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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“Flowers begin arriving past night and bidding starts before dawn. To ensure their lilies and hyacinths are ready for the auction block, growers move them from cold storage onto carts in the early morning, or else rush them from Schiphol after overnight flights from Quito, Nairobi, and Tel Aviv. It’s impossible to see, much less make sense of, the Aalsmeer at eye level, as the floor of its central warehouse is a thicket of carts bearing blooms, all waiting their turn. This is the world’s largest commercial building at ten million square feet, more than twice the size of Chicago’s Willis Tower or Merchandise Mart….” (Page213).
“From a catwalk running above, you can study the crazy quilt of tulips, sunflowers, azaleas and hydrangeas bleeding into daubs of orange or pink on the horizon. The quilt constantly changes colors and patterns as burly Dutchmen at the wheel of one-man tugs trail daisy chains behind them.” (Page 213)
What is interesting about these passages, concerning the marvels of the vast flower-auction market in Holland, and the global reach of this business made possible now due to aviation and refrigeration, is that the author does not fall into the usual stale bromides about how all this aviation-led trade is killing the planet. I liked this passage, on page 232-3:
“Food miles cannot begin to compare in toxicity with flatulent cattle. Anyone who’s read the Omnivore’s Dilemma can recite chapter and verse on the perils of force-feeding corn to livestock in feedlots. Cows produce methane, a greenhouse gas thirty times more potent than carbon, as a by-product of digestion…..A breakdown of the Big Mac revealed that nearly a third of its [carbon] footprint stems from feed production, another third from storage, and much of the rest from slaughtering, frying, and baking. Food miles contribute 3 per cent.”
Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, Greg Lindsay and John Kasarda. 2011.
I especially regret not having been called upon to answer Duncan Weldon’s claim that Hayekian’s are like dentists who have nothing to offer someone who is suffering from a rotten tooth. I might then have been tempted to point out, first of all, that it was pretty cheeky for a British proponent of greater government intervention to be bringing up dentistry.
– Professor George Selgin, discussing his preparation for the LSE Keynes versus Hayek debate, which is being broadcast on BBC Radio Four in half an hour’s time.
Update: The BBC has now put the debate on the internet, which can be listened to here. I am not sure if it can be listened to from outside the UK, as the BBC insist on their annoying iplayer crap rather than just posting an mp3.
Nick Gillespie, who when he is not pointing out how American politics is changing rapidly with his fellow Reasonoid Matt Welch, has an interesting essay up about how much of what passes for the “artistic community” was left looking pretty lame in how writers, painters, sculptors, film-makers and even poets responded to 9/11. (Yes, it is almost a decade ago). He makes a number of good points. Tim Sandefur weighs in with some thoughts of his own and makes this pretty blunt point:
“That is largely due to two factors: for one thing, much of the artistic community, and especially its elite, sympathize more with the perpetrators of the attacks than with a United States that they hate for its “commercialism,” “materialism,” dynamism, secularism, industrialism, and so forth. The artistic world is dominated by romanticist ideologies that see science, technology, free markets, and human progress as essentially evil things—precisely the ideology that produced the September 11th attacks. What is an artist, who has spent his or her career producing work to condemn capitalism, going to produce to mourn the loss of the World Trade Center at the hands of anti-capitalist terrorists? They certainly aren’t going to produce a second Mourning Athena. As Robert Hughes says, American artists particularly are obsessed “with creating identities, based on race, gender, and the rest. These have made for narrow, preachy, single-issue art in which victim credentials count for more than aesthetic achievement. You get irritable agitprop…. The fact that an artwork is about injustice no more gives it aesthetic status than the fact that it’s about mermaids.” Relatedly, the artistic world is dominated by aesthetic notions that preclude powerful artistic commemorations of anything, really. The elite artistic world produces work that is simply not accessible to average people—the people who actually do mourn September 11th and rightly see it as an attack on everything America and they stand for. This is especially true in public monuments, which, since Maya Lin, have been minimalistic, sterile, and unmoving. (As is often true of art, Lin’s Vietnam Memorial is damn good—powerful and effective and brilliant; it’s her followers and imitators who have mucked it up.) Since the artistic elite have abandoned representationalism and powerful emotional appeal for cold abstractions, they also belittle the works of representational artists who might produce works friendlier and more moving to general audiences—and the political leaders are going to listen to the elite, not to the remaining believers in representationalism.”
For me, the only really telling film made about 9/11 has been Flight 93. I watched it several years ago and remember it as a powerful, if flawed, production.
As Sandefur says, the inadequacy of art in relation to a terrible event such as 9/11 is a broader reflection of how art has arguably, degraded in recent decades. For what it is worth, I am one of those old grouches who finds a lot of what passes for Modern Art to be mind-erasing garbage. But then again, my “modern” tastes in things like science fiction, and all the whizz-bang art that can come with it, don’t necessarily make me old fashioned, either.
As an aside, I came across these photos of Civil War memorial art. Worth a look. It adds to Sandefur’s point on representational art, I think.
It would seem that the government is about to amend copyright laws, so that it will be legal to “format shift” recorded music that you have legally bought to a different format. For instance, people will now be able to legally copy the music on a CD to their PC, or perhaps to an iPod or the music player of a mobile phone.
Ignoring for the moment the absurdity of the idea that government and a bunch of lobbyist lawyers could actually lead anyone anywhere, I am struck by the thought that the people such an amendment might have been most helpful to in 1997 were those in the music industry itself, which spent the best part of another decade attempting to preserve their existing business model of reselling people the same music over and over again every time there was a technology change. (As late as 2003, I heard an interview in which one such person stated that if the rampant piracy problem could not be solved, then the internet would simply have to be closed down. Alas, I didn’t preserve the details for posterity).
If the music industry had actually been willing to acknowledge that there was a complete paradigm shift underway a little earlier, then it might have done slightly less badly out of it. Or at least, it might have managed to avoid becoming Steve Jobs’ bitch, as ultimately happened.
Although another way of looking at it is that the industry managed somehow to find a fate that it actually deserved.
Tonight,BBC Radio 4, 8pm:
I’m told that it will sound a lot more coherent than it did on the night it was recorded.
More pre-publicity from the BBC here.
When travel writers start going on about how “vulgar” and “overdeveloped” Cuba is becoming, I’ll book my flights. So long as it is the favoured destination for the sort of people who wear silly T-shirts with pictures of mass murderers on them, I’ll be off to somewhere else instead.
– Johnathan Pearce
This paragraph from a good posting by Victor Davis Hanson, at the National Review’s Corner blog, applies not just to the US, but also to the UK:
“The strangest thing about the current paradox of cash-flush companies and little or no economic growth is the administration’s puzzlement over the lethargy — as if no one outside Washington ever listened to what the administration has said or noticed what they have done the last three years.”
Exactly. I’d also add to VDH’s list of things that have stymied recovery: the still-lingering and damaging impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley law on things such as initial public offerings and the foolish FASB tampering with share option payments that have crimped venture capital startup businesses. (I can, by the way, recommend this book by Dale Halling about why US entrepreneurship is stalling – it controversially argues that a key problem has been the erosion of patent law in the US, an argument that is bound to get some libertarian opponents of IP excited).
VDH’s points apply in Britain, too, such as what he says about demonisation of some businesses, as well as things like bailouts, Green regulations and so on. Of course, a key problem here is the European Union and all the red tape that comes from that.
Regime uncertainty, if I can use that term, is a big problem. We have a tax authority (HMRC), given the power to decide, as it goes along, what constitutes tax “avoidance”, so that avoidance is now seen as wrong, as is tax evasion. This relates to a wider problem of uncertainty. Even the daftest tax laws are more tolerable if they are predictable. The problems get even worse, though, if officials have the ability to retrospectively decide that this or that business practice is wrong and should be shut down. Our tax code remains one of the longest and most complex in the world.
We need far fewer laws, and those that remain should be simple, easy to understand and enforce. Sometimes though, doing things the simple way seems to be so hard.
In a letter (scroll down) to the Independent on February 25, Glen Watson, the director of the UK Census, had the following to say
First, it is not true that EU legislation allows for census information to be shared with EU member states. No personal census information has been or will be provided to EU member states or EU institutions; only statistical tables and counts will be provided.
Second, it is not true that raw census data may be acquired by the police, intelligence agencies, immigration authorities etc under the Statistics and Registration Services Act. The UK Statistics Authority and the Office for National Statistics will never volunteer personal information for any non-statistical purpose.
It is particularly lovely we were assured of that last point. However, a literal reading of Section 39 of The Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 states that for data it holds, the ONS is not permitted to disclose any personal information (ie on specific individuals) to anyone.
Never ever, that is, except if such a disclosure:
(a) is required or permitted by any enactment,
(b) is required by a Community obligation,
(c) is necessary for the purpose of enabling or assisting the Board to exercise any of its functions,
(d) has already lawfully been made available to the public,
(e) is made in pursuance of an order of a court,
(f) is made for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings (whether or not in the UK),
(g) is made, in the interests of national security, to an Intelligence Service,
(h) is made with the consent of the person to whom it relates, or
(i) is made to an approved researcher.
It is great to have such protections, isn’t it?
There was considerable concern at the time of the census that some or all of these exceptions might apply to census data, which is why Mr Watson felt the need to make such a disclaimer.
If he was going to make such a strong claim, one would hope he was sure of it. One would expect that he or his organisation would have asked for legal advice on the matter perhaps? One wouldn’t want to mislead the public any more than one would want to disclose their data to the EU Agriculture Directorate. The readers of the Independent should not be misled, but should be told the truth, always.
Which is why the results of a recent Freedom of Information request to the ONS are quite interesting. Specifically:
The nearest that ONS came to seeking legal advice or formally discussing this matter with Treasury solicitors was while we were drafting the confidentiality undertakings that were incorporated into the Census Regulations. However there was no formal advice sought or specific discussion held about how Section 39 would cover the census, all of these meetings were un-minuted,
Yes, this is just as bad as it sounds. I for one am glad I did not fill in the form.
American government spending will be higher in 2011 than it was in 2010.
Government spending will be higher in 2012 than it was in 2011 – much higher.
The above is all that matters – everything else is piss and wind.
The deal is one great big shining lie.
– Paul Marks
“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.”
– AJP Taylor, historian. The funny thing is, that AJP Taylor was a lifelong socialist and therefore, supported policies and ideas that led, directly and indirectly, to the destruction of some of the liberties he wrote about in this much-cited passage, on page one, from his classic, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).. Like many of his generation, he was naive about the Soviet Union, to put it kindly, although he did break with communism while remaining a lifelong member of the Labour Party. But as he would respond, much of the damage to British freedoms mentioned in this passage had been done by the calamity of the First World War and its aftermath. And piecemeal changes – starting in the late 19th Century and arguably hastened by the arrival of the mass franchise, made these liberties vulnerable. But are we being starry-eyed about Victorian-era liberties? Is he describing a myth or a reality? There’s a question to stir up the commenters.
I see that Ed Driscoll of Pajamas Media liked this quote too. I imagine it resonates with American readers quite as much as with a Brit.
My wife and I are off to Cuba next week for a fortnight.
We have to be quick if we’re to catch a glimpse of the place before it changes irreversibly. Every piece of news seems to be in the right direction for Cubans, the wrong direction for tourists seeking picturesqueness.
President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.
And:
Since last October, Cuba’s streets have turned on a new look with the opening of new private restaurants, fast food stalls, beauty salons and electronic repair shops.
Yes, got to move fast before Cuba’s USP as the Western Hemisphere’s only communist paradise slips away. Perhaps to pass to Venezuela.
But Venezuela hasn’t got the Hemingway connection to trade on.
At lunchtime yesterday, the BBC’s Test Match Special radio commentators held a most entertaining Q&A with former top cricket umpire John Holder, who was asked questions like: “If a batsman hits the ball, it hits the batsman at the other end, bounces off the teeth of the bowler onto the wicket and the stricken batsman is still out of his ground, is that batsman run out?” (yes); or: “If the batsman hits the ball into the air, and a bag blows across the ground and the ball goes into the bag, and a fielder catches hold of the bag before anything hits the ground, is the batsman out?” (yes again). “If the batsman hits the ball and it strikes the branches of a tree …?” “If a dog gets on the pitch …?” “If a passing bird of prey catches the ball …?” You get the idea. Ho ho, chuckle chuckle. Holder answered everything with utter confidence. Not once could anyone, as the cricket metaphor goes, stump him.
But, about two hours later, right at the very end of the immediately following session of test cricket between England and India, at Trent Bridge Nottingham, a question of just this complicated kind arose for real.
If a batsman hits the ball towards the boundary, and if the fielder stops the ball going to the boundary, but thinks he failed to stop it, and if the fielder then picks the ball up in a relaxed, casual manner, for all the world making it clear that he thinks it was a four, and if the fielders in the middle of the pitch receive the ball in the manner of people who also think that the ball went for four, but if then, as an afterthought, one of the fielders takes the ball and flicks off the bails, with no sense of celebration, just on the off chance, because the umpires haven’t signalled a four, or said that it’s now tea time, but nevertheless, one of the England batsmen has already concluded that it is tea time, and is walking off the pitch, and is thus out of his ground, the fielder who has removed the bails having appealed in a quietly interrogative rather than exultant manner … is the batsman out? That’s what happened, for real. The umpires asked the Indian captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, whether he was withdrawing his appeal. No, said Dhoni. Out, said the umpires. Ian Bell run out 137, off the last ball before tea. Bell bewildered and angry. The England team, and the crowd … not happy.
 Where, the commentators were all saying to one another during their frantic tea interval attempts to explain it all to us listeners, is John Holder when you need him?
But meanwhile, the two Andrews, Flower and Strauss, coach and captain of England, dropped by the Indian dressing room and asked the Indian team if they would withdraw their appeal, and India did. Boos turned to cheers and applause when the umpires (boo!), the Indian team (boo!!), and then … Ian Bell all emerged from the pavilion after the tea break. Hurrah!!!
We now live in an age when all sports fans and all players come to that, rather than just the official salaried commentators and newspaper hacks, can immediately say what is on their (our) minds. This fact may not yet have had very much impact on global politics, the banking system, etc., but it has already changed the atmosphere that surrounds international sport.
So who do I think was right? Were the Indians gents, or suckers? Spirit of the game, or letter of the law? → Continue reading: The run out that wasn’t
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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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