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 “Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that’s to build.”
– Marc Andreessen.
As “manifestos” go, this is not bad at all and more sense than seems to come out of a lot of certain businessmen these days (particularly those that seem more interested in giving their wealth away, like Bill Gates, than creating it). Here is a follow-up that supports much of what this Silicon Valley rainmaker writes, with some caveats and added points.
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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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Bill Gates and others are interested in POWER – he is a first class grifter (a con artist skill he inherited from his mother – who used her activity in the United Way charity to get to the head of IBM to push her son), he may not know much about computer programming (but then I KNOW VASTLY LESS THAN HE DOES), but he has got major corporations to put him in a position to gain truly vast sums of money and is now conning the world – going on television show after television show telling the world how medical science means that people must do this and must not do that….. that every aspect of human life should be controlled by wise rulers, such as (no surprise) BILL GATES himself.
For a grifter to gets lots of money is one thing, but for a con artist to end up helping to rule-the-world is something else. Especially when, in truth, he has no medical qualifications at all. “Comrade Doctor” Bill Gates is NOT a medical doctor. But medical doctors (qualified and with many years of practicing medicine) soon find themselves censored off Social Media if they go against Comrade Doctor Gates and his associates.
But what sort of legacy is that to leave behind you.
You grift to gets lots of money, which you then spend (“charitably”) to gain yourself the POLITICAL POWER to control the lives everyone else. “Where a mask!” “Do not wear a mask!” “Only travel if you have one of my digital passports”, “Only go to work if you have proof you have been injected with what I want you to be injected with”, “Only say what I want you to say”, “crawl on your hands and knees to me – or you do not eat”.
That is not the sort of thing a real man wants to leave behind him as his legacy. Even if you were bullied as a little boy – do not turn round and bully everyone else now as some sort of sick revenge for being bullied yourself as a child.
Why not do as Jon Huntsman (senior) or, yes, Marc Andreesson, has suggested – and actually BUILD for the future.
Do not be obsessed with controlling the lives of everyone else, obsessed with punishing anyone who disobeys you, – BUILD things that will be of use long after you are gone.
You do not leave the world a better place by making everyone prostrate themselves – to make yourself look tall by comparison.
As for the article itself. Good though it is – I do have a few problems with it.
I see no reason to massively expand universities such as Harvard – some people may lean things of value there (although I am not sure about that – not on balance) – but if they do it is because is is a relatively small place.
If you have a university of a hundred thousand people – then you might as well learn at home (as Mr Gates would, correctly, point out – there are such things as computers).
If a physical university has a value – it is a value that is lost if you try and scale it up.
As for building lots more housing in San Francisco – why?
The place is a Credit Bubble city in a Credit Bubble State – no rational manufacturer would to be anywhere near these sky high taxes and endless regulations.
Singapore it is not.
Nor did anyone “need” government bailouts.
The government did not hand out such money in 1919-1920 (even under the Wilson Administration).
And it was not done in the late 1950s mass death Asian Flu, or the mass death Hong Kong flu of the late 1960s.
In parts of Canada the “lockdown” is carrying on even now.
And in Boulder Colorado (and other lunatic Collectivist places) you can be sent to prison (for up to a year) for not wearing a mask.
It is now obvious that this is NOT about a virus.
This is a POWER GRAB.
There comes a point where the grifter (the con man) is less irritating than the “mark”.
If people continue to allow themselves to be conned by the “lockdown” grifters the power mad con artists, then they DESERVE what it is going to be done to them.
“Obey me in every aspect of your life – or you will DIE”.
“So I will be immortal if I bow down and worship you? No, I do not think so – and, by the way, are you aware that a large calibre bullet in the face is actually more deadly than one of your viruses? Just saying.”
TT of the Ayn Rand is correct – it is ideas (principles) that are key.
And California is not a place of good principles – its principles are top-down Collectivism.
Computer companies should move OUT of California.
Not be like “Google” and hand over millions of Dollars in “Social Responsibility” money to people who want to “cut the throats of the capitalists”.
‘TT of the Ayn Rand is correct – it is ideas (principles) that are key.’
Thanks Paul. Rand’s idea that people (and nations) will act according to their most fundamental principals and world view always struck me as common sense and not particularly controversial, yet it is an idea that conservatives and libertarians cannot seem to grok.
There seems to be a law or principle of the human being, that when you get very wealthy, you are then inclined to random acts of charity. Perhaps Mr. Gates has reached that point.
As for that manifesto, it has good principles. Can anyone give a better one? My own attempt is called Aurarchy. It’s motto is “For Gold, and the Golden Rule!” We should have Gold Standard for the economy, and practice the Golden Rule for personal interactions.