Europe

Seth Barrett Tillman: The Libertarian/Popperian Case for Brexit: A Response to Professors Somin, Levy, Norberg et al.

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The so-called libertarian case against Brexit works like this. Nations do bad things. E.g., tariffs. And the European Union (“EU”) blocks some (perhaps many of) those bad things. Indeed, the EU has set up a tariff-free free trade zone. That’s a good thing. Therefore EU-good & Brexit-bad. This position is not entirely wrong, but it is only half the story.
 
First, the EU (and EFTA) free trade zone extends to EU (and EFTA) member states and their dependencies, and also to a few nearby non-member political entities (e.g., San Marino, Andorra, etc). This tariff-free free trade zone does not extend to the world. So when foreign goods are imported into the “tariff-free free trade zone” across the EU’s external borders, EU law mandates a “Common Customs Tariff”. In other words, hand-in-hand with the absence of tariffs among member states is an EU-imposed tariff against non-members’ exports. Whether this situation is a net gain for the people of Europe is a complex empirical question. That question is not answered merely by parroting the EU’s line: we promote tariff-free free trade. No, that question is not so easily answered because although the EU promotes some free trade, it positively discriminates against non-members’ exports.

Read the rest.

This is a long and well reasoned post that is worth reading in full. The gist of Seth’s argument is that the political phenomena lumped together as “Brexit” should be evaluated empirically rather than according to someone’s interpretation of libertarian doctrine; there are good reasons for supporters of freedom and open societies to favor Britain’s exit from the EU.

UPDATE: Ilya Somin responds. The reader is invited to evaluate Somin’s full response for himself, but I was struck by this line: “Tillman’s discussion of immigration is notable for its implicit assumption that we can assess immigration policy while completely ignoring the freedom and interests of potential immigrants themselves.” Has there ever been a country that framed its immigration policy in any terms other than its own self-interest?

MOHAMED AND HIS TRUCK

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The headline at the Drudge Report says it all —   MOHAMED AND HIS TRUCK.

A Tunisian born Muslim with French citizenship took a box truck and ran over hundreds  during the annual French Bastille Day celebrations in NICE, Southern France.

The UK Daily mail article at this link —

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3691895/He-drank-alcohol-ate-pork-took-drugs-NOT-Muslim-Truck-terrorist-Mohamed-Lahouaiej-Bouhlel-s-cousin-reveals-unlikely-jihadist-beat-wife-NEVER-went-mosque.html

…said that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel drank alcohol, ate pork, chased women at night clubs,  beat his wife and took drugs.   He was a petty criminal, publicly violent, and possibly an informant for French police or internal security forces before he was turned into a suicide-murderer by those who he was spying on, according to David P. Goldman of the Asia Times.

See Goldman’s article titled:

WHY THE TERRORISTS ARE WINNING THE INTELLIGENCE WAR
http://atimes.com/2016/07/why-the-terrorists-are-winning-the-intelligence-war/

The only  thing of importance in all of this is the realization that the law enforcement and internal security forces in the West have lost control.   No amount of law enforcement, electronic surveillance or gun control can prevent a suicide-murderer bent on religious self-immolation,  and activated by the ongoing world wide social media  incitement campaign(s), from killing dozens to hundreds.

What cannot go on, won’t.

Goldman suggests in his article that  a General Sherman “March Through Georgia” style of collective punishment of Muslim civilian populations in the West can work to end this random death in the Western civilization’s life support.

The  bottom line — as BREXIT proved — is that publics in Western democracies can and will replace elites that say nothing can be done, and that Western publics “…will have to accept more Muslim Mass Immigration & Terrorism, because… (insert P. C. excuse here)”.

Discuss.

 

 

Seth Barrett Tillman: Reflections on the Revolution in the UK: Parts 3 and 4

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Part 3: Farage’s Poster Is Racist:

Farage was called a racist (and worse [1 minute mark]) for this poster.
 
Yet, no one claims this photograph was a fake, i.e., a staged photograph made with actors and props. No one claims that it was photoshopped. No one claims that the skin tone of the people in the photograph was altered or, even, darkened. No one claims that the photograph was out of date. And no one claims that the picture is not representative of the pattern of large scale immigration coming into the European Union (here, Slovenia—an EU member state) from the Third World.
 
In other words, if you reproduce a photograph of an actual, recent event, you are a racist…

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Part 4: Errors of the Labour Party and the Remain Camp:

A fictionalized exchange on television between any Labour candidate for MP and an audience member during the 2015 general election …
 

[. . .]
 
Labour Candidate for Parliament: I understand. New immigrants—frequently coming without skills that fit the modern U.K. economy—cause wage compression at the low end of the wage scale. We will make sure employers pay the minimum wage; we will ensure that your economic interests are protected.
 
Audience Member: No, that’s not my point (at least, that’s not my only point). I don’t like how our society is being changed by mass immigration. I don’t like polygamy. It is illegal, but no one gets prosecuted for it. I don’t like FGM. It too is illegal, but it is not actively prosecuted. I don’t like it when the immigrants’ customs are accommodated in these ways—I don’t want our criminal laws ignored by the immigrants or by the police and the prosecutors. It makes me feel unsafe—it makes me think the immigrants’ way of life is preferred over ours. The immigrants should be integrated into our communities, not the other way around.
 
Labour Candidate for Parliament: I understand. We will work to ensure that your wages are not compressed.
 
Audience Member: You’re not listening. That’s not what I said: I don’t like the direction your party’s immigration policies under Blair & Brown have taken our country. I don’t like where we are now as a result—not that Cameron has done anything to modify those policies.
 
[. . .]

Read the whole series.

Seth Barrett Tillman: Reflections on the Revolution in the UK

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The first two posts of a five-post series:

Part 1: It Is All Cameron’s Fault:

Finally, you might ask why did Cameron promise the referendum in his party’s election manifesto? It is simple. Even with the promise of a referendum, Cameron barely overcame the UKIP surge: a 3.8 million vote surge. It was only by peeling off voters from UKIP—through the promise of the in-out referendum—that made him PM. Had he not made this election pledge, any number of marginal Tory seats would have tipped: Labour, Lib-Dem, or UKIP. There was no blunder here by Cameron. It was not the referendum which destroyed Cameron’s ministry; rather, it was the promise of a referendum which made Cameron the Prime Minister in the first instance.
 
[. . .]
 
Parties who have been rejected at the polls twice should engage in meaningful introspection, at least, if they expect to be taken seriously in the future. The let’s put all the blame on Cameron position lacks just the sort of gravitas that one hopes to see in serious opposition parties.

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Part 2: The U.K.’s Bradley/Wilder Effect Is Enough To Swing Elections:

If a society permits those who engage in wilful violence and those that command the police & the revenue office to drive normal political expression underground, then that society will not have normal political expression. One consequence of the lack of normal political expression is that every poll will lack validity.*

(Related: Brexit, Predictions and Trump.)

How Scotland can rejoin the EU

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I’m surprised with all the sturm und drang of the brexit vote reaction in Scotland, it seems like everybody has missed entirely the easiest way for Scotland to rejoin the EU without a messy period of independence. It could apply for admission to the nation of Ireland based on their common historical roots.

The likelihood of this actually happening given the political stars of today is approximately zero. What I find interesting is the reason why the idea is so far out there that it wouldn’t even be brought up. If an independent Scotland has difficulty making a go of it, why is a Scotland tied to the English and out of the EU superior than a Scotland tied to the Irish and inside the EU?