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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Having spent half-a-lifetime confronting, facing down and baiting my left-wing compatriots, I have the benefit of knowing exactly what words, names and phrases to use in order to elicit a dramatic response.
For example, the very name of George Bush has become the etymological equivalent of a nerve agent. One only has to drop it into a conversation and then watch the lefties convulsing themselves in spasms of bug-eyed hatred-cum-delirium. At the moment there is no antidote.
Robust political partisanship of this kind is nothing new nor is it confined to the left; the name of Tony Blair will turn the face of most Conservatives into a rictus of horror. For most of the time, this kind of mutual baiting is fun and, in many ways, indicative of a healthy society.
However, I have found evidence of something a little darker in this quite awful cartoon in the Guardian.
The two figures are supposed to be those of Messrs Bush and Blair but it is the image of George Bush, portrayed as a sort of cross between a pointy-eared alien and an ape, which I find just a little disturbing. Presumably the cartoonist is trying to convince his audience that George Bush is less than human.
The art of caricature is a time-honoured British tradition which I particularly enjoy and it is right that all political figures should be regarded as fair game. But this is not just caricature, it is deliberate dehumanisation; a process with a very unfortunate provenance.
Nor can this be simply dismissed as the work of an ‘unrepresentative fringe’ as the Guardian is undoubtedly the most important organ of the British left. Given their alleged commitment to ‘humanitarian’ policies, depictions of human beings as apes is the kind of thing I though they would go to any lengths to avoid. As it is, they have provided us with a window into the kind of psychosis which lies at the heart of at least some portions of the ideological left.
When George Orwell wanted to warn us all of the horrors of communism he did so by portraying animals as human beings. My feeling is that those who portray human beings as animals have a far less worthy agenda.
Natalie Solent (“brain like a planet” – Alice Bachini) has this to say today about farm regulation:
Note the vague and subjective nature of the criteria by which the officials make these decisions – “Is the farmhouse character-appropriate?” “Is the residential aspect in balance with the farm?” If one has high taxation one needs a complicated regime of rules to allow wealth to be created at all. Once the regime of rules becomes sufficiently complicated it collapses under its own weight and becomes a regime of the personal judgement of officials. And personal judgement must frequently mean personal whim, personal caprice. We are edging back to the lord administering justice as he pleases in his own demesne.
Apart from the word “edging”, which I would probably have done as “moving”, I agree.
But now here’s a thought. If it is true that any year now the public sector will be carved up again into slices of property which the ruling official can rule as he pleases, might this perhaps be a way that classical liberal ideas could smuggle themselves back into society again? Might not some of these local lords of the manor decide to preside over a genuinely free market, and if they do, would they not attract lots of business? And might it not then start to spread?
If the very laws themselves are now more and more being enacted upon the whims of individuals, and they are, might not laws in due course find themselves being abolished by the same mechanism?
A further relevant thought, which I often find myself repeating because it has so many applications and resonances. When I worked in that free market bookshop in Covent Garden in the eighties that I’m always going on about, we found that some of our most loyal, knowledgeable and ideologically simpatico customers were people in the upper reaches of the civil service. Why? Because, whereas outsiders still tended to hope for the best from the government, these people all knew the worst. They knew that government screws up almost everything it touches, because time after time, they’d been right there when it was being done. Often these people start out very statist in their thinking, which is why they started out working for the state. But if they are well educated (and they mostly are) and intellectually scrupulous (which some certainly are) they find themselves compelled to revise their statist opinions.
So it is not so very fanciful that at least some of these high state officials who mutate into lords of the manor might well be our kind of people, and want to do our kinds of things.
It must have been about a year ago when a gentleman describing himself as a ‘real socialist’ fetched up on the Libertarian Alliance Forum and threw himself headlong into stinging denunciations of the state and its coercive methods. He was delighted to be amongst those of what he believed to be a like mind. But he wasn’t just against government coercion, no. He was against all coercion which included the ‘tyranny’ of capitalism, commerce, money and property (which he regarded as theft).
Upon further prompting (and it didn’t take much) he advised that his goal was a pure society where all government, money, trade, property and personal gain had been abolished. Intrigued (and heartily amused by this stage) we asked him how he intended to prevent people from creating currencies, establishing property rights and trading as they please without coercion.
In response he was both affronted and bemused. Why couldn’t we understand that when all the above-mentioned iniquities had been abolished, a spontaneous order of cooperation would arise, self-interest would be dispensed with, and there will be no need for coercion because nobody will want things like property and money.
After the delivery of a few well aimed logic incendiaries, he disappeared taking his one-man crusade for utopia with him. He simply could not understand why people would want money or property in a world where everything was free. I daresay that he still has the hoots of our derisive laughter ringing in his head.
I am reminded of this gentleman and his utopian vision because of something posted by one of our commentators recently:
“As I’ve mentioned before, the US Libertarian Party has a concept called the non-aggression principle which states that you will not initiate force, or advocate its initiation. Anyone who joins the LP signs a statement saying that they will abide by that.”
On the face of it, the non-aggression principle (NAP) sounds like a very noble and enlightened thing. Indeed, it is a principle to which I once subscribed myself. However, further reflection (and not just recent events or by way of any reference to the possible impending assault on Iraq) has led me to quite a different opinion. → Continue reading: The best form of defence
Whether one thinks government is a necessary thing (if only for fighting other, worse, governments) or not, it is well to remember that one should not place great trust in government.
A recent reminder of this in the British context:
A few years ago the mobile telephone (cell phone) companies paid the British government many billions of pounds for licences.
It is now widely agreed that the companies that got the licences went a bit mad during the auction process and grossly overpaid – but at least they thought they had an asset (even if it was an asset they had paid too much money for).
They were quite wrong. They forgot about the government’s power to regulate (although the very institution of a ‘licence’ should have reminded them of this power).
Now the government regulators have demanded that the mobile telephone companies cut the price of telephone calls.
In short the mobile telephone companies paid many billions of pounds for nothing. The powers that be can come along and regulate their profits away.
The “close working relationship” they had with the government was a sham, their trust in Mr Blair and Mr Brown with their “support for British high tech business” (like the late Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” back in the 1960’s) was quite mistaken.
Now the companies are screaming and going to court – but I bet they wish they had not got involved with the government in the first place.
As the potential military conflict with Iraq draws near, all sorts of weird things come out of woodwork. For example, some of them are planning a D-Day for the ‘peace’ movement in Europe and United States on 15th February. Andrew Burgin, spokesman for Britain’s Stop the War Coalition expects record numbers on the day at the biggest anti-war demonstration London has ever seen, all marching under a “Don’t attack Iraq” banner.
“The message is a simple one: no war against Iraq for any reason, whether the United Nations supports an attack or not.”
I am aware that the public opinion in Europe is at best divided over an attack on Iraq and in most countries – Britain and France included – is against by a wide margin if an invasion is not supported by the United Nations. However illogical that position might be, I have grown used to fighting it and nowadays it leaves me cold, merely a reminder of human stupidity. But “no war, for any reason”?! Who are these people?
The aim of the Coalition should be very simple: to stop the war currently declared by the United States and its allies against ‘terrorism’.
When I looked at the list of supporters of the Stop the War Coalition, I found many of our old ‘friends’ from CND, assorted Marxist trade unions, and other institutions where ‘idiotarians’ like to congregate. Just a few rich pickings:
George Galloway MP, Harold Pinter (playwright), Lindsey German (Editor, Socialist Review), Paul Foot (journalist), George Monbiot (journalist), Tariq Ali (broadcaster), Liz Davies (Socialist Alliance), Dave Nellist (Socialist Party), John Rees (Editor, International Socialism), Will Self (writer), Germaine Greer (writer)…
These are just a few whose names have either been pilloried on this blog or the names of institution they belong to speak for themselves. What really gets me going is that these people confidently claim and occupy the moral highground in protesting against war with Iraq (notice how even the phrase ‘war on Iraq’ suggests aggression from our side; as far as I am concerned Iraq is at war with us and has been for some time, thanks to its megalomaniac leader).
They will satisfy their flaccid social consciences by making themselves ‘feel good’ about having the courage to stand up for things that everyone else is against like peace and justice and brotherhood… [hums the tune to Tom Lehrer’s song: We are the Folk Song Army, Everyone of us cares, We all hate poverty, war and injustice, Unlike the rest of you squares…] It’s an old communist, leftist, tranzi…etc technique. Grab them by their emotions and you are sure to be followed by those without reason.
What would these people say about fighting Hitler and the Nazi Germany or indeed about any aggressor attacking its neighbours and posing threat to the world? How do they square history with their idiotic demand to oppose war against Iraq for any reason? I fear that security and defence are meaningless concepts to such ideologues, what matters is that they get to call demonstrations against the US and be anti-American with a ‘noble’ message to boot. What joy!
On the other end of the table, we have the likes of Major Peter Ratcliffe, who won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his role in the Scud base attack leading the crack Alpha One Zero squad behind enemy lines. He believes Britain should support any American military action in Iraq and describes anti-war critics in Tony Blair’s government as traitors:
“Tony Blair vowed to support America in the war on terrorism. He said: ‘Whatever it takes’. I see no reason why he should go back on that. Those who now say otherwise – old Labour lefties like Clare Short and Tam Dalyell, the pacifists, those now turning on Blair – they’re traitors.
Few doubted at the time of the Gulf War that Saddam’s true goal was to become a ruler of the Muslim world in the Middle East. There is no reason to believe that goal has changed. He is a megalomaniac. Saddam wants to dominate the Middle East, he wants to terrorise the world. His own people revile him.
Hussein has always vowed to avenge himself on America. His people suffer more, not less, because Saddam Hussein is allowed to remain in power. And they will continue to do so until he is removed. And no amount of hand-wringing, no amount of international aid, no amount of windy wobbling will change that fact.
Nobody likes war. Nobody enters a war recklessly, without deadly serious consideration of all the facts. Everyone would prefer to stay at home and hope for a political solution. But the fact is that there isn’t one.
Soldier’s words, honest and direct. They also carry far more weight as they are uttered by someone who fought to protect us and the society we live in.
Whilst Samizdata.net is not trying to start a flame war with LewRockwell.com, it would be fair to say that once we stray out of the area of economics, we disagree with them fairly consistantly on issues of war and peace. Alan Forrester adds his views on the subject.
One of my favourite ways of thinking about libertarianism is that we ought to have libertarian institutions because people are ignorant. I’m not misanthropic, it’s just that outside a very narrow range of expertise people tend to know nothing and this ignorance means that we should strive to have a world in which people can offer advice to each other without making it compulsory. Interestingly enough there is a brilliant illustration of this within the libertarian community itself at Lew Rockwell.com, those Lew Rockwell fellows know everything there is to know about free market economics and I take my hat off to them in that respect. But when it comes to moral and political philosophy and in particular the morality and politics of war they don’t have a clue.
Take, for example, this bizarre piece: Bloodthirsty ‘Libertarians’ by Walter Block
“The libertarian non-aggression axiom is the essence of libertarianism. Take away this axiom, and libertarianism might as well be libraryism, or vegetarianism. Thus, if a person is to be a libertarian, he must, he absolutely must, in my opinion, be able to distinguish aggression from defense.”
How exactly one is supposed to derive all political wisdom from a single catchphrase rather than look at real problems and try to figure out how one could deal with them in away that is conducive to problem-solving I’m not sure. However, even on the basis of the non-aggression rule, the comments below are complete tosh.
“You don’t have to wait until I actually punch you in the nose to take violent action against me. You don’t even have to wait until my fist is within a yard of you, moving in your direction. However, if you haul off and punch me in the nose in a preemptive strike, on the ground that I might punch you in the future, then you are an aggressor.”
So let me get this straight. You’re standing atop a pile of dismembered corpses, laughing like a madman and brandishing a chainsaw covered in blood. You haven’t noticed me yet, but I’m a few hundred metres away with a telescopic rifle. Am I allowed to blow your head clean off your
shoulders or not? → Continue reading: Libertarianism is not about nonaggression, it is about liberty
One of the advantages of giving up smoking (10 days now, folks) is that you can defend the rights of other smokers from a higher strategic ground; nobody can accuse you of having a personal axe to grind.
But not having an axe leaves me with a free hand with which to take up cudgels against busybodies and their campaigns for increased state bullying:
“The survey was carried out on behalf of Cancer Research UK, Marie Curie Cancer Care, QUIT, ASH and No Smoking Day.
Officials said they hoped the survey would encourage ministers to take steps to ban smoking at work.”
My own view is that it is up to the owners of the business to decide upon the issue of smoking on the premises and what I find grating is not that these organisations disagree with me or even that they publicise their views on the matter. No, what I find questionable if whether ‘charities’ should be engaging in these kinds of campaigns.
Incidences of charities behaving as political lobbyists are far too frequent to be dismissed as symptoms of altruistic exuberance. In fact, whilst this is probably not true in the case of organisations like Cancer Research UK or Marie Curie, one could be forgiven for suspecting that the label ‘charity’ is, in some cases, used as a fig-leaf to mask a wholly political ambition. It provides an automatic authentication for the views they express and an insulation against criticism of either their opinions or motives.
I wish to make it clear that I am not against charities. In fact, I am very much in favour of charities as voluntary organisations which can and do provide real help to the distressed and the weak with far greater efficiency and humanity that any number of indifferent state bureaucracies. But I do think that the parameters of ‘charitable status’ are overdue for some scrutiny. Organisations that confine their activities to distributing hot soup to the destitute or arranging day-trips for orphans deserve the title and the advantages it brings. Organisations which exist merey to egg on Big Brother and advance an ideological agenda are lobbyists and should be treated as such.
In this age where ancient protections of Liberty are openly scoffed upon by the powers that be, it behooves us to proclaim loudly from the rooftops those rights they much prefer buried and forgotten. I wonder how many of you know it is a basic Right of an American Juror to judge not only on fact but on law as well? As this forum has a large libertarian readership, I wager it is far higher than in the general public – but still depressingly low.
Jury Nullification is an ancient right of law inherited from England. It is yet another of the many glorious innovations in the defense of liberty invented here and forsaken in the rush to fascism of the last hundred years. Jury trial, Double Jeopardy, Habeas Corpus and Innocence until Proven Guilty all seem destined to follow it into the Westminster tip.
These foundational protections are still fairly safe in America. It is also the case Jury Nullification is still valid law there. This is not a matter of strange interpretations. It is a dirty little secret which is not easily swept under the courthouse rug.
I’ve known a number of activists in the battle to pass Fully Informed Jury laws, so I’ve long been aware of the importance of this concept in American history. The ancestors of many black Americans owe their freedom to this not-so-arcane bit of legal history. Juries could not be found that would convict workers on the “Underground Railroad” which helped so many escape the degradation of being self portable property. In both English and American history, Jury Nullification has been a bulwark of Liberty. It does not matter who buys the legislature if the courts cannot find a Jury of Peers willing to go along – or be bullied into going along – with the scam.
This is why “The System” hates it so much. It lets you, the six-pack drinking slob on the street tell them the Law itself is unjust – and make it stick. It makes you, the citizen, the final arbiter of what is Just.
I bring this up tonight because I finally “got around to” reading a legal paper by Glenn Reynolds on the topic. It’s quite a good one and I think anyone interested in how the system used to work to protect liberty should read it.
Make sure everyone you know who might possibly be called for jury duty knows it as well, and knows if the Judge or Prosecutor threatens them… it is the Judge or Prosecutor who is breaking the law, not the Juror.
A commenter, who might otherwise buy a moral case for making war on communist regimes, has pointed out that the local citizens should do their ‘job’ and overthrow the nasty regimes. The argument seems to be that the locals should do it, if they are in favour of freedom and democracy, and thus demonstrate that they are worthy of our support. Such suggestion can only be made with certain assumptions. As a self-appointed champion of the individual facing a totalitarian state, I shall respond to them.
It has been said, and I believe it to be the case, that the people of a nation are only as free as they want to be. The Cubans have long had the power to overthrow Castro, but have simply chosen to live with him and the poverty he brings.
With respect, that is utter nonsense. The assumption here is that ‘the people’ are a collective entity with the ability to act unanimously. In reality, it is a large number of individuals against whom monopolised and institutionalised violence is used on a regular basis. After a couple of decades of propaganda and control of information by the state, the system needs only an occassional tweaking and a careful monitoring of the non-conformist elements of the castrated society.
Same with the Iraqis. As vile a creature as Saddam is, he would be out of power if the Iraqis were willing to make sacrifices for rebellion. Sure, the terror tactics used by Saddam (chopping up bodies and delivering them to homes in body bags, killing his own relatives, etc.) serve to scare the populace into submission. However, the power and the choice is there. What is needed is enough patriots to give their blood to plant the seed that will grow into tree of liberty.
No, the power is not there, the choice is not there. You can have as many Iraqis as possible, individually knowing that Saddam is a vile creature and yet not be able or ready to fight him. Unless there is an organised resistance, it is impossible for a ‘nation’ to ‘free itself’ from tyranny. The more brutal a regime is, the more difficult is to dislodge it. You need a critical mass of individuals each one of them willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. The more brutal a regime, the more it has to loose and the more determined and vicious those supporting it are.
The Iranians seem to be realizing this. There are actually true Iranian patriots willing to die for freedom. The roots of liberty are spreading within the hearts and souls of each individual Iranian. This is the best way to overthrow tyrants – from the ground up, not the top down.
Hmm, if the roots of liberty are spreading within the hearts and souls of each individual Iranian, then I’d better move to Iran because it is the only country where this is happening. Don’t you think that Iranian resistance has something to do with the Western life style and freedoms it offers, such as mixed-sex parties and alcohol and other goodies that the islamic kill-joys don’t want young Iranians to have. The professor, who may be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, is doing so in a situation that puts the government at the disadvantage. Why has the situation arisen in the first place? Because the Iranian regime doesn’t want to look illiberal to the western world. And so we have the external influence again, getting in the way of the neat image of ground-up liberty blossoming in the heart of each Iranian patriot…
You can point to Germany and Japan all you want, but the tradition of freedom was already prevalent in their cultures prior to hijacking by fascists.
Yes, I will point to Germany where there was the tradition of freedom as much as any other European country at the time. But the Germans did not overthrow fascism and the internal opposition to Hitler had been squashed ruthlessly well before the war. Japan on the other hand, had no tradition of freedom before fascism, hence the need for 7-year US ‘presence’ in the country. The Soviet Union did not collapse because of its citizens rising against their oppressors. The country had never had a tradition of freedom, they went straight from serfdom to er, communism… Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, had been democracies before communism. Dissident movements existed and none of the old-style communists resurfaced in post-Cold War governments like in Russia.
…suppose the US makes war with N. Korea and Iraq, and overthrows the communists and Saddam. Then what? Will that magically create freedom? Will the people recognize individual natural rights that lead to a spontaneous societal order? Will they realize the benefits that a respect for property rights brings?
Yes, overthrowing the communists and Saddam will create freedom. No magic, just logic. If you take away the root of oppression, you get freedom. The question is what the people will do with it. If you expect nothing less than recognition of individual natural rights and a spontaneous societal order, that seems rather harsh. I don’t think it’s fair on the poor oppressed population to hold them to a standard much higher than that reached by the assorted lefties polluting the Western societies. One thing you can be sure of, though, is that their will love property rights…
Or will the N. Koreans simply create another socialist government, like the former Soviet republics have chosen to join the socialist EU?
Are you saying that the socialism of the EU is comparable to the Stalinist totalitarianism of the North Koreans?! No one can accuse Samizdata.net to be pro-EU but such suggestion is preposterous. All statisms are not equal. Some are bad and some are even worse.
And will the Iraqis see the US not as the great liberator that saved them from oppression, but as the Great Satan, much like the ungrateful Kuwaitis see the US today?
I don’t see why it is such a tragedy that Kuwaitis are ungrateful. Perhaps they realised that the US ‘liberation’ was not out of love of Kuwait but because it was in the US national interest. Nothing wrong with either.
Can armies and government, the very wellspring of statism, achieve a top-down conception of liberty?
Why should they? I certainly don’t expect them to! Their role is to protect their citizens and remove tyranny if it threatens their liberty. They are to uphold the framework within which freedom can flourish. To remove tyranny from top down means just that, it does not mean an imposition of freedom. I advocate the use of the army and the state to do the former and reserve the latter for the individual.
You are born in a place and time not of your choosing. Growing up you learn about your surroundings, people and places. You are intelligent and start thinking about ideas, history, the world around you and your place in it.
Imagine all sources of information and knowledge are controlled by the state. The world you live in is the only alternative you know. You may have heard of other ones but you have no means of understanding them from the images and details that seep through. Most people around you form their views on the information that the state provides and controls. That means your parents, family, teachers, friends, colleagues… the entire society or what’s left of it. And, of course, there is an enemy out there, set on destroying the utopia the state is leading you to. Can’t trust the outside, they are devious and destructive. They are the enemy of freedom itself, as defined by the all-knowing and all-embracing state.
But as I said, you are intelligent and things don’t add up, your world doesn’t quite fit. This may happen to you as a teenager, when rebellion comes naturally but confidence to take it further often does not. You are not taken seriously and told to wait and see – life will teach you… Or it may come later in life, when the purpose of your everyday efforts suddenly escapes you and you feel the need to recapture it before it’s too late. Alas, you have a family, children, committments and a new set of insecurities collected over the years, that make you vulnerable and any deviation from the norm too risky.
If you are lucky, you have an aged relative or two who remember a different life, free and full of variety and perhaps can explain principles and rules other than those governing the claustrophobic world around you. You start thinking the unthinkable, you see the full horror of your existence and decide to fight the system. You go out in search of people like yourself in hope that you are not alone in your displacement.
Here the interesting part of the story ends. What comes next is dangerous, lonely, depressing, and often pointless.
You find an Underground, a Dissident Movement that may accept you and share with you the mindset and information you need to resist the state propaganda and its violence. You learn just how much of your life and personal details are monitored by the authorities and if you overstep the line, you abandon everything you have taken for granted. You live in pervasive fear and helplessness punctuated by an occassional underground meeting where you share a few political jokes and keep each other assured that it is not you who have gone insane but the society. For that is the main purpose of a dissident movement. Information, its dissemination and a chance to experience a collective spirit that helps you overcome the terrible sense of isolation.
Fear, clammy and unheroic, is your daily bread, not thoughts of liberty, of human rights and of making history. Oh yes, you dream of freedom but not in terms of lofty concepts of a freedom fighter. You want to learn, see and understand the world imagining how superior those who have the freedom to do so must be. They are free to read whatever they want and go wherever they want and so their knowledge and understanding must surpass yours.
And you wait, with the others, for something to help you change your world. You can’t do much, although you have already risked a lot. You wait for a spark, a collective project that would make your sacrifice meaningful. If the government is afraid to use brutal tactics (due to external pressure, no doubt), mass demonstrations and civil disobedience are a likely option. However, if the government is brutal beyond restraint, then your only salvation is help from the outside.
My question to all those who believe in liberty and the rights of the individual and all things beautiful: would you really fight for them? Would you be willing to put your life and perhaps the lives of your loved ones at risk and do so without any guarantee of success? Would you be ready to shed your blood in the name of liberty without knowing whether you are making history or just adding to the list of nameless victims of the tyranny? Would you be able to remain certain that you are right and that everybody else is wrong when the only world you know is the one where they are right? Because those are the choices you have before you, not one of clarity and moral certitude, supported by intellectual arguments and discourse. Every act of resistance, however insignificant on the large scale, is a small victory for sanity and human spirit. But more often than not, it is not enough to defeat the enemy.
The nature of tyranny in places like Iraq and North Korea is one of unrestrained brutality and although they may collapse economically one day, like the Soviet Union did, ultimately it is not just a matter of brave local people standing up for what is right: in such places to do that is tantamount to suicide… the state must be decapitated and realistically that will only happen via foreign military action of some sort (either military aid or outright invasion).
One could argue that it is not the responsibility of foreign taxpayers to free others from tyranny and perhaps this is true, but do not kid yourself that this is a ‘pro-liberty’ response. The US and British Armies cannot impose liberty in Iraq, only the Iraqi’s can do that, but foreign armies can destroy tyranny.
Free Iraq.
Jeffrey Tucker has written a superb article about conservative statist central planning, but one paragraph stands out for me:
Central planning has several universal features. It is coercive. It bypasses the needs of the consumers for the sake of politics. It relies on edicts which may or may not reflect reality. It does not take advantage of the price system, profit, or loss. It is impervious to change. It ignores local conditions. It does not permit flexibility according to circumstance. It robs those who know the most of the ability of make decisions and innovate. It creates incentives to obey the plan but diverts attention from the real goal, whatever it may be (and it may be the wrong goal). It ends up over utilizing material resources, underutilizing human ones, and not generating the intended results.
What could I possibly add to that?
There are all manner of idiots in the world. There are dangerous idiots, annoying idiots, (Lord help us) influential idiots and then there are some idiots who wallow in such specious gibberish that it requires a hard heart to look upon them as anything other than pitiful.
The Guardian (where else?) has a long record of providing a platform for pitiful idiots as illustrated by the column they insist on giving to George Monbiot:
“If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going backwards.”
Perhaps it’s just you that is going backwards, George. Not sure about the rest of us. Mind you if you right, then perhaps the nutty 60’s has something to do with it.
“The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion.”
Ah George, you haven’t been reading your Julian Simon like a good boy. You haven’t have you? Naughty.
“Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic.”
Which you clearly have been.
“The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production.”
Er, care to explain that, George?
“Even the repayment of debt, the pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the short-term. As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of production commensurate with the repayment of debt.”
I’d love to give this a Fisking but I must confess that I have no idea what the f*cking hell he is actually talking about. It sounds like the kind of marxoid tripe they teach at universities and which is so deliberately opaque that it must be very clever and authoratative and therefore beyond question.
“Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 9m hectares of productive land.”
Time for a ‘Made-up-Statistics’ warning!
“Every national newspaper in Britain lamented the “disappointing” volume of sales before Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to live reports from Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we were facing “the worst Christmas for shopping since 2000”.
Suppose that has nothing whatsoever to do with Gordon Brown’s tax increases which have deprived us of so much of our disposable income? No, course not. Silly me for even asking.
“The economist Bernard Lietaer has shown how a system based upon negative rates of interest would ensure that we accord greater economic value to future resources than to present ones. By shifting taxation from employment to environmental destruction, governments could tax over-consumption out of existence. But everyone who holds power today knows that her political survival depends upon stealing from the future to give to the present.”
‘Bernard Lietaer’? Never heard of him but I’ll wager that he’s the kind of smelly, dysfunctional political activist who haunts Labour Party fringe meetings with a shopping bag full of newspaper clipping and scribbled essays in the hope that he’ll get an opportunity to corner some hapless victim and bore them into the grave.
“Everything we thought was good – giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend’s wedding, even buying newspapers – turns out also to be bad.”
Buying the Guardian is definitely bad. Otherwise that one sentence contains everything you need to know about Mr.Monbiot. He is a jealous, begrudging loser who has spun an ideological mask of deceit around himself in order to provide a fig-leaf for his po-faced, anti-human, defeatist miserabilism.
Pitiful. Just pitiful.
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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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