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 I think the United States is the greatest country that’s ever existed on earth. And I think that it is difficult to argue on objective grounds that it is not. I think the facts really point in that direction. It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been. I think it would be a mistake to say the United States is perfect; it certainly is not. But when historians look at these things on balance and measure the good with the bad – and I think if you do that on a rational basis and make a fair assessment – I think it’s hard to say that there is anything better. I wasn’t born in America – but I got here as fast as I could.
– Elon Musk during an interview for “From Paypal to Outerspace”, TCSDaily, 2008-06-16
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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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What about Victorian England? Free trade, industrialization, a degree of peace and order in some traditionally war-torn parts of the globe.
As a proud American, I agree. But we could never have done it without the profound cultural and philosophical heritage from our origin as part of the British kingdom.
I think the United States is the greatest country that’s ever existed on earth.
Even assuming that to be true, it’s a bit like the most beautiful sow that ever graced the farm, qué no?
Run along there, Ashley. With elitist attitudes like that, you would be a welcome addition to the Labour or Democrat parties.
It is clear from your brief statement that you have no concept of the degree of cooperation and the underpinning of shared values required to keep your dainty little self in tampons.
The US is no different than anyplace else on earth, indeed, the people are a cross section of every place else on earth.
We are, however, the fortunate heirs of a profoundly revolutionary system of thought regarding the appropriate structure of social and political organization, crystalized in that extraordinary foundational document of our culture—the Constitution.
As a people, we are subject to all the faults and failings that flesh is heir to. We have been prevented from engaging in some of the more egregious mistakes that so many other systems have fallen into because the main threat to human life and happiness, the predations of an out of control state which can coerce and kill its own subjects at will, have been somewhat controlled by the strictures built into the “law of the land”.
Indeed, one can make the argument that every significant step of progress that we have made as a society was in pursuit of further fulfilling the promise of the Constitution in protecting and dignifying the rights of each individual citizen, and, conversely, that every mistep and regression has been an incidence of failing in that project.
We have had many arguments in this space about the successes and failures of the various governments and societies we inhabit. I have been, perhaps, somewhat more optimistic than some others in my assessments of the current situation, and the possibilities for continued expansion and realization of individual rights and liberties in the future.
I do not base this on any pollyannish belief that Americans are somehow better than other people, or that we are immune from the pitfalls that have literally consumed so many millions of our fellow human beings around the world, especially in the calamitous 20th century.
It is an idea, or set of ideas, that protects and elevates us, enabling a compilation of scrufty cast-offs and renegades from every corner of the earth to construct the wealthiest and most powerful social entity the human race has ever seen.
Each of us, as we squalled our first cries upon entering this veil of tears, was given a pearl of great price—we were awarded the status of citizen of a polity unlike any before, with rights and liberties protected and guaranteed as a birthright.
This is a great and noble experiment, as Lincoln said, demanding that each of us take seriously our duty to ensure that a government of, by, and for the people does not perish from the earth.
I am a middle class working man from a family of farmers and small shop keepers, and yet, I can speak and write, read and believe, and raise my shildren as I see fit. Is it perfect? No. It is life on the real earth, with real people, full of all the failings and mistakes, fallacies and foolishness that men and women have, and will always have.
We do not live in Utopia. We live, as human beings, in all our glory and ignominy, in the US.
Behind the great shield which says one simple thing, one glorious thing—that we own our lives, and are free to live them.
Happy belated fourth of July. Long may she wave.
Looking at the legacy that the United States has had in terms of freedom, liberty, and justice, one would be hard-pressed to dispute it. All these “objective” measures used by the U.N. etc. to name the top countries to live in all disregard one important factor: how many, and what kind of people want to go there. In this regard, the U.S. wins hands down. Jingoistic? maybe, but the truth nonetheless.
Delightul thoughts, and true, but don’t we have to keep this very very quiet lest the anti-jingoistic bleating crowd get their knickers in a knot?
I think we’re OK on that score, Sam. I doubt that the “anti-jingoistic bleating crowd” spends much time reading a technology site like TCS Daily (or, for that matter, Samizdata).
there is certainly much to be admired in America. However Americans work far longer hours and live shorter lives than those in other western social democracies – I see little reason why the social democracies in Europe and beyond would want to emulate the ‘free market’ system of the US.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Our poor are fat.
Many of our harshest critics won’t leave (although free to do so).
People stream here from every corner of the globe, often risking their lives and being content to exist here as illegal aliens.
Top that anywhere else.
Yes, we owe great debt to the Vicotian era Britain. But I think we are a bit ahead on general welfare of the greater mass.
Well, hennesli, let me put it like this.
I chose to emigrate to America from the UK, and I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’d rather live in place where if I choose, I can work longer hours, for more years, with the expectation of delivering a superior level of healthcare to myself and my own family.
The problem with the much-vaunted WHO healthcare study is that it addressed the expectations for a single year. Furthermore, it uses data sourced by differing methodologies – for example, if a newborn in the US dies at any point during the delivery process, it’s a mortality – in other countries, newborn mortality isn’t recorded, etc.
On the matter of Eurpean social democracies wanting to emulate the US – this is another issue of moving targets. Let’s revisit those countries’, and America’s healthcare provisions and those actuarial tables in about 20 years’ time. I have no idea what the rankings will look like, except that they won’t be the same as they are now.
From a social point of view, I’m not convinced that working shorter hours and living longer are necessarily what many people want when they get down to the details of just what it might be like to live in abject poverty on a state pension for 20 years. I’d rather live for 10 and with luck 15 at a level of prosperity comparable to that which I enjoyed during my working years. But again, that’s a personal preference.
The USA might well be the best country which ever existed; this may or may not be true, but it is certainly a defensible premise. The danger is in then thinking that the current, 2008 version of the USA must be the best country, or at least one edition of the best country, ever to exist. The US has been going downhill for over a century; it has improved since 30 years ago, but had fallen a great deal before then. Modern America all too often does a parody of real freedom, and vainly imagines that it is somehow in keeping with the Constitution, when really it is just slightly less unfree than most other nations.
there is certainly much to be admired in America. However Americans work far longer hours and live shorter lives than those in other western social democracies
We paid for Europe’s defense for decades, so Europeans could afford to work shorter hours.
I would strike at a deeper premise. Just exactly why are people better off to be made useless earlier in their lives when they are going to live on average decades more than people did when the ideas of retirement began?
Retirement was once a way to get the senile and those who could no longer work out of the way.
As I have jokingly but in all seriousness told friends, “My retirement home is a dewar”.
I think you would find that in most cases retirement isn’t retirement. People find something else to do. In my case, when the ‘retirement’ date comes around, I will either be into a very interesting phase of my startup in Wyoming and not retire until I drop dead, or else I will still be in the UK eking out a living doing odds and ends of system design and development until I keel.
I just don’t get this ‘retirement is good’ thing.
Nobody forces anyone to work longer hours in the United States.
Anyone can work as much or as little as they want — you just have to eschew the “security” and benefits that come from working for large companies (which do insist on a longer work year), and choose self-employment, or (full-time) part-time employment.
I’ve worked for The Man, and never got more than a couple of weeks off a year. I worked for myself, and in four years I managed three overseas trips of almost a month’s duration each. I just had to accept lower income for making that choice.
As America’s most grateful adopted son, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Musk’s assessment.
America isn’t perfect. But show me Paradise, and I’ll buy the tickets. Until then, I’ll live here, thanking my lucky stars every single day for my good fortune.
Heck, after posting that, I think I’ll take my AK-47 rifle and 1911 pistol to the range for a little outing. Not too many other places in the world I could do THAT, after all.
“I think I’ll take my AK-47 rifle and 1911 pistol to the range for a little outing. Not too many other places in the world I could do THAT, after all.”
Love it.
What mad universe . . .
Great comments. Even Ashley and Hennesil are right, but watch the mortality statistics! Bod has hit the nail on the head, and while I hate to bleat jingoistically (not really), if you take out the 1 day mortalities, the US could very well have the top life expectancy even. NO OTHER COUNTRY measures births/deaths by the WHO standard, just the US.
That said, who the fuck cares? The US was set up to be “different from”, not “better than” the kingdoms of Europe. The problem with many of our wadded-panty critics is that they’ve never understood that. They are still wedded to the false idea that the US is in competition with the EU, an idea which originated wholly in the EU. And whoever said it above, yes, we are traveling down a dangerous and unattractive road as well……I could go on for hours about the problems of the US. Did you know that merely getting a haircut requires finding someone who’s had the mandatory 1,500 hours training to get a hair-cutting license? A fucking license! For cutting hair! If you want to know why your yoga lessons, or milk, or medicines, or doctor’s treatment costs so much, look at tort law and professional-group lobbies, /rant.
As I said before, please come visit. Allow plenty of time…..it’s a big place.
Yes, America is a great country. Perhaps it should be known – and maybe one day it will be – as “Great America”.
In the race of time, in the rise and fall of empires, America is the new great empire that has been for a while and will continue being – for a while – the world’s economic powerhouse and custodian of a kind of global moral compass, beneficial (in the main) to the rest of mankind. It has produced a culturally rich food – as opposed to a toxin – for all mankind.
By “in the main”, I mean – and this is not a criticism – that like all great empires, America has internal corruption, and it will have committed what looked like mistakes (e.g., the Vietnam war, the economic colonisation of the Philippines) and gross atrocities along the way. As is usual, future historians will probably be required to mitigate or expunge these negative aspects from the history books. Nobody is perfect, and imperfection dislikes being exposed as such under the hard light of scrutiny.
The race of time and empire can be described as a relay race. The baton of relatively benevolent and great empire is being or has already been passed from Great Britain to America. It used to be, as Cecil Rhodes said:
Now it can perhaps be said:
But why is America a great empire? How did it get to this state? Maybe it could only have evolved from a unique and rich primordial soup including things like, for example, colonisation, civil war, the Declaration of Independence, concepts of freedom and liberty, the influence of the Christian faith, secularism, and a democratic system and laws developed or drawn from Old England’s best.
To which empire will the baton be passed next? To the League of Nations – the UN, perhaps? Probably unlikely, since it seems the UN is becoming an irrelevance, consumed by bureaucracy, internal parochial strife, and unable to make or take tough decisions.
Perhaps to the Arab nations then, with all their massive accumulated wealth? This might be possible, but certainly they would seem to have squandered their potential with incomparable speed, and to have failed miserably to seize the opportunity to act for the betterment of all mankind. Maybe this was because they never had the chance to evolve from a rich primordial soup comparable to that which the European countries, the UK and America had, being instead focussed on maintaining generally backward and barbaric political-religious ideology.
Yes, America is great, and will probably need to remain great for some time yet – for all our sakes.
AMEEERRICA….FUCK YEAH!!!
repeat
repeat
Chorus
Whole Song
America…
America…
America, FUCK YEAH!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way yeah,
Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,
America, FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,
America, FUCK YEAH!
What you going to do when we come for you now,
it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow
FUCK YEAH!
McDonalds, FUCK YEAH!
Wal-Mart, FUCK YEAH!
The Gap, FUCK YEAH!
Baseball, FUCK YEAH!
NFL, FUCK, YEAH!
Rock and roll, FUCK YEAH!
The Internet, FUCK YEAH!
Slavery, FUCK YEAH!
FUCK YEAH!
Starbucks, FUCK YEAH!
Disney world, FUCK YEAH!
Porno, FUCK YEAH!
Valium, FUCK YEAH!
Reeboks, FUCK YEAH!
Fake Tits, FUCK YEAH!
Sushi, FUCK YEAH!
Taco Bell, FUCK YEAH!
Rodeos, FUCK YEAH!
Bed bath and beyond (Fuck yeah, Fuck yeah)
Liberty, FUCK YEAH!
White Slips, FUCK YEAH!
The Alamo, FUCK YEAH!
Band-aids, FUCK YEAH!
Las Vegas, FUCK YEAH!
Christmas, FUCK YEAH!
Immigrants, FUCK YEAH!
Popeye, FUCK YEAH!
Democrats, FUCK YEAH!
Republicans (republicans)
(fuck yeah, fuck yeah)
Sportsmanship
Books
So?
Do you really think that’s the whole story?
I don’t know if what you say is true, but for the sake of argument, let us assume that it is.
Let us begin with your first premise: that it is a vice for people to work longer hours.
[ad hominem removed]
Does it ever occur to you that people might work harder because they achieve greater wealth in doing so?
Production of wealth requires productive work, plain and simple. A lone individual who tried to deny this would not be able to survive long at all. People try to evade the consequences through collusion in giant militant mobs, but they only defer the consequences for a time.
As for your second premise, the fact of Americans having a shorter life expectancy is at best a highly uncertain vice. [ad hominem removed’, some people may not measure quality of life entirely in terms of how long life is. [ad hominem removed] as to think that man’s highest aspiration in life is merely to persist in drawing one breath after another, day after day, month after month, year after year, ad infinitum.
You clearly don’t even have the beginnings of a case against America or capitalism. Assuming that [ad hominem removed] as to think that human happiness is entirely a function of just two factors–working hours and life expectancy, you are just grasping at straws, hoping that people will just take your words at face value and not think too much.
The moral justification of America’s capitalist system is that it protects the individual–the only rational, happiness-seeking entity, from the single greatest threat to his well-being–thugs and con men who tenaciously work to disable his mind, obstruct his pursuit of happiness, enslave him, and destroy his life. So to answer your last question, the question of why other countries would want to emulate America’s free market capitalism, ask yourself: why would people want to live as traders, rather than as victims and executioners?
The answer is, because it is the only decent, humane thing to do.
n005: Editors warning.
Cut the personal slurs. They do not assist your arguments and in fact make you look bad. Ad hominem is not allowed on Samizdata. Be polite at all times.
Wasn’t it Ayn Rand who believed that Life was the greatest value? Longer life allows you more chances to enjoy other values, surely?
The USSR had a average life-span that kept getting shorter and shorter, in Gorbachov’s years. I remember right-wing commenters saying this showed the system was bad in every way. Now we see that America’s got a glass jaw! Can’t take honest criticism! If you can learn lessons from Europe, do so! Whilst we often criticise Europe, it isn’t all bad!
By “life,” Rand meant not mere physical survival, but “the life suitable for a rational being”. Whatever she may have meant by this, I am sure she would have measured quality of life in much more complex terms than simply the length of one’s life.
Sure, a longer life affords more opportunities to enjoy values, but many people suffer not from lack of opportunity but rather from ignorance of opportunity, and just won’t bother to pursue values no matter how many chances they have.
A long life and a wealthy, prosperous life are corrolaries. Thus, it is easy to understand why a socialist nation such as the USSR, when it tries to sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former, ends up with neither.
So would you have accepted the argument that Soviet citizens were living shorter, but happier, lives? Wouldn’t you have thought there was an element of ‘Heads, I win; tails, you lose’ about it?
Second to witnessing the birth of my children, was the day I became an American. Fine blog btw.
Hear hear.
And I think the original bumper sticker is “I wasn’t born in Texas but I came here as fast as I could.” (A response to the “Native Texan” car sticker.)
“So would you have accepted the argument that Soviet citizens were living shorter, but happier, lives?”
No, because they weren’t.
Back before cultural relativism sucked common sense out of people, this would have been the obvious retort.
MR, if you mean that Soviet lives weren’t happier, you are right. I was just making a point that surely long life is one of a desired number of goals, and claiming otherwise seems a bit counter-productive.
What is interesting to me about this quote is the unabashed praise of America, which seems so rare these days.
Of course Americans arent perfect, but, then again, nobody is. What we are, as a culture, is optimistic and generous, which is very much against the grain of most cultures throughout human history. Thanks, I am glad to be here, and want more of the same for millenia to come.
Um, actually, that is the exact opposite of what I said.
When I say that a long life and a happy life are corollaries, I mean that neither can be had without the other. Neither can rightly be taken outside the context of the other, and certainly neither can be had at the expense of the other. Without any prospect of a long life, a man is unhappy for want of a future to live for. Without happiness, a man lacks the self-esteem to care for his physical health, and thus does not live long.
‘Some people may not measure quality of life entirely in terms of how long life is’- For 500 Monopoly dollars, can you tell me who said that?
Can you then explain it, removing the Ad Hominem remarks?
If it is your intention to make me eat crow for my earlier vituperative rant, then you succeed.
Nobody actually said it, I merely misread hennesli’s post that way–and then reacted as I did–in a fit of sleep-deprived grouchiness. I apologize.
All the same, I’ll still jolly well stick by everything I said in my following posts.