There’s more to the world than politics. Politics is a way to have paved streets and cops and firefighters show up when we call 911. It’s nothing more than that.
– Commenter ‘Sunfish’
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Samizdata quote of the dayFebruary 16th, 2007 |
 13 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Well in an ideal world yes absolutely, but in the real world no.
How would Israel (for example) defend itself without political deals and state mandated defence programs etc etc?
Because that is exactly what Sunfish is talking about… Defence is what the state is for (courts, police, army, CDC are all aspects of ‘defence’ in various ways).
What it is not (should not) be for is all the other crap it does because there really is more to life than politics (much as politicians hate that idea).
Ah, to the politically naive, we say bless you, unfortunately you are most unlikely to inherit what’s left of the earth.
Politics is something conducted for the benefit of parasitic politicians, not the fools and sheeple who vote for them. Productive people find ways to prosper in spite of politics, not because of it. We ‘inherit’ just fine, thanks, we don’t let Gordon Brown know when we do so.
Ah, but Perry you know that Israel depends on a high tech military.
Which means if the state wants that they must also facilitate education and science programmes, and as soon as they do that ‘equal opportunists’ will be spawned trying to get access to the ‘public’ money. etc.
… Israel depends on a high tech military.
You would be surprised at how much sheer human stubborn resolve and a desire for freedom from the moral decrepitude of Islam can make up for a lack of technology. I might hazard that Israelis would and could fight tooth and claw, even if armed with blunderbusses and crossbows, against a such a creed that seeks to cast them into slavery or a 21st century holocaust.
That implies that there is no demand for such things without the state, which is preposterous. The ascendency of the western world started long before compulsory state funded education ever reared its toxic head. The only way the state needs to ‘facilitate’ those things is by staying the hell out of the way.
Why don’t we change the date to 0059, because surely nothing happened before 1948?
The State has a subconscious desire, if not outright desire, to “facilitate” – how else can it become the gatekeeper to Other Peoples’ Money and be courted and fawned upon for access to the teat?
In the UK New Labour has got this to a fine art, emasculating the private sector through its own greed. Oh how the Sociofascists must laugh watching corporations roll over and wag their tails so as not to be out of favour and put to the back of the queue when the gravy is being dished out. Some organisations are so fat on a diet almost entirely of cream that they can do little else but lie on their belly and be stroked.
Julian is right. In ’48 the nascent Israeli state bought a load of surplus B-17’s from the US via a front company on the pretext of converting them to airliner use. Not only did Israel get their paws on the bombers but they managed to use them to bomb Cairo on the way to Lod Airport despite the planes having their gun-emplacements replaced with plaster of Paris.
One of the IAF’s first fighter planes was an ersatz Bf-109 with a Hispano-Suiza engine (the S-99 and S-199 series).
Where there is a will, there is always a way. Where there is also a sizeable number of highly capable mathematicians, scientists and engineers who really don’t want to be slaughtered like cattle as their parents were their is more than a way, there is a tool. Wikipedia maintains a list of Jewish Nobel prize winners. It also has a list of Islamic Nobel Laureates. Consider for a moment the number of jews in the world compared to the number of muslims. Then look it up via the Wiki. It’s a shocker I can tell ya.
It clearly proves that Islam is second to none in fostering creative thought and innovation. Just think how many innovations they have spearheaded in female fashion since 632AD!
More to the point. The left seemed to love Jews when they were victims but seems to have gone totally anti-semitic the minute we started getting 6’2″ Israeli paratroopers with crew-cuts and muscles. Even my brother seems to have caught this bug. He shared a house with a female Israeli machine-gun instructor and thought she was “spooky”. I thought she was a fit bird who knew about high-calibre weaponry and was doing a PhD in philosophy at Cambridge and was therefore absolutely my type. Got nowhere, mind. Bugger.
Perry,
Despite working in state-funded (higher) education, I agree. The state should butt out and we should sink-or-swim on private fees.
Nick,
Bad luck about the machine-gun instructor. The course of true love and all that…
Sunfish reflects what citizens want from politics – basic protection and basic services. I’m reading the last few pages of Will Durant’s opus on post-Revolution France and the Napoleonic wars; I think it’s safe to say that politicians have different expectations from politics.
I don’t assume there would be no demand for education without the state, but we are talking about special kinds of education and science such as nuclear, missile, advanced fighter plane, etc.
The state doesn’t always run such programmes directly but it is the state that mostly demands and funds them.
Hereward says:
Let’s look at the origin of the word “politics.” Either P.J. O’Rourke or Dave Barry explained it quite well. “Politics” comes from the Greek prefix “Poly,” meaning “many,” and “tics,” meaning small blood-sucking disease-carrying parasitic louse-like bugs. Hence, “politics” is the state of being infested by small bugs and getting spotted fever from them.
Now, if only we could get rid of them by using lice shampoo according to the label directions…
Dave:
As noted above, major universities-even private ones-offer engineering coursework. I imagine that most would continue to do so as long as students are willing to pay for the same.
At any rate, the total absence of the “state” isn’t really what I think we’re talking about here. Even on this blog I’ve seen few calls for total anarchy. I’m guessing that most would be happy if the state pissed off and stuck to those things that actually are its business.
Invading Iraq and sending a fire engine and ambulance to the injury accident I attended this morning are, MHO, perfectly righteous uses for government. (Although, sometimes I wonder if the fire service could be run privately, say under contract to various neighborhood associations…)
Asking kids whether there are guns in the home, or requiring people to get licenses in order to give haircuts, or worrying about who is smoking what in a bar to go with beer and televised sports, or writing court summonses to people who transport Christmas trees commercially without documentation of their origin, or ticketing people for putting their business address on their driver’s license instead of their home address, or hassling people for not shovelling snow from walkways which are completely on their own property: I’m not sure why any of that is a matter for the government, and I’m very much not happy about the fact that all but one are matters for police. (And that’s in my state, which is one of the freer ones in the US!)