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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Clarkson is a hero, and Monbiot is a chicken.
– Why Monbiot is so Miserable
And anyway I wanted to see what it would feel like ordering a three hundred quid starter
– Giles Coren, reviewing the St James’-Ukrainian restaurant Divo for The Times.
The capacity at will to do something improbable (and quite possibly stupid) in order to find out what it feels like is to my mind the measure of a society worth living in. Mr Coren did not have to consult religious authorities about that starter, and no government inspector determined for him whether it was fair or appropriate fo him to do so, or insisted on him having counselling first, or afterwards. He is not confined in a fixed universe of approved experiences. For how long? The vigilantes are abroad, though they are coming for the poor first. And everyone ought to be free to be daft, not just oligarchs.
There has been a change in the policy on policies, and therefore all the policies have had to be rewritten in order to be in compliance with the new policies policy
– A compliance officer at a large investment bank, during a compulsory compliance training seminar this week.
There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
– Sam Harris, rebutting the daft charge that a denial of belief in the afterlife or a supreme being must open the doors to hell on earth.
“The evidence is that when tariffs come down, tariff revenue tends to go up.”
– Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner, on why poor countries should liberalise trade
About 120 years ago, Mme. Cadolle figured out that it made more sense for women’s breasts to be suspended from above than cantilevered from beneath. That is, she invented bra straps. So instead of walking around wearing the lingerie equivalent of the London Bridge, women could slide themselves into a Golden Gate. This was a huge relief – as anyone who has worn a strapless bra can tell you – because the London Bridge pretty much always falls down.
– Belinda Luscombe in the course of asking Warren Buffet for better fitting bras – spotted by Amit Varma
Whatever happened to getting your head down and doing the damn job? Whatever happened to going bowling in your own time? You want to take some of the crew from work? Well, that’s nice, too. And if a more fruitful professional relationship between a close-knit group of employees is the result, well isn’t that peachy? But really, if we are all big about this, shouldn’t we be able to interact productively without the panacea of fake camaraderie or a day throwing up in a corporate box at the races? Some of the 7/7 bombers went white-water rafting before the event, you know; and what great team players they turned out to be.
– Martin Samuel. I have never suffered a “team building” trip away from the office, thank god (my boss has better things to do).
I’ve yet find an area that I’ve studied extensively where the arguments justifying the state stand up to historical evidence. I think the state’s takeover of these aspects of human life occur for different reasons than the reasons currently given for the state in those areas, and that what we see is a lot of ex post rationalisation to justify the state. I haven’t looked at every area, and certainly may find some where I wouldn’t make that argument. But I have yet to find one.
– Bruce L. Benson (one of the speakers at the LA/LI Conference last weekend) talks about his work to Patrick Crozier – the whole thing lasts a little over 15 minutes
For quite some while now, I have been meaning either to write this myself or to come across someone else writing this. Since the Australian blogger Russell Blackford beat me to it and I read him saying it this afternoon, here it now is:
Unfortunately, the impression has been created by many Muslim leaders that Islam seeks to control all aspects of individuals’ lives and does not shrink from using secular power to achieve its aim. We are all well aware of extreme examples in recent history, such as Afghanistan under the benighted Taliban regime. Until that fear is laid to rest, it is quite rational for the rest of us to fear Islam’s political ambitions – which is one reason why the word “Islamophobia” is so stupid. A phobia is an irrational fear, but secular Westerners actually have perfectly rational reasons to be at least wary of Islam …
In my experience there is nothing quite like the best sort of Australian academic or intellectual for calling bullshit bullshit.
Forgive me if someone has already said this exact thing here already. What many writers and commenters here have definitely said many times is that much of the art of the propagandist lies in the inventing of and the destruction of words. The bad guys invent bad words and destroy good ones. We good guys invent good words and destroy bad ones. And “islamophobia” is a very bad word indeed.
Just because we are sometimes foolish does not mean that the government is any wiser.
– Tim Harford commenting on Julian le Grand’s latest proposals. “[Le Grand] is not crazy. He is just wrong.”
I hate the use of the word ‘public’ as a synonym for ‘government’. The government is the government and the public is what is not the government.
But I am not here to save the English language, I am here to save the planet.
– Leon Louw, at today’s Libertarian Alliance/Libertarian International conference in London
Try and put me in a burqua and you die.
– Ysabel Howard
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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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