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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Here is what London’s Metropolitan Police say about stop and search:
Being stopped does not mean you are under arrest or have done something wrong. In some cases, people are stopped as part of a wide-ranging effort to catch criminals in a targeted public place.
A police officer, or a community support officer must have a good reason for stopping or searching you and they are required to tell you what that reason is.
Reasons include that the police officer thinks you are carrying drugs, or there has been violence or disorder in the vicinity.
It is safe to say that stop and search is a really bad idea. It is reasonable to expect to be left alone by the authorities when you are going about your lawful business. However:
Of the Reading the Riots interviewees, 73% said they had been stopped and searched in the past 12 months – they were more than eight times more likely than the general population in London to have been stopped and searched in the previous year.
Reading the Riots is a report by the Guardian and the London School of Economics who interviewed 270 rioters to find out why they said they rioted. One could argue that cause and effect are reversed; the rioters are criminals and that is why they get stopped and searched a lot.
Theodore Dalrymple, who I do not think is right about everything but is right about a lot, analyses what he calls the underclass in his book Life at the Bottom. Reading through some of the quotes from rioters in the Guardian, his analysis rings true. The essence of it is that people have decided that bad things just happen to them and it is not their fault. Their view of themselves as victims is reinforced by their social workers who get their ideas from articles in the Guardian.
From the Guardian’s report of the research:
Rioters identified a range of political grievances, but at the heart of their complaints was a pervasive sense of injustice. For some this was economic: the lack of money, jobs or opportunity. For others it was more broadly social: how they felt they were treated compared with others.
This sense of being treated unfairly is exactly the victimhood mind-set. As for jobs, Dalrymple writes:
the unemployed young person considers the number of jobs in an economy as a fixed quantity. Just as the national income is a cake to be doled out in equal or unequal slices, so the number of jobs in an economy has nothing to do with the conduct of the people who live in it but is immutably fixed. This is a concept of the way the world works that has been assiduously peddled, not only in schools during ‘social studies’ but in the media of mass communication.
So stop stopping and searching because it is a good idea anyway, but they will find other excuses to riot.
Equal time for each candidate (no playing favourites), no audience to make animal noises, serious questions from people who are not media hacks (the A.G.s of three States – including the key States of Virginia and Florida) and no stupid stunts such as hand shows or video links to media plants.
Each candidate given time to express their opinions on serious matters – just that, nothing else. With even the order people spoke in determined by lot.
Not hard to think up – yet no previous debate did that.
And the “Candidates Forum” on Mike Huckabee’s show did do this. So a pat on the back due to former Governor Huckabee.
How did the candidates do?
Well Jon Huntsman did not show up (so he gets a fail) and Gary Johnson does not seem to have been invited (the one demerit that can be given to Huckabee), as for the rest……
Ron Paul showed his age (both in his thin voice and in the difficulty he had hearing what was said to him) – but he did advise people to read Bastiat’s “The Law” (perhaps the best reading advice any candidate has ever given). He also understood that the Welfare State is unsustainable (as well as being unconstitutional), but also that just waving a magic wand would not wish away the problem of the millions of people who have grown to depend on it – hence the need for transition programs. However, when questioned about terrorism he hinted (did not formally state – but hinted) that America being attacked was the fault of American policy overseas – and that is both vile and just plain wrong.
Governor Perry had some sensible ideas (on energy and on education) – but (as usual) was undermined by his inability, unless speaking from a prepared text, to speak in public (sorry but that is part of the skill set for a candidate).
Rick Santorum spoke with true passion about the things that really matter to him – the social issues (abortion and so on). This will appeal to those who share his passions – but, of course, turn everyone else away from him.
Michelle Bachmann had a lot of good things to say (and some less good) – but she also had that oft mocked (by Jon Stewart and co) fixed look in her eyes. I am certain there is something wrong with her sight – indeed I would not be astonished if it turned out she could not clearly see the people she was talking to. I know poor eyesight should not be relevant – but the look on someone’s face does matter. On budget issues Congresswomen Bachmann was good, on illegal immigration her hard line will alienate some people (especially as it is clear, from her whole manner, that everything she says is sincere – so when she says that eleven million people are going to be rounded up, that is exactly what she would do).
Governor Romney was the opposite – his look was perfect (straight at the people he was talking to – with a look of intelligent concern), his voice was perfect also – exactly the right pitch and so on. Content is not really his thing (deliberately so – as it would give the Obama people ammunition to fire at him in a general election, should he win the nomination), but his presentation was ideal. A very good performance.
That leaves Newton ‘Newt’ Gingrich.
The American Gothic (for that is what he is – an incredible mixture of good and bad in both policy and his personality). Speaker Gingrich’s personality is the opposite of mine – to him no position is unwinnable and he is certain that he is the person who can achieve victory. He could be surrounded by a legion of enemies – and be astonished at his good fortune in so many enemies falling into his grasp.
I should despise the man. After all on policy he is as mercurial as Romney (accept that Governor Romney adapts his positions to suit the audience he is trying to reach, the ultimate democrat, small “d” – whereas Gingrich is always restless, always seeking new ideas, even if they contradict some of his older ideas, and is not wildly interested in saying what he is expected to say as he has total confidence in his ability to convince people that he is right), and in personal conduct…..
Governor Romney appears to have no vices (none whatever), no human is without sin – but “Mitt” appears to be as close to being without sin as it is possible for a human being to be, even his changes of policy are a sincere effort to win the support of the voters, and he tends to keep specific promises he makes to voters if he wins an election. Whereas to list the personal failings of Speaker Gingrich would take quite some time – indeed there was so many things that Democrat attack dogs appear to be confused over what specifically to attack him about, especially as, under the normal rules of politics, a Republican who has committed adultery or taken money from Fannie Mae, or has used political connections for his own advantage in office (and on and on) should slink away in shame (for a Democrat to do these things, and much worse, is fine as far as the media are concerned – but Republicans are held to a different standard).
Yet Gingrich shows no shame whatever… → Continue reading: The best American Presidential debate so far was not a “debate”
Via Japan Probe comes the news that 14 luxury sports cars were involved in a recent pile up. This will have been expensive. The crash took place as the cars were cruising along at (what for a supercar is) the rather sedate pace of about 90mph. This will have been embarassing.
My Japanese isn’t up to much but the video seems to suggest that the pile-up took place on the ‘China Road’. I cannot help feeling there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Reading this piece, linked to by Instapundit today, we see that politics in the USA, and in fact everywhere, is a trialogue rather than a dialogue. All parties to the trialogue (definitely including me) believe that the other two camps are wrong, and many in each camp believe that the other two camps are actually one camp.
The three camps are:
Camp 1: Capitalism is fine, so long as the government stays in charge of it and does a few more of the right things and a few less of the wrong things. The mixed economy is fine, if only we can just mix it right, and meanwhile preserve confidence that all will be well. No need for radical change. Trust us. No, we’re not convinced that’ll work either. Camp 1 is very powerful, very clever, very unwise. For now.
Camp 2: Capitalism is an evil mess. This crisis was caused by capitalism – naked, unregulated, unrestrained – being let loose by neo-liberal fanatics. What should be a poodle has become a wolf. Do whatever it takes to make capitalism a poodle again. Yeah, yeah, we need a bit of capitalism, to make stuff, but not nearly as much as we’ve been having lately. Anyone who gets in the way … boo! We hate you! No, we don’t think that’ll really work either, even if the people were willing to give it a go. They won’t, so boo! And if they did, it would fail horribly, and we’d have to blame capitalism even more. So … boooooo. Camp 2 is very stupid, but horribly numerous.
Camp 3: Capitalism would be great, but what we’ve had has not been capitalism – unregulated, unrestrained, as hoped for by us neo-liberal fanatics – but capitalism mixed with statism in a truly horrible way. What we’ve seen in the last few decades has been crony capitalism, capitalism with politicians in its pocket, so that whenever a big chunk of capitalism looks like failing, most notably a big bank, the politicians squirt more money at it. Which ain’t proper capitalism. Meanwhile, capitalism even of the crony sort makes better stuff. Capitalism, the real thing, should also be allowed to make better money, the kind that is allowed to fail if it does fail. The adjustment process will be horrific. No, we’re not sure that will work either. If we could do it, it would work great. But will we ever be allowed to do it? Camp 3 is right. But maybe not numerous enough or clever enough (maybe not wise enough) to win, and prove itself right. → Continue reading: The three way argument
People who know me are most likely sick of my ranting against the Economist magazine, but an article in the present edition deserves to be noted – as example of establishment statist folly.
Under the title of “Poor By Definition” we are told that the Chinese government has adopted an international measure of poverty (support for international government, European-world-whatever, is one of the defining features of the establishment to which Economist magazine writers belong) which will mean that one hundred million extra people will get various forms of government benefit. This is “good news” – “for them” and “for the economy”.
Let us leave the World Government (world definition of poverty, claim of entitlement…) stuff aside – like its support for the European Union, the international statism of the Economist is too demented (and too unpopular – outside a narrow international elite) to be worth further comment. I will just comment upon the social and economic claim being made in the article.
One hundred million MORE (not less) people getting various forms of government benefit is a “good thing”. Someone can only suppose it is “good for them” if they have ignored all the careful examination of what welfare dependence does, to individuals, families and whole communities. Works such as “Losing Ground” have been out for some time – but if the Economist magazine writers have not yet got up to speed with Aristotle and Cicero (who made similar points about the Greek and Roman worlds) it is perhaps too much to hope they would have read and understood more recent studies on how just handing out benefits undermines people – destroys families, undermines communities by destroying self help and mutual aid. And on and on – the growth of the “underclass” and the destruction of such institutions as the family among large segments of the population (the poor) all over the Western world, has been a central element of the history over the last 40 to 50 years – but the Economist magazine writers have totally missed it.
As for “good for the economy” this is the spend-our-way-to-prosperity fallacy that the Classical Economists (such as J.B. Say and Bastiat) thought they had killed off – but got a zombie rebirth with the influence of the late Lord Keynes. As Hunter Lewis points out in his “Where Keynes Went Wrong“, what we call “Keynesianism” (all the central fallacies) had been refuted long before Keynes was even born – even Karl Marx (not known as a hard core “right winger”) laughed at the absurdities of what is now called “fiscal and monetary stimulus”. However, neither the works of the Classical Economists or more recent works (such as those by W.H. Hutt.., Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises and many others) have had any effects on the minds of the international elite – because they have never read such writers. Their education is confined to nonsense and, being intelligent (but not wise) and hard working people, they absorb the nonsense and it remains with them for the rest of their lives. They base all their policy opinions and proposals on a foundation of nonsense – which they learned (with great attention) in their early years. They are (falsely) taught that rejecting common sense is the mark of the “intellectual” (putting them above the common herd of humanity) – and so they reject common sense (basic human reason) with a passion, embracing the absurdities they are taught, perhaps, because what they are taught is absurd.
Lastly the Economist magazine article declares that the money is better spent on expanding welfare schemes than on Chinese banks. An odd statement considering that the Economist magazine has been the leading defender, in the English speaking world, of credit bubble banking and government bailouts. From the rather limited interventionism (corporate welfare) suggested by Walter Bagehot (third editor of the Economist and enemy of then Governor of the Bank of England who, quite rightly, thought that Bagehot’s suggestions would encourage all that was bad in banking) to the “unlimited” (their word – used repeatedly in articles) money creation (money creation from NOTHING) that the Economist magazine has supported in relation to bank bailouts in the United States and for bank, and national government, bailouts in the European Union. Again for the Economist magazine to attack money being thrown at the banks (anywhere) is very odd. The last demented spit of a demented article – the product of an intellectually bankrupt elite who are pushing the world towards bankruptcy. Not just economic bankruptcy – but social, cultural and moral bankruptcy also.
“Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?” said Wilfred.
“ffinch-ffarrowmere,” corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.
– from the short story Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse, quoted by Stephen Fry, in an essay by him about Wodehouse published by the Independent in 2000.
Leo Hickman of the Guardian is apparently angry (as Bishop Hill mentions here) that the Spectator published an article by sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner, an article I recycled the concluding paragraphs of as a(n) SQotD here on Thursday, and Leo Hickman isn’t the only one. The general mood in the CAGW camp is: get Mörner!
To this end a commenter (“schoolswot” – today 11:10am) at Delingpole said this of Mörner:
This is the guy that claims that dowsing works but doesn’t actually want to prove it?
To which commenter “rastech” (circa 1pm) replied:
Dowsing does work, and you can prove it yourself (everybody can do it, some are just better at it than others).
The guy that taught me how to do it (yeah I was surprised I could do it), was a water well driller. He told me exactly where the springs were that he was going to drill, where two springs crossed, their depth (18ft and 24ft), how much water an hour they would produce to start with (it improves the more you pump), PLUS, where there was an even better spring to drill, if those two didn’t work out (it would have been twice as expensive to drill it, as it was almost 50ft deep) too reliable, as they were both in sandstone (but ideal for drinking water as it is beautifully filtered – you should taste the tea!).
He was spot on (you know when you hit a spring as the colour of the rock changes as you go through it – I watched every stage from start to finish on many wells with him, as all my neighbours had boreholes drilled by him and I helped him with them, as he got me practicing the dowsing on them).
Let me guess, from a position of complete ignorance and inexperience in the subject, you are an ‘expert’, right?
Well don’t feel bad about it, I felt exactly the same until I felt that damned divining rod dive for the deck with me holding it.
PS. What convinced me to try him, wasn’t a money back guarantee. I didn’t have to pay him AT ALL until he had delivered a good water supply. He got years of work in the area from that borehole, and he never let anybody down.
So, it’s now officially official. Dowsing, like cold weather, is now right wing.
All this in a comment thread attached to a Delingpole piece about Jeremy Clarkson, and about how all the shouting about Jeremy Clarkson is really about diverting attention from the fact that the recent public sector strike, some time last week, was a failure. Although, Guido reckons Clarkson is now laughing all the way to the bank. They haven’t so much diverted attention from the failure of their strike as given a ton of free publicity to someone who said, admittedly in his characteristically OTT manner, that the strikers were idiots.
Please try to keep your comments on topic. The topics being: Leo Hickman, the Guardian, Nils-Axel Mörner, dowsing, whether tea really does taste better if made with water filtered through sandstone, James Delingpole, the BBC, public sector strikes, Jeremy Clarkson, whether it’s okay for Jeremy Clarkson to joke about people being taken out and shot without really meaning it, Guido Fawkes, how to get tabloid publicity by the ton, paper money collapse … well, I didn’t mention paper money collapse until now, but I thought I ought to.
And by that I do not mean that someone has merely been printing stuff on a violin. The violin itself was made by a printing machine.
Here is a video of the violin not only being enthused about but actually played, by Simon Hewitt-Jones. To whom many thanks for the email that alerted me to this amazing object.
Paul Krugman:
“Although Europe’s leaders continue to insist that the problem is too much spending in debtor nations, the real problem is too little spending in Europe as a whole.”
Let us fisk this:
“The story so far: In the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, Europe, like America, had a runaway banking system and a rapid buildup of debt. In Europe’s case, however, much of the lending was across borders, as funds from Germany flowed into southern Europe. This lending was perceived as low risk. Hey, the recipients were all on the euro, so what could go wrong?”
Nice piece of snark, which I do not demur from.
“For the most part, by the way, this lending went to the private sector, not to governments. Only Greece ran large budget deficits during the good years; Spain actually had a surplus on the eve of the crisis.”
That may be true. I have not checked. However, the fact that Spain’s public finances went down the toilet so fast does not quite suggest that the Spanish public sector was a model of mean-minded prudence.
“Then the bubble burst. Private spending in the debtor nations fell sharply. And the question European leaders should have been asking was how to keep those spending cuts from causing a Europe-wide downturn.”
No, they should have been facing up to the fact that a vast number of mal-investments were caused by a decade of under-priced credit, and that there was no way that such a build-up of bad investments can be unwound painlessly. Seeking to hold off the pain by increasing public spending (and hence scaring the hell out of the global bond market) is hardly likely to achieve the desired effect.
“During the years of easy money, wages and prices in southern Europe rose substantially faster than in northern Europe. This divergence now needs to be reversed, either through falling prices in the south or through rising prices in the north. And it matters which: If southern Europe is forced to deflate its way to competitiveness, it will both pay a heavy price in employment and worsen its debt problems. The chances of success would be much greater if the gap were closed via rising prices in the north.”
That may be true in crudely political terms; after having enjoyed the fat years, those who have done so are not likely to enjoy a lean period. However…
“But to close the gap through rising prices in the north, policy makers would have to accept temporarily higher inflation for the euro area as a whole. And they’ve made it clear that they won’t. Last April, in fact, the European Central Bank began raising interest rates, even though it was obvious to most observers that underlying inflation was, if anything, too low.”
Well, it seems a bit glib to assume, as Keynesians like Professor Krugman do, that the inflation will prove to be temporary… Riiiight… One key problem for the eurozone, as he ought to know, is that labour markets in much of the region are so heavily regulated that getting a meaningful adjustment in wages and prices is hard, and yet this has to happen if countries such as Greece and Germany are to co-exist under the same currency area without strife. The same issue, of course, would apply if the whole region were to adopt, say, an inelastic system of real money instead of fiat money issued by a central bank or banks.
Another point for Professor Krugman to remember is that in some member nations, such as France, there has been double-digit percent unemployment for the young long before anyone had heard about sub-prime or credit crunches. And Europe’s record for wealth and job creation, compared to that of the US prior to the crunch, has been and remains lamentable.
There seem to be lots of people out there who think the euro is about to collapse. They talk about Greece or Italy leaving or of Germany leaving or the creation of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ euro zones. I beg to differ.
Let me explain. There is one thing that people in the Anglosphere often fail to understand: euro-federalists are euro-fanatics. They (the euro-fanatics) seriously believe that should the European Union fail or take a step backwards or even stutter, then Europe would more or less instantly be plunged into war.
Now, us sceptics might ask why it was that there was no war between 1945 and the founding of the European Community (1958, if I recall correctly) or why, if a European Community was all that was needed to preserve the peace up to 1992, it was necessary to create the European Union, but we would be wasting our breath. This is not something that has anything to do with logic or reason. Euro-fanaticism pretty much took over where religion left off.
When push comes to shove nothing else matters. So, when Germany’s politicians are given a choice between the breakup of the euro and a Weimar-style hyperinflation fueled by the European Central Bank printing press, they’ll choose the hyperinflation. Inflation at 20%, 200% or 2000%? It won’t matter: they’ll do it.
And that is the choice they will be given. The PIIGS: Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy are bust. They cannot pay their bills. In itself this would not be a problem. As far as the European project is concerned these countries are expendable. France, however, is not. France is absolutely central to the project. After all, without France there would be no one to go to war with. French banks have lent enormous sums to the PIIGS. If the PIIGS go bust (possibly only even one of them) France’s banks go bust. Now you and I might think “serves ’em right” or “well, that’s how capitalism creates wealth: by weeding out loss-making enterprises” but that’s not how the euro-fanatics think. They are no less wedded to the theory of ‘too big to fail’ than Hank Paulson – the US Treasury Secretary who bailed out US banks in 2008. So, France’s banks will be bailed out. But France can’t afford to do this. So, it will have to print money. But France can’t print money. So, it will have to get the eurozone to do it instead. Enter the ECB. Enter hyperinflation.
The good news is that hyperinflations can’t go on forever. At some point Europe’s hyperinflation will end but it will end in different countries at different times. The different times will dictate that there will, in the end, be a euro breakup, but the hyperinflation will happen first. We just have to hope that the breakup of the euro and possibly even the EU doesn’t trigger the very war it was designed to prevent.
The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment claimed that ‘there is strong evidence’ of sea level rising over the last few decades. It goes as far as to claim: ‘Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3mm yr–1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier decades.’
Almost every word of this is untrue. Satellite altimetry is a wonderful and vital new technique that offers the reconstruction of sea level changes all over the ocean surface. But it has been hijacked and distorted by the IPCC for political ends.
In 2003 the satellite altimetry record was mysteriously tilted upwards to imply a sudden sea level rise rate of 2.3mm per year. When I criticised this dishonest adjustment at a global warming conference in Moscow, a British member of the IPCC delegation admitted in public the reason for this new calibration: ‘We had to do so, otherwise there would be no trend.’
This is a scandal that should be called Sealevelgate. As with the Hockey Stick, there is little real-world data to support the upward tilt. It seems that the 2.3mm rise rate has been based on just one tide gauge in Hong Kong (whose record is contradicted by four other nearby tide gauges). Why does it show such a rise? Because like many of the 159 tide gauge stations used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it is sited on an unstable harbour construction or landing pier prone to uplift or subsidence. When you exclude these unreliable stations, the 68 remaining ones give a present rate of sea level rise in the order of 1mm a year.
If the ice caps are melting, it is at such a small rate globally that we can hardly see its effects on sea level. I certainly have not been able to find any evidence for it. The sea level rise today is at most 0.7mm a year — though, probably, much smaller.
We must learn to take the environmentalists’ predictions with a huge pinch of salt. In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. That was last year: where are those refugees? And where are those sea level rises? The true facts are found by observing and measuring nature itself, not in the IPCC’s computer-generated projections. There are many urgent natural problems to consider on Planet Earth — tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions not least among them. But the threat of rising sea levels is an artificial crisis.
– Sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner rips into the climate catastrophists.
See also this piece, which drives a dagger into the heart of the climate catastrophe fraud.
An old friend of mine, now living in Texas, gave me several links on Face Book that show there really is a revolt going on over the Edison bulb issue. It is one of those small things that everyone can easily understand. It is the hand of Big Brother reaching into their own personal space.
The rebellion is catching on at the State government level in Texas and South Carolina and Georgia and Arizona too.
Let the NoGreen war banners unfurl! Onwards to victory!
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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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