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 – Snoopers in high Places Across all these laws, the pattern is the same: more data collection, more sharing between agencies, and more pressure on companies to watch what users do. The justification is usually ‘national security or ‘protecting the public,’ but once these systems are in place, they rarely stay limited to their original goals. The Parliament Act was passed to limit the powers of the Lords in cases of ‘vital national emergency.; Tony Blair used it to force through a ban on fox-hunting.
From intercepting letters centuries ago to scanning emails and social media today, governments have always found reasons to pry. The technology has changed, but the instinct remains the same, and so does the question: how much surveillance is too much?
– Madsen Pirie
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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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“The objective is never the objective” as the late Saul Alinsky might have said.
We are told that a certain measure of government (and “partner corporation”) control is for a noble objective – say preventing child rape, but then we find out that the establishment elite have no interest in preventing child rape, indeed regard discussion of the subject as a “racist dog whistle” and/or “Islamophobia” or “anti Muslim hate” or whatever. So what is the REAL objective of the surveillance and control measures?
The real objective is control-for-the-sake-of-control – like Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon” prison where everyone would be watched all the time (which he confided to his friends was not just for criminals – it is how he wanted general society to be) – or Henri Saint-Simon’s ideas that (long after his death) came to be called Technocracy – a dream that goes back at least to Sir Francis Bacon (“The New Atlantis”) – and, perhaps, all the way back to Plato and his Guardians – having absolute control of ordinary people.
There is a horrible continuity between the ideas to be found in such works as what we call Plato’s “Republic” very popular in such places as Cambridge (both Cambridge England with the Apostles Club and so on – and Cambridge America, Harvard) and the Marxism (or semi Marxism) the “intellectual elite” later took up.
They just went from one form of Collectivism to another – that was, in practical effect, much the same.
The public do indeed need protecting – protecting from their so called “protectors”.
And, according to George Orwell, a life long supporter of the Labour Party, that protection starts with two things – “the right to tell people what they do not wish to hear” (although there is no right to force them to listen – they have the right to walk away) and “the rifle on the wall in the ordinary workman’s cottage”.
The fact that BOTH these statements are now considered outrageous in modern Britain “Hate Speech must be punished!” and “You want ordinary people to have firearms – Monster! Demon! American!” – shows just how far we have fallen.