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.
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Samizdata quote of the day If asked which groups posed the greatest threat to individual liberty in modern Britain, I would unhesitatingly cite two groups. These groups are, broadly, the medical profession and those who are generally called ‘celebrities’ – pop stars, film stars and so on.
– “Whig”, at the Adam Smith Institute blog.
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While the medical-industrial complex (which is a broader group than just the doctors themselves) is indeed a fine thing to loathe, I think it hard really to go past “politicians” and “civil servants”.
“Greatest” threat? No – the greatest threat to liberty is the wild spending of the government and the insane monetary policy of the Bank of England which finances it.
“medical-industrial complex”?
There is a lot of corporate welfare in Britain and the govenrment has just announced it will accept nearly all of the suggestions of the arch corporatist M.H. (the person who helped bring down Mrs Thatcher) for still more of this sort of statism – with (long discredited) “Regionalism” on top.
However, that is not really what the article is about.
It is about the IDEOLOGY of the medics (the “ban, ban, ban, – tax, tax, tax” stuff “for your own good”), the celebs (such as the trash of “Hacked Off”) have a similar death-to-liberty ideology.
Someone like Mr Bloomberg in the United States does not really want to ban everything (from large soda drinks to firearms) out of reasons of commercial profit – he believes that he is “doing good”.
A man is seldom so innocently engaged as when he is after money.
It is when people are after love, or power – to “make the world a better place” that the real evil gets done.
The ideology of the medics is to tell everyone what to do and to regulate stuff, both as part of their authoritarian ideology and as a way of maintaining their existing closed shop. A huge bureaucracy of self-serving rent seekers has come into being to help them do this. Some of this lies within government and some of it lies in the private sector. This bureaucracy tends to be much the same, regardless of whether healthcare is supposedly publicly funded, publicly run, privately funded, whatever. This, more than the doctors themselves, is what has to be defeated.
Think I’ll stick with:
The greatest threat to individual liberty in the U S is prosecutorial discretion; probably the same in the U K via the CPS.
Others may threaten life or its “quality;” but, taking individual liberty as a vulnerability, the threat from prosecution (see, increases in statutorily designated “crimes”) is far more pervasive.
RRS, I would say it’s prosecutorial immunity (and, indeed, all the other immunities enjoyed by government and its functionaries). Make them civilly (and,where appropriate, criminally) liable for their misdeeds and you’d see a big change in attitude.
Laird,
Absolutely