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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This essay, which I found while browsing the excellent website of Stephen Hicks, will resonate on both sides of the Atlantic.
As a farmer’s son, I sympathise with its message, but more optimistically, I’d argue that in some ways, life in the countryside is still a lot less regulated than in the towns, perhaps rightly, since when people live in close proximity and have to get along, more rules are required, if only tacit, rather than written, rules. But the sort of restrictions this farmer writes about are not caused by that sort of issue, but by the ongoing move by the state to regulate agriculture.
Cynics may argue that farmers have signed a Faustian pact with the state; they have accepted massive subsidies and can hardly be surprised if the providers of said increasingly demand to control the actions of the recipients. I agree with this. The sooner that the Common Agricultural Policy and its equivalents are obliterated, the better.
Correlli Barnett, a long-standing critic of the Coalition overthrow of Saddam’s Ba’ath dictatorship, gives us this in this week’s Spectator:
“In Saddam’s strictly secular Iraq, al-Qa’eda and other forms of Islamist extremism were ruthlessly put down. Is it not plainer every month that we would all (including Iraqis) now be much better off if Saddam Hussein had been left in power,but under continued allied air surveillance?”
The regular trope that Saddam was a “strictly” secular leader won’t wash. The “strictness” was in fact pretty variable. What is Barnett trying to say, that Hussein kept copies of the complete works of Voltaire and Richard Dawkins under his bed? Surely, to be serious, Saddam was capable and willing to use and invoke religion when it suited his purposes; I have no idea whether he thought there was a supreme being or not, but frankly, what consolation would it be to the tens, hundreds of thousands of people who were brutalised by his rule to be told that he was “strictly” secular? The Marsh Arabs, the Shiites, the Kurds and other groups may want to ask Mr Barnett what benefit they had from being oppressed by a “secular” ruler. Stalin was “strictly secular”, as was Mao, at least as far as I know.
In fact, this argument is so silly that it got me wondering about what exactly is so marvellous about “strictly” secular regimes that cause havoc on a mass scale; Stalin’s Russia, for example, with its attendant mass famines, the Gulag, and the rest, surely drives a stake through the notion that the absence of revealed religion automatically brings a better state of affairs. I am a lapsed Christian, and no admirer of much that goes under the name of religion (that’s puttting it mildly, ed), but there are so many examples of evil, secular regimes, that it is hard to summon breath to point this rather obvious fact to someone like Barnett.
Then there is this claim that Iraqis and others would have been “much better off” with the old brute in power. That is frankly impossible to judge, and sitting here in the comfort of my apartment, is not one I feel fit to make, but then neither does Mr Barnett. I guess the henchmen who ran Saddam’s torture chambers and his security services feel that their circumstances have taken a big turn for the worse; George Galloway and the various other lowlifes clearly may mourn his passing; arms dealers in the West, East and elsewhere may rue the missed orders and deals no longer struck (that includes Britain, I am ashamed to say), but if Barnett wants to make this claim with seriousness, he needs to weigh the costs of what is now happening in Iraq with the toll of the Iran-Iraq war, the invasion of Kuwait, the gassing of villagers in northern Iraq, etc. And he needs to consider whether, and for how long, Saddam’s regime could have lasted, even without sanctions, and what would have happened thereafter.
The other problem I have is Barnett’s casually thrown-in comment about the Allied air surveillance – he means the “no-fly zones” in the north and south of Iraq. They cost money to enforce, there was exchange of fire between the airforces and the Iraqi forces on the ground (breaches of the 1991 Ceasfire, for those who bleat about the “illegal” invasion of 2003). It is naive to imagine those flights could have remained indefinitely, or have been enforceable beyond a certain point. Sooner or later, the air cover would have been reduced, leaving those in the north and the south to the tender mercies of Saddam’s/his son’s forces on the ground. Not a happy prospect.
There are good arguments to be made against the war: Saddam posed us no immediate threat; his armed forces were degraded after 1991 and there were more serious threats around which required more of our attention. There are also prudential grounds to avoid war if possible, starting with the old adage, which ought to be familiar to libertarians: the law of unintended consequences. I have found myself, more than once, rueing the entire enterprise as an object lesson in the folly of interventionism and chided myself from falling off the wagon in this respect. But the only problem is that I start getting those neo-con urges as soon as apologists for dictatorship like Barnett put pen to paper. The anti-war folk may have many arguments in their favour, but so many of them give me the creeps.
(Update: topic heading changed: this article has nothing to do with Korea!)
This glorious article in the BBC website appeared today. I’d love to know whether the person who wrote this has a sense of irony. There is just a hint that he might:
Britons are “addicted” to cheap flights and confused about the climate impact of flying, according to research.
Well, at least the writer had the good grace to put addicted inside scare quotes.
Britons want to fly for a cheap fare. The horror.
The reason welfare is bad is not because it costs too much, nor because it “undermines the work ethic,” but because it is intrinsically at odds with the way human beings come to live satisfying lives.
– Charles Murray, US author.
(I greatly enjoyed his recent volume, Human Accomplishment)
Tim Worstall has a bit of fun with poor old George Monbiot, who frets about the origins of all that terribly nasty “neo-liberal” (ie, classical liberal) thinking that dared to suggest an alternative to Man’s future in a great socialist project.
Well, I have been to a few events hosted by think tanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs, have been a member of the Libertarian Alliance for 22 years (!) and have been even known to correspond with likeminded people in foreign countries. The sheer horror of it, Georgie!
Seriously, articles such as Monbiot’s suggest to me that the “neo-liberals” have been winning at least some debates, or at least getting under the collars of collectivists of various types. That has to be a good thing.
For a grown-up analysis of the revival of classical liberal ideas in the West, Brian Doherty’s book is a great read. It mainly focuses on the US, however.
Well, that is probably inevitable anyway. Political honeymoons that last a long time tend to be followed by savage changes in fortune (Nicolas Sarkozy, please note). Gordon Brown enjoyed a bounce in the polls after he killed off, er, sorry, I meant took over from Tony Blair; he was able, however spuriously, to appear all statesmanlike amid the various natural disasters, almost-successful terror plots. But the shooting of the young boy in Liverpool, adding to a spate of gun crimes, has put crime higher up the political agenda, which may hurt Brown; the recognition that Brown has, after all, been finance minister since 1997 and therefore bears a fair share of the current difficulties, is starting to break into the public awareness. And the latest issue which could really wipe the smirk off his face is Europe. His attempt to slyly sign up to a EU Constitution in drag is unacceptable, and thank goodness if it is true that many Labour MPs and some ministers feel the same way.
Seeing is believing, of course. But somehow, I think life is going to get a lot rougher for the government. The question as always is whether the opposition will fully exploit it.
If you are in central London and want to see some wonderful art, I can recommend this. The ticket prices are a bit steep and the collection is not quite as big as some, but definitely worth it. It makes me want to get across the Channel and sip wine in a nice restaurant in Normandy or Brittany.
There is something strange about contemplating a peaceful scene on a Normandy beach, painted in say, 1870, to realise that 74 years later, the place was swarming with Allied troops slugging it out with the German Army, or what was left of it.
Jim Henley has kicked off a fair old discussion buzz on the blogs in asking the question: do animals have rights? My short answer right away is they do not as the term rights only makes sense applied to humans because humans, being actually or potentially rational creatures, need freedom to exercise that rational faculty, which is not automatic, and hence doctrines of rights have evolved. Humans, by their nature, need liberty to survive and flourish because of how our minds work. Dogs and bunny rabbits do not.
Well, that is what I have thought for a long time. But the fuzzy bits that you get with these sort of broad claims have started to bother me. A dog, for example, does not have a ‘volitional consciousness’ in the same way that a human being does, but the dog can respond to signals and its environment; it may not be able to form complex plans, but it can change its behaviour ever so slightly. So a dog needs an element of freedom to survive, too. So if rights are necessary for the furtherance of life, then perhaps they also apply to some other sentient creatures besides we humans. I still think the answer is no, since rights also entail the capacity to respect the rights of others: a vicious dog is not bothered about such things, let alone a white shark or even – may Perry forgive me – a hippo.
And then of course, if we start to cut off the application of rights for any creature that does not fully fit the Aristotelian concept of a ‘rational animal’, where does that leave the mentally handicapped, or very young babies that have not yet formed a rational capacity? I think the in the former case, we regard the handicapped as having lost or never acquired something that humans normally would have, but our sheer sense of solidarity and compassion for the frail means we treat the handicapped with respect and care and rightly so. But of course we do not allow severely handicapped people to perform potentially dangerous jobs and in practice, such people tend to be placed under pretty serious constraints about what they can do. The same goes for very young children, or aged people suffering from mental deterioration to do with age.
But I must admit that our attitudes towards animals are strange at times. I do not shoot or hunt animals for ‘sport’ – if it was sport, they would be able to shoot back – and I despise factory farming, think people who are cruel to animals deserve to have their gonads removed, and think that cruelty to other species diminishes us as human beings. But the problem is, I really, really feel in the mood for a big cheeseburger.
Tibor Machan, the libertarian philosopher – and thoroughly nice chap – gives the standard classical liberal argument for why animal rights do not exist. I strongly urge commenters to take a look at the links on Jim Henley’s post I have linked to above.
I love the Chrysler Building in New York, while the magnificent V&A in London, St Paul’s Cathedral, the gorgeous French chateau of Chenonceu come very close in my list. I also have a soft spot for the city centre of Montpellier in France, if that counts.
What are your favourites?
(One commenter, I see, has chosen Britain’s Sizewell B power station for its uncompromising purpose. I like the sentiment but am not all that wowed by the design. Here is a photograph of it).
The Bourne Ultimatum is a crackerjack of a high-adrenalin, fast-paced film. I must admit that I am slightly allergic to Matt Damon but he delivers the goods in this third instalment of the Jason Bourne series. James Bond he ain’t: no tuxedos, no rapier one-line putdowns, no Russian Smersh agents called Tanya and definitely no Aston Martins with ejector seats but for excitement, it ranks highly. I was slightly irritated by the constantly jerky film shifts – the director is obviously trying to show how realistic and gritty the whole thing is, and I am not entirely convinced that the CIA’s technology is as snazzy as in the film. But these are quibbles.
I expected to see a few cliches in this film, and we were not entirely disappointed. Yes, the CIA is portrayed as riddled with mad, bad people, but on the other hand, justice is done, the bad folk get brought to book eventually, and the film does not imply, as far as I can tell, that the threats to the US are somehow made up or are the figments of imagination. If anything, the message is that overzealous security agencies can easily convince themselves that it is okay to violate the boundaries of the law to do what is necessary. No one is above the law.
I also smiled wryly at the way the film showed how many CCTV cameras there are in Britain. The scene at Waterloo Station, for example, was excellently done, and horribly believable.
Let’s see if we can spot the flaky reasoning in this letter to The Times (of London), as prompted by a good(ish) article by Daniel Finkelstein today:
Writing as a parent and as one who stands to inherit a large sum, a far better way to reduce inter-generational inequality would be to set inheritance tax at 100% over a comparatively high threshold (e.g. £500K). Then the older generation would have a strong incentive to sell their large, expensive homes – increasing supply and making property more affordable for the young – and spend the money, boosting the economy, employment and wages. It would also have the benefit of forcing the children of the rich to make their own way in the world – they have enough advantages in life anyway.
First, the writer assumes as a matter of course that “inter-generational inequality” – however defined – is of itself a bad thing, a thing to be prevented by limits on any wealth bequeathed above a certain level. For this writer, he/she assumes that no person should have, in this case, an amount higher than say, £500,000. But why on earth should the state rule that people should be banned from receiving, as a gift, more than whatever some egalitarian thinks is the “right” amount? So the inheritor may not “deserve” it in some sense but so what? If a person does not deserve to inherit £1m, neither do his fellow citizens deserve to have that wealth evenly divided up among themselves, either. I think it was FA Hayek who pointed out that in talking of deserve, we talk of deserve in the eyes of someone else, like a father, boss or God who decides that Johnathan Pearce or AN Other “deserve” to receive X or Y out of the multitudes. But dumb luck in inheriting money or good looks or a high IQ is just that: luck. Luck is neither undeserved or deserved. Through aeons of time, we have evolved into human beings with things like opposable thumbs and relatively large brains. We did not “deserve” those, either, so does this mean we should hold ourselves back to benefit our less fortunate creatures?
→ Continue reading: The fallacies behind inheritance tax
People worried that Britain’s supposedly overcrowded, damp island will soon burst at the seams from rising population levels should always remember that although immigration has been high lately, so has the exodus of many people. Of course, if you are bothered about underlying trend, it is not exactly cause for celebration that so many Britons, especially if they are young and talented, want to get out of here as quickly as possible. To say that this thought has not occured to the Samizdata crew would be an understatement. (Although one might debate whether yours truly is young or even talented).
In the 1960s, there was talk about a “brain drain” from high-tax Britain. The situation is a little different now: I think the reason(s) for leaving are as much about the regulatory climate, the bloody awful weather, crime, the general ugliness and boorishness of Britain, and the better perceived better chances of raising a family. I am not saying that all these reasons are valid: countries like Australia or the US have their own problems and having been to the States regularly, I find it bizarre that that country is held up as a beacon of freedom sometimes, if only because some states like California seem hellbent on copying the worst regulatory excesses of Europe. But such caveats aside, this exodus ought to be an issue for Gordon Brown and the opposition to think about. If such large numbers of people want to leave, it is sending out a message.
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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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