Does The Anglosphere’s Libertarian Capitalism Produce More Creative Freedom?

Sometimes all of us, including not least Clameur de Haro, need a little lightening up and R&R at the end of a distinctly average week. And with that malignant pipsqueak Stuart Syvret purporting to decide for himself which aspects of legal process should or shouldn’t apply to him, the continuing myopia of Jersey’s public sector employees to economic reality, and an EU tax bombshell blowing a hole through an already questionable fiscal policy, this week has certainly fallen into that category.

So on this grey-ish, adjectival October Friday, here’s a classic from CdeH’s not too outrageously mis-spent youth – the great, great, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s legendary performance of Sweet Home Alabama for The Old Grey Whistle Test on (CdeH thinks) 11 April 1975.

Clameur de Haro remembers his youthful self, in those far-off days possessed of long-ish and blond-ish locks and always an aficionado of Whistle Test rather than TOTP, watching the performance, mesmerised. It was one of those moderately seminal experiences we can all recall in our lives, in CdeH's case a Damascene conversion to the blazing vibrancy and musical integrity of Southern Rock that’s lasted now for 34 years.

But looking it again after all this time got CdeH thinking - why is it that the greatest and most successful rock bands of the past 40 years have come predominantly, not just from the democracies of libertarian capitalism, but specifically from their Anglosphere countries?

Is it just the superficially obvious answer of commonality of language and culture? Well, maybe, but that doesn’t quite feel like the whole story.

Or could it somehow be more than this - a subtle consequence of the systems that regulate the Anglosphere societies being based on common law with the presumption that we are all free to do anything we like which is not actually prohibited, rather than the Continental tradition of codifed law that restricts citizens' freedom to only that which is specifically permitted?

So that a bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 could just go ahead and get together to express themselves without needing 27 separate permissions plus elf'n'safety and risk assessments from state, county and municipal bureaucracies? And in the process create, out of nothing, an artistic and commercial product that millions have exercised their freedom of choice to buy for 30 or 40 years, and still do.

And perhaps that’s a handy reminder also to the dirigiste leftists who argue that libertarian capitalism is a zero-sum game, that there exists by definition only a fixed total of wealth, which requires activist governmental intervention to re-distribute it “fairly”. The amount of wealth isn’t fixed – it can be created out of apparently nothing, provided that individuals and entrepreneurs are allowed the freedom to create it.

Is it really that fanciful to wonder whether, if the enviro-militant Greenists get their way, in five years time, 50 years after Skynyrd was formed, the local jobsworths of the Barack Obamania Federal Energy Use Control & Allocation Agency will tell another bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida that they’re not allowed the obligatory licence to just get together for a band practice and jam session in a friend's garage, because the power requirement would represent an irresponsibly unnecessary and frivolous use of the planet's precious resources?

What a lot of enjoyment future Clameurs de Haro would miss. And what an unrelievedly dreary and joyless world it would be. We have to stop it happening, and with the wheels slowly but inexorably starting to come off the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam wagon, we will. But in the meantime, and just for 5 minutes and 41 seconds, click the video clip to full screen, turn up the volume on your speakers, sit back, and enjoy those classic riffs.

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On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………

Clameur de Haro is prompted by recent comments on his posts to muse at length on the potential for confusion stemming from the epithets and labels applied to beliefs, and the benefits of more precise definitions.

Mr Frank Binney (a new commenter, and most welcome) raises the issue of how accurate, or otherwise, it is to apply the “left” or “right” label to the Greenists? Tony The Prof, in his courteous and erudite way as always, highlights the undesirability of debating climate issues with ad hominem arguments. Both comments, and the reasoned, courteous tone of them, merit a full response.

CdeH subscribes to the view of The Political Compass that the traditional “left” and “right” label is no longer sufficiently adequate to describe positions on the political playing field, because the continuum is one-dimensional, and predominantly an indicator of economic position – ranging from communism or overwhelmingly statist collectivism (on the left), to unfettered, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism (on the right). And that a more sophisticated and illuminating definition of politico-economic philosophy can be made by complementing location on the economic dimension with a statement of position on the social, authoritarian-to-libertarian continuum, ranging from ultimate authoritarian (fascism, in fact) to ultimate libertarian (virtually anarchy).

It should come as no surprise to Clameur de Haro’s more careful and perceptive readers that CdeH finds himself in the area of the 4-o’clock position in the bottom right-hand quadrant of Libertarian Right – being unequivocally in favour of small government, free trade, free markets, low taxes, but light-touch regulation on the economic continuum, and with a moderate libertarian slant on the social scale, believing as he does that the state aggregates too much power to itself and then often proceeds to exercise it illiberally, and has no business, for example, interfering in willingly-undertaken social transactions between competent, consenting adults, provided that others are not harmed thereby.

Not a million miles from the Hayekian and Friedmanite positions, it would appear, which probably accounts for CdeH’s intuitive listing of Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom” as among the most influential formatives of his political / economic thinking.

CdeH frequently has the label “right-wing” hurled at him as an insult. On The Political Compass’ economic continuum, of course, this is, as far as it goes, a more correct than incorrect identification of his economic and fiscal philosophy (although quite why the belief that government is not per se automatically efficient and that taxpayers should be entitled to keep more of their own money, should be a cause for insult, is mystifying).

But on the social policy scale, and when hurled at a commentator who -

(1) naturally inclines to concern at the accretion and abuse of power by the authoritarian state and its agents;

(2) has been appalled at the implications for our liberty as citizens of Labour’s 12-year attack on habeas corpus, the right to jury trial, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, all on spurious grounds; and

(3) would choose La Moye rather than be forced to carry a show-on-demand ID card or render up his DNA without just cause, believing that it is his property and not that of the state,

the epithet “right-wing” as an insult is hilarious in its inaccuracy (as Clameur de Haro’s friends who know his views on privacy and personal freedom issues tell him), and betrays rather more about the insulter that it does about the criticised.

Where does this take us on the subject of applying labels in that area where politics and Greenism meet?

CdeH has good friends, occupying varying locations on the left-right economic-fiscal spectrum, who are very environmentally-minded but who equally accept that scepticism on green issues is valid, healthy, and should in a free society be widely aired, and that this is all very much a matter of private, personal choice, not public coercion. In no way could they be described as fundamentalist Greenists. On this specific point of socio-political philosophy, we would have to place them in the libertarian half on the authoritarian–libertarian scale.

But others – indeed, many others - appear, regrettably, to be much less tolerant. Consider just the following examples –

The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen, being on record as averring that anyone who even questions the postulate of catastrophic warming should be put on trial. Not positively counter-argues it – merely questions it;

The proposal of David Marxiband Milliband, when UK Energy Secretary in 2006, to force the entire population of the UK to carry a swipe card to be presented on every transaction, with every single person in the land being expected to render account for their carbon footprint and being allocated a personal annual carbon allowance – enthusiastically endorsed by the then environment correspondent of The Guardian (now there’s a surprise) in the following terms –

“The move marks the first serious step towards state-enforced limits on the carbon use of individuals……….extends the principle of carbon to consumers, with heavy carbon users forced to buy unused allowances from people with greener lifestyles” ;

The proliferating use of CTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits;

The admission of Ealing Council in West London that “hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10, [have been] trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues” and that of Harlow Council in Essex which has said it has “25 ‘Street Scene Champions’, all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an ‘enviro-crime’ has been committed” ;

The examples of prominent EU Greenists with hard-left, marxist, pasts: those of us of a certain age, (pace Tony The Prof) remember, for example, Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit propagating in the 1970s, revolutionary socialist prescriptions eerily precursory of much of both the authoritarian restriction on private behaviour and freedom, and the “for-the-sake-of-the-environment-and-the-planet” taxation that the Greenists espouse today. Is it really just a coincidence that aggressive environmentalism really started to take off in the early 1990s when communism was finally consigned to the scrapheap?

The rallying call of Green Left - an offshoot of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity - for an electoral pact in Birmingham with the Green Party “……….to give a progressive and environmentally aware candidate the chance of taking the seat, and a victory for all those opposing the policies of privatisation, war, greed, racism and environmental destruction. We are firmly of the belief that this will benefit both the Green and progressive movements in this country……….” ;

The author of this, intriguingly enough, is one Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party, who in another incarnation also comes up with this explicit summary of the advantages from the growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement -

“The creation of an Eco-socialist International network seems a good institutional basis for making European Green Parties more radical and I would like to see EU Greens working with the Nordic Green Left. I hope that it builds an eco-socialist network that links activists in every single state on this planet and, as we agreed in Paris, to work to make greens redder and reds greener.”

This, and plenty more of the same, can be viewed at http://www.climateandcapitalism.com/.

All of which suggests to Clameur de Haro that, far from the idea of Greenist Fundamentalism being an exaggeration, when taken overall, ample justification exists for that upper left Authoritarian Socialist quadrant of The Political Compass being the correct location for the activist, militant Greenism most often propounded by the save-the-planet-warriors. This is what he refers to when he speaks of Green Fundamentalists. As we can see, there’s a lot of it about.

And yet CdeH is mocked by a commenter for displaying a “Green is the New Red” logo on his sidebar?

Which brings us inevitably on to Mr Nick Palmer, Clameur de Haro’s most frequent commenter, and serial ritual abuser. Mr Palmer is fond of labelling CdeH as a recidivist perpetrator of what seems in his lexicon to be that most heinous of all crimes, far, far worse than mass-murderer, or child-abductor, or financial swindler, or…………………well, worse than anything at all really, namely being a “global warming denier”.

It sheds, firstly, an interesting perspective on the more strident advocates of radical environmentalism that mere scepticism, inherently just a manifestation of thought or opinion, rather than any illegal actions or criminal deed, should be judged so deserving of such calumny. But given on the one hand the inclination so prevalent in Gramscian cultural marxism (to give the colloquial, more familiar, label of political correctness its ideological origin) to establish, define, and prosecute crimes of thought and opinion, and on the other hand the correlation between Gramscian thought and militant Greenism, CdeH is relatively unsurprised by this.

The attaching to sceptics of the term “denier” in this context is quite deliberate, and no mere accidental or careless use of language. Its users are employing one of the classic tactics of cultural marxism – closing down the argument and thereby circumventing debate. It’s exactly the same technique which accuses someone of racism if they attempt to discuss whether current levels of immigration are sustainable, or of elitism if they suggest that a few more grammar schools with scholarships might actually benefit bright children from modest backgrounds, or of xenophobia if they suggest that handing over sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable supranational authority might not be a terribly good thing for democracy. By seeking to equate enquiring scepticism about anthropogenic climate change with something as repellent as (primarily) Holocaust denial, they try to convey the idea that their target is so irretrievably and unspeakably vile that anything they say should not even be given a hearing, never mind taken seriously.

For the record, Clameur de Haro does accept that there has been an upward movement in average global temperatures over significant periods of the past century-and-a-half or so, but equally is persuaded that this has not been the case since 1998. As indeed, even the warmists – from the IPCC, who acknowledged that its first apocalyptic predictions omitted the Medieval Warming entirely, through Mann, who eventually conceded the fundamental flaws in the algorithms which generated his infamous hockey-stick, to the Biased BBC, which has just reported that for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed and that there could be 30 years of cooling due to falling ocean temperatures - have had to admit.

Noticeable, isn’t it, how in the last few years, it’s all become “catastrophic climate change” rather than “catastrophic global warming”?

He has yet to be convinced, also, by the entire man-made / CO2 argument, having seen too many graphs of data sets showing non-correlation between temperature and CO2 output, temperature cooling during periods of rising CO2 output irrespective of whichever time lag is attempted, and studies suggesting that CO2 levels may be the consequence, not the cause, of temperature movements.

And he feels unable to ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history (and that a mere 30 years ago, some of today’s warmists were ardently warning of catastrophic global cooling and the strong danger of a new ice age). Climate change isn’t unlikely – it’s guaranteed, as it has been for the last x million years, mankind or no mankind, and CdeH is presently unconvinced that human influence on it, while possible, is nevertheless other than peripheral. The notion of “combating climate change” CdeH suspects, is about as feasible as combating tomorrow morning’s sunrise or combating the advent of next Christmas.

So, the correct term for Clameur de Haro is actually “anthropogenic climate change sceptic”. But then that’s so much less emotive as a term of derision than “global warming denier”, isn’t it? Perhaps those who inadvertently - or more likely deliberately - conflate the two need to put “dictionary” at the top of their Christmas List.

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Rebels Against The Future

Clameur de Haro was torn between whether to laugh or cry yesterday on reading in the Jersey Evening [sic] Post about the sputtering outrage of local retailers, echoed by David Warr of the Chamber of Commerce, at Jersey Post’s initiative to inflict on deliver to every home in Jersey a copy of the Argos catalogue.

[Although one does so hope that it will be only one copy – according to the report’s author, Carly Lockhart, “thousands of Argos catalogues are being delivered to every Island household” – er, that’s rather a lot of catalogues]. CdeH’s, whether just the one or the threatened promised thousands, will be going straight into the bin, but that’s beside the point.

The grounds for protest attributed to Mr Warr and Barry Jenkins of Fotosound really are risible.

At the basic level, anyone can access Argos’ product ranges on-line, and can obtain a catalogue anyway by merely phoning and asking for it, so even though Jersey Post’s initiative does look a little superfluous for those and other reasons (CdeH has no trouble finding online retailers who deliver to the C.I. at only modest additional cost - and deduct the VAT in full as well) the criticism of it by Mr Warr and Mr Jenkins completely (but predictably) misses the point.

Although, and as CdeH blogged only a couple of days ago, if Jersey Post was to be fully privatised and have its connections with the public sector severed completely, the line of attack that a States’ organisation is threatening local retailers would become untenable.

Mr Jenkins and Mr Warr also betray a telling reluctance to appreciate, or acknowledge, that previous retailing and distribution business models have irreversibly changed, and that they are on the wrong side of the argument. Jersey has suffered for far too many years from the unhealthy predominance of producer interests – whether public sector unions, or retailers comfortably insulated from competition and free trade – and transition to a situation where consumer interests are paramount is to be welcomed.

Just a modicum of research reveals how uncompetitive local retailers can be. A quick Clameur de Haro glance into the window of Mr Jenkins’ Charing Cross emporium reveals some rather vague pricing labels generally, but specifically a Samsung VPMX20 Camcorder at £149.99 and a Sanyo CE32LD90 television at £329.99. The Camcorder is available online at anything from £135 (and approximately £125 ex-VAT at Amazon), while the TV is retailed online from £292.95 ex-VAT. Can Mr Jenkins or Mr Warr provide any kind of convincing reason as to why prospective purchasers should not take advantage of these savings?

Clameur de Haro doubts it. Their grievance is, fundamentally, a Luddite argument: presumably in former times they would have been found protesting that their horse-drawn carters’ businesses should be protected from the competition posed by motor-lorries, or perhaps whinging that this new-fangled electricity thing was killing off their candlestick shops. Messrs Jenkins, Warr et al may bleat as long as they like that the high rents, rates and overheads they are forced to pay choose to endure inhibit them from matching internet retailers on price. But that, although arguably a problem for them, is not one for their prospective customers.

Jersey retailers also typically appear to hold low stock inventories, leading to either restricted choice of product or unacceptably long delivery times, and obtaining spares is often well-nigh impossible, with more than a few shop staff showing little interest in providing a service capable of fulfilling customers’ requirements. Mr Warr moreover is on record in the past as saying that consumers’ expressed preferences for lower prices are not really that at all.

Consumers are proving him wrong with every mouse-click. Competition, choice, and free trade – long may they flourish.

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Privatise Jersey Post – Now!

Over at Jersey 24/7, Clameur de Haro’s fellow-blogger made the point a couple of days ago that it’s time Jersey Post was sold off. His reasoning was based specifically on the potential damage likely to be inflicted on the local retail sector by Jersey Post’s new Ship2Me service, but he is undoubtedly right in the wider context as well. The case for the full privatisation of this business and its disposal out of public sector ownership and control entirely is overwhelming.

Initially, the economic philosophy argument. Generally, being naturally less efficient than private enterprise, government should restrict itself to providing only those services which the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide. Throughout Europe, mail and postal services are increasingly shown to be capable of being willingly delivered by the private sector at reasonable cost and to an acceptable return. Where is the compelling evidence that Jersey is an exception?

Subsequently, the practical points. A Jersey Post continuing in even partial public sector ownership is undesirable on at least three counts: firstly, it’s a monopoly, which is bad enough; secondly, it’s a public sector monopoly, which is even worse; and thirdly, it’s a unionised public sector monopoly, which virtually guarantees sub-optimal operation and unresponsive customer service.

Any reader who doubts the latter should try visiting Broad Street on a busy lunchtime and noting what proportion of total counter positions are actually open. Rarely does the ratio exceed 50% (even during the long queues of the annual pre-Christmas rush): presumably this is mainly because of union resistance to instituting shift patterns which would deploy the greatest numbers of customer-facing staff precisely at the times of peak customer demand, exacerbated by an inherent management disincentive, stemming from the business’ position as a semi-state-owned monopoly with guaranteed protection from competition, to even tackle this issue.

Does anyone really imagine that this degree of insensitivity to customer demand could be sustained if Jersey Post was a 100% private sector enterprise accountable to multiple shareholders, and forced moreover to compete with other mail service providers on price and service levels? As many of CdeH’s acquaintances have remarked, it was only the arrival of Sure and the ending of Jersey Telecoms’ monopoly which forced JT to provide a retail facility in the main shopping precinct.

And then, to add insult to injury, in recent years the wealth-creating private sector has had to endure the sight of Jersey Post executives both publishing excessively self-congratulatory annual statements and paying themselves handsome bonuses commensurate with private sector out-performance in the face of stiff competition; totally unjustified in the case of a protected, esentially public sector monopoly.

It’s a fairly openly-expressed opinion in the Island’s financial and business community that when the full disposal of Jersey Post was looked at a few years ago, potential buyers were scared off by the size and extent of the potential future liabilities represented by the (typically for the public sector) exceptionally generous but under-funded employees’ pension scheme. And that only by promising that the taxpayer, rather than the purchasers, would retain these liabilities could the States even get potential buyers to pursue their initial interest.

Neither that particular issue, nor the strength of the conceptual argument for full privatisation, nor the opportunity cost to the Island of the States’ non-realisation of this asset at a time of financial stringency, are going to go away at any time in the foreseeable future. And transferring Jersey Post to private ownership in its entirety would also blunt the criticisms from retailers about its (totally legitimate) expansion of fulfilment business on the grounds of its public sector component.

It’s vital therefore that the States develop the resolve to resist and defeat the inevitable specious arguments – which will be superficially predicated on fears of reduced customer service, but will actually be founded on ideological committment to state ownership and hostility to private enterprise – and move to end both Jersey Post’s increasingly indefensible monopoly and its protected, even quasi-public sector, status.

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Warr on Want

Mr David Warr, the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Group, appears to suggest, in his Letter to the Editor in tonight’s Jersey Evening [sic] Post, that consumers who express a preference for a wider choice of shopping outlets don’t really want a greater choice of shops at all, but only rather more “fairness” in retailers’ pricing policies.

His logic and phraseology are tortuous, but he makes a disingenuous attempt, by alluding to the range of goods on display at one particular supermarket, to deliberately conflate availability of products with choice of supplier (they are very much not the same thing, Mr Warr), before going on to imply that the desire for a wider choice of suppliers is not genuine, but somehow a proxy for the wish merely that existing retailers demonstrate more “fairness”.

Clameur de Haro? suspects that this is very wide of the mark indeed, and that a wider choice of suppliers, with the benefits of more competition in both prices and service which that implies, is precisely what the vast majority of consumers want: and something moreover which they would enthusiastically vote for, with their feet and their wallets. Mr Warr should not however be blamed too much - his Chamber of Commerce role is, after all, to represent the views, and advance the interests, of traders for many of whom greater competition is anathema.

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