Probably the most devastating take-down yet of the economist and leftist news columnist I have ever read. The man’s credibility is in total ruins. The stuff at the end about the housing bubble is the killer. Read the whole thing.
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James P. Hogan, Minds, Machines and Evolution, in the chapter, “The Revealed Word of God, pages 174 and 175. Hogan wrote good SF and non-fiction, although this Wikipedia entry (treat with some care), suggests he also was a Holocaust denier, which is a bit like finding out that your close friend is selling hard drugs to teenagers. He died in July this year. As some may know, I wrote a while back about what I saw as an unconvincing attempt by the UK journalist Christopher Booker to play the victim card and assume that advocates of AGW scepticism and intelligent design proponents (i.e., creationists), were both equally victims of intolerance from the scientific community. But actually, as one commenter – I think it was Counting Cats at his own blog – pointed out, there is more in common between AGW alarmists, with their almost religious approach, and creationists. The reason why I keep returning to this topic is that for all that I am unbudgeable on tolerance for all manner of views, barking mad or eminently sane, the point is that if we are going to be able to resist some of the more oppressive demands of AGW alarmists, it pays not to ally ourselves with what I regard as seriously flawed ideas, such as creationism. It is the sort of thing that will be seized upon by the AGW alarmists, in their quest to treat any dissent as examples of bad science. Just sayin’. October 18th, 2010 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I am reading a review of this book (thank you Instapundit), about Stalin and Hitler and their many and mutually supportive crimes, and I came upon a fact that was very surprising to me:
Here in Britain we remember, those of us who are the remembering sort, Winston Churchill’s metaphor-mangling talk of winds and whirlwinds, sewing and reaping. Relatively mild bombing of British cities by the Luftwaffe was followed later in the war by truly horrific bombing of German cities by the RAF. But that original wind, in other parts of Europe, was windier than I had realised. LATER: And here’s another little fact that pulled me up short:
Although, I am not clear whether that is inmates in camps at that time, or inmates in camps over the whole period. The former, I think. Either way, it is hideous. Not sure I want to read the entire book. I already get the general idea. October 17th, 2010 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
When in my teens, in the 1960s, I wondered what rules were best for governing the world, and the nations in the world. Comparisons like this (featured by Tim Worstall at the ASI blog today, he having come upon it here) helped me to decide:  As Tim Worstall notes:
Exactly. It was the matching of like (to start with) with like that was most telling. And before 1990, we also had the damning comparison between East and West Germany (very near to my English home) to contemplate. So, said contemporaries who were drawing more nearly opposite conclusions, you want sweatshops like they have in South East Asia? With growing confidence, I learned to say: yes. If people in South East Asia now have sweatshops, that’s a pity. They must be very poor. But how will shutting down those sweatshops make them any less poor? You’re saying poor with hope of escape is worse than poor with no hope at all. That sounds downright wicked to me. That time proved me, and all who argued as I did, right was one of the big reasons for communism collapsing where it did collapse, and trying to insert capitalism into itself where it did not. Some libertarians now live in dread of a time when such comparisons will no longer be possible, because the entire world will be equally stagnant, and nobody except them will be able to see this. Some people are determined to be miserable. October 17th, 2010 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
El socialismo es contra la prosperidad. – Instapundit flags up an aspect of the Tea Party that doesn’t fit the one party media narrative. October 17th, 2010 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Soooo…when Ken Loach makes a movie about Islam? – Commenter Lucklucky October 16th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ken Loach made a good film in 1969. I gather he has made other films since. A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership, for instance, and something about a Glaswegian alcoholic. My opinion of Loach as a human being was decided when I read this:
Loach felt that the ordinary moral rules against causing someone (particularly a child) intense suffering through a cruel deception did not apply so long as his deception was carried out in the service of his art. The old Independent article I linked to above goes on:
His “pokes at authority” seem not to be incompatible with a not-very-surprising yearning to wiggle his way to a bit more power himself, the power, at least, to “do something” about all these people watching what they want instead of what is good for them. And him. And his friends. Here he is in yesterday’s Guardian:
It is not quite clear from the article whether Loach is proposing that these municipal cinemas programmed by people who care should wholly replace the commercial cinemas and films that nobody cares about, except the millions who pay to watch them. Since he is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Party, which describes itself as a revolutionary anti-capitalist party, it is reasonable to assume that would be his ultimate goal. He continues,
Not that having you and your protegés decide what films the taxpayer will have available in the cinema he pays for would make you part of the establishment, or in any way compromise your independence, of course. October 16th, 2010 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Quangos and the rest are instruments of government. To get rid of them, you have to get rid of their functions. October 15th, 2010 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the UK edition of Wired magazine is an article on the use of environmental markets in which, for instance, property developers or industrial users of water pay others, such as owners of wetlands or somesuch, if they want to make a development. The way the article is written gives the impression – at least in my eyes – of this being a great example of how capitalism and the Greens can work together. I am not so sure. For instance, take the idea of “banks” of wetlands. Typically, what happens is that a government, such as the US one acting under legislation, will decree that there can be no net loss of wetland in given geographical area A, so if any area of wetland is destroyed, then the destroyers must offset this by paying to create another area of wetland somewhere. I immediately see a problem here: someone in authority has decreed that whatever happens to be the area of wetland at the time the new system is introduced is the area that must be maintained ad infinitum; but why not say that the area should be twice as big, or three times, or four times, or half as big? Also, the supposed “market” for such development permit trading depends on the existence of government regulations of certain areas, like wetlands, which might clearly go against the property rights of the folk who have owned those wetlands in the past and might have wanted to turn them into golf courses or whatever. To be fair, though, the article does address the fact that property rights or markets of some sort represent a smarter way of addressing issues such as conservation, pollution and so on than traditional “lets just ban it” approaches used in the past. The article contains a great example of how the French mineral water industry did a deal with farmers over the latters’ use of fertilizer and pesticides in order to protect the water and keep the farmers happy. That is the kind of market transaction that works, and probably could have worked without government getting involved. My worry, though, is that a lot of such artificial markets in things such as environmental resources can become prey to corruption and mission creep of all kinds. Nigel Lawson, for instance, wrote dammingly about carbon trading in his recent book on the global warming controversy. October 15th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Victor Davis Hanson homes in on one of the big themes of the forthcoming USA elections, which is just how many of the candidates are not life long politicians, but people who have got seriously stuck into doing other things. Not stuck in to other things so as to have a better story to tell when they eventually make that first dash for political office that they all along had planned, but seriously stuck into other things as in seriously stuck in, as in it not occurring to them that they would ever be running for any political office:
Not having a “political resume” seems to be just what the voters are now looking for. Every time the regular politicians accuse one of these political amateurs of having said or done something amateurish, the above impression, of not being a regular politician, is reinforced. I get the feeling that the present political class in the USA contains hardly anyone who could mend a roof or build a car or program a computer or fly a helicopter, but that in among the next bunch, there will be quite a few who can do such things. There will be more “life skills” (think of the Harrison Ford character in Six Days and Seven Nights) in American politics than there are now. Not that I think this matters very much. The crucial thing is: will these people have the right political ideas and do the right political things? You can do something very well but then come an almighty cropper when you switch careers, just as you can be undone by a mere promotion out of what you did well to telling others how to do what you did well. If this next generation of US politicians, many of whom are now professional-at-other-things, prove to be as amateurish in a bad way as the present lot of politicians, then they won’t last long as politicians, and heaven help America. October 15th, 2010 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
I see on Guido Fawkes that arch-Europhile Denis MacShane is to be investigated by the police. He has had the Labour Whip withdrawn. To give him credit, he did once call Hugo Chavez a “ranting, populist demagogue”. On the other hand he was once Minister of State for Europe. This article gives a sample of his thought. Commenters are requested to bear in mind the principle that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yes, even a man who said:
October 14th, 2010 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whatever pious comments George Osborne, UK finance minister, or David Cameron might make about encouraging savings for the long term and less reliance on borrowing, blah, blah, blah, this sort of policy, assuming it is true, shows that this government does not give a rat’s arse about encouraging savings. Coupled with the new top tax rate of 50 per cent, reduced tax-free allowances and other adjustments, the enterprising class of those who work to build up pension pots for themselves just got a serious setback. At a time when there is so much talk about a pensions “time-bomb”, this sort of announcement is also disheartening since it sends out the message that pension schemes are a contrick. My own managing director at the firm at which I am now a small partner does not bother with pensions and intends to rely on his own business/properties to pay for his old age. When announcements like this come out, who is to say he is really wrong? October 14th, 2010 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
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