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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“Unlike government, a corporation has no legal authority to force anyone to do anything. It canât tax you, arrest you, or conscript you. It canât force you to work for it. It canât force you to invest in it. It canât force you to buy its products. Bakan, however, says corporations âdetermine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and what we do.â No, they donât. They make us offers, which we can accept or refuse. But those offers give us countless options to improve our livesâoptions we wouldnât have otherwise. Far from a threat, the earned economic power of corporations brings us great benefits.
People interact with corporations voluntarily. If a corporation sells a shoddy product, people can refrain from buying it. If it sets prices they regard as too high, they can negotiate or look for a better deal. If it pays low wages or lays off employees, they can work elsewhere or start their own business. If people think Google and Facebook collect too much personal data while failing to properly safeguard it, they can use other platforms or services. Bottom line: If you donât like a corporation, you can avoid it. You do not have this choice with government, though. Ignore the IRS, and fines, penalties, or prison await you. You can opt out of Google and Facebook, but you canât opt out of the surveillance dragnet of the NSA.”
– Michael Dahlen, The Objective Standard.
“We are all capable of hypocrisy. When someone says at a party, `I’m a great listener,’ you just know they are going to yak on about themselves for hours.”
– Tim Stanley, Daily Telegraph. (ÂŁ)
The media have taken umbrage at some of the rhetoric of the [15 minute city] schemesâ critics. Some opponents have referred to the scheme as akin to a âclimate lockdownâ, which The Times dismisses as an âoutlandish claimâ. While some conspiracy theorists may take this term literally, others will no doubt recognise it as a polemical line. After all, while Oxford residents will not be forced to stay indoors, they will be encouraged not to drive and to remain as much as possible in their 15-minute district. Itâs hard not to see at least some parallels between this green-inspired scheme and the Covid âStay at Homeâ mentality. (Indeed, the term âclimate lockdownâ was coined by the green movement itself, which marvelled at the supposed ecological benefits of the Covid lockdowns.)
– Laurie Wastell
We almost certainly havenât seen the last of Ardern. No doubt a plum job at the United Nations, the World Health Organisation or some other ghastly supranational body beckons. Nor have we seen the last of the elitist politics that she came to represent. Itâs high time we had a reckoning with this âkindlyâ authoritarianism.
– Tom Slater
“But fully mature people still have a sense of their own privacy, they keep to themselves what is properly kept to oneself. Privacy isnât some relic of the pre-tech past, as I said once, it is connected to personhood. It has to do with intimate thingsâthe inner workings of your head and heart, of your soul. You donât just give those things away. Your deepest thoughts and experiences are yours, held by you; they are part of your history. They are part of your dignity. You share them as a mark of trust. This is true intimacy, not phony intimacy but the real thing. If you tell all the strangers your secrets what do you tell your intimates?”
– Peggy Noonan, WSJ ($)
This argument hints at why so many rich, virtue-signalling celebrities argue not just for Net Zero but âRealâ Zero, with the banning of all fossil fuel use. King Charles said in 2009 that the age of consumerism and convenience was over, although the multi-mansion owning monarch presumably doesnât think such desperate restrictions apply to himself. Manheimer notes that fossil fuel has extended the benefits of civilisation to billions, but its job is not yet complete. âTo spread the benefits of modern civilisation to the entire human family would require much more energy, as well as newer sources,â he adds.
[…]
In Manheimerâs view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, âtruly is an unholy allianceâ. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. âWe should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,â he added.
– Chris Morrison, Net Zero will lead to the end of modern civilisation
Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right
– Great Grass MCR Ltd đ
“Precisely how and where `free-market fundamentalism’ has run amuck remains a mystery. After all, we live in a world in which most governments in developed nations routinely control 40 per cent or more of their nation’s GDP.”
– Samuel Gregg, Spectator (maybe behind paywall). Gregg is the author of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets In An Uncertain World (2022) and is Distinguished Fellow in Political Economy at the American Institute for Economic Research.
Full disclosure: As a young newswire journalist in the 1990s, I went to the WEF in Davos three times (in one of them, I met Nelson Mandela, as one does). The whole event, held in a Swiss mountain resort once made famous by Thomas Mann while he underwent treatment for turberculosis, rather resembles the lair of Ernst Blofeld in Ian Fleming’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In fact, Schwab is very, er, Spectre-like, although I did not see a white cat.
There is, of course, the pro-free market Mont Pelerin Society, so even the good guys cannot resist the allure of the mountains.
Surely no year could be as bad as 2020, which had seen families sundered, schools closed and businesses destroyed in a hysterical over-reaction. After all, by December 2020, the second lockdown had ended and the UK had begun its vaccine rollout. The new year, it seemed safe to assume, would see a return to normality.
Boy, did we get that wrong. On 6 January 2021, another lockdown was imposed. It lasted, in one form or another, until July â and, even then, a noisy coalition of public sector unions, BBC panic-mongers, skivers, malingerers and mask-fetishists fought to prolong it.
The original justification for the restrictions had collapsed by April 2020. Sweden, which stuck to the plan that the UK had prepared in cooler-headed times, saw its cases peak and fall in line with everyone elseâs, and now turns out to have had the lowest excess death rate of any OECD state.
But, by 2021, dirigisme had taken on a force of its own, and lockdowns were a policy in search of a rationale. âFlatten the curveâ became âProtect the NHSâ, then âWait for the rolloutâ, then âStop new variantsâ, then âYeah, but Long Covidâ.
– Daniel Hannan (ÂŁ) on how mankind experienced 65 years of progress towards peace, democracy and the rule of law, but now a new age of illiberalism beckons
If anything, our modern puritans are worse. At least the stiff folk of the 17th century believed reducing bodily pleasure would help expand the spirit, get one closer to God. The new puritans offer no such spiritual transcendence in return for our curbing of our blowouts â only the bovine payback of a slightly smaller waistline.
We eat around 6,000 calories on Christmas Day, disgusted experts say. We can do better than that. Start with a Buckâs Fizz breakfast; donât scrimp on the Christmas-tree chocs; make brunch a sozzled, carb-heavy mix of your first beer and some Christmas panettone; everything for dinner should be cooked in turkey fat; follow that with a 1,174-cal slice of Christmas pudding; end with more booze and a selection box you donât pick at but consume entirely. We can beat 6,000 calories. We owe it to old England and the original spirit of Christmas.
– Brendan OâNeill (ÂŁ)
I’m up for embracing your admonition, Brendan, going to give it a serious try. Have a Merry Christmas all.
Like so many things on the left, they went from asking us to tolerate something to demanding we celebrate it.
– Roger Williams
“The West is stagnating because it has grown neglectful of freedom.”
– Sherelle Jacobs
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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, âPorcupinesâ, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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