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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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How many have you read? Ernest Benn was the uncle of Tony Benn and great-uncle of Hilary Benn. Luckily for us he was the black sheep of the family and pursued a career in business before becoming one of the “great and the good”. And then he decided he didn’t want to be great or good any more, founding the Society for Individual Freedom. As I understand it the Libertarian Alliance – who most here will be familiar with – emerged from that association.
A hundred years ago Benn was compiling a list of good economics books which – seemingly unbelievably – The Times published. It includes – as you might expect – Smith, Bastiat and Mill and – as you might not expect – Spencer and Smiles. It also includes Henry Ford – presumably before he started blaming the Jews for everything. But there is one book that’s missing. Luckily a young Austrian is on the case.
 The Times, Tuesday, 14 April 1925 [I hope this is legible. It’s a bit blurred on my computer but the original is fine. The list is totally blurred if I try to include it inline with the post. All very odd.]
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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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Yes indeed Patrick – Ernest Benn did very good work.
Sadly good economics normally ignored – for example the “return to the gold standard” (how weird that term “gold standard” is – the gold is either the money or it is not) in 1925 was at “the old parity” – in short it pretended that the inflation of the First World War had not happened, and the Pound was worth as much in 1925 as it had been in 1914. David Ricardo (who was wrong about many things – but right about this) warned, a century before, against trying to restore an exchange rate with gold after a massive inflation – just be honest about what the Pound is really worth in terms of gold.
Even the 1914 level was a FRAUD (the Bank of England did not have enough gold to cover all the notes – let alone the bank deposits) – but the wartime money printing had made the old exchange rate an absurdity.
This is not “rocket science” – just see how much physical gold the Central Bank (there should be no such thing as a Central Bank – but leave that aside for now) really has, and divide that by the number of Pounds – that is the true level.
“But that would mean the Pound was not worth as much gold as the government said it was” – yes, exactly, BE HONEST.
The same is true of the United States – do not steal privately owned gold, admit the true value of the Dollar.
On Henry Ford….
If I remember rightly – he is good on denouncing the fraud (legalised fraud) of the Credit Bubble banks – but then makes the Major Douglas or Juan Peron (General Peron) or, these days, the Neil Oliver, blunder of pushing the idea that the government should just print lots of money and spend it – or hand it to people for them to spend.
The correct answer to the demented antics of the banks is NOT for the government to engage in demented antics – the correct answer is for no one to engage in demented antics.
Let money be a commodity that people choose to value before-and-apart-from its use as a money, and let lending be from Real Savings, the actual sacrifice of consumption, not Credit Bubble tricks.
A slight mistake in Hayek’s letter – due, perhaps, to English not being his first language.
He describes Ludwig Von Mises as a “German” writer – rather than a “German language” writer.
Mises identified as being part of the German language, and cultural, world – but never lived in Germany, being from that part of the Austrian (Hapsburg) Empire that is now, I believe, part of the Ukraine – and living his life (before having to leave – due to the Nazi take over) in Vienna.
As Patrick points out – both Mises and Hayek were Austrian by original nationality.
Indeed Mises served as an Austrian Artillery Officer in the First World War.
Stuff like this is fascinating.
Yes Perry – and, sadly, it is doubtful whether the Times now would be so respectful to such writers as Samuel Smiles (by coincidence Samuel Smiles shared the name of the first anti statist writer known to us – the Prophet Samuel, see the First Book of Samuel, Chapter Eight, but remember this applies to ALL governments – including democratically elected ones) and Herbert Spencer.
On a visit to Derby I went to the museum – a large part of the museum was devoted to the “black history” of Derby, but Herbert Spencer (the most famous son of Derby) was mentioned – for his “racism” and “Imperialism” – Herbert Spencer was the leading ANTI Imperialist and anti war writer of the 19th century, but that is not what people in his home town are taught about him.
It is not just Britain – for example Austria is much the same. Mark Steyn, quite some years ago now, visited Vienna (NOT for a political purpose – he was interested in the light opera of the late 19th and early 20th centuries) and was struck by how many Muslims he spotted visiting a maternity shop (buying stuff for babies – logically enough for a maternity shop) and how few non Muslims he viewed going to the same shop – he mentioned it (after all it might have just been this particular shop – other maternity shops might have different customers) and found out that a person is NOT suppose to notice this – and certainly NOT supposed to ask questions about it.
“The future belongs to those who turn up for it” or as the French used to say (before Freedom of Speech was crushed in France) “demography is destiny”.
Time marches on – now the gift of a statue from Poland, of the Polish King who saved Vienna in 1683, has been rejected – as it is “Islamophobia” to oppose the conquests of Islam, and Austrian school textbooks are filled with praise for Islam – and sneering contempt for Christianity. No mention of the Polish town where the survivors were all skinned alive (by order of the Grand Vizier who later organised the attack on Vienna in 1683), or the tens of thousands of civilian prisoners who were ritually murdered on the retreat in 1683 – or all the other atrocities over the centuries. But the crimes of Christians are covered in the school textbooks.
All the “mainstream” political parties in Austria have united to keep the Freedom Party out of government – because opposing conquest is “Nazi” (an odd definition of National Socialism – but there we are), but even if the Freedom Party got over 50% of the vote on its own (very unlikely) it would not matter – as E.U. and “international community” backed judges would prevent them doing anything anyway – and will, most likely, ban the party in due course.
Writers such as Samuel Smiles, Herbert Spencer, Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek will, most likely, be forgotten – as they are part of a civilisation that appears to be coming to an end – and this is NOT the fault of Islam, NOT the fault of Muslims – it is the fault of the leadership (cultural and political – “politics is downstream from culture”) of Western nations – who are filled with hatred for their own culture, history and people.
What one sees in Britain and Austria is also to be found in Germany, France and other Western nations – the treason of the “educated” establishment.