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.
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Several comments stuck in my mind that were made by speakers at the Liberty Conference on Saturday in central London at which I was present along with David Carr and some other Samizdata and Libertarian Alliance members. The following will not be forgotten easily:
“Er, Mr Chairman, we live in a managed society. We all manage each other. We cannot have a world where we just have freedoms and certain rules”.
This was uttered by a man who claimed to be a member of Liberty, the civil liberties lobby. Perhaps he should lobby to have that organisation’s name changed to something more appropriate to what he thinks should be its true values, such as ‘Nanny’.
As David said, it was not a particularly encouraging event, although a few half-decent contacts were made and a lot of Libertarian Alliance pamphlets were taken away.
As with many such events, the best course of action is to behave like a decent human being. However, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, most of the people there did not have the intellectual equipment to figure out the exit route from a damp paper bag.
Over on Liberty Log there’s a long but good piece by William Cooke in praise of skycrapers and critical of the Prince of Wales for being critical of skyscrapers. Some while ago William Cooke asked me if the Libertarian Alliance might like to publish this piece. My problem was the way it ended:
If we resurrect the Twin Towers and make them better and stronger they will be living memorials and signs of hope for the resurrection to come on the great day of the Lord. Every family member who lost a loved one, when they look at the new Towers, will not only be able to see that we refused to surrender to the terrorists, but that we have hope and trust that in the end God Himself will set all things right and see that justice and peace are brought about on the earth.
Well they may be able to say such a thing, but what if they think that everything after “but that” is gibberish and don’t want to say it? And what if many more, who didn’t lose any loved ones in the outrage but who likewise don’t want terrorism surrendered to, feel similarly? This paragraph is a pointless exercise in coalition breaking, an attempt by a Christian to take posthumous possession of some classic symbols of don’t-care-what-religion-you-are-so-long-as-you-want-to-do-business secular materialism for his team.
But although Cooke’s piece ends very religiously, the thing as a whole is insufficiently religious. The religion is merely bolted onto the end. This means that it can’t really be a Libertarian Alliance Religious Note but would be a bit odd as anything else.
But the fact that I was unable to classify this piece of writing to suit my own editorial categories, and instead put it to one side (the side you never get back to unless prodded), shouldn’t put anyone else off reading a mostly very good piece.
Just before Cooke’s piece gets religion, it goes like this, agreeing with the Anne Coulter piece that I linked to on Friday 7th:
But, the best memorial may be two giant towers, like the ones that stood there before. Atta and his gang hated the Towers for their architecture and for what those buildings stood for – namely freedom, capitalism, western power, and modernity. To rebuild would send the message that they didn’t win and that our society and our culture will prevail. Those people who died there would want us to go forward in the world with that message.
Which is how and where the thing should have ended.
I would like to apologise to any visiting Argentinians or Argentophiles for yesterday’s rather visceral outburst.
My temporary use of such inflammatory and pugnacious language, whilst regrettable, was purely the product of a temporary bout of fog-inducing euphoria following Englands Word Cup win. Let me assure you that I bear no ill-will towards the Argentinian people. Indeed, they have my every sympathy given the chaos into which their venal and corrupt political class has plunged them. I hope, pray, nay expect them to rise like a phoenix from the flames.
Contrast, however, the mode of celebrations in Croatia from whence Natalija reports on the sounds of gunfire filling the air following the unexpected victory over Italy today. How spontaneously joyous.
I long for the day that I, too, can rejoice in Englands victories by firing my carbine into the air. But, due to the UK’s ridiculous prohibition on the private ownership of firearms, such healthy and safe expressions of national enthusiasm are forbidden to me and I am forced to resort, instead, to malevolent jingoistic slurs.
I apologise for any offence caused but I must lay the ultimate blame squarely at the feet of HM Government. Thank you for your kind attention.
In the 1990s, Paul Krugman was one of the most respected economists in America. He wrote for a popular audience as well as for the scholarly community, and although I didn’t always agree with the contents of his books, he at least pursued his subjects with rigor, and occasionally turned out a real gem (1995’s Pop Internationalism is a great book). He was seen by many on the left as their Great White Hope, the one cutting-edge liberal economist who was raising objections to the more conservative University of Chicago crowd that was dominating the debate (and the Nobel Prizes) at the time.
Like those before him, though (Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky) Krugman has done irreparable damage to his academic credibility by choosing to become a political hack — that’s what I mean by the title. Krugman’s latest NY Times op-ed (link requires registration) serves up one howler after another. He offers precious little support for his thesis — that the Bush administration has given “energy companies” carte blanche to dictate environmental policy because the energy companies bankrolled the Bush campaign — because, well, that claim just won’t stand up to scrutiny, no matter how good a sound bite it makes. So in that great Blogosphere tradition, let us now fact-check Krugman’s ass and see where he comes up short.
Whopper #1: In the case of energy policy, the administration still won’t release information about Dick Cheney’s energy task force. But it’s clear that energy companies, and only energy companies, had access to top officials. The result was that during the California power crisis — which, it is increasingly apparent, was largely engineered by Enron and other companies that had the administration’s ear — the administration did nothing.
Enron did some sinister things. They lied to the investment community, covered up their lies and committed securities fraud on a grand scale. This does not mean, however, that Enron is responsible for every crisis that comes down the pike. Enron engineered the California power crisis? This simply strains credulity. The electricity that Enron did sell to the California ISO (the power-sourcing agency for the state) came at a lower price than the market average in California, and at a lower price than the LA Dept. of Power and Water was charging the state for its electricity. Moreover, Enron accepted credit from electric power distributors and from the state of California during the worst part of the crisis, and the state of California ended up reneging on millions of dollars of obligations to Enron. If anything, Enron helped relieve the California electricity shortages of 2001.
Whopper #2: When scientists discovered that industrial chemicals were depleting the earth’s protective ozone layer, [Reagan-era Interior Secretary James] Watt suggested that people wear hats, sunscreen and dark glasses. Luckily for the planet, he was overruled; the United States joined other countries in curbing production of ozone-depleting chemicals. The ozone hole is still growing, but disaster has at least been postponed.
The US banned CFC’s (the principal group of industrial chemicals linked to ozone depletion) from use as an aerosol propellant in 1979. The treaty Krugman referred to, the Montreal Protocol, was signed by the US delegation in 1987, and was ratified in the spring of 1988. All of this was going on during the Reagan administration.
Krugman then resorts to damnation by faint praise, congratulating the Republicans for “at least postponing” ultraviolet disaster. According to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) 1999 publication on the Montreal Protocol, global CFC production is presently lower than in 1960, and the bureaucracy predicts that the ozone layer will stage a recovery over the next 50 years, even if no further action is taken. As Bjørn Lomborg points out in The Skeptical Environmentalist, the additional exposure to ultraviolet light from the ozone depletion we have already experienced is roughly what would be experienced in moving 100 to 200 miles closer to the equator, say from Manchester to London.
Whopper #3: … the E.P.A.’s Christie Whitman assured the public that Mr. Bush would honor his pledge to control carbon dioxide emissions — only to be betrayed when the coal and oil industries weighed in on the subject. So the administration learned nothing from the California crisis; it still takes its advice from the energy companies that financed its campaign (and made many administration officials, including Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, rich).
Big corporations financed the Bush campaign! This assertion is totally preposterous on its face. The last US election in which corporations of any kind were permitted to make any contribution to a presidential candidate was the hotly contested Theodore Roosevelt vs. Alton Parker race of 1904. Direct corporate contributions have been illegal in federal elections for nearly 100 years. Of course, corporations can set up Political Action Committees and have the PAC make a donation to a candidate, but this is limited to $5,000 per PAC per candidate per election. GWB raised a total of $193.1 million for his 2000 presidential bid (including a federal subsidy of $67.6 million.) Just over $2 million, or 1.2% of Bush’s campaign funds, came from all PACs. Maybe that $2 million came from 400 energy company PACs that donated $5,000 each … or maybe not. (Rather than muddling through the FEC’s website for data, check out this handy thumbnail of the Bush Campaign’s sources and uses of funds at OpenSecrets.org).
Whopper #4: And it’s one thing to reward your friends with subsidies and lax regulation. It’s something quite different to let them dictate policy on climate change.
First, Krugman says that the administration is bound to energy companies such as Enron. Then he says that the energy companies are dictating policy on climate change. So it stands to reason that Enron opposed action on the climate change front, right? Wrong. Enron lobbied heavily for greenhouse emissions caps a la Kyoto, and also for subsidies for renewable electric energy, the exact opposite of what the administration wants.
All in all, this was a thoroughly disappointing effort by Krugman, a man whom I used to have a great deal of respect for. Paul Krugman is a brilliant man, and he is capable of much better work than this. Come on, Dr. Krugman, stick to economics, and leave this sort of political sloganeering to the Carvilles and the Begalas of the world.
One of the elements of Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” I enjoyed was the casual references to anarcho-capitalist mechanisms for dealing with services that are currently provided by the state. In answer to a question about social security, the narrator said that a bookmaker will agree odds and take a stake for any eventualities covered by insurance schemes.
Certainly the evolution of spread betting and online betting has brought such a vision closer to reality. What struck me about the recent soccer match involving two beef-eating nations was the speed with which the price mechanism adjusted: England went from a 16 to 1 chance to win the FIFA World Cup to 7 to 1 in the space of a couple of hours. Meanwhile, Argentina went from 3 to 1 favourites to 8 to 1. One could claim that this shift is merely a symptom of nationalist delusion by the English.
Planning freaks would say that if the government set the odds they wouldn’t shift, because they would be based on a rational assessment of the various teams merits. I beg to differ.
First, it’s a lot more fun for the outcomes to be unexpected. Visiting market-places is generally more entertaining than visiting a planning office.
Second, the planners can’t put every factor into their equations (as the state price fixers in Argentina have recently discovered, to the distress of millions).
Third, bookmakers aren’t sentimental or swayed by public opinion, only committed cash. If Her Majesty the Queen were to stake £10 million on a Commonwealth team to win the World Cup, it would shift the price the same as if one million punters did the same with £10 each. The same isn’t true of such political decisions as working if, when, and at what rate at which the pound should join the Euro. The planners will decide with other people’s money, trusting to public opinion (or lack of it), and hoping to freeze the price mechanism if not to ignore it altogether.
So here’s my tip. 1) Ignore the opinion polls, check the bookies for the results of the next elections, dates of Euro referendum, future market prices. 2) Don’t stake too much on a single event.
Antoine Clarke
Josh Chafetz over on OxBlog has an interesting post about the nature of order, touching on Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith but mostly about Fred Hayek. He also brings up a useful point about a Pejman Pundit post ridiculing the idea of an anarchy club. In a later posting Pejman insists he does understand the definition of the word ‘anarchy’ and points out his first posting was mostly in jest.
There is indeed a useful point being made here and one I have made to several Libertarian Alliance members before: we understand what we mean when we say ‘anarchy’ but when the term is used in common parlance, it is generally a synonym for ‘nihilism’. For example when a bunch of scruffy self-described anti-globalisation protestors set fire to a MacDonalds in Paris and smash up a Mercedes parked near by, those so-called ‘anarchists’ are not doing those things because they want more kosmos (spontaneous or natural order) and less taxis (imposed order), leading to a morality based anarcho-capitalist golden age… no, they are mostly just nihilists whose vision of the future is little different from that of the bikers from hell in the movie ‘Mad Max’. The few of them who actually do have a semi-coherent idea of what the future should look like are Spanish style (circa 1938) ‘anarcho-syndicalists’… which is to say they are rather like meat eating vegetarians (see the ‘related article’ link below).
It is for this reason I usually urge libertarians to stay away from the ‘A’ word because it is so widely misused. Josh Chafetz also expresses his views about anarchy as an objective that shows he more or less does understand the true nature of what real anarchists are arguing for:
That is to say, there is nothing absurd about people organizing in favor of anarchy. What they are doing is stating a preference for absolute kosmos with no taxis. Again, I think this preference is folly. I think that it is neither possible nor desirable to do away with all taxis. I am not an anarchist.
I said more or less understand because taxis does not necessarily mean state imposed order: for example most of the rules within a stock exchange are ‘taxis’ rather than ‘kosmos’ and are analogous to the rules of a private club.. a few are imposed by the state but most are imposed by the exchange itself. No one is forced to trade in a stock exchange and thus in some hypothetical anarchist future, there may well still be ‘taxis’ intensive stock exchanges.
However like Josh, I too am not an anarchist. I am a minarchist but where I depart from Josh is that whilst I agree it is probably not possible to depart from a system in which there is a state, I do think it is desirable. In essence I believe in systems involving the one word conspicuous by its absence in this interesting but utilitarian discussion: morality. I believe in objective morality, albeit imperfectly understood and conjecturally proposed. That, rather than the force of state or vox pop, is the one and only source of legitimacy in any system.
 Probably not what you had in mind
This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle…
This precious stone set in the silver sea…
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…
– William Shakespeare
My views on the state of The State (not just Britain, any state) are well known: I am a libertarian up towards the radical end of the minarchist spectrum.
Yet whilst going out for lunch today, I walked past The Trafalgar, a popular pub on King’s Road in Chelsea, and ended up watching the match between England and Argentina which resulted in a gripping and hard won 1-Nil victory by England. The roar and fierce chants of the English supporters in the pub was utterly magnetic and I found myself pulled in almost against my will, swept up in an irresistible atavistic fervour as if the blood of my ancestors on both sides of the line on Senlac Hill was calling to me to join the shield wall, to add my strength to theirs… now does this sound like the rationalist libertarian who writes anti-state polemics on the Samizdata?
Well, a society is not a state and a nation is not a government. Some libertarians may think that a libertarian future will have evolved beyond tribal yearning as we all live in rational individually determined free associations, but they are quite incorrect… because it is those very yearnings which will lead to many of our free associations.
Many hear echoes of the Nazi Nuremburg mass rallies in the football terraces and pubs of England but they are wrong because coming together to act collectively is not the same as collectivism. Only the state could have caused the Nazi mass rallies, but only the state could prevent such freely associated mass rallies we call football matches, because they are the expression of a deep seated need that will never ever disappear, no matter how rationally centred a society is. The need to wave the tribal banner and roar the latter day war cry can be turned to evil, but what great collective assemblies like football matches show that there is indeed another way to express those feelings which do not involve invading Poland or conquering India.
In my quest for unearthing new clever ideas on how to slake one’s thirst, it seems an inventor has cracked the problem of how to drink a mug of tea or coffee and chew on a biscuit at the same time while using only one hand. This could prove a handy invention for Brian Micklethwait’s end-of-the-month Friday libertarian get-togethers where drink and biscuits are consumed in vast quantities. Could such a nifty idea ever get the nod in a socialist state?
And, no, this isn’t just my muscular, traditional British chauvinism. France gets a thorough ‘Fisking’ and from a Frenchman no less!
J.P. Zmirak cuts right through the bull to remind us that the the ‘glorious’ French Revolution was anything but:
“That little thought experiment should give you an idea of what the French Revolution was really like – a digestive eruption of all the basest instincts in the lowest elements of society, led by power-drunk ideologues of the radical Left.”
The writer also goes on to point out that French Revolution had nothing whatsoever in common with the American Revolution, despite the two events so often lumped in with each other, and was driven by a wholly different impulse:
“It was utterly unlike the American rebellion against the English colonial officials – which amounted to a regional secession, led by the responsible members of the upper middle class. And for that fact we should be forever grateful – as should other countries which emulated the American model of political reform, rather than the French.”
He also goes on to lay the blame for so much future barbarity squarely upon the shoulders of those French leftist jackasses:
“At the heart of this exquisite movie is the relationship between Grace and the Duc d’Orleans. The latter is a pampered, ambitious, not very bright cousin to the tragic King Louis XVI, a Duke who throws his weight and wealth behind the Revolutionaries, in the hope that they will place him on the throne. He spouts, and no doubt believes, the new rhetoric of hysterical, xenophobic revolutionary patriotism – which would soon spread to Germany and Italy, planting the seeds of both the Nazi and Fascist movements.”
The whole article is written with the kind of florid anger born of pain and profound regret. It rings out a warning of the depravity and destruction which results from letting the bad guys get their way.
Imagine life at the Quindlen household. Say they are pondering what to make for breakfast on a leisurely Sunday morning … someone suggests pancakes, while Anna retorts that “it is impossible to believe that anyone who does not want waffles has a proper sense of our place in history.” This is Anna Quindlen’s M.O. — she takes her own (often perfectly reasonable) prejudices / preferences on a given subject and elevates them to the level of an absolute moral imperative. Just as OxBlog proposes the four laws of Maureen Dowd, we can isolate the First Law of Quindlen: There is no need to provide evidence for my argument, because it is impossible to believe that you could disagree with me.
Anna thinks that we ought to turn the remains of the WTC site into an austere memorial instead of entertaining designs for new commercial real estate. “The demands of democracy should not be confused with those of capitalism,” she solemnly intones. And you didn’t even know that you were confused! Why the institute of democracy “demands” that this particular corner of southwest Manhattan remain eternally undeveloped, Ms. Quindlen never quite gets around to explaining, except by offering the official post-911 cliche: otherwise, the terrorists will have won.
Japan rebuilt Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The Germans rebuilt Dresden. The United States reconstructed Atlanta. (Which reminds me — wasn’t the Civil War, not Vietnam, the most corrosive war in US history? Or did US history begin on the day Anna Quindlen was born?) Why do we rebuild our war wounds? As the anti-Quindlen, Virginia Postrel, would put it, because we are a dynamic society, with the few stasists like Quindlen serving as the exceptions that prove the rule. Most of us do not believe that we have already achieved all the greatness we will ever claim. Or as Oscar Wilde said, “we’re all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.”
There is nothing inherently wrong with what Anna Quindlen is proposing, but there is something wrong with her insistence that her vision is the only one that passes muster from an ethical perspective. If she wants the space to remain vacant, then she ought to organize a consortium of like-minded individuals to purchase the vacant land, and leave it perfectly barren, or erect some weird new age memorial with nondenominational angels playing Enya music on their harps, or whatever floats her boat. Until she is willing to take such action, however, her opinion of what ought to go on the WTC site counts no more than mine, which is to say, not in the slightest.
Now, if Anna Quindlen really wanted to do something nice for Manhattan, I can think of about eight blocks of choice midtown real estate, right there on the East River, that developers would love to get their hands on. That’s right, the US could hand the United Nations an eviction notice and sell the property to the highest bidder. If, by even suggesting this, it proves that I have no sense of America’s place in history, well, I guess in Anna’s world I am already guilty as charged.
Many apologies but it is late here in England and I am too tired to spend hours trawling through our archive with a view to digging out all the previous postings about the link between welfare and terrorism. However, I do distinctly recall that the general theme was that it is far easier to recruit young men for terror attacks and guerilla wars when they are poor and under-utilised recipients of state largesse.
Now I am only too aware of the profound mischief and hazard produced by state serfdom but if this report in the US News about American Jihadis is anything to go by, then perhaps the phenomenon needs further examination (or, at least, revisiting):
“Fifteen thousand feet high in Kashmir and armed with a Kalashnikov–that was not how friends thought Jibreel al-Amreekee would end up. All of 19, the restless kid from Atlanta had grown up in a wealthy family attending Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. A soft-spoken youth with long dreadlocks, al-Amreekee had a passion for sky diving and reading books on the world’s religions.”
Clearly this young man (along with several others described in the article) was not the product of a broken home, a deprived slum or welfare benefits. It follows, then, that the welfare-terrorism link is rather too glib. Rich kids go crazy as well.
[Link courtesy of Pejman Pundit ]
Why the caution David? Because if they do start chucking H-bombs about the subcontinent I don’t want to add a feeling of extreme foolishness to all my other unhappinesses. It reminds me of yet another P.G. Wodehouse quote, where Bertie Wooster (I think) notes the occurrence of some ghastly modern practice or other and says something to the effect that if it catches on Western Civilisation will collapse. “And then what a lot of silly asses we should all look.” I love that.
Changing the subject, to all this royal stuff that’s going on just now (which you also mentioned in another post, David), I find myself noting the emotions that millions of my fellow countrymen now seem to feel, of fondness for their stubbornly traditional country and its stubbornly traditional head-of-state arrangements, but not sharing them. I’m a puritan. I think constitutions should describe the realities of power, not surround reality in an aerosol spray-canned mist of sentimental heritage flummery, which was once the real system but which is now just a fading memory. I’d like to live in a country where the official story of how we are governed approximates to reality.
It is said that Royalty confers respectability upon the sordid manoeuvres of politics. Exactly. That is precisely my objection to it. Let the sordid reality of politics be looked in the face, not funked. And then, you never know, people might just be persuaded to change it for the better. I don’t think that our Monarchy is better than the predations of democracy; I think it protects them. (Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues for the reality of Monarchy, not the shadow of it as we now have.)
However, there is the matter of Europe. The Europe issue is real. Royalty is just an argument about interior decor by comparison. If I have to choose between Britain becoming a sordidly real province of the European Union, and remaining a sentimentally heritaged flummery in a state of at least some political detachment from that Union, then I go with the flummery.
I summarise my objection to Britain’s “membership” of the European Union with one question: What British problems will it solve? Only career problems among the elite, it seems to me. With luck, some of them will get to run what they fondly hope will become a superpower to rival the USA. No more grovelling to Uncle Sam. No other problems will be solved that I can think of. What problems might British membership of the EU cause? Infinite. As some clever French conservative (identificatory emails welcome) once said: “When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.”
That’s how the Royals always do it. They quietly allow themselves to become identified with whatever in the country is being complained about, and all the complainers forget about any flummery objections they might have had (and in this case there were damn few complainers to start with).
The Conservative Party is finally making a difference to all this. It is keeping its hated mouth tight shut. This is helping. An anti-Blairite atmosphere may now finally be coalescing, and the Conservatives must wait in silence, and let it grow.
(I’m right now watching the Falklands Play, and I’m taping it too. Very interesting.)
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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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