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 regular Samizdata readers will know, many of the authors here have been enthralled by the development of a nascent commercial space flight industry, given a vital kick-start by the X-Prize and demonstrated in thrilling fashion by Bert Rutan’s Space Ship One.
As I said at the time, the cultural Luddites in our midst will mock, but ventures like this inspire the open-minded, scientifically curious and plain ornery speed freaks like yours truly. They show that the boundaries we accept as given are anything but. The demonstration that private enterprise can produce real results in space flight is an important one, and I reckon that a growing competitive market in this area should help bring long-term costs down and free the industry from the dead hand of NASA and other state institutions with multi-billion budgets and limited visions.
In the years leading up to the first phase of manned space flight, there was a good deal of fiction pointing to some of the ideas and developments which later translated into fact. Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and Poul Anderson are among those who spring to mind. But I had not come across a lot of recent fiction (ie, written in the past 20 years) which had played with ideas of how space flight would be borne on the wings of buccaneering free market capitalism. Well, in the past couple of years, I came across two good books, one I regard as solid, if perhaps a little wooden in its style, and another which simply blew me away with its sweep, drama and all-round believability. The first is Firestar, by Michael Flynn and the second, and in my view better, book, is Kings of the High Frontier, by Victor Koman. The Koman book is my favourite.
What is depressing, given the present amount of crud sold in bookshops these days, is that Koman’s book is not easily available. The publishers thought fit to produce a small run. Considering the revival of interest in space flight which I detect at the moment, and the deeds of the SSI flight, this book deserves a bigger audience. I have contacted the publishers to make this very point. Perhaps if they don’t want to produce more, then another publisher with more flair will take up the challenge. Screw Harry Potter and nonsense about wizards – this is the real stuff of real, achievable adventure.
Blogger and friend Russell E. Whitaker links to and quotes from an article citing the increasingly intrusive, impertinent and downright rude questions which compilers of the U.S. national census deem is fit to ask citizens of Jefferson’s Republic once every ten years.
It is scarcely better in Britain, as far as I can tell. Oh well, I do recall with amusement reading somewhere that in response to questions about matters of religious belief, a number of folk now give their answer as ‘Jedi’. Even funnier, it is now a recognised category. I wonder if I ought to go through my collection of science fiction novels and come up with a new category or two.
The wife of British footballer, Ray Parlour (of Arsenal) has won a landmark court award giving her an unprecedented right to take half of his future wage earnings. Already comments are flying out to the effect that this ruling makes a mockery of marriage arrangements, giving further amunition to gold-digging spouses with an eye on their partner’s wealth.
I do not know about the full particulars of the Parlour case – for all I know the ex-Mrs P. may have justice on her side – but developments like this make me fear for the future of marriage. Rulings like this give out a bad message, telling people that marriage is even more of a lottery than before and that a man or woman who hit difficulties in their relationship can endure heavy demands on their income for years to come. Given the pattern of child custody arrangements after divorce, I can predict that most of such heavy wage demands will be borne by men (though women could also be affected if they were divorced from a former “house husband”).
I would like to know what those with legal knowledge think about this ruling. Does it really fundamentally alter the marriage contract, and will it put potential super-high earners off marriage? What is for sure is that pre-nuptial agreements currently have no legal standing in Britain, as they do in some other countries, such as the United States.
In my view, couples should be able to make whatever kind of marriage agreements that suit them best, such as pre-nups and the rest, and the State should be kicked out of the field. Another part of our life overdue, I feel, for a dose of Thatcherite privatisation.
The odious dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has long been able to rely on the lack of loud criticism from many of his neighbouring African neighbours, afraid perhaps that they are seen to be lining up with their old white colonial oppressors against Zimbabwe. Well, if this report at Reuters is any indication, the coyness on the subject may be changing. More and more African nations are speaking out at the murders, pillage and looting carried out by Mugabe’s henchmen.
Zimbabwe is a humanitarian catastrophe, occuring in slow motion before our very eyes. The sooner that the more decent regimes in that troubled continent apply the necessary pressures to help bring this bastard down, the better.
The animal welfare charity, the RSPCA, wants lawmakers to ban ‘non-official’ firework displays and outlaw sales of fireworks which make very loud bangs, due to the distress this causes to dogs, cats and other animals, including livestock.
Now, it would be dead easy for we libertarians to immediately characterise this sort of thing as the obsession of a bunch of control freaks who want to remove our fun. I can certainly see that point. As a kid, I loved the annual Bonfire Night firework display of November 5, when my dad invariably built an enormous fire at our farm and let off vast numbers of fireworks.
But libertarians are also conscious of the issue of property rights. If I am a dog owner, and I do not want my canine companion to be traumatised by loud bangs coming from my neighbour’s property, can and should I be able to find a way to get the noise stopped? Do repeated loud noises constitute an invasion of my property rights? Or should I be able to make some kind of agreement, perhaps even involving money? For example, the firework lovers could offer a neighbour a cash sum, or offer to take the neighbour’s pets to a kennel home (soundproofed!) for the evening?
Sound ‘pollution’ can be hard to enforce via property rights, but that does not mean it would be impossible to do so. So at the risk of attracting the ire of firework nuts, I sympathise with this particular RSPCA cause, but obviously vastly prefer solutions which mean that enthusiasts of firework displays, both amateur and official, can enjoy a party while their neighbours’ pets are not sent into agonies.
The present UK government, like many socialist-leaning administrations, does not like cars. Besides complaints – sometimes justified – about pollution and congestion, a lot of the hatred of the car contains a puritan impulse (sometimes this is also seen among a certain tweedy sort of conservative). Congestion charges, petrol taxes, speed cameras, road bumps… you name it, owning a car will soon be on a par with smoking, eating red meat, or confessing to enjoying recreational sex.
Well, I have bad news for the puritans. I spent last Saturday in total petrol-head heaven – the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed in west Sussex, and the event was a total sellout. I saw the Lotus of the late Ayrton Senna driven immaculately on a wet track at 150 mph and hear the unbelievably high noise that a F1 car makes. Vintage Maseratis, Ferraris, Lotuses and BRMs vied with Le Mans endurance cars such as the Ford GT40 or the Gulf Porsche (of the kind that Steve McQueen drove in the movie, Le Mans). Magic. There is an almost sensual pleasure involved in the sight, shape, noise, and yes, the smell, of a very fast car.
The crowds were large although not so big as to impede my enjoyment. From what I could see, Britons remain firmly in love with cars, including very fast and noisy ones. I would not presume to check the political/cultural views of the crowds, but I would guess the bias would be towards liberal (small l), fairly pro-enterprise, pro-fun, and not very keen on environmentalism and high taxes. If I were Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, then the Goodwood Festival of Speed clientele would be the sort of folk I would have in mind as a target constituency. I would call it the ‘Jeremy Clarkson Voter Segment’.
The Goodwood event also reminded me of something else, which is the high number of South Africans, Finns and Scots who have excelled as drivers over the years. I wonder why that is?
The business and economics sections of the press have been dominated by the problems of private pensions in recent months. Once a dull-as-ditchwater subject about which journalists and the public showed little interest, the state of our retirement nest eggs is now a major policy issue. Hundreds of blue-chip British firms have shut pension plans to new staff, such as those which offer to pay a benefit linked to final salary at retirement age. Some workers even suffered the torment of losing all their accumulated pension when their sponsoring firms went to the wall. All in all, it has been an alarming time for those dreaming of retirement.
But to read the media, you would hardly know that the biggest pension scandal of all is in the state system. James Bartholomew, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, pens a scorching denunciation of state pensions. He points out that we are told by the experts that retirement ages will have to rise, and, to be fair, improved life expectancy (surely a triumph of health and living standards rather than a problem) makes that a sensible option. But taxpayers who paid their national “insurance” contributions are being told that the state is welshing on its side of the bargain. If a private business operated on the same basis as the government did with tax-funded pensions, the directors would be sent to jail for mis-selling on an epic scale.
Reform of our creaking state pensions system remains one of the most intractable public policy issues of the age. The destination — a system of privately held accounts may be obvious to a free market zealot like me, but getting there is going to be very, very hard unless politicians have the sense, and the courage, to scrap all taxes on savings income and capital gains to make widespread long term private saving a reality.
The present state of affairs cannot endure.
A commenter to this blog has dismissed the recent achievements of Bert Rutan’s Spaceship One flight as being a waste of money, money which the commenter believes should not have been ‘wasted’ on such a venture and devoted to causes the said commenter no doubt deems a worthier object. We have been here before with this sort of criticism, of course with the Moon landings, with the rather obvious difference that the Apollo missions relied on taxpayers’ money, and not funds provided voluntarily by businessmen.
More generally, any innovative endeavour, or venture which may yield benefits not immediately graspable, can be dismissed and attacked as wasteful. The trial and errors of capitalism were dismissed by early socialist thinkers as wasteful, in contrast to their dreams of an efficient, centrally planned order. We know better now, of course. It hardly needs to be pointed out that on that logic, the first man who discovered how to make fire and spent hours chipping flints to make arrowheads was ‘wasting time’ in the eyes of his fellow cavedwellers, who no doubt wondered if he should be doing something more important.
And I am sure I speak for my fellow Samizdata contributors in hailing the excellent and sustained coverage by Dale Amon of the latest space flight ventures. It is a positive and exhilarating development and frankly, a tonic at a time of so much depressing news out there. So my message to the Luddites who carp, is simply this – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
We recently marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of the 19th century free trade reformer, classical liberal and ardent anti-interventionist politician, Richard Cobden. Cobden rose from conditions of poverty that would have crushed lesser spirits to become one of the greatest advocates of laissez faire capitalism and globalisation to have ever lived. Along with fellow liberal John Bright, Cobden created the anti-Corn Law League, one of the most successful pressure groups in British history. The Corn Law protectionist measures were eventually swept away by Tory Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1846, helping to set the stage for the mid-century industrial boom. (Peel is also one of my few historical political heroes). Cobden opposed protectionism and explained the benefits of free trade with a passion and energy that puts our timid politicians of today to shame.
So it was rather fitting to have just spent a most enjoyable evening listening to live jazz and sipping champagne in one of London’s oldest private member clubs, known as The Cobden Club. Located near the Paddington area of west London, and founded as a working man’s club in the Victorian age, it has now morphed into a comfortable bar and restaurant complete with a separate dance floor for those inclined. I like the way that the Victorian architecture has been retained, with wonderful tall ceilings and fittings, combined with plenty of modern touches and colourful prints on the walls. The atmosphere is very ‘chilled out’ and relaxing. I love its big comfy armchairs into which you can sink while sipping a coffee or brandy in the company of friends. It is also unpretentious and lacks the stuffy atmosphere one finds in some of the clubs around Mayfair, for example.
I like to think that the spirit of the great man would have smiled at the thought of a Samizdata blogger carousing in the club that bore his name, since I very much doubt whether 90 percent of its clientele have ever heard of Richard Cobden, and his standing as a magnificent advocate of classical liberalism.
So far, I have not been all that enthused by the Euro 2004 European Championship football tournament being held in Portugal at the moment but finally, it appears, the sporting event has sparked into life. This evening, Croatia came close to beating the former champions France, in a thrilling game. Earlier in the day, England, who lost their first game in the last minutes to France, managed after some hiccups to overwhelm Switzerland.
All to the good. I must say that watching some of the matches has reminded me of why, despite my annoyance at the antics of highly paid sportsmen, I still love watching football, and why I despise those who think it is amusing to sneer at we plebs and our love of what Brazil’s Pele called the “Beautiful Game”.
Take this piece of drivel from an anti-sports snob, for instance:
The players are even more loathesome than the fans. All professional sportsmen are more or less imbeciles, of course, but only footballers manage to be so utterly charmless with it. They are essentially overgrown spoilt children, diving and rolling around pretending to be injured, and practically wetting themselves whenever someone scores. There is a general, and sometimes quite fantastic, ugliness. If I had my way, I would have them all shot.
I wonder if the author of this piece would like to pass on his profound thoughts to one of the England team? Seriously though, for all that I despise the moronic behaviour of certain England football “fans” causing mayhem, I also despise a certain kind of anti-sport snob who imagines he or she is being terribly daring and original by sneering at the pleasures of the ordinary guy and his enthusiasm for team sports.
Oh well, come on England!
Ronald Reagan was, as we know, dubbed among other things as “The Great Communicator”. Through his speeches, radio broadcasts and writings, Reagan had a wonderful knack of communicating important truths in clear-cut ways.
What intrigues me is wondering what he would have made of this new field of blogging. I reckon he would have loved it and could easily imagine the old fella writing one. As a talk-radio host, he had a lot to say that would have fitted in perfectly with the weblog format. I have recently been reading a collection of his radio show broadcast transcripts and it blasts the idea of him being a dope. Anything but, in fact.
Reagan was eager to make full use of the modern technologies of his time in spreading his views about the role of government, capitalism, the evils of communism and the like. I don’t think it impertinent to imagine that this great man would have loved our medium and enjoyed the fact of its challenge to Big Media. I wonder what he’d have called his weblog. How about “Shining City on a Hill”?
I am watching a television show on Channel 4 at the moment about how an English couple fare in foresaking the home comforts and routine of life in Essex for the risk-taking venture of running a sailing school in the Canary Islands. As a keen yachtsman myself, I identified quite a lot with the guy who became fed up with a routine day job and dreamed of making a living in the sun. This television show, called No Going Back, has featured a number of couples, mostly young, who have emigrated in the search for a dream job.
In many cases, the people selected for the shows chose to go overseas either because they were bored with life in Britain, fed up with their jobs, their neighourhood, and tempted by the glossy magazine images of life abroad. But the programme makers never directly asked any of them if other factors drove them abroad, such as rising domestic taxes and regulations on business, or the rising level of crime and sliding quality of schooling for their children. Maybe this sort of stuff was considered a bit too political in what are essentially ‘fly on the wall’ documentaries about ordinary folk striving after a dream.
What is clear, more broadly, is that a lot of my fellow Britons have had enough of life in this damp little island off the European continent and want out. Some of the issues I mentioned in the previous paragraph have something to do with it. There have in the past, and indeed now, been examples of some of Britain’s best scientists and entrepreneurs leaving the UK for friendlier and more lucrative places abroad. There is also the simple fact that Britain is so densely populated. It is hard to convey to those who have never been here and who live in big nations just how crowded the UK is, particularly in the economically vibrant bits, such as London and the southeast.
I would love to go and work abroad, if only to savour the experience of living in another land and broadening my horizons. I would, however, like to think that I take such a step for the positive reasons of spreading my wings, rather than because I have been pushed to despair by the state of this nation.
Of course, in years to come, Channel 4 may be screening a show about how a young couple from Essex packed up their belongings and decided to ‘start over’ in the recently terraformed Mars.
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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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