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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…to disagree with two of his first three posts, but I can’t help that. Here on Libertarian Samizdata I samizdate in a Libertarian way, and that involves criticizing what I see as ideas opposed to Liberty. You were kidding about the proposed sixfold increase in petrol prices, right? That’s called a tax. Taxes take people’s money by force and spend it on projects that meet with the approval of the taxers. Wrong in itself, and anyway the taxing powers always dribble the money away or spend it on rubbish, as is likely to happen to anyone who gets a pile of money they didn’t work for. Switching around different taxes as you propose would not affect that in the slightest.
I don’t know if there is anything artificially low about the price of red diesel. If it’s low because of subsidy, sure, junk the subsidy. But I suspect what you mean is that it is at is natural price and only looks odd compared to the absurdly hiked price of non-farm diesel. The natural price of a commodity is a package of information telling us all sorts of useful facts about its availability and usefulness. Censoring that information is like censoring speech. For a little while it seems to work, but under the surface all sorts of resentments will build up at pressure points, and now the censors themselves cannot judge where the pressures are. Your proposal, which I hope was facetious, would have effects quite different from your list. I don’t claim to know in any detail what they would be (although the idea that it would augment the status of the musclebound is absurd: when ten men come in to do badly the work of the cool machine you used to have, you aren’t going to love those men), but I don’t have to know. I just have to look at how rich and successful India became from its determined attempted to protect hand-loom weaving. Not.
As for Britain versus New Zealand, the problem for us is not that we have a large population but that we have an ageing population. Eventually the ratio of bedpans to nurses is going to get out of hand. Immigration is one possible solution, although it strikes me that it does not so much solve the problem as put it off for thirty years. As an alternative I’ll bang on once more about one of my favourite themes, namely what a good thing all round it would be if welfare would stop killing all the humble jobs. In this case, servants.
The Pim Fortuyn quote hit the button, though.
I think the muitbats have mated with the froonbats and had baby smelibels in your brain, because I have only the vaguest idea of what your post to me was about. Most of your readers will have even less idea, because at least half of them are so benighted as not to make their daily pilgrimage to my blog. I slipped that one in rather nicely, don’t you think? Were you saying that I could keep the proceeds of my now-uneccessary keyboard fund because I have said some nice things about the Queen sometimes and the British Empire wasn’t so bad? If so, I quite agree with both propositions (a decision helped along by explicit permission from the donors) while not quite giving my full intellectual assent to the chain of reasoning between them.
(What with all these jolly little interjections and in-jokes, this blog is sounding more and more like The Corner all the time. This is no bad thing. It is a cause dear to Perry’s heart that Jonah Goldberg should one day come weeping and penitent to our door, saying brokenly between sobs, “I’m so sorry that I foolishly said that I was so mighty that I needed no hits from an outfit calling itself “Libertarian Samizdata”. Not only do I concede that I copied your format in forming The Corner, I also humbly beg you to take us over, now that the Libertarian Revolution has arrived and President Sullivan is in charge of the Committee for Public Safety and Rending Conservatives In Their Gobberwarts, In A Totally Non-Coercive Manner Of Course.)
Back to the British Empire. I agree with you. Empires are wrong, but as Empires go the British wasn’t so bad. And part of the reason for that not-so-badness was indeed the fair trials for the “fuzzie-wuzzies”. I seem to recall that a very similar remark to that made by Corporal Jones was made by one of the characters in Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast when the party land in the alternative universe where Britain rules Mars as a penal colony. “We may be shot,” said one of the good guys, “but we’ll be shot after a fair trial with a wigged judge and a defence counsel.” Maybe not those exact words, but that was the sense of it.
In his book Table Talk Adolf Hitler lamented that German writers had neglected what he saw as their proper business, namely composing paeans of praise of the ancient German kings. He finished off with this comment:
Even Schiller had to glorify that Swiss sniper, Tell.
“Good evening, this is the news from the EBC.
The Security Commissioner today announced the final destruction of one of the last remaining internet cabals. (Older readers may recall the “internet”; it was a sort of primitive precursor to Maxitel, but being utterly unregulated provided means for various perverts and seditious libellers to conspire against the peace of our Community.) Members of this grouping, the so-called ” [CENSORED] Samizdata [/CENSORED]” were taken into custody. Viewers will be happy to learn that these once-recalcitrant citizens made a full recantation and apology for their crimes before sadly dying of AIDS all on the same day.
Meanwhile at the Hague, the trial for War Crimes of ex-President Bush of the area formerly known as the United States continues. His court appointed defence lawyer (required by the somewhat archaic procedure of the tribunal), Maitre Cherie Booth, while admitting that Bush’s so-called “War on Terror” held back for several years our present happy accommodation with the Protector of the Three Holy Places, did at least pursue in the last years of his presidency economic policies that controlled currency speculation and protected the environment by reversing the selfish phenomenon of economic growth.
Some more good news is that, as part of the widely-popular Drive for Health, the bread ration has been reduced again…
That careless person, Happy Fun Pundit, was so inattentive to the proper order of things as to post a lovely mini-rant on Star Trek & Socialism on his own blog rather than here on Samizdata where everyone knows such posts belong.
Sometimes I leap to defend libertarian ideas with a glad cry, filled with the joy of battle. And sometimes I do it with a peg on my nose, scarcely able to believe that it is my fingers doing the typing. In the latter spirit do I second the Brian Micklethwait line in an earlier post. Incest between adults falls into the category of wrong (and in my view impious, and, no, I am not joking or posing when I use that word) actions that nonetheless should not be illegal.
I did not enjoy writing that, but it got me thinking. Might a libertarian society be more, not less conformist than our present one? A favourite theme of mine is the coming return of the age of the verbal oath made in person. For the last few hundred years we have leant on the crutch of documentary or camera proof but the time is coming when technology will allow us to fake anything. Then, my friends, a man’s word had better be his bond, at least if he wants to borrow money. The only way of telling who is creditworthy will be personal recommendation. Well, in a similar way, we have leant on the crutch of law to regulate our social relations. Should that crutch be removed, a man or a woman’s reputation may once again be his or her most precious possession. And since reputation is decided by others, public opinion will matter more.
David Carr in a post below seeks to reassure us Brits that the US steel tariffs do not matter because they will help rather than harm our economy. That’s like being reassured that it is the house next door burning down, not one’s own, and with a kindly additional word pointing out that all this nice warm air wafting over from the conflagration will reduce one’s heating bills.
The tarriffs will (a) directly harm the economies of many other countries, to whom I am not indifferent; (b) allow the European Union the excuse they’ve been praying for to put tarriffs on the South Korean and Chinese steel you mention – so no, the British consumer will not benefit; (c) give strength to the yelps of half a hundred other US lobbies; (d) start another round of retaliation with all the effects above applied to some other randomly chosen commodity, thus screwing up another bunch of people’s prosperity.
And they make Bush look weak and hypocritical, which the world could do without right now.
The tasks of the party are … to be cautious and not allow our country to be drawn into conflicts by warmongers who are accustomed to have others pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them.”
-J V Stalin.
[It was said at his speech to the 8th Congress of the Communist Party on 6 Jan 1941, some six months before the Germans invaded.]
… is not the fact that he said this: “Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to a gardener. What a mad idea to demand equality for women! Women are nothing but machines for producing children.”
One is so surprised to see the BBC acknowledge in any manner the existence of black conservatives that it seems unreasonable to ask them to do it politely as well. Actually it wasn’t too bad. Around the middle Keane was stricken by Paxmanitis and got a little offensive as he kept interrupting Connerly and denying the listeners what could have been interesting trains of thought. Then he got a grip on himself and asked some interesting questions about the lessons that Connerly drew from being abandoned by his father.
That wasn’t what I came here to talk about. I get distracted so easily. Brian, I had a similar experience when I went to Oxford. I was used to being Miss Clever Clogs, top of the class, star of the show. Suddenly I was surrounded by people at least as clever as I was. On the one hand, a bit of a blow to my ego. On the other – how wonderful to strike this unsuspected lode of people who saw nothing odd about wishing to talk about Olbers’ paradox. Let’s just be glad they don’t make us take an exam to determine our rankings in the suddenly-extended Libertarian pecking order. You might not come a-cropper even if they did.
That wasn’t it either. Oh yes, aeroplanes. My dear spouse and helpmeet directs me to say that yes, the Spitfire did suffer from a low range, but the British never attempted a long range fighter, largely due to Portal’s opposition. (See The Right of the Line by John Terraine.) As to armament, the US never needed cannon because they never needed to knock down bombers. Against single engine fighters, .50 calibre machine guns were enough, but you need something which explodes to knock down a twin-engine bomber…
There’s more. Much more. Do you any idea what it’s like living with this? I sit down to watch a war flick and rest my eyes on the young Robert Mitchum, and what do I get? “That’s never a Panzergnadigefrau Mk XCVIII, nah, it’s a recycled Abrams with a cardboard hat on. (They sold a job lot to the Vatican in 1958 you know.) And they have the nerve to call that a EntschuldigenSieWaffen uniform? Hah! Don’t they have researchers? Couldn’t they employ someone to tell them that the silver fly-buttons didn’t come in until 1944, and late 1944 at that….”
Perry left out the best bit of Ken Layne’s comments, namely:
“I also want to blow up that planet of Furbies who ruined the third Star Wars movie … before PETA gets over there. The PETA ship will come out of hyperspace and find nothing but pelts floating around.”
I find that so inspiring.
When I was a teacher I would sometimes, not often but sometimes, convince a yob* to do some work. When this happened I would do my best to welcome him back to favour but also tried to avoid giving said yob an easier ride than those who had always been working. I felt that giving him an easier ride would send the wrong messages to both yob and good kids. Correction, stuff the “wrong messages” bit, it would be radically unfair to both yob and good kids.
If I could work this out within weeks of first facing a class, why can’t Tony Blair? I say all this to illustrate why I heartily support David Carr’s recent post “A warning to George W. Bush” while opposing, in gnomic fashion, his post a little further down where he appears to lament the partial reform of terrorists.
* Editor’s translation for our American cousins: yob = English slang for a disorderly young man
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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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