Great Moments in Capitalist History: on this day in 1824 J. W. Goodrich introduced rubber galoshes to the public.
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I note a state of mind which I have detected in myself, and wonder if any others share it? Once Upon A Time, I was a happy libertarian. I knew only about a dozen other libertarians at all well and I was one of the cleverest and most dedicatedly productive of them. The rest of my little world consisted of the Great Unenlightened, the Statist Masses, all of whom I outranked. I knew of other libertarians, in far away countries of which I knew little such as America, but they didn’t loom large in my mind. Occasionally they sent us little bits of writing through the post, but nothing impressive enough to threaten my sense of my own libertarian magnificence. I and my little gang of friends, we few, we happy few, were shining the torch of liberty in little England. I thrashed out Libertarian Alliance pamphlets, secure in my own libertarian splendour. I was a Big Fish in a Small Pond. Then came the Internet. Suddenly I am becoming acquainted on a daily basis with the clever – often very clever – thoughts of as many dozen libertarians as I can make myself attend to. Worse, Little England no longer needs me to tell it about libertarianism, for it too can plug into the great Magic Filing Cabinet in the Sky, the Great Conversation Machine. In such a world, does my little voice, my little computer keyboard, count for anything? What do my Libertarian Alliance pamphlets signify, when set beside the thousands upon thousands of other libertarian writings out there? I still crank out Libertarian Alliance pamphlets, because it’s what I do. It’s what I am. But what I now am is a Small Fish in a Big Pond. I feel melancholy. This experience is not confined to libertarians. I am suffering from a universal syndrome caused by better global electronic communications. (I’ve even read a book about this, by, I think, someone called Oliver James.) Because of daily TV broadcasts of the best club and international football matches in the world (which he knows others are watching even if he can’t bear to watch such things himself), a man who was happy when thinking of himself as the second best footballer in Doncaster, is now forced to contemplate the fact that he is the 9,673rd best footballer in the world – a depressing demotion indeed. Ditto in every other area of human endeavour. It sounds to me as if most of my fellow bloggists here at Samizdata found their first voices, so to speak, as contributors to the Great Global Conversation, and are making steady, satisfying progress up the relevant, if huge, pecking order. “Last week I was the 934th best libertarian” (or however exactly they classify themselves). “Now I’m the 919th best. Next year, if I keep it up, I’ll make it below 900”, etc. I’m talking subjective experience here and my guess numbers are just that, pure guesses. I am aware of no rating system for libertarian writers and activists of this kind, of the sort which now says that Sachin Tendulkar of India – for I think it is he – is the now the best test match (i.e. international cricket) batsman in the world (thereby depressing all other batsmen everywhere). Thus, the other bloggists do not feel melancholy. But then again, maybe if you are starting out at the bottom of the global libertarian pecking order, the prospect of that long trudge from 900 to a probably peak of, I don’t know, about 300, and then back down to 1,000 followed by oblivion, depresses them too. Serious confessions of unhappiness are not cool, coming from libertarians, and especially not if the cause of the unhappiness is something so triumphantly capitalist as modern electronic communications. Trivial snarlings about the annoyances of the latest version of Windows or non-trivial snarlings about politicians and their many misdeeds, yes, fine. But confessions like this one cross some kind of line. Which of course is why I choose to write thus. Good writers regularly cross such lines, and I’m still bashing on, trying to write well. So don’t worry everyone, everyone who cares that is to say. My confession is serious, but the unhappiness I confess to is not overwhelmingly serious. I’m not talking suicide here. I’ll soldier on, and all the better if this piece of confessional therapy does its job and helps to reconcile me to my new (small) place in my new (big) world. But, does anyone else out there know what I’m talking about? February 4th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 The dependably interesting John Weidner at Random Jottings has a wonderful article on the daddy of all bloggers.
If you want to know who this mystery proto-blogger was, you will just have to go take a look at John’s article. February 4th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Ever heard the secret to boiling a frog? Throw the frog in a pot of boiling water, and he jumps right out. But, put him in cooler water, and slowly heat it up, and he’ll stay in until he’s cooked. People, we are almost well done! [Yes, we know it is an urban legend but it is still a great slogan! A tip of the kevlar battlebowler to Rajat Datta. Ribbit.] February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
But certainly not a site for the weak! The curiously named Rantburg is a tightly focused geopolitical warblog with a robustly anti-idiotarian view of things. I do not always agree with Fred Pruitt’s particular spin, though I frequently do, but it is nevertheless a good and and often quite detailed read. He has a fine grasp of the regional players about which he writes (unlike a few blogs I could mention) and he understand real-world political dynamics (unlike a few other blogs I could mention). Visit daily. February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Our very own Tom Burroughs has long complained to me about the consistently venal and ugly way in which businessfolk are portrayed in TV drama. His highly meritorious complaint is picked up and expanded upon by Rand Simberg Having spent a few years of my life as a jobbing scriptwriter, I have moved amongst these people and, from my experience, the anti-capitalist theme of much of their writing is no surprise given their almost universal woolly socialist outlook. I know that, in Britain at least, this is so overwhelmingly the prevailing paradigm that it is, to all intents and purposes, a hegemony I have tried to examine the reasons for this and the one that I find most compelling is that their socialism is a reflection of their life experience. Most of those who spend their lives pursuing artistic success will do so fruitlessly. Very, very few make it and, even those that do, have spent years in struggle and poverty. The cliche of the artist starving in a garrett is a cliche because it is largely true. The simple, seemingly eternal, truth is that there are way too many people wanting to earn their living from artistic endeavour than the market can viably support and possessing talent guarantees nothing Yet, there is no paucity of effort on their part. A writer may spend years of his or her life pouring their heart and soul into a magnum opus that nobody wants to publish or buy. Nor are they lacking in cognitive faculties. Most writers are highly learned and articulate and many feel that, for that alone, they should be rewarded in some way but are not. It is easy to imagine just how rudely offensive they find it when a monosyllabic, uncouth market trader can go off to the City of London to ply his share-dealing skills and earn more money in a month than most artists will earn in any decade of their lives That is what they find so wrong about capitalism: its indifference. It cares not a jot for sincerity and effort and craft and endows its riches upon those who fulfil the often flimsy and evanescent wishes of consumers. The dedicated artist whose fingers have bled in learning to play Shostakovich on his cello, but can’t afford to give up his day job, knows that something needs changing when Gerri ‘Spice Girl’ Halliwell (who gave consumers what they want, what they really, really want) builds another palatial home on the Cote D’Azur. It’s all so unfair Just how much more attractive to any writer or artist is the warm embrace of socialism with it labour theory of value, its promise to support and succour artists regardless of their output, to banish harsh wordly concerns of homelessness and unemployment and build a society based on status rather than contract There are, of course, exceptions. There are always exceptions but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. And, for sure, there may be other factors involved, most notably good, old fashioned peer pressure. Success as a writer depends upon acceptance by the notoriously cliquey world of the Literatti and either you lockstep or step out (I stepped out) But it is my view that, lying behind all of it, is the almost unchallengeable belief that Mistress Capitalism is cruel, capricious and immoral and so are those who feed at her breast February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
An article in the Sierra Times describes a Canada sharply at variance with what I had thought existed.
Well that certainly is one hell of a majority! But call me cynical if you like: talk is cheap… except for political talk, which is usually very expensive indeed. But then when I read what the BC Liberals have actually started doing, I almost fell off my chair! Way to go! Read the Scott Carpenter article and be amazed yourself. Methinks I shall be visiting the Sierra Times and the various Canadian blog sites more often to see what is in the air over there.  February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
 See how eager people are to demand that they have a right to your money? Polish farmers are upset because they are not going to get to steal tax money from the rest of Europe the moment they join the European Union. They will have to wait until 2013 to join the undead legions of European subsidy vampires.
Yes! It would be wonderful if that happened and Poland did not sign away its future. Of course if the farmers do indeed scupper Polish EU membership, they will be doing so for all the wrong reasons but as anyone who has lived through a war will tell you, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Whilst nothing the EU does ever surprises me, it often amazes me that even in the USA the farmers can rob the rest of the country not only in terms of subsidies but in terms of artificially inflated prices. How can the ‘left’ who claim to have the interests of the common people at heart accept that food should be made more expensive by government action? For rich and bourgeoise people, the cost of food as a proportion of their wealth is utterly trivial. Yet for the poor, that is obviously not the case and so various forms of state assistance becomes important to avoid going short of food. In a democratic nation or super-nation, this naturally produces a dependent class who will always vote for the people who provide that state assistance, even though in reality those self same people are actually the ones responsible for the food being so expensive in the first place. The vampire bites and produces a mindless legion of bloodsucking followers. About this funny vampire picture: I think I might have gone out with this guy a few years ago. I find this on Communist Vampires website that Perry mentioned in earlier posting.  February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
I have always felt second to none in my detestation of former NY mayor Ed Koch, who was for me the unalloyed stereotype of pragmatic municipal amorality. And yet, I found the following Ed Koch quote on the sublimely named Communist Vampires Newswire regarding the WTC twin towers:
Absolutely true. Even better would be to build the largest building(s) in the world. To keep the site as some maudlin garden of remembrance would be a colossal mistake. We must indeed remember the fallen but let us also remember that they fell engaged in World Trade and in doing so made the world a better place more than any ten NGO’s you might care to mention. February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Have you ever been more than a little aggravated by the snotty moral superiority of vegetarians? I know I have. I also know that I somewhat dismayed by growth in popularity of this fetish, especially among women. These days I cannot find a single restaurant in London that doesn’t have a ‘Vegetarian Section’ on the menu. This shouldn’t be a political issue, merely a matter of personal preference. But, while a vegan society remains the aim of the Animal Rights movement, it is a political issue. Thus far, in defence of my firmly carnivourous ways, I have always used the freedom of choice arguments against the accusations that I am promoting cruelty to animals, harming the planet and ruining my health (although why these people should concern themselves with my well-being is a mystery to me). However, thanks to anthropology there is another, and better, rebuttal available. Thanks to recent discoveries about the early history of our species we have learned of the contrasting fates of two different but concurrent sub-species of early hominid; Robust Man (Australopithicus robustus) and Gracile Man (Australopithecus garhi). Robust Man was a vegetarian. We know this because of the extraordinarily prominent sagittal crest found on its skull. This crest could only have evolved in order to provide an anchor for enormous jaw muscles of the kind required for rumination. That, coupled with large, flat teeth, lead anthropologists to the conclusion that Robust Man ate roots, tubers and plants. Gracile Man remains, on the other hand, consist of a smooth skull and lots of sharp teeth. He was a carnivore. The trouble with eating vegetables is that they are difficult to digest and require a large gut in order to do so. Meat, however, is easy to digest. So Robust’s metabolic energy went into the development of his huge gut and Gracile’s metabolic energy went into the development of his brain. As a result, Gracile went from picking the marrow out of bones to develop hunting skills and eventually become us while poor retarded old Robust wallowed around on the floor of the forest and farted himself into oblivion. So, the next time somebody tells you that meat is murder, you can reply yes, but vegetables are suicide.  February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
I’ve been catching up on my essential reading this evening – or rather this AM – and was annoyed to the point of blogging by a recent DOD news briefing. The fantasy mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo seemed to be the only item on the press agenda that day. I, too, have a question about the prisoners’ treatment. One that is not being sufficiently addressed. One I suspect resonates with others from the same planet as I, ie normal people.
I want assurances these people will never, ever again have the freedom and opportunity to crash an airplane into a skyscraper, release a bio-agent, smuggle radiological weapons, poison a cities water supply, machine gun a crowd, blow up an embassy or nuke Chicago and LA. I’m really not much interested in whether they’re getting the proper sun block in their Club Gitmo tanning butter. These prisoners are excessively dangerous men. They are trained, drilled, lethal killers… every one of them. They will seek death for the opportunity to take some of us with them. No normal prison or prison guards will be capable of holding them. If it meant 50 of them had to die so one could grab a soldier’s weapon, they would do so. They will quietly wait 3,5,10 years for a guard to slip, to forget what sort of people they are, to become complacent. They will revolt and kill and revolt and kill again until there are none of them left. So exactly how the hell are we going to neutralize these arseholes? That’s the kind of investigative journalism I wish I were seeing. I still prefer baseballs in Yankee stadium, but if push comes to shove I’ll settle for a good ol’ fashioned necktie party à la Nuremberg. February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
Over on National Review On-line, sometimes inspired and sometimes confused Jonah Goldberg describes the new NRO blog Corner for those unfamiliar with the format:
Someone needs to spank that boy with a rolled up copy of National Review and set him straight on a few things: Firstly “Corner” is not “very much like a blog”… it is a blog. Secondly, it is bad form not to link to Andrew Sullivan and Instapundit if you are going to mention them. We are not competitors, Jonah, we are actually a resource for each other and “Corner” is no different. Unlike dead tree media, which is chasing the same dollar, cross links actually feed readers at the people we comment on and visa versa. In fact, the more of us there are and the more cross links there are, the more readers we all get by virtue of the increased content and broader catchment… people who might not be seen dead with a copy of NR or ever think of typing www.nationalreview.com (i.e. quite a few libertarians) might nevertheless follow a link they find here to NRO just to see what we are talking about, which is surely what NRO would want. Bitching aside, “Corner” is actually quite a fun blog. We are glad they liked our multi-contributor format so much that they copied it. It is even nicer to know that when Jonah thinks about blogs, he thinks about sex. I’d like to think we can take credit for that too.  We are of course well aware that the cognoscenti like Jonah only come to Samizdata for Natalija’s “go for the throat” articles. February 3rd, 2002 | Comments are closed
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