China.
Who will win the coming American Civil War, Republicans or Democrats?
Author: Keir Hartley
The Fable of the Bees really made us think again
Ok, LSS is a Whig website, but we, like the original Whigs, can never escape our Puritan origins. You know-if you ain’t suffering, it’s not really working. Save every penny, live lives of relentless austerity and virtue, and all will be well. You find its echoes in films like Apocalypse Now, with the implications that the Americans jolly well deserve lose because they spend their free time at strip shows, while the austere Vietnamese will triumph on their diet of boiled rice and rat meat. Even old Max Weber [1] got in on the act with a story of how simple living Protestants vanquished free spending Catholics and created the Industrial Revolution. Societies of ants-all sobriety, thrift and work- will always prevail over grasshopper communities where everyone spends their time in activities like gambling, art galleries, sex, parties, and generally living it up. A sine que non, and we have always believed it.
Until a funny little man called Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) came along. He was one of those transnational thinkers who show Europe at its best, starting out Dutch and ending up English. The Holland of his youth was an intensely Protestant society, endlessly sermonising itself to eschew vices like tea and cherry brandy. Except young Bernard couldn’t help noticing how all the money to pay for Holland’s greatness (it was a major power) came from taxes on the imports of wicked things like tea and spices brought in by the Dutch East India Company. That the merchant fleets of this company could be quickly transformed into warships to enforce Dutch security. In other words: Holland has got rich by doing exactly what it tells itself it shouldn’t.
When Mandeville got to England, he published his thoughts in a book called The Fable of the Bees, or, Private Vices, Publick Virtues. [2] . to quote wikipedia, Mandeville
describes a bee community that thrives until the bees decide to live by honesty and virtue. As they abandon their desire for personal gain, the economy of their hive collapses, and they go on to live simple, “virtuous” lives in a hollow tree. Mandeville’s implication—that private vices create social benefits—caused a scandal when public attention turned to the work, especially after its 1723 edition.
Mandeville dares to question the idea that simple ideas of virtue (Christian at that time, but later inherited by many stripes of Reformers) could actually be inimical to the creation of wealth and prosperity. That paradoxically, the good society is the result of many people joined in selfish competition, none of them motivated by altruism in the least It’s a powerful question, for it cuts to the heart of the personal motives of the reformers, and what they hope to achieve.
Is The Fable propaganda, a curveball thrown by a wicked ruling class designed to sap Progressives’ confidence in themselves? Or a useful antidote against fanatics like Communists or ISIS, whose own murky motives become clear shortly after they assume power? One thing is certain; as soon as we read it it made us think, deeply, about our own ideas and assumptions. And that is always a very good thing.
Editors note: In the course of researching this article we discovered that Holland, the Netherlands and the Low Countries are all the same place.
[1] Max Weber The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 1905
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees
#virtue vice #communism #puritanism #economy #society #hooland #netherlands
Immigration: many causes, one solution
Like it or not (we don’t care), immigration is the hot button issue of our time. The dread it inspires in large sections of the host populations has become politically destabilising. And thereby inimical to progress in so many more important areas such as climate change, medicine and education. There are ever-more hysterical calls to get tougher and, more brutal with migrants. All futile, like the cries of angry prohibitionists for tougher enforcement of the booze laws a hundred years ago. Cruelty only works on the people you catch. If violence worked as a deterrent, no one would ever join armies, for fear of the dangers they face.
These advocates are like the quacks who posed as healers before the advent of medical science. Whose successes have taught us that if you want to stop something, you need understand its deep causes. Fortunately, we have arranged a series of clicks by which you can read more on this very trope, dear readers. [1,2.3] Yet deep down, it’s simple: people migrate from bad economic conditions in the hope of finding better ones. Like charged ions in an electric field, they move along gradients of money. So the UK receives rather few immigrants from prosperous Denmark, but many from poor Albania. The advent faster communications such as aeroplanes, or cheap labour ideologies, certainly speed the process. But it would happen anyway.
The only certain prevention would be a concerted effort to raise standards of living, political and social rights and environmental quality, in the countries from which people emigrate. This in turn would require a considerable transfer of funds from rich countries to poorer ones. Tricky: because the very people who call most loudly for immigration prevention (the Dog and Duck, Daily Mail crowd) are also those who hanker most strongly for cuts in foreign aid. But until such action is taken, mass immigration will not go away. Only a World Government would have the strength and authority to carry out such transfers. And it would be right for so many of the other problems we have alluded to as well.
[1] https://www.lirs.org/causes-of-immigration/
[2] https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/why-people-migrate-11-surprising-reasons/
[3] https://fullfact.org/immigration/why-do-international-migrants-come-uk/
#immigration #emigration #migration #poverty #inequality #world government
Weekly Round Up: Serbia, Bends, Cuts, Brazil-and a dreadful football team
stories that caught our eye
Nasty Serbs Every playground bully always has a couple of smaller boys who want to join his gang. Putin has Byelorussia, and now Serbia. What drives so many Serbs to the side of evil? The answer may be delusions of grandeur, as Tomislav Markovic explains in the Guardian.
Surprisingly Bent Imagine if you could fold up your mobile phone and tuck it away. You can’t, of course, because the battery is so rigid. But now new discoveries in materials science suggest types of conductors/chargers that can be bent and shaped like play-doh, Here’s Stacy Liberatore for the Mail
Cuts now, knife crime later Why do people turn persistently to self-destructive behaviours like gambling, alcoholism, and violent crime? The answer may well be that failure to control impulses may be linked to childhood deprivation, as Richard Tunney makes clear for the Conversation. Any Government thinking of massive welfare cuts may be storing up trouble to come.
Irresponsible, that’s what you are We mean you, Bolsonaro, the man who wants to burn out the lungs of the planet. We don’t know what drives this man and the sinister groups that back him, but one thing is certain. The world will be in a far more perilous place if he succeeds. As this piece in Nature Briefings makes clear
As Brazilians prepare to go to the polls on Sunday, a Nature editorial argues that a second term for Jair Bolsonaro would represent a threat to science, democracy and the environment. Bolsonaro charged into office four years ago denying science, threatening Indigenous peoples’ rights and pushing a development-at-all-costs approach to the economy. This weekend, Brazilians will go to the polls in the second round of one of the country’s most important elections. Bolsonaro is standing for re-election against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Workers’ Party leader who was president for two terms between 2003 and 2010. Lula is not without baggage — he spent 19 months in jail as a result of a corruption investigation, although the convictions were annulled in 2021. However, he has pledged to achieve ‘net zero’ deforestation and protect Indigenous lands, if elected.Nature | 4 min read
Off the ball Fans of the satirical magazine Private Eye in the 1970s will remember the saga of the hapless Neasden FC and its ashen-faced manager Ron Knee. Now the real thing has come along in the shape of Durham City AFC, whose record of goals conceded, matches lost and relegations endured makes the doings of the North London outfit look positively accomplished by comparison. Here’s George Simms for I News
https://inews.co.uk/sport/football/durham-city-afc-inside-england-worst-football-club-1935944
#serbia #russia #materials science #crime #addiction #cuts #bolsonaro #lula #brasil #football #durhamcityafc
Friday Night: Cocktails from the Movies
If ever two art forms were born together, grew and mutually nurtured, it was the movies and cocktails. Seen as a cultural trope, they were children of the interwar period from 1919-1939. Both evoke the world of stylish glamour captured best in the art deco buildings of Manhattan, as Fred and Ginger danced from peak to peak across the concrete towers and chasms of that mighty metropolis. Since when both Film and Cocktails have sat together in many great era-defining moments.
So it’s only fitting that this week we dedicate our little blog to some of the great movie cocktail moments. And before you all shout “Bond!”, a warning. Yes, the stylish spy is in there, but our researchers have uncovered many other great moments from the silver screen across not one, but two excellent sites![1] [2] Among the highlights you’ll find the White Russian (The Big Lebowski) the Orange Whip (The Blues Brothers) a French 75(Casablanca) a Vesper Martini (Casino Royale) and a humble glass of Chardonnay (Briget Jones’ Diary) If you’ve got any of these films, now might be the night to put them on, crack out your mixers, and wolf one down at the exact same moment as the actors in the film do. (how do they do all the takes without the actors getting drunk?-it’s a permanent mystery to us)
And our own favourite, sadly not on the lists. It’s superb stylemeister Cary Grant, chatting up Eva Marie Saint in North by North West. [3] Sadly the clip we’ve clipped does not contain Grant’s classic reply to the waiter “Yezz pleaz, a Gibson.” But it’s firmly on the table in this elegant railway scene,and looks far better than a can of Special Brew. How travel has gone down since those days!
[1] https://www.delish.com/restaurants/g325/movie-cocktails/
[2]https://aspiringwinos.com/cocktails/iconic-cocktails-from-movies-and-television/
[3] https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=north+by+northwest+yon+train&&view=
#cocktails #fims
Pensions: the time bomb ticking at the heart of society
If there’s one thing that keeps most people on the straight and narrow, it’s the thought of retiring to a comfortable old age. You won’t go out throwing bombs, joining revolutionary parties or selling cranky newspapers outside Tube stations if it imperils your chances of spending quality time with the grandkids or blocking airport lounges with your unfeasibly bulky luggage. As the Capitalist Class, bless ’em, has always known.
Until relatively recently, the system had worked well. Pension funds took a slice of your money, invested it , and at the end gave you a lump sum which was then used to buy an annuity, and off you went to buy a car/boat/Benidorm villa, “au pair” or whatever. But now there are real fears that the whole scheme has seized up, leaving millions seriously out of pocket. Samantha Downs [1] has an excellent article here, but we’ll try to summarise a little below.
After the crash of 2007-2008 the world was only saved from disaster by quantitative easing, that strange but necessary global lowering of interest rates which kept the world running on life support. But pension funds carried on buying gilts, understandably, as they looked so safe. However, post Covid, interest rates are rising, and so are the values of gilts. (The price of any bond, such as a gilt, will always fall as the yield rises. And these yields have to rise to compete with interest rates offered elsewhere.)
Suddenly, the value of the stuff you need to buy an annuity has fallen away, with little hope of getting back up any time soon. A lot of people will find their retirement to be penurious. Which is always worse when you weren’t expecting it. In countries dependent on the grey pound, that will leave a big gap in discretionary spending. More worryingly for us a compact of understanding between the system and its loyal subjects has been broken. Younger people will start to entertain real doubts about their own futures. And who can blame them if they start to look for alternatives?
we thank Mr Peter Seymour for the idea behind this story
#pensions #gilts #bonds #annuities
Iranian women-the struggle goes on
For sheer courage, and the hope of the world, nothing is so admirable as the struggle of Iranian women against their malevolent and tyrannical regime. Braving tear gas, clubbings, live rounds and hundreds of deaths and injuries, they daily fight everyone’s fight against bigotry and oppression. And for what? So that each may choose whether or not to wear a simple headcovering, the hijab. They are certainly not trying to ban the garment. But the mere fact they demand this choice is enough to send the misanthropic brutes at the summit of the Iranian regime into paroxysms of fury and violence.
Today will simply provide you with a useful summary of the women’s cause, by Nifoofar Hooman of the Conversation, looking at the balance of forces on each side and where we are today.
And our thoughts? The ancient fools who run Iran are looking for blood in too many places. Just as they supply Russian tyrant Putin with more means to pursue his genocide in Ukraine, they face massive opposition at home. “The hour of destiny has struck upon the clock.”
#iran #womens rights
Weekly Round Up: Falls, Caves, Mess, and some adorable tiger cubs
things that caught our eye in this week’s news
Rise and Fall of a Prime Minister How come intelligent hard-working people make dreadful, nation-changing errors? British PM Liz Truss must have had some of those qualities to reach as far as she did. We all need to learn from poor decision-making, wherever we live. So this article from The Conversation seemed entirely apposite:
First Family Once again the wonders of DNA technology leave us breathless. Not only does it take us parsecs beyond bone studies, but it gives us hints to the sociology of these early hunter gatherers, and close human relatives. Not bad! Nature, A Neanderthal Nuclear family
for the first time, researchers have identified a set of closely related Neanderthals: a father, his teenage daughter and two other more distant relatives. The discovery of the family and seven more individuals in Chagyrskaya Cave in southern Siberia, along with two more from a nearby site, nearly doubles the number of known Neanderthal genomes. Genetic clues found in the individuals’ DNA hint that the population of breeding adults was low, and that there was more diversity in maternally inherited mitochondrial genomes — suggesting that mothers left their communities to build new families.Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Nature paper
How far is justified? At LSS, we tend to take the view that any desecration of a work of art cannot be justified. Think ISIS and Taleban if you like. So we were horrified when climate activists threw soup over a painting in the UK’s National Gallery. But we ill offer you the case for their defence, if only because it’s made by George Monbiot, all round intelligent guy and good bloke.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/19/van-gogh-sunflowers-just-stop-oil-tactics
Tiger Tiger, Tiger The Zoological Society of London, that august institution, has always been at the forefront of conservation efforts. Heartening then to see their efforts amply rewarded with the birth of three rare Sumatran tiger cubs, who should do much to boost their Covid-depleted coffers.
see you Monday!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/19/van-gogh-sunflowers-just-stop-oil-tactics
#liz truss #uk #politics #dna #neanderthal #climate change #protest #zsl
Friday Night Cocktails: Pumpkin themes for autumn
Nothing is so evocative of autumn as the appearance of the pumpkin [1] in schools, streets and supermarkets. As the colder nights draw in and we look to evening festivals like Halloween and Bonfire Night, the big, friendly round squash comes into its own as a source of seasonal foods, decorations,…….. and of course, cocktails as we hope to show in this brief blog.
We were surprised when our indefatigable researchers showed has how many recipes there are. What we offer today is just a selection, and we’re sure you can google a few more if you want
So, while the kids are gathered around the bonfire with their sparklers, celebrating an ancient act of judicial murder, or frightening each other to death with witch costumes, here’s something to take the heat off of the adults, who can relax and
From Basco, (and this let us use their lovely picture)
Mix that drink offer a nice looking pumpkin pie martini, which you can see by clicking on this link:
https://mixthatdrink.com/pumpkin-pie-martini-mixthatdrink-original/
while the cookie rookie suggest a pumpkin whisky smash
Pumpkin Whiskey Smash Cocktail
Not to be outdone, the good old Co-op offers a pumpkin puree
https://www.coop.co.uk/recipes/pumpkin-puree?
see you next Friday, which is more than you can say for Liz Truss.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpkin
#pumpkin #cocktails
In praise of Foster Parents
“Every year” says Paul, “David sends me a birthday card. It says Thank you for teaching me everything I know. ” Paul is a Foster Parent, one of that amazing army of unsung heroes and heroines who often make the difference between survival and total collapse for so many thousands of abused, neglected or abandoned children. David was his first foster placement. It was many years ago, when Paul was busy as a successful businessman in the food supply business,and raising a highly successful family of his own. Since then, Paul and his wife Jane have fostered many and are still doing it today, well into their seventies.
The trouble with LSS-and like certain Prime Ministers, we humbly admit it-is that there are too many molecules, too many econometric theories and too many cocktails in here. We don’t bring you enough human interest stories. Too easy to sink into a pit of esoteric academicism, ignoring the heroic work of carers, fosterers, police officers, and all the others who are the real glue holding our society together. Time to learn from them. And this was our principal lesson.
About fifty years ago, certain supercilious biologists were fond of preaching that utter selfishness and egoism were the only worthwhile guides for human behaviour. It was all, in our genes, they told us, with all the otiose certainty of first year undergraduates who imagine a university place is a guarantee of private virtue and public wisdom. Qualities such as altruism, sharing and solidarity were the delusions of weak minds, destined for evolutionary extinction. A way of thinking quickly picked up by newspapers such as the Daily Mail, ever eager for sticks with which to beat Trade Unions, Social Democrats and anyone else who tried to stand in the way of a dog-eat-dog free for all.
We won’t tell you of the satisfaction which Paul and Jane obtain from each successful placement. Or that each successful case which they handle turns in to a healthy productive citizen, ready to work to pay taxes for the rest of us in our dotage. Or that every child saved from the streets saves someone from getting mugged, drugged, slugged or harmed in some way. We’ll leave you instead with the words of John Donne, that amazing 17th century mystic, who wrote
No man is an island, entire of itself: Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s, or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
names have been changed for confidentiality
#john donne #fostering #altruism
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Learning, Science and Society 