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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For some reason, my home turf of East Anglia will not stay off the news
For sale: the world’s smallest country with its own flag, stamps, currency and passports.
Apply to Prince Michael of Sealand if you want to run your own storm-tossed nation – even if it is just a wartime fort perched on two concrete towers in the North Sea.
Built in World War Two as an anti-aircraft base against German bombers, the derelict platform was taken over 40 years ago by retired army major Paddy Roy Bates who went to live there with his family.
Sealand, which is based off Felixstowe, one of Europe’s largest container ports, has in its time been raided by the authorities, who have been at their wits’ end to know what to do about the feisty Bates family. The place has even featured as an inspiration for people trying to harness encryption to make new forms of offshore banking possible, although I suspect that after 9/11, it will become impossible for a place like this to carry out totally private banking operations without countries such as Britain taking fairly robust action.
Even so, in his way, Bates has been a bit of a hero. He has established one of the longest-running ‘private nations’ on the planet in recent history. I wish him and his family the best.
This website is worth a read for material about offshore communities. And of course do not forget the Free State Project.
It is some time since the book was published, but as I am increasingly finding due to pressures of time, I only recently managed to finish the book “1421, the Year China Discovered the World”, written by former Royal Naval submariner Gavin Menzies. He writes in the tradition of revisionist historians who, fired by a sense that a group of people have been done a great injustice – the Chinese treasure fleet sailors – puts his own skills to righting a perceived wrong. It is an enthralling read, drawing on Menzies’ own navigational knowledge and seamanship, his thirst for adventure and historical knowledge, and above all, by an almost Sherlock Holmes-like ability to track down awkward facts to build a case.
The case is a pretty powerful one, although there are some holes in it, at least on a first reading. What makes the book enjoyable all the way through is that it does not strike the reader that Menzies is full of that tedious modern desire to debunk the achievements of great men in order to exalt his own cleverness. This trait, this desire to show that certain brave folk have feet of clay, bores me to tears. Menzies reveres Cook, Magellan and other European explorers, but he feels the Chinese, who put together massive fleets of enormous sailing junks, have been the victims of undeserved obscurity.
Without spoiling the book for those who have not read it, what Menzies does is to show how certain maps of the mid and late 15th centuries, used by the Portugese and folk such as Columbus, could not possibly have contained the information in them without someone having done the prior work of charting certain areas. He finds all kinds of evidence: fauna, flora, jewellery, stoneware, and patterns of trade. He shows how the Chinese, centuries before Englishman John Harrison invented his vital chronometer, cracked the problem of accurately measuring longitude. Menzies’ navigational expertise is vital to showing how maps of the Middle Ages, when corrected for certain errors, make sense for the modern navigator (as an amateur yachtsman myself, I find this sort of stuff fascinating).
I have a few problems though with this thesis, although they may not be fatal to it. First of all, the mandarin-run China destroyed pretty much all the known written evidence that the voyages that Menzies writes about took place. Several of the admirals who led the expeditions were killed or disappeared. Thousands of their sailors died or found shelter in the lands on which they were shipwrecked. Although a European monk – converting to Islam to avoid problems, perhaps wisely – apparently sailed on the ships and transmitted evidence of the expeditions, it is often rather hard to see how the details that Menzies uses to base his claim can be assembled coherently. I find it frankly incredible that not one major Chinese sailing officer ever laid down independently verifiable accounts of his actions and voyages and that those accounts were all destroyed. The probabilities of such an outcome strike one as low. Menzies relies to a large extent on informed and clever conjecture. But conjecture is what we have and I am not sure how all this would pass muster in a court of law.
→ Continue reading: The Chinese got there first – quite possibly
A few days ago, Perry de Havilland suggested the rather cute idea of erecting statues of the US Senators who cooked up the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law, on the grounds that this law has encouraged many firms into listing their businesses outside the United States and holding Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) outside Jefferson’s Republic. London’s stock market has benefited from this, as have bourses such as the Amsterdam Euronext, for instance. I do not know whether some of the impact of S-O has been exaggerated – this may be the case – but there is no doubt that from a regulatory point of view, the United States is not quite the model of laissez-faire capitalism that its supporters or indeed opponents imagine it to be. In fact, the US has been becoming a regulatory hell-hole for some time, such as with the recent crackdown on online gambling, to take one example.
Another man who deserves some sort of award for unintentionally driving business away from America is departing NY Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer. He is stepping down from the job to run for political office, and some say he has been doing that while in his present role. While some of his highly public campaigns to crack down on dodgy dealings should be applauded by free marketeers on the grounds that markets need laws against fraud, some of his campaigns seem to be driven more by the wrong-headed belief that markets must in some sense be “fair” and “perfect” in order to work in the interests of the general public. The mistaken idea that markets must contain no barriers to entry, contain “perfect” information and so on, has done incalculable harm to real capitalism, as also seen in the absurdities often perpetrated in the name of “trust-busting”. In his campaign against biased stock market research, for instance, Spitzer seems to downplay the old wise dictum, “let the buyer beware”, and presume to protect the customer against the shock-horror fact that banks might not be models of Olympian objectivity. There is a good and passionate attack on Spitzer’s record here.
Spitzer did some good but also a lot of harm to Wall Street and beyond. Competing financial centres, possibly including the rapidly-growing hub of Dubai, will rush in to fill the gap as capital becomes ever more fluid in this information age (yes, you read me correctly, I said Dubai, notwithstanding the local regional, er, difficulties).
In case any US readers get all hot under the collar about yours truly, a Brit, taking a prod at the US economy, I am only too well aware of how Britain is falling under the same regulatory menace, both of the home-grown and EU varieties. We all lose if the world’s biggest free economy becomes encumbered by bad laws.
I am writing these few words in the island of Malta, having spent the last week and a half enjoying the sights, sounds, and particularly, the culinary tastes, of this splendid island. This is now the second time that I have spent Christmas here and I strongly recommend it as a place to enjoy the turn of the year. The weather is currently warmish and sunny, with the thermometer around 17 degrees C. The locals celebrate Christmas with the unapologetic gusto of a strong Catholic country, laced with a mix of influences (Arabic, British, southern Italian). The front windows of shops and private homes often carry brilliant decorations and Nativity scenes. Most balconies – there are a lot of balconies – have plastic Father Christmases attempting to scale the side of a house. There are pleasingly few signs that planning officials tell people what sort of decorations to put up.
Malta is noisy. Maltese people love fireworks with a passion that rivals that of the Chinese. Any excuse to set them off will do. And we are talking about seriously loud, bright fireworks. The great safety panic that seems to have stifled so much enjoyment in Britain, the USA and elsewhere is still held at bay – mostly – in this island of about 500,000 souls. There have been some bad accidents in the fireworks factories but the enthusiasm for the things is undimmed. Perhaps having survived the terrible bombings during the Second World War, the Maltese are not going to be frightened by a few rockets set off in the garden.
I have visited this place more than a dozen times, got married here, drunk far too much red wine than is good for me here, watched several theatre plays here, sailed here, swam here, but more than anything else, eaten myself silly here. One of the finest dishes you can get is Lampuki Pie, which is made from this particular fish. I have just consumed a rather large part of one.
I need to go for a lie down.
Well, that is the view of this guy, anyway. I must say I never got very hung up on elaborate theories as to why bits of sheep in tanks or rows of rubber tyres were not, in some profound sense, “art” or not. There are almost as many theories of what art is as supposed art objects themselves. For me, art has to enhance my imagination in some way and has to appeal to my emotions as well as my rational faculties. I like my art to be strongly stylistic but also grounded in some kind of reality (I am a sucker for 1950s comic art, for example).
This writer, David Thompson, is obviously not impressed by the incoherence of those who defend or propound much that goes under the title of modernism:
If some readers find it hard to believe that academia has actually been churning out people who can no longer distinguish between coherent argument and vacuous patois, it’s worth casting an eye over some of the more fashionable quarters of art theorising and cultural study. A cursory scan of Mute magazine (issue 27, January 2004) revealed the following nugget, from an essay titled Bacterial Sex written by Luciana Parisi, a teacher of “Cybernetic Culture” at the University of East London: “This practice of intensifying bodily potentials to act and become is an affirmation of desire without lack which signals the nonclimactic, aimless circulation of bodies in a symbiotic assemblage.” If you think you misread that sentence, try reading it again.
Thanks to the website of Stephen Hicks for the link.
Anyway, that is pretty much me done for 2007. Off to Malta with Mrs P at the weekend, assuming the fog does not interfere with the flights. Wishing everyone a great Christmas and prosperous New Year. I’d like to thank Perry and the other members of the Samizdata gang for taking this blog through to its fifth year. Now for the sixth!
Signs of technical advancement from Britain’s own constitutional monarchy.
The latest edition of The Onion has some invaluable advice on avoiding being “irresponsible” when it comes to drinking booze this Christmas.
God, I love that publication.
“Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy”.
Groucho Marx (the Marx who actually had intelligent things to say about money).
Reason magazine’s Brian Doherty (he of Burning Man fame) has written a nice piece looking at the controversial role the late Milton Friedman played in advising economic reforms to the government of the late, and not-very-lamented, Augusto Pinochet of Chile.
The New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis declared in 1975 that “The Chilean junta’s economic policy is based on the ideas of Milton Friedman…and his Chicago School…if the pure Chicago economic theory can be carried out in Chile only at the price of repression, should its authors feel some responsibility?” Such attitudes haunted Friedman to his death and beyond.
The reaction of some of the usual conservative suspects to Pinochet’s death didn’t help debunk this unfortunate association. Since he was a pro-American autocrat, who ultimately honoured a plebiscite and stepped down, portions of the American right have always had an unhealthy affection for the general. National Review ran both a symposium and a stand alone piece by former editor John O’Sullivan marking Pinochet’s passing, neither of which were much outraged about his crimes. O’Sullivan explicitly said , in the sort of bizarre moral prisoner exchange that partisan squabbling generates, that sure, Pinochet should suffer for his villainy – but only if Castro and Allende’s associates do as well.
I agree with pretty much every word of Doherty’s analysis, and his punchline is good:
Undoubtedly, Friedman’s decision to interact with officials of repressive governments creates uncomfortable tensions for his libertarian admirers; I could, and often do, wish he hadn’t done it. But given what it probably meant for economic wealth and liberty in the long term for the people of Chile, that’s a selfish reaction. Pinochet’s economic policies do not ameliorate his crimes, despite what his right-wing admirers say. But Friedman, as an economic advisor to all who’d listen, neither committed his crimes, nor admired the criminal.
Those leftists who nitpick at the late economist for his role in advising the Chilean regime have only the tiniest of legitimate reasons for bashing Friedman, I think. Considering that he was a man who made the case for abolishing the draft, decriminalising drugs, promoting school choice and so forth, his credentials as a pro-liberty guy were pretty much impeccable.
“Progressive taxes do not redistribute income. They redistribute taxpayers.”
George Gilder, one of the early evangelists for “supply-side” economics, which is a fancy way of saying that he thinks people respond to incentives, considered a wild-eyed idea by some people.
The only way to view the present, imploding Labour government as it fights over the cash-for-peerages issue, is like a bunch of street rats at each others’ throats. This story in the Sunday Telegraph states that Tony Blair is willing to let one of his top cronies and fund-raisers, Lord Levy, take the hit for the scandal.
In many ways, what strikes me as so distinctive about this government and its ministers is that the big bust-ups, the big fights, were not on issues of principle. At least the Tories, for all their manifest faults, fell out over things like the euro and the Maastricht Treaty, which were serious, major issues. But then the Tories were once a grown-up party, with grown-up people in it like Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson. Say what you like about these personages, but their rows were over issues of major substance.
It seems an awfully long time ago.
I had the pleasure of meeting U.S. blogger Stephen Green, of the excellently entitled Vodkapundit, a few months ago at a party in London. Stephen has been ill, lost a lot of weight, and I must say I got quite concerned when he stopped posting. He now explains what has been going on. It looks as if the fella is going to be all right, which is terrific news for him and his wife and child. Feel free to nip over to his site and give him your best wishes.
I am looking forward to the Colorado Scribe posting up more of those cocktail recipes again. Mine’s a gin and tonic.
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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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