Quotulatiousness

September 2, 2019

The economics of climate change policies

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

Tim Worstall explains the economic implications for the various demands that we consume less in order to fight climate change:

A major contention from economists is that if we decide to fight global heating in the wrong manner then we’ll make ourselves poorer than we need be. A major contention from the same economists is that if we don’t fight global heating at all then we’ll make ourselves poorer than we need be. That being the economic point about all of this, we must fight global heating in the correct manner.

The correct manner not being vast plans by bureaucracies. Instead, change market prices with the one intervention – a crowbar into the system just the once with a carbon tax – and then let the economy itself chew through the implications of that.

Do note that the argument is not “poorer than we are now”, it’s poorer in the future than we need to be in that future.

And then we’ve got the varied Green, New Deal, unsoaped hippies and socialist idiots whose demand is rather different. They are insisting that we must be poorer, now, than we are, now. These people really do have to be told to bugger off:

    A sustainable environment means consuming less, not differently.

The only useful measure of how rich you are is “What are you able to consume?” Insisting that you consume less is therefore insisting upon being poorer.

It’s also entirely wrong that consuming differently won’t make a difference. Because again those economists. The thing we consume is value. That’s also the thing that we produce. That Gross Domestic Product, GDP, that is so bewailed as a societal target is nothing but the value added in the economy. GNP is the value which accrues to the people in the economy. NNI is the net value that goes as income to those in the economy. And so on through the different possible combinations of net and gross, national and domestic, production and income.

They’re all measures of value added. Not of resources consumed at all. So, if we face resource constraints all we need to do is change the value we’re producing by using fewer of those scarce resources to do so. Then we can carry on consuming ever greater quantities of value that we’ve gone and created. This must obviously be so – we do quite obviously face resource constraints currently. All economic resources are scarce, that’s what makes them economic resources in the first place, their scarcity. We don’t actually have an economics of atmospheric nitrogen because it’s not scarce. We do have an economics of soil nitrogen because it is scarce. The conversion of one to the other comes at a price – many prices in fact. The conversion itself, the algal blooms from having done so and so on. But the doing also adds value – which is then what humans consume, the value added.

So, the idea that consuming differently won’t make a difference is dribble. Plus, the idea that we must all be poorer in order to sustain that environment is drivel. Simple observation tells us that places with poor people have worse environments than places with rich.

August 24, 2019

Remy: All My Loving (Beatles Parody)

Filed under: Economics, Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

ReasonTV
Published on 23 Aug 2019

Remy discovers the hysterical, shrieking crowds are here for the entitlements.

Written and Performed by Remy
Produced and Edited by Austin Bragg
Music tracks and mastering by Ben Karlstrom
——————

Reason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.

—————-

LYRICS:

Does adulthood dismay you?
Vote me and I’ll pay you
You won’t have to grow up it’s true
All your bills will be paid
Your adulthood delayed
And I’ll give all this money to you

Bob commuted to college
For discounted knowledge
So large debts he would not accrue
Lived at home, did some chores
Now he’ll also pay yours
Cuz I’ll give all his money to you

All this money
You will get from Bob
All this money
If I get this job

All your work wages risen
Your debts all forgiven
Your childcare will be paid for too
Want free parental leave
Just takes one vote for me
And I’ll give all this money to you

All Bob’s money
I will give to you
All Bob’s money
If I win it’s true
All Bob’s money
All Bob’s money
All Bob’s money
I will give to you

August 19, 2019

UBI: threat or menace?

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

At Samizdata, Samizdata Illuminatus outlines the arguments for some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Negative Income Tax (NIT) and argues that it’s a terrible idea that should not be implemented anywhere:

Cartoon that appeared with Michael K. Spencer’s article “Is Universal Basic Income really a solution?” at https://medium.com/@Michael_Spencer/is-universal-basic-income-really-a-solution-c0d6d95f100e

For those that are not familiar with the term, UBI (Universal Basic Income) means, roughly, “the government should guarantee everyone some minimum level of income whether they work or not”.

The notion began simply enough. Some economists observed that there are a myriad of intersecting government programs for the poor (in many countries, dozens) which distort behaviour in horrible ways and which cost a fortune in overhead to administer. This is where the problem of UBI begins, in the hubris of the armchair philosopher. “What if”, these economists asked, “we can’t get rid of the dole entirely (even though that would be better) but we could at least make it efficient by replacing the entire morass with a single program, say a negative income tax?”

Trained to explore ideas (no matter how bad) for a living, said academic economists then vigorously explored this impossible hypothetical world in which they could not get rid of the dole but could somehow get politicians to perfectly implement their hypothetical improved alternative, and proceeded to write lots of papers about it.

Again, this academic musing was already a utopian impossibility, for in the real world, there are interests that would act to block the elimination of existing welfare schemes and insist that the new scheme be added to the current ones rather than replacing them. This sort of thing is routine, of course; originally, VAT schemes were thought of by academic economists as a less distorting replacement for income taxes but ended up added in addition.

The interest groups arrayed against replacement of existing welfare schemes range from the bureaucrats whose job it is to administer said schemes (and who for whom “efficiency” means unemployment), to the vast range of contractors employed in providing benefits of one sort or another, to the politicians who get votes and power in exchange for largesse paid for with other people’s money, to the current recipients of existing benefit schemes who will correctly reason that the notion behind “efficiency” is not to increase their benefits. There’s no advantage in replacement for any member of the existing system, and thus, it was a non-starter to begin with.

This did not, however, prevent many people from falling in love with the idea, as wouldn’t-it-be-ever-so-elegant-if-it-could-happen so often trumps this-is-reality in the minds of those saying “what if” over a pint or seven late in the evening at the pub next to the economics department offices.

Oh, and of course, a form of the negative income tax was created in the United States under the name of the “earned income tax credit”; as might have been predicted in advance, it was added to existing welfare programs rather than in any way replacing them.

From this simple yet benighted beginning as a completely unrealistic thought experiment, the idea of UBI gained traction and then, as most cancers do, developed a mutant and even more virulent cell line, one that allowed it to spread and grow in the minds not only of leftists (who are already inclined towards redistribution of all sorts) but those on the right who are inclined to view ordinary people as useless.

We are now informed that UBI is a solution to a different problem as well. We are informed, in not-so-hushed tones, that the rise of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence will soon automate away most jobs, resulting in a vast class of people who will be unemployable in any trade whatsoever, which will consequently lead to mass unemployment, and that said permanently unemployable people will starve to death if we don’t find ways to provide them with income.

We are told we thus must guarantee a minimum income for all, without regard to whether they are capable of earning a living on their own, or we’ll have riots on our hands once AI based systems become ubiquitous. They claim that we should, nay, must, promise everyone some minimal subsistence income, whether they work or not. This will provide the masses with the ability to survive, and thus society will be preserved.

August 16, 2019

Rule Britannia, Britannia Rules the Salt | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1930 Part 1 of 1

Filed under: Britain, History, India — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published on 15 Aug 2019

After the Great War, the British empire is at its peak in terms of population and size. However, resistance against colonialism is starting to brew in the British colonies and dominions.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Sound design: Iryna Dulka

Portrait Colorizations by Daniel Weiss.

Sources: National Portrait Gallery, Library and Archives Canada, Jenny Scott

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

August 1, 2019

QotD: Small government provides little scope for special interest lobbying

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

When a government is small, it can provide very limited benefits to special interest groups, so there is a small incentive for special interest groups to lobby the government. The successes of those that do lobby the government will cause the government to grow. This occurs because the great majority of voters and taxpayers are rationally ignorant about most government activity, making it easy to increase everybody’s taxes a small amount to provide a sizable benefit to a few. Most people do not have an incentive to investigate in detail the allocation of their tax dollars, but the special interest groups with the sizable benefit will repay the representatives with political support. Thus, special interest groups cause government growth.

The growth of government, in turn, raises the payoff available to special interest groups. With a higher payoff to special interest groups, this encourages the formation of new special interest groups to share in the payoff. A larger government can support a larger number of special interest groups. Thus, as government grows, more special interest groups form. The formation of special interest groups in turn increases the demand for special interest legislation, cause a further growth in government spending.

Randy Holcombe, An Economic Analysis of Democracy, 1985.

July 31, 2019

The quickest way to raise the real income of minimum wage earners

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

Tim Worstall explains how to quickly raise the living standards of everyone in Britain earning the minimum wage, without costing employers any more:

I – Tim Worstall that is – then started pointing out that the difference between this living wage and the minimum wage was the amount of tax that we – shamefully – charge to the low paid. Tax being both income tax and national insurance contributions. In fact, I rather shouted about it around the place, at the ASI, and here in The Times in 2012.

    The gross annual salary of a full-time worker on the minimum wage is £12,070.50. We could come close to lifting every low-paid worker out of poverty if we simply increased the personal tax allowance from £8,105 to that sum. Not a penny of income tax or NICs should leave their pay packet. A full-time worker, however, on the living wage would be taking home £12,410.74, after the taxman has taken a cut — that’s only £340 more. And before the Foundation uprated the living wage yesterday, the annual difference was just £8.74.

    There are problems. Raising the personal allowance gives everyone a tax cut — which I’ll admit doesn’t break my heart. But we could lower the amount at which the higher rates of tax kick in to make up for that lost revenue. And won’t these workers lose their right to unemployment benefit and a pension, if they don’t pay NICs? No, they qualify already, as the system treats the very low paid as if they had made NI contributions. We should go farther. The link between the full-year minimum wage and the personal allowance for tax and NI should be made explicit. Change one and the government of the day must change the other. If the minimum wage is the minimum moral amount that someone’s labour is worth, then that is what they should get, not the amount after Denis MacShane’s European wanderings have been paid for.

    Which leaves us with two competing visions of how everyone can be free of poverty pay. The Living Wage Campaign’s vision is to shout at every employer in the country until they give in. The Worstall Way is to increase the incomes of the working poor by stopping taxing them.

June 27, 2019

“Raise our taxes!” cried the hypocritical virtue signallers

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

We’ve been over this ground before. Some very rich people are getting fawning media coverage for their “selfless”, “virtuous” demand that the government raise their taxes. Except they’re far from selfless: they’re demanding that other people be forced to pay more tax, but they’re very much not putting their own money where their bleating mouths are. Most governments are happy to accept more money from you than your formal tax liabilities:

… are all very eager to accept your contributions. But most people don’t take advantage of this mechanism, especially the ones garnering headlines for their “altruism”. Because they’re virtue signalling, and almost certainly don’t actually want to be taxed more. Don’t believe what people merely say they want, watch what they actually do (economists call this “revealed preference“). Hypocrites, the lot of them.

June 26, 2019

What is the problem that a wealth tax is designed to solve?

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

Andrew Coyne asks the obvious question about the sudden keen interest in imposing wealth taxes:

It is noteworthy how the debate on inequality has shifted in recent years: from the problem of poverty, whose evils are obvious, to the “problem” of great wealth; from the gap between the poor and the rest of us, to the gap between the rest of us and the rich, or indeed between the rich and the very rich.

But it is not obvious why it is wrong, in itself, that a small number of people should get stinking rich. It is clearly objectionable if they did so by illicit or unethical means — but then it is the means itself, not the wealth, to which we object. And it would be in poor taste, at the least, if they spent it all on themselves. But that is not how the great fortunes are typically disposed of — it’s physically impossible to spend more than a small fraction of it.

Perhaps the argument is less that the rich are too rich than it is that the government is too poor. You can make a case that government should spend more on certain things, especially in America. It doesn’t follow that you need to raise taxes to do so. A lot of good new spending could be funded by cutting bad old spending.

Suppose there were a case for raising taxes. Are wealth taxes the way to go? Wealth is, after all, merely the accumulation of past income — and we already tax income. If rich people are exploiting loopholes to avoid paying tax on their incomes, by all means close the loopholes. But the case for taxing income twice seems obscure.

Yes, we already have a kind of wealth tax, in the form of municipal property taxes — and they’re a notorious mess. They conform to none of the usual principles of good taxation, being neither simple, nor efficient, nor fair.

Why unfair? The bedrock criteria of tax fairness is supposed to be ability to pay. That’s only uncertainly related to wealth. Suppose the value of your house shoots up. Congrats: suddenly you’re wealthy. But your income is unchanged. And it’s income you need, or more accurately cash, to pay your taxes. It’s not clear why you should pay more in tax than someone with the same income, but a cheaper house.

June 14, 2019

“[P]eople aren’t really arguing about the existence or logic of the Laffer Curve they just hate the empirical answer”

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

The Laffer Curve is one of those ideas that drives some people mad, because if it’s true (and empirically it appears to hold most of the time), it militates against raising taxes on the wealthy:

That working out where the peak of the Laffer Curve is is difficult is entirely true. That it’s going to be different for each tax in each different legal and societal set up is also true. But that doesn’t excuse drivel like this:

    The ends of the curve are basic enough – at a tax rate of 0, the government will raise $0 in revenue, and at a tax rate of 100, the government will still raise $0 in revenue because people won’t work without take-home pay. At the extremes, the Laffer curve is correct, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the points in the middle. Laffer’s idea, however, was that a “tipping point” existed on the continuum in between, where people’s incentives to work and invest decreased because tax rates were too onerous.

If the end points are true – something admitted – then it’s a matter of simple, pure, and true logic that there are one or more revenue maximising points inbetween. For it’s simple enough for us to observe that there are tax rates which do raise revenue. And if we have tax rates which raise no revenue and tax rates which raise some then there are those one or more rates which raise the most.

So, please, can we stop the drivel?

Sure, Art Laffer himself is incorrect when stating that all tax cuts always pay for themselves through increased economic growth. But that doesn’t invalidate the logic of the curve, only the use to which it is put.

Fifty-four percent. That’s approximately it: the tax maximizing point on the curve when you include all of the taxes on income (including the things they often don’t call taxes — social security, unemployment insurance, and other non-tax taxes — but which are still withheld from paycheques or payable at tax deadline time). Go much above that and the government’s take begins to decrease, defeating the purpose of raising the tax rate in the first place. (Unless the real purpose is just to harm the rich … which might be true in a number of cases.)

June 9, 2019

People who call for higher taxes are almost always hypocrites

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

And the numbers prove it:

There are many people who tell us that taxation in the UK is too low. Just think of all the gorgeously bureaucratic things that could be done if only the government had more money! Then there’s the number of people who actually do pay more tax on the basis that they think the government should have more money. The second being a rather smaller number than the first.

Which does bring us to that basic point that economists do insist upon making. Revealed preferences are a much better guide to what people do in fact believe than are expressed. Or, as folk wisdom has it, talk is cheap. That many shout that taxes should be higher – usually to insist that them over there should be taxed more – is interesting and amusing. But the actual number of people who really believe taxes should be higher is the number of people who voluntarily offer up more of their own hard earned to the government.

Which means that, according to the aggregate views and actions of the population of Britain taxes last year were too low by exactly the amount of £11,069. Everyone else is just virtue signalling:

    Donations to the Treasury have dwindled in recent years, however, even as the country’s debt remains relatively high. There were just 14 donations and bequests to reduce the national debt in the 2018-19 tax year, totalling £11,069, the UK Debt Management Office said.

That is the revealed preference of us all in aggregate.

It’s not just the UK where the number of people demanding higher taxes don’t actually put their own money where their mouths are — it’s true in Norway, the USA, and even the City of Toronto.

For ultra generous Canadians, Her Majesty will happily accept your donations here. To prove that you’re even more devoted to the challenge, you can even forego the tax credit, too!

June 4, 2019

What do you get for your tax money?

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

Alex Noble conducts a small experiment:

I suggest we stop thinking about taxes as paying for something useful – this type of thinking paralyses us and causes us to refuse to do that which needs doing. Because our taxes are supposed to pay for it.

We are no longer charitable, because our taxes pay for dole money.
We no longer look after the verge outside our homes, because our taxes are supposed to pay for a council worker with a strimmer.
We don’t repair potholes in our roads, because council workmen are supposed to fill them in.

Just to check that last one, I contacted my local council.

    “I was wondering if I could personally pay a local company to make repairs to the potholes that are causing damage to my car out of my money, and if so, would they be granted permission to close the road while my privately-funded repairs were being carried out?”

And they said…………

    “It would not be possible for you undertake these repairs, and no permission would be given to close the road.”

So I proposed I make a payment to them, to be spent on repairing the road:

    “…could I instead make a voluntary tax contribution on the condition the money is to be spent on these road repairs?”

And they said…

    “…the County Council will not accept payment from members of the public for the provision of highway maintenance over and above that already collected via the Council Tax”

I made one last attempt…

    “I have obtained quotes for the work which are acceptable to me and my neighbours – is there really no way we can as private individuals simply pay for the repairs to our road?”

They responded:

    “…it is not possible to accept any from of funding other than that accepted via the Council Tax and Central Government.”

So I just went out and bought a bag of sand and pounded it into the hole one night. A temporary fix, admittedly.

£5 of sand and five minutes of my time.

No doubt the council are scouring CCTV as we speak in an attempt to bring to justice the criminal that repaired the road.

June 1, 2019

Paying taxes is only for the little people like you and me…

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canada’s tax-gathering bureaucracy is eager to crack down on scams that attempt to hide taxable funds from scrutiny, although they seem to be rather more vigilant when it’s some poor slob who forgets to declare a grand or two from part-time work than multi-national organizations running decades-long scams to benefit deep-pocketed clients:

The Canada Revenue Agency has once again made a secret out-of-court settlement with wealthy KPMG clients caught using what the CRA itself had alleged was a “grossly negligent” offshore “sham” set up to avoid detection by tax authorities, CBC’s The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada’s Enquête have learned.

This, despite the Liberal government’s vow to crack down on high-net-worth taxpayers who used the now-infamous Isle of Man scheme. The scheme orchestrated by accounting giant KPMG enabled clients to dodge tens of millions of dollars in taxes in Canada by making it look as if multimillionaires had given away their fortunes to anonymous overseas shell companies and get their investment income back as tax-free gifts.

KPMG is a global network of accounting and auditing firms headquartered out of the Netherlands and is one of the top firms in Canada.

“Tax cheats can no longer hide,” National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier promised in 2017.

Now, Tax Court documents obtained by CBC News/Radio-Canada show two members of the Cooper family in Victoria, as well as the estate of the late patriarch Peter Cooper, reached an out-of-court settlement on May 24 over their involvement in the scheme.

Details of the settlement and even minutes of the meetings discussing it are under wraps. A CBC News/Radio-Canada reporter who showed up to one such meeting this spring left after realizing it was closed to the public.

Journalists discovered references to the final settlement agreement in Tax Court documents only by chance.

May 29, 2019

Trudeau’s Liberals consider running on “more taxes” platform for fall election

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

Are you ready for more taxes? Justin Trudeau seems to think you are, and internal Liberal Party documents indicate that several “revenue enhancement” tools are among the ideas being considered for inclusion in the party’s election campaign:

Are you ready for a tax on pop?

That is what some Liberals want to run on in October’s election.

Well, that and a carbon tax, a plastic tax, a tax on selling your home and more.

When it comes to taxes, Liberal like them all.

Lest you think I’m picking on Liberals, this actually comes from an internal party document that was first reported by the Liberal-friendly CBC.

“Ontario Liberal MPs want to pitch voters on a “sugar sweetened beverages levy — more commonly known as a soda tax — in the coming federal election campaign,” reported CBC over the weekend.

The information came from a series of policy proposals put forward by Ontario Liberal MPs that were to be considered for both the budget earlier this year and as potential policies for the upcoming election.

“We have a problem with sugar sweetened beverages being too readily available at too low a price and it is massively contributing to the obesity epidemic,” Liberal MP Mark Holland wrote in support of the proposal.

The Liberals want a tax of 20% on any sugar sweetened beverage believing it could bring in an estimated $1.2 billion a year or $29.6 billion over 25 years and health-care savings of $7.3 billion over 25 years.

May 18, 2019

QotD: “Revenue neutral” tax cuts

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

Real men (as well as pull-no-punches women) cut taxes. The lesser mortals that tend to inhabit Washington wring their hands and get all weak in the knees when it comes to cutting taxes. Rumors are President Trump will propose a real tax cut. I certainly hope so.

Once upon a time, most Republicans believed in tax cuts. Somewhere along the way, inside the beltway especially, Republicans forgot about the benefits of cutting taxes. Republicans became more concerned with government keeping “its” revenue than letting the people keep their money.

Too many Republican have become timid about tax cuts, often spouting the milquetoast line of “revenue neutral tax cuts.”

Let me translate that little bit of Washington-speak for you. “Revenue neutral” tax cuts aren’t really tax cuts. It’s more like tax shifting. Some will pay more. Some will pay less. And the net effect will be that government will collect the same amount of taxes.

If revenue neutral tax shifting is what Republicans stand for, maybe it’s time we re-evaluated what we really stand for.

What will “revenue neutral” tax cut mean to your business? Well, that may depend on how expensive your lobbyist is. Which side of the “revenue-neutral” ledger you wind up on may depend on how well the skids are greased, hardly, a pleasant scenario to anticipate.

I believe as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan did, that the best way to stimulate our economy, promote job growth, and give our ailing middle class a raise is to cut taxes for all.

Rand Paul, “Real Men Cut Taxes”, Breitbart.com, 2016-04-25.

May 1, 2019

QotD: Standardized measurements, feudalism, and revolution

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

The pint in eighteenth-century Paris was equivalent to 0.93 liters, whereas in Seine-en-Montane it was 1.99 liters and in Precy-sous-Thil, an astounding 3.33 liters. The aune, a measure of length used for cloth, varied depending on the material (the unit for silk, for instance, was smaller than that for linen) and across France there were at least seventeen different aunes. […]

Virtually everywhere in early modern Europe were endless micropolitics about how baskets might be adjusted through wear, bulging, tricks of weaving, moisture, the thickness of the rim, and so on. In some areas the local standards for the bushel and other units of measurement were kept in metallic form and placed in the care of a trusted official or else literally carved into the stone of a church or the town hall. Nor did it end there. How the grain was to be poured (from shoulder height, which packed it somewhat, or from waist height?), how damp it could be, whether the container could be shaken down, and finally, if and how it was to be leveled off when full were subjects of long and bitter controversy. […]

Thus far, this account of local measurement practices risks giving the impression that, although local conceptions of distance, area, volume, and so on were different from and more varied than the unitary abstract standards a state might favor, they were nevertheless aiming at objective accuracy. This impression would be false. […]

A good part of the politics of measurement sprang from what a contemporary economist might call the “stickiness” of feudal rents. Noble and clerical claimants often found it difficult to increase feudal dues directly; the levels set for various charges were the result of long struggle, and even a small increase above the customary level was viewed as a threatening breach of tradition. Adjusting the measure, however, represented a roundabout way of achieving the same end.

The local lord might, for example, lend grain to peasants in smaller baskets and insist on repayment in larger baskets. He might surreptitiously or even boldly enlarge the size of the grain sacks accepted for milling (a monopoly of the domain lord) and reduce the size of the sacks used for measuring out flour; he might also collect feudal dues in larger baskets and pay wages in kind in smaller baskets. While the formal custom governing feudal dues and wages would thus remain intact (requiring, for example, the same number of sacks of wheat from the harvest of a given holding), the actual transaction might increasingly favor the lord. The results of such fiddling were far from trivial. Kula estimates that the size of the bushel (boisseau) used to collect the main feudal rent (taille) increased by one-third between 1674 and 1716 as part of what was called the reaction feodale. […]

This sense of victimization [over changing units of measure] was evident in the cahiers of grievances prepared for the meeting of the Estates General just before the Revolution. […] In an unprecedented revolutionary context where an entirely new political system was being created from first principles, it was surely no great matter to legislate uniform weights and measures. As the revolutionary decree read “The centuries old dream of the masses of only one just measure has come true! The Revolution has given the people the meter!”

James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress