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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The global suicide pact takes form So how long before not even the mainstream media can pretend this lunacy is not going to spread economic catastrophe far and wide? My guess is they will move from cheerleaders to tut tutting sages of rectitude seamlessly in a few years without the slightest sense of irony. This will probably happen about the same time the mainstream media more or less stops existing in any meaningful sense.
The collective democratically sanctified derangement on display sure does help harden the heart when people start complaining about the economic hardship they find themselves in. A friend of mine said “Ordinary people do not deserve what is happening to them”.
“Sure, except for all the people who voted for any one of the main parties,” was my reply.
They are getting exactly what they voted for, good and hard, and there is a trillion more of it coming down the pipeline that will wash away all our savings.
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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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This morning, listening to Radio 4 very early, I heard some twat praise the president of the European Central Bank for “seeing the light” and engaging in “quantitative easing”.
This is the problem we face: so many journalists, pundits and economists know tiddley-squat about the very basic facts of finance. If you print your own money, you are a criminal. If a central bank does it, it is an act of statesmanship, vision, etc.
Sigh.
Hopefully there is some libertarian-friendly group in the UK ready to step in & supply protection to people as things go to hell.
I’m of the opinion that we’ve got a massive planetary human die-off coming. We’re proving that we, as a species, are too stupid to live. The vast numbers of people who don’t seem to be able to think for themselves mean that when real challenges arise, those people will dither and hesitate while their time for saving themselves vanishes. As a result, they’ll be part of the casualty totals.
It’s the disaster brought about by democratic practice that leads so many to regard it with contempt. Neither Obama nor Brown could be trusted to operate a small-town dog pound competently–and they’re in charge of the two most influential countries in the Anglosphere. Yes, there’s a large-scale die-off coming–and we, as a species, deserve it.
@robotsphere: Why should any libertarian have to rely on someone else for their protection?
“I will not live for the sake of another man, nor expect another to live for mine.”
If things go to hell then I am fully prepared to defend me and mine from any threat which may arise, to the death if need be. Expecting someone else to step up and do it for us is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Your statement should be that hopefully there are enough libertarian minded individuals around to stand up for themselves so that those who would pose a threat get the message that we will not be slaves. It may be true that there is safety in numbers but if those numbers include those whose interests you do not share, and who live by a different set of values to yourself then your are more often than not better off without them.
The ordinary person is really caught in a trap. Modern government is so gargantuan and spends huge sums of money in so many different areas for so many different reasons that the ordinary person has not the slightest hope of making an informed judgement about any but a fraction of it.
One could say they have a responsibility to study furiously on economic and social policies and their historical value and in a sense they do. But when they are raised to be disinterested and allowed by government and society to get along by being disinterested it’s a lot to ask for someone to break the chains that they didn’t even realise were there.
Ordinary people might be getting what they deserve as the price for their disinterest in their own freedom but I don’t think they would choose this path if they were made aware of where it leads to.
Hi there,
Enjoyed some of the comments. Particularly the one which said ordinary people are getting what they deserve, because they voted for it.
Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
In my opinion, most do not understand what the problem is, much less any idea of a “fix” Most do not understand the simple meaning of Freedom, which is self-responsibility and self-control.
And even when they do recognize that, they dont really want to be responsible, but prefer some governmental agency taking care of them from the cradle to the grave.
Enjoyed your Blog
Anne Cleveland
Gainesville, Georgia
octogenariansblog.com
My only hope is that enough people will realize we are talking about a relative handful of people here. Even here in the US we’re talking only about 537 elected and 9 appointed people who are ordained with power. Every other bureaucrat owes their clout to these 546 people, but even if we include the top 200 Bureaucrats as well, we’re still talking about less than a thousand people relative to the 300,000,000+ people in the US. And then multiply that out over the G20.
It all comes down to are the masses going to continue to listen and carryout our directives. Are we still going to continue to pay our taxes in the New Order? We could asphyxiate the Feds within a few months if the masses wanted to ( the productive people within the masses anyway). It also comes down to are the rank and file within the armed forces going to take orders from those who are destroying us? When the economic reality sets in I can certainly see cracks within armed forced occurring, brigade by brigade perhaps.
But it certainly stands that a slim minority of people hold the reins of power that exist due to inertia. When enough people wake up to the shafting that is taking place, then the institutions will fall. Unfortunately it will be bloody. The time ran out on dismantling the bombs before they went off. Now we’re just playing a waiting game to see how much damage their is going to be (if we’re still around to see it).
Everyday that goes by I get more and more set on placing nice big orders here, here, and here
Since there’s been so much reference to “Atlas Shrugged” around as of late, I’m going to speculate that what is happening is right out of the scene about the “save the steelmakers” program the pols try to put over on Reardon.
To thumbnail, the big new idea is that the money earned by steel producing firms would be pooled, and paid out to the companies based on how many furnaces they operate.
Reardon does the math, shows that the real net effect of the program would be that he would operate at a loss while subsidizing his main competitor, Boyle’s politically connected Associated Steel, and asks, “How long do you think I could survive that way?”
The response is an offhand, yet utterly explosive remark—“Oh, you’ll think of something.”
Finally, Reardon realizes that that has always been the belief that all these shyster pols and incompetent bozos have based all their nonsense on—he, and others like him, would always do whatever they could do to rescue the situation, no matter how egregiously stupid and malevolent the obstacles placed in their path.
I would submit that this is precisely the “basic truth”, unspoken and unacknowledged, that the entire current farcical rescue and stimulus plan is based on—that the evil capitalists will somehow make it all work, no matter what foolishness is piled on their backs.
We are approaching a moment of great peril, and, as is so often the case, one of great opportunity. The current collectivist ideology has swept the world much like the absolutism of the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic church.
The statists believe they can dictate in all areas of life, control everything, legislate everything, regulate everything, and nothing can stand in their way.
Regardless of whether their forecasts prove accurate, or their predictions are totally unrealistic, they will simply do as they have always done—blame any failures on someone else and demand more of the same as a remedy.
There was an editorial in the Telegraph I saw a reference to today, written by an ordinary, working guy who was fed up with all the nonsense being touted by all the experts, pols, and bullshit artists of one school or another.
I truly believe that feeling is spreading, and will grow stronger, the more the collectivists promise, and, inevitably, fail to deliver.
It will certainly be, as Wellington described Waterloo, “a close run thing”. All critical times are.
Gather yourselves. It will be a long, dirty, viciously fought conflict. The outcome will be decided by courage, physical, intellectual, and moral.
Reality, as it always does, will render the final verdict.
Will you, and your children, wear chains? Or will you grasp the pearl of great price, and pass the treasure of liberty down to the 7th generation?
Here is a chance to answer some of the great philosophical questions of mankind—What does your life mean? What is its purpose? What does it mean to be a human being?
The winners of this contest will define the answers to those questions for a long, long time.
I am a free man. I know what my answer is.
“Yes, there’s a large-scale die-off coming–and we, as a species, deserve it.”
Species don’t die — individuals die without reproducing. Enough individuals die without reproducing, and the species ceases to exist. So the species does not deserve to die; certain individuals within it do.
Key question is how those individuals end up on the deceased list. Global war that punishes the unprepared? (Bye bye, Europe). Internal dissent? (Bye bye, US liberals). Generalized breakdown in organized international trade? (Leaving primitive Afghanistan & Bangladesh standing)
Under any scenario, the human race will survive. But things will be different. Our task is to find a robust way to pass on to unknown descendants the hard-won lessons the human race has learned so far.
What does $1 Trillion look like?
A Trillion Dollars On Display
I wrote the following about the US, but I think it applies in parallel for the UK.
There is hope in four things:
(1) The idiocy of Obama’s budget will sink in to a majority of voters, who will vote out most of the congressmen, Dem or Pub, who voted for this budget bill or the bailout bills. We should be frightened into real change we can believe in, and carry it out.
(2) No country, even China, will lend us this money. There will soon be reports of government printing presses, sudden inflation, and higher interest rates. Obama is trying to borrow 1/2 of a full year’s income for the entire US economy.
(3) This budget cannot be administered without vast corruption, which may finally wake up the starry-eyed liberals in the press.
(4) Contact your senator, representative, and the president. Say that you are going to vote against anyone who supports these plans to borrow and bankrupt the US.
They are getting exactly what they voted for, good and hard, and there is a trillion more of it coming down the pipeline that will wash away all our savings.
Yep. That’s why the gents who wrote the US Constitution viewed it as a bulwark against democracy. They hated democracy, because they knew what we’re seeing now is how it always ends up. The ancient Greeks were right: government types change in cycles, and we went from republic to democracy and now we’re heading into tyranny.
With all this talk of trillions being casually bandied-about, I ask people how long they think a trillion seconds is. One man guessed 500 years, the others hadn’t a clue. The answer always stops people in their tracks: it’s about 31,000 years.
Try it on a few people. It might become a meme.
No taxation without conception!
Thanks to the future people for picking up the tab.
Another Tea Party idea for Tax Day in Amurrica:
Set up a copier with green paper and print money all day.
Veryretired the Catholic Church was not all bad.
For the positive side see the wprks of Thomas Woods (the Church and the Market, The Catholic Church Builder of Civilization, and so on and so on).
Of course one attack Wood for being too pro Catholic in his view of history – but the defence deserves a hearing.
By the way…
Woods is a solid Austrian School man (and his “Meltdown” book is doing fine work in getting the truth about the present crises out to the people).
As for the electronic media.
Sadly Perry is correct – unless one has cable or sat and is able to watch Fox News (which, leftists please note, the Nazi who murdered the policemen in Pittsburg did NOT have) there is no real attack on the current spend-spend-spend.
When it looked like a few people on the financial station of the NBC (General Electric) empire were having doubts about Comrade Obama the left (not just the bloggers – but “Jon Stewart” and so on) went after the heretics. And the management soon brought in Howard Dean (Chairman of the Democratic Party) and others to stamp out dissent.
So it is a few people (not all people) on Fox News (and American talk radio) against the rest of the world.
And it is the “rest of the world” – I have watched all the English language television news stations, and they all have the same spend-spend regulate-regulate ideology.
The BBC and Japanese television is no better than Russian or Chinese television (if anything the BBC is worse).
Indian, French (whatever) only the a few minor things are different.
The left control what is taught in almost all schools and universities – therefore…….
And only the United States has an English language television service that expresses some dissent (especially on the Neil Cavuto and Glenn Beck shows) – the hated Fox News.
Still “for what it is worth” (hopefully a lot) we have reason on our side.
The media (and academia) claim that the Bush Administration is the cause of the present crises.
And the economic policies of the Bush Administration were wild government spending and MORE (not less – there was no “deregulation” under Bush) regulations.
So we have truth (reason) on our side – we can defeat the left if we are allowed to debate them.
The contradiction between the establishement saying “it is Bush’s fault” and their policy of continuning with wild spending and wild regulating (again not “deregulating” – after all even the bonus structures of banks were mandated by Federal regulations) – indeed magnifying the Bush policy by a vast factor.
This is what has to be stated – again and again.
The solution to wild spending can not be wild spending times X.
And it is an international thing.
For example, the Indian government is trying to win the election by borrowing money as if there was no tomorrow.
And the Japanese government has just announced another stimulus package.
If there were dissenting television stations in Japan (and there seem not to be) they would be making the obvious point.
“All the previous government spending orgies have failed – did not the economy do a lot better when government spending was a lot less”.
The line that the mainstream media and academia (in all countries) is pushing is so absurd that it is not hard to refute it – indeed to tear it to bits in ways that anyone can see.
So, if we can get the message to people, it is an open goal.
So it has been about 2 years now since this post was up and it seems to have gotten worse? Yet, I will have hope in my God. I believe that is one the big problems of today, everyone has some how become dumb to the fact of what is on the inside of them, which is a soul. A soul that yearns to love and be loved, however all the distractions in life had made people riggid and lost. What a shame for those who caused this and those who know yet not pray or humble themselves before God.
The next best thing for those who do not repent is to be prepared with all they can, from a back up solar generator(Link) , guns and food.