Take your stinking paws off my guns you damn dirty ape!

Here is a great article by RCP/LM/Spiked stalwart Brendan O'Neill about Charlton Heston. I meant to write something to this effect myself on Sunday, but didn't have the time.

Essentially, those who see a contradiction between Charlton Heston's earlier crusades in the civil rights movement and his later fight against gun control are missing the point. Heston was a consistent liberal and a vociferous defender of liberty in all its forms. Unlike so many modern US "liberals", he did not pick and choose a favoured set of individual freedoms, he defended them all.

Update

RCP members obviously have a "three line whip" on this subject. Here is another nice article in the Times by Mick Hume.

Don't take yourself so seriously

It is always amusing when people are so tied-up in their own political obsessions and enmities that they fail to notice when something is quite obviously a wind-up. Take for example this post from the rather tedious Orcinus blog. The disdain for wacky US evangelicals would be justified if it wasn't for the fact that the article (and website) in question wasn't so obviously a joke:

Meanwhile, no one appears to have made the trip upwards from Capitol Hill. Beltway observers had speculated that dozens of high-profile leaders, including President Bush and Representative DeLay, would be raptured, possibly setting off a complex battle over succession within the halls of power.

XFM: You're No Fun Anymore!

What happened to you XFM? You're no fun anymore. You use to be cool, man. You gave Ricky his break. He introduced the world to the brain of Karl Pilkington. You gave Adam and Joe their own show, when everyone else thought of them as just those blokes who made lame movie parodies using Star Wars toys.

Now you're just a whore for the Government. Every advert break you offer a succession of preachy messages from the regime: hepatitis, tax returns ("tax doesn't have to be taxing" - YES IT DOES, IT'S TAX! You goddamn, pink-latex-wearing, bicycle-riding tit), smoking, Jebus know what else... God forbid you might advertise a good or service we might actually want to buy once in a while.

One would be forgiven for thinking your core demographic had no disposable incomes, just empty brains ready to absorb Government propaganda. As you are obviously pretty much entirely state-funded these days: why not just rename yourselves "BBC X"? You could get your money from the licence fee and then at least we wouldn't need to listen to the mind-numbing public information bullshit between the rock music that you still occasionally play.

XFM: You're no fun anymore!

Yapping Pomeranian Mauls English Mastiff

As expected, in round three of their debate, the “yapping Pomeranian”, Kevin Carson gives Samizdata's “English Mastiff”, Paul Marks the savaging he deserves:

Round 1: Contract Feudalism: A Critique of Employer Power over Employees by Kevin Carson.

Round 2: A Critique of a Critique: An Examination of Kevin Carson’s “Contract Feudalism” by Paul Marks.

Interlude: Samizdata blog posting by Perry de Havilland with “yapping Pomeranian” comment.

Round 3: Further Thoughts about “Contract Feudalism”: A Response to Paul Marks by Kevin Carson.

Suggested new logo for Mutualism or Left-Libertariansm: A fierce-looking Mutualist Pomeranian tearing chunks from the ankle of a complacent vulgar libertarian English Mastiff.

Discussion point

Are we going to experience an economic crash the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression?

That oath of allegiance in full

That oath of allegiance in full:

“I pledge my allegiance to the UK, Queen Brenda of Slough and to the EU as my designated regional trading bloc.

I promise to do my duty to my God/my secular belief system [delete as applicable] and to the community and/or communities of which I am a member, notwithstanding my prior allegiance to the above authorities.

If I belong to a devolved nation or region within the UK, I also swear allegiance to my elected parliament or assembly in so far as relevant powers have been devolved to that body.

I understand that this pledge does not imply any reciprocal allegiance from the state to myself. My home may be at risk if I do not keep up with repayments. Participating stores only. Redemption value: £0.001p.”

We're All Doomed (Again)

"Get liquid. Get out of debt. Get some food stored up in quantity, against the possibility of sudden price spikes and shortages."

More scary prophecy from William Grigg.

Buckley

Compare and contrast.

Uncanny Prophecy of the Day

Whatever, then, the State Socialists may claim or disclaim, their system, if adopted, is doomed to end in a State religion, to the expense of which all must contribute and at the altar of which all must kneel; a State school of medicine, by whose practitioners the sick must invariably be treated; a State system of hygiene, prescribing what all must and must not eat, drink, wear, and do; a State code of morals, which will not content itself with punishing crime, but will prohibit what the majority decide to be vice; a State system of instruction, which will do away with all private schools, academies, and colleges; a State nursery, in which all children must be brought up in common at the public expense; and, finally, a State family, with an attempt at stirpiculture, or scientific breeding, in which no man and woman will be allowed to have children if the State prohibits them and no man and woman can refuse to have children if the State orders them. Thus will Authority achieve its acme and Monopoly be carried to its highest power.

    - Benjamin R. Tucker, State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree, and wherein they differ, 1886.

Quick Link

Bush the Younger, Greenspan, Northern Rock and the coming Great Depression. Another apocalyptic post from William N. Grigg.

Big Business and Liberty

Sean Gabb refuses to defend the favourable tax status of non-domiciled foreigners and rails against The City of London and big business in general.

He is right to do so. When libertarians reflexively defend the riches of those who operate within the status quo, they are not defending a free market or liberty, they are defending actually-existing corporate capitalism. The latter is in no way an imperfect approximation of the former.

Those who picture the free society as an ultra-capitalist Tescoville (with cannabis cigarettes available on aisle 5 obviously) are suffering from a degraded vision of low expectations. When they evangelize on behalf of liberty to normal folk in those terms, they should not be surprised when Joe Public prefers statism, which at least gives the illusion of restraining the power of these rampaging corporate behemoths.

Sean argues that limited liability is the source of unwarranted corporate power. But there are are other, even more fundamental ways, in which big business needs the state to survive and dominate. Here are just a few :

1. Land
   The current distribution of land is historically unjust and morally indefensible. Absentee landlords own vast swathes of land in the UK. Their titles are upheld by the state despite their historical (and current) injustice. The taxpayer covers their massive enforcement costs and large agricultural subsidies are given, based on the amount of land held.
   
   Without the state and without the ability to externalise the cost of retaining exclusive access to large areas of land, a more flexible system of usufruct rights could evolve, whereby rights over land could only be retained by ongoing occupancy and use. To simplify grossly: use it or lose it.
   
   When it retains access to land, labour has traditionally shown itself reluctant to become the "human resource" upon which big business is dependent. It will work for wages but the right (and ability) to return to the land prevents "wage slavery". This is why, in countries around the world, land must be enclosed by the state and peasants must be driven into the cities before big business can get the labour it needs on the terms it requires.
   
   
2. Labour
   Even when deprived of the means to obtain subsistence from the land, labour will attempt to organise itself to obtain increased wages and working conditions within the capitalist system. Within a partnership, cooperative or mutual society, labourers can organise amongst their fellows to do so. Within a small business they can bargain directly with their employer. Within a large company, they have no choice but to organise collectively. Without the state there would be no anti-union laws, upon which large companies in particular depend, to keep the workers in line, their costs low and their profits high.
   
   
3. Intellectual property
   "Intellectual property" is a state-privilege granted to individuals or organisations allowing them a monopoly of production on particular goods or services. In theory it creates incentives for the creation of new and useful products. In practice it accrues massive amounts of power and profit to large corporations. These same corporations lobby constantly and successfully for ever increased extensions to the period of time they can retain their state granted privilege. The privilege prevents smaller competitors from entering the market.
   
   
4. Infrastructure
   Big business thrives on state-built infrastructure. The most obvious example is the transport network. Without the state-constructed motorways and railways, big business could not obtain the economies of scale needed to compete against smaller, more agile competitors. It goes without saying that the land for this infrastructure is nearly always stolen using compulsory purchase (US: eminent domain). Without this huge market distortion, business would tend towards smaller, more local enterprises.
   
   
5. Regulation
   Regulation is often described as being anti-business. The public thinks of regulation as a counter-balance to the power of corporations. It is no such thing. Government regulation is shaped by big business. In some cases, the legislation is actually designed by corporations. Regulation entrenches market incumbents and discriminates against smaller business. Who is better able to deal with employment legislation: a single-proprietorship with one employee or a corporation with a hundred-strong "human resources" department? Regulation creates an artificial economy of scale, privileging big business and disadvantaging smaller enterprises. As Rothbard said of FDR's New Deal:
   

   Every element in the New Deal program: central planning, creation of a network of compulsory cartels for industry and agriculture, inflation and credit expansion, artificial raising of wage rates and promotion of unions within the overall monopoly structure, government regulation and ownership, all this had been anticipated and adumbrated during the previous two decades. And this program, with its privileging of various big business interests at the top of the collectivist heap, was in no sense reminiscent of socialism or leftism; there was nothing smacking of the egalitarian or the proletarian here. No, the kinship of this burgeoning collectivism was not at all with socialism...but with fascism,...a kinship which many big businessmen of the twenties expressed openly in their yearning for abandonment of a quasi-laissez-faire system for a collectivism which they could control…. Both left and right have been persistently misled by the notion that intervention by the government is ipso facto leftish and antibusiness.

In a very real sense, big business cannot be thought of as separate to the state. Big business lives in a symbiotic relationship with government, feeding it with taxes and bribes and extracting privilege. But ultimately this gestalt entity is a parasite. It draws its sustenance from labour: from you and me. We won't kill one half of the parasite without also destroying the other.

I finish with a quote from Sean's post:

A free society is not Tesco minus the State. It is a place of small craftsmen and farmers and traders, of artists and of unlicensed doctors and lawyers, and of others needed if individuals and free associations of individuals are to live well. We cannot say much more than this about the arrangements of a free society. But we can be sure it would have no place for big business as it now is found.