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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UBS has been closing the secret accounts of its American clients, forcing them into the cold, tax lawyers say. Many Americans with undeclared accounts have sought leniency by making voluntary disclosures to the IRS. Meanwhile, UBS has reported large outflows of deposits, which go beyond its American clientele.
Union Bank of Switzerland is haemorrhaging clients, not just American ones who have unwisely not stuffed their US passports in a shredder, but others too who no longer trust the bank with their privacy.
Frankly UBS was insane to do business in the USA in the first place, given the mafia-like behaviour of the American tax authorities, and the way I see it, this is just a very bad business decision being punished by clients voting with their feet money in favour of more discrete and less bombastic banks that cater to people with the quaint notion that their own money belongs to them and not the IRS… or any other rapacious state.
And any US nationals throwing themselves on the mercy of the thuggish IRS seriously need their heads examined. At the first sign of trouble, and this has been brewing a long time, they should have sold up and got the hell out of the USA for good. The weather in Costa Rica is really very nice, guys, trust me, and your money buys a whole lot more down here.
The government forgets that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning, and not a blueprint
– Chris Huhne
In every language, the first word after “Mama!” that every kid learns to say is “Mine!” A system that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say “Mine!” when you grow up, has – to put it mildly – a fatal design flaw.
– Frank Zappa
The recent embracement of the so-called Reform Treaty, which is in all important aspects identical with the old Constitutional Treaty, is a defeat for all true European democrats and should be interpreted as such. The down-playing of its true essence is intellectually unacceptable and morally inexcusable.
Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming. The recent awarding of Nobel Prize to the main apostle of this hypothesis was the last straw because by this these ideas were elevated to the pedestal of “holy and sacred” uncriticisable truths.
– Vaclav Klaus
Whatever you believe about race these days in the privacy of your own head is pretty irrelevant. Having the wrong opinions about these issues is professional and social suicide so broadly speaking people with a stake in society don’t.
People higher up the socioeconomic pyramid aren’t less racist than those lower down because of any greater enlightenment on their part. They are because they have far more to lose by refuting the orthodoxy.
The defeat of racism in this manner has given the current cultural establishment the idea hat such authoritarianism is a fundamentally legitimate means by which to stamp their political and moral assumptions upon the populace.
The elite’s ideas about the evils of racism at least had the virtue of being essentially correct. Most of the other opinions they want to violently foist upon us are not.
– Commenter Jay Thomas, of the Thoughtful Ape.
“It’s not lack of choice that stops people getting a good education – it’s lack of schools and teachers. To say otherwise is pure ideology… Diverting scarce resources into providing voucher systems in a world where 18 million more teachers have to be trained if all children are to get the education they need is simply the wrong answer to the problems that poor people face.”
– Claire Melamed, Head of Policy, ActionAid
The end result of this incestuous relationship is the same as occurs whenever such closely related bodies become intimate – idiot children. Unfortunately, they’re running the country.
It’s like “Deliverance” without all the banjo music.
– Commenter ‘Veryretired‘
All the existing [medical care] schemes, including the present American mixed corporatist/socialist model, represent a transfer from the young and healthy to the old and chronically sick (and to the medical cartel, of course). The way it’s used in practice, the phrase “having health insurance” means having the right to place oneself on the receiving end of these transfers. No honest discussion of the situation is possible until the entirely false and misleading concept of “health insurance” is dropped.
– Commenter Ivan
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
– Milton Friedman
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
– Voltaire, rationalist & satirist (1694 – 1778)
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
– Winston Churchill
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom
– Friedrich Hayek
…or perhaps not
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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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