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]
|
“The evangelists for WFH and flexi-working keep telling us that it will create a happier, more productive workforce. But if that were true, then output per person should have soared over the last two years. Of course, it hasn’t. Instead, it has stagnated – and in many cases gone down. The UK’s miserable record on productivity is a long and complex story, but one certainty is that flexi-working won’t fix it.”
– Matthew Lynn, taking aim at the whole “working from home” demands from certain quarters. (In many cases, the WFH phenomenon is a preoccupation of those in white-collar areas. One suspects that industrial welders, lorry drivers, supermarket inventory managers, farmers, lab technicians, car mechanics and power station maintenance workers don’t work from home. Mind you, my father, a farmer, likes to joke that he worked “from home”. It was a field.)
“What I am observing is that, contrary to common reputation, the UK political system is turning out to be more gridlocked than the American system. One problem is that governments can very easily lose their majorities and fall, as witnessed by the quick succession of three British prime ministers, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and now Rishi Sunak. To provide a simple example, it has been difficult for any of those governments to legalize fracking (Johnson did not, Truss made gestures in that direction, Sunak has claimed he will not). If nothing else, fracking would disrupt the rural and suburban environments of Tory voters, and endanger the stability of a Conservative government. The end result is that Britain is less energy-independent, more budget constrained and as a result more constrained in what it can do politically.”
– Tyler Cowen.
It’s always puzzling to people who value ‘the revolution’ more than its alleged benefits to discover that a former comrade actually cares what is true, so chooses a different side if they see the truth is there. When people who value political correctness over actual correctness meet such a puzzle, their way of avoiding having to understand it is often to explain away the change as the result of bribery. Accusing Burke of:
“… praising the aristocratic hand that hath purloined him from himself …”
…helped Thomas Paine explain away Edmund Burke’s prescient criticism of the French revolutionaries. “This is at least an elegant formulation of that perennial hypothesis of venality”, remarks Connor Cruise O’Brien in his biography of Burke – before noting that Paine’s lesser prescience meant he was lucky to escape France before the revolutionaries did to him what they did to so many fellow travellers, as things developed the way Burke had predicted.
Nothing ever changes in these brave new worlds. When it came to curing poverty and suchlike, said Burke, the French revolutionaries were happy to let any quack try out the latest nostrums, but when it came to seizing power, they used historically tried and tested methods “because there they were in earnest”. Matt Taibbi – having reported information Elon Musk made visible about how Twitter helped censor the Hunter Biden laptop story – is getting the same treatment. Journolist has done its best – and it appears that its best is to agree that a bunch of people beholden to Soros, to Pritzker (to Bankman-Fried, till just now) and so on, and their supporters, should all tweet how shameful they think it is that Matt is having anything to do with Elon, because Elon is rich.
_________________________________
THAT IS THE END OF THIS POST. WHAT FOLLOWS IS JUST BACKGROUND ON BURKE FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS IT.
Ten years ago, I wrote the first of my (very few) instalanched posts. (It was put up for me by Natalie Solent – I was not a poster on samizdata back then.) It was about Edmund Burke. As its old instalink has succumbed to bitrot, I quote the meat of that old post below, in case anyone wants background on his role in my post above.
_________________________________
When I first started reading Edmund Burke, it was for the political wisdom his writings contained. Only many years later did I start to benefit from noticing that the Burke we know – the man proved a prophet by events and with an impressive legacy – differed from the Burke that the man himself knew: the man who was a lifelong target of slander; the one who, on each major issue of his life, gained only rare and partial victories after years or decades of seeing events tragically unfold as he had vainly foretold. Looking back, we see the man revered by both parties as the model of a statesman and thinker in the following century, the hero of Sir Winston Churchill in the century after. But Burke lived his life looking forwards:
– On America, an initial victory (repeal of the Stamp Act) was followed by over 15 years in the political wilderness and then by the second-best of US independence. (Burke was the very first member of parliament to say that Britain must recognise US independence, but his preferred solution when the crisis first arose in the mid-1760s was to preserve – by rarely using – a prerogative power of the British parliament that could one day be useful for such things as opposing slavery.)
– He vastly improved the lot of the inhabitants of India, but in Britain the first result of trying was massive electoral defeat, and his chosen means after that – the impeachment of Warren Hastings – took him 14 years of exhausting effort and ended in acquittal. Indians were much better off, but back in England the acquittal felt like failure.
– Three decades of seeking to improve the lot of Irish Catholics, latterly with successes, ended in the sudden disaster of Earl Fitzwilliam’s recall and the approach of the 1798 rebellion which he foresaw would fail (and had to hope would fail).
– The French revolutionaries’ conquest of England never looked so likely as at the time of his death in 1797. It was the equivalent of dying in September 1940 or November 1941.
It’s not surprising that late in his life he commented that the ill success of his efforts might seem to justify changing his opinions. But he added that, “Until I gain other lights than those I have”, he would have to go on being true to his understanding.
Burke was several times defeated politically – sometimes as a direct result of being honest – and later (usually much later) resurged simply because his opponents, through refusing to believe his warnings, walked into water over their heads and drowned, doing a lot of irreversible damage in the process. Even when this happened, he was not quickly respected. By the time it became really hard to avoid noticing that the French revolution was as unpleasant as Burke had predicted, all the enlightened people knew he was a longstanding prejudiced enemy of it, so “he loses credit for his foresight because he acted on it”, as Harvey Mansfield put it. (Similarly, whenever ugly effects of modern politics become impossible to ignore, people like us get no credit from those to whom their occurrence is unexpected because we were against them “anyway”.)
Lastly, I offer this Burke quote to guide you when people treat their success in stealing something from you (an election, for example) as evidence of their right to do so:
“The conduct of a losing party never appears right: at least, it never can possess the only infallible criterion of wisdom to vulgar judgments – success.”
I have recently started a YouTube channel. It is called What the Paper Said and – as I say every week in the introduction – involves me skimming through The Times from a hundred years ago, picking out some of the articles and commenting on them.
So, if you are into fascism, communism, socialism, hyperinflation, genocide, civil wars, kangeroo courts, unemployment, deadly diseases, non-deadly diseases, smog, alcohol prohibition, cocaine prohibition, compulsory vaccination, dirty old Clerks to the Privy Council, the Ku Klux Klan, American spelling, imperialism, railway statistics, rent control, aging battlecruisers, some bloke called Hitler, and Oxford commas; this may be the channel for you. Until it gets banned.
Also available as a podcast.
Lindybeige (1.2m YouTube subscribers) hardly needs our endorsement but this interview with a British member of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion is excellent. Organisation, disorganisation, treachery, office politics, death, Walter Mittys, mess tins, big bangy things, tea; it’s got it all, apart from Part II.
“Switzerland could be the first country to impose driving bans on e-cars in an emergency to ensure energy security. Several media report this unanimously and refer to a draft regulation on restrictions and bans on the use of electrical energy. Specifically, the paper says: “The private use of electric cars is only permitted for absolutely necessary journeys (e.g. professional practice, shopping, visiting the doctor, attending religious events, attending court appointments).” A stricter speed limit is also planned highways.”
– Der Spiegel, the German publication (via the ironically named US website, Hotair.)
A few weeks ago, California’s government warned that petrol (sorry, gasoline)-driven vehicles would be compulsory soon, while warning of blackouts.
It’s a clown show out there, but who feels like laughing?
For a sanity check, I recommend this book, Fossil Future, by Alex Epstein, to my friends, and occasionally to those I want to torment, in my adolescent fashion. Excellent book that gets to the philosophical guts of what is wrong and malevolent about much modern environmentalism.
COVID is only a problem for people with some form of compromised immunity and/or comorbidity.
It has always been thus.
As Dr McCullough would say – “it is amenable to risk stratification and effective early treatment” (whatever “it” is, which you will understand is not actually that important if you read on).
The “hammer” approach is actually a great analogy. It’s just like this other one: “A sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
My favourite way of expressing it at the time was taking a homogenous approach to tackling a heterogeneous problem.
Absurd, illogical, inefficient, doomed to inevitably fail even absolutely let alone in terms of relative cost/benefit.
Several months later, the best epidemiologists in the world articulated it in The Great Barrington Declaration.
What’s truly incredible is that any of this needs saying. I can still clearly recollect Covidians arguing that it was not easier to protect the vulnerable (who were already mainly corralled in hospitals and care homes anyway) who numbered no more than 2% of the population, than it was to shut down the other 98%.
– Joel Smalley
When I first read of the storm-in-a-teacup story of an 83 year old royal aide, Lady Susan Hussey, asking some black woman who runs a charity, Ngozi Fulani “where are you actually from?”… I thought it seemed rather a crass line of questioning in this day and age. Indeed, cringeworthy was the term that came to mind.
But then I saw a picture of Ngozi Fulani (if ever there was a Liverpudlian sounding name… previously known as Marlene Headley) dressed like an extra on the set of some Black Panther movie, suddenly the entire encounter started to look entirely different.
Turns out the woman was cosplaying as an African and yet took umbrage when someone consequently assumed she was African (pro-tip Susan, actual Africans rarely dress like that which should have been a giveaway). The moment Ngozi Fulani started flouncing around announcing how upset she was at such ‘racism’, the response should have been to tell her to grow the hell up and make damn sure she never gets invited to any official functions in the future.
For once (yes, it happens) the legal authorities of the EU are in the right, in my view, and their critics are wrong, contrary to what Henry Williams, author of this article in CapX, says.
A top EU court has ruled that creating public registers of beneficial ownership, so that everyone can just find out who owns what, is a dangerous loss of privacy. In my view, if people are concerned that X or Y is an owner of a company or trust and that is somehow nefarious, they should get clearance first from a court or suitable legal authority and show some reason for the desire to obtain that data. It is not, in my view, acceptable to put everyone’s beneficial ownership details in the public domain so that journalists and others, many of whom seem to have it in for anyone whom they deem rich, can put this information into the public domain. For instance, public registers means that people can simply go on “fishing expeditions” and dump all kinds of financial data into the public domain, and damn the consequences. Sure, if politicians and the like have questionable financial affairs, some on the libertarian side will think they are fair game, but those whose only “crime” is to be rich or successful will get caught in the crossfire.
There are also risks, as lawyers have pointed out, that such owners can be targeted by gangs. This is not paranoia. And paradoxically, the pressure for beneficial ownership disclosure clashes with data protection rules in the EU – known as GDPR.
It is arguable that Swiss bank secrecy was a step too far, but there is such a thing as legitimate privacy. Would, for example, the author of the linked article from CapX be happy for there to be public databases, accessible to all, of medical information, etc? (Maybe he is.) We seem to live in an era where due process of law and respect for privacy are forgotten or seen as old-fashioned issues.
Being independent of the EU does not mean that everything in the EU is bad or worse than in the UK. Occasionally, the EU gets things right. The key is that decisions rest in the hands of the UK electorate.
Financial privacy is not a popular subject, and there are lots of campaigners, sometimes coming from a good place, who think putting everything in the public domain is a good thing. They are wrong, and for once, a court has done the right thing. I doubt, of course, that this debate is over.
For some reason I was not as enthused about the recent actions of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin, as the mykhel.com reporter seemed to be:
Tamil Nadu CM MK Stalin gifts a house to India hockey player Karthi Selvam on seeing current house condition
Chennai, Nov 30: Rising India hockey player Selvam Karthi has a new abode where he can live with his family. The new house has been gifted to the hockey player by Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin. Stalin recently paid a visit to the Karthi’s house in the Ariyalur district, which is 360 kilometres away from Chennai, and seeing the dilapidated condition of the Indian player’s residence, he gifted him a new house.
I have nothing against sporting achievement being rewarded, but there does seem to be something disturbingly arbitrary about a public servant having the power to give away entire houses to players who have a good debut against New Zealand. Given that Mr Stalin celebrates Social Justice Day, I assume he was not generously donating his own money: the “gifting” was actually done, involuntarily, by the taxpayers of Tamil Nadu. Aside from that, history relates that when sportsmen are lavishly rewarded by political leaders it does not always go well for them in the long run. While I am sure that Karthi Selvam, the young player in question, is happy with his new house, he should remember that what the State giveth, the State can taketh away. I hope for Mr Selvam’s sake that he does not disappoint in his next game.
I read the following article about the civil unrest in mainland China, caused by anger and frustration over the endless cycle of lockdowns and repression:
The sight of thousands of international football fans celebrating in stadiums in Qatar, without a face mask or testing station in sight, has broken the spell of the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda.
My first thought was that maybe the Qatar World Cup has something to recommend it after all (beyond watching the outstanding Brazil football team, which I hope wins it). Maybe the thugs running the CCP and China hadn’t realised that the sight of thousands of fans not wearing masks and having a jolly time (even if beer is not being sold in the grounds – ye gods!) would be seen by the Chinese public. Just as Ron DeSantis’s relatively sane approach to lockdown in the US, or those of Sweden on the same issue, have been impossible for the “sensibles” to ignore, so has the very existence of un-masked folk in Qatar.
A further irony is that in the United Arab Emirates, that jurisdiction (not a democracy) managed the pandemic relatively sanely, with strict restrictions for a few weeks, then mask mandates, then vaccines, but normality was restored fairly fast, and done in a way that made sense. I went there on business last November, and colleagues went there in November 2020 when many other places such as Singapore and Hong Kong were completely shut. Hong Kong has suffered immense financial damage and people have left.
Public events can have a power beyond the imaginations of those who put them on. I doubt if the crooks and characters who have made the Qatar World Cup possible ever wondered that one result of the jamboree would be to inspire Chinese people to say that “enough is enough” over zero-covid.
‘Democracy dies in darkness’ is on the masthead of the Washington Post. They say it as if it is their fear, but they behave as if it is their hope (for example, when hiding the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop). One thing it isn’t (yet) is literal fact. Despite the efforts of many, there’s still enough light around that anyone who chooses to look can see some of what is happening to democracy in the US today.
PART I: let’s examine an example – Arizona.
PAST PERFORMANCE …
The usual suspects spun the Arizona-State-Senate-mandated audit of the 2020 election and its results like a top – but they could not literally suppress it. Anyone who wanted to could (and still can) watch the presentations and/or read the audit reports themselves, not the spin about them.
“None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant. There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election. Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server. Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing. Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care.” [FYI, this is a reformatted summary from ‘Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit Volume I: Executive Summary & Recommendations’. As there was a draft release of the report shortly before the late september presentation and filing, there is more than one version of this text extant, all very very similar but not quite identical.]
Anyone who wanted to look could also see that the people who administered the 2020 Maricopa County election were very hostile to being audited.
“By the County withholding subpoena items, their unwillingness to answer questions as is normal between auditor and auditee, and in some cases actively interfering with audit research, the County prevented a complete audit,”
They were also keen on deleting records (the MSM tried to spin that too), and they continued to withhold information in the face of pressure from the Arizona Senate and Attorney General:
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Arizona Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen have pressed the county and Dominion Voting Systems to produce routers, traffic logs, mail-in ballot envelopes, and other information in their investigation. The county has refused. … in its response MCBOS [the Maricopa county election administrators] failed to explain why it is not required to comply with the legislative subpoena. Its only response was that the Arizona Senate is not currently in session, so MCBOS could not be held in contempt. (August 21st, 2021)
This very cautious audit nevertheless found 23,344 mail-in ballots voted From prior address (and no one with the same last name remaining at the address), 9,041 more ballots returned by voters than were sent to them, and so on and so on for a total of well over fifty thousand flagged ballots (more than five times Joe Biden’s declared margin of victory) – the data breakdown is in the Maricopa County Forensic Election Audit
Volume III: Result Details (scroll to page 5, ‘Findings Summary Table’).
The canvas audit was a private effort (it resembled some of the follow-up checks the official audit advised in its report but was not a state-run activity: hundreds of canvassers went door-to-door verifying registration and voting information for thousands of residents (and, of course, very properly not asking for whom any responder voted). This method found examples of what the state audit’s methods could not:
“American citizens living in Maricopa County who cast a vote, primarily by mail, in the election and yet there is no record of their vote with the county and it was not counted in the reported vote totals for the election.”
Unlike the state audit’s method, the canvas audit’s statistical samples (and so the estimates made from them) are capable of being overstated, not just of being understated – for much the same reason as an opinion poll can be off in either direction (albeit the canvas audit was on a larger scale than typical polls of comparably-sized populations IIUC). People could simply forget that they had not in fact voted. Or they could lie; it is possible (but a bit odd) that someone who had not bothered to post or cast their vote in the election might nevertheless be motivated to lie that they had. Etc. But the canvas audit found enough cases to estimate 173,104 such “missing or lost” votes (plus four times as many unknown-at-address/departed-from-address mail-ins as the state audit reported). That’s enough for a many-times-over result reversal even if your estimate of the unreliability of the canvas’ audit’s estimates is high. (And of course it would be a additional challenge to justify estimating the lying or errors of audit-canvassed voters very high while estimating those same qualities very low in the unprecedented 2020 statistics of mail-in voters from the same population – or in the administrators who verified them.)
→ Continue reading: Dying in the light
|
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.
|
Recent Comments