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Many people (including me) bitch about George W. Bush. However, at least he is not in South Africa applauding the endless insults directed at the United States and supporting the demands for a world government to be set up to direct money from the “islands of wealth” to the poor of the planet. This is exactly what Mr Gore would be doing. Paul Marks August 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed
…which, attempting to emulate the incomparable Scrofulous Steve, I thought might work better as an animated gif.  Current conditions: By comparison, an infantry soldier’s pay starts at £12,578 and can rise Has anyone visited the Fire Brigades Union website? They don’t mince words:
David Harthill August 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Libertarians who study the history of thought are well aware of the power of lies. To give one example: Generations of people accepted that the labour theory of value was universally accepted (at least in the English speaking world) because J.S. Mill, in his “Principles of Political Economy” (1848), stated that the theory of value was now settled and not disputed. Actually most economists in the Italian, French and German speaking worlds opposed the theory and two of the best known political economists in England also opposed it. These economists were Samuel Bailey and Richard Whately (the work of both men was known to J.S. Mill). I wonder how many people in the last one and half centuries have been tricked by J.S. Mill’s ‘no one disputes’ tactic. This tactic is deployed whenever wants to pretend that no one opposes a piece of statism he happens to favour. In “Principles of Political Economy” we are told that no one disputes the need for police (in fact hotly disputed and not made compulsory for local communities till 1856), or the need for the government to be engaged in street building, water supply, drainage, rubbish collection etc (all hotly disputed at the time). If one wishes to make something happen, pretending everyone agrees with it may be a good tactic. However, it does not work for free market reform – as it has always been too obvious that some people oppose liberty, so the lie that no one opposes it is too transparent. We have to be honest whether we like it or not – otherwise we look absurd. How is this all relevant to the present day? → Continue reading: The Power of Lies August 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Paul Krugman (the pet economist of the New York Times) is fond of sneering at the Austrian school theory of the boom-bust cycle as a ‘moral theory’. According to Professor Krugman, Austrian school economist believe the bust is a moral punishment for the degenerate luxury of the boom. Of course to a ‘liberal’ like Paul Krugman moral and morality are ‘boo words’ to be sneered at (unless they are talking about George W. Bush – in which case it is quite all right to talk about lack of morality). However, Professor Krugman is (I believe) up to a bit more than this here. Ludwig Von Mises was insistent that economic science be “value free” – the methods of natural science were not suitable for economics (or so Von Mises taught), but economics (like natural science) must be kept distinct from ethics. As an economist one explained the consequences of a policy – and only then did one (as a human being) decide whether these consequences were good or bad. So by claiming that Austrian school of economics is a moral school Professor Krugman is playing the same game that Marx and Engels played with Max Stirner – knowing he was obsessive atheist (even more so than they were) they insisted on calling him “Saint Max”, “Our Saint” (and so on). Stirner had claimed that a communist society (which he opposed) would have to be based on the ethical (‘religious’) principle that equality was good (communism as an overgrown monastery) – so Marx and Engels were trying to get their own back on someone who had argued that communism was not ‘scientific’. There is clearly a long tradition in ‘social science’ of regarding the accusation of ‘morality’ as a deadly insult, so Professor Krugman clearly knows where to hit. However, is he totally wrong? Is there no connection between Austrian economics and morality? Murray Rothbard often argued that there was a connection between the concept of economic law and the idea of natural law in ethics. I will not examine Rothbardian Aristotelianism in this blog but I mention it in case any one supposes that I am the first person to try and explore the connections between economic law and moral law. Von Mises (like Carl Menger before him) based his whole conception of economics on human choice – on the reasoning “I” which decides how to act and then acts. It is true that Hayek (being influenced by determinism) did not go along with the concept of agency (the choosing agent – the “I”) but, in practice, Hayek accepted that people should be considered “as if” they were actually different from clock work toys so he need not be examined here (although I wonder who is doing the considering if Hayek himself was not an agent-subject – but simply a complex object like the rest of us supposed to be). Mises himself was careful to never actually formally endorse the concept of free will (to do so would have been the ultimate horror in early 1900’s Vienna) but clearly (as for the Aristotelian Menger) the whole of his thought depends on man being able to think – to consider, to make choices, to be “acting man” the agent. Agency may not be ethics but it is at least a doctrine of metaphysics. This is why both Mises and Karl Popper were amused when they were accused of being ‘positivists’. The Vienna Circle would never accept any metaphysical doctrines – indeed that was the whole point of the Vienna Circle (circles with points? oh well “you know what I mean”). Still how does all this metaphysical stuff relate to practical ‘policy issues’? Someone might accept that not allowing private ownership of the means of production and money prices derived from voluntary interaction will (eventually) lead to mass starvation, but still hold that mass starvation does not matter (the Cambridge economist Maurice Dobbs came close to this – he accepted that socialism was not as good at giving people what they wanted as capitalism was – but held that this was not relevant, as it did not matter what people wanted) surely then Mises’ distinction between economics and morality still holds? → Continue reading: Economics and Morality August 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
SADDAM, LET’S THINK outside the box for a change. We know you don’t really give two shits about the Palestinians, and you sure as hell don’t give a rat’s ass about Islam, either. And we know you’re a practical kind of man. So here’s a little suggestion that might meet both of our needs. Here’s the way it is. Unless we make some kind of arrangement here, we’re going to have to turn all of Iraq into a pane of stained glass. It’ll be an ugly business; everyone in the world will get their panties in a wad about it, and we’ll all have to waste a lot of our valuable time and energy holding useless press conferences explaining things we’d rather not explain. We will, that is. You won’t, because you’ll be dead. You can take Israel with you, sure, but you’re still going to be dead as a dodo, and there ain’t no 72 virgins in Paradise waiting for you. Take my word for it, we know from the pleasures of the flesh in our country. Now here’s what we suggest, Saddam. This might come as a surprise to you, but we’ve been giving it some thought, and lately it occurs to us that the Iraqis and the Americans might actually have more in common than we first thought. You know that book about what to do when someone moves your cheese? Well, we’ve read it too, and it really spoke to us. It’s time to look at that cheese again. For one thing, we’ve noticed lately that we really don’t feel a lot of love for the Saudis, and it just doesn’t seem to us that they’re running those oil fields as responsibly as they could. And you know the Kuwaitis? Well, we were wrong, you were right, and we’re man enough to admit it. They’re repulsive little ingrates and they’re too damned cowardly to have a country of their own. Hell, they probably were stealing your oil. So you know what, Saddam? Go ahead. Yep, you heard us right. That was the green light, just like the one you thought you got from that Glaspie woman, only this time we mean it. Take Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia too. It would take you what, three days? Go ahead and butcher the Al Sabahs and the whole Saudi royal family. Have at it. Any dissent? We know you know how to handle it, just don’t tell us about the details. Let Noam Chomsky worry about it. And hell, Saddam, you want a free hand over Iran? We see no problem with that either. We know they gave you a bit of hassle the last time around, but after 23 years under the Ayatollahs, this time they’ll probably be throwing roses at your tanks. As far as we’re concerned, you can have the whole Persian Gulf. All of it. You can even keep your WMD program. We’ll sell you the damned Trident missiles if you like, just as long as you keep them pointed toward the right people. Oh, and we’ll give you a free hand to slaughter all the Islamic fundamentalists you want – in Saudi Arabia, outside Saudi Arabia, in Iran, Yemen, wherever. We know you’re dying to do it anyway; heck, you love killing people. Give ’em a taste of what the Kurds got. Like I said, we don’t want to know the details. Kind of like we said to the Indonesians back in the day. Let Robert Fisk worry about getting the scoop. (Oh, and if something unfortunate were to happen to him, you didn’t hear it from us, but you know – accidents do happen. The will of Allah and all that.) Way we see it, Saddam, there’s really no reason the two of us should go to war when we really have a lot of common emotional needs. Sure, we think you’re a little ruthless, a bit of a homicidal maniac, but you know, we managed to see the bright side of Stalin when we needed to, and in retrospect, it’s a fine thing what those Russians did at Stalingrad – that could have been our boys taking losses like that. We think we might have sort of a similar situation here. Let’s face it, we Americans just don’t have the stomach to do what it really takes to wipe out these Islamic lunatics. And they seem awfully serious about wanting us all dead. So why not give the job to a man who has both the appetite to do the job right and the expertise? We just have a few little things we’d like in return. Lay off of Israel, stop sending money to those idiotic suicide bombers, and keep the price of oil below nine dollars a barrel – forever. The way we see it, everyone ends up happy, except maybe the Al Sauds, and frankly, at this point, their happiness is just not our number one priority. You get what you always wanted – total control of the Gulf. We get what we always wanted – – cheap oil and the assurance that every fundamentalist maniac in the Middle East will enjoy your excellent vacation facilities and your trademark Iraqi hospitality. We can be buddies again, just like we were during the Cold War. Remember the good times we had together back then? What are the Europeans going to say about it? They’re the ones who keep blathering on about how they don’t want us to antagonize you, so they should be thrilled by the announcement of the Iraqi–American Peoples’ Alliance for Peace. And figure this: We lift the sanctions, you control all the oil in the Gulf, you start pumping it out like there’s no tomorrow, and within a week you’ll be able to feed all those poor little starving Iraqi children and keep your palaces maintained in the fashion to which you’ve become accustomed. No more of this undignified slinking from house to house every night to escape detection – you could really live in style. And a constant supply of nine–buck–a–barrel oil will do wonders for this unpleasant little economic slump we’ve been facing here. It’s a win-win situation. So that’s really the deal, Saddam old buddy. It’s simple, isn’t it? Lay off of Israel, do the needful with the terrorists, and the Gulf is yours. We tried to do the right thing by the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, but you know, there comes a point in every relationship where you have to ask – “Am I giving more than I’m getting here?” And honestly, we think that point came and went a long time ago. It’s like they say in the books about healthy relationships. We feel like one of those women who love too much. Have you read that one? It really spoke to us, all that stuff about being co–dependent and all. Always bailing out some penny–ante, Jew–hating Gulf potentate whenever he gets himself into some stupid mess, and getting no thanks, none at all, not one word, just more abuse about how we’re such bullies and warmongers. Well, we’ve talked it over with our therapists and we’ve seen that we’re worth more than that. It’s all about Toughlove now. If they think they don’t need us, fine – let them go it on their own, just don’t come crying to us when the Republican Guards start yanking out the plugs on those tiny widdle incubating babies. They had their chance. Nine dollars a barrel. Lay off of Israel. Do whatever it is that you do best with the Islamic Fundamentalists. And the Gulf is yours forever. Tell me you don’t see the beauty in it, Saddam. And of course, remember the alternative. Claire Berlinski  August 23rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
New York City has been known as the heart of statism in the United States since the late 1930’s. However, in recent decades the State of California (or rather its rulers) have been keen to overtake New York in statism. New York State still (by some measures at least) manages to just have higher taxes than California (although I doubt that New York State is still ahead in terms of state spending as a proportion of average income), but in terms of regulations California is well ahead, and in terms of the practices of the courts California has (in some ways) the worst legal system in the United States. Statist Californian cities (most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco) are handicapped in their race to have higher taxes than New York City by the fact that so much is centralised in California – but they do their best, and in terms of regulations are in many ways ahead of New York City in statism. Why I am going over this well known and rather sad story? Well there have been recent developments in the race to collapse. California has decided to ban home schooling (at least parents will now need to be qualified teachers) – this should increase the government education budget (in a state that is heading for bankruptcy anyway) and reduce the standard of education. Not to be outdone, New York City is banning smoking in restaurants, bars and so on that seat under 35 people (smoking is already banned in establishments that seat 35 people or more) – all this is a direct aping of Californian regulations. New York City already has the highest taxes on tobacco in the country (much to the joy of organised crime). Both the anti smoking regulations and the higher taxes are the brain children of the new ‘Republican’ Mayor (both New York City and New York State have a long tradition of ‘Republicans’ of this sort). Is the race to collapse intentional? I do not think so. Although the Greens and other small groups (stronger in California than in New York State) really do want collapse, mainstream Democrats and Republicans do not. However, intentions will not change results (objective reality sees to that). Which area will collapse first? I simply do not know. New York City has already gone bankrupt once (during the mid 1970’s), and been bailed out (in return for some fiscal responsibility) by New York State and the United States government, I suppose history could simply repeat itself. California may simply be too big for such a bailout, especially as the national (and world) economy goes into decline next year (unless there is an oil price collapse of course). A Californian collapse should finally get people’s attention focused on the fact that statism does not work. However, academia and the media will work hard to prevent people drawing this conclusion. We can expect lots of articles and TV interviews from the likes of Paul Krugman on the lines of “the collapse of this symbol of capitalism proves that laissez-faire does not work”. At least in the United States the TV networks (although utterly dominated by ‘liberals’) still feel the need to sometimes have people on screen arguing against the statist account of an event – they are not quite on the level of British television. Paul Marks August 23rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Whilst I’m very disappointed that Ireland’s Progressive Democrats (PD) are campaigning for a Yes vote on the Nice treaty again I noticed Milton Friedman in an interview in this month’s Central Banking (sorry, subscription required) excusing Irish membership of the €uro because they are a small country with an export orientated economy, he thinks the same can also be said for Central and Eastern European countries eventually joining the €uro. But the PD’s ‘Yes’ campaign coupled with the Young Progressive Democrats putting out a policy paper explicitly stating they are liberals, not libertarians, makes me wonder if I’ll be throwing my PD party membership card and my Tory party membership card into the fire. But I’ve just heard something that strikes me as an indictment of Gordon Brown and a tribute to PD leader Mary Harney’s tax cutting agenda. As the Tories tour Europe looking for policies, perhaps they should just dust off some of Thatcher’s old manifestos. Mary Harney did just that; she implemented major tax reforms, cutting Ireland’s basic tax rate to 22%, substantially raising tax thresholds, cutting the number of those liable to pay the top rate of tax, as well as cutting the top rate of tax, exempting the low paid from tax altogether, and finally slashing capital gains tax from 40% to 20%! State spending went from over 50% of GDP down to 26% today. Lo and behold, guess what happened? The Laffer curve smiled on Ireland and the Celtic tiger roared. So much so that Ireland, which was an economic basket case a little over a decade ago, now has lower tax rates than the UK, higher economic growth rates and, unbelievably, higher per capita income than the UK. Bejesus, would ya believe that? Come April, Gordon Brown will be putting up basic UK taxes 2% as we move into an economic downturn. Thick Scot, smart Paddies. Paul Staines August 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I should be interested in this idea. I have been a member of the Conservative Party since 1980, and even when I went to join the party at the offices of the Kettering Association, I stated that I was a libertarian and have stated so often since then (oddly enough it is the older members of the association, some of whom have since died, who tended to know what a ‘libertarian’ actually was). However, nothing I have heard so far attracts me. I would be interested in a party that wanted to cut taxes, government spending and regulations (I do not expect them to understand to monetary policy, the only people I have met in the Conservative party who understood monetary policy were very old indeed and are now almost all dead). People who call themselves ‘centre left’ and declare that the “debate is not about economics” do not interest me at all. Aping the ‘New Left’ by trying to construct a politics based on an obsession with “race, gender and sexual orientation” (the Herbert Marcuse idea of building a new alliance to make up for the poor revolutionary showing of the old working class) is not sensible – although it may be profitable (there are lots of central and local government grants available for such activity). When I pointed some of the above out to the Conservative group Connect (in reply to unsolicited e-mails) they did not reply. Had they replied I would have asked them the following question:
If the reply to the above is “no we do not support the repeal of the anti discrimination laws, the closing down of the various government race and sex agencies… [and so on]” then please spare us all the rubbish about being in favour of ‘civil liberties’. Paul Marks August 16th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Now I have stopped writing as an unbiased person (at least as unbiased as I can be) in my blog Monetary Policy I can get on to a question that interests me as a hard money faction Austrian School man. Those of you with the courage to read my last blog (I should have made it more plain – but I lack the wit to do so) will hopefully know that a Austrian school man of my type believes that money should be based entirely on one commodity and that institutions that issue paper money (bills of credit, whatever) should actually have enough of that commodity to cover all their notes. Traditionally people of my sort have supported the so called ‘100%’ or ‘real’ gold standard (as opposed to the various statist frauds that have existed under the name of ‘gold standard’) – but actually any commodity might be used, and there might be competition between commodities – as there was (for example) in the Kingdom of Hanover before the mid 19th century. As long as only one commodity was used for each money and there were no fixed exchange rates between the commodities – if (for example) a certain amount of gold ‘has’ to buy a certain amount of silver then things are messed up. Some people who read these blogs are well aware of the ‘Austrian’ arguments against Monetarists (that the concept of a ‘price level’ is too loose to be useful, that a price ‘index’ is a misunderstanding [even Hayek argued that himself at various times – but sometimes seemed to like the concept of a price index], and that the ‘money supply’ does not gush everywhere like water, but instead piles up like treacle – creating asset price bubbles, distorting relative prices and creating mal-investment). However, I am not going to deal with all this here. My question is this – given that the world is not what I would wish it to be, just what will happen? Traditionally a hard money man would say there will be a bust or a crack up boom. In a bust the government stops propping up the magic circle of ‘private’ financial institutions and other favoured business enterprises (by ‘increasing the money supply’) and the economy goes into slump. In a ‘crack up boom’ the government continues to increase the money supply (i.e. credit money) till there is vast open inflation (not just asset price inflation but ‘prices in the shops’) and a ‘flight from money’ occurs – and the thing comes to a terrible stop. The boom-bust cycle (with the crack up boom being far worse than a normal bust). However, what happens if government continues to increase the credit-money supply, but not enough to create vast open ‘in the shops’ inflation? As the various speculations of the financial institutions and other favoured enterprises go wrong so the government increases its credit money supply to prop them up – but (by their very failures) the institutions’ own credit paper (‘broad money’ if you like ‘M3’ etc) shrinks – so there is not much actual change in what people see as the ‘price level’. Well of course things become more and more inefficient as a greater and greater share of resources are devoted to propping up mal-investments – so there is general economic decline over time. But is there a formal big bust? Readers of this should get to find out over the next few years – as governments seem determined to neither go for vast open inflation, or to allow the financial system to bust. The economy will get worse – but in what way the process manifests itself will be very interesting. Please take some time off from the simple process of survival, over the next few years, to observe and consider these matters. A bit of observation and thought will not reduce your survival chances (if survival is what interests you) – it may even help. Paul Marks August 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Two stories in yesterday’s Telegraph caught my eye and made me smile, the first hinting that disgruntled young Conservatives (young means they are all over 30, but below pensionable age) are organising to split the party August 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
There has long been a debate, in libertarian circles, about whether there is a special commitment among the people of England (or the cultural institutions of England) to liberty – or whether England is much the same as other Western nations. My own position is that (whatever may have been true in the past) England today is indeed much the same as other Western nations. The English tend to say that they believe in freedom – but when faced with one of the ‘hard questions’: Are you in favour of the abolition of the National Health Service? Are you in favour of the legalization of cocaine? Do you support adults being allowed to buy automatic rifles? and so on, support for liberty tends to collapse – it is much the same in other Western nations. In formal politics England is also much the same as other Western nations. One of the two major political parties is in theory in favour of a smaller less interventionist government – the Conservative party. Yet when it is actually in government, the Conservative party is not very good at reducing the size and scope of government – but (again) that is much the same as the Republicans in the United States, the Liberals in Australia, the R.P.R. in France, the Christian Democrats in Germany (and so on). But have a look at Scotland and Wales. The most important party is Labour (a party, whatever some people may like to think, that is overtly in favour of ever more government spending and regulations). The Labour party is far more important in Scotland and Wales than it is in England and far more important than its sister parties are in other Western nations, but that is not the most important point. The second party of Scotland and Wales is NOT the Conservative party. The Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Liberal Democrats are all openly statist parties – and they are more important than the Conservative party in Scotland and Wales. The Liberal Democrats in Scotland and Wales support the ruling Labour party (so perhaps can be discounted), but the major opposition are the statist nationalist parties. In short Scotland and Wales have openly statist governments working for ever more government spending and regulations – and openly statist oppositions, working for ever more government spending and regulations. This is not normal in the Western world. Is it in the interests of England to be bound to Scotland and Wales? Paul Marks August 13th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The news that Charlton Heston has Alzheimer’s will sadden all decent people. The news that the authorities will be able to take his gun from his hands long before they are either cold or dead pisses me off like hell. But if it is the case that individuals with Alzheimer’s should be disarmed shouldn’t the same apply to governments? Take the British state – it’s showing definite signs. It is definitely getting forgetful. If it wasn’t it wouldn’t keep putting out the same press release time after time or announcing an old spending increase as a new one. It’s cognitive functions are not what they were. How else could one explain its obsession with prosecuting a War on Drugs which it can’t possibly win or continued membership of the European Union – the answer to a question no one asked? There is a definite tendency to nostalgia. Why else would it still cling on to a Stalinist model of healthcare long since rejected by the rest of the world? It suffers from mood swings. One moment it is counting every last penny, the next splurging cash in the general direction of the NHS and railways. And it seems to be incapable of carrying out even the most basic tasks, like supplying the armed forces with a rifle that works or putting guilty people in jail or teaching its citizens to read or cleaning air conditioning systems or dealing with foot and mouth. I wonder if we could do a swap? Patrick Crozier August 12th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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