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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Thanks to my investigative reporting skills, I came across the following draft of the Conservative Party manifesto for the next General Election. It makes for fascinating reading:
“A Tory Party will be a Green government. Global warming, along with terrorism and capitalism, is the greatest threat to our lives. Today’s Tory Party has shed its outmoded addiction to markets, freedom and selfish individualism. Instead, we pledge to shut down industrial civilisation during the course of our first term of office, although we realise that this goal is an ambitious one. Flights will be banned, along with cars, buses, trains, central heating, electric power stations, ports, ferries, factories, foundaries, shipyards, computer stations, everything.
We do of course accept that this policy is a radical one. However, under the funky leadership of David Cameron, a man who has already been prepared for the big challenges of life by his career as an old Etonian and executive for Carlton Communications, we believe our policy of returning to a glorious pre-industrial age is one that is sure to capture the public’s imagination.
Vote Conservative.
Sounds like a real winner to me.
People will bet on anything these days.
Mark Steyn is one of those writers on the “right” who, I suspect, are admired by the sort of folk who read this blog. He is very funny: some of his takedowns on movies and politics have got me laughing out loud. (P.J. O’Rourke remains the Emperor and tends to be less pessimistic and is more libertarian). I mostly supported Steyn’s take on the case for overthrowing Saddam – although I get the impression that he has gone rather quiet due to the mess of the subsequent Coalition occupation of that tortured country. More recently, Steyn has pushed the following thesis: Europe is headed for an Islamist takeover because Those People are, to use the late Orianna Fallaci’s charming expression, “breeding like rats”, and that in 20 years’ time, they’ll be beheading criminals in Birmingham, forcing women to cover up on the Cote’ D’Azur, and they’ll be no more boozing in the Munich Oktoberfest. We are, as Private Frazer would say in Dad’s Army, the old British sitcom, all doomed. No wonder a certain kind of American who tends to despise those “commie Europeans”, is lapping it up.
Steyn bases his thesis on demography. It is both the core but also the main weakness of his book. The problem I have with all such predictions is that the variables have a nasty habit of changing. Even a small change in the birth rate can have a huge impact on the subsequent growth rate of a population set. It is a bit like the law of compound interest. Even a small increase in cost of borrowing money or the yield on a stock can, over 10 years, make a big difference to a mutual fund or the size of your mortgage. Population growth statistics and predictions are like that. Remember the doomongering population scientist Paul Ehrlich? He bet that, by around now, the world’s population would have expanded so fast that we would be starving to death. As the late Julian L. Simon pointed out at the time, Ehrlich’s prediction was hooey. Erhlich overlooked a rather universal trait: as people get richer and no longer have to rely on big families to support parents in their dotage, birth rates fall. It seems to happen pretty much everywhere, including in those countries with very different religious and cultural traditions.
This makes me wonder a bit about whether Steyn is over-egging the point. Demographics is clearly a vital issue, not least in explaining why European growth rates might remain sluggish in the decades ahead. But I cannot help but wonder that Steyn is making the sort of bold extrapolations on population that he would be the first to mock if it was, say, the latest prediction about global warming. Conservatives like Steyn are usually skeptics about Big Predictions, so it seems a bit odd that he has taken up the demographic prediction game with such enthusiasm.
I do not think Steyn is a racist, although in a rather overheated review of his latest book, Johann Hari comes close to making that charge, although even Hari admits that Steyn makes some important points about the follies of multiculturalism and agrees that there is a serious problem with Islamic fundamentalism. But I think Hari does make the important point of questioning whether Steyn has let his own pessimism get the better of him.
Regulars will know that this blog does not have a lot of time for political correctness. They will also know, however, that this blog does not also have a lot of time for racist bigots – or “race realists” as these creeps call themselves these days – either. As Ayn Rand once remarked, racism is the oldest form of collectivism. And like all forms of collectivism, it ignores the unique differences between individuals.
With that in mind, the resignation of this idiot was inevitable and wholly justified. I read the Telegraph comments and see that a lot of people defended the views of the Tory MP who said what he said. It makes me realise that I have as little sympathy for parts of the “right” as I do for a lot of the “left” as well. Non-white soldiers have put their lives on the line in the service of their comrades and their regiments. This MP would do well to remember that point.
This story catches the eye:
The UK’s Jedi community today expressed concerns that government plans to ban Samurai swords could hinder their freedom to wield lightsabres in public.
The UK’s Home Office today issued a consultation paper ahead of legislation intended to ban Samurai blades by the end of the year. In a bid to “protect the public”, replica Samurai swords will become illegal to import, sell and hire in Britain.
The quote marks around “protect the public” are deserved. Quite how such a ban will “protect” anyone is a mystery. The ban on handguns has not led to a dramatic fall in gun-crime, as the recent spate of shootings in London demonstrate all too plainly. If swords are banned to prevent crimes, why not go the whole hog and ban kitchen knives?
Come to that, why not take up the idea of banning opposable thumbs? Human beings – we are not a feature, but a bug!
This is a shame, since I have grown to greatly value Wikipedia and hope it does not get badly damaged:
Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopaedia, has been plunged into controversy after one of its most prolific contributors and editors, a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as a 24-year-old community college drop-out.
The editor, who called himself Essjay, was recruited by staff at Wikipedia to work on the site’s arbitration committee, a team of expert administrators charged with vetting content on the on-line “free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit”.
The open-source and on-line dictionary has been a roaring success in its brief life. I use it constantly both at work and in my spare time. I also consult other reference tools and would strongly advise people never to rely on just one source for the sort of information that Wikipedia and its rivals provide. But it is a shame that this character hoodwinked the site in this way. The best way for Wikipedia to handle this is put its hands up, admit the problem and deal with it.
Which is more than one could say about some organisations.
Last night was a magical one, and not just because I danced to some great music at the wedding of a sailing friend of mine. I also was able to stand outside and, glass of rather fine Armagnac in hand, watch the lunar eclipse in a crystal clear night sky. I have dabbled a bit in astronomy over the years, but this sort of thing might make me part with a few pounds and buy a proper telescope. Think of it: for a short while, the remains of the Apollo landing craft were bathed in orange.
Last Sunday I came across a gem of a job advertisement for HM Customs and Revenue and we discovered that as taxpayers, we are in fact “customers”, and the job of directing this happy enterprise went with a six-figure salary and no doubt, a final-salary pension. Ever since I have been tracking job ads in the public sector, and this weekend, I have another little cracker for you via the Sunday Times:
“A new era for adult social care services.”
A new era. Hold on to your wallets folks.
Director of adult services.
What, is this a porn company?
Up to 110,000 pounds.
Yowza!
Newcastle, recently designated a “science city” by the government, is a great city which in recent years has been transformed into one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the country”.
True. No longer famed for shipbuilding, Newcastle has been through a terrible economic time, but it has some top-class firms, like Sage, the accounting software business. The beer is good and cheap, and the local boys and girls amaze by their ability to go out on a wintry Friday night wearing hardly any clothes. Oh, and it has Newcastle FC, which last won a trophy back in the early Jurassic period.
Our population is ageing and changing – we need to plan for this now. It is critical that organisations across the city work together to better plan for and provide for these changing needs.
No. What the state needs to do is to withdraw from many activities and let people increasingly take control of their own lives and save up money to deal with rising longevity. This process was made rather harder by the present Labour government’s endless fiddling with the tax system, and most of all, its 5 billion-pound-a-year tax raid on corporate pension funds.
In other words, the job spec. here is for some head honcho to “co-ordinate” various efforts to confront the “problems” of a greying population. It seems to me that all this co-ordination will do will cost a lot of money for jobs like this one. People are living for longer – which is hardly a problem from many points of view. As people live longer and healthier lives, then job patterns would, in a free and unfettered market, adjust to deal with that.
£110,000 (US $214,000) is a very nice payout for a lot of bureaucratic hot air. If one multiplies such jobs, you can see why the increase in public sector jobs of more than 800,000 since 1997 has had no noticeable impact on the quality of public services in this country, and arguably, made them far worse.
George Soros, a man who can annoy with some of his less-than-brilliant pronouncements on public affairs, nevertheless is an investor of genius. Well, at least he was in the 80s and early 90s when, purely out of glorious avarice, of course, he helped push Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September, 1992. This event irreversibly damaged the reputation for competence of the then-Tory government of John Major and Chancellor Norman Lamont. Soros’s fortunes in the 1990s waxed, although he failed to exploit fully the 1990s dotcom boom and now prefers to travel the world dispensing advice. He is loathed by many on the right for his support for the Democrats. I saw him give testimony to a Treasury Select Commitee in the House of Commons a few years ago and felt that this was a brilliant financier who, like many men who are brilliant in one area, can be often rather silly in other areas (Einstein springs to mind).
But the beauty of open markets is, that even if you disagree with the views of a person, you can still trade with that person and make each other better off. Voltaire, when he travelled around England in the 18th Century, marvelled at the London Stock Exchange and how people of all religions could and did transact with one another. Well, Soros, a lefty financier, has just made the sort of deal that is likely to send those charming folk of the Democratic Undergound off the edge. Tee-hee.
How we behave toward cats here below determines our status in heaven.
– Robert A. Heinlein, one of the world’s great science fiction writers and moggie-lovers.
As regulars of this site will know, even the most ardent sports fans on this blog – Brian Micklethwait, Michael Jennings and yours truly – despise the Olympic Games. Or, more exactly, we despise how the Games in the UK are funded out of taxes, and despise the crooks, cretins and gullible fools who imagine that the benighted taxpayers of Britain are making some sort of “investment” by paying for the Games. The other evening, flicking through the channels, I saw Sebastian Coe, now a peer and a former Tory MP, go on about what a smashing “investment” the Games respresented, as if he was talking about a punt on the Nasdaq or a purchase of BMW bonds. That an alleged Tory should use the word “investment” to talk about something that could not stand up on commercial grounds and requires the looting powers of the state to function is depressing evidence of the calibre of Tories today. For all their faults, former Chancellors Nigel Lawson, Geoffrey Howe or even Norman Lamont never insulted our intelligence by abusing the English language in this way.
It is possible that the Conservatives have made the crude calculation that the blasted Games, which surge in cost all the time, are going to happen anyway, will be an expensive mess, and the best thing to do is to make supportive noises, not appear to be grouchy, and pin any blame for cockups on the Labour government. From a narrow tactical angle, this is possibly sensible. There are some battles not worth fighting; while the cost of the Games could run above 10 billion pounds, the overalll size of UK public spending is several multiples of that and the Tories or any decent opposition must focus its attention on that. Although a huge figure, the cost of the Games represents a rounding error compared to the total public spending burden. Even so, it would be good to see the Tories flaying the government over the fiasco that this event threatens to become. Over at the Social Affairs Unit blog, the writer Jeremy Black makes some good points on what this government’s opponents should be doing.
Oh well, at least writing about this takes my mind off Ipswich Town FC’s miserable footballing year and England’s loss of the Ashes. Sigh.
As if the threat of being bullied and labelled a fattie is not enough, there is now the risk that the state and its agents will take a child into care if that child is deemed “obese”. Over the last few days, the press has carried reports of how a young boy, weighing in at a powerful 14-stone (196 lbs/ 89 kg), narrowly avoided such a fate.
My first instinctive belief is that the state has no business telling us about what should be the shape of our butts. In the case of children, responsibility lies with the parents, and there has to be real and sustained proof of neglect and abuse to trigger any form of intervention. In nearly all cases, my view is that the “cure” of taking an “obese” child into care will far worse than the supposed problem. Yes, extreme obesity, as measured in terms of excess fat vis a vis overall body shape, is not something to laugh at or dismiss. Although I have been lucky and born with a slim physique, I still try to build on that good fortune by keeping fit. There’s no doubt that many people in Britain are unhealthily overweight. Lack of exercise, sedentary lifestyles and the demise of hard, physical labour all have an effect. But while I would encourage folk to look after themselves, ultimately, what people choose to do with their lives is their business, not mine. In the case of this youngster, realising that he is overweight should be incentive enough to do something about it. His parents may not be the brightest lights in the harbour, but from what I have read, they plainly adore their son, although they probably could exert rather a stricter control over his diet.
As we have also found in so many cases, paternalistic state actions often start to “protect the kids” and end up spreading towards adults as well. I hope this young man learns to take pride in his own health and can look back in future to this time in his life as one where he learned to control his appetite and also realise how dangerous the state has become. There are plenty worse things than having a large tummy, that is for sure.
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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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