The Shotgun
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Michael Ignatieff on health care
Michael Ignatieff is smart guy. No matter what else you think of him or his policies, you cannot plausibly deny that he is extremely intelligent. So I am puzzled by his recent comments on health care reform.
Dr. Ignatieff says that he will make Health Care a priority for his hypothetical Liberal government. He also attacks Mr. Harper by saying, “"Four years of this Conservative government, we've really done nothing substantial on health care."
Maybe Dr. Ignatieff should take a second look at the Constitution Act. The federal government isn’t supposed to do anything on health care. That is a responsibility of the provinces. If he wants to make health care a priority maybe he should run to be premier not prime minister.
I find it bizarre that a leader of a liberal democracy is being attacked by the opposition for obeying the constitution.
I say again that Dr. Ignatieff is a smart man so I have to assume that he has some basic knowledge on how the Canadian federal system operates. This means that I have to also assume that his comments about health care are not really policy declarations but empty political rhetoric.
This assumption is reinforced by the nature of his proposals. Dr. Ignatieff starts off by saying the current system is unsustainable. Then he says that he won’t make any substantive change except for refocusing on preventative care. The idea being that it will lessen the health care demand which is straining the system.
Preventative care is good and all but it isn’t really a solution to the looming health care crisis. The population is aging and older people will always need more health care. How exactly do you prevent people from getting old? So with no power to reform health care and no real reforms being proposed, Dr. Ignatieff thinks he can win the next election on health care rhetoric alone.
I think the Canadian people are smarter than that.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on September 4, 2010 at 06:56 AM
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Friday, September 03, 2010
No shit
The corralling of 250 people at Queen and Spadina Streets for hours in torrential rain at the end of Toronto’s G20 summit remains a flashpoint in a weekend that saw the largest mass arrests in Canadian history.
In the face of an onslaught of complaints, lawsuits and inquiries, Toronto police Chief Bill Blair on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that he made mistakes that night.
(from The Globe & Mail)
Posted by Mike Brock on September 3, 2010 at 01:27 PM
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Drinking and smoking as a patriotic act
Russian Minister of Finance calls for patriotic action from the Russian people. He calls upon them to drink and smoke more so that the government can receive more taxes:
Speaking as the Russian government announces plan to raise duty on alcohol and cigarettes, Alexei Kudrin said that by smoking a pack, “you are giving more to help solve social problems such as boosting demographics, developing other social services and upholding birth rates”.
“People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state,” he told the Interfax news agency.
I suspect that the average Russian on the street will answer this particular call to arms with an ole “Ready, aye ready.”
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on September 3, 2010 at 09:53 AM
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Family to be bankrupted for hosting a barbecue
Every year the Jaworski family host a weekend of barbecue and lectures. People come from all around the world to hang out in their backyard and discuss and celebrate the principle of freedom. The Jaworskis have cause to know the importance of freedom, they fled communism to find liberty here in Canada. So in memory of their former oppression they help their son host the aptly named Liberty Summer Seminar.
As many of you already know the Jaworski family is being fined $50 000 for hosting the Liberty Summer Seminar. The by-law official is accusing them of holding a commercial conference center outside of the permitted zone. The idea that LSS is a commercial event is absurd. Considering the caliber of speakers that they attract and the relatively low cost of attending, I doubt they have ever made a profit.
So to bankrupt these honest and hard working people (I have met them several times) on such a flimsy claim that the LSS is somehow commercial is arbitrary and cruel. The bylaw officer that charged the family did not even have the courtesy to talk to either of the Jaworski parents or even one of the event’s organizers.
The local mayor suggested that the Jaworskis “[…] have a discussion with the bylaw officer, sort of like beg for forgiveness, say ‘I didn’t realize’. Or they can work it out with lawyers.” If the bylaw officer was not willing to talk to them before he charged them, why would he behave reasonably now? Also what kind of free society gives people the choice between begging some petty official to forgive them for using their own land to host a barbecue and going bankrupt?
The mayor is trying to stay out of the incident, and I agree with the general principle that politicians should not interfere with legal proceedings. But this is such a clear case of the misuse of bylaws. No reasonable person would think that bankruptcy is an appropriate punishment for hosting a barbecue. I hope that the mayor takes a moment to reconsider not only his position but what exactly his duty is to his constituents.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on September 3, 2010 at 06:58 AM
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Danielle Kisses the Third Rail
Wildrose attacks the most sacred of sacred Canadian cows:
“I wish I could’ve delivered meaningful reforms, but I didn’t. That’s for the next premier,” Mr. Klein said.
He was wrong. Ed Stelmach has shrunk from any such initiatives. But Danielle Smith, leader of the Wildrose Alliance, who hopes to be the next premier after Mr. Stelmach, is reopening it.
“Albertans have been ready to have that debate, but the politicians are afraid to,” Ms. Smith said. “Controversy in itself, or the fact that people might disagree with us, is not enough for us to decide not to take on an issue.”
This is not talk of freeing the market for health care - perish the radical thought - but allowing private entities to offer care with public funds. The hope is that by contracting out, the services will be delivered more efficiently, while keeping the provincial governments as paymasters. The latter part is suppose to reassure the electorate in some deeply mystical way. Because the government is paying for it, it will be good and humane. Repeat until numb.
Since this is government-run health care by other means, there is little to cheer about. Its main advantage is circumventing the militant health care unions. Its disadvantage is that, in the Left hands, it can be used to discredit further reforms in the direction of the market. Just regulate privately delivered care in such a way as make it even worse than the purely public system, and wait for the Toronto Star - and its sisters across the Dominion - to denounce it as capitalism run amok. A few editorials about the Americanization of Canadian health care, and the issue is dead for another ten years, along with many of the poor suckers still on waiting lists.
As I've often said in this space, Medicare isn't a government program, it's a cult. The nominal reason behind socialized health care is "universality." The altruistic goal of insuring that all Canadians have access to quality care. That was the wedge that allowed the Medicare Myth to be born, and is still its headline rationalization. But take the same argument and apply it in a different context. If a politician was to argue that "universality" of access to quality food should be a government objective, and that the government should therefore takeover the supermarkets, he'd be laughed at.
The overwhelming majority of Canadians can afford quality food, if they choose to buy it, and only a small percentage might go hungry without help. If one believes that government should be charged with delivering charity - I certainly don't - then the logical approach would be to subsidize food for the poor. Whether through food stamps, or a welfare check, it would give the poor the means of eating and leave the rest of us to arrange our affairs as we choose. That is how we already feed the poor in Canada. It is not ideal, but it is far preferably to having your local Loblaws run by a Minister of Food.
The same logic applies equally well to health care. Any sort of health care financing scheme will have to rely on the principle of putting a bit in and using as needed, something akin to insurance. The overwhelmingly majority of Canadians can afford private insurance premiums, if they could not the tax base would not exist to support the current system. Like with food and housing, those who could not afford the premiums would be subsidized. Such a system would have its abuses, as any system does, but it will allow the great majority of Canadians access to health care on their own terms, rather than those of the Minister of Health. It would also ensure that even the poor could get quality health care, since they would be just another customer of the hospital or clinic.
While such an approach would be logical, it would challenge the sanctity of government delivered care. The Cult of Medicare is not interested in quality health care, it is interested in preserving state health care. A nation where the people turn to the government for their most intimate personal needs, whose health is subject to bureaucratic diktat, will find less objectionable further intrusions in their private lives by the state. Once the medical state has gotten its foot in the door, the rest is details. The advocates of Obamacare in the United States understand this, as do the opponents of private delivery in Alberta.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 3, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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Defence of the Realm
After nearly four decades of surrendering sovereignty to Brussels, it seems Whitehall is abandoning all pretence of Britain being an independent nation:
While British special forces are seen as one of the greatest global assets Britain has to offer and are particularly coveted by the US, they are expensive accounting for an estimated £2 billion out of the £37 billion MoD budget.
However, like the rest of defence the SAS has had to make cuts and getting rid of the “old and the bold” and part of the TA is seen as the best solution.
Under the Strategic Defence and Security Review, under with the Ministry of Defence has to make cuts of between 10 and 20 per cent, the SAS will also lose either 21 SAS or 23 SAS, its two TA battalions who also contribute to the war in Afghanistan.
Is there not a welfare scrounger, or busy body social worker, who could not be dismissed in their stead? This isn't even a butter vs guns decision, its a choice between defence or bread and circuses.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 3, 2010 at 04:09 AM
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Thursday, September 02, 2010
The story of the Liberty Summer Seminar
I've been working on a new website for the "Clarington saga" -- that's the saga of my parents, who were charged by the municipality of Clarington for running a "commercial conference centre" on property zoned agricultural. They let me host the Liberty Summer Seminar on that property for the last ten years.
You can take a look at the new website here.
Today, I posted a somewhat brief history of the Liberty Summer Seminar. It was an email that we sent out to our email distribution list last year. Since people want to know what the LSS is all about, I thought I'd re-post it.
Here's an excerpt:
We’ve learned that people are willing to come from really, really far away to join us. Jamie Tronnes has come in from Morocco (Morocco!), my sister Agata has flown in from the Netherlands, Marc Brandl came from California, a gaggle of libertarians make a trip from New Brunswick every year (Mike Stockford, Tyler MacFadzen, and Jordan Graham, who is now a councillor. I call him “Councillor Jordan, sir”), Chris Kilmer and Jason Song have come in from New York, some fly in from way out west from Vancouver and Calgary and Edmonton. Isaac Morehouse made the trek himself from Michigan starting at five in the morning, and then came back the next year with a whole van full of people. Toronto may not be far (about an hour-and-a-bit by car), but Paul Brennan and Christopher Twardawa have made the trip on a bicycle. On a bicycle!
I’ve learned that Catharine Sloan will mail me and my family a “thank you” note after a Seminar. No, thank you, Catharine. My mom promptly put the note on our fridge.
One big lesson is that no matter who we get to come out to the Seminar, no matter how incredible the talks, most of you will spend a lot of time talking about and giving glowing reviews of my mother and father’s cooking. That makes both of them very happy.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on September 2, 2010 at 02:09 PM
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Minimum alchohol price will not prevent Scottish alchoholism
There is an ongoing debate in Scotland on how to curb alcoholism among the Scottish people. The governing party, the Scottish National Party, is proposing to enforce a 45p per unit minimum price on alcoholic products. Apparently the number 45p is very scientific; the Scottish Government is claiming that this minimum will lead to 50 fewer deaths and 1200 fewer hospital emissions.
How exactly did they come up with those numbers? I picture some academic or civil servant somewhere with a calculator (“Okay so if we make it 40p we will only save 35 lives, but with an extra 5p we can save 50 lives!”). Do they honestly think that human beings work that way? Do they really think that if they pull one lever or push a button they can direct society?
I have news for the Scottish nationalists; Scottish people love to get drunk. This isn’t just a stereotype. I recently lived above a bar in Scotland. Believe me when I say that the Scottish people love to get drunk. There is absolutely no way that a price floor will make a difference.
How do I know that for sure?
Because it has never worked anywhere else no matter where or when it has been tried.
The opposition parties say that all this measure will do is hurt the lower income responsible drinkers, and they are right. Someone who drinks more lightly may be less inclined to pay more, but someone who loves to get drunk will get drunk regardless of how much money they have to spend.
Society and individuals just simply cannot be engineered.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on September 2, 2010 at 01:11 PM
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The Education Machine
Learning and Leviathan:
By and large, until, say, 1945, the expansion was fairly harmless. The underlying motives were noble, benevolent, or at worst foolish: a democratic ideal, the need to occupy the young increasingly excluded from the labor market, the quest for prestige. Certainly the affluent society could afford keeping the kids in school. The academic types were probably not much hurt—smart kids can adjust to anything, except being debauched by base rewards. And so long as the attitude was easy-going, the others did not suffer more than boredom. Unfortunately, however, there came to be established the misconception that being in school was the only appropriate way of being educated. Academic talent, the ability to profit by going to school, is a special disposition, neither better nor worse than any other. It does require good intelligence; yet high intelligence, grace and inventiveness need not be academic at all. A school is fundamentally a box with seats facing front.
Paul Goodman's perceptive comments date from 1963. Please go and read the whole piece, its relevance has only grown. The author still approves of state financed education, his ire is directed only at modern public schools. The transformation of education into a bureaucratic machine, which began even before 1945, has destroyed education. It isn't simply the dumbing down of the subject matter, to increase the graduation rates, but the needless torment inflicted on the academically uninclined.
As Goodman points out, only a small percentage of the population, he suggests about 15%, are geared toward book learning. This does not mean that all the rest are unintelligent, merely that their aptitudes are different. The young grease monkey might be a mental match for the future graduate student, but our bureaucratic system of schooling does not recognize this potential equality. This is not accidental.
Bureaucrats breed more bureaucrats. A system manned by university graduates, with ever higher levels of accreditation, believes that such a type of learning is socially useful. The Mandarin believes his role to be central in society. The state will manage society, and he and his class will manage the state. Other forms of learning are useful, but inferior. Since the Mandarin also controls the state schools, he will wish to gear the whole system to the generation of more like him.
This may seem counterintuitive. Why have more competition? Why not, like the original Mandarins of Imperial China, select only the best and brightest for higher education? Because the modern Mandarin lives in a democratic society. Such obvious selectivity would be damned as elitist. Mass high school and university education has the added benefit of reinforcing the bureaucratic system. This goes beyond the crude propaganda used in the schools, which really works only on those too young to challenge it, but to the very methods being employed.
The academically uninclined, even though still intelligent, youth acquires a grudging admiration for the academically talented. He begins, and the whole system reinforces this notion, that only this type of aptitude truly matters. His own talents, which might be every bit as useful to himself and society as any other, he begins to regard as inferior. Reluctantly, sometimes bitterly, he begins to defer to the "smart kids." He has been prepared for a society in which the academic student has become the intellectualized bureaucrat. It will be easier for him to defer to the bureaucrat, whom he regards, if only subconsciously, as his superior.
This process has gone very far in Continental Europe, most of which has never really escaped the feudal spirit. See the ruling elite of the European Union as Exhibit A. In North America, our more individualistic and entrepreneurial culture has resisted longer and harder. We cannot help admire college drop outs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and further back minimally educated geniuses like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Brains, daring and hard work are what count, not the ability to jump through a series of scholastic hoops.
It is this spirit which the Obama administration, packed with Ivy League power lusters, is keen to destroy or subvert. President Obama has declared it a national objective that all children should go to college, an absurd and dangerous boast. It would mean vast amounts of time and money wasted on those not inclined, or perhaps not even capable, of such an education. It would require even further dumbing down of the curriculum. It would place virtually the whole youth of the nation under the remit of the state, well into what previous generations would described as adulthood. A bureaucrat's dream, but a nightmare for the rest of us.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 2, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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Blogging For Dollars
Don't anyone tell Dalton McGuinty. He might get ideas:
For the past three years, Marilyn Bess has operated MS Philly Organic, a small, low-traffic blog that features occasional posts about green living, out of her Manayunk home. Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she's made about $50. To Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it's a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.
In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.
If anyone thinks this is just about the government being money hungry, I've got some prime beachfront property on Baffin Island for sale.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 2, 2010 at 04:09 AM
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Natives should support property rights
Some native chiefs are worried that the government’s goal is to bring property rights to the native reserves. So far the limited amount of property rights that has been introduced to some reserves has led to marked improvements in the reserve’s economy and standard of living. So why on Earth would the native leadership oppose something that is improving the lives of their people?
Their publicized reasoning is that property rights would ultimately lead to assimilation. They are keen to protect their ‘traditional way of life,’ but a tradition is only as good as it is beneficial to the people. A tradition that impoverishes is a tradition that is better off being gotten rid of.
So what exactly would allowing property rights mean for natives? It would mean that natives living on reserves can join the mainstream of economic life. It will give them an opportunity to escape the endless cycle of poverty that has captured native families for generations. It will mean a better life.
Is it fair to call this assimilation?
Invoking the term assimilation is a powerful rhetorical tool for native leaders. It reminds both natives and non-natives of some of the harshest most tyrannical actions of the Crown. Canada has a sad history in its treatment of native peoples.
But bringing property rights to the reserves is not the same thing as trying to stomp out a language or a religion. It brings more freedom to natives not less. So in this case it is native tradition not the government that is acting the tyrant.
And it is time that those who live on native reserves overthrow that tyrant.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on September 1, 2010 at 01:57 PM
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Two letters from soldiers
As some of you may be aware, my parents were charged for running a "commercial conference centre" for letting me host the Liberty Summer Seminar on their property. This year was the tenth year that I've hosted the LSS on my parents' property. But, this year, the municipality has decided to crack down on my folks.
I put together a press release, and me and my family have appeared in the National Post, twice, in the Sun, in the Oshawa This Week, even in the Toronto Star. Ezra Levant wrote a column about it. I appeared on the Charles Adler show twice (hosted by Roy Green), as well as the John Oakley show (you can hear audio from all three here).
The response from the public has been encouraging, and overwhelming.
In particular, we've received letters from active members of the Canadian Forces. One from a man serving in Afghanistan, the other from a high school friend of mine who teaches young people in Bowmanville, which is part of the municipality of Clarington.
You can read the full letters here. But here are a few excerpts from those letters:
My friend John writes:
"I feel ashamed. To think that something like this can happen in Canada...
"In addition to my full time job, I go out to Bowmanville to teach teens things like seamanship skills, and citizenship. Occasionally, we give them lessons about WWII around Remembrance Day, and the Battle of Atlantic Sunday, including the evils of fascism and tyranny. It’s sad to see that despite our best lessons, these evil seeds are taking root in this rather nice community."
Gilles, meanwhile, on active duty in Afghanistan, writes:
"I’ve been defending our country for many years, but I never thought that what I was defending was the right of over-zealous bylaw enforcers to bully a family business over a backyard BBQ.
"What if a similar Hero’s Ride were to be organized when I get back next spring from my tour, but instead of ending it at the Bowmanville exit on Hwy 401, some participants pulled into the Jaworskis’ Bed and Breakfast for a BBQ, would your Bylaw officers once again employ the same heartless uncommon anti-social tactics? Of course, no such event is planned, but the freedom to do so seems only natural, but not, it seems, in your most unfriendly municipality.
"While I’m here in Afghanistan, or as I have been throughout my career, defending those freedoms Canadians enjoy, it appears the Jaworskis are not entitled to such freedom, regardless of how many heroes have died to ensure that those freedoms exist."
You can read the whole of the letters here.
Posted by P.M. Jaworski on September 1, 2010 at 01:33 PM
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The Warts and Not the All
Passing judgment on the past:
After objections from the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada will reconsider whether former Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton should be recognized as a person of national historic significance.
[…]
Whitton, mayor of Ottawa from 1951 to 1956 and again from 1960 to 1964, was the first woman to serve as mayor of a Canadian city.
[…]
That "supplementary information" was supplied by the CJC, which opposes Whitton's recognition because of her role in keeping orphaned Jewish children out of Canada during the Second World War, Marie-Josée Lemieux, the board's executive secretary, confirmed Monday.
In light of the new information, Lemieux said the board will reconsider its earlier recommendation at a future meeting.
While Whitton's actions were appalling, they would have been quite popular at the time. Her anti-semitism was well known, as was her contempt for pretty much anyone who wasn't of British descent. George Drew, Premier of Ontario from 1943 to 1948, described French-Canadians as a defeated race, and tried to discourage immigration from non-British sources.
Whitton was, however, quite a progressive figure for the era. She was a founder of the Canadian Council on Child Welfare, which is today the Canadian Council on Social Development, and an advocate of a modest welfare state. Bigotry, in both its vulgar and scholarly forms, was perfectly acceptable in mid-twentieth century. Much of this was driven by fashionable pseudo-sciences such as eugenics, as well as by old fashioned xenophobia.
In the wake of the Second World War, and the dissemination of the Nazi atrocities, racism slowly acquired the powerful stigma we know today. While it is important to remember Canada's racist past, including the behaviour of Charlotte Whitton, reducing both Whitton, and the Canada of that generation, to crude characterization serves neither the truth or Canadians today.
Racism was not invented by white Canadians. It is as much a part of human history as war, slavery and tyranny. To borrow from one of Whitton's contemporaries, C.D. Howe, in racism no one has a monopoly on SOBs. Such bigotry stems from a defence mechanism, born of our early tribal history. Our survival depended on close co-operation between small groups of individuals, most of them close genetic relations. These groups could not function without high levels of trust. Outsiders were not simply different, they were potentially dangerous, even fatal. Who knew what the stranger might bring?
Over time the "tribes" we belonged to expanded, from region to small nation state to continental state. We climbed a conceptual chain to the recognition of the universality of human nature. Not everyone reached that conceptual landmark at the same time, indeed much of mankind has yet to reach it. Thus the dark irony of modern progressives, professed anti-racists, refusing to condemn the racism of non-white immigrants. Most of those who immigrate to Canada come from nations that are, in every sense, backward. Economically, politically, legal and socially these societies are where Canada was decades, or even centuries ago.
Stating this fact, which even thirty years ago was quite uncontroversial, is now itself considered racist, and seen as an attempt to resurrect the worst elements of the Old Canada. The Old Canada, the Canada of Charlotte Whitton, was not a dark and evil place. It generated no great massacres. Its horrors were, by the bleak standards of human history, quite pedestrian. Aside from the fashionable bigotry of the elites, most ordinary Canadians were not so much malicious as ignorant.
They, and their ancestors, had built a spectacularly successful nation. It was a leap of the imagination, which Laurier urged us to take, that these newcomers would eventually turn out Canadian, that they would maintain rather destroy what they had indirectly inherited. This is what the modern progressives miss about the Old Canada, it was far more apprehensive that evil. Its desire to assimilate newcomers driven by a sober understanding, borne of remembered experience, that the quarrels of the old world should remain in the old world.
One of the main difference between the Right and Left in this country, as well as in the rest of the English speaking world, is that the former believes in the basic decency of the ordinary individual, the latter in his essential sinfulness. So obsessed with fighting the ghosts of bigots past, the Left ignores the bigotry of Islamists who plan murder on their "fellow" Canadians. It is not the generals, but the intellectuals of the Left who seem to be fighting the last war.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 1, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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The Upstarts of Mid-Manhattan
How they dare they build skyscrapers in New York!
To hear the two sides in the skyscraper war tell it, never has so much been at stake.
The owners of the Empire State Building and their supporters say their tower’s international status and New York City’s skyline are in mortal danger of an assault from a “monstrosity.”
[...]
What irks the former is that the latter would rise to be 1,216 feet, almost as tall as the Empire State Building, and would be just 900 feet away, a little too close for a building that has stood apart in the skyline for its entire 79-year life.
“The question here is: How close is too close to one of New York’s iconic landmarks,” Councilman Daniel R. Garodnick said Monday, after a hearing in which the owners of both properties made their cases, in advance of a City Council vote on Wednesday.
If Plato had been right, and there was indeed a world of forms, then all skyscrapers would be but imperfect reflections of the Empire State Building. Its magnificence is undeniable. But to build it Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, the legendary architectural firm hired for the task, had to demolish the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
Had today's network of zoning and historical regulations been in place in 1930, there is not a chance in hell the Empire State Building would have been built on that site, and probably not anywhere near it. Perhaps it would have been built somewhere else, and we would have it and the grand old Waldorf-Astoria. Perhaps not.
Location is everything in real estate. In preserving the great old buildings of the present, or even just preventing their lines of sight from being blocked, we run the risk of preventing the great new buildings of tomorrow from rising. New York is not a museum, and it did not become New York by preserving everything from its past, otherwise it would never have been anything other than a small Dutch settlement. Nowhere more than New York City is Schumpeter's phrase "creative destruction" so vividly displayed. It is a creativity imperilled.
Posted by PUBLIUS on September 1, 2010 at 04:09 AM
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Note to New Brunswick voter: governments don't create jobs
At least not productive jobs. Liberals and Progressive Conservatives are debating job creation in New Brunswick’s election. Neither party seems to understand that it is not the role of government to create jobs, nor is the government any good at creating real jobs.
Often a government will increase employment by creating subsidies to an industry or hiring extra staff in some crown corporation. These are not real jobs. Sure someone gets paid and that individual benefits, but the economic gain is zero. To pay for that job the government has to take money from other people to produce something that nobody wants.
Such a job does not create anything of any real worth. If it did it wouldn’t need a subsidy to begin with.
It is only the private sector that can create true wealth and it is only the private sector that can create real jobs. All that any government can do to help job creation is get out of the way.
So the New Brunswick Liberals can come up with a strategy to create 20 000 jobs by 2013, and the Progressive Conservatives can come up with their own plan with their own deadline. It doesn’t really matter. Unless they plan to reduce regulation and decrease taxation, any plan that they can come up with won’t actually help the economy.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on August 31, 2010 at 11:22 AM
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Party for the Course
I'm shocked, shocked to find patronage in modern Canadian politics:
At least 20 patronage appointments handed out by the Harper government this month went to political supporters who had given money to the Conservative party or its candidates, the Liberals say.
The political connections of some appointees are more obvious than others: Pat Binns, the former Progressive Conservative premier of Prince Edward Island, was made consul-general in Boston, a position that often goes to party faithful. The Chrétien Liberals had filled the spot with defeated Nova Scotia MP Mary Clancy and, later, former Indian Affairs minister Ron Irwin.
Sian Matthews of Calgary was re-appointed to the board of directors of Canada Post Corp. In 1993, Matthews served as official agent to Stephen Harper and has donated $3,750 to Harper or the party since.
Political patronage is a deep and important Canadian tradition. It predates Confederation. According to some scholars it predates even agriculture. Arguably, it is our first, and among our elected masters, most popular national sport. Yet not everyone can play. Only friends - both fair and foul weather - of the government of the day seem to get these plum positions. From time to time an opposition politico is given a free ticket to pork paradise, just to show we're all in this together, at least among the political class.
The ordinary proles - that would be we the taxpayers - occasionally get upset at this sort of thing. Getting free stuff without deserving it strikes at the heart of Canadians' sense of fairness. Unless, of course, it's free health care, subsidized university tuition, cheap mortgages and subsidies for our particular ethnic / class / demographic / regional sub-group. But that's different. Because its free stuff for us little guys. It's only appalling for all those rich bastards to be at the trough.
Frederic Bastiat, whose works should be mandatory reading for all high school students, famously observed that the state is the great fiction, by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. Eventually, however, you run out of everyone else. The United States is getting to that stage. The Second French Republic, in which Bastiat wrote, meet with a nasty end at the hands of Napoleon III.
What drove France toward the arms of the younger Bonaparte, and is steadily undermining our liberal democracies, is pressure group warfare. Each group makes its claims upon the public purse, i.e. everyone else. This pits old against the young, the young against the old, rich against the poor, and region against region. Once the government is bankrupt, it can no longer placate everyone at once. It must favour some groups over others, sometimes openly. That in turn provokes backlashes, sometimes quite violent, as we've seen in Greece recently, and as happened in other southern European states in the 1920s.
It's easy enough to damn the patronage of the elite. Yet it is small price, borne by all. The patronage of the masses, euphemistically called the welfare state, is applauded as visionary and morally noble. It is the latter, however, which is the far more dangerous.
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 31, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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Where Almost Everyone is Above Average
Who knew the British were so bright?
Figures published by examination boards showed that 22.6 per cent of papers were graded A* or A – a rise of one percentage point in the last 12 months.
Almost three times as many pupils now gain the top grades compared with 1988 when the exams were first introduced.
But that was back in the 1980s. People were dumber back then. Heck, the parents of that generation gave Margaret Thatcher three majority governments. Not like adults today. No, sir. The modern state school educated Britisher sees the light! The generation educated after 1988 could now, thanks to their advanced "critical thinking" skills, see through the glass clearly (spot that allusion kids!). They instead elected Tony Blair to three majority governments.
With all these new super smart A students about to flood the job market, bringing their "critical thinking" to the challenges of modern business life, the future of Britain is assured. Another Golden Age dawns, to put the petty antics of Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin and Gladstone in the shade. Wider still and wider..
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 31, 2010 at 04:09 AM
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Monday, August 30, 2010
Cops 4 Control
The long-form vampire will not die!
The Canadian Association of Police Boards (CAPB) approved eight resolutions when its members met in New Brunswick last week, including one that calls on the government to restore the mandatory long-form census.
The association recognizes “that police agencies throughout Canada depend on reliable, comprehensive demographic statistical information provided by Statistics Canada to establish policing priorities and to determine policing services for their communities,” the CAPB said in a statement released Monday.
In other words, support the long-form, so we can control you more efficiently. Wouldn't it be possible - to say nothing of desirable - for the police to establish priorities based on citizen complaints and routine patrols? Why does the police department need to know: My marital status? Where I was born? My native tongue? My race? Whether I'm a status Indian? My religion? My parents' birthplace? Whether I finished High School? My income from employment? Method of commute? Whether my dwelling is in need of repairs? These are all questions on the new, and now, voluntary 2011 long-form Census.
Even at an aggregate level, why does the police department need to know that a particular area has a certain race or ethnicity? And if it does, couldn't this be established with tolerable accuracy by, you know, walking around and asking a few polite questions of the locals? Getting out of the patrol cars, putting away the radar guns and actually establishing relationships with members of the community. Just a thought. The Canadian Association of Police Boards call to keep the long-form comes, strange coincidence, at the same time the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police launches a campaign to keep the long-gun registry:
The head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police says members have endorsed a national firearms strategy that includes the long-gun registry — a program the Conservative government is trying to scrap — at its annual meeting in Edmonton on Monday.
"A resolution for its adoption as the official policy of the CACP was put before the members and that resolution was passed without a single dissenting voice," Toronto police chief and CACP president Bill Blair told CBC's Power and Politics with Evan Solomon.
"I think it's a very strong statement of the commitment of our members to safe communities and for retaining the tools for our police officers that help them do their jobs."
Shelly Glover, Tory MP and former police officer for nineteen years, disagrees, questioning its basic effectiveness. After conducting a survey of front line officers, Edmonton Constable Randy Kuntz noted:
You can’t tell from this registry if someone is going to do anything criminal with a firearm anymore than you could tell if you looked at the registry to see if someone is going to drink and drive.
Even OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino, hardly anyone's idea of a civil libertarian, doubts its effectiveness as well. The historical origins of the registry are well enough known. In panicked reaction to the Montreal Massacre much of the Canadian liberal elite pushed for a long gun registry, handgun registration having been mandatory since 1934. The Chretien government picked up the issue and introduced the registry in 1995. The party has held on dearly to the registry, costing it what remained of its rural support. Calls for maintaining both the long-form Census, and the long-gun registry, have less to do with public safety than a desire for bureaucratic control. Even when the information, obtained at the price of basic civil liberties, is useless the government still wants it. Why? Because information is power. The more they know, they more they can try to control and mould.
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 30, 2010 at 07:11 AM
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Friday, August 27, 2010
The Business of Bureaucracy
One of the most discouraging aspects of working in the corporate world is the realization, which comes slowly and surely, that you are not working in a business, but in a bureaucracy. The larger the company, the less like a business it becomes. A business is the line between A and B. The A is the owner, the B is the client. The business works to create value for A by creating value for B. The shorter and more direct that line, the closer the owner is to client and the more closely aligned their interests can become. The longer the line, the harder it becomes to align interests of owner and client, harder to strike the best deal that serves both parties.
The mom-pop shop is the pure business. The owners face their clients in the flesh. The feedback is instant, and not always polite. In vast organization the feedback mechanism is byzantine. The delivery of a complex product requires hundreds, if not thousands of workers. Co-ordinating such activity means spending more time focused on the internal workings, and politics, of the organization than focused on clients who sit outside the organizational bubble.
The executive, the proxy for the owner, will try to step outside of the organization bubble with market research, focus groups and customer service feedback. But this is only one element of the data flow that comes to him. The executive is overwhelmed with data. Sorting the trivial complaints from the vital criticisms is challenging. His perception of client needs may vary with others within the organization. He is constantly being distracted by the machine of which he is a part. There is little energy left over for potential client needs, what client doesn't know they might need or want, yet meeting those needs is the future of the organization. Yet the discipline of the market is there, punishing the least able, rewarding the best fitted at riding the albatross. Added to the enormous complexity of the modern private organization is the demands of the modern state.
The power suits and walks belie the fact that the executive is highly circumscribed, by their immediate superiors, and the mass regulations that surrounds and infiltrates the firm. Companies drown in the forms they produce. There are even forms to obtain more forms. Why? Because the auditors want it! Why do the auditors want all these forms? Well to give themselves cushy jobs is the immediate answer. Why do executives keep auditors around? Because they are afraid. Afraid of regulators and afraid of ravenous class action lawyers. Culturally the end product of this fear is bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the standardization, and routinization, of behaviour so as to minimize risk. The more bureaucracy, the less risk, as well as innovation. A bureaucratized businesses becomes more interested in making sure they don't get sued or fined, than worried about what their clients need or want.
The executive knows this. They know they can't serve their clients the way they should, so they engage in a elaborate game of distraction, this is called marketing. New products are launched, which no one wants. But the people who launch these products have cushy jobs. The executive who approve them can point to their superiors, and clients, and say that they are doing things. Motion is all important. In what direction? Doesn't matter. Direction is too long range. Purpose is too abstract. Just keep moving and hope you hit something. Hope people don't notice that you aren't addressing their needs or wants, just trying to distract them.
Look at this bell and whistle, neat, eh? Yes, neat, but no wants it. They want X, but X might cause problems with the auditors, so forget about X. Keep up the song and dance. The link between executive - the proxy for the owner - and the client is no longer simply distorted, it is largely severed in the bureaucracy. The executive, and so the whole organization he directs, becomes rule focused rather than customer focused. An irony since the government controls are often enacted in the name of the customer.
Without purpose and meaning, a business ceases to be a business, it becomes a game of deception. We pretend to provide value, and the clients pretend that they are satisfied. Sometimes they'll complain, they'll stamp their feet and threaten to take their money elsewhere. The bureaucrats, for at this point they are scarcely recognizable as businessmen, find the complaints amusing. You see the competitors have auditors too. They think the same way that our auditors think, because all auditors are alike, because the laws apply to all. They are the enforcers of the paper pusher world. You certainly need them, like you need traffic cops. But how many do you need? And how many rules are really required to get on with the business of business? When the rules become all, where is the client?
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 27, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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Thursday, August 26, 2010
Canadian Medical Association is wrong on MMA ban
The Canadian Medical Association has come out against Ontario’s recent move to allow Mixed Martial Arts. They claim that the sport is too dangerous, but they are suffering from a prejudice against the sport based on faulty assumptions. According to the Globe and Mail:
“It’s savage and brutal. The aim is to disable and maim your opponent. … We should not tolerate this so-called sport in a civilized society,” Victor Dirnfeld, an internal medicine specialist from Richmond, B.C., told the general council of the CMA in Niagara Falls, Ont. on Wednesday.
Savage and brutal? I confess that it can often look that way if you watch it for the first time, but if you keep watching there isn’t really that much brutality. There is rarely any blood spilt, and if there is the fight is called to an end. The opponents are almost always respectful of each other and the game is far more about tactics and strategy than anything else.
Disable and maim? The rules of the Ultimate Fighter are specifically made so that it is unlikely someone would be disabled or maimed. I challenge the CMA to look up the number of people that have been disabled in an Ultimate Fighter match then look up the number of competitive divers that have broken their backs. MMA is not about violence it is about controlled violence. It is certainly not about maiming or disabling.
The truth of the matter is that the opinion of the CMA doesn’t matter, or at least it shouldn’t matter. They may not like the sport but many other people do. And more importantly anyone who enters the Octagon knows the risk that he is taking. Much like any sport, as long as the rules were followed a person who is injured in a MMA match is responsible for putting himself at risk.
It is not the job of the MMA or the government to tell those men what choices they can make.
Posted by Hugh MacIntyre on August 26, 2010 at 07:14 AM
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Because It Will be Good for the Environment
I don't know if Elizabeth May ever ran for high school class president. Her colleagues, however, seem to be running for that office:
The Green Party of Canada will consider a motion Sunday on whether or not they will push to decriminalize polygamy.
Party members in a workshop on Saturday evening voted to send the motion to the full-Party plenary, where they'll debate and vote on it.
Speakers in the workshop were careful to define polygamy as a marriage between multiple spouses. They made a clear distinction between polygamy between consenting adults and a polygamist sect in Bountiful, B.C., where domestic abuse has been alleged, though charges were thrown out in 2009.
Love is a many splendoured thing. Political amateurism isn't. For the record May is against the idea. Perhaps because polygamous families have larger carbon footprints than monogamous families. Who knows? This all goes back to the whole point of having a Green Party. Is it an environmentalist protest party? Or a genuinely new national party, which happens to have an environmental emphasis? As the NDP skews unionist and working class.
Talking about polygamy muddles rather than broadens the party's brand. It also adds an unneeded, and additional, "weirdo" level to the public's perception of the party. It's the kind of issue that gets raised at left-wing law schools (I know, an unnecessary qualifier), not by serious parties vying for the mainstream. It isn't just that the issue is extreme, it makes little philosophical sense for the Greens. It's like the Conservative Party arguing for privatizing sidewalks, without the ideological consistently. For those not in the know:
Polyamory is the process of having more than one intimate relationship at the same time, according to the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association.
We used to call that being easy. But that was awhile back.
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 26, 2010 at 06:15 AM
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Iggy Why
A nice chap really:
He's tall, intelligent, principled and affecting. He's an internationally renowned scholar of history and public affairs. He is genuinely interested in the condition of his nation. He speaks well, both on the spot and off the cuff. To the camera, he smiles when he must, and scowls when he should. He is, by some standards, the near-perfect candidate.
And yet, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, whose approval ratings have rarely broken 30 per cent, is set to make history as one of Canada's great, political underachievers.
This is partly his fault. His peculiar brand of substance and style is so decorous he sometimes strikes his fellow citizens as bookishly inattentive. He can, occasionally, resemble that respectable uncle who shows up on Christmas Day to deliver a homily on the rights of man just as his nephews and nieces are running out the door to test their new toboggans. He's not much fun. Then again, who is, these days, on Parliament Hill?
Yes, but replace the rights of man with the velocity of money, and you've got Stephen Harper. Canadians like their politicians dull. Perhaps at some point, many moons ago, this was a defense mechanism of sorts. A dull politician is unlikely to do anything rash and interventionist, thereby mucking up the daily life of the nation. This is no longer a safe strategy. Lester Pearson was politely dull, and unleashed Medicare, an ahistorical flag and Pierre Trudeau on an unsuspecting nation. Never was so much harm, done by so few, in so short a period of time, than in Mike Pearson's five years in office. Much of what people blame Trudeau for was actually begun by Pearson. But who could hate Mike? He was such a nice guy. He wore a bow tie.
There have been only three genuinely charismatic Prime Ministers in Canadian history: Wilfred Laurier, John Diefenbaker and Pierre Trudeau. John A Macdonald might be a weak fourth, depending on how fond you are of boozy charm. What did they all have in common? What the Elder President Bush disdainfully called the "vision thing." You may not like their visions, but they were about something and attracted a train of almost fanatical - by Canadian standards - followers.
You can't run into an aging baby boomer in Toronto, they are ubiquitous here, without being bored to tears with their particular Trudeau story. They campaigned for him. They met him walking down some solitary Montreal street. You get the odd Trudeau in the wilderness stories. The funny ones usually involve a disco, a blond and something that happened after the third cocktail. Urban legends used to surround Laurier as well. Dief, as Peter C Newman noted, had the presence of an Old Testament prophet.
Their vision and their charisma were not coincidences, but corollaries. Just being charming and interesting will get you only so far. That's about as far as Michael Ignatieff has gotten, or will get, barring a massive Harperesque gaffe. After four years in Canadian public life Lord Iggy has yet to explain why he wants to become Prime Minister. With Stephen Harper there was a vague impression, cultivated in the two decades before his entry into 24 Sussex Drive, that he was free market reformer. Some substance to our hockey helmet haired leader. Now he's just a safe pair of pragmatic hands. Paul Martin, without dithering, Jean Chretien with better English (and possibly French). Iggy's bid for higher office has the smell of a curriculum vitae fetishist, just adding one more prestigious entry.
Posted by PUBLIUS on August 26, 2010 at 04:10 AM
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