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]
|
When I edited pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, our problem was that we could not expect much in the way of immediate distribution. There was no internet in those days, or not that we knew about or could have used. Nor did we have the resources to print our publications and then to market them, and in the meantime store them. So it was that we relied on (a) the photocopier, and on (b) time. If what we said did not instantaneously find a readership, then it would have to get itself around nevertheless, one pamphlet at a time, by its sheer eloquence.
The time angle meant that we needed a different style of writing, a more timeless style, a style that would not date. We had to write in what I now recognise as a French style – more abstract, more theoretical (but free of any technical jargon), not heavy on detailed evidence (because evidence is liable to date) and heavy instead on generalisations with universal (and therefore timeless) appeal.
We were accused of preaching to the converted, and this was true. We were doing that. But preaching to the converted is an important part of any propaganda enterprise. The eloquent statement of that which is good and true, everywhere and at all times, is something to which supporters can rally and declare their agreement. By saying what we believed, we helped to turn what had merely been a silent army of isolated dissenters into an interconnected network of potential activists and organisers and movementeers. And writers, of course.
In short, we wanted people to write more like this:
Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice – under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility – that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve – slowly, no doubt, but certainly – God’s design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.
→ Continue reading: Frédéric Bastiat looks at the entire world
Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street web site is claiming that some spurious target or other, for the National Health Service to recruit an extra 2,000 General Practitioners, has almost been reached. That is, according to some figures produced, and I use the word advisedly, by the UK government’s Department of Health.
However, I have just watched a hilarious piece on Channel4’s News programme where the Royal College of General Practitioners challenged how these good news figures had actually been arrived at? I felt like phoning the programme up and telling its producer about a civil service game called Hard Target, which involves a pack of marked cards, a set of rusty darts, and a small bag of pistachio nuts. But I relented and listened on.
With an increasing number of GP surgeries refusing new patients and an increasing shortage of GPs around the country, for instance in Barnsley, as mentioned by Channel4 tonight, and even in relatively well-funded towns in Scotland, the Royal College puts the alleged increase in GPs at something more like 200, rather than 2,000, and if you take into account the increasing number of GP retirements and the increase in part-time GP working, the full-time figure actually shrinks, in real world terms, to something more like 26.
So, well worth increasing the spend on the NHS then, to nearly one hundred billion pounds, from about sixty billion. I know that’s almost £1.54 billion pounds per extra GP, but hey, is it really possible for us heartless libertarians to put a monetary price on the sanctity of human life and its guardians in the general practitioner service? Shame on us.
Which leaves me in a dilemma? Do I believe the UK government figures or do I believe the ones from the Royal College of General Practitioners set at about 1% of the government’s own claims? It is a toughie, I will admit, but you know me. I always believe everything the government says on principle. For where would civilisation be if we ever lost trust in the government?
I am an Aardvark.
As someone often accused of never having one word for a subject, where three hundred and fifty seven will do, I am afraid the following act of collectivized lunacy has simply left me stumped. Gazumped. And just plain flummoxed.
A National Health Service surgeon, from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, has been suspended on full pay, for a week now, in a row over whether he took too many croutons to go with his lunchtime soup.
No, I am really not making this up.
I particularly like the comment from some idiot going under the name of Lord Warner:
I am reliably informed that there will be no detriment to patients, because the work that that doctor was due to perform will be covered by his colleagues
Tell you what, to save NHS costs let’s sack every surgeon in the entire country except one, who can cover all the rest. There will be no detriment to patients, obviously. We just better make sure we have a fleet of helicopters ready to whizz him about the country and a good supply of amphetamine pills to keep him awake.
Like I said, words fail me. Just pick your own croutons from the following word soup and gently flavour with Basil:
Parasites. Fools. Cretins. Croutons. Bananas. Idiots. The sooner the NHS is privatized the better. Monkey nuts. Lickspittles. Guardian-reading Enemy Class. Arse. Feck. And of course. Drink. Lots and Lots of Drink.
I particularly like Monkey nuts.
There’s an interesting debate going on at Megan McArdle’s blog where she copies a post made by ‘Contributor A’
Nick Kristof says that a national ID, in the form of a beefed-up standard driver’s license, would add security without sacrificing much or any real liberty. (He doesn’t propose forcing people to carry it at all times, like some countries do.) Is he wrong on the second count, that the loss of liberty is essentially negligible?
Please don’t answer
– Biometrics don’t work. We’re assuming for the sake of argument that the technology can be made to work.
– It won’t add that much security. Since any security gain is good, I’m for anything that adds any security at all at an acceptable cost.
– It would be expensive – again, if there’s a measurable, even if modest, security gain, we’re assuming it’s worth quite a lot in dollar terms.
– It will infringe your right to be invisible. You don’t currently really have the right to be invisible. We’re assuming you’re a normal American who pays taxes, has a social-security number, answers the census, carries a driver’s license and has a credit-rating. Those few who have none of these things can keep that right–they just may not marry, drive, fly, travel abroad, work for pay or draw any government benefit whatsoever.
– You don’t like it in theory because government is bad. I want concrete examples of how a significant number of Americans could lose concrete rights.
– Ben Franklin once said “Those who would sacrifice liberty…” Yes, we know. I want an argument, not an aphorism.
There’s nearly 50 comments, many of them quite interesting. There was a lovely rebuttal by commenter Spec Bowers:
I have strong principled objections, but that’s not what you are asking for. Here’s a pragmatic objection: What if you misplace or lose your ID? Think about how long it takes today to get a replacement driver’s license or passport. Imagine a future where you are requested several times a day to produce your ID. How miserable might your life be if you couldn’t produce it?
Quite so.
The Home Office has tried to assure us that David “Big” Blunkett’s plan to impose compulsory National Identity Cards on innocent British citizens is not a threat to privacy. Yesterday that argument was finally blown out of the water.
The Guardian reports that ID Card usage will be tracked centrally. Stephen Harrison, the head of the Home Office’s identity card policy unit, admitted yesterday that the Government is “minded” to log every single ID Card usage and store the data centrally.
As ID Cards become used for more and more things, this data shadow will become larger and larger. Every time you use your ID Card for any purpose this information will be recorded. All available in a central government database at the touch of a button.
Of course, Harrison assures us that the data is only being collected to guard against abuse and that there will be “safeguards” to protect it. Some of us have heard such words before and don’t find them very reassuring.
Harrison’s admission yesterday confirms that compulsory ID Cards will effectively mean the end of privacy in the UK.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
To say that legislation can bring about an end to child labor is akin to saying that someone’s fever could be cured by dousing his thermometer in ice.
– Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
In response to a couple of kind inquiries from readers, a quick update on my personal situation. The job search grinds on, although I am getting some good interviews. Later this week I go to Dallas to interview for a position I would very much like to land. Home to Texas! Spin a prayer wheel for me.
My visit a few weeks ago to the Minneapolis gun show was semi-productive. I got to handle a number of pistols, and pretty well settled on a 4-inch barrel, single stack .45 as the kind of gun I will eventually purchase to carry. The Kimber was veerry nice, but pricey, as was the Springfield. The HK USP Compact may just carry the day, though. Sadly, more research will be needed, more gun shops will be visited, and a regular paycheck will need to be found, before this issue is closed.
Finally, no tour of the wartime blogsphere would be complete without a visit to Wretchard at Belmont Club. His offering today examines the implications of Hamas founder Sheik Yassin catching an Israeli missile (thus rendering the deceased Sheik truly the spiritual leader of Hamas, as one wag at Tim Blair’s blog pointed out).
Before diving into excerpts and discussion, let me take a moment here for a big round of applause. Sheik Yassin was long overdue to take a dirt nap; the world is a better place without him, and his absence will only increase the prospects for a long-term and stable peace in the Mideast.
Wretchard makes a series of related points: → Continue reading: Schwerpunkt, hudna, and zugzwang
For a good look at what pissed-off Middle America is thinking, check out the invaluable James Lilek’s bleat (actually, more of a screed) today.
Immediately below the picture of the protestor with the sign saying “I (heart) New York even more without the World Trade Center,”* Lileks cuts to the heart of the matter:
That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is a traitor. He may be an idiot, a maroon, a 33rd degree moonbat, but he’s still a traitor. That is a man who celebrates the death of Americans (and others) and supports the people who killed them. Oh, sure, he’s nuts. But he fits right in. So what were all these people against, exactly?
A free press in Iraq. Freedom to own a satellite dish. Freedom to vote. A new Constitution that might actually be worth the paper on which it’s printed. Oil revenues going to the people instead of Saddam, or French oligopolies. Freedom to leave the country. Freedom to demonstrate against the people who made it possible for you to demonstrate.
Freedom. More freedom now than before, and yes it comes with peril; it always does, at first. But freedom is either in retreat, or on the advance. These people marched to protest the premature bestowal of freedom by exterior forces. Better the Iraqi people live under the boot for 20 years, and rise up and get slaughtered and rise up again and slaughter those who killed their kin, then have Bush push the FF button and get it over with now. Better they suffer for the right reasons than live better for the wrong ones.
As the man says, read the whole thing.
The major obstacle faced by many opponents of the war in Iraq is that already, a year later, Iraq is demonstrably better off in almost every way than it was under Hussein. Even the worst feature of the current scene, the terror attacks, pose less of a threat to most Iraqis than Saddam’s regime did. It is very difficult to argue against a war that has been so immediately and obviously beneficial; that is why opponents so often have to resort to abstractions and platitudes about the UN and lack of international cooperation. Underneath it all, it is more important to the committed Left and its new Islamist allies that the US lose than that a nation of millions be given a decent shot at freedom and prosperity.
*= I believe this sign to be genuine, and not a photoshop job. If you believe otherwise, well, comments are open.
The good Professor Bunyip has a modest proposal for reforming the welfare state:
Fire all the public servants, social workers and ministers of the new and godless Christianity and replace them with the very people to whom they have been sending everyone else’s money.
The newly uplifted wouldn’t actually have anything to do, since there would be no further funds to distribute, but they would have salaries and somewhere to go in the morning. Meanwhile, those laid-off social engineers could sample the poetic justice of penury — the very condition they have encouraged in the underclass whose positions at the bottom of society’s ladder they would assume.
We taxpayers would notice no difference but a positive one: Bureaus of social engineers would cost less to support while achieving just as little. And we could also expect to see crime rates diminish, since the pool of formerly downtrodden malefactors would be otherwise occupied giving each other tattoos with government-issue ballpoints and microwaving infants in their departments’ lunchrooms — a kinder, quicker, cheaper and altogether more efficent way of squandering human potential than the current method. As a final advantage, the newly designated poor, being composed of a better class of person, would be less likely to burn down railway stations.
I say its worth a try.
In his latest post Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber gives the background to, and an unedited version of, his letter in today’s Guardian.
I agree with every word of his letter. Paticularly the bit about scavenging for soundbites that the Guardian edited out.
Judging from what I’ve read in blogs and the press about Cavanagh’s unreconstructed views, he did not put forward the standard libertarian argument that to forbid racial discrimination is to violate the human right of free association. (The standard libertarian view is the view I hold. It is quite compatible with thinking that in all but a few special situations racial discrimination is morally wrong, a view I also hold.) According to Edward Lucas in a letter further down the page, “We invited Mr Cavanagh [to the ICA debate that started all the fuss] as a leftwing critic of equality of opportunity. He argued, for example, that it leads to an overemphasis on competition between individuals.”
In other words the views I hold would be even more likely than Mr Cavanagh’s to be described as pyschotic by David Winnick MP, a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee. As described by the Guardian this prominent Labour MP’s own views appear close to totalitarian. He does not merely think it is pyschotic to oppose the discrimination laws he thinks it is psychotic even to question them.
That’s us lot for the loony bin then.
Still, you never know with the Guardian. Tomorrow we might be treated to the amusing spectacle of Mr Winnick saying that he was quoted out of context, just like Mr Cavanagh before him.
Well, no surprise there… China fears everything it cannot control, and thus it is stomping on China’s blogosphere.
The site Blogbus.com was closed on 11 March “until further notice” for allowing a letter to be posted that was critical of the government. It was the turn of Blogcn.com to be shut down on 14 March.
We tried to see if we could get banned in China and it did not take that long to get us shut off from Chinese readers a while back (I have not checked recently to see if we are still a China no-no).
The linked Vigilant.tv article at the top of this entry even helpfully provides a link to his wonderful Invisiblog system to allow Chinese bloggers to deftly avoid the best efforts of the Chinese state’s attempts to silence them.
Yet in the long run it will avail them naught. As the Chinese state increasingly liberalises its economy in order to provide more wealth that it can tax, which of course means assuming less state control over that most entrepreneurial of people, the Chinese, that very process will eventually cause alternative power centres to appear as a direct consequence of creating more wealth without directing where that wealth is created.
|
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.
|
