Quotulatiousness

March 14, 2025

Greenland in the news again … and it’s not about Trump this time

Filed under: Americas, Business, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Tim Worstall sums up coverage from The Guardian about a case involving the government of Greenland and a mining operation going to court for damages from the government’s change of policy:

So, here’s a case:

    Fearing toxic waste, Greenland ended uranium mining. Now, they could be forced to restart — or pay $11bn

Gosh.

    In 2021, Greenland went to the polls, in a contest to which uranium was so central, international media dubbed it “the mining election”. The people voted in a green, leftwing government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party, which campaigned against uranium mining due to the potential pollution.

    When it took power, the new government kept its campaign promise, passing legislation to ban uranium mining. While not primarily a uranium mine, the Kvanefjeld project would require unearthing the radioactive substance to extract its rare earth oxides, putting it in violation of the law.

    Many Greenlanders celebrated the vote as a victory for health and the environment. But three years later, the company is suing Greenland for stopping its plans, demanding the right to exploit the deposit or receive compensation of up to $11.5bn: nearly 10 times the country’s 8.5bn krone (£950m) annual budget.

That part of it isn’t wholly biased. It is, roughly and around and about, true.

Just as an aside I think I met one of the lads behind the mining company once. Mickey Five Names was it? Management and all has changed since then but they were not, say, of the probity of the board of Rio Tinto. Just as an opinion, you understand.

Still, they signed a contract which allowed them to prospect and so they then spent money. The law stated that they would, naturally, advance to an exploitation licence. That’s what they got denied.

[…]

Everyone’s agreeing on what happened. Roughly they are at least. You Mr. Corporation can explore and if you find something you can dig it up and so make money back on your costs. Then the government changed its mind leaving the company facing the total loss of all it had spent.

So, who has to cough up here?

No one — really, no one at all — is saying that a government cannot change its mind. Or even that elections should not have consequences and that policy might change after having had one.

What is being said is that if you nick someone’s property then you’ve got to pay for it.

Well, is not issuing an exploitation licence that you said you would nicking someone’s property? That’s clearly arguable (I would say “Yes!” but then that’s me) so, where do we go to argue this?

March 10, 2025

Deep State delenda est

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

Elizabeth Nickson calls for the destruction of the deep state, Cato the Censor-style: salt the earth and leave no stone standing upon another stone:

There has been some argument in my house about Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and indeed the rest of the world. I’m on the American side; why on earth should the Americans pay for everything? Because they do. They pay for Europe’s defence, they allow every single country to tariff American products while allowing their goods in for pennies. When anyone, anywhere is in trouble, who do they call? The Yanks. Where do the pleas of all the desperate people all over the world land? America. Who did the Israeli captives hope for? Trump and the Americans. (Actually just Trump. They didn’t think that the Biden people would lift a finger. Which they didn’t.)

Please explain why these countries below, numbering 550 million people, cannot defend themselves?

Why can’t they defend themselves? They are broke.

The following represents $150 billion in missed opportunity in the last FIVE years. Canada is so broke, it is broke-ass broke; it is a shriveling carbuncle on the American economy. We send 80% of our exports to you because we are TOO DAMNED LAZY to develop our own country.

If we had built those projects, Canada would be rich, the middle class would be crackling along, creativity would have soared and we would actually be proud. No one is proud of Canada except for the people paid to bloviate or who hope to be paid to bloviate, and those too stupid to bloviate. The rest of us are sullen and angry and so frustrated we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

But no. Climate Change. Look, I am sorry to say this, but anyone who “believes” in climate change being somehow catastrophic is stupid, malignant or has not done the required reading. Which means lazy. Which means childlike. There is no there there. Climate alarmism is nonsense, it is bullshit, it is utter crap made up by subsidized kids looking for “significance” and an endless supply of taxpayer dollars. The science is far too new to be reliable, there are thousands of real (not NGO) scientists in opposition to it and the policy implications are so vast we are looking at a new feudalism. Anyone promoting climate change is unserious.

Childhood is where we are. Canada is the only country in the Western Hemisphere which exacts a crippling carbon tax. And this:

The above is a perfect illustration of vanity, of a detachment from reality. And the only way people can detach from reality is that they are subsidized by the Americans. This means the Heartland people, the Flyover people. Those subsidies to the world added to a massive, unsustainable, insane, debt of thirty-seven trillion, created a giant fuzzy rainbow coloured cloud inhabited by perpetual children built by ghastly people like Samantha Powers, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and their legion of sick, larcenous, pedophile supporters, the ferociously stupid women on the east coat of America, the idiots at all the Ivies, and the two million federal workers who are about to be reduced by, I wish, 50%.

March 4, 2025

“Rare metals” are not really rare at all

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, John Ringo explains why the US doesn’t exploit its own vast reserves of “rare metals”:

I love every single time someone goes ‘CHINA HAS A LOCK ON RARE METALS! WE NEED TO ALLY WITH COUNTRY X TO GET RARE METALS! WE NEED RARE METALS!’

The US has huge deposits of pretty much everything we need. Lithium? Got it. Neodymium? Got it. Silver? Spades. Montana’s practically made of it.

The reason we don’t mine it here is the stupid ways our laws are written and allowing the Chinese to play us.

There’s an area in TX that has as much neodymium as the Chinese deposits that supply 98% of the world’s neodymium. (Critical material in rare earth magnets which are in turn critical in … so many things. Drones. Electric cars. Etc.)

There’s even a registered mine. Which was open.

Why is it closed?

The Chinese drop the prices below production cost (dumping) every time they open. Then jack the price and play political games with it when it closes.

There’s a silver mine in Montana (critical in modern solar) which has been trying to open for FIFTEEN YEARS.

Why can’t it open?

Tied up in environmental lawsuits because Congress won’t amend the EPA act that allows anyone to sue for any reason whatsoever and damn having mining or manufacturing WE DON’T NEED THAT WE NEED TO SAVE THE WORLD!

AND SLAVA UKRAINE YOU MAGA BASTARDS! TRUMP IS PUTIN’S COCK HOLSTER! WE NEED TO MANUFACTURE MORE WEAPONS TO SEND TO UKRAINE BUT ONLY IN A PERFECTLY ENVIRONMENTAL FASHION!

‘Environmental’ emphasis on the ‘mental’.

Autarchy is the idea of a country neither importing nor exporting. Just keep everything in the country. Ourselves alone.

A few have tried it from time to time. India did at one point.

Nobody can do it. There’s ‘something’ that you need from outside.

Except the US. We more or less need some tropical stuff. Like coffee, tea, sugar. Palm oil. (Super important in soap.)

But we can, in reality, even dispense with tree rubber. We can make it all from artificial.

Which comes from oil.

And we have enough oil. Thank a fracker. We’ve got enough oil in Southwest Texas to supply the WORLD for a thousand years.

(Touch expensive compared to Persian Gulf. But the price is constantly coming down.)

All we need to do is change laws, and we can almost go it without any other country. Without import or export.

I’m not suggesting we do.

But I am suggesting we dedicate some serious attention to things like China manipulating trade to ensure they have a lock on rare metals.

That we prioritize internal production.

That we decouple critical issues from other countries.

Cause the way the world is going, we’re reaching a point we’re gonna have to go it alone and if we have allies and trade partners, I’d suggest they be in the Western Hemisphere.

Cause those fuckers cross the pond be crazy.

Fifteen years ago, Tim Worstall explained why China’s rare earth monopoly won’t stand up in the long run.

February 27, 2025

Reining in the ATF

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

J.D. Tuccille on the ATF’s immediate future with FBI director Kash Patel as the newly appointed acting head of the bureau:

Kash Patel, 9th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

… it’s impossible to credibly argue that the ATF doesn’t need a shakeup. After all, this is a federal agency that ran guns to criminal gangs in Mexico as part of a bizarre and failed “investigation”, manipulated mentally disabled people into participating in sting operations — and then arrested them, lost thousands of guns and gun parts, killed people over paperwork violations, and unilaterally reinterpreted laws to create new felonies out of thin air (which means more cause for sketchy investigations and stings). The federal police agency obsessively focused on firearms has long seemed determined to guarantee itself work by finding ever more things to police.

But what about putting the same person in charge of both the ATF and the FBI? How does that make sense?

Well, there’s a lot of overlap in the responsibilities of federal agencies. During the ATF’s “Operation Fast and Furious” gunrunning escapade in Mexico, it coordinated — badly — with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During its 2012 investigation of that fiasco, the Justice Department Inspector General “conducted interviews with more than 130 persons currently or previously employed by the Department, ATF, the DEA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)” on its way to identifying “a series of misguided strategies, tactics, errors in judgment, and management failures that permeated ATF Headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division”.

[…]

Done right, you wouldn’t need as many agents for the combined agency, and you would have lower overhead. But — and this is a big concern — done wrong, you’d end up with a supercharged federal enforcement agency with all the hostility to civil liberties its old components embodied when separate, but now with lots more clout.

When he took charge of the FBI, Patel became the leader of an agency that has long served as a sort of political police. Its abuses date back decades and never seem to go away, just to morph into new ways of targeting anybody who criticizes whoever is currently in power.

“The FBI entraps hapless people all the time, arrests them, charges them with domestic terrorism offenses or other serious felonies, claims victory in the ‘war on domestic terrorism’, and then asks Congress for more money to entrap more people,” John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower, wrote in 2021.

That means there’s already a problem that needs to be addressed, or it could infect a combined agency rather than taking the sharp edges off the ATF.

Also troubling is that before his nomination to head the FBI, Patel made comments suggesting he wants to target his own political enemies. He’s backed off those threats, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee he’s committed to “a de-weaponized, de-politicized system of law enforcement completely devoted to rigorous obedience to the Constitution and a singular standard of justice”. But it’s worth watching what he does with his roles at the separate FBI and ATF before combining the two agencies into something more dangerous.

Or maybe the Trump administration won’t take the next step of formally integrating the ATF and the FBI. Self defense advocates have long called for ATF leadership that isn’t actively hostile to gun owners. If all Patel does is rein in the ATF so that Americans get a few years of relief from that agency’s abuses, that’s a victory itself. But eliminating a much-loathed federal agency would be even better.

February 24, 2025

Rule by bureaucrat, believe it or not, was once considered a better form of government

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

In the 19th century, the Americans switched from a system where one of the major outcomes of a presidential election was the wholesale replacement of government employees to one where the civil service was “professionalized” to the point that only the very top levels were subject to presidential replacement (Trump 2.0 may mark a significant change in this). Fans of the professional bureaucracy would sometimes gesture toward the venerable Chinese model, which had been run in this way for a very long time until the 20th century. Lorenzo Warby considers the actual performance of these kinds of systems:

Excerpt from the handscroll Viewing the Pass List. Imperial examination candidates gather around the wall where results had been posted. Traditionally attributed to Qiu Ying, but now suspected to be the work of a late-Ming painter with Qiu Ling’s name added.
National Palace Museum via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the course of the C19th, Western states adopted the Chinese notion of appointment by examination for their government bureaucracies. Such appointment-by-merit did have the effect — for about a century and a half — of creating effective and responsive bureaucracies. So much so, that Western democracies gave more and more tasks to such bureaucracies.

This replicates the early stage of the Chinese dynastic cycle — the actual one (see below), rather than the traditional version — where, early in a Dynasty, rule through the bureaucracy is quite effective, even efficient. In modern Western democracies, the legitimacy of democratic action — the demon-in-democracy problem, where the all-trumping legitimacy of the democratic principle tends to overwhelm other ways of doing things — aided the massive expansion in government action, and so in the ambit of government bureaucracy.

The trouble with adopting the Chinese model of appointment-by-merit bureaucracy — including selection-by-examinations — is that folk failed to take a good hard look at the patterns of Chinese government. This despite the fact that the keju, the imperial examination, was introduced under Emperor Wen of Sui (r.581-604) and was not abolished until 1905, so there was quite a lot of history to consider.

The patterns of Chinese government are much less encouraging, because the quite effective, quite efficient, stage of bureaucratic administration does not last. The problem with appointment-by-merit is that it selects for capacity, but not character. Confucianism tries to encourage good character, but it repeatedly turned out to be a weak reed compared to incentive structures. (Almost everything is a weak reed, compared to incentive structures.)

The actual dynastic cycle was:

  1. Population expands due to peace and prosperity in a unified China. This pushes against resources — mainly arable land — creating mass immiseration, an expanding underclass with no marriage prospects, peasant revolts and falling state revenues.
  2. The number of elite aspirants expand — a process aggravated by elite polygyny — but elite positions do not, leading to disgruntled would-be elites who provide organising capacity for peasant revolts (including through sects and cults).1
  3. Bureaucratic pathologies multiply, leading to a more corrupt, less responsive, less functional state apparatus, eroding state capacity and increasing pathocracy (rule by the morally disordered). Late-dynasty imperial bureaucracies could be astonishingly corrupt and dysfunctional.

In contemporary Western societies, mass migration interacting with restrictive land use, and other regulation (e.g. “net zero”), so that:

  1. housing supply is blocked from fully responding to demand for housing—thereby driving up rents and house prices; while also
  2. inhibiting infrastructure supply from responding to demand—increasing congestion and other (notably energy) costs

is creating immiseration pressures. Figures about the “macro” health of the US economy, for instance, are misleading as much of the growth is either not reaching people further down the income scale or is failing to compensate for rising rents.

Western commercial societies are sufficiently dynamic that elite over-supply is much less of a problem than in pre-industrial societies. There is, however, very much a problem of toxic parasitism — the entire (Diversity Equity Inclusion) DEI/EDI apparatus to start with. What we might call malign elite employment or bureaucratic parasitism.

    1. NR: I’ve read that the Taiping Rebellion in China was led by a man who’d failed the Imperial Examination and raised the banner against the entire system as a form of revenge. By the time the rebellion was quashed, somewhere up to 30 million people were killed in the fighting or as an indirect result of the conflict. (Traditional note of caution about any statistics from pre-20th century China … well, any Chinese statistics at all, really.)

Update: Fixed broken link.

February 21, 2025

QotD: Why does it cost so much to build modern infrastructure?

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Now, obviously, there are reasons why building infrastructure is expensive. One is that politicians have taken unto themselves the power to decide what infrastructure should be built how and where. Therefore infrastructure is built by fuckwits, obvious, innit? We’ve also allowed far too many people to dip their ladle in the gravy — that £300 million planning inquiry into a tunnel under the Thames. And did I say fuckwits already — that £100 million bat tunnel.

But one reason all these things are so expensive is because we’re not doing them on terra nullius. If we start with a bare field a ground source heat pump might well not be that bad an idea. Communal heating systems into an entirely new development, maybe.

But putting ground heat pumps into central London? Can’t do that ‘ere mate, someone’s already built central London right where you want to dig up. HS2 goes right through some of the most expensive — and inhabited by the highly vocal — countryside in the nation. Edinburgh, minor though it is, still has that central London problem.

This also explains why Mercury Comms employed the ferrets. The tubes already existed and fibreoptic could be stuffed down them. They didn’t have to dig up central London, see?

Agreed, this isn’t one of the world’s truly great insights but it is something to keep in mind. The reason building the infrastructure for the next level of civilisation costs so much is because we already have a civilisation. The existence of which gets in the way of the building men …

Tim Worstall, “Why Is Infrastructure So Damn F’n Expensive?”, It’s all obvious or trivial except …, 2024-11-18.

February 15, 2025

Nannies on the right are just as bad as nannies on the left

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

Jim Treacher briefly gets slightly serious about RFK Jr.’s new role as America’s chief health nanny:

Fake image generated by Grok

First things first: I’m fine with a United States president picking his own cabinet. Donald Trump won, so he gets to choose the people he wants. It’s not fascism, it’s not unconstitutional, and it’s not going to destroy the country. This is the system we have, and so far the Trump administration has been operating within precedent. (Yes, even with Elon Musk and DOGE.) Fair enough.

And, also, in addition to that: I don’t like RFK Jr., and I won’t pretend I do just so you don’t yell at me.

RFK is still the same guy he was before he suddenly started being nice to Trump. He’s the guy who thinks COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack Caucasians and blacks, while sparing the Jews and Chinese. He’s the guy who bragged about having a worm in his brain. He’s the guy who, just seven months ago, said “Trump was a terrible president“.

Now I’m supposed to pretend none of that happened, just because Trump likes him for the moment? Nah.

And, of course, RFK is the guy who thinks the role of government is to slap your hand at the dinner table. So I’m supposed to pretend nanny-statism is good now.

Yay, let’s embrace lib policies to own the libs!

If you didn’t want Michelle Obama telling you what to eat, why do you want RFK telling you what to eat? If you didn’t want the government telling you which vaccines to put in your body, why do you want the government telling you which food to put in your body?

“But seed oils and high-fructose corn syrup and Red Dye Number Whatever are bad for you!” Okay. So don’t eat that stuff. You can read labels, can’t you? Why do you need the feds to hold your hand?

It’s amazing: At the very same time MAGA is cheering on Trump for reducing the size of government — and buddy, I’m right there with them — they’re begging the government to “clean up the food supply”.

Which is it, friends?

Get mad at me all you want, but at least I’m consistent. I don’t want the government telling me what to do, no matter who’s in charge for the time being.

February 14, 2025

Trump may start paying attention to Canadian cultural protectionist polices next

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

Michael Geist points out just how many Canadian federal policies and programs will likely come under scrutiny by the Trump administration for their blatant protectionism against US cultural products:

My Globe and Mail op-ed argues the need for change is particularly true for Canadian digital and cultural policy. Parliamentary prorogation ended efforts at privacy, cybersecurity and AI reforms and U.S. pressure has thrown the future of a series of mandated payments – digital service taxes, streaming payments and news media contributions – into doubt. But the Trump tariff escalation, which now extends to steel and aluminum as well as the prospect of reviving the original tariff plan in a matter of weeks, signals something far bigger that may ultimately render current Canadian digital and cultural policy unrecognizable.

Our cultural frameworks are largely based on decades-old policies premised on marketplace protections and mandated support payments. This included foreign ownership restrictions in the cultural sector and requirements that broadcasters contribute a portion of their revenues to support Canadian content production.

As we moved from an analog to digital world, the government simply extended those policies to the digital realm. But with Mr. Trump appearing to call out what he views to be Canadian protectionist policies in sensitive sectors such as banking ownership, the cultural and digital sectors may be next.

If so, there are no shortage of long-standing policies that tilt the playing field in favour of Canadians that could spark some uncomfortable conversations.

Why do U.S. companies face ownership restrictions in the telecom and broadcast sectors? Why are Canadian broadcasters permitted to block U.S. television signals in order to capture increased advertising revenue? Why do Canadian content rules exclude U.S. companies from owning productions featuring predominantly Canadian talent?

The Canadian response that this is how it has always been is unlikely to persuade Mr. Trump.

Canadian policies premised on “making web giants pay” may also be non-starters under Mr. Trump. For the past five years, the Canadian government seemingly welcomed the opportunity to sabre rattle with U.S. internet companies. This led to mandated payments for streaming services to support Canadian film, television and music production; link taxes that targeted Meta and Google to help Canadian news outlets; and the multibillion-dollar retroactive digital services tax that is primarily aimed at U.S. tech giants.

Not only have those policies raised consumer affordability and marketplace competition concerns, they have also emerged as increasingly contentious trade issues. If the trade battles with the U.S. continue, the pressure to scale back the policies will mount.

Beyond rethinking established cultural and digital policies both new and old, the bigger changes may come from re-evaluating the competitive impact of policies that rely heavily on regulation just as the U.S. prioritizes economic growth through deregulation. Proposed Canadian privacy, online harms and AI rules have all relied heavily on increased regulation, looking to Europe as the model.

For example, consider the Canadian approach to AI regulation in the now-defunct Artificial Intelligence and Data Act. It specifically referenced the European Union’s regulatory system, which establishes extensive regulatory requirements for high-risk AI systems and bans some AI systems altogether.

However, the European approach is not the only game in town. Mr. Trump moved swiftly to cancel the former Biden administration’s executive order on AI regulation, signalling that the U.S. will prioritize deregulation in pursuit of global AI leadership. Further, the arrival of DeepSeek, the Chinese answer to ChatGPT, took the world by storm and served notice that U.S. AI dominance is by no means guaranteed.

The competing approaches – U.S.-style lightweight regulation that favours economic growth against a more robust European regulatory model that emphasizes AI guardrails and public protections – will force difficult policy choices that Canada has thus far avoided.

February 8, 2025

Interprovincial trade barriers in Canada

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

In the National Post, Jamie Sarkonak pours some icy cold water on the fever dream that we can fix what ails us economically with this one neat trick:

Understand what an interprovincial trade barrier is: it isn’t a simple matter of repealing tariffs, because internal tariffs don’t exist — provinces aren’t allowed to impose them. Instead, barriers take the form of red tape that differs in shade by province; if there are 10 provinces that each regulate, say, what shape of toilet seat is required to be used on a construction site, expect 10 different rules on the matter (Ontario requires a gap at the front of the seat; Alberta doesn’t care).

For Canada’s toilet seat manufacturers, that’s another level of complexity that can complicate production and make it costly to expand to new jurisdictions.

Now repeat the mental exercise for every other provincially regulated product: food, alcohol, pesticides, lumber and so on. And again, with all the other provincially regulated things you can buy but not hold: massage therapy, legal services, hair and aesthetic services, provincially regulated securities.

It adds up to a lot, and that’s by design: in 1867, the Constitution explicitly handed authority over most sectors to provincial governments. Provincial regulations, and by extension, interprovincial trade barriers, are central to provincial autonomy.

Theoretically, rule consolidation is a good deal. It would be far easier to do business in Canada if it worked more like one country with one set of rules, rather than a heterogenous group of 10 micro-states packed into one.

On the taxpayer side, there are savings to be had, too: regulatory bodies use public funds and there are (theoretically) savings to be had by centralizing the offices of 10 different sheriffs into one. Estimates vary, but lifting barriers is thought to add a boost of $80 billion (International Monetary Fund) to $200 billion (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) to the economy.

But standing in the way of free-trade utopia are the practical considerations, the big one being protectionism. Making its case in the Journal de Montreal, William Rousseau put it well: “The abolition of these barriers can even be economically harmful, because for each barrier that blocks a company from the rest of the country, there is a Quebec company that benefits from it and whose business model takes this barrier into account.” The exact same can be said for any province.

This is why I thought well of Pierre Poilievre’s recent trial balloon about ways to coax the provinces into reducing interprovincial trade barriers by … let’s be honest … providing a financial bribe from the federal government. By allowing the individual provinces to “capture” some of that “lost” revenue, it may provide enough incentive to start dismantling at least some of the structural barriers to free trade within Confederation.

January 23, 2025

Do you want an imperial presidency, because this is how you get an imperial presidency

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

On paper, prime ministers in Westminster parliamentary systems have more power, but the US president has more immediate, practical power to direct government activity using totally non-democratic executive orders. Democrats didn’t mind that when it was Obama wielding the pen, but they’re incandescent now that it’s the Bad Orange Man inking rules into existence. MAGA Republicans hated when Joe Biden’s ventriloquist was writing the orders, but suddenly it’s fine because it’s their president doing it. In neither case is democracy safe:

A quick image search turns up plenty of examples of Presidents proudly showing off freshly signed documents. Usually these will be laws passed by the legislators but sometimes (especially in January 2025) it’s rule-by-decree on steroids.

Well before President Donald Trump returned to office, his supporters boasted that he would start the second term with a flurry of executive actions. The new president exceeded expectations with an avalanche of pardons, orders, and edicts on matters great and small. Some should be welcomed by anybody hoping for more respect for liberty by government employees. Others extend state power in ways that are worrisome or even illegitimate. All continue the troubling trend over the course of decades and administrations from both parties for the president to assume the role of an elected monarch.

From an Interoffice Memo to “Shock and Awe”

“When President Trump takes office next Monday, there is going to be shock and awe with executive orders,” Sen. John Barrasso (R–Wyo.) predicted last week.

The president signed some of those orders as he bantered in the Oval Office with members of the press, engaging in more interaction than we saw from his predecessor over months. Wide-ranging in their scope, Trump’s orders “encompassed sweeping moves to reimagine the country’s relationship with immigration, its economy, global health, the environment and even gender roles,” noted USA Today.

Executive orders, which made up the bulk of Trump’s actions (he also pardoned and commuted the sentences of participants in the January 6 Capitol riot), are basically interoffice memos from the boss to executive branch agencies. “The President of the United States manages the operations of the Executive branch of Government through Executive orders,” according to the Office of the Federal Register of the National Archives and Records Administration.

That doesn’t sound like much — and at first, it wasn’t. Executive orders as we know them evolved into their modern form from notes and directives sent by the president to members of the cabinet and other executive branch officials. Nobody tried to catalog them until 1907.

But because executive branch officials interpret and enforce thickets of laws and administrative rules under which we try to live, guidance from the boss is powerful. Interpreted one way, a rule regulating unfinished gun parts leaves people free to pursue their hobbies; interpreted another, and those owning the parts are suddenly felons. The president can push interpretations either way.

They Can Be Used Correctly, or Abusively

So, some of Trump’s executive orders are very welcome, indeed, for those of us horrified by federal agencies pushing the boundaries of their power.

“The vicious, violent, and unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end,” Trump said in his inaugural address regarding an order intended to punish politically motivated use of government power. “I also will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” he added of another.

January 18, 2025

Incentives matter even to “objective” scientists

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

A 2019 Canadian “study” ideally illustrates that scientists are just as human as anyone else where they are incentivized to provide “desired” outcomes:

“The Beer Store” by Like_the_Grand_Canyon is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Earlier this year, a major Canadian study on alcohol policy provided an excellent illustration of this. As news headlines across the country reported, 16 scientists and researchers at various universities and institutions had, through their Canadian Alcohol Policy Evaluation, shown that provincial governments are “failing to address alcohol problems”.

The scientists evaluated provincial government policies and assigned a grade in the “D” range to seven of Canada’s 13 provinces or territories, while five received an “F”. The policy evaluation, however, was a curious one. Strangely, the policy evaluation did not evaluate whether government policies were beneficial to those who want to buy or sell alcohol.

Instead, provincial governments were evaluated more favorably if they devoted greater efforts toward afflicting buyers and sellers of alcohol through punitive taxes, price controls, heavy restrictions on the sale and marketing of alcoholic beverages, higher minimum legal drinking ages, and so on.

Even in the most restrictive markets, the researchers found that alcohol was too cheap, or that its purchase was too convenient, or that governments did not do enough to discourage or restrict its sale and consumption.

Predictably, and perhaps exemplifying Berlinski’s point on scientists grasping for government funds, the report authored by 16 scientists whose livelihoods involve raising public alarm about alcohol consumption concluded that there ought to be more government funding for public education on the dangers of alcohol consumption.

The report also advocated more government funding for bureaucracies to discourage drinking, more government funding for a lead organization to implement restrictive alcohol policies, more government funding for independent monitoring of such implementation, and more government funding to track and report the harm caused by alcohol consumption.

Like the CEO of a domestic automobile company insisting that tariffs against car imports — which would cause a massive wealth redistribution from consumers’ wallets into his own and those of the company’s shareholders — are in the national interest, the anti-drinking scientists insisted in the name of public health and wellness upon income redistribution from taxpayers and consumers to their own industry.

January 2, 2025

How to solve Britain’s housing crisis

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

Tim Worstall outlines why just increasing the number of building permits allowed won’t — by itself — increase the total number of houses built. This is because the process of awarding the permits has been largely captured by the biggest players, and the supply is artificially restricted by local governments:

Kensington High Street at the intersection with Kensington Church Street. Kensington, London, England.
Photo by Ghouston via Wikimedia Commons.

The first bit is to diagnose the problem properly. If the big builders won’t build because they don’t want to then and therefore we want to find other builders who will and do want to. And the important part of this is that the big builders do indeed have market power. It costs a lot — a lorra lots — of money to be able to get a scheme through planning. Thus we not only have that problem of a shortage of places to build — because planning — but we’ve also handed market power to those able to build — because planning.

The answer is to shoot the planners, obviously. But then that always is the correct answer. Here, more specifically, we need to flood the zone with permissions. Really, grossly, oversupply. Like issue 15 million permits. Say. At which point the value of a permit is zero. So, anyone with a scrap of land can gain a permit and build.

This brings back the small housebuilder. Instead of being held back by the ideals of half a dozen national builders we’ve got 50,000 blokes all looking to build 2 or 3 houses a year. Or 10 or 20 even.

There’s no way that the big builders can then delay building on their plots. For they don’t have market power any more. And even if they do want to delay then it doesn’t matter a damn.

And this always is the way that you deal with those with market power. You flood that zone with supply so as to destroy their market power.

January 1, 2025

The EU emulates King Canute

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Europe, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The headline is a bit misleading, as Canute’s failed attempt to control the tides was intended to refute courtiers’ exaggerations about his royal powers. The EU, on the other hand, is determined to impose stasis on a very dynamic and changing field:

The European Union will have the continent-wide standard for the buggy whip real soon now. That’s the logical conclusion to draw from that recent announcement about USB-C.

For those who’ve not been following along at home the European Commission is very proud of itself. They’ve managed to pass a law mandating that USB-C (don’t worry, it’s a shape of cable) be the only flavour of connector now allowed within the EU. This has caused the less intellectual of our own rulers — St Stella for example — to just quiver, gasp, with excitement. This is proof of the ability of the collective bureaucracy to really stick one to The Man or something. A vast victory over Big Cable it seems.

Well, yes. Those with a little history to their name will know that the EU has been trying to do this for some time now. So much time that they’d originally intended to make Micro-USB the Europe-spanning insistence but it took them so long to make their rules that USB-C had already superseded it.

At which point we might draw a couple of conclusions. Even, suggest an insistence or two. That first insistence would be that a time of rapid technological change is really not quite le moment juste to be insisting upon only the one way of doing things. Because change, d’ye see? No, this is important for we know, absolutely, that there’re people out there just itching to insist upon the one connector for electric vehicles. Who would, in the name of a vapid uniformity, insist upon freezing technology at its current state rather than allow it to develop.

We could, should, also go on to insist that such a legal insistence on the only form allowed means that technological development cannot happen any more. For, in order to advance or even just change it will be necessary to change that law, that definition.

Legal changes in the European Union are not easy. Of course, the Parliament cannot do it — they are not allowed to even propose law changes, let alone enact them. It is necessary first to convince the European Commission of the need for a change. That means convincing the bureaucracy of course. Once that’s done it must pass the Council of Ministers, which is all the national governments. Parliament is then allowed to say yes. Then, and only then, would it be possible to put the new technology — say, a new cable — on the market.

But the only method we’ve got of testing whether a new cable is better is by putting it on the market. That is — no, really — the only process by which we find out whether consumers desire this new cable with all its delights, at the price that suppliers are willing to make it. But in the European system they cannot undertake the basic usefulness test until they’ve convinced a continent full of politicians that the new is in fact necessary and compulsory.

December 17, 2024

The rejection-in-advance of Bovaer as a “climate-friendly” “solution” to the “problem” of climate change

Filed under: Business, Environment, Europe, Government, Health, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At Watts Up With That?, Charles Rotter documents yet another imposed-from-above bright idea that consumers are already eager to reject:

When global elites and bureaucrats decide they must “fix” the world, the results often speak for themselves. Take the latest technocratic debacle: Bovaer, a feed additive designed to reduce methane emissions from cows, marketed as a “climate-friendly” solution. It’s now being shelved by Norwegian dairy producer Q-Meieriene after consumers flatly rejected its so-called “climate milk”.

This is more than a simple story of market rejection. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when governments, corporations, and globalists push policies and products that tamper with the food supply to address a problem that may not even exist.

The Quest to Solve a “Crisis”

Bovaer, developed by DSM-Firmenich, has been touted as a game-changer in the fight against methane emissions — a major target of climate policies. The additive is said to suppress a key enzyme in the cow’s digestive process, reducing methane emissions by up to 30%. Regulatory bodies in over 68 countries, including the EU, Australia, and the U.S., have approved its use.

But let’s step back for a moment. Why are we targeting cow burps and farts in the first place? Methane is indeed a greenhouse gas, but it’s also a short-lived one that breaks down in the atmosphere within about a decade. Moreover, cows and bison have been emitting methane for millennia without triggering apocalyptic climate shifts. Yet suddenly, livestock emissions are treated as a planetary emergency demanding immediate action.

This myopic focus on cow methane is a prime example of how climate zealotry warps priorities. Rather than addressing real and immediate issues — like the energy crises their own policies create — governments and globalists have decided to micromanage how your milk is produced, all to reduce emissions by an imperceptible fraction of a percentage point.

Consumer Rebellion

The backlash against Bovaer has been swift and fierce. In Norway, Q-Meieriene began using the additive in 2023, branding the resulting product as “climate milk”. The response? Consumers overwhelmingly rejected it, leaving supermarket shelves stocked with unsold cartons while Bovaer-free milk flew off the shelves.

Facing dismal sales, Q-Meieriene recently announced it would discontinue the use of Bovaer, stating:

This is not merely a marketing failure. It reflects a broader consumer revolt against the technocratic imposition of “solutions” no one asked for. People are increasingly skeptical of being told that their daily choices — what they eat, how they travel, how they heat their homes — must be sacrificed on the altar of climate orthodoxy.

December 6, 2024

QotD: Herbert Hoover in the Harding and Coolidge years

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

[Herbert] Hoover wants to be president. It fits his self-image as a benevolent engineer-king destined to save the populace from the vagaries of politics. The people want Hoover to be president; he’s a super-double-war-hero during a time when most other leaders have embarrassed themselves. Even politicians are up for Hoover being president; Woodrow Wilson has just died, leaving both Democrats and Republicans leaderless. The situation seems perfect.

Hoover bungles it. He plays hard-to-get by pretending he doesn’t want the Presidency, but potential supporters interpret this as him just literally not wanting the Presidency. He refuses to identify as either a Democrat or Republican, intending to make a gesture of above-the-fray non-partisanship, but this prevents either party from rallying around him. Also, he might be the worst public speaker in the history of politics.

Warren D. Harding, a nondescript Senator from Ohio, wins the Republican nomination and the Presidency. Hoover follows his usual strategy of playing hard-to-get by proclaiming he doesn’t want any Cabinet positions. This time it works, but not well: Harding offers him Secretary of Commerce, widely considered a powerless “dud” position. Hoover accepts.

Harding is famous for promising “return to normalcy”, in particular a winding down of the massive expansion of government that marked WWI and the Wilson Administration. Hoover had a better idea – use the newly-muscular government to centralize and rationalize American In his first few years in Commerce – hitherto a meaningless portfolio for people who wanted to say vaguely pro-prosperity things and then go off and play golf – Hoover instituted/invented housing standards, traffic safety standards, industrial standards, zoning standards, standardized electrical sockets, standardized screws, standardized bricks, standardized boards, and standardized hundreds of other things. He founded the FAA to standardize air traffic, and the FCC to standardize communications. In order to learn how his standards were affecting the economy, he founded the NBER to standardize government statistics.

But that isn’t enough! He mediates a conflict between states over water rights to the Colorado River, even though that would normally be a Department of the Interior job. He solves railroad strikes, over the protests of the Department of Labor. “Much to the annoyance of the State Department, Hoover fielded his own foreign service.” He proposes to transfer 16 agencies from other Cabinet departments to the Department of Commerce, and when other Secretaries shot him down, he does all their jobs anyway. The press dub him “Secretary of Commerce and Undersecretary Of Everything Else”.

Hoover’s greatest political test comes when the market crashes in the Panic of 1921. The federal government has previously ignored these financial panics. Pre-Wilson, it was small and limited to its constitutional duties – plus nobody knows how to solve a financial panic anyway. Hoover jumps into action, calling a conference of top economists and moving forward large spending projects. More important, he is one of the first government officials to realize that financial panics have a psychological aspect, so he immediately puts out lots of press releases saying that economists agree everything is fine and the panic is definitely over. He takes the opportunity to write letters saying that Herbert Hoover has solved the financial panic and is a great guy, then sign President Harding’s name to them. Whether or not Hoover deserves credit, the panic is short and mild, and his reputation grows.

While everyone else obsesses over his recession-busting, Hoover’s own pet project is saving the Soviet Union. Several years of civil war, communism, and crop failure have produced mass famine. Most of the world refuses to help, angry that the USSR is refusing to pay Czarist Russia’s debts and also pretty peeved over the whole Communism thing. Hoover finds $20 million to spend on food aid for Russia, over everyone else’s objection […]

So passed the early 1920s. Warren Harding died of a stroke, and was succeeded by Vice-President “Silent Cal” Coolidge, a man famous for having no opinions and never talking. Coolidge won re-election easily in 1924. Hoover continued shepherding the economy (average incomes will rise 30% over his eight years in Commerce), but also works on promoting Hooverism, his political philosophy. It has grown from just “benevolent engineers oversee everything” to something kind of like a precursor modern neoliberalism:

    Hoover’s plan amounted to a complete refit of America’s single gigantic plant, and a radical shift in Washington’s economic priorities. Newsmen were fascinated by is talk of a “third alternative” between “the unrestrained capitalism of Adam Smith” and the new strain of socialism rooting in Europe. Laissez-faire was finished, Hoover declared, pointing to antitrust laws and the growth of public utilities as evidence. Socialism, on the other hand, was a dead end, providing no stimulus to individual initiative, the engine of progress. The new Commerce Department was seeking what one reporter summarized as a balance between fairly intelligent business and intelligently fair government. If that were achieved, said Hoover, “we should have given a priceless gift to the twentieth century.”

Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.

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