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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Un despote a toujours quelques bons moments ; une assemblée de despotes n’en a jamais. Si un tyran me fait une injustice, je peux le désarmer par sa maîtresse, par son confesseur, ou par son page ; mais une compagnie de graves tyrans est inaccessible Á toutes les séductions.
[A despot still has good moments; an assembly of despots never does. If one tyrant mistreats me, I can get round him by means of his mistress, his priest, or his page-boy. But a staid company of tyrants is impervious to temptation.]
– Voltaire. A remarkable characterisation of the monotonic puritanism of modern democratic government, but written in around 1760. I wonder whether C.S. Lewis’s better known pronouncement on those who torment us for our own good has its origin here. It is similar both in the thought expressed and the cadence of its expression.
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder
– Suketu Mehta, author of a splendid book on India’s most wicked and exhilarating city, getting properly to the point, even if asking for a responsive government is getting into “Be careful what you wish for” territory.
The arrest of Damian Green is quite appalling and so ridiculously Orwellian that I am almost tempted to vote Tory. I mean it.
– a commenter here
I love to go to Washington – if only to be near my money.
– Bob Hope
“There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”
– The Wisdom of Adam Smith, page 194.
“In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly “thinking people” who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.”
Thomas Sowell, the Vision of The Anointed, page 260.
His analysis applies – with the odd exception – to the political/intellectual elites responsible for the expansion of government for the past 100 years or so.
To the authoritarian mind, freedom and chaos are synonymous.
– Commentator Ian B, er, yesterday. My guess is that ‘Ian B’ does not stand for Ian Blair, nor is it a pseudonym of Liam Byrne MP.
Many people have said that the internet is like the wild west in the gold rush and that sooner or later it will be regulated. What we need is for it to be regulated sooner rather than later
– Barbara Follett, Minister of Kulture.
Haringey had a beautiful paper trail of how they failed to protect this baby.
– Eileen Munro, London School of Economics, as paraphrased by Simon Jenkins.
“Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to “go left.” Yet oddly enough that’s where they’ve all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.”
Mark Steyn. As he points out, the upcoming US government bailout of General Motors and god-knows-what-else should nail the idea that the US is the land of “unregulated capitalism”.
Update: PJ O’Rourke writes in similar vein.
Times have changed, voters want the pendulum to swing back from spending towards tax cuts. Rumours are circulating in the Westminster Village that Gordon and Alastair are preparing to announce tax cuts. Which will, even if they are only rhetorical tax cuts, in a stroke make Dave and George look ridiculous as both Labour and the LibDems promise tax cuts and the Tories are left high and dry stranded on the high tax centre ground …
– Guido
Is all change good? No. Only good change is good.
– although probably more quote of yesterday from Alice Bachini-Smith
PLUS: I just noticed this
PLUS: I also like this (via here)
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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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