Samizdata

I was tired of being poor.
-Paul Rutherford, a sales associate at Fry’s Electronics in Burbank, California, when I asked what prompted him to emigrate from the UK to the US

The gods of Samizdata decree that linking to The Times of London is discouraged. But I am going to at least quote from it. Twice.

First, here is William Rees-Mogg on the EU Constitution, but stating a general rule:

So long as our Government takes us for fools, we have every reason to take them for liars.

Meanwhile, my former neighbour Mr George Thomas, on the letters page, demonstrates an application of the rule:

Tony Blair claims that “there is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack”.

He is wrong. If the 20th century teaches us anything it is that the greatest threat to civil liberty comes from governments that have been allowed to exercise excessive power over their own people. The greatest civil liberty is to live securely protected from government intrusion. We have seen that, while terrorists can threaten the lives of hundreds and maybe thousands, governments can oppress and maltreat entire peoples and can do this for decades.

It’s one thing to have people looking at your sex tapes, but having people reading your personal e-mails is a real invasion of privacy.
-The anonymous source who took the story of Paris Hilton’s hacked BlackBerry to the press

Freedom of speech makes it much easier to spot the idiots.

– Jay Lessig, quoted in the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web.

People love to demonize greedy bosses who don’t care for their workers. However, after going through this bout of downsizing my company, I know that my surviving employees are not unhappy about the change, because it was accompanied by a renewed sense of discipline and focus. Employees – or, at least, my employees – have understood and responded positively to their boss’ determination to succeed financially. A boss who tolerates low financial returns will not deliver the wherewithal to provide raises and job security. In retrospect, my biggest sin was not in laying people off during my bout of downsizing – despite the pain involved – but in not demanding enough of them or myself previously. In short, I should have been more greedy … I would have been more socially useful.

– Friedrich Blowhard last Saturday, in the course of explaining why he has been obliged to stop blogging for a while