http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspective. We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. en-us Fri, 03 Feb 2012 18:26:28 +0000 http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_vigilante_mo.html An interesting take on vigilante films, such as Death Wish and for that matter, Dirty Harry: "But film critics are such inveterate moralists, directing their principled scorn on every deviation from strict correctness and crossing with the light, right? Not in any world we’ve seen. Something in the vigilante film seems to foment a strident exception to typically (and reasonably) agnostic views toward violence in the review community. There’s a limitless history of criminal anti-heroes,... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/samizdata_quote_955.html "How fashionable to wear clothes that are distressed. The young on the Westside of Los Angeles dress themselves in jeans worn, sanded, and razored to resemble something a six-month castaway might crawl ashore in. Why? They are trying to purchase a charade of victimisation, as the ethos of the Liberal West holds that these victims are the only ones of worth. but how to go about it? For the jeans can cost over one thousand... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/on_neoliberalis.html "And as to neoliberalism laid bare. Yes, the industrial revolution is the only way we humans have found of improving the living standards of the average guy in the street. I, as a liberal (even if neo) would like the living standards of the average guy to increase. Thus I support the industrial revolution. Yes, in all its mess and clamour: for it is making things better. I’m out and I’m proud. As a neoliberal... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/reasons_to_be_c_1.html Talking to a business contact of mine earlier today, the subject of the Levenson enquiry concerning the alleged hacking of persons' phones by journalists/others came up. One thing that was mentioned was that the corruption of certain police officers, and possibly other officials with access to important data, highlights the dangers of aggregating large amounts of important data into a few places, since the temptation to abuse this for financial gain - by selling some... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/off_to_the_fren.html I am in Paris, staying with occasional Samizdatista Antoine Clarke. Photoed out of the Eurostar on the way, the M25 bridge over the Thames: When I got there and after I'd settled in, we went out for supper and then went walking for a while. Arc de Triomphe: Old internal customs duties office, which ceased functioning in 1943: Antoine on Twitter this morning: Ice cold in Paris … And those nice straight boulevards make wonderful... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/how_libertarian.html Madsen Pirie's latest video is about mass production, but I want to talk about mass distribution. The first of his series, released just over a week ago, has, according to YouTube, been viewed 9,493 times. That seems quite encouraging, especially when you look at the viewing figures of some of Britain's public-service television. According to The Telegraph last year: "S4C, which gets more than £100m of subsidy from taxpayers, officially attracted zero viewers on... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/happy_faces.html "If “happy” means that you have satisfied your desires, then the claim that people seek only happiness is no more than the triviality that people want what they want. On the other hand, if “happy” refers to some particular state of mind, such as the apparent contentment of the Dali Lama, then we obviously do not seek only happiness. No one believes that a Rolex watch will put him in the mental state of the... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/02/keynesians_on_a_1.html I have lost count of the number of opinion pieces written by finance commentators and journalists who complain that the austerity programmes of Europe are doomed to fail, because they cause perpetual economic contraction, resulting in shrinking government revenues, curtailing the ability to pay down debt - which was why the austerity programmes were embarked upon in the first place. And this will go hand-in-hand with a widespread, precipitous and neverending decline in living standards,... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/agw_skepticism.html Rand Simberg is not a happy man: "....here’s the problem with the comparison between creationism and climate skepticism. Evolution is a scientific theory. It is the one that best fits all of the available evidence. There is also a creationist theory that fits all the evidence: God did it, complete with evidence that evolution occurred. The problem with the latter theory is that, while it might be true, in some sense, it is not scientific,... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/foiled_by_the_i.html While driving up Israeli Highway 90 along the west bank of the river Jordan from the Dead Sea to Galilee last Friday, I passed the turnoff to the actual site on the river Jordan where St John the Baptist baptised Christ. I really couldn't miss the place where the Holy Spirit descended on Christ in the form of a dove and God said he was pleased with his son, so I turned down the road,... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/immigration_iss.html As regular readers here know, immigration is an issue that even people who are libertarians with a strong hostility to state barriers to movement disagree about. The nub of the issue can be expressed thus: immigration+welfare state+weak indigenous culture = social discord. Or: immigration+free market capitalism+strong sense of civil society = strong, dynamic country. Over at the CATO think tank in Washington DC, a number of writers, such as Bryan Caplan, Daniel Griswold, Richard K... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/a_little_game.html The above picture is of the Church of Jesus Christ the Adolescent, which is found on the top of a hill in Nazareth in Israel. It presumably gets its name from the fact that Jesus Christ did apparently spend his teenage years in Nazareth. I post the picture merely because everyone I have shown the picture to so far has laughed at the name. Thinking about it more, though, asking people to complete the... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/samizdata_quote_954.html Hartnett wants the citizenry to stop giving cash to their cleaners, gardeners, and to small tradesmen and other potential tax cheats and economic criminals so that they can no longer avoid paying taxes. Hartnett’s vision of Britain is a society of snoops and denunciators. “Households have a duty to ensure that other people do not evade paying their share of tax. The people who are worried about it should use our whistle-blowing line to tell... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/bankers_pay.html "Nationalising RBS was a monumental error; no bank must ever bailed out again. Resolution and bail-in procedures to properly wind-down even the largest institution must be ready for use the next time there is a crisis. The government’s takeover of part of the banking industry in 2008 – combined with a stagnant economy and a flawed narrative about the real causes of the crisis – has triggered a cultural shift that will turn out to... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2012/01/madsen_piries_s.html I really liked that first Madsen Pirie short economics video, about the subjectivity of value, flagged up here. Now number 2 has emerged, on the closely related topic of price control. I happened upon this second video here, which would suggest that these things are getting around and being noticed. They should. The short video lecture is the perfect medium for Madsen. Many is the time that I have had a short lecture on this...