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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Wealthy property tycoon, Will Hutton, is having himself a right old grumble today.
He is angry because other people are not paying enough tax and it is all the fault of those wretched Americans:
Equally, would our readiness to stand by progressive taxation have been so weakened without the view from the US that high rates of income tax on the rich are morally and economically wrong?
We had Mrs Thatcher, but arguably her dominance in British politics would have been less secure had it not been for the succour she took from American policies and conservative ideas. Britain is not a slave to American influences, but it cannot ignore the international common sense which the US more than any other nation shapes.
But, and lest anyone think that Mr Hutton is mindlessly anti-American, salvation is at hand. If US Conservatives have crippled the British left then American socialists can help them to cast away their crutches and enable them to walk tall again:
But opinion is moving. My bet remains that it will carry John Kerry to the White House – just. Of equal importance is the fact that neo-conservatism is on the defensive and that American liberalism has its best chance to regain ground for the first time in a generation.
It is not just American politics that could be transformed by Iraq, but our own. To believe in universal rights and fair societies might become respectable again.
Ergo, Mr Hutton believes these things are not respectable now.
For the most part, this is standard, nay boilerplate, Sunday fare for Guardianistas. Something to be to scanned in approvingly over a nut roast washed down with a steaming pot of fair-trade, dolphin-friendly, non-judgmental eco-coffee.
But if his regulars are unable to appreciate the sumptuous irony here then I can because Mr. Hutton is a member of that peculiar class of British metropolitan scribblers who are forever bewailing what they see as American dominance of our economy and culture and demanding that we look to Europe for inspiration. Yet Mr. Hutton feels himself unable to make the case for socialism without the bulwark of a Democrat President in the Whitehouse and notwithstanding the fact that Europe is a social democrat lock-in.
I think the truth is that Mr Hutton has lost the capacity to make the case for ‘universal rights and fair societies’ under any circumstances. But if he insists on blaming Ronald Reagan and George Bush for this descent into rhetorical impotence, then that is just fine by me.
Harry Browne overstates the case against Ronald Reagan and makes himself look small.
There are plenty of libertarian criticisms of Ronald Reagan, from his refusal to veto tax increases, for failing to cut spending, or his support for the ‘War on Drugs’. Where Harry Browne goes well overboard is when he dismissed the effect of Ronald Reagan’s spending cuts rhetoric and on the Cold War.
Browne actually admits that Reagan made the dialogue of spending cuts possible and the mainstream debate. He accuses Reagan of not acting on his words. But what about Harry Browne himself?
In his excellent 1973 book: How I found freedom in an unfree world, Harry Browne claims:
You waste precious time, effort and money when you attempt to achieve freedom through the efforts of a group… I came to see how foolish it was to waste my precious life trying to make the world into what I thought it should be.
Yet by 1996, Browne was writing:
I don’t want to be a politician. I just want our country back.
He then sought the nomination twice as the Libertarian Party candidate for the US federal presidency. Now unless Browne had a grotesquely over-estimated sense of his on importance, he must have realised that the LP candidate was not likely to win. If not to win, why stand for office? → Continue reading: If Browne is right about Reagan, he is wrong about himself
This past weekend, I took a friend’s baby daughter for a long walk (or, more accurately, a long push – she can’t yet walk, so was in a buggy/stroller). The ducks that reside at a nearby lake are usually a safe bet when one wants to keep this particular child entertained, so that’s where we headed.
As the baby clapped and giggled at the animals – They’re not that funny, I sniffed. She kept laughing anyway. Kids, eh? A man arrived on the shore carrying a cage that contained a baby duck. He had rescued the animal the week before, he told me, after a member of the public had called the Folly Wildlife Rescue to report that the duck was caught in some fishing line. Initially, it was believed that the duck would have to have its leg amputated, but fortunately the vets were able to save the animal’s life and its leg.
I asked the man about Folly Wildlife Rescue, and he told me that it is an exclusively volunteer effort, with absolutely no form of government subsidy or other state support. It relies entirely on donations from the public and its own fund-raising activities. He himself is not paid a penny for the time and effort he puts in to this endeavour, and neither is anyone else involved.
In addition to the entirely noble goal of trying to educate the public about how they can prevent accidental injury to animals and caring for those animals when they do get hurt, I approve wholeheartedly of people taking the initiative to launch and maintain this kind of volunteer effort. It is refreshing to see Folly Wildlife Rescue performing such an admirable service without relying on the state to write the cheques. And I am pleased that they get enough donations to treat thousands of animals and inform the public about the dangers posed to wildlife by seemingly innocuous activities.
For years, Folly Wildlife Rescue – including its intensive care unit and other medical facilities – has been run from the home of Annette and Dave Risley in the Kent and East Sussex borders area of South East England. Due to the huge volume of animals they are treating, this is an impractical set of circumstances, both presently and in the long term. Because the price of property in this area of England is so high, it is expected that Folly Wildlife will have to spend at least £400,000 (more than $730,000US at current exchange rates) in order to buy suitable premises for their operation.
If you are at all impressed with the dedication shown by the volunteers who run and raise funds for this rescue operation that is untainted by money taken from taxpayers, I would ask you to consider throwing a few ducats their way. If you are not able to do that, you could support them by using their Amazon affiliation link when you shop at that online store, or simply drop them an email (address here) to let them know you are behind them and wish them luck. After all, someone has got to give injections to sick badgers and put bandages on injured hedgehogs, and I am pretty glad it is not me.
More to the point, Folly Wildlife Rescue is the kind of thing any supporter of a smaller government should gaze upon with gratitude. Please consider doing what you can to communicate that gratitude to the people behind the effort.
During the last few days, the British media, all of them, have been making much of D-Day, and quite properly so. The survivors from among those who fought that day who still remain with us now will mostly be gone ten years hence, so now is the last big moment of public thanks and public acknowledgement for these gents. And today will surely not pass without further mentions here of the sacrifices made on June 6th 1944, and the great purposes for which those sacrifices were made.
But the bit of the story that I keep thinking about is … the weather. How pleasing that one of our great national obsessions should have proved so extremely pertinent, at that time of all times.
The story is well known. The weather during the first few days of June 1944 was vile, and Group Captain Stagg, the man whose job was to analyse and present the weather news to those in charge of Operation Overlord, was the bearer of these bad tidings. On June 4th, D-Day, ready to happen on June 5th, was postponed, because of the weather, by one day.
But it could not be postponed for much longer than that. Too many men were revved up to go. A serious postponement would do dreadful things to that most crucial of military variables, morale.
Then, the miracle. Stagg discerned a magical moment of calmness in the middle of the weather system that was causing all the headaches, and through the eye of this meteorological needle Supreme Commander Eisenhower was able to thread the Normandy Landings. And they were all the more of a success for the fact that the Germans knew for certain that they just could not be done when they actually were done. As it turned out, the weather for D-Day was perfect, and all the more perfect for having seemed to be so imperfect.
My main purpose here is not to salute those ageing D-Day survivors, although I do salute them in passing, of course I do. No, the point I want to make here is that weather forecasting is one nationalised industry that really does seem to work, and to have been working well for some time now. → Continue reading: Weather forecasts are up there with dentistry
Totalitarianism is any political system in which a citizen is totally subject to state authority in all aspects of day-to-day life.
– free-definition.com
Britain and the United States are not what could be reasonably called totalitarian states. The ‘modern’ understanding of what a totalitarian state is falls within frames of reference conjuring up the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: national systems which believed that the state was an all encompassing thing that superseded society, in fact replacing civil society, in the manner advocated by Rousseau and others. To be a totalitarian means a total state in which quite simply no aspect of human life is beyond the remit of the political state.
Because both of these well known forms of totalitarianism enforced their political will via mass murder on a biblical scale, that disguises the fact that National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union differed quite significantly in many ways. Just being ‘total states’ does not mean they were the same kind of total state. Whereas the Soviets simply nationalised literally everything (i.e. took direct political control of all means of production) and maintained control via the supply of, well, everything, Nazi Germany retained large numbers of privately owned companies which were ‘free’ to trade and make several profits provided they did so in ways which complied with regulations and essential national strategic objectives: Willi Messerschmitt was free to run his company, provided he did not decide to stop making aircraft and instead become a refrigerator manufacturing company.
Reasonable commentators have often pointed out that in modern times, totalitarian states have always come about due to cataclysmic events… it was the slaughter, privations and aftermath of World War One which lead to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union after all. However is this understanding of how a total state comes about the only way Totalitarianism one can come about? → Continue reading: Inching closer to a total state
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!
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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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