Have you ever had trouble explaining to someone why libertarians are neither a funny sub-species of conservatives nor an odd sort of neo-liberal? People are so stuck in the Left/Right paradigm you can hardly get through to them about a different direction, one that is not left or right but.... up. [Apologies to Flatland!]

I have tried pointing out issues on which any libertarian will disagree with a conservative; and then of like issues on the other side. I have tried showing my "World's Smallest Political Quiz" card with the Nolan chart on it. That helps a little, but you still rarely see the light of real understanding.

A week ago, in conversation with a very liberal friend in New York, I found a parable that rewarded me with a look of sudden comprehension. I again tried it with someone on the airplane back to Belfast and was similarly rewarded. It was a parable-ized form of something which happened to me about twenty years ago in the Skibo Hall student union building at CMU:

If you put a Democrat, a Republican, and a Libertarian alone in a room together, the Republican and Democrat will eventually team up against the Libertarian. This is because both of them believe the power of government could be used for enormous good... if only they were the one controlling it.

The libertarian wants to destroy the machine.

I think this makes it clear why, in the end, both Democrats and Republicans are our 'enemies'. They like the machine, they believe in the machine... and they both will defend it to the death. Make no mistake: if we become powerful enough to be a real political threat, they will both turn on us.

In all the acres of commentary in the press and elsewhere on those cartoons (death toll at time of writing, five, which is getting beyond a joke), I have not seen anyone mention this point, so I will get it in before I get bored of the whole affair.

There are two distinct reasons given in hadith why an image of Muhammad might be forbidden.

First, there is a general ban on images of living things as an attempt to rival God's creative power. That can not be what is at issue here, since it is generally ignored outside mosques, even in Saudi Arabia (though the Taliban appear to have gone more or less the whole hog, to use about the least appropriate possible metaphor).

Second, reinforced by the prophet's deathbed injunction not to set up a shrine or mosque over his grave, there's the idea that religious worship through icons of saints, in the manner of the christian churches familiar to the early Muslims, constitutes an idolatry, or worship of the saint rather than God directly. So images of the prophet are banned in Islam because they may be revered idolatrously.

So the objection to the cartoons cannot really be founded in the Islamic image-ban. They are clearly neither idolatry nor invitations to it. On the contrary, the insistance that a mocking representation amounts to a gross insult to the prophet is much more like idolatry in that sense: a demand that the man be revered as incapable of representation as God.

Is what is really happening that the 'insult' is actually felt by individual Muslims (either at first hand, or in reaction to hearsay)? Those who feel themselves outraged are themselves threatened by the mockery, but wrap themselves in religiosity as a defence. In effect they are setting themselves up in the prophet's shoes, attributing to him either primitive notions of honour that his disavowal of a shrine rather suggests he had surpassed, or God-like equivalence with the religion itself.

Now, remind me, who was insulting Islam?

So if the United Kingdom is in the grip of a "Blairite Tyranny", what is the proper response?

After all, few would question the ethics of assassinating Adolf Hitler. The main complaint about the attempt on Hitler's life is that it took as long as it did to be set in motion.

Even today, the 'Third World' is full of dodgy dictators whose death by tyrannicide would not be condemned by many, least of all their own victims.

However, few would actually argue that Tony Blair's conduct of government, while authoritarian in operation and intention, merits his actual death by murder. If merit is involved, in my opinion, Blair deserves a sound thrashing from the Headmaster's office, and ostracism by civilised members of society, and in any case, violence should always be a last resort in political life as in everything else.

But this begs the question: at what point does a ruler's conduct become so vile and repulsive that tyrannicide becomes a morally plausible response? Does the democratic process increase the threshold, or lower it? Tyrannicides were applauded in ancient Greece; should we applaud them in this era?

[Editors note: please read this article carefully before commenting. It is NOT suggesting or even discussing whether or not Tony Blair should be assassinated, but rather is a discussion of how to deal with lesser variety tyrants. Comments suggesting Blair et al should be done in will be deleted as both unhelpful and seditious]

There seems to be a lot of it about at the moment, as the late British comic writer and broadcaster Spike Milligan might have put it. "It" being atheism. The biologist Richard Dawkins, known in some quarters as "Darwin's Rottweiler", takes aim at religion in a current television series on Britain's Channel 4 station. And only a few weeks ago I watched a programme on BBC 2 with Jonathan Miller, praising the tradition of skepticsm and outright atheism.

What is going on? We live at a time when our post-Enlightenment civilisation is threatened by religious fundamentalism in the guise of radical Islam. It seemed for a while after 9/11 to be bad form to make harsh attacks on religion per se but now it appears some restraints are coming off.

Of course this may only apply to Britain. In the United States, notwithstanding the theoretical separation of religion and state, it is, as Salman Rushdie has said, all but impossible for any declared atheist to hold down a public office more senior than that of a dog-catcher. This may of course change in time. Such things sometimes move in cycles.

As the report stage of the Identity Cards Bill approaches in the Lords, a reminder of one highlight from the first day of the committee stage Hansard, 15 Nov 2005, Col.1012:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl's father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

"I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?".

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

This is the sort of rhetoric that makes my blood run cold. Here's a prefiguring example:

In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence
- Benito Mussolini

Terry Eagleton (from a review of Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism in the New Statesman) elucidates the connection:

Conservatives disdain the popular masses, while fascists mobilise and manipulate them. Some conservatives believe in ideas, but fascists have a marked preference for myths. If they think at all, they think through their blood, not their brain. Fascists regard themselves as a youthful, revolutionary avant-garde out to erase the botched past and create an unimaginably new future.

All supporters of the old-fashioned conception of individual liberty, whether they think of themselves as left or right, conservative or progressive, must do what can be done. Resist. We should not expect any quarter for outdated ideas under a new kind of freedom.

[cross-posted from White Rose]

"If you're determined to be altruistic about it, the only way you can be of any good to others is for you to be self-sufficient. The biggest burdens in a crisis are those who were so concerned about the welfare of everyone else that they never provided for themselves."

Harry Browne, How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation, pp. 199-200, Arlington House Publishers, Westport, Connecticut. I also recommend this classic by Browne.

The great irony is that the most fundamental right to individual sovereignty—private property—is the one most highly questioned. Property rights are usually construed narrowly to cover only things that can be exchanged, given away, or abandoned. But since a property right is the right to use and dispose of something, it actually has a far broader meaning. One begins with a right to one’s own person, including one’s body and energies. Indeed, this is that basic right that gives rise to the right to appropriate unowned objects from nature and to exchange peacefully acquired property with willing traders. In fact, without property rights there are no no rights at all.

From the Independent Institute.

Mick Hume has me worried, not for the first time. If I want to be gently scared, much rather a challenging column than a horror film (generally much less alarming than, and approximately as soporific as, the Shopping Channel).

He is describing Spiked!'s political position:-

We stand on the left as it was originally named, after those who stood on that side of the National Assembly during the French Revolution to champion reason, science, liberty and the secular values of the Enlightenment. We don't want to return to the past, but to see those gains of humanity defended and developed in the changing context of the twenty-first century.

Well that certainly sounds attractive. Except for the word "left". I have been defining myself as right-wing, by default, for 30 years. Any adherence to policies promoting human freedom (from atheisim to legalising cannabis to banning torture) out the conventional Left have always seemed to me adventitious, adopted only as markers of difference from reactionary traditionalists, not springing from principle. The basic principle, of subordinating individual lives to wiser-than-thou ruling class—and catering to the velleity of the mob—was always repulsive. Better identify, then, with the limited, pessimistic, ambition of the Right and find both a space to live and scope for pragmatic arguments for liberty.

The truth is, of course, the Left-Right division never made sense. It ought to be politics for the simple-minded, who can think only in one dimension. But everywhere serious, bright people are mentally enslaved by it.

My guess is Mr Hume has had a mirror of my experience: he has thought of himself as opposed to repulsive "right-wing" things throughout his life, and therefore is comfortable being Left, which I could never be. An acquaintance on The Salisbury Review once described me as having gone so far right to have come out the other side and being "practically a communist"—but I don't feel it. Red flags (red ties even, Mr Bush) make me shudder.

The truth is, of course, that the rationalists on Spiked! and the rationalists on Samizdata are both too sentimental to abandon the political labels they have had imposed on them and have grown up with. A bit of explicit redefinition of those terms, which we indulge ourselves with, will not help us.

The point of politics, and therefore of political labels, is not to explain the world, but change it. Meanwhile the utterly unsentimental are doing just that, by appeal to popular sentiment, and by changing the language implicitly. They do not worry about coherence or clarity of definition, because social reality is defined in institutional power, and in the popular stories that make up "common sense". It is not what we call ourselves that matters. It is what other people call us—and whether they can be persuaded to notice us at all.

Wanted: A new banner.

Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of comment out there in dead-tree media and the electronic versions about religion and its relation vis a vis the state at the moment. (Full disclosure: I am a lapsed Anglican Christian who read a lot of David Hume, much to the annoyance of my old vicar, no doubt). There is a bracing essay in the Spectator this week about the nonsense spouted in the usual places about "moderate" Islam.

The blog Positive Liberty, which has become a group blog like this one - has an excellent piece looking at the religious, or in some cases, decidely lukewarm religious, views of the U.S. Founding Fathers. These men, to varying degrees, were acutely conscious of the dangers of religious fundamentalism, having seen within their lifetimes the human price of it. As we think about the dangers posed by Islam in our own time, the insights of Madison, Adams, Jefferson et al are needed more than ever. The linked-to article is fairly long but worth sitting back and sipping on a coffee for a good read, I think.

It is in my view essential for the west's future that the benefits of separating what is God's from what is Cesear's is made as loudly and as often as possible. Muslims must be made abundantly aware of this point for if they do not, the consequences could be dire. Maybe because of the role played by the Church of England in our post-Reformation history, we don't have the tradition, as in the States, of keeping a beady eye on the blurring of the edges of temporal and spiritual. Cynics have of course argued that nationalising Christianity via the CoE has helped the cause of fuzzy agnosticism and atheism more than the complete works of the Englightenment. Well, maybe. It may have as much to do with the relative openness of British society, our ironical sense of humour (religious enthusiasm has often struck the Brits as slightly silly or unhinged, ripe for Monty Python treatment) and desire not to give offence.

I fear that sense of humour is going to be tested for the remainder of my lifetime.

I have been tipped off by Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber that he is taking issue with this post of mine. His post has the title you see above and can be found here. He writes:

The title, btw, is not meant to be a personal dig but rather a play on the title of Jerry Cohen's book (see the post). Still, I think there's a real question for you guys: granted, you think it would be wrong for the state to force you to do good, so why don't you do it anyway, unforced?

I anticipate a range of answers to that one, including that the good I'm thinking of either (a) isn't really good at all or (b) wouldn't be achieved by the means I'm suggesting. But I'm saving responses for a later post.

Bertram says that I was not entitled to assume that the protestors are strict egalitarians or that they necessarily believe that the Third World is poor because they are rich and that money transfer is the way to correct that situation. He continues, "They may, of course, believe the true claims that some Third-World poverty is attributable to the action of wealthy nations and that money transfer can be part of a solution to that problem."

I cannot resist saying that I am at least as entitled to my assumption that protestors at a protest agree with the rhetoric of the protest leaders as he is entitled to his assumption that libertarians do not do good unforced.

In his next paragraph he very neatly cites protectionist regimes such as the Common Agricultural Policy as an example of the action of wealthy nations that he correctly states I believe causes poverty. A little too neatly: if the protestors' foremost demand was the abolition of the CAP then I might head up to Edinburgh myself, but it is not. Where they do make that demand at all, it comes way down the list after a lot of actively harmful demands such as that Third World governments make their own people pay more than we do for food and fridges. (Or "Third World countries have the right to protect their farmers and infant industries" as they quaintly put it.)

Bertram then gives a quick summary of Bono's view that personal contributions are irrelevant contrasted with my view, and seems to largely agree with me. "Solent’s original post, though," he adds, "seems motivated by the thought that the protestors are in some sense hypocrites , that if they are true to their principles they should give much more than they are giving. "

Yes. It costs good money to go to Edinburgh, good money to find a place to stay, good money to buy six or so meals - especially if you are boycotting MacDonalds - and many of them will have forgone a day or two's pay as well. Very few will get home without having spent a hundred quid plus in dribs and drabs. If they think that money is needed, why not send it instead? (Or "as well", but since my original question implied "instead" I will stick with that.) If all the planned million protestors each gave £100 it would be a serious contribution. It might be less than the increase in the aid budget lobbied for but it could be targeted better and would arrive sooner. As an extra bonus, the millions of pounds due to be spent on protecting the G8 leaders against protestors would also be freed up! The protestors are acting like they think the money is not urgently needed.

Another thought playing around in my mind was the extreme indirectness of what the protestors were doing. They hope to influence one group of leaders to transfer more money to another group of leaders so that the latter will use it to do good in a way distinctly unlike their usual behaviour following previous transfers. Compare that to just giving money. How likely it is that the chain of causality that the protestors think will do good will actually break at some point. This is not the same as the argument above. There I was casting doubt on the protestors' sincerity. Here I am casting doubt on the correctness of their assumptions about the way the world works.

In the next part Bertram asks how much egalitarians should give. He says with approval that an author called Liam Murphy holds that we should calculate what our share would be in the collective project of morality if everyone did an equal share, and then feel strictly obliged to do only that, while being allowed to do more if desired.

From Bertram's summary of Murphy, I do not agree with him. Point one: to call morality a "collective project" sounds nice but it begs the question. I did not sign up to any project. Point two: the thrust of his argument seems to be "we work out what we would do in an imaginary world and then do that." Why not imagine no one went hungry? Then you will not need to do anything at all!

The next part of the post asks how much it would cost to bring everyone up to a minimum standard of living. Chris Bertram himself, I deduce from this and other things he has written, is not an egalitarian, more a nobodystarvesist. (As am I.) He argues that the required contribution is surprisingly small. But I repeat: this misses the point; people are starving. If one believes that being given government money will help, then so will being given your money.

Now we cut to the chase: "My view is that the state should enforce that duty. Instead of giving my share, with no assurance that others would do theirs, I would thereby be assured that everyone was making a contribution: a collective project of preventing serious harm would not be undermined by free-riders and curmudgeons. So I’m happy both to pay, and to try to get the state to force me and others to pay."

I respond:

1) I do not see why his preference for feeling that he is not paying more than others should be deferred to.

2) I take his objection about the "project" not being undermined by free riders much more seriously, despite my dislike of the connotations of the word project. I assert that the reduction in generosity caused by the resentment of free riders (that term is being misused by my lights: he means "persons not choosing to contribute as much as you") is far less than the reduction in generosity caused by everyone assuming that the government will see to it. This assumption also decreases the initiative, status and ultimately the wealth of the recipients. And force has high transaction costs.

Bertram finishes by saying, "... that doesn’t mean that others can’t raise questions about what she does choose to do, including, of course (and again), her own question: “Why is what you are doing better than just giving your spare money to the poor?”

Let us take my glowing description of the virtue of trade as a means of making poor people rich as already having been made. In fact, though, I do not agree with some of my more committed libertarian brethren in seeing no benefit in giving rather than trading. From what he has said Chris Bertram's actual behaviour and mine are approximately similar. I claim that the mismatch between words and actions in my case is slightly less than it is in his case and far less than in the case of those heading to the mutual admiration festival in Edinburgh. [Added later: On reflection, there is no mismatch between Bertram's words and actions, assuming he follows Murphy in both word and deed. I should have talked about the mismatch between ends and means.]

There is another contradiction as well. The reason for having a protest is that protestors do not think the government leaders are doing the right thing. In other words they think their judgement as to the best way to spend money is better than the judgement of their leaders. But if they think that, why are they keen to hand over more money to those same leaders to disburse rather than disbursing it themselves?

In Milton and Rose Friedman's Free to Choose it says:

Of course, an egalitarian may protest that he is but a drop in the ocean, that he would be willing to redistribute the excess of his income over his concept of an equal income if everyone else were compelled to do the same. On one level this contention that compulsion would change matters is wrong - even if everyone else did the same, his specific contribution to the income of others would still be a drop in the ocean. His individual contribution would be just as large if he were the only contributor as if he were one of many. Indeed, it would be more valuable because he could target his contribution to go to the very worst off among those he regards as appropriate recipients.

I have a question for all the protestors planning to give up their time and money by going to Edinburgh for the G8 summit. Why is what you are doing better than just giving your spare money to the poor?

Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite...If you are flying to an international congress of anthropologists or literary critics, the reason you will probably get there - the reason you don't plummet into a ploughed field - is that a lot of Western scientifically trained engineers have got their sums right.

- Richard Dawkins, from a collection of brilliant essays, "The Devil's Chaplain", crushing all manner of shoddy thinking.

A few weeks ago parts of the libertarian intellectual scene marked what would have been Ayn Rand's 100th birthday. Among a number of articles reflecting on her life and novels was this surprisingly conservative article by Reason magazine regular Cathy Young. Young is determined to present both Rand's great virtues alongside her not-so agreeable side, particularly her intolerance of anyone, who, however constructively, criticised her.

But the article contains a number of charges about Rand and her system of ideas which I think are unfair. I want to address them not as some sort of defence of Rand - a writer who had some serious faults, in my view - but because the points Young makes can be applied to classical liberal/libertarian views more broadly.

Young claims that Rand had no time for family life of any kind and that her main characters appeared to have no enjoyable family life at all. As a result, her value system is held to be seriously deficient, in that Young claims that a viable human society requires us to feel obligations towards our fellow family members even though a person has not chosen the family he or she is in. (The same sort of argument is used by conservatives to justify loyalty to a country). This surely overlooks the point that for Rand, the relationships in life that matter are the ones people choose to enter into, not those born of historical accident. I am lucky enough to have been raised by two loving and smart parents. Very lucky, in fact. But it is obviously not so great for many other people and I have no doubt that a few of my friends and acquaintances have been drawn to libertarian ideas as a way of rebelling against the sort of unpleasant experiences that many children can have. So I certainly don't condemn Rand because her heroes and heroines did not take out time from their adventures to change the kiddies' diapers. After all, many great works of fiction contain characters with no reference to family issues at all. Young does not address it, but for Rand, and indeed many others, there can be no such thing as unconditional love. The sense of obligation I feel towards my parents cannot, in my view, be divorced from my sense of gratitude towards them. If they had been monsters, I would feel quite differently.

Another charge that Young makes is that Rand (and presumably many libertarians) had no interest in charity and therefore a society created by rational egoists would have no base of voluntary organisations able to help others in times of distress. That seems odd. As David Kelley points out in this marvellous book, "Unrugged Individualism", rational self interested people have a direct vested interest in cultivating a benevolent, friendly disposition towards their fellow humans. In fact many people become firefighters, nurses, paramedic rescuers and the like precisely because it is an important value to them to do such things. In short, charity is not in conflict with enlightened self interest at all. What counts is that the actions concerned are voluntary rather than something that is imposed by coercive force.

Such drawbacks aside, Young's piece is well worth reading. I discovered, for example, that Rand did not have much interest in evolution, which seems a bit strange for a declared atheist and enthusiast for science. I would have thought that evolution is something that fits quite snugly into a pro-reason, pro-freedom political phiolosphy, as Daniel Dennett has shown.

In one of his recent entries, Brian Micklethwait referred to that small but intruiging part of historical scholarship, the "what-if" variety, in which writers conjecture what might have happened if a particular event, such as a political assassination or piece of intelligence, had not taken place. What interested me was that one or two comments suggested that this was a pure "parlour game" of no significance and that grown-ups should not bother themselves with such playful nonsense.

Ah, play. The idea that history, philosophy or art could involve play and other frivolous activity is offensive to a certain type of person. I happen to think quite differently. Playfulness is in fact often very useful in the realm of ideas. When a good writer wants to illustrate a point or an argument, he or she can often do so highly effectively through such gambits as a "thought-experiment", or through borrowing from supposedly unrelated branches of knowledge.

A good example of this was the late libertarian author, Robert Nozick, who shamelessly borrowed from game theory, science and much else to make his arguments. He famously crushed egalitarian arguments for coercively redistributing wealth in his "Wilt Chamberlain" case by showing the injustice of taking wealth from a man who had earned it from the volutantary exchanges of people starting from a completely egalitarian starting point.

Maybe it is a product of puritanical Christianity, but our culture still revolts against the idea that ideas could, and should, be fun. I find that rather odd.

Last week I spent an evening pubbing with Samizdata reader 'Spacer' who writes for the Wall Street Journal now and again. As you can see, he was fully prepared for the Arctic conditions of the Upper West Side.

At the second pub we stumbled upon a group of his friends and next thing I was deep into a Cambridge style philosophical discussion on the existence of God. I am sure most readers know I am not the least bit religious in a fundamentalist way. I usually deflect the topic by declaring myself a "nonpracticing atheist". This unusual label typically confuses the opposition sufficiently to allow me to make good my escape.

A correct explication of my beliefs requires far more explanation and odd looks than I typically care for when my pub intent is to be chillin'. In truth I am more agnostic than atheist. I do not believe I can prove one way or the other that there is a higher being. In and of itself that is not an unusual belief set. The difficulty comes when I attempt description of the God of whose existence I am unsure.

I do not believe in the supernatural God of scripture; nor in a God of the First Cause. No God created itself and the initial Universe, but the Universe may quite possibly have created a God or God's, any one of which would be utterly indistinguishable from the all powerful God of earthly religions.

You may ask yourself, "What the hell is he talking about?".

So I will tell you.

We can describe different levels of Godness:

• An entity with a command of all which physical law allows but which exists in a localized region of space and time.

• An entity which in addition is able to control space and time.

• An entity which exists at the end of space and time and can operate on any point in that continuum.
  

There are a number of paths by which entities may reach a state which we would call God.

• God of the Simulation. If, as David Deutsch suggests in some of his writings, there is one reality (a multiverse) and untold numbers of simulated realities, then the initiator of a simulation is an all powerful God, limited only by the rules and initial conditions it chooses to follow.

• God of the Universal Mind. If Strong Nanotechnology really is possible, then any technological species will eventually gain the ability to build anything physical law allows. It will take control of its own shape, its own mind, its own destiny. Sentience may become a property of matter and the adage "God is Everywhere" become literally true.

• God of the Singularity. If we gain control of space and time, it may be possible to create an entire space-time universe bubble to specification. The creators may or may not be able to ever again interact with their creation, but they have set the parameters which define its evolution. The creator of such a bubble is a Creator, but not the Self-Creator of religious texts.
  

There are a number of different origins for these entities. Some origins do not apply to some God-types:

• The entity could be 'ourselves' from a future time, or from the 'end' of time if our space-time is closed.

• The entity could be a progenitor from pre-existing space-time.

• The entity could be an alien civilization that developed past some threshold before we did.

• The entity could be some combination of any of the above, for instance, a mass mind existing at the end of time made up of all sentient species which passed the threshold for membership.
  

The type of Universe also may affect the possible types of God.

• If there is a final big crunch, then the amounts of available energy per unit time and space increase exponentially as does the ability to compute. [This is from Deutsch].

• In a Freeman Dyson open universe scenario, a civilization has exponentially less available energy per unit time and space, but adjusts by exponentially slowing down the speed of its own thoughts. It has forever to play with, so why rush?

• Entities which come to a full understanding of Space-Time may simply end-run all of this and move their thoughts to a new bubble universe.
  

All or none of these or any combination may be true. They are as beyond our ability to test as is the existence of the Biblical God.

The only thing they are not beyond is our imagination.

Reading several pages of interesting reports and discussion on the BBC's website about Somalia, I wonder:

Is Sudan a better country to live in than Somalia?
Do refugees travel between the two countries (probably via Ethiopia) and which is the better place to live?
How would Somalia score on a human rights questionnaire? Compared with say North Korea. I think of the official line from the worker's paradise about homosexual rights: "There is no homosexuality in the Republic of Korea, it is a bourgeois disease."
How obstructive are Somali warlords of international trade compared with say, the EU's regulatory of tariff restrictions on agriculture? Is it easier and cheaper for a Kenyan farmer to sell food to Somalia than to Sudan or Spain?

I also note that multiple currencies are operating in Somalia, with US dollars, private currencies and old banknotes being exchanged in markets. Are Somalis really so much more intelligent than Europeans who had to be protected from currency choice?

The BBC reporter makes the mistake of comparing Somalia today with Holland Park in London today (except that some types of crime are probably more frequent in Holland Park). He is appalled that guns are for sale and that the entry fees finance qat instead of state schools and state hospitals. I think it is much more interesting to compare Somalia today with neighbouring countries today. On the face of it anarchy seems a lot like Robert A Heinlein's depiction in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Ken Macleod's The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal. Despite my quibbles with the BBC on this issue, full marks for going to Somalia eyes wide open, if not quite minds wide open.

I am happy and relieved by the result of the US election. I thank those who campaigned, volunteered or just plain voted to keep the right man at the helm.

All the same, I take literally the statement that democracy is the least worst form of government.

Many here argue that we do not need any government at all. It is not going away any time soon, though. Most anarchists and minarchists will concede that modern liberal democracy is fertile ground compared to the despotic wasteland that makes up most of history, even if it is not yet a garden of libertarian delights.

I figured out as a child that the least wonderful aspect of a modern liberal democracy is that it lets the majority decide: the tyranny of the majority is to be feared. Votes are a mechanism to deal with the fact that some administrative variables affecting many people (speed limits, for instance, or surrenders) must be set at a predictable value for a recognisable group, or bad stuff happens.

I also figured out as a child that the good soul of a liberal democracy, the thing that has made us the most fortunate human beings in history, is the idea that every individual matters. None of us can be made to stop mattering because we look wrong or do wrong. That's why every individual has certain rights that cannot be...

...OK, OK, I had better stop myself before I re-hash the Declaration of Independence in much inferior prose. You know all this. You can probably cite references. Please do!

It is a pity it ever has to come to voting. Votes by definition make some people sad. Yet we go on and on about majorities and mandates and elections and other things to do with the regrettable majoritarian aspects of our system. We talk much less about how the only reason that counting people matters is that people count. And, as we on this blog know, it is a constant struggle to defend individual rights against the majority.

I just wondered, is the reason that we so exalt the rule of the majority over the more fundamental principle of equality before the law simply because we picked the wrong ruddy name for our system of government? Everybody knows that we don't mean by democracy what the Greeks meant by it. We don't have ostracism. We don't have slavery. These prohibitions are not mere differences of custom but integral to the system. The difference between our 'democracy' and theirs is precisely that we believe in inalienable rights and equality under the law. So whose bleedin' stupid idea was it to call our system the Greek word for "people-rule?" It was sure to give folk the wrong idea. If we had just called it isonomy instead we would all be a lot better off.

This morning I was left deep in thought after a seemingly innocuous article in Scientific American about Ebola vaccines. It sent me off into a bit of internal philosophizing. I have long intended to explicate a particular set of thoughts here but have never quite found the time. I do not have it right now either, but will nonetheless dedicate an hour to it. The day it deserves will never come.

There are three worlds. Not worlds in the sense of planets or matter but of realities. The first one is the world as it is. You may subdivide it any way you wish, but no matter what you do, there is still a here and now and all of the events unfolding as we speak. Whether we can understand or agree upon the details of the objective reality of this instant makes no particular difference to my thesis.

Second is the world of dreams. The one across the dream bridge. The one of our imaginations. The place where all Utopias exist and prosper. The place where perfection is possible and things just work themselves out according to great visions.

Third and last is the world of becoming. It is the first world of tomorrow or the day after that or the century after that. It is one which will one day be an objective reality on which philosophers will debate.

I find all too many persons live entirely within one world. There are those who are so grounded in reality of the first world they cannot envision change and are continuously surprised, shocked and caught mentally flat footed by it.

There are those who live totally in the second world. They are the ideologues, the ultra religious, the dreamers without a tie down. They firmly believe the first world can be made over to exactly fit their dream and everyone can be made to see the 'rightness' of their way.

There are some small numbers who live much in the third world, or at least attempt to do so. They believe the world as it is moves deterministically into the world of the future following a linear or at least predictable track.

I have problems with all three ways of living. The first worlders may be solidly grounded, but they just react to events. Change will overwhelm them because they are unprepared for it. If you were an Eqyptian of 2000 BC, you could afford the stability assumption. As a citizen of the 21st Century AD the luxury of stasis is unavailable to you.

Third worlders are a little bit better. They at least can deal with linear change. While subconsciously stasis-minded, at least they do understand tomorrow will be somewhat different and that difference will grow from the current instant of objective reality.

The second worlders have glorious visions about worlds which are fundamentally different from what the first or third worlders see. They envisage a new world and believe it can be brought into existence if they can just convince enough people to join them. But the purity of dreams slips away as more people join in; the edges fuzz out, the concepts drift as the rhetoric inevitably mutates in the face of inconvenient facts.

One must take all three worlds into consideration. There is a real today and we must be ready to deal with it. There will be a real tomorrow that grows out of the unique decisions, creativity, actions and beliefs of 3 billion or more human beings - not to mention the odd curveball tossed by nature. Hurricanes, great earthquakes and giant tsunami's happen regularly. Really big events happen rarely and randomly but do happen: Yellowstone Park caldera could go up tomorrow and wipe out half of the USA; an unseen asteroid could send us back to day one; the Sun could burp a small flare and sterilize half the globe...

That is where the need for the World of Dreams comes in. We do not have to accept tomorrow will flow entirely out of the way things are. If one has a goal and enough people behind it one can change the course of history. If you could compute it you might have changed the way a butterfly waggled its wings in 1850 and decided the outcome of the 2004 US election. If you have a few thousands or tens of thousands of dreamers today, you can strongly influence the objective world of 2010.

Note I say 'influence'. This is where the pure dreamer falls flat. Because they have only a weak tie with reality they will begin with belief in an exact 2010. As a few years pass and reality diverges from the dream path, they will become increasingly desperate in their attempts to force the first world back onto the path to their second world. No matter how desperate, no matter how violent or how draconian their approach, when 2010 arrives it will not match their 'solipsist' dream.

The wise man knows you can never make the world over exactly as you want. You can only foresee directions and do your best to make the outcomes better. At each moment you have to recognize where you really are and start anew. You have to accept what is all the while you are trying to change what is becoming.

Most important of all, you have to stand back and take pleasure in each real moment of time. Those moments are the only ones you truly have.

Candida Moss, writing in the Spectator, suggests that 'presumed consent' ought to apply for donating organs. On the basis that my comments my not appear in the magazine, here's what I wrote:

Presumed consent is not consent. If it were, then minors or people suffering from dementia might not enjoy the protection from sexual assault that they do at present. Sexual predators could no doubt claim "presumed consent" for their crimes.

There is a difference between medical expedience and morality. There can be no doubt that there would be enormous medical benefits from performing vivisection on human beings, instead of on animals: dosages, differences in metabolic rates etc. would be far easier to calculate.

Rightly, we abhor this and consider controvertial using the results of Nazi experiments on Jews, because it can be considered the partial condoning of horrific actions.

Is it Candida Moss's wish that the state (probably at EU level) ought to nationalize our bodies and redistribute organs according to need? At least Gordon Brown only wants my money.

I might add that the issue of designer babies giving their own consent to being used as experimental animals is another current topic. It seems pretty sick to me.

As Mayday approaches and with it the traditional harbingers of summer, such as the sight of a freshly dug paving brick in flight, with its comet's tail of dirt particles, tracing an arc towards a McDonalds plate glass window or the contents of a looted Baby Gap whirling in the breeze, blue bibs and striped sleepsuits hanging off street lights, my thoughts turn to that strange creature who has emerged from winter hibernation, the anti-globalisation "anarchist". This creature represents a conundrum: While he professes to favour anarchy, he is more likely than not to owe his current indolent lifestyle to a most un-anarchical social welfare system. How to reconcile this contradiction?

The first thing I'd like to say is that I am not anarcho-libertarian. I do understand the arguments, I just remain unpersuaded. But my intention here is not to provide a rebuttal of anarcho-libertarianism, rather to compare it with the "anarchism" more prominent in the popular imagination, that of a Mayday protester. If you take such an anarchist at his word and grant that he will be happy to forego the benefits of a redistributive welfare state once his utopia arrives, where does his purported philosophy differ from an anarcho-libertarian or anarcho-capitalist?

It occurs to me that the principal difference lies in the respective attitudes towards private property. The anarcho-capitalist respects private property, his own and others. The "anarchist" considers all property to be theft and asserts a right to expropriate such property as he needs or wants from others. As a welfare state needs a state to sustain itself, the anarchist presumably imagines that the "needy", in lieu of state handouts, simply steal what they "need" from others. Of course if you are one of those "others" you may not be so keen on this happening. As there would be no state police force, the task of defending property devolves to the individual who may contract it out to private security services. Thus the anarchy favoured by the "anarchist" turns out strikingly similar to that proposed by anarcho-capitalists. Is this really what he wants?

I suggest that what the "anarchist" really wants is short term anarchy. An afternoon or so of mayhem, "for kicks", and then a return to an un-anarchical world where the welfare state remains to inadvertently subsidise his "alternative" lifestyle.

In May I am heading off to Las Vegas, where I am speaking at FreedomFest, the year's big libertarian event. Booking tickets today, and looking at lots of pictures of casinos, I was reminded of an article the Liberty Club published a couple of years ago about gambling, money and morals. The author, Conyers Davis, writes:

As I fought my way through the throngs of gamblers in Atlantic City, I could understand why Martin Luther reiterated the phrase that the love of money is 'the root of all evil'. Never in my life have I seen people treat money in so desperate a manner. Gambling on unknown odds, hoping to exponentially increase their wealth as if by magic. It quickly became obvious that the gamblers in Atlantic City do not love or respect money, despite their obvious desire to have more of it. Indeed, they have fallen into a trap that allows it to dictate life's terms to them. These gamblers see money as the answer to all their problems, yet cannot escape the fact that it has become the bane of their existence. Surely, money represents more than this greed of the gamblers. Despite the fallacies that these people attribute to power of money, a positive alternative does exist. Money is one of the greatest physical tools that man has produced and should be openly regarded as such.

As a libertarian, I obviously believe that gambling should be legal. Is it moral? Is there perhaps a difference, morally, between gambling for fun and gambling because of an addiction? Discuss.

I lunched today with our Great Leader Perry, and one of the things he mentioned was how he doesn't care for ploughing through the collected works of the Great Philosophers (something to do with preferring simply to find out "the truth"), and prefers instead to read … and I can't remember the exact phrase he used, but the one I use in such circumstances is 'Bluffers Guide'. I share Perry's tastes in this matter. However, like him, I do want to know approximately what these people did say.

I was thus particularly pleased to encounter this posting, by Friedrich Blowhard. It is number three in a series of postings he has done about Friedrich Nietzsche. (Something tells me that there may not be many more in this series of potted guides.) But since Friedrich B starts Nietzsche posting number three with a brief summary of postings number one and two, I reckon that means we can skip postings one and two and just read three.

There is a definite air of challenge in what Friedrich B says to the likes of us, especially in these paragraphs:

But by his example in putting forward the Over-man as the 'meaning of the earth' (whether you agree with him or find this ludicrous) Nietzsche makes it clear how intellectually flaccid it is to argue for or against, say, a social policy on the basis of abstractions like 'liberty,' 'justice,' and 'fairness.' I have nothing against such concepts, but clearly they are pretty vague and toothless in the absence of an explicit goal or a stated purpose. I mean, who really thinks they are here on earth to pursue perfect liberty, perfect justice or perfect fairness as ends in themselves? Aren’t liberty, justice and fairness valuable only as means to some end? But can we really be surprised that the average American ends up living a life of ‘mindless consumerism’ when he or she can’t state a social goal more profound than ‘eliminating injustice’?

But I share Nietzsche’s skepticism about how long an era that remains agnostic about any higher or supreme goal can stave off the hunger pangs of meaning. As evidence of this, I would point to the rise of movements like sociobiology, and perhaps the aesthetic theories like those of Christopher Alexander. Although Sociobiology, for example, is too shy to come right out and admit that it nurtures such an ur-goal in its bosom, I think it is clearly implied: that we should live so as to maximize the odds that our descendants will survive and thrive. And since our biological 'nature' is the only possible basis for profound human 'meaning,' we must come to terms with it, if only in order to survive long enough to accomplish our goal.

These philosophies seem to me to the first signs of what I would term the emergence of post-nihilistic 'meaning,' but I doubt they will be the last. I look forward to seeing others arise as well. Let me announce my formula: Nihilism is dead.

Heh. Nice little joke that. But after that laugh dies away, I am left with the definite feeling that I am being got at.

My problem is that I think that the Nietzsche described by Friedrich (Blowhard), who identifies the twentieth century as the time when God died and the God gap got filled by a succession of philosophical/political catastrophes, is pretty much correct. However, I am also part of the God is Dead tendency myself. In the words of Michael Caine in The Last Valley (a movie which, it so happens, Perry and I share a taste for): "There is no God! It's a legend!" My sentiments exactly. And if you combine that with "You can't get an ought from an is!", you get that pretty much all 'meanings' you get nowadays are actually meaningless, other than the ones I make for myself.

Okay, well that's something for you all to think about. If your tastes are more in the direction of cool gadgets, Perry also allowed me to take a photograph of this.

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers
David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Ecco, 2001

"Wittgenstein's reputation among twentieth-century thinkers is ... unsurpassed. ... A poll of professional philosophers in 1998 put him fifth in a list of those who had made the most important contributions to the subject, after Aristotle, Plato, Kant and Nietzsche and ahead of Hume and Descartes (p. 231)." Yet there is nothing in this book that is comprehensible to the layman about Wittgenstein's philosophy, or even, I have to say, much of an attempt to make it so. His eminence and influence and his credibility to other philosophers we have to take on trust.

On the other hand, Popper - the antagonist to Wittgenstein's protagonist - has two well-known and accepted achievements to his credit, his book The Open Society and Its Enemies and his "falsifiability" theory on the structure of scientific hypotheses (though I have often wondered if "vulnerability" would not be a better term). But in Britain an