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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R K Jones eschews the crudity of opening a can of whoop ass and prefers to see rebellion served up in shot glasses
Those obsessed with fine whiskeys are perhaps already familiar with Malt Advocate magazine. Those with functioning livers may think of it as the Guns & Ammo for the discerning tippler. Each issue contains detailed looks at the international trade in liquor, almost always with an anti-regulatory bent. People expect to see reasoned support for free trade in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or (sometimes) The Economist, but a drinks trade magazine? One doesn’t expect to buy a glossy, high-end specialty liquor magazine for the political commentary, but the current quarter’s issue (sadly, only teasers are available on-line) is worth a look. Any forum where a prominent American distiller opens his portion of a panel discussion (concerning regulation and taxation of the industry) with the words…
We need another Whiskey Rebellion
…is worthy of support.
Given the international, and free trading character of the liquor industry, I suppose the only real surprise should be that the paper mache puppet head brigade hasn’t yet begun picketing distilleries. Does the tone of the magazine mean anything about a change in attitude in the world? Or am I deceiving myself? I don’t know, but writers of a libertarian bent going back as far as Ayn Rand (and further) have been criticizing businessmen for a lack of ideology. Thus it is nice to see an industry niche publication that ‘gets it’.
Self-deception may be central to the human condition, and not exclusively confined to libertarians. However we often seem to have a particularly wide streak of it when it comes to looking at the world around us for signs that others may some day come round to sensible views. Just the same, it is always pleasant to see indications precisely that may indeed be happening.
RK Jones
For years I’ve been jabbering away on radio jabber-ins, in favour of the right of people to discriminate in the use of their property, and in particular of minorities to discriminate against majorities, and in particular of the right of gays to discriminate against straights. Are you in favour of such a right? Question mark, question mark. Because I am. And so on. Property rights. The right to fire people because you’ve taken a dislike to the colour of their eyes. It’s their property, it’s their money, etc. etc.
So this story gave me particular pleasure, even though it’s about something that shouldn’t be happening.
A manager of a gay bar was told to discriminate against heterosexuals and ordered to throw out a straight couple for kissing, an employment tribunal was told yesterday.
Nothing wrong with a gay bar discriminating, but they shouldn’t be hauled up in front of any tribunal.
Angelo Vigil, the assistant manager of G-A-Y bar in Soho, London, said the venue’s co-director and licensee, Jeremy Joseph, ordered him to deny entry to heterosexual couples as well as mixed groups of gay and straight revellers.
The nerve. Who does this Jeremy Joseph think he is? He’s behaving like he owns the place. Doesn’t he realise that he owns nothing? He is the delegate of the community, in the person of the employment tribunal. The G-A-Y bar in Soho is the property of All Of Us, and if All Of Us, as interpreted by the employment tribunal, say heteros can enter it, enter it they can.
Mr Vigil, of Barons Court, west London, started working at the club, which is owned by the Mean Fiddler Music Group, in September 2002. He resigned three months later and is claiming victimisation and harassment. He told the tribunal in Woburn Place that he understood the importance of preventing homophobia in the bar, but he believed the policy amounted to discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.
Yes, that’s exactly what it amounted to. And if the law forbids this, the law is an ass. Chucking out all non-homos is a nice simple way of chucking out not just the reality of homophobia, but even the mistaken fear of it. Makes very good business sense.
He said when he raised concerns over the policy, he was told by Mr Joseph that he would “face the sack” if he “did not change his attitude”.
So. Angelo Vigil, “assistant manager”, didn’t want to assist the manager in enforcing the manager’s preferred policy of who comes in and who doesn’t, and how they behave when they’re there. So he got the boot. Sounds fair to me.
And even if it wasn’t fair, it is their property they wanted Angelo Vigil to help them administer, and it was their money they were paying him to do it.
Even if it wasn’t fair, it was still fair, and the employment tribunal should also get the boot.
The Bush administration may be in the process of revolutionising America’s foreign policy but, on the domestic front, it seems like business as usual:
The Bush administration, pressing its campaign against state medical marijuana laws, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let federal authorities punish California doctors who recommend pot to their patients.
The administration would revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who tell their patients marijuana would help them, a prerequisite for obtaining the drug under the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law.
And, of course, his predecessor was no better:
Contending that the drug has no medical value, the Clinton administration announced in January 1997 that doctors who recommended marijuana would lose their licenses to prescribe federally regulated narcotics. Doctors in many fields need federal licenses to remain in practice.
Proof that, regardless of who is sitting in the hot-seat, the absurd and insane ‘war on drugs’ just has to go on and on and on.
[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]
Q: What is the difference between a social democrat and a socialist?
A: A social democrat is a socialist who has realised the socialism doesn’t actually work.
A perfect illustration is provided by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, the very model of a modern social democrat, who has announced that things must change:
If we want to generate growth and jobs, we must lower those costs that eat into take-home pay.
Financial constraints are not the only driving force behind our reform programme. The reform of the welfare state is also a precondition for the success of future generations. In the past, the main topic of welfare politics was the redistribution of wealth. First, we must remember that wealth can only be redistributed once it has been generated. Second, we should note that redistribution has limits, beyond which mere monetary transfers encourage dependence. Third, elaborate systems of redistribution tend to produce “side-effects” in opposition to the desired results.
Do my eyes deceive me or is this doyen of the ‘Third Way’ demanding tax cuts and warning of the dangers of a dependence culture and unintended consequences? No, I think I am reading it right and if Herr Schroder keeps this up he might find himself being invited to write for the Samizdata one of these days.
And neither is this manful attempt to grapple with common sense a breaking of the ranks or a solo frolic in the fields of sanity because I could not help but notice that it follows hot on the heels of this rather more nebulous and ill-defined attempt from Peter Mandelson to say something along similar lines.
Coincidence? No, I don’t think so. Nor is it due to mere fickle fate that both of these portentious editorials appear in the pages of the Daily Social Worker where messages like this are about as common as gay bars in Riyadh. Now, I’m taking a calculated guess here but I’d say this is all part of a cunning plan to prepare the ground ahead of a big summit on ‘Progressive Governance’ (subtitled: ‘Oh Christ, we’ve been rumbled. What do we do now?) to be held here in London this coming weekend.
Could all these ominous warnings and pleas for an open-mind from the likes of Herr Schroder and Mr.Mandelson be a means of softening the ground for heavy blows ahead? Because to the extent that anything at all emerges from this gathering of professional pick-pockets and incurable busybodies, it is bound to be triumphal, shiny ‘reform’ and ‘new deal’ initiatives of the kind that pretty much herald an end to the welfare-state settlement.
If I am right (and that remains to be seen) then it is obvious that some of the brighter stars in the left-wing firmament have seen the writing on the wall and they know only too well that carrying the 20th Century state-socialist models into the 21st Century is a guaranteed one-way ticket to palookaville.
Wouldn’t it be fun to watch them emerge from their smoke-free rooms next week and jointly announce to their tax-consuming constituents that the booze has all run out, the snacks have all been eaten, the guests are all tapped out and that the party is definitely over.
I think they have been having a day of broody reflection over at the Daily Social Worker.
Peter Mandelson says:
Political projects that fail to renew themselves are soon swept away and deserve to be. That won’t be allowed to happen with New Labour. It is one reason why the progressive governance conference, which starts on Friday, comes at a crucial time for the international centre-left.
Meanwhile, Jeanette Winterson says:
How could we double spending on schools? We could start by abandoning the fetish of higher education, where armies of illiterate, innumerate kids are signed on to courses that are as useless as they are. Why are the kids useless? They haven’t been taught properly in school. Why haven’t they been taught properly in school? No money. So why do we insist on university targets when we aren’t able to educate all children at a basic level?
A far cry from all the smug triumphalism of the late 90’s, isn’t it. And is it just me or do I detect that these people are gripped by a mounting sense of panic? Perhaps even they have have realised that they have run out of ideas and that they need to clutch at something, anything before their entire project unravels.
Or maybe I am reading too much into it.
Dave Carr’s post reminds me of an idea I’ve had for ages.
I often consult for long periods in in Manhattan. It’s normal there to see people standing outside on the street for a cig break. It’s such a common sight you just stop noticing it.
It also takes up a lot of peoples time. Some co-workers in one company I consulted for (pre dotBomb) went out for a puff nearly every hour.
Perhaps NYC Libertarians should carry gummed stickers sized to fit the US cig package warning. Every time you see someone standing on the street, give them one.
Imagine thousands of New Yorkers standing on the street with packages saying: “If I’d voted Libertarian I wouldn’t be standing here”.
Use your imagination.
There is room for a similar tactic here in the UK. Our health Nazi’s are so overt it leaves them open to really easy ridicule. Why pull punches at all?
“Health Nazi’s make an ASH of themselves.”
“ASH doesn’t know shite”.
“I vote Libertarian: my diseased lungs are my own business”.
The mind just boggles.
lib·er·ty n. pl. lib·er·ties
- a. The condition of being free from restriction or control.
b. The right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one’s own choosing.
c. The condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor. See Synonyms at freedom.
- Freedom from unjust or undue governmental control.
- A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference: the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights.
Like some undead zombie in B-grade horror movie, we have pumped the hideous thing full of lead from our rifles and shotguns… it falls riddled with logical holes and yet somehow the creature staggers to its feet again with bits falling off, lurching forward once more.
Gauche is clinging remorselessly to the term ‘Libertarian Socialism’
But I’m still an enthusiast for egalitarian self-managed market socialism; and I still want the state to leave us all alone as much as possible. My big difference with libertarians of the right is that my ideal minimal state concentrates not on maintenance of property rights and defence of the realm but on redistribution of incomes and wealth to provide basic needs to everyone as of right (citizen’s income and free healthcare, education and housing) so we can all get on with whatever we want. And OK, I know that’s utopian. But so what?
Well on one point I am in complete agreement with Gauche… his view is utopian. In fact, the notion that a state which redistributes wealth by force and provides ‘education’ to its citizens can be a minimal state is more than just utopian, it is fantastical. Wage control? Nationalised healthcare? Nationalised education? Nationalised housing? And how, exactly, would this be different to the non-libertarian modern socialist (i.e. social democratic) states found all over the western world?
The answer is it is exactly the same thing. The only liberty in Gauche’s libertarianism is the liberty to take the money of others by force without prior consent and to run the economy on political, rather than social, interaction.
Sure, there is a long history of people calling themselves libertarians. But so what? Liberty means not having one’s life under the force backed direction of others… socialism means using force backed politics to direct people’s life in accordance with socialist political ends. The two are antithetical.
Arrrggg… I’m a…libertarian…too!
Amid the recent revival of the spectre of large tax increases, a simply splendid post by David Farrer pointing out exactly why the political classes need them:
The truth is that the welfare state is bankrupt and almost no one, not the Scotsman editorial writer and certainly not the Tories, is willing to say that the Emperor has no clothes.
And not just the British welfare state either. For all the robust free market rhetoric that frightens the piss out of European lefties, the American welfare state is in just as parlous a condition:
Are we really broke? The answer is clearly, YES, but living on borrowed time and money. A recent study was done by Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters which measures our government’s current debts and projected debts based on the proposed federal budget and revenues for 2004. By extending the numbers in constant 2003 dollars, they have come to the conclusion that the Federal government is officially insolvent to the tune of $44 trillion.
According to Financial Sense Online (from whence the above quote is lifted) both Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupt by 2010 or 2011.
This is really the big, global, dirty, open secret: the 20th century welfare state constructs are lurching, creaking and on the verge of collapse. Yet, in polite circles, this looming disaster cannot even be discussed, let alone addressed. Such is the taboo status of the welfare state that most Western politicians would rather be seen to publicly champion child molestation than any serious reform agenda.
It is for this reason that the reactionaries are trying to float various methods for the state to plunder everything and anything they can in the desperate, febrile, frantic hope that they can put off the Day of Reckoning for just a few more precious years.
Social individualists of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains
and a whole world to win!
Although intended as a humorous meme-hack, the statement is also quite clearly true. The irony is that for individuals to preserve their individuality, they must unite with others to fight the collectivist political pressures that would deny that we are moral free agents and make us so much less than we are: to fight involuntary collectivism we must voluntarily act collectively.
And so that is why I set up Samizdata.net and lured others to dive into the blogosphere with me head first.
It was my attempt to give a platform to shout out to the world for like-minded individuals who rejected the intrusive force backed collectivist view of the world. We are not really trying to ‘convert’ people, though that would be nice, rather we are trying to change people’s meta-context and let the ideology take care of itself. That is our ‘mission statement’ if you like.
A meta-context is a person’s frames of reference through which they interpret the world around them. It is not an ideology or a political ‘ism’ or even a philosophy… it is ‘just’ a series of axioms and ‘givens’ that colour and flavour how you think about things and come to understand them via a set of critical or emotional preferences and underlying assumptions. We all have a personal meta-context.
For example, it is one of the reasons that although I have written many articles on Samizdata.net about the issue of private ownership of firearms in the USA, I very rarely discuss the Second Amendment. Why? Because an individualist meta-context does not have rights as something which are dependent on The State.
The Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal artifice, but it is not the source or reason that people should be able to own weapons as a matter not of privilege but by right. In fact, no state and its laws is the source of any right whatsoever: rights are objectively yours to begin with and are not given to you by anyone. Thus I will never argue an American has the right to own a gun because ‘it says so in the Second Amendment’ because they would have a right to do so even if it said nothing of the sort.
Yet that is not to say I think the Second Amendment is a bad idea, just that it is nothing more than a useful profane tool to secure an objective right, not a source of rights. To me as an individualist, I see do not see the state as central to my life or quite frankly to civil society… as I am not a fully convinced anarchist I do see some role for limited government in securing the rights of individuals, but just as an adjunct to far more important the networks that are primarily social rather than political.
And so if we are trying to change people’s meta-context to include more individualist and less collectivist frames of reference, then it behoves us to use phrases which assist in this process rather than those which are loaded with ‘trigger words’ that may well get our views unhelpfully pigeonholed in places that does not really reflect where we are coming from. Now I certainly regard myself as a libertarian of the minarchist flavour… what is sometimes called a ‘Classical Liberal’. However the term ‘libertarian’ is increasingly loaded with meanings that generate more heat than light, and thus I have started using the term ‘social individualist’ rather than ‘libertarian in Samizdata.net’s introduction in the sidebar. We have not changed… certainly I have not… and I intend to continue arguing that the term ‘libertarian’ can only be used correctly to describe people who promote the individual liberty to chose how you interact with the world via social interaction rather than force backed political interaction. Just as Living Marxism changed its name to Spiked in order to shed the ‘baggage’ of the term ‘Marxism’ without actually changing a thing ideologically, we started life as ‘Libertarian Samizdata’ back in our early days on-line and then just became Samizdata.net in order to better reach beyond the worthy true believers. We are no longer Libertarian Samizdata but our thinking is really no different to when we started.
Yet if the term ‘libertarian’ gets in the way of what we are trying to do, it is time to start de-emphasising it. I am still a member of the executive committee of the London based Libertarian Alliance and I still regard myself as a pukka libertarian. But a more accurate description of my views than just the broad church of ‘libertarianism’ would be that I reject collectivist views of the world as utterly falsified, but at the same time I do not regard individuals as atomised objects existing in splendid isolation. Unless you live alone in a log cabin in the middle of Canada subsisting on nuts and moose meat, you are an individual within a social environment: a civil society. And it is the extent to which you can freely act within civil society as an individual pursuing self-defined ends by right, without political coercion or permission, that is the measure of whether you are free or not.
Additionally, I have long regarded socialism as the most ironic use of language in the history of mankind, given that it means to replace social interaction with entirely political interaction. It is time to reclaim the word social and reject the newspeak inversion of it into meaninglessness.
And it is addressing those issues that make this a social individualist weblog.
Responding to a posting a fortnight ago on CrozierVision, I posted a piece the day before yesterday on my (Brian’s) Culture Blog entitled Do blogs convert people? Jonathan Wilde commented on that piece in a manner which suggests that the early editorial meetings concerning Samizdata may have been bugged. By Jonathan Wilde. He certainly gets what we’re trying to do here:
As I stated in my original post on Patrick’s entry, I do believe that blogs at least influence people, if not convert them. Yet. I was a libertarian prior to finding Samizdata, but over the 18 months or so that I have been reading Samizdata, I have been directly influenced by what I have read. I used to be a reluctant voter thinking that to be a libertarian meant being a Libertarian (i.e., member of the American Libertarian Party) and that taking part in the political process was the only way to be a libertarian. When I read Samizdata, I saw people who didn’t really care that much which political party was in power, but were in the business of changing ‘meta-contexts’ and going around the state, rather than through it. Further, I saw people who were influenced by Mises, Popper, and Hayek rather than the usual Rand and Rothbard that you find in America, yet arrive at the same basic conclusions on most issues. I saw people who were proud of Western culture. I saw people who were proud of defeating the Nazis in WWII rather than simply seeing it as just another state war, with all of its side-effects. These were all things that made me believe that it was okay to be a libertarian and agree with those ideas.
Since this is a culture blog, let me mention that the ‘culture’ of Samizdata had a lot to do with its success. Yes, the brilliant writing on the blog is vital to convert readers. But the culture is also essential. Pictures of Samizdatistas drinking, acting goofy, fondling women, and making fun of war protestors gives the impression that libertarians aren’t angry gun nuts from Montana (the stereotype in America), but are simply regular, everyday people.
And the last way in which Samizdata influenced me is to start my own website with similar characteristics – a group blog focused on Austrian economics, with a ‘laid-back’ non-angry-gun-nut atmosphere, and periodic ‘off-topic’ content.
I was already a libertarian, and perhaps I’m not the best example of blogs influencing, if not converting people, but the blogosphere is young. If our ideas are better than the rest, then they will rub-off with time. After hearing Perry being on a forum with ‘mainstream’ media on BBC last week, I really think that Samizdata has a chance to be something special. And it’s a classic libertarian strategy: carve a new niche, go around the established paths, and succeed on what you do best. The blogosphere is the new niche, and Samizdata is at the top.
Jonathan Wilde
Who, precisely, is busting out all over? People who call themselves ‘socialist libertarians’ are busting out all over, that’s who.
The latest addition to this roll-call of the ragged is a certain Mr.Paul Anderson who, I am advised, was previously a columnist for the left-wing newspaper ‘Tribune’. Mr.Anderson has started a blog. Good for him. His blog is called ‘Gauche’ which is fine insofar as his Francophonic pretensions are entirely a matter for him.
My annoyance, however, is with the subtitle of his blog which reads:
Democratic Socialism with a Libertarian Punch
May I humbly suggest a clearer alternative to that meaningless bit of cant? How about:
Vegetarian cooking with just a hint of roast beef
That is what he might as well be saying. In fact, that is what he is saying and, one supposes, with a straight face to boot. Mr.Anderson has clearly not yet been advised that he can either be a socialist OR he can be a libertarian but he cannot possibly be both. Nor can he plausibly pass himself off as representing some sort of squishy compromise position between the two. If Mr.Anderson wants to know exactly why, then I can do no better than to recommend this comprehensive exposition on the subject by Perry de Havilland.
I have no intention of apologising for the tetchiness of my tone but, you see, this is something of a ‘hot button issue’ for people like me. We at Samizdata will be tarred, feathered, damned and consigned to purgatory before we sit back and allow the word ‘libertarian’ to be hijacked in the manner that the word ‘liberal’ was once hijacked and then handed over, gift-wrapped, to people who have since proved themselves to be anything and everything but liberal. → Continue reading: They’re busting out all over!
Well, I must say I am shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the gazillions of pounds of taxpayers money that has been thrown at the state health and education sectors have not made a blind bit of difference. Who says? Why, none other than our Glorious Leader, Tony Blair:
Higher taxes will be needed to fund health and education improvements, Tony Blair indicated yesterday after admitting that his first six years in power had failed to deliver a promised “transformation” in public services.
‘Higher taxes’! Of course, that’s the answer! Damn, why didn’t he think of that sooner? Er, except he did think of it sooner. He thought of it back in 1997 and we have been paying increasingly higher taxes ever since. Oh never mind, just hike them up again, that’s bound to work.
Keep digging, Tony.
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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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