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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Free marketeers in the U.S. are currently arguing in convincing terms that taxes on equity dividend payments should be scrapped. This, they argue, would end many of the pressures to inflate corporate accounts and the kind of shenanigans currently roiling the financial markets around the world. It is an interesting point, and made in great detail by blogger and economics writer Brink Lindsey.
Lindsey points out that the current problems in the financial system are a result of government intervention, such as restrictions on hostile takeovers, rather than laissez faire. Hostile takeovers, as he explains, actually keep management on their toes and can prevent, rather than cause, the kind of abuses that happened at Enron.
So perhaps we need more Gordon Gekkos and fewer Harvey Pitt’s (head of the U.S. SEC). Not an argument one is likely to read in the New York Times.
In case anyone who has been observing the Tory Party in Britain has not noticed, they have not been doing very well for rather a long time now. In spite of years of Tony Blair’s less that glorious ‘precedency’, the Conservatives are still trailing a very distant second place in England and are more of less nonexistent in Scotland, riven everywhere by factions fighting over control of the carcass of the Party and quite bereft of any distinctly identifiable ‘Tory’ ideology. In fact there is not even any sign of an intellectual or political ‘wave of the future’ starting to build up… not even a ‘ripple of the future’ really.
Now we are being told by Norman Tebbit, the Dr. Harold Shipman of British politics, that what the Tory Party really needs is a purge of any ‘libertarians’ (i.e. anyone who likes non-white sportsmen or dislikes the state telling them what to do with their genitals or actually has anything resembling a new idea).
Of course Tebbit has quite a lot of experience masterminding Tory party purges. He shut down the Federation of Conservative Students in 1987, thereby guaranteeing the Conservative Party would become an ideology-free zone from then onwards.
Funny how the party has been in decline ever since it eradicated its most radical and highly motivated roots. They don’t call it ‘The Stupid Party’ for nothing.
Although Prague has been hit hard by the worst flooding of the Vltava in a century, at least there has been some good news for the despondent staff at Prague’s zoo. After having been forced to put down several highly prized large animals when it became clear they could not be moved to higher ground in time to avoid drowning, returning zoo employees were astonished to discover Slavek, an 18 year old hippo, waiting for them on the second floor of a zoo building in an exceedingly bad mood.
 Don’t just stand there gawping, feed me, damn it!
How else does one explain this?
Things in Zimbabwe are going from worse to even worse than that and I think it is safe to assume that Robert Mugabe is really not kidding around. Zimbabwe surely must qualify as Evil Central combining marxist year-zero policy with a highly illiberal dose of ethnic cleansing. Yummy!
White farmers are now being arrested for defying Chairman Mugabe’s edict and, in due course, they will either be expelled or killed. Mugabe has had, to all intents and purposes, the green light from the Tranzis who have been far too pre-occupied with bringing down the Great Satan (USA) and Little Satan (Israel) to waste any valuable hectoring time with the likes of Brother Mugabe whose odds of seeing the inside of the Hague are considerably longer than my odds of seeing the inside of Gwyneth Paltrow’s bedchamber.
Still, the Tranzis might live to regret it. Comrade Mugabe is in the process of setting a precedent and precedents tend to get followed. That’s why they’re called precedents. Trouble is, a whole load of other people might live to regret it as well.
Although it has been linked to elsewhere in the blogosphere, I feel that this essay by John Fonte is simply too important to pass without mention here.
It’s a long essay but far more than worth it. For me, it was more like a gripping novel; once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. It isn’t just good, it’s exciting because a lot of us have known for some time that there was something wrong in the world but it was difficult to pin down and put our fingers on. It was something that has no face and no name. Like fog it swirled all around us but not being corporeal we lashed out fiercely in all directions, landing blows on nothing. It was like an itch we could never scratch.
John Fonte has done us all a service by running his nails deliciously down that spot and we will hear more of him and, more importantly, much more of the ‘Transnational Progressives’ (“Tranzis”) he so graphically disects.
You don’t need a government to tell you when you’ve gone too far. There’s no greater deterrent for a comedian than stone silence.
– Mike Myers
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Twenty-five years after his death people all over the world are gathering to celebrate the life of Elvis Presley. And when I say the world, I mean the world. Not just all over the USA but in Britain, Germany, Holland, Japan and even Malaysia.
Elvis Presley is bigger, more popular and more influential now than he was even when he was still alive. He is a global phenomenon that shows absolutely no signs of waning. His memory and his music continues to proselytize across borders and generations.
Elvis was so much more than a great rock ‘n’ roll singer. He was dirt-poor red-necked farm boy who earned fame and fabulous wealth by exploitation of his raging talent. He was all about looking good, living fast, having fun, driving gas-guzzling cars, eating hamburgers the size of cathedrals, wallowing in pretty girls and not letting anybody tread on his blue-suede shoes. His consumption was not merely conspicuous it was outrageous.
In a story linked to the one above, Chinese Elvis Impersonator Paul Hyu says:
He has gone down in Far East culture less as a rock star, and more as an icon of the West presented to them in a stage of their development.
For so many academics and ‘intellectuals’, Elvis represents everything that is crass and vulgar but for millions of other humbler folk he is the American Dream made flesh. It is a dream that are buying into as they gather together in every corner of the planet to shake, rattle, roll, jive and jitterbug.
Whether they realise it or not, Elvis fans are engaged in a glorious political act.
The King lives on.
…was that a large proportion of the Samizdata Team were distracted by Antoine Clarke’s birthday party in London!
Antoine blows his cork!
Adriana and Brian look on as David Carr
does his mushroom cloud impersonation
A man in New York City is suing McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s and KFC, saying they have made him fat. He is also suing Victoria Secret for making him play with himself.
– Jay Leno
August 17, on this day in 1795 the slave known only as Tula and his friend Bastian Karpata started a violent revolt against their oppressors.
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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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