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.
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March 14th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 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. March 13th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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. March 10th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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.” [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.] February 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed
… 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.” February 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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….” February 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Perry left out the best bit of Ken Layne’s comments, namely:
I find that so inspiring. January 31st, 2002 | Comments are closed
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 January 23rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
A man, by some miracle of medicine, is cured of bubonic plague. Then does he forget that he came close unto death and sayeth he desireth back his beloved plague because the warmth of fever, yea the very burning of his flesh, stopped him feeling cold at night in the tents of his cyber-camp. Truly, it is hard to discern the meaning of this parable. January 22nd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Perry mocks the Black Kittens. David laughs at the soppy little FARC-ers. Can I just remind you boys that, if you must be some sort of revolutionary socialist, it is at least less bad to be a halfway peaceful one. Let’s not make it harder for them to move in the right direction. Along the same lines, may I also offer my heartfelt congratulations to any ex-Taliban among our readers who cried “uncle”, hid, shaved or ran away during the recent readjustment in Afghanistan. Well done. Right decision. You think I’m joking at your expense, but I’m not. Welcome back to the real world. January 19th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I agree with ‘Johnny Student’ that one reason for the elite to want to present the world as complex is to keep them in jobs as the only people able to understand it. Another reason for wanting the same thing is as an explanation for the failure of their preferred solutions. They look around after decades of welfare/gun control/affirmative action and still see poverty/gun crime/blacks at the bottom of the heap. It is much pleasanter to bemoan the complexity and “stubborness” of poverty/crime/racism than admit that their solutions were just plain wrong. It also gets you a bigger budget. Obviously in many ways the world is complex. But rather as physics can reduce multifarious phenomena to simple equations, I think you can dig down to some fairly simple ethical principles. The complexity comes in seeing what applies where. January 10th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Lots of good but wrong stuff… …In Kevin Holtsberry’s blog. I would like to join battle with the redoubtable Mr Holtsberry on several issues, but can I start with just this one. I am as he is of sick of e-mails headed “heya…” and “hi?” that turn out to be porn. These e-mails disgust me when I see them, waste my time while I delete them, and mean that my children cannot be let out even for a moment from the kiddie-ghetto of Kids’ AOL. I don’t deny there is a problem. His proposed solution is to have a law. I have to point out that there probably are laws already, dozens of them. How long does a new one take to come in? How effective will enforcement be? Is there any special reason to suppose that it will be any more effective than the laws prohibiting drugs? Slowly, imperfectly, but definitely, the market has provided solutions to related problems before. We first hooked up to Compuserve in 1995. At that time you paid for every message you received. We received a lot of junk, got sick of it, and quit. (Our family would be classified in advertiser’s jargon as not so much “early adopters” as “early rejecters”.) When we came back five years later the payment structure problem had been solved, and the quantity of junk mail much decreased. (Yes, really.) It’s an arms race. At the moment the attackers are winning – but who is going to be more motivated to research on means of defence: AOL, who are going to lose my custom one of these fine days if they don’t get a move on, or the government? It’s not the case that I deny any role for law in this issue. Separate contracts, enforceable in law, between ISP and users as to what could and could not be sent by the ISP’s services, would be fine by me. Different ISP’s could compete on their various brand contracts. “We always prosecute pornographers who send unsolicited mail!” some would boast. Others could proudly say, “You choose: this service is completely unrestricted and unsupervised.” Contrast that with the obvious dangers of blanket supervision by not just the present government but all future ones. But the law is always likely to trail behind the power of angry customers (like me) with the right of exit. The lowlife that Mr Holtsberry rightly describes as being “creative and dishonest” in evading the software barriers that Internet Service Providers try to put up against them are scarcely likely to be less creative and more honest in evading legal barriers. January 8th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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