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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Kevin Holtsberry uses Russell Kirk‘s opus The Conservative Mind to analyse his own views. I find this approach interesting because I suspect the devil is in the details. Here is my libertarian take on Kevin’s listed summation of ‘The Conservative Mind’:
1) Belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.
Yes: I believe that morality is something objectively derived but the understanding of which is often an evolutionary process. However it is this objectively derivable morality, which being the basis for all natural law, which transcends the custom of time and place and complex utilitarian constructs of written law, business and economy. It is the test all custom and law must in the end be subject to.
2) Affection for the proliferating variety and mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity, egalitarianism, and utilitarian aims of most radical systems.
Yes, this is surely one of the keys to a libertarian or classical liberal mindset: an antipathy to conformity as a desirable objective independent of context. It is liberty and the inevitable diversity of objectives and understandings that spring from minds freed from literal coercion that is the highest objective of the classical liberal, rather than a utilitarian objective such as tractor production or discouraging single mothers. I am not so convinced “proliferating variety and mystery of human existence” is actually a true conservative value however.
3) Conviction that civilized society requires orders an classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.”
Yes, but given that ‘class’ is just a moving amorphous set of social cues, it is not something that is an end in and of itself, anymore than ‘classlessness’ should be. It is only when concepts of class take on force backed statutory characteristics that ‘class’ becomes an objective ill. ‘Class’ when rationally understood is an emergent phenomena that means a whole lot less than Marxists would have people believe.
4) Persuasion that freedom and property are closely linked: separate property from private possession, and Leviathan becomes master of all.
Yes. All true libertarians would regard this as axiomatic.
5) Faith in prescription and distrust of “sophisters, calculators, and economists” who would restructure society upon abstract designs.
Yes. Civil society is the product not of reason and imposed models of ‘what should be’ but rather of evolutionary processes. To think otherwise is to confuse the essential difference between society and state, which is the underpinning fallacy beneath all forms of statism. Yet a willingness to let ‘nature take its course’ invariably means a willingness to accept the inevitability that as economic realities shift and readjust dynamically within any rational economic system, so too will society… and not all people who have ‘abstract visions of society’ want those visions imposed at bayonet point.
6) Recognition that change may not be salutary reform: hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration rather than a torch of progress.
Yes, see above. But the libertarian/classical liberal is also a dynamist, and thus grasps that rational understanding of the gradualist evolutionary nature of societies does not preclude an enthusiasm for innovation and the changes that tend to spring from that. A society which accepts change through social evolution and development towards a less statist/stasist imposed order is not a society unmaking itself but rather one becoming deeper and denser: an adaptable society is a successful society.
This morning a contact of mine called up to say he was attending an event discussing the so-called Tobin Tax, which is a levy on foreign exchange transactions named after the Nobel Prize Winning Laureate of 1981, James Tobin. The tax is proposed by such politicians of usually leftist anti-market hue as French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who favour the tax as a way of reducing the massive flows of foreign exchange business and hence, they hope, in reducing the power of global markets. It is a vain hope. For starters, any attempt to tax foreign exchange deals would be a massive boost for the offshore tax-haven market, already booming as investors wisely choose to domicile their businesses there to avoid paying tax. It is an idea that has, in my view, very little chance of taking form. It would be a particular blow to the City of London, which boasts a vast foreign exchange market on which many jobs depend.
Anyway, on Monday Professor Tobin, a former adviser to President John F. Kennedy, passed away. One should not speak ill of the dead, and on the whole my impression of Tobin is that of a distinguished economist. But let us hope the foolish levy that bears his name passes away also to the great dustbin of bad ideas in the sky.
Sometimes I leap to defend libertarian ideas with a glad cry, filled with the joy of battle. And sometimes I do it with a peg on my nose, scarcely able to believe that it is my fingers doing the typing. In the latter spirit do I second the Brian Micklethwait line in an earlier post. Incest between adults falls into the category of wrong (and in my view impious, and, no, I am not joking or posing when I use that word) actions that nonetheless should not be illegal.
I did not enjoy writing that, but it got me thinking. Might a libertarian society be more, not less conformist than our present one? A favourite theme of mine is the coming return of the age of the verbal oath made in person. For the last few hundred years we have leant on the crutch of documentary or camera proof but the time is coming when technology will allow us to fake anything. Then, my friends, a man’s word had better be his bond, at least if he wants to borrow money. The only way of telling who is creditworthy will be personal recommendation. Well, in a similar way, we have leant on the crutch of law to regulate our social relations. Should that crutch be removed, a man or a woman’s reputation may once again be his or her most precious possession. And since reputation is decided by others, public opinion will matter more.
Yesterday, 12 March 2002, there were 11 RNLI lifeboats launched off the British and Irish coasts.
Also yesterday people all across Britain and Ireland would have seen men and women on the high streets of their towns and cities collecting money from passers-by for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and rewarding them with small stickers. The RNLI is an emergency service that has been in operation in Britain for 175 years and it is run by volunteers and is entirely funded by voluntary donations.
As an all-weather sailor myself, I have always had not just a fondness for the RNLI but a significant vested interest in its existence.
Lifeboat stations can be found in coastal communities across the British Isles.
Anyone who has seen an off-shore lifeboat launch during a pounding North Sea gale can be left in no doubt that these people are some of the world’s great unsung heros. In the course of saving over 130,000 people from the sea since its founding, more than 400 RNLI volunteers have lost their lives.
But another reason that I am so fond of them is not just their fierce bravery but that regardless of the fact the RNLI is an utterly non-political organisation, they are perhaps one of the very best arguments for libertarian voluntarism in the world (link requires Adobe acrobat reader or similar): a world class non-governmental ‘common good’ emergency service not just manned but also funded without coercive taxation.
Please visit the RNLI website and donate to this superb organisation.
It drives on with a courage which is stronger than the storm. It drives on with a mercy which does not quail in the presence of death. It drives on as proof, a symbol, a testimony that man is created in the image of God and that valour and virtue have not perished in the British race.
– Winston Churchill, RNLI Centenary 1924
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender
-Winston Churchill, June 4th 1940
Tomorrow, the EU parliament will vote on a Directive that will ‘harmonise’ the sale of vitamin and mineral supplements right across the EU.
The effect in Britain will be to remove some 90% of currently commercially available vitamin and herbal remedies from the shelves of British shops.
“Many people believe these supplements are vital to them. This is heavy-handed legislation which I believe should be withdrawn but all we may be able to do is a damage limitation exercise.”
Britain has always been very relaxed about alternative health remedies and self-help as have countries like Ireland and Holland. But this is all to the great and deep displeasure of the German Pharmaceutical industry whose oily fingerprints are all over this bit of contemptible mischief and are now using their political marionettes in the EU Commission to legislate their competitors out of existance.
As per usual the justification is health and safety:
“Manufacturers will be able to make a case for supplements to be put on the list if they can prove their efficacy and safety, but many small companies do not have the resources for this kind of research trial.”
Even a child knows that nobody ever died from eating vitamins or herbal supplements.
There is widespread and angry opposition to this and not just from Britain but from all over Europe. Millions of e-mails and letters have been sent to the EU Parliament from angry and frustrated people. Sadly, it is likely to avail them nought . The vote will most likely be a rubber stamp by the Teflon Technocrats. The Parliament is just a fig-leaf to give Europeans an illusion of democratic accountability while the Commission agenda is waved through.
“In the UK, vitamin and mineral supplements are now a huge market worth £376 million in 2001. Direct sales are estimated to add £60-£70 million to this total.”
So yet another thriving British industry is executed by fiat and yet another chunk of our choice and independence is chipped away.
‘Harmony’; such a seductive word. We all want ‘harmony’ in our lives. We long for ‘harmony’. Who could possibly object to ‘harmony’?
A.N. Wilson is one of that species of writers that Britain has in abundance: well educated, articulate and not excessively intelligent. He is an exemplar of a particular strain of well heeled British thought that will praise a well crafted essay that states the received wisdom with an air of wise engagement and formulaic cynicism. However such people are deeply suspicious of anything resembling a rigorous argument (for that might imply the truth is not self-evident) or any attempt to make causal links beyond the second logical tier. This species of writer’s forbearers were the people who knew that ending unemployment was good, and that The National Socialist German Workers Party had ended unemployment in the 1930’s. Thus as they looked on and saw a tidy, neat Germany arise from the social and economic chaos of the Depression Years, they would state at parties in their Eton and Oxford educated accents that that Hitler chap might be on to something.
And so we have A.N. Wilson writing about Eugenics on Sunday, 10th March 2002 in The Future lies with Eugenics. He quite interestingly and articulately describes an underclass in Britain that lives a life of state subsidised indolence, crime and childbirth, leading to generations predisposed genetically from birth to become predatory unemployed drains on the diminishing public purse that would otherwise be setting aside tax money for more worthy retirees.
And his solution? Keeping in the tradition of not so much Occam’s razor but rather Occam’s chainsaw, all problems are resolved in one causal step:
(A) The children of ‘hooligan parentage’ provide the majority of repeat offending criminals.
(B) Therefore the solution is to forcibly sterilise repeat offenders to prevent the birth of more congenital criminals.
The justification for this is that these hooligan elements not only absorb a disproportionate amount of appropriated state tax monies containing, housing and feeding them but also will have the temerity to demand an equal share of nationalised state welfare benefits in their dotage.
Now a more rigorous mind might have noted that the common thread here is not some societal line of poison genetics but rather who gets to share in the money the state has appropriated from its hapless taxpayers. The concept that perhaps it is the very structure of the predatory wealth destroying state that is the problem, rather than a genetic underclass, would appear to be a causal link too far for a writer whose primary aim is to be articulate rather than intelligent.
So house prices are skewed by state intervention in tenancy relationships, low end jobs are priced out of existence with minimum wages, undercapitalised businesses are bankrupted with taxes and regulations, tax monies are forcibly taken from the productive and given to subsidise unproductive behaviour and yet somehow the emergence of a perpetually unemployed underclass is deduced to be a genetic problem? Well perhaps it is. Maybe if a few more of A.N. Wilson’s class had contrived to get themselves slaughtered in Britain’s 20th century wars, we would not have developed a political and media elite that seems genetically predisposed to blame everyone for the miserable state of Britain except themselves.
I cannot think of a more compelling argument for the importance of the libertarian argument that no state can be trusted with such a high degree of power over civil society as states have today. The likes of A.N. Wilson would have people castrated and spayed by the state because those people have to live in the reality that the likes of A.N. Wilson helped to create.
Patrick Crozier has some interesting remarks about ‘Labour women’
This article in the Telegraph got me thinking.
First of all there is Mrs Kinnock’s use of the term “real women”. It sounded far too much to my ears like “all women”, or the “only women of any worth”. The truth is that some women go out to work and others stay at home. Is that really such a terrible idea to bear?
Maybe it is. Maybe, to dyed in the wool feminists like Glenys Kinnock, the idea of total sex equality shines so bright that any woman who chooses what we might describe as a “traditional” role is in some way a traitor to her sex. Perhaps, Mrs Kinnock understands only too well that to many women home and family are far more important than boring old work. Thus they have to be forced into the workforce by economics or, as in this case, ridicule.
It is the economics that frighten me. If I ever marry or have children I want my wife to stay at home – at least for the first few years – just as my mother did with me. I believe that (usually) a mother’s love brings huge benefits to child rearing – benefits for which a child minder or a creche is no substitute. I want that choice. But I can’t have it. In London it is virtually impossible for one person on one salary to buy a house (certainly not in the careers that I am considering). Thus we are more or less forced (apologies for the quasi-Marxist terminology) to set up two income households. And hence stay-at-home mums are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
The answer is to build (or at least allow to be built) more houses, semis and apartment blocks. Same demand, more supply, lower prices. But that is more or less impossible in London – the State decrees it. And that is a whole other issue.
As is the case with many libertarians, I am opposed to the death penalty not on the grounds the state is wrong to kill people, it does that all the time on an almost casual basis via more indirect means, but rather that as a falliblist I am all too aware that miscarriages of justice occur with frightening regularity and you cannot ‘undo’ an execution. However I have no objective moral problem with the idea of a murderer paying with his life per se, just a problem entrusting that decision to a fallible judiciary.
In the USA, convicted murderer Tracy Housel has been on death row for 16 years for the 1985 rape and murder of 46-year-old Jeanne Drew. Because he is a British passport holder, the usual parade of people from the UK have been petitioning to commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment. Even our blessed leader Tony Blair has written to the US authorities on behalf of this man. Vera Baird, the Labour MP for Redcar is in the USA and has said that “at a time when British troops are working along side American troops in Afghanistan, some special consideration is called for”.
And so given my libertarian opposition to the death penalty, presumably I agree, right?
Wrong. In this case, the murderer Tracy Housel admits he raped and strangled his victim. There is absolutely no grounds for reasonable doubt here and so I say let him get exactly what he deserves. What is more, the conflation of value by the Member of Parliament for Redcar of British soldiers putting their lives on the line alongside their US comrades in the fight against terrorism, and a self confessed British rapist-murderer in the US is nothing less that a disgusting insult to British soldiers everywhere. To hear the two mentioned in the same sentence is an absolute disgrace of the sort I have come to expect from moral relativists like Vera Baird.
No, Marie Claire is not my supermodel younger sister. She’s a British woman’s magazine, and a lady writing a piece for Marie Claire rang today asking about the libertarian line on incest (which she knew, either from the Libertarian Alliance website or via that from Sean Gabb’s Freelife website, that Sean had done a piece about, many years ago).
I told her (a) that you need to distinguish between morality and legality (legitimacy of social pressure, etc.), (b) that it ought to be legal if both parties consent, (c) that the consent principle meshes nicely with the fact that the police are powerless to catch people if no one is complaining – and thus telling them – about whatever it is, but that (d) the consent principle comes under severe strain as soon as a weaker party is on the receiving end of an inescapable power relationship, as is almost invariably the case where children are involved. It’s tricky to get things like this right, but she seemed sympathetic. Consent lead us on to the mass of consenting relationships (e.g. between the “Metric Martyrs” and their customers, all happy to trade in feet and inches) that are now being busily illegalised by our pathologically meddlesome government.
A nice illustration of how the willingness to assert libertarian principles, even (especially) when what follows from them is deeply disreputable, leads directly to mainstream media attention, and not just in the men’s pages.
She said she’d ring back if a piece does materialise in Marie Claire which refers to any of the above, and I’ll keep you posted.
Computer World has recently warned us about a German research student who found out that by measuring the light reflected from a user’s face information on a computer screen can be reconstructed. As if we have not enough surveillance in the UK already.
The Cambridge whizz-kid explains: “Even if I can’t see your screen surface, as long as your face is illuminated from a distance of 50 meters I can collect the photons from your face into a sensor and I will have a very good chance of turning it into a readable text”… While his research on information leakage from monitor reflections shouldn’t worry the general population of computer users, government agencies and corporations dealing with top secret or confidential materials would probably want to take precautions, he said.
I find this information interesting for two reasons. First, having grown up the other side of the Iron Curtain, this is the first time I felt a stab of regret that the Cold War is over as such technology has its obvious and spectacular uses. Secondly, being a woman I have already thought of an ‘improvement’ to its application – a light absorbent or, better yet, information distorting make up.
It also demonstrates, at least to me, that one should not attempt to control or regulate the consequences of human inventiveness. Individuals will always find a way around such measures using unforeseen and exotic approaches. The only way to counter negative results of such creativity is to let other individuals’ twisted minds match it…
I just spotted this splendid article on the ‘Grauniad’/Observer website which actually have the bravery to call for the complete abolition of Britain’s third rate socialist healthcare system. The sooner the better.
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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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