Category Archives: Philosophical and speculative

Free speech as an economic principle

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This is John Stuart Mill discussing freedom of speech as an economic issue in his Principles of Political Economy (1848), in my view the best single text on economics ever written. Freedom of speech, as he writes in the passage below, is a crucial element in allowing minds to wander where they will and consider all kinds of ideas and alternatives, and then to debate freely each and every one of the various considerations that different individuals might have. Without such freedom of thought, an economy cannot prosper. What is specially interesting are the examples from his time where different ideas have been suppressed. It would almost entirely be the reverse opinions that might be suppressed today.

The notion, for example, that a government should choose opinions for the people, and should not suffer any doctrines in politics, morals, law, or religion, but such as it approves, to be printed or publicly professed, may be said to be altogether abandoned as a general thesis. It is now well understood that a régime of this sort is fatal to all prosperity, even of an economical kind: that the human mind when prevented either by fear of the law or by fear of opinion from exercising its faculties freely on the most important subjects, acquires a general torpidity and imbecility, by which, when they reach a certain point, it is disqualified from making any considerable advances even in the common affairs of life, and which, when greater still, make it gradually lose even its previous attainments….

Yet although these truths are very widely recognized, and freedom both of opinion and of discussion is admitted as an axiom in all free countries, this apparent liberality and tolerance has acquired so little of the authority of a principle, that it is always ready to give way to the dread or horror inspired by some particular sort of opinions. Within the last fifteen or twenty years, several individuals have suffered imprisonment, for the public profession, sometimes in a very temperate manner, of disbelief in religion; and it is probable that both the public and the government, at the first panic which arises on the subject of Chartism or Communism, will fly to similar means for checking the propagation of democratic or anti-property doctrines. In this country, however, the effective restraints on mental freedom proceed much less from the law or the government, than from the intolerant temper of the national mind; arising no longer from even as respectable a source as bigotry or fanaticism, but rather from the general habit, both in opinion and conduct, of making adherence to custom the rule of life, and enforcing it, by social penalties, against all persons who, without a party to back them, assert their individual independence. (Mill ([1871] 1921): 940)

Did you make it this far? Not everyone finds Mill all that easy to read, but once you get the rhythm there is no one like him anywhere.

The worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time

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I have been working away at my next book which is on classical economics, which was the highpoint of economic theory, from whence economics has been in precipitous decline since falling into the hands of socialists and academics (did I just repeat myself there?). As it happens, I have just today been working on the chapter on the role of government according to the classics. Here’s the first para of the chapter:

It is almost impossible any longer to know what a modern economist believes about the economic judgements found among economists prior to the publication of The General Theory. Possibly the most incorrect judgement is the belief that classical economists were opposed to public spending and insisted on an extremely limited role for government regulation or expenditure.

There is a lot in the chapter but let me start with this quote from The Principles of Political Economy by J. Shields Nicholson published in 1901. Don’t know who he is? You’ll have to buy the book, but very respectable, a man of the establishment of his own time. He is here summarising the almost-two previous pages on how Adam Smith understood the role of government.

“Thus, according to the actual teaching of Adam Smith, if competition leads to injustice or oppression, the State ought to intervene, and if self-interest is inadequate to provide various institutions for the satisfaction of actual needs, the State ought to provide for their erection and maintenance.” (Nicholson 1901: 179-180)

This is the kind of statement that you will never find in an economics text today, which is not something I say in any kind of positive way. But what I really want to deal with is his view of the people who get elected to Parliament.

“The assumption that government is all-wise and all-powerful is so far removed from the truth as to be of little use even for the purposes of abstract reasoning. With the best intentions, governments may ruin their legislation by ignorance and their administration by feebleness. And very frequently the intentions are not the best, if by best we mean that the public interests, with the due regard to the future as well as the present, are always dominant. The government, even of the most democratic states, must be formed of persons who are themselves liable to errors of judgment and errors of passion. And to a considerable extent they are supposed to carry out the mandate of their electors. The electors are open to all kinds of persuasion, as well as to the persuasion of justice and reason…. In the most advanced democracies, laws are still made and unmade in the interests of powerful classes and sometimes against the interests of considerable minorities. Officials are still appointed for all sorts of reasons apart from merit and efficiency, and are removed, or not removed, on a similar diversity of excuses.” (Nicholson 1901: 249)

Then follows my own comment on what Nicholson has written:

One cannot quote the whole of Nicholson, but it is as engaging today as Mill’s Principles is now a formidable challenge to a modern reader. Yet they both speak from the same script, with Nicholson frequently referring to Mill’s Principles even with the first edition having been published more than half a century before his own book was published. And in his views on the role of government, he was doing no more than following Mill who did much to outline just how crucial government was in the management of an economy. And in this, he spoke for the entire classical tradition.

And so far as leaving things to the market, you will not find a single economic writer today who is as resolute in wishing to see the market succeed and who is as fulsome in their support for liberty and prosperity that only free markets and democratic governments can bring as were Mill and Nicholson, and indeed the whole of the classical tradition going right back to Adam Smith.

Judge for yourself

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Start with this: A state’s system of justice put on trial, where it says:

Bret Walker SC is an old-fashioned stickler for precise legal language. That is why his clinical evisceration of the judges who ruled against George Pell is so effective.

Without a skerrick of emotion or one wasted word, Walker has torn the guts out of the Court of Appeal majority who rejected the cardinal’s appeal against convictions for sexually assaulting choirboys.

The special leave application drawn up by Walker and barrister Ruth Shann leads to an unstated but obvious conclusion: two of Victoria’s most senior judges utterly botched the cardinal’s case, not just on the facts but on the law.

And then this:

Grave allegations of sexual misconduct against a US Supreme Court justice. Cameron Stewart, The Australian, Monday:

Donald Trump has come out swinging in defence of conservative Sup­reme Court judge Brett Kavanaugh, saying the Justice Department should “come to his rescue” in the face of fresh attacks … The President was responding to a new book by two New York Times reporters that claims to have uncovered more evidence of sexual harassment involving Mr Kav­anaugh when he was a student. The new book, The Education of Brett M. Kavanaugh: An Investigation, examines claims by Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Mr Kavanaugh’s, who alleged during his confirmation process that he had exposed himself to her at a party while they were in college.

Everything the left and much of the media touch have the same corrupting effect, it seems.

Did E.T. come back?

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If you are interested in these things at all, and if you think this might not be a fake, watch to the end. It’s not long.

Here’s where you can read more: The Navy Says Those UFO Videos Are Real.

Here is Tucker Carlson discussing the same video.

That was on March 13, 2018. No more since. Obviously nothing.

While I’m at it: Las Vegas shooting – more evidence.

Every criminal act involving more than a single person is a conspiracy. Watching “the Deep State” in action since 2016 makes almost anything possible. About the only thing ruled out is that the media will tell us the truth if it harms the self-interests of the left.

A world less divided by religious intolerance

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Pakistan Flirts with a Strong Israel:

According to an op-ed in Haaretz this week, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his military supporters are allowing a highly-censored media unprecedented freedom to discuss the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

This may go well beyond my enemy’s enemy and into the territory of mutual respect and accommodation in a less religiously divided world – that is, a world less divided by religious belief. The Enlightenment may yet become universal. These are only the first seeds, but this is how the world must go if we are all to live in peace and in prosperity.

Intelligent design and the true nature of reality

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Venus Flytrap Takes a Bite Out of Darwinism. Watch only if you can bear a true horror story direct from nature. No modern film would go to this kind of story since for the fly, there is no happy ending, even if some do get away. Not to mention that Darwinian theory cannot possibly provide a mechanism through which the Venus Fly Trap could have evolved since the necessary combination of the fly trap along with the ability to gain nutrition from flies defies explanation. Each half is purposeless without the other, and the independent but simultaneous evolution of each is impossible.

On a new episode of ID the Future, Brazilian Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from Scottish Brazilian chemist Marcos Eberlin’s recent book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. In this excerpt, the distinguished scientist highlights the challenge the Venus flytrap poses for evolutionary theory. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Dr. Eberlin, the former president of the International Mass Spectrometry Association, describes the problem: The Venus flytrap, like all carnivorous plants, had no use for its insect-trapping function unless it also had an insect-digesting function. And vice versa. Did they really both evolve together? And how, when there would be no functional advantage along much of the evolutionary pathway to the sophisticated finished system? Finally, how did this “evolutionary miracle” also happen in four other carnivorous plant genera?

If you watched the video, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Too smart for their own good

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This post got me thinking about something I have noticed for quite some time: Why the smartest people can make the dumbest mistakes. Before going on let me take you to the heart of it. As you will see, the author of this report, ironically, exactly demonstrate personally the case he is trying to make out.

Consider people’s beliefs about issues such as climate change. Among Democrats, the pattern is exactly as you would hope [?????]: the more educated someone is, the more likely they are to endorse the scientific evidence that carbon emissions generated by humans are leading to global warming. Among Republicans, however, the exact opposite is true: the more educated someone is, the less likely they are to accept the scientific evidence…. When it comes to certain tightly held beliefs, higher intelligence and knowledge is a tool for propaganda rather than truth seeking, amplifying our errors.

The unfortunate conclusion is that, even if you happen to be rational in general, it’s possible that you may still be prone to flawed reasoning on certain questions that matter most to you.

Universities are filled with people who really do believe global warming is an issue needing deep consideration and urgent action. They are also places filled with socialists, who because they hunger for someone else to pay their bills, and hate it when someone gets rich running a business, want the government to run the economy. The media the same. Talking to these people leave you aware how precarious our future is. The more we breed ignorant elites who think they are smarter than everyone else while knowing nothing about politics, history and economics, the more in danger we become.

What really needs teaching is the imperative that whatever you may believe, you should be able to make the strongest possible case for the other side of the argument. The smug insufferable ignorance of the global-warming set, or these full-on clueless imbecilic socialists, is a continuous astonishment to me. They’ll tell you about some phone call from a Nigerian scammer as they head off to some demo on behalf of some group who would if they could rob and murder them in their sleep, and who even say so everywhere else but to their face. And sometimes even to their face.

The American election is still a toss up. Trump is by no means the certainty he ought to be. And you know what? Given the profile of the man who wrote this article –

David Robson is a senior journalist at the BBC –

there would not the the slightest doubt that he is worried about global warming, favours socialism, votes far left and hates PDT.

CPAC Australia first day

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The first day of Australia’s first Conservative Political Action Conference was an astonishing success. I cannot tell you what a satisfying day it was, full of interest and surprise, even where I didn’t expect to be surprised. I will only hit what stood out for me, so if I leave out The Reunion of the Outsiders, for example, it’s only because they were precisely as insightful and entertaining as I thought they would be. It really is irritating to be reminded how cowardly Australian television was in not being able to keep all three together for a nothing bit of TV of a Sunday morning once a week.

Tony Abbott came next, who reminded me once more how the most philosophical and potentially among the great Prime Ministers of this country was sandbagged by a narcissistic incompetent without any of the ability of the man he replaced. He discusses what he saw as the essence of conservative leadership, “pragmatism, based on values”. I also thought the advice he gave his daughter when she took up a post in the Australian embassy in China was exceptional. Don’t spend your time learning about China. There are lots of experts on that. Learn about Australia: “You must know about us.” He fears, and I think rightly, that the traditions of the West “are no longer holding their grip”. And he repeated John Howard’s definition of a conservative: “people who do not believe themselves morally superior to their grandparents.”

Warren Mundine and Jacinta Price provided an Indigenous perspective, similar in their outlook but very different in their focus. Both, as I heard them, provided the same lesson: Indigenous Australians need stop dwelling on whatever wrongs may have been done to their ancestors since nothing from the past can be changed, but should instead look to creating the kind of future that can be made for themselves embedded as they are within a Western nation from whom they have a lot to learn given the people with whom they share this continent with.

We also heard from the founder of CPAC in the United States who discussed PDT and American politics generally with a Republican Congressman from Tennessee. An hour of back and forth with among my favourite bits the discussion of “The Trump Whisper”. This is when someone would ask him to come close because they wanted to say something to them – usually, he would think, because they wanted to complain about something in private – but then would say to him, in this very quiet voice, “I really like Trump.” Easy to believe, given how viscious the left is, but, as he noted, it is a problem all the same.

They were followed by Judge Jeanine who was even more entertaining live than she is on Fox. Spellbinding. Terrifying.

Not last nor least, but the surprise feature speaker was Raheem Kassam, whose prominence was brought to the front when Kristine Kenealy tried to get his entry-visa denied. A very impressive speaker, filled with insight, humour and philosophical detail about an issue of the greatest importance – radical Islam – of which he had much of interest and value to say. He also said this, which was an interesting perspective on how times change, that Enoch Powell, yes that Enoch Powell, had taught classics at the University of Sydney when he had been 24 years old, and amongst his students had been Gough Whitlam. No problem getting a visa then, and GW studied classics!

Congratulations to Andrew Cooper for pulling this off. Then tomorrow there is still Nigel Farage to start off the day.