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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The following was posted as a Samizdata comment by the pseudonymous ‘Jaded Libertarian’, but it deserved to be an article in my not so humble opinion, and so…
I read in the paper today that after subjecting 500,000 people to mandatory face to face interviews, the government denied passports to eight for fraud.
This is the thing that most do not get. The big evil does not justify, never justifies, the small good. Causing inconvenience, misery and transgressing the privacy of half a million people in order to catch eight fraudsters is absurd.
And our society is full of such absurdities. Millions of adults are denied the “gift of giving” into their children’s lives by “child protection” policies. There is this assumption that any adult watching children swim is potentially sexually aroused, for example.
I would contend that the people who make such laws have dirty minds. I find it nobler and better to live life as though perverted degenerates do not even exist, for they are thankfully rare. And on the rare occasions where monsters abuse society’s trust, why, we should quickly and simply hang them in the town square and then return to life as before.
This is the model for transgressing only the liberties of the lawless, and not those of society at large. If you have to tread on the freedoms of innocent people to catch the lawless you’re doing it wrong.
“If it stops one fraudster, if it saves one life and if it protects one child it will all be worth it” the statists cry. These thoughts are supposed to make us feel warm inside as we queue to be inspected by the passports office, as security cameras follow us down the street and as police demand to know what we are doing for no particular reason. We are to lay our personal freedom on the alter of society in the name of the common good, and feel heartened by our sacrifice. As bizarre as it may sound, there are “true believers” in this cult – I see them all the time.
Down that road lies 24 hour policing of the entire population, and lives that are not worth living for all but the party elite. Basically 1984 made real.
And it all began when we passed that first law that mildly inconvenienced many in order to wheedle out the wicked few…
Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties
– Ludwig von Mises
I have not yet given much thought to writing out a piece here on the oil spill – this is, on one level, a complex issue that does not lend itself to quick-fire blog postings. This article over at the Melangerie blog (which I thoroughly recommend) is a great piece, very fair and perceptive, in my view.
One issue for us free marketeers is this: we like to talk about how pollution is, in some ways, a property rights issue. When a huge oil leak contaminates a sea and damages vast amounts of marine life and say, fishing industries, it is an interesting question on how exactly that issue gets resolved without some way of apportioning costs and compensation. Is a state needed to oversee this? Can it be fixed by entirely non-state means?. There are some free market environmentalists out there who might have some ideas. Rather than write more, I would be interested in comments.
“As you march grimly forward through the detritus of economic debate, with a Sturmgewehr 90 assault rifle and fixed bayonet gripped firmly in your hand, thousands of blind Keynesian moles will leap up from deep dark holes in the mud to bite your ankles.”
Andy Duncan. Like Andy, I have read Thomas E. Woods’ Meltdown book and I wrote out some thoughts about it here. And here.
Glad to see Andy is writing away. Old Samizdata hands may remember he used to scribble for us occasionally.
I ran across this article on Thomas Paine tonight and thought our readers might also find it of interest.
There is a great deal of detail here about his life that I had never known before.
Via National Review’s The Corner blog, I see that FA Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom is top of the Amazon charts. Wow.
Funny how these supposed golden oldies keep racking up the best-seller scores, isn’t it?
Mind you, I guess the same phenomenon applies to entertainers. Like it or not, Sinatra and Elvis keep selling.
Steve Baker MP’s maiden speech.
Tried to finish a longer piece involving that link, but failed. There’s the link anyway. Now rushing out to a meeting organised by the very organisation that published that blog posting. Such is life.
“The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world. They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States. Mr. Obama may not hold all, or the more extreme, of these views. But there can be no doubt by now of the influences that have shaped him. They account for his grand apology tour through the capitals of Europe and to the Muslim world, during which he decried America’s moral failures—her arrogance, insensitivity. They were the words of a man to whom reasons for American guilt came naturally. Americans were shocked by this behavior in their newly elected president. But he was telling them something from those lecterns in foreign lands—something about his distant relation to the country he was about to lead.”
Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal.
I am not sure whether it is very smart for the WSJ to have a headline referring to Mr Obama as an “alien” in the White House – that will only reinforce the view, held by parts of Mr Obama’s more extreme fans, that his critics are racist bigots. And it is also far from the first time that a supporter of Transnational Progressivism has held office – think of the dreadful Woodrow Wilson, for instance, or to a lesser extent, Jimmy Carter. But it certainly is notable that more and more people are drawing the conclusion that Obama and his associates don’t seem to care for their country very much, or pander to some of the silliest Blame-Amerika-First lines.
Of course, had WSJ readers been following Paul Marks on this blog, none of this stuff would be a surprise.
Here is a report about progress, so to speak, in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China.
This dam, just as was earlier prophesied, is causing lots of environmental problems, as in real environmental problems, as in: people are finding themselves living in buildings that are collapsing, beside roads that are cracking up, on land that is sliding into the water. We are not talking imaginary rises in sea level here, but real damage to real human habitats. Earthquakes are now happening.
That Telegraph piece links to this Times report, which explains things thus:
As the water rises, it penetrates fissures and seeps into soil. Then it loosens the slopes that ascend at steep angles on either side of the river. Eventually, rocks, soil and stone give way. The landslides undermine the geology of the area. That, in turn, sets off earth tremors. It may be the world’s biggest case of rising damp.
The Times report also includes this choice little paragraph, concerning some crumbling building that was hurriedly vacated by government officials and allocated instead to mere people:
“What kind of dogshit government moves itself out and moves us into somewhere like this?” one of them complained.
A key point made by the Telegraph piece above is that less is now being done than you might expect by Chinese higher-ups to suppress such reports:
Three years ago stories were already emerging in the Chinese media about landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae further down the river. And less and less effort seems to be made to plug the leaks.
This all made me think of a book I read a year or two ago about the Western Way of War, or some such title, by Victor Davis Hanson (I think it was this book, although I believe I read a proof copy with a different title). The connection? Well, Hanson identifies one of the strengths of the Western Way of War to be the way that western war efforts are often preceded by almighty rows, often woundingly public, about how to set about, or even whether to set about, doing whatever it is they are attempting, which typically continue after the effort has begun. One of his major points being: this is not recent, it’s always been like this.
The result, for all the mess and unpleasantness and unfairly ruined careers, tends not to be the division and confusion that you might expect, or not only that, but also (a) better decisions, and (b) better understood decisions. Even the losers of such arguments at least understand the plan the others fellows are now making everyone follow, so even they follow it better. Both decision-making and decision-implementation are improved. Then, often with even greater doses of injustice, wars, even successful wars, are then raked over and argued about yet again, afterwards. It’s all very indecorous, and “debate” doesn’t do justice to the chaotic nature of such public rows. But the result is better decision-making and better informed and better prepared decision-makers, at all levels.
And for war, read: everything else big and dangerous also, like mega-engineering projects. Tyranny, aka dogshit government, in war and in everything big, imposes bad and un-thought-through decisions on baffled subordinates, decisions which still might have worked after a fashion if implemented properly, but not if even quite senior subordinates don’t really have a clue about what they are supposed to be doing and are just following orders blindly, or worse, perhaps not even doing that, because, you know, who gives a shit.
It must now be becoming clear to quite a few Chinese high-ups that had they had a big, messy, public ruckus about how exactly (or indeed whether at all) to build this damn great dam, then it might at least have been a damn sight better dam than it now looks like being. It might have been messier and more difficult and more stressful deciding about it all beforehand, but far better afterwards, once all the dust, and in this case also all the mud and all the various bits of collapsing land and roads and buildings that are now sliding and tumbling hither and thither, had settled.
And even if they failed to argue about the Three Gorges Dam properly beforehand, it would be better than nothing to at least have a bit of a public row about it now. At least that way, some harsh lessons might be learned and spread around, and such things might be done a bit better in the future.
“David Cameron is determined to make as much noise as he can, and for as long as he can, to the effect that every unpleasant thing the coalition needs to do is solely the consequence of the criminal improvidence of its predecessor. No new prime minister, especially in these circumstances, would act any differently. I wonder how long this card will remain trumps, however. After all, when Margaret Thatcher’s government cut the unsustainably vast subsidies to public sector industries – from coal-mining to car manufacturing – which her Labour predecessors had not dared to confront, it established her reputation among millions as a cruel and heartless prime minister. It will be fascinating to see if the much more soothing rhetoric of a Conservative government in coalition with the Liberal Democrats can convince the electorate that they are caring cutters; how extraordinary it will be if they carry that off while reducing public expenditure on a scale which Margaret Thatcher never even attempted.”
– Dominic Lawson
This is one of the more hilarious spoofs of PETA I have seen in ages. It recently showed up in my Inbox and I simply must share it with you, our readers:
Johnstown, PA (GlossyNews) – Local and state police scoured the hills outside rural Johnstown, Pennsylvania, after reports of three animal rights activists missing after attempting to protest the wearing of leather at a large motorcycle gang rally this weekend. Two others, previously reported missing, were discovered by fast food workers “duct taped inside several fast food restaurant dumpsters,” according to police officials. “Something just went wrong,” said a still visibly shaken organizer of the protest. “Something just went horribly, horribly, wrong.”
The organizer said a group of concerned animal rights activist groups, “growing tired of throwing fake blood and shouting profanities at older women wearing leather or fur coats,” decided to protest the annual motorcycle club event “in a hope to show them our outrage at their wanton use of leather in their clothing and motor bike seats.” “In fact,” said the organizer, “motorcycle gangs are one of the biggest abusers of wearing leather, and we decided it was high time that we let them know that we disagree with them using it… ergo, they should stop.”
According to witnesses, protesters arrived at the event in a vintage 1960’s era Volkswagen van and began to pelt the gang members with balloons filled with red colored water, simulating blood, and shouting “you’re murderers” to passers by. This, evidently, is when the brouhaha began.
“They peed on me!!!” charged one activist. “They grabbed me, said I looked like I was French, started calling me ‘La Trene’, and duct taped me to a tree so they could pee on me all day!”
“I… I was trying to show my outrage at a man with a heavy leather jacket, and he… he didn’t even care. I called him a murderer, and all he said was, ‘You can’t prove that.’ Next thing I know he forced me to ride on the back of his motorcycle all day, and would not let me off, because his girl friend was out of town and I was almost a woman.”
Still others claimed they were forced to eat hamburgers and hot dogs under duress. Those who resisted were allegedly held down while several bikers “farted on their heads.”
Police officials declined comments on any leads or arrests due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, however, organizers for the motorcycle club rally expressed “surprise” at the allegations..
“That’s preposterous,” said one high-ranking member of the biker organizing committee. “We were having a party, and these people showed up and were very rude to us. They threw things at us, called us names, and tried to ruin the entire event. So, what did we do? We invited them to the party! What could be more friendly than that? You know, just because we are all members of motorcycle clubs does not mean we do not care about inclusiveness. Personally, I think it shows a lack of character for them to be saying such nasty things about us after we bent over backwards to make them feel welcome.”
When confronted with the allegations of force-feeding the activists meat, using them as ad hoc latrines, leaving them incapacitated in fast food restaurant dumpsters, and ‘farting on their heads,’ the organizer declined to comment in detail. “That’s just our secret handshake,” assured the organizer.
No, the British state is not financially bankrupt, at least not quite yet, but thus quoth Dave Cameron…
“Because the legacy we have been left is so bad, the measures to deal with it will be unavoidably tough. But people’s lives will be worse unless we do something now […] instead of your taxes going to pay for things we want, like schools, hospitals and policing your money, the money you work so hard for, is going on paying the interest on our national debt.” ”
These remarks by David Cameron might look like something that would get a thumbs up from the Samizdata mob yes?
Well no. “Unavoidably tough”… I have no doubt whatsoever that these cuts are something Cameron would indeed prefer to avoid, and therein lies the reason I despise him just as much as I have ever done. The cuts to government spending, which should be an order of magnitude greater just as starters, are not being done because allowing the appropriative state to grow so vast is morally wrong or intellectually foolish, no, it is being done but because it cannot currently be avoided.
If it could be, what Cameron really wanted to do was increase the size of the state’s appropriation by £ 25 billion.
That is what he intended to do before he realised it was simply impossible: never ever allow that key fact vanish down the memory hole. He is not making the moral case for a smaller state, because he does not want a smaller state, he is just discussing dealing with the current economic crisis, nothing more. In this respect he is the ‘anti-Thatcher’, who at least made the intellectual case for a less pervasive state (even if she then allowed Norman Tebbit to destroy the very political cadre that sprung up to support that view).
Could it not be that what “we” want, and certainly what “we” need, is not for more skoolzanhopitalz funded by the state? What “we” need is for more wealth to be created, not more stuff to be funded by money diminished by being filtered through the wealth destroying tax system and then mis-allocated by politics.
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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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