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 quote of the day It’s the danger of tidy-minded people…
– Andrew Marr, in an extempore line, almost thrown away, to close an item on the surveillance state on the BBC’s radio talk-show Start the Week.
I think Marr pins it down precisely. Oppressive regimes are frequently driven by a desire for order, seen as conformity to explicit rules. The most insidious, most universally oppressive castes, don’t seek order because they want to be obeyed. They seek order for its own sake. They want the security of rules for everything, and recording everything.
|
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.
|
Listened to the show on way into work. What a line, throwaway as you say but it did make me me smile.
I’ll keep the mess thanks, not so fond of the “tidy minded”.
Join me Luke, and together we will bring order to the galaxy…
Reminds me of the old story of the strict convent school which was supposed to have as part of its school rules:
Rule 1. Everything which is not prohibited is compulsory.
This explains a lot. I often complain that such-and-such shouldn’t be regulated. “But then there would be chaos!” comes the answer. “Yes, and so what?” I reply, and am met with incredulity.
Order has value. There are lots of people walking around only because rewarding them is against the law.
Forgive my ignorance but…huh?
I think Mr Wallis may be advocating the Guatemalan approach to order, with none of that pesky law stuff. Just give officials the power to murder anyone they deem disorderly. If they torture them first… well you have to provide staff benefits, don’t you?
It’s the reductio ad terrorem of the Blairite approach to crime:
– Blair, 23 June 2006.
A traditional – not ‘modern’ – style of muderous authoritarianism, not mutually exclusive with the bureaucratic fundamentalism that I was discussing (because the fiendish normaliser just makes a legalistic rule exempting official murderers from the rules that apply to others) but a different social pattern and motivation.
Funny this should be QOTD just now – I came across a precursor of this very sentiment in Hayek’s Individualism and the Social Order just the night before:
This wording indicates that the sentiment likely even predates WW2, as this was said in a lecture he delivered in December 1945. Although I question his assertion of it being ‘rational,’ I don’t doubt that it was part of what motivated him to write The Fatal Conceit (I’m going by what I have read about it, not it itself for I only got my own copy recently and it is next on my list after the present book).
JJM
Try Max Weber, in 1922, on: Die bürokratisch-monokratische aktenmäßige Verwaltung
Google yields an applicable bit of Trotsky from 1939:
The development of the country, and in particular the growth of its new needs, is incompatible with the totalitarian scum; this is why we see tendencies to resist the bureaucracy in all walks of life …. In the areas of technology, economics, education, culture, defence, people with experience, with a knowledge of science and with authority automatically reject the agents of
StalinistBlairite dictatorship, who are for the most part uncultivated and cynical uncouth likeMekhlisKelly andYezhovCasey.I was not going to comment Guy – for I turned off the programme you cite before the comment was made (I turned it off when Mr Frost came on and they all began to say how similar head hacker T.V. is to the B.B.C. and C.N.N. – it is similar, but that shows how bad they are not how good it is) and I AGREE WITH YOU that the comment of Mr Marr was a good one.
However, I can not let the Guatemala stuff pass. The President of Guatemala (democratically elected only a couple of years ago in an election which even the left admitted was free and fair) has greatly cut back the military. He has also tried to get a grip on inflation (I do not need to tell you in how many ways inflation undermines society).
The ethnic divisions in Guatemala are still serious. but I have met Guatemalan people who are as “Indian looking” as anyone could think of who certainly do not fit the sterotype of Mayan Indian (the streotype that suggests they must believe that land can not be privately owned and that all other possessions must be shared out according to the doctrine of social justice).
Of course some indians did fit the sterotype and when they tried to enforce their opinions with violence they had to be met with violence, hence the old saying from the war “when they kill us it is social justice, when we kill them it is a human rights abuse”. It should also be pointed out that the leaders of the enemy (the ones who decided what “Indian culture” was) were often white (indeed rather paler than a lot of the “evil Indian killers”).
Also whilst it is true that the police force (which is rather small in Guatemala) does use violence sometimes, there are also times when it does too little rather than too much – for example if you checked with the Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index (something I have had big disputes with in the past – so I am harldly a cheer leader for them) you will find there are cases where the police do not act at all when squaters take over private property (when there are complaints the police say that to do anything would lead to violence)
Of course, in an ideal world, the police and other security forces would neither go in shooting or sit around saying “there is nothing we can do” – it would be a matter of getting a court order and enforcing it as nonviolently as possible (the trouble is that everyone might die of old age by the time the local courts decided anything – and judges are unrelable to say the least). But things are not so simple as you imply.
After all if the government forces did nothing all the time (as opposed to just some of the time) this would not mean that things were peaceful – it would just mean a fight between the people trying to take private property and private security forces.
The danger of watching, listening and reading establishment news services (the B.B.C., the Guardian, the Independent and so on) too much is that one may start to see the world through their eyes – and that is a false picture of the world.
After all, in the current issue of the Economist high crime (specifically rape) in Guatemala is somehow linked to low tax levels.
The top rate of income tax is 31%. It is true that the poor pay nothing at all (which is why total tax revenue is low), but I do not see how even in the minds of the people who write for the Economist how increasing taxes on the poor (or imposing more regulations or destroying what private property still exists) is supposed to reduce the rate of rape and other violent crime. As for increasing tax rates on the wealthy – again I do not need to tell you that this would REDUCE revenue (not increase it as the Economist seems to think).
One of the best (perhaps the best) university in Latin America is in Guatemala – I suspect it would be better for us to follow their judgements about their own country.
Still, on the other hand, perhaps Western hostility to Guatemala is not all bad. I remember years ago talking to an ex Guatemalan soldier who said that the best thing that ever happened to the army (not that he had much time for certain wild spending military rulers) was when the Americans cut off aid.
“No more helecopters, so we had to get on our feet and hunt the enemy in the jungle – which was the right thing to do” and “no M16s, so we used G3s – and when you shoot someone with a G3 he does not get up again”.
Paul,
It is an extraordinary viewpoint that marks The
Economist down as a purveyor of leftist propaganda. Economic and civil liberties are not tradeable one for the other. A contingently low tax rate (31% low??) now does not excuse 50 years of death-squads.
Whose judgments about their own country one listens to depends how trustworthy they might be – which itself is a matter of judgment based on the degree of integrity they exhibit. Would you take Mr Blair’s pronouncements about British government policy at face value, because, after all, he is in a position to know? Do you think Mandela less reliable than Vorster because the former associated with communists?
I think I’m prepared to listen to the Guatemalan ombudsman’s office, and its Presidential Commission on Human Rights.
I don’t think I’d regard any army as a useful source of opinion on the legimacy of its own actions.
Guy there is often “leftist” stuff (if by this we mean statist stuff) in the Economist (for example the big article on Mexico in the same issue was a tissue of absurdities), but I must admit that I was a bit shocked that the Economist could claim that rape and other violent crime is caused by low tax revenue.
Is that what you think?
The article even used language such as “reactionary oligarchs” – which (I admit) is not langauge I would associate with the Economist (they are normally welfare state new liberals – not Marxists).
I advise you to read my comment again and then (once you have read it) you may have something to say.
For example I did not say that economic and political liberties are tradeable for one another (indeed no clear distinction between “economic and political liberties” is even possible – for example freedom to trade must include freedom to sell newspapers critical of the government in power or run radio stations that are critical) – I suspect that you just did not bother to read what I actually did say (which is odd considering it was you who decided to raise the matter of Guatemala).
Compare Mr Blair to Stalin if you must – I (and others) will understand that you are making a point and do not intend to be taken literally.
However, when you mention somewhere that many of your readers may not know much about you should be more careful – as people may take what you say about “a far away country of which we know nothing” as gospel.
I understand that I may sound like a silly old women by writing this – but it is still the truth.
I have just used the link you kindly provided. I apologise for not doing so before (I tend to overlook links).
It seems to be dealing with matters during the war. This is not what the Economist article was about.
As for the war. I would never deny that many bad things were done.
Nor did the army just treat the enemy badly. For example the punishment for going to sleep on active service without permission was summary execution.
On the matter of sources of information. Apart from various research sources (one of which I cited) I have known a few people who have lived in Guatemala, not all were soldiers (inspite of conscription), for example some were people from other parts of the world who went to work as academics.
But soldiers or not, none of them had a kind word for a certain wild spending military popularist (who dominated the country for years), I think you will find that he was also the worst Indian killer.