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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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There is an excellent, detailed and revealing interview in the July edition of techie magazine Wired with supply-side economics writer and computer enthusiast George Gilder. I missed it when the magazine came out but caught it on the net this morning.
Gilder is one of my favourite writers on economics. He can actually make the often-dry subject matter really sing, in a way few others can. His first major book, Wealth and Poverty, published in the early 1980s, helped to provide the intellectual ammunition for Reagan and Thatcher’s supply-side tax cuts, the beneficial effects of which are – mostly – still with us. I recall an enjoyable evening, about 17 years ago (!) when Gilder came along to the now-defunct Alternative Bookshop in Convent Garden, central London, to talk about his following book, The Spirit of Enterprise. After that book was published he turned his attention almost full-time to writing about technology, especially the whole area surrounding computers and the Internet. He later became something of an investment guru, which initially made him a very wealthy man.
Gilder has taken a hard knock from the meltdown in technology stocks over the past two years, but his boyish enthusiasm for what the future can hold is undimmed. The man is a tonic, even when reflecting on the rough times he has endured over the past two years.
Now that our own British government seems bent upon wholesale reversal of some hard-won supply-side reforms, his message needs to be broadcast again.
One of the threats to economic freedom is the state sponsored cartel, in which groups of economic agents can collude to fix prices with the aid of the state, crushing opportunities for lower prices from newcomers to the market. A particularly dangerous cartel is in the offing – the global tax cartel. Such a cartel is the aim of the European Union, which in the name of tax “harmonisation” wishes to prevent countries, especially the United States, from setting taxes at rates lower than those in the EU. The EU, dominated in recent years by leftist governments hostile to the market, resents the way in which the Anglosphere nations have been able to outperform the EU in terms of growth and job creation. The latest manifestation of this desire is enshrined in what is called the “savings tax directive”.
One of the great things about global free markets has been the ability of financial capital to whizz around the planet, seeking out the best returns and the countries with the lowest tax rates. This financial freedom has forced many a government to give up tax-and-spend policies and follow a more market-friendly path. And that is precisely why the High Priests of Big Government at the EU wish for such a cartel. I am quietly optimistic, though, that American politicians will see this proposal for what it is, a desire to shaft American enterprise and hobble the global economy. (I may be wrong, of course) It comes at a time when there has been a lot of friction between America and Europe post September 11. Tthe threat of a tax cartel to throttle American enterprise will only deepen the rift.
With this in mind may I commend readers the freedomandprosperity.org website, which is a lobby group and publishing house giving a full list of articles spelling out the horrors of tax harmonisation. They also have email addresses so that people can contact Senators and Representatives about this crucial issue.
British legislators have used their privileged position to vote themselves a 25 percent rise in their own pensions, in contrast to the vast majority of we mere mortals, who are suffering falling returns on our pension schemes as stock markets fall off a cliff.
Remember, these are the same guys and girls who like to wax indignant about the behaviour of chief executives at scandal-ridden firms like American energy firm Enron or telecom company WorldCom. But of course they are dirty businessmen, whereas public-spirited folk who devote their lives to politics earn every penny they receive, don’t they? 
It is difficult to get one’s mind around the vast sums of taxpayers’ money that British finance minister Gordon Brown has planned to hurl at our public sector. The sums are mind-numbing. The spending plans are predicated on some pretty rosy forecasts for the British economy over the next few years, not to mention some fairly dubious accounting methods which reduce the potential bill to the taxpayer from infrastructure projects.
Those rosy forecasts could easily fail to materialise, particularly as mounting red tape, higher taxes and growing interference from the EU clogs the arteries of the UK economy. What is beyond doubt in my mind is that “New Labour”, that strange political entity supposedly different from old tax-and-spend Labour, is dead. Central control of finance, big spending, handouts for the public sector unions – the whole unlovely mix is back. And of course Brown’s announcement on Monday of this spending mania was accompanied by a sharp fall in British equities to the lowest levels in six years. Of course much of the damage to stocks stems from events in the U.S., mired as it is in accounting scandals. But one cannot help but conclude that Brown’s charmed existence for the first five years of his time in the job is about to get a lot rougher.
There may be some upside to all this. Brown’s attempt to improve our creaking health and education system may prove the futility of state monopoly as the ideal way to deliver good service and give the opposition Conservatives ammunition for the case for root and branch reform. But I would not bet the farm on it just yet.
The Daily Telegraph reports today that a farmer who was accused of shooting intruders at his home has been acquitted. Frederick Hemstock, who had claimed he intended to fire the gun in the air to frighten two intruders, has been cleared of deliberately shooting one of them.
The judge in the case also criticised the police for refusing to answer an emergency call made by the defendant’s wife. Why is anyone surprised? Dialing 999 is now the equivalent of playing the National Lottery.
Of course, if Mr. Hemstock had deliberately shot the intruder, then he still would not have been guilty in my eyes if he could have been shown to prove self-defence. But as we sadly know, self-defence is the Number One crime in this country. Meanwhile, PC Plod has all those speeding CCTV cameras to attend to…
Occasional Samizdata contributor and libertarian Andrew Dodge points out that for the British musical industry to carp about a lack of recent hits in the U.S. is silly because so much mainstream British pop music is rubbish. He seems to be right, judging from what I hear when I turn the radio dial around from time to time.
Of course, I have to be careful that my dislike of much modern stuff is not just a sign of my becoming an old git and is in fact a genuine response. The last CDs I bought were by Carlos Santana, Diana Krall and the complete works of Tom Lehrer (the guy who gave us the Dr Werner von Braun song). Not quite sure what Mr Dodge makes of that.
Anyway, what if anything can or should be done about our musical predicament? You cannot conjure artistic talent out of the trees. Maybe we are, for various reasons perhaps too complex to understand, going through an artistic dry patch. How are we going to make that dry patch sprout a million new flowers? I’d like to think that modern technology might have a part to play. Be interested to know what other folk think…
The greatest achievement, in narrow political terms anyway, of the present Labour government is to have convinced large swathes of the middle class that it has nothing to fear from Labour. Certainly, the decision taken early on to make the Bank of England independent and set interest rates was a masterstroke. Pretty much every other decision, though, has been in the wrong direction, and after the usual early honeymoon period, doubts are setting in.
In a cogently argued piece for the right-leaning Daily Telegraph, columnist Daniel Johnson subjects the reign of UK finance minister Gordon Brown to a thorough bashing. At the core of the problem is Brown’s massive tax increases, which, coupled with a horrendously complex welfare benefits system, is fostering a corrosive dependency culture while at the same time retarding economic growth. For several years while world markets boomed it was possible for Brown to get away with the reputation of the ‘canny Scot’ who would take no risks with the economy. But his mania for new tax rises and sundry gimmicks, coupled with a barely concealed dislike of the middle class, is starting to get noticed.
The real question now is whether the opposition Conservative Party can make any gains from this. Judged by the complete lack of tax-cutting rhetoric from the Tories, they don’t look like making progress any time soon.
I have just had the pleasure of reading through a 221-page report sent to the British government on what should be done to make us save more.
Attending the press conference, I listened to the mild-manner Ron Sandler take us through the thicket of tax codes, rules and varied practises of Britain’s Byzantine financial industry. Nodding off for a second, I fell into a strange dream:
“Ladies and gentlemen, today’s report on how to stop shafting the British saver is brought to us today by Prof. Tom Burroughes of Libloony University. He has kindly produced this report, which, er, is rather short.” Cut to moi: “Members of the press, you will see my report is only one page long. Its recommendation is brief – abolish taxation and get government out of the savings business. Period. End of story.”
At this point a strange noise emerges from the assembled hacks. Muffled cries from back of the room…
I suddenly woke up, hope no-one noticed my nodding off, and listened for an hour about differential tax codes, the need for fewer rules on X rather than Y, blah, blah. blah.
With a strange feeling of sadness I read in The Sun newspaper today that British pop musician and idiotarian George Michael has decided not to release his America-bashing single ‘Shoot the Dog’ in the U.S. He fears, so the Sun says, it could kill his career. A columnist in the Sun writes this:
“I don’t want a man who stuffed shuttlecocks down his shorts and sang about a Club Tropicana preaching about the War on Terror”.
The natural inclination of a libertarian nut like me, is I suppose, to gloat at the obvious demise of this clown, but maybe it is a fragment of decency within which makes this difficult. George Michael is a pretty talented musician and has a great soul voice it has to be said, but like all too many of his type, he looks at the world through some drearily predictible lenses. What is so sad about the man is that his lame effort to bash the U.S. and attack Britain for following America’s lead in the war on terror is entirely lacking in originality. How about writing a protest song attacking the ‘America is always in the wrong’ school of thought? Now that would be daring, and genuinely different. This is the problem with our self-styled ‘cool’ musicians of today. Many of even the more talented ones haven’t done anything genuinely challenging for years. And poor old George Michael looks like he is headed for a period of oblivion.
[Ed: and what is a high-brow like Tom doing reading ‘The Sun’ I wonder?]
The British government’s maniacal desire to transform this island into a Police State grows by the day. Our dear old friend, the State ID card, made another appearance on Wednesday, the pet scheme of Home Secretary (interior minister) David Blunkett. What is encouraging is that media coverage in the press and television has so far given full rein to objections to such a monstrous proposal from the likes of privacy campaigner Dr. Simon Davies of Privacy International and other civil liberties groups. In the press, even the relentlessly pro-corporatist ‘on-message’ Financial Times gives the ID card idea a skewering in its editorial pages, although it focusses as much on the practical arguments against as ones of principle.
Now I may be getting carried away here, but I cannot help thinking that the current wide coverage of hostile views to ID cards has something to do with the commendable work by libertarians to take a stand on this issue. The privacy meme is out there, and we helped achieve that. But we have to keep up the pressure and make a stink about this latest proposal. And it is worth noting that this is the kind of issue where libertarians, misleadingly bracketed as being on the political ‘right’, can linkup with sympathetic souls on the ‘left’, and maybe even sow some other libertarian seeds in the process.
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
I spent a couple of torpid hours on Tuesday afternoon listening to the billionaire hedge fund king and now globetrotting philanthropist George Soros give a talk to a British parliamentary committee. Soros is the man who, to the everlasting gratitude of the British public, attacked the pound sterling in the foreign exchange markets during September 1992, ejecting this country out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), a move which allowed the pound to fall to a level that made it possible for British goods to be profitably sold abroad once more. So one might have thought that the Hungarian-born finance wizard would be a hero to this humble hack. Alas, the man has feet of clay, and very big lumps of clay at that.
Soros has spent the last few years ruminating about the many dangers of global capitalism, which is a bit like Formula One racing ace Michael Schumacher warning about the risks of high-speed motor racing. Soros thinks the globalisation of capitalism, while not without a few benefits, is full of dangers and problems, which require rules and international watchdogs to run things. Here are a few snippets:
“The major causes of poverty are bad governance and bad location.”
Well, I agree bad governments contribute to poverty, and there are dozens of examples of how collectivist regimes of various stripes have beggared their populaces and retarded wealth creation down the centuries. Take the current miserable example of Zimbabwe, for example. But bad location? Does Soros think that unfortunate geography causes poverty? Then how does he explain why places like Hong Kong, with hardly any natural resources apart from good shipping links, are fabulously wealthy, while most of Africa, with huge mineral wealth, subsides in misery? The same goes for large chunks of Asia and parts of Latin America.
“Governments are less well situated to provide public goods than they were because they cannot tax capital as they used to. We need to strengthen international institutions for the provision of public goods.”
Well, all I can say to that is – thank heaven for multinationals. By George, George has got it! International capital flows are cramping the ability of would-be socialist spend-it-like-water governments from doing what they used to do. The likes of British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been forced, through gritted teeth, to rein in old socialist habits on the knowledge that financial markets will punish those habits in a heartbeat.
George Soros is clearly a highly clever man when it comes to making dollops of money beyond most folks’ wildest dreams, but I fear that like many in his case, he has almost rebelled against the free market order in which he made his billions out of guilt or perhaps more honorably, out of a desire to help mankind from his lofty vantage point. It bears out the point I have sometimes heard in libertarian circles that capitalists often make the worst advocates of the classical liberal order.
British musician and now geopolitical sage George Michael has cooked up a memorable ditty bashing the British government for being the White House’s poodle.
Wow. How original. Can you imagine a musician lampooning “blame-America-firsters”? No. Neither can I. (If there is one out there, I’d love to know). Michael’s fearless effort, which will no doubt prove a real hit with some, comes in for a superb fisking (oops, a bit non-PC there) from blogger James Lileks. Read and enjoy as Lileks spells out a few basic truths.
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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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