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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Is there an afterlife or is death the end?
This is a bit scary:
Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. “Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years,” says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study’s lead researcher.
The study found 54% of Americans regard atheists as dangerous or threatening.
It is not just because I am an atheist that I find this disturbing. I would like to suggest that it is an example of a more general tendency among the populations of even advanced states to react more strongly to the imaginary dangers of things they don’t understand than to real threats. It is an inexhaustible fuel for authoritarian populism.
A week or so ago, Ross Clark, the eminently sane columnist who writes for the Spectator, defended globalisation and attacked what he sees as a growing hatred of rich people. We see it in the endless bleating about the supposed Evil of private equity and hedge funds, or of financial speculators generally. Much of the reason, I think, for this hatred, is not that the rich are so much better off in relative terms than the poor – the poor probably don’t have the time or the inclination to spend time hating the rich – but that the rich are a lot better off than the broad middle class. In my experience, many anti-globalistas are middle class intellectuals, not poor folk living in state subsidised housing. As it becomes more difficult for middle class folk, for example, to educate their offspring privately without going into massive debt, and to buy a house for the same reason, naturally the Man on the Clapam Omnibus – or his US version – gets a bit cheesed off if he sees City financiers buying swanky homes or sending children to nice schools with ease.
But this hatred of wealth is dangerous and it draws on economic illiteracy. To demonstrate a good case of such dunderheadedness, in the print version of the Spectator (16 June, page 26), is this letter from a Mr Edward Collier, of Cheltenham, a traditionally genteel spa town in the west of England famed for its posh girls’ school and a rather fine horse racing festival in March:
“Sir, In his article “Hatred of the rich is back in fashion” (9 June) Ross Clark wondered “What about the people who sew £10,000 handbags together – surely the more that the wealthy spend on their handbags, the more they earn?” Does he really believe that the sewers of hyper-handbags earn more than those who sew the mundane totes of everywoman? They’re sewn by the same people, for God’s sake, and for the same pathetic pittance.”
I could quote more from this character, but you get the idea of where he is coming from. So let’s spell it out for this Sage of Cheltenham: if more people spend money on luxury goods, which typically often require more intensive labour to produce, such as fine leather handbags or Breitling wristwatches, this increases the profits of the people who make these things, and in turn, increases the demand for the skilled labour required to make them, and hence, raises the real wages of the persons who make them, and so on. If a luxury leather handbag really does require no more skill to produce than a bag one could buy for a fiver, then presumably this letter writer might have a quarter of a decent point, but he does not. He merely asserts that the “same people” produce high-value goods as cheap ones, and uses this to dismiss the argument that when rich people spend their milions, it recycles wealth back into the economy.
In fact, even John Maynard Keynes’ argument of stimulating demand to encourage production presumably was based on the notion that if people spend money in the shops, it creates jobs, and therefore is a good thing. What this character seems to be saying is that no matter how much money rich folk spend on luxury goods, it makes no difference whatever to the people who make them. Apparently, the money never reaches the poor downtrodden producers, but ends up in a few capitalists’ pockets. But presumably, if more money is spent on goods than before, then, other things being equal, the prices of those goods will rise or output will have to be increased. To argue that none of this process filters through into the living standards of people is quite extraordinary.
Meanwhile, this story, if it is true, is not going to help the blood pressure of Mr Collier, I fear.
I am looking forward to this book by Ross Clark.
You really couldn’t invent this if you tried. Or at least I couldn’t. It is real ad, from the Guardian Online:
Smokefree Coordinator
Organisation: ENFORCEMENT JOBS
Salary: £26- £28 p/h
Date posted: 31 May 2007
Closing date: 30 Jun 2007
A formidable position has a risen for a Smokefree Coordinator.
The role will involve the implementation of the smoke free action plan. This will involve report writing and presentation, training, giving advice and information to stakeholders of council primary care trust (PCT), and the business community. Preference will be given to candidates who have previous projects experience.
The ideal candidate will have excellent communicative and interpersonal skills and be confident in delivering a project plan.
We require candidates who have been a Environmental Health Officer or other Health Practioner. Otherwise a professional with a history of working within a council. A good understanding of the enforcement issues around Environmental and Consumer Protection Law. Must have knowledge of current developments around smoke free legislation.
The contract is for a 6 month period, due to the level of experience required for this is paying between £26-£28 p/h.
Enforcement Jobs is a member of the Red Snapper Recruitment Group and acts as both an Employment Agency and Employer .The Red Snapper Recruitment Group is an equal opportunities employer
The government scheme to ban smoking in public places in Britain is currently reported as about £100 million over budget, at somewhere in the region of £1.6 billion. But I am not sure that counts local government expenditure, which this is.
The book is now officially open…
Muslim radicals burned an effigy of Queen Elizabeth Tuesday as Pakistan summoned the British ambassador over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood and Iranian hardliners turned their fury on the monarch.
…so time to place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
Will the British government buckle? Yes or No?
The Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has issued a strong rebuke to the Pakistani Religious Affairs Minister for saying that the UK’s decison to award a knighhood to author Salman Rushdie was a justification for suicide bombing.
Mr. Haniyeh was quoted as saying:
“Ejaz-ul-Haq is a dog. The whole world knows that the reason for suicide bombing is the suffering of the Palestinian people. Now he is saying it is Salman Rushdie. Does he want the world to simply forget our plight? Is he in the pay of the Zionists now?”
The row has prompted EU officials to express concern that there was a “risk of public confusion” as to the genuine justifications for suicide bombers and other terrorist acts. EU Ministers are expected to convene an emergency session to determine the real root cause of terrorist acts which member states will be required to officially endorse.
At last, a blow is being struck for truth, justice and equality:
Gingerism in the workplace could form the basis of formal grievances or constructive dismissal cases, an employment lawyer has warned. The news comes in the wake of one Newcastle family having to move house because of abuse about its members’ red hair.
The Chapman family has moved home three times in three years in the Newcastle area because of abuse directed at its six red-haired members. Kevin Chapman told reporters that his 11-year-old son even attempted suicide after becoming depressed following years of abuse.
The story has led to speculation about whether insults over red hair could have the same legal status as insults regarding a person’s race or gender.
This country is plagued with ugly and unchecked gingerism which is completely unacceptable in a multi-folicle society. According to scientifically-proven statistics more than 100% of ginger-haired people die before the age of 6 due to ruthless oppression and rampant pilophobia. This has serious repercussions for their future employment and housing prospects. This is the worst problem facing the world today and it is high time that the politicians did something to combat it. Hirsuitism must stop. Full stop.
It’s a bit like walking into a Sunday meeting of the Flat Earth Society. As they discuss great issues of the day, they discuss them from the point of view that the earth is flat. If someone says, ‘No, no, no, the earth is round!’, they think this person is an extremist. That’s what it’s like for someone with my right-of-centre views working inside the BBC.
– Jeff Randall, formerly the BBC’s business editor. The BBC does quote this against itself, but my experience of the bien pensant left in the media suggests that it will not be much apprehended inside the corporation.
I missed this sharp and wise article by US columnist Jonah Goldberg a few days ago – but I had the excellent excuse of being on holiday – but his piece, which nicely sums up what is happening in Britain from a US perspective, demonstrates how some Americans are waking up to what a nannied country Britain now is. Of course, north American readers of this blog have been aware of this progressive infantilisation of the UK adult public for some time.
The question that keeps coming up, and which makes an appearance in Jonah’s article, is exactly when will the conveyor belt of nanny-state interference in our liberties stop? When, exactly, does the excrement hit the fan? Just how bullied do we have to be before something snaps?
I am still none the wiser as to whether we really know the answer to those questions.
“Make sure you are well-scrubbed, your nails are clean and your hair is washed. Remember that girls are as nervous around you as you are around them, if you can imagine such a thing. They think and act rather differently to you, but without them, life would be one long rugby locker room. Treat them with respect.”
From The Dangerous Book for Boys, page 127. Sound advice on every page. The book is a non-PC work of genius that has tapped into a sense among many folk that life has become too obsessed with safety and avoidance of risk.
Three weeks ago it was a long weekend in the UK, and on Monday afternoon I therefore somehow found myself wandering fairly aimlessly around the centre of Szczecin in Poland. After contemplating for a little while that one of the major differences between communism in Poland and East Germany was that in Poland churches were rebuilt lovingly, whereas in East Germany they were dynamited for ideological reasons, and just thinking about how many ghosts there are in sites of ferocious battles between the Wehrmacht and the Red army, I found myself staring at these advertisements on a wall.
Not speaking Polish myself, I was entirely baffled by what this was saying or why, other than whatever it was having a certain amount of latent Anglophilia in it. Therefore I just took the photo and walked on.
Last night, while having a few beers in a pleasant London bar with a fellow Samizdatista, I took the opportunity of asking a Polish waitress what it meant. She looked at it for a moment, paused, and said “That is very weird…… They sell vintage clothing….weird”, poured my beer into my glass, and walked off.
In truth that only enhanced the mystery. Further questions arise. What exactly does it say on the front of the bus? Do the proprieters of this business use mod fashion to express the essense of London’s street fraternity culture? I need to know Perhaps the readership can help?.
This guy does not like the Joseph Heller book, Catch 22, one little bit, and gives a decent takedown of the book:
This is by intention a humorous book, a work of social satire. But it consists of basically the same joke over and over again: military people are evil and stupid. They are also stupid and evil. (Did I mention that they are evil? Also stupid?) I found this pretty clever and amusing for about the first twenty pages. But by that time I still had about 450 pages more to go, and the rest of it wasn’t any fun at all.
Absolutely. The problem with such books is that they were written to appeal to folk who no doubt thought that military people were and are inherently ridiculous. In that sense, Heller succeeded: I can think of dozens of lefty acquaintances of mine who have Catch 22 on their bookshelves but they would not be seen dead reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, or for that matter, the Sharpe novels of Richard Cornwell.
But as Lester Hunt, the reviewer, goes on to argue, if Heller really wanted to show some guts as a novelist, he should have attacked the whole idea of WW2 rather than target the lunacies of military bureaucracy (admittedly a fair target). But then, he would have to argue that it would have been better to let a certain A. Hitler and Co. tyrannise Europe and Asia, with all that would flow from that. Tricky, no?
Perhaps more generously, Heller and other writers of a similar ilk – Kurt Vonnegut springs to mind – might have had enough of reading about the feats of “The Greatest Generation” and rebelled. Perhaps some of this was necessary and right; Heller’s book and others of its type hit a receptive audience. Published in 1961, Catch 22 was bound to gain a more avid following from readers increasingly disenchanted with the Vietnam campaign. Heller caught the mood of the times well.
But it is an over-rated book in my opinion, and it is occasionally reassuring to realise that one is not alone in holding that sort of view.
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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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