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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The Libertarian National Convention may have reminded a few observers of Sartre’s “No Exit” – each faction selected the candidate that would deny their rival faction victory, producing a nominee with little broad-based support. Or maybe it was more like the 1969 blaxploitation classic Putney Swope, in which a wildly unlikely darkhorse emerges out of similar circumstances at an advertising agency’s board meeting. At any rate, the Convention certainly produced an unlikely candidate, Texas-based computer guru Michael Badnarik.
Badnarik entered the convention as a distant challenger to two better-financed candidates, Hollywood producer Aaron Russo and Ohio-based talk show host Gary Nolan. But acrimony between Russo’s and Nolan’s camps led Nolan, who fell behind in early balloting, to withdraw and endorse Badnarik, with the intention of tilting the election away from Russo. Badnarik finally carried a majority on the third ballot and became the LP’s unlikely nominee.
Badnarik’s campaign website, as of the time of this post, apparently has not been updated in ‘weeks’, as you are greeted with this message on the home page:
With the National Convention mere weeks away, we owe it to you to finish up our drive to the presidential nomination in style. Please consider NOW to be the optimum time to make a difference! (emphasis mine)
Moreover, it appears that Badnarik has not raised much money to date, and has not even had a professionally managed campaign, although I understand that a team is being mobilized rapidly. Candidate websites can be powerful fundraising tools, but right now, the only way to contribute online is (egad) via PayPal.
Badnarik’s website also contains a link to a speech given at Washington University in St. Louis that contains, well, comments about the United Nations that he would probably rather have back. But there they are, out on the web for the whole world to see. (Scroll down toward the bottom, or just do a Ctrl-F search for “detonate.”) Astute readers may find other causes for concern as they read through his position statements.
The election is still five months away, and Badnarik will have time to refine his campaign between now and November. I will keep an eye on the situation and provide updates (with the best intentions of objectivity.)
Last month, I was in the Sydney Fish Markets with fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings. We had a splendid lunch, as the Fish Markets have plenty of good places to eat. Anyhow on leaving we grabbed a coffee to go, and headed off back to the tram stop to return to the CBD.
I was tardy in finishing my coffee, and in fact I did not finish it until I had got to the tram stop. So I got up to put the cup in the bin. However, I found to my considerable surprise that the bin had been closed. A plastic lid had been placed over the top of the bin.
I had never seen anything like it in my life. Michael Jennings, though, knew why- he explained that it was the practice to seal such bins to prevent people from placing bombs there, and that this is a common sight in London.
Well, that makes sense. There is a war on, as they used to say.
If truth is the first casualty of war, then libertarian ideals seem to me to be not far behind. In a society under military pressure, the liberty of the individual is quickly appropriated by the State for its own ends, often quite justifiably. The needs of the RAF in England in 1940 really were quite important, after all.
In Australia, the touch is very light. We are rather remote and isolated from the crosscurrents of the War on Terror. But we’ve had experience of this phenomena before, in the Second World War. With the Japanese ‘at the gates’ so to speak, the Federal Government wasted no time in seizing power over large swathes of the liberty of the individual. And, as a libertarian minded individual, if I had protested, the government would have told me “hey, there’s a war on, you know”.
The only Western society that would really understand this these days is Israel, I would guess. Liberty is best enjoyed when you are alive, and sometimes the need of the latter have to take precedence over the former.
I think though, that it is no coincidence that the necessary loss of personal liberty in both Australia and Britain in the second world war acclimatised the citizens for the massive assault on personal liberty and responsibility that came straight after the war, when socialist governments in both nations erected all-embracing welfare states.
Not that they saw it that way at the time – it was seen as a ‘just reward’ for the people who had endured the costs of war. It turned out to be a false reward indeed, but the idea that there really is no such thing as a free lunch took thirty five years to sink into the minds of the electorates in both nations. (Indeed, it is arguable that it has not penetrated even now).
The lesson is clear though – the state will use the loss of liberties necessary to undertake the war on terror to its own advantage, and we must be vigilant to prevent a second welfare state disaster being built on the back of it.
Yes, so far it is just a rubbish bin. Let us keep it that way.
However badly the war on terror infringes our liberty,
there are at least appropriate ways in which
we can deal with the Wasabi strain of Islam.
Conservative MP (and onetime leadership contender) Michael Portillo has a column in the UK Times [note: link may not be available to non-UK readers] in which he manages to illustrate everything that is so frustratingly wrong with British Conservatives.
This is not to say that his opinions are entirely unworthy. In fact, he hits several nails very squarely on the head:
Public esteem for business is alarmingly low. It is striking how much comment in the media is negative. In Britain those who most influence public opinion, the so-called commentariat, are in the main not involved in wealth creation. They are journalists, lobbyists, academics, religious leaders, civil servants and public service employees. They are generally given to scepticism or cynicism.
They are generally given to far more visceral sentiments but the point is still meritorious. However, it all starts going downhill from there.
I am a fervent advocate of free enterprise. Humankind has invented no better system for the generalised increase of prosperity. I believe that the creation of wealth is virtuous. People who work in business can and should feel that their efforts have a moral purpose. Without the profit motive we would not generate the resources that make it possible for government to build schools and hospitals and pay benefits to those who are poor or who cannot work.
Mr Portillo’s idea of ‘advocacy’ is to make a moral case for free enterprise based on nothing except a shameless pandering to the parasitical instincts of the public sector. Vote for capitalism, you will get a fatter cow to milk.
But these are not easy times for enthusiasts of capitalism. The cynics have received plentiful ammunition. We have witnessed the collapse of Enron, the American energy conglomerate, into a cesspool of deceit and trickery with its shareholders defrauded. Its auditors, Arthur Andersen, had one of the finest names in the business. The firm was associated with the highest ethical standards, a reputation built up over a century. After such rottenness was revealed within a venerated institution, it is difficult to be confident of anything.
Well, if that is ‘fervent’ I would hate to see ‘phlegmatic’. That sounds like a BBC editorial, written by the kind of people who believe that fraudulent behaviour is an inevitable and damning characteristic of free trade. Mr. Portillo seems to agree. → Continue reading: Limp
‘Underground, overground,
Wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find,
The things that the everyday folks leave behind.’
I was half watching one of those interminable nostalgia programmes on TV last night when my intention was caught by the voice of Bernard Cribbins, whose vocal intepretation of the flawed yet quietly heroic role of Orinoco (not to mention Tomsk, Wellington, Tobermory, Madam Cholet and Great Uncle Bulgaria) in The Wombles will forever have its place in the hearts of all who heard it.
Among the many interesting things he said (did you know that all those endearing dithery mutters were ad-libbed?) was that Womble-fixated kiddies used to go to Wimbledon Common and drop litter there in the hope that a Womble would come and take it away.
This proves something. I am not sure what, but something.
Regulation is the new taxation. Eamonn Butler has an example of this at “Europe’s Favourite Think Tank blog”, as the ASI blog has taken to describing itself:
… Germany is introducing a new workplace regulation, which insists that businesses must take on at least one trainee/apprentice for every fifteen workers they employ.
An excellent initiative to get young people learning a trade, you might think. …
But I wonder whether this concession is one that we free marketeers should perhaps stop inserting into pieces like this. Something more along the lines of “well now let us think of just what sort of harm this state compulsion is going to do” might be more in order, instead of ritual obeisance towards the supposed good intentions of the people who imposed this rule. So, let me see. This one will result in masses of businesses having apprentices who just hang around going through the motions. Wasted young lives, in other words. A classic welfare trap, imposed upon the ‘private’ sector.
But as with all government interventions over the marketplace, there are unintended consequences.
Quite so.
For Germany recently legalized brothels. And, like other businesses, they too are covered by the new law. So for every 15 girls employed, another must be enticed into the trade as an apprentice.
A rather odd result – which just shows what a tangle politicians get into when they start telling businesses how to run themselves.
But what if this “tangle” is actually the whole idea? The people who did this, I surmise, hate business, all business. But recent intellectual trends make it harder for them to say this out loud. So, they just go ahead wrecking businesses anyway, without any public justification, and then they blame the very principle of doing business for the wreckage that they have themselves unleashed. Bastards.
The trouble with the theory of “unintended consequences is that you deny yourself the chance to call people doing harm evil. And calling such people evil might be just the thing to get them to stop.
On the legalising prostitution thing, a couple of years ago the Libertarian Alliance published a piece by a prostitute, who argued that the last damn thing her line of business needed was to be made ‘legal’. ‘Legal’ equals smothered in idiotic laws and regulations (and taxes of course), whereas illegal means she could run her business the way she wanted, uninterfered with, apart from the occasional bribe or two, by meddling government officials.
This is not about sport.
Libertarian and conservative policy obsessives tend not to read the sports pages of newspapers. There is a theory that most politicians were victimised at schools and their pursuit of politics is a form of revenge. Even those libertarians who are sporty are often practitioners of solo sports: jogging, skiing, suba-diving. I merely point this out to explain why the collectivist drivel which infests the sports sections of newspapers rarely gets challenged.
One of the the great myths of modern England is that the cricket team is rubbish because of the ‘polluting’ effect of foreigners. Some people have suggested that the solution would be to ban non-white players from the England team. Others suggest a more merchantile approach: ban foreign players from playing for the counties. The argument is exactly the same as for US steel tariffs, or restricting the number of American TV shows on European TV stations.
This article in the Daily Telegraph describes a development in the labour laws that should be welcomed. But English cricket keeps its ostrich head rammed into the ground.
The problem is that cricket does not generate enough money to pay for squads of highly paid professionals. The bulk of the money comes from televised matches involing the national team only. Therefore if a team is going to shell out a large sum of money for a couple of players, it wants a big name, which means an established international player.
Perversely, restrictions on foreign players mean that each club is only allowed to hire two, roughly the number of players who could be paid big wages. Result, cricket is not a viable professional sport for most young English players.
The sensible commercial decision would be for cricket to go either go semi-professional (part-time players paid appearance money), or cut the number of teams to a level that is affordable. Instead we have demands for EU citizens who are allowed to work anywhere in the EU to be banned from playing cricket in England. Is this the way to spread one’s market?
Imagine if the software industry worked like this.
Californian firms would initially be banned from hiring more than one programmer from outside the state of California. These firms would also refuse to serve customers outside Silcon Valley, except at international trade fairs. Then when the Supreme Court prohibited restraint of trade for non Californians there would be a moan about the number of Texans etc in Californian software firms. With a market restricted to one state there would be demands for subsidies, wage control, and repressive immigration laws.
This is the economic orthodoxy of cricket, yet there is no reason why it should be. Other sports such as baseball, gridiron football, soccer, basketball, even rugby union in recent years, are profiting from globalisation. What English cricket needs are better business models, not laws.
Australian Libertarian blogger Tex waxes lyrical on free markets:
For me, nothing – nothing – in recent years has confirmed my faith in the wonders of markets and competition more than one humble little sector of our economy: the pizza industry.
I’m a pizza addict. Ten years ago, I would have to part with the best part of twenty bucks to get one large pizza delivered. Suppliers in my area were limited and it sometimes arrived cold. When in Sydney a few years ago – in an area not well serviced by the Pizza men – I shelled out nearly fifty bucks for two delivered pizzas + a drink. Nowdays, I can get two large pizzas – easily enough to feed three people – for less than $15. It arrives quickly, is great quality, and there are a far greater variety of pizzas to choose from.
So in ten years, pizza prices have more than halved, the quality has gone up, the delivery times are quicker, and there’s a greater menu to choose from. And it’s 100% the result of competition. As a couple more suppliers moved into the area, the “coupon wars” began. Maybe a couple of coupons per month would arrive in the mail, offering a few bucks off per pizza. Then other companies started to price-match. Nowdays, my letterbox is flooded with pizza coupons, each subsequent one outmatching the last.
As another example of the benefits of free markets, I was in Melbourne on the weekend. Melbourne is justifiably proud of it’s food- I’m not a well travelled man by any means but it does seem to be one of the world’s leading cities for fine dining.
In the restaurant strip in Lygon Street, for example, you will find that the establishments there actually have hired people to stand outside and make offers to passers-by, to entice them in, and in this way you can get yourself, for example, a free bottle of wine. Australians don’t haggle much, but the visitor who has this skill can make good use of it there.
In Melbourne’s Chinatown on Little Bourke Street, the same practice has come into vogue.
This hot-house atmosphere of competition isn’t just a boon from the point of view of the diner’s wallet either. Restaurants don’t just compete on price- they compete on quality as well, and reputation is as important as price in these markets. For they are dealing with a clientele that is, on the whole, very well educated in dining.
And this also encourages risk-taking, to provide new and innovative ways of presenting and preparing food. Bon apetite!
Glenn Reynolds pointed me to this story which should warm the cockles of a libertarian anarchist’s heart. It seems ‘hundreds’ of what I presume were members of the Mahdi’s ‘army’ were held off for hours by eight employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (apparently all ex-Special Forces), four MP’s and a Marine. Company helicopters flew in under fire to pick up the wounded Marine and drop off ammunition supplies.
The DOD Press briefing for the day neglected to mention the government building was privately held.
My friend Bernie emailed me with the link to this short Radio Times film review of The Godfather, shown last night on Channel 5. Spot the anti-capitalist bit.
This crime drama and its 1974 sequel are among American cinema’s finest achievements since the Second World War.
The production problems are well documented — how Paramount wanted a quickie, how Francis Ford Coppola came cheap and how he turned the picture into an epic success, a box-office hit that was also an artistic triumph.
His first masterstroke was casting Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, four relative unknowns and one known risk; his next masterstroke was to keep cool under fire, like Michael Corleone himself, turning Mario Puzo’s pulp novel into art and showing how capitalism and crime go hand in hand.
It’s thrilling, romantic, tense and scary – a five-course meal that leaves you hungry for more.
“… capitalism and crime go hand in hand.” Another of those implied solutions that dare not spell itself out clearly. Wanna get rid of crime? Rub out capitalism. But if thus challenged, the anti-capitalist replies: “but I never said that”. If unchallenged (which is how most readers will get the message), he did say it.
This is why we need our own publications, to edit out sneaky little innuendoes like that, and to insert our own.
It would be truer to say that the legal creation of victimless crimes goes hand in hand with crime, and that the state (a) claiming a universal monopoly in the supply of law and order but then (b) not supplying it anything like universallly goes hand in hand with crime.
Will this get a link from Biased BBC?
Recently a commenter here on Samizdata.net used a term that I think sums up modern regulatory statism in the Western World rather well.
Populist Authoritarianism
Whilst Google shows that the term is not exactly new, it does seem both little used and particularly apt. The banning of smoking on private commercial property seems a classic example of this in action. Let’s start calling a spade a spade and stop letting the statists of all stripes hide behind euphemisms.
Spread the word.
The government talks a lot about ‘investing’ in hospitals and schools. That is why we have to pay extra taxes. We all know that New Labour’s experiment with spending has been a flop, with the improvements to services tiny compared with the increased spending.
One problem is that the cash we think is going to be spent on operations and classrooms gets diverted. Sometimes this is because of excessive bureaucratic layers, like Local Education Authorities. But sometimes it is rather more blatantly wasted.
Like with government attempts to encourage ‘e-society’.
The private sector worldwide has done a really good job at providing opportunities for e-society. Just look at AOL Instant Messenger, webcams, blogs, web site forums, Friendster and Orkut.
But the fact that e-society is so abundantly provided by the private sector has not stopped the UK government thinking it should get involved. Back in the autumn, I got an e-mail from James Crabtree of VoxPolitix asking if I would blog about a new project called MySociety.org, run by his friend Tom Steinberg, a former No. 10 adviser. I have met Crabtree a couple of times and like him, so I thought I should do my bit. I tried for an hour or so to write a blog about this new project, but I just could not. The project was utter crap. And I just could not write anything nice about it with a clear conscience.
Well, that project which I thought was ‘utter crap’ is now being funded by the government. It has just been awarded £250,000 as “part of something called the e-innovations fund, a pot of government cash set aside to stimulate useful and innovative new online projects”.
When I edited pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, our problem was that we could not expect much in the way of immediate distribution. There was no internet in those days, or not that we knew about or could have used. Nor did we have the resources to print our publications and then to market them, and in the meantime store them. So it was that we relied on (a) the photocopier, and on (b) time. If what we said did not instantaneously find a readership, then it would have to get itself around nevertheless, one pamphlet at a time, by its sheer eloquence.
The time angle meant that we needed a different style of writing, a more timeless style, a style that would not date. We had to write in what I now recognise as a French style – more abstract, more theoretical (but free of any technical jargon), not heavy on detailed evidence (because evidence is liable to date) and heavy instead on generalisations with universal (and therefore timeless) appeal.
We were accused of preaching to the converted, and this was true. We were doing that. But preaching to the converted is an important part of any propaganda enterprise. The eloquent statement of that which is good and true, everywhere and at all times, is something to which supporters can rally and declare their agreement. By saying what we believed, we helped to turn what had merely been a silent army of isolated dissenters into an interconnected network of potential activists and organisers and movementeers. And writers, of course.
In short, we wanted people to write more like this:
Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice – under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility – that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve – slowly, no doubt, but certainly – God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.
→ Continue reading: Frédéric Bastiat looks at the entire world
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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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