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]
|
Although I am unlikely to be in a rush to join either of these organisations, today is a day a day I can say I am for once in agreement with their current campaigns.
Amnesty is campaigning against Castro’s crackdown on dissidents. OK he might not change his ways just because you send a letter of complaint, but Amnesty also, rightly, reckons the US government embargo needs to go. More contact will weaken, not strengthen Castro. And anyway, if I want to go to Cuba, what business is it of the US government?
Oxfam has also been making some helpful noises on Trade for Africa, on CNBC in Evian one of their spokespeople rightly said aid did not matter any where as near as much as trade. The best thing for Africa would be an end to subsidies for American and European farmers. Their latest paper on the G8 summit has the usual nonsense about how poor taxpayers in the West should subsidise rich kleptocratic dictators in Africa through government-to-government aid, but also calls on G8 governments to…
Address the enourmous harm being done by the subsidies rich Western Countries pay their farm sectors to produce a glut of cheap food which is dumped on world markets, undercutting African farmers and robbing their livelihoods. To fight a war on unfair trade rules, the G8 countries should: Immediately stop using subsidies and export credits that cause over-production and dumping of surpluses in developing countries. Open their own markets to all products from Africa and other low-income countries.
Looks like the message is semi-seeping through to NGOs.
As for Bono and Oxfam’s “Drop the debt” campaign, even a greedy capitalist like myself recognises that debts derived from old Cold War era geo-political bribes should not burden Africa’s children. Time for a market-solution to the debt. Let the failed-states go bankrupt. Alternative, better, delivery mechanisms for education and healthcare can be created. Africa doesn’t need corrupt governments and armies, it needs teachers and nurses.
Paul Staines
I always thought Burke’s metaphor of the English oxen ignoring the buzzing political insects was a good thing, however in the present situation placidity in the doorway of the abattoir may not be a virtue.
– Doug Collins
With Orwellian double-think, the preamble to the European Convention begins with a quote from Thucydides:
Our Constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people
So should we not vote on it?
It is�about as ‘democratic’ as the Warsaw Pact Treaty.
Paul Staines
Robert Theron Brockman II observers how not to liberate a country from tyranny and chaos
It seems that the United States government has decided to disarm the Iraqi populace as part of its newly found desire to restore order.
This smells like the sort of thing that could lead to disaster, for all the usual reasons – only outlaws will have guns and whatnot. And if any population needs to be armed as a check on a potentially tyrannical government, it is the population of Iraq.
It almost seems like a clerical error – surely the guys who were the driving force behind the invasion over at Central Command aren’t gun control nuts, are they?
This seems like a good basis for a lively discussion here at Samizdata.
Robert Theron Brockman II
It is becoming increasingly clear that Europe’s economic problems are a year or so away from becoming nightmarish. The international economic establishment is getting worried, G7 finance ministers, the OECD and the IMF are making increasingly gloomy noises. Deflation approaches like a glacier, slowly but almost impossible to stop without radical measures. The ECB’s constitution is inadequate to deal with the problem. It is charged with holding down inflation and maintaining price stability, not with encouraging economic growth.
Inflation is not a threat, deflation is a real threat. Japan has had 41 consecutive months with no inflation, Germany is going the same way pulling Europe with it. The US has abandoned the strong dollar policy in order to reflate, devalue its debt and cheapen exports. Consequently the Euro has now strengthed over 40% from its lows, adding to the woes of exporters. Germany is mired in high taxes, social costs and rigid structural problems – Eurozone unemployment rates are nearly double that of the Anglosphere countries. Real interest rates (base rate – inflation) in the Eurozone are punishing compared to the US. Don’t even think about the unfunded pension problems.
So what does the ECB do? Nothing. Last year many people laughed when 90 year-old Milton Friedman joked that he would outlive the Euro. If the ECB does not re-invent itself as a growth orientated central bank, Milton may yet have the last laugh.
Paul Staines
The bete noir of much of the left, Ariel Sharon, appears to be ‘doing a Nixon’. Just as only Nixon could go to China without a collapse of domestic support, perhaps Sharon can make peace with the PLO, secure Israel’s pre-1967 borders and compromise on the settlements.
He is being branded a traitor by Jewish settlers, a war criminal by pro-Palestinians and a pariah by the usual suspects. So he must be doing something good. He clearly has a difficult task in balancing Israel’s security against peaceful compromise, but with the new strategic reality in the Middle-East, his task might be easier.
Paul Staines
Quite an old story (end of April) but interesting. Write a protest on your own property: get warned off by the police.
A German man who staged a political protest by writing “The Government is crap” on his own car, has been told to remove it or face jail.
Police failed to see the funny side of 33-year-old Stefan Lukoschek’s protest at the policies of Gerhard Schroeder.
Officers said they had received complaints from several people about protest on his yellow VW. The words were stenciled on the rear and side windows.
Lukoschek said: “I put it on there because my father who worked all his life, has seen his pension reduced to nothing by the current government.”
“Police failed to see the funny side”. Well obviously that’s because:
- It wasn’t a joke.
- They’re German.
So the German police warn a guy off who writes anti-government statements on his own property (so he must presumably have been breaking some law), the French now have laws against booing the national anthem or insulting the flag (no, really)… and apparently also against insulting the president, and the EU is concocting assorted speech-crime laws to cure “online xenophobia”. What a fine state of affairs.
Robert Hinkley
This appeared as a comment from Nick Forte in the largely humorous article about the brouhaha relating to the State Flag of Georgia. As Nick makes some very interesting points about an endlessly debated subject, we thought it was worthy of appearing as a Samizdata.net article in its own right
I fear the debate over the cause of the Civil War will never be resolved. This is because there was no single cause. There was not even a predominant cause. The various participants in the war fought for a myriad of different reasons. On the Southern side, it is true that many advocates of secession argued that slavery was threatened if the South remained in the Union. This view was strongest in the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas), were most of the slaves were located.
But is must be remembered that there were two waves of secessions. The states of the Deep South seceded in the early months of 1861 and many of their articles of secession did claim slavery as a major issue.
The Upper South (Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas) did not secede until after Lincoln called for a levy of state militias to put down the “rebellion”. It was their view that the Federal government was abusing the sovereign rights of the seceding states that drove the Upper South out of the Union. In fact, prior to Ft. Sumter, Virginia voted against secession. Also, both Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson, two Virginians who were unarguably the Confederacy’s two best generals, viewed slavery as an abomination and wouldn’t have taken up arms simply to fight for slavery. They were fighting to defend their home and hearth from what they viewed as a foreign invasion.
Even this dichotomy between the motivations of the Deep South and Upper South over simplifies the issue. The South also had other grievances against the North, particularly over the tariff. The Republican Party, representing the manufacturing interests of the North-Eastern States, was highly protectionist at that time. Lincoln had written quite extensively on the benefits of high tariffs. The South, with few manufacturers, generally supported free trade. → Continue reading: The Civil War rumbles on
Paul Staines thinks Iraq should give Russia and France exactly what they are owed…
Bringing Democracy to Iraq may prove difficult if the Americans are wary of the potential result; namely Iraq voting to become Iran-lite. But bringing prosperity should prove easier. The dispatch of a corrupt gangster-regime of looters can only assist. David Plotz writing over at Slate makes some good market orientated points.
But why do I have the suspicion that a Washington written program devised by the likes of the World Bank and IMF might be less than turbo-charged. If we go from warfare to welfare for Iraq, the outcome will be a burden on Coalition nation taxpayers as well as Iraqi proto-capitalists.
Privatisation of the oil fields is being painted by those who marched against a ‘war for oil’ as if its Bush’s personal peace dividend. But it seems to me eminently sensible and appropriate. Split the oil fields up by region, privatise ’em and give ’em to the people.
If it can not be done by direct mass privatisation via a Thatcherite give-away, with every Iraqi citizen/stock holder receiving an annual dividend check, then set up trust funds chartered to pay dividends for infra-structure capital projects that directly benefit the people. Maybe they can securitise the trust’s future earnings to get up front capital to finance urgently needed projects immediately: Iraqi owned and inviting to badly needed foreign capital, a win-win for everyone. Just make sure that the oil trusts are transparent, with contracts public knowledge so that corruption can be thwarted. George Soros’ Publish What You Pay NGO is one of his best ideas.
As for Iraq’s debts, its obviously a matter for the future government of Iraq whether they honour them or not. But I suggest they repay Russian debts with easily and cheaply sourced Czarist bonds. Chirac’s contracts will of course be subject to some ‘re-negotiation’ by the newly democratically elected government of Iraq. Payback can take many forms, monsieur.
Paul Staines
Paul Staines wants to shine a light into the closet and see who is in there… no, not that one!
There are a lot of libertarians who are modest and in the closet. Often they just find it awkward to explain there views on politics, philosophy or economics if, for example, they work for the Inland Revenue. I can sympathise. Its hard for a libertarian to justify working as a civil servant of any kind, but such are the compromises of real life.
It can embarrassing to questioned as to your attitude to a number of issues in many situations, drugs, gun ownership, and the abolition of the National Health Service may not assist your job application to become the over-paid Chief Executive of the local Health Trust.
I disapproved of Tatchell’s ‘outing’ of closet gays so it would be hypocritical to advocate outing closet libertarians. It strikes me that it still might be beneficial to point out those people who have publicly identified themselves as libertarians. It would highlight that there are more of us about, that we are not all obsessed with arguments about lunar property rights and may even assist in networking.
So I’ll kick off with the first of what I suspect will be a huge number of self-identified but unrecognised right-wing libertarians with Tony Parsons, ex-husband of Julie Burchill and author of “Man and Boy”… and Hans Snook, Orange Telecom’s visionary CEO who is a Randian… and Microsoft bashing Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems is one of us.
Any more?
Paul Staines
Here’s S. Weasel’s handy guide to American voting:
- If the race is dangerously close, and there’s a clear difference between candidates, vote the better candidate.
- If the race is not close, and there’s an interesting third-party candidate, vote the third party…just to rattle the bastards a little.
- If the race, close or not, is between two hopeless losers, stay home and cast a vote for apathy.
It’s an imperfect system, but it’s my own.
|
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.
|
