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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David Cameron, Tory leader, appears determined that it will not be just the current government that comes out with serious errors on policy. This refusal to not state that a new, higher tax band of 45 per cent “on the rich” will be repealed is a serious error. The error is to ignore the history of what happens when marginal tax rates are cut – these cuts lead to more, not less, revenue. Now of course, as small-government folk, we support tax cuts because we want taxes to fall, and not because we want higher revenues. But if it is revenues you are worried about, then raising taxes is dumb.
The UK and many other economies are falling down the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. It is profoundly depressing that the lessons I thought had been learned have been so totally lost. It makes me wonder whether any senior politician has a clue about economics whatever. On an earlier Samizdata discussion thread following on from my post about the Kevin Dowd lecture, was a long and very involved debate about the issue of fractional reserve banking, for example. You commenters are a smart bunch and I say, without false modesty, that we rate consistently above many other UK blogs in that respect. I wonder whether there is now a single major politician who has a clue about FRB, the arguments for or against, etc. Seriously, does anyone in the major parties understand even the most basic concepts of economics?
Maybe the most gloomy answer is that some do understand but are too frightened or cynical to do anything about it.
Maybe someone should put this on Mr Cameron’s summer reading list.
Jacqui Smith on “The Politics Show” turned in another performance in evasion and Newspeak that I was unsure what she actually said. Not as bad as Simon Sion about the Further Education Councils but a mirror of distortion nonetheless. She is being interviewed prior to the publication of the government’s updated counter-terrorist strategy. Part of this agitprop approach allows Gordon Brown to write his hyperbole in The Observer, claiming credit for the success of others.
Part of the problem on counter-terrorism strategy is assessing its context, its capabilities and its outcomes. If you read Brown’s article, his assessment of the threat from Al-Qaida is straightforward: who would disagree that they are our primary threat. Zero in on his statements and we become more sceptical of the claims and the results.
They are motivated by a violent extremist ideology based on a false reading of religion and exploit modern travel and communications to spread through loose and dangerous global networks.
They are an ideology; they are a religion: their beliefs are more widely shared than Brown states, especially amongst the British Muslim population. Jacqui Smith identified the rise of extremism as a root problem but was unwilling to define an extremist. First, know your enemy. When we read Brown state that our defence is the duty of every individual, we heartily agree. In practice, this is piety shrouding inaction:
And there is a duty on all of us – government, parliament, and civic society – to stand up to people who advocate violence and preach hate, to challenge their narrow and intolerant ideology – in public meetings, in universities, in schools and online.
But accept that our arbitrary laws on hate speech may leave you open to arrest and detention. Who arrested the Islamic extremists in Luton? This doublespeak permeates the entire article with faint aroma of Brownie beans: expenditure, exaggerated claims and comparisons, and the image of Britain as a world-beater. When was Brown ever misperceived as humble?
I believe that this updated strategy, recognised by our allies to be world-leading in its wide-ranging nature, leaves us better prepared and strengthened in our ability to ensure all peace-loving people of this country can live normally, with confidence and free from fear.
In the world of Jacquistan, the words on the page protect us; in reality, their attempt to make political capital of this duty leaves me suspecting that policy is subject to increased political meddling and control.
The more we move into the world of Jacquistan, the more I fear another attack.
People used to hand me the hymnbook and insist on finding me the place.
– Rt Hon David Blunkett PC MP, on Radio 4’s Sunday programme today, recalls being at church in Sheffield as a blind boy… and provides a perfect metaphor for his party’s philosophy of government.
He went on to explain that he would play along with the pointless drama – pretending to sing from the book. Compliance is not approval; nor is it evidence that the ‘enabling’ state is doing good.
This sounds horribly familiar:
Obama has never run anything other than his presidential campaign. He doesn’t know the difference between governing and campaigning and he’s sticking with what he knows.
Which sounds exactly like Britain’s Labour government from 1997 until now. The difference being that in 1997 the British economy was in fairly good shape, which meant that the then British government had a decade during which to learn how to govern. It never did, but it might have. Now the world economy is in a terrible state, and Obama has no time at all.
Does the USA as a whole already have a bad feeling about Obama? Or is it just the people in the USA who detest him already, telling each other that they have a bad feeling about him? From over here, it’s a bit hard to tell.
There is no stated national consensus that as a country we should substantially reduce overall masturbation, but such a reduction would benefit the health of many who wank – and those affected by passive wanking- the concept I invented a few sentences ago and am now treating as a genuine problem.
In 2006, 180,000 people died from pornographic-related causes. Wanking has a major impact on individual wanker’s health: it causes cancers of the liver, bowel, breast, throat, mouth, larynx and oesophagus; it causes blindness, hairy palms, a pale pallor and insanity …
Some point to the potential benefits of self-pleasuring, but these tend to be greatly overstated.
Despite its known harms, one-quarter of the adult population – about 10 million people – now wank above the recommended low-risk levels. I made this figure up but as the Chief Medical Officer I can cite myself because I am in a position of authority.
Here is a graph to illustrate how many people are killed by masturbation. It actually represents something completely different, possibly cat food sales, but I’m guessing that most of you are actually too stupid to actually look at the graph in any detail …
– some Unenlightened Commentary sadly not actually supplied by Sir Liam Donaldson (with thanks to Obnoxio the Clown)
…and Carla Howell has just the song to put you in the mood!
The Cato Institute has the report.
Now that leftists at Harvard want to portray laissez-faire philosophy as being somewhat akin to a mental disorder, maybe the next step will be re-education camps for Cato staff? Maybe the next “stimulus” bill could include a few earmarks for such facilities? I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I get sent some place warm.
South Park could not even come up with these characters.
This is pure genius.
I must say that things are going sour for The Community Organiser quicker than you can say the words “Andrew Sullivan”.
“‘Cant’ is a four-leter word we don’t use much now. Most people of my generation have never heard of it, never alone use it in conversation…to apply it to someone is to accuse them of sloppy thinking, if you are being kind, or, at the very worst, of a total lack of sincerity.”
Ben Wilson.
Of course, when it comes to sincerity, one should remember as Milton Friedman once put it, that sincerity is a much overpraised virtue. People can sincerely believe in all manner of utter rubbish, while others insincerely pay tribute to things that are right and true. Oh, the crooked timber of humanity.
I know how the Duke of Wellington (attrib.) felt. The problem for a rational civil liberties campaigner is often not that you do not know who your friends are, but that you do – and that you worry whether, given what they actually think, they will be let out for the day and not talking to buttercups when you need their help.
Here is a breathtaking non-sequitur in the comments of the Guardian Comment is Free:
I think ID cards would be fine … but I think they should be introduced after the constitutional reform that guarantees safeguards, PR and no monarchy.
The comment is however appended to a piece of splendid news. The entirely sane Mark Thomas has managed to persuade the Metropolitan police to delete him from the National DNA Database.
“I am not in favour of any parental choice in education. You will go to your local school.”
– Former London mayor and Hugo Chavez buddy, Ken Livingstone. Not too up to speed with the concept of choice, is he? No wonder the unions loved him.
As promised, I have some thoughts following on from the talk given by Kevin Dowd, a professor at the Nottingham University Business School and a noted advocate of what is called “free banking”. He gave his talk at the annual Chris R. Tame Memorial Lecture as hosted by the Libertarian Alliance. (The LA was founded by Mr Tame, who died three years ago at a distressingly young age after losing a battle against cancer.)
Professor Dowd covered some territory that is already pretty well-trodden ground for Samizdata’s regular readers, so I will skim over the part of the lecture that focused on the damage done by unwisely loose monetary policy of state organisations such as central banks, or the moral-hazard engines of tax bailouts for banks.
→ Continue reading: The Kevin Dowd lecture on free banking
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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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