GlobLog - September 2004
A direct link to each entry is obtained by using the button below the entry.

11:15 - THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOGS: Bloggers got it right, CBS News used forged memos to attack Bush. Since then both old media and new media have misunderstood the new media landscape. Some bloggers say that they are more honest and less biased, and at the same time mainstream media accuse them of having a much stronger political agenda, which makes them less credible. They should read Jesse Walker, who implicitly agrees with the old Smithian-Hayekian idea that we shouldn’t try to look for the best people (politicians, capitalists, journalists, whatever) – we should create institutions where bad people do as little harm as possible, and where someone always watches the watchers. Blogs are not good because they are better. They are good because they offers competition and checks-and-balances:

"If you´re looking for ´agenda journalists,´ this debate coughed up plenty on both sides.
That´s not necessarily a bad thing. One group´s agenda drove it to make a strong case against the CBS story; the other group´s agenda shot down some of the weaker claims the conservatives were making. Now, if you read nothing but right-wing sites like Free Republic or left-wing ones like The Daily Kos—and there are some political zombies out there I suspect of doing just that—then you´re not going to be served very well. But if you look at the larger Internet, where partisans try to shoot down each other´s arguments and relatively independent-minded writers weigh the results, you´ll be in pretty good shape. You´ll be in better shape, in fact, than if you rely entirely on the old media. The biases in blogdom are generally more transparent than the biases in the mainstream; it´s not hard to take the slant of a site like Eschaton or InstaPundit into account when you´re weighing its claims, whereas the assumptions obscured by the rhetoric of ´objective journalism´ aren´t always so easily discerned. And that encourages critical thinking. There are still people who are willing to believe something just because they read it in The New York Times—or just because they read it in their favorite weblog or, in some sorry cases, in an e-mail from a con in Nigeria. But it´s harder to ignore rival worldviews and detailed critiques, not just when you´re trying to authenticate some memos but when you´re looking for an answer that´s more elusive. […]

You´re worried you´ll never learn the whole truth? Welcome to the human condition, my friend."

13:34 - MUST SEE: Didn’t you see Uppdrag granskning yesterday about vänsterpartiets relationship with the communist dictatorships, and their attempts to hide it? You have to. This is important modern history we must never forget. Available on-line and reruns on Thursday and Friday, and on Tuesday we can see part 2.

13:19 - SUPERIORITY COMPLEX: Oh, yes there is another explanation for bias in libraries: Left-wing books are simply better and more interesting, thinks socialist author Johan Ehrenberg. What a convenient explanation for someone who is apparently twice as good as me, almost three times better than Susanna Popova, four times better than Björn Lomborg and the entire classical liberal intellectual tradition, six times better than Assar Lindbeck, 13 times better than Magnus Henrekson and 179 times better than Carl B Hamilton.

11:15 - ONE-PARTY STATE, ANYONE?: I get so much mail after the library article that it’s impossible for me to reply to everybody. But I read everything and will respond to as many as possible. Almost every single reaction is positive. And most interesting is that I get so many reactions from librarians – 100 percent positive so far! They say that it is exactly the way we described it – there is a very strong left-wing bias, and they are sad about it, since they think that their goal is to supply people with different perspectives to facilitate independent thinking.

They mention two factors: Those who make the decisions are almost always left themselves, and they buy the books they like. The other thing often mentioned is Kulturrådet - The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs. With the taxpayers’ money this institution buy books and give to the public libraries – almost always anti-liberal, anti-capitalist literature.

You’ve guessed the rest: Kulturrådet’s chairman is Anna Hedborg, former social democrat cabinet minister, and the director-general is Kristina Rennerstedt, former social democrat state secretary.

10:51 - LIBERTARIANS FOR BIGOTS: For some strange reason, a bigot anti-gay professor, who prefer monarchy to democracy and oppose open borders (and think that the pro-immigration position I have "can be understood only psychologically") has become the favourite of some American libertarians. Read the excellent libertarian thinker Tom Palmer’s devastating portrait of Hans-Herman Hoppe here. And be sure to read the discussion afterwards, which is even more interesting.

11:09 - REALITY CHECK: I have acutally started watching a reality show, Farmen, about a group of people on an island in the archipelago, trying to live as farmers and fishermen. I started because one of the participants, Christian Gergils, is an old friend, but I have found that it has a value in itself. This is a new form of cultural expression that gives a lot of funny and tragic insights into the thinking and behaviour of people today. In the middle of all the highbrow stuff we read every day, this is an important reality check. Gergils writes cleverly about this in Aftonbladet today.

11:01 - COMMUNISM IS COMMUNISM: In 2000, prime minister Persson’s closest man, Pär Nuder said that "There is no communism light, Lars Ohly. Communism is communism We social democrats don’t want and will not cooperate with any communists in the new century".

Nowadays, the social democrats rule with the help of old communists like Ohly in Vänsterpartiet. This party always claim that it broke with the communist dictatorships in 1977, but tonight Janne Josefsson will show that it kept the close ties with the murderers for the duration of the dictatorships, in Uppdrag granskning 20.00.

But keep in mind that Josefsson is not a master of nuances. If he has made up his mind he will only be looking for the facts that support his case, and edit away the rest. But for a critical viewer, I think it has a lot of value. And it’s nice that he is examining the left for a change.

21:56 - POOR DEFINITIONS: Does anyone know this gentleman: He has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two colour televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family´s essential needs.

This is the typical American poor, according to the definition by which there are 12.5 percent living in poverty. There is also real poverty in the US, people who experience something like overcrowding, temporary hunger or difficulty obtaining health care. But that’s only about a third of those officially classified as poor, and the groups shouldn’t be confused.

Here are some other interesting facts about American poverty from a Heritage backgrounder by Robert Rector:

- The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna and other European cities.

- Despite the recession, nearly one million black children have been raised out of poverty since the welfare reform of 1996.

- The census report that the top fifth of households has $14.60 in income for every $1.00 in the bottom quintile. But these figures don’t include taxes and the social safety net, and they don’t adjust for the size of households (the top quintile has 70 percent more people than the bottom quintile). When adjusted accordingly, the ratio of the income of the top quintile to that of the bottom quintile falls from $14.60 to $1.00 to $4.21 to $1.00.

21:35 - WORTH CELEBRATING: Congratulations to Dick Erixon´s blog - one year old today! I often agree with his strong convictions, I am sometimes frustrated by his angry pro-republican agenda, but I always find it worthwhile to read his hard-hitting comments, in an otherwise very insular and unstimulating Swedish debate. May his blog´s life be longer than his temper! :-D

14:14 - WHY DO YOU HAVE A MURDERER ON YOUR T-SHIRT?: The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara is still considered cool on t-shirts, and in the new film The Motorcycle Diaries, he is portrayed as a fighter for freedom. But Paul Berman (author of the important book Terror and Liberalism) reminds us that Che was a murderer and a totalitarian. It should be as unthinkable to wear a Che t-shirt as it is to wear a Goebbels t-shirt:

"Che was a totalitarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution´s first firing squads. He founded Cuba´s ´labor camp´ system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che´s imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for ´two, three, many Vietnams,´ he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: ´Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …´— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale."

15:20 - PRO LOGO: On the first page of In Defence of Global Capitalism, I mention my old punk hero Thåström. I don’t think I am the only one who has changed my world view a bit since the 80s. Today I learn that Thåström is now a registered trademark, and so are his great old bands Ebba Grön and Imperiet.

15:07 - THE SWEDISH MOTHER MODEL: "For decades we´ve been told Sweden is a great place to be a working parent. But we´ve been duped". The words of an American neo-liberal economist? No, the famous British sociologist Catherine Hakim in very lefty The Guardian:

"[T]here is a pay threshold in Nordic countries below which are 80% of all women, and above which are 80% of all men.
´What is more, the glass ceiling problem is larger in family-friendly Sweden than it is in the hire-and-fire-at-will US, and it has also grown as family-friendly policies have expanded. In Sweden 1.5% of senior management are women, compared with 11% in the US.´ […]
75% of Swedish women are working in the public sector - traditionally the lower-paid, lower-qualified end of the employment market - while 75% of men are working in the racier, more demanding private sector. What has happened through the years of family-friendly policies, she says, is that private companies have reduced their number of female employees because they can´t afford the cost of the generous maternity packages."

But most disturbing in this story is that when DN’s Niklas Ekdal asks Catherine Hakim about her conclusions, she refuses to tell him, and says this:

"I can see some explanations but Swedes wouldn’t like them. And I don’t need more enemies than I already have."

Have we Swedes become so insular, self-righteous and uncritical that we consider all signs of criticism as treason? Is our model so fragile that it would fall over the moment we welcomed an open and honest intellectual debate about it? It’s a rhetorical question. The answer is yes.

11:06 - NOT VS AS SUCH: Just a small clarification, since the interview with me in Svensk Bokhandel today is titled "Norberg vs the libraries": I am not opposed to libraries. I love libraries, and I am almost raised on library floors, finding most of the intellectual nutrituion that made me what I am in those shelves. That´s why I am sad when libraries stop offering visitors a variety of sources and influences.

00:25 - IN CONTROL: Tonight, the chairman of Biblioteksföreningen – the Swedish Library Association – commented our library article in the TV show Kulturnyheterna, and the association has also issued a statement about it. They claim that it is not interesting to try to measure bias by counting books from different perspectives, and that the libraries´ purchase of books is done in a professional way. They don’t contemplate the possibility that the process of selecting individuals, and their personal preferences, have an effect on purchases.

By the way, the chairman of Biblioteksföreningen is Britta Lejon – MP for the social democrats and minister of Göran Persson’s government 1998-2000.

19:07 - NOW WHAT?: I have almost never received as many comments as I got today after my article with Björn Wallace about the systematic left-wing bias in public Swedish libraries. The reactions are almost all positive, and even left-wing commentators have said that there is something to this story. Our article really confirm people´s suspicion that supposedly open and pluralistic platforms have been effected by the closed political climate in Sweden since the 1970s. Many ask me what we can do about this. Well, one thing would be to keep the pressure up. Most of the library data is available on-line in the database Bibliotek.se. Why don´t you for example repeat our research in your city, and write an article in the local paper on the left-wing bias in local libraries? Don´t let them get away with this.

09:34 - LONG MARCH THROUGH THE CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS: 7.39 this morning I debated my article about left-wing bias in libraries on the radio with Nina Wadensjö (available here). Interestingly, Nina is part of that bias. She was presented as an unpolitical publisher, but her background is symptomatic: She used to head the left-wing publisher Atlas, and has led a commission for the social democrat government, and has been a local social democrat politician.

09:22 - WHY NOT FAKE A GOOD STORY?: The always brilliant Michael Moynihan actually takes Aftonbladet seriously, and checked the supposed stupid Bush quotes they present as evidence that the president is now senile. Turns out they are mostly fake, and several were from an old 90s list of supposed Dan Quayle quotes! This fake quote is actually even more fake than normal Aftonbladet standard:

"If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure."
- This is from an early-90’s list of supposed quotes from former Vice President Dan Quayle. A Google search shows that it has been alternately attributed to Clinton, Bush and Quayle. None of them ever said it.

07:07 - BIAS: Today I publish an article on DN Debatt with Björn Wallace on the systematic left-wing bias in public Swedish libraries. An average book from the left is bought four times more often than a free market book. You find the article and the figures here.

14:56 - HOW NOT TO MAKE HISTORY: U2 singer Bono hates poverty. That’s good. But it would be even better if he knew how to end it. Yesterday he launched a Make Poverty History manifesto in conjunction with a coalition of churches, trade unions and charities. The ratio between good intentions and good ideas is something like ten to one.

The liberal NGO Global Growth Org (pdf) replies:

"´Make Poverty History´ has great objectives but unrealistic and superficial solutions to the problems of the developing world´s poverty. It will provide more feel-good photo opportunities for Western celebrities than job opportunities in the developing world. India and China, the most populous nations on earth, recognise that generating economic growth through an increasing share of world trade is the fastest engine of poverty reduction. That is how India and China will make poverty history, not by rock stars issuing manifestos and holding concerts on their behalf."

09:04 - FREEDOM WORKS: Peter Wolodarski writes about the strongest empirical proof of the benefits of capitalism, the Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom survey, co-published by Timbro. Read the entire report here.

11:41 - A CONSERVATIVE WORTH CONSERVING: We don´t have a conservative ideology in Sweden. A "conservative" here is someone who is a bit reactionary in private and will only accept the most marginal changes of the social democrat welfare state. But there are a few conservative individuals of the Anglo-Saxon/Burkean variety, and have a deep respect for civil society and the rule of law. Best among them is Per Dahl. If you understand Swedish, you have to read his hilarious article about the social democrat mentality in smedjan.com.

11:48 - FACTS ABOUT CUBA: After my post on Cuban health care, I have been asked to share a few facts about the socialist model Cuba. Here they are:

Before Castro, Cuba was as rich as Italy, and richer than Spain. Cuba has not merely lagged behind, it has actually grown poorer, and is now more than five times poorer than these countries. It used to be among the richest in Latin America, now it’s among the poorest.

Cubans had better access to food than all other Latin American countries except Argentina before Castro, but now they have worse access than almost all the others. Cubans are the only people in Latin America who have seen their intake of calories decrease since then. It is now better than in the 90s, but more than every tenth Cuban is chronically undernourished.

Cuba had lower infant mortality than all other Latin American countries before Castro, and lower than France, Italy and Japan. It is the only area where progress has continued since then, but it has been much slower than in other similar countries.

(Source: Manuel Sánchez Herrero och Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique: Los llamados logros.)

But hasn’t anyone benefited from the revolution? Sure, Castro has amassed a fortune equal to ten percent of Cuba’s GDP. This is one dictator who does not wear his uniform because he can’t afford a suit.

And, oh, did I mention that Castro has murdered more than 70 000 of his own citizens for political reasons? That’s about seven times more than Pinochet, who is hated by all leftists who love Castro. Apparently murder and brutality is not what they object to in Pinochet.

11:01 - PROTECTING YOU FROM DANGEROUS IDEAS: When you visit an American bookstore (or watch a Swedish TV-journalist visiting one), the big majority of the books on politics are anti-globalisation, anti-capitalist and anti-Bush. Have you ever wondered why? Perhaps because the bookstore employees don’t want you to find anything else. Norton Tierra and Billy McCormac draw our attention to a piece by in National Review, on how bookstore employees in the US try to keep classical liberal and conservative books away from the customers. On a forum on the union website of Borders bookstores, employees give each other advice on how to keep bad books off the shelves and on how to humiliate customers asking for politically incorrect books.

I would be surprised if you couldn’t see examples of that in Swedish bookstores as well, and in Swedish libraries. At least the political imbalance among the books on prominent display suggests that. Someone should do some research here. But first I’ll get a copy of National Review and read the article. Hmmm, strange. I can’t seem to find it in the bookstore.

17:15 - LIBRARIANS AND LIBERTARIANS UNITE!: The fight for privacy used to be led by radical libertarians. Now they are joined by radical librarians. Wired writes about librarians like Jessamyn West, who protests against the Patriot Act giving FBI the right to access personal records without a subpoena or even having to show that a crime has been committed. The libraries are now being filled with so far technically legal signs like these:

"We have been visited by the FBI. They requested your reading lists. Now do you feel much more secure?"

"We’re sorry! Due to National Security concerns, we are unable to tell you if your Internet surfing habits, passwords and email content are being monitored by federal agents; please act appropriately."

"The FBI has not been here (Watch very closely for the removal of this sign)"

15:42 - BISMARCK IS DEAD: Now that the euro is safely in place, can something bring it down? Yes, the pension time bomb in big countries like Germany, France, Italy and Spain, says José Piñera (pdf) in the Cato Journal. Piñera convincingly shows why small reforms of the old pay as you go-system will not work, and why personal retirment accounts is the only way ahead. But time is of the essence. The unfunded liabilities of the public pension programs is now more than 200 percent of GDP in France and Italy, and more than 150 percent of GDP in Germany. It’s time to bury Bismarck.

11:36 - CUBAN HEALTH CARE EXPOSED: One year ago, the socialist doctor Sven Britton wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter saying that Cuba had excellent health care, and he guaranteed that statistics from this dictatorship was ”reliable”. He failed to mention that Cuba had far better indicators on infant mortality etc than Southern Europe before the communist revolution, and has lagged behind since. If someone believed this apologist for the tyranny, DN sets the record straight now, by revealing the hidden truth about the horrible state of health care in Cuba, with the help of Cuban photographer Luis Alberto Pacheco Mendoz – a real hero who risks a life in prison for exposing what Castro and his friends in the West wants to keep away from us.

10:24 - FREUDIAN SLIP: In The Economist’s excellent report on why the EU should open membership negotiations with Turkey, the opponents in Germany’s "Christian Socialist Union" are mentioned. At first I thought it was just a mistake, it’s easy to confuse "social" with "socialist". But on the second thought – these South German Christian Democrats are in favour of stealing property from taxpayers to hand them over to farmers, are interested in letting the government legislate morality, and opposed to creating a big, free market (including an open labour market) with 70 million Turks. Isn’t "socialism" a very suitable label for such opposition to free markets and free men?

09:22 - TRO OCH VETANDE: Text-TV just nu, sidan 117:

"Inom EU är den genomsnittliga konsumtionen cirka 12 liter sprit per person, en nivå vi närmar oss. Troligen leder det också till att alkoholskador ökar, varnar forskare."

09:04 - ENERGETIC GOVERNMENT: I just discussed deregulation of the energy market on Swedish television. My opponents say that deregulation has raised prices. But since 1996 when this took place, the energy tax has increased by 150 percent and a VAT has been levied upon this. Now two thirds of the price is tax or government grid charge. Furthermore, the government has stopped subsidizing new production, and is instead actively stopping and outlawing production of new energy (nuclear power). And it has not opened the system to make it possible to compete for most European competitors, if they don’t go to the trouble of buying old Swedish energy companies. So the market is dominated by companies owned by governments, like Vattenfall, Fortum and Sydkraft. And the left insists it’s all the fault of neoliberal markets. Excuse my lack of imagination.

13:27 - MOORE IN IRAN: Now Iranians have had their first chance to see Michael Moore´s Fahrenheit 9/11. Here are some of the reactions from young people in Teheran, as reported by AFP. My favourite is the last one.

"I love to see foreign films on the big screen, and I never miss Farhang cinema shows no matter what is on.”

"They are showing this film to erase from our minds the idea that America is the great saviour."

"It was just too political. I was bored from the middle, and I wished we had gone to see ´Kill Bill´ instead."

"It sure is a great country, where someone like Moore trashes the president and gets away with it – and makes so much money!"

13:12 - FOOD FOR THOUGHT: New columnist in Svenska Dagbladet, worth reading.

09:07 - IN DEFENCE OF DEREGULATION: ”Deregulation raised prices” – thus concludes the Swedish commission on the deregulation of markets in the 1990s. It was appointed by the social democratic government, and is led by the Dan Andersson, chief economist of the national union, LO. So you should have seen where this was going.

Andersson do not distinguish between different levels of deregulations, so more deregulated markets with a lot of competition between private companies (telecom) are treated in just the same way as a re-regulated market where a government monopoly still has the sole right to chose where to dominate (railways). So he does not draw any conclusion from the fact that prices on the phone market have dropped, and that railway prices have increased more than anything else. If Andersson had looked at indicators as free entry and level of competition – as the Swedish Competition Authority has (pdf) – he would have seen a clear correlation between deregulation and prices. So it goes without saying that he didn’t look at that.

And these four factors must not be forgotten:
1) In the old monopolies prices were often kept down artificially by government, with subsidies or with guarantees, which distorted the allocation of resources, and which we still of course had to pay for, but in other ways.
2) One of the reasons why prices have increased is that the government has raised and created new taxes on these services, especially on electricity and postal services.
3) It is not certain that low prices is always what consumers prefer on a free market. In that case everybody would always eat the cheapest food, no matter what it tastes like. It could be that people are actually willing to pay for better service, increased quality, a wider variety of choice – and getting what you want when you need it and not six months later.
4) And perhaps most important, where is the personal responsibility? The price picture is now more diverse – where prices have increased, you still have cheaper alternatives than you had before. As a consumer, you can compare and chose. So if Dan Andersson doesn’t make a choice, perhaps he has himself to blame, and not the market.

16:45 - BLOGS-CBS 1-0: So now it’s almost official. The documents CBS News used to prove that Bush received special treatment in the Texas Air National Guard were forgeries, just like lots of blogs claimed from the beginning – and now we hear that two of the document experts CBS hired refused to authenticate them, but CBS didn’t mind, and went ahead anyway. Ugly. This isn’t about Bush. He might have received obscure privileges. As important and wealthy as his family was, I would be surprised if he didn’t, and his service record has strange gaps. But this is about the reliability of the media, and our certainty that they always put the truth above their political preferences. And CBS just lost that credibility. I don’t know if Bush or Kerry wins the election, but it almost seems certain that the blogosphere will win and mainstream media will lose.

11:00 - SOMEONE WATCHES THE WATCHERS: The worst pieces of journalism are the ones with the pretension to separate the facts from the fiction in a story, but only succeed in bringing out more fiction. Aftonbladet has perfected the genre. Happily, Michael Moynihan has the patience to separate the facts from the fiction in Aftonbladet’s separation of the facts from the fiction in the American presidential campaign.

14:19 - I HOPE IT´S ONLY A ROUGH DRAFT: The four Swedish opposition parties seem to be challenging the draft system. At least that’s what I first thought. They write: "selection for military training should as far as possible be made on voluntary basis", but amazingly, they continue: ”within the framework of the draft system". What does that mean? "Voluntary" is the opposite of forced labour. If you are volunteering "within the framework" of a system that forces you into it, you do not volunteer.

They should listen to someone who knew that you do not win elections by compromising away your belief in freedom or your cognitive ability, Ronald Reagan:

"[T]he most fundamental objection to draft registration is moral... a draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending."

09:41 - THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM: 

Conversation at a café on Surbrunnsgatan, Stockholm:

- Hi, I’d like a cup of tea and a sandwich, please.
- Where do you live?
- On Birger Jarlsgatan.
- Aha, don’t belong to us, eh? (looking through her papers)
- No, I don’t but…
- (Looking up from papers, triumphantly) You belong to the café on Döbelnsgatan.
- Well, strictly speaking, I don’t ”belong” to any café.
- Yes you do, just look here. (showing me papers)
- But you don’t have any customers, this place is empty, and of course I’m willing to pay…
- So? You belong to Döbelnsgatan. You’ll have to get over there to get your tea.

(Authentic conversation held this morning, with the only difference that the café was a care center, and that instead of asking for tea and sandwich, I asked them to remove a few stitches after minor surgery the other week.)

17:24 - NOBODY FORCED YOU TO SUPERSIZE IT: I saw Morgan Spurlock’s documentary Super Size Me yesterday – the famous film about the daring month-long experiment to eat only the worst things from the McDonald’s menu. I am positively surprised. Spurlock has been compared to Michael Moore, but that’s unfair. In contrast to Moore, Spurlock does not lie or distort the facts, as far as I can see. And unlike Moore, he gives the viewers some room to come to their own conclusions. Furthermore, where Moore makes fun of other people, Spurlock has a genuine sense of humour, often filled with self-irony.

The problem with the film is that it is not serious in diagnosing the problem of the fattening of society. It actually comes close to saying that the problem is that McDonald’s exist. But why is there a demand for McDonald’s? Spurlock mentions the fact that his mother always cooked healthy dishes when he was young, whereas young people today eat fast food. Yes, his mother always cooked. But he does not realise that mothers can’t do that if they have full-time employment outside the home. And when the world changes that way, perhaps there is some room to assume responsibility for your own choices? You don’t have to pick the worst things from the menu every day (and if you pick the best, McDonald’s can actually downsize you). Spurlock is conscious about the problem of personal responsibility, but does not really address it. He should, because that’s where his film could actually do a lot of good.

Instead Spurlock is right now becoming pop culture’s answer to Joseph Stiglitz – someone who actually had important things to say, but happened to become a favourite of the anti-capitalists, and then started to exploit that lucrative niche. And Gresham’s intellectual law is that bad ideas drive out good ideas. Spurlock should watch his own film again, and think hard about the best line in it, spoken to a girl with problems of keeping her weight:

"The world is not going to change, you’ve got to change."

15:06 - LYING ABOUT FLYING: Old airline companies, unions and the media try to scare people away from low-cost competitors, often by accusing them of compromising safety standards. But if anything low-cost carriers seem safer than old airliners. And the world’s safest airline is the original low-cost airline, Southwest Airlines, flying 200 Boeings 737s every day, and with 33 years in the business, so far without a single fatal accident.

And as low-cost carriers have expanded, the number of accidents have decreased. Today flying is safer than it has ever been. The number of fatal passenger flight accidents 2003 was the lowest since World War II. And the downward trend is accelerating. Here is the number (pdf) of scheduled passenger flights worldwide that suffered fatal accidents in the last five years:

1999: 19
2000: 14
2001: 13
2002: 12
2003: 8

12:27 - SWING VOTERS: It seems like Bush is winning the American people, but because of patriot acts, deficits and tariffs, he has lost the libertarians. New Republic tells the story.

12:14 - MOORE BOUGHT "EMBEDDED" FOOTAGE: We already knew that Michael Moore lies about facts and figures in Fahrenheit 9/11. But now Stockholm Spectator reveals that Moore even lies about how he has done the film, at least about the footage from Iraq:

"When asked how a notoriously anti-war filmmaker managed to obtain ´embedded´ press credentials, Moore was coy. ´I´m not going to say how we got in there,´ he said. ´I was able to sneak three different freelance crews into Iraq,´ Moore told the BBC.

In another interview, Moore suggested his cameramen successfully duped the military by camouflaging their identities: ´We were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing it was Michael Moore. They are totally fucked.´

But as is often the case with Moore ´s grandiose media proclamations, the truth is decidedly more banal.

The ´abuse´ footage--which shows prisoners being hooded after a raid on suspected insurgents--was provided to Moore by Aftonbladet´s Iraq correspondent Urban Hamid, who, while working for Sweden´s largest daily, was embedded with Charlie Company. According to a report in the University of Colorado ´s Daily Camera (where Hamid is currently a PhD candidate), Moore saw the footage after Hamid returned from Iraq and staged a public screening in Boulder, Colorado . […]

The remainder of the on-the-ground footage in ´Fahrenheit´ was shot by Australian filmmaker George Gittoes who, contrary to Moore´s claim of secret embedding, ´had no idea his work was in Fahrenheit 9/11 until it was screened at the Cannes film festival,´ reports the Sydney Morning Herald."

11:51 - KVINNAN SOM KAN SAMLA OPPOSITIONEN: Borgerligheten har lyckats bra med sammanhållningen på sista tiden, men jag har varit lite orolig över bristen på en samlande gestalt – någon som verkligen kan manifestera ivern att välta enpartistaten. Nu finns det en sådan: Hon heter Marita Ulvskog och är socialdemokraternas nästa partisekreterare. Hennes arroganta överhetsperspektiv och antikverade vänsterdogmer kommer på ett förträffligt sätt koncentrera borgerliga sinnen och mobilisera till maktskifte. Tack, Göran!

10:42 - NYA FANS: Det enda som är nytt med de rödgrönas hämningslösa utgiftsbudget är att den har oväntade supporters. Som Inger Arenander konstaterar i Dagens Eko:

"Både från oppositionen och internt i socialdemokratin kommer kritik med innebörden att budgetförslagen inte är tillräckliga för att öka tillväxten, men det så kallade röda laget får för ovanlighetens skull lite uppskattning från Svensk Näringsliv."

11:53 - SAMUELSON IS WRONG AGAIN: Paul Samuelson, the famous economist who told us that ”The Soviet economy is proof that...a socialist command economy can function and even thrive", as late as 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, (”Economics”, 13th ed., p. 837) is now trying to warn us that outsourcing does not help the American economy function and thrive.

His fear is that new jobs might be worse than those exported, and he supports this with the example of Wal-Mart where he thinks low prices for consumers comes at the cost of lower wages: "If you don´t believe that changes the average wages in America, then you believe in the tooth fairy”.

Well, apparently I believe in the tooth fairy, and so does the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because as Wal-Mart has expanded in the US, retail wages have increased (excel). And average wages have increased even more. Furthermore, Samuelson ignores that lower prices is the same thing as higher real wages for people. For all its faults, Samuelson should re-read his old Economics textbook.

10:19 - BUSHISMS: Bush isn´t a great speaker, but now you can help him.

09:51 - READ WOLODARSKI: One of Sweden’s best journalists is Peter Wolodarski, working on the editorial page of Dagens Nyheter. He has a classical liberal perspective on the issues, and in contrast to most journalists, he is a contrarian, just like all journalists should be - he questions and looks into what everybody takes for granted even though they never check it. Recently he exposed how the news journalists on Dagens Nyheter (and other papers) had bought the unions’ entire smearing campaign against Ryan Air, without checking the sources and controlling the facts. Yesterday, even the Readers’ Ombudsman had to admit that Wolodarski was the one who had done his homework, despite the fact that she almost makes it sound like doing actual research is cheating, and she never really blames the news journalists for distorting the story.

Today Wolodarski comes after the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise for their strategy of negotiating with the government. They were so interested in abolishing the property tax, that they offered to finance it with higher taxes on small businesses, something I criticised at the time. Now the result is that the social democrats implement the Confederation’s offer of higher taxes, but refuse to abolish the property tax! So the social democrats takes everything they are offered, and gives nothing in return. That should teach Swedish Enterprise not to play with tax risers.

09:29 - TOLKIEN´S WISHES: Since my last post, I have been kindly reminded by a reader that Tolkien really wanted a translation of names. That’s right. I think Tolkien was wrong. But of course you have to stick to his demands, right or wrong. But in that case, you could still use the name ”Baggins” or at least ”Bagger”, as the old translation. Swedes do know what a bag is. I think “Secker” sounds like a sly scrap-dealer in the shabby parts of town, in a Swedish 1950s movie.

21:35 - PUT SECKER IN A BAG: According to SVT´s Aktuellt, it’s now official: In the new Swedish translation of The Lord of the Rings, names of persons and places will be translated literally. In some cases the new translations are superior to the old ones. Hobbits will translated into ”hobbitar” and not the old Norse version ”hober”, and Rivendale will be known as ”Riftedal” rather than the misleading "Vattnadal" (riven is a cleft, not a river). But Frodo Baggins will be known as – horrors – Frodo Secker. What an interesting way of destroying a great work, and deprive it of the wonderful spirit of old England, which gives it a lot of its strength. My American publisher do not translate my name into Johan Northmountain, do they?

13:05 - LIVING DEAD: There are hundreds of asylum-seekers who are threatened with expulsion from Sweden, but have to stay here because the country they are supposed to go to do not accept them. But the Swedish government stops these individuals from working, studying and living a normal life. They are forced to live their lives living dead. This is a brutal and unjust system that systematically breaks people down. Now it is being challenged. Timbro’s Mauricio Rojas and the Refugee’s Ombudsman, Merit Wager just sent an application about the case to the European Court of Human Rights. With some luck, this is the beginning of the end of a system that makes me ashamed of being Swedish.

11:20 - PEACE IN OUR TIME – REALLY: War always makes the headlines. But in fact, it would be difficult to find a more peaceful era than the current one. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, last year 19 major armed conflicts were under way worldwide, which is a sharp drop from 33 wars in 1991. And the intensity of the conflicts is also declining. The number killed in battle is now below 20 000 a year, the lowest figure in the post-World War II period – and perhaps the lowest proportion of the world population ever.

As Rudolph Rummel points out, and has shown in his works, this is a result of the spread of the rule of law and liberal democracy around the world. If people can choose themselves, most often they choose not to kill and be killed.

18:50 - ELUDE THE SOCIALISTS: And if you are Swedish and want to gamble without subsidising the social democrats, you can visit, for example, Unibet or Ladbrokes on the internet. Technology is freedom.

18:40 - MONOPOLISING POWER: I am glad to see that the Stockhom Spectator Blog attacks one of the last sacred state monopolies in Sweden, gambling. Why sacred? Because – you won’t believe this – the monopoly gives the government the possibility of giving the social democratic party a special permission to arrange a big lottery, which does not have to face competition from commercial lotteries. And almost 40 percent of the party’s income (the party and its youth organisation) is actually derived from giving gamblers bad odds. I am sure Suharto and Mobuto would have been impressed.

17:52 - WE WANT SNUS!: European politicians – always trying to live our lives for us – hate smoking. Therefore, you would think that they approved of the Swedish form of snuff, snus, which is far better for your health. It is a way of helping people quit smoking, and pick up a tobacco habit that won’t give them lung cancer. You would be wrong. The EU subsidises tobacco, but since 1992 it outlaws snus (with an exception for Sweden). And it looks like the Court of Justice will uphold the ban. The EU don’t just want us to stop smoking, it wants it to be difficult and painful as well. If the EU insists in such irrationality, what should European citizens do? Perhaps ignore them, just like Christofer Fjellner, member of the European Parliament from Sweden’s moderate party just did. Yesterday in parliament, Fjellner sold 11 small snus boxes to curious MEPs in one hour. Civil disobedience as it could and should be.

15:46 - HABLA ESPAÑOL?: I am often asked if my In Defence of Global Capitalism will be translated into Spanish. Yes, a Spanish edition will be published, probably late this year. Until then, if you read Spanish, you can read several of my articles, translated at Liberalismo.org, a site produced by a group of great Spanish liberals.

21:07 - JOB SECURITY – FOR WHOM?: Imagine that a country outlawed cheap computers and only allowed people to own very expensive and advanced computers. The result would be that hundreds of thousands of people who would have had a computer could not afford one, and those who could afford one were forced to buy a really advanced and expensive one, even though they would have preferred another balance between price and quality. And then imagine that an International Computer Organisation investigated the computer policies of the world and concluded that this country had the best policies, since the average computer was more technologically advanced than in other countries.

That would be ridiculous, you say? I agree, but that is exactly how the International Labour Organisation just reached the conclusion that Sweden has the best labour security in the world. The fact that the regulations, the job security and the high cost of labour in Sweden means that less productive individuals are forced into unemployment, is apparently none of their concern. If you combine unemployment, early retirement, long-term sick-leave and people in specific labour market projects, Sweden has an unemployment figure at about 20 percent of the population of working age. Walls around job places do not just keep the workers in, they also keep the others out.

17:39 - THE CASE FOR GLOBALISATION IS WATER-RESISTANT: A reader just told me that I am far too optimistic about the world’s progress. Just look at the lack of access to clean water in the world, he wrote. It’s correct that this is a big problem. More than one billion people drink unsafe water. But that’s a smaller proportion than ever. From 1990-2002, 1.1 billion people have gained access to clean water. And the development has been led by the countries with high growth and private investments in the water industry.

11:16 - THE PALME FAN CLUB: Yesterday’s Agenda in SVT was worth viewing as usual, especially the report on how Yasser Arafat has squandered all the billions sent to him by the EU. If all the aid had gone to the people, poverty would today be nonexistent in Palestine, but under Arafat’s authoritarian and corrupt leadership, more than two thirds live in poverty.

But the discussion afterwards proved once again that Sweden is a small country with a homogenous perspective. Thomas Hammarberg, secretary general of the Olof Palme International Center debated the problem with the minister for international development cooperation, Carin Jämtin. What they failed to mention was that Jämtin was recruited to the government in 2003 from her post as deputy secretary general – of the Olof Palme International Center!

20:49 - MEMOS AND MYTHS: Dagens Nyheter’s political editor Niklas Ekdal is a good analyst and often I share his opinions. But I am beginning to suspect that he has watched Michael Moore, and taken him seriously. Today, Ekdal blames Condoleezza Rice for saying that the August 6, 2001, CIA briefing ”Bin Laden determined to strike in US”, was nothing but "speculative", and contained "historical" information. Ekdal is implying that it was a warning about the September 11 attacks, which Rice and Bush ignored. Yes, that’s what Moore wants us to believe. In Fahrenheit 9/11 he claims that the briefing "said that Osama Bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes".

But in fact, it was a general warning that Bin Laden wanted to attack the US – which wasn’t news, after all, this is the man who said such things in television interviews. The memo refers to the historical background and mentions the vague possibility that Bin Laden in the future would hijack a plane in the traditional sense, perhaps to gain the release of an imprisoned terrorist operative, just like it mentions the possible use of explosives. And it says that no specific threats had been corroborated. In other words, it does indeed consist of speculations (about other things than really happened on September 11), and all the facts are historical.

The memo has been declassified. Ekdal and everybody else can read it here (pdf).

11:37 - YOU ARE 10 YEARS OLD – AND THE DADDY STATE IS HERE TO TAKE CARE OF YOU: Some more evidence against a big government conservative: Ronald Reagan sometimes complained that the government treated citizens as children, giving them material welfare, but not allowing them any responsibility or freedom of choice. When he started his political career by saying that "For many years now, you and I have been shushed like children" he didn’t mean it as a good thing.

Compare this respect for the individual to how White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card describes president Bush’s world view, in a positive way:

"It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child … I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children."

23:26 - SKUGGE VS PJ: I dagens Expressen gnäller Linda Skugge över PJ just nu, och irriterar sig över att "den absolut långtråkigaste och omodernaste politiske redaktören" blir först i Sverige med att ha en blogg, och hon citerar mig:

"Johan Norberg skriver på sin blogg: ´PJ is one of Sweden’s most important intellectuals, and one of the most eloquent writers in this country.´
PJ är en av the most important intellectuals!? Och vad fan betyder eloquent?"

22:54 - PROGRESS: I have a theory that you can measure the progress of the world scientifically by how rapidly it is approaching Star Trek. Computer disks and communicators arrived pretty soon after the original series in the late 1960s. Teleportation seems to be in the works. And today I read that the universal translator is here. I can’t wait for the warp engine.

10:45 - BLACK BOOK OF CAPITALISM?: In Dagens Nyheter today, Sverker Lenas suggests that capitalism is responsible for genocide and starvation. His argument? Relying on Mike Davis’ book Late Victorian Holocausts (”Svält och kolonialism”), he mentions starvation in British-ruled India in the late 19th century. But what has that got to do with capitalism, apart from the fact that Britain was capitalist? Lenas’ own description of the causes was that Indian farmers were forced to grow certain crops, they were forced to sell it to Britain, and they were forced to pay oppressive taxes even during the worst times. For us who think that capitalism means property rights, low taxes and free trade, Lenas’ description is completely absurd.

The left has never understood that colonialism was never capitalist. It was a government-funded project to dominate other people, taking control over their economic activities, destroying local markets and monopolising their trade. And that was why classical liberals like Smith, Bastiat, Cobden, Bright and Spencer vigorously opposed (pdf) all forms of colonialism. The American revolution, by the way, was the first anti-colonial war.

10:18 - WHERE WAS DN?: Yesterday Michael Moynihan visited Timbro to present his case against plagiarism at Dagens Nyheter. It is very convincing, and now the biggest scandal is that Dagens Nyheter has tried to silence it. But most devastating for DN was that none of their three representatives who were invited as commentators appeared to defend the paper. And they did not even have a representative in the audience. Is their point of view that undefendable?

14:18 - KERRY VS KERRY: Bush may have an unconvincing message, but Kerry´s got two, as this fictitous debate makes clear.

11:10 - THE BIG GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVE: Convention speeches with hysterically applauding audiences share a problem with American football: The game is constantly being interrupted, for no apparent reason to the alienated viewer. George W Bush’s speech last night was a big disappointment (video, text). We already knew that he is not at all as good a speaker as McCain, Giuliani or Schwarzenegger, and his speechwriters don’t seem to give him stories that would lift the message. But the content was also disappointing.

Sure, Bush said some good and important things about the march of freedom and democracy in the world, and about the fight against terrorism and dictatorship. But his preference for government intrusion in people’s lives, like the Patriot Act and federal discrimination against gays has now trickled down to the economic arena. Bush has finished the Republicans’ transition from Reagan’s small government-conservatism, to national greatness- and big government-conservatism. Where Reagan said that government was the problem, Bush basically says that his government will fix all the problems in the world. He defended his expensive programs in health care and education, and promised more of the same. He gave us no indication on how he would control spending and balance the budget. He only objects to the first part of the Democrats´ tax-and-spend-policies.

This speech would have been the right time and place to defend free trade and economic dynamism, and to outline a strong reform agenda for the ownership society, especially when it comes to giving American’s control over their pension accounts. But the only thing he said about trade was that, just like any mercantilist, he wants to increase exports, and he only mentioned in passing that he wants an ownership society with personal accounts. No explanations, no emphasis, no stories. Bush missed an excellent opportunity to explain the reforms that would warrant a second term, and that’s an indication that he won’t fight for them when the going gets tough.

I think I’ll have another look at Schwarzenegger instead.

15:41 - INSTEAD OF A RECALL: One of Latin America’s most interesting liberals, Alvaro Vargas Llosa (yes, Mario’s son), writes about the Venezuelan recall referendum in an intelligent way. Apparently, Chávez policies have real popular support, and therefore, the opposition must change its ways. Above all, they must show that Chavéz is not overturning the old corrupt apparatus, he is taking it to extremes.

13:56 - TO UNITE OR NOT?: The four Swedish center-right parties have decided to create a common platform for the election 2006 – a unique step. And this decision is very popular among journalists interested in a dramatic contest, and among voters, fed up with prime minister Persson. But is unity in the opposition a good thing? Yes and no.

Yes, because you win elections by setting an agenda and getting people to care about a specific problem. And if the center-right parties continue acting like cannibals, and attack each other to eat their electorate, the voters attention is shifted away from the real problem – the social democrats. One platform will focus all our minds.

No, because you would think the parties get more votes if they have different profiles and appeal to different voters. And I, for one, would hate to see a streamlined, middle-of-the-road, we’re everybody’s friend-platform. But on the other hand, calm and shy Swedes seem to be very brawl-averse, and prefer unity and friendship. So I might be in the minority.

The best of both worlds would be if the four parties show everybody that they are good friends, agree that throwing out the socialists is the overriding interest, agree not to attack one another, have a few common symbolic suggestions, and are free to choose their own profile in all the other issues. They’d get my vote.

09:45 - THE MAN WHO SHOULD BE PRESIDENT: Here you can see Arnold Schwarzenegger´s speech at the GOP convention last night. He has given stronger performances, but it was a passionate speech about the American dream, about immigration and individualism, and against oppression and statism. And – taking aim at the traditionalists in the party – he told the audience that you do not have to agree with the Republicans on every issue, it is actually a virtue to ”respectfully disagree”.

It now seems likely that Bush will win the election, the opinion has already shifted. And in that case he is in the debt of radical centrists like Schwarzenegger, rather than to the Christian Right, which he put in the closet during this convention. I hope he remembers that when it’s time to rule.