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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Here is a website that is obviously produced by people very, very angry about what they see as the one-sided coverage of Mr Obama in his recent victorious campaign. You do not have to buy into conspiracy theories to be alarmed at the fawning press coverage that Mr Obama received during the campaign. As for the treatment of the McCain/Palin ticket, while I am certainly no great fan of either, the hysteria over Mrs Palin’s personal life or supposed wing-nuttery over religion seemed totally out of proportion.
In the end, we get the media we do because the underlying philosophical assumptions of the public at large are reflected by it and at the same time, those assumptions are held by the media outlets themselves. It pains me to say it but in many respects, the US is now closer to the social-democratic, corporatist model of Europe than many in the US will want to admit. There will, I hope, be a backlash, but whether that backlash is a particularly libertarian one is not something I am very confident about at this point.
Thanks to fellow contributor Paul Marks to alerting me to this website.
“Whenever someone complains that libertarians are just pie-in-the-sky utopian (or distopian) intellectuals, just ask them again about the real world consequences of the War on Drugs, and see who gets all pie-in-the-sky right quick”.
Randy Barnett.
Mr Barnett clearly did not get the memo from former UK prime minister Tony Blair that all that talk about liberty was so 19th Century, dahling.
Yesterday, while I was cleaning my flat (you asking for a medal, Ed?), I had the TV on in the background and it was running a series of programmes via the Horizon team at the BBC about various natural disasters, such as earthquakes, killer giant waves and tsunamis. In the latter case, the programme speculated that if there was a volcanic eruption in one of the islands in the group known as the Canaries, off the African coast, that it would trigger a huge slide of rock into the ocean, therby causing a massive wave, which would then run left across to the Eastern seaboard of North America, probably parts of the Caribbean also, annihilating all in its path. New York, Balimore, Miami, etc would be obliterated.
This guy is not terribly convinced by the thesis. But suppose for a second that the direst predictions are accurate. Part of the theory is that the eruption will be so violent because of the enormous pressure that is building up inside the active volcano. So a question that occured to me was why doesn’t a team of geologists and engineers try to bore several large holes in the side of the volcano and let some of the pent-up magma come out, in a fairly controlled way?
I am not a scientist so feel free to mock this idea, but it occurs to me that given all the facts presented, this sort of idea might be a goer. I’d be interested to know what people think. There might be other techical “fixes” that spring to mind.
This looks like a film worth seeing for anyone who values the bravery and steadfastness of the American soldier, as I do and as should any Briton. (Full disclosure: I am related to several people serving in the US military). Kevin Bacon is a fine actor and well chosen for the lead part.
I see that the former BBC presenter of a programme about gardens and gardening, Monty Don, has recently argued that we should aim to be self-sufficient in food. The trouble with such calls for self-sufficiency is that the unit in which such activity should occur is not spelled out. Does Mr Don think trade should be confined to within Britain, or within a region of it, or a village? Has this character no idea of how starvation frequently accompanied those societies cut off from the benefits of trade? Has he no notion of the benefits of trade, division of labour, regional specialisation, etc?
Of course I have nothing against owners of land looking to grow their own food if they want – how could I? But of course I doubt that Mr Don or other self-sufficiency types want to adopt such a grass-roots policy, to excuse the pun. I grow most of my own herbs, for instance. People have at times brewed their own beer to avoid the insipid stuff on sale in the shops, and as a result, this encouraged the “micro-brewery” movement in the US and elsewhere. But that is an example of enterprise at its best. The trouble with Mr Don, I suspect, is that his approach tends to be accompanied by calls to restrict imports, and the like. I remember once watching a programme in which Mr Don went to Cuba, and presented a remarkably uncritical, almost fawning eulogy to the wonders of Cuban home-grown food. He is quoted gushingly by some Cuban website here. Ugh.
Talking of bad ideas, it does appear that Naomi Klein’s argument that crises provide fok with an “excuse” to “impose” free markets seems to have been rather turned over. In fact, the current crisis seems to have provided politicians and their media supporters with a great excuse to bash free markets, trade and entrepreneurship. It may be that eventually, of course, the disastrous consequences of interventionism will cause a reaction back towards free markets, in which case Klein will be correct, but not in a way she realises.
David Boaz has a good article on this issue.
All those folk who voted for The Community Organiser in the hope that he would lift some of the allegedly more questionable measures enacted by the previous administration to deal with terrorism are likely to be disappointed, at least if this report is accurate.
Shutting down Gitmo is just a stunt if all that happens is that terror suspects and other folk rounded up in the Middle East etc are locked up indefinitely in a different place. If people like Andrew Sullivan, who have hammered the institution of Gitmo, try to make excuses for this by arguing that such detention is somehow “different”, they deserve to be treated with contempt.
Bishop Hill comes up with a list of the legislation that an incoming UK government should get rid of to restore some of the civil liberties lost over the past decade or so. As he accepts, this is probably only scratching the surface of the issue, but still. The sheer quanity of the legislation that has been brought in, and its scope, is pretty startling even to a grizzled veteran of chronicling such outrages.
Maybe the simple solution is to repeal all the acts in one go.
This is on my Amazon wish-list. I love the mad, over-the-top style of the late Terry Thomas and from a young age, was delighted by his crazy turns of phrase, his hilarious demeanor and wonderful portrayal of the upper class cad. I must say that every time I am unfortunate enough to see Gordon Brown, The Community Organiser or Sarkozy on the television, it is hard not to shout out in true TT style: “What an absolute shower!”
Where did the expression “absolute shower” come from, by the way?
One of the best journalists out there, Claudia Rosett, responds to the dimwit assertion in parts of the MSM that “We are all socialists now”. Quite. I would also be happy to see someone write denying that “we” are all Keynesians now, by the way. Who is supposed to be the “we” is never quite explained. It is just assumed by the issuers of such pronouncements that all those in positions of power and influence have signed on to a particular world view.
Rosett, as I remember, did great work in helping to expose that sink of corruption and double-dealing that was the Oil For Food Program of the United Nations, yet another reason for shutting down that organisation.
Taking a break from the financial tsunami and idiotic politicians, here are some wonderful infra-red photos. (Via David Thompson).
A good friend of mine and fellow blogger, Andrew Ian Dodge, who is also an occasional commenter here, writes about his father, who died this week after an illness. Rest in peace.
In the current crisis, there is a lot of wisdom in the idea that the best thing for politicians and their appointed central bankers right now is to do absolutely nothing. Nada, zip, the square root of zero. To do nothing would be the gutsiest option of all. Of course, Mr “Hope and Change” Obama is unlikely to show that sort of courage, nor will Gordon Brown or, heaven help us, David Cameron.
I actually have a theory, that the amount of time that a politician talks about courage, audacity, vision, etc, is inversely related to the actual possession of those qualities. Not even Mrs Thatcher went on about her courage all the time: the most we ever got was the “resolute approach”. And she delivered by taking genuinely brave stands on issues in the teeth of furious opposition from the chattering classes and the media establishments of the time. And in terms of telling folk what they did not want to hear and sticking to a tough policy, politicians such as former UK finance minister Geoffrey Howe in the early 1980s, wiped the floor with today’s lot.
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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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