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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Samizdata quote of the day We are contemplating sanctions for misbehaviour in the healthcare and banking sectors; why not in the energy policy sector?
– Professor Michael J. Kelly, “Prince Philip Professor of Technology”, University of Cambridge, in a letter to the Times yesterday, putting Britain’s energy decision-makers right down where they belong, alongside central bankers, bankers, NHS malpractitioners, etc.. The Times is behind a pay wall, but Bishop Hill picked up on this, and has the whole (quite short) letter.
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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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Rolling blackouts will lead to…
a) …greenery no longer politically possible due to all the riots and protests; sensible politicians at last.
b) …everyone blaming it on immigrants who are using all our British electricity.
c) …acceptance, as it becomes socially unacceptable to use more than one’s fair share of electricity in the name of sustainability.
???
Why fiddle about with half measures? Sanctions should be applied in every department across the board. Education comes to mind first, closely followed by commerce, and in our case Homeland Security. At the least the option of discontinuing the entire department should be kept open.
Once there was this old fashioned thing called “the rule of law” which included such things as punishment should only follow an actual crime – a violation of other persons or their possessions.
Now a “crime” seems to be anything – even taking “risks” in banking, or general “misbehaviour”.
Prof Pigou back in early 1900s Cambridge suggested that people who cut taxes should be sent to prison (the description of Pigou as a free market person in Keynes’ “General Theory” is an in-joke).
So why not prison for climate change “denyers”?
After all Thomas Hobbes “proved” long ago (against his straw man “student of the common laws of England”) that “law” is just the arbitrary will of the ruler or rulers – so if they want you to put you in prison for having blue eyes or for any other reason, that is O.K. then.
Professor Kelly is just carrying on an old Cambridge tradition of totalitarianism (no limits on state power – the state being “total” in the words of the life long socialist Mussolini) – Kim Philby and the others would be proud of him.
Of course there is another tradition associated with Cambridge – but who reads such people as Ralph Cudworth any more?
You people seem to be giving off large whiffs of disapproval. I don’t see why, as long as I get to decide what’s “misbehaviour.”
There’s one other little problem, by the way. “Sanctioning” means either (roughly) “prohibiting; punishing,” or “allowing” with overtones of “blessing.” I also expect to be the one to decide which meaning to apply when. :>))
If all he wants is to ‘contemplate’, then no harm has been done, surely?
Soon, the term ‘troll’ might have this meaning- one who believes in The Rule Of Law (T.R.O.L.). We’ll be seen as old-fashioned throwbacks to a simpler age of limited government. Maybe the government will give us our own reservation! Won’t that be nice?
Rob, consider
d)People resorting to inefficient ways to use electricity during the blackouts such as generators and battery storage.