This trend toward prescriptive behaviour is a direct result of abandoning the Rule of law for a “Law” of Rules.
– commenter R. Richard Schweitzer
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From time to time I get into a lot of trouble with my allies because I express skepticism of the value of prescriptive rights, regulation or transparency. In fact am inclined to think (though there may be tactical advantage in their reception in law) human rights are an ornamental distraction from the pursuit of liberty, Gucci belts for those who think buying trousers is disgusting. One of the reasons we are in such a terrible mess in the UK is that those on the left who used to care about personal liberty became utterly infatuated with the legalism, having been given the Human Rights Act as a pretty distraction, and now spend all their time defending its importance. November 14th, 2009 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “The first World War is one of the topics in history that interests me the most. I really think that if more people focused on leadership during that war, the concerns over “market failure” and the faith in political leadership would decline. I challenge anyone to come up with a group of business villains who caused as much death and suffering as the “legitimate” political leaders of 1914. My proposal for Veterans’ Day observances is that they should include a re-telling of the history of World War I along the lines of the Passover re-telling of the Exodus. My goal would be to help inoculate people from believing in the wisdom of the ruling class.” November 13th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
“…how will the media blame it on the failure of capitalism?” Well, you know, China started market-friendly practices, it goes belly up, nothing bad ever happened in Mao’s China, and so on. The editorial in The Guardian writes itself. – Commenter ‘Dom‘ November 11th, 2009 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. – George Orwell Yet strangely I do not think Orwell actually knew David Cameron. November 10th, 2009 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
“I can easily see how there’s a connection between individualism and depression. Once you manage to throw off the social-collectivist hive-mind and think for yourself, you cannot fail to see how deeply into-the-shit ‘society’ has got itself.” Tanuki, a Samizdata commenter, writing about this. November 9th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Snapped by me a fortnight ago, at the LA/LI Annual Conference at which Anthony Evans was the final speaker. I’ve straightened and sharpened it as best I could. A copyable, pastable and more readable version of the text from which this is taken may be read here. More photos of the speaker taken that same day can be viewed here. November 8th, 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 6th, 2009 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The trouble is rules based safety nets often end up subsidising what they are supposed to be alleviating. The big advantage a charity has is that they do not have to give you anything if they do not think you actually deserve it… the state on the other hand operates (quite rightly) not by using discretion but by following politically derived formulae. To get things from the state all you have to do is understand the system. This has all manner of unintended consequences when you (in effect) nationalise charity and replace private institutions with public ones… in short, when you replace charity with an entitlement, you completely change the rules of the game. November 2nd, 2009 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. – Lord Acton, from The History of Freedom in Antiquity …with extra added bonus quote from the same: Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime… November 1st, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
“What I’m saying is that this does set me apart. One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he’s socially inept – because everybody’s been there – but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.” “Which is still kind of pathetic.” “It was pathetic when they were in high school,” Randy says. “Now it’s something else. Something very different from pathetic.” “What, then?” “I don’t know. There is no word for it. You’ll see.” – Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon October 30th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Thomas Woods, Meltdown, A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. Page 84. This book is full of great passages like this. I have already quoted a nice line from Mr Woods mocking the contention that the enormous expansion of government spending in WW2 helped “solve” the Great Depression. Incredibly, there were people who actually defended this absurd idea on our comment boards. It never fails to amaze me that people overlook a basic fact of economic life: we work to produce stuff that people want to consume. The kind of state domination of a country during war, with its rationing, government direction of labour, and of course, mass conscription, hardly sounds like the sort of policy that anyone interested in increased prosperity should favour. There is one point where I disagree with Mr Woods. He says the veneration of Keynes is inexplicable. It is in fact pretty easy to understand: he had a sort of superficial plausibility, and of course his ideas were meat and drink to politicians looking for intellectual cover to expand their powers. Even so, I do kind of wonder if Keynes would be embarrassed by some of the people who claim his name as justification for their views. October 30th, 2009 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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