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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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?
Batten down the hatches, stock up on vital supplies, head for the hills and stay there – IT’S COMING!!!! According to the British press we’re all doomed, DOOMED by a huge lump of rock hurtling at us from outer space at unstoppable speeds and due to impact at just about the same time as the British Conservative Party is finally showing signs of a revival.
Meanwhile, Antoine Clarke thinks that the very existence of the thing could constitute an Islamic Heresy (presumably not if lands on Tel Aviv though).
Now I know that none of us are likely to be losing any sleep tonight but, nonetheless, isn’t this recent bout of angst about apocolyptic death from the skies a bit, well, medieval?
“Rejoice, brothers, it’s heading for Brussels”
Gibbering Dark Ages peasants pointed at manifestations in the sky and took them for portents of impending doom. Were they merely prescient? Or are us humans prey to pre-programmed primordial collective fears regardless of our technological advances?
I was just wondering if the asteroid – currently projected to hit Earth in 2019 and destroy a continent – happened to land on Mecca…
Is this thought heresy to to a Moslem? Would scientific efforts by Christians or worse, atheists, to deflect the asteroid be an interference in God’s purpose?
I think we should be told.
Newly-installed Church of England Archbishop Rowan Williams, about whom I made a brief mention on the blog yesterday seems an opinionated fellow, but I don’t want to discuss his particular insights on the possible invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Afghanistan or other foreign points. What really piqued my interest was his broad condemnation of consumerism, particularly the use by young children of video games, such as those which feature violence.
By happy coincidence, I have started to read a fascinating new book Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence by American comic book author and child psychologist Gerard Jones, who has written about how violent video games like Doom or Tomb Raider can in reality help children to master insecurities and fears of all kinds.
Jones explores the many fantasy games now on the market, the importance of superheroes in comics and television, ending with the broad conclusion that this stuff is essentially good for children rather than harmful. He points to the fact that during the 1990s, when such games became wildly popular in the United States, teenage violence decreased. Of course, some horrific school shootings prompted commentators to wonder whether video games were making youngsters more violent, but Jones’ book tends to weaken that argument quite strongly.
He even shows how comics, action hero films starring the likes of James Bond or Spiderman can in reality help children suffering from low self confidence become stronger, more assertive (in a good way), and better suited to coping with the inevitable difficulties of adulthood. In many ways the book is a re-working of the need for fantasy and make-believe in childhood development.
His analysis is light-years away from that of Archbishop Williams, and I would guess, from that of many mainstream commentators for whom video games are just another dread feature of global capitalism. For me, the profusion of amazing games and top-notch films are one its great glories.
This was posted today by Alan Forrester on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, but is perhaps better suited to a blog such as this. It deals with one of the great issues of our time: Which one is better, Salma or Friedrich?
I once met Friedrich Hayek. Some time in the early to mid nineteen eighties he tottered into the Alternative Bookshop (where all his books were on sale and were among our least-worst sellers), at the age of about ninety five. I got him a chair. (It was a very wobbly chair, one of our worst, and terrible headlines flashed through my mind: “Free market bookshop kills world’s greatest free market economist.” Luckily the chair did not collapse.) “How are you?” seemed like the proper thing for me to say, so that’s what I did say.
Being Friedrich Hayek he took this question very seriously. He apparently took all questions seriously, from everybody, no matter how seemingly insignificant. One of his life principles, deeply embedded both in his personal behaviour and in his theoretical ideas and writings, was that the opinions of non-academics (“tacit economic knowledge” and all that) are just as important as academic opinions like his, and often more so for some important purposes, quite possibly even those of an insignificant assistant bookseller like me. (Leon Louw once told me about a South African expedition with Hayek during which Hayek cross-examined game wardens and park keepers for hours on end about the mysteries of their various trades.) So: here was this young person, perhaps a young person who was deeply knowledgeable in new and surprising ways that he, Hayek, had not yet heard about, asking him, Hayek, how he was. So: how was he? He gave it some thought.
Eventually he answered roughly as follows. Well, he said. I get up in the morning, and I do some work on my book, and then I write a letter to The Times and then I write an article and then I have breakfast, and then I work some more on my book and then I go to see some politicians, and then I prepare my talk for the next Mont Pelerin Conference, and then I have lunch and give a talk at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and then I write another letter to the newspapers and talk with some more politicians and do some more work on my book and then I talk to a journalist … It went on like this for several more minutes. What did this have to do with how he was?
Eventually this was revealed. After he had finished describing all his activities for one entire day, a look of extreme resentment came over his face. “…and in the evening”, he said plaintively, “I feel tired!” This was evidently a new experience for him and he didn’t like it one bit.
I felt tired just listening to him. Moral: great men are not just great for doing great things. They are great because they do a lot of great things.
There is a general election in New Zealand this weekend. The present Labour party government has done its best to reverse much of the half hearted reform that it inherited – and it looks like the Labour party will be re-elected (and continue to increase the size and scope of the state).
I found myself thinking (as I often do) “good, if people vote for statism they deserve to get it – good and hard”. However, the divine right of the 51% (democracy) is (as all libertarians know) quite immoral. There is no reason why those who vote against statism should suffer because of the people who vote for it.
Take the example of California. When I rub my hands with glee (which I do) at the latest example of California statism (“jolly good, the reckoning is brought forword and the collapse of California will be a warning to the rest of the nation to repent…”) I am overlooking a few important points.
Firstly the innocent (those who vote against the increase in government spending and regulations) suffer at least as much (most likely rather more) than the guilty. And secondly there is no reason to suppose that people in other areas will understand that the suffering is caused by the statism.
Take the example of retail price controls on the sale of electricity (in California this is known as ‘deregulation’). Such price controls created a shortage of power (no surprise there) and rather than letting the lights go out the Bush administration demanded that companies outside California sell power (at the government price) to California.
I have argued that the lights should have been allowed to go out until the Californians worked out “if we pay more money people will sell us power”.
However, (of course) people who opposed the price controls would have suffered along with the people who supported them. Also there is no guarantee that people would understand that the suffering was caused by the statism.
After all the famous “economist” Paul Krugman has explained that the Californian energy crisis was created by a plot by Enron and other wicked corps. Nothing is so absurd that it will not be argued for by the media and academia. It does not matter whether most academics and media people are liars or whether they believe their own nonsense, the effect is the same – millions of people are mislead.
When I argue that the bankruptcy of California would act as a warning to the rest of the United States, or that the bankruptcy of one of the European Welfare States would warn the other nations of Europe to reform themselves whilst there is still time I must come up with a reply to the above. And I have no great reply.
I suppose all we can do is to endlessly try and explain to as many people as we can the consequences of statism – sadly we have little access to such things as the mass media, but we must do the best we can.
Things are not formally inevitable and we must help when we can. For example in California if the people voted for Bill Simon to be Governor (the election is in November) there is a good chance that collapse could be avoided (almost needless to say – the Bush administration strongly opposed Mr Simon getting the Republican nomination for Governor). And even if Gray Davis is reelected (as he most likely will be) there may still be an election in 2006 (I do not think people will be eating each other by then) and something might be saved.
Yes democracy is immoral and it is inefficient (the innocent minority are punished for the votes of the majority and the majority are endlessly mislead by academics and media people anyway), but this does not mean we should ignore democracy.
Perhaps the world will collapse and isolated groups of libertarians (or semi libertarians) will have to try and rebuild civilization via a grim struggle to survive – but we should not just give up. To give up (or to treat each example of statism with perverted joy – as I often do) is immoral.
Paul Marks
When I was a young articled clerk with firm of London solicitors, I was involved, at some length in what turned out to be fruitless legal action against a notorious slum landlord called Nicholas Hoogstraten. Fruitless, because every time I went to Court to enforce against him, he simply disappeared behind a kaleidoscope of dummy front companies and aliases. He was as elusive as the morning mist.
Still, what I learned about him from the file notes left an indelible impression on me that was stirred again today when I heard that Hoogstraten has been convicted of manslaughter and now faces the possibility of a life sentence. In 1999 he ordered two of his henchmen to attack a former business associate who was threatening to sue him. They killed him. The jury accepted Hoogstraten’s plea that he never ordered the man’s death, he merely wanted them to rough him up and frighten him. The two hit-men were convicted of murder.
Hoogstraten is the nearest thing to a Bond villain that I have ever actually encountered. He could have sprung, fully-formed, from the fevered mind of a Hollywood script-writer; arrogant, sneering, dapper, ruggedly handsome, enormously rich, wickedly cunning and mind-bogglingly ruthless. He built his property empire on the back of intimidation, violence and outright theft. Every plausible account I have read of him paints a picture of a swaggering ego that was not just prepared to use violence to get what he wanted but actually enjoyed using the violence. The fear he engendered seemed to actually turn him on.
Whilst undoubtedly possessed of high intelligence and great business acumen he was flawed by an arching contempt for his fellow men and almost insatiable desire to hold power over them. A man of such single-minded malevolence that he appears to have scarred all who ever came into contact with him.
And, now, it’s all over.
But why is this a Libertarian view? Because there is apparently no end of people, mostly (but not exclusively) on the left who are convinced that we Libertarians admire and wish to emulate characters like Hoogstraten. That when we call for an end to state intervention and regulation it is because we want the Hoogstratens of the world unshackled and free to wreak whatever havoc they choose; that when we speak of free markets, what we really mean is freedom for Hoogstraten and his ilk to use their wealth and power to stomp on anyone who gets in their way. For socialists of all stripes, Hoogstraten is capitalism made flesh.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
Libertarianism is not, and never has been, about money or its pursuit. Money is incidental. It is about empowering ordinary people to take control of their own lives and arrange them in ways that best suit them. It is about the sanctity of contract, the endless possibilities of voluntary arrangement and real wealth to be found in reputation, decency, civility and honour. All these things are a anathema to men like Hoogstraten.
It is also well worth pointing out that Hoogstraten built his empire and wreaked his worst havoc at a time when there was far greater state intervention in the property market than we have now and where the laws and regulations protecting tenants in rented property were far more draconian. Yet none of this stopped Hoogstraten or even slowed him down. He simply possessed the insatiable will to drive under, over and through them.
Ultimately, there is no surefire way to stop the Hoogstratens of this world. They are like a malevolent force that nature throws up at us every now and then. But a far surer method of cutting them down to size is to build a strong civil society where people actually care about what happens to their neighbours and have a stake in their neighbourhoods and where toxic bullies like Hoogstraten are kept in check or run out of town on the end of a pitchfork.
Yes, here’s the latest crop of Libertarian Alliance publications. They were posted out some weeks ago on paper but getting them up at the LA website has been delayed by LA Webmaster Sean Gabb having recently had to upgrade his computer while simultaneously being engaged in moving house, a vexing combination of circumstances. Since the LA’s stuff is for Posterity, not to cause a stir next week (although we don’t object if that happens), I let Sean take his time and didn’t nag him unduly after I’d given him the files. But now, here they are.
They’re only in Acrobat format, I’m afraid. Sean told me the other day that HTML is a format of diminishing importance, and that Acrobat files can now be searched by the best search engines. Or something. The gist of it being that maybe Acrobat will suffice. But can you cut and paste stuff, the way you can with another blog? Surely not, but what do I know. Please feel free to quote from these pieces at will, at whatever length you like, unless doing that is too laborious.
Since there’s so many of them, I’ll keep this blurb very brief and let the titles speak for themselves, which I hope they do. Suffice it to say that the pieces by Perry all appeared first here on Samizdata, and that almost as soon as my piece about blogging (Personal Perspectives No. 17) was published, either my opinion of the Libertarian Alliance Forum changed for the better, or the LA-F changed for the better. A bit of both, I suspect. Unfortunately all references in these publications to Samizdata are to the old, pre-Movable-Type version of it, which I hope in due course to correct.
Political Notes No. 177. Neil Lock, State Your Terms! On The Mis-Use of Language to Convey Subtle Collectivist Messages, 2pp.
Political Notes No. 178. Paul Anderton, The Real Nature of and the Abuse of the Drugs Problem text here, 10pp.
Political Notes No. 179. Perry de Havilland, I Do Not Fear The Immigrant: A Critical Response to Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Ilana Mercer, 2pp.
Political Notes No. 180. Perry de Havilland, Citizenship: The State’s Way of Saying It Owns You text, 2pp.
Political Notes No. 181. Brian Micklethwait, I Am A Libertarian Because …, 2pp.
Economic Notes No. 94. Kevin McFarlane, Why “Trader Sovereignty” Makes More Sense Than Consumer Sovereignty, 2pp.
Philosophical Notes No. 63. Peter Richards, In Defence of the Freedom to Fish, Shoot and Hunt, 4pp.
Legal Notes No. 38. Peter Tachell, Why The Age of Consent in Britain Should Be Lowered to Fourteen, 2pp.
Cultural Notes No. 47. Perry de Havilland, Tolkein’s Ring: An Allegory for the Modern State, 2pp.
Historical Notes No. 41. Gerard Radnitzky, The EU: The European Miracle in Reverse, 6pp.
Historical Notes No. 42, Roderick Moore, The History of Civilisation and the Influence of the Environment, 4pp.
Educational Notes No. 33. Brian Micklethwait, The Failure of Politics and the Pull of Freedom: Reflections on the Work of the Reading Reform Foundation, 4pp.
Tactical Notes No. 29. Perry de Havilland, Giving Libertarianism a Left Hook: How To Make The Traditions of The Left Our Own, 2pp.
(This link doesn’t work yet. Please be patient. Should be okay in a day or two.)
Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 38. Roderick Moore, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, 4pp.
Personal Perspectives No. 17. Brian Micklethwait, Losing, Blogging and Winning, 4pp.
Pamphlet No. 27, Miranda Matthews, Why “Sex Work” Can’t Be Unionised and Shouldn’t Be “Legalised”, 4pp.
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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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