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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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It is Labor Day here in the US, and the inimitable Mark Steyn, as usual, hits the nail on the head in a delightful column extolling the virtues of capitalism and the purblind idiocy of the hard left:
The transformation of Labour Day, from a celebration of workers’ solidarity to a cook-out, is the perfect precis of the history of Anglo-American capitalism.
The new received wisdom — forcefully articulated by, among others, Maude Barlow’s Council of Canadians at the laugh-a-minute 2002 Johannesburg “Earth Summit” — is that the masses themselves are the problem. To the irritation of their self-appointed spokespersons, the oppressed masses refuse to stay oppressed. If they were still down in the basement chained to the great turbines, all would be well. But, instead, they insist on moving out of their tenements, getting homes with non-communal bathrooms, giving up the trolley car, putting a deposit down on a Honda Civic and driving to the mall. When it was just medieval dukes swanking about with that kind of high-end consumerist lifestyle, things were fine: That was “sustainable” prosperity.
There’s no such thing as “sustainable” development. Human progress and individual liberty have advanced on the backs of one unsustainable development after another: When we needed trees for heating and transportation, we chopped ’em down. Then we discovered oil, and the trees grew back. When the oil runs out, we won’t notice because our SUVs will be powered by something else. Bet on human ingenuity every time. We’re not animals, and it’s a cult as deranged as the screwiest fringe religion to insist we are. Earth’s most valuable resource is us.
The whole article is a wonderfully wicked skewering of modern-day tribunes of the oppressed. I will confirm from personal experience Mark’s observation that speaking with a trade unionist is a disorienting experience. Bare, unvarnished Marxism/Leninism is still on display, with much talk about oppression of workers and the evils of capitalism. Mind you, the average union worker is more likely to be oppressed by the credit card debt he ran up buying a new boat and widescreen TV than by his boss, but nevermind…
Oh no I couldn’t possibly. No, no, no, no. No, never. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand? I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I shouldn’t. Not me. Not now. I said n………oh, well if you insist:
Hillary Clinton, the darling of the Democratic Party, is under growing pressure to make a late bid for the White House in 2004 from supporters who believe that only she can defeat George W Bush.
There will be no shortage of Americans willing and eager to step up and testify about the depths of loathing this woman incites in ‘fly-over country’. I am sure they would be right. But it would be foolhardy to ignore all those legions of baby-boomers with retirement on their minds. You don’t have to be liked to win elections (see either of Messrs.T.Blair or J.Chirac for details).
Jane Galt has a thought-provoking post on the structural instability of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are a veritable festival of interest groups: unions, teachers, minorities, feminists, gay groups, environmentalists, etc. Each of these groups has a litmus test without which they will not ratify a candidate: unfettered support for abortion, against vouchers, against ANWAR drilling, whatever. A lot of groups means a lot of litmus tests, because with the possible exception of the teachers, no one group is powerful enough to swing an election by themselves.
. . . .
But the larger problem is that those interest groups are increasingly coming into conflict. African-americans want vouchers, but the more powerful teacher’s union says no. Latinos trend strongly pro-life, but don’t let NARAL catch them at it. Environmentalists want stricter standards that cost union members jobs. The more interest groups under the tent, the looser the grip the party has on any one group. And as social security and medicare turn into the sucking chest wound of the budget, the money for the programs that Democratic politicians have traditionally used to cement those interest groups to them is disappearing.
One can only hope. While I have little use for Republicans, I can at least sympathize with the tattered remains of their fiscal conservative wing, and they do occasionally put up a proposal, like tax cuts, that I can actively support. I honestly cannot remember the last major Democratic proposal that I supported – the Democrats are truly, through and through, the party of state expansion. In their eyes, there is no protruding nail that cannot, and should not, be battered down with hammer of the State. Even their lone “civil liberties” plank – the right to abortion – is shot through with inconsistency and has morphed into a demand for state funding, support, protection, and promotion of abortion. I would shed no tears for the collapse of the Democratic “coalition,” or for the less likely collapse of the Republicans.
I hope it is time for one of the periodic great realignments in American politics. Certainly, the collapse of one of the two major political power centers is a necessary precondition for such a realignment. The current polarities reflected in the two dominant parties are hopelessly blurred iterations of the class struggles of the ’30s, for crying out loud. A realignment might serve to create parties that will debate the one true issue of politics – the scope and power of the State. Currently, this issue is simply out of phase with the structure and ingrained habits and positions of the parties, as a result of which both consistently plump for a larger and more intrusive State. For chrissake, even tax cuts are sold with a pitch that the economic growth they will trigger will in turn result in increased government revenues.
Without an historic realignment of the political parties that channel and mold preference into politics into policy, the growth of the State in the US will continue unabated.
According to the new FBI statistics, violent crime in the US just keeps falling. It’s down 50% in the last decade.
“Right to carry” laws also became very common in the last decade. There couldn’t possibly be a connection could there?
Have you had a bad day? Got a problem? Is your life a mess? Are you sick? Lame? Poor? Lonely? Unemployed? Or are you just fed up, listless and overwhelmed with feelings of exhaustion and hopelessness?
Well, you can always vent your frustrations by blaming your troubles on George W. Bush. Why not? Everyone else does. For everything. From perished pensioners in Paris to stubbed toes in Sarajevo to nosebleeds in Nairobi there is not a misfortune or a twist of cruel fate anywhere on the face of this planet that cannot be laid squarely at the varnished door of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
And this is all because that current occupant of the most important office in that august building went and ‘tore up the Kyoto Treaty’; the modern equivalent of snapping a ju-ju stick. Thus has Mr.Bush incurred the wrath of the angry spirits.
Of course, George Bush did not ‘tear up’ the Kyoto Treaty at all (which is a shame because it deserves to be torn up). But that doesn’t matter. We’re not dealing in truth here, we’re delving the murky, opaque depths of mythology and superstition. George Bush is for the modern left/green axis what the devil was for medieval peasants.
Perhaps Mr.Bush (or his advisers at any rate) is aware of this and decided to take advantage of the situation. After all, if you’ve been cast as the devil, you may as well go ahead and live up to the role:
The Bush administration plans to open a huge loophole in America’s air pollution laws, allowing an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity.
Critics of draft regulations due to be unveiled by the US environmental protection agency next week say they amount to a death knell for the Clean Air Act, the centrepiece of US regulation.
The rules could represent the biggest defeat for American environmentalists since the Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto Treaty on global warming two years ago. But the energy industry welcomed them, saying they were essential for maintaining coal-fired power stations.
Now a word of caution here: the link is to the Guardian so the story may not be true at all. It may just be the product of their febrile imaginations (Next week: “Bush adds fresh babies to Whitehouse menu”). However, I certainly hope it is true and not just because it would mean good news for US industry and prosperity but also because it drives home the old lesson that being hated has its definite advantages. At a stroke, George Bush will have lifted a millstone from the neck of his country without doing the slightest harm to either his reputation or chances of re-election.
The devil may not have all the best tunes. He just has the freedom to whistle them.
One of the premier rent-seekers in the US, Jesse Jackson, appears to be off his game. Jesse has long run what amounts to a protection racket, in which he threatens to invoke the anti-discrimination laws and boycotts against any company that doesn’t pony up to one of his phony charities.
To take one gruesome example from the book: In 1981, Mr. Jackson struck up a “covenant” with Coca-Cola in which the company not only agreed to change overseas policies but, more to the point, provided profitable distributorships to black businessmen–including Mr. Jackson’s half-brother, Noah Robinson, later convicted of racketeering, drug trafficking and murder-by-hire.
However, Jesse has made a number of gaffes and missteps in recent years that may have undercut his little empire.
His shot at the membership policies of the Augusta National Golf Club had flown straight into a water hazard. His complaints about the jokes in the movie “Barbershop” were dismissed as raving. And it wasn’t so long ago that he was outed for his close and fruitful relations with a female staff member of his Citizenship Educational Fund, a scandal that occasioned a trip into the political wilderness that lasted most of a weekend. Finally, Kenneth Timmerman’s “Shakedown,” published last year, detailed his lucrative intimidation habits, with Mr. Jackson threatening charges of racism unless corporations adjusted their policies and gave “willingly” to various causes.
The sooner Jesse disappears from the public stage, the better off we will all be. Let’s hope that day is coming soon.
Mr Schwarzenegger has been avoiding stating his proposed policies, to reduce California’s debt mountain, in his play for the California state governorship role, and he’s had a public row with Warren Buffet, his economics adviser, on property taxes. But even if just for Friday entertainment value, check out these latest quotes:
“I feel the people of California have been punished enough. From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet they’re taxed.”
Zing!
“I teach my children not to spend more money than they have. That’s what I will teach Sacramento.”
Bosh!
Combine those sound-bites with some he delivered a few days ago:
“I am more comfortable with an Adam Smith philosophy than with Keynesian theory.”
Splat!
“I still believe in lower taxes — and the power of the free market.”
Yowzer!
Ok, until someone can actually nail him down on his policies, we must reserve judgement on the larger-than-life mega-star, especially as he keeps neatly side-stepping the really difficult questions on taxation with a “we can never say never” line. But if you retain even the slightest Churchillian belief that democracy is the least bad of all of the systems of government, things are becoming increasingly interesting in the Golden State.
And Mr Arnold “Arnie” Rimmer, of the future mining space ship Red Dwarf, is certainly getting plenty of newspaper headlines to cut out and keep, to impress all of his friends with!
Having just recovered from the shock of hearing about David Carr’s illegal tomato seeds, I’ve stumbled this morning across an even madder tax scam, this time originating from among our American friends in Seattle, in Washington State.
Apparently, and I’m still struggling to believe it, there’s a proposal to put a 10-cent coffee tax on every cup of espresso sold in the City of Seattle, to raise money for pre-school child care.
That’s Tax-tastic!
So what’s the alleged tax linkage between espresso coffee and pre-school child care? Linkage? Heck, we don’t need linkage. Here’s what John Burbank said, the man behind the proposed tax:
“I go into these places every day. One of the good things about Seattle is we love our coffee and we love our kids. So let’s make that connection.”
Has anyone reminded Mr Burbank that this is the land of the Boston Tea Party? I think someone should.
And while we’re waiting for the tax to go through, is Frasier available? I think I need a consultation to prevent early-onset total madness. The screens, please nurse. Quickly!
While I’m there in the recovery room, kids, you better watch out. One day, in the US, it’s a coffee tax. The next day, in the UK, it’s a Tetley Tea tax! Maybe those fine people in Boston won’t be the last ones to revolt over caffeine-based refreshments?
Blogger and Canadian writer Colby Cosh tells us why he is a libertarian in one of those don’t-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry stories.
Yes, you read that right–an officer enforcing a health regulation ordered a club for recovering alcoholics to get a liquor license. But wait–it gets worse. The club’s application was turned down by the province.
Read, as the man says, the whole thing.
I was probably one of the first in Europe to hear about the US blackout. I’ve customers in Manhattan. One of them rang me in Belfast as soon as she determined not only her Upper West flat, but also her Chinatown server rack were both affected. She has a big UPS but no backup generator. It just isn’t feasible for a facility her size. I advised an immediate controlled shutdown.
It seems government officials were announcing “this wasn’t a terrorist incident” almost before people like my customer completed their emergency procedures. I found and still find this strange. It may well be true. It probably is true, but the haste to discount the possibility was unseemly.
Terrorism and sabotage are not necessarily spectacular events. It doesn’t take a bombing or an armed attack to bring down a power grid. In 1964 the East Coast power grid came down all by itself. It was due to a cascade of protective shutdowns after a “First Cause” failure. That may be the case this week as well, but we don’t know yet. A sudden reversal of power flow on the Lake Erie power loop occurred instants before the cascading failures began. That is sufficient information to tell us absolutely nothing.
Thus unarmed with facts, I will now sally forth into the vacuum of hard data and suggest some attack scenarios.
The Saboteur. Someone with appropriate knowledge may have penetrated a targeted power facility and simply thrown a few switches. A “mole” at a power station would be best, but power stations are not Fort Knoxen. A trained agent could probably get in and out of some “weakest link” facility somewhere without being detected.
Does anyone remember the incident of November 11, 2001 (see Charleston Daily Mail, “Guard Chases Men Near Power Plant”) during which a security guard slugged a person attempting to enter power plant grounds from the river?
The Hack. Someone could have cracked a power company control system and “adjusted” a few things. I once authored software systems for control of large building complexes. Most such systems have queues of time based actions. If an attacker penetrated several systems, they could insert minor events synchronized to milliseconds. Even the actual queue insertions could be handled by stealthy, pre-positioned “Trojan Horse” programs. An innocuous looking message could trigger the countdown sequence. The trigger could be sent from anywhere on the planet. Perhaps the Microsoft worm was a diversion.
Each event on it’s own would be insignificant, but the sum of all could be a big problem.
A trail might be left, but it would be difficult to uncover if there was a dispersed attack. If only one site were involved it would be much easier to find evidence both because the source of the First Cause would be pin-pointed and because the event itself would be out of the ordinary.
If the attackers were moderately good they would leave a trail only discoverable by computer forensics. The critical computer log entries would be gone unless printed on paper as they occured… or if they were intended to be found.
These scenarios are an intellectual exercise. Taking down a power grid is an annoyance but doesn’t accomplish anything in and of itself. There has been no “other” event connected to it. No claims of holding American infrastructure under threat. No major attack during the early blackout confusion. No operational movements and pre-setting of people or material… hmmm.
Just thought I’d keep y’all worryin’ over there!
Virginia Postrel’s latest NY Times column highlights what may become a growing weakness in the regulatory state.
Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as someone who “knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” To many people, that sounds like an economist or an executive.
But Wilde’s witticism ignores what prices do. They convey information about how people value different goods, including the intangibles an aesthete like Wilde would care about most.
. . .
Public policy often regards aesthetic value as illegitimate or nonexistent. This oversight comes less from ideological conviction than from technocratic practice. Unlike prices, regulatory policy requires articulated justifications and objective standards. So policy makers emphasize measurable factors and ignore subjective pleasures.
As the info-industrial economy advances, the regulatory state will look increasingly out of step and, one hopes, irrelevant and undesirable. Regulation is all about conformity, and while top down conformity might appear to be tolerable in a society that is struggling to make ends meet, one hopes that it will become increasingly intolerable as it becomes more of a barrier to the kinds of pleasure-seeking and self-realization that people are willing to go to great lengths to achieve when they have the means to do so. As Ms. Postrel points out, the pricing mechanism of the market lets people pursue these essentially aesthetic ends as far as they want (or can afford), while top-down policy-driven efficiencies all too often preclude these pursuits.
Future debates over the regulatory state may play out as a struggle between the competing values of risk-aversion and efficiency on the one hand, and self-individuation and aesthetics on the other.
A cascade of power blackouts have hit the north eastern USA and parts of Canada, causing widespread chaos. It was also reported that due to the power cuts, the United Nations building in New York City has been closed.
So, not entirely bad news then.
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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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