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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As Mayday approaches and with it the traditional harbingers of summer, such as the sight of a freshly dug paving brick in flight, with its comet’s tail of dirt particles, tracing an arc towards a McDonalds plate glass window or the contents of a looted Baby Gap whirling in the breeze, blue bibs and striped sleepsuits hanging off street lights, my thoughts turn to that strange creature who has emerged from winter hibernation, the anti-globalisation “anarchist”. This creature represents a conundrum: While he professes to favour anarchy, he is more likely than not to owe his current indolent lifestyle to a most un-anarchical social welfare system. How to reconcile this contradiction?
The first thing I’d like to say is that I am not anarcho-libertarian. I do understand the arguments, I just remain unpersuaded. But my intention here is not to provide a rebuttal of anarcho-libertarianism, rather to compare it with the “anarchism” more prominent in the popular imagination, that of a Mayday protester. If you take such an anarchist at his word and grant that he will be happy to forego the benefits of a redistributive welfare state once his utopia arrives, where does his purported philosophy differ from an anarcho-libertarian or anarcho-capitalist?
It occurs to me that the principal difference lies in the respective attitudes towards private property. The anarcho-capitalist respects private property, his own and others. The “anarchist” considers all property to be theft and asserts a right to expropriate such property as he needs or wants from others. As a welfare state needs a state to sustain itself, the anarchist presumably imagines that the “needy”, in lieu of state handouts, simply steal what they “need” from others. Of course if you are one of those “others” you may not be so keen on this happening. As there would be no state police force, the task of defending property devolves to the individual who may contract it out to private security services. Thus the anarchy favoured by the “anarchist” turns out strikingly similar to that proposed by anarcho-capitalists. Is this really what he wants?
I suggest that what the “anarchist” really wants is short term anarchy. An afternoon or so of mayhem, “for kicks”, and then a return to an un-anarchical world where the welfare state remains to inadvertently subsidise his “alternative” lifestyle.
A letter to the editor of the Daily Telegraph, from Dr Chris Williams, European Centre for the Study of Policing, Open University, Milton Keynes:
One problem with the proposal for a national ID card (News, Apr 27) is the security of the information in its “clean” database.
Although police all sign the Official Secrets Act, and are well paid, well supervised and largely trustworthy, at least one policeman has been sent to prison for selling the information on the Police National Computer to the highest bidder – in this case, credit reference agencies. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary recorded their concern over this practice in 1999 and recommended measures to stop it, yet the Police Complaints Commission admitted in 2002 that “there will always be a few officers willing to risk their careers by obtaining data improperly”.
So we can’t trust the police to keep a sensitive database watertight. Can we trust other state institutions or outsourcing companies such as Capita? To be usable, an ID card database has to be accessible by hundreds of thousands of people. And the security has to be permanent.
In 1938, the Gestapo took over the files of Interpol’s predecessor when they entered Vienna. If we put all our data eggs in one basket, we need to be certain that a DVD with all our details on it never gets to al-Qa’eda, the IRA or the unknown evils that the future doubtless holds.
The thing I really like and admire about capitalism is its attention to detail, made possible by the division of labour. While we Samizdatistas get sucked into Political Class worries – like the EU and the Iraq War, overpopulation, underpopulation, etc. – capitalism continues to crank out solutions to problems so small that they can actually to be solved. Someone, somewhere (actually: Canada!), instead of worrying about the Iraq War (over which, he probably decided, he had no influence), has instead been worrying about bananas and how to guard them.
Consider this problem:
Are you fed up with bringing bananas to work or school only to find them bruised and squashed? …
I know I am. I have lost count of the number of times I have done damage to a bagful of Important Things, as a result of a neglected banana at the bottom of everything which I put there three days ago and then forgot about. But what to do? Bananas taste nice. You never know when a banana in your bag might come in handy.
So how do you stop it being crushed and becoming a sticky, destructive mess, dangerous to everything around it? Well, when a capitalist asks an arkward question like the one above, you just know that he will very soon start in on the answer, and this capitalist is no different:
… Our unique, patented device allows for the safe transport and storage of individual bananas letting you enjoy perfect bananas anytime, anywhere.
A perfect banana. Tell me more.
The Banana Guard was specially designed to fit the vast majority of bananas. Its other features include multiple small perforations to facilitate ventilation thereby preventing premature ripening and a sturdy locking mechanism to keep the Banana Guard closed. The Banana Guard is of course dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.
Of course. Small perforations. There goes that attention to detail.
You can get your Banana Guard in an impressive range of colours, namely: Ravishing Red, Outrageous Orange, Mellow Yellow, Sublime Green, Skyhigh Blue, Brilliant Blue, Passionate Purple, Pretty in Pink, and Glow in the Dark.
My thanks to this Monkey.
Useful Idiots
Mona Charen
Regnery, 2003
It must have struck many people besides myself that anti-Americanism, so much a world-wide sentiment and problem, is, to an extent it is hard to quantify, an American export. No nation, surely, has produced such a large volume of self-criticism, proceeding through self-denigration to self-hatred. Is it surprising that the rest of the world has listened to, copied, and amplified the message? Yet it was not always so; indeed Americans fought both World Wars and the Korean War with little dissent. Television may have been the ultimate morale-breaker in the Vietnam War, but why did those responsible use it for this purpose, even turning good news into bad, as with the crushing of the Vietcong “Tet offensive”? This book doesn’t give the motivations, just the facts.
“Lenin is credited with the prediction that liberals and other weak-minded souls in the West could be relied upon to be ‘useful idiots’ as far as the Soviet Union was concerned,” states the author and I have been unable (like her, I suppose) to find any source for Lenin’s insight in the handful of books of quotations I have consulted; it would be interesting to know to whom it was first contemptuously applied. If the function of a useful idiot is to support a cause detrimental to his best interests, then the definition is perhaps a little imprecise, for few, if any, of the useful idiots described in this book have received their come-uppance. But then, their cause didn’t triumph. Or didn’t where they lived; elsewhere, it was a different matter. → Continue reading: Idiots (complete with a big list of idiots)
As a rule (well, more of a ‘guideline’ really) I do not fisk the ‘readers letters’ section of media organs.
There is no objectively good reason for me to refrain from doing so except that I regard it as bad form; rather too close to bullying for comfort. After all, the whole point of ‘readers letters’ sections is for the public to let off some steam and drawing attention to the wild and woolly nature of the some of the contributions hardly makes me a clever dick.
Still, this particular missive in the ‘Feedback’ section of the Spectator is so extravagantly barking that I am going to grant myself a (temporary) exemption:
It is an indictment of the pitiful state of our ‘democracy’ that Britain’s future role in Europe should depend on the whim of one egregious Australian-born businessman (‘The man who calls the shots’, 24 April).
I did not realise that Prime Minister Blair was an Australian-born businessman.
How to stop similar circumstances arising again? Our broadcast media — i.e. the BBC — is the envy of the world.
If that is true, then all I can say is that the world must be in a piss-poor state.
The solution is obvious: we need a British Press Corporation, an equivalent of the BBC for print media. The ‘Beep’ could run a small stable of publications from tabloids to broadsheets (and even perhaps weeklies too).
Of course!! (meaty slap to the forehead). The solution is so obvious. Damn my eyes for not thinking of it sooner!
It could be part-subsidised out of general taxation, and would therefore be more independent of the business interests whose ownership deforms the content of so much of our press.
It would have to be subsidised out of taxation. Nobody is going to voluntarily hand over hard-earned money for that crap.
Drawing as it would on the existing structure of news-gathering available to the BBC, the BPC would be cost-effective as well as provide an intelligent and informative source of news. Its competition would surely have the effect of undercutting the worst at least of the present tabloid excesses and the dominance of a handful of private individuals over the British polity.
Listen, buster, if any ‘handful of private individuals’ are going to have dominance over the British polity, then it is the Samizdatistas. Got it?
I refuse to pay more than about £100 to sit in a tube for several hours, no matter how far it travels or how interesting the place at the far end, and even if they let me sit by the window and look at the clouds and, with extreme luck, at the beginning and the end of the journey, some actual views of earth. So until now, and given that no one else has thought it worth paying for me to visit, I have resigned myself to never actually seeing the (now sadly truncated) towers of Manhattan and the depths of the Grand Canyon (to name the two American things I most want to see before I die), plus whatever else American has to offer, such as those peculiar shaped small mountains in the desert wherever those things are, nice people, Carnegie Hall, an NFL football game, etc. But now, via the invaluable Transport Blog “In Brief” section (April 28th), I have come across this:
Transatlantic flights for as little as £60 could soon be available under a deal being forged between a German airport and US carriers.
The managing director of Cologne-Bonn airport, Michael Garvens, says he has been negotiating for several weeks to establish the service, which would take low-cost travel into a new realm.
Under the proposals, carriers such as Hapag-Lloyd Express and Germanwings would fly passengers from Cologne-Bonn to New York, Chicago and other destinations in America and Canada for as little as £60 per stretch. The deal would require passengers to pay for refreshments and to book online.
“We are currently holding concrete discussions with American carriers,” said an airport spokesman. The airport said its goal was to combine the strengths of budget airlines.
Concrete discussions, no less. (Interesting that “concrete” in this connection means a discussion that is actually going somewhere. Often “concrete”, applied to conversations, means the opposite of that.)
Two possibilities suggest themselves. Either Cologne-Bonn to America will shortly be followed by (e.g.) Stansted to America, or Stansted to Cologne-Bonn by Ryanair or scumbagair or reallyeasyjet or gojet or whatever can be stuck on the front of the journey, and I could be in the USA for something around or not far above my £100 limit.
The world is getting smaller.
So, now, who will pay my American hotel bill and cab fares, or put me in their spare room and feed me for a fortnight, having collected me from the airport? Some pocket money would be nice. A few speaking engagements (but not too many), some TV and radio appearances in which I can air my opinions to the American masses and become an instant celebrity, maybe some girl friends for the duration (see the Kris Marshall scenes in Love Actually for details), …
Who will start the bidding? America is the land of opportunity, right? So America: prove it. Show me some opportunities. (And please: no “we will pay this much for you to stay at home” nonsense. Well, actually, yes, that might be good too.)
An interesting question for those concerned about creating a more free society is how such a society, be it a model of constitutional, limited, minimal government, or even an anarchist one, would actually defend itself from attack. What sort of practical ways would such societies employ, and would such societies require armies, navies, air forces and the like?
It seems pretty fair to me to assume that outside some sort of pacifist utopia, any such model requires defence and people with the skills and willpower to serve as soldiers, pilots and the like. That is why in the absence of the draft, which libertarians rightly abhor, we need people who can volunteer to serve in the armed forces, giving up the comforts of home. That is not sentimental military-speak, but hard reality.
Hard reality is something of a stranger to the author of this diatribe, full of twisted logic, presumptiousness and lies against the late American soldier and former NFL star, Pat Tillman.
I will not bother to fisk the piece. The illogicality of it is so glaring, its vile intent so obvious, that a line by line response would merely insult the intelligence of this blog’s readership. Suffice to say that a man gave up the promise of a fat paycheck and the comforts of a loving family to go and join the army, knowing that in so doing he might be called upon to fight in situations those moral perfectionists in our academic world would find abhorrent.
Whether one agrees with the war against Saddam and the Taliban or not, on a broader point, it seems obvious to me that we will need people willing, like Pat Tillman, to defend us. This is a point that about which a “chickenhawk” like me who is too old to serve in the forces any more is only too painfully aware.
Remember the name of the woman who wrote this shabby article. As the years go by no doubt she will continue to enjoy the benefits of a world made rich by a model of free enterprise she hates, and defended by “macho” men she despises. But I will not forget. This sorry excuse for a human being has not just traduced the memory of a very brave and good man; she has done so against all those who believed they were fighting to defend the freedoms we enjoy.
(Please post comments on the Daily Collegiate website I linked to. They deserve to hear what you think).
A mindboggling article on the TF1 (French TV) website.
Apparently, Jacqeues Chirac is dedicating today’s presidential press conference to the subject of EU enlargement. The analysis is that this will dillute French influence in the EU, shift the balance of power in a more “Atlanticist” direction, and help bring about back-door free-market reforms.
The French Socialist Party has decided to make the threat of a libertarian Europe (Europe libérale) the main plank of its European election campaign, citing the EU constitution as part of the potential problem. They think it is going to be amended into something terrifying (i.e. good). Especially horrible for the European left is the prospect of cross-border private welfare arrangements: buying private pensions and health insurance without the ‘protection’ of nationalized welfare monopolies. Get your life insurance in France, health insurance in Germany and your pension in the UK for example.
Jacques Chirac as the agent of Anglo-Saxon capitalists! Priceless.
There have been rumoured Dale Amon sightings in the Irish bars of Manhattan. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid…
Personally I do not know what to make of the referendum we are now promised about the EU constitution. Will the forces of darkness triumph, or will it be: NO!?
Patrick Crozier has no such doubts. In 1975, the verdict was Yes, but this time, he says, it will be different:
- We know what the EU is like.
- Then all the main political parties were in favour. Now they are not.
- Then most of the papers were in favour. Now most of them are not.
- Then, our economy was a laughing stock. Now it is the rest of Europe that has the problem
- Then, most businessmen were in favour. Now things are much closer.
- Although I don’t know what it was like then, now there are plenty of celebs prepared to endorse a “No” campaign.
Setting aside the matter of why he thinks Blair has decided to hold this referendum (and here is another explanation), is Patrick right? I want to believe him, but do I?
I have the feeling that the people writing this blog are not quite so confident, or why would they bother?
James Hammerton’s Blog has a sound fisking of two pro-ID card articles published in the Times yesterday.
Michael Gove, author of one of the Times articles argues that given the changed circumstances of the 21st century we may need to reexamine this prejudice [prejudice against the state exercising arbitrary authority] where, in the west at least, the main threat to individuals comes not from state power as it did in the 20th century, but from terrorists who have the will and may get the means to carry out slaughter on a horrendous scale.
James spots the consistency in the Home Secretary’s policies:
To take the last part of that first, I’d respond that Blunkett has not merely “rethought” civil liberites, he (and Straw before him and Howard before him) has set out to dismantle them plain and simple. A “rethinking” would not have attacked every single protection across the board. The right to a jury trial, the presumption of innocence, the right to security of property, freedom of expression, freedom of association, doctor-patient confidentiality, lawyer-client confidentiality, freedom from arbitrary surveillance, the right to protest, all of these have been sytematically eroded. Every year since 1999 (before 9/11!), the government has produced bills with swingeing attacks on civil liberties. Only a small proportion of them could possibly be justified on the grounds they may help protect us from terrorism. Even where such measures can protect us from terrorism they’ve often been applied broadly weakening protections when the authorities are investigating crime in general rather than just terrorism.
He concludes with the point that cannot be repeated laudly and often enough:
Thus the state incompetence or inability to actually control would be terrorists and criminals and the odd clever civil libertarian via the system does not transfer to the state’s ability to control the law abiding majority with the system. The cynical might suggest that controlling the majority is the whole point, whilst crime fighting and dealing with terrorism are just the sales packaging.
Read the whole thing, as they say…
Says government’s partner for passport trials…
Silicon.com reports that the company behind the biometric technology being used by the UK passport office says biometric IDs will happen – and they will happen with the blessing of the majority of UK citizens.
NEC technology is being used by the UK government in the roll-out of biometric IDs and, having already been involved in similar schemes worldwide, the company is confident that the UK implementation will be a success despite vocal opposition from “a noisy minority”.
The roll-out won’t be without problems, according to Gohringer, but he anticipates that the problems will owe far more to the complicated logistics of getting everybody signed up than to the issue of end-user opposition.
People need to realise this is not going to harm them – if anything it is going to be beneficial to them.
However, Gohringer believes that those opposed to the systems are actually a very vocal minority, making enough noise to get themselves noticed. He cited recent research – supported by that conducted by silicon.com – which shows strong support for biometric identification.
Mr Gohringer just does not get it. In his world the state is probably just doing its job and those who do not see that are just so… unreasonable. And in any case, they should be silenced by all the civilised and sensible people, you know, the majority. As we are so fond of saying here, the state is not your friend and anything that looks like infringment of your freedom, most definitely is. Despite the purported ‘benefits’ that the measure should bring. The government should be justifying its existence to you on a daily basis, not you proving your identity to the government.
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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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