Philosophy

pax est mendacium, est contra

On Liberty

"It is a misfortune that we offer the guilty the chance of impunity, but it is not nearly as bad as delivering the good man to the vengeance of the oppressor."

Benjamin Constant on the presumption of innocence

On Liberty / Free Markets

The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.



Milton Friedman

On Litigation

“You worked hard, you got your law degree, so make something happen with it.”
Rachel Rodgers, Solo Practitioner, 29

On Liberty - (Bioshock style)

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It’s the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism. Whenever anyone wants others to do their work, they call upon their altruism. Never mind your own needs, they say, think of the needs of… of whoever. The state. The poor. Of the army, of the king, of God! The list goes on and on. How many catastrophes were launched with the words “think of yourself”? It’s the “king and country” crowd who light the torch of destruction. It is this great inversion, this ancient lie, which has chained humanity to an endless cycle of guilt and failure. 
Andrew Ryan - Rapture

Freedom Quotes

“You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.”

Robert A. Heinlein

On Liberty

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
 John Stuart Mill 

Bonuses are Bollocks, stop wasting your time paying them

Money is not an issue once you earn enough to be comfortable......or rather it becomes a different issue.

It's not money to them (them being footballers, bankers, CEOs or fcuking wonks) anymore. It's a social marker. It will always drive ever upwards as the individuals in high-paying industries seek to outdo each other. We know where this goes: football clubs that are ready to collapse despite being at the peak of their international popularity. A banking sector which took unacceptably risks and brought the world economy to its knees.

The research all points away from financial incentives. Instead it suggests that employees need three things: autonomy, mastery and purpose. The need to self-improve is what motivates really talented people. If you don't believe that, take a look at the free-to-use software made by engineers. Look at the success of Linux, or Apache, or Wikipedia, as highly-skilled workers use their free time to make something which is then given away.

Bonuses do not improve performance. They worsen it. The banking sector's track record is the proof which defeats its own arguments.

and Performance and Productivity are what we need if we are to compete with the eastern economies determined to drag themselves out of the mire their rotten backwards ways got them into back in the 1700s.

Politics.co.uk

On Freedom

When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imagined, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface – but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in its course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument, and every good government will be safe.

Thomas Erskine

Certainly true of my office

God help England if she had no Scots to think for her!

• George Bernard Shaw The Apple Cart (1928), Act II

On Freedom

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but licence.
John Milton

On Liberalism

When I say that the conservative lacks principles, I do not mean to suggest that he lacks moral conviction. The typical conservative is indeed usually a man of very strong moral convictions. What I mean is that he has no political principles which enable him to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society with a minimum of force. The acceptance of such principles means that we agree to tolerate much that we dislike. There are many values of the conservative which appeal to me more than those of the socialists; yet for a liberal the importance he personally attaches to specific goals is no sufficient justification for forcing others to serve them

F A Hayek

On Power

The genuine role of the media, the role it must adopt if society is to function in a practically and morally coherent way, is to reveal power, to pester power, to hound it with questions. Because power cannot be trusted.


Ian Dunt

People in the UK need to stop venerating the government.

(stolen from the Obnoxio the Clown Blog here, so glad he's blogging again gives me something clever to pinch and shove on rollonfriday when there is a spazfight about whether blu labour or nu labour are worse, anywhose)

People in the UK need to stop venerating the government.


The government takes your money, spends it very badly on delivering things because it's just a way of hiding transfers of wealth from you to multi-national businesses. The government takes us to wars that we have no business fighting, leading us to be responsible for the deaths of thousands or millions of innocent people on the other side of the planet. The government sticks its nose in to things which are none of its business.

All these people who seem to equate society with the government are leading us down a very dangerous path.

Lazy journalists who attack businesses for being tax efficient because that starves the government implicitly seem to feel that the government deserves to have our money for whatever fucking nonsense they want to do next.


Cheerleaders for government spending ignore the fact that most government spending is simply transferring money from you and me into the hands of Accenture, Capita, ATOS, Cap Gemini, Capita, etc.

Stop being khunts and fucking think about what you're saying for a change.

On Liberalism (old fashioned liberalism not what the confused Americans call Liberalism)

Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic and power adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism; and with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place.
F A Hayek

On Libertarianism

The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.
Henry George Book VIII, Ch. 3

On Freedom

Books won't stay banned.  They won't burn.  Ideas won't go to jail.  In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.  The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas

Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959

On Liberty

“A library is an arsenal of liberty.”
Couldn't find the author, but never a truer word spoken

On Freedom

On Freedom

Obviously, I'd like people not to be offended, but if they are I'm not going to waste any time worrying about it. Ultimately, I don't care if you're offended

Cerrie Burnell - Cbeebies - Children's Television show Presenter