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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Samizdata slogan of the day By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
– Lord Salisbury (1830-1903)
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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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I like this. But how much of our tax-based culture survives this six-men-coercing-five-men test?
Would you consider a lynch mob to be an example of democracy in action?. it meets all the criteria to called as such.
It would seem that democracy, being the rule of the majority, is just another word for redistribution of wealth and property, as the less wealthy will always be in the majority, and will therefore always pass laws that favour them.
Maybe democracy isn’t such a good thing after all, and is just another statist buzz word, that on the surface seems to be very reasonable, but in truth is just another ‘frequently used, so it must be a good word, and don’t even think of arguing otherwise, you cretin’. By such acceptance democracy has a ‘good’ image. All the lefties think it is good, so it must be.
In the middle ages, I’m sure that the idea of democracy was a good and valid line of thought, but somehow our modern politicians seem to make even the best of ideas into something quite corruot and to mean the opposite of the original intention. So the democratic decision making process may not be the best way after all.
The formation of the EU is supposed to be the result of a democratic decision, taken by some committee or other in Brussels, maybe the majority in France and Germany are happy with the result, after all, they seem set to be net benificiaries in the long term, but somehow, from the British point-of-view, it does not seem to be so democratic, when we stand to lose so much in both the short and long term, not just in terms of wealth, but also in so many other ways.
The fact that the formation of the EU is ‘democratic’ from the European viewpoint, does not mean that it is ‘democratic’ from the British viewpoint. It does not appear to have a majority in favour in the UK. Somehow, I get the feeling that we have been manipulated in a big way.
Democracy – who needs it?.
Junior: Amen to that! People need to be disabused of the notion that democracy = liberty, and the sooner the better.
But how much of our tax-based culture survives this six- men-coercing-five-men test?
I don’t imagine any culture holds onto minding its own business for very long. Too many people who like to tell other people what to do, and too many who like to be told what to do…or at least don’t mind it much. And too much lovely money to be redistributed at someone else’s expense.
People who genuinely prefer being left alone to get on with it are a smaller proportion of the human race than one might have hoped.
Allow me to call down an airstrike on my own position by suggesting that the natural propensity of the very productive to stop working (or slow down) when overtaxed acts as a natural brake on overtaxation by the mob (witness the Reagan years) and that the increased political influence of the very productive on the political process can serve to balance out the larger numbers of the voting mob.
Also, we seem to be converging towards a line where only the very productive and the owners of capital are guaranteed financial success, and where the ambitious but moronic will have a tougher and tougher time. I have no qualms with allowing the lazy to starve (unless they starve slowly and consume useful food while doing it) but I respect that there are some legitimately ambitious but less-gifted souls who may need and deserve more help from the State, and democracy may ensure that they receive it when the marketplace does not reward their efforts.