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Samizdata quote of the day They want to manage and control every aspect of daily life. That is not the role of the EU. It is the role of local government.
– A French euroskeptic cheese merchant, interview broadcast on BBC World Service this morning.
19th century romantic nationalism still rules even in places one hoped were civilized: Slavery is not the problem, as long as the master is one of us; being enslaved by foreigners stirs the blood of popular rebellion.
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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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What, you thought romantic nationalism was dead? In France of all places?
Hoped.
While I obviously disagree with this statement, I do agree that it is generally better for power, if it must be exercised at all, to be vested in a smaller government than a larger one. There are three main reasons why I say this.
First, it is easier to change the laws of more local governments than those of larger, broader governments – whether through legal action, swaying popular opinion, etc.
Second, it is easier to be flee the laws of a government that has a smaller sphere of influence than to flee the laws of a government that has a larger sphere of influence.
Third, reason number two pressures smaller governments to implement more favorable laws, for fear of losing human capital, valuable assets, etc to mass emigration.
On a related note:
One can favor laws that violate natural rights and still be civilized. Indeed, there has never been a civilization that has not violated its citizens/subjects natural rights.
An enlightened person is another matter entirely, however.
I realize now I should specify that by smaller government, I mean smaller in relation to the one that would wield the power. I should have explained it as levels of power, in accordance with federalism in the United States.
Also, a suggestion: change the link to the merchandise on the left sidebar to http://shop.cafepress.com/samizdata as the current link is sorta dead.
Ah yes, that wonderful, wicked and warped piece of performance art known as “France”. Once in a while, I almost think it is real.
FromChicago,
A local Authoritarian is far worse than a distant Authoritarian. As the Chinese say: “The mountain is high, and the Emperor is far away”.
So I would think that it is not just about local-central/small-large, but that there is the dimension of the size and involvement of government, and there is a crossing point where local government is worse as the Authoritarianism grows.
A problem is Balkanisation. Once you have enough people aligning themselves to religious or ethnic groups, then localism can cause more problems the more power the local government has.
For localism to work, we need small local government, IMHO. If we try and “go local” before we “go minarchist”, we will find it very hard to prise all those sticky fingers from the levers of power, especially as they will be constantly stuffed into all manner of pies and at every opportunity.
Well, yes; provided that the local tyrant is within earshot/rifle shot.
Sadly, Mr. Carpenter, I feel that modern technology has rendered that old Chinese proverb untrue. Tyrants are now perfectly capable of oppressing people from afar: just ask the English grocers arrested for selling their merchandise in non-metric units.
KdT: ” just ask the English grocers arrested for selling their merchandise in non-metric units.”
Er, you will find they were hounded and punished by Local Council “inspectors”. Even after the EU dropped the requirement, the prod-nosed fascists would not let go and continued to pursue the cases.
I do agree, though, that technology does have a long arm, but in so many ways a local thug is still far more of a problem than a remote one – distant thugs still need their local agents.
Tim Carpenter,
I reiterate Kim du Toit’s (!!!) point that technology these days enables tyrants to be not significantly hampered by distance form their target.
As tyranny worsens and becomes seriously evil, fleeing becomes and thus the government seeing the effects of mass emigration become more likely. People are less likely to want to emigrate if the government is the US federal government or the EU, as opposed to the state of California or the nation of Germany.
Does this not hold for larger governments as well? As people align themselves with religious or ethnic groups, then the government can always cause more problems the more power it has.
No matter what level of government we are talking about, I most certainly agree we need small government. The forces aligned against liberty are surely more powerful the larger the government. I’m not prescribing lower level government as the means to achieve libertarian utopia. I am saying it’s better for power to be with local government than larger level government if it is to be held at all.
This is not on topic, sorry: If you happen to read this Kim du Toit, please know that yours, along with Samizdata, Instapundit, and Liberty Papers, was one of the my personal four horsemen of liberty online that hugely affected my political opinions. It was always such a pleasure reading your blog! I hunted for the first time on the day of your retirement from blogging. I just want to thank you for blogging so much, so well, and for so long.
That kind of thinking is the sort of thing that made France the economic mediocrity it is today.
The proper response to local wannabe tyrants is tar and feathers. The shotgun should be reserved for only the most extreme cases.
I very much doubt that the person really wanted the French government (which is national not “local” anyway) to control every aspect of life.
People make mistakes when they speak – especially when they are not speaking in their native language.
As for the European Union:
It adds another layer of government on top of the all the existing layers – therefore a libertarian should oppose the existance of the E.U. and (if it can not be abolished) at least support nations leaving the E.U.).
Also even if the national level of government was abolished (so the E.U. would not be adding another layer of government – at least if we forget about the vile regional governments it has had created) the E.U. would still be a bad thing.
This is because the larger the area (in populationl, wealth and so on) a government controls the harder it is for people to leave it.
Footing with one’s feet (by going to areas of less government spending and regulations) becomes more difficult – less of practical option.
Needless to say various people will have noticed that all of the above (both the main lines of argument) could be appled to the Federal government of the United States.
That should have been voting not footing – of course.
As for the adding another layer of government.
It is true that in terms of government spending (NOT in terms of regulations) the E.U. layer of government (on top of all the other layers) is as yet small.
But that was once true of the United States government.
Even as late as the 1920’s the Feds spent a smaller proportion of the economy than most States did.
However, the Federal govenrment has grown like cancer – and often compells State and local governments to spend money as well (via both regulations and via by schemes that the Feds created by the State taxpayers also have to pay for – such as Medicare).
Russia is ruled by very nasty people – but it is not in the grip of a Marxist ideology that seeks world conquest.
China is also ruled by very nasty people and they still pay lip service to Marxism – but it is a sham and has no support for any desire to impose Marxism on the world.
“What of Islamism?”
Radical Islam is a threat – but seven and half years of failing to deal with Bin Laden and co is hardly a sign that the Feds can achieve justice for 9/11 (and as for their war on drugs and weird idea that Afghanistan and so on can be turned into a liberal democracies…..)
“But the Feds are needed to secure the border”.
This would be “secure the border” as in the border with Mexico?
The United States government (under many Administrations) has utterly failed to safeguard the borders.
It is hard to see how Texas (and so on) would do a worse job if things were left to them (remember immigration was a State matter till a Supreme Court judgment in the 1850s).
Certainly I am a person who lives thousands of miles away – but it is hard to see the arguments for keeping the United States going.
And, of course, I will admit what I am really thinking.
A Communist is President of the United States – and a person who has lived a life of no merit whatever.
It is not just his opinions or ideological conditioning (almost from birth in his case).
No military service, no business experience, no real government experience (not having to balance a budget as a Governor or Mayor) just a life of going from one Ivy League University to the next and being given well paid jobs on the boards of charitiable foundations – to give him lots of time for politics.
A man who has never worked a day in his life, and who is not only a far leftist – but a twenty year supporter of one of the most corrupt political machines in existance. Opposing all efforts (from the left as well as from the right) to expose the corruption and work for an honest administration in Chicago.
For such a man to be President of the United States (backed by people like Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin in control of the Congress) may well be the end of the road for the United States.
Perhaps there will be a backlash and victory in 2012.
But there is a possiblity that there will be no such backlash – that the majority of people are citizens of the “United States of Celebrity” who are so stupid that they think that a 100 million Dollar cut of government spending (which was a transfer of money, not a cut, anyway) just after agreement to add another 10 TRILLION to the national debt is a net cut.
Such people (if they can be called people) are not in the majority in all States – there are some States where Barack Obama is not considered a “good man”. And perhaps those States should consider their position.
“Die British devil – stop sticking your nose into these matters”.
Perhaps so.
But who can deny that Obama (and his Comrades in Congress) are vastly worse than George III (and Lord North and so on) even after King George went mad.
Surely this is the bitter end?
Nothing above should be taken to mean that I do not accept the vital role the United States played in such things as the defeat of National Socialist Germany, and the Empire of Japan, and the contrainment and eventual defeat (at least in parts of the world) of militant Marxism.
However, nations are mortal – and although the death of a nation is a terrible thing it is even worse for everyone to insist on dying with a nation that can not be saved.
By all means struggle on to save the United States of America, but I (British devil though I be) beg people to not become trapped into thinking that if the nation dies everthing and everyone must die with it.
There may be other options for liberty, for civil society. And States leaving the Union (without the insitution of slavery to give the Feds a moral reason to make war upon those States that decide to leave) MAY be such an option.
To be considered – not rejected out of hand.
“And States leaving the Union … MAY be such an option.”
That would be the better option. Problem is that there is no longer a clear ‘North/South’ type of division. The opposing populations are too intermingled. Hard to avoid the possibility that a state seceeding from the Union would rapidly descend into a civil war, giving the federal overlords an opportunity to step in & sort things out.
Best option is for the money to run out — and, Lord knows, Obama is trying very hard to make that happen. One of the messages from the GM debacle is how long a doomed structure of unsupportable health & pension benefits can stagger on — and how rapid the final collapse can be. Getting close, methinks, and not just in the US.
Follow that with the US military taking over the obviously incompetent government. A certain number of politicians, lawyers, and other forms of overhead hanging from lamp-posts. And eventually, a new Constitutional Convention with a militarily-imposed groundrule that there will never again be a permanent political class or an overly-expanisve federal level.
The US will struggle through. Life may get very hard for people in certain other parts of the world, though, as the US focuses on its internal problems.
Well, yes. But I’m reminded of the quote which I must paraphrase (because I can’t remember it verbatim): “No matter how much the form of government changes, the local constabulary has no problem adapting.”
In Kim terminology, if I may be so bold, it’s a lot easier to take action against local tyrants than against remote ones — it’s easier, say, to blow up a local council office than the EU building in Brissels.
But the entire EU/US Federal government experience has shown us that oppression is most easily applied from afar, with modern tools. The mountain ranges of the Chinese proverb aren’t much use against paratroopers, after all.
All we have left is our voice (the Internet), our participation (the vote) and our spirit (backed up with arms — too bad the Brits don’t have the latter option, or else their local tyrants might be a little more cautious).
Which is why our respective governments are moving heaven and earth to control all three.
I’ll shut up, now.
Alice.
One of the most disturbing developments is how hard Comrade President Barack Obama is working to make friends with the military.
He, quite rightly, sees this as a high priority.
If his efforts work then even economic collapse will not lead to an end to his “Progressive” dream.
With 40% (plus) not paying income tax, and an ever greater percentage of the population dependent, in whole or part, on government aid, winning the 2012 election is going to be very hard indeed.
Especially with the iron grip of the left on the education system and the mainstream media.
And with their lack of moral scruples in blatent election rigging (for example via the taxpayer subsidised ACORN groups).
Plus the millions of illegals who will be voting.
So election victory is not assured even with economic collapse.
Nor can a military coup be relied upon – with Obama’s efforts to win over the military (and their own fanatical “we obey whoever the elected government is” doctrine).
Whereas it may be possible to get a majority in one or more States.
It is an option that should not be ruled out.
Still, I wonder how many in the military voted for the Big O.
Having only read this tiny snippet of a transcript, and not seen the actual broadcast, I can’t really gauge the tone of the “French euroskeptic cheese merchant”. Still, are we certain his comment isn’t somewhat tongue in cheek? It certainly has the same flavor as the quote from Roger Dascombe in V for Vendetta: “Our job is to report the news, not fabricate it. That’s the government’s job.”
The idea that a French cheesemaker would want the government to control every aspect of life is not very likely.
Certainly every group of people contains statists – but normally French small businessmen (especially craftsmen such a cheesemakers) tend to be more independent minded than British people.
For example, on encountering a regulation that will bankrupt them a British businessman will appeal against it.
And when his appeal (of course) he will sob his heart out to Christopher Booker (or some other person) about how terrible it is that his family enterprise is destroyed.
A French person is far more likely to ignore the regulation (“break the law” horror of horrors) and if challenged just lie and lie (if he can not find a way to bribe the offical who is challenging him).
One of the more pathetic things about British life is how small bussinessmen give officials the very information the officials need to destroy them.
Giving false information (and covering one’s tracks well) does not seem to occur to the average farmer and so on.
Some businessmen even approach government departments to check that their enterprises are “obeying the law”.
Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.
If you make yourself noticed (by actually making contact with officials) of course they are going to destroy you – that is what they are there for. It is like going to the tax collectors and asking if you are paying enough tax (rather than doing all you can to avoid being noticed by them).
Of course the typical “cynical French peasant” can not really scale up his enterprise (for then it will be noticed and his “breaking the law” will be harder to hide) this is a real problem.
Still, I wonder how many in the military voted for the Big O.
You’d probably be surprised.
While the military vote does lean R, having a buddy blown apart by an IED tends to cause a certain amount of wondering if the goal is worth the price, and a willingness to consider leaders who favor approaches that seem less likely to result in dead buddies.
A fair point, asommer. Still, to the extent active military members voted for “the Big O”, I wonder how many actually voted for him and how many merely voted against McCain.
Another thing I was wondering about is how many voted based on race.
Smited for the R word. Another shot:
Another thing I was wondering about is how many voted based on r….