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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All over the world, people gravitate to the field that pays best “The richest persons in Africa are heads of state, governors and ministers. So every ‘educated’ African who wants to be rich – and there is nothing wrong with wanting to be rich – heads straight into government or politics.”
– Ghanaian economist George Ayittey
Found via this tweet from Students For Liberty:
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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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So a true African capitalist enters government.
I guess capitalists are nothing if not adaptable.
bobby b, one of the good things about true “capitalism” (I prefer the term “a truly free market”) is that it allows humans to channel their eternal lust for power and status into more benevolent paths.
As Michael Jennings put it in a post called “Why capitalism is good”:
Natalie,
And that is why I am currently sitting in an IKEA chair and not a Panzer 😄
Why work for riches when you can be a Communist and take over the entire country and run it for your own benefit?
Looked at in those terms, Communism is the greatest capitalist system in the world. Instead of working for “The Man” in a particular company or industry and have the option of changing which “The Man” you work for, under Communism you are working for THE Man (in the singular). No chance of changing which unpleasant employer you are working for/under.
In some cases it was sincere belief – not a desire for money or power, but the results were the same – disaster. In terms of policy motivation does not matter – what matters is the policy itself.
In the United States some people demand to hear the tapes of “Dr” (his PhD thesis on German theologians was copied from a thesis on the subject submitted to another university – his “I have a dream speech” speech was copied from the speech given by a black pastor at the 1956 Republican Party Convention)) Martin Luther King cheering on the rape of a women in front of him, and his giving advice on what to do to her (a judge ordered, back in 1977, that the public is not allowed to hear the tapes – but the transcripts have got out) and his drug abuse, and support for the Marxist forces in Vietnam (who murdered vast numbers of civilians – which was regarded with indifference by the American, and general Western, media), and ….., but what about W.E.B. Du Bois – who was a real intellectual (Ph.D from Harvard back when Harvard was the finest university in the United States) and an honest and moral man – the socialism of W.E.B. DuBois would have been just as damaging.
It does not matter if socialists really are saints – the results of the state control of everything is the same whether they are saints or monsters. Just as a really limited government will have good results even if the people in charge of it are, in their spare time, serial killers and child abusers.
The Republican Party boss in New York State in the late 19th century, Roscoe Conkling, was a skirt chaser – whereas his young rival Theodore Roosevelt was a man of strict morals, yet it was Roscoe Conkling who was correct about policy – and Theodore Roosevelt was wrong.
And on African colonies – the move towards state control started BEFORE independence, it started as far back as the 1930s, with Planning Boards, and Marketing Boards and so on.
The black rulers who took over were just pushing to a logical conclusion (as they had been taught to do in school and university) the policies that had already been pushed, for years, by white colonialists.
For example, it was the Conservative Colonial Secretary (and anti Communist) Oliver Lyttelton who proclaimed “we do not want a class of Kulaks emerging in Africa” – “Kulak” is an insulting Russian word for a farmer who owns their own farm (supposedly they are a “grasping fist” – greedy), that a Conservative Anti Communist could use (without irony) language like this – shows how total the ideological hegemony of the left already was – even before independence.