Monthly Archives: August 2019

Standing Tall

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Great Britain has said that it will abide by British law regarding cross-border movement of persons. European Union law will no longer have applicability, with effect from 31 October, Great Britain’s departure date from the EU.  Unless the EU agrees, and begins concretely, to negotiate in good faith a serious departure régime.

Oh, the hoo-raw.  How dare those Brits follow through instead of kowtowing to their betters in Brussels?

Rebecca Staudenmaier, writing at the link, also mischaracterizes the move.

The move is a departure from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, who had said the government would end free movement “as soon as possible” if the UK left the EU without a withdrawal deal, suggesting the rules could be phased out.

This is no departure from May. On the contrary, this is a solidification of her position: it clearly defines what “as soon as possible” means.  Phase out? That phasing has just begun, if Brussels will get serious about negotiating the departure.  Indeed, that transition period has been going on, tacitly, since Great Britain made clear its intention to go out from the EU.  Phasing merely has been formalized with this announcement.

Indeed, here’s what the British Home Office actually has said on this subject [bold face emphasis added]:

EU citizens and their families are welcome to stay and there are no changes to the deadline to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme.
This scheme covers all EU citizens and their families living in the UK by 31 October, and EU citizens have until at least 31 December 2020 to apply.
Here is a short explainer:
What is happening? Is freedom of movement ending on October 31?
We are leaving the EU on 31 October come what may. This will mean that freedom of movement as it currently stands will end on 31 October when the UK leaves the EU.

And

EU citizens will still be able to come to the UK on holiday and for short trips, but what will change is the arrangements for people coming to the UK for longer periods of time and for work and study.

Hmm….

Even though the transition period has begun, it will extend for 15 months after Great Britain leaves, and it’s quite a generous transition, to boot.  Much more so than Brussels’ departure demands and May’s meek acquiescence to.

Of course, there are problems with this.

In a phone call with the EU Settlement Scheme office helpline, activist and former Change UK candidate Nora Mulready said she was told that EU citizens would have difficulty reentering the UK if they hadn’t applied by the Brexit departure date.
Those who hadn’t applied “would no longer be entitled to [freedom of movement] rights to live and work and be in Britain,” she said the office told her.

That’s a very serious problem.  Mulready apparently thinks EU citizens are so grindingly stupid or otherwise incompetent that they can’t figure out that they need to make their applications—in the 71 days that they have.  That just isn’t enough time for an adult continental.  Wow.

Unnamed Liberal Democrats (here’s NLMSM policy again) claim this policy is reckless.

Not at all. What’s been reckless is the EU’s bad faith pretense of negotiation for a smooth exit, instead using the talks and outcome to punish the Brits for their effrontery and to serve as a warning to other nations contemplating the presumption of leaving.

Here’s hoping a Johnson government is good to its word.

Naivete and Hong Kong

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Bill McGurn usually does better than this.  He suggested

If the governments in Beijing and Hong Kong would show an ounce of that humility, the protests might be over tomorrow.

Presumably that would include an apology by Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, per his piece’s headline.

It’s hard to believe, though, that McGurn would be this naive. Lam’s apology, and PRC and Hong Kong government “humility” would be nothing more than empty, unbelievable words. Lam needs to fully withdraw and cancel, as though it had never existed, the extradition bill that her PRC masters instructed her to put forward, not merely HIA it.

Then she and her deputies and cabinet need to resign and repair to the mainland.

Then Xi needs to withdraw his PLA units from the city’s front porch.

All of that would still leave the PRC government wholly untrustworthy and its Hong Kong branch mostly so, but at least the threat would be pushed back a little bit.

Never forget: the Hong Kong people are in the streets because they can trust neither the PRC’s government nor its Hong Kong branch.

The Purpose of a Company

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The Business Roundtable thinks we need to change our view of the purpose of the companies we own.

CEO group urges firms to remember obligation to society, employees, and customers

And

The Business Roundtable said Monday that it is changing its statement of “the purpose of a corporation.” No longer should decisions be based solely on whether they will yield higher profits for shareholders, the group said. Rather, corporate leaders should take into account “all stakeholders”—that is, employees, customers and society writ large.
“Each of our stakeholders is essential,” the new statement says. “We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities and our country.”

The Roundtable is virtue signaling.

The only stakeholders are a company’s owners. Full stop.

Of course, a company should listen to its employees; it can’t function without them. But stakeholders? We’re seeing the effects of the destructive self-absorption of employees given too much “stakeholder-ness” in Alphabet’s shameful behavior—on society writ large, yet.

Of course, a company should listen to its customers, and potential customers; that’s why a company exists at all: to provide a product or service that fills a gap in their lives.

Society at large? Society is best benefited by the company doing what it does best: satisfying its customers’ needs and wants, providing jobs along the way, innovating to better satisfy those needs and wants. Further, by being successful, a company can grow and foster new businesses, which increase jobs and innovation—and maximizes profit, which draws more investors and owners into the company and into the larger market, a positive feedback loop in its own right.

Profit max is the most efficient way to achieve any of that, and maximizing those returns to the owners within a free market economy maximizes that efficiency.  That, in turn, enhances the company owners’, and their employees’ and customers’, ability to work toward the good of society at large, with each acting according to his own view of what that good is, undiminished by being mixed into a mishmash of phantom “stakeholders.”

Mr [JPMorgan Chase CEO James] Dimon, for example, has challenged the shareholder-profit focus as too narrow and an impediment to executives’ ability to focus on long-term goals.

That misunderstands the problem. This is an investor education matter; business executives need to show the gains to be had from mixing a long-term view with a shorter-term view. Diluting the owners’ control over their company by passing too much power to pseudo-stakeholders only weakens any sort of view.

Because Politics, not Policy

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Even the more moderate Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate, Joe Biden (more moderate? He says he’s the most Progressive of them all, but never mind that, just now), says Party should appoint him because—he can beat Trump.  His wife says so.

Speaking at a bookstore in Manchester, NH, Dr Jill Biden urged voters on Monday to consider the “electability” of her husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, ahead of the 2020 Democratic primaries….

She went on:

I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that, but I want you to think about your candidate, his or her electability, and who’s going to win this race[.]

I respect that.  That’s awfully decent of you, Ma’am.

But leave that bit of self-absorption aside.  It’s certainly true that winning an election is highly useful for implementing policy (so is willingness to compromise with other participants in government).

But the most effective way to win the election is by having and communicating better policies than the other party or parties.

Maybe this is why the Progressive-Democrats and pseudo-Progressive Democrats like Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Tom Steyer are pushing “beat Trump” or “impeach Trump” instead of actual, concrete policies.

Maybe this is why all the leading and middle-tier Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates are touting, secondarily to their “I can beat Trump” mantra, carefully amorphic offerings like free stuff for everybody (except privileged white males and Evil Rich).

None of them have serious policy offerings, so all they can do is run on “electability.”

People Power

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Hong Kong style.

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators braved torrential rain to hold their largest rally in weeks [last Sunday], a show of strength led by more moderate protest leaders who advocated peaceful resistance to Beijing’s tightening grip on the city and sought to ramp up pressure on officials to respond to their demands.
Hundreds of thousands of mainly black-clad protesters of all ages rallied in Victoria Park, the starting point of some of the biggest demonstrations through 11 weekends of unrest, with crowds overflowing into the streets. The organizers said more than 1.7 million people attended the rally.

On that rally, here’s Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran of Hong Kong’s years-long campaign for just the simple respect for the terms of semi-autonomy to which the People’s Republic of China agreed when Great Britain handed the city over to the PRC:

If we have to break the law to exercise our constitutional rights, it means the government is exploiting our constitutional rights.

Can I get an Amen, brothers and sisters?

 

A major question, though—apart from whether Xi, or his subordinate, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam, will even pretend to listen to the demonstrators—is this: does PRC President Xi Jinping have the same respect for human life as did Republic of the Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos when the canonical People Power Revolution went in?

That’s an open question.  Marcos, even in the depths of his reign, never ran “reeducation” camps.  Xi is doing precisely that, that interring millions in Xinjiang Province, and so did his hero and early predecessor Mao Tse-tung.

Marcos—indeed, no Philippine President, including the current Duterte—ever ran anything like Tiananmen Square with hundreds to thousands butchered by the nation’s army.  Xi’s predecessor, Yang Shangkun and that one’s second, PLA CinC Deng Xiaoping, have, and Xi has shown no regret over that atrocity.  Presently, Xi has elements of the PLA—of which he also has been CinC since 2012—massing and drilling just outside Hong Kong.  (Yes, I’m aware those units officially are paramilitary. It’s a distinction without a difference.)

The Hong Kong people are showing great courage, and they deserve our overt support.