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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Pakistan has a very large expatriate community scattered across the world, particularly in the UK and the USA. The peoples of the sub-continent also have a deeply engrained and entirely laudable distrust of governments poking around in their affairs, which is why the hawala system of moving money around globally is so popular with people from that part of the world.
In recent weeks there has been a huge inflow of capital from the Pakistani diaspora back to Pakistan due to the scrutiny of US investigators looking ostensibly for Al Qaeda funds. Of course there is widespread and quite justified belief amongst Pakistani businessmen that where the anti-terrorist investigators tread, the IRS will not be far behind looking to see what they can confiscate. Sub-continent businessmen have been on the receiving end of shakedowns like that from potentates, princes and nations for centuries and have well honed cultural reflexes in such matters. The simple solution: move your money where the US authorities cannot see it, by bank transfer if possible or via the invisible hawala system if not.
Networked distributed capitalist systems like this are extraordinarily resilient and are fueled by deep seated and entirely admirable non-deference to state authority. Just as the justified fight against Al Qaeda is also being used to fulfil an unjustified a wish list of civil liberties abridgements, so too are the statist enemies of free trade on both left and right using it to move against the sort of small scale (though large in aggregate) trans-border capitalism at which people from the Indian sub-continent so excel. It is for reasons of control that Big Capitalism and The State get on so well: bureaucrats can meet with a few hundred CEOs of vast companies and reach understandings to their ‘mutual benefit’ (though not to anyone else’s). Hundreds of thousands of small scale truly capitalist ventures with trans-border cash flows however are impossible to even monitor, let alone control: which is of course why they are such a good thing.
Continuing in the same spirit of the last few posts, a tip of the space helmet to Samizdata reader Neil Eden for providing us with two excellent essays located on The Proceedings of the Friesian School website:
The Fascist Ideology of Star Trek: Militarism, Collectivism, & Atheism
Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace, A Response to Critics
I had forgotten how popular critiques of science fiction are, but reader responses via e-mail have just reminded me of that fact following my less than flattering remarks about the politics of Star Trek! Here are some earlier articles on the same subject that produced much the same response:
The trouble with the Federation
Star Trek: the Post-Christian Generation!
More on Star Trek: An amuzing/alarming suggestion
Star Wimps
I am a great fan of both pugnacious blogger Ken Layne and Sci-Fi afficionado King Abdullah of Jordan, as both are anti-idiotarians who have excellent taste in women by all accounts. However both the worthy King and Ken seem to have a misplaced affection for Star Trek.
It’s like Star Trek — and notice that the Star Trek universe is multiracial and multicultural and the whole deal is based on getting it together, exploiting science, taking the good stuff from every culture and leaving behind the stupid, racist, sexist, totalitarian nonsense. (No Saudi science officers in Star Fleet).
Roddenbery’s ‘utopian’ United Federation of Planets is a vision of the future in which society is starkly homogenised, with para-military governance and a total state allocated command economy the likes of which have thankfully never yet come to pass (even the Soviet Union did not completely abolish money as a medium for low level allocation of resources). How many gay characters crop up in Star Trek’s Federation? How many non-conformist extroverts? Any sign of a counter-culture? How often is an internal voice of political dissent heard in the Federation? The only dissidents shown, the Maquis, were forced into armed conflict with the Federation when it betrays them to the fascist Cardassians. The only attempts at political change shown were a couple failed attempts at a coup d’état by elements of the Federation’s own military, neither of which had liberty as their objectives. The Star Trek Federation is a dystopian nightmare: smiley face totalitarianism with a California “liberal” vibe, complete with attractive telepathic political officers (‘councellors’).
A similar vision of a fascist future existed in Babylon 5, but unlike Star Trek, they were the bad guys (and had much cooler uniforms)!
Oh, and Ken is also totally wrong about Spanish food.
The BBC, in its on-line news, reported on Monday: “Roman Catholic lawyers should refuse to handle divorce cases, Pope John Paul has said.”
In fact, the Pope said nothing of the sort and the Telegraph points this out in an editorial after some ‘fact-checking of arses’*. As I have mentioned before, I would be a whole lot less bothered by what the BBC spews out but for the fact that I am forced by law to pay for this mouthpiece of the statist British establishment.
* = Pace Ken Layne: asses are a type of strange donkey and are less likely than posteriors to be repositories of facts and falsehoods.
A gentleman from France wrote in with some questions about what would happen in a society run under libertarian principles. He had some practical questions and I thought an extract form these remarks might be interesting to some Samizdata Readers. The gentlemen who sent the e-mail did not want to be pointed at books which he would find hard to locate, and thus I answered much by pointing him at various Libertarian Alliance pamphlets on the matters in question, as they are short, to the point and available free on-line (in .pdf format, requires Adobe Acrobat or similar to read).
Q: If there is no government/state then who pays the police?
Not all of us at Samizdata advocate full blown anarcho-capitalist social models. We range from ‘minarchists’ (small state libertarians) who see the role of the state as being security and nothing else, to other hyphenated libertarians across the spectrum between neo-conservative to anarcho-capitalist. There have been some interesting things written on the subject, such as:
Private Police and the Free Rider Problem by Max O’Connor.
Q: Who takes care of pensions?
You do. In the USA and UK (and unlike Europe), private pensions are hugely important and are the reason why as society goes ‘grey’, the EU’s state pensions are, in the long run, completely unsustainable whilst those in the US and UK are still financially viable due to [rivate sector involvement.
Q: Who regulates industries?
In the current sense, no one does. That is the whole point of the laissez-faire capitalism that underpins libertarianism. Much as in the USA there is less state regulation but more civil liability litigation, in a libertarian model, people will sue if others impose costs on them to prevent things like building a chemical plant in a residential area. The state is not the only way to achieve sensible results. As that greatest of Frenchmen wrote: said:
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.
– Frederic Bastiat
Q: Who decides who the judges are going to be?
There are several interesting pamplets on that subject such as:
Restitution: Justice in a Stateless Society by Christian Michel
Privately Produced Law by Tom Bell
Polycentric Law Versus the Minimal State: The Case of Air Pollution by Adam Chacksfield
If you want a glimpse of the future, here is a truly astonishing article that I must say confirms many of my views about spontaneous networks.
The online fantasy game EverQuest lets players create and control characters – or avatars – within a fantasy world called Norrath. Characters gain skills and possessions that they can then trade with other players using the game’s currency of “platinum pieces”. However, many EverQuest players have found this process too complicated and have instead opted to sell their assets for real money though trading web sites such as eBay
Read the whole article, it is thought provoking stuff with real-world implications.
Over on Little Green Footballs (also see link under ‘posh blogs’ section in sidebar), there is a lengthy series of entries in the comments section under an article about globalization and the people who are heading to New York to protest against it. Someone called Michele stated that she was “strongly against world trade”. This astonishing remark was something that had to be answered and so I will repeat my remarks here:
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.
Also, as a laissez-faire capitalist libertarian, I am strongly opposed to the World Bank, the WTO and the IMF… these are institutions that support crony capitalism and big-government. They subsidise neo-national socialist stupidity like that in Argentina and despotic kleptocratic regimes across the globe.
I am in favour of true free association and therefore laissez-faire and true globalization. I reject collectivism in all its coercive left and right wing forms and the violence and poverty they always lead to. Individualism and laissez-faire capitalism without borders is the only moral option and the only option that can actually work at all in the long run.
I have a slightly sore throat so I am drinking what I always drink at such times. Take one large mug into which put:
· Fresh squeezed juice of one medium lemon
· One large teaspoon of English heather honey
· One hefty shot of Kentucky bourbon (Bulleit Bourbon)
· Fill with boiling water
· Stir
· Drink
But what makes this unusual tonight is the large mug in question, for on the side it says: I’m a BITTER Princess. www.bitter-girl.com
And the bitter Princess in question can be found here. She may be bitter, but she is also rather splendid in my not so humble opinion.
Manly philosopher Will Wilkinson over on The Fly Bottle has posted a picture of himself getting in touch with his, um, feminine side.
Over on the excellent blog Flit, Bruce has done a good ‘back of the envelop’ bombing survey that highlights some interesting facets of ‘smart’ bombing vs. ‘dumb’ bombing vs. ‘real indiscriminate’ bombing (i.e Al Qaeda). The article pointing to Bruce’s survey “U.S. Aerial bombing: a statistical summary” provides a simple interpretation of what the numbers mean.
This sort of short but thoughtful factually based commentary really does the blogosphere credit and is an excellent example of high quality original content blogging.
There is a much better obituary for Robert Nozick in the Telegraph that the rather pallid official Harvard one I linked to before.
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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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