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“He told me it was now his apartment because he’s an anarchist and nobody owns anything.” The indefatigable Andy Ngô reports a little falling out among Antifa comrades Sean Gabriel Lopez and Camillo Masagli:
Mr Lopez, who goes by the name “No$hu”, tweeted at 6:35 PM on Oct 18, 2021:
No$hu
@Noshu4me
Camillo ( who you know as trumpet man) and his girlfriend just tried to overtake my apartment. I let them stay there after they reached out to me from Seattle, telling me that they were houseless and needed help. I paid for their train ticket and gave them my space to stay in.
And at 6:40 PM.
He told me it was now his apartment because he’s an anarchist and nobody owns anything. I asked them to leave, and that only made them more angry. They than [sic] made threats while standing between me and the exit, but I was able to leave that night after letting them calm down.
Not to blow my own trumpet regarding “trumpet man”, but I predicted this ten years ago: “Upon what basis can an Occupy protest ask someone to leave?”
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Didn’t the Spanish anarchists essentially settle those sorts of questions with bullets?
The biter, bit!
I remember seeing a comic along these lines. An anarchist is hosting a party and holding forth on the evils of private property. He sees a man emerge from his bedroom and goes to investigate.
“Hey!” the anarchist cries. “You shit on my bed!!”
“Hmm,” the man replies, “well I did shit on a bed …”
My rules apply only to you, not to me. The motto of every tyrant in history. Imagine, for example, campaigning to defund the police while at the same time demanding extra funds for your own personal protective detail. Or saying that riots burning people’s buildings were just mostly peaceful protests, but riots in the temple to democracy are the worst thing in the world demanding endless detention and the severest of criminal penalties. Or wear a mask or you can’t go out to eat, unless you are a powerful politician dining at the French Laundry. Examples abound.
Well, this particular useful idiot is clearly no longer useful. That just leave the idiot.
Poetic justice, the only form that appears to remain. I’m guessing he hasn’t got the wit or balls to try the same thing on anybody else.
Even the poems need rewriting for the modern age. 🙂
[With acknowledgments to Ogden Nash’s (Pearl Harbour-motivated, I hope) poem “How courteous is the Japanese”.]
>>Pearl Harbour-motivated
Apparently ’twas written in 1938, so I’d assume the Japanese invasion of China would have been the inspiration. Regardless, I like your modern adaptation.
“it was now his apartment because he’s an anarchist and nobody owns anything”
Spot the logical fallacy.
The very rich people, the “Davos” crowd (World Economic Forum) behind the left, laugh about all this – some minor league leftist having their private property violated does not bother them at all.
It does not bother them, because the very rich people behind the left do not conceive of the possibility that it might happen to them.
But it will happen to them. Eventually it will be happen to them.
The endless flow of money-created-from-nothing has concentrated wealth into a few hands (the Cantillon Effect – although carried to an extreme that Richard Cantillon could not have dreamed of) and the endless regulations (such as the lockdowns) have also helped to do this.
People such as Bill Gates declare that they are not the selfish owners of land and so on – they are the “custodians of the community”.
But it is only a matter of time before “the masses” (who will “own nothing” but “be happy” according to the Davos crowd) notice that the “custodians of the community” are living much better than they, “the masses”, are.
“Do not worry” someone such as Bill Gates would reply – “the masses will only have electric cars and those cars will be programmed to go no where near our estates” – which sounds rather as if that “land held in trust for the community” is PRIVATE land after all (even after it is “re wilded”).
But “the masses” will find ways of getting to the private estates (“held in trust for the community”) of the super rich people behind the left.
“We have lots of security” – not enough Davos crowd, not enough.
You eat beef whilst telling everyone else to eat insects, you can go anywhere you like (by private jet if you feel like it) whilst limiting the freedom of movement of everyone else, you are warm while other people freeze to death because of your energy taxes and regulations.
And your endless money-created-from-nothing and regulations (such as the lockdowns) have concentrated property in your hands – and destroyed the independent business enterprises of “the masses”.
Eventually things are going to go very badly for you Davos Crowd – very badly indeed.
I once had 3 cracked ribs, from a discussion with a llama whose goals differed from my own. Now, on cold days, or when I cough or laugh too hard, they hurt.
Two Motrins, this morning.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? From the Communards, to the Soviets, from Occupy to Antifa – they never, ever, ever think it will happen to them. I will wager good cash money that Mr Masagli and his girlfriend still have possession of Mr Lopez’s apartment, and that he is still crying the blues about the injustice of it all. ‘But I’m one of the righteous!’. No, you’re just another dupe who ran up against someone who was prepared to deploy more force than you were, only now we’re playing by your rules and nobody’s going to do a thing about it. Good luck.
Ooof. Maybe 3 Motrins.
llater,
llanas
“Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can.
Nothing to kill or die for
A brotherhood of man . . . ”
Well, here it is, sucker. Enjoy.
llater,
llamas
The stupid kind of anarchist, who believes that property is a government-created legal fiction. Thus no government – no property.
As opposed to the other kind of anarchist (anarcho-capitalist, propertarian anarchist) who believes that property is real while government ought to be fictional.
@ Niall Kilmartin
Like it!
@llamas
“Imagine no possessions…sharing all the world”
I think advocates of this view should all start small and locally. Imagine no possessions. Let’s start with toothbrushes. Imagine you didn’t own your own toothbrush and had to share it with everyone.
Doesn’t sound so appealing now.
Wait, if anarchists don’t own anything (which would come as a surprise to real anarchists) then how is it ‘his’ apartment?
Maybe these new apartment owners will in turn be replaced by new apartment owners muscling in, though if the couple have any sense they wouldn’t share their newly acquired property with any of the deadbeats they used to associate with.
Perhaps in all this it is a question not of ownership, but what you are determined to defend as your own. Such a hateful concept, I know, but when people have gained something worthwhile, ownership becomes far more important than dogma and ideology.
“overtake”? “houseless”? “reached out”?
Excellent comments, the situation reminds me of a remark reportedly attributed to Stalin, almost as a folksy anecdote about ‘Uncle Joe’, it is undated, but if true, presumably pre-dates his rise to absolute power. Methinks the source is the well-known Italian reporter Ben Trovato, relayed by Nikolai Tolstoy. Someone asked Stalin if he knew what gratitude was. He sat back in his chair and puffed on his pipe and replied ‘Yes, I know it very well. It is a sickness suffered by dogs.‘.
I don’t think government should be fictional, just genuinely restricted in its operation and small enough to drown in the bath tub.
Please don’t think that i do not appreciate the irony of this story, if i say that it relates to one or more comments that i wrote a long time ago (and Natalie was gracious enough to acknowledge my contribution).
The comments were about David D. Friedman’s distinction between the concepts of positive rights, normative rights, and legal rights.
Without trying to summarize the quite short essay at the link, let me just say that Mr Lopez has a legal right — and by Lockean/NAP standards (which he does not accept) also a normative right — to ‘his’ apartment.
Ultimately, Mr Lopez also had a positive right to his apartment *in this instance* since he was able to throw out Mr Masagli and girlfriend, even without the police. But it might not be as easy for him next time.
If you don’t get to own what you bought with the money that you went out to work for, then why go out to work? Nobody works, nothing is produced, no possessions. I presume that “Imagine no possessions” is imagining people having lots of stuff and just sharing it amicably. The reality is rather different, as this dupe found out.
This was why all of Lennon’s music was always available for free, why he failed to pursue licensing for his body of work, and why he was never able to afford that multi-million dollar apartment in the Dakota building that he always wanted. What a guy!