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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Back in my day, the toms weren’t much to look at, but you look at these Polish birds in London these days and yer think, blimey, I’d pay money for that!
– So said a London taxi cab driver the other day, starting off with what I had taken to be the preamble to an anti-immigration rant to a captive audience (me) but which turned out to be a hosanna to the value to the British gene-pool of the latest wave of mass immigration. He said because of the area he worked, he frequently picked up and delivered high class ‘courtesans’ to their place of gainful employ.
Spring onions are spring onions (or scallions). Aussies might have recently beat us at a pointless activity (it isn’t sport if you can do it in a chunky-knit tank-top) but they lag well beyond the Northern Hemisphere in the recognition of common-place veggies. And your water goes down the plug-hole the wrong way round… And that’s moral turpitude that is, not the Coriolis effect.
– Commenter Nick M
Most of my old mates from Country Durham probably know how to download porn off the web (that’s what its really for after all) but I’d be willing to bet that to a man they think MySpace is where you part your car.
– Commenter ‘Albion’
Democratic Undergrounder 1: “Dude, Bush is a god-damn fascist. I asked everyone I know and like no one voted for him! Patriot Act, wiretaps made easier, locking up people in Guantanamo Bay without a trial… he’s like some whacked out Christian dictator!”
Democratic Undergrounder 2: “Yeah man! It’s so good to see Chavez in Venezuela sticking it to Bush’s buddies in the oil business! He’s gonna make Venezuela totally free now!
Democratic Undergrounder 1: “That’s right! Did you hear? He’s been given powers to rule by decree and now he can close down opposition newspapers, silence non-socialist radio stations and throw his political enemy’s asses in jail if they don’t do whatever his decree says.”
Democratic Undergrounder 2: “Woah, cool! One day I hope we’re as free as that in the USA!”
Of course, I am just imagining that discussion. I am sure nothing like that ever happened.
If the best we get by having a choice between a “democratically” elected Statist behemoth and a dictatorially selected Statist behemoth then we’ve got a major problem. So “scale” is important when discussing democracy. Granted local authorities can be corrupt as well, but the whole notion is to “set aside” bad government, not elect in a new batch of the same. In the end, the bigger the government, no matter how it is contrived, the more self serving and unresponsive it will be. The anti-federalists knew this, but lost out for the most part
– Commenter ‘Brad‘
New Year’s Day – Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving the road to hell with them as usual
– attributed to Mark Twain
All governments, all people even, should be held to the same moral standards. If you allow it for Saddam or Uday, then you must allow it for Bush or Rumsfeld. If you forbid it for Bush or Blair, then you must forbid it for Saddam or Ahmadinejad. Anything else smacks of “you can’t expect any better of Middle Easterners”-style of racism, or at least cultural arrogance. Did Saddam lie about WMD? Does Bush rape women or imprison and torture small children? First set out what your standards of behaviour are, and when particular actions in response are justified, and only then consider the example set by particular nations. For if you pay more attention to Iraq than Tibet, say, people might be able to accuse you of being on the side of the tyrants, and your moralising protests no more than enemy propaganda. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?
– Commenter ‘Pa Annoyed’
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city
– George Burns
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph
– Shirley Temple
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
– H.L. Mencken
The Irish government has this week succeeded in their plans to help restore a monopoly in health insurance, as the main private insurer was yesterday forced to withdraw from business, leaving the state behemoth with only one tiny rival left to prevent it from controlling the market. Risk equalisation payments which cost them a million €uro every week left BUPA with no choice but to leave.
For those unacquainted with the health insurance market, risk equalisation is a device designed to underpin community rating: a regulation of health insurance whereby the level of risk a consumer poses to an insurer must not affect the premium paid; i.e. everyone must be offered the same products at the same price regardless of their age, gender, or personal health characteristics. A sceptical observer might wonder why a healthy young person should have to pay the same as a sick geriatric, or in what sense this is really insurance at all. Well, the justification given is that, without this scheme, and the associated regulations of lifetime cover and open enrolment, no-one would be willing to offer sick or old people a health plan they could afford. Therefore, the argument goes, it is acceptable that young people are overcharged in order to prevent this. Community rating is designed to produce inter-generational subsidies, and is a clear example of cradle-to-grave statism.
However, community rating alone does not fully prevent competition – it is possible for more than one insurance company to offer community-rated products simultaneously, as indeed was the case in Ireland for the last ten years. It’s a heavily regulated market (imagine if car insurers were not allowed to discriminate according to the risk profile and vehicles of their customers, or house insurance had to ignore the likelihood of flooding or earthquakes in any particular area), but we proved that it can exist sustainably.
So, to really cut out competition, there are several other things you have to do. The first thing that the Irish government did for the last number of years was to give its dominant state provider preferential treatment with respect to the requirements of its solvency reserves. While that did hurt the private operators, it did not totally force them out of business. So our supposedly pro-market government decided to trigger risk equalisation: a device which is theoretically meant to correct discrepancies between customer bases by forcing insurers with younger customers to subsidise their rivals with older, costlier, riskier members. In our case, what it actually did was threaten the main private insurer with having to subsidise its wealthy state rival with nearly three times its operating profits, for little discernible reason and despite clear, logical protests from professional economists in Ireland’s major universities (for example listen to this file).
The result of all of this: BUPA is forced to quit, leaving increased power to the state company. According to leaked documents, this company is preparing to increase its premiums by 15% each year over the next three years, clearly exploiting its position of power to the fullest. The public has been duped, and has absolutely no clue.
What’s more, no-one is going to stand up for them. An Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern revealed his lack of understanding of the issues by launching an ignorant attack against BUPA. The powerful trade union controlling the state monopoly then announced that it would fight against any efforts to break up this company into competing units. And the mainly left-wing opposition has, predictably, come up short in its handling of this issue.
My question is this: what would you call a private business that was able to intimidate and then forcefully eliminate anyone who dared to compete with it? That’s right, you would call it a highly organised criminal outfit. So why is the government any different?
I have just run across a copy of the South Park Episode [RealMedia file] (from ‘Operation Clambake’) which was blocked from airing in many places… and I thought our readers might enjoy it.
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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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