market actually is. It may well be that we have an ‘eternal nature’ as you say but your narrow and clumsy understanding of it is a useless guide to policy, it is the dumb interplay between the fools on the left and you fools on the socially conservative right over the last forty years that have brought forth the ‘rivers of pain’. For my own lifestyle I seek no subsidy but I certainly will not tolerate any repression. I want not equality but freedom. Paul Coulam September 2nd, 2003 | 93 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)
Blogging is unpredictable. It began as innocent posting by me about the Segway, which is a sort of mobile Zimmer frame, on Transport Blog. Then Patrick Crozier, presiding boss of Transport Blog, made this rather more profound comment.
From the ridiculous to the sublime. → Continue reading: David Sucher on the necessity of states to contrive and maintain “infrastructure” August 21st, 2003 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tax greed is running rampant in California these days. The Statists have managed to, if not quite kill, make the golden goose quite ill. Revenues are falling and they have no way to fund more welfare for politicians and bureaucrats. They need a new victim – one that has not yet been bled to within an inch of its’ life. The American Indians are in their sights once again. Over the last decade or so many tribes have gone from rags to riches. They’ve done it the old fashioned American way: capitalism. Some of this may be due to the leadership of people like American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, although I cannot state that as proven fact. Russell’s imposing warrior’s frame is well known in the Libertarian community: he ran against Ron Paul for the 1988 LP Presidential slot. He lost the nomination but gave a memorable concession speech, spiced with his signature line, “Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility”. His after-the-vote party was also much more fun than Ron’s… almost as much fun as a Kansas Caucus. Reservations are far from libertarian. They’ve been inundated by socialist activists for many decades. Even so, Marxism has not displaced the traditional culture. As Russell wrote in a paper long ago in his more radical youth, socialism is just another alien European philosophy. It has nothing to say to Indians. It’s time again for the American Indian’s to string their lawyers and sharpen their lobbyists. The Great White Liars in State Houses across the continent are once again on the march to expropriate Indian wealth. August 19th, 2003 | 30 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)
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