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 wish I could play the piano well. What skill that you lack do you most wish you possessed?
The government’s campaign to ban the rural practice of hunting foxes with hounds – motivated by a mix of sentimentality about animals, some genuine concern about cruelty and a lot of spite – has proven to be a waste of time, at least as far as I can judge from some news reports as well as direct personal experience. On the latter point, a foxhunt came across some open land that is owned by my father – what was left after he sold the bulk of the farm in Suffolk. The hunt did not ask my dad about coming across the land, and in fact caused a fair amount of damage to several hedges. My old man was, understandably, not very amused.
It is sometimes assumed that farmers and other folk who work the land must be in favour of hunting vermin and therefore support foxhunting. I ‘support’ it in the sense that I tolerate it. I tend to regard foxhunting as a mildly silly activity but there are lots of silly activities which make up the eccentric land of ours. Just because one might not enjoy a certain pursuit in no way justifies banning it. On practical grounds, if one wants to control wild animals like foxes, a rifle is arguably better use than a bunch of dogs. Riding to hounds across open fields and over high hedges might at one stage have been good training for a budding cavalry soldier. And Let’s face it, foxhunters chase foxes because they enjoy it; they enjoy steaming across the countryside, with all the adrenalin rushes and cameraderie that this brings. And a man and woman look pretty damn good in those riding clothes.
Even so, many farmers, such as tenant farmers, resent the hunt. When tenant farmers were more common than they are now, a landlord could ride across the tenant’s farm at will, and force said tenant to maintain the land in such a way as to keep up the supply of foxes, pheasants, partridges and other targets. Roger Scruton, in his ‘elegy’ to old England, defends the pattern of landholding in such terms (he denies the idea that one owns property in any absolute sense, but more as a sort of lease from the State). With the rise of owner-occupier farmers, however, it is not quite so simple for hunters to gallop across the land in pursuit of game come what may. The clash between foxhunters and farmers is rather ironic, given that some commenters tend to lump all country dwellers in the same mental category.
Respect for property rights is in decline in this nation, and from all quarters. The assault on property rights, such as telling owners of pubs that their clients cannot smoke even if no-one is forcing anyone to frequent a place, is only one such example. The ability of people to change their property is constrained as never before by planning laws. Landowners are also affected. All the more reason, then, why devotees of the hunt should respect the rights of people who are, in usual circumstances, tolerant of the men who chase the fox to the cries of Tally Ho!
Following the brilliant ‘straw man’ quote below, I thought I would list a few regular straw man arguments that I come across in the comment threads of this blog as well as in the wider media/public world where the ideas of liberty, defence policy or the free market are mentioned:
Free marketeers do not believe in law and rules of any kind
This is often posited as a fact, when in fact law and liberty are necessary for each other. Without laws defining property rights, for example, much peaceful intercourse is impossible.
If you are against the invasion of Iraq, you are a peacenik
This boils down to a form of argument by intimidation. Even though many opponents of the operation to overthrow Saddam are stupid, evil or possibly both, quite a lot were against it for prudential reasons.
If you are in favour of the invasion of Iraq, you must be a warmongering lunatic
Many people from all parts of the political spectrum thought overthrowing Saddam, who was a bloodthirsty tyrant, invader of neighbouring nations, sponsor of terror, user of WMDs, was a humanitarian and necessary act.
If you are a skeptic about global warming and other alleged environmental terrors, you care nothing for future generations and might also be in the pay of Big Oil
This is not a start of an argument, but an attempt to shout debate down. It betrays the fact that Greenery is becoming a religion with its own notions of heresy. If anyone plays this gambit, refuse to take it up.
Libertarians believe in the idea that humans are born with a mental “blank slate” and hence pay no heed to inherited characteristics of any kind
I often see this argument made by bigots as well as more benign folk. In fact it is possible to believe that many human characteristics are inherited but also changeable. And just because we are influenced by genes, it does not mean were are driven in a deterministic way. Free will still exists. The more knowledge we have about human nature etc, the more power it gives individuals, not less.
For capitalism to work successfully, everybody has to be obsessed with making money all the time
All that is necessary is that human economic interaction is based on voluntary exchange, not force. How much people want to get rich or not is irrelevant.
Libertarians are uninterested in preserving certain old traditions and cultures
In fact, a free society is often much more able to preserve certain traditions, not less so.
Libertarians tend to be loners and discount the importance of community life
This is rubbish: liberals value communities so long as membership is voluntary and further, co-operation is a consequence of liberty, not its opposite. An individualist can enjoy group activities as much as anyone, such as being part of an organisation, club, football team, whatever. The key is that such membership is freely chosen.
I am sure that other commenters can think of a few more…
Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
– Voltaire, without a doubt one of the greatest Frenchmen who have lived. His novel, Candide, with its great character Dr Pangloss, reads as fresh today as when it was written two centuries and a half ago.
Nice piece in Wired magazine by Clive Thompson coming to the defence of video games, frequently a target for the culture scolds (“Quake made my boy a killer!”). This gives me the perfect excuse to remind readers of this fine book, Killing Monsters, which shows the beneficial side of playing such games for children’s development. Come to think of it, children – and not just boys – have played rough-house games since the dawn of time, so I do not quite see how computer games represent a major step towards cultural depravity. As a boy I played all manner of war games, not to mention staple favourites like chess.
Of course, in the case of chess, there are other considerations.
I suppose it is not very noble of me to share this wee story with you, but the sun is shining and I am still feeling a warm glow after hearing this from my brother:
Brother: “Hey, you know that guy Mark who used to bully you at school a bit, you know, the one that went off to run a music shop?”
Me: “Er, yes, but it is a long time ago”.
Brother: “I bankrupted him this morning.”
My brother is a civil litigator.
Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.
P.J. O’Rourke
I was reminded of this remark while watching the final stages of the The Masters. Britain’s Justin Rose is currently just behind the leader. One of these days, I tell myself, I am going to pay a visit to Augusta and soak up the atmosphere.
UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has, as we now know, ignored the advice of his civil servants and plundered the private sector pensions industry to fund a massive public spending splurge. More than 800,000 jobs have been added to the public sector payroll since 1997, what might be regarded as a large group of folk with a vested interest in keeping the gloomster and his fellows in office. Vast sums have been spent on education and health, to debateble effect (some good has been done probably but not to the extent that would justify all that money). But one of the proudest boasts of Brown and Blair has been how this effort has reduced poverty since the dark, satanic era of the Conservatives (sarcasm alert).
Thanks to some diligent digging by the weekly UK magazine, The Business, it turns out that the bottom 10% of the UK population have actually got poorer. Last Friday, it was the Times, meanwhile, which won a long-fought campaign to expose the pensions issue. It is nice to see old-style Fleet Street journalism at its best.
It is not turning out to be a great spring for the Scot. Have a happy Easter.
I thought I’d just put this photo up from the Libertas film blog, simply because, well, I can, dammit.
“CCTV systems are sinister is that they are a constant reminder that trust is a rare social commodity – you cannot trust other passers-by because they may rob you, assault you or be wearing a bomb-shaped rucksack. Norms of altruistic and reciprocal behaviour simply are almost non-existant in big cities like London and New York. CCTV systems are sinister because their existence emphasises the unknown risks around you and thus your own vulnerability”.
From the commenter “Mike”, pointing out that CCTV cameras in public streets with loudspeakers attached are not harmless adornments to our towns.
This story in the Telegraph is no doubt just crazy right-wing paranoia, and we have in fact no need to worry, get annoyed or even become the tiniest bit cheesed off. Oh no. Polly has explained it all for us. To be worried about the surveillance state is a middle-class thing, apparently. All true denizens of a socialist Britain should be proud to carry ID cards and be photographed constantly.
If Polly Toynbee did not exist, we would have to invent her. Not even Ian Fleming could cook up a female villain as good as this woman. Henry Porter, meanwhile, has scathing remarks on his fellow Guardian columnist. Good for him.
Of course, if CCTVs are installed in privately owned streets, shopping malls or other privately owned buildings, I do not have a problem so long as it is pretty clear that such cameras are installed. But that is not quite the issue.
I am quite a fan of the fiction and some of the non-fiction of Ayn Rand, but I am the first to concede that some of the people who call themselves Objectivists are an assorted bunch, to put it politely. I have little time for some of the “official” Big-O Objectivists, like Leonard Peikoff, although I enjoy the writings of Tara Smith very much. The group of folk who liked Rand’s broad ideas but detested the narrow-mindedness and paranoia of some of the “official” group broke off, under the leadership of Dr. David Kelley, to form groups like The Objectivist Center. I like the TOC crowd and have corresponded with a few of them. I subscribe to The New Individualist, the monthly journal edited by the great Bob Bidinotto. What is so refreshing about it is that one does not get lots of shrilll lectures or dense philosophical treatises, but an engaging and assertive writing style coupled with an often impish sense of humour and enjoyment of the good things in life. It is a cracking read, in fact. Bob is also addicted to thriller novels, which puts him in the same bracket as me.
Okay, enough creeping from me, now for the nasty part. In the April print edition – the web version does not appear to be up yet – there are two articles that struck some decidedly jarring notes. The first, by Roger Donway, argues that basically, the late Milton Friedman was not a good advocate of capitalism and individualism, and in fact he used arguments that play straight into the hands of socialists. (I am not making this up). The second article, by Bidinotto, includes a defence of the use of torture in ’emergency’ situations, although Bob does not define ’emergencies’ very clearly and leaves begging the question about who gets to decide such matters. But I have pretty much argued on this torture issue before and will not repeat myself here. So I will focus instead on what Roger Donway has to say about Friedman.
To try to make this point, Donway argues that Friedman’s attack on the idea that firms have “social” responsibilities itself rests on a sort of utilitarian basis. Does it?
→ Continue reading: Sometimes, even a superb magazine gets it very wrong
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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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