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]
|
Today’s NYT on moves to restrict freelance surveillance:
CHICAGO
WHAT grabbed my attention,” said Alderman Edward M. Burke, “was that TV commercial when the guy is eating the pasta like a slob, and the girl sends a photo of him acting like a slob to the fiancée.”
The commercial, for Sprint PCS, was meant to convey the spontaneity and reach afforded by the wireless world’s latest craze, the camera phone. But what Mr. Burke saw was the peril.
“If I’m in a locker room changing clothes,” he said, “there shouldn’t be some pervert taking photos of me that could wind up on the Internet.”
Accordingly, as early as Dec. 17, the Chicago City Council is to vote on a proposal by Mr. Burke to ban the use of camera phones in public bathrooms, locker rooms and showers.
Trouble is, how are such infringements to be detected?
Most will assume this to be a surveillance debate. But might it instead not be a ‘too many laws’ debate? I have in mind a world in which everyone will break the surveillance laws routinely, but only Enemies of the People will be prosecuted for it. Just wondering.
Robert Mugabe, that noted expert on the alleviation of Third World poverty, has been holding forth at a UN meeting in Geneva about the Internet. He may have left the Commonwealth, but he hasn’t lost any of his certainty of his own rightness and wonderfulness.
Here is my favourite bit of this BBC report:
He said there was no point in providing poor people with computers unless they were also given electricity and a phone network to run them.
Good point. And come to that, what’s the point in people having computers if they are starving to death or being beaten up or killed by government thugs?
I also liked Mark Doyle’s nicely ironic final paragraph, inviting comparisons between the monster Mugabe and all the other tyrants down the years who have also been rather bad people …
Opposition leaders in Zimbabwe may condemn Mr Mugabe for acting oppressively at home; but here in Geneva, many delegates – whether they agreed with him or not – were impressed by a lively speech.
… but who have likewise softened their various blows by making lively speeches which impressed everyone, whether they agreed with them or not.
It seems Arthur Laffer’s famous curve is finally starting to bite into Gordon Brown’s economic plans, you know, the ones based on hope, pie in the sky, and getting one solitary day past the next general election date. Apparently Gordon is puzzled by Britain’s steady economic growth, of approximately 2%, but its fall in tax revenues, last year, of around £8 billion pounds.
Well, Gordon, it’s like this. If you borrow £37 billion pounds, plus a few other hidden tens of billions on public-private ‘partnerships’, you’ll get apparent economic growth, because all of the paperclip suppliers in the country have been working flat out to feed all of those nice new shiny government bureaucrats with nice new shiny stationery equipment. But one day all of those paperclips are going to have to be paid for, Gordon. I know, it’s just terrible, isn’t it?
And having hit the wealth-generating sector of the economy with a cornucopia of new taxes and regulations, since 1997, Gordon, the latest being an extension of IR35, and then having thrown the proceeds at your friends in the wealth-spending sector of the economy, you’re about to hit what we credit-card junkies call ‘economic reality’. That’s when the credit card company finally stops letting you borrow any more money from this month to pay off next month’s minimum card payment. Bummer.
If I were you, Gordon, I would get that Tony Blair out of office, right now, or at the end of January at the very least, to take his job. Then land poor old Alistair Darling in at the Treasury, so he can carry the can when it all goes bang. Does that sound like a plan, Gordon? Good. Glad we’ve got it sorted.
I’d send you a bill for fifty quid, for this consultancy advice. However, I sense that although you possess the economics of a half-wit, possessing political cunning to your fingertips you’ll already have the Tony Blair Hutton/Top-up fees assassination plan well in hand. Nice job on preparing his ejector seat excuse, by the way, “for reasons of my health”. Top quality.
Another evening meal with a fellow Samizdatista, and out of it another question. The Samizdatista was Michael Jennings, and the question now is this:
If the cost of getting stuff into earth orbit is seriously reduced, what kinds of things will be done in space that are not done now?
I am not asking how this big price reduction will be contrived. (As I understand it, it’s either better rockets or a giant stepladder, but commenters: don’t bother with that please. As I recall, we’ve had that argument.) I am asking what the consequences will be if, as and when this reduction in cost is contrived.
The two big things done in earth orbit at the moment are, it seems, looking down on earth and seeing things (such as crops and crop diseases, military installations, urban growth, the weather), and: helping to send messages from earth persons to each other, via communications satellites. If that all gets cheaper, there will clearly be a lot more of it.
A reduction in the cost of getting stuff into near space will surely result in a surge of space tourism. Money must even now piling up in earth bank accounts, waiting for the day when day trips to space are available at, say, a million quid a throw.
If only because the increases in what is already going on will alone result in a far greater general human presence in earth orbit, it is to be presumed that many other activities will become possible and will follow.
So, what other things will soon be done in space that are hard or impossible to do on earth?
Switching off gravity on earth is hard, but contriving a vacuum is fairly easy by comparison, so vacuum based manufacture will accordingly still be easier to do on earth than in space. But just because switching off gravity where it is is so hard, going to where it isn’t may bring huge manufacturing benefits. In particular, Michael tells me, it may be far easier to make three rather than merely two dimensional computer chips (very desirable apparently) in zero gravity.
In general, nanotechnology, whatever that is exactly, is relatively easy to do in space, compared with other sorts of technology, on account of it being so small, and hence relatively cheap to get up there. What, in English, might nanotechnologists be able to do that they can’t do on earth, if earth orbit became as easy to get to as a desert is to get to now?
And another ‘in general’ is that, in general, anything involving space travel beyond earth orbit, whether manned or unmanned, will get massively easier to organise if the getting of stuff, human or mechanical, into orbit can be organised separately from the business of going beyond earth orbit. Or so it would seem to me. Two obvious applications? Space tourism beyond earth orbit (see above). And, filling the solar system with unmanned gadgets for looking at our neighbour planets in more detail than has hitherto been possible, in the manner of that gadget that plunged into Jupiter not so long ago, but more so.
Because of all this orbital activity, it is a sure bet that many space service industries will thrive, such as rubbish collection, which I assume to be quite an art in space. (Mishandle a piece of junk and it could vaporise you.) Will there be specialist construction companies? Specialist firms of spaceship cleaners? Where will the advertising industry fit in? Sponsors will surely be heavily involved in space? They’ll want their logos flashed about. Won’t they?
Back here on earth, much new activity will ensue in support of and in response to what is going on out there. There’ll be zero-gravity training courses for tourists, for media people, and for ceremonial visits by senior management and bigshot politicians. There will be vast new bureaucracies to process all the new information that will come flooding back to us, vast new industries made possible by those few magic components that can only be made in space. There’ll be …
Well, those thoughts were the result of about an hour of very casual cogitation. There must be cleverer answers to my question out there, and I’m looking forward to hearing a few of them.
Today, the US Supreme Court issued a decision that will live in infamy. It upheld the core provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. I confess I have not yet digested the full 300 page turd dropped on the Constitution by our masters at the Supreme Court, but I would observe that any decision of this length is bound to be flawed. It does not take many words to apply the simple phrase “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech” to overturn legislation; it does, however, take many, many words to obfuscate the meaning of that phrase sufficiently to uphold legislation that, in part, prohibits the airing of campaign commercials in the weeks before an election.
I will address one of the fundamental flaws underlying the entire project of regulating campaign finance – the claim that money does not equal speech.
First, though, allow me to state that it is perfectly consistent with freedom of speech to outlaw bribery and other permutations of the quid pro quo that may crop up in connection with campaign finance activities. Outlawing bribery in such circumstances is no more a restriction on freedom of speech than outlawing the fencing of stolen property is a restriction on freedom of contract.
It is a fundamental premise of campaign finance regulation that such laws do not restrict speech, but rather restrict only the raising and spending of money.
This distinction between speaking and expending resources on speaking is utterly fallacious, unless you believe that guarantees of free speech extend only to the fine art of conversation. Any attempt to distribute your thoughts to persons who are not in the room with you when you utter them requires the use of resources, and thus the expenditure of money. Allowing the state to prohibit the use of resources to broadcast or distribute speech means that freedom of speech is no more than freedom to converse.
Speech, for all practical purposes, is the distribution to an audience of your thoughts. In the political realm (and most others as well) this distribution cannot be made to any meaningful audience without applying resources, that is, spending money. You cannot print a newspaper, distribute a flyer, operate a website, or stand on a streetcorner ranting through a bullhorn, without using money to distribute your speech. Even bullhorns cost money, after all. The use of resources, the expenditure of money, to distribute your speech, is an absolutely indivisible part of freedom of speech.
Yet campaign finance regulation is nothing more than state limitations on the use of resources to distribute political speech, which is to say, state limitations on political speech. No one would say that a prohibition on expenditures by a publisher to print and mail a magazine, or on a publisher charging for subscriptions or advertising, are consistent with freedom of speech, yet these limitations are closely analogous to the campaign finance restrictions now blessed by the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: I was grousing about this to one of my partners, and he pointed out that apparently the Supreme Court was just being somewhat over-literal. The Constitution protects “free speech,” and they thought that meant it protected FREE speech. If you see what I mean. Sadly, that seems to be about the level of comprehension on display in the opinion.
The Conservatives have at long last committed themselves to a tax-cutting agenda:
The Conservatives plan to offer tax cuts at the next general election in a shift aimed at highlighting the divide between their policies and the tax increases introduced by Labour.
So is that settled then?
Oliver Letwin issued a statement clarifying the party’s position after earlier appearing to slam the door on a manifesto commitment to reduce the tax burden.
In an interview with the Telegraph yesterday, he surprised senior colleagues by declaring: “We will not go to the polls at the next election saying that we will reduce the tax bill.”
Er… so it’s not settled.
A spokesman for Mr Letwin said: “The Tory party has always and will always be a low tax party.
So they are going to cut taxes?
“We will not make any irresponsible promises or do anything which that put the public services or Britain’s finances at risk.”
Or, they’re not.
So that’s clear then. Or not. They want low taxes. Or they don’t. Or they do. In principle. If nobody minds too much. They have made a commitment. Or not. Well, a bit of a commitment. A qualified promise. More of an aspiration really. An idle thought. Just a suggestion. They are going to run it up the flagpole and see if the cat licks it up. But not yet. Soon. Maybe. Possibly not though. Let’s not be too hasty. The Conservatives are muddled. Well, a bit muddled. Not coherent at all. But they expect to be. Sometime. Cannot promise when. Er, what was the question? Can’t we change the subject? Good grief, is that the time? They have just remembered..er, a very important appointment. Must dash.
[My thanks to Melanie Phillips for the links.]
Sorry, Natalie, but I am in a profound depression triggered by the US Supreme Court’s decision to jettison the First Amendment (which protects, or used to, freedom of speech and of the press). After I am suitably medicated (less than half a bottle of Laphroiag to go), I will have some thoughts on one of the fundamental flaws in the whole campaign finance debacle.
Right then. Desperate times, desperate measures. It’ll just have to be the kittens.
The scale of Russia’s disillusionment with western-style democracy became apparent yesterday as the country’s two largest pro-western parties were all but wiped out in parliamentary elections.
President Putin’s United Russia came out the clear winner with 37 percent of the vote and a majority in the new State Duma and will most likely end up controlling two thirds of the Duma enabling the president to change the constitution at will. This may not be a revolutionary change from the past as the constitution was rendered feeble and Duma castrated by Yeltsin. Another quarter of the seats will be shared by anti-western reactionaries nostalgic for the days of Soviet superpower status.
The election made clear one thing – that I have argued here on Samizdata.net in the face of indignation by some commenters – Russia is not (and was not) heading the right direction. The reasons for this are more fundamental than Putin’s taste for power or Yeltsin’s penchant for gestures of a ‘Leader of Mother Russia’. Although they both fossilised what was wrong with the political and state institutions in Russia, their attitudes and actions originated from the country’s political and social values and traditions and were often supported by the majority.
Here are some quotes that sum up the political development in Russia:
Yesterday’s election shows what the people actually think: they are stridently nationalist, want wealth redistributed and have little interest in liberal or democratic values.
An analyst at a financial firm, Aton
It is a sad day for liberalism. The liberals in Russia are finished in the short term.
Igor Mintusov a political campaign consultant at Nikkolo M
Our main impression of the overall electoral process was one of regression in the democratisation of this country.
Bruce George of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe
The first two statements are spot on, the last one confuses democracy with liberal values. The Russian elections were probably democratic alright. It is freedom, liberal constitutionalism, individual and civil rights that have suffered a defeat in Russia. My point is that they were not even taking part.
Taxation is in the news just now in Britain, because the word is that Middle England is finally getting fed up with Gordon Brown and his relentless drizzle of sneaky tax increases and failure or refusal – it doesn’t really matter which, does it? – to keep a lid on public spending. Which is perhaps why, when I supped last night with Alex Singleton, we fell to talking about Tax Freedom Day. And I heard myself saying, the way you do, that there is another way to dramatise the scope and nature of the British tax burden, which is to ask: How many taxes does Britain now have?
Frankly I have almost no idea at all of what the answer to this question is, for Britain. But to ask it might achieve many benefits, I surmise. → Continue reading: How many taxes does Britain have?
Lawrance M. Bernabo, Amazon reviewer #2 with 6700 reviews behind him faces a Hamletesque (Hamletian?) dilemma:
To review, or not to review: that is the question:
Whether ’tis better to post reviews and cover
The pros and cons of action figures,
Or to write reviews about best sellers,
And by reviewing diss them? To critique: to review;
No more; and have a life again we end
The long-nights and the thousand misspeeled words
and buy things instead, ’tis a consumption
Amazon devoutley wish’d. To critique, to review;
To review: perchance be voted: Yeah, there’s the fun;
For in those votes for reviews what ranking may come
Whence we may achieve a cute little badge,
Must make us crazed: such obsession
Surely makes such big time fun of reviewing life;
For who would bear the wit and scorns of posts,
The counter review, the second page oblivion,
The pangs of negative votes, posting delay,
The insolence of edits and revisions
The steady rise of the unworthy reviewer,
When anyone might their ascension make
With some extra accounts? who would freebies take,
To read and review someone’s new book,
But that the fun of something never reviewed,
The undiscover’d product for the nounce
No reviews critique, inspires the mind
And makes us rather review everything we have
Than review those things that we know not of?
Thus ranking does make competitors of us all;
And thus the constant cry re: ranking
Is debated o’er with constant call for reform,
And reviews of great length and insight
With words counts the elves judge too high,
Do lose the chance of posting.– Submit you more!
Fair Amazon.com! Jeff, on thy pages
Be all my reviews spotlighted.
We conclude that he needs a blog. Now!
Via Many-2-Many
I’m hoping to enter the Hastings Weekend Chess Congress at the first weekend after the New Year. I have never previously been to the entry point to the UK of Perry de Havilland’s marauding ancestors. They were among the (so far) most successful gang of 11th century “asylum seekers”.
In order of Anglosphere fame I suppose Hastings ranks as:
- The place where the Norman Conquest happened. And since I spent much of yesterday enduring endless processions of fairweather English rugby fans parading around central London, pretending they know what a three-quarter line is, and I lost money on France to win the rugby world cup, I remind Anglo-Saxons that the battle was the most decisive result between the two countries.
[I feel better already!]
- Captain Hastings, the nice but dim sidekick of Agatha Christie’s fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The main problem being that most Belgians I have met are either extremely racist (so would not live in London), or have not got as many grey cells as Hastings between them. Or both.
- The site of the most famous chess tournament ever – the 1895 Hastings Christmas Tournament, and the scene of one of the all-time classic matches: former world champion
Wolfgang Wilhelm Steinitz versus Curt von Bardeleben. On Black’s 25th move, von Bardeleben, in Prussian fashion, realising that the situation was lost, is said to have got up without a word, put on his hat and walked back to his hotel, leaving his clock to run down and lose on time default. I enclose this link from a Brazilian web site still raving about the game over 100 years later. I googled 295 references to this one game.
My immediate concern is to get my entry in before the late entry penalty and to find a bed and breakfast to stay in Hastings on the two nights of January 2nd and 3rd. Any advice gratefully accepted.
After that it will be time to prepare some tactical plays for the tournament itself: and exhausting schedule of one match ending on Friday night at 11pm, then three matches on Saturday running from 9.30am to 11pm pm, and another two matches on Sunday that I haven’t even begun to worry about.
No kidding: I shall be doing some weight training over the next few weeks just to help with my stamina. (I can hear Adriana sniggering already) I shall also be re-freshing my familiarity with a few opening sequences. My nightmare would be a repeat of a 1995 match in Mill Hill against the then London under 8 year old champion, a certain David Ho. My favourite win posted online to date is this one, a tough positional game against a Minnesota amateur.
|
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.
|
