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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It is a rare treat when you get to see the seeds of destruction actually being germinated so please take note of this latest pronouncement of Romano Prodi
“According to the Financial Times, Mr Prodi and other EU commissioners have discussed the possibility of having direct elections in order to give the future president a massive democratic mandate. However, they have concluded that it is almost impossible to run a meaningful election campaign all across the EU.”
So Mr.Prodi thinks that future EU Presidents should be appointed by horse-trading and deal-broking (in smoke-free rooms, of course). No, that is not what he actually says but that is what he means.
For all the high-minded ideals and blather about human rights and democracy from the apparatchicks of Brussels, there is no consensus in Europe, no demos in Europe, there is no ‘Europe’ and if there is one eternal truism of politics that is beyond argument it is that no system of government can rule without the consent of the majority of the governed. A government of and by a ruling elite will always fall. Always.
What a superb showing by British shooter Mick Gault. He keeps winning at the Commonwealth Games in spite of having to do all his training in Switzerland.
The reason he has to train in another country is that Britain took a giant lurch towards becoming a police state in 1997 by outlawing all handguns (not to mention seeing firearms crimes soar since then).
It has long seemed to me that as interest rates have been forced to a ludicrous 40 year low, there is no real reason to keep money sitting in a bank as once the government appropriates a chunk of the pitiful interest on your cash, you might just as well have it stashed under your bed.
The rational view is that rather that seeing a bank as intermediary to invest your money for you, it is really just a glorified piggy bank… a supposedly safe place to invest your money. But then when you add in the fact retail banks go out of their way to pile on service costs and pull such ‘fast ones’ as taking up to four days to clear cheques (thereby pocketing a few days interest on the uncleared funds), when in reality they are capable of clearing the transaction before you have walked away from the counter, it is hardly surprising that retail banks are hearing the first rumblings of a consumer revolt.
I have always thought consumer boycotts were splendid things but quite why the inane Independent Banking Advisory Service (IBAS), a bank consumer group, is calling for a windfall tax (free registration required for link to ERisk Portal) on banks as a result is not so clear.
[Eddie Wetherill of the IBAS says] Nobody can understand how charges are calculated or precisely when they apply. The banks appear a law unto themselves.The Government has made fancy promises to be the consumer champion, but in reality it appears to have been in the pockets of the banks. We are calling for a windfall tax. They have ripped off the public and ought to be paying back £5-10 billion. We have seen ten years of plundering.
And as a consumer of retail banking services, exactly how do I benefit from having the government help itself to the bank’s funds? Does Wetherill think the state is going to appropriate £5-10 billion from the banks and then dole it out to retail banking customers? How idiotic. The government already takes a great deal more of my money that my bank ever has and any ‘windfall tax’ is just going to make the bank a less solvent less secure piggy bank without helping me one iota. With ‘friends’ like the Independent Banking Advisory Service, who needs enemies?
I hate sounding like a dried-up professor by insisting on going back to underlying concepts and definitions but in this case I will. One of the responses I received on my international ‘morality play’ was from Derk Lupinek and although he believes that we should attack Iraq and set up a democratic government, he didn’t think that we have any “responsibility” toward the Iraqi people.
It was his understanding of rights that intrigued me sufficiently to comment on it:
Rights are nothing but wishful thinking without the power to enforce them. The power of enforcement requires an emotional commitment on the part of many individuals. Each individual agrees to help enforce the rights of others and, in return, each individual gains the right to protection under the group’s power. The individual has this right because he contributes to the power that enforces the right. Individuals must contribute to the power that enforces rights or else they have no right to protection under that power. So, I think we can “call for freedom and progress for ourselves” and not feel obligated to kill ourselves helping other countries, especially when those people do not contribute to the preservation of our rights.
I detect a category fallacy in the above paragraph. The definition of a right as wishful thinking without the power to enforce it. So does it mean that where individual’s rights are abused and often cannot be enforced, they do not exist? A right is not a right unless it is enforceable and/or enforced? Just because some people do not wash, should we deny the existence of soap on the grounds of its ineffectiveness with the unwashed?
Which leads me nicely to the various concepts of rights. There are actually three versions at play here. One is the natural rights theory, which assigns inalienable rights to an individual by his/her virtue of being a human being. I will not go into assumptions behind this one here as it is a well-worn and therefore lengthy topic, suffice to say it is the one I subscribe to. That is why I cannot agree with Derk Lupinek’s subscription-based rights, whereby individual’s rights are defined arbitrarily by and within groups of individuals, and protected by a sort of social contract enforced by mutual consent.
In my post on Western intervention in totalitarian regimes, however, I haven’t used either concept of rights, natural or positivist. I was merely thinking of the individuals trapped in totalitarian regimes who never had a choice to enter in any such agreement about either definition or protection of their rights. It is that freedom of choice I feel we have some sort of moral obligation to help them obtain. Not because they contribute to the power that enforces the right or because we are somehow legally or otherwise bound to do so.
Let me put it another way. Try to explain to a child being beaten up by a bunch of thugs, that he has no right to protection since he has not contributed to the power that enforces that right. If you can manage it, you may be consistent but not very humane.
As human lifespans in the prosperous bits of the planet get longer, the older generation is able to live life much more fully. And it seems this is causing a few problems. In a lightly amusing but also poignant article in the Spectator , Nicholas Coleridge writes that granny and grandpa are now so busy with fund-raising, taking exotic holidays or other activity that they don’t have the time to babysit for the children any more, thereby making it harder for working couples to take the odd weekend off without the kids.
I guess this is part of the demographic shift now affecting us. We are living longer, having children later in life, and traditional networks of childcare are breaking down. On the one hand this is not always a bad thing, since it means people are living full lives well into their 70s and 80s, but it also has its costs. I was looked after by my grandparents several times to help out my parents. I will treasure those memories until the day I die.
In his usual, sweetly controversial way Brendan O’Neill spells out his opposition to the planned US bombing of Baghdad rejecting the West’s right and its responsibility to intervene in Iraq or anywhere abroad.
He sees the world in realpolitik terms where the only ‘right’ of the West to do as they please comes from competing rights – i.e. the West’s right against the sovereign right of smaller nations. Apparently, given that is not the case now as almost everybody accepts that
Western powers should ‘do something, anything!’ about corrupt, victimised and poor states, instead all we hear is the word ‘responsibility’.
Brendan finds curious the implicit notion that ‘we’, the West, have some kind of responsibility to do something about Iraq. And by extension anywhere else, even if the regimes are repressive. At least he is consistent in his position which is a rare virtue in today’s muddled-up musings on individual and collective morality, rights and responsibilities.
Let’s have it out then, Brendan.
Round 1: The West is not a uniform block. It is a collection of nation states, governments, or as we, Samizdatistas, like to think of them, a bunch of bureaucratic and oppressive collectivist entities, and as such it cannot be assigned rights or responsibilities. There may be unifying or common features characteristic to the Western world and there may be some moral force vested in those.
Round 2: Freedom is what makes us, the ‘West’, better. I find curious Brendan’s implicit notion that Western values are on a moral par with those of the non-Western regimes whether it be ex-communists or the Third World. Therefore there can be no ‘moral’ right or responsibility to intervene. Given Brendan’s scepticism of the state and governments, perhaps his notion is based on something like: Those who live in glass houses, shouldn’t throw stones…
However, there is such as thing as relative comparison. I may not like the Western states and governments but they are a damn sight better than the communist regimes of old and the oppressive regimes of the present. However flawed the Western moral, political and social fabric may be, it got there by way of choice and freedom! I say it was thanks to progress based on freedom, rights of an individual and other visions and aspirations of the kind I recall Brendan calling for:
It seems perfectly clear to me that we need more development, more production, and bigger and loftier ambitions. (10th July 2002)
Round 3: Monopoly on power. The problem is not assignment of rights or responsibilities to the international players but the fact that only governments currently have monopoly on power and force of the kind needed to bring freedom to those living under totalitarian regimes. This has not always been the case and so people did not need to look for moral guidance in international affairs in the press releases of their politicians and defense officials. Individuals with convictions could fight for their vision regardless of the official position. Take Lord Byron in Greece, Tom Paine in the French Revolution and George Orwell and Ernest Hemingway in the Spanish civil war.
Round 4: If it’s evil, fight it. Brendan says:
They [the left and liberal opponents to war] seem to have forgotten two important points: democratic governments, by their nature, cannot be imposed from without – and to those on the receiving end, choosing between diplomacy and war is a bit like choosing between a rock and a hard place or between having a gun pointed at your head and having somebody pull the trigger. It’s no choice at all.
Speaking as someone with experience of being on the receiving end, the Soviet empire was evil and repressive and there has never been a chance of achieving democracy from within. The only hope for those trapped inside was pressure from without combined with the inevitable but oh so slow decay of the system. My parents’ generation is a ‘lost’ generation – the best years of their lives wasted by communism. Why? Because the West didn’t have enough balls in 1948, 1956 and 1968 to kick the communist arse. Iraq is a variation on the same theme. Therefore, I say, if force is needed to defend freedom, use it.
So do we have any right or responsibility towards those who do not enjoy the same degree of freedom as us? Perhaps not collectively, in the form of state intervention but as individuals we do. Otherwise how can we passionately call for freedom and progress for ourselves and then calmly insist that others will just have to put up with whatever kind of oppression they find themselves subjected to?!
I enjoy reading Iain Murray’s blog The Edge of England’s Sword but I fear he comes a cropper in his anti-drug legalisation screed today.
He attempts to refute the idea that the War on Drugs is every bit as big a disaster of social policy as Prohibition was back in the 1920s.
Excuse me, but the parallels between Prohibition and the War on Drugs are striking and compelling evidence in my view that the current approach to drugs needs to be changed. Criminalisation of drugs has swelled the ranks of organised crime, corrupted law enforcement bodies, artificially driven up the price of drugs to levels so high that addicts commit crimes to fuel their habits, and apart from anything else, is an assault on the core liberal idea that our bodies are our property, not that of the State.
In one paragraph that stands out, Murray writes:
“In any event, the main difference between the two is that society has decided it prefers alcohol legal (there are no polls about restoring alcohol prohibition because it’s such an outlandish suggestion), but is more convinced that drugs confer more harm than benefit overall.”
I love that use of the word “society”. In one fell swoop, logic and evidence are brushed aside. “Society” has “decided” booze can be legal but cannabis cannot. The argument seems to be that because we have had centuries of booze and developed customs to civilise its consumption, we can stick with the current approach, while drugs are relatively new and therefore easier to ban. Even if this were broadly true, longevity is not logic. Alcohol arguably causes far more damage to the fabric of “society” than drug use. Consider the amount of assaults perpetrated by people who are drunk, for example. Consider also issues such as worker absenteeism, chronic ill-health and premature death. Consider how once-brilliant athletes are turned into shells of their former selves through drink.
There is one issue which also comes into play here – The Welfare State. I have no doubt that much of the harm caused by drugs of all kinds is magnified by welfare dependency and the loosening of self discipline that goes with it. I am one of those libertarians who are wary of legalising drugs without first replacing State welfare with a more benign variety.
It is nice to see HM Customs and Excise get one in the eye from a British court. These people would have you believe they are just acting to ‘protect’ Britain from ‘evil drug smugglers’ whilst in reality just engaging in capricious power trips, confiscating property of travellers without any evidence of wrong doing and reversing the burden of proof with a presumption of guilt.
It is particularly bizarre that Customs and Excise claim:
Cigarette, tobacco and alcohol smugglers cost taxpayers £9 million a day
How does depriving the British state of £9 million per day in taxes, and thereby allowing British consumers to purchase cheaper tax free ‘smuggled’ goods, actually cost British taxpayers? Surly it is the British taxes on cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol that is the added cost to British taxpayers, not the avoidance thereof. Since when is not being forced to pay more money a ‘cost’? The ‘smuggler’ makes a profit by purchasing cheaper goods taxed at lower French levels and then importing said goodies to Britain… and the millions of Britons each year who purchase those less costly tax-free goods are thereby able to afford more of what they want… and the state gets less money to spend on surveillance, property redistribution, bureaucracy etc. etc. etc.
Sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.
I knew it wouldn’t take long for someone to respond to Leah McLaren’s criticism of the English male. By the way, Perry, I was not merely amused by her remarks, I also agreed with them. 
The gentleman defending Englishmen’s pride and amorous skills sounds nice and perfectly serviceable. Nevertheless, Leah based the conclusions in her article on about a dozen ‘dates’. Perhaps not enough to make sweeping statements about the entire male population of the British Isles, especially as there are always exceptions, but sufficient to get some insight into their ‘mating habits’.
Instead of discrediting Ms McLaren’s motives, one should ask – does any woman agree with her? To me her rather unkind analysis of an English male rang true not as an old adage about the reserve and reticence of the quintessential English gentleman, usually so painfully and embarrassingly at odds with his own emotions that only ‘tragic’ and ‘desperate’ situations a là Jane Austin novels force him to articulate them.
Leah may have been harsh in her judgement but yet… harsh. It all depends on what you are after. If she expected to be overtly fussed over, adored and ultimately made feel above all women, well she was probably not going to get that on the first or even the fifth date with an Englishman. In that sense, English men are perhaps slower but more solid once they sort out their sometimes convoluted emotions. (And I am talking about the kind of gentleman who wrote the article, I would not want to presume an emotional dimension in the laddish section of the population.)
Leah says she prefers a straightforward North American male who looks her in the eye telling her whatever she wants to hear. Good trick, if you can manage it. This is where the grain of truth in what she says is hidden. The English man does not understand women. Leah may have even been right about why that is. Separation from maternal affection at an early age, exclusively male company during the crucial formative stage, etc,..blah blah. None of this necessarily means that he cannot understand a particular woman once he decides to make the effort. What it does mean though is that he is indeed no match for the more romantically skilled nationalities, such as Italians for example. And believe you me this is not just another cliche. 
To be fair though I’d much rather have a date with an English gentleman than an oily Don Juan.
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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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