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 – two wrongs Fuck off. I despise Google, but I’d trust them more than I trust Wes Streeting or any of the other narcissistic arseholes in government. I will do whatever I can to foil any attempts to drag me into their net. I, not they, am the owner of myself and my data. At every turn I will put down obstacles and refuse to comply. We’ve been here before – twenty years ago, in fact. Nothing changes. Different faces, but the same lurking evil.
– Longrider quietly musing on the relationship between the state and its subjects.
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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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How can they implement pervasive CBDC’s if not everyone is properly D?
Implantables at birth – a soon-to-be-announced feature!
If it is a smartphone and smart watch combination I expect there will be a rash of ‘confound your data’ apps produced.
As my colleague Martha Gill wrote last week, the main aim of companies, from the newest startups to major multinationals, is to get us all addicted to their products. It is the private sector that wants to use and manipulate digital information much more than the state could ever conceive of doing.
This made be laugh because that is EXACTLY what the government does. “We will tax the crap out of you so you can’t save for retirement, now you need to use our retirement system and so you need to bend the knee to us”. “State government, we are going to tax the crap out of your citizens, and then if you state governments are sufficiently obsequious to us we will deign to give you highway dollars”, “Brits, we will impose a VAT to pay for the NHS, and so now you have to do everything we say, stop smoking, stop eating, stop having fun, or we will withhold the medical care you need,that you can’t pay for because we have siphoned off all your wealth.”
At least facebook just sells you as the product, the government charges you for the privilege of being the product.
The whole thing is based on the Dual Delusions of Democracy: that your vote can influence the government, and that the government is the only or best way to solve problems. Compare to the Two Truths of Tyranny: we are going to take from you as much as we can get away with, and we are going to tell you that we are doing it for your own good.
If the NHS isn’t going to treat people who smoke, it seems only fair that smokers should be exempt from tobacco taxes. . . .
William H. Stoddard
If the NHS isn’t going to treat people who smoke, it seems only fair that smokers should be exempt from tobacco taxes. . . .
And all the income and VAT taxes that pay for the NHS. Heck with the amount they save they can probably pretty easily pay for a BUPA subscription. Almost makes you want to take up smoking, amirite?
In any case, I think it’s time to give up the smartphone and re-embrace the brick again – if only to humbug the likes of Streeting.
Google is joined at the hip with government – both the American government agencies and international “governance”. Its search engine is systematically rigged.
The idea of Milton Friedman that the vast corporations are political and culturally neutral and just concentrate on making profits for shareholders is incorrect today – most of the shares of the vast corporations are not controlled by individuals (partly due to tax law), the shares are mostly controlled by institutions (hired managers in charge of other hired managers – very similar to a government bureaucracy, and they are also linked to the government bureaucracy). the corporations also depend on such things as government contracts, and (of course) access to the endless Credit Money that the government (via the Central Bank) creates (from nothing) and dishes out on increasingly political grounds (such as DEI – EDI in the United Kingdom).
To have a capitalist economy one must first have a neutral non political currency (such as gold or silver – but there may be modern alternatives to such commodities) and business enterprises must be controlled by actual owners – not BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard plus the Credit Bubble banks (which are NOT based on Real Savings, the actual sacrifice of consumption – today banks are Credit Bubbles dependent on the government Central Bank).
Only a few years ago I think we had a sort of “as if” capitalism – so even though the structure of the economy was no longer capitalist, business enterprises (including the vast corporations) acted “as if” they were operating in a capitalist (free enterprise) economy – but that has broken down now.
As Dorothy said “we are not in Kansas any more Toto”.
As for everyone having “smart phones” to “save the NHS” – it is another gimmick.
Russia (then the Soviet Union) had a health system of this kind some 20 years before the NHS (indeed the NHS was based upon the Soviet model – although this is not admitted, as it would destroy the “first in the world” legend and other, associated, legends) – the difference seems to be that Russians have a more realistic, less cult-like, view of their health service – they know its limitations only too well.
The British have not yet reached the Russian level of “cynicism” about such matters – or realism, depending on one’s point of view.
As for the use of technology (such as computers) to control the lives of ordinary people – this has been on the agenda of both governments and international corporations (if any real distinction can be made between the two) for a long time now.
For example, there are signs of it in the Rio Conference of 1992 – where the excuse trotted out for international, yes international, tyranny, was C02 – although all the leading people behind the conference had supported international tyranny long before the C02-is-evil theory started to be used as a justification for it.
In a few days we will find out if the United States will go along with this international agenda of tyranny (a tyranny made more absolute by the use of computer technology) – if “Harris/Walz” (or rather the forces behind them) are declared the winners, then the concepts of “the West” or “the Free World” will-be-dead.
If America falls – no where else can stand.
“The West” or “the Free World” can continue to exist without the United Kingdom (which is just as well – considering that the United Kingdom is on the left hand path, the broad and easy road, to a rather unpleasant place), but “the West” or “the Free World” can not exist without the United States.
Wonderful, but impotent invective. What ‘Longrider’ fails to appreciate is that Google, Microsoft et al, are your government. It is the data collection arm of the State.
The marriage of big business and the surveillance state. AKA Fascism.
I find it notable that in the ’90s nuclear power was vilified and excoriated by the greenoids and the left for being dangerous, the byproducts of which was going to ruin the environment and kill us all. But suddenly, they are reopening the Three mile island nuclear facility because it can be harnessed to supply the massive data centres of big tech. But not to supply our economy with cheap energy and improve the living standards of the average Joe.
Not one squeak from the Greenoids.