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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Whilst reading one of my favourite blogs, Daily Pundit, I came across a story Bill Quick was commenting on which a 17 year old boy in the United States denounced his father to Police for growing a few marijuana plants.
And just how is this different from Nazi and Communist regimes that encouraged children to denounce their parents to the authorities for doing things they disapproved of? The moral corruption at the heart of the ‘war against drugs’ gives perfect lie to the ‘family values’ cant of political establishments across the so called ‘free world’. Nauseating. I hope the little shit ends up out on the street and reaps the true consequences of his treachery.
On BBC News 24 in the early hours of Monday morning they were reporting on “creationism” in the USA.
As an orthodox twentieth century boy, I believe that creationism is bunkum, and that evolution is the truth of the matter. But one thing I do agree with the creationists about is that Christian doctrine most definitely is in head-on collision with modern science.
Most of the Christians I know here in Europe seem to believe that Christianity is about different things to science, and that you can be a completely Christian Christian, and a completely scientific scientist, without any intellectual conflict.
If you go to the “The Church of England’s view on…” bit of the C of E’s website, you’ll find a long list of contemporary political and ethical issues to explore (such as “animal welfare”, “ethical investment”, “defence and disarmament”, “capital punishment”, “euthanasia”, “AIDS”, “the national lottery”, “child benefit”, and many more – plenty for us to get stuck into), but nothing involving the words “science” or “evolution”. Anglicans do not seem to be exercised by such arguments. As far as they are concerned, there is no collision between Christian doctrine and scientific doctrine to be discussed.
But the Book of Genesis makes claims about the origin of the earth and of its biological contents which, as was well understood in the late nineteenth century when these matters were first debated, are in total opposition to the theory of evolution. Either God was the maker of heaven and earth (as I was made to proclaim every Sunday morning when I recited the Creed at school) and men and beasts and plants and bugs, along the lines claimed in Genesis, or he was not.
You can’t have it both ways. Only by completely overturning what Christianity has meant for the best part of two thousand years, as the Church of England seems now to be doing by turning Christianity from a religion into a political sect, can you possibly believe that there’s no argument here.
“Will it change in the foreseeable future?”
No.
Evelyn Palmeri thinks the perspective taken by Paul Marks regarding British politics has resonance in the USA as well.
The only way ‘local control’ is good is if it financed by local taxation – then people can ‘vote with their feet’ by going to the area with the lowest taxes (ditto regulations).
– Paul Marks, Thursday, July 04, 2002
Absolutely true.
‘Liberals’ (in the American sense of the word) only got power over us when we abdicated financial control over our local communities. It all started during our late unlamented cultural revolution of the 60’s when in the name of ‘fairness’ state and federal government began taxing us and then redistributing our money in the form of state and federal grants to local schools, hospitals, public works, welfare, etc., etc. In a short time most of the money for these operations came from outside the community. In our little Florida city of 5000, commissioners routinely tell us that this or that scheme won’t cost the city a dime because the money will come from state and/or federal funds. No amount of argument will make them see that it is all our own money.
Of course, non-Liberals know that fairness has nothing to do with redistributing income. It’s power they want and as a result public schools and other public services are in bondage to powerful unions and are run to benefit their members. Although trillions (a trillion is a thousand billion, if you can imagine such a huge sum) of dollars are spent in social services, the results are painful to see. The public school system in the U.S. once a model for the world is now a third-world operation, public hospitals are snake pits, social services do very little to help those in need, etc. Most wealthy people and those who are not so wealthy send their kids to private school and seek medical attention from private hospitals at great financial sacrifice, eschew all social services except those unavoidable ones like driver’s licenses.
Life still isn’t fair, but now it’s a lot more expensive for those of us work and pay taxes. The non-productive still aren’t satisfied with amounts of their handouts and continue to vote for politicians who promise them more and more OPM (Other People’s Money), and cycle continues.
Will it change in the foreseeable future? Has September 11th thrown cold water on voters and caused them to wake up from the stupor of the last 25-30 years? Do we want to continue our drift to the ‘left’?
I think the November elections in the U.S. will give us a clue.
Evelyn Palmeri
Security is the one area minarchist libertarians like me are willing to countenance at least some role for the state… but yet again private security measures, whilst not infallible given that no work of mere man is foolproof, prove no less effective than those heavy handed defenders of order on governments payroll.
Egyptian Hesham Mohamed Hadayet shot two people dead at the El Al desk in LAX yesterday before being shot dead by a private security man. The airport had armed US soldiers wandering around and yet on July 4th, the EL AL desk was defended by private security. 
Is it any wonder the Israeli airline takes responsibility for its own security whenever possible rather than leave it up to the local buffoons to protect them?
Spotted in the Daily Telegraph report of the air disaster in southern Germany on Monday night, caused by the air collision of a cargo plane and a charter jet carrying Russian youths on a cultural exchange visit:
Khalyaf Ishmuratov, the Bashkirian deputy prime minister, said: “We lost wonderful children who could have become artists, scientists, entrepreneurs. Their disappearance is a huge loss.”
Would any Western leader have mentioned “entrepreneurs” in this context? In England the answer is probably “Never”. Mr Ishmuratov sounds like Ayn Rand’s idea of a statesman.
A problem for the UK: the Swiss air traffic control is a private contractor, so we can expect this tragedy to be exploited by opponents of the British government’s scheme to privatise air traffic control over here.
I love this, from the “in fact” section of the July 2002 issue of Prospect (quoted in its turn from The Guardian World Cup guide):
In Paraguay, duelling is legal if both participants are registered blood donors.
This sublime example of the art of contriving to practice a politically incorrect past-time by attaching it to something politically very correct is an inspiration to all. What next? Feminists Against Income Tax? (Nice Acronym, that on.) Gays For Globalisation? Guardian-readers for the Right to Hunt? (We already have Feminists Against Censorship and those gay gun guys in America called, if I recall it right, the Pink Pistols.)
And this is the first sentence of an excellent review article in the same issue of Prospect by Malise Ruthven, called “Radical Islam’s failure”.
The attacks of 11th September were the last gasps of a moribund Islamist movement. Terror is a sign of failure, deployed when political mobilisation has failed.
With each passing day, the number of intelligent people focussing their intelligence on 9/11 and all that grows. If this article is anything to go by, the whole mess may get settled sooner than pessimists like me now fear. I do like Prospect.
A Muslim woman in Florida who demanded the right to wear her veil for her drivers license photo has won her case. At first blush this seems silly. But think of the consequences for liberty! She has set a precedent. If you are a Florida resident you now have a way around State mandated identity photos. All you need to do is establish a religion which forbids it… and have a good lawyer ready to ram the precedent back down the Court’s throat when they try to play by a double standard.
Thinking about the applications of this to Northern Ireland is enough to put me on the floor laughing. Wouldn’t it be fair enough to let the lads wear their ski masks for their NI driver license photo’s? If they have a culture of violence shouldn’t we be culturally sensitive about their cultural needs? Just because they only blew other people up is no reason to think they don’t deserve the same respect!
Paul Marks responds to David Carr’s article Boiling Mad
I accept that some politicians have evil motives and are statist out of envy and/or power lust. However, I think most politicians are fairly normal people (not particularly evil).
The trouble is that that most people go in to politics to ‘help people’. If one does not have a good understanding of political economy one will ‘do something’ when confronted with a problem – for example, if people need better health care (‘look there are people dying over there’) the least difficult thing to do is to increase government spending on health. It is the same with all other human wants (so government spending tends to rise). It takes a good understanding of political economy to realize that increasing government spending is a bad thing.
It is the same with regulations. There is a problem – for example rents are high, so one imposes rent control. One wishes to help improve the environment – so one imposes more environmental regulation (and so on, and so on). It takes a good understanding of political economy to realize that government regulations are a bad thing.
As centuries of free market folk have pointed out, the seemingly good effects of government spending and regulations are obvious – but seeing the real effects of such things takes thought.
Many free market people put their faith in education to enable people to understand the effects of statism. Now here we have the real problem – the vast majority of education (in Britain or any other country) is statist. Whether one goes to a private school or a state school. whether one goes to a private university or a state university the concepts one will be taught (as regards political economy) will most likely be wrong.
It is even possible that someone may be better off not going in for say “higher education” at all. If a person sees that his line of policy seems to be have bad effects the person may change their policy. But if this person has been educated into believing that bad policy is good policy a change of mind is much less likely.
One must also remember that ‘education’ does not just cover school and university, such things as television and radio (at least the ‘serious’ programs) are also part of education – and the ideas of political economy that the television and radio spread are also mostly false. So even a person who is not formally educated is still more likely than not to be filled with false ideas – but it is not as bad as if this person had gone through the formal education process as well.
Of course there are such things as free market books in the world and one can encounter them in such places as university libraries. However, I believe that the vast majority of people who read these works were LOOKING FOR THEM (or at least had their minds open to this sort of work).
Take my own case. I often present myself as a conformist, however the objective evidence shows that I am in fact a pathological rebel.
Even in junior school (i.e. before I was 11 years old) I was already in revolt. The teachers asked us to bring food for a party to ‘share with out friends’, so I strongly objected when they stole the food I brought (they had tried to make me share the food with my enemies).
Nor was this an isolated incident. I disliked the way that lies and brutality were encouraged by people of power – they played lip service to being against bullying, but did nothing to fight it and did their best to work against people who did try and fight it (such as myself). Many (perhaps all) of the teachers where nice people – but they did not do their duty, the system did not work.
Nor was this just a matter of school. I remember going through reference works as a young child looking for countries that did not have Welfare State programs (and feeling great pain when I found out that nations that appeared not to have such programs really did have them). I also went through history books about various nations with almost the sole intention of finding out when and how various “reforms” (i.e. crimes) had happened.
To take one example. I was not convinced by E.G. West‘s book Education and the State (1965) that the idea that without government action most people would not be able to read and write was a false idea. No, I thought that already – and spent ages trying to find a book that would agree with me.
To take another example. When I read Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) it did not convince me that such things as rent control were wrong (I already thought that), no it just upset me that even this proclaimed “free market” book seemed to be in favour of such things as government fiat money (such a concept being clearly evil, you see).
I do not claim that all libertarians are as mad as I am. However, I told hold that (in the present intellectual environment) to reject statism someone must have a mind with something odd about it. To be told (endlessly) by nice well read people that (for example) ‘anti monopoly’ laws are a good thing and to think “this is all nonsense, everyone is a fool – apart from me” indicates an odd personality type. It is not to be expected that most politicians (who I repeat tend to by rather ordinary people) would have this personality type – and it might not be a good thing if they did (as not everyone with this personality type is likely to be a libertarian – they might be the very power mad types that people are concerned politicians are).
Of course libertarians will not tend to like the above. I think that is why (for example) one gets so many silly ‘libertarian tests’ – you know the sort I mean, they have questions like ‘are you against a police state?’ or ‘do you think freedom is a good idea?’ and if you say ‘yes’ to such question (or ‘no’ to certain other questions) you ‘must be a libertarian’. I believe that such tests are created so that libertarians can think that there are more of us than there really are.
If the questions were things like ‘are you in favour of the abolition of Old Age Pensions [or ‘Social Security’ if it was an American test]?’ without loading the question by talking about Cato Institute style ‘Individual Retirement Accounts’ (or other such attempts to have free market reform, whilst pretending that no one will lose), then our true numbers would be revealed. It is not to be expected that politicians would think in the same way as a small minority of the population.
There really are no clever ways one can have reform. There are no painless options when statism is as advanced as it is in the world today. I would recommend Lew Rockwell’s recent article Freedom is not “public policy”, which explains this better than any other work I know of.
Paul Marks
I received this email from Sean Gabb today. It deserves a wider readership:
I did the Mike Parr show this morning – BBC Radio Newcastle – about ID cards. I was very polite to the local police boss who was on against me. He ended by agreeing that he’d rather have more officers than a scheme that he though might easily be abused.
Sean Gabb does lots of this kind of thing.
A French libertarian arguing about infidelity in relationships said that unless a contract is written, it isn’t valid. In the torrent of refutations (to which I contributed my ha’penny worth) Stefan Metzeler included the following anecdote:
Here’s another example which demonstrates the advantage of a good reputation, even “collective”. About ten years ago, I was in Martinique (a very, very beautiful place). On my last day, I chanced upon a boutique with jewels and I thought that this would be a nice present for my girlfriend. So I chose some for a little more than $100 and I want to pay by VISA. No luck, she [the shop-keeper] couldn’t take it and I didn’t have any cash. But then the saleswoman says to me looking at my card: “Are you Swiss? Do you have your passport?” I reply “Yes, of course.”
“Then no problem, I’ll give you credit and you just wire me the money when you get home. I’ve never had a problem with the Swiss.”
I must admit that I was gob-smacked… a reputation like that is worth more than gold in the bank. Of course, I settled up the day after I returned to Switzerland.
I wonder what it is that motivates politicians and bureaucrats to dream up new schemes to strangle free enterprise? That they are wrong goes without saying but are they driven by a genuine (if misguided) belief that they are helping to make the world a better place or are they spiteful and envious ghouls who pursue power so they they can wreak their vengeance on those who are manifestly better then them?
Increasingly, I take the latter view, reinforced by these kind of reports from the Spectator on the new European Pressure Equipment Directive:
“Under the directive, all companies which manufacture boilers will be obliged to nominate a ‘notified body’ —in practice, one of several insurance companies which have been licensed for the task — which will then have the power to conduct an initial inspection costing several thousand pounds, and unlimited follow-up inspections costing the company £700 per day.
Take that, you wealth-creating bastards!! And, for the little guys, a double-whammy. In fact, a death-whammy:
“Large engineering firms will be able to absorb the costs, but for the likes of Ian Stock, whose Carmarthen-based company Dragon Boilers Ltd makes copper boilers for model railway enthusiasts, it could spell ruin. ‘There is no limit to how often the notified body could come and inspect me,’ he says. ‘Any time it can say to itself, “We’re short of money, let’s make a trip to Dragon Boilers.”
Poor Mr.Stock. Still, at least he’s got the message in no uncertain terms. Let us hope he sees fit to spread it.
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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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