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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People talk and think about jobs like they are things. Like you can possess one, lose one, or like you need to go get one from someone. So they go to job boards looking for the people who are giving away jobs. They go through the societal rituals that are expected of job seekers. But they are making a fundamental mistake–because jobs are not things, they are abstractions.
Getting lost in this abstraction causes a lot of pain and confusion. Seeing past the abstraction lets you see the countless opportunities you have available to you.
A job is an abstraction to describe a relationship between one person and another individual or group of people that agree to a certain type of ongoing trade. To get a job, you don’t need someone to create it and give it to you; you simply need to convince someone that you can make them more money than you cost.
– Ryan Ferguson
For at least half a century, nearly every secondary school pupil and university student in Britain has learnt about the evils of Nazism and Fascism, and the crimes of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Most young people have also been taught something about the evils of apartheid in South Africa, Western colonialism, and white racism in the United States. One enormously important subject, however, has generally been missing from the education curriculum: namely, the horrendous and universally destructive nature and record of Communism.
– Philip Vander Elst
It is sometimes said in a disapproving sort of way that social media is bad in that it reduces social inhibitions. “You’d never say that to a person’s face”, sort of argument. It is a bit like the argument made as to why people are rude when behind the wheel of a car because, encased as they are behind metal and glass, they feel able to shout and swear at the real or alleged berk in front. (Needless to say, being the brilliant driver I am, all those who receive my ire deserve it.)
On places such as Facebook, which I use, I occasionally see people whom I thought are quite reasonable people write or say things that make me think again. A case in point is the recent outpouring of rage over the fact that Donald Trump had decided that the US embassy should be shifted to Jerusalem. Apart from anything else, he is merely executing on a policy that had been approved of, in a bi-partisan vote, in Congress back when Clinton was in office. But, my FB room-mates shout, he should have not done this, he is stoking up the “Arab Street” (such people have, I suspect, never been to the ME), and this shows he is reckless, silly, has an orange face, yada fucking yada. And in one case, an acquaintance went into “the Jews running Congress and American politics mode”, making various references to Trump’s relations, his being a New Yorker (full of those ghastly people), and so on. I decided not to put the point to this FB fuckwit lest I cause a total meltdown, which is that if it is so terrible for Jerusalem to host a US embassy, with the implied recognition of said city as the Israeli capital, then why not just come out with it and say that the state of Israel should not exist at all?
A lesson learned, therefore, is that there are a lot of people out there who buy into the whole “Jewish conspiracy thing”. Now I know that not all anti-Israel people are Jew-haters, and that one can and should be able to discuss what that country does without falling down the rabbit hole of anti-Semitism. But there is, from my own impressions, considerable overlap between the two. And while not infallible as a guide, I take the view that people who dislike or fear Jews, and Israel, are fuckwits, and people whose judgement should be regarded with scorn.
So Donald Trump, thankyou for clarifying a few doubts I have had about certain people I know out there. I am beginning to think, what with the tax bill, the Supreme Court, agency and most cabinet picks, and now this, that the man is actually proving to be a decent POTUS, and a lot less scary than I had previously thought. All he needs to do is turn down the Twitter feed, but maybe enraging people in the way he does is precisely part of what makes him effective, even if it upsets our fastidious tastes. As Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has remarked, he’s even got “liberals” talking about the separation of power and Constitution again.
Here is an article by John Podhoretz on the issue of the embassy.
Key quote:
The idea that Jerusalem is not Israel’s capital has been a global pretense for decades, including here in the United States. It’s a pretense because Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital from the moment the new country secured a future by winning a bloody war for independence waged against it by Arab nations after they rejected the UN partition of the old British mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
Brexit: ‘Breakthrough’ deal paves way for future trade talks
In the spirit of 1066 And All That, is this a Good Thing or a Bad Thing?
N.B. Do not attempt to answer more than one question at a time. (An exception may be made for the Irish Question.)
Youtuber JeffHK works on container ships and his channel is very useful when one’s children ask questions about how stuff gets moved around the world, not to mention just fascinating in general.
One of his videos lists the advantages of working at sea. Paying less tax is among them. He expresses amazement that the income tax rate in the UK can be as high as 45%.
I heard in the UK if you earn more than 151 thousand pounds a year you get taxed 45%. That’s crazy! That’s half of what you earned; your blood, sweat and tears going into someone else’s pocket.
Another video lists disadvantages. Among them: regulations.
Every year new regulations come into force and sailors, we have to fetch out money for endorsements on new certificates, new licenses, more paperwork, more checklists, new codes, new safety procedures, new environmental laws […] We are paying to get certified for what we have been doing for hundreds of years. It’s almost like the government or marine schools are milking us for money. There’s no end to that.
But never mind the politics. Don’t miss the Suez Canal timelapse, the container loading explanation, or the ship tour. The production is of a high quality with good editing and judicious use of drone footage.
These new disintermediated internet marketplaces can have interesting effects.
Last month, MPs launched an inquiry into the apparent rise of so-called “pop-up” or temporary brothels. The phenomenon, where sex workers use Airbnb, hotels, or short-term holiday lets as a work base, has caused concern among politicians and the police.
It is not all good news, though:
But the pressure to make back the cost of the hotel meant she ended up booking clients she would not otherwise have seen. “There’s something – for me anyway – that felt quite bleak about rocking up in a hotel,” she said: “You get a ‘spidey sense’ and you’re like ‘I’m not sure about this one’… you do end up taking more risks.”
Apart from cost, there are other advantages to setting up a more permanent shop:
With CCTV and a panic alarm, she says the more permanent setup means she has better security measures: “I honestly can’t imagine working any other way now and it astounds me that what we’re doing is technically illegal.”
Reducing risks from clients brings more risk from state interference.
“At the moment, I have absolutely no trust in the police whatsoever,” she says. “You can literally go from being the victim, to being the criminal in a matter of minutes.”
Is it time to end the war on some consensual sex?
To be precise this is why we can’t have politicians who try to explain concepts from economics in a relatively grown up manner. When they give the more highminded strategy a go, along comes the Daily Mirror and the “pan-disability charity” Scope – whose Wikipedia entry is graced by one of those template messages saying, “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement” – to remind them why when attempting to discuss economics with the Great British Public the wiser course is to mindlessly repeat one pre-prepared soundbite. Daring to suggest that some groups might be on average be less productive than others, even in the context of saying that their participation in the labour force is a good thing, only brings on another mass bout of indignation dysentery. All one can do then is try not to breathe in too deeply until people have got it out of their system.
Quoth the Mirror:
Philip Hammond blames Britain’s low economic productivity on working disabled people
“The consequences of high levels of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, will be felt for many, many years to come.
“It is almost certainly the case that by increasing participation in the workforce, including far higher levels of participation by marginal groups and very high levels of engagement in the workforce, for example of disabled people – something we should be extremely proud of – may have had an impact on overall productivity measurements.”
Quoth Scope:
Anna Bird, Director of Policy and Research at disability charity Scope, said: “These comments are totally unacceptable and derogatory. They fundamentally undermine the Government’s policy to get more disabled people into work, and the ambition set out by the Prime Minister just a week ago.
“The Chancellor must urgently withdraw them and offer a full apology.”
Quoth Mirror commenter “DiAne”:
Didn’t Hitler say something similar?
It has been quite a grim century for Mongolia, many decades under the Soviet yoke after the ‘Mad Baron’ von Ungern-Sternberg managed to take over in the chaos after WW1, and write his own grim chapter, and still its capital is called ‘Red Hero’, but despite that name, Mongolia has got itself into the EU’s bad books, not by human rights abuses, but by a lack of them as a tax haven.
To determine whether a country is a “non-cooperative jurisdiction” the EU index measures the transparency of its tax regime, tax rates and whether the tax system encourages multinationals to unfairly shift profits to low tax regimes to avoid higher duties in other states. In particular these include tax systems that offer incentives such as 0% corporate tax to foreign companies.
The scoundrels, the shame of it, not taxing someone!
EU members have been left to decide what action to take against the offenders. Ministers ruled out imposing a withholding tax on transactions to tax havens as well as other financial sanctions.
OK, how about undercutting or matching them for starters? That would, actually, hurt them.
For some reason, the ‘charity’ Oxfam thinks it is entitled to chip in.
The UK-based charity Oxfam last week published its own list of 35 countries that it said should be blacklisted.
Are Oxfam’s shops taxed (or business-rated) in the same way as their commercial neighbours? Can they explain how sanctions (so useful against South Africa under Apartheid) improve the lot of the poor? Since sanctions harm, the corollary is that free trade doesn’t, and yet… But I digress.
Let’s hope that Mongolia shows the same defiance before its accusers as the Baron von Ungern-Sternberg did when facing a People’s Court, from ‘Setting the East Ablaze’ by Peter Hopkirk.
‘Showing no signs of fear at the fate awaiting him, the baron challenged the right of a ‘people’s court’ to try him. He told his Bolshevik accusers: ‘For a thousand years Ungerns have given other people orders. We have never taken orders from anyone. I refuse to accept the authority of the working class’.
Then they shot him.
The full blacklist is:
The 17 blacklisted territories are:
American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, South Korea, Macau, The Marshall Islands,Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates.
and conceding the point that taxes create poverty:
The EU made exceptions for countries faced with natural disasters such as hurricanes, and put the process temporarily on hold.
An interesting, and to my mind convincing, posting by Eric Raymond:
Decentralized threats are the mother of liberty because the optimum adaptive response to them is localist and individualist – the American ideal of the armed citizen delegating power upward. Centralized threats are the father of tyranny because the optimum response to them is the field army and the central command – war is the health of the state.
There is an implication for today’s conditions. Terrorism and asymmetrical warfare are decentralized threats. The brave men and women of Flight 93, who prevented September 11 2001 from being an even darker day than it was, were heroes in the best American tradition of bottom-up decentralized response. History will regret that they were not armed, and should record as a crime against their humanity that they were forbidden from it.
He links to this essay by Dave Kopel.
A book comparing and contrasting UK and US experiences with guns, by Joyce Lee Malcolm, is also worth reading. Here is her website.
The BBC, along with most of the Remain establishment, is presenting this as if it’s only the DUP which is standing in the way of an agreement between the EU and UK in advance of trade talks. In reality, I suspect a great many Tory MPs, more than a few old-school Labour MPs, and a large percentage of the British population would also object vehemently to Theresa May deciding for herself that Northern Ireland should remain under the jurisdiction of the EU at the behest of the Irish government and their masters in Brussels. Anyone who thinks this is a minor detail being blocked by a gaggle of DUP hardliners really doesn’t understand the issue at all. Or they do, but are spinning it differently for political gain.
– Tim Newman
Adriana Lukas, intermittently of this parish, will be giving a chat on the cheerful subject of Life under Communism. Turn up and meet assorted Samizdataistas at this Libertarian Home meetup event in London, Tuesday, December 5, 2017, 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM!
Some time ago a chap called Paul Golding from an organisation called Britain First followed me on Twitter. When people I’ve never heard of follow me my standard procedure is to have a look at their most recent tweets and if they sound interesting I follow them back. If at some later date I find them obnoxious or boring I unfollow them.
This rule is not quite universal. Out of fear of ending up in an echo chamber I follow a small number of communists. Communists, of course, are nothing but obnoxious and boring. But such is the price we have to pay if we want to know what the other half think believe.
Anyway, it would appear that thanks to the wonder of the Donald and the Jack, Mr Golding is now famous and people are saying all sorts of nasty things about him. Which is a surprise to me. I cannot recall him saying anything particularly unreasonable. He certainly doesn’t like Islam. But then again neither do I. But if he’d had a go at the Jews I would have noticed. Similarly, if he’d had a go at a racial minority I would have noticed. But he hasn’t. At least not in the tweets of his I have seen.
Now it may well be the case that Mr Golding harbours all sorts of unpleasant opinions – opinions that I violently disagree with – but if so he doesn’t seem to think they are ready for the ocean. For the time being they will have to remain stuck in port much like the French fleet prior to Trafalgar. Maybe he is biding his time in the hope that if he can lure enough ships into harbour he can then board them but if he is then he is making an appalling strategic mistake. If you want to win the argument first you have to have the argument. He may be a fascist but he might as well not be.
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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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