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.
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And that’s only trivially because Patrick deals with other countries besides the UK. The deeper reason why all should periodically attend to UK Transport is that what it says about transport often applies with equal force to the rest of the universe. Consider the following, from a posting yesterday about airline seats.
I think there are archive problems over at UKT, because I couldn’t make the first of those two links work. Here’s the stuff I mean:
It may be that left to its own devices the market will solve the problem. But, of course, these days markets are not left to their own devices. Right now, at an airline near you the following conversation could be taking place:
“Why don’t we increase seat sizes?”
“Because, the government is thinking of introducing some new regulations.”
“How does that affect us?”
“Because, if we go ahead and change all our seats we could find they’re too small and have to replace them again.”
“Oh. And if they’re too big?”
“Then with the new regulations, everyone will assume that the problem has been solved and we’ll lose any competitive advantage we might have had.”
“So, we’re better off waiting for the government?”
“Precisely”
So, the change will be late, you won’t have a choice and the state will take the credit.
Now I think that’s about a great deal more than just airline seats, don’t you?
Last night (Thursday July 11th) I attended a lecture organised by the Adam Smith Institute (note that their website now has no “uk” at the end – it’s just “www.adamsmith.org”), and given by former Chief Schools Inspector Chris Woodhead. It was a strange occasion, in some ways extremely encouraging and in others somewhat frustrating.
Woodhead patiently explained why, in his very well informed opinion, state education, academic improvements are because the exams are getting easier. The national curriculum, which he said he used to support, has allowed real subjects to be replaced by nonsense subjects, and he now thinks it should be scrapped.
Nor, said Woodhead, will the present government’s various “initiatives” make any difference. Lowering class sizes has had little impact in the USA. Parents don’t want specialist schools, they just want good schools which are good at everything that matters. Bringing in “private sector management” won’t help if the managers aren’t allowed to sack any of the existing teachers.
So, having spent most of his career working for the “top down” (his own oft-repeated phrase) state education system, he now wants the freely choosing citizenry rather than state hirelings and bureaucrats to make the key decisions about education.
Well, good. And good on the Adam Smith Institute for fixing it for Woodhead to say such things. But I felt about it rather as I did about high-level (and hence well paid) “critics” of the Soviet empire, at the time when that was also falling apart. Could you not have arrived at some of these conclusions a little sooner? And some of Woodhead’s proposed reforms were decidedly naïve. Education vouchers? He said that the entire state education machine, and especially the unions (“the blob”), is unanimously against vouchers. Indeed. So might not something a little more cunning, if only because more cunningly worded, be preferable? There was also the suspicion that Woodhead’s own inability to get his own way from his former position of supposed power, and the general unpleasantness he suffered from the many and various enemies he accumulated within the system, had a lot to do with his conversion. Sour grapes in other words. But one shouldn’t carp too much. It will certainly make a difference that a major ed-celeb has come out in favour of moving education in a much more free market direction. And besides, what better way could there be to learn about the horrors of the politicised and state-centralised provision of education than by experiencing and observing these horrors at first hand and face to face? Better late than never.
Another reservation that many libertarians would have felt (and which one questioner stated out loud during the Q&A session) concerned the fact that Woodhead’s proposals were all about parental choice, and about the reestablishment of old-fashioned education and old-fashioned academic standards. The Woodhead plan was simply that the children should be told to do different things by different people. But what of the children’s own wishes? What of their freedom?
This bothers me less (although Brian’s Education Blog may change my mind about this!). First, Woodhead has a point about the value of basic skills, especially of the simple three Rs variety. Learning to read and write and add up is a far better basis for individual freedom than being kidnapped and made to muck about with plasticene, or to be taught literacy and numeracy very badly.
And second, it seems to me that in practice children can have a huge influence over the choices that parents supposedly make on their behalf, far more than they could ever hope to influence the state. Eagerness to follow Alternative Plan B and severe temper tantrums and adolescent bolshiness directed at Parental Plan A means that Plan A in practice stands little chance of being followed, no matter how certain parents may feel about its superiority. That so many children get bossed by their parents is because most children are either unthinkingly obedient, or else only bolshy. Children lack freedom, that is to say, not because they are in a prison, but because they themselves give insufficient thought to alternatives.
He who understands neither judges nor offends.
-Anonymous
On Brendan O’Neill‘s self-titled blog, he replies to my article The long and winding road on Tuesday in which I praised him for rejecting the economic equivalent of ‘flat earth theory’, namely the infamous ‘fixed wealth fallacy’.
However whilst he agrees that he indeed rejects the sort of corporatist statist capitalism that we at Samizdata despise, he does not much care for our economic objectives: non-state centred laissez-faire capitalism. It is interesting that I was struck by the same paragraph in Brendan’s response as Adriana in her article (see below).
So Brendan does not want corporatist statist capitalism in which existing companies get subsidies from the state or use the state’s raft of regulations to make it hard for competitors to enter their market… but he also does not seem to like unregulated laissez-faire capitalism, which is based on market forces and voluntary contract free from the dead hand of the state.
Okay, as he states that he is not an ‘anti-capitalist’ because those ‘anti-capitalist’ guys are anti-growth, so he is obviously pro-growth. However he does not like ‘capitalists’ because for some reason he feels they can’t deliver “more development, more production and bigger and loftier ambitions”… the lofty ambitions however are left unstated. So it seems he does not want regulated hand-in-hand-with-the-state capitalism (i.e. ‘third way’ nonsense) and he does not want unregulated capitalism. I cannot help but see that the similarity between these two different ‘capitalisms’ Brendan rejects is that they both leave the means of production in private hands (though in reality only laissez-faire truly does). When presented with these two contrasting forms of ‘capitalism’, he asks if these are the only two ballgames in town? No, of course not, Brendan. We also have Marxist economics as an option.
So let me speculate as to what Brendan actually wants as he is not exactly spelling it out… he has often stated that he is a great fan of democracy, and in fact when I wrote an article scorning modern democracy, he seemed almost unwilling to believe I really intended to gore that particular sacred cow. However ‘democracy’ is one of those weasel words in that it does not always mean the same to different people. To some, like Brendan I suspect (and I am sure he will say otherwise if I am misrepresenting him), democracy means allowing ‘The People’ (whatever that means) to have democratic input into what any business actually does with its accumulated means of production. In short, ‘The People’ will act as a super-owner of land, labour and capital rather than leaving it to some capitalist ‘owners’: private property itself ceases to really be private anymore. The important thing here is not the economy but making everything democratic. In other words, ‘democratic socialism’.
On a purely historical basis, socialism is very big on “bigger and loftier ambitions”, but truly dire at producing “more development, more production”. Capitalism is demonstrably the best system for increasing development and production, and the less regulated it is, the better it works.
Yet the fact is, even if it was not the best economic system for achieving Brendan’s utilitarian aims of “more development, more production” (which it is), I would still support capitalism for what can only be described as my own “bigger and loftier ambitions”… sure I want more economic goodies but much more than that, I want liberty and that is not something the state can give me.
I read Brendan O’Neill’s response to Perry’s challenge to take his spot-on rejection of ‘fixed wealth fallacy’ to its logical conclusion, i.e. laissez-faire capitalism, with mounting – wait for it – agreement.
For I agree with Brendan’s disappointment with ‘capitalism’ – I am also unimpressed by blundering inefficiency of large corporations and big businesses, by short-term horizons and inconsistency of their management. And I too am depressed by the effect ‘the limited mindset of capitalist bosses’ has on entrepreneurship, innovation and progress (even without the recent headlines about fraud and criminal accounting). What I see in the corporate world of today though is not laissez-faire capitalism but statist corporatist capitalism. Which by any other name would stink as much…
I do not understand though what Brendan means when he complains that capitalism cannot provide enough for everyone and can’t deliver what the world needs:
Of course, the truth is that neither side has a solution. It seems perfectly clear to me that we need more development, more production, and bigger and loftier ambitions. The capitalists can’t deliver that, and the trendy anti-capitalists don’t even aspire to it. To that end, I would say I am neither a capitalist, nor a so-called ‘anti-capitalist’.
I admit, Brendan, I do not have a solution, but then, I am not on either ‘side’ since my ambitions are bigger and loftier. The difference is I do not expect anyone, state or institution, to provide for me. I want the freedom to provide for myself and my nearest and dearest without interference from anyone. And I want free markets to be the mechanism for communicating my needs and for meeting other peoples’ needs. Because that is what capitalism is – the most efficient mechanism known to man for pursuing individual rights and freedom. It may not eliminate inequality but offers means to generate wealth to redress it.
Most importantly, it is freedom not capitalism that encourages creativity and motivates individuals to develop and progress. Laissez-faire capitalism ‘merely’ maximises that freedom and enables those individuals to pursue their ambitions. So let’s not complain that capitalism does not supply the big and lofty ambitions that Brendan needs – for me, that would be a depressing choice.
Occasional Samizdata contributor and libertarian Andrew Dodge points out that for the British musical industry to carp about a lack of recent hits in the U.S. is silly because so much mainstream British pop music is rubbish. He seems to be right, judging from what I hear when I turn the radio dial around from time to time.
Of course, I have to be careful that my dislike of much modern stuff is not just a sign of my becoming an old git and is in fact a genuine response. The last CDs I bought were by Carlos Santana, Diana Krall and the complete works of Tom Lehrer (the guy who gave us the Dr Werner von Braun song). Not quite sure what Mr Dodge makes of that.
Anyway, what if anything can or should be done about our musical predicament? You cannot conjure artistic talent out of the trees. Maybe we are, for various reasons perhaps too complex to understand, going through an artistic dry patch. How are we going to make that dry patch sprout a million new flowers? I’d like to think that modern technology might have a part to play. Be interested to know what other folk think…
There’s been a discussion going on between Kausfiles and detractors on whether the Left or the Right has been more violent over the last thirty years. I’d have to say it’s neither one nor the other. There are nuts at the far extremes of every political ideology. Perhaps it’s one of those funny properties of infinity… no matter which direction you go you end up in the same loony bin if you go far enough.
I disagree with Mickey’s statement the left doesn’t have the guns. I’d have to point out the Simbianese Liberation Army (SLA) and its last ditch firefight from a burning house; the various armed bank robberies and such carried out by it during that period; the Black Panthers; the Weather Underground bomb that blew out an upper floor of the Gulf Building in Pittsburgh in the early 70’s; not to mention former Manson Family member Lynette “Squeeky” Fromm’s attempt to shoot President Ford. So who says the Left is unarmed?
In the last decade we’ve had nearly an affirmative action of violence. You’ve got PETA and other eco-maniacs causing destruction and putting lives at risk; you’ve got the equally mad Anti-Choice types on the Right targetting clinics and doctors; you’ve got a few mad bombers… and then you’ve got Unabomber. God only knows where you’d classify him. Somewhere in the neighborhood of Pol Pot I’d say…
I have no doubts we (libertarians) will someday produce a few of our own extreme nuts. Actually we already have, they just haven’t caused any damage yet and those who appeared dangerous have been actively pushed away and shunned by the Party at all levels. The sort of individuals who might one day harm others in our name are persona non-gratis in our ranks. It doesn’t matter how well they walk the walk and talk the talk, they are not welcome.
The extremes of the Left and the Right are more likely to promote violence to accomplish their agenda than even the most far edge Libertarians. The difference in attitude of the Left and Right towards “active measures” shifts in time with the dictats of RealPolitic. When violence moves one’s agenda forward, it is condoned; when violence advances the other side’s agenda it is condemned.
Following on from Brian’s post on synthetic phonics, here are some words from a guest blogger:
It is great! I don’t even do it because I do my sunshine work. (I am not going to tell you my name) You spell out words and stuff and do synthesis and segmantatean.
That was written by my son. Some of it he typed himself, some of it I typed at his letter-by-letter dictation. He was taught reading at his state school by means of a scheme called Early Reading Research, which is being piloted in several schools in Essex. He says “I don’t even do it” because he has completed the scheme at the age of six years and three weeks. “Sunshine work” is presumably the next scheme on. As you can see, although not yet a giant of literature he is competent to write down in a comprehensible fashion any idea that he can express verbally. He gave up on spelling the word “synthesis”, but so might many adults.
This rather misleading BBC News 24 story discusses the scheme. The article is better than the headline; I bet you 95% of readers saw the words “real books” and either applauded or condemned without reading further. ERR has little to do with the discredited system whereby children had books thrown in their direction and were told to get on with it. Rather it consists of tightly structured sessions of about twelve minutes, three times a day, where they do “c-a-t spells cat” (synthesis) and “dog is spelt d-o-g” (segmentation). Then they finish with some exemplary reading from real books.
The scheme is popular with his classmates and with the teachers. I gather the same is true wherever it has been tried. So why isn’t it famous? Guess.
Brian, I thought your “this is how holocausts begin” article was meant to be a deadly secret, its very existence hidden from all those who have not rolled up their trouser legs and passed the hideous initiation tests* necessary to join Libertarian Alliance Forum. I quite understood the secrecy. Although it was clear to me that you spoke of your fears not your desires, of course such an article is going to be misunderstood and misquoted by those too uneducated or too wilfully blind to make the distinction. But if you are going to hint about it to the whole world, why not publish it?
*The candidate must write the holy word “subscribe” and send it to a shaman of the cult of Yahoo. My life is in danger now I have said this.
The greatest achievement, in narrow political terms anyway, of the present Labour government is to have convinced large swathes of the middle class that it has nothing to fear from Labour. Certainly, the decision taken early on to make the Bank of England independent and set interest rates was a masterstroke. Pretty much every other decision, though, has been in the wrong direction, and after the usual early honeymoon period, doubts are setting in.
In a cogently argued piece for the right-leaning Daily Telegraph, columnist Daniel Johnson subjects the reign of UK finance minister Gordon Brown to a thorough bashing. At the core of the problem is Brown’s massive tax increases, which, coupled with a horrendously complex welfare benefits system, is fostering a corrosive dependency culture while at the same time retarding economic growth. For several years while world markets boomed it was possible for Brown to get away with the reputation of the ‘canny Scot’ who would take no risks with the economy. But his mania for new tax rises and sundry gimmicks, coupled with a barely concealed dislike of the middle class, is starting to get noticed.
The real question now is whether the opposition Conservative Party can make any gains from this. Judged by the complete lack of tax-cutting rhetoric from the Tories, they don’t look like making progress any time soon.
Usually – well often at least – the Opinion Journal email newsletter delivers interesting stories with an interesting spin on them. But today they went off the deep end with a Cryonics story. It seems Ted Williams may be an Alcor customer. For those in the know, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation is the premier organization of its’ kind. I have met and dealt with many of Alcor’s founders and customers. They are uniformly well educated, intelligent and interesting people. Fortunately none of those I know well are suspendees yet.
The silliness with which the OJ approached the topic showed a low standard of care in research. The writer shows a lack of general knowledge of the subject and uses cuteness to cover ignorance.
There are many reasonable questions that could be asked. What exactly is Alcor? Who are its’ customers? What does it stand for? Why would someone have their self frozen? I will attempt very short answers, but I suggest those who are really interested go to their web site and perhaps some others I will reference.
What is Alcor Alcor is an organization dedicated to cryonic suspension of its’ members upon a declaration of death under current medical criteria. Alcor has an experienced staff that will then do their absolute best to get the member into long term suspension in liquid Nitrogen with the minimum possible extra damage possible under current technology.
Who are its’ customers? The customer base of Alcor is drawn from the ranks of extremely intelligent and creative people. They are not fanatical believers in some pseudo-science. They are lovers of life who are taking one last gamble. If the medical technology of 100 or 200 years hence is advanced enough to fix both the original cause of “death” and the possibly severe cellular damage from the freezing process, they win. If they lose, they will never know the difference and so don’t much care.
What does it stand for Alcor believes nanotechnology will advance to a point at which repair at a cellular level will become possible. Life expectancy will then jump to hundreds if not thousands of years. The primary cause of death in the future will be accidents that destroy the brain structure. The difficulty Alcor sees is most of us will be dead long before this becomes possible. Their premise is to just “bite the bullet” now and use the best techniques we have at hand in an attempt to bridge the gap.
Some experiments have shown excellent long term tissue preservation in LN2; in one experiment a dog was taken down to freezing and brought back. It lived out a normal doggy life afterwards. Many in the cryogenics field have a political dislike for the whole concept so few have actually been doing the experiments. None expect it to be easy; none give the current techniques any more than an outside chance of working. Alcor people will tell you that up front. It’s in their paperwork and disclaimers.
Why would someone have themselves frozen???? “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia”. If you are cremated, you ain’t comin’ back. If you’re buried to rot, you ain’t comin’ back. If you’re cut up for medicine, you ain’t comin’ back. If you are frozen in liquid nitrogen for a century or two… well you might not be coming back. But… If you love life why not take a shot? You can’t take the money with you anyway; Alcor isn’t a big profit corporation, it’s a member run organization and all funds go to the purpose. Their employee salaries and benefits suck. It all goes back into keeping those dewars icey.
I first ran across the concept of Cryonic suspension a long time ago. Way back in the late 60’s or early 70’s I believe (the oldest still viable suspendee dates from that early period). I thought it was technically preposterous but somewhat interesting. Nothing about it interested me enough to dig further until after I read and commented on Eric Drexler’s drafts for Engines of Creation in the early 80’s. The penny dropped. If you can manipulate atoms, repairing or even rebuilding a body becomes technically conceivable. I have watched the field of nanotechnology grow from a handful of Eric’s friends to a globally known buzzword in less than two decades. Some of the first products of the field will be out in a couple years. It is expected to be a major economic sector within the next twenty years.
There are critics of the whole scenario. They may be right. I don’t think so, but they might be. So read the literature, take my opinions with two grains of Sodium Chloride, study the technical issues, pick your horse and lay your money down.
If you are interested in a quick education on nanotechnology, check out Foresight Institute. And oh yeah. Jim Bennett, Glenn Reynolds and myself all have ties of one sort or another to Foresight.
A month after the September 11th attacks I posted a long article on the Libertarian Alliance Forum which prophecied/threatened/feared/was-trying-to-prevent-by-threatening a possible Western slaughter of Muslims. All Muslims. It caused quite a ruckus there. The grammar was a bit overwrought but it still reads well. What did it say? Pretty much what J. J. Johnson says in this.
Summary: if the Good Muslims want to go on being treated like Good Muslims, then they had damn well better sort out the Bad Muslims.
There’s no denying that there’s an extra frisson to Johnson’s piece that comes from him being a black man. He mentions how he and his fellow Good Blacks of American are now sorting out the Bad Blacks of America more energetically than they used to (instead of blaming it all on White America), and cites this as the kind of example that the Good Muslims ought to follow.
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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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