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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Former Samizdata contributor and full-time Tea Party/libertarian rabble-rouser Andrew Ian Dodge has been endorsed by the Libertarian Party of Maine for his independent US Senate run.
Libertarian Party of Maine Chairman, Shawn Levasseur spoke on Dodge’s change in party affiliation, “Andrew has been a long time friend of the LP in Maine. So when the news broke that he was leaving the Republican party, and would be petitioning to get directly onto the November ballot, we asked him to run as a Libertarian. He has often described himself as a libertarian. The only difference now is that he’s now capitalizing the ‘L’.””
Maine is an odd state that goes against the logic that only two parties matter in US politics. Maine, like Vermont, is perfectly happy to elect independents to high office.
Not content to just run for office he continues to publish his writing, despite being banned by his campaign from blogging. Andrew and his wife Kim just published Drifting into Oblivion about his, so far, successful battle against colon cancer.
The irony is that he will be 5 years free of cancer on election day in early November.
Good luck mate!
Bishop Hill and WUWT are both making much of this:
To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers.
If CAGW-inspired regulation is to make any sense, it must be universal. There must be a World Government. There are those of us who have long believed that this was why CAGW was devised in the first place.
Time was when economic success was believed to result from such “cooperation”, and to impossible without it. So, the language of tyranny was economics. Then – alas for the tyrants – it became clear that economic success and tyranny are opposites, although that lesson has still to be completely learned.
Now, the language of tyranny is a different kind of “science”.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program
– Milton Friedman
Stereotypes are good. They give you a starting point which can then be adjusted as more facts become available.
Most national stereotypes are easy enough. Americans? Enthusiastic Brits. Irish? Drunken Brits. French? Charming, friendly, cultured, unless, that is, you’re dealing with some arm of the government. Italians? Emotional incontinents, no sense of civic responsibility. But the Germans? Well, we all know what we’re thinking. And we all know it’s not true. Don’t we?
But what do we replace it with? Well, they’re officious. Are they perhaps then officious Brits? Not really. While there are superficial similarities in terms of language and religion pretty soon it all starts to break down. In many respects Britain and Germany are exact opposites of one another.
Take cars. The Germans can churn out reliable, cutting-edge cars like no one else. The British can’t. In fact the British are so bad at it they need the Germans to churn out their Rolls-Royces, Aston Martins and Minis. But while the British dominate motor sport the Germans can’t make a Formula 1 car to save their lives. Or, at least, haven’t been able to since, ahem, the 1930s. Nowadays, they need us to do it for them.
Take music. While the Germans were pioneers of classical music they are hopeless at rock.
Take association football. British clubs are streets ahead of German clubs but on the national level Germany has outperformed England in every World Cup since 1966 (and most of the ones before, incidentally).
Take libertarianism. Has Britain produced anyone like a Mises or a Hayek? [Yes, I know they’re Austrians but for the sake of simplicity I’m lumping them in with the Germans.]
From time to time I ask friends and acquaintances about this. One suggested that the Germans were great at taking first principles to their logical conclusions and bad at asking whether the first principles were correct or not. Another said something similar in that the Germans “take everything to extremes.”
This certainly helps to explain some of Germany’s oddities like unrestricted sections of the autobahn and that case of mutually-agreed cannibalism a few years ago. Whether they explain some of the other oddities, I am not quite sure. Is there a logic to classical music?
I used to know a little girl with severe mental and physical disabilities. She had to be lifted and moved dozens of times a day as she was unable to walk or crawl. It was a source of great worry to her parents how they would cope when she grew up and could no longer be lifted easily. More distant, but greater, was their fear concerning how she would be cared for when they died. Their fears did not come to pass for the saddest of reasons; she herself died when she was still quite small.
I thought of that family when I read about Ashley. Ashley is another little girl with severe mental and physical disabilities; even more deeply disabled than the child I once knew. Ashley is fourteen, but is described as having the cognitive abilities of a three month old baby – in truth, if the description of what she can and cannot do is correct, a three month old baby is better able to communicate than she is. Her parents share the same fears as those of the parents of the girl I knew. They have taken drastic action: they have had her treated surgically and with hormones so as to ensure, within the limits of the technology, that she remains a child for the remainder of her life.
“It was carried out in the belief that her quality of life would improve as it would save her from physical discomfort and pain”, reports the Telegraph. The Guardian, which ran opposing comment articles on Ashley’s case, suggests that another motive was to reduce the effort of lifting her and hence extend the time for which her parents could care for her. I wonder if an unmentioned further reason – one that sounds ghastly but might make sense given human nature – was to try to ensure better care for Ashley when her parents are gone by keeping her cuter. It is a sad fact that many people will find their protective instincts aroused by the sight of a mentally disabled child (or apparent child), yet flinch at the sight of a mentally disabled adult.
Ashley cannot consent and cannot withold consent. This procedure might help – no, it very likely will help to give her the best quality of life possible, for as long as possible in the care of those who love her. Yet the potential for abuse is horrible. Her body is being irrevocably altered for the convenience of those who care for her (but that convenience is no small thing, and convenience is too weak a word; whether they can cope is a major determinant of her quality of life.) If we can do this to Ashley, what else can we do to future Ashleys? More severe modifications to more severely disabled people? To less severely disabled people? To any people?
A couple of months ago now, I went ahead and bought that new camera that I had for quite a while been thinking about buying. The circumstance that provoked me into making a decision earlier than I otherwise would have done was a trip, early in February, to Paris. Yes, it was cold:
That’s a water feature, somewhat frozen when I photoed it, in La Défense, the big clump of modern architecture in the west of Paris.
The thing that clinched it for it, in favour of the Panasonic Lumix FZ150, was how reviewer after reviewer used phrases like “an all round winner” and “all round best”, as in best for the sort of camera that I wanted, when writing about it. Such talk suggested to me: excellence in what I knew I wanted (zoom, picture quality, good video recording) together with excellence in other areas that I would only learn about after I had started using the thing. So it is proving.
The other camera I was considering buying was the Canon SX40 HS. I can’t compare my new Lumix with that, and will presumably never know for sure if I made the exact right choice. But I can compare my new Lumix with all the previous cameras I have ever owned, and in particular with my most recent previous camera, a Canon S5 IS. And I can now tell you that I am a very happy snapper. Could I have chosen even better? Perhaps. Have I meanwhile chosen well? It certainly feels that way now.
The x24 zoom supplied by the new Lumix is wonderful, just as I expected it would be. The Canon SX40 HS has x35 zoom, but I reckoned that x24 would suffice for my purposes and so it is proving:
That’s a snap taken last week from Primrose Hill. On a typical London day, the limits of how far your camera can see with clarity are set not by its lens but by the clarity of the air, which is mostly set at: not very. So I am very happy with my new zoom superpower.
Other improvements on my old Canon were not quite so expected. → Continue reading: My new Panasonic Lumix FZ150
It can’t be a lot of fun working for Goldman Sachs these days (unless you are still making big dollops of money, that is). A former employee has, famously, come out with a fairly spectacular rant about his old firm. Some might regard this as a sign of speaking truth to power, others might say that if this man really felt as he did, he perhaps could have quit the Wall Street giant earlier than he did. It adds to the gaiety of nations. Even the Daily Mash website has got into the act. (I love that site). And Michael Bloomberg – good businessman, not-so-great NYC Mayor – has come to Goldman’s defence.
But while the Goldmans of this world, with their privileged access to central bank funds, bailouts, political pull and so on, represent that form of crony capitalism that has even normally friendly pro-market people up in arms, there are, maybe, signs that new banking businesses are being formed. Over at the Cobden Centre, Steve Baker MP has a nice piece contrasting the Goldman Sachs affair and the launch of a new bank.
In the meantime, my only caveat about all this piling on at the expense of Goldman Sachs is to point out that it is only one of a number of Western banks that have enjoyed the privileges of our quasi-statist monetary order. Goldmans may be a powerful, well connected institution, but it is hardly the only one of its kind.
Rowan Williams won’t be missed. (H/T Guido Fawkes).
“During the ’08 campaign, the same media that reported breathlessly about an old used tanning bed I purchased to get some sun during the dark Alaskan winter, couldn’t be bothered to investigate Barack Obama’s associations, statements or even his voting record as a state senator.”
– Sarah Palin. It continues to amaze me how, whatever one thinks of her views, she is portrayed by a large chunk of our MSM as stupid or crazy. Really?
Here is a list of things that you can buy, but which Michael Sandel (who I seem to recall doing a series of lectures for the BBC – yes) thinks it’s morally dubious for you to be able to buy.
I haven’t read all of them, but was immediately struck by this one, which strikes me as, on the face of it, a very good idea:
The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $250,000. South Africa has begun letting some ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.
To Michael Sandel, this seems to mean that South Africa is being bad. But to me it sounds like South Africa is serious about preserving its now endangered black rhinos.
I have a definite recollection of noted South African libertarian Leon Louw having recommended just such a thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he was partly responsible for this arrangement.
I myself won’t comment in detail on the rest of Sandel’s piece. It is complicated and I am about to go to bed. Parts of what he says strike me as true, parts not. But me saying only that needn’t stop other commenters going into more detail.
I dislike windmills because they are inefficient, destabilise the grid and put up my electricity bills. That I think, should be enough to stop building the things. That they kill bats and birds is not something that we should making too much of a fuss about. Buses, aircraft, and just about everything that moves does too. If we ban windmills because of the threat they pose to wildlife then logically there is an equal case to do the same to really important things. Remember, the Green lobby don’t actually love animals, they hate humans and anything they can do to screw up our society they will do.
– Bishop Hill commenter “AndyS”
I get emails occasionally from readers. This one interested me:
“I am a student at the University of Southern California’s M.A. program in occupational therapy. In 2010 our national organization, the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), included Social Justice in our code of ethics. About 12 states incorporate by reference AOTA’s code of ethics as part of their licensing requirements, meaning that getting an occupational therapy license and keeping it requires adherence to social justice, which is a set of political values and a political agenda that is today associated with those who are termed left, liberal, or progressive. For example, the code of ethics states that we are to advocate for social justice, which requires an equitable distribution of resources to all individuals and groups. Professors also use the requirement as an excuse to teach “social justice activities” in class.”
Interesting. The email continues:
“This is actually a trend in all the health sciences today. My hope is that this trend can be stopped as it normalizes setting political litmus tests to practice a profession. In 2015 AOTA votes again on the contents of its code of ethics and I will be submitting a motion to remove the social justice requirement. I am working now to educate members on this issue before the 2015 vote.”
“One of the things that makes this a hard road to travel is that if I tell a health science student that social justice is a highly political concept used today to promote a left/liberal/progressive agenda, they easily shrug it off because of the way in which the material is presented to them. They are simply told things like, “social justice is about fairness in receiving society’s resources” or something equally bland and nice-sounding.”
The correspondent, by the name of A.D, asked me to sign a statement with others opposing this. As a Brit, I am not sure whether any signature of support from me would be valid but I am happy to lend my voice to this issue. As the late FA Hayek famously pointed out, “social justice” is one of those question-begging terms that takes as given such ideas as the presumption in favour of equal distribution of wealth by some sort of “distributor”. It is not a neutral term – ideas of socialism and state ownership are baked into it. And while “justice” is a word that might mean something, “social justice” is very different.
I wish this gentleman success. You can visit his website here. And he has a related item with a large number of comments here.
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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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