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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 temperance movement in the UK Regular commenter here, IanB – who now gigs over at CountingCats – bashes those doctors, who, claiming to speak for all doctors, want to ban alcohol advertising.
Authortarian creeps, the lot of them. If one thinks about it, the number one addiction in the world that needs to be curbed is the habit of trying to tell grownups how to lead their lives morning, noon and night.
Inevitably, they do this in the name of protecting children, so it is not censorship, you see. How conveeeenient. Look, I like children and feel parental control and guidance is fine, but can we just remind ourselves that as kids, we managed to grow up into relatively sane creatures without being mollycoddled and protected by state censorship from adverts for beer, gin and plonk? Considering the risks that send our so-called medical “establishment” off the edge, it is a wonder we made it to adulthood at all.
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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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Question from a doctor: “Do you have any guns in the house?”
Answer, from someone who shall not be named: “Mind your own fucking business.”
No, it wasn’t me, either.
It’s a matter of control, not problem-solving. Solving problems eliminates the need for those agencies and people claimed to be need to solve them.
Authority follows the same influences as economics.
Supply, demand, and manipulation to increase profit margins. Sex, money and power are all currency
Authority is power, a currency.
Who knows? If authority is increased it may suffer inflation. When authority becomes scarce, it increases in value.
The irony is that the biggest threat to our collective health is mostly from the medical profession itself. Its more than a trite saying that “doctors kill more people than guns”. That fact coupled with government overregulation and malpractice insurance premiums is what has made healthcare so much more expensive than it needs.
When Governments pay for healthcare it is the wedge that is used to justify all the more government intervention in private lives, (what you may drink and eat etc) on the basis that it is meant to save on healthcare costs.
Johnathan,
Damn straight! And nicely put…
DK
Indeed. I have often contemplated a public service ad, patterned after the “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” ads here in the US, that would announce “Friends don’t let friends be prigs.”
It seems unlikely to happen.
“When Governments pay for healthcare it is the wedge that is used to justify all the more government intervention in private lives, (what you may drink and eat etc) on the basis that it is meant to save on healthcare costs.”
And that’s the lot, the maximum, One-Hundred-And-Eighty!
I have commented over at The Devil about what could be done to limit the damage that these “doctors” are threatening.
There are probably suitable little books about which tell us how we can all make our own beer, wine, hooch and even nicer spirits than that, from freely-available materials such as berries, grains of various sorts, potatoes and the like. It’s really not difficult provided you observe various simple precautions about fermentation temperature, type of yeast, the proper minimum height for a fractionating column in distillation, accurate high-temp thermometers in the column, and so on (so as not to collect methanol by mistake! It will make you blind unlike some other activities.)
The spreading of people’s ability to ferment and also distil their own alcoholic drinks will at once undermine the State’s taxation base, and also enrage it into “putting more police on the beat”. The ensuing legal acts of banning the purchase or possession of chemical glassware, demijohns, thermometers, sugar, potatoes, barleygrains, rubber tubing, bunsen burners or waterbaths, ammonium phosphate, bentonite filtration, copper vats, grapes and berry-presses, will expose fully the roots of the Enemy Class’s hatred of human beings and what they like to do while alive for a little time.
Well they are consistent – they support forced funding (i.e. money given to them, from the taxpayers, by the threat of violence) and the support endless regulations – i.e. more threats of violence.
If the political medics supported forced funding, but not regulations, or regulation, but not forced funding, I might have to be tolerant – and say such stuff as “people are complicated – they can be statist in one way, but pro freedom in another”.
However, as they support both forced funding and endless regulations, I do not have to be tolerant at all – I can simply point out (as others have already done) that the political medics are scumbags.
I will raise a glass of a fine locally-brewed oatmeal stout to your post.
I’ve often thought that an excessive interest in the lives of strangers is a mental illness of some kind. Luckily I don’t suffer from it, but a great many people obviously do, by buying the lives of stars magazines, watching day time television or by being chairman of the BMA.
“Look, I like children and feel parental control and guidance is fine, but can we just remind ourselves that as kids, we managed to grow up into relatively sane creatures without being mollycoddled and protected by state censorship from adverts for beer, gin and plonk?”
Do you really think that from the point of statist authoritarians we ‘have turned out well?’ I don’t think I have. I reject the statist consensus on almost every issue under the sun and from their collectivist frame of reference I must be far from sane. The state socialization and propaganda system is designed to prevent the creation of people like us.
To use ourselves as the example of what a more liberal attitude to regulation can produce is unlikely to persuade statist authoritarians that less control would be a good thing.
You know, someone needs to remind these statists of the oldest truth of all time; forbidden fruit is irresistible.
And someone also ought to point out to them that in all the places where alcohol advertising is not permitted (like, say, oh, Malaysia), the level of drinking is not exactly what I’d call minimal.
Gregory: The statist is not motivated purely or even mainly by results. Statism is not a philosophy rooted in discovery of pragmatic solutions to social problems. At the root of this kind of legislation is the belief in Society (ie the state apparatus) as a source of moral authority. The state needs to express its moral disapproval of vice and wickedness. Legislation as an expression of that disapproval is a moral and just end in and of itself, regardless of any practical impact it may or may not have.
Passing such laws is a symbolic act. Government must ‘send a message’ to the flock. If it doesnt legislate (uselessly or not) it forsakes its moral authority.
If it was all about results why are the statists still persisting with the war on drugs?
I prefer to use the term “moral perverts” when discussing people like these.
They strongly believe they are “good and just”, therefore anyone who opposes them is inherently evil or wicked.
As for the pervert part, well that applies just as strongly to them as it does to a wanker at a nudist beach, peeping tom, or any other person watching/collecting information on me for their own gratification.
Its a perversion to want to control other people, and its about time the perverts were informed thats what they are.
Jay, I liked your comment a great deal, so I’ve quoted it over at Counting Cats In Zanzibar.
I’ve seen my GP (a friend) more drunk than me.
He is also very rotund, a lot more than me but I am the one takinig statins!
I shall ask him what he thinks of the BMA next time I see him.
Home distillation scares me, for reasons you mentioned.
But, google “Charlie Papazian.”
I just finished the last of a batch whose recipe I wrote on the back of a napkin at the Denver Tea Party, “F*** Tim Geithner Ale.” It’s not especially complicated.
There is a collection of books on early industrial age
1800-1900 technologies, including home brewing,
and some subjects some would find objectionable.
Been around for a long, long time.
Search for “Kurt Saxon” and “Atlan Formularies”
I’d be very cautious with Kurt Saxon. I have bits and pieces of chemistry and gunsmithing background, and the Poor Man’s James Bond series scared the hell out of me.
He printed one item of “advice” about how to convert a semiauto firearm to automatic. I won’t go into details here, but it’s absolutely terrible for the gun. (And unlikely to work. Maybe on paper but that’s it) That led me to conclude that his comments on technical matters had value only as comedic or cautionary tales.
Sunfish:
Among the rural populations in Eastern Europe, home-brewing and distillation is still widely practiced, and these people know how to make quality booze safely. For example, if you go to a holiday in Croatia, you’ll often see local peasants selling their home-made wines and liquors next to roads and beaches and in the markets. If you live in any large metropolitan area in Western Europe or North America, you could probably find people with this knowledge among the local Eastern European immigrant population.
And also in rural Ireland. My mother in law usually manages to find something from one of these sundry distillers for me around Christmas time.
I don’t doubt that there are people who can distill safely and end up with a no-methanol no-formaldehyde no-fusel end product. But for every one, there’s no shortage of people who, no doubt mean well but I couldn’t get thirsty enough to trust their product.
Wines and spirits, BTW, are radically different in their production. Screwing up a wine just makes it taste weird. Even then, you can just call it Tokay and sell it to people who like that particular version of weird.
Now, are these truly hobby distilleries, or is the license the only difference between them and George Stranahan or the folks at Bushmills?