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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How else? You might ask. But this abstract in McKinsey Quarterly caught my attention with its astounding wrong-headedness:
How Brazil can Grow –
The most important obstacle is Brazil’s huge informal economy which, distorts competition by putting efficient, law-abiding companies at a disadvantage. Macroeconomic instabilityreflected in the high cost of capitalis the second-most-important hurdle, followed by regulations (such as rigid labor laws) that limit productivity.
Could it possibly be that it’s the top-heavy regulatory state and shocking tax rates on officially recognised activities that are keep the poor poor, small companies small, and the poltically unconnected outside the system hoping not to be noticed? It couldn’t be state favouritism and that same capricious regulatory apparatus that keep the risks high and capital proportionately expensive? It would also be interesting to know in what sense ‘efficient’ and ‘law-abiding’ go hand in hand in such circumstances. It is implied that unlawful, invisible, enterprises are inefficient ones (in whatever sense that is). How do they know?
I am fairly used to intermittently getting peeved e-mails from people who get their comments deleted wailing about how they cannot understand how a ‘libertarian’ blog can ‘censor’ free speech (never mind that Samizdata is a blog that has many libertarian writers, rather than a libertarian blog per se).
But today I got two such e-mails within minutes of each other, one from a racist troll whom I have long banned and one from a Muslim troll who keeps posting passages from the Koran in random articles. As a result I thought I would revisit the issue yet again, even though Samizdata has several articles on this subject, such as this one.
It is really simple: this is private property and as a result anything published here is at the sufferance of Samizdata’s editors. We invite comments but that does not mean we relinquish control over our property, just as when you invite people into your house, you do not relinquish the right to subsequently un-invite them if they act inappropriately or if you just want them out for whatever reason.
Apart from spam comments, the main reason we axe people’s remarks are that they are gratuitously insulting, grossly and uninterestingly off-topic (interesting but off-topic is sometimes tolerated) or they are endlessly repetitive. Racists and Muslim extremists, who between them make up 85% of the non-spam deletions, almost always fall into the last category. It does not matter that their arguments are shredded and rebutted, neither group are psychologically capable of accepting their questions have been asked and answered unless they have been agreed with. Even more annoying, the racists are capable of hijacking a discussion about cricket or Beethoven into yet another absurd phrenological rant about racial IQs. The Muslim extremists tend to just reply to reasonable questions with great long quotes from the Koran as if that will magically end all arguments. Well life is just too short to tolerate such people flogging their dead horses on our turf and preventing rational discourse and reasonable progression of a discussion.
And when certain commenters wear out their welcome, sometimes they do not just get their comments deleted, they get banned completely. This is often a shame because a couple of the banned commenters had some interesting things to say when on the rare occasion they can bring themselves to stop obsessing about the issue that dements them. Yet there are only so many hours in the day we can spend moderating Samizdata (we do have off-line lives, believe it or not) and when the majority of a person’s comments have proven to be obsessive rants, they get banned.
And who gets to make that call? We do. Our house, our rules. End of story.
I believe there is something out there watching us. Unfortunately, it’s the government.
– Woody Allen
Today is local council election day in England and Wales. As a voter in the area of Westminster, I decided to stick to my local Conservative councillors since whatever I think of the national party (not all that much), the local lot seem to have done a reasonably decent job, and I know them reasonably well as sane individuals, so I duly put my cross against their names. At a national level, meanwhile, it is hard to figure out quite what the Tories are doing. They are confronted by a ruling Labour establishment in meltdown mode, corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and, on the field of civil liberties, positively dangerous. Yet so far leader David Cameron prefers to romp around in the Artic Circle to prove his supposed Green manliness to Guardian Man. All very unimpressive.
Oh well. At least Boris Johnson is honest about the future of the Tory Party: a sports club. Maybe Dave and Boris should pack up their bags and run a light entertainment show. They might even make a decent go of it.
I am in the ops room in the midst of the last minute activities before the conference proper gets going. Before we open the gate we have over 1100 persons expected. With walk-ins tomorrow we will very possibly pass 1200 or even more.
I will attempt to post stories live from the event when I have the chance.
I write this as I am flying at some 36,000 feet over the midwest on my way to Los Angeles and the 25th annual International Space Development Conference (ISDC). I chair the committee which overseas the local conference teams so I will be busy with that and other National Space Society (NSS) management duties. But despite much work ahead, I will try to do an occassional live blog.
This is quite an event we of NSS (along with our major co-sponsor this year, The Planetary Society) have going this week. Pretty much everyone who matters in the space world will be there. If you are interested in space tourism or commercial space, this is the place to be.
I hope to see some of you!
It is now the next afternoon. When I went to file the story I got drafted into making the conference wifi network and router work so that I could use it.
Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated.
Isaiah Berlin, reminding us of the value of stating truths over and over, even if you fear you are just preaching to the converted.
The Ukraine is not exactly famed for its high standards of probity and decency in the field of business, as this article suggests. It was certainly a bit of an eye-opener to see this failed, disgraced British cabinet minister, Stephen Byers, on the slate to opine at a conference all about the marvellous business opportunities out in that country. Great. The man who confiscated the assets of Railtrack shareholders – in retrospect a key point signalling the true intent of New Labour towards investors – is considered worthy to share his thoughts about encouraging enterprise in the Ukraine. Riiiight.
Perhaps in a fairer spirit, though, there may be a good case to make for economic opportunities in that country, and I could not help noticing that the organising firm of the conference goes by the moniker Adam Smith (no relation, it seems, to the Adam Smith Institute). It does strike me as mighty odd that a character like Byers should be prime billing at such an event, though. The citizens of that nation surely deserve better.
“Power corrupts. Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.”
– Edward R. Tufte, professor emeritus of political science, computer science and statistics, and graphic design at Yale
Police state’s cannot work unless people cooperate with them, and the supermarket Tesco is doing eaxctly that: helping make Britain’s emerging police state a reality.
A man took some photographs to be developed taken whilst deer hunting (showing him posing with a deer he had bagged), to his local supermarket, Tesco. However when the staff saw the developed pictures, they called the police because they felt the images ‘inappropriate’, although he had broken no animal cruelty or firearms laws. So how do the police get involved when something is deemed ‘inappropriate’ rather than ‘criminal’? Nevertheless, the police duly did get involved and moreover according to the article they questioned the man for “several hours”. Unless there is a great deal more to this story that came out in the article, I cannot see what this guy did to justify being questioned at all, let alone for “several hours”.
Now this raises more questions: firstly, what could they possibly question him about for ‘several hours’? If they were trying to ascertain if he had a licence for the weapon in the picture, surely all they needed was his name, a police computer terminal and about five minutes of some police office worker’s time. So what exactly where they asking this man to justify?
Also, Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive of Tesco, does not think that his company was the one who was acting in an ‘inappropriate’ manner, strangely stating:
Tesco does not discriminate against any lawful section of the community.
Sir Terry has not thought that statement through clearly as it is manifestly not the case (and if he dislikes that assertion, his lawyer is free to contact me). To ‘not discriminate’ would mean Tesco treats lawful gun owners the same way way it treats lawful dog owners and lawful car owners (all of which must be licenced).
So, following that statement of non-discrimination, I wonder if every time (or even occasionally) the staff at Tesco photolabs see a person driving an automobile in a picture they develop, something that can only be done lawfully in Britain if you have insurance and a valid driver’s licence, do they call the cops so they can grill the guy in the picture and make him produce proof his vehicle was licenced? If they do indeed do that, well, then I suppose Sir Terry is correct and Tesco do not ” discriminate against any lawful section of the community” as they really do apply the same standards to everyone. If that is not the case, then Sir Terry is not being truthful as clearly they do indeed discriminate against a lawful section of the community, namely those who own licensed firearms.
Needless to say I will never shop in a Tesco again.
Here is an interesting story. A friend of Jackie D (to whom thanks for the link) called Amy Alkon has discovered an artist. He is now homeless, but something tells me he is not going to be homeless for long.
His name is Gary Musselman, and here is one of his drawings:
Amy put that at the top of her posting, surely knowing that this would appeal to the blogosphere, although I rather prefer “Wichita” myself. Scroll down to see that.
These are the kind of drawings now sufficiently out of date in artistic style to appeal to large numbers of the general public, especially the sort who are internet-connected, but to be disapproved of by the regular art critics, who will not, I predict, approve. “Derivative”, “emotionally empty”, etc. Their real objection will be that their verdicts aren’t going to count. Not this time.
Jackie D has already equipped Gary Musselman with his own blog, and the story is now gathering pace.
Sorry to keep banging on about J K Galbraith, but I just had to drag a gem of a BBC Radio 4 radio interview out of this comment thread – thanks to commenter John K (not Galbraith, one assumes) for bringing it to light. The Radio 4 producers were no doubt expecting hushed reverence for a crusty Keynesian warrior like Galbraith – much beloved by most BBC types – so I think they received rather a rude shock when the interviewee, Meghnad Desai, got into his free marketeering stride. My favourite part :
“So Galbraith was very much a 1950s man. And he still has fans, because lots of people are still stuck in the 1950s. You know, quite a lot of them in the Labour Party.”
I also particularly enjoyed the shocked pause before the interviewer, Greg Wood, thanked the eminent Professor for his heresy.
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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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