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People occasionally ask me why I work as a journalist. Is it the thrill of interviewing British Chancellor Gordon Brown, covering aspects of the Enron disaster or implications of September 11th? Well I guess the answer would be yes to all of the above. But, gentle readers, it is stories like this one that really make working for Reuters so rewarding. It is libertarian, in a not terribly intellectual kind of way. Enjoy. May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Brendan O’Neill is a republican in the British sense of the word, which is to say he wants to abolish Britain’s figurehead monarchy. He wants to do this because it is ‘anti-democratic’. Of course when a Marxist says ‘democratic’ it is useful to actually ponder the meaning of the word and how it is being used. After all, communist East Germany was the ‘People’s German Democratic Republic’… and Brendan is both a self described republican and in favour of democracy, so clearly one must not just assume that when the D word gets bandied about we all mean the same thing. Or do we? When I use the term democratic, it is generally in a negative pejorative sense. To me it means my neighbours voting themselves some of my money, in effect mugging me by proxy when the state taxes me for their perceived benefit. To me ‘democratic’ means allowing my neighbour a say in how I build my house and how I raise my children and what chemicals get put in my food and water regardless of what I want. Democracy is at its core about denying the concept of ownership, even of your own body, because other people get to use the violence of the state via their ballots to reduce my actual ownership. When the state intermediates itself, it negates society, because state and society are two completely different things. The morality of several ownership, even of yourself, gets superceded by the force based political state. So when I hear people like Brendan say something is ‘anti-democratic’ I usually assume that whatever they are referring to is actually a good thing. The US Constitution for example is quite anti-democratic because it severely constrains (in theory at least) the ability of people to vote for laws that would abridge liberties (such as freedom of speech or the right to own the means to defend yourself)… so things that act as a check on that violence backed tyranny of the majority called ‘democracy’ are generally a splendid idea. For me, voluntary social interaction is the source of legitimacy, not the sanctification of the ballot box and the violent intermediation that springs from it. Yes, I suspect Brendan and I do indeed mean the same thing when we use the term ‘democratic’, I just happen to regard it as the means by which a vast engine of criminality powers itself whereas Brendan sees it as the key to an egalitatian Utopia at gunpoint. So whilst I must confess to being infused with the widespread indifference to the monarchy Brendan mentions, the fact is the Queen steals a great deal less of my money and poses a far lesser threat to my liberty than the democratically elected thugs in Downing Street, so I for one am happy to use the Jubilee as an excuse to hoist a few drinks to toast the health of ‘Her Majesty’, who reigns without ruling, something I am unlikely to ever do to the Capo di tutti Capi, the Prime Minister, who rules without reigning. May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I can assure Tony Millard (see below) that mine shines through pure and strong throughout the ages having started its life on the wrong side of a Habsburg bed… As to being led by one’s ancestral star, I see the task more like building my own constellation… May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Tony Millard cogitates about ancestry and its influence on the modern man…sort of Another major busy farmer day yesterday – among other events there was a return of the well excavator, which has been away for a month, in pasta-sphere time, for some minor surgery. I thus had some quality “digger time” yesterday afternoon which is as good a substitute as can be found for the 7.05am Haslemere-Waterloo express, upon which I used to do most of my cogitation (45 mins each way per day) before moving to easier-on-the-eyes Northern Tuscany. It struck me as to the appositeness (or otherwise) of our antecedents. For instance, many moons ago I used to be a broker at Lloyd’s – a job something akin to a pirate on the Spanish Main. Well blow me over with a wafting feather, if I didn’t discover after a while that a couple of my fellow-travellers around the floor of Lloyd’s sported the names Kidd and Morgan, and yes, they were both direct descendants of the eponymous pirates. Genetic programming or pure coincidence? Or just a couple of boys having some fun at the expense of their ancestors? Who knows… Perhaps we should ask Adriana Cronin or Perry de Havilland, if they are led by the ancestral star. Me, well, I’ve been traced back to a family of itinerant and impoverished flour millers of 17th century Britain. QED. Anyone else sporting an interesting past? Tony Millard, Tuscany, Italy May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
In my capacity as the Supreme Pamphleteer of the Libertarian Alliance I am assembling the next Stuffed Envelope operation, consisting of, you know, publications. Arising out of this exercise in twentieth century nostalgia, and for reasons I can’t be bothered to explain, I find myself searching, at present in vain, for the exact chapter and page number of the following quote, probably from The Fellowship of the Ring, and probably from Chapter 2 (“The Council of Elrond”), said, I’m told, by Gandalf (good) about Sauron (bad):
A magnum of warm virtuous feelings for the first person to tell me the answer and put me out of my editorial misery. Update: [Editor: Ah, the power of the blogosphere…Thanks for the help, the information is now safely lodged in Brian’s head] May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I don’t know why I still bother noting the various examples of the fact that governments are inherently inefficient. I suppose because this one, as government cock-ups (and accounting errors) go, is a whopper. The US Treasury has admitted that is has ‘lost’ $17.3 billion (£11.7 billion) because of shoddy book-keeping – enough to buy a fleet of eight B-2 stealth bombers and still have change for jet fuel, as Chris Ayres of The Times calculates in his article. The misplaced cash is nearly 30 times greater than the $600 million error in Enron’s reported profits that led to its spectacular bankruptcy last December. The admission, contained in the 2001 Financial Report of the United States Government, is likely to infuriate firms that have been targeted by the Bush Administration for sloppy accounting. I wonder if the anti-capitalist activists screaming about Enron’s malfeasance will be sceaming 30 times louder about this? To top it up, Paul O’Neill, the US Treasury Secretary, writes in the introduction to the Financial Report:
However, on page 110 of the Financial Report is a note that explains that the Treasury’s books did not balance because of a missing $17.3 billion. So no holidays for you then…? Oh, well, it’s not like it’s your money, is it? May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Well, it seems hapless former UK transport minister and all-round-twit Stephen Byers learned the hard way of why the once-magnificent British railway system was to prove his downfall. As they say, it could not have happened to a nicer guy. Meanwhile, Patrick Crozier, at his excellent UK Transport blog, confesses to being totally surprised at the resignation of Byers. I confess to feeling the same way. But of course I am not kidding myself that anything will change in the quality of our transport network as a result of Byers’ departure. The trains will still be late and dirty, the Tube (underground subway) will still be noisy, late and hot; our roads will be jammed, and the cost of motoring will still be extortionate. Britain is a member of the Group of Seven industrial nations and yet we have an increasingly third world transportation system.  May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
No, they cannot touch me for coining. I am the King himself. May 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Freedom works. You know that from your own life. Give it a chance to work for everyone else as well. May 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
So he’s gone. Stephen Byers, formerly Secretary of State for the Department of Local Government, Transport and the Regions has resigned. And just when I thought he’d never go. You just can’t tell. Now, all the speculation is about who should replace him. Should it be invisible Charles Clarke? Or should it be Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon? Neither is about to set the world alight. Of the two, Hoon, would seem to have the best credentials to step into Byers’s shoes: not only can’t he manage the news, but I understand he’s rapidly buggering up the armed forces. But I have got a much better and simpler idea. One that will almost certainly solve our transport problems. Abolish the Department. It only goes back to 1919. Before then we had the best railway in the world. We had already built most of the tube. Electric trams, taximeter cabs and motorised buses plied the streets of the capital looking for trade. And then Transport got a Ministry and a Minister: Eric Geddes. It got off to a bad start – forcibly re-organising the railways and hamstringing their profits. So started their steady decline. And after the bad start things just got worse. London Transport was nationalised halting development in its tracks. Not satisfied with that they then decided to nationalise the whole railway. The decline just gathered pace. And so on and so forth. Luckily the Ministry’s incompetence was masked by the growth of road transport. But even there motorways were built too late and in insufficient numbers. Almost every move the Department has ever made has made things worse: expanding the railway, then cutting it; expanding the road network then slamming on the brakes. They couldn’t get nationalisation right. They couldn’t even get privatisation right. Politicians are not part of the solution: they are part of the problem. May 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Despite Perry’s recent preoccupations, Samizdata seems to be bowling along nicely, doesn’t it? The pattern is, there’s an eight hour silence, Perry is out on the town trying to sign up more Samizdatans and getting somewhat “tired”, I decide it’s up to me, I post a page-and-a-half of waffle about whatever comes into my head and other Samizdatans read it and say to themselves we can’t have all those Americans thinking all this is is Brian waffling we’d better do something. So they do. And I now have some rambling to do in reply. I liked Paul Staines’ bit about Britain’s growth rate having sunk like a stone. What this confirms is that British government income is now as high as it can be. Increasing the percentage rate of taxation doesn’t increase government tax income, it merely slows the economy down and causes government income to remain static. Similarly, if the government were to reduce the percentage rate of tax, government income wouldn’t decrease. This would merely cause the economy to surge forward, and the smaller slice of a bigger cake would end up being the same size as the bigger slices of smaller cakes. Britain is now at the top of the Laffer Curve. Isn’t that exciting? In plain English, the bastards are taking us for the absolute maximum amount they can, and if they get any greedier we stop coming through their bit of the forest. If they truly want to spend more on the British National Health Service they are going to have to spend less on other things. Aaron Armitage liked my ramble about gun-control, but wants to add that: “… people who are more likely to be shot are more likely to buy guns for self-defense. In other words, the risk of getting shot causes the gun ownership, not the other way around.” Quite right. Capitalise the P, take away “in other words”, and we have another anti-gun-control aphorism for the collection. I didn’t pay much attention to that David Caruso movie, but by the end Marg Helgenberg was making excellent use of a gun to kill a bad person. David Caruso, if I understood matters correctly, continued to disapprove and instead of remaining with Marg like a Real Man and having some more sex with her in her swimming pool instead buggered off to Rio de Janeiro. Good riddance. Whatever happened to David Caruso? (E-mailers: I do not care what happened to David Caruso.) I was delighted that Alice Bachini responded to my bit about pram design. I feared that this pram posting had disappeared into the oblivion bucket labelled Things That Belligerent Men Of A Certain Age In T-Shirts With Jobs In IT Don’t Care About. “Prams? Prams?!?!?!?! We want threats to H-Bomb the Middle East, girls in black leather on motor bikes, GNP statistics, guns, jet planes, pictures of Kylie Minogue in see-through clothing …” [stay tuned gentlemen]. “We may not be Real Men, but at least when we’re sitting at our computers allow us to pretend that we are.” Etc.) Anyway Alice, thanks. You caught me committing an error I’m fond of denouncing others for, which is another Fixed-Quantity-Of fallacy, in this case the Fixed Quantity of Infant Attention fallacy. Your point being: outside stimulation increases the total capacity of infants to pay attention to things in general, such as and including Mum. They don’t either attend to the outside world or to Mum. They pay more attention to both. Makes sense. That’s enough rambling for now. I’ll get to Antoine later. As usual, most of what he’s saying I agree with. May 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Well, it seems the Communist state of North Korea is not letting its downtrodden citizens get so much of a sniff of the World Cup tournament, which kicks off this weekend. Anti-football snobs may claim this is a rare example of the benefits of Communism, but as an (admittedly currently depressed) Ipswich Town and England fan, this story surely demonstrates the evils of what Marx has spawned, May 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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