We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
“Sure, organic agriculture is sustainable: it sustains poverty and malnutrition.”
Taken from an article by Matt Ridley, on the self-imposed agricultural disaster of Sri Lanka, caused by the government’s suppression of artificial fertilisers in preference for more “organic” methods.
As Ridley concludes in his article: “If the world abandoned nitrogen fertiliser that was fixed in factories, the impact on human living standards would be catastrophic, but so would the impact on nature. Given that half the nitrogen atoms in the average person’s body were fixed in an ammonia factory rather than a plant, to feed eight billion people with organic methods we would need to put more than twice as much land under the plough and the cow. That would consign most of the world’s wetlands, nature reserves and forests to oblivion.”
In Holland, farmers have been protesting the Dutch government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions.
It seems that “educated” and “well-informed” people the world over want to reverse a truly “Green revolution”, driven by new fertilisers, seed varieties and agricultural technology. And all the while doing so when Ukraine, one of the world’s most important exporters of wheat, sunflower oil and other important products, is being attacked.
I am searching in vain to find much reflection about any of this from those folk running to be next leader of the Conservative Party.
I put these remarks into a comment thread below but thought I might as well bung them here, loud and proud:
I am saddened that Boris Johnson’s administration has ended this way, but not surprised. His personal failings, such as inability to run and manage a team, meant that he was unable/unwilling to push forward on a handful of areas where a government can make headway. As a result, the “Whitehall Blob” was able to stand in his way. He had no talent for strategy and process. It sounds deadly dull and management-speak, but it is important. Dominic Cummings is an overrated character, who seemed to alienate people unnecessarily. He was a technocrat, not an original thinker. Even so, he gave a certain sense of drive to Johnson. Once Cummings left in the lockdown kerfuffle, things began to unravel.
I read the conspiracy theory sort of charge that the media and much of the political class who wanted the UK to stay in the EU were determined to destroy him, so angry were they that the UK has had the cheek to leave the tender cares of the EU. There’s some truth to this, of course. He achieved an excellent 2019 General Election result, and was also fortunate to be up against an extreme Leftist and anti-semitic guttersnipe such as Jeremy Corbyn. And he also got a tailwind from cultural realignments of political loyalties, with voters in the Midlands and North, for example, turning against Labour decisively. But from then on the fizzle went out of Boris. Yes, he signed a treaty to take the UK out of the EU, but work needed to be done on the Northern Ireland border, and if necessary, we should have threatened to abandon the deal. The EU did not think we would do so, and the likes of Barnier in the EU and Macron in France have weaponised the Northern Ireland border issue shamelessly. Johnson never quite gave the impression he was prepared to push back hard enough. (The idea that the NI border is some insuperable obstacle for a meaningful deal is bunk.)
And then there was covid. Unlike some, I don’t give him a hard time for the first lockdown, but the cronyism about medical contracts, the “save the NHS” sentimentalism, the failure to stress that furloughs were very temporary, was a mistake. As was the failure to do a proper costed analysis of lockdowns, and be honest, quickly, with the public about the costs. That was a failure of leadership. There were results on the vaccines, but even then, and without following the anti-vaxxers on this, I thought too much stress was put on these, rather than a range of treatments, including so-called “early treatments”. (Johnson also, like far too many other leaders, gave China an easy ride on what caused this clusterfuck and its culpability for said.)
Then there was the whole “Green transition”, “build back better”, “Great Reset” nonsense, at a time when the likely spike in inflation/energy costs could have been predicted by anyone who had not forgotten monetary realities. The commitment to Net Zero, as our late Samizdata commenter Brian Micklethwait told me not long before he died, was a fatal mistake for Johnson, as it will be for several other political leaders around the world.
Then there were the tax hikes to pay for unreformed public services, such as the rise to National Insurance Contributions, the freezing of tax brackets, etc. There were no clear attempts to recalibrate our universities and reduce an obsession with sending every student with a pulse to university. And finally, there was no concerted attempt to use the freedoms we regained outside of the European Union and its customs union to slash tariffs, repeal EU legacy legislation, and put sunset clauses into any new laws. (I liked the Trump idea that for every new regulation hitting the statute book, two must be removed.)
There was a lot to do after the GE in 2019, and it would have taxed the skills of the most effective of Prime Ministers, such as a Peel, Thatcher or Gladstone. Boris is a colourful character, whom I have met a few times, and like personally. It was plain he was not in the mould of such political statesmen and women, however.
It is also worth noting that some of the dislike seems to be borne of a priggish dislike of someone who seems to have had a gilded life, and I find that rather unpleasant.
A final, added thought here is that the zero-sum world of politics, with its plots, nastiness and scrapping for the spoils of office, its use of tax and spend to push this or that cause, contrasts with the positive-sum world of free enterprise, where success comes from adding value, not predation. For a person to live with honour, business is far preferable to politics.
“The developed world’s response to the global energy crisis has put its hypocritical attitude toward fossil fuels on display. Wealthy countries admonish developing ones to use renewable energy. Last month the Group of Seven went so far as to announce they would no longer fund fossil-fuel development abroad. Meanwhile, Europe and the U.S. are begging Arab nations to expand oil production. Germany is reopening coal power plants, and Spain and Italy are spending big on African gas production. So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal that the nation will more than double its exports.”
– Bjorn Lomborg
“While dictators usually lie about everything they do, they are often candid about what they would like to do.”
– Gary Kasparov
“The British Courts and our legal system are the envy of the world. We know this, because so many people choose to illegally cross the Channel in order to exploit them.”
– Lee Rotherham.
Several weeks ago I recall how Russia’s attempted conquest of Ukraine had rallied European countries together, and had given fresh life to an embattled EU. This glow of satisfaction in Brussels appears to have gone, and two of the reasons are France and Germany, the most important EU member states. German chancellor Olaf Scholz made positive noises on defence spending, energy and so forth in the immediate aftermath, but he appears to be getting criticism for not following through. As for French president Emmanuel Macron, his interventions into the horrible business seem almost designed to weaken Ukrainian martial spirit and bolster Russia’s hopes.
We are told that Ukraine wants to join the EU and NATO. It may still want to be under the NATO umbrella, in fact if not in writing, but what about its supposed desire for EU membership? It can see how the main countries in the EU act; it is able also to see the unhappiness of countries as varied as Poland and Greece. It must wonder why one of the most important members in the bloc, the UK – a founder member of the UN, NATO, etc – has left, and studied the reasons (loss of sovereignty, anger at creeping bureaucracy and Brussels centralisation) for us getting out. Relations between the UK and Ukraine are good, given the UK’s fulsome support for Kyiv in its agony. I am betting that as and when this war ends, Ukraine is not going to be rushing to apply for EU membership, and may spurn it if offered, but prefer a web of trade deals and pacts instead. But I may be wrong, and Ukraine will join, initially benefiting – its people may hope – from trade and lots of financial aid. At some point, as with so many countries, the love will end, and the grumbling will begin.
“The facile solutions offered by McKibben and other environmentalists fail to reckon with many things, not least how profoundly the world has changed since Russia’s invasion. Europe’s heavy dependency on Russian oil and gas is just the tip of the iceberg. The world’s renewable energy economy is deeply entangled with geopolitically problematic supply chains. Huge parts of the world’s supplies of silicon, lithium, and rare-earth minerals rely on China, where solar panels are produced by Uyghur slave labor in concentration camps. The idea that the crisis might be resolved by choosing Western dependence on Chinese solar panels and batteries over Western dependence on Russian oil and gas reveals just how unserious the environmental movement’s pretensions to justice, human rights, and democracy really are.”
– Ted Nordhaus.
A few years ago, Tom Bergin, a journalist for Reuters, wrote a book challenging several ideas, such as supply-side economics.
In a nutshell, the book criticised the idea that people respond to economic incentives in a linear fashion. It does not dismiss the role of incentives entirely but does generally poo-pooh the idea. Bergin appears to have a generally left-liberal political bent. For all that, the book is well worth reading because he attempts to back up his claims with a lot of figures, although it is worth noting that there are studies that don’t support his case. See an example also here.
And in a new article from the Wall Street Journal, the paper notes how the exodus of US citizens from high-tax states to low-tax states is now so pronounced that suggesting that people don’t respond to incentives is not just wrong, but a case of intellectual evasion:
Each year the IRS publishes data on the migration of taxpayers and aggregate adjusted gross income between states. Its latest release for 2020 shows that migration from high- to low-tax states surged amid pandemic lockdowns and a shift to remote work.
Yes, that is what I am seeing.
The biggest winners were Florida ($23.7 billion), Texas ($6.3 billion), Arizona ($4.8 billion), North Carolina ($3.8 billion), South Carolina ($3.6 billion), Tennessee ($2.6 billion), Nevada ($2.6 billion), Colorado ($2.3 billion), Idaho ($2.1 billion) and Utah ($1.3 billion). Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Florida and South Carolina gained the most as a share of their 2019 income.
The biggest losers: New York (-$19.5 billion), California (-$17.8 billion), Illinois (-$8.5 billion), Massachusetts (-$2.6 billion), New Jersey (-$2.3 billion), Maryland (-$1.9 billion), Ohio (-$1.4 billion), Minnesota (-$1.2 billion), Pennsylvania (-$1.2 billion) and Virginia (-$1.1 billion). New York, Illinois, Alaska, California and North Dakota lost the most as a share of 2019 income.
Notably, four of the 10 states that gained the most income in 2020 don’t impose an income tax (Florida, Texas, Tennessee and Nevada). The others have generally low tax burdens. States losing the most income generally have high income and property taxes. Taxes aren’t the only factor in migration. Schools, quality of life and cost of living also matter.
Yet high-tax states don’t provide better public services and often have worse schools and public works despite spending more.
Another example that I hear about as a barometer are U-Haul rates. It cost a lot more to go from California to, say, Tennessee than the other way around. If I order a U-Haul from San Francisco to Nashville, TN, on 8 July, the price I am quoted is $3,587. To go from Nashville back to what has been dubbed “San Fransicko”, and on the same date, it is $1,913. Okay, I hear you cry, there may be other factors. Well, there may be reasons why people are so much keener to pay to go to the Smoky Mountain State from California, and that talking about taxes is so much evil neo-liberal ideology. But I am betting that taxes, which are after a cost, do have a bearing.
“To tackle big problems, we need more freedom, not less. Only world-leading entrepreneurs and businesses can stimulate the new discoveries and technologies that will enable us to deal with super-castropic risks. It is not collective sacrifice but a new wave of radical individualism that fuses classical ideals of liberty with a renewed sense of personal responsibility (not least when it comes to health) that will make our country more resilient.”
– Sherelle Jacobs, Daily Telegraph (£)
“There is no winner to the victimhood Olympics,”
– Vivek Ramaswamy, interviewed here by Texan Congressman Dan Crenshaw.
Ramaswamy has founded a new investment business, Strive, that, shockingly, focuses more on building returns for investors than engaging in political positions. He is the author also of Woke Inc, an indictment of ideas that are hostile to free enterprise taking root in the boardroom. More power to this chap, I say.
A few days ago, HSBC (which is listed in London and Hong Kong) suspended Stuart Kirk, head of responsible investing at the lender, because of how he scorned efforts by regulators to exaggerate the financial and market impact of Man-made global warming. He gave a presentation, “Why investors need not worry about climate risk”, and this seems to have ruffled a few feathers at the bank. (Here is a link to his presentation.)
As the Wall Street Journal comments:
“Unsubstantiated, shrill, partisan, self-serving, apocalyptic warnings are ALWAYS wrong,” one of his slides noted. He highlighted sky-is-falling quotes from banking potentates such as Mark Carney, the former Bank of England Governor, who recently said the damage from climate change will dwarf the current pain from rising prices. Tell that to the working folks dealing with 8% inflation.
But then of course scoring virtue points about climate change is so much easier than not printing lots of money and trying to control inflation, I suppose.
By the way, I love Mr Kirk’s business title, “head of responsible investing”. As opposed to what, “head of irresponsible investing”, or “lazy investing” or “immoral investing”?
There appears to have been quite a bit of pushback, and I am thinking of ordering some popcorn. Standard Chartered chief Bill Winters is reported to have said that all should be free to “speak their mind” on environmental issues, even if executives disagree with them. (Standard Chartered, which is listed in the UK, makes much of its money in places such as Asia.)
And here’s another point: both HSBC and Standard Chartered, given the importance of Asia to their earnings, in 2020 backed Beijing’s imposition of a national security law in Hong Kong, designed to crush democratic opposition to moves around ending Hong Kong’s independence in legal terms under the agreement signed with the UK. Both these banks make much of their environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials. Where does their defence of China’s bullying of Hong Kong leave their “social” or “governance” credentials, may I ask?
ESG is now a corporate religion in the industry that I report on. It is impossible to seriously criticise it, it seems, without endangering one’s career. That said, I think the hypocrisies and cognitive dissonance involved is showing strains. HSBC may regret suspending a man for telling what is essentially the truth. He is right that there is a lot of self-serving nonsense around ESG and that some people are making a fat living out of it. I hope Mr Kirk, if he is forced out, sues the pants off the bank.
The aforementioned WSJ article notes:
If climate change poses such an enormous economic threat, Mr. Kirk asked, why did asset prices surge as doomsday warnings increased? Either climate risk is negligible, climate risk is already in the prices, or all investors are wrong, he said. If you believe the latter, then you don’t believe in markets and shouldn’t be regulating them.
Credit to Mr. Kirk for exposing the hubris of the regulatory climate emperors even as his superiors shrink in fear.
I am an atheist – I don’t even seek any cover in the “foxhole” of agnosticism, or pull the “religion isn’t true but it keeps the plebs in line” sort of argument that I have sometimes come across. Full disclosure: I am a confirmed Anglican but fell away over the years, primarily because I could not engage with the idea of belief via faith. I know a lot of people who are religious, if not noisily so. I respect them and love many of them, and vice versa. It really is as simple as that.
Occasionally I come across the phenomenon of the “noisy atheist”, and am reminded what an unlovely creature that is. On my Facebook page, I follow a few groups such as one dedicated to Second World War allied pilots (I am an aviation history geek. Bite me.) Recently, a Canadian pilot, who flew Spitfires in the war, died at the tremendous age of 100. I wrote something along the lines of “Rest in Peace and blue skies to the brave gentleman.” All of a sudden, when I woke up the following day, I noticed that my comment and that of many other people had elicited comments from a person who wrote words to the effect of “religion is crap – grow up” or “your beliefs are a piece of shit”. The person has his own FB page on the subject of military history and makes a big point of his being an atheist. So it is probably not a Russian bot, although one never knows.
What to make of this other than the fact that some people are sociopaths, or just plain unpleasant and in need of some direct lessons in manners? Well, what it proves to me is that if you firmly hold to the idea that belief in a Supreme, omniscient god is nonsense, then it is absolutely fine to express that view, but not in a way that is so rude, or by injecting your views into the conversations of others, and ignoring context completely. Ironically for this digital yob, he has achieved the opposite effect in anyone whom he might have tried to convert, by associating unbelief with rudeness and crassness.
Atheism is the absence of belief, rather than a positive belief in X or Y. (To go further, atheism is the view that the idea of god is incoherent and therefore existence of gods cannot be true. A thing cannot be beyond nature and above it, as a god is, because nature is all of existence and to be outside it makes no sense. (That is my understanding of what atheism is, properly defined.)
There are, in my experience, a great variety of atheists, such as by their political beliefs and for some, belief in political or other ideologies fills a sort of philosophical hole. For other atheists, the lack of belief in a God creates no such “gap” – they have a coherent philosophy of life requiring no props of any kind. That is where I stand. Some atheists can be socialists/collectivists, others on the libertarian, classical liberal/Objectivist end of the spectrum, others traditional conservatives and so on. Some can be agreeable, philosophical and rounded as human beings. Some, alas, are just plain bloody awful. It seems to me that I have encountered the latter.
Anyway, I share these musings to reflect on etiquette and how social media has given opportunities to encounter humans at their best and their worst. On a positive end point, I have met a lot of good people via social media, in terms of actual friends whom I meet for real.
|
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.
|
