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]
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The problem is that a lot of data suggests that countries with more robust welfare states tend to have stronger far-right movements. Providing white voters with higher levels of economic security does not tamp down their anxieties about race and immigration â or, more precisely, it doesnât do it powerfully enough. For some, it frees them to worry less about what itâs in their wallet and more about who may be moving into their neighbourhoods or competing with them for jobs.
– Zack Beauchamp, Vox.
(Yes, I am putting up a SQOTD from a lefty news service. If readers’ blood pressure rises, sorry. The article contains a few errors and arguments I don’t agree with, but I like to find signs, or glimmerings, of intelligence wherever I can. Maybe, just maybe it is dawning on some of the smarter souls in the Left that the identity politics game has been a catastrophe, and that some of the so-called solutions for our ills as advocated by socialists/Welfare Statists have been an abject failure. Politics/ideas are in ferment right now, and this article is a sort of suggestion of what the ferment is causing. I also commend the author for the amount of data here.)
I added this to the pushback in the comments:
Letâs consider: the article goes into considerable detail to point the fact that in those countries with high levels of Welfare State spending and the rest, support for the far right has increased often more than among those places with less of this, and the author concludes that one reason might be that citizens in those places feel their welfare frees them up to worry about non-economic issues, such as the allegedly malign impact of foreigners entering a country. That seems to be just as plausible a reading of the facts â and in some ways an original and perceptive one â as the standard line that high welfare has sucked in lots of foreign scroungers who have provoked a backlash. For a start, there is no clear evidence that immigrants in net terms consume more welfare than the indigenous population. Secondly, there is the point that the sort of people who want high welfare spending (paid for, they naively think, by other, richer people) tend to have a zero-sum, economically illiterate view of the world (hence their support for a Welfare State), and people who hold wrong-headed views about the State tend also to hold fearful views about immigrants âtaking their jobsâ or whatever. And the kind of folk who are turned on by the politics of identity tend, given their collectivist assumptions about life (bosses, workers, them, us, etc) to be the sort who like Big Government.
This article shows why it is no accident that Labour Party voters, who by and large arenât the sharpest knives in the drawer, have switched to UKIP, or even further to the right, and why socialism often blends very easily with nationalism.
Like I said, what I hope (naively!) this article suggests is that there are people on the Left who are seeing this, and who realise there is a problem. At the very least, rather than simply criticise and pick holes, it is a good idea in my view to engage with these folk, to show where they are correct and draw them out. This is how intellectual shifts occur; smart advocates of liberal free markets and limited government should embrace anyone who seems honestly to be wrestling with what is going on.
For decades, often in word but always in deed, politicians have told voters that government debt didnât matter. We, and many economists, disagree. Yet even if the politicians were right, the absence of available creditors would be an insurmountable problemâwere it not for the Federal Reserve. But when the Federal Reserve acts as the lender of last resort, unpleasant realities follow. Because, as everyone should be keenly aware, the Fed simply prints the money it loans.
A century of arguing about how much to increase spending has left us with a debt that dwarfs the annual economic output of the planet.
A Fed loan devalues every dollar already in circulation, from those in peopleâs savings accounts to those in their pockets. The result is inflation, which is, in essence, a tax on frugal savers to fund a spendthrift government.
– Antony Davies & James Harrigan
If cutting that welfare state means that women are getting less out now then that obviously means that before the cuts to the welfare state then women were getting more out.
– Tim Worstall
Which raises the question: into which model do men and women fit? As I said before, women seem to prefer working in sprawling bureaucracies masquerading as support functions in huge companies. Men tend to drift towards the sharp end of the business where the core function is carried out and the most value added. I am also fairly certain that it will be men who are setting up the small, nimble businesses that aim to cash in on technologies such as the Internet, drones, and 3D printing. There will be female entrepreneurs, but their numbers will be dwarfed by those who are men. For whatever reason, young men in their twenties have a habit of risking all for a big reward instead of seeking security and certainty, at least in comparison to their female peers.
– Tim Newman
America needs a new party, one that will â in the present emergency â bravely rise to the defense of the republic and the grand alliance of the free nations which it leads. It needs a party of economic sanity, which will not destroy the basis of our livelihood through either a combination of trade war and immigration restriction, or top-down suppression of business. It needs a party of humanity, which rejects tribalism, not only for the harm it inflicts upon its targets but for the moral and intellectual degradation it infests within the minds and hearts of its converts. It needs a party of liberty, one which will defend not only the borders of freedom, but the ideas and institutions that make freedom possible.
– Robert Zubrin
I am becoming steadily more convinced that Mrs. May doesn’t believe anything, but by God she doesn’t believe it fiercely!
– Michael Jennings, of this and other parishes
Emma Watson’s Convenient Feminism: Talk A Good Game In Between “Yoohoo, CHECK OUT MY TITS!”
– Amy Alkon, also penning a real contender of best blog post article title of the year đ
Can the NHS be reformed? Or is major surgery required if it is to make a full recovery? We need to come up with much more radical reform than is currently being proposed. And if that doesnât work, instead of accepting the somewhat back-to-front NHS version of TINA â in which we are told that there is no alternative to a welfare-state-era model of provision frankly unfit for the 21st century â we need to replace the NHS with something better.
According to Benedict Spence, writing in the Independent, âpretty much all of our European counterparts have a universal and in many cases much better healthcare system than the UK â and, horror of horrors, most European healthcare is what we would call âprivatisedââ. The UK is unusual among developing nations, he says, whose often social-insurance-based systems often perform better than ours (for example, in cancer survival rates). And yet, the defenders of the NHS remain âaggressively insularâ.
– Dave Clements
D’Souza thanked the academy for the prizes, saying in a recorded message that “being dissed by you guys, this is absolutely fantastic.
“My audience loves the fact that you hate me.”
“The reason you are giving it to me is because you’re very upset Trump won.
“You’ve never got over it, you probably never will.”
– Dinesh DâSouza, as quoted in the Guardian upon getting four Razzies for the worst film of the year for his Hillary Clinton exposĂ©.
This approach works equally well against both left and right.
Besides Yiannopoulos, his publishers and the concept of free speech, the big winners here are booksellers. Or at least youâd think so. But at least one Sydney outlet says it wonât stock Dangerous.
âJon Page, owner of Pages & Pages, Mosman, and the online retailer Boomerang Books, became the first Australian bookseller to publicly declare he would not stock or promote the book by Yiannopoulos,â The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week, describing the author as âa mouthpiece of the hard right and a figure of controversy for his anti-immigration, anti-Islam standâ.
Page is wrong to say he wonât promote Yiannopoulosâs book. He just did, and in a far more effective way than if heâd filled his bookstoreâs windows with Milo posters.
By taking his anti-free speech stand, Page ensured further publicity for Yiannopoulos and even more sales â but Page wonât be sharing in the profits.
– Tim Blair
Political correctness is not some sort of politeness, it is a cancer, a disease that eats away at society, allowing the poison to fester, for it stifles free speech and attempts to control our very thoughts, encouraging self-censorship. Freedom to speak means the freedom to offend and those so offended may respond in kind.
These days, if someone calls out âracistâ or uses the terms such as âIslamophobeâ or âhomophobeâ or some other variation, I switch off as they have labelled themselves as someone whose opinion I may safely ignore.
Itâs nice to see that [Trevor] Phillips has finally seen the light, but the damage has been done and he was part of that.
– Longrider.
But I would respectfully take issue with the last line, which although undeniably correct, suggests a counterproductive sentiment. Nevertheless I strongly suspect from Longrider’s choice of title, Much Joy, that in truth he also sees this much as I do. And thus, although I am an atheist myself, this second quotation actually expresses my view rather well.
âI say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.â
Welcome to the fight, Trevor, let me show you to your place on the forward edge of the battle area.
The result of [the ‘sharing economy] is that in many ways, private tech companies have ended subsidising new forms of public services, for the public good.
That ought to make them the darlings of the Left. Yet unfortunately, the Left just canât rid itself of its urge to regulate, legislate and tax. And in their efforts to thwart consumer freedom, they have a useful ally in the shape of a legal framework which was developed for the analogue age.
Uber, for example, is the poster child of the sharing economy. Yet 2017 is make or break year for its European ambitions â and at its core is an age-old political battle of Left versus Right.
This battle isnât on the streets of San Francisco or London; Uber has already won over consumers. Instead, the fight is moving to a soulless courtroom in Luxembourg. The question is whether the company is a technology or a transport company; and the answer is incredibly complex.
– Daniel Dalton
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