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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I knew who Dominic Frisby was before I knew who Elon Musk was I only really cemented in my head which of those Billionaires Having Something To Do With the Internet Elon Musk was in February 2018, when he sent his Tesla Roadster into space. I loved him for that, but fell out of love a few months later over Musk’s behaviour towards Vernon Unsworth. Since then, my regard for Mr Musk has crept up again. It’s nice having freedom of speech on the internet back. I now – and I do know how sad this is – follow him on Xitter or whatever it’s called these days.
In contrast, I have been reading about Dominic Frisby on Samizdata as an financial writer, economist, film-maker, singer and comedian since early 2014.
Elon Musk has finally caught up with us.
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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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Why would you think it’s sad that you follow him on X? Right or wrong, he’s an interesting newsmaker and influence. If Cthulhu were on X, I’d be following her.
(Unless, of course, you’re saying that following anyone on X is sad just because of what X is. That I might understand.)
I think anyone who can get “Gladstonian Liberal” into the rhyme structure of a song deserves a serious long round of applause.
As to Elon Musk, I think he is the most important human alive today, I could not come close to 1% of his work capacity, insight and innovative thinking. He is also one of the most interesting people to listen to that I know of, and utterly brave and unswayed by other people’s opinion. He’s got plenty of warts, but, honestly, I stand in awe of the guy. I’m an Elon fanboy.
(FWIW, I disagree with DJT a great deal more than I do with Elon, but he also is similar in his insatiable work capacity, focus and contempt for what other people say. Who among us would not wither under the legal pressure he is under, but it almost seems like water off a duck’s back to him. DJT is driven by ego, Elon by desire to advance the human condition. But DJT is also a pretty impressive person.)
I’ve met him many times, splendid chap, a fighter of good fights. He just needs to snap out of his keenness for Georgism, but I do have a lot of time for Dom.
Pretty sure Cthulhu is a he:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Cthulhu is neither good nor evil – merely indifferent to humanity.
You cannot gaze upon Cthulhu and remain sane. “Your body would crumble as your mind collapsed into madness.” “You cannot hope to understand Cthulhu fully as you would other creatures . . .”
Cthulhu is “the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind, and is also the object of worship . . .”
Seems clear to me that Cthulhu is a beautiful but woke woman. 😉
I’ve been following the various firms trying to develop private launch vehicles since my final year of uni 20 years ago, so have been aware of SpaceX since its early days. I also met Elon before he was well-known, maybe 2009?
That said I’ve only been aware of Frisby since his ’17 million f*ck offs’ Brexit song.
I think bobby b wins the internet today 🤣
As far as i understand, nowadays all & only people opposed to the globalist (US/EU/UK) Establishment are “”far-right””.
But this is a xxi century thing.
Previously, all & only fascists were “far-right”.
I can already hear the pedants screaming:
but… but… fascism is left!!!
Well, it might be to you, but the fact is, in the xx century, when people said “far-right”, what they meant was: fascist.
Snorri.
That the Fascists and National Socialists were both economic Collectivists is well known to you – we both know of such works as Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” or Ludwig Von Mises’ “Omnipotent Government”. But as Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn pointed out – they were also social revolutionaries, people who wanted to utterly transform society.
It is odd that people agree that this is so about the philosopher Fichte – whose ideas were taken up by the National Socialists so long after his death, or the ideas of the Italian philosophers who the Fascists took ideas from (and one of those philosophers was Mussolini himself), but they reject the logical next step – namely that both the National Socialists and the Fascists were radicals. It appears that any failure to stick to every detail of Marxism makes someone “right wing”.
Of course, this is what Dominic Frisby, and he is a fine fellow indeed, is mocking.
Today even an Orthodox Marxist is “right wing” – because Orthodox Marxists do not accept the obsession with racial and sexual groups of “Critical Theory” “Woke” (Frankfurt School) Marxism.
In short – Lenin, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx….. would all be considered “far right” by the “Woke” Marxists who dominate every institution, public and private, of the Western world.
Dominic Frisby is a fine fellow indeed.
Great point Bobby, but I have to tell you, I’m a bit worried about you since you apparently want to follow her on X. I know she is utterly captivating, but she is going to rip your balls off. Walk away dude. Perhaps an intervention is in order?
Of course “the source of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind, and is also the object of worship . . .” is a pretty good description of social media in general, so maybe you are spot on.
Fraser, most of those quotes reminded me of my ex of 40 years, so I think I’m well suited to handle Cthulhu. Lust tempered with wariness. 😉
Paul:
Of course, but that does not change the fact that, on “the Continent” and, i believe, also in the Anglosphere, when people said ‘far-right’, what they meant was ‘fascist’.
If you want to say that words do not mean what people mean by them, they mean something else, then please say so explicitly!
If you read “between the lines” in The Road to Serfdom, then you might get the same impression that i got, that Hayek considered Lenin (and Stalin) as “socialists of the Right”.
And in fact Lenin did argue that left-wing communism is an infantile disorder.
I learned of Mr. Frisby from Professor Elemental and Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer. I thought he was just some creative studio wonk, like a less psychotic Phil Specter. I never knew he did his own music and videos until YouTube served one up for me. Not sure how that slipped past the Google Censors.
Snorri – I did not get that impression when reading “The Road to Serfdom”. Anyone who really did consider Lenin, or Robespierre for that matter, to be “on the right” would be using the term “right” in a way that is utterly bizarre.
What I got, when first reading the Road to Serfdom, was a nagging feeling that Hayek did not really believe in the foundational principles he discusses in the work – Hayek correctly says that Old Whigs and Classical Liberals based their position on human agency (free will) and rights-against-the-state (hence the Bill of Rights and so on) – but no where in the work does Hayek say “and this is what I also believe”.
When I read Hayek’s more philosophical works, such as “The Sensory Order” and even the “Constitution of Liberty” (this 1960 work on politics and economics starts with a discussion of philosophical matters – a very bad discussion of philosophical matters), it became clear that he did not believe in the foundational philosophical (moral – and what used to be called “the nature of man”) principles of the Old Whigs and Classical Liberals – that, on the contrary, he thought he could have political and economic liberty without this philosophical foundation – indeed without any foundation at all.
This was a deeply depressing experience – but it did explain why the Western world was in such a horrible decline, as even its key defenders did not believe in its foundational principles.
Undermine the foundations, most importantly the nature of humans as beings – as free will moral agents (the “I” that can know the difference between moral right and moral wrong – and, with effort, to choose to do what is morally right against our desire to do evil) and the house-of-the-West must fall.
The view of what humans are, that Hayek presents is that of creatures (if they can even be called creatures) who do not deserve liberty, indeed are incapable of liberty. And it must be stressed that Hayek does NOT invent this false picture of what humans are (basically denying our humanity – our status as human BEINGS) he faithfully follows the fashionable philosophy of our age – going all the way back to Bentham, Hume and Hobbes.
A fashionable philosophy that can only lead to tyranny and then to destruction.