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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I have been reading a remarkable book about a remarkable period in British history – the mid- to late 18th century – when a group of entrepreneurs, gifted amateur scientists and political radicals helped create the foundations of much of our modern industrial world.
The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow, looks at the lives of a small but amazingly influential group of men, particularly the ceramics genius Josiah Wedgewood, pamphleteer and scientist Joseph Priestley, engineer Matthew Boulton, steam engine king James Watt, and medical doctor Erasmus Darwin. What jumps off the page is these men’s tremendous sense of drive and enthusiasm for acquiring and sharing knowledge. They were great polymaths, seeing no division between the pursuit of abstract knowledge and practical concerns of money making.
Most of these men were consciously outsiders, eccentrics and radicals ill at ease with the Anglican establishment. That sense of being ‘on the outside’ I think partly explains their drive to succeed. Most of them notably were unable for religious reasons to attend the main English universities of Cambridge and Oxford, often attending Scottish academies instead or bypassing such places altogether. And I was also struck by the sense of limitless possibility afforded by a country which at the time imposed very few restrictions and taxes on the public. 18th Century Britain was a bit like the Silicon Valley of the 1990s, with powdered wigs. Of course there were restrictive practises such as merchant gilds and duties on some imports, but that period surely came about as close to a genuine model of laissez faire capitalism as we have ever seen in our history.
There was much that was very bad and ugly about that period in our history, but also a great deal worth preserving and emulating today. The entrepreneurial gusto of these men is something we could surely use today. Glorious geeks indeed.
The Financial Times in an editorial chastises the U.S. Federal Reserve bank chairman Alan Greenspan for encouraging speculators, such as those mysterious bodies called hedge funds, to snaffle up bonds recently by cutting interest rates to ward off deflation, only to find that bond prices dropped sharply once it appeared the economic situation in the U.S. was improving. (It is too early to say for sure that things are getting better in the world economy though. Certainly not in Continental Europe).
I do not really have a quick way of picking through the rights and wrongs of the FT’s position. I think it is plainly daft that Greenspan, who remains one of the sharpest economic brains around, would have deliberately set out to con investors. What I do think this episode does, however, is reinforce in my mind the enormous risks of entrusting great economic powers to folk like Dr. Greenspan. In fact, the more highly regarded such men and women are, the more lethal the consequences when they slip up.
Even many folk who consider themselves to be ardent free marketeers can get caught up in near religious reverence for the great central banker. Financial speculators hang on every word. The most bland of statements are parsed for some deeper meaning. I have spent too many hours than I care to remember trying to work out if the statement of X or Y actually suggests that inflation is likely to up, down, or whatever.
The cult of the central banker is one of those belief systems of surprisingly short duration, by historical standards. Maybe in decades to come, we will look back on the era of Alan Greenspan and his ilk rather as we would that of the Medieval Popes. And we will be even more struck when we recall that Greenspan, when a young economics student and friend of Ayn Rand, urged a return to old-style private banking and the unfairly maligned Gold Standard.
Watching the news on the ITN television channel last night, the lead item was about the current high temperatures we are experiencing at the moment. What I thought was interesting was the way in which presenter David Suchet announced that “global warming is happening” as if it were no more controversial a statement than to say that night follows day.
Over at the BBC website, meanwhile, you can read all about climate change. Again, the main page presents climate change as a given assumption. There is no place for dissent, scepticism or doubt. For that you have to delve into places like the recent book by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, etc.
Now, unlike some red-blooded defenders of free enterprise, I do not challenge the Greenhouse Effect case as something being put around by neo-luddite technophobes and control freaks. It may just be that the Greenhouse Effect is genuinely occuring. If so, then a good question for the likes of liberty-loving folk is to ask what, if anything, can citizens in a liberal order do about it?
It seems to me that this is a more interesting way to present our case rather than simply say, when hearing the latest piece of doomongering, that so-and-so is a Luddite.
In the meantime, thank heavens for the invention of air conditioning.
The European Commission is to fine Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corp for what it claims is the firms’ continuing misuse of its ‘dominant’ market position and will force it to change how its Media Player software is distributed, according to Reuters.
I don’t want to get into the complex issues of whether Gates has or has not ‘abused’ his market position in any way but rather address the core issue: does Bill Gates and his colleagues have a right to exploit the source code they have created, or not? If Microsoft cannot do so, what is the point of intellectual property rights and patents? And how does the Commission judge if a firm X holds a ‘dominant’ position in a particular market? Is it claiming that Microsoft salesmen force to us to buy their products at the point of a gun? Surely not.
Using alternatives to Micrsosoft’s products may be – and often is – inconvenient. Ask any computer user. But unless the EU, the U.S. Justice Dept or any other bunch of property-right grabbers can show that a firm forces us to use its products, such claims should be treated with scorn. Just because a firm is very big, as Microsoft unquestionably is, does not by itself confer coercive power on such a firm. Of course such firms can try to acquire this by screwing privileges out of government, but that is a separate issue.
Bill Gates is not everyone’s idea of a victim, and frankly he is not the most endearing of business leaders. That, however, is besides the point. He and his colleagues created a source code. Over the years, and due to some savvy business decisions, they have made this code the basis of a hugely successful business. Obviously this is mighty troubling to some, even those who may claim to be in favour of free enterprise.
The EU is telling Bill Gates, “Don’t get too big for your boots, and certainly don’t get too successful”.
I have noticed that quite a few libertarian-minded folk, including the late, great science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, have been interested in exploring the ramifications of extended human life spans.
After all, if you believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then I suppose it is a natural concomitant to be interested in pushing the envelopes of life as far back as possible. Why bother to settle for three-score years and ten? And of course the demise of religious belief among many in the West – though not elsewhere – has given a certain poignant edge to the avoidance of death for as long as possible.
Extending life spans has all kinds of economic, cultural and philosophical implications. If people know they have a much greater chance of living longer than their parents, it could effect career choices, child-rearing, and behaviour patterns in the broadest sense. Extending life spans may make people more cautious and risk-averse in some ways, perhaps accentuating the current vogue for pursuit of the healthy life and increasing pressure on practises like smoking and alcohol consumption. It may also encourage positive behaviours, encouraging people to think more about the long-term effects of their actions. If you know there is a good chance of your making it to 150 years old, it may tend to affect the way you behave now.
There is a long and interesting article on CNN full of details about new scientific advances. I don’t necessarily accept all its conclusions but it has plenty of food for thought on this fascinating topic.
Here’s a random thought – intellectuals with good ideas and boundless curiosity often outlive their peers. Hayek made it to 90, Milton Friedman has just enjoyed his 91st trip round the sun and Karl Popper also made it past 90. Maybe Samizdata should launch a range of health products with the slogan – liberty for a longer life!
Aaron Barschak, the loon who thought it was amusing to dress up as bin Laden and gatecrash a fancy dress party hosted by the Royals, has not been able to draw in the crowds at the Edinburgh arts festival this year, according to this report.
The gag is definitely on him. Here’s hoping he crawls under a rock where he came from. Sorry to be killjoy, but dressing up as terrorist is not my idea of a joke.
Veteran Labour MP, fierce opponent of the European Union and one of the more congenial politicians, Austin Mitchell, has his own blog. Mitchell is a pretty outspoken MP, and though his mixed-economy Keynsian economic views are hopelessly wrong-headed and out of date, he is one of the more independent minded MPs in our rather colourless political landscape.
I had a brief look at his blog and it should be good to read, though Austin had better be prepared for how fellow bloggers will be ready and willing to ‘fact-check his ass’ at a moment’s notice.
Come on you Tory MPs, get a blog!
One of the few drama series worth watching over at the BBC (sharp intake of breath!) is the programme Spooks, which purports to show how M15, Britain’s secret service, operates. A short while ago, an episode featured how the various operatives dealt with radical Islamic terrorism.
What interested me was the very fact that such a controversial topic would be aired by the BBC at all. The series tended to start off with a decidedly politically-correct slant, so broaching the topic of Islamo-fascist terror was quite brave. Makes me wonder how the script-writers were able to get this episode on screen.
Well, as this story shows, the episide triggered a number of complaints, claiming the programme was racially stereotyped. But then it is a bit difficult to do a programme about spies taking on the likes of al-Quaeda and it not to encounter such an issue, I would have thought.
More broadly, though, this got me thinking about how television and movie dramas have handled issues like this over the years. In the early James Bond movies, for example, the bad guys were either Russians or former Smersh agents, but as the series progressed and got ever more silly during the Roger Moore era, the villains became less ‘political’, no doubt to avoid the kind of complaints that Spooks has encountered.
There have always been a few interesting exceptions, though. Some of the Tom Clancy books adapted for film touched on issues like Northern Ireland, although often not very convincingly.
Do I detect a change in trend? The American series “24”, for example, makes no bones about enormously contentious issues. I think people want a bit more hard-edged realism in their dramas, and if that means upsetting some people, so be it.
However, I am not sure whether 007 will be staging his next adventure in Bagdhad any time soon.
You don’t have to hold an anti-interventionist stance regarding Iraq to feel mighty queasy about this story in the Washington Post, which covers a case where the U.S. Army seized the family of an Iraqi officer, threatening to hold the family until the person concerned co-operated with the Army’s requests.
Lovely. If the coalition wants to hand propaganda material on a plate to those who would have preferred Saddam to remain in charge than that we should have liberated that country, then this sort of thing is just ideal.
I hope the persons responsible are dealt with harshly for this.
And I don’t want lots of comments about how “Pearce has turned into a peacnik idiot yada-yada”. Kidnapping is wrong. Period.
Blogger Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings looks into the issue of American football teams whose names have sparked controversy, such as teams calling themselves the Redskins, and so on. Now I don’t want to enter the swamps of that particular controversy, which Jim negotiates with customary dexterity. No what struck me is this – why don’t European sports teams have such names at all?
For example, consider the Premiership football (soccer to you barbarians in the colonies) league. The teams are called Manchester United, Liverpool FC, Tottenham Hotspur, etc. Not many references to ethnic groups there (though of course football does have its ethnic issues, as any Glasgow Rangers or Celtic fan would point out). The nomaclature of football is pretty tame, even while the makeup of the teams and the fans is not.
Look elsewhere. English cricket teams are named after counties of England. All very staid. Of course when you go outside the field of professional sports, it can get a bit more interesting. I occasionally play cricket for a side called The Pretenders. (My favourite cricket team was called The Corridor of Uncertainty!). But at the professional level at least, British teams sound about as exciting as a German movie without the subtitles.
Why are our teams sporting such dull names compared to our American cousins? I need enlightenment on this subject.
Angelina Jolie, curvaceous star of the latest movie based on mega-hit computer game, Tomb Raider, reckons that the busty, heavily-armed heroine is a role model for women. Hmmm. An interesting thought. Croft knows how to handle guns, is mighty tough in a fight, and is rather easy on the eye (as Ms Jolie assuredly is). The ultimate libertarian heroine, perhaps?
A feature of popular culture in these past few years has been the ascent of the kick-ass female movie/tv star. Think of Buffy, for example; the character Trinity in the Matrix films, or the ladies on Charlies’ Angels. I think the whole thing got started with the likes of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg in the old Avengers television series, and in some of the better James Bond movies.
One thing all these women have in common is that they are a million miles away from the ‘victim culture’. Nothing passive or helpless about them. It seems that popular culture is diverging increasingly from the political and legal realm. On the one hand, you have superheroes and heroines on the Big Screen. On the other, you have twerps suing fast-food joints for ‘making’ them fat.
I wonder what explains this divide?
I have been enjoying the television documentary of the American war of Independence shown over on the BBC (yes, that pinko channel!), presented by military historian Richard Holmes.
Bestriding around the countryside, Holmes is excellent. He even looks the part with his bearing and military moustache – you could imagine him in an army officer’s uniform circa 1940.
During his trip Holmes asked some locals on a bus travelling near Charleston about what the war meant to them. One elderly lady gave an articulate take, arguing about the issues of taxation, representation and liberty. And then he spoke to a young guy, probably in his early 20s, who came out with this gem. I paraphrase slightly:
Well, it was all about rich folks, who just did not want to pay their taxes. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d be British, and enjoy (!) socialised medicine.
So there you have it. Some of the younger American generation wish that George Washington had lost so that all Americans could use the National Health Service.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry, really.
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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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