Utopia, you are standing in it!

Yesterday I featured a provocative blogginheads.tv discussion with Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, both of whom issued some opinions that would be condemned as racist if coming from white people.

But one opinion, which is not that controversial but does have its critics, is that the violence and looting accompanying the George Floyd protests should be loudly and unequivocally condemned. Some like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar don’t approve of the violence, but find it “understandable” in a way that comes close to excusing it. Others—some on this website—have said that the violent incidents are few and overplayed in a way that overshadows the peaceful protests. We should, they imply, simply ignore the violence. Others argue that all the looting and physical assaults were not committed by “real” protestors, but by white supremacists, Antifa-ites, or simply greedy people.  I don’t accept that claim.

Now I’m not sure how many incidents of violence or…

This past March, Public Choice published an article I found to be very interesting. It is called “The anti-discrminatory tradition in Virginia School public choice theory” by Phil Magness. I found this article interesting for two reasons. First, I’ve read a fair amount of public choice and, honestly, I had no idea that racial discrimination was a topic they dealt with in detail. Second, after the really misleading work by Nancy McLean on Buchanan, I wanted to read something written that is more level headed and, to be blunt, truthful.

So what is the article about? Magness examines the published and unpublished writings of scholars associated with the “Virginia School” of public choice theory, which focuses on how incentives affect state actors, the theory of rules and and constitutions, and issues like regulatory capture. He focuses on scholars who visited or were affiliated with the organizational home of public choice…

Within a year of George’s accession the Whigs won an overwhelming victory in the general election of 1715. Several members of the defeated Tory Party sympathised with the Jacobites, who sought to replace George with Anne’s Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart (called “James III and VIII” by his supporters and “the Pretender” by his opponents).

George’s distrust of the Tories aided the passing of power to the Whigs. Whig dominance grew to be so great under George that the Tories did not return to power for another half-century. After the election, the Whig-dominated Parliament passed the Septennial Act 1715, which extended the maximum duration of Parliament to seven years (although it could be dissolved earlier by the Sovereign).

After his accession in Great Britain, George’s relationship with his son (which had always been poor) worsened. George Augustus, Prince of Wales, encouraged opposition to his father’s policies, including measures designed…

Price gouging on the grand scale to keep the ruinables show on the road, regardless of electricity grid stability. But our leaders love this fiasco and label it as climate policy, so that’s OK? No, but they seem to face few obstacles to their blinkered obsession, even though the problems look bound to get worse.
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Lockdown reveals the UK’s power grid is fragile, costly, and failing – because of renewables, says Dr. Benny Peiser @ Climate Change Dispatch.

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is today publishing a collection of papers by energy expert Dr. John Constable, documenting the rapid decay of the UK electricity system, with system balancing costs spiraling out of control over the last few weeks.

The cost of balancing the grid over the Bank Holiday weekend amounted to £50m, and National Grid has predicted additional costs of £700m from May to August…

Lieutenant Chard’s famous drawing of the Rorke’s Drift battle, showing the main thrusts of the Zulu attack.

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift fully deserves its elevated status in the annals of British military history, if only as one of the most heroically fought and efficiently conducted small-scale military actions of the last 100-odd years. The British were, from the outset vastly outnumbered by up to thirty to one by their Zulu protagonists. In the context of the relatively confined space of the garrison, and the considerable opportunities for enemy concealment in the shrubs, bushes and caves outside and overlooking the garrison, British technical superiority had been much more limited than some observers have suggested. After the initial, albeit destructive volleys fired against the first wave of Zulu attackers, much (if not the majority) of the fighting was at close quarters. The survival of the garrison depended at its most…

This is a cross post. It was originally published on Harry’s Place on May 31st 2012, 9:15 am

On The Commentator blog, James Boys has an article which ostensibly attacks President Obama’s statement that would put the commencement of the Vietnam War in 1962, a year when John F Kennedy (JFK) was President. In practice, the article presents a severe distortion of the reality. Boys tries to suggest a substantial difference of view between JFK and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ), of American involvement in Vietnam.

Specifically, Boys states:

Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor reported back from Vietnam that One thousand troops could be withdrawn by the end of 1963, and that the United States would be able to withdraw all military personnel by the end of 1965.”

This plan was outlined in the Top Secret national Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, dated October 11^th, 1963. This…

The late Leszek Kolakowski is missed. In 1985 he wrote a review of David Miller’s book, Anarchism for the TLS. Not only is it worthwhile reading for his views on anarchism: “a puerile utopia,”  it is also instructive for what he had to say  on Marxism: “Anarchists… are strongest when they criticize Marxism as an infallible prescription for despotism.”  However what struck me as particularly insightful were his comments on the market economy. I copy them below.

One cannot perhaps suppress the market entirely, it persists even in a concentration camp – which probably comes closest to what an ideal non-market economy would be in modem society. One can suppress it, however, to such an extent as to destroy all the sources of information which only the market can provide, to stifle the possibilities of innovation, to make the entire production system highly inefficient .and to organize a police state which is…

While long supporting the right of Americans to protest injustices peacefully, I’ve also decried the use of violence, whether that be hurting other people without provocation (including both demonstrators and police), destroying property, or looting. I consider this immoral because you are hurting others, or destroying their property, with no justification. Further, it’s also ineffective, at least judging by the several studies cited in the CNN report below.

While violent protests may in some cases achieve their aim, there’s no control experiment here: who knows whether peaceful protests might be even more effective? In fact, I can’t imagine a situation in which scenes of protestors burning cars or police stations, beating up people without provocation, or looting stores could move people to rectify injustices more strongly than when seeing many peaceful demonstrations that are, for instance, occurring now. Indeed, many people have warned—and I think this is true—that violence…

(1) (H/t: masgramondou). Matt Ridley tells the story of the 1890 Russian flu epidemic 

The killer came from the east in winter: fever, cough, sore throat, aching muscles, headache and sometimes death. It spread quickly to all parts of the globe, from city to city, using new transport networks. In many cities, the streets were empty and shops and schools deserted. A million died. The Russian influenza pandemic of 1889-90 may hold clues to what happens next — not least because the latest thinking is that it, too, may have been caused by a new coronavirus.

In addition to the new diseases of S[ARS], M[ERS], and C[COVID]-19, there are four other coronaviruses that infect people. They all cause common colds and are responsible for about one in five such sniffles, the rest being rhinoviruses and adenoviruses. As far as we can tell from their genes, two of these coronaviruses came…

Part III

Accession to the British Throne.

Though both England and Scotland recognised Anne as their queen, only the English Parliament had settled on Sophia, Electress of Hanover, as the heir presumptive. The Parliament of Scotland (the Estates) had not formally settled the succession question for the Scottish throne. In 1703, the Estates passed a bill declaring that their selection for Queen Anne’s successor would not be the same individual as the successor to the English throne, unless England granted full freedom of trade to Scottish merchants in England and its colonies.

Georg-Ludwig, Elector of Hanover

At first Royal Assent was withheld, but the following year Anne capitulated to the wishes of the Estates and assent was granted to the bill, which became the Act of Security 1704. In response the English Parliament passed measures that threatened to restrict Anglo-Scottish trade and cripple the Scottish economy if the Estates did…

Book Review

Jason Brennan, Why Not Capitalism? (Routledge, 2014) 120pp.

In 2009 G.A (Jerry) Cohen’s short book, Why Not Socialism? defending socialism was posthumously published by Princeton University Press. Jason Brennan’s book, just published by Routledge, is a response to Cohen. A more accurate title for the book might have been Why G.A. Cohen is Wrong. However, as Brennan is defending capitalism, and no doubt with an eye on sales, his own choice of title more suits his purpose.

While Brennan’s book can be read and understood by those without the background, it is a work of political philosophy and will be more appreciated by those with at least an elementary background in the work of twentieth century political philosophers, Robert Nozick, John Rawls, and G.A. Cohen.

A similarity between Cohen’s book and Brennan’s book is the cover design. If a book defending socialism can have a single red…

This is a cross post. It was originally published on Harry’s Place on July 2nd 2012, 2:27 pm

Roger Rosewell had been a full-time worker for International Socialists, the forerunner organisation to of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP), for five years in the 1970s.  He knew how the Party operated because he had been an operator. He used to direct shopfloor members and shop stewards in how to manipulate disputes between workers and management. He ultimately defected from the party and in 1982 his booklet, Dealing with the Marxist Threat to Industry, was published. It was here that Rosewell accused Trotskyist groups of “systematic, undemocratic, elitist manipulation” of workers. Reporting on this publication, John Ezard for The Guardian described the tactics that  Rosewell explained that the SWP and other Trotskysists used:

• Positioning shop stewards so that only they could see and count a show of hands.
• Deliberate cramming of indoor meetings into insufficiently large halls without seats so that workers could not see around them and could…