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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Ron Paul and his campaign workers are still out there taking on the dirty job of rebuilding the Republican Party. If you are interested in what they are up to, you can watch this speech.
I might also add that I read “The Revolution: A Manifesto” while I was on the road for a month. It was pretty much as I expected: I disagreed with him on Iraq and vehemently agreed on almost everything else. It is a very readable tome and I will go so far as to say it will be seen as a classic. It should be on the shelf of every libertarian.
The Irish have voted “No” to the EU Constitution, sorry, Treaty, in their national referendum.
It is turning out to be quite a week in politics.
This is very cool.. I reckon 007 should get Q to make him one with all those lovely “additional features”.
A story here which says that fans of computer games are not all weird. I have never quite understood this whole media fixation with games just because they are on a screen rather than face-to-face. A lot of games draw on all kinds of creative energies and are arguably far better for cognitive development than just passively watching TV. As for the arguments about various social pathologies, well, this book is an excellent corrective to the social scolds, pointing out that games involving superheroes and vanquishing monsters is actually a very healthy thing.
Coming next, research shows that people who like to play poker with their mates on a Friday night, play tennis on a Sunday afternoon, do the Times crossword, are also normal. (Sarcasm alert).
Of course, by some yardsticks of social behaviour, gamers, or other hobbyists, are “weird”, but then what counts as normal, exactly?
Personally, I think the world could use a bit more eccentricity, not less.
I do not believe, as Ministers continue to insist, that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm. What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free.
– Increasingly loveable leftie Diane Abbott MP, who was unfortunate to be trumped by David Davis’s melodramatic flourish.
David Davis, the Tory shadow Home Secretary, has resigned over the issue of detaining terror suspects for up to 42 days. He is going to resign his seat as an MP, hold a by-election, in the hope that he can win and create a storm of public rage over this issue.
It is certainly a bold move, and a commendable one. I am glad that at least some Tory MPs have got some backbone. As a former Territorial SAS member, Davis has more guts than most.
Update: I see that parts of the right-leaning press are trying to sell the narrative that Davis is a nutcase, trying to create cover for himself in the offchance that David Cameron, Tory leader, hits any future problems. Well, I guess that is possible. Make no mistake, how the Tory party reacts to Davis’ stance will tell us quite a lot about how genuine their commitment to civil liberties, to overthrowing ID cards, etc, really is. I cannot help but believe that David Davis, a very different animal from Cameron, has probably had a very major row with his centrist boss, who I confidently predict will not repeal most of the measures this present government has passed.
Now the counter terrorism bill will in all probability be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. After all, what should they be there for if not to defend Magna Carta.
But because the impetus behind this is essentially political – not security – the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act to over-rule the Lords. It has no democratic mandate to do this since 42 days was not in its manifesto.
Its legal basis is uncertain to say the least. But purely for political reasons, this government’s going to do that. And because the generic security arguments relied on will never go away – technology, development and complexity and so on, we’ll next see 56 days, 70 days, 90 days.
But in truth, 42 days is just one – perhaps the most salient example – of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.
And we will have shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world.
A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with 1000s of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.
We have witnessed an assault on jury trials – that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state. Short cuts with our justice system that make our system neither firm not fair.
And the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.
The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws that stifle legitimate debate – while those who incite violence get off scot-free.
This cannot go on, it must be stopped. And for that reason, I feel that today it’s incumbent on me to take a stand.
I will be resigning my membership of the House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden.
– David Davis MP
Quite unprecedented. An MP – and a privy counsellor – quitting in order to draw attention to loss of liberty (and he used my phrase, “the database state”. A meme whose time has come, I hope).
Update: now the official text rather than Sky’s slightly mangled transcript.
One begins to wonder if Krushchev was right in 1959 when he said “We will bury you”. We just thought he meant economically rather than socially. I am beginning to wonder how many differences between the current Russian and American governments will be left if we have a few more years of an executive branch which ignores the Constitution. According to this article in World News Daily we are now going to have a biometric database on anyone that anyone in the adminstration does not like and it will have no oversight or means of challenge whatever:
Although the directives run over 1,700 words in length, Congress is not mentioned once, nor is there any specification of how the coordinated “framework” will be disclosed to the public.
and:
The directives also do not specify any procedures for citizens to challenge their inclusion in the biometric database or any resulting consequences, such as restricted travel or additional government surveillance.
I am certainly not anti-defense minded but I would humbly suggest that no CITIZEN should have such information kept on them and if a non-citizen becomes a citizen all such information should be destroyed forthwith and severe legal penalties should exist for violations.
I fully expect this will be as effective and as competently kept a database as the no fly list, which is to say real terrorists will walk through and free and sovereign Americans will get the treatment by some jerk with a rubber glove.
I am very sorry to hear this. I could not give a damn about what his political views are. Fact is, he has been one of the acting greats. The Sting, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Harper, The Road to Perdition….that is just a few of them. And he was a pretty mean motor racing driver as well, like his old pal, Steve McQueen, who succumbed to cancer at a much younger age.
At 83, he’s already put a lot of miles on the clock, but I hope he can make a few more.
Looking for a real boost in the morning? Someday you may be able to do better than coffee. According to New Scientist (via the Foresight Institute):
Human cells could have their metabolisms upgraded without altering their genes by inserting tiny plastic packages of enzymes, Swiss researchers have shown. They hope the technique could allow advanced cancer therapies, or even upgrade a person’s metabolism.
I can hardly begin to imagine the applications. With this technique you could correct chronic genetically caused disorders. It makes drugs old hat. You could boost athletic performance from inside the cell and really give the luddite sports crowd something to worry about.
Imagine the battlefield applications! It could keep the 21st century soldier alert despite little sleep; alive when injured; fed from sunlight or other external energy sources and performance enhanced when under threat.
When people rack up massive credit card debts it is easy to blame the card companies for seducing us poor moppets into living life beyond our means. So it is perhaps a little surprising that the sort of hysteria that has done for “Big Tobacco” (what, as opposed to “little tobacco”?) has not caused a political clampdown on credit card firms. I guess the reason why they have escaped heavy controls is that because the majority of the adult population use them, it would be electoral suicide for politicians to call for them to be banned or heavily restricted.
Debt is clearly a serious problem for lots of people and the have now, buy later culture plays a part in this. A lot of people are also unaware that if you do not repay a card in full every month, the bill can swell alarmingly. A rising burden of taxation has not helped, either, which can hardly be blamed on wicked money-lenders. Strengthening the incentives to save and avoid indebtedness is a good thing. Cutting taxes on investments and savings products is a good start.
Yet the supposedly “conservative” columnist David Brooks comes out with the sort of panicky, “We are all dying of debt” item that you just can tell is a warm-up to calls for heavy government regulation. He places a lot of the blame on the likes of financial services firms, and avoids mentioning the role that central banks like the Fed and government-backed mortgage agencies like Freddie Mac might have played in fuelling heavy borrowing. And there is this paragraph that really raised my eyebrows:
Public and private programs could give the poor and middle class access to financial planners. Usury laws could be enforced and strengthened. Colleges could reduce credit card advertising on campus.
Huh? Ursury laws? Forgive me, but I was not aware that charging interest on loans was or is a civil or criminal offence, as it is in the Muslim world or was the case in the Middle Ages. And the line about restricting or even banning advertising of financial products like credit cards so that poor, gullible college kids do not buy them is patronising nonsense. After all, if Mr Brooks wants to use the government to help give people financial planning advice, it is pretty silly to prevent firms from advertising products that are legal, as credit cards are.
But then I remember that Brooks is not all that keen on the idea of the state leaving adults alone, even if that means their making mistakes, anyway. That’s just so Reaganite, dahling. Check out this article.
Blogger Timothy Sandefur has an interesting item questioning the argument that the inefficiency of using slaves rather than free labour would have gradually eroded the institution anyway, such as in the Old South of the US. He makes the point that as far as the owners of slaves are concerned, maximising wealth may not be the only reason why they keep slaves, so the inefficiency of this repulsive institution may not prove fatal to it. In other words, it would be naive for defenders of say, the Confederacy, to argue that a war was not necessary to get rid of this institution.
Sometimes, oppression does not just wither away. A loathesome institution or regime can endure for a long time. You need action, sometimes involving bullets, to remove these evils. For those of a pacific nature, this is not a comforting conclusion.
Here is an article I wrote some time back celebrating one of the great British campaigners against slavery, Thomas Clarkson, who is a lot less well known than William Wilberforce. Reading through the comment thread reminded me that a lot of people imagine that free marketeers like me claim that capitalism will inevitably weaken slavery. There is nothing inevitable about the demise of any human institution, certainly not one that satisifies the human lust for power over others.
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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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