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.
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Samizdata quote of the day If anything is harming Britain right now, it is the ongoing attempts to catastrophise Brexit being fomented by bitter Remainers – people who would seemingly rather Britain descend into some dark, dystopian future and be vindicated in their doomsaying than help their own country to present a positive, open and internationalist face to the world.
We should not be surprised. In an age where looking good (and signalling virtue) is more important than actually doing good, there is every incentive for Remainers to continue seizing on every morsel of bad news, overlooking every positive development and generally acting hysterically, so long as their precious internal narrative – that They Virtuous Few stood alone against the “dark forces” of racist Brexit – is not disrupted.
Personally, I find it despicable, but good luck to them.
– Samuel Hooper
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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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“ . . . continue seizing on every morsel of bad news, overlooking every positive development and generally acting hysterically, so long as their precious internal narrative . . . is not disrupted.”
I wonder what the overlap is between bitter Remainers and climate alarmists. They do seem to be all of a type.
If the Remoaners were actually right the UK would already be a smoking hole in the ground.
“I wonder what the overlap is between bitter Remainers and climate alarmists. They do seem to be all of a type.”
The very thought that entered my head too. I believe that Phil Jones is on record as saying that if temperatures failed to rise as predicted it would be a serious problem. He would prefer the world to be engulfed by droughts and catastrophic sea level rises than be proved wrong. Fortunately the planet doesn’t seem to care what he thinks.
The BBC were running a story yesterday about Brexit causing a hike in the price of tea.
I don’t much like being proved wrong either.
Anyway, the Last Ditchers still have plenty to look forward to. The British government still doesn’t seem to have decided what sort of Brexit it’s going to go for.
If it opts for the EEA then the Last Ditchers will be able to say: “What was the point? You’re still subject to all this regulation, you’re still paying in, you still have to accept EU immigrants and you don’t get a say.”
If it opts for WTO rules, then I can only hope it has a massive bonfire of the regulations lined up. As I understand it, trading under WTO rules is not as easy as you might think. To do well under them Britain will have to be very competitive. Moreover, whatever happens there will be a period of transition in which businesses that did well under the Single Market scale back before the new businesses that will do well under WTO rules have time to scale up. So the Last Ditchers will have some fun there. The key will be that the transition happens quickly enough so that the Last Ditchers aren’t able to persuade everyone to change course.
Monetary policy was wildly too loose even before the vote for British independence of the E.U. Yet the reaction of Mark Carney (Governor of the Bank of England) to the vote for independence (the rejection of the taxes and regulations of the E.U. – indeed of its right to impose taxes and regulations on the the British people) was to LOOSEN monetary policy still further – he CUT interest rates.
Fiscal policy was also wild even before the vote – with a massive deficit spending under the lie (for it is a lie) of a “austerity”, yet the reaction of Mr Hammond (the new Chancellor of the Exchequer) to the vote for British independence was to LOOSEN spending even more.
Now the warnings about both the wild monetary policy and the wild fiscal policy (the Credit Bubble monetary policy and the huge deficit spending) were common even before the vote – many people (including many leading members of Parliament) have warned against the Credit Bubble monetary policy and the wild deficit spending.
Yet Mr Carney and Mr Hammond have DOUBLED DOWN on these policies – made them even more extreme. With their support for Corporate Welfare “infrastructure” spending and so on (stuff that might be straight from the pages of the corrupt Economist magazine).
Mr Carney was “Remain”, and Mr Hammond was “Remain” (as was the previous Chancellor, the wild spending “austerity” George Osborne), and the Economist magazine (and the Credit Bubble special interests it represents) was (and is) “Remain”.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that what is being done is the deliberate sabotage of British independence. Create a massive Credit Bubble (leading to a crash) and a massive fiscal deficit (also leading to a crash) and then blame the inevitable crash on British independence.
Excellent. Lets hope to see some major casualties among statist crony capitalist companies, replaced by more competitive and customer-focused upstarts.
The great thing about genuine capitalism is the creative destruction companies and the reallocation of misapplied resources (capital and labour). I don’t give a flying f*** about the producer, it is the consumer that I am interested in.
Patrick,
“I don’t much like being proved wrong either.”
I do, because I like being wrong a whole lot less.
“Personally, I find it despicable, but good luck to them.”
Why that last clause? Is this a manifestation of some strange sort of British politeness? I wouldn’t wish “good luck” to my enemies, or to people who advocate stupidities. I want them to fail spectacularly and be thoroughly discredited. And to hear the lamentation of their women.
I guess I’m just not a nice person.
I’m British and thought the same Laird. So I guess I am also not a nice person.
Laird and Alex speak for me also.