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]

The Power of Lies

Paul Marks points out that truth is rarely allowed to get in the way of objectives.

Libertarians who study the history of thought are well aware of the power of lies.

To give one example: Generations of people accepted that the labour theory of value was universally accepted (at least in the English speaking world) because J.S. Mill, in his “Principles of Political Economy” (1848), stated that the theory of value was now settled and not disputed. Actually most economists in the Italian, French and German speaking worlds opposed the theory and two of the best known political economists in England also opposed it. These economists were Samuel Bailey and Richard Whately (the work of both men was known to J.S. Mill).

I wonder how many people in the last one and half centuries have been tricked by J.S. Mill’s ‘no one disputes’ tactic. This tactic is deployed whenever wants to pretend that no one opposes a piece of statism he happens to favour. In “Principles of Political Economy” we are told that no one disputes the need for police (in fact hotly disputed and not made compulsory for local communities till 1856), or the need for the government to be engaged in street building, water supply, drainage, rubbish collection etc (all hotly disputed at the time).

If one wishes to make something happen, pretending everyone agrees with it may be a good tactic. However, it does not work for free market reform – as it has always been too obvious that some people oppose liberty, so the lie that no one opposes it is too transparent. We have to be honest whether we like it or not – otherwise we look absurd.

How is this all relevant to the present day? → Continue reading: The Power of Lies

‘Bags of Sense’ reveals a great deal…

…about The Daily Telegraph.

In an article called Bags of Sense apparently the ‘right wing’ Telegraph’ thinks it is okay for the state to tax us 10 pence per plastic carrier bag at supermarkets because:

Taxes are generally disagreeable. But this case is different. For one thing, the charge was not introduced as a surreptitious way of raising revenue. Nor has it had unintended consequences. Whereas the increase in tobacco taxes has led to smuggling, and rising fuel duties have encouraged hauliers to fill up across the Channel, the bag levy has altered consumer behaviour precisely as envisaged.

And so the Telegraph, which on one hand claims to be at the crusading vanguard of defending our civil liberties against the state with their ‘A Free Country’ campaign, is nevertheless happy with the concept that it is perfectly okay for the state to impose “changes to consumer behaviour” provided the objective is not really to raise revenue.

Sorry, but most taxes are not ‘disagreeable’, they are actually immoral theft backed by the threat of violence and this one is no different. I do not want the state having any say whatsoever in my private ‘consumer behaviour’. Of course one must keep in mind that The Daily Telegraph is a Tory newspaper, and thus actually has nothing against vast acts of statism per se, just so long as ‘The Right People’ are in control of them.

Bags of Sense? Bags of Bullshit actually.

Britain’s favourite apologist of mass murders

I am referring to Harold Pinter, that well known playwright and signatory to the ‘Free Slobodan Milosevic’ campaign.

It seems he has avoided dying from cancer for a while, which I am sure will gladden the hearts of socialist mass murderers the length and breadth of Yugoslavia and Republica Serbska. I am sure his friends at the Tatler will be thrilled.

Vermin one and all.

All the Newspeak fit to print

Barbara Amiel delivers a damning indictment of the New York Times, pointing out:

Super-liberalism has led the Times into a lot of nonsense. The Israeli government is routinely described in its news stories as following “hardline” policies while no such negative description is given to governments such as those of Saudi Arabia or the Palestinian Authority.

Indeed, the Saudis are routinely described as “moderates” in news stories or “pro-West” allies of America – even as they fund al-Qa’eda and their official newspapers spout virulent hatred of the West.

Amiel also points out that the New York Times recent attempt to portray Henry Kissenger as opposed to the Bush strategy on Iraq was:

The new-look Henry K was so blatant a piece of deception that, on August 19, the Wall Street Journal parted with its tradition of keeping quiet about its competitor’s editorial policies and published a leader with a damning indictment of the “tendentious” claims of the New York Times, suggesting that the paper keep “its opinions on its editorial page”.

She also links to the splendid Smarter Times website, which records the NYT’s dissembling stream of half truths and outright deceptions. The whole article is well worth a read.

However for me there is a certain resonance to it all as one does not have to look as far away as New York to see the phenomena. Samizdata.net’s own Brian Micklethwait recently had to ‘Fisk’ his own article after The Times (of London) published it ‘edited’ in significant ways that changed what he was actually trying to say. That said, what the London Times’ editors did to Brian’s article pales compared to the outright deceptions masquerading as ‘objective news’ routinely printed by the New York Times.

Saddam moves in mysterious ways

There is a weird article in the Sunday Telegraph about how Abu Nidal was killed by Saddam Hussain’s security services because he refused to help train Al-Qeada fighters for terrorist strikes against the West.

Sorry but my bullshit detectors are honking extremely loudly.

Now let me nail my colours to the mast before I proceed: I want war with Saddam Hussain and his vile brood. I want Saddam Hussain dead and his supporters slaughtered in vast numbers. I want to see the laser guided hammer of God strike Baghdad and the skies filled with thermobaric fire on a biblical scale. I want passage of B-52 bombers to register on the Richter scale. I actually do think the Iraqi regime poses an unacceptable threat to me. And before anyone says ‘and by that interventionist logic, why not take out North Korea and China too?’… yes, that would be fine by me. Hell, feel free to add Saudi Arabia, Syria and maybe even Pakistan to that list. It seems to me that if we are going to turn back the tide of statism in the Western World, lets hurry up and remove the justification of ‘security considerations’ as quickly as possible (this is obviously somewhat of a caricature of my actual position, but in essence that is where I stand).

That said, is it just me or is this latest spin on the death of Abu Nidal not the most crassly obvious media plant by The Boys in Langley to justify an attack on Iraq that has ever been printed in a ‘serious newspaper’?

Face it, how the hell would these ‘intelligence sources’ have the foggiest idea why Saddam’s lads killed the psychopathic Abu Nidal? Frankly it would make political sense for Saddam to publicly say “Look guys, I just blew away the odious Abu Nidal cos he was playin’ footie with those awful Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda fruit loops, so as you can see, it makes no sense whatsoever to attack me, a secular socialist in the Ba’athist tradition”.

I mean, how stupid is this?

Slacking: a sign of more than you might think

The always interesting Brendan O’Neill has written an article called Why I hate slackers. As is often the case, I see things rather differently:

As always the 1960s has a lot to answer for. The hippies of the anti-Vietnam War brigade were the original slacker generation. There were no doubt some positive elements in the opposition to the Vietnam War – there were some anti-imperialists in there, who were keen to kick interfering America in the teeth and to defend independence and democracy in Vietnam.

I am anti-imperialist because I do not think it is right to impose non-consensual force backed rule on other people at bayonet point. That is also why I am anti-communist, anti-fascist, anti-socialist, anti-statist conservative, anti-democratic (at least in the sense Brendan uses the word) and above all, anti-political. All these things are based on intermediation-by-force.

Today, such slackerdom is writ large across society. Today’s privileged youth don’t seem to believe in anything very much. Among the young, membership of political parties is breathtakingly low

The very essence of modern democratic politics is that it is okay to collectively use the state to by-pass normal contractual relationships between individuals and redistribute wealth in certain ways, which is a euphemism for forcibly stealing private property. That so few people should join political parties is a sign of the incremental de-legitimisation of this entire process. Splendid!

very few teenagers and twentysomethings, in both America and Britain, are signing up for the military; even in the private sphere, young people are staying at the parental home for longer and are putting off getting married and having children until much later in life, if not altogether.

In reality, this is just a return to the historical norm: prior to World War II, except during major wars themselves, both Britain and the USA maintained small non-conscript professional militaries. The large peacetime militaries of the cold war era were aberrations. As for living at home, this is largely a function of caring statists ‘helping’ the housing market with rent controls that are a dis-incentivization to rent out properties in the first place, planning regulations that discourage new building, high levels of taxation etc.

As for not having children, exactly what is so bad about that? Women are not baby factories and actually want more from life than just to reproduce. Having children is a choice, not an obligation.

Some might see these as positive developments – as signs that young people are not prepared to go along with the mainstream and are refusing to do what the authorities expect of them. But when such opting out seems to be driven more by insecurity and uncertainty than by a determination to do things differently, how positive is that? So to slackers everywhere: get a life. And a job. And a home of your own. And some conviction. And…

The world is an insecure place and if people are acting accordingly, that suggests to me an outbreak of realism. The statist world view of the left and right within which Brendan seems to be operating is the meta-context of stasis, in which the certainty and predictability of the collective replaces the messy dynamism and uncertainty of an increasingly apolitical world in which people are more concerned for their own interests.

By looking at ‘slackerdom’, Brendan has actually touched on one of the societal manifestations of two important opposing forces at work: as the state imposes itself (i.e. intermediates politics) into private life in ever more pervasive ways, non-state based apolitical spontaneous network effects are pulling hard in the opposite direction by allowing people to manage information in ways previously only available to the top of the pyramid.

There are very good reasons more and more people are not dutifully tramping down the treadmill of life in the manner those whose views rely on planning want them to. Slackers have conviction, Brendan: they have the conviction that what they want as individuals actually matters regardless of what other people think they should do.

Britain’s secret war

Is Britain revolting? According to this report in the Straits Times the British are as MAD as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.

“This week, anonymous letters were sent to national newspapers by an organisation calling itself Motorists Against Detection (Mad), claiming responsibility for the acts of vandalism against the cameras.

The growing number of attacks on cameras in recent weeks signalled the start of a British-wide assault on the devices, Mad warned.

Although thousands of cameras have been damaged, police have not received a single message from any passing driver reporting a vandalism. As a result, no one so far has been caught damaging a camera.

Strangely, though, not so much as a word about this in the British press. So what’s the score? Was it simply a slow-news day in Singapore, so time for a bit of journalistic licence? Or is it being kept quiet here for fear that publicity will only fuel further civil disobediance?

Followers of Fisk

Fear and self-loathing in Johannesburg.

This deeply concerned man was going about his usual business of saving the poor and oppressed of the Earth when one them mugged him. His response?

“He had not laid a charge because he believed the muggers were the very people who needed to be helped by the summit”.

Ah, the good old days…

On this day in 1814, following the defeat of US Army and Marines defending the capital at Bladensburg, the British military occupied Washington DC, burning most major government buildings.

Perhaps it is time for a really realistic historical re-enactment, starting with 1111 Constitution Avenue, with US taxpayers wearing the Red Coats this time…

Physician heal thyself

A useful pointer for those of you determined to stem the spread of Tranzi ideology: it seems to rush in to fill a vacuum. The vacuum in question here is the British medical establishment in the form of The Lancet, its leading publication.

According to the Sawbones Union, what the world needs is a global body to direct economic development. Thus proving that just because someone is a doctor doesn’t mean they’ve actually got any brains.

The article includes this thigh-slappingly hilarious assertion:

“It says there is no consensus on the best policies for development, as there has been no scientific analysis of what works and what does not.”

Hmm, I diagnose an advanced case of Economic Illiteracy. I recommend that they be locked in a room with Paul Marks three times a day before meals. If symptoms persist, then I’m afraid that the condition is probably terminal.

The self-evident truth

Jeff Jacoby has a superb article on Jewish World Review about a woman’s right to defend herself:

But what if some of those women did want to protect themselves with guns? If they walked into a police station and applied for a license to carry a firearm for their personal protection, would they get one?

“They would not,” says Mariellen Burns, the Boston police spokeswoman.

What if they lived in the North End and two of their friends had been raped and they were terrified that they might be next?

Tough luck, says Burns. “Living in a high crime area is just not enough of a reason to get an unrestricted license to carry.”

Now, it is not news that Boston and Brookline — and Massachusetts generally — are frequently out of step with most of America. But it ought to be news when public officials increase the risk to life and limb of the people they are sworn to serve. And make no mistake: Those who prevent law-abiding women from arming themselves with guns make it easier for rapists and other predators to attack them with impunity.

Read the whole article as it is terrific stuff. But the fact is, it is not news that “public officials increase the risk to life and limb of the people they are sworn to serve”, it is actually the norm – for it to be otherwise, now that would be (good) news.

The state will nearly always try to place whatever its functionaries perceived to be its own narrow institutional interests before those of its subjects. The very nature of modern governance is about management, which is usually interpreted to mean control, and keeping weapons out of the hands of private individuals is pretty much the perfect manifestation of the desire to have the ability to easily impose management decisions on people who might not see that decision as being in their interests.

Yet the reality is that what makes management decisions by the state different from management decisions by a company or individual is that the state backs its decisions with the threat of force and does not think twice about intermediating itself into a person’s life without consent. The fact that very real threats to your personal safety are trumped by the state’s desire to maintain exclusive control over the means of self defence pretty much proves that the state regards its ability to impose management decisions as manifestly more important than a person’s right to life and limb, let alone private property.

In reality, the principle threat to most people in high crime areas are not so much the muggers but the state which make you easy prey for them and requires you to live in fear for its own convenience.

The state is not your friend.

Samizdata slogan of the day

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
-Thomas Paine