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 What I’ve described is essentially a top-down process, yes, that has gone bottom-up, as I’ve described so far, across official levels at Departments very widely. Now we have to make sure that nothing has fallen between the cracks in the stakeholder engagement process, but I think this issue of top-level Government buy-in to it is very important. I see it as a feature of the way that the new Government goes about its business. The approach of Cabinet Committees, with Ministers taking them very seriously, officials being energised by the fact that Committees will come back, rather than the Committee process being in any sense a formality, is something that in a lot of processes, not just relevant to the NRP, is galvanising much better across Government co-ordination in a very productive way. I think this applies to the NRP, as to lots of other things.
– Lord Sassoon, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, makes everything clear. Helen Szamuely found it here.
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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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Please tell me that I’m not the only one who has no clue as to what any of this actually means – other than the frequent appearance of the words ‘government’ and ‘committee’, which in and of itself cannot signify anything good?
Brain fade…
Oh, I get it now…:-)
With apologies for being slightly off topic, I would really like to nominate this as a Samizdata quote of the day. It was posted on the Richard Dawkins website under an article about Muslim extremists issuing death threats to a Muslim scientist by Marc Country:
“Islamophobic” is a term that should apply to those people who seek to appease, not oppose, the Islamists, since it is obvious such concessions are made out of fear.
Regarding Lord Sassoon’s comments, I am unable to avoid finding it anything less than not at all impossible that anyone reading them should fail to abstain from denying that their presumed lack of a complete absence of discernible meaning is far from being something that few would be disinclined to dispute.
He’s saying cabinet committees used to be an ignored formality, now they are being taken seriously.
He thinks this is a good thing, I think it’s an attempt to dodge responsibility.
BINGO!
I’ll take your word for it, Roue, although I’d like to see what Guy Herbert might think – he seems to be very good at reading bureaucratese. Long time no see, BTW…
Here in Australia, it is March 8; i.e. International Broad Day! Happy women’s Lib to all our samizdettes!
Unfortunately, here in Australia, politicians are talking about imposing gender quotas on the boards of ‘big’ corporations, because the current average of 11% is not representative of the community. (Q and A, last night).
Still, that raises the issue of why most of our contributers seem to be men. Is Individualism more appealing to men? Is it a gender issue? Should we be drafting random females into samizdata, just to get the numbers right? Should i call myself ‘Nukella’, just to confuse the numbers?
http://www.vianesse.blogspot.com/2011/03/agenda-21-british-forests-and.html
Read about agenda 21, British forests, and corporatism
….which reminds me that sniffing airplane glue is not good for you…..
What he is doing here is demonstrating his tribal allegiance to the political class. The important thing is not content but forms. I believe that parsing it for meaning is a waste of time. The words are not employed to convey meaning, but the pretense of meaning is used to convey words.
The important thing is not whether what he has said is intelligible. The important thing he got to say ‘top down process that has gone bottom-up’ ‘stakeholder engagement process’ ‘co-ordination’ and ‘productive’ In the minds of political class such terminology buttresses his authority. The words themselves provide the status.
The only meaning I take from it is.
“I am a member of the elite. What I do is beyond your understanding, but I am a dynamic enterprising fellow on the cutting edge and so are the people with whom I associate. What we do is far too complex for the nonspecialist like you to understand.
Now return to your huts, peasants and don’t worry concern yourself with ideas above your station. The only thing you need take from this that I am smarter than you and worthy of admiration. You should be intimidated by the complexity of my job.”
No, nuke, no bogus numbers here.
Report to your nearest NHS gender reassignment station.
Nuke,
Libertarianism does I think, appeal to those people who have certain “male” mental characteristics. It is based on a rational view of society and not a romantic view. I bet a fair proportion of samizdatistas are engineers or from the hard sciences.
Also, I think that women are less interested in power than men. Whatever one might think of quotas I think it would probably be a good thing to have more women in board rooms, and if we have to have politicians at all; in government.
Peter
I tend to agree. I think that it explains the relatively low interest women tend to have in politics – although that seems to be changing. That low general interest in politics should in turn explain the specific low interest in libertarianism. (Not that there are very many males who are interested in it either).
Also, we tend to be much busier with the truly important things in life:-P
The quoted passage reminded me of this from Blazing Saddles:
“I think that women are less interested in power than men.”
Per Dame Ragnelle, power, maybe, sovereynté, well, different question. (I prefer the word “sway”.)
Let’s see how many women get dragged along to the US release of Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 on April 15th.
No Objectivist I, but I’d like to hope that this movie energizes some interest in Rand’s stuff, and ‘done right’ I think Dagny’s character could be pivotal in popularizing the story among the fairer gender.
It would be quite refreshing to spend some time ‘toning down’ and rounding out some neophyte Objectivists rather than brute-forcing moderates into our way of thinking for a change.
Let’s hope that Dagny is played as a black lesbian with Amerindian ancestors who wears only organic clothing!
Alisa, you’re just here to make up the numbers! If you keep on making anti-male comments, like women doing the important things in life, we’ll stop ordering knitting patterns from you!