That whirring sound you can hear is JS Mill spinning in his grave after a spectacularly stupid piece at Comment in Free today. Mild insults here, an entirely appropriate response here. The piece itself is here. Worth noting a comment by "olching" which mentions a meta-study done a few years back. The only effect found upon children of their parents’ smoking at home was a reduction in lung cancer in later years. So even the "for the children" trope doesn’t work here. "Health facism" was a phrase coined for a reason. And things were very different a century ago.

More stupidity , this time from the private sector, the RIAA. They’re suing a man for copying his own, legally purchased, CDs onto his computer. They might indeed win "Dumbass of the Year 2007" with this late entry. More here .

This time it’s government stupidity. Netsmith isn’t really certain that this is true: no one, surely, can be, even if in receipt of tax money, quite this insane can they? Sex education in Scotland is not allowed to discuss contraception. (Sweary but righteously so) discussion here and more here. 

As if this wasn’t enough, Australia has decided to start censoring the internet. 

It’s true that John Edwards is indeed reporting jobs gained and lost in the normal political manner. However, it’s that normal political manner which is wrong, not just John Edwards (we should, of course, be using net figures).

Some good news though: $30 oil should be just around the corner. 

And finally , a look at the year ahead. 

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Note that I didn’t say “revolutions” edition, although if your resolution is to start a revolution, that’s fine too.
My goals are pretty vanilla; get into better shape and cut down on debt, and hopefully (if the market is properly battered) to buy a house.
How about you folks? What do you have planned for 2008?

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

My true love sent to me: seven swans a-swimming. In the song, this could refer to the seven sacraments, or the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which include things like teaching, service, and leadership.

Teaching, of course, is another of those things where there is far too much government, and far too little service and leadership. As in health, it is not that the staff are bad - but they are just badly managed, and the sector is too centrally run. The top-down Stalinist way of running things didn’t deliver in the Soviet Union, and it doesn’t deliver in health, education, and other public services. So we end up with sink schools from which parents and kids - usually those in the most deprived areas - have no escape.

Now, though, the world is building up experience that decentralization actually works. Instead of the state running every school, give parents and teachers money to run their own. That has led to a flowering of new schools in poor, often black areas of America where the state schools had been overwhelmed with drugs and violence and underwhelmed with learning and achievement. Now Sweden has a similar system - the money follows the choices of parents, not bureaucrats, so it tends to be spent better: and all sorts of new education providers are springing up as a result. A model for the UK? Well, we certainly think so.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Some pundits guess America, long known for her unique exceptionalism, is roughly 50 years behind the French in realizing that Western security is jeopardized by the reliance on imported energy. Abandoned by her last ally in resistance to Kyoto carbon emission cuts - with Australia signing probably the most overrated and greatly dysfunctional treaty in human history - the US is expected to revive its nuclear industry after 30 years of stagnation.

Now, given that most of the Anglosphere looks set to be dominated by the secular left in years to come there is no guarantee that the nuclear renaissance will succeed. So let’s look at France, which as a country with no own energy resources to speak of, can serve as a role model for achieving energy independence.

It is the only country where the political left has not opposed civil nuclear energy. Over the last fifty years, that has enabled France to excel as a beacon of nuclear electricity generation worldwide – producing 80 percent of its electricity supply that way. Secondly, France has an exceptionally strong cultural appreciation of scientific progress - expressed in popular high-speed trains and the supersonic Concorde. Thirdly, the trust in French public service officials, who tend to be trained engineers - rather than lawyers as typical in the US – helped to maintain public confidence in the nuclear program. And finally, the excellent security record of the French nuclear industry - usually attributed to synergies from central management, reactor standardization, a better learning curve and better homogenous training facilities for personnel.

These are the lessons to learn for the US, which will need 35 new reactors to meet surging energy demand by 2050. It’s time to forget about Freedom Fries and just say ‘oui’.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Another snippet from this fascinating upcoming book, Power and Plenty:

Buringh and van Zabden show that European book production rose at roughly 1% per annum between the sixth and eighteenth centuries, from an annual production of roughly 120 manuscripts over the course of the sixth century to the 20 million books printed in 1790. 

The thing that leaps out at me is the incredible power of compounding: we often hear that we should give up this or that little bit of economic growth on this or that grounds, but in the long term that slowing of growth is extremely expensive, look what just 1% leads to.

Another illuminating little exercise is to look at, say, the effects of the Greenland ice cap melting. According to the IPCC this is booked in for sometime after 2500 AD if we don’t change our ways. If we assume current trend growth rate (2.75% say…and always asuming that I’ve used this calculator correctly, no certain thing) then people in 493 years time will be 643,342 (and a bit) times richer than we are. If it is true that the rich should pay for global warming then shouldn’t it be those in the future, those more than half a million times richer than we are?

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Fred Thompson or Ron Paul? Like Perry and some others, I would rather see a big government Democrat elected than a big government Republican. At least that would bring back some opposition. Republicans in Congress have a much better record of reining in the Democrats' presidents than their own. And as I explain later, I think that one of these two is the only Republican candidate capable of winning the national election. Ron Paul answering…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

This morning Fox and Friends concentrated on three candidates in relation the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night: the two lead candidates in the polls, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney - and John McCain… this was in spite of the fact that Senator McCain is not in Iowa (he is in New Hampshire) and that Fred Thompson is ahead of John McCain is most of Iowa polls. This is a part of pattern: last night Fred…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Kevin Hassett, of the American Enterprise Institute, has a pretty good item over at Bloomberg about the good economic developments over the past 12 months, which inevitably get overlooked with so much understandable focus on the sub-prime mortgage snafu and the associated mega-buck losses sustained by some of the world's top financial institutions, such as Citi and Merrill. But much of the economic news is good; when I punch some numbers on my Bloomberg machine,…

From Samizdata.net

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

 A nice little reminder of a basic classically liberal thought. Yes, we are against business gorging on the taxpayers’ money, just as much as we are anyone else. Corporate welfare is no more admirable (and as compared to those who really need aid, less so) than any other kind.

An extraordinarily awful and depressing story of the vileness of which man is capable.

It would appear that the scientific credentials of those at the IPCC who have created the scientific consensus about climate change are less robust than is often thought. 

With stories like this it’s difficult to believe that we have the very best patent system possible. 

Perhaps not the very bestest honours list ever? 

Just to dispel any rumours of Netsmith’s philistinism, a sketch of 20 th century music trends and a wonderful art exhibition. 

And finally, the EU and comic characters. Please make up your own jokes about the EU as comic characters.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom