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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Tony Millard writes in from Tuscany with an excellent perspective on the ‘war’ on drugs.
It was refreshing to hear on Radio 4 last night that Mo Mowlam taps my e-mails to Libertarian Samizdata as I had written this on Saturday (she has called for drug legalisation). Perhaps Samizdata should invite her to submit a webwaffle blog of her own.
Raising the tax burden is about the redistribution of wealth – making drugs illegal has been about the redistribution of misery as a Bristol police report on crack cocaine crime-wave demonstrates. The process of criminalisation has not reduced demand but merely shifted the social cost from the addicts (in illness and premature deaths) to the law-abiding masses whose assets are appropriated, often violently and in public, by such users to pay for the inflated cost of their cravings. Such inflation of cost is directly proportional to the efforts of state law enforcement agencies. Freeing and legalising all drugs would shift the bulk of the misery burden back to its ‘beneficiaries’ and originators – the drug users.
Also, imposing a tax on the ‘product’ according to the true cost of the care of addicts would have two benefits – it would bring the distribution and quality control in from the shadows and deal a death blow to the underground drug economy with the terrorism and horror it fuels. (Guess what paid for the funding of September 11th!). Legalisation would be tempered with strictly enforced (and enforceable) rules relating to where the products can be taken and where they cannot. Whether we like it or not, this is informally already the case in England, Lambeth in South London being a case in point. Such measures would provide a relief for the majority, a safer, harassment-free environment for the minority, and a sweeping reduction in crime generally just in time for Mr Blair’s self-imposed September deadline. Over to you Tony.
Tony Millard (Tuscany, Italy)
iFeminists.com reports that the Queensland state government in Australia has given license to five legal brothels, with three more pending. Licensing fees and operating revenues from these facilities will go to the government. At the same time, the government there has aggressively cracked down on unlicensed brothels (aka “competition”) — 72 unlicensed houses of ill repute have been shut down since January of 2001.
“We take a tough approach to illegal prostitution while at the same time provide strict laws to ensure health and safety standards within the legal industry,” says Queensland Premier Peter Beattie. Of course, the very fact that prostitution (outside these few licensed facilities) is illegal is what creates health and safety problems. If someone sells you a defective car, you can sue to get a new car; but if an illegal brothel operator lies to a client about the health of one of the workers, you can’t get the law involved without incriminating yourself. Similar problems arise in the illegal drug trade, obviously.
I suppose that the Aussies in Queensland are to be applauded for partially legalizing prostitution; but of course they are only doing it because they found a way to make money from it. (Likewise, governments generate billions of dollars from lotteries, but would prosecute the exact same lottery system in the private sector as a “numbers racket.”) The unanswered question remains: why do certain activities carry so much moral baggage that only the government may participate?
Sometimes, you can gain amazing insight into a person’s whole mentality from merely a simple phrase, a snatch of conversation or a casual comment. A little crack in the curtain can allow you to peer through and shudder at the desolation that lies beyond.
I have had such an experience while perusing the website belonging to those purveyors of fine aluminium millinery antiwar.com. The thing that caught my eye was a headline which reads: “Latest US Menace to Okinawa: Falling Jet Parts”
For a moment I did a double-take. Was I reading that correctly? Yes, I was. I clicked on the link to find this prosaic bit of reportage concerning some bits which fell off a US military jet whilst it flew over Okinawa. This monstrous ‘war crime’ resulted in:
“…no injuries or damage and said the incidents posed no threat to the local community.”
Oh the inhumanity! Oh the oppression! How long can the poor Okinawans be expected to put up with being ‘menaced’ in this way? Weep, WEEP, for Okinawa!!
On the other hand, don’t bother. I may be no expert on aviation but even I know that bits periodically fall from all flying aircraft and I think it is safe to say that it is one of the less worrisome perils of modernity for most normal people. Not so the antiwarriors. No, for them it is a heinous act of US imperialist aggression. I suppose that it easy to do provided you have already settled in your own mind that the USA cannot but be wrongful (despite all the demonstrable evidence to the contrary).
Much of the thrust and complaint of the antiwarriors is directed at the extent to which traditional civil liberties in the USA have been traduced. In this, their complaint is meritorious and noble but I cannot help wondering if they are actually a part of the problem and not the solution. In order to win arguments about civil liberties (or anything else for that matter) the first requirement is to be taken seriously by serious people. But when your outlook is so jaundiced that you brazenly attempt to construe some minor workaday incident as murderous conspiracy then you can only be taken for a crank. Cranks do not help good causes; they pollute them by sheer dint of their crankiness.
Small wonder then that the antiwarriors are left to plough the lonely furrow of providing intellectual succour to vile thugocracies and tinpot demagogues. Like them, the antiwarriors have trapped themselves in a straightjacket of hate and crippled their own faculties with delusions of persecution.
Theodore Dalrymple, a prison doctor, has written a remarkable article in the Sunday Telegraph called A world where no one is to blame:
Replying to the suggestion that he and his brother were gangsters who terrified people, he said: “Gang culture is nothing like that. It’s just youths. A group of youths growing up on the estate.” The implication here is not only that no one has a right to criticise gang “culture”, because all cultures are equal and he had done only what every other person in his circumstances had done. Of personal responsibility, not so much as a squeak: he was Pavlov’s dog, responding not so much to a bell as to a Peckham housing estate.
I can only speculate why local people do not start simply banding together and applying polycentric law of their own to deal with such problems, given that the state has not only failed to apply its law but is in fact the root cause of the problem in the first place.
Having read the article based on the observations of Marian Tupy it has occured to me that Jean-Marie Le Pen could be the next President of France.
Now before anybody goes getting their shorts in a knot, please note that I said ‘could’ not ‘will’ because Marian reminds us that an alarmingly high percentage of the electorate voted not just for Le Pen or his fellow traveller Bruno Megret, but also for Soviet-worshipping loop-de-loos like Jean-Pierre Chevenement and Arlette Legullier. Altogther, more than 30% of those who voted, voted for totalitarian government.
It is widely assumed in the press and elsewhere that the hard left will throw its weight and numbers behind Jacques Chirac out of disgust at Le Pen but Marian points out that this is a dangerously flawed assumption. In fact, they are just as likely to throw in their lot with Le Pen and, if they do, then Chirac is struggling.
It is equally assumed that the 28% or so who failed to turn out will turn out this time for fear of a Le Pen victory. But, again, this could be quite wrong. What if a lot of those abstainers are Le Pen sympathisers who failed to register their vote because they felt that he had no chance of winning? Now that he does have a chance, will then weigh-in? If they do, then Le Pen will win.
Of course, this is all just speculation and, on balance, the odds probably do favour Chirac but I think it unwise to regard his victory as a foregone conclusion, because it isn’t.
The epidemic spread of Britblogging is definitely this weekend’s Britblogging story. Perry says he doesn’t want too much blogging about blogging, because, well, even to explain would be to break the rule, nevertheless …
… posted on the Libertarian Alliance Forum at 4.54 pm today, by long time Libertarian Alliance supporter David Farrer: “My new blog is now up and running.”
The first posting was last Wednesday, thus:
Welcome to this new blog. The title Freedom and Whisky links the two themes of this blog: libertarianism and Scotland. The libertarianism will, however, sometimes extend beyond events in Scotland and I shall also be covering non-political news of interest to me north of the border. I have therefore included links to a variety of Scottish sites which I often use.
On Constable Potter’s face was that hard, keen look which comes into the faces of policemen when they intend to do their duty pitilessly and crush a criminal like a snake beneath the heel. It was the look which Constable Potter’s face wore when he was waiting beneath a tree to apprehend a small boy who was up in its branches stealing apples, the merciless expression that turned to flint when he called at a house to serve a summons on somebody for moving pigs without a permit.
-P.G.Wodehouse (Uncle Dynamite, 1948, quoted in Wodehouse Nuggets, selected by Richard Usborne, 1983)
Last Friday was the last Friday of the month, and that meant a meeting at my place. Libertarian Samizdata supremo Perry de Havilland talked about blogging, and many of those present were either blog bosses (Perry, Patrick Crozier of UK Transport, Andrew Dodge of Dodgeblog) or blog contributors (such as Samizdatans Tom Burroughes, David Carr and me).
The dark horse in the herd was Chris Cooper. He has written a number of things for the Libertarian Alliance over the years. One of my favorites of his was the first Personal Perspectives piece we ever published called Mere Anarchy, and he was writing about why Free Market Broadcasting would be a good idea long before most people realised that such a thing was possible, let along desirable. But he has been too busy working, raising a family, etc., to do as much libertarian writing since then as we’d all have liked. An ideal blogger, in other words. So I was especially glad when he showed up on Friday. And, it turns out that for the last month Chris Cooper has been doing Chris Cooper’s Blog (CCB from now on). Having glanced through CCB in amazement on Friday night, I gave it a proper read on Saturday.
Perry made a distinction in his talk between “mezines” and “pundit” blogs. CCB, rather like Natalie Solent‘s Blog, looks to be both. Like Natalie, Chris is an uncompromising libertarian but he doesn’t hit you over the head with it all the time. And when he does it can take a few seconds to register, such a tabby cat does he usually seem, what with writing about other things besides libertarianism.
You’ll probably need a longer attention span for CCB than for your average blog. It’s more like a nineteenth century gentleman’s diary, kept as much for its author’s pleasure, now and in later decades, as for anyone else’s benefit. If you want to read CCB over Chris’ shoulder you’re very welcome, but he’s not begging. But just like those nineteenth century gentleman he can write, I promise you.
CCB has not so far been strong on links, but this may merely be because Chris has yet to master the technicalities of that. I know the feeling. If that’s so, the fact that Patrick Crozier was deep into technical confabulation with Chris over my computer on Friday night could prove significant. In particular, CCB‘s left hand bit, now decidedly blank, should soon come alive.
I shan’t organise my life around Chris Cooper’s Blog, not yet. But I will be giving it a look every few days.
You know those “what I’ve always said” things, which actually thousands of others have been saying for even longer. Well I’ve always said that we, the forces of enlightenment, the good guys, need to get our hands on more stories where the gun hasn’t been in evil hands and done harm, but in good hands and done good. And when we do get our hands on such stories we should spread them in all directions.
So here is just such a story (“Woman shoots, kills armed intruder in West Seattle”) from the Seattle Times, picked up by a very promising blogger fellow named Glenn Reynolds, on a little thing he calls Instapundit. This Reynolds chappie has a definite future as a blogger. The Instapundit hit rate will now explode …
Deputies sitting in the Russian Duma are proposing a law that would re-criminalise homosexuality.
However, according to the BBC:
“At a time when President Putin is concerned about Russia’s image abroad, it is inconceivable that the proposed gay ban could be put on the statute book.
Yes, well, I do recall that it was the same BBC that assured everyone that Jean-Marie Le Pen had not a cat in hell’s chance of getting past the first round of the French presidential elections.
Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth, socialism the equal distribution of misery
-W.S.Churchill
Marian Tupy of St Andrews Liberty Club has some observation about the reality of just who are Jean-Marie Le Pen’s supporters in France
Hitler used to say that Communists make the best Nazis. This was true in Nazi Germany where many Nazis including Hitler, flirted with Communism when they were young. There is a little known photo of Hitler in the procession carrying the coffin of a deceased Communist leader and wearing Communist insignia. Similarly, Ribbentrop reported from Moscow where he signed the pact of Russo-German non-aggression (known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact) that he felt very much at home. Same is true of a little French town of Douai, close to Lille, where the Communists have been traditionally in charge and where Le Pen did spectacularly well.
The town has been a subject to the recent Channel 4 report, were the reporter wondered why was it that the same people who elected Communists could also elect Le Pen. To this journalist, the two were polar opposites. Clearly, he has not read his Mein Kampf and knows little of philosophy and history. Communism and Fascism/Nazism appeal to the same mind set, which believes that the state is there to provide all the answers to life’s problems – especially job security. This was exemplified by the answers, which many of the questioned Le Pen supporters provided. “Foreigners are taking our jobs” was the most usual of responses. “If Le Pen had power for 6 months, France would change beyond recognition” said others. Clearly, if one believes that the state can provide a good life, then it does not matter whether it is the Communists or the Fascists who are in charge. What matters is who promises more and who seems more plausible to deliver the results.
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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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