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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Earlier in the week I heard Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute on the radio argue that Labor Day in the US should celebrate the achievements of man’s mind, rather than main’s muscles. For me, the most interesting bit of the show was when Binswanger pointed out that free trade benefits everyone. The interviewer jumped on this and pointed to the US’s huge “trade deficit” with China. Binswanger started to debunk this, but was cut off by a break for the adverts.
Now he has an article up on Capitalism Magazine explaining his position, entitled: ‘Buy American’ is UN-American. He writes:
The lucrative workings of free markets do not depend upon lines drawn on a map. The economic advantages of international commerce are the same as those of interstate, intercity, and crosstown commerce. And if we kept crosstown trade accounts, the “trade deficits” that would appear would be as meaningless as are our international “trade deficits.” Fact confirms theory: the U.S. ran a trade “deficit” practically every year of the nineteenth century, the time of our most rapid economic progress.
If you are still worried about America’s “trade deficit”, here’s something you should get your head around: each year, America exports exactly the same value as it imports. The “trade deficit” merely refers to part of trade – the current account of the balance of payments. It ignores completely the capital account of the balance of payments. Because successful countries tend to get a lot of investment coming into the country – which is recorded on the capital account – it looks superficially as though these countries have “deficits”, despite the fact that they continue to get richer. In short, a “trade deficit” is a meaningless term.
Suppose you met someone who argued that there is a moral right to sex. He said that it is unfair that some people don’t have sex at all, particularly those who are less well endowed physically. Thus the government should make sexually successful people have sex with those who are missing out.
You would probably think the argument used is outrageous. It would be an act of violation. It uses compulsion. It treats people as a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of itself.
Now let’s look at schooling. Some people argue that there should only be comprehensive schools. Grammar and private schools should be abolished. They point out that if less academically gifted children spend time with people who are high academic achievers, it raises their ambitions and helps them to be successful in life. But this right to have bright people at your school, is just like the right to have sex without the other party’s consent. It is violation of the child. It treats the child’s life as a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of itself. It is based on the principle of slavery.
If you use Barclays online banking, beware.
There’s a spam email going round claiming to be from them. It says that due to a systems update you should log in to Barclays and reactivate your account.
The link enclosed looks genuine but will take you to the spammer’s site. The objective is to steal your password.
There’re lots of clues that the email is a fake, including strange headers and bad English. However it’s very easy just to click, hence this warning.
This is not a hoax warning about a non-existent virus! I received this evil email myself this morning. Barclays have been informed.
Why is this White Rose Relevant? Because it shows once again that the weakest part of any security system is the human factor. Over-reliance on technical “solutions” gives people a false sense of security and can make them more vulnerable.
Partly cross-posted from An It Harm None.
Many in the blogosphere have said the al Qaeda hate us simply for what we are… free, wealthy and tolerant. Now we have confirmation from a top al Qaeda leader:
The author of “The Future of Iraq and The Arabian Peninsula After The Fall of Baghdad” is Yussuf al-Ayyeri, one of Osama bin Laden’s closest associates since the early ’90s. A Saudi citizen also known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad, he was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Riyadh last June.
Yussuf al-Ayyeri considers American democracy the last and greatest threat against Islam:
This form of “unbelief” persuades the people that they are in charge of their destiny and that, using their collective reasoning, they can shape policies and pass laws as they see fit. That leads them into ignoring the “unalterable laws” promulgated by God for the whole of mankind, and codified in the Islamic shariah (jurisprudence) until the end of time.
He is afraid the increasing wealth of a free society will breed a world in which young people won’t be willing to blow themselves to their heavenly virgins. The following paragraphs may well contain the explanation of the economic warfare going on in Iraq. It appears the al Qaeda goal isn’t just beating Americans. They must send Iraq back to the stone age. Iraqi’s must be left ignorant and starving:
The goal of democracy, according to Al-Ayyeri, is to “make Muslims love this world, forget the next world and abandon jihad.” If established in any Muslim country for a reasonably long time, democracy could lead to economic prosperity, which, in turn, would make Muslims “reluctant to die in martyrdom” in defense of their faith.
He says that it is vital to prevent any normalization and stabilization in Iraq. Muslim militants should make sure that the United States does not succeed in holding elections in Iraq and creating a democratic government. “If democracy comes to Iraq, the next target [for democratization] would be the whole of the Muslim world,” Al-Ayyeri writes.
The Turkish government should beware. They are also on the menu:
The al Qaeda ideologist claims that the only Muslim country already affected by “the beginning of democratization” and thus in “mortal danger” is Turkey.
“Do we want what happened in Turkey to happen to all Muslim countries?” he asks. “Do we want Muslims to refuse taking part in jihad and submit to secularism, which is a Zionist-Crusader concoction?”
Like most fanatics, he does not understand history:
Al-Ayyeri says Iraq would become the graveyard of secular democracy, just as Afghanistan became the graveyard of communism. The idea is that the Americans, faced with mounting casualties in Iraq, will “just run away,” as did the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is because the Americans love this world and are concerned about nothing but their own comfort, while Muslims dream of the pleasures that martyrdom offers in paradise.
Al-Ayyeri is perhaps not aware Americans have fought fanatical suicide bombers before. Oh yes, we know all about this form of warfare. The absolute abhorance for it is part of American cultural history. We have an ingrained visceral hatred for those who would do it.
Three thousand five hundred Japanese Kamikazi pilots attacked American ships at the end of WWII with devastating effect. Japan’s remaining industry was churning out two man human torpedoes for the final battle. They were testing catapult ground launch of the manned Baka rocket bomb. The mainland population was preparing to fight to the end as they had on islands leading up to Japan: islands on which masses of civilians threw themselves off cliffs into the sea rather than surrender.
Soldiers died with hand grenades primed and ready underneath them. Surrendering prisoners approached American lines with explosives ready to go. The priests of the Bushido code called upon the people of Japan to die for the Emporer. They were preparing to do so. The invasion would have nearly wiped out the Japanese population. It would have taken years and cost the lives of a half million or more American soldiers. So we did the Indiana Jones thing… we nuked them.
We know how to solve this problem if it ever comes down to “end game” again. If there is still anyone out there who doesn’t understand the seriousness of the threat, please read this very final solution manifesto very carefully:
“As far as belief is concerned, the absolutely final version is represented by Islam, which “annuls all other religions and creeds.” Thus, Muslims can have only one goal: converting all humanity to Islam and “effacing the final traces of all other religions, creeds and ideologies.”
Did you just catch that whiff of smoke from the incinerators?
Many thanks to James Taranto’s daily Opinion Journal email newsletter for the heads up on this story.
I have heard it mentioned, more than once I must add, that Polly Toynbee lives in a little world all of her own. Not true, I say. This is a woman who knows only too well that ‘dark forces’ are gathering on yonder horizon and they are attacking not just politicians but (shudder!) the institution of government itself:
This approach is in danger of making the country nearly ungovernable: were Iain Duncan Smith to win power, his government would get barely more respite these days. Journalism of left and right converges in an anarchic zone of vitriol where elected politicians are always contemptible, their policies not just wrong but their motives all self-interest. Those on the left should take this very seriously indeed.
Taking it seriously is one thing. Doing something about it is quite another.
The right is individualist, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-collective provision.
Sounds good to me. Where do I sign up?
Undermining the idea that government is a force for good is its ideological aim, alongside the mad militias of Idaho. But the left, which purports to believe in government, should be wary of joining the same all-governments-are-rubbish camp. This anarcho-individualism is a very British mindset – and it is not compatible with social democracy.
Idaho is in Britain???!!
Still, she is right about individualism being incompatible with social democracy. She also has some robust ideas on how governments (or left-of-centre governments I suppose) can fight back:
It is time to shed the third way triangulation that strangles clarity of message. Trust comes with a sense of purpose, direction and clear belief, unmuffled by trying to please the enemy. So when some newspapers continue to distort, cut them off and denounce them bravely. Making enemies also makes friends.
No, I don’t think that’s going to work. The trouble with social democracy is that it doesn’t light any brushfires in the mind. It’s boring. The narcolepsy-inducing details of Keynsian pump-priming will simply not lend themselves to set jawlines, steely-determination and blood-curdling battle cries. If your aim is to turn the whole world into Sweden, you’re going to have to find an altogether gentler horse to ride it around on.
Once more into the breech, Ms.Toynbee.
A commenter (“Tregagle”) on a previous smoking-related posting here mentioned this. Here’s the story, from the Independent:
A hormone that signals when the stomach is full has been found to cut the appetites of both fat and thin people by one-third in an experiment that could signal an important advance in the treatment of obesity.
Professor Stephen Bloom, of Imperial College London and Hammersmith Hospital, who headed the team that made the discovery, said it was the first time in 20 years that they had identified a compound with such potential. The finding is published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
And I wonder if this research might have a bearing also on the plight of at least some of those unhappy people who eat too little? Maybe they are producing too much of this stuff naturally. Just a thought.
Look out Atkins Diet. Here comes the Bloom Diet. Just take one of these half way through your meal, and the dog can have the rest.
In twenty years time, everyone will look like supermodels. Everyone will be beautiful. But the Marxists will then say that beauty is relative, that the only-rather-beautiful ones will be the new uglies, and that capitalism should still, as always, feel thoroughly ashamed of itself, this time for having dared to turn willpower into a commodity. Plus, the vilified Bloom will be held responsible for diminished sales of Third World agricultural produce, and for the depressed state of and mass unemployment in the sticky bun industry.
News about Italian spam:
Senders of unsolicited junk e-mails in Italy will now face jail sentences of up to three years, according to Italian media reports.
The country’s privacy watchdog issued the ruling in an attempt to limit the huge amount of advertising and promotional material sent online.
Sending e-mails without the permission of the receiver is against the law in Italy.
Offenders now risk fines of up to 90,000 euros and between six months and three years in prison, if it is proved that they did it to make a profit.
The ruling follows estimates by the European Commission that spam e-mails cost EU companies approximately 2.25bn euros in lost productivity last year.
EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.
Most spam comes from the United States and China, and will be outside its reach.
If that’s so, you wonder what the real point of this is. Expect calls for world government to deal with this. Sorry: “global governance”.
Let me go on record (to the extent someone posting under a pseudonym can go on the record) as someone who believes that President Bush’s domestic agenda has been very nearly a complete disaster, with the sole exception of his tax cut bill. Perhaps the only glimmer of hope for the future is that there seem to be some regulatory relief things happening “under the radar” within some of the major administrative agencies.
On the legislative front, he has not vetoed a single bill, and has signed bills that dramatically increase domestic spending and increase national government involvement in all manner of things. He has refused to confront the Senate on its unconstitutional refusal to vote on his federal judge appointees. Essentially, the Bush White House has adopted a policy of giving the liberal/statist Democrats nearly everything they want in an attempt to neutralize their issues and appeal to their voters. As a political ploy, I think this will prove to be of dubious effectiveness at best (repeat after me: “American elections are won by mobilizing your base, not chasing the uninformed and apathetic “moderate/undecided” voters”). As a source of policy, it is disastrous.
Even his tax cut had the effect of increasing the complexity of the tax code, stank of social engineering via tax policy, and in no way partook of genuine tax reform.
While I disagree with the Bush-haters on their assessment of his intellectual capacity and management skills (the former is adequate, certainly by the standards of politicos, and the latter are quite sophisticated), and on their assessment of the war, I see little reason to support the Bush administration on nearly any domestic issue. I voted for the man, and I would rate this aspect of his administration as a major disappointment.
I’m shocked, shocked:
A man attempting to sue farmer Tony Martin for loss of earnings is back in custody after allegedly breaching the terms of his release from prison.
Brendon Fearon, 33, of Newark, Notts, appeared before the town’s magistrates accused of stealing a Toyota Landcruiser on Aug 24.
He had been serving part of an earlier prison sentence on licence at his home and observing a 7pm to 7am curfew. He did not enter a plea at the hearing and spoke only to confirm his name and address.
Prison sources confirmed that Fearon is back in custody for allegedly breaching the terms of his licence and will be transferred to prison tonight.
There will probably be comments to the effect that here in the great state of (state your state) we do things better and this varmint would be dead by now. Personally, weighing up the evidence and taking a considered and reflective view of the matter, I agree. Tony Martin injured this person in circumstances of maximum fear and confusion. Had he shot him dead, on purpose, in broad daylight, it would have been no more than this nasty parasite deserved, and it would also, in my further opinion, have been “reasonable” (the key legal word here), in self defence against the inevitable next attack.
The Volokh Conspiracy highlights the jailing of an antiques dealer “for conspiring to receive antiquities claimed by a foreign government, in this case Egypt.”
This has been an earthquake of sorts for the American trade in antiquities, it is an open secret that most of the material is assembled against various foreign laws. Previously the American law was applied only to thefts from museums, churches, private homes, and the like, now for the first time it is being applied to thefts from archaeological sites. Dealers suddenly wonder whether they can stay in business. Observers wonder what is the difference between licit and illicit antiquities dealers, given how much of the material comes from sites.
Although the Volokh Conspirator agonizes over this issue in seeking a proper libertarian solution to the problems posed by the antiquities trade, it seems to me that the solution is quite simple in principle, and that the problem is entirely a creation of overweening governments.
As with any other item, an antiquity is properly on the market if the seller has proper title to it. For an old vase recovered from an archaeological site, the answer to who has title is (or should be) quite simple. The vase belongs to the archaeologist (or other person) who found it, unless it was found on private land, in which case it belongs to the landowner. The vase is, essentially, lost/abandoned/mislaid property in the sense that no one knows who the original (or last) owner was and/or no one can trace their living descendants. Under the common law, such property discovered anywhere other than private land belonged to the finder as against anyone but the true owner, meaning in an archeological context that the antiquities belong to the archaeologist, unless the dig was on private land, in which case it belongs to the owner.
The “problem” posed by the antiquities trade is entirely a creation of overweening governments, which have asserted a wholly unjustified ownership interest in all antiquities discovered within their borders. If one disregards this claim (as the American courts apparently did until this most recent case), then in principle it becomes possible to construct a valid chain of title for antiquities, and thus possible for the trade in these items to go forward on the same basis as every other line of business.
One wonders how other countries, especially the French (as I understand Paris is the center of gravity of the arts and antiquities trade), deal with this issue.
Much of the push towards compulsory ID cards, and, in general, towards huge nationally co-ordinated databases of information of every imaginable sort about individual citizens, is based on the wholly fallacious belief among those with no direct knowledge of how these things work that the information in all these databases is automatically going to be correct. Not even a terrorist with million dollar back-up will be able to diddle his way around, say, a policeman demanding to see his “papers”.
It follows, then, that any newspaper story which reports that any such databases might be repositories not of truth but also of falsehood is, to use a favourite phrase of mine here, “White Rose Relevant”. In fact I may start calling it just “WRR” for short.
This story, then, from the New York Times, is very WRR indeed:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — About 3.3 million American consumers discovered within the last year that their personal information had been used to open fraudulent bank, credit card or utility accounts, or to commit other crimes, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s first national survey on identity theft.
The commission, in a report issued today, said these cases had collectively cost businesses $32.9 billion and consumers $3.8 billion.
In addition, 6.6 million people fell victim to account theft in the last year. Unlike identity theft, in which the criminal uses personal information to open and use accounts that are in the victim’s name, account theft entails using stolen credit or A.T.M. cards, or financial records, to steal from the victim’s existing accounts.
Such account-theft cases, the survey found, caused $14 billion in business losses and $1.1 billion in consumer losses. The vast majority of these cases, almost 80 percent, involved credit card fraud.
Though account theft and identity theft are often lumped together in popular perception, data from the survey showed that the consequences of identity theft were more severe. In identity theft, which accounted for nearly 10 million of the 27 million cases of both types in the last five years, the financial losses were greater, and it took victims longer to resolve the cases.
It is not just the fact of falsehood here. It is the scale of it. (Note the number of uses of the words “million” and “billion” in the above paragraphs.) Clearly, for certain sorts of people with certain sorts of friends, this kind of thing is not hard to do.
At last, the people of the world unite to take a stand against tyranny:
Casting aside petty differences and forging new allegiances, UN ambassadors said they would ignore New York’s smoking ban, imposed five months ago and extended to the UN this week.
Now that’s what I call multilateralism!
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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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