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He must not be satisfied with indolent benevolence, nor fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world.
This quote from Adam Smith put me in mind of pop groups who proclaim that the world would be a better place if there was more peace and equality, and the fans at concerts who cheer at such sentiments.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 7:47 PM EDT
Last night, for various reasons, I found myself queueing outside Waterstones in Chiswick at midnight. It was the release of the latest Harry Potter, and the queue stretched all the way back to Starbucks: hundreds of people were milling about in the street.
Not a single other business was open. Not a single tea or burger wagon was in attendance. Not Starbucks, nor any of the restaurants in that stretch were handing out drinks or snacks. What is the matter with everybody? Don’t they know a business opportunity when they see it? Why weren’t the coffee shops full of people reading their new books? Where is the entrepeneurial spirit?
Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 12:48 PM EDT
Did single tube journeys in zone 1 ever cost £4 *before* Oyster cards were introduced?
Update: The answer is no. In 2005, a single in zone 1 cost £2. So Oyster cards have not reduced the price from £4 to £1.50, rather the cash fare has increased to make you use an Oyster card. By the way, you still might pay £4 even with an Oyster card if the gate is open and you forget to touch out. This couldn’t happen with paper tickets.
Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 7:18 AM EDT
I’m honoured to have been invited to post on the Transport Blog. So far I’ve written three articles: one about flight simulation, one about motorcycling and one about the EU and motorcycling. I’m in highly esteemed company too, so pay a visit.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Links at 7:03 PM EDT
Here’s a spam blog comment I had to moderate, it’s a new one on me:
Please, do not delete the given message. Money obtained from spam will go to the help hungry to children uganda
Posted by Rob Fisher as General at 6:58 PM EDT
A new one for the daily reading list: Worse Than Failure. It contains humorous tales of stupidity and misadventure from the world of information technology. Oddly enough, I found it via another excellent blog, Climate Audit, one of whose commenters linked to a tale about someone who managed to destroy a roomful of computers in an attempt to save the planet.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism, Links at 9:08 PM EDT
There is a girl across from me, sitting on a bench, smoking in the rain. It’s a disgrace.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 11:42 AM EDT
Sign at a clay shoot.
How nice of our lords and masters to grant us such rights (as long as we haven’t been too naughty)
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 9:26 AM EDT
I’ve been posting some things on a private forum that I think are quite good, so I’ll just stick them up here.
On smoking:
Cruz wrote:
“What about the rights of those who don’t want to breath the same foul air as them?”Everyone has a right to breathe clean air. What you don’t have, is a right to breathe clean air on *someone else’s property*.
Civil liberties types are not talking about a right to smoke. (Or if they do, they’re wrong too. You don’t have a right to smoke on someone else’s property, either).
This has everything to do with whether the government should be telling consenting adults what they can and can’t do in private.
And before anyone tries to complain about the workers or the public, the workers are there voluntarily too, and the public are only there at the landlord’s invitation. A pub is a *private* place.
If you’re pleased with the smoking ban because you don’t like the smell of smoke, fine. But you have to admit that you support the use of violence to arrange the world for your personal convenience.
This line of argument didn’t resonate. So I changed tack:
Well, smokers *have* lost liberties as well. You’re a smoker; you’ve been going to the same pub all your life; all your friends and neighbours go there; you like nothing better than a beer and a fag and a chat with your mates after a hard day at work; everybody either smokes or likes going there so much they don’t mind the smoke; you’re practically best mates with the landlord who invested his life savings to buy the pub and then invested years of hard graft and financial risk and emotion into making it the best pub he can.
You might well ask, where do a bunch of toffy-nosed, Guardian-reading ponces in Whitehall, who’ve never even been to my village, let alone my pub, get off on telling me and my friends and my neighbours who have been coming here for years, what they can and can’t do? All so a bunch of pampered, middle-class townies, who also have never been to my village or my pub, can go to All Bar One without having to put on clean clothes the next day.
Give it 5 years and you’ll be too busy worrying about whether you’ve gone over on your beer rations, or your saturated fat allowance, or met your fruit-and-veg consumption quota to care.
This actually met with some sympathy. Examples vs. first principles. But then the debate worked back round to utiliraianism: smoking ban equals the maximum number of people being happy. So one more go at first principles:
“For that lose scenario you paint above though rob, there are many win scenario’s in my view.”
The trouble with an unconstrained democracy is that everything is about keeping the majority happy, so you end up with utilitarianism and no principles of right and wrong.
“As far as im concerned ppl who want to smoke themselves to death can do it in their own home.”
The thing is, a pub *is* someone’s home. They may not live there, but they bought and paid for it. Just because they invite you in and sell you beer doesn’t give you the right to threaten them if they don’t behave to your liking.
(That’s what law is — a set of rules enforced with the threat of violence.)
At which point I can only repeat myself. Sometimes you can’t win. Meanwhile, in another thread about the environment, I wrote:
Re. global warming, my main objection is that government and the media pretend like everything’s already sewn up. The so-called concensus is nothing of the sort. There are even disputes about whether the land-based temperature record is any good:
http://www.surfacestations.org/Re. recycling, I’m suspicious of any activity that has to be subsidised by the government. If it’s so much more efficient to recycle, why aren’t people making a profit at it? In fact, it turns out people *are* making a profit at recycling certain materials, like aluminium, because it’s so much more energy efficient.
Interestingly, very little resistance on the global warming front. Recycling seems a more emotive issue. There was a call for fines for people who don’t recycle. I have no problem with people advocating recycling, but again with the violence! I replied:
Well, the government thought it knew best, and spent £2.3 million of our money on the Real Nappy Campaign, which included giving £80 to people who used “eco-friendly” towelling ones.
Then the Environment Agency spent 4 years investigating, and came to the conclusion that “there is little or nothing to choose between them…Reusable nappies may reduce demands on landfill but they still impact on the environment in other ways such as water and energy used in washing and drying them.”
So excuse me if I’m a little skeptical when the government tells me that recycling will save the planet and threatens to fine me for putting the wrong type of rubbish in the wrong bin.
If that type of economics applies to nappies, it might just apply to other materials too. What if you have to use more stuff to recycle something than to make it anew?
I think the proof is in the pudding: if it can make money from people doing it voluntarily (copper, aluminium) it’s worth doing. If it needs government subsidy, propaganda and force, I’m suspicious.
Another thought: stuff thrown into landfill is still there. If the day comes that there really is a shortage of some essential stuff, someone will do very well out of developing the technology to extract it again.
The general worldview of most people is that everybody gets together and votes on the rules, and everyone follows the rules. Convincing people that some rules are immoral; and that the rules amount to rules about when violence is allowed; is for some reason almost impossible.
Perhaps all this arguing from first principles is pointless and un-persuasive. Perhaps what’s needed is bare-faced emotional rhetoric.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties, Enviro-Mentalism, Introspection at 6:56 PM EDT
Most people are either pleased with the ban on smoking in certain private places, or else placidly accepting it. I was pleased to see news of some resistance in today’s Metro, though.
Tony Blows, landlord of the Dog Inn in Ewyas Harold, is a member of Freedom2Choose and is defying the ban. He’s doing it for all the right reasons, too.
I’m doing it for the simple reason that this is my home.
My wife and I work 200 hours a week in this pub.
It’s private property and there’s no way they can stop us doing it. As long as we abide by licensing laws we are not doing anything wrong.
Freedom2Choose has launched a legal challenge at the High Court. I don’t fancy their chances much, but futile protest is more satisfying than meek acceptance. I do feel sorry for Mr Blows, though, who will probably end up having his business shut down, having his property confiscated or in jail.
But that’s what those in favour of the ban want; even those smokers who looked forward to it as a good opportunity to quit because they are too weak willed to do it without the threat of violence.
Update: From the Telegraph, via a Samizdata commenter:
Few people will be implementing the smoking ban in England today with less enthusiasm than the Queen. Although she has consented to have no-smoking signs erected in the public areas of Buckingham Palace to comply with the new regulations, she has made it clear to courtiers that she would have preferred to continue to offer visitors the use of ash-trays rather than outlaw the practice.
“HM is a confirmed non-smoker but she is also a great libertarian and has no time for political correctness,” says my man at the Palace. “She has always made cigarettes available to her guests. I might add that she also refuses to wear a hard hat when she is out riding and she refuses, too, to wear a seat belt when she travels by car.”
No-smoking signs are already up at the entrances used by members of the public when they receive honours, but there will be none at those used by the Queen, members of the Royal Family or their senior aides. “She has agreed to comply, but can’t bear the Government meddling with every aspect of an individual’s life,” adds the courtier.
Update 2: Perry de Havilland perfectly summarises the smoking ban in terms of what’s private, what’s civil, and what’s violence. Some good comments, too:
From Crosbie:
It is a form of collective punishment. If I go to my local and light up in the corner, my landlord could be prosecuted. For this reason I wouldn’t resist.
Collective punishment is an effective way of enforcing immoral laws because because decent people feel guilty when their actions will have bad results for others. This is the reason for the meekness.
From Nick M:
An Englishman’s home is now his non-smoking castle. Long ago, it became his can’t shoot burglars castle. Soon it will be a no transfats, carbon-footprinted, 5-a-day, always use a condom, take a break after fifteen minutes at a computer, lights out at eleven (our planet is dying!!!) castle.
Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 7:53 AM EDT