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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In the current crisis, there is a lot of wisdom in the idea that the best thing for politicians and their appointed central bankers right now is to do absolutely nothing. Nada, zip, the square root of zero. To do nothing would be the gutsiest option of all. Of course, Mr “Hope and Change” Obama is unlikely to show that sort of courage, nor will Gordon Brown or, heaven help us, David Cameron.
I actually have a theory, that the amount of time that a politician talks about courage, audacity, vision, etc, is inversely related to the actual possession of those qualities. Not even Mrs Thatcher went on about her courage all the time: the most we ever got was the “resolute approach”. And she delivered by taking genuinely brave stands on issues in the teeth of furious opposition from the chattering classes and the media establishments of the time. And in terms of telling folk what they did not want to hear and sticking to a tough policy, politicians such as former UK finance minister Geoffrey Howe in the early 1980s, wiped the floor with today’s lot.
It is the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. I came across this powerfully argued article stating what a great man he was. I strongly recommend it, particularly as it wrestles directly with the accusation, made by some writers in the libertarian camp, that Lincoln was some sort of demon. The author, David Mayer, argues that with some exceptions, the accusations made against Lincoln were and are unjustified.
Update: Well that was a bracing set of mostly hostile responses about Lincoln! A question that I would put to those who claim that the secessionists were justified and Lincoln was a monster is why are some libertarians so willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a group of men who kept slaves and defended the practice? Several commenters argue that slavery was never what the civil war was about, but that is a bit like saying that the English Civil War was never about religion. Plainly it was a factor. Not necessarily as big as the Unionist defenders always claimed, but a factor nonetheless.
The buyers will take possession of this seat April 7, 2009 at 8:00pm and retain custody for 10 years.
Rent seekers and power crazed collectivists from the ruling class, your bids are recorded here.
Small government conservatives and people who believe in personal rights and responsibilities, your bids are recorded here.
Aaaannnnd, (suspenseful pause) as of February 2nd, 2009 the totals are:
Rent seeking collectivists and associated members of the ruling class – $1,068,551
Small government conservatives and supporters of individuals rights and responsibilities – $53,674
I often hear people on this blog and elsewhere say “the voters are idiots, we get what we deserve.” Leaving aside the grating sound of “we”, when the small government conservative is outbid by a 20 to 1 margin, there is no way the message of small government and liberty can be heard. Incidentally, over $20,000 of his $54,000 came from his own pocket. And while your at it, compare Abrahamson’s and Koschnick’s statements of financial interest. I thought the small government conservatives were supposed to be the rich ones.
This is not the first time that the Home Office has used its discretionary powers to bar someone from entering the UK, nor surely will it be the last, but I cannot recall in my adult lifetime such powers ever being used against an elected, serving politician from a friendly, democratic country. And a member of the EU to boot!
Geert Wilders had been refused entry to the United Kingdom to broadcast his controversial anti-Muslim film Fitna in the House of Lords.
Mr Wilders said he had been told that in the interests of public order he will not be allowed to come to Britain.
Under normal circumstances, I would devote the rest of this article to speculation about the reasons behind this extraordinary decision. But, in this case, that would be redundant.
We all know why.
“We are ruled by people who have achieved the remarkable distinction of being both dull and frivolous.”
Theodore Dalrymple. The problem is the idea that we need “rulers” at all.
Over at Devil’s Kitchen, the blogger subjects Guardian columnist and socialist Polly Toynbee to a thorough take-down. One thing that struck me about this piece is how obviously rattled advocates of Big Government now are by the activities of the Taxpayers’ Alliance. The TPA has been one of the most effective organisations in recent years for pointing to the waste of public sector spending and highlighting where taxpayers’ money ends up. It is, of course, a statement on the still-feeble nature of the Tory opposition that this sort of work is not being done by members of the opposition in Parliament. So the TPA has filled a void. It is now drawing the rage of the left that sees power slipping away. In the case of any columnist for the Guardian, of course, the rage is matched by economic fear: the fear that in any possible cull of public sector spending, many of the public jobs that are advertised in the Guardian’s pages will disappear, causing a mighty blow to the Guardian’s finances, not to mention a serious reduction in Labour’s client class.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has been running a noisy campaign against so-called tax havens – which on some definitions are just places that operate low or no taxes. The horror. And yet the Guardian is structured within a highly tax efficient trust, meaning that its tax bills are low. How conveeenient, as they used to say on Saturday Night Live.
If you want evidence of management ruthlessness, never mind Wall Street, the City or for that matter, politics, then check out the English Premier League. Scolari, the Gene Hackman lookalike who was once the manager of a World Cup winning side with Brazil, no less, has been sacked as manager of Chelsea by its Russian owner. Chelsea are only a few points adrift of Manchester United, the leaders. Tony Adams has been fired as manager of Portsmouth, which is near the bottom end of the table. A few weeks ago, Paul Ince, a former midfielder with Manchester United and West Ham, was sacked from his job. At Tottenham, they have been through about three managers in as many years. The same merry-go-round operates at such febrile clubs as Manchester City, Newcastle, Bolton or West Ham. In the latter case, you can bet the cries will go up that its current, relatively new manager, Zola, should be headed for Chelsea, where he is rightly adored as a legend. Against all this, it seems mildly incredible that Arsene Wenger has lasted so long at Arsenal, and of course that Sir Alex Ferguson has reigned for more than two decades at Manchester United.
It is as if the credit crunch has barely begun to make itself felt at the world of English football. Some time ago I wrote about the wrangles between players and clubs over contracts. As far as the sackings of managers go, the world of football looks more cut-throat than ever.
Some time ago, I asked here, non-rhetorically: What use is handwriting?, and I got a lot of very useful answers, such as that techies can communicate very well if they can hand-write, in ways that just wouldn’t work with any gadget more complicated than a pencil or felt-tip pen. By attaching labels to hastily sketched diagrams or graphs, for instance.
Now, for similarly pedagogical reasons I ask: What use is algebra? I refer to the most primitive sort of algebra, where you merely tiptoe into the swamp of abstraction and say things like: if a is 2 and b is 4, then what is a plus 2b? What is the specific value of writing out algebraic equations with small letters in them, and then either substituting particular values for those letters, or else deducing some of those values? Why go into letters, if all you then do is get out of them again, which seems to be the rule when you first start out at algebra.
I’m guessing – guessing because it is decades since I myself did any of this – that there is value to an equation, as a generalisation, quite lacking in the mere specifics of what happens in the particular case when a is 2 and b is 4. An equation specifies a general relationship, and one that is often worth understanding, and impossible to understand without this on-the-face-of-it peculiar and regressive diversion out of arithmetic and back into mere letters. But can the commentariat rephrase, correct, expand on that?
Ideally, they would do this in a way that might convince a twelve-year-old whose ambition is to get rich – perhaps by being a Something in The City (assuming there still is a City for him to be a Something in when he reaches his twenties) – and who now gets up before 6am every morning to do a paper round. By the time I get around to teaching him things like algebra, he is tired. What’s the point of this?, he asks. I would like to be able to give him some better answers than I have managed so far. I both like and admire this boy, and would really like him to do well.
We meet every Tuesday night, so my next chance to pass on such things will be tomorrow evening.
UPDATE Tuesday lunchtime: Many thanks for all the comments, most useful. Lots to pass on and to think about, and not just this evening.
Reading Johnathan’s piece on ‘the precautionary principle’ below, I was struck by the way both it and the comments fail to come to grip with the fact that people who support precaution simply do not share the attitudes and values that those arguments take for granted. Both sides are unintelligible to the other. All sides, in fact, because there are more than two.
I am thoroughly persuaded by the distinction made by cultural theorists between two sorts of precaution promoters, the heirarchists and the egalitarians. The interaction between those two types in a media democracy very well explains how we get to the regulation of virtual risk. Egalitarians expect difference and change to be threatening; heirarchists value order and system, and hate absence of rules. Regulation promises egalitarians safety, that is – the minimisation and control of change and choice – in return for granting heirarchists power and order. Collective nightmares and regulatory bedtime stories are both the stuff of news.
The people advocating the precautionary principle adopt it because it is a neat encapsualtion of the preconception that all change is danger, or because it is a procedural pretext for change to be subject to approval so that it not be permitted to disrupt social order. That is how it is a principle so completely incapable of application. It is not intended as an axiom of rational construction for policy but to legitimate an approach.
The commentator who compared it to Pascal’s Wager had it precisely wrong. It is an inversion of Pascal’s Wager, an anti-rational argument for refusing to make any bets.
Nicolas Bourbaki presents a very interesting insider’s view of the how things are developing in Russia. Several of the article’s links require registration at the linked site.
The summer of 2007 was a busy year for the Russian oil and gas business. In April of that year, the state-run energy company Gazprom finally exerted enough pressure on the Sakhalin II consortium to wrest control of the giant project in Russia’s Far East from Shell, who had hitherto been the majority owner and manager of the development. In return for a cash payment of $7.45bn, at the time seen as a knock-down price, Gazprom acquired a 50% plus one share stake in the project. The deal was struck after months of the Russian environmental regulator exerting pressure on the consortium, Sakhalin Energy, resulting in works being delayed, stopped, and threats being made to withdraw the license to continue the development altogether. Despite there being genuine concerns regarding environmental damage incurred by the development, not to mention the doubling of project costs to $22bn, few believed that the governmental pressure exerted on Sakhalin Energy was anything other than a naked attempt by the Russian government to gain control over the project, its resources, and its revenues by force. Sure enough, within weeks of Gazprom taking the keys to Sakhalin II, the environmental regulator cheerily announced that all concerns had been resolved to its satisfaction and not a peep has been heard from them since. The outcome at Sakhalin II was presented by the Russian government, and accepted by many Russians, as a significant victory of the resurgent Russian state in reversing their exploitation at the hands of foreign powers when they were weak, and regaining control over Russia’s strategic resources, its wealth, and its independence.
Buoyed with confidence from their coup on Sakhalin, the month of June saw the Kremlin use alleged breaches of license obligations to ‘persuade’ BP to sell its 62.85% stake in Siberia’s Kovykta development to Gazprom for $900m in cash, a figure many people thought better than what was feared, i.e. nothing. Two months later, in August 2007, the Russian government moved to deny the Exxon-led Sakhalin I consortium the right to export gas from its development in an attempt to force the sale of the gas to Gazprom at artificially low domestic prices, after which Gazprom would be free to export it via pipeline or LNG carrier at international prices.
Now that Russia’s foreign-run developments were back under government control or suitably compliant, the government ensured that all future developments would remain similarly tied to the Kremlin with limited foreign influence. In April 2008, the Russian parliament approved a new law which effectively handed monopoly rights for all future developments of the Russian continental shelf to just two companies: Gazprom and state-owned Rosneft. By now, the bulk of Russia’s enormous hydrocarbon wealth both present and future was firmly in government hands, a situation which was looked on with gleeful satisfaction by Russians and allowed them to wield considerable influence beyond their borders. Soon followed grand plans for Gazprom to build a pipeline across the Sahara desert, buy all of Libya’s gas, and build LNG plants in Nigeria. Energy nationalism at home and the loudly announced forays abroad as personified by Vladimir Putin helped ensure the Russian population returned approval ratings of over 80% for their then president, now prime minister. Russia had picked itself up off its knees, Russia was strong once more, Russia could once again command respect from others. Russia was back. → Continue reading: Russia’s descent into reality
MSNBC reports that:
The Capitol Hill publication Congressional Quarterly yesterday reported that the White House, responding to minority groups’ concerns about Gregg’s commitment to funding the census, has decided to have the director of the Census Bureau report directly to the White House.
Why am I expecting ACORN to get the census contract?
In Article I, Section 2 the US Constitution orders that “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”
The Congress, by law directed that:
“The Secretary [of Commerce] shall perform the functions and duties imposed upon him by this title, may issue such rules and regulations as he deems necessary to carry out such functions and duties, and may delegate the performance of such functions and duties and the authority to issue such rules and regulations to such officers and employees of the Department of Commerce as he may designate.”
As I read it, the Director of the Census must, by law, be within the Department of Commerce and under the direction of the (Senate approved) Secretary of Commerce who then reports to the president. Am I missing something?
Correction: From reading through Title 13, Chapter 1 it appears obvious to me that the POTUS has no role in the census whatsoever beyond, with Senate approval, selecting the Secretary of Commerce and, also with Senate approval, selecting the Director of the Census who ” shall perform such duties as may be imposed upon him by law, regulations, or orders of the Secretary.” Hhmmm… No president mentioned.
The Secretary of Commerce is the only authority the law recognizes. Since as commenter Laird points out, the Constitution did not place the census function in Article II – the Executive branch but in Article I – the Legislative branch, it is not at all within the President’s reach unless the legislature places it there.
I think that interpretation is supported by phrasing such as this taken from Subchapter 1 section 9 “No department, bureau, agency, officer, or employee of the Government, except the Secretary in carrying out the purposes of this title, shall …”
The Secretary of Commerce does not even report his findings to the President, but rather is instructed to ‘publish’ them. It looks quite clear to me that any incursion by the White House after those two Senate approved appointments is clearly against the law.
Last night I heard an argument used in relation to the climate change argument and Man’s alleged role in driving it, that went along the following lines: We have a responsibility to ensuing generations, maybe even those around 1,000 years or so hence, which means we should do X or Y to curb CO2 emissions etc to ensure that these future generations’ lives are not blighted.
Now of course nothing is more likely to get your humble blogger annoyed than the “Do it for the children” line. The precautionary principle: do nothing if you cannot prove it will not cause harm – would have killed the Industrial Revolution at birth, prevented any life-saving drug from having been brought to market, been used to shut down scientific speculation, space-faring, advanced dental surgery, modern medicine, the whole 9 yards of human endeavour. And the problem with the argument that says “We have a responsibility to generations yet unborn” is that it demands a great deal. How on earth can I or others evaluate the proper limits or scope of such a responsibility? What about the Law of Unintended Consequences? For instance, if we adopt the PP, and we severely curtail the pace of industrial development, scientific advance or economic growth, will we not bring about disastrous consequences for our children, grand-children and so on? In fact, if folk want to bring up the issue of “Do it for the kids”, I tend to respond that if we are to take this sort of multi-generational responsibility, then we should go for as much freedom and growth as possible, and not the other way around.
Another way to think about this is from the position of scarcity, both in terms of time and resources. I only have so much time in my life to make the sort of adjustments that I might hope to benefit my kids, or my grandkids, or whatever. I also only have so many resources at my disposal. And with that in mind, I think that governments – which after all are only collections of persons – have only fixed resources and time at their disposal too, and that there are major tradeoffs to be considered in stifling a technology A to benefit a technology B. Simply repeating that we “owe it to our children” does not take us very far. All too often, in fact, the line about protecting future generations can easily descend into a form of argument by intimidation, a sort of moral bullying.
When it comes to bad arguments used in conversations on topics like this, Jamie Whyte’s gem of a book repays a lot of reading for avoiding pitfalls.
Of course, as a final point, the “Do it for the kids” argument frequently comes from those advocates of greater state controls who are blind to the damage that the state does, sometimes deliberately, to the institution of the family. The ironies abound.
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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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