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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The Daily Telegraph has an article defending the idea that general practitioners can and sometimes do out-earn the banking business. Of course, people have not traditionally gone into the medical field looking to make millions, although some innovators of medical patents, for instance, may have done just that. Generally speaking, I take the view that so long as doctors are operating in a free market, then what they receive is a matter of indifference to me. Good luck to those who do well, I say. If we had a genuine market in healthcare, then the high salaries paid to the best doctors would, in time, attract bright people to become doctors rather than say, derivatives traders, or whatever.
Of course, this is not the present situation. With many doctors, their pay is partly driven by their membership of a restricted profession and in the case of the UK, by the money spent by the taxpayer. And as for bankers, or at least some of them, they too benefit from the privileged access to central banking funding of their employers, from bailouts, from barriers to entry erected by regulators, and so on. So if people in Wall Street and the City do get sniffy about how much the men and women in white coats sometimes get paid, remember, they are not quite operating in a free market world, either.
Say what you will about the environmentalist and Guardian columnist Mr George Monbiot – not, apparently, the prototypical moonbat but merely a moonbat – he does have integrity. I have no doubt his recent conversion to a belief in the benefits of nuclear power cost him many friends in the green movement.
This article will not win them back. In it Mr Monbiot and Justin McCurry write that
The Green party’s former science and technology spokesman is promoting anti-radiation pills to people in Japan affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that leading scientists have condemned as “useless”.
Dr Christopher Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, is championing a series of expensive products and services which, he claims, will protect people in Japan from the effects of radiation. Among them are mineral supplements on sale for ï¿¥5,800 (£48) a bottle, urine tests for radioactive contaminants for ï¿¥98,000 (£808) and food tests for ï¿¥108,000 (£891).
and
Launching the products and tests, Busby warns in his video of a public health catastrophe in Japan caused by the Fukushima explosions, and claims that radioactive caesium will destroy the heart muscles of Japanese children.
He also alleges that the Japanese government is trucking radioactive material from the Fukushima site all over Japan, in order to “increase the cancer rate in the whole of Japan so that there will be no control group” of children unaffected by the disaster, in order to help the Japanese government prevent potential lawsuits from people whose health may have been affected by the radiation. The pills, he claims, will stop radioactive contaminants attaching themselves to the DNA of Japanese children.
Regarding that claim, Monbiot and McCurry write:
Gerry Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College, London, describes his statements about heart disease caused by caesium as “ludicrous”. She says that radioactive elements do not bind to DNA. “This shows how little he understands about basic radiobiology.” Of the products and services being offered, she says, “none of these are useful at all. Dr Busby should be ashamed of himself.”
UPDATE: George Monbiot has also put up a blog post on Christopher Busby in the Guardian Environment section. There is fierce debate in the comments between pro-and anti-nuclear Guardianistas. Meanwhile the Green Party have made no statement on all this that I can see.
“This sub-prime revival is part of an alleged “growth package” which will have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. It will further stoke inflation, inflict more misery on savers (pensioners especially) and further distort the market mechanisms whose proper functioning is vital to our economic recovery. One might expect this kind of crazed Keynesian recklessness from President Obama: he does at least have the excuse of being a Marxist, hell bent on destroying the US economy, with Paul Krugman as his adviser. But Cameron? Please can someone, anyone, explain what exactly the point is of voting in a conservative prime minister if he won’t cut taxes, won’t deregulate, won’t support free markets, won’t promote sensible energy policies, won’t defend Britain’s interests in Europe, won’t in fact do anything that Ed Miliband wouldn’t have done in the same position. And at least Ed Miliband has the decency to admit to being a socialist, so we’d know more or less what we were getting.”
James Delingpole.
Our own Perry de Havilland had Cameron more or less figured out in January, 2006. I have had no reason, and neither has Perry, to change my mind about him.
The tight financial integration of the eurozone, together with the essentially political decision to cement all domestic claims into a foreign currency (the euro) was deliberate: thereafter no sovereign could expect to regain independence. A razor-wire fence was erected to prevent members from leaving the enclosure. Now that some inmates are proving excessively troublesome, that same razor wire is a formidable barrier to getting them out.
– G. R. Steele
Yes, there are a couple of interesting recent postings up at the Adam Smith Institute blog, both involving falling prices and falling profits.
Tim Worstall writes about why the solar power business is not proving very profitable. This is not, he argues, because solar power is rubbish. It’s just that making the kit to capture it is not that hard, the price of such kit is falling all the time, and making that kit won’t be very profitable.
The other falling prices and falling profits ASI posting is by Sam Bowman, who links to a piece in the Atlantic Cities blog about how a sharp drop in the price of cocaine caused a similarly sharp drop in the murder rate in the USA, during the 1990s. The business stopped being nearly so profitable and became a lot less worth killing for. (The reason the price of cocaine dropped was that smuggling got cleverer.)
I have very little to say about how true either of these claims are. Mostly my reactions are: interesting! Can anyone here be any more informative than that?
I believe in legalising drugs no matter what. But if it is true that a freer market in drugs, and consequent fall in their price, already has reduced the crime associated with illegal drugs, then that surely strengthens the arguments that I can use to support what I already believe in.
As for solar power, is solar power really about to become economically rational in a big way? If so, how much is that reality talking, and how much the politically rigged and politically deranged energy market?
“As the Church of England keeps telling us how much it shares the aims of the St Paul’s protestors, I notice an advertisement in the Financial Times. The Church Commissioners need a chief operating officer. He will be paid a `six figure salary’, says the advertisement, to manage their `£5 billion multi-asset portfolio’. There is no mention of anything Christian, or even anything ethical. The language is all management-speak. The ideal candidate will have a `proven track record of driving continuous and consistent operational performance’. The job’s responsibilities include `to build and maintain internal controls and process and to lead a no-surprises culture’. Although it is pretty hard to reconcile a `no-surprises culture’ with the mystery of the Incarnation, one must admit that it might have come in useful in dealing these various `occupations’. As well as St Paul’s, there is no one else outside Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield Cathedrals. You have only to study the websites of the various Occupy groups across the country to see that they, too, stick to a no-surprises culture. Events include Palestine Solidarity Campaign rallies, performances by Billy Bragg, strikers’ benefit gigs, meetings of the Anti-Cuts Alliance. They are not forerunners of a Second Coming: they are the usual suspects. There is nothing unchristian about rounding them up (caringly, of course).”
Charles Moore, page 11 of Spectator, 19 November. (This is behind the magazine’s pay-wall. Be grateful to your humble Samizdata scribe for re-typing these words from the dead-tree version).
I like the point about Billy Bragg. He’s in danger of becoming a “national treasure”.
I took this photo yesterday afternoon, not far from my home in London:
Maybe I am being very dim, but what happened here? Did the former user of these crutches have some kind of accident and get whisked off in an ambulance? Did he (or she) encounter a faith healer, and thanks to him (or her), make a miraculous recovery and thus no longer need the crutches? Did the crutches fall off a lorry, and then get put helpfully on the pavement, to stop them getting run over? I strongly suspect that there is an uncontroversially obvious explanation for this circumstance, and that when a commenter provides it I will look very silly, but I can’t now think what it could be.
In its varying degrees, the political, legislative and social applications of environmental science studies in this 21st century should be carefully compared to that of Eugenics in the late 19th and through the mid- 20th centuries.
– Redoubtable serial commenter ‘RRS’
I remember, about a quarter of a century ago, speculating that the way things were heading, in Britain, all “drugs” would eventually be legal, except tobacco. We seem …
All smoking in cars should be banned across the UK to protect people from second-hand smoke, doctors say.
The British Medical Association called for the extension of the current ban on smoking in public places after reviewing evidence of the dangers.
… to be on course for exactly this arrangement:
Ex-MI5 chief Baroness Manningham-Buller is set to call for cannabis to be decriminalised in a speech.
The crossbench peer believes that only by regulating the sale of cannabis can its psychotic effects be controlled.
She is also expected to say the “war on drugs” has been “fruitless”.
I am reluctant to urge consistency in these matters. That might mean them banning the lot, which actually seems a rather more likely outcome. And note that the Baroness favours legalisation because illegal drugs are the sort over which They have less control. So both proclamations are consistent with one another, in wanting Them to have more control.
Yes, I know that there might be some room for doubt here, but an example I came across in the news pages of CityAM today clearly highlights how so-called environmental taxes are hurting the economy and costing jobs, often in areas already in dire straits:
RIO TINTO yesterday said new environmental taxes and red tape were partly to blame for the closure of its Lynemouth aluminium smelter in Northumberland, risking 600 jobs.
The mining giant said the smelter “is no longer a sustainable business because its energy costs are increasing significantly, due largely to emerging legislation.
It is thought that the coalition’s controversial plans for a carbon price floor, announced in the 2011 Budget, are being blamed alongside EU emissions trading and large combustible plant rules.
Earlier this month, the lobby group Energy Intensive Users Group said Rio Tinto was among dozens of firms asking the government for some relief from the carbon price rules.
An agreement has not been made in time for Lynemouth to remain open, though a government “support package” is due before the end of the year.
The government recognises the need to support energy-intensive industry,” said a Treasury spokesperson yesterday.
Personally, I think risking 600 jobs is pathetic. If the AGW alarmists are really that good, they should be looking to risk millions. They need to raise their game.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but you can see why this blog, along with others, gets angry about the lying and bad faith of those “scientists” who exaggerate their doomongering, and the politicians who embrace their ideas. It has consequences for actual lives.
The names on the list of his ministers – most of which were unknown to members of the Italian general public – showed that Monti had failed in his attempt to involve party representatives. His cabinet was made up exclusively of non-aligned specialists.
“The absence of political personalities in the government will help rather than hinder a solid base of support for the government in parliament and in the political parties because it will remove one ground for disagreement,” he said.
The Guardian speaks of the absence of “party representatives” in Italy’s government. The Times (behind a paywall) is more frank: Italy ditches democracy as row blazes over how to save the euro.
A new row blew up between France and Germany yesterday over how to save the euro as Mario Monti, Italy’s new Prime Minister, appointed an all technocrat Cabinet that does not include a single elected politician.
“A paramedic was also told to remove his harness and halt an attempt to reach Mrs Hume because he was not familiar with fire service equipment”
That is from a report in the Herald on the Fatal Accident Enquiry carried out by Sheriff Desmond Leslie on the slow death of Alison Hume while the Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service read up about “the parameters of their engagement” and concluded that these did not include her rescue. She was eventually pulled out by a police mountain rescue team, but by that time hypothermia had taken hold. She died of a heart attack in hospital.
Sheriff Leslie said that some degree of “imagination, flexibility and adaptability were necessary” in conducting a rescue of this kind. He described “a preoccupation with adherence to Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service policy which was entirely detached from the event with which Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service was confronted.”
He said: “There was clearly a balance to be struck between the interests and safety of the rescuers, and those of the casualty they were there to rescue.”
Sheriff Leslie directly criticised two senior officers, group commanders Paul Stewart and William Thomson, for their attitudes at the inquiry. He said they were “focused on self-justification for the action or non-action taken by them”.
The sheriff said: “I found their evidence to be bullish, if not arrogant, in their determination to justify the subservience of the need to carry out a rescue to the letter of Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service Brigade policy.”
It is good that the sheriff has named names. There is precious little penalty other than public shame that will touch a public sector employee who has adhered to procedure. Although the report says that criminal charges “may be brought”, I have a presentiment that the route between the Procurator Fiscal’s office and the criminal courts will turn out to be full of deep holes that an embarrassing report can fall down.
The Fire Brigades Union also made a contribution:
John Duffy, of the Fire Brigades Union Scotland, said: “If we are going to do these specialist rescues you need specialist teams who know what they are doing and know how to use the equipment. We have three statutory functions – to fight fires, prevent fires and deal with road accidents. The problem is we are being asked to do a whole range of duties with no more funding.”
As a commenter to the Herald story suggests, specialist equipment sat there unused and highly trained men sat there debating while Alison Hume slowly died beneath their feet.
Some past Samizdata posts that are also relevant: Alameda County Cowards, We have to wait for the fire brigade because of health and safety, and my first Loss of nerve post.
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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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