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If no one will buy this oil then why is there a market price for it? And why are there transactions occurring at this market price? We can go further. This oil is owned by someone. That means someone has bought it. It’s entirely true that some of this oil – say maturing futures at Cushing – has a negative price. But that’s just an annoying market price, not the absence of a market nor a lack of a price at which someone will buy it. April 26th, 2020 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The (Glasgow) Herald reports,
The Test Acts, in case you had forgotten,”were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and nonconformists.”
As I mention every time this subject comes up, I am more of a believer in anthropogenic climate change than many here. But the Scottish Government is working on that. If profession of a certain belief becomes a test of office, then soon enough every office holder will profess that belief. But why should anyone believe them? Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? April 26th, 2020 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
It shakes. It convulses. It casts off its old body. It emerges softer and more flexible. Don’t kid yourself. It’s still a tarantula. Clare Foges writes in the Times, “We need Big Brother to beat this virus”.
April 25th, 2020 | 63 comments - (Comments are closed)
About half the patients have managed to recover sufficiently to ‘earn’ a tracheostomy and be weaned off the ventilator. The damage to their lungs makes us all wonder if any will avoid being respiratory cripples. Despite this recovery, COVID is also leading to profound neurological dysfunction. Some patients are agitated and confused but for a significant proportion, the lights are on but no one is home. We wonder how families will react to their loved ones being different people. – Dr Smith at the Adam Smith Institute’s Despatches blog. Smith is an ASI supporter who has gone back to the NHS for the crisis and is reporting from the front line. We are lucky to have a reliable source of information at a time like this. April 24th, 2020 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
As you know, despite being right next to China – or perhaps because it is right next to China – Japan is having a good coronavirus outbreak. Despite getting it earlier than Western European countries it has had fewer cases and fewer deaths (349 at time of writing). Why is this? I’d had it down to mask-wearing which as anyone who has ever been to Japan will know is very common. But I wasn’t quite sure, so when the other night NHK (that’s Japan’s equivalent of the BBC. Think bad, but not that bad) had a documentary on the subject I thought I’d take a look. So, what did they say? The first thing that struck me is that they are bricking it. They – meaning the team that has been set up to study the outbreak – can see this killing a lot of people. They in no sense feel that they have turned a corner. They look enviously at the South Koreans and Singaporeans who had far better testing capacity. That’s not to say they aren’t proud. “I had every faith in the Japanese people.” says one. Another aspect is the way that Japanese government is formally powerless but informally quite the reverse. There is no legal lockdown in place in Japan because – they say – they don’t have the powers. So why doesn’t the government grant itself those powers like they did in Britain, one wonders? They don’t say. But it would appear that the government “requesting” that people stay away from bars and other crowded places has had the effect of law. The approach of the study team was – and it may well have changed since the documentary was filmed – to study in detail the outbreaks that occurred. They concluded that the big spreader was the 3 Cs: (En)closed; Crowded; Close Proximity. I must admit that I thought crowded and close proximity meant the same thing. But I guess that crowded refers to the number of people present. One of Japan’s hottest of coronavirus hotspots turned out to be a “Blitish pub” – whatever that may be. I was amused to see that their chief modeller spent time at – you guessed it – Imperial College. So there’s a very good chance that they’re using the same dodgy, secret code that we are. It’s not just viruses that get transmitted from human to human. What they didn’t do was address why they are doing so well. Considering the size of Tokyo and the scale of commuting there you would have thought it would be far worse. So, I’ll stick with my original hunch. Masks work.  Masks work. Usually but not always. Two days later I was in hospital. April 24th, 2020 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Swine Flu was never eradicated. It has hung around ever since it first emerged in 2009 but now goes by the name ‘flu’. It’s quite possible that coronavirus ends up seen as part of the viral furniture, lethal, but a manageable risk if the right preparations are there. April 24th, 2020 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
A writer I follow is Joel Kotkin, who is based in the US and writes a lot about how cities and other human settlement patterns are changing. COVID-19 will accelerate changes in place, such as moves from big, crowded cities towards more roomy surburbs and the rural areas (this obviously comes up against issues such as zoning and planning controls). One thing that his article here does not say a lot about though is the future of the car. For the last few decades, the standard narrative from what might be loosely called “The Established Elite” is that cars are bad when the masses have them, because of congestion, pollution, not to mention how they encourage the plebs to go where they want. The whole idea of owning and caring about a car, of guys chatting about engine sizes, 0-60 speed performance and all that Jeremy Clarkson sort of stuff, drives our Established Elites nuts. But if public transport struggles to win back the punters after the plague dies down, and people remember how valuable it was to have a car, where does this leave the anti-car agenda? (As an aside, here is a playful article by a libertarian chap who connects up the experience of freedom with driving cars and riding motorbikes. April 23rd, 2020 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
Seriously old chap, you need to slay that damn dragon, you know, lance through her head, and then head back to England. You even missed your grandmum’s birthday FFS! You’ll be forgiven, but only if you return alone. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; April 23rd, 2020 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Overall it’s just that Birkenstock stamping on a human face, forever, again isn’t it? April 22nd, 2020 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just imagine the current Wuhan Coronavirus lockdown, not for a month or two, but forever, with government telling you when you can go out, when you can travel, who can work and what jobs are ‘essential’. Welcome to the NetZero future some people want for everyone. If this message lodges in enough minds, the Chinese Bat Lung pandemic might actually have a substantial upside. April 22nd, 2020 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is too long and not right for a Samizdata Quote of the Day. I am busy today, but just have to put this up:
Arnold Kling. (Hat-tip, Tyler Cowen at his Marginal Revolution economics blog.) Margaret Thatcher once famously said (to the fury of the Left) that socialists always run out of other people’s money. Same applies to locking people down for months on end. It will end. The issue is how high the rubble is going to be. April 21st, 2020 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Taiwan is not a Chinese province, you bat-eating, dog-beating, grave-robbing, ethnic cleansing, police state cockwomble of a stolen Nazi uniform. April 20th, 2020 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
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