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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Every so often I have one of those ain’t-capitalism-grand? moments, and I just had another:
It’s like we can’t make it through the week these days without word of some outlandish memory technology solving all worldly ills; but it’s not that we’re complaining. This week’s featured tech comes from Nanochip, and promises gains in storage quantity and cost per chip over flash memory. The first prototypes will store 100GB, and will be shipped to device makers next year for evaluation. Nanochip technology stores data on a thin-film material, and accesses it using microscopic cantilevers. Each bit will be 15 nanometers wide at first, with theoretical sizes as small as a couple nanometers. Speeds will be near that of flash, and the data could last longer. There are still some obstacles to accessing the data efficiently, but luckily Nanochip just scored $14 million in funding to complete its pursuit. IBM has been pursuing a similar tech since the late 90’s.
Flash memory being the kind of memory you can drop on the floor, and still get at. Here‘s the story that engadget is linking to.
Yesterday, capitalism was great too. I finally got my hands on, and immediately bought, for a mere £220, one of these. Is the Eee PC about to be capitalism’s next triumph?, I asked back then. Definitely one of them, I would say. It has hardly any memory built in, certainly no nano-magic like that described above, but it does have an SD card slot, and it is very cute, and very small, and very light, yet very solid, and I love it.
This article on the Ron Paul news site has a very interesting photo of the Obama Houston Campaign office. You really want to take a look.
It would be much improved by a propeller beanie.
Considering how many health-scare news items there are these days, it makes me want to smile in a wry way when I also read about the supposed problems caused by an ageing, greying, population. The first and obvious question is: if we are all at such risk from obesity, drugs, booze, stress, pollution or the angst of watching Jonathan Ross, why are we living so much longer than our parents or grandparents? If this is what happens when the sky is supposedly always about to fall in, then what must a healthy population be like? And yet there is something in the human psyche, or our culture, that rebels against the happy prospect of a longer life. We are told, or at least have until recently accepted, that three-score years and ten is Man’s rightful due (perhaps a tad longer for women); it is almost a hangover from religion to believe that it is impious, even blasphemous, to want to live for much longer. Andrew O’Hagan, writing in the Daily Telegraph today in a moan about how the elderly are treated in Britain – a valid subject – makes this point:
Growing old is now considered more of an option than an inevitability, something to beat rather than be resigned to, something that is thought to take away from one’s individuality rather than deepen it.
I don’t really know how death, or its inevitability, adds to one’s individuality. I think I know what O’Hagan is trying to say: We are unique, precisely because we are mortal. We cannot be replaced, or copied.
The trouble, though, is that I don’t see how one’s uniqueness is somehow reduced by living for 200 years rather than say, 100, or 50, or 30. Were the ancient Romans – average lifespan about 35 – more individualistic and unique than a 21st Century Brit? How on earth can one measure this? Also, the desire to keep the Grim Reaper at bay surely attests to a love of life, not a denial of its value; if one believed in a craven acceptance of the inevitable, then why do we have doctors and hospitals?. I value my life rather a lot and am in no hurry to see my hair go all grey, my face resemble tree bark, and my limbs to seize up. Sorry, Mr O’Hagan, but I’d rather not suffer that fate any time soon. I go to the gym and try to keep fit despite my enjoyment of red wine. I have not signed up for cryonic suspension or anything like that but I keep an eye on life extension research and have been greatly impressed by the work of people such as Aubrey de Grey, among others. (Don’t be put off by the immense beard, he’s not a nutter). I lost a good friend and intellectual mentor, Chris Tame, nearly two years ago to the horror of bone cancer – he was in his mid-50s – and I am pretty sure this most unique of people could and should have been around for many more decades among us. (I particularly miss his outrageous jokes).
I remain to be convinced of the idea that to value one’s life, it must be short, or that we should resign ourselves to it meekly. Meekness did not build the space rocket, the Aston Martin DB9 or even produce modern dental surgery.
Update: Glenn Reynolds has interesting thoughts on this subject. He’s been writing on this for some time. Ronald Bailey, whom I met over a year ago during a book tour of London, is also well worth reading on this and related topics. I read this Peter Hamilton novel which touches on rejuvination; it is not one of his best tales, unfortunately (the Amazon.co.uk book reviews are not very flattering).
Via the Association of British Drivers (and Transport Blog) comes news of this wondrous logo, which advertises the activities of something called GMPTE:
I don’t know when this poster was first displayed, but it is the star of the most recent ABD press release, so presumably quite recently.
It doesn’t actually say at the GMPTE website what GMPTE stands for. I had to go here to be sure that it stands for Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive. If that logo is any guide to GMPTE’s modus operandi I should guess that it is also known locally as Gumpty Dumpty.
Despite all the empirical evidence on the failure of Fairtrade, along with widespread criticism from august organs like The Economist, Alan Duncan appears to support the scheme in today’s Independent. Responding to a question, he says:
The Fairtrade set-up is a really good system. It stops exploitation, gives producers a start, and makes a serious contribution to the development of poorer countries.
But maybe he is not so supportive. For the question had two parts. He was asked whether it was a good idea and: “Do you buy any?”
He did not respond to the second part of the question.
In a recent article I noted my surprise at the apparent progress made in fusion by the Bussard team and stated I had not heard of them before.
it turns out I was wrong. I did indeed run across them before but the importance did not register so it did not stick in my consciousness. I even have a photo:
EMC2 exhibit at the 2007 International Space Development Conference in Dallas.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
In my defense, I am rather occupied with Society management duties at these events so I do not have much unscheduled time to talk to exhibitors.
A friend of mine in San Francisco passed along this video of a marvelous arrangement performed by a classical Japanese orchestra.
It is well worth four and a half minutes of your time.
Fungible: Etymology: New Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi to perform
: being something (as money or a commodity) one part or quantity of which can be substituted for another of equal value in paying a debt or settling an account – oil, wheat, and lumber are fungible commodities.
Hugo Chavez, the paleo-socialist who is working tirelessly to turn Caracas into Pyongyang, has threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States due to actions brought against the Venezuelan government in British, Dutch and US courts by ExxonMobil. Following the freezing of $12 billion in assets by a British court, Chavez said:
“If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to harm you,” Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program, “Hello, President.” “Do you know how? We aren’t going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger.”
Chavez has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil shipments to the United States, which is Venezuela’s No. 1 client, if Washington tries to oust him. Chavez’s warnings on Sunday appeared to extend that threat to attempts by oil companies to challenge his government’s nationalization drive through lawsuits.
And your word for the day, Mister Chavez, is ‘fungible’.
If his intention is to sell Venezuelan oil to no one, he will push up the price to everyone, that much is true. And of course that also means he is cutting off the cash flow being used to finance the Glorious Bolivarian Revolution. Your call, El Presidente.
If on the other hand he intends to sell Venezuelan oil to anyone except the USA (and presumably the UK and Netherlands as well as they have also been crossed off his Christmas Card list), then… who cares? As oil is fungible, it just goes into a big global market and what does it matter if Venezuelan oil goes to China instead of the USA when all it means is that someone else’s oil will take its place?
I am amazed by this Microsoft bid for Yahoo, and it makes me think that business people need to consider doing something like anti-bankruptcy more. Presumably the clever ones already do it quite a lot, on the quiet.
What I have in mind is that Microsoft has made huge pile of money, but has now run out of ways of making such money in the manner that it has become accustomed to. So, it should simply cease trading.
If Microsoft can not mend Windows and beat off Linux, Apple, etc., then they are out of business (business as they know it) and should accept the fact. The XP version of Windows continues to be a respectable operating system, and a company should be set up and sold off (to its employees probably) to keep it going for as long as there is life in it. But that forty billion (and maybe more) dollars that Microsoft seems determined to throw at Yahoo should instead be distributed to shareholders and employees, and spent or saved just like normal money. I know very little about all the details of it, but I have the overwhelming sense – and the overwhelming sense also that many others have the overwhelming sense – that the Yahoo purchase will be money down the drain. One over-the-hill business buying another over-the-hill business, and shoving them together with giant bulldozers. They were two very impressive hills in their time, but together they will not get any bigger or better. If I was a Yahoo shareholder, I would be pinching myself with joy, but trying to stay cool and get the best price from these deluded maniacs, which according to the story linked to above, is just what is happening.
A business does not have to go on for ever in order to have been a triumphant success. Microsoft should quit while it is still, just about, ahead.
Is this stupid?
A New York billionairess was once reported to have said, to her eternal shame: “Only the little people pay taxes”. It is an attitude of mind that nicely demonstrates how, under even high-tax regimes, some people, if they have the right lawyers, smart tax planners and political connections, try or even succeed in avoiding paying as much revenue as possible, leaving those on lower incomes to pick up the tab.
Of course, the ideal solution to problems of tax avoidance by the rich is to cut taxes, drastically, across the board. And with all the current complaints about the British taxman’s crackdown on “non-domiciled” residents in the UK, it would be refreshing if those champions of capitalism like Lord (Digby) Jones, or William Rees-Mogg and the rest could acknowledge this point. I don’t mind non-doms being able to pay little tax; I hear all the arguments for why it is sensible to encourage them to live and invest in Britain. But would it not be nice if, say, the Tories could focus on what is a genuine problem: resentment by the increasingly taxed middle class of what is seen, however, mistakenly, as favourable tax treatment to very wealthy people? The solution, of course, is not to hit non-doms, but to cut taxes sharply, simplify them, and put the brakes on public spending, and then hit the reverse gear-shift.
Would laws to protect animals from cruelty and/or neglect be legitimate in a free society?
It is often wrongly assumed that a supporter of capitalism has no business complaining if a beloved sports institution, like a cricket or football team, becomes a vast, worldwide brand, or if sports contests are held outside the venue from which the institution sprang. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper (to quote a line from Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop). As a libertarian, the key thing for me is that autonomous institutions, set up and created under certain rules of association by their members, should continue to be run on said principles since otherwise, the whole point of the association is destroyed. Since no coercion is involved, there is no reason, for instance, why a group of socialists could not join together to create their own communes. The only proviso being that people who live in these places have the right to quit and form their own, ‘break-away’ groupings or just leave if they so wish. The same applies to say, professional football. I happen to think that the influx of non-British players and oodles of cash into the game has been a mixed blessing; just because I support the right of people to spend their money how they want emphatically does not mean that good things always happen when they do, nor is it contradictory for a free marketeer such as yours truly to wonder whether sports can be ruined by wrangles over money.
Take the current controversy over the idea of staging Premier League football matches outside England, for example, in order to appeal to the hundreds of thousands of folk who allegedly are desperate to watch English Premier League football. Well, sorry guys, the whole freaking idea of an English premier league is that the games are played in England, not Planet Zog. If fans in England are increasingly priced out of their clubs’ games – which means that crowds often have all the passion of wet cement – and if players become exhausted by a 365-a-year playing season, then the game will suffer. And that, in the end, will damage the game that the heads of sports associations are supposed to be taking care of.
Yes, I know that the purist idea of autonomous sports institutions has been badly eroded in recent years by the attempts by governments to muscle in on sports. That is a key, if separate issue. But stay with me on this: in a free society, it is nevertheless the case that good things, like friendships, clubs and voluntary organisations, do not revolve around the desire just to make pots of money. Sport is something one enjoys and plays for its own sake, not just to win. As Michael Oakshott, the conservative philosopher said, some things, like being a member of a club or having a good friendship, have no external ‘end’. As a supporter of Ipswich Town, I think that is probably just as well.
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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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