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]
|
I often claim that the United States is just as bad (in its own way) as Britain (this fits in well with my “we are all doomed” view of the universe). However a couple of things over the last 24 hours have produced doubts in my mind.
Yesterday I was playing with my computer and looked up the website for South Dakota. It was not a very impressive site and it did not seem to have been created by very bright people, but I did say some things of interest. The Governor of the State casually announced the State’s balanced budget (the State has had a balanced budget every year for the last 113 years), he also mentioned (in passing) that the voters (not the politicians) had voted to get rid of the death tax (the state inheritance tax).
South Dakota does not seem to have much in the way of taxes – no income tax, no business profits tax, a sales tax that is a fraction of ours. It also seems to have little trade union power and the Governor has finished selling off all the state enterprises that were created in the early 1900’s.
The leader of the Democrats in the Senate represents South Dakota – perhaps he should look at his own State sometime. It is not just a bunch of subsidized farmers anymore.
Meanwhile back in Britain. I went to pick up an inhaler today (interesting contradiction – I claim I want to die and yet I go to absurd lengths to stay alive). I presented my prescription to the lady at the chemist shop and she said “you have not ticked any of the exemption boxes”. I explained that I was exempt – that I paid for my prescription. “No, you must tick one of the exception boxes” (said the lady). I pointed out the old saying that “someone, somewhere must pay” – “you have met him” I said “it is me”. “You have not ticked any of the exemption boxes” (said the lady).
Eventually I was able to pay for my prescription. However, I think this type of conversation is the death rattle of the Welfare State (and not in the nice sense that we are about to see free market reform). I do not think I would have this sort of conversation in South Dakota.
Paul Marks
‘Judge Ling‘ from Ally McBeal is no more ridiculous than her more pompous colleagues, but both are the products of the common law. One of the sillier libertarian/conservative claims is that ‘the common law’ will automatically sort things out. The heck it will!
The Devil’s Dictionary defines the Common Law as ‘the whim of judges’. As most judges are either social justice creeps or doddering fools it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the common law ‘discovered’ or ‘interpreted’ by such people is as much a threat to freedom than the drafted statutes are. Except that at least one can look up the statutes, whereas only lawyers have the time and means to ‘interpret’ precedent.
Scrapping written legislation in favour of common law solutions is only a good idea for professional lawyers and full-time litigants: the sort of people who walk on cracked pavements hoping to trip up, chip a bone and sue.
Libertarians who want ‘the common law’ and decry ‘the litigation culture’ are like vegetarians asking for steak tartare.
Is this “Paul Foot” who condemns “corporate greed” and “boardroom fraud” the very same “Paul Foot” who – as a lap-dog of the late Mr Robert Maxwell M.C. at the Mirror Group – took money from a crook who was robbing his colleagues’ pension fund, ignored the accumulated evidence of investigations into his masters frauds, and to my knowledge has never shown the slightest remorse for covering up – by his silence – the biggest corporate crime in British history?
I trust that I am completely mistaken, otherwise I could never look at Private Eye or the Guardian again without worrying about the editorial integrity of these fearless organs.
Doesn’t sound like such a big deal does it? Portugal out? What’s new? So are France. So are Argentina. No, the big story is that the USA are through to the last 16, despite being beaten 3-1 by Poland. Weird weird world (cup) or what?
On a more serious note, I’m doing a broadcast for BBC Radio Scotland this Sunday morning (at about 9.15 am) on the subject of what the Trade Justice Movement hopes will be a big demo by the Trade Justice Movement. What should I say? Their campaign seems to be big on waffle and weak on specifics, which I think is probably good because any specifics they favour would probably be bad. So what specifics (a particular identified tarriff barrier – a particular WTO procedure or rule or programme) should I talk about?
Please don’t email me with why free market economics in general is better than statism in general for getting rid of world poverty. I already know that.
I don’t know much about MEMRI, and I don’t know who David Tell is except that he writes about MEMRI’s activities in a way that strikes me as illuminating:
IF THERE WERE JUSTICE in the universe, the Middle East Media Research Institute would already have been awarded some kind of special-achievement Pulitzer Prize. MEMRI has pioneered the careful translation, and dissemination to European and American audiences, of print and broadcast news sources in the Arab world. The group’s work now pops up everywhere; here in the States, hardly a week goes by when some major daily or cable news show doesn’t make use (generally without attribution) of a MEMRI translation. And the cumulative effect of such translations is–or ought to be, at least–roughly analogous to the body blow struck against European philo-communism by the first Western publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novels in the 1960s. Here, really for the first time, non-Arabic speaking Westerners are being given a direct, first-person look into a previously unseen gulag. Only this time there is no barbed wire, the prisoners all serve by choice, and the anti-Semitism is no longer ancillary but central, basic, and paramount. It turns out that the Islamic Middle East, just as the Israelis have been begging us for years to figure out, has got itself trapped in a deep, deep swamp of near-psychotic Jew hatred.
I got the link to this from Instapundit (Thursday), and what Glenn Reynolds was interested in was what followed, which is a report of a video exchange involving a small Muslim girl who is being brought up as a nice respectable anti-Semite. So if that’s the sort of detail you’re looking for, follow the link and enjoy. Me, I love to look at the big picture, and Tell’s introductory paragraph above says a lot about that to me. Any short but well-done compare-and-contrast job on the similarities and differences between the Cold War and the present confrontation between the West and Islam gets my complete attention whenever I encounter it.
John Webb, Chairman of the the United Kingdom Objectivist Association, understand the truth about paleo-socialist Paul Foot.
“Is capitalism sick?” asks Paul Foot, Cash for Chaos, Guardian, Wednesday June 12, 2002. “Yes,” he contends, “disgustingly so. Its sickness is terminal, and it urgently needs replacing.”
As evidence for this singular claim Foot relates a litany of “misdemeanours” which have recently rocked the business community and suggests that far from being an exception to the daily practise of honest commerce they serve to illustrate what he calls “the central feature of capitalism,” namely, “the division of the human race into those who profit from human endeavour and those who don’t.”
Unfortunately for Paul Foot, all the examples he cites in support of this breathless conclusion have little or nothing to do with the free exchange of goods and services within a capitalist economy, as they are, without exception, directly attributable to governmental interference within a mixed economy.
The Enron Scandal, for example, did not occur within the context of unregulated trade or unbridled competition but within a highly charged political atmosphere so beset by graft and bogus environmentalist concerns that the caprices of an 18th century mandarin would seem enlightened by comparison.
The telecoms industry, which Foot also cites, is another unfortunate example to use as it seems to have escaped his notice that the telecom industry has the distinction of being one of the most highly regulated and licensed industries on the planet and where, in the UK, the telecom regulator OFTEL is a byword for bureaucratic incompetence.
As for the tax evasion “scandal” of Tyco – again it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Foot that such a “crime” could never have happened in a capitalist society – in a capitalist society property rights are inalienable and all coercive taxes would be prohibited by law.
Perhaps some people may be tempted to overlook Foot’s rather lame grasp of even the most elementary principles of politics and economics; after all, he must be so busy campaigning to clear the name convicted murderers like James Hanratty [whose guilt has recently been confirmed by new DNA evidence] that he probably has very little time to obtain an adequate grasp of current events.
And in any case, leaving the obvious factual errors aside doesn’t he make a valid point that the riches of the wealthy few are obtained at the price of the poverty of the many?
Well he would be making a worthwhile point if the Labour Theory of Value on which his argument rests had not been thoroughly refuted by the Austrian School of economics through Carl Menger’s theory of marginal utility more than a century ago.
No, the real problem with Paul Foot lies much deeper.
Paul Foot is not merely guilty of a failure of knowledge.
He is guilty of a failure of morality.
And the name of that failure is altruism.
Unfortunately, many people today mistakenly assume that altruism means having a regard for the well-being of others.
It doesn’t.
On the contrary, altruism, in practice, means having a necessary hostility to others as a consequence of adopting something other than oneself as the very standard of evaluation.
Though the precise standard of altruist morality varies depending on the prevailing ideology, the People, the Race, the Proletariat, the Gender, the God, the Prophet, the Environment, the Social Organism etc., the premise which always remains constant in the altruist’s world-view is the notion that there is some overriding standard, something other, something above and beyond and greater than the individual to which everyone should gratefully and enthusiastically sacrifice themselves.
According to altruism ANY desire, ANY benefit, ANY positive evaluation in this life or even the next, if Kant is to be believed, is immoral.
If you feed your child, or help an elderly stranger or the hapless victim of an unfortunate accident and feel even the slightest glimmer of vicarious pleasure yourself, then that pleasure counts as a benefit to yourself and whatever else you may have intended you have not committed a moral act.
By such a standard of morality any act whether beneficial to oneself or the whole of humanity is of no moral worth if it is motivated by the slightest concern for personal benefit.
That people might prosper by freely pursuing their own interests, to mutual benefit and by voluntary consent, without needing to inflict harm on others is an anathema to the likes of Foot.
Why?
Because Foot is a collectivist and for collectivists, all human endeavour, all profit, all property, all knowledge, all values, all human life, is collective.
Anyone pursuing their own interests for their own sake is necessarily at war with the “common good” – a “good” so rare and lofty that only “politically aware” people like the fabulous Foot can identify it.
In this view, company directors don’t earn their bonuses – they “steal” them.
One man’s “gain” is another man’s “loss.”
The rich grow “richer” and the poor, who have a higher standard of living than a medieval King, grow “poorer.”
Property isn’t created – it’s “ill-gotten.”
Wealth isn’t something to be earned – it’s something to be “shared.”
Individual prosperity above the level of “equality” isn’t desirable – it’s “excessive.”
The rich are “guilty” in virtue of their wealth.
And the living are guilty in virtue of dead murderers like James Hanratty.
So how does Foot get away it?
He relies on the reluctance of others – the very others that he would so earnestly make his victims – to abstain from making a moral judgement.
So now it is time to make a judgement.
For decades Paul Foot has sanctimoniously postured as a supporter of the underdog, a valiant champion of the outcast, defender of the weak, and a protector of the innocent.
In reality, however, his is one of their greatest enemies for all he has ever been is an altruist, his entire journalistic career amounting to nothing more than a demand for the glorification of force based on the cultivation of the vice of envy – an vice defined by Ayn Rand as “a hatred of the good for being the good.”
Is Paul Foot sick?
No.
He doesn’t have that excuse.
John Webb
A few days ago, I received through the post one of those half-book half-pamphlet things (only 85 pages long but with a readable spine) that have so abounded ever since the Institute of Economic Affairs got into its stride, this one being from the Social Affairs Unit. It is called Marketing The Revolution: The New Anti-Capitalism and The Attack Upon Corporate Brands. It’s by Michael Mosbacher, who is a longish standing friend/acquaintance of mine. It’s good.
There’s a biographical note at the back which tells us that Mike, who is now the Deputy Director of the Social Affairs Unit, once upon a time “studied politics at Exeter University, writing his Master’s dissertation on the impact of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union upon the British Communist movement”. This, or something pretty like it, was published by the Libertarian Alliance as Political Notes No. 127. This new piece is the logical successor of that earlier one. It describes some of the new globalised groups and campaigning methods and ideological themes that have elbowed their way forward to fill the void once occupied by those pathetic old Bolsheviks and all their massed ranks of useful and not so useful idiots.
Here’s a chunk, not from the piece itself, but from the press release that arrived with it:
The broader message is an old, and rather tired one, hatred of capitalism, the belief that the world is diametrically and permanently divided between the exploiting corporate fat cat few and the exploited masses. What’s changed is the way that message is now being marketed to a new, wider audience by piggy-backing on the corporations’ own publicity. The activists do this, often via websites, by cleverly parodying corporate ads, organising media-friendly stunts at AGMs and launching boycotts.
That you can play games with a famous brand and get your joke bounced around the world at virtually no cost to yourself is a fact that Samizdata readers have several times also been invited to enjoy. Think of the logo adaptations we’ve featured of London Underground (“take a taxi”), and of Intel (“Big Brother inside”).
Would that Mike Mosbacher’s work was making equally clever use of the Internet. Alas, the Social Affairs Unit website makes that of my dear old Libertarian Alliance look downright advanced. That it doesn’t refer in any way to this publication is peculiar (although technical difficulties have also prevented any reference to the LA’s latest batch of paper yet finding its way onto our site). But far worse than that, the SAU website commits the basic old-school sin of using the internet only to try to sell paper, instead of also to distribute text free of charge. There’s nowhere on the site from which you can download anything “published” by the SAU, other than short bits of sales blurb. If you actually want to read anything substantial that they’ve “published”, you have to order it through the post. You have to pay money. (For all the difference it can make me saying it here, you can buy Marketing the Revolution by sending GBP9.95p plus GBP1 for postage and packing (blogspotbollocks won’t do pound signs so please decypher that as best you can) to: Social Affairs Unit, 314-322 Regent Street, London, W1B 3BB. Or ring Mike Mosbacher himself on 020 7637 4356.)
You’ve got to make a living, and if you are in politics, “public affairs” etc., that tends to involve doing things that ignorant old people think will influence the young, rather than doing things that actually will influence them. I don’t blame Mike Mosbacher for the foolishness of writing interesting things about the internet but then publishing them in an internet-hostile manner. Well, maybe I do, because like I say he doesn’t just write for the SAU; he is its Deputy Director. Whatever. But let’s be clear what the next step is: an internet presentation of Mike’s stuff which actually deploys some of the good work that he’s been doing in an internet-usable form.
Because it is good work. Mike is not overwhelmingly strong, for my taste, on analysis. His big picture is somewhat unpersuasive. He makes much, for example, of the fact that anti-capitalists make a living within the world of actually existing capitalism by having capitalist money of their own, and by accepting great lashings of it from others who do if they don’t. So what? This is like moaning about Soviet dissidents who also had jobs as government scientists. What were they supposed to do? Starve? The case against these anti-capitalists isn’t that they are taking money from capitalism to trash capitalism; it is that they are trashing capitalism.
But if the big picture is somewhat blurred, the small pictures are in exact focus again and again. Just as with PN127, Mike digs into just how this campaign operates, and what that bunch of lefty-capitalist self-haters actually say and do and ill-spend their well-gotten gains. Waffle it is not. And again as with PN127 (communists who reviewed that said it was very accurate), those it describes would recognise the details as accurate rather than the polemical and inaccurate waffle that is often presented as anti-anti-capitalist “analysis”.
Mike is good on the way that capitalism appropriates the imagery of youthful rebellion and uses it to sell things to those same youths when they get a bit older. (While doing this I also noted a TV advert featuring the late Jimmy Hendricks emitting all manner of anti-establishmentarian vibrations via the latest psychedelic computer-graphical trickeries, in honour of the latest Audi.)
But one of the better bits of analysis comes not from the text itself, but from that same press release which I’ve already referred to. Just after the bit quoted above, it goes on to say:
Because its impulse is anti-capitalism rather than ameliorating the practice of corporations, the anti-corporate movement views progressive corporate policies as simply an attempt to mask the true nature of capitalism; which it is their mission to unmask. The harder an individual corporation seeks to show that it is doing good, the more important it becomes for these activists to seek to show that it is not. Progressive companies are attacked not in spite of, but because of their progressiveness.
I don’t remember anything as bang-on-the-nail as that in the thing itself, although of course in Marketing the Revolution itself there’s much more detail:
The TV stations of Turner and the skin care products and lotions of the Roddicks are, of course, themselves identified by the anti-branders with all the alleged sins of branding. They are, in fact, seen as especially heinous offenders by some: the mainstream media represented by Ted Turner is seen as the engine behind the construction of the branded world and Anita Roddick is the champion of what they see as the blind alley of ‘ethical consumerism’. Hence, The Body Shop was a prominent target on the web-based hit list of corporations to be subject to ‘anti-capitalist actions on Tuesday 1st May 2001’.
Here we have a principle that might enable the pro-capitalist movement to start making some waves of its own, by piggy-backing on the anti-capitalists. We can note which corporations are trying to be seriously “progressive” to the point of being actually anti- any capitalism but their own, and especially if they are doing this not just with their messages but with their money. We can point out to them not only that they are asking for trouble, but that, if they don’t stop letting the capitalist side down, we will set the anti-capitalist dogs on them.
It’s no use blaming anti-capitalists from getting money from whoever they can, but you damn well can blame capitalists for giving it to them.
This letter not just to, but in, today’s Daily Telegraph is worth reproducing in full. Its relevance to earlier posts here about “joined up government” is obvious.
Re: Government assists sinister Euro plans
Date: 13 June 2002
SIR – The Government intends to give public sector bodies the capacity to find out what we access on the internet, who we e-mail and who we phone.
This is part of a broader drive by the European Union to give its fledgling police force, Europol, the capacity to accumulate information on all EU citizens. The Europol Convention gives that organisation the right to keep a database of information on any individual, including “sexual orientation, religion or politics”. Europol was also charged last August by the Council of Ministers with adding the names of “troublemakers” to the Schengen Information System, so they could be “tracked and identified” with a view to preventing them leaving their home countries shortly before major EU summits.
Under the existing EU Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance, Europol and any national police force can request information on any citizen living in another member country. The legislation being introduced by the Government will greatly assist this sinister process.
On May 30, the European Parliament voted for a new directive granting the police and others the powers referred to above. The Labour leadership instructed its MEPs to support a measure that, until recently, the group had rhetorically opposed. Only Arlene McCarthy abstained. The Tories also voted for it, with the honourable exception of Lord Stockton. To their credit, the Greens, the Lib Dems and UKIP voted against it.
From:
Marc Glendening, Democracy Movement, London SW6
Marc Glendening was one of the speakers at that Liberty Conference we’ve been going on about. According to what people said to Chris Tame, who was also a speaker but didn’t hear Marc’s talk, it was extremely good.
For as long as I can remember, every change of importance imposed upon Britain by its political rulers has been (a) something to do with European integration, but (b) announced without the European Union being so much as mentioned. This joined-up government crap seems to be no exception to that rule.
We live in a litigious society – everybody running off to court. It’s stupid. It’s up to the judge to make them feel stupid. I can do that.
-newly appointed Judge Ling in last night’s episode of Ally McBeal
(Judge Ling, played by Lucy Liu, immediately began to settle cases in seconds, and by the end of the episode had been offered a nationwide TV deal.)
Hard-line socialist journalist Paul Foot Paul Foot waxes indignant in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday about what he sees as the systemic sickness of capitalism, as demonstrated in his view by the demise of such U.S. corporate behemoths as Enron Corp and conglomerate Tyco. Foot quotes the Goldman Sachs chief executive Hank Paulson, who warned last week that “Business has never been under so much scrutiny. To be blunt, much of it is deserved.”
These words, which will hardly strike readers of this blog as controversial, come in for the following Foot broadside. Let’s quote the man in full: “The problem with this argument is that it overlooks the central feature of capitalism: the division of the human race into those who profit from human endeavour and those who don’t. This division demands freedom for employers, and discipline for workers; high pay and perks for bosses, low pay for the masses; riches for the few, poverty for the many.”
In other words, life is a zero-sum game. If I profit from selling you a pair of shoes, a newspaper or a motor car, then you have “lost”. If you are poor, your poverty must be caused by my wealth, and vice versa. No-where in Foot’s mental universe is the idea entertained that both sides in a trade gain, since why else would they trade in the first place? In his world, no wealth is really ever created, just redistributed or grabbed by one group from another. His world is essentially closed. It is not surprising that a world fashioned according to such beliefs will be marked by stasis and decline. If we were to accept Foot’s take on capitalism, the history of mankind and its staggering increase in wealth at all levels would be incomprehensible.
I have no quarrel with the many commentators who have blasted the U.S. financial system for the bad lapses in recent months. The demise of Enron, the faltering faith in the quality of corporate accounting and the shenanigans of analysts secretly trashing stocks while plugging them in public have damaged the U.S. economy. But surely what these sagas show is that capitalism, often with brutal power, punishes malefactors and ultimately puts a premium on honesty and fair dealing, and at the same time educates the masses into investing carefully. In short, capitalism works because it embraces a form of feedback, as mis-judgements and crooked behaviour get punished. This is something one won’t readily find in the socialist world of which Paul Foot dreams.
As a regular commuter in London – I travel from the western end of Central London to the eastern end covering 10 miles each way – I have suffered most evils of modern transportation known to man. This is despite the fact that I ride a motorbike, which should save me from most traffic jams and delays. In fact, I have observed the traffic getting worse over the last two years and even got stuck in ‘motorbike jams’ that occur during major gridlocks. Public transport is horrendous in its own special way, the London Underground (affectionately known as the Tube) is apocalyptically over-crowded (those who travel by it will understand the description – it’s a disaster waiting to happen) and the quaint red buses are pitifully inadequate in capacity and frequency and surprise, surprise, get stuck in the same traffic jams as cars, vans, lorries and trucks. As a biker I especially detest the last three categories.
I have often wondered how much worse the situation needs to get before this major source of frustration of living in London is addressed. Some Libertarian Alliance gurus, namely Brian Micklethwait in his pamphlet on road pricing and Tim Evans in his posting to this blog, think that charging for road use is the way forward, with the market fine-tuning the traffic flows. I can’t wait for their proposals to be taken up and bring the desired results as travelling in London has become unbearable (yesterday, instead of 30 minutes it took me 1.5 hours to get home). 
Therefore, I read with interest an article The war against the car in the last week’s issue of The Economist (alas, subscription needed to view the article) commenting on Ken Livingstone’s, London’s mayor, plan to combat congestion. As of February next year, a ring of 200 cameras linked to computers programmed to recognize licence plates will start scanning 40,000 number plates an hour. The 250,000 motorists who drive into 21 square kilometres (8 square miles) of the city centre between 7am and 6.30pm every day will have to pay £5 a day for the privilege. Those who fail to do so will face an automatic £80 penalty unless they fall into one of the several exempt categories, such as taxi drivers or nurses on duty.
So far, so good. Mr Livingstone seems to be on the ‘free market’ track trying to play the supply and demand game. The article also confirmed my observation that over the past two years, congestion has been getting noticeably worse with average traffic speed dropping from ten miles an hour to nine – slower than at any time since the car took over from the horse and carriage. What really got my attention was that the mayor’s critics say this is not a coincidence. They maintain that Mr Livingstone is deliberately making things worse before his scheme is introduced so that it will appear to work miracles. For example, the combination of new bus lanes, longer red traffic lights and more pedestrian crossings mean more delays for drivers. I can confirm all of these have appeared on my regular routes.
The timing of traffic lights is being subtly changed all over London. A few seconds’ difference can affect traffic for several miles. “Double-cycling” – traffic lights which allow pedestrians twice as much time as cars at busy crossings can have a painful impact – there are places in Central London where forty seconds out of every minute are devoted to pedestrians, leaving twelve seconds for one stream of traffic and eight for another. And of course, road works can always be relied upon to do the trick. You can hear the arteries slamming shut, as drivers’ adrenalin levels rise steadily during London’s rush hours.
The details of how exactly Mr Livingstone can make the London traffic more hellish is important because it is half-way to proving that he is doing so. Yes, the same old story – the mayor is up for re-election in two years’ time and has staked his political future on congestion-charging. Mr Livingstone needs the scheme to be seen to work. Suddenly, his objectives are no longer aligned with mine and those of thousands of frustrated drivers. The saviour turns into the devil, deceiving us in the very act of making the situation ‘better’.
What matters is that those who drive cars in the centre of London during the day are a tiny minority compared with the millions who walk or use public transport – and as any good politician, he can count his votes.
|
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.
|
