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 number of county court actions for mortgage and secured loans has also risen steeply over the last few years. Between 2004 and 2006, the number of mortgage possession claims has increased by nearly 70% and the number of possession orders actually made by 94%. The number of possession actions in 2006 is now similar to that seen at the beginning of the mortgage repossession crisis in 1990.
– from a Citizens Advice Bureau report just released, quoted today by Guido, who says: “Somebody should dig out that old Labour Party general election poster which blamed house repossessions on Hague and Portillo, changing the pictures to Brown and Darling. So much for an end to boom and bust …”
A person has only so much time allotted to him, and I hate to waste it reading tripe. I suppose that’s why I rarely listen to politicians’ speeches – why waste time that could be better spent scratching my ass?
– commenter veryretired
I never have seen any of the Rambo movies and who knows if I ever will? Probably not. The day is always full, and they’re not on any priority list of mine. Despite all this, the latest picture from Mr Stallone has given me one moment of pleasure. How so? Well, it’s being reported here and there that the movie, in which Rambo takes on Burma’s military junta, is making an impression with some of the junta’s opponents. And this has caused Marina Hyde a moment of irritation. ‘Oh, please!’ she exclaims. I don’t know why I should take satisfaction from it. After all, I have no interest in the quality of Marina Hyde’s day; in the normal way of things I’m happy for it to be altogether fine. But there you are: opponents of the Burmese regime don’t have the name of some smug little metropolitan liberal on their lips. They enjoy seeing the discomfiture of a tyranny at the hands of … Rambo. Dearie me, how gross.
– Norm Geras
I’m seriously considering pitching a detective novel, about the hunt for a serial killer. The unique selling point will be that as the detective homes in on the killer, he gradually comes to sympathize with him, and ends up questioning whether he should actually collar the murderer … because the victims are all spammers.
– Charlie Stross
“One day, there will be a woman worth electing to the White House. But not this one.”
– Andrew Sullivan. His observations on the contrast between Senator Clinton, and Margaret Thatcher, are spot-on.
Every child should have authoritarian parents, because then they’ll grow up to be libertarians.
-Oddball Australian journalist Paddy McGuinness, as recounted at his funeral this week by Bill Hayden.
We’d all play like that… if we could.
– John Coltrane, no mean saxophone player, talking about arguably the greatest of them all, Stan Getz. His cool, silk-like style is the perfect cure for a stressful day at the office.
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power. And reading Aristotle in Greek.
– Will Wilkinson
However I must disagree with Will elsewhere in his article. I see individualism as magnificently and floridly Art Deco.
Human desire is insatiable. Now, some think this is a bad thing, blaming it on greed and consumerism. But think about Mother Theresa – a saint if ever there was one. Was she greedy? Insatiable? Well, yes, she was. If she could have helped one more person, she would have.
– Russ Nelson, The Angry Economist
Whilst roaming the interweb and dozing through meetings, I have collected the Iron Laws of Human Behavior:
1. You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish.
2. The less you know about something, the easier it looks.
3. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
No particular claim to originality of thought is made, but I rarely get through either a political or a business discussion without seeing one or more of them in action. I will caution the reader that noting the application of an Iron Law out loud in a business setting is not without its risks.
Additional nominations and/or corollaries are hereby solicited.
At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world’s richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation’s largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes.
– Victor Hanson Davis, as pointed out by Instapundit.
This point though could be made about any community. There is no country on earth that is not voluntarily in poverty. If you choose to have an anti-wealth creating atmosphere, then you will be poor. If you choose a wealth-creating meta-context in your society, then you will have wealth.
The rise of the wealthy East Asian nations, with almost none of the natural resources that bless the State of California, demonstrate that there really is no excuse.
First he has no chance whatever of being elected President of the United States of America.
He is a rich kid, yes so is George Bush as well – but George Bush gives a good imitation of looking and sounding like an ordinary Texan, Mitt Romney looks and sounds like what he is.
Americans will accept a Democrat who was born rich – they have more of a problem with a Republican who was born rich.
– Paul Marks, taking no prisoners
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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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