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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Moral Hazards The great American satirist P.J. O’Rourke uses his usual combination of deadly-sharp wit and smart understanding of economics to launch a salvo at government regulations in his article How to Stuff a Wild Enron. In this case, he argues that the collapse of U.S. energy titan Enron, far from proving that we need more regulations, proved that regulations can make such catastrophic problems more likely and more dangerous.
Here is a killer paragraph: Regulation creates moral hazard. We don’t understand finance, but it is regulated, so we’re safe. “Regulation,” Jerry Taylor (a friend) says, “dulls the sense that you would take into an unregulated situation. If you hear screaming in the middle of the night, you assume it’s hot sex, not murder.”
The line about sex is brilliant. If only all discussions about market economics and the perils of big government were so racy.
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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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