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On BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (on Monday’s show – if my memory serves) there was a story about the destruction of the forests of Eastern Europe.
The BBC journalist would refer to forests in country after country and talk about how the trees were “illegally cut down” and the timber “illegally imported into Western European countries”.
I noticed something about the BBC man’s remarks. In each Eastern European country he discussed he talked about the ‘national parks’ or the ‘national forests’ – never once did he talk about privately owned forests being destroyed.
Whether forests are owned by old aristocratic families or by private companies (as in the State of Maine) there is no question of them being destroyed for a quick buck – ownership (as opposed to licences, or ‘rights to’ or other nonsense), brings concern for the long term.
Of course the BBC man did not notice this – he just claimed that ‘things’ would be improved when the Eastern European nations joined the European Union and there were even more regulations than there are now.
All the coverage of California we have had in Britain has not mentioned the fact that another large State in the United States has just balanced its budget.
I believe I am right in saying that the second largest State in the Union (Texas) has balanced its budget without increasing taxes.
Texas has achieved this by the strange practice of – cutting government spending
This policy does not often occur to politicians or media folk.
Fidel Castro, in a speech to the masses, has announced that he will not accept any more aid from the European Union as people connected with this organization have made critical comments about some of the policies of his regime.
Now if Fidel Castro actually keeps his word (I admit that this a dodgy assumption) his regime may soon fall.
Cuba has various sources of income. Some are not that important – for example the Castro regime’s drug dealing has long been limited by the desire to maintain plausible deniability (cocaine dealing having a negative public relations aspect in modern times – although at one time it was considered a respectable trade, and may one day be so considered again). Also there is little point for Latin American cocaine sellers to work via Cuba (when they can sell direct) – although some groups (such as the F.A.R.C. and the E.L.N. in Colombia) have an ideological interest in working with Cuba.
Other sources of finance are important, but also vulnerable. For example the cheap oil from Venezuela depends on the President there continuing to hold power. Now whilst it is true that large sections of the population continue to be part of the ‘Chavez cult’ (the President is consided a sort of God – who is to be worshipped no matter how much harm he causes his worshippers), the majority of the population are not part of the cult and the President may feel it sensible to sell oil at market prices to whoever wishes to buy it – or the President may lose power.
Then there is the nickel mining in Cuba. Nickel is a good source of money, however the mining depends on western companies and both the E.U. and Canada seem to be getting tired of encouraging private companies to operate in Cuba (considering the way these companies tend to get treated there). The belief that Castro should be supported because he is a ‘progressive’ (and also as a good way of twisting the tail of the United States) is finally slipping away. Also the fad of Cuba tourism seems to be losing its shine. Pre Castro musicians are dying off and pre Castro buildings are decaying (in spite of all the aid sent to prevent their decay).
This leaves Cuba with the income sent home by Cubans living overseas.
It is ironic that such an important source of income for Cuba (perhaps more important than tourism) is from people in the United States sending money back to their families.
A regime that depends on the population being supported by people living in the ‘great enemy’ can hardly be considered a strong one.
My guess (it can be no more than that) is that Fidel Castro will be out (or dead) within a year.
With the exception of the judgement by the Supreme Court to overturn the Texas anti-sodomy law, the last few days have seen some bad judgements in both the United States and Britain.
Indeed even the sodomy case was dodgy – in that a good result was achieved by, I suspect, bad methods.
True I have not been able to bring myself to read the judgements (reading the words of modern judges tends to make very depressed), but unless they used the elastic Ninth Amendment (which, perhaps, could be used to stop the Federal, State of local governments doing just about anything – which might be no bad thing) it is hard to see how the six judges found anything in the Constitution to prevent the State of Texas banning sodomy. I suspect that the judges tended to waffle on about freedom – i.e. expressed their political opinions (which I happen to agree with this time) rather than actually based the judgement on the text of the Constitution (as they should have done).
As for the other cases that have caught my eye.
Well the University of Michigan has been told that it is okay to practice racial discrimination – as long as it is not open and honest about doing so (diversity waffle rather than an overt quota). This would seem to be the worst of both worlds. Of course there is an easy way to solve the problem of who goes to State Universities – close them down and have no one go to them. However, whilst they exist, it would seem reasonable that such places do not make skin colour a factor in admissions (but five of the Supremes think differently). Oh well, who reads the 14th Amendment anyway – ‘equal protection of the laws’? No, let us have ‘diversity’ instead (although the Constitution does not mention the word diversity anywhere).
Then there was the Nike case. The Supreme Court decided that if a company decided to argue back against attacks made on it, the company may be taken to Court under California’s wonderfully biased statutes. In short the First Amendment applies to ‘activists’ (individuals or groups) attacking a company, but not to the business itself.
Back in Britain we have just had the long predicted outcome to the mobile phone (cell phone) farce. Some time ago the government manipulated some mobile phone companies into paying vast sums (billions of pounds) for mobile phone licences – this put these companies into financial difficulty. Fast forwards a few years later and the government declared that companies must cut their call rates.
In short the companies had paid through the nose and then got hit on the nose. They sued – and have just lost.
The old saying is proved right yet again – never trust the government.
And remember, the courts are part of the state.
George Monbiot made one valid point in his debate with Perry (and others) on B.B.C. Radio 3. Although I suspect that Mr Monbiot did not believe in his own point.
George Monbiot stated that a Parliament does not have to pass laws so his World Parliament need not mean world regulations. I suspect that world regulations are exactly what Mr Monbiot wants (indeed he admitted this by talking about ‘fair trade’ rules in the same discussion). However, a Parliament need not be, indeed should not be a legislature.
Having a group of people elected to pass laws is a terrible system. It leads to endless laws to please this or that special faction (which may represent only a tiny fraction of the general population), and even laws passed to satisfy the whims of politicians.
When libertarians and others denounce ‘delegated legislation’ (rules made up by officials), we should not forget that laws made up by politicians are no good either.
Whether one believes that law should be established by deduction from the principles of justice (i.e. property rights – the nonaggression principle), and-or should evolve in a Common Law way – the whole concept of a body of politicians creating laws (a legislature) just does not make sense.
But can a Parliament just be a check on the Executive – deciding on the budget and (under some systems) throwing out the Executive if the Prime Minister or President becomes too bad to tolerate.
Does not having a body of politicians sitting there and then saying “now do not do very much” involve a fatal contradiction? Someone is not going to go through all the vast effort of getting to be a member of this body and then do little or nothing – human nature just does not work that way. Individuals and parties are going to mess about.
Once you elect a body of people (called a Parliament or whatever) do they not inevitably become a legislature – creating laws as they choose? That is part of the basic anarchist libertarian case.
Constitutional limits on the power of such bodies have proved largely ineffective (although in the case of the United States Constitution this may be because it relies for its enforcement on a body of appointed judges).
Perhaps the way to go is the way of the Constitution of Texas – have the ‘legislature’ meet for as few days as possible, this structural limit (rather than policy limit) may have some effect in limiting the number of crazy laws such a body can pass.
I hope there are not too many absurdities in the above (sleeping in the last day or so might have been a good idea), but let those who will open fire.
Last year I was annoyed when the government of Switzerland broke the last link between the Swiss Franc and gold.
I was annoyed as it was yet another defeat for tradition and decency in the world. Decay and collapse may be a process we have to go through to get to a position where people can rebuild – but that does not mean I have to like the process. But I thought the broken link would have little practical importance – as the Swiss Franc was (like all other currencies) basically a fiat (government command – token money) currency already.
It seems that I was quite wrong. The Swiss money supply (whether one measures narrow money or broad money) has been expanding like mad.
Not only are the Swiss powers-that-be expanding the money supply faster than the American powers are, but they are doing so faster than the British or even the European Union authorities. I have been watching the progress of the various money supply expansions via the back pages of The Economist for quite some time.
I wonder if the Swiss authorities are trying to get some temporary economic growth (via the standard credit bubble) in order to influence the elections in October?
Looking at reality (even the imperfectly measured expansion of money supplies) does make watching political debate quite a strange experience. For example, in Britain, virtually everyone talks of how the European Union Central Bank is following too ‘tight’ a policy – whereas in reality it is inflating the money supply more than the Americans or even the British are doing.
Both pro and anti Euro forces in this country are deeply ignorant of even the most basic facts.
On a recent visit to Lancashire (a county in the north of England) I found a 1906 Chambers encyclopaedia in the house I was staying in.
Now whilst the encyclopaedia had lots of the then newly fashionable statism within it (the “historical method” in economics and other such nonsense), it did have some interesting articles and the one on Iceland caught my eye.
Most libertarians are aware of the Iceland example of a basically free society. How incoming settlers arrived in an empty land (apart from a handful of monks in a tiny area), and established a private property based society without such things as taxes.
Also how things first went well over time – for example with slavery dying out (the Norse settlers started off with Irish slaves – but, over time, the practice of slavery fell apart) without any civil war.
However, then (after centuries of settlement) tithes were introduced in the 1080’s (Iceland had become Christian in 1000 – so Christianity did not mean religious taxes at first). And then (after a couple of more centuries) a few families tried to monopolise the courts of justice (which arbiter one went to had been a matter of choice), fell into conflict – and the Icelanders made the fatal mistake of inviting in the power of the King of Norway.
First under the Kings of Norway and then (far worse) the Kings of Denmark statism grew in Iceland, with state control of much land, monopoly of trade and on.
A sad tale – supposedly one well fitted for grim minded people like myself.
However, the story did not end there. I have long known that in stages in the 18th and 19th century a lot of freedom was restored to Iceland (by later Kings of Denmark), but I did not know just how much of a free society Iceland became again.
Reading the Chambers article was instructive. Not only was Iceland a free trade country (which I knew) it was also a land of a fairly high cultural level.
In about 1900 (a time when there were hardly any state schools in Iceland – indeed when there was very little government at all) virtually every person could read and write (they were taught, by their families, in childhood) – and a large proportion of adult men could get by in several languages.
This was at a time when in, for example, Sweden (with its system of state education) about one in four people was illiterate.
Certainly after 1904 local government was allowed to grow in Iceland – but the fact remains that Iceland had, for a time, become a basically free society again.
It is these sorts of things that makes me (much to the confusion of the people who know me) take a fairly positive view of the future of the human race. The growth of statism is not inevitable – government control can decline without a collapse into chaos and a free society can be rebuilt.
Modern Western nations are (as is well known) fiat money, credit bubble, welfare states. They will fall apart, most likely quite soon – say over the next ten years.
However, I do not think that this will mean a collapse into savagery (mass starvation, cannibalism and so on). I believe that (with hard effort and good luck) something much closer to a free society will emerge.
I do not expect to live to see it (my own position is not a good one, and I am a fairly realistic man – not in the habit of accepting comfort from lies), but I firmly believe that many libertarians now living will see it.
You have both my best wishes and my confidence.
Well what would a dyslexic swine like me know about education? I can not even spell and my knowledge of grammar is revoltingly poor. As for my knowledge of languages (ancient or modern) this is confined to my (somewhat limited) knowledge of English. Oh, by the way, my knowledge both of mathematics and the natural sciences is rather limited as well.
However, I am going to comment about one recent incident which I believe shows (yet again) the decline of the classical vision of education (education in moral principles and general good conduct).
Last Thursday evening the Cambridge University Union held a debate on the motion:
“This House would gag the bad”.
By ‘House’ they (of course) did not mean someone’s home, they meant the Union (acting like a legislature) would, if it could, use the threat of violence to prevent people it regarded as bad expressing opinions by voice or in print.
As a publicity stunt the Union invited the French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to be one of the speakers against the motion. Various young people then expressed their ‘antifascism’ by smashing up Mr Le Pen’s car.
In the debate itself over 200 students voted in favour of the motion and 12 voted against the motion.
In short in the whole of the University of Cambridge only 12 students exist who have the decency and courage to come and vote against even such an obscene violation of liberty. The rest of “the House” did not even have the wit to understand that the power they wished to have to gag those with whom they not agree could also be used against themselves (some future government could regard them as bad).
As for the 12 just students, will they be part of the ‘saving remnant’ once written about by such writers as Irvine Babbitt and Paul Elmer More? It would be nice to think so, but it is more likely that these students (because of their unfashionable decency and courage) will be forced out of the intellectual and cultural world into dead end jobs where their impact (short or long term) on life will be close to nil.
“Oh well, we are just talking about a mob of students – they will change their opinions when they leave university”. It is true that many people become more ‘moderate’ when they leave university (i.e. they make compromises between their abstract principles and the situations they find themselves in), but it is not true that most people adopt new basic principles once they leave university.
If someone has not learnt decent moral principles by his early 20’s it is quite likely (although not inevitable) that he never will.
Most people have heard of concepts such as ‘the rule of law’, ‘respect for the law’, perhaps even ‘a government of laws, not of men’. The idea being that ‘the law’ is a noble thing, worthy of respect, the safeguard of civilization. Even non-libertarians (who reject the idea that ‘the law’ should be the law of nonaggression) hold that the law is something stable, something that helps defend the basic institutions of society over the centuries.
How is it possible to reconcile the above with the ever changing and ever increasing statutes and regulations churned out by politicians and administrators? Far from being majestic and worthy of respect, the actual law is normally a sordid mass of commands worthy of contempt.
By what right does the state tell people to do a certain thing or not do another thing? Whether it be to not cut meat on a wood surface, or to only make cheese in a certain way, or whatever?
The normal reply (which can be traced back to John Locke and others) is that government gets its authority from ‘the people’, but even if one believes (which I do not) that the majority have the right to tell everyone how they should live their lives down to every last detail of civil interaction, it is hard to see how this fits in with the world as it is.
Even in nations with democratic governments ‘the people’ do not tend to vote on the laws. Even the elected politicians who form the ‘legislature’ in such nations do not debate or even vote on most of the laws. The vast, ever changing and ever growing web of rules and regulations that control people’s lives are mostly created by administrators elected by no one. → Continue reading: The Law
On Saturday I spent the morning helping out with canvassing for the town council elections (not seeking votes for me this time – I was in another ward seeking votes for another couple of candidate of my party).
Instead of going straight home (after the morning canvass) I visited first the town museum and then the town library. I have visited both places many times over the years, but I still sometimes go (perhaps my senile brain means that each time I visit I find things that have long been there, but which I do not have a clear memory of).
In the museum, amongst other things, I looked at a stuffed red fox and was impressed by the size of the beast. In life it would have clear threat to the nice cats I had met in the morning – how can anyone oppose fox hunting? I know I was supposed to be talking to voters in the morning, rather than to talking to cats, but….. Also I know that cats are very cruel to birds and other such – but I do not much care (I like cats).
In the town library I looked through the main encyclopaedia (the one that is not going to publish any more editions in paper form). The section on Sweden told me that compulsory education was imposed there in the 1844 a few years before the guilds were abolished and the trade monopoly taken away from the special towns that had long held the monopoly. The encyclopaedia article also told me that in the mid 19th century it was decided that the Swedish state was to control all main line railways. Over the centuries it did seem that the state owned vast areas of the country and could steal private land at will – and there were all these detailed facts and figures on everything (in this country the first census we had in recent centuries was in 1801 and the Birth Marriages and Deaths registration act came in 1836 – other than that there was nothing much).
I thought about how this compared to what I had seen in my local town museum. In Kettering there was no town council till the the late 19th century. There was a church Vestry, but the local people had rejected a town council. In 1872 a local government board was imposed and in the 1890’s a Kettering Borough Council was created. Within a year or so the new K.B.C. was out doing wicked things (such as taking over the town water and gas supply). → Continue reading: What we have lost
People often say that President George Herbert Walker Bush (the current President’s father) did a very wicked thing – that he called upon the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the regime and then, when they did rebel, he betrayed them (left them to die in their tens of thousands).
Now I am no fan of the first President Bush (I am not much of a fan of the second one either) – after all this was the President Bush of “read my lips” who then shoved up taxes, and this was the President Bush of the ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’ and all sorts of other regulations.
However, many people say that Mr G.H.W. Bush was a nice man who would not have set out to call on people to rebel and then left them to die.
I do not know whether the first President Bush was a ‘nice man’ or not – but there is a way he might have been, a possibility that has president in American policy.
There is a view common in American (and other) ‘educated’ circles that dictatorships do not rest on force, but are instead based on ‘opinion’. And if ‘the people’ really want to they can overthrow tyranny. So United States government has gone around making calls for populations to rise up against tyrannical rule and when populations do rebel (as they did several times in Eastern Europe) it is found to have no plans to help – it does not need to help you see, ‘opinion’ is what matters. If the ‘the people’ want to do something they can.
Where does this idea come from? It comes from David Hume. → Continue reading: One of the problems David Hume left us
This is not a blog about whether the war was a good idea or not (for better or worse the choice has been made, and it is too soon for any historical analysis). Nor is it a blog about how the war should be fought – I do not have access to all the military information and I am not a soldier anyway.
My concern in this. Will the war get the blame for the coming economic downturn, thus diverting attention from the real cause?
For 30 years most newspapers, television and radio shows, economics textbooks and other such have blamed the failure of the Keynesian system in the 1970’s on the “Oil Shock”.
The fact that wage and price controls were introduced in the United States in 1971 and in Britain in 1972, whereas the ‘Oil Shock’ was in 1973 is overlooked. The idea that one can just pump up the money supply to hold down unemployment was clearly coming under strain (hence the effort to deal with the price rises, caused by the monetary growth, by direct controls), but then the “Oil Shock” came along to give the establishment an excuse for the failure of their system.
A similar thing could happen again. There is a vast credit bubble out there (in most Western nations) – the great majority of credit-money is not backed even by paper notes (let alone by anything else) and we are due for a big bust that will hit asset prices hard.
We have seen some of this already (with the decline in stock markets) – but there are a lot more problems to show up yet.
However, now the war has come – thus giving the establishment an excuse. “There is nothing basically wrong with the system, it was the war that messed things up”.
I know that it is cold to write about such things when people are dying – but it still has to be thought about.
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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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