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]
|
A report in the Daily Telegraph today over the Group of 8 gathering of political leaders in Japan carries this:
Mr Brown will call for the creation of a new international panel of experts – mirroring a similar panel for climate change – which will examine long-term trends in food supplies and offer advice to individual countries.
A panel of experts? Surely, the best judges of long term trends are those investors who have been putting their own and their clients’ money on the line. Those evil people – speculators – have a strong vested interest in getting these long-term trends right. I would rather listen to the famed investor and commodities writer Jim Rogers than a bunch of academics hired to form some form of panel.
He will also pledge to increase investment in agricultural research and push for an increase in aid to agricultural projects in the developing world. In total, Britain’s contribution to tackling higher food prices has now cost the Government more than £500m.
How about not spending taxpayers’ money on such ventures and instead, removing trade barriers and other trade restrictions, such as production quotas and the like?
As for encouraging research, there is no need for states to do this. Large companies in the agricultural sphere, such as Monsanto and Bayer do oodles of research already. These governments would do better to resist attempts to outlaw GM foods and other “frankenstein” technologies.
That great economist Gordon Brown is at it again. His depth of understanding of real people and the real world is unrivalled after 11 years of prudent stewardship of the UK’s whole economic wellbeing:
Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said en route to the G8 summit in Japan.
Mr Brown said “unnecessary” purchases were contributing to price hikes, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.
A Cabinet Office study on food policy reveals that the average UK household throws away £8 of leftovers a week.
Back-to-front puritanism. Sounds to me like the ‘problem’ is food is so relatively cheap that Britons don’t mind wasting it. (Encouraged by bureaucratic nonsenses such as use-by dates, no doubt.) If something is genuinely expensive and hard to get, people do not throw it away.They don’t plan meals in advance and store food carefully because they can afford to live at their convenience and with less effort. We are so rich in the western world that the price of basic food and of energy has only a marginal effect on our living standards.
That’s not to say consumers and producers, unless prevented from doing so by state bullying in some unpredicted direction, won’t change their behaviour because of that marginal increase in costs. They certainly will. What they won’t do is simply less of the same thing, nor will they without threats follow the puritan agenda. The whole social and economic system will adapt in a million different ways by changes in factor prices, taste and technology.
Brown seems to think we should always be striving and suffering towards some abstract common goal, however. So the facts don’t suit.
So it is with ‘recycling’. Driven by targets and prohibitions and propaganda, it has become a national obsession. But this is at the cost of subsidy and taxation that uses up resources and displaces people from other activity. Some re-uses are enforced; others are now forbidden. It has more to do with the taboos of governmentalism than any rational allocation of resources.
There used to be quite a lot of voluntary recycling, the measure of the utility of waste reclamation being the price of the materials. Much of it has been stopped. That ‘waste’ food would have had value and been sold to pig-farmers not so long ago. Banned. On no evidence. For no other reason than it suited the bureaucracy.
I began fully-listening when Ellis Cashmore appeared as a ‘witness’. Cashmore is ‘professor’ of Culture, Media and Sport, surely the Andrex of academic disciplines. You can listen to him on the website – it’s the programme about celebrity – he appears at about twenty minutes. You may need a new laptop as these machines don’t take kindly to being flung across the room. The gist of what Cashmore said was contained in his line ‘Cultures are no better or worse than each other’. Right then, Prof, here’s my time machine and, woosh, here we are in Tiananmen Square during Mao’s Cultural – geddit? – Revolution. You, being an intellectual, are about to be stamped to death for the entertainment of the peasants. Luckily, I am on hand to, first, console you with the thought that all cultures are equal and, secondly, to operate the time machine and whisk you off to Germany in the thirties. I, having a Jewish mother, am being dragged off by Brown Shirts, but, luckily, you are on hand to console me with the thought that all cultures are equal. Sadly, you cannot operate the time machine. … Who are these people? What are they for?
– Bryan Appleyard listens to the BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze
In 2004 anti-leftists were determined to prevent the Democrats capturing the Presidency. “No Child Left Behind” and all the rest of the Bush’s absurd wild spending (opposed by John McCain and a some other Republicans) were forgotten about. Even Saddam turning out not to have stockpiles of WMDs (although, yes, he had plans to get them) was downplayed by people trying to prevent a President Kerry, and lots of evidence of serious mismanagement of the war in Iraq was ignored (apart from by McCain and a few others). Total focus was on winning the election.
However, even if Senator Kerry had won – the Republicans would still have controlled Congress. Now in 2008 there is the most leftist leadership of House and Senate there has ever been. Speaker Pelosi (who has shown that the “Blue dog” moderate Democrats are either a myth or a joke) and her friends in the House (such as Barney Frank). And a Senate in the hands of people like Senator Durbin – with pathetic “coal makes you sick” Harry Reid acting as front man.
Yet no one cares that the Presidency may be about to fall to the Democrats – indeed a Democrat whose record and background is of the hard left.
Total power over every part of government (from the FCC to the IRS) via control over the Executive and the Legislature – and power over the appointment of judges. And there is no focus – no will to prevent it happening.
“But they are corrupt, Paul”.
Someone can be corrupt and still work for a cause.
For example Senator Dodd is corrupt (and in the most old fashioned sweet heart loan from a corporation way), but this is not stopping him putting a housing bill into law that will send yet more millions upon millions of tax Dollars to leftist activist groups. Think how much more the left will be able to do when they have total power.
Or stay as you are and do not think – after all thinking about it might mean it would occur to you that you should do something.
I make a point of looking at the Economist each week, in order to see what this part of the establishment are thinking. I can not normally stand to read it for than a couple of minutes (as it makes me feel unclean), but that is enough time to find some utter absurdity with which amuse people.
However, this week I think I have come upon the worst Economist article of all time:
The title, featured on the front cover, is “McCain’s lurch to the right”… For those who do not know British “political speak”, “lurch to the right” is what the Labour party (and so on) have long said whenever a Conservative party politician gives any sign of not agreeing with everything the BBC and Guardian newspaper hold to be correct.
However, in the case of John McCain the Economist goes overboard.
First he is, as normal with the Economist, damned with faint praise – for example we are told that although it “may be wrong-headed” he does genuinely believe in the right of individuals to own firearms – so at least he is an honest lunatic. We are to forget the basis of freedom in the right of freeman to be armed, in both Classical Civilization and in English (and other Germanic) Common Law – only a few insane Americans believe in the right to keep and bear arms.
But McCain is worse than wrong-headed – he is also a liar.
For example, he has “recently” been saying that there should only be immigration reform after the borders of the United States are secured – which everyone knows is impossible.
Actually it is not a recent “lurch to the right” as McCain has been saying this (over and over again) for more than a year. And everyone clearly does not include the vast majority of Americans who support securing the borders.
On taxation the evil McCain now supports the Bush tax rate cuts – which he once wisely opposed (no mention of John McCain also opposing the Bush spending increases of course), and the crazy man even wants more tax cuts.
The Economist of course does not mention that the American tax code is absurdly complex and something like a voluntary flat tax would be sensible – but it is more than this.
According to what is implicit in the article this recent “lurch to the right” by McCain, actually – again something he has been saying for ages, is wrong (indeed obviously wrong) – McCain should come out and support higher taxes. Which is what “ending the Bush tax cuts” actually means.
So the Economist holds that taxes should be increased at a time of economic weakness – this is a position that even Lord Keynes would have had trouble with. Even a few months off the Federal fuel tax is an insane thing that the all-wise Senator Obama “cleverly opposed”.
Finally we are told that McCain’s support for off shore drilling, if the States agree, is the sort of thing that centrists and moderates would never go for.
This is odd on two grounds:
Firstly as John McCain’s main task at this election is to bring out the conservative, or rather conservative and libertarian – i.e. the anti left, base (a lot bigger than the Republican base) which includes many people who really dislike him. The stay-at-home threat is a terrible one for McCain.
Secondly – the Economist folk simply do not know what they are talking about.
In reality, with the price of fuel being what it is – and set to get a lot higher over time, about 70% of American voters support an end to the Federal de facto ban on new off shore drilling. Nor does the Economist even mention alternatives like opening up the areas of the Western States for oil shale, and allowing new nuclear power stations (both of which McCain has supported and Obama has not).
So by “centrists and moderates” the Economist in fact means “committed hard core leftists who would never vote for McCain if their lives depended on it”.
I do not expect to influence some people to vote for McCain with the above, John McCain has too much baggage (McCain-Feingold, the amnesty bill for illegals, and so on) for that.
However, I do hope to have finally have convinced the die hards that if the Economist is a “free market” publication then I am the Emperor Augustus.
The Economist is written by a group of people who were taught a lot of semi, and not so semi, collectivist doctrines at university – and simply trot them out each week in vague connection to the events of the time.
As a current resident of Beijing, my social life is already being affected by the slew of new rules and bylaws raining down upon the citizens of this city to best ensure that the upcoming Olympic Games is “safe” and – more importantly – free of episodes that might embarrass the notoriously thin-skinned government of China. Consequently, less easily controlled events in celebration of the Olympics such as street parties, spontaneous parades and other assorted manifestations of public revelry have all been banned. According to a BOCOG website, restaurants, bars and clubs will be subject to a 2am curfew. Even establishments that usually set up tables and chairs on footpaths for patrons to enjoy their food and drink in the balmy evenings have been forbidden from doing so this summer. Considering the above, I can reasonably confidently predict that if the Olympics goes off without a hitch, this colossally expensive event will be the most boring in living memory. Still, at least the fun-deprived foreign visitors will have something to snigger at:
 Dinky little machine guns: check. Shiny gold targets on helmets to give opponents something to aim at: check. Segways: check, baby, and welcome to the future. Look out, bad guys – here comes the recently unveiled and Segway-straddled Chinese anti-terror/crowd control unit, charged with protecting the Olympic Games from universally acknowledged threats, as well as those that keep only CCP apparatchiks awake at night. Judging by the way China’s finest are handling their weapons in this photo, however, they look to be more of a danger to each other than to anyone not behaving.
If you want to be a part of the most secretive of the New Space launch companies, here is your opportunity!
I ran across this item in a Janes newsletter today:
US warns Iran on threat to close oil strait. Senior US military officials have responded to Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a strike against its alleged nuclear facilities. Any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to an attack on its nuclear facilities would be an “act of war”, Commander of the US Fifth Fleet Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff said
Now however much anyone may wish for a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, such a strike will be a clear and unmistakable act of war. I find it exceedingly strange anyone would believe it would not be considered a casus belli. The Iranian leadership would have to either accept the war gauntlet or hang themselves then and there and save someone else the trouble. If attacked, they damn well are going to fight back. That is to be expected and any one who believes otherwise is a damn fool.
For us to say a war will only be started if Iran closes off the straits as their first counter attack is utterly dishonest.
Let us get this straight. Nations act in their own interest. If the US government decides it is of overriding Interests of State to take out the nuclear facilities of Iran, then it has declared war. Iran could, like the US with the Panay, choose to ignore the incident… but I doubt it. You may argue over the need for starting that war but calling black, white is not going to pass my semantic muster.
I have long said we should change the name of the DOD back to the Department of War. If you are going to make war, then you should damn well be a man and say so.
That said, I would really prefer we not do so.
At my education blog late last night, I found myself putting, in connection with this (which is a story about how two French science students were brutally murdered in London yesterday), this:
It’s somewhat off topic for this blog, but I say: allow non-crims be be armed!
It may yet happen. London, full of disarmed non-crims and armed crims, is rapidly becoming like New York used to be but is now so conspicuously not, a “crime capital”. Any decade now, something might just give. Or, to use the language of this blog, the lesson might be learned.
Something about the extreme savagery of that double murder yesterday made me think that now was the exact time to be saying such a thing, not just to those few of my devoted libertarian friends so devoted that they read that education blog of mine, but also to any eco-friendly home-schoolers or weary school teachers who happen to drop by there. Suddenly, the anti-gun-control message felt very right, like an idea whose time, finally, might have come. → Continue reading: Is gun control about to be rolled back in Britain?
That is not a sensational boxing headline being concocted; it is the name of an American athlete, being yanked around by some rather pompously programmed software. This morning one of David Thompson’s bits of Friday ephemera is a link to this, which is a link to this, which says this:
The American Family Association has a policy at its new outlet, OneNewsNow, never to use the word “gay” but to replace it with “homosexual.” And that works absolutely perfectly until they write an article about an athlete whose last name is Gay, as in Tyson Gay, the fastest man on the US Olympic track team.
This was of course hastily corrected, but the magic of copy-and-paste had already done the damage. Most quoters have quoted the searched-and-replaced version, but I’ll let you do it. Change “Gay” to “Homosexual” in this, from the revised-and-then-revised-back-again version:
Tyson Gay was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.
Or this:
“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Gay said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”
Or, my favourite, this:
After the race, Gay and Dix looked at each other and slapped palms, then hugged.
But amidst all the joking, it should not be forgotten that this guy sounds like he might be a real athletics superstar.
No one ever has covered 100 meters more quickly.
I say “might”, because when you hear that an athlete is really, really fast your first thought may be wow, but a close second in a photo-finish is: I wonder if it’s just that the dopesters have now found a new and cleverer way to do it. Gay might, that is to say, be a very quick runner but a fake superstar. If you don’t want to be at the centre of universal suspicion, do not be a superstar sprinter, and in particular, do not come to the boil just for the Olympics. Lawyers may forbid constant reference to this suspicion in official big-media sports reports, but this is what all of us casual onlookers now think, and all the lawyers on earth cannot stop us. For Gay’s sake, I hope that this proves to be a real, drug-free record.
I also hope that, come the Olympics, Gay doesn’t choke. Ditto all the other athletes. But then again, if such a PR catastrophe in some way makes the government of China a little less nasty, maybe a bit of athletic choking would be a good thing. Sadly, however, if the story so far is anything to go by, such an eventuality would probably cause that government behave even more nastily, perhaps by inprisoning all the TV cameramen who concentrated too much on the choking.
Another senior UK figure – one of the most senior judges in the land – has argued that some aspects of Sharia law should be permissable when it comes to settling certain disputes between Muslim couples. This re-ignites the controversy sparked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who argued for the same.
Once more, the bedrock principle of a liberal order, that men and women should be treated equally before the law, is potentially at odds with a code that, by definition, does not accept this equality as part of its essence. The inherently anti-women bias of Sharia is not a bug, it is a feature. Take cases where, for instance, a young English guy who is an atheist or Christian tries to take a Muslim girl out on a date and the latter gets physically intimidated by her family (this is not a hypothetical situation, it has happened). To what authority should the woman or man appeal in dealing with such cases? Unless the judge is able to answer that sort of hard question, which goes to the heart of why sharia is considered unworkable in a liberal order, the judge would be well advised to focus on his core responsibility, of seeing that justice is done under the laws of this land. This is one of those examples of why I do not think that a polycentric legal order can really work unless it is possible for its members to elect to choose under which code they wish to be treated. Muslim women would not have that choice if sharia law was incorporated. More importantly, they do not have the key right of “exit”, the right to choose no longer to be treated under a specific code of their families.
The judge, like the Archbishop, is proof to radical Islamists that some of the most senior figures in what might pass for the British Establishment lack the intellectual or moral fibre to defend the core values of this nation.
I have been perhaps less fascinated by the current political season than some, but despite my loathing for one media darling and disregard for the other, I have watched the rather normal campaign season unfold.
It is all so predictable. The Democrats are running a Chicago politician, and that means someone who knows ‘machine’ politics inside out. Whatever Obama does, Obama does for political reasons. “Change” is just a nice meaningless word with which to whip up the party workers. One can well imagine that each ‘problem’ has been orchestrated to make some faction of the Democratic base feel he is ‘their’ man and is being ‘pushed’ toward the middle. Instead of seeing campaign events through the lens you are accustomed to, start looking at it from the viewpoint of “which constituency does it play to?”
Take the Reverend Wright bruhaha. It simultaneously solidified support for him amongst the radical black constituency, made him appear to them as an oppressed victim, and allowed him to move toward the center. That is one brilliant bit of maneuvering, a double play that would do Karl Rove proud.
Democratic candidates have a certain problem to deal with. The activists who will get out and work and who will secure the nomination are significantly (consider that an understatement of British proportions) to the left of the general population. Without their support, a candidate will have a difficult time getting the money and workers required for a successful nomination. Then comes the problem: once nominated they must be positioned for electability. That requires a bit of legerdemain.
The best way to handle it is to appear ‘forced’ to the right. The base believes they ‘know’ what the candidate really believes and continues to support them. There is always enough new blood around that either did not learn through a previous election what happens next or else is gullible enough to believe it will somehow be different this time.
My prediction? By September Obama will be so centrist and mainstream you will be hard pressed to find light of day between him and the polled positions of the American public.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments