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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Another quote for today “You teach people that it’s wrong to care. You tell them that the right course of action is to “not get involved”. When they see a crime being committed, then if they try to stop it they may end up in prison, but there’s no punishment for looking the other direction and not seeing. And thus fewer people will get involved.”
– Steven Den Beste writing on what happens when you punish people for killing robbers. Emphasis added by me.
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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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The “no punishment for looking the other direction” bit reminds me of the Good Samaritan Law from the Seinfeld finale. I’d be careful when quoting something like that; the average legislatures first reaction to reading it will be “Wow, we’d better start punishing people who don’t get involved” not “Wow, we’d better stop punishing people for getting involved”.
The Good Samaritan Laws that exist in many US states are about not punishing people for getting involved. They mostly immunize people who stop and help from lawsuits. (If you stop and give CPR, but the person still dies, or perhaps you make a small error doing it and they are injured, you can’t be sued.)