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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Given my long and strongly held reservations about the European Union (EU) and my enthusiasm for most things Internet and World Wide Web, I felt considerable discomfort reading an Accenture paper The euro and eCommerce: Bringing Europe closer to a single market. The reason for my discomfort, apart from the source of the paper, was its argument that ‘the interaction of a single currency and e-commerce will forge powerful synergies across the euro zone, enhance European competitiveness and accelerate the emergence of pan-European capital market’. So does Bad [EU] plus Good [e-commerce] equal an enhanced Good [capital market unification and its benefits]?
How is it possible that something as centralising and anti-competitive as the euro can provide such a fertile ground for e-commerce, a symbol of non-regulated and most free market business model? At first I could not fault the paper’s conclusion or even its argument, but then I realised that a dose of ‘meta-context’ analysis is needed to understand what are the underpinning ‘world views’ at work here.
The EU debate (a civilised term for the battle between the strongly opposing camps) seems to be conducted on a simplistic utilitarian level, an argument that cannot get beyond the second-tier logic and with a short to medium-term horizon. It consists, at least in the media, of collecting examples and anecdotes of beneficial or damaging effects the European project will or might have. The EU supporters put forward the positive results of their efforts and EU opponents strive to point out their negative impact. Although consequences are an important measure of success or failure, this approach rarely addresses the fundamental premises from which both sides launch their campaigns.
An EU supporter would use the paper’s conclusions to point out that the positive impact of the euro, as enhanced by e-commerce, makes the justification of monetary union more powerful. The euro together with e-commerce further breaks down the barriers between the nations and moves us closer and more rapidly towards the ‘glorious day’ of pan-European capital markets. This also:
- reduces currency exchange risk and cost.
- through the Growth and Stability Pact limits the size of public-sector deficits thus indirectly increasing private sector access to capital by reducing ‘crowding out’ by public-sector borrowers,
- encourages growth of the European corporate bond market that is now widely seen as being able to match the dollar market,
- in combination with information and communications technology enables more fluid and efficient payment processes and settlement systems,
- enhances competition and creates greater price transparency.
There you are – all of the above worthy of any libertarian, or indeed common sense, endorsement. Why would we want the UK to forgo such lovely things, which is what will happen, if we don’t join the €uro?
To me the issue is not about centralisation and efficiency versus free market and disorder. The successful coupling of the euro and e-commerce has a straightforward explanation – the euro provides, by default, a transparent standard for transactions. E-commerce, e-business or any e-prefixed interaction cannot reach its full potential without it. The issue is about the distinction between standards (good) and uniformity (bad) – uniformity as an objective, out of context and without regard for the long-term consequences (if we are to play the utilitarian game) does not sit comfortably with the pursuit of freedom. The distinction between inefficiency (bad) and variety (good) – although a certain degree of inefficiency may have to be the price we pay for variety. It seems to me that the EU has been designed and promoted by the kind of mind that does not value variety and freedom as much as it values uniformity and supposed efficiency.
I believe that the truth about the EU lies in understanding and exposing the true objectives and motivations of its supporters. An understanding of the unintended consequences of market and human interactions will have to play an important role. Therefore I call for a meta-context based examination of the EU debate that reveals the actual view of the world its supporters would have us accept instead of wasting our adrenaline on specific EU horror stories.
That careless person, Happy Fun Pundit, was so inattentive to the proper order of things as to post a lovely mini-rant on Star Trek & Socialism on his own blog rather than here on Samizdata where everyone knows such posts belong.
Chuck Kuffner claims I agree with the case made by We The People. I neither agree nor disagree, although I am inclined towards disagreement. The issues of law are far too arcane for me to state a position. I realize Kuffner has an FAQ against the tax protestor case in general, but I am likewise not in a position to judge their validity or whether they are equally as political a statement as We The People’s. Just because a lawyer wrote up opinions does not mean it is the only set of opinions on the matter or even that it is correct.
My stand is quite simple. Whether or not Bob Schulz has a legal leg to stand on, I find him a courageous individual committed to the cause of liberty. Unlike the al Qaeda hunger strike wimps at Gitmo, Schulz and Croteau went nearly all the way on a Ghandian protest:
July 20, 2001
BOB EATS THIS DAY. We The People have been heard.
High level DOJ and U.S. Congressional officials formally committed the U.S. government, in writing, this afternoon, to answer the People’s Income Tax charges.
Schulz & Croteau have first food in three weeks. Schulz heads home on Saturday.
Remonstrance hearing to be held on Capitol Hill. Rep. Henry Hyde (IL), former Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is expected to preside.
Whether his case is frivolous or not, officials responded to the hunger strike and agreed to a hearing.
Those government officials are liars and dishonourable men. Their word is of no value and is meaningless. Their promises are as solid as a treaty by the Great White Father with the American Indians. That is the judgement I do make and will stand by.
It is independant of whether his case has any validity. They gave their word to hear it. I want people to know what sort of “men” we are governed by.
They reneged. They lied. End of story.
Dr. Tim Evans has some interesting views regarding the reality of what many people ostensibly on the ‘left’ really think about healthcare
On 11 September 2001, Daniel Kruger, of the Centre for Policy Studies wrote a major feature article in the Daily Telegraph entitled Why half the members of trade unions have private health care. Kruger correctly pointed out whilst many members of the Trades Union Congress (T.U.C) continue to publicly attack Tony Blair’s efforts to establish an ever closer relationship between the National Health Service and British and French private hospitals, the trade union movement are themselves massively involved in a range of private healthcare schemes. Today, more than 3.5 million trade unionists have various forms of private health cover – which is more than half the T.U.C’s 6.8 million membership.
In his article, Kruger points to a trade union web site that spills all the beans called Trade Unions and Not-For-Profit Private Healthcare. It makes for remarkable reading and exposes the hypocrisy of many trade union leaders when it comes to private healthcare. This site quite rightly points out that the history of British independent health and social care is deeply rooted in the not-for-profit traditions of the friendly societies, mutuals, co-operatives and charities from whence the trade unions originally came in the early part of the nineteenth century. Today, for instance, BUPA is a mutual, Nuffield Hospitals are a charity, and people like the Salvation Army, Methodist Care Homes and Jewish Care all provide high quality health and social care services on a not-for-profit basis. There are literally dozens of other organisations underlining this deeply libertarian tradition.
Today, 7 million people have private medical insurance. Another 7 million people have private health cash plans such as H.S.A. (Hospital Saving Association), health cash schemes – as separate from private medical insurance invariably offer cash towards a range of services that were once covered by the NHS. For example, dentistry, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, chiropody, maternity services, allergy testing, hospital in-patient stays, convalescence, home help, and in some cases the use of an ambulance.
Another 1.2 million people have private dental insurance, whilst more than 20 million people pay directly for private dentistry with no insurance at all. 1.4 million people now have critical illness and permanent health insurance whilst 8.5 million will go private in 2002 for complimentary medicines such as osteopathy and chiropractics. Millions of these people will be trade unionists.
Perhaps, as the political scientist Dr. Nigel Ashford pointed out in 1997, it is under the historic and voluntaristic rubrics of mutuality and co-operation that Tony Blair might just continue with his Plan to Privatise UK Health and Welfare(1)
Come to think of it, perhaps that is why Labour’s ministers are beginning to talk about giving the best “three star” NHS hospitals “Independent Foundation Hospital” status and are endlessly obsessing about giving them “earned autonomy”. Strange bedfellows – funny old world!
(1)= (link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded for free)
Charles Kuffner wrote:
Oh, and surely now that several people (myself, Matthew Yglesias, Mac Thomason, Max Power) have pointed out the idiocy of [We The People] the Samizdata folks would admit that they were wrong in assigning them any credibility, right? Not quite. I stand by everything I said.
Well the trouble I have with this is twofold:
Firstly I think Dale was just pointing out what the We The People campaign are saying, not actually making much of an argument whether it was/was not really valid.
Secondly, and my biggest grouse, the ‘not quite’ link is to my article called Tax: The view from Atlantis in which I actually said I thought ‘We The People’ would lose the legal argument. So to use Charles Kuffner’s words, I thought the ‘We The People’ campaign was not a credible way of trashing the IRS. I stand by everything I say too, Chuck. What is the problem, you don’t like people agreeing with some of what you say?
Paul Staines writes in with a rational explanation about how the advocates of flat-earth economics want to ‘end poverty’ by taxing the very mechanisms of trade.
Tom Burroughes wrote on Samizdata on Wednesday:
“This morning a contact of mine called up to say he was attending an event discussing the so-called Tobin Tax, which is a levy on foreign exchange transactions named after the Nobel Prize Winning Laureate of 1981, James Tobin.”
Tom might admit its not so weird when you know that contact was myself, I took his advice and put on a pinstripe, garish shirt and clashing braces – if you are going to be an evil currency speculator, best look the part he said.
Bizarre gathering, left winger Shirley Williams was the keynote speaker, ‘anti-poverty’ campaigners, the Guardian’s economics editor and a couple of economists who have never worked outside academia made up the panel. If you plan to tax foreign exchange transactions best not to involve anybody who has actually done an FX trade in the planning I guess. Besides myself, amongst a sea of ‘anti-poverty’ campaigners the only dissident voice was a journalist from the Financial Times and a pretty young student thing from London School of Economics. The cherub from the LSE asked the entirely logical question “won’t this be a regressive tax on third world traders?”
For example I’m a gum farmer from Sudan, I sell my gum to Rowntrees Ltd. in the UK so they can make fruit pastilles. I want Sudanese dinars, Rowntrees pay pounds sterling, I sell the pounds for dollars (Tobin tax time), I sell the dollars for dinars (Tobin tax time). Minor currencies are always quoted against the dollar, so if you come from a small country you pay the tax twice – and this regressive tax helps the developing world?
War on Want reckon that $250 bn a year can be raised by taxing currency speculation at a mere 0.1%. Sounds like a cheap tax with great rewards. Lots of talk about how $1 trillion a day passes across the FX markets daily. You know how it is, I buy a $1m you sell ¥130m, I buy £1m you sell $1.6m next thing you know, by days end we’ve consummated $1bn in trade. And hopefully I’m up $10,000. Did you notice how the big numbers and the profits are very different? Banks also have their profits taxed by the way. I pointed out that if you add up the profits of all the investment banks this year, it probably doesn’t even make $10bn. Its been a tough year. So where will this $250bn come from? Stand up row ensues, I don’t care about the poor being the conclusion. They were, genuinely, quite shocked to realise the sums couldn’t add up by a factor of 2500%. So much for ending world poverty next year.
Have you ever played poker for hours and ended up with the same money you started out with? Well these jokers think that we’d still play cards if the croupier stole a chip every deal. Obviously we’d play at a casino that didn’t steal our chips, say the Bahamas, Zürich or cyberspace, but I suspect Chancellor Gordon Brown will continue to be the croupier for a free market City of London, home to nearly half the world’s FX deals, he won’t start stealing the chips any time soon.
Patrick Crozier has a good article On Corporate Manslaughter. He notes that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) will be prosecuting Railtrack (the company which ‘owns’ the actual railroad infrastructure in Britain, recently in effect re-nationalised by the State). Thus one part of the state is trying to make another part of the state pay fines to yet another part of the state.
Patrick makes several excellent points and avoids the usual stale perspectives on these sort of issues.
It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you have just bombed
– Unknown
Jason Soon over on the Catallaxy Files has a fascinating article about the idea of using native rights to over-fished waters as a means for achieving some free market environmentalism.
Libertarians have long claimed that there are alternatives to environmental regulation – one of the more obvious is giving property rights to what were previously unowned resources. Native title rulings seem to be a perfect opportunity (where a tradition of property ownership can be established) to put this worthy libertarian principle into practice while recognising ‘Aboriginal rights’ in a manner that promotes economic efficiency and justice and encourages entrepreneurship – and privatises more of Australia (alright so ownership will be vested in the tribe but how is that different from firms in Western society owning property? It’s part of their tradition, let them sort out the principal-agent problems).
Interesting idea. The whole article is well worth pondering.
Kevin Holtsberry uses Russell Kirk‘s opus The Conservative Mind to analyse his own views. I find this approach interesting because I suspect the devil is in the details. Here is my libertarian take on Kevin’s listed summation of ‘The Conservative Mind’:
1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.
Yes: I believe that morality is something objectively derived but the understanding of which is often an evolutionary process. However it is this objectively derivable morality, which being the basis for all natural law, which transcends the custom of time and place and complex utilitarian constructs of written law, business and economy. It is the test all custom and law must in the end be subject to.
2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
Yes, this is surely one of the keys to a libertarian or classical liberal mindset: an antipathy to conformity as a desirable objective independent of context. It is liberty and the inevitable diversity of objectives and understandings that spring from minds freed from literal coercion that is the highest objective of the classical liberal, rather than a utilitarian objective such as tractor production or discouraging single mothers. I am not so convinced “proliferating variety and mystery of human existence” is actually a true conservative value however.
3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders an classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.”
Yes, but given that ‘class’ is just a moving amorphous set of social cues, it is not something that is an end in and of itself, anymore than ‘classlessness’ should be. It is only when concepts of class take on force backed statutory characteristics that ‘class’ becomes an objective ill. ‘Class’ when rationally understood is an emergent phenomena that means a whole lot less than Marxists would have people believe.
4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.
Yes. All true libertarians would regard this as axiomatic.
5) Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would restructure society upon abstract designs.
Yes. Civil society is the product not of reason and imposed models of ‘what should be’ but rather of evolutionary processes. To think otherwise is to confuse the essential difference between society and state, which is the underpinning fallacy beneath all forms of statism. Yet a willingness to let ‘nature take its course’ invariably means a willingness to accept the inevitability that as economic realities shift and readjust dynamically within any rational economic system, so too will society… and not all people who have ‘abstract visions of society’ want those visions imposed at bayonet point.
6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration rather than a torch of progress.
Yes, see above. But the libertarian/classical liberal is also a dynamist, and thus grasps that rational understanding of the gradualist evolutionary nature of societies does not preclude an enthusiasm for innovation and the changes that tend to spring from that. A society which accepts change through social evolution and development towards a less statist/stasist imposed order is not a society unmaking itself but rather one becoming deeper and denser: an adaptable society is a successful society.
This morning a contact of mine called up to say he was attending an event discussing the so-called Tobin Tax, which is a levy on foreign exchange transactions named after the Nobel Prize Winning Laureate of 1981, James Tobin. The tax is proposed by such politicians of usually leftist anti-market hue as French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who favour the tax as a way of reducing the massive flows of foreign exchange business and hence, they hope, in reducing the power of global markets. It is a vain hope. For starters, any attempt to tax foreign exchange deals would be a massive boost for the offshore tax-haven market, already booming as investors wisely choose to domicile their businesses there to avoid paying tax. It is an idea that has, in my view, very little chance of taking form. It would be a particular blow to the City of London, which boasts a vast foreign exchange market on which many jobs depend.
Anyway, on Monday Professor Tobin, a former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, passed away. One should not speak ill of the dead, and on the whole my impression of Tobin is that of a distinguished economist. But let us hope the foolish levy that bears his name passes away also to the great dustbin of bad ideas in the sky.
Sometimes I leap to defend libertarian ideas with a glad cry, filled with the joy of battle. And sometimes I do it with a peg on my nose, scarcely able to believe that it is my fingers doing the typing. In the latter spirit do I second the Brian Micklethwait line in an earlier post. Incest between adults falls into the category of wrong (and in my view impious, and, no, I am not joking or posing when I use that word) actions that nonetheless should not be illegal.
I did not enjoy writing that, but it got me thinking. Might a libertarian society be more, not less conformist than our present one? A favourite theme of mine is the coming return of the age of the verbal oath made in person. For the last few hundred years we have leant on the crutch of documentary or camera proof but the time is coming when technology will allow us to fake anything. Then, my friends, a man’s word had better be his bond, at least if he wants to borrow money. The only way of telling who is creditworthy will be personal recommendation. Well, in a similar way, we have leant on the crutch of law to regulate our social relations. Should that crutch be removed, a man or a woman’s reputation may once again be his or her most precious possession. And since reputation is decided by others, public opinion will matter more.
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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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