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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Well, Christmas is nearly upon us. I am shortly off to demonstrate my serious limitations as a singer down my local church. (I write this from Suffolk in eastern England at my folks’ farm. The weather has been sunny although snow is promised later in the week). One of the things that I certainly valued this morning was my ability to get out of central London by car. People reliant on public transport have been reminded, alas, that public sector trade unions are among the most cussed groups of people around. The London Underground system is threatened with a strike on New Year’s Eve, which would seriously mess up many people’s celebration plans. And as this story suggests, it may even tempt some people to use their cars, even if they are over the alcohol limit.
Anyway, enough of such glum thoughts. May I wish my fellow contributors and Samizdata readers a very happy Christmas and prosperous 2006.
“If you’re determined to be altruistic about it, the only way you can be of any good to others is for you to be self-sufficient. The biggest burdens in a crisis are those who were so concerned about the welfare of everyone else that they never provided for themselves.”
Harry Browne, How You Can Profit From the Coming Devaluation, pp. 199-200, Arlington House Publishers, Westport, Connecticut. I also recommend this classic by Browne.
The Chinese economy is set to be bigger in GDP terms than that of Britain by the end of this year, according to this report. Of course, raw statistics, such as aggregate economic numbers, do not tell the entire story, such as the degree of upward mobility, quality of life, extent of personal opportunity and so forth, but even so, China’s growth remains for me the most compelling economic story of the past year. It is interesting to speculate just what the world economy would be like without the dynamo of China.
What remains to be seen, of course, is whether China’s economic dynamism is eventually reflected in greater individual liberty. The jury is well and truly out on that question. Meanwhile, this article in Forbes is worth a look.
Yes, it had to happen: a man has named a police dog in a lawsuit.
Woof!
(Thanks to the marvellous Overlawyered blog for the story).
I must admit to being saddened and a bit angered to read that Doug Bandow, a former writer for the CATO Institute, a leading U.S. libertarian think tank, has left after it was revealed that he was paid by a lobbyist to write articles specifically favouring said lobbyist’s clients. I used to like some of the stuff Bandow wrote as he came across as a relatively sane voice on domestic and foreign policy issues. It turns out that at least on certain topics, he was a shill. Ouch.
Of course, most of us have to work to earn a crust, and there is nothing specifically wrong in my view in a writer being paid by a company or organisation to advance a point of view so long as the writer is up-front about that. If a person writing skeptical articles about the so-called Greenhouse Effect is backed by Exxon or Shell, then one can obviously take that into account, even if the quality of the argument is impeccable. The same might go, say, for a writer getting backing from Greenpeace who writes all manner of doomonger articles, and so forth.
A lot of people who once enjoyed Bandow’s articles will be feeling slightly peeved.
The U.S. Senate has blocked a vote to extend the Patriot Act, about which Perry de Havilland wrote the other day. Maybe some sanity is breaking out. Many of the Act’s provisions are tenuously linked to protecting the public from terrorism, to put it mildly, and violate parts of the U.S. Constitution. Let’s hope Congress reflects more before passing such laws at such high speed in the future. And the same applies to our own benighted Parliament and the wretched UK Civil Contigencies Act.
I have come across a press release from Britain’s National Health Service. The NHS is currently trying to prevent obese people from having hip replacement operations as they do not “deserve” to have such treatment, despite the little matter of their having been taxpayers like the rest of us.
“The NHS, like any proud creation of a socialist, inclusive Britain, has to operate under certain priorities. Indeed its founder, the great Soviet leader Nye Bevan, stated that socialism is about priorities. Well, there is no place and certainly no priority to treat people, who, by laziness, sloth and lack of intelligence, choose to make themselves ill or incapacitated. In fact ill people are a positive nuisance. It is the fit, able-bodied and alert people of Britain who deserve to be treated by the Greatest Health Service Devised by Mankind. No more obese people. No more smokers. No more drinkers. No more red meat eaters and chocolate fans. Such habits have no place in a socialist Britain. Let such vile habits wither away.”
I am still trying to vouch for the authenticity of this release. Looks plausible to me.
“Perhaps the meek shall inherit the Earth, but they’ll do it in very small plots . . . about 6′ by 3′.”
Robert Heinlein, quoted at this excellent legal website with stacks of quotations about self defence.
The Italian government, desperate for any additional source of revenue as it beggars the surrounding economy with its imposts, has slapped a fresh tax on the country’s porn industry. It will be intruiging to know just how much this tax raises or whether, as may probably happen in Italy, the tax drives the industry under the bed, so to speak.
Personally, I have more regard for people who earn an honest living making racy videos than tax collectors.
I keep banging on about this subject since it is, in my eyes, a prime example of how the state is not pulling its share of the deal in coercing the citizenry to pay for schooling and for coercing children to spend the ages of 5 to 16 or more in school. Latest official data suggest that standards of literacy and numeracy among schoolchildren are not up to scratch.
Schools are not doing enough to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of those pupils who start their secondary education with low standards in English and mathematics,” a report from Ofsted said.
The findings were released on the same day the National Audit Office, the government’s spending watchdog, said more employers need to invest time and money in teaching staff basic skills such as maths and English.
Tony Blair is locked in conflict with his Labour backbench MPs over his education reforms. From a superficial reading, one would get the impression that Blair wanted to drastically open up the amount of choice available to parents as to where their offspring are educated. In practice, nothing so drastic seems to be on the cards and yet the slightest hint of increased choice seems to send socialists into a frenzy.
The other night, the Institute of Economic Affairs held an evening to honour the late, great Arthur Seldon, who among other reforms made the idea of school vouchers one of his pet issues. It is fair to say that we are as yet a million miles from achieving the kind of choice in education that Arthur wanted to bring about.
As Christmas is almost upon us, it is a pleasure to read a nice article by a doughty basher of nanny-state puritanism, Jacob Sullum. Sullum states what many of us probably instinctively know to be true – a bit of what you fancy is good for you. Dark chocolate (yeh!), red wine (yeh again!) and even red meat (thrice yeh!).
So in the interests of good health, I am now eyeing a bottle of fine Rhone red wine sitting on the rack in the kitchen.
Officials from the Israeli security services, not usually thought of as the Europhiles’ favourite, are apparently in France at the moment advising that country’s security services on riot control, following the mass mayhem in France a month ago. It strikes me as rather ironic, given the anti-Israel tilt of French foreign policy in recent years, that the country’s leaders are calling for help from Israel. Strange days indeed.
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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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