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]
Quite a lot has already been written about the British government’s demented suggestion that security of public transport will be improved by installing airport-style security checks at 250 “strategic” railway stations (places, presumably, such as Paddington, St Pancras, Victoria and Liverpool Street in London). Bloody marvellous. A hint of the chaos this will cause, the enormous economic damage and ruination of the railway industry that will ensue, struck me this morning as I took a Tube ride from Covent Garden to Victoria on my way to work from an early meeting in the City. Victoria’s Tube station was closed due to “overcrowding on the platform”, according to a public announcement. The crush of crowds was terrible. Now, just work it out, gentle reader. Imagine in say, two or three years hence, if Gordon Brown’s daft idea takes root: massive queues at London railway stations in the evening rush-hour as people struggle to get home, huge groups of people milling around stations waiting to be passed through security. A perfect target for a terrorist, you might might think.
You might indeed think that. I bet a few of the more intelligent police and security service folk realise that. But not Gordon Brown. I am no longer convinced that Brown is particularly bright, in fact. We have long been assailed with this image of a brooding, obsessive Scot with his books and his clever ideas. Cleverness? I think his intellect should be regarded like one of those flakier tech stocks in the late 1990s – greatly over-priced and due for a rapid fall. I already sense that this process is under way. Let the selling continue.
In this weeks edition of The Economist, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, is attacked for ‘spending’ money by promising to reduce taxation in a targeted way so that people can better afford to send their children to independent schools. We are also told that “professionals and economists” (no names are given) hold that the money would be better spent on increasing the government school budget even more.
So tax reductions are ‘spending money’, as if all money belonged to the government and allowing taxpayers to keep a bit more of their own money is ‘spending’ it, and the solution to the problems of government education is to increase government spending on it even more than it has already been increased.
In recent times I have attacked the Economist for pretending to be pro free market whilst, when one reads it closely, not really being so. Articles like the one on the Australian elections mean I can no longer fairly make this charge. The Economist having now ‘come out’ as an openly leftist publication.
The other day, flicking through one of those glossy property magazines that get shoved through my letterbox, I came across this article about the Russian emigre, Leon Max, who fled the Soviet Union in the 1970s, went to the States and founded a now very successful fashion business, Max Studio. He has recently bought a beautiful stately home in Northamptonshire – Paul Marks’ stamping ground – and I sympathise with most of the sentiment behind this paragraph in the magazine, Country House: “Max admits that England’s favourable tax regime was a factor (in buying the house). He is not apologetic about this. He is an enthusiastic free marketeer and libertarian. In his own self mocking words, he says, “Considering I was brought up under Communism, I am a little to the right of Pinochet.” (There is no web link to the article).
Not sure I like the Pinochet argument – he was a torturer although no worse than most Latin American regimes and better in many ways – but I get the general idea of what Leon Max means. Frankly, if more people like him want to live in Britain, bring them on. It may partially counter a trend of emigration among smart young Britons as noted by Fraser Nelson, the journalist, in a recent article.
Perhaps Britain’s newest classical liberal think tank, Progressive Vision, should ask Leon Max for a donation.
“The stock market is pure capitalism. The stock you buy doesn’t know if you’re white or black, male or female, old or young, American or French. Prices are dictated by supply and demand and nothing else. It’s global, efficient, wildly volatile, always surprising: raw and beautiful.”
Ken Fisher investment management chief and Forbes columnist.
Today is 17th November, the day when the Velvet Revolution began 18 years ago. Since then there have been years when I did not ‘commemorate’ the event and there were years when I did. A couple of weeks ago I was visiting Eastern Europe and despite the trickle of bandwidth available where I was staying, I found myself watching old clips from the communist era on YouTube. The most surreal was not the absurdity of their content, the ridiculous gravitas of the communist propaganda but the memory of this rubbish being taken seriously and accepted as the norm.
I have written about 17th November 1989 already and what it meant to me. This year I prefer to share some images, which as usual, speak a thousand words. To those, let me add music and words of Karel Kryl whose songs used to be a constant companion in the years before the revolution. I was old enough to understand his bitter humour and lyrical cynicism. There is nothing soft or simple about Kryl’s songs, they are hard hitting, harsh and without hope.
When armies of Warsaw Pact occupied Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968 to suppress the democratization movement of Prague Spring, Karel Kryl released album BratŠ™íÄku zavírej vrátka (Close the Gate, Little Brother), full of songs describing his disgust over the occupation, life under the communist rule, and rude inhumanity and stupidity of the regime. The album was released in early 1969 and was banned and removed from shelves shortly thereafter. This work became an icon of the anti-communist movement for years to come — when he returned from exile in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, almost every little child in Czechoslovakia knew the lyrics of these songs by heart.
One of his most famous songs has been superimposed on video clips of the two historical events in Czechoslovakia – August 1968 and November 1989.
1968
1989
[Quick and dirty translation] Little brother, don’t sob, it is not a banshee
Don’t be frightened, it is only soldiers,
Who arrived in sharp-edged metal caravans
Through tears caught on eyelashes we look at each other
Come with me little brother, I fear for you
On the uneven roads, little brother, in children’s shoes
It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, have you closed the gate?
Little brother, please do not sob
Do not waste your tears
Hold back the curses and save your strength
You mustn’t blame me if we do not make it
Learn the song, it is not so hard
Lean on me, little brother, the road is rough
We will stumble forth, we cannot turn back
It rains and it is getting dark
This night will not be short
The wolf has a yen for the lamb
Little brother, do close the gate!
Please close the gate!
An article about the exploits of the Royal Anglian Regiment reminds us that the fighting in Afghanistan has been very sharp indeed: over six months the Royal Anglians suffered one hundred and forty four casualties (nine killed and one hundred and thirty five wounded), in return for one thousand Taliban killed (which according to the traditional 5:1 ratio which would probably be more accurate for the technologically unsophisticated Taliban, implies at least a further five thousand wounded).
Yet I cannot escape the feeling that the quality of the politics has gone a long way to undermining the quality of the military efforts. Why oh why are we trying to stop people in that poor country from growing the cash crop they have grown since time immemorial and thereby making enemies of people who just want to make money? And as paying people to not plant opium is a demonstrable waste of time, if the governments of the west are so keen to stop opium ending up on the streets of western cities, why not take the vast ocean of money wasted on odious subsidies to affluent western farmers in Europe and the USA, and instead just buy whatever opium the Afghan farmers can grow? At a stroke the Afghan economy is improved in the short term, distorting subsidies removed from western economies and Afghan farmers and warlords alike given a very good reason to maintain good relations with their western patrons (i.e. addict them to subsidies).
I long ago endorsed Ron Paul despite strong disagreements with his foreign policy. Now, with Iraq looking more and more like less and less of an issue for the next election, that disagreement is fading in importance.
Meanwhile my distaste for ‘security measures’ taken in the name of ‘defense of the homeland’ has reached a point of utter disgust. On the issues which matter to me there is probably not the light of day between a Clinton or a Guliani Presidency. Neither is likely to ask for congress to kill off ‘Real Id’. Neither is likely to put Presidential authority behind removal of even some of the more obnoxious sections of the un-Patriot Act or any of the other wildly misnamed acts of Congress.
Over my many years as a libertarian I have come to feel like someone alone in the wilderness. People who believe as I do simply do not get elected. I assumed that a Ron Paul run for the Republican Party slot would be the same, with the very positive upside that he would gain more publicity for the ideas of liberty and individualism than decades of efforts by thousands of dedicated libertarians.
I am beginning to wonder if I might have been wrong. I was rather pleasantly surprised to read that Ron is picking up more money and attention on the web than any other Republican hopeful. While this does not translate into as much attention off web as I would like to see, it is nonetheless a surprise. Ron is still very definitely in this race and it is beginning to look like he will still be in it come the Republican convention.
I would really look forward to that happening. I have not bothered to watch convention coverage in many years because the people running did not even vaguely represent me.
I could rub my hands with glee at Just imagining the horror in the eyes of media and politicos alike if someone were to stand on the podium at that convention and not just mouth words about Liberty and Individualism… but really mean them!
Anatole Kaletsky, writing in today’s Times (of London) has a justifiably ferocious piece about how the “loan” by the benighted British taxpayer to the stricken British mortgage firm, Northern Rock, has encouraged the latter to make all kinds of presumptions about its future behaviour.
I knew this would happen. They may wear smart suits and talk the language of capitalism, but the truth is, City financiers can be just as infantilised by the prospect of taxpayers’ largesse as any farmer or coalminer getting a subsidy. At least the coalminers did a job that was physically dangerous.
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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