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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People (like Anatole Kaletsky) who have the view that large quantities of government debt somehow don’t matter and are are not potentially damaging would do well to listen to this talk given by Professor Kevin Dowd, that I was fortunate enough to attend at the Libertarian International conference in Paris last September.
An audio only version is here.
The whole talk is good, but the first half (mainly about sound ways of recapitalising banks) is drier than the second. The really good stuff gets going at about the 20 minute mark.
Update: For the first few minutes of this lecture, it seems that Professor Dowd is giving the same talk he gave at the Chris Tame lecture earlier in the year. However, this is not the case. He gets through that in the first half of the talk. It is in the second half of this that he really says exactly what he thinks, and it is refreshing to hear someone just come out and say these things. If you heard the earlier lecture, it is still worth listening to at least the second half of this one.
Talking of conviction parties, as I was the other day, how about this shamelessly populist rant, from the leader of the LPUK. Its basic message is very simple:
Join us.
Alas, whenever I hear that phrase I tend to be reminded of a big ugly guy in a hat, beckoning, with a machine gun, to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon to come over and become bit part players (i.e. corpses) in a gangland massacre that the two soon-to-be cross-dressers have just made the mistake of witnessing. Luckily, the machine gun guys get distracted by the arrival of some cops, or Some Like It Hot would not have been much of a movie.
Mr Devil’s Kitchen didn’t mean it that way. I wish him and his party the best of luck. They will need it. Times have changed since I wrote this, and as I said in my posting yesterday the internet has changed the rules for small political parties hugely. I now think that however difficult and dangerous a British Libertarian political party may prove to be, it simply has to happen. Certainly lots of others think it has to, to the point of joining it in quite promising numbers, and who am I to try to stop them? But many of the warnings in that Libertarian Alliance piece from over a decade ago do still apply.
I wonder how many candidates the LPUK will manage to field in the next general election? The willingness to be (electorally speaking) massacred is unfortunately a job requirement, but as I said in my earlier bit about UKIP, the silly parties might actually soon start doing a bit better, what with the big three parties being so widely despised, and now that the silly parties no longer depend on mainstream media coverage to be noticed at all.
I consider it interesting that UKIP and LPUK have both recently followed the Conservatives in choosing a couple of Old Etonians to be their leaders. Coincidence? Probably, but Etonians have always been good at smelling power. Two further straws in the wind to suggest that the age of the silly parties may now be with us?
Anatole Kaletsky still inhabits the mental world where debt-driven crises are cured by more debt, where the damage inflicted by madly cheap money can be cured by, er, even cheaper money. And in the process, he dismisses anyone who might demur from this fantastical notion as mad ideologues or right-wing troublemakers:
“These unabashedly Keynesian policies, which Mr Brown did not just implement in Britain but proselytised around the world, are now almost universally acknowledged to have contributed to economic recovery, not just in Britain, but also in the US, Europe, Japan and China. It might well be argued, therefore, that the Tories discredited themselves as potential economic managers by choosing the wrong side of the debate over fiscal stimulus, aligning themselves with right-wing Republicans, German neo-Marxists and anti-Keynesian academic ideologues, all of whom insisted that you cannot cure debt with more debt and that government stimulus plans would prove counter-productive.”
So perhaps Mr Kaletsky can explain why, if Brown was such a great man, he presided over a situation as finance minister when the UK ran a budget deficit even when the economy was – according to official statistics – growing reasonably strongly before the crisis. And maybe he can explain why, in previous historical episodes, such as in Britain during the early 80s or in the early 1920s in the US, the economy recovered from recession without massive government spending and oodles of cheap central bank money.
Of course, Kaletsky is right to point out that this massive pile of public debt that has now been built up will have to be reduced, and probably far more severely, than the UK’s opposition Conservatives have been willing to let on. But then such a process is bound, by the logic of Mr Kaletsky’s own neo-Keynesian macro-economics, to drag on any future recovery, since such a debt reduction programme is bound to involve tax rises as well as public spending cuts.
By “anti-Keynesian academic ideologues” – as opposed to sober-minded sages such as himself – Mr Kaletsky is presumably referring to what can be loosely described as the Austrian school of economics, a school that regards money not as a metaphysical abstraction to be manipulated at will by a handful of central bankers and their political overlords, but as a claim on real resources, which cannot be simultaneously used by different people at the same time. Instead of sneering at such views, it would be more edifying if Mr Kaletsky, and those who share his views, could address them cogently.
Here is a decent article on a related theme.
“I think that people can legitimately complain that the educated class that dominated Wall Street and Washington first made the mortgage mess and then railroaded through a bailout in which a transfer of wealth from main street to Wall Street was marketed as a benefit to main street. The educated class is losing the respect of the rest of America for reasons that are well deserved.”
– Arnold Kling. The quote is equally applicable to the UK.
Read the whole item. It contains interesting commentary on a new book by Thomas Sowell. By the way, the question of the influence of an “educated class” begs the interesting question as to whether this class is all that well educated in the first place. Surely one of the hallmarks of a traditional, liberal education was understanding certain lessons of history, such as the dangers of concentrations of power in a few hands with few checks or balances. Just a thought.
This story is a fairly nice summary of the icy conditions affecting bits of North America, Asia and Western Europe. Here in London and the Southeast, we are getting snowed on quite a bit; other parts of the UK have been hit even harder.
This time last year, I had cause to snigger at some of the Man-made global warming folk out there and I suppose I was being a bit mischievious, in that AGW alarmists would argue that one or two bad winters hardly undermines their argument, which is true, but then a couple of sizzling summers cannot, by the same logic, be used as confirmation of AGW, either. But much more of this in the next few years, and I would not be at all surprised if public skepticism about the whole AGW issue deepens yet further. One by-product may be changes to transport and the types of cars people use, with more four-wheel drive vehicles coming along (and no, not necessarily SUVs, but smaller ones). And expect sales of these things to rise.
And maybe, this book might get more readers, too. The story, “Fallen Angels”, is about what might happen when governments succeed in massively cutting C02 emissions. Be careful what you wish for.
“The sexual conservative’s true hypocrisy is that he doesn’t really believe in his own idealisation. Men will be inflamed by the sight of hair, women will bear other men’s children at the fall of a veil, boys will suddenly cast off the tedious ways of heterosexuality and put on the gaudy garb of gayness. In truth, sexual conservatives wants to make everyone else pay for their own dark thoughts.”
– David Aaronovitch.
I get the feeling that the next general election in Britain could be the first one to be seriously altered in its overall result by the internet. I definitely hope so. My ideal result would be for Gordon Brown and David Cameron and that LibDem guy all to emerge from the election feeling equally humiliated, and all sounding like they are on the same side, that of Big Politics, while all the conviction parties, the silly parties, including silly conviction parties whose silly convictions are the absolute opposite of my own convictions, do far better than they were supposed to and compared to the amount of and nature of the mainstream media coverage that they got.
In particular, I hope that UKIP does really well. I’ve heard the complaints about this party, most of which boil down to the claim that they are all just too weird. But scratch any active participant in any political party and pretty soon the weirdness spills out.
My feeling-stroke-wishful-thinking along these lines is based on seeing things like this:
I came across that here, a few days ago. It’s basically a greatest hits compilation of UKIP snippets taken from the European Parliament, mostly about Climategate, with a few bits from some internet TV show in the USA spliced in. I particularly like the Liverpudlian guy.
That EU Parliament is an odd place. People make these little speeches in it, which almost none of the people present pay any great attention to, but which, on YouTube, can sometimes escape into the wild, to the point where mainstream media non-coverage becomes impossible to sustain.
More fundamentally, even if such non-coverage persists, as I expect it to persist at least until the forthcoming general election, so what? More and more people can now receive such messages as these anyway.
Enough to embarrass Brown, Cameron and Whatsisname? Maybe. As I say, I do hope so.
I thought this might interest and rile up some of our readers, many of whom I expect are as great fans of Michael Yon as I am:
Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not “arrested”, but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but simply refused questions that had nothing to do with national security. Port authority police eve…ntually came — they were professionals — and rescued me from the border bullies.
He was not at all pleased by the treatment and has written:
When they handcuffed me, I said that no country has ever treated me so badly. Not China. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan. Definitely not Singapore or India or Nepal or Germany, not Brunei, not Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Kuwait or Qatar or United Arab Emirates. No county has treated me with the disrespect can that can be expected from our border bullies.
When, I ask you, are we going to FIRE these un-american, untrained, brainless, worthless, useless apes? (I beg forgiveness if I offend any of our near relatives by use of this comparison. Great Apes are marvelous creatures.) Of course, they might have to go on welfare if we fired them because no one but a government bureaucracy would be stupid enough to hire people whose only contribution to America will be their retirement.
Mad? You are damned right I am mad. The TSA and INS are out of control. Disband it. Fire them all. NOW, DAMN IT!!!
New info from Yon in addition to the above on FB: “The Customs people (CBP) were the actors who handcuffed me.”
By the time the ‘evacuation’ bus delivered Rand Simberg and I to the parking lot of the Mariah Hotel, the wind was far worse. ‘They call the Hotel, Mariah’, Rand quipped on the bus. The wind, however, was more like raging beast. The car was just around back and we had to lean into the sandblast.
Rand thought there might be a party over at the XCOR hanger, but it was rather dark when we arrived. I was unconvinced anyone was still there and stayed in the car. Rand got out to knock on the office door and somehow managed to do so without being carried aloft like some Wizard of Oz character.
So. No joy on Plan A. Plan B perhaps? The spaceport bar at the Mariah? So, back we went. It turned out this was where the action was tonight. We did a quick turn of the downstairs and found Alan Boyle at work near the Christmas tree in the Mariah lobby. He worked so much today he must still have been sober.
Alan was transported from tent to hotel without missing a keystroke.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
While Rand went off to see who else was around, I took a few lobby photos and examined the rather interesting hotel trophy case.
Yep, this is the spaceport hotel…
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
When Rand did not turn up again after a few minutes I went looking and naturally found him with another journalist in the bar. Where else do you find journalists? (Except Alan of course.) They type, they drink and therefore they are.
I must admit my photos went rapidly down hill in quality. By the end of the night the results were about as blurred as what I was actually seeing. Remember, we had free Absolut and wine all day… this was just the after the party party!
It was around this time I heard the evacuation was not just precautionary: the tents had been demolished by the winds.
Len David and Rand Simberg at the Spaceport Bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Pretty much everyone was there, including Burt Rutan and Richard Branson.
Sir Richard hung out in the Spaceport Bar with a few hundred close friends.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Since Mojave is the first official commercial spaceport, I am guessing that makes the Mariah Hotel bar the very first official spaceport bar!
The first spaceport bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Mostly we stayed in our quiet corner: not too crowded there and the bar staff kept full bottles in our hands. Misuzu Onuki, designer of fashion for space travelers, joined us for awhile. It was impossible to get a candid shot of her as she is just too camera aware! This is not to mention that, by this time, it was surprising I could even find the shutter button…
Barb Sprungman, Len David and Misuzu Onuki.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Although the party showed little sign of slowing down, we had a long trip ahead of us. Rand pointed me down the hallway towards the front door, but I stopped in the front room to thank Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn for a marvelous time. I also noticed Sir Richard was still hanging out and seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. He was in a small knot of folk talking in the back of the room.
Yep, this is just as I remember seeing it….
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
When we arrived back in LA, I posted my Samizdata teaser story and got into an online chat with one of my friends from the Mojave community. She asked if I felt like helping with the hunt for designer jackets tomorrow morning at the spaceport East fence…
This is the last of a series of 7 articles on the SpaceShipTwo roll out at the Mojave Spaceport. The previous article is here
An Islamic group called islam4uk, who are a front organisation for the islamo-fascist group al-Muhajiroun, want to march through Wootton Bassett carrying “symbolic coffins” as a protest against the ongoing British participation in the Afghan civil war against the Taliban.
My suggestion is that the good people of Wootton Bassett reply by throwing “symbolic bricks” at the Islamo-fascist protesters, should they actually ever march down that town’s streets. Just symbolic bricks of course, made of sponge cake… or maybe bricks of good English bacon or Danish butter as I am sure the cheerful chaps of al-Muhajiroun will get the joke… not real bricks, because we do not want any Islamo-fascists to get their brains bashed out by our jolly japes… well, not whilst they are in Britain at least.
But what I would really like to see is for Islam4uk carry out a march carrying symbolic coffins through a street in beautiful downtown Bazarak in Panjshir Province in Afghanistan. Just about everyone there is a muslim, so what could possibly go wrong, eh? Go on, guys, give it a try.
I pretty much endorse this list, over at Big Hollywood, of the 10 worst films of the past 10 years, although I am sure Samizdata readers will come up with some more for their own lists. I did not see No Old Country For Old Men, which is one of the derided films on the list, but the way that certain reviewers wrote about it, meant I just knew it was the sort of pretentious, nihilistic waste of several hours that the writer in the article I have linked to said it was. Plus I happen to think the Coen brothers are a bit over-rated anyway, although I quite enjoyed Fargo.
As for the best 10 films of the past decade, name your choices. For my part, I would say that two films I saw last year – The Wrestler and Gran Torino – deserve to be on such a list. Here are my other choices:
The Aviator – the biopic of Howard Hughes.
Serenity – Okay, it helps to have seen the Firefly TV series first, but even so, a fine film.
Casino Royale – Despite some flaws, it marked a triumphant reboot of 007 on the screen. Ian Fleming would have approved.
Sideways – A funny comedy set in California’s wine country. My tour of Napa and Sonoma was not quite as eventful.
Spirited Away – Proof that Miyazaki remains one of the world’s greatest animators and film artists.
The Incredibles – I loved this film and much of its sense of life. The “designer” character is a hilarious combo of fashionista and Ayn Rand.
Gladiator – “Upon my signal, unleash hell”. The film that made Russell Crowe a megastar.
The Lives of Others – Brilliant film set in former East Germany, demonstrating the utter evil that is done in the name of the “surveillance state”.
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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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