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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Of course it threatens the man who pointed out that the security services protecting the Queen and government ministers are using insecure radio systems to communicate.
Making the equipment that can pick up those channels illegal in the UK will do nothing to prevent the IRA or any middle eastern terrorists who want to attack British targets from acquiring them overseas or just building it themselves (it is not exactly rocket science).
Solution? Buy encrypted communications systems and stop broadcasting in the clear. Duh.
Ask most British people about what they know about Manchester, in north-west England, and they will probably name Manchester United Football Club, (“The Reds”), cotton mills, rave music nightclubs, or, if they move in libertarian circles, the city often associated with laissez faire economic thinking in the 19th Century. So it is a proud day for the city to be now put alongside Cape Kennedy as a centre of space flight excellence.
It looks likely American lawmakers will soon agree airline pilots (as do all of us with a Blue Passport) have an inalienable Second Amendment Right To Bear Arms. Or in this particular case, pilots have a Right To Protect Our Sorry Arses. Support is apparently overwhelming. The public and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) with strong support of air service staff are solidly behind it. There’s hardly a discouraging word to be heard in the halls of the Senate… with the exception of our old friend Senator Fritz “I’m For Sale” Hollings (D Disney) who is worried he’ll lose the terrorist vote if they all get shot before the next election.
Hollings and his friends will no doubt be wheeling out all the hackneyed arguments agin it. They’ll regale us with visions of pilots with the aim of an Imperial Storm Trooper who failed his Rifle Qual. Or like a posse from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, blowing holes through passengers, windows and wings while missing the hijacker standing Jedi-like six feet away. And of course dozens of passengers strained out of the airplane through centimetre holes while the rest balloon up and die in “Outpost” airlock-like technicolour gore.
But it ain’t that way in real life.
Many pilots are ex-military pilots who are well at ease with firearms and are just as likely to drop the sucker on the first shot as not. And as to the holes in the fuselage… that brings me to a story.
I was sitting in a hotel bar in Denver (doubt anyone is surprised at the story so far) late one night a couple weeks ago. It was a fairly quiet night. The three of us around the small round table were getting served rather quickly. But this was not your ordinary group watching sports and women in a hotel bar. The scene would not have been out of place in a movie about the making of the first A-Bomb. The table top was filled with napkins covered in arcane “back of the envelope” calculations made by a physicist friend who actually did work with Dr Teller at one time.
Among the many problems solved amidst the constant stream of engineering lubricant (Sam Adams is a nice beer for a Libertarian) were: “Will normal pots and pans survive launch in a gas gun at 3000 Gravities?”… and “What is the bleed down time for a Boeing 747 with a bullet hole in it?”
The answer to that question was: a good fraction of an entire day. And that was making the assumption the cabin pressurization was static. Which it isn’t, so basically a couple bullet holes in the frame won’t even make the system blink.
What we have here folks is your basic non-problem.
Erratum: As one reader pointed out, the movie name was Outland, not Outpost!
It’s official. According to an unnamed US government study (reported in the Daily Telegraph) the parts of the brain responsible for sensation in the mouth, lips and tongue are “most active” in obese people. Health fascists conclude that larger men (such as Perry and I) [Ed: speak for yourself!] “like the taste of food too much”, which coming from them is a compliment.
The obvious explanation is that we are in fact superb oral technicians. In less benighted cultures than welfare states young ladies know that larger men make better company. We cook better, have more appetite for life, aren’t obviously short of cash, and have sensitive mouths, lips and tongues. What more could a lady ask for?
It’s nice to know that governments spend money on this sort of research. I think I shall buy some more luxury foods and contribute sales taxes to the state.
Although I am personally a ‘Hakeyian Popperoid’, unlike Adriana and Brian I am not particularly ill disposed to Objectivism per se, seeing the minarchist libertarianism of its advocates as clearly fellow travellers. Of course I realise some capital ‘O’ Objectivists reject the term ‘libertarian’ as applying to them but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and has feathers, I tend to call it a duck… the Libertarian Alliance has many objectivist members who are not uncomfortable with being associated with the term.
My view is that we live in such a ‘target rich’ world replete with statist, socialists, fascists, racists and various other toxic ‘-ists’, thus attacking people who are largely in sympathy with the cause of liberty because we don’t like the way they got to that conclusion is not particularly productive.
That said, Samizdata will continue to publish critiques of Objectivism, if that is what is on its contributors minds… and we will also publish Objectivist perspectives. Rand is not the enemy.
Tony Millard sends in a Tuscan Weekly Webwaffle.
Much of life’s futile and circular debates revolve around out-dated totems and taboos, developed in times when laws were not universally enforceable. One of the Samizdata contributors has already written about incest – which by-the-by I don’t agree with for various non-totemistic reasons – and I have been most strident in the call to legalise and destigmatise all forms of narcotics. However, upon reading the Funny Old World section of the UK satirical magazine Private Eye, which concerns itself with bizarre-but-true news articles from around the world, I now have a new cause in mind.
The Private Eye story was an interview with an Australian brothel madam, complaining about the workload for her girls following the arrival of 6,000 sailors of various ships the US Pacific Fleet in the small Western city of Perth, and her suggestion to the US Navy that such large-craft visits should be phased to ease the strain on her employees. Knowing the Australian legal system reasonably well, the matter could also give rise to legal action against the US forces for inter alia unnecessary stress and suffering to the ladies in question.
To avoid such an embarrassing diplomatic debacle, I have a better suggestion. Why not make space on board ship for freelance piecework-remunerated female (and male) operatives, with full medical support, and ‘manage’ the problem away? Reduced time on shore for the sailors, increased efficiencies for the fleet, and no doubt reduced hormonally induced tensions on board on long tours of duty. And a minimal red light district problems for coastal towns as an added bonus. Now there’s a refreshing thought for the week.
Tony Millard
I’m glad that one of us is having a philosophically serious go at that bizarre Randian diatribe of some days ago
My problem is that I so utterly despise Randian philosophy that I cannot make myself take it seriously. I am also put off by the vicious religiosity of so many Randian responses to any criticisms of their sacred texts.
But if Randians boom forth with their nonsense while the rest of us just suffer in silence, observers of the libertarian scene are liable to get the idea that Randian philosophy is a far more important part of the libertarian movement in general than it really is.
My take on the Randians is that, like the Marxists (“exploitation”, “labour”), they are definition hoppers. By “altruism” they don’t mean what the rest of us mean. If you explain to a Randian that you are an altruistic sort of a person from time to time, that you don’t always behave selfishly, etc. etc., he’ll tie himself into knots explaining that you are really being totally anti-altruistic and completely selfish, all the time, even if you have just rescued a complete stranger from drowning in a freezing cold lake at definite risk to your own life. Something to do with selfishly choosing to live by your own values, blah blah blah.
Meanwhile back in normal-land, altruism means what Adriana says it means, and capitalism is relentlessly altruistic. Tradesmen spend their entire working lives obsessing not just about what they would like to be doing all day long, but also about what their customers would most appreciate them doing, the trick for happy capitalist life being to find things to do that satisfy on both counts.
Which leads to the other great folly that I see embedded in Randianism, namely fixed sum economics. The world is now, as it always has been, full of the foolishness that you can only get rich and happy if other people are made to sacrifice their riches and happiness for your benefit. It’s not that Randians believe explicitly and self-consciously in fixed-sum economics, any more than most other people do. It’s merely that everything else they say is said as if they believed in fixed sum economics.
The proper way to deal with this falsehood is to deal with it. (See my Libertarian Alliance piece called The Fixed Quantity of Wealth Fallacy: How To Make Yourself Miserable About the Past, The Present and The Future of Mankind.)
Fail to deal with it and there are two characteristic ways in which the fixed quantity of happiness/wealth fallacy will deal with you.
People who are nice, and who don’t like the idea of making other people miserable, restrain themselves from getting rich and happy. We see that syndrome all around us, and especially at political demonstrations of the concerned variety.
But then there is the screw-you-Jack response, which consists of saying that I want to be happy and goddammit I’ve a right to be happy! And that if that means others have be unhappy, then to hell with them!! And we see that all around us also, in the form of exuberantly busy capitalists who just want to get rich, and if that means they have to think of themselves as quasi-criminals, then so be it. They can live with it. With friends like these, capitalism doesn’t need enemies. (Screw-you-Jack capitalism is especially rampant in the financial world, where it takes a little bit of imagination to realise just how much good you are doing for the world by, e.g., placing a bet on the price of next year’s corn crop. It’s obvious that you do a bit of good for other people if you sell them newspapers and sweeties, but perhaps not quite so clear that you and your confreres are actually making modern agriculture possible if you trade in agricultural futures.)
These two characteristic social types, the self-sacrificing conscience-ridden misery and the selfish capitalist bastard, dance a sort of self-reinforcing dance with each other, each reacting in horror to the other’s existence, but neither realising how much, intellectually speaking, they have in common. The unifying error is that in living your life you are condemned to choose between your own happiness and the happiness of others, between selfishness and altruism.
Randians don’t fit exactly into either of these boxes, because they actually come in both forms! Randians are anything but straightforward advocates of selfishness, even though they insist hysterically that they are. Atlas, the ultimate miserably self-sacrificial altruist who eventually can take it no longer and who shrugs, is one of their biggest heroes! And when Atlas does shrug, that also turns out to be partly a selfish act of self-liberation, but also partly a contribution to an altruistic movement of general social redemption.
But back in normal-land again (where “selfishness” is assumed to mean selfishness), the Randians, with their bellowings forth about the virtues of capitalism and of selfishness, are heard to be supporting screw-you-Jack capitalism, that is, they reinforce rather than challenge the idea that capitalism is rooted in an active hostility to – in an active determination to destroy – the happiness of the non-capitalist masses.
Which is just one of the reasons why the Randians must be regularly denounced by the rest of us.
Our leaders have spoken:
European Union leaders have confidently declared the region’s economic slowdown is over.
So that’s it then. The economic downturn is officially over. It has ended. It has been abolished. Our leaders have said so and there can be no argument. A glorious new age is upon us when everyone will be prosperous and happy. It has been decreed and so it shall be. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!!
Mad cow disease (vCJD), foot-and-mouth, MMR, salmonella in eggs… the list goes on and on. The reality of life is that no one has a monopoly on insight, intelligence and information. Yet the state would have us believe that in their case when they say something, is somehow of a higher order compared to any other institution or individual. After all, it that was not the case, how could the fact the state backs its views with the threat of violence be justified?
Yet time and time again we are told in patronising tones that the state’s experts know best, to the extent the state is prepared to after our body chemistry regardless of our individual wishes. We are told for years “Of course British Beef is safe to eat. Our scientists tell us there is nothing to worry about and reports to the contrary are just scare-mongering”… only to discover it can in fact kill us in the most ghastly manner by boring holes in our brains .
Likewise, the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine is still foisted on people by Britain’s national Health Service in spite of worries about potentially horrendous side effects. Fortunately, the culture of deference to authority has been breaking down for quite some time as the state finds itself dis-intermediated from the flow of information to people. As yet more information casting doubt upon the safety of MMR comes to light, those who decided to shun the state’s advice and err on the side of safety for their children are shown the wisdom of their ways.
Yet the important issue here is not ‘if it better to fluoridate water’ or ‘should I eat more folic acid’ or ‘should I immunise my children with single jabs or the three-in-one’ or ‘should I wear a seat belt’?’… but ‘Why do I tolerate the state and the experts on its payroll overriding my views on issues which relate directly to my body?’
The fact is fluoride probably does make for better teeth, folic acid for better health, MMR is usually safe and seat belts often save lives. But why on earth entrust these decisions to such a demonstrably fallible institution like the state? We all make mistakes, but the price of individual error is largely confined to the individual making the error or at least to his immediate family or associates… the price for the state making an error however is far wider and much harder to mitigate. When the advice the state gives us proves to be flawed, that can be disastrous, but they it actually makes its views on health as a force backed mandatory law, that should be regarded as intolerable.
In the case of MMR, single vaccines are privately available off the NHS, yet due to the fact people have their money appropriated to fund the NHS regardless of their wishes, the state reduces their ability to actually make meaningful choices independently. In much the same way, you make correctly deduce your children would be better educated either at home or at a private school, yet because the state takes your money and pours it into funding state schools anyway, it greatly reduces the real choice of less wealthy parents to actually opt out.
We are told we have all manner of free choices in the wonderful ‘representative’ democracy in which we live (pick any western country), yet as long as the state appropriates such a large chunk of the money we earn and depend upon to actualise our wishes, the reality is that for many, choice is an illusion as they struggle to manage what remains of their unapproapriated several property.
Related articles
It is a matter of private choice, not a matter of ‘public’ health, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
Libertarian ‘Public Health’?, Tuesday, June 18, 2002
The totalitarian mindset, Sunday, June 16, 2002
The quotes below come from a new blog called This Blog has no Title just Words and a Loon. I’m indirectly responsible for this. After posting my personal attack on Patrick Crozier the other day I rang him up to tell him not to take it personally, and it emerged that he had all sorts of other non-transport thoughts he wanted to blog and talked about starting Words and a Loon, although not by that name. For whatever difference it may have made I said go ahead, because I admire Patrick as a writer and will go there regularly. Patrick explained the thinking behind W&L in another non-transport posting on UK Transport. Then he started W&L, and it already has several bits including “The newspaper is dead”. At first I thought of just cutting and pasting the concluding paragraph, which has stuff like:
Newspapers exist (I presume) because it is not actually possible for one person to write the article, print it and distribute it to the millions of possible customers. There has to be some kind of division of labour. But the internet changes that.
But we’ve most of us had thoughts like that. I reckon these earlier ones are more illuminating.
I have no principled objection to paying for content. What I would object to is having to subscribe to masses of different publications. It might work for some of the bigger publications but if it comes to a choice of fumbling for my credit card for that one article in Peruvian Railways Monthly then it’s a non-starter.
What I would like to be able to do is to make ONE payment of, say, £20 a month and then be able to access everything.
Like all good libertarians, Patrick invents new businesses by just thinking aloud. He describes what they might look like, anyway. I don’t think he’s a loon.
Alice Bachini enters the fray on the issue of altruism.
I don’t think that we need to define doing good things for other people for no clear personal gain as altruism. It just seems the rational way to go about things sometimes. Good things cause general improvement in all sorts of ways we can’t necessarily demonstrate or define, and knowing this is enough reason for doing them. If we don’t want to do them, then there must be a reason for that. But if we do want to, then presumably our egotistical desire is based on some sensible understanding of how things are. Preferences aren’t arbitrary things, they are based on reasoning to begin with (some of it inherited, or inexplicit, or too deep or fast for us to be consciously aware of it at the time).
On the other hand, irrational desires like the urge to murder someone or to chop off your own hands, are damaging precisely because they are irrational. So the fact that people’s preferences aren’t always necessarily good does not mean that they should not operate on the basis of egotism; it just means they should get more rational before doing things.
Basically, good things make sense and are morally beneficial, including me having a delicious burger for my lunch. Whereas bad things are irrational and morally detrimental. So I can’t see any need for altrusim at all. However, it can be very bad, if it means acting in a way that is contrary to one’s egotistical preferences, because a better thing exists. This is to reason out why we don’t feel like doing what we think we ought to do. Then we can change our preferences and do good things autonomously. Individual freedom is a good thing to seek out.
Alice Bachini
Paul Marks casts a jaundiced eye at real voodoo economics.
The latest crackbrained theory to hit the media is the “Brazil must win for Wall Street” argument.
This argument holds that if Brazil wins the world cup “confidence” in Brazil will improve, an Argentina style collapse will be avoided, the ‘Right’ will win the election – and the money lent to Brazil by various ‘Wall Street’ institutions will be safe.
Of course if the term ‘Right’ means anti-statist the argument is out of touch with reality – as the government of Brazil are a bunch of social democrats and the opposition ‘Workers Party’ are worse.
However. the problem with the argument is rather more basic than this. The argument is really anther example of J.M. Keynes’ theory that a change in ‘confidence’ (‘animal spirits’) creates slumps.
Actually government credit money expansions create the boom-bust cycle.
This may have been explained a long time ago (David Hume stated it in a basic way – and Mises explained it in detail many decades ago), but ‘Wall Street’ and the media do not have a clue.
Everyone reading this blog may be saying to themselves “why is Paul Marks telling us things we already know” – but the problem is that the powers that be in our world do NOT know these things. They are not evil – they are ignorant. Ignorant of the basic principles of political economy.
Of course if Brazil wins the World Cup its economy will still collapse, but will that lead the people of power in our world to do some real thinking? I doubt it.
Paul Marks
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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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