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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – late stage capitalism is really just early stage socialism Late stage capitalism is really just early stage socialism. Every problem you blame on markets comes from the state’s power to interfere, distort, and pick winners. But instead of stopping and reflecting, socialists double down. The more government creates the very conditions they complain about, the more they demand even more of the thing that caused it. It’s ideological autopilot. No thinking, no introspection, just reflexive calls for the same poison in a higher dose.
There’s no such thing as late stage capitalism, or state capitalism, there’s just capitalism.
– Rock Chartrand
|
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.
|
As I have said, I strongly dislike the word capitalism, but it is important to note that these things are not black and white. It is a spectrum: on one end free markets (which, in its purest form has never actually existed) and on the other communism (which also, in its purest form has never existed.) It is a matter of where along the line you are.
Calling someone a “socialist” is a bit like calling someone old — my kids think someone over 35 is old. Age is a gradual spectrum too, and your perspective of where someone else stands on that line very much depends on where you stand on the line.
Also, it is worth commenting on this:
there is an assumption in there that is not obvious, but is extremely important and wrong, namely that we do not all have a shared agreement of what constitutes a problem. For example, if you consider a disparity of wealth in a society to be a problem in itself, then that is most certainly a problem that is caused by the free market. If you think the existence of billionaires is an intrinsic evil, it is an “evil” that comes from free markets. If you consider the dilution of a country’s native population and culture by foreign immigrants a problem, then, in the freest types of market with no restrictions on movement, is also a problem caused by this free market.