Quotulatiousness

October 26, 2012

“Canada has effectively become the Digital Third World”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

In Forbes, Reuven Cohen looks at the state of internet access in Canada:

Before I get into what was discussed, I need to provide some context to the current state of Internet connectivity in Canada. To understand the Internet landscape in Canada is to endeavour into the realm of duopolies, bandwidth caps and mediocre Internet connections. As it stands today, Canada has effectively become the Digital Third World.

A recent video interview with The Globe and Mail’s Omar El Akkad and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings summaries the problems with cloud computing in Canada. Hastings’ specifically calls out capped Internet plans as compared to the rest of the world saying “Canada has the misfortune of being the country with the lowest internet caps maybe in the world but certainly in the developed world and in all of the Netflix world. In Mexico, Internet is largely uncapped; in the US it’s largely uncapped; in the UK it’s completely uncapped; in Canada there’s a number of providers with very low caps…I don’t quite understand it.”

Herein lies the problem, the widespread use of bandwidth caps in Canada is partially the result of a market defined by vast geographies and a limited population base. This has resulted in a highly concentrated market controlled by a small group of ISPs. Making things worse is a highly government controlled telecom industry that prevents foreign investments, particularly for wireless and broadband services. This combination of factors has led to one of the most restrictive markets for cloud computing as well as other internet related services found in any of the major industrialized nations today.

October 23, 2012

Canada’s foreign investment “net benefit” test is a farce

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:15

Andrew Coyne scrambles to find the right words to describe the indescribable:

The existing rules, as readers will know, require that a foreign takeover be of “net benefit” to Canada. How this is to be demonstrated, how it is even defined, is a secret to which the bidder is not privy — understandably enough, since it is not known to the government either. The result may be compared to a game of blind man’s bluff, only with both players wearing blindfolds. The bidder makes repeated attempts to hit the mark, while the government shouts encouragingly, “warmer… ” or “cooler…” depending on its best guess of where the target happens to be at the time.

I’m joking, of course. In fact, there’s a perfectly clear definition of “net benefit.” As set out in section 20 of the Investment Canada Act, the minister is required to take into account the effect of the investment on “the level and nature of economic activity in Canada,” specifically (but “without limiting the generality of the foregoing”) “on employment, on resource processing, on the utilization of parts, components and services produced in Canada and on exports from Canada.” Clear enough, right?

[. . .]

All told, I count more than 20 different criteria to be applied, vague, elusive and contradictory as they are. Whether it is possible to measure even one of them in any objective fashion, still less all of them at the same time, may be doubted — but even if you could, the Act provides no benchmark of what is acceptable, separately or collectively. Neither does it say what weight should be given to each in the minister’s calculations, or even whether he strictly has to pay any of them any mind at all (“the factors to be taken into account, where relevant, are…”).

In other words, the whole thing is a charade, applying a veneer of objectivity to what remains an entirely subjective — not to say opaque, arbitrary and meaningless — process. Which is good, since any attempt to define such benchmarks, weights, etc would be even more arbitrary and meaningless. Because there isn’t any objective definition of “net benefit,” at least in the sense implied, nor is it necessary to invent one. We don’t need to clarify the net benefit test. We need to abolish it.

October 21, 2012

Nick Gillespie: A libertarian appreciation for the late George McGovern

Filed under: History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:22

George McGovern will, unfortunately, be best known to most people as the poor beggar who lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon in a blowout. Nick Gillespie says there was much more to McGovern than just being on the wrong side of an electoral landslide:

McGovern’s early criticism of the Vietnam War (he first spoke against it as a newly elected Democratic senator from South Dakota in 1963) was out of step with a bipartisan Cold War consensus that smothered serious debate for too long.

Yet when you take a longer view of his career — especially after he got bounced from the Senate in 1980 during the Republican landslide he helped create — what emerges is a rare public figure whose policy positions shifted to an increasingly libertarian stance in response to a world that’s far more complicated than most politicians can ever allow.

Born in 1922 and raised during the Depression, McGovern eventually earned a doctorate in American history before becoming a politician. But it was as a private citizen he became an expert in the law of unintended consequences, which elected officials ignore routinely. He came to recognize that attempts to control the economic and lifestyle choices of Americans aren’t only destructive to cherished national ideals, but ineffective as well. That legacy is more relevant now than ever.

[. . .]

In a 1997 New York Times op-ed article, he emphasized that simply because some people abuse freedom of choice is no reason to reduce it. “Despite the death of my daughter,” he argued, “I still appreciate the differences between use and abuse.” He rightly worried that lifestyle freedom, like economic freedom, was everywhere under attack: “New attempts to regulate behavior are coming from both the right and the left, depending only on the cause. But there are those of us who don’t want the tyranny of the majority (or the outspoken minority) to stop us from leading our lives in ways that have little impact on others.”

McGovern believed that attempts to impose single-value standards were profoundly un-American and “that we cannot allow the micromanaging of each other’s lives.” But as governments at various levels expand their control of everything from health-care to mortgages to the consumption of soda pop and so much more, that’s exactly what’s happening.

QotD: Environmental externalities

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:12

That other people place different values upon the environment than I do worries me not in the slightest. It is precisely such differences of opinions about value that make a market. What does annoy me intensely is that almost all of the environmental problems that are currently being complained about have indeed been studied by economists. And they’ve found solutions to them as well. Just about any and every environmental problem is either about externalities or common access to a resource. In many ways these are just the flip side of exactly the same problem. But we do indeed know how to solve each of them and both of them. Hardin on ownership or regulation, Pigou on tax or regulation, both mediated through Coase on transactions costs (with a decent assit from Ostrom on communal ownership). There, that’s it: far from economics ignoring matters environmental economics has solved the damn problems.

So why won’t the environmentalists listen?

Tim Worstall, “Why won’t the environmentalists learn any economics?”, Adam Smith Institute blog, 2012-10-21.

October 19, 2012

Minnesota takes a firm stance … against free education

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:43

If that headline sounds stupid, it’s only because it’s accurate:

Every day, it seems, we hear of yet another story of silly out-of-date regulations, which may have had a reasonable purpose initially, getting in the way of perfectly legitimate innovation. For example, there’s been a massive growth in “open courseware” or open education programs, that put various educational classes online for everyone to benefit. They’re not designed to replace the degrees of college, but rather to just help people learn. One of the biggest ones, Coursera, recently told people in Minnesota that they could no longer take Coursera classes, due to ridiculously outdated Minnesota regulations:

    Notice for Minnesota Users:

    Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

Update: In the first of what promises to be a cascade of Minnesota-education-related announcements, Popehat is forced to introduce new terms of service for Minnesota residents:

Now circumstances require us to create special terms of use for Minnesota residents. See, some of you have occasionally said that, despite our best efforts and lack of relevant skills or experience, you occasionally learn something at Popehat […] That’s problematical in Minnesota.

You’d think that Minnesota residents should be free to learn whatever they want from any site on the internet. You’d be wrong. The State of Minnesota determines not just what degrees may be offered there, but how its residents may learn things on the internet.

[. . .]

Now, I think it’s unlikely that Popehat would be treated as subject to the statute. We’re not a learning institution and we don’t offer “courses,” per se, except in the sense of “a course of abuse.” But we can’t be too careful. We’re talking about a state that thinks it should dictate whether web sites in other states can make free online content available to its citizens. Who knows what they’ll do next? I don’t want to subject Popehat to Minnesota’s onerous disclosure requirements or pay fees or be subject to injunctions if some functionary within the Minnesota Office of Higher Education decides that Popehat is attempting to offer courses in, say, Spammer Communications. I don’t want to have to go to Minnesota to defend myself. Lakes make me itchy. Plus, my lovely wife spent only a couple of years there in the 1970s and I still laugh at her accent, so I’m concerned that legal proceedings there may not go my way.

Update, 22 October: Minnesota belatedly realizes that beclowning yourselves in front of an international audience is sub-optimal:

Last week, we were among those who reported on a ridiculous attempt by regulators in Minnesota to enforce a regulation aimed at stopping degree mills, by telling various legitimate online learning providers like Coursera that Minnesota residents couldn’t take courses from without state approval. Thankfully, all of the attention has caused Minnesota officials to admit that this was silly and back down. According to Larry Pogemiller, director of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education:

    Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free. No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.

October 7, 2012

Recycle, re-use, re- … oops.

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Food, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:48

The EU is being its traditional bureaucratic self again, this time in the home-made jams and jellies department:

It’s a fairly usual part of modern government to try to increase the rate at which people recycle used items. Sometimes it’s a very sensible practice indeed (we’ve been recycling gold for millennia precisely because it is so valuable) and sometimes it’s really rather silly (no trees are saved by paper recycling as we make paper from trees that we grow specifically to make paper). But more recycling is generally seen as a good thing. Which is what makes this latest piece of tomfoolery from the European Union so strange:

    But the thousands who regularly sell their home-made jam, marmalade or chutney in re-used jars may have to abandon their traditions after a warning that they are breaching European health and safety regulations.

    Legal advisers to Britain’s Churches have sent out a circular saying that while people can use jars for jam at home or to give to family and friends, they cannot sell them or even give them away as raffle prizes at a public event.

No, it’s not a spoof. It really is true that those tasked with running an entire continent, the bureaucrats in Brussels, think that putting home made jam (jelly to you perhaps) in used jam jars should be and is a crime. With serious penalties too:

    The agency said it was up to local authority environmental health officers to enforce the regulations, and penalties can reach a maximum of a £5,000 fine, six months’ imprisonment, or both.

October 2, 2012

Why (some) business experience is valuable for politicians

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Education, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:34

Megan McArdle writes about the worsening problem of government officials who have never spent any time in the business world, but have huge power over the business environment:

Of course, we’ve had many good presidents with no business experience. But Obama’s whole administration tends to be light on people from outside the academia — NGO — government triangle. It’s something that’s increasingly true of Washington in general — and, I think, increasingly problematic.

[. . .]

The increasingly mandarin elite, hygienically removed from the grubby business of scrounging for customers, frequently seems to have no idea at all what goes on in companies. Stop grinning, Republicans; I mean you too. Yes, too many liberals seem to believe that all infelicitous market outcomes can be cured by appointing a commission composed of really top-notch academics — during the debate over health care reform, the words “peer reviewed study” were invoked by supporters with no less touching a faith than an Italian grandmother performing a rosary for the salvation of the godless Communists. On the other hand, here comes the GOP claiming that entrepreneurship can be started or stopped with small changes in marginal tax rates, as if one were turning on and off a light. This is no less of a technocratic fallacy, even if, as with many technocratic fallacies, there is a grain of sound theory buried somewhere under that towering mountain of unwarranted assumptions.

The result is that companies usually get treated as a rather simple variable in a model rather than the complex organizations they are. For example, you see people reasoning from corporate behavior to efficacy: if fast food companies spend a lot of money on advertising, then said advertising must make kids eat more fast food; if hiring managers demand a college degree for positions that didn’t used to require one, there must be a good business reason. “They wouldn’t do it,” says the argument, “if it didn’t work.”

If you’ve actually worked at a company, this is a ludicrous statement. Companies do stuff that doesn’t work all the time, and it can take decades to unwind even the stupidest expenditures and rules. More importantly, when they do have good reasons, they are often not the reasons that outsiders think. The elite projects their own concerns onto the company, instead of asking the company what it’s worried about.

[. . .]

The flip side of this is the people who think that companies don’t do anything at all that couldn’t be done better by government or academia … except sit back and rake the money in. This is particularly prevalent in discussions of health care, but it frequently pops up elsewhere. My favorite in this genre is Jerry Avorn, the professor of pharmacoeconomics who told Ezra Klein that we didn’t really need drug companies because now academics with good drug prospects could simply go straight to the capital markets and raise money to fund their own projects.

This is simply breathtakingly wrong. For one thing, venture capitalists want an exit strategy before they will put money in, and in biotech, exit is often a sale to a big pharmaceutical firm; no Big Pharma, no VC funds. And second, few newly hatched biotech firms have the complementary capacities to bring a drug to market by themselves. Forget the sales force; I’m talking about the expertise to get the thing through the FDA approval process and produce it in massive quantities. How do they acquire those capacities? They partner with Big Pharma, or license to them.

September 29, 2012

Regulating the size of soft drinks won’t solve the obesity problem, but will infringe on individual rights

Filed under: Food, Health, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

At Reason, Baylen Linnekin explains that even if all the claims about the nutritional evils of sweetened soft drinks are completely true, regulations will not actually make much difference:

As an opponent of increased regulations, I find these latter scientific points noteworthy. But I also believe that even if sugar-sweetened drinks turn out to be virtually everything their opponents claim, people still have a right to buy and drink these beverages — just as much, as I argued in a recent Bloggingheads debate, as they have a right to buy a Big Mac. After all, we don’t have a right to free speech or to travel from one state to another because speech or travel has been proven by the scientific community to promote good health.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, I was to take at face value the assertions of those who claim the NEJM studies justify some combination of sugary drink taxes and bans.

There is still this problem: The solutions these advocates propose won’t likely solve the problem of obesity. For example, studies have suggested taxes will have little or no impact on obesity. And not one person has (to the best of my knowledge) even attempted to argue that soda bans would have any specific impact, either — unless one counts “sending a message” or “creating a debate” as conditions precedent to weight loss.

There is also the issue of a genetic predisposition, which again is one finding of the studies. Many people are genetically predisposed to certain food allergies — including soy, dairy, gluten, nuts, and seafood — and food intolerances. I have never seen a researcher or AP journalist like Marchione argue seriously that the widespread impact of food allergies “adds weight to the push for taxes” on wheat, tofu, and shrimp. Yet if one were to buy the argument of those calling for taxes and bans to combat consumption of sugary drinks in light of the NEJM studies, one would have to accept the idea of taxing society writ large based largely on the outcomes of what these researchers argue is a genetic condition.

September 28, 2012

Reason.tv: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring at 50 Years

Filed under: Books, Environment, History, Media, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

“It’s not polite to talk about brown and black people dying because rich white people in America feel better about themselves when the brown and black people don’t get to use DDT,” says the University of Alabama’s Andrew Morriss, co-editor of the new book Silent Spring at 50: The False Crises of Rachel Carson.

Published by the Cato Institute, the collection of essays by environmentalists, law professors, economists, and other analysts argues that the legacy of Carson’s best-known book — widely considered the starting point of the modern environmentalist movement and the international ban on the malaria-fighting pesticide DDT — has caused many more problems than it has solved.

Reason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Morriss to talk about Carson’s work and influence on environmental policy.

September 24, 2012

Flying cars are still (mostly) future-tech, but amphibious cars are almost here

Filed under: Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:23

Except for the WW2-era Schwimmwagen, no other amphibious car has gone into mass production. That might change soon, if Gibbs Technologies can square the circle between US highway regulations and US Coast Guard regulations:

Gibbs Technologies, based in Nuneaton, England, is the only major company now making a serious push into the amphibious car. Its Gibbs Amphibians Inc. division, in Auburn Hills, Mich., has developed the Aquada, a sports car that can hit speeds of more than 100 miles per hour on the road and then, with a press of a button, turn into a boat that can do more than 30 mph.

[. . .]

The reason it is still in dry dock, he says, is a conflict between U.S. government regulations for vehicles on land and on water.

For example, air-bag sensors must be set according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration standards for the car to be approved for the open road. But on the water, the settings are too sensitive. Waves that crash on the vehicle deploy the air bags. Another problem: An Environmental Protection Agency rule requires a catalyst to control emissions which can heat up several hundred degrees. The Coast Guard bars anything even half that hot operating in the engine compartment.

The Aquada is on the sidelines for now, but Gibbs is moving ahead with a drivable jet ski it calls the Quadski that will be on the market by year-end. With wheels that fold out horizontally when it is afloat, the Quadski can travel as fast as 45 mph on water and on land. And it has fewer regulations to meet because it is classified as a personal watercraft.

Flying cars have shown up closer to the showroom in recent years, but they’re still not available to the general public.

September 23, 2012

Canada is open for (shady) business

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:03

The Economist looks at the relative level of difficulty in setting up a shell corporation in various jurisdictions and how easy it is to create an untraceable shell:

Shell companies — which exist on paper only, with no real employees or offices — have legitimate uses. But the untraceable shell also happens to be the vehicle of choice for money launderers, bribe givers and takers, sanctions busters, tax evaders and financiers of terrorism. The trail has gone cold in many a criminal probe because law enforcers were unable to pierce a shell’s corporate veil.

The international standard governing shells, set by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF), is clear-cut. It says countries should take all necessary measures to prevent their misuse, such as ensuring that accurate information on the real (or “beneficial”) owner is available to “competent authorities”. More than 180 countries have pledged to follow it. A study* scrutinises the level of compliance worldwide. The results are depressing.

Posing as consultants, the authors asked 3,700 incorporation agents in 182 countries to form companies for them. Overall, 48% of the agents who replied failed to ask for proper identification; almost half of these did not want any documents at all. Contrary to conventional wisdom, providers in tax havens, such as Jersey and the Cayman Islands, were much more likely to comply with the standards than those from the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Even poor countries had a better compliance rate, suggesting the problem in the rich world is not cost but unwillingness to follow the rules (see chart). Only ten out of 1,722 providers in America required notarised documents in line with the FATF standard.

September 22, 2012

The “joy” of data-capped, throttled internet access

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

Welcome to Canada:

Blogger Stephanie Morrow has complained about data caps in Canada for a while now. The details of her situation show just how hard it can be to get faster internet even if you are willing to pay for it:

    My monthly data cap at the moment is 80 gigs. I pay just over $100 CA for 80 gigs a month, and $2 CA per gig over my cap. Understandably, 80 gigs is not that much, especially if you play multiple games or download a lot of games on Steam, watch Netflix, have a PlayStation 3, Xbox, 3DS, iPad or iPhone like we do. Sadly, there are not a lot of other options. We have two major ISP companies in the city that work this way (there’s no such thing as unlimited here in Canada from these two ISPs), and then there are a handful of smaller ISPs that do offer unlimited but at a greatly reduced speed.

    So, I had to make the sacrifice. Did I want an unlimited cap when I’d barely able to download anything because it would take weeks and weeks, or did I want a cap and be able to download at the speed of light? The cap is a harsh mistress, not to mention that everything peer-to-peer gets throttled. That means no free-to-play games for me because they typically download via a peer-to-peer method that gets throttled. I was unable to do my job while using internet from Rogers, one of the major companies here. I had no choice but to switch to a smaller company or give up my job. I wrote to the companies about this situation but didn’t hear anything back.

That’s a pretty amazing story. I remember the speeds I got when I used another cable company, and I remember just how bad it felt to have to set a game to download overnight. Stephanie goes on to update the situation on her Google + blog, noting that the company she is with is one of the worst throttlers in the country. She quotes TechVibes:

    In 2010, Shaw throttled 14% of users and Bell throttled 16% of users. Rogers? The Toronto-based telco throttled a startling 78% of users, and this number has surpassed 90% during some quarters since 2008.

Again, it can be hard for many of us to imagine having such a limited connection, but I hear from players all the time who have such issues. Is internet access a human right, as declared by the United Nations? Do players have a right to the internet, even if they are using the connection mainly for gaming? I’d have to say yes simply because there are so many common advantages that come with internet access, access that provides information not only about one’s social network but local weather problems, health issues… the list goes on and on. The internet is now so much a part of our lives that we forget just how much we need it.

It’s a very rare month that I don’t get a bandwidth warning from Rogers…

September 18, 2012

Canada ranks fifth in the world for economic freedom

Filed under: Australia, Cancon, Economics, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

The annual Fraser Institute report on world economic freedom may confirm what a lot of Canadians have been noticing: we’re now much more free than our American friends, at least by the measurements tracked in this series of rankings (PDF):

  • In the chain-linked index, average economic freedom rose from 5.30 (out of 10) in
    1980 to 6.88 in 2007. It then fell for two consecutive years, resulting in a score of
    6.79 in 2009 but has risen slightly to 6.83 in 2010, the most recent year available.
    It appears that responses to the economic crisis have reduced economic freedom
    in the short term and perhaps prosperity over the long term, but the upward
    movement this year is encouraging.
  • In this year’s index, Hong Kong retains the highest rating for economic freedom,
    8.90 out of 10. The other top 10 nations are: Singapore, 8.69; New Zealand, 8.36;
    Switzerland, 8.24; Australia, 7.97; Canada, 7.97; Bahrain, 7.94; Mauritius, 7.90;
    Finland, 7.88; and Chile, 7.84.
  • The rankings (and scores) of other large economies in this year’s index are the United
    Kingdom, 12th (7.75); the United States, 18th (7.69); Japan, 20th (7.64); Germany,
    31st (7.52); France, 47th (7.32); Italy, 83rd (6.77); Mexico, 91st, (6.66); Russia, 95th
    (6.56); Brazil, 105th (6.37); China, 107th (6.35); and India, 111th (6.26).
  • The scores of the bottom ten nations in this year’s index are: Venezuela, 4.07;
    Myanmar, 4.29; Zimbabwe, 4.35; Republic of the Congo, 4.86; Angola, 5.12;
    Democratic Republic of the Congo, 5.18; Guinea-Bissau, 5.23; Algeria, 5.34; Chad,
    5.41; and, tied for 10th worst, Mozambique and Burundi, 5.45.
  • The United States, long considered the standard bearer for economic freedom
    among large industrial nations, has experienced a substantial decline in economic
    freedom during the past decade. From 1980 to 2000, the United States was generally
    rated the third freest economy in the world, ranking behind only Hong Kong and
    Singapore. After increasing steadily during the period from 1980 to 2000, the chainlinked
    EFW rating of the United States fell from 8.65 in 2000 to 8.21 in 2005 and
    7.70 in 2010. The chain-linked ranking of the United States has fallen precipitously
    from second in 2000 to eighth in 2005 and 19th in 2010 (unadjusted ranking of 18th).

September 16, 2012

Nebraska: same penalty for manslaughter and for operating a business without a license

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

Nebraska sure is harsh on people who operate unlicensed businesses. Or they’re really soft on those who commit manslaughter:

The libertarian public-interest law firm Institute for Justice reports on one of the most insane, inane, and profane prosecutions in all-time memory.

Karen Hough is a long-time practitioner of “equine massage,” which supposedly is beneficial in all sorts of ways to the animals in question.

[. . .]

A few weeks later, she received a letter from Nebraska’s Department of Health and Human Services ordering her to “cease and desist” from the “unlicensed practice of veterinary medicine.” In Nebraska, continuing to operate a business without a license after getting a cease and desist letter is a Class III felony. So Karen could face up to 20 years in prison and pay a $25,000 fine. By comparison, that’s the same penalty for manslaughter in the Cornhusker State.

Nebraska isn’t a place that shows up in the news very often: I’ve posted nearly 5,000 entries here at the blog, and this is the first time I’ve needed to tag anything “Nebraska”.

September 8, 2012

QotD: The European Project

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Government, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:22

Like all people with bad habits, politicians and bureaucrats are infinitely inventive when it comes to rationalizing the European Project, though they’re inventive in nothing else. Without the Union, they say, there would be no peace; when it’s pointed out that the Union is the consequence of peace, not its cause, they say that no small country can survive on its own. When it is pointed out that Singapore, Switzerland, and Norway seem to have no difficulties in that regard, they say that pan-European regulations create economies of scale that promote productive efficiency. When it is pointed out that European productivity lags behind the rest of the world’s, they say that European social protections are more generous than anywhere else. If it is then noted that long-term unemployment rates in Europe are higher than elsewhere, another apology follows. The fact is that for European politicians and bureaucrats, the European Project is like God — good by definition, which means that they have subsequently to work out a theodicy to explain, or explain away, its manifest and manifold deficiencies.

[. . .]

The personal interests of European politicians and bureaucrats, with their grossly inflated, tax-free salaries, are perfectly obvious. For politicians who have fallen out of favor at home, or grown bored with the political process, Brussels acts as a vast and luxurious retirement home, with the additional gratification of the retention of power. The name of a man such as European Council president Herman Van Rompuy, whose charisma makes Hillary Clinton look like Mata Hari, would, without the existence of the European Union, have reached most of the continent’s newspapers only if he had paid for a classified advertisement in them. Instead of which, he bestrides the European stage if not like a colossus exactly, at least like the spread of fungus on a damp wall.

Corporate interests, ever anxious to suppress competition, approve of European Union regulations because they render next to impossible the entry of competitors into any market in which they already enjoy a dominant position, while also allowing them to extend their domination into new markets. That is why the CAC40 of today (the index of the largest 40 companies on the French stock exchange) will have more or less the same names 100 years hence.

More interestingly, perhaps, Hannan explains the European Union’s corruption of so-called civil society. Suppose you have an association for the protection of hedgehogs because you love hedgehogs. The European Union then offers your association money to expand its activities, which of course it accepts. The Union then proposes a measure allegedly for the protection of hedgehogs, but actually intended to promote a large agrarian or industrial interest over a small one, first asking the association’s opinion about the proposed measure. Naturally, your association supports the Union because it has become dependent on the Union’s subsidy. The Union then claims that it enjoys the support of those who want to protect hedgehogs. The best description of this process is fascist corporatism, which so far (and it is of course a crucial difference) lacks the paramilitary and repressive paraphernalia of real fascism.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Rejecting the European Project”, City Journal, 2012-09-07

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