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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Defending the “fat cats” Anatole Kaletsky, one of the newspaper columnists I read regularly, despite his incurable Keynesianism, has smart things to say in defence of private equity firms that have been taking over major businesses lately, provoking the ire of unions and leftist policians. Good for Anatole for refusing to jump on a silly bandwagon. Here are my thoughts on the issue a while back.
(Full disclosure: I do work for a non-listed company, thank god).
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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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I, for one, was outraged to hear that some private equity companies get away with paying only ten percent tax. I want to pay only ten percent too!
Incurable Keynesiaism sounds nasty…
To be honest, I really don’t think it matters who owns what. Why should it? It matters not a jot to me what the financial details of ownership of a company I do business with are. It may be private equity or a partnership or a PLC or a cooperative or Gawd knows what. I just care that they provide me with the goods and services I need at a good price.
I really wouldn’t even care that as the result of someone’s will the majority share-holder was a cat called Mr Frisky and the honorary CFO was a budgie called Tweets.
I did a contract for that company once, and what made it even better was that Tweets was a proper old fashioned Finance Director, none of this American CFO nonesense. Best boss I ever had!
These days I find a great frustration in that my skills and experience mean I get more offers of work from public companies than private. I have found that I get more satisfaction from working with smaller organisations rather than having to slavishly the over regulation of listed entities, but more money from large ones, and the kids do need feeding.
Mark E,
Feeding to what?
Feeding to fatten them up for Christmas of course.
Not sure how to prepare them this year though; I recently finished reading Brian Sewell’s “South from Ephesus” and one of his digressions involves a discussion of baby boiling. As the great Brian points out, baby is likely to be quite bland so barbequeing might be more appropriate. Normally I just fry them, very simple, as if they were veal.
“…baby is likely to be quite bland. You have never tasted a baby, have you!