Adriana ponder the meaning of ‘In vino veritas’.
Andrew Dodge and Tom Burroughes attempt to form non-Euclidean shapes with their arms
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July 17th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Samizdata.net is our new look blog that replaces the blogspot hosted/blogger.com powered Libertarian Samizdata. We are now a Movable Type powered blog, fully searchable with thematic, author and date indexed archives. It will take a while to fully index all our old archives but they are available indexed chronologically already. July 15th, 2002 | Comments are closed
On Brendan O’Neill‘s self-titled blog, he replies to my article The long and winding road on Tuesday in which I praised him for rejecting the economic equivalent of ‘flat earth theory’, namely the infamous ‘fixed wealth fallacy’. However whilst he agrees that he indeed rejects the sort of corporatist statist capitalism that we at Samizdata despise, he does not much care for our economic objectives: non-state centred laissez-faire capitalism. It is interesting that I was struck by the same paragraph in Brendan’s response as Adriana in her article (see below). So Brendan does not want corporatist statist capitalism in which existing companies get subsidies from the state or use the state’s raft of regulations to make it hard for competitors to enter their market… but he also does not seem to like unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, which is based on market forces and voluntary contract free from the dead hand of the state. Okay, as he states that he is not an ‘anti-capitalist’ because those ‘anti-capitalist’ guys are anti-growth, so he is obviously pro-growth. However he does not like ‘capitalists’ because for some reason he feels they can’t deliver “more development, more production and bigger and loftier ambitions”… the lofty ambitions however are left unstated. So it seems he does not want regulated hand-in-hand-with-the-state capitalism (i.e. ‘third way’ nonsense) and he does not want unregulated capitalism. I cannot help but see that the similarity between these two different ‘capitalisms’ Brendan rejects is that they both leave the means of production in private hands (though in reality only laissez-faire truly does). When presented with these two contrasting forms of ‘capitalism’, he asks if these are the only two ballgames in town? No, of course not, Brendan. We also have Marxist economics as an option. So let me speculate as to what Brendan actually wants as he is not exactly spelling it out… he has often stated that he is a great fan of democracy, and in fact when I wrote an article scorning modern democracy, he seemed almost unwilling to believe I really intended to gore that particular sacred cow. However ‘democracy’ is one of those weasel words in that it does not always mean the same to different people. To some, like Brendan I suspect (and I am sure he will say otherwise if I am misrepresenting him), democracy means allowing ‘The People’ (whatever that means) to have democratic input into what any business actually does with its accumulated means of production. In short, ‘The People’ will act as a super-owner of land, labour and capital rather than leaving it to some capitalist ‘owners’: private property itself ceases to really be private anymore. The important thing here is not the economy but making everything democratic. In other words, ‘democratic socialism’. On a purely historical basis, socialism is very big on “bigger and loftier ambitions”, but truly dire at producing “more development, more production”. Capitalism is demonstrably the best system for increasing development and production, and the less regulated it is, the better it works. Yet the fact is, even if it was not the best economic system for achieving Brendan’s utilitarian aims of “more development, more production” (which it is), I would still support capitalism for what can only be described as my own “bigger and loftier ambitions”… sure I want more economic goodies but much more than that, I want liberty and that is not something the state can give me. July 11th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Socialism really only makes sense if you think that economies are like pies and fairness is all about deciding who gets what slice of that pie… it is the belief that economics is a zero sum game, or that the size of the pie remains the same and all that ‘society’ (meaning state) can do is cut it more fairly. As this is of course a demonstrable absurdity, given that producing new services and products and opening up new markets actually increases the size of the ‘pie’, it follows that wealth destroying socialist notions of ‘fairness’ are also demonstrable absurdities. This is the ‘fixed wealth fallacy’ that we have often mentioned on this blog… the reality is that me getting richer does not make you any poorer. Thus it is refreshing to see that Brendan O’Neill, a writer for what used to be called ‘Living Marxism’ and is now called Sp!ked, is also rejecting the fixed wealth fallacy. Making Americans consume less cosmetics or buy less pet food will not make people less poor in the Sudan or anywhere else. As a result, given that worthy blogger Brendan describes himself as ‘anti-capitalist’, I can only assume that what he is actually ‘anti’ is the sort of statist corporatist capitalism that all libertarians also abominate. It sounds like Brendan is well on the way to being against trade tariffs that discriminate against the third world and against the notion that states trade with each other (in reality people and companies trade with each other)… in short, Brendan seems to heading towards the logical consequence of rejecting the fixed wealth fallacy: laissez faire capitalism. What say you, Brendan? July 9th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Whilst reading one of my favourite blogs, Daily Pundit, I came across a story Bill Quick was commenting on which a 17 year old boy in the United States denounced his father to Police for growing a few marijuana plants. And just how is this different from Nazi and Communist regimes that encouraged children to denounce their parents to the authorities for doing things they disapproved of? The moral corruption at the heart of the ‘war against drugs’ gives perfect lie to the ‘family values’ cant of political establishments across the so called ‘free world’. Nauseating. I hope the little shit ends up out on the street and reaps the true consequences of his treachery. July 8th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The recent brouhaha over the ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein €uro’ ad by anti-€uro activists, showing British comedian Rik Mayhall as Hitler, does make one wonder if the same people were protesting in front of shows by Mel Brooks when he used Hitler (in three movies, no less) as a source of humour. The following advert, which features the well known red triangle trade mark of that bastion of macho virtues, Bass Breweries Ltd. would presumably have had the likes of pro-euro ‘comedian’ Eddy Izard howling about ‘homophobia’ in much the same way he has protested against the use of the Hitler image on grounds of ‘taste’ by his political enemies (never mind he himself has done a well know ‘Hitler skit’).  By comparison I was first shown this Bass Breweries advert by a floridly homosexual libertarian with whom I am acquainted… and he thought it was hilarious. Is there something about being a statist that makes a person not just morally comfortable with using the threat of violence to reorder free social interactions on a massive scale but also intrinsically humourless? July 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
In the United States, property forfeiture laws effectively make the ‘protection’ of their vaunted constitution meaningless against seizure of pretty much anything, as various arms of the state can help themselves to property without the owner having ever been convicted of a crime and often without even being charged with one. Alas this tyrannous state of affairs can now be found in Britain as well, at least when it comes to HM Customs and Excise. The fact that just on the opinion of a customs inspector that you have too much alcohol or tobacco for personal use, the presumption of innocence can be swept away, reversed in fact, and your property stolen by the state without you ever being convicted of smuggling. Without so much as setting foot in a court of law, if the representative of the state says you are a criminal smuggler, then you must prove otherwise on the spot or not only will he take the goods you are trying to bring into the country but he will also appropriate the vehicle in which you are transporting them, i.e. your car or van. You are guilty unless you can prove otherwise. There are many things to admire in the USA that Britain should seek to emulate… however its legal system that allows convictionless theft by the state just on the say-so of state functionaries is not one of those things. July 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Security is the one area minarchist libertarians like me are willing to countenance at least some role for the state… but yet again private security measures, whilst not infallible given that no work of mere man is foolproof, prove no less effective than those heavy handed defenders of order on governments payroll. Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Hadayet shot two people dead at the El Al desk in LAX yesterday before being shot dead by a private security man. The airport had armed US soldiers wandering around and yet on July 4th, the EL AL desk was defended by private security. Is it any wonder the Israeli airline takes responsibility for its own security whenever possible rather than leave it up to the local buffoons to protect them? July 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
That is in effect what President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Giscard d’Estaing said last Tuesday when discussing the implications of another refusal of the Irish voters to sanction the enlargement of the EU:
The advocates of corporate statism are determined to have their way and piffle about ‘democracy’ is only used when it suits them. If Ireland vote ‘No’ again, regardless of Romano Prodi’s claim ‘there is no Plan B’, it is clear that the mere wishes of the Irish people will not be allowed to stand in the way of Europe’s ‘Manifest Destiny’.  July 4th, 2002 | Comments are closed
This is in essence what the ‘Visigrad Four’ (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic) are telling the EU as they loudly protest at the prospect of not having their inefficient antiquated agricultural sectors subsidised by other sectors of the greater European economy when (if) they join the Quite why anyone thinks farmer are entitled to protected status compared to, say, construction or pharmaceuticals or software or little plastic widget manufacture always seems to avoid coherent discussion, but I assume the logic is that if they are going to join the Swine Society, then they must be given a full place at the trough. Actually if the poor fools are indeed successful at getting into the EU I hope they get their way, thus vastly increasing the strain on the monstrous Common Agricultural Policy and bringing the day of financial implosion of the entire EU a giant step closer. Of course the preposterous Prince Charles could not care less if working people have to pay inflated prices for their food. No doubt next he will demand the EU and State put an end to the ‘obsession’ of common working people with cheap holidays and cheap motor transport… oh… I forgot, they already did that by taxing the hell out of petrol (75 percent of the cost in the UK) and propping up inefficient airlines with anti-competitive practices. July 2nd, 2002 | Comments are closed
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