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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The basic moral issue, however, is that no one has a right to other people’s wealth. Need – even the genuine need of someone suffering through no fault of his own – is not a license to steal. In Ayn Rand’s words `misfortune is not a claim to slave labor; there is no such thing as the right to consume, control, and destroy those without whom one would be unable to survive.’ Does that sound harsh? Consider your own case: Would you regard your hardships as a claim on your neighbor’s paycheck? would you march into his house waving your need around like a gun and helping yourself to his food or his medicine cabinet? Would you think very much of a neighbor who did that to you?
– Free Market Revolution, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, page 188-189.
“In terms of technology I hate to sound ridiculously optimistic, but I am ridiculously optimistic”.
– Terence Kealey
Speaking today at the Liberty League Freedom Forum.
Mankind will never enjoy the full social, economic and psychological perfection of the Inuit hunting group, as portrayed by First Peoples — but then real Inuit hunting groups don’t enjoy that either.
– Martin Hutchinson
The Hoppean position on immigration is illogical; you do not reduce the scope of the state by increasing it and the number of tasks it undertakes. We should be looking at ways to limit the damage and cost of government now, and not sit in ivory towers trying to fudge a philosophical position that takes away the right of free association.
– Allrik Birch
After Hurricane Sandy struck last fall, “Today” reporter Jeff Rossen did an exposé on how some contractors were “preying on” homeowners. How? By performing repair work without the proper licenses. Rossen found several contractors who lacked home-improvement licenses, but only one consumer who had been taken advantage of – and that was two months before Sandy struck. His big story boiled down to the fact that some Sandy-related tree removal and home repair work was carried out without prior government permission.
But wait – does Rossen have a license to practice journalism? Does he think journalists should be licensed? I reached out to Rossen by email. “What can I do for you?” he wrote back. But when I put those questions to him, he never responded – much like the unlicensed contractors he caught on camera. How scandalous!
– A. Barton Hinkle
For the first time ever, labourers were able to purchase cheap goods for themselves. The first factories focused on mass production of cheap goods for the poor. Shoes, for example, were produced for the proletariat – the rich bought made-to-measure shoes. This was different from France, where the government’s mercantilist product standards, designed to uphold quality, ensured that nothing was produced for the poor at all. In France, mercantilism continued to be state policy for much longer than in England. This is the reason why industrialisation took fifty more years to arrive on France’s shores.
– This is a typical “I did not know that” moment from J. P. Floru‘s excellent new book Heavens on Earth: How To Create Mass Prosperity, from the chapter about the British industrial revolution.
Well, I myself did not know it. If you did know this particular thing about shoes, you will still probably find a hundred other such titbits in this book that you did not know. In an equal-but-opposite way, this made me think of how we can now buy excellent yet vastly-cheaper-than-before spectacles on the internet, that being a case of a made-to-measure product becoming available to all at a mass production price.
Besides the world-changing success story that was British industrialisation, Floru writes about: the USA and West Germany just after WW2, Hong Kong, China, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. The miseries of despotism are not glossed over, but the inevitable failure of statist economic policies and the almost automatic benefits of free market policies, provided only that you can make them stick, are made unmistakably clear.
I hope, Real Soon Now, to be supplying a longer posting here about this fine book, along the lines of the five star reactions to it here. Short version: it is a fine book.
“I want a “leave me alone” society — one where Christian schools can turn people away for rejecting their doctrine, just as gay rights groups can reject those who don’t share their beliefs. I don’t want us all to get along — not because I’m misanthropic (well, not just because I’m misanthropic), but because I know that “consensus” is usually a fancy word for muting minority viewpoints. I want us all to be free to be annoyed with each other from our separate corners. Is that too much to ask?”
– Troy Senik
He’s writing about Michael Bloomberg, who is up there with Hugh Grant and George Galloway in my current “rogues’ gallery”. Competition for membership of the gallery is proving quite competitive at the moment.
Why has this [Earth Hour] not expanded into a day when toilets go unflushed?
– Samizdata commenter RRS
Let’s not kid ourselves, because the end of money, as we know it, really means the beginning of the transactional surveillance State, which makes this a serious debate about the boundaries of State power and the dignity of an individual.
Unfortunately, the real world extends beyond Wolman’s polite corner of Oregon.
There are activists and dissidents in hostile regions paying for Internet blogs, food supplies, and safe harbor. There are payments being made to border guards on a daily basis to flee a murderous government somewhere. There are women selling baskets and blankets at street markets to feed their hungry families. There are cancer patients buying weed from a friend if their state doesn’t accommodate medical marijuana. And even before and after the Third Reich, persecuted peoples have always needed a way to protect and transfer what little remained of their wealth.
The persistent war on cash has more to do with moralistic society than it does with civil society as Wolman claims. With ultimate tracking capabilities, how does Wolman decide when a government’s “right” becomes a wrong? Does he defend the victimless crime laws against online gambling and consensual sex for money between adults? Does he defend confiscation of private sector wealth when a socialistic regime runs out of funds? Does he defend an orchestrated payments blockade against whistleblower site Wikileaks? Does he defend brutal government law enforcement measures in Syria and Gaddafi’s Libya?
Anonymity and civil society do mix — it is omnipotent violent government and civil society that do not mix.
– Jon Matonis
So far Voyager 1 has ‘left the Solar System’ by passing through the termination shock three times, the heliopause twice, and once each through the heliosheath, heliosphere, heliodrome, auroral discontinuity, Heaviside layer, trans-Neptunian panic zone, magnetogap, US Census Bureau Solar System statistical boundary, Kuiper gauntlet, Oort void, and crystal sphere holding the fixed stars.
– A rather marvellous alt-text from Randall Monroe of xkcd. Can we just give the guy the Nobel Prize for Literature right now? And possibly also the prize for Peace (assuming he has the bad taste to want it)?
“Last time I remember over-reaching legislation being similarly rushed, we ended up with the Terrorism Act Section 44 which started out as preventing terrorism and ended up as random stop-and-search powers being exercised by the Met on any motorist they felt like bothering.”
– Alec Muffett, in a rather depressing summary of his thoughts about the meeting that he, other members of the Open Rights Group, and other civil liberties groups had with Hacked Off last night. Read the whole thing. (This is a subsequent post to the one that was linked to earlier).
“Bent British newspaper hacks are indeed a curse. Nobody anywhere in the world thinks Britain’s tabloid press does a good job. But the slimiest, most gin-sodden Fleet Street hack who ever lived isn’t as dangerous to Britain as the bland, responsible, respectable people who decided to set up a government-backed press board. Britain can thrive in the 21st century, but it will surely fail if the British people allow their brain dead but well groomed establishment free rein.”
From The American Interest.
The eroding liberty of the UK is getting noticed.
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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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