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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As has been noted before, the disaster of the eurozone is, in the eyes of some policymakers, as much an opportunity for further pan-European empire-building as it is an occasion for shame and embarrassment. This week, Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy (remember him? He’s the one who married one of Mick Jagger’s old flames), came up with this barnstormer of an idea, in the form of a European-style “Tobin tax” and a form of increased economic central government. It has the ring of inevitability about it.
The problem for the UK is that said tax, which has been assailed by the likes of Tim Worstall before, would apply not just to the eurozone, but to the UK, which is not in the euro. And given the relative size of London as a financial centre compared to Paris, Frankfurt or Milan, guess which place takes the biggest relative hit? You guessed: London. Never mind, of course, that banks that can do so will put some of their activities outside the EU, or that the costs of the tax will be borne by savers, borrowers and users of financial services generally, in the form of lower rates of savings interest – already negative in real terms – more expensive costs of hedging forex transactions, and the like. This is what is known as tax incidence. Politicians are not, as we know, in the business of understanding the Law of Unintended Consequences. Indeed, we might even define today’s political class as people who defy this law.
Of course, Cameron, Osborne and others (but not their LibDem allies) will protest about such a tax on London’s financial sector, but look how far such protests got us before concerning sovereign debt bailouts by the UK. And such men have shamefully pandered to such anti-capitalist sentiment in the past, so there is a sort of brute justice if they fail to prevent this latest move now. Such men, of course, have enjoyed the fruits of financial wheeler-dealing when the going was good, such as financing of the Tory party by the likes of Michael Spencer, the founder of derivatives powerhouse ICAP. (As an aside, I see that the odious Vincent Cable, Business Secretary, wants to slap capital gains tax on housing transactions of wealthy properties if the Tories decide to ditch the top 50 per cent rate of income tax. Even a land value tax is better than CGT, although not by very much. There is no such thing as a benign tax.)
Alas, banker bashing has reached such heights of hysteria that some might even try and argue that such a tax on the evils of speculation is a jolly good idea. It pained me to see that even that otherwise fine book on the recent market disaster by Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson, floated the idea.
Allister Heath weighs on the latest eurozone wheeze. He’s unimpressed, not surprisingly.
Update: Here is a twist on the issue of tax incidence and taxes on companies. Milton Friedman is magnificent.
It’s amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness. […]
I don’t believe the majority always knows what’s best for everyone. The fact that the majority thinks they have a way to get something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don’t want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, I don’t believe you really know jack.
– Penn Jillette
The impact of David Cameron’s spending cuts is so impressive.
Update: To be fair, this particular chart does not give Cameron a lot of time to make a difference, but does anyone think it matters?
With respect to the other countries, my gut feelings are that the Spanish numbers are made up, and at least some of the British and Italian debts are backed by real assets that are worth something to a greater extent than are whatever is supposed to be backing the Greek, Irish, and Spanish debts. The Portuguese numbers are probably somewhere in between in terms of believability. Belgium is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma inside something French.
HT Tim Harford
“Richtie is the true Clausewitzian nightmare, an industrious idiot who never stops.”
– David Moore, commenting on an item by Tim Worstall, who fisks the absurd Richard Murphy.
Okay, back to the recent violent disorder. Eating in a local cheap restaurant for lunch, I grabbed a copy of the Daily Mail and was pleasantly surprised at this remarkably non-hysterical piece on the recent controversy about David Starkey, the historian. But of course, if you want a reliable mix of social conservative rant and shafts of lucid insight in the same piece, there is always Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) on hand. In the article I link to here, I broadly agreed with some of it but as usual, there is always the equivalent of a crack in the pavement.
“Say to him [Cameron] that mass immigration should be stopped and reversed, and that those who refuse any of the huge number of jobs which are then available should be denied benefits of any kind, and he will gibber in shock.”
Interesting. So Mr Hitchens thinks that mass immigration should be “reversed”. How exactly? There is often, I find in some of the denunciations of mass immigration, an unspoken assumption, never fleshed out, as to what said denouncers want to do about it. Does Mr Hitchens think, for instance, that those who have been living in the UK for some time, and who hold UK passports, should, if they fall into the “wrong” demographic groups as he might define them, be deported? To where? How? Never mind European “human rights” legislation, how can any supposed “conservative” such as Mr Hitchens, with his famed love of “family values” and the rest, countenance a reversal of mass immigration without spelling out the details? Casually referring to “reversing” X or why without saying how is foolish, in my humble opinion.
Of course, there are tens of thousands or more people who emigrate from the UK every year in pursuit of a better life. And I suspect the recent mayhem will only add to the shift. But I get the impression that such folk are not the ones that Mr Hitchens has in mind.
We tend not be very nice about the BBC around here. It is a state-created broadcaster that forces everyone to pay for it, etc. (Boo, hiss, throw rotten tomatoes, etc). But it does occasionally put up programmes of some value. In view of the popularity of shows in which the rich, famous or infamous track down their ancestors, such as “Who Do You Think You Are?”, there is a show that runs in the dead-zone of daytime TV, called Heir Hunters. It shows how various financial/legal professionals earn a living by trying to track down people who could inherit money from the deceased but who don’t know about it because there was no will signed. The actual commission or fee that these people charge for this work is not disclosed but the general effect of what these businesses are doing is positive, in my view. The reason for my saying that is that at present, if a deceased person’s estate has not be carved up in a will, then it is grabbed by the state.
A friend of mine who works in this area reckons that in his own, modest way, he is keeping private wealth out of the hands of the state by making sure that those who could inherit the money actually do so. Anyway, the popularity of the show suggests that inheritance of wealth is something that Brits of many backgrounds are comfortable with. Most of the people highlighted in the programme are not exactly the Duke of Westminster type.
The popularity of this sort of programme also, of course, speaks of the enduring interest people have in history, family traditions and roots. Like certain other passions and enthusiasms, it appears to be ineradicable, and woe betide the politician who attacks it, however indirectly, via taxes.
A letter to yesterday’s Times (link behind a paywall):
Sir, Statistics indicate that 100,000 children sleep rough in the UK every night. Evicting rioters from their homes would only add to this shameful number and it would fall on already overstretched charities to protect them. It will also create a disaffected underclass as can be found in countries like Brazil and Mexico.
Trudy Davies
Co-Founder of the Consortium for Street Children charities (CSC)
Wimbledon SW19
There are about 11.8 million children under sixteen in Britain, so according to the statistics cited – or at least mentioned as existing somewhere – by Trudy Davies, about one in 118 of them sleeps rough every night.
Strangely, a six year old document produced by Charlie Bretherton, a Trustee of the very same Consortium for Street Children Charities, gives a less alarming picture, although it does also include a figure of one hundred thousand. It says:
How many young people are involved and where are they?
‘Runaways’: The Children’s Society estimates that about 100,000 children under 16 run away from home every year. Most stay away for between one and three nights, but some stay away for longer. The Social Exclusion Unit estimates that at least one in eight runs three times or more. Most do not travel long distances; only one-fifth travel further afield than the nearest city. The majority will stay with friends or sleep in garden sheds, fields or bus stations.
Homeless: There are few statistics on youth homelessness. Centrepoint in London provides a place to stay for over 500 young people every night; in 2000 one in five were 16 and 17 year olds.
Street Homeless: The last rough sleeper count found only two under-18 year olds sleeping rough on the streets. However young people who run away often choose to sleep in dangerous places.
Emphasis added. From two to a hundred thousand in six years. I blame the Tories.
“The global paper standard has lasted 40 years but evidence is accumulating daily that its endgame is now fast approaching. The world economy is caught in a deepening financial crisis caused by excessive levels of debt, severe asset price bubbles and overextended banks—all imbalances that are the direct consequence of four decades of unprecedented fiat money creation, of artificially low interest rates and of “lender-of-last-resort” central banking. Monetary policy today—whether by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the ECB or the Bank of Japan—is not much more than an increasingly desperate attempt to postpone via super-low interest rates and periodic debt monetization the painful but unavoidable liquidation of these imbalances. This will not only ultimately prove futile, but will lead to a complete currency catastrophe if pursued further.”
– Detlev Schlichter, writing in the Wall Street Journal. The fact that he is now gigging at the mighty WSJ is, of itself, a great thing.
Update: today is the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s decision to kill off the link between the dollar and gold, although in reality the old gold standard had been dead for much longer.
Instapundit, whom I revere for his relentless, industrial strength linkage (happy tenth anniversary Professor), has been in the habit, in recent times, of linking to pieces about how Americans are getting ever more disappointed by President Obama. But, as I am sure that Instapundit himself appreciates, the disappointment with Obama coming from Obama’s own former supporters is not because Obama’s preferred economic policies are now correctly understood by those ex-supporters to be disastrously destructive, but rather because Obama seems insufficiently determined and skilful in imposing these policies upon Americans who would prefer relatively sensible economic policies.
Obama’s leftist critics are not disappointed with Obama because they have come, reluctantly and through bitter experience, to share the opinion of his policies held by the Tea Party. Rather are such critics disappointed with Obama because he is not crushing the Tea Party, but instead haggling with them, and doing so, as these critics see it, with insufficient skill and nastiness.
Yes, Obama still seems to believe in the same daft policies that these leftist critics favour. But where is the passionate commitment to folly that he persuaded them he felt when he was getting elected, and that they still yearn for? Perhaps someone else (Hillary Clinton?), with greater energy, industriousness and human warmth, could lead America over the cliff with the proper amount of dash and determination, instead of Obama just leading the herd from somewhere in among it.
One should not, in short, confuse the fact – if fact it be – that President Obama is now being thought by ever more Americans to be doing a bad job, with the claim that all of America is coming to its senses in the matter of what it should do about its current economic woes, or what will happen to it, and to the world, if it does not do what it should do.
Whenever a senior political figure, such as David Cameron or Boris Johnson (the London mayor) writes a newspaper column on some issue or other – and Boris Johnson does this a good deal, being a good writer – you can bet that in light of recent events, at least one commenter will make some remark about the politicians’ holidays. You see, it was terrible, apparently, that our Prime Minister was sunning himself in Tuscany or that BJ was carousing in Canada, rather than working 24/7 in their offices. To delay coming back to our Sceptred Isle for a few days when the disorder broke out is inexcusable, just the sort of lazy, arrogant stuff you can expect. Etonians. Bullingdon Club. These bastards probably did PPE at Oxford! (Sarcasm warning).
As you can see, I find all this type of commentary tiresome. It suggests an inability to realise that in the age of the internet, video conferencing and the like, that things don’t collapse when a political leader is away. The Prime Minister is not my Daddy.
And from the point of view of someone who believes in minimal government, the free market and the open society, this mindset is very foolish. While I don’t want to pay for their holidays, I happen to think that the idea of politicians taking time off from their politicking is a very good idea and should be encouraged. A century or more ago, the Peels, Palmerstons, Gladstones and Disraelis holidayed a good deal, and their backbench members of Parliament holidayed even more, or ran their estates. In the USofA, Congress was deliberately located on the swamps of the Potomac in order to discourage people from meeting during the hot, malaria-filled summer months. (Arguably, the governence of the US went down the tubes when air conditioning was invented). And London stank so badly because of the lack of drainage that getting out of London was a good idea for anyone who could do so.
As I said, I don’t mind politicians taking time off so long as we, the taxpayer, don’t have to pay for it. But in principle, the idea that Civilization will come to an end unless Dave, Boris or Barack are constantly at their desks or in the assembly is barmy. There is much to be said for a bit of time out from these people. As the saying goes, we should be grateful we don’t get all the politics we pay for.
(Aside, the commentators on the Daily Telegraph site are truly awful, arguably worse than the Guardian. Take a look at the moronic stuff regarding BJ’s latest article on the riots).
Is anyone seriously going to try to make the case that this isn’t black culture in excelsis? Or does anyone, perhaps, want to persuade me that this is but one tiny and much-exaggerated facet of a broader black culture dominated by opera and madrigal singing and crochet and sonnet-construction and lawn bowls and Shakespeare and new translations of Ovid? If they are capable of doing so then maybe, just maybe, I might accept that there was something demeaning or reductive in Starkey’s comments on black culture. Problem is, I don’t think anyone can. (And I speak, by the way, as someone who quite likes his hop hop and who is very much into the new Kanye West/Jay Z album. But who, listening to it, can’t help noticing that it’s rather more a celebration of gats, hos, casual sex and easy money, than it is an invocation for study, hard work and social conformity.)
To pillory a man for pointing out such a glaringly obvious cultural fact just because he’s white and Right-wing would have been quite wrong even before the riots. Post riots it is positively obscene.
– James Delingpole, declining to join the lynch mob baying for David Starkey’s blood.
One of my little hobbies is spotting when words change their meaning, often to the disgust of (over?) zealous grammarians.
“Refute” now seems merely to mean disagreeing, rather than disagreeing successfully and persuasively, which is what refuting an argument definitely used to mean.
“Sophisticated” has, for many years now, meant admirably and subtly complicated. But in Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear himself uses the word sophisticated (here 1899-1900) to mean complicated in a bad way, as in over-complicated, affected, over-elaborate, over-socialised.
“Disinterested” now merely means “not interested”, in many mouths.
A fellow Samizdatista whose hospitality I enjoyed this afternoon reminded me that the words “hack” and “hacker” have also been on a bit of a journey, following the quite recent invention of the word to mean the various things it means now (as opposed to just hacking meat from a bone or some such thing). Hacking used to mean merely acquiring an understanding of a complicated, often computerised of course, system. It meant sussing it out, working it out. It still does, among the people who still use the word this way. But those of us not familiar with the hacker fraternity typically regard hacking as computerised breaking and entering, and thieving, of information. Hacking, to us non-illuminati, means the same as hacking into. What started out as a morally neutral, even admiring, word has taken on a meaning that automatically includes wickedness.
Earlier today, while wallowing in England’s cricketing success yesterday against India, I think I may have spotted another of these walkabout words, here, although in this particular case I hope not, because this is a word I would personally like to stay put:
England demolished India at a delirious Edgbaston to usurp the tourists at the top of the world Test rankings.
“Usurp”, to me, says that there was something illegal or improper about England’s arrival at the number one test match cricket spot. The implication, to me, is that maybe an English cricket delegation – perhaps those two Andrews again – somehow pressurised the custodians of the ranking system into declaring England the top team despite England not actually having enough points, or whatever it is you must have the most of to be the top team for real. But nobody – not the writer of the above sentence, Sam Sheringham, nor anybody else – is suggesting this. Not on purpose anyway. Also, you usurp a title or a throne, not the person who previously held it.
Is Sheringham perhaps wanting to imply (infer?) that, given their lofty status in the world of cricket – because of them having by far the most cricket fans and, until now, a stellar batting line-up, still a stellar line-up if you go by the mere names and their test match achievements in the past – India have some sort of divine right to be the top team? Well, some vague thought along these lines may be why the word occurred to him, and why his editors didn’t change it. But what Sheringham is really reporting is that India used to be the top team, but now England have toppled them, fair and square. “Supplant” or “replace” would have been better words for his purpose. My video recorder tells me that earlier this evening Mark Nicholas, finishing up a highlights show of the series so far, on Channel 5 TV, used the word “toppled”.
Personally, I like the fluidity of language. I like how we can all invent new words, which immediately get across something otherwise hard to explain. I like “walkabout” for example, even if nobody outside of Australia knew of this word two centuries ago (although perhaps they did, I don’t know). And I regard the loss of good words as the price that must be paid for the widespread right that we Anglos all enjoy to make up new words, or acquire new words from each other. The common point of both word destruction and word creation being that together, we do it, rather than being told what’s what, verbally, by some damn committee of self-important academics in London.
I love that “television” is a mixture of Latin and Greek, and that – or so the story goes – an irate newspaper correspondent once argued that because of this linguistic abomination, the thing itself would never work. I had no idea, until I found my way to this collection today, that there are so many such Latin/Greek hybrid words in common English use.
I also enjoy, from time to time, concocting sentences without proper verbs in them. What’s that you say? Not allowed? Hard cheese.
I also enjoy turning nouns into adjectives, as English allows as a matter of routine.
Even so, all that being said, I would be sorry to see the word “usurp” ceasing to mean, well: usurp. It’s a good word and a useful word, and a word with a significant history. I think we should keep it meaning what it has meant for centuries. If we do not, a lot of history will have to be laboriously rewritten.
“Usurp” should not, that is to say, be usurped.
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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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