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 quite enjoy going to the Proms, the renowned series of concerts held in the Royal Albert Hall, west London during the late summer. As many readers know, the last night of the Proms ends with a rousing performance of some of the best-loved works of Edward Elgar, such as “Land of Hope and Glory”. A government minister has claimed that the event does not fit in with the bright, shiny vision of Britain that the Gramiscians of New Labour believe is the one to which we should all aspire.
I could not agree more. It is time to face the fact that Britain, or indeed just England, is no longer a land of hope or much glory. Far better that the symbols of modern Britain be such things as state ID cards, unfunny standup commedians like Ricky Gervais and lumps of dead animals at The Tate.
Ok, rant over.
It is a widely accepted fact that one of the key ingredients to the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in the Second World War was the ability to crack the Enigma codes used by these powers, and keep that code-breaking achievement a secret.
A question I’d like to put to Jon Snow, the chief news reader of Channel 4 news and usually a fairly cool-headed fellow, is whether he would have complied with any wartime requests to keep the Enigma achievement a secret, had he been a working journalist in the 1940s. Judging by his antics over the Prince Harry and Afghanistan episode, the answer to that question would be a no. It also makes me wonder whether anything on the scale of the Enigma code-breaking and its remaining a secret could be repeated now. Of course, the argument cuts both ways: in our more open world, it might also be harder for a country like Hitler’s Germany to make its moves in the first place. (I admit that is a guess of mine, not a prediction). Even so, the implications for military secrecy, when it is something of vital importance in defeating an enemy, are troubling if the media outlets refuse to protect a secret for an agreed period of time. And libertarians, even the most ferocious opponents of censorship, need to realise that keeping military secrets is perfectly consistent with supporting armed forces necessary for the protection of even a minimal, nightwatchman state.
There may have been an element of PR in the whole Prince Harry kerfuffle, but he’s already shown more balls than most of the folk who have sneered at him in some internet comments I have read. Come St George’s Day this year, I will be very glad to hoist something alcoholic to the fellow. Well done him.
It has been rather cold lately in different parts of the world. As this gentleman points out, if worries about man-made global warming can cite the early appearance of flowers or migrant birds in support of their case, the argument cuts both ways. In case any supporters of the man-made global warming thesis get sniffy about this point, I am not a ‘denier’ of the thesis: I think there is some evidence that it may be happening. The trouble is that my views are coloured by the fact that supporters of it tend to support a Big Government agenda. And frankly, I see an awful lot of dodgy investment ideas being sold on the basis of encouraging ‘Green’ technology.
I am looking forward to the first article, meanwhile, that tries to blame Britain’s earthquake this week on human activity. Take a good look at the British Geological Survey website: it is fascinating. Apparently, there have been even been quakes in Norfolk. Norfolk, fcrissakes.
There is a depressing article at Reason magazine about the protectionist instincts of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. What the article does not tell us about much is whether McCain is much better (I honestly do not know, so I welcome comments about his voting record). And of course George W. Bush hardly made friends with Britain by slapping tariffs on steel imports – which also hurt American manufacturers and builders (but they lacked powerful friends in Congress). America is the largest economy in the world and despite what some of the more starry-eyed writers on China or the other ‘Brics’ might claim, is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
Basically, America matters. If the country goes down a more protectionist path, it will hit the world economy in general. For all his many flaws, Bill Clinton’s signing of the NAFTA Treaty – admittedly when Congress was in Republican hands – was one of the few major achievements of his time in power. It has helped to fuel the ascent of the world economy, lifting millions into higher living standards: if any fans of trade restrictions out there want to contest that assertion, let them provide figures. Here are some official US ones that give some pretty punchy numbers.
As the title says, I wish they could all lose. I have had it with the media guff about how a McCain-Obama contest will somehow elevate American politics and ‘restore’ its image in the eyes of the world. What is the point of winning image points among the Guardian-reading classes if you pull a rug under the world’s economy through greater trade restrictions? How is that going to help America’s ‘image’, assuming that Americans could or should give a flying **** what people think of them in the first place?
A novel based on the Joss Whedon cult SF series, Firefly, which was one of the very best in recent years in my opinion, has been released and you can view it online, thanks to a Creative Commons platform, here.
If you have not seen the TV series, correct that ommission immediately. It beautifully blends western-style cowboy drama with its strong individualistic, screw-authority ethic with science fiction, nifty and authentically grimy spacecraft. There are plenty of dashing men and gorgeous women to please both sexes. And there are sword fights and lots of shooting. What’s not to like?
One of the most important writers and intellectuals of America, William F. Buckley, has died. I did not agree with all of his views, but it would be churlish and extreme bad manners not to acknowledge his enormous influence in the fightback against what was, when he started out, the entrenched Big Government views of the US. He was, by all accounts, a most civilised, friendly and good man. As they say, he left the world a better place. He is one of those American intellectual and political figures, like Barry Goldwater, whom I regard, warts and all, as heroes.
May he rest in peace. My condolences to his friends and loved ones.
“It is one of the oddities of the consumer-electronics industry that the snazziest products often have their origins in the world’s oldest profession., The porn industry’s embrace of the videocassette helped guarantee the technology’s commercial success. Today, it is doing the same for the DVD and the Internet.”
– John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, A Future Perfect.
(John is related to Samizdata contributor Brian Micklethwait, for those who are curious).
Well, the daffodils are out, even the shrubs in my small garden are starting to grow. The weather has been rather nice of late. So, in this spirit, take it away, Mr Tom Lehrer:
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don’t you? ‘Course you do.
But there’s one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes every Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
Every Sunday you’ll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an’ hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun’s shining bright,
Everything seems all right,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
We’ve gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it’s not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you’re free,
Why don’t you come with me,
And we’ll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we’ll do
In a squirrel* or two,
While we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
One of London’s top City financiers is lobbying to get a statue of Keith Park, one of the top RAF commanders during the Battle of Britain, put in Trafalgar Square. Park, a New Zealander, seems an excellent choice.
Park had the sort of qualities, according to reports, that I have come to associate with New Zealanders today: unassuming, sharp sense of humour and frequently tough as nails.
It makes me smile when a grand new book hits the stores proclaiming a supposedly startling new point of view. One of the oldest refrains has been that Britain is run by a clique of super-rich, well connected folk. Robert Peston, a senior BBC journalist who is probably best known to the British viewing public for his jerky speaking voice (how the f**K does someone with such a manner hold down a TV career?), has written a book which, I summarise thus, complains that Britain is ruled by rich people; they are too rich, should not moan about things like high taxes on non-domiciled residents, should therefore pony up their wealth and be a good citizen. So there!
About as original as a BBC drama repeat on a Monday night, in fact. Peston argues that the wealthy, global elite who can supposedly flit around the world seeking the lowest tax regimes, should jolly well stop being so, well, selfish and pay the same taxes as the rest of us. But he gets the argument totally the wrong way round. The vast majority of the population should pay much lower, flatter taxes, so the rich will not need to act in this way. Problem solved, Mr Peston.
It is the existence of great mobility, of the ability by the rich to find the cheapest tax destinations, that acts, however imperfectly, as a check on the ability of socialist and other high-taxing governments from putting up taxes even more. Why do statist organisations like the OECD and others, for instance, bleat about the existence of more than 40 tax havens like the Cayman Islands, the Channel Islands or Monaco? Do you, dear reader, honestly think that they do so out of a fear about criminals stashing away their ill-gotten gains? Of course not. They are worried about “tax leakage”. If you are a leftwing politician or some other brand of political looter, you are not obviously very happy if a lot of people prefer to avoid having their wallets lifted.
Peston’s books has its interesting features: he writes about the rich businessmen who supported Blair, for example. But to be honest, even this is not terribly original. As long as politicians have the powers they have, control the budget spending that they do, then businessmen will have an incentive to try to carve out what benefits they can for themselves. Back in the 18th Century, the complaints of Peston would have been wearily familiar.
Ultimately, if we worry about the influence of rich people over public affairs, the solution is to shrink the state, so that filthy rich can do what they do best: making shedloads more money by providing others with goods and services that other people want, rather than engaging in political rent-seeking. And Peston need not worry, as he does, about children of the rich making a mess of their lives by inheriting “too much”. If governments did not interfere with trust law as they have, then rich parents could stipulate how and when their offspring inherited and spent money, assuming they inherited at all. If some of the children of the rich do mess up, well, so long as the British economy remains dynamic and embraces outsiders with talent, Mr Peston need have nothing to worry about.
For a multiple award winning journalist, this is not a very impressive book. I am afraid I have to give it a “D”.
The Financial Times is very much the house journal of corporatist Britain; while not blind to the needs for a vigorously entrepreneurial culture, it tends to be hemmed in by a general acceptance of government and its hold on our lives. This headline says it all in the assumptions that underpin that newspaper:
“Boost for Darling as tax takings increase.”
Marvellous.
“Smith did believe free markets could better the world. He once said, in a paper delivered to a learned society, that progress required “little else…but peace, easy taxes, and tolerable administration of justice.” But those three things were then – and are now – the three hardest things in the world to find. Smith preached against the gravitational load of power and privilege that always will, if it can, fall upon our livelihood. The Wealth of Nations is a sturdy bulwark of a homily on liberty and honest enterprise. It does go on and on. But sermons must last a long time for the same reason that walls must. The wall isn’t trying to change the roof’s mind about crushing us.”
– P.J. O’Rourke, On the Wealth of Nations.
O’Rourke’s book – a New York Times best seller, according to the dust jacket – is a terrifically well-written, concise look at Smith, who wrote not just WoN but also on moral philosophy, jurisprudence and many other things. What O’Rourke does is tease out some of the contradictions as well as the great insights of Scotland’s most famous thinker apart from David Hume (the men were both great friends). What is particularly good is that although Smith was considered – not always accurately – to be the great-grandaddy of laissez-faire economics (he did not invent that term), he was much more than that. He was no ardent minimal statist although he would certainly have been horrified by the extent of state power in our own time. He supported state-backed funding of education for the poor, for example. He was not particularly fond of businessmen and some of his comments on the latter’s tendencies to collude smacked almost of that fear of big business that later spawned the madness known as anti-trust legislation in the US and elsewhere. He supported a version of the labour theory of value that was ultimately taken to its absurd conclusion by Marx; but Smith being Smith, he was the sort of man who also kind of understood that the value of something is what people will pay for it, nothing else. I suspect – although I cannot prove this – that Smith had the open kind of mind to accept the marginal-utility approach to understanding prices that eventually pounded the labour theory into dust (although not quickly enough to prevent the horrors of Communist economics). → Continue reading: Inquiring into Adam Smith
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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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