Joining the dots

A regular, weekly, column to join our other, irregular, posts

Chris Johns

One of the barriers to doing anything is laziness. It comes in many forms: procrastination, real or (more usually) imagined, well-argued, reasons for not doing anything; something else assumes greater importance, something trivial just got in the way - they are all versions of the same thing. I have gold medals and black belts in all of these. I’ve left my keyboard up twice to do something completely useless while writing this paragraph. The following paragraph was written at the beginning of the year, with the intention of doing this post weekly. This is the second attempt!

None of us has time to read everything great or listen to all the brilliant podcasts that are out there. Jim and I try very hard to absorb as much as we can and then add our own insights via our pods and posts. Given how much we do read and listen to, I thought it might be useful for our readers to be pointed at some of the stuff that we find informative, important and/or fun. Things we might mention on the pods but can only talk about briefly (or at all). Links to and summaries of the original sources can be useful. So here goes (in no particular order of importance). Some of the stuff is behind paywalls - we hope a short summary doesn’t upset the authors (we are publicising your work!). Do let us know what you think - we could include lots more (or less). How often would you like to see this? And so on! Enjoy!

1. Fallen Crypto Billionaires

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), ex boss of crypto giant FTX, is currently charged with all sorts of offences. Two things have struck me as details about his alleged offences have emerged

• The US political journalist Rob Crilly recently Tweeted this about SBF and one of his more wacky ideas when he was riding high. It’s a quote from the new Michael Lewis book:

If you think about it, this reported conversation perfectly fits the zeitgeist. Everything about Trump is purely transactional, to be measured only in terms of its cash value. Nothing else in life matters. Maybe that’s what has gone wrong in the round. Maybe that’s true of too many of us.

• The writer Ian Leslie has been forensically examining court

  documents and has unearthed several gems. The guy now in charge of FTX is suing Bankman-Freid and his parents. The latter, both Ivy-League law professors, are pillars of the liberal-Democratic-progressive establishment. Joe, the father of SBF, took leave from Stanford to take up a position at FTX. E-mails in the lawsuit revealed that he complained about not meeting his $1 million salary expectations. Leslie says that $10m was, two weeks after Joe’s email, gifted to his parents and was

plundered from an account containing customer funds

This and other allegations prompts Leslie to embark on an ever so slightly facetious riff about whether or not SBF is merely a product of his upbringing by apparently rapacious - maybe just awful - parents and, therefore, not really responsible for his actions. Which raises the rather deep question about whether any of us have free will. It’s worth reading Leslie’s substack in full. Here’s his conclusion, which, let’s face it, is hard to disagree with. And contains a deep insight into the limitations of financial regulation.

And yes, if Bankman-Fried, and Bankman and Fried, are found guilty, I think we should blame them for being, at best, grossly irresponsible and at worst disgustingly greedy, and make it harder for unscrupulous rich people to further enrich themselves via illegal means. Although, ironically, the FTX debacle exposes the limits of “fix the problem”. I’m no expert on American financial regulations but I’m not sure the lesson here is that the system needs to be changed, since it may be that no matter how tightly or precisely you draw the rules, expert insiders with a thirst for money and status will always find a way to evade them. If so, then our best hope is that the culprits get caught, punished and shamed.

2. “Anyone who gets behind the wheel instantly becomes right wing”

   I can’t find the original quote, but it is sometimes attributed to Jeremy Clarkson. While the obvious temptation is to dismiss yet another Clarkson click-bating aphorism, the more I think about it, the more I think there is something in it. Who ever got a critical-race theory rant from a cab driver? Google ‘why are lorry drivers all right wing?’ Look at the signatures on the petition against the new Welsh Government’s 20 mph national speed limit - more people have signed it than voted for the incumbent Welsh Labour government. That’s what you get for voting for for a one-party state I guess. We really do get what we vote for.

   And the UK didn’t vote for Rishi Sunak who is now declaring an end to the ‘war on motorists’. Anyone ever spot the war being declared? Me neither. The world is moving right - see latest Slovakian pro-Putin election winner, Trump, Braverman, GB News, Farage’s leader-in-waiting reception at the Tory party conference, Liz Truss & Johnson on the comeback trail. Maybe we are all driving too much already.

3. The European Central Bank makes its latest mistake

   There is a high chance, based solely on their history of making serial policy errors, that the ECB (and, not coincidentally, the Bank of England) has cocked up again courtesy of Jens Nordvig:

4. The Irish NHS

   It can take a while for deeply held beliefs to change in the light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s part of the human condition. We change are minds reluctantly, if at all.

   Relatively few people in the UK are aware that the NHS has fallen over. Yes, they grumble about long wait times to see a GP and lament the number of people who reach pensionable age waiting in A&E (or for cancer, heart, glaucoma, hip, knee etc. treatments). But most people don’t directly interact with the NHS, and those that do experience its horrors too often have a touching faith that a bit of cash and one more reorganisation can solve all the problems.

   Sinn Fein have promised an ‘Irish NHS’ within two terms of office. Shouldn’t take that long - demolishing is always quicker than building. The Irish health system is much better than the UK’s - there is plenty of data supporting that conclusion (see this excellent piece in the Irish Times). It really is quaint that the Shinners are so out of touch that they don’t know this. The North’s health system is one of the worst in the UK, possibly matched only by the Welsh NHS. I guess Sinn Fein can claim they don’t know anything about the North as there is no government there. Once Ireland get’s its NHS maybe it should be called the CHS - the Celtic Health System.

   The NHS was put together at a time when you went to your GP for a ‘tonic’ and into hospital to die. (I exaggerate slightly). Now, we expect to live for another decade or two when we get ill. And the NHS is meant to pay for it all. The NHS is structurally screwed by demographics. Ireland, by all means emulate it, but I respectfully suggest you don’t.

5. The costs of net zero

   Back to neo-fascist wing-nuts. In the UK, there is a nexus of mainstream media, social media, billionaires, Cabinet ministers, Dubai-based holding companies and Tufton Street think tanks, all seeking to turn us into drivers fearful followers of strong men and women leaders. That’s a playbook we have seen before so don’t pretend to be surprised.

   ‘Tufton Street’ is a bit of pejorative term sometimes applied to right-wing think tanks, opaquely funded, agenda-driven, who are always in tune with hard-working families done down by North Londoners/Metropolitan Elites/Globalists.

   The latest missive from the SW1 brains trust is another attempt to get us all back into combustion-engine vehicles because the costs of doing anything else are just too high.

   Ever heard of Civitas? Me neither. They grabbed headlines across all media channels last week by claiming the alternative, decarbonisation, is so expensive that it isn’t worth the candle. So to speak.

   Except Civitas got its sums wrong. Very wrong. One whopper was confusing Megawatts with Megawatt hours. Oops. Anyone who can do arithmetic will know that this will lead to energy cost estimates tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands (10,000 with one of the estimates) of orders of magnitude wrong.

   The alacrity with which all the usual suspects leapt on these utterly bogus cost estimates (and, therefore, conclusions) is revealing: Rishi Sunak is right, we are an innumerate nation.