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 continued mockery of saving I enjoyed listening to this Mark Steyn radio interview the other day. He gets seriously worked up and he’s very effective in that medium, as well as in print. The show that I link to here has its advertisement segments. One ad, for some sort of investment trading product, talks about all kinds of clever trading ideas, but it had this jarring note, if I remember: “You don’t get rich by saving money”.
That’s the current financial disaster in a nutshell. Saving money, accumulating wealth and investing it in productive assets such as businesses, is for saps. And with negative real interest rates (thanks to Messrs Bernanke, Greenspan and chums), saving money in the traditional way is a mug’s game.
When the culture of steady wealth accumulation and savings is mocked like this, it adds up over time.
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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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“You don’t get rich by saving money”
That’s true enough in the sense that you have to invest the money you have saved in productive ways. Our disaster is that the money – borrowed and taxed – was spent in unproductive and counterproductive ways.
I have worked in companies where the management preferrred to increase profits by small fractions based on trimming costs rather than enter new markets with the potential to multiply profits but with risks attached. Their growth potential was extremely limited as a consequence.
The ads were scary.
Eco wine, that is sustainable – what does this mean?
Then there was an ad for chopping people’s faces up in the (demented) belief it makes them look as they did when they were young.
Am I right in thinking that Californians (at least in this area of California) are a little odd?
As for J.P.s post.
Well yes – if saving does not make people better off they will not do it (or will do it far less).
The dream of Keynes will be achieved – and the consequences will be truly terrible.
This is where the elite are just so wrong.
They think, if they play various monetary and fiscal games, things will get better (evenutally).
However, the monetary and fiscal games mean that things, over time, will get worse and worse.