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.
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Paul Marks points out that there is no imposed structure can achieve what a real market can
Last Sunday there was a big storm in Britain, power was been cut off for a lot of people and some of these households are only now being reconnected.
There have been a lot of attacks on the power companies, but (as far as I know) no one in the media has pointed out that the present set up is not free enterprise at all – it is a government effort to create ‘perfect competition’.
Now ‘perfect competition’ is something that exists in neoclassical economics textbooks – here lots of similar companies (similar assets, similar knowledge, similar just-about-everything) compete in a sort of mathematical game.
In real life enterprises build things and own them. For example a railway is built, or a gas line, or a telephone line, or an electricity line.
Complexity may evolve (with different people owning the track and the trains on a railway, or there being ‘producers’ and ‘providers’ in electricity supply), but any attempt to impose a complex scheme is likely to turn out to be a mess.
In transport the natural competitors for a railway are roads, canals and airlines. The endlessly complicated spiders web of regulations in Britain (to make sure that different people owned the track and ran the trains and that the train operators only ran the trains for a certain period of time, and so on and so on), just caused a mess.
Against electricity the main competitors are gas and (to a much lesser extent) home generation (by solar cells, open coal fires or whatever). Again complexity may evolve (with different companies producing the electricity and supplying it and, perhaps, even different suppliers offering to supply the same household), but any attempt to impose a complex scheme (via endless regulations and administrators) is bound to cause problems – and it has.
In the end what matters is not ‘perfect competition’ but ownership – having a company that owns assets and is responsible if it fails to provide the power that people have paid for.
Paul Marks
Serial comment writer Molly does not like the look of Britain’s future
The poster of the ‘kindly’ authorities watching us that Perry de Havilland wrote about on Wednesday scared the hell out of me. Is that really how they see themselves? Do they really think we want to have our movements watched? Do they actually think that a bunch of gobshites full of beer on a bus are going to be made to behave by a camera?
The fact is if you have ever had your house broken into in Newcastle (and I have lost count) then you know that the boys in blue, when they turn up a day later to take down your details, are never ever going to catch them. They are just going through the motions. If you are assaulted and raped by someone you do not know, they will take a statement and look around for evidence for a few minutes (like, maybe he dropped his f**king business card perhaps?) and then give you the telephone number of some tax funded and utterly pointless ‘counsellor’ to talk to who will keep forgetting your name.
And yet if you take a baseball bat to a burglar, they will throw the book at you because they know who you are and where you live. Of course they do because you foolishly called them to come.
All the people who live off my taxes, both the ones who empty my meagre bank account to ‘provide me with services’ and the ones on the dole who break into my house to steal what I have left, seem to me to be on the same side most of the time. David Carr is right that if ‘security’ is why the state is watching us, it certainly does not seem to be our security.
No, I am not sure why the cameras are going up but it sure as hell has nothing to do with my safety. The people who put them up do not give a f**k about that, this much I know for sure.
Molly
The future?
Tradesports.com runs an over-the-counter derivatives market with contracts covering various events.
Those of you who like a market solution for any problem will be pleased to know it quotes quarterly futures style contracts on the likelihood of Saddam being President of Iraq in December, March and June.
Market prices currently imply that he has an 83 percent chance of being the Mother of all Dictators come Christmas, but only a 48 percent chance of opening Easter Eggs as President and a 37 percent chance of seeing in the second half of the year in power.
Early optimism that Saddam would take an early bath has declined as time has progressed. Being an unregulated market there is of course nothing to stop Dubya doing a bit of insider trading…
Paul Staines
Paul Marks sees who is really getting shafted by state
It is well known that Sweden has the highest taxes in the Western world (one should always been careful to remember that it is the Western world – the corrupt regimes and plundering rebels in much of the rest of the world make their ‘tax as a percentage of G.D.P.’ stats quite meaningless).
However, as the Adam Smith Institute has reminded us, it is Britain were taxes have gone up the fastest (in the European Union and, I believe, in the Western world generally world) since 1997.
There is one good thing about this. At least now people will stop talking about there being an economic concept behind ‘New’ Labour.
There may be many new things about the present government, but its economic policy of tax, spend and regulate is not new.
Paul Marks
Russell Whitaker sees sections of the medical profession’s distaste for accessable services for what it really is
From the “I saw this on Fox News several weeks ago but just got around blogging about it now” department, comes another tale of indignation, this time from the medical guild.
In an article transcription of a TV news feature featuring an adversarial interview of obstetrician Dr. Leon Hansen, founder of Fetal Foto versus Dr. John Hobbins, one of a stable of media medical expert witnesses who hew to the usual AMA trade unionist line.
Fetal Foto is a shopping mall medical imaging service. It’s apparently harmless, and lets prospective parents get a real head start on boring their friends with their family photo albums. Dr. Hobbins is incensed that Dr. Hansen is providing it on the cheap:
The high-tech scan, which isn’t covered by insurance, costs $60 at a Fetal Fotos facility and $280 at his doctor’s office, according to Hansen.
But the trend has angered the FDA and other critics, who argue it’s exploitative and dangerous and is commercializing a sensitive medical procedure.
“Here’s a group that’s using this wonderful technology to put bucks in their pockets,” said Dr. John Hobbins, head of obstetrics at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
What really angers Dr. Hobbins and his cronies is that the bucks are lining someone else’s pockets, and in a shopping mall of all places. As Fetal Foto’s Dr. Hansen notes:
“Twenty years ago, they felt it was inappropriate to have a pregnancy test available to the general public,” he said.
Other shopping mall boutique medical success stories include adult whole-body imaging service AmeriScan, which rightfully claims to have contributed to the saving of a number of lives through early diagnosis of various ailments, e.g. male colon cancer.
The Fetal Foto business model explicitly excludes medical diagnosis – it most vehemently is not in the diagnosis or treatment businesses, by charter – but this is not what bothers the boys in the AMA.
No, what riles the unionists is that they have no control over the use of an interesting medical procedure used for non-medical purposes. They’re embittered by the fact that, after all, medical people provide services that people want, and some people are willing to take those services to what they and other “public health” gatekeepers revile as among the worst venues in the capitalist world, the modern bazaar of the American shopping mall.
After all, it boils down to tired arguments of guild protectionism and class warfare with these people. Long live the crass temples of capitalism!
Russell Whitaker
Russell Whitaker sorts the sad facts from the ideological drivel regarding the much deprecated SA80 rifle
In an article typical of London’s The Guardian newspaper – noxiously socialist but sometimes well-researched – I read a sad account of the SA80 British infantry carbine.
In typical socialist fashion, James Meek takes potshots at privatization, in the context of its involvement in the debacle, speaking to the sorry state of the government-owned Royal Ordnance facility of the once-venerable Enfield:
Thanks to privatisation, the atmosphere in the factory was a poisonous mix of bitterness, anger and apathy. Workers who thought that they had a job for life felt betrayed by a government which, many had believed, was both patriotic and pro-military.
I’d argue that the expectation of a “job for life” was part of the cause of quality problems with the weapon, but that point has been set to rest by its evident failures in societies ranging from communist Russia to corporatist Japan.
What’s especially interesting is the passing mention of the involvement of Germany’s Heckler & Koch (H&K to us gunnies) in helping to fix the bloody mess:
In 1985, the German gunmakers Heckler & Koch, who had been asked to do some sub-contracting work on training ammunition, were sent two of the new rifles. Shortly after the consignment arrived, the officer who had sent them got a phone call. The voice at the other end said he was calling about the British rifle. He said: “You know it goes off when you drop it?” The officer admitted that he didn’t. He fetched a gun from the armoury and dropped it. It went off. German experts had discovered a dangerous safety flaw in a British rifle which, after supposedly exhaustive testing and acceptance into service, the Brits themselves had failed to find.
and:
Those who have used it say the new version of the gun, redesigned by Heckler & Koch, is better, but complaints still came in when it was used in Afghanistan. Confidence, rather than reliability, may now be the real problem.
I’ve spoken to acquaintances who’ve had to carry the SA80, and a very close friend formerly of the U.S. Army Special Forces, who confirm that in very recent times, the SA80, in its A2 incarnation, has evolved into an adequate infantry carbine. It’s worth noting in some of Parliament’s own notes of 2000, H&K UK Ltd (also mentioned in MoD/DLO SA80 Individual Weapon (IW) & Light Support Weapon (LSW) Modification Programme notes) has taken over from Royal Ordnance as the Design Authority for the weapon.
Mr. Meeks should admit that the only way to salvage the soiled reputation of the SA80 is complete privatization, ruthless outside testing combined with an intense feedback loop involving design & manufacturing… and years of unavoidable wait & see, with British squaddies acting as hapless test dummies.
In the meantime, variants of the privately-produced (usually by Colt and Bushmaster) U.S. M-16 (e.g. the M4A1) will continue as the choice of the SAS, not surprising given the “2nd culture” nature of most special forces units worldwide: spec ops guys, within limits, generally get their choice of personal weapons.
Russell Whitaker
Eminent blogger Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas thinks beyond the impending war against Iraq
As you can tell by the title of this post, this discussion isn’t about whether or not it’s ‘properly libertarian’ for the U.S. to wage war against Iraq. I’m going to assume that as a given. The question that has been running around in my mind is this: what is the libertarian case for regime change? Or, to be more specific, there’s a clear libertarian case for toppling a government that proves itself to be a danger. I don’t think any libertarian thinks that, once World War II started, the only goal of the Allies was to contain Germany within its borders. Clearly, Hitler and the Nazis posed a danger, and it would have been suicide for the world to simply let them rebuild again. However, what about the aftermath? Is there a libertarian case for the Marshall Plan, rebuilding the nations of the former Axis powers, etc.? This is a particularly vital point of discussion when it comes to Iraq.
The Libertarian case for Marshall Plans
First, let’s look at a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Iraq. At first glance, it looks like the libertarian case is easy: ‘we’re against it.’ After all, libertarian theory relies heavily on the idea that neither state-supported safety nets nor foreign humanitarian aid are moral or effective. Yet a Marshall Plan would seem to combine qualities of both. However, there are several factors that differentiate the rebuilding of a country after a war from the twin devils of welfare and foreign aid. → Continue reading: Libertarians and regime change
Paul Marks holds the line in his worthy ongoing mission to rubbish Keynesianism
Some time ago I sent in a blog claiming two things – first that many of the doctrines of Keynesianism were nonsense, and secondly that one did not need to be an Austrian economics person to see this.
I have had some replies to what I wrote. No one has claimed that one needs to be an Austrian school person to see there is something very wrong with Keynesianism (that no one claimed this surprised me – but then I am an Austrian school person myself).
Some people opposed my opinion that Keynesianism is nonsense (and opposed my strong language with strong language of their own). However, no one has produced any evidence in favour of Keynesianism – either directly or via the books they have suggested I read.
Such concepts as the ‘multiplier’ (presented in almost all basic economics text books) remain without argument in their defence. The idea that government can help the economy by (for example) issuing money and using this money to buy sand and hire people to shovel this sand into the sea, is absurd. To teach such doctrines someone must either be a knave (someone who teaches something he does not believe), or a fool (someone who believes nonsense).
Of course even if one insisted that government ‘investment’ actually be about buying capital goods (rather than ‘investment’ simply being another word for government spending) the idea would still make no sense – investment must be based on real saving (not credit money games).
It is tragic that fallacies refuted by such men as Bastiat almost two centuries ago (such as the fallacy of the broken window) are treated as ‘scientific’ by the vast majority of basic economics text books (often with lots of formulas and pseudo scientific language shoved in to try and hide the basic absurdities).
Even as I type this many nations in the world are undergoing rapidly rising prices (and prices rising at an increasing rate) whilst at the same time these nations have falling output and rising unemployment. If Keynesianism means anything the above should not be possible.
An Austrian economics person does not rely on empirical examples, but such examples are noteworthy. When one sees the rising inflation, falling output and rising unemployment of such nations as Venezuela and Argentina the concepts of Keynesianism fall apart. As some of these nations export oil and some import oil the idea that ‘oil shocks’ are a magic way out for the Keynesianism falls apart also.
When I see that most undergraduate textbooks that do not have concepts such as the various ‘multiplier’ in them (or treat such concepts with the contempt they deserve) then I will apologise for being too hard on the economics profession. I would apologise if even ONE textbook recommended at a British state university exposed such concepts as nonsense.
As far as I am aware no apology is in order at this time.
Paul Marks
Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood is a freelance writer and home educator. She is a supporter of Taking Children Seriously and writes on home education, autonomous education and non-coercive parenting from a libertarian perspective.
In both the United States and Britain home education is on the increase. Roland Meighan, formerly special professor of education at Nottingham university estimates that at least 1% of school aged children are home educated in Britain. In the United States the figure is 5% with a growth rate of 20% each year and rising. In both the United States and Britain home education is increasingly a step taken by families disillusioned by the provision of mainstream education.
However, the content of this disillusionment seems to vary enormously. In the States, despite a growing number of secular home educators, the religious reason continues to dominate. In a society that separates religion and state, religious parents, especially those on the fundamentalist right are likely to withdraw their children from schooling. In contrast, Britain has no such separation of religion and state. Religious education and a daily act of worship are mandatory in state schools and the government is set to forge ahead with plans to increase the number of state funded schools with an explicitly religious foundation despite the protests of the National Secular Society. Of course, for some religious families this weak inoculation of school based religion is insufficient, especially when evolution is taught routinely in biology classes, but those who withdraw their children for religious reasons are very much in the minority of British home educators.
In the United States, Ronald Presitto1 tells us that the right of parents to raise their children according to their religious convictions is at the heart of the divergence between ‘home schooling’ and the educational establishment. In contrast, most British home educators begin with pragmatic concerns – children are withdrawn when severe bullying incidents fail to be resolved, when they are too bored to tolerate the standardised national curriculum, when their special needs are not taken into account or when the only school place offered is at some dismal, failing institution where you wouldn’t leave a dog. Some do start out with convictions about individualised education or religion, but these are the minority.
What American home schoolers and British home educators have in common is the reaction of their ‘authorities’ to their presence. From local officials to policy makers to government ministers there is a swathe of opinion that believes that parents are not to be trusted with their children and that the State, whether it is secular, socialist or broadly Judaeo-Christian, represents safer hands and inculcates more objective values. Recently in Britain the host of a prestigious legal radio programme (Radio 4 ‘Law in Action’) opined exactly that in his weekly Guardian column – teachers are trained, accredited and hand down the official package to children, but heaven (or not) only knows what parents might be doing to their children. → Continue reading: Behind the scenes in home education
Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood is a freelance writer and home educator. She is a supporter of Taking Children Seriously and writes on home education, autonomous education and non-coercive parenting from a libertarian perspective. Her third book, Bound To Be Free deals in depth with the hidden costs of so called ‘free’ education, including further discussion of the issues below
According to last week’s Independent on Sunday a new mental health campaign sparked off by the fear that parents may face jail over compulsory drug orders for their children if a new Bill becomes law. Not content with collecting personal and private data on parents and children via the Orwellian Connexions scheme, the Blairite regime is now proposing to parent our children for us still further by accusing parents who do not favour drugging their children of being negligent and denying their children medical treatment.
The use of the ADHD drug, Ritalin, continues to rocket – 208,000 in 2001 compared to 2,000 a decade earlier. Compulsory treatment orders are a symptom of a culture which treats children as products and an adjunct of administering a brutal, centralised ‘free’ education system. Those who do not conform to this ‘one size fits all’ educational machine are ‘bad’ and/or ‘dysfunctional’ and can be diagnosed and treated. The more the system feels threatened, the more aggressive the intervention. In a collapsing state education system so-called hyperactivity disorders such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are popular tools of control and neatly shift the focus of failure away from the non-individually responsive institution and onto the child.
There are an increasing number of doctors and psychiatrists who consider that there is no objective difference in the behaviours of so called ‘normal’ and ADHD children. There are even some, like Thomas Szasz, who put these objections vigorously, pointing out that feeding children what is effectively ‘speed’ in order to curb what is not a disease, but a ‘catch all’ for troublesome behaviour, is a matter of adult convenience and control, not of medicine.
Formerly, quacks had fake cures for real diseases; now, they claim to have real cures for fake diseases.1
When big brother is threatening to drug your children so that they can be more suited to the homogenised environments of state schools perhaps its time not only to fight back, but to ensure that more and more people are aware that they can opt out of the system entirely and choose the freedom of home education. The hidden costs of so called ‘free’; state education are on the increase – not only through massive taxation, but also via services delivered with increasing menaces to civil liberties.
Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood
1 = Chemical Straitjackets for Children by Thomas S. Szasz
© 2001 The Foundation for Economic Education
Paul Marks laments the timing and cost of upcoming events
The Mont Pelerin Society is holding its conference in London next week. Rumour has it that the price of actually attending the conference is quite absurd (over eight hundred pounds) [Editor: fortunately the Liberty 2002 Conference is only a mere £75].
However, there are fringe meetings and I have asked, and been allowed, to attend two of them (the panel discussion on the future of freedom at the Institute of Economic Affairs at 18:30 on Monday and the debate on a good and free society between Roger Scruton and Stephen Davis at the Travellers Club, 106 Pall Mall at 18:00 Tuesday).
Contrary to what is sometimes said there are still people in the Conservative party who are interested in liberty – but many Conservative activist types will be down on the south coast (perhaps listening to John Redwood and Co, at a Selsdon Group fringe meeting, explaining why Conservatives should “Stand up for Capitalism”).
To have the Mont Pelerin Society conference clashing with the Conservative Party conference is unfortunate.
Paul Marks
Blogger Alice Bachini rejects yet another collectivist ‘one size fits all’ approach to the problem of juvenile crime
If a certain group of people is identified as causing particular kinds of crime, is it OK to legislate against the rights of that group? Say, black men were proven to be responsible for 90 percent of stabbings. Would that make it OK to ban black men from buying or owning knives? What if white men between twenty and forty were responsible for 95 percent of all drink-driving deaths? Should we make a law banning them from pubs except between certain hours of the morning, say?
Obviously not. Which is why it is a good thing that plans to bring in an ageist curfew in Corby have been shelved. But of course, no-one there is concerned about the civil liberties of people under fifteen. The argument seems to be between those who want something done about certain kinds of crime perpetuated by this age group, reasonably enough, and those who think more football and youth clubs are the answer to immoral behaviour, which, they aren’t. And I don’t have any easy answers either, but I do think some kind of intelligent understanding that young people are human beings like the rest of us would be a good start.
My other main suggestion is to make it easier for young people to do proper, money-earning work. As long as the system continues to ban kids from doing honest mornings on low-paid milk rounds on the grounds that this interferes with their totally pointless unpaid days of school, it is actively preventing many of them from finding a good way forward with their lives.
Alice Bachini
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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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