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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I was driving past Duxford, the airbase near Cambridge, at the weekend and unfortunately, I was so busy with other things that yours truly did not have time to go to the airshow there. They were marking the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Then, as now, the skies were a deadly clear blue – ideal for any bombers looking to find their targets at the time. We curse heavy clouds in Britain, but we should be grateful for them occasionally.
It is perhaps not surprising why this epic battle over the south and southeast of England continues to capture imaginations, even among those usually and rightly wary about military power: there is the fact that the battle was a largely defensive one, pitting a relatively under-strength air force up against a larger, and more battle-hardened, German airforce, although the UK had the great benefit of an integrated radar/fighter dispersal system put in place in the late 1930s and run with magnificent calm by Dowding. If there ever was a case of a relatively clear Good versus Evil sort of conflict, this surely was it. (That should get the peaceniks going, Ed). For us aviation nuts, there is, obviously, the aesthetic as well as emotional appeal of one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. And whatever some revisionists might claim, there is little doubt in my mind that Britain’s decision to resist invasion in that year rather than agree some sort of grubby and easily-broken deal with Hitler was the right one.
Many of those who fought in the skies are no longer with us; soon, this conflict will be captured not in first-hand memories, but in books, films and TV documentaries. Here is a review of three books of that conflict.
The headline on this blog entry was taken from one of my favourite war films, The Battle of Britain. It was uttered by the great Ralph Richardson. The film does have some great one-liners. I must run that DVD again some time.
“Those who justify the need for greenhouse gas reductions by exploiting the mounting human and economic toll of natural disasters worldwide are either ill informed or dishonest…Prescribing emission reductions to forestall the future effects of disasters is like telling someone who is sedentary, obese and alcoholic that the best way to improve his health is to wear a seatbelt.”
– Sarawitz, D., & Pielke, R.A, (2005 January 17). “Rising tide, The New Republic, 10.” Quoted in Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg, page 108.
I guess after a harsh winter, the AGW alarmists must be breathing a sigh of relief now that we are having a nice summer.
“I was just watching part of a Congressional presentation on C-Span honouring the slaves who built the u.s. capitol – not by making restitution to their heirs, of course, but by setting up some sort of plaque. What especially bugged me was the speakers’ continual references to expressing “thanks” and “gratitude” for the slaves’ “sacrifices” and “contributions.” If I take your wallet at gunpoint, it would be rather a euphemism to call your handing it over a sacrifice, and what I owe you is not gratitude. (Of course the language of sacrifice and gratitude is also used in connection with conscript soldiers shipped off to die in lands they’ve never heard of.)”
– Roderick Long, anarcho-capitalist blogger.
I do not agree with Mr Long on all his views – he is far too keen on that seriously wrong-headed Kevin Carson chap for my liking – but the quote above is an absolute zinger.
To all intents and purposes, the banking industry inside the EU has ceased to have any serious claim to be a part of the free market. The EU has voted to cap bonuses for bankers, introducing remuneration controls that look pretty draconian.
Of course, defenders of such controls might say that we are where we are: the modern banking industry, with all its privileges, “too big to fail” ability to claim taxpayer support, controls on capital ratios, and the rest, means that banking has not been a proper model of free market behaviour for decades. That is true. But capping bonuses is about the least relevant reform that policymakers could make, though no doubt this panders to the sort of anti-banker sentiment that also recently encouraged Germany’s government to impose, without warning, controls on the investment techniques of hedge funds. The radical overhaul of our banking system advocated here, for example, is not really considered.
We are in the best of hands, as Glenn Reynolds likes to say.
Apologies to Samzidata readers if you have already seen this, but I had not, and boy, this is just gooooooood.
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
– Benjamin Franklin.
Happy 4th of July to my American friends and relations. This is a good day for all Anglospherists to remember.
A most enjoyable trip was had by yours truly on the Thames yesterday in the company of the Adam Smith Institute. Every year, the think tank invites its members and various assorted free marketeer campaigners to have a glass of bubbly or two on a nice pleasure cruiser. Old age must be setting in as far yours truly is concerned, since the revellers seem to be getting younger. But then again, that is testimony to the cleverness of the ASI’s outreach programme to universities and colleges. It is impossible to over-stress how important this is. Anyway, thanks to the ASI for an extremely pleasant evening, blessed by superb weather and great company.
As I have seen before, a lot of political news coverage in the UK (and in the US, for that matter) rather resembles sports coverage, if without the tone of hysteria covering the media’s reporting on England’s World Cup horror show. For instance, over at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog on the issue of public spending cuts, it goes into a lot of the arguments about who said X or Y about cutting A or B. In fairness, the Coffee House crew are pretty good at teasing out the statistics – Spectator editor Fraser Nelson has been excellent in hammering the former government over its debt – but there is something a bit missing from its analysis. And that is this: the scale of the shift that we might see from public sector jobs to private sector. If is true that hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs are to go, and the private sector is going to be encouraged to pick up the slack by new job creation, that is surely good news.
We are not admirers of Cameron’s style of Conservatism here at Samizdata (that’s putting it mildly, Ed), but I’ll give him and his finance minister credit if, at the end of the current parliament, there has been a significant shift away from the state and towards the private sector. We libertarian ideologues are hard to please, but such a shift will be pretty tough to pull off. If it means we have to put up with a certain amount of political BS along the route, I don’t especially mind. It is the general direction that counts.
Update: Guido Fawkes points out that certain leftist publications, reliant on public sector job ads, such as with the Guardian, have an obvious reason to fear the axe. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
I have visited Germany several times – I lived there for about a month while a student (in the Moselle area) and briefly attended a Gymnasium school in the town of Ahrweiler, but have not yet been to Berlin, the capital. I have always had a good time in the country – the Rhineland is as impressive as the photos suggest – and this article by Tyler Cowen at his Marginal Revolution blog definitely makes me want to get on an aircraft and go there. I’d probably avoid it in the height of summer, though, not to mention the harsh Prussian winter.
Talking of Berlin, here is one of my favourite Michael Caine films. And of course David Bowie did a lot of his best work while living in the city.
Inevitably, when the name of Berlin comes up , it raises the issue of that palaver of 1939-45. Anthony Beevor’s book about the attack on Berlin in 1945 is a must-read. I remember there was an old guy who used to live in my parent’s village who was on pathfinders (Mosquitos) during WW2, and he played a part in the near-flattening of that city.
And of course, like many people of my generation, I vividly remember those scenes as beamed around the world of the Berlin Wall coming down, and imagining the joy of people in the East who were no longer treated like cattle in their own nation. I sometimes wish, naively, that there was more sense of shame among the hard left about its support for such a state of affairs. Let’s not forget that that overrated smart alec, JK Galbraith, made light of the wall and what it represented.
Proof that the US remains a very different nation to the UK at the moment. I just caught this Supreme Court decision via Bloomberg.
Basic logic is something that Mr Richard Murphy, wonderfully flayed by the indefatigable Tim Worstall, is blissfully unaware of. As Tim points out, Murphy reckons we can use inflation to somehow “wash” out massive debt (by shafting savers and others on a fixed income) while he also vents about the terrible plight of pensioners and the need to protect them.
It might be easier to deal with Richard Murphy in the same way that you might an old, very ill dog. Don’t worry, Richard, there would be no pain.
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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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