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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Well, for all you gold bugs out there, here is a spiffy new banking facility, although it so far is confined to the Gulf.
Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises would have approved, I’m sure. By the way, the price of gold is currently around $1,250, a new record. Given the various “quantitative easing” programmes of central banks in recent months, the hunger for the yellow metal is not surprising. I must say that at current levels, it does seem a pretty risky idea to push even more money into gold, since there has been so much of a rally already. If – and this is one hell of an if – some governments start to reduce their debt burdens and try to squeeze monetary growth in some parts of the world (like in Australia), then some of that “fear premium” in gold may start to fade.
Sam Bowman, whom I mentioned in my previous posting below about the IEA, responded by emailing me further proof that he is taking his Cobden Centre duties seriously:
The Cobden Centre Education Network is a new network of students in the UK interested in libertarian and classical liberal economics, especially the Austrian school. Working with the Cobden Centre it aims to connect libertarian and classical liberal students across the UK and help them develop their interests and involvement in classical liberalism and libertarianism.
This summer, the Cobden Centre Education Network will be hosting a series of seminars studying Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy and State, a seminal work in Austrian economics that lays the foundation for further study of the Austrian school. The seminars will take place twice a month at the Institute for Economic Affairs in London, and Cobden Centre board members and fellows will join us for some sessions. Electronic copies of all reading materials and a study guide will be provided.
As well as being a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive knowledge of the Austrian school, this will give Education Network members a chance to meet some of Britain’s foremost libertarian and classical liberal thinkers.
If you are interested in joining the Cobden Centre Education Network, please email Sam (sam @ cobden centre (all one word) dot org – I trust that will deter at least some spammers – BM) with your name, contact email address, and university and course if you are currently in education. Please also state if you are available to attend events during the summer in London.
Outstanding. And good on the IEA for lending them the place to do this.
Badgering politicians is worth a go, because you can get lucky, and because even if they don’t listen, someone else might, especially in an age when letters can double up as internet postings. But politicians will mostly just do their thing, which is fire fighting the fires on their desks within the limits set by public opinion, or by what they suppose to be public opinion, and within the limits that they all set amongst themselves. What matters is the long-term intellectual struggle, that is, the process of creating the limits within which politicians and other decision makers will operate in the future. The above enterprise is a fine example of how you go about doing that.
In the age of social media, blogs, emails and so on, it is tempting to suppose that personal contact is a bit superfluous. But I suspect that the most lasting impact of such novelties is creating and strengthening old fashioned face-to-face contacts, between people who might otherwise never have been introduced.
I wonder if there is an upper age limit.
The Institute of Economic Affairs is the mothership of the free market think tanks, certainly in Europe. Or, it was. Because now, the IEA’s reputation is almost entirely based on the stir that it managed to make when it was presided over by the stellar duopoly that was Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon. Those two men ensured that the classical liberal intellectual tradition remained alive in Britain, and they brought it, and the developing tradition of Austrian school economics, to bear on the failed Keynesian consensus of the 1960s and 1970s, laying the intellectual foundations for the Thatcherite economic rescue act of the 1980s.
Harris and Seldon had always been very careful, first, to ground their activities in pro freedom scholarship. The intellectual war was what they cared about most. Seldon fought that war. Harris, although also a considerable warrior himself, concentrated on making sure that the war effort was paid for. Second, they were careful not to get too closely intertwined with the Conservative Party, to the exclusion of any others. They always kept their lines open to anyone who was willing to listen to what they had to say and to help them say it, of any party or of none.
However, when age inevitably caught up with Harris and Seldon, the IEA then chose a man called Graham Mather as its new boss, who proceeded to use the place as his personal campaign office to turn himself into a Conservative MEP, while declaring that “the intellectual arguments have been won”. Mather was hurriedly dumped, and under John Blundell’s leadership the IEA then did rather better, even if it never really lit up the landscape like it had in the old days. To switch metaphors from fireworks to aviation, under Mather, the IEA was crashing earthwards and was about to burn up completely. Under Blundell it glided near horizontally, not at all disastrously, but without any upward impetus that I could see. When I heard that the Institute of Economic Affairs had, however long ago it was, appointed as their new boss Mark Littlewood, whose previous job was as a media relations person for the LibDems, I reacted with indifference. I hardly, that is to say, reacted at all.
Mark Littlewood has clearly always understood what classical liberalism and libertarianism are all about, and has done as much of them as he could, given the day jobs he has had. He has always been a friendly and civilised presence, albeit rather too EUrophile for my liking, at the various Libertarian Alliance events I have seen him at over the years, at quite a few of which he has spoken. Nevertheless, I assumed that in hiring such a person, the IEA was merely going to throw a big chunk of its still impressive stash of money at a pointless media-based charm offensive, which would achieve nothing. Pick a nice chap, with lots of contacts in politics and in what they used to call Fleet Street, hope for the best and get nothing very much. After a few years, Littlewood would move on. In due course, the building would be sold and the IEA would move from Westminster to somewhere or to nowhere. Its few surviving supporters would become even more geriatric. Another member of the Political Class, more unscrupulous than Mark Littlewood and cut from the same cloth as Graham Mather, would move in and hoover up all the remaining money, and that would be that. Way of the world. Old order giving place to new. Such is life. Such is death.
I never really thought any of this through, apart from the Mather episode, when I became tangentially involved as a junior advocate for the team that ousted him. I merely realise, now, that the above sentiments about Littlewood were what I was thinking, insofar as I was thinking anything at all. The point being that as far as the IEA was concerned, and like many others, I had pretty much stopped thinking.
So it was that when I got invited to a Libertarian Alliance dinner about a fortnight ago, at which Mark Littlewood was to speak about how he was setting about his various IEA tasks, I did not, as they say, jump at the invitation. I merely, having nothing else fixed, said yes and went along, expecting little more than some nice food. But as soon as Mark Littlewood started talking, I realised that I had been seriously misjudging him. → Continue reading: Mark Littlewood and the future of the Institute of Economic Affairs
This sounds like the kind of thing that our own Michael Jennings is fond of saying:
“I was recently waiting for a flight in Delhi, when I overheard a conversation between a Spanish UN peacekeeper and an Indian soldier. The Indian spoke no Spanish; the Spaniard spoke no Punjabi. Yet they understood one another easily. The language they spoke was a highly simplified form of English, without grammar or structure, but perfectly comprehensible, to them and to me. Only now do I realise that they were speaking “Globish”, the newest and most widely spoken language in the world.”
That’s journalist Ben Macintyre, quoted by Robert McCrum, in a recent Guardian piece about the global evolution of the English language. But, McCrum then asks, will English, having spread so widely, and like Latin before it, then fragment into distinct languages? Or will the effect of what is loosely called globalisation mean that enough English speakers who start with their local variant of English will want then to move towards a more internationally tradeable, so to speak, version of English, and make the effort? Will they try to add some of that grammar and structure that Ben Macintyre spoke of? And will global standard English, particularly as spoken by the more globe-trotting sort of American and in due course by most Anglos, itself hold out its hand, as it were, making its own effort, and come half way to meet Globish, to ensure that English, although changing faster than ever before, nevertheless remains one language, or at least one linguistic continuum? Will English, in other words, keep on pulling itself together? Note that Ben Macintyre had no problem understanding the Globish that he heard in Delhi, and would presumably have no problem speaking like that.
My guess is that there are powerful unifying forces at work here, as well as fragmenting forces. What follows began life as a separate posting, and was mostly written before I encountered the above article. → Continue reading: Bangalore changing to Bengaluru says that English will keep on pulling itself together
In May 1979 I was walking over Hungerford Bridge a day or two after the election that brought Margaret Thatcher to power. I saw in the distance a small embarrassed-looking group gathering to take part in some sort of march or demonstration to protect union rights. I was not happy about Mrs Thatcher’s victory, earnest young leftie that I was, but I remember thinking, at least she’ll stomp on the unions.
I gather that there has been some sort of political development today.
Finish this sentence, if you can: At least he’ll….
Indeed, and here he was just before delivering it, earlier this evening, to the assembled friends and supporters of the Libertarian Alliance, at the National Liberal Club:
His subject was Public Goods and Private Action: How Voluntary Action Can Provide Law, Welfare and Infrastructure – and Build a Good Society.
Academics who are supportive of the free market and the free society tend to be economists. Such thinkers might have based an argument like that one on economic theories concerning the alleged possibility and desirability of such arrangements. But Dr. Davies is a historian, with a wealth of knowledge concerning how such arrangements did exist, and accordingly might again. It is hard to argue with any persuasiveness that voluntarily funded policing, or unemployment insurance, or roads or railways cannot exist, if the fact that these things actually did exist is widely known. The current crop of fiscally disastrous and morally destructive social and infrastructural policies depend for their continuation on perpetuating ignorance of how such voluntary alternatives existed in the past. (Hence in particular the importance of voluntarily organised and voluntarily funded education.)
Dr. Davies argued that the current fiscal crisis of the modern state, not just in Britain but everywhere, means that an historic opportunity now exists to revive such ideas as these.
A fellow Samizdatista asked, during the Q&A that followed Dr. Davies’s lecture: Will the text of it be published? Answer: yes. I await this text with eagerness, as do many others. All to whom I spoke afterwards agreed that this was an outstandingly effective and informative lecture.
So the European Union and other Tranzi* institutions have decided to prop up the euro by another, monstrous bailout package, involving the purchase, by the European Central Bank, of billions of euros of bonds. In other words, the ECB, which for a while tried to act as “Son of the Bundesbank”, has given up on all that rigorous, Teutonic stuff and taken a leaf out of the Anatole Kaletsky let’s-print-till-we-drop playbook. Excellent. Holidays in Europe will be cheap as chips at least until inflation takes off.
What do readers think is the chance that Germany, say, will be back using the Deutschemark by the middle of this decade? I’d say it is low, but you have to wonder. Germany had for many years an enviable reputation for having a strong currency. They’ve thrown it away. I see that some of the natives are getting restless, although a news report here cites “dithering” over the bailout package as a cause of anger. I’d say it was hostility to the bailout per se.
Ironically, the strength of gold at the moment highlights the benefit of that Hayekian idea of “parallel”, competing currencies in the same jurisdiction. The way things are going, a lot of firms and individuals, given the freedom to do so, would rather be invoiced in gold or some other, relatively solid store of value (eg, Swiss francs, Australian dollars, and so on).
*A short term for Transnational Progressivism, a sort of political philosophy that puts stress on the need for big, cross-border institutions to run our lives at the expense of national, and usually more democratic ones. Examples: the UN, IMF, European Union, IPCC, etc.
Can it be? Do my eyes deceive me? An MP… a Tory MP… who seems to have a grasp of economics!
How long before this guy gets a visit from the party whip advising him that insightful talk about real world economics might be harmful to his career, capice?
The election has dealt a major blow to the political class, though it hasn’t been a catharsis; we still hate them.
– Raedwald
… the Greens won an MP in the enclave of Brighton, but their share of the vote fell. I find this quite amazing, really. After five years of relentless environmental yakkery in the mass media, bombarding us on all channels at once, the Greens received a lower share of votes than the BNP. All that most Greens can now look forward to is to return to their yurts, and prepare for recycling.
– Andrew Orlowski, writing in the Register, and reaching the fairly sensible conclusion that the reason every political party did badly was because they are all intellectually bankrupt, and the public is starting to get this. Read the whole thing.
It is amusing to be honest. The Tory party faces a PM with no actual mandate, who is as charismatic as a bowl of cold Scottish porridge and who has presided over economically calamitous times… and the best the Tory Party can do is… 36.1 percent.
I now look forward to some bracing political paralysis and hopefully the unedifying mess of a hanged… I mean hung parliament… hanged would be most edifying indeed. With a little luck the inevitable steaming pile of discordant political prima donnas will further discredit the whole establishment with their antics.
I can only hope that in the coming months this period will do lasting damage to the Tory party in order to provide a wedge of daylight for the likes of Libertarians and UKIP to exploit.
The ‘Middle of the Road’ is where you generally find road kill.
Well, it was Samizdata wot won it. Perry de Havilland said a plague on all their houses last week. Chris Cooper said last night that he’d voted for none of the above. And the result? None of the above. A plague on all their houses. Who says blogs don’t have any influence?
Here are the various plagues:
Conservatives: A horror story. No absolute majority. Will Cameron manage to contrive an absolute majority after another general election? (Think 1974.) Will he be able to contrive any kind of government in the meantime? Maybe and maybe, but there’s a world out there, and what Cameron has to do about that may make him even less electorally appealing than he is now. Cameron has been all at sea ever since the boom went bust. As have …
Labour: A horror story. In terms of percentage of the vote, Michael Foot did a tiny bit worse in 1983 than Brown. That’s Brown’s only comfort. But now, do they try to cling on or do they walk away? Neither choice makes them look good. Unelectedness versus “we made the mess but the rest of you must sort it out”.
LibDems: A horror story. Cleggmania fizzled out ignominiously. Yet they can still decide everything, in the short run. So which of two profoundly unappealing big parties do the LibDems pick? Neither choice makes them look good. Plus: do they plunge the political system into a huge row about proportional representation? But the problem is not how they’re picked; it’s what the hell they now do about that world out there. And what the hell kind of “mandate” do the LibDems now have to demand anything at all? Yet if Clegg comes away from all this with nothing, what will his party think?
Others: BNP, UKIP, Greens, etc. My impression is UKIP did not too shabbily, but not too shabbily doesn’t really count. At least the Greenies got a stuffing. SNP hardly laid a glove on Labour in Scotland.
Just heard a politician talking on the telly – I think somebody called Tony McNulty:
“Anyone who thinks this is a good result for any party, locally or nationally, needs their head examining.”
Boris Johnson agrees. Now I’m watching him say that the voters hate all the politicians, and have found a way to make all of them suffer. All those us who wanted the whole damn lot of them squirming as a result of this election have now got our wish.
Now Brown is making a speech. He’s trying to cling on.
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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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