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]
1. Tell them not to. But how are you going to know if they are complying? A Reform government is not going to have the personnel it can trust to do this.
2. Make them fully independent. End grants, abolish student loans. You could even remove their Royal Charters. There’s going to be a hell of a backlash. But if you can get through that they should get back to education again.
3. Make university education less attractive. I’ve heard it said that people need degrees because IQ tests are illegal. Is that true?
4. Declare all universities “indoctrination centres” and remove all funding until proved otherwise. If they bleat about “independence” then you can say they’ve got what they wanted. The proof could be in the form of each member of academic staff being asked for their opinions on communism and DEI. Could produce some interesting results.
@Patrick Crozier
There is a fifth possibility:
5. Invent a technology that makes the large majority of university education worthless.
Of course we have that technology, it is called the internet. For the most part (outside of some specific professions) universities provide students with four things: an education (Which is now no longer relevant since you can learn anything 1% of the cost by other means), a certification, which surely we can legally circumvent by setting up a skills based certification system (though see below), networking opportunities which only really matter at very high end and lower end universities — the majority in the middle do not provide value here, and a fourth, letting the kids PARTY. Presumably kids can have a really good time elsewhere too.
The certification is the big issue, but surely there are other ways to prove one’s skills? Certainly in my area of expertise I’d rather have someone as a Certified AWS architect than a poncey degree from Harvard. That is a cultural change though, and I think it is coming. But in truth AI and robotics is going to largely eliminate jobs in this middle part anyway.
I say let them die their natural death. One easy fix? Eliminate student loans and payments and let students bear the full cost of their education while keeping the government out of the “student loan” business. That’d shake things up PDQ.
As I said there are exceptions, people with highly specialized training like Medical doctors and lawyers.
Due to waves of (mostly) Russian spam hitting our server, the Samizdata SmiteBot is has been grumpy for several days now beyond my ability to manually intervene every time. This means it has been shooting on sight (or maybe on site) & asking questions later. If your comment vanished, now you know why. Do not take it personally unless you are a Russian spammer, in which case take it personally.
To be clear, none of this has much to do with actual right-wing or conservative political thought. If you’re wearing tweed and reading Sir Roger Scruton, please carry on.
The influencer ecosystem I once inhabited was the Chernobyl-ass Frankenstein of right-wing politics. A radioactive, reanimated corpse stitched together from clout, resentment, and cocaine, which desperately needs to be taken out back and shot for everyone’s good (it’s own included). Unfortunately, monsters are hard to kill
Under the Bank Secrecy Act, one of the most common reasons for filing a suspicious activity report (often abbreviated as SAR) is because someone deposited or withdrew nearly $10,000 in cash. That’s all it takes for you to get labeled as “suspicious” in an official report to the government.
These reports rarely catch actual criminals. Yet, each report is like a red mark on your banking record, nonetheless. And getting too many of these reports filed on you can quickly spell trouble. If you rack up multiple reports (often as few as three), banks will close the account. The bank might know you are likely innocent, but the risk of regulators punishing them for inaction is too high. Fines for failing to report real criminal activity can reach into the millions.
It’s much safer for the bank to close the account than risk fines later, especially if it is a smaller account.
I find it splendidly sensible that ‘ordinary’ people are able to see through celebrity endorsements. It was F Scott Fitzgerald who famously said, ‘The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind, at the same time, and still retain the ability to function’. Regular people are able to admire, even idolise, a singer or an actor – and then totally do the opposite politically to what that performer calls for.
“The First Amendment doesn’t stop at the water’s edge just because a foreign bureaucrat sends a threatening letter. If you’re in Wyoming, you speak freely. Period.”
When U.S. special forces captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in a predawn raid on Saturday, it should have been a moment of triumph for Venezuela’s democratic opposition. But rather than endorsing the leadership of Edmundo González, whose victory in July’s 2024 election was stolen by Maduro, President Donald Trump announced he’d work with Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s vice president for the past six years. After Trump called her “gracious” and claimed she was “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court swiftly appointed her as acting president on Saturday, once again sidelining the elected opposition.
Rodríguez is neither gracious nor a reformer. She’s a self-identified communist who has held key positions under both former dictator Hugo Chávez and Maduro, Venezuelan political writer Paola Bautista de Alemán tells Reason. In 2017, Maduro tapped Rodríguez to be president of the illegitimate constituent assembly that usurped the powers of the elected National Assembly to silence the opposition. Later that year, Maduro appointed her to the “Anti-Coup Command,” tasked with taking measures against alleged coup plotters and terrorists, labels routinely applied to peaceful opposition figures.
The US Congress is to all intents and purposes dead. It cannot function with the filibuster rule and an evenly balanced country with the two sides highly belligerent. Now the question we want to ask is: is this a good thing or a bad thing? One the negative side it means that the government can’t get anything done, but on the positive side it means the government can’t get anything done.
And I hope when I next check the news, I discover that we’ve put a missile down Khamenei’s smokestack, and that Putin and his entourage have perished mysteriously in an accident involving an exploding tractor or something. Wouldn’t that make for a great news day. (Given how surprising the news has been so far in 2026, who would be such a fool as to blithely rule that out?)
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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