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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Part 1 in a series of thoughts on the nature of liberty and libertarians.
I have often pondered what principles are shared by all real libertarians, and have periodically tried to produce a set of ‘distilled axioms’ that we all share. This has always proved harder than one might think. Minarchism, Objectivism, Anarcho-Capitalism, Agorism, Dynamism, capital ‘L’ Political Party Libertarianism, Hoppeism, cultural conservative libertarianism, classical liberalism, Whigs, etc. etc. all more or less fall within the nebulous taxonomy of ‘libertarians’ whilst at the same time often vilifying each other’s ‘-isms’.
I eventually came to the conclusion that it was not the ‘non-initiation of force principle’ which is frequently offered up as the core axiom that characterises us all (I regard that as emergent default behaviour, which is to say a consequence, not an underlying axiom). What I offer up is:
You are not a libertarian unless you accept as axiomatic that, at its core, society must allow individuals to make their own choices in the pursuit of self-defined ends.
Now the reason I think this is the case is that whilst we objectively derive our rights as individuals, we nevertheless exist within a social setting. We are not isolated atomic entities living in fortified towers, we are social individuals. Misrepresenting this self-evident fact results in people thinking that ‘libertarians’ are in fact nihilists and therefore treating libertarian theories on ‘anarchy’ (the rule of no-one) as synonym for ‘disorder’. Now part of the reason for this is that libertarian revulsion for the statist force based collective in all its modern forms (socialism, the overt end of the collectivist continuum… and statist conservatism, the covert end of the continuum), makes them condemn any function of the modern state because that what is being done is currently being carried out by the state, rather than because the function is inherently antithetical to liberty: the military immediately springs to mind.
This has blinded many to the fact collectivist and collective are not the same thing at all. We can come together to create wealth (for example, getting a job and working for someone else) or band together to deal with an emergency when one or all of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come calling, i.e. act collectively without without becoming collectivists, because a collectivist does not accept that you, an individual, actually owns anything… and so how can you voluntarily elect for collective action what is not yours to loan or dispose of. To them is was never your land, your capital, your labour to begin with because several property does not exist.
And therein also lies the difference between the covert form of collectivism, statist conservativism, and actual libertarians. A conservative will accept the concept of several property, but only sort of. This also has misleading echoes of the difference between the libertarian propertarian/anarcho-capitalist view of absolute personal sovereignty over several property and the libertarian minarchist views to which folks like me subscribe to, which sees property rights as contextual: within the context of a forest fire or war, your property rights are subordinated to the reality of non-civil society, without being alienated once civil society is restored. Conservatives on the other hand will sing paeans to private property whilst supporting compulsory purchase (US: eminent domain) for ‘important’ yet non-emergency reasons, such as roads, parks, urban redevelopments or whatever seems ‘sensible’ for the ‘common good’. Yes, you can own property but not if Donald Trump really wants to build on it.
Statist conservatives generally see societies as having separate ‘rights’ too, as it they were somehow more than shorthand for an aggregated expression of individual decisions, blurring the boundary between society and state in the process and masking the reality that they really agree with the socialists that the collective trumps the individual when push comes to shove. Socialists take that a giant step further, seeing state and society as one just as Jean-Jacques Rousseau always argued, the individual as no more independent from the society-as-state than a blood cell from a human body. So a libertarian is someone who thinks rights are something only individuals have but opinions vary greatly how we actually interact socially within the context of our objectively (or naturally or divinely or even subjectively…pick one depending on your -ism) derived rights.
I really must take issue with the vilification of Hollywood, and warn against assuming that Mr Blair is just a fool.
The last four films I’ve been to see in the cinema are:
1) Spiderman
2) Bad Company
3) Sur mes levres
4) Minority Report
The idea that any of these movies merely panders to minorities is rubbish.
We all know that Spiderman had to be re-shot because of 9-11 and to be frank, the final confrontation with the Green Goblin is a little weak. However, the storyline of the teenager growing up in an unexpected way was engaging and the effects of the New York streets was simply stunning.
The most philosophically impressive movie on this list was Minority Report (despite being directed by Stephen Spielberg). It would have been very easy to lower the depth of Minority Report: the Christian federal agent has two possible motives – is he sceptical of the Pre-Crime idea, or does he merely wish to rule it himself? The doubts he expresses about Pre-Crime are essentially conservative (in the sense of believing in the fallibility of human schemes). I don’t know what kind of movies Friedrich Hayek enjoyed, but I’m sure he would have nodded approval at the script of Minority Report.
Bad Company had a simple gag of having a black comedian playing two roles, one a suave, cultured, CIA agent using the cover of an antiques dealer, the other a street hustling ticket-tout who had to replace the CIA agent for a fortnight. It had the idea of Trading Places except that instead of impersonating a banker, the street kid had to impersonate James Bond. For those who say this is unoriginal, The Prince and the Pauper was probably the plagiarism of a oriental folk-tale.
Sur mes levres, which was made in France was good, but it was a cross between Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain, both films as exploitative in their own way as anything produced by a Tinseltown accountant.
I enjoyed all of these movies and found them a lot better than most of the television I’ve watched recently.
On the issue of commercialism: Ice Cold in Alex (British – 1958) was “probably the longest lager commercial in the world”. French movies of thirties always plugged Dubonnet or milk. On the other hand United Artists studio, founded by Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others ensured that they would have editorial control and a greater share of their movies’ profits. No film maker I’ve ever heard of refused to collect…
As for Mr Blair. The recent splurge of public spending in the UK marks the end of New Labour’s attempts to portray itself as the human face of Thatcherism. The reason for this is that the political threat to the government doesn’t come from the Conservative Party (apparently some people think “Alan Duncan Smith” the Tory leader “came out” as gay last week). The pressure comes from the Left, which doesn’t believe the Tories can win the next election and therefore see no reason to restrain their lunacy.
This policy is wrong for two reasons: first we know that the extra money cannot produce effective returns without the dismantling of the state command structure, especially in the National Health Service. Second, the extra spending relies on what seem to be over-optimistic assessments of tax receipts for the next two years.
The policy is wrong for economic reasons, but the assumption by Mr Blair that he his greatest political threat comes from the Left is correct. It would not surprise me if the Conservatives failed to make any significant headway in the opinion polls, not because they are rigged, but because the Opposition parties might as well not exist.
There is method in what Blair does: until this year he was set on destroying the Tory party. Now he is set on winning the hearts of his party’s left wing.
The opposition to Blair now comes from us, the libertarians.
Jonathan Hanson takes an elemental look at liberty and culture
My best friend Steve Bodio (yes, the ‘spook‘ who was referenced here some time ago) and I are both freelance natural history writers who live in the rural southwest U.S. We are both strongly pro-environment, pro-gun, hunting-and-fishing libertarians who love watching birds as much as shooting them, drive, respectively, a 20-year old Ford truck and a 30-year-old Toyota Land Cruiser, and live in houses that wouldn’t qualify as closet space to some of the new, liberal enviros who are flocking to our overburdened area of the country. Both of us despair that the battle to save the last open spaces in the American West will be lost, thanks to these self-satisfied ex-urbanites who want to mandate to those of us already here how they think it should be saved.
In Steve’s splendid 1998 book of outdoor essays, On the Edge of the Wild (which everyone here should buy), he wrote two paragraphs comparing the “old” residents of our rural landscape to the “new” ones, to sum up these meddlesome invaders. But on a re-read yesterday, it struck me how well the passage buttonholes a much wider spectrum of the close-minded liberal sheep who are laying waste to freedom and individuality in both the old world and the new. Pay particular attention to the last line.
What the old ones really knew in their bones was that death exists, that all life eats and kills to eat, that all lives end, that energy goes on. They knew that humans are participants, not spectators. Their work and play and rituals affirmed and reinforced this knowledge.
The new ones want to evade death and deny it, legislate against it, transcend it. They run, bicycle, network, and pray. They stare into their screens and buy their vitamins. Here, they want the street drunks locked up, cigarettes banned, drunken driving met with more severe penalties than armed assault. They fear guns, cowboys, Muslims, pit bulls, whiskey, homosexuals (though they’ll deny it), and freedom. Strong smells offend them.
“Strong smells offend them.” Couldn’t those four words describe concisely all those who are determined to homogenize our entire society?
Strong smells offend them.
Jonathan Hanson
Adriana, who knows a thing or two about the reality of living in a repressive regime, points out that doing business in a place in China is not a morally unambiguous matter and asked
[D]id anyone call for a boycott of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies during the Cold War? I remember the drinks in their distinctive bottles that put some fizz into my rather gloomy childhood under communism.
I guess my answer is that I have no problem with selling Coca Cola to communist states, after all it is communism’s hapless victim for the most part who will be drinking it. Also trade itself can be wonderfully subversive… but what Yahoo is doing is analogous to Coca Cola agreeing to embed a recording device in each bottle so that the state can hear what each person is talking about whilst they sip their drink…ie, not just trading with tyrants but actually collaborating with the repression of their subject peoples. That is what Yahoo (and Cisco, Oracle and their ilk) are indeed doing.
And that I rather do have a problem with.
However please do not think I want just Yahoo singled out. As Adriana said, Cisco thought nothing of installing the telecom architecture to enable the Chinese Panopticon approach to the Internet. Whenever companies do business with those who would abridge our liberties, they rarely do so for reasons of sheer malevolence but rather due to the cost-benefit to shareholders of working in such regions of the world (though Oracle chief Larry Elison does like to hold up pro-fascist Napoleon as a paragon of virtue so in his case who knows).
My view is that not just Yahoo but Cisco, Oracle and anyone else who wants to get rich selling the apparatus of repression should be given to understand when they make their utilitarian business decisions that part of the cost will be people who see the world in more moral terms taking their business elsewhere. Do not underestimate the value to a company of its corporate image:
‘Cisco and Yahoo, Big Satan and Little Satan: international partners in repression’
…is not the sort of meme these guys want in circulation as it is just not good for business, and that is why I support noisy boycotts which involve saying things that people in boardrooms do not want to hear.
Far left statist Christian peace campaigners Pax Christi have issued a declaration on the impending war to depose Iraqi despot Saddam Hussain. It makes for a fascinating insight into the meta-context of the organization’s members, which include former KGB favourite cleric, Bruce Kent:
The so-called ‘war on terrorism’ is an act of political rhetoric that must be distinguished from a military campaign against a sovereign state. It cannot be used to justify an attack on Iraq, and any offensive planned to counteract the perceived threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction should not be represented as a war against terrorists.
What the hell is morally enabling about a sovereign state as opposed to a bunch of trans-national terrorists? How does an act by a state or against a state somehow take on a different moral quality simply by virtue of the fact it is carried out by or against a collective? Are there no objective moral qualities? Because Saddam Hussain presides over a sovereign nation and Osama bin Laden did not, what is the difference morally how they may be attacked? Surely an attacks is objectively just (or not) regardless of the fact a nation state is (is not) involved.
We are pleased to note that Prime Minister Tony Blair has assured Parliament that Britain will not support any military action against Iraq without the authority of the United Nations.
As I mentioned yesterday when I attacked the next Archbishop of Canterbury, what possible moral authority can spring from a ghastly cabal of benighted states like the UN? To get approval from the UN for something is not a moral matter but rather a political matter… the calculus is ‘We’ll vote to lift restrictions on ivory sales if The Peoples Republic of Kleptostan votes for x in the general assembly’. Why the hell do these people hold up UN authority as having any validating moral quality whatsoever? As our resident Reuters wonk Tom Burroughes said yesterday, people like the excellent Jim Henley have made all manner of rational arguments against going to war with Saddam Hussain, but people like Pax Christi are incoherence incarnate and with a sense of their own moral superiority to boot which is insufferable and laughable equal measure.
Appropriately given that we have been mentioning the subject of optimism and pessimism, Paul Marks says why he sees the cup as half full.
People who read my blogs (such as the latest one Ignorance has never been an impediment to journalism) may regard the idea that ‘Paul Marks is an optimist’ as a sick joke. However, I do not regard telling the truth (whether about, New Labour, the Telegraph papers, the financial system, or anything else) as giving in to despair – on the contrary understanding reality is the first step to genuine hope (rather than fantasy).
I do believe that “things will turn out all right” (not for me – but for world generally), and I want to briefly say why I think this.
My belief is based on two points. Firstly that the mainstream left are not savages and secondly that most people are capable of learning.
Take the example of California. By all accounts the present Governor (Gray Davis) will be reelected in November. Mr Davis is a bad Governor. He endlessly increases taxes and spending (he has an “F” grade from the Cato Institute), in what was a big government State even before he was elected. Mr Davis and his friends in the State Legislature also love regulations and blame all of California’s problems on greedy business people (even the power shortage was not caused by price controls – it was all a plot by Enron).
When Mr Davis is reelected there is very little chance of him reforming. He will carry on in his statist way and California will continue to slide – especially as the economic problems of the United States (which will get worse next year) will prevent much expansion of federal aid.
So why am I optimistic about California? Because Mr Davis (and most of his followers) is not a beast – he will not set up a police state, he will not kill or lock up his political foes. Some leftists in California would indeed do these things (indeed I suspect that they desire the taste of human flesh in their mouths and the feeling of human blood flowing down their throats). However, such leftists in California are a tiny minority and I believe that they will not come to power (especially as so many of them choose to be active in fringe groups rather than the Democratic party).
Millions of people in California will vote for Bill Simon this November. He will lose, but he will have told them the truth – that the path of statism is a bad path. At the next election (2006) the people who see that statism does not work will not be minority – they will be the majority. Must people can learn IF they have evidence and IF people are prepared to tell them the truth (even at the cost of losing elections in the short term).
What will be true for California in 2006 will eventually be true for the world. The mainstream left (in Britain, France, Germany etc as well as the United States) is not interested in eating people. When their policies fail they will not set up a police state to try and cling to power. IF politicians are prepared to tell people the truth (or even part of the truth) eventually this message will get through to people (as they see the evidence with their own eyes) and reform will take place.
It takes only ONE major nation to reform for this to spread. There are (for example) many free market politicians in the United States (although not the man who sits in the White House). After Mr Bush loses in 2004 the left will come to power. But the Democrats will not feast on human flesh, they will simply flap about as the economy continues to fall apart – and in 2008 free market Republicans will be elected. The example of the United States will influence the rest of the world (where people will be desperate for a way out of economic decline).
Reform may even start before this. In New Zealand the left has just be reelected – but it was not the landslide they were predicting and many of the opposition groups had people within them who told the voters some of the truth. As the economy declines this will be remembered – and in the next election (2005) Labour may well be kicked out and reform take place.
What lessons for Britain? Simple enough – politicians should tell people the truth (that the path of taxes, spending, regulations and funny money) will not work. As the economy collapses these politicians will eventually come to power with a mandate to clear away statism – so that people can start to rebuild civil society.
It will not be easy or quick (and I will not live to see it), but statism will be driven back and civil society will be rebuilt.
Paul Marks
I came across this small quote on the BBC website today and wondered if they had thought about what they had written.
The amount of data currently downloaded from the site every month, the centre says, would fill seven 12-metre (40-foot) articulated trucks.
I would love to know how they measure amounts of data by volume, in fact I would love to know how many trucks of data are moved around the internet every day, and the savings made by not having to pay for the fuel.
I have oft-times been accused (particularly by Perry and Brian) of being negative or pessimistic. Well, all I can say is, that you don’t know the meaning of those words until you have read the latest litany of damnable woe from John Derbyshire:
“The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride”
Go and read the whole thing. And then kill yourself. But, if you are one of those people who have ever accused me of pessimism, then will you kindly offer up a grovelling apology before you go.
My absence from the blog (already briefly interrupted by two postings) was not due to aesthetic disagreements with the new face of samizdata.net. I went away on a holiday to Egypt where Internet access is not a priority and the ‘camel connection’ is particularly slow. 
Upon my return I also noticed a link to Samizdata merchandise and given my newly acquired tan I know which product to buy.
Although I spent most of the time cocooned in a luxury holiday resort (Marriot hotel in Taba Heights), I did have a chance to go on a trip into the desert proper and visit a Bedouin village for a bit of ‘local culture’.
There are the standard impressions of a traveller in the Middle East i.e. dodgy hygiene of food and other amenities, genuinely friendly locals (unless they are trying to sell you something), really hot weather, the graceful poise of camels, the beauty of the desert and the sea, but I have tried to add a few of my own.
I think the first prize goes to the local women for swimming in their chadors, which are like burqas but show the face. I felt sorry enough for them watching them walking around in the blistering heat but my sympathy soon turned to astonishment when I saw them floating in the swimming pool, their black garb trailing behind. Oh, well, to each his (or her) own…
Another slightly surreal moment occurred during a lunch in a Bedouin village where a large horned animal was roasted and placed at the mercy of the guests and their knives. The meal was accompanied by bottled water as drinking from the local water supply equals a gastric suicide. On the bottle, among Arabic script, I could clearly read www.sinai4you.com. Yes, the information highway reaches and extends even beyond goat tracks.
At Brian Micklethwait’s monthly meeting of libertarian subversives in Victoria, American blogger-in-exile Robert Bauer, of Hokiepundit fame, attended after first getting spectacularly lost en-route.
He has wisely decided to keep quiet about certain secrets he has learned about me and as a result I see a long and healthy future for the young man.
The Commonwealth games have been organised to be a ‘logo free’ event so that they are not ‘tainted’ by commercialism. Ok, now let me get this straight… the Commonwealth, an association of kleptocratic nation states that includes mass murdering tyrants like Robert Mugabe, think it is okay to celebrate nationality, a concept in whose name Commonwealth subjects are robbed and imprisoned, but it is not okay to celebrate commercialism, a concept that allows people to gain employment and acquire the money that the state then steals in taxes. Riiiiiiight, gotcha.
However when I saw that the game’s organisers were annoyed at David Beckham for wearing a track-suit with ‘Adidas’ sequined across it when he presented the weird looking baton to the Queen, Beckham went up in my estimations. Way to go, Becks, you subversive capitalist tool you!
Yo, Mugabe! Guess where I’m gonna to stick this thing!
J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 writes in answer to a question about Canadian taxes:
“I was able to get a waiver on LoTR because it was a short-term engagement, but on Jeremiah I’ve been paying Canadian taxes (as well as American taxes) since day one. Even so, my Canadian tax burden is still far less than the average Canadian has to shell out every year, percentage-wise. Though I’m still somewhat of a newcomer, my feeling is that, frankly, the Canadian people are getting hosed. I understand the dilemma of having a very large country and a very small population that has to support that infrastructure, but even so they’re just getting hammered out of all proportion and reasonableness.”
So the question for the Blessed Tony Blair is, what excuse in a crowded little country where the infrastructure is crap, like the UK?
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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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