|
|||||
|
To the political class, whatever the rhetoric, government programs aren’t tools for improving the country. They’re tools for acquiring the main goal of the political class: more power… – Glen Reynolds (All hail to the Blogfather… PBUHH) in USA Today – April 29, 2013 May 1st, 2013 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
 …given there is a cross-party consensus that energy rationing is good for growth. – Samizdata commenter Kevin B. April 30th, 2013 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Dave is going to wake up one morning and find that the Conservative Party website, and any other right-of-centre source of information, is going to be shut away behind an “Over-18” “hate-and-porn” firewall and he will be too stupid to work out what happened. – Samizdata commenter Rob April 26th, 2013 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If, as I believe, the distinctive distance from our organic nature, we should rejoice in the expression of changing human possibility in ever-advancing technology. After all, the organic world is one in which life is nasty, brutish and short and dominated by experiences that are inhumanly unpleasant. Human technology is less alien to us than nature (compare bitter cold with central heating; being lost without GPS and being found with it; dying of parasitic infestation versus vermicides or spraying with pesticides) and the material of that part of nature that we are: our inhuman, or at least impersonal bodies. Anyone who considers the new technologies as inhuman, or a threat to our humanity, should consider this. Better still, they should spend five uninterrupted minutes imagining the impact of a major stroke, severe Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s disease on their ability to express their humanity…..Self transformation is the essence of humanity and our humanity is defined by our ever-widening distance from the material and organic world of which we are a part and from which we are apart.” – Raymond Tallis. In Defence of Wonder, page 200. April 25th, 2013 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
“But the only job that someone like Antony Flew would get in a mainstream university today is cleaning the toilets”. If that is true – then cleaning the toilets is the only job worth having. – Paul Marks April 25th, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Taking offence cannot be equated to being criminally victimised. – “Cannot” as in: “should not”. Sadly, they just did. That’s Richard Carey, writing at Libertarian Home about the disappearance of the blog and twitter feed of Old Holborn, and other twitter accounts, for the crime of being “inappropriate and offensive”. April 23rd, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
[W]hen you pull a gun the implication is that you will use it. All subsequent actions proceed on that basis. When you raise your interactions to that level here in Wisconsin you should bear in mind that Wisconsin is a concealed carry state. You better be prepared to play for the stakes you wager. – Samizdatista Midwesterner, discussing the implications of coercing people into ‘doing the right thing‘ with threats. April 20th, 2013 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
April 18th, 2013 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have been interested in Frank Turner, who is a popular singer, ever since he performed at the London Olympics opening ceremony, and a Labour MP got angry about that:
Oh dear. Not allowed. Can’t be a popular pop singer and even think things like that, let alone say them. And just now, things on the Frank Turner front are getting rather interesting. NME have done an intereview with him. The NME website reports:
If that had been the only Frank Turner quote in this report worth requoting, that would have been today’s SQotD. But there is more. Turner also spoke about that Guardian piece (here‘s the link again):
Today, I intend to be doing exactly that. April 18th, 2013 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
“As we mourn the passing of a remarkable Prime Minister, we should reflect on the lessons we can learn from Lady Thatcher. She showed courage, conviction, determination and placed great faith in the wisdom of ordinary men and women. We should celebrate her legacy, but also consider how to emulate her today.” – Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs. That think tank has played a legendary role in developing some of the ideas that influenced Margaret Thatcher, whose funeral was held today. RIP, Maggie. April 17th, 2013 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
No. North Korea is not socialism betrayed. It is socialism done. Which everyone here knows, but it is worth repeating. – Brian Micklethwait April 16th, 2013 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Indulge me in a little sermon. The tradition among many anthropologists and archaeologists has been to treat the past as a very different place from the present, a place with its own mysterious rituals. To cram the Stone Age or the tribal South Seas into modern economic terminology is therefore an anachronistic error showing capitalist indoctrination. This view was promulgated especially by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, who distinguished pre-industrial economies based on ‘reciprocity’ from modern economies based on markets. Stephen Shennan satirises the attitude thus: ‘We engage in exchanges to make some sort of profit; they do so in order to cement social relationships; we trade commodities; they give gifts.’ Like Shennan, I think this is patronising bunk. I think people respond to incentives and always have done. People weigh costs and benefits and do what profits them. Sure, they take into account non-economic factors, such as the need to remain on good terms with trading partners and to placate malevolent deities. Sure, they give better deals to families, friends and patrons than they do to strangers. But they do that today as well. Even the most market-embedded modern financial trader is enmeshed in a web of ritual, etiquette, convention and obligation, not excluding social debt for a good lunch or an invitation to a football match. Just as modern economists often exaggerate the cold-hearted rationality of consumers, so anthropologists exaggerate the cuddly irrationality of pre-industrial people. – This little “sermon” is on pp. 133-4 of The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (also quoted in this earlier posting here), in the chapter about the simultaneous rise of agriculture and early industrial specialisation, all within the context of a wider web of exchange relationships. What most clearly distinguishes humans from animals, and successful humans from all the failures, says Ridley, is trade. Early agriculture and early industrial specialisation are both manifestations of the division of labour, which depends on trade. You can’t have early agriculture without specialists supplying crucial agricultural implements, such as axes to clear forests. You can’t have specialist suppliers of agricultural implements without specialist food-growers feeding them. April 12th, 2013 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||