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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It is a common occurrence on this blog to point out how the Labour government blatantly pursues its socialist agenda. Yes, I am using the S-word in relation to the party that has been polished and spun by the likes of Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair for the public consumption. Today after reading the Sunday Telegraph, gloom descended upon me in an almost David-Carr-esque manner.
The Labour government, true to its socialist DNA, is making headlines again with its penchant for tax increases. The front page announces that inheritance tax is to rise to 50 per cent for those whose inheritance exceed a limit set by socialist bureaucrats or worse yet, a bunch of self-righteous lefties. Institute for Public Policy Research that came up with the scheme is indeed firmly wedged in the socialist utopia:
Inheritance tax needs to be made fairer, according to a new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), published next week. The report recommends a tax cut for middle class families, with extra revenues raised from the wealthiest invested in assets for the poorest children.
Ah, children. Beware of ‘children’ mentioned in any political context.
A fairer inheritance tax would see the very wealthy, who are comfortably over the threshold, pay more, whilst the vast majority of families that are currently taxed would pay less.
Again, a fairer inheritance tax. Fairer to whom? To those who build up assets during their lifetime so they can choose to pass them on to their children? And, pray, what is that ‘threshold’, which the very wealthy are comfortably over?
The quotes read like passages from an old Marxist-Leninist textbook, the problem is that they originate from an institute whose former director, Matthew Taylor, is now the head of policy unit at No 10 Downing street. It has been suggested that the scheme may be a “big idea” for a third Labour term in power.
But the Labourites are not yet finished with the Middle England and with anybody who either owns a roof over their heads or stands to inherit one. Northern Ireland minister admitted there will be significant shifts in rate bills [local government tax], particularly at the top end of the market.
It is only fair that those who can afford to pay do pay a fairer share as soon as possible.
Here we go again, talk of fairness… fair to whom and fair by whose definition? Who are these guardians of fairness and equality that they feel confident to define how much I get to keep before I am forced to pay a fairer share? These are the very same people whose existence and – dare I say it – salaries depend on the money that are extracted from all of us to self-righteous noises about ‘schoolsandhospitals’.
For once, the Tories managed a sound-bite:
It is becoming clearer by the day that Labour are planning third-term tax rises to feed their appetite for fat government.
The only thing that is not clear to me is that how Labour’s propensity for taxation and fat government has not been clear to everybody all along.
Every dollar spent in a libertarian society on public goods will accomplish far more than a dollar spent by the welfare state. So even if a free society spends less money, it is far from clear that it will perform less charity.
– Patri Friedman, Catallarchy
Advice Goddess Amy Alkon, whose writing is always good for a laugh, has a disturbing piece on her site about how useless the police were when her car was stolen. On one occasion, a friend spotted her car and, when she rang the police to tell them exactly where they could find it, she was fobbed off by a disinterested operator who read from a script and did not send officers to retrieve it. Later, when the man she knew (and the cops strongly suspected) had stolen her car was known to be at home, Alkon called the LAPD and told them exactly where they could pick him up. The police receptionist told her that no detectives were around, and that she’d have to call back the next day to speak to anyone who could help her.
In the end, Alkon had to get her car back from the thief herself, using good old fashioned shame and hostility. She even enlisted her mother in trying to guilt him into returning items that were in the car when he stole it. But few will be surprised at what the real consequences were for the thief.
Fred still hasn’t been arrested. The case was knocked down to a misdemeanor and so the police can’t go into his house to pick him up…So far his punishment has amounted to being forced to disconnect his phone, probably because he couldn’t take the telephone harassment from me and, especially, my mother. Still, I don’t regret the experience. I had great fun moonlighting as a private detective, I gained newfound faith in humanity, thanks to the Rambler nuts and the other near-strangers who went out of their way to help me, and I’d learned a surprising little lesson: In Los Angeles, crime pays.
Of course this state of affairs is not confined to Los Angeles. Everyone seems to know someone who has been similarly screwed over by police bureaucracy and incompetence. I know some good cops. But pieces like these make it all the more puzzling to me that so many people trust the police so unquestioningly, both to serve and to protect. Do they genuinely believe that the system is stacked in their favour, or is it something people tell themselves in order to feel secure?
Yes, Fahrenhiet 9/11 is ‘patriotic art’ in the same way Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” was patriotic art… and both take a similar relativist view regarding the role of reality in film making
We have endless claims that global warming caused the Boscastle floods in Cornwall.
Now global warming may be a real problem, and it may be caused (at least in part) by human action (rather than sunspot activity and/or other natural factors). But I do not hear many people (although there are a few) saying “oh we must have more nuclear power stations to replace C02 generating power sources” – instead it is just the normal capitalism is evil stuff and demans for more wind turbines and other such (whose contribution to power generation can, at best, only be minor).
There is also something else to be thought about. The endless talk about global warming distracts attention from other factors that might be involved in the flooding.
Cornwall has had very heavy rain before in the past – and the buildings than have been flooded were centuries old. Could the flooding have anything to do with the narrowing of the river (in a government ‘reclaim land’ scheme) and the building of a new road bridge?
A letter in the Daily Telegraph yesterday claimed exactly this – and was ignored by the broadcast media.
It reminds me of the flooding in the South East of England some time ago. There were endless claims that it was due to global warming – and much later (and without much publicity) it slipped out that there had been various government building schemes that had undermined the drainage system of the area concerned.
Not all government ‘investment’ is just a waste of money (and therefore a denial of what people could have done with the money, had it not been taken from them), some of it causes direct harm as well.
Only if you say things that are favoured in Islington, it would seem.
Some odious Jamaican singer rejoicing in the name of Beenie Man could be charged under British law with incitement to violence because of the anti-homosexual lyrics of his songs.
I am all for the annoying Peter Tatchell trying (with some success) to cause ‘Beenie Man’ and his ilk financial difficulties by getting sponsorship deals cancelled as a result of their hate-mongering: that is civil society in action and an altogether good thing… but unless ‘Bennie Man’ actually starts taking up his bazooka for real, the state has no business suppressing free speech by force.
The essential civil liberties called ‘freedom of expression’ are rather more important that the actual substance of some idiotic reggae song. Has the culture of liberty really decayed so far that this sort of overarching state control can be tolerated? Freedom of expression for the politically favoured or the mainstream are the easy bits… it is when some detestable half-wit homophobic prat like ‘Beenie Man’ opens his noisome trap that you discover what the real state of civil liberties in a country is.
Pathetic. It is just a song and the state has no business banning songs.
The trouble with all this free-market capitalism (according to every reliable and sound authority on the subject) is that it results in a cruel, dog-eat-dog society where the strong and the rich grow stronger and richer while the poor and weak get trampled underfoot in the headlong stampede for endless profits.
This is why markets must be subject to the moderating influence of a compassionate government which must deploy a range of taxes, regulations and laws to stave off the worst predations of naked greed and help create a level-playing field and decent living conditions for all those poor and feeble people.
Here endeth the first lesson in received wisdom: [Note: link to article in UK Times may not work for readers outside of the UK]
THE black economy does Britain good because it helps to keep poor people off the breadline and develop their “entrepreneurial skills”, a report commissioned by the Government has found.
Efforts to stamp out moonlighting — including a year-long £5 million advertising campaign — were misguided because tax dodges were a way of providing the needy with a financial safety net, the study commissioned by John Prescott’s office found.
It may cause some cognitive disonance to reverberate around the corridors of power to be told that the best way to help the poor is to let them out of the prison that has purportedly been built for their benefit.
Clearly not satisfied with mere temporal power, some of Europe’s ruling elite are now seeking divinity:
A campaign to sanctify the European Union through the beatification of its founding father, Robert Schuman, has run into stiff resistance from the Vatican and now appears likely to fail.
For 14 years investigators under the diocese of Metz have combed through the life of the French statesman to determine whether he merits the title “Blessed Robert”, the first step to sainthood.
The drive for his beatification and eventual canonisation was launched by a private group in Metz, the St Benoit Institute, but has acquired powerful backers, including President Jacques Chirac.
I can find no information about the St Benoit Institute but the reference to ‘powerful backers’ leads me to suspect that they are merely the low-profile conduits for a project which has been germinated at a far higher and more official level.
I seldom comment of matters of religious doctrine or practice because, as someone without any faith to speak of, I do not consider them to be any of my business. However, this is not really about the practices of the Roman Catholic Church or even about the status of the late Mr. Schuman but more about Europe’s elite seeking divine provenance for their transnational machine.
Is this how they now see themselves? As apostles of a blessed prophet working to establish a Church of Brussels? Would they prefer to be seen as the ‘Annointed’ rather than merely a political nomenklatura?
The presses of the European Fourth Estate may ring out furious daily denunciations of ‘American arrogance’ but I submit that it is next to impossible to find anything more wildly hubristic than a post hoc claim to the benediction of Holy Writ. Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine the chorus of snorting, braying contempt that would be served up in response to George Bush seeking canonisation of, say, Thomas Jefferson.
I believe it was our friend David Farrer who first coined the term ‘Holy Belgian Empire’ to describe the European Union. He was joking, of course, and my how we laughed!
“Gold Plating” is the practice of getting an order (a ‘directive’) from our masters in the European Union and adding lot of additional regulations to it. Sort of…
“If this arbitrary order has not destroyed your business we will add regulations to it, and we will keep doing so until you are destroyed”…
…”Why are we trying to destroy you?”…
…”Well what else do we have to do, it would be lazy and unethical to just sit in our offices and not do anything”.
The British Civil Service is supposed to love gold plating more than any other civil service in the EU. The British Civil Service having long prided itself on being more hardworking an ethical than Civil Servants in other nations (do not even think about bribing a British Civil Servant to save your business – he would rather starve than let you survive).
Examples are tossed about, supposedly a Directive on slaughter houses that started off as about 8 pages in Brussels (EU HQ) was turned in to about 7 pages in France – and about 97 pages in Britain.
No surprise that almost all of the little local slaughter houses closed down.
The BBC (and other such) still has the occasional item about how sad it is the all the local family owned places have gone, and how animals are now taken to great corporate factories (which actually have worse records for the quality and safety of meat). The little places may not have understood the paper work or been able to afford all the special people the regulations insisted they have (such vets – mostly from Spain) – but they did the job better. “Oh the wicked supermarkets” (they get the blame for destroying the “local food” from “local farmers” system that the media claim to love) “and now on to our next story about the need for more regulations concerning such and such”.
Well the British Conservative party has promised to end gold plating and if a business thinks that a EU directive has been interpreted more strictly in Britain than in other parts of the EU (or just used as an excuse for another regulation orgy) they will be able to take the matter to court.
Well this is good as far as it goes. The promise to end gold plating is nice to hear (although I doubt the Civil Service would take any notice) and taking things to court might work sometimes – although the British courts (like the courts of most nations) are a mess (and getting worse – as they slowly reject what is left of the old ‘out of date’ principles of law).
However, it is also a wonderful way for the British Conservative party to look as if they are “doing something” about regulations and “standing up for Britain”. After all by concentrating on ‘gold plating’ the Conservatives duck the issue of whether to defy ANY of the endless thousands of Directives that come out of the EU.
Too cynical? I hope so.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (a sympathiser of Italian terrorist organisations in the 1970s and imprisoned as such) wrote Empire, a book that purported to demonstrate a new concept of Empire sans imperialism, engaging with the ongoing march of globalisation. This book came to my attention at its publication when Hardt was interviewed on Radio 3; since the BBC viewed post-Marxist critiques and other explorations of jargon as vital contributions to high culture. It was theory-laden and empirically light, a strange attempt on the part of the Left to accept a ‘theory of globalisation’ by condemning all nationalism as reactionary. Even the Marxists found this theoristic verbiage too much to take.
Still, old Reds have never lost their airbrush, as this quote demonstrates:
The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating “development”, cruel “civilization” and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world. Concentration camps, nuclear weapons, genocidal wars, slavery, apartheid; it is not difficult to enumerate the various scenes of the tragedy….
Modern negativity is located not in any transcendant realm but in the hard reality before us: the fields of patriotic battles in the First and Second World wars, from the killing fields at Verdun to the Nazi furnaces and the swift annihilation of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia, the massacres of Setif and Soweto to Sabra and Shatila, and the list goes on and on. There is no Job who can sustain such suffering!
Can you see the “hard reality” that they missed?
Glenn Reynolds gets in line with Samizdata, bridging the gap between your humble poster’s musings on big media and the current kerfuffle over Kerry’s account of his adventures in Vietnam.
But this story seems to me to be absolutely fascinating in that it reveals just how in the tank for the Democrats the mainstream media are, and how little the vaunted Cronkitean claims of objectivity and research and factual accuracy really mean when the chips are down.
To me, that’s a bigger deal than the underlying issue or even, in some ways, the election itself. Elections come and go, politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be disappointments one way or another. But the “Fourth Estate” is a big part of the unelected Permanent Government that in many ways does more to run the country than the politicians.
Glenn does more than any professional journalist that I know of to bring together the public information on stories that catch his eye. His work on the Kerry “Christmas in Cambodia” story has been first-rate.
I have always suspected the notion blogging will lead us into a wonderful future of ‘participatory democracy’ was one of those ideas which withers away to nothing under closer scrutiny. Sure, we can ‘fact check the asses’ (as Ken Layne put it) of the established political/media classes but that only makes us bloggers ‘participants’ in the sense that calling the cops when the party next door is making too much noise makes you a ‘participant’ in the next door’s party.
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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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