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 My favorite conspiracy theory is the one that says the world is being run by a handful of ultra-rich capitalists, and that our elected governments are mere puppets. I sure hope it’s true… The only way I can get to sleep at night is by imagining a secret cabal of highly competent puppetmasters who are handling the important decisions… I know some of you will say that it’s obvious that corporate money influences the government. But that’s not enough to make me feel comfortable. I want to know there’s an actual meeting of the puppetmasters every Thursday at 3 pm…
– Scott Adams via Frank McGahon who got to it via Hit and Run
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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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Now that’s funny … and sure to drive Leftists crazy with cries of, “See! That’s what all Wingnuts want! I knew it all along!!!”
Ahem, the meetings are actually on Tuesdays at 10 am.
Followed by a good lunch…
Oops! let the cat out of the bag there…
The complete lack-of-evidence is for some the perfect proof that the conspiracy is working.
It’s obvious to me that our elected governments aren’t being controlled by a secretive cabal of uktra-rich capitalist illuminati.
If this were to be the case you’d see government actually working properly.
Spot on Brian! I reserve my most extreme contempt for those who ascribe to conspiracy what could be explained by incompetence. (Paraphrasing Napoleon). Some so-called academics in Africa are particularly adept at propagating fantastic conspiracy theories. I wonder how to get an invite for the next lunch.
Leave your name and address,
and Lord Levy will contact you.
The password is-
I love you coocachoo
OT:
What the Fu@# is wrong with your country:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2295384,00.html
Banning drinking while standing? Stupidest shit I’ve read in a while.
I quit keeping the black man down because there were so many meetings.
But you kept your shares in the Global Domination Trust, tho didn’t you!
The really funny “conspiracy” is the one where all of these captains of industry are supposedly colluding to make more and more money.
I’ve met a lot of these guys over the years. They hate each other (or at least distrust each other immensely). The idea that they could work so closely together for years on end is pretty hilarious.
My favourite variation is the one where the hyper-rich super-capitalists are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the world economy with bad monetary policy/inflation/debasement and kill most everyone.
Because, you know, being super-capitalist rich people, they don’t want sound currency or customers.
Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense to me either.
Scott misses the point.
We can’t be a secret cabal that he knows about. He never can keep secrets. Gee, talk about blowing our thing (Cosa Nostra).
Gotta go. Today is Thursday and it is nearly 3 pm in Philly (they have the best pizza there).
After Kwame Owino, who wrote:
I reserve much disapproval for those who ascribe to the causal laws of physics, that which could be explained by random fluctuation.
Best regards
Leave your name and address,
and Lord Levy will contact you.
The password is-
I love you coocachoo
I thought Lord Levy’s password was ka-ching!
Um Nigel, next time you stick your hand into a flame and find it has cured your warts not given you blisters, give us a bell!
Strokes impossibly white cat in Rabfeld fashion cackling madly!!!
Exist stage left.
For now… heh heh heh!
Chris, the Ka-ching was based on the coocachoo.
If your manager ends up vastly richer than you….
@RAB:
There are laws of physics, and conspiracies too; we just don’t need to believe in more than there are.
And we’re better off that way too.
Best regards
It gets especially juicy when the puppetmasters are really just puppets themselves, controlled by the aliens that run our planet and keep us fighting against each other so we won’t unify and explore the stars peacefully like on Star Trek.
Laws of conspiracy? Hmm??
1. Everything that’s daft is possible (no reelly!!)
2. There is no 2
As my Jewish uncle once said to me: “I want to know where this global jewish conspiracy is, because it’s quite apparent that they’ve left me out of my cut of the action!”
My favorite observation about conspiracy theorist is that they prefer to believe in a world micromanaged by an evil cabal than to believe in world where nobody is actually even capable of pulling off that feat. They are terrified of the idea no human or group of humans understand the workings of the world enough to control it.
Personally, I see an element of the “the gods did it” in conspiracy thinking. People imbue what are basically natural events, like recessions or high commodity prices with personality.
I nearly draw off the road laughing when I heard somebody on the local Pacifica Radio afiliate discussing the trend in many cities towards urban living. This trend is reflected in rising prices for real estate in downtown. He declared it a conspiracy by the wealthy elite to force the poor out of city centers into the suburbs so that the rich would not be inconvenienced by higher gas prices.
That is interesting, RA. We do see a lot of towns which are on the up and up passing “growth control” ordinances which generally are solely intended to raze subsidize or unsubsidized affordable housing, and motivate the ‘remodeling’ gentrification that economically exiles people who work barely above minimum wage in a local economy that has a living wage at least twice that of minimum.
At the same time, I see proposals by groups like the World Federalist Society to use the UN World Biosphere Preserve program to depopulate vast tracts of the American rural landscape, excepting the metropolises and the interstate highway network, and repopulate the new wilderness (even here in the Northeastern US) with wolves, grizzly bear, mountain lion, and buffalo, while using title to the land as a means of collateralizing the massive government debt that will be required to finance the retirement of the baby boomers in a social security system unchanged by any privatization schemes, as well as allowing a good chunk of the WBPs to collateralize UN debt and a global fiat currency.
I’ve been to WFS meetings where this is discussed, seen the maps they themselves produce, but if you dicuss these things in any venue intended to raise the alarm, to put them to a stop, the first thing that comes down are claims of “conspiracy nut!”
I hadn’t heard of the World Federalist Society before. Would they be the same as the World Federalist Movement? If so, I can’t say I am very worried about their plans actually being implemented.
I am always very wary of the term “affordable housing.” What we really should talk about is low price housing. To do this you can build small, build low quality or build far away from where people want to live. Unfortunately, “affordable housing” is usually just an excuse for government to use taxpayers’ money to subsidize housing.
Global conspiracies: the ultimate in government central planning.
The last time a group of super rich people tried to get exercise political power was (as far as I know) in 2004 when a lot of super rich people tried (in cooperation and by individual effort) to get John Kerry elected President of the United States.
Most people would have assumed that the super rich would have supported George Bush – but it did not prove to be so.
Certainly they lost – but it was only about 51% to 49%.
Back in 1972 George McGovern (a man of similar political opinions to John Kerry) went down 60% to 40% to Richard Nixon.
It was a similar situation to, a war that was no longer popular (at that time Vietnam), and a President who had been elected as a free market man but had not proved to be much of a free market man in office.
So I think that money can make a difference in politics – just not always enough of a difference to win.
It must be remembered that the super rich (including the Kerry family – thanks to his wife) are not really hit by such things as income tax (check up what percentage of their income the Kerry family actually paid in income tax) and so do not tend to care about it.
It is a bit like the mainline Churches – their wealth is not hit by taxes. So they are great “social justice” fans.
Other people will pay taxes for all the nice help-the-poor stuff.
Of course people should care about high taxes even if they are not hit by them – but that is not the ethical position that is taught by the institutions of modern society.
WFS is no joke. They’ve got chapters in every major liberal community, particularly in college towns. Here in NH, the state WFS chapter is, of course, based in Hanover, at Dartmouth College.
Back in the 1930’s Ronald Reagan supported world federation.
It was partly reading works like Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” (it is often forgotten that Reagan was the last serious reader to be President – his copies of various works by Hayek and others show signs of extensive use) that changed Reagan’s politics – but also the fact (often denied today) that many of the left of centre political organizations of the 1940’s really were under the influence of communists (sorry but the “paranoid Red baitors” were largely correct).
As a noncommunist leftist Reagan found himself betrayed by his fellow noncommunist leftists – they would not help fight the communists. So he started to look for people who would help.
As for the idea of World Federation it goes back a very long way.
The modern version (democratic federation with various welfare services) goes back to Kant (this time Rand is correct).
President Wilson (after whom Ronald Wilson Reagan was named by his Democrat father) was the first President (as far as I know) to support this vision.
Of course (in private) Wilson went a lot further than Kant in his statism.
See both the friendly words that Wilson had for socialism in his days as an academic – and also the novel “Philip Dru: Administrator” written by Wilson’s assistant and “other self” E.M. House.
World government with extensive government control of society.
Of course even a world federation without a statist mission would tend to end up statist.
People in charge of governments want to achieve things – and to achieve things they need “wider powers” (besides such people tend to like power).
The major check on statism is that people and money can move to other areas – with a world government this would not be practical.
The point of making government as local as possible is not that there is anything good about local government (actually local government tends to be at least as corrupt and incompetant as central government – this “closer to the people” stuff is a lot of bilge).
The point of making govenment as local as possible is to keep down tax levels and regulations.
“I do not like your local sales tax, I am shopping in the next town”. The higher the tax the more revenue is lost.
“I do not like your ban on casinos, I am going to the one over the county line”. The more regulations on business the more business enterprises move to the next town.