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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A reluctance to acknowledge the specific religious motivations behind certain acts of terror makes it more difficult to develop the social initiatives, political strategies and security arrangements that we need to contain their possible spread in the future. Empty platitudes over the peacefulness of religious ideologies do not achieve much when it comes to maximising public security and community safety.
There should be strong pushback against those who wish to restrict the boundaries of much-needed discussions on radicalisation, extremism and terrorism. We need to be able to identify and comment on unusual behavioural patterns and religiously inspired ideological motivations. There is simply no room for thought-policing or political correctness in the realm of counter-extremism.
– Dr Rakib Ehsan
Not interacting with people outside of our immediate circle is disastrous for the social fabric of society. As the demands of Black Lives Matter protesters or transgender activists show, it increasingly seems as if some people are speaking a different language to everyone else. Words like oppression, privilege, racism, experience and identity may still be familiar, but they now mean entirely different things to different people. Phrases like âcis-genderedâ, âcultural appropriationâ, âgenderfluidâ and âintersectionalâ trip off the tongues of some, but are utterly meaningless to others. âSilence is violenceâ is either common sense or ridiculous. Stating that there are two genders is either blindingly obvious or offensively transphobic. The existence of this language-within-a-language exposes fundamentally different ways of making sense of the world. The less we talk to each other, the more these differences crystalise.
– Joanna Williams
No need to bother, Co-op. As of today you are henceforth banned from advertising in The Spectator, in perpetuity. We will not have companies like yours use their financial might to try to influence our editorial content, which is entirely a matter for the editor.
– Andrew Neil, in response to Co-op indicating they would refuse to advertise in The Spectator due to the publication’s “transphobia”
Being nonwhite leaves one protected in this environment only to the extent that one toes the ideological line. An assistant professor of color who cannot quite get with the program writes, âAt the moment, Iâm more anxious about this problem than anything else in my career,â noting that âthe truth is that over the last few years, this new norm of intolerance and cult of social justice has marginalized me more than all racism I have ever faced in my life.â
– John McWhorter
The initial claim of media bias is not that thereâs a cabal that nays no darkie jokes no never, rather that the people doing the defining think that no darkie jokes should ever be made therefore thatâs what they describe as being impartial. Itâs a cultural censorship not a cabalistic one. As such itâs also quite possibly unthinking, not self-aware of what it is doing. Things that cannot be said in Islington drawing rooms may not be said on TV sorta thing. Which leaves rather a lot of people who donât hold Islington drawing room opinions outta luck.
The very proof of this being that if a TV station starts up saying non-Isling.dr things and succeeds like wildfire then we know those views were being censored by that unconscious bias.
Itâs all going to be rather fun, isnât it?
– Tim Worstall
I am puzzled so many Guardianista race obsessed identitarian socialist commentators are alarmed by the sight of the British Union of Fascists in Trafalgar Square. After all, what are the BUF if not race obsessed identitarian national socialists? đ€Ł
– Perry de Havilland
We are sorry if our heterodox views serve to disappoint friends and colleagues in the United States and elsewhere. But we retain the belief that, in supposedly pluralistic societies, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. We urge other scientists not to follow the American example, and to resist the campaign to racialize science. While we admire many aspects of American culture, we reject its cultural imperialismâincluding the new form of ostensibly progressive cultural imperialism that serves to impose Americaâs own obsessive race tribalism on the rest of the world.
Our European experience provides no shortage of cautionary talesâincluding Renaissance Florence under the influence of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who imposed a regime of religious purity in the 1490s. Such was his sway that no less an artist than Sandro Botticelli was induced to burn his creations and give up painting. In all eras, the demands of ideological purity serve to suppress the pursuit of art and reason. Standing up to puritans is necessary if we are to protect the telos and soul of science.
– Andreas Bikfalvi & Marcel Kuntz
None of the arguments against rent controls are new. You can already find them all in Verdict on Rent Control, a book which the IEA published in 1972. The book is actually a collection of papers on the subject, some of which are much older than that. It contains one paper by Milton Friedman and George Stigler on wartime rent controls in the US, which were still lingering after the war had ended. It was first published in 1946, but they were already having the same arguments then that we are still having today.
The oldest contribution is a paper by Friedrich Hayek, on rent controls in interwar Vienna (which he obviously did not call âinterwarâ). Hayek shows how rent controls do not just lead to shortages of rental properties, but have all sorts of secondary effects that distort the wider economy, for example the reduction in labour mobility. This was first published in 1929, and yet, the parallels to todayâs situation immediately stand out.
Economic papers often end on the more cautious note that âmore research is neededâ. You would not do this in a publication on rent controls, because the situation is too crystal clear. No more research is needed. We know â or rather, could know, and should know â everything there is to know.
What we need to do is finally accept it.
– Kristian Niemietz
As George Monbiot is pointing out, but cannot bring himself to say, the government is not your environmental friend.
– Tim Worstall
In politics, narrative is now less synonymous with events than with their exposure as a pack of lies. The relativists at Merriam-Webster cite Michael Grunwald in Time magazine (2012) on narrative as a pejorative: âThe rise of the Tea Party and the weakness of the Obama economy have fuelled a Republican narrative about Big Government as a threat to liberty.â The Romans would recognise this implicit dismissal of other peopleâs narratives as a snarky refutatio, but some moderns may wonder if shooting the messenger in this manner is an epic self-own.
– Dominic Green
Guardian readers, union officials and other blobby types would have conniptions. Why should our wonderful âworld classâ education system be turned into a supermarket, where people pick and choose what schools they want for their children?
Well, it wasnât the supermarkets that let us down in this crisis, was it? They never closed, while their poorly-paid staff ran ostensibly much greater risks of infection than those in the classroom.
If our teachers donât like the marginal risks which a return to school might bring, they should perhaps consider another career. Sadly, there are going to be plenty of young and not-so-young graduates who will be looking for such secure and reasonably well-paid employment in the near future. They might make a better fist of it than many current teachers.
– Len Shackleton
Tin whiskers. If you use a pure tin solder then the electronics will grow little whiskers which will, over the course of perhaps 3 or 4 years, short circuit the system. Hmm, OK, has a good chance of doing so. The cure for tin whiskers is to add lead to the tin solder. This is now illegal because using lead is verboeten on environmental grounds. Thus we have a shorter life span for electronics. And yes, it is worth noting that the electronics which really does have to be reliable is not subject to the no lead rule.
– Tim Worstall
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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, âPorcupinesâ, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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