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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Samizdata quote of the day Unfortunately, this is not what many Greeks (or Spaniards) believe. A large plurality of them voted for Syriza, which wants to reallocate resources to wage increases and subsidies and does not even mention exports in its growth strategy. They would be wise to remember that having Stiglitz as a cheerleader and Podemos as advisers did not save Venezuela from its current hyper-inflationary catastrophe.
– Ricardo Hausmann
There are several things in this article that I think are very debatable and damn I hate seeing people describe spending less of other people’s money as “austerity”, but this is an interesting piece nevertheless.
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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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I am fascinated by the inability or refusal of so many people to accept reality. I don’t think it’s a new phenomenon, “The Guns of August” or Mr Crozier’s pre-WWI articles prove that, but it seems that nowadays, new manifestations can be tracked in real time, so to speak. One can actually watch the stupidity double-down and double-down again according to that old saw about the definition of insanity.
From the same article:
SQ for today?
Perry: people describe spending less of other people’s money as “austerity”.
But it’s worse than that: spending the same amount of money, raised by taxation rather than borrowing, also counts as “austerity”.
jdm: I am fascinated by the inability or refusal of so many people to accept reality.
Some of the comments to Hausmann’s article provide this kind of morbid fascination.
Yes – if people want to see Stiglitz and Krugman in action, look at Venezuela (and so much else of Latin America).
As for Greece – almost 60% of the economy is taken up by government spending, and its labour market is strangled by regulations (leading to the worst unemployment in Europe).
Yes some government spending in Greece has been cut – defence spending has been cut to bits in recent years.
But overall government spending in Greece is actually crushing.
The WELFARE STATE (of Greece and other nations) is totally out of control.
Every single person in the world has accepted or will accept the socialist bribe. You cannot fault Greeks for doing what Germans, Brits, Americans et al. have been and are doing. The Greeks’ problem is that their economy doesn’t produce enough stuff to pay the bribe. On its own, it can support a second world life style. Papandreou and his successors temporarily changed that.
Northern Europe was fortunate to have developed (despite two attempts at suicide) a sufficient economic base to temporarily pay the socialist bribe when it was first offered in the 50’s and 60’s. However, the declining productive native populations and the invasion of huge numbers of alien parasites means that eventually all of Europe is Greece. It tolls for thee.
I agree; it is an interesting piece, and he does have some sensible things to say. But then I run across a sentence like “spending cuts will amplify the output loss in the same way that Keynesian multipliers amplified the output gain from borrowing” and it makes me question the rest of the essay. Clearly he missed the memo explaining that the “Keynesian multiplier” is a myth. Apparently Hausmann is an unreformed Keynesian who merely thinks that the Greeks are doing it wrong.
I also agree with Snorri’s SQ nominee. That sentence gave me a good snort.
In turn, i agree with Laird that the article displays a Keynesian bias. That is evident already from the 2nd paragraph:
In other words: unlike in Greece, “austerity” would have been bad economics in the US.
The analysis of the Greek situation otoh is very good as far as i can tell.
The key to success in the collectivist universe, success being defined as the acquisition of increasing amounts of political power and control over societal resources, is disconnecting the relationship between cause and effect.
By doing this, all collective efforts can be judged only by their nominally idealistic intentions, and any and all failures can be attributed to a lack of the power and resources needed to finally reach their goal. Even better, since these laudable goals are only nebulously defined, they are forever out of reach, and will endlessly require the power and resources that are, in fact, the only true objective of the whole project.
Whenever you find yourself mystified as to how anyone can continue to call for the same failed policies over and over again, step back, and remember—success to the collective mind has nothing to do with attaining the stated intentions, but is only and always a matter of power, and how to increase it.
The path out of the Bizarro universe that collectivist ideology is attempting to create begins with the realization that nothing they claim is real, and their stated intentions are meaningless. Only then can you begin to understand why such lunacy prevails across the globe.
When everything is pretense, the real world becomes shadowy and seemingly nonsensical. Refuse the collectivist’s premise, and the true nature of the enterprise becomes clear.
Why are the Greeks recapitulating the same tragic farce that every collectivist experiment has already shown to be a disastrous failure?
Because in the bizarro universe, wanting and feeling and needing trump all those mean-spirited laws of economics, and logic, and cause and effect.
And when reality finally comes crashing down, and it all goes bust, why, then, it must be somebody else’s fault.
And so it (always) goes.
I always thought that the principal export of Greece was, well, Greeks. Unfortunately, that’s not a revenue source (unless you count the flow of expatriate money from the Greek Diaspora back to the Old Country). Olive oil and feta aren’t enough to sustain a socialist system, and as long as the Greeks continue to neglect their antiquities, tourism too will come to be a declining revenue source.
Basically, what’s left is a backwater state and a Third World economy, propped up by foreign (EU) financing. Pericles would not be proud.
I feel the Greek efforts at brinkmanship maybe more successful than many think. The reason for such a thought derives from the Euro project, an idea that will not be allowed to fail no matter what the price might be in the short term. In fact the Euro will be used, is being used, to increase the centralised powers of the EU, this time into policies that are going to define energy provision. Nothing will stop thie ambitions of Eurocrats. I mean nothing! Except of course economic collapse.
The principal export of Greece used to be…Greece, courtesy of a stunningly beautiful country with a superb climate and a friendly currency for visitors.
“spending cuts will amplify the output loss in the same way that Keynesian multipliers amplified the output gain from borrowing”
The fail is strong in this. Why the government spending more money called Keynesian, when they ignore the first bit which is saving that money whilst running a surplus?
BTW the article does not mention one thing that Greeks are good at: shipping.
I remember reading in The Economist about a Greek shipping magnate revealing the secret of Greek success: they buy ships from the Norwegians when prices are low, and sell ships back to the Norwegians when prices are high.
An honest, if risky, way to make a living.
re: Snorri
Look at the long term trends illustrated by the Baltic Dry index http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND/chart
The international shipping market is in the dumper…
The Greeks were good at shipping when there wasn’t much competition outside Europe. But when the Koreans and Japanese (and lately, the Chinese) all got their act together, the Greeks stood no chance. Onassis and Niarchos wouldn’t get diddly in today’s shipping industry.
“Whenever you find yourself mystified as to how anyone can continue to call for the same failed policies over and over again, step back, and remember — success to the collective mind has nothing to do with attaining the stated intentions, but is only and always a matter of power, and how to increase it.”
Hear! Hear!
This must be the SQO some day or other. No?
Now Greece is looking at hiring casual tax inspectors, not more than 2 months work with no rehiring (the guilds hate competiton) to tackle the ‘culture’ of tax evasion. The real problem is the culture of tax consumption, but there you go.