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Category: Liberty
With bludgeoning fuel subsidy beginning to affect other more productive spending, something has to give. On June 5, the subsidy was reduced and the move is understandably unpopular to many. With higher cost of living plaguing us all, there grows a tendency to blame the state for our reduced welfare lately. The government meanwhile is frustrated at being blamed for something they have little choice in the face of a very global trend. While I sympathize with the government in this particular area, it is the government that has brought this blame game upon themselves. The Barisan Nasional government deserves to be mired in this very inconvenience political scenario.
The Barisan Nasional government over the years has created a system that causes the masses to become addicted to the state. After decades of such dependency, slowly but surely it erodes confidence in the ability of individuals to surmount challenge.
From the very beginning, the BN government embarks on various efforts to expound the requirement of the state intervention for the creation of a peaceful and unified society. We have to look no farther than affirmative action practiced in our country and the rhetoric and rationale employed in support of various interrelated policies. The possibility of individuals are able to advance himself is ignored in the public policy sphere.
As if that is not enough, the specter of May 13 has been used every now and then to back up state-sanctioned affirmative action. As the argument goes, without the state enforcing the affirmative action, there would be chaos. All that reinforces the idea of Leviathan: without a strong government, there would be a war of all against all, anarchy, etc.
And then there is what Marx called the opiate of the masses. How religion is regulated in Malaysia further suppresses confidence in self. All is placed in the hands of the gods which ironically, access to the gods is controlled by the state. God is everything and inevitably, the state is everything, leaving little space of individuals to express themselves. Anything different from what the state effectively endorses, is punished, depending on the leniency of the government of the state. The ability to be different from what the state endorses diminishes with years of indoctrination.
Even the source of self-empowerment is not spared from state intervention for the state is ever jealous of individuality. From elementary level and all the way to tertiary education, the state’s presence is there. Students in our education system are being told what to do rather than providing students with the opportunity to explore their potential. Even in colleges and universities students are forced to take up irrelevant subjects just to justify the state’s role in our society.
For individuals whom have broken free from sanctioned narratives, those whom have the courage to challenge the statist ideas in favor of individualism, they are accused of being foreign agents, foreign educated, forgetful of history and all other dismissive labels. In effect, instead of facing criticism advocating for greater individual liberty logically, the state prefers to poison the well and hushes away the neutral others from developing confidence in individuality. Nobody wants to join the “enemy”. More importantly, in doing so, the state convinces the neutral others of importance of strong and wide state roles in the society.
If all that does not create a society hopelessly reliant on the state, control mechanism on prices and supplies definitely does exactly that. Yet, a state the size of Malaysia hardly has total control over its economy, especially when the economy trades with other countries relatively freely. Trends such as increasingly expensive prices of raw materials are something beyond the control of a small relatively open economy like Malaysia.
At best, the mechanism along with the impression that the state is our only savior developed throughout history, gives the public the perception that the state has complete control over the economy. In reality, it does not. And so, when these global trends render these state controls over the economy useless, it gives the perception that the state is not doing its jobs in spite of the fact that it is not the fault of the state that the global economy is at the way it is at the moment.
With an education system which fails to provide self-empowerment, a whole social apparatuses that kill self-confidence and discourages individuality along with an economy system that creates the perception of absolute control, is it really a wonder why many within the society blame that state for failing to live up to a statist ideal?
What was convenience then for the state has not become inconvenient. So inconvenient it has been that the more statist political players have turned the tables against the statist incumbent.
Let this be a lesson to Barisan Nasional, and any other aspirants with statist outlook.
A version of this article was first published in The Malaysian Insider. The TMI version has the reference to Marx removed.
I am divided on the whole issue surrounding the sodomy allegation made against Anwar Ibrahim. I really have trouble in expressing myself on the issue from the start and that is apparent in an earlier entry of mine which I was forced to rewrite and added a post-script to express myself better. Over at the Malaysia Forum, Wan Saiful Wan Jan put it in the clearest of terms which I failed to get to clearly in the first place: the allegation of sodomy is not about prosecution of homosexuality but rather, it is about transgression of individual liberty.
I do not agree with the criminalization of victimless crime but again the allegation is not about victimless crime. It is an allegation of rights transgression. For this very reason, I am quite agnostic with a dose of skepticism reserved, about the sodomy allegation. Judgment has yet to be handed and it is only fair to maintain neutrality.
Let the due process takes its place. If the judgment was tempered, then a revolt would be justified. If Anwar Ibrahim is innocent, then by all means punish the accuser for fraud.
All is equal before the law and so too Anwar Ibrahim. Yes, I know, the weight of the law — regardless the value of the law — has not been equally applied to everybody but two wrongs do not make a right. But only those whom do the right thing have the moral authority to preach about being right.
Returning to due process, the biggest issue for me concerns the timing of the arrest. It was made more or less an hour earlier than the presented deadline.[1] I am on Anwar Ibrahim’s side as far as the arrest is concerned because of the police’s failure to adhere to due process. If the police had adhered to the timeline, Anwar Ibrahim’s arrest would have been justified.
On the allegation itself, I am, as I have written before, agnostic.
My position is this: I believe in equality before the law and due process, as long as individual liberty is preserved.
[1] KUALA LUMPUR, July 16 — Police feared that Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim was going to barricade himself in his home and resist arrest. That is why they moved in, and arrested him near his house in Segambut as he was making his way back from an interview with the Anti-Corruption Agency — an hour before he was scheduled to show up at the KL police headquarters. [So why were the police in such a hurry?. The Malaysian Insider. July 16 2008]
Special thanks to John Lee for lending his hand in clarifying my thought.
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Education empowers individuals by enabling them to utilize their faculties, freeing themselves from tyranny. With reasonably educated individuals dominating the society, the creation of a liberal society becomes more possible than ever. Self-empowerment is the seed to the creation of a liberal society and education is the key to such empowerment. Without the empowerment, individuals would forever stand timid in the face of tyranny, unable to rationalize the reason for liberty.
Education is the sculpture of a society and its importance cannot be overemphasized. Yet, the issue of education has always bogged me down. I struggle to answer the question whether the state is required in providing individuals with education, especially in poor societies.
I am predisposed to answer no.
The path is chosen due to my minarchist tendency which seeks to limit the roles of government to simply the protection of individual liberty and private property only. This is the only social contract which a libertarian seeks. Anything more increases the opportunity for tyranny.
All other areas should be left to means of individuals in the society. The reason for that is the market in many cases has proven to be more than capable to play roles played by statist state as effective if not better. It is part of the spontaneous order doctrine so close to the heart of libertarianism.
The issue of education and the state arises when I come to consider the effect of endowment on eventual outcome. In a poor society, attainment of education requires a quantum leap. Resources well beyond the means of the poor are required to invest in education.
It is not uncommon for children of poor families to face strong pressure to forgo basic education in order to answer immediate question surrounding matter of survival. Without coercion by the state in form of compulsory basic education as well as other aids, it would be highly probable for these children to stay away from any kind of formal education. As they grow up, they would become susceptible to manipulation of the elites whom might have insidious plan to promote themselves in a society. Through this manipulation which usually comes in form of populism, a mob could easily overrun individuals, transgressing individual liberty with impunity.
Only a strong liberal culture could fight such tendency fearsomely. It is worth repeating that the birth of a liberal society is only possible through self-empowerment usually brought upon by education. By education, I do not mean simply the ability to read and write. I am referring to the development of the critical minds which take more than merely learning about humanities and sciences. I speak of liberal education which students are able to explore their potential freely.
Leaving education to the workings of market of a poor society may not encourage the creation of a liberal society. There is always competing demand between immediate demand and the future prospect. Not too many people have the luxury of looking beyond a hill when no food is guaranteed on a table everyday, assuming there is a table in the first place.
The misalignment of temporal requirement for education could perhaps be tweaked to impress on individuals the importance of education through market means without the use of force. For instance, a philanthropist or foundation could fund schools or offer need-based scholarships, making the cost of education of a child more bearable to poor families. To bring the idea farther down the road, a corporation in need of talents could adopt a child by financing the child’s education. Graduated individuals under such program could repay their sponsors when they start their professional career.
Then again, this only repeats the problem of citizenship for liberals and mismatched timelines: the ones most likely to make such bond for the children would be the parents while the children really had no say in the matter. As they matured, they found themselves in bond they did not choose to be in.
How well private institutions tailored for basic education fares against the idea of universal basic education has yet to be explored however. Even on the surfaces, private institutions may disfranchise the poor for reason made clear earlier. And I am uncertain how a system dominated by private institution for basic level encourages a society’s progress towards liberal ideals.
All that considered, it seems that the institution of universal education on the basic level supported by the state looks promising in creating a liberal society, especially for poor societies. As for affluent societies, the problem of endowment is less of an issue. It is probable that members of an affluent society are well-educated and liberal enough in their outlook to fight tyranny.
The progression towards an affluent society however requires education and this creates a conflict in my thinking. Ignorance is a barrier to self-empowerment and liberty.
Perhaps, universal basic and general education with involvement of the state for poor society is the spark plug for liberalism. Perhaps, I am trying to be too rigid, ignoring a virtue of pragmatism.
p/s — Milton Friedman’s The Role of Government in Education is an essential read. Friedman’s Free to Choose is for further reading. For wider scope, the Friedman Foundation has more.