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Rally Against Debt I had already pencilled in the Rally Against Debt as something I would try to be at, if only because it will be taking place a mere walk away from where I live. An incoming email forwarded to me via the Cobden Centre has made this more likely. The email had this attached:
For me, those speakers are an appealing combination of the known, the known of, and the unknown.
How many others will show up, I have absolutely no idea. But, if I can do my tiny little bit to make the turnout that tiny little bit less insignificant, I think that I should. I still promise nothing, but I really will do my best to be there, and then to report back here, hopefully with some photos.
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I might make it, too; but in the afternoon, I shall be on a panel in the Barbican to discuss this:
http://www.lidf.co.uk/event/article-12/
and attempting to bridge the gap between the libertarian right and the liberal left on the topic of the surveillance state.
How about a rally against mortgage debt? How about organising a buyers’ strike? There’s little you can do about transfers of wealth to the government’s chosen few, but if young people stuck together, at least they could do something about the transfers to the hidden state – the banks, the NIMBYs and the landowners.
The whole idea of a “buyers’ strike” is pure bullshit. They chose to borrow the money; they have a moral as well as legal obligation to pay it back. You want a real “buyers’ strike”? Then try just not buying property in the first place. But if you do buy, honor your promise.
I shall be there, and have made vague attempts to organise a trip to pubs afterwards!
Debt will continue to mount because the borrowers can’t be stopped. What will stop it, eventually, is young people telling lenders that, when their generation has assumed political power, they have no intention of repaying debts they had no part in contracting for.
This thread seems to have taken a turn away from specific “debt” incurred in the name of the STATE by the political class, for political purposes.
The uses of credit in commerce of advanced (?) social orders – involving extensions of trust to impersonal transactions – is probably only a little less important than the utility of “money.”
That is pretty well established by the fact that credit (in various forms) now performs practically all the function of “money” in those same social orders.
Two of the lsted speakers are Parliamentarians, so how can it not be politically affiliated? Are they both Independents?
I will try and make it, but I am playing the ultimate capitalist oppressor game, golf, in the morning, as I will be honouring the memory of Ballesteros by chipping in to the green from a carpark.
Anyway, I hope it goes well.
Probably the best line to take is “destroy future entitlements and programes”.
Because that is the only thing which will scare “motherstatists”.
And because it HAS to be true.
On one side of the debate we have a handful of individuals like Guido Fawkes and Nigel Farage.
On the other side we have hundreds of thousands of vested interests in financial services, real estate, local government, state employees etc., whose short term interests rely on a continuation of the debt binge, hundreds of politicians interested only in buying votes, and upwards of sixty million individuals either blisfully unaware what state UK plc is in, or deep in denial.
By all means support this rally, but don’t expect much to change until the realities of national bankrupcy kick in.
Mark Wadsworth: Mortgage debt, or debt of any kind, is not necessarily an evil so long as say, there is good collateral against it, the stream of income to pay the debt down is reliable, etc. If I buy a house with a mortgage and equity, I should be confident that by the time I die, I have paid all or most of it off, and that the value of the property will deal with the rest. This is a cashflow mismatch issue: people need a house, but the expected path of their income does not mean they can immediately buy one from savings.
It is true that the price of housing in the Southeast, for example, is inflated artificially by cheap central bank credit and state restrictions on the sale of usable land. That needs to change, which is why any serious treatment of debt needs to start with an overhaul of our central banking system and NIMBY culture, as you describe it.
Another reason for inflated house prices in central London’s prime residential area, by the way, is the continued influx of money from places such as the Middle East and other places. This has a knock-on effect, which is unlikely to disappear even if free up the housing market completely.
I do not agree with Mr Wandsworth’s beliefs (he is a follower of Henry George). However, I must formally state that he did reply to my question “give me numbers for your Single Tax” and I did not think he would.
As for the housing market – both in Britain and the United States prices were pushed up to absurd levels by the monetary expansion by the Central banking system – and (in Britain and large parts of the United States) rented accomidation is made incredibly expensive also – by a vast web of government regulations (in Britain going back to the First World War) and subsidies – “housing benefit” in Britain has the same effect as the subsidy of higher education in the United States (it helps push prices into outer space).
However, I agree that people who signed contracts should honour them. If they can not (as opposed to will not) then they must go bankrupt. Although in most of America one can just walk away from a house without a debt at all – indeed one can live in a house or flat for a long time without paying the loan (because foreclosure has been made very difficult indeed).
One of the more depressing things I heard recently was a group of Republican Congressmen agreeing with Democrats that government must continue to “support the housing market” – the property market in the United States is a vast bubble, yet people still resist the obvious truth that prices must be allowed to collapse, and the various entities that have lent people money to buy property must be allowed to go bankrupt.
Is not 400 billion in wasted subsidies (since 2008 alone) enough? The TRILLION Dollars of home loans that such things as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own are going to crash (period) delaying the inevitable is just making everything worse.
On Brian’s post….
Yes the government debt is vile.
The numbers are inredibly bad and the government is NOT really dealing with its spending.
Indeed I suspect that TOTAL government spending this year will be much the same (if not actually HIGHER) this year as last year. Some departments are indeed being cut (such as local government – and Mr Pickles is quite correct to do so), but other government spending is being increased so…..
What the present government has done is to increase taxation.
Taxes on oil companies, and taxes on everyone else (via such things as the sales tax increase).
This policy of increasing taxation is unwise.
So did anyone here attend this rally? Are we going to see a report?
According to the media about 400 people attended the event (the BBC and so on were keen to point out that 400, 000 people attended the TUC anti cuts event).
Also the media claimed that the event was about “supporting the government cuts” (thus spreading the legend that government spending is being cut – remember those “400, 000” people came out to oppose a LARGELY MYTHICAL policy, thus showing just how ill the culture of Britian is).
If the event were to have any real meaning it would be to expose that (overall) government spending is hardly being cut at all (in spite of the efforts of a few sincere people – such as Mr Pickles at local government, whose efforts I strongly support no matter that my support makes me even more unpopular than I am anyway).
I repeat that government spending must be dramatically reduced, it IS NOT being dramtically reduced, and this failure (this substitute of harsh words instead of strong action) is unwise – very unwise.
The bond markets may be fooled for now (how I do not know – but then I know nothing of the minds of City traders), but reality will have an impact eventually.
And the reality is that problem of vast government spending in Britain is not really being dealt with.
Paul
Just to add a few numbers to your comment; according to the Office for Budget Responsibility government expenditure for 2010/11 was £694bn which the 2011/12 budget will “cut” to £710bn. This years budget however was prepared before Cameron committed British forces to Libya and the former French colony of Cote d’Ivoir; before the latest round of bail outs and “loans” to save the Euro; before the EU set its own budget, requiring higher contributions from the UK (I know Cameron has said he will fight and the UK will not increase its contributions, but I also know what his word is worth); and before Cameron’s subtle hint to Pakistan that he would increase aid to them to compensate for those nasty Americans killing the terrorist they were harbouring.
If Labour had won the election last year they would have followed the same policies (OK, maybe they would have increased some departments’ budgets by a bit more, and some a bit less, but the total would be the same) but we would stand some chance of seeing a gilts strike, which would have forced either real cuts or (more likely) a general election in which the replacement for the Conservative party (which would have torn itself apart following defeat last year) would have a real chance of being elected and imposing such cuts.
Quite so MarkE.
A very good comment.