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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I am old enough to remember the run-up to the 1979 general election, and a lot of what swung that for Thatcher was the feeling that our country seemed about to descend into a state of South Americanness. This extraordinary lost data discs business is, I think, particularly wounding to the Brown regime, for it gives off that same vibe, of a government descending into anarchy, and not in a good way. The whole world is now sniggering at Britain.
However, good news for Brown comes from a commenter on this posting at Guido’s:
There are about 13million children under the age of 16, most of whom have two parents. So that gives us about 25million individuals listed. However, only about a quarter of these will have bank details listed, so the BBC’s claims that the bank details of 25million people have been lost is actually misleading. It is probably about 7million.
Oh, only seven million. That’s okay then.
This comment reminds me of an amazing peacenik meeting I once attended, almost as long ago as the 1979 election, in which the speakers on the platform all took it in turns to explain how ghastly a nuclear explosion over a built-up area would be and that therefore we should chuck away our nuclear weapons, and a particularly bonkers middle-aged woman in the audience, called Daphne if I remember it right, got up to explain that actually, if you got lucky with the prevailing wind, and if proper civil defence measures were taken, it might not be that bad. The looks on the faces of the platform speakers were truly treasurable. I got up and said that the speakers certainly had me convinced me that nuclear war would indeed be rather nasty, and how about the replacement of Soviet communism with liberal democracy, as the least implausible way to end the nastiness? But that’s another story.
Getting back to this lost discs thing, I agree with everyone else here who is, quite rightly making such a fuss of this business. Don’t collect the damn data into these huge compulsory gobs in the first place.
Whatever David Cameron, says now …
Mr Cameron said people were “desperately worried” and they would “find it frankly weird” that Mr Brown still wanted to go ahead with plans for a national ID cards scheme and register.
… his conclusion if and when he becomes Prime Minister (which this whole thing makes that much more likely) will presumably be that it will be a sufficient answer for his noble self to be in charge of the government’s compulsory databases, and that all will then be well.
But it does occur to me, just as Black Wednesday saved the pound from being swallowed up by the Euro – which it surely did, whatever you think about that – this fiasco might just have done something similar to the database state. Not abolished it, or even reversed it seriously, but at least thrown a bit of a spanner into its works. Suddenly, ID cards are looking truly scary, combining malevolence with incompetence – Soviet even – to Mr and Mrs Average. I wrote that before reading what Guy Herbert said in the previous posting but one here, and I see that he reaches an identical conclusion. If so, good. Campaign for Database Disarmament anybody?
One of my fellow Samizdatistas recently told me that whatever business model the porn industry is following now is what Hollywood is about to follow. To see the future of Hollywood, look at porn now. Porn, so I was told, now, already, distributes itself by being given away, and then if you like something you see for free you go to the originating porn site and pay a bit, either in cash or in advertising attention or for individual products, because that turns out to be an even better deal, and worth paying a bit for. Hollywood is slowly learning this lesson.
But is it actually too late for them to learn? Look what is apparently now happening to the porn industry:
DVD sales are in free fall. Audiences are flocking to pornographic knockoffs of YouTube, especially a secretive site called YouPorn. And the amateurs are taking over. What’s happening to the adult-entertainment industry is exactly what’s happening to its Hollywood counterpart – only worse.
So, is that what is about to happen to Hollywood also? Will movie and TV entertainment of the clothes-mostly-on sort also be overrun soon by amateurs?
WIth thanks to Instapundit for the link.
We have said this kind of thing here many, many times, and will say it many, many more times, but I think this puts it particularly well:
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society.
The rest of it – the posting is by “marko” and is entitled “why the gun is civilized” – is equally eloquent. It is quite short and anyone who is inclined to will have more than enough time to read it all.
It is particularly refreshing to read an American arguing against gun control without once mentioning the US Constitution. I am not opposed to the US Constitution, most of it, but I think that Americans should spend at least some of their time explaining why most of it is right, instead of just taking it for granted as a stack of unchallengeable axioms. When they do argue without relying on this document, it certainly makes it easier for us foreigners to link to them. [M]arko’s argument is not American only; it is universal.
A Muslim is somebody who believes that a man called Muhammad… passed on certain revelations and instructions directly from God Himself. By logic, a non-Muslim is somebody who does not accept that Muhammad was any such prophet, and thereby rejects his teachings as not having come from God… If, contrary to Muhammad’s claims (assuming he has been represented correctly), we do not believe that he was any such prophet from God, what do we truly think of the man?
The answer must be one of three possibilities: either Muhammad was a liar, or he was deluded, or he was mad. These are the only possible conclusions of the intellectually honest non-Muslim. Let us ponder one of the three possibilities – that Muhammad was a liar. Would it be unreasonable then to posit that a man willing to deceive many thousands of people, perhaps out of hunger for power or self-aggrandisement, could be labelled as ‘evil’? If so, on what basis do we object to an extremely negative portrayal (either graphic or prose) of such an ‘evildoer’?
Whether or not such a portrayal may appear ‘gratuitous’ or provoke widespread anger, it would nonetheless be a justifiable expression of dissent. Therefore, to place legal sanctions on any such piece of literature is to necessarily outlaw opposition to, and disagreement with, Islam to a logical denouement; this suggests we are implicitly calling for the abolition of the right to proclaim oneself a non-Muslim in clear and in certain terms. That is, one may still be a nominal ‘non-Muslim’ free of harassment, but one cannot explain and defend one’s position in any significant detail without committing the act of blasphemy.
– from On the Right to Give Offence by Steve Edwards quoted today by David Thompson
Clarkson is a hero, and Monbiot is a chicken.
– Why Monbiot is so Miserable
I find this Hollywood writers strike fascinating but puzzling. On the one hand, we have long been told, Hollywood crawls with waiters who serve scripts to movie people with the coffee, lift attendants who type deathless dialog during their lunch hours. On the other hand, Hollywood is grinding to a halt, because the Union, and all those sympathetic to unions, really can withdrawn a great chunk of the raw material essential to the entertainment industry.
Rather than announce the answer to the what’s-going-on? question, I will simply ask it of the Samizdata commentariat. What’s going on?
Is this an industry in decline, having a quarrel about a diminished pie? Or is it a quarrel about new territory (digital rights), in other words a quarrel about an increased pie? Is this TV and the movies on their last legs, or TV and the movies getting the ground rules established for marching profitably forwards into the internet age? Is that actually what the quarrel is about? The studios say: it is a famine out there. The writers say: it is a feast.
My heading says one thing that I do observe with confidence, which is that if you want small screen entertainment, perfectly crafted to fit in with your exact preferences and prejudices, there is still plenty of it out there, which is not going to go away or stop being made any time soon. So, is not this a rather bad time for Hollywood to be strike-bound? Are not the professionals simply handing the future to the blackleg amateurs? Or am I missing something?
I want the strike to last for ever, on politico-philosophical grounds. As a libertarian I am not against strikes in principle. An individual should be allowed to withdraw his labour. So should an organised group of individuals, and attach any conditions they like to ceasing to withdraw that labour, just so long as organised does not mean violent (the alternative to such rules is slavery). Nevertheless, the kind of writers, and the kind of people generally, who like striking, unions, etc., and who believe that striking, unions, etc., is what has made the word rich (rather than productive work), mostly have the kind of opinions I would like to see severely muted, indefinitely.
I could get my wish, at any rate for quite a while:
They want more money for their work when it is used online than Hollywood studios are willing to pay. Because the strike is over matters of principle, not just dollars and cents, it could last for months.
But what are these principles exactly?
Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul seems to have attracted a lot of attention with his big fund-raising day, although Mark Steyn says that although he now has money his poll rating is still very low. If you don’t know what he looks and sounds like, watch him being interviewed by Jay Leno.
The most interesting thing I have encountered about Ron Paul is this, from Jonathan Wilde:
On the heels of the big fundraising day, I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know are declaring themselves Ron Paul supporters. Many of them are not just not libertarian. If anything, they’re big government advocates. They justify their support with vague statements like, “He’s shifting the landscape” or “The system needs to be shaken up”. I don’t think they have any idea what Paul actually stands for.
Maybe they will learn. I have long thought thought a way for libertarianism to spread will be when people get that it is a different sort of mischief they can make to the usual kind. This was surely the appeal of Marxism, while it had appeal. Now, the world is still full of Marxists but they keep quiet about it, and wrap it up as other things, like Greenery. Where’s the mischief in that? That won’t shake up the system. That is the system. But libertarianism is a kind of mischief making that dares to speak its name, and if done, would cause serious embarrassment to thousands of politicians and lobbyists and subsidy guzzlers.
Of course, much of Paul’s appeal is that he is mounting a non-left attack on US military involvement abroad. But if many are backing him because of that, they may also become acquainted with the notion that maybe seriously cutting back big government is something that a decent man could genuinely want to do. Paul wants to cut government spending on foreign wars, and rather than blowing what is ‘saved’ on schools and hospitals and other foolishnesses, he says: let the citizens keep their money.
I presume that Ron Paul has lots of domestic personal policy positions concerning how to get there from here, so to speak, as any serious political candidate must. I do know, because he said this to Leno, that he wants to phase out welfare addiction very gradually, rather than just cold turkey it, for example. But that makes sense (‘cold turkeying’ it might also make sense, I think, but what do I know?)
Patrick Crozier and I have taken to meeting up on Monday evenings to have recorded conversations. How long we’ll do this is anyone’s bet, and how many people listen to these conversations apart from us I have no idea… though perhaps Patrick knows? But a good time is had by us, and the mere possibility that others may be listening tightens up our conversation and makes it a lot more satisfying than if we merely chatted in complete privacy.
This coming Monday, we will be talking about World War I: how it was fought, and why it was fought. This has long been an interest of Patrick’s, particularly the how bit. He thinks, or so I expect him to be saying, that Britain’s military commanders have been criticised too much.
As for me, it is my (unclear) understanding that for all its exaggerations, the Blackadder version of WW1 is basically correct. The end did not justify the means. The prize was not worth the price. Germany was temporarily subdued, but at a cost in blood and subsequent political mayhem that was out of all proportion to any good that was achieved. But is that true?
In particular (Patrick and me both being Brits) what might been the outcome of this war if it had still proceeded, but if Britain had sat it out, either by not forming a special relationship between Britain and France, or by not sticking to that deal in August 1914? What if Britain had left Germany to do its worst? Presumably the argument of Britain’s WW1 warriors was that sooner or later there would have been some kind of military reckoning between Germany and Britain, involving interests that all Brits (including me) would have regarded as vital, and that the longer such a confrontation was delayed the worse it would be for Britain. But is that right?
Comments about all these and related questions would be greatly appreciated.
Last week, Patrick and I talked about Northern Ireland, and the comments on this Samizdata posting proved very useful in suggesting various reasons why peace has broken out there, if peace it proves to be. Maybe something similar may happen again.
About 120 years ago, Mme. Cadolle figured out that it made more sense for women’s breasts to be suspended from above than cantilevered from beneath. That is, she invented bra straps. So instead of walking around wearing the lingerie equivalent of the London Bridge, women could slide themselves into a Golden Gate. This was a huge relief – as anyone who has worn a strapless bra can tell you – because the London Bridge pretty much always falls down.
– Belinda Luscombe in the course of asking Warren Buffet for better fitting bras – spotted by Amit Varma
There is a direct connection between this:
It’s rather telling that the UN’s American defenders fail to directly address an indisputable fact: U.N. Human Rights Council’s subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has endorsed a report denying the existence of a human right of self-defense, and the subcommission, pursuant to the report, has declared that all national governments are required by international human rights law to implement various gun control provisions – provisions which, by the UN’s standards, make even the gun control laws of New York City and Washington, DC, into violations of international law because they are insufficiently stringent. (See page 14 of the draft BYU article.)
… and this:
The Somalian model has spread across the planet, from the Congo to chaotic East Timor to Afghanistan, where the Taliban have violently resurfaced, to Iraq. Populations are taken hostage, terrorized, and sacrificed, the spoils of wars by local gangsters. Under various pretexts – religion, ethnicity, makeshift racist or nationalist ideology – commandos contend for power at the point of AK-47s. They fight against unarmed populations; most of their victims are women and children. Terrorism is not the prerogative of Islamists alone: the targeting of civilians has been used by a regular army and by militias under the command of the Kremlin in Chechnya, where the capital city of Grozny was razed to the ground. Where the killers appeal to the Koran, it is still primarily Muslim passersby who suffer. Algeria, Somalia, and Darfur (at least 200,000 dead and millions of refugees in just a few years, with the Sudanese government, protected by China and Russia, acting with impunity) are live laboratories of the abomination of abominations: war against civilians.
The answer to the problem of gangsters terrorising unarmed populations is, and I know there are many who genuinely think that this is a cure worse than the disease (hence all the benign support for this malign UN repression): let the populations be armed.
I have a theory about gadgets, which is that we all get fixated on a particular type of gadget, on account of the particular sort of life we lead, or were leading when the fixation struck. I now live a very settled life, so, although I love my favourite sort of music considerably more than life itself, the iPod now holds no appeal for me. When on the move I prefer to read books. But when I first got bitten by the computing bug (which rapidly became the computing necessity), I lived a very unsettled life, and I thus became fixated on the idea of a really good, but really portable, computer. My first computer was an Osborne, which I could just about shift from one work surface to another, or move from one house to another, every few months. But, not surprisingly, I yearned for something lighter. Much lighter.
Laptops as currently understood have never enthralled me. Too expensive to take everywhere, and risk losing, to accident, forgetfulness or thievery. And still too big and heavy for my feeble arms.
So it is that I have been tracking the Eee PC, ever since they first announced that they were working away at it to the point where they would be able to announce it for real, with things like specs, a price, and somewhere you could actually go and buy it. The trouble with all ultra-portable computers up until now is that the smaller they have been, the more expensive they have been. What I have always wanted is a proper computer small enough to fit into a big pocket – and by the way why don’t they make pockets bigger? – yet cheap enough to be purchasable out of semi-petty cash, and hence, at a pinch, if someone does pinch it, or if I drop it or something, I can just about afford to buy another without severe financial meltdown.
So anyway, the news now is that I am apparently not the only one on this planet thinking like this. The Eee PC is about to become a runaway hit:
The company first said the computer would be on shelves by August, then September, before it finally arrived Oct. 17. The holdup, says Shen, was making sure the interface worked well. To test it, Asustek took 1,000 prototypes and distributed them to employees and vendors, with strict orders to share them with family members of all ages. Bloggers on Eee PC Web sites that sprung up after the Computex show groaned that the product was taking too long to come out, but that didn’t bother Shen. “The user experience must be very high,” he says. “So we delayed, because with all the momentum built up around this product, I want to make sure it’s exactly right.”
There’s nothing as cheap as a hit, and when you have a hit, make ’em queue round the block. Bloggers groaning? My oh my. But yes, me too.
However, I will not be buying an Eee PC until I can physically handle one, either owned by a friend or in a shop. Or, you know, maybe I’ll meet a stranger with one and ask to have a go on it. I hope the keyboard is very small, so that it is. I have very small hands, and you know what that means. Finally, this may be of some advantage to me.
I’ve yet find an area that I’ve studied extensively where the arguments justifying the state stand up to historical evidence. I think the state’s takeover of these aspects of human life occur for different reasons than the reasons currently given for the state in those areas, and that what we see is a lot of ex post rationalisation to justify the state. I haven’t looked at every area, and certainly may find some where I wouldn’t make that argument. But I have yet to find one.
– Bruce L. Benson (one of the speakers at the LA/LI Conference last weekend) talks about his work to Patrick Crozier – the whole thing lasts a little over 15 minutes
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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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