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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Although we have had one of the most savage downturns since the 1930s, an analysis of the crisis would conclude that we have still not met its full political or social effects. Indeed, the whole experience has been dampened by fiscal stimulus and an air of artificial normality. Economists still call for green shoots and implore the broken totem of consumer spending and house prices to merge, giving a new impetus to the economy. Salient voices say that the model is broken, but ‘debt and spend’ is only postponing the inevitable.
Riots that have broken out were concentrated on particular countries where the elected authorities were particularly mendacious or incompetent: Iceland, Latvia etc…but they have tended to peter out. Action has been displaced by apathy, indifference and a mood of anti-politics as social democracy has withered on the vine. Disagree with much of the Left’s analysis, but they can smell the rot as the European elections attested:
What we are seeing in Britain and throughout Europe is the last death throes of historical social democracy that emerged from the split in the world workers movement after the Russian revolution. This does not of course mean that we shall see the early demise of the parties that originated in social democracy, but the project – in the early phase socialism via successive reforms and then pro-working class reforms within the framework of capitalism – is all but dead, and in any case nowhere the majority or the leadership of parties like the French SP or the SPD in Germany.
The social democratic Left may no longer have the institutions to mobilise disaffected voters and workers. Their most recent travails are based upon the migration of the disaffected to marginal parties more in tune with their attitudes and goals: euroscepticism in Britain, radical right in the Low countries or Austria, hard left and poujadiste in France.
What is left out of the equation is that the social, cultural and political reaction to a depression can take two years or more to surface in a slow burn radicalisation. Political crisis did not start to hit till 1931 with the sovereignty crises. Are we in the early stages of a new migration to the extremes; awaiting that tipping point?
Needs must and the Romans acted. We can add one last item to the list of what ever did the Romans do for us. Although we are more civilised (measured by less blood!), we can gainfully deploy their policy of decimation, on an annualised basis.
Forget wishy-washy arguments about repeals or sunset clauses. Every year, cut one in ten who receive a payment from the state: one in ten able bodied citizens who idle their lives away and receive a pay as you go pension afterwards (an idea that only ever worked on mobile phones!); one in ten quangos (or just abolish them all in go); one in ten departments of state; and one in ten Members of Parliament, either from the Lords or Commons. Ringfence defence personnel for nightwatchmen status and we have a blueprint for a downsizing classic.
Is there no U-turn that this shameless government will not indulge, helped by their handmaiden, the Daily Telegraph? At least, Brogan fences the slurry in, although it oozes and drips through the cracks in the fence. Now, casting my mind back, I seem to recall that targets, micro-management and huge public expenditure without gain are all hallmarks of one G. Brown Esq. So how can this ‘target culture’ be derided as Blairite?
In an interview, Mr Byrne said: “We need a power shift from Whitehall ministers and civil servants that currently have the power and move it to citizens.
“We know the argument for public services has got to change so we have been developing a strategy that takes public services away from a target culture to giving people rights and entitlement to core public services.”
What will this shift entail? Liam Byrne describes this latest stage of reform, and when did we never have a period of reform, as giving individuals a set of rights and, if they are not met, you get to complain.
Well, as a member of the public, I would like to demonstrate near Parliament, wear a “Bollix to Brown” T shirt and ensure that nephews could read. And I can complain to the people who buggered up in the first place. And what do people want when they complain? They want redress. If they can’t get the rights, they get the compensation.
A new way of using your money to puff up Brown’s largesse and promote dishonesty. Incentives to lie and cheat by crying that rights are infringed, to be bought off by gold, all helped out by that nice Mr Brown, who understands my needs. This is one last ditch effort to bribe the electorate at the expense of widening compensation culture and increasing something for nothing expectations.
Good thing the money has run out.
Brown does not really understand libertarianism, but this is an accolade:
One of the words Brown uses most often in private to describe the Tory leader is “libertarian”: a word that conveys his belief that Cameron’s “compassionate conservatism” is mere window-dressing, but also hints at a decadent strain of Tory libertinage, drug-taking and yacht-fondling.
I expect I shall be arrested for loitering around marinas as yacht-fondling will be outlawed in the next Parliament.
Peter Beaumont has an interesting article on Iran that notes how our understanding of the local complexities must trump simplistic perceptions shaped by our own foreign policy assumptions. A valuable lesson, though Beaumont commits the same sin when he artificially divides foreign policy debates into two camps, so that he can pose as the voice of sense.
Of value in his article is the lack of knowledge that we have in the Iranian regime. That Iran is an Islamist conservative state with wider freedoms, though severely circumscribed, than is commonly supposed, must be accepted. This has allowed space for a democratic pillar to develop as a channel for aspirant social mobility and as a safety valve for the competing interests within the elites. When the inherent clash between the revolutionary drive of the rulers and the risk of a democratic vote endangering their goals emerged, a crisis of legitimacy was assured. For Khameini and Ahmedinejad, the crisis preceded and precipitated their decision to rig the election, leading to the current conflict.
Many of the demonstrators want reform and counter-revolution; the maintenance of the Islamic republic without pursuing the destabilising geopolitical foreign policy of the hardliners. Some want a liberal democracy and a westernised state. The current clash over the future of the Islamic Republic of Iran posits a revolutionary hardline or the transition to a post-revolutionary polity.
What an unpleasant choice for libertarians in Iran: an unstable, brittle Islamic dictatership or a republic progressing towards an illiberal democracy. It isn’t a choice. Support is required for the courage of the demonstrators as the value of freedom exercised has the potential for effecting more radical change.
I am quite tempted to vote for Robespierre in the European elections, masquerading as Jean-Louis Pascual, a bus-driver who has lived in Reading for many years. Will he be asking, in monster mode, for cheese and wine orgies. Alas, no! His goals are more mundane: he wishes to become President of France. From 2006, since this competitor to Sarkozy has been around for a while:
The “Roman Party” is listed in the Evening Post as:
‘Jean-Louis Pascual, a bus driver who was born in France but has lived in this counrty for 11 years, explained the Roman Party referred to the phrase “When in Rome do as the Romans do”.
He said: “This is all about people coming to this country and becoming part of the community.
“There are some people who come here and stay separate, living in groups and keeping to their own culture.
“It is fine to keep in your own culture in your home, but outside it you should not be separate.”
Mr Pascual, 36, of Watlington Street, is standing for Reading Borough Council because he wants to be a “minister or president” in his own country.
He told the Evening Post: “I believe that if I get recognition in this country then I will be recognised in my own country. It is difficult to come to power in France if you are not wealthy.”
He said because he was single and without children and family here, he could not be corrupted.
He also suggests British jails should be moved abroad to Russia and the money saved should be spent on the NHS.
I rather prefer his criminal justice policy. Remember tomorrow is the day when you can stand up and be counted.
First there was the financial crisis; then, our entire political numpties were found out to be embezzlers. But now, we have a real black swan.
Nul point Norway wins Eurovision with the highest number of points ever achieved in the competition.
Io9 lists their ten best sci-fi libertarian stories: and the mix is an interesting combination of the obvious and the outliers. The anarcho-socialist tradition, mostly British, is referenced, revealing some surprises on the influences that could be fictionalised as libertarian utopias. My own favourites are that hoary old goat, the fabian Wells, providing a counterpoint to his scientific socialism, and Eric Frank Russell with his homage to Gandhi.
Some would criticise the absence of L. Neil Smith, Ken McLeod and others, but lists are always a springboard for discussion, an opportunity to find works that did not blip the reading radar.
What is the worst case scenario for swine flu cases in the United States? About 1,700.
This is not a pandemic, and the ballet of institutional panic in government combined irresponsible media coverage over the last few days has been instrumental in ticking public health as another area where contemporary alarmism, fanned by governments, signposts higher mortality when a crisis finally arrives.
Why we should shut these bastards down now and add TV Licensing to the unemployment figures.
The arrest. The outcome.
Raze White City to the ground and cast salt upon the earth…
Hat tip: Biased BBC
Once I was born a British citizen, and enjoyed the suzerainty of a long-standing liberal democracy. I knew my liberties as they were embedded in common law and understood the rights and privileges which were my birthright. This was a common culture that was shared in many forms by my fellow pupils at school, by my family and by those who desired to make this country their home.
In 1997 I was still a citizen. Now I am a subject: not a subject of the Crown but the subject of a new beast, one that stretches from Whitehall to Brussels. Roger Scruton has defined a subject as follows:
Subjection is the relation between the state and the individual that arises when the state need not account to the individual, when the rights and duties of the individual are undefined or defined only partially and defeasibly, and where there is no rule of law that stands higher than the state that enforces it.
This is a contentious argument, but our rights are overdetermined and overdefined on paper, arbitrary in exertion, incompetent in execution. Moreover, the European Union under the Treaty of Lisbon confers the authority of a bureaucratic state based upon a law no higher than itself, which can annul and strike out all rights, as power overrides law.
In practice, bureaucratic accretions, quangos and the vomit of regulation have encouraged a culture of subjection. This may have roots prior to New Labour but it acquired its final flowering under this pestilent regime, and discarded the final brakes upon its power: demanding that we are subject to them, civil servants in name, masters in form. ID cards, databases, surveillance and dependency.
The final transition can never be dated. It is not in the interests of the Tories to row back on such change, as they will lose the power that they have looked upon so enviously for a decade. So, when I vote in 2010, I will know that we are each capable of acting responsibly as a citizen, but we are now viewed as subjects, to be feared and controlled.
Guido’s scalp may place further problems for the blogosphere. Labour’s line has been to blame the medium and the messenger, spreading the slurry of ‘dark arts’ to Guido and even Cameron, though they are the primetime guilty party.
Now that the monopoly of the mainstream media has been blown right open, Labour MPs are demanding regulation and trying to put the lid back on Pandora’s box. Hear their complaints: the blogosphere is an arena of tittle-tattle and gossip, compared to the comforting blanket of reporters and the NUJ who will take you out to lunch and treat you with respect. They will want to turn the clock back.
Well, it is the goodness of blogging sunshine that reveals the dark arts. Time to start flaming the political vampires who suck the lifeblood out of Britain with their lies, expenses, and hypocrisy. Time to follow up with garlic and the stake.
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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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