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Samizdata quote of the day – why Big Government fosters corruption edition

· Political Economy · Slogans & Quotations

“The more big and active the state is, the more it is worth purchasing.”

– Deidre N McCloskey and Alberto Mingardi, The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State (page 97).

June 25th, 2026 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)

If you want to understand Andy Burnham…

· Political Economy · UK affairs

If you want to understand Andy Burnham, the only thing you’ll ever have to read is… this.

I was going to tag this as “humour”, but it’s too true to be haha funny.

June 24th, 2026 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)

Which would you rather have near you, an abandoned pub used by druggies or a Buddhist temple?

· Historical views · Political Economy · Religion · Self ownership · UK affairs

Here is a story about a place I once knew. I found it via this post by “TantumErgo” in the UK Politics subreddit. “Owners of former Walthamstow pub ordered to stop using it as Buddhist temple”, the Waltham Forest Echo reports:

An unlicensed Buddhist temple operating out of a former pub in Walthamstow has been ordered to close by Waltham Forest Council.

The Confucius and Tao Association (CTA) bought the Lord Brooke, in Shernhall Street, in 2014 but was refused planning permission to convert the building into a place of worship the following year.

Contemporary reports described its purpose as promoting the teachings of Buddhism, Confucius and the Great Tao through public seminars, while working to tackle poverty and racial tension.

The council’s planning committee refused the charity’s application in early 2015, saying the use of the building as a pub was a “valued part of the social infrastructure of the area”.

No doubt many residents of Walthamstow did value the Lord Brooke being a pub, but it’s not as if they would have continued to have it as their local if only the Buddhists had not taken it over. In 2014 the pub was branded a “drug haven” by the Metropolitan Police and was “shuttered after evidence of drug use was found all over the venue.” No one has been found willing to reopen it as a pub, not surprisingly given the pub trade has been declining for years, mostly due to government actions like the smoking ban, “sin taxes” and increases in the minimum wage.

Faced with the choice between the abandoned building falling into dereliction and having it used by a group known for their harmlessness, one would think the council would jump at the chance to allow the change of use, but no, they preferred to wait for their “prince” in the form of a new landlord to come some day.

So those naughty Buddhists snuck in anyway, and started worshipping in the building so quietly that no one in authority noticed for years. They also opened a vegetarian cafe, the bastards. The Waltham Forest Echo continues:

Despite the town hall’s decision, the TCA [this is a typo for “CTA”, which stands for “Confucius and Tao Association”] appears to have gone ahead with the conversion.

It is unclear when the venue began being used as a place of worship. There is no formal signage for the temple, only for the associated Lotus Bloom Café, and historic remnants of the Lord Brooke are still in place more than a decade on.

Waltham Forest lodged a planning enforcement notice in late April, demanding the charity stops the “unauthorised use of the land and buildings as a place of worship, associated community centre, and ancillary café” and ceases “all gatherings, events and educational classes”.

So the state compulsorily closed down a pub due to it being a drug haven. The state said that the building could only be reopened as a pub. The state made reopening it as a pub a losing proposition. Then the state said that the people who had quietly reopened the building as a place of worship for Buddhists and a cafe open to all had to close it down and restore it to its previous state.

The Confucius and Tao Association ought to scatter the ground with needles and syringes for authenticity, but they are probably too nice.

June 19th, 2026 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)

“It’s the difference between harvesting apples and chopping down the apple tree”

· Internet · Languages · Philosophical · Political Economy · Science & Technology · Self ownership

I came across this post by Brivael Le Pogam on X:

I’ll assume you’re acting in good faith, because your reasoning is intuitive and 90% of people share it. But it rests on three factual errors, and it’s worth looking at them calmly.

Error 1: Elon’s fortune isn’t a pile of cash. It’s ownership of factories, rockets, and satellites. “Taking half his money,” in concrete terms, means forcing the sale of half of SpaceX and Tesla. The money doesn’t come out of a safe; it comes from the companies themselves, which fall under the control of foreign funds or states. You’re not redistributing cash; you’re dismantling a tool of production. It’s the difference between harvesting apples and chopping down the apple tree.

M. Le Pogam goes on to politely describe two other errors that his interlocutor is making regarding how the richest person in the world got that rich, and how an astonishing percentage of the the poorest people in the world have been lifted out of absolute poverty in my lifetime.

His post is well worth reading for the eloquence of his arguments. But there is another, quite separate reason to give it your attention. You see, Brivael Le Pogam never actually wrote “I’ll assume you’re acting in good faith, because your reasoning is intuitive and 90% of people share it.” He wrote, “Je vais partir du principe que tu es de bonne foi, parce que ton raisonnement est intuitif et que 90% des gens le partagent.” The thought behind them was in French, but the English words I read and admired for their eloquence were written by a computer program. Over the last couple of years we have quietly reached and passed the point where automatic translation is, for most practical purposes, invisible.

June 13th, 2026 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Out: “Zack Polanski pledges to end the affordability crisis.” In: “‘Veg for seven pence is too cheap’, Zack Polanski says.”

· Environment · Political Economy · UK affairs

15th April 2026: Zack Polanski pledges to end the affordability crisis and ‘normalisation’ of foodbank use – The Canary

8th June 2026: Veg for seven pence is too cheap’ Zack Polanski calls for tighter supermarket regulation as food system is in ‘crisis’ – LBC radio.

June 8th, 2026 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)

Decolonising British farming: a thematic snapshot of the Food Justice Ecosystem

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Environment · Historical views · North American affairs · Political Economy · UK affairs

It is probably best if you do not actually read this post.

“Nourishing Justice” is a report produced by a charity (not the sort of charity that runs on voluntary contributions from the public) called “Eating Better” (Registered Charity No. 1175669). The Executive Director of Eating Better is Sarah Wakefield, the Green candidate for the Makerfield by-election upon which so much hangs. Sarah Wakefield wrote the foreword for the “Nourishing Justice” report.

I found out about the report from a GB News article called “Green candidate in Makerfield by-election wants farming to be ‘decolonised’ with ‘inclusive spaces'”. The idea that British farming needed to be decolonised confused me. Who from, the Romans? I was not convinced that GB News was giving a fair account of Eating Better’s charitable work, so I decided to check for myself. GB News was giving a fair account. “Eating Better” did indeed host a decolonial decision-making workshop called “The Gathering Table” in August 2025, co-facilitated by Diana Garduño Jiménez of a charity called “Nourish Scotland”.

“Nourish Scotland” (Registered Charity No. SC048239) is funded by a similar mixture of state money and grants from philanthropic foundations as “Eating Better”, but with the addition of some money from the Scottish government. To be clear, the organisation “Nourish Scotland” did not produce the Nourishing Justice report. “Nourish Scotland” might also be easily confused with, but is separate from, another body and another report mentioned on page 8 of the Nourishing Justice report, which says,

“The contemporary UK food system generally lacks the ability to apply race, gender, and class analysis to how food systems should change. The Sankofa Report: British Colonialism and the UK Food System delves into the numerous layers of inequalities in the current UK food system, stemming from the legacies of colonialism and exploitation. It highlights issues such as underrepresentation in the sector, food insecurity, lack of access to green space for marginalised communities and to the dominance of western epistemologies (theory of knowledge) in food research. Most importantly, the report emphasises that in order to create meaningful and lasting shifts, we must confront and address the forces that have shaped our present food system.

The “Sankofa Report” to which Nourishing Justice links is the rather grand title given to a fourteen page report on “British Colonialism and the UK food system” written by an intern called Jada Phillips at “Food Matters” (Registered Charity No.1178078). The organisation “Food Matters”, you may be surprised to learn, is a registered “charity” funded by by a mixture of public sector grants, National Lottery money, and most of the same charitable trusts and foundations as fund “Eating Better” and “Nourish Scotland”. The name of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation turns up in all three.

I think. Maybe it was only two out of three, or maybe I was thinking of another charity called Eat Scotland or a trading card game called Charity: The Gathering. Gimme a break, I’ve got three tabs up from the Charity Commission, two Annual Reports, four responses from two different AIs (at least one of which is a lie), and a splitting headache.

It’s easy to get confused between the all these bodies with wholesome-sounding words to do with food and eating in their names, but it is very important that you distinguish between them because otherwise you might think that they are functionally identical bodies whose employees get to eat pretty well by being paid to quote each other by the taxpayer.

May 28th, 2026 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day – debunking egalitarianism edition

· Political Economy · Slogans & Quotations

“If everybody must be equally well-off all the time, there can be no significant movement up or down. That would rule out what might be seen as a natural trajectory from less successful to more successful, or from early struggle to affluent independence, perhaps involving personal resourcefulness or a climb up a professional ladder.”

And:

“Personal achievement and self-improvement are among the greatest satisfactions life has to offer. The possibility of moral agency and the scope for taking individual responsibility are probably the defining attributes of emotional maturity.”

– Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph.

May 26th, 2026 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

We need a Vicar of Trumpington to cure the delusions of our leaders

· Historical views · Political Economy · UK affairs

In the Telegraph, Charles Moore writes, “Will politicians ever realise that they can’t fix prices?”

The article begins with an anecdote to which I can relate:

When I was about 12, I thought like Rachel Reeves. “Prices are going up too much, so why,” I asked my parents, “don’t we just stop them going up?”

I cannot remember their answer, but I now know what my problem was. I did not understand what a price meant. I thought it was an order from on high (which, in dictatorships, it is). Only gradually did I come to understand it was something infinitely more subtle. It is the result – the signal – of an agreement made between someone who wants to sell something and someone who wants to buy it.

The equivalent “Why don’t we just” moment in my childhood occurred when my parents were moaning about lack of money. Less polite than the young Master Moore, I stamped my little foot and said, “If you haven’t got enough money, go to the bank and get some more.”

I blame fairy stories. I don’t recall ever believing in dragons, but I think I did believe that a Good King (or rather a Good Democratically Elected Prime Minister; I was that sort of kid) had but to say the word and there would be no more poor. I was pretty stupid for a clever seven year old. Our present Democratically Elected Prime Minister is sixty three.

After a brief explanation of what market signals are and how very bad things happen when people distort them, Mr Moore continues,

In my youth, most British politicians of both parties thought in my childish way. In 1972, Ted Heath’s Tories, shocked by the inflationary effect of the artificial boom their own policies had created, intervened to stop the merry-go-round. The Government’s Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill created a Price Commission and a Pay Board. All price rises were frozen for 90 days. Only one Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, voted against this profoundly unconservative measure.

Geoffrey Howe, later a great free-market Chancellor of the Exchequer, was Heath’s minister for consumer affairs. As such, he was the enforcer of every single price control. The utter absurdity of this was brought home to him when he was informed that the Vicar of Trumpington had doubled the charge for brass-rubbing in his church during the freeze. It was part of his job as the relevant Cabinet minister to prevent even that.

May 25th, 2026 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)

The contemporary “Right” has an economics problem

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Political Economy

“The return of the Right in 2016 and again in 2024 was not an intellectual revival. It was not driven by theory or political philosophy, but by visibility and reach: Jordan Peterson debating feminists, Charlie Kirk confronting campus socialists, Donald Trump dominating the podcast circuit. The Right returned culturally, but with an intellectual vacuum at its centre: most notably, a lack of serious economics.

For classical liberals looking back decades from now, this revival of the Right is unlikely to inspire them in the way Thatcher and Reagan still do today. The politicians of the 1980s were what George Will called ‘conviction politicians’: figures who entered politics with a coherent social creed. Politics for them was not merely about remaining in power, but about pursuing a broader mission of prosperity. That mission was not to control the economy toward a collective goal, but to empower individuals to make their own decisions.

Today’s Right, by contrast, is dominated by political entrepreneurs: figures highly skilled at attracting attention and mobilising voters. By nature, they are populists, and populism is the direct translation of public emotion into government policy. Without intellectual grounding, politics becomes purely oppositional. Today, lacking any clear sense of direction in economics, the Right is often effective at identifying problems but incapable of solving them.”

–

May 12th, 2026 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)

“This is how you crush a society”

· Historical views · Philosophical · Political Economy · Totalitarianism · UK affairs

I thought that this apparently minor news story from the Telegraph, the comment made by someone called Bernie@Artemisfornow while linking to the story on Twitter, and the reply to that comment with an apt quote by Alexis de Tocqueville were all worth highlighting.

In case the screenshot goes away, the Telegraph story has the headline “Volunteer banned from cleaning graves over ‘health and safety’ fears” and the standfirst “Ben McGregor says South Tyneside authority has threatened him with legal action, despite praise from families“. It continues,

A volunteer has been banned from cleaning graves because the council says it is not safe.

Ben McGregor, 25, washes the headstones at Hebburn Cemetery, South Tyneside, with only soap, water and a bristle brush.

He lost both his father and his best friend to suicide and, after struggling with his own mental health, said that “if I am helping others, it helps me”.

However, the Labour-led council claims it would be “inappropriate” for Mr McGregor to continue his work because “safety checks have not taken place”.

He has been praised by families for his transformations of the headstones, but said the council had threatened him with legal action if he did not stop.

Mr McGregor said: “The one that stands out to me is a woman who was suffering from cancer. She was crying on the phone, saying that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. The council’s response has blown my mind. It’s doing my head in”.

To which Bernie@Artemisfornow replied,

This is England, where even the kindest, most human acts are subject to control by authoritarian pen pushers.

Using “health and safety” to stop a young 25 year old man from cleaning gravestones with soap and water.

This is how you crush a society. You do it by smothering small acts of decency, like driving people home from the pub and cleaning gravestones. You do it by putting rules in the way of people pulling together, until eventually they just stop trying.

and TurnedFourthing @turnedfourthing in turn replied,

de Tocqueville had this figured out 180 years ago:

After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

– Alexis de Tocqueville

May 5th, 2026 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)

A Nextdoor post that made me sad

· Political Economy · Social media nonsense · UK affairs

Nextdoor, for those that don’t know, is one of those local social media apps. It can be a great place to find out local news, although the number of posts about cats being run over can be depressing. The other day I saw a post that depressed me despite featuring no dead pets. A presumably well-meaning lady asked, “Would it be unreasonable to remove the shop brand labels on clothes that I want to give to local charity shops?” She had observed that some people buy clothes with prestigious labels from charity shops or second-hand clothes apps such as Vinted and then sell them at a profit. She wanted to prevent this happening.

Several people challenged her view. “Why would you take the labels out if you are donating to a charity?” said one response. “The charity could make more money with the labels in”. That seemed to be the majority opinion. But a distressingly large minority clearly felt that reducing the charity’s income from selling donated clothes was worthwhile to ensure that no “spivs” could make any money from selling them a second time.

May 2nd, 2026 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)

As ever, the British electorate wants incompatible things – but do not despair

· Philosophical · Political Economy · UK affairs

The title of this Telegraph article by Daniel Hannan “Here’s why I’m quitting the Conservative Party” is true – he is quitting – but not for the reason you think. The Reform Party will not be getting its first representative in the House of Lords quite yet. Hannan writes,

Here is the nub of the problem. A majority of the electorate believes that Britain, which has the highest tax rate since the aftermath of the Second World War and whose national debt is about to overtake its annual GDP, is some kind of Hayekian, if not Dickensian, state. The single most unpopular Labour policy since polling day was to seek to remove the winter fuel allowance from better-off pensioners.

Our politician problem, in short, is a manifestation of our electorate problem. Plenty of MPs, including Labour MPs, can see what needs to be done. But they can’t see how to get re-elected if they do it.

For example, almost every politician will privately admit that the pensions triple lock is condemning Britain to penury, yet no party proposes abolition. Why not? Because, by 65 to 11 per cent, voters want to keep it (all figures are from YouGov polls within the last 18 months).

MPs likewise know that the NHS cannot remain a state monopoly. Wes Streeting, Nigel Farage, Kemi Badenoch – all have eyes in their heads. But, having eyes, they are also aware that voters oppose any use of private provision, even within a system free to the user, by 71 to 16 per cent.

Every MP grasps that housebuilding has not kept up with population growth for 40 years. So where are all the new towns that keep being proposed? It turns out that voters (by 49 to 30 per cent) don’t want them.

We are in a vicious circle. As things deteriorate, voters become angry, and blame the political class. MPs lose whatever lingering legitimacy they had, and become even less able to propose unpopular policies.

and

Consider, for example, the idea that rent controls reduce the number of available properties and so drive up rents. It is not obvious, but a few minutes’ thought reveals that, if people cannot make a profit by letting out their homes, they will not do it.

Or consider the idea that you become more secure by buying what you need from around the world rather than by manufacturing it at home. Again, it seems counterintuitive, but we apply that principle to our own lives. Indeed, it is precisely the important things – food, clothing, housing – that we purchase from specialists rather than trying to make them ourselves.

Consider, above all, the idea that cutting the tax rate might encourage more economic activity and so generate more tax revenue. This must, if you think about it, be true. A tax rate of 100 per cent would mean zero revenue, since people would not work for nothing, so it is simply a question of finding where the optimum rate is.

At present, though, voters instead favour any tax that they think will fall on other people. For example, a wealth tax – a textbook example of a levy that drives entrepreneurs away and reduces revenue – is backed by an extraordinary 75 per cent of voters, with just 12 per cent opposed. In the current climate, almost no one in public life is prepared to tell 75 per cent that they are wrong.

Yet it is precisely the counter-intuitive truths that can be profitably taught. That was what Ralph Harris did in the 1950s and 1960s; and it is what I shall be doing from 1 June, when I take over as the director of the IEA.

April 27th, 2026 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
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