Margaret Thatcher was an advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Wasn't the first time she showed herself to be an champion of hysteria, but I think this particular bit of advocacy is what Americans should remember about Maggie. The fact that she had a lot of foolish company when she threw her weight behind this obviously preposterous endeavor does not mean it should be forgotten.
It has been amusing to hear Thatcher discussed as "an inspiration to women everywhere" by women whose heads detach from their necks at the very mention of W. Bush; her foreign policy soul mate. I thought a key part of the "WE NEED MORE WOMEN IN POWER" movement was that women would bring a different perspective to power. So why are women celebrating a woman who was interchangeable with Reagan and Bush? If women in power are going to be as craven and incompetent as men, how exactly is electing them a step forward?
Conveniently ignoring Thatcher's resemblance to Reagan and Bush simply because she was a woman in power is a classic example of the mania for diversity showing itself to be a beauty pageant rather than a campaign for increased substance. I hope I live long enough to see the first female leader on trial before the world for putting her citizens in deathcamps. I love a good spectacle, and I relish the thought of seeing a cryogenically frozen Gloria Allred thawed out to defend Hitlerette.
The global power paradigm continues to get more diverse, and yet F.A. Hayek continues to be proven correct: only the worst members of society succeed in politics.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
'Cause everybody knows, she's a femme fatale
If you read the forward to any novel or short story collection published today, there is a strong chance it is going to read more like a psychiatrist's notes on a patient than a discussion of the fiction you're about to read. Especially if the author is a male author from the Bad Old Days.
You can be assured you're going to be treated to some Freudian wrongheadedness about the author and his mother. If she was in his life, she is the model for every female character he ever sketched (including the IHOP waitress featured in chapter two. Lotta mommy stuff going on there. I mean, c'mon, waffles with two scoops of ice cream? Do I have to draw you a map?). If she wasn't in his life, the "anger towards women" he evidently displays on every page stems from his anger about her absence. Where else would all these "femme fatales" come from?
Listen: until very recently, the vast majority of writers were men. What concerns most men most? Women. Hell, what concerns most readers most? Relations between the sexes. So if most writers were men, and men are concerned with women, and relations between the sexes have a long history of holding readers' interest, it is not that far fetched to think that maybe literary tropes like "femme fatales" have more to do with statistics than a deep seated, structural hatred of women. Plots have to come from somewhere.
Also, in the past fifty years ago many colleges have been reduced to liberal arts softball leagues built around kids who got a -17 SAT math score. This means MUCH bigger liberal arts/social science departments, many more people sitting through the witchcraft taught in those classes, and many more people graduating with useless degrees that train them to do what? Teach liberal arts foolishness to others, naturally. This means many more dunces getting graduate degrees in Liberal Arts Hypnosis meaning many more dissertations meaning many more contrived investigations into the alleged "sexual repression" and related "misogyny" found in every syllable put on paper prior to the Summer of Love.
Not surprisingly, such an echo chamber has produced multiple generations of indignant dullards whose M.O. is to shout misogyny first and ask questions later. Even twenty years ago, the word misogyny was still fairly obscure. Now you find it in tweets about Matlock.
How did the word misogyny become more overplayed than Led Zeppelin? Statistics. More liberal arts "schooling" means more circulation of words like misogyny means more foolish Freudian analysis of every male author who ever lived. And with liberal arts-contaminated women now dominating the publishing biz, perhaps it isn't shocking that today's book reviews and literary essays take it for granted that if you scratch any male author hard enough you'll find a mommy-hating brute.
Let's look at the assumptions of all this pseudo-analysis, starting with "sexual repression." I--and most other men-- probably wouldn't mind sleeping with at least 1 out of every 20 women I see. But I can't, because that just isn't the way life works; not even in today's sexually free society. Does this fact of life equal sexual repression? After all, my urges are not being expressed as I would like them to be. And I would like to sleep with 1 out of every 1 supermodels I see. Unfortunately, I am only tall enough to come up to mid-calf on most supermodels, so I do not do well with that demographic. Does this automatically mean I'm walking around with Petruchio-like rage against supermodels? Of course not.
Lots of things were different back in the day. Many more women used to die during childbirth, so having a woman die in a novel could just as easily have been attributed to the realities of the day, as opposed to "matricidal urges" or an innate fear of lady parts.
Imagine if every male reviewer (or student) approached every female author looking for...no, EXPECTING misandry. Imagine if every literary review and college paper about female writing had misandry as its baseline assumption. Well, to begin with, no one would know what that meant, because misandry--hatred of men--is a largely unknown word. How telling...
Fiction has to at least nominally be about something (even in French literature). Usually this requires imperfect characters (women and men). If the characters were perfect, there wouldn't have been any drama or suspense to keep readers' reading:
Meet Suzie. She's a self-assured, free thinking woman with an IQ of 180 and remarkable ability to match or exceed men in every physical activity. She meets Nathaniel. Nathaniel doesn't notice her looks at all, and instead immediately falls in love with her immaculate sense of self. The End.
Not exactly a page-turner. Drama requires flawed characters, and writing a flawed woman doesn't necessarily stem from hatred, yet this assumption is now as common as the cold.
Another piece of flint off Occam's Razor: Lots of writers are just untalented, so they can only write one dimensional characters. To say that a hack was deliberately out to savage women by writing them crudely is probably overstating his abilities. No need to go spelunking through his personal life to find out why the female characters weren't fleshed out in a piece of hackwork called, "Scotch Egg, English Yolk."
Frankly, there's no need to even read novels anymore. The best fiction can be found in literary criticism.
You can be assured you're going to be treated to some Freudian wrongheadedness about the author and his mother. If she was in his life, she is the model for every female character he ever sketched (including the IHOP waitress featured in chapter two. Lotta mommy stuff going on there. I mean, c'mon, waffles with two scoops of ice cream? Do I have to draw you a map?). If she wasn't in his life, the "anger towards women" he evidently displays on every page stems from his anger about her absence. Where else would all these "femme fatales" come from?
Listen: until very recently, the vast majority of writers were men. What concerns most men most? Women. Hell, what concerns most readers most? Relations between the sexes. So if most writers were men, and men are concerned with women, and relations between the sexes have a long history of holding readers' interest, it is not that far fetched to think that maybe literary tropes like "femme fatales" have more to do with statistics than a deep seated, structural hatred of women. Plots have to come from somewhere.
Also, in the past fifty years ago many colleges have been reduced to liberal arts softball leagues built around kids who got a -17 SAT math score. This means MUCH bigger liberal arts/social science departments, many more people sitting through the witchcraft taught in those classes, and many more people graduating with useless degrees that train them to do what? Teach liberal arts foolishness to others, naturally. This means many more dunces getting graduate degrees in Liberal Arts Hypnosis meaning many more dissertations meaning many more contrived investigations into the alleged "sexual repression" and related "misogyny" found in every syllable put on paper prior to the Summer of Love.
Not surprisingly, such an echo chamber has produced multiple generations of indignant dullards whose M.O. is to shout misogyny first and ask questions later. Even twenty years ago, the word misogyny was still fairly obscure. Now you find it in tweets about Matlock.
How did the word misogyny become more overplayed than Led Zeppelin? Statistics. More liberal arts "schooling" means more circulation of words like misogyny means more foolish Freudian analysis of every male author who ever lived. And with liberal arts-contaminated women now dominating the publishing biz, perhaps it isn't shocking that today's book reviews and literary essays take it for granted that if you scratch any male author hard enough you'll find a mommy-hating brute.
Let's look at the assumptions of all this pseudo-analysis, starting with "sexual repression." I--and most other men-- probably wouldn't mind sleeping with at least 1 out of every 20 women I see. But I can't, because that just isn't the way life works; not even in today's sexually free society. Does this fact of life equal sexual repression? After all, my urges are not being expressed as I would like them to be. And I would like to sleep with 1 out of every 1 supermodels I see. Unfortunately, I am only tall enough to come up to mid-calf on most supermodels, so I do not do well with that demographic. Does this automatically mean I'm walking around with Petruchio-like rage against supermodels? Of course not.
Lots of things were different back in the day. Many more women used to die during childbirth, so having a woman die in a novel could just as easily have been attributed to the realities of the day, as opposed to "matricidal urges" or an innate fear of lady parts.
Imagine if every male reviewer (or student) approached every female author looking for...no, EXPECTING misandry. Imagine if every literary review and college paper about female writing had misandry as its baseline assumption. Well, to begin with, no one would know what that meant, because misandry--hatred of men--is a largely unknown word. How telling...
Meet Suzie. She's a self-assured, free thinking woman with an IQ of 180 and remarkable ability to match or exceed men in every physical activity. She meets Nathaniel. Nathaniel doesn't notice her looks at all, and instead immediately falls in love with her immaculate sense of self. The End.
Not exactly a page-turner. Drama requires flawed characters, and writing a flawed woman doesn't necessarily stem from hatred, yet this assumption is now as common as the cold.
Another piece of flint off Occam's Razor: Lots of writers are just untalented, so they can only write one dimensional characters. To say that a hack was deliberately out to savage women by writing them crudely is probably overstating his abilities. No need to go spelunking through his personal life to find out why the female characters weren't fleshed out in a piece of hackwork called, "Scotch Egg, English Yolk."
Frankly, there's no need to even read novels anymore. The best fiction can be found in literary criticism.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
13 Slogans You'd See if Tourism Boards were Honest
State and city tourism boards concoct catchy slogans to bait people into visiting; "Virginia is for lovers" (ironic, considering Virginia had anti-sodomy laws until 2003), or "I love New York." National governments spend big bucks promoting themselves around the world: "Incredible India." Most of the time, these slogans either provide no incentive for one to visit--how does commanding me to love New York encourage me to show up?--or they present caricatures of the destination that the government of said destination (the one that financed the caricature) will later complain it doesn't deserve.
Anyway, here are some more accurate slogans to give you an honest picture of some of the places you might think of visiting:
Quebec: A sanctuary for Francophones who have discovered deodorant.
Paris: A place that guilt trips you for not loving your significant other as much as you claim to.
India: An "anti-materialistic" place that materialistic Americans visit so that they can feel better about being materialistic.
London: The only city improved by constant, obscuring fog.
Florida: The one state where being a resident can equally be a sign of big success or complete failure.
Delaware: A territory so desolate it feels the need to catch up to Maryland.
Virginia: West Virginia gentrified.
Pennsylvania: The only state where you can be Amish and not miss anything.
New Jersey: A bogeyman that exists to scare New Yorkers into working harder so they can afford to keep living in New York.
Massachusetts: Thanks to all the brains being turned on at MIT and Harvard, everyone else in the state feels comfortable turning theirs off.
New Hampshire: Live free of relevance and still die.
New York City: Because no one is from there, everyone who lives there wastes all their time obsessing about what it is to be a real New Yorker.
Atlantic City: A place to go when you've seen all the other rest stops in New Jersey.
My Twitter feed; a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there: https://twitter.com/greatMikePayne
Anyway, here are some more accurate slogans to give you an honest picture of some of the places you might think of visiting:
Quebec: A sanctuary for Francophones who have discovered deodorant.
Paris: A place that guilt trips you for not loving your significant other as much as you claim to.
India: An "anti-materialistic" place that materialistic Americans visit so that they can feel better about being materialistic.
London: The only city improved by constant, obscuring fog.
Florida: The one state where being a resident can equally be a sign of big success or complete failure.
Delaware: A territory so desolate it feels the need to catch up to Maryland.
Virginia: West Virginia gentrified.
Pennsylvania: The only state where you can be Amish and not miss anything.
New Jersey: A bogeyman that exists to scare New Yorkers into working harder so they can afford to keep living in New York.
Massachusetts: Thanks to all the brains being turned on at MIT and Harvard, everyone else in the state feels comfortable turning theirs off.
New Hampshire: Live free of relevance and still die.
New York City: Because no one is from there, everyone who lives there wastes all their time obsessing about what it is to be a real New Yorker.
Atlantic City: A place to go when you've seen all the other rest stops in New Jersey.
My Twitter feed; a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there: https://twitter.com/greatMikePayne
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Public Service Annoncements for Euthanasia
I have said for years there should be Public Service Announcements promoting suicide. Many random shooters end up turning the gun on themselves anyway, so why not encourage them to cut out the middleman? A few Super Bowl commercials with this message would go a long way:
Are you a loser with a big important plan? Do you think trying to get the world's attention by killing a bunch of strangers is going to make up for all the years humanity treated you like the buzzkill you are? Well, before you turn that gun on others, think twice and turn it on yourself first. Charity begins at home.
Unfortunately, I am seldom consulted on these matters. Society is going to keep discouraging suicide, which will reinforce the anti-suicide stigma; a stigma that will probably prevent a few future random shooters from eliminating themselves before they start the shooting spree.
Oh well, we should still address of few classic anti-suicide cliches in hopes of spreading the good word:
1) When a person offs himself, sometimes family or friends will say: "It couldn't have been suicide! If he was going to kill himself, why would he do (insert normal behavior) beforehand?"
Self-preservation is the overwhelming norm in the Homo sapien world. Even the destitute and the deeply ill usually fight to extend their lives for as long as possible. Prisoners on death row fight for pardons in hopes of continuing to live, even though the rest of their lives will be spent in a ghoulish dungeon. They still prefer ghoulish dungeon to oblivion. All the evidence points to the vast majority of humans wanting to see another day.
Now along comes someone who instead chooses suicide; the most unusual and contrarian decision a person can make, and you're surprised that while making the most unusual decision available in the human experience, he exhibited a few other quirks along the way?
It's like being surprised that someone also snaps his fingers while doing a karaoke version of "My Way".
But why did he send that last rent check? Why did he clean his apartment first? Maybe he was worried about his place in the afterlife, which is why he made the "quirky" decision to tie up loose ends. Many people who are about to die of natural causes behave the same way. Folks worry about their reputations, both on Earth and wherever they think they're going to afterward.
Harakiri is the path least traveled. There is no telling what someone is going to do in that frame of mind.
2) Killing yourself is the most selfish thing you can do.
This is another blowhardy slogan that four out of five dentists recommend. Hey everyone: isn't it more selfish to ask someone to continue living in pain (emotional or physical) so that you don't have to deal with the grief of his disappearing from your life? Because you're going to miss him, he should remain alive against his will? He no longer owns his body because of his friendship with you?
It gets better. People are always stressing that mental illness is a disease like any other. Daytime talk shows regularly focus on elevating mental illness to the same status as cancer, AIDS, etc. And nowadays everyone has 85 bracelets on each arm to raise awareness of diseases of which every Earthling is already aware. We've got to bring these diseases out of the shadows.
Many advocates for euthanasia point to the pain of disease as a reason it must be legalized. You know, human mercy and all that. Great, but how about euthanasia as a response to the disease of depression? [Dial-tone] Hello? Hello? Anyone there?
So mental illness is a disease, but when someone wishes to be relieved of this disease the same way he might wish to be relieved of cancer, suddenly everyone gets on their high horse. Suddenly euthanasia is no longer merciful; it's selfish. And the people who want you to suffer on their behalf? Not selfish. OKEY DOKE...
Getting back to public service announcements: We've already seen the driving safety slogan "55 saves lives." What we need now are a few billboards that say "86ing Yourself Saves Lives." Or if billboards are too much trouble, we should at least print that slogan on every copy of the unofficial murdering losers' bible The Catcher in the Rye.
Are you a loser with a big important plan? Do you think trying to get the world's attention by killing a bunch of strangers is going to make up for all the years humanity treated you like the buzzkill you are? Well, before you turn that gun on others, think twice and turn it on yourself first. Charity begins at home.
Unfortunately, I am seldom consulted on these matters. Society is going to keep discouraging suicide, which will reinforce the anti-suicide stigma; a stigma that will probably prevent a few future random shooters from eliminating themselves before they start the shooting spree.
Oh well, we should still address of few classic anti-suicide cliches in hopes of spreading the good word:
1) When a person offs himself, sometimes family or friends will say: "It couldn't have been suicide! If he was going to kill himself, why would he do (insert normal behavior) beforehand?"
Self-preservation is the overwhelming norm in the Homo sapien world. Even the destitute and the deeply ill usually fight to extend their lives for as long as possible. Prisoners on death row fight for pardons in hopes of continuing to live, even though the rest of their lives will be spent in a ghoulish dungeon. They still prefer ghoulish dungeon to oblivion. All the evidence points to the vast majority of humans wanting to see another day.
Now along comes someone who instead chooses suicide; the most unusual and contrarian decision a person can make, and you're surprised that while making the most unusual decision available in the human experience, he exhibited a few other quirks along the way?
It's like being surprised that someone also snaps his fingers while doing a karaoke version of "My Way".
But why did he send that last rent check? Why did he clean his apartment first? Maybe he was worried about his place in the afterlife, which is why he made the "quirky" decision to tie up loose ends. Many people who are about to die of natural causes behave the same way. Folks worry about their reputations, both on Earth and wherever they think they're going to afterward.
Harakiri is the path least traveled. There is no telling what someone is going to do in that frame of mind.
2) Killing yourself is the most selfish thing you can do.
This is another blowhardy slogan that four out of five dentists recommend. Hey everyone: isn't it more selfish to ask someone to continue living in pain (emotional or physical) so that you don't have to deal with the grief of his disappearing from your life? Because you're going to miss him, he should remain alive against his will? He no longer owns his body because of his friendship with you?
It gets better. People are always stressing that mental illness is a disease like any other. Daytime talk shows regularly focus on elevating mental illness to the same status as cancer, AIDS, etc. And nowadays everyone has 85 bracelets on each arm to raise awareness of diseases of which every Earthling is already aware. We've got to bring these diseases out of the shadows.
Many advocates for euthanasia point to the pain of disease as a reason it must be legalized. You know, human mercy and all that. Great, but how about euthanasia as a response to the disease of depression? [Dial-tone] Hello? Hello? Anyone there?
So mental illness is a disease, but when someone wishes to be relieved of this disease the same way he might wish to be relieved of cancer, suddenly everyone gets on their high horse. Suddenly euthanasia is no longer merciful; it's selfish. And the people who want you to suffer on their behalf? Not selfish. OKEY DOKE...
Getting back to public service announcements: We've already seen the driving safety slogan "55 saves lives." What we need now are a few billboards that say "86ing Yourself Saves Lives." Or if billboards are too much trouble, we should at least print that slogan on every copy of the unofficial murdering losers' bible The Catcher in the Rye.
Friday, April 5, 2013
MAD MEN: Madison Avenue 90210
Mad Men is the only show I make a point of watching. Despite all that has been written about it, it is really just a soap opera for men. It is a melodramatic romance saga built around the drives and desires of men; sort of like High Fidelity is chick lit for men. But because MM is self-aware, and because soap operas are usually for women, Mad Men isn't seen for what it is.
Despite knowing this, I keep watching. Afterward I have dishpan hands.
Yottabyte after yottabyte has been dedicated to analyzing the show, mainly because it revolves around the illiberal corporate world of the 1960s, those murky, perilous days before sensitivity videos and feng shui conference rooms (if Genghis Khan were alive today, he'd quit his emperor gig to work in Human Resources). It takes a moralistic tone toward its era, and tries very hard to flaunt the sins of the past (you might call it anti-WASP porn).
I think this makes it a guilty pleasure for some conservatives: "Wasn't it great when everyone smoked? When you didn't have to walk on egg shells all the time? When this was a m-a-a-a-a-a-a-n's world!"
And for liberals, gawking at the bad old days is their raison d'être, so any opportunity to dig on how evil things were is not an opportunity to be missed! I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. We've come a long way, baby! [Clap-clap-clap]
Because the producers are smart, Don Draper is kept more "modern" than most of the characters. He may be a dipsomaniac that constantly cheats on his wife, but because he exudes less WASPy evil than the other characters, he comes out ahead. Draper is kept pure so that progressive female viewers can guiltlessly fantasize about sleeping with him. It would be harder if Draper looked like John Hamm but talked like George Wallace (female viewers would still push through the guilt, possibly by first purifying their vibrators with fair trade chai).
I said the show was self-aware, which is why it loves to play with the "bad old days" theme. Overplay is more like it. Every episode has at least once ham-handed THINGS USED TO BE DIFFERENT moment. It'd be like if Star Trek had a point in each episode where Captain Kirk looked at the camera and said: "Can you believe we're in space?!"
We get it. 1963 was different from 2013.
All this hyperbole keeps Mad Men from being the edgy feast it thinks it is. Because the show is full of subtle and not so subtle apologies for the material and the era in which it took place, at times it almost feels like an afterschool special. Contrast that with a show that was actually edgy like The Sopranos. The Sopranos never felt the need to write in the margins that "Murder is wrong!" It also offered no apologies for the politically incorrect conversations. You were either along for the salty, violent ride or you weren't.
Mad Men may be a soap opera for men, but its sensibilities can be downright girly. I'll be watching the season premiere with bated breath.
Despite knowing this, I keep watching. Afterward I have dishpan hands.
Yottabyte after yottabyte has been dedicated to analyzing the show, mainly because it revolves around the illiberal corporate world of the 1960s, those murky, perilous days before sensitivity videos and feng shui conference rooms (if Genghis Khan were alive today, he'd quit his emperor gig to work in Human Resources). It takes a moralistic tone toward its era, and tries very hard to flaunt the sins of the past (you might call it anti-WASP porn).
I think this makes it a guilty pleasure for some conservatives: "Wasn't it great when everyone smoked? When you didn't have to walk on egg shells all the time? When this was a m-a-a-a-a-a-a-n's world!"
And for liberals, gawking at the bad old days is their raison d'être, so any opportunity to dig on how evil things were is not an opportunity to be missed! I knew things were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad. We've come a long way, baby! [Clap-clap-clap]
Because the producers are smart, Don Draper is kept more "modern" than most of the characters. He may be a dipsomaniac that constantly cheats on his wife, but because he exudes less WASPy evil than the other characters, he comes out ahead. Draper is kept pure so that progressive female viewers can guiltlessly fantasize about sleeping with him. It would be harder if Draper looked like John Hamm but talked like George Wallace (female viewers would still push through the guilt, possibly by first purifying their vibrators with fair trade chai).
I said the show was self-aware, which is why it loves to play with the "bad old days" theme. Overplay is more like it. Every episode has at least once ham-handed THINGS USED TO BE DIFFERENT moment. It'd be like if Star Trek had a point in each episode where Captain Kirk looked at the camera and said: "Can you believe we're in space?!"
We get it. 1963 was different from 2013.
All this hyperbole keeps Mad Men from being the edgy feast it thinks it is. Because the show is full of subtle and not so subtle apologies for the material and the era in which it took place, at times it almost feels like an afterschool special. Contrast that with a show that was actually edgy like The Sopranos. The Sopranos never felt the need to write in the margins that "Murder is wrong!" It also offered no apologies for the politically incorrect conversations. You were either along for the salty, violent ride or you weren't.
Mad Men may be a soap opera for men, but its sensibilities can be downright girly. I'll be watching the season premiere with bated breath.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Where is John Galt?
The recent Chinese hacking scandal brought to mind a libertarian Zeitgeist that was sweeping
the web a few years back.
In '06 and '07, blind faith in emerging market growth and
in the assumed superiority of emerging market governments became so contagious
that even libertarians caught the bug. I remember reading reports from
prominent libertarians who had scoured the Third World in search of Galt Gulches.
Their optimistic report: nations like China and Argentina were evolving into
safe havens from collapsing Old World powers like the US. Everyone in Asia was
a Confucian Steve Jobs. Argentina had learned from the sins of Peron. If I had
done a push up each time I saw a sentence giddily comparing "capitalist
China" to “anti-capitalist” America, I'd be strong enough to cradle the
globe after Atlas shrugged.
Never mind that China still had a command economy. The biggest risk was remaining in the US, and so libertarians who complained about government spawned real estate bubbles in America started fawning over all the government spawned building in China (a place famous for ghost cities). People concerned about US currency debasement talked of seeking refuge in a place that famously suppresses the yuan; treating its citizens to riot-inducing inflation.
Reinforcing the idea of superior freedom and opportunity in the emerging world was the idea of decoupling: The tired West would collapse under the weight of its colossal debt and old ideas, and the vibrant East would suddenly develop a middle class big enough and rich enough to support its continued rise; a rise largely independent of the West. The very people who praised globalism and the opening of more markets were suddenly declaring that the closing (or impoverishment) of Western markets wouldn't matter much. The people who laughed at the idea of Fortress Europe effectively endorsed Fortress Asia.
Never mind that China still had a command economy. The biggest risk was remaining in the US, and so libertarians who complained about government spawned real estate bubbles in America started fawning over all the government spawned building in China (a place famous for ghost cities). People concerned about US currency debasement talked of seeking refuge in a place that famously suppresses the yuan; treating its citizens to riot-inducing inflation.
Reinforcing the idea of superior freedom and opportunity in the emerging world was the idea of decoupling: The tired West would collapse under the weight of its colossal debt and old ideas, and the vibrant East would suddenly develop a middle class big enough and rich enough to support its continued rise; a rise largely independent of the West. The very people who praised globalism and the opening of more markets were suddenly declaring that the closing (or impoverishment) of Western markets wouldn't matter much. The people who laughed at the idea of Fortress Europe effectively endorsed Fortress Asia.
The key piece in the puzzle of emerging market freedom
and prosperity was the Internet. Just as blue jeans supposedly helped topple the Soviet Union, the
power of the Internet was going to plant tiny Adam Smith seeds throughout the
emerging markets, leading these newly capitalist minds to start utilizing the
best aspects of Western thought. Forget V for Vendetta; we were going to have B
for Bandwidth.
When the 2008 crisis hit, the emerging world didn't decouple. Most of it collapsed much harder. China didn't look to Adam Smith. They looked to Keynes; launching the largest stimulus in the country's history. And it turns out Argentina didn't reject Peron. Since 2008 Argentina's government has toyed with pension seizures, price controls, nationalization, and capital controls (even going so far as to use currency sniffing dogs to keep evildoers from carrying cash across the border).
It seems these libertarian optimists incorrectly assumed that the merger of a rising emerging world and an exploding Internet was necessarily going to have a libertarian bent. They seemed to think we were poised for a Libertarian Spring. But why should anyone have expected such an outcome? Couldn't Twitter just as readily be used to spread pro-government info.? Couldn't "tax the rich" also go viral? Wasn't uber-statist Barack Obama hoisted into the White House with a huge boost from social media?
Internet tools like Twitter and Facebook are used by people, and most people, wherever they reside, conveniently endorse receiving things paid for by other people. The free market that libertarians rightly celebrate continues to get a lukewarm reception in the marketplace of ideas. Even in the US, anti-libertarian moves likes increasing the minimum wage are condoned by the majority, so it seems predictable that more pro-state ideas are going to be spread online than libertarian ones; just look at Occupy Wall Street and its Internet-generated offspring throughout the world.
To witness this phenomenon at work, visit reddit.com and click on the Politics header. Not a subcategory (subreddit) like “Conservatism” or “Liberal.” Just click plain old Politics. What you will see is a long list of touchy-feely, MORE GOVERNMENT, PLEASE! sentiments dominating the headlines, despite the fact that reddit is outside the system, man!
It is hard not to notice a certain irony in China’s using the Internet—the state’s worst nightmare!--to violate the non-aggression principle. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Middle Kingdom to become the Switzerland of the East.
When the 2008 crisis hit, the emerging world didn't decouple. Most of it collapsed much harder. China didn't look to Adam Smith. They looked to Keynes; launching the largest stimulus in the country's history. And it turns out Argentina didn't reject Peron. Since 2008 Argentina's government has toyed with pension seizures, price controls, nationalization, and capital controls (even going so far as to use currency sniffing dogs to keep evildoers from carrying cash across the border).
It seems these libertarian optimists incorrectly assumed that the merger of a rising emerging world and an exploding Internet was necessarily going to have a libertarian bent. They seemed to think we were poised for a Libertarian Spring. But why should anyone have expected such an outcome? Couldn't Twitter just as readily be used to spread pro-government info.? Couldn't "tax the rich" also go viral? Wasn't uber-statist Barack Obama hoisted into the White House with a huge boost from social media?
Internet tools like Twitter and Facebook are used by people, and most people, wherever they reside, conveniently endorse receiving things paid for by other people. The free market that libertarians rightly celebrate continues to get a lukewarm reception in the marketplace of ideas. Even in the US, anti-libertarian moves likes increasing the minimum wage are condoned by the majority, so it seems predictable that more pro-state ideas are going to be spread online than libertarian ones; just look at Occupy Wall Street and its Internet-generated offspring throughout the world.
To witness this phenomenon at work, visit reddit.com and click on the Politics header. Not a subcategory (subreddit) like “Conservatism” or “Liberal.” Just click plain old Politics. What you will see is a long list of touchy-feely, MORE GOVERNMENT, PLEASE! sentiments dominating the headlines, despite the fact that reddit is outside the system, man!
It is hard not to notice a certain irony in China’s using the Internet—the state’s worst nightmare!--to violate the non-aggression principle. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit longer for the Middle Kingdom to become the Switzerland of the East.
When it comes to popular
uprisings--"springs"--, regardless of where they happen or which
tools are used to fuel them, it is naïve to presume they will necessarily usher
in profound new freedom. Let's not forget what happened at the end of the Prague Spring; the Soviet Union invaded and turned
off the spring.
Friday, March 29, 2013
What happens in European banks stays in European...oh wait, nevermind
Cyprus-style deposit tax now possible in New Zealand?
New Zealand savers could see a Cyprus-style tax on their bank accounts, the Green Party is warning, accusing the Government of planning similar solutions for the country.
Canadian "bail-ins" possible should certain "systemically important banks" fail (pages 144-145, h/t www.silverdoctors.com)?
New Zealand savers could see a Cyprus-style tax on their bank accounts, the Green Party is warning, accusing the Government of planning similar solutions for the country.
Canadian "bail-ins" possible should certain "systemically important banks" fail (pages 144-145, h/t www.silverdoctors.com)?
The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada.
Not every precedent becomes a trend, but given how the unthinkable has become both thinkable and predictable, it doesn't hurt to be paranoid. If Canada, the "model for global banking," the financial system that was celebrated for being far less reckless than those in the US and Europe, is using bail-in language reminiscent of what was heard during that "one-off" event in Cyprus, it is definitely time to contemplate the risk of having your savings cut and pasted from your bank account.
When authorities cross a line and it doesn't trigger revolt, they keep moving until they cross the next line, and the one after that. I would be a bit suprised if we didn't see more Cyprus-like "solutions." The European Union is the world's largest economy, and is a place that seems to fancy itself the supreme repository of all things moral and just, so if such a thing can happen there (and in front of the world, no less), my guess is that other countries will at least attempt similar measures; under the guise that depositor haircuts are now part of "international law."
Those who dream of international law delivering the world from giant villians never consider that it can just as easily be used against puny non-villians. In fact, it is more likely to be used against puny non-villians because puny non-villians can't push back.
Ah well, there is probably some cosmic lesson in the fact that the originator of the word "utopia" wound up getting beheaded.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)