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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…It’s the RIGHTS, stupid…
[Editors note: The ubiquitous Mommabear has written in and decided to stick one of her fragrant paws into the BlogWarstm maelstrom]
Everyone seems to forget that, in the beginning, middle, and end, it boils down to:
The Constitution of The United States of America starts out and continues to enumerate the Rights of The People that are The Given in a set of constructed rules. It does NOT say that these Rights are something that the formation of a government created. Instead, it says that they exist and must be acknowledged before anything else can proceed. Most people argue about them from a backward direction, thereby inducing fatal errors into their arguments.
MommaBear
One of the most appealing things about working with Libertarian Samizdata is the opportunity to show the many faces of the libertarian philosophy and the people behind it. Libertarians aren’t a bunch of humourless ideologues who spend all their time pondering pin heads. We’re real people who love liberty because we love life and desire to live it to the fullest. We play music, do sports, ride bikes, drive fast cars, ski, fly airplanes, get drunk, fall in love, go to churches or not, read porn or not, and believe it or not, party until dawn with our non-libertarian friends… without ever once mentioning politics.
If you come to us looking for an enlightenment or a revealed truth you will be very disappointed. Rather than answers, we give you questions; rather than proscriptions we tell you to think and to take responsibility for your own life. Of course if you do find comfort in some strange -ism you might find us a community tolerant of whatever strangeness you believe… so long as you do it peacefully.
Libertarianism does have core ideas and core beliefs. No one can be a libertarian without accepting the noncoercion principle. You must accept that I have a right to do anything I damn well please so long as I do not threaten you with direct violence to person or property and I use resources acquired honestly to do whatever it is I wish to do. I can’t use force, fraud or theft to take from you what I “need” for my lifestyle. I am both free to act as I please and wholly responsible for the results. If you are certain I’m a damn fool and will probably kill myself, you are free to attempt to talk me out of my bad behavior if you can get me to listen voluntarily. Otherwise you will have to wait until reality teaches me its’ harsh lessons. If the time comes when I am ready and contrite enough to beg for help and if you are of good enough heart to assist, you are free to do so.
Alternatively, if I attempt to steal from you or threaten you, it is your right to use whatever force is necessary to stop me even if it means my death. Libertarians are not pacifists. You are always in the right when you defend your person and property and loved ones against those who would do them harm.
Understanding non-coercion as an idea is the simple part. But ideas are fuzzy things when brought across the dream bridge to the physical world, a world in which maniacs fly airplanes into office buildings. What action does a libertarian take against a threat like that? The extremes are easy to judge. Few libertarians would agree that we should have had troops in Somalia or Panama. Most would agree that September 11th, 2001 and December 7th, 1941 were sufficient causus belli for any society, libertarian or otherwise. Some don’t and that is their right.
There are numerous philosophical strands that wend their way through the space of ideas and dump their passengers in pretty much the same location. If one thinks of ideas as points in space, then libertarians are those who are neighbors in that thought-space. Each will have their own unique perspective on how and why they ended up there.
However different our journeys we have all ended up with similar ideas. A belief that individuals know better what is good for them than any collective; that more individual liberty leads to better, happier lives; that government intervention even with the best of intentions fails to deliver the goods; that the vast majority of the several billion humans on this planet are decent, honourable and just plain nice.
If you’re really curious about us, try taking this little quiz. It’s not perfect, it’s probably not scientific, but you’ll come away from it with a sense of what all these crazy libertarians believe in. And who knows? Maybe you’re one of us.
Over on National Review, Jonah Goldberg remains in the hole and appears to be digging with all his might. He writes in The Libertarian Lie:
Virginia Postrel suspects that my “anti-libertarian outbursts” stem from a desire to get her and other libertarians to link to my site. Well, we can put aside the suggestion that it’s a web-traffic bonanza to get linked on something called “Libertarian Samizdata” (I actually lose traffic when I indulge my anti-libertarian bent). But Postrel seems to believe my arguments are so silly that they’re better explained by some sort of cynical ploy.
Gosh, I wonder why she might think that? Could it be that she actually has a genuine objective philosophical underpinning to her ideas? Just a guess.
In fact, he makes libertarianism sound like a warm bath you can slip into to melt all your political cares and concerns away. And that’s all fine. Except for the fact that when criticized, all of a sudden libertarianism becomes this deeply complex body of thought with all sorts of Kantian categories and esoteric giggling about “rational fallibility” flying all about (many of my blogger critics actually sound like self-parodies). On offense, you guys are like the “Drink Me” bottle in Alice in Wonderland, or Morpheus’s pill in The Matrix. But on defense, you turn on the smoke machines and cloud the room up with faculty-lounge verbiage. You can’t have it both ways.
Of course not for a moment did I expect Goldberg to actually recognize Karl Popper‘s theory of rational falliblism. Those sort of ideas inevitably lead to the rejection of irrational dogmatism of the sort which underpins Mr. Goldberg’s flavour of anti-intellectual intuitive conservatism. So what does his defence upon finding his views challenged intellectually amount to? “No fair! You’re using big words!”
Thank you for living up to my expectations, Jonah. And by the way, if you are going to insult the Samizdata, you could at least have given us a link! Sheesh.
I have had a wave of interesting e-mails from Samizdata.net readers about the fallacious Jonah Goldberg missive ‘Freedom Kills’ and my reply to it. Whilst there were a variety of incoming views on the matter, it does seem everyone is queuing around the block with their baseball bats eager to take a swing at the dangling Goldberg piñata.
Let me address just two of the e-mails. Sarah Walker from New Zealand writes (excerpt):
The way I see it, you let him off easy. Rather than just pointing out his glaring errors, you need to emphasize that what he is objecting to is the libertarian antipathy to civic coercion and his implicit authoritarianism. Libertarians such as myself who take the rational ‘fallibilism’ approach, think that whilst truth is objective, it is also conjectural, therefore realise the foolishness of imposing by force what can only ever be conjecture. That is ‘cultural’ libertarianism. It means that we do not accept every demented belief just because it makes us feel good, merely that we reject dogmatism and its political manifestations, such as conservatism and socialism. A libertarian may say ‘if you want to go join the Taliban/become a Christian/believe the moon is made of cheese, I am not going to stop you doing that’, yet that is not the same as saying ‘because all ideologies are the same’. I think the Taliban are evil tyrants, that Christianity is irrational superstition and that the moon is not made of cheese, and I will strongly argue my views, ridiculing the Taliban, Christianity and the idea of cheddar cheese moons. Yet I have no problem tolerating these idiotic beliefs in others (unless they intend to do violence to me) even though I believe I am correct and they are not.
Mark Wells similarly bristles at the Goldberg article but he also takes issue with one of my remarks in which I said “Almost everything [Goldberg] ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis”. Mark writes (excerpt):
Maybe not. What Mr. Goldberg calls “find[ing] whichever creed or ideology fits us best” seems to be common among libertarians: evaluating creeds and ideologies and finding one (or a combination of several) that fits our experience, instead of just committing to one at random. “You want to be a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? Sure, mix and match, man; we don’t care.” His objection is not to moral relativism; it’s to independent thought that cuts across the boundaries of tradition. Goldberg makes this clear in his attack on Nick Gillespie: Gillespie keeps going beyond [disdain for identity politics], and argues that people should be able to be whatever they want.” What does Goldberg think they should be able to be? Why can’t one be, for example, a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? In Goldberg’s analysis, it’s not because he believes there’s a logical contradiction in such a worldview but because he thinks it’s disloyal. Different traditions ought to remain separate, so as to spare people like Goldberg the trouble of thinking about them. Goldberg writes: There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.)–only personal ones.” If Goldberg’s idea of a ‘universal truth’ is the authority of tradition or patriotism on a grand scale, many libertarians would indeed reject it.
I think both Sarah and Mark make good points even if not all libertarians would subscribe to all their views (many libertarians are indeed Christians). One of the reasons I said “Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis” [emphasis added] is that he is correct about a few things but grossly misinterprets what they actually mean. Libertarians do not view all ideologies as equal, however they take a non-dogmatic approach (at least the Popperians like Sarah do, pace Ayn) and as free thinkers are willing to examine a wider variety of cultural influences than Goldberg seems to think is healthy, seeing as we view choice as having intrinsic value. For example when Goldberg claims:
Virginia Postrel can write triumphantly that the market allows Americans to spend $8 billion on porn and $3 billion at Christian bookstores, because she isn’t willing to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.
Yet it is clear Virginia Postrel is indeed making a judgement, just not the particular one that Goldberg thinks is at issue. What she is saying simply does not pertain to either Christianity or porn and contrary to what Goldberg thinks, that is far from being a lack of “willing[ness] to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.” Au contraire, Jonah. I do not know Virginia Postrel personally yet it is abundantly clear what she means. It is a clear statement that what is of value here is not the porn or the Christian books but the value of a society based around having THE CHOICE. It’s that whole liberty thing again.
Jonah Goldberg over on National Review Online writes in Freedom Kills, one of the least informed articles about libertarianism I have read in a long time. Frankly I have read better from the ghastly Noam Chomsky, which is just about the biggest insult I have written in a very long time. The sheer depth of his complete and utter lack of understanding of what underpins libertarianism is summed up thus in two paragraphs:
In this sense, cultural libertarians are less bigoted than their liberal cousins. The libertarians think all ideologies – so long as there’s no governmental component – are equal.
Huh? So let me get this straight. People who are profoundly influenced by Ayn Rand or Karl Popper or Murray Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe et al, think all ideologies are the same? Has this guy ever actually met a libertarian in real life? What breathtaking ignorance of the subject about which he opines. If anything, libertarians only think all non-libertarian ideologies are the same in so far as they reject them as just so much morally subjective crap. Libertarians are the very antithesis of what he calls ‘liberals’ in that respect, hardly what he sneeringly calls “cousins”.
But of course, the flip side of this is that cultural libertarianism is essentially a form of arrogant nihilism. There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.) � only personal ones. According to cultural libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick from across the vast menu of human diversity – from all religions and cultures, real and imagined � until we find one that fits our own personal preferences.
Now due to the fact libertarianism comes in many hyphenated forms, it is risky to generalize about ‘what all libertarians think’, but overwhelmingly they operate on the basis of objective epistemology (look it up, Jonah), typically of the Randian or Popperian type. As a consequence they strongly advocate objective morality as the only basis for legitimacy, rather than subjective prejudice-based state centred coercion of the sort Goldberg seems to think holds American culture together. If you hold that morality can only be valid on the basis of objective knowledge, how can we also be “believing in absolutely nothing , until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best”? Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis.
At one point Goldberg says about himself “if I were smarter and more patient […]”, well Jonah, there is little chance any libertarian reading your incoherent rant would have thought otherwise on either point. Try actually reading Ethics of Liberty first (gawd knows there is enough about Rothbard to criticise, just not the on the grounds Goldberg does).
Addendum: Will Wilkinson on the enigmatically named The Fly Bottle also has no less that two excellent skewerings of the ignorant Mr. Goldberg’s dismal offering.
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Thanks (sort of) to Hannah Biel for pointing me at the Goldberg article. I have been grinding my teeth as a result for the last few hours.
Once more, Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit takes conspiracy theorists and the ludicrous Tony Benn to task for incoherent thinking
I am having a bit of an argument with a friend at the moment. Among a number of other things, he insists that the U.S. is fighting this war for oil, as stated some time ago by Tony Benn. This latest conspiracy to do the rounds is getting really irritating. For I thought that perhaps we are at war simply because the Al-Qaida terrorist network, which we understand to be aided and abetted by their puppet Taliban regime, were the cause of the attacks on the WTC on September 11, not to mention the Pentagon attack, and a possible attack on the White House through Flight 93.
However, should Adil mistakenly think such convoluted interpretations are the exclusive preserve of Islam’s wacko fringe and their secular socialist counterparts such as Anthony Wedgewood Benn, that is not the case. Alas similar dark prognostications can be found in the more loopy eddies of libertarian thought as well.
One example is Emmanuel Goldstein of Airstrip One, who is a well thought out, largely coherent quasi-libertarian who writes a lot of very good and insightful stuff. Yet it seems to me he become unhinged at the first whiff of US or UK military involvement in pretty much anything. I realise he thinks me far too trusting of the state (a novel concept for me) but I regard his approach, like that of many Muslim conspiracy theorists, as a ‘theory of reflexive disbelief’ rather than one of skeptical rational analysis.
Of course the irony of sharing some aspects of world view with Emmanual’s strain of libertarianism might be lost on Muslim extremists, unless they also have a sense of humour. I certainly think it is funny.
I just got around to reading the PoliticalCompass.org FAQ in which they ‘answer’ the question of “You can’t be libertarian and left wing” by claiming otherwise. Well before we even start with the body of the FAQ that is, yet again, a false dichotomy. Why? Because libertarians are neither ‘left wing’ nor ‘right wing’. For my personal views on why ‘left’ and ‘right’ are just meta-contextual frames of reference which are really meaningless in actual ideological terms, read my Giving libertarianism a ‘left hook’. Allow me to casually dissect the FAQ:
This is almost exclusively an American response, overlooking the undoubtedly libertarian tradition of European anarcho-syndicalism. It was, after all, the important French anarchist thinker Proudhon who declared that property is theft.
For one, I am British. For another, PoliticalCompass.org was the subject of informal discussion at a well attended and very British Libertarian Alliance meeting a few months ago and it was treated with complete derision.
To describe anarcho-syndicalism as ‘libertarian’ is preposterous as there is no individual liberty to do anything or even exist beyond the collective’s needs. It is a system that refuses to recognize the existence, much less the possibility of ownership, of several property beyond that which you have immediate use of. Let me put it this way: if you claim you own something that you are not in actual use of, you are thereby depriving someone else of using it, the anarcho-syndicalists regard it as perfectly legitimate to use force to take your stored goods for the collective’s perceived good. None of this ‘freely entered contracts’ or ‘freely associated trading’ nonsense for them. Although claims are made to the contrary, you do not in reality even have the liberty of owning your own labour, as if you produce something, you cannot freely trade it with another individual and acquire several property with it. Anarcho-syndicalism is communal living that is enforced with violence against any who claim ownership of any means of production with sophistication beyond the level of the hunter-gatherer (i.e. nothing less that primitive tribal Communism implemented at a local, rather than national, level).
Yes, yes, I realise theorists will leap up and down to disagree with my characterisation of anarcho-syndicalism but when you boil away the inane verbiage, that is the truth. That the people at PoliticalCompass.org cannot grasp that individual liberty and anti-collectivism are the defining characteristic of libertarianism is just an indication of their lack of comprehension of the words they use.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the likes of Emma Goldman were identified as libertarians long before the term was adopted by some economic rightwingers. And what about the libertarian collectives of the mid-late 1800s and 1960s? Americans like Noam Chomsky can claim the label ‘libertarian socialist’ with the same validity that Milton Friedman can be considered a ‘libertarian capitalist’.
The concept of Chomsky, an apologist for the genocidal Khmer Rouge, as a libertarian is beyond parody. Presumably they regard a policy to slaughter class enemies by the million as a form of ‘liberty’ and hence libertarian? That they quote Chomsky is not surprising however. It is his linguistic theories that were to some extent responsible for the term ‘liberal’ changing meaning (in the USA) from an advocate of limited governance to a socialist. Chomsky is nothing less than an advocate of linguistic incoherence as the only non-oppressive way to use language. His views are best summed up as ‘Truth is Oppression’. Thus the name for Communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, was perfectly acceptable to him. Never mind that it was neither democratic nor a republic. Sure, Chomsky may have called himself a ‘libertarian’ but that does not make it true. PoliticalCompass.org use the word ‘libertarian’ in much the same way, stripping it of any meaning which inconveniently falls outside their own meta-context.
The assumption that Social Darwinism delivers more social freedom is questionable.
So here we are told that libertarians, by rejecting the welfare state, favour a system that will lead to less social freedom. That is of course the socialist (and fascist) view of the result of non-state centred society. But how does that change the fact that rejecting welfare states is indeed a view held by libertarians? All libertarians (and some conservatives) regard alternative ways of dealing with social problems as being better: ways that involve liberty rather than state imposed laws. If they do not think that, they are not libertarians.
Yet it is clear from the FAQ that PoliticalCompass.org think the alternative to a welfare state is people starving in the street rather than the growth of charitable institutions. Again, that is fine for socialists to think that…they are socialists after all. But for them to fail to understand that libertarians do not think that because a libertarian view of ‘social justice’ is based upon non-coercion is just proof that when they use the term ‘libertarian’ they do not actually know what they are talking about.
Which of these two views are correct is utterly irrelevant as all that matters within the context of what PoliticalCompass trying to do is to correctly characterise what the views associated with each label they bandy about actually is.
The welfare states of, for example, Denmark and The Netherlands, abolished capital punishment decades ago and are at the forefront of progressive legislation for women, gays and ethnic minorities – not to mention cannabis and anti-censorship. Such developments would presumably be envied by genuine libertarians in socially conservative countries – even if their taxes are lower.
It does not seem to occur to these people that genuine libertarians might not be any more at ease with ‘conservative’ statism that ‘socialist’ statism. So called ‘progressive’ legislation for women, gays and ethnic minorities are just more violence backed statist interposing between private social interactions: there is nothing ‘libertarian’ about that, regardless of how commendable or not the objective is.
I do not expect the socialists at PoliticalCompass.org to agree with libertarian views. But if they cannot even understand that the essence of the libertarian position is that state legislation (i.e. violence based government action) to mediate the nature of voluntary interpersonal civil relationships is the antithesis of social liberty, then they are so uninformed, so ignorant of the political spectra they are purporting to describe with their ‘compass’ as to be completely incoherent and worthless as a measure of anything. It is not a matter of whose world view is correct, just a matter of knowing what other people actually think.
…is a complete and utter load of bollocks. It claims to have a method of portraying a person’s political position outside the narrow confines of ‘left’ and ‘right’. Nice idea. It asks a series of questions to which you reply that you “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “agree” or “strongly agree”.
However just take the first question:
If globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations?
Sorry but my answer is both as that is a totally false dichotomy. Trade carried out by trans-national corporations does far more benefit than harm to ‘humanity’ (and we all know what that is a code word for… peasent farmers in Guatamala).
Or how about:
Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.
Again, a false dichotomy, so my answer is neither as unimpeded markets do both within the business cycle. The question also presupposes that either can be meaningfully ‘controlled’.
PoliticalCompass.org is just another group of flat-earth socialists using sloppy methodology to say nothing worthwhile about anything in particular. The questions are just a series of propositions based on a resolutely statist meta-contextual view of political dynamics. PoliticalCompass.org is not just irrelevant to libertarians, it is just plain irrelevant. I have no idea why worthy blogs like Andrew Sullivan and Daimnation give them the time of day. I guess they were slumming.
Tony Benn, who is an apologist for collectivist mass murderer Mao Tse-tung, is more ‘libertarian’ that Michael Portillo? These buffons do not know what ‘libertarian’ means. Also anarcho-syndicalism is not a form of libertarianism, it is a form of incoherent violence based communism. PoliticalCompass.org is a complete waste of pixels.
J. Baxter writes:
I am a conservative moving quickly into the libertarian camp. Libertarians are the last bastion of defense for the Constitution, I do believe, and watching the hysterical, knee-jerk reactions of both government and the social movers and shakers these last weeks since 11 September is alarming. The reactions of government beyond the military mode should leave little doubt in the rational mind that we long ago crossed over into socialism and so far away from the Constitution and the First Amendment, that little argument to the contrary remains.
That being said, the First Amendment as written…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
…should not be merely the whip by which the “religious right” are the ones flogged, but also in order, every time: Congress for screwing around with the free exercise of religion, or the freedom of speech (add and read that “internet”), and of the press (as they parrot the governmental line they should be severely chastised); the peaceable assembly of citizens who are just damn sick and tired of not being counted anymore unless redistricting or a new tax hike is in the works; and yet again the government for using every means possible to shut down the response of the citizenry, if even by demagoguery and the use of the press to further governmental schemes.
There exists an all out assault on the First Amendment, and even those who would defend it to the death deal with the assault piecemeal, rather than exposing the whole battle plan of whatever opposition. The first two amendments, and the 10th, are the targets, and as long as most Americans can live with their take-home pay and ignore the deductions, talk their faith only at church and not criticize any governmental official at any level (try it at the most local level and see the reaction), most Americans are as happy as clams.
Of course the American ire was aroused on 11 September. Home invasion causes such a reaction. But now I watch us being lulled back to sleep by the same governmental agencies responsible for this whole flipping mess anyway.
The blame is being shifted; every American is now a suspect (try getting on a plane these days), and it is little wonder that the prophet par excellence of our time is no one other than Charlie Daniels, who had the temerity to put to music the words:
I ain’t asking nobody for nothing,
if I can’t git it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m living,
you just leave this long-haired country boy alone
Amen, Charlie… hope your recovery is going well.
By J. Baxter
I just felt like posting this short piece from the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke that he wrote a few years ago.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights–the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery–hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
Quite so.
All libertarians need to remember that capitalism eventually leads to liberty but Capitalism is not a synonym for Libertarianism. Once a society introduces a degree of capitalism, it starts to produce more wealth and more knowledge than it previously did. As this society trades amongst itself, competition occurs and comparative advantages start to emerge between businesses. This produces an imperative for the owners of these businesses to change the way they function in order to minimise competitive disadvantages and exploit comparative advantages…and to do that they must be free to make decisions.
It is this that is the truly subversive thing about capitalism: in order to make it work, people with the knowledge of running the business (the ‘owners’) must be allowed to actually use that knowledge to directly implement changes in a dynamic manner and people must be allowed the choice to purchase what they produce. This of course means that the owners of the business/knowledge and the people who decide to acquire what they produce, are the ones who cause things to happen, rather than the force based state… but states like more wealth they can tax and so allow the wealth creators to create yet more wealth by their own efforts. The paradox is then that for the state to accumulate more resources and grow in size, it must allow power to pass from its hands. The economy gets larger and wealthier, the state gets larger and less relevant. If the state tries to rein in the capitalists, once the economy has become globalized, their ability to do so decays rapidly as capital itself is no longer captive.
Hence even a totalitarian state like China can introduce a tiny sliver of capitalism and, in the short term, the Communist power structure is seen to benefit from increased wealth and knowledge. Yet this early capitalism is a distorted creature, as much of the entrepreneurial talent being freed is still being largely diverted from wealth creation by the time required to navigate the endless maze of regulations and state imposed obstacles.
Similarly, many of the ‘new capitalists’ will be creating wealth not by filling dynamically derived market needs but by finessing obscure and often contradictory state regulations.
However the new capitalists will inevitably start exerting pressure for a relaxation of a regulation here, a redrafting of a law there, and thus the virus of liberty is spread. Capitalism is nothing less than the impersonal and unintentional carrier wave of liberty.
But it does show that capitalism can coexist with profoundly unfree states for a considerable amount of time… and in the meantime, capitalists in that state will try to profit from the state’s apparatus of repression as well as free themselves from its effects.
So every time you see the leering face of Larry Ellison on television pushing for the national ID cards that will make him millions of dollars, remember that just because a person is a capitalist, that does not automatically make him a friend to the broader liberty of society. Next time you see Larry Ellison or an Oracle product, just change the channel: he has plenty of competitors.
Christian Michel’s high quality libertarian site LIBERALIA has some new papers well worth reading:
Oneworldism: The Leviathan strikes back by Alberto Mingardi
Immigration: controversies, libertarian principles & modern abolition by Ken Schoolland
Down with the EU by Martin Stefunko
What should we do with the rich? The welfare state and the question of poverty by Christian Michel
The LIBERALIA website is one of those ‘must visit’ places on the Internet for libertarians. If you ever get the opportunity to hear Christian in person, he is an engaging speaker and a most congenial gentleman. Highly recommended.
All the papers on the LIBERALIA site are available in English and French.
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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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