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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When I leave university and get a job, I want to live and die by my own efforts, but if they are especially productive, I want to enjoy the fruits of my labour without being penalised by the state for my success. I don’t want to see people starve, or to go without basic needs, but rather than having the state steal my money and use it to pay them to stay poor, I want them to have the opportunity to work, earn and live for themselves. I also want, through free charity, to be able to decide for myself in whose aid the money I donate will be spent: perhaps I might find the starving Iraqi child a more deserving cause than the perpetually-unemployed Dundonian who can’t afford the monthly satellite television subscription; perhaps I won’t think that the fact that one has been born in closer geographical proximity to me gives them a greater claim to the money I worked for. I don’t want these choices to be taken from me and decided centrally, by those whose very jobs require them to please as many local people as they can.
– David Bean, part of the St Andrews Liberty Club’s new committee, writing on The Liberty Log
Some of Samizdata’s more socially conservative readers seem to think gay marriage is a bad idea. But trying to work out why they hold that view is, at least at first, puzzling. They rail against social freedom saying that it leads to social degradation and also to lots of government spending. Well, I’m against ‘social degradation’ and ‘government spending’. So why don’t I agree with them?
The reality is that homosexual marriage would not lead to any degradation whatsoever. Homosexuals already live in a society where on the whole they are able to be open about their sexuality, and are able to have sex without the government arresting them. If the government lets two gay people marry, that if anything encourages fidelity. If you ask social conservatives to explain how this causes social degradation, the response is… BLANK.
The idea that homosexual marriage means that government spending has to go up is just plainly stupid. Homosexuals don’t have children, so they don’t impose the cost of education on the taxpayer. They generally die younger (although I suspect this will change), meaning they impose less cost in terms of pensions. If they split up, the taxpayer doesn’t have to look after the mother because both partners generally work.
The social conservative arguments are quite obviously bogus.
Could the real reason why social conservatives oppose gay marriage be much simpler? They oppose it because they hate gay people. They think it’s disgusting what these faggots do. They think the state should punish them for their depravity.
If not, could they perhaps explain themselves?
Peter Cuthbertson doesn’t like social liberalism. In a comment on The Liberty Log, he attacks free-marketeers who also favour social liberty:
So they advocate a smaller state while they also want government to promote behaviour that forces immense financial burdens onto the state? Greaaat.
I respect Cuthbertson a lot, and he writes an excellent blog, so I’m going to take the time to point out why I think he should reconsider his view.
Those who favour social freedom are not asking government to promote any behaviour at all. They are asking government to be neutral – to let people make their own choices. As for saying that it “forces immense financial burdens on the state”, this is exactly the same argument used in the early 1980s by the Left. Every time the government came up with a policy that would involve nationalised industries employing fewer people, this form argument would be brought up. Miners, they argued, were producing something and formed part of cohesive communities. Destroying the mining industry would force financial burdens on the state, destroy the family, violate rights…
Cuthbertson falls into the trap of believing that when the government doesn’t regulate people’s social affairs, society will deteriorate. Yet I suspect that many of the institutions he values – like marriage – have been in decline despite being controlled by the government. The problem of single motherhood has been an entirely government created phenomenon – not because of it being legal (it always has been) but because of government welfare.
Measures to reduce government involvement in social affairs should be welcomed. Labour’s proposal on gay unions does not encourage straight people to be gay. I think Cuthbertson would agree with me on that. But the policy will have a profoundly beneficial effect on gay culture, encouraging gay people to enter into more stable, longer-lasting relationships. Here we have a case of social freedom encouraging the sort of society that, I guess, Cuthbertson would like.
The reality is that over time society changes its attitudes. It is no longer socially acceptable to attack homosexuality. To do so is taboo. But despite developments in how people view the world, the government is often not very good at developing social institutions to cater for these progressions. In crude terms, it is often the inability of government to react to market forces that leads to social degeneration, not the market forces themselves.
Even on the drugs issue, where many people argue that legalisation or decriminalisation would lead to social degeneration, one should not ignore that degeneration is what we already have. 75% of crime is said to be drug-related, caused by the black-market price. Drugs being illegal doesn’t stop people using them.
No one wants a degenerate society. The difference in opinion is between those that think government control is that best way of society flourishing, and those who think that devolving the evolution of society to individuals and civil society works better. I, for one, go with the latter.
My boredom with eating sandwiches or salad for lunch encouraged me to visit the ready-meal section of Tesco today. The result was lasagne. As it cooked at work, one of my colleages commented on how good it smelt. I realised there was a positive externality created by cooking the meal, so I suggested to the office that they should pay me for the pleasure they were receiving.
I had no takers. Had I pushed them, they might have argued that, while the smell was enjoyable, they had not consented to it and therefore had no obligation to pay for it. They might also have pointed out that although the smell was nice, I would be getting the real benefit (the eating part).
In this example, it can be seen that charging people to receive a positive externality is unfair and absurd. Yet this is exactly the argument many people use in favour of taxpayer-funded university courses. This argument, out of all the arguments for scrapping tuition fees, is the worst.
Most of academic economics is polluted by the dangerous notion of ‘perfect competition’. It is dangerous because it is so utterly unlike the real world. Capitalism’s great duty is the taking of risks. Success is measured not so much by the virtues of the product but its place in a subtle flux of prices and alternatives. Perfect competition, with its associated poetry of ‘equilibrium’ is a romantic folly.
– John Blundell, Institute of Economic Affairs
Extremism in the pursuit of the Presidency is an unpardonable vice. Moderation in the affairs of the nation is the highest virtue.
– Lyndon Johnson, the successful 1964 US presidential candidate (thanks to an article in Capitalism Magazine for the quotation)
The section of Libertarian Alliance pamphlets I find most interesting is Tactical Notes. One of the most important questions for Libertarian strategists should be: how close to party politics is it advantageous to be?
I spent my four years at University distant from the Conservative group. The group was, most of the time, largely worthless. Sometimes they were wet, other times just offensive. I remember the time when one Tory president went into a chip shop and exclaimed loudly, “I think it’s great that I buy from the common people here! It keeps them in a job.”
The Liberty Club, which is non-partisan and interested in ideas, was much more successful, with more members, a higher budget and a higher profile. One of the Tory presidents declined our invitation to join saying that the Liberty Club seemed “extreme”. I replied: “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Being independent of a political party was very useful because we could express ideas seen as being slightly on the fringe.
But I do think it harmful when libertarians completely remove themselves from mainstream party politics. The creation of a Libertarian Party in the US has been wholly unhelpful because it allowed the religious right much more influence over the Republican Party. It has taken away the influence of libertarian ideas. Giving centre-right parties a libertarian hook does seem to me to be worthwhile.
Yes, I know all of you on this blog disagree with me. So I’ll shut up now, and promise not to write on this subject again.
It is often argued that the Conservative Party must move to the Left to win. It must tone down the tax-cutting agenda, and take the centre ground.
Sounds plausible, but reality is different. At a recent dinner of the Imperial College Conservatives, David Davis revealed that the all-important swing voters are more free-market than normal Tory supporters. According to a Conservative Central Office survey, 87% of swing voters think taxes are too high, compared with only 80% of loyal Tories.
So if you hear the nonsense about “gaining the centre”, tell The Enemy Within to go to hell.
No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
– The Magna Carta (1215)
Oliver Letwin is one of my favourite Parliamentarians, so I was pleased to find an article by him in today’s Telegraph. He is defending the right to trial by jury – which is under attack again by Our Glorious Government. He makes the very good point that the legal system should be bottom-up, rather than top-down:
There are, in essence, two models of justice. In the first, justice is an item imposed from above upon the community. In the second, justice is the means by which the community uses the power of the state to protect itself.
The significant difference between these two models is that, if justice is seen as something imposed from above, the citizen begins to regard the law and its enforcement as alien forces; whereas, in the second model, justice is understood to be something in which we all have a stake – and hence, as an activity in which all honest citizens can co-operate.
This of course helps protect individuals from abuse by the state:
The fact that amateurs have this role is one of the guarantees against the state arbitrarily imprisoning an individual.
The depressing thing is that David Blunkett just doesn’t get it. He doesn’t see why the people need protecting from him. After all, he’s an altruist and New Justice is in everyone’s interest. He’s from the government and he’s here to help.
Labour’s first term in office was relatively moderate for a Labour government. Most of the damaging policies were done by stealth or – with policies like foxhunting – put off until the future. This term, however, Labour is much more authoritarian, openly raising taxes, creating regulations and destroying civil liberties. But a third term, with Blunkett still in the Home Office and possibly Brown as PM, is not a prospect I like to think about.
Those pleased that the Office of Fair Trading is investigating Britain’s top private schools definitely deserve a detention. Fines, if issued, would be worse for parents than the alleged crime.
The crime is that the top private schools run a cartel which conspires to raise the price of tuition. But since there is more demand for places as these schools than supply, meaning the price is below the market-clearing price, the allegation is quite obvious nonsense. As last week’s Economist pointed out:
Some of them think they could raise their fees by 50% and still fill all their places with the children of the super-rich. Headteachers don’t want to do that because it would weaken their claim to charitable status and limit their ability to select the cleverest children and thus get the best results. So if they have been colluding, it may be to keep the fees down, not up.
But even if private schools have been colluding to raise prices, a fine would not be justified. Private schools are non-profit distributing charities, and if they have more money, they employ more teachers and build better sports facilities. How does taking a school’s cash and giving it to HM Treasury benefit the parents?
The Conservative Party wishes to liberate both our society and the individuals within it from the all-encompassing claims of a State that is still believed by some to be able to reap miracles.
– Oliver Letwin MP, seen by many as the chief architect of future Conservative Party policy
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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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