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]
|
Samizdata slogan of the day Winner libertarianism is about how to make the world better, and how the world is, at least in some ways, actually getting better. Winner libertarianism explains how I can make my life a success. I am free. Yes, governments do bad things, as do others, but they can be confronted, resisted, criticised, and sometimes – quite often actually – defeated.
– Brian Micklethwait (PDF)
|
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.
|
I feel like a winner already.
This would be as opposed to ‘whining libertarianism’, as seen on lrc.com, among others?
I like the distinction, and the phrase.
regards,
Shirley Knott
“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I’d like to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day by lamenting that the current racial equality movement considers the content of character secondary to the color of skin.
As you say Brian:
“The constant danger of libertarian propaganda is that it will become a propaganda of complaint, complaint, complaint.”
Let’s hope we begin to see a bit more of the winners and less of the complainers.
Right on, Brian! One of the big problems in converting people to libertarianism is the common (and often correct) perception is that all we like to do is bitch about the government. But you can’t beat something with nothing, and keeping an optimistic message is important in attracting and keeping people’s attention. Look back at the history of elections in most democratic countries — the candidate with the more confident and optimistic message nearly always wins. This doesn’t mean glossing over reality; it’s about tone and emphasis more than anything else.
Libertarians generally enjoy the advantage of being right where public policy is concerned, but there’s a bit of a dearth of good marketing skill among us which tends to make it hard to get people to pay attention long enough and open-mindedly enough for us to convince them.
Sure Perry played his part but there was a bigger P in there as well – Persitence. Nice story.
Winner Libertarianism? There’s a rare bird, but no thanks. It has the same self-conscious tonality as “People’s Republic.”
I’ll just stay with the ubiquitous and more lyrical Loser Libertarianism.
Depressing theories make for downbeat libertarians, truth. But also, I’m convinced downbeat people seek out and suck up depressing theories. Libertarianism seems to be a magnet to the “sky is falling” tendency. Many times I have walked away from libertarian fora because everyone was like “oh no, we’re all slaves now”. No, buddy, I’m not, and you’re not, but I haven’t the time to talk you out of your funk.
My own theory is that (referencing a post earlier) liberty never “peaked”. It has expanded in the personal sphere even as it has contracted in the public – in fact, I see the rise of statism as a panicked reaction to unprecedented individual leverage, social mobility, and scope of possible action. Panicked, because it’s not working; liberty continues to grow.
This is why all the statist tricks – ID and whatnot – don’t faze me. I have seen dictatorships, and they are weak.
Myself I try to operate on the principle of “how would you like it if everyone did that?” – I basically act in the same way I would were there no such thing as a nanny state, or even a government at all. And I ignore their deeds, except as entertainment. Just living a normal life, but if “everyone did that”, the state would evaporate overnight like an unsupported epiphenomenon.
Well if it’s not apparent, I don’t give a rip about making the world a better place. I haven’t the slightest idea about how to do that. And I believe no one else does either, hence why I am chagrined when a portion of the populace feels obliged to turn guns on me to comport with their plan. I make no promises to people about what libertarianism will or won’t do en masse. I simply demand freedom for myself as I am convinced I will prosper better without government interference and force. What everyone else manages to do with their freedom is not quantifiable by me, and I make no statement thereon. To think I can instantly puts me in the arena of Statists. About the only statement I can make is that statist bureaucrats make out pretty sweet in the deal.
And apparently freedom is a State of mind. When I have 50+% of my labor confiscated annually, by direct taxation or by de facto taxation (much of it withheld before I even see it) in the form of regulation, when I have a set of codes and laws thrust on me more burdensome than any other society in the history of the world, when an elderly women can’t even consider filling out her own tax forms to comply with the ‘voluntary tax system’ that is so hopelessly complex, when I see ID cards and cameras set up street corners, when I hear talk of central databases collecting date on everyone, everywhere, living in a country with the highest prison population in the world (the US) populated by people whose ‘crimes’ were not against any other person or property, I guess I get all silly and question whether I am really free or live in a free country.
I can’t help but conceive that a person transported from 150 years ago would see our world is a dystopian nightmare. Privacy in nearly non-existent, and the degree of taxation would make their minds spin.
Being able to fly down to Florida, or not having to pass through checkpoints is not necessarily freedom. Transferring 50% of my labor (and the values and behaviors embedded therein) to other sharers and fairers, to install these cameras, and issue tracking numbers, and to pay for the mitigation of other peoples’ poor decisions, and generally return a small portion back to me constrained with a whole wagon load of conditions is not freedom to me.
Is the dividing line whether one is free is whether you are being hauled off to gulag or concentration camp or not? When the State extracts 80+% of your labor and returns lupins? 90+%? 100%?
Maybe I am simply too dour a person for the average samizdatatista. I have never asserted anything else than that I consider myself a right libertarian and so at least exist within the same general sphere. But I do detect that there is much more of the straight conservative element portioned here. I think presuming trying to package a better world and trying to sell it is the dividing line. I tend more to the anarchic side of the street than the average writer or commentator here.
I guess the goal is to try and spread the idea that there is no one central answer or creed, whether it is at large, or with other right libertarians. The contradiction is to how to loosely aggregate around a concept, spread it, tear down Statist conceptions, and gain personal freedom. I’m not a champion of some utopian future or some golden age. As simply as it can be put is convince people that the innate fear they have will rarely be cured by pointing guns at other people.
Even though he’s gone off the rails (to my mind) in recent years, the ca.1973 book by Harry Browne “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” remains the most inspiring statement of the possibility of individual happiness despite the unhappiness of all about you. As he said, (not verbatim!) “If one nation can be free in a world of nations enslaved, so can one man be happy and productive in a world of guilt-ridden clockwatchers.”
There is always a way to lessen the effects of rampant statism and mysticism on your personal life. It’s only when you think you can never be happy until the whole world’s happy that you forfeit any chance to make the most of your precious time on this earth.