Blog Review 860

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What is beneficial to the regulators is not necessarily beneficial to the regulated.

Maybe those WalMart jobs aren't so bad after all?

Backseat driving saves lives.

Do the brothers really want to be calling for equality?

It's not necessary to agree with everything here to admire the brio with which it is said.

On the US stimulus: surely the burden of proof rests with those who want to spend near a trillion dollars rather than those who don't?

And finally, seriously tough food safety rules.

Reflections on a snow day

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I didn’t make it into the office yesterday, because of the 8" of snow that fell on Sunday night made it just about impossible to get anywhere in London by public transport. Where I live, on the border between Putney and Wandsworth, there were no trains, tubes or buses running at all. A lot of people seem to have been moaning about that, wondering how one night of snow can bring the capital to a standstill.

Well, the reason we can’t cope with snow is that it so seldom happens. And I don’t have a problem with that. Apparently this was the heaviest snowfall for 18 years – why bother being prepared for something that only happens once or twice a decade? Imagine all the money that would be spent on snow-ploughs and action plans and training (and, no doubt, health and safety assessments). If you ask me, we’re better off just waiting for it to melt.

After all, it’s not like most of us can’t work from home. Whether it was editing documents, writing articles, emailing authors and so on, nothing on my ‘to do’ list yesterday really required an office. Just to underline the point, I even did a radio interview from the telephone in my bedroom. All of this has of course been possible for quite some time now, but remote working is yet to take off. There are obvious reasons why, but as London’s transport network gets filled further and further beyond its capacity, I can see remote-working becoming more and more popular.

Just after lunch, I went for a walk in the park. There were people everywhere, and they all seemed very cheerful – the snow clearly bringing out the best in them. It was also obvious how many Australians and South Africans there were living in the area. Following the oil refinery strikes in Lincolnshire, and the secondary action across the country, the free movement of people is very much in the news, and very frequently under attack. But what a strange and different place London would be without it.

ISOS: Economic and Social Policy: What Next?

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In case you missed it, we will be holding our first Independent Seminar on the Open Society (ISOS) of 2009 on the 24th February at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster. We have a strong lineup of speakers that includes Douglas Carswell MP and Jeremy Browne MP. There are places still available. Please click here for more information on how you can join us.

Déjà vu

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The country snowbound, trains not working, strikes and industrial disruption, the Labour government massively in the red, economy sliding to disaster... It's just like the 1970s all over again!

Blog Review 859

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Revisting Ricardo on rent (and Tim Harford on Ricardo on rent).

No, we really don't want to insist that politicians do nothing else in their days than politics. In fact, given the mess they make of politics, can't we insist that they all have other full time jobs? Perhaps if they find enough energy to interfere in our live anyway we could insist they do mandatory overtime?

It doesn't matter whether compulsory volunteering is temporary or permanent: it's still slavery.

The structure of a tax system is indeed extremely important.

Words of wisdom as a quote of the day.

On the (in) efficiency of government.

And finally, no more insane than some investment selection procedures.

On this day...

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On this day in 1905, Ayn Rand was born. She would certainly have had plenty to say about the general response to this financial crisis. If this is what you are after, you can do no better than taking a peek at what is coming out from the Ayn Rand Centre.

Blog Review 858

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Rather shocking, Bill Easterly actually says that Jeff Sachs is correct. About one thing at least.

Working for the civil service makes you ill apparently. Clearly we'd better fire a few hundred thousand of them. For their own good of course, you understand.

Or if said bureaucrats are going to act like this can we just shoot them instead?

Actually, perhaps we need to do more work on the appropriate torments.

Next week The Guardian will be running a series on corporate taxation. Here's why just about everything they say will be wrong.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet but relabel a stimulus as "deficit spending" and it might not garner quite so much support.

And finally, why wait until June 15th?

Liberal, Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism

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American English has expropriated the word “liberal". It uses it to signify a mishmash in which “lifestyle" must be absolutely free, subject to no rules of common decency and traditionally agreed norms of good taste, while “economic“ freedoms are subject to mild contempt and irony (“free choice between two dozen flavours of ice cream") and subordinated at every turn to labour union privileges, eminent domain, public interest, “positive rights", equal access and the administrative regulation of markets. The “liberal"of English English is replaced by “conservative".

Before this linguistic occupation of their ancient terrain, some liberals started to call themselves “libertarian". This conjures up images of wild devauchery, emancipation from authority, might over right and much else that gives honest citizens goose-pimples. It is doing liberalism no good. Other liberals have opted for calling their creed “classical liberalism." This term is perhaps the worst of all. It is instinctively understood as the opposite of “modern".  It is outdated, fuddy-duddy, 19th century, nice enough and worthy in its own limited way, but not up to the “great challenges of contemporary society".

The point I am trying to make is that retreat and peaceful acquiescence in the colonising infiltration of alien notions does not pay. It does not pay at the level of language any more than at the level of judgments of value and the finding of facts.  The order of the day should be to resist and counter-attack.
 

Extracts from a speech introducing Liberale Vernunft, Soziale Verwirrung, 27 January 2009 in Zurich.

Blog Review 857

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There really are green shoots of recovery. If the index of shipping costs is rising, is trade also rising?

Fascinating: what the truly non-partisan economists say about tax cuts as stimulus.

Also fascinating: what politicians think is economic analysis.

Will a stimulus work? Depends upon what you mean by stimulus and what you mean by work.

If you mean this stimulus and "work" means anything useful, probably not.

Man flying in taxpayer funded plane criticises those who fly in partially taxpayer funded plane.

And finally, can there be such a thing as too much bacon or sausage?

But who is it that gets fined?

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I have to admit to a certain amount of head scratching here. It's determined that we're ruled by incompetents so therefore we must pay more tax?

Europe is prosecuting Britain for consistently breaking air pollution laws and endangering people's health in urban areas. Legal proceedings against the government were started today by the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas, and could result in unlimited daily fines.

I agree that it isn't that much of a surprise that the median pecksniff who actually gains power over us is inefficient, willing to promise what cannot be delivered and is driven more by what retains his power than any thought of the wider interests of the body politic.

I'm also aware that the art of government is to charge me a great deal for things I don't in fact want while failing to deliver the things that I do actually both need and desire. While still charging me for failing. But what causes this bonce handling is the logic that, once government has been proven to be government, someone is going to come after my wallet again.

The British Government doesn't have any money of its own. It only has whatever if can extract from our hides now or, by borrowing, what it can extract from those of our children in the future. So when some bright spark says that it would be a lovely idea to sign up to some standard for PM 10 pollution, then fails as they were always likely to do, why is it that "the government" gets fined? We're the people who have paid for said bright spark, we're the people being poisoned and we're also the people who have to pay this fine for being poisoned because the bright spark signed us up.

Why isn't it the people who have failed who have to pay the fine, rather than the people they have failed?

Anyone?