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 “When I stacked the shelves at my father’s grocery store, and I finished bringing the boxes up and emptying them and pricing everything, I wanted to see the shelves just sparkle. I called my dad over – I had a great father – he’d pat me on the back, “Fantastic!”
Ed Snider, American sports entrepreneur and philanthropist, from an interview with Stephen Hicks. This quote, I hope, gives some flavour of the zest and energy of a great, principled businessman who does not seek government handouts or favours. The interview is long but worth a read.
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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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A very good post – thank you for it.
More or less off-topic, but just read Jamie Whyte’s TimesOnline article(Link). Wow.
Well it is off topic, but threads go all sorts of places – so…..
Interest rates should be determined by the time preferecne of borrowers and lenders.
In short if a person has savings (money he is not going to consume) he must sort out with a potential borrower what interest rate will be acceptable for giving up those savings (an important point – when a person’s savings are lent out he DOES NOT HAVE THEM anymore, not till when and IF they are repaid, using the term “on deposit” for “lent out” confuses this point) for a certain period of time – and running the risk of never getting the money back.
“You want my money for a year – how much are you prepared to pay for it?” is what interest rates should be about.
Banks should just be a middle man here – “you will not have to look for reliable borrowers – we will do that job and you will pay us a percentage (or whatever) for doing it”.
Even with fractional reserve banking (with all the misguided expansion of credit beyond real savings), as recently as a few decades ago a typical bank manager in Britian knew the people he was lending money out to – and social activities like the golf club were part of this (“you can tell a lot about a man’s moral character by how he plays golf – and beides the golf club bar is the first place one can hear rumours of fraud”).
Buying secuities made up of home loans when one knows nothing about those home loans (who they were made to, what sort of people are they, how easy would it be to get the properties back………) is clearly silly – and one does not “hidesight” to know that. Only in a system where the Federal Reserve (under Alan Greenspan) came in with more credit money expansion whenever the Barney Frank-Christopher Dodd-Senator for ACORN Barack Obama “affordable housing” farce looked like it was going to collapse, could the mess get this big.
Still, whether one goes with fractional reserve banking or not one principle is vital. No bailouts – not “too big to fail”.
If one starts engaging in Corporate Welfare one plays into the hands of the enemies of private enterprise in general.
Bastiat warned of that – it is not something I have thought of as a result of my recent run in with bad guys.
Jonathan: you could put up a quote like that on here everyday and you wouldn’t get any argument from me.
Paul M – I love the concept of “hidesight” (please tell me it was deliberate?). One to get into the mainstream, I think:-
Hidesight, n. – attribution of past events to whatever suits your current political/economic/[complete as appropriate] agenda, rather than the true causes.
Reading that article, I came across a paragraph that really illustrated how things have changed, for the worse obviously, in the past 3 or 4 decades.
By way of explanation, Ed Snider built in Philadelphia, (with his own money) the Spectrum in the mid-1960’s (an 18,000 seat hockey/basketball arena) and the Wachovia Center in the mid-1990’s (a 21,000 seat arena).
Here’s part of that paragraph:
Thanks for the article. Very good read.
Thanks Maz – I meant “hindsight”.
As for the general credit mony expansion of the Federal Reserve and the specific “affordable housing policy” antics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and so on (under the instructions of Barnie Frank, Chris Dodd, and the Senator for ACORN Barack Obama).
The consequences of these things were all predicted over a period of years – the articles on the Ludwig Von Mises blog are there should you wish to read them.
I do not believe that “economics is prediction” – but if it is, our side wins on this one.
Of course other people may be more interested in Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” especially the bit about ridiculing someone personally (perhaps, in this case, by making fun of a disablity such as my dyslexia) when one is unable to reply to their arguements.
David Crawford.
Yes – things have changed for the worse.
The Empire State Building took 18 months to build – and we are still waiting (after almost eight years) for the replacement for the World Trade Centre. And there are so many other examples.
Even in government things have changed.
For example, the Interstate Highways Bill of the 1950’s was about 30 pages long.
I would have opposed the Bill (and lost), but at least people knew what they were voting for.
The recent “Cap and Trade” Bill was 1300 pages long – of which 300 pages were amendments presented at 3am which Congressmen opposed to the Bill were not even allowed to read.
The system has become dysfunctional – and it has been a deliberate process.
Make Bills very long (so that hardly anyone really knows what they are voting for) and rush them – so that no one has a chance to find out what is really being planned.
This is the source of stuff like the “stimulus” Bills and the “Cap and Trade” Bill and so much else.
As the “Nation” article in 1966 said – overburden the system, clog it up, that way it will fall.
It is not just the welfare rolls that the enemy had (and has) their sight on.
Not just millions of ordinary people can be turned into unemployed (or government employed) welfare dependents – major corporations can be turned into welfare dependents also.
So dependent on the govenrment that they will go along with anything.