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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“As long as life sustenance remains the ultimate goal of individuals, they are likely to assign a higher valuation to present goods versus the future goods and no central bank interest rate manipulation is likely to change this. Any attempt by central bank policy makers to overrule this fact is going to undermine the process of wealth formation and lower individual’s living standards. It is not going to help economic growth if the central bank artificially lowers interest rates whilst individuals did not allocate an adequate amount of savings to support the expansion of capital goods investments. It is not possible to replace savings with more money and the artificial lowering of the interest rate. It is not possible to generate something out of nothing. Likewise, by raising interest rates the central bank cannot undo the damage from the previous easy interest rate stance.”
– Dr Frank Shostak, writing at the Cobden Centre website. (Thanks to Paul Marks for the pointer.)
The US has a leadership vacuum, at least in terms of the White House.
After four years of a bitter war with Donald Trump, much of the US media establishment has returned to its old deferential approach now that one of their own is back in the White House. To them, the appearance of normality, the fake return to mainstream codes of behaviour, the fact that Ivy Leaguers are back in charge at Treasury and State, matters far more than the reality, which is that the president isn’t really presiding and that America’s constitution is once again in deep crisis.”
– Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph.
What is worth noting is that even if Biden was mentally sharp, his comments and opinions have been notable for their crassness and foolishness. He is also a plagiarist. And that was when he was younger. I fear that far too many reporters and others covering politics are desperately trying to now play down what an empty shell he is.
(By contrast, the actor Bruce Willis has had to end his acting career because of a cognitive decline problem, and I find it very sad to see the star of Die Hard and other films retire. But he’s had to be honest, and that is brave of him.)
I suppose the issue is whether all this matters very much. To some extent, the fact that Biden is too far gone to make lots of decisions might not be a bad thing. The problem is that his policy ideas, even if they are not going to be enacted, are still terrible, such as on the plan to impose some sort of “wealth tax”. Sooner or later, one of his dumb ideas could actually have very bad consequences for The Republic.
And meanwhile, in the back of everyone’s minds, is the thought “God, imagine Kamala Harris dealing direct with Xi and Putin.”
So my question to the commenters here is this: what is to be done? There are another two and a bit years to run under this man. What’s the realistic chance he will make it?
“The old truths remain unchanged: The free world isn’t free because it is rich — it is rich because it is free. Freedom is not only a moral good but also a practical one: Because we have a system that enables us to fail quickly and fail cheaply, we can try many different approaches to social and material problems, throwing everything we have at them and seeing what works. Authoritarian societies, in contrast, have trouble adapting to fluid conditions, often discomfited by problems that cannot be solved with bayonets. One by one, Americans and Germans and Englishmen aren’t any more intelligent than Russians or Chinese or Saudis, but the institutions of free societies — from the free press to competitive elections — enable free people to rally and deploy their collective intelligence in a way that is difficult or impossible in unfree societies.”
– Kevin D Williamson
An internet acquaintance called Tim Starr, who writes a lot about foreign policy from a “realist libertarian” point of view (ie, the opposite of the sort of “it’s all our fault” line that I see too much) has an interesting comment about the Russia/Ukraine drama on his Facebook page. I asked him if I could reprint it here, and he said go ahead. So here it is. It skewers the notion that there were parallels with Putin’s fears about Ukraine becoming pro-Western and JF Kennedy’s alarm at the Soviet Union’s stationing of nuclear weapons in Cuba in the early 1960s. And he makes an excellent point about the difference between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. These are obvious points, but a lot of those excusing Putin’s monstrous regime seem to be trying to confuse them.
A false analogy keeps being made between the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russia’s supposed fear of having offensive missiles in NATO countries bordering Russia. Supposedly, Russia has just as much right to object to NATO missiles in its neighboring countries as the USA had to object to them in Cuba.
One of the main problems with this analogy is that the Cuban Missile Crisis happened before there was such a thing as ICBMs – Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. Thus, there were no Soviet missiles capable of hitting the continental USA, until they sent IRBMs to Cuba, thus threatening the USA with nuclear missiles for the first time ever. Russia has already been living under the threat of nuclear ICBM attack by the USA for decades, we have never launched one, we have signed multiple nuclear arms-control treaties with Russia, we have kept the terms of those treaties (unlike Russia), etc.
Another problem is that Russia already has nuclear-capable missiles stationed on NATO’s borders, in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders both Lithuania and Poland, and is within IRBM range of many other EU and NATO countries. Do those countries have the right to invade Russia because of the IRBMs in Kaliningrad?
(Emphasis mine.)
Going back to the Cuba analogy, Castro was so unstable that he actually urged the Soviets to launch a nuclear first strike on the US from Cuba. Fortunately, the Soviets never put Cuba in command of their nuclear forces there, didn’t grant his request, and soon thought better of leaving their nukes where he might be able to get his hands on them.
Another disanalogy is that NATO membership is voluntary. No country is forced to join NATO against its will, the agreement of all existing NATO members is required for any new members to join, and any member can leave at any time. Cuba was taken over by Castro in a violent, Soviet-sponsored revolution, so Cuba had no choice about whether to become a Soviet ally. No Soviet ally was ever allowed to stop being a Soviet ally without Soviet permission, and none of the other Soviet allies ever had any say in the matter. Cuba was a Soviet puppet, completely dependent upon the Soviets. Cuba was ruled by its secret police, who were under the command of the Soviet secret police. It was subsidized by the Soviets with billions of dollars a year. Cuba remains a one-party state, more than 30 years after the demise of the Soviet Union, having only in desperation permitted a little bit of free enterprise and replacing its former Soviet subsidies with money from Venezuela’s oil exports, drug smuggling, etc. Cuba sponsored terrorism all over the Americas, and engaged in military adventurism in Africa. Nothing comparable to that has ever been the case with any NATO members.
To the final point Starr makes, it is worth noting that in the 1960s, France left the NATO command structure (de Gaulle was not happy about US foreign policy). No Warsaw Pact country was able to do so; any attempt at dissent was crushed (Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968).
During my morning trawls of newsfeeds I came across this from some film industry news portal called Deadline:
A long list of celebrities from the film, television, sports and music industries has sent a letter urging City National Bank’s parent company, Royal Bank of Canada, to defund the Coastal GasLink pipeline. The letter, sent “In solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders,” is demanding the immediate withdrawal of financial support for a 416-mile gas pipeline slated to cut through what’s termed “sacred and sensitive ecosystems” in Wet’suwet’en land, in British Columbia, Canada without consent from hereditary chiefs.
More than 65 Hollywood celebrities, including Mark Ruffalo, Leonardo DiCaprio, Taika Waititi, Scarlett Johansson, Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, and Robert Downey Jr., released a letter to City National Bank’s (CNB) parent company, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).
More than 65 celebrities – that’s serious firepower, man!
Here is a chart showing natural gas prices over the past five years, and the huge fall and bounce back in some ways tracks the lockdowns, and also, I suggest, what is going on in Ukraine. The past few weeks have been a wakeup call about where natural gas comes from, and who controls it. Maybe these “celebrities” might want to reflect on that, assuming they have above-room temp IQ capacity to do so.
Protecting wildlife is important. So is keeping the lights on, the air conditioning working and the heating. Those “celebrities” presumably want these things to continue. If they don’t, and would prefer to live in a tent, they should say so.
From the Wall Street Journal (paywall):
Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia. The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.
The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
From what I can recall, the demise of the dollar as the world’s most important reserve currency has been predicted for so long that it was probably being stated fifty years ago. Predictions of “currency wars” often crop up in the business sections of bookstores. Take this racy example from James Rickards.
The underlying problem is not oil exports, or whether Sleepy Joe is getting on well with whatever shithead is running Saudi Arabia. The problem is that the US government has racked up a debt of $28.43 trillion. Further, US savings rates haven’t held up. The US has been too reliant on savings from countries that have at times wished it ill. This is not sustainable. It is funny really. Sustainability is one of the buzzwords of our time, denoting a concern about the Planet, but surely if it also means anything it means having a state that does not go bankrupt.
The US Federal Reserve put up interest rates today, and in the next few months, is likely to put them up more. (See an interesting discussion involving a friend of mine, Keith Weiner, about the Fed.) Every time it does so, the interest costs of the US debt stock will rise. The amount of interest payable on that debt will be the equivalent of, say, an aircraft carrier fleet. High indebtedness is not just stupid in financial terms. It is a national security issue.
“Young men are also a production resource – a productive resource that is used to wage war, but Russia’s youth have had it with Putin’s regime and the collapse of the economy and the prospect for going to war and dying in Ukraine is causing young Russian to flee the country. It is said that more than 25,000 Russians have already left for Georgia since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The exodus of young Russian in fact started more than a decade ago, but this process is now accelerating dramatically. Polls done even before the war on Ukraine have again and again shown that more than half of the Russian population would like to emigrate. That number is now skyrocketing – particularly among the young. The Putin’s regime can hardly accept that much longer – and therefore it is only a matter of time before a “Russian wall” is erected – and in the same way as with the Berlin Wall, it is not about keeping enemies out, but about keeping the population confined.”
– Lars Christensen, economist based in Denmark.
“If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny.”
– Elon Musk: entrepreneur, spacefarer, and annoyer of the Woke. (Quoted by Yaron Brook here.)
I have been struck in my reading of the media, in conversations with people in the City and elsewhere, as to how the topic of COVID-19 has suddenly disappeared from regular conversation. It is true that the UK came out of lockdowns a bit earlier than some other countries. It is true that the embarrassments of the Boris Johnson Downing Street machine meant that Mr Johnson was afraid to reimpose any controls given that no-one would take him seriously. (One reason I am very sad about the passing of the late P J O’Rourke is the sport he would have had the expense of various governments over such hypocrisies). Even so, it is striking how fast Russia’s attack on Ukraine was able, in a flash, to take the bug away. Gone. Kaput. This is a virus that seems to know the news agenda. Amazing.
But we should not forget the past two years or more of lockdowns, of the pettiness, the bullying, the hysteria, the use of fear, the “what we can get away with”, the suspension of civil liberties, the North Korean-style worship of “Our NHS”, and indeed, we shouldn’t overlook the heroism of medical staff who dealt with the crisis particularly in the early months when the full nature of this bug was unknown. We should not forget China’s refusal to enable a clear analysis of what caused this shitshow, or its bullying of those who asked questions, of the biases of the World Health Organisation, the questionable actions and financial involvements of people such as Anthony Fauci in the US and the unease in asking if this bug came from a lab. We should not forget the shenanigans over PPE contracts in the UK, the frauds over loans to businesses, the cowardice and horribleness of the teaching unions and damage to education. We should not forget the stoicism of lorry drivers, supermarket workers, farmers, delivery drivers and logistics workers. We must not forget how parents could see what their children were learning online, and were shocked.
We must not forget these things.
An interesting article in Reason, the US magazine, about central bank digital currencies, which appear to the reverse of the libertarian, ground-up approach of Bitcoin’s original champions:
You know who thinks that cryptocurrencies are the future? Central banks, that’s who, and they’re jumping on board the crypto bandwagon. But that doesn’t mean you should anticipate the folks at the Federal Reserve stepping aside to make way for Bitcoin adoption—far from it. Instead, central bankers want to displace grassroots cryptocurrencies with central bank digital currencies (CBDC) of their own design that absolutely will not protect privacy, and that will let governments control private transactions.
In the race to adopt state-sponsored digital currencies, the United States is behind the curve. China recently banned the use of private cryptocurrencies to make room for the digital renminbi. Cambodia launched its digital currency, the Bakong, in 2020. Nigeria plans to introduce the eNaira this month. But America lags, and for very good reason.
“Depending on its design, CBDC accounts could give the Federal Reserve access to a vast amount of information regarding the financial transactions and trading patterns of CBDC accountholders,” Christopher Waller, a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, commented (PDF) in August. “The introduction of a CBDC in China, for example, likely will allow the Chinese government to more closely monitor the economic activity of its citizens. Should the Federal Reserve create a CBDC for the same reason? I, for one, do not think so.”
It should surprise exactly nobody that China’s digital renminbi promises only “controllable anonymity” between private parties, and that the state retains the ability to monitor transactions.
This raises the old debate that I have read about and been involved in over the years – can technology tools really help free us from the State, or will the State simply adjust and use said tools for its own purposes? Down the years I have seen how entities such as the Internet, 3-D printing, social media platforms and so forth will empower individuals at the expense of Big Government, but that’s not always worked out.
The brute fact is, in my view, is that to push back against the State, it is necessary to win battles of ideas, and that is a slog. No wonder some hope that technology can help. Maybe it has to be a mix: good ideas that are spread, and new ways of living and working that feed off them.
A few years ago, David Friedman (son of Milton Friedman) had a good book out, Future Imperfect, where he wondered about such matters. Strongly recommended. He gave a talk on the issues here.
“Mr. Putin finds himself in a struggle now because of the bravery of 41 million Ukrainians, not the strength of Europe or the United States.”
– Wall Street Journal
“This is the man whom Canadians have thrice elected, which speaks for a country that—with the exception of a courageous and steadfast minority—no longer values its freedoms and traditions. Fear and ignorance triumph over patriotism and reason. Some might be inclined to argue that Canadians had little choice given there was no credible opposition and that vote-heavy Toronto, Montreal and Halifax effectively determine the outcomes of elections in this country. Nonetheless, Trudeau was always a popular favorite despite his autocratic nature and a clear tendency to abuse his office. Trudeau is working to remake Canada in his own tarnished image. He can do no other. That is who he is.”
– David Solway
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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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