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 don’t want to use these hallowed pages as a forum to moan about the odd personal gripe, but I think I can find an excuse as there is a larger point. What am talking about? I am talking about the fact that at my local London Tube (underground for you non-Brits) station, the down-escalator has been taken out of service for almost nine months. It is in Pimlico, and serves the Victoria line, one of the deeper of the stations in the capital. Result: I, along with everyone else, have to walk down a long flight of stairs, which was a bit of a problem recently after I suffered a painful foot injury (now mercifully healed). It also meant that it is impossible sometimes to use that station if you have heavy luggage. A disabled person would have to go to another station, which is hardly a great advertisement for public transport.
The explanation given for why it has taken this time to service and replace an escalator seems to be something like this: spare parts for these things are incredibly rare and specialised and take months to make. I can even remember once reading several years ago about how the Tube engineers were trying to find spare parts on Ebay. Now, a thought occurs: surely, in this era of computer-aided design, or CAD, and just-in-time stock inventory systems, it should be possible for an engineer, supplied with the correct measurements, to fabricate whatever spare parts he or she needs to fit into something like an escalator, or for that matter, an aircraft engine. And yet this does not appear to be the case.
Of course, another explanation is that the building contractors who work on the Tube, while they may contain some excellent staff, contain an awful lot of leeches who are happy to pocket the contract money and then spin out their contracts for as long as possible. So it may be that the procurement process is woefully inefficient. Even so, our forefathers who built much of Britain’s industrial landscape would regard such delays with contempt. I bet this guy would not have been very happy.
George Gilder – author of such books as the Spirit of Enterprise, has a nice essay up about the technological savvy and business prowess of Israel’s IT sector. Makes a change to read something about that country that does not involve armed conflict. But then, as we should remember, it is the sheer success of Israel as an economic unit, as much as anything else, that drives its would-be destroyers nuts, because it shows up their own massive failings.
I would like to get Gilder’s new book on Israel. As if my reading list were not long enough as it is.
“We’ve heard ample warnings about extremist paranoia in the months since Barack Obama became president, and we’re sure to hear many more throughout his term. But we’ve heard almost nothing about the paranoia of the political center. When mainstream commentators treat a small group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement, they unwittingly echo the very conspiracy theories they denounce. Both brands of connect-the-dots fantasy reflect the tellers’ anxieties much more than any order actually emerging in the world.”
Jesse Walker, talking about how the likes of Glenn Beck and other conservative commentators are being targeted by an increasingly jumpy “liberal center”. This is a good article and it has a certain relevance too here in Britain. If something like talk radio or a UK equivalent of Fox were to take off, just imagine the commentary from the MSM.
From time to time, the Guardian, to its credit, likes to shake up its leftist readership with a dose of sanity. Here is a fine example.
“By the end of that summer, I had concluded that the population cannot be divided into an intellectual class and a nonintellectual class; instead, I concluded, everyone is to some extent an intellectual. The college professor is an intellectual who, it is hoped, applies his intellect to his teaching and research. The skillful auto mechanic is an intellectual who uses logic to eliminate various possible causes of an engine’s failure in order to narrow it down to the actual cause. Everyone is an intellectual. Compulsory schooling has robbed millions of people of the knowledge of their intellectual birthright.”
David Henderson, reflecting on how he learned to be less dismissive of folks who had not been to university. I am glad to say that I have never suffered from that form of snobbery: having a smart-as-hell dad who could have gone down the academic route but who chose a different path does help, of course, in providing a firewall against striking superior attitudes.
The way things are going, not going to university will be a badge of pride.
Here is a quick thought: in the aftermath of various financial crises – the 1997 Asian crisis (remember that one?), Long Term Capital Management (1998), various business blowups (Enron, etc), and of course, the latest excitements, one invariably hears from the Great and the Good that what we need to stop is the “box ticking mentality” when it comes to regulation. We need, so the argument goes, to rely a lot less on making sure the correct forms are filled in, and to require people in business and enforcers of laws to use more common sense. So true.
And yet. Every time a new problem emerges, what happens? You guessed it right: more box-ticking. Take the case that this blog has written about in the past few days concerning the attempt to put a quarter of all UK adults under some sort of oversight in case they come into contact with children, and other groups. What is a distinguishing feature of such a bureaucratic, and in fact dangerous, development is that it is bound to involve people answering various forms, entering various answers into a sort of database. In other words, box-ticking. So if you pass the test, then voila! you are in the clear. And so certain crooks and villains will continue to get through, because they have passed the test.
So the next time you hear a politician piously informing us that we are going to “get beyond the box-ticking approach”, do not believe them.
“We have an incoherent attitude to freedom in this country. We imagine that we value freedom above almost everything else and yet at the same time we are neurotically averse to risk. Every time something terrible happens, such as the murder of a child, the public clamours for something to be done to ensure that such a thing never happens again. Such unspeakable suffering must not have been in vain; inquiries must be held and systems must be put in place; all such risks to children must be eliminated. Yet the harsh truth is that risk is the heavy price of freedom.”
Minette Marrin.
She points out that the development – as elaborated below on this blog by Natalie Solent – will poison civil society and discourage volunteering. I think that is actually part of the idea. I have long since abandoned any notion that such developments are introduced by well-meaning but foolish people. Their intentions are to Sovietise British society, to put all law-abiding adults under a cloud, and rip up the autonomous, private spaces that make up civil society. There is a comment I remember being made by the late Tory MP, Nicholas Budgen: “Old Labour wanted to nationalise things; New Labour will nationalise people.”
Via Instapundit, here is the modern form of the classic Mercedes car, known as the gullwing. Given its price tag, I’d only be able to afford the badge, alas. Anyway, it is nice to see a manufacturer trying to make something with a bit more of a stylistic personality.
I am writing this while keeping the TV on in the background and the programme is the F1 qualifying round for Monza, Italy. Seems rather appropriate.
And now for something completely different: the amazing new photos via the Hubble telescope.
“Part of me hopes that Michael Moore’s movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars and that he suddenly wakes up from the slumber of logic he has been in for many years while the opportunity to choose to help the downtrodden and poor has passed him by. But I now see what Moore truly is in a different light, and success will only encourage him to lie to more people and mislead them about the opportunities that await them, should they only dream. After all, he’s a rich and powerful capitalist. The same thing he’s teaching his audience to hate. Irony, in a word.”
Michael Wilson, who has made a film about the rotund limousine socialist. If he ever imagines Mr Moore, a truly revolting character, is likely to have an epiphany when his bank account gets ever bigger, he’s in for a long wait. Of course, such things do occasionally happen: to wit, the case of playwright and film-maker David Mamet.
Regular commenter here, IanB – who now gigs over at CountingCats – bashes those doctors, who, claiming to speak for all doctors, want to ban alcohol advertising.
Authortarian creeps, the lot of them. If one thinks about it, the number one addiction in the world that needs to be curbed is the habit of trying to tell grownups how to lead their lives morning, noon and night.
Inevitably, they do this in the name of protecting children, so it is not censorship, you see. How conveeeenient. Look, I like children and feel parental control and guidance is fine, but can we just remind ourselves that as kids, we managed to grow up into relatively sane creatures without being mollycoddled and protected by state censorship from adverts for beer, gin and plonk? Considering the risks that send our so-called medical “establishment” off the edge, it is a wonder we made it to adulthood at all.
The other day, I criticised a short programme slot about how the Chicago school of economics – to use that rather loose term – might have to carry some responsibility for the credit crisis. The programme was put together by the Channel 4 news programme. Anyway, someone at the show noticed my comments, and the journalist who put the programme together, Faisal Islam, was kind enough to comment at some length in an email to our editors. Here goes:
“Hello Johnathan,”
“I saw your comments on the piece on economics that aired on C4 News last month. I thank you for your understanding of the limitations of television. Even C4 News would be hard-pushed to do a piece on the history of economic thought. It was really meant to be the entree for a main course of red-blooded economic debate, but that didn’t quite come off. Anyway, clearly I would dispute the notion that it was ‘propaganda’. I think it’s a bit harsh when the main protagonist is a chicago professor who does a fairly good job of defending his position, yet also recognises that they did get some things wrong.”
“Likewise we ran almost unchallenged a piece featuring Jim Rogers’ Austrian-ish critique of Obama/ Brown’s global stimuli. so I’d like to think we are more eclectic than you seem to indicate.”
“Anyway, you’ll be interested to see the rest of the Robert Lucas interview. I put it on the blog as a balance to the Paul Krugman NY Times magazine article. It’s all here, I’m sure it might stimulate some debate on your excellent blog.”
Here is Faisal’s link.
Good for Channel 4 for its reponse to what was a fairly grumpy posting by me. I guess I should have mentioned its Jim Rogers interview. I actually did link to it a while ago on this site. Jim Rogers is great value.
Anyway, I think my original point still stands, although in the light of the reaction, I will be a bit easier on Mr Islam from now on. It is gratifying that we got a response, and that Mr Islam even understood the significance of why we are writing about this topic and get annoyed if schools of economic thought are presented in a seemingly unfair way. If parts of the MSM pick up on the idea that the credit crisis cannot be blamed on “greedy bankers” and derivatives – although these instruments can be aggravating factors – but has origins in erroneous ideas of printing money, “too big to fail” bailouts and the rest, then we might be making progress. By continuing to slog away at it, we can influence ideas that are held in the media/academy and even public affairs more broadly. And influencing a guy who presents economic and business news for a major UK news channel is a pretty big deal.
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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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