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]
Things descended into absurdity when A. abruptly asked:
Do you seriously believe that countries all over the world have coordinated and agreed to order restrictions like these? Northern Italy last year, China, etc.?
I was totally dismayed by her open cluelessness. Had she slept through these world-historical moments? Did she have no idea that lockdowns were demonstrably imported from China, with the help of the WHO and other actors? Was her implication that all these restrictions had arisen in spontaneous response to conditions, and that everything must therefore be in order? In any event, she called me “naive,” because I naturally answered her question with “yes.”
A. and B. are both intelligent and competent people in their fields, and I value both for different reasons. Nevertheless, they are swimming in these currents as if hypnotised, like countless others, and with their complicity our country has devolved into a dystopian dictatorship.
COP26 will help to consolidate this neo-aristocracy. And, bizarrely, the left will cheer it on. The left once said: ‘We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance… We do not call for a limitation of births, for penurious thrift, and self-denial. We call for a great production that will supply all, and more than all the people can consume.’ (Sylvia Pankhurst.) Now it pleads with the super-rich to come up with more and more creative ideas for how to rein in the filthy habits and material dreams of the masses. What a disaster. It isn’t climate change that poses the largest threat to humanity in the early 21st century. It’s the bourgeoisie’s loss of faith in its historic project, and its arrogant generalisation of that loss of faith into a new ‘green’ ideology we must all bow down before. A revolt against environmentalism is arguably the most necessary cause of our age. Who’s in?
Please follow this link for the time and location of Brian’s funeral. Also included is the information required to observe the proceedings online if you wish to do so on the day.
If you are coming in person, please RSVP so we have some idea regarding numbers.
I read an article on Unherd by Tim Bale and was struck by what a great example of mainstream herd thinking it was. I quite like Unherd and subscribe, but it also has some very much in-the-herd stuff like this one.
But then in the comments I saw pithy analysis of Tim Bale’s views by ‘Mikey Mike‘…
let’s look, first, a little closer at the Conservative Party under Cameron – “would you like to impale a straw man” (sung to the melody from Frozen)
ethnocentric, not particularly well-educated, intensely patriotic voters – citizens who become dumb racists when they stop voting Labour
commit…to net zero – Assure the public that we’ll make it a lot more expensive for the working poor to heat their homes and drive their cars without the climate ever noticing the difference.
draconian policies – stuff that a slogan can dismantle before a paragraph can defend.
austerity – whenever the annual increase in spending drops below 10%
I fear that, having once been sacrificed on the altar of the NHS and its limited capacity, our freedoms are no longer safe from the utilitarian knife. The same people telling us to shop alone, drink alone, and be in bed by eleven, to save lives from Coronavirus, will continue to make the same arguments over lesser risks.
If we accept pubs serving no alcohol, or alcohol only with a meal, or closing at ten, on the shaky ground that it reduces the spread of a virus, why not accept similar measures to take the strain of drunkenness off A&E departments every weekend? It can’t be coincidence that those rules fit so well with public health campaigners’ longstanding desire to wean us off our boozy nights out.
There are some questionable assumption in the linked article but the points above are an absolute certainty. People need to push back and not be too concerned with being polite.
Brian Micklethwait departed this world earlier today, leaving the samizdatistas poorer for his absence but richer for his lifetime dedication to the cause of liberty.
The deforestation statistics are startling to anybody who listens only to green activists. In 2018 a team from the University of Maryland concluded: ‘We show that – contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally – tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km². That’s 7 percent more forest globally than in 1982. New forests have been planted and old ones have regenerated naturally, as the footprint of farming shrinks, thanks to better yields.
So many libertarians, such as the good fellows at Reason magazine for example (who I do like, I hasten to add), have a simplistic, dare I say dualistic notion about bad-things-done-by-private-business and bad-things-done-by-the-state. One is met with “so start up a rival company” the other with “an outrageous example of state overreach that must be opposed politically.”
And in an ideal world, yes, that makes sense. We do not live in anything resembling an ideal world.
In an era when three (two really) credit card companies and a handful of payment processors have an off-switch for pretty much any on-line business they take a dislike to (unless they are called Apple or Amazon), as more and more of the economy goes virtual, what we have is turn-key tyranny for sale to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder is always going to be a state. I am uncertain what the solution is, but as we do not live in a ‘free market’, not convinced “so go set up your own global credit card and payment processing network” adds anything meaningful to the discussion. It is a bit like saying when the local electric provider turns off the power in your office (or home) because they disapprove of what you are doing “so go set up your own electric supply company”, as if that would be allowed to happen.
Fascism is the organised attempt to introduce socialist planning with the consent of big business
Just as the greengrocer was compelled to display signs of his loyalty under Soviet bloc communism, signs transmitting semantic content to which he was indifferent, so the covid citizen is compelled to display signs of compliance and complicity under the covid regime. The signs have included donning the mask and, increasingly, displaying the vaccine passport—to take part in society. And, as under communism, these displays are compulsory rituals. What function do they serve?
Let us take note: if the covid citizen were compelled to wear a sign that said, “I am afraid, therefore unquestionably obedient,” he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The covid citizen would be embarrassed and ashamed to don such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of fidelity must take the form of a sign which, at least on its surface, indicates a level of credulousness in the covid regime. It must allow the covid citizen to say, “What’s wrong with the vaccine passport? The experts say that the vaccine is necessary, for my health and that of others.” Thus, the vaccine passport helps the covid citizen to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, while at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. The vaccine passport hides them both behind the façade of something high. And that something is ideology.
The [indented] text above is my revision of a passage from Havel’s essay—with “the covid citizen” and “vaccine passport” of the covid regime replacing the greengrocer and the greengrocer’s sign of the Soviet regime. The point is to show, mutatis mutandis, the substitutability of terms. Although the vaccines have shown some efficacy at mitigating the effects of the virus, they neither protect their recipients from infection and disease nor prevent them from spreading it. And the dangers of the vaccines are not all known, although many short-term side effects, including death, have been documented. The vaccines may also be driving antibody-dependent enhancement, and, with the selective pressure they put on the virus, the production of mutations (variants). The vaccines are, after all, “state of emergency” measures, rushed into use before the necessary scientific testing to gauge their efficacy or ensure their safety could be done. Thus, they are anything but “science”—if by “science” we mean unhampered and open inquiry using the scientific method. The vaccine passport thus serves an ideological function, just like the greengrocer’s sign.
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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