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]
Talking to a business contact of mine earlier today, the subject of the Levenson enquiry concerning the alleged hacking of persons’ phones by journalists/others came up. One thing that was mentioned was that the corruption of certain police officers, and possibly other officials with access to important data, highlights the dangers of aggregating large amounts of important data into a few places, since the temptation to abuse this for financial gain – by selling some of the juicy stuff to journalists – will be hard to resist. And that surely is another argument against centralised ID systems of the sort that groups such as No2ID have campaigned against.
Call me optimistic, but at least I hope I can say that for the moment, the case for compulsory ID cards is off the table in the UK. That does not, of course, mean that the Database State is not advancing, quite the reverse. But at least some of the more brazen examples of this are not advancing, and the public are getting a very good education in the dangers of data aggregation and the abuse of data by those who are entrusted to defend the public.
Comment just attached, by “Malcolm”, to my posting here a while back entitled Austrianism as Number Two:
Newsnight has just introduced its story on Ed Milliband’s decision today to back the government’s pay freeze by playing the Keynes v Hayek video from Econstories.tv
The narrator even described it as a “fabulous” video that is “easily the most entertaining explanation of the issues” – as closely as I can remember the wording, anyway.
I realise I’m commenting on a posting that’s six months old, but I’m hoping Brian, as the original author, gets automatically notified of comments. That the video is being used to give context to a now-current news item is certainly consonant with Brian’s original theory about Austrianism as the new #2 (with apologies to The Prisoner).
I did get automatically notified of this comment. Many thanks for the kind thought. However, I also clocked this Newsnight snippet myself, and added an off topic bit in a comment I also added to the earlier posting today about SOPA, which Newsnight is also reporting on, thanks to the Wikipedia black-out that Rob Fisher noted.
The more I ponder those Keynes v Hayek videos, the more of a stroke of total genius I believe them to be. They play especially well with the BBC, because the BBC is never happier than when explaining an issue in terms of competing arguments. Yes, the BBC is often “biased”, in the sense that you get a definite idea of which team they may prefer (which may not be yours), and which team they choose to give the last word to. But the “other” team often gets a more than fair crack of the whip.
As I made clear in that earlier posting of mine, the real sufferers from this kind of bias are the “other other” teams, so to speak, the ones who don’t even get a look in, the ones who are shown as being not even wrong, on account of not even existing.
To quote Rob Fisher in the posting immediately below, about Detlev Schlichter’s performance on the BBC’s “Start The Week” show yesterday morning:
All in all not a bad day for the spreading of Austrian ideas.
Which adds up to two consecutive not bad days for the spreading of Austrian ideas.
Just a heads-up in case you are interested, I will be one of four guests on Andrew Marr’s show Start the Week on BBC Radio Four on Monday, 16th January. The program starts at 9 am but there are various ‘listen again’ facilities, and it will also be published as a podcast. The topic is the financial crisis, and the other guests are The Economist’s Philip Coggan (author recently of Paper Promises), Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, and the Labour life peer Maurice Glasman.
Dymaxicon doesn’t accept ‘submissions’. I’m not a particularly submissive person, and I have always resented that writers were always cast in a submissive role… no one should ever be in the position of accepting or rejecting.
So says California-based Samizdatista Hillary Johnson about Dymaxicon, the new model publishing company she set up as an imprint of Agile Learning Labs. Yes, a software development coaching firm is its own publisher – and is putting titles on the market that cover everything from gardening to scrum (the geeky kind, not the rugby kind). Free from the politics and restraints of traditional publishers, Johnson is highly selective about the titles Dymaxicon puts out, and her gamut-running taste leads to releases such as a graphic novel telling the true story of two teenagers on a killing spree in the 1950s:
The model is simple: No one makes money unless the books sell, and Dymaxicon does a straight 50/50 split with authors. The publisher earns its half by editing the work, formatting it for a range of electronic reading devices and apps, marketing the work (including creative, easily shareable book trailers), and making sure the entire distribution process runs smoothly. Titles are available both in electronic form and, for more money, as hard copies.
So what kind of results are Johnson and her authors getting with this approach?
Nancy Rommelmann, another friend of Samizdata, has released one novel and one essay with Dymaxicon. The Bad Mother quickly became a cult favorite novel, and was downloaded more than 1,000 times within hours of Dymaxicon launching a promotional giveaway (you can still get it for free as I type). Her essay on growing up as a rebellious teen in 1970s Brooklyn, The Queens of Montague Street, hit number seven – and is still climbing – on Amazon’s bestseller list of biographies and memoirs of journalists, topping titles by Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper, and Barbara Walters, among many other celebrities. It was also named the number one long-form read of the week by top online outlet Longreads, with dozens of other blogs lauding the work as well worth the 99 cent price.
David Swinson, a former police detective, film producer and music promoter who released his first novel for Dymaxicon after a career of working with the likes of Nick Cave, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Social Distortion, saw his book A Detailed Man rise to the number one spot on Amazon’s list of bestselling noir titles. The murder mystery also hit Amazon’s Top 100 overall list of Kindle bestsellers.
The fact is, you can publish your writing on Amazon if you have 99 cents. (If you are an Amazon Prime member, it is free.) Yes, blogging has enabled anyone to publish their thoughts without cost for years now, but putting your writing into a digestible format and capitalizing on Amazon’s distribution platform is kind of a big deal. Just because it is not difficult to do does not mean it is easy to do well – which is where a publisher like Dymaxicon comes in. This new model means that revenue-sucking intermediaries like agents can be bypassed completely, as can dealing with traditional publishing houses (if one was ever lucky enough to get that far in the first place). As Johnson says:
The way literature gets produced in our world seems positively medieval. Not to mention anti-creative. Publishers are gate-keepers, deciding who gets to be heard, and the process of putting a book out is glacially slow, linear, and hierarchical.
Not anymore, though. So if you have always fancied yourself a novelist in the making, or think the series of email rants you send friends might make for compelling content to read as a collection, consider making an author of yourself. All you have to lose is the expired excuse that it is hard to get published.
This morning I was prodded by the scourge of epidemiocracy, Chris Snowden, to read this piece by Theodore Dalrymple. What most struck me was not the main argument (I find predictable agreement almost as wearing as disagreement) but this piece of supplementary information:
A higher proportion of the Dutch population smokes than average for a developed country (27 percent), and fewer Dutch people are aware of secondhand, or second-lung, smoke — that breathed in from other people’s tobacco — than any other comparable country.
Why should that be? I think it demands an explanation. Certainly the Dutch population cannot easily be classed as ill-educated or poorly-informed. (I have been sworn at by a drunk tramp on an Amsterdam tram who switched instantly to English invective when he realised that it was going to be more effective in my case.) My mind leapfrogged towards ideas about the Dutch liberal tradition. They choose not to know, because they do not like to hassle people about their private behaviour, perhaps…
Unfortunately there are no sources quoted. When I looked for stats and background info, I found something even odder. That remarkable factoid contains no truth. → Continue reading: Facts and attitudes
We haven’t here done a Kim Jong Il is dead posting until now, probably because what else is there to say besides Kim Jong Il is dead? A new Kim Jong has been installed. Un. From Il, to Un. In English it sounds like going from sick to nothing. North Korea, presently terrible, will either get a bit better, or a bit worse, or a lot worse, or stay much the same. Or, if it gets really lucky, a lot better! Will paid North Korea watchers, experts in North Korean things, do any better than that? I doubt it.
I have called Kim Jong Il Kim Jong Il. Others call him Kim Jong-Il with a hyphen, or Kim Jong-il, with a small i for il. Until today I never knew of this confusion. Blog and learn.
My favourite of the Kim Jong Il is dead postings that I have seen so far is this one, at Mick Hartley’s blog, which features the very last Kim Jong Il picture: King Jong Il looking at toilet paper.
I wrote all that last night, but Mick Hartley now has another Kim Jong Il is dead posting up, in which he quotes somebody called Simon Winchester saying this:
India’s attempt to go it alone failed. So, it seems, has Burma’s. Perhaps inevitably, North Korea’s attempt appears to be tottering. But seeing how South Korea has turned out – its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.
Or then again, perhaps … not. No bad thing? Competition for commenters: concoct morally disgusting sentences which begin with “For all its faults …”. You’ll struggle to top that one. These obscene ravings are currently behind the Times pay wall, hence no link, although Hartley does supply one.
Says Hartley:
Better a starving slave state, it seems, than this ghastly modern Americanised culture.
Conservative romanticism raised to a truly idiotic level.
Commenter Martin Adamson adds:
And it’s not even remotely true on its own terms. The architecture of Pyongyang is Moscow 1952. The mass displays are China 1964. Painting is Soviet Academy 1936. Music is Gang of Four Operas 1974. Dress is Bucharest 1988 etc etc.
Assuming this is the Simon Winchester in question, it seems that:
Simon Winchester is a best-selling British author living in Massachusetts and New York City.
Heartfelt apologies from Britain to Massachusetts and New York City. Apparently American culture is itself sufficiently un-Americanised for Winchester to find it livable in. Winchester has a new book out, which looks rather creepy. Let’s all not buy it.
Most readers will know about Detlev Schlichter and his book Paper Money Collapse. Some readers will know about Max Keiser who presents The Keiser Report on Russia Today. Yes, Russia Today. Doesn’t sound good does it?
Well, it is not all bad. Keiser does predict global economic collapse (the non-badness here being that his prediction is (I think) correct). He does blame central banks and their printing of money. He does point out that what we are seeing at the moment is very definitely not capitalism. He does interview a good number of libertarians such as Peter Schiff. And he does advocate the ownership of gold and silver.
But then things start to go downhill again. He forever blames the global situation on “banksters” and their “fraudulent” ways. While apparently being in favour of capitalism he still manages to lambast any attempt to control government spending. The UK coalition government’s austerity programme, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and the Tea Party have all been criticised by him. He also seems to believe in global warming or to be more accurate: CAGWIT (that’s my new acronym: Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming Inspired Tyranny, by the way). And he interviews a whole bunch of nutters including Keynesians and anti-Israelis.
The other night he interviewed the distinctly non-nutty Detlev Schlichter. The good news is that Schlichter managed to get most of his main points across (now if only he were allowed to do that on the BBC!)…
…The bad news is that during the interview Keiser made his usual remarks about fraud (at about 20:00). And Schlichter said nothing or, at least, nothing in response. Now I appreciate that Schlichter is new to this kind of thing and that he has a book to sell but I think he should have at least said something. To acquiesce while Keiser makes his outrageous claims, to my mind, gives the impression of agreement.
Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight’s economics editor (and the guy who fronted that Keynes v Hayek radio show we’ve blogged about here), picks Detlev Schlichter’s Paper Money Collapse as one of his five economics books to give people for Christmas.
Mason begins his Guardian piece thus:
Two questions predominate in this year’s slew of books on economics. The first is the most obvious: how do we get out of this mess? It’s a question that has set authors along many roads but they all lead to the same destination: a bigger role for the state and the need for renewed international co-operation.
Which, alas, explains why Detlev Schlichter is so pessimistic about good sense prevailing in financial policy before ruin engulfs us all. The world’s rulers have pushed the world slowly but surely into a huge hole, and all that Mason’s authors (aside from Schlichter) can recommend is digging the hole ever deeper.
A “bigger role for the state” is not the solution to the world’s problems just now. That is the problem, and it has been for many decades.
At least Schlichter’s kind of thinking is getting around, and, as this piece by Mason proves, in some somewhat surprising places. Mason may not fully understand Austrian economics to the point of actually agreeing with it, but he does seem (as I said towards the end of this earlier posting) to respect it. He knows it is saying something important.
Schlichter has been unwavering in his pessimism about the world getting “out of this mess” and he is being proved more right with every week that passes. When total ruin does arrive, we can only hope that he and people with similar opinions to his will then be listened to rather more.
“…Journalism is a trade, not a profession; the idea that its practitioners should be licensed, that it should be a closed shop that only people who have passed a test can enter; and that a politically created quango can determine who is “right” and who is “wrong” and should therefore be banned is appalling and dangerous. It is a sure route to eliminating free speech and ensuring that only “approved” views can be aired. These days, there is a continuum between a lone tweeter or blogger with a dozen followers to a star broadcaster who speaks to 10m people every day. One cannot arbitrarily draw a line between journalism and non-journalism any more. All should be protected by free speech; all should be held responsible for what they write or say.”
Allister Heath, talking about the disgusting idea of a UK Labour Party shadow cabinet member to licence journalism. It is important to note – as Samizdata regular Guy Herbert has from a Facebook comment I saw, that the sins of someone like Johann Hari would not have been picked up had he ticked all the right boxes by attending a J-school.
As Brian Micklethwait notes below, it appears the Labour leadership has disowned the idea – so far. You know how it goes: an idea is floated, is immediately rejected by the senior folk, but gradually keeps getting more and more traction.
I cannot overstate my loathing for the political class in this country. Glenn Reynolds says of the US equivalent that it is the worst political class since before the US Civil War (not exactly an encouraging thought). God knows what sort of epoch we can compare this lot to in the UK.
You could live decades in Manhattan and still be surprised by what its vibrant capitalism throws up at you. Last weekend I got an invite to go along to a party that was raising money for some charity cause, although I was not one of the ones there to be a high roller. Let us just say I got in via the journalists back door since one of the celebrity guests was a Fox News personality who was also a friend of my usual Manhattan drinking buddy. It should come as no surprise to long time readers that when in New York I chill with journalists, spacers and the odd Irish musician.
I knew it was going to be interesting before I met up with Taylor Dinerman at the usual media waterhole, but on the some thirty block walk we were lost in discussions about typical fighter pilot behavior with the fair sex, space policy and which foot Paul Krugman is currently inserting. I was expecting something exceptional but when I finally walked over to the railing of the rooftop party I was not quite prepared for a night time view of New York like this. It is really different when you can see the city laid out in front of you in every direction and yet you are close enough to be struck by the full three dimensions. I can hardly imagine what waking up to this every day must be like, but I am glad to know there are people out there who do.
A Northerly view of the Chrysler building and surrounds.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
The party had the standard accoutrements. If you simply looked at the bar man serving drinks from a table by the core wall, or at the disk jockey in the corner, it would look like the standard parties we have all attended. The DJ laid down a modern sound track to insure all would eat, drink, be merry and network till they dropped. I was of course doing just that. I handed out Immortal Data Corporation business cards to all and sundry while keeping up my energy from the passing trays of hors d’oeuvres. I do not think I had a repeat taste all evening.
The disk jockey kept the place rocking, or whatever you call it with dance music.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Being the spacer that I am, my actual first photograph of the night was the stunning image of a fall moon rising over the East River from a southeasterly direction. A mere photograph cannot come close to what the eye took in. Believe me, this poor small subset of photons does not come close to doing it justice.
The view of the moon was even more amazing in person.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Later on, after several drinks and much mixing I decided to temporarily break from the crowd, and that was when I discovered the flat was even more spectacular than I had thought. This is where Tony Stark would live if he owned a flat in Manhattan. No doubt about it.
This is not one of Tony Stark’s residences. But it should be.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Taylor and I mostly talked with media folk, although there were lots of financial types there as well, with some of which we also spoke. I knew Taylor was fluent in French and Hebrew. Tonight I found him talking at length in German to a businessman and doing the occasional phrase in Mandarin. We were also joined by James Taranto of the Wall Street journal after he returned from a quiet far corner where he did a radio show call in to express his opinion of the latest Krugman piece at the New York Times.
One of the more fun people I spoke to was a woman who started her career as an NPR reporter assigned to Belfast. She was there in the seventies, well before my time, but we still had much common knowledge to share as she was a lover of Irish Traditional music and I think it fair to say that a few of my close friends in Ireland can play or sing a note or two of that genre.
I was there with journalist and occasional Samidatista contributor Taylor Dinerman.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
It was a very international crowd, although it is sometimes hard to tell in New York. Someone who you think looks foreign may come out with a strong New York accent when they say hello… or they may speak with a strong accent from some odd corner of the world. You simply cannot tell.
Late in the evening Taylor and I were sipping our drinks and talking Chinese politics with a VP of Tang Dynasty TV, Mike Chen. He is very much the all American himself but is able to travel and mix in China and the three of us were off in a Samizdata like discussion of China’s economy, ethnic strife problems, what happens when the North Korean penny drops, why China is building forces, what sort of aircraft India is buying and why…
I think it rather suitable that drinks in hand, we were looking down upon the United Nations Building from our high capitalist perch.
I have always looked down on the UN as an institution. But from here I really did look down on it.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Oh, and we had a chance to talk with Rita Cosby, an old friend of Taylor’s from Fox News, before he and I and James went off for our rather late dinner at McFadden’s Bar.
Despite the Corona’s, the wine, the rum and cokes, and the Johnny Walker I had already downed, or perhaps because of them, I decided after my dinner pint of Guinness that I could not let that poor pint feel lonely. So when they headed home, I headed further down Second Avenue to an old hangout of mine. The rest of the night (and pints) is another story and I was off duty as your Samizdata On The Scene reporter.
Correction: I mistakenly wrote in an earlier version of this that Hari was being sent on a course at the expense of his employer, but that is not so. He is paying for it himself. I am still not quite sure how this helps: do you need to learn how to be honest? Maybe he should read some books on ethics instead. Anyway, the error was mine.
Reading this comment about the revolting Johann Hari, a journalist who fabricated interviews and, well, basically made stuff up, I am still stunned that he has not been fired by his current employer. Instead, the creep writes a sort of mea culpa and is attending a course to learn about journalism. He should have been fired, in my opinion. There are thousands of talented people trying to make a career in the media; why should this shit be allowed to stay in the business?
Of course, in a free market, he should be able to do what he likes so long as he does so not at my expense, so I would, for example, object if he ever got a job working for the BBC, which is funded by a tax. But this sorry saga does rather suggest that if you are a leftie, self-styled preacher of idealism like Hari, that you can get away with a lot.
Here is a blog, with the beguiling title of Splintered Sunrise, by a man who obviously swings to that side of the political spectrum who is rightly appalled by Hari and his antics.
Sometimes it pays to call a spade a spade. Johann Hari is a conman. End of subject.
Christina Odone, who was on the receiving end of Hari’s behaviour, is unimpressed.
If this lowlife ever resurfaces in journalism, he should be referred to as “Johann Hari, the plagiarist”, in much the same way as Paul Krugman is sometimes dubbed “the former Enron advisor”.
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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