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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Today I shall be leaving the wet and mouldy Albion for a snowy and frosty Mittel Europa. This means much lower temperatures but also fur coats, Christmas markets, hot mead, mulled wine, slivovica and lots of lovely, lovely traditional Christmas food. Provided I can heave myself away from all that feasting, I shall post about whatever catches my meta-contextual eye. Or may be I’ll just write about anything that still makes sense after drinking the fierce regional spirits.
I shall return to celebrate the New Year in London with the rest of the Samizdatistas.
Few weeks ago I blogged about China’s pressure on Hong Kong to pass an anti-subversion law. According to the law, people found guilty of acts of treason, sedition, secession from, or subversion of, the mainland government could be imprisoned for life under the new law. Also, concepts like “state secrets” and “national security” in the law are too vague, leaving them open to abuse.This may be – and I’d certainly argue that it will be – exploited by authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong against anyone they dislike in the former British colony, promised a high degree of autonomy when it was handed back to China in 1997.
Tens of thousands of Hong Kong people (march organisers say 50,000) have taken part in one of the territory’s biggest marches in years, denouncing the plans they fear will erode freedom and civil liberties. As many as 100 civil and religious groups joined in the march, including the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.
Mr Wong, a marcher says: “This law will threaten the rights of many, many people in Hong Kong, how can I not protest?”
Quite. I wonder what John Smith or Joe Bloggs would say…
You never know who’s trying to get into your computer:
“The phone rings: tech support: “hello computer tech support ” customer: “hello my computer was making a strange hissing noise last night and this morning when I turned it on there was a crackling noise and some smoke then nothing, if I bring it in can you fix it?”
This time, though, the intruder was caught on camera.
Mark Steyn is in rare form, delivering a splendid satirical roasting of the detestable Harold Pinter.
‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,’ Pinter continued. ‘You know why that is? Depleted uranium’?
[…]
“George W Bush says he’s dreaming of a white Christmas,” sneered Mr Pinter. “But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare. I wake up feeling like a man trapped in a snowy knick-knack with his face pressed up against the glass howling, ‘Let me out of here’, only to be buried under another ton of artificial flakes.”
Splendid stuff. It is a continuing marvel to me that Pinter can still appear in polite society in Britain without having doors slammed in his face.
…about people living in miserable material conditions. It is a measure of relative poverty, or a difference in material goods. This is obviously most useful for the promotion of envy and class hatred. It also allows the glossing over of the twin Marxist errors of the “pauperization of the proletariat” in advanced capitalist economies, and the notion that people have no identity outside their membership of an economically determined class.
It is handy for promoters of class hatred to use ‘poverty’ as an issue. First the relative measure is easy to falsify. It is notorious that in the UK, satellite television dishes appeared disproportionately (in the late 1980s early 1990s) among low-income families before spreading to higher income brackets. On the other hand the only people I’ve ever met who didn’t own television sets in the UK were both in the top 20 per cent of incomes.
What value does one put on television ownership? The price of the set? How does one measure the value of the service provided by broadcasting? What about foreign holidays? If a low-income family travels to Spain for the same relative price as their parents once went to Morecombe on the British coast, are they really no better off?
Taking the measure of a household 60 per cent below the average household I once discovered a cute fraud in the British Household Survey (I’m sorry I don’t recall the year but it was in the early 1990s). “Household” is not the same thing as a house full of people. The bottom fifteen per cent households in the UK in the early 1990s had an average of 1.1 people living in them. The top fifteen percent had over four people living in them. The age distribution was equally revealing. I forget the exact figures, but elderly people and students were the bulk of the bottom fifteen percent of the population. This of course fits with what we know of individual people’s incomes over a lifetime: low-income as a youth, rising income until retirement and a drop in income except where large capital savings have been made.
I calculated that the income per person of the top fifteen percent households was about five times that of the bottom fifteen percent per person households, after taxes and cash benefits were taken into account. Considering that students and elderly people aren’t generally earning salaries, or of they are, these would often be part-time or seasonal, British “poverty” isn’t all its cranked out to be by campaigners for class hatred.
This has intriguing consequences for ways of “tackling poverty”…
More on this subject tomorrow
Paul Marks takes an interesting look at the relevance of Britain’s bloody history
How can a civil war, in the 12th century, between rivals for the throne of England be relevant to libertarians today? Surely the war was simply as it was presented by the contemporary (pro Stephen) writers – a lot of needless bloodshed brought about by the lust for power of wicked women?
However, I think the war is of interest.
First some background. Henry I was the youngest son of William the Conqueror, he based his claim to the throne of England (after the ‘hunting accident’ death of his brother William II) on the grounds that he was the only son of William I to be born after the conquest (i.e. after William I had been accepted as King of England) and in England itself.
To some people (such as Robert of Normandy – Henry’s older brother) such a claim appeared weak. However, by a combination of diplomacy and war Henry I made good his claim.
Henry had issued a charter of liberties limiting the lawless power of the Crown (in such matters as taxation and the security of property), he appealed not just to the Norman but to the Anglo Saxon (English) population and married Matilda (formally Edith) – daughter of the King of Scotland, but also direct decedent of the Anglo Saxon Kings of England going back to Alfred the Great. → Continue reading: Stephen and Matilda
TANSTAAFL Times is dead. In early 1996 I founded a libertarian newspaper called TANSTAAFL Times. The title was based on Robert Heinlein’s coined motto: There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. To date the publication has made me a small profit (under $100). The original intention was to publish twice monthly and as material became available I would shift to a weekly format.
The first edition carried two cartoons I drew (badly) myself, a news report and an opinionated feature article. It sold for 50 pence and went like hot cakes at a Libertarian Alliance conference. I had little trouble finding subscribers, my peak being 97 and with a peak print run of 250. I doubled the price without any problems.
Despite these low circulation figures and the fact that I paid contributors, I never made a loss. I managed to sell advertising space which alone covered all my costs except postage.
So why did only 24 editions appear in six years? After all if Samizdata offered to pay $50 for a 500 word article or a cartoon, I’m sure our editors would be at risk of being crushed in the stampede of eager wannabe contributors.
I took a lot of criticism, some of it to my face, for the failure to produce regular editions of TANSTAAFL Times. True, 24 editions is six times more than the average periodical achieves in a lifetime (anything more than five editions is a sort of success). The critics didn’t help, because they failed to understand the nature of editing a periodical.
I calculated that there were 74 distinct tasks involved in producing TANSTAAFL Times properly. As owner, editor, chief columnist, sole reporter, designer and subscriptions administrator (I’m forgetting some of my job description) I estimated that the job could not properly be done in less than eight days a month. But this assumed that I had material to publish. The reason that I offered $50 per article was twofold. First I wanted to be able to refuse rubbish. Second I wanted to attract lots of libertarians with something to say.
In six years I received exactly three unsolicited articles one of which was 10,000 words long. One was published. I had one offer of cartoons, but no samples. For two years every week I begged a cartoonist (who complained that he was broke) to let me have a look at the rejected material he offered to Private Eye which they found too “politically incorrect”. I offered £20, £30, once going as high as £150. Nada. In total I managed to scrape fewer than twenty articles out of different authors, most of which refused payment. I note that Samizdata gets more contributions than that every single week.
I had intended to produce a glorious 25th edition of TANSTAAFL Times, I’ve written four articles for it. But the fact that I knew that I wouldn’t get any authors without a fight was simply a battle not worth fighting.
So I’ve decided to write this blog and acknowledge that Samizdata.net is achieving what I had hoped for, and that I’m better off, at least for the time being, as a regular contributor to this blog, than ruling my own dilapidated kingdom.
I hope in due course to put an on-line archive of the 24 editions of TANSTAAFL Times. In the meantime they can be accessed through the British Library. I like to think that TANSTAAFL Times was ahead of its time: offering a libertarian slant on current affairs. I will miss it.
It’s a done deal!
“Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia are all set to join the EU in May 2004.”
Following an intense round of Gallic shrugging, Belgian glad-handing, German tax raising, Italian bribing and Swedish introspection, Brussels has munificently agreed to don the mantle of the late Soviet Union and squat like a toad on the peoples of Eastern Europe.
My message to the ten lucky winners of ‘Economic Jeopardy’: you guys need your collective heads tested! Don’t you know that there is no destination printed on that ticket you’ve just bought to ride the Great Rattling Train of Regulation?
Still, there is hope for the Turks, left yapping like angry terriers outside as the stone gates of the Belgian Empire slammed shut in their faces:
“European leaders meeting at a landmark EU Summit in Copenhagen this week thwarted Turkish and Anglo-American hopes for early negotiations for the country’s entry into the European Union, opting instead for a review of its progress on its economy, human rights and democracy by the end of 2004.”
A review!! Oh come on, we all know what that means. Sometime towards the end of 2004 a roomful of enarques in Brussels will take some time out from their daily task of grinding out reams of pointless legislation to call up Jacques Chirac and ask him if he has changed his mind about the Saracens. ‘Non’. Review complete.
No, the real mystery is why the US appears to be so keen to stuff Turkey into the Euro-oven. Do they think it will strengthen the EU? Why would they want to do that? Have they not been keeping up with current events in the State Department?
Or, alternatively, perhaps they realise only too well that the French and Germans are never going to accede to Turkish membership and are therefore sponsoring the proposition in order to lever open a few nascent cracks?
Of course, if Washington wants to be really smart they could always drop a line to Ankara offering them membership of NAFTA. The Turkish terriers would snap at it, I’d wager. They clearly want to join the West. They want to be in the rich boys’ club. Oo-oo-oo I wanna be like you-oo-oo. So let them. In fact, Washington could really set the cat amongst the Princely pigeons by going further and offering NAFTA status to the ten soon-to-be-strangled-in-red-tape candidates above as well.
Of course the EUnuchs would be furious. Wouldn’t want that now, would we (snigger!).
My message to the Turks; we Brits are in and want out, you’re out and want in. Fancy a swap?
Which is more reprehensible? A genuine belief in socialism and Gramschian deconstruction or a willingness to pay lip service to the ideas in order to curry favour with a particular constituency?
Either way, ‘Conservative’ MP John Bercow, once regarded as a radical free-marketeer, opens his heart to the Guardianistas in an article which is, shall we say, thought-provoking:
“For too long, Conservatives have ducked expressing their belief in social justice for fear of being disbelieved or derided. This taboo must now be broken”
Translation: Don’t be silly, we were socialists all along.
“Social justice is not about stopping people from becoming too rich; it is about stopping them from becoming too poor.”
Er…can you just run that one past me again, John?
“Although Labour ministers have not achieved as much as they would like, they clearly care even if they cannot always cope.”
Attaboy, John, you give ’em hell. Gosh, Labour must be terrified of you.
“So what is needed? First, review every benefit to ensure that it is focused on the most needy. Simplicity, transparency, targeting, fairness, effectiveness – these are the criteria against which policy must be judged.”
The Tories will throw even more money at the Welfare State than Labour will.
“The government cannot be the only supplier of assistance but should work with charitable groups, churches and community leaders.”
We will nationalise all the people.
“Discrimination is inimical to social justice. Conservatives should reject it without qualification. The case for equal treatment is not about political correctness, but about human decency. Where pay inequalities between men and women result from differences in skills or qualifications, this must be addressed. However, where inequalities are down to cowboy or chauvinist employers, Tories should side unequivocally with the individual whose right to fair treatment has been infringed.”
Yes, the Tories will hunt down those evil capitalist hoodlums wherever they’re lurking and flay them alive. You thought New Labour was tough on enterprise and freedom? Hah! Wait till you see NuTories in action.
“The first step to changing this negative perception would be to declare that helping the poorest pensioners, for example, should be a vastly higher priority than cutting taxes for the middle classes.”
Oh tsch, tsch. Surely there are loads of good excuses to plunder the middle class to the point of penury and not just pensioners?
“It is vital that Tories should aspire to govern Britain as it is, and not Britain as it was. That means valuing equally rich and poor, public sector and private, urban and rural, male and female, young and old, black and white, gay and straight.”
SWEETIES FOR EVERYONE!!!
” We must share the commitment of our fellow citizens to the ideal of social justice and demonstrate to millions of doubters that Conservatives will deliver it.”
The Tories must fully embrace state socialism and convince the electorate that only the Tories will deliver it.
Pitiful, eh. Now all you non-Brit readers have some idea of what we have to put up with in this country. Is there any wonder that we sound just a little jaded from time to time?
In among blogging up as much of a storm as I could manage during the last few months, I’ve also been ploughing my way through a book, which I’ve had cause to mention here several times before, but do not apologise at all for mentioning yet again: Peter Hall’s magnificently blockbusting Cities in Civilization.
It is full of delights beyond numbering. Recently I enjoyed a thrill of patriotic pleasure when I got to the end of the chapter dealing with the birth of Rock and Roll (“The Soul of the Delta”).
The Story So Far: Rock and Roll has arisen, in Memphis, as a creative collision, fertilised by the newly active music radio, between Delta Blues and Country and Western. But the New York Los Angeles Axis of Evil (bland pop with no mention of Black People) is fighting back and threatens to submerge R+R in a tsunami of upbeat but basically middle-class woolly cardigans and Christmas albums. But, riding to the rescue, yes, it’s the British Cavalry:
Understood or not, these British groups left no doubt about their debt. Indeed, they went out of their way to record it. When the Beatles first came to America they told everyone they wanted to see Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley; one reporter asked: ‘Muddy Waters … Where’s that?’ Paul McCartney laughed and said, ‘Don’t you know who your own famous people are here?’ Eric Clapton quoted Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Bib Bill Broonzy, Robert Johnson, and Blind Boy Fuller, but above all B. B. King; Muddy Waters was discovered by white America only after the Rolling Stones took their name from one of his tunes. John Lee Hooker understood when he said: ‘It may seem corny to you, but this is true: the groups from England really started the blues rolling and getting bigger among the kids – the White kids. At one time, fifteen years back, the blues was just among the blacks – the old Black people. And this uprise started in England by the Beatles, Animals, Rolling Stones, it started everybody to digging the blues’.
I guess most Americans who care about such things knew this story already, but I didn’t realise this until now. I just thought, you know, the Brits went to America and sold a lot of tickets and a lot of records and got drunk and drugged and had a good time, playing essentially the same kind of stuff as their US rivals. That they played such an important part in the nurturing (if not the birth) of Rock and Roll, I did not know.
It’s a frightening thought that, world impactwise, this is probably about the last truly interesting thing that Britain has done. Are there any other more recent Big Things that have originated in or even been partly done in (like Rock and Roll) this little land of ours? I’d love to be told, but fear that the comments won’t add up to much. (And before Rock and Roll, you have to go back to Bomber Command.)
Our current popsters – and I know I sound like an old fart here but there you are, I am an old fart – are an embarrassment, not just musically to my Rolling Stones trained ear, but also commercially. I’m told that Britpop is doing no business at all in America. Right?
I thought Robbie Williams made a promising start, and I loved his performance of “I Hope I’m Old Before I Die” on Top of the Pops about a decade ago, but his latest single is, I think, as exciting as cold washing up water. I further understand that some Idiot Old Record Company has just paid him 4 billion quid for his next fifty albums. I believe that They Will Regret This.
On the other hand, I bought a DVD of the Rolling Stones recent “Zimmer Frame Tour” (no, the “Bridges to Babylon Tour 97-98”, which is but a blink of an eye ago in Rolling Stones time) and there was a new track on it which I hadn’t heard before, in among the old classics, called “Flip The Switch”, which I thought was great.
Have a nice weekend.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
I suspect Vladimir is more widely read in Broadcasting House (The BBC) than Hayek, Rand, Mises, Bastiat, Friedman and Popper added together
David Goldstone has discovered that ‘voodoo economics’ is alive and well and living in Broadcasting House in Portland Place, London
Yesterday I discovered that:
The UK has the second highest rate of poverty in the European Union, with 22% in poverty compared to the EU average of 15%. Only Greece is higher. The Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands, with their highly-developed welfare states, have the lowest poverty rates.
Even worse…
The number of people living below the poverty line… is twice as high as it was 20 years ago.
How can this be? Have real incomes not risen in the last 20 years? Has trickle-down failed? Is capitalism not producing more capital? Should I take up socialism?
Well, it turns out that “poverty” BBC-style means anybody with an income below 60% of the median, regardless of the fact the purchasing power of that median has been almost constantly rising. How does the fact some people get richer (in fact most people over the last 20 years) actually make other people somehow poorer?
David Goldstone
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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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