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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Matt Welch makes some excellent points about the reality of world trade but the following bit suggests he does not read the Samizdata very often.
If free traders spent as much time railing against rich-country protectionism as they do making fun of the anti-globalization kids, the pig-puppet audience would dwindle to a core of fog-headed Maoists, and more importantly, destitute people around the world could vault out of poverty much faster.
We are wounded Matt! You mean we are not your default page when you boot up the ol’ box every morning? We often go though periods of railing against the immorality and stupidity of protectionism. Such as:
Stupidity beyond the measure of language by Natalija Radic on February 1st:
Jospin is a man who is responsible more than any other political figure in the EU (and that is saying something) for people like me being fined and harassed by EU states for trying to do business within the EU because I am an outsider, just another Slavic white nigger girl. Naturally he takes much the same view of Africans and Asians who try to do business in the EU.
Comments worth repeating by Perry de Havilland on January 30th:
To be “strongly against world trade” is to be in favour of poverty and against free association. It is to favour force over choice. It is to favour death and famine in the third world. Anyone who actually wants for the peoples of South America, Africa and Asia to prosper should be demanding not an end to world trade but the removal of all barriers to entry to the US and EU markets. At a stroke that would result in cheaper products for common working western people as cheaper African, South American and Asian goods become available. Immediately the economies of third world nations would improve as they could sell their products without immoral grotesque discriminatory tariff barriers.
What free trade actually means by Natalie Solent on December 18th 2001:
So the European Union, having stopped Africans making a respectable living as producers and traders by denying them access to us, then bestows a lesser largesse via ‘Third World Aid’. Adding insult to injury, the EU then expects gratitude from the very people they have discriminated against. Of course what happens is that Africans, now being dependent on largesse rather than their own efforts, take on the character of beggars, whiny when desperate and sullen when temporarily a little better fed. We in our turn take on the character of patronising social workers-cum-lords of the manor. What a pity, when we could be interacting as equals and fellow human beings.
… and those are just the ones I can be bothered to find. So you see, Matt, here on Samizdata this particular group of free traders really really doesn’t like protectionism and we attack it on both economic and moral grounds quite often.
There is nothing to the rumour that mentioning BRITNEY SPEARS increases the hit rate for a blog.
Blog me baby one more time!
And his name is Will Quick. When Will is in full vitriolic flight, it is a thing of wonder to behold. If, like me, you enjoy savouring the savage directness possible with the English language, then read Will’s latest spleen venting invective regarding all manner of folk that grievously irk his anti-idiotarian sensibilities:
Where a pack of stupid, venal whores whose tarnished Olympian wares are for sale to the highest bidder in the lowest bidet can profess distaste for a minor show of honest patriotism, though if somebody had thought to keep them supplied with sufficient hot and cold running hookers, they’d have no doubt been out waving American flags themselves.
These are disconnects so blindingly obvious you’d think they’d be pointed out in every major media outlet in the United States. But they aren’t. Which means somebody else has to do it. That would be us. That’s what we’re good for. Pointing things out.
With a chainsaw.
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Read the whole article and then go put some fuel in the motor of your chainsaw.
Miss Veen has a series of sublime cat haiku which will be immediately recognisable to people who live with cats. For example:
The rule for today.
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.
Blur of motion, then-
Silence, me, a paper bag
What is so funny?
Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitos
Fear vacuum cleaner.
Read them all. Meow.
You have nothing to loose but your hackneyed diet of stale media…
This is a snapshot of where Samizdata visitors came from earlier today, demonstrating the truly global appeal of blogs. In the last 72 hours have had e-mails from USA, UK, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, South Africa, India, Hong Kong and Australia.
And these are just the early days of blogging. Richard Bennett started the ball rolling (perhaps), Glenn Reynolds gave it a kick and the rest is yet unwriten.
The subtitle is: cryptography, censorship, copyright, thoughtcrime and this is definitely truth in advertising. Zem:blog is tightly focused on those issues, eschewing the occasional off-message flights of whimsey found in places like Samizdata.
I do not mean that as a criticism however, it is just that zem:blog is very serious about focusing on what are frankly serious issues to anyone who regards civil liberties as nothing less than the bedrock of civilisation, as zem clearly does… and as do we.
zem:blog tends to focus on technical issues as they relate to civil liberties and he takes a truly global view, reporting in the last few days on matters in the Europe, USA, Britain, Iceland, Swaziland and Egypt. The enigmatically named ‘zem’ is an Australian software developer in the telecommunications industry and thus knows of what he speaks.
Recommended
John McGuinness chides NRO’s blog The Corner for their disinclination to link to articles they reference.
I’m enjoying National Review’s new Blog — The Corner, but one complaint is that they don’t seem to be as diligent in linking to articles they’re referring to as most bloggers are. So it’s not always easy to tell if they’re representing opposing viewpoints fairly.
John makes a very good point. I also groused about that and why it is actually counter-productive in an earlier article. I suspect the NRO team are so steeped in old-media-think that it just does not seem ‘right’ to link to people they incorrectly view as competitors. Well the fact is that links are what makes the blogosphere and the very internet itself go around and they are a resource in themselves… and like unilateral free trade, which works even if the idiots in other nations are protectionists… I will continue to link to Corner if I quote them (and they are also in the blog side bar) because it is in my interests to do so for both the reasons I mentioned in my earlier article on the subject “Jonah Goldberg comments on the joys of group sex“, and also for the valid reason John McGuinness gives: it actually boosts credibility to be able to check the facts yourself.
So guys, what are you afraid of?
Andrew Sullivan is pleased that Irish singer Bono is not slagging off drug companies. Well a word of advice, Andrew… don’t get your hopes up that Bono’s seeming conversion to the forces of reason is more than a fragile veneer. He does have this disheartening knack for seeming to make sense, only to dash your raised expectations on the rocks of reality a little further down the road, as I observed back on January 14th 2002 in the article Teeth grinding illogic and grotesque conflation…or perhaps genius?. He is either a perverse genius or a jackass. You choose.
This humourous phase was once used to describe fox hunting but could just as well be applied to the US Congressional investigation into the fun and frolics pertaining to Enron. For a rather more forthright view of this investigation, let me refer you to the blog known poetically as Gut Rumbles:
The central point seems to be that a bunch of overblown, publicity-seeking assholes who lie, cheat and waste other people’s money for personal gain have a lot of nerve to appear on television and barbeque a bunch of overblown, secrecy-seeking assholes who lied, cheated and wasted other people’s money for personal gain.
Not quite how I would have phrased it but I can’t say I disagree.
Suman Palit on the Kolkata Libertarian has some interesting links and commentary about hawala, a system of trust based independent networks for transferring money across borders completely outside ‘official’ financial systems. I have touched on the subject of hawala in previous articles and Suman points out the absurdity of US (and other) efforts to try and stamp it out
Criminalising such a large-scale human endeavour that is rooted so deeply in history is laughable and idiotic. Like the failed drug war which penalizes consensual behavior and therefore can never be effectively enforced, stigmatizing hawala simply drives it deeper underground.
The fact is that there are millions of people who simply do not see why the state, any state, should have oversight over their business. The usual demands that people must simply ‘trust the authorities’ is seen as fundamentally irrational in many communities. Too many people have both direct experience and deep societal folk memories that such contentions are simply foolish, leading to a whole culture of economic activity occurring under the radar. The very essence of hawala is that of an audit trail-less trust within a closed and multiply redundant distributed network.
Not only do I predict the US will fail utterly to regulate hawala, I expect that their actions will once again prove the law of unintended consequences is alive and well and living in a town near you. The very actions of the financial regulators will reinforce support for it by proving why hawala is still as needed as it ever was: to enable genuine free trade when princes and policemen try to restrict it, and to avoid confiscation of the proceeds of that legitimate trade by the same people.
Whilst I often agree with Glenn Reynolds over on Instapundit, there is one pet theory of his that he has mentioned several times before that I find baffling:
I still say that what’s going on right now is that the Israelis are dismembering the Palestinian Authority and all the various terror groups there so that there won’t be any significant resistance when the Jordanians move in and take over.
To which I say, and have said before, what on earth is in it for the Jordanians? Why would the Hashemites want to risk another Black September uprising against their Bedouin dynasty five to ten years down the road by adding 2 million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians to an already complex Jordanian 5 million strong ethnic Palestinian/Bedouin mixture? Quite apart from the horrendous political and security nightmare the occupied territories would present to Jordan if they were handed back to them, they are an economic booby prize. The Jordanians have a GDP of about $3,500 per capita, hardly rich…compared to the West Bank Palestinians GDP per capita of about $1,500, which is truly dire.
So whilst it might well take the pressure off Israel, so what? I must ask Glenn to say what on earth is in this for Jordan? They would have to be bonkers to want the West Bank back!
[Update: Glenn responds on Instapundit. However I do not doubt that Jordan and Israel will continue to cooperate in security matters, just that Jordan will accept the poison pill of reacquiring the West Bank. The article to which Glenn links seems to strengthen my case regarding the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Jordanian monarchy for having the West Bank Palestinians within Jordanian borders]
Ah, those famous lines from the Stealer’s Wheel. Brendan Nyhan over on American Prospect drew my attention to the fact that Ted Kennedy was not the only one making a total ass of himself over the meaning of a game of American football.
Now there was a time when Rush Limbaugh was actually witty and insightful, hell I went to see his show live once in New York some years back. Yet after listening to his radio remarks (available via the Brendan Nyhan article linked above) I am forced to the conclusion that Rush has finally completed his journey from right wing punditry’s doyen to its doofus. I guess the bailiffs must have come calling and repossessed that ‘talent on loan from God’.
Limbaugh contends that because the Patriots Football Team market themselves to ‘the soccer mom’s season ticket base’ as a team rather than by emphasising the individual players, then the Patriots are in fact ‘socialist’. Never mind that it is just a capitalist marketing ploy and never mind that socialism is a political system in which the means of production, including labour, are controlled by the state (unlike a voluntary football team of millionaire players).
And so there we have it: Rush Limbaugh and Edward Kennedy in agreement as to what the Patriots Football Team actually represents. Two of a kind: a brotherhood of absurdity, spouting fallacies that must surely reduce anyone who actually knows what the word socialist really means to either stunned silence or embarrassed laughter.
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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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