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 just had the pleasure of reading through a 221-page report sent to the British government on what should be done to make us save more.
Attending the press conference, I listened to the mild-manner Ron Sandler take us through the thicket of tax codes, rules and varied practises of Britain’s Byzantine financial industry. Nodding off for a second, I fell into a strange dream:
“Ladies and gentlemen, today’s report on how to stop shafting the British saver is brought to us today by Prof. Tom Burroughes of Libloony University. He has kindly produced this report, which, er, is rather short.” Cut to moi: “Members of the press, you will see my report is only one page long. Its recommendation is brief – abolish taxation and get government out of the savings business. Period. End of story.”
At this point a strange noise emerges from the assembled hacks. Muffled cries from back of the room…
I suddenly woke up, hope no-one noticed my nodding off, and listened for an hour about differential tax codes, the need for fewer rules on X rather than Y, blah, blah. blah.
Most of the news I hear from South Africa is bad. AIDS. AIDS denial. Crime. And black politicians blaming everything on white racism and trying to impose equal outcomes by the force of law, as opposed to equality before the law with the outcomes coming out as they will. As a sports fan, I particularly noticed what sounded like a truly vile quota rule, insisting that there had to be at least one black player in the national cricket team. They also, I learned today when digging deeper, had a rule that provincial cricket sides had to have at least four “players of colour” in them.
The good news is that they are now scrapping these quotas. South Africa’s Sports Minister is having “talks” with South Africa’s United Cricket Board. But assuming that talk is all that ensues, that the Minister is reassured rather than determined to over-ride and over-rule, and that the quotas will indeed be got rid of, this is the best news I’ve heard from South Africa for quite some time.
Positive discrimination rules of this kind perpetuate the process of judging people according to skin colour and collective racial membership rather than on individual merit. The South Africa cricket quota rules were bound to give rise to the suspicion that individual players, even players who in fact fully deserved international recognition, had in fact only got into the national team because of “politics”.
Quota rules are especially depressing in sport, because sport has traditionally been an arena where, because results matter so much and because individual merit is so hard to ignore, hitherto disadvantaged racial groups have time and again been able to make their first big strides towards social and legal equality, lead by their greatest individual sportsmen. From a TV documentary screened in connection with the recent soccer World Cup about the great Pele, for example, I learned for the first time what a big part the unavoidably brilliant talent of that great sportsman played in breaking down the racism so powerful in Brazil in the nineteen fifties. (Brazil won the recent World Cup, with a team containing, of course, numerous coloured players.)
Assuming that the South Africans really have now dumped their cricket quota rules, I am even willing to say, retrospectively, and despite their obvious ghastliness, that I can see why they had these rules, temporarily, and that I can see what they may have achieved with them. By flagging up the issue of non-white participation in cricket in this aggressively interventionist manner, the South African cricket authorities at least made it clear that they were serious about involving all South Africans in cricket and not just white South Africans. The quotas may now have ended, but the UCB has made it very clear that all the other efforts South African cricket has been making to achieve greater equality of cricketing opportunity (and thereby in due course lots of non-white international representation on merit), such as new pitches and new coaching schemes in non-white areas, will continue.
In his article yesterday, Brian agrees with the most ridiculous Christians in order to denounce them. This is all too familiar, he used the same polemic tactic when denouncing Ayn Rand.
In the first place, Darwin’s theory needs extensive modification: the actual mechanism of change isn’t confirmed by paleontological findings: one quarter-horse, three-quarters giraffe, then two-thirds giraffe, then half-giraffe, leading up to modern giraffes. There seems to be sudden bursts of extinctions and sudden appearances of new creatures, which is inconsistent with the Darwinian account of progressive change. It would make more sense to call the Theory revolution than evolution.
Second, the origin of the universe appears to have been a sudden event (a ‘Big Bang’). The Genesis account of the creation of the universe is as good an illustration as any available to us. Compared with what other theories were in circulation in 2,000 BC it’s remarkable. What evidence does anyone have that Big Bang was something other than a deliberate act? I know I can’t prove the Christians wrong about the creation of the universe. Brian apparently thinks that because humans weren’t made on the sixth day, therefore God didn’t create the universe. He may be right, but the assertion is not logically valid. That means that a conclusion that CAN be true if the premises are false is logically invalid.
We could use In the following logically valid reasoning:
Premise 1: Either God created the universe as described literally in the book of Genesis or Darwinian evolution is true.
Premise 2: Darwinian evolution is true.
Conclusion: Therefore, God didn’t create the universe as described literally in the book of Genesis or Negative that God and Creation are true.
But what the argument has not demonstrated is that Darwin and God are exclusive:
The conclusion – Negative that God and Creation are true – is not valid from the premises listed above.
If Darwinian theory is true then both premises are true. But if God actually started Big Bang (for example by sneezing) and Darwinian theory merely describes what happened next, then the conclusion is false. Nothing in the premises excludes this possibility, therefore the argument is logically invalid.
Third, making any point about Christianity in relation to the nationalized Church of England is as relevant as using British Leyland in 1970 as a case example of capitalism. This doesn’t stop some people from doing so: mostly anarchists who think the USSR was an advanced capitalist society.
I look forward to Brian’s dismissal of logic as the devil’s script. 
I’ve been having philosophical thoughts on the Tony Martin affair and some of those thoughts crystalized as I was talking it over with my business partner, a fellow who grew up on the Falls Road.
Government has scarce enough reasons for existing at all, but very few citizens would disagree the core of the “social contract” is protection of person and property. In a healthy community this is the primary role of the police. A free society will not have enough police to have them everywhere, nor will it allow mass surveillance and the corresponding destruction of privacy. Citizens will be expected to defend themselves. They will know police are their friends, always ready to help them in time of need.
Tony Martin’s actions should hardly be noteworthy enough to make the local news. If the incident were noted at all, he would be reported as an exemplary citizen doing exactly what is expected of any good citizen. He would have wounded or detained the troublemakers. The police would have come by, thanked him and perhaps had a spot of tea to pass the time until the ambulance arrived to haul the sorry carcasses off for patching up so a judge could put them away.
Mr Fearon would now be serving a very, very long sentence. He would be held up as a total disgrace, a human being with no intrinsic worth.
But we do not live in a healthy community. Good citizens are fair game for scum; if the scum get hurt they are lionized as downtrodden victims. Meanwhile the real victims are dragged off and given a good swift kick in the goolies for good measure.
This is an unstable situation. If good citizenship is held in contempt there will soon not be any. The social contract has been violated and the result will not be salutory. If there is one social good people will not do without, it is personal safety. If the government can not supply that good, the provision of it will go underground. One should not find this idea surprising as a good fraction of the economy has already done so. Those of Statist mentality don’t seem to understand there is a “conservation law” at work. If there is a demand for a good and they promise to provide it and do not, words will not replace the missing quantity. An underground method will appear and will grow until it satisfies the need. If the government interferes with the underground service provision, we’ll end up with Colombian Neighborhood Watch cartels.
If you want a view of the future this insane treatment of Mr Martin has in store for you, look to the sectarian communities in Belfast during the depths of the Troubles. The government did not, and could not (and was not welcome to) deal with local crime. But the streets here were safer than those of London or Dublin. There was very little crime of any sort for the simple reason the community did not allow it. No one spoke about exactly who the fellows in the ski masks were even though they were friends and neighbors. The men folk went out and “took care of” street crime by the simple expedient of “taking care of” the trouble makers. If you were into robbery and such you got a warning. Then you got your knees done. If you were too stupid to get the point by then the next lesson was final. Rapists got the final lesson first and rape was virtually nonexistent.
It’s no surprise crime is on the rise now that the Troubles are history. You still hear about punishment beatings, but they are less severe and less common than before. I am not saying this is right; I am not seeing it is good. It is just the nearest to home example of “conservation of justice” I could come up with.
Government is not the sole source of justice. If it fails to do it’s job; if it fails to encourage good citizenship and honour those who openly defend their property and person we will have vigilantism. Men and women in masks. 3am executions of trouble makers. Disappeared criminals who might have only served a prison term in a normal society. All this and the climate of fear that goes with underground violence…
..for if the government does not provide the goods, others will and they will not have the luxury of leaving witnesses alive.
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!
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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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