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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Hard to say if the snappily titled “When Your Neighbor Loses His Job It’s A Recession. When You Screw A Whore Behind Your Wife’s Back, Get Caught, And Lose Your Job, It’s A Catastrophic Economic Meltdown” is my favourite blog post title of the year or not but it is both howlingly funny and 100% on the money.
Disgraced criminal Eliot Spitzer has for reasons unknown been occupying a columnist spot at Slate.com for some period of time. His column is always dull, hysterical, and powered by a level of self-satisfaction that is undiminished by any apparent shame over the pain the columnist has caused not only for his own family but for a good Jersey girl trying to make a living by providing an honest service.
Hehe… read the whole thing.
The impending strike by Royal Mail workers is a wonderful opportunity to deal with a long standing issue… the essential obsolescence of the whole notion of state mail monopolies.
In this era of highly efficient competing international courier companies, why bother with state letter carriers at all? Do not ‘privatise’ the Royal Mail as was planned earlier, instead make the workers (very generously) redundant… all of them… then sell off the assets to the highest bidder, end the anachronistic monopoly on letter delivery and get the state out of that business completely: simply wind up the Royal Mail.
El Gordo needs to stop seeing this strike as a ‘problem’ and instead see it as a golden opportunity to raise some more money to squander from yet another asset sale whilst allowing modern high tech courier companies like TNT, DHL and UPS to expand into an area they should never have been excluded from in the first place… it is a win-win really.
CNN is talking about something called ‘Blog Action Day‘, which describes itself as follows:
Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be one of the largest-ever social change events on the web.
Yet would anyone care to bet that when they say ‘social’ change (such as deciding to do something yourself, such as recycling your plastic bottles) a great many of the contributors are actually talking about ‘political’ change (using the collective means of coercion to force people under threat of violence to be more ‘green’).
Of course such folks are just following the well establish and rather Orwellian conflation of opposites used exemplified by socialism, which I have often argued is the most ironic use of human language ever – a system by which all social interactions are forcibly replaced by intermediating politically derived formulae.
Well I would like to dedicate a previous samizdata blog post to “change.org” and the Blog Action Day jamboree, called My carbon footprint is bigger than your carbon footprint by the indispensable Michael Jennings, that one man global warming machine that we are privileged to have as a writer for our splendid blog.
Britain’s National Health Service, so beloved by Michael Moore, is not what (most) supporters of Obama’s ‘reforms’ claim they want for the USA. They are of course lying through their teeth as a single payer system is clearly the desired endpoint (i.e. eventual de facto nationalisation) and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Well just look what you have to look forward to.
Yet as every UK politician will say when asked, the NHS is the ‘envy of the world’ and wanting to do away with it is clearly a sign of madness as the only imaginable alternate to state provided healthcare is, apparently, no healthcare at all, with anyone who is not a millionaire dying in the streets if they get ill.
Seriously, try and have a sober conversation about the NHS and the extent to which people have been propagandised will stun you.
Much has been written about Kindle in the last few days, but I for one am in no hurry to rush out and buy one.
I do like the idea of a searchable digital book reader, but being locked into a proprietary format, not to mention paying a 40% premium for content for not being in the USA, means I am not even considering this product.
If someone comes up with a well designed open-standards digital reader which does not force me to buy from Amazon, that will get me to look again, but until that happens…
There is a bizarre article over on liberalconspiracy (liberal as in “not-liberal-in-any-way” kind of liberal) called “Are all libertarians so childish?“, whose category error starts in the title, saying ‘mean things’ about a fringe Tory party conference outfit called The Freedom Zone.
The theme of the meeting was ‘the bully state’, and the panel included Roger Helmer, the MEP for East Midlands. Mr Helmer made a gallant defence of his rights to get pissed, stuff his face, pollute his lungs, and ruin the atmosphere by driving as fast as he likes in a great gas-guzzling monstrosity. People were sick of being told how to live, he said. The state should butt out.
Fair enough. But then, after making this impassioned defence of the rights of the individual, he jumped seamlessly to the rights of decent English sorts to tell travellers (”we’re not allowed to say gypsies any more”) to piss off. He told a story about how villagers in Bedfordshire had objected to proposals for a travellers’ encampment, because of what it would do to their quality of life. Ninety percent of those complaints had been disregarded, he said, because the powers that be considered them to be racist. This was an outrage. The state should be on the side of the people.
Is anyone else detecting just a hint of hypocrisy here?
[…]
Things don’t work like that, of course. Society has rules, to make sure that by exercising my freedoms I don’t crap all over yours.
Those rules don’t just apply to people we don’t like. The laws that stop Mr Helmer from getting pissed and going joy-riding in an SUV have nothing to do with a deeply felt desire to restrict his freedom, and everything to do with stopping him from buggering things up for the rest of us.
Now these are very reasonable observations, but the steaming pile of elephant poop in the middle of this pool table is that the people in question maybe Tories… but they are not in fact libertarians.
My reply in the comment section was:
I always laugh when I see the phrase “libertarian” and “Tory” anywhere near each other. And probably best not to conflate society with state when you talk about rules (and mean laws).
Rational libertarians understand that the “freedom” to get drunk in your SUV is trumped by my freedom not to have you impose clear and present risks to life and limb on me, but hardly anyone on the Stupid Party, sorry I mean Tory Party, are *any* sort of libertarian, let alone the rational kind. If a few souls are trying to move them in a libertarian direction, well power to them, but I don’t fancy their chances.
But regarding gypsies, really it just comes down to property rights, which are something very few Tories support any more than you do, as asking them questions about gypsies are indeed a wonderful way of showing: the issue highlights the fact they are not libertarians (people who support several liberty), they are (gasp) Tories (people who support “people like them”). It is simple: if the gypsies rent property from the legal owner, they have a right to be there and too damn bad if the neighbours object to their mere presence. End of story. If said gypsies then nick stuff and trash adjoining properties, then action should indeed be taken against those responsible. Also end of story (and it is a different story to the first one).
Nevertheless listening to you discussing the failings of libertarian thought, with some Tories as examples, is a bit like listening to two members of different religions discussing the failings of atheism. Entertaining but not very enlightening.
It is the lack of hope in this world that drives so many desperate souls to bigotry, violence, and terror. Barack Obama has now struck a telling blow against this, by giving literally billions of plain people across the globe a ray of hope that – without any elitist demands for actual diplomatic achievement on their parts! – a genuine Nobel Peace Pony may yet be theirs.
When, next year, he finally resolves the Middle East conflict, and is borne shoulder-high through Jerusalem by an ecstatic crowd as Netanyahu and Abbas lead a mass conga round the Temple Mount, we shall just have to give it to him twice. Unless he fails, in which case I guess it can always go to Paris Hilton.
– Gray Woodland of Goat in the Machine commenting here.
This was too good to leave languishing in our comment section as it had us literally weeping with laughter at Samizdata HQ.
Dave Cameron “promises to tear down big government“, presumably by increasing the size of government.
I have one question for you, Dave… were you lying in January when you promised to increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year – rather than the £650bn proposed by Labour… or are you lying now in October when you say you will tear down big government?
The notion that the US blogosphere is going to allow the US state to require it to register certain content is something that has me wondering if some cunning conspiracy was not at work by a shadowy cabal of Good Guys (who inexplicably did not let me in on the plan) luring the enemy into a sort of virtual Teutoburger Wald by playing to hubris and Imperial overreach. These people do not really even understand what the internet is I suspect.
I can not tell you how delighted I am. When a body like the Federal Trade Commission commits itself to an unwinnable fight against an almost literally endless enemy with the ability to vanish and reappear at will, it is a clear sign that terminal stupidity has set in, which is really rather good news.
Oh and by the way, all you US based corporate drones looking for a few blog harlots to review your magic widgets in return for some free samples, there are large numbers of blogs based outside the USA with extensive US readerships who will be happy to openly invite the FTC to stick their regulations up their collectives arses… that said, US blogs who like to review products are almost certain to completely ignore the FTC, with the more nervous ones just reorganising how they do things (trivially easy: change names/host overseas) to make these absurd regulations worthless.
At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes. This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Lord Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending. As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.
– Ludwig Von Mises as quoted by Toby Baxendale
I have not laughed so hard in weeks.
David Cameron has declared his intention to be a radical prime minister who will deliver “massive change” to Britain if elected, in an article for The Sunday Telegraph […] So this week in Manchester you will see that far from playing it safe, the Conservative Party has a radical agenda for returning power and responsibility to people.
Thigh slappingly funny stuff! At least the Telegraph put “massive change” in quotation marks. Given that Dave has been bending over backwards for years now to make it clear he is the embodiment of ideological continuity and to promise nothing without wiggle room for backtracking later once he gets what he wants, the latest rebranding as daring radical saviour is truly our old chum “The Big Lie” in use once again.
So lets fill in that “memory hole” that Dave knows all his previous statements have vanished down…
The “massive changes” he plans are more Blair/Brown style regulation and political direction of the markets:
But we must also stand up to business when the things that people value are at risk. So it’s time to place the market within a moral framework – even if that means standing up to companies who make life harder for parents and families.
And this is the jackanapes whose “massive changes” involve promising to expand the bloated state, just a wee bit slower than Labour, and I quote from earlier this year:
Mr Cameron said he would increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year – rather than the £650bn proposed by ministers. He warned voters not to expect an incoming Tory administration to slash public spending and cut taxes, saying: “That’s not what they should be thinking…
So guys and gals, about that promise of “massive change”…
Thank God we have those valiant seekers of truth in the media, so key to our sainted democracy, to challenge the utterances of politicians and confront them with their own contradictory remarks when they make them and… oh… hang on…
Irish votes… the finest European money can buy.
It is entertaining to see how brave and resolute Dave is already setting up his wiggle room for refusing to give Britain the referendum it overwhelmingly demands.
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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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