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 maths doesn’t add up; this is just sinking capital into a loss making project. If you’re going to use the power of the state to do that, then you shouldn’t be surprised that this country is getting poorer.
– Steve Baker MP denounces the plan for a new stretch of high speed rail, quoted (behind a registration wall) at the Financial Times.
I make this today’s QotD here not in spite of Guido having already featured it as his quote of today (and maybe also of the next few days) but because of this. Baker’s soundbite is getting around. Good.
Lots of Americans who read Samizdata but not Guido, and who are also confronting idiot plans to waste their money on high speed rail foolishnesses, will now also read this soundbite. Good again.
Meanwhile, as the FT’s headline proclaims, “economists insist” that this piece of Keynesian pump priming that won’t should go ahead, damn the expense. Well they would, wouldn’t they?
Newcastle did not beat Manchester United today, because the long term trend is for Manchester United to beat Newcastle.
– Bishop Hill’s quote of the day today. He found it here. This is the game being referred to.
“At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done. Our most enlightened citizens think it’s rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather “save the planet,” a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks.”
– Mark Steyn
This might be the only measurement you need to judge the Afghanistan War. Vendors in Kabul are doing a brisk trade in Taliban ringtones. Because Afghans report that the Taliban kill travelers at clandestine checkpoints if they don’t hear one of their messages on someone’s phone.
– The opening sentences of a Wired piece by Spencer Ackerman entitled Either Your Phone Plays Taliban Ringtones, or You Die
I let Guy Herbert buy me a drink. Nobody should ever let Guy Herbert buy them a drink. I should always buy him a drink.
– Rob Fisher, to me, a year or so back, shortly after the plans for the ID card were abandoned. The fight continues, but battles have at times been won.
Also: Merry Christmas, everyone.
I get the feeling that crime fiction is where ideas go to die.
– Brian Micklethwait
Nothing is sustainable.
– Willis Eschenbach
“I am not one of those who have ever flattered the people, or striven to win favour by telling them that from the Crown or from Parliament that could be got which could not be got from themselves, by themselves. I would impress upon you this. What the State gives to you, the State takes from you first; it further charges you with the cost of collection, and with the cost of distribution. Better by far that you should save for yourselves and spend for yourselves, than put into the purse of the State your earnings of which only part can at best come back.”
– Charles Bradlaugh, 19th Century British parliamentarian and campaigner on issues such as rights of non-believers, contraception, the case against the monarchy, and as this quotation shows, an opponent of socialism. The quote is taken from a review of a book about Bradlaugh by Bryan Niblett, who is known to some of us at Samizdata. Bryan is an Objectivist (as in an admirer of the philosophy of Ayn Rand) and has worked for many years as a private arbitrator concerning areas such as intellectual property. A very good and smart man all round, in fact.
Usually in politics, we say one guy is great and the other guy is bad and the they’ll say their guy is great and our guy is bad. But can’t we compromise and agree they’re all awful? Treating all politicians with contempt is the first steps towards a smaller government, because when you hate and distrust them all, you realize how imperative it is to give them as little power as possible.
– Frank J
Why don’t [union leaders] be selective and call out only those members who can cause damage to the government? There are places in the public sector that could go on strike for years and it would make little difference.”
– Letter in the New Statesman, 12 December 2011
Assuming the unions were to agree with that—which I suspect they dare not, and is indeed one strategic reason why one-day strikes are preferred—in what places in the public sector would staff striking for a significant period damage the government more than the unions? Maybe there are some. But it is hard to think of any.
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace
– Vaclav Havel, tireless fighter against communism and sundry other human absurdities, has died. Ave atque vale.
Immigrants are incoming assets … in a global economy, their labour is vital both to tackle severe skills shortages and to fill long-term vacancies. Immigrants are not taking jobs that British workers could fill, but jobs which British workers are unable or unwilling to do … the idea that immigration is an intolerable burden on the taxpayer and the welfare state is baloney. Immigrants give far more than they take. It is estimated that they make a net contribution to the economy of £2.5bn …
– House of Commons Speaker John Bercow in an article in the Independent in 2005, quoted by Henry Oliver today in Adam Smith Institute’s Pin Factory Blog.
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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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