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]
If you engage with the work of art, you are entitled to an opinion about it.
If, instead, you refuse to read or view or listen to it — or taste the green eggs and ham — you don’t get to have an opinion. Knowing what you’re talking about is the bare minimum requirement for expecting other people to care about your opinion of a cultural product.
What is distressing to me — and to all lovers of art and of free expression — is that of late we appear to be taking seriously the opinions of those who have not ponied up even that very minimal buy-in. We wouldn’t pay attention to restaurant reviews written by someone who has never been to the restaurant in question. Why are we reading — and accepting — evaluations of literature by people who have never read the books they’re condemning?
It’s not a high standard. I’m not calling for a “critic’s license” or saying that one must have an advanced degree, or 25 years of experience, or a sheaf of academic articles and a stack of books to one’s name in order to have an opinion about art.
I’m just saying that if you want me to take you seriously when you tell me that something is great, or awful, or trash, or immoral, or pornography, you should probably have actually made contact with the thing you’re talking about.
This is bonkers. Firstly, the BBC’s reporting of the numbers was full of bald assertions. Jon Brown, head of sexual-abuse programmes at the NSPCC, was quoted in the BBC report, saying that ‘accessing hardcore pornography is warping [children’s] view of what is acceptable behaviour’. This claim was made in spite of the fact that decades of research has failed to demonstrate any link whatsoever between exposure to pornography and sexual-assault prevalence.
Children have not transformed in recent years into a marauding gang of sexual offenders; nor are they any more sexually aggressive today than in the past. In fact, these stats say less about our children’s newfound tendencies towards sexual perversion and more about our own warped idea of what constitutes sexual criminality.
Today’s Sisyphus is China. More particularly, the Chinese authorities. They are determined to roll that boulder uphill. The path of least resistance for the boulder, however, is downward. Gravity, after all, is a bitch. The Chinese stock market is still comparatively young, and as stable as any toddler overwhelmed by parental expectations. With their boulder beset by the giant suck of gravity, China’s Sisyphus first cut rates, and trimmed banks’ reserve ratios.
In fact, the only real value of Fischer’s pretentious bloviation was that it was a reminder that the financial system of the world is in thrall to a tiny, insuperably arrogant posse of Keynesian academics who have invented from whole cloth a monetary theory of plenary control. They have effectively ended free market capitalism in the financial system and beyond and made democratic fiscal governance essentially irrelevant.
Nor is gay marriage the only issue around which strict orthodoxies are calcifying. Climate change, multiculturalism and feminism are all issues on which there is only one correct view. To be sceptical of the impact of climate change, or to challenge the censoriousness of feminism, is to incur the wrath of the right-thinking. Not that critics of the new orthodoxies are challenged on their views. Rather, they are branded – as deniers, as misogynists, indeed, as bigots. By their labels, they shall be known – and shamed.
For centuries, people living in Western Civilization have been accumulating capital. They have not simply subsisted, and left the world the same as when they entered it. They have been creating more than they consume, passing on new wealth to their children. The Fed’s falling interest rate has slammed this process into reverse. It has put the entire economy into liquidation mode. It has forced people to consume their capital.
The dramatically named NHS Survival – an “umbrella group bringing together patients, public and professionals” – echoes previous dire warnings that we had “24 hours to save the NHS”, or “14 days to save the NHS”, and so on. At best it seems a bit “boy who cried wolf” and at worst actually contradictory.
Backed by many of the same people who cherry-pick the Commonwealth Fund report to claim the NHS is just super, its website says that “our NHS is a wonder of the world”. In another part, it warns “the NHS will continue to fail”. If it’s failing, then why are they trying to save it? If it’s so good, why are they trying to fix it?
Contradictions like this make it difficult to take the group seriously at all. We are told that it wants an “independent body” (presumably stuffed with NHS staff) to set funding requirements for the NHS. Yet the campaign’s whole website is predicated on the idea that it already knows what funding needs to be – higher, much higher.
When the aliens stop trifling with crop circles, bumpkin abduction, and indelicate probes and finally introduce themselves to the rest of humanity, will they turn out to be partisans of central planning, interventionism, or unhampered markets?
This week, Alastair Campbell said that the current eruption of ‘Corbynmania’ was akin to ‘what happened when Diana died’. Worse still, popular delirium can foster a herd mentality that leads to the persecution of dissenters and opponents. This is especially the case when a movement’s mentality is half-detached from reality. Protecting benefits, ending austerity, raising taxes on the wealthiest, abolishing university tuition fees, reopening coal mines: Corbynomics is basically the equivalent of saying ‘wouldn’t it be great if all this Monopoly money was free?’.
The European law gives individuals and institutions the right to demand that search engines such as Google must de-list postings containing ‘outdated’ or ‘irrelevant’ information. The Euro authorities insist that this cannot be construed as censorship, since the material will not actually be removed from the internet – it will simply not be linked to by Google and Co anymore. When plans for these regulations were first announced in 2012, the European Commission’s vice-president said: ‘It is clear that the right to be forgotten cannot amount to a right of the total erasure of history.’ That sounds like rewriting history. If material is not listed by search engines, it is effectively invisible to most online and ceases to exist as public information.
No, no, say the authorities, of course we are not banning this controversial book! We are simply ordering all libraries and bookshops to remove it from their shelves and websites forthwith. You will still be at liberty to read it – if you can find a copy anywhere, or even spot a reference to its existence…
Krasimira is gloomy about the future. She doesn’t think Greece will implement the necessary reforms and will, in the end, have to leave the eurozone. As ever, she views the situation through a Bulgarian prism. “Greece has received €30 billion from Europe,” she says. (In fact the figure is far higher). “That’s more than seven other Balkan countries have received put together — I saw it on Bulgarian TV. You’ve got to pay back your debts in order to take more loans. If I ask you for a loan you’ll give it to me; if I can’t pay it back you wont give me any more.”
She has a final comment — on the EU subsidies. “In Bulgaria the state doesn’t give subsidies to the farmers.” She points to some sprinklers watering the garden. “So what you see here: water being wasted, you’ll never see in Bulgaria. My brother has 2,200 hectares there and grows corn and wheat and he is not allowed to overly water them, he has to rely on the weather. If it’s not good he has a problem.”
“Yes, the subsidies have made Greek farmers spoiled and wasteful. But since Bulgaria joined the EU and started receiving subsidies you’ve seen the same thing — people receiving subsidies and using them to buy houses and consumers goods instead of investing the money.”
The EU as resource curse: it’s an old tale — and one that seems to have had disastrous effects for Greece, which for years grew fat on easy money. Now in its time of crisis it must watch its poorer, leaner neighbor to the north further compound its deep, almost existential, despair.
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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