I came across this neat invention by a company calling itself Moller International which looks rather fun and a great way to beat those traffic snarlups which are getting worse and worse in London. It looks like something out of a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel from the Fifties. Terrific.
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The widely reported attempt by the state to extravagantly expend the list of state bodies with access to e-mail and telephone intercepts has been withdrawn in the face of strong cross-party opposition from politicians with a modicum of respect for at least the fiction of civil liberties. However it is very important that people not judge the government just by the laws it has passed but by the laws it has tried to pass. The Regulation of Investigative Powers Act (RIPA) is bad enough as it stands without the latest astonishing power grab by the state, yet it shows once again if anyone doubted it that no matter what the state says about its modest intentions when taking upon itself new powers, the belly of Leviathan is filled with an insatiable hunger for more. Bob Ainsworth, the Home Office minister is using The Big Lie technique to claim this is not in fact about crushing civil liberties but ‘protecting’ us all, so do not kid yourself that the advocate of a Panopticon Britain will give up so easily. What we need protection against is the British state or we will soon have a system of pervasive surveillance and intrusion that rivals that of the INS and IRS in the United States. Tony Blair was not joking when he promised to bring us ‘joined up government’. The line being drawn between those dots being joined up runs through the centre of our lives.  When the state watches you, dare to stare back June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Harold Pinter is a well known British playwright, a scourge of the Tories and impassioned voice for the statist left. None of this matters one jot to me as the world is full of people declaiming incoherent left wing world views. He is also a signatory to the free Slobodan Milosevic petition, which makes him an apologist for Europe’s most prolific socialist mass murderer since Joseph Stalin. That most certainly does matter to me and to any rational non-idiotarian who views support for mass murderers as prima facie evidence of off-the-scale immorality. So one would think that this would put Harold Pinter beyond the pale in polite society in Britain, right? I mean if telling a mildly racist joke ends your political career, then presumably showing solidarity with a man who ordered the systematic raping of Croat and Muslim women in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the slaughter of tens of thousands by government backed Serbian einstztruppen must mean there is hardly an open door in Britain for such a man. Er, no. It means you get mentioned in the latest list of honours. This ‘non-political’ award by the British state is of course replete with political meaning. If you are a vocal left winger then standing up for a mass murderer is regarded as little more than an endearing eccentricity that in no way detracts from being ‘The Great Man of Letters’. This sort of thing is exactly what I do not dislike the British political class. I hate them. June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Ahn Jung Hwan, take a bow. He misses a penalty in the early minutes of the game, and then he scores the golden goal that ends it in extra time. What a story. South Korea 2 Italy 1. France, Argentina, Portugal, and now Italy. Who’s next in the cull of the Great Soccer Nations? Brazil? We wish. (Brazil play England in the next round, early in the morning on Friday.) As for doing something about poverty, Antoine, maybe regular folks are better off giving the World Cup their undivided attention, but I think that we libertarians ought to be able to do better than that. In pursuit of such positivity I will tonight be attending a lecture organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs to be given by the great Hernando de Soto. Expect a report here, and hope also for a picture, of one of the truly great men of our time. I did my best on the radio the other day, that is to say I tried to do my best. I pointed out that the Trade Justice campaigners were only fighting symptoms, and ignoring the “underlying causes” of why this nation (South Korea being a fine example) does well economically, while others do badly. (For a country that has done badly look no further than North Korea, who played with distinction in the 1966 World Cup Finals in England but who have since faded away football-wise, and done a hell – and I do mean hell – of a lot worse than that economically.) However I wasn’t persuaded by what I said. These trade justice campaigners are at least fighting some symptoms, even if not all or exactly the ones I would have liked. I remember how Amnesty International used to be accused of the same thing. They too used to fight individual cases with individual faces, while carefully ignoring the ideologically divisive matter of what makes nasty governments nasty in the first place, and well done them. Amnesty went into decline, at any rate in my eyes, not because it “fought symptoms” and ignored the “causes” of tyranny, but because its literature switched from featuring photos of unjustly imprisoned poets and tortured opposition politicians from far away places to having photos of already much celebrated celebrity supporters from the world of showbiz, and because it branched out into the perhaps correct but in my opinion utterly unrelated matter of campaigning against the death penalty. Also, since the end of the Cold War, the enemy went from being Tyranny to being Chaos, and writing begging letters to Chaos asking it to be nicer doesn’t work so well. Oh well, live and learn. Also, British TV today is full of the video of a firefighting airplane in Colorado crashing after its wings had exploded and fallen off, killing all three on board. So no more jokes from me about people starting fires. June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Brendan O’Neill asks, “Why is blogging a right-wing thing?” and adds various unflattering remarks about us, our guns and our mid-life crises. As I said to him in a private e-mail, I would dearly love to rend his gobberwarts.* But there’s a problem. I agree with him. He says:
You can’t say truer than that. It’s like being a sheepdog on a sensitivity training course these days. Pah. But after this strong start the limitations of Mr O’Neill’s mindset soon become clear:
Huh? Just what sort of fundamental challenge do you think I was putting up before the blog? Cleaning the toilet in a right-wing way? Non-multicultural clearing up after breakfast? The point about blogging is that it costs next to nothing, anyone from housewives to executives can do it, and you don’t need to go through an editor. Mr O’Neill’s disdain for such low-intensity warfare comes through in his repeated use of the word “challenge”:
Er, yes. Such a relief. As I write this post now I know that it is well short of the serious and weighty response that I could be composing were I Gladstone reborn. How nice that I’m not, and it’s just a blog post that I can get done before nipping round the shop for some more milk. For all his romantic attachment to the spirit of 1798, Sir Brendan the Serious has all the attitudes of a nobleman demanding that these oiks put down the longbows and fight properly (with the very important caveat that first they have to buy the horse and the armour i.e. get a journalism degree and a proper job.)
No, but it’s turning red and shuffling about. Did I ever tell you the story of Matthew Engel’s column that was laughed right out of the Guardian archives?
He means proper politics again. Join a party. Become activists or local councillors or journalists. Get a proper job. (Not that I have the slightest objection to Iain Murray (May his sword arm be ever strong!) or anyone else doing these things. But it all boils down to play nicely! To which I say, “Shan’t!”
Classic guerilla tactics. And a classic guerilla error is to be tempted before you are ready into full scale battles that you are certain to lose. Whoah, brakes on. Perhaps I’m in danger of letting my military metaphor push me into conclusions I don’t really believe. Although I do think the right wing three quarters of the blogosphere does indeed do much of its work by pinpricks, it may have its greatest effects through conventional means. As Brian Micklethwait says, ‘Blogging is going to impact seriously on all this, by identifying non-left and libertarian journalistic talent, giving it a start, training it, and then feeding it into the mainstream media.’ So come on Brendan, gis a job. *As Terry Pratchett fans will know, not as much fun as it sounds. (Given that Brendan O’Neill threw down two gauntlets in my direction, by sending me duplicate e-mails, one addressed to me alone and one as a member of this mighty Libetarian organ, I feel that I am entitled to scurry out of his way and squeak from the sidelines in duplicate as well. So an almost identical post to this one also appears in my blog.) June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Or: We must preserve our freedoms or the bad guys win. June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Brian remarks that no one posts him advice about what to say about Third World poverty, but that he was relatively flooded with info about the US soccer team. This is a good sign. Worrying about the US soccer team is a relatively harmless past-time. (Revelling in their defeat of Mexico might be dangerous in some places however). The libertarian answer to what radio listeners should do about the Third World is basically “do nothing”. The three main obstacles to enrichment of people in the Third World fifteen years ago were: 1) the skirmishing of the Cold War (which I think was justified by anti-Soviet forces) 2) the absence of the rule of law 3) trade barriers and a belief that socialism was better than capitalism for developing economies The first is redundant. The second can only come about by internal pressures or by the imposition of direct colonial rule from the only country whose constitution I would trust: Switzerland. Realistically this means, the Africans are going to have to sort it out for themselves. The third is very simple. We oppose Bush’s trade tarriffs. We want the European Union Common Agricultural Policy abolished immediately. We should also try to stop the IMF and the World Bank from financing welfare state programmes in countries that can’t afford them (and never will afford them, if they try to leap from pre-industrial to welfare-underclass in one go). BRING ON BRAZIL!!!!!!!!! June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I agree that Logan (see previous article) is almost certainly not a totalitarian. However I stand by my contention that there is indeed no such thing as ‘public health’ except for communicable diseases not because I disagree with his self evident statement that ‘The field of public health is primarily concerned with prevention of disease’ but that ‘health’ is not in fact legitimately ‘public’ except in the case of communicable disease (and possibly some mental illnesses as well) as it goes to who owns a person’s body. Most other health related matters are essentially only legitimately private rather than public matters. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone spending non-appropriated monies (such as a philanthropic fund) to preach high and low the virtues of folate in bread/low fat diets/wearing seat belts/not smoking/not taking crack cocaine/wearing sensible shoes/eat more fish/eat less fish/avoid mad cow beef or whatever the health scare de jour is… provided the people being preached to ‘for their own good’ are free to respond with a loud yawn and a rude gesture if they are so inclined. Yes, it is legitimate to ‘educate, persuade, and cajole individuals to take folate’… and to induce (not mandate) companies to produce folate bread… but it is not legitimate to mandate it and it was that I was objecting to. To mass medicate, such as putting folic acid in bread or fluoride in water in such a way that people cannot realistically avoid changes to their body chemistry, is to suggest that the state and its experts actually have some over-riding ownership of everyone’s physical body and they may adjust its chemistry as the likes of Professor N.J. Wald and Professor A.V. Hoffbrand see fit. Now it that is not a totalitarian value then I don’t know what is. The issue here is not health but who owns your body! June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I am a libertarian and an epidemiologist, and with these perspectives I must take issue with the statement made by Perry de Havilland that, “Except for communicable diseases, there is no such thing as ‘public health’.” The field of public health is primarily concerned with prevention of disease, so your statement is nonsensical. Of course we can prevent chronic ailments like heart disease or diabetes (though they possibly have infectious etiologies, as is increasingly being suspected for an array of conditions). The question is how- through force or persuasion?? Now, my colleagues in the field are by and large statists who look first to government mandates to improve the public’s health. In fact one of my professors, Godfrey Oakley, is a prominent folic acid researcher and was instrumental in making folate supplementation mandatory. It would give you a pounding headache to hear the list of things he think should be taken care of by government fiat. But just because practitioners of public health have so far relied on coercion for good ends does not mean that non-coercive means are not available or should not be tried. The first method for improving health, as you imply by your personal use of folic acid, is education. If undertaken by private groups health education is entirely consistent with libertarian principles, no matter how bitterly some segments of libertarianism dislike being told what to do (see www.lewrockwell.com for this perspective). It is, however insufficient to rely solely on individuals’ initiative in improving their health. Folic acid is needed during a critical period very early in pregnancy, before a woman knows she is pregnant. If folate is lacking, neural tube defects (such as spina bifida) can result. Would that every woman with the chance of conceiving were taking folate, but such is not that case. Well, if it is legitimate to educate, persuade, and cajole individuals to take folate, why would not the same apply to companies as well? U.S. bakeries put up almost no fight to the mandate that they supplement their bread with folate, mainly because the benefit was clear and the cost minimal. Had public health organizations gone directly to bakeries, rather than to the government, they would have had little problem convincing them to supplement. The companies would benefit by touting their altruism (thus negating their altruism but you get the idea), and the public would benefit from improved health. Note that if anyone objected to having folate in their bread, companies would be free to market folate-free bread. I hope you don’t think that taking this position makes me a totalitarian. Logan Spector June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The latest figures for the French parliamentary elections give the Socialists and their allies 155 seats out of 577 (the same proportion as the British Conservatives in 1997: a massacre). Martine Aubry, the creator of the 35 hour week is out, so is the Communist party leader Robert Hue, and one of the leading Greens (Dominique Voynet). To put the Aubry defeat in context, only Chirac himself, or one of the four blood contamination killers (Laurent Fabius) would be higher up my list of French politicos to revel in their misery. Meanwhile Alain Madelin the “libéral-libertaire” slipped in by 725 votes (50.6% to 49.4%). One right wing candidate in Paris got 100% of the vote (his run-off opponent, a supporter of Chirac, pulled out and endorsed him). The score in Paris (which has a Socialist mayor) was right/centre-right 9 seats, Socialists 10, Greens 2. The national abstention rate also hit a record with over 38%, a big jump from 32% in 1993 (the previous record for this sort of election). We haven’t quite been here before. The three tiers of central government (presidency, senate, house of representatives) are all in president Chirac’s hands. He also controls the constitutional court (as much as any president can) and the state media commission (yes I know it should be scrapped). The question is, what will that Byers-brain Chirac do with it. Unlike a US president he could theoretically fire nukes, declare war, arrange ‘car accidents’ for terrorist sympathisers, appoint his wife the minister for shopping and retail therapy, and screw interns – all by himself – without exceeding his powers. Remember though that the last time (in the mid-1990s) he had the opportunity to purge the state media of leftist political appointees he threatened them with a pay rise. His first spell as prime minister also broke all records for budget deficit, inflation, trade deficit, social security deficit, unemployment growth and the introduction of capital gains tax. His government also gave asylum to Ayatollah Khomeni (probably not personally his fault). These ‘achievements’ were barely matched in the early 1980s by a socialist government which included four Stalinist Communist Party ministers. Chirac’s latest political philosophy appears to be inspired by Charles Murray’s views of state welfare, the welfare underclass, prison, and a massive tax cut. Unfortunately, how this will translate next week, let alone next month, is open to speculation. As a victory over Socialism, this is a great night. Whether the ratchet effect will actually be reversed… Not for the first time, I hope Alain Madelin knows what he’s doing. June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Brian Micklethwait asserts that Americans ought to be anti-EU then finds some Americans who are anti-America (you can see where ‘Un-American’ came from). I’ve got news for you. Plenty of Europhiles love the institution of the USA. They wish to copy bits of it. In fact there is a love affair between the liberal vision of the US (‘liberal’ as in anti-gun, federal welfare programme, political correctness agenda) and the socialist vision of the EU (anti-gun, euro-welfare state and political correctness): hence Blair’s popularity in Washington when Clinton was in charge. ‘The EU’ doesn’t hate America anymore than the board of directors of Manchester United Football Club hates Real Madrid. The people who are trying to complete the creation of a European Unionist state see the USA as a competitor, a rival, a model and a partner, often all at the same time. The relationship is love-hate between the EU builders and the edifice that is the US federal government. What does ‘anti’ mean? I don’t think that Schadenfreude over the short-comings of the US in trying to crack Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (nasty, spiteful and short-sighted as it might be) is the same thing as wishing Euro-fanatics had flown passenger jets into the World Trade Center. The most paranoid EUnionist probably doesn’t expect a gang of Montana militiamen to fly an Airbus into the Europol HQ, though I’ve heard some wonderfully wacky conspiracy theories about the US programme to destroy Western (European) civilisation. Do the Yanks really rig the EU Common Agricultural Policy to suit mid-west farmers? Did the Yanks really push Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait in 1990 in order to have an excuse for stopping the French armaments industry from selling kit to Iraq? Did the Yanks really bomb Serbia as part of a Zionist plot to create an Islamist state in the Balkans? They’d love the US anti-cold war stuff put out by isolationist Libertarians if they knew about it. I think the European parliament is the most vocal opponent of the Echelon mass surveillance project around (for a mixture of good and bad reasons). In France I’ve heard several conservatives claim that the EU is a Yankee plot. I’ve also been assured by a social-democrat politician that the British opt-out from Maastricht and Tony Blair are CIA operations, but that the US will follow the EU and go completely metric by the end of 2002, and the UK adopt the €uro by 2004. He was very good at forecasting the weather in the mountains so I’m not completely confident that he’s wrong on all counts. You don’t have to be a Europhile American to prefer a European Union (as long as it can hold together), to a bigger version of the break-up of Yugoslavia, where the US ends up taking sides and making enemies. I suspect that a European Unionist state would break-up, possibly in a major war. For this reason I am skeptical about the outcomes proposed by the Euro-unionists. The reason however that I am not affiliated to any Euro-sceptic organisations is that I see no automatic salvation in nation states. Cuba is a nation state. Unification in a NAFTA super-state (with USA, Mexico and Canada) wouldn’t obviously be worse for the Cuban population than independence under Castro and his successors. Germany was a real nation state in 1939: it would take some doing for the EU to be worse. The UK did badly enough as a nation state between 1945 and 1973, not just in the economic sphere. A question I’m pondering is whether a global market creates a market for a “government standard” with a single currency, single police force, one body of contract law, single crime database, single language, etc. There is a problem of “no exit” from such a state without space travel. There is also the problem of lack of innovation in a monopoly. Absence of tax and regulation competition is another issue. My question is whether ‘government’ is a natural monopoly. If true, this suggests a pragmatic libertarian objection to economic globalisation. As I’m opposed to ‘anti-trust’ law and ‘perfect competition models’ which ‘justify’ state regulation of businesses, this makes my opposition to a world government weak, if this order emerges peacefully, consensually, and with a generally economic liberal agenda (i.e. by a market process). Only the anarcho-capitalist option of voluntary exchange and contract seems capable of offering a peaceful alternative to a World State. I’m left with the choice of opposing all government, and making the best of the largest chunks of state possible (to reduce the number of border disputes). June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I ask for advice about what to say on the radio about Third World poverty. Nothing. I mention the USA soccer team and the emails flood in. Well, one did, from Radley Balko, whose email ends with @cato.org, which makes him something to do with the Cato Institute, which makes him someone with a back to be scratched. Okay then. I said that our media are saying that the USA is ignoring the World Cup. Not so, says Bradley Balko. The USA’s media are ignoring the World Cup. But, says, Radley Balko, the USA’s people are paying it some definite attention.
Radley Balko does a blog called The Agitator where he picks up on the rumours that the Portuguese tried to get the South Koreans to agree to a draw. I just heard from our TV that this rumour is all over our newspapers too. He also has pictures reinforcing the Malkovich/Friedel similarity. And he has things about civil liberties violations in the wake of 9/11, the crazinesses of the war on drugs, and such like. If you like personal-stroke-political-stroke-humorous, have a look at it. June 18th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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