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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Brian Micklethwait is right to say that the government is falling apart. It has faced revolts from its own party on foxhunting, Iraq and foundation hospitals. It is seen by many as having misled the people about the reasons for the Iraq war. Hospitals and schools are in crisis despite having more money than ever. National Rail is a bottomless pit. The payment of Tax Credits has been a disaster. Now the government is lurching even more to the Left, introducing draconian employment laws to appease its backbenchers. As for Europe, the government has completely failed to get a grip: it keeps on saying that it will not give in on items in European treaties, but each time it does exactly that.
The reality is that government is not just incompetent, it is a walking disaster. John Major’s Conservative Party might have had its problems, but it was never this bad. The Third Way is rarely heard of these days. Like a drunk, Labour’s Way involves stumbling all over the road.
Yet there is an alternative. There is one major party that broadly promotes libertarian ideas. It vocally states that we are overtaxed and over-regulated; that the European Constitution and Euro are wrong for Britain; that government-control of healthcare and education does not work; that the BBC’s business model needs “examining”; and that individuals should be free to make their own choices about their lives.
What is the name of this libertarian party?
Conservative.
Ian Boys of Dissident UK points out that essential civil liberties are collateral damage in the war against terrorism
For better or for worse the war against terrorism is Britain’s war too: we sent a few thousand soldiers to Afghanistan and made our political support for President Bush quite clear. Now it has come back to haunt us: nine of our citizens are held incommunicado in Guantanamo Bay, together with several more from the Commonwealth. We do at least know who and where they are, even if we do not know why they are being held. Their families cannot visit them and they cannot speak to outside lawyers. Their status has been determined by the US Secretary of Defence and the only lawyers they will be allowed are US military officers: it has been suggested that their conversations even with these will be overheard. The same camp holds children as young as 13, while 16-year olds are mixed in with the adult detainees.
Imagine that Argentina’s Junta of the 1980’s or today’s Iran were holding these 680-odd detainees, including nine Britons. The outcry would be phenomenal. There would be talk of sanctions at the very least.
Yet these are actually the ‘lucky few’ among the hundreds detained by the USA. Many many more have disappeared. Let’s look at that word – reminiscent of the dictatorships of the 1960’s and 70’s. Do I mean that they have been murdered? No, probably not. Do I mean that they have been tortured? Yes – whether outright physical pressure or just being held in a steel container at Bagram airbase in the blazing sun. Do I mean that they have vanished, held in some solitary hell-hole? Most certainly. → Continue reading: The disappeared
At present I am not in the market for a longer penis, or for more energy when my mind turns to the sexual as opposed to urinary use of the penis that I already have, so most junk emails are for me just that: junk. Delete. However, I got one this morning, and I’m sure millions of others did too, which interested me, White Rose wise, and (although in the years to come I will probably mark this moment as the one when my life stopped working and went to hell, my identity stolen, my bank account emptied, my hard disc and that of all my friends virused, etc.) I pressed this link.
For the benefit of those wiser or more cautious or more internet savvy than me, the link leads to a website devoted to a computer programme which enables you to learn everything there is to learn about all of your friends and all of your enemies.
Now, once downloaded to your computer, the INTERNET INVESTIGATOR quickly sorts through the maze of over 800 million web pages and other information sources, easily and effortlessly, and turns your personal computer into a POWERFUL information goldmine.
The democratisation of joined-up government, you might say. Everyone can be a member of the surveilling class. (And by the way I think “surveilling class” or maybe “surveilling classes” is a meme with a future.)
As with current strength surveillance cameras, the actual effectiveness of this particular programme as of now – it sounds to me a lot like an old fashioned search engine (but what do I know?) – is not really the big point here, or not the point that interests me. What I think is the big point is that, sooner or later, such programmes surely will do what this one promises to do.
Not surprisingly, the same web site also pushes another programme called “Privacy Protector”, which, I guess, enables you to defend yourself against Internet Investigator. Maybe Privacy Protector is the real product, and Internet Investigator only exists to scare up business for Privacy Protector.
Whatever. It all has the smell of the new battles that people are going to be fighting in this brave new twenty first century. And they won’t just be government-people or people-government battles, they’ll be people-people battles.
By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
– Lord Salisbury (1830-1903)
Cobden Bright posted a comment in an earlier article that deserves the prominence of full posting, slightly edited. This follows on from The Anglosphere and Economic Freedom
The fact that a country taxing over 40% of GDP from its populace can be considered the 5th most “economically free” country in the world is rather depressing. Let’s face it, most countries on that list are not economically free at all – they are just slightly less bad than most of the others.
The people at Cato also seem to have forgotten about tax rates. A person paying 0% tax is in most respects an economically free man – someone paying 50% per year is a slave for half their working life. So they should have included tax havens like Monaco, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Cayman Islands etc, and low tax larger countries like Russia.
Also, as noted by a previous poster, it is actions, not written laws or words, which achieve freedom. A backward country with repressive laws may be freer for you personally if those laws are not enforced, or avoidable at low cost via bribes or cunning. So a corrupt backwater may be relatively free in real terms, whereas a “free” country like America will tax you ruthlessly even if you move to live on the other side of the world, and will exact severe penalties for certain voluntary economic exchanges (e.g. buying a joint or a Cuban cigar).
Which raises the final question – is there any meaningful distinction between economic and personal liberty? I would say no. How free are Hong Kong, Singaporean, UK or US citizens to buy and sell firearms, narcotics, or sexual entertainment?
Finally, there is a bizarre tendency for everyone to take GDP figures at face value. Remember who makes these up? Yes, that’s right folks, it’s our old friend the government. So take GDP figures with a pinch of salt. Firstly, much government spending, most of which is highly wasteful, is regarded as a positive contribution to GDP. So employing someone on $30k per annum to build bridges to nowhere is seen as economically just as “good” in GDP terms as paying someone $30k per year to build a house, or work as a doctor or shopkeeper. Yet obviously the latter activities are productive, and the former destructive or at best worthless. This focus on production per se, rather than useful production, means utterly worthless projects drive a country up the GDP ranks. Thus countries with large amounts of state spending get an artificially high GDP rating.
The only real way to measure economic prosperity is to visit a place for a while and see what kind of real living standards prevail. What kind of cars do people drive, what clothes do they wear, how nice are their houses, are the streets clean, how good are the restaurants, how long does it take to get from A to B?
Cobden Bright
With his surname partially derived from the Gods, and his standing as an Englishman of Scottish descent, you may already know I love Iain Duncan Smith, beyond the edge of reason. But yesterday, in Prague, he ripped open his long silence, on the European issue, and moved to lead the Europe-wide revolt against the long-planned socialist super state. Which, for those of us in the “Get out of Here” Euro-nexus, within the Tory party, is excellent news; it confirms our faith, in why we voted him in, as leader.
As the Maastricht rebel leader strutted his stuff, he even picked up a favourable review from Alastair Campbell’s scoop-favoured creatures on The Sun. Trevor Kavanagh, their maverick political commentator, feared by the Downing Street lie machine, and a man, by order of Rupert, beyond the reach of Labour-supporting editor Rebekah Wade, also said about Duncan Smith:
Europe will hear him and Britain will agree
In my opinion, IDS is the bravest man, in British politics, from the entire period of the last 30 years. Can you imagine having woken up, every morning, for the last two years, and then been forced to view the world through his semi-oriental eyes? He has been vilified, pilloried, and humiliated, in every newspaper, on every Channel 4 news programme, and on every BBC web page — virtually every single day — for being a charisma-less, hopeless, and witless fool. But he has come through this burning fire, to nudge ahead of Phoney Tony in the polls, much to the incredulous bafflement of the New Labour-Guardian-BBC aristocracy, which rules this once glorious, and sceptred isle.
It’s a fragile lead, admittedly, and there’s still a lot more work for IDS to finish, to cement it in; even assuming it’s not Gordon Brown who ends up as the initial beneficiary, from Tony’s fall; and yes, it’s a shame about that bovine statism, inherent within the general Tory Party; and yes, I would prefer a straight decision to just get out of the EU Dodge City, right now. But on the topic of Iain Duncan Smith, army officer and gentleman; I am a believer.
From the Samizdata last week on the English regional assemblies:
This is not a devolution of power and decision-making, this is a retrenchment of power at the top; a mere administrative reshuffle to create yet another fantastically expensive tier of labyrinthine bureaucracy in what amounts to nothing more than giant job-creation scheme for technocrats, busybodies and form-fillers. Nobody is going to gain more control over their own lives and no community is going to have any more local power bestowed upon it. It is just another greasy pole for the social-working class to climb up.
To the Spectator this week on the English regional assemblies:
In theory, stronger regional government might seem like a good idea, serving to counter the centralising instincts of Whitehall and the parochialism of town halls. But in practice it does not work out like that. All that happens is that we end up having to fork out for another lot of party careerists and pointless bureaucrats, while the Civil Service and municipalities carry on as before. And so, with no real role to perform, the new regional bodies create endless work for themselves to justify their own existences, desperately hyping up every one of their unwanted initiatives and reports.
And from Samizdata on the role of Brussels:
The regional assemblies are being created as civilian Gauleiters in order to ensure that the laws and directives of the EU Commission are administered and enforced at local level and to jockey with each for the chunks of redistributed largesse handed out by the various arms of the Euro-state. Their job is not to represent the will of the people to those in power, it is to ensure that the will of those in power is applied to the people.
To the Spectator on the role of Brussels:
Regionalism is part of an insidious agenda to end the nation state, so Britain can more easily slot into the new United States of Europe. Brussels, hope Euro-enthusiasts, will be able to bypass national governments and instead work directly with the regional assemblies. Indeed, one of the favourite phrases of the European Commission is ‘a Europe of the regions’.
This could be the start of a consensus.
In this posting I want to pull together all the reasons for thinking that the “New Labour” project may now be unravelling, and unravelling so seriously that there is a real possibility that they might even lose the next general election. There is no one cause of this phenomenon, just lots of things coming together.
My first because deals head-on with the – I presume – widespread American belief that … well, how could we not love Tony Blair? But there are many other becauses now assembling themselves, and the list that follows is surely not exhaustive:
Because being popular in the USA doesn’t necessarily make you popular in your own country. Like Thatcher and Gorbachev before him, Tony Blair is now revered by many Americans, but this doesn’t make him any more liked here. If anything, probably rather less so. Being thought of as a Prime Minister who is more concerned to play the world statesman than to grapple with the actual problems on your own desk is not a plus. Prime Minister Callaghan never recovered from the public perception (“Crisis? What crisis?”) of him as a man who didn’t care about his own country’s problems because they were too boring and too intractable. Blair is flirting with the same stuff now.
Because now fewer and fewer people are Labour or are Conservative, they merely vote Labour or Conservative. Party membership of all parties is now tiny. When there’s a shift of voter mood, such shifts can be bigger than they used to be, because more people are willing to switch. Even majorities like the current Labour one can vanish, as quickly as they arrived. → Continue reading: Labour could lose the next general election because …
A newspaper advertisement headlined “Prostitutes Required” for a club “downstairs at The White House” has riled US officials in New Zealand. The crossed Stars and Stripes and bald eagle logo may appear to suggest the Bush administration has branched out, but the advert is in fact for a brothel in Auckland looking for new ladies for its nightclub, Monica’s.
The US Embassy has sent a letter to the business complaining that the advert, especially the logo, is in poor taste.
We believe that any likeness of a national government symbol in a commercial advertisement is in extremely poor taste. We are sending a letter to the advertiser that expresses our disappointment and displeasure about their choice of symbolism.
The brothel’s theme is unashamedly American and the building even has white columns outside similar to the US President’s residence. During the previous US administration the women working at the complex wore blue dresses like that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The bordello’s owner Brian Legros was unrepentant.
They don’t own the White House. They should get on with the affairs of their country and not worry about little old New Zealand…”It’s my crest. “It might look like theirs, but it’s not.”
Now call me a big kid, if you will, and Stephen Pollard certainly doesn’t pull any punches in his article, on the topic, but I used to really enjoy reading the Harry Potter novels, even in public, even on trains, and even in preference to Murray N. Rothbard economics textbooks. (No, I hear you cry, how can you say such a thing?) But not any more.
For me the magic is either dying, or has already died. And it seems I’m not alone, for a Booker-winning author, A S Byatt, has also just slated the latest tome. Which is a relief, because I thought it was just me. → Continue reading: Potter losing his magic?
I wonder if there could be more to this civil unrest in Hong Kong than at first meets the eye? I only say that because what started out as a ‘people power’ mass protest at proposed anti-subversion laws has caused not just the Hong Kong government to backpeddle furiously but it also appears to be tightening a few sphincters on the Chinese mainland as well:
In a sign of China’s deep concern about the situation, pro-Beijing politicians said a team of middle-ranking mainland officials had arrived in the territory to assess developments.
A BBC correspondent says the officials are reported to have been present at Wednesday night’s protest, which saw tens of thousands of people gather outside the territory’s legislative council.
No great leaps of imagination are required to here. The nabobs are going to be reporting back to the poobahs on just how deep this river of discontent runs and the poobahs are going to lose a few nights sleep worrying whether all this uppityness could spread to the mainland. Well, you never know.
On the face of it, it seems unlikely that this show of bolshiness in Hong Kong could threaten the regime in China itself if only because, to outsiders, the old commie apparatchicks appear to have the country in such an iron grip. But the truth is that all authoritarian regimes are shot through with insecurity. They know only too well that their power rests solely on their monopoly of and willingness to use lethal force. But if that force ever fails, even once, then the whole house of cards comes down. → Continue reading: A little trouble in big China
Evidence, if you ever needed it, that surveillance cameras are getting smarter:
Britain’s first digital speed cameras are being installed today and will go “live” next month.
The new “super cameras”, which need no film or servicing, are being tested at Limehouse, in east London. With traditional cameras, motorists hope that there is no film in the camera and that they can get away with speeding.
But there will be no escape with the new digital version, which sends a stream of images and data along a phone line to a Metropolitan Police centre in Kent.
The first cameras are being installed at the Limehouse Link tunnel, which is an accident blackspot. Surveys have shown that drivers of nearly all of the 80,000 vehicles using the tunnel each day break the 30mph speed limit.
In the last three years, 14 accidents there have led to death or serious injury.
And evidence too of why surveillance cameras are widely believed to be a good thing, not just by the surveilling classes, but by the surveilled also.
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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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