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]
|
Samizdata quote of the day – recovering the West’s mojo edition “Our problem in the West, I believe, is that we got into a vicious circle of decline. Our victory in the Cold War removed the pressure to remain productive and to constantly demonstrate the superiority of the Western model of free markets and free nations.”
– (Lord) David Frost, Daily Telegraph.
He refers to a new essay he has out to coincide with the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference that has been going on in London. I think it is a worthwhile read.
|
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.
|
Sadly, civilizations do decline and die, as history shows. No reason why we should be exempt. If one would sit down a make a list of all the things that would have to be fixed to restore the country to some semblance of normal functioning the length of that list would be disheartening. The simple first step of electing patriots seems impossible.
On the other side of the Atlantic Trump understands that if an empire is not growing it is dying. A USA from the pole to the equator may not be possible but from a morale point of view it is a worthwhile objective.
If Lord Frost is talking about the rise of state – then, even as a percentage of the economy, it has been on the rise in most Western nations since the 1870s.
Perhaps it was the victory of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War (although even back in the 1700s most English speaking intellectuals, with the exception of Edmund Burke, made a hero of the arch statist Frederick “the Great” of Prussia) that discredited liberty among the “intellectual” classes (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels thought so – and celebrated the victory of Prussia, NOT because they loved Prussia, indeed they planned to destroy it, but because the France of-that-time was associated with Classical Liberal ideas – and they wanted those ideas discredited). Remember not only did France at-that-time, unlike Prussia, not have a state education system (although the French government did subsidize education), it also had no Income Tax and (unlike Britain) no Poor Law Tax.
France was light years from perfect, for example its military burden was high, but it did not have the horror that the United Kingdom had in Poor Law Tax Ireland (a quarter of the population either dead or had to flee), or in the depopulation of wide areas of Scotland – with people having to leave and go all over the world. The France of 1869 was a land where farmers owned their land, the state did not dominate education or the relief of poverty, and taxes were relatively light.
Still Lord Frost is correct – there has been a terrible ideological decline since 1989, people such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher replaced by people like George Herbert Walker Bush and John Major – people who whilst they might “very nice” had-no-real-beliefs, no-principles.
The left was very powerful in the culture even before 1989 – but after then the “long march through the institutions” became a cake walk for the left, with virtually no resistance at all to Critical Theory Marxist (what we call today “Woke”)_ doctrines in the universities – and from the universities into every other institution, public and private.
As John O’Sullivan (former adviser to Margaret Thatcher – and now Danube Institute in relatively conservative Hungary) often says – there can be no “neutral” institutions (including the law courts), either they are fighting the left hand path (opposing evil) or they are controlled by it.
@Paul Marks: Still Lord Frost is correct – there has been a terrible ideological decline since 1989, people such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher replaced by people like George Herbert Walker Bush and John Major – people who whilst they might “very nice” had-no-real-beliefs, no-principles.
I met and spoke to John Major a few times (I never met George Bush snr) and I can state that Mr Major was not a pleasant person: overly sharp, dismissive and petulant.
The United States is not an empire – it is a nation (and it is no bigger now than it was in the 1890s). And Empires do not have to grow to avoid dying. Even the Roman Empire, which had made the very bad decision of subsidizing the population of the City of Rome – a tragic error, did NOT have to grow to avoid decline. The Empire under the Emperor Antonius Pius was not inferior to the Empire under Augustus – there had been no decline of civilization, that came later and for other reasons (such as terrible plague and many Civil Wars).
China is no bigger now than it was in the 1700s – is it less powerful?
President Trump has no plans to expand the United States to the equator – and it would no sense to do so, as this would mean taking in Mexico and many other countries (as far south as Colombia) where people do not wish to be Americans and whose principles (whether Marxist or some misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Catholic economic teaching since the Encyclical of 1891), are not compatible with the Constitution of the United States.
It is folly to take in people who reject your basic principles – either by territorial expansion or by mass immigration. Better a smaller united population – than a larger population made up of groups of people who hate each other.
Something the British (and general Western European) establishment fail to grasp – with their obsession of increasing “GDP” by endless mass immigration, with total disregard for what the new population (and their children and children’s children) believe.
Roman medical knowledge was superior, in terms of dealing with wounds, than American and other Western knowledge was even in the 1860s – although I have come upon the argument that Roman medical knowledge declined because so many Roman doctors flung themselves into the fight against the terrible plagues (such as the plague under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius) and died. They knew how to deal with such things as amputating a limb safely – but the plagues were beyond them (they still felt a duty to TRY to help – and this was fatal).
Certainly knowledge, in all areas, declined later on – to call the Dark Ages “Late Antiquity” (as is the modern fashion) and pretend that there was no great decline of civilization, is absurd.
Whether it was the level of literacy (it was fairly normal in the Roman world for an ordinary citizen to be literate – such levels of literacy were not seen again for at least a thousand years), or such things as industrial production – again such things as the great (water powered) factories of the Roman world (such as the ones near Arles in France) were not seen again in Europe till the 1700s.
Johnathan Pearce – I stand corrected about John Major.
In the “Consolation of Philosophy” Boethius (later tortured to death on the orders of a Germanic King who ruled Italy) gives his reason for writing the work – his fear being “what everyone knows now, soon no one will know”.
We should take note – our civilization may fall, and we should try and save true records of its achievements for future generations in a distant time.
Sometimes people are mocked for saying, for example, that large American cities, such as Chicago or New York, are inferior places to live now than they were 60 or 70 years ago (even though this is TRUE). People who parade “GDP per capita” and mock people saying that their grandparents (even way back to say 1950) lived better than they do – are wrong, in terms of things that people actually needs, a home, food, medical care, and so on – living standards have declined (certainly since the late 1960s), things have become most expensive in America compared to the level of wages – hence a man can no longer support his wife and children, and the wife has to go out to work (and the children? well “who told you to have children – the next generation will come from lesser developed countries”).
Progress is not automatic – and decline often occurs.
Italians understand this – perhaps because even in the 19th century there were large, disease ridden, mashes around Rome – when there had not been in ancient times. What had created them? Leaking aqueducts, broken by the Goths in the 6th century AD or just messed up by time – and lack of real maintenance. Drip-drip-drip – over more than a thousand years.
Go to the Pantheon in Rome – and before you go in, look at the DOORS – they are almost two thousand years old, vast bronze doors, still on their hinges, which can be opened and closed by one person.
The roof used to be covered in bronze as well (perhaps with a thin sheet over the opening – to let in the light) – that lasted till the 1600s when Bernini took the bronze for an art work for the Catholic church – yes it is a very impressive art work, but if you had told a Roman “I need some material for an art work – I am going to strip the roof” he would have thought you were bonkers (because you would be bonkers).
Even in the Middle Ages the major source of lead was not lead mining – it was plundering old Roman buildings for the lead the Romans used to secure them.
Those days could come again.
Talking of civilisation collapse, is any one here aware of the ultra precise ancient granite vases found in Egypt?
An empire doesn’t have to expand geographically to expand. America’s expansion since the last 19th century has been internally, improved industrialisation, improved communications, improved living standards. The “must have more land” assertion is the same class of argument as “no growth in finate world” nonsense.
The UK has been increasing its GDP through massive immigration, but that massive immigration has resulted in GDP *per* *capita* plummeting – due to that very immigration. If you vastly inflate the bottom half of a fraction, the total gets smaller.
jgh – quite correct, on all points.
David Roberts – yes I am aware of the granite work found in Egypt, there are some theories – for example that industrial diamonds were more common in the past and were used up in work. Wooden splits, if one pours water on them, will split granite neatly – but not do the sort of work you point to. So I certainly would not claim to have a pat answer for this or other problems of Ancient History.
Even weapons technology can vanish – and in historical time periods.
For example, Roman soldiers used very large shields – if they had not they would have had either their legs or their faces broken by lead bullets fired from slings (which were very common) or would have been hit by arrows or other projectiles – yet in the late Empire the large shields vanish, to be replaced by much smaller shields (no better than Germanic ones) – what happened to the lead bullets (and so on), were people not using them any more?
And what about “Greek Fire” – extensively used by the Byzantines (East Romans) against the forces of Islam and others. Used by naval vessels, by fixed defenses on the walls of Constantinople, and in army battles.
Very extensively used and highly successful – then suddenly no one knows how to make it any more?
Nothing to do with aliens or with lost ancient civilizations – just highly successful and wildly used weaponry, which suddenly is-not-there-any-more.
Imagine the ships of the Fourth Crusade arriving at Constantinople only a few years before – they would have been burned by Greek Fire. But no one knew how to make it any more.
But why?
The Romans used water powered drills for cutting stone – but then the Romans used water power (or wind power – or animal, or SLAVE power – like those diabolical giant hamster wheels in the mines, it was not giant hamsters walking round in them, it was MEN) for everything, because a key leap was NOT made.
The ancient world had the steam engine – but it was never scaled up, it remained small, barely enough to move a statue or other display, not a factory (factories were water powered).
Why was the steam engine not scaled up? I do not know – I can not answer.
And, before anyone points it out, I know of the ancient electrical stuff – but, again, it is tiny voltage. It is – “put your finger here – ha-ha you have got a shock” stuff.
Cicero and others wrote of ancient mechanical computer-like devices with very complex gears for predicting eclipses and so on.
For many centuries, historians mocked the idea or just ignored it – then such a device was found on a ship wreak.”The thing you said the Romans could not build – here it is”.
Complex mechanical gearing, of great accuracy, could be done – just as other skilled work, in glass (lenses – if they did not have telescopes there is no reason why-not), or granite could be done.
“How was it done Paul”.
I do not know.
One thing they did not have was gunpowder – now that, IF they had developed weapons, might have made a real difference.
Even the Chinese did not develop lots of hand held muskets and so on – they had gunpowder but they went another way with it.
With gun powder weapons, if there are a lot of them, the barbarians LOSE. A lead ball from a musket will go right through shields and armor – and kill the man the other side of it.
You need a civilization to have lots of gun powder and gun powder weapons – it is how the Russians drove the Tartars (and others) all the way to the Pacific. Armoured wagons – rolling forward and forming defensive positions when needed, with lots of muskets and cannons.
Had there been lots of gunpowder weapons in the ancient world – the barbarians from the forests and steppe would not have won.
The strength of American Civilization is not just in the number of people who have firearms and ammunition – it is in the number of people who can MAKE firearms and ammunition.
Roman civilians were helpless – American civilains are NOT.
Why was the steam engine not scaled up?
Probably because it needs steel manufacturing to be scaled up first, which needs mining scaled up first, and because the Romans tended to use slaves and criminals it wasn’t very productive.
One of the first usages of a steam engine was to pump water from mines, so there was a reciprocal effect going on which the Romans didn’t see from the surface.
Runcie Balspune – Roman steel production was high, higher than used to be thought.
But you have a point about slave labour – if people have no problem with putting other people (slaves) into giant hamster wheels and have them walk and walk (till they died – then the bodies were just discarded) to pump water out of the mines, why bother with steam engines? After all early steam engines often failed – it was really difficult to work out how to “scale up” steam engines reliably – much easier to just fling in more slaves to be used till they died.
For all the attacks on Christianity it rejected this behaviour (YES there were many Christian slavers – but there was always a tension between slavery and Christian doctrine, and it is no accident that the abolitionists were passionate Christians, going back as far as about 1100 in England and not much later in France) – just as it rejected throwing unwanted babies away (to be eaten by rats) and, more controversially now, Roman and Greek homosexual activity.
Christianity built the modern West – the great industrialists, such as Mr Wedgewood of the potteries, were passionate Christians – and their rejection of slavery came from their Christianity.
The West has now turned its back on Christianity, with hatred and contempt, even people in the highest positions in the churches reject the basic beliefs of Christianity.
The West has cut itself off from the philosophy that created it.
For those who do not know – the great cathedrals of Christian Europe were built by free men, although (yes) they were partly financed by church taxes (the tithe).
In 1102 it was proclaimed in Westminster (long before Parliament existed) that it was not lawful to buy or sell human beings – and Anselm (the Chancellor and Arch Bishop of Canterbury) was from Continental Europe – this anti slavery view was certainly contested (the slave trade persisted in Venice and many other places), but it prevented the establishment of a “slave society”.
Nor is it a matter of “serfdom replacing slavery due to a change in the forces of production” – areas of Europe that did not have serfdom (such as Kent) did not have different “forces of production” or “mode of production” than areas that did.
And when that troubled man Louis X of France (1314-1316 – yes he was only king for a couple of years and died at the age of 26) banned slavery, declared it had always been unlawful, in France, he crushed serfdom as well – many centuries before 1789.
Future lawyers said “but he did not mention French colonies” (there were none in the 1300s – so of course he did not mention them) – thus getting slavery into French colonies, just as corrupt lawyers got slavery into British colonies in defiance of the Common Law.
The Roman’s were aware of Hero of Alexandria’s engine and regarded it as somewhat of a novelty because that is essentially what it was. In principle it could have been scaled-up but it would still have been an atmospheric engine not a steam engine and therefore inherently very inefficient. The Roman’s also of course had slavery as well. These two factors alone are probably enough to explain why the idustrial revolution was more Tyneside than Tiberside. There is something else (and one of the reasons other than my native Geordie pride) and that is coal. Britain is (was?) rich in easily obtainable coal. Coal rather than wood helps the efficiency problem for any form of external combustion engine (ECE). Now the first serious use of ECEs was to pump water out of mines (originally tin mines) but later all sorts of mines so you can see a virtous circle developing. And there were other factors at work. I think James Watt (30 January 1736 – 25 August 1819) had an innovative marketing scheme. He’d supply the engine free and you’d pay him the cash you’d have used to buy oats to feed horses as a sort of subscription.
I think in order for an industrial revolution to happen (and we’ve had a few) there needs to be a convergence of need and means as well as other factors which are probably difficult to pin down being cultural, social and economic.
Then there is the “vision thing”. I don’t think I’m going off at too much of a tangent to quote Joseph Louis Lagrange (January 25, 1736 – April 10, 1813)…
Lagrange was a great mathematician but dead wrong there. Newton’s Framing of the World System was of course brilliant but there is a lot not even mentioned in it. Obviously there is no aotmic physics, quantum mechanics or relativity but there is also nothing of electricity or thermodynamics. Think on that and look at Legrange’s dates and James Watt’s dates… Interesting.
Perhaps the industrial revolution could have started in France if the French hadn’t been to busy revolting in their own Gallic fashion!
NickM – yes the Romans made extensive use of water power (big factories in Arles and other places), but it is not enough to power an industrial society (Ed Miliband please note – water, wind and solar are NOT sufficient).
Greek and Roman thinkers could have figured out how to improve steam power – and the mechanical skills were indeed there to do the job, but slavery meant they lacked the vital incentive.