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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A wonderful snippet from a BBC radio reporter (Ed Stourton) in Afghanistan for the Today programme: A new bus-stop has been built in Lashikar Gah as part of the ‘reconstruction’ effort.
The report does not say whether it is a replacement for a pre-war bus-stop. Somehow I doubt it. It is very well-equipped, having its own mosque and a pharmacy, as waiting times “can be rather long”.
An odd approach. In most of the world a bus-stop is a place where buses happen to stop. Of course bus-stops, like ports and railway stations all round the world provide opportunities for traders, places of worship, bars and cafes and so forth, but they seldom have them built in. Bus companies and their passengers are primarily interested in selling and buying travel. The pause at the roadside to move from foot to wheel, wheel to foot, refuel, refresh, is just procedural necessity.
Even in the first world, where there are some fabulous bus stations and garages, mostly this is an utilitarian afterthought, contingently well-designed. Everywhere (I thought) the buses are the transport network, not the stops. You have a shed for the buses at the end of the route, and signs to show where the buses are supposed to stop. Many places they do without the shed, not least because the buses are always on the move maximising their passenger-, luggage- and livestock- miles.
But a government bus-stop is built to different, higher, standards. A throwaway line at the end of the report reveals just how long those waiting times are: “There are no buses yet.”
Writing in Forbes, Alexander Tabarrok has written a cheerful essay on the long term outlook for world economic growth.
New ideas mean more growth, and even small changes in economic growth rates produce large economic and social benefits. At current income levels, with an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 3% per year, America’s real per capita gross domestic product would exceed $1 million per year in just over 100 years, more than 22 times higher than it is today. Growth like that could solve many problems.
It is good to see a whole-hearted, open and positive outlook for humanity. Much of the media’s reportage accentuates the negative, as bad news always sells. Even here at Samizdata.net, we spend much of our time chronicling the follies and evils of governments and handing out (well deserved) brickbats. But there is also plenty of reason to be cheerful too.
I would just add one caveat to Professor Tabarrok’s optimism. Long term economic growth requires a stable framework of liberty, peace and a consistently applied rule of law. The trend of events by governments in the last decade have not been positive on these metrics, and governments who think that they can erode the rights and liberties of their citizens without it having an economic impact in the long term are kidding themselves.
There is a new book about Tom Cruise, the American movie actor. Normally this information would not elicit even a groan from me. I simply have no interest in Cruise, movies, Hollywood and the pampered, pathetic world of the modern celebrity. But this new book, on the other hand, seems to be much more interesting then its subject matter.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian bookstores have been denied access to sell the book, not because of any government ban, but because the US distributor has decided that it will not sell the book outside the US or Canada. The distributor, Ingram International, will fulfill existing orders, but will not accept any more orders.
This is a very curious story. What is not said but is left implied is that the most controversial aspect of the Tom Cruise story is his adherence to the Church of Scientology. It seems that the Church came to some sort of legal arrangement with the distributor.
US-based Ingram International, described on its website as “the world’s largest wholesale distributor of book product”, sent an email to its Australian customers this morning citing unspecified legal reasons for not being able to distribute the book outside the US and Canada.
“Although I recently e-mailed stating Ingram’s ability to offer the book to international customers, the position has now changed that we will not sell it outside of the US and Canada,” Asia, Australia and New Zealand sales representative Jonathan Tuseth wrote in the email.
If so, it seems to be hardly worthwhile- anyone who wants to read the book, anywhere in the world, can do so by ordering through Amazon.com.
However it is another sad retreat from the old position of ‘publish and be damned’. The publishers of Salmond Rushdie’s book showed some courage in the face of Muslim rage in 1989, but now publishers seem to be willing to retreat at the first hint of a lawsuit.
This is just the sort of case that an aspiring young political figure with a passion for freedom should take up as a rallying cry for liberty, freedom and rationality. Do not hold your breath.
Fidel Castro is on the mend and is ready to resume a political role, according to Brazillian President Luis Inacio Lula de Silva.
Although his future has been a matter of speculation, Dr Castro on December 17 gave his strongest hint he would not return to power, in a letter read on television. “My basic duty is not to cling to office, nor even more so to obstruct the rise of people much younger, but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived,” he said in a signed letter.
Very modest value indeed.
Former governor Mitt Romney won the Michigan Primary, and it seems he did it the old fashioned political way, not by showing any leadership or vision, but rather by showering other people’s money at the voters. This earned him the scorn of David Brooks in, of all places, the New York Times. The money quote was pure snark.
His campaign was a reminder of how far corporate Republicans are from free market Republicans. He proposed $20 billion in new federal spending on research. He insisted that Washington had to get fully engaged in restoring the United States automotive industry. “Detroit can only thrive if Washington is an engaged partner,” he said, “not a disinterested observer.” He vowed, “If I’m president of this country, I will roll up my sleeves in the first 100 days I’m in office, and I will personally bring together industry, labor, Congressional and state leaders and together we will develop a plan to rebuild America’s automotive leadership.”
This is how the British Tory party used to speak in the 1970s.
Who should be more ashamed of themselves- Mitt Romney for pandering or Michigan primary voters for swallowing this claptrap?
A headline in the Australian newspaper struck my eye just now: ‘Teachers warm to merit pay‘. A deeper reading of the story reveals a few caveats, but the fact that Australian education unions are willing to concede anything at all to the principle still struck me as the most surprising thing to me. I thought we’d see peace in the Middle East, cold fusion and spending cuts long before seeing education unions in Australia concede the principle of merit pay.
Statistics of the sort unearthed by Matthew Elliott here are of the kind that any ambitious Tory MP, anxious to hammer the government, should memorise by heart.
One of the briefing notes that I get from a stockbroking company has this to say:
I see from the headlines that this Government seems to be reverting to type over the treatment of fee paying schools. When times get tough, “lets put a bit of trendy legislation through attacking those nasty ‘rich’ people” in a desperate attempt to divert attention away from the state of the economy. The definition of ‘charity’ used to be ‘for the public good’; it would be difficult to find a better description of that than educating a seriously large section of the ‘public’ (even if you are Middle Class you are still part of the Public), to a much higher level then the average at absolutely no cost to the Exchequer, and with money that has already been taxed at 40%.
The definition of ‘charity’ (where Public Schools are concerned), now appears to exclusively mean ‘benefiting those in poverty’ which, were it applied universally, would put virtually every charity in existence in a bit of a quandary. The problem with this type of legislation, is that it is almost impossible to defend against because it will always be the majority ganging up on the few (remember fox hunting?), especially when the few are perceived as the privileged minority. The UK establishment seems to be doing its normal reaction to success, which is not to lambaste the failures but to drag down the achievers.
The circular refers to this story. Now, ideological purists for classical liberalism might well argue that charitable tax breaks are a problem, since they immediately beg the question of who gets to decide who is entitled to the tax break and why. Far better, of course, to get rid of the taxes in the first place and let people spend as they wish; part of the case for low, flat taxes of course is that it will remove the need for a vast stage-army of accountants, lawyers, “tax planners” and the like who earn a high living on what is essentially paper-shuffling rather than genuine wealth creation. But, but… we live in the world we have, not Galt’s Gulch. Hence the current attack on tax breaks and government interference in private schools should be seen for what it is; an attempt to further undermine any semblance of independent education in the UK.
Of course, Samizdata regulars will know that for real radicalism about education, we need to embrace the notion of removing compulsory schooling across the board, but I’ll discuss that again in the future, no doubt.
If only I was a American voter – what wonderful things I would be get for voting for the correct person.
Former Governor Romney has been busy for weeks telling everyone that he will restore “every job” lost in the Michigan Auto industry if they vote him – and not by anything difficult like taking away the government granted power of the United Auto Workers union. No, all that is needed is more taxpayers money for scientific research and ‘Mitt’ Romney’s own management skills if he becomes President. After all there is no basic difference between a business enterprise and the government, so if one can run a business one can “run the country”, right?
Senator Hillary Clinton has added another 150 billion Dollars of government spending on top of the all the other hundreds of billions of Dollars the Senator has already promised – again if only people will vote for her.
And it is only January. What will the candidates be promising by November – eternal life?
Kill six millions Jews in Germany, your name becomes a synonym with evil. Kill between 44 and 72 million Chinese, you get a café named after you. It’s a funny old world, eh?
– commenter Jill Murphy
There is a truly bizarre story on Reuters saying that the French car manufacturer Citroën has apologised for running an advertisement featuring a scowling Chairman Mao.
“As a Chinese, I felt greatly insulted when seeing this ad,” a posting on web portal Tianya (www.tianya.com) said. “It is not only insulting Chairman Mao, but the whole Chinese nation.” […] “Chairman Mao is the symbol of China, and what Citroen did lacks basic respect to China,” another posting said.
Astounding. The man who was probably the most prolific mass murderer in history, who murdered between 44.5 & 72 million mostly Chinese people and brought tyranny to almost one fifth of the world’s population, is regarded by some people in 2008 as “the symbol of China”? That is truly surreal.
Well, I suppose he is in the same sense that Jack the Ripper is the ‘symbol’ of Whitechapel. Yet somehow I cannot see the residents of Whitechapel taking umbrage at an advertisement by Citroen featuring Jack the Ripper being portrayed with a less than congenial expression.
Just how many people does a tyrant have to order killed before he becomes absolute anathema in China? How many lives does he have to ruin to stop being ‘the symbol of China’? What kind of moral derangement is required to take insult in this manner? Well people in China should indeed be insulted, but by the fact Citroën used the image of that vile psychopath to portray anything other than horror, death and misery. How dare someone trivialise suffering on such a colossal scale? How would people react if they had used Hitler instead? People would certainly protest but somehow I do not think all too many Germans would be saying “The Fuhrer is the symbol of Germany”.
A Chinese person I know described the Mao era as ‘The Long Nightmare’. It seems some people in China do not want to wake up.
In Germany recently, there was a pleasing moment of defiance in the face of the determination of the banning classes to ban smoking. Boss fires staff for not smoking is what the headline says, and this is – surprise surprise – inaccurate, assuming that the report under the headline is accurate. The boss fired the non-smokers because they were making a damn nuisance of themselves by demanding that the smokers stop smoking, and he has now announced that he will not hire any more non-smokers, in case they behave similarly. Nobody got fired merely for not smoking. Not that there would be anything wrong with that.
But this is only a very small and temporary victory for the right of employers to hire and fire at will, restrained only by whatever contracts may have been made that require otherwise.
Germany introduced non-smoking rules in pubs and restaurants on January 1, but Germans working in small offices are still allowed to smoke.
It is the little word “still” that tells the true story here. And big offices have already been sorted out. This tiresome little anomaly will soon be corrected, and Germany will proceed methodically towards making smoking illegal everywhere. Adolf Hitler (not even he was able to give legal force to his detestation of smoking) is smirking in his grave, doing no turning whatsoever.
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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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