Bertrand Russell on Hayek (Sort of)

(Okay, not exactly ON Hayek, but it is rather Hayekian.  The timing doesn't work out very well, since this was published in 1912.  But who knew that B. Russell was a proto-Austrian?)

From Proposed Roads to Freedom (1918): "We come next to the consideration of the economic power of the State and the influence which it can exert through its bureaucracy. State Socialists argue as if there would be no danger to liberty in a State not based upon capitalism. This seems to me an entire delusion. Given an official caste, however selected, there are bound to be a set of men whose whole instincts will drive them toward tyranny. 

Together with the natural love of power, they will have a rooted conviction (visible now in the higher ranks of the Civil Service) that they alone know how to be able to judge what is good for the community. Like all men who administer a system, they will come to feel the system itself is sacrosanct. The only changes they will desire will be changes in the direction of further regulations as to how the people are to enjoy the good things kindly granted to them by their benevolent despots. 

Whoever thinks this picture overdrawn must have failed to study the influence and methods of Civil Servants at present. On every matter that arises, they know far more than the general public about all the definite facts involved; the one thing they do not know is "where the shoe pinches." 

Very cool.  Sent by the optimally skeptical Zach Weinersmith...  (Good one from Zach yesterday, btw)

Battleship Cathy: SMBC Theater

SMBC Christmas Theater

Is there a Santa?  SMBC Theater has the answer.  Well, an answer.  A twisted answer.

Merry, merry Christmas!

UPDATE:  I'm pretty sure But there is no child. James wears the body of a small child, so you feel like there is a bigger cast.  Seems happier that way...

Are Markets Better Than Altruism?

One of the cool parts of the Radford's 1945 article, "The Economics of a POW Camp," is this observation:

Our supplies consisted of rations provided by the detaining power and (principally) the contents of Red Cross food parcels – tinned milk, jam, butter, biscuits, bully, chocolate, sugar, etc., and cigarettes. So far the supplies to each person were equal and regular. Private parcels of clothing, toilet requisites and cigarettes were also received, and here equality ceased owing to the different numbers despatched and the vagaries of the post. All these articles were the subject of trade and exchange.

Very soon after capture people realised that it was both undesirable and unnecessary, in view of the limited size and the equality of supplies, to give away or to accept gifts of cigarettes or food. “Goodwill” developed into trading as a more equitable means of maximising individual satisfaction.

Trading is more equitable than goodwill? Think about it. I notice you don't eat your beef ration, and I ask for it. You give it to me, because it will be wasted else. But then next month, and the next, and... at some point, the fact that the beef has value means that I should pay you something. YOU may not value the beef, but it has value in the market. I am taking value, and you get nothing. Altruism, if systematized and made permanent, is inequitable. If the state FORCES us to act as if we were altruistic, then it isn't altruism at all.

SMBC illustrates the same problem: Altruism is at best an emergency solution, because it quickly devastates those it is intended to help. If you love something, set it free to find a way to support itself by producing something someone else wants to buy.

(A nod to David D)

UPDATE: From the intrepid Pels-min: PJ O'Rourke nailed it in 1994, "All the Trouble in the World," when he was baffled by Somalia's fields filled with (unharvested) crops. "Somalia was being flooded with food aid… Rice was selling for ten cents a pound in Somalia, the cheapest rice in the world. But what, we thought, did that mean to the people with the fields of corn and sorghum and the herds of goats and cattle? Are those now worth nothing, too? Had we come to a Somalia where some people some- times starved only to leave a Somalia where everybody always would?"