Samizdata

“I do worry that spokespeople for the Fairtrade movement suffer from a myopic romantic vision of the coffee farmer in a co-operative, whereas in truth such an existence is backbreaking and mired in exploitation.”

– Alex Singleton (via Owen Barder)

Greer is disgusted by a vulgar fellow like Irwin, just as she has previously been disgusted by Australia’s vulgar choice of prime minister, its lack of culture, its shameful history and so much else Australian that doesn’t meet the standards of her refined intellect (how she must have agonized before accepting the invitation to appear on Celebrity Big Brother).

– Steve Waterson provides a most welcome addendum to Thaddeus’s slapping of fading English (!) intellectual Germaine Greer.

(Via Tim Blair)

The solution to envy is not to tax the rich but to tax the envious…It’s envy which imposes an externality on the rich. Make the envious pay for their ugly preferences.

– Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution fame.

On the whole, I am not a huge fan of using taxation to eradicate any kind of human behaviour, irrespective of whether it is levied upon the rich or the envious. And this is obviously a frivolous prescription. However, I like the quote for two reasons. Not only is it a worthy inversion of the status quo; it also spots the principal (yet unspoken) justification for our “progressive” taxation structures in the minds of statists – envy.

How can you tell who someone’s god is? You look to see whose name they invoke as the cause of all things, good or bad. By that standard, the god of the devout Left is Global Warming; here is the Psalm of Al, from which the faithful constantly quote (King James Version):

1. Great storms ravage our cities, and the wise man saith: Global Warming hath done this.
2. Drought keepeth all storms at bay, and the wise man saith: This also hath Global Warming done.
3. Global Warming maketh the oceans rise; it maketh deep snow to fall;
4. Flood and fire, feast and famine, typhoon and tornado, hail and lightning, all things good and bad that come from sky or sea, Global Warming hath made them all.
5. And when our homes are beneath the waves, we shall know that Global Warming in its wrath hath seen our sins.
6. For our vehicles that glut themselves on oil, for the trees we cut and land we clear,
7. For the cooling and heating of our houses, for the plowing and harvesting of our fields, we are punished.
8. Whenever we burn carbon and release it into the air, we shall know that Global Warming seeth it, and is wroth.
9. O man! Thou hast flouted the great god of the sky, and by three degrees of temperature we shall be burned,
10. For Global Warming is a jealous god, and small and annoying is man.

Orson Scott Card, via Tim Blair.

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

Sir Thomas More, played by Paul Scofield in a Man for All Seasons. Even if Tudor history means nothing to you, I definitely urge folk to rent out this movie. It is an object lesson in what integrity means.

Thanks to a commenter for pointing out that I got Scofield’s first name wrong. It was Paul, not John. (Dolt!)