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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Übersportingpundit, the Australian based sports blog to which Brian Micklethwait, David Carr, and myself also contribute, has been down for a couple of days because the domain name expired without being renewed. Normally I think one should laugh at someone whose domain expires the way you would laugh at someone whose car has run out of petrol, but blogmaster Scott Wickstein assures me that he did not receive a renewal notice. (Perhaps it was swallowed by a spam filter or something). In any event, for those who have noticed, the site is back up. As a bonus, non-Australian readers can read and take pleasure in the fact that the Australian cricket team is not doing so well in its first test match against Sri Lanka.
Also, we should observe that Scott has suffered so much from the loss of his blog that he has been driven to writing guest posts for Samizdata. So give him some sympathy.
Scott Wickstein gives us some analysis on what is happening in the world’s most populous Muslim nation
Indonesia is not a nation that bestrides the global stage, so the fact that it goes to the polls this year has not attracted much international attention. The elections, though, matter a lot to Indonesia, and they will be interesting to outside observers as well.
Indonesia is new at this sort of thing. Since independence, democracy was ditched in favour of rule by Presidents Sukarno and Suharto, and this year’s poll will only be the second that could really be called democratic.
Like America and India, Indonesia is fond of political dynasties, and the incumbent, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is the daughter of President Sukarno. It is not a happy family though. In this election, Megawati faces challenges from both her sisters. → Continue reading: Indonesia goes to the polls
ZDNet.com reports that computer-security software maker RSA Security has developed a new technology for protecting information emitted by radio frequency identification tags.
The RFID cloaking system is intended to guard proprietary data located on chips used to carry product information. The RSA Blocker Tag technology uses a jamming system designed to confuse RFID readers and prevent those devices from tracking data on individuals or goods outside certain boundaries.
The blocker tags work by emitting radio frequencies designed to trick RFID readers into believing that they are being presented with unwanted data, or spam, causing the information collection devices to shun the incoming transmission. RSA claims that by placing an RFID-loaded product into a parcel bearing one of the blocker tags, the system would cause RFID readers to miss any information carried by the product in the bag, thereby protecting consumers.
The company also promised that its cloaking system would not interfere with the normal operation of RFID systems or allow hackers to use security technology to bypass theft control systems or launch denial-of-service attacks.
Equitable Life is a mess, that is for sure. The responsibility of making sure the people who look after your money can be trusted ultimately lies with the owner of the money… the pensioners, the beneficiaries of what Equitable Life actually does. However if fraud or other gross misrepresentation is involved, and not just incompetence, ineptitude or misfortune, then things do change somewhat as it becomes a criminal matter.
However Equitable Life is massively regulated, so many of its weird business decisions must be seen within the context of the weird distorted environment within which it operates…
So yes, there is an argument that as the state should therefore also be liable for the mess. But then if you accept that, given that the British economy grows more regulated by the day, that would suggest investors should be lining up to claim tax money from the state every time anything goes bust. After all, what makes Equitable Life’s casualties any different from the casualties of any other business cock up?
Occasional Samizdatista Malcolm Hutty recently emailed me thus:
Re your post on Samizdata a little while back about the fixed quantity of programming fallacy: if you’re interested in an intelligent discussion amongst programmers about whether outsourcing programming to India is actually a successful commercial strategy (and under what conditions it might work or not work) look here.
Sample quote:
In my opinion you rarely can separate design and implementation, especially if it’s not a totally standard system that you are going to implement, e.g. when your customers don’t know exactly what they want. You have to have a very clear and quality design in order to be able to send the specs overseas for implementation. Most of the time you have a half-baked design when you start coding. You make a prototype, you try out this and you try out that, and you correct your design in the process. After a while you get confident in your design, and then you start coding full-speed. At this point you have stable specs, and you can outsourse things but it’s too much of a hassle and overhead at this point, and maybe not worth the trouble at all. Most of the software projects have this kind of loosely structured overlapping design and implementation processes. It’s not automated yet, we are still too chaotic.
As someone unburdened by much detailed knowledge of these matters, I say that a reduction in price will always have consequences. Pile it high and sell it cheap, and you will be amazed by the number of new purchasers who come forward, seemingly out of nowhere. Remember the days when there would only be demand for six mainframe computers. As cheaper computers materialised, people thought of steadily more things to do with them. And it will be the same with outsourcing. My guess is that outsourcing will not so much make certain already familiar types of software cheaper, but will make new kinds of software possible. The big impact will come not from the people asking: how can we do our stuff more cheaply? It will come from those asking: what software can we now do that will make use of outsourcing, which we could not do before?
But what do I know? Meanwhile, I am quite prepared to believe that making profitable use of outsourcing is a skill that has to be learned, and that outsourcing definitely has its pitfalls.
What happens when idiotarian values, movements or policies collide? When EU clashes with animal rights activists…
Thousands of animals face laboratory tests involving industrial chemicals because of new European Union legislation. The EU measure, called Reach (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals), is intended to impose strict regulation on Europe’s chemical industry. It will require new laboratory tests on animals for 30,000 separate chemicals currently in production in Europe. At present, each country has its own laws governing testing.
In reply to Dr Spink’s question, Alun Michael, the rural affairs minister, said Reach required 20,000 chemicals to be tested on at least 25 animals – a total of 500,000 tests. Another 4,000 substances would require 1,500 animal tests each – six million in all. The number of tests for the remaining 6,000 chemicals was not stated.
Or when “environment-friendly” energy sources meet conservationists…
Wind farms – the “environment-friendly” energy source – are threatening to push the golden eagle, one of Britain’s rarest birds, into extinction. Conservationists say that the rapid spread of the farms in Britain – encouraged by Government subsidies for renewable energy projects – poses a grave threat to birds of prey. Other species at risk are osprey, red kites, merlins, kestrels, honey buzzards, ravens and peregrine falcons.
Both of these articles in one day. More and faster, please.
Scott Wickstein takes a look at how farmers in so many parts of the First World get away with distorting trade at other people’s expense, both via pocketing taxes and inflating prices in the supermarkets of Australia, Britain, Europe and North America
To the list of certainties in life, such as death and taxes, we can add the fact that farmers will clamour for protection and subsidies. That is not surprising, but what is surprising is that around the globe, governments of all persuasions, whatever their nature, are willing to obey the demands of their farm lobbies.
A typical example of this is the recently concluded free trade agreement between Australia and the United States. Much of the agreement is actually devoted to excluding certain products from free trade. One such product is sugar, which was excluded at the behest of the US sugar producers lobby. That exclusion, in turn, provoked such an outcry by Australian sugar producers that the Australian government felt obliged to provide subsidies for the Australian sugar farmers.
From these actions, one can conclude that the political clout of the US sugar producers is much greater then that of sugar consumers, such as confectionery manufacturers. And yet, this is but a manifestation of a trend which is global. All over the world, governments are all too willing to knuckle down and obey the demands of their farm lobbies. That politicians do this, and run the risk of enraging urban electorates, speaks volumes about the organization of farm lobbies, and, indeed, it also shows how disorganised free trade proponents are. → Continue reading: First blast of the trumpet against the Monstrous Regiments of Farmers1
We were off the air for a short while today because Hosting Matters were moving their servers into a security cage.
Blogger and libertarian authoress Virginia Postrel, in her recent book, The Future and Its Enemies, made a telling point that having fun and free enterprise are increasingly being fused in the same activities.
She cited the example of sports like professional beach volleyball. Now, there are few activities which might excite the moral scorn of the miserablists of the left and right more than a group of young men and women (the latter in rather fetching garb, ahem) punching a ball to and fro over a net. Well, if the idea of volleyball as part of an enterprise culture offends the scolds in our midst, then how about skiing?
I have recently had my annual fix of shooting down ski slopes in the French resort of Val D’Isere, a magnificent resort . I enjoyed a fantastic week. There are few adrenalin-boosting activities to match it, in my view. And putting aside the obvious points about this activity, one thing struck me – skiing is a classic part of a capitalist, fun-loving, life-affirming culture.
Skiing is ‘pointless’ to those who think we should devote our energies to ‘higher’ activities, or who think that all those resources spent on ski lifts, skis, hotels and airliners should be diverted to other, worthier goals. Skiing is a vast industry these days. Unlike spectator sports such as football or cricket, skiing is 99 percent participant sport. Millions of people of all ages – mostly being relatively fit – go skiing in places all over the world every year.
Many of the people who work in ski resorts – guides, holiday reps, lift attendants, bar staff and so forth – all seem to form part of a new culture remarkably similar to the sort of laid-back surfing culture made legendary in southern California. While affecting a sort of casual demeanor, most of the people seem in deadly earnest about ensuring they serve the skiers well. A lot of the holiday staff, many of whom have taken big salary cuts to go to the mountains, seem to speak a sort of ‘leisure industry slang’, a sort of hybrid of Australian ‘matespeak’, Californian ‘coolspeak’, and in France of course, overlain with that Galoise-smoking sang froid of the expert skiier with his nonchalant posture.
Skiing is a major triumph of capitalist organisation and enterprise. And even in the French Alps, in the homeland of the 35-hour week and dreaded bureaucracy, it seems one of the most successful businesses in France. In fact, I got the impression that many staff in the French ski businesses have to work for far longer than is permitted under the nation’s job-destroying regulations.
And as a final observation, skiing is risky. Good grief, allowing folk to go down a slope without a State licence – are we mad?
I hope that nobody in Ireland was naive enough to imagine that the recent public smoking prohibition was the zenith of their government’s ambitions.
Not even close. In fact, they are just getting warmed up:
After piloting through radical laws that will ban smoking in Irish pubs at the end of the month, Irish Health Minister Micheal Martin pledged to bring in new controls on alcohol.
Martin’s smoking prohibition will mean that anyone found lighting up in bars and restaurants after March 29 will face a fine of up to 3,000 euros.
Addressing his Fianna Fail party’s annual conference, Martin said he now planned to target the country’s alcohol problem and to encourage “responsible” drinking, in particular targeting under-age offenders.
Lord only knows what else is on his ‘hit-list’ but his blood his up and his nostrils are flared with the scent of victory so its onwards and upwards to new frontiers of micro-management. His is an addiction for which is there is no ‘cold turkey’. It is a thirst that can never be quenched and neither reason nor persuasion can divert such people from their mission.
How apposite is the wisdom of C.S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
I have posted this quotation here on Samizdata before but the age in which we live demands that it be repeated again and again.
Call me cautious if you will, but I will wait a while before jumping for joy over this potentially wonderful news:
U.S. researchers will soon publish strong evidence of a recipe to generate fusion power with tiny bubbles, which does sound like a modern witch’s brew.
The power source is ultrasonic noise aimed at a clear glass canister whose size would qualify as a grande latte in a coffee house. The sound waves rattle through a liquid solvent in the glass and, as they do, create minute (on the order of a thousandth the width of a human hair) bubbles. Further sound causes the bubbles to expand, compress and then collapse. When they do, some of the hydrogen atoms in the liquid seem to fuse and give off light and energy.
Hmmm… What do our resident gearheads make of this?
Tired of the orgy of Kerry worship from the British media, not just the BBC, but also from ITV and C4, I turned to the internet for some other news from the United States.
As expected, propositions 57 and 58 passed in California. Prop 57 being approval to borrow billions of Dollars (sorry ‘issue bonds’) in order to ‘pay for’ already agreed government spending, and Prop 58 being a promise (sort of) not to borrow money in future.
However, I came upon another proposition – Prop 55. This prop was a request to borrow (again sorry ‘issue bonds’) – $12.3 billion for government education spending on top of what had already been agreed. This bond debt to be on top of the $73 billion bond debt that the State already has.
The prop passed – I admit that it passed only narrowly (50.6% to 49.4%), but it passed.
So on the same day that Californians agreed (in Prop 57) to borrow another $15 billion (or so) for existing spending and (in Prop 58) overwhelmingly voted not to pile up more spending… they in fact did just that.
“We will not add deficit spending on to the deficit spending we already have”
…except that more deficit spending is indeed added and on the very same day.
That sums up politics – not just in California, but everywhere.
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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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