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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There is currently a good deal of fuss about MP’s perks in Britain. People think they are not getting value for money. But conventional wisdom, as usual, is wrong. What we need to do is to reward MPs more the less they do.
It is the rest of the state, created by hyperactive legislation, that is truly out of control. The newly formed UK Libertarian Party suggests that income tax could be abolisheed in its entirety without touching what most people think of as “public services”, if only the country’s autonomous regulatory bodies and agencies – the quangos – were to be abolished.
Should anyone doubt this, a epitomic fabulous fact courtesy of the BBC’s File on Four programme. The part-time chairman of the South East England Development Agency – a body with no reason at all to exist – spent more public money on taxi fares in one year than all 659 MPs put together.
You are on death row awaiting execution. What would you order for your last meal?
I quite enjoy going to the Proms, the renowned series of concerts held in the Royal Albert Hall, west London during the late summer. As many readers know, the last night of the Proms ends with a rousing performance of some of the best-loved works of Edward Elgar, such as “Land of Hope and Glory”. A government minister has claimed that the event does not fit in with the bright, shiny vision of Britain that the Gramiscians of New Labour believe is the one to which we should all aspire.
I could not agree more. It is time to face the fact that Britain, or indeed just England, is no longer a land of hope or much glory. Far better that the symbols of modern Britain be such things as state ID cards, unfunny standup commedians like Ricky Gervais and lumps of dead animals at The Tate.
Ok, rant over.
If you do not regularly read Michael Totten’s Middle East Journal, you really are missing out on something you just do not see in the MSM. He delivers straightforward reportage not just of The Big Issues when they happen but of the mundane realities of what it is to be in the Slums of Fallujah with the USMC.
Lieutenant Lappe overheard our conversation. I think he was worried that I was getting nervous.
“No one can lay down an IED anymore without somebody calling it in,” he said.
Very revealing.
If you like his stuff as much as I do, consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal button and support truly independent journalism.
It sounds like one of those three decker jokes where part three brings you down to earth with a bump, which is presumably why it got written like that. Hedge your bet by hinting that the story could be all rubbish, and then tell it anyway. Because, maybe he’s right:
BOSTON – He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He predicted the explosive spread of the Internet and wireless access.
Now futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth’s people in 20 years.
There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, he says, and the technology needed for collecting and storing it is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially in accordance with Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns. That law yields a doubling of price performance in information technologies every year.
Tell me more:
… advances in technology are about to expand with the introduction of nano-engineered materials for solar panels, making them far more efficient, lighter and easier to install. …
Is anyone serious now interested in this, other than singularity prophets?
… Google has invested substantially in companies pioneering these approaches.
Okay, but I would have preferred an obscure venture capitalist with a boring name, rather than the overmighty corporation which is, for now, flavour of the decade, and which has, for now, more money than God, to the point where hundreds can have full-time jobs spending it, without making a visible dent in money mountain. How “substantially” has Google invested?
The reason why solar energy technologies will advance exponentially, Kurzweil said, is because it is an “information technology” (one for which we can measure the information content), and thereby subject to the Law of Accelerating Returns.
“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”
So, could any of this be true? If it is true, what follows, economically, politically etc.? Beyond the obvious in the shape of disconsolate arabs. Instapundit doesn’t have comments, but we do. My first thought: batteries for laptops and mobile phones are going to be replaced by infinitely powerful black patches on the outside (that’s already happened with calculators, has it not?). Second thought: will big black patches on the roof in due course be enough to power cars? Trains? Lorries? Airplanes? Spaceships?
Third thought: the greenies will absolutely hate this, because there’s nothing they hate so much as technical fixes to their precious and previously unfixable problems. Predictions for what they will say: “The sun is a finite resource! It is running out! Stop consuming Our Fragile Sun! …” And, suddenly they will fall in love with oil industry workers, because they won’t be needed any more.
But, first things first. Is it true?
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Marion Cotillard, Oscar-winning actress and qualified electronic engineer:
Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winning French actress, will not apologise over remarks she made describing the 9/11 attacks as a conspiracy and believes that the comments had been taken out of context and misunderstood…
Cotillard said that the towers were destroyed not as part of a terrorist plot, but because it would have been too expensive to rewire them. She also reheated an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing never having happened.
Of course, working in the entertainment industry does not disqualify Ms. Cottilard from having opinions, nor (heaven forbid) should she ever be restrained from expressing them. However, and equally, I am not disqualified from calling her an ignorant jackass. I hope she spends the rest of her career in French dinner-theatre emoting pointlessly before an audience of coughing, hawking, shouting, farting, senile old-age pensioners who are slupring down a mediocre bowl of bouillabaisse before shuffling home to die alone in a heatwave. How do you like them pommes, Ms. Cotillard?
At first I was going to put this up as a Samizdata quote of the day. It is a paragraph from a piece by Mark Leonard in the latest issue of Prospect, about Chinese think tanks. The Chinese intelligentsia have their left and right, it seems, just like us.
The new right was at the heart of China’s economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Zhang Weiying has a favourite allegory to explain these reforms. He tells a story about a village that relied on horses to conduct its chores. Over time, the village elders realised that the neighbouring village, which relied on zebras, was doing better. So after years of hailing the virtues of the horse, they decided to embrace the zebra. The only obstacle was converting the villagers who had been brainwashed over decades into worshipping the horse. The elders developed an ingenious plan. Every night, while the villagers slept, they painted black stripes on the white horses. When the villagers awoke the leaders reassured them that the animals were not really zebras, just the same old horses adorned with a few harmless stripes. After a long interval the village leaders began to replace the painted horses with real zebras. These prodigious animals transformed the village’s fortunes, increasing productivity and creating wealth all around. Only many years later – long after all the horses had been replaced with zebras and the village had benefited from many years of prosperity – did the elders summon the citizenry to proclaim that their community was a village of zebras, and that zebras were good and horses bad.
Nice story. But the problem, from the quote-of-the-day point of view, is that Zhang Weiying surely has the story upside down and entirely wrong. They did not start by painting stripes on horses. They introduced real zebras, but painted over the stripes and declared them to be horses just as usual. No change was occurring. No upheaval. It was still socialism. Only after the amazing production gains duly materialised were the authorities in a position to wash away the camouflage, and admit that the new and improved “horses” had been zebras all along. But – extra twist – the zebra stripes are still painted over. They still insist that they are horses.
Horse with stripes painted on them are what you introduce when you are trying to get rid of zebras.
There is an interesting article on Martin Kramer’s Sandbox blog about Obama adviser Samantha Power. The article points out the extraordinarily daft 2002 foreign policy suggestions made by her and Michael Ignatieff (who I have met a couple times… nice enough for a total Guardianista) in which she urges US military intervention against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. But in the quoted part of her problematic remarks…
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people.
… the real ‘money quote’ for me is not the bizarre notion of (in effect) going to war with Israel, it is “But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway.”
Her remark is a pretty clear cut rejection of the US Constitutional Republic in favour of unrestrained democracy. That is of course clearly what Obama thinks as well and why he will not allow the Second Amendment to get in the way of what he wants. So it is hardly surprising that he chooses an advisor who shares his opinion that constitutional limits on democratic politics are something to be sad about. It is also something that needs to be pointed out loudly and often by people who think limits on what the state can do are a very good idea indeed. At least Samantha Powers is somewhat honest about the fact she feels the US Bill of Rights is a regrettable limitation on untrammelled democratic politics. I wonder how many politicians would be so candid?
William H. Stoddard of San Diego, California has some interesting commentary on the state of the debate between Clinton and Obama on what they want for US health care policy
Health care policy is a major issue in the Democratic Party’s choice of a presidential candidate. The final debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in Ohio, spent a reported 15 minutes on it. Yet the mainstream news media in the United States consistently report that there are only very minor differences between the positions of the two candidates. Given this, the argument looks like little more than semantic quibbling over the meaning of the word “universal,” all too typical of Clinton’s struggle to contest Obama’s unexpected rivalry for the nomination.
But the mainstream news media have it wrong. There is, in fact, a vitally important difference between the two positions, though one that their worldview makes them ill equipped to recognize. The difference is that Clinton would compel everyone to purchase health insurance; Obama would not. The standard label for this difference in health policy debates is “mandate,” for what Clinton wants.
Clinton has been evasive about exactly how she would compel the purchase of insurance – which is not surprising, as talking about punishing voters is not a good selling point in an election. The state of Massachusetts, which has a mandate, imposes fines on adults who do not have health insurance. Clinton has not talked about fines, but has suggested garnishing wages or making enrollment compulsory on admission to any hospital.
Of course, Clinton promises to make health insurance affordable to everyone, through subsidies and through massive new regulation of the insurance industry. So does Obama. But what if their plans do not work out? Under Obama’s plan, adults who thought even subsidized health insurance cost more than they could pay would remain uninsured, and at least be no worse off. Under Clinton’s plan, they would be forced to sign up, or penalized for not doing so – and either way they would be hurt. And given that Clinton predicts that fifteen million Americans would remain uncovered under Obama’s voluntary plan, it seems that she anticipates that fifteen million people would have to be hurt financially to make her plan viable – or, perhaps, simply to justify her in calling it “universal.” → Continue reading: Health care, class conflict, and the Democratic Party
Did the United Kingdom commit an act of war upon the sovereign nation of Lichtenstein?
Discuss.
We know that the European Union does not respect the sovereignty of other countries. We know that governments will accept stolen goods if they think that they can get away with it. The British government is now capitalising on the proceeds of theft, a manoevre that would result in individuals going to jail. Let us hope that this is challenged, since how could one guarantee the veracity of stolen data:
Meanwhile, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) expects to obtain £100m in unpaid tax from 100 Britons who bank in Liechtenstein. It paid £100,000 to Heinrich Kieber, a former bank employee, for clients’ names and bank account details. In the past few days it has begun sending them letters referring to their account numbers.
The European Commission, Britain and Germany are attacking any country that wishes to provide a tax haven. Along with the OECD and its list of recalcitrant countries, they wish to overturn secrecy laws and end the existence of tax havens. If you cannot stand the heat of tax competition, they reason that you should crush the territories:
THE chancellor is to step up hostilities against Britain’s super-rich by pressing for sanctions against Monaco, the Mediterranean tax haven.
Under one proposal, to be discussed by Alistair Darling with European finance ministers on Tuesday, there will be a levy on any money transferred to a Monaco account from anywhere in Europe. Precise policies will be discussed the following week at a meeting of Europe’s tax authorities in Berlin.
The threat of sanctions marks an escalation in the battle between European governments and the continent’s three remaining tax havens: Liechtenstein, Andorra and Monaco.
“So far the attention has been on Liechtenstein, but Monaco is the goldmine,” said a Whitehall official. “Germany has got the bit between its teeth now and Monaco is where they want to go next – and we’re right with them.”
They even have Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore in their sights. I foresee an archer’s salute and a raspberry. Note that the usual excuses of terrorism, moneylaundering and social justice will be trotted out as an attack upon the freedom of individuals to live where they please and enjoy the pleasures of low taxation. Remove the threat and the peons at home might not want the same.
It is a widely accepted fact that one of the key ingredients to the Allies’ victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in the Second World War was the ability to crack the Enigma codes used by these powers, and keep that code-breaking achievement a secret.
A question I’d like to put to Jon Snow, the chief news reader of Channel 4 news and usually a fairly cool-headed fellow, is whether he would have complied with any wartime requests to keep the Enigma achievement a secret, had he been a working journalist in the 1940s. Judging by his antics over the Prince Harry and Afghanistan episode, the answer to that question would be a no. It also makes me wonder whether anything on the scale of the Enigma code-breaking and its remaining a secret could be repeated now. Of course, the argument cuts both ways: in our more open world, it might also be harder for a country like Hitler’s Germany to make its moves in the first place. (I admit that is a guess of mine, not a prediction). Even so, the implications for military secrecy, when it is something of vital importance in defeating an enemy, are troubling if the media outlets refuse to protect a secret for an agreed period of time. And libertarians, even the most ferocious opponents of censorship, need to realise that keeping military secrets is perfectly consistent with supporting armed forces necessary for the protection of even a minimal, nightwatchman state.
There may have been an element of PR in the whole Prince Harry kerfuffle, but he’s already shown more balls than most of the folk who have sneered at him in some internet comments I have read. Come St George’s Day this year, I will be very glad to hoist something alcoholic to the fellow. Well done him.
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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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