Calamity Clegg?

To my intense irritation, I managed to miss the first ten minutes of the Politics Show, which meant that I missed the first half of the Liberal Democrat leadership special, where John Sopel spoke to both Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne in a head-to-head. Others will have to tell me whether I missed the best bit, but the half I saw was interesting enough.

I came in just before Sopel produced a document entitled Calamity Clegg, that he claimed was an attack sheet produced by Huhne’s office in which it accused Clegg of flip-flopping, saying different things to different audiences and of failing on key policies. Chris of course denied any knowledge of it, but then proceeded to argue that much of what it said was true. What is noteworthy is that he did not say “I’ve no idea what that is, John, but it is not something I commissioned, I have nothing to do with it, and as such I have no intention of discussing a document I have not seen and for which I bear no responsibility.” Perhaps that is because he couldn’t. There ensued the bitterest argument between the two that I have yet heard.

Chris accused Nick of being vague on Trident and of refusing to rule out European social insurance and school voucher models. Nick rebuffed these accusations extremely strongly, arguing that Chris’ own stance on Trident was unclear (he suggested Chris supported building an new missile system) and said that he had been entirely clear on the question of social insurance and vouchers, neither of which he proposed. Notably, Nick mentioned at least twice that he had explicitly ruled these out the previous day (Saturday 17 November) in a private conversation with Chris, but that Chris was deliberately ignoring this; Nick also said that he was clear about this on his website and in other sources.

I think this is a shame. Partly, this is because I believe that social insurance and particularly school vouchers are worth examining, so it is frustrating to hear policies that I believe would improve services and empower individuals being dismissed by both potential leaders. Others however might be relived, so what individuals think about the specific policies is not so important. What is a tragedy is that Chris, by using the suggestion of liberal alternatives to state provision as a weapon with which to beat his opponent, has made it now impossible for either leader to ever consider them. Whether or not the policies would benefit people, it behoves our leaders to be open-minded and willing to examine new evidence as it comes in. By closing down even consideration of alternatives because it serves their personal ambition and vanity does not do any favours to the leadership, the party or the people we are hoping to serve.

Nick’s counter-attack was equally ruthless, it must be said. He accused Chris of deliberately inventing non-existent differences between them so as to create avenues for attack: in effect, lying about Nick’s beliefs or campaign. This follows Chris’ efforts on Thursday to damn Nick by association, suggesting that because one of Nick’s main supporters was David Laws, Nick could not be trusted. Interestingly, the document had been produced just after Sopel had asked Chris whether Nick would be a good leader, to which Chris replied “Yes, but not this time.” As a result of this argument, Nick escaped ever having to answer that question.

Overall, Nick was far calmer and in control of the situation today, while Chris looked more on the back foot than he had on Thursday’s Question Time. However, this was at least in part because it was he whom Sopel had accused of underhand tactics. Chris came out of it looking shifty, underhanded and bitter – perhaps because most of the senior party figures and the press favour his opponent. Nick by comparison looked like he was frustrated by the cheap tactics that the Huhne camp was employing and would rather get on with the important matter of… well… leading the party.

Overall, Chris appeared focussed on undermining Nick; and in the process did harm to our reputation as a party. It is interesting that on Thursday David Dimbleby asked Nick Clegg how he would respond to the reputation of the nasty party. Had I been in Nick’s shoes I would have replied “Not being a Conservative I cannot comment on their reputation”, but if Nick’s answer was less quick and less witty it might be because he was painfully aware that after losing (ejecting?) two leaders in two years, and with David Cameron doing so much to appear cuddly that I expect him any day to dress up in a bear costume, that reputation is passing our way. Today, Chris appeared to be pouring fuel on that fire.

If there is truth in Sopel’s accusation, and that document is real, or is indicative of the campaign the Huhne camp is leading, then the calamity Clegg presents is one for Chris Huhne alone, whereas the tactics Chris is employing to win the election render him a liability.

Fascists for freedom

Okay. This is weird.

I was just checking out the Stormfront website (as you do!) and at the bottom I saw a banner advertising Ron Paul for President.

Now, as I understand it, Ron Paul is a Libertarian. As a libertarian, Mr. Paul would undoubtedly uphold the right of bigots, fascists and neo-nazis to shout whatever they want as loudly as they want, to preach hate to their shrivelled hearts' content.

He would also strip away border controls and allow millions of hard working hispanics into America, along with anybody else who could afford the airfare, didn't expect any welfare on arrival and were willing to pay some very low taxes. I've not looked to closely into Mr. Paul's campaign (I'm as far away from Texas as he is from the presidency) but he would probably also slash defence spending, and he would certainly not pass any laws banning inter-racial marriage. Indeed, he would uphold the freedoms of people of all races.

Now, we know fascists are idiots, but advertising their worst nightmare on their own website takes the biscuit!

Question Time: Head-to-head with Clegg and Huhne

There were few surprises in tonight’s Question Time. A Liberal Democrat leadership special, it saw Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne answer questions from an audience that was half Lib Dem supporters and half not. Both started by praising the former leaders, Charles Kennedy and Sir Menzies Campbell, and both sought to fight for the middle ground, not of British politics, but of Liberal Democrat opinion.

In fact, in one sense the night was a fascinating example of Median Voter Theory, with both trying to appear most like most Lib Dems, so as to attract the most votes. In this respect, Chris Huhne undoubtedly has an advantage. Nick Clegg has in the past discussed policies and associated himself with more liberal and more individual-empowering (what I would call libertarian and what others might call Right Wing) ideas, whereas Chris, while also having written for the Orange Book and supported some liberal policies, has not allowed himself to be typecast. It was interesting – and discomforting – that Chris tried to damn Nick by association (“We are judged by the company we keep”) by pointing out that one of his supporters was David Laws, who has written positively about social insurance and school choice.

Unsurprisingly, Nick came across as frank and open, while Chris came across and earnest (“We will do thing differently because we are different”). Chris was replete with sound-bites that he had clearly prepared (which I will highlight below). He spent most of his time positioning himself: he was anti-Trident; he claimed to have originated the policy of setting a date for withdrawing from Iraq. Nick was forced onto the back foot early on when David Dimbleby raised a critique he had made of Chris 18 months before.

On the question of coalitions, both were less strong than they could be. Of course both refused to state with which party they would prefer to deal in the event of a hung parliament, but as a result both appeared to be avoiding answering the question, rather than explaining why they could not answer. Nick appeared to fudge, while Chris suggested that a Purple Coalition between the Tories and Labour was a likely prospect, as the two tried to squeeze the Lib Dems out of government. In fact, this is an extremely implausible suggestion for the very reasons that Chris raised when discussing the results of such an outcome: the upshot would be that the Lib Dems would be strengthened by being seen as the real alternative to the cosy Tory-Labour consensus. Nonetheless, Chris persisted in suggesting it was possible, which I think lacked credibility. He kept referring to himself as a “First, Best Liberal Democrat” and noted that our current electoral system “stinks”. Nick argued that the Lib Dems should not be seen as an “annex” of other parties but should seek a more liberal world, and interestingly (though without presenting any explanation) suggested that we might be two elections away from the end of the two party “grip on power”.

Where I think both failed here is that neither made two crucial and honest points: firstly, that decisions on coalitions must depend entirely on how liberal the other parties are prepared to be in the programme they are willing to propose for a coalition government (put simply, we will ally with the party that is prepared to join us in the most liberal coalition), and second that we would have to be guided by electoral reality (if one party won 300 seats and another 200, we would have to at least give the larger party first refusal). Both fluffed this issue, and I was surprised and disappointed that they did.

The first real policy spat started with Trident. Accusations began to fly as Nick accused Chris of being willing to build a new generation of missiles while Nick would prefer to keep all negotiating options open as we go into the 2010 disarmament talks; while Chris denied this and suggested that we would be better spending the money on equipment for troops rather than new nukes. Chris made a bid for the anti-American vote by arguing that Trident wed us to the United States and somehow suggesting a link between this and the Iraq war – a suggestion that does not bear up to scrutiny. But he made a good point about Pakistan in saying that if we support President Musharraf we might end up repeating the mistake we (the UK and the US) made when supporting the Shah or Iran in the 1970s.

The spat over, the question on what the Lib Dems would say to a voter seeking lower taxes was a damp squib. Both agreed flatly that they completely agreed with one another that Lib Dem policy presented a lower and fairer tax burden, and that was that. Dimbleby moved on.

Asked how we should tell them apart, however, both resorted to listing their curriculum vitae, which pointed out that both had lives and careers before politics – a strength which both bring to the House and to the Party and which help make both more rounded people and promising potential leaders. This was Nick’s big moment, as he chose it to deliver his haymaker – a big, impassioned speech about why he went into politics: his “Anger that so many children go through the day without getting a hot meal”, the fact that poor people in Sheffield die 14 years earlier than their rich neighbours, his opposing to the war, the extra money for the NHS that has been wasted, the to 15-20 per cent of children who leave school unable to read and write.

This highlighted one of Chris’ main challenges as a potential leader, which is that while he undoubtedly feels just as passionate as Nick or anybody else, he often fails to express it; to convey it. Nonetheless he did make an emotive plea for the party to prioritise equality (“a fair start and an open road”) as well as liberty and opportunity – a position with which many and probably most Liberal Democrats would agree. He is undoubtedly genuine in this and sees this (whether correctly or not I do not know) as a difference between him and Nick. Where he was less honest, however, was in his criticism of “Top-down market solutions” to public sector efficiency problems. This is a remarkable comment for an economist: the whole point of the market is that it is bottom up; individuals express their will by allocating their resources themselves, rather than having them allocated for them by officials. As a paean for more localism it had a certain internal logic, and will appeal to Lib Dem voters. But it missed the fundamental point that empowering individuals improves the services they and everybody else enjoys.

As the programme wound down, the gaps narrowed again. Both utilised state schools (who, now in politics, does not!) and opposed raising the compulsory education age to 18 (though it was interesting to note that Chris had misunderstood the proposal, suggesting that it would not benefit those like his son who were less academic and would benefit from an apprenticeship, which is in fact one of the government’s routes through training for over 16s). Chris said that he shared Gordon Brown’s ambition to match the average spending on state pupils to that of private pupils – a noble goal, but an impossible one, as private education is largely used by those who are prepared to spend above the average; a rise in state spending will merely reduce the size of the private sector and raise the average cost. Neither was clear enough here: compulsion is a daft idea; all young people should have access to education, but none should be forced. The option to defer that education should also be considered.

On voting ages and the failings of David Cameron, both were in agreement; on the best qualities of the other, a love-in ensued. It ended a bit suddenly and unsatisfactorily. Neither delivered the knock-out blow, though if anything I think Chris Huhne did himself more favours, for while I question much of what he said and of what he did, his deliberate efforts to place himself “to the Left” of Nick and so perhaps closer to the median Lib Dem voter may nonetheless be successful. Only time, Sunday’s Politics Show and the forthcoming hustings will show. Oh, and the vote itself, of course.

Isolation or engagement?

Tristan Mills’ provocative article on whether Milton Friedman should be castigated for engaging with Augusto Pinochet, and the Reason Magazine article that (I presume) inspired it, have raised the broader question of the extent to which we engage with, or isolate, unpleasant, illiberal and undemocratic rulers.

For brief context, Milton Friedman once met the Chilean autocrat for an hour, and following that meeting wrote him a two-page letter in which he proposed means by which the Chilean government (then under the control of the military dictator) could improve Chile’s economy. Furthermore, the Chilean economics ministry was heavily influenced by “the Chicago boys”, a handful of young Chilean economists who had participated in an exchange programme that had enabled them to study at Chicago University under Friedman and his colleagues. The consequence was that Chile adopted relatively liberal economic policies while at the same time suffering political tyranny.

The controversy surrounding this has several strands, not least the fact that both economic liberalism and nationalist/military dictatorship are frequently described as “Right Wing”, and here they appeared to march hand in hand. Ignoring for the moment the fact that the confusion is derived from the limited analysis resulting from trying to impose a bipolar model on a multifaceted world (I hare argued that a tripolar model provides a better explanation, but ultimately any model is bound to be limited in comparison to the complexity of the real world), there is undoubtedly uncontrolled glee that those on the “Left” who oppose both fascism and economic freedom should find some apparent link between the two – the smoking gun of “conservative” politics. And to be fair, with the abundance of opportunities for liberals to point to countries where socialism and tyranny have coexisted, one can understand their relief at having at least one counter-example.

Friedman of course denied any such link, as both Tristan’s and Brian Doherty’s articles make clear. For most, however, the main criticism of Friedman is not that his policies brought great harm to the people of Chile – an argument that only a few die-hard anti-capitalists make, and which requires a refusal to compare long-term growth rates and poverty reduction among South American nations. Rather, the criticism is that Friedman was willing to talk to Pinochet at all, that he advised him, and that he did not take the opportunity to criticise the regime. Doherty sympathises with this:

“He did not choose this as an opportunity to upbraid Pinochet for any of his
repressive policies, and many of Friedman’s admirers, including me, would have
felt better if he had… Friedman’s decision to interact with officials of
repressive governments creates uncomfortable tensions for his libertarian
admirers; I could, and often do, wish he hadn’t done it.”

This raises the question, previously raised by Richard Nixon and relevant today in the context of Iran and North Korea: To what extent should we engage with unpleasant regimes? Should we trade with the Soviet Union? Or isolate the Taliban? (You will note that I am assuming a degree of consistency that does not apply in practice, as the juxtaposition of these two examples make clear).

On the one hand, the argument is that we should make a stand and show our disgust for these regimes. They are evil and we should have nothing to do with them; indeed, we are complicit in their crimes if we work with or associate with them. A secondary argument is that the wealth created strengthens the regime. We have seen this in the past with calls to boycott South African and Israeli oranges, and more recently with calls for British businesses to disinvest from the Sudan and Myanmar.

The counter argument is that it is engagement that weakens these regimes by showing the citizens that there is a better alternative. If the Soviet Union was such a worker’s paradise, why did the workers have to eat American butter? And once the workers were trading the Red Army uniforms they were given during conscription (which the United States had long ago stopped imposing on its citizens – thanks in part to a campaign by Milton Friedman) for Levi jeans and other western products which to us are common but to them remained luxuries, could the end be far away? By comparison, sanctions generally hit the poorest first – it was in Soweto rather than in Cape Town that the pain of the South African boycott was felt hardest – and also empower the dictators – it was not the West that starved a million Iraqis with an inadequate Oil for Food programme, but the fact that the $46bn worth of imports were distributed by Saddam’s henchmen based on political criteria rather than need.

Friedman’s argument was in the same vein. Whether he approved of Pinochet’s regime or not (and his writings represent one of the strongest and most eloquent explanations of the benefits of freedom written in the 20th century), he knew that he would not prevent a single disappearance by castigating the tyrant, either to his face or in writing. But by proposing an alternative economic model that empowered citizens and created prosperity, he would not only alleviate the suffering that resulted from poverty, but also create the conditions where political freedom would flourish. For both Friedman and Hayek (his contemporary and another liberal economist and philosopher, though they theories of the two differed) demonstrated that tyranny is an inevitable consequence of central planning, while political oppression is far harder (perhaps impossible) to sustain if the economic levers of control are not in the hands of the state.
Another study (the citation for which I can never find) has noted that there is a correlation between wealth and political activism; that as citizens become richer the likelihood of protest in the face of political oppression increases. If so, enriching the people is itself a weapon in the armoury of freedom. And as for the claim that the wealth strengthens the regime, it is worth noting that Pinochet may have done better by his people economically than his interventionist neighbours, but he still lost the 1988 plebiscite in which he sought to renew his term in office. The liberal economic policies in Chile did not earn him praise; they merely unleashed a taste for freedom.

There are no hard-and-fast rules, of course, and sometimes it may be necessary to isolate a dictator or make a stand. But by-and-large is seems that engagement is more effective than sanctions. And if there is one thing of which we should be sure, it is that ideas should always be shared. This holds powerful lessons for today’s governments: sanctions in Cuba, Iran and North Korea have undoubtedly lengthened and deepened poverty, while failing to undermine and perhaps buttressing their terrible regimes. The same may very well be true of the Sudan and Myanmar, and should cause us to question calls for a boycott of the 2008 Olympics in China.

Friedman was right to offer his wisdom to all who would listen (and he advised Communists in China and Yugoslavia as well as fascists in Chile and Brazil). He was not showing his support for the regime; just trying to help its people in the only way he could. In other theatres, in other ways, we should try to do the same.

Rape, politics and populism

It is fair to say that nobody is going to feel much sympathy for the poor rapists, whom the Tories targeted in yesterday’s announcement. They plan a review of sentencing – “review” being political code for “lengthening”.

There may very well be grounds for a review. If Theresa May is correct, sentences have been falling over the past three years; if this is due to changes in, or poor application of, the law then a review is warranted. Similarly, if Mr. Cameron is correct that “as many as one in two young men believe there are some circumstances when it's okay to force a woman to have sex” then there is an urgent need to tackle the causes.

I have two reasons for feeling uncomfortable, however.

The fist reason for concern is that being tough on criminals is to politics what a steep gully is to water; it is the path of least resistance. Few people have any sympathy for criminals, and rapists in particular engender very strong feelings of anger among large numbers of people. It is thus all-too-easy to achieve what political analysts call “valancy”, a sense among people that a politician thinks like they do, by taking a tough line on crime.

We have seen the upshot of this after ten years of Blairism (which if it exists as a philosophy at all is the belief that the primary goal is to remain in power, from which good must eventually follow). On average a new crime was created every day during the Blair years; there are 170,000 new pages of law; and our gaols are now bursting at the seems because of longer minimum sentences. Yet there is no evidence that we feel safer.

Which brings me on to my second reason for hesitancy: that one cannot change attitudes through legislation. I agree with Mr. Cameron that it is appalling (and indeed shocking) that up to half of young men think that a circumstance could exist where it would be acceptable to force somebody to have sex. However, I think the point is both a wider and an older one; that there are still many people in society who think that it is acceptable to use force to compel others to do anything. Rape is a particularly unpleasant example, but there are plenty of other instances where people are forced or bullied into obeying others. It is this general attitude that we should be addressing; rape is merely one symptom of a more prevalent disease.

Yet, as I have argued before, the law is not the solution (though we must in the meantime criminalise such behaviour so as to protect citizens both through incarcerating the abusers and deterring those who might abuse). People do not change their attitudes because something becomes illegal; indeed, legislation is only necessary because people have not been persuaded. What is necessary is to address the root causes – the beliefs of those who believe that force is justified in getting what they want. Unsurprisingly, the coercive power of the state will not achieve that goal.

So while I agree with Mr. Cameron that school is a perfect environment to address these attitudes, I would hope that our education establishments would go beyond focusing on sex education, and instead address the whole issue of freedom from compulsion, to instil in our children an understanding of why it is wrong to force people to do things against their will.

In the meantime, by all means address low conviction rates or inadequate sentences that result from failures in the system. But do not make political capital out of seeking to be seen to be “tough on crime”. Toughness may win the brief adulation of voters, but in the long run what they want is to be safe and secure. That would be popular without being populist.

Is a lack of evidence enough reason to ban GM crops?

When I heard yesterday morning that the Government consultation on genetically modified crops had closed, and that the issue was therefore back in the news, I knew that the Lib Dems were about to shoot from the hip again. And Chris Huhne has duly delivered:

“Ministers should not give any go-ahead for commercial planting until they can state confidently that GM varieties would not contaminate non-GM foods and that they are safe.”

This seems a strange inversion of liberal philosophy. The first principle of a free society should surely be that everything is permitted unless it is explicitly banned: we may later debate what is forbidden (e.g. murder) and what is inviolable (e.g. expression), but if we err towards the Napoleonic model whereby everything is forbidden unless it is explicitly sanctioned our society is not free, it is permitted.

So it is mistaken to argue that something should be banned until it is proved to be safe. On the contrary, it is those who wish to ban something upon whom the burden of proof should rest; the reactionaries and conservatives should be able to demonstrate that harm will result from the planting or consumption of GM crops before we even consider a ban.

The alternative is based on the ‘precautionary principle’, which in its 1992 formulation states that “'Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation”. But the precautionary principle was supposed to address issues where there was broad agreement though debate still continued; it was formulated to justify ignoring the objections of a small number of dissenting scientists.

Now, however, it has been corrupted to suggest that “'Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall be used as a reason for postponing measures that are aimed at achieving non-environmental goods.” In other words, whereas it once overcame fringe objections, it now elevates them to such a status that they are given a veto.

So a “crack-pot global warming skeptic” can be ignored, but a “crack-pot GM food skeptic” must be obeyed.

This is of course rank hypocrisy and demonstrates one of the more malign effects of the rise of Green thinking. “The environment” (in this case, a rather idealised view of the environment) becomes a higher goal, the service of which overrides other goods such as freedom, progress or prosperity. It does not need to be this way, however. It is entirely possible to protect our environment without resorting to double standards or demonising human activity.

There are two other arguments that are used to oppose GM crops: that they will cross-pollinate and so contaminate other, more “organic” crops; and that the majority oppose GM and in a democracy a majority should prevail. These at least deserve a second look, but under careful scrutiny they, too, fail.

Cross-pollination raises the classic debate about externalities: to what extent should Farmer A put up with the unintended by-products of Farmer B’s operations. In this case it is a zero-sum game: one cannot set a price on the organic nature of Farmer A’s operation, so one cannot price Farmer B’s externalities. However, it does not follow that Farmer B should be banned from planting GM crops. After all, one way or another, the freedom of one farmer is limited. Which farmer’s freedom is curtailed is a philosophical and moral question. To my mind, it is Farmer B who should be free to plant her GM crops, for two reasons.

Firstly, while there is a chance that Farmer A will see his organic crop contaminated, the probability is lower than the certainty that Farmer B will be prevented from planting GM crops if the government intervenes; the latter definitely results in curtailed freedom whereas the former may not (it is up to Farmer A to then assess his risk). In addition, it is possible that Farmer A could separate and destroy any contaminated crops and retain the GM-free crop for sale (though in practice this probably, at least currently, presents difficulties).

Secondly, the externalities of Farmer B’s operation are an unintended by-product; she is not actively seeking to inconvenience her neighbour. By comparison, Farmer A is actively seeking to prevent Farmer B from planting GM crops by using the power of the state. Deontologically, Farmer A’s deliberate assault on Farmer B’s freedom is less justifiable than Farmer B’s accidential affect on Farmer A’s.

As for democracy, Friends of the Earth claim that 95 per cent of the 11, 676 respondents to the consultation opposed the growing of GM crops in the UK. This may seem an overwhelming number, but it represents just a tiny fraction of the citizen in the country. This highlights one of the misunderstandings about government consultations: they are a means to better inform decision makers, not a straw poll of opinion. In a consultation, the views of ten ignorant people should count for less than one informed person. In a representative democracy, we choose decision-makers whose instincts and integrity we trust, but we delegate to them because they have the time to look into and understand a subject. If we do not like the decisions they make we can sack them. The alternative, direct democracy, leads go decisions being made by the most motivated, the most organised and the best resourced. Rather than the government of the people, by the people, for the people, it becomes government of the busy, by the bossy, for the pushy.

Here it is worth noting that Friends of the Earth may have had a hand in the imbalanced results: The BBC reports that “80% [of the responses ] were in the form of stock letters or petitions, which conveyed a ‘basic disagreement’ with Defra's proposals…” It is of course very easy for a membership organisation such as Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace (or the British Legion or Amnesty International) to mobilise its supporters, especially if they include a pre-written letter on their website or a card in their next mailing, to which members need merely attach a signature and a stamp. There is no Friends of the Farmer, Friends of the Scientist or Friends of the Consumer to run a counter campaign; even where such organisations exist (for example, the National Union of Farmers or Which?) their interests are broader and so their members will not automatically coalesce around an environmental question.

The fact that the consultation is not democratic is only half the story, however, and here I would remind Mr. Huhne that he is a Liberal Democrat. The fact that a majority objects to something is not in itself reason to ban it. Fifty years ago a majority were probably (and a hundred and fifty years ago certainly) repelled by homosexuality, but that did not justify a ban, which liberals led a noble campaign to repeal. Today we can find majorities in favour of banning all sorts of things that minorities might wish to do. A liberal democracy is not a majoritocracy – and there is a reason why nobody has ever bothered to find a more euphonious word for such a dangerous idea – and it is democracy that should serve freedom rather than the other way round.

To prohibit the planting of GM crops because of an overly cautious approach to scientific advances, pushed by special interest groups, would not even be justified if the ban were supported by the majority, which has in no way been proven.

It is therefore wrong to impose such a ban in general – and that’s even before one begins to consider the science and polices around this specific issue!

Weimar Zimbabwe

Usually, when one thinks of Zimbabwe, it is fascism that comes to mind.

A demegogue leader; a repressive police state; an internal racial minority (caucasin, this time, rather than semitic) scapegoated and used to divert the anger of the masses... The parallels with Nazi Germany are legion.

Yet Hitler was at least able to keep the currency stable (I'm prepared to be corrected by any Economics History experts out there, but I understand that part of Hitler's appeal was that the Reichsmark kept its value).

By comparrison, the Papiermark was the currency that people would take into the bakers in a wheel barrow, only to emerge with bread and a bag full of papiermarks. Friedrich A. Hayek needed 200 pay rises in eight months (yes, that is more than one a day!). People demanded their wages in the morning, because by the evening they would be worthless.

Imagine!

Or if you can't, read the article in the Times about the economic meltdown now underway in Zimbabwe. One quote stands out as an exemplar of what hyperinflation entails: "Golfers buy their mid-round drinks at the start, because prices will have risen by the ninth hole".

Mugabe isn't even a competent dictator. The end can be only jsut around the corner.