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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The Financial Times in an editorial chastises the U.S. Federal Reserve bank chairman Alan Greenspan for encouraging speculators, such as those mysterious bodies called hedge funds, to snaffle up bonds recently by cutting interest rates to ward off deflation, only to find that bond prices dropped sharply once it appeared the economic situation in the U.S. was improving. (It is too early to say for sure that things are getting better in the world economy though. Certainly not in Continental Europe).
I do not really have a quick way of picking through the rights and wrongs of the FT’s position. I think it is plainly daft that Greenspan, who remains one of the sharpest economic brains around, would have deliberately set out to con investors. What I do think this episode does, however, is reinforce in my mind the enormous risks of entrusting great economic powers to folk like Dr. Greenspan. In fact, the more highly regarded such men and women are, the more lethal the consequences when they slip up.
Even many folk who consider themselves to be ardent free marketeers can get caught up in near religious reverence for the great central banker. Financial speculators hang on every word. The most bland of statements are parsed for some deeper meaning. I have spent too many hours than I care to remember trying to work out if the statement of X or Y actually suggests that inflation is likely to up, down, or whatever.
The cult of the central banker is one of those belief systems of surprisingly short duration, by historical standards. Maybe in decades to come, we will look back on the era of Alan Greenspan and his ilk rather as we would that of the Medieval Popes. And we will be even more struck when we recall that Greenspan, when a young economics student and friend of Ayn Rand, urged a return to old-style private banking and the unfairly maligned Gold Standard.
As I walked along Sumatra Road yesterday in the early evening, a burglar alarm rang out in a house about ten along from where I’m moving out of. Out of twenty houses along that stretch of the road, there have been half a dozen burglaries in the last two months (including my Moslem neighbours who were robbed whilst they were at evening prayers in the mosque in late June, and myself two weeks ago).
The modus operandi is identical and no fingerprints are ever found, suggesting that either the burglar is a police informant (so they don’t want to catch him because British police are not allowed to employ an informant with a criminal record), or he wears gloves and has some skill. The ‘local’ police based three miles away admit that they are surprised at the recent crime spree in the neighbourhood: burglaries may have trebled in the area this year.
Today, having dialled 999 and explained that there had been a number of burglaries in the area I gave my name and address and assumed that a normal response would occur: either nothing or at least 20 minutes response time. I cannot honestly say that the service was worse than I expected.
When I called back I was told that the control centre would not send anyone unless there was evidence that someone was actually inside the property. I asked if this happened frequently and was told that 95% of alarm call-outs were a waste of time. If this is so, I’m surprised that burglar alarms are even allowed in this country.
So the solution is obvious: if a neighbour is burgled, call the police saying that you’ve shot a burglar, give the address you think the burglary is in progress, then drink a couple of glasses of whiskey, before the cops arrive to either protect their informant or crush an attempted self-defence, so you can claim to have been confused. Do NOT try to get in a car. You don’t want to risk losing your driving license.
As for being burgled myself, does anyone know a pig-farmer?
This afternoon I stopped off at my local branch of the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain to get something for dinner. I picked up a prepared ham and mushroom tagliatelle to heat up in the microwave when I got home. However, I like a lot of cheese on my pasta, so I headed off the the cheese section looking for some parmesan. I walked past all the cheeses in the store, and couldn’t see it. I then walked past all the cheeses again, and still couldn’t see it.
On the third pass, I saw a sign on the shelf which said
Sainsbury’s Parmesan is now Sainsbury’s Italian Grated Cheese. Same product, new pack.
(I didn’t have a digital camera with me to photograph the sign, and of course I wouldn’t dream of stealing a sign off the shelf of a privately owned shop, particularly when it is doing something useful like helping people find their correct cheese).
Yes, it is the type of EU law Gabriel Syme was talking about recently, in which the EU has been drawing up lists of geographical (and other) names used for food products, and has been insisting that the names be used only on food produced in that exact place. Cheese that does not come from the Parma area can no longer be called parmesan.
Now, this is problematic, because as I use the word, “parmesan” is a name for a particular type of strong flavoured hard cheese. Yes, it is named after Parma where a lot of such cheese is made, but I personally have no expectation that something called “parmesan” does actually come from there. I do expect that it will be hard, will have a particular flavour, and that it will taste good on my pasta. (If a cheese does come from Parma and does not satisfy these requirements, then I do not think it should be called “parmesan”).
I have no difficulty with a law that requires it to be clear on the packaging whether a “parmesan” cheese comes from Parma or not. There is already another more specific name for cheeses that do, which is “Parmigiano-Reggiano”, and I have little problem with this name being restricted to cheeses from Parma, because it has never become generic. Really, though, if the word has become so generic that there is no intent to deceive about the origins of the cheese, then banning all use of the word otherwise is going too far.
I think that geographical names are like any other trademarks. If they are not defended, they can be lost. And if they are lost, they cannot be retrieved. And this present EU policy overreaches badly. → Continue reading: Who renamed my cheese?
It turns out that the US government’s asinine “equal time” rule for broadcasters, which requires them to give all candidates for office equal time on their stations, will be applied to effectively bar the broadcasting of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies in California for the duration of the recall campaign.
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s foray into California’s gubernatorial recall election poses a dilemma for broadcasters who might be tempted to show his films during the race: Doing so would allow rival candidates to demand equal time.
For that reason, broadcasters in California will likely not air Schwarzenegger movies such as “Total Recall” and the “Terminator” or a repeat of a “Diff’rent Strokes” episode with Gary Coleman for the next few months.
Cable channels are not covered by the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time provision, which in the past kept reruns of “Death Valley Days” off the air while Ronald Reagan ran for president.
Since there are 240 candidates, no broadcaster would possibly risk having to cough up 2 hours for each candidate as “equal time” for Arnold’s movie appearances.
I just did a little talk spot on the radio, jabbering away about politics with a guy called Mike Dickin, who, in addition to doing his fare share of sport talk, takes care of the political chat on Talk Sport Radio. I’m doing little spots with Mike Dickin quite often at the moment, although usually at very short notice. When I typed “Mike Dickin” and “Talk Sport Radio” into google, this came up as entry number two, out of just ten. I don’t know what that proves exactly. Perhaps that most of the people who listen to Mike Dickin are too old or too poor to be bothering with the internet.
Mike Dickin is what we here would call a Carr-ite. The world’s going to hell but what the hell can we do about it? “I don’t trust the police. I don’t trust social workers. I don’t trust any of the people to whom I pay such vast sums of money to take care of things” – that’s what he was saying today in his intro. In among agreeing with him about state over-regulation and the state crowding out individual initiative, I tried to put in an optimistic word along the lines of “you can still do some things – it’s not all misery”. He replied “Maybe you can, but I’m starting to think seriously that you can’t do it here any more?” “So where can you?” I said. I can’t remember what he replied, but no specific locations were mentioned.
During our brief conversation, I accused Dickin, politely I hope, of being a fine example of the Baby Boom generation having entered its Grumpy Grandad phase. When the Baby Boom was a teenager it told the world it had invented sex. When it got its first job it and started driving about in a flash car it told the world that it had invented the idea of getting a job and driving about in a flash car. And now the Baby Boom is starting to creep away to the pub where it booms forth to anyone who will listen that the world is going to hell, and that young people these day, blah blah blah.
However, it occurs to me that I might just as fruitfully have identified the particular way in which the State now makes a mess of our lives as having lilkewise entered its Grandad phase, or to be more exact its Grandma phase. → Continue reading: Grandma socialism
It would be quite wrong to suggest that the issue of self-defence (and the law relating thereto) is a libertarian issue. But it is probably true that, for many years, there was next to no debate about it as an issue outside of libertarian circles.
For free market advocates, self-defence (and the natural right thereto) is not just an important issue, it is a cornerstone of individualist philosophy. Yet, while libertarian scholars and writers debated passionately about the issue, it barely registered a blip on the radar of wider public interest.
That is, until a certain Tony Martin shot two intruders who had broken into his remote Norfolk farmhouse, killing one of them. The news that he had been arrested and charged with murder, led to a broken-dam deluge of furious and passionate debate about the right of self-defence and which flooded every medium.
Overnight, it seemed, self-defence had become a hot topic, not least because, as with so many debates, it has tended to generate more heat than light.
I do not intend to simply re-hash the Martin case and the various reasons why his actions either were or were not justified. That has already been done in some length here and elsewhere. What I want is to examine the reasons why practical self-defence has, to all intents and purposes, become illegal in the UK.
The obvious starting point is the law itself. While I believe that broader phenomena have played their part in creating the current situation, it is critical to examine how they worked to shape both law and custom as it stands. → Continue reading: The way we were
White Rose has a post about the launch of the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) to raise awareness about the IP Enforcement proposal’s threat to consumer rights and market competition.
Forbiding tools that are required for the exercise of legally protected rights, like private use, preservation of works by libraries, and reverse engineering, means giving a complete monopoly to right-holders on the basic infrastructure needed to communicate in the digital world.
The government has enthusiastically taken up the cause of introducing more ‘flexible’ voting methods in order to increase electoral turnout. The fragility of their new experimental systems was brought home to me when my father asked me to witness his postal vote (a requirement that is now being dropped). I wasn’t too concerned because he was voting for the Residents Association rather than a political party.
I am not the only one. The e-voting systems have been criticised. Dr Ben Fairweather, Research Fellow at De Montford University, has analysed the local elections and found some disturbing results. These involved eighteen elections and 1.5 million voters.
He said the system used in Shrewsbury and Kerrier, Cornwall adopted a CESG security model that called for candidate codes to be sent to voters by post, as a security precaution. But people could request this information online on the day in violation of this security policy.
In Sheffield matters were worse. Many polling stations were without an Internet connection on polling day. As a result voters could get a vote at a poling station while still being able to vote again online from home.
The good fellow is also concerned about inappropriate influences within the home, and one could point to our more tight-knit communities where vulnerable members could be forced to vote for particular candidates. These changes encourage communalism in voting patterns.
“For one thing how do you know who’s in the room with someone when they vote and how can you be sure they are not trying to influence someone’s vote?” he asked.
Dr Fairweather’s work is here. The Foundation for Information Policy Research made similar criticisms.
So far, none of these elections have been rerun, even though their flaws have been documented.
In an amazingly petty act of vengeful spite, the US Treasury Department is fining a peace protestor $10,000. Faith Fippinger was one of many who went to Iraq to act as a “human shield”. She has now been told that her action was in breach of trade sanctions because whilst in Iraq she spent around $200, mainly on food and water. She has also been accused of “providing services” to the Iraqi regime by her presence.
If she can’t or won’t pay she could face 12 years in jail.
Whether or not you supported the war, the right to protest against it was supposedly one of the things that US citizens had and Iraqi citizens were denied. Now a minor technical breach of sanctions legislation is being used to punish a citizen who dared exercise her civil liberties.
The message from King George’s regime is clear: defy us at your peril.
BBC report here
Cross-posted from An It Harm None
An international coalition of 47 civil liberties groups and consumer rights campaigns sent a letter to the European Union today urging rejection of the proposed Intellectual property Enforcement Directive .
The coalition warns that the proposed Directive is overbroad and threatens civil liberties, innovation, and competition policy. It requires EU Member States to criminalize all violations of any intellectual property right that can be tied to any commercial purpose, with penalties to include imprisonment. Andy Müller-Maguhn, a board member of European Digital Rights and speaker for the Chaos Computer Club explains:
If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use ‘intellectual property’ regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms. Under this proposal, a person’s individual liberty to use his own property is replaced with a limited license that can be revoked or its terms changed at any time and for any reason.
Ville Oksanen, a lawyer and Vice Chairman of Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFi) who signed the letter, points out:
Currently EU-Member states are implementing the EU Copyright Directive and the EU Software Patent Directive is next in the line. We should really wait and see what effect these new laws have before adding any new legislation organizational letter. Contrary to what the Enforcement Directive claims, Member States are already obliged by international treaties like TRIPS to protect intellectual property rights.
The letter marked the launch of the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) to raise awareness about the IP Enforcement proposal’s threat to consumer rights and market competition. → Continue reading: IP Enforcement Directive – DMCA on steroids
David Sucher asks: “why are libertarians so much wittier than liberals?”
The answer is that the sense of humour comes from a libertarian understanding of the world. Statists see a world of oppression and pain, and get depressed because of global warming and evil multinationals. Libertarians see the world in a different way, seeing the bad in the world, but also seeing the great advances that humankind has experienced over the past few hundred years. They have greater confidence in humanity, progress and the future. So they can afford to not take life completely seriously. The sense of humour is profoundly libertarian. (Thanks to Madsen Pirie for giving me the idea for this post.)
When I leave university and get a job, I want to live and die by my own efforts, but if they are especially productive, I want to enjoy the fruits of my labour without being penalised by the state for my success. I don’t want to see people starve, or to go without basic needs, but rather than having the state steal my money and use it to pay them to stay poor, I want them to have the opportunity to work, earn and live for themselves. I also want, through free charity, to be able to decide for myself in whose aid the money I donate will be spent: perhaps I might find the starving Iraqi child a more deserving cause than the perpetually-unemployed Dundonian who can’t afford the monthly satellite television subscription; perhaps I won’t think that the fact that one has been born in closer geographical proximity to me gives them a greater claim to the money I worked for. I don’t want these choices to be taken from me and decided centrally, by those whose very jobs require them to please as many local people as they can.
– David Bean, part of the St Andrews Liberty Club’s new committee, writing on The Liberty Log
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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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