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.
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Mark Edwards lays out some arguments against the Panopticon State
Yesterday I spent rather more time than I should have reading and commenting on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ discussion about the surveillance society. Faced with the predictable response from the obedient serfs that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” I tried to make three main points.
The first was that you have nothing to fear only if the authorities are perfect, all the time and every time. Imperfections could be mistaken identity, linking you with some criminal activity; if the bloke who asked me for the time as I bought my paper this morning went on to rob the newsagent after I left, might I be an accomplice? There is also the risk of blatant corruption, where a government employee abuses the data they collect as part of their job to identify you as being worth burgling, or to watch through your teenage daughters’ bedroom windows.
My second point was that all of this surveillance does not make us any safer; the least implausible case for it suggests that evidence may be obtained that makes conviction of those committing crimes easier. This however is not proven beyond doubt. What is well established is that the constant surveillance creates an atmosphere of paranoia, in which we are convinced there is a greater threat to each of us than is actually the case. I have found no evidence that crime has fallen where cameras have been installed (I have seen reference to situations where crime fell when cameras were installed and police activity on the ground increased, but that is by no means the same thing).
Thirdly, I tried to explain that the level of surveillance in Britain had radically changed the relationship between government and governed, and between people and the law. There is no longer any presumption of innocence, because we are all suspects. Worse than that, we are suspected of crimes that we may not have committed yet. I feel we have moved from having a Civil Service that was motivated to serve the public (even if they were often misguided), to government employees who now see themselves as ‘the authorities’.
Later in the evening I thought back over the day and realised that I had tried to justify, on purely utilitarian grounds, something that should need no justification; why should I have to justify my desire to protect my privacy? And why are so many people so careless of theirs?
You may be asking why I would want to spend my time posting to what is actually an authoritarian left wing site (the BBC), when I regard myself as libertarian right wing. My reason is simple, and, frankly, arrogant. I kid myself that my arguments may be so persuasive that someone will read my comment, and understand it enough for me to have sown a seed of doubt. I suspect this is so unlikely as be a delusion, but I keep trying. I fear I am not even nearly as persuasive as I like to think I am, and my arguments are doomed to failure, so I am wasting my time but I continue anyway.
To end on a positive note, I counted the most recommended comments at 16:00, and found the first pro camera comment was number 70. None of my contributions were in the preceding 69 but at least the forces of common sense seemed to be carrying the argument.
It is, I suspect, no accident that it is in Europe that climate change absolutism has found the most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest popular hold. Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of Green alarmism and what has been termed global salvationism – of which the climate change issue is the most striking example, but by no means the only one – which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy.
– Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, quoted today by Guido Fawkes
This reports states that Britain’s armed forces are considered to be below strength for the tasks they have been ordered to perform. Nothing very surprising about that, given that although Blair has been almost indecently keen to deploy troops, sailors and airmen to various theatres of operations, he has not backed this up with a corresponding deployment of resources.
As a minimal statist rather than an anarcho-capitalist libertarian, I accept that providing for the defence of this country is a basic task of the state, but that of course leaves wide open how exactly that task is carried out, by whom, and at what cost. Does it mean things like standing armies, or navies, or large airforces, or anti-missile batteries dotting the coasts? Does it mean an armed citizenry called upon to defend the nation at short notice? Does it mean getting into alliances with other powers to share this role, or focusing entirely on one’s own resources?
It is Friday and we like a good debate ahead of the weekend. Let the comments fly! Try not to get hurt.
There has been some interesting discussion on Peaktalk in the subject of freedom of expression, marking the second anniversary of the murder of Theo van Gogh. As there are several relevant articles, I have not linked to any in particular.
Tim Blair links to a critique of the ubiquitous Stern Report, written by Bjørn Lomborg. Perhaps his most damning (and least surprising) criticism of the Report is that it is “unrealistically pessimistic”, and considering its wholesale adoption by the Green lobby, I have no doubt that this is true. The article is well worth a read as an antidote to all the hand-wringing the Stern Report’s tabling has inspired. However, Lomborg’s rejoinder only receives two cheers from me.
Whilst Lomborg’s most famous publication – The Skeptical Environmentalist – was enormously refreshing, I found many of his remedies to the world’s problems uncomfortable. He really seems to believe that solving these crises is as simple as throwing a pre-determined mega-amount of cash at them – x billion dollars here will provide clean drinking water for those who currently have no access to it, x billion dollars there will defeat malaria. In this latest article of Lomborg’s, he ambitiously declares that all of the major problems of the poverty-stricken world can be solved by spending x billion dollars per year, claiming:
Spending just a fraction of this figure [$450 billion p.a. to cut carbon emissions, as recommended by Stern – JW] – $75 billion – the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world’s major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now.
Really? Who is going to disperse this cash, and how? Lomborg does not say, but such a project has the State’s fingerprints all over it. Where else could Lomborg expect to get this sort of sustained funding from? Only an entity with the coercive power to extract resources from countless others would be able to volunteer a sum like 75 billion dollars year in, year out. Are we talking about government – or a coalition of governments? Of course we are! Surely only governments (or an intergovernmental body like the U.N.) are trustworthy enough to distribute such a volume of resources fairly and efficiently. Only governments would utilise these resources in the single-minded purpose of lightening the burden of the world’s poor, unadulterated by the agenda of other forces. An organic, non-governmental response is simply not organised; not holistic enough. Consider how well large-scale state planning has served us this past century or so.
Not buying it?
Well, I think we can all agree that the record of government and the U.N. in the field of aid distribution and poverty alleviation is really quite something. So whilst Lomborg is a useful resource if one is hosing down the wilder claims of the Global Climate Change mullahs, his obvious faith in government action should remind all liberals that he is not one of us. His solutions to the world’s problems are ultimately as futile as those proposed by the environmental industry, although Mr Lomborg’s are admittedly rather less demanding on the wallets of long-suffering taxpayers.
Labour MP Tom Watson is undecided as to whether or not vein scanning and other biometric technology being forced on Britain’s schoolchildren is a good or a bad thing. Perhaps you can share your views on the matter with him. Please note that Watson told me a couple of years ago that his view on ID cards was actually changed by the persuasive arguments he read on various blogs, so this is a man who is willing to listen to reason.
In today’s news, media channels bring Samizdata readers this stunning, shocking announcement:
The UK is becoming a “surveillance society” where technology is used to track people’s lives, a report has warned.
CCTV, analysis of buying habits and recording travel movements are among the techniques already used, and the Report on the Surveillance Society predicts surveillance will further increase over the next decade.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas – who commissioned the report – warned that excessive surveillance could create a “climate of suspicion”.
One of the many justifications for creating this all-seeing, all-knowing state is that it will help reduce crime. Well, it does not appear to be having much impact on Britain’s lovely teenagers, at least according to a new report. Of course, one wonders how much of the worries about crime are partly a moral panic and partly based on hard, ugly reality (a bit of both, probably). Even so, Britain’s approach to crime, which involves massive use of surveillance technology to catch offenders, appears not to be all that much of a deterrent to certain forms of crime, although arguably it does mean that there is a slightly greater chance of catching people once a crime has been carried out (not much consolation for the victims of said, obviously).
I recently got this book on the whole issue of crime, state powers, surveillance and terrorism, by Bruce Schneier, who confronts the whole idea that we face an inescapable trade-off, a zero sum game, between liberty and security. Recommended.
Surprise, surprise:
London’s 2012 Olympic dream suffered a huge setback last night amid fears that the entire project will fall prey to soaring costs and interfering politicians.
You mean there are people who only worked that out last night. Olympic costs soar. Politicians interfere. These are fundamental natural forces. Everybody knows that. It is merely that lots of people do not care, because they will not – or think that they will not – be paying.
Jack Lemley, the American engineer drafted in to oversee the gigantic building project, quit suddenly two weeks ago saying that he wanted to spend more time on his construction business.
Makes a refreshing change from spending more time with his family. No doubt his construction company still loves him very much.
But last night, Mr Lemley, 71, the boss of an international engineering and consulting company, revealed that politics had driven him out and warned of soaring costs for the Olympic project.
In a body blow to hopes of a successful games, Mr Lemley told Idaho Statesman newspaper: “I went there to build things, not to sit and talk about it, so I felt it best to leave the post and come home.”
Very wise.
He said the London construction projects seemed likely to come in late and cost more than expected due to politics, and he feared that would ruin his reputation of delivering projects on time and on budget.
Which makes you wonder how much it will cost to replace the guy. And what kind of a jerk he will be.
The remarks have enraged Olympic organisers who privately say that Mr Lemley had left partly because of ill health and had agreed not to comment more about the project.
Privately as in don’t-say-I-said-it-but-do-say-it. Mr Lemley owes these people nothing, and certainly not his silence.
If only …
Via NewsMax: the troops respond to John Kerry’s ‘joke’.
 Photo: US soldiers, via News Max.
I particularly like it when blogging is being done, or is about to be done, by people whom I know quite well. And my friend Helen Evans has just this very day started a blog about nursing, called the Nurses For Reform blog.
That said, the prose style so far is rather corporate and armour-plated for my taste. However, despite the rather baffling word “contestability” – which is presumably some kind of Blairite code-word, for something or other – I think it is reasonably clear what is intended by the following:
NFR rejects bland egalitarianism in favour of contestability. Above all else we believe that greater partnership with the private sector is to be actively welcomed and that this sector’s contributions are good news for patients and healthcare professionals alike.
That suggests to me something quite like free market medicine, and of course I am totally for that. This next bit is definitely about free market medicine:
NFR believes in fundamental change. It believes that only by putting patients and consumers interests first will healthcare improve. It is only when healthcare is opened up to real consumers and trusted brands that nurses will find themselves working in a sustainable environment and with the incentives, resources and encouragement to deliver a responsive, popular and truly high quality service.
This says stuff I agree with, but in the manner of a corporate mission statement, and I loath and detest nearly every corporate mission statement that I have ever encountered.
Wouldn’t it be fun one day to read one of these things starting with something like: “We believe only in superficial change. Fundamentally, things should stay pretty much as they are.” And how about someone just occasionally admitting that he aims to supply an “unresponsive, unpopular” product or service? Many splendid tradespersons do just that and are richly rewarded.
However, since this is a corporate mission statement, I really ought not to carp. And since this is medicine and nursing care in Britain that is being talked about, well, I admit it, I do believe in “fundamental change”. Nor can I reasonably object to the ambition that nurses should work, if at all possible, in a “sustainable environment”, nor to them delivering a “responsive, popular and truly high quality service”.
To be more serious, I have quite often heard Helen Evans say, in the plainest of English, that one of the many problems of Britain’s National Health Service is that its nurses do not now have a proper career path in front of them. As soon as they get really good at their job, they tend to leave. The NHS has lost many of what would now be its NCOs, so to speak, good and experienced senior nurses being to hospitals what good and experienced sergeants are to armies. And where have they all gone? To get married, or to the private sector.
When the postings at this new blog get more specific and personal, as I am sure many of them will, I will surely read them with interest and pleasure. There will be more links from here to there in the future, I promise you.
I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
This is a quotation attributed to the Duke of Wellington, referring to the red-coated soldiers he led in the Peninsular campaign in the early 19th Century and later, in the Battle of Waterloo, in what is now Belgium. He would often remark in scathing terms about his own men while also praising their steadiness under fire and general courage.
I kind of feel the same way about a bunch of men – it seems to be male thing – called the New Atheists in this interesting article over at Wired magazine. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and others are no doubt fearless in fighting against what they see is wilful superstition. You want to admire and like what they are doing and in general, I do. I recall reading Dawkins’ book, the Selfish Gene many years ago and was greatly impressed. I felt the same way about Dennett’s books. And yet and yet… Dawkins is so dismissive of there being any value to religion whatsoever that you almost end up feeling rather sorry for religious people – at least the ones that are not fundamentalists. For all that I have problems with religion and un-reason, I cannot overlook the benign side of religion or the contributions that the Judeo-Christian tradition has played in the West, for instance. It is arguable, for example, that notions of individualism, free will and dignity of the person have been greatly driven by that tradition, as well as other schools of thought. But Dawkins will have none of it. He is just as harsh on moderates as he is on the fundamentalists. He thinks the state should ban parents from trying to pass their views to their children (quite how this would be enforced is not made clear in the Wired article). I am not sure if he is going to persuade any existing religious people out of their views although he might, by his sheer boldness, encourage a lot of secret atheists to “come out of the closet”.
Anyway, it is an interesting article and the associated comments, or at least most of them, are pretty good as these things go.
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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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