Nicola Orwell [updated]

Over the weekend, we were watching the recent George Orwell doco Orwell 2+2=5 on DocPlay. Worth it, except to the extent it (deliberately?) confuses economic power with political power -- the very important distinction, as Harry Binswanger explains, between, the Dollar & the Gun. (And the film's own language does get somewhat Orwellian itself towards the end.)

Anyway, two quotes from the great man came to mind as I read Finance Minister Nicola Willis attempting to explain why her government spending more is nonetheless a 'saving.'

"What [her] Government has largely done,"explains Luke Malpass, "is to cut in some areas to fund increases in others." In her words:

It is not a saving in the sense that we are spending less as a government; it is a saving in the sense that, in the absence of making those savings, we would not have been able to fund increases to health and education and essential services without borrowing more.

As Orwell writes:

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

And:

When one hears a politician using a word like 'socialist,' 'communism,' 'freedom,' 'patriotic,' 'realistic,' 'justice,' and the like, one is not sure what he is saying, but it is clear that he is not saying anything meaningful.

Add to that last one the word 'saving.'

1984 was not supposed to be an instruction book; it was supposed to be a warning.

Look! Look! Come see how much 'saving' Nicola has been doing year on year! 

[Source: NZ Treasury's official Financial Statements]

UPDATE: To put some more context into what Willis's 'savings' look like, here's Matthew Horncastle, who's been reading the NZ Govt's Financial Statements, which say that last year, Willis's government took in $169.8 billion in revenue.

The majority of that is taxes. Forced. Compulsory. Taken from working people, business owners, and families under threat of legal consequence. There is no opt out. 

    They spent $183.5 billion. That is $13.7 billion more than they collected. 

    Net government debt is now $182.2 billion. That is $140,000 for every household in New Zealand. The interest bill alone is $8.9 billion a year. Every single year. That is more than the entire budget for law and order. More than defence. More than housing. Just interest. Just the cost of the debt that already exists. 

    And debt is still growing. In 2019 net Crown debt was $58 billion. It is now $182 billion. In six years the government tripled the national debt and handed every New Zealand household a $140,000 bill they never agreed to. 

    That is not governance. That is generational theft. 

    Free people should not be working to service the borrowing habits of politicians who will never personally bear the consequences of what they have spent. 

    Get the books back to surplus. Cut spending. Stop borrowing. Let productive people keep more of what they earn.
    This is not complicated. It just requires the courage to do it.

"And what we have now are English professors saying that, you know, Taylor Swift is as good as Mary Shelley."

"Q: 'So I want to ask you about Philistines and how Philistines have taken over the culture. I think the phrase you used is ‘Philistine supremacy’?'

"A: 'That's right. A lot of the time, when we talk about Philistines, we mean, oh, that awful person I know who doesn't appreciate the high arts. And it's a kind of snob thing. I'm not interested in that. Everyone's a Philistine, right? I'm a Philistine. You're a Philistine.

"'The really important thing is whether the literary elite are Philistines. And what we have now are English professors saying that, you know, Taylor Swift is as good as Mary Shelley. And the guy who runs the New York Times book review section hasn't read Middlemarch and doesn't think it's a problem. And there are just so many examples like that—that sort of suggest that the elite tier has kind of given up on being elites in a way.

"'I think part of it is we had what was called prestige TV, and people wanted to write about that and talk about that.'

"Q: 'Let me play Devil’s Advocate for a moment and say, no, 'Succession' is really good. The writing is very interesting. The cinematography adds a new layer to its presentation. The storytelling's good. It gives you room to explore various themes in a way that a play doesn’t because of its runtime and multi-season arc. Tell me why that’s crazy.'

"A: 'There are two questions here. Is Succession good? And is Succession the sort of thing that merits the cultural elite giving it the kind of attention that they have? And those are separate questions.

"'Maybe Succession is good. I neither know nor care. I found it boring. I couldn't watch very much of it. Personally, I think the cinematography is hugely derivative. ... But should we be talking about it in partnership with King Lear? Should we be devoting the kind of space and the kind of critical attention that we give to it, that we also give to the great works of fiction and drama? That’s obviously a no. Even the advocates can't really make a serious case for it. And, you know, King Lear is 400 years old at this point and is acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of the West. No one's printing out the Succession scripts and doing a close reading. ...'

"Q: 'What would you do specifically about Shakespeare?'

"A: 'So the first thing I would say is, you’re not at school and you’re not that person anymore. And there are a lot of things you did and didn’t like at school that are no longer relevant. So just move on. Put that to one side. That’s over. Shakespeare’s the best. People get a little fussy about, can we say the best, and can we have rankings? Whatever. Yes, he’s the best. He’s the heart of the English canon. He’s the best reading experience you can have. You owe it to yourself to see or read some Shakespeare in the way that you would travel to see amazing landscapes, amazing buildings, have the best food of the world, hear the best music of the world. No one thinks it’s crazy to jump on a plane for eight hours to go and do something incredible on the other side of the world. But spending three hours with this book is too scary?'"

~ from an interview with Henry Oliver on developing literary taste in an age of TV binge-watching and dumbed-down mass culture: 'How to Be a Serious Reader'

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth."

"Globalisation encourages the capitalist engine of growth. If people understood how generous that engine has been they would have less enthusiasm for protectionism or socialism or environmentalist or economic nationalism in any of their varied forms. Most educated people believe that the gains to income from capitalism’s triumph have been modest, that the poor have been left behind, that the Third World (should we start calling it the Second?) has been immiserised in aid of the First, that population growth must be controlled, that diminishing returns on the whole has been the main force in world economic history since 1800. All these notions are factually erroneous. But you’ll find all of them in the mind of the average professor of political philosophy."

~ Deirdre McCloskey from her review of Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree and John Gray’s False Dawn

Freedom is a nation's greatest resource

 "Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free."

~ Montesquieu from his 1748 book The Spirit of Law [hat tip FEE]

"Too often ‘multiculturalism’ is mistaken for ‘multiracialism'"

"Too often ‘multiculturalism’ is mistaken for ‘multiracialism,’ when the two could not be more different. A multiracial society is one in which people of all races are able to coexist together in peace and cooperation as equal citizens under the law. A multicultural society is one in which people are encouraged to ghettoise themselves according to national or cultural identity."

~ Andrew Doyle from his book The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution [hat tip Gary Judd]

Thank you Adam Smith

It's a busy week. This week also marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the first in-depth exploration and explanation of (in PJ O'Rourke's words) why some nations are prosperous and wealthy and other places just suck.In honour of the anniversary, here are several of Adam Smith’s most insightful observations:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter II]

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter I]

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. [Lecture in 1755, quoted in Dugald Stewart, Account Of The Life And Writings Of Adam Smith LLD, Section IV, 25]

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter I]

By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution... It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI]

It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book II, Chapter III]

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book V Chapter II Part II] 

Every individual... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
    Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII]

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. [From his 1759 work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments]

The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. [The Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section II, Chapter II]

Focus

“If we look at history, it always will speed up. So that’s why I think the skill of focus, being able to know how to focus when it's necessary, I think is a very, very valuable skill to have nowadays.”

~ Oscar de Bos, co-author of a new book Focus On-Off

BOOK REVIEW: 'Who Was Behind the Bolshevik Revolution?' by Ron Asher [updated with reply by publisher]

I have in front of me a new book by Tross Publishing, which I have been invited to review. Having written a chapter or two for the publisher, it is my unpleasant job not just to recommend you not buy it, but that the publisher withdraw it. (Recommending withdrawal is not a matter of "free speech" -- the right to speak includes the right to take the consequences, including criticism -- simply a recommendation for good editorial hygiene.) Withdraw, because it sits poorly with his other titles, because it sits badly with genuine scholarship on any subject. ...

... and because it's not even a good read.

In 1917 in the midst of a war for survival on the First World War's eastern front, Bolshevists seized power from a provisional Russian government fighting the war, and proceeded to enact terror on the population and thereafter on the world. Far from a revolution, it was a squalid little coup, and what came of it was disaster, starvation, death, and mass-murder. 

There had been a revolution that swept away the Tsar -- swept away him and his autocratic regime -- what Ayn Rand was to call "the good revolution." But it wasn't the Bolsheviks who revolted against the Tsar's regime; they came to power instead in a squalid little backdoor coup eight months later -- orchestrated in part by the Imperial German High Command, who had sent Lenin into Russia to kill the war on their terms -- a backroom revolt that stabbed in the back the Provisional Government and squashed like a bug Russia's first stumbling chance at real freedom. 

The Bolsheviks didn't sweep away oppression; they brought it back.

And our friend Mr Asher has now written 93 pages (and 5 pages of notes) to tell us who really did it. And oddly, the important wartime context is never mentioned ...

The wartime context of the coup. (From Louis Fischer's

 The Life of Lenin (NY: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 109

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT WAS SUPPOSED TO have said that "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

This short book claims to reveal who was really behind the Bolshevik Revolution. Really and truly. And it will do so, we are promised, "with meticulous care and references" [p. 5; all uncredited page notes will refer to Mr Asher (2026)]. Take careful note: This is not a book about the ideas that caused the event in question. It is about the people. And, spoiler alert, our author says it was the Jews wot dunnit. They were driven to it, says the author, because they were Jews. 

That's it. That really is it.

And note the argument: it wasn't that those who driven to it because they happened to be Jews. They were driven to it because they were Jews. It was "vengeance," says our author, for earlier Russian pogroms against Jews. Or just because their religion was weird. Or ... something.

A remarkable claim, not least because head Bolshevik and the revolution's driving force was one Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who was not at all Jewish. (He was raised in a Russian Orthodox Christian family, baptised as an infant, and identified culturally and ethnically as Russian; historians who have examined distant links, such as the author of Lenin's Jewish Question, emphasise any link was irrelevant to his identity, ideology, or actions: he critiqued all religion, including Judaism, and saw ethnicity as secondary to class struggle). Nor was Lenin's successor known as Stalin any more Jewish (he was, famously, an ethnic Georgian christened as Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), and nor was the head of Lenin's feared secret police, the Cheka (the brutal Feliz Dzerzhinsky, who was a Pole). 

None of the heads of the snake were Jewish.

Indeed, of the 21 members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in August 1917, there were at most just six who could be categorised that way. Such niceties however do not disturb our author. (Indeed, he adds three more, without any reference for doing so.) 

And in any case.a similar ethnic make-up can be found for many other Russian movements of the time, including the Russian Orthodox priesthood, the rival Menshevik party (whose founders were both Jewish, and which actually had double the proportion of ethnic Jews to the Bolshies), and of course the Jewish Bund (a secular Jewish socialist party active between 1897 and 1920). A similar make-up can be found because any intellectual movement attracts intellectuals -- and Jewish Russians were among the most educated of the time, and were barred by the Tsar's regime from other political involvement.

So the claim is not just remarkable for being bold, but also (as we will see) for lacking the kind of "meticulous care and references" the boldness demands. It's true that historians of the various Russian revolutions and coups d'etat have generally recognised that Jews were represented in early Bolshevik leadership, but so were many other educated ethnic minorities who all faced persecution under the Tsar. (Most of whom were excluded by being non-Russian from advancement in Russian culture or in the vast Russian bureaucracy.) And of course the vast majority of Jews were not Bolsheviks, and Jews as a community suffered enormously under Soviet rule.

This is especially important today to understand. The book comes at a time when ethnic Russian fascism and anti-Semitism has escalated dramatically following Putin's insane aspirations for empire, and Hamas's murderous October 7 attack followed by Israel's bloody response. It's said that Hamas's “Sinwar placed his money on the 2,000-year belief that Jews were inherently vengeful, greedy, and lustful for the blood of innocents and children [and] in betting on Jew-hatred, Sinwar hit the jackpot."  

The irrational hatred continues even here in New Zealand, once considered a relatively safe environment for Jewish folk, and yet the NZ Jewish Council recorded 227 antisemitic incidents in the 12 months following October 7 -- more than the 166 recorded across the entire eight-and-a-half years prior.

So things are ramping up, and you might well ask yourself about such a book's publication: "Why now?" 

And about the thesis, even if proven: "So what?"

WHILE YOU PONDER THOSE QUESTIONS, consider again what such a proof might look like -- proof that it was the Jews wot dunnit -- and about that promise of "meticulous care and references." 

Let's begin by looking at some contemporary (or near-contemporary) quotes adduced by Mr Asher to describe the Bolshevik coup and the Jews' alleged responsibility for it: some examples drawn from a diplomat's alarmed despatch, a gossip columnist's interview, a White Russian general's memoir, and a State Department intelligence file drawing on a known forgery -- all of which are treated as equivalent historical evidence ...

Hitchen's Razor

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”

~ Christopher Hitchens, from his 2007 book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Your library is like a wine cellar ...

“It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones. “There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion. 

“If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice! 

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity.”

~ attrib. Umberto Eco from discussion in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's 2007 book The Black Swan

"Don't get mad..."

"'Don't get mad,' Mr. James had told him. 'State your case --your facts and your reasons -- and don't raise your voice. You aren't going to win every time, that's just the way it'll be, but you should win more than you lose'."

~ Robert Gore from his 2013 novel The Golden Pinnacle

'Education Through Recreation'

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him that he does it well."

~ Lawrence Pearsall Jacks from his 1932 book Education Through Recreation (pp 1-2)

Collectivism v Democracy

“It is now often said that democracy will not tolerate 'capitalism.' If 'capitalism' means here a competitive system based on free disposal over private property, it is far more important to realise that only within this system is democracy possible. When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.”

~ Friedrich Hayek from The Road to Serfdom, Ch. 5

Power politics from ancient Greece

"So many people quote the famous line from Thucydides—'The strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must'—and forget that the amoral imperialists who used that line in the end lost their war and their empire. 

    "Thucydides does not offer the line, 'The strong do what they can,' as a neutral analysis of how international affairs operate. He offers it as an expression of the reckless arrogance that brought about the destruction of the Athenian Empire."

~ David Frum

"Thucydides is often interpreted as the proponent of power politics .... However, again, a careful reading of the text reveals a deeper ambiguity. Is Thucydides genuinely teaching that might makes right or is he more interested in illustrating Athenian hubris or both?”

~ Franz-Stefan Gady from his article 'Hey Policy Wonks, This Is How You Should Read Thucydides'

The open society is the successful society

"The most secure and prosperous societies did not hide from the world. They were confident enough to remain open to trade and ideas, allowing the new to challenge the known. Progress emerges when people experiment, borrow, and combine ideas in ways no planner could ever foresee; decline happens when fear overcomes curiosity."

~ Johan Norberg from his article 'From Athens to the Abbasids to today’s Anglosphere, creativity and commerce drive greatness.' in which he explores the central lessons of history’s real golden ages in his new book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages.

The Seen & the Unseen — Dicey edition

 

"The beneficial effect of State intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and, so to speak, visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect, and lie out of sight. ... Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favour upon governmental intervention. 

"This natural bias can be counteracted only by the existence, in a given society, ... of a presumption or prejudice in favour of individual liberty, that is, of laissez-faire. The mere decline, therefore, of faith in self-help — and that such a decline has taken place is certain —is of itself sufficient to account for the growth of legislation tending towards socialism."

~ AV Dicey from his lecture 'The Growth of Collectivism,' collected in his 1905 book 'Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century'

"This pathetic and muddled belief in the power of credit to cure all economic ills is perennial in New Zealand"

With all the talk this week of how the cheap credit of a a dirt-cheap OCR announcement filtering through to the economy, as if some wand had been waved we should all celebrate, I couldn't help thinking of NZ economist JB Condliffe's sage observation on the New Zealander's enthusiasm for cheap money:

"Still belief  persisted in the magic of credit to achieve all economic objectives. ... This pathetic and muddled belief in the power of credit to cure all economic ills is perennial in New Zealand ... "

He wrote that in 1959 in his book The Welfare State in New Zealand. 

I doubt he'd be surprised today.

“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded"

“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded — and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist." 

~ Friedrich Hayek, from his 1979 book Law, Legislation & Liberty, Vol III: The Political Order of a Free People

The dawn of the post-literate society (and the end of civilisation?)

"If you’ve ... been concerned with the decline of reading as a leisure activity, or you’re wondering what happens if a culture abandons literacy, this is a conversation for you. ... ranging from the rise and fall of literacy, the causes behind it ..., and what this could mean for politics. ...

"[S]tatistics, which show pretty consistently—... and virtually everywhere—that reading is in quite severe decline. ... [A] third of UK adults have given up reading for pleasure. ... UK reports shocking and dispiriting falls in children reading for pleasure. Researchers .... found a 40% drop in reading for pleasure in the last 20 years in America. [A]n OECD report at the end of last year found rates of literacy were falling or stagnating across the developed world ...[P]ublishing’s been dying for 100 years. But ... even college graduates have by and large abandoned reading for pleasure after they leave university. ... And the most talented and the most ambitious students [themselves] now read almost the same as the least talented students who have often not really read that much. ...

"[I]f we were to abandon literacy, you might expect some devastating consequences, or at least the world would be quite different than the world we’ve become used to living in, especially in the last 500 years when literacy became a widespread phenomenon. ... if writing transforms consciousness, how does television or broadcast transform consciousness? What do we lose when we move towards rapidity and breadth over slowness and depth?"

~ from an interview with Jared Henderson and James Marriot on 'The Post-Literate Society'

RELATED: 1. Marriot's post on The dawn of the post-literate society ...

 

RELATED: 2. Conversely, author Jonathan Rose reflects 20 years later on his book, first published in 2001, uncovering which books people read, how they educated themselves, and what they knew; from the preindustrial era to the twentieth century:

'If I today had a chance to rewrite [my book] The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes ["the classic book about auto-didacticism, especially in the UK"], would I revise anything? I have changed my mind about one important issue. In 2001 I assumed that the autodidact tradition died out after 1945, but it is today very much alive and kicking. Twenty-first century book clubs – untold thousands of them in the UK and US – are the successors to the nineteenth-century 'mutual improvement societies.' These are seminars without professors, where students democratically select their readings and educate each other.

"The Internet is, for all its flaws, the greatest machine for self-education ever invented, and it does far more good than harm. The fact that the powerful and wealthy want to control and censor it is a testimonial to its immeasurable social value. When economic inequality is breaking all records, when the media is concentrated in ever fewer hands and deeply complicit with corporations and governments, when universities create vast bureaucracies devoted to shutting down debate, when Western liberals have abandoned liberalism, online discussion groups and websites must be preserved as islands of free thought and individual self-direction."

 

No Kings

"The chief evil is unlimited government…nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.”

~ F.A. Hayek from his book The Constitution of Liberty