Quotulatiousness

February 13, 2012

Der Spiegel: Is it too late to save Greece?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Greece — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:48

The Greek civil service is overstaffed, and has lots of quirky habits, proving the old adage that there’s nothing as permanent as a “temporary” government program:

One of Greece’s purported saviors is a short, rotund, 72-year-old man named Leandros Rakintzis. He was once a respected constitutional judge on the country’s highest court, the Areopagus. Since 2004, he has been the head of a government agency that is the first of its kind for Greece. Rakintzis is Greece’s general inspector of public administration.

His body twitches and shakes with delight as he talks about his successes and discoveries. For example, he discovered that on weekends, hospitals admit elderly people who require nursing care or are confused because their children bring them there so that they can take a few days of vacation. This, of course, drives up healthcare costs.

[. . .]

Rakintzis has stories to tell that take place throughout Greece, and some are downright unbelievable. For example, the government agency that was created to manage a bid to make Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, a European cultural capital in 1997 is still humming away. Its employees are supposedly working on winding down the major event and settling up the accounts — 13 years later.

How many people work there? “I don’t know. Not even the government knows that,” says Rakintzis. He adds, in an almost threatening tone: “Not yet.” Rakintzis and his staff are now in the process of investigating about 4,000 government offices and agencies in similar situations.

[. . .]

Greece has more than five times as many civil servants per capita than the United Kingdom. The country’s inflated government apparatus consumes tens of billions of euros a year. It’s money the Greek state doesn’t have — and actually never did. Greece’s gross domestic product is only slighter higher than that of the German state of Hesse and is just one-tenth the size of Germany’s total economic output.

February 12, 2012

Bryan Caplan on “the stranger”

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:36

An interesting post at Econlog:

What do you call a man you never met? A stranger.

What are you morally forbidden to do to a stranger? You may not murder him. You may not attack him. You may not enslave him. Neither may you rob him.

What are you morally required to do for a stranger? Not much. Even if he seems hungry and asks you for food, you’re probably within your rights to refuse. If you’ve ever been in a large city, you’ve refused to help the homeless on more than one occasion. And even if you think you broke your moral obligation to give, your moral obligation wasn’t strong enough to let the beggar justifiably mug you.

Notice: These common-sense ethics regarding strangers, ethics that almost everyone admits, are unequivocally libertarian. Yes, you have an obligation to leave strangers alone, but charity is optional.

Interpol system key in arrest of Hamza Kashgari

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Abuse of a system designed to catch international criminals led to the arrest of Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari for “insulting the Prophet Muhammed” on Twitter:

Interpol has been accused of abusing its powers after Saudi Arabia used the organisation’s red notice system to get a journalist arrested in Malaysia for insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Police in Kuala Lumpur said Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained at the airport “following a request made to us by Interpol” the international police cooperation agency, on behalf of the Saudi authorities.

Kashgari, a newspaper columnist, fled Saudi Arabia after posting a tweet on the prophet’s birthday that sparked more than 30,000 responses and several death threats. The posting, which was later deleted, read: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you … I will not pray for you.”

More than 13,000 people joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”.

Clerics in Saudi Arabia called for him to be charged with apostasy, a religious offence punishable by death. Reports suggest that the Malaysian authorities intend to return him to his native country.

Daniel Hannan at CPAC 2012

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:11

If you want to hear from someone who unmistakably understands the profound impact of America’s founding and believes there is still time for its citizens to take hold of its bureaucratic laden government and return it back to the will of it’s founding, then you must hear this speech from Daniel Hannan. You’ll appreciate America all the more afterwards, I assure you.

H/T to John Ward for the link.

Gary Johnson in the Washington Times

Filed under: Economics, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Libertarian presidential hopeful Gary Johnson is interviewed by Brett M. Decker:

Decker: America would be a lot better off if Washington adopted more libertarian positions, especially those that advocate cutting red tape, slashing taxes and getting Big Brother off our backs. In a very tangible way, however, many Americans have gotten hooked on federal largesse and aren’t willing to give up their government goodies. How can you make the message of smaller government resonate in this growing climate of dependency, and who is your main audience?

Johnson: I believe most observers would agree that, of all governors in modern history, I governed from a more libertarian foundation than any other. When I ran for governor and when I took office, many claimed the sky would fall. It didn’t, and I was re-elected and even today enjoy the highest approval ratings in my home state of all the governors in the presidential race. And New Mexico is a Democratic state. That tells me that people actually get it. They understand that government “largesse” is not largesse at all; rather, big government and the “benefits” it provides come at a price that is simply too great. They also understand that by limiting the federal government to that which it really needs to do, we will free the states to deliver essential services in innovative and efficient ways. And we will free the private economy to create real jobs and restore opportunity as an American trademark. Government would not disappear in a Johnson administration. It would live within its means and do what the Constitution says it should do. No more, and no less.

As I convey this message, I find that Americans of all ages, incomes and demographics respond. Young people, in particular, are embracing a libertarian approach to government. They want to be left alone to live their lives, chase their dreams and do so without government imposing values and burdens that limit their freedoms. I am convinced that there is a majority of voters in America today who are classical liberals — committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law,due process and individual liberty.

Never before has that majority been more poised to organize and exert itself in a political environment that has for too long been controlled by the two “major” parties.

Decker: Conventional wisdom is that a third-party challenger cannot be elected president of the United States. Certainly, a Libertarian candidacy siphons votes away from the GOP. Is that the point — to send a message of protest that Republicans need to be more principled, especially on fiscal issues?

Johnson: Conventional wisdom has never been a guiding principle in my life or career. Conventional wisdom held that a businessman who had never been in elected office could not run and win as a Libertarian-Republican in New Mexico. And conventional wisdom would argue against a former governor with a not-yet-healed broken leg making it to the summit of Mt. Everest. My candidacy is not about a message of protest. It is about defying conventional wisdom and giving voice to what I believe is a majority of Americans who today do not feel comfortable in either the Democratic or Republican Party.

Likewise, I do not accept the premise that my candidacy siphons more votes from Republicans than from Democrats.As I hold online town halls, travel the country and read the emails and messages coming into our campaign every day, it is obvious that we are connecting with at least as many Obama voters as McCain voters from 2008. A lot of people who thought they were voting for change in 2008 are today very disappointed that what they achieved was only a slightly different version of the same business-as-usual they wanted to reject. The desire for a truly new approach cuts across all parties and independents alike.

Interested in early SF pulps?

Filed under: History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:17

You can now read the full text, including pictures and ads, of the first six issues of Amazing Stories online:

The Pulp Magazines Project has just posted the first several issues of Amazing Stories. Read the classic pulp magazine edited by Hugo Gernsback in all its scanned-in glory, with stories by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Murray Leinster and more.

February 11, 2012

Canada calls for a meeting of other countries buying the F-35 fighter

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:25

Just when you think the Canadian government is going to keep kicking the F-35 can down the road, meekly accepting the repeated delays, they suddenly make headlines:

Washington’s plan to further slow production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is prompting Canada to convene a meeting with seven other international partners as the countries rethink their own orders for the stealthy new fighter jet.

Canada has committed to purchasing as many as 65 of the planes, but delays and shrinking orders threaten to drive up costs each country must bear for what is already the most expensive weapon system in history.

The Pentagon is restructuring the program for the third time in recent years; a move that will delay savings that would come from building more planes faster.

While I strongly doubt the Canadian government will pull out of the F-35 program — it’s been a key part of the Conservative defence plan — it’s a bit of a change to see them making waves about the delays and cost increases. Even if they eventually get some sort of a break on the final pricing, 65 aircraft are going to be too few to meet current needs but there’s little chance of the government increasing the funding to buy more.

Lockheed Martin Corp., the Pentagon’s No. 1 supplier, and U.S. officials who run the $382-billion US weapons program are anxiously preparing for a meeting in Australia in mid-March where the partners — Canada, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Australia, Turkey and the Netherlands — will outline their revamped procurement plans.

But Canada has tentatively scheduled a meeting of the partners at its embassy in Washington before the Australian meeting to get an update on the program and better coordinate their approach.

Each U.S. restructuring has consequences for the partners, which have already chipped in hundreds of millions of dollars for development of the fighter, which was sold as an affordable way to replace a dozen older jets in use around the world.

Canada’s plan to purchase up to 65 of the jets is based on a very specific timetable, and a slower ramp-up in production could force a tough decision between paying more per plane or extending the life of the country’s CF-18s. The government has estimated the jets would cost $16 billion, including maintenance. Others have pegged the cost at up to $30 billion.

Yet another theory on the solar effect on the Earth’s climate

Filed under: Environment, Science, Space — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

You’d automatically assume that the sun is a major factor in the climate, but this theory is non-intuitive:

That man is the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark, who seems to have discovered the most important factor that actually regulates Earth’s climate, and who is quietly in the process of proving it.

[. . .]

Let me briefly sum up Svensmark’s theory. The temperature of the Earth, he argues, is regulated by the intensity of solar radiation, but not in the obvious way. It is not that the increase is solar radiation heats the Earth directly. (It does, of course, but not to a sufficient degree to explain climate variations.) Rather, an increase in solar radiation extends the Sun’s magnetic field, which shields Earth from cosmic rays (highly energetic, fast-moving charged particles that come from deep space). How does this affect the climate? Here is the crux of Svensmark’s argument. When cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, he argues, their impact on air molecules creates nucleation sites for the condensation of water vapor, leading to an increase in cloud-formation. Since clouds tend to bounce solar radiation back into space, increased cloud cover cools the Earth, while decreased cloud cover makes the Earth warmer.

So if Svensmark is right, lower solar radiation means more cosmic rays, more clouds, and a cooler Earth, while higher solar radiation means fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer Earth.

Those who have followed the global warming controversy over the years may recall that cloud-formation is one of the major gaps in the computerized climate “models” used by the consensus scientists to predict global warming. They have never had a theory to explain how and why clouds form or to account accurately for their effect on the climate. Svensmark has smashed through this glaring gap in their theory.

Alan Moore: “Without wishing to overstate my case, everything in the observable universe definitely has its origins in Northamptonshire”

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:51

Alan Moore on the origins of the Guy Fawkes mask and its role in the Anonymous protests:

When parents explained to their offspring about Guy Fawkes and his attempt to blow up Parliament, there always seemed to be an undertone of admiration in their voices, or at least there did in Northampton.

While that era’s children perhaps didn’t see Fawkes as a hero, they certainly didn’t see him as the villainous scapegoat he’d originally been intended as.

At the start of the 1980s when the ideas that would coalesce into V for Vendetta were springing up from a summer of anti-Thatcher riots across the UK coupled with a worrying surge from the far-right National Front, Guy Fawkes’ status as a potential revolutionary hero seemed to be oddly confirmed by circumstances surrounding the comic strip’s creation: it was the strip’s artist, David Lloyd, who had initially suggested using the Guy Fawkes mask as an emblem for our one-man-against-a-fascist-state lead character.

When this notion was enthusiastically received, he decided to buy one of the commonplace cardboard Guy Fawkes masks that were always readily available from mid-autumn, just to use as convenient reference.

To our great surprise, it turned out that this was the year (perhaps understandably after such an incendiary summer) when the Guy Fawkes mask was to be phased out in favour of green plastic Frankenstein monsters geared to the incoming celebration of an American Halloween.

It was also the year in which the term “Guy Fawkes Night” seemingly disappeared from common usage, to be replaced by the less provocative ‘bonfire night’.

At the time, we both remarked upon how interesting it was that we should have taken up the image right at the point where it was apparently being purged from the annals of English iconography. It seemed that you couldn’t keep a good symbol down.

Tim Harford discusses Nudge-ology

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:16

Yes, I committed a neologism in the headline. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m too lazy to think up a better headline. Perhaps I need a nudge:

I hear the Nudge unit is in the news again …

I am waiting for the government to establish a Dig in the Ribs unit. Maybe even a Slap and Tickle unit, who knows?

Don’t be silly. Remind me what Nudge is again?

It started as a concept, “libertarian paternalism”, advanced by two American academics, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The idea was that the government could help people to help themselves without violating their liberty — for instance, by assuming they would like to make pension contributions unless otherwise stated. Then it became a book and the concept got a bit broader and a bit vaguer and more generally about the use of psychology and behavioural economics in policymaking. Then “Nudge” became a fashionable label to be slapped on any policy in search of a headline. Finally, David Cameron set up the Behavioural Insight Team — aka the Nudge unit — to do more research on the subject. The Cabinet Office published some of their findings this week.

[. . .]

For example?

Let’s say somebody has been fined in court but has not paid. You could send in the bailiffs. Or you could send a text message explaining that if the fine isn’t paid quickly, the bailiffs will be on their way. The Behavioural Insight team and the courts service ran a randomised trial, sending no text message to some people and a variety of text messages to others to see which approach works best. It turns out that text messages are highly effective and even more effective is a text message that mentions the miscreant’s name. The difference between no message and a personalised message is that instead of one in 20 people immediately paying up, one in three people do. That adds up to 150,000 occasions on which the bailiffs need not be called in.

This doesn’t sound like rocket science …

No, and it’s not brain surgery either. But it does appear to work. Sometimes these effects are mind-numbingly obvious. For instance, a letter sent by HM Revenue and Customs to chase up tax from doctors was vastly more effective after being written in a straightforward way with the key messages and request for action at the top of the letter. It was just as effective as an alternative that shoehorned in many fancy behavioural insights.

“Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

George Jonas explains why Canadians were more free before their rights and freedoms were codified in the Charter:

The Canada in which I landed in 1956 may not have had a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it had rights and freedoms galore, making it the envy of the world. The Canada in which I make my home today has a Charter, but Canadians who say they had more rights and freedoms 50 years ago aren’t paranoid: They did.

There seems to be an inverse relationship between written instruments of freedom, such as a Charter, and freedom itself. It’s as if freedom were too fragile to be put into words: If you write down your rights and freedoms, you lose them. Minimally, governments will try to take away every freedom you haven’t remembered to include.

“Where does it say you have a right to breathe, sir? Surely it’s not a fundamental right. If it were, it would be in the Charter.”

The 19th century British constitutional scholar, A.V. Dicey, foresaw this. He cautioned against written constitutions for this very reason, among others.

Part of the reason for the inverse relationship between written rights and actual freedom is the court system:

When I came to Canada, a court of law was often a place where individuals went for protection against the state. These days, they’d be taking a chance. Courts are often the state’s battering rams, used for breaking down individual rights and freedoms. Climate trumps the law, obviously, considering the law isn’t the law until a judge says it is. There is global warming, as the world is warming to tyranny. A judicial climate change has turned Canada’s courts from frequent champions of individual liberty to near-permanent defenders of social policy.

A judicial expression used to call policy “an unruly horse.” If you’ve time for only one book to see how events unfold when policy starts driving the law, pick up Christie Blatchford’s account of the native land-claim standoff at Caledonia, Ont., called Helpless. It shows what happens when the justice system becomes a branch of social engineering.

Argentina accuses Britain of deploying nuclear weapons in Falkland Islands

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

Raising the rhetorical stake yet again, Argentina has taken their complaint to the United Nations:

Argentina has accused Britain of deploying nuclear weapons near the Falkland Islands and “militarising” the south Atlantic.

The Argentinian foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, lodged a formal protest at the United Nations on Friday and showed slides of British military bases in the region, saying they represented a threat to all south America.

He said Buenos Aires had intelligence that a Vanguard submarine was operating in the area. “Thus far the UK refuses to say whether it is true or not,” he told a press conference in New York. “Are there nuclear weapons or are there not? The information Argentina has is that there are these nuclear weapons.” Quoting John Lennon, he added: “Give peace a chance.”

Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant, said London did not comment on the disposition of nuclear weapons or submarines but that it was “manifestly absurd” to say it was militarising the region. Britain’s defence posture remained unchanged, he said.

There was a report in the press that the Royal Navy had sent a nuclear powered submarine to the south Atlantic, but that it was conventionally armed. No nuclear power is in the habit of detailing where their nuclear weapons are deployed, so don’t expect Britain to break ranks with the others.

Also in the Guardian, Marina Hyde characterizes the decision to send a member of the royal family to the Falklands is the wrong kind of gesture:

The technical military term for the decision to deploy the second in line to the throne to the Falkland Islands is William-waving. If dispatching a fancy new warship to the archipelago on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the conflict with Argentina sends a message, then dispatching Prince William makes a hand gesture.

Of course, the Duke of Cambridge is not in the South Atlantic in his capacity as the male lead from the latest, successful instalment of the hit-and-miss Windsor Wedding franchise. His other day job is as an RAF search and rescue pilot, which is genuinely commendable — but need he really have been sent to the Falklands this week in a posting described by William Hague as “entirely routine”? If the foreign secretary truly wishes to claim that the deployment of Prince William is a business as perfunctory as deciding whether to serve tea or coffee at a meeting, then that is a matter for him. But many of us will find our disbelief simply impossible to suspend in this case, and will nurse a deep suspicion that such things are discussed at prime ministerial level.

February 10, 2012

This week in Guild Wars 2

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:27

My weekly column on news, commentary, podcasts, and videos from the Guild Wars 2 world is now up at GuildMag.com.

Willpower, for good or evil

Filed under: Books, Media, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:52

In the Guardian, Jon Henley reviews the new book by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney:

Willpower: Rediscovering Our Greatest Strength distills three decades of academic research (Baumeister’s contribution) into self-control and willpower, which the Florida State University social psychologist bluntly identifies as “the key to success and a happy life”.

The result is also (Tierney’s contribution) readable, accessible and practical. It’s an unusual self-help book, in fact, in that it offers not just advice, tips and insights to help develop, conserve and boost willpower, but grounds them in some science.

Willpower is, Baumeister argues over lunch, “what separates us from the animals. It’s the capacity to restrain our impulses, resist temptation — do what’s right and good for us in the long run, not what we want to do right now. It’s central, in fact, to civilisation.”

The disciplined and dutiful Victorians, all stiff upper lip and lashings of moral fibre, had willpower in spades; as, sadly, did the Nazis, who referred to their evil adventure as the “triumph of will”. In the 60s we thought otherwise: let it all hang out; if it feels good, do it; I’m OK, you’re OK.

But without willpower, it seems, we’re actually rarely OK. In the 60s a sociologist called Walter Mischel was interested in how young children resist instant gratification; he offered them the choice of a marshmallow now, or two if they could wait 15 minutes. Years later, he tracked some of the kids down, and made a startling discovery.

[. . .]

What they found was that, even taking into account differences of intelligence, race and social class, those with high self-control — those who, in Mischel’s experiment, held out for two marshmallows later — grew into healthier, happier and wealthier adults.

This is why the “patriarchy” is an unlikely culprit

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:27

Henry Hill explains the key market mechanism that would undermine “the patriarchy”:

Let’s imagine we have ten businesses competing for the same market. If we are spectacularly ungenerous to the male sex (as to get into Harriet Harman’s brain we must surely be) let’s assume that nine of those businesses are run by real, conviction sexists who consciously exclude capable women on the grounds that they’re women. This leaves a vast talent pool available to the tenth business, which presumably can lap up these highly capable workers. If sexism was depressing their wages as well, then this business would have a significant competitive advantage over the competition.

How long would rival businesses really keep deliberately hiring inferior labour at inflated prices out of allegiance to the principle of sexism? It would only take one company in a competitive market to break the ranks of chauvinist solidarity for such arbitrary and costly employment practises to be rendered totally unaffordable.

There are all kinds of reasons for differing employment patterns between men and women, including different priorities, working hours, child-rearing and so forth that have firm bases in business sense. To ascribe these differences to an omnipresent, more-important-that-profit sexist conspiracy, one must believe the entire spectrum of business subscribes to the exclusion of women at the expense of their own industrial and economic interests. That they literally looked at the ‘profits’ David Cameron is waving in front of them and decided that, if the cost was employing women, £40bn wasn’t for them.

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