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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Yesterday, they closed off Regent Street, the famous central London shopping venue, to traffic, to make way for … some cars. I made my way to Regent Street, on the off chance of some photo ops, and was not disappointed.
There were E-Type Jags and Minis (i.e. real Minis – not the horribly huge German rehashes we see now), because both are celebrating their fiftieth birthdays this year:
And there were even more exotic vehicles, like this one:
If there was a sign explaining that, I missed it. Anyone? It looks vaguely familiar, as having been involved in something like a land speed record.
There were also new vehicles on show, involving various drearily alternative means of propulsion, but looking exactly like regular cars.
But the really old cars were something else again:
There were lots and lots of those. And it would be putting it very mildly indeed to say that I was not the only digital photographer present:
Nor was I the only digital photographer who was intrigued by many of the smaller mechanical details of these old cars:
The weather was rather grim, but the rain held off long enough for me to take all these snaps. Click on all of the above to get them bigger, and if that isn’t enough, go to my own blog, to see many, many more.
By the way, I’m not anti-German about everything they’ve done to Britain’s motor industry. I love what they’re doing with the Rolls Royce.
To politicians, endless horror is much preferable to a horrible end.
– Samizdata commenter “Plamus”, discussing the future of the Euro here.
Beijing is full of empty shopping malls and empty apartment buildings. There are at least 60 million empty housing units in China, and probably a great many more than that. The absurd construction boom that continues to go on here is many times bigger than the rest of the world combined, and the Chinese banks are many times more bankrupt than those anywhere else
– Michael Jennings (currently in Beijing)
It is often said that Guy Fawkes was the only man to ever enter Parliament with honest intentions…
In my youth, we libbos used to go to P.J. O’Rourke for American libbo laughs. Now that mantle – of American, deceptively profound, politically right on the money laughs – has passed on to IMAO man Frank J. Fleming, whose book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is coming out quite soon now.
Good recent Frank Jism:
Things often overwhelm and underwhelm, but seldom do things just whelm.
You see? It’s funny (I think), but it also gets you thinking. Where did the word “overwhelm” come from, from which the word “underwhelm” has recently been derived (because as soon as you say “underwhelm” everyone immediately understands)? “Overwhelm” means that “whelm” must once upon a time have meant something too. But what? Is it an upper class mispwonouncing of “realm”? Does “whelm” have a future, as a word? I’m not trying to be funny (although that is one of the standard methods of actually being funny). I’d really like to know.
This is good too:
I support double standards. I expect better behavior out of conservatives than I do liberals.
And this:
You know how everyone has their idea of what a fair tax plan is? Well, I have now unveiled the “Frank J. Fleming Super Double Extra Fair Tax Plan” at PJ Media and it is the fairest of them all. I mean, it’s crazy fair. You’ll recoil in horror and scream, “No! Too fair!” That’s how fair it is.
I need something to end this with, now. I know. Here’s my funny yet deceptively profound and right on the money tax plan: The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut To Zero. If FJ’s tax plan is too fair for you, that might be just right.
Earlier this evening I attended a libertarian get-together in the upstairs room of a pub (the Rose and Crown in Colombo Street, London SE1), organised by Libertarian Home, and in particular by leading LH-er Simon Gibbs.
If what you would like would be a convivial evening in a London pub where, if you are not a libertarian you are going to have to explain yourself, whereas if you are you aren’t (unless you feel like it), then why not get in touch with Simon Gibbs and invite yourself along to the next one of these things. If my experience this evening was anything to go by, you will be made very welcome.
Here is a photo I took of the other end of the table from where I was:
And here’s another snap from the same spot, moments later, after I’d asked if I could interrupt everything, and “take some photos”:
I am surprised what good photos these are, technically, given the light. If you are surprised what bad photos they are, technically, then clearly you don’t know my photos.
These photos do not include anything like everyone who was present. They are accurate in suggesting that the gathering was youngish (certainly compared to me), and bright, but inaccurate in suggesting that this was an all male affair. It’s just that the ladies present were seated nearer to me, and my lens is not wide-angle enough to have included them.
In particular, missing from that snap are two of the people who, it so happened, I spent a bit of time conversing with. For the first time ever, I got to meet Trooper Thompson in the flesh, whose blog I have long had a liking for. And, I also got to meet “Misanthrope Girl”, whose blog I have not properly noticed until now. Trooper Thompson got chased out of the Samizdata commentariat for saying something rude about a gun (I think that was it), approximately a decade ago, which, having finally met the guy, I now think is a shame. Misanthrope Girl would also fit in here very well.
I had to leave earlier than I would have liked, but I am still very glad I went. I heard about this gathering by attending the Liberty League Conference, where Andy Janes (mentioned here recently already because of that Zimbabwean bank note), who also helps organise these evenings, suggested I might like to attend the next one. Perhaps, I thought to myself, and perhaps not. But then Andy gave me a physical copy of the leaflet that he had been handing out at the Occupy London occupations. These guys, I thought, maybe have something about them. (See also this open letter to the London occupiers.) Maybe they do. We shall see.
What will happen to the Euro? I am not asking “what should happen”, but what will happen. Take this opportunity to put your predictions on the internet, and later be hailed as a true prophet or derided as a false one.
Via CityAM, here is an interesting article about the UK’s own space industry. It is bigger than might be supposed from first glance.
(Thanks to my good friend Tim Evans, over at the Adam Smith Institute and the Cobden Centre, for the pointer).
BTW, one of the big places for registering space-related companies these days is the Isle of Man. No doubt, in centuries to come, the Tranzis will be trying to shut down tax havens in outer space.
For any of you who may be feeling particularly depressed about the state of the economy, politics and the regulatory leviathan in general, this will cheer you up greatly. It certainly improved my overall outlook.
Although this trend is very much a good thing, I do have some concerns. One of them is for intellectual property protection. All advances in technology and the arts are the result of intellectual endeavors, and assuring the rewards and return on investment of those endeavors is essential to continue the advances. Another concern I have is for ‘real’ property rights. I would very much like to hear from any of the Samizdata commentariat who have access to, and perhaps even do business in “l’economie de la débrouillardise.”
As the dollar and the Euro flare off into nothingness like the methane from a decomposing landfill, I presume System ‘D’ is Plan ‘B’ for advanced Western societies as well. How will that unfold?
Today is our blogiversary…Samizdata crawled out of the primordial ooze of the blogosphere on Friday, November 02, 2001.
Our name was a wee bit longer then but like some vestigial tail, it eventually dropped off once we learned to walk upright… and it took us a while for our flippers to evolve into feet… but here we are all those years later, still blathering on about the things that irk or amuse us.
13,315 articles and 226,617 comments later…
…Blimey, where did all those years go?
“All this [illicit trade] suggests that, while customs barriers stifled trade, they did not necessarily increase isolation. The `fortress’ of France was remarkably porous. Any commemoration of European unity should remember the smugglers and pedlars who helped to keep the borders open.”
Page 152, taken from The Discovery of France, by Graham Robb. The entire book is crammed with wonderful examples of French life down the ages, and in particular, I am struck by what were, by the standards of the time (18th and early 19th centuries) vast migrations of people within the country in a way that resembles the even longer migrations of people around the world today. Even the “Tour de France” cycle race seems to have its echoes in the heroic journeys made by pilgrims, travellers and labourers of ages past.
This is a great book if you are thinking of spending a week in that country. Robb has also written a fine biography of that giant of French literature, Victor Hugo.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.
– Richard Feynman, quoted by Matt Ridley in his Angus Millar lecture at the RSA in Edinburgh, the entire text of which you an read at Bishop Hill. Do read the whole thing. Following on from the above quote comes one of the best summaries of why climate skeptics are climate skeptics that I have ever encountered.
Does anybody know if Ridley’s brilliant lecture is, or will be, available on video?
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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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