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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Heading for the red planet There is quite a procession of folks headed for Mars at the moment, according to this BBC report. Coming relatively soon after the awful Shuttle disaster, it is heartening to see some actual stirrings of decent activity in the space field at the moment.
Godspeed to them all.
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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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Somehow this grabs my imagination far more than anything they do with the Shuttle. I hope at least one of them makes it, because even if they don’t answer any complex questions, pictures from Mars are cool, and it would be nice to see more positive news stories about science.
One beneficial indirect consequence likely to result from the EU’s emergence is a manned landing on Mars.
Not by the EU, of course.
A joint anglospheric effort would be delightful, however unlikely.
Why’s this heartening? None of the Mars-missions is privately financed, as far as I am aware, and manned ones are more about national vainglory than cost-effective acquisition of information. (Hence the EU’s interest: it is to be “our” Apollo.)
The cash is still coming forcibly out of my (and your) pockets. What makes this a legitmate reason to shake me down, when a fancy office building for earth-bound bureaucrats plainly isn’t? Could it be Samizdatovites are suckers for a collective “vision” provided it’s spun the right way?
What is the point of “space”?
What did it ever add to the sum of human happiness?
Andrew Duffin writes what is the point of space?
Of course he’s right. There’s no point. No point to discovering new places. Christopher Columbus should have stayed at home and used his talents elswhere.
Guy Herbert: you have a point – of course I would infinitely prefer private space exploration to the tax-funded sort, and I hope this happens sooner rather than later. But if we are going to have States, I’d rather my tax moneys were spent on space exploration and broadening human knowledge to a lot of the current rubbish.