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Anyone who has had the misfortune to have seen many examples of Modern ‘Art’ recently can only concur with the British politician who described this year’s Turner Prize exhibits as “bullshit”. Ok, not terribly polite, but a wonderfully lucid and accurate description of what is on display. Can we hope for similarly salty descriptions of the EU as a “crooked empire”, the British education system as a “Soviet disaster zone” from the UK’s political masters? November 2nd, 2002 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder November 2nd, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Last Sunday there was a big storm in Britain, power was been cut off for a lot of people and some of these households are only now being reconnected. There have been a lot of attacks on the power companies, but (as far as I know) no one in the media has pointed out that the present set up is not free enterprise at all – it is a government effort to create ‘perfect competition’. Now ‘perfect competition’ is something that exists in neoclassical economics textbooks – here lots of similar companies (similar assets, similar knowledge, similar just-about-everything) compete in a sort of mathematical game. In real life enterprises build things and own them. For example a railway is built, or a gas line, or a telephone line, or an electricity line. Complexity may evolve (with different people owning the track and the trains on a railway, or there being ‘producers’ and ‘providers’ in electricity supply), but any attempt to impose a complex scheme is likely to turn out to be a mess. In transport the natural competitors for a railway are roads, canals and airlines. The endlessly complicated spiders web of regulations in Britain (to make sure that different people owned the track and ran the trains and that the train operators only ran the trains for a certain period of time, and so on and so on), just caused a mess. Against electricity the main competitors are gas and (to a much lesser extent) home generation (by solar cells, open coal fires or whatever). Again complexity may evolve (with different companies producing the electricity and supplying it and, perhaps, even different suppliers offering to supply the same household), but any attempt to impose a complex scheme (via endless regulations and administrators) is bound to cause problems – and it has. In the end what matters is not ‘perfect competition’ but ownership – having a company that owns assets and is responsible if it fails to provide the power that people have paid for. Paul Marks November 2nd, 2002 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It’s that time of the week when most of Samizdata’s readers and most of its writers like to creep away from their terminals and live a little. Time for another Brian screed with MORE in it. But how can I reconcile my refined tastes with Samizdata’s preferred subject matter just now of monsters and war and mayhem. I’ve been making no secret lately of my liking for the blog written by The Two Blowhards, and for their sustained determination to talk about “culture” and not just about such things as politicians, Islamofascists and the exact guns and bullets and training manuals being used by the USA’s latest mass murderer. So what can this screed be about? Well here’s a question that may connect these two camps: Why do so many of the villains of popular entertainment like classical music? Not all fictional villains love classical music. But if a character in a TV adventure show does love classical music, then the chances are, overwhelmingly, that he’s the bad guy. One need only hear the tinkling of a classically played harpsichord or the smooth sound of a classically played violin to know at once Who Did It. → Continue reading: Classical villainy November 2nd, 2002 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
noun. Derived from anarchist. An advocate of minimal government, often described as the night watchman state, in which the state exist legitimately only to enable appropriate law and order and to deal with collective territorial defense. Such as state can exist to reinforce the liberty of individuals but not to ‘do things’ and is therefore a largely ‘apolitical polity’ guarding the boundaries of civil society. Some minarchists view this as a transitional state leading inevitably to completely stateless anarcho-capitalism, whilst others see minarchy as a stable end point. Whilst this is not a blog specific term, it is often used on ‘pundit blogs’, many of which are libertarian, hence its inclusion here. November 1st, 2002 | Comments are closed
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul November 1st, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
But what is the name of a group of jack-o’-lanterns? I think two names might be needed: On a crisp, cold and clear Halloween, they are perhaps a cackle… or maybe a coven, or a leering or even a haunting of jack-o’-lanterns. But the day after the night before, in rainy grey London, they are just a sorry sight to behold: they are jack-o’-lanterns no more, misshapen and decaying …alas, nothing more than a woefulness of pumpkins.  November 1st, 2002 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
In this report the New-York based organization Human Rights Watch unequivocally describes suicide bombers, and those who send them, as war criminals. UPDATE: There are some comments below disagreeing with the term “suicide bomber” and suggesting various alternatives that better get across the idea that these are evil people. While I certainly do think they are evil I prefer to stick with the term “suicide bomber”, as it accurately describes the factor that makes them striking and newsworthy. Any terrorist bombers – the Basque separatists ETA, for instance – can be described as homicide bombers. In our present world, when you say “suicide bombers” everyone knows in a second who’s killing who and where and why. This is an aid to efficient transmission of information, if nothing else. If the trend spreads we may need to particularize further. However, I quite agree that the suicide angle is irrelevant to their status as terrorists and war criminals. Morally, suicide affects only themselves. I also agree that their suicide is used to glamourize and excuse their evil. This needs to be debunked. However I think the debunking can be done as well or better by argument as by changing a generally accepted and efficient term. So let me rephrase my original post to bring all this out more clearly: “…Human Rights Watch unequivocally describes those who kill Israeli civilians, and those who send them to kill, as war criminals. It does not go along with the idea that suicide somehow legitimizes this.” May I add that I think this report is quite big news. HRW’s website gives the impression that they are generally within the same mildly-lefty tradition as Amnesty International, Oxfam and so on. The record of this tradition in speaking out against the recent murders of Israelis by suicide bombers is not that impressive. It is therefore slightly surprising and very welcome to see HRW speaking out so clearly. Hence my title, “Breaking the Silence.” November 1st, 2002 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
November 1st, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Out of sheer horrid fascination I dip into Bartcop from time to time, and look what I found just now on the Forum:
Well, well, well. It seems that American socialists just love the BBC. I wonder why? November 1st, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
An interesting It is a good thing this sort of idiotic nonsense would never happen in our more enlightened era, right? Right? October 31st, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Greetings from London on this All Hallows Eve. I have always thought this festival was wasted on the very young… it is not a time for ‘friendly ghosts or good witches’, it is a time to get in touch with your inner werewolf  Wishing everyone a suitably ghastly Halloween. Just remember what happens if you have too much fun!  October 31st, 2002 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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