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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With David Willetts blowing yet another unsolicited Kiss of Death into the rapidly fading twilight of the UK Conservative Party, it was interesting to hear Polly Toynbee say Willetts had been using the thoughts of our old friend, John Maynard Keynes, to push forward the increasing statism of his latest ideas, such as using coerced taxpayers’ money to subsidise working mothers.
No wonder Ms Toynbee has been so taken with Mr “Two Brains” Willetts’ recently published pamphlet. What it contains used to be called social engineering, of the most crude kind, but now it has been re-labelled as compassionate conservatism, and even arch-socialist Ms Toynbee has declared her guarded support. I therefore thought we’d better examine the roots of Mr Willett’s new philosophy, and get an Austrian view on the Keynesianism underlying it.
And what better place could we start than Mises.org? → Continue reading: Keynes, the Man
John Fund of the Wall Street Journal Online has an excellent look at the seamy, sleazy side of the California recall election, and specifically the role of Indian gambling money. If you want an accounting of how politics really gets played in the US, this is a pretty good vignette. Discliamer: John is a pretty loyal Republican, for the most part, but I have met him and I can assure you he is savvy and knows his politics.
There are all kinds of lessons in this article. I will leave you with a few to chew on:
Note the brazen contempt for campaign finance law by the Bustamente campaign. Where politicians can’t get the money they need through various kinds of gray-market loophole-oriented money-laundering operations designed to evade these laws, they just violate them outright because they know that no enforcement will occur until after the election.
Note the heavily cynical and strategic use of political money to build up politicians that the contributors actually want to lose the race, because these dark horses will strip votes from a real rival to the preferred candidate.
Money and power will always find each other. The only solution to the kinds of influence peddling activities on display in California is to strip power from the state.
Arnold has finally come out of the closet. In a Wall Street Journal article he states:
I have often said that the two people who have most profoundly impacted my thinking on economics are Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. At Christmas I sometimes annoy some of my more liberal Hollywood friends by sending them a gift of Mr. Friedman’s classic economic primer, “Free to Choose.” What I learned from Messrs. Friedman and Smith is a lesson that every political leader should never forget: that when the heavy fist of government becomes too overbearing and intrusive, it stifles the unlimited wealth creation process of a free people operating under a free enterprise system.
He then lays out the key elements of his program:
My plan to rescue the economy in California is based on the opposite set of values: I want to slash the cost of doing business in California; I want to unburden businesses from regulations that strangle economic growth; I want to bring taxes down to levels competitive with our neighboring states. Within three years, I want business groups to trumpet the fact that California is once again one of the best places in the country to do business.
He then closes with a statement which is difficult to argue with:
Our state will prosper again when we commit ourselves in California to “Free to Choose” economics. This means removing, one by one, the innumerable impediments to growth–excessive taxes, regulations, and deficit-spending. If we do this we will bring California back as the untarnished Golden State.
Long before the California election I read Mr Schwarzenegger had at least slight libertarian leanings. Given this statement I feel safe declaring he is a fellow traveller at the very least.
The article can be found here. It is well worth reading despite the hassles of getting to it. This is perhaps the first Opinion Journal article I have linked to since they started crashing my browser when I attempt to print to file. In general, I do not refer people to something if I am unable to file a copy for future reference in the all too common case where the link becomes unreachable.
Over at the White Rose, some of us have been lately discussing the consequences of future ubiquitous computing, and whether it spells the end for privacy.
However, ubiquitous computing does of course also have its upsides. Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have invented a smart couch. This couch is capable of recognising any of the people who regularly sit on it (by weight) and greeting people individually. Future versions of the couch will be able to control the room temperature in accordance with the preferences of the individual, turn the lights off automatically, automatically switch the television to show favourite programs, and order your preferred variety of take out food.
At least, I think it has its upsides.
(Link via slashdot).
The Conservative Party has been blessed with a ringing endorsement from none other than Polly Toynbee:
A remarkable document has emerged from the Conservative frontbench. Search it from cover to cover and few would guess its provenance. Its deceptively dull title hides a radical departure: Old Europe? Demographic change and pension reform, by David Willetts, the shadow secretary for work and pensions, transforms Conservative family policy.
Not even his economics smells of Conservatism. The pensions problem does not, Willetts declares, need more saving by today’s workers. “Europe needs more consumption, more spending and more borrowing. Keynes warned in the 30s that ageing societies with high levels of savings and not many investment opportunities face a deflationary nightmare.”
So, is this just a devlishly cunning bit of cognitive jiu-jitsu to throw their opponents? I don’t believe they are anywhere near clever enough for that.
I think the end is nigh.
Many of us are aware bin Laden was not US funded. Fewer of us have the information at hand to prove it when faced with an adamant statement that “the US funded and trained bin Laden!”.
Osama paid his own way. Through his wealthy Saudi friends he helped finance a jihad against the Russians by forces entirely seperate from other, less religiously fanatical, guerrilla forces. Even those forces were not funded directly by the CIA. The money went to Pakistan and the arms went in via the Pakistani ISI. In hindsight this had some some serious downsides. It made the ISI nearly independent of the central government. Later the ISI did indeed back the Taliban during the post-Russian Kabul free-for-all.
But not bin Laden. The linked story by Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden) has an extra nice touch to it. This bin Laden quote:
“We were never, at any time, friends of the Americans. We knew that the Americans supported the Jews in Palestine and that they are our enemies.”
comes from an article written by… Robert Fisk.
This strikes me as rather draconian:
The software giant Microsoft declared war on internet paedophiles last night by announcing the closure of its thousands of UK-based chatrooms used by millions of people.
It will also restrict access to chatroom systems around the world, allowing only identifiable, adults living in the same country to use them.
The decision is a significant precedent, the first time one of the biggest internet service providers has cut off an element of the World Wide Web in reaction to concerns over misuse.
Calls to place all internet chat rooms under strict state regulation and control cannot be far off.
Now this is one American import we could well do without especially as it appears to be selling rather well.
Among the distributors are Simon Jenkins who devotes his latest column in the UK Times to ‘The Untimely Death of a Liberal Generation’:
Three British liberals have died in the past few days, all before their time. Jim Thompson, Gareth Williams and Hugo Young were still in their sixties. Each was outstanding in his profession, as priest, lawyer and journalist. They cut their political teeth with the rise of the welfare state and sharpened them on the Thatcher era. They lived to see what they regarded as Thatcherism’s denouement in the Labour landslide of 1997. They are gone. Something has died with them.
I certainly hope so because, as the brief obituaries which follow make abundantly clear, these men were not ‘liberals’ they were socialists.
I don’t care if I am ploughing a lonely furrow, I am not going to stop campaigning against this gross distortion of language.
There are several disturbing features of this panoptican state in which we will soon be living not the least of which is the sheer breakneck pace of its assembly.
It seems like only yesterday that speed cameras suddenly appeared on every lamppost but even they are so much old hat now:
Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems are set to be deployed by police forces throughout the UK as a major plank of a campaign of “denying criminals the use of the roads.” The system will link up to the DVLA, Police National Computer and a National Insurance Database, with these links alone giving it the capability of identifying untaxed, unroadworthy and uninsured vehicles, but they’ll also facilitate police surveillance operations, the swapping of data on “prolific offenders” between forces and, well, other stuff… Take this, for instance:
“Eventually the database will link to most CCTV systems in town centres, meaning that all vehicles filmed on one of the many cameras protecting Bedford High Street, for instance, can be checked against the database and the movements of wanted cars traced to help with serious crime investigations.”
As far as the drivers are concerned, well, that just about wraps it up, folks.
But truly one hardly has time to digest one horror before the next one comes galloping over the horizon. Dr.Sean Gabb has suggested that our rulers our ‘drunk with the technology’ but I am not so sure. More like they are stone-cold sober and determined to get the whole country locked down before the public realises exactly what has been done to them.
After reading Natalie Solent’s article, posted both here and on White Rose called A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?, reader Matt Judson wrote in with a cautionary tale of his own as a case in point.
Check out his close encounter with the reality of CCTV over on White Rose.
CCTV is not your friend.
After reading Natalie Solent’s article called A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?, reader Matt Judson wrote in with this cautionary tale as a case in point. The camera does indeed lie.
I have read with interest your posts on security cameras, and the threat they represent. I was especially interested in your post on the idea that law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from security cameras and other surveillance technology, because I was recently unjustly accused of vandalism due to security video.
I recently moved to Nob Hill in San Francisco. Nob Hill is justly famous for the lack of parking; After a few weeks of struggle, I surrendered, and chose to pay $255 per month to park in the Masonic Garage.
Purely by coincidence, my friend works in IT for the Masonic Center of San Francisco, which oversees the garage. Friday morning, he sent me an email: “Emergency: call me now! This is not a joke.” I called him, and he told me that the garage manager had asked for his help in emailing security camera video. The garage had caught someone keying a car on camera; they identified the suspect because he drove off a few minutes later, and they had his license plate number. They wanted to send the video to the owner of the car, so that the owner could take it to the police and file charges.
When he looked at the video, he was shocked to see that I was the suspect on the video. He did not think that I was the kind of person who would vandalize a car, but he thought I looked very suspicious on the tape. If he had not known me, he would have sent the video off without a second thought.
I told my friend that I have never keyed a car in my life. That was me on the tape, no question. I knew what I was doing when I was on the camera: I checked for my car on one level, but did not see it; I then turned around, thought about heading for the stairway, and then decided to take the elevator to the next level. I did all of this next to the car that had been vandalized.
At lunchtime, I went to the garage to speak to the garage manager. I told him that it was not me, and asked him to review the tape carefully. He replied that the garage had already reviewed the tape carefully, and they were convinced that they had the right person. He suggested that I call the car owner and try to work out a deal so that I would not be charged.
My friend believed me, and spent the rest of the day reviewing video. Two days after I was caught on video, he found video of a group of teenagers doing something to the car in question; when the teenagers noticed the security camera, they covered their faces and ran away. My friend took the video to the manager, and forced him to call me to apologize. His apology was grudging, of course: “Your friend found someone who was maybe more suspicious than you were.”
If it had not been for an incredible stroke of luck, I would have been in for a major headache, perhaps charged with a crime. The initial reviewers of the video tape were completely untrained in viewing video; they did not bother to review the tape carefully; the way they passed on their suspicions resulted in a psychological set that I was guilty; if I had not had a close friend in the process, it would have been very hard to convince anyone of my innocence. Lastly, the garage was going to pass the video on to the owner of the car without telling me; if the car owner had seen me in the garage and recognized me from he video, what would he have done?
Law-abiding people do indeed have something to fear from security cameras.
Matt Judson, San Francisco
David Sucher has another post on ubiquitous computing. He quotes from the sales puff for one manifestation of this stuff:
IntelliBadgeTM: Towards Providing Location-Aware Value-Added Services at Academic Conferences … The major characteristic of this project is the fusion of RFID technology, database management, data mining, real-time information visualization, and interactive web application technologies into an operational integrated system deployed at a major public conference. The developed system tracks conference attendees …
Sounds like another one for Natalie’s list.
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