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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Stop! Have you not raped the planet enough? Is it not time that you lifted your greedy foot from the head of the oppressed?
Put down that cup of steaming, hot coffee right now. Toss that doughnut away. Rip off your cotton T-shirt and consign it to the rubbish tip.
There. Doesn’t that feel so much better? And would you not like to feel this good all the time? Wouldn’t you just love to luxuriate in the warm, satisfying glow of self-righteousness? Tell me that would not like to tuck yourself up in your cosy bed at night and sleep the sleep of the just?
Well, now you can do all of those things. Yes, those guilty days and sleepless nights are at an end for you too can reach out for the ‘Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping’:
Along with the usual demons such as Nike and Gap, which are routinely accused of using sweatshops to keep production costs low, are other alleged villains. The fashion label French Connection is accused of having a “feeble” code on ensuring its clothes are not produced in sweatshops, while the Arcadia boss Philip Green, who owns Top Shop and BhS, has refused to join the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative.
Ah yes, the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative. Otherwise known as a ‘shakedown’ → Continue reading: Shopping for the Insufferably Sanctimonious
Last Friday, on another blog, I did a link-to/short-comment-on piece, linking to and commenting on this report. It was about Chinese students lying about their qualifications in order to get into British Universities.
Harry Hutton (esteemed writer of this hugely entertaining and clearly much frequented blog) added the following very interesting comment to my posting:
It’s a big problem with the IELTS exam in mainland China – people turn up to do tests for other people. They also come in with live mobile phones, to record the script. But there is zero cheating in Hong Kong. I don’t know why this big difference, but it is so.
Cards on the table, I do not know why there is this big different either. And never having been to – or for that matter anywhere near – Hong Kong, or mainland China, I am a lot less qualified even to guess than Harry Hutton is.
However, I choose to offer a guess nevertheless.
Hong Kong has been a rampantly capitalistic economy for the last half century, and rampantly capitalistic economies make people more honest. → Continue reading: How capitalism grows human capital as well – the example of Hong Kong
Last night I attended a seminar on education organised by the Social Affairs Unit (there is as yet nothing about this event on their blog), at which the speaker was Francis Gilbert. Gilbert read a bit from his new book, I’m a Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here!, and if this bit was anything to go by, it is a very good book. (See also this posting here earlier this year.)
I will not here recount – and could not hope to recount – everything that was talked about, but I do note with approval that Francis Gilbert, after he had finished reading from his book, invited us to think about how much better education would be if it was run by the man who has recently taken over his local corner shop, and has made a great success of it, and by a few thousand others like him, instead of by the Government.
However, I will focus on one very widespread and wrong clutch of related ideas that cropped up in the course of our discussion. It was said, echoing something that Francis Gilbert himself had said, that education is not “like oil or bread”. The most important qualities of education are beyond measurement or quantification. The thing is just too complicated and … I think that the word ineffable may even have been used. Unlike oil or bread.
The conclusion we were invited to draw from this was that education, unlike oil or bread, cannot be supplied entirely by the free market, as a lot of us, taking our lead from Francis Gilbert, were enthusiastically recommending. It is just too complicated a thing to dole out in easily measurable little packets, like oil or bread.
But it simply does not follow that because something is complicated and immeasurable, even ineffable, that it cannot and should not be supplied by tradesmen. → Continue reading: The false argument for state control from immeasurability
Depress yourself with this:
The Home Office is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds recruiting a PR team to sell the benefits of compulsory identity cards before legislation for the scheme has been before Parliament.
It is advertising for a head of marketing on a salary of up to £66,000 to promote the ID scheme not only to the public but to MPs and public sector groups. Legislation enabling the Government to set up a population database containing the details of every citizen and to begin issuing ID cards in three years is due to be included in the next Queen’s Speech.
From 2007, all new passports and drivers’ licences will double as ID cards. By the time they have been issued to 80 per cent of the country, Parliament will be asked to make the scheme compulsory for all. A programme team has been set up to mastermind the plan, including the testing of the biometric identifiers, such as iris prints, that will be included on the cards.
I recently defended democracy here, but this is its ugly side. I mean, if a majority gets to vote, and if out of that emerges a guy who wants us all to have these ID card things, and if most people have them anyway … what the hell, right? The difference between eighty and a hundred is, democratically, insignificant. But when it comes to liberty, that difference is all the difference.
Dominic Wellington see the hate filled collectivist attitude to private sector space flight as being the same attitude which feeds poverty in places where such sentiments actually control the political process
Rand Simberg points to this article in The Washington Dispatch. The author, Mark Whittington, writes about the sophomoric class-envy editorials on the X-Prize that have appeared recently in the UK press. Excerpt:
An editorial in The Scotsman on October 3rd [online here] seemed to set the tone. “Virtually every child does fantasise about space travel,” The Scotsman sneered. “But most then grow up. Branson reckons he will have no difficulty attracting customers for his space venture. Sadly, he’s probably right. Arrested development is a common trait among the super-rich, a fact which explains the market for Lotuses and Lamborghinis.”
Speaking as someone who would love a Lotus or a Lamborghini, and would kill for a ride into space on one of Mr Branson’s craft, I have no idea what the Scotsman editorial writer has been smoking. What is his problem?
Well, actually, I know perfectly well what his problem is – he thinks that nobody should be rich, and we should all live in dour council flats and drive Ladas and Trabants. I only have one response to that, and it’s not printable.
I do not have much time for those who inherit wealth and squander it, but self-made men or people who work with their inheritance and grow it command my full respect. This is one of the reasons why I like Berlusconi and his kids. He came from nowhere, and made some very clever deals. Nobody would have bet on private TV in Italy when he was buying stations up, but once it took off the howls of outrage from slower competitors and suddenly obsolete State broadcasters were deafening. The same sort of thing happened with many of his real-estate deals. His kids, with an inheritance the size of the national debt, are working their tails off in the family businesses.
Gerard DeGroot, the bitter ankle-biter of the Scotsman, is instead a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Surprisingly, he approves of space travel per se – see for instance this Christian Science Monitor article from earlier this year – it is just private space travel that he dislikes. I wonder how he can combine the vitriol quoted above with positive sentiments such as the following:
Through history, every vibrant culture has pushed horizons outward. They’ve done so not simply because of the practical benefits of exploration, but also because discovery is a touchstone of cultural vigor.
I would argue that individuals doing things for their own reasons and benefit are much more of a “touchstone of cultural vigor” than massive State-run programs dropped onto the populace.
There is an expression in Italian: cattedrali nel deserto. Literally, it means ‘cathedrals in the desert’. It refers to the practice of building a shiny new factory, motorway, hospital or whatever in the economically backward South of Italy. The problem with this practice was – is – that the factory had no workers or transport links, or the motorway went from nowhere to nowhere, or there were no doctors to work in the hospital. These projects were as absurd as building a great cathedral in the desert, far from any worshippers. The ‘cathedrals’ bred only corruption, and many of them never even entered service. This is what State-run projects look like.
By contrast, the North of Italy, which has a GDP on a level with Switzerland and fearsome productivity, is driven entirely by small to medium businesses. Sure, there are a couple of Fiat-sized colossi, but mainly we’re talking little companies that you’ve never heard of, that are making their owners rich, that bring jobs to the area, and that supply such a level of diversity and resilience to the economy that it can drag the South along with it into Europe without being crippled or even slowed down too much.
The entrepreneurs driving this new space race and their prospective super-rich passengers are productive members of a vigorous culture. Gerard DeGroot and his intellectual compatriots, despite pretensions to the contrary, are most emphatically not.
It is not at all uncommon for libertarians to boast about not voting in political elections. The rationale behind not voting varies, from “it is pointless, my single vote cannot affect the outcome,” through “I don’t like any of the candidates on offer, so why should I vote for any of them,” to “voting only ratifies the cult of the state.” (I abbreviate for brevity’s sake, but not unfairly, I hope).
I disagree with those who do not vote, not because any of these arguments are wrong (indeed, they are each correct in their own relatively narrow sphere), but because elections and some degree of ‘democratic’ accountability are an essential part of any society that hopes to retain a sphere of personal liberty beyond the reach of the state. I say this based on a broad reading of current events – those nations that are the worst offenders against liberty lack democratic accountability, and those nations that maintain a sphere of liberty, however beleaguered, have some degree of democratic accountability.
Voting and democracy are, in a nutshell, a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty. Those opposed to voting focus on the ‘not sufficient’ part of this formulation, and say that therefore it is worthless, or at least not worth doing. I freely admit that democracy is not sufficient to maintain liberty, and that a number of other conditions also have to obtain; to conclude, however, that what is not sufficient is also not necessary is to fall into a logical fallacy.
I think the broad correlation of functioning democratic institutions and personal liberty is solid, and the inverse correlation of lack of democracy and tyranny is absolutely undeniable. From this I draw the conclusion that, regardless of the value of your individual vote, the institution of voting is important. This institution is dependent on people actually voting, and so refusing to vote on principle amounts to undermining one of the pillars of personal liberty.
There is nothing to be gained from not voting, as there is no chance whatsoever that voter apathy or nonparticipation will ever spur any reform or change. However, there is something to be lost. Not voting concedes the field to a narrow class of political activists who uniformly want to turn the power of the state to their own ends rather than limit it (as illustrated by primary elections in the US, which have low turnout and all too often result in the nomination of party hacks). Not voting may also, over time, undermine the principle of democratic accountability altogether; is it just coincidence that, as voter participation has declined, state power has expanded at the behest of unelected judges and bureaucrats?
To my libertarian brethren and sistren I say, then, vote. Hold your nose if necessary, “throw your vote away” on the execrable Libertarians if you wish, but vote. Like so much in life, it may not be a panacea, but it sure beats the alternative.
Natalie got there ahead of me but I also noticed the preposterous attempt by the pseudo-liberals of Crooked Timber to lecture us “Schmibertarians” in the ‘correct’ libertarian stance towards Iraq.
I thought it might be informative to examine the Crooked consensus and some of its logical implications. I would summarise the “Samizdatistas are schmibertarians” argument – and anyone who suspects I’m setting up a straw man here is invited to read the relevant posts and particularly the follow-up comments – as follows:
- ‘Proper’ Libertarians oppose major government programs funded by coercive taxation, the Iraq war is such a program.
- ‘Proper’ Libertarians are wary of any kind of social-engineering, so the neoconservative plan to remodel Middle Eastern countries as democracies is futile folly.
- Thus anyone who supports the war against Saddam is necessarily a sham libertarian who just thinks it’s cool to blow things up.
My first reaction was to the irony of being lectured in ‘correct’ libertarianism by a bunch of egalitarian, social-engineering collectivists who presume to identify as “Liberal”. Indeed it is precisely because this previously unambiguous term has been suborned by those who display a cavalier disregard for the classic liberal values of autonomy, individualism and limited government that many of us reluctantly adopt the libertarian moniker in the first place.
The premise behind the argument is dubious to say the least. It is generally taken to be the case that arguments are accepted or opposed on their own merits and without reference to whether they conform to some theology to which those making the argument are perceived to subscribe. I were to argue against, say, a Creationist, it would seem to me to be a pointless task to identify what a ‘real’ Creationist ought to believe prior to debunking his theory. Indeed, the logical consequence of a position which states that the correct libertarian ought to oppose the Iraq war according to libertarian first principles is that those who oppose the war are implicitly endorsing those specific libertarian principles. So, the next time some wonky twig proposes a massive government intervention or other, one can remind him that, as his opposition to the Iraq war demonstrates, such social engineering ought to be avoided.
It is also curious to note the partial isolationism adopted with regard to Iraq, considering the enthusiasm regularly displayed for action against third world ‘exploitation’. Thus, according to the Crooked Timber moral calculus, it is not ok to interfere in the affairs of another country if its citizens are being tortured or murdered but it is ok to interfere to prevent those (remaining) citizens getting a good job with a dreaded multinational corporation!
The dogs of the ‘fat war’ are chalking up their first victory:
Confectionery companies have agreed to phase out many king-size chocolate bars as part of the campaign against obesity.
The concession is part of the food and drinks industry’s efforts to persuade the Government that tough new laws on issues such as labelling, advertising to children and school vending machines are unnecessary.
The bitter lessons of appeasement are as valid on the domestic front as they are on the foreign front. This ‘concession’ is merely the first of many, many more.
Like frightened villagers, the chocolate manufacturers have thrown some meat to the ravenous wolves in the hope that their hunger will be satisfied and the wolves will leave them alone.
But the wolves have a bottomless appetite and they will be back for more. Very soon.
A series of posts on Crooked Timber criticise pro-Iraq war libertarians, mentioning this blog in particular. The posts (and still more the comments) differ in their degree of charitability to our position but the general thrust is ‘… can we think of a new name for libertarians who think it’s a good idea to invade other countries and overthrow their governments, like maybe “shmibertarians”?’
Apologies to those who have heard me saying this before.
It is all much simpler than you think.
When I see my house burning down I do not wait for the evolution of private fire brigades.
Funny how one posting leads to another. There I was going on about books, and now, as David Carr has already flagged up in a posting below, here come a thousand books.
I agree with David that this Liberty Library is a very important development, with potentially enormous long term significance to the cause of liberty. And it so happens that when I was in Brussels earlier this year, in addition to snapping the new EUro-parliament, I also took photos of, among many other interesting people, the two men in charge of this other and far better project.
Here is the techy of this operation, CNE webmaster James Rogers…
… and here is the academic supremo, Dr Hardy Bouillon:
Good as Hardy Bouillon is at this kind of thing there are almost certain to be some omissions, and there may even be the odd mistake in what is up there already. In either event, Hardy wants to know.
As it happens I think I may already spotted an error, in the form of a duplication. Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice by Tullock, Brady and Seldon, seems to get two entries, the one right above the other. That is no big disaster, two mentions of this fine volume being greatly preferable to no mentions.
There is no explanatory verbiage attached to each title. It is just a plain and simple book list, with subject area (economics, history, literature or whatever), title, author, and link to where you can buy it and where you will find explanatory verbiage. A simple idea, simply done. I am told that it will be possible to search for an individual title, or to search for all the works of an individual author, but I cannot now find that facility. Unless this is just me, these further features have yet to materialise, but presumably they will very soon.
The sort of people who find books rather heavy going to plough through, and who prefer lighter reading of the sort supplied by things like Samizdata, are prone sometimes to underestimate the importance of books. We want action not words, blah blah blah. And it is true that people who already have classical liberal or libertarian opinions, and who have their lives and careers all up and running and who hence have only so much time to be reading books, are probably not the target readership of this site, although if that description fits you and you still want liberty-inclined books, got there and click away. But students, meanwhile, and younger people generally, with their opinions as yet unformed and their entire adult lives still ahead of them, are likely, insofar as they have been persuaded to look at this site at all, to be profoundly influenced by it, that is, by the enormous volume of writing to which it now provides easy access. I wish the project all the best. It can only make the world a better place.
I only discovered David’s post about the Liberty Library just before I was about to put this up, and of course I then had to scurry back to the drawing board, so to speak. And I obviously considered not bothering with this post at all. But, like that Government Failure book mentioned above, if this Liberty Library is good enough for one mention, which it definitely is, two mentions, although a trifle confusing, can do no very great harm.
The CNE (or the ‘Centre for the New Europe’ for those of you who still need an introduction) is an influential free-market think tank in Europe for whom I sometimes write, are spreading their wings even wider.
They have launched the ‘Liberty Library’, an on-line bookstore which lists over 1000 books and publications which can be sorted by subject or author and directly linked to for purchase or download.
Here is a treasure trove of the very best ideas in the whole wide world. Dive in and enjoy!
Taylor Dinerman, a professional New York City journalist and long time Samizdata reader, sent us this short and incisive article on the impact of blogs and libertarian ideas on the current political environment.
Over the years I have come to the conclusion that most things in this universe revolve around a) The law of gravity and b) The Law of Supply and Demand.
The best case for this is the way the US election is being impacted by ‘New Media’. The combination of Talk Radio, Fox News and the Blogosphere made it impossible for the traditional Big Media to ignore the Swifties. Thus John Kerry’s character and personality were exposed in ways that would never have come out if it were up to just the New York Times etc.
The demand, in the US, for a non left wing media was always there, it was just when Limbaugh and the others showed that one could make money at it that others came in. The Blogs were more a pure product of technology but the demand for people all over the world to make themselves heard could not be held back. The flow of ideas is frankly, amazing.
Libertarian ideas have tended to triumph over the long term because they are better adapted to human nature. Sadly, resistance to these ideas is also deeply ingrained in the hearts of men. It is interesting to see how difficult it is to make people accept things that are manifestly in their own interest. While the ideas tend to win, libertarian leaning politicians tend to loose. Newt Gingrich was probably the most libertarian major politico in recent history, he was easily defeated by Clinton even while slick willie was grabbing his major ideas such as welfare reform.
Bush on the other hand pays little serious attention to libertarian ideas, but he may move America closer to those ideals with his ownership society set of proposals, than Newt ever could.
The point is that Libertarian ideas have become the ‘default’ position for the Republicans in the same was that socialist EU-centric ones are for most European politicos.
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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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