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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Brian Micklethwait is right to say that the government is falling apart. It has faced revolts from its own party on foxhunting, Iraq and foundation hospitals. It is seen by many as having misled the people about the reasons for the Iraq war. Hospitals and schools are in crisis despite having more money than ever. National Rail is a bottomless pit. The payment of Tax Credits has been a disaster. Now the government is lurching even more to the Left, introducing draconian employment laws to appease its backbenchers. As for Europe, the government has completely failed to get a grip: it keeps on saying that it will not give in on items in European treaties, but each time it does exactly that.
The reality is that government is not just incompetent, it is a walking disaster. John Major’s Conservative Party might have had its problems, but it was never this bad. The Third Way is rarely heard of these days. Like a drunk, Labour’s Way involves stumbling all over the road.
Yet there is an alternative. There is one major party that broadly promotes libertarian ideas. It vocally states that we are overtaxed and over-regulated; that the European Constitution and Euro are wrong for Britain; that government-control of healthcare and education does not work; that the BBC’s business model needs “examining”; and that individuals should be free to make their own choices about their lives.
What is the name of this libertarian party?
Conservative.
By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
– Lord Salisbury (1830-1903)
I’ve just watched the film Wall Street for the very first time. I know I’m a few years late, but c’est la vie. The movie subjects viewers to the economic fallacy that asset stripping does not create wealth.
When financiers asset strip a company, they do something very useful. They take assets that are not being used efficiently, and change their use to something more valuable. It may not be nice for those employed by the company, but the country as a whole is better off as a result.
The key reason why I oppose boycotting French businesses is because it is counterproductive. Some of the boycotters just avoid French goods to make themselves feel better. But many boycott with the idea that somehow this will get the French to be more supportive of America in future. They are mistaken.
The effect of fewer American tourists on the streets of Paris is to cut the interaction between ordinary French people and ordinary Americans. It eliminates those conversations in which the American tourists say, “Well, I can understand why you opposed the war, but I’m very pleased that Saddam can’t kill any more people.” It reduces understanding between the two peoples. It makes the French less reliant on trade with America, helping to make America more distant and easier to demonise. It encourages anti-Americanism.
In short, boycotting the French is a mistake.
Woody Allen has been hired by the French government to encourage Americans not to boycott France when going on holiday. In a promotional video, he says:
I don’t want to have to refer to my French-fried potatoes as freedom fries and I don’t want to have to freedom-kiss my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her.
I am of the same opinion. Disagreeing with Jaques Chiraq’s opposition to the freeing of the Iraqi people isn’t the same as hating French people. In fact, I really quite like France. It may sound odd to some neo-cons, but France has many positive aspects to its culture.
Don’t get me wrong: I like the go-getting, entrepreneurial, play to win culture that America brings to the world. I like the ideas of Jefferson and other founding fathers. But it is a mistake to think that any culture cannot benefit from other ideas. For a start, the Paris approach to fashion and marketing is chic – often much hipper than America’s. Readers in Britain will most probably have seen the recent adverts by Orange, the French-owned mobile phone company. They have a boy, aged maybe twelve, dressed up in a suit advertising their products. But it’s not just any old suit. Oh no. It’s a suit that oozes of fashion. The shirt and tie combination are spectacular. It’s so, so French, and it’s very appealing advertising.
Yes, I’d like the French government to learn from America’s lower tax economy, but there’s French culture that’s valuable too. Oddly, French culture is actually less statist than American culture in some respects. There aren’t any speed cameras on the road. There aren’t proposals, as far as I can tell, for banning smoking in bars. Nor do they have America’s puritanical laws against drinking by under 21s. There is an element of social libertarianism that is really quite refreshing.
Iain Duncan-Smith relaunched the Conservative Party yesterday, announcing that a future Conservative government would abolish tuition fees. Of course, political parties have to reach out to those outside their traditional supporters. But IDS is going about it the wrong way.
Margaret Thatcher got lots of people living on council estates to vote for her. It was not by being left-wing, but by applying her free-market principles to make their lifes better. By giving them the option to buy their houses from the state, she helped them to rise up the ladder of economic prosperity. By allowing parents to have a say in which state school their children could go to, power was taken away from government bureaucrats, enabling parents to take their children to away from failing schools. Her strategy for getting non-Conservatives to vote Conservative was entirely consistent with her principles. Voters believed her policies because they saw their consistency.
By simply adopting socialist policies – and moving the Tories to the left of Labour – IDS is alienating his core support. But worse, he is unlikely to gain the votes of those who support his policies anyway. There aren’t many Old Labour opponents of tuition fees that are going to jump ship and vote Tory. They are much more likely to vote Lib Dem, a rather more convincing party of socialism.
“To exist without enemies is to be a miserable jellyfish that stands for nothing.”
– Carter Laren, Capitalism Magazine
On Channel Four News tonight it was reported that the UK government is to ban childminders from smacking children from the autumn. What I found odd in the report was that apparently the UN thinks the government should go further and prevent parents, not just childminders, from smacking.
I don’t have strong feelings either way on whether smacking should be allowed. What gets me is that the UN thinks it is its job to decide whether or not it should be legal. Surely the UN’s role – if it has one at all – is to provide a forum to discuss disagreements between countries, helping to prevent wars. It should not be for deciding the domestic policies of individual countries.
The current Time Out (print edition) quotes a playwright, Nabil Shaban, attacking the government’s spending on war:
Blair is misusing the democratic process, and taxpayers’ money – which should be spent on health and education at home.
To show that this war is not in his name, Mr Shaban’s has publicly given back to the government a £24,800 grant awarded as funding for one of his plays. This publicity stunt, however, does raise an important question. If Mr Shaban objects to taxpayers’ money being spent on something he deems unnecessary – as opposed to hospitals and schools – why did he in the first place think it right to receive accept taxpayers’ money for his play?
There is no margin for error about a monstrosity that was created for the alleged purpose of preventing wars by uniting the world against any aggressor, but proceeded to unite it against any victim of aggression. The expulsion of a charter member, the Republic of China [Taiwan]—an action forbidden by the U.N.’s own Charter—was a ‘moment of truth,’ a naked display of the United Nations’ soul. What was Red China’s qualification for membership in the U.N.? The fact that her government seized power by force, and has maintained it for twenty-two years by terror. What disqualified Nationalist China [Taiwan]? The fact that she was a friend of the United States. It was against the United States that all those beneficiaries of our foreign aid were voting at the U.N. It was hatred of the United States and the pleasure of spitting in our face that they were celebrating, as well as their liberation from morality—with savages, appropriately, doing jungle dances in the aisles.
– Ayn Rand (at the top of the UNisEvil.com website)
The trick to beating student unions is to force them to follow their arguments to conclusion. Student politicians tend to be the sort of student who enjoys controlling other people’s lives. They hear fond stories of student protests in the 1960s, but are disillusioned by the lack of interest in student politics among today’s undergraduates. Boycotts particularly appeal to this mindset.
Let’s say a student politician proposes that the union ceases trading with any business with involvement in Burma. The result of such a ban would be minimal. But why should only Burma be included? The boycott is because the country has a poor human rights record. Surely, therefore, the union should cease dealings any country that abuses human rights? It is much better to student politicians the idea that lots of products ought to be banned. That way, there are two possible outcomes. The boycott will be stopped by the Tory wets (who would put up with a boycott of Guinness but couldn’t cope if Gordon’s disappeared too). Alternatively, half the drinks in the union bar disappear overnight, in which case people stop going to the union, and its power therefore decreases. It’s a win-win situation.
The problem is that this strategy is far too risky when it comes to national politics. If you tell the government to be more consistent, it might actually do what you say, and mess up the entire country. It’s much better for governments to mess up the economy inconsistently than do it properly.
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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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