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 advantages [of the Digital Pound] over cash are, then, as clear as day. The pesky thing about cash is that it isn’t regulated. If you want to buy something in cash, you just hand it over to the person who is selling the thing, and that is that. This covers the transaction in a layer of kryptonite as far as government is concerned: it can’t control who ends up owning the money, and it can’t control whether the transaction takes place. The digital pound, and the way it is being set up, offers no clear advantage to the ‘user’, but, again, that isn’t the point. The advantages are obvious to those doing the governing, and that is ultimately what motivates the entire project for reasons which by now will be well understood.
– David McGrogan.
Highly recommended that you read the whole thing.
I would like to think that the cozy post war socialist consensus is coming to a long overdue end. We defeated the divine right of kings, now we have to do the same to the divine right of bureaucrats.
– Roué le Jour
While the desire on the part of modern conservatives to divorce themselves from ‘neoliberalism’ is understandable enough, the simple truth is that there is a very good and obvious reason why parties on the economic left tend towards being left on culture, too.
And it is simply this: a State which minutely governs the economy is one which minutely governs society as a whole, because economy and society are not in fact separate phenomena, but an integrated whole. This means that if the State is big vis-a-vis the economy, it is going to be big in all areas – and it is going to want to squash or co-opt competing sources of loyalty and authority (like the family, religious and community groups, businesses, etc.) which the right holds dear accordingly.
The truth of the matter, then, is that conservatives and libertarians both fundamentally need the same thing (a small state) and that the ‘left on the economy and right on culture’ meme is just that: a slogan without a genuine cause.
– David McGrogan
Prices in markets are information – however much we might not like the lessons being delivered.
– Tim Worstall
The course began with the issue of definitions. What is Terrorism? Without anyone providing an opposing standpoint, we were taught the adage, ‘One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.’
I posed to the room: ‘Surely we can acknowledge subjectivity while being able to come up with a collective understanding of what terrorism is?’ Some 40 civil servants looked at me blankly. No?
I wondered why we were there.
The danger of understanding terrorism with cultural relativism is that it breeds moral apathy; the kind that says ‘Who are we, mere democratic, liberal Westerners to impose our morality onto others? Who are we to say our culture is superior to others?’
These are luxury attitudes. It is easy to be sat in Kings College London and feel that all cultures are equal, when you haven’t been anally raped at a peace festival by someone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and held hostage. In the introduction to the course, labeling an organisation as terrorist was described as a problem because it ‘implies a moral judgment’. Nothing was said about why a moral judgment might be appropriate.
– Anna Stanley
“Banksy is a billboard, promoting a product, and a set of ideas, that are as ubiquitous as Coca-Cola and as dangerous as Greggs. We need a new set of discordant voices, able to articulate ideas that challenge the consensus view of the new Establishment of the Banksies and Cold War Steves. Voices from neither the left nor the right, but coming from a place of originality, united by a desire to reveal the ludicrousness, and moral bankruptcy, of those who refuse to see it in themselves. And perhaps, in 2024, the most subversive voices would be offering us hope, not despair.”
– David James, CapX.
For non-British readers, Greggs is a purveyor of meat pies and other marvellously unhealthy food.
The Tory failure is, as Helen Joyce mordantly details, spiritual too. The care of souls is what Trans extremists have squarely set themselves at, and this Tory government has, in law and administration alike, conceded to them. Penny Mordaunt, Maria Miller and Caroline Nokes head a very long list of Tory MPs who have not just done the bidding of Stonewall et al, they have cheered them on and denounced their critics.
– The Critic Editorial
Too often the culture war is misconceived as a conflict between Left and Right, with “woke” aligned with the former and “anti-woke” with the latter, but “wokeness” carries with it the kind of clout that transcends the political binary. In their 13 years of government, the Conservatives have presided over the worst excesses of this identity-obsessed ideology and the havoc it has wrought on society. Far from fighting a “war on woke”, they have been actively enabling it.
– Andrew Doyle
“If the NHS is so wonderful, why do its staff keep threatening to emigrate?”
– Daniel Hannan, Sunday Telegraph (£).
As an aside, while a lot of media and political commentary these days is about immigration, the emigration of talented people from the UK is likely to be a problem that becomes more significant, with potentially political effects. I am just about old enough to remember the “Brain Drain” that was a Thing in the 70s.
So, there you have it. To recap — the new government installed its own political nominees by force, based upon a completely bogus legal justification, and the excuses it used were… “depoliticization”, “trust” and “restoring the constitutional order”. Moreover, the democratically elected President, who actually suggested being open to compromise, is treated like an obstacle to be bypassed by illegal means. All of it in the name of — you guessed it — “the constitutional order”. Right…
– Paweł Sokala, discussing the astonishing coup-like behaviour of the new Polish government.
It’s going to be an interesting election: the party that deserves to lose versus the party that doesn’t deserve to win.
– Commenter Andy
“In recent years, businesses have been shaped by the beguiling mantra of ‘win-win’. When confronted with any difficult choice – sustainability or efficiency? excellence or equity? stakeholders or shareholders? – their chieftains have kidded themselves into thinking that you can have both. Sustainability leads to efficiency in the long term; equity is the best way of securing excellence; pleasing all the stakeholders leads to higher share prices. This will be the year that finally brings an end to the idea that you can have your cake and eat it. Companies will have to make tough decisions that they’ve been putting off as long as possible. Consumers will no longer wear the idea that, say, the green transition is cost free.
“Win-win was an affordable luxury in an era of free money and rampant virtue signalling. But higher interest rates will make both companies and consumers more cost conscious. And virtue signalling is far from cost free, as several chief executive officers have discovered. Companies will tell their young recruits to put their noses to the grindstone rather than working from home. The yoga classes and pizza parties will be cancelled. The Business Roundtable will soft pedal the talk of stakeholder capitalism.”
– Adrian Wooldridge. He is writing in Bloomberg ($), a business news and information service that at times seems to have bought into sometimes fashionable ideas, but the need to make a profit tends to keep that in check.
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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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