By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
– Lord Salisbury (1830-1903)
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July 11th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The fact that a country taxing over 40% of GDP from its populace can be considered the 5th most “economically free” country in the world is rather depressing. Let’s face it, most countries on that list are not economically free at all – they are just slightly less bad than most of the others. The people at Cato also seem to have forgotten about tax rates. A person paying 0% tax is in most respects an economically free man – someone paying 50% per year is a slave for half their working life. So they should have included tax havens like Monaco, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands etc, and low tax larger countries like Russia. Also, as noted by a previous poster, it is actions, not written laws or words, which achieve freedom. A backward country with repressive laws may be freer for you personally if those laws are not enforced, or avoidable at low cost via bribes or cunning. So a corrupt backwater may be relatively free in real terms, whereas a “free” country like America will tax you ruthlessly even if you move to live on the other side of the world, and will exact severe penalties for certain voluntary economic exchanges (e.g. buying a joint or a Cuban cigar). Which raises the final question – is there any meaningful distinction between economic and personal liberty? I would say no. How free are Hong Kong, Singaporean, UK or US citizens to buy and sell firearms, narcotics, or sexual entertainment? Finally, there is a bizarre tendency for everyone to take GDP figures at face value. Remember who makes these up? Yes, that’s right folks, it’s our old friend the government. So take GDP figures with a pinch of salt. Firstly, much government spending, most of which is highly wasteful, is regarded as a positive contribution to GDP. So employing someone on $30k per annum to build bridges to nowhere is seen as economically just as “good” in GDP terms as paying someone $30k per year to build a house, or work as a doctor or shopkeeper. Yet obviously the latter activities are productive, and the former destructive or at best worthless. This focus on production per se, rather than useful production, means utterly worthless projects drive a country up the GDP ranks. Thus countries with large amounts of state spending get an artificially high GDP rating. The only real way to measure economic prosperity is to visit a place for a while and see what kind of real living standards prevail. What kind of cars do people drive, what clothes do they wear, how nice are their houses, are the streets clean, how good are the restaurants, how long does it take to get from A to B? Cobden Bright July 11th, 2003 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
With his surname partially derived from the Gods, and his standing as an Englishman of Scottish descent, you may already know I love Iain Duncan Smith, beyond the edge of reason. But yesterday, in Prague, he ripped open his long silence, on the European issue, and moved to lead the Europe-wide revolt against the long-planned socialist super state. Which, for those of us in the “Get out of Here” Euro-nexus, within the Tory party, is excellent news; it confirms our faith, in why we voted him in, as leader. As the Maastricht rebel leader strutted his stuff, he even picked up a favourable review from Alastair Campbell’s scoop-favoured creatures on The Sun. Trevor Kavanagh, their maverick political commentator, feared by the Downing Street lie machine, and a man, by order of Rupert, beyond the reach of Labour-supporting editor Rebekah Wade, also said about Duncan Smith:
In my opinion, IDS is the bravest man, in British politics, from the entire period of the last 30 years. Can you imagine having woken up, every morning, for the last two years, and then been forced to view the world through his semi-oriental eyes? He has been vilified, pilloried, and humiliated, in every newspaper, on every Channel 4 news programme, and on every BBC web page — virtually every single day — for being a charisma-less, hopeless, and witless fool. But he has come through this burning fire, to nudge ahead of Phoney Tony in the polls, much to the incredulous bafflement of the New Labour-Guardian-BBC aristocracy, which rules this once glorious, and sceptred isle. It’s a fragile lead, admittedly, and there’s still a lot more work for IDS to finish, to cement it in; even assuming it’s not Gordon Brown who ends up as the initial beneficiary, from Tony’s fall; and yes, it’s a shame about that bovine statism, inherent within the general Tory Party; and yes, I would prefer a straight decision to just get out of the EU Dodge City, right now. But on the topic of Iain Duncan Smith, army officer and gentleman; I am a believer.  July 11th, 2003 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
From the Samizdata last week on the English regional assemblies:
To the Spectator this week on the English regional assemblies:
And from Samizdata on the role of Brussels:
To the Spectator on the role of Brussels:
This could be the start of a consensus. July 11th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
In this posting I want to pull together all the reasons for thinking that the “New Labour” project may now be unravelling, and unravelling so seriously that there is a real possibility that they might even lose the next general election. There is no one cause of this phenomenon, just lots of things coming together. My first because deals head-on with the – I presume – widespread American belief that … well, how could we not love Tony Blair? But there are many other becauses now assembling themselves, and the list that follows is surely not exhaustive: Because being popular in the USA doesn’t necessarily make you popular in your own country. Like Thatcher and Gorbachev before him, Tony Blair is now revered by many Americans, but this doesn’t make him any more liked here. If anything, probably rather less so. Being thought of as a Prime Minister who is more concerned to play the world statesman than to grapple with the actual problems on your own desk is not a plus. Prime Minister Callaghan never recovered from the public perception (“Crisis? What crisis?”) of him as a man who didn’t care about his own country’s problems because they were too boring and too intractable. Blair is flirting with the same stuff now. Because now fewer and fewer people are Labour or are Conservative, they merely vote Labour or Conservative. Party membership of all parties is now tiny. When there’s a shift of voter mood, such shifts can be bigger than they used to be, because more people are willing to switch. Even majorities like the current Labour one can vanish, as quickly as they arrived. → Continue reading: Labour could lose the next general election because … July 10th, 2003 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
A newspaper advertisement headlined “Prostitutes Required” for a club “downstairs at The White House” has riled US officials in New Zealand. The crossed Stars and Stripes and bald eagle logo may appear to suggest the Bush administration has branched out, but the advert is in fact for a brothel in Auckland looking for new ladies for its nightclub, Monica’s.  The US Embassy has sent a letter to the business complaining that the advert, especially the logo, is in poor taste.
The brothel’s theme is unashamedly American and the building even has white columns outside similar to the US President’s residence. During the previous US administration the women working at the complex wore blue dresses like that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The bordello’s owner Brian Legros was unrepentant.
July 10th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now call me a big kid, if you will, and Stephen Pollard certainly doesn’t pull any punches in his article, on the topic, but I used to really enjoy reading the Harry Potter novels, even in public, even on trains, and even in preference to Murray N. Rothbard economics textbooks. (No, I hear you cry, how can you say such a thing?) But not any more. For me the magic is either dying, or has already died. And it seems I’m not alone, for a Booker-winning author, A S Byatt, has also just slated the latest tome. Which is a relief, because I thought it was just me. → Continue reading: Potter losing his magic? July 10th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I wonder if there could be more to this civil unrest in Hong Kong than at first meets the eye? I only say that because what started out as a ‘people power’ mass protest at proposed anti-subversion laws has caused not just the Hong Kong government to backpeddle furiously but it also appears to be tightening a few sphincters on the Chinese mainland as well:
No great leaps of imagination are required to here. The nabobs are going to be reporting back to the poobahs on just how deep this river of discontent runs and the poobahs are going to lose a few nights sleep worrying whether all this uppityness could spread to the mainland. Well, you never know. On the face of it, it seems unlikely that this show of bolshiness in Hong Kong could threaten the regime in China itself if only because, to outsiders, the old commie apparatchicks appear to have the country in such an iron grip. But the truth is that all authoritarian regimes are shot through with insecurity. They know only too well that their power rests solely on their monopoly of and willingness to use lethal force. But if that force ever fails, even once, then the whole house of cards comes down. → Continue reading: A little trouble in big China July 10th, 2003 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Evidence, if you ever needed it, that surveillance cameras are getting smarter:
And evidence too of why surveillance cameras are widely believed to be a good thing, not just by the surveilling classes, but by the surveilled also. July 10th, 2003 | Comments are closed
The BBC’s political editor Andrew Marr has reported that “senior Government sources” believed that weapons of mass destruction would never be found in Iraq. Oh dear. Now let me state my position. I was all for the war against Iraq, and still believe the UK took the right decision to go in, with our US allies, to remove its disgraceful socialist dictatorship. But spare a thought for poor old Tony. He had to convince all of those Guardian readers, and all of those who marched against his policy, as well as those of us who’d already decided the rules changed, when two hijacked planes flew into the twin towers. So Tony spiced things up, a bit. And thereby hoisted himself on the petard of WMD. And now he’s beginning to twist on it, ever so slightly, in the wind. In the last two days, in a subtle, nay, almost undetectable, change of emphasis, he’s abandoned the line of saying the weapons will be found. He is now saying, quite categorically, that evidence of the weapons will be found. Now weapons of mass destruction are one thing — a bit of plutonium here, a bit of uranium centrifuge there — but evidence? What constitutes evidence? An old copy of the Cairo Times, with a handwritten Arabic scrawl on the back, saying ‘The Fist of God is in place, Sire’. Will that do? I suppose that depends on either how many people in GCHQ can write Arabic, or whether you’re a fan of Frederik Forsyth. But the interesting thing is this. Did you spot the change of emphasis, when Blair switched to it on Tuesday? I must fess up, and say I didn’t. He’s a slippery devil. But those nice kind clever people, at the BBC, did, bless them. Isn’t self-inflicted fratricide, between lefties, simply excellent entertainment. July 10th, 2003 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Reuters reports:
Oh no, we are not imitating anybody! July 10th, 2003 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
The French and German ministers recently tasked with boosting bilateral cooperation have already agreed on one important point – the need for summer crash courses to learn each other’s language. French European Affairs Minister Noelle Lenoir and her German counterpart Hans-Martin Bury said each would spend part of their holidays in the other’s country sweating over grammar rules and vocabulary lists. They met to prepare an October conference bringing together the heads of France’s 22 regions and Germany’s 16 federal states to discuss boosting cooperation in education, culture, economic development and environmental issues. Lenoir told journalists in French after talks with Bury:
Heh. July 10th, 2003 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
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