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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Yes, I learn from a tweet by Anton Howes, a young academic whom I greatly admire, that his first book, entitled Arts & Minds: How The Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation will be out on May 12th. It is already available on Kindle.
I will start reading this book with the prejudice in my head that the Industrial Revolution was not only “industrial”; it also resembled what we more usually mean by a “revolution”, in the sense that it was also an ideological event. People didn’t just do this, for their own private and selfish reasons. They believed in doing it. They told each other, and anyone else who would listen, that what they were doing would do good, on a huge scale.
But unlike with almost all other “revolutions”, the ideologists of the Industrial Revolution were completely and triumphantly right. This triumphant rightness has been such an elephantine presence in the room of history, and is so very counter-intuitive (“Ideologists are all nutters!”), that the ideological nature of this revolution has now become nearly invisible.
The concluding paragraph of the Amazon blurb …:
Informative and entertaining, Arts and Minds reveals how a society of public-spirited individuals tried to make their country a better place, and draws vital lessons from their triumphs and failures for all would-be reformers today.
… together with the title of the book, arts and minds, suggest to me that the above prejudices will be confirmed and strengthened.
If there is a disaster, would you like people for hundreds of miles around to drop everything and make herculean efforts to get those worst affected exactly the sort of help they need most – even when the helpers have no personal connection with the victims? Would you like factories worldwide to rush to switch production to making whatever they are short of in the disaster zone?
You would? Then let people make money by doing it. You can either rely on the small subset of people who will seriously disrupt their lives to help strangers out of pure charity, or you can also get help from the much larger pool of people who who are pushed from vague thoughts of benevolence into action by the prospect of profit. Let them sell goods of which there is a shortage at a higher price and soon there won’t be a shortage any more.
– something sorta like this was said by someone, whom I would gladly credit if I could remember who they were.
My post was prompted by this story by Edward Thicknesse in City A.M.: Coronavirus: Calls for price controls dismissed as ‘economically illiterate’.
Coronavirus is dominating all our lives just now, but I have little to say about it other than that I, like almost everyone else, wish it all to stop, both the virus itself and the measures now believed necessary to combat it. Whether these measures have been and are insufficient or wise or excessive, I look forward to reading about in the months and years ahead, but do not now have much of an opinion about.
Instead, I would like to ask some questions about the political beliefs that most of us here share. What are the best arguments you know of in favour of libertarianism? I define “libertarianism” loosely, as a general inclination towards liberty, towards property as the way to solve the problems of contending liberties, general lifestyle freedom, and (very) little in the way of governmental power, either financial or regulatory.
Insofar as I can remember how I first thought about such things (during the 1960s and early 1970s), what made me a libertarian was that the world’s most free countries seemed also to be the nicest countries, while the least free countries were definitely the nastiest ones. This contrast was especially clear when you looked at single countries which had been divided into two countries, unfree and much freer, such as Korea and Germany.
What pushed me away from the majority “centrist” notion of how things should be (quite a lot of liberty but also a lot of government), was the thought that if extreme liberty worked amazingly well (Hong Kong seemed to me to illustrate that) and extreme lack of liberty definitely worked extremely badly, why would you want to have a “balanced” mixture of these two contending processes, one very good but the other extremely bad? There was a widespread view, then as now, that “business” needed to be quite free, but that things like healthcare, education, and (a particular interest of mine) architecture, could not or should not be treated only as businesses, as the mere outcomes of free and individual decisions, like the washing machine business or the hi-fi business. I thought: Why not? Surely this notion should be given a serious go, in at least some countries. I further thought that if it was given a serious go it would work out very well, and that it consequently would, or at least should, spread very widely and preferably to nearly everywhere.
I further believed that “lifestyle” freedom and commercial freedom went well together, each reinforcing the other, despite the loudly expressed opinion from many of my contemporaries, who also favoured lifestyle freedom but who believed that only government power applied to the advantage of hitherto disadvantaged minorities could set them free.
So, those were my answers to my above questions, and such thinking continues to make me call myself a libertarian. But are mine the sort of arguments that will best persuade others to arrive at similar conclusions?
What I’m hoping for from commenters is not so much minute dissection of only a very few arguments, but rather quantity of arguments, each quickly and perhaps rather roughly described, together with expressed preferences for this sort argument over that, in terms of persuasiveness. Thanks in advance for as many answers to these questions as commenters are kind enough to supply.
Concerning quantity of arguments in particular, different people respond to different arguments, depending on how they already think, and therefore maybe quantity is the key to successful libertarian persuasion. We need lots of arguments, including many that we have either not yet thought of, or made much use of, or which we ourselves do not now consider very persuasive. Perhaps the title of this posting should be: What are all the arguments for libertarianism?
By the way, you don’t have to be a libertarian to contribute to this discussion. Quite the contrary. Every argument against libertarianism calls for a response, which it may get, or may not get but should.
Links have been lacking in this so far, so here is one to end with, although not a proper one because it is to a video recording of a talk that I myself gave in 2012, to the now alas dormant Libertarian Home. This talk was entitled Libertarianism Is Simple To Describe But Not Simple To Argue For. Partly because of what it said, this talk started well but became less coherent as it went on. But I’m still quite proud of it, because despite its meandering nature, it does refer to many different sorts of arguments for and against libertarianism, of the sort I seek to learn more about now.
I’ve just been reading the twitter feed of a senior journalist and also of a well-known philosopher. They seem to me to be preposterous figures. One of the extraordinary effects of digital is that it reveals the hollowness and mediocrity of those we’d once have lauded.
– Douglas Carswell
“NHS phone app holds key to lifting UK’s coronavirus lockdown”, the Times reports.
Ministers have ordered the creation of an NHS mobile phone app the government hopes will help end the coronavirus lockdown.
The app would allow mobile phones to trace users who have come into contact with infected people, alerting them to get tested.
This would make it possible to start lifting the most stringent social-distancing measures from late next month, ministers hope.
Senior sources say NHSX, the health service’s technology arm, has been working on the app with Google and Apple at “breakneck speed”. The system will use Bluetooth technology to alert those who download the app if they have been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19.
Combined with a vast expansion in testing, which ministers claim will hit 100,000 a day by the end of the month, the app is a central plank in the government’s push to lift the lockdown. “We believe this could be important in helping the country return to normality,” a Whitehall source said.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, is considering how to incentivise people to install the app. Experts say the “track and trace” concept only works effectively if 60% of people adopt it.
One idea under consideration would mean people being told they could resume normal work and home life if they installed it on their phones.
As I said in the title, the worst of it is that this might be the way to control the epidemic, an outcome greatly to be desired. And then it might be the way to control us.
“Police under fire for telling dad he can’t play with his kids in his own front garden”, LBC reports.
I found myself with a certain sympathy for the cop lady. Daniel Connell, the man who made this recording, gave her an unnecessarily hard time by pretending to misunderstand what she meant by “special powers”. But his pretended misunderstanding of her powers was not nearly as serious as her actual misunderstanding of them. As the title of this post says, it is not asking too much that those entrusted with the police power should have some basic knowledge of what that power does and does not entitle them to demand.
South Yorkshire Police released a statement on Twitter, saying: “This encounter was well-intentioned but ill-informed and we’d like to apologise for the way it was handled.
“We’ve spoken to the officer concerned and made our approach absolutely clear.
“Again, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and will continue our work to support the NHS.”
I’m amused to see we’ve now reached the “interracial marriage is bad” part of the transition of the illiberal left into 1950s conservatives.
– Marcus Walker responding to this.
There’s a fruit store on our street
It’s run by a Greek.
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers “no”.
He just “yes”es you to death, and as he takes your dough
He tells you
“Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.”
Those are some of the words to the 1923 hit song “Yes, We Have No Bananas” by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. The song is mostly associated with World War II, but according to Wikipedia it had found its way into the history books before that:
The song was the theme of the outdoor relief protests in Belfast in 1932. These were a unique example of Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland protesting together, and the song was used because it was one of the few non-sectarian songs that both communities knew. The song lent its title to a book about the depression in Belfast.
For nine decades “the depression” meant the one that started in 1929. But the coronavirus looks likely to bring in its wake an economic depression that may well take the definite article for itself. Naomi O’Leary of the Irish Times reports,
Euro finance ministers reach compromise to fund pandemic recovery
Deal dashes hopes of Italy, Ireland and seven others for the roll out of so-called corona bonds
The 19 members of the euro zone agreed a compromise on Thursday to aid states in need of funding to address the profound economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
But it dashed the hopes of Italy, Ireland, Spain and six other member states that had called for eurobonds to bring down borrowing costs and send a signal of unity as the continent confronts a health crisis that is threatens to become an economic disaster.
Under the deal, states can borrow from the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund to finance spending needed to overcome the crisis.
I do not seek to play down their achievement in reaching a compromise at all. Every finance minister on Earth must be passing sleepless nights wondering how best to deal with our current predicament. But the dilemma faced by the Eurozone countries is particularly acute. Italy and Spain will never forgive the EU if they receive no help in their hour of need. But the northern countries were repeatedly assured that EU membership and the adoption of the Euro would never mean they had to write a blank cheque to what they see as the spendthrifts to the south (and a few other directions besides). The Dutch, the Germans, the Finns and the Austrians must hope that when they say, “yes, we have no Eurobonds” the upbeat momentum of the first three words will carry them over the next two.
“The signature of authoritarianism is not the use of force, but the pathological dependence on deception, often to the extent of becoming self-delusional.”
– Tom G Palmer and Simon Lee
“Viktor Orban ruins his rivals with power grab”, the Times reports.
Under a regime described by critics as the “omnipotence law”, Mr Orban’s government is able to take sweeping measures to tackle the coronavirus epidemic without parliamentary approval.
Within days of the reform it announced that parties, banks, multinational corporations and local councils would be obliged to pay into a £3.3 billion national fund designed to cushion the blow to the Hungarian economy.
Political parties must hand over half of the grants they receive from the state, a total of about £2.8 million, Gergely Gulyas, one of Mr Orban’s closest ministerial allies, said. The measure will apply to all Hungarian parties, including Fidesz, the prime minister’s party, which is backed by businesses that have benefited from public contracts. Some of its struggling rivals, however, are heavily reliant on public funding. Jobbik, the largest opposition party in the National Assembly, is still reeling from a fine of nearly £1 million after auditors found that it had underpaid for billboard advertising.
Emphasis added. From what little I know of Hungarian politics, the Jobbik and Fidesz parties seem to have swapped bodies. I hold no brief for either. But I can sympathise with the plight of anybody – or any body – that suddenly has their financial support kicked away. Unfortunately that is what happens when the state pays your bills: what the state gives, the state can take away. Hence the “self ownership” tag on this post.
As I wrote the above, I remembered having written something very similar before. That post was about the last of the Kalahari Bushmen. The plight of the last opposition parties of Hungary is not quite as desperate as theirs, but give it time.
So few people have any understanding of the importance liquidity plays in markets (which is why ‘speculator’ is a dirty word to the ill-educated twats who don’t grasp the essential role speculators play).
– Perry de Havilland
“But if this really is the moral equivalent of war then history teaches us that wars can be won on the battlefield but lost on the home front, and just as nations have been defeated because they ran out of food or a revolution broke out, so the Government’s strategy could collapse because the millions of civilians stuck indoors lose patience.”
– Tim Stanley
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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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