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]

‘A Dead Statesman’ by Rudyard Kipling

A Dead Statesman

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Rudyard Kipling

Ponder…

Samizdata quote of the day

The problem is not that the BBC is on the wrong wavelength, it is that it is on any wavelength at all. That in this day and age a supposedly first world country has a tax funded state broadcast institution is simply absurd.

Perry de Havilland

Samizdata quote of the day

Poverty is a solved problem – all they have to do is abolish taxes and regulations which cripple those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women and destroy their productive capacity, then stand back and watch the economy boom.

– L. Neil Smith

Samizdata quote of the day

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority

– Edmund Burke

Samizdata quote of the day

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt

– Attributed to Herbert Hoover

Samizdata quote of the day

Politicians can’t reform Social Security because they can’t talk about it honestly, and they can’t talk about it honestly because the median voter doesn’t want to admit a basic fact: Grandpa is an embezzler.

Peter A. Taylor

Fit and proper

Unlike terrestrial radio transmissions, satellite transmissions come from a point source in the sky. One must point their antenna in the right direction to receive such signals. Different people may launch satellites in different positions and broadcast without interference. The case for licensing radio spectrum is already weak. There can be no argument for the need for a third party to license satellite radio spectrum.

In satellite television, the satellites are privately owned and launched by private space vehicles.

And yet in the UK one needs a broadcasting license from Ofcom to squirt photons encoded with television signals towards the Earth from space.

In addition, Ofcom gets to decide who is “fit and proper” to hold such a license. There is no definition of “fit and proper”. This is the rule of the whim of bureaucrats.

Samizdata quote of the day

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program

– Milton Friedman

Government explained to an alien

This is good, because it shows how reasonable most people consider their government’s existence and demands to be – and because it shows how misled those people are. (I have put this under the Humour category, but I find it rather depressing. Those who can be emotionally detached about these things may laugh, though.)

Video via Richard Nikoley

Samizdata quote of the day

The current U K problem seems to be that despite the growing conflicts there of principles with interests, there is no “grass roots” movement nor electorate concerns that no election party is strong enough to represent principles.

– Redoubtable commenter RRS

Wayne Toepp: Welcome to the Panopticon

I found myself entranced last week by a collection of art at The Gershwin Hotel in New York. Entitled Welcome to the Panopticon, the exhibition of paintings focuses on the capture of our daily lives, and reflects on the impact of surveillance. The artist, Wayne Toepp, writes of the work on his own website:

This body of work engages the twin notions of watching and being watched. I am examining images collected from the continual data stream of the expanding security environment that we move through in our daily comings and goings. The surveillance state has indeed arrived, attended by an ever more rapidly diminishing sphere of privacy.

…If art is a process of pointing, it must register and account for that which it is pointing toward. I have chosen to examine, at some length, images culled from actual surveillance video because I would like the viewer to register both the disintegration of privacy and the implications of surveillance technology in the current political climate.

Wayne Toepp at Gershwin Hotel

Click thumbnail to view larger version

It is refreshing to see modern art that is not simply an exercise in provoking for the sake of it, or trying to elevate offense to an art of its own, but displaying a surreal sort of beauty while leading the viewer to think and feel about something that matters. See more in Wayne Toepp’s portfolio.

Samizdata quote of the day

Who forms criminal associations? You see them formed by bankers, politicians, judges, and maybe, sometimes… by thugs.

Beppe Grillo, Italian blogger and comedian