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]
“The legitimacy of altering social institutions to achieve greater equality of material condition is, though often assumed, rarely argued for. Writers note than in a given country the wealthiest n percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth, and the poorest n percent hold less; that to get to the wealth of the top n percent from the poorest, one must look at the bottom p per cent (where p is greater than n) and so forth. They then proceed immediately to discuss how this might be altered. On the entitlement conception of justice in holdings, one cannot decide whether the state must do something to alter the situation merely by looking at the distributional profile or at facts such as these. It depends upon how the distribution came about.” (page 232)
I wonder if any of the leaders of today’s political parties in the UK have read it, still less understood the profound way that the late Harvard professor eviscerated egalitarian “patterned” ideas of justice more incisively than arguably anyone else, before or since. Somehow, I doubt they have. In this day and age of talk about wealth taxes and other horrors, Nozick is well worth reading again.
There’s a fascinating case study to be made of how in a generation or so the British ripped leagues of old Etonians, Harrovians, Wykehamists out of institutions to be replaced by “the best and brightest”, and then inexplicably everything became shit
In the UK right now, @X is performing the same function that Radio Free Europe did in the Eastern Bloc. Without this site, or if it still remained Twitter under the control of the American left, our government would be much more able to hide things they don’t want to discuss.
In February, outside the Turkish consulate in London, a man set light to the Koran. On seeing this, a Muslim man shouted, “I’m going to kill you”, and violently attacked him with a knife.
The first of those two men was convicted three months ago of a religiously aggravated public order offence, and is now living in hiding, having been warned by police that there are several credible threats to his life. But what about the second man, the one with the knife? The one who later told police that he’d merely been trying to “protect my religion”? What happened to him?
Well, here’s your answer. At Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, he was spared prison. All he got was a 20-week suspended sentence, 150 hours of unpaid work, 10 days of rehabilitation activity, and a bill for £150 in court costs.
I know I’m not alone in feeling that this punishment was possibly a touch on the lenient side. As the Free Speech Union put it: “Had a knife-wielding white male pleaded guilty to attacking a Muslim for breaching a Christian blasphemy code, you can bet your bottom dollar he would have gone to prison.”
I’m wondering, is this another one of those speeches [Keir Starmer] didn’t get round to reading before he hit the lectern.
Wrapping himself in the flag is about as authentic and my love for Pilates. I know it exists, but I have no idea what it is.
“…there is surely no doubt that politics has a bitter tone, a harsher edge, a public unpleasantness that occasionally spills over into crisis or just onto the streets. Why is this so? It’s nothing to do with social media. It’s nothing to do with “populism”. It’s none of the fashionable solutions. It’s simple. Politics is more polarised than ever before because more is at stake in politics than ever before. When is a lot is at stake, people argue more loudly. They are less willing to accept defeat. They want their views pressed hard.”
Let me make my position unequivocally clear: I will not comply. If this scheme becomes law, I will resist it with every fibre of my being, joining the ranks of those who have historically stood against arbitrary power. This is a fight we cannot afford to lose, for it edges us closer to the continental nightmare of citizens as compliant serfs, beholden to an all-seeing state.
To understand the gravity of this threat, we must first confront the profound dangers it poses to our civil liberties. At its core, a mandatory digital ID transforms the relationship between citizen and state from one of mutual respect to one of constant suspicion and control. Imagine a world where accessing basic services, banking, healthcare, employment, or even public transport, requires scanning a digital credential that logs your every move.
This isn’t hyperbole; civil liberties organisations like Big Brother Watch have warned that such a system would create a “bonfire of our civil liberties,” enabling mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale.
The prime minister believes it would help crack down on illegal working and modernise the state, according to senior figures in government.
The practicalities of the scheme will be subject to a consultation, which will also look at how to make it work for those without a smartphone or passport.
The previous Labour government’s attempt to introduce ID cards was ultimately blocked by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.
But earlier this month, Sir Keir said he thought the debate had “moved on” since then, adding: “We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago”.
“We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago.” So we do, and that means we all have available a variety of independent digital means to prove our identity that are not subject to the danger of putting all our eggs in one government-made basket. Twenty years ago – well, 22 years ago to be precise – I made a post called “A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?” in which I listed some situations in which a law-abiding person could indeed be harmed by having their identity known by local or national government, or by whoever hacks into the government database, or by whoever gets their mate in the police to do a search for them. Has the passage of two decades made any of those scenarios, or the other scenarios suggested in the comments to the post, cease to apply?
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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