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 We are now living in a corporate economy. We are living in an economy where capitalism, free markets, enterprise and ambition have been replaced and are often crushed by a modern form of corporatism, which is supported by all three political parties and the trade union movement.
– Nigel Farage
I by no means agree with Farage on everything (to put it mildly) but I cannot argue at all with that remark.
|
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.
|
Not directly relevant to the corporateness of the UK state specifically, but I calculated the other day that I’d spent roughly the equivalent of a full working week on the phone, filling in forms, visiting banks etc to deal with “FATCA” – the American law designed to prevent Americans from using foreign banks. Although I have nothing whatever to do with America, I do have quite a few bank accounts in far flung places, because I travel a lot, and they all require much formage from me to prove that I have nothing to do with America.
I’m also storing this one up for the next time someone tells me that “nudge” is not illiberal, as it’s easy enough to opt out if you want to.
I have worked for General Motors, Bank Of America, Wells Fargo and owned a piece of Apple’s first distributorship back in the 1970’s. I have also started (2)companies and I can say from experience that large corporations are not my idea of free markets and entrepeneurship.
The larger the company, the more regulated it becomes, the more it needs lobbyists in Washington DC, and therefore the more it realizes it needs to contribute money to politicians. I worked for another Fortune 500 company that asked me to head up a group to raise money in my division for the Democrats. I politely refused and then was promptly blackballed and my career with them was over. The man in the company who asked me to do this looked at me as if I were a mass murderer when I told him my conscience required me to refuse his request.
I detest what has happened to our once great public companies. I also detest large government. It is intrusive and corrupt.
Farage and UKIP are not libertarians, but my goodness they are the nearest thing to it I’ve seen with vast popular support since the 4th Labour government here in New Zealand in 1984-1987.
Farage and UKIP are not libertarians, as Bruce Hoult rightly says, but they are the best option, by far, in the General Election in May.
I voted for them in the European elections, and I will vote for them in the GE. And I will do it proudly without ‘holding my nose’.
If you are a UK voter and choose another course then please get back to me when you have discovered how many libertarians can dance on the head an ideologically pure libertarian platform.
James Strong, I agree. I voted for them in the last GE as well. Then, it was least-worst, but if Farage and Co. Keep saying things like this…
Mr Farage is the only leader of a political party in the UK in around 25 years who talks like this. Remember, that there was never a man so hated, as he who told the truth.
Someone recently linked here a hundred reasons to vote UKIP, and I agreed with 32 of them. I would guess this is a higher number than any other party’s list. So, least worst option (even if I disagree with two-thirds of the program)
I can’t find the Labour Party Manifesto for 2015.
Here is an unofficial one.
Isn’t a corporate economy fascism?
England will have to reclaim Brittany and Normandy and given there’s a substantial diaspora of Brits there, good enough reason to load the Brit Army onto the car ferries and reclaim your rightful inheritance.
Regional, We also want Calais, and Menorca. Corporatism is Fascism without parades and gymnastics.
I suppose we could start arming “seperatists” in all those places?
” load the Brit Army onto the car ferries ”
I don’t think you’ll need ferries plural any more.
In fact I think you could probably embark the entire army onto the eighteen remaining ships of the Royal Navy quite easily.
Yes, eighteen ships – most of them tiddlers: this is what the nation of Nelson and St. Vincent has been reduced to.
And there are still those who imagine we are “world power”. Feh.
Not really, Mr Ed. The Italian Fascisti, who were very much Corporatists (and coined the term, as far as I know), had parades and gymnastics. It’s more “National Socialism without the genocide”.
Bruce, James: Indeed so. What depresses me is that they’re getting absolutely nowhere round my neck of the woods, in North Britain. We have our own national socialists instead, who, to give them their due, don’t plan any genocide.
What a fine slogan for the leaders’ debates.
I have to say that the SNP logo reminds me of the insignia of the SS Division Prinz Eugen, as if it had been modified for plausible deniability.
Good God. You know they used an angular version back in the ’90s that looked even more like that?
I do not agree Perry.
In fact I think this is Mr Farage talking nonsense (on purpose) and going after the votes who would never vote for him in a million years.
What does it even mean?
Does it mean that a Corporate State after the manner of Mussolini or the American National Industrial Recovery Act (1933 – struck down as unconstitutional in 1935) has been established?
Of course it does not – Mr Farage is not a stupid man, he knows such a claim would be absurd.
What this is, is an effort to attract the “boo-hiss corporations” college student vote – and the people who leave university but never grow up.
“Big business” (the “corporations”) is not at the heart of any of our problems – certainly there are corrupt deals with some big companies, but it is marginal (trivial compared to the real problems).
The sort of people who think our “corporate economy” is the real problem are the sort of people who support the new government in Greece.
A government that is actually worse than the European Union.
If I thought that Mr Farage really believed this rubbish I would number him as an enemy – as someone on the other side.
But he does not really believe it.
He is just producing a sound bite at election time.
Which is what politicians do.
As for lobbyists – yes big companies have to employ them.
Bill Gates did not use to bother to employ them – and he nearly got destroyed by “anti trust” attack.
Lobbyists are a net cost – but a necessary one.
They do NOT mean that “big business owns the government” or anything else of this Marxism-for-dummies “Corporate economy” stuff.
As for subsidies and twisting regulations for one’s own advantage.
Of course that goes on – and goes on a lot.
But that does not mean that government is not a net cost – both in taxation and in regulations, to even the largest companies.
It is a massive net cost to them.
And companies such as Walmart would NOT be worse off with smaller government.
They would be better off with smaller government.
I am astonished to find something like this here.
Although, I repeat, I do not hold it against Mr Farage.
Politicians come out with crap at election time – it is what we do.
On second thoughts…..
If Nigel Farage is attacking Central Banking (i.e. “low interest rates”) and credit bubble (“fractional reserve” – i.e. trying to lend out many times more “money” than physically exists) banking – then he has a point.
The financial services industry (“The City”) has also been a government dominated place since the old voluntary institutions (what a “free market” REALLY is) were crushed by court judgements back in the mid 1980s (1986 to be exact).
But if all this is what Mr Farage is attacking then I am Sir Robert Walpole.
I better he is favour of the “Big Bang” – because it would not occur to him not to be in favour of it, after all it was a “free market government move” (a contradiction in terms) to get rid of voluntary agreements – I mean “restrictive practices”.
Ditto I am sure he is favour of the low interest rate (Credit Bubble) policy.
Most likely – like “all the political parties and the trade union movement” he wants even more “money” (money that was never really saved – indeed does not even physically exist) to be lent out.
The credit bubble is too small – make the credit bubble bigger!
If someone wants to attack a “corporate economy” then attack that.
Please attack it.
Not that it will do any good to attack it of course.
It is too late.
Vastly too late.
Tired now.
Off to York I go.
I can say from experience that large corporations are not my idea of free markets and entrepeneurship.
Insofar as oil companies go, they show about as much free marketry and entrepreneurship as a Soviet politburo. In the main, they are indistinguishable from a branch of a bloated government.
Once again Paul says in three long comments what could be summed up in three lines. And thus he is wrong at length rather than wrong succinctly.
Mister Ed,
Only the nice places with oodles of cream, butter, eggs and wine.
Sometimes people miss the point of the similarity in culture between large corporations and governments. Corporations are still nominally capitalist — i.e., nominally, they exist to convert capital into useful economic activity. If left to compete in the marketplace without government assistance they would have a hard time competing with smaller corporations and privately-held companies that can convert capital to profit more effectively. Thus, a world without government support for large, established companies (which generally means corporations) simply would not have as many, or as large, corporations as it now does. And those that did exist would likely be somewhat less government-like in their internal culture.
Such a world can only exist when enough people understand that. We’re currently a long way from that situation.
Regional, I’d swap Boulogne for Calais. And there is a part of the Pas de Calais, Mimoyecques, that is ‘forever England’, having been the landing spot of some of Dr Barnes Wallis’s Tallboys when it housed a nasty Nazi cannon.
Mr Farage is the only major political leader in the UK who talks like this. All the rest are just re-animated Ted Heaths at best, slightly cautious Marxists at worst. I think you will find that it is Mr Cameron who is going after the enemy vote, like a gazelle hoping to be a hyena’s pet Bambi.
A problem for politicians is that people in increasing numbers are not giving a fuck.
That’s not a problem, that’s permission.
And “economy” is far to narrow a term for a system that controls or at least holds veto over every aspect of our lives that it currently cares to.
I’ve been supporting them for a couple of years now, and even stood as a candidate for them in the last council elections in a lost-cause ward. Farage is far more libertarian in instinct than most of the rest of the party (I’ve met a few of the top tier now). The party is not really libertarian in many policy areas. But they are, by a country mile, the best on offer. The attempt to turn the Conservatives from inside has clearly stalled, if not failed utterly. Labour, new and old, are far beyond salvaging. There used to be another party too, but I forget their name. 😉 So I think we can either be all purist and Old Holbornesque and not vote, or we can change our tags to “pragmatic libertarian” and apply the biggest “nudge” to the body politic that we can in May.
Bob.
Setting aside how right or wrong he is at what he means, I should point out that “corporatism” has a long-defined meaning, and that meaning is not “control by large business entities aligned with the State”.
“Corporatism” is a (literally) fascist term describing the organization of the state in groups of the “bodies” (“corpora”) of various interests – Business, Labor, the Church, the Army, if I recall correctly.
It’s annoying when moderns use the term to mean “businesses have more power than they’d like” – it’s intolerable when they run across Mussolini talking about it and think it’s the term as they use it.
Well, myself being undecided on this particular issue, I found Paul’s comment very helpful, length and all. That, while finding Cynwulf’s comment short, but not to the point at all.
Mister Ed,
What’s wrong with nubile flexible women being able to stretch over backwards and putting their feet flat on the floor behind their head?
Regional,
I have no opinion on the matter, nor locus standi.
(Nor do I see how the issue is ‘on thread’).
I might suggest that it would be a matter for the women concerned and perhaps any health insurer who might have an insurable interest.
Paul, I do not know what Farage’s policies are on many of the things you mention, and I imagine you are also just guessing, but perhaps you follow Farage more closely than I do. Indeed I would be very surprised if Farage had any thoughts whatsoever on the ‘Big Bang’ in 1986 (right when I was in the City in fact) as it is about as germane now as the Peace of Westphalia.
So I must say I interpreted your multiple comments as lets all just hide in our basement because if a politician says something bad, he means it, but if he seems to be pointed in kinda sorta the right direction, it either doesn’t matter or he means something else and we are fucked anyway.
About as helpful as cursing a storm at great length when other people are trying to figure out how best to reef the sails.
>Farage and UKIP are not libertarians, but my goodness they are the nearest thing to it I’ve seen with vast popular support since the 4th Labour government here in New Zealand in 1984-1987.
Not exactly ‘vast popular support’ when they’re struggling to get a single MP elected.
To me, UKIP are an amateurish rabble who lie as much as the big parties, have no idea how to run things in reality, know next to nothing about their specialist subject, the EU, and their local MPs are often loonies. They’ve become the new Lib Dems in that they say what suits their local constituency.
On the other hand, the Conservatives are just slightly less left-wing Labourites, who are introducing ruinous legislation.
But if you vote UKIP, then Ed Miliband gets in, and he is genuinely left-wing, and may screw the country (like Chavez and Hollande). But then, by doing that he may help discredit Labour for a generation. But it may take a generation to recover from the damage he causes. But is the UK screwed anyway, due to all the debt and ridiculous legislation that the Conservatives are going along with?
I think in the end I’ll have to vote UKIP. I dread Miliband as PM, but I agree with PdH that the long game involves getting rid of the Tories. Not that I harbour any illusions that this will improve things much, but change is pretty much impossible as long as those public school Blairites remain on the scene.
Yeah I would love to change my mind on that one but sadly nothing has come even close to convincing me to thus far. The Tories really are the problem.
Mister Ed,
‘Corporatism is Fascism without parades and gymnastics‘
Tedd,
I entirely agree. I used to deal with Nokia as a third party developer a few years ago and it was exactly like dealing with government. It came as no surprise at all to me or to other Symbian developers when they met a sticky end.
Cal, if you listened to the Farage speech (it’s linked in the article), he addressed the “go to bed with Farage, wake up with Miliband” issue. Does anyone here have any thoughts on his assessment?
I suspect that the real effect of a vote for UKIP is similar to a vote for the Libertarian Party here in the US. The Republicans are always screaming that a vote for a Libertarian candidate is effectively a vote for the Democrat. However, the reality (shown in a survey in Virginia after the last election) is that the Libertarian candidate took more votes from the Democrat than from the Republican, and mostly attracted people who simply wouldn’t have voted otherwise.
Laird,
The UKIP appears to have support from among white van drivers. Labour doesn’t protect the workers any more, they’ve thrown them under the bus while pandering to the Bourgeois.
My last business venture was destroyed by government and a crooked franchise owner working hand in glove.
Without significant legislative changes it couldnt have happenned.
The franchise was actively lobbying for more regulation and “oversight” because of 2 reasons.
1: Barriers to entry, it made it massively more expensive for a competitor to start up, more than double the outlay.
2: It made it possible to use the government legislation to cripple and steal their existing franchises before offering to “take it over” for nothing, all perfectly legal.
They sat down with government for over a year to design the new laws, 3 companies all raising barriers to new competition.
Big business loves regulation, it kills start ups and competition.
Put me down as another ‘pragmatic libertarian’ as I will be voting UKIP and perhaps even standing for them in May (a a local election candidate). I certainly do not agree with everything the party says (immigration is one issue I particularly disagree with the party on) but they are the only show in town. The rise of UKIP is showing two things – new parties can win elections under first past the post, even in Britain. Furthermore Carswell and Reckless did not have to stand for election. They could have crossed the floor and shown contempt for their electors just as so many other MPs have done. Instead they chose to let the people have their say. Was it tactically advantageous to UKIP? Yes. Does this negate the fact they chose to live by their principles? No. If UKIP continues to have honest, principled and intelligent representatives there may be hope for a much brighter future.
Despite its many, many flaws the rise of UKIP is the most exciting development in British politics for a long time. If nothing else it is bringing together a lot of people with very different views, thereby stimulating a much richer political environment. The cozy left “liberal” agenda that dominated the late 90s and the whole of 00s is being seriously challenged. If that challenge isn’t yet strong enough or robust enough don’t criticize from the sidelines, join us and improve it.