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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Government-fetishists are always trying to justify their demands for ever-bigger state by claiming that only the state can ride to the rescue of the public to correct what they call ‘market failures’.
So, who is going to come riding to the rescue to put this right?
Thousands of parents who had children taken away from them on the evidence of the controversial paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow will not have them returned.
Ministers are to review as many as 5,000 civil cases of families affected over the past 15 years by Prof Meadow’s now-discredited theory of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. This accused mothers of harming their children to draw attention to themselves.
Many mothers say that they have been vindicated in their insistence that they were wrongly accused and now want their children back. However, Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, has ruled out any widespread return.
Mrs Hodge said that the exact number of civil cases where Prof Meadow’s theory had been used to remove children from mothers was unknown, but could run into “thousands or even tens of thousands”.
She added, however: “If a miscarriage of justice was made 10 or 15 years ago, what is in the child’s interest now? If the adoption order was made on the back of Meadow’s evidence and that was 10 years ago, what is in the real interest of the child? If they were taken as babies the only parent they know is the adopted one. It is incredibly difficult. It is a really tough call to make.
“The sort of families that are coming forward are heartbroken families. But if the child was adopted at birth the sensible thing to do is to let it stay. As children’s minister my prime interest has to be the interests of the child.”
I would be willing to wager that the ‘prime interest’ of Margaret Hodge is Margaret Hodge.
As for the thousands of parents who may have had their children abducted by the state, well, tough titties. Live with it.
What the government puteth asunder, let no man join together again.
When the French government decided to place a prohibition of overtly religious symbols in state schools (or ‘the headscarf ban’ as it is more widely know), I bet they thought that they were removing a splinter from the soft tissue of the body politic.
But it looks like the wound is beginning to fester:
Muslim protests have been taking place in France and other countries against a French bill which would ban headscarves from state schools.
Up to 5,000 protesters, mainly Muslim women in scarves, rallied in Paris.
Many of France’s five million Muslims see it as an attack on their religious and human rights.
And that view is not confined to French Muslims either:
“Ultimately, if I have to choose between further studies or my turban, I will keep the turban.”
Fourteen-year-old Vikramjit Singh, who lives in suburban Paris, says giving up his studies would perhaps ruin his material life.
“But if I have to give up my turban, I am sacrificing my spiritual life. And that is totally unacceptable to me,” he told BBC News Online.
For Sikhs, wearing the turban is crucial to their religious identity.
I get the feeling that this one is going to run and run.
Bruce Bartlett has one of the most thought-provoking columns on economic history that I’ve seen in a while. In recent months, we’ve seen a number of lame attempts to compare Bush to Hitler. (Blogger Stephen Green is doing a good job of documenting these things.) I’ve seen a number of sites that display a series of Bush photos, each juxtaposed with a photo of Hitler in a similar pose … Bush is seen here eating a ham sandwich, and here’s Hitler eating a ham sandwich in 1937. Here’s Bush talking to some children, and here’s Hitler doing the same. See? Bush = Hitler! QED. Self-indulgent celebrities and hard-left ideologues have picked up on this tiresome Bush = Hitler meme, and the wave of moral equivalence crested with the recent controversy over MoveOn.org’s anti-Bush ad contest.
Meanwhile, Bartlett is seizing on this theme to take issue with some, both on the left and on the right, who want to compare Keynes to Hitler. He starts with Alexander Cockburn, quoting his most recent effort in The Nation:
Hitler, genocidal monster that he was, was also the first practicing Keynesian leader. … There were vast public works, such as the autobahns. He paid little attention to the deficit or to the protests of the bankers about his policies. … By 1936, unemployment had sunk to 1 percent …
Then, to pick an example from the opposite end of the spectrum, he points to an August 2003 column by Llewellyn Rockwell, longtime chairman of the Mises Institute. Here is the full text of the Rockwell piece that Bartlett is citing.
While I admire the Mises Institute and enjoyed the time that I spent at the Mises annual seminar in ’96, my take on Rockwell is that his writing style often loses focus due to its underlying anger. This is a classic example. And note that even he can’t help but juxtapose images of Keynes and Hitler, striking similar poses, just as those sophomoric “Bush = Hitler” websites do.
The money quote from the Rockwell piece, which Bartlett cites in his column, is this non sequitur:
Keynes himself admired the Nazi economic program, writing in the foreword to the German edition to the General Theory: “[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire.”
I don’t see how the quote from Keynes is tantamount to “admiration of the Nazi economic program.” Taken in full context, Keynes is just pointing out that it would be much easier to implement an activist fiscal policy in a state that is already centralized and forceful than in a state that was characterized by decentralization and federalism, a point that I would take to be obviously true. How this is supposed to represent Keynes’ “admiration” of the Third Reich is not clear.
Yes, Nazi Germany, in a roundabout way, did employ policies that Keynes would have prescribed if he had been running Germany at the time. This does NOT mean that Keynes’ idea of “public works” was building prison camps. Bartlett is correct in concluding that there are enough substantive problems with Keynesianism that we don’t need to resort to ad hominem criticisms of the man himself — just as there are plenty of ways that one can oppose the policies of Bush without resorting to the same. I disagree with a lot of the policies of the Bush administration (campaign finance reform, Medicare “reform”, on and on) but I have better things to do than try to fit this opposition into some tortured “Bush = Hitler” framework.
To put the shoe on the other foot — Rockwell was against the war in Iraq, and so was Noam Chomsky, but that doesn’t mean that “Rockwell = Chomsky!” or anything close to it. It doesn’t mean that Rockwell “is an admirer of” Chomsky, or that Rockwell also agrees with Chomsky’s denial of the holocaust, or even that Rockwell would use his brakes if Chomsky was crossing the street in front of his car.
Now, when are we going to see the article that says, “Bush used Keynesian fiscal policy, and so did Hitler, therefore Bush = Hitler!”
Peter Briffa catches Polly Toynbee talking sense:
The middle classes, who benefit most, might have preferred an earmarked income tax rise to extra university fees.
The government replies that 80% of taxpayers never went to university, so why should they pay too? Besides, if taxes rose, there are better spending priorities. Why should the 50% with too few opportunities fork out for the lucky ones? That’s very nearly a good enough answer – but it raises key questions, too.
For that is not social democratic thinking: on that basis, why should those without children pay for schools? Or those without cars pay for roads? Or the great majority who never use trains pay for the 4% who commute by rail? Or those outside London contribute �1bn a year to the tube? Or southerners pay for the Angel of the North, while ballet-haters pay for Covent Garden? And why should the majority pay for social housing or tax credits they will never use?
Once you start to question who should pay for what, the idea of national collective provision crumbles. Where is the line in the sand? Where does it stop? Is there really something about universities that is clearly, qualitatively different to any of the above? You might just argue that there is a stronger personal financial gain to be had from a degree which justifies a personal contribution. But the same case might be made for why the suburban commuter should pay the full cost of his train, paying for his pleasure at living somewhere salubrious. �
Very good! PT of course intends that all these very good questions should be answered with:yes. Yes, southerners should pay for the northern angel, yes ballet-haters should pay for ballet, etc. And yes, higher education despisers should pay for other people’s higher education. But for once, I like the cut of her jib. Asks Briffa mischievously: Is the penny finally dropping for La Toynbee? No of course not. She is incorrigible. But might not some of her readers find their brain cells being prodded into unfamiliar directions by all this flagrant logic.
This spasm of Toybee sanity reminds me of when people say that I should oppose some little government tyranny not for being tyrannical (that being perhaps too difficult or unpopular to do effectively), but for being inconsistent with some other not-so-tyrannical arrangement. Beware of asking for consistency in such circumstances, I reply, you just might get it, in the form of consistent tyranny. Toynbee starts by arguing for consistency and immediately finds herself sounding for the duration of her point like the purest sort of libertarian.
Heh.
Given the global prominence of this brand, I find it quite surprising that only now are Starbucks about to open their first branch in Paris:
When Disney arrived with its theme park they called it a cultural Chernobyl. Many Parisians will view as an even bigger disaster the opening today of the city’s first branch of Starbucks.
Six years after it served up the first decaf cappucino in Europe, the Seattle-based global coffee giant is ready to take on the nation that invented café society.
They better hire some burly security guards as well. If they manage to get through the first month without succumbing to a Jose Bove-led sit-in protest they will be able to consider themselves fortunate.
Despite the global success, purists are predicting that in France, where ordering an express (often consumed with a cigarette) is a sacred tradition, the brand will flop. Bernard Quartier, spokesman for the organisation that represents French café owners said: “I don’t believe this concept is going to work because nothing can replace the conviviality and sociability of the French café.”
Now this is a different matter. If Starbucks fails to ignite the interest of the Parisians then so be it. The market rules and, in as much as he is basing his dismissal on his understanding of local market conditions, then Monsieur Quartier has got a point.
After all, if your idea of a good night out is lashings of Sartre and dollops of Foucault washed down with litres of bitter café noir and a lungful of Gitanes then the child-friendly play areas and sanitised chirpiness of Starbucks is probably not for you. → Continue reading: Would you like guilt with your coffee, sir?
I’ve just done a posting at Samizdata about the phenomenon of excessive regulation, so excessive that even if an organisation wants to obey it, it can’t. It’s just too voluminous, too complicated, sometimes even too contradictory. (One of the Samizdata commenters told of how his encryption duties seemed to require some sort of infinite regress and were un-obeyable.)
The White Rose Relevance of this is, Cicero apparently said:
Excessive law is no law at all.
Which means that in practice the law becomes whatever those in charge decide to make it. And that is the point at which White Rosers should sit up and notice, because that is when people who make trouble for the authorities by saying things that the authorities disapprove of, get prosecuted not for their wicked sayings (which might be a rather hard charge to make stick and would anyway draw attention to the sayings) but for non-compliance with plumbing regulations, for failure to fill out the proper forms concerning employee sick-leave, for baking bread of the wrong size and shape, etc. The completely we are all likely to be breaking this or that law, the more completely they have us by the proverbials.
T. M. Lucas also commented as Samizdata, drawing the attention of its readers to a series of posts his blog has on these themes.
Natalie Solent links to this posting at Thought Mesh, about the realities of regulation. Thought Mesh seems to be US based, but the message is universal:
As you may know, I work in network security management. I’ve been off at a summit discussing the future of the product. While listening to our chief marketing guy talk about future requirements, he said something I found astounding. Paraphrasing, the gist was that our corporate customers cannot comply with their reporting and auditing requirements. There are so many and they are so detailed that compliance is apparently no longer possible. The point for us is that any auditing done by our software should be designed with this fact in mind and so, rather than verifying compliance should be able to document the level of failure to comply.
Further, it seems that this situation is known to the regulating agencies and the requirement is now not actual compliance, but “improvement” over time (which is where our reports can contribute). It’s the “no child left behind” theory of corporate regulation. One is left to wonder if we shouldn’t be trying for a set of regulations that is actually possible to obey. The answer, of course, is that it’s best for the regulators if everyone is guilty of something. Then when bad things happen, there is a nice selection of the usual suspects to pin the blame on, all of them disarmed because they are in violation of some regulation.
In another sense, it’s cargo cult regulation. Some good company is observed to perform some action. Therefore if every company is required to do that, they will be good companies. In fact, this kind of regulatory environment, with endless obscure rules and universal compliance failure, is perfect for the sophisticated con men. Not only does it provide a thicket of procedures to hide in, but it distracts everyone into watching the forms without time to worry about the results. All that good corporate governance in Europe let Parmalat get by with shady accounting longer than any American company. It seems like there’s a lesson there somewhere.
And here are the first two comments about this at Thought Mesh. This from “anon” (no wonder!):
“our corporate customers cannot comply with their reporting and auditing requirements.”
This is so true.
I work in networks too, and every year I get sent a questionnaire by central auditing. It always contains a question like “Do you regularly monitor your audit logs to search for [some bad event or other]?”
If you answer No (being truthful) and go on to explain why it is impossible – like for instance, the log is a squillion pages long, unsearchable free-form text, and doesn’t log [super-bad event] anyway – then they nag you to death demanding to know when you are going to start, never mind that it’s impossible etc etc.
Whereas if you answer Yes (lying) you never hear any more about it.
So guess which answer they get?
What purpose is served by this? The one you mention, I imagine – if anything goes wrong I can be screwed. Well, I will be anyway, so who cares.
And this from vbc:
You say that it seems like there is a lesson in there somewhere. There is, and it was formulated nicely by the ancient Roman, Cicero:
Excessive law is no law.
Indeed. But not “heh”.
While channel hopping in the early hours of this morning through the unwatched digital end of the British TV spectrum (no doubt that is a technologically impossible thing to do literally but I’m sure you understand), I encountered the beginnings of or an advertisement for (I switched off and am only now remembering it) one of those Kilroy-Silk type programmes in which a sleek self-important talk-leader wanders around among various people desperate to be on television talking about something too interesting and lowbrow to be of interest to the kind of people who watch analogue TV with a number like 1 or 2, such as what it is like to sleep with your nephew or why you want your grandmother to stop getting any more tattoos. This sleek Kilroy-man was called Walsh, I think. (Yes.) And, this time the subject was going to be … and here I confess to forgetting the technical term which the unwatched TV industry has coined for this phenomenon … but it was video/digital/TV cameras for looking up girls’ skirts in public places. Apparently some unfortunate girl had become the victim of one of these freelance soft porn Spielbergs and video of her bottom and underwear was even now circulating on the internet.
I don’t know exactly how the cameras are organised. Perhaps they are placed in the shoes of the filmer. Perhaps they are operated from the basements of sleazy restaurants. A particular unfortunate girl had become more unfortunate in that she had sued her voyeur-tormentors in an American court, and the court had found that although disgusting, the behaviour of the electro-digital-voyeurs was not illegal. So now the unfortunate girl was taking her case to a higher court: unwatched television.
And that was when I switched off, which I now regret. It was the most memorable and interesting thing I saw on the telly yesterday, but I only realised this today.
As I say, I don’t know how the argument then proceeded, although I do know that they had managed to entice or fake up some sleazoids willing to argue in favour of the rights of people to make movies by pointing cheap cameras up girl’s skirts. So presumably there was an argument.
What might I have said if I had found myself in the middle of such an argument? I have no idea, but here are some guesses. → Continue reading: Invisible cameras in the pavement? What is to be done?
On the same day that Prime Minister Tony Blair launches London’s official bid for the Olympic Games in 2012, I hereby announce the start of my ‘No Olympics’ campaign.
“The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games will enhance sport in London and the UK forever,” said bid chairman Barbara Cassani.
And, by curious coincidence, ‘forever’ is about how long we are going to have to spend paying for it. No. Non. Nein. Njet. Let the French have it. Or the Russians. Or the Brazilians. Or somebody. Anybody. Just not here. Go away. Sod off. Scram. Sling your hook. Get lost.
I think I shall call a press conference.
UPDATE: The French have also launched their official bid. Apparently, they are the favourites. Good. I support the French bid. Vive la France!
I suppose it had to happen. Italian legislators, no doubt hoping to look useful in the wake of the near-collapse of Italian food group Parmalat, say they need new laws to prevent the kind of abuses that have dragged the firm into the mire.
Yep, that’s the spirit. What we need is a “overhaul”, a “sweeping new set of powers”, a new super-agency with “wide-ranging” powers to prevent such things happening again.
They never learn, do they? If the public authorities had been doing their job in the first place, ie, enforce the laws preventing fraud and theft, then Parmalat would be chiefly known for its milk cartons, and not as a firm which is doomed to be known as Europe’s Enron. But I guess where there’s muck, there’s brass, as we Brits say. The firm may be teetering on the brink, but at least politicians can see the bright side and pass some impressive new laws and bolster their wonderful reputations.
So George ‘Hitler’ Bush and his shadowy cabal of extreme right-wing neo-conservative warmongers are, once again, showing their contempt for the peace-loving, democratic will of the international community:
The United States is challenging a strategy by the World Health Organization (WHO) to tackle obesity.
Some scientists accuse President Bush’s administration of planning to water down proposed junk food regulations, in order to protect big business.
No mention of who these ‘scientists’ are, mind. Perhaps they are Indyscientists.
Anyway, I support the WHO. I think it is only reasonable and fair that I should be told what I can and cannot eat by a panel of experts from Libya, Chad, Cuba and North Korea. It’s for my own good!
I am glad that Brian has invited readers of his article below to veer off into unrelated realms because I intend to do exactly that. Of course, I would have done so anyway but I feel better for having had Brian’s blessing.
Though this post has been sparked off by Brian’s musings, it has nothing to do with Islam. Rather I have homed in on one particular phrase which Brian has used in his post and which has been repeated ad nauseum by others. Namely:
War is the health of the state
If free-market axioms were trees then that one would be a mighty oak. Among libertarians it is an unquestioned and proven truism. An article of faith. The nearest thing we have to a party line.
However, it is a line from which I dissent. Not because I regard the process of war with any favour but rather because, like Brian, I dislike untruth and while the declaration that war is the health of the state may be comfortingly self-righteous and gallery-friendly, it is not true. → Continue reading: War is not the health of the state
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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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