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]

MPs and Rabbis join forces to ban free speech

It is fascinating to see Members of Parliament and Rabbis joining forces to ban free speech. Indeed it is even more fascinating to see Rabbis and Imams (and indeed the Pope) all steadily uniting to undermine one of the primary pillars upon which modern liberal western civilisation rests, which is to say freedom of expression. And of course I mean liberal not in the nonsensical debased American sense of the word (by which they mean something that is illiberal).

Can not blog much today…

… because last night I visited full time evil genius and part time mad scientist Dr. Frankenstein Alec Muffet, and whilst cackling “It’s alive! IT’S ALIVE!“, he created so fearsome a work that the very fabric of reality strains and writhes as unspeakable… things… threaten to slither into our mundane reality!

So now I grasp things that mankind was never meant to know, the terrible forbidden knowledge…

Only the bravest should gaze upon what lies below this line, you have been warned…

→ Continue reading: Can not blog much today…

The solution to a unfavourable business environment is…

The best way any government in the UK can bring prosperity is not by being ‘pro-business’ but rather by being ‘pro-market’. Labour sneeringly loathes both business and markets, the LibDems do not understand either and the Tories do not grasp that there is even a difference.

The solution? Try to do your business in Hong Kong, Singapore or New Zealand if you realistically have such a choice.

Now that is what I call a put down!

The statistical methods used in the paper are so bad as to merit use in a class on how not to do applied statistics. All this paper demonstrates is that climate scientists should take some basic courses in statistics and Nature should get some competent referees.

Gordon Hughes

Samizdata quote of the day

Ah, the ‘do it again, only HARDER’ fallacy espoused by so many pro-regulation types. I still wonder why people assume that something will be good if you sprinkle the magic pixie dust of government on it.

– ‘Toastrider‘, discussing ‘Net Neutrality’

This should be interesting!

I just noticed this:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won its four-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over secret legal interpretations of a controversial section of the Patriot Act, including legal analysis of law enforcement and intelligence agency access to census records.

Well, well, this should be interesting.

So why have overseas subsidiaries at all if you are a US business?

Question: why have overseas subsidiaries at all if you are a US business? Why not just hive off any non-US based businesses into actual, and not just nominal, separate businesses? As other nations do not try to tax and regulate non-domicile activities in the way the US does, surely it make more sense to simply do business elsewhere, have your HQ elsewhere and just make deals to sell your stuff to US only based companies if you want to access the US market (i.e. do it indirectly)?

Alert: police in Britain seek man for exercising free speech

If you see the man shown in this article, please do not inform the Police of his whereabouts.

But do tell the bloke, who it must be said may well be a low IQ scumbag who likes to insult strangers on a bus, that he is quite mistaken if he thinks people in the UK have a right to freedom of expression. That is not the case, for it is only politically approved speech that passes a Guardian/BBC sniff test that is permitted. Mutter the wrong things on a bus and you are likely to end up in front of the Beak, with your arrest applauded by those valiant custodians of truth, the Press.

It is hard to see a downside for the even-farther-left winning in Greece…

… not for Greece, which is screwed regardless of who wins, but rather for the rest of Europe on the basis that cutting a gangrenous limb off is often a good idea.

After all, to yet again use one of my favourite quotes from H. L. Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”.

And if ever there was a nation filled with people who deserve to keep getting what they voted for, it is Greece circa 2015.

Discuss.

We must destroy the village to save it!

Yet Oxfam also claims, without any real evidence, that excessive inequality hampers economic growth. It suggests that, since we want that economic pie to be as large as possible, we should tax wealth and capital. The problem is that all taxes destroy some economic activity, shrinking that pie. And different taxes do so differently. We also know that capital and wealth taxes destroy more of the pie than almost any others (other than that Robin Hood Tax Oxfam also supported). So the argument is that we must shrink the economic pie in order to stop inequality shrinking it. This has shades of having to destroy the village so as to save it.

Tim Worstall

Can this be true? Did I read that correctly?

Did David Cameron just say something… um… well… sensible and manifestly correct? I can hardly believe my eyes!

British Prime Minister David Cameron said there was “a right to cause offence about someone’s religion” in a free society, drawing a distinction between himself and Pope Francis in their response to the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris.

Did Dismal Dave really say this? I need to lie down.

Samizdata quote of the day

Odious figures of the totalitarian regimes are not objects of the cultural heritage of either national or local significance

Vyacheslav Kirilenko