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]

Samizdata quote of the day – the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history

One naturally wants to believe that an issue one is involved in is of world-historical importance. But as the judge himself wrote in the decision, “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” That, my friends, is a strong claim, but as I have previously argued, an entirely accurate one.

Aaron Kheriaty

Meritocracy in America

Well, a day has gone after Independence Day, and I read this interesting article by Bloomberg ($) columnist Adrian Wooldridge about the recent SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action as it applies to higher education. The Court ruled, among other things, that such action violates the 14 Amendment. Wooldridge, who has written a book about meritocracy (he is for it), has these comments:

The most serious problem with affirmative action (and one that the court ignored) is that it is too little too late. The best way to address inequality of opportunity is at the high school level and earlier, rather than at college when most of the damage has already been done. Elite America needs to shift its focus to fixing the supply chain of talent.

The obvious way to start is to abolish affirmative action for the rich, which the court’s judgement leaves in place, despite a lot of tut-tutting, because it is based on class rather than race. Astonishingly, Harvard actively discriminates in favor of ALDCs—athletes, legacies, the Dean’s interest list and children of university employees. For one, that could cover the children of politicians and celebrities as well as people who might give the university lots of money. It also sweetens the pill of diversity for the people who administer it by discriminating in favor of the children of alumni and staff. ALDCs make up less than 5% of applicants to the university every year but 30% of freshmen.

Harvard’s “preferences for the children of donors, alumni, and faculty are no help to applicants who cannot boast their parents’ good fortune or trips to the alumni tent all their lives,” Justice Clarence Thomas acidly wrote in his opinion. ALDCs are also 67.8% white (11.4% are Asian American, 6% are Black and 5.6% are Hispanic). Other elite universities pursue similar policies.

A second method is to emphasize objective rather than subjective assessments of applicants. That means academic and objective tests such as the SATs as opposed to so-called holistic ones that take into account extracurricular activities, personal statements, and measures of potential rather achievement.

I agree with much of this but, being a classical liberal chap that I am, I am sort of opposed to any outside interference with how a private university conducts its admissions policy, period. (If such a place takes taxpayers’ money, or is even forced to do so, that’s a separate issue.) A broader point, maybe, is that in US higher education and to some degree in other Western nations, the “sheepskin effect” of having a degree from a smart university is more potent than the intellectual capital that any person may have accumulated from his or her studies. Bryan Caplan, the economics writer, has written a book where he unpacks the whole issue and argues that much of present higher education, at least in most subjects as taught today, rests on this effect, and is socially regressive to the extent that such places receive State (ie, taxpayer) funding. The issue becomes even more egregious when you have attempts, as in that of the Biden administration, to “forgive” the college loans of people who are, mostly, middle class (and disproportionately women, which plays to how we live in an increasingly “gynocentric social order”, as the “manosphere” writer Rollo Tomassi might put it. (The Supreme Court has ruled against Biden on student loans. It’s been a good week for that court.)

In my view, how Harvard, Yale, Oxford or any other place of higher learning structures its admissions is up to the people who run it. To break any dangerous hold these institutions may have is going to mean a, genuine school choice and a re-focus on excellence in schooling (and encouragement where possible of homeschooling); the closure of government education bureaucracies and the end of monopolies of teacher training certification, which is a crucial problem. We need far more people, from all different backgrounds, to be able to teach. That, in my view, is a big issue. Tinkering with Higher Ed. admissions may do some good, but it is, as Woodridge says, too late when a lot of damage has been done already.

Samizdata quote of the day – the awkward truth about free speech

Is it ever possible to take a neutral position on the importance of free speech? The task certainly seems quite difficult. As Vogue’s favourite philosopher, Amia Srinivasan, notes this month in the London Review of Books, many Right-wingers seem to assert the value of free speech, mainly or even only to make room for political views the Left would prefer smothered at birth. Occasionally, someone on the Right will complain about the suppression of a position or person they don’t agree with, but usually more to avoid complaints of inconsistency than anything else.

The Left, however, also has its blind spots — many of which are apparent in Srinivasan’s essay. Scathing about the new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act’s attempt to create a culture which promotes academic freedom in UK universities, she barely acknowledges the problems diagnosed by its authors and defenders. Instead, as many a defensive-sounding progressive has implied before her, real cancellation almost never happens in academia — except, of course, where it happens to exactly those people who deserve it (cough).

Kathleen Stock

Samizdata quote of the day – until there are consequences, nothing changes

Lockdown ruined Britain – and our deluded leaders couldn’t care less.

It was a catastrophic error: we should have pursued a liberal Swedish or Floridian approach. Lockdowns saved or extended comparatively few lives but inflicted huge economic, social, health and psychological damage, left behind a ticking cancer time bomb and caused or exacerbated most of the pathologies of contemporary Britain.

Yet there is something very wrong with our national conversation: why are we so reluctant to accept our mistakes, to connect the dots, to link lockdowns with Broken Britain? How is Matt Hancock able, with a straight face, to tell the Covid Inquiry that Britain must prepare for wider, earlier and more stringent lockdowns in the face of future pandemics? The delusion is staggering, the hypocrisy sickening, the mendacity breath-taking.

Allister Heath

“What we do is restrict freedoms”

– Irish Green Party Chairperson Senator Pauline O’Reilly, speaking on Tuesday, 13 Jun 2023 in the Seanad Éireann debate on the second stage of Ireland’s Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022.

I transcribed the words she speaks in the clip as follows:

“When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. That’s exactly what we are doing here, is we are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good. You will see that throughout our Constitution, yes, you have rights but they are restricted for the common good.

Everything needs to be balanced. If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

The official record of the whole debate can be read here. Note that, just as Hansard does for speakers in the UK parliament, the Official Report of the Oireachtas presents a slightly cleaned up version of what was actually said, though not enough to change the meaning.

According to that record, just after that clip ended she made another remark which I think needs to gain wider publicity:

One cannot do and say whatever one likes in our society, which is a society governed by laws. This is very fundamental to a legislative system. It should be one of the very fundamentals for any legislators who sit in this Chamber that they understand what we do is restrict freedoms.

Senator O’Reilly is wrong by every moral measure – but on that factual point she is not wrong.

Samizdata quote of the day – the cult of net zero

But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years – a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party’s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron – and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that would undermine the economy of any advanced country that relies on the generation of electricity, the heating of buildings and water and, of course, on moving people and goods around from A to B.

Simon Heffer

Samizdata quote of the day – do as your betters tell you, pleb

Our own opinion is that this is just another version of the desire for sumptuary laws, as with the hopes for bans on fast fashion. If even the poor can have a change of clothes, interesting food, then what’s the point of being privileged? Therefore those things that enable the poor to be as their betters must be banned.

It’s a very common and very unattractive part of human nature.

The other way to look at this is as a proof of Hayek’s contention in The Road to Serfdom. If government becomes the provider of health care – the NHS – then the population will be managed at the pleasure of the health care system.

Tim Worstall

“But I think what is happening to me is important.”

I do not know what this woman is accused of. [UPDATE: Commenter John did know, and linked to this Mark Steyn interview and this Mail story from October 2022.] It is always possible that things will look different if ever we get to hear the full story – not that Surrey Police seem inclined to tell us. But if this is half as bad as it looks, Caroline Farrow is right: it is important – and frightening.

To save space, and to keep a sequential record of them in case they disappear, I have written out the rest of the tweets in her thread as bullet points. The following was written by Caroline Farrow, not me:

  • On Monday afternoon my solicitor received a bizarre communication from Surrey police solicitors. He thought it had to do with my civil claim against them.

    After some miscommunication, they sent through a bundle for a court hearing.

    I am due in court tomorrow morning.

  • The police asked that “physical paperwork” relating to the court hearing against me in 2 days, was withheld from me.

    They wanted me to go to a court hearing without access to the accusations and alleged evidence.

  • Surrey police have applied for a stalking protection order as a result of material I have posted on Twitter.

    On page 1 of the bundle repeated misgendering is cited.

    Here are the prohibitions they are seeking tomorrow morning.

  • I will be assigned an “offender manager”.

    I will not be allowed to use any Social Media, Social Networking, Gaming, Dating (lol) site without this person’s written permission and having supplied them with usernames and passwords for all sites within 3 days.

  • In addition the following requirements are added:

    1. Allow Police Officers to enter your registered address(es), between the hours of 8am and 8pm, to conduct a risk assessment, monitor devices, and manage compliance of the order

    2. Provide your Offender Manager with any mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices for examination, review, and monitoring purposes, immediately upon request. You must also your provide your Offender Manager with any access PINs, passwords, or patterns. Examinations may be completed manually on scene, or could entail them seizing your device(s) for examination by agencies contracted by the police for that purpose. Failing to disclose the existence of a device in your possession to your Offender Manager will count as a failure to comply with this condition.

  • 3. Re-register home address every 12 months at a Police Station (within 365 days of last registration).

  • 4. Provide your Offender Manager with list of all mobile, digital, or internet enabled devices that you own or have access to use. The list must be provided within three days of the order being granted or within three days of any changes.

  • The police officer says this:

    I believe that while presenting a significant interference with the respondent’s privacy rights, it is an appropriate course of action in the circumstances.

  • Signed by Surrey Police Superintendent

    “I consider that in accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 8 of HRA, an interference by this force as a public authority is in accordance with the law and is necessary.”

  • I left out another condition Surrey police are asking for.

    5. Possessing, owning or using more than one mobile phone and one SIM card, unless with written permission from your Offender Manager in the area that you reside. You must provide the telephone number and unique identifying numbers of all device(s) within three days of this order being granted or within three days of and supplying any changes within 3 days of any such change.

  • Tax the legal cigarette industry to death, watch the illegal industry replace it

    Youth smoking has increased six-fold in Australia since 2019 despite the highest cigarette taxes in the world.

    That is what is shown by the orange line on the graph in Snowdon’s tweet. The graph is taken from page 8 of the Australian government’s own publication, “Current vaping and current smoking in the Australian population aged 14+ years: February 2018-March 2023”.

    If you seek to understand why this has happened, cross out “despite” and replace it with “because”.

    In an article called “Introducing the Snowdon Curve”, Tim Worstall explains further:

    There is an optimal amount of regulation, taxation, meant to discourage an activity. Going further than this actually increases the amount of the undesired activity, not decreases it.

    If, for example, spirits were taxed so highly that it was near impossible to afford them then how much would home distillation rise? It’s possible to think by more than the drinking discouraged. We do not insist on that particular example, it is just an example.

    But here with smoking the thing that everyone wants to discourage most is the teen smoking of cigarettes.

    […]

    Australia, as the news keeps reminding us, does have a large illegal tobacco sector. The taxes, the restrictions, are worth people working in and supplying it – which leads to the real price of smokes and baccy to be considerably lower – thus consumption higher, than the legal status would suggest.

    There really is a curve here. Restrictions can be so onerous that the society simply declares “Bugrit, millennium hand an’ shrimp” as with this example of teen smoking and Australian tobacco restrictions.

    It’s possible to generalise this further too. Some of us have lived in societies where everything is so tediously regulated that no one bothers to obey any of the laws. This explains the Soviet economy and Italian driving.

    There really is this Snowdon Curve, it is possible to have non-optimal levels of tax and regulation which end up increasing the amount of the undesired activity. As with the base Laffer contention, this is unarguable. That we are now beyond this point in many aspects of society, well, let the arguments begin.

    Samizdata quote of the day – Missouri vs. Biden

    So far I’ve only really discussed the procedural happenings—however what limited expedited discovery in this case has exposed (separate and apart from the Twitter files) is both unprecedented and abhorrent. The most widespread and troubling discovery? CISA has designated YOUR THOUGHTS part of the governments infrastructure. They call it “cognitive infrastructure”.

    They argue they can regulate what you think as they consider it under their purview. In this article I describe “The 6 Most Shocking Recent Revelations of Government Censorship,” if you want the details. One character of particular importance was White House director of digital communications and strategy Rob Flaherty. Flaherty was ABUSIVE to social media companies—like they were his battered wife. Many of them resisted the calls for censorship until threats forced them into action. I was actually stunned to see how averse they were to censoring—until forced to by the government.

    Tracy Beanz. Read the whole thing, it is astonishing.

    Samizdata quote of the day – cataloging a tsunami of Covid scandals

    The mainstream press is 99.9 percent captured.

    The “gatekeepers of the news” have become stenographers of virtually every dubious or false public health narrative. Nobody (who really matters in the Big Picture) is challenging the never-ending lies, manipulated data and false narratives.

    If this lack of skepticism persists, it seems almost a certainty that all the important organizations in the world will continue to be led by people who either aren’t intelligent enough to challenge false narratives or know the narratives are false and simply don’t care.

    Bill Rice

    Will this also apply to public sector pensions?

    “Labour willing to force pension plans to invest in £50bn ‘growth fund’”, reports the Financial Times.

    Labour is prepared to force pension funds to invest in a proposed £50bn “future growth fund”, as the party aims to boost the amount of capital available for fast-growing UK companies.

    Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, said she did not believe Labour would need to mandate retirement schemes to invest in the new fund because of the goodwill in the sector, but added: “Nothing is off the table.”

    Speaking to the Financial Times on a three-day visit to the US, she said she also wanted to accelerate the merger of smaller UK pension funds so as to consolidate a fragmented market.

    Reeves, who visited the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, said she wanted to change the culture of Britain’s savings industry, unleashing homegrown funds that could persuade UK companies to list in London.

    She also wants pension funds to work alongside the state-owned British Business Bank to improve the UK’s “start up, scale up” landscape, with Labour warning that the country is trying to do “capitalism without capital”.

    Reeves said: “A lack of confidence in Britain’s economy has led to too many businesses leaving our shores.”

    Confidence in the British economy is not likely to be improved by the woman who will probably be the next Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that she has so little confidence that pension funds will invest in it voluntarily that she thinking about making them do it by force. It would be unfair to call this the Walter Ulbricht strategy. Unlike Comrade Ulbricht, who said “No one has the intention of erecting a wall!”, Ms Reeves has sportingly given pension funds warning of her intentions so they can get out before the wall goes up.

    Investments can go down as well as up. The record of the state in “picking winners” is particularly poor. British workers are not going to be happy bunnies if their pensions lose value because a Labour government forced them to put some of their pot into risky start-ups that venture capitalists wouldn’t touch.