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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It has often been said that one of the more important functions of blogs like this is to get ‘memes’ (or ideas, as I prefer to call them) started and then spread around virally. In the spirit, I think it behoves us to begin spreading this idea: that people who work in the public sector should be exempt from having to pay tax. All tax.
And, no, I am not proposing to do them a big favour, though expect that many in the public sector will see it as a favour and that is all for the good. No, what I am proposing is the stripping away of a fig-leaf that disguises the very important distinction between tax-payers and tax-consumers.
Currently, only those who earn their living in the private or voluntary sector are tax-payers and while public sector employees do file tax returns and, on the face of it, pay their taxes too, this is a mere bookkeeping fiction. They are the recipients of tax, adding nothing to the public purse. The number of people who fail to understand this distinction, holding instead that “we are all taxpayers” is alarmingly high. By forcing the public sector to lead tax-free lives, we make their true status not just clearer but undeniable.
It is high time that we made it crystal clear as to who bears the burden of taxation and who enjoys the benefit; who produces the wealth and who gets the wealth handed to them. It is a cheap and easy means of dramatically changing the dynamic of all economic and political debate.
If you like this idea, then tell someone else. Let’s start spreading it.
In every language, the first word after “Mama!” that every kid learns to say is “Mine!” A system that doesn’t allow ownership, that doesn’t allow you to say “Mine!” when you grow up, has – to put it mildly – a fatal design flaw.
– Frank Zappa
The next time Gordon Brown, or his counterparts mock free marketeer “Austrians” such as myself for our opposition to Keynesian monetary expansionism and huge state debt, perhaps they could explain why, after all the vast spending that there has been, we get figures such as this. Just asking.
For those unaware, Mr Kaletsky is an economics writer and supposed investment guru who fully supports the Keynesian view. I assume most readers have heard of Mr Krugman.
You can basically sum the UK government’s dilemma up as either they’re going to have to tell Gerry Adams he has to have a British ID card to live in NI or tell Iain Paisley he’s going to need a passport to travel from Belfast to London…
– An anonymous commenter, at The Register, discussing one of the minor obstacles to the British government’s ID card and e-borders schemes.
I have been sitting on this story for several years, ever since Gary Gaudet contacted me through the Samizdata comments section after a story I published about a Swordfish from the HMS Ark Royal being spotted on the ocean bottom near the sunken carrier. Since that time I have spoken with him several times as well as trading emails.
His Swordfish is in a somewhat drier and slightly more reachable location in the wilds of Nova Scotia. It will soon be brought in from the cold after resting where it ended its flying career after a walk-away crash in 1944. I spoke with him again this afternoon and with his permission I am bringing this story to a wider audience. It has been known locally for some time, but there has been an understandable desire not to attract undue attention until the aircraft recovery was at least imminent.
It may not look like much to the untrained eye, but to those of us who are Warbird afficionados, it is incredibly complete. There have been rebuilds to fly from wrecks recently dragged out of the Russian wilderness which were found in worse condition that this.
Fairy Swordfish Mk IV in Digby County, Nova Scotia.
Photo: Gary Gaudet
Although the Swordfish is a biplane, it used very modern construction methods and was an incredibly rugged aircraft. The ‘stringbag’ was still in use at the end of WWII and is much loved by those who flew her and all the youngsters like myself who built the Airfix model of this beautiful bit of British Naval Aviation history.
PS: There is ever so much more to this story than I have time to write this afternoon. I have hopes Gary Gaudet will drop by the comment section and regale you with more of the story: he has been in contact with the family of the fellow who happened to have flown this very particular airframe!
Snakes.
A chance encounter? Perhaps not.
We need to try this in the UK as well. Releasing rabid pit bulls in Parliament (and then locking the doors with everyone inside) might be more culturally appropriate however.
The decision by the UK government a few months ago to use anti-terrorism powers over the case of Icelandic banks in trouble has caused deep resentment in Iceland. As this article suggests, such a tactic is hardly a way for Britain – now in deep debt – to make friends with foreign investors. Of course, Mr Brown may have made the calculation that he will be out of power in a few months so why care? But even so, the use of such powers represented a new low for UK diplomatic relations. It also proves the age-old truth that if governments acquire new powers, they will use them in ways far beyond their original scope.
The other night I attended a talk by Tara Smith, a philosopher from the University of Texas who has written a number of good books, such as this one. Her talk was at a private event so I am not going to relate the exact details of what was said, but one thing that struck me during the Q&A session was when a guy in the audience, who clearly disagreed violently with Prof. Smith’s views, began to state that she “did not get” certain ideas (which he presumably agreed with).
I really dislike this verbal tactic, although I occasionally find myself lapsing into it, and I should not. When we say that someone does not “get” something, such as not “getting” rock music, or clothes fashions, or a political creed, or whatnot, what they really are trying to say is that “X does not like or agree with this because he or she is an idiot or is blind to the wonderfulness of it.” I remember, back in the days when he was cheerleading for George W. Bush, Andrew Sullivan was a particularly bad offender, writing about how X or Y did not “get” the threat posed by Saddam/etc and so forth. Even if Sullivan was right at the time, this tactic smacked of saying that smart, clever people like him understood what was going on but those who did not were in some ways deficient in their reasoning.
Jamie Whyte, about whom I have written before, has a great book debunking these lazy ways of thinking and arguing. Well worth the read.
“Groupthink was a major factor in the buildup of risk in the financial system in the decade preceding the recent crisis. Top bank executives and regulators ignored dissenting voices from both ends of the political spectrum which were questioning the excesses that were building up in the system. What was once a comfortable consensus about the strength of our regulatory structure has now been replaced by an equally comfortable and equally flawed consensus about how to fix it.”
Arnold Kling, libertarian-leaning economist, giving a long report on the problems with how the US administration has sought to deal with the crisis, and why he thinks those moves will make future problems more, not less likely. My fear is that for now, such warnings will continue to go unheeded not just in the US administration of The Community Organiser, but in the UK and parts of Europe, as well.
Bill Whittle has a video report of his visit to XCOR on Pajamas TV. If you enjoyed my future history of yesterday, you will enjoy this vision of the current and the near future of New Space.
In Britain, you probably are.
Both the Shetland Islands Council (101) and Corby Borough Council (90) – among the smallest local authorities in the UK – have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department (71)
– BBC Report Pretty pictures here.
That’s nothing, it seems. We learn today that a single school in Stockwell, south London, has 96.
House of Dumb is as sympathetic as ever to film director Steven Soderbergh.
It seems that the viewers of Soderbergh’s latest biographical work were indeed inspired to follow the example of the subject of the movie:
The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for [Eutimio], so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]. He gasped for a little while and was dead. Upon proceeding to remove his belongings I couldn’t get off the watch tied by a chain to his belt, and then he told me in a steady voice farther away than fear: “Yank it off, boy, what does it matter.” I did so and his possessions were now mine.
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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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