The Inner Ring

Like me you might have been wondering why the EU persists in its sanctions against Russia, despite it now being completely obvious that not only are they not working against Russia, but that they are hurting the EU countries more than they hurt Russia. It seems unlikely either that all the politicians concerned are too stupid to notice or that they are being bribed by some other country. Some, perhaps, but not all. However, there is a possible third explanation, as set out in this 1944 talk by C.S.Lewis, The Inner Ring

As he puts it "Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things." What C.S.Lewis calls the Inner Ring is simply an exclusive grouping of people, generally, but not necessarily, people with power and influence. It's worth reading the whole talk to get the flavour of the concept. Politics consists almost entirely of such rings, each ring touching another more inner, stretching from local to national to international to supranational. How many aspiring politicians have been faced with this scenario,

Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.” And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

and fallen for it? Of how many politicians can it be said that they seemed to talk sense until they were part of the government and how many retired generals or senior spies suddenly start coming out with opinions, once they have retired, that you know they didn't express when they were in office? Could it all be down to kompromat, or is it just the lure of the inner ring at work?

AGW and the war in Ukraine, what's it all about?

At first sight, it seems hard to link the war in Ukraine with the theory of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming, now rebranded as Climate Change), however this article makes points that appear to put forward quite a compelling case.

The fact is that the resource base on which our world developed has now been severely depleted. And every year the situation will only get worse. The so-called “green” technologies that the West imposes on less developed countries by order will not help the planet’s ecosystem in any way without changing the paradigm of economic development of the whole world. This is most clearly described in the concept of “Planetary Boundaries”, based on the anthropogenic factor of human impact on the environment. Three processes have already gone beyond reasonable limits, provoking irreversible changes in the planet’s ecosystem in the near future:

- the extinction of species, depending on their habitats, began to occur 100-1000 times faster than it was before the industrial revolution 250-300 years ago;

- the degradation of natural freshwater reservoirs has begun: if 2.3 billion people do not have access to fresh water today, then in 30 years 4.5 billion people will not have access.;

- degradation of rural land, lack of irrigation water and acidification of the world’s oceans inevitably lead to a decrease in access to food in the world on a per capita basis.

Note that AGW is not there, and it seems to me that the reason for this is that the "green agenda", which the AGW myth is designed to promote, is about increasing the access of the developed nations of the West to energy and food resources. So, as the article shows, is the war in Ukraine. Neither is about countering a real threat, indeed the real threats to life on Earth, both geopolitically, geographically and economic, are almost never mentioned. Only the phony threats, those that serve the interests of the sort of people who go to Davos every year, are blazoned across our news media with monotonous regularity.

Ukraine / NATO / Russia

Does anyone else find it strange that there appears to be no diplomatic effort at all by the NATO powers, or the EU, to engage with Putin and Russia and try and talk our way out of the Ukraine conflict?  Not in the least because - in my view - if cornered Russia will use nuclear weapons.

And then no-one will win.

Thoughts?

Disappearing Homes Conundrum Revisited (cont'd)

Serendipitously, the BBC had an article on this very matter.

Whilst second-home owners and retirees were rightly held up as the prime culprits, there was another reason mentioned for the lack of ability of local people to find a home in the area, (but not mentioned very loudly, this is the BBC after all):

"It is like a perfect storm - there's a lack of social housing, a lack of affordable homes, rising prices, not enough well-paid jobs.

Yes, the Tories' political masterstroke of the 80s, the great sell off at undervalue of the country's social housing, is still having its malign effects to this day.

Disappearing Homes Conundrum Revisited

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the "Disappearing Homes Conundrum", whereby it is argued, by landlords' associations mainly, that introducing rent controls or increasing the regulation of the letting of homes will result in a reduction of homes available. Of course this is true in a limited sense, in that it will reduce the number of homes available for rent, possibly quite drastically as seen after WWII when the Rent Acts were passed, but it won't reduce the total number of homes available, in that for every landlord that sells up, there will be another home that is owned by its occupier.

However, this is only true for certain parts of the country. In the other, more scenic, parts, the homes really do disappear as landlords either convert their rentals to holiday lets, or sell to someone who will either do the same thing or will buy them as a second home. In Wales, with the complete lack of joined-up thinking that we have come to associate with government, they are simultaneously increasing the regulation of and bureaucratic burden on landlords and bewailing the effect of the number of holiday lets and second homes is having in restricting the supply and affordability of housing for local people.

No doubt they will try to solve this problem with yet more regulation and legislation: to the man who has only a hammer, every fixing looks like a nail.

'Fossil' or 'Mineral' Oil

Building on our hosts demolition of the 'CO2 is a pollutant and causes global warming' argument it is becoming increasingly clear that the widely held belief that crude oil as extracted is a fossil fuel is also nonsense, or less combatively, highly improbable.  And that there is no scarcity of it.

It is a Widely Held Belief that the maximum depth for fossils is about 16,000 feet down. Yet crude oil has been extracted at depths of over 30,000 feet. How did it get there?

I also found some research that made the assertion that crude oil was a mineral that is constantly being synthesised abiotically by the Earth's magma layer.  In fact, a lot of the time, people do refer to oil as a 'mineral' oil.  

There is also some comment that oil was only classified as a 'fossil fuel' (despite it not having any 'O' in it) under the influence of Rockerfeller who wanted to maintain its scarcity value.

What's more, BP recently reported (lost the link) that new technology had enabled them to double their forecast reserves.

All of which implies that crude oil, mineral oil, is super-abundant.

Thoughts anyone?

Killer Arguments for LVT, Not

"The case for a land value tax is overwhelming" is the headline of an article in the Financial Times, but you can't read it because it's behind a paywall*.

However, most of us on here will have a pretty good idea what it says and the interesting bit is that it is in the Financial Times in the first place

*hence the "Not" in the title, in case anyone was wondering.

The Upcoming Internal Combustion Engine Ban

 I have been working on the text below of a letter that might be useful to copy and send to your MP.

Dear your MP

Internal Combustion Engines

 

Emissions from ICEs, both diesel and petrol, are now well controlled – in modern vehicles – by various technologies.

 

Clever engineering has reduced CO2 emissions to very low levels.

 

Three way catalytic converters on both petrol and diesel vehicles have scrubbed out other potentially toxic emissions, including NO2

 

Diesel vehicles apply ‘ad blue’ (Urea injection) to reduce further NO2 emissions. Diesel Particulate Filters (DPF) are successful and filter out at least 85% of soot and particulates.  In optimum operating conditions this filtration can easily approach 100% of particulates, including nano-particulates of sub one micron in size.  In the UK standard diesel at the pump is of the Ultra-low sulphur type.  And premium fuels (especially diesel), for example Shell V-Power, further reduce soot levels.  The days of sooty smokey diesel engines are over.

 

Furthermore, we can now produce synthetic fuels from atmospheric CO2 which de facto makes burning such fuels carbon neutral.  Such synthetic fuels contain far less impurities than mineral oils and therefore burn much more cleanly.  Proof of concept plants are already working in Canada and the UK and the owners have stated that they could, today, produce road fuels at prices competitive with current pump prices.

 

Modern vehicles powered by ICE are getting more and more efficient and getting ever better fuel consumption.   And all the emissions control technologies are getting more and more reliable.

 

We can now make ICE powerplants at extremely low costs using abundant and easy to acquire resources like aluminium (bauxite being super abundant) and iron and steel (also abundant) meaning that personal transport is also extremely low cost. This enables the private citizen to efficiently exploit his own labour and enjoy freedoms unimagined by earlier generations.  

 

Liquid fuels have very high relative energy densities of about 47.5 Mj/kg  as opposed to battery electric vehicles with energy densities of about 0.3 Mj/kg.  That is petrol (and to a slightly lesser extent diesel) have 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery.

 

Looking at this from the environmental perspective ICE powered vehicles consume modest resources to produce and can be recycled.  BEVs are relatively costly to produce mainly because the production of batters that require rare metals is costly.  And not at all environmentally friendly and nor easily recycled. 

 

Apart from the above, the distribution of petrol and diesel is very well served in the UK, and globally.  Whereas to create the infrastructure to be able to charge electrical vehicles will likely cost trillions of Pounds. 

 

And lastly, what restrictions and surveillance will lawmakers have to impose on us to collect the taxes lost by the loss of fuel duty?  The implication of things like user charges by mass surveillance are an appalling assault on personal liberty.  

 

Given the forgoing please explain to me why the sale of new ICE powered vehicles is being banned?

 

Love

A Constituent.

 

Feel free to copy it.  If you think it's (a) right in its assertions (b) something your MP will actually read and, hopefully, act on (c) in line with your own prejudices.

Also any suggestions for an edit will be welcomed. But bear in mind, in view of the fact that some (most?) MP's seems to have the attention span of an inebriated goldfish and the reasoning ability of a 15 year old female (I speak from personal experience) I think it best we keep it to one side of A4.

UPDATE  4th February 2023

Serendipity strikes again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNrGZC8h4Fg

 

 

Sound or Unsound Money

The is an edited version of one of my businesses' Briefing Notes.  Thoughts?

What is ‘sound money’?  Or, perhaps more importantly, what is ‘unsound money’?

Unsound money can be defined as money which has:-

• Overwhelming counterparty risk, and
• Fails to sustain its relative value over time.

To see why this matters we have to understand what money is and what its function is.

Money is any thing which an economy accepts to act a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account (a measure of value).  Commonly this thing that became universally accepted in most exchange economies was, is, gold.

There is also a difference we need to define between money and currency.  These two words are nowadays used interchangeably; as the same thing. But to make sense of ‘sound money’ their meanings need to be differentiated. 

1.    Money, is money.  The fundamental store of value, medium of exchange and unit of account.

2.    Currency is a medium of exchange and unit of account but has to be exchanged for money as a reserve of value.  Witness the statement on a British Ten Pound note – ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of Ten Pounds’.  That is such ‘paper money’ is not money but a ‘promissory note’.  A ‘currency’.

Why does the counterparty risk matter? 

Firstly, in effect, no exchange transaction is complete until the receiver of the currency goes to the currency issuer and obtains his money.  Until he makes this exchange what he holds is a promissory note, not money.  Now, this may not matter if he can then, at any time in the future, exchange this promissory note for other real goods and services.  And that the promissory note maintains its relative value.

What do we mean by relative value?  Suppose the currency issuer issues a lot more promissory notes than he has money at hand.  This will increase the supply of currency (and therefore the counterparty risk) relative to other goods and services.  If the number of promissory notes is, say, doubled, then their value must halve.  The currency holder will need twice as many promissory notes to have the same purchasing power.  And hence the prices of goods and services in that reduced value currency must double.  In short, the counterparty has taken half the value of the currency holders’ money for nothing in exchange. This is theft.  Or in money terms, counterfeiting.

It used to be that the free market had evolved over time a sound money system.  Roughly, money was gold.  Gold was held in warehouses, called goldsmiths and latterly banks.  Customers would instruct banks to settle debts using written instructions - ‘please pay A gold to the weight of X on this date signed B depositor’.  As time passed it was realised by banks that they could issue ‘bank notes’ based on the quantity of gold in their vaults which customers could carry and exchange between themselves confident that if at some point they needed to obtain their money they could present the bank note at the bank for settlement in gold.  (I have ignored coin here for simplicity – but similar rules apply).

In due course it dawned on bankers that as long as they did not overdo it they might be able to issue more currency than the value of gold – i.e. money - they held in their vaults.  This practice bestows enormous benefit to currency issuing banks as obviously this new ‘currency’ / aka money, is money for nothing.

Luckily Mr Market was wise to this practice and under laissez-faire banks who pushed this currency expansion too far, were called to account and failed.  There were bank runs.  Some depositors lost money.  But the banks owners, in the age of unlimited liability banking partnerships, lost everything or nearly everything and lost their reputations.  These market disciplines generally kept banks honest and respected.  And excellent example of how this worked is the story of the failure of the Ayr Bank.⁽¹⁾

Now, moving forward to today.  We live in an age of catastrophically bad money.

In 1944 various of the great and the good (including Mr Keynes) met at a place in the USA named Bretton Woods⁽²⁾ to sort out a post war international settlement and money order.  Very briefly they agreed that the USD should be linked to gold at the price of $35 per ounce.  And that all other currencies would be linked to the USD.

This was all fine and dandy (actually it was not – it was a huge accident waiting to happen) until the USA got involved in the Cold War/The Korean War/The Vietnam War/and the Great Society Program. They funded all this by simply printing more and more USD.  Until the French got fed up and demanded settlement of their USD balances in gold.  Which of course the USA did not have / would not do.  This led to Nixon closing the gold window on 15^th August 1971 and collapsing the Bretton Woods fake gold standard.   We, the West, have been using entirely fiat money (currency) since that date.

The result has been catastrophic.  Sterling and the USD have lost respectively about 99% and 98% of their relative value.  (It is an economic saw that ‘all paper money trends to zero value).  We, the people have been robbed by our governments.  This currency (money) debasement is also a product of the fallacies of Keynesianism. You cannot operate Keynesian with sound money.

The worry for us as individual citizens is how far will this go?  As currencies like the USD, GBP, Euro etc fail (and fail they will) the currency authorities will replace them with programmable CBDC (central bank digital currency), the day by day relative value of which can be manipulated directly by those nationalised currency authorities.  How will be able to grow and preserve our wealth under such an assault?  Let alone our freedom?

Lobbying for a return to sound money is one thing we should be doing if we want to preserve the free society.

 Footnotes

(1(1)  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas,_Heron_%26_Company

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system