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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Samizdata quote of the day “So you live beyond your means and rack up a bunch of bills you can’t cover. So you go to your rich uncle. He’s tapped out, alas. And tired of supporting you. So he goes to his rich uncle who’s even richer and known for his desire to keep the family name unsullied. But what if he’s tapped out? Those are my thoughts when I read this story that Sarkozy is supporting Merkel in getting the IMF to bail out the Greeks. The IMF is the richer uncle. Eventually the other guy runs out of money. We’re going to have to start borrowing from Mars or Venus soon.”
– Russ Roberts, at the Cafe Hayek blog.
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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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No, they go to the Godfather who has been tapping the wealth of everyone in the neighbourhood for years.
And then the Godfather increases his take “to pay for it”.
I believe it was Maggie who first observed that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.
We are getting close to that now in the UK.
My reading of history has told me that this is the juncture point where scapegoated minorities are held to be responsible and when the razor wire gets strung up. When there is no more money to borrow, no more money to print, and no more foreign treasuries to plunder the Force is turned inward. It’s much easier to attach to other people’s property with a clear conscience when you have some axiomatic highground you have fabricated. The Statism-lite of semi-brutish taxation gives way to harder forms. The only mystery is it going to be hard left or hard right?
Yes. I suspect the time is fast approaching when the numbers of productive people and companies leaving the UK is going to cause a tailspin descent as more and more welfare claimants are forced to feed off fewer and fewer genuine taxpayers (i.e. those that are a net beneficiary after services and “tax credits”).
The thing which makes me most sad is the general faith in the government B/S that everything is fine and a few years of 3.5%+ growth will resolve the problem.
Poor deluded fools.
As the old saying goes “Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad”. Certainly insanity and delusion seem to be reaching epidemic proportions in the UK at the moment.
I seem to remember someone writing a novel about how those described as being “in need” would eventually consume the productive members of society.
Wasn’t it Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”?
:O)
“Yes. I suspect the time is fast approaching when the numbers of productive people and companies leaving the UK is going to cause a tailspin descent…..”
That sounds very wise, as I suppose it was intended to. It sounded quite wise the first time I heard it, back in the fifties. That’s an awfully long tail-spin.
Personally, I think the markets are saying the apocalypse may be delayed a trifle.
“I believe it was Maggie who first observed that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.”
Right, and when she said it, we already had. But we recovered quite nicely over the next two decades. If Cameron only has the sense to let the economy out from under the dead weight of the PowerPoint jockeys, that will happen again. He doesn’t have to do much else; not even change Government policies – just have fewer of them and fewer people putting them into practice.
Actually, I don’t think the IMF charter permits such an action. In banker’s terms, all the IMF does is “bridge” loans, not bailouts. If they DO loan money, it usually carries the kind of conditions that the Greeks wouldn’t begin to countenance.
Kim: In addition, I was under the impression that the IMF generally provides loans up to the USD15 billion mark. However, I think the Greeks are looking for rather more than that…
And all the evidence to anyone playing attention indicates he intends to do exactly the opposite.
They’ll just invent money the process of which, in reality just steals it from savers, until all that wealth is gone and then it will be time to have your own patch of ground to grow veggies.
Yep. The Maggie reprieve is over.
jon livesey
Cameron is no Thatcher, not even in sheep’s clothing.
If I thought that if he got in, he wouldn’t do the centrist things he had implied, but would instead rip the guts out of the state sector, I might vote for him.