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 – the only winning move is to tell them to fuck off The way to win the point is to flatly refuse to have anything to do with these parasites. One of the benefits of self-publishing is that you can bypass the publishing world and its hangers-on, such as sensitivity readers. In a few weeks, my latest novel, Railroad, will go live. It is set during the American Civil War, and it isn’t very sensitive. Okay, I did tone the language down a bit, but there is still language that would make sensitivity readers break out in a fit of the vapours. Too bad. It’s a historical novel, not modern-day. It is set during a period rife with violent racism, so the language and behaviours reflect that.
I would never let a sensitivity reader anywhere near my work. Ever. If readers are triggered, then they are probably reading the wrong author.
– Longrider
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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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If readers are triggered, then they are probably reading the wrong author.
Or perhaps the right author. It is only the “participation trophy” generation that considers it bad when their prejudices are shocked, their assumptions oppugned or their little social bubble popped. Those of us who are seekers of the truth, of growth, of enlightenment will surely welcome a good triggering once in a while. It is why “trigger warnings” for University students are the very death knell of those institutions. If there is anywhere you should be triggered it is there.
Your book sounds tantalizing.
There is also the hypocrisy of it. The Usual Suspects cheer on épater le bourgeois but howl at the ‘injustice’ of that happening to them.
Agreed.
Good post and good comments.
‘Sensitivity Readers’ are a form of soft censorship. Those who pick the sensitivity readers are unlikely to select anyone other than people who share their political views.
Discovered Joys – or pick someone whose political beliefs they pretend to share.
Remember if even the highest Corporate manager is declared to be “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “Islamophobic” (massive contradiction there as Islam holds “kill the one who does it, and kill the one to whom it is done” in regards to homosexual acts), and-so-on – the high Corporate manager will be out-of-the-door.
The high Corporate type would be declared to have created a “hostile working environment” and gone against the “values” of the Corporation.
And if a Corporation does not act in this tyrannical way (the rule of “HR” and so on), then the entities that “manage” the shares of the “owners” of the Corporation (pension funds and so on – which are themselves bodies corporate), will act – and Larry Fink’s BlackRock is not known for mercy.
Milton Friedman’s conception of what a Corporation is (an entity solely concerned with making money for “Aunt Agatha” style individual share holders) is dead – this is the age of Corporate bureaucracy (“educated”, indoctrinated, in schools and universities – and terrified of taking a step out of line) with shares “managed” by BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard – which have shares in each other.
And do not forget the Credit Bubble banks (hello Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase) and the corrupt funny money (money that is NOTHING – not gold, not silver, not anything – it is created from NOTHING) that goes to the elite to enable them to buy up real assets (such as land) and have a stranglehold on the economy – a stranglehold they use to push their political and cultural agenda.
F.A. Hayek pointed out many years ago (long before Frankfurt School Marxism was renamed “Woke”) that most high employees of large Corporations have little contact with customers, and think mostly not of customers – but, rather, of their position in relation to the Corporate bureaucracy.
This was a far more accurate understanding of a large Corporation than Milton Friedman’s idea of a Corporation (which was basically that they they were the modern version of Adam Smith’s “butcher or baker” – who owned his own shop and dealt directly with customers).
And, naturally enough, large corporations love the Henri Saint-Simon idea of ending real competition and becoming the partners of government.
With Henri Saint-Simon that was called socialism – Mussolini called it “Fascism”.
Look at how Ian Fleming and Mark Twain, or Joseph Conrad, have been bowdlerised. Another is Roald Dahl.
It’s maddening.
Perhaps it’s a sign of my age that every time Paul Marks writes “Saint-Simon” my brain inserts “Templar” at the end.
@Frazer Orr: The novel follows five main characters through and beyond the American Civil War. A mix of abolitionists and soldiers on both sides along with escaped slaves running the underground railroad (hence the title). Slavery and war are both depicted as violent, coercive and wasteful. The rudimentary medical interventions are described in some detail as well (I did the same with my medieval novel as well). Everyone comes out damaged. Some don’t survive. However, I don’t try to disguise or tone down the theme.
This business of “being triggered” with all the infrastructure of and trigger warnings and so forth is sickening. It’s all about snowflakes pretending to be in the same state as people who have been through genuinely awful experiences – often intentionally, because that was the right thing to do; soldiers, rescue workers and so forth. It is no different from the man who turned up to Remembrance day in a naval uniform, complete with medals he was not entitled to, except that in this instance there are thousands doing it and getting away with it.
Sensitivity readers? They need to be mocked mercilessly, and then told, in no uncertain terms, where to go.
Readers who are British, and around in the 1970s, will quite possibly remember Mary Whitehouse, and her campaign against what she called “smut” in the media. For her efforts she was mocked mercilessly by the left who, incredible as it may seem now, took the libertarian attitude that if you object to something on TV, then don’t watch it. (She was mentioned at least once in Monty Python, which is a little ironic, given the trouble John Cleese has since had with the woke mob.)
We need to adopt the same approach with the left. As others have recently observed on this blog, ridicule can be very effective.
And Longrider, I hope your novel is a great success.
Is there a reason for President Trump to not breakup the likes of BlackRock, JP Morgan &etc?
Wasn’t that done to the oil companies about 100 years ago, so why can’t it be done now to these gigantic financial and pharmaceutical monsters?
john in cheshire:
There were attempts to “trust bust” the likes of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of Ohio, and some others. The net effect of this, encouraged by likes of Theodore Roosevelt, was negligible in terms of benefiting US/other consumers, and may have been negative. Anti-trust is based on a mistaken understanding of what competition is (the “Austrian” school of economics is good on this). Competition is a process through time, not a game of cricket. Absent government barriers, even the largest bank that gets fat and complacent will lose to upstarts.
Antitrust powers can be used by demagogues of Right and Left (William Jennings Bryan in the 19th century, etc) to go after big firms that are too successful. It forms a form of intimidation.
There is, to be fair, a genuine worry that some groups are so large that even if they get big by outstanding business skill and great consumer service, that they inevitably start to inject themselves into politics, and this drives corruption, etc. Also, politicians fear them, demand regulations and tributes in the form of campaign contributions. Politicians – leftist politicians are generally worse – can use threats of anti-trust suits as “shakedowns” (“nice business you have there, shame if the Justice Department/European Commission were to break it up”).
Burton W. Fulsom wrote a short, incisive demolition of the arguments about anti-trust in The Myth of the Robber Barons. Perhaps to stir things up here, I regard people such as Carnegie and Rockefeller (if not some of his family) as heroes, as courageous men who established business that enriched millions on a scale that makes their own fortunes a bargain, in the circumstances. Nobody bought Rockefeller’s gasoline at gunpoint.
With banks such as JP Morgan, etc, they are, to be sure, beneficiaries of “too big to fail” promises of bailouts if there is a problem; they benefit from central bank “lender of last resort” support; regulations and capital rules have raised barriers to entry and squeezed out smaller lenders. Decades of money printing and a zombified business sector mean some large banks have become fat and lazy. Anti-trust is not the solution, in my view. It would leave the underlying causes intact.
The solution is for interest rates to be set by the market, not by a central – state-run – bank. It also means that the endless bureaucracy that banks now operate under, turning them into arms of the State, should be cut back. And it might also mean that banks’ owners should not have complete limited liability for losses, if only to curb imprudent lending, particularly given the fractional reserve nature of modern banks. (Paul Marks has written quite a lot on this here over the years.)
Sorry to go on!
To @Johnathan’s point it is worth considering recent history. In my business — computer software — I have seen many supposedly unassailable monopolies toppled. In the late 20th century IBM totally dominated the computer hardware and software business. The motto was “nobody was ever fired for buying IBM”. What is IBM today? It is a kind of sad consulting firm that mostly outsources its work to India. Then there was Microsoft — an organization so utterly dominant in the computer market that the government did try to step in and break them up. But it wasn’t the government, it was natural market forces that pushed Microsoft off the throne. In the early 2000s the vast majority of computers ran Windows. Today the vast majority of computers run Android and the server market is now mostly dominated by some operating system a Finnish guy hacked together in his basement and gave away for free.
And part of all that was driven by the dominance of Intel — even Apple, whose people hated Microsoft and Intel with a passion, ported to the Intel processors. Now? The VAST majority of computers run ARM based processors mostly made by TSMC, and a many “Intel” like processors are made by AMD. And lets not even talk about NVIDIA. Intel, the unassailable Leviathan is now a former shell of itself, with talk of breaking it up and selling it in pieces.
And what about utterly dominant cell phone company Nokia? Or Motorola? Both crushed by up and comers like Apple, Google, Samsung and so forth.
And we see it today also. Google was an unassailable, overwhelming dominant in the search market (who, BTW took it over from the unassailable dominance of Yahoo, and earlier AltaVista), but again that is being taken over from them by the various AIs that provide a more powerful interface.
One big exception — Amazon continues to be utterly indominable. But why? Because it continues to be on the bleeding edge of ecommerce, it continues to work every day to bring better prices, faster delivery, unmatched logistics. Big companies fail when they take too much advantage of their monopoly position. Smart big companies keep on trying every day.
Which is to say, these companies that look utterly unassailable, if the normal course of the free market is allowed to flow can only continue their position by selling amazing products that beat out the up and comers. “Too big to fail” is about as wrong as it can possibly get. The correct mantra should be “too big and so therefore it SHOULD fail”.
In 2008 with the banking disaster, if Obama had just let things be, the big badly run banks like BoA would have collapsed, their assets acquired by other banks, and the FDIC would have had to write some big checks. But banks would have been chastened and would have adjusted their risk calculations appropriately. As it is the government wrong ginormous checks and nobody learned anything, except that failing to take big, unjustified risks, is a bad business strategy.
And we saw it again when that big bank collapsed in California — I forget the name. What I do remember is that Netflix had 500 million dollars in a checking account there (seriously?) and somehow the FDIC which has a clear limit of 250k, paid the whole thing out! If people don’t suffer the consequences of their poor choices then they learn to make the same bad choices over and over again.
I self-publish. I’ve had to deal with sensitive people before. I’ve been told “Surely things aren’t that way!” when I wrote one article with direct testimony from a medical missionary. In another case, an SCA woodcarver did an excellent job using Medieval styles in his work. Most people thought it was excellent, until somebody noticed there were swastikas involved. This was a Medieval design, from the days when swastikas were good-luck symbols. No Hitlers involved. But she went off like a siren about something few others had noticed, and worked up quite a campaign.
People who want to find and stop Bad Things are going to find Bad Things no matter what, and start campaigns. Scroom.
Me too, but I think of Hoppy Uniatz and it chases the thoughts away.
In 2008 with the banking disaster, if Obama had just let things be, the big badly run banks like BoA would have collapsed, their assets acquired by other banks.
In the UK we used to have loads of “Building Societies” which were member-owned usually localist savings and lendings organisations. When one got into trouble neighbouring societies would descend on the dying corpse and strip it for parts, and parcel up the toxic remains, to preserve the members at the expense of the business. It was a fairly ruthless process of killing failing businesses. Many of them gradually got so big that sold up and converted into banks or pretended to be banks, and so “couldn’t fail”.
@Schrödinger’s Dog: Many thanks. And mocking is an excellent approach. They even named a soft porn magazine after Mary Whitehouse. The ultimate in mockery.
Ellen, Longrider,
I like the idea in principle but does it make money?
It makes money, but not very much. Still, a dance manual I published with some friends grossed about $40,000. Unfortunately, the net was somewhat lower.
So far, no, however, as with any small start-up, it takes time and investment. It does have the potential, but it needs as much work in marketing as it does in writing. Don’t give up the day job is still sound advice. Am I selling books? Yes, but since I went solo, we are talking a couple of hundred, which is a couple of hundred more than when I was at Leg Iron Books.
Re: Mary Whitehouse, who was certainly a highly-visible figure in my young day – I would have the go back and check but I seem to recall that her National Viewers and Listeners Association gave some sort of award for upholding decent and upright broadcasting standards to – Jimmy Savile. And it’s not as though his – preferences – were anything other than an open secret at t5he time. Hell, even Johnny Rotten thought he was a wrong ‘un at the time, and said so.
llater,
llamas
Longrider, Ellen,
Thanks. I should have asked, are we talkig paper publishing or ebooks?
Longrider, I am not surprised as to what you say about marketing.
Anyway, seeing as you’ve both shown me yours it is only fair if I show you mine… I have a couple of ideas for Tolkien fanfic stuff (yes, I know) and they are essentially short stories… The first is about how JRRT got hold of the Redbook of Westmarch which is a neat in/out of universe thing (The Silmarillion is very vague as to the fate of Maglor… Could he have survived into our Age with certain tales…). The second is the diary of Rosie Cotton whilst Sam is away on his damn fool quest. These are just vanity projects. But I do have an idea for a “Magnificent Octopus” on the history of mathematical symbology aimed at the pop-sci level. Now I think this might run and I think I might have a co-conspirator who would give it serious credence if he were interested. He is a full Prof in the history of mahematics at an Ivy league university*. We were also chums at a Comprehensive school in Gateshead quite a while back. I haven’t dared email him yet. But, in principle, it could work. Histories of mathematical notation have been written but I don’t think they have been ever really been aimed at the general market.
I wondered if this comment was going OT and being about me but then doesn’t “Samizdata” derive from “samizdat” which means self-published in Russian? So, yeah, the Hell with it! If more of us could effectively self-publish – and the tech is here – then the World might be a better place.
*He’s also one of the leading authorities on the Antikythera mechanism. You can see why I’m a bit slow in coming forward to the guy here…
llamas,
Yes, John Lydon was almost unique in speaking out… An exellent chap in many ways.
Lydon is a good man. Many “wild men” are: Keith Richards, etc.
JP,
Keith Richards is not a “man”! He is a force of nature forged by Thor Himself!
Here in the US we have a lot of triggers. Political ones but many more that are mechanical actuators.
We’re supposed to have warnings for the former and locks for the latter.
I suggest we fix this obviously prejudicial situation and provide locks for the political triggers as well. Perhaps muzzles on all the “Karens” and AWFLs?
Or better yet, no locks or warnings for anything!
Regarding Keith Richards’ reputation as a stand-up guy, this may be interesting:
https://www.npr.org/2015/07/04/419558280/veterinarian-kevin-fitzgerald-plays-not-my-job
llater,
llamas
John in Cheshire and Johnathan Pearce.
John D. Rockefeller and the other “robber barons” produced goods of real value.
Someone like Larry Fink (BlackRock) has never produced anything in his life – and he despises people who do. Remember they are, to him, “racist, sexist, homophobic…….” and responsible for the “Climate Crises”, how much of this stuff Mr Fink (“Fink by name – and fink by nature”) really believes, I do not know (perhaps he does not believe any of it – not deep down), but he pretends to believe it – and acts accordingly
As for Jamie Dimon and the other Credit Bubble bankers – they make original J.P. Morgan look like a saint (they really do) – remember Mr Morgan had one Dollar of physical gold for every three “Dollars” he left out – yes a con, but nothing as bad as other bankers even-at-the-time (let alone now).
Yes the Austrian School is “good on this” – as was Richard Cantillon three centuries ago.
This is the world of Credit Money – of the “Cantillon Effect”.
That is the world of BlackRock (and State Street and Vanguard – and all three have shares in each-other) and the Credit Bubble banks.
This is not an economic system – it is a scam.
New York City (the base of BlackRock) is going to go, and Boston (the base of State Street) will not be far behind.
Although that little town in Pennsylvania that Vanguard rules (with an iron fist – carefully covered with a velvet glove) may be a better place to be.
As for President Trump – he should smash the entire scam, the Credit Money, but he will NOT.
Remember this is the “system” he has know all his life – he knows no other way of doing things, other than money being produced (from NOTHING) and doled out to the politically connected (such as Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink – and Warren Buffet), so they can buy up real assets before the price goes up.
John D. Rockefeller and Mr Morgan could remember when money and finance were, basically, straight – but no one now alive can remember anything other than a massive scam, Organised Crime pretending to be an economic system.
Very astute observation: it wasn’t just people such as Mary Whitehouse. Margaret Thatcher was taken in by Savile. A certain kind of person who puts a high premium on respectability (I’m not being snide here) can also be a bit gullible. Savile knew how to weaponise a certain British fondness for those who perform “good works”, a parallel to our sniffy attitude towards those who get rich by the “vulgar” route of “trade”. In reality, an unapologetic capitalist is more likely to be a morally superior person than a noisy altruist who’s always on the TV.
Excellent comment, Fraser.
Ironically, Jamie Dimon is one of the shrewder, more outspoken CEOs: willing to call it as he sees it, such as on “shadow banking” excesses, the whole “working from home” thing, protectionist follies, etc.
Even without bailouts and CEO, such a man would thrive under laissez faire capitalism. As would a business such as Vanguard, and its innovation around tracker funds. Economies of scale aren’t dependent on central bank crack cocaine.
Savile also cultivated eccentricity. He was almost too weird to be something as mundane as a sex-offender. I think much the same could be said about Michael Jackson except I’m not so sure in Jackson’s case it was a deliberate ploy. He really was mental.
Never mind Margaret Thatcher – Prince Charles was more-or-less completely taken-in by Savile. If I read the documentary right, Princess Diana was somewhat-more-cautious of him, perhaps because her fabulously-disbrangled family situation made her more-aware of liggers, posers and chancers.
Thousands knew of his predilictions, many of them personally. But they were virtually all ‘working class’, disadvantaged or easily-dismissed. Even in the 70s, the UK was still so focussed on class divisions that the visible approval of suutable members of the ‘upper classes’ made him more-or-less untouchable. As we saw.
llater,
llamas
I’ve listened to both of John Lydon’s memoirs, the first read by the man himself, the second unfortunately not. They left me wondering what a man like him might have accomplished if he had had (or chose to take advantage of) a really-good education. Not that he isn’t a success in his chosen field, but still . . . .
llater,
llamas
I do both. If you search Amazon for Ellen Kuhfeld you will find three paper-and-digital books. Secret Murder I did myself. Minnesota Vice is co-authored with Mary, who has many names and about 30 novels. The Chronicles of Deer Abbey was written by Mary (as Margaret of Shaftesbury), but she wrote it as a series of chapbooks. I scanned them using my computer, edited them into one manuscript, copy-edited it and published it.
If you want digital only, go to AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenKuhfeld/works where
I have a 100K novel there, and the entire Harry Potter saga demolished in 1,835 words. But several of the stories were published in magazines also, so they count as “both, but not in the same place”. You know – fanfiction.
Johnathan Peace – excellent points.
Yes I think Jamie Dimon could do well in a system of honest money and honest finance – he is not to blame for the present Organised Crime type system, it was created before he was born.
And the same is true of the men behind Vanguard.
There is an old story of a philosopher whose dog was so honest and loyal that he trusted the dog to go to the butcher and bring home wrapped up meat in his mouth – never eating any of it.
One day a pack of dogs attacked the philosopher’s dog when it was on the way back from the butcher – and he watched to see what the dog would do.
If his dog fought the other dogs – his dog would be killed, but it was too intelligent for such folly.
Instead the dog tried to eat as much of the meat as he could – just as the other dogs did.
In a corrupt system honesty does not work – indeed it leads to poverty and death.
So someone who would be honest if the system was straight – learns to operate as other people do.
“If the funny money is there – it might as well come to ME, as it is going to go to someone”.
I cannot imaging picking my reading material based on, of all things, the political beliefs of the author, that her than whether or not they write a gripping story.
Much depends on how thoroughly the author’s politics seep into the story.
@Ellen, I try to keep my politics out of my stories, but a series of short stories written during the lockdowns of 2020 made it pretty clear where I stood on the issue. Ahem.
@NickM I publish in all formats. The sales though favour eBooks by a long chalk.
I have written a story about politics also. In the end, it was decided that werewolves were better to have around. To be honest, it was a were-bear making the decision. It’s on my website: http://washuu.net/cycles.htm