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]

Samizdata quote of the day

Meanwhile, over at the global superpower, the public is slowly waking up to the fact that this government, too, is going bust, thanks to out-of-control entitlement programs, expensive bailouts, and the suicidal policy of everlasting peace through everlasting war. For the past six months, all of the United States government’s issuance of new debt has been bought by its compliant central bank and paid for by the printing press. As the politicians of this empire in decline are fiddling on the aptly named Capitol about a few billion in savings here and a few billion there, trillions are getting burned by the unstoppable state machinery. And over in Albion, the hotly debated “savage” cuts in public spending still seem the figment of tabloid imagination as they have so far not prevented the country from accumulating another £145 billion in debt over the past 12 months.

Detlev Schlichter

Samizdata guffaw of the day

New drink, “The Bin Laden”: two shots and a splash of water.

– via Alisa

Samizdata quote of the day

Like two drowning sailors hanging onto one another in order to postpone the inevitable, overstretched banks thus accumulate the debt of insolvent governments to keep the façade of solvency up.

Detlev Schlichter

Samizdata quote of the day

That is one suspected reason for why the Icelandic government was so eager to roll over for the Dutch and the British – they were willing to bankrupt the nation to get their snouts trotter-deep into the EU troughs. If this means I can’t join the EU I regard the referendum result as a double win.

– Commenter Bjarni

Samizdata quote of the day

I am, therefore I’ll think

John Galt

Samizdata quote of the day

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we’ve proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.

– Rudyard Kipling

Samizdata quote of the day

The government can take away my freedom, but if they take away my internet porn, they’re going down

@arabist

And the good news is…

… that ‘tax pros’ are worried that tax evasion will be greatly increased by new regulations in the USA

Tax pros now fear that tax evasion could go viral if the health-reform bill’s new 1099 requirement takes effect next year. They say more small businesses will likely opt to do all-cash transactions under the table to avoid the 1099 reporting requirement, and all of its onerous provisions, which are worse than small businesses may realize.

“Tax evasion could go viral”… what a pleasing concept. Well all I can say to these unnamed ‘tax pros’ laboring away tirelessly to make people ‘compliant’ is “from your lips to God’s ear”.

Few things would help the growth of the culture needed for a fight back of liberty to succeed than something that not only induced contempt for the state but actively motivates self-interested resistance to the supra-constitutional tax gathering arm of the US government… and perhaps the single best form of resistance to an over-mighty state is keeping as much money as possible out of its hands.

Encouraging tax evasion: far from being an ‘ugly side effect’ it is the unforeseen silver lining that may tip millions of apolitical business folk into unwitting de facto alliance with liberty’s anti-statist friends.

Samizdata quote of the day

How about adding some math lessons to plot statistically the chance of an Arab suicide bomber and a gay socialist vegetarian pacifist wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt and no sense of irony all ending up on the same bus in London?

Sigh…Math was never that much fun in my school days.

State education is beyond parody.

– Perry de Havilland commenting here

Samizdata quote of the day

German politicians view the monetisation of sovereign debt as the road to Weimar. They expect the ECB to be the heir to the Bundesbank and not the Reichsbank

Willem Buiter, Citigroup chief economist

Samizdata quote of the day

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

– Robert Peel

Samizdata quote of the day

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

– Leonardo da Vinci