Samizdata

Many of you know me already. As I have been haunting the blogosphere for the last three years through comments, emails, and guest articles. Those of you that do not will in due time, so I will skip the typical bio/Curriculum Vitae stuff. I was going to post a Micklethwaitian tale of my 50 mile journey of Southern California’s quite righteously maligned public transit system to Brian Linse’s blogger bash, where I met Perry & Adriana face-to-face for the first time. But that got a bit longish for a forum such as this, so I guess I will have to save it for a chapter in my memoirs.

One of the subjects which has piqued my fancy recently is the concept of N-dimensional variants on the classic Nolan chart. This was initiated a few weeks ago when I read this TCS article by Eugene Miller, on a link from Virginia Postrel. In it Miller attempts, quite successfully, to typify political philosophies on a Nolanesce grid – embrace of change forming one axis, and the need for control over change forming the other.

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It occurred to me that one could map this function on top of the typical Nolan chart by equating ‘liberty’ with ‘change’. Further analysis led me to sumise that this conjunction of the two concepts was better expressed in differentials. But, for the purposes of both brevity and accessibility, we will spare that dissertation for another day.

Further indulgence of my curiosity led me to this article by Kelley L. Ross. Therein, Ross expands upon the basic Nolan chart with another dimension of what form of government safeguards what liberties (or not). It’s an interesting read. But the average Samizdata.net reader would likely find the first ten pages review, and should skip right to Liberties in Three Dimensions. Although, this little graphic, concerning the US Supreme Court is rather interesting:

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The final seven or so pages constitute the meat of the article, where he makes the point that democracy is no guarantor of liberty. In it, he makes an interesting and rather open-ended point with this:

A Republican form was envisioned by people like James Madison, who wished to impose practical, and not just theoretical limits on government by the use of the Separation of Powers and a system of Checks and Balances. This worked well enough but was ultimately undermined by one grave oversight: The United States Constitution provided no mechanism for its own enforcement. That task was soon taken up by the Supreme Court, but Thomas Jefferson realized that the Supreme Court, as a part of the federal government, could not be trusted to faithfully maintain the limits to the power of the federal government itself: “How can we expect impartial decision between the General government, of which they are themselves so eminent a part, and an individual State, from which they have nothing to hope or fear?”

[Autobiography]

In the end, especially during the Civil War, World War I, the New Deal, and the Sixties, the Supreme Court began to concede extra-Constitutional powers to the federal government simply on the principle that it wanted them. The only mechanism that existed to check the failures of the Court was the torturous avenue of Constitutional Amendment, politically impossible when so many people had begun to believe that unlimited power for the federal government was actually a good thing. And then again, it is hard to know how a newer version of the 10th Amendment could be more plainly worded than the old one. A new Amendment would have to descend to the ignoble level of contradicting specific Supreme Court pronouncements that the original Amendment was simply a “tautology” or “truism” that wasn’t really meant to limit federal power. (See Two Logical Errors in Constitutional Jurisprudence.) An effectively updated Constitution would have to address all the sophistry and dishonesty that was used to undermine the original one, besides providing for such additional checks and balances as would abolish the dictatorial powers of the Court.

Indeed, how does one establish practical limitations on power within a republic? Jefferson’s answer was to have an armed revolution every twenty years or so. Serious talk of that today will get you twenty years or so behind bars.

It took a while but the truth is no longer ‘out there’, it has landed smack dab onto the pages of the Guardian. Yes, the Guardian.

This long-overdue confirmation of the real centre-left agenda comes courtesy of David Walker who is gleeful about the viral growth of tax-consumers:

Tony – reform is my middle name – Blair isn’t obviously the public sector’s friend. Nor, for all his protestations of affection, is Gordon Brown, the man who insisted on putting the safety of London’s tube travellers in the hands of profit-maximising companies.

Yet under them the public sector prospers. Since 1999 it has just kept growing as a source of jobs; the UK’s approximation to full employment owes a lot to council, NHS and government recruitment. Paranoid rightwingers, for whom the Guardian’s thick advertising sections are a weekly torment, don’t know the half of it. Under Labour, “indirect” employment has also boomed. Yesterday John Prescott published an evaluation of his new deal for communities, a set of participative projects in run-down areas. Between the lines it noted that a sort of reserve army of tenants and activists has been recruited, subsisting of government grants.

Imagine how ‘paranoid’ those ‘rightwingers’ would get if they suspected the truth about how many people are suckling at the state teat? Why, it would be enough to drive them round the twist.

Now here come new figures for direct government employment. Whitehall is booming. During the past year, the Inland Revenue took on 8,500 extra people, at a time when total civil service numbers increased by nearly 4%. Even the tiny Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 450 strong in April last year, added 30 people to its roster.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!!! Roll on the glorious day when everyone works for the state!

In theory, that ought to mean up to 6 million households -perhaps 15 million people – with a direct interest in buoyant public expenditure, and hence in having a government likely to keep it that way. Labour’s formula for permanent re-election, you might think. But turkeys will vote for Christmas.

And to think it is capitalists like me who are generally regarded as ‘self-serving’.

Not once does Mr.Walker even attempt to invoke the mendacious tropes about ‘social justice’ and ‘caring’ and while his candour cannot be regarded as admirable it is, nonetheless, refreshing. His is as bold an admission as I can imagine that the motivation behind voting Labour is to increase one’s chances of joining or staying on the government payroll. Of course, libertarians have been saying this for years and I suppose I must extend some muted thanks to Mr.Walker for publicly admitting that we were right.

But being right is one thing and prevailing is something else. In order to prevail this message must filter down to the remaining 45 million or so other British people who struggle to support themselves and carry the burden of this parasite class on their backs.

Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy fans will remember the ultimate cocktail drink; the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Imbibing this infectious blend was like being hit in the head by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. But does the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster remain the ultimate cocktail? I think I may have stumbled across something even stronger.

Imagine a blowtorch. A really fierce one glowing bluely in the dark. Turn it up a little, hear that roar. Stuff a small lemon into the top of an Irish whiskey flagon. Lay the flagon on its side, perhaps propped up on some old hitchhiking towels, and place the blowtorch against the flagon’s newly exposed underside. Retire to an unsafe distance. When the flagon explodes, try to catch the whiskey-flavoured lemon between your teeth. Suck it and see what you think. Because that’s what it’s like reading Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s book, Democracy: The God That Failed, first published in 2001. As the latest professor of economics at the University of Nevada, and senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises institute, this book out-Rothbards Hoppe’s old Austrian mentor, Uncle Murray Rothbard. Did you even imagine this was possible? Check this:

The mass of people, as La Boetie and Mises recognised, always and everywhere consists of “brutes”, “dullards”, and “fools”, easily deluded and sunk into habitual submission. Thus today, inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectuals, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people.

Schwing, Baby. And that’s just the warm-up. Try this, if you like your lemon juice even sharper:

Hence, the decision by members of the [libertarian] elite to secede from and not cooperate with government must always include the resolve of engaging in, or contributing to, a continuous ideological struggle, for if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones.

Sounds like a great idea for a web site.

And if you like it really rough, try this:

As a result of subsidizing the malingerers, the neurotics, the careless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the Aids-infected, and the physically and mentally challenged through insurance regulation and compulsory health insurance, there will be more illness, malingering, neuroticism, carelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, Aids infection, and physical and mental retardation.

Crazy, dude. → Continue reading: Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Walking on the wild side