The vast majority of the British public opposes the government’s nannying campaign, according to a poll released today by the campaign group Reform. It shows that 71% of the public think that “Too many infringements on personal liberty are being proposed on matters that should be for individuals to decide for themselves”, while only 27 per cent believe that “The Government should legislate on such things even if they mean restrictions on personal liberty.”
|
|||||
|
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] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Nanny State is not in our name, say BritsNovember 25th, 2004 |
 19 comments to Nanny State is not in our name, say Brits |
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. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
bBrothers and sisters…fight The Power!
For me one of the alarming thoughts that emerges from your statistic is that we are still surrounded by nearly one person in three for whom personal liberty and the value of the individual seem to count for so little. There seems to be a hard core of statists in this country, approximately 30% I reckon, who want to increase the power of the state, force the people of Britain to accept the rule of foreigners and who depracate and wish to destroy all of the things which make our nation what it (is) used to be. I’m happy that 70% of people do not think like that, unfortunately, with the help of the BBC/Guardian and others, their voice is drowned out by the ruling class.
This does suggest that a new pro-liberty party might be in with a chance of having an impact.
They’ll still vote Labour, though.
I recall several years ago people moaning that taxes were too high, and in the same breath demanding more money be spent on public services.
EG
You can have lower taxes and higher spending on public services, just piss less of the taxes away.
Euan
In a way it doesn’t matter if Labour’s vote holds at the next election; the Tories just need to get their vote out. I still think that outside of chav colonies the English are a conservative people and they haven’t been voting recently. The results truly are astonishing; at the 2001 election, 18 million voters did not vote. It was possibly the high water mark for the Labour Party in modern political times yet just 24% of the electorate voted Labour. Frankly, for the Tories not to be in office they have to be pretty incompetent. And they have been. When the Tories cease to be afraid of their own shadow they will win again.
I know they’re statists etc but they are preferable to the alternative. As someone said: its the difference castration and a wedgie.
Yes, but on Planet Reality that doesn’t happen. Governments are wasteful in expenditure not because they are nasty, evil Gramscian statists but because they only have to put their hand out to get more cash and it’s perfectly legal. Where else can you spend 450 million on a computer system that can be replicated on a pocket calculator and STILL not get it to work?
I’d agree. Here in Edinburgh we don’t call them chavs, though. The term “schemie basturt” seems to suffice, although you need to be able to do the dialect to make it convincing. I personally prefer “slack-jawed troglodyte,” but I’m only 50% Scottish. I’d also agree with your postulate that they (the non-troglodyte ones) just haven’t been voting.
I suspect many cannot bring themselves to vote Labour, some will vote Liberal Democrat, but most will just stay at home. I can’t see much sign of them turning out this time, though. The Tories haven’t exactly excelled themselves in putting forward a credible alternative to Labour. I’m not holding my breath waiting for them to promise the repeal of the Civil Contingencies Act or cancel the ID database.
I sometimes wonder if compulsory voting would help, maybe with a 50 pound fine for failure to turn up without a valid excuse. I’m often struck by the number of people who moan like hell about the government but don’t get off their backsides to go and vote. Even if they spoil their ballot paper, at least they’d be participating and have a reasonable ground to complain. Thinking of that, don’t you suppose the government might actually try to do something constructive if say 30% of all votes cast in a general election were spoiled ballots? I have always thought that if you don’t vote you forego the right to complain about the government, and I have zero sympathy with those libertarians who complain like buggery but refuse to vote because there is no libertarian candidate.
EG
You can’t. Government spending is forced to be wasteful by the laws of economics. It’s called the “socialist economic calculation problem”, google for it. In summary: you can’t determine least-wasteful allocation without market prices, and you can’t determine if an activity is producing more than it consumes, except via profits.
Well, in part. Even where the government provides a service in parallel with the market, such that a market pricing mechanism is present, it is still wasteful. This is not because of economic rules, but basic human nature. The administrator working for the private company can be fired for laziness or incompetence, but this is far less likely to happen to the state administrator, hence the greater ease with which he can indulge his natural human tendency to indolence.
EG
I have always thought that if you don’t vote you forego the right to complain about the government
Yes, your thoughts are very often extremely twittish.
I sometimes wonder if compulsory voting would help, maybe with a 50 pound fine for failure to turn up without a valid excuse.
Yes, thats right. We need more ‘libertarians’ like you suggesting new victimless crimes, extra bureaucracy and more police power.
Fortunately your sympathy is not very important to process. As it happens if the UKIP continues to develop in the right directions, I might actually vote for it, but the idea that voting for some jackass Tory Civil Contingencies Act supporter is going to make things better just because the Labour Party is also dire actually borders on demented. Not voting because there is no one worth voting for may not get your sympathy but it is quite rational.
As for wanting the government to spend my tax money more effectively, hell no. If it was up to me, 80% of my tax money should be flushed down the toilet rather than spent on ANYTHING. Government spending does damage, not just the raising of taxation. I do not want a more efficient NHS, I want it destroyed so that private sector solutions can emerge without distortion. I do not want more efficient state schools, I want them closed down completely, etc..
Sadly, your comment contains all the counter-argument it needs.
Who said you should do this? I certainly didn’t. I’d point out, though, that we have two successive landslide Labour victories not because more people voted Labour but because a large number of people simply didn’t get out and vote. People, I am afraid, with the same attitude as you have just displayed.
Perhaps if you read again what I had written, you’d see that as far as I am concerned it is not especially important who you vote for, but I do think it is worthwhile participating in the process – as I asked above, do you not think that if 30% of all the ballots cast in a general election were spoiled the politicians might realise it was time to do actually do something people wanted?
If steadily fewer people vote, due if you like to the paucity of credible candidates, then some more extreme elements in the political classes will in consider that obviously elections are unimportant because people really don’t care about them – and the next step is to not trouble the people with them ever again, since going out to vote is obviously such an ordeal. If you don’t give a damn about exercising a right, quite often you find that in a short time it is taken away.
I assume you don’t want that.
EG
What use would compulsory voting be? Why do you think Lord Kinnock is to spend his incredibly rich retirement in promoting it? Because it would benefit the Labour Party, and keep them in for their thousand year reich. If you vote anything other than conservative/Labour, all you will succeed in doing is splitting the vote and we’ll get labour back in again. whether we vote for it or not. It’s a terrible dilemma, I have to face it too, like everyone else.
as far as I am concerned it is not especially important who you vote for, but I do think it is worthwhile participating in the process
Euan Gray is one of those people whose grasp of libertarian and free market ideas is so feeble that in opening his trap he verges on actually being a hinderance to the cause.
Maybe it isn’t the answer. I do sometimes think it would work, though.
Whether through compulsion or persuasion, I do think it is important to actually participate in the process. Sometimes, of course, you will get governments you don’t want, but for sure you will never get the government you do want if enough people stay at home and simply don’t vote.
Paul, with respect, making snide, personal and flippant remarks does not advance anyone’s cause.
I am not a libertarian and have never pretended to be one. I have stated several times before that the closest description of my beliefs would be socially conservative minarchism. I do not think anarcho-capitalism has a plastic bag’s chance in Hell of working, however theoretically perfect and wonderful it may be, and have several times attempted to give my reasons for believing this.
You, on the other hand, think it will work, and have repeatedly stated your opinion that libertarianism is the best solution to all plausible problems. It is perfectly permissible to disagree, and even beneficial since the free and frank exchange of ideas increases everyone’s knowledge.
However, chucking personally insulting remarks around and arguing ad hominem will not achieve this. It is unlikely that we would ever agree on the merits of libertarianism versus minarchism, but I for one would be really happy if you could try to be civil and constructive about it.
EG
You are quite right, it is very remiss of me not to engage with you properly and instead to fling lazy insults in your direction. I’ts just that when I read your contributions I am unaccountably overcome with despair and ennui. I admit that this is a failing on my part though.
Is there any reason to believe that the views of those who didn’t vote are sufficiently different from those who did that they would have overturned Labour’s majority if voting were compulsory? I don’t believe it myself.
More importantly, is there any reason to believe that compulsory voting would actually improve the policies that the parties offer us? The parties’ policies will depend, to some extent, on the views of the electorate, and whether they are good policies will depend on whether the voters are well informed and understand the likely consequences of what they are voting for. I can’t think of any reason why those who presently don’t vote should be any better informed than those who do.
A bad government will still be a bad government whether it wins on a 90% or a 10% turnout.
But if you really want to know how to improve voter turnout without creating victimless crimes, read this(Link).
An interesting idea, which might only fall down when the lucky voter polled for the Communists…
The idea of not counting the votes is daft, though. Why not proceed with the electoral system we have, and then a random draw of one elector per constituency getting some cash?
And there’s no need to write your name on the paper. The ballot paper carrying your vote is traceable to the electoral register listing your name via the electoral roll number written on the stub by the guy who tears off the blank ballot form. British elections are not secret ballots, although I seriously doubt if anyone actually does tot up who votes for whom (other than for extremist parties, I suspect).
EG
I don’t think the risks of ending up with a handful of communist MPs is any greater than under the present system for electing MPs to Scotland’s present parcel of rogues. Just look at Tommy Sheridan’s crew.
It saves time and labour and it would still result in a representative parliament give or take some statistical noise.
But in any case, you’re taking it too seriously. It was proposed in jest. If you think that’s daft, you should hear what our transport policy was.