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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Uber banned for the second time in Germany:
A regional court in Frankfurt ruled that Uber’s low-cost ride-sharing service UberPop is now banned throughout the country. The case was brought by taxi union Taxi Deutschland that been battling Uber for over a year.
And the French state agrees:
Around 30 police officers were sent into the Parisian Uber headquarters on Monday as part of an investigation into its UberPop service, which connects drivers with passengers via a smartphone app.
The state really hates it when their Permit Raj and compliant patron rent-seekers get threatened. Next thing you know, uppity consumers sick of overpriced taxies might start thinking state state involvement was not necessary!
The left wing ‘charity’ Oxfam has staged a stunt in Westminster demanding the government collect more in taxes.
Please remember the next time you get the urge to go into one of their shops, or donate goods or money to Oxfam, that they are nothing less than a left wing advocacy group favouring poverty-inducing statist policies worldwide. These people work tirelessly to cause the misery (I believe they like to call it ‘fairness’) that they ostensibly exist to alleviate.
Do not assist the insatiable beast who wishes to devour the riches of others.
Anyone else find this deeply creepy?
Senior bankers could face up to seven years in prison under new rules revealed by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) today. Following a series of scandals such as Libor and Forex, the financial watchdog has changed the legal requirement for punishment from “innocent until proven guilty” to “presumption of responsibility”.
So you are guilty until proven innocent?
No you don’t get to get away with that. You don’t get to advocate policies which allow you to use force to deprive people of their jobs and their opportunities and then claim that those who would have provided the jobs are the heartless ones.
You don’t get to trot out the insipid, mindless, tendentious talking points about how you are morally or intellectually superior when every “solution” you proffer is destructive and is based upon forcing others to do your bidding. You don’t get to decide whose job is worth preserving and whose isn’t and still claim the moral high ground.
You have to own this. You have to accept responsibility for the suffering your ignorance has caused and you have to understand that there is no way forward as long as you remain ignorant. Until you can begin to think rationally instead of being so full of hate that you think the best solution to every problem is to use force against those you disagree with then you can’t be accepted into the company of decent people and will always be seen as supporting those who would oppress us because that is exactly what you are doing.
– Pseudonymous commenter BenFranklin2 delivering a mighty and artful kick to the bollocks on someone else defending state imposed minimum wages, which are leading to restaurants closing in Seattle. Scroll down from main article as the link to the comment itself does not seem to work.
h/t Natalie Solent for finding this article.
Yet in Guards, Guards, a reign of terror begins with attacks on small businesses driven by envy and resentment whipped up by a cynical politician. In later books, a conman redeemed through entrepreneurship becomes the hero who saves the day. It is the rich, human mess of the marketplace, under the rule of law, that his heroes strive to protect. Through Pratchett’s generous gaze we see not only the absurdities of a commercial civilisation, but also its abiding value.
– Marc Sidwell
As the world is ever more wired together, so too are the threats. So if Russian security companies like Kaspersky cannot be trusted when it comes to Russian state spying, and US companies like CrowdStrike and FireEye cannot be trusted when it comes to US state spying, seems to me that companies based in places like Finland, Switzerland or India might actually be able to parley that into a meaningful competitive advantage.
I anticipated something along those lines for quite some time myself.
When I think of all the people the world would be a better place without…
… Sir Terry Pratchett was not one of them.
Iraq is over, done, finished. The literally insane paranoiac Nouri al-Maliki guaranteed Iraq was toast and only a wilfully blind fool can pretend it can be put back together, or that doing so would even be desirable at this stage. There is only one tortuous bloody route to regional stability and that needs to be centred on an independent Kurdistan.
And I am delighted to see that both Ted Cruz and now Rand Paul seem to understand this. There are already willing and able ‘boots on the ground’: Kurdish ones. There is totally no need for US boots or anyone else’s boots to be there in any substantive way, beyond training missions and perhaps some SAR capabilities. Enough with the whole White Man’s Burden shtick already! Even a great many locals are embarrassed about how often they need to get bailed out by the US, arguing they really need to do this themselves!
Yes yes, I know an independent Kurdistan will horrify theocratic Iran, the Iranian dominated rump of Iraq, the Ba’athist Socialist rump of Syria and Islamist dominated Turkey. And whilst that is really just awesomely wonderful, it is just gravy on the many benefits that will eventually come from an independent Kurdistan.
Biji Kurdistan azad.
I tend to avoid party politics but over on Sp!ked, Brendan O’Neill has a very interesting free ranging chat with Nigel Farage.
‘The Conservative Party is as upper class today as it has ever been. Over the past hundred years, the upper classes had more connection to their fellow man than they have today. And I’ll tell you why. Firstly, those that were from the landed classes may have been selfish financially, over the corn laws or whatever it was, but they ran their estates themselves. They actually knew the lads that cut the hay and looked after the horses. And then we had two world wars, which brought the whole class system together. Up until the late 1980s you had senior Tory politicians from posh backgrounds who could talk to the lads doing the scaffolding. They can’t do that now.’
That certainly does ring true. Read it!
The worthy IEA are hosting a panel discussion tonight called: The future of the BBC.
Guess what I would like to see for the BBC…
If you do not know who she is, you should because she is quite remarkable.
… but then they discover that the UK has made it illegal to fly there! Rats foiled again! Yeah that should work, hahaha 😀
And on a related note, the three formerly British girls who ran off to Syria to become ‘Jihadi Brides’ have been located at a specific address in Raqqa. My only question was, does the RAF know?
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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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