Communists for free expression are like vegetarians for veal.
– Perry de Havilland, at Saturday’s march for free expression in London
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Maybe you’re right Perry. But, maybe you’re overly pure in your principles.
Stalin was an evil swine, but he proved a handy ally against Hitler. In the real world, away from the libertarian sunlit uplands some very strange alliances form.
I’d only agree with you if the commies were demanding the beheading of anyone satirising Marx, but as they’re not they’re useful allies. It is very useful to have people of all political shades on side on this because it sends a clear message that it ain’t just about “right-wingers who hate muzzies” – it’s about defending the freedom bought with centuries of blood and treasure.
I’m not categorising libertarians as right-wing. That is the job of the MSM. And it’s made a lot harder if it’s clear that this campaign is supported by the left as well.
If you were specifically reffering to the Iranian Communist Party – of whom I’d never heard of before – I could agree. I’m struggling to think of an organisation that sounds more repressive than Iranian Communists.
The Iranian Communists were the biggest signle factor behind ditching the Shah in 1978 (oil workers’ strike and all that).
Then Khomeini ditched the Communists, usually with a pistol.
I was there at the rally and I knew there would be commies attending… but that does not mean I am going to just accept them as ‘good guys’ now. We should take their help on this issue just as Churchill did indeed take help from Stalin against Hitler, but it is vital to keep stating that this does NOT make them anything more than temporary tactical allies.
Which was precisely what I said. I’m actually flat-out fascinated about the weird tactical alliances that can develop. For me the 1980s sharing of military weapons data between Israel, China, Pakistan and South Africa takes the cake. Nasty thing expediency. It’s only got one thing going for it. It’s expedient.
This is always going to be an issue for libertarians. The late great Chris R. Tame, for instance, encouraged the Libertarian Alliance to engage in “outreach” to other groups if it was felt that there was a common aim of value to work for, such as freedom of speech, and if there was a reasonable chance of planting the liberal meme. However, as Chris realised, this is something to be handled with great care. I would always make it clear to any Marxist, for instance, that I would only campaign for freedom of speech for them if they were willing to reciprocate.
I had quite a shock when, while at a Liberty conference about 3 years ago, (the outfit formally known as the National Council for Civil Liberties), many of the speakers had no compunctions about calling for regulations to limit freedoms of people they disliked.
Its rumoured that when Gordievsky defected in the mid-1980’s he gave MI6 more or less the full membership of the Iranian communist party including the secret members. This was then handed over to the Iranians as the one thing worse than a load of Islamic nutjobs controlling the oil was the Soviets. As you can imagine party membership fell after that.
Hmmm…how does an economic theory stifle free expression?
Fred, if you’re too lazy to do the research for your fourth grade social studies report, don’t expect people here to do the work for you.
I think history tends to show that Soviet control of the oil was probably somewhat less bothersome for the west than Islamist control of the oil. At least you can talk rationally with communists and they tend not to be convinced that God is sending them on a holy mission to incinerate the infidel.
An interesting point is raised above concerning expediency and the shifting temporary coincidence of interest that colours virtually all of international relations over all of time. Stalin was a murderous bastard, but Hitler was an even worse and far more poisonous murderous bastard, so sensibly you align yourself with the lesser of two evils to eliminate the greater. A failure to do this in Afghanistan (favouring the encouragement of the Afghan Islamists to resist secular Soviet occupation) was a major motivating factor in the rise to prominence of Islamism today.
But this is what happens when you insist on an ideological view of the world. We could plainly do with a little less ideology and a little more pragmatic expediency.
EG
Why was Hitler worse than Stalin? In terms of pure body count, Mao was worse than them both.
Hehe, I like Concerned Citizen.
Euan, with perfect hindsight, one could probably agree with your view about Hitler vs Stalin, but my goodness, what a close call. Two evil regimes, both slaughtering millions, enslaving millions more, on the basic of bogus creeds of race and class.
Collectivism, of whatever stripe, has a pretty grisly record really on this sort of thing. Which probably explains why I am the libertarian ideologue I am.
Yes Perry’s statemen is about as accurate as the European Union of Anarchists.
To a certain extent, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the only problem with the Soviets were is that we didn’t use the closeness we had during The Great Patriotic War to sidle up close enough to use an ice pick on them. Instead we invented cute names like Uncle Joe and The United Nations.
What worries me right now is how Our Dear Leader has suddenly decided that free markets are healthy for an economy. Of course as Prime Minister, Blair limits his experience of free market economics to the supply of utilities at Number 10 Downing Street; utilities which for the most part either operate within a cartel or within a complete monopoly for their respective industries.
Might we therefore somewhat revise the quote to …
… given that many of your younger readers might not know what a Communist is 🙂
It’s ideology that’s the problem, not necessarily collectivism. The ideologies of fascism, Nazism, Marxism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, you name it, all have horrible records in this regard.
Christianity puts at its centre the Golden Rule (which pre-dates it), but an ideology that calls people to deal with others as they would be dealt with themselves nevertheless produced the inquisition, the crusades, witch-burning and the suppression of free enquiry.
Buddhism emphasises the individual and his pursuit of harmony with the universe, and yet in power produced slavery, torture, squalor, dictatorship and – perhaps uniquely for an atheist philosophy – theocracy.
And so tediously on. It’s entirely possible to be a sincere communist and equally sincere in the advocacy of freedom of speech and thought for all. There is no contradiction or hypocrisy here, just as there is no contradiction or hypocrisy in being a sincere Christian and at the same time sincerely practising self-sacrifice and love for one’s enemy.
Put any ideology in a position of authority – especially if that ideology says it can prove what the right way is – and prepare for trouble as the unintended consequences become apparent.
EG
No, it is not possible to be a “sincere” Communist and be in favor of free speech. Communism’s god is “the people” whose will is interpreted by the Party. Any speech against their god or prophet is punishable by death. Communists are convinced that God is sending them on a mission to destroy the infidel. They just define God and “the infidel” a bit differently from the way Wahhabis do. And what makes some Christians so dangerous is their belief in self-sacrifice and love for their enemies. That ideology leads to death.
Put any ideology in a position of authority – especially if that ideology says it can prove what the right way is – and prepare for trouble as the unintended consequences become apparent.
I don’t see that as applying to a supposed ideology like classical liberalism. I mean, the “ideology” of classical liberalism, English conservatism, etc, is one that embraces freedom and believes that governments cannot and should not solve all of life’s problems. So surely such a belief system, if held by people in government, cannot lead to tyranny. If such people became tyrannical then they would no longer be liberals in any meaningful use of the word.
The problems with collectivist belief systems such as communism and fascism is that that the very ideas of subordinating the individual to the collective (be that the State, God, race, proletariat, whatever) leads to disasters like the former Soviet Union.
One of the things that appealed to me about classical liberalism from the start was the idea that the extended order of a free society worked better than Big Government precisely because we humans are flawed, make mistakes and need room to learn. I find it hard to see how such a body of ideas, honestly applied in public affairs, could become tyrannical or lead to the sort of disasters mentioned earlier.
JP
So, it seems that on Planet Speirs communists are dangerous because they are on a mission from their god to destroy their enemy, whereas Christians are dangerous because they’re on a mission from their God to love their enemy.
Doubtless there’s some twisted logic in there somewhere, but I can’t see it and I’m pretty sure you can’t explain it either – your comment doesn’t betray a great deal of knowledge about either communism or Christianity.
EG
Another point worth making is that we need a bit of room for doubt, to change our minds, to admit, “I screwed up”, etc. That does not exist in closed ideological systems where those unpredictable, messy things called individuals are subordinated to the collective.
Have any of you actually read Marx?
Of course it can.
But first, liberalism in this sense, and conservatism in most senses, are not ideologies but rather are fairly pragmatic philosophies which generally assume that the government should stay out of private life (though not necessarily public life) as much as possible – which doesn’t mean wholly and exclusively, nor does it mean for ever. That isn’t libertarianism, though. Then again, if you think it is, the label “libertarian” is redundant and you may as well call yourself a liberal or a conservative.
Assuming libertarianism to be a more rigid and ideologically derived set of restrictions on the state, let’s consider the imposition of a libertarian system in Britain. There’s the first tyranny – libertarianism *would* have to be imposed because the electoral reality is that nobody wants it. If it’s tyranny to impose communism when the people don’t want it, it’s tyranny to impose libertarianism when the people don’t want it. Sauce for the goose, and so forth.
Assuming that people actually did by some fluke vote for it in sufficient numbers, the second tyranny arises if they then want something different. Suppose in Libertarian England a written constitution was agreed that prevented the state from taking certain actions, such as some kinds of taxation or regulating in certain areas. Suppose then that a large segment, perhaps a majority, of the people exercised your “bit of room for doubt” and decided they’d got it wrong and that progressive taxation was after all a good idea whatever the constitution said. Are they permitted to go back to it? If they are not, it is tyranny because the people are thus prevented from having the system of government they want.
A third tyranny is the granting of positive right against the wishes of the majority. A classic example of this in England would be gun ownership – the overwhelming majority of English people do NOT agree that people should in general be permitted to own guns. You can argue all you want about it, but the plain fact is that this is something the majority simply does not want. Are they allowed to deny this right, when a clear majority wishes it to be denied? Is it not tyranny to say that the majority may not have their own society regulated as they see fit?
A fourth tyranny is in commodity currency, which to be fair isn’t a feature of all Libertopian visions. Commodity currency does have certain advantages, but none that cannot also be realised by properly controlled fiat money. It also has some serious disadvantages, not least the inability (or extreme difficulty) in the state embarking on inflationary expenditure to prevent recession turning into depression. It’s worth noting that no modern western economy based on fiat currency has experienced depression, but all of them when based on commodity currency have. There have been worse stock market crashes than 1929, but in the context of fiat currency they have not caused depression, precisely because the state can inflate the money supply and thus avoid depression. The tyranny here is that the fetish for commodity money will inevitably consign large numbers of people to a miserable poverty, however temporary or not, that is otherwise eminently avoidable because fiat money means the economic cycle inherent in capitalism can be mitigated.
Money is nothing more than an abstraction to ease the exchange of the product of labour. That’s all. Lumps of soft yellow metal have no intrinsic value, and money isn’t a thing in itself apart from entirely human concepts of wage labour. It doesn’t matter a damn whether it’s based on gold, oil, rolls of wallpaper or state fiat – provided it’s reasonably stable and predictable, that’s enough. But basing it on state fiat has massive advantages.
And finally, dragging this back to the topic, would a libertarian society permit speech against itself? If so, but if it did not permit the constitutional basis to be changed, changed perhaps in flat contradiction to libertarian nostrums, then what value is that liberty of speech? What is the advantage in being able to talk yourself blue in the face about the iniquities of the libertarian system, even to convince a majority, if all you can do is talk and never actually change anything?
Tyranny is not in the ideology, it is in the practical implementation of the ideology, and I see nothing in libertarianism that makes it immune to the faults that have afflicted all other ideologies.
EG
Crikey, that was a long post. But sheer wordcount does not persuade me, EG. You have not explained how freedom-loving people, conscious of the need to act with care towards their fellows, could be tyrants.
Assuming libertarianism to be a more rigid and ideologically derived set of restrictions on the state, let’s consider the imposition of a libertarian system in Britain. There’s the first tyranny – libertarianism *would* have to be imposed because the electoral reality is that nobody wants it.
Silly argument. If no-one wants libertartarianism, then it won’t happen, and we will continue with the mixture of statism and half-assed markets that we have now. I don’t know of any major libertarian thinker around who would impose their views by brute force, although it is possible, I suppose.
A fourth tyranny is in commodity currency, which to be fair isn’t a feature of all Libertopian visions. Commodity currency does have certain advantages, but none that cannot also be realised by properly controlled fiat money. It also has some serious disadvantages, not least the inability (or extreme difficulty) in the state embarking on inflationary expenditure to prevent recession turning into depression.
Well, it is true that “properly controlled fiat money” that we have with modern central banks — after decades of inflation, mind — can deliver fairly stable prices. But I doubt that the “extreme difficulty” of a state inflating a currency to combat a recession is quite the terrible drawback you claim, given that I think Keynsian economics to be bunk.
Money is nothing more than an abstraction to ease the exchange of the product of labour. That’s all.
Absolutely, and a jolly good reason why monetarists/Austrians have tended to take a dim view of states deluding themselves into treating money like a toy.
And finally, dragging this back to the topic, would a libertarian society permit speech against itself?
No, I see no reason why it would ban people who want to preach collectivist ideologies of some sort or whatever. I very much doubt that a completely libertarian society is possible, given the frailities of some humans and their desire to choose the comfort blanket of the state. That is how people are and I have to accept that.
Crikey, that was a long post. But sheer wordcount does not persuade me, EG. You have not explained how freedom-loving people, conscious of the need to act with care towards their fellows, could be tyrants.
Assuming libertarianism to be a more rigid and ideologically derived set of restrictions on the state, let’s consider the imposition of a libertarian system in Britain. There’s the first tyranny – libertarianism *would* have to be imposed because the electoral reality is that nobody wants it.
Silly argument. If no-one wants libertartarianism, then it won’t happen, and we will continue with the mixture of statism and half-assed markets that we have now. I don’t know of any major libertarian thinker around who would impose their views by brute force, although it is possible, I suppose.
A fourth tyranny is in commodity currency, which to be fair isn’t a feature of all Libertopian visions. Commodity currency does have certain advantages, but none that cannot also be realised by properly controlled fiat money. It also has some serious disadvantages, not least the inability (or extreme difficulty) in the state embarking on inflationary expenditure to prevent recession turning into depression.
Well, it is true that “properly controlled fiat money” that we have with modern central banks — after decades of inflation, mind — can deliver fairly stable prices. But I doubt that the “extreme difficulty” of a state inflating a currency to combat a recession is quite the terrible drawback you claim, given that I think Keynsian economics to be bunk.
Money is nothing more than an abstraction to ease the exchange of the product of labour. That’s all.
Absolutely, and I would not claim otherwise. All the more reason to avoid the false charms of inflationism.
sorry for the double-posting.
Your point I was answering was that the type of system you postulated could not lead to tyranny, not that the people doing the governing would be tyrants. These are not the same things.
Tyranny is a somewhat over-used word, but we might take it to mean a system whereby the generality of the people are not permitted to have their society governed the way they wish it be governed, and where the government stops or seriously attempts to stop, with violence if necessary, any effort on the part of the people to change this situation. Much of Europe, including England, was in this position in the first half of the 19th century – small state not doing much, but a form of tyranny nevertheless because of large scale disenfranchisement and the forcible suppression of dissent. England avoided revolution by seeing the writing on the wall and moving to have the state mitigate some of the worse reults of laissez-faire in a gradual process from the 1830s onwards, but much of the rest of Europe didn’t because it didn’t permit such reform, certainly not to the same extent.
Tyranny can quite easily come about where the system of government believes it can prove that it is right, perhaps especially in such circumstances, and irrespective of the size of the government. Appeal can be to holy writ, the works of Marx or the specious logic of Austrianism, or indeed anything else. If you have a system of government run by the type of libertarian who thinks that collective central planning is “proved” not to work (despite the fact that almost all private corporations are centrally planned collectives), and therefore by extension that his contrary method is “proved” to work, then tyranny is but a step away.
Libertarianism doesn’t get a free pass because it’s never been tried. In fact, several countries have come fairly close in the past to recognisably libertarian systems, most notably early to mid-19th century Britain and, slightly later, America. The results are not particularly pleasant and aren’t stable in the long term, so I see no reason why “proper” libertarianism should be different. It’s the difference between theory and practice, and whilst in theory libertarianism may be wonderful, in practice it’s likely to produce all manner of unintended consequences, just as Marxism does.
Ah, so depression with its excess involuntary unemployment and associated misery is preferable to prudent economic management to avoid such things? Perhaps one of the reasons why libertarianism doesn’t appear on the electoral radar.
Perhaps you’d care to explain how this “bunk” manages to work, then, and not only that but to deliver a degree of economic stability that commodity currency simply cannot provide?
But not, presumably, false dilemmas? It is not the case that we can have either fiat money or stability through gold. You can, as you concede, have stable fiat money and the means of achieving this are now well enough known – I concede immediately that they were not well enough known until about the 1970s, of course. There’s a distinction I assume you’re aware of between Keynesian and neo-Keynesian economics.
Modest inflation – say about 2% or so – in a fiat money economy is harmless and does not adversely affect anyone provided it is consistently modest. High inflation is indeed a bad thing, but a low rate of inflation as a price for a stable yet flexible currency and a means of readily avoiding depression is something worth putting up with. Almost all western governments now accept this, and it is only the Austrians and some other similar thinkers who cling to the unecessary and inflexible relics posited as solutions in an earlier time with radically different circumstances.
The point is that what works is good, even if it is theoretically unsound by some standards. The advantages of fiat money greatly outweigh its disadvantages, and in competent and sensible hands it really has no disadvantages. To throw that away for the sake of a simplistic dogma conceived in an earlier age with much different problems is really rather silly.
EG
EG you are only exposing your own ingnorance here. The fact is that there is a modest increase in the money supply under a commodity system since every year people dig up more gold and silver. The question is should we have the government add an additional amount of inflation. The fact is that a commodity money system based on sound banking principals would not result in massive swings in the money supply with a resulting threat of inflation and potential deflation.
Which, unless the mines are nationalised, is not capable of stimulating an economy in recession.
It is indeed, and the answer is yes, in some circumstances.
And precisely the same effect can be had with a sensibly administered fiat money system based on sound banking principles, with the added advantage that the money supply can be inflated when necessary to mitigate recession and avoid depression.
The price of gilded stability is that recession turns into depression. This is far more of a problem for the economy and for people.
EG
Tyranny is a somewhat over-used word, but we might take it to mean a system whereby the generality of the people are not permitted to have their society governed the way they wish it be governed, and where the government stops or seriously attempts to stop, with violence if necessary, any effort on the part of the people to change this situation.
Indeed, Euan, indeed. I reckon that if a libertarian society does develop, it will only do so because the vast majority of the populace want such a society, though no doubt, for reasons I have already stated, some will cling to the fantasies of state-provided crade-to-grave security we have endured for the past 100 years or so.
Perhaps you’d care to explain how this “bunk” manages to work, then, and not only that but to deliver a degree of economic stability that commodity currency simply cannot provide?
Keynesian demand-management of economies has been widely discredited. Don’t take my word for it: pretty much most major central banks of any credibility these days focus on delivering price stability, rather than try to pick spots in the economic cycle to manage growth. The stagflation of the 1970s and the accelerating inflation of that era obviously had a huge impact on thinking.
Even Japan in the 1990s was mired in stagnation for a decade, despite the ultra-low interest rate policy of the Bank of Japan. Hardly a good advert for the joys of fiat money. In Russia after the debt default, the dollar and gold were preferred stores of value.
We take for granted that central banks these days do a pretty decent job, and by and large they do. The current generation of people at these places now operate under rules constraining what they can do to pull the monetary policy levers.
BoE indepdendence was probably the only major good act of the present British government, in fact.
Modest inflation – say about 2% or so – in a fiat money economy is harmless and does not adversely affect anyone provided it is consistently modest.
The key word here, of course, is “consistent”. Inflation, when used deliberately to stimulate an economy, only “works” if the drug is administered in bigger and bigger amounts, otherwise the hangovers get nastier and the impact wears off. That is precisely why most policymakers strive for stable prices, not some “safe” level of inflation.
I am fairly happy with how central banks operate right now, but I am interested in the idea of private money because it seems perfectly consistent with an open market order to let citizens transact in alternative forms of money if they want. It is an area of economics that deserves more attention that it gets.
An ‘ideology’ is a series of theories which seek to add coherence to politics, which makes Euan’s amoral utilitarianism just as much an ‘ideology’ as anything else. The fact his views are epistemological nonsense does not make them any less ‘ideological’.
Another false dilemma. The choice is not between a libertarian order or cradle to grave state provision, and there is a vast spread of different emphases in between. Most people seem content that we should maintain a system whereby the better off subsidise the worse off, so the question is really not should there be such subsidy but rather how much subsidy.
For example, you could have a healthcare system whereby all hospitals and insurers were independent mutual organisations and GPs were private contractors, but also where there is taxpayer subsidy for those unable to afford the cost of insurance on their own and for uninsurable risks such as serious accident and long term incurable illness such as some cancers, Alzheimer’s disease, and so on. Thus, you have the advantages of private competition but with people insulated from the worst problems of laissez-faire. Neither libertarian nor state controlled, but somewhere in between.
There are numerous other examples in the fields of pensions, unemployment insurance, pretty much any aspect of what is now called the welfare state. An insistence on ideological purity simply harms the cause of increased personal liberty and ignores the basic desires of most people. Even Hayek recognised this when he stated that nothing had so harmed the liberal cause as the insistence on rough rules of thumb, not least laissez faire. Such dogmatism condemns the libertarian to the margins of politics, and always will.
Incorrect. The way to avoid this, which really is well known, is to control the money supply fairly tightly during the upswing of the business cycle and then, during the downswing, reduce taxation and increase state expenditure by means of, as necessary, expending extant state cash reserves and increasing the money supply. This is inflationary, but it stimulates the movement of money in the economy, which mitigates recession and, done properly, avoids depression. The trick is that when the recession is over the state must again reduce expenditure (because the market is once more meeting needs), tighten control of the money supply and increase taxation, which rebuilds the state’s cash reserves ready for the next downswing. This provides a stable and more or less depression-proof economy, and in theory could lead to even the elimination of recession.
That, however, is expecting too much. In practice, it is also difficult for politicians to trim state expenditure in economic good times, which I at once concede is a weakness is a democratic system. The best that can realistically be hoped for is a reasonably stable economy with modest inflation, only mild recessions and no depression. This is good enough, and it’s what we have.
One of the points here that I think some libertarians overlook is that peak economic efficiency simply is not necessary. Why should a society be expected to experience unnecessary privation and discomfort in return for marginal improvements in economic performance? There’s just no reason why this is necessary.
In many countries they already can in practice, even where it’s illegal. In the UK, AFAIK, people can trade in any currency they want but they cannot refuse legal tender. In many countries, you can buy and sell in dollars or Euros – I hired a taxi once in the Sudan and paid in dollars, which mightily pleased the driver but put me at risk of 3 months in jail.
That’s one thing, but privately issued currencies are quite another. The possibility of fraud is greatly increased, and came to pass in the US when there was private currency. There is also the added load on business of handling multiple currencies and having multiple exchange rates – this is fine for big business, which already deals with this, but it’s a bit of a problem for Mr Patel’s corner shop.
What is the added advantage of multiple private currencies and how does it outweight the disadvantages?
EG
Good point, Perry. People who call themselves pragmatists, are often unwitting advocates of a particular philosophy. I do at least try to be upfront about my own political/philosophical moorings.
I
You can, as you concede, have stable fiat money and the means of achieving this are now well enough known
Can you really? Is that why the US dollar has lost 95% of its value since 1913?
The experiment of fiat currency is a fairly new one, given that the US only fianlly ditched the dollar link to gold in 1971. Since then the US money supply has mushroomed. Once politicians realise that they can literally create money from thin air, the temptation is always there to print a few dollars more to finance this or that bit of pork barrelling. The trouble is that every new dollar printed, backed by nothing at all, makes the previous dollars printed worth just a little bit less.
We currently see the US enjoying huge trade defecits, financed by debt, which will be repayed in dollars. The tempation to repay a dollar’s debt with a dollar worth 50 cents will prove overwhelming, and politicians can resist anything but temptation.
I’m not saying that it is impossible to run a good fiat currency, with money supply growing no faster than the general economy. The Bundesbank seemed to do a good job for many years, but of course they have now been sacrificed for political reasons with the advent of the Euro. So it may be that even if you have a well run fiat currency, eventually the politicians will find a way to ruin it.
As an aside, do you know that the US has just stopped issuing figures for the growth of M3? Do you think this is because the numbers look good or bad? Just a thought.
An even simpler approach is not to delude oneself with the hubristic idea that one can guide the economic cycle in the first place. Governments that tried to do this after WW2 came a cropper and as I said already, Keynes’ ideas are in retreat, and most central banks focus on getting prices stable and not trying to manage aggregate demand.
See me after class for additional homework, Gray!
Pragmatism isn’t ideology.
Mirabile dictu, my ideas work in the real world. I frankly don’t care whether they are epistemological nonsense, what is more important is that they actually work. What works is good, what doesn’t work is pointless and bad, even if it is theoretically elegant, logically coherent and epistemologically sensible.
EG
Ah, I see you *aren’t* aware of the distinction between Keynesian and neo-Keynesian economics, then.
EG
So what? Have US citizens lost 95% of their purchasing power since 1913? No, so what’s the issue?
Suppose you’re paid a dollar a day. Suppose the currency loses value such that in a year your dollar is buys only what 50c would a year earlier. Suppose now that your wage is increased from one dollar to two dollars. You can then buy everything you could before for the same proportion of your income.
In practice, inflation needs to be kept low so that the erosion of purchasing power between wage increases is small and manageable, but provided that is done there really is no issue with currency losing nominal value in this manner. Given that it is now well enough understood how to manage a fiat currencty to achieve this, there is no need to return to commodity money.
BTW, 517741 is me demonstrating what happens when you put the spambot code in the wrong box.
EG
“small and manageable” is the key here. I’d like to share your confidence that the current managers of fiat currency have cracked the inflationary problem and that the ghost of JM Keynes has left the Treasuries of the West, but I would not bet my pounds, euros or dollars on that.
One of the insights of the “private money” school of thought is that all monopolies, inclluding fiat money systems, are potentially vulnerable to abuse because there is no incentive for the issuer to protect the quality. That strikes me as a pretty basic but obviously worthwhile point.
Sounds like rampant inflation to me, and unsustainable. Sorry, your pragmatism is not really very pragmatic!
Anyway, we are miles off topic.
In practice, inflation needs to be kept low so that the erosion of purchasing power between wage increases is small and manageable, but provided that is done there really is no issue with currency losing nominal value in this manner. Given that it is now well enough understood how to manage a fiat currencty to achieve this, there is no need to return to commodity money.
The problem, EG, is that in practice this tends not to happen. It may be understood in theory how to manage a fiat currency, but in practice politicians can never resist creating more and more money. Of course, they cannot produce value, only money, so each new unit of money produced devalues the preceding units of money. The more fiat currency you have chasing the same amount of goods gives you inflation does it not?
Do you take my point about US M3 figures? Why do you think that the Fed has just decided that it will no longer issue this measure of the money supply? Is it because things are stable, or getting out of control?
Johnathan Pearce: “I had quite a shock when, while at a Liberty conference about 3 years ago, (the outfit formally known as the National Council for Civil Liberties), many of the speakers had no compunctions about calling for regulations to limit freedoms of people they disliked. ”
I have to bring to your notice that there is an impostor using your name to defend the right of Leeds University to dismiss Dr Frank Elllis because he repeated mainstream psychometric findings about racial differences in average IQ.
I must apologise for being momentarily deceived by this person, who argued that anyone financed by ‘taxpayers’ money’ should be limited to saying things ‘Johnathan Pearce’ found tolerable, or be blacklisted from his career.
It should have been obvious to me that nobody who calls himself a libertarian could have committed such a burlesque.
Absolutely, and that is one of the things I am saying is a prerequisite for sound control of a fiat money system.
Generally speaking they seem to have done so. Things can always change, of course, but it seems that the lessons have been learned at least for now.
Indeed, but that still doesn’t provide justification for multiple private currencies. People can freely exchange fiat currencies, after all, and can trade in any currency they want, and this is pretty stable and flexible. If the pound degrades through economic mismanagement, start using Euros or dollars, for example. I repeat the question – what concrete advantage do multiple private currencies offer that the present system doesn’t, and how does it outweigh the disadvantages and potential for abuse and fraud that the multiple private currencies engender?
It was a simple example to illustrate the point using gross values, as I’m sure you know. Consider it again if your dollar buys after a year what 98c would buy last year, and your wage then increases from one dollar to 1.02 or 1.03. Who loses?
Funnily enough, it’s happened throughout most of Europe and America for much of the past quarter century. Possibly this is merely a statistical blip and can be ignored.
Of course it does. But as I said before, if your income increases at the same rate as inflation you aren’t any worse off. If prices go up 2% per annum but your wage also goes up 2% per annum, what exactly is the problem?
They have given their reason as follows:
“M3 does not appear to convey any additional information about economic activity that is not
already embodied in M2 and has not played a role in the monetary policy process for many
years. Consequently, the Board judged that the costs of collecting the underlying data and
publishing M3 outweigh the benefits”
Obviously, this is a state conspiracy to hide the collapse of fiat currency. Or it could just be that M3 doesn’t mean very much to anyone. Which do you think is more likely?
EG
Matt, if you were honest — and you are plainly notl — you would get into your head the point that my beef with racist lecturers or whatever was their subsistence on the taxpayer’s wallet. That is the whole frickin point.
You can freely exchange a fiat currency if you travel from one country to another, although it is not exactly common for me to shop in my local Sainsbury’s using the dollar. I might try it next weekend.
The fact that you cannot understand the merit of competing currencies in the same jurisdiction is because you have, like most folks, gotten used to the idea of one country, one currency, full stop. But fiat currencies are of recent historical origin by any reasonable standards.
Of course you don’t care. You don’t even understand so how can you care?
But how do you define ‘work’ without a philosphical frame work?
Sure, this is EXACTLY the justification used for apologists of all sorts of savagery. “But they made the trains run on time”. No evil you do is ‘bad’ because it ‘works’. That is why I regard you as not just wrong but deluded and find your notion that you have no ideology preposterous. Utilitarianism is an ideology, a sort of ‘functionalist nihilism’.
Funnily enough, it’s happened throughout most of Europe and America for much of the past quarter century. Possibly this is merely a statistical blip and can be ignored.
Hmm. You are basing your theory on the evidence of a mere 25 years? That’s not much of a time period is it? Historically, can you point to any fiat currency which has not eventually collapsed? The temptation to politicians to issue more currency simply because they can eventually seems to prove irresistable.
But as I said before, if your income increases at the same rate as inflation you aren’t any worse off. If prices go up 2% per annum but your wage also goes up 2% per annum, what exactly is the problem?
My problem is that isn’t the way it works. Prices go up by 20% per year, workers strike for 25%, you get industrial chaos, no-one knows where they stand in relation to money and prices, and anyone like pensioners on fixed incomes gets clobbered.
Obviously, this is a state conspiracy to hide the collapse of fiat currency. Or it could just be that M3 doesn’t mean very much to anyone. Which do you think is more likely?
I know what they are saying, I just think that words and figures do not match. The Fed has hugely inflated the money supply in the last few years, and has now decided to cease publishing a key measure of money supply. I think I can join the dots.
Quite a few shops up here in Edinburgh accept dollars and Euros. You can of course freely change them at banks, post offices, moneychangers, etc, etc. There’s little lack of choice. Of course, there’s a commission to pay on the exchange, but you’d get that with competing private currencies as well.
Unless of course there are multiple banks all issuing and backing up their own pounds, these pounds all being worth the same. Problem there is fraud, which is the principle reason from historical experience that we have one currency, one issuer.
On the contrary, I have lived and worked in various countries, in most of which you can more or less readily use currencies other than the official one. I know perfectly well that multiple currencies in the same jurisdiction can work, but that’s not my question – my question is what do you see as the merit of having multiple private currencies. The last major experience of multiple privately issued currencies like this was in the US and it wasn’t a pretty experience – lots of fraud and deception. I don’t see it as worth any advantage, and you still haven’t explained what the supposed advantages are.
Furthermore, what makes you think your local Sainsbury’s is going to accept all the multiple private currencies? Suppose you have 10 “competing” currencies in the country. Sainsbury’s might accept two of them, but perhaps Virgin only accept a different two, and Boots yet another one. If you’re gonig to visit all three of these shops, you’re going to need three different currencies, or possibly three different credit cards, or possibly one card but three different sets of exchange fees. If they’re all issuing the same currency, independently banked, suppose Sainsbury’s doesn’t recognise the same banks as HMV, and so forth. If they’re forced to accept them all, what’s the difference from today? I cannot for the life of me see why these are advantages, but do please enlighten me…
I define it as “achieve the result required.” How do you define it?
The result required in this case is a stable economy within a peaceable society. These are generally good things, and are usually necessary to permit the other things – the numerous different bits that the messy individuals want for themselves – to be provided. There is no need for ideology and little for philosophy, just a realisation that these things are pretty much prerequisites for everything else, and from that that any system which provides them with little fuss or disruption is therefore good as long as it works. If it doesn’t work, it’s a waste of time fiddling about with it.
Incorrect. Making the trains run on time at the expense of unnecessary regimentation of society and the suppression of reasonable liberties is not achieving the desired end – it might help with the stable economy, but it doesn’t help with a peaceable society.
It is indeed. However, I’m not a utilitarian.
As Johnathan points out above, widespread use of fiat currency is a fairly recent innovation. However, if you want to look at historical records, you could do worse than consider the record of the gilded age and private currencies, with the record of fraud, embezzlement, bank collapse and depression.
In large parts of the western world today, and whatever you may think about it, this IS the way it works.
Yes, we really suffer from that in Britain today, don’t we? The country and its economy have moved on since the 1970s, you know.
You do actually know what the various M series of indicators show, don’t you? Why do you think there is such a massive difference between M2 and M3 and why is the state “hiding” this?
EG
The merit — as the examples in Edinburgh you cite make clear — is having a choice if you want it. You say you have lived all over the world and used different currencies, well you will see that point, surely.
I don’t deny all the benefits of common currencies, any more than commonly accepted standards on all kinds of things. What is always healthy for an economic system, mind, is the knowledge by people that they have an alternative if something breaks down. It is the monoply bit that I object to.
Inflation is not just a characteristic of fiat currency, commodity based currency can also be affected by an increase in the money supply, witness the price revolution that saw massive inflation between the end of the 15th and start of the 17th centuries within Europe. This was of course due to both an increased production of precious metals within Europe and an influx of bullion from the New World.
Commodity based currency is not a cure all for the causes of inflation, it simply takes the supply of money out of the hands of central bankers and puts it in the hands of miners. If the supply of a commodity increases faster than the demand for money, perhaps due to new finds or more efficient extraction processes, inflation will be the result.
Conversely deflation is possible, with commodity scarcity affected by the inherent utilisation of the commodity. For instance, a currency backed by oil would fail due to deflation if the supply of oil did not match it’s competing uses as fuel and money, not to mention plastics and its various other uses.
Even if there are no other major competing uses for a commodity, the supply of a commodity is ultimately limited by our ability to produce it. There is only so much recoverable anything available without considering extra-terrestrial sources. Once we exhaust supplies, or at least reach the point where the cost of extraction becomes excessive, deflation will occur. Of course deflation will be a motivator to produce more of the commodity, but by the time BHP have opened the first mine on the moon, the market will have either substituted for another type of money or collapsed entirely.
I’m all for competing currencies, be it state or privately backed fiat currencies or commodity options, so long as we recognise that any currency has its limitations. Each currency must compete as a stable unit of account and exchange.
Of course! I am not saying that there ought to be lots of different currencies, but that it ought to be possible, if people want, to offer alternatives. In practice, most people will adopt the same currency for convenience’s sake. Leave it to the market to sort out.
There may be frauds (like that never happens now?), but the laws used to enforce contracts should be applied, and I don’t see how a monopoly is so much safer.
Take a slightly different case, concerning weights and measures. Most people under a certain age these days operate in kilogrammes and metres, rather than the older imperial units. It is plainly sensible for most businesses to list their produce in metric, but it is also insane, in my view, to ban firms who want to use imperial measures instead. Let the market decide and let the best standard win. Simple.
So, we have one currency commonly accepted together with a couple of others for the sometime convenience of a few. You change this and enable multiple currencies, which in time (and probably not much time) will resolve itself to one currency commonly accepted with a couple of others for the sometime convenience of a few. Other than loading business (and hence consumers) with additional cost and increasing the probability of currency fraud and debasement in the intervening period, what precisely does this achieve?
It’s a bit pointless really, isn’t it?
It means that everyone knows what a pound (or dollar, or Euro) is, and in a democratic society such as ours there is some degree of transparency and popular debate as to the mechanism of altering what it means should it be necessary. If the pound floats freely on the international currency exchange market, you also have the option to put your money into another currency at your discretion. What more do you want, or rather what more do you actually need?
It’s not that different. As was pointed out to GCooper some time ago, the beloved “traditional” Imperial standard system of weights and measures actually dates from 1824 – it’s younger than the metric system – and was created to unify the literally hundreds of regional variations in the same nominal units.
The same principle applies – you know what a pound (or kilo, or metre, or gallon) actually is because there is an agreed centrally maintained standard. Before 1824, there was no such central standard, and the system was closer to what you presumably would like to see. The result, as with multiple currencies, was fraud and deception on a large scale. Although it works for simple localised economies, it’s *not* sensible as the economy grows and becomes more interdependent on other economies. You need to speak the same language, you see.
I say this, incidentally, as some of an age and with an education that permits me to use either system with equal facility. In practice, I tend to use metric because its far more commonly used and it is, in many respects, much simpler and more logical. It’s also a bloody sight easier for computers and calculators.
Suppose I want to sell you cloth. I can say right now that 100 metres of my cloth sells for 95 pounds, and you can readily compare this with Joe’s cloth which sells for 90 pounds for 100m but is of a slighlty lower quality standard. You know what 100m is, you know what 90 pounds is and how it compares to 95 pounds, and you can readily decide on the basis of cost versus quality. It’s easy, because it’s standardised.
Suppose, though, I offer you 100 metres of cloth at 95 Scottish pounds, whereas Joe offers 100 *yards* of cloth at 80 English pounds. Not so simple, because you need to convert from metres to yards and between currencies. If your business adopts the English measures and currency because that’s the market you serve, I’m at a disadvantage. I could also adopt that, but suppose a big chunk of my market uses metric and Scottish pounds – then instead of you buggering around with pointless conversions I have to do it.
This sort of system with multiple competing standards is a nuisance and only adds cost to business, and thus eventually to the retail purchaser. The market pretty much *has* decided – metric measures because everyone (except, and even then to a reducing extent, America) uses them, standard currencies because it vastly reduces fraud and deception.
There’s a reason why we have standards in so many things – it works, and it makes life a lot easier. Not only currencies and weights, but standards for cement, electrical power, fuel grades, how to test things, and so on.
I simply cannot see why this wooden insistence on pointless and frankly burdensome, expensive and counterproductive choice should be so attractive. The ideas simply have no merit and they’ll only cost everyone more. Why do it?
EG
Yes, we really suffer from that in Britain today, don’t we? The country and its economy have moved on since the 1970s, you know.
I agree that at present we don’t suffer from 20% inflation (though in adopting the CPI I feel that the government is trying to massage the inflation figure by excluding the cost of housing). Can you guarantee that we will never suffer from such rates of inflation again? You can’t.
Why do you think there is such a massive difference between M2 and M3 and why is the state “hiding” this?
According to the Fed, they are not hiding M3, they are not even going to bother calculating it any more. I find that suspicious, you obviously don’t.
You put your finger on the problem with Keynsian pump priming. Governments never, ever, reduce spending when they should, after the recession. Thus, when the next recession comes, defecits rise from the bloated level of the previous recession. They never go down. When politicians think they can print as much money as they want, and get away with it, they will. Reality always bites eventually, but if they are lucky, it will not be on their watch. The USA is a case in point. The only way they can finance their vast defecit is because people are willing to lend them money in return for bonds paying them interest in dollars. Any other currency would have crashed by now, but the dollar is different, for a while. But that can only last so long. If people are getting significantly devalued dollars they will stop lending to the US, and then things will get interesting.
The point is that those who want a choice can have it, even if you think that is silly. So what? You may think a monopoly is the right way to go, others may not. Let the market sort it out. It is very simple.
You could apply the same argument to things like software, saying that we should all use Microsoft and that it is silly for holdouts to stick with stuff like Apple.
Brendan’s points are well made. Nice comment.
Yes it is easy, which is why in a free market most people will adopt the same standard, as I have tried to drum into you. This is how standards develop from the bottom up in a market. But there will always be some who might choose a different standard. It is messy, but then this obsession on unifying all standards seems a bit creepy to me. If it is so self-evidently sensible for people to adopt common standards, then they will evolve out of self interest. There is no need for the State to pronounce that all measurements shall be in yards or that all transactions must be logged in ducats, or whatever.
Even so, this has been an enjoyable thread. I may even write about this later on.
The market pretty much *has* decided – metric measures because everyone (except, and even then to a reducing extent, America) uses them, standard currencies because it vastly reduces fraud and deception..
Find me one country where the metric system was not introduced by law, which is to say, by the threat of force. Seriously. The plan to make illegal dual marking of both Imperial and metric in 2010 (iirc) is statist bullying of the worst sort.
Anyway, I’m pleased to know that the Imperial system is more modern than metric, though it always amuses me when a system of weights and measures introduced by French revolutionaries 200 years ago is described as modern.
Can you guarantee that a commodity currency would not suffer from devaluation, that competing currencies would not engender fraud, or that a gilded economy wouldn’t suffer depression? No, you can’t.
Nothing is perfect. Fiat money works, and in key respects, most notably economic stability, it has worked of late much better than commodity money. Again, the world has moved on.
Yes, but I’m not paranoid about things the state does. I don’t think there’s anything in M3 that has the immediate potential to show up unpalatable facts, and cannot conceive of any sinister motive for the Federal Reserve to stop calculating it. It notice you haven’t explained what is in M3 that you think is so critical. If you can’t explain that, I don’t see why your suspicion is based on anything more than a predisposition to see conspiracy in government action.
Well, no, the more appropriate comparison would be that you needed a certain type of browser to view Samizdata but that type of browser wouldn’t work on the Mises blog, for example, and you’d need a third one to read Fox News. Or that Samizdata was on a private network with different technical standards to the rest of the internet.
Again, this ain’t anything new – remember AOL and CompuServe and their entirely private and proprietary standards? They really did well, didn’t they?
It doesn’t work, Johnathan. Competing standards like that just add cost, inconvenience and annoyance. This is why we don’t have a single browser, but we have a unified standard as to how those browsers parse HTML/XML code so the page designer knows how his creation will look on any browser. Yes, there are exceptions and quirks, but generally it’s standardised because that’s the efficient way to do it.
Standardisation is silly for some things, but eminently sensible for others. Money happens to be one of the sensible things, as do weights and measures.
EG
Find me one country which has ANY standard system of weights and measures which is NOT imposed by law.
EG
Find me one country which has ANY standard system of weights and measures which is NOT imposed by law.
You were the one saying that the market had decided in favour of the metric system! As if. You may recall one market trader who was found guilty of the crime of selling bananas by the pound.
So WHY load them with a whole bunch of unnecessary extra costs if they’re going to settle on a single standard anyway?
There is, however, a need for someone to define whatever the currency or weight or measure actually is, and to enforce that definition. The wider people trade and the greater the volume of trade, the greater the need for such an enforced standard.
EG
Nothing is perfect. Fiat money works, and in key respects, most notably economic stability, it has worked of late much better than commodity money
Fiat money seems to work for now. But it is in reality money backed by nothing more than the good sense of politicians. Some of us would rather see something a bit more tangible.
It notice you haven’t explained what is in M3 that you think is so critical
Simply that M3 is the most commonly used measure of the money supply, and that the Fed, having created more money out of thin air in the last ten years than in the previous two hundred, now decides it does not need to calculate M3 any more.
I’m not paranoid about things the state does
You mean you trust them? Good luck.
I said it *pretty much* had so decided, because it’s what virtually everyone else uses. Most of trade and industry uses metric for exactly that reason.
He was actually convicted of using uncertified scales. You can sell bananas by the pound if you want to, but you need to weigh and price them using metric units. If Granny Smith wants a pound of bananas, you can sell her a pound of bananas, but the scales have to show 453 grams.
You may also care to think about the tens of thousands of other traders who sell kilos of bananas.
Now, what about quoting me any country that uses as its official system of measures ANY system that is not imposed by law?
EG
The rest of us would rather not suffer economic depression just so you can feel good about your greenbacks.
No, I just don’t see conspiracy in everything they do. I read once that one can always tell the libertarians at a public gathering – they’re the ones scanning the skies for the black helicopters. Be sceptical, but don’t assume everything’s a conspiracy.
EG
If something like a common standard is desirable and in our our mutual interests, then there is no need to impose it by the State, is there?
I find it utterly absurd, for instance, that a grocer in Sunderland was fined for selling spuds in ounces and pounds rather than kilos. How on earth should this be any of the State’s business? If both parties to the transaction are happy to trade in a unit of X, that should be the beginning and the end of the matter. The state should only be involved in ensuring that both parties refrain from fraud, theft and force. The exact terms on which the deal is struck is no-one’s business but their own.
Can’t think of one off the top of my head, sorry, although I should point out that when metrication came in in the early 1970s, it was possible for businesses for quite a while to continue advertising stuff in old units. The increasingly draconian enforcement of the rules occured later. Pubs still serve in pints, remember.
My father, a retired farmer, often used to buy spray chemicals in gallons, apply them into farm machines that were measured in metric, etc.
He used a pocket calculator a lot.
I said it *pretty much* had so decided, because it’s what virtually everyone else uses. Most of trade and industry uses metric for exactly that reason
That’s an odd definition of a market.
He was actually convicted of using uncertified scales. You can sell bananas by the pound if you want to, but you need to weigh and price them using metric units. If Granny Smith wants a pound of bananas, you can sell her a pound of bananas, but the scales have to show 453 grams.
Actually you can’t sell bananas by the pound. A customer can ask for a pound of bananas, but the trader can’t put up a sign pricing his produce by the pound. And if he only sold her 453 grams he’d be be doing her out of a gram wouldn’t he?
The rest of us would rather not suffer economic depression just so you can feel good about your greenbacks
The point is that we might end up with a depression because of the attempts of central banks to fiddle with the money supply so as to avoid a recession.
Be sceptical, but don’t assume everything’s a conspiracy
I agree, but some things are conspiracies aren’t they?
A final point before I go off this long thread is that a lot of rules that become “standards” can become common because they catch on, almost like a sort of virus. We don’t know, for instance, why certain terms become common in things like the software industry or in finance, but they do. Of course, what tends to happen is that the State comes along and sets an emergent standard in legal stone, and as a result, folk mistakenly think the state created the standard, but it didn’t.
WRT the gold standard, I’ll suggest people google up testimony by our last Fed chair before the congress, in which he was questioned by Rep. Ron Paul. Greenspan specifically said that the Fed has generally tamed inflation in the last few decades by banking as if they were on a gold standard.
While this isn’t entirely true (bailouts of foreign banks, S&L crisis, and continuing underwriting of US Treasury debt), by agressively escalating interest rates in response to increasing borrowing (similar to fast escalating interest rates once an economy reached the limits of its gold supply) the Fed has vastly improved its performance under Greenspan than under past administrations if only because of this change in attitude.
That being said, I must say that in an era when most US treasury debt is not held by americans, but by Americas enemies, particularly oil shieks and chinese communists, high inflation hurts them more than it does us. The only difference between the two is that the shieks can make up the difference by raising oil prices, while China is prohibited by GATT/WTO from raising export tariffs.
This all being said, I wonder how many of y’all in Britain have been using your Liberty Dollars, and how do the currency laws over there differ from here?
As pointed out above, he was actually convicted for using uncertified scales. As also pointed out above, you *can* sell produce in Imperial units, but you have to measure them in metric. Go to B&Q and you’ll find that you can still buy a 4′ x 2′ sheet of plywood – but it’s labelled 1220 x 610mm. If we were really metric, it would be 1000 x 500, no?
The point of having central certification of things like scales in an authorised system of measures is to help ensure that everyone buying stuff gets true measure. No, you don’t need to have the state do it, but you do need to have *someone* do it. What is wrong, exactly, with the state doing it? I mean in practice, not in theory.
As also pointed out above, the wider people trade – and in a globalised economy they trade very widely – it makes sense and is practical and economical to have a single unified system of weights and measures understood globally. How do you feel about importing stuff from a foreign country when you have no idea whether their “ton” is long, short, metric or something else entirely? It also makes sense to use the same system internally, because it is wasteful and unnecessarily expensive and annoying to have duplicate systems of measurement.
Why do you insist that it is a good idea to impose these extra costs and inconveniences on everyone?
Which, believe it or not, is actually why all states have legally enforced systems of weights and measures. Why do you think they do it?
The metric and imperial units could both be used for this purpose since the end of the 19th century. I think 1890, but frankly I can’t be bothered checking.
Earlier. The early modern “draconian enforcement” dates from 1824, and people bitched & moaned about it then a lot more than they do now. I’m quite sure there were many earlier enforcements of fair and accurate measure, and seem to recall reading about this happening as far back as the Middle Ages. Fraud prevention, remember.
I think until 2009. There are exceptions made for beer, speed limits and road distance signs, presumably on the basis that British people are not clever enough to figure out that half a litre is about a pint and once they’re pissed can’t recall that 50km/h is 30mph.
Actually, you can. My local Sainsbury’s displays the price for butter, for example, in cost per kilo and cost per pound, although the only legally meaningful one is the metric one. It’s rather silly, since it’s all sold in metric size packets (250 or 500 grams). You can’t sell them lawfully *ONLY* by the pound.
EG
Further to Euan’s point,
I understand that plumbing and other engineering parts often stick with the Imperial standard sizes established by the 19th century British manufacturers, and used everywhere. Thus a “25mm nominal” size pipe is actually produced with a fine tolerance at one inch diameter.
It doesn’t matter much what the standards are, as long as you can rely on them.
Another candidate for Samizdata quote of the day. Nice one Guy!
Well, I guess we agree here, at least in the sense that if folk in a market decide to use a particular yardstick (!) to measure something, that there ought to be some point of authority. But again, I don’t see whether a state is necessary for that.
Actually, for all that I have disagreed with you on some points Euan, this has been a damn fine thread and I enjoyed it.
Nearly, but not quite. Domestic plumbing pipes and fittings for the UK are made in metric sizes (15, 22 and 28mm diameters normally) and have been for years. Interestingly enough, the threads on the fittings are BSP, which is an Imperial “standard” thread. The reason for that is that there simply so many radiators, taps etc installed that converting the threads to metric would be a nightmare. Joining pipes is easier, and so the changeover is relatively painless & costs only an adaptor piece that B&Q will sell you for about 50p.
The (only) major industry still run to more or less Imperial standards is the oil and gas pipeline industry, and that’s largely because it has always been American dominated. Even then, it’s full of traps for the unwary: a 12″ pipe is not a 12″ pipe.
It is a 12″ NB (nominal bore) pipe, but the standard outside diameter (to which these things are made) is 12.3/4″ because the standard plate thickness used for the pipe in older times was 3/8″. You still get pipes this size, but the steel mill is invariably metric and actually makes you a 323.9 x 9.5mm pipe. The reason for that is the potential cost of billions to replace extremely expensive pipelines.
And just for fun, a 2″ pipe can be 2.1/4, 2.1/2, 2.3/4 or 2.7/8″ in outside diameter, but either way it’s called a 2″ pipe.
And people say the metric system is too difficult.
AFAIK, in areas where US mensuration technology has not noticeably penetrated such as the former USSR pipelines are made to rational metric sizes rather than metric conversions of inch sizes.
Apologies for anorak nature of the comment, but that’s the industry I work in.
Exactly, and this is made a LOT easier by having a single unified standard. Nobody has yet given a reasonable explanation of why choice justifies loading the consumer and business with the extra expense, inconvenience, confusion and potential for fraud that multiple competing “standards” would bring.
EG
EG – presumably on the basis that British people are not clever enough to figure out that half a litre is about a pint and once they’re pissed can’t recall that 50km/h is 30mph.
Hardly.
British old coinage and Imperial measure is good for the brain. 12 pennies in a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound, 12 inches in a foot and 24 hours in a day – 12 is a brilliant number as it divides by 2, 3 & 4, unlike 10 and we still use it all the time. You need to be smarter to use Imperial than metric. Might have been the reason we whupped Boney, its most vocal supporter. Twice.
It was a good grounding for when I had to use Hexadecimal.
Calculating from miles to kilos was convenient when I went to Singapore, as not only was miles-km on a ratio of approx 1.6, so was the GBP to USD, SGD to USD and Malaysian Ringit to SGD at that time. One could almost say it was the Golden Mean! Made shopping a real maths test.
Johnathan Pearce:
Matt, if you were honest — and you are plainly notl — you would get into your head the point that my beef with racist lecturers or whatever was their subsistence on the taxpayer’s wallet. That is the whole frickin point.
You libboes are always moaning that the compulsorily public-financed BBC fails to reflect your opinions. Why shouldn’t racists moan that compulsorily financed universities don’t reflect theirs?
Moreover, there are commercial alternatives to the BBC in radio and TV (albeit stealth-financed by the extra cost of advertising embodied in goods and services) whereas AFAIK there are no universities except titchy Buckingham outside the State circuit.
No Matt, you should — as I do — argue for the abolition of such compulsorily funded places. Moaning about BBC bias is a waste of time as far as I can tell; much better to campaign to get rid of the licence fee and let the subsequent market in broadcasting have as many opinions as possible, including from people like you, assuming anyone in their right mind would want to watch a racist tv channel.
As for the argument that there is a pathetically small private higher education sector, then argue for change, then, rather than insist on trying to patch up the status quo. Let’s face it, libertarians have a pretty difficult time in getting into higher education also; just imagine what would happen to a lecturer who argued for legalisation of heroin, or so on. Having highly controversial or downright bigoted opinions is one thing – expecting that places paid for by the taxpayer will be ok with that is another.
In the case of this Leeds fellow, I see that he has in the past spoken in the USA on platforms shared by the KKK, among other charming organisations. I am not aware that the authorities in Leeds have actually sacked him for misconduct towards students, although obviously if I were a non-white student at Leeds, I might wonder about whether I was receiving fair treatment from this lecturer, a point that is hardly trivial.
You’re wriggling. You’re like all the rest of the ‘free speech’ hypocrites– any casuistical excuse or smear, no matter how far-fetched, will do to stop your own ears.