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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Here are three articles I saw over the last couple of days, one about Canada, one about the UK, and one about Ireland.
Jordan Peterson writing in the Telegraph:
As a professional, practicing clinical psychologist, I never thought I would fall foul of Canada’s increasingly censorial state. Yet, like so many others – including teachers, nurses, and other professionals – that is precisely what has happened. In my case, a court has upheld an order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that I undergo social media training or lose my licence to practice a profession I have served
…continue Free speech and privacy are under siege across the Anglosphere
But grinding poverty is, so far as ministers are concerned, a price worth paying for the cult of net zero. Few independent experts pretend that either solar power or wind power are remotely adequate for the needs of heating and powering a country of approaching 70 million people. We are facing this serious crisis because of the demented opposition to nuclear power that has taken root in the last 20 years – a bacillus that entered the Conservative Party’s bloodstream with the leadership of Dave Cameron – and a chronic determination to make promises about improving our environmental record that
…continue Samizdata quote of the day – the cult of net zero
And so something as potentially useful as AI has become a means for politicians and experts to express their fatalistic worldview. It is a self-fulfilling tragedy. AI could enable society to go beyond its perceived limits. Yet our expert doomsayers seem intent on keeping us within those limits.
The good news is that none of this is inevitable. We can retain a belief in human potential. We can resist the narrative that portrays us as objects, living at the mercy of the things we have created. And if we do so, it is conceivable that we may, one day, develop
…continue Samizdata quote of the day – AI is just the latest ‘scare’
When you lose the big match, try to get the result declared void and run the match again. If you can’t get a rematch, try another game entirely and say that’s the one that matters.
“Citizens’ juries can help fix democracy”, writes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times.
Elections are necessary. But unbridled majoritarianism is a disaster. A successful liberal democracy requires constraining institutions: independent oversight over elections, an independent judiciary and an independent bureaucracy. But are they enough? No.
Thus far, I agree with him. For a moment I thought he was going to defend the rights
…continue The real test is tiddlywinks
“‘In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight’: China is calling in loans to dozens of countries from Pakistan to Kenya”
– Bernard Condon and the Associated Press in a major article for Fortune magazine.
Here are some excerpts from the article that struck me:
In the past under such circumstances [debtor countries being unable to make interest payments], big government lenders such as the U.S., Japan and France would work out deals to forgive some debt, with each lender disclosing clearly what they were owed and on what terms so no one would feel cheated.
…continue China calls in the loans
England came fourth out of the 43 countries that tested children of the same age in the Progress International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), announces the government. Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, England. Yes, dear highly literate Samizdata readers, your own reading skills have not failed you. English schoolchildren are the fourth best readers in the world and the best in Western Europe.
Pinching myself, I offer my sincere congratulations to England’s teachers and to the Department of Education, in particular Nick Gibb MP, the Minister of State for Schools. Mr Gibb is serving the third of three non-contiguous stints in this
…continue English children ranked fourth in international reading test. Yes, really.
Any significant public health threat from Covid was over in the early part of 2021, as my colleague and I have previously argued. However the administrative classes – politicians, MSM, ‘public health experts’ and so on – kept the charade going for another two years to serve their various agenda-driven purposes.
Now, though, most of these people have decided that it is expedient for the insanity to be over politically. As usual, the details we discuss in this article relate to the UK, but it is a similar story across the western world. So why now?
The disastrous fallout has
…continue Samizdata quote of the day – a journey of a thousand miles
If anything, our modern puritans are worse. At least the stiff folk of the 17th century believed reducing bodily pleasure would help expand the spirit, get one closer to God. The new puritans offer no such spiritual transcendence in return for our curbing of our blowouts – only the bovine payback of a slightly smaller waistline.
We eat around 6,000 calories on Christmas Day, disgusted experts say. We can do better than that. Start with a Buck’s Fizz breakfast; don’t scrimp on the Christmas-tree chocs; make brunch a sozzled, carb-heavy mix of your first beer and some Christmas panettone; everything
…continue God rest ye Merry Gentlemen
‘Democracy dies in darkness’ is on the masthead of the Washington Post. They say it as if it is their fear, but they behave as if it is their hope (for example, when hiding the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop). One thing it isn’t (yet) is literal fact. Despite the efforts of many, there’s still enough light around that anyone who chooses to look can see some of what is happening to democracy in the US today.
PART I: let’s examine an example – Arizona.
PAST PERFORMANCE …
The usual suspects spun the Arizona-State-Senate-mandated audit of the 2020 election and
…continue Dying in the light
Why leave Albania – parts of which are beautiful – for an unprepossessing bedsit in a dispiriting London borough? The experts I sounded out, friends and a friend of a friend, interestingly don’t focus primarily on the economy to explain the exodus – because it really is an exodus of the younger generation. Rather, it’s to do with Albania being a failed state: the absence of the rule of law, the sense that the place is being run by a corrupt coterie for its own benefit, the hopelessness about the prospects for change, the narco-economy. One recent paper put the
…continue Samizdata quote of the day – Albanian edition
Today’s Guardian warns:
Twitter’s mass layoffs, days before US midterms, could be a misinformation disaster
Internal chaos at the company – and the decimation of its staff – has created ideal conditions for falsehoods and hateful content.
The mass layoffs at Twitter, that diminished several teams, including staff on the company’s safety and misinformation teams, could spell disaster during the US midterms elections next week, experts have warned.
What would the woke do without experts – for example Paul Barrett, described as “an expert in disinformation and fake news at New York University”. I’m sure he’s very committed to it,
…continue Free speech on Twitter: my hopes, their fears (Samizdata quotes of today’s Guardian and yesterday’s Independent)
Mr Sunak…..explained how the minutes from Sage meetngs were edited so that dissenting voices were not included in the final draft.
(Report from the Daily Telegraph.)
In other words, the committee – Sage – that was created by the government to oversee COVID-19 policy deliberately suppressed views from one of the most important departments of state – The Treasury – because it did not go with the lockdown narrative.
I am not a particular fan of former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, one of the two senior figures running for leadership of the Conservative Party. We have
…continue Now he tell us
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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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