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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Apologies for not flagging up sooner that I recently had a recorded conversation about Samizdata with Perry de Havilland. It took me over a week to edit the thing, by which I mean over a week to get around to stitching the two chunks it happened in together (I find everything involving computers to be hard until I know how to do it). And after posting about it on my blog, it has taken me another two days to mention it here. I had a busy weekend. But the mills of Samizdata grind small, and slowly. A week and a half’s delay will make no huge difference to the big picture, or to the meta-context as Perry likes to call it.
Anyway, click here to have a listen. It lasts about forty minutes.
Our conversation reminded me of something I first heard myself say to Madsen Pirie a long time ago, in the old Alternative Bookshop. What will this achieve? – said Madsen, waving some pamphlet I had just done in my face. I replied: “In the short run, nothing. In the long run, everything.” Samizdata is like that.
Jackie D liked it too.
Today, assuming the plan goes according to plan, I will be doing another of these things, with Alex Singleton, about… Gilbert and Sullivan. There is more to life than what governments do.
Where coercive institutions are strong a fanatical minority is well placed to capture them and turn them to its own purposes.
– Natalie Solent, in this discussion, which is a an interesting touchstone of liberalism.
It’s the danger of tidy-minded people…
– Andrew Marr, in an extempore line, almost thrown away, to close an item on the surveillance state on the BBC’s radio talk-show Start the Week.
I think Marr pins it down precisely. Oppressive regimes are frequently driven by a desire for order, seen as conformity to explicit rules. The most insidious, most universally oppressive castes, don’t seek order because they want to be obeyed. They seek order for its own sake. They want the security of rules for everything, and recording everything.
On the other hand there are countries where the law is changed in order to prosecute the ordinary activities of those whom the government chooses to classify as criminals because it is politically convenient to do so. Should there be no evidence on which a jury will convict, the law can be changed till the public enemy is punished, you can punish them anyway even if they are acquitted, or you can always keep juries, burden of proof and testing of evidence out of it altogether in selected cases.
The traditional test in designing the criminal law in western legal systems – common law or civil law – was to ask, “What mischief does the law address?” or “What harm to persons, property, or society as a whole, does it seek to prevent or punish?” Libertarians might be troubled by the unlimited scope of “society as a whole”, but universalism – the treatment of all persons the same in the same circumstances, and framing the law on general principle rather than special cases – was once deemed fundamental to the rule of law. Indeed there is a common law maxim: hard cases make bad law, that warns that attempts to extract jurisprudence from the merits of the parties involved result in dangerous incoherence and uncertainty (the career of the late Lord Denning is replete with example) .
What should we call a jurisdiction where criminal liability is determined principally by the identity of ‘the criminal’ which is to say, whoever it is the authorities determine should be punished? Not lawless, because all these things are done under the colours of law, most legalistically. I think Tony Blair would call it ‘modern’. I think I would call it a ‘pyramid of bullies’.
In the Dutch town of Drachten, they have removed nearly all the traffic lights in a bold experiment that seems to be paying off. There was typically one road death every three years in Drachten but there have been none whatsoever since the traffic light removal began seven years ago.:
“We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt,” he said yesterday. “It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk.
It is also nice to see the correct message from such examples starting to sink into a few brains in the mainstream media.
Meanwhile back in Britain…
Glenn Reynolds posted this link to an almost forgotten but pivotal story of the early civil rights movement. A group of young men opened an entire chain of stores to black americans by patience and nonviolence, and more notably without disrespect of private property or sobbing to mama government to kiss and make better.
They broke no laws. They neither committed nor threatened to initiate any violence. They just sat at a counter day after day, waiting to be served until:
On August 11, while the early arrivals were sitting at the counter waiting for their friends to show, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at them for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, simply, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” He then walked back out. That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain.
The owner then gave the same orders to all of his other stores.
These people deserve to be better known than they are.
We should also remember the owner of the chain for being a businessman and a reasonable human being who did the right thing in a time and a place where ideologic racists abounded.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
– C.S. Lewis
A lot of people have been talking to me about the pubs of Yeovil this week. Not because of my unwise enthusiasm when young for rough cider. But because of this, first covered at the beginning of the year:
Revellers in the Somerset town of Yeovil, often seen as Britain’s answer to the Wild West on a Friday and Saturday night, were this weekend getting to grips with a unique scheme which is more science fiction than Wild West. Customers entering the town’s six main late-night drinking and dancing joints were being asked to register their personal details, have their photograph taken and submit to a biometric finger scan.
That’s from a report in The Guardian in May, which went on to explain:
The clubs and Avon and Somerset police, who are supporting the scheme, argue that it is not compulsory. Nobody can be forced to give a finger scan, which works by analysing a fingertip’s ridges and furrows. However, the clubs admit they will not allow people in if they refuse to take part in the scheme.
But things have moved on. “Don’t like it? You can drink elsewhere. Let the market sort it out… let these awful surveillance clubs go out of business and free-wheeling ones thrive,” was my immediate reaction. It appears that was naive. While it may be “voluntary” for drinkers, it appears that it is not voluntary for pubs and clubs. Not any longer. The Register explains,
“The Home Office have looked at our system and are looking at trials in other towns including Coventry, Hull & Sheffield,” said Julia Bradburn, principal licensing manager at South Somerset District Council.
Gwent and Nottingham police have also shown an interest, while Taunton, a town neighbouring Yeovil, is discussing the installation of fingerprint systems in 10 pubs and clubs with the systems supplier CreativeCode. […]
The council had assumed it was its duty under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) to reduce drunken disorder by fingerprinting drinkers in the town centre.
Some licensees were not happy to have their punters fingerprinted, but are all now apparently behind the idea. Not only does the council let them open later if they join the scheme, but the system costs them only £1.50 a day to run.
Oh, and they are also coerced into taking the fingerprint system. New licences stipulate that a landlord who doesn’t install fingerprint security and fails to show a “considerable” reduction in alcohol-related violence, will be put on report by the police and have their licences revoked.
The fingerprinting is epiphenomenon. What’s deeply disturbing here is the construction of new regimes of official control out of powers granted nominally in the spirit of “liberalisation”. The Licensing Act 2003 passed licensing the sale of alcohol and permits for music and dancing – yes, you need a permit to let your customers dance in England and Wales – from magistrates to local authorities. And it provided for local authorities to set conditions on licenses as they saw fit.
Though local authorities are notionally elected bodies, and magistrates appointees, this looked like democratic reform. But all the powers of local authorities are actually exercised by permanent officials – who also tell elected councillors what their duties are. And there are an awful lot of them.
Magistrates used to hear licensing applications quickly. They had other things to do. And they exercised their power judicially: deciding, but not seeking to control. Ms Bradburn and her staff have time to work with the police and the Home Office on innovative schemes. I’ve noted before how simple-sounding powers can be pooled by otherwise separate agencies to common purpose, gaining leverage over the citizen. I call it The Power Wedge.
They are entirely dedicated to making us safer. How terrifying. “A Republic?” said the Seagreen, with one of his dry husky unsportful laughs, “What is that?”
GIve me the foul air of corruption, if that is the only way I may be permitted to breath at all.
Mary Ann Sieghart has written an interesting article about the rush to subject more or less everyone who comes in contact with children to checks by the state. She rightly points out what a paranoid example this sets by presupposing that people are pederasts. I heartily agree with her article and see this as one of the more extreme examples of the state replacing social interactions with politically mediated ones.
One of the nicer aspects of being a child used to be the random acts of kindness offered by adults outside the family: the friendly shopkeeper who ruffled your hair and gave you a sweet; the enthusiastic PE coach who gave up time after school to help with your gymnastics and was constantly – and wholly innocently – adjusting your body position to get the moves right. These adults were generous with their time and their affection. We knew who the pervs were and took pains to avoid them. Now all adults are deemed to be perverts unless they can prove that they are not. Most will now avoid contact with other people’s children and will refrain from touching them for fear of the action being misconstrued.
And then, in the next snippet by her, she writes lamenting the fact more people do not join political parties. Tellingly she mentions the two main (and largely indistinguishable) political parties.
Labour has a leadership contest coming up, in which members have a vote. Wouldn’t it be fun to cast one? And my local constituency is being split into two, so there will be selection processes for both new seats. I would love to have a say in the candidate selection, especially for the Tories. Having lectured them for years about the importance of choosing more women, it would be great to be able to make a difference.
What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it? What puzzles me is that so few people do want to join parties these days. Voters are always complaining about feeling disempowered. Here’s a chance at last to exert some power. Why not stop whingeing and take it?
I find that interesting as on one hand she clearly laments the destruction of civil society by the regulatory state and on the other, she urges people to join the institutions who are responsible for doing precisely that. In effect she might just as well be saying: “it is terrible that gangs which threaten people with violence are invading our neighbourhoods and fostering a climate of fear… I wonder why more people are not empowering themselves over other people by joining a gang?”
One of the key rights that makes civil society possible is the right to free association: the right to deal with people who want to deal with and the right to dis-associate yourselves from those who (for whatever reason) you disapprove of without threat of force being used against you.
As a result it should be no surprise that in the ongoing struggle to replace the interactions of civil society with entirely political mediated interactions, that the right to free association is under attack yet again. The right to decide who you must to do business with is being fought for by Catholic and Muslim institutions who do not want to be forced by law to deal with people who are homosexuals (i.e. people acting sinfully according to their beliefs).
Yet no one is even discussing the fact that individuals, such as shop owners or landlords for example, might also want the right to free association Why is this right being discussed only in terms of ‘group rights’? The right of Catholic or Muslim institutions not to have people forced on them by law? What about the rights on everyone else to make their own minds up who they will or will not associate with and do business with?
Granted, these days the United States of America has saddled itself with a big ol’ government fat enough to set the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves. However, the USA’s genesis was so well-considered – such a precise ideological crystal – that it gave rise to the mightiest of nations; enormously prosperous even in the face of the myriad bureaucratic hindrances witnessed today. I love to reacquaint myself with aspects of such a universal, timeless and (in my opinion) optimal design of a nation – the Minutemen inspired this post. Such history is criminally superseded by modern reality, but it nevertheless provides something to work towards.
There is so much in the USA’s formative years that is inspirational.
American judge Alex Kozinski, interviewed recently in U.S. magazine Reason, is roughly billed as a ‘libertarian’ judge. He is asked, among various things, for his views on the infamous Kelo eminent domain decision, which relates to the case in which a local municipality in the States won the power to evict people from their own homes in order to redevelop a site for commercial and tax-raising reasons. It is a decision which has scandalised classical liberals and defenders of property rights. Yet Kozinski thinks the decision is fine, and comes up with the following jaw-dropper:
What’s the difference between taking property for public roads or anything else? Do only public automobiles travel on public roads? I don’t understand why it’s a problem. If the government thinks the city will benefit by having a road there instead of having your house so that people can drive their private cars on it, then it has to make that decision. Who owns the road really doesn’t matter. What matters is that it makes it easier for other people to get from point A to point B using their private vehicles for private purposes. You could say “but it’s my house and my private purpose is more important than your private purpose.” But we live in a society.
“We live in society”. And so what? This judge is using ‘society’ as a sort of mystical incantation to shut down debate. His argument seems in broad terms to be a sort of utilitarian one: if the interests of a supposed majority are served by seizing the property of some people, then this is okay so long as ‘fair’ compensation is paid. His argument seems not to accept that though certain outcomes may be desirable, that it is necessary for the state to be constrained by certain long-term rules and institutions, most emphatically, by the existence of property rights. The judge’s position seems to be “property rights be damned”. If we imagine there are alternate uses of property that might put a gleam in the eye of a politician with property developers in his back pocket, then there is no limit to the assaults on property rights that could be permitted under the Kozinski formulation.
Eminent domain – what we Brits call compulsory purchase – can be justified, if at all, for creating certain facilities like a road, military base or law court that are essential for the peaceful ordering of a society, essential for human life and in the interests of all, and not just because it makes life a bit nicer for some or most of us, whether we be motorists or whatever. What is terrible about the Kelo decision is that it was driven by commercial gain, not a clear public interest such as defence of the realm.
After all, if the economic pie really is swelled by people selling their homes for new development, then that would happen in a market, albeit perhaps not in the neat and tidy way favoured by power-grabbing government official. Yet this ‘libertarian’ judge cannot see that. May we be preserved from ‘libertarian’ judges like this.
For an excellent book about this subject, see this work by Timothy Sandefur.
As an aside, I should point out that the reason I keep focusing on this issue is because American legal rulings and arguments have a habit of travelling across the Big Pond.
One of my sillier pastimes is doing the Radio Times crossword, the easy version. And last night I was stumped by one of the clues, and had to look at the upside down crib to learn the answer. And the answer was an outrage.
The clue was “Lack of fairness”. Even when it was blank blank E blank U blank L blank T blank, I still did not get that the answer was “INEQUALITY”.
Which is, as I say, an outrage. Fairness is absolutely not the same as equality, and under cross-examination, everyone – everyone – will admit this. Should a murderer be treated in an equal way to someone who commits no crimes at all? Of course not. Well, yes, of course, it would not be fair to treat murderers equally, but even so, equality, roughly and readily, still, sort of, means fairness. The principle is established, conceded, and then promptly forgotten. But I say that the murderer/good person contrast applies in a modified way to many other less outrageous, yet assumed completely fair, proposals for an equal outcome. What about people who work very hard, compared to people who do the same kind of work, but somewhat less diligently and effectively? Is it fair for those two to get exactly the same pay? Again, no. Equality is one thing and fairness is something quite distinct and different. Sometimes, as when dividing up scarce biscuits at tea time, an equal outcome makes the most sense. But when more is at stake and more needs to be taken into account, well, more is at stake and more needs to be taken into account.
An argument to the effect that people who do unpleasant manual labour for a living deserve, on the grounds of fairness, to be paid more than people who work in nice clean, sweet-smelling offices, is at least using the idea of fairness in a reasonable way. But notice that this argument is likewise not about equality. It is being claimed that it would be fair for the unpleasant (as it were) manual labourers to be paid more than the occupiers of comfortable offices. So this argument isn’t saying that fairness equals equality either.
My answer to this claim is that it might well, in some ways, be fairer for shit shovellers to be paid more than office drones, but that, at any rate in an approximately free society and free economy, it is not typically a good idea for people to be paid what a third party decides that they deserve. The world works better if people are paid whatever an employer freely agrees to pay them. Imposing ‘fairness’, whether defined (fatuously) as equality, or defined in some other far more reasonable way, is a bad idea. (Not least because those imposing this ‘fairness’ must clearly by unequally powerful, or they would not be able to make their decisions stick.) But that is a different argument.
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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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