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.
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Simson Garfinkel of MIT Enterprise Technology explains:
RFID technology is already broadly deployed within the United States. Between the “proximity cards” that are used to unlock many office doors and the automobile “immobilizer chips” that are built into many modern car keys, roughly 40 million Americans carry some form of RFID device in their pocket every day. I have two: last year MIT started putting RFID proximity chips into the school’s identity cards, and there is a Phillips immobilizer chip inside the black case of my Honda Pilot car keys.
He comes to an interesting conclusion:
The problem of voluntary, industry-approved privacy standards is that they’re voluntary—companies don’t need to comply with them. And the very real danger facing the RFID industry is that a suspicious public will push for regulation of this technology. Although the industry has successfully killed legislation proposed earlier this year in California and Massachusetts, high-handed actions on the part of RFID-advocates will likely empower consumer activists and their legislative allies to pass some truly stifling legislation.
Indeed.
Iraq The Model has translated comments of Iraqi’s about the US election that were posted to the BBCArabic site. You can read them all
here
The election victory of George Bush is a hugely significant event in its own right but at least part of the reason why it gets so much coverage here is due to the near-absence of anything good happening in the UK. It has been this way for years.
Hence, I am doubly-delighted to note that a small proportion of the British electorate has done something right for a change:
People in the North East have voted “no” in a referendum on whether to set up a new regional assembly.
The total number of people voting against the plans was 696,519 (78%), while 197,310 (22%) voted in favour.
That is not just a ‘no’, it is a big, fat, resounding ‘no’.
The ‘new regional assembly’ that HMG was attempting to foist on the public was supposed to be the first of many similar boondoggles designed (allegedly) to facilitate ‘local decision making’.
Dressed up in the fuzzy, fashionable, eminantly spinnable language of ‘decentralisation’, these assemblies actually represent nothing more than yet another grossly expensive tier of government, complete with an army of paper-shufflers, ticket-punchers, regulators, office-holders, rubber stampers and form-fillers. Not to mention the heavy battalions of outreach co-ordinators, inclusivity counsellors, gender advisers, diversity directors, real nappy officers and sundry other busybodies and parasites.
In short, the whole thing is simply an ‘Enemy Class’ job-creation scheme and I like to think that (at long last) some sections of the British electorate were able to see the truth of this. Perhaps, just maybe, some of the long-suffering British cash cows have decided that they have donated more than enough blood to these Vampires-Who-Walk-By-Day.
HMG has promised that, in the event the referendum was lost, they would drop the whole idea. I am not at all confident they will abide by that pledge. The career ambitions of their supporters will not be so easily thwarted.
But, for now at least, I am prepared to bask in the moment and declare myself temporarily content.
I am happy and relieved by the result of the US election. I thank those who campaigned, volunteered or just plain voted to keep the right man at the helm.
All the same, I take literally the statement that democracy is the least worst form of government.
Many here argue that we do not need any government at all. It is not going away any time soon, though. Most anarchists and minarchists will concede that modern liberal democracy is fertile ground compared to the despotic wasteland that makes up most of history, even if it is not yet a garden of libertarian delights.
I figured out as a child that the least wonderful aspect of a modern liberal democracy is that it lets the majority decide: the tyranny of the majority is to be feared. Votes are a mechanism to deal with the fact that some administrative variables affecting many people (speed limits, for instance, or surrenders) must be set at a predictable value for a recognisable group, or bad stuff happens.
I also figured out as a child that the good soul of a liberal democracy, the thing that has made us the most fortunate human beings in history, is the idea that every individual matters. None of us can be made to stop mattering because we look wrong or do wrong. That’s why every individual has certain rights that cannot be…
…OK, OK, I had better stop myself before I re-hash the Declaration of Independence in much inferior prose. You know all this. You can probably cite references. Please do!
It is a pity it ever has to come to voting. Votes by definition make some people sad. Yet we go on and on about majorities and mandates and elections and other things to do with the regrettable majoritarian aspects of our system. We talk much less about how the only reason that counting people matters is that people count. And, as we on this blog know, it is a constant struggle to defend individual rights against the majority.
I just wondered, is the reason that we so exalt the rule of the majority over the more fundamental principle of equality before the law simply because we picked the wrong ruddy name for our system of government? Everybody knows that we don’t mean by democracy what the Greeks meant by it. We don’t have ostracism. We don’t have slavery. These prohibitions are not mere differences of custom but integral to the system. The difference between our ‘democracy’ and theirs is precisely that we believe in inalienable rights and equality under the law. So whose bleedin’ stupid idea was it to call our system the Greek word for “people-rule?” It was sure to give folk the wrong idea. If we had just called it isonomy instead we would all be a lot better off.
The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life.
The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes.
Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out.
The state is not your friend.
The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life.
The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes.
Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out.
The state is not your friend.
President Jacques Chirac, who has just rushed to the military hospital in Clamart to be at Yasser Arafat’s bedside, took time off to pen a letter to his American colleague. My translation [handwritten bits in bold]:
Mister President, Dear George
In the name of France and in my personal name, I wish to express to you my most hearty congratulations for your re-election to the Presidency of the United States of America.
I make the wish that your second mandate will be the opportunity to reinforce franco-american friendship. The ceremonies for the sixtieth anniversary of the landings paid a shining hommage to the American soldiers who fell on the Normandy beaches for our freedom and that of Europe.
It is in the spirit of dialogue, esteem and mutual respect that our co-operation, our common combat against terrorism and the action that we carry out together to promote liberty and democracy, must continue.
We cannot find satisfactory answers to the numerous challenges against which we are confronted today without a close transatlantic partnership. The United States and France are called upon to play in this an essential role. We share the ambition of assuring to the greatest number peace, security and prosperity, in the spirit of solidarity [this usually means entitlement programs in French]. I am convinced that together, we can get there.
I beg you to believe, Mister President, of the assurance of my very high opinion of you. and of my very cordial friendship
Jacques CHIRAC
I bet that was painless. Oh and I hope that the President Chirac is careful in his motorcade coming home from Clamart. That’s right next to the road junction where the OAS tried to assassinate General de Gaulle (as seen in the Day of the Jackal) in 1962. And we would not want anything to happen to Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat’s favourite Frenchman.
Over on Fox News website:
LATEST HEADLINES
– Official: Arafat in Coma
– Arafat Congratulates Bush
Food for thought.
You know, I generally hate to gloat but:
The mistake we all made was in getting our hopes up.
The only mistake you made?
Dismally, people asked each other how long they had stayed up the night before. “Until 4.30am,” said my friend Jim. “Long enough to start crying like a girl.”
The first email I received the following morning read: “Fucked off, dejected, our hopes have been blown to shit.”
Signed: G. Soros.
The next one read: “As REM once sang: ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it.’ Only unlike REM, I don’t feel fine.”
Such creativity. Such depth.
“There’s going to be a brain drain from this country which will leave the Red-State [Republican] morons to fend for themselves,” wrote an American on the Guardian talk-boards.
And spend their own money on themselves, to boot.
I rang my cousin in Chicago. “I’m good,” she said. “Well, no, actually, not great.” The hope thing had prospered there, too. “We thought we were going to win. Bruce Springsteen … the youth vote … ” She had to get off the line then; there were commiseration calls waiting.
It was Bruce on the line. He’s crying like a girl.
[Warning: obligatory ‘Bush is Hitler’ reference coming up]
“Ach,” says Oliver James, the clinical psychologist. “I was too depressed to even speak this morning. I thought of my late mother, who read Mein Kampf when it came out in the 1930s and thought, ‘Why doesn’t anyone see where this is leading?'”
Hmm..I recommend an intensive round of therapy.
There might be a feeling that a dirty bomb exploding in London is more likely to happen with the policies pursued by a Bush government.
Quite right. Just ask the Spanish.
This sense of powerlessness was also raised by American psychologists, who, anticipating high levels of disgruntlement among voters, were on standby yesterday to analyse the fallout.
And, today, they are being treated for depression, hysteria and suicidal tendencies.
“I am deeply ashamed to call myself American,” wrote another, while, “I’m ashamed to be English,” countered a third, in a competitive orgy of shame. Lots of people talked about powerlessness. “And that,” said one, ominously, “won’t lift until we get our own general election.”
And I bet John Kerry would still lose that one.
Naah, I was only kidding. I love to gloat really.
I do not depend on the ‘main stream media’ world for my news. I expect that is true of most Samizdata readers as well. There is just the tiniest bit of self-selection effect at work here: you are applying your eyeball time to us rather than elsewhere. That given, I hope you are perusing the Iraqi blogs and papers for their take on the US election. There are many fine Iraqi blogs, but my current favorite is The Messopotamian. Here is his take on yesterday’s events:
Congratulations to all American people and to our Iraqi people for this great outcome of the American Elections. This was a great statement by the American people; a statement showing the quality and backbone of this people and affirming their worth and qualification as world leaders. Now that this matter has been settled in satisfactory manner, in my humble opinion; we should emphasize that this is no time for division and rancor. Senator Kerry has acted in very dignified manner when he did not allow the matter to drag, and has shown his patriotism and sense of responsibility and awareness that the interests of the country at these times require national unity and putting this election campaign behind our backs to concentrate on the momentous tasks ahead. Yes at times of war and conflict, the unity of the nation and putting higher interests above partisan considerations is the mark of a great people.
Read the whole thing. Then keep reading: it is well worth the time.
Not only is Kerry the ’60s candidate, but he also apparently employed a campaign strategy that would have given the election in the ’60s. If Kerry had won the same bundle of states that gave him 252 electoral votes in this election, but the states were still valued according to the Congressional apportionment based on the Census of 1960, he would have won the election, 270 electoral votes to 268. The trend since then:
1960 census (1964, 68 elections) – Kerry 270, Bush 268
1970 census (1972, 76, 80 elections) – Kerry 270, Bush 268
1980 census (1984, 88 elections) – Bush 276, Kerry 262
1990 census (1992, 96, 2000 elections) – Bush 279, Kerry 259
2000 census (2004, 08 elections) – Bush 286, Kerry 252
This is indicative of a potential long-term problem for the Democrats: they are strongest in the parts of the country that aren’t growing anymore. Even since the 2000 election (which was still based on the 1990 Census) the states Kerry won this time around are worth seven fewer electoral votes than they were worth last time.
On the other hand, maybe I should not bring up any of this, out of fear that someone will accuse Bush of stealing the election through the Census. Bush 2004: enumerated, not acclamated!
(Source for old electoral college apportionments: Statistical Abstract of the United States Table #402 – this link opens a .pdf file.)
I just want to say that I am already very tired indeed of listening to US Democrats and British broadcasters drone on about how President Bush must now reach out to various people, and in particular to his defeated opponents. By this they do not merely mean that he should be polite and dignified in his moment of victory, as he has been, and as John Kerry has been in his moment of defeat. They mean that President Bush should now do what John Kerry proposed should be done (which lost Kerry the Election), instead of what he, Bush, proposed should be done (which was what won). This is a very stupid idea.
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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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