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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Samizdata quote of the day “Unlike those excitable countries where the peasants overrun the presidential palace, settled democratic societies rarely vote to “go left.” Yet oddly enough that’s where they’ve all gone. In its assumptions about the size of the state and the role of government, almost every advanced nation is more left than it was, and getting lefter.”
Mark Steyn. As he points out, the upcoming US government bailout of General Motors and god-knows-what-else should nail the idea that the US is the land of “unregulated capitalism”.
Update: PJ O’Rourke writes in similar vein.
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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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On the PJ O’Rourke piece-
He pretty much hits it on the head. The Republicans (as the supposed outlet for conservatism) evolved into a fiscally liberal/socially conservative party, pretty much the opposite of its neo-libertarian “old right” position of pre-WWII. I realize socially liberal is a relative thing in that pretty much nobody favored abortion or gay-rights pre-WWII, but if had stayed reasonably on course the party would have, IMO, evolved following its libertarian leanings instead of where it decided to go – the Religious Right, drop of a hat Hawkism militarily, and basically devoting itself to the narrowing anti-choice crowd, anti-gay (not on stemming the advancement of a socialist agenda grounds but bible thumping grounds), yet signing in the likes of Medicare Part D.
It basically was the party of the 55+ set, the shoe polish jet black hair Stosh and the blue hair rinse Stella set, rubbing elbows at the all you can eat fish fries in the Supper Clubs on county trunk highway X out in the middle of nowhere. The Republicans thought that as long as they pleased the square red state crowd, marginalizing the libertarian leaning, dyed in the wool fiscal conservatives (I’ve read one too many articles by National Review criticizing us) that they would be fine. I guess they were wrong.
This is a new era. Abortion isn’t going anywhere. Gays aren’t going to go back into the closet. “Traditional” values are changing. The REAL problems of our day (and the last three decades at least) have been economic. But the Republicans, in their quest to maintain their aging base, decided to not only not fight liberal economic ideas, but whole heartedly joined (at least if it benefited their constituency), while fighting on social fronts losing battles, not factoring in the “traditional” set are dying off and the majority of younger people aren’t on board with the social planks that are currently being ridden. That’s not to say there aren’t younger social conservatives, but it stands that abortion and gay “rights” aren’t going back into the bottle they came out of.
So we need “conservatism” to be socially realistic and be about hammering on the economic fronts. We have somewhat of an oppurtunity at this point – show just how much the Great Depression was due to bad monetary policy in the first place, and show all the bad governmental buffoonery kept it going for a decade with no end in sight. We are doing the same exact things right now – anti-deflation rhetoric, work programs, business and Wall Street were all at fault and Mother Government will lead us out. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Be there with true sound economic policies and quit grinding outdated social axes and MAYBE a new Republican party can emerge. Basically quit hounding out the libertarians and embrace them. The Stosh’s and Stella’s aren’t going to be around in the next decade and a half. Be prepared to meet the realities of 2020, not trying to reinvent 1950.
If we don’t get sound economic footing very soon we will have terrible consequences to face, greater than we’ve had in a long, long time.
P.J. O’Rourke’s piece wasn’t up to his usual standard (in terms of humor; he’s spot on with his analysis, of course). I guess he’s just in a funk, like the rest of us.
Having a fight over ideology may be fun, (mostly for the other side) but it is a distraction from the real problems.
This is the 3d election in a row in which the GOP has been outspent. This time by as much as 3 to 1. The Republicans have got to completely revamp their fundraising machinery and find ways to motivate hundreds of thousands of new donors. I’m sure that Obama, Reid and Pelosi will help this process, but the Party has got to be organized to take advantage of the results.
The next problem is organization and here ideology is a factor. Politics at the level where elections are won is a tedious, petty, boring process. Only those who really strongly believe in politics are willing to put up with it. Such people tend to be the ones who are attached to the idea that the state, and state power, is the most important thing i the universe.
The few people on the other side who are willing to put up with the tedium tend to be religious. Thus the social conservatives will tend to dominate the party because they at least, show up when the party needs people to do mailing or to gather voter lists or all the other hard unrewarding work that goes into making a political campaign successful.
P.J. O’Rourke has been diagnosed with cancer.
The natural trend of governments is to grow. Politicians get into power by promising to solve problems, so they can claim a ‘mandate’ to expand government power if they get in- a candidate who promised to do nothing would not sound as exciting as one who promises to fix things. The only way around this would be to remove their powers to raise any taxes at all. If they could only offer services for which we could choose to pay, or not, then that would be some cap on spending.
For instance, if citizenship had a cost, that price might pay for the police force and the armed services, and other emergency services. Licence fees over public roads could be linked to roads and car safety, and only them. Professional politicians would have a harder time making promises if they had to show exactly where the money would have to come from.
I know. The prognosis is reasonably good. He’s 60 and has the same form of it as several people I know, all of whom recovered completely. Hang in there, PJ, we cannot afford to lose such a wise and funny voice.
Both Mr. O’Rourke and Mr. Steyn have pontificated in the same direction when describing the recent political shift in the United States. And if one observes this political evolution it seems somewhat inevitable. The politicians who bring home the most pork are the winners at the ballot box. From John Murtha to Ted Stevens to Red Ken himself, the reality is bribe your constituency, they’ll keep you in power.
What will resuscitate the spirit of liberty is the attempt to extinguish it.
nick g:
Amen.
Big-statism is built into the system. It’s a structural design fault, and it’s observable across the, idunno, 50 or so democracies across the globe. To change the end result, you have to change the design of the system.
As you point out, nick, the ability of politicians to get elected by making the standard corrupt bargain with the electorate – “vote for me and I’ll tax somebody else to your benefit”.
I believe we need to split the legislature into two houses – one only to legislate, and one only to tax. Legislation could only be implemented if passed by the legislators AND, separately, funded by the taxers.
Nice idea, Thon, but how will the “Tax House” be selected? Won’t they be subject to the same populist pressures, tempted by the same quid-pro-quo offers (from lobbyists and/or legislators in the other house), and ultimately co-opted by the system just as at present?
Lobbying (at least the corrupt vote-yerself-rich kind that now predominates) would, I think, decline. To swing sweetheart legislation, a lobbyist would have to swing two legislatures with mutually opposing attitudes to spending, rather than just one, more sympathetic, assembly. Campaign finance legislation might no longer be necessary.
The idea is to eliminate the politicians’ power to make the usual shifty corrupt bargain with the electorate: “Vote for me – give me power – and I’ll use that power to advance your sectional interest, at gunpoint, if necessary, against the people who won’t vote for me”. The determination of the tax-spend equation would be brought out of the control of the political corridor-runners and fixers and further under direct democratic control.
And it’s this last point that I think might form the basis of a strategy to turn it all into practical politics. The present arrangement is that politicians determine the tax-spend balance, and inevitably use that power to their own advantage. A dual-chamber arrangement takes that power and puts it in the hands of the people, for better or worse. “Double democracy” can’t be a bad campaign slogan.
As for quid-pro-quos between legislators in the Commons and the House of the Exchequer (let’s give it an old-fashioned Oliver-Cromwell-sounding name): well, that would be in the normal run of political horse-trading. But by definition, for the quid there’s a quo: “We’ll agree to this year’s Dept. of Health budget, or we’ll finance your lunatic ID card scheme. Our electors won’t let us do both. You choose.” That scenario doesn’t happen now – there’s no tension in the tax-spend decision – and, lucky us, we get to pay for both. Or try this: “That billion-pound foot-and-mouth outbreak originated at a Government laboratory? We and our electorate want to see some rolling heads before we OK DEFRA’s budget. Make it happen.” Consider how the ability to do that sort of thing might change the culture of the Civil Service.
Sad news about P.J. – I hope he recovers.
As for the voters:
I find myself being more positive than many people – which is weird.
This is because most voters think they have voted for someone who supports the 2nd Amendment (and the rest of the Constitutional supports for liberty) who will cut taxes for “95% of the people” and will “more than balance” and government spending increases with government spending cuts in other areas.
“But that is total nonsense Paul”.
Yes I know – but most voters do not know.
Remember the mainstream media have not told them what President Elect Obama really is (and most people do not watch Fox News, and even less people go to websites like this one).
What they think they have voted for is NOT more statism.
Remember most people opposed the financial bailout – it was the elite (of both political parties) who supported it.
The “peasants” in the United States are not as bad as you think.
Nor is the “religious right” that bad either (taking the mainstream media view of it is as mistaken as taking the mainstream media view of anything else) – a few crazy people do not represent a movement made up of many tens of millions of Americans (which is what “the religous right” actually is).
Of course the United States is not “unregulated” – it is saturated with regulations (local, State and Federal) and it is saturated with government spending as well (an all time peace time high – however measured), taking a vastly greater proportion of the economy than for most of American history.
The fact that the left can talk about financial crises leading to the end of “laissez faire” as if the status que has not been mega government, and the fact that they totally ignore that the Austrian School of economics PREDICTED THE ECONOMIC CRISES YEARS IN ADVANCE (where is the “emprical” nature of the establishment now, why are they not praising the people who warned of the comming crises?) shows that the left are either wildly dishonest or insane (as P.J. claims) – or both.
The establishment even get little things wrong.
For example, I never buy but I sometimes check on the “Economist” magazine (on “know the enemy” grounds) and this weeks contribution by “Lexington” caught my eye.
The writer denounced American conservatives for being “volkish” (he used the word “volkish” because he wanted to call American conservatives Nazis, but was too cowardly to do so – even though he was not writing under his real name) who are “hostile to ideas” – no doubt these “ideas” are the ever greater government spending that the “Economist” favours in so many other articles about various countries (basic Lord Keynes style absurdities that one gets from Nobel Prize winning “economists” and other such collectivist trash).
“Lexington” also sneered at conservative speakers as people who “drop their gs” – meaning people like President Bush who tend to say “thumpin” rather than “thumping” and so on.
Accept that the two conservative speakers that “Lexington” mentioned in the article were Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity – neither of whom tends to “drop their gs” when they speak.
A small point I know – but it shows that “Lexington” (like the rest of the establishment collectivists) does not even bother to listen to the people he attacks.
But tens of millions of Americans do listen – and they know that it is people like “Lexington” who are the real morons.
Of course the United States is not “unregulated” – it is saturated with regulations (local, State and Federal) and it is saturated with government spending as well (an all time peace time high – however measured), taking a vastly greater proportion of the economy than for most of American history.
The fact that the left can talk about financial crises leading to the end of “laissez faire” as if the status que has not been mega government, and the fact that they totally ignore that the Austrian School of economics PREDICTED THE ECONOMIC CRISES YEARS IN ADVANCE (where is the “emprical” nature of the establishment now, why are they not praising the people who warned of the comming crises?) shows that the left are either wildly dishonest or insane (as P.J. claims) – or both.
The establishment even get little things wrong.
For example, I never buy but I sometimes check on the “Economist” magazine (on “know the enemy” grounds) and this weeks contribution by “Lexington” caught my eye.
The writer denounced American conservatives for being “volkish” (he used the word “volkish” because he wanted to call American conservatives Nazis, but was too cowardly to do so – even though he was not writing under his real name) who are “hostile to ideas” – no doubt these “ideas” are the ever greater government spending that the “Economist” favours in so many other articles about various countries (basic Lord Keynes style absurdities that one gets from Nobel Prize winning “economists” and other such collectivist trash).
“Lexington” also sneered at conservative speakers as people who “drop their gs” – meaning people like President Bush who tend to say “thumpin” rather than “thumping” and so on.
Accept that the two conservative speakers that “Lexington” mentioned in the article were Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity – neither of whom tends to “drop their gs” when they speak.
A small point I know – but it shows that “Lexington” (like the rest of the establishment collectivists) does not even bother to listen to the people he attacks.
But tens of millions of Americans do listen – and they know that it is people like “Lexington” who are the real morons.
Mark Steyn is quite correct that the Democrat plan is to put most voters on government benefits.
It is not Marxism – it is much older and is the traditional way that democracies die.
Such benefits can either by financed by tribute taken from people in other countries (and, contrary to a Scottish historian at Harvard, the United States does NOT have an empire) the way that Pericles did (and thus created the hatred that led to the defeat of Athens).
Or they can be financed by taxing the richer people in society to pay of the voters (Pericles and others in the Greek world, did a bit of that as well).
This destoys economic life over time.
The Democrat plan is far worse than that of Speenhamland in the England and South Wales of the early 19th century. For in that case the “working poor” could not vote (mostly – there were a few seats where they could) so the payments were quite small by modern standards.
Trying to turn the whole of the United States into the South Side of Chicago is economic destruction (and moral wickedness), but it is politically highly intelligent.
Mark Steyn is quite correct that the Democrat plan is to put most voters on government benefits.
It is not Marxism – it is much older and is the traditional way that democracies die.
Such benefits can either by financed by tribute taken from people in other countries (and, contrary to a Scottish historian at Harvard, the United States does NOT have an empire) the way that Pericles did (and thus created the hatred that led to the defeat of Athens).
Or they can be financed by taxing the richer people in society to pay of the voters (Pericles and others in the Greek world, did a bit of that as well).
This destoys economic life over time.
The Democrat plan is far worse than that of Speenhamland in the England and South Wales of the early 19th century. For in that case the “working poor” could not vote (mostly – there were a few seats where they could) so the payments were quite small by modern standards.
Trying to turn the whole of the United States into the South Side of Chicago is economic destruction (and moral wickedness), but it is politically highly intelligent.