This whole notion of loyalty to one’s country really has no meaning whatsoever, since countries always change, just as do people who live in them. The only loyalty worth anything is that to one’s values and principles.
– commenter Alisa
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Now that the likes of yours truly are back from holiday to a post-Olympic London, I have been reading about the number of people who noted how quiet London (outside the Games areas) has been. Tranquil streets, empty restaurants, that sort of thing. It appears that the authorities, such as Transport For London, did a “good” job, in a way, in putting the fear of God into the domestic populace. Janet Daley writes:
I am very pleased the event has gone off well. Not least because there were not (unless it has been kept secret) any major security problems at the Games. Lots of sportsmen and women had a grand old time, the capital looked pretty good to outsiders, etc. The last two weeks does certainly prove that if certain organisations want to convince Londoners that they should get out, they will. Holding the Games in August also helped. And the terrible summer weather leading up to the Games also encouraged a lot of us to hit the airports and railway stations. I may have missed some of the buzz of Olympic London, but the lovely countryside and weather in Southwestern France more than compensated for it. There is, of course, the matter of the cost of all this. To borrow from Frederic Bastiat, the French economics and legal writer, we can all see the benefits of shiny new stadiums, swimming pools and cycle tracks. That is seen. What is not seen are the things and services that will not be supplied or made due to the taxes and other charges imposed to make the Olympics happen. There are no photos of entrepreneurs whose business plans might be stillborn from such costs, for example. I doubt whether Lord Coe or other Olympic grandees gave much thought to the opportunity costs of such events, or cared. And the insights of Bastiat apply to other “eye-catching” projects: space flights, high speed rail, big aircraft carriers, etc. Anyway, I am not going to rain on the parade of what appears to have been a successful event. But being the Adam Smith libertarian that I am, it would be remiss not to remind fans of big sporting jamborees that these things have a cost, and the costs will be borne by those quite different, sometimes, from the beneficiaries. August 13th, 2012 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I used to consider myself a patriot… no more. There is simply nothing to be proud about and we have the government the voters deserve. But I didn’t leave England, England left me. – Thaddeus Tremayne, overheard over dinner. August 12th, 2012 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
The state funded Great Britain team has (by perception) done extremely well at the London 2012 Olympics. As a consequence (?) there are calls amongst politicians and sports bureaucrats to make competitive sport compulsory for children. The state funded Australia team has (by perception) done extremely badly at the London 2012 Olympics. As a consequence (?) there are calls amongst politicians and sports bureaucrats to make competitive sport compulsory for children. I have a standing personal rule that whenever someone proposes compulsory activities for children that are implied to be wholesome – particularly if they involve going outdoors and running around in some way – I should immediately compare them to the Hitler Youth, on the basis that the comparison is always fair. So consider it compared. August 11th, 2012 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The world’s energy problem seems to have been solved, but governments do not seem to have noticed. August 10th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Peter Schiff is an economics guru held in high esteem by several of my libertarian acquaintances, and he is is starting a gold-based bank. The good news:
The bad news:
In the comments on my previous posting here, about what went wrong and when, much was made of the idea that in addition to knowing what went wrong it would help a lot if we can also say how to put it right. Personally, I believe that “politics” is never going to sort this mess out, certainly not politics alone. What might is people just recreating the gold standard on a freelance basis, by such means as joining in with enterprises of the sort described above. Yes, governments can shut such things down, as the above report makes abundantly clear. But if large numbers of people start placing side bets in enterprises of this sort, then it starts to become politically hazardous to just forbid such arrangements. One of my favourite slogans just now is: “This isn’t gold going up; it’s the dollar (the pound, the euro, the yen, the whatever) going down.” That is because I consider this to be the basic idea behind a non-state imposed (which is the good kind of) gold standard. When large numbers of people measure state fiat currencies by how badly they do against gold, rather than gold by how “well” it is doing against this or that collapsing currency, then that is surely the beginning of the end for these currencies. August 10th, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of my understandings of the current financial mess that the world is in concerns when the various contending diagnosticians think that the rot set in. The earlier the more Austrianist, seems to be the rule. Instapundit recently linked to a piece by James Pethokoukis concerning the diagnosis offered by Robert Hetzel. Hetzel thinks the problems only got seriously serious around 2008. Until then, it had been a bit up and down, but nothing that bad. But then, in 2008, the Fed, and central banks the world over, adopted money supply policies that were too restrictive. By not creating enough more money at that moment, the Fed turned a little temporary difficulty into a far bigger difficulty. I’m not an expert on this stuff, but this is similar to what Milton Friedman et al said about what triggered the Great Depression, is it not? Hetzel is, I presume, some kind of Friedmanite Monetarist. He reckons he knows exactly how to skipper the nationalised industrial ship that is money. I reckon he doesn’t. For if Detlev Schlichter and the other Austrianists are right (I think they are), the rot set in a long, long time before 2008. The idea that, if things had been handled just that little bit more deftly in 2008 all could have been well – bar a slight bump or two – is just wrong. The world by then was full of bad investments, and these investments were – are – going to have to be liquidated if the world economy is ever going to start motoring again. Encouraging even more bad investment, which is what Hetzel is saying should have been done, would only have made the grief still to come that much more grievous. Whether James Pethokoukis agrees with Hetzel with anything resembling the vehemence with which I disagree with Hetzel, I do not know. Perhaps he just wants an excuse to blame everything on President Obama. But if the Austrianists are right (they are – reprise), it goes way back, to Nixon and before, to the very creation of central banks as a means of sucking wealth out of economies (traditionally to wage war) without people getting the chance to complain too loudly in some sort of parliament. The idea that Obama, or for that matter George W. Bush, could have entirely solved the world’s present financial problems, i.e. solved them without any political grief, is absurdly mistaken. They could make it worse and they both did, with only a bit less Hetzelism than Hetzel now thinks they should have perpetrated. The idea that, with one Hetzelian bound, they could have freed us all from any grief is crazy. As is the idea that dumping Obama and replacing him with someone less malevolent, anti-American, socialistic, Christian, atheist, Muslim, environmentalist, Chicagoan, incoherent, lazy, golf-loving, devoted to black magic (take your pick), will fix everything. In my opinion dumping Obama would be better than not dumping him. But doing this could merely be the difference between jumping off the cliff instead of sliding down it. August 9th, 2012 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is 1912 I am referring to (of course), when Britain had ended up behind the United States and Sweden, and not more recent times. A certain Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who you may have heard of) is particuarly upset:
But he has a solution:
Like the Australians know anything about winning at the Olympics. Ha! Actually, Sir Arthur is kinda sorta touching on, what is, in 1912, for Britain, a worrisome issue. Britain’s lead is slipping. France, Germany and the US are all catching up. Meanwhile, the colonies, especially Canada and Australia, are becoming less dependent on the Mother Country. Britain wants to retain some influence without getting into the same mess it got into with the Americans. Hence ideas are being floated for a combined tariff wall, a combined defence staff and (in this case) a combined Olympics team. They won’t work, of course, but Britain does, at least, manage to avoid a war of colonial repression. And the colonies manage to show up on time for the world wars. August 9th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Almost a SQOTD, but Guy beat me to it:
That is Chris Anderson in Wired writing about how automated flying aircraft happen to need just the same sensors and processors that are found in smartphones, and hobbyists and increasingly serious people like farmers surveying their crops are taking advantage of this. I suspect his first sentence applies more generally. August 8th, 2012 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you think £2m for a project without any policy implications is expensive, just imagine how expensive it would have been with policy implications. – The IEA’s Kristian Niemitz on the Office for National Statistic’s venture in ‘happiness research’. August 8th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Earlier this year, I bought myself an FZ150. But now there’s an FZ200. And the torture begins:
Now they tell me.
Is this why some people hate progress? The thing is, my FZ150 is the best camera I’ve ever owned. And now there is a better one. August 7th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Incoming:
You’re welcome. August 7th, 2012 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
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