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.
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So the social democrat who promised the people more government health care, education and welfare, higher minimum wage and so on, has been defeated. Even taking account of Chavez rigging things it seems likely that (with a claim of some 60% of the vote) he really did win.
Chavez promised the same things as the social democrat of course, but he offers more entertainment value. Jumping about the world and allying himself with anyone (Putin in Russia, the mad Mullahs of Iran and so on) who hates Uncle Sam.
At least Chavez understands that these people do hate America (and Western values in general), unlike so many people in Washington who think they can ‘talk’ to the Iranian regime (what would be there to be talk about – whether the evil infidels of the world should be buried or cremated?). Or President Bush who “looked into the soul” of Mr Putin and discovered that he was a “good man”.
As for the elections: I am often attacked for saying nasty things about the way people sometimes vote, but the case of Venezuela is a tough one for the “the people may make mistakes but they mean well” crowd.
President Chavez was first elected in 1998. He had previously led a military coup effort (which, on its own, should have sunk bid for the office of President of the Republic). He was up against a rather boring social democrat type – but there was nothing evil about that man. Venezuela was at peace (so there was no “it was the war stupid” factor), and no one could seriously believe that Chavez would be less corrupt than his opponent or that he would be any better at what is now called the “management of the economy”.
So why did the majority of people vote the way they did? They voted that way because Chavez played class war “the poor against the rich” – forget that the Venezuela government had spent vast sums of money, it still was not enough.
Why was it not enough? Was it because there were still lots of very poor people? Certainly, but in their hearts these people knew that they would still be just as poor under Chavez (and if they did not know in 1998 they certainly knew last Sunday – when they voted for him again, in spite of all the billions that have gone on his overseas alliances and in corruption). The majority vote they way they do because they see that there are well off people – and they want these people to suffer as much as they do.
A vote for Chavez is not a vote to make oneself better off (and it never was), it is a vote to make other people as poor and as unhappy as one is oneself.
Voting for people like Chavez is not a ‘mistake’, it is something very different.
I hear that the anti-leftist candidate for President of Ecuador has been overwhelmingly defeated by the leftist candidate (an academic ‘economist’ who thinks, among other things, that free trade with the United States would be bad for Ecuador).
The last time saw the anti-leftist candidate (a very wealthy businessman) via television, he was on his knees (quite literally) begging for votes and promising people “jobs, homes, health care, education” (etc.) if only they would vote for him. And he has gone down to defeat by about two thirds of the voters.
He might as well have given a very different speech.
“Subhuman scum, when you vote for the leftist (which I am sure you will) he will put into place policies that will make you suffer greatly – some of you may even starve to death. This is exactly what deserve – as you lust after goods that are not yours and are prepared to use violence, or to have other people use violence on your behalf, to get those goods.
I have sold all my property and have taken the money out of the country, I am speaking to you via satellite from the Cayman islands”.
Certainly he would still have lost, but he would not have humiliated himself by going on his knees, begging and promising the moon. And he would have saved the fortune the election campaign cost him.
I do not know whether the Democrats will win the office of President in 2008 or not.
Walmart bashing, promises of worse barriers to trade (the free trade deals with Colombia, Ecuador and Peru seem to be the latest targets of the Democrats [the various Marxist terrorist groups in Latin America will be pleased] – with demands that these countries further cripple themselves with more “union rights” and other regulations) and even bigger subsidies for universities (which will push up costs again) and even more regulations on HMOs and insurance companies (which will also push up costs again), even more money tossed away on “No-Child-Left-Behind” (and other unconstitutional welfare state schemes) than the Republicans tossed away on them and…
I doubt that this agenda will still be popular after another two years of Nancy Pelosi and the rest pushing it. Indeed I do not think it is that popular now – I think the Republicans lost the midterms partly because of sleaze and Pork, but mostly because of “the war stupid”.
And by 2008 the great George Bush – Mark Steyn project to spread democracy to the Muslims will either be abandoned (and voters will forget it fairly fast once they stop seeing American soldiers dying on the television news) or there will be some evidence that it is actually a good idea – either way it is not going to shape the 2008 elections in the way it shaped the 2006 elections.
However, the Democrats may win. The power of the mainstream (i.e. leftist) media is vast (and the left are just as good as anyone else in using the internet – perhaps better than their foes) and the Democrats have huge amounts of money that are not hit by John McCain’s death-to-the-First-Amendment ‘campaign finance reform’. → Continue reading: 2012 – The great chance for liberty in the United States?
As promised to various Samizdata people, here is my posting on the Kettering Gang Show. I have lived in Kettering almost all my life, but I had never been to the Gang Show before.
For those who do not know a ‘Gang Show’ is not an event put on by street gangs, it is an entertainment event put on by Scouts (which include not only the young cubs, and the adult scout masters but, these days, girl Scouts). It is a matter of songs, dances and comedy – put on to aid Scout funds (supposedly on every night of the year there is a Gang Show going on someone in the world).
Well on a cold and windy night I walked to event, passing only few groups of youths hanging about on street corners (surely, whatever one thinks of groups like the Scouts, these youngsters would be better off joining in rather than just hanging about, they looked rather depressed – even by my standards).
The singing, dancing and comedy routines were not amazing – but they were not bad either. And I was rather moved by the effort the children put in (the speed of the costume changes alone was very impressive). Even us in the audience tried to do our bit – we stood up and sang “God Save the Queen” at the start, and did a bit of participation in one song and movement thing (yes we proved that we could not sing and were uncoordinated – but we had a go).
My strongest impression was of the attitude of everyone (entertainers, people selling stuff, people checking the tickets, St John’s people on call against anyway getting hurt or falling ill) – all seemed to have a good time and to show benevolence for others.
The Northamptonshire folk may not be wildly attractive (neither the large native Northamptonshire people, nor London overspill stock like me) and they may not be clever or knowledgeable (but intelligence and knowledge are not always an advantage in life – after all I have the ability to produce strong arguments showing how any situation is hopeless and it is pointless to try anything, and I can produce lots of facts and stats to back up my inactive despair), but their faces showed both courage and good will – and not just good will for the event.
The people there were clearly honest and good (if not beautiful or profound). Rather like Tolkien’s hobbits, they are clearly folk who are both decent enough companions in the ordinary run of life – but better companions if something terrible were to happen.
On Saturday I went to the annual conference of the Bruges Group – an organization that has moved from a critical attitude to the European Union to an understanding that the United Kingdom should get out of the of the E.U.
One of the speakers was Mr Booker of the Sunday Telegraph a man who has specialized in detailing the exact harm done to business after business (normally small business enterprises) by EU inspired regulations after the Single European Act of 1986 allowed E.U. directives to be applied to most areas of British life. Small damage at first (just a few people’s lives destroyed) but over the last two decades more and more enterprises (and the people who go with them) destroyed. Although, of course, much of the damage of the EU (such as the CAP and the CFP) go back to when we joined back in 1973.
I will not go into the mistakes of some British politicians (such as Mrs Thatcher) who were tricked by the EU people and their British supporters, or the actions of other British politicians (such as Sir Edward Heath or Lord Howe) who deliberately acted for this hostile power against their own country. Other than to say that I do not accept the Benedict Arnold defence – i.e. that brave service in war means that a man should still be considered a patriot if he later changes his coat.
I am more concerned with a minor matter here. As I heard Mr Booker’s speech I thought “it is a long time since I bought the Sunday Telegraph – I will buy it tomorrow”.
And so I did buy it – and was reminded why I do not buy it any more. → Continue reading: Why buy the Sunday Telegraph?
Milton Friedman has died at the age of ninety four. Others will list the vast number of honours that he achieved in his life time and will speak of him as a husband, father and friend.
I remember Milton Friedman from my youth via the mainstream media, because he belonged to a time when it was still possible (although difficult) for a free market thinker to have large scale exposure in the mainstream media. I remember the interviews, I remember the television series (Free to Choose – and the book of the same name being in every bookshop and library in the land), and I remember the articles in Newsweek magazine.
Milton Friedman replaced Henry Hazlitt, but he was given an article only every two weeks (Hazlitt had a weekly spot), These days of course it would be almost unthinkable for a free market thinker to be given such space in a main stream magazine – and it is not really a question of modern free market folk being inferior writers to Professor Friedman (it is the message that is no longer tolerated, not a higher standard of writing that is demanded).
If ‘conservative’ voices are heard in the mainstream media it is more likely to be voices like that of President Bush who was speaking today (in Singapore) – the normal confusion of ‘freedom’ with ‘democracy’ and the normal promises of aid from the Western taxpayer to various governments in return for these governments ‘investing in people’ (“schools ‘n’ hospitals” and the rest of the standard speech).
Milton Friedman refused to meet President Bush, perhaps this was intolerant of him (for all I have written above President Bush is not a bad man and he means well), but Professor Friedman’s argument was that as he had tried for eight years (during the Reagan Administration) to explain the basic concepts of liberty to George Herbert Walker Bush, to no effect, he was not going to waste what little remained of his life talking to the son.
As for Milton Friedman’s message I (and many others) could argue over many matters. Were “right to work” statutes (i.e. bans on the closed shop) really bad things (as Professor Friedman believed) or were they a counter weight to pro-union laws (as some of us political folk believed)? Was the ‘negative income tax’ really a good way to save people from poverty, or would it lead to people not working if they could not find a good job? Were education vouchers a way of combining freedom in education with support for poor parents, or would they corrupt private schools?
The arguments were endless, but they (by all accounts) tended to be debates conducted in a good spirit – and Milton Friedman always at least held his own in debates (against anyone). → Continue reading: Milton Friedman RIP
Yesterday I watched the Queen’s Speech – where the government lays out its plans for the new session of Parliament.
I have always had mixed feelings about this event. I like the colour and ritual, but I do not like the fact that a person (the Queen) has to read out a speech full of plans that they may not agree with, and I do not like the fact that the speech is often full of lies and the plans are often very bad.
Yesterday’s speech was indeed a mixture of lies and bad plans. For example, the government will continue its policy of ‘sound finance’ (in reality there is a vast government spending deficit, and there is also a vast credit money bubble produced from the ‘independent’ Bank of England).
There are to be about 30 new bills to be presented to Parliament, mostly on subjects that the government has legislated on often before. It is like watching the latter days of a Greek city state, or the decline of the Roman Empire – every problem needs a ‘new law’ and if this measure does not work (or makes things worse) then there is another measure and another. Some of the new measures are nasty (such as yet another effort to get rid of trial by jury in fraud cases), but many are just silly and have been done before.
The leader of the Liberal Democrat Party (‘Ming’ Campbell) was correct when he said that the Labour party had come into office saying “education, education, education” but had followed a policy (on all matters) of “legislation, legislation, legislation” with hundreds of new statutes and thousands of Statutory Instruments (measures that have the force of law, but are put in place by Ministers and Civil Servants rather than Parliament) being created since 1997.
Of course Sir ‘Ming’ did not point to the source of a lot of the regulations the government has put in place (the European Union), and he tried (as ‘progressive’ politicians tend to try to do) to be anti C02 emissions and anti-atomic power at the same time – but he had made a good basic point. Passing laws does not solve problems, indeed it often makes them worse or creates different (and worse) problems.
Before anyone points it out, I fully accept that things were much the same under the last Conservative party government (that of John Major).
A couple of days ago the Congregation of the University of Oxford voted to give outside professional managers more power over the university (it is not a done deal yet – but the plan is now well under way).
The vote showed how things are done in modern Britain. Half way through the debate a letter from the government was produced (by some ex top Civil Servants who are now Oxford dons) and read out – basically the message of the letter was simple, the government has not pushed ahead with ‘reform’ of the university because it expected the people there to “reform” the place, but if they do not do so… So change will be “voluntary” in the sense of an “offer you can not refuse”.
Scholars have been living in Oxford for a long time, perhaps there really were some there in the time of Alfred the Great (as the old stories say). First on an informal basis and then (in the 13th century) in organized ‘colleges’ – communities of scholars who ran their own affairs.
There has always been some government involvement in Oxford. Grants of property (as capital) by various Kings to start up some of the colleges (although private individuals financed the creation of others). Parliament (under the influence of various monarchs) laying down rules concerning religious practices. Even sometimes changing the structure of the university (as with the reform measure of Gladstone).
However, the basic structure of Oxford remained. Colleges as groups of self governing scholars. I can remember when the only non academic staff at Oxford were the cooks, cleaners and the men who guarded the gates of the colleges (who also kept important records). → Continue reading: A bad day in Oxford
After an election in which “although many individual races were close the cumulative effect was a thumping” I watched President Bush give a brief statement and then spend the best part of a hour answering questions from a room full of journalists many of whom are his sworn enemies.
Political leaders in Britain do not react to election defeats that way – the give a statement and perhaps answer a question or two (normally not) and then run away.
I may disagree with a lot of things about what President Bush has done (for example I think that he has made the entitlement program burden, about which he rightly warned today, even worse than it was before he came into office), but he is clearly a man of great courage.
I could not have done what I watched him do today.
Well Nancy Pelosi and her friends are overjoyed – higher minimum wage levels, more government spending, especially on education and heath care (buy stock in the stem cell companies that the Democrats intend to increase subsidies to) – and an end to the timid Republican experiments in choice in schools, medical care and in pension accounts, more regulations (and efforts at world regulations – such as Barney Frank’s dream of a world government financial services regulator) and all the rest of it. And I do not expect President Bush to veto much (Captain Veto he is not – this is not the Administration of President Ford and William Simon).
Turning to the election itself:
It looks like an odd combination of some Fox people thinking a Senator was too old and tired and the Libertarian party have handed the United States Senate to the Democrats.
Conrad Burns looks like he has lost by a few hundred votes – he was denounced on Fox (on the O’R. Factor) as “too old and tired” to have any hope of victory. And the Libertarian candidate (Mr Jones) got 3% of vote in Montana (my guess is that some of those voters would have gone Republican, some stayed home, and just about none gone Democrat).
So one Fox News prediction, that the Libertarians would act as spoilers this time round, has been proved correct.
However, the Republicans deserved to lose. Their ‘compassionate conservatism’ (i.e. be soft on spending and wink at Pork) finally irritated the base so much that they stayed home. And Mr Foley did not exactly help either – Democrats may be ‘cool’ with man-boy stuff (Congressman Frank got away with the under-age male prostitution that operated from his home, and another Democrat got away with sex with House page years ago), but Republican voters are not cool with it. Perhaps these voters are ‘bigots’ but that is just a fact of life.
The money of Mr. Soros and others could be counted on (via various front organizations) to bring out the Democrat vote (and finance adverts – such as the tissue of lies that destroyed JD Hayworth in Arizona).
And John McCain’s ‘Campaign Finance Reform’ sometimes meant that some Republicans found themselves outspent (because spending by the leftist groups did not count as spending by their opponents).
And yes virtually all the newspapers and mainstream television acted as part of the Democratic party (Arizona was a good example of this in the House races).
But even where the Republicans had a friendly newspaper they lost – both seats in New Hampshire in spite of the ‘Manchester Union Leader’.
“It was the war stupid”
The voters are quite happy to use force overseas in order to (for example) kill or capture O.B.L. – but they are (for better or worse) not prepared to spend money and blood on some ‘War for Democracy’ in Iraq or anywhere else.
The neo-cons coming out just before the elections and sneering at President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld as morons for the conduct of the war that they, the neo-cons, demanded was also unhelpful (and disgusting). Supposedly the war would have been fine if ‘smart people’ had been in charge – yes right. As I am part Jewish myself I will resist a Mel Gibson moment about the neo-cons – the sooner these backstabbers are forgotten the better. → Continue reading: The last great leftist victory in the United States
On BBC News 24 TV this morning there was a tech show that was dominated by a report from the Republic of Korea (‘South Korea’).
After explaining how nasty some Korean people are in writing their opinions about other people, the BBC person said that the government of Korea was going to bring in a new law that would demand that anyone writing an opinion on to the internet would have to give their name and ID number. The only criticism of this new law (which I believe is going to come into effect next year) offered was “some people do not think it goes far enough”.
I wonder if the ‘Federalist’ would have been written if ‘Publius‘ and the rest had to sign their correct names. Or ‘Cato’s letters‘ – or so many of the other great publications in history.
Or indeed most opinion comments on this (or many other) internet sites.
“If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear by giving your right name” – I hope I do not have to explain how absurd that position is. Some people (such as me) really do not have anything to lose and can sign their name to any opinion they believe in – but most people have families, jobs, positions (and so on) and may sometimes wish to give their true opinion about a person or issue without putting their life on the line.
I could mention historical examples to the BBC (some of which I mention above), but as the BBC people think (to judge by one show I watched) that the “tribes of Angles and Saxons” brought Christianity to “pagan Roman Britain” and (in the ads for another show) claimed that the war that brought Constantine to power had broken “centuries of peace” I do not think they would understand what I was talking about.
I do not know whether it is the statism of the BBC or their lack of knowledge that bothers me more.
Nancy Pelosi was on fine form on Friday – denouncing the people who made certain documents (now withdrawn) available on a United States government website.
As the New York Times (and, surprise surprise, a United Nations agency) reported the story it was all about wicked Republicans publishing documents that could help people build atomic bombs. Of course, what Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the left really objected to was that the documents came from the government of Saddam Hussain and show that he WAS planning to build atomic bombs right up to the invasion of Iraq (information the left has been trying to sit on for years).
The Economist (a journal that has often been very critical of President Bush and other Republicans) also published an interesting article (subscription required) on Nancy Pelosi in its present issue.
It is well know that Nancy Pelosi represents (and reflects) the extreme left San Francisco area, but her money raising activities (at least one hundred million Dollars over the last few years) are less well known, as is her history.
It is not just that Nancy Pelosi’s father was a leftist Congressman and then Mayor of the corrupt city of Baltimore (no one can help who their father is), it is the fact that Nancy Pelosi personally “kept the book” for him – i.e. the record of favours received and delivered. I do not know how the lady can keep a straight face when she talks about the “culture of corruption” in Washington DC Nancy Pelosi has been involved in corruption her whole life – but I doubt that one voter in ten knows this.
The Republicans are at least partly to blame for people not knowing what they are getting. I can guess the sort of talk that justifies just making token attacks rather than full attacks – “Nancy Pelosi is a women, we can not attack her all out as we would look like beasts” and “we can not say what Nancy Pelosi is as it would look like an ethnic slur and we do not want to upset Italian-American voters”.
So the ‘attack dog’ Republicans (or at least the Republican leadership) do not really fight – and thus help give the United States a Speaker Pelosi.
Another point that the Economist article makes is the iron discipline that Nancy Pelosi has imposed on the Democratic party. Whoever the voters think they are being presented with (“the Democrat is very nice and they went to Iraq”) the fact remains that these people will vote the big government way that Nancy Pelosi tells them to (the Republicans may have been soft on spending, but the Democrats want to spend hundreds of billions more – and it is a similar story on regulations).
Almost needless to say, the Democratic party leadership supports Nancy Pelosi – including the people set to head the key committees in the House. Barney Frank is already boasting (for example to the British Financial Times newspaper) of the world government financial services regulator he intends to help create.
There will also be lots of ‘investigations’ – designed to tie the Administration up in knots (in order to bash Bush) and, thus, lose the war (both in Iraq, and in Afghanistan – and everywhere else).
Radical Islam (of both Shia and Sunni types) will win and moderate Muslims (and the West) will lose.
I very much doubt that Nancy Pelosi actually wants this result, but she does not really care – at least not enough for the Democrats not to do it anyway.
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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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