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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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“We continue to “mind the gap”. The subject has not lost its power to provoke and wound and illuminate. We still talk quite a bit about it in various ways: journalistic-facetious, or pretend-anthropological, or even old-fashioned snobbish. But that does not mean that we are at all comfortable with the subject. On the contrary, we are often decidedly uneasy when it is brought up, and we do not care for it when the question of class is described as “Britain’s dirty little secret”. We tend to be especially resentful when the Americans or the French describe Britain as uniquely class-divided.” (page 105)
“We are often told that deference has disappeared from modern Britain. Yet the adulation of the rich and famous is surely as fulsome as ever. In hotels, restaurants and aircraft – the sites of modern luxury – the new upper crust is fawned on as egregiously as old money in its Edwardian heyday. All that has changed is that the composition of the upper class has changed, as it has done roughly once a century since the Norman Conquest…..what has almost disappeared is deference towards the lower classes. Throughout the two world wars and the decades following both of them, the lower classes were widely revered for their courage in battle and their stoicism in peace. Values such as solidarity, thrift, cleanliness and self-discipline were regularly identified as characteristic of them. That is no longer the case.” (page 107)
Mind the Gap, by Ferdinand Mount 2003. Definitely food for thought, and despite the title, is not a plea for some sort of mushy egalitarianism. I thought about this book while reading the comment threads here bemoaning the rise of the middle class football fan as some supposed frightful imposition on a working man’s game. We still bother about class, it seems.
Terrorism is an extreme form of political communication. You want to be sure that, in your response, you don’t end up amplifying the messages that terrorists are trying to convey.
and,
We just have to live with risk. We can’t be completely secure, and we will never be completely secure.
Not some supercilious liberal flâneur and dilletante security-skeptic – such as yours truly – but Sir Richard Dearlove, formerly C, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
In case anyone missed it, here is a fine article summing up what I think is the truth behind the case of the three NatWest bankers who are to be extradited to the United States on charges related to the collapse of Enron. The author, business writer Jeff Randall, fingers what he sees as the reason why the banks have been so coy about defending their employees from the U.S. legal authorities.
Unlike Stephen Pollard, who huffs and puffs about how this controversy is largely a matter of anti-Americanism, I do not like the smell of this case at all. I think Pollard’s argument – which has its merits – misses the point of how one-sided the operation of U.S. extradition powers are. These men are not regarded by the British authorities of being guilty of any offence. The U.S. authorities appear not – to the best of my knowledge – to have given even the semblance of a prima facie case justifying the extradition of this trio. And yet as the article points out, while the U.S. can use these powers – supposedly justified by the War on Terror – Britain has no corresponding right to extradite alleged U.S. wrongdoers (powers associated with terrorism have a habit of branching out).
As with the British blogger Clive Davis, I am a pro-American who also thinks the U.S. authorities sometimes do a lousy job at treating what they should regard as their close allies. Okay, I can hear the comments coming that even if they did a great job, it would make no difference. I am not so sure. While I agree with Stephen Pollard that U.S. authorities are arguably right to get nasty on financial wrongdoings and are often tougher than we Brits, this use of extradition powers looks a step too far. It does not strike me as smart diplomacy or right law, and I hope, perhaps naively, that the British government shows rather more backbone on this case than hitherto.
Here is more on the story, and more here.
UPDATE: And of course let’s not forget the continuing outrage of the EU arrest warrant. I should have mentioned this fact earlier, in case our American readers think I am picking on them.
In order to get ‘into’ a sport, it usually helps to have grown up with it. I grew up with shooting, sailing and rugby in so far as those where the things I took to during my (mostly) English school days. Although I also served time doing part of my education in the USA, American Football, Baseball and Basketball never really appealed… not that I really have anything against those games, I just do not ‘relate’ to them myself. Strangely, the only times I have ever played soccer was in the USA as that seemed a more understandable sport to me, perhaps for the simple reason that although it was never a school sport in my neck of the woods in the UK, the ambient presence of ‘footie’ is hard to escape in England.
I do enjoy watching soccer and although the prospect of the World Cup did to some extent sweep me up, but the more matches I watched this time, the more this strange sinking feeling came over me. No doubt it is just me but there just seems to be something desperately unheroic about the game these days, at least at an international level. Perhaps the fact that every time I watched Italy, the eventual winners, play, they seemed to be taking more dives that Jacques Cousteau. I for one find athletes rolling around on the ground play-acting terrible injury when someone so much as brushes up against them such a pathetic and unmanly spectacle that perhaps the Italian team should replace their national flag by flying a petticoat from the nearest flagpole. Although Italy seem to be the worst offender in this regard, it does seem to be an increasingly widespread tactic (that said, anyone playing against Croatia need engage in no injury play-acting given that team’s ‘robust’ approach to the game).
Overall, I cannot help but feel that the whole thing was rather unedifying.
A few hours ago (but still today – it now being the small hours of Monday morning) I finished watching the soccer World Cup Final, and a right old bore it was, I thought. Thank goodness my kitchen contains so many other amusements. I have to admit that the complaints of Americans who say that there is not enough scoring in soccer, and a deal too much despicable play acting, now strike me as thoroughly persuasive.
The more fraught and important the occasion, the duller soccer games now seem to be. It was very noticeable how much more entertaining the group games were in this tournament than the later games, when the seriously effective sides were the only ones left, and when all those exotic Africans and Americans and whatnot, with their “brought a breath of fresh air to the tournament” unpredictability, had all gone home. The more important the games got and the higher the stakes got, the more boring they became for the increasing numbers of disappointed neutrals. It did not help that the semi-finalists in this World Cup all came from European countries within a day’s drive of each other. As the end of the tournament neared, all the players still in it knew each other’s way of playing inside out, because all of them play for the same handful of big European clubs.
The television commentators did their best to explain that the Italians showed colossal resolve and determination and great defensive skill, and that they were “worthy winners”, blah blah blah. But the commentators could not disguise the mediocrity of the occasion, which ended, inevitably, with a penalty shoot-out. During this, one French bloke made a mistake, no Italian did, and that was that.
When I was a teenager at school, I used to play squash. If you are only as good as I am at squash, then squash is a great game. With a racket slightly smaller than a tennis racket, and a small black rubber ball, which you take it in turns to smack, against a wall with a net painted on it, so to speak, squash maximises the exercise you take, while making ball boys entirely superfluous, what with the ball always bouncing back towards you for you to pick it up and resume smacking it.
But squash has one huge drawback. The better you are at it, the duller it gets. The room-stroke-court in which it is played is made the right size to suit players like me. In it I can just about reach the ball much of the time, but am also quite often unable to reach it. For a player like me, against an opponent of a similar standard, it is possible for us both to play genuinely winning shots and to have a really good game, at the end of which the loser is able to say in all sincerity: well played mate.
But at the upper reaches of the game of squash, things are different. If you are a really good squash player, you can always reach the ball, no matter where your opponent hits it. At the supreme pinnacle of the game of squash, where the two best squash players in the world are to be observed through transparent walls bashing that little black rubber ball against one of the transparent walls, the idiots who assemble to watch this absurd spectacle might as well be watching paint dry for all the excitement that it involves. Each point, to be settled, demands a mistake by one or other of the players, and each point means sitting there and waiting for one of the two squash players in the world who are least likely to make a mistake, to make a mistake. And the loser of this hideously prolonged contest, when he does finally emerge, leaves it with the feeling that it was his failures, rather than the other chap’s excellence, which defeated him. Squash did appear briefly on British television, a few years ago. Not surprisingly, it soon departed.
Might soccer be heading that way too? → Continue reading: Is soccer the new squash?
Recently, I heard someone describe the Australian constitution as the second best in the world. No prizes for guessing the best. Since the recent 4th of July celebrations, I have been revelling in the bracing ideological purity of the Constitution of the United States of America, and I have no doubt that it is superior to the constitutions of other nations – in the mind of a liberal, anyway. What of Australia’s, however? It is hopelessly outdated and largely irrelevant – the form of state it envisions bears little likeness to modern Australia. For example, the office of Prime Minister is not mentioned at all and most of the mechanics of government exist thanks to convention rather than doctrine. It is not a bad constitution; mainly for the fact that it contains none of the Fabianesque “positive” rights (citizens have a right to a life free of poverty, etc) which tend to enable and then entrench statism. Such caveats are common in most modern constitutions, to their great detriment. If Australia’s constitution is the second best in the world, it is certainly a very distant second. As regular commenter Chris Harper said in a recent Samizdata thread,
The Constitution of the United States of America, one of the great works of human thought.
Quite. In contrast, Australia’s constitution is passable only due to the elements it does not contain – surely there are a number of superior (in ideology and effectiveness) national constitutions in place today. So what is the second best constitution in the world?
You would think Switzerland’s should be a contender. It is a country that holds a number of liberal values as national traits. It is also admired by many of the Samizdatistas, who tend to be a rather liberal bunch (for the most part). One would not be being unreasonable if they predicted that the Swiss constitution is a relatively liberal document. However, if you did predict that, you would be wrong. I did a little research to test my above hypothesis, and was surprised with what I discovered. Far from being one of the best constitutions around (from a liberal perspective), I believe the Swiss document to be one of the worst – if not the worst. For a start, it is too easily altered. According to Wikipedia, the original Swiss constitution was altered to include
the “right of initiative”, under which a certain number of voters could make a request to amend a constitutional article, or even to introduce a new article into the constitution. Thus, partial revisions of the constitution could be made any time.
Worse still, a revised version of the constitution that came into force in the 1990s
is subject to continual changes
due to
constitutional initiatives and counterproposals[.]
This is no good at all. Most liberals are deeply interested in durably enshrining the rights and freedoms of the individual; if these can be swept away on a majoritarian whim, then sooner or later it is likely they will be. Such ease of amendment dramatically weakens the document, although worse is to come. From the same Wikipedia article mentioned above:
[The] Swiss Federal Constitution has a certain peculiarity when compared to other constitutions in the world. It does not provide for any constitutional jurisdiction over any federal laws, that is, laws proclaimed by Parliament may not be struck down by the Federal Court on the grounds of unconstitutionality. This special provision in the Swiss Constitution is a manifestation of how democratic principles are held to outweigh the principles upon which the constitutional state is built.
What a terrible idea. A liberal would assert that the whole point of a constitution is to constrain majoritarian democracy – has the phrase “tyranny of the majority” been widely translated into French, German or Italian? This “peculiarity” consigns the Swiss constitution to complete irrelevance. Regarding the contents of the document – who cares? They can be ignored at any time by a majority of the Federal parliament. The constitution may currently be adhered to by Swiss federal politicians, but there is nothing enforcing their adherence. The only thing that stands between the relatively liberal arrangement the Swiss enjoy today and a Blairite soft tyranny (or worse) is the Swiss people’s enduring common sense and conservatism. I have met a number of Swiss folk in my time and have found that generally they are predisposed to exhibit both traits. However, events change people. Time changes people. If the Swiss elect a Tony Blair and the political circumstances allow it, such an individual could set about dismantling the various manifestations of Swiss liberalism, completely unrestrained by the toothless constitution. I am led to believe that the Swiss constitution is relatively popular in that country. For a generally conservative people, it is hard not to remark that they paradoxically admire a document that is inherently unconservative – dangerously so.
As for the second best constitution in the world, perhaps some of the readers of this post might put forward a few contenders.
(An English translation of the Swiss constitution can be found here – also via the aforementioned Wikipedia article.)
The June edition of technology, futurism and culture magazine Wired has a fascinating piece by Steve Silberman about growing government restrictions in the United States on home-chemistry kits and how this could bar children from learning from, and getting excited by, science. Instead, children are likely to increasingly encounter chemistry and science not up close in a lab and by playing around with kits, but via video or school labs where experiments are conducted in highly protected environments. I can see the thought process here: “If youngsters get home-kits to make chemical experiments, then the odd potential bin Laden brewing up a concoction in his bedroom could go out and try to blow people up.” Small-scale amateur rocketry has already experienced similar bans or restrictions on stuff like the fuel used (“some nut might shoot a plane out of the sky!”).
But the security services are missing the “Pack not a herd” point of Glenn Reynolds and others: namely, that in a rich civil society where lots of people have hobbies and interests including messing around with chemistry, physics and technology in their spare time, it creates a natural “social capital”, if you will, of people who can prove mighty useful in an emergency. The same edition of Wired magazine has an article on how companies like Proctor and Gamble use home-based scientists – what Wired calls “crowdsourcing” – to fix problems that their own in-house professionals take more time and a lot more money to solve. If I were a defence or security official, instead of treating all amateur scientists as potential trouble-makers, I’d co-opt them, issue prizes for new ideas, and so forth. I suppose this links to my point below about the value of X-Prize contests.
So by all means be vigilant in the fight against terror. But if geeky children want to learn more about chemistry at home, I think that is a healthy thing to be encouraged. Our ancestors, such as these fellows, who often arrived at scientific breakthroughs after exploring scientific ideas in a far less regulated environment than today, certainly would have agreed.
The official in this case being the senior civil servant in charge of the project review, according to emails leaked to the Sunday Times:
From: Foord, David (OGC)
Sent: 08 June 2006 15:17
Subject: RE: Procurement Strategy
This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality. The early variant idea introduces huge risk on many levels some of which mature in these procurement options.
How can IPS plan to do anything but extend existing contracts in the absence of an approved business case? The plan on page 8 shows outline business case approval in March 2007 (which incidentally I think is a reasonable target but by no means guaranteed). OJEU is dependent on this (as page 15 plan shows correctly) so Sept 06 is not an option for anything other than supporting business as usual.
Oh there is so much more. Read the whole thing.
Now how does this square with numerous ministerial statements that all was fine and dandy? For instance, Charles Clarke,(Hansard, 18 October 2005, Col.800):
Since the debate on Second Reading, the project has been through a further Office of Government Commerce review on business justification. The review confirmed that the project is ready to proceed to the next phase. An independent assurance panel is now in place to ensure that the work is subject to rigorous, ongoing challenge by experts, as well as major period reviews by the OGC process.
Or Baroness Scotland of Asthal, to the lords (Hansard, 16 Jan 2006, col.459):
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness can satisfy my curiosity. At which traffic light, during the various stages, has the ID card been subject to review, and which traffic light has it been given for each of its stages, and which current stage has it just passed?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I think it has gone through its first two stages—that is, nought and one—and it has been given a clear bill of health to continue to the next stage. So the gateway review process is well on its way and is within the ambit of where it should be. The noble Earl will know that it is not usual for the gateway process details to be expanded upon or disclosed.
Or the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on 17th January:
Put to the PMOS that the KPMG report on ID cards had recommended a more detailed risk based cost analysis, the PMOS said that the project had already been through a number of processes. It had already been through a further Office of Government Commerce (OGC) review on business justification. The review confirmed that the project was ready to proceed to the next phase. An independent assurance panel was now in place to ensure that the work was subject to rigorous on-going challenge by experts as well as major periodic reviews via the OGC process.
In addition there had been the KPMG independent review. So in terms of oversight and reviews it had certainly been scrutinised. It was also subject to the normal audit procedures of departmental expenditure through the National Audit Office (NAO). What would not be wise, however, would be to reveal what our baseline was in discussions with commercial contractors because that would take away the commercial flexibility needed to get the best value for money. In any other realm of business you would not expect an organisation to reveal what it’s [sic – GH] baseline cost was precisely for that reason.
Rubbish, for reasons I may go into some other time. You might however expect it to have some idea what those costs are.
In the light of the officials’ view on the facts of the matter, in what way are all these Government comments not lying to the press and to parliament?
I have read Andrew Sullivan’s blog pretty much from the moment he started it. I have a natural sympathy for anyone who defies conventional stereotypes, and a man who is Catholic, gay and a small-government Reaganite conservative, a fan of Madonna and Michael Oakeshott certainly breaks more sterotypes than most. He has been magnificent in taking a stand on the issue of torture, for example. But even our heroes – and Sullivan is one in my eyes – have their feet of clay or views that I regard as stand-out dumb. And on the issue of cars, Sullivan (who does not drive) reverts to nannystatism in all its ugly glory. He endorses an article by Jonathan Rauch arguing that President Bush should press for an international pact to phase out the use of gasoline in cars over the next 30 years. Oh great. So do we humble, much-harassed motorists get a say in this? Don’t give me a line about how this would be ‘democratically’ decided. Oh yeah. Why not leave it to the market, already driving new alternatives to petroleum-based engines? If the real price of oil continues to be high, as it is at the moment, then we will get more hybrids, more hydrogen-powered cars, more innovations and new transport sources, without the need for some Grand International Treaty or 30-year deadline. If Bush did make such a pronouncement, how seriously would anyone take it? Would it not be regarded as the sort of ‘eye-catching initiative’ one has come to associate with our own Tony Blair.
A far better idea, in fact, would be to rely on innovation contests such as the X-Prize to encourage new technologies rather than go for a big Treaty with a deadline. Now that strikes me as the sort of idea a small-government advocate like Sullivan should be pushing.
I can understand the wish to reduce use of oil from the Middle East and curb C02 emissions. But in my gut I feel that Sullivan and others like him just don’t like cars very much and are mystified by most American’ love of a set of wheels (clue, Andrew – America is seriously BIG). Sullivan has lived in the States now for more than two decades, but I fear that in some way, the fella never really left this little damp island known as Britain.
I recently read This is Burning Man by Brian Doherty, chronicling the remarkable phenomenon of the Burning Man annual festival/event/blowout in the middle of the harsh Nevada desert. Despite the occasional slip into Sixties hippyspeak which might suggest a sort of communalistic mushiness, the book contained at its core the profoundly rational message that we can enjoy civil society by reducing the state to its barest minimum. Very subversive of statism, Doherty writes with obvious passion for the festival and affection for the often nutty but loveable characters who have developed the event. A great way to while away the hours while waiting to catch my delayed flight out of Nice after a business conference yesterday. Money quote:
“Any political virtue I saw in Burning Man always had to do with its avoidance of politics as I see it – the game of some people telling other people what to do. Burning Man to me was about liberty, and ordered anarchy, the inherent strength and possible joys of a civilisation in which all the “government” you need can be purchased in a freely chosen market.”
I may even go there one day and try and combine a Burning Man trip with a visit to the magnificent Reno air race festival. Yowza!
Speed limits, especially highway speed limits, are one of those things that bring out the inner libertarian in many Americans. Which is to say, when Americans get on the open road, they tend to drive as fast as they damn well please. Even on crowded urban freeways, the speed limit is routinely ignored. It is universally assumed that the occasional ticket is just a cost of doing business, and that speed limit enforcement isn’t about public safety but about revenue generation.
On the flip side, few things will get a nanny stater on his high horse faster than automotive travel. In some ways, the 55 mph speed limit (signed into law by Richard Nixon, no friend of limited government, but widely associated with Jimmy Carter, the very model of a modern nanny stater) stands as a high watermark of government bossiness. Aside from claims about gas savings (about which more later), 55 mph is universally lauded by Our Betters as saving lives.
Except, it does no such thing. When the 55 mph federal mandate was being repealed:
Ralph Nader claimed that “history will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life.” Judith Stone, president of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, predicted to Katie Couric on NBC’s “Today Show” that there would be “6,400 added highway fatalities a year and millions of more injuries.” Federico Pena, the Clinton Administration’s Secretary of Transportation, declared: “Allowing speed limits to rise above 55 simply means that more Americans will die and be injured on our highways.”
So were St. Ralph and his cohort of busybodies correct? The envelope, please:
We now have 10 years of evidence proving that the only “assault” was on the sanctity of the truth. The nearby table shows that the death, injury and crash rates have fallen sharply since 1995. Per mile traveled, there were about 5,000 fewer deaths and almost one million fewer injuries in 2005 than in the mid-1990s. This is all the more remarkable given that a dozen years ago Americans lacked today’s distraction of driving while also talking on their cell phones.
Of the 31 states that have raised their speed limits to more than 70 mph, 29 saw a decline in the death and injury rate and only two – the Dakotas – have seen fatalities increase. Two studies, by the National Motorists Association and by the Cato Institute, have compared crash data in states that raised their speed limits with those that didn’t and found no increase in deaths in the higher speed states.
So what about conservation? Everyone opposed to driving fast parrots the bare fact that driving 55 mph is more efficient, but oddly no one seems to mention what percentage we could reduce our total energy use if everyone did so. Given that most driving is done off the freeways, one suspects that the global impact of 55 mph is not great. While there is no doubt that driving slower uses less gas, driving slower is not cost free:
Americans have also arrived at their destinations sooner, worth an estimated $30 billion a year in time saved, according to the Cato study.
So do not forget to offset any savings with the cost of achieving them.
Efficiency is good, no doubt about that. Efficiency is generally not achieved via government mandate, but by the to and fro of the market. All things being equal, a more efficient gizmo, automotive or otherwise, is more attractive the consumer.
So what is the case for 55 mph? Like so many nanny state initiatives, it is rooted not so much in safety (impact: minimal) or efficiency (net global impact: minimal), but in a puritanical desire to control.
Paul Routledge in the Mirror (not a permalink, sorry) offers a follow up to the “Bollocks to Blair” story covered here by Brian the other day:
“Getting fined worked,” he says. “I had only sold two before the police came. Once word got round, people took pity on me and everyone wanted one. I ended up selling 375.”
But more scarily…
The cops asked for the shirt seller’s eye colour, shoe size and National Insurance number to keep track of him “in case he reoffended”.
Once you know that, you know what the fuzz are up to – building a national database of people they don’t like.
Well that we knew. In fact the government is building a database of everybody just in case it might not like them – or might have some reason to ‘assist’ them personally (as a matter of ‘enabling’ a more ‘active citizenship,’ you understand) by telling them what to do – at any time in the future.
For myself I’m only surprised the cops did not take careful note of the brand of footware, and take his footprints for the national footprint database, which they have recently acquired the power to do – I kid you not. Or perhaps they did…
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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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