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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The headline says ‘Europe declares war on rating agencies‘:
Wolfgang Schauble, German finance minister, said there was no justification for the four-notch downgrade or for warnings that Portugal might need a second bail-out. “We must break the oligopoly of the rating agencies,” he said.
Heiner Flassbeck, director of the UN Office for World Trade and Development, said the agencies should be “dissolved” before they can do any more damage, or at least banned from rating countries.
Now ponder that for a moment… what is a ‘rating agency’? It is a company that states an opinion regarding credit worthiness. And those opinions are only significant if people who make investment decisions think the opinions in question actually reflect reality, i.e. the opinion has some credibility.
So what these quoted members of the political class are calling for is banning credible opinions about the consequences of decisions by, er, people like themselves.
Astonishing. And in reality rating agencies have a history of excessive optimism, only downgrading ratings long after the dots were joined by anyone who has been paying attention.
“Will militant unions derail big fat Greek sell-offs on the rocky route to recovery?” sayeth the Telegraph.
Well anyone buying Greek infrastructures with private money deserves everything they will get… it would be easier and probably less stressful to just flush the money down the toilet and call it ‘performance art’.
Leave Greece to circle the drain as a prime example of Mencken’s observation:
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard”.
Greece will just be the first of many as the vast ponzi scheme that is the ‘welfare state’ reaches its climax set to Bouzouki music playing faster and faster…
It is difficult to know how seriously to take China’s red revival. Like the idea of a Cultural Revolution-themed restaurant – could the world imagine an Auschwitz Café? – to Western eyes the campaigns are almost beyond parody.
– Peter Foster discussing the nauseating celebrations of the communist party in China
And even if the Greek populace remained blissfully oblivious when all that debt was being piled up, they certainly are aware of it now. But judging from the riots in the streets their only thought still is that they want the party to continue, at someone else’s expense. They deserve what they get.
– Commenter ‘Laird’
… no, it was the highest institutions of the Netherlands who were on trial with their credibility and very legitimacy at stake.
Although I am delighted he was acquitted of all charges, frankly it is a disgrace that he was ever put on trial in the first place for simply stating his views about Islam and multiculturalism.
And the fact the BBC calls him ‘far right’ tells you nothing useful about Geert Wilders’ views but speaks volumes about the BBC.
The dependably dismal Archbishop of Canterbury, a man who thinks his god favours a massive force backed regulatory state which takes one person’s wealth implicitly at gunpoint and gives it to someone else, get a well phrased hammering by Graeme Archer:
It is obscene, Dr Williams, that some people choose not to work, and are better off as a consequence than those who do not make such a choice. Such people are less deserving than others. If there are no jobs available, what are all these Polish men doing on this bus, at 6.30am? They deserve more than to be viewed as taxable cart-horses.
And you? On an average salary? Trying to raise a child and thinking about having another? Coming to the conclusion that you might be able to balance commuting against mortgage costs, if you moved to an unpopular area farther out than you’d like? It must be hard for multiple houseowners such as Mr Cruddas, or the Archbishop in his palace, to understand: this is life, for most of us. And we’re not fascists because we make a distinction between the deserving and the undeserving when we see where our tax is spent.
Read the whole thing. My only regret is Archer does not follow the moral argument to its logical conclusion.
… no, I am not talking about his, er, other talents but rather the clarity of his economic analysis…
Ladies and gentlemen, Guido presents the Great Inflation Swindle, we have just seen the second-biggest one-month increase on record and a record high in core CPI yet the Governor of the Bank of England has told us for 3 years inflation was a blip and that the real danger was deflation. It was a deliberate lie to excuse the most reckless monetary loosening since… well actually monetary policy has been too loose globally since back to 1998 when Greenspan “saved the world” after Long Term Capital’s financial theory geeks had a close encounter of the reality kind. The loosening up of monetary policy to smooth the aftermath of that hedge fund collapse told financial risk takers to rack up the risk because central banks would step in if you got in to trouble. Everyone was “too big to fail”. Central bankers turned capitalism from a system of profit and loss into a system of private profits and socialised losses. Taxpayers had their chips put on the gambling table without even being asked.
Read the whole thing.
Though a World Health Organization study concluded cell phones may cause cancer, some are wondering why, if their truly is a link, there not been a significant worldwide increase in brain cancers.
Go figure. But of course providing excuses for more regulations, and more funding for further studies, is the reason bodies such as the World Health Organisation exist.
While some minorities become popular political causes, other minorities are on the receiving end of negative political populism. Politically correct campaigners will loudly support the “good minorities” such as GLBT or immigrant groups, but they are equally loud in their condemnation of the “wrong minorities”. This seems to indicate that we are not becoming more tolerant… we are simply switching our bigotry on to other areas.
– John Humphreys
Read the whole thing.
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.
– Lord Acton
…have been rather unwell lately, hence it has taken rather longer than usual to get comments approved if they have aggro’ed smitebot. Do not be concerned if you have no idea what this means 
There have been three Chinooks with US markings circling overhead above my house in London for quite some time now, and for a moment I thought that maybe the rapture was at hand and they were here to air lift me off to heaven… or wherever else it is that rotorheads go when they kick off for the last time.
Actually a place with large helicopters perpetually circling overhead fits my preconception of ‘heaven’ rather well, so maybe the world *did* end as I was certainly watching them in complete rapture.
Result!
Hello? Is there anyone else out there?
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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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