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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Two of my blog-colleagues are struck down with computer-related grief.
Natalie Solent, who has been unable to blog since last Saturday, has asked Samizdata.net to pass on to as many of her regular readers as we can reach that she has not abandoned them on purpose, but has been wrenched away from them, by an attempt to upgrade from Windows Complicated to Windows Even More Complicated which has proved to be very complicated indeed. But she will be back, just as soon as it’s all sorted.
And if you’re wondering why it’s techno-moron me telling you this rather than Perry de Havilland, well as you may have guessed already from his recent blog-silence, he too is having computer-related troubles, this time involving a hardware failure. It isn’t going to be too expensive (it’s one of the small connecting boxes rather than the big box itself which has collapsed), but the problem is proving to be time consuming, while Perry queues with other afflicted souls for the services of his computer-guru. He too is doing all he can to get back on line.
TransOrbital, a member of the Artemis Project, will soon carry out its’ first launch, an engineering mockup of their lunar probe. The vehicle is scheduled for launch into low earth orbit (LEO) tomorrow, Dec 20th, on a Russian Dnepr former-ICBM.
TransOrbital hopes to launch the first commercial lunar probe in late 2003.
From all of us at Samizdata: “Good luck and clear jets TO!”
More information is available here
The 2004 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) will be held in Oklahoma City. The ISDC is the annual National Space Society (NSS) conference. This is a direct inheritance from the L5 Society which began the conferences in Los Angelos in 1982.
The NSS Executive committee voted the final approved of the 2004 site candidate on Dec 12th. The 2003 conference is in Palo Alto, California this coming May. Please check out the web page for more information.
Just for the sake of full disclosure… I chair the committee that makes the location recommendations to the NSS Board of Directors, so I sort of knew this for a few weeks now.
Yesterday I found myself reflecting on that monstrous half-truth, consumer sovereignty. It’s a half truth because the places where consumers do their consuming are also sovereign. (I seem to recall the late Murray Rothbard having some good things to say about “The Myth of Consumer Sovereignty” in Chapter 7, I think it is, of Man, Economy and State). Shops can also do things as they wish, and if you don’t like this then ultimately your only course may be to run away. I don’t favour shop sovereignty extending to the point where they can bolt the door while you’re still there and force you to do things their way, take back what you just said, buy things you don’t want, and so forth. But short of that I like the occasional shop where the constomer has to walk on egg shells to avoid a proprietorial tantrum or to avoid knocking huge tottering piles of random items all over the grubby floor.
Sure, there must be proper shops where the customer is always right and which are helpful, clean, efficient, full of good stuff well displayed and reasonably priced, etc. etc. But not all shops should be like this.
There used to be a wonderful place in Dover Street, just off Seven Dials (a bit to the north of Covent Garden tube station), which was crammed to the ceiling with hardware of every kind you could possibly want or imagine, provided it could be found.
I remember three things in particular about this place, aside from the general mess and dirt and confusion and lack of walking space.
First, the front window was literally a rubbish dump. There it was, displaying a kind of archaeological system of sediments from previous eras of the shop’s history. Nails from the late nineteen fifties, drill bit sets from the early sixties, crushed cardboard boxes, rolls of insulating material, bags full of obscure and complicated joinery items, long discontinued workbench kits, and of course inch upon inch of genuine actual rubbish. All this could be clearly enjoyed through the front window of the shop. → Continue reading: Retailer sovereignty
Brian asked if Japan was only pretending to do badly. He seemed to think that there were some grounds for doubting the news of Japanese economic stagnation.
Looking at the World Economic Freedom report I discovered the following interesting figures.
- Income Tax top rates as percentages:
(1st figure 1990), (2nd 1995), 3rd 2000.
Japan 65, 65, 50
USA 33, 42, 42
UK 40, 40, 40
Ireland 58, 48, 42
Sweden 72, 58, 51
OECD average 53, 50, 47
- Corporate Taxes (including regiuonal, state, local etc),
also top rates as percentages: 1990, 1995, 2000
Japan 42, 42, 42
USA 40, 40, 40
UK 30, 30, 30
Ireland 24, 20, 16
Sweden 28, 28, 28
OECD average 34, 33, 31
Note that Japan is consistently higher than the OECD average. Note also that Sweden’s business taxation always was low. The US corporate taxes may be close to Japan’s, but the US economy hasn’t needed tax cuts for the past ten years to stimulate growth.
My conclusion is that Japanese “stimulus packages” are clearly not addressing incentives to produce.
Finally, the overall ranking between 1990 and 2000 is highly revealing:
USA 3rd in 2000, 4th in 1990
UK 4th (2000), 6th (1990)
Ireland 7th (2000), 20th (1990)
Sweden 19th (2000), 26th (1990)
JAPAN 24th (2000), 7th (1990)
Before David Carr wonders how the heck a Labour government pushed the UK up 2 places: 1) independent Bank of England, 2) you should have seen what other governments were like…
A case example of (relative) economic freedom being a precondition for (relative) economic prosperity.
Faith and philosophy are air, but events are brass.
– Herman Melville (Pierre – 1852)
Today I had lunch (a sandwich and coffee anyway) with my friend Kristine Lowe, who is a journalist – you know, one of those people who writes stories for a “newspaper”, which is “printed”, on a Big Machine somewhere in London. The newspaper that Kristine writes for is called the “Daily Express”. She had a story in it today, about the improving business performance of a company called London Clubs International, which is now doing better than it was, because of the relaxing of the British regulations concerning gambling which apparently occurred last August. (So something is being deregulated here, even if it’s only gambling.)
The reason I am reporting for Samizdata.net on this meeting is that, much to my surprise, I found that I was able to tell Kristine things – about business, about the big wide world, about the world of men trying to damage each other – things which she didn’t know much about and which I knew somewhat more about, as a result of me being a blogger. I talked of Glenn Reynolds (K: Who is he? What does he do when he’s not blogging?”) and of Trent Lott (“Who’s Trent Lott?” – this despite Lott having finally made it to the British TV news shows last night), of the arguments about data copying and patent protection, in connection with the music industry and the pharmaceutical industry. I told her of particular bloggers to pay attention to, such as Stephen Pollard (pharmaceutical patents and intellectual property generally), Michael Jennings (telecommunications), my recent discovery China Hand (China), and Reynolds of course (for the Lott story, and for his very different take on intellectual property).
I had assumed that my blogging activities would be a matter of at most polite interest, but basically indifference – like amateur dramatics talk to a real professional actor. But actually Kristine started scribbling things down and didn’t stop until her lunch hour did. Interesting. I wonder if anything – Daily Express-wise – will come of this.
We haven’t become The Media. But we are starting to be a part of The Media’s nervous system.
Just who is being protected here? Just what benefit is being bestowed upon our society? What good can possibly be derived from a ruling like this?
“A mother-of-two has been jailed for failing to prevent her daughters from playing truant from school.
The Brighton woman was sentenced to seven days in prison and is only the second parent in the country to be jailed because her children skipped lessons.”
Why incarcerate this woman for the ‘refusenik’ behaviour of her children? I presume it’s because the state takes the view that threatening the liberty of parents will oblige them to become more coercive and bullying towards their own offspring in order that they may toe the educational establishment line. How degraded and immoral is that? I am reminded of the late Philip Larkin’s injunction:
“Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out, as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself”
The once misanthropically gloomy Larkin begins to sound more and more like a pragmatist.
This woman has been sent to jail because education for children is compulsory and the state is the monopoly provider. Sadly, this paradigm is now a fixture of just about all Western societies but has anybody thought to ask the children themselves if this process is something that they either want or need? Clearly, the two little girls in question were fed up with being forced to traipse day after day to a draughty, municipal building and sat at a desk while a low-grade public servant with halitosis and a short temper drones at them about the French Revolution. Or Algorithms. Or something.
I am at a loss to understand how these two children, or the society of which they are a part, have anything to gain from being forced back into a situation where they are likely to be nothing except sullen and resentful prisoners? Very few people take the view that forcing human beings to work in state-owned factories on government-mandated projects will be in any way beneficial yet nearly everybody is entrenched in the dogmatic belief that doing the very same thing to human beings under the age of 18 will be nothing but beneficial.
This is an orthodoxy to which I once held myself: education is good, but children don’t realise this. Therefore prescribed and generally agreed packages of learning must be forced on them for their own good. Is this true? I must confess that I have no ready alternatives available nor any glib answers on what parents should do instead. But I do know that I am increasingly unsettled by noxious enforcements of the kind reported above and by the quiet, persuasive ideas of people like Alice Bachini.
Compulsory education is about compulsion not education. It is a received wisdom to which I am finding it increasingly difficult to subscribe and which I believe should be revisited and re-examined at a systemic level.
A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man is of his bones. But if you break a nation’s nationality it will think of nothing else but getting it set again.
– George Bernard Shaw (in the Preface to John Bull’s Other Island – 1904)
I clearly recall that first time I attended a meeting of the Libertarian Alliance here in London. The guest speaker, a very earnest but rather monochromatic fellow (whose name, I must confess, I cannot now recall) was issuing forth on the subject of the purpose of the Libertarian Alliance and what its goals should be.
His conclusion was that those goals should, at the very least, include ‘the spreading of good ideas’. That sounded like a worthwhile project and, indeed, it is one in which I am engaged to this day.
But, how to do it? That’s the real trick. Marketing is dead simple when you’re peddling, say, luxury motor cars. But if you’re peddling the kind of ideas that make luxury motor cars both possible and widely available then you tend to find that you’re butting your head against a brick wall of indifference.
Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the book of those people who spread bad ideas because they seem to be enjoying no end of success, especially in Southern Africa:
“South Africa’s ruling African National Congress yesterday effectively gave its backing to President Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, cheering a speech by a Zanu-PF loyalist attacking “western imperialists”.
Now one would think that the experience of a lunatic marxist regime transforming a neighbouring country from a relatively prosperous bread-basket into a ‘Year Zero’-type hellhole would provide a pretty stark lesson in ‘How Not To Do Things’. But, such is the seductive power of those bad ideas, that they can trump even the most graphic and immediate realities.
And so British libertarians are left wrestling with the puzzle of how we capture that magic driver for impelling bad ideas and turn it to good use.
It is a thorny and will-sapping problem but one of far less magnitude than the one facing those South Africans of European or Asian descent. As far as they are concerned, all I can say is that I sincerely hope that they have an exit strategy because the day that they’re going to sorely need one appears to be getting closer.
I was reporting the events in and around Parliament Square yesterday afternoon, for a French magazine. Having previously attended the 1998 Countryside March and the 2002 Liberty & Livelihood March, I was able to observe the differences in mood.
In 1998 the typical banner read “Please listen to us!”
In 2002 the banners read “The last peaceful protest…”
Yesterday was not a peaceful protest but an act of civil disobedience.
None of the people I interviewed believed that the government would or could deliver a deal. All criticised the leadership of the Countryside Alliance for as one Devonian middle-aged lady put it: “They are protecting their knighthoods.” Minutes later she was part of the first violent attempt to break into the House of Commons car park.
I took a careful look at the people, mostly men who took on the police. One looked like a soccer hooligan, baseball cap, beer gut and the drooling stupidity of English nationalism at its worst: the police didn’t even bother arresting him when he broke through the police cordon.
The others were in their late thirties or forties. They looked more like farm labourers than landowners. They also looked rather more interested in provoking a battle than dialogue. The campaign badge said “Bollocks to Blair”. No pretence at dialogue there.
In all the police acted with almost incredible restraint, police horses were shoved backwards by huntsmen who tried to unbuckle saddles and throw riders. Smoke bombs were thrown by Real C.A. activists, sometimes at police. The Real C.A. activists, who have promised a campaign of direct action against the ban on hunting, were handing out Real C.A. stickers but not wearing them themselves to avoid detection. Some of the demonstration leaders were giving instructions in Welsh to confuse the eavesdropping Special Branch.
There were eight arrests, but most of the violent offenders were allowed to rejoin the crowd. I overheard a reporter interviewing a campaigner and asking why they didn’t go through the normal channels: support the Tories, for instance. The reply indicated that for these protesters at least, they have to create their own opposition.
Shortly before I left I heard a police officer saying to a mother with two young children who were screaming “Blair Out!” and cheering a particularly vigourous charge against the mounted police:
“It’s one thing to be up against Swampy or those Greens, but this just doesn’t feel right!”
He looked as if he’d just realised that his parents could be attacking another part of the human shield of police. Unlike his Parisian police counterparts in 1943, he has the option of refusing to collaborate.
Following on from yesterday’s fracas, first-hand reports are now on-line at the website of the Countryside Alliance.
Of particular note is the report from Parliament Square by Simon Hart:
“There isn’t a single person who was in Parliament Square today who has the slightest desire to do anything other than lead a life free from political interference and to respect the rule of law.”
That sentiment has a vaguely familiar ring to it. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before.
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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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