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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Guido:
Even if the GDP numbers are not entirely unexpected, they are still a failure, a failure to grow the economy. The deficit can only be paid down if the economy grows, we can’t borrow our way out of a debt crisis. It is time for a supply-side revolution, why is the government implementing a policy of selected regional enterprise zones, why not make the whole economy an enterprise zone? It was a mistake to hike VAT and it is a strategic error to burden industry with crushingly high green taxes, penal marginal income tax rates of over 50% discourage entrepreneurs and investors from coming to Britain.
If the government is going to miss the deficit target, and it is, miss it because the government slashed taxes to grow the economy. The international bond markets will forgive a finance minister with a growing economy who misses his deficit target, they won’t forgive a finance minister with a contracting economy in any circumstances. Chancellor Zero knows that with no growth there is no hope for the deficit.
Whether Guido is right that there is any hope for the deficit, under any circumstances, is a proposition I leave to others to ponder. I quote the above posting because it illustrates something important about Guido himself.
In among all the knockabout gossip about who is sleeping with whom and who is cheating on their expenses, Guido regularly slips in more thoughtful stuff. He regularly, that is to say, drops in explicit libertarian messages, in among all the merely implicit libertarianism about how they are all conspiring with each other to rob us blind. This is why they all hate him so much. He is absolutely not one of them. They want to believe that he is only a gossip monger, and a mere partisan Tory, with no principles other than that he wants his particular team to be in charge of all the robbing and conspiring. But those of his pro-state (I often think more fun than is might be had with that hyphen) enemies and victims with any antenna or honesty know that he is something far more dangerous to them than that. He is a principled libertarian with readership numbers and influence most of them can only dream of. He, more than anyone else in Britain, is responsible for the widespread perception in British politics that the arrival of the internet was a breakthrough for libertarian ideas. Before Guido, we were talking amongst ourselves, which was good. Now Guido regularly shoves it in front of them, which is even better.
Okay, a simplification. Others were doing this before Guido. But none so entertainingly, or to such a wide readership. One of Samizdata’s prouder boasts, I think, is that before Guido found his own blog persona and his own voice as a blogger, he was briefly part of ours.
Here is a photo I took of the great man, at a recent gathering at Samizdata HQ:
A fine if rather blurry addition to this collection. (This is my favourite one of these.)
By the way, do you remember the posting I did here a while back about how so much of what happens in the world is down to two-man teams? Well, these days, anyone who cares knows that there are now two Guidos. I asked original Guido about this at the party where I took the above snap, and the partnership between him and Harry Cole is definitely the real two-man team deal.
Yes. This …
… has finally moved out of my home, and out of my life. Last week, Men collected it and took it … I don’t know where. A dump, presumably.
I recently wrote here about the continuing life of physical books and about the limitations of the idea of the paperless office or paperless home. Office-working commenters piled in to describe the persistence of paper in their offices, often in the teeth of earlier diktats from on high to the contrary.
But as far as my own libertarian activities are concerned, I really have pretty much completely abandoned communicating on paper, with my own writing, and most definitely with anyone else’s. Which means that this machine, with which I once processed all the paper that I once processed, really had to go, if only to help me to accommodate my ever increasing hoard of books. Only inertia had caused the photocopier to linger on, in my kitchen. That, and the affection I still feel for something which once made such a difference to my life.
A simple way of describing what this machine did for me, and for a small gang of mostly London-based libertarians, from the 1980s until the early 2000s, is that it enabled us to do something like blogging, before there was blogging. → Continue reading: My photocopier – 1981-2012
Earlier this evening I attended a libertarian get-together in the upstairs room of a pub (the Rose and Crown in Colombo Street, London SE1), organised by Libertarian Home, and in particular by leading LH-er Simon Gibbs.
If what you would like would be a convivial evening in a London pub where, if you are not a libertarian you are going to have to explain yourself, whereas if you are you aren’t (unless you feel like it), then why not get in touch with Simon Gibbs and invite yourself along to the next one of these things. If my experience this evening was anything to go by, you will be made very welcome.
Here is a photo I took of the other end of the table from where I was:
And here’s another snap from the same spot, moments later, after I’d asked if I could interrupt everything, and “take some photos”:
I am surprised what good photos these are, technically, given the light. If you are surprised what bad photos they are, technically, then clearly you don’t know my photos.
These photos do not include anything like everyone who was present. They are accurate in suggesting that the gathering was youngish (certainly compared to me), and bright, but inaccurate in suggesting that this was an all male affair. It’s just that the ladies present were seated nearer to me, and my lens is not wide-angle enough to have included them.
In particular, missing from that snap are two of the people who, it so happened, I spent a bit of time conversing with. For the first time ever, I got to meet Trooper Thompson in the flesh, whose blog I have long had a liking for. And, I also got to meet “Misanthrope Girl”, whose blog I have not properly noticed until now. Trooper Thompson got chased out of the Samizdata commentariat for saying something rude about a gun (I think that was it), approximately a decade ago, which, having finally met the guy, I now think is a shame. Misanthrope Girl would also fit in here very well.
I had to leave earlier than I would have liked, but I am still very glad I went. I heard about this gathering by attending the Liberty League Conference, where Andy Janes (mentioned here recently already because of that Zimbabwean bank note), who also helps organise these evenings, suggested I might like to attend the next one. Perhaps, I thought to myself, and perhaps not. But then Andy gave me a physical copy of the leaflet that he had been handing out at the Occupy London occupations. These guys, I thought, maybe have something about them. (See also this open letter to the London occupiers.) Maybe they do. We shall see.
Today is our blogiversary…Samizdata crawled out of the primordial ooze of the blogosphere on Friday, November 02, 2001.
Our name was a wee bit longer then but like some vestigial tail, it eventually dropped off once we learned to walk upright… and it took us a while for our flippers to evolve into feet… but here we are all those years later, still blathering on about the things that irk or amuse us.
13,315 articles and 226,617 comments later…
…Blimey, where did all those years go?
I have a lot of time of Michael Totten. That does not mean I agree with everything he says but I rate his commentary and reportage more highly than 98% of the Fourth Estate’s professional ‘experts’ from megacorporate media land.
His latest work, Hanging with the Muslim Brotherhood, is an interview with Esam El-Erian and I commend this to you, not just for its informative content but because it may have the same effect on you as it did on me… some laugh-out-loud moments just visualising what the exchange of views must have been like for the exasperated but ever polite Totten and his redoubtable colleague Armin Rosen.
Read the whole thing and perhaps even drop your mouse on his ‘donate’ link as he is worth every penny.
I am very sad to hear the news that a libertarian acquaintance of mine, Richard Garner, has died at a young age. I don’t know any more details. Richard used to write a fair number of excellent comments over at this blog’s comment threads. I used to like chatting to him at conferences and other gatherings; I remember getting a cheery invite from him to join him and others at the recent “rally against debt” in central London.
My condolences to his family and many friends. He will be missed.
Rob Fisher has a couple of postings up about coffee, which I enjoyed reading. I am strictly a Gold Blend man myself, and am as interested in the structural qualities of coffee jars as I am in their contents, but even I notice how the price of Gold Blend can fluctuate quite wildly, which is what the second of Rob’s coffee postings is about.
In the first and more substantial of Rob’s coffee postings, the whole matter of Fair Trade coffee is gone into. Like many free marketeers, I assume this to be a fairly (actually not that fairly) foolish enterprise, better at separating money from dimwitted Westerners than at helping poor coffee growers in faraway countries. But what are the facts? Read Rob to learn more, and also read Has Bean, the quality coffee blog which Rob links to and discusses some of the content of.
Unlike me, Rob does care a lot about the quality of his coffee, having just purchased a coffee grinder. Apparently, the smaller the time gap between grinding and drinking, the better the coffee tastes. Unless you prefer Gold Blend.
One of my favourite blogospherical institutions is David Thompson’s Friday Ephemera. No matter what else may be happening in the world, there, every Friday, they are. The world’s financial system may be going to hell. My life may be a perpetual disappointment, doomed in not very may years to end, probably in pain. But meanwhile, never fear, every Friday, a couple of clicks will get me to things like … a horse in a car … spiral staircases … whisky barrel flooring … the credit crunch in the form of aerial photos of Florida … a sex toys chess set … cool bookshops … a cat with bionic legs … a high rise tennis court … secure parking … an oddly shaped football pitch (that was on a Sunday but look at it anyway) … a fish with hands … bookshelf porn … Japanese travel posters … or a scary trick like this (not for those with heart problems).
Ninety five bloggers out of a hundred with a taste for such trivia would give each of these oddities a posting to itself, and add a paragraph or two of superfluous waffle (although that’s what I usually do, so maybe I am projecting there). But David Thompson is merely sprinkling a little weekly seasoning upon what is basically a very serious blog. His more typical meat and two veg posting is something like a fisking of some piece of leftist nonsense, or maybe several such pieces.
Last Friday, I had the honour of providing not one but two of David’s chosen ephemera. One was a cat seeing off some alligators, and the other was a video taken with a mobile phone from the inside of an airplane of its propeller, in motion.
I promised David Thompson that I would ask Samizdata’s notably educated commentariat to explain the strange effect with that propeller, and this is me doing that.
Can anyone say what is going on at the other end of that last link, in a way that makes it seem less than totally bizarre?
The story of Waleed Hasayin, a Palestinian West Bank atheist blogger, is indicative of the nightmare that is inevitable in any system where state, society and religion are completely intertwined.
[Muslims] believe anyone who leaves Islam is an agent or a spy for a Western State, namely the Jewish State.
The mere existence of an outspoken atheist is intolerable in such an environment… but the thing about tolerance is it is only appropriate when it is reciprocated and Islam does not tolerate views that deny their God’s existence, so why should any non-Muslim tolerate Islam? Tolerance for intolerance is cowardice, not to mention suicidal.
For the benefit of anyone who would like a Brit libertarian angle on the US Midterms, Antoine Clarke has blogged about them already (with more promised) at his recently launched Norlonto Review. And Rob at Rob’s Blog is also up and liveblogging. Both are at Mr and Mrs Rob’s home for the evening.
I too was going to be there, if only to see how the new offspring is doing, but a seriously sore throat demands that I remain at home, and probably also that I stay away from babies outside of London. Have a good evening everyone, and sorry not to be there to share with you face-to-face whatever fun may materialise. Your blogging will be the next best thing.
LATER – best bit yet, from Rob at 20:48:
So Al Jazeera had a polite discussion with a sensible Tea Partier who was allowed to make all kinds of sensible points about healthcare reforms and stimulus packages. Al Jazeera is much better than the BBC.
Building an audience by reporting things intelligently. Whatever next?
LATER: Michael J just got a mention from Rob, so maybe there’ll be something from him here. Or here.
There is a bit of a stir going on concerning a recent, very rude and unpleasant review of Matt Ridley’s recent book concerning how optimistic Man should be about the trend of events. George Monbiot, who wrote the review, is answered, at length, and with great restraint, by Matt Ridley.
Monbiot – known in these parts as George Moonbat – should be ashamed of writing such a piece. But then, as Bishop Hill notes, it is clear that Ridley has really got under Monbiot’s skin.
Optimism, I find, often really annoys a certain mindset, not just on the left, but to a certain “things were better in my day before we got infested by all those foreigners” sort of conservative. A pox on both their houses.
You can get Ridley’s book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves here.
There have been some good postings at Rob’s Blog recently, in particular an informative review of a new book called The Spirit Level Delusion, and a vivid description of some rather uncaring care. But this …
… is particularly good news.
You can’t assume that children will have even approximately similar opinions and ideas to their parents, but that’s the way to bet. But however his ideas and opinions turn out, warmest congratulations to Mr and Mrs Rob’s Blog.
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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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