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I know that many non-economists that read The Filter^ are curious as to what Austrian economics is, or at least what I think it is. So I have written a short essay attempting to encapsulate why Austrian economics is distinct, and important. Comments from all are welcome.
Everton is blessed to have not only an excellent (and award winning) official website, but also a vast emergence of unofficial efforts created and maintained by fans. Two of the best, and indeed two of the best fansites on the internet full stop, are Toffeeweb and Bluekipper.
Some Evertonians like to pick one over the other, since they have vastly different attitudes and style. Toffeeweb looks slick, stylish and professional. It has an awesome wealth of information, and is the best source of Everton news on the net. It publishes fans articles (including mine on Wayne Rooney), and is full of considered opinion. This attitude extends to their message board The People’s Forum that is consistently informative, political and knowing. Generally the professionalism of the owners means a deep suspicion (and sometimes downright hostility) to the Everton board, but a firm support for David Moyes.
By contrast Bluekipper is proudly amateurish. The format is simple yet effective, and news articles carry raw wit. Their commentator Mickey Blue Eyes was often on the money, but the editors tend to have a closer relationship to the Goodison hierarchy and therefore seem less willing to judge, pontificate, and give up their position as merely “fans”. Their message board is the opposite of the People’s Forum, where younger and more impressionable fans will be far freer in their opinions and rumours. For example, a typical post on The People’s Forum will be someone linking to a Norwegian press article implicating Paul Stretford in a dubious takeover deal, whilst Bluekipper will have a 15 year old stating his “starting eleven” on the assumption that we’ve signed the last 3 players that clubs been linked to.
So why do I share this? Bluekipper have published a collection of their funnies in a book called Turning the Air Blue (reviewed in the Echo here) and it will be of interest to football fans of all shades. Here’s a few of my favourite ‘arl fella shouts:
Peter Reid advances on the ball with Trevor Steven lurking out on the right. Reid is given instructions by crowd know-all: "Wing! Wing! Wing!" to which a wag retorts: "Will someone answer that --phone!".
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Newcastle last home game. In the park end and Newcastle fans were holding their shoes in the air singing: "Show your shoes if you love the toon". Mid way through the second half this fella next to me (he'd had one to many changs) gets up and shouts: 'SHOW YOUR COCK IF YOUR TWO NIL UP.' Pissed myself laughing!!
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At the home game v Chelsea. Father and son together in the top balcony toilets. Father shouts: 'How many times have I told you not to slide on the pee'.
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At the Southampton game on the 2nd December and we played the usual dismal first half, some fella shout's, what's that Smith doing he's only playing one fella in the correct position and that's fuck'in Gerrard on the bench
From a recent essay called "Flat Tax: Ideas and Interests"
Within the dusty tomes of academia, the seeds of the flat tax had been sowed. The fresh breeze of post-Communist Eastern European would carry the fertile germ across the Atlantic and into the heart of a new wave of liberalisation.
The article has been published in the Open Republic (Jul/Aug/Sep 2005 Vol 1. No 1.) My current research here in Romania - interviewing academics and policy makers - is an attempt to inject epistemic choice and the power of ideas into economics, so this essay is a nice introduction to the general thinking behind my work.
Although here on business, it’s impossible to visit a foreign city without sampling some of the star attractions, and although I’d never admit it, sometimes I’m just a tourist. On Monday we were offered a tour of the Palace of Parliament, Romania’s most famous icon and the unmissable leviathan of the Bucharest skyline.
It is a phenomenal construction – the world’s second largest building – with over 3000 rooms covering 12 stories. Only the Pentagon has a larger surface area, and within the marble walls are grand halls, galleries and conference rooms. We stood in a room built to be a theatre, but since there’s no backstage it’s used for meetings. Amongst the million tonnes of marble and crystal chandeliers (all mined in Romania), the neglect of common sense offers a lesson in the folly of socialist calculation.
For the people of Bucharest, the cost of this elephant was immeasurable. About a sixth of the city was bulldozed to make room for the Palace, and when lit it would consume a day’s supply of electricity for Bucharest in just 4 hours. During a time when people starved on the streets (as they still do) and hospitals lacked basic medicine, 700 architects and 20,000 workers laboured non-stop to build nothing more than the egotistical whim of a megalomaniac.
Romania’s dictator - Nicolea Ceausescu – ordered construction to start in 1984 and took control of many details of the design. He made sure that the emblem adorning the marble floor would match the pure silk drapes and would change his orders daily. Indeed he still hadn’t decided on the roof design when his regime was toppled in the 1989 revolution, but construction continued and the building now houses the Chamber of Deputies.
Now, it feels very melancholic to walk through the immaculate, grandiose halls. The entire construction is a testimony to Romanian craftsmanship, and must be treated with awe. And yet this is the world’s biggest statement of what communism really means – a human genocide to finance the lavish political elites. Before advocating a greater concentration of power to central government, and before letting politicians get away with taxing us for their lives of majesty, remember this building.
We stood on the balcony that looks out toward Unirri. The vista is deliberately longer and wider than the Champs Elysees, and the concrete blocks lining the road frame the Palace so that it commands the attention of anyone walking through the main district. Whilst Ceausescu called it “a victory of socialism”, the people called it “a victory of socialism over the city”.
Lest we forget.
For more photos from Bucharest click here
Message to all English cricket fans, regarding recent "success":
Be excited by it, just don't get too far ahead of yourself
Bring it on Pommies.
During our trip to Cluj, we ventured eastward into a more rural region of Transylvania. We drove for about 2 hours to Bistrita, and another hour into the Carpathian Mountains. We took a seated ski lift to get a better view of the mountains, and passed peasant industry underneath. A family were out collected berries, and several men were using axes to fell trees, and then harness them onto horses that dragged them down the mountain side. It was a unique and spiritual voyeurism.
One of our hosts in Cluj comes from a region north of Transylvania, close to the Hungarian and Ukranian border. He spoke of it as being the heartbeat of Romanian culture - a rural, self-sufficient idyll untouched by Collectivism or Westernization. The question - whether to visit?
Our apartment has cable and so I've been watching a lot of BBC World, and a series by Kirsty Wark called "Tales from Europe". She journeys from south to north throughout 8 ascession countries, delivering the sort of establishment pretentiousness one expects from the BBC. As an example, she sits drinking beer in Prague, likening British stag parties to swarms of locusts. Apparantly we in the west think of Eastern Europe as a barren land devoid of culture or romance, and in our masses we visit to trample through the hidden richness in a blaze of cheap beer fuelled revelry.
The hypocrite clearly misses the point - that it is precisely her presence that encourages western Europeans to venture east - and she has no moral claim to bemoan her "less civilised" compatriots. I do not need her to tell me that communism breeds a culture, as much as it abolishes rights. If we were to travel up to the land untouched by the west, then I'd be guilty of the same process of cultural collision that Wark likes to pretend she's above. So if I do go, then I promise to never complain that such regions are being lost to homogeneity. And if I don't, rest assured that there's still pockets of desperate poverty that can make us in the west feel charmed by.
Good news for my two favourite footballers:
Duncan Ferguson has backed up a verbal agreement by signing a new one-year contract, and even spoke to the official site about what he's still got left to offer. Since Super Kev left, the famous number 9 shirt is now available and I for one hope it's returned to the rightful owner for his swansong.
Elsewhere, BBC Sport claim that Steve Claridge will be appointed Millwall manager later today. Claridge was hard done by Portsmouth and I can even forgive him for moving to Weymouth (a team I hate, hate, hate). As centre-forwards go, his lack of pace and anachronistic style belied incredible technique and intelligence.
Osmo Tapio Raihala, a Finnish composer, has written an opera about Everton center forward Duncan Ferguson. The piece focuses on
Duncan’s spell inside the notorious Scottish prison Barlinnie, and according to Raihala:
It takes into account the contradictions in him: he has an aggressive side but there is a lyrical undertone to him, as the fact that he keeps pigeons shows
Evertonians are split as to whether Big Dunc is a legend, and I am unashamedly obsessed. The man is my hero. One massive factor in the enigmatic swagger behind him is his lack of publicity. He never, ever, speaks to the press, and that silence can foster malicious rumour.
To some, the aggression and raw heartbeat with which he plays the game restores faith that football’s not been lost to the suits. To others, he’s a mercenary bleeding dry the club’s hopes of building for the future.
In the mid 90s he played on throughout injury to score the goals that saved us from relegation, but as captain some blame him for not doing more.
He’s the first to leave the pitch after a match, but the last to leave training – ambiguity abounds.
I can understand those who see him as a talent squandered, but I don’t think he owes us anything – his wages may have strangled the club but his goals have saved us. Granted, off the pitch he’s prone to the good stuff but it’s wrong to believe that his lifestyle leads to his injury record. If anything, it’s the other way around – but regardless, the fact that he never realized his full potential ("an apotheosis for underachieving"), is down to the fact that he lacked a main partner, and a decent supply. With Kanchelskis (and Hinchcliffe before that), Big Dunc was the best striker in Britain.
A wonderful irony is that on the night that the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra premiered the work, this happened.
"It was like an alcoholic hitting the bottle again… there I was describing Duncan as a failure in Finland, and thousands of miles away at Everton he rises like a phoenix from the ashes to score against Manchester United.
The rest of the article in The Scotsman goes on to discuss the fusion of opera and football, and perhaps the only surprise of this story should be the rarity with which it happens. There can be no doubt that Duncan Ferguson is a unique giant of modern football – an anachronism that modernity can’t control – and a fitting protagonist for an operatic exploit.
Also, check out David Moyes speaking about Ferguson to the League Managers Association:
At first we had disagreements with that, but one thing I'll say about Duncan is he's as straight a footballer as I've ever known, he'll stand up and be counted and tell you, which I really like a lot.
There's currently a train strike in Romania, and it might affect our overnight 8 hour journey to Cluj - a small town in Transylvania. We leave just before midnight, tonight.
In my continued absense, follow this link for a few photos taken thus far, and should I not return from the forests of the Balkans, remember me thusly:
Peaks and Troughs
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