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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day Your teeth belong to the collective.
– From a Planet Money piece quoted by Alex Tabarrok (who was linked to today by David Thompson), about how China went from the bad old days of the Great Leap Forward to the better days that followed. The above words, which Thompson also singled out for attention in his link, were an answer to a property rights query to those in authority, in the bad old days. Do we even own our teeth? No you do not.
The switch from collective “property” to actual property, as Tabarrok makes clear, was initiated by the people of China, rather than by their rulers. It began in the village of Xiaogang, whose farmers decided to go back to actual property for each individual farmer and his family, with immediate beneficial effects. And then it became a movement. The rulers of China didn’t decide to make this change. They merely decided not to stamp it out.
|
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.
|
Meanwhile, in the United States…
Property rights is a natural state of affairs and would require constant vigiliance from the authorities to keep it from springing forth anew. Attributing it to the decisions of some farmers in one village sounds a little fishy to me. In reality, I suspect that it was breaking out all over the place all the time.
As much as I hate to admit it, I think the authorities in China have to be credited with recognizing and to the extent they do respecting and enforcing property rights. While surely wary of public sentiment, they clearly have the power of the gun on their side. They chose to do so and were not compelled.
Mark Steyn recently noted how, under Obamacare, the health Kommissar is required to establish what I think the legislation called “teeth-level surveillance”.
And all your cheezburgers, too.
I wish somebody would lay claim to my hemmies, I could do without them.
Now there’s a campaign slogan that seniors could get behind—“All your ‘roids are belong to us!”
TMI? Ah, what the hell, I’m in!
All your base?