The Labour government that will take office tomorrow will be a disaster. Keir Starmer will make a terrible prime minister – a political weathervane, swinging wildly towards the policies he thinks will be most popular; a weak, unimaginative leader trying to keep the lid on a party seething with far-left lunatics, bitter class warriors, anti-Semitic bigots and deranged wokels.
|
|||||
|
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] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Samizdata quote of the day – StarmergeddonJuly 4th, 2024 |
 41 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – StarmergeddonLeave a Reply |
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. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
As the old Chinese curse says, ‘we will live in interesting times’.
Indeed. You think where we were in 1990 and wonder.
“a political weathervane, swinging wildly towards the policies he thinks will be most popular”
Who will notice any difference? Unless Starmer actually delivers on some promises.
We can hope that Starmer, and those around him, will be so busy swinging between fashionable policies most popular from headline to headline that Labour will not have the perseverance to see anything weighty to conclusion.
Of course you could also argue the the Conservatives have been doing this for years – and see how well that has gone for them.
This morning I passed a news stand with a headline above a picture of Starmer and some other Labour person.
“Vote Farage, Get Them”
Yes, vote Tory because they are slightly less awful than Labour, that’s the best argument we’ve got.
The Tories seem baffled that their usual electioneering strapline “Yes, we’re awful but the other lot are awfuller” isn’t working. If they knew their Douglas Adams they would know that the purpose of elections is to stop the wrong lizards getting in, and that they are now, quite categorically, the wrong lizards.
The “we are less awful than the other guys” schtick is played by both sides; they conspire in it together to keep living that sweet publicly funded high-mucketymuck lifestyle.
So good luck on your Reform gamble. May both flavors of the same ol’ thing get what is coming to them – in spades!
And I hope the next several years are not catastrophic for your nation.
It promises to be a real barrel of laughs.
@Stoneyground
This morning I passed a news stand with a headline above a picture of Starmer and some other Labour person.
“Vote Farage, Get Them”
On the other hand since it seems probable that we will get them anyway perhaps it is more sensible to register a protest vote that might really unsettle Labour. If the LibDems are the Uniparty Lite then that leaves…
The LibDem’s position over Brexit demonstrated that they were neither liberal nor democrats. There’s something a bit communist about calling your political party the opposite of what it actually is.
For me voting Reform was less of a protest vote and more it being the one chance that we have of breaking the deadlock of parties that don’t represent me in any way whatsoever.
“Vote Farage, Get Them”
I saw that but I read it as ‘Vote Farage – Get them!’. I was pleasantly surprised by the Mail’s bold stance, but of course your explanation makes it all make sense now.
No choice but to vote Reform. There is no difference between the “right” of the Labour party and the left of the Tory party, and those are the wings that control their respective parties.
I had an interesting conversation with an American professor of political science at the end of the last century. He remarked that the problem with politics in the UK (where we were holding that conversation) is the FPTP system. I countered that proportional representation has also proved to have problems, and anyway don’t they have FPTP in the US? He replied that, in the US, there are primaries.
Maybe the “Conservatives” should take note.
Does the voting system make much difference? It seems to me that all Western countries – who have all sorts of voting systems – have more or less exactly the same problems.
Re: “. . . . a weak, unimaginative leader trying to keep the lid on a party seething with far-left lunatics, bitter class warriors, anti-Semitic bigots and deranged wokels.”
This description applies equally to the Democrat party.
Brendan: The electoral processes are different, but the bureaucracies seem to be much the same.
Farage joining the race actually gave me something I could actually positively vote for rather than the lesser of evils for once (not a fan of Richard Tice). The utter wretchedness of the Tory campaign pretty much sealed any chance I’d be gaslighted into voting for them too.
I like most of what Farage says policy wise. But my inner child meant Reform had my vote the minute Farage did the tik tok video singing along to Eminem. All politicians have to indulge in cringe but he does it so well and with massive confidence.
Sadly Fergus Mason is underestimating the harm that will be done.
What will happen is that the last line of defence against totalitarianism will be gone.
“The Conservatives were a pathetic line of defence Paul – a half hearted resistance to officials and experts” – perhaps that is so, but you will miss that “pathetic” line of defence when it is gone. Kemi Badenoch (and others) have tried to warn people – but have been ignored.
There will be a massive increase in statism and dissent, especially on cultural matters (the “Critical Theory” agenda on sexuality and so on) will be crushed.
Forget about “in five years time ….” – that game is over.
Brenden Westbridge (London) wrote:
Universal suffrage was a mistake. A fine ideal, but it clearly does not work in practice.
No representation without taxation. We need to give more say to those who pay and less for those who contribute little (or nothing).
The problem with any kind of selective suffrage is with who decides who is allowed to vote. It is just too easy for the powers that be to only grant the vote to people that can be relied on to vote the way that they prefer. Having said that, I do think that having made a positive tax contribution being a prerequisite for voting could work.
Re taxation…
One pound, one vote.
Every pound you pay in tax (net what you receive back in civil service salary/benefits etc.) should equal one vote.
Give it 20 years and we’ll be back to Cobdenite first principles!
The Conservatives of Net Zero, ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’, jab or no job by law, continuing the BBC licence fee, and not copying EU member Denmark’s immigration policies, banning people from leaving the their homes without a ‘reasonable excuse’ more than once a day and then the country?
Just FOAD if you believe that they have been or would be a defence of anything other than the bureaucracy and totalitarianism.
Just one comment as an American. Sunak announced the election about a month ago, and you are done. Starmer will be PM tomorrow. Here in the US we have been in the middle of an election campaign for at least a year and we still have four months to go and after that a couple of months before the new guy takes power. The election will cost several billion dollars in campaign funds. For you Brits there is some surprisingly small limit per candidate (I forgot what it is.)
For all its faults, I think the British system is better, even though this result will bring Britain to pre-Thatcherite despair. I’d really love to see Biden going to the legislative body to take PM’s questions every week. This whole nonsense with “OMG I didn’t realize he was shit-for-brains until now” would never have happened.
I agree totally with Fraser Orr. Having the President do an American version of Prime Minister’s Time every week would be amazing to watch. Do it for the President, Speaker of the House, and President Pro Tem of the Senate.
Temporarily agreeing for the sake of argument (but see below), we must however rely on net contributions, not just tax contributions. Public-sector employees, people on welfare, and people who rely on government contracts for most of their income, should not get to vote.
But actually i think that such people should also be represented. So, my suggestion is that everybody gets an equal vote for the Lower Chamber, while only net contributors get to vote for the Upper Chamber, the weight of their votes being monotonically related to their net contributions.
I bet that Perry would view the LVT less negatively in such a system!
LVT means everyone just rents from the state, no one ever owns any land whatsoever. Feudalism really.
Paul:
Immigration, immigration, immigration.
Yes, quite right… and yet, i’d prefer to be a feudal vassal rather than a serf, which is what most people are today.
But i don’t want to distract from my brilliant idea on how to reform Upper Chambers and link once again taxation to representation.
(NB: for federal States, the American system remains preferable.)
@Perry de Havilland (Wiltshire)
LVT means everyone just rents from the state, no one ever owns any land whatsoever. Feudalism really.
Here in the US you pay property tax based on some percentage of the assessed value of your home. Which means you never really own your home, as you say. I never actually owned a home in Britain so I don’t remember how that works. It used to be rates, then the community charge now it is something else that I don’t remember. But basically isn’t it a tax based on the value of your home or some proxy for it? I don’t remember.
FWIW, I hate property tax for the very reason you describe. If you have to pay someone else for your home, you don’t own it at all, it is just a special form of rental.
Where do you stand on retired people? I now pay very little tax now but have contributed steadily for a lifetime. Also how do we factor in VAT?
Nobody who lives out of the public purse should vote. This is because it is not in the public interest for recipients to force up contributors taxes as would happen if they were allowed to vote in their best interest.
The question you have to ask is, which do you prefer, everybody votes, including you, or on the other hand you don’t vote but voting is done by people you broadly agree with?
When I lived in the UK I lived in a solid Labour constituency so my vote was entirely irrelevant and as a consequence I had no great attachment to it, I do understand though that others feel differently.
Universal suffrage is all very well when taxpayers and voters are essentially the same people, but once taxpayers cease to be the overwhelming majority of voters a moral hazard is created where voting in ones best interest is not in the best interest of society.
Among features of the result that stick in my mind is how, in my native Suffolk, the northeastern constituency of Waveney is now represented by a Green. The Green party is militantly anti-car, wants very high taxes on “the rich” (ie, a lot of people who aren’t poor), so I wonder who the fuck is voting for them there. The place used to have a Tory MP, very much a knight of the shires.
And Jeremy Corbyn, the darling of the pro-Hamas far Left, is re-elected to Islington North, so that will keep the flame of evil burning on the Labour benches.
JP
1. Mr Corbyn is an opposition MP as he is an independent, he defeated the Labour candidate in his constituency, so he will face the Labour benches. Of course, if enough Labour MPs were to invite him to lead them and depose Sir Keir, then he could become PM.
2. In Suffolk, it is Sizewell Nuclear Power Station. The Greens are nice fluffy bunnies to a lot of the local voters I presume.
Roue le Jour wrote:
Just to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment, does that include people working for the government? Employees, contractors, soldiers, police, prosecutors, university professors at state schools, and so on and so forth? How about veterans getting VA benefits for injuries incurred during service, does that apply to them? Medical residency programs are often funded by the government; does that mean someone going through a residency doesn’t get to vote? How about students who get a student loan?
Mr Ed – the only opposition in the House of Commons to the policies you, rightly, oppose was from Conservative Members of Parliament, some of whom have now lost their seats in Parliament, to be replaced by Labour Members of Parliament who support all the policies you oppose.
But we must get past that – if liberty is to have any future in this country then the Conservatives and Reform must come together, the laws of mathematics (as well as centuries of local political networks) mean there is no other path to victory.
It may already be too for the United Kingdom – but we must try. And that means rejecting Central Office “business as usual” attitudes.
Something similar to what was done in Alberta Canada must be done here.
Land Value Tax.
The basis for this was from the economics of David Ricardo, which was later developed by Henry George.
The view of economics of land explained by David Ricardo was refuted by Frank Fetter – more than a century ago.
The Land Value Tax is in error because the understanding of economics upon which it is based, that of David Ricardo and Henry George, is false.
Some readers will remember that David Ricardo was also responsible for pushing the Labour Theory of Value (although this theory may originate in some of the errors that Adam Smith fell into in his old age) – but this error of Ricardo was not refuted by Frank Fetter because the Labour Theory of Value theory had already been refuted by other economists, such as Carl Menger.
The unspoken problem is not Labour, but the alarming number of Islamists now in parliament, and the even larger number of closet anti-Semites who will willingly support them.
Fraser:
As i said, i don’t want to distract from my (still brilliant) idea about re-connecting taxation to representation.
The following, however, has nothing to do with the LVT. It is about reality.
Specifically, the reality that you never really own your home even if you do not pay any property taxes. That is because
1. of eminent domain and no-knock raids;
2. even in the hypothetical absence of property taxes, eminent domain, and no-knock raids, the mere feasibility of legislating for such measures makes your ownership depend on the whim of the legislature.
If there are countries in which there are guarantees of home-ownership more robust than in the US of A, i do not know about it.
I pay a yearly license fee on my cars, motorcycles, trucks, and RV that are based on the current value of the vehicle. I pay a percentage of my income to the many various taxing authorities who know about me. When I buy things, I pay sales taxes, as a percentage of what I spend.
How far does this “rental” theory go? Seems like, by that logic, my entire life is rented. As for the property tax, what other mechanism could be used to distribute the bill for local cops, firefighters, local gov infrastructure, road and sewer and water maintenance, and all the rest of the fun things that such taxes pay for?
You sure own a lot of vehicles!
But never mind. The point i want to make, arising from Perry’s comment, is that there is a “philosophical” difference between taxes on wealth and taxes on income.
If you pay taxes on wealth, then you are a vassal. If you pay taxes on income, then you are a serf.
Of course, there is a large overlap between the 2 sets in modern societies.