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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Inculcating guilt as a tool of power and control. This is a time-honored tactic of manipulative mothers, of many religions, and of political ideologies, like socialism, progressivism, and environmentalism. It works because self-respect is one of our most basic psychological needs: We all need to feel that we are basically good, right, valuable, worthy of esteem. So if you can make someone ashamed of themselves and defensively wallowing in remorse, you can get them to do pretty much anything you want, because they’ll be desperate to make amends and redeem their self-esteem. And you can also cash in on their guilt-driven quest for redemption, as they surrender to you their money and control over their lives.
Call it the Guilt Racket.
As written by Robert Bidinotto on his Facebook page. He links to this item about the current nonsense around “white privilege” – another of those daffy ideas which seem designed to fill the pockets of shakedown artists of various types.
When we hear the phrase “tax the robots,” it doesn’t sound the same as “tax the laundry machines,” or “tax the computers.” It sounds a lot more like the phrase “tax the rich.” This suggests that we tend to think of the robots as an actual class of persons. When we talk about taxing robots, it’s as though we humans can “get back” at the robots for taking our jobs. By taxing robots, we could take back the value they’ve taken from us. But wait a second. If we think of robots this way, it’s probably a sign we’ve been watching too much “Westworld.” Robots as we know them are inanimate objects. They are machines, like cars and computers.
– The Federalist.
This reminds of the broader point, made for example by James Hannam, a tax expert in the UK, that “no matter what name is on the bill, all taxes are ultimately suffered by human beings” (What Everyone Needs To Know About Tax.)
Far too many people seem to be in denial about this basic fact. Tax a robot, and the robot’s owner gets taxed. A robot in that sense is no different from an electric toaster or dishwasher; these are tools made by Man for his use. Until we reach that moment when robots become truly autonomous (and have to pay taxes and perform jury service, etc), this fact is not going to change.
Maybe Bill Gates got swayed by the idea that because robots are displacing human labour in some senses, and this creates a problem, it can be solved by taxing said robots and use the proceeds to give everyone a sort of Universal Basic Income. The idea of a UBI has been embraced even by those who think of themselves as libertarians/classical liberals, on the grounds that in some ways this might weaken resistance to some of the good things that come with disruptive change in commerce and finance. I have a number of problems, however, with UBI, not least its likely devastating impact on any sort of work ethic and a divorce between notions of cultivating a certain character and earning some form of income. At the end of September I am giving a talk on this matter at the end-of-month events that Brian Micklethwait has been putting on. I will update my thoughts on UBI a bit later. For the time being, check this out by Bryan Caplan at Econlog.
I am not sure this works as a quote of the day, but it certainly does count as a data point so eye-popping that I wanted to share it:
Forty-three hundred people, including two dozen children under the age of 12, were shot in Chicago last year.
That’s right: 4,300 people shot in a major US city during a period of 12 months.
A report presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgets gave an inclination of how the EU intends to spend European taxpayers’ money in 2018 and 2019. Among the planned expenditures is a stunning €6.18 million (£5.3 million) for furniture. One can only speculate as to what sort of furniture would cost the EU so much over the course of a single year. Even this sum, however, is dwarfed by the amount the EU intends to spend on a communications campaign which they claim will “explain the purpose of the [European] Union and the [European] Parliament to the citizens’ ahead of European Parliament elections in 2019”. So that’s €33.3 million (£28.6 million) on an EU PR campaign. In total, it will be €25 million (£21.5 million) next year, and another €8.33 million (£7.1 million) in May 2019, all aimed at boosting the European project through these elections.
– CapX.
Of course, countries that aren’t members of transnational (“tranzi”) organisations are just as capable of blowing millions or more of their citizens’ wealth on such foolishness, but it does seem that with tranzi organisations, there is a greater momentum for this nonsense, because the chains of accountability involved tend to be weaker. And never forget good old-fashioned empire building: the EU, as I like to remind my Remainer friends, is at root a political project and that those who consider it to be a Good Things don’t scruple that hard about what is needed to spread The Word. I have, in my capacity as a journalist down the years, been to my fair share of EU gabfests, and I have always been struck by just how many media “aides” and so on there are in attendance. I recently went to Malta for such an event, and there were enough EU officials running the thing to make up three football teams. This is where the money goes. Just because someone as florid as Nigel Farage denounces EU waste and spending doesn’t make his comments any less true. And getting away from this circus, it seems to me, is a prize worth taking.
Right now people are debating the pros and cons of what Britain is doing. Britain does, I hope, have a chance to use its departure from the EU as an opportunity not just to break free from EU cost and regulatory nonsense, but to consign plenty of homegrown foolishness to the garbage can. And it is therefore all the more depressing that an authortarian centrist such as UK Prime Minister Theresa May seems determined to march the country down into a dirigiste dead end, if only for reasons of narrow party advantage, although there is a chilling thought that this fan of Joe Chamberlain, god help us, actually means it.
Labour always goes missing during a depression. They did it in the 1930s, the 1980s and they’re doing it now. A cynic might argue that that is because during a depression there’s nothing more to steal.
– Patrick Crozier, one of our own regular contributors.
Pickup basketball is a beautiful example of the spontaneous, emergent order that arises from voluntary interaction predicated on classical liberal principles of dignity, respect for the individual, and voluntary cooperation. Every individual who has ever played pickup basketball can enumerate the rules for forming a team, playing, and interacting regardless of location, age or ethnicity- African Americans in the poorest sections of Harlem play by the same pickup rules as do those on the playgrounds of the whitest, richest suburbs in America.
– Trey Goff
This a few months’ old, but I thought of this excellent point on the issue of Single Market access, made by Tim Worstall, when reading some bleatings from Remainers on the subject:
“We could in fact argue that a payment into the EU budget in return for Single Market access is illegal state aid. And thus not allowed under the usual rules of trade with the EU. Because it is state aid. Exporters will face tariffs if the payment is not made. The payment thus benefits exporters. But the payment is made by taxpayers, this is thus aid from taxpayers to exporters. It’s a subsidy for exports – something that isn’t allowed.”
And:
A reasonable guess at the amount the EU would demand for continued Single Market access is £8 billion a year or so. Around and about the current nett contribution and not far off the correct multiple they charge to the far smaller economies of Switzerland and Norway. And recall again, this is what they demand be paid by taxpayers to grant that profitable privilege to exporters.
What we should therefore do is charge that £8 billion to the exporters. This has two useful effects. Firstly, the charge for the privilege now falls precisely and exactly upon those who profit from the privilege. This is where costs are supposed to go, to those who gain the benefits.
And then this:
The crucial point is that the benefits, as far as the UK is concerned, of Single Market access lie with those making the exports. Thus those making the exports should be those paying the cost of Single Market access. If those who benefit think it not worth the cost then no one should be paying such bribesillegal state aid access fees. And simply by applying the costs, correctly, to those who benefit we find out which is the truth.
It’s very difficult indeed, nay impossible, to see the down side of this suggestion. If exporters want Single Market access then exporters can pay for it, not taxpayers. If they won’t pay it then it’s not worth it, is it?
Worstall rightly says that this sort of idea is politically difficult, precisely because it is so logical.
There is another issue. The Single Market, as envisaged by the late Margaret Thatcher, may have been about trade and economics, but as far as much of the EU political class is concerned, it was part of a wider architecture of a European superstate – hence the way debate is linked to its access being tied up with free movement. Even so, as Worstall says, if access to this market really is so important, and denial of entry is going to be “catastrophic” (to quote an excitable Facebook acquaintance of mine), then exporters should not mind paying a fee. It would be no different to, say, paying an annual membership fee, or “tithe” (Worstall’s neat term) to be a member of the London Stock Exchange, or some other market, such as the Tattersalls bloodstock market, etc.
As cannot be said too often, the Single Market is a customs union, surrounded by tariff and non-tariff walls that, for example, have significant costs on consumers. To be a member of such a protected zone ought to be a privilege that those who wish for its membership should pay for, and that payment should not come from the general taxpayer.
Worstall’s logic is impeccable.
“France will be led by a woman – it will be either me or Mrs Merkel.”
– Marine Le Pen, as quoted by Brendan O’Neill.
Say what you like about Le Pen (I dislike her protectionist politics), but she has probably minted the best political quote of this year, as Brendan says. Of course, being a classical liberal, I’d prefer it if countries were not “led” by anyone at all.
“When you stop judging men by the content of their character, eventually you’ll run out of men of good character.”
– Stephen Green, known to some as “Vodkapundit”, writing about more identity politics insanity over at Instapundit. Here is a link to the original article.
If you think a lot of TV and live comedy shows have got tired recently, then I think this fellow, a columnist at Bloomberg, could stir things up a bit, albeit without realising it:
Voters in the major continental nations may get angry and disappointed — say, with French President Francois Hollande’s feckless leadership or with the recent inflow of refugees from the Middle East — but they don’t get desperate enough to vote in a Donald Trump or to inflict Brexit-style turmoil on their countries.
– Leonid Bershidsky
Absolutely, Mr Bershidsky, voters in France, for example, continue to elect people who preside over the grandeur, nay, the stability, of double-digit unemployment, of all those jolly car-burning festivals that so enliven the outskirts of Paris or Marseilles. And they vote for the sort of structures that will admit a country such as Greece, or for that matter, Italy, into a single currency predicated on economic fundamentals that are for the fairies.
But hey, they don’t vote to leave a transnational progressive union with centralising intent, and they don’t vote for property developers from Queen’s. So I guess Europe’s okay then.
Where the hell does Bloomberg find these people?
Yet it is the Democrats’ relentless focus on minority issues that has enabled the GOP to capture parts of the white middle and working class vote. Trump exploited that opportunity more effectively than any other Republican. But he did it – with the alt-right’s help – by borrowing from the Democrats’ playbook. Aping the left’s identity politics, Trump adopted the alt-right’s cultural narrative around the oppression of white people. Gone was the traditional Republican belief in individual responsibility. In its place came the leftist credo of perpetual victimhood.
– Simon Gordon
Another way of putting it is that Trump is a bit like Bernie Sanders, with skyscrapers and funny hair.
Andrew Lilico, who in my view is one of the sharpest and sanest commentators on issues such as Brexit (he is for it) has this to say about the benefits not just to the UK of leaving the EU behemoth, but arguably, to the remaining members of said behemoth:
We’ll also be able to do new trade deals with non-EU countries, which by 2030 will constitute around two thirds of our trade. The eurozone will grow faster, because by leaving the EU we will allow it to function better, enabling the euro to work. And future UK regulation can involve more experiments, where we try something, get it wrong and u-turn, rather than all our regulation being subject to the EU’s “ratchet” whereby once any measure in place it is almost impossible to undo. The ratchet works well when the best thing to do is obvious — cut tariffs, strip away non-tariff barriers. When it is not obvious — e.g. how best to regulate the sharing economy, the commercial exploitation of space, vaping, or green technologies — being able to experiment and u-turn is valuable. The UK can become an international leader the regulation of these new sectors by being able to experiment.
Of course at present many, if not all, EU member states will see the UK’s departure in these terms. They might suspect (as libertarians such as I hope) that the UK will head down a less regulated path, although it is worth noting that UK politicians are quite as capable of coming up with dotty rules as any Brussels civil servant (but at least those politicians can be voted out of office, which is the key thing). It bemuses me when I hear people wail that the UK is trying to become a tax haven. If only.
But it is an interesting observation that with the UK out of the EU, the eurozone (the UK is not a member of it) will “work”. Maybe it might. Maybe Germany, France and the others will, without those pesky Anglo-Saxons carping about regulations of carrots, vitamins and light bulbs, be able to create some sort of federal European entity where policy is in sync with the demands of a single currency. The UK gets to break free of an arrangement that has become increasingly vexatious, and the Continentals can make their vision (well, that of their political class) come true.
It might just be that the best thing for the Continentals is to get shot of we Brits and push ahead. Of course, if or when the dream of a European federal union turns out to be the authortarian clusterfuck of Biblical proportions that some expect, the UK will be in the beneficial position, hopefully, if having insulated itself from this by bringing up plenty of new trading relations with non-EU nations near and far. And it will be able to give the ultimate “I told you so” to the continent on the follies of transnational progressivism.
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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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