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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Eurostat has concluded that sixteen percent of the population resides in poverty. At a first reading this appeared quite a high figure, perhaps mitigated by the enlargement process in 2004. On closer examination, this statistical sleight of hand concerned the level of social inequality in each Member State. Poverty was measured as that proportion of the population who had less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income. Hence, these startling results:
Using a set of micro-data and cross-sectional indicators from national sources, Eurostat determined the percentage of people living in households that have less than 60% of the country’s median disposable income to live on. Surprisingly, this indicator for social inclusion is best in some poorer countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia. The Czech Republic’s leadership shows that recent policy plays a greater role in combating poverty than a country’s historical background. Slovakia, which was part of the same country as the Czech part of the former Czech Republic for more than sixty years until 1993, has the worst indicators eleven years after Czechoslovakia split.
And is there a greater absurdity than this?
Being poor does not mean the same throughout the European Union. While a four-person family with an annual purchasing power of 30,000 euro in Luxembourg is already threatened by poverty, a family with 5,000 euro a year in Lithuania or Latvia is just above the poverty line.
I have no idea how events in Iraq will eventually play out. I fervently hope that this tortured country can move to a more peaceful direction but the current violence and mayhem makes such a prospect seem pretty distant. One thing that has always struck me is how Saddam has never gotten sufficient blame for bringing the current mayhem on to his own country. So it is interesting to read this smart passage by Russell Roberts over at the Cafe Hayek blog:
I don’t understand how the failure to find weapons of mass destruction makes the war unjustified. It’s not like Bush made up the idea of WMD. Saddam Hussein is the guy you ought to be mad at. Saddam Hussein acted as if he had or was working on nuclear capability. He’s the guy who employed nuclear scientists. He’s the guy who convinced the UN that he wanted nukes. He’s the guy who resisted weapons inspections. He’s the guy who said you can look over here but not over there. Why did he do all these things? Either because he actually had nuclear capability or was close to it, or because he wanted to fool people into thinking he was more important than he was. He managed to fool Bill Clinton, the United Nations, George Bush and Israel into thinking he had a desire for WMD. It appears now to have been something of a ruse. Probably. Should Bush have ignored the behavior of Saddam on the grounds that the whole thing was probably a hoax to enhance his self-image? I don’t think so. That certainly turned out to be a mistake with Osama. His talk wasn’t cheap.
Exactly. 20/20 hindsight is all very well, but it is not much use in making credible foreign policy.
Tony Blair now does not even feel the need to hide the fact he intends to introduce summary ‘justice’ in Britain without the inconvenience of a trial or other for of due process.
He cited the example of a police constable who saw someone throw a brick through a window or abuse an old lady. “If you have got to take that person all the way through a long court process, you are not going to do it,” he said. Mr Blair said he had introduced fixed penalty notices to try to get round the problem. Offenders who disputed such a notice issued by the police could fight the case in court. “Summary justice is tough, it is hard, but in my judgment it is the only way to do it,” he said.
So in other words, rather than just arresting the person and then determining the facts in a trial, we are just supposed to trust that the police will always act in good faith and impose summary justice only against the truly guilty and with only the best judgement. Calling Judge Dredd, please report to Scotland Yard to collect your warrent card. Courts? Bah! Who needs ’em?
So I have been an alarmist all these years, eh?
My contempt for the Nobel Prize for anything grew dramatically today when I read that Harold Pinter won the award for literature. The fact he is an apologist for Europe’s most prolific mass murdering socialist since Joseph Stalin, namely Slobodan Milosovic, is apparently is not something which bothers the worthies in Sweden.
A contemptible prize for a contemptible man.
Arthur Seldon, one of the founders of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), a think thank that has played a crucial role in the fightback against collectivism, has died. Even though he was heading towards his 90th year – he was born in 1916 – his death is still a sad shock to me. I met him several times, both at IEA receptions at the organisation’s offices and at numerous conferences. He was a lovely man.
Every time I met him, Arthur always treated you with respect and kindness. He had the ability to make his arguments without implying that people who disagree have base motives, which is a sensible strategy. He regarded the prophets of Fabian socialism, who have wreaked so much havoc in this country, as well intentioned fools rather than knaves (with the possible exception of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, whom he loathed). Arthur was, to use an old fashioned word, a gentleman.
His contribution to the re-birth of liberal ideas (to use it in its proper sense) cannot be exaggerated. Many friends of mine, including such fellow bloggers as Brian Micklethwait, have been touched by Arthur’s influence.
I shall raise a glass to a great classical liberal writer tonight. May he rest in peace.
Regular readers may recall that I supported Bush for President as the “least bad” alternative. Certainly his domestic agenda was nothing for a libertarian to crow about, but on most issues his opposition was at least as bad.
Bush is certainly doing what he can these days to put the “bad” in least bad.
One of the areas where this libertarian could confidently point to Bush as better was on tax policy. He cut taxes, and his Democratic opposition was all about raising them. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is now floating tax “reform” that includes limitation of the mortgage deduction, a great way to raise revenue and disrupt the economy by assuring a hard landing from our current mortgage-fuleded credit bubble.
While the usual Democratic lament when faced with the Republican budget agenda has been some combination of “they aren’t spending enough” (the Dems wanted to spend more on the brobdingnagian presription drug benefit) and “they aren’t raising taxes to pay for this”, the Republican spending spree has gotten so far out of control that the normally rock-solid claim that the Dems would spend more is getting harder to make.
And finally, we come to his nomination of crony Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Now, the reasons for disappointment in this pick are multiple.
First, Bush blinked on the diversity/affirmative action front. You may recall that his first pick to replace Sandra Day O’Connor was a man, John Roberts, a nice thumb-in-the-eye for the diversity crowd. However, Roberts was shifted over to fill Rehnquist’s seat, and Bush explicitly told his crew to find a woman to replace O’Connor, pandering to the worst kind of identity politics.
And he apparently did so based on his confidence that she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the decision creating a right to abortion in the US. Now, as a matter of Constitution law, Roe is a terrible decision, and should be overturned pronto. However, there is every reason to believe that Bush has sold a seat on the Supreme Court, for a single vote on a single issue, to a woman who will be reliably statist and anti-Constitutional.
Harriet Miers is from Dallas, and the word here is that she is a pretty squishy liberal who found God (conveniently, just about the time that being an evangelical became a real entre into the Dallas power structure, but lets give her the benefit of the doubt on that). There is no reason whatsoever to believe that she won’t join the anti-individual rights wing of the Court, and some pretty good indications that she will. From what I hear from people who have reason to know, she is a very conventional thinker whose strengths have always been political, not intellectual, and who has never shown a shred of political courage in her life.
She is likely to be very much in the mold of Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter, in other words, with the occasional anti-gay and anti-abortion vote thrown in.
Another opportunity blown. Humbug.
Mick Hume has me worried, not for the first time. If I want to be gently scared, much rather a challenging column than a horror film (generally much less alarming than, and approximately as soporific as, the Shopping Channel).
He is describing Spiked!’s political position:-
We stand on the left as it was originally named, after those who stood on that side of the National Assembly during the French Revolution to champion reason, science, liberty and the secular values of the Enlightenment. We don’t want to return to the past, but to see those gains of humanity defended and developed in the changing context of the twenty-first century.
Well that certainly sounds attractive. Except for the word “left”. I have been defining myself as right-wing, by default, for 30 years. Any adherence to policies promoting human freedom (from atheisim to legalising cannabis to banning torture) out the conventional Left have always seemed to me adventitious, adopted only as markers of difference from reactionary traditionalists, not springing from principle. The basic principle, of subordinating individual lives to wiser-than-thou ruling class—and catering to the velleity of the mob—was always repulsive. Better identify, then, with the limited, pessimistic, ambition of the Right and find both a space to live and scope for pragmatic arguments for liberty.
The truth is, of course, the Left-Right division never made sense. It ought to be politics for the simple-minded, who can think only in one dimension. But everywhere serious, bright people are mentally enslaved by it.
My guess is Mr Hume has had a mirror of my experience: he has thought of himself as opposed to repulsive “right-wing” things throughout his life, and therefore is comfortable being Left, which I could never be. An acquaintance on The Salisbury Review once described me as having gone so far right to have come out the other side and being “practically a communist”—but I don’t feel it. Red flags (red ties even, Mr Bush) make me shudder.
The truth is, of course, that the rationalists on Spiked! and the rationalists on Samizdata are both too sentimental to abandon the political labels they have had imposed on them and have grown up with. A bit of explicit redefinition of those terms, which we indulge ourselves with, will not help us.
The point of politics, and therefore of political labels, is not to explain the world, but change it. Meanwhile the utterly unsentimental are doing just that, by appeal to popular sentiment, and by changing the language implicitly. They do not worry about coherence or clarity of definition, because social reality is defined in institutional power, and in the popular stories that make up “common sense”. It is not what we call ourselves that matters. It is what other people call us—and whether they can be persuaded to notice us at all.
Wanted: A new banner.
If there is a heaven, then I died and went to Las Cruces this weekend. Or perhaps I stumbled into a jackrabbit hole after one of the long sessions in the hotel bar and found myself inside a space art painting I saw some years back. Whatever the case… I was there.
It was obvious from a great distance the event was bigger than I had imagined possible.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.When I noticed the Canadian rebuild of a V-2 missile I decided some Canadians have two. Big ones. Really big ones. Made of solid stainless steel.
And yes, those round things really are view ports for the ‘pilot’.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.I got up close and personal with Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.John Carmack pats his Armadillo after it tipped over on landing from a tethered 20 foot controlled flight.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.Your fellow Samizdata readers at XCOR Aerospace brought their EZ-Rocket engine testbed out of retirement just for the event. Astronaut Searfoss jumped at the chance to display this lovely hot-arsed bird twice within the afternoon.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.Even the bicycles had rocket motors on them.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.The British engine gave a rather spectacular pyrotechnic sound and light show as it blew up at t=0. To be fair, the Starchaser group apparently had several succesful firings of this quite large engine over the weekend. I simply had the good or bad fortune to be there for the one that did not.
Photo: Copyright Dale Amon, all rights reserved.I also have video of such things as two low level passes by an F117; the full first flight of EZ-Rocket and much else, but I am afraid I would bring our server to its little knees if I were to try to upload so much to it.
The BBC top brass are demanding a rise in the licence fee, which is levied on all people who buy a television regardless of whether they watch BBC programmes or not. The fee increase is – so we are told – designed to fund the various digital television ventures the BBC believes it needs.
As I frequently have to explain to my American friends who are left aghast at the situation, the BBC licence fee must be paid, on penalty of a heavy fine, and possibly gaol. In reality, there are people who probably have gotten away with non-payment but the threat is real enough.
In the age of the Internet, satellite and cable, how long can this monster remain in existence? And for how long can it claim that without its privileged source of income, exacted with the ultimate sanction of imprisonment, our culture would be in ruins? Who seriously believes that argument today?
Instapundit today links to Ralph Kinney Bennett’s charming article about the history of shaving equipment. Anyone who still – even after being subjected to the cry of “dentistry!” – doubts that modern comforts are really as comfortable as all that, really should read this hymn of praise to just what capitalism and its attendant attention to detail can do for human happiness. I mean, imagine having to shave with an uneven, hand-made cutting edge. Bleedin’ hell, as we English would say.
The heart of Bennett’s article is a short account of the life and works of – and this really was his name – King Camp Gillette. Gillette was a salesman, and his achievement was essentially to ask a question. What if, he asked, you could separate the bit of a razor that gets quickly blunted, and needs to be either sharpened or replaced, from the rest of it? Thus the disposable razor blade.
Like so many creative endeavours, the Gillette empire had another guy heavily involved, an engineer who actually made everything. But here there was a problem.
A grateful Gillette wanted to incorporate both his and Nickerson’s names into the company that was established. Nickerson felt his name sounded too much like what the new product was designed to avoid.
We are now deep into the age of three-bladed, four-bladed, and even, now, the five-bladed razor. But the first blade was the one that really made the difference.
Gillette himself, at any rate according to this, was himself some kind of socialist:
Gillette was part of a broad socialist movement in the USA in the 1890s, who wanted to use the profits from his safety razor to finance his beliefs in a new socialist system.
Which only goes to show that people who are clever at one thing are not necessarily so clever at other things.
I often slag off the BBC, so let me praise them today. The BBC are banned from Zimbabwe. In the best traditions of journalism, back in August correspondent Justin Pearce went there anyway.
Following the mass evictions from and destruction of Harare’s squatter camps, hundreds of thousands have been sent to their “home” villages. Never mind that the evictees are city people who may not have seen the village since childhood, or at all. Naturally, they become paupers. The lot of those who do not have even that much of a home village is even worse. People whose parents or grandparents originally came from other African coutries have been left in limbo.
What in this sorry tale can count as a sign of hope, you ask? Only this: even soldiers and policemen go hungry says a more recent BBC report. When even those who take service under the tyrant cannot be sure of their next meal, one may hope the end is near.
Do not expect the good times to roll once Mugabe’s obsequies are done – or his noose is cut down. Chaos can be an ugly thing, and Zimbabwe’s political culture has been brutalised. But without Mugabe’s megalomaniac desire for tidiness, so typical of dictators, this campaign to sweep human beings aside as if they were rubbish will probably lapse.
Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in?
– Oliver Kamm
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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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