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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With hindsight it can be stated that the outcome of the Industrial Revolution was that human beings no longer needed to go out and grab other people’s possessions by force, but merely to settle down, work hard and exchange the considerable surplus they produced for something they wanted from the surplus someone else produced. How simple it all seems! Yet how hard to put into practice.
– Findlay Dunachie (1928-2005 – his funeral is today) in The Success of the Industrial Revolution and the Failure of Political Revolutions: How Britain Got Lucky, page 6, published in 1996 by the Libertarian Alliance.
“The Bush administration is the most dangerous force that has ever existed. It is more dangerous than Nazi Germany because of the range and depth of its activities and intentions worldwide.”
2005 Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, displaying an interesting sense of historical perspective.
“When government does, occasionally, work, it it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don’t need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
P.J. O’Rourke, All the Trouble in the World (page 199).
I love the punchline.
“We must have faith in the social and economic benefits of the free market. A real programme for prosperity will progressively remove the barriers to wealth creation in Britain today. We need to open ourselves to risk and treat adults like adults. The stock of regulations must be reduced: we should trust people to make their own mistakes and learn from them. And the flow of new regulation from the EU must also be reduced: our aim should be to take back control of employment and social regulation…
“We must reduce and simplify taxes so we can take on with confidence the long term challenge of competing with China and India for jobs. This means not only proper control of public spending, but also a thoughtful and long-term strategy for tax reduction.”
– David Cameron MP
“IPN is the bastard child of the Institute of Economic Affairs.”
– Indymedia
“On sighting an elephant Selous would instantly remove his trousers as he found it easier to pursue them in his underpants.”
As one does.
The quote is from Tom Quinn, Shooting’s Strangest Days.
Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in?
– Oliver Kamm
We embrace these concepts of the private sector, the marketplace and freedom of expression. So the contrast is stark and the choice is clear.
– Michael D. Gallagher, U.S. assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information
Actually it was a much cheerier gathering than I expected: usually the Tories have a leader who embarrasses them, but this year they have no leader and everyone’s full of beans.
– Eamonn Butler at the Conservative Party Conference
The political system tends to lag behind technological change, which is often a good thing. I remember attending a House subcommittee hearing in the 1980s on whether the U.S. should create a phone-computer system modeled on the state-funded French Minitel, a text-only network being promoted as the wave of the future. Fortunately, the Internet exploded – making Minitel obsolete – before Congress could fund such a project.
– Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviewing this book
If Nazi Germany was fascism by radio, New Labour is the corporate state by television.
Colin MacCabe, writing in the Observer, on why he has left the Labour Party.
Meanwhile, you’ve got how many (admittedly very stupid) Australians in Indonesian prisons for something like 20 years on drug charges? So I guess the message here is kill some infidels and you’ll get two years with time off for good behavior, have a couple tabs of ecstasy on you and you’ll do 20 years in a third world prison.
– Hank Scorpio
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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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