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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People love to demonize greedy bosses who don’t care for their workers. However, after going through this bout of downsizing my company, I know that my surviving employees are not unhappy about the change, because it was accompanied by a renewed sense of discipline and focus. Employees – or, at least, my employees – have understood and responded positively to their boss’ determination to succeed financially. A boss who tolerates low financial returns will not deliver the wherewithal to provide raises and job security. In retrospect, my biggest sin was not in laying people off during my bout of downsizing – despite the pain involved – but in not demanding enough of them or myself previously. In short, I should have been more greedy … I would have been more socially useful.
– Friedrich Blowhard last Saturday, in the course of explaining why he has been obliged to stop blogging for a while
Until today I knew nothing of Pete Doherty, but this poor woman knew far too much about him. She had the extreme misfortune to live next door to him.
Ms Latteck, who shared a wall of her maisonette in Bethnal Green, east London, with Doherty, said she had decided to speak out after being incensed by the glorification of the singer as a modern rock legend. “He is presented as some kind of hero. He is not. The truth is that he made me very sick with incessant loud music, day and night,” she said. “It was like having a 100 watt speaker at full volume in my bedroom. The walls and furniture would shake.”
That is the Telegraph version of this horrible creature.
Here is the kind of thing that Ms Latteck was complaining about:
He went into jail rambling and incoherent, but is set to emerge as a poet. Pete Doherty, the drug-addict pop star, will find himself pursued by publishers as well as paparazzi when he emerges from HMP Pentonville tomorrow after being jailed following a rumpus that left a documentary-maker with two black eyes and a broken nose.
Already famous for his drug-fuelled antics as the former frontman for The Libertines, as well as his on-off relationship with the supermodel Kate Moss, Doherty is being seen as a hot property after agents learnt that he had been scrawling volumes of verse since his teens. Publishing houses are bidding to sign up the wayward star, who is due to be released tomorrow on bail after being charged with robbery and blackmail. A source close to Doherty, 25, said that he had been approached by a number of publishers.
Now I know what you are thinking. How good is the Horrible Creature’s poetry? Well, ask a stupid question.
I would like to see the Horrible Creature’s poems make an enormous amount of money, and for all the money to be given to Ms Latteck, with just enough set aside to enable the Horrible Creature to buy enough drugs to kill himself. That is surely what the wiser sort of publishers would prefer. The Horrible Creature is the kind of person who does more good for his fellow humans when dead. When he does die, which surely will not be long now, those who want to can enjoy his poetry and have fun telling each other what it all means, without anyone having any longer to put up with him. Art is often like that, I think.
Rows of dutiful school children in matching desks and matching school uniforms can then study his poems for their GCSE English exams.
Tonight, for about the twentieth time, they showed the movie Pretty Woman on the TV, on ITV2. I like this movie, but I do not like the slurs cast upon the ancient and noble, and thoroughly beneficial, art of asset stripping.
The Richard Gere character is an asset stripper. He buys companies, takes them apart and sells the bits, for more than he paid for all the bits when they were bundled together. This character is contrasted unfavourably with the old man whose warship building company the Richard Gere asset stripper character is busy buying as the movie proceeds. The asset stripper wants to take over the warship company and turn the land it occupies into a place where people will live, in houses and flats. But eventually, we are asked to believe, the asset stripper sees the error of his asset stripping ways, and switches to helping the old bloke to make yet more warships.
Yes, you got that right. Asset stripping is presented as worse than arms manufacturing. And the Pretty Woman herself, the Julia Roberts character, says that the Richard Gere character is just like her. Both screw people for money. This is a cheap shot, based on two different meanings of the word “screw”. But screwing – as in having sex for money – is not that terrible either. And assets strippers do not screw people in a bad way. They buy their property, usually for a better price than they would get from anyone else.
Just where prostitution fits into the wider economic scene I will leave for another day and another argument. No doubt it contributes to economic wellbeing in all sorts of ways that I cannot now think of, although it is not a job I would fancy. But what I do know is that asset strippers do something very valuable. When economic resources are tied up in activities with an insufficient economic future to justify their use in this way, it makes perfect sense for someone to unbundle them and release them into the wild, separately. That there are people who specialise in doing this, who are always on the look-out to ply their trade, injects huge vitality into the economy of the world. Asset strippers ensure that existing resource uses are always questioned, and that the future, when it does emerge unmistakably, is not smothered by the past.
I am having problems with my two blogs, Brian’s Culture Blog and Brian’s Education Blog. Go there, and you just get big coloured blanks next to the sidebars. I cannot post new stuff, and the only way to read my latest from when I could post is to look in the January archives (here and here). And all this at a time when I am heavily involved doing other things, and do not need such complications as these.
The good news is that this computer genius is even now giving this problem whatever attention he can spare, in among all the other demands that the world has for his skills.
I have told him to take his time. Culture and education will continue. Digital photographs will go on being taken and being displayed on the Internet, even without my inspiring example. Classical CDs will still be enjoyed, even though I am unable to tell people which. People will continue to teach and to learn, even though I am temporarily unavailable to teach them, or to say what I have learned.
Meanwhile, my thanks to all those who have kindly enquired after these blogs, and especially to those who have said that they miss them. They will return.
We curse and rage at the BBC here, a lot, but you have to admit that this is a great story.
Even Ghana’s director of tourism may have to admit that Accra has its work cut out competing with other tourist destinations in Africa. Yet just outside the capital, is the suburb of Teshi and it is here that tourists are coming to look at a relatively new tradition – the fantasy coffin makers.
So how did this happen?
The story goes that in the first half of last century one Ata Owoo was well-known for making magnificent chairs to transport the village chief on poles or the shoulders of minions.
When Owoo had finished one particularly elaborate creation, an eagle, a neighbouring chief wanted one too, this time in the shape of a cocoa pod. A major crop in Ghana.
However, the chief next door died before the bean was finished and so it became his coffin.
Then in 1951, the grandmother of one of Owoo’s apprentices died.
She had never been in an aeroplane, so he built her one for her funeral.
And a tradition was born.
The only bit of what might be BBC politically correct boringness that I could detect in this report came a few paragraphs before that last quote, where it said:
Many of their clients want to bury loved ones in something that reflects their trade.
Even if that means being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle.
Even? I suppose if you are the BBC, that is the ultimate horror. But, if being buried in an airplane or a car or a cockerel or a cocoa pod is okay, then what on earth is so wrong with being buried in a Coca-Cola bottle? (Not Diet Coke obviously. That would be stupid.)
Something tells me that in these post-Christian times, this might spread to other parts of the world. Our boring British death industry could certaionly do with a shake-up. What kind of giant object would you like to be buried it?
It is good to read some good news coming out of Africa. True, African people are dying, but they are mostly dying of natural causes and are going out in style.
By all means, wear pyjamas in the privacy of your own bedroom. Wear them round your own house, even. But I am frankly disturbed that the art of dressing oneself has transmogrified these days into a competition to see who looks most like they got their clothes out of a recycling bin. We don’t all have to look like the poor and starving in order to persuade others that we care. It’s a big lefty trend, and now is the time to reclaim the clothing-sphere as something capable of expressing more valuable ideas than, “I wouldn’t wear a Gucci suit if you paid me.” Improving your style isn’t about getting different writing on your t-shirt. It’s about conveying who you really are. You are not a sack of potatoes.
– Alice Bachini last Sunday (good to see she still knows how to spell pyjamas)
One of my favourite jokes – and if you are any kind of friend of mine you have probably heard it several times already – concerns a man who goes, on his own, to the seaside. He swims around, having a good time. Then, two strong hands descend upon his shoulders and force him beneath the waves, and keep him under until he thinks that he is about to die, without even knowing why. Finally, the two strange hands allow him to the surface again, and it turns out that they are the hands of a total stranger, who excuses his strange and aggressive conduct by saying: “I’m sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine.”
Well, now, as David Carr is fond of noting whenever he sees it happening, reality seems to have gone one stage further than mere humour:
A teenager was hacked to death by three friends who attacked him with large scythes, a court heard.
What are friends for?
I like airplanes, but am rather suspicious of this huge new Airbus that they have just rolled out, handsome though it does look and useful though it will surely be in many circumstances. In particular, I suspect that the A380 is costing Europe a whole lot more than is being officially suggested, and that Boeing decided not to build a similar aircraft for good, loss-avoiding reasons.
Well, I still do not know very much about Airbus finances, but this story certainly backs up the costing-more-than-they-are-admitting aspect:
TSUNAMI-struck Thailand has been told by the European Commission that it must buy six A380 Airbus aircraft if it wants to escape the tariffs against its fishing industry.
I realise that it is carrying the search for a silver lining to absurd lengths to say such a thing, but one good thing about this whole Tsunami horror is that it has brought this EU vileness rather more out into the open than would have happened otherwise. As it is, the combination of nastiness and lack of political sensitivity being shown by the EU is extraordinary even by their low standards. Do they not see that the Tsunami has somewhat changed things?
The Thai trade negotiators, not unreasonably, seem to betting that things are indeed now rather different. They seem to be calculating that, if they simply expose the nature of the deal they are now being faced with by the EU, the EU will back down in the face of worldwide disgust, not least within Europe itself. The Thais will get their aid. They will be allowed to sell their keenly priced fish products without punitive tariffs being slapped on them. And they will not have to buy six of these damned great airplanes unless they decide that they want to. All of which is a lot to hope for, but at least they may get more of what they want than they would have done if the Tsunami had no struck.
The EU Referendum Blog has more on this whole sordid episode:
The aircraft will cost Thailand some £1.3 billion – nearly the amount that all 25 EU members states have pledged in tsunami aid to the whole affected region.
Richard North also points out that Thailand was being shafted before the Tsunami in a similar manner. This is not about the EU getting nasty; it is about it remaining nasty.
But that is the EU, naked in tooth and claw. While workers from across world are on the ground, helping to rebuild the Thai economy, EU officials are also right in there – undermining the basis of any recovery.
And according to North, Thailand is not the only country that is being “encouraged” to buy Airbuses with EU trade policy concessions.
The irony is that by swapping a bit of freer trade for aircraft orders, the EU is agreeing, reluctantly, to do itself a favour. It is agreeing to impose the terrible burden of cheaper goods upon itself. But even when it does good things, it cannot seem to help stirring in bad things, like flogging unwanted airplanes.
“We’re reckless arrogant stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don’t like dicks because pussies get fucked by dicks, but dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just wanna shit on everything. Pussies may think that they can deal with assholes their way, but the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much, or fuck when it isn’t appropriate, and it takes a pussy to show ’em that. But sometimes pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves. Because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes. I don’t know much in this crazy crazy world. But I do know that if you don’t let us fuck this asshole, we’re gonna have our dicks and our pussies all covered in shit”
– said by a member of Team America in the movie of that name. Says Christopher Price, who posted this in a comment here this morning: “Its got one of the best explanations of US foreign policy that I’ve seen in a long time. Kind of like what Condaleezza Rice was saying yesterday, but more succinct.”
Down with Kim Jong-il. Let’s all rise to drive out the dictatorial regime.
– written on a Kim Jong-il poster in a North Korean factory
Echoing what our own Johnathan Pearce said about The Aviator, an emailer to Instapundit, Doug Levene, said this about the movie:
What struck me about the Aviator is that it’s the first Hollywood movie I’ve seen in quite a while that portrayed a business man – a filthy rich, ruthless entrepreneur yet – as the hero, and the crusading, anti-war-profiteering, corruption-exposing Senator … as the villain. Am I the only one to have noticed this peculiarity?
Well, Johnathan certainly got the hero bit of that in his review, but the only villains he referred to were Katherine Hepburn’s ghastly family.
The Aviator has just been nominated for 14 BAFTAs, i.e British Oscars, and looks set to do very well at the real thing.
Will there now be more wacky but true-life entrepreneur movies? If there is one thing Hollywood loves even more than its own silly lefty opinions, it is money.
The Conservatives are promising tax cuts. Good for them.
Tax cuts are always more popular than political chatterers think they ought to be, and tax increases are always more unpopular than political chatterers think they ought to be. The chatterers talk a lot and persuade themselves that their opinion about these things is shared, but come election time, provided there are any politicians who have remained unbullied by them, the chatterers are always baffled and disappointed.
Promised tax cuts are appealing to voters, because they have a quite good chance of materialising, and once they do, the voters get to keep the money and spend it how they want.
But when it comes to tax increases, and the accompanying promises of better public services, the picture is very different. From time to time, surveys of the sort that political chatterers take very seriously ask voters a question along the following lines: Would you be willing to accept increased taxes in exchange for better public services? And often the answer comes back: Yes, we would.
However, reality does not ask voters this question. What the promise of increased taxes in exchange for promised better public services actually means is the certainty of increased taxes, but the mere possibility that public services will actually get any better in exchange. The voters’ money might be spent better, but it is at least as likely to be spent on idiotic make-work schemes and political pay-offs. Faced with that question, voters tend to vote: No.
So I say that this is a smart Conservative move. They do not look like they can win any time soon, but this may soften the next blow quite a bit. On the other hand, if the government steals this policy the way it has stolen so many other Conservative policies, that will plunge the Conservatives into further confusion. But I would be quite pleased.
If such tax cuts occur, public services will be no better and no worse than they would have been otherwise. This is because tax cuts are actually a cut in the rate of taxation, rather than in the total amount of tax collected. If tax rates are reduced, the economy cheers up a bit, and the total tax take, from all taxes combined, is as big as ever. On the other hand, if tax rates are increased, as the Liberal Democrats are threatening, the economy stalls, and although the yield from the increased taxes increases, the yield from all the other unchanged taxes declines, and the total tax take remains stagnant. Which is yet another reason why the tax-increases-in-xchange-for-better-public-services idea is so foolish, and why voters are so right to shun it.
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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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