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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David Cameron, who clearly does not have enough to do, has pledged to consult on campaigners’ proposals to force internet service providers to block porn by default. I am against the proposals because of the force. I also agree with Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group that non-porn will get blocked by mistake. There will likely be other technical problems. And it will make the perceived problem it is trying to solve worse because parents will have a false sense of security while savvy children figure out how to work around the filters. And I am not convinced that porn harms children.
But mostly I want the government to stop messing with my internet.
Along with variations such as “The lying will continue until trust improves”, this jokey phrase is, alas, a completely accurate description of what many of our most lauded and influential thinkers believe is the best way for them and their class to motivate those less lauded and influential.
Guy Lodge is associate director at the Institute for Public Policy Research and a Gwilym Gibbon Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He writes:
Bad weather in parts of the country will no doubt have played a role in keeping some voters at home, but clearly this doesn’t account for the worrying levels of political disaffection reflected in the low numbers choosing to vote.
His cure for political disaffection?
This cycle can only be broken by radical means. IPPR research shows that the best way to boost political participation among “hard-to-reach” groups is to make voting compulsory.
James Taranto (with thanks to Instapundit for the link and the quote):
In 1999 Lionel Tiger coined the word “bureaugamy” to refer to the relationship between officially impoverished mothers of illegitimate children and the government.
A little googling tells me that this word hasn’t been completely ignored since 1999. But if the internet had been more of a Thing in 1999, I surmise that it might have become a universal commonplace by now.
So far it seems to have been mostly Americans using the word, but we could sure use it here in the UK. That link takes you to a quote of Tiger’s original suggestion, with some more context from him.
What may have been holding this word back is that it is not instantaneously clear (or not to me – comments?) whether it should be pronounced byoo-rogue-amy, or byoo-rog-amy. It has to be the latter, but I found myself having to stop and work it out, which is not what you want with a neologism, however badly needed. It’s that “eau” in a slightly unfamiliar setting that slows you (me) down. Is the answer actually to change the spelling, to “burogamy”. i.e. switching from “bureaucracy” to “monogamy” one syllable sooner? Neither is perfect, but it’s probably better to stick with the Tiger original.
What is very excellent about the word is that you know at once what it means.
(Last minute editing of this, changing “byoo-roe-gamy” to what you see above, suggests also a word like “buroguery”. Or should that “bureauguery”? Time to stop this.)
All those cultural worriers fretting that lots of furriners are grabbing “our” jobs and generally messing up the scenery can rest a little easier. Soon, large parts of Europe will be positively depopulated. The disaster of the euro is helping to drive this trend.
“the story that truly captures the imagination comes courtesy of New York University’s Development Research Institute. It highlights the influx of Portuguese immigrants to Angola – an economy that has been growing by over 10 per cent a year since peace broke out in 2002 – and Mozambique, in a dramatic reversal of roles between erstwhile colony and ex-imperial power. There was a time when poor Africans flocked to southern Europe to better their lives; the opposite is now happening. Five hundred years after Vasco de Gama first landed in Mozambique, impoverished Portuguese are turning up in droves, begging for work permits. Six years ago, Angola issued 156 visas to Portuguese migrants. In the most recent year for which data is available, that number had exploded to 23,787; 100,000 Portuguese have moved to Angola, four times more than the traffic in the opposite direction. Other studies have shown a brain drain of Portuguese to Brazil and of Spanish youngsters – especially skilled graduates – to Latin America.”
“Portuguese workers in Angola now send home more cash to their families than Portuguese workers based in London. For millions of young people, Europe appears in terminal decline, while parts of Africa have emerged as a new Eldorado. The Eurozealots thought the single currency would turn old Europe into a new superpower; instead, it has catastrophically impoverished tens of millions of ordinary folk. It is time for an apology.”
Allister Heath.
What law of physics obligates the existence of a moral code? Why don’t rocks and trees and lions and zebras have moral codes? What is it that makes human decisions a special case that is different from all other things and creatures? Philosophers have struggled over the concept of right and wrong since before fire was captured for domestic use. In the time since then there have probably been as many moral codes as there have been philosophers to think of them. Most of them have one thing in common; they are claiming a lever to compel the behavior of others. Do lions and zebras have moral codes? Of course not. Lions attack and zebras defend. Zebras are (I’ve heard) a principal non-human killer of lions. They break the lion’s jaw with well placed kicks while attempting to escape. Unable to eat, the lion starves to death. Is a lion committing a moral wrong when it attacks a zebra? Is a zebra committing a moral wrong when it kicks a lion? Of course not, lions are lions and zebras are zebras. There is no moral code for lions and zebras beyond continuing their gene pool. With only that for guidance, all of their interactions tend towards extreme violence. Carrying on one’s gene pool is an internal imperative to each individual. There is no external imperative in the laws of physics that a particular gene pool must be continued. If one line ends, (other) life goes on. There is no external imperative for a lion or zebras’ moral code. Nor for a human’s. → Continue reading: On originalism
Anorexia is a nasty eating disorder, and although in the prosperous West there seems to be more fretting about obesity than the other extreme, there is no doubt that people who, for whatever reason, don’t eat enough to protect their health, represent a serious health issue. But as ever, I get irritated at the “victim culture” that is sometimes wittingly or unwittingly promoted in public discussions of the issue. Case in point was earlier this week on the BBC.
The state broadcaster’s morning current affairs show featured a young woman who had almost died as a result of this condition, and some shocking photos were shown. During the course of the discussion with the presenters, the argument from the woman (I did not get the name) was that she had been strongly influenced into her under-eating by a desire to look like the models and actresses seen in glossy magazines and on TV and movies. Such pictures are often enhanced, ergo, such enhancement is evil and there should be a law against such activity so as to prevent impressionable people from being led astray, etc.
At no point did either presenter, or another woman who was representing the modeling industry, say something like this:
“I am very glad you have recovered your health and are eating a proper diet and don’t feel a need to starve yourself to `look good'”. The fact that photos of such supermodels/actresses or whoever might appear to show that it is acceptable to be very thin does not, and should not undercut your own responsibility for your health. You have a mind, so use it. You have free will; you are not a piece of clay in the hands of the advertising industry, the movie business, or modelling agencies. You are an attractive young person who can, and should, think for yourself. Finally, curves on women are fabulous, and anyone who thinks for a second that the opposite sex is turned on by skeletons needs their head examined. So take charge of your life, and don’t expect the State to censor things because you lacked self-control earlier in your life. Thanks for appearing on our show and now let’s go over to Carole for the weather forecast.”
But they didn’t say that. Pity.
“Thus you see, he is a Composition of Whim, Affectation, Wickedness, Vanity, and Inquietude, with a very small, if any Ingredient of Madness. … The ruling Qualities abovementioned, together with Ingratitude, Ferocity, and Lying, I need not mention, Eloquence and Invention, form the whole of the Composition.”
– David Hume, in a letter to his friend and fellow Scot, Adam Smith. (H/T, Stephen Hicks).
Hume was writing about JJ Rousseau, whom Hicks has mentioned as one of the most destructive and evil thinkers in recorded history. His other choice for that slot is Martin Heidegger.
At the moment I am a daily Instapundit reader, which is because at the moment I find American politics a whole lot more interesting than British politics. At least Obama is interesting! Cameron just makes me want to give up thinking about British politics altogether.
But the interesting American question for me is not who will win their next Presidential election. Personally – in defiance of our Dear Leader (although time may well prove to me the error of my ways), for all the grief it may bring, and for whatever miniscule difference it may make to anything – I support Anyone-But-Obama for President rather than the man himself. No, what interests me about America just now is to what extent the old mainstream media really are in the process of being dethroned.
This is what is so interesting about things like the Obama Eats Dogs story. In itself it is about nothing. Its only significance is that Obama’s cheerleaders want this story to stop, while Obama’s detractors want it to rock on. But that is exactly why it is so interesting. It is pure media. It’s like one of those enemas that doctors inflict upon you, to enable them to see what is happening inside you. It does nothing to you, other than make your insides trackable. Obama Eats Dogs stories tell you about the power of The Media either to suppress a story which they now don’t like, or maybe not to suppress it.
My take on the alleged bias of the American mainstream media is that they have been monstrously biased in a statist direction for well over a century. Every other Media story since the year dot has been about (a) a Problem; and (b), all intertwined with that, what the government is doing about the Problem or ought to be doing about the Problem. There is now a huge constituency of idiots who really do think that the answer to any problem of any sort is for the government to take charge of it, and screw it up some more.
What is now changing is not the bias. What is changing is that now, because of the rise of other media (barium enema media?), this bias is trackable.
Don’t kid yourself that an earlier generation of Old Gents In Suits Who Worshipped Facts were not almost as biased as their now visibly biased progeny. The point about bias is not – or not only – whether you lie. The point is what you say is a story in the first place.
Problem!!! Facts. What is the government doing about it?!? More facts. What does Everyone Important say about what the government ought to be doing about it?!? More facts. There’s no need to lie about anything to skew the way you present the world.
Imagine, on the other hand, a world in which The Media all assumed that problems were there to be solved by humans, and that the “politicians” are just another of those problems that we humans have to deal with from time to time. The “News” would be completely different.
And what interests me about America just now is that this kind of thing is all becoming so much more visible, to the point where it might even be changing, in a good direction.
Nice to see I am not the only Obama detractor who nevertheless wants Romney to crash and burn. Shikha Dalmia over at Reason writes 5 Reasons why conservatives should root for a Romney defeat:
The GOP is in a state of intellectual flux, illustrated perfectly by the ideological heterodoxy of its presidential field. Various strains representing different interests are fighting for the soul of the GOP: The neocons are duking it out with anti-war Paulistas. Social moderates are trying to wrest some space from pro-life religious conservatives. Deficits and debt worry everyone, but there is no consensus on entitlement reform. The GOP allegedly stands for the free market—but it has yet to figure out whether Bush’s financial bailout was right or wrong.
A visionless, rudderless, gaffe-prone presidency is the last thing that Republicans need right now. Having to defend Romney’s slips—he’s insulted 7-Eleven cookies, said he enjoys firing people, and announced he is not concerned about the very poor, and that’s just this year—will further contort the party’s soul. Four years of Romneyisms, all of which smack of elitism, will cement the image of the GOP as the out-of-touch party of the rich.
Better that the GOP remain in the political wilderness for another four years (and, hopefully, find itself) than have a Romney presidency prolong its intellectual and moral confusion.
That is more or less how I see it as well.
Boris Johnson says the government should go in for “more tax cuts.” More in addition to what? There have been no significant tax cuts. In fact every week there are proposals for ever more inventive methods of extorting money from the hardworking and the thrifty.
– Peter Mullen
Andrew Copson asks rhetorically in the pages of the Guardian, “Should we allow faith schools at all?” The general opinion in the comments is that “we” should not.
To be fair to Mr Copson, he probably did not write the subheading and his article talks about state funded faith schools. A proposal to ban state funded faith schools, though clearly intended to ensure that pupils are not exposed to opinions Mr Copson does not like, is less illiberal than a proposal to ban faith schools tout court. (In fact I am in favour of such a ban myself, though my ban would be accompanied by a ban on state funding of all other types of school, and preferably all other types of anything.) Many of the Guardian commenters reject such quibbles and are simply totalitarians. For instance, the second comment by “whitesteps”, recommended by 123 people at the time of writing, says,
Of course there shouldn’t be faith schools, though such a ban wouldn’t go anywhere near far enough.
Religion should be treated as a controlled substance only accessible after a certain age, with the religious indoctrination of small children treated as a form of mental abuse.
I always find the sublime confidence of such people that they will always be the ones to allow or forbid very strange. Given the course of events over my lifetime, perhaps such confidence on the part of “progressives” and tranzis is justified – however there are many still alive who remember a time in Britain when certain religious prohibitions were backed both by force of law, and by the sort of public opinion that leaves offenders with fewer teeth. I used to think that the lesson had been learned by all sides. I used to think that nowadays the principle that freedom of belief must apply to all to protect all was accepted by all. How naive I was.
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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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