Eamonn's book launch

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ASI Director Eamonn Butler's new book is unveiled at a book launch party at St Stephen's Club in London. With a welcoming speech to introduce it by author and journalist Peter Oborne, the book, "The Alternative Manifesto," sets out what ought to be done to rescue Britain. It's a punchy 12-point plan of radical policies on everything from taxation to drugs policy. There is no doubt that the programme it sets out would transform Britain for the better in very short order.

The new book comes only two weeks after Eamonn celebrated winning, jointly with Madsen, the National Free Enterprise Award for 2010. Madsen, meanwhile, is working on an economics primer for school students, teaching about what does not work in economics in order to highlight what does.

Both Eamonn and Madsen have handsome new websites that illustrate their activities. Eamonn's is here, and Madsen's here.

British horseracing – The going is heavy

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Whilst the going for next week’s Cheltenham Festival is drying out nicely, the financial outlook for the British horseracing industry is rather less propitious.

Flat racing is being seriously impacted both by the recession and, more specifically, by the financial crisis which has imploded in Dubai, whose rulers - the boys in blue - have invested massively both in world bloodstock and in British horseracing.

Major flat races, too, are being eclipsed. The Derby, once one of Britain’s great sporting occasions, has been greatly diminished, although the brilliance of such winners as Nijinsky and the ill-fated Shergar endures.

National Hunt racing is arguably in a rather better state, although the major meetings – the Cheltenham Festival and the annual drama of Aintree’s Grand National - mask the reality that most racing is at modest tracks with modest attendances.

Historically, through various guises, the bookmaking industry has been the key financial backer of British horseracing. However, with rapidly increasing betting levels on other sports, notably soccer, leading bookmakers are now less focussed on just one sport.

Importantly, recent results from bookmakers were very lacklustre. Despite a £275 million rights issue, Ladbrokes’ UK Retail operating profits fell by 28% compared with 2008. William Hill’s financial profile has been similar: poor 2009 trading figures and a £350 million rights issue. These setbacks are hardly helpful either for boosting the valuation of the Tote, which the Government has been seeking to sell.

If horseracing’s appeal continues to wane, UK racecourses may increasingly replicate many of those overseas, such as in the US and Brazil. In many cases, with virtually no spectators, horseracing has simply become a betting medium on television.

And if there is a long-lasting recession, horseracing could undergo the prolonged demise of greyhound racing. In which case, how many of the c60 racecourses in Britain could survive?

To the dogs?

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With its massive deficit and chronic policy weakness, this country was always going to have major problems selling vast swathes of un-indexed, sterling-denominated sovereign debt. Rising inflation and a tumbling pound makes those problems far, far worse.

Liam Halligan, 'A weak pound is no substitute for making tough decisions on debt' Telegraph.co.uk.

Civil servants to strike

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A two-day strike by 270,000 civil servants will start on Monday.

How will we tell?

What's happening?

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What's happening in the developed world today isn't so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to.

Mark Steyn, 'Our own Greek tragedy' The Washington Times.

Trust is like a vase

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The reason why the MPs’ expenses story made such a splash was not because it surprised people. It was because it didn’t. The public had always known, always, that MPs were in it for themselves. This was just the “Gotcha” moment.

Daniel Finkelstein, 'Westminster chatter won’t change the result' The Times.

Young Writer on Liberty 2010

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With our freedoms increasingly trampled underfoot, the ASI is pleased to announce its 2010 ‘Young Writer on Liberty’ competition.

Open to anyone under the age of 20, entrants are asked to write three short articles on ‘Ways to advance liberty’.The topics are entirely open to you: whether it is adjusting taxation, abolishing ID cards or the decriminalization of drugs, we are open to all views and opinions.

And, because incentives matter, the top prize includes £500 cash, 3 books, all 3 articles published on our blog and the offer of 2 weeks work experience at the Adam Smith Institute. To see all the prizes available, click here.

To enter, you must be under 20 on the entry deadline of April 30th, while each article must be under 400 words long. Simply email your entries, along with contact details and your DOB to charlotte@old.adamsmith.org.

Marxist exploitation

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"Marxian exploitation is the exploitation of people's lack of understanding of economics."

Robert Nozick - Anarchy, State and Utopia

Are we all doomed?

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The annual investment forum in Tokyo of CLSA (Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia), a hugely influential group of fund managers, has heard a grim forecast from Dr Marc Faber, a market analyst with some success at forecasting crises. Universally pessimistic, he is dubbed "Dr Doom" by the industry. His forecast is that the US cannot service its growing mountain of debt, and that its debt repayments could hit 50 percent of tax revenues within 10 years. If this happens, he thinks the US will go bankrupt.

Dr Faber then ventures beyond market conditions to warn us of a coming "dirty war" which will shut down the internet and mobile phones, and see city water supplies being poisoned. He advises buying farmland and living rurally to escape the violence and biological attack which will afflict cities. He also suggests buying gold and precious metals "because they can be carried." In Asia he advises buying into agriculture and water treatment to play on future food and water shortages.

Chilling stuff, but will it happen? Doomsayers don't have a very good record. Humanity seems to muddle through despite the catastrophes so regularly predicted. Part of the reason is that we alter our behaviour to avoid them. We develop new technologies such as those which enabled the "green revolution" to avoid the threatened starvation. We will not all choke on the nightmare levels of pollution forecast because we are constantly developing ways of dealing with it and avoiding it. We haven't all died yet in a nuclear holocaust because we changed the way we behave once nuclear weapons entered the frame.

This is not to say Dr Faber is wrong – although I believe he is. It is just that he, like other doomspeakers, downplays what Julian Simon called "The Ultimate Resource," the creative ingenuity of humankind. Despite the gloomy forecasts that civilization would be wiped out by a new ice age, a population time bomb, a silent spring, or the depletion of scarce resources, we have proved quite adaptable and quite resourceful at dealing with problems.

I doubt Dr Faber's hedge fund audience will all rush take his advice. Maybe a few will hedge their bets by buying just a little farmland and just a little gold. The rest of us will probably bet on humanity again, rather than disaster.

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice

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The Daily Kos deconstruct that work of viral genius: "Fear the Boom and Bust".

H/T Cafe Hayek