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]
|
Jane Galt has a thought-provoking post on the structural instability of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are a veritable festival of interest groups: unions, teachers, minorities, feminists, gay groups, environmentalists, etc. Each of these groups has a litmus test without which they will not ratify a candidate: unfettered support for abortion, against vouchers, against ANWAR drilling, whatever. A lot of groups means a lot of litmus tests, because with the possible exception of the teachers, no one group is powerful enough to swing an election by themselves.
. . . .
But the larger problem is that those interest groups are increasingly coming into conflict. African-americans want vouchers, but the more powerful teacher’s union says no. Latinos trend strongly pro-life, but don’t let NARAL catch them at it. Environmentalists want stricter standards that cost union members jobs. The more interest groups under the tent, the looser the grip the party has on any one group. And as social security and medicare turn into the sucking chest wound of the budget, the money for the programs that Democratic politicians have traditionally used to cement those interest groups to them is disappearing.
One can only hope. While I have little use for Republicans, I can at least sympathize with the tattered remains of their fiscal conservative wing, and they do occasionally put up a proposal, like tax cuts, that I can actively support. I honestly cannot remember the last major Democratic proposal that I supported – the Democrats are truly, through and through, the party of state expansion. In their eyes, there is no protruding nail that cannot, and should not, be battered down with hammer of the State. Even their lone “civil liberties” plank – the right to abortion – is shot through with inconsistency and has morphed into a demand for state funding, support, protection, and promotion of abortion. I would shed no tears for the collapse of the Democratic “coalition,” or for the less likely collapse of the Republicans.
I hope it is time for one of the periodic great realignments in American politics. Certainly, the collapse of one of the two major political power centers is a necessary precondition for such a realignment. The current polarities reflected in the two dominant parties are hopelessly blurred iterations of the class struggles of the ’30s, for crying out loud. A realignment might serve to create parties that will debate the one true issue of politics – the scope and power of the State. Currently, this issue is simply out of phase with the structure and ingrained habits and positions of the parties, as a result of which both consistently plump for a larger and more intrusive State. For chrissake, even tax cuts are sold with a pitch that the economic growth they will trigger will in turn result in increased government revenues.
Without an historic realignment of the political parties that channel and mold preference into politics into policy, the growth of the State in the US will continue unabated.
I was in a dilemma this morning. I was just coming up to the last chapter of Mr Steven Pinker’s seminal work, Blank Slate, and reckoned I needed another 20 minutes to finish it. Unfortunately, my usual Tube journey takes me about 15 minutes. So what to do? Ha ha, I thought, I’ll take the Circle Line instead. This is always full of delays.
But then a Circle Line train pulled up almost immediately, full of empty seats, and raring to go. Foiled! I thought, once again, by a socialised transport system which even fails to be late when that’s what you require. So, resigned to getting to my client’s office on time, I set about the last chapter. However, I was not to be disappointed.
For there was a delay getting into Edgeware Road station! Oh, yes. → Continue reading: Pinker, or bluer, or freer?
So did you vote for Ken Livingstone, at the last London mayoral election? Are you pleased? No doubt many voted for Ken to try to wipe the smile off Tony Blair’s perma-grin face, but a few are now beginning to regret their actions. The average London poll tax payer is now contributing over £220 pounds a year to fund Ken’s baronial circus, on the Thames, with most of it going on the 640 bureaucrats and image consultants he employs to project his avuncular Big Brother image around the capital.
His solution-is-worse-than-the problem congestion charge, currently being swamped by the legal costs of two-finger-saluting defaulters, has severely curtailed trade in the West End, particularly the pre-theatre restaurant trade, and his plans to the increase the usage of those very long and very empty bendy-buses, which dribble continuously past my current client’s offices here in Holborn, will put another additional £200 pounds onto the poll tax payers’ bills, at the very least. So are you still glad you voted for him?
Yes, there’s the rapacious Gordon Brown and his thirst for stamp duty, both on house sales and share transactions, which is draining the carotid arteries of London’s economic golden goose, but if you think you could spend £420 pounds a year, of your own money, better than Big Ken does right now on social engineering, it may be time to start thinking of another lizard to vote for next time. Unfortunately, Mr Schwarzenegger is unavailable. → Continue reading: The Oyster-Catcher
As is rather common in Belfast, it was cloudy earlier this evening. Even so, I laid the latest two issues of Sky and Telescope out on the bed, open to the sky map pages. I tried to interpolate where Mars would be tonight. The charts are basically for the East Coast USA, so they aren’t quite right for my considerably different longitude and latitude.
I needn’t have bothered.
Somewhat after midnight the clouds parted. I pulled on a jumper against the chill of the night. I went out into the too well lit parking lot hoping to navigate my way around the sky based on what ever made it through the glare. It’s not as bad as being in the city centre, but the sky glow here is still considerable.
I found Cygnus. Then I started looking for where I thought the plane of the ecliptic should be. Over in the general direction of the Belfast City Airport there appeared to be a plane in the pattern, and the brightness of its’ lights were an annoyance while looking for…. HOLY SHIT!!!
That was when I realized just how bright Mars is. I’ve seen oppositions before, but nothing remotely like this. The various astronomical news items have been just words. One suggested Mars might be bright enough to throw a dim shadow if you are in a sufficiently dark place. Another said Mars is nearer and brighter than it has been since Neanderthals were hunting Wooly Mammoths in Europe.
You really can’t miss it.
Layman’s Logic has a brief summary of some of the issues surrounding RFID tags (radio transmitters in products), which soon may be in most goods in large stores. One issue is quite how kooky a number of the opponents of the tags are. Another is persistent rumours Euro bills with have tags in in the future. Another is what to do about them:
“[W]hat I need to know is how to kill the tags when I get them. I don’t care that people can see what I’m buying when I use cards – they can see that anyway if they can access credit info, and they want to track stock. Not a problem. On the other hand, I would like to know how to kill the tags the moment I’ve bought something to avoid any nasty privacy surprises. Fortunately, Slashdot seem to have identified a few possibilities“
I am a skeptic of opinion polls but they have their uses. A recent poll suggests that Swedish voters are so far likely to say no to the single currency in the forthcoming referendum on whether Sweden should or should not sign up to The Project.
Notwithstanding the occasional wrinkle in official economic data, it seems pretty clear that the “core” nations of Euroland – Germany and France – are mired in economic difficulty and their labours are hardly likely to make it easier for the Swedish political elite to sell the euro to their electorate.
Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph reports that the ongoing wrangle about whether UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government “sexed up” the dossier about Iraq WMDs has so damaged the public’s perception of Blair that a referendum on the euro looks farther away than ever.
Here’s hoping.
Our good friend Dr.Sean Gabb is currently in Sweden where he is exercising his estimable talents (by invitation, I hasten to add) in support of the campaign against the Euro.
Like Britain, Sweden is actually a member of the European Union (remember, it’s a process not a club) but has yet to ditch its currency (the Crown) in favour of adopting the Euro currency. That could all change next month as a result of a national referendum on the issue and which has divided opinion in the country along by-now familiar lines; most of the political, managerial and media elite are strongly in favour but are battling against widespread grassroots scepticism.
It is into this confrontation that Sean (as well as Dr.Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute) have stepped and from where Sean has written this report:
Adlon Hotel, Stockholm, Monday 25th August 2003
With Mrs Gabb, I am in Sweden for two reasons. The first is to address the summer conference of one of the main libertarian movements in Scandinavia. The second is to help strengthen the no campaign in the closing stages of the Swedish referendum on the Euro. It was my intention to write a long account of the things seen and done during this past week, together with observations on the Swedish people and their architecture and language. But I am presently short of time, and the glare of the television lights has dimmed all else but the events they illuminated. I will write at more length when back in England. For the moment, though, I will concentrate on the second reason for my visit.
→ Continue reading: Fighting the Euro in Sweden
Ah, the free market. Don’t you love it? When offered a Two Towers DVD at Victoria station by WH Smiths, on Friday, for £18.99, three days ahead of the supposed release date, I had to turn it down for three reasons:
- My mother-in-law, whom I was visiting in Worthing, has no DVD player.
- I didn’t want to have to go back to Victoria to change it, if it was scratched.
- I knew those nice people at Tescos would have a better deal, and I would be driving right past the Tescos in Henley on Monday, on the way back from Worthing.
And lo, the Two Towers two-disk set was mine, as I’d predicted, for a mere £11-99, provided I spent fifty quid on other Tesco items. Oh please, I never get out of there for less than a full ton (£100) these days, what with nappies, slim-line tonics, and Atkins’ diet steaks. So laughing all the way to the till, with a trolley load including two small steaks valued at my saving of seven pounds, I inwardly praised Adam Smith and the mysterious workings of the free market, before I bore the precious item home. → Continue reading: Lord of the DVDs: Thank God for Tescos
Oh no, the elephants are at the watering hole again.
The government’s National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) says that In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatment should be free, whatever the heck ‘free’ means, which I suppose in this case means I have to pay for it whether I want to or not.
Here’s one of those hot medical areas which it is easy to avoid discussing. But being one who is constantly trying to seek the best position on any particular ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ position, I was wondering if anyone out there is willing to offer me further guidance? My current views on ‘free’ IVF treatment are as follows. → Continue reading: NHS ‘should offer free IVF’
There’s an interesting White Rose relevant posting at 2 Blowhards just now. 2 Blowhards? Mostly culture in the paintings-movies-literature sense, but often they wander towards culture in the Brian’s Culture Blog sense (where culture means whatever I want it to mean). Anyway, Blowhard “Friedrich” put a piece up yesterday called They Know Two Much, which is about targetted marketing, in this case at the extremely rich. It’s surveillance in its way. As Friedrich says, of the people he’s writing about, the “geodemographic segmentation” merchants:
Well, the next time you get some direct mail or other advertising that seems to know exactly who you are and where you live and how much tread life remains on your right rear tire, you know who to thank – or blame.
Which makes the point nicely that these people will surely be getting into bed with the CCTV minders if they haven’t already. Which would supply the CCTV people with lots of money and motivation.
“Looks like a worn tyre there – give me the number would you? Make? Owner? Address? Phone? Thank you.” Then: call one from the police about driving with a worn tyre, and call two from the tyre salesman offering immediate delivery and fitting.
Ah, brave new world.
The September Astronomy issue reports what may be a cosmological bombshell. Time is continuous. It is not quantized. There is no such thing as an ‘instant’ of time, only a continuim. This makes the paper I discussed a few weeks ago look even more interesting than it did then.
The test is quite an elegant one. Light waves from a distant source exhibit fringes called an Airy disk. This is a set of rings around a central bright point with an appearance much like a Fresnel lens.
If we assume time is discrete, there are definable instants a quantum or Planck time interval apart. The speed of light in a vacuum becomes slightly fuzzy rather than exact. Photons that leave a source at the ‘same’ time would go out of phase by a small amount as they travel because some would travel slightly faster than others.
The theoretically proposed smallest time interval (the Planck time) is incredibly short. Phase slippage could not possibly be detected unless the light had travelled for an almost unimagineably long time: such as from a very distant galaxy. If time is quantized, the slippage in the phases should fuzz out the Airy disks of such distant objects.
Astronomers found sharp Airy disks. QED: time is not quantized. The work has already been replicated and seems fairly solid.
I await the theoretical fallout with great interest.
It would be helpful if you could indicate your city or town or, at least, your state, province or country. Failing that, your continent or hemisphere will do. If you seriously think Arianna Huffington is the voice of the people, do let us know what planet….
— Mark Steyn’s advice to people who would send him e-mail.
|
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.
|
