We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Defining the ‘scofflaw demographic’ I have just discovered that I am clearly a member of the scofflaw demographic, as I suspect are a great many of Samizdata’s contributors and readers.
What scofflaws need now, and what the majority of our population will wish for in the future, probably at the point where the government finally does try to seize every handgun or require every citizen be fingerprinted and have his or her DNA sequenced and recorded in a permanent database, or when every financial transaction, no matter how trivial, must by law be processed electronically, by a credit card company, or when traffic at lighted intersections is tracked by remote cameras, or when our employers begin forcing us to piss in cups as a condition for keeping our jobs (wait a minute…), is a refuge from the unrelenting psychological, political, legal, religious, economic and physical coercion we are daily subject to at the hands of our employers, our governments and everybody in-between, and from the over-politicization of every facet of our lives.
Great article, read the whole thing.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Good article, and pretty accurate, though heavily focused on outdoor activities. I still prefer the term Rational Anarchist, though:
“If I find a rule tolerable, I obey it. If I find it intolerable, I break it.” — Prof. Bernardo de la Cruz
I may never finsd out if I match the demographic –
“Forbidden
You do not have permission to access this document.
Web Server at newwest.net”
Aw shucks
Every now and again I have conversations with people who believe that we are somehow maximally free (of course this is the mainstream belief). I begin rattling off all the public debt we are riddled with, the amazing pace at which pages are added to the Federal Register, and the endless permits and licenses that are required to engage in very basic living. And it all seems to be news to them. People have become so immune to the level of coercion they are under that as long as they are not hauled off to a gulag or a concentration camp, they must be free.
And when I get into an argument with some folks about freedom, they’ll usually come back with some outrageous point like “so people should be allowed to feast on baby brains?” and when you say “well, no” then the justification for every last invasion somehow is made. What needs to be nailed logically is that there are so many invasions into private affairs when property and life are not directly and clearly at some major risk (it seems that some infinitely small risk is enough for action).
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A prime example as to why I, too, am a scofflaw. Not too long ago I was pulled over by a State Trooper for the unforgivable sin of going 10 mph over the allowable speed. He pulls out, causing the traffic behind me to change, pulls us both over to the side of the road for 15 minutes (which itself has to increase risk much greater than my “sin” ever did) and as he comes up to my car he has his hand on his service revolver, making me feel real comfortable at this point. For what? A $236 payment into the threadbare public coffers and a warning that given the season, going 80 mph versus 70 mph is an unbearable risk to society or myself(and there hadn’t been any precipitation for three days, the highway perfectly dry). I guess it’s the last two extra flips my car makes when I happen to go off the road that are the killers.
And just the other day I actually saw a “black helicopter” buzzing back and forth along the same highway, obviously monitoring the traffic (and most likely radioing ahead).
So I am a scofflaw. I think people can monitor their own speed and bear the risks of the extra two car flips. And if I am irritated by something that most people have been conditioned to think is a just use of executive and judicial time, imagine when something truly idoitic comes along (i.e. most of the new laws hitting books, from the Federal Register on down).
Guilty as charged Guv.
Now catch me if you can!
Great article pure and simple. Very prophetic methinks.
I think I prefer “anti-political”
I’m not against the rule of law per-se.
Just the kinds of laws that our lords & masters seem to be passing.
Oh, and the fact that these are frequently justified on the basis of our “own good” or some bizzare and iniquitous ideology that I personally can’t stand.
I look at both front benches in the Commons and there are very few bums on seats there that I don’t want to punch.
It’s always when reading American articles – stuff that would doubtless be dismissed by collectivists over there as “scaremongering” or simply “ranting” – that it comes home to me just how far down the Road to Serfdom we are in Britain.
Our government has seized every handgun. It’s about to require every citizen to be fingerprinted and have his or her DNA sequenced and recorded in a permanent database. Traffic at lighted intersections is tracked by remote cameras, to all intents and purposes. (And certainly will be if the government goes ahead and ignores the 1.7 million people who signed the petition against road pricing, as it intends to.) We’re still some way off every financial transaction being processed electronically by law, although it’s extremely hard to open a bank account these days if you aren’t a householder (with a utility bill), and don’t own a current passport, as I found out to my cost.
And of course there are other interferences that could be mentioned. I read today of a 12-year-old girl from Northern Ireland unable to visit her relatives on the mainland since she doesn’t have a passport – necessary to board a ship or plane. People are unable to travel around their own country without “papers”, now. (Incedentally, I don’t recall such restrictions when IRA terrorists were busy blowing up people in England.)
Scoff at these laws? Hold them in contempt? Yeah, sounds about right.
Embrace the future.
In order to ensure the continuation of ordered liberty and to preserve the democracy for which our ancestors fought and died, it is necessary to make certain accomodations. Only paranoids need worry about the reasonable and common-sense public safety measures that we use to protect our children from the scourge of gun violence. After all, universal gun registration is useful in solving violent crime, say the NACP and the FOP.
And, with proper universal identification measures in place, we can prevent terrorists from traveling to conspire to attack our freedom. It’s only a minor inconvenience to have to produce a passport or identification card to board a plane.
And often, the only way to prove a sexual assault is through genetic matching. And all you need to do is swab the inside of your cheek with a q-tip: no needles required. Do you have something to hide? If you don’t, then I don’t understand the objection.
Financial transaction pattern analysis is often a necessary technique in exposing the paths taken by money as it moves from here in the US, to the terrorists who hide in caves overseas and plot to kill us all. Exposing this analysis alerted the terrorists to the fact that we’re watching their money (because it never would have occurred to them otherwise) and helped them to cover their tracks. I trust the government to use this power wisely and with restraint. I don’t need to know what they’re doing to protect me.
And neither do the courts. The requirement to obtain a warrant to conduct a wiretap is incredibly onerous. The world moves quickly in this modern electronic age. By the time an agent submits an affidavit and receives a judges approval, it could be too late to stop the attack. And further, requiring the judge’s actual name and signature on the warrant will put the judge himself at risk from the terrorists.
I don’t know what these New West people are on about. Don’t they realize that, when 9-11-01 and 7-7-05 happened, things changed? The Constitution is not a suicide pact, people!
I submit that in Britain, and possibly in other advanced countries too, we have already reached the point where to live is to be a scofflaw on the naked definition, in that it is no longer possible to avoid continually violating the law. But is not always likely that you will or can be punished for such violations.
The “progress” of the state is less now devoted to regulating all life, than to obtaining the powers necessary for entirely arbitrary prosecution and punishment. Things won’t be perfect until not only is everything you do illegal, but it is practically possible to punish you for anything you do, if suits the authorities to do so.
This is the way the “respec” shown in abject compliance is supposed to be achieved.
Perry,
This linked article of C. Probasco is a rag bag of opinions masquerading as something meaningful.
For instance, the following passage is amazing:
City folk are more likely to play the field and steal? It may be true, then again, it may not. Since there is no evidence of these “statistics”, then by all means, we should just let the article confirm our prejudices. But then I also have some aluminum tubes that will allow someone to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program from the comfort of his own home. Yes, they look like missile fuselages, but they are just great for spinning uranium. Just trust me and Secretary Powell.
In the same vein, people sick of the rest of the world lording over them are “suffering from a genetic condition” that comes from being descended from American frontiersmen. Hmm. So Americans whose family came through Ellis Island, not during the first part of settlement of the US do not have this same degree of longing for more control over their lives? Again, any proof whatsoever? Europeans do not get a little sick of Brussels telling them to alter the minutest elements of their lives because their ancestors missed the Mayflower? North Korean political prisoners are really descended from religious refugees who fled to the Massachusetts Bay area looking to purify their religion and convert Squanto? This whole genetics thing is as childish as pondering that migrants to the US from northeastern Germany are more likely to become police officers and soldiers because the Prussian state bred them for it over previous centuries. Perhaps Christian Probasco, whenever he sees a vehicle full of law enforcement officers exclaims to his children, “Look kids, a Kraut wagon!” He must be wondering why all the US troops on TV never have their helmet spikes properly screwed on.
This tripe may sell copy at newwest.net, but it would certainly get one laughed at by anybody who has ever given, attended, or walked by the open door of a lecture in political science. We would do well to expend our pixilated ink on something that was based upon cited fact and steely logic instead of unsupported genetic/geographic determinism.
Perhaps veryretired could be persuaded to share a little of his intellectual surplus on finding interesting things to debate? It would be much more interesting to know what is on his bookshelves and what he thinks about than what the likes of C. Probasco surmise of the world.
In love and squalor,
Michiganny
Sunfish,
I’m going to assume for your sake that that was satire.
Personally, I would be proud to wear the moniker of Scofflaw (which I’ve just had to add to mozilla’s spellchecking dictionary). The law should serve the people and not the other way around. If the law no longer serves the people it should not just be changed, giving rise to amendment after amendment so that the original law is obscured in a mire of bureaucratic legalese, it should be done away with.
A man is not a man who cannot govern himself. (sounds like a quote but I swear it came out of my head, feel free to correct me, I may have read it somewhere and forgotten)
Mandrill:
Absolutely not! I’m insulted by the very notion that you would accuse me of such impure motives to….what the hell, you’re right.
I felt dirty writing that. It’s not the good kind of dirty that comes from Natalie Portman whispering in my ear that she’s really not a Democrat and that she wants to move to Alaska with me. It’s more the dirty that comes from having to wrestle an amped-up drunk wife-beater into the back of my car when I parked in the mud and he hasn’t showered in a week.
Anyway, it looks like someone’s been getting into the Cactus Ed again. He’s some kind of nasty bomb-throwing subversive saboteur.
Government seizing Handguns, Fingerprints (biometric Passports & IDs) DNA, Remote cameras at traffic lights, Drugs & Alcohol Testing at work, etc.
I agree with Sam Duncan – If you live in the UK we have just about already reached that point.
I align with Nick M (splitters!) in that I consider myself law abiding (I put it down to my upbringing – swift, immediate, consistent, fair punishment for wrongdoing as a kid) but also fairly “anti-political”.
Brian M, I think, put it very neatly on 18 Doughty St the other day in that the government uses law to enforce “best practice”, and that is a bad thing indeed. Laws should be used to prevent people saying or implying they employ a particular “best practice” when they do not. The customer can then make a choice.
Governments are fine for enforcing “weights and measures”, if you get me.
Well it always comes round to that quote, ironically from the very statist Prussian, Otto von Bismarck; “Anyone who loves sausages and respects the law should never watch either being made”.
Count me and my wife in as “extreme” scofflaws as we are trying to homeschool in the one place in Europe where it is illegal and the full weight, arbitraryness and cruelty of the state is being brought to bear on those who dare to think that the law is at fault and wish to raise their children independantly
The “progress” of the state is less now devoted to regulating all life, than to obtaining the powers necessary for entirely arbitrary prosecution and punishment. Things won’t be perfect until not only is everything you do illegal, but it is practically possible to punish you for anything you do, if suits the authorities to do so.
Deltawingman,
Home-schooling illegal in Germany? Wow!
“Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Gymnasium!”
At least now I know why I keep staring out the window and like escaping as far into the wilderness as I can.
Sam – get out if you still can!
Well, over on Sp!ked we have Shooting down the myth of the ‘gun culture’, with some very interesting statistics on the trends in firearm murder in the UK.
And today, some Government chappie said that the response to increased murder with small arms is to ban replica handguns.
[More kindly, this has me wondering just how many replicas are imported, and how many of those are (re-)converted for actual use as a gun. And that has me wondering about the definition of replica (and even of spiked).]
Best regards
The current “gun debate” in the UK makes me want to shoot somebody.
I saw it on ITV news. ITV news is utter wank. I’d start the shooting with those patronising, sanctimonious sub-tabloid, monkey-felching fuckwits.
My situation, as a technical contractor, is that I don’t have to piss in a cup to keep my jobs, only to get them. This has the unintended consequence of having me abstain when unemployed and indulge while employed. Conveniently, the industry business cycle tends to coincide with my longtime practice of using Lent as a framework for abstention.
There is a fellow who frequents the shroom-growing forums who makes a point of informing his clients, after saving them from disaster thru his database-rebuilding expertise, what he was smoking when he went out for his smoking breaks.
TimC,
I’ll get back to you on something you said. It really interested me an it’s been gnawing away at me while I’ve been busy tonight. But now it is definitely time for bed.
I think I am agreeing with TimC. As a free individual, I reserve the right to work for an employer who does enforce work place sobriety.
I worked as a carpenter on a job with a guy, actually a very talented carpenter, who finished off a case, 24 cans, and then some of Budweiser in one day on the job. 300+ ounces of beer on the job! Since he was related to the client, it was work with him or don’t work. He operated circular saws, table saws, power miter saws, power nail guns, ladders, you name it; all of the typical carpenter tools. By noon, the other two of us were spending most of our time trying to hide dangerous objects from him. At the end of the day, I told the customer I would not return until he left.
Any body who has done dangerous work with somebody who is impared can understand why, for certain kinds of work, I
wantdemand those kind of rules be enforced on those I am expected to work with. The government does not have any role other than to enforce employment contracts when challanged, and to require the employer to be honest about what the terms are so that applicants and potential customers can use their own judgement whether to accept the contract. But the other employees and the customer are fully entitled to condition their contracts on those rules being enforced on any and all other participants.Insurance companies are also entitled to stipulate these terms before providing insurance.
We have an impending example of when the Government exceeds “weights and measures” in the “Home Information Pack” nonsense.
It will soon be a “law” to provide an HIP. I do suspect it is a) a job creation scheme (16,000+ “inspectors”) and b)also a nice neat way to get their noses into every house for potential council/property tax revisions in future. It is also a covert mind-warp over “energy efficiency” for the econazis.
If HIPs were ‘a good thing’ then they need to manage the implementation where it is done (i.e. no “fake” HIPs).
If HIPs are preferred, owners will adopt them when selling because buyers demand them. If not, they pay a penalty in lower or slower resale. The market finds the balance.
Is this to happen? Oh no, it will be “illegal” to sell without it. A law used to dictate “best practice” even if the “best” is not advantageous or considered advantageous.
Oh, and while we are at it, the inspectors should NOT be linked to the government in any way. I am not sure if they are or not…my guess is if not now, Miliband will try to make it so.
Anybody notice that this article is extremely America-centric–that Americans descended from frontiersmen have “genetic” cause to feel hemmed in?
Is that a little too deterministic for anybody else?
By the way, this is now my fourth attempt to get a comment posted. Am I offending the editorial board by thinking there are more cogent cases to prove the point for liberty?
Answer: the editors do not man the blog 24 hrs a day
My situation, as a technical contractor, is that I don’t have to piss in a cup to keep my jobs, only to get them. This has the unintended consequence of having me abstain when unemployed and indulge while employed. Conveniently, the industry business cycle tends to coincide with my longtime practice of using Lent as a framework for abstention.
There is a fellow who frequents the shroom-growing forums who makes a point of informing his clients, after saving them from disaster thru his database-rebuilding expertise, what he was smoking when he went out for his smoking breaks.
I think I am agreeing with TimC. As a free individual, I reserve the right to work for an employer who does enforce work place sobriety.
I worked as a carpenter on a job with a guy, actually a very talented carpenter, who finished off a case, 24 cans, and then some of Budweiser in one day on the job. 300+ ounces of beer on the job! Since he was related to the client, it was work with him or don’t work. He operated circular saws, table saws, power miter saws, power nail guns, ladders, you name it; all of the typical carpenter tools. By noon, the other two of us were spending most of our time trying to hide dangerous objects from him. At the end of the day, I told the customer I would not return until he left.
Any body who has done dangerous work with somebody who is impared can understand why, for certain kinds of work, I want demand those kind of rules be enforced on those I am expected to work with. The government does not have any role other than to enforce employment contracts when challanged, and to require the employer to be honest about what the terms are so that applicants and potential customers can use their own judgement whether to accept the contract. But the other employees and the customer are fully entitled to condition their contracts on those rules being enforced on any and all other participants.
Insurance companies are also entitled to stipulate these terms before providing insurance Veryy Good site Thank You…
Government seizing Handguns, Fingerprints (biometric Passports & IDs) DNA, Remote cameras at traffic lights, Drugs & Alcohol Testing at work, etc…!
The “progress” of the state is less now devoted to regulating all life, than to obtaining the powers necessary for entirely arbitrary prosecution and punishment. Things won’t be perfect until not only is everything you do illegal, but it is practically possible to punish you for anything you do, if suits the authorities to do so tHANKS..