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 – debunking egalitarianism edition “If everybody must be equally well-off all the time, there can be no significant movement up or down. That would rule out what might be seen as a natural trajectory from less successful to more successful, or from early struggle to affluent independence, perhaps involving personal resourcefulness or a climb up a professional ladder.”
And:
“Personal achievement and self-improvement are among the greatest satisfactions life has to offer. The possibility of moral agency and the scope for taking individual responsibility are probably the defining attributes of emotional maturity.”
– Janet Daley, Sunday Telegraph.
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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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Even if you could have total equality of income you still wouldn’t have equality. Some people are just completely hopeless at handling their money and would always be broke while others who spend more carefully would be far better off.
“Harrison Bergeron” is a satirical dystopian science-fiction short story by American writer Kurt Vonnegut, first published in October 1961.
In a world where everyone must be fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else the government handicaps the more able. A Handicapper General ensures that this is rigorously applied.
Although written as satire this story appears to veer towards today’s reality. Is Miliband the energy Handicapper General? Is Reeves the wealth Handicapper General? Is Starmer a mightily effective politician – but weighed down by imposed handicaps?
When everyone ‘must win prizes’ the prizes become meaningless.
“Facial Justice” by the late Mr Hartley is a good satire of the “Social Justice” doctrine.
However, some (some) inequality is artificial – caused by the Cantillon Effect (Credit Money expansion) or by regulations that tend to favour large Corporations that have legal departments and-so-are – crushing small business enterprises trying to grow.
And (often forgotten) high tax rates actually promote inequality – as people who already are rich can avoid (quite legally avoid) high tax rates in various ways (such as Trust Funds, and “investing” in government debt) – but someone who was born poor and is trying to get rich via productive enterprise, is hit by high tax rates they can not avoid.
The Medici family in Florence eventually used high tax rates (which as high as 50% on the wealthy) to prevent other families rising to challenge them. Florence went from one of the most prosperous cities on Earth, to a city known for terrible poverty.
It is no accident that cities that are major banking centers are known for extreme inequality – due the the Cantillon Effect, but as these cities also tend to be places of very high taxation and endless regulations, how much of the inequality is due to the Cantillon Effect and how much to the very high taxes (see for above for the surprising result that high tax rates actually lead to more inequality not less – as the existing rich can avoid the taxes,including Wealth Taxes, but people trying to become rich find it much more difficult).
For example, New York City makes no longer makes economic sense – it did once, not only as a major port where a major river met the sea – with vast amounts of industry in the city and in New York State (which was once truly the Empire State) – but now industry is a shadow of what it once was, New York City (and State) is unionized and crushed by taxes and regulations.
“But it is the center of the financial industry” – so it is, and has been since at least the Civil War period Banking Acts (which were a terrible blunder) – but it will NOT be for much longer.
“So what will happen to the millions of people who live in New York?” – nothing good will happen to those who stay there.
‘Harrison Bergeron’ was also adapted as a TV movie. It’s on Youtube.
Dialogue in an early scene between a student and a teacher handing back marked work encapsulates what’s going on:
“Garth Bergeron: B-minus … I think you had a B-plus on the last geography test, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Miss Hopkins.”
“Well, this is quite an improvement.”
One of the most insidious forms of equality happens in education. At one end of the scale we could have the “baby bird” system, devote the bulk of resources to the chick most likely to survive, at the other end we actually have devoting the bulk of resources to the children least likely to benefit in the name of equality. Apparently the smart children will take care of themselves.
Which reminds me. Rawls and his “veil of ignorance” thing never get enough of a kicking.
The poorest creature on Earth benefits from the existence of people like Elon Musk. That society is arranged such that Musk can make a bundle and use it to pursue his next madcap scheme makes society so much richer, in every way, than having capital distributed by the People’s Committee for Capital Allocation.
Only a complete halfwit would select a society without inequality.
Lee Moore – the late Anthony Flew destroyed the “arguments” of John Rawls, in several books – ending with “Equality: In Liberty and Justice”.
Rawls was not dealing with justice at all – justice is to each their own (whether it is land or anything else), it is NOT about choosing something from behind a “veil of ignorance” – and persons with no moral (ethical) beliefs at-all are NOT persons, remember the “veil of ignorance” does not strip knowledge of whether you will be rich or poor from you, it also (according to Rawls himself) strips you of all your beliefs – everything that makes you a human being.
Justice is to each their own – it is nothing to do with “distributing” income or wealth. As M.J. Oakeshott said in “On Human Conduct” – civil rulers “have nothing to distribute”.
And remember the mainstream cover up of what John Rawls actually was – how many books point out that he was a socialist? He had been a “Christian Socialist” for many years – yet he was presented as “mainstream” by the establishment, which tells us what we need to know about the “mainstream establishment” – they are totalitarians, they want total control over human life so they can “distribute” income and wealth – and everything else.
Lastly the late John Rawls is less popular with the establishment than he was – but for a very bad reason.
John Rawls made it clear that he was talking about “distributing” income and wealth in a single society, say the United States – whereas the modern establishment (certainly since Barack Obama – indeed long before) hate (actually hate) the United States and other Western nations – and think in global terms.
Even as far back as the 1992 Rio Conference (when conservatives were still thinking totalitarianism was defeated with the fall of the Soviet Union) the “Green” agenda was taken by the international establishment as an excuse for “redistributing” on a global scale.
The “moderate” position must also be rejected – this so-called “moderate” position being, from Rawls (or supposedly from Rawls), that if someone can prove that their wealth works to the advantage of the poor, they should be allowed to keep their wealth – in reality this would not lead to people being allowed to keep anything, for as soon as someone starts to try and “prove” or “justify” their wealth they have already conceded that they have no moral right to it – that they only keep anything if they can prove (to the satisfaction of the leaders of the men with guns) that they are “useful”.
One must NOT try and “work with” the Social Justice crowd – they must be defeated.
“Social Reform” (more government spending, taxes and regulations) does not hold back socialism (as Prime Minister Balfour and others wrongly claimed) – it pushes it forward.
It pushes socialism (totalitarianism – total control of society, of people, by the public power) partly by making “social problems” worse than they otherwise would be (the opposite of what “Social Reformers” such as Disraeli and Bismarck seem to have believed) – but also by undermining the MORAL case for justice – the moral case of traditional justice, to each their own.
As soon as people accept they have to “justify” their income or wealth they have already lost – they might as well hang themselves, and thus save the totalitarians the trouble of hanging them.
As the despicable “Lenin” put it – “the capitalists sell us rope – which we will use to hang them”.
Here is an interview of Dr David Butterfield on Trigonometry. At 01:09:32 he covers this blog post’s topic. I suggest however that watching the whole hour and a half will be illuminating for most people here.
https://youtu.be/XzWXCzroOro?si=9O3usHhUSUjxz-vs
Roué le Jour,
As to “Baby Birds” we used to have grammar schools… Gone by my day (apart from the private ones). So, me and my cohort got poured through the Comprehensive system. Having said that, I at least, was at one that had sets. I was set 1/1 (1 for maths, 1 for everything else!). It went down to 9/9 or as the Headmaster once told me (I was third year at the time but he would have little chats with the kids), “The hewers of wood and drawers of water”. He was Old Skool Methodist or he might have said, “Do you want fries with that?”. He also said something to me that totally took me off-piste. He said he knew there were teachers in the school who were actively detrimental to education but he couldn’t sack ’em. I guess that’s what happens when you inherit a former Secondary Modern – which were only ever really intended as holding pens to keep rambunctious teens off the streets for a few hours of the day and to employ the unemployable as guards…
As to the teachers doing more harm than good I think both of us knew who. We had a “woodwork” teacher who was deemed unfit for even the hewing of wood (dunno about drawing water) and he was placed where he could do least harm… “Teaching” careers. He was an utter farce. It mainly consisted of a film strip (think Powerpoint for a bygone, unlamented age) where you played a tape and advanced a frame when the tape made a bong noise. He couldn’t work that which resulted in him mumbling obscenities and general hilarity in the class that wound him up which resulted in an inevitable death spiral…
It was all about a kid called Neville Sponge and his quest to find a job. He wound-up as a mastic asphalt spreader. Hours of that and I still don’t even know what mastic asphalt spreading involves.
Oddly enough every episode of “The Sponge Mix” started with the Paul Simon song, “Kodachrome”…
That was played with no irony whatsoever.
I don’t even wanna touch on the farce that was “Computer Science” but three kids to a BBC Micro! Fortunately, I had a Speccy at home and taught myself.
Any effort to “justify” wealth plays into the hands of the looters – as it puts the burden of proof on the wealthy person to “justify” themselves.
The socialist George Bernard Shaw took this to its logical conclusion – and he was deadly serious. According to Mr Shaw (a darling of the modern cultural establishment) everyone should be forced to “justify their existence” to the satisfaction of a government board – and if Board was not satisfied, the person should be executed. G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, Mr and Mrs Webb, and so on – these people were monsters, utterly evil – and they were the founders of the modern establishment which reveres them.
Edmund Burke warned rich fools who thought they could “justify” their wealth – in his “Letter to the Noble Law” Mr Burke explained to the Duke of Bedford (one of the clever – but normally unwise, Russell family) that his French Revolutionary friends would rob and murder him just as they had robbed and murdered rich people (and lots of poor people – lots and lots of poor people) in France, his being “industrious” and “enlightened” would not matter to them.
Quit trying to justify your wealth to people who want to rob (and murder) you – and your family.
David Roberts – thank you for the link. I have shared it.
The West is indeed about objective truth and the belief that it can be found by reason – and that this merit should be celebrated, and that it is beautiful to seek the truth (the objective truth in everything from physics to art), and all this is dismissed by modern academia, which is all about “Social Justice£” and “Power Relations”.
On a recent visit to Cambridge I spotted a young women (most likely a student) carrying bag with “read black poets” written on it – not “read poetry” or read a particular poet because the young women believed this poet had objective merit, NO – poetry was to be decided by skin colour.
This is was an utter rejection of the basic principles of the humanities – such as person should have no place in a university, yet now such people CONTROL the universities.
They don’t want us all to be equally well off, they want themselves to be equally well off and us to be equally poor.
That’s the whole point of being of the Royalty, the elite, the nomenklatura.
@Fred_Z
…and if they try to control social mobility through poverty, education, class, religion, or race, then they reduce the challenges to their own status. Pulling the ladder up behind them, as it were.