Wednesday
"All the available Keynesian levers for achieving economic growth have been pulled, yet the recovery is one of the weakest since World War II. The problem lies with the way the "stimulus" was carried out, the uncertainty of looming higher taxes, and the antibusiness rhetoric and regulatory strong-arming of this administration."
- Harvey Golub, Wall Street Journal.
One of the things I most admire about capitalism is its willingness to pay attention to what for many are utterly extraneous details, details that many would consider far too insignificant to be concentrating on - even morally rather degraded, but which many others have been begging for someone to sort out. In among solving world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah.
One of the many disagreeable features of tyranny, on the other hand, is that everyone has to obsess about whatever happens to be the dominant obsession, such as world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah. People aren't allowed to concentrate entirely on their own thing and ignore whatever public mood has been officially decided upon. With the result that very little actually gets accomplished. Progress, which usually takes the form of a large succession of small steps, just does not happen. While everyone is shouting about world peace, imperialism, poverty, AIDS, blah blah blah, nobody is taking care of it, by doing little bits of it.
So, all hail to the team of super-geeks who may (probably a bit early to say for sure yet) have cracked (which is the opposite of the right word) the problem of tomato ketchup getting stuck in the tomato ketchup bottle.
David Thompson has details:
Because the world has been waiting for a low-friction ketchup bottle.
Indeed it has. Not all of it, mind. But, a lot of it.
Tuesday
...the state is not your friend.
Ira Stoll over on Reason.com has an excellent article drawing the obvious parallel between the Nazi era Reichsfluchsteuer tax imposed on fleeing Jews and the 'exit taxes' being imposed on US subjects seeking to leave the USA.
Read the whole thing.
One of the little pleasures of my life is looking back through old photo-archives and finding pictures that particularly amuse, in ways that I did register when taking them (otherwise I would not have taken them), but then forgot about.
So this morning, for instance, while looking through some pictures I took earlier in the month of the remarkable (because so remarkably ugly) Baynard House, I came across this picture:
Yes, it is ugly, isn't it? But what interested me when I took that photo was also all those Men in Orange. What were they up to? What struck me at the time, and I distinctly remember this feeling now, was what an alarmingly large number of Men In Orange there were. It was like they were making an action movie and about to be slaughtered by James Bond or by a James Bond imitator, or perhaps even plotting an urban atrocity of some sort themselves, for real. None of the photos I took of these many, many Men In Orange quite captures the scary oddity of them, congregated in such an alarmingly large number. The above snap was only the least unsuccessful from this point of view.
So it was that, when I encountered this sign on the side of Baynard House a few moments later, I was amused, and not wholly surprised:
Click to make that more legible.
What the Men In Orange are doing is some major rearranging of Blackfriars tube station. Blackfriars Station as a whole, including an overground railway station that straddles the Thames on Blackfriars Bridge, is being entirely reconstructed, and the underground bit with it. (I show a couple more shots of the overground aspect of all this activity here.) Merely the London Underground (LU) aspect of this is a big job, which requires the attentions of Men In Orange in large numbers.
The above snaps were taken when I was on my way to One New Change. The process of writing about One New Change caused me to forget my strange encounter with the Men In Orange, until prompted to remember the experience this morning, thanks to the magic of digital photography and the infinitely capacious hard drives that computers have in them nowadays.
SpaceX will try again for the one second launch window this monring at 03:44 am EDT; coverage will start at 03:00 am. The link is not yet up, I will add it here when I see it.
The link is here and will go live in about 1.5 hours from now.
Broadcast is live both at SpaceX and at NASA's web site.
Falcon 9 launch flawless, Dragon capsule is in orbit, solar arrays deployed. Dragon is on its way to ISS! It is a new ballgame in space.
Monday
In all the discussion about the Greek exit from the Euro I see a lot about wealth and poverty; about whether more damage would be done to the economies of Greece, Europe and the world by "austerity" within the Euro versus a default and a return to the drachma.
These are the questions of cost and benefit that it is respectable for world leaders to discuss. Discussion gets heated, I hear - voices are raised and cheeks flushed with anger. But the thing that really sends the blood rushing to a Prime Minister or a Chancellor's cheek is pride, not money. Pride matters. Pride, shame and "face" in the oriental sense set billions of Euros coursing this way and that in a way that mere economics could never manage. Greek pride finds German diktats hard to bear - but not so unbearable as facing the fact that Greece did not join the Euro but rather was let in by condescending officials who turned a blind eye to obvious lies, like a university turning a blind eye to plagiarism in order to keep up the diversity quota. The Germans were proud of their Deutschmark, prouder still of their own nobility in giving it up for the greater good (with a little frisson of shame at the sinful pleasures of that export boom), and this is the thanks they get?
Bitterest of all is the wounded pride of the Eurocrats. Their sure touch was meant to gently shape history as the potter's touch shapes the clay. Only the clay slid off-balance on the wheel and it has begun the trajectory that will end when it hits the wall with an almighty SPLAT.
Shapers of history really hate almighty splats. Hurts their pride, you see.
I really hate shapers of history.
Sunday
I have a sense that, if what writers such as Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media say is correct, that it will become more politically palatable for parts of the mainstream media to address the sensitive issue as to whether Mr Obama actually is, by the usual tests required of a POTUS, American.
"So now Chris Matthews isn’t the only one experiencing a little thrill when he thinks about Barack (omit middle name) Obama. The recent revelation that from the early 1990s until the day before yesterday—or, to be more accurate, until Obama made his decision to run for president—a biographical pamphlet circulated by his literary agents described him as having been “born in Kenya” has been setting the world of Twitter atwitter. What should we think about that? An agency spokesman who claims to have been responsible for the “born in Kenya” wheeze has publicly said that it was a mistake, a typographical error, a slip of the pen that just went “unchecked” for, um, sixteen-seventeen years. I can understand that. She meant to write “Hawaii” and wrote “Kenya” instead. Could happen to anyone. They look and sound enough alike, don’t they, that no one noticed. You meant to write “there” and you wrote “their” instead. You meant to write “cup” and you wrote “floccinaucinihilipilification” instead. No one—no one at the literary agency, not the author himself—could be expected to notice. You understand that, right?"
The article then goes on to address to the extent to which various records about Obama (medical and college stuff,) have been sealed. And one commenter on the PJM site had this observation:
"The curious thing isn’t so much that these things are all sealed, but that the sealing is so effective. If this had been any Republican, or any ordinary Democrat, these things would all have been on Wikileaks years ago. The CIA can’t keep secrets this well. Not even the Mossad."
But in the end, how much of this stuff about "Who is Barack Obama?" matters. He's been in the job for four years. Although his period of office coincided with the very welcome disposal of Bin Laden, I cannot really think if a single serious positive accomplishment by Obama during his time in office, although I suppose his greatest might be his unintended one: the birth of the Tea Party movement, and an associated invigoration of the small government, libertarian strain within the Republican Party (well, even that might be debatable). Whatever doubts I might have about Mitt Romney, I just cannot go along with the idea of "to save the village we must destroy it" point of view, nor do I think we can finesse the situation if Obama wins, as argued by Tim Sandefur recently. (I don't share Tim's fear that we will see a dramatic loss of freedoms to the religious right, although I suppose anything is possible).
Saturday
I am sitting in a motel room near the Mojave Spaceport where I am working at present and will be watching the SpaceX launch HERE and probably *not* trying to type what you can already see there. If you have questions about what is going on, fire off a comment and I will try to explain as best I can. Keep in mind though that I will have a cut off different than most of you since I am in Pacific Daylight Time, -3 hours from EDT and -8 from BDT.
For those who have not been following it, this is the first commercial cargo test flight to the International Space Station. The Dragon capsule will deliver food, water, clothing and other miscellaneous not-critical supplies; it will return to Earth carrying a lot of special purpose gear from experiments that have been completed.
The flight is a combination of two test flights which were originally planned to be separate. COTS 2 is the demonstration that the Dragon can do all of the sorts of maneuvering required for space station 'Prox Ops'; the COTS 3 portion is an actual docking and deliver of cargo to the station and back to Earth.
This is a very big deal to those of us in the commercial space world. NASA is an initial customer but not the only one. SpaceX has signed a contract with Bigelow Aerospace to handle resupply for the Bigelow space stations that will be going up starting in the middle of this decade.
01:17 PDT: Video feed is live
01:44 PDT: This is going to be a tough one. The launch window is seconds wide... any hold and they will have to wait until Tuesday to try again.
01:56 PDT: Oh, well. Not tonight. Vehicle had a terminal abort. SpaceX has very conservative limits and go criteria. If this wasn't a one window per day due to the tight parameters for an ISS rendezvous, they will not be able to recycle and try again as they have in the past. It will be a Tuesday window. I will be in DC for the runup to the ISDC by then.
02:00 PDT: They had a chamber pressure high on one of the engines. Well, they have several days to work it out. For now they are safing the vehicle.
Friday
It seems that Alain de Botton, who I might add is a weapons grade plonker of the first order, has finally come up with a good idea.
As his next project, the philosopher and founder of The School of Life is aiming to revolutionise pornography. Driven by the way society has been saturated by explicit images and videos, de Botton is asking 'what next for porn?'. The writer intends to meet with leaders in porn and the arts in order to bring about a better kind of pornography.
Well I am all for anything that leads to better products. And perhaps he will use this opportunity to point out to these "leaders in porn" that boob implants are to porn what McDonald's is to fine dining.
What does anyone know about the outfit calling itself FairSearch?
Based on growing evidence that Google is abusing its search monopoly to thwart competition, we believe policymakers must act now to protect competition, transparency and innovation in online search.
Policymakers? That is a bit like asking a collective of rapists to protect chastity, virginity and privacy. In my experience nine times out of ten when I hear people calling for a market leader to be kicked by 'policy makers', it is because they find it cheaper to pay lobbyists to do in the competition's legs than actually compete with them.
Anyone have the low down on these guys?
This article on Greeks seeking refuge from their woes by emigrating to Australia is a bit old now, although I would be very surprised if the desire to go has changed at all. Greeks are now, by one measure I saw, the seventh largest ethnic grouping Down Under.
Of course, countries such as Australia and Canada, for that matter, might not be as easy to emigrate to as in the past if the would-be emigrant does not have the sort of skills that are likely to appeal to any granters of visas. And without wishing to sound sour about it, I could argue that the sort of enterprising Greeks who would have been welcomed with open arms by such countries have left their ancestral homes long ago. Another problem is that the very people who are trying to get the hell out of Greece are likely to be the sort most likely to drive their country back towards some semblance of prosperity.
Update: EU officials are starting to admit they are planning for a Greek exit. The end of Greece's eurozone membership is very close now, I think.
Thursday
A Dead Statesman
I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
Rudyard Kipling
Ponder...
Today I had an idea for a website that might be worth monetising. Nothing I could give up my day job for, but something that might bring in a few tens of pounds pocket money from Google Adsense. It would be fun; it might help fund my gadget habit. But:
Despite what you may have read somewhere on the Internet, any income earned from Google Adsense is taxable income. It makes no difference whether you earn £5 or £10,000 – this money must be declared to the Inland Revenue as income derived from self employment. Moreover, you must declare yourself as self employed as soon as you start work (this could be when you begin that new website or insert Google Adsense into a personal blog).
Says Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs:
If you're self-employed on a temporary or part-time basis you must register for business taxes with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) as soon as you start work. You'll have to complete a Self Assessment tax return and are responsible for paying your own tax and National Insurance contributions on the income you earn.Even if you don't think you'll earn enough to need to pay tax, you still need to complete a tax return.
Right now I pay my tax on Pay As You Earn, meaning my employer employs a department of people to do all the form filling. I like it that way. I have a very strong aversion to filling in official forms. When forced to do so my heart rate increases, I start to sweat, I hyperventilate, my writing hand cramps up, I have a stong urge to shout and throw things and people around me get nervous. This is partly indignation at being made to do something I do not want to do, partly the unease of spending time doing something that is not pleasant and not what I am skilled at (if I was good at organising paperwork and form filling I would have made different career choices), and partly irrational. And I can never find the damned supporting documents no matter how organised I have tried to be. I could elaborate yet further but thinking about it now is starting to induce symptoms so I must end this paragraph soon. The point is: the rewards would have to be very high to overcome this aversion, or I would have to make enough to pay someone else to do it for me.
A quick google suggests I am not the only one. Even for normal people, the cost, time and effort to fill in a tax return must be high enough to rule out all but the most serious of business ventures.
What is the cost to society of all the little side projects, hobbies and micro-businesses that do not get started because it is not worth the bureaucratic hassle?
Update: I found some tax examples graciously provided by HRMC. I particularly enjoyed the phrase "air of commerciality". No grey areas here, then.
Wednesday
Samizdata's favourite Member of Parliament, Steve Baker, has been elected an Executive Member of the 1922 Committee. What this shows is that he is the kind of Member of Parliament whom other Members of Parliament rate highly, and pay respectful attention to. It means that Baker has a Parliamentary following. He is not a loan (!!!) lone voice in the wilderness. Good.
In other words, ideas like this (written by Baker in response to some recent remarks by William Hague to the effect that we should all work harder) are now getting around:
Senior politicians must realise that hard work cannot produce prosperity without the right institutions. In addition to Adam Smith’s "peace, easy taxes and a tolerable administration of justice", hard work must be rewarded with honest money which holds its value, not money which the commercial banks and the Bank of England can produce at the touch of a button.Money loaned into existence in ever greater quantities caused the present crisis. It has given us a society based on crushing burdens of work in exchange for rewards which quickly disintegrate. That is the problem which must be solved if hard work is to have proper meaning and if we are to have a moral and just society which delivers prosperity for all.
Imagine a world in which the most powerful people in it started seriously to understand and to act upon notions like that. Thanks to people like Steve Baker we may eventually find our way towards such a world, and maybe (although one should never assume such a thing) quite soon.
I have admired Steve Baker MP ever since I first heard about him from my friend Tim Evans, and have liked him ever since I met him, at a Cobden Centre dinner a while back.
If you also admire Baker and what he is trying to accomplish, then please take the small amount of time needed to add a comment here saying so, even if you are not normally inclined to comment, here or anywhere else. Baker has several times told me, and I have no reason to doubt him, that encouragement of this sort makes a definite difference to his happiness, and to his willingness and ability to keep on keeping on.