|
|||||
|
You’ve all seen trolls, and know that they come in various guises. You might even be a troll yourself. To find out which sort, some bright spark has put together the Internet Message Board Wandering Monster Table, an essential resource for any blogger with comments. (Via A.E. Brain.) September 26th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I had never seen the infamous GULAG system; the Soviet authorities were not keen to document their crimes. But in 1946 they incarcerated an artist, Nikolai Getman, and he survived.
September 24th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has called an election for October 9. So we get to choose once again between a fuzzy right-wing statism, or a ‘Blair wannabe’ statism. You will excuse me if I do not get ferociously excited about this choice. One of the worst things about Australian elections is the placards that political parties insist on hanging on street poles. At no other time of the year are any other organisation permitted to do this, but political parties do like their perks; inflicting an eyesore I call it. I am not going to vote – I will defy the State, and not vote. That is an offence which will cost me a parking ticket fine. It is actually also illegal for me to advocate not voting to other people as well. As to who will win, I think the ‘Blair Wannabe’ Party will win; I wrote about this back in June and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. In the great scheme of things, this is a small matter but it will consume the local media and blogs here for the next six weeks. August 30th, 2004 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
I would guess not, because he was complaining bitterly about the regulatory nature of the British government, in an article which drew a dry smile. After making the confident predicition that the world as we know it will end, on the grounds we are running out of oil, Monbiot presents for our admiration a commune in Somerset. But our hippy heroes found to their dismay that regulations thwarted them at every turn:
I think it is just hilarious that the hippies of Tinker’s Bubble, who have imposed all manner of self-regulations on themselves, find themselves so hindered. The State is not your friend, even if you are a hippy on a commune. August 25th, 2004 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the interesting but un-noticed thing about world affairs is that, for all the wealth that traffic in oil is able to generate, the nations that produce it are not high up on the list of nice places to be. Not many people consider Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, or Russia to be desirable places to go for a holiday, never mind live. In an odd twist to the old folks tale that ‘money won’t make you happy’, it is pretty clear that oil wealth is not particularly useful in solving the problems of a nation. Nancy Birdsall and Arvind Subramanian did notice it however and wrote a 5,000 word essay on the subject, with Iraq in mind, for Foreign Affairs magazine (preview here) What they noted was that oil wealth tends to corrupt the state, and since it has an easy stream of revenue at its disposal, it does not have to work so hard at gouging its citizens. So it also has no incentive to promote property rights as a way of creating wealth. And those that control the state, control the wealth. Therefore, you get the distressing sight of the President of Chad spending the first instalment of his country’s oil wealth on a new Presidential jet for example. More recently, in Russia we see President Putin using state power to attack the oil-enriched oligarchs. And Nigeria seems to have been actively impoverished by its oil wealth, as the ‘Pirates in Power’ have skimmed $100 billion over the years. Oil wealth is not particularly healthy for democracies, either. How to escape the curse? Merely privatising the oil sector does not work very well in states where the concept of ‘property rights’ is a shaky one at best (see Russia). Another attempt has been to create special ‘oil funds’ with constitutional restrictions on the way the money is used. This has been used in many different places. But again, the strength of the rule of law is the decisive thing. Chad had a ‘oil fund’ but the President still got his airplane. Birdsall and Subramanian instead advocate the novel idea of distributing the oil wealth directly to the citizens. This means that every citizen of the nation gets an annual cheque from the oil company. For Iraq, this idea has many wonderful features. In the first place, Iraqi citizens get a real stake in their government, and will be not inclined to support Islamist or separatist groups who wish to smash the state for their own nefarious purposes. Secondly, all Iraqis get the same cut. A struggling farmer, a Mad Mullah, or an educated doctor- each of them get the same thing. No complaints about the system getting rorted in favour of one ethnic group or another. And best of all, ordinary Iraqis will get prosperous at the expense of the government. There will not be rivers of gold for a class of local ‘social planners’ to waste, and the government will have to work hard to sell the need for tax increases to fund their operations. This means that citizens can look the state in the eye. And tell it where to get off, too. August 17th, 2004 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although Australia and the US have signed a free trade agreement, it is an imperfect document, with many exemptions on both sides. In Australia, there has been a loud campaign to have existing ‘local content’ rules for Australian television excluded, and this campaign has been successful. The ‘local content’ rules mean that a certain proportion of television programmes that are broadcast on Australian television must be locally made. The scrapping of this rule was an American objective in the free trade negotiations, as it meant that US television companies were restricted in their access to the Australian television market by what in effect is a quota. Australia resisted this; we should not have. Australian television has had local content rules for a long time, they provide that at least 55% of the programming on Australian television between 6am and midnight must be locally produced. This creates a local internal market for television, which is actually quite a cut-throat industry. The economies of scale mean that Australian television products are not cost-competitive, but they do rate well. → Continue reading: Cultural protectionists win in Australia August 4th, 2004 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
After legalising prostitution last year, the New Zealand government has now issued a 100 page Occupational Health and Safety manual.
Ah, governments. Where would we be without them? August 3rd, 2004 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
How slow can an object in motion be? A special interest group returning taxpayers money? A bureaucrat accounting for his travel expenses? International trade negotiations? There has actually been progress in the latest round of WTO talks, as serial offenders the EU and the US have finally agreed to remove export subsidies on agricultural products, and to lower domestic subsidies as well. Not too much can be read into this- the Economist report states:
There is still so much to be done. Japan, for example, maintains a 490% tariff on rice imports. Nations which have already woken up to the fact that free trade is a good thing have been more proactive. Australia, for example, has signed a free trade agreement with the US, which goes with similar agreements with New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. There is no doubt that these agreements, while useful, are a poor substitute for genuine international trade liberalisation, but they are still progress, at least for those willing to give Free Trade a chance. August 3rd, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
There has been some laughs about Linda Ronstadt getting kicked out of a casino for her anti-Bush tirade. This happened because of confusion about the right to free speech and the right of private property to be enjoyed as the owner sees fit. Casino owner Bill Timmans explained that:
This is all quite proper in my view. I have nothing against anti-Bush tirades, and I might make one myself soon (although I’m unlikely to dedicate it to Mike Moore), but there is a place for everything, and I would suggest that if you are paid as an entertainer, when you go to work, you entertain. And the casino owners were right to evict her. It is like having a blogroach in Samizdata comments. A casino is private property, and the owners can admit whoever they like, and set guidelines for how guests should behave. July 23rd, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is the 60th Anniversary of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power in Germany. In the 12 long years of the Third Reich, it was the only serious attempt that was made to remove Hitler and his vile regime. Graf von Stauffenberg was a mid-ranking Colonel who had been severely injured during service in North Africa but he was a talented officer so he was sent to Berlin. to fulfill a staff role in the ‘Home Army’. As part of his duties, he was to give briefings to Hitler at his Rastenburg headquaters. On the day itself, Colonel von Staufffenburg hid a bomb in his briefcase and made sure he left in in Hitler’s main working room. It was placed so that the blast would be lethal to the dictator. But another officer found it was in his way and moved it, critically, so that a leg of the heavy table that the papers and maps for the briefing was between the bomb and Hitler. So when the bomb went off, although many were killed, Hitler himself survived. Colonel von Stauffenburg had planned his escape well, and flew back to Berlin, blissfully unaware that Hitler had survived. There, he tried to organise his co-conspirators into taking power, but their attempt was feeble, and once word reached Berlin that Hitler was still alive, the attempt failed miserably. Colonel von Stauffenburg was shot that night; a merciful end compared to the barbaric fate that awaited some of his collegues, and many more who had done nothing. The ramifications of the affair sent shockwaves through Germany until the total destruction of the Nazi regime. Although it is not well remembered, Germans now honour Colonel von Stauffenberg and his collegues who tried to actually do something about the hideous regime. July 20th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The nuances of Japan’s langauge can be found even in the title of this book, as Hagakure can be rendered as ‘hidden leaves’ or ‘hidden by the leaves’. But this collection of 300 musings and anecdotes, of the 1,300 taken down from the retired samurai retainer Yamamoto Tsuenetono (1659-1719) are close enough to give the Western reader a taste of the ethical ideas, philosophy and moral ideas of the Japanese samurai class. In 1660 the Shogun prohibited the practice of tsuifuku where a retainer committed suicide at the death of his master. So when Yamamoto’s Master died, he retired to a Buddist monastary, and younger samurai gathered to hear his views. They were transcribed, and these were collected as a book, some excerpts of which can be read here. They are, to say the least, radically different to anything in the Western moral tradition. This is not a book of essays, many of the precepts are but a paragraph in length, and deal with the ways of the samurai. What preoccupied them was war and death, and the correct way to inflict and recieve them. It is, to our eyes, a gruesome code. The samurai were the warriors who served their Lords, the daimyo, who were the real rulers of Japan, under the Shoguns and Emperors. Yamamoto Tsuentono devotes much of his work to the conduct and behavior of the samurai retainers. He extolls an ideal of absolute unquestioning obedience; to me it seems like voluntary slavery. And death, of course, is the ideal. The retainer should consider himself as a dead man walking, and should also be ready to die even at his own hand, should his Master require it of him.
But of course, the main business of the samurai was to inflict death, and this they did on a constant basis. The ‘Way of the Samurai’ is a military code, designed to discipline men into serving as soliders in a hostile, pre-technological environment. Notions of class and honour evolved into concepts which overpowered other sentiments. Yamamoto scorns women and the ‘lower classes’ when he thinks of them at all. For him, life is death, service is freedom, and killing is love. This is an important document for the historian who turns to look at Japan. This moral code enabled the conquest of Japan and the destruction of its original inhabitants, over 2,000 years ago, and seems to have evolved until the end of the pre-technological age. As new precepts and ideas emerged in this culture, they survived by winning victory, or were killed in battle, so a form of social Darwinism dominated. For the Japanese were constantly fighting each other. One meme that did survive was the need to be adaptable to new military ideas. So when the West impinged on the Japanese culture with a decisive technological edge in the 1850’s, the Japanese ruling class embraced the new concepts quite quickly, and within 50 years had totally discarded their old techniques for new. However, they had not changed their ideas on how wars should be fought- they felt that the old ethical considerations and ideas of valour This is why the brutal ideas of the Hagakure survived into the 20th century. In reading this book, one can see the ideas of the old samurai in full view against the might of Western industrial power. But it was decisively defeated by the US with their own ethical code, and since then, the Japanese have eschewed war for other pursuits. A reading of the Hagakure is enough to remind any reader that this is something we should all be thankful for.
July 14th, 2004 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I spend a lot of my time writing a sports minded blog, Ubersportingpundit, which tries to do to sports what Samizdata.net does for economics and politics. Indeed, many of the contributors to this blog also contribute to Ubersportingpundit. Ubersportingpundit covers the various Australian football codes, cricket, rugby, and UK football. However, I would like to ‘beef up’ the UK football coverage for the coming season. With this in mind, I’d like to invite Samizdata.net readers who have strong views about football and the willingness to express them on at least a weekly basis the opportunity to write for Ubersportingpundit. I’m not looking for someone to write match reports on Aston Villa vs Charlton Atheletic; I’m more interested in someone writing about David O’Leary’s strategy to take Villa forward on a tight budget and how Alan Curbishley intends to fill the hole left by the sale of Shane Parker to Chelsea. I am also looking for another cricket correspondent, preferably someone of South Asian background, who will give a different view to the Anglo-Australian cricket coverage that Ubersportingpundit currently supplies. Residence does not matter, but a willingness to cover India, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Bangladeshi cricket issues does. If you are interested, please drop an email to ‘scott’ at ‘ubersportingpundit.com’. Renumeration is at Samizdata.net rates. (i.e., the goodwill and esteem of the editors!) July 7th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||