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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Almost everywhere I turn I hear bad news and horror stories about youth and education. Based on that I was quite surprised by this paragraph in a DOD press release:
These reference group scores are called norms. The current ASVAB norms were developed in 1980, and no longer accurately reflect the aptitude of today’s youth. Over the past 20 years, aptitude levels in the United States have increased. Scores on educational achievement tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) are up; high school and college attendance rates have increased; youth demographics have shifted; and the country has experienced an explosion in technology development and application. Consequently, the 1980 norms are no longer representative of American youth.
It must be the computer games.
There are some people in this world who do such a good job of discrediting themselves you need hardly bother. I refer you to the public attack on Dr. Glenn Reynolds by a Mr. Mark Modzelewski.
I double checked the impression given by his writing with a physicist friend who runs into him on a regular basis and will for political reasons remain anonymous. “The guy is a PR Flack” and “He knows nothing” were perhaps the kindest remarks I heard, and this is from deep within the ranks of people Mark deals with.
So I’m a Drexlerian by his lights? I find that a label to be proud of.
At least I can pronounce it.
There used to be a time when companies has serious names. Standard Oil. East India Company. Marks & Spencer. Ford Motor Company. Western Union. General Electric. Blohm und Voss. Consolidated Engineering.
Now companies have names like Eat My Handbag Bitch.
Perhaps the commentariat knows of some other interesting examples? God bless post-modern capitalism!
In our ceaseless quest to track down fine examples of modern capitalism, I lift my hat and salute blogger Andrew David Chamberlain , who has recently returned to blogging after a haitus, for pointing out a stupendous example of modern factory design in Dresden, Germany. The new Volkswagen plant is amazing, and if you follow the Car & Driver site he links to, you can see just how far things have come.
At one stage, car factories, like factories generally, were grim, smoky and frankly ugly buildings. We all know the images from old school textbooks about the Industrial Revolution, with rows of workers grinding away in massive structures belching out smoke. (Of course the same textbooks were often written by historians hostile to free enterprise, such as R.H. Tawney and Stalinist apologist Eric Hobsbawm but that is another topic on its own).
Well, for a variety of reasons, not least the massive rise in working condition standards, the quality of surroundings in a modern manufacturing plant has moved a light-year away from the Dark Satanic Mill cliched image of old.
I find it rather amusing that Germany, not a country which gets the credit it perhaps deserves for its futuristic design skills, should have come up with this terrific building. And of course the building also prompts thoughts about how styling of buildings, even supposedly very utilitarian ones like a car plant, is now a perfectly normal feature of life, as libertarian writer Virginia Postrel has already pointed out in her recently published book, The Substance of Style.
One of the most appealing aspects of a libertarian outlook is simplicity. It is often the case that when one examines, in greater depth, what initially appears to be a libertarian conundrum, it proves not to be. One such faux-dilemma, suggested to me by Alan K. Henderson’s comments to Andy’s post below, is the extent to which liberty can be threatened by non-state interests.
This can be the basis for populist political crusades against “Big Oil”, “Big Pharma”, even “Big Food”. The faux libertarian conundrum is the notion that we need a strong state as a guarantor of “real competition”: to break up monopolies in the interests of consumers. Yet surely such interference in the market is un-libertarian? In reality the conundrum evaporates when one examines how such monopolies arise. Put simply, monopolies wither in the free market and thrive under state regulation. Such monopolies, rightfully abhorrent to any free market capitalist or libertarian, are sustained by the very political system which seeks to regulate them. Just as the enforced “tolerance” of multiculturalism is a form of intolerance, so enforced competition is inimical to true free-market competition.
A similar dilemma is suggested by considering the plight of those in Northern Ireland who have fallen foul of paramilitaries. It matters little to a person tortured or exiled on threat of death whether his tormentors are acting for the state or a paramilitary group, Yet so-called human rights bodies such as Amnesty International, pay little attention to the human rights of such individuals, reserving their comments for infringements by state forces. Glenn Reynolds struck a chord when he cheered David Trimble for pointing this out. Needless to say this did not go down too well with some of the socialists and nationalists who comment at Slugger O’Toole. The conundrum is that surely a libertarian can agree with Amnesty’s justification: It is proper to be more concerned by state abuses than actions by private agents.
In examining this “conundrum” it also evaporates but leads to a surprising, counter-intuitive insight. In the segregated, working class urban ‘bantustans’ of Northern Ireland, paramilitaries are in a position to exert punishment and enforce exiles because they have been ceded a monopoly of violence. By the state. Local hostility to police forces means they are reluctant to carry out normal policing and individuals are prevented from defending themselves. This gives the paramilitaries a free run. Though they are nominal antagonists, the IRA effectively operates a monopoly of violence backed by the British state. The plight of its victims should be the proper concern of any agency which professes to uphold human rights.
Yes, of course you socialists are more concerned about the poor… your policies create so many of them!
– Part of a heated conversation overheard at another table during lunch at The Chelsea Bun restaurant
A leading British police officer has argued that heroin should be legalised, according to this report.
To which I can only say – wow! Of course, the usual suspects in the political world and media will throw up their arms in horror, demand this officer’s resignation and so forth. But to those of us ‘loony libbos’ who have been arguing about the utter futility of the war on drugs for years and pointed out how it has massively boosted organised crime will be pleased that someone from the Boys in Blue has had the moral courage to make this point.
Let me say straight off that I recognise that this is not a straightforward issue. Some who are sympathetic to the legalisation argument will nevertheless argue that our society has been so infantilised by the modern welfare state that it would be dangerous in the extreme to legalise what are seen as the most harmful drugs without at the same time making important social reforms. There is no doubt in my mind that if heroin were legalised straight away with no other parallel changes, a lot of vulnerable people could die. Any reform of public policy has to take that into account.
But for far too long any discussion of drug policy has occured in a sort of fairy-tale land, in which a whole area of debate has been shut down in advance. I find it a sign of the times that it is now even thinkable for a senior police officer to broach the subject of legalisaing heroin in public. Ten years ago it would have been unimaginable. By the standards of British public life, that is progress.
Dana Rohrabacher (R-Ca) has just introduced a bill to clarify language in Federal law relating to commercial human spaceflight.
I must admit there is much about this which truly grates on me as a libertarian. But the realist/entrepreneur side of me recognizes Dana is doing us a good turn. He is easing existing law to make life easier for X-Prize entrants.
Under current law, every launch requires a license. Under the Rohrabacher bill, a single permit appears to cover all flights until the vehicle is ready for commercial operations. Ideally, I would like a single permit to cover all normal commercial operations as well. It seems silly to have vehicles which can take off and fly a suborbital job on a half-day notice and yet require months of effort for the approval to do so. I do not think commercial aviation would have accomplished very much under such a regime. Perhaps we can talk Dana into doing something about this problem when it arises in a year or two.
The other interesting point is his treatment of liability limitation. He has continued the existing law in this area but has laid out a path for removing the government from this loop entirely. My libertarian side would say “get rid of it now”, but my spacer side recognizes the complexity of the insurance issues for the infant field. In a litigous society like the USA, human spaceflight would be uninsurable without this fiat ceiling… despite the fact that a SpaceShipOne or similar craft could do very little damage in the worst of cases. The details of the liability situation would require discussion of FAA regulations which are far too complex for me to reduce to a few bloglines. Let it suffice for me to say US X-Prize entrants are quite happy to have such limitation right now… and I am quite happy to see it phased out as insurance companies become more familiar with the Insurable Risks involved.
I do not have time for a really detailed study of this law. I do know from personal contacts (an ex-staffer for one) Dana Rohrabacher is very familiar with the issues and is pro-commercial space. I have also heard he started off on the libertarian side of the fence but went Republican and drifted a bit out of our quadrant. Still, he is about as good as they come outside of Ron Paul.
The issue is now open to discussion amongst the exceedingly knowledgeable space entrepreneur wing of the Samizdata commentariat.
While searching for an article I am absolutely certain I wrote but cannot find, I came across this article. I wrote it not long after 9/11 and I would not change a word of it.
One interpretation is that it is meant to indicate, from left to right, priority of the seats should go to any person with a broken arm, a person with a child, a pregnant woman or a person with an injured leg…
The nuclear disarmament of Libya is moving more quickly than I would have imagined. According to Jane’s Defence Weekly on 30 January 2004:
Libya ships nuclear weapon material to US
The process of removing weapons of mass distruction (WMD) from Libya has begun, with 55,000 lbs (25,000kg) of “critical materials related to Libya’s nuclear weapons programme and ballistic missile capabilities” now held on US soil, according to White House spokesperson Scott McClellan.
Adding this to today’s revelations by Dr. Kahn in Pakistan makes three down and three to go of the potential sources of weapons grade fissionables. Well… plus an extra half to account for the thriving Russian black market.
There are some fascinating (if incomplete) bits of news from the Warbird world this month. The first one really made me sit up at my curry chicken, and it wasn’t because of the spices: a Ju-87 Stuka has been added to the UK civil register! It is another Russian front recovery.
There is very little other information about this as yet. It could be corroded parts at the start of a ten year restoration or it could be in the paint shop and weeks from rollout. Your call.
The other item was quite as stunning, not because of uniqueness, but due to the amazing state of the newly recovered airframe. An Me-109e-7 (upgraded from a -1) has been pulled out of a Russian lake where it landed on the ice 60 years ago. The airframe is in such incredibly good condition that the yellow nose is not only visibly yellow… it is Yellow. I’ve never seen the like of it.
This Emil has been returned in carefuly packed bits to the UK and is now on sale. The project is a real steal for any warbird fan with a million or so burning a hole in their pocket.
 A Bf-109g-6 Gustav at NASM
Photo: Copyright D.Amon all rights reservedThe sheer number of WWII airframes sourced from Russian crash sites over the last decade is nothing short of astounding. It also humbles one. The air battles on the Western Front pale to insignificance when set against the hordes thrown into the aerial meatgrinder of the East.
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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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