The eighteenth century Scottish judge Alexander Fraser Tytler, said “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public Treasury”. In other words, democracy evolves into kleptocracy.
If Tytler were alive today, surely he would have added that the rot begins with a state education system and a national syllabus which themselves eulogise the State. What else can cause highly intelligent and educated people to plead for funding of their personal interests, even as Rome is burning?
Thus can eminent scientists seek more taxpayer funding for science, while sportsmen write in the Telegraph that, “A party that prioritises sport might get my vote”. More generally those making good livings from “the arts” (actors, musicians, and so on) seem to bleat almost perpetually in the broadsheet newspapers.
Did all these worthies not learn that science and inventions, sport, and “high-brow” entertainment were thriving features of the UK throughout the 19th century (and earlier), when state funding wasn’t on anybody’s agenda. Indeed, government involvement would have been pooh-poohed on the basis that not only would it come with strings attached; it would also become contaminated. Indeed this has happened in spades to science and statistics in the last 75 years.
The end of democracy is nigh, unless it is severely constrained via a constitution which puts most current government functions firmly off limits. Fat chance.
Terry Arthur is a keen sportsman and played rugby for England in 1966.
As I was walking through Westminster earlier, I saw something really quite beautiful. A red Ferrari 599 was parked next to a silver Prius Hybrid (Pious Hybrid to those of you who watch South Park). Beautiful as the red car is, and no matter how great a demonstration it is of what a capitalist production system can achieve, this is nothing compared to what it represents next to the Prius. That is the fact that in a free, or free-ish society, Ferrari-owner and Prius-owner can happily coexist.
This is something quite unique about liberty, which simply cannot be countered by those on the statist/socialist left wing. In a free society, people can happily organise themselves along communitarian, environmentalist or even socialist lines if they so choose, as long as they don’t initiate force against those who do not wish to live that way. They can drive a hybrid car, recycle their trash, or even give away all their wealth to charitable causes. In a controlled statist society, libertarians would not be allowed to live along the lines they chose to follow.
This clash of ideologies is perhaps worth remembering with tax freedom day about a month away. In a free-ish society, individuals (like Warren Buffet a few years ago) who feel guilty for their owning wealth and don’t regard that day as a day to celebrate at all, are all entitled to give more than demanded of them to the tax man, or to a charity of their choosing. The crucial difference is that under a government that doesn’t have any respect for liberty, that option is absent – there is no choice whether to comply or not.
The website ‘Unfair Internships’ argues that unpaid internships are, well, unfair, campaigning for a US-style system, where:
There aren't many circumstances where you can have an internship [at a for-profit company] and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law” (Taken from a WSJ article, quoting a US Labour Department Official).
It is argued, on ‘Unfair Internships’, that unpaid internships violate a principle apparently at the “core of the capitalist system”, namely that “work should be compensated according to productivity”. The author of the blog even goes as far as to accuse the WSJ editorial staff of not understanding economics.
The basic principle alluded to is completely false. A wage is a price at which a worker is prepared to sell her/his labour, this price is defined as the equilibrium between what the employer is prepared to pay and the labourer is prepared to sell at. Expected productivity is one input into deciding how high a price the firm will pay for the worker’s labour, while the circumstances of the labourer and how much they value the possibility of working for the employer (experience, working environment etc.) also affect the wage. It can be assumed that a profit-maximising firm will pay as low a wage as the worker is prepared to work for, so an unpaid internship indicates that the worker values something – possibly the experience gained or the contacts made – about the work placement that cancels out their need for monetary compensation. Another ‘capitalist principle’ is that workers should be free to value their own labour; unpaid internships fit in with capitalist principles thus.
An objection to this view could be that would-be interns from families who cannot support an unpaid family member are discriminated against and will lose out to the rich, who can afford to forgo a wage for some months. This may be true, but it is equally unfair to expect companies to compensate for this, the likelihood is that if forced to pay interns, many such intern opportunities would disappear. There are many ways in which a rich background benefits those beginning a career, but forcing companies to pay interns a wage risks getting rid of such schemes altogether, definitely not beneficial to anyone.
If the campaigners for mandatory-wage internships want to reduce their perceived inequality here, they would do better to look at in a wider framework of government programs to encourage social mobility; to suggest that the burden of redistributionary measures should be carried by firms is likely to have the opposite effect.
[I]f you treat voters like children, and constantly promise them free money and handouts, don’t be shocked when they throw their toys out of the pram when cuts are forced upon them when economic reality becomes impossible to ignore any longer. That is what is happening now in Greece, with endless riots, demos and strikes; it is what is likely to happen in Britain when voters are finally told the truth by our supine, vote-craving political establishment.
Yesterday finally heralded my first day at the ASI as the Communications Manager, following a rather extended holiday due to the Icelandic ash cloud. After being cut off from the British news for nearly four weeks, it has been rather a shock to return to all the election hype and Nick Clegg-mania, but I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into work at the ASI.
Prior to the ASI I worked for a large consumer brand PR agency, working with global brands across the pharmaceutical, financial and FMCG sectors. I also hold a PGCE from Oxford University, but one year working in comprehensive schools with all the paperwork and its dull and limited curriculum was more than enough to cure me of my desire to teach. I studied my undergraduate degree around the corner from where the handsome Adam Smith Monument now stands in Edinburgh, and it was whilst studying English Literature there that I first encountered ‘The Wealth of Nations’ and Adam Smith as part of my reading list!
In my spare time I enjoy going to the theatre, drinking far too much coffee and reading fiction. To counterbalance these more sedentary activities, I play netball and am training for a half marathon. I also love travelling and plan to see two-thirds of the countries in the world before I die. Any suggestions on how I can manage this, do let me know! I’m very much looking forward to meeting everyone and reading your blog comments etc – expect to hear more from me over the coming months!
As April 30th draws closer, time is running out to enter the ASI’s ‘Young Writer on Liberty’ competition. With economic freedom eroded by taxes and regulations and civil liberties trampled underfoot, we want to know what the next generation would do to reverse this depressing state of affairs.
For a chance to become the ASI’s ‘Young Writer for Liberty’ 2010, simply submit 3 short articles, each on a different ‘Way to Advance Liberty’. You might support drug legalization, an open borders policy or dismantling the state completely; we are open to all ideas for making the UK a freer place.
Incentives matter, which is why winners will receive literature to further their quest for liberty and see their work published on our blog, while the top prize includes £500 cash.
Entrants must be under 20 years of age on the day of the deadline. For more details, click here.
On this day, in 1759, Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was an instant sensation. Since the Greeks, philosophers had tried to work out the basis of human ethics: what it was that made some actions good and others bad. Many, in the age of Enlightenment, thought there must be some rational, logical explanation, and perhaps even some way of measuring the goodness or badness of an action, almost mathematically. Such efforts did not lack ingenuity, but never met with great success.
Smith's breakthrough was to see ethics as an issue of social psychology. It was not something inherent in actions themselves that made them good or bad. It was how they affected other people, and how other people reacted to them. Because we are social beings, Nature has equipped us with a powerful empathy (Smith calls is sympathy) with other people. When we see them suffering, we are distressed; when we see them overjoyed, we share some of their happiness. This natural empathy steers us towards action which benefits our fellows, and causes us to approve of it; likewise it steers us against damaging action, and prompts our disapproval of such action.
Writing exactly a hundred years before Darwin's Origin of Species, Smith lacked evolutionary theory; yet he knew that, for some providential reason, Nature encouraged socially beneficial action. He knew that if she had not, our species would not have lasted so long. He understood the mechanism, if not the biology.
Smith's book made him famous. And rich: a prominent admirer of the book instantly hired him to act as personal tutor to his ward, the young Duke of Buccleuch, with a salary payable for life. His travels with the young Duke, and the thinking time that this new wealth gave him, enabled Smith to expand his ideas on politics and finance into a new book, The Wealth of Nations. The rest is (economic) history.
The eighteenth century Scottish judge Alexander Fraser Tytler, said “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public Treasury”. In other words, democracy evolves into kleptocracy.
The website ‘
Yesterday finally heralded my first day at the ASI as the Communications Manager, following a rather extended holiday due to the Icelandic ash cloud. After being cut off from the British news for nearly four weeks, it has been rather a shock to return to all the election hype and Nick Clegg-mania, but I’m very much looking forward to getting stuck into work at the ASI.
On this day, in 1759, Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. It was an instant sensation. Since the Greeks, philosophers had tried to work out the basis of human ethics: what it was that made some actions good and others bad. Many, in the age of Enlightenment, thought there must be some rational, logical explanation, and perhaps even some way of measuring the goodness or badness of an action, almost mathematically. Such efforts did not lack ingenuity, but never met with great success.