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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Chinese Taipai, or Taiwan, or the Republic of China; whatever you call it, you have to admit that the small electronic island has some of the best legislators in the world.
Not because they are particularly wise or sensible, but rather, they are perhaps the best exponents of the ‘scrummage’ school of legislative thought. The proceedings of the Parliament there are frequently punctuated by brawls, biffs, and other exciting interruptions.
And they have been at it again:
Pandemonium broke out in Taiwan’s parliament when deputies attacked a woman colleague for snatching and trying to eat a proposal on opening direct transport links with China in a bid to stop a vote on the issue. Lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party charged towards the podium and protested noisily to prevent the review of an opposition proposal seeking an end to decades-old curbs on direct air and shipping links with China.
Amid the chaos, DPP deputy Wang Shu-hui snatched the written proposal from an opposition legislator and shoved it into her mouth, television news footage showed. Wang later spat out the document and tore it up after opposition lawmakers failed to get her to cough it up by pulling her hair. During the melee, another DPP woman legislator, Chuang Ho-tzu, spat at an opposition colleague.
“She spat saliva,” yelled Hung Hsiu-chu of the main opposition Nationalist Party.
In Australia, although there is plenty of legislation going about, I fear it has almost zero nutritional value. However, I applaud Ms Wang Shu-Hui’s novel approach to legislation and I think it should be adopted in legislatures throughout the world.
A combination of perfect timing and extremely strong arms. Repect!
The FT’s The Way We Live Now column reports that David Blanchflower is to appear before the Treasury select committee, as he has been appointed to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. I imagine he is up for it as an economist representative of the currently modish disguise of egalitarianism as a collectively-skewed hedonics.
So does Maggi Urry, one suspects. She writes:
Blanchflower’s most frequently quoted claim to fame is his co-authorship in 2004 of a paper entitled “Money, Sex and Happiness”. […] He calculated that increasing the frequency of sex from once a month to once a week would generate as much happiness as would a $50,000 a year pay rise. Depends, I would have thought on who the sex was with – the pay rise might be preferable.
I am a little more cynical. At British tax rates, I note that is approximately $750 a time. If you cannot get really good sex for less than $750 without a series discount then your grasp of the market is quite questionable.
How else? You might ask. But this abstract in McKinsey Quarterly caught my attention with its astounding wrong-headedness:
How Brazil can Grow –
The most important obstacle is Brazil’s huge informal economy which, distorts competition by putting efficient, law-abiding companies at a disadvantage. Macroeconomic instabilityreflected in the high cost of capitalis the second-most-important hurdle, followed by regulations (such as rigid labor laws) that limit productivity.
Could it possibly be that it’s the top-heavy regulatory state and shocking tax rates on officially recognised activities that are keep the poor poor, small companies small, and the poltically unconnected outside the system hoping not to be noticed? It couldn’t be state favouritism and that same capricious regulatory apparatus that keep the risks high and capital proportionately expensive? It would also be interesting to know in what sense ‘efficient’ and ‘law-abiding’ go hand in hand in such circumstances. It is implied that unlawful, invisible, enterprises are inefficient ones (in whatever sense that is). How do they know?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, is immune from state interference. Not even in the Land of the Free. Not even the past.
The original story here seems to be the tip of a bureaucratic iceberg. Last weeks further comment from the New York Times (which I can not find online, sorry):
[A]t the [US] National Archives, documents have been disappearing since 1999 because intelligence officials have wanted them to. And under the terms of two disturbing agreements – with the C.I.A. and the Air Force – the National Archives has been allowing officials to reclassify declassified documents, which means removing them from the public eye. So far 55,000 pages, some of them from the 1950’s [sic], have vanished. […]
What makes all this seem preposterous is that the agreements themselves prohibit the National Archives from revealing why the documents were removed. They are aparently secret enough that no-one can be told why they are secret – so secret, in fact, that the arrangement to reclassify them is also secret. According to the agreement with the C.I.A., employees are also prohibited from telling anyone that the C.I.A. was responsible for removing reclassified documents.
Next time you hear that saw about the price of freedom being eternal vigilance, remember eternity is outside time. You do not just have to keep watch on this moment.
Just when I thought e-government couldn’t get any sillier, I happened upon this site.
“Anti-social behaviour practitioner” is a particularly glorious piece of tin-eared bureaucratic jargon. “Tackling alcohol disorder” is alternative to “Taking a Stand Awards”, suggests to me that many of those approaching this site are expected to be unable to stand.
But apart from being stupid and unintentionally funny, it is another scary glimpse into how unlimited is the appetite to regulate and manage social life in Britain.
Brits take note – see what happens when there is no decent succession plan for your monarchy?
[87 year old] King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, who lost $37 million of the kingdom’s money when he gave it to his American court jester, appears to be falling for a Nigerian-type scam.
Oh dear.
Talks were under way “to bring a billion dollars to invest in Tonga to help fund many projects in Tonga” and neighbouring countries, he said.
He would be involved in a telephone link with the investors to set a date to visit Tonga.
“Talks with this bank are for them to use the Reserve Bank of Tonga, to leave their money there and take the funds for the project from the Reserve Bank.
And you thought Prince Charles regularly dressing up like an Imam was a bit embarrassing.
(Via Silent Running)
While I am on the subject of lists, check this out for the world’s 10 weirdest keyboards. I think I might give myself a serious physical injury trying to use some of them. (Hat tip: Catallarchy).
I will confess I disappointed by the complete ban on feudalistic activities in the park. Having my serfs around makes it so much easier for me to tease shrimp.
While walking throught the old (Chinese) section of Shanghai today, I walked pass a shop offering to print T-shirts to whatever design I liked. This was the lineup of sample shirts out the front. I don’t know about you, but if I was the man on the left I might be slightly miffed about being put in such company.
On the other hand, since this is officially still a communist country, perhaps this is meant as the highest possible compliment to Mr Beckham.
I just received an SMS message from our Samizdatista at large, Michael Jennings, who is currently in Shanghai, China, expressing his relief at arriving in a Starbucks coffee house.
It should be no surprise that Starbucks, that monolith of globalisation and spearhead of Western Imperialism, decadence and coffee beans, should be found in Shanghai, fast becoming one of the key cities of the 21st century.
The ambience of a coffee house generates rational discussion. Many of the key figures of the 18th Century Enlightenment honed their ideas around Java beans. Naturally, with coffee providing a stimulus, it is the natural clearinghouse of ideas for clever people, as sociable as a pub, but without the side-effects of a pint of ale.The culture of coffee beans was gradually displaced by tea in the tastes of English people in the 19th century, and coffee only gradually emerged as the favourite beverage of Americans.
Of course, it may or may not be a coincidence that since Starbucks was founded in 1971, technological change and artistic innovation based on the sort of ‘grass-root’ initative that Glenn Reynolds talks about in his new book has skyrocketed. And it continues to grow at an ever expanding rate. This has done a great deal to enrich our current post-industrial civillization, and the humble coffee bean has proven itself to be a great support for all manners of high culture.
I love this story:
Armed with nothing more than a couple of sensors, a robotic fish unveiled by Japanese scientists this week could one day be used to observe fish in the ocean or survey oil platforms for damage.
Modelled on the koi, a decorative strain of carp popular in Japan, the remote-controlled white, red and gold robot can manoeuvre its way around a fish pond with a realistic flick of its tail.
The 80-cm (32-inch) carp can also use sensors in its mouth to monitor the concentration of oxygen in water, a key to fish health, said project leader Tetsuo Ichikizaki of Ryomei Giken, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd <7011.T>, in Hiroshima, western Japan.
I wonder if this works with the great white shark.
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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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