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The thing is, when you were ten years old, wouldn’t you have loved to have gone down a mine or up a chimney? – Patrick Crozier has dropped by (to help me buy gold on the internet), and we were talking about how education is probably the most vulnerable of all the big ongoing government spending sprees, in the face of the forthcoming financial meltdown. June 25th, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 … no, it was the highest institutions of the Netherlands who were on trial with their credibility and very legitimacy at stake. Although I am delighted he was acquitted of all charges, frankly it is a disgrace that he was ever put on trial in the first place for simply stating his views about Islam and multiculturalism. And the fact the BBC calls him ‘far right’ tells you nothing useful about Geert Wilders’ views but speaks volumes about the BBC. June 24th, 2011 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Brian Micklethwait of this blog has linked to a series of nice take-downs of the work of the “documentary” maker, Adam Curtis. I link to one rather nice video at that man’s expense. One of Curtis’ recent efforts was about Alan Greenspan and the dangers of giant computers or something. He’s a sort of posh conspiracy theorist for people who would otherwise scoff at the sort of guy who rants that Man never really landed on the Moon, Jews bombed the WTC, etc. It is arguable that the whole phenomenon of the “documentary” as an impartial piece of good journalism has been more or less hammered in recent years. After all, we have had the various efforts of Michael Moore, which, like Curtis’s efforts, are not really designed to inform or ask difficult questions, but a form of propaganda, and a form that plays well to the smug complacency of fashionable opinion. But let’s be fair, even a programme which said things with which I agreed, such as this Channel 4 Martin Durkin one about explosive government debt, used techniques to pull on our heartstrings, although I thought in that programme, it did make an argument – an extremely good one. With the Curtis stuff, it is more like taking a sort of drug. Maybe the whole idea of a non-biased documentary needs to be junked. Perhaps the honest truth is that these programmes don’t really lend themselves to a sort of “on the one hand and on the other” sort of fairness; in truth, a guiding narrative, with a punchline at the end, is what makes these things work. But then this is clearly advocacy journalism and a form that does not square with it being paid for by a state-privileged broadcast network such as the British Broadcasting Corporation. Then again, the whole idea of a broadcaster financed via a tax needs to be ditched, so that Curtis will have to make such rubbish without my having to pay for it. I wonder if Curtis wants to do one of his documentaries on the idea of governments using state broadcasters to shape opinion? No, I did not think so. June 24th, 2011 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Another zinger of a piece by Detlev Schlichter. If you are not reading his stuff regularly, you need to deal with that oversight. He’s indispensable:
And he signs off with this:
With some honourable exceptions, I find it hard to think of many even supposedly “private” banks in the world as proper, capitalist institutions in any sense. Their reliance on the crack cocaine of cheap credit has become too entrenched. June 23rd, 2011 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am not entirely happy about an article, which is fine as far as it goes in defending libertarians from the idea that we are all callous brutes who would rather walk by the other side of the road, so to speak. I agree that that is wrong. Of course, there are one or two so-called libertarians who might not give a damn about anyone else but themselves, and they are happily avoided. In my experience, however, the vast majority of libertarians are not just right-thinking, they are fine individuals: generous, creative and benevolent to their fellows. But this is a rationally selfish thing. Think about it: if you believe freedom is a good thing because of the wealth and opportunities that it leads to, you will realise pretty fast that it is inconsistent to want freedom for yourself but not for anyone else. Not just inconsistent, but dumb. However, for all that the article does make that sort of point, citing fine groups such as the Institute for Justice, the article is somewhat spoiled by this rather silly paragraph:
He’s making a fairly basic mistake here. The pursuit of rational, long term self interest – the words “rational” and “long-term” are crucial – is totally congruent with spending time and money to support the genuine freedoms of others. After all, as any Rand “sycophant” would argue, if we do not defend freedoms with a bit of effort, and go into bat to defend causes that are important, even if they are unpopular, or appear weird, then they will find themselves in a very lonely place if their own freedoms are attacked. A genuinely selfish person, who holds his own life and flourishing as his ultimate value and cultivates the virtues to achieve it fully (reason, independence, honesty, pride, productiveness, justice and integrity), will want to see freedom expand. The cost of spending a bit of time lobbying, arguing and campaigning is, for such a person, outweighed by the long term benefits. The individual benefits if the total sum of liberty is increased, in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. For the Rand “sycophant”, the real stupidity would be to ignore the wider world and its problems. By the same token, libertarians understand the Law of Unintended Consequences: a lot of supposedly “altruistic” government interventions, for example (I use the word altruist in the usual, not Randian sense) make many real or imaginary problems far worse (examples: the War on Drugs, Prohibition, state education, etc). One example of “selfish activism” might illustrate the point. For a long time I have been going along to events hosted by FOREST, the UK-based pressure group that defends the rights of people to smoke in privately owned places such as pubs. I don’t smoke, in fact I dislike the stink of tobacco and ask people not to spark up in my apartment. But I defend the libertarian line on smoking because I realise that if such freedoms get eroded without protest, then things I want to do could be banned next. For similar reasons, I’ll defend the right of people to publish hateful remarks (so long as they don’t demand I have to republish them), or practice non-conventional lifestyles I might abhor (so long it is consensual), and so on. For me, the long-term payoff – more freedom – is the point. I don’t see campaigning for justice or freedom as intrinsically good. It is much more important than that – it benefits me. Another way of putting it is that life is not a zero-sum game. I obviously cannot spend all my time trying to defend freedoms or other issues; I have my own business and personal life and various interests to pursue. (My golf swing needs a lot of attention). But if I can, by my advocacy of hopefully good ideas and opposition to bad ones, make the world a marginally better place for myself and others, then I cannot think of a more truly selfish objective than that. In other words, I am not a classical liberal because it is an unchosen duty. I enjoy it and see the benefits. And let’s not forget, another reason why libertarians defend the causes they do is that, despite the odd glitch, we get to meet some excellent people and make good friends. Some of my greatest mates are those I have encountered through such networks. June 22nd, 2011 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
If you only go to IMAO occasionally (like me), or even not at all, then allow me to pass on a recent Frank J-ism (if you will pardon the expression) which made me smile if not laugh out loud, from here:
I think a negative maybe got wrongly doubled sowhere near the beginning of that, but you get the point. My approximate understanding of voters is that they do indeed vote about the immediate future, rather than reward or punish politicians for their past deeds or misdeeds, the most famous case being how British voters booted out Churchill in 1945, despite his triumphant war leadership, but because of his presumed inability to win the peace. He won in 1951 not because of his heroic past, but because of what he was then saying: set the people free. Obama is now tanking in the polls because the US economy is now experienced as bad. If it feels like the US economy is heading in the right direction come election day, Obama could indeed win. I could go on, but prefer to leave commenters who actually live in the USA, like Paul Marks, to take that further, if they care to. I will only say that I vividly recall being told, by a visiting American at the time when President Bill Clinton was riding very low in the polls during his first term, that he had zero chance of winning again. But, he did. Also, I was amazed by this FJ revelation:
I did not know that. So, she probably doesn’t know that much about Obama’s re-election chances either. June 22nd, 2011 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
A few days ago Phlip Davies MP suggested that disabled workers or those with mental health problems could get work more easily if they had the right to voluntarily opt out of the minimum wage. He said,
Within hours so much outraged commentary flowed out of newspaper columnists, charity representatives and politicians of all parties, including Mr Davies’ own, that you’d think there’d been an outbreak of indignation dysentery. Let us look at a few of the responses. “A lower minimum wage if you’re disabled? Not acceptable, sorry,” says Lucy Glennon in the Guardian. “It is a preposterous suggestion,” MIND spokeswoman Sophie Corlett was quoted as saying in the Yorkshire Post, “that someone who has a mental health problem should be prepared to accept less than the minimum wage to get their foot in the door with an employer. “People with mental health problems should not be considered a source of cheap labour and should be paid appropriately for the jobs they do.” “Philip Davies’s comments are another obstacle to disabled workers being treated as equal,” said Paul Farmer, chief executive of MIND, writing in the Telegraph. He added, “He has caused offence to many people who work with a mental health problem and those who want to work on an equal footing, yet struggle to overcome the stigma they face.” Jody McIntyre in the Independent was also outraged. His suggestion that Members of Parliament should work for less than minimum wage was not bad, though. Of the mentally disabled, he said “A strong test of any progressive society is how it’s most vulnerable people are valued for their worth, rather than pitied for their faults. Philip Davies clearly places little value on the role of people with learning difficulties in our society; instead of celebrating their diversity, he chooses to reinforce the discriminatory myth that people with learning difficulties are more of a risk to employers.” There was more, much more. After reading loads of responses I noticed something that they all had in common… as not having. Not one response of all the many I read even tried to argue that Mr Davies was factually wrong. They were outraged, disgusted. They asserted what no one denies: that mentally disabled people are equal citizens and often prove to be hardworking employees, valued by their employers. But I could not find one article that argued that Davies’ description of the way things go when a person with an IQ of 60 or a history of insanity seeks a job was inaccurate, or gave reasons to believe his proposal would not increase their chances of landing one. “Philip Davies is right, of course,” says Tim Worstall. “But so profoundly unfashionable that no one will say so”. He then goes on to argue that Davies is right. His views will not be purist enough for some libertarians, but the novelty of reading someone bother to put forward a chain of reasoning when talking about this topic is a bit of a thrill. The fact that he bothers to think about what will actually happen to disabled people, particularly mentally disabled people, under various scenarios shows a thousand times more compassion than the people whose response is mostly concerned with their own emotions. A quote from Charles Murray: “It seems that those who legislate and administer and write about social policy can tolerate any increase in actual suffering so long as the system does not explicitly permit it.” June 21st, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
He is talking only of Canada, but even so, it puts a whole different slant on things, doesn’t it? Read the rest of the piece for a few details. I also think it puts a different slant on the constantly heard – and utterly ridiculous – claim that in the absence of Old School Dead Tree Media news reporting, there will no longer be any news, just bloggers blogging and twitterers twittering, about nothing. There will still be plenty of news. But it may be somewhat different news. June 20th, 2011 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
London mayor and newspaper pundit Boris Johnson has a good article in his usual Daily Telegraph redoubt and it is getting a lot of attention, as it should:
Oh, they knew. They wanted this to happen – maybe not in the wrenching, embarrassing way that has manifested itself in the case of Greece, Ireland the rest, but they surely wanted economics to be melded to the service of politics.
Democracy, schemocracy, as Mel Brooks might have put it. June 20th, 2011 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
An interesting item about how economists influenced by the teachings of the late JM Keynes are falling out with one another. Here is a quote worth pondering from Henry Hazlitt: “Keynes constantly deplored saving while praising investment, persistently forgetting that the second was impossible without the first.” Page 203, The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt. June 19th, 2011 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
BBC:
My thanks to Antoine Clarke for the h/t. Antoine’s Norlonto Review has been only occasional in recent months, but is now active. And Antoine adds this observation:
Heh. June 19th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle – Winston Churchill June 19th, 2011 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
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