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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J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5 writes in answer to a question about Canadian taxes:
“I was able to get a waiver on LoTR because it was a short-term engagement, but on Jeremiah I’ve been paying Canadian taxes (as well as American taxes) since day one. Even so, my Canadian tax burden is still far less than the average Canadian has to shell out every year, percentage-wise. Though I’m still somewhat of a newcomer, my feeling is that, frankly, the Canadian people are getting hosed. I understand the dilemma of having a very large country and a very small population that has to support that infrastructure, but even so they’re just getting hammered out of all proportion and reasonableness.”
So the question for the Blessed Tony Blair is, what excuse in a crowded little country where the infrastructure is crap, like the UK?
I was just wondering if the asteroid – currently projected to hit Earth in 2019 and destroy a continent – happened to land on Mecca…
Is this thought heresy to to a Moslem? Would scientific efforts by Christians or worse, atheists, to deflect the asteroid be an interference in God’s purpose?
I think we should be told.
Alice Bachini almost manages to scare me silly with talk of nuclear weapons in suitcases (this article must surely be in the NSA ‘Dodgy’ Inbox via the Echelon Internet System, being pored over for hidden significance).
However a few clues about the person carrying it: a decent sized nuclear weapon is going to need a twenty five kilogramme lump of Uranium 235, or a smaller piece of plutonium (I don’t know how much smaller). There are assorted devices for triggering the detonator, initiating fission and of course a very strong cradle (and heavy) to hold the whole thing together while the whole thing is carried around.
Last weekend I watched an entertaining film called “Bad Company” in which a couple of CIA agents played by Antony Hopkins and Chris Rock threw the briefcase around as if it contained only a couple of sandwiches and a copy of the daily paper. I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger (I probably weigh more but not for the right reasons) and I’m quite sure that a forty or fifty kilogramme suitcase would be beyond my capacity to carry one-handed for any distance. I would have thought that someone struggling two-handed with an attache case they could barely lift would be a fairly indiscrete sight. It would also be a very naughty gag to pull at a station as a practical joke.
Realistically we’re looking at a device in a vehicle. It is a safe bet that no European city is safe but I would be amazed if the US government hadn’t installed radiation detection equipment on all major roads leading into the major cities. The Mayor of London is too busy trying to mess up the traffic to worry about such niceties. Even a heavily shielded lump of radioactive material can be detected fairly easily at a distance. At school we played with tiny pieces of uranium encased in lead which we could detect yards away with Geiger counters. Indeed in the movie, such a device was used to track down the bomb.
For reasons I won’t bore readers with, I could really use a nice fat housing bubble burst in London. Having turned down a chance to buy a house in 1996 on the grounds that it was overpriced and the downturn imminent (one recently sold in that street for five times the then asking price), my judgement on timing the crash is not terribly good.
However, I just came across a comment on a newsgroup about whether the author of a TV series was a millionaire (in US dollars). One respondent mentioned in passing that there’s been a sharp fall in Silicon Valley property prices for the past year. Despite the claims of estate agents and mortgage lenders – both have an interest in inflating reported prices which makes a “House price index” produced by a lender suspect in my eyes – there seems to be a drop in the number of really expensive houses for sale in London (a subjective impression of mine) but rents are clearly crashing (only three times equivalent Paris prices, from four times last summer).
This will no doubt be reported as terrible news for homeowners and the leftist class-hate merchants on Channel 4 news will have a field day. The bigger problem is that the correction in the housing market looks set to occur just when the government gets round to intervening. So there will be subsidies paid to public sector workers, planning controls will protect derelict industrial slums as “monuments to working-class culture” whilst hideous boxes with tiny (eco-friendly) windows will be built on water meadows (to be flooded each spring). Council officers will be sent on “search and destroy” missions to eliminate greedy landlords by regulation, just in time to prevent home-hunters from benefiting from a buyers’ market. And the accursed Housing Benefit, a bigger creator of crime and fraud in Britain than drugs,will be raised, thereby distorting the lower end of the housing market even more.
Isolationist libertarianism is a particularly American brand and trusting elections to prevent civil wars seems to be a British one. Both have their strong points but there are occasions where both are plain wrong.
I wrote (and deleted) a few hundred words on the history of Algerian massacres which go back to the mid-nineteenth century, and have a strong (under-reported) underpinning of ethnic hatred. That and the fact that the Iranian revolution didn’t have the option of elections is part of the reason I don’t think that the comparison is fair on the Algerian Army.
Even with the benefit of hindsight I find it difficult to see how the armed forces of Algeria could have calculated that the FIS wouldn’t be worse than their Iranian counterparts (I recall that Ayatollah Khomeni had only recently died at the time). The Army had no way of knowing what we know of Iran today.
Sorry, can’t locate the Milton Friedman quote, however, for a model example of the justified military coup, see the later stages of series two of Babylon 5. I believe it’s available on DVD. If I buy one of those machines soon, the whole series will be on my first round of shopping.
In a previous Samizdata.net article by Brian Micklethwait, he quotes an article by fellow Samizdata contributor Natalie Solent written on her own blog:
Natalie says that it would have been better for the Algerian fundamentalists to have kept their election win and taken Algeria down the Iran trail, which eventually, if Iran itself is anything to go by, gets better. I think I agree.”
Great. “Algeria” is better off for the next twenty years under Islamic fundamentalist rule. Yet again Brian sees people as an amorphous mass. Several thousand individual women have had their throats cut in the past decade for not wearing ‘modest dress’. Several hundred children have been slaughtered by similar means. But that’s OK ‘cos in twenty years someone else’s kids might not be shot for demonstrating against the ban on “The Simpsons” or Pepsi adverts.
It’s one thing to take a libertarian isolationist view (it is a better one since the end of the Cold War, in my opinion). Liberal interventionism on the nineteenth century scale can be ineffective (Afghanistan after toppling the Taliban springs to mind) and is arguably a misuse of British taxpayers’ money. But on what possible grounds can a libertarian support the imposition of a theocratic dictatorship by a rigged ballot only a week after attacking Christian creationists for wanting to keep Darwin out of the classroom in some U.S. southern state?
As for Natalie, I wonder what future she thinks her Algerian contemporaries see for their families. I don’t suppose many of them blog under their real names either. I thought a libertarian position would be that if consenting Islamic fundamentalists wished to purchase land and build a shining model of the good society for us all to learn from; then so long as they didn’t use force to get people in, or to prevent them from leaving, that would be fine. Unlike Iran, the Algerian Islamists are quite open about scrapping elections, something even Adolf Hitler was vague about.
To the extent that the armed forces see their job as protecting the constitution or the population from external invasion or tyranny, I reckon they’ve got a point in opposing Theocratic despotism. This is also true in Turkey where a similar problem exists albeit in a less bloody form. I’m not saying “send in the Marines”. But every Algerian soldier who shoots a fundamentalist terrorist is making the world a better place in my books.
Natalie’s remarks about “two-sided” cruelty is another fine one. The Algerian equivalent of Guardian readers think the Islamists will let them live, just like their late and un-lamented predecessors in Iran did (atheists die too). The Guardian and the Independent have played a very dirty game indeed. The standard line they put out is to attribute every other massacre to the army first, then reluctantly admit that maybe, this time the fundamentalists did it. Imagine if every time the IRA planted a bomb, the American press claimed the British police did it? I can just hear the conspiracy theorists reply “They’re the ones that don’t go off, because the British army’s detonators don’t work”.
There are only two things to do about terrorist organisations, either destroy them by any means, or surrender (if they’ll let you). I don’t think the fundamentalists will let their opponents surrender.
As for those who think that a temporary dictatorship far away would be fine, I suggest this simple exercise, imagine that you are being told to submit to it for the rest of your lives, by someone sitting in New Zealand (who may even object to your escaping to his country).
Exactly a year before the assasination attempt on President Chirac the day before yesterday, I stood in a downpour at the corner of the avenue de Friedland on the place de l’Etoile at the top of the Champs Elysees. The exact spot of yesterday’s gunman in fact.
I picked the spot because it was at the top of the Champs Elysees where the parade vehicles sort themselves out. Because of the wet conditions and the roundabout of l’Etoile, the vehicles have to drive slowly, giving me a better view.
As the military parade began President Chirac was driven slowly, in an open topped vehicle which dropped speed even more to negotiate the bend before entering the Champs Elysees. M. Chirac is tall (well over six foot), towering over his bodyguard, he doesn’t wear a hat or cap, and as his convoy meandered past I remarked to myself that with a heavy calibre pistol any shooter would have fancied their chances of hitting M. Chirac several times at a distance of of about ten metres. I myself, never having fired any weapon, would probably have managed to miss.
Over the next couple of days I mentioned this to several French libertarians.
One can imagine my relief to discover that the gunman was a member of a white supremacist organisation which has no links to the French libertarian movement.
I would like to be able to assert with confidence that no libertarian in France would believe that assasinating Chirac would do no good. They are pretty cynical about the merits one politician versus another.
Unfortunately, Chirac is such a dreadfully corrupt character (financially, morally, intellectually) that I can’t think of anyone from his circles who wouldn’t be an improvement. I wouldn’t be able to put them off by saying “So and so could get in and he’d be worse…” So maybe it could have been one of ours. However, to quote the Jackal: “You see, gentlemen, your own efforts have not only failed but have queered the pitch for everyone else.”
Oh well, with any luck he’ll catch pneumonia next time there’s a downpour.
In his article yesterday, Brian agrees with the most ridiculous Christians in order to denounce them. This is all too familiar, he used the same polemic tactic when denouncing Ayn Rand.
In the first place, Darwin’s theory needs extensive modification: the actual mechanism of change isn’t confirmed by paleontological findings: one quarter-horse, three-quarters giraffe, then two-thirds giraffe, then half-giraffe, leading up to modern giraffes. There seems to be sudden bursts of extinctions and sudden appearances of new creatures, which is inconsistent with the Darwinian account of progressive change. It would make more sense to call the Theory revolution than evolution.
Second, the origin of the universe appears to have been a sudden event (a ‘Big Bang’). The Genesis account of the creation of the universe is as good an illustration as any available to us. Compared with what other theories were in circulation in 2,000 BC it’s remarkable. What evidence does anyone have that Big Bang was something other than a deliberate act? I know I can’t prove the Christians wrong about the creation of the universe. Brian apparently thinks that because humans weren’t made on the sixth day, therefore God didn’t create the universe. He may be right, but the assertion is not logically valid. That means that a conclusion that CAN be true if the premises are false is logically invalid.
We could use In the following logically valid reasoning:
Premise 1: Either God created the universe as described literally in the book of Genesis or Darwinian evolution is true.
Premise 2: Darwinian evolution is true.
Conclusion: Therefore, God didn’t create the universe as described literally in the book of Genesis or Negative that God and Creation are true.
But what the argument has not demonstrated is that Darwin and God are exclusive:
The conclusion – Negative that God and Creation are true – is not valid from the premises listed above.
If Darwinian theory is true then both premises are true. But if God actually started Big Bang (for example by sneezing) and Darwinian theory merely describes what happened next, then the conclusion is false. Nothing in the premises excludes this possibility, therefore the argument is logically invalid.
Third, making any point about Christianity in relation to the nationalized Church of England is as relevant as using British Leyland in 1970 as a case example of capitalism. This doesn’t stop some people from doing so: mostly anarchists who think the USSR was an advanced capitalist society.
I look forward to Brian’s dismissal of logic as the devil’s script. 
Spotted in the Daily Telegraph report of the air disaster in southern Germany on Monday night, caused by the air collision of a cargo plane and a charter jet carrying Russian youths on a cultural exchange visit:
Khalyaf Ishmuratov, the Bashkirian deputy prime minister, said: “We lost wonderful children who could have become artists, scientists, entrepreneurs. Their disappearance is a huge loss.”
Would any Western leader have mentioned “entrepreneurs” in this context? In England the answer is probably “Never”. Mr Ishmuratov sounds like Ayn Rand’s idea of a statesman.
A problem for the UK: the Swiss air traffic control is a private contractor, so we can expect this tragedy to be exploited by opponents of the British government’s scheme to privatise air traffic control over here.
I don’t believe that the Conservative Party has a future. I think most of its members will either go away or pass away over the next ten years. I also reckon that Labour will win the next election (perhaps with a new leader), which will be extremely upsetting for many of the current generation of Conservative politicians.
However, Oliver Letwin MP, at last night’s Adam Smith Lecture, offered the sort of evidence, which if sustained over the next three years, could yet force me to change my mind. It is also an exception to my rule never to listen to political speeches, when trying to predict the future.
But then Mr Letwin is no ordinary politician. His speech was Sustainability and society. He started by setting the infamous Mrs Thatcher remark “there is no such thing as society” into its context and then announced that the rest of what he was going to say was consistent with her full statement.
He then listed four main themes and stuck to them. These were:
- Society is irreducibly complex
- Simplistic targets can be exceptionally destructive
- Crude intervention damages natural regeneration
- Natural systems are able to absorb limited disruption, then degrade suddenly and irreversibly
Especially cute was the use of the ecosystem of the tropical rainforest to illustrate the harm that social engineers can inflict on society. Mr Letwin also described the damage caused by spin-initiatives in the National Health Service and housing estates in the manner of a don discussing the pernicious effects of Byzantine tax policies. Mr Letwin was precisely such a don dissecting Marxist philosophy before entering think-tanks and politics. The deliberate refusal to make the attack emotional or personal was all the more powerful. Mr Letwin didn’t spell out every detail. I figured out for myself that the last point could be a description of the accelerating shambles of the railway, state health system and of course the criminal justice system.
I could have written everything Mr Letwin said on the contrast between local decision making being less bad than remote decision making.
He then answered questions openly, without being afraid to disagree.
Mr Letwin responded to the fear that local tyrants would replace remote bureaucracies. Local tyrants are easier to persuade of the error of their ways or to remove if necessary. Also the harm would be inflicted on fewer people at a time, and mistakes could be rectified quicker.
Mr Letwin also outlined his ideas for a ‘Freedom Audit’ for new legislation. This would at least mean that politicians and civil servants would have to invent ingenious excuses why the most oppressive price of legislation was really liberating. This would force the issue of freedom to be raised before a law was rushed through Parliament.
He also gave his case for drug criminalisation in answer to a Cambridge University student who asked what ingenious excuse Mr Letwin could find for explaining that drug prohibition was in fact liberation. Mr Letwin took that point on the chin and admitted that drug criminalisation was a violation of liberty and “inconsistent with the libertarian position”. He defended this on the grounds that for an individual to destroy his intellect was something that should not be allowed. He also claimed that it would be inconsistent to legalise some drugs and not others (True!). But in his view the total legalisation would cause the collapse of civilisation as we know it. However, he did add that cannabis might not be properly categorised as a drug, which he considered a technical issue.
There are three problems for Mr Letwin’s approach (which I suspect he understands full-well). One is that Labour could steal any or all of his actual proposals. To his credit Mr Letwin appears content with this: he would prefer to be in opposition with the government doing the right thing than in government doing the wrong thing. The other is that a lot of the centralisation he talks about was pushed through by his own party: at some stage he will have to say “We were wrong”, it is unclear whether Mr Letwin will be allowed to say it. Finally, will Mr Letwin’s colleagues have the intellectual integrity to keep to this approach, or will they quickly lose their nerve.
Already Sean Gabb is admitting that he may have to change his tactics towards the Conservative Party. If Mr Letwin can silence our separate criticisms, they’re doing something right.
I was asked by someone at the reception afterwards if I thought Mr Letwin would swing young voters to back the Tories. On that performance I said “No, but they would have been intrigued…”
I just took part in a French online discussion about abortion, sale of human organs, genetic material etc. It occurs to me that a libertarian point view includes the following idea:
· The components for the manufacture of human beings are legitimately tradeble.
· The finished product is not.
What is the boundary?
A French libertarian arguing about infidelity in relationships said that unless a contract is written, it isn’t valid. In the torrent of refutations (to which I contributed my ha’penny worth) Stefan Metzeler included the following anecdote:
Here’s another example which demonstrates the advantage of a good reputation, even “collective”. About ten years ago, I was in Martinique (a very, very beautiful place). On my last day, I chanced upon a boutique with jewels and I thought that this would be a nice present for my girlfriend. So I chose some for a little more than $100 and I want to pay by VISA. No luck, she [the shop-keeper] couldn’t take it and I didn’t have any cash. But then the saleswoman says to me looking at my card: “Are you Swiss? Do you have your passport?” I reply “Yes, of course.”
“Then no problem, I’ll give you credit and you just wire me the money when you get home. I’ve never had a problem with the Swiss.”
I must admit that I was gob-smacked… a reputation like that is worth more than gold in the bank. Of course, I settled up the day after I returned to Switzerland.
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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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