I've only recently discovered the John Redwood blog site. It's amazing that a man this intelligent should have so much time to run such a good blog site when he should be shadow chancellor of the exchequer, tossing the rag doll of Alistair Darling around the commons, unlike that light-weight sniveller Osborne.
Alas, Mr Redwood doesn't seem to have seen the Austrian light yet, though he's close. One would hope he's at least read Margaret Thatcher's favourite book, "The Constitution for Liberty" (Hayek). Although only written by a student of Mises, and watered-down with all sorts of lily-livered socialism, it's still a pretty good read.
But John, if you're reading, you need the real McCoy. Try "Human Action" (Mises) or "Man, Economy, and State" (Rothbard), if you want the real hard stuff. I have the links to the PDFs right here:
=> http://mises.org/Books/HumanActionScholars.pdf
=> http://mises.org/rothbard/mespm.PDF
Pip pip!!
UPDATE: Mr Redwood's site is so good I felt compelled to comment on the following articles:
Ladders and greasy poles
Do nothing or do the wrong thing - please don’t let that be the question
There can be two Presidents at a time after all
3 comments:
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2008/05/17/why-has-the-government-and-the-bank-of-england-failed-us-on-inflation/#comment-20645
Before you pass judgment on Redwood you might be interested in reading the above posting; not by me but by one, David Page, and the answers posted by Redwood.
Before I read this I had thought Redwood was one of the more sensible politicians.
I suspect his blog will not likely remain on my favourites list for long
Notwithstanding what David mentions above, John's blog does come across as being considered and erudite. My guess is that its Cameron's desire to avoid being too closely associated with free market views that stops Redwood getting into the Shadow Cabinet. But he is no Austrian as is clear by his support for the govt to guarantee bank loans on some scale in the face of the current meltdown. He was also calling for reductions in interest rates a short while back so as to offset the crisis (alhtouhg I don't think he agrees with taking them down to zero).
That said I have given up on him. He censored about 4 or 5 of my posts on his blog just before Christmas (i.e., he didn't publish them) so I can't be arsed to go back there anymore. Petty I know but there you go ...
Yes, Redwood lets himself down by his government-centric view that bureaucrats taking central decisions in Whitehall can make things better or worse by mere strokes of their pen (e.g. in moving interest rates up or down), but I'll persevere with him until he starts censoring me.
Just putting the free market case for such taboo subjects as privatising state education or privatising state health, may initially come across as madness on my part, but if enough of us keep putting this case in enough places, it might make eventually make some headway, especially with those more prominent people who claim themselves to be 'free-marketeers'.
In a few years time I think this country is going to be a basket case. At that point we will have a choice. We can either step back from the brink and become a free country again, or fully embrace full-scale national socialism.
If our ideas our 'out there' before that time, there is the slightest tiniest chance that the free country route may be taken.
Even if we have to propagate those ideas through those who aren't quite fellow travellers.
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