The Thatcher/Reagan years are commonly thought of as the heyday of free market ideology. The reality is starkly different however – despite the lip-service paid to F.A. Hayek by Thatcher and the Tories they suffered from the same Fatal Conceit that state socialist planners and previous economic managerialists did – they believed that they could plan economic activity.

I am reminded of this by a post on the FEEs blog Anything Peaceful which describes the ‘market based approach’ being pursued to redevelop a small town’s downtown area. Far from being market based, its planning centred with ‘experts’ deciding what should be done.

Back in the 1980s, Thatcher and company were likewise paying lip service to the free market and market based solutions, but in reality their program of privatisation was simply a more efficient mechanism of control. Allowing a few sops to the market to impose some discipline, but still seeking to manage the economy – the Fatal Conceit.

Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance saw this, the so-called privatisations being nothing of the sort, simply passing the profits and day to day running to another section of the ruling class (one more amenable to Tory aims than the Unions and state employed managers).
It was this truth which allowed New Labour, under the direction of Blair and Mandelson to adopt the Thatcherite methodologies – the state maintains control, but in a more efficient manner than the supposedly socialist methods which dominated until 1979.

Murray Rothbard also criticised this pseudo-privatisation, seeing it for what it really is – the notorious anarcho-’capitalist’ suggested that the state run businesses should be taken over by the workers in an act of true privatisation.

Too many of today’s supposedly free market ideologues are actually another breed of the planner and controller.

Update:
Just to make it clear, the FEE blog post was making a similar point to me.

For a while I’ve been wanting to make my own bread, I’m not sure why, but the idea has long appealed to me.

Not long ago I started suffering from RSI, which has given me the perfect kick in the pants to actually do this – having to spend less time on the computer means I have to find other things to do – reading books on baking bread and baking bread helps fill some of the time (although there’s not actually much time spent doing things when making bread).

At the moment, I’m attempting to create a sourdough starter. My wife despairs at the lack of sourdough in this country, the only good one we’ve found is from Tesco of all places, so I thought I’d try making my own.

I’m using the instructions found here (approximately – I added too much water so had to top up the flour as well).

After one day I’m getting a sour smell and a few bubbles, but no real rising – probably due to the cool temperatures in the house. Signs of life are good though.

Going through as yet unread blog posts in my feed reader I came across this astounding statistic on Richard Garner’s all too infrequently updated blog:

According to the Times in 1955 there were about 47 heroin addicts in the United Kingdom. Compare this with the US where heroin had been illegal since 1925 and heroin was a ‘major social problem’. Compare it also with today’s situation where heroin addiction is a large problem, and the violence which results from the drug’s illegality is a severe problem for many communities.

Score one victory for the endless War On Drugs there – make something illegal for ‘moral’ reasons (usually code for prejudice – such as the outright racism of ‘reefer madness’) and you just increase its use and add a whole load of other problems.

The ‘War on Drugs’ itself, like the ‘War on Terror’ and the upcoming ‘War on content sharing’ is also a tool for the state and its clients/supporters to take more power over our lives, a tool for the extension of the political/aggressive means over the market/voluntary means.

I love John Scalzi’s writing, I’ve just read his Old Man’s War trilogy and greatly enjoyed it, but I do find it best to ignore much of his politics.

Today, he bemoans the vote to allow casinos in Ohio, wishing that the state would use force to enforce his own moral feelings against gambling, whilst on the other hand he bemoans the use of the state’s force to discriminate against homosexuals.

I’m with him 100% on the latter, it is disgusting that people use the state to back up their bigotry. Unfortunately, he supports the same violence against people who wish to gamble in casinos.

If it is wrong to use the violence of the state to prevent two men marrying (and it is) then the use of that violence to prevent any other consensual act is just as wrong, no matter what your moral objections.

If anyone wanted more evidence that the Labour Party is just another party for big business then Lord Mandleson’s proposals to disconnect families from the Internet after unsubstantiated allegations of file sharing.

This policy is purely driven by the scrambling big content providers seeking to use the violence of the law to preserve their position and secure rents in a changing world.

How does this help the worker or ‘ordinary working families’? It doesn’t at all. Cui bono? Certainly not the poor or workers, those who the Labour Party claims to be there for. It doesn’t protect the most vulnerable. It doesn’t even protect artists and writers those its supposed to help.

To satisfy (the no doubt big donors in) big media, Mandleson is proposing that media companies and their lawyers  can make unsubstantiated accusations and get people cut off from the Internet. No proof needed, just the say so of some lawyers somewhere.

So, The Labour Party, a party which likes to champion itself as promoting the interests of the poor and the working class is yet again siding with business interests against individuals.

Being laid up at the moment post-surgery my Aunt has sent me some ‘light reading’ – the Summer 2009 issue of The Land

Looks interesting – about the history of enclosures in Britain. Nice accidental timing there – being something which Kevin Carson’s work has brought to my attention. I recall the enclosures being mentioned in passing at school, but understandably, the national curriculum doesn’t really want to spend much time on an injustice which has contributed greatly to the current distribution of power.

Hopefully it’ll be an interesting read.

A little about me wouldn’t go amiss.

This blog has mainly been about politics, so I’ll start there.

I’m a libertarian and an anarchist. I believe that a world without enforced hierarchy (manifested in the state or otherwise) would be a far better, fairer, more pleasant world. Not a utopia, that is impossible, but a world in which we can together and as individuals better handle the problems of the world.

To expand further, coming from the liberal/libertarian side of things, I’m particularly inspired by the mutualist and individual anarchist traditions. If you want to apply labels then I suppose market anarchist is a reasonable label given my general emphasis upon the individual and the free and voluntary interactions of individuals (ie the free market).

Needless to say, there’s lots of space to expand on things here.

In my day job I’m a software developer. Mostly programming in Java, with a nice splash of Linux based systems work to glue things together. I may well write about bits of this – especially when it comes to the things we’ve been trying in a project management way.

Other things – I’m married to a lovely lady from northern Indiana – its lucky I support the Cubs (White Sox wouldn’t be so bad I’m told) and the Bears (being a Packers fan would lead to me sleeping on the couch for the rest of my life I believe) and I also follow Notre Dame. Oddly I follow American sport more than British sport (only noticing test cricket and international rugby union, football (soccer) has never held any appeal).

That’ll do for the moment, I’m sure other things will come up in passing.

Having some time on my hands for once I thought I’d try and reboot this blog.

I’ll see what happens, but I hope to try and blog more regularly and to cover more topics, not just the politics, but also other things which strike my fancy.

Wish me luck…