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 The tale of Climategate and its aftermath is not an edifying one. As we look back over the ten years of this story, the impression we get is a wave of dishonesty, a public sector that will spin and lie, and mislead and lie, and distort and lie, and lie again. If one lie fails then another lie is issued and if that fails then they simply lie again.
– Andrew Montford, Hiding the Decline: A History of the Climategate Affair, p307. Having chronicled in painstaking detail official attempts to save face and hide the truth, Bishop Hill (as he is otherwise known) finally loses his temper.
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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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According to the Oxford Dictionary Online, edifying means, “providing moral or intellectual instruction”. I would not take moral or intellectual instruction from the climate “scientists”, so it’s not “edifying” in that sense. Similarly, I suspect most of the readers of this blog and similar would find no instruction they didn’t already know. However, for most of the general public, I would consider the tale of Climategate to be thoroughly edifying indeed.
Recently read an article about the pause in warming that has now gone on for 15 years, since 1997, and the reactions to that conclusion from some of the climategate crowd.
Jones was concerned in one of the released emails that if the non-warming trend went on for 15 years, that would be a problem. Now that it has, he says it isn’t a problem until it’s been 20 years.
As I’ve said before, I don’t have any problem believing we are in a general warming trend, which began in the early 1800’s at the end of the Little Ice Age, and will continue for a few hundred years until the next cooling phase. That has been the pattern during this last several thousand years of inter-glacial time, and I see little solid evidence that humans have influenced that cycle to any significant degree.
The key point, as it is with all these hysterically trumpetted faux-crises, is to focus on the policy proposals being pushed by the statist crowd.
It isn’t hard to show people that, regardless of the nature of the alleged crisis, the supposed remedies always consist of more and bigger state controls and programs, and never ever ever involve increased individual freedom and liberty.
When every problem seems to require the same solution, no matter what the variables or circumstances involved, it becomes very clear that the alleged solution is the true point of the entire exercise, and the proximate cause being cited is merely the latest pretext.
For over a century, the progressive solution to every conceivable problem has been an increase is state power and control.
We are approaching the end of that long and costly road, and the sign says “Dead End” ahead.
The novel approach, and the only truly new and revolutionary idea, is to expand and enhance the freedom and autonomy of the creative individual mind, and allow that resource to explore possible paths toward greater well-being for our society.
As that was the same solution arrived at by that odd little group of political theorists better known as the Founding Fathers, it seems good enough for me.
I agree with VR 100%.
For 50% of the time, I agree with Laird 100%!!!
“They’ve done studies you know. 60% of the time it works everytime.”
Very, Very well said. Expect to be quoted…perhaps even in private, as an alternative to breaking some faces personally.
“When every problem seems to require the same solution, no matter what the variables or circumstances involved…”
Well you know with statists, “when all you have is a hammer, every thing looks like a nail”.