Quotulatiousness

November 29, 2019

Revolts, civil wars, and revolutions

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Severian offers his taxonomy of protest with examples from English history:

King Charles I and Prince Rupert before the Battle of Naseby 14th June 1645 during the English Civil War.
19th century artist unknown, from Wikimedia Commons.

  • A revolt is a large-scale, semi-organized riot. It aims, at best (e.g. Wat Tyler’s Rebellion), at the redress of specific grievances. At worst, it’s violent nihilism (e.g. the Jacquerie).
  • A civil war aims to replace one leader with another, leaving the underlying civil structure intact — e.g. any of the Roman civil wars post-Augustus.
  • A revolution‘s goal is total social transformation. We’re stipulating that it’s violent, because while stuff like the Industrial Revolution is fascinating, we’re not looking at peaceful change here in the Current Year. Revolutions are necessarily, fundamentally ideological.

I realize this can cause some confusion, as events I’d classify as “revolutions” are called civil wars in the history books, and vice versa. But the difference is important, because it sheds light on the development, course, and outcome of events.

The paradigm case is the English Civil War, 1642-51. This was clearly a revolution, as it aimed at — and achieved — the near-total overthrow of existing society. When Charles I took the throne in 1625, his kingdom was very much closer to a Continental-style divine-right monarchy than most Britons would like to admit. While the English had succeeded in clawing some of their liberties back from the crown after Henry VIII’s death, the fact remains that the Stuart state, like the Tudor state, was despotic. But by 1625, the despot was completely out of step with his people, and his times.

By 1642, the first revolutionary prerequisite was in place: No clear alternative. There were lots of revolts against Henry VIII, and one of them, the Pilgrimage of Grace, had the potential to turn into a civil war, or even a revolution. The revolts against Elizabeth I didn’t quite rise to that level, but the Northern Rebellion, and Essex’s Rebellion certainly imperiled her government. See also Wyatt’s Rebellion against Queen Mary, the Prayer Book Rebellion and Kett’s Rebellion against Edward VI, etc. In all of these, the alternative was clear — return to Rome, replacement of one court faction with another, or return to the old ways.

November 28, 2019

It’s time for the ever-popular Game of Budget Leaksmanship for the British military

Filed under: Britain, Government, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Sir Humphrey wants to encourage all defence-minded readers not to panic unduly at the all-too-predictable tactics used by all sides in the next round of British government defence planning:

It’s that time again, a period theoretically seen every five years or so, but occasionally more recently than that. A group of people who it seems cordially loathe each other spend months leaking, shouting, briefing and making grandiose pledges that don’t always get fulfilled. This whole, and at times, unedifying, process is, of course, the latest iteration in a Strategic Defence Review.

The Sunday Times leads with a story today that the Army is facing cuts to its manpower, and that in return they want the Navy to be forced to lease or mothball one of the two Queen Elizabeth class carriers. The article talks about a range of debates going on, and the latest news about what may or may not be scrapped or cut in any future budget settlement. Is this something to worry about, or is it merely the opening salvos in what is likely to be a long and painful campaign of attrition?

Defence reviews are driven from the very centre of Government – they occur usually with the Prime Minister of the day’s blessing, and they are now run centrally – usually via the Cabinet Office, and not by the MOD. This reflects the fact that modern national security requirements means the need to bring all departments together in a consensus and not isolated pockets doing their own thing.

He also provides a helpful list of the specific “the-sky-is-falling!” predictions you can expect to see through all stages of any given defence review process:

What is clear is that the new season of “Game of Planning Rounds” has begun. We can expect plenty more leaks like this to a variety of sources and papers which will be intended to achieve effect. If past performance is anything to go by, you can expect to see a “greatest hits” collection of some variants of the following options leaked in the next 12-18 months:

a. Parachute regiment to merge with Royal Marines
b. White elephant carriers are all to blame
c. The nasty MOD civil service did it …
d. SAS to merge with SBS
e. RAF to take control of all F35 and scrap FAA
f. Army has more horses than tanks
g. Army to no longer have enough troops to deploy a Division
h. Cranwell, Sandhurst and Dartmouth to close / merge in one location
i. RN to scrap X number of frigates or other ships
j. Naval Infantry Division to return …
k. Army to scrap Y number of tanks
l. RAF to dispose of Z aircraft fleets

All of these have appeared in the past, but how many of them actually happened or were true? The above links are just a snapshot in time (based on a quick google) but demonstrate that in the build up to a review, we’ll see a lot more articles like this one (which predicted cuts, many of which never happened) and a lot of rumours, angst and predictions.

Humphreys honest advice is simple – DON’T PANIC! Until the review is finalised, and has gone to the Prime Minister of the day for approval, nothing is set in stone. There will be leaks aplenty, rumours aplenty and very little in the way of actionable outcomes. Until the final package of measures is approved, everything is to play for, and anything can happen. It is just not worth getting worked up about because unless you are on the inside track as part of the Review team, you don’t know what is going on.

“The chickens are coming home to roost … but they are, actually, Pierre Trudeau’s chickens”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell looks at Justin Trudeau’s plight — needing to focus on policies that will increase his party’s chances of winning more seats in Quebec — with increasing demands from south of the border to get the Canadian commitment to higher military spending moved from “aspirational goal” to actual policy:

Justin Trudeau meets with President Donald Trump at the White House, 13 February, 2017.
Photo from the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

Many in the media are saying, and I agree, that Justin Trudeau’s agenda for the next couple of years is about 99.9% domestic and focused, mainly, gaining seats in on Québec and holding on, at least, in Atlantic Canada and in urban and suburban Ontario and British Columbia. The overarching aim ~ the ONLY aim ~ of this government is to be re-elected with a majority.

As I mentioned a week or so ago, Donald J Trump is about to rain all over Justin Trudeau’s parade.

As Murray Brewster reports, for CBC News,

    The Liberal government is facing renewed political pressure from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to increase defence spending to meet the benchmark established by NATO [… and …] Robert O’Brien, the new U.S. national security adviser, said it is an “urgent priority” to get allies across the board to set aside military budgets that are equal to two per cent of the individual country’s gross domestic product [… while …] Speaking with journalists at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday, O’Brien rattled off a list of the world’s flashpoints, including Iran and Venezuela, as well as traditional adversaries such as Russia and China [… saying …] “There are very serious threats to our freedom and our security [… and adding that …] Canada made a pledge at [the 2014 NATO Summit in] Wales to spend two per cent. We expect our friends and our colleagues to live up to their commitments, and Canada is an honourable country; it’s a great country.”

Note the choice of words by Mr O’Brien, who is “a lawyer and former U.S. State Department hostage negotiator.” He doesn’t say that President Trump and the USA “asks” Canada to keep its word (although the Harper government said that spending 2% of GDP on defence was an “aspirational goal,” rather than a firm commitment) nor did he say something like “the US hopes Canada will change its ways and spend more on defence.” He said that Donald Trump’s America “expects” Canada to live up to its “pledge.” As I mentioned before, when President Trump negotiates with friends and allies he usually has both fists in the air and his knuckles are often reinforced with unfair trade tariffs and the like. Right now he is, for example, asking Japan and South Korea to pay much, much more to support American forces in their countries because, in his mind, he (America) is providing a “service” which is all for the Asians and is not, in any way, in America’s self-interest and, therefore, he wants to be reimbursed. It’s a very Trumpian notion. I am sure he sees NATO and NORAD in very much the same light.

[…]

The issue that worries some analysts is that while Canada is, in the final analysis, protected by the US because it is in America’s best interests to protect us, NATO provides a useful counter-balance and, in effect, helps us to at least pretend to be a little less than just another American colony. And that, having the status of being little better than a US colony, is what Pierre Trudeau willed upon Canada in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he wanted to leave NATO, entirely and saddled Canada with his, juvenile, nonsensical, neo-isolationist “Foreign Policy For Canadians” white paper in 1970. Although Brian Mulroney wanted Canada to be independent – think standing up to President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher on South Africa – and Stephen Harper did, too, the cumulative impact of Trudeau-Chrétien-Trudeau for 30 of the last 50 years has been too much to change. When our political leaders don’t care about Canada being a leader amongst the nations and don’t, in fact, even care about Canada being a truly sovereign state then we will sink, inevitably, into the status of an American colony.

November 27, 2019

The Deep State versus the President

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David P. Goldman reviews a new book by Andrew McCarthy on the ongoing conflict between the elected President of the United States and the permanent bureaucracy:

Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

America’s Central Intelligence Agency in concert with foreign intelligence services manufactured the myth of Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, argues Andrew McCarthy, a distinguished federal prosecutor turned public intellectual.

A contributor to Fox News and a prolific writer for The National Review and other conservative media, McCarthy well knows how to build a case and argue it before a jury. His latest book Ball of Collusion should be read carefully by everyone with an interest in American politics. It is exhaustively documented and brilliantly argued, and brings a wealth of evidence to bear on behalf of his thesis that an insular, self-perpetuating Establishment conspired to sandbag an outsider who threatened its perspectives and perquisites.

From my vantage point as an American, the constitutional issue is paramount: The American people elected Donald Trump, and it is horrifying to consider the possibility that a cabal of unelected civil servants supported by the mainstream media might nullify a presidential election. That is why I support the president unequivocally and without hesitation against his detractors.

But this sordid business has deep implications for America’s allies as well as her rivals. Trump is not a popular president overseas, except in Poland, Hungary, and Israel. In the eyes of polite opinion, McCarthy writes, “Donald Trump was anathema: a know-nothing narcissist – as uncouth as Queens – riding a populist-nationalist wave of fellow yahoos that threatened their tidy, multilateral post-World War II order.” China (and not only China) views Trump as a bully who presses American advantage at the risk of disruption to the global economy.

Donald Trump has one quality for which the rest of the world should be grateful: He really does not care how China, Russia, or any other country manages its affairs. By “America First,” he simply means that he cares about what happens in America, and is incurious about what happens outside America unless it affects his country directly. That stands in sharp contrast to view of all the wings of America’s political Establishment – progressive, “realist” and neoconservative – who believe that America should bring about the millenarian End of History by bringing democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, by expanding NATO into a giant social-engineering project, by pressing China to transform itself into a Western-style democracy, and so forth.

McCarthy reports in persuasive detail how the spooks set up the president. There is more to be said, though, about why they did it. I will summarize McCarthy’s findings, and afterward discuss the motivation.

November 25, 2019

QotD: The origins of the state

Filed under: Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Taxation most likely began ten thousand years ago, when nomadic hunter-gatherers gave up their wandering ways — and the tools associated with them — settled down, and started growing crops and herding livestock, which requires an entirely different suite of tools than hunting. The hunter-gatherers’ tools could be used as weapons because that’s essentially what they were — ask any mastodon — the farmers’ could not. As a result, anti-productive marauders who had been held off by the hunters’ tools (or the ability of the hunters and their families to escape and evade) took advantage of those who were stuck to the plots of land they had learned to farm with clumsy agricultural implements (which could not be wielded as easily by females, relegating them to a subordinate role for fifty centuries), and forced to to pay tribute to the bandits. Go take another look at the 1960 movie masterpiece The Magnificent Seven for illustration. The thieves eventually learned to call themselves “government” and the goods they stole, “your fair share”.

L. Neil Smith, “What Would Real Tax Reform Look Like?”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2017-10-29.

November 23, 2019

Sir Charles Trevelyan, head of the Irish relief efforts during the potato famine, and creator of the modern civil service

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

By happenstance, after posting the OSP video on the history of Ireland, a post at Samizdata covered one of the questions I had from OSP’s summary, specifically that the famine was worsened by British “laissez-faire mercantilism”. Mercantilism is rather different from any kind of laissez-faire system, so it was puzzling to hear Blue link them together as though they were the same thing. Of course, I live in a province currently governed by the Progressive Conservative party, so it’s not like I’m unable to process oxymorons as they go by…

Anyway, this post by Paul Marks looks at the man in charge of the relief efforts:

Part of the story of Sir Charles Trevelyan is fairly well known and accurately told. Charles Trevelyan was head of the relief efforts in Ireland under Russell’s government in the late 1840s – on his watch about a million Irish people died and millions more fled the country. But rather than being punished, or even dismissed in disgrace, Trevelyan was granted honours, made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) and later made a Baronet, not bad for the son of the Cornishman clergyman. He went on to the create the modern British Civil Service – which dominates modern life in in the United Kingdom.

Charles Edward Trevelyan (contemporary lithograph). This appeared in one of the volumes of “The drawing-room portrait gallery of eminent personages principally from photographs by Mayall, many in Her Majesty’s private collection, and from the studios of the most celebrated photographers in the Kingdom / engraved on steel, under the direction of D.J. Pound; with memoirs by the most able authors”. Many libraries own copies.
Public domain, via Wikimedia.

With Sir Edwin Chadwick (the early 19th century follower of Jeremy Bentham who wrote many reports on local and national problems in Britain – with the recommended solution always being more local or central government officials, spending and regulations), Sir Charles Trevelyan could well be described as one of the key creators of modern government. If, for example, one wonders why General Douglas Haig was not dismissed in disgrace after July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme when twenty thousand British soldiers were killed and thirty thousand wounded for no real gain (the only officers being sent home in disgrace being those officers who had saved some of them men by ordering them stop attacking – against the orders of General Haig), then the case of Sir Charles Trevelyan is key – the results of his decisions were awful, but his paperwork was always perfect (as was the paperwork of Haig and his staff). The United Kingdom had ceased to be a society that always judged someone on their success or failure in their task – it had become, at least partly, a bureaucratic society where people were judged on their words and their paperwork. A General, in order to be great, did not need to win battles or capture important cities – what they needed to do was write official reports in the correct administrative manner, and a famine relief administrator did not have to actually save the population he was in charge of saving – what he had to do was follow (and, in the case of Sir Charles, actually invent) the correct administrative procedures.

But here is where the story gets strange – every source I have ever seen in my life, has described Sir Charles Trevelyan as a supporter of “Laissez Faire” (French for, basically, “leave alone”) “non-interventionist” “minimal government” and his policies are described in like manner. […]

Which probably explains why Blue used the term in the previous video. Then these “laissez-faire” policies are summarized, which leads to this:

None of the above is anything to do with “laissez faire” it is, basically, the opposite. Reality is being inverted by the claim that a laissez faire policy was followed in Ireland. A possible counter argument to all this would go as follows – “Sir Charles Trevelyan was a supporter of laissez faire – he did not follow laissez faire in the case of Ireland, but because he was so famous for rolling back the state elsewhere (whilst spawning the modern Civil Service) – it was assumed that he must have done so in the case of Ireland“, but does even that argument stand up? I do not believe it does. Certainly Sir Charles Trevelyan could talk in a pro free market way (just as General Haig could talk about military tactics – and sound every inch the “educated soldier”), but what did he actually do when he was NOT in Ireland?

I cannot think of any aspect of government in the bigger island of the then UK (Britain) that Sir Charles Trevelyan rolled back. And in India (no surprise – the man was part of “the Raj”) he is most associated with government road building (although at least the roads went to actual places in India – they were not “from nowhere to nowhere”) and other government “infrastructure”, and also with the spread of government schools in India. Trevelyan was passionately devoted to the spread of government schools in India – this may be a noble aim, but it is not exactly a roll-back-the-state aim. Still less a “radical”, “fanatical” devotion to “laissez faire“.

What? No minister for socks? How will Justin decide what to wear?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the quirky decision to appoint a “Minister of Middle Class Prosperity” to Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet:

Typical image search results for “Justin Trudeau socks”

Wednesday’s Cabinet shuffle featured the usual head-scratching reorganization of portfolios and outright invention of others, “bigger” being for some reason a stated goal. Joyce Murray, for example, becomes Minister of Digital Government. It has a very pre-Y2K ring to it, but then again the government in question accepts payment for access-to-information requests by cheque, and sometimes fulfills them (if at all) via CD-ROM, and it can’t manage a simple payroll system. So maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have someone on that job specifically.

Then there’s Ottawa-Vanier MP Mona Fortier’s new job. I literally assumed people were joking about the Liberals’ obsessive branding, but it’s true: No word of a lie, she is an Associate Minister of Finance and, specifically, the Minister of Middle Class Prosperity.

Should a government need a minister whose job is to ensure Canadians are prospering? One might reasonably hope that’s the goal of pretty much any minister when she rolls out of bed in the morning. But they sure don’t always act that way, so maybe a Minister for Making People Richer isn’t such a bad thing.

But the “middle class” flourish is so ridiculously on-brand that it turns the very idea into a joke. Recalling Trudeau’s 2015 catchphrase, many wags asked: “Shouldn’t it be the Minister of the Middle Class and Those Working Hard to Join It?” And they have a point. After four years in government, the Liberals have a good story to tell on social mobility: Poverty rates are at an all-time low. And yet they remain officially obsessed with a middle class that was never as imperilled as they claimed.

November 21, 2019

“Gosh I miss the good old days” … when the CIA and the FBI were the bad guys, according to all good progressives

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Severian on the amazing change in popularity of the bad old US cloak-and-dagger set among Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Progressives, and other well-intentioned folks:

For anyone who grew up during the Cold War, reading the news these days is like your first time getting stoned. Everything’s fine, nothing’s happening, and then … what the hell? Wait wait wait … the cloak-and-dagger goons are the good guys now?

For the benefit of younger readers: Back when the USSR was a going concern, the Left spent a great deal of time excusing Commies’ behavior Scooby Doo-style — they would’ve gotten away with it, were it not for those meddling kids! The Reds’ hearts were in the right place, of course, but gosh darn it, the CIA insisted on interfering with spontaneous sovereign people’s movements, and that’s why the Marxist guerrillas invariably had to massacre all those peasants. It was pretty much an entrance exam for NGOs back in the days — if you couldn’t find a way to blame the excesses of, say, Kim Il Sung’s torturers on Ronald Reagan, you couldn’t get a job at Amnesty International.

Naturally, then, all correct-thinking people hated the CIA and their domestic Mini-Me, the FBI. Those two organizations used to show up at college job fairs, and a good way to meet easy girls was to drop in on the inevitable protests. Slap on a Che t-shirt (available at the campus bookstore, natch), do a Ricardo Montalban impression while saying “Sandinista,” and let the magic happen. Don’t forget to stop by the Emma Goldman clinic for some free rubbers on your way back to her dorm room!

Gosh I miss the good old days, but whatever, the point is, watching groovy antiques like Nancy, Bernie, and Hillary telling me to trust the black helicopter guys is like watching Bruce Jenner in drag — you’re embarrassed for him, and scared of his enablers. Listening to them screech about Russia like the most paranoid Reaganaut is so weird, I can’t even come up with an analogy. Yo, guys, THIS was your idea, wasn’t it? Just like it was you guys calling the FBI the American Gestapo all those years? Hello? COINTELPRO? Remember that? Hello? Is this thing even on?

November 19, 2019

No matter who you vote for the (permanent) government always gets in

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Arthur Chrenkoff on the differences between the theoretical role of civil servants and what they actually do:

The western front of the United States Capitol. The Neoclassical style building is located in Washington, D.C., on top of Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall. The Capitol was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Public servants consider themselves more intelligent and expert in their areas of competence than politicians. In many cases they are right. This only adds to the frustration. Because it’s not the job of public servants to make policy but to give advice to elected officials and to implement their decisions. And it certainly is not their job, if elected officials choose not to accept and act on that advice, to sabotage their efforts or even try to engineer the downfall of their political masters.

If you are a public servants who disagrees with the direction the politicians are taking, you have a simple, binary choice: you can clench your teeth, stay in your job and implement the politicians’ will or you can resign – at which stage you have every right as a concerned citizen to publicly campaign against people and policies you disagree with. There are more legitimate avenues of dissent and opposition outside than inside the system.

The ideal of the public service is a completely apolitical and impartial workforce, which faithfully assists government of the day in implementing its agenda, whatever that agenda might be. The reality is that while many bureaucrats are able to separate their personal beliefs from their professional duty, some can’t and won’t. For the reasons that are both obvious and unnecessary to go into detail here, public sector attracts those on the left, the way private sector attracts those on the right. Thus, left wing governments rarely encounter the problem of bureaucratic dissent, unless they really act out of the traditional left-wing box. The right wing governments, by contrast, face at best dutiful but unenthusiastic and sullen cooperation. There are no vast and organised conspiracies; this is a systemic phenomenon where organisations are required to do things that go against the conventional institutional wisdom and against the individual beliefs of the majority of members who shape the informal internal culture. This is the Shallow State. Bureaucracy will always cheer on the expansion of its numbers and powers and shriek at the prospect of shrinking the state. It will embrace and run with the policies it approves and stumble with the policies it doesn’t.

Forgetting the rank and file of the public service, which is unmovable and unchangeable, the reason why new governments enjoy the power of key appointments, including diplomatic ones, is not simply the patronage of rewarding supporters and the faithful but more importantly ensuring that the key administrative positions in bureaucracy are occupied by people who share their vision and can therefore be counted on to enthusiastically pursue the government’s agenda within the particular organisation. This, of course, only kicks the basic problem down the line, in that the top government appointees then have to struggle with the “permanent” employees on the levels below. The lower ranks might still succeed in frustrating their superiors, or worse, in “capturing” the political appointees by converting them to the institutional consensus. But for the government, having its own people in top positions is better than having no support at all. In an ideal world, of course, none of this would be necessary and happening because the impartial public service would be working well with whoever is in power. This is not an ideal world; certainly not for right wing governments. The Shallow State is always the reality. The Deep State is nothing more and nothing less than the Shallow State going well beyond the usual sullen uncooperativeness and taking a particularly strong stance against the government they disagree with. It’s a difference between passive resistance and active resistance.

It is not the job of bureaucracy to resist the government. Hence the current vogue for insubordination and sabotage is necessitating a rather radical redefinition of public service. Recently, we seem to have finally crossed the threshold from years of obfuscation (“The Deep State is a right wing conspiracy theory”) to acknowledging the reality (“The Deep State are patriots trying to protect America and the American people from the president”). But for all the talk about the supposed collusion, treason, crimes and corruption of the Trump administration, which could thus justify the resistance, the only thing that the endless agitation and investigation has succeeded in showing over the past three years is policy differences. Quite simply, the public service is vehemently opposed to the president’s views on a whole range of matters, and they are outraged that he has not followed their conventional wisdom.

November 17, 2019

QotD: Socialist beliefs about “capitalism”

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The poor understanding of economic and political institution that Marx did so much to promote remains widespread today. “Progressive” and hard-left opponents of markets hold mistaken – or, at the very least, questionable – presumptions about reality, which include:

  • Wealth is either fixed in amount, or, while it might be destroyed or diminished by certain human activities (such as war), if wealth grows this growth occurs largely independently of human ideas, choices, actions, and institutions;
  • trade and commerce, therefore, are largely zero-sum – that is, each exchange situation pits a party who will win against one who will lose;
  • trade and commerce, in turn, involve activities are thus, at best, suspect; trade and commerce too often reward greediness and duplicity while penalizing generosity and honesty;
  • the “distribution” of wealth – whether conceived as financial flows or assets, or as access to real goods and services – is determined largely by power;
  • prices set on markets are largely arbitrary; prices seldom play any role beyond determining how much one party “wins” from trade and how much the other party “loses.”
  • each of a handful of large groups of people, mostly as conceptualized by intellectuals with no understanding of economics, has its own “interests” – interests that are shared by all members of the group and that are at odds with the interests of other groups; for example, “labor” has interests that are are shared by all workers and that are at odds with the interests of “employers”;
  • while the state can be captured by ill-intentioned people, the state – especially under unlimited majoritarian rule – is also the only possible savior of the powerless against the predations and frauds of the powerful;
  • absent vigorous state intervention, ordinary people – people whose main asset is the value of their own labor – lack both the power to get their fair share of society’s wealth and the intelligence or self-discipline to use wisely whatever share of wealth they do manage to secure;
  • social progress is achieved by the powerless grabbing power under the leadership of men and women of singular vision, intelligence, and courage; “the People” will be led to the Promised Land – can be led to the Promised Land – only if they faithfully follow their caring messiahs;
  • those who argue in favor of free markets are either soulless mercenary cronies for the powerful propertied class or they are ideologically blinded dupes for this class; no intelligent and decent person could possibly deny the enormous benefits available to “the People” when the state is empowered to work on their behalf against the propertied few.

Don Boudreaux, “Some Links”, Café Hayek, 2017-10-08.

November 15, 2019

“In a functioning system, the head of the government sets foreign policy and the diplomats enact it. So naturally there’s not a chance of that in Washington”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn on the foggiest of Foggy Bottom diplomatic bafflegab on the first day of the :

Yesterday I caught a bit of the impeachment theatre en route to a lunchtime speaking engagement. To be honest, if they’d come round and performed it live in my hotel room, I’d still have fled. If universally respected eminent lifelong career foreign-service bigshots Bill Taylor and George Kent are Adam Schiff’s star witnesses, their chief purpose seems to be to get Democrats pining for the charisma of Bill de Blasio and the self-effacement of John Kerry.

In a functioning system, the head of the government sets foreign policy and the diplomats enact it. So naturally there’s not a chance of that in Washington. When Taylor and Kent whine that there seemed to be a “shadow foreign policy”, the shadow is theirs; they spent a day testifying that everything had been going ticketty-boo for decades just as they’d always done things – and then Trump came along and took a different view. Oh, my! Anyone would think that, as Barack Obama once proposed, “elections have consequences”.

First up was George Kent, the “Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Eastern Europe and the Caucasus”. He warmed up the crowd with some extensive biographical material about the “nearly sixty years” of George Kents (I believe he’s George III or some such) who have “chosen” to endow America with the blessings of their “public service”. It didn’t help that he wore a bow tie. Eventually he stopped talking about himself and started talking about Ukraine:

    Our strategic aim for the entirety of my foreign service career is not possible without a Ukraine whole, free, and at peace, including Crimea and Donbas, territories currently occupied by Russia.

Crimea is, of course, familiar to anyone who’s read “The Charge of the Light Brigade”:

    Theirs not to reason why
    Theirs but to do or die…

Or, in the case of low-level diplomats who’ve never had a single conversation with the President, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or tender their resignations after first ensuring that their pensions won’t be affected. Instead:

    Into the valley of the SCIF
    Rode the six hundred hearsay witnesses…

As I said, any Tom, Dick or Harry can bandy Crimea, but it takes a career striped-pants Foggy Bottom public servant to toss in “Donbas” with gay abandon. It would have been interesting to see whether Adam Schiff or anyone else in the room could have found Donbas on a map. The odds of pinning the tail on the Donbas blindfolded are better. It’s bordered to the north, east and south-east by Russia, so it’s akin to the Russian foreign ministry regarding northern Mexico as a vital national-security interest of Moscow’s.

In fact, northern Mexico is a vital national-security interest of America’s, but, under the mass wankerization of public policy, Perma-Beltway cares more about the borders of Ukraine than it does about the borders of the United States.

November 14, 2019

Albertan separatism – “we don’t want to become Newfoundland”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh discusses the hot topic in western Canada, separatism:

In trying to puzzle out the immediate future of Greater Alberta’s struggle with Confederation, one is naturally exposed to many varieties of the question “What are you blue-eyed sheiks complaining about?” Alberta is still a province with relatively high incomes despite a labour market that has been in the doldrums for years: why, people ask, is there separatist panic in a place that is still far wealthier than, say, Newfoundland? A good short answer to this would be “That’s why everybody here is going nuts: we don’t want to become Newfoundland.”

Newfoundland, unlike Alberta, was given the choice of joining Confederation on a bare majority vote; the result, in time, is that the province’s defining cod industry was permanently annihilated … thanks to expert, scientifically informed, completely well-intentioned centralized management from Ottawa. Hey, mistakes happen! One long-term consequence of this one is that a large fraction of the ethnic stock of Newfoundland now lives and works in Alberta. It might be that “Wexit” sentiment is especially strong in this expatriate community, though no one has any hard data to hand yet.

A crucial purpose of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s “Fair Deal Panel,” announced on the weekend, is to gather some. Kenney announced, in a speech which reaffirmed his own strong commitment to federalism, that Preston Manning will head a group of MLAs and academics whose job will be studying ideas for giving Alberta more autonomy within Confederation. The “Fair Deal Panel” is going to look at a number of concepts that have been swirling around for decades but which were ignored by Alberta’s Progressive Conservative governments. One notes, however, that the panel does have a mandate to sound out public opinion quantitatively, through polling and focus groups.

Some of the political concepts recommended to the Fair Deal Panel for study appeared in what is remembered as the Alberta “Firewall Letter,” authored by Stephen Harper and a group of Calgary School fellow-travellers (not including Kenney); the letter was first published in this newspaper in 2001. The firewall had five components: Alberta withdrawal from the Canada Pension Plan, Alberta withdrawal from the federal Tax Collection Agreement, the revival of an Alberta Provincial Police force, a request for tax points from the federal government in place of cash transfers for health and welfare, and a provincial referendum on Senate reform, which was still a thing back then.

November 5, 2019

The three ways human beings can organize themselves

Filed under: Government, History, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith relates the time he took a week-long seminar with Robert LeFevre:

I already considered myself a libertarian — of the Randian variety — when I first met Bob in 1972, at a seminar he delivered in Wichita, Kansas, sponsored by the Love Box Company and the local 7-up bottlers. I spent five magical 8-hour days in a motel basement meeting room, with about forty other people, listening to Bob’s moral, historical, and economic observations. Nearly half a century later, I can still remember large swatches of them, virtually verbatim. Bob reminded me of Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz. I didn’t agree with everything the Wzard of Libz said and thought (most notably, Bob was a Gandhian pacifist, while anyone who knows me or my work will tell you that, I, decidedly am not.)

But it was Bob’s unique view of history that won me over and changed my life. There are only three ways, he said, for human beings to organize themselves: (A), one guy tells everybody what to do; (B), everybody tells everybody else what to do; and (C) nobody tells anybody what to do. The last, he insisted, is the very definition of libertarianism.

Inevitably, Bob was an advocate of (C), and so was I, once he had rid me of the cob-webs in my head and the myth of “limited government”, which, he pointed out, somehow never manages to stay limited. Option (A), he suggested, was the way that the world had turned for ten thousand years or longer.

(B) is supposed to be the be-all and end-all of sociopolitical arrangements. It encompasses various forms of collectivism, including socialism, fascism, and the most dangerous of all, democracy, under which you are encouraged to believe that you’re free, but your neighbors can vote to control your life and impoverish you any time they want. As Robert A, Heinlein (a friend of Bob’s) put it, “‘Vox populi, vox dei‘ usually means ‘How the hell did we get into this mess?'”

The violent transition to (B) in 1776 accomplished two important things. It may yet prove to be a pathway to real liberty (no, I’m not holding my breath). In terms of what I’ve written here, it also pissed off all the right people. It schmussed humble pie in the face of the insane King George III and the rest of his inbred, slithery, pampered ilk. And when British General Corwallis surrendered his sword to George Washington, the band (where the hell did that come from?) played a little ditty called “The World Turned Upside-down.”

Most of history since then, according to Bob, has been a series of attempts — the War Between the States, public schooling, World War I, the Federal Reserve banks and the income tax, World War II, the United Nations, communism’s rise in Europe and Asia, the overpopulation and Global Warming hoaxes, the Silicon Valley commisars, the socioeconomic war on the Productive Class — by the pre-Revolutionary elites (who all seem to be related to each other) to regain the power they once wielded over the rest of the human race.

Aside from what I’ve written in The Libertarian Enterprise about the political significance of gun ownership, if you want to see who’s really on what side, take a look at the war on cattle and red meat. For centuries, the aristocrat class have hunted, and they have dined lavishly on animal protein, while trying to forbid the peasantry — us deplorables — the same rights and forcing them to subsist on boiled turnips. There’s a good reason for this: meat is mind. If you remembver nothing else of what I’ve said here, remember that: meat is mind. It contains certain components that let you build a strong and efficient nervous system (look up myelin), creating uppity peons, the last thing any right-minded upper cruster wants.

For decades, these creepy, perverted parasites have been sneaking up on us, falsely calling themselves “Progressives”, hoping to reverse the American Revolution and everything it has meant to humanity. Since socialism was invented in the early 19th century by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, they’ve made more and more of what they regard as “progress”. By the beginning of the 21st century, they thought their victory was inevitable — until it was rudely snatched out of their blood-soaked hands by those uppity meat-eating peasants, eventually led by Donald J. Trump. The patricians and their surrogates are the swamp Trump wants to drain.

November 3, 2019

Colby Cosh on the origins of carbon taxes

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In response to a column by Andrew Coyne in the National Post, Colby Cosh outlines the intellectual origins of carbon pricing:

As Andrew knows, the intellectual origins of carbon pricing are purely classical-liberal. Maybe you have to belong to our club to spot that he has carefully not called it an invention of the “left.” When I was an undergraduate, it was the unfashionable libertarian and Hayekian zanies, not the despondent post-Cold-War Marxists, who were preaching what would become mainstream environmental economics. The left has been slow rather than fast to accept the idea of putting a mere price on what they regard as an inherent evil.

British economist Arthur C. Pigou (1877-1959).
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

All of the foundations of carbon pricing were developed by economists that the left, in all varieties, now regards as cartoonish modern-day demonoids. The gentle Arthur Pigou, who developed the concept of economic externalities and the idea of taxing them, might still pass muster. But Pigou’s reformer-reviser Ronald Coase is deeply suspect, having pioneered an amoral analysis of externalities that tackles social-cost problems like environmental pollution without assigning blame to, or even necessarily acting against, the polluters.

In his paragraph Andrew almost explicitly outlines the theory of the “double dividend” from replacing bad, economically distorting taxes (like the one we impose on incomes) with taxes laid directly on externalities like carbon. The double dividend is pure Gordon Tullock, who is now a hate figure on the left for his role in creating public choice economics.

You can see that this analysis gets pretty complicated in a hurry. The idea of carbon taxation isn’t really of the right or the left. The best term for it might be “neoliberal,” although some people think there is no useful place for that word. To the degree that the left has accepted carbon pricing, they have done so as a (perhaps mostly unwitting) compromise with otherwise abominable thinkers like Coase and Tullock. Total state command-and-control of the economy isn’t an option in today’s Western world, and since there’s a neo-Malthusian crisis in the atmosphere around us, we had better try to solve it without having to execute a global socialist revolution first.

But if instinctive suspicion of the state is a feature of the conservative mind, carbon pricing doesn’t solve the problem completely. Canadian carbon tax designs have been given redistributive features, which makes them more acceptable politically to people who aren’t instinctive or innate conservatives, but creates confusion and distaste for those who are. And to the degree conservatives are inclined to doubt that the state will cut other taxes to make carbon prices revenue-neutral, they have been partly justified, so far, by the history of Alberta and B.C. The “double dividend” is a good idea: can governments be trusted to actually let us collect it?

In a nutshell, that lack of trust is why I’m generally opposed to the federal carbon tax system, even though the idea of carbon taxes (when properly implemented) are far less distorting to the economy than the hodge-podge of taxes and regulations we have now.

Alberta and the Liberals

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne summarizes the deep-seated anger in Alberta toward the federal Liberals … and the rest of Canada:

The point sometimes arrives in politics when a complex of different issues coalesce into one; when people stop listening to the arguments in favour of or against each, and instead allow their emotions to dictate a single response to the lot. We are at such a point in Alberta.

Pipelines, carbon taxes, equalization, the Canada Pension Plan — to which familiar litany we can now add the departure of Encana’s headquarters from Calgary — have become, not so much issues in themselves, but arguments in another, grander meta-controversy. All of the questions raised by each (is there a problem? if so, how is it to be solved? who pays? etc) have been pureed into a single narrative: of a Liberal government that is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to Alberta, whose re-election confirms the rest of Canada is as well.

There is, it should be said, some truth in this. Whether the Liberals have failed to win more than a handful of seats in Alberta in over a half a century because of their historic disdain for the province, or whether the causation runs the other way, the chicken is as malignant as the egg. There’s no doubt some people in some parts of the country would cheerfully shut down the oilsands tomorrow, nor is it impossible to detect a strain of anti-Albertanism in some of the rhetoric on the subject.

Albertans, for their part, are not just in a fight to defend their major industry today, but have been for decades. It is inconceivable, to take the most obvious example, that the National Energy Program, that vast attempt to expropriate Alberta’s oil wealth for the benefit of central-Canadian oil consumers, would have been visited upon either Ontario or Quebec, were the situations reversed.

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