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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Maybe I am making too much of this, but see what you think.
This is the blurb, from a leaflet that fell out of the latest edition of the Radio Times (so no link), for a movie that has just come out on DVD about the musician Ray Charles:
MUSICAL BIOGRAPHICAL DRAMA The early life of celebrated musician Ray Charles, from 1930-1966. Charles loses his sight at the age of seven – two years after his brother’s tragic drowning. Encouraged by his mother, he forges a successful career as a pianist and singer, fusing together gospel, R’n’B and soul. But despite overcoming his early setbacks, Charles becomes dogged by drug problems and the complications arising from his numerous affairs.
The bit I object to is where it says that Ray Charles was “dogged by drug problems”. I do not know the exact circumstance in which Ray Charles turned to drugs and do not know to what degree he is to be blamed for his drug problems, but one thing is surely true, namely that these problems were set in motion by things which he himself did, and by choices which he himself made. Yet the blurb writer (who I do think is blameworthy) makes these “problems” read like entirely separate creatures who sneaked up behind Ray Charles and mugged him, without him doing anything to provoke them at all. To use the phrase “dogged by drug problems” to describe Charles’ drug misfortunes is to imply that these misfortunes were not in any way self-inflicted. It is to switch from the active to the passive, from responsibility for action, to excuse. At least those “complications” that arose from his affairs are described as arising from his affairs, rather than just from thin air. And of course Ray Charles gets all the credit that he surely deserves for forging (in a good way) his career, for fusing this music with that (ditto), and for overcoming early (and horrendous) setbacks. So why the “dogged by drug problems” stuff? Why not “problems caused by his drug-taking”?
You hear this kind of language – the passive evasive tense, and the relabeling of forces actually set in motion by the victim of them, into external life forces with minds of their own – a lot. (I recall this man referring to such language a lot – link anyone?) And this matters, because if individuals are not going to be described as at all to blame for what are actually their – at least partly – self-inflicted misfortunes, it is all too likely that someone else – someone who at worst only contributed somewhat to these problems – will be held entirely responsible for them. Which is unjust.
When things are said badly, they are liable to be done badly.
I was listening to Frou Frou‘s cover of ‘Holding out for a hero’, I could not but help think of British politics. Here’s part of the song, and the sentiment is what I think many Samizdata readers will feel, especially following of the Tory leadership’s shameful and unprincipled support of identity cards:
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where’s the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream
of what I need
[Chorus]
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
It was a peculiar juxtaposition of programmes. First I watched the latest episode of Spooks, on BBC1 TV, and then I watched the BBC Ten O’Clock News, without pushing any buttons on the TV because that was on BBC1 TV also.
The News was dominated by David Blunkett‘s difficulties, largely self-inflicted, it would appear. There will be an independent inquiry into whether Blunkett fast-tracked a visa application for his ex-lover’s nanny, and the Prime Minister announced that he was confident of the outcome, which was an odd combination of circumstances. If the Prime Minister is so sure, why the independent inquiry? Why can he simply not say why he is so sure of the impeccability of his Home Secretary? And as another talking head opined, it would now take a brave independent inquirer to fly so completely in the face of Blair’s clear statement of what he wants the answer to be. Which means that if the independent inquiry does endorse the Prime Minister’s view, the suspicion will remain that this was because of the Prime Minister publicly demanding that answer instead of because the answer is true. So whichever way the independent inquiry goes, the stink will either be strong, or strong.
Spooks (a programme I have had cause to mention here before) was a even more lurid soap opera than usual – of junior Ministerial wrongdoing (he murders a girl, then resigns to spend more time with his family (sound familiar?)), of a famed rock and roll couple (she has her baby kidnapped to keep them in the news, but it goes wrong, the baby dies, and he finally murders her in a rage and then shoots himself). Downing Street was presented throughout as relentlessly manipulating a deranged state of public sentimentality (not least in calling in the Spooks to sort the matter in the first place, instead of leaving it to the Police), as in the grip of electoral desperation, as total hypocritical, and generally as a huge cover-up machine. If this show is any clue as to the state of public opinion, out there in Middle England, we have our answer to that question about why the Prime Minister does not want to explain why he believes his Home Secretary to be innocent of all wrongdoing. Middle England would not trust such pronouncements further than it could spit them. The Prime Minister is not trusted. → Continue reading: Public life, private life and public trust – reflections on two consecutive TV programmes
In this posting earlier today, Jonathan mentions how The Incredibles includes some “clever and sly digs at America’s litigation culture”. So here is another clever and sly dig at Britain’s fast expanding litigation culture:
With thanks to b3ta.com.
Did you join an army, and then get hurt in a battle? Sue your commanding officers for forgetting to warn you that war is sometimes violent.
Did you fall over, because of running too fast? Sue the owner of the floor you fell on, the person who employed the person who spilt some water on it and made it slippery, the maker of your shoes for not making them with more grip, the maker of the floor tiles, but: on no account blame yourself, for being careless. Your life is not your fault. It is the fault of somebody else, somebody rich. And if you were engaged in robbing the place at the time, never mind: this makes no difference!
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.
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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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