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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While idly surfing around the net thanks to the marvels of Google (what a wonderful thing Google is!) I had a look at a few stories about the worrying state of French cuisine, like this one.
I yield to no man in my love of French food, or indeed food generally. I love French food as much as I loathe the French political establishment. And it will surely be a tragedy of Napoleonic proportions if France, wedded to such economic absurdities as the 35-hour work week, were to drive many of its finest restaurants out of business or lead them to cut corners in their work. The irony, of course, is that if France does crush its wonderful restaurants through such nonsense, it will encourage the very fast-food big chains that the French intellectuals despise, since such chains have the economies of scale to shoulder red tape more easily than a small bistro. It would be a cruel irony indeed if MacDonalds spread its grip on the market thanks to French socialism. I guess the great French classical liberal economics writer Frederic Bastiat would have savoured the irony.
There is a silver lining to all this. Some of the best French cuisine is now being made in grey old London, which means I can indulge my tastebuds without making the trip across the Channel. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
Blogger, film scriptwriter and novelist Roger Simon notes that there have not been many sounds of disgust from his Hollywood backyard at the murder of Dutch film-maker, Theo Van Gogh (a descendant of the artist) on November 2nd.
I must say there has not been a huge amount of noise from our own British film-makers, documentary producers and big shot journalists, either. I get the distinct feeling that a lot of folk in the artistic community are simply scared or uninterested that a man who made a film about the treatment of women in Islamic culture was shot in broad daylight in Holland, that most laid-back of nations.
I find that there is something rather shabby about this silence. I hope to be proven wrong and that all those who have cause to value freedom of speech and the right to challenge certain ideas will speak out at the brutal murder of Mr Van Gogh.
“Just imagine that instead of urging householders to barricade themselves inside their homes if a burglar attacks, a group of senior police officers were to write a joint signed letter to the Times saying that in such a case, fight the intruder, to the death if necessary. Imagine what impact this would have on the public debate about self defence and crime.”
Brian Micklethwait, speaking at a recent one of his regular Friday evening soirees.
Last month a British panel of the Great and Good issued a thumpingly big report on the state of Britain’s pensions system covering both the private and state networks of provision. In short, the report said that we are living longer, have fewer children, and hence pensions systems which were constructed in the middle of the last century are buckling under the strain. It is all now a fairly familiar story and likely to prove one of the most ticklish political domestic issues in Europe and north America for the next few years.
But consider this – if we are living longer and able to live healthier lives for longer, and this is causing certain strains to emerge in pension provision, then how do the doomongers square that with the claim that we face all manner of threats to our health? One can barely open the pages of a newspaper or turn on the television without being regaled about all the horrible risks out there, obesity being the latest issue, but by no means the last.
Well, for all our supposed problems, something wonderful has happened to the health of most people in modern industrial nations these past few decades. (Clues: modern medicine, drugs, decline of heavy manual labour, greater awareness of healthy diet, dangers of tobacco, etc). I appreciate that stating such a thing in today’s culture of gloom is unfashionable, even reckless, but there it is.
I take my good news where I can find it. The chaos in the EU corridors of power over the refusal by the EU parliament to ratify the proposed new line-up of EU Commissioners may only last a few weeks but hey, a few weeks in which the EU leviathan is unable to act is surely a net gain for humankind.
The fracas has been caused by opposition from PC types to the views of Commissioner-designate Rocco Buttiglione, who said that as a Roman Catholic, he regarded homosexuality as sinful. Well, he also said that he would not allow his moral views to support any laws against homosexuals, on the grounds that what is immoral should not necessarily be illegal. Such issues, he said, should be outside politics. I agree. If this man had supported bans on gay couples or use of State action against them, it would be an entirely different issue, but he said nothing of the sort.
By making that remark, the gentleman actually expressed a central feature of a liberal civil order. Many aspects of human dispute cannot, and should not, be dealt with by the law of the land. It is vital that there should be a space in which humans can disagree on moral matters without having recourse to law to make their views victorious. I support the wishes of gay men and women to get married, largely on the grounds that the State has no business telling us with whom we form binding relationships in the first place (so long as it involves consenting adults). But gay men and women should beware since the campaign to oust Mr Buttliglione as an example of how so-called liberals in positions of power in Europe are not really concerned about liberty, but power.
Where the EU is concerned, t’was ever thus.
The British government is preparing to launch a further assault on the English Common Law by eroding the presumption of innocence in jury trials involving certain categories of offence. In short, the government wants it to be possible for a defendant’s previous convictions to be made known to a jury unless there are compelling reasons in the eyes of a judge against it.
It does not take a lot of imagination to see why prosecutors and even the odd well meaning but deluded politician think this is a grand idea. It must be disheartening for a prosecutor to see a serial rapist, mugger or thief get off on a technicality and for the defendant’s nefarious past to be undisclosed to a jury. But – and it is a very big but – keeping previous convictions a secret except in certain conditions is designed to ensure that juries examine a criminal case on the facts as they are presented, and not by trying to guess the motives of the accused or rushing to a conclusion on the basis of a hunch.
Also, by withholding information about previous convictions, police and others are forced to present their evidence as strongly and as competently as possible. The Law of Unintended Consequences applies here. My fear is that prosecutors and others could become lazier and more slapdash in how they present evidence if they think that they can always shove X’s seedy past in front of a jury as part of the case.
I must say it is hard to summon up feelings of surprise or even anger any more at what our political classes are doing to the traditional checks and balances of our criminal code. To be fair, much of this process began long before Tony Blair, although this most authortarian of governments has set about destroying our liberties with a zeal not seen in decades. I hold little hope that the Conservative Party or the Liberal Democrats will offer much resistance, given their terror at being thought to be ‘soft on crime’.
And so we go on, changing processes of law in ways which will undoubtedly lead to more unsafe convictions. The present government, like all too many before it, is extraordinarily hostile to process and the understanding of the long-run bad consequences of interfering with constraints of law and custom.
The likelihood, of course, that all this messing around with the Common Law will reduce crime significantly is, I confidently predict, zero.
Earlier this week I received a telephone call at work which left me trembling with rage and disgust. Had I been asked to make a donation to Hamas or buy a Michael Moore DVD? Had a born-again Christian harangued me about my evil atheist views? Was I trying to get some data from our Paris office? Had I been told that my soccer team, Ipswich Town Football Club, was about to be merged with Norwich City FC?
No, it was none of these things. I had just been lectured about what I should consider paying for a house by a early twentysomething estate agent.
Now, like a lot of people, I realise that the process of buying a home can be stressful. I work in the London financial market, which is a pretty stressful place full of aggressive folk and also some of the smartest, nicest folk around, too. In my decade or more of working here, though, I have never encountered such a rancid mix of rudeness, patronising attitude, overlaying a rather obvious desire to grab my money as fast as possible. A very British set of character failings, in fact.
During my recent and wonderful trip to the United States, I used to chuckle at some of the real estate advertisements, with expressions such as “We don’t just sell houses, we sell dreams.” Smug Brits may laugh at such cheesy imagery and words, but frankly, I will settle for a bit of American cheesiness and cheery good manners over the British alternative every time.
The British government wants, so it says, to ‘modernise’ Britain’s gambling laws, which will, so it is said, make possible the creation of Las Vegas-style gambling resorts in all their lovely, gaudy, tacky glory.
Now, being one of those crazy libertarian types, I naturally take the view that if folk wish to waste their hard-earned wealth in gambling, whether it be on the horses, baccarat or a fruit machine, then it is none of the State’s business to prevent them. Gambling is after all a manifestation of Man’s love of taking risk in the hope of gain, something which is a part of the capitalist system and in fact a perfectly healthy part.
But it is ironic, is it not, that this change to gambling law is happening under the reign of Tony Blair, our preachy, puritanical, Prime Minister. Mr Blair is, so we are told, a devout Christian. Now, I realise that one cannot generalise about these matters, but I was not aware that gambling was something that Christians were particularly in favour of. So what is going on?
I have a vague theory, and I would of course like to know what commenters think about it. It is this: socialistic governments naturally repress and in some cases, crush, risk-taking behaviour of entrepreneurs. However, said governments dimly realise that the desire to take risks and profit from risks does not disappear. So instead, such governments offer citizens an alternative outlet for this risk-taking appetite, setting up things like national lotteries and so forth as a sort of general safety valve.
Or to put it another way – if we really allowed people to take risks in a wealth-creating fashion by slashing taxes and red tape, it would not be necessary to create a tacky gambling empire to satiate the desire for risk taking. Who needs the cheap thrill of gambling when one can hope to imitate the achievements of a great entrepreneur? Of course, I am not so naive to imagine that gambling will ever fade if the top rate of tax were to be halved tomorrow, but I would hope that some of that risk-taking drive would be channelled in a more productive, perhaps more useful, direction.
By the way, I once visited a casino in Vegas. My overall impression was that it was one of the most boring places I have ever visited, at least the gambling side, anyway. There were, other compensations, of course.
It will probably now be a widely accepted view that Saddam Hussein had no active weapons programme and was some way off from creating one. But that he intended to create one given a moment’s opportunity, is beyond doubt, and one reason why, given the increasingly porous nature of the sanctions regime, Saddam’s risk-taking behaviour and the corrupt oil-for-food programme of the UN, I felt war was the least-bad option.
Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan linked this week to a Reuters story about how mothballed nuclear facilities were stripped and spirited out of the country after the Coalition successfully invaded Iraq.
It is one of the most serious charges one can level at George W. Bush that he bungled the aftermath of the war and that the Coalition forces failed to secure sites such as nuclear facilities. It was, after all, supposed to be a central justification for the war that we were securing such sites and preventing weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. Stuff like this makes me wonder whether Bush and Co. really had a clue about what they were doing.
But it is also interesting to note that a Reuters story (that big fat commie news service) implicitly conceded that Saddam did have a nuclear programme. And if it were not for the bravery and brilliance of the Israeli airforce in 1981, he would have had one up and running some time ago.
I must say I am quite a sucker for the recent spate of films based on comic strips. I liked the Spiderman films, the Hulk, and even quite enjoyed the Batman films (the one with Michael Keaton, anyway). Well, another one off the conveyor belt is Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
It has been panned by the critics, which is usually a promising sign given the nature of most snarky film reviewers these days, and I hugely enjoyed it. It has numerous fine qualities: WW2 fighter planes which can go underwater; futuristic aircraft carriers in the sky with great big Union Jacks on them; spiffy uniforms with Angelina Jolie wearing them; hot female journalists in classic 1930s garb with rakish hats and wavy hair (Gwyneth Paltrow), and big, biiiiiiig metal robots that do not talk but stomp menacingly around New York.
The film has no great ‘message’, I suppose, apart from showing how in the middle of the 20th century mankind, or at least the western bits of it, dreamed of a mechanised, high-tech future. The vision appears a bit comical to us now, but perhaps our age, with our interests in the Web and so on, will appear no less bizarre to generations hence.
But never mind all that highfalutin’ stuff. Go and see the film and have a feast of art deco kitsch with two of the most ravishing actresses now working. What’s not to like?
Last evening I enjoyed a pleasant evening chatting to old friends at a reception held at the Institute of Economic Affairs in honour of great Victorian author, Samuel Smiles. His most famous work, Self Help, became a best seller, not just in Britain but also around the world.
It is, in fact, probably the great grandaddy of self help books. Go into any bookshop today and you will see shelves crammed with books showing you how to get rich, be healthier, happier, deal with relationships, and so forth. In fact, the spread of liberal ideas will be limited unless people also take the opportunity to liberate their own potential. Reading Smiles is a reminder that there is more, much more to ideas than the pure political realm.
After a long period of neglect, I hope this great book will win back the respect it deserves.
Some may find the following comments to be unserious, in poor taste and reflecting the laddish tendencies of some Samizdata contributors. If you do reach such a conclusion, you will of course be dead right.
The great Tory MP, Spectator editor, game show contestant and budding novelist (does this man have no limitations?) Boris Johnson, has contributed greatly to the gaiety of national life through such jolly japes as hiring sacked BBC journalists like Andrew Gilligan or driving cars on Top Gear.
But surely among his greatest achievements was the identification of what in retrospect was obvious to all but which struck like a thunderclap at the time. In the mid 1990s, when “New Labour” was on the rise, our Boris, then a humble scribe for the Daily Telegraph, created what he called the Tottymeter. The Tottymeter aims to reflect the representation of attractive young women – preferably unnattached – in a political party. Blondes, redheads, brunettes – it does not matter. If your political party has a fair showing of the Fair Sex, then chances are that your party is headed for power rather than for Skid Row. Women, so he argued, are attracted to successful men. (Success rather than looks, given that the average political male is not exactly Sean Connery).
Serious types will sneer, saying I am showing a sexist attitude, suggesting that women do not have a serious reason for joining a party. But I think when looking at success in a field like politics, you can tell a lot from the sort of folk who are joining a party as well as those who are leaving it.
I found Boris Johnson’s thesis convincing. In the mid-1990s when I attended a Labour conference in the course of my job, I was struck by the relatively high number of pretty, and very ambitious young women. (Mind you, when the average young NuLab type opens their mouths, my interest disappears, even if they look like Gwyneth Paltrow).
I think one key contribution of bloggers to modern political reporting should be trying to record this phenomenon and indeed analyse it.
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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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