Without the state

Justice is Reciprocal - Wm Godwin

More from my reading:

"But justice is reciprocal. If it be just that I should confer a benefit, it is just that another man should receive it, and if I withhold from him that to which he is entitled, he may justly complain. My neighbour is in want of ten pounds that I can spare. There is no law of political institution that has been made to reach this case and to transfer this propertry from me to him. But in the eye of simple justice, unless it can be shown that the money can be more beneficiently employed, his claim is as complete as if he had my bond in his possession or had supplied me with goods to that amount.

To this it has sometimes been answered that there is more than one person that stands in need of the money I have to spare, and of consequence I must be at liberty to bestow it as I please. I answer, if only one person offer himself to my knowledge or search, to me there is but one. Those others that I cannot find belong to other rich men to assist (rich men, I say, for every man is rich who has more money than his just occasions demand) and not to me. If more than one person offer, I am obliged to balance their fitness and conduct myself accordingly"

William Godwin An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness 1793

in The Anarchists, Irving L Horowitz (ed) 1964

As I read, I will be posting more such extracts as I come on them, not necessarily because I agree with every detail, or that they add up to a consistent view, but because, in the manner of a commonplace book, I find them interesting at the time. In this case, the quote seems to be a good description of reciprocal rights and duties.

"Harry was a Bolshie"

This post about Harry Pollitt (in the Virtual Stoa's Dead Socialist Watch series) reminded me of a song I used to know about him in the 1960s. After commenting to that effect, I did what I should have done first and googled on the lyrics I could remember, which turned up the full words on, believe it or not, the Oldie website. The Oldie item includes the words and an explanation of their origin from the writer, a member of the CP in the 1930s.

The Neighborhood Pace Car

From the man who invented the Walking Bus, new comes the Neighbourhood Pace Car:

Residents with a traffic problem in their street are encouraged to sign the Pace Car Pledge. They promise to drive within the speed limit, stop to let pedestrians cross and minimize their car use. They put a Pace Car sticker on the back of their car so that the motorists behind know why they are driving courteously. When there are sufficient Pace Cars on the street, traffic is calmed citywide. Pace Cars are ‘mobile speed bumps’ that get out of the way of emergency vehicles.

The Pace Car is a very important part of an overall strategy to make streets safer and to increase the vitality of neighborhood life. It calms drivers rather than streets and thus reduces the propensity for drivers to take risk. (The Pace Car sticker is an essential element as it informs the drivers behind why the car is being driven within the law. This reduces the chances of them becoming agitated and is part of an awareness raising process.) The Pace Car helps create an environment where adults and children are more likely to walk or use their street for play and socializing.

Kilroy - "The bully beneath the tan"

On the surface, Kilroy-Silk - whose face was surely made by God for baby-kissing - appears the consummate politician, a self-appointed moral guardian dripping with charm. Yet the carefully cultivated image belies the hypocrisy of a man whose tendency to berate single mothers for their own lapses in morality is not reflected in his own behaviour.

This is a millionaire who, despite having been married for 42 years to wife Janet, fathered a love child he has never met.

He is a bully who has been violent and is said to have cut off the water supply to his neighbours' home.

He is an ambitious political chameleon who has attacked races from Arab to Irish and insulted Muslims. He is an egotist so astonishingly vain he once thought himself, "too handsome for politics".

More on this nice man here

via Crooked Timber

On the Crooked Timber link make sure you read about the economic idiocy of the UKIP chief advisor.

New localism

Different members of the Labour Party are in different ways raising ideas about giving control of local facilties to the local community.

In a Demos lecture, the former minister Alan Milburn floated the idea of allowing local groups limited levy-raising powers as part of the New Localism agenda. But [Nick] Raynsford and [Yvette] Cooper oppose this, warning of inequality. Ms Cooper says empowered local communities can help regenerate deprived areas but also "justify the worst kind of nimbyism, divisive inequalities and deep conservativism". Mr Raynsford warns that "the devolution schemes in Tower Hamlets, Walsall and Islington, in the early 90s, paid insufficient attention to the need to deliver value for money".

Ms Cooper also counsels against giving new bodies revenue-raising powers. She responds: "If affluent communities can buy themselves better policing or more frequent litter collection or clean-up campaigns than poorer districts can afford, then inequalities will widen.

"Social cohesion within the leafy estate may improve, but social cohesion across the district will be undermined as areas become more polarised."

In principle I can only give a cheer. In practice I'n doubtful - the track record of this government on things like New Deal for Communities has been to impose a substantial bureaucracy onto volunteers and only allow very limited freedom of action. If local communities are to take over local services it has to be on a properly funded basis. As for Yvette Cooper's comments, affluent communities can already buy better standards and social polarisation is already here. What we need is not some way to stabilise the position but a way to lift the most impoverished areas. I'm not convinced that giving local groups power to raise levies is the best idea though. The evidence from Home Owners Assocaitions in the USA suggests that they can be as bureaucratic and overbearing as the worst council.

I touched on some of these ideas in a post on this book. I must get back to preparing the longer post I promised myself.

Who says philosophy is boring?

I am sick and tired of hearing about that ticking nuclear bomb in Manhattan. You know the one. Why? Because, if you let me put my thumb on the utilitarian scales, I can get you to agree that you have an affirmative moral duty to torture a three-year-old child to death.

Having got your attention you can find the rest at Crooked Timber an increasingly cool and calm oasis of thinking where I seek refuge.

[I hope the link works because they are doing one of those esoteric things with hosters and redirections and things that I always pretend to understand but really don't]

And if it isn't clear I think Belle has it right on the button.

Someone else I've never heard of

Willie and I, of course, do not always agree on everything. More than a year ago, just before the invasion of Iraq, we discussed the subject on his bus. I was very much for the war. He was very much against it. Finally, I tried to reason with him. "Look, Willie," I said, "the guy's a tyrannical bully and we've got to take him out." "No," Willie said. "He's our president and we've got to stand by him."

and this:

I aspire to inspire before I expire -- to remind people that JFK is not an airport, RFK is not a football stadium and Martin Luther King Jr. is not a street. In 2 and 1/2 years you may see me in the back of a long, black limousine, which will mean that I'm either governor or I've been bugled to Jesus, the distinction often not being readily discernible.

Brilliant! - read the rest here

via Normblog

A great post

I didn't sleep very well last night - I have a racking cough keeping me awake. So - sometime in the early hours of dawn I composed in my head a brilliant post, a post that would wrap up all the things I wanted to do when I set out with this blog in one elegant, witty piece.

Then I fell asleep. I've rewritten it below - it isn't as good as the original would have been though.

An argument for complexity

I found the quote below in my copy of Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (price 3s 6d). I say 'found' because I haven't looked at the book for some time and didn't remember the quote:

Until lately the best thing that I was able to think of in favour of civilization, apart from blind acceptance of the order of the universe, was that it made possible the artist, the poet, the philosopher, and the man of science. But I think that is not the greatest thing. Now I believe that the greatest thing is a matter that comes directly home to us all. When it is said that we are too much occupied with the means of living to live, I answer that the chief worth of civilization is just that it makes the means of living more complex; that it calls for great and combined intellectual efforts, instead of simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved from place to place. Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life. They mean more life. Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have enough of it.

I will add but a word. We are all very near despair. The sheathing that floats us over its waves is compounded of hope, faith in the unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort, and the deep, sub-conscious content which comes from the exercise of our powers.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR

I like this - it is an elegant argument in favour of the 'examined life' .

I have to confess I have never knowingly read anything by Wendell Holmes, although the name is known to me. I am sure that some will be horrified but I look on that gap as a prime example of what he is talking about - another opportunity for a fuller and richer life.

Mrs Jacobs does not identify the source of this quotation as far as I can tell, and I haven't found a phrase from it which turns up anything on Google. What does turn up suggests that most posters, like me got it from Mrs Jacobs. Any erudite reader out there with an idea of the source?

UPDATE: My ignorance is compounded - the Oliver Wendell Holmes I knew about (vaguely) - a doctor, writer and poet- is actually the father of this Oliver Wendell Holmes - a judge and writer.

Libertarianism in One Lesson

Well I think this is funny although I dare say others don't.

Philosophy
* Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
* Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.

Government
* Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.
* Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
* Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.

Regulation

* If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament?
* Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up.

Political Debate Strategy

* Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
* All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims.
* The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.