Samizdata

In a previous Samizdata.net article by Brian Micklethwait, he quotes an article by fellow Samizdata contributor Natalie Solent written on her own blog:

Natalie says that it would have been better for the Algerian fundamentalists to have kept their election win and taken Algeria down the Iran trail, which eventually, if Iran itself is anything to go by, gets better. I think I agree.”

Great. “Algeria” is better off for the next twenty years under Islamic fundamentalist rule. Yet again Brian sees people as an amorphous mass. Several thousand individual women have had their throats cut in the past decade for not wearing ‘modest dress’. Several hundred children have been slaughtered by similar means. But that’s OK ‘cos in twenty years someone else’s kids might not be shot for demonstrating against the ban on “The Simpsons” or Pepsi adverts.

It’s one thing to take a libertarian isolationist view (it is a better one since the end of the Cold War, in my opinion). Liberal interventionism on the nineteenth century scale can be ineffective (Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban springs to mind) and is arguably a misuse of British taxpayers’ money. But on what possible grounds can a libertarian support the imposition of a theocratic dictatorship by a rigged ballot only a week after attacking Christian creationists for wanting to keep Darwin out of the classroom in some U.S. southern state?

As for Natalie, I wonder what future she thinks her Algerian contemporaries see for their families. I don’t suppose many of them blog under their real names either. I thought a libertarian position would be that if consenting Islamic fundamentalists wished to purchase land and build a shining model of the good society for us all to learn from; then so long as they didn’t use force to get people in, or to prevent them from leaving, that would be fine. Unlike Iran, the Algerian Islamists are quite open about scrapping elections, something even Adolf Hitler was vague about.

To the extent that the armed forces see their job as protecting the constitution or the population from external invasion or tyranny, I reckon they’ve got a point in opposing Theocratic despotism. This is also true in Turkey where a similar problem exists albeit in a less bloody form. I’m not saying “send in the Marines”. But every Algerian soldier who shoots a fundamentalist terrorist is making the world a better place in my books.

Natalie’s remarks about “two-sided” cruelty is another fine one. The Algerian equivalent of Guardian readers think the Islamists will let them live, just like their late and un-lamented predecessors in Iran did (atheists die too). The Guardian and the Independent have played a very dirty game indeed. The standard line they put out is to attribute every other massacre to the army first, then reluctantly admit that maybe, this time the fundamentalists did it. Imagine if every time the IRA planted a bomb, the American press claimed the British police did it? I can just hear the conspiracy theorists reply “They’re the ones that don’t go off, because the British army’s detonators don’t work”.

There are only two things to do about terrorist organisations, either destroy them by any means, or surrender (if they’ll let you). I don’t think the fundamentalists will let their opponents surrender.

As for those who think that a temporary dictatorship far away would be fine, I suggest this simple exercise, imagine that you are being told to submit to it for the rest of your lives, by someone sitting in New Zealand (who may even object to your escaping to his country).

I met up with Tim and Helen Evans yesterday. After several years at the Independent Healthcare Association, Tim is now the President of the Centre for the New Europe, which is pro-free-market but neutral about whether the EU as such is a good thing, which, when Britain is finally and irrevocably swallowed up by what Freedom and Whisky calls the Holy Belgian Empire, is what I will probably end up being. Tim is now connecting with lots of excellent European libertarians, including a lot of well placed academics. How come continental Europe’s libertarians are so excellent? Simple. They have to be.

Tim also reminded me of an email I received a few weeks back from his CNE colleague Richard Miniter, following a plug I put here for two forthcoming books by him. Apparently a long lost friend of Richard’s saw my mention of him and got back in touch, much to Richard’s delight. I asked Richard if I could mention this also – Samizdata brings people together again, etc., etc. – and he said yes fine. After all, if you’re someone like Richard, getting your books plugged is easy enough. Keeping in touch with all your cool friends is harder, and he was genuinely grateful. But then I forgot about this. Meeting Tim again is my excuse to mention this touching reunion now. Said Rich:

The friend, Steve Bodio, wrote a excellent piece for the Atlantic Monthly last year entitled “the eagle hunters of Mongolia.” He spent some time with those fiercely independent steppe riders and watched them bring home dinner with their trained eagles. He is also a gun expert and genuine authority on birds. And, of course, he loves freedom and despises “priggish authority” in all its forms.

People who habitually watch birds in countries other than their own are as likely as not spooks of some kind, in my opinion. After all, what better way is there to spy on metal birds and their habitats, and such like, than to pretend to be looking only at regular ones? And this bird man is also a gun man. Add the fact that one of Richard’s forthcoming books is about Bill Clinton’s (mis)handling of al-Qaeda and is apparently full of juicy revelations, and you get the picture. These guys may not have spook ranks and spook serial numbers, but they definitely have good friends who do.

Some libertarians say that we should never make any friends among the spooks, even the part-time ones, all of whom are the statist spawn of Satan. What tripe. For starters, not all of these people advertise themselves as flamboyantly as some of them do, so how can we know who to avoid? And more seriously, they (or their for-real friends and contacts) work at the darkest heart of the state and spy on the rest of it, and they know how it really works, and doesn’t work. They know that the state is an anarchy, and they are mostly individualist anarchists themselves, in their everyday working lives if not in their beliefs. So if we’re right about what the state is really like – and we are right, right? – then the spooks should be moving our way. The question the spooks mostly ask me is not: Are you sure that the state is really that crazy? It’s: How could a totally free market in spookery actually be made to work, given that it’s such a nice idea? (I’m working on it.)

Think what would happen to the course of history if all the spooks and semi-spooks (or even a decent percentage of them) did become hard-core libertarians.

I read Brendan O’Neill’s response to Perry’s challenge to take his spot-on rejection of ‘fixed wealth fallacy’ to its logical conclusion, i.e. laissez-faire capitalism, with mounting – wait for it – agreement.

For I agree with Brendan’s disappointment with ‘capitalism’ – I am also unimpressed by blundering inefficiency of large corporations and big businesses, by short-term horizons and inconsistency of their management. And I too am depressed by the effect ‘the limited mindset of capitalist bosses’ has on entrepreneurship, innovation and progress (even without the recent headlines about fraud and criminal accounting). What I see in the corporate world of today though is not laissez-faire capitalism but statist corporatist capitalism. Which by any other name would stink as much…

I do not understand though what Brendan means when he complains that capitalism cannot provide enough for everyone and can’t deliver what the world needs:

Of course, the truth is that neither side has a solution. It seems perfectly clear to me that we need more development, more production, and bigger and loftier ambitions. The capitalists can’t deliver that, and the trendy anti-capitalists don’t even aspire to it. To that end, I would say I am neither a capitalist, nor a so-called ‘anti-capitalist’.

I admit, Brendan, I do not have a solution, but then, I am not on either ‘side’ since my ambitions are bigger and loftier. The difference is I do not expect anyone, state or institution, to provide for me. I want the freedom to provide for myself and my nearest and dearest without interference from anyone. And I want free markets to be the mechanism for communicating my needs and for meeting other peoples’ needs. Because that is what capitalism is – the most efficient mechanism known to man for pursuing individual rights and freedom. It may not eliminate inequality but offers means to generate wealth to redress it.

Most importantly, it is freedom not capitalism that encourages creativity and motivates individuals to develop and progress. Laissez-faire capitalism ‘merely’ maximises that freedom and enables those individuals to pursue their ambitions. So let’s not complain that capitalism does not supply the big and lofty ambitions that Brendan needs – for me, that would be a depressing choice.

Brian, I thought your “this is how holocausts begin” article was meant to be a deadly secret, its very existence hidden from all those who have not rolled up their trouser legs and passed the hideous initiation tests* necessary to join Libertarian Alliance Forum. I quite understood the secrecy. Although it was clear to me that you spoke of your fears not your desires, of course such an article is going to be misunderstood and misquoted by those too uneducated or too wilfully blind to make the distinction. But if you are going to hint about it to the whole world, why not publish it?

*The candidate must write the holy word “subscribe” and send it to a shaman of the cult of Yahoo. My life is in danger now I have said this.

A few days ago my phone line went silent. I rang BT (British Telecommunications plc). After about ten minutes and several phone calls later, trying to dodge past multiple choice computers and computerised music, I eventually got to talk to some helpful humans. Do you, they asked, have any extensions on your line? (One badly behaved extension can shut everything down, it seems.) Yes, several. Unplug each one, they said, one at a time, and see if things improve. The extension in my bathroom was the culprit. It had got wet. When I unplugged it, all was well again. So, aside from the difficulty of getting through to the helpful humans in the first place, a good result. Another of the humans rang me the following day to check that all was well, which it was. Thank you gentlemen, great job, wonderful.

But then earlier today I had another call, from a market research company calling “on behalf of BT” wanting to ask me more questions about my “experience” with the fault I’d reported. I told them the story you have just read, minus the complaints about the multiple choice computers and the moron music. I said that I was very satisfied with the advice I’d been given, and that my problem was solved. No, no engineers had called. No worries. Okay?

No. Not okay. Would I mind “answering some questions” about all this? What?! I thought I just had. This would apparently take “about five minutes”. I said yes I would mind. I’ve just told you the story, for heaven’s sake. Write that down.

What was depressing about this call today was that although this was clearly an intelligent human doing the talking, he, unlike the people who had actually helped me, was obviously reading from a script, and this script had beaten all the commonsense out of him. I just couldn’t face five minutes (or more) wading through this conversational treacle just when I had got deep into doing something else. So, I said I would mind, and that was that.

Afterwards I felt bad about this. BT had helped me. Why couldn’t I answer a few questions? I felt guilty, and then angry about being made to feel guilty. Grrrr!

So, having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, by telling me (eventually) how to handle my phone problem, BT then snatched defeat back again by trying to inflict an annoying conversation on me, and then making me feel bad about having said get lost.

Now that I think about it, it also annoys me intensely when BT calls me to ask whether I’d like my phone bill reduced. Yes, I say. Then please tell us which numbers you use most often. This is insane. They know the answer to that at least as well as I do, because they list it all on my phone bills. And after I’ve told them that, how many more questions will there be? I say: “If you want to cut my phone bill, then cut it. When you’ve decided about that, I’ll decide about whether I go on using BT. Put that in your questionnaire!” Jesus. But of course they can’t, because there’s no question that goes “Is this call driving you insane?”, and no box for “Yes it f***ing is!”, in this particular idiot script. You can feel BT’s market share collapsing during calls like these, right in front of their idiotically self-blinded eyes.

BT are fine at installing phones. Their engineers are fine, and great to deal with. But when it comes to the ancient and ignoble art of using telephones to drive people crazy, BT’s “marketers” and “market researchers” are, in my experience, among Britain’s leading offenders. It’s ironic when you think about it. Britain’s biggest phone company uses its own product to drive its own customers crazy.

*

Dealing with and being dealt with by big organisations on the phone doesn’t have to be like this. BT should take some lessons from Viking Direct, from whom I and the Libertarian Alliance get our office supplies.

When I call Viking Direct it’s a human who answers, not a machine with a recorded humanoid voice, and she usually does this straight away. Sharon (“This is Viking Direct my name is Sharon how may I help you?”), or whoever, is most definitely the product of her training. But she uses her computer to make things easier for me rather than more impersonal and pre-scripted, for example by checking exactly which printer toner cartridges I ordered last time and ordering the exact same ones again, or by volunteering that there’s a special offer on A4 paper so I can have it even cheaper than usual, which, chances are, makes me order a couple of extra boxes.

Note that, BT. She tells me about the price cut, and immediately arranges for me to get it. There’s no nonsense about me having to tell them which item I order most frequently.

Nor does Sharon try to bash me into a pre-scripted conversational prison. We simply talk, like the two humans that we are. There’s the big clever machine, and there’s Sharon and me making maximum use of it, two people working intelligently together, both of us on the same side.

And nobody ever rings me up later to pester me about whether Sharon and her computer have been helpful, presumably because if they want to know this, they simply stand behind her and listen, or perhaps listen in on another extension.

Another for our “triumphs of capitalism” collection, don’t you agree?

*

You will not be amazed to learn, if you don’t know it already, that whereas BT is a quasi-governmental, heavily regulated organisation which it is complicated and costly to take your business away from, Viking Direct, although big and bureaucratised, is nevertheless out there every hour of the day in the freest bit of the free market, the bit where me taking my business elsewhere is as easy as me picking up a different catalogue and trying a different number. Which is all part of why I haven’t and don’t plan to.

BT on the other hand, I may be switching from …

I cannot but note the discrepancy between compensations awarded to people who suffered from defective products on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. Take for example the classic(!) case of Stella Liebeck who was awarded $2.9 million in damages for spilling a cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself.

Compare this to a case in France, where it apparently takes more than a hot cup of coffee to claim damages, which are, in any case, nowhere near as spectacular. A French court has ordered two medical associations to pay damages to the family of a woman, Pascale Fachin, who died a horrible lingering death from the human form of mad cow disease (vCJD) after growth hormone treatment was administered with contaminated products to the tune of €394,000 (£253,060). Oh, and a paltry few thousand €uros to friends who looked after Fachin during her illness.

Go figure…