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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Recently, Samizdata’s own Paul Marks had a post about F.D. Roosevelt and considered his reputation, his actions and the New Deal. The blogger under the name Hedge Fund Guy has this scathing assessment of the man regarded by many Britons to this day as a good guy:
I think FDR was a horrible president. My son takes better care of his ant farm than this guy took care of the economy. If ever there was someone in power who looked only at partial derivatives, it was FDR. If there was ever someone who focused on producers and ignored consumers, it was FDR. If there was anyone who thought self-interest was only present among businessmen, not government or union workers, it was FDR. His economic views are indistinguishable from a typical campus left-winger after 10 bong hits.
Ouch. He then goes on to attack much of FDR’s record, and I don’t have a quarrel with a single word of it. Even so, it interests me that a man who, objectively speaking, was a total failure in cutting the massive unemployment of 1930s America managed to hold the reputation as a saviour of capitalism for so long. I recall my O-Level history classes and how Roosevelt was presented as essentially one of the Good Men of History, while Herbert Hoover, FDR’s immediate predecessor in the White House, was presented as a Republican who did what he could but not nearly enough (in fact, Hoover was a persistent meddler and regulator, and carries considerable responsibility for the scale of the Great Depression, as do the protectionists in Congress at the time).
Roosevelt was a great showman. His “fireside chats”, his folksy manner, his ability to surround himself with a loyal and capable grouping of what we would call today “spin-doctors” ensured that the FDR myth lasted a long time. His friendship with Winston Churchill – albeit subject to strains and disagreements such as how to deal with Stalin – also ensured that the man is viewed by some Britons in a positive light. Being entirely selfish, I am glad that the United States entered the Second World War on Britain’s side, and one of the reasons why I am a visceral pro-American is that I believe that Europe today would be in a far worse shape than it is now were it not for the courage shown by America’s airmen, soldiers and sailors (some U.S. folk joined up on the British side even before America joined). I have absolutely no truck with the absurd isolationist view that the United States should have sat back, let Stalin/Hitler do their worst and if need be, come to some sort of accomodation with an entire European/Asian landmass under totalitarian, race-based thugs. So it is easy to see why Roosevelt’s image burned bright for many people.
I think the lesson of how FDR managed to hold a high reputation for so long is that a political leader, particularly if he or she is adept in the arts of propoganda and can come across as “doing something” to fix a problem, however counter-productive, can get a fair pass. I do wonder, however, whether FDR would have been as successful in narrow political terms now.
This book, written very much from the “Austrian” perspective, has a particularly devastating chapter on the New Deal, the record on unemployment.
There is an Australian political party worth voting for! I have recently joined as a financial member. Some principles, some policies. Not bad at all. I think their taxation policy places too much of a burden on the taxpayer, but it is still preferable to the progressive status quo.
Are you a member of the Tory Party? Remember when Dave Cameron said he would pull the Tory Party out of the €uro-Federalist EPP once he was elected leader? Remember when he promised Tory MPs would be free to campaign for withdrawal from the EU provided they were not on the front bench?
Have you had enough of the endless porkie pies from Dave Cameron yet? Do you care if you are lied to just to get your vote? If you do care and you still like the idea of being a member of a political party, then I suggest go and join the only thing even approximating a conservative party in Britain… and to do that, you have to leave the Tory party because if you are not a part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
The only thing worse than another term of Labour implementing its destructive policies would be a term of the same destructive policies being implemented by Dave Cameron’s Tory Party and institutionalising radical regulatory centrist authoritarianism as the only permitted political option in Britain regardless of the party in 10 Downing Street.
Although the editorial writers are pulling out all the stops to minimise the threat of the UKIP, clearly the blood is in the water and ideology-free die-hard ‘sensibles’ like Matthew d’Ancona and other have abandoned their policy of trying to laugh off UKIP. There could be no clearer sign that the Cameron Tories are circling the drain.
Update: I left the following comment earlier today on the Telegraph’s website for the Matthew d’Ancona article linked above. As they seem to have decided not to approve the comment for publication…
So let me see… Dave Cameron (who you may have noticed leads a party that claims to be conservative) promises more ‘green’ regulations, goes back on his pledge to leave the Euro-Federalist EPP, goes back on his pledge to allow non-front bench Tory MP’s to campaign for EU withdrawal if they support that, has called for ‘redistribution of wealth’ a la Polly Toynbee, but no, he has not signed up for the European Social Model and is a pukka conservative. Is that really your position?
Sorry Matthew, but how credulous do you think people are? Not only is Dave Cameron a liar (please show me where the things I have mentioned are incorrect), he is clearly not in fact a conservative by any meaningful definition of the word.
Okay, another plug for a funny piece of entertainment following my previous posting. My kid brother bought me the DVD of the first series of ‘Look Around You’, which is a glorious send-up of the 1970s programmes which were used to teach pupils and college students about science, maths and other subjects. The production styles: slightly fuzzy camera shots, corny old folk music, guys with Frank Zappa haircuts wearing tweedy jackets and black-rimmed spectacles, brought back scary memories of how long ago in style terms the 1970s now appears. I went to primary school in that era of flares, British Leyland cars, Roxy Music and endless labour disputes. The education programmes used to be narrated by some posh-sounding gent, or occasionally woman, normally with a perfect received pronunciation and heavy touch of condescension. The programme-makers would sometimes be a bit daring and let the vowels of Edinburgh or even Wales onto the show.
It may be unlikely material for a spoof, but the show Look Around You is in my view the funniest television comedy I have seen in years. I do not know if someone who was not brought up in Britain when these original programmes were made would ‘get’ the gag. However, if you are British, aged about 40 and your blood runs cold at mention of the words NHS spectacles or “modular study guides”, then rent out or buy this DVD. We like to bash the BBC here at Samizdata because of the tax-financing of it, sorry, the licence fee, but this is a gem and is in the same bracket in my opinion as ‘The Fast Show’.
(Health warning: I laughed so much at this show that my jaw is now actually quite painful. Avoid liquids).
The Monty Python purists may be offended – I tend to find such people awkward company – but if you want to have a fun night out and laugh yourself hoarse, then the crazy musical/panto/ “Spamalot” is a must-see event. It has been running in London’s West End for a few weeks now and has already been a smash in Broadway.
“We are the Knights who say neeeee!”
Am I still going to be regarded as a wild-eyed loony by quite so many members of the general public after this?
Probably. Note the delicate way in which one big file on everything in your life – a British Dang An – is justified by a lacrymose anecdote about a family having to have dozens of contacts with government agencies after someone died. Who makes them do that in the first place?
Professor Aziz Sheikh has called for the National Health Service to provide separate (privileged?) services for Muslims to take account of their religious requirements. The Professor is of Muslim orientation and has written an article for the British Journal of Medicine, giving reasons for his argument:
Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said the NHS should record patients’ religion as well as their ethnic grouping. “It is absurd that we do not, for example, know the perinatal mortality or smoking prevalence among Muslims,” he said. Male infant circumcision should be available throughout the NHS, he added. Although some NHS trusts do offer circumcision, most parents are forced into the poorly regulated private sector, he said.
Aziz Sheikh is conflating two issues here: matters of health provision and providing specialised services for particular communities. Whilst there may be problems amongst Muslim communities in terms of infant mortality and chronic illness, it is unclear why their status as Muslims should predispose them to these. Indeed, habits of smoking, an inability to speak English in the United Kingdom as an immigrant and living in relative poverty are better indicators for life expectancy and health. Therefore, these arguments may demonstrate that Muslims suffer from these problems, but that the causes are not specific to Muslims in particular, but are generally prevalent amongst the poor and immigrant communities.
It is not absurd that we do not gather statistics on the basis of faith, as faith is not a primary indicator for health, unlike social class, education or the country of origin for your family. Aziz Sheikh has cited this argument to add ballast to his call for discrimination in favour of Muslims on the NHS. This points the article away from a public health agenda towards a medical version of the ‘identity politics’ that has hindered the effectiveness of other governmental institutions.
The NHS should be more accommodating to the religious needs of Muslims. Many Muslims would prefer to see a same-sex doctor for reasons of modesty, but this was often not possible, despite the increasing number of female doctors in the NHS. More information about drug ingredients should also be available to allow Muslim patients to avoid porcine and alcohol-derived drugs.
If a patient who is Muslim wishes to receive treatment that is compatible with his religious inclinations, the National Health Service is unlikely to meet their requirements. The rationing of healthcare is resolved in a mediocrity of outcomes based upon the equality of all – though contact with NHS personnel or class will often result in a better quality of care.
Aziz Sheikh’s call for services in line with the Muslim faith could be interpreted as the natural demands of a community that has found its feet and started to request personalised treatment, in line with the oft-quoted rise of consumer expectations in health. Some could also see this as the further development of separatism within the Muslim community, demanding special treatment for itself.
The common factor is the state monopoly in health. It encourages communal responses to health issues, allowing professional leaders to make calls for particular treatment, with the corresponding balkanisation and backlash that we would expect from those who perceive that they have been missed out in any sharing of the tax spoils. Hence, the unedifying advance of ‘white welfarism’ in the leafy suburbs.
This would not be reported if health was a choice of individuals purchasing their requirements in a free market. The particular institutions would cater for those who wished to apply these requirements, and one would expect multi-faith alliances to obtain the critical mass that health provision often requires.
The problem is not Islam, it is the National Health Service.
I sometimes look at the statistics on the back pages of the Economist. Although I am not generally interested in mathematics and (as a student of the Austrian school) do not regard mathematics as a vital part of the study of economics, I have long had a mild fondness for statistics (I know that to many people that seems a dark perversion to admit, but there we are).
Last week I noticed that the Economist had altered its presentation, whether this is a first issue of the year thing, or will be carried on the next issue I do not know, and I had the feeling that something had been left out.
However, it was only after looking again today that my tired old brain finally worked out was missing. There were no money supply figures.
Nothing for either M0 or MB (basically notes and coins, plus a few Treasury instruments) growth, and nothing for any of the broader measures of credit money (M3 and so on). Certainly measuring credit money growth is not easy (there are lots of arguments) – but no money supply stats at all? At least not in the paper version of the Economist, and it is the paper version that most people, who look at the Economist at all, look at.
Perhaps the young people who now dominate the staff of the Economist believe that inflation, which they may think of as rising prices in the shops, if they are not aware that a rising money supply may also cause asset price rises in such things as the stock market and the property market, comes about by union power: for example, obstructing a entrance of an enterprise by ‘picketing’, or government bans on replacing workers who do not turn up to work – or some other non market means, raising wages which, if the money supply is not increased to pay for wages being pushed higher than supply and demand would have done, really leads to higher unemployment – not to greatly rising prices in the shops or in the asset markets. Or perhaps they believe that it is caused by exchange rates – and that governments, via central banks, should set interest rates to influence these exchange rates (no matter how many times efforts to manipulate exchange rates blow up in peoples faces there is never any shortage of folk advising yet more manipulation).
It is hard to know. After all I am not an economist, I am only a student (in the old sense of the word) of this subject so my level of knowledge of the subject should be well below the standard of economists in Britain. But this is not the case, most economists in Britain seem to know very little about economics. Perhaps this is because there are few economics departments in British universities where even Chicago school (let alone Austrian school economics) is taught – so young ‘trained economists’ get hired by the Economist ‘newspaper’ (as the magazine calls itself) but do not know much about economics.
This would explain, why the Economist supports things like ‘land reform’ (i.e. land theft) in Latin America, the absurdity of government ‘anti-trust’ or ‘anti-monopoly’ policy all over the world (a policy based on the treating the ‘perfect competition’ model of neoclassical economics, with everyone having the same level of knowledge and all enterprises being much alike, as something ‘fair’ that governments should try and create in the real world), and supporting ever more taxpayers money for the ‘public services’ (in most of the countries of the world).
Of course it would not explain why the Economist supports the European Union (although not all its activities), but I can not think of anything that could explain that level of perversity.
Still… I should return to statistics.
The vanishing of money supply stats put me in mind of something that used to annoy me about the United States Annual Abstract of Statistics.
There was no simple presentation of the size of State and local government spending or taxation.
The stats for government spending and tax were given only ‘per capita’, which of course takes no account of the fact that in some States of the United States people have higher incomes than in other States.
Later on on found that till the mid 1970’s the Annual Abstract had also given State and local government spending and taxation per thousand Dollars of income – which (again of course) made it very easy to see what percentage of the economy was going to State and local government in a given State of the United States (if you are interested the private Tax Foundation still provides such information).
Was it all a dark plot to disguise the real size of government in different States? Much as some people have suggested that the liking of the statistical office for the ‘median’ (the number in the middle of a group of stats – for example with “1, 3, 4, 5, 7,” the median would be “4”) rather than the ‘mean’ (get all the amounts and divide by “number of numbers” – what the layman thinks of as an “average”) as its measure of average, is due to a hated of inequality (which using the mean for such things as “average income” is supposed to ignore). I do not think so – I think it is more the fashions of the world of statistics which I, as a non-mathematician, should not expect to understand, although I do not expect the ‘mode’ to become a popular measure of average any time soon.
However, it is irritating that the Statistical Office stopped publishing a useful number, such as total State and local taxes per thousand Dollars of income, but continued to publish a useless number, such as total State and local taxes per capita.
Just as it is irritating that the Economist published inflation numbers (the staff there, like most modern people, perhaps think of ‘inflation’ as price rises in the shops), while not publishing money supply growth figures – as if the money supply could explode and there be no consequences ever.
Michael Totten has some more great stuff from Lebanon that you just will not read in the mainstream media.
And remember he does not have a news organisation behind him, so he trips and reportage are all funded from his own pocket and from donations from readers.
Last night I and several other assorted bloggers and Samizdatistas dined at Chateau Perry, at a gathering hosted by Jackie D. The guest of honour was Mr Squander 2. Of course we all asked after Mrs and Baby Squander 2, and the good news is that mother and child are doing much better.
For me the most memorable thing that got said last night was when Mr Squander 2 told of how, during the Brezhnev era, poor old Mr Brezhnev apparently consumed an annoyingly large amount of Soviet and in particular KGB man hours trying to get various of his minions to answer for him the question: “Who runs capitalism?”
Presumably so that they could take him/her/it out, in some way or another, and score a cheap and quick victory in the Cold War, although sadly that wasn’t part of the story as told last night.
Or, maybe the idea was for Brezhnev then to able to sit down with this controlling mastermind, and to ask him/her/it: “How can we do it?”
Knowing the damn Bolsheviks, it could well have been both. First find out how they do it, then kill or enslave them all, starting where it makes most sense, with whoever is in charge.
Anyway, (1): Heh. And (2) does anyone know anything more about this? I tried googling: Brezhnev “Who runs capitalism?”, but that yielded nothing. It is such a great story that it is the kind of thing people believe because they want to believe it. I know I want to. But, is there any truth in it?
Greetings Samizdatistas, greetings Commentariat. Long time no see. I expect Brian would have blogged about this were his education blog still going (I for one would love to see it back) but instead the task has roused me from the sweet repose of my “resting contributor” coffin. Here goes.
On the face of it, the idea of raising the school leaving age to eighteen might seem reasonable, especially given that the British government still plans to permit either schooling or “vocational training” when it bans young people from full-time work. After all, the idea apparently works fine in Canada. They simply enforce the law by taking away young people’s driving licenses if they attempt to work for a living. Clearly it is the working teenagers we need to worry about when it comes to youth crime, truancy and so on. Work is bad for you, and encourages bad behaviour! Young people should be writing essays, not mending cars!
But underneath the face of it, I have a few questions:
- Does “approved training scheme” mean “what the government likes” or does it mean something more sensible and informed?
- How much will it cost to approve all post-16 on-the-job training schemes?
- Since when did working for a living exclude learning useful things? Why is it assumed that jobs and learning are mutually exclusive? Is this because all entry-level work is exploitative labour nowadays?
- If this is the case, why does it not apply to graduates with arts degrees working in burger bars and so on? Is it acceptable to be exploited as long as you have wasted five years of your life acquiring thousands of pounds worth of debt, for some reason? Why?
- What will 16 year olds without private financial support be expected to live on if they are banned from honest work? Will they be expected to acquire early student loans? Join a homeless shelter? Or merely become heroin salespeople?
Just wondering.
Well-intentioned politicians are of two kinds, those who want to help people directly and those who want to free people so that indirectly they can help themselves. The distinction may sound like a quibble, but it is not.
– paragraph one of a Telegraph piece yesterday in which Tim Congdon explains why from now on he will be voting UKIP (thank you Iain Dale)
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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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