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.
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We couldn’t find a single negative review of Unsettled that disputed its claims directly or even described them accurately. Many of the reviewers seem to have stopped reading after the first few pages. Others were forced to concede that many of Koonin’s facts were correct but objected that they were used in the service of challenging official dogma. True statements were downplayed as trivial or as things everyone knows, despite the extensive parts of Unsettled that document precisely the opposite: that the facts were widely denied in major media coverage and misrepresentations were cited as the basis for major policy initiatives.
When dissenting scientists are implicitly compared to Holocaust deniers, or their ideas are considered too dangerous to be carefully considered, it undermines public respect for the field and can lead to catastrophic policy mistakes. It’s human nature to favor evidence that confirms our biases and leads to simple conclusions. But for science to advance, it’s essential that moral certainty does not override objective discussion and that personal attacks not replace rational consideration of empirical evidence.
– Aaron Brown & John Osterhoudt
Nothing speaks to the madness of the modern elites better than their war on farming. Consider France. One day President Macron is telling the world to get serious about ‘food security’. Post-Covid and with war raging in Ukraine, we must make sure food keeps being made and transported around the world, the French government says. Yet, at the same time, that same government, without missing a beat, is bringing in pesticide bans that could devastate sections of France’s own agriculture industry. Which could even lead to the closure of farms. Behold the schizophrenia of the 21st-century establishment.
– Brendan O’Neill
We are many, they are few. The Welsh Rugby fans did their country proud and they did the cause of liberty proud by defying the petty little tyrants who would rule our lives and restrict our speech. And a big fuck you, to Chris Bryant, which is what he deserves. It is by resistance to tyranny that we make it unworkable. There is a lesson here.
– Longrider. The key to winning the culture war is to actually fight the bloody thing.
The vast differences between US and UK policing practices are not just a matter of public perception, either. During the fiscal year 2020 in the US, federal law-enforcement agencies reported 65 arrest-related deaths – 47 per cent of which were homicides. And there were a total of 614 deaths in custody. During the same time period in England and Wales, there was just one fatal police shooting – of a 57-year-old white man who was part of a street fight in Wiltshire. In the same year, 19 people died in or following police custody – of those 19, 17 were white and two were black. If anything should concern us about these incidents, it’s not alleged racism – it’s the fact that so many involved people with addiction and mental-health issues. Indeed, 12 of the 19 people were identified as having mental-health concerns, and 14 had a known link to alcohol and / or drug abuse. […] Culture warriors need to recognise that the US and the UK are very different – in their histories, in their cultures and in their laws. America’s race war has no place here.
– Rakib Ehsan
The media have taken umbrage at some of the rhetoric of the [15 minute city] schemes’ critics. Some opponents have referred to the scheme as akin to a ‘climate lockdown’, which The Times dismisses as an ‘outlandish claim’. While some conspiracy theorists may take this term literally, others will no doubt recognise it as a polemical line. After all, while Oxford residents will not be forced to stay indoors, they will be encouraged not to drive and to remain as much as possible in their 15-minute district. It’s hard not to see at least some parallels between this green-inspired scheme and the Covid ‘Stay at Home’ mentality. (Indeed, the term ‘climate lockdown’ was coined by the green movement itself, which marvelled at the supposed ecological benefits of the Covid lockdowns.)
– Laurie Wastell
We almost certainly haven’t seen the last of Ardern. No doubt a plum job at the United Nations, the World Health Organisation or some other ghastly supranational body beckons. Nor have we seen the last of the elitist politics that she came to represent. It’s high time we had a reckoning with this ‘kindly’ authoritarianism.
– Tom Slater
This argument hints at why so many rich, virtue-signalling celebrities argue not just for Net Zero but ‘Real’ Zero, with the banning of all fossil fuel use. King Charles said in 2009 that the age of consumerism and convenience was over, although the multi-mansion owning monarch presumably doesn’t think such desperate restrictions apply to himself. Manheimer notes that fossil fuel has extended the benefits of civilisation to billions, but its job is not yet complete. “To spread the benefits of modern civilisation to the entire human family would require much more energy, as well as newer sources,” he adds.
[…]
In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.
– Chris Morrison, Net Zero will lead to the end of modern civilisation
Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right
– Great Grass MCR Ltd 😀
Ending fossil-fuel consumption now would be a disaster. It would obliterate our already weak energy security, subjecting households and industry to exorbitant energy costs and unreliable supplies. Travel would be severely limited. The farming industry would be gutted by restrictions on fertiliser use and farm vehicles, threatening food security. Last year, we saw the devastating impact these kinds of green farming policies can have in Sri Lanka, where food production was devastated.
Regrettably, for all the antagonistic posturing of Tory politicians and eco-activists alike, the political class and XR already agree on many issues. Britain is already committed to Net Zero. There are legally binding targets to decarbonise the UK by 2050. And the dire impact of this policy can already be seen in the persistent threat of blackouts and the broader energy-supply crisis. A further acceleration of Net Zero, as demanded by XR, would only accelerate the damage that is already being done.
– Lauren Smith
Surely no year could be as bad as 2020, which had seen families sundered, schools closed and businesses destroyed in a hysterical over-reaction. After all, by December 2020, the second lockdown had ended and the UK had begun its vaccine rollout. The new year, it seemed safe to assume, would see a return to normality.
Boy, did we get that wrong. On 6 January 2021, another lockdown was imposed. It lasted, in one form or another, until July – and, even then, a noisy coalition of public sector unions, BBC panic-mongers, skivers, malingerers and mask-fetishists fought to prolong it.
The original justification for the restrictions had collapsed by April 2020. Sweden, which stuck to the plan that the UK had prepared in cooler-headed times, saw its cases peak and fall in line with everyone else’s, and now turns out to have had the lowest excess death rate of any OECD state.
But, by 2021, dirigisme had taken on a force of its own, and lockdowns were a policy in search of a rationale. “Flatten the curve” became “Protect the NHS”, then “Wait for the rollout”, then “Stop new variants”, then “Yeah, but Long Covid”.
– Daniel Hannan (£) on how mankind experienced 65 years of progress towards peace, democracy and the rule of law, but now a new age of illiberalism beckons
Like so many things on the left, they went from asking us to tolerate something to demanding we celebrate it.
– Roger Williams
In this sense, the problem of EU corruption, rather than being a bug in the system, should be seen as an inherent consequence of the supranationalisation of politics. Making the EU “more democratic” won’t change the fact that the lack of a European demos represents an insurmountable obstacle to the creation of a European democracy, even if Brussels was interested in going in that direction (which it isn’t). The number of corrupt officials involved in the amateurish Qatargate scandal is of little importance; for the EU, it is already too late.
– Thomas Fazi
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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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