Last week, Jamie Whyte, James Tyler, Tom Clougherty and I attended a dinner with numerous others at which the former Prime Minister of Georgia, Vladimer ‘Lado’ Gurgenidze spoke. Hosted by good our friends at the Adam Smith Institute, the evening was a showcase of sound reform and what can be achieved by politicians who have a clear vision and will to set people free. Don’t take my word for it. Get a flavour from the man himself, here.
Politicians and bankers would do well to head the more than 200-year old words of Patrick Henry in his infamous “Give me liberty of give me death” speech:
“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.”
Today, if politicians and bankers merely channeled the same amount of energy that they expend in deceiving the people into fixing the monetary system, then perhaps they would have already come up with a viable solution by now. To have the slightest fighting chance of resolving this crisis with a solution that benefits the people, politicians and bankers must be courageous enough to tell the public the worst of the truth and to provide for it. But fraud, and perpetuation of an illusion seems to be their only concern today. And with good reason. After all, as illustrated by a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities study, they are the only ones benefiting from this fraud. From 2002 to 2007, the top 1% of Americans captured nearly 70% of the income gains in America. Today, in my opinion, today, the number one reason why the vast majority of people still cannot except the possibility that we will soon enter into a second phase of this global economic crisis that will prove to be far worse than the financial disruptions we experienced in 2008 is the following: Most people alive today have no memory of the Great Depression. For those that do, certainly they are able to identify with much greater clarity, the similarities in the patterns of fraud back then and the patterns of fraud occurring today.
On Tuesday, I spoke at the IEA’s The State of the Economy conference, participating in a panel discussion on Fiscal Policy and Government Expenditure with Edmund Conway, Sir John Bourn, Graeme Leach and Danny Alexander MP.
In discussions about when to begin cuts, I flatly rejected Keynesianism, explaining that capital-based macroeconomics gives a quite different set of tools for thinking about the economy. This generated interest from students and professional economists present so I have updated our primer, adding The Causes of the Economic Crisis and Garrison’s macroeconomics slides.
I also recommend these articles as a quick-start to rethinking money, banking and economics:
In an exciting development, the Conservatives have announced employee-owned cooperatives for the public sector:
A Conservative government will give public sector workers a powerful new right to form employee owned co-operatives to take over the services they deliver. This will empower millions of public sector workers to become their own boss and help them to deliver better services.
This is the most significant shift in power from the state to working people since the sale of council houses in the 1980s, which gave millions of people across Britain greater freedom, security and control over their lives.
The new right to form employee owned co-operatives will apply throughout the vast majority of the public sector – including JobCentre Plus offices, community nursing teams and primary schools. Employee owned co-operatives will continue to be funded by the state so long as they meet national standards, but will be freed from centralised bureaucracy and political micromanagement. They will be not-for-profit organisations – any financial surpluses will be reinvested into the service and the staff who work there, rather than distributed to external shareholders.
Over the years, our Chief Executive, Dr Tim Evans, has written a great deal on mutual, co-operative and worker ownership. See for example This Stockholm Network Paper. We are delighted that the policy debate is moving in this direction.
Chris Neal offers a personal perspective on bloated EU regulation.
I am reading ‘God Stories’, a wonderful book by Andrew Wilson and last night enjoyed the chapter entitled “Concerning His Son”.
In this Andrew unpacks a passage of Scripture that in a “mere 40 Greek words” summarises the entire Gospel.1
He compares this “mere 40 words” of highly effective language to the Magna Carta’s 4000 words, the American Declaration of Independence at 1321 words and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address at 267 words.
Let me add some more examples:
Pythagoras Theory – 24 words
The Lords Prayer – 66 words
Archimedes Principle – 67 words
The Ten Commandments – 179 words
Andrew’s final example is the EU directive on the sale of cabbages – yes that’s right ‘cabbages’ – which extends to an incredible 26,253 words!
I found this quite amusing in the context of Andrew’s writing last night but this extraordinary fact has played on my mind all day. How did we ever get into the position that we allow the ‘Eurocracy’ to conjure such useless and lengthy pieces of legislation for us to then implement and police? Furthermore, what does this persistent and systemic interference from the EU cost the British tax payer?
Richard Cobden campaigned for the repeal of the Corn Laws: best we set about EU veggie directives sooner rather than later!
Romans 1:1-4 translated from 40 Greek to 54 English words:
“The gospel of God which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” [↩]
