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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 – the tech insurgent’s battle for the future Stagnation is an illusion. We grow or we die, and our planet is a museum of civilizations gatekept to their extinction.
It’s a grim question, but worth asking: are we improving our world today, or are we living in the ruins of a world that died with our grandparents?
The last moon landing took place on December 14th, 1972. Today, there are ninety-three nuclear reactors in the United States. We’ve built 3 since the year 2000. Following a century of complications, and a full decade building, New York City recently opened three new Subway stations along Second Avenue. There is presently no city in America capable of building a complete underground rail system. Fortunately, that knowledge hasn’t yet been lost. We’ve just been gatekept to paralysis. But a century from now, with no course correction, who will be left to teach our grandkids what to build, or how?
– Mike Solana (£)
Or as the excellent Virginia Postrel phased it in her great book “The Future and Its Enemies”… Stasists vs. Dynamists
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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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Unwilling and unable are the same in practice.
I don’t think the lack of new subways is simply some bureaucratic lethargy or the right palms not being greased. You’re talking about digging tunnels under existing buildings, around foundations going down to bedrock, around infrastructure like water and sewer lines, gas lines, phone trunks, electrical systems, extant subways, and gods only know what else, not to mention unknown engineering problems like structures and tunnels planners didn’t anticipate because the original maps and plans were lost ages ago when a courthouse burned down or an archive was lost in a flood, or some other such disaster. Not to mention the cost of such a venture will be in the billions, even for a simple and small system. That money has to come from somewhere and raising taxes and grants from state and federal coffers will only go so far.
Does a pessimistic mindset contribute to a civilizational decline?
Or as Jeremy Clarkson put it, “our Concorde moment”.
United States and other Western nations are strangled by bureaucracy – and by institutions who all take the same line (a line which often is totally divorced from objective reality – divorced from the truth).
Policy is often no longer made by the political leaders nominally “in charge” – policy is presented to them, and they are drowning in a world of endless “conferences”, “training” and “briefings”.
Even if a “political leader” has the best of intentions – they often (not always – but often) find themselves in a position where changing policy is just-not-possible, where everything is predetermined, and they find themselves acting out a role.
As for “a 100 years” – it will not take that long, the present system will have collapsed by the end of 2025.
But the international establishment elite are not worried – as they have a “new” system of international governance (by international organisations and Partner Corporations) ready to roll out – “digital currency” and all. At least they-think-they-do, as I suspect that their new system will fail – and will fail horribly.
Is it possible for a democratically elected leader to get their country to fundamentally change course – to really roll-back-statism? To “unstrangle” society?
Well the President of Argentina is trying – it will be interesting to see if he manages it.
The Budget Office just announced that the Federal budget deficit will be 400 Billion Dollars worse this year than they estimated – 400 Billion Dollars “not much if you say it quick” and this is even with the government rigging the inflation index to try and keep down index linked benefit payments.
By August the American government debt (just the Federal debt – not the State, local, Corporate and personal debt – all of which are also exploding) will be over 35 Trillion Dollars – a number so big the human mind can not grasp it.
In reality America is not “going to go bankrupt” – it already-is bankrupt – although the official acceptance that the system has collapsed will be delayed till after President Trump returns to the Whitehouse – so they can blame him for an economic and cultural (societal) collapse that has been many decades in the making.
The monetary and financial system is based on nothing – nothing at all. The money is not a commodity (it is not gold or sliver – or anything) the money is just the whims of the political and corporate elite – they create it from nothing (nothing at all), and the financial system is not based on Real Savings (what Real Savings?), it is also just the whims of the political and corporate elite.
This is not capitalism – this is nothing to with capitalism.
Y’know, Paul… I think there’s a sign in all this that you’re missing: Yeah, it’s 400 billion dollars we don’t have, but as you point out, it’s “fiat money” that is basically… Imaginary.
Just like a gold-based economy is, when you get down to brass tacks. The whole thing is basically “What confidence do you have in the value of that-there symbolic whosit…?”, whether you’re talking gold, one of those Papuan stone coins that never move, just change ownership… Or, whatever else your using as a medium of exchange.
And, as such, so long as confidence in the dollar/economy last, why… They can do anything.
The national debt ain’t really real. When the economy crashes, which it likely will because everyone is suddenly going to go “Wow, there ain’t no there, there…” and lose their willing suspension of disbelief that’s essential to the system, well… Ain’t nothing really have going to have changed, except that there won’t be a reliable means of exchange. People are still going to need food, the food’s gonna be there on the farm, the ores are going to be in the mines, and the labor is still going to be “worth” the same as it always was… The whole thing is basically a massive con game, and always has been. What intrinsic value did gold have, for currency purposes? Could you make anything with it, besides coinage and jewelry? Nope; there weren’t industrial uses for it at all, until the 20th Century.
The whole thing is, and always has been, a scam. Periodically, we wake up and notice that fact, and that’s usually when the economic crises come along…
I have to agree, however, that this time? They’re carrying the whole joke out to ridiculous extreme.
It isn’t true. A new subway system has been built in Las Vegas. It isn’t very large but it is absolutely illustrative of the issue here. The forward movement of humanity is basically a tension between new technology pushing us forward and government dragging us backward. People like Musk change the world, and then that massive forward step is taxed and regulated dragging us all backward.
Fortunately technology has generally been stronger than government which is why the human condition improves exponentially.
Fraser Orr said:
I think that you’re stating a truth here, but at the same time, it isn’t quite correct. The dichotomy isn’t “technology and government”, but “entrenched interests and innovation”. Typically, it is the government that winds up being used by the entrenched interests, but there have been clear cases where the government has been right there at the forefront of innovation.
The Bell Labs folks wanted what amounted to VOIP to be put in place back during the late 1960s. The people running the phone companies said “Nope… That’d threaten our comfortable sinecure marketing of plain old copper…”
Eventually, VOIP took over, and long distance is now literally too cheap to bother billing.
The seesaw back-and-forth of people wanting to innovate and then being stymied by the “powers-that-be” in whatever industry or field isn’t at all new; we’ve been struggling against the drag of this since virtually the beginning of history. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if there had been conflict between the flint knappers doing early-days stuff and the innovators that came up with the Solutrean techniques.
It ain’t the government. The government is just the tool used by a lot of the “drag on progress” types, the rent-seeking parasites. Look into what happened with regards to the EPA refusing to certify high-efficiency diesel engines here in the US… That was down to one guy with an axe to grind. It’s why we don’t have any of the high-tech Toyota diesels here, and they dominate the world market elsewhere. And, I’ve heard intimations that he did what he did because someone paid his ass off…
Progress usually comes via the obituary column. The guys who resisted scientific theories like continental drift and the great floods at the end of the Ice Age here in Washington State all had to die off before the new and better ideas could take hold. This is a constant feature of human existence, I fear.
Kirk – yes they, the Corporate State elite, can produce as much “money” as they like.
Which means that the money will be worth less and less – it will buy less and less, although they will continue to lie and say “inflation is very low” as prices double and triple, and-so-on.
Frasor – yes Nevada is a hopeful place, relatively low taxes, a big gold producer, lots of ranching (the idea that it all desert is wrong) and-so-on
Unfortunately Nevada is in the United States – where the Corporate State can take everything you have (via their corrupt Kangaroo Courts – or just via massive inflation, which they deny exists) and throw you in prison (to be abused) for imaginary “crimes”.
When the FBI or the ATF come, in their paramilitary armour, in the early hours of the morning to smash down your door, stick rifles in your face, and drag you out – what are you going to do?
Remember they can put you in prison for internet memes (even if you just copy internet memes that they themselves have used) or they can put you in prison, to be cut up with knives, for “murder” – even when no murder has taken place, they can and they do – and they laugh as they do it.
It is later than most people think.
Perhaps the election of President Trump in November (if they do not murder him, or throw him jail for imaginary crimes, or just rig the election – as they did in 2020) will turn the back the tide of Corporate State tyranny – or perhaps it will not (with President Trump being blamed for the economic and social breakdown that is inevitable now).
We shall have to see.
Where the money is corrupt, everything else, eventually, becomes corrupt.
The money has been corrupt in the United States for a very long time – and now everything else is also corrupt.
“But Paul – this is true of all other countries”.
Exactly.
This system is going to collapse – but the international establishment elite are not worried, as they have (or they believe they have) and even more corrupt system ready to take its place.
A system of open international governance – by organisations setting policy (they partly do already) and Partner Corporations – with Digital Money making sure that that people buy what they are told to buy (because they will not be able to buy anything else).
The dream of Henri Saint-Simon of some two centuries ago – made real (in all its evil) by modern technology.
For the international Corporate State establishment elite are NOT opposed to modern technology – on the contrary, as long as modern technology is used for the purposes of tyranny, they strongly support it.
Will their economic system work?
No, I do not believe it will – but their tyranny will do terrible harm (inflict vast amounts of suffering upon human beings) before it collapses.
This ain’t new..
William Gladstone: But what use is it?
Michael Faraday: Why, sir, I think one day you’ll be able to tax it.
This ain’t true. The two never met. But the sense of it is which is why this quote persists.
@Kirk
I think that you’re stating a truth here, but at the same time, it isn’t quite correct. The dichotomy isn’t “technology and government”, but “entrenched interests and innovation”.
Yes, I agree, that is a better description.
@Paul Marks
Perhaps the election of President Trump in November … will turn the back the tide of Corporate State tyranny
It won’t, the most it’ll slow it down a bit. One of your big issues is money printing, but Trump is a debt guy and there is no evidence from his first term that he has any inkling toward sound money — which, ultimately is the real problem. For sure he’ll fix some stuff, the border will improve, the Ukraine war will get sorted out, we will have better foreign relations, he might even clean out some of the very worst in the executive — though that is not going to be easy. But the real core of the problem? Spending, and unsustainably high debt? He won’t do anything to fix that. Most likely, he will make it worse.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to vote for the guy, mainly because of the lawfare, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up too high. And no matter what Trump does, you Brits are going to have Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Good luck with that.
Not necessarily. I won’t make any predictions in either country as I don’t know the U.S. situation well enough to comment with any meaningful opinion, but in the UK we’ll see how many shy Tories there are. I know a couple of people who’ve expressed frustration and dislike for the Tories in recent years but as the election has drawn closer they’ve said they will reluctantly vote Tory, in the spirit of “better the devil you know”. Personally, I find the current Tory administration so offensive I can’t bring myself to vote for them, and my local Conservative MP has done his utmost to lose my vote anyway as he was extremely rude to me the last time he responded to one of my emails (interestingly, the previous Labour MP, while we didn’t see eye to eye about everything, was never anything than perfectly polite and respectful in his replies to my letters).
Given the actions of this government, such as allowing literally millions of immigrants in the last few years, and the interference in the energy market that caused us to have I believe on average the most expensive energy in Europe while also handing millions to the energy companies in subsidies, how exactly can we regard this so-called Conservative government as in any way conservative? They are quite literally changing the country beyond recognition faster even than Blair did, while also being quite happy to indulge in “big state” technocratic “solutions”. With that in mind, it is with some concern that I believe that the next government may actually still be the Conservatives with the slimmest of majorities.
I can only speak for myself but at the start of election I went from being disgusted by the Tories, but all the Tories have done during the campaign is make me absolutely hate them. I’d always been wary of BoJo, and never liked Liz Truss to begin with. But Sunak I’ve just grown to despise intensely and I think it’s unlikely I’ll vote Tory while Sunak is an MP let alone leader.
At the start of the campaign I wasn’t enthused by Reform as Richard Tice was a very poor leader and the local candidate seemed unimpressive. However, Nigel’s resurrection has made a convert of me. And seeing Tory boys repeat leftist slurs about Farage is just making me hate the Tories more and more.