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 early aircraft business resembled that of the shade-tree mechanics who, in building hot rods, gave rise, then as now, to true advances in automobile design. See also the chopper shops of California and their influence on the world of motorcycling. A list of these shade-tree mechanics includes the Wrights, Cyris McCormick, Henry Ford, Tesla, Tom Edison, Meg Whitman, Bill Gates, Burt Rutan, and Steve Jobs. How would they and American industry have fared had government gotten its hands upon them at the outset – if it had taxed away the capital necessary to provide a market for their wares; if it had taxed away the wealth, which, existing as gambling money, had taken a chance on these various visionaries? One need not wonder, but merely look around at the various businesses that government has aided. And now it has taken over health care.”
– David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, page 79.
I’m so insulted when people say that lawmaking is like sausage making.
– Stanley A. Feder, President of Simply Sausage, quoted by the New York Times, requoted here. And now here.
“It is worth asking in both the British and American contexts why people who regard themselves as believers in free speech and liberal democracy can be so openly eager to close off – silence, kill, extinguish – different political views from their own. This is the question that is at the heart of the matter and which will remain long after every News International executive who may possibly be incriminated in the current scandal has been purged. There is scarcely any outfit on the Right – be it political party, or media outlet – which demands the outright abolition of a Left-wing voice, as opposed to simply recommending restraint on its dominance (as I am with the BBC). That is because those of us on the Right are inclined to believe that our antagonists on the Left are simply wrong-headed – sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes malevolent but basically just mistaken. Whereas the Left believes that we are evil incarnate. Their demonic view of people who express even mildly Right-of-centre opinions (that lower taxes or less state control might be desirable, for example) would be risible if it were not so pernicious.”
– Janet Daley.
Someone I know quite well said she hoped the problems at Murdoch’s media empire will lead to Fox News being shut down. Not changed in ownership, you understand, but closed. This person is, you will not be surprised to learn, very “liberal”.
“Brecht, an East German, was allowed by the Communists to keep his wealth and live at ease in Switzerland – a show dog of Communism. His accomplishments, however, must be seen not as an indictment, but as a ratification of the power of free enterprise. As must the seemingly ineradicable vogue for the notion of Government Control. The free market in ideas keeps this folly as current as any entertainment reviled by the Left as “mindless”. But the fiction of top-down Government Control, of a Command Economy, is, at essence, like a Reality Show, which is to say, a fraud. The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle, getting nowhere.”
David Mamet, page 3 of his book, The Secret Knowledge. I love his line about NASCAR. The whole book is stuffed with one-liners such as that.
Here is what I wrote a little while ago about Mamet.
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
– Ronald Reagan
Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard …
– Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. My thanks to Detlev Schlichter for alerting me to this piece. Schlichter‘s forthcoming book would appear to have been timed to perfection. I am reading an advance pdf of it now. If you want a copy I recommend you advance-order it now, or you just might have a rather long wait.
“Revulsion, however justified, is a dangerous counsellor.”
– Bruce Anderson, on the continuing saga of Rupert Murdoch. A good article overall, somewhat spoiled by a daft remark about Australia.
I did some coke, and slept with a whore. But that’s what a superinjunction is for!
– Robbie Williams, at last week’s Take That show at Wembley, mocks the legalised suppression of free speech. Quoted by Fraser Nelson in his obituary for the News of the World, in the News of the World.
Bohemia has been banned.
– David Hockney denounces the smoking ban.
“Politics is a lagging indicator of American society”.
– Nick Gillespie, of Reason magazine, talking about his new book, co-authored with Matt Welch, at CATO. An interesting presentation, if you can spare the 40-odd minutes to watch the talk and Q&A.
Rupert Murdoch is 80 years old and his empire makes no sense other than as a reflection of his personality. Murdoch is very good at running television stations but his new media investments have been hopeless. His adult children are not very bright, are widely perceived as such by investors and won’t ever be allowed to run the company or to continue to use the weird share structure that Murdoch is allowed to use to control the company without actually owning a majority of the equity. News won’t survive six months when Murdoch is no longer running it. Seriously, at this point in his life Rupert Murdoch is about as scary as a strawberry blancmange.
– Michael Jennings, in response to an online petition asking him to oppose News Corporation’s complete takeover of BSkyB.
Because he’s a Democrat.
– Overheard by Damian Thompson at the unveiling of the Ronald Reagan statue in London this morning. Someone was explaining why David Cameron gave the event a miss.
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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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