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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Incoming email from Sean Gabb:
Dear Brian,
I know this is not the best time or place for the debate – I believe much of the audience wants to leave afterwards to wander up and down outside Parliament waving candles or some such. I hope to be abed by then. But it may be an important event. If you cannot attend, please circulate.
Regards,
Sean
I could attend but do not want to. I am going through a quietist phase just now. But I am happy to pass it all on:
Free Trade v Fair Trade
A Debate Organised by Christian Aid
St Margaret’s Church, Westminster (Near Parliament)
Friday 15th Aril 2005 – 11.50pm to 1am
What is best for poor countries? Do they need global free trade in goods and services? Or is this just a cover for western neo-imperialism? Do such countries instead need fair trade – a system in which local producers are encouraged to develop without competition from larger foreign countries?
Come along and listen, and have your say.
Chair: Alan Beattie, The Financial Times
For Free Trade: Dr Sean Gabb, Libertarian Alliance; Alex Singleton, Globalization Institute
For Fair Trade: Martin Khor, Third World Network; Prosper Heoyi, Oxfam
For further details, contact:
Leo Bryant
Campaign Events
Christian Aid
020 7523 2264
camtemp3@christian-aid.org
Sean adds the following:
Assuming other speakers will give permission, Sean Gabb will video the whole event, and will make DVDs available. He will certainly record his own contribution.
This flyer was put together by Sean Gabb on the basis of limited information. He had nothing to do with what he considers the dreadful time and place of the debate, but is told that around 700 people will attend.
Good luck gentlemen. I look forward to viewing the DVD.
The Daily Texan reports that State Rep. Larry Phillips, R-Sherman, isn’t happy that one-quarter to one-third of all Texans drive without automotive insurance, according to his research. He aims to change that with his proposed House Bill 2893, which includes a subsection that some find disturbing: the addition of an electronic tracking and identification system onto each vehicle.
The RFID tag would transmit a unique frequency that would show the vehicle’s make, model, identification number, the title as registered with the Department of Transportation and whether or not the driver has insurance coverage. The proposed law also makes clear that the state will create a database of insurance provider and coverage information, keeping track of who has what insurance policy and whether it is paid or not. Scott Henson, a Texas American Civil Liberties Union police accountability and homeland security specialist warns:
The language opens up the whole tracking system for any conceivable law enforcement use,” Henson said. “Once that happens, Texans’ cars might one day appear as electronic dots on law enforcement’s computer mapping screens.
The transponder lets the government track you wherever you go, whether to visit your grandmother, secretly visit a gay bar or drive to a medical supplies office, whatever.
Philip Doty, associate director of the Telecommunications and Information Policy Institute at UT-Austin goes to the heart of the matter:
In post-Patriot Act America, people have lost awareness of the little changes that lead to a chain of effects that restrict us politically and individually.
Here is proof that Jeremy Clarkson and his fellow petrolheads have definitely got under some green skins, if you get my meaning:
Environmental campaigners have called for the BBC’s Top Gear programme to be scrapped as they claim it promotes irresponsible driving. But how fair is this criticism?
For many motoring enthusiasts it is among the highlights of the television week.
But, with its irreverent style and penchant for high-speed stunts, Top Gear attracts fans and critics in equal measure.
Now the BBC Two programme has come under fire from the Transport 2000 pressure group, which has called for it to be taken off the air and replaced with a show that promotes “sensible driving in sensible vehicles”.
Yes, that will pack them in.
Greenies: try to understand. Most drivers spend their lives driving sensibly in sensible vehicles, except when you lunatics have stuck bumps in the road, in which case they are obliged to drive senselessly, accelerating and decelerating and generally spoiling the air and the neighbourhood. The idea that TV’s premier driving show should surrender its position as TV’s premier driving show by doing nothing but reflect this dreary reality is crazy, and cruel. Kill Top Gear, and you will have alienated yet another big brick in the human wall that is Middle England.
Transport 2000, which is committed to reducing the environmental and social effects of transport, argues that Top Gear falls short in its responsibility to educate viewers and acknowledge the interests of women drivers.
Personally, I am in favour of the “social effects” of transport, the main ones being that because we are able to travel, we can get to see interesting places and appealing people, and get and do far better jobs than would otherwise be possible. And as for the environmental effects of transport, I know what they mean, but once again, I think transport makes the environment far more congenial, not least because we can travel about in it and see what it all consists of.
Obviously the most environmentally friendly thing, in the sense these people mean, that humans could do would be to drop dead en masse. But most of us, thank goodness, are not these people. For most of us, life is for living, and life would be very lifeless if we were to do away entirely with exciting cars, and drove only sensible ones, and worse, if we were not even allowed to watch crazy cars being driven crazily on TV.
From Instapundit, the excellent news that traffic cameras have been voted down in Virginia, New Hampshire, and Indiana.
A number of jurisdictions still have such cameras in place (or at least a place for them has been reserved, legal authority-wise), but fortunately there is a solution.
Downfall (Der Untergang) proved the perfect foil to the Europe of the Diversities conference, referred to earlier by Johnathan Pearce. This is a controversial film that has excited some who argue that representations of the Nazis which humanise their actions, and detail their suffering, downplay the consequences of the regime. There is weight to this argument, as the film focuses fully on the people within Hitler’s bunker, their loyalty, their duty and their concerns in those final days.
Deftly underscored by Stephan Zacharias’s string-laden soundscape and cinematographer Rainer Klausmann’s truly terrific skill in capturing of the grim reality of the horror that was 1945 Berlin, Hirschbiegel pushes many buttons: the collective guilt of a nation for atrocities committed by their state balanced against the horrific human price of no surrender; the astonishing loyalty of the women around the cold-hearted dictator and the SS who vow to fight on because “we cannot outlive the Fuhrer’s death”; the double standard of being superior but cleansing themselves of traitors and the imperfect until there’s no leadership left to carry the torch.
Although Friedrich Hayek argued that totalitarian regimes allowed thugs and psychopaths to enter positions of authority, this film shows that traditional values of honour and duty were perverted and strengthened by the Nazis. In the film, it is Prussian values which sustain the dying regime, bring the Hitler Youth onto the streets and motivate the soldiers.
One should watch Shoah prior to this, as an inoculation, since one must make a conscious effort to recollect the camps in order to avoid feeling any empathy with these monsters.
UPDATE: For those who thought my link to a revisionist website was too obscure a warning signal that these memes still exist, here is an interview with Lanzmann, the director of Shoah, explaining the reasons why his work must exist.
“The East Coast Forestry scheme should be abolished”
“Why?”
“Because it is a scheme”
– A conversation that took place between a senior minister of the government of New Zealand and an adviser who had been sent to “evaluate” said scheme, back in the glorious days of yore when New Zealand had been taken over by rabid free-marketers. (Sadly, New Zealand is these days once again run by some of the world’s squishiest leftists).
I attended a one-day conference on the EU Constitution today, drawing together an eclectic mixture of people from all parts of the political spectrum, both British and foreign, and all united on the need to get a decisive No vote in the event that Mr Blair decides to hold a referendum on one (let’s pray it is not done by postal vote, god help us). I attended the morning session and drifted home for lunch with my head still ringing with one of the best speeches by a politician I have heard for years.
The politician’s name is Steve Radford and he is a Liberal Party councillor in England. His party is the bit that refused to merge with the old Social Democrats and decided to keep the flame of Gladstone, Richard Cobden and Joe Grimmond burning bright. Well, if Mr Radford’s performance was a guide, the Liberal Party is a very interesting outfit indeed. He denounced the European Union’s economic tariffs most effectively by holding up a bag of sugar and pointed out that the price of the bag is inflated fourfold by tariffs. He denounced the rampant corruption, cronyism and lack of democratic accountability of the EU, a situation which will get only worse if the EU Constitution becomes a fact. He was passionate in making the free market case – all too rare these days, and frequently very funny.
It is refreshing to hear an actual big-L Liberal refer to the anti-Corn Law League and the great campaign to promote free trade by the likes of Richard Cobden. I don’t know about all his views on other subjects, but if every member of the Liberal Party were like this man, I’d very seriously consider voting for it.
I hope we haven’t heard the last of this gentleman.
A Guardian headline spotted today:
The complete story is here.
Basically, and especially in recent months, things are improving.
The story ends thus:
Six months ago Bradt Travel Guides published what was probably the first postwar guidebook for Baghdad. If you do not enjoy Iraq’s capital, at least appreciate the residents, it said.
“They are a justifiably proud people, whose city was the capital of the world when London was an overgrown village and Columbus several centuries away from America.
“War has not destroyed this and western condescension is met with the scorn it deserves.”
So, whatever happens, the West is still wrong. It would not be the Guardian if there was no defeat to snatch from the jaws of the victory they dreaded, but are now having to concede.
The ’45
Christopher Duffy
Weidenfeld & Nicholson 2003
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart
Frank McLynn
Routlledge 1988
Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s campaign to regain the British throne for his father is the most romantic episode in British history, retold many times. Landing in Moidart on the Scottish mainland with seven companions, and then persuading a number of clan chiefs to support him, he conducted a brilliant campaign that took him to 120 miles of London. Because of the passivity of the English Jacobites and the failure of any French help to arrive, the clan chiefs refused to proceed further and the army retreated back to Scotland and ultimate defeat. The five-month hunt for Charles through the Scottish Highlands and Islands until he escaped at last to France provides a coda just as romantic and more material to make him into a legend, which even turned the head of Frederick the Great.
Duffy’s massive 639 page account is primarily a military history, giving much information on the forces of the two sides, Stuart and Hanoverian, their movements, tactics and morale, but strangely lacking serious discussion of strategy. The political background, national and international is likewise missing; in 1743 Britain had got involved in the war of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), and was at war with France. It may be that the author is overconscious of going over well-trodden ground, but it seems perverse to opt out of giving an account, or even a summary of an account, of the council of war at Derby that decided that the Jacobite army should retreat, and though he dissents from that decision himself: “It is not the purpose of the present work to recapitulate the details of the sessions, which are recounted at length in every serious biography of the Prince and study of the ’45 (p. 301)”.
McLynn’s biography makes it clear that the Highland chiefs, whose clans had been the spearhead of the invasion simply refused to continue. They had been disappointed by the lack of French intervention, promised by Charles, together with the passivity of the English Jacobites. Duffy makes much of the fact that the scale may have been turned by the false information that the Duke of Cumberland’s army was about to block any possible retreat provided by the Hanoverian agent, Dudley Bradstreet, masquerading as Oliver Williams, an English, or more likely, a Welsh Jacobite volunteer. Bradstreet must have had nerves of steel, for he stayed with the Prince on the retreat, and was not slow to take the credit for it. Duffy does not say when he deserted – for that one would presumably have to read Bradstreet’s own account (1750; edited and republished, 1929). Needless to say, it is far from being accepted by everybody as gospel.
There is no doubt that until Derby, the rebels had won every move, mainly because of their greater mobility and their seizing of the initiative. Even the weather, usually bad, favoured them, despite or even because by the time the crisis came they were conducting a winter campaign, for which they were better suited than their opponents, not only because of the greater hardiness of the Highlanders, who made up their shock troops, but because of their logistics. They advanced from town to town in an orderly manner, usually collecting money already accumulated there for tax payments and sometimes clothing and equipment. What they did not get, especially after they had crossed the border, were many recruits. The impression given is that most of the population, both in England and Scotland, had decided to sit things out and see what happened. → Continue reading: The Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 – a romantic non-event?
Hopefully my title has alerted readers to what “George IV” I am thinking of.
George IV has got a bad press. He is thought of as a fat, drunken fool. Who was so deluded that he thought he fought at the battle of Waterloo.
His father (George III) has had his reputation defended by it being pointed out that his metal problems had a physical cause (a blood disorder made worse by arsenic poisoning from the power in his wigs and the very medical treatments he was given). Whilst in control of his body and mind, it is now accepted, that George III was a hard working and learned man who was deeply concerned by cases of individual injustice – for example a poor clock maker might be cheated of the longitude prize by all the politicians and administrators, but when George III got to hear of the case he would not rest till justice had been done.
On the other hand George IV is seen as a man whose problems were self inflected. A man unwilling to resist temptation – whether it was for women, food or booze. A man disloyal to his father (for example keen to be Regent years before his father had his final breakdown and even willing to have his father locked up for life), of hopelessly unsound political judgement (for example his connection with Charles James Fox, a politician who supported the French Revolution and never showed the understanding of either security or finance needed to be fit for high office).
And whereas George III was learned (with a great library of well used books, knowledgeable on all the main subjects of his day), George IV is presented as shallow minded and lazy – whose knowledge of even those subjects that interested him (such as architecture) was superficial.
The last point first:
George IV may indeed have had less knowledge of art and architecture than George III had. And George IV’s favoured architect (John Nash) may indeed have big gaps in his education.
However, have a look at Windsor Castle, or the Brighton Pavilion, or the area of Regents Park in London. Neither George VI nor John Nash may have had the book learning of George III – but they did not do so bad a job.
On women, food and booze: George IV had the faults that many European aristocrats (and other rich people) had in this period. That George III did not have these faults is to his credit – but it should not be used as a stick to bash his son over the head with.
Also on booze, water was unsafe to drink in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (although not as unsafe as it would be when cholera stuck Britian in the 1830’s) so becoming what we see as a drunk was quite common – even the great Pitt the Younger (the supposedly straight laced rival of the degenerate Charles James Fox) died of booze.
A man may say some very stupid things when he is drunk – even waxing on about the fighting at Waterloo – but then again people interested in military history (or military affairs in general) often see themselves at certain battles and talk in this way.
I would not like to be thought mad because I have talked of battles (as if I had been there) that occurred hundreds of miles from me, or indeed centuries ago – we armchair generals may be bores, but we are not mad. → Continue reading: In defence of George IV: King of the United Kingdom
Is the Pope still Catholic?
How long Economics in One Lesson has been available to read free, online, I have no idea, but since she only just heard about this, I feel entitled to say with similar lack of shame (unless of course a fellow Samizdatista has already flagged this up and I missed it) that her posting was how I finally found out about this myself.
It has been a while since I read this book. The bit I recall with the greatest vividness concerned the broken window fallacy. This fallacy says, fallaciously, that broken windows are good for the economy because they are good for the window-mending business. What the broken window fallacy neglects to mention is that broken windows are bad for all the businesses that the window mending money might have gone to instead, but now cannot.
The most extreme statement of this fallacy is the claim that the ultimate window breaker, war, is good for the economy, because that way lots of work is “created” in all the industries that subsequently set to work to repair the destruction. When Keynesian economics was in its pomp, you did hear people actually saying this. Maybe, if those are the kind of circles you still move in, you still do.
Yet war is creative, in a back-handed way, and provided that you lose. It destroys wealth, but it can also destroy certain impediments to future wealth creation. Mancur Olsen, in his book (alas not available on line so far as I know) The Rise and Decline of Nations (lots of five stars out of five reviews here), says that, yes of course, losing a war does destroy wealth, but that it also destroys what he calls “distributional coalitions”. In plainer language, losing a war breaks up politically well-connected rackets, like state-enforced cartels and trade-unions. Thus the post-WW2 economic miracles of Germany and Japan.
This is what you would call a high risk strategy for achieving economic dynamism. I mean, just for starters, be careful who you lose your war to. Pick the wrong country to surrender to and you are liable to end up with an even huger, politically even better connected racket, in the form of your rapacious conquerors. In other words, broken windows followed by more broken windows, and nobody ever mending them.
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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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