Tag: libertarianism

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Economics Politics & government

[2563] Why I do not want to see a Eurozone break-up

I understand the case for the breaking up of the Eurozone. I do appreciate the virtue behind a flexible exchange rate, especially for cases like Greece. There is a need for rebalancing that a monetary union cannot provide. Yet, I am uneasy at the suggestion of a break-up, of Grexit, because deep inside of me, I am more or less an internationalist.

The internationalist sentiment is derived from my libertarian belief. It is about freedom of movement. Free flow of labor. Free flow of capital. All around the world.

I dream of a world where I would not have to present identification whenever I land in some foreign airports. I dream that I would be free to be anyway I choose without the need to ask permission from the state.

Unleash the ideal world and what I call the crazy me would come out as an anarchist. Specifically, an anarcho-capitalist. Freedom unbounded.

But I am not an anarchist because I understand anarchism is inherently unstable. I settle for the second best option available and that is free-market libertarianism.

Just as anarchism is the ideal but unattainable and thus the second-best solution is libertarianism, internationalism is the ideal but the second best approach is regionalism, for now.

This fuels my sympathy for the Eurozone. I want the Eurozone to be intact because of my bias. It has nothing to do about being western or Europe-centric.

I want it intact so that in the future, the Asean version can emerge. An Eurozone failure will likely inform decision on a more integrated Asean. Already the Indonesian President warned Asean of repeating the European mistake. The warning is appropriate but as I have argued, there are appropriate lessons to learn from the European crisis without jettisoning a closer Asean idea.

And I do think Europe will succeed, if recent history is of value.

The end of World War II saw closer cooperation between European countries: observe the Marshall Plan. Not all and definitely it was easy to cooperation when your opponent is dead, but the cooperation happened and that is the point.

The Cold War saw closer integration: observe the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community.

Post-Cold War saw even more: observe the European Union and its expansion.

The European Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis brought closer cooperation: observe the introduction of the Eurozone.

Now, the latest Eurozone crisis may bring in closer cooperation: observe the fiscal union proposal.

So, do not ring the bell yet. The regionalist game is not over yet and the outcome of death is not certain.

As a libertarian, the issue is the creation of a stronger state but I think, this can be a largely enlightened state, with a federal structure is can be a counterforce to the central government.

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Politics & government Society

[2536] Some liberals are not really liberals

I have been accused as a purist when it comes to defining the term liberal. I subscribe to a specific definition of the term liberal that will disqualify many other self-proclaimed liberals quickly. By specific, I am referring to libertarianism. Others prefer the term classical liberals and I find it hard to really differentiate the two in a substantive manner. In any case, that label is merely used to convey the idea that I and others like me hold the individual as the most important component of our society. The way we manifest our political philosophy is by mostly emphasizing or demanding the absence of coercion in running our lives. This is most easily observable when libertarians address economic questions by trying to circumvent any reference to any political authority. There are other qualifications but those details can be suitably discussed at a more measured pace some other time. I only lay out the major identifiers generally to prove that the definition is specific and will disqualify other self-proclaimed liberals.

The term liberal in the most general sense did evolve over time. The experience in the 20th century fused ideas in so many ways. Some decidedly non-liberal understanding of the world before the 1930s became generally liberal by the 1990s. The great economist John Maynard Keynes went out to save liberalism and capitalism from fascism and communism by introducing ideas that today are so imbedded in mainstream economics, but then opposed vehemently by the liberals of his time. The results of the intra-liberalism debate produced a new liberalism that not only sharpened its thesis but also synthesized some of its anti-thesis. A new hypothesis emerged in the post-Cold War 1990s with the rise of the Clinton and Blair administrations, after a political and economic classical liberal resurrection of the 1970s.

The evolution of liberalism forces me to admit at least this: even if I philosophically despised these evolved liberalism, their subscribers do have the claim to the title. They are like the siblings that you find hard to sit with. No matter how much you cannot stand the other, you know all of you share the same parents and there have to be some kind of decorum between the sides.

The debates between the different schools of liberalism still continue today to remind all of the original early 20th century debate in the mist of the Great Depression. But the essential difference is that those intra-liberalism debates now firmly take the center stage while in the past, the opponents in the ring were not liberal at all. Communism is dead and hard socialists of old only throw potshots from outside of the ring, unable to steer the debate even as liberals’ capitalism is in trouble. Possibly jealous of the success of liberalism in evolving itself, old liberalism’s 20th century foes from the left who call themselves liberals, ally themselves with the evolved liberals and sometimes pull the strings towards the left’s original home in the process.

The left’s liberals are those that I take pleasure criticizing because I know they are not liberals in the general sense of the term, even without appealing to libertarianism. At least the evolved liberals accept the market economy even if they do not have the courage to run their arguments to its natural course as libertarians do. In contrast, the left’s liberals are not really convinced of the arguments of the market economy. Have a discussion with them about economic liberalism and one will wonder what is so liberal about them. Pursue a fundamental question beyond the veneer and a fault line will emerge. The left’s liberals would tweak the market economy beyond recognition the minute the more genuinely liberal others blink.

Outside the realm of serious philosophical debates are the superlative liberals. They are liberals just because they are more progressive compared to our conservative society. They may be political moderates or centrists but they are not liberal ideologically in a way that some ideas are fundamentally derived from first principles, like proper liberals. But the superlative liberals call themselves liberals anyway, just because they met someone who holds conservative worldviews that disturbs them. Unfortunately, that is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition to be a liberal.

And then there are the libertines. Or really, they are just socialites. While some liberals may live life large, but libertines by themselves do not ground their ideas the way subscribers of liberalism do, if they have any idea at all. Libertines’ liberalness is just like the superlative liberals’ liberalness. Their liberalness is devoid of liberalism. Moral and religious conservatives derisively call these libertines are liberals while alluding to liberalism, but that only because the conservatives do not understand liberalism as proper liberals do.

So, when I criticize non-libertarians of their diluted liberalism, I can accept the charge of being a puritan. When I criticize the superlative liberals and the libertine, I think I have full moral authority to dismiss them, if they claim themselves as liberals. In the latter case, I am not being a purist at all. It is just about calling a spade a spade.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
This was meant to be published in The Sun in March 2012. It did not appear on the appointed date for reason unknown to me.

Categories
Politics & government

[2514] Koch’s betrayal

Ceciro spoke eloquently,
against Catiline’s betrayal,
will libertarians protest fully,
against Koch’s betrayal?

Categories
Conflict & disaster

[2498] The Syrian frustration

I know I said no to foreign military intervention in Libya when its civil war erupted. I reasoned that such intervention would rob legitimacy from any success out of the rebellion against the Gaddafi administration. In retrospect, I vastly underestimated the popularity of the rebellion. Foreign intervention did not matter much in determining the perceived legitimacy of the new government. Even if foreign ground troops were deployed in Libya to aid the rebellion which did not happen, I would think these foreign soldiers would be greeted enthusiastically by most Libyans. Once I realized this, I decided to support the intervention. Besides, the Gaddafi government itself received foreign military aid, and even had foreigners fighting for him. The NATO/UN action seemed justified in a tit-for-tat logic. In the end, I am glad the situation in Libya turned out as it has panned out, with or without foreign intervention. What is happening in Libya so far has been very liberal when compared to its history and its neighbors.

Libya has to rebuild their country and it has a long way to go. The relevant point here is that the military struggle has ended.

Not for Syria though. What happened in Libya is happening in Syria. Protests erupted. The government used force against the protestors. Some protestors picked up armed and fought back in an organized manner. The Syrian rebels have not been as successful as their Libyan counterparts had before NATO/UN intervened so far. Its evolution is almost the same, except this time, the UN Security Council is divided. That makes foreign military intervention impossible, if not hard.

I am tempted to repeat the same argument about legitimacy, popularity and foreign military intervention in Syria. At the back of my mind however is the success of the Libyan model and if the UNSC had passed the resolution, it would probably pave the way toward foreign military intervention and I would support the intervention in favor of the rebels.

But the UNSC did not pass the resolution to call among other, for the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. For me, that is a barrier towards support for the intervention.

The Syrian case added a new dimension to the issue of military intervention, or rather it accentuated it. It highlights the importance of not only the organic legitimacy of the rebellion at the expense of the incumbent dictatorial government but also international legitimacy. Libya had both. Syria has only one so far. As a sidetrack, Iraq had none (nevertheless, after all that has been said and done, I think the Iraq episode is a success story and I find it hard to deride the invasion of Iraq as I had in the past. That does not mean the invasion was legitimate though).

In the statist world that we live in, we definitely do not want countries to simply conduct hostile military action in foreign soil regardless of its justification, apart from explicit self-defense. That would mean an overly chaotic world. There has to be a check-and-balance mechanism and however flawed the UNSC is, it is one that prevents the strong from bullying the weak so blatantly. That is not to say the bullying does not happen (remember Russia and Georgia in 2008?) but the system does provide some needed discouragement.

The realist in us will realize that the UNSC is all about politics and not idealism. Russia has interest in maintaining the status quo in Syria. News reports cite that Syria is Russia’s only open ally in the region amid an either an increasingly independent Arab states, or pro-US states like Saudi Arabia and other smaller Gulf states. The fall of the Assad government may benefit the US, especially when the US is siding with the rebel forces.

Regardless of the benefits the US may gain, that does not negate the liberal impetus for the intervention and that is the protection of individual liberty which is clearly being trampled over.

The point of all this is that I want a military intervention.

But the consensual approach in the UNSC does appeal to libertarian non-interventionist foreign policy. It is a bit convoluted and can be contradictory but as I have written a long time ago, it is true that pure Ron Paul’s non-interventionism ignores violation of liberty outside of the border of a liberal state. That is a problem for me but it is also a practical approach to the fact that liberal states cannot fight tyranny everywhere out of economic reality. The UNSC with it consensual approach makes non-interventionism a default position.

But in the case of Syria, it frustrates me as a libertarian. The very libertarian foreign policy comes with a trade-off with another very libertarian principle.

Categories
Politics & government

[2463] We don’t need a big government voting bloc

In our modern Malaysia, one can hope that government policy comes about through the general will of the people peacefully through democratic means. One can further hope that this mean not merely crass majoritarianism but that which is respectful of individual rights. After all, the government and the state derive its legitimacy from the people, the citizens — an idea that is clichéd but time-tested and the prevailing idea of government in our time. It took us humanity hundreds if not thousands of years to finally subscribe to it either willingly or grudgingly.

The ideal democratic government and state translate the general will into policy and ideally, they must always accede to the general will.

What is ideal is not necessarily true on the ground however. How many self-proclaimed democratic states have turned against its citizens?

History has witnessed many of those examples, which should be enough to convince the democrats among us of the need to establish some mechanism to limit the opportunity for government to shirk from their responsibility to the people and more importantly, to prevent it from developing means to promote its own separate interest at the expense of citizens.

Since we really live in a largely majoritarian reality, herein lies the importance of a small government.

To understand the need to control the size of government, it is crucial to note that government employees themselves are voters and all voters are self-interested. They will vote for those who will promote their welfare and interest more often than not. They are exemptions, of course, but the assumption of self-interest remains the most robust assumption of human behavior. It expects the least and thus less susceptible to disappointment, unlike other more benevolent but naïve assumptions that exist on the economic left that have failed more frequently than the financial markets have crashed.

A large government employing a large fraction of citizenry will invest this group of voters with excessive political power. The larger the government, the more votes will go toward enhancing the welfare of its employees.

This creates a conflict of interest where the employees of the government can promote their interest collectively instead that of the wider voting population. With a power voting bloc, the institution that is supposed to execute the general will of the people takes a life of its own. How many times have large rewards been to government servants just before the election in Malaysia?

Essentially, that large voting bloc enables government servants to raise their own wages and grant themselves other benefits, a conflict of interest so brilliantly portrayed in an episode of the BBC’sYes Minister.

That conflict of interest is even more worrying when the taxpayers are mostly those who are employed in the private sector. What pain do the benefactors of the voting bloc suffers when someone else is financing the punch party?

With a majoritarian reality and an influential voting bloc, officeholders and the aspirants will not dare promote a responsible public finance. So not only it exacerbates the status quo, it reduces the likelihood of putting the party to a stop before it is too late to switch the tracks.

At the very extreme, such bloc makes the liberal rationale for the state irrelevant. The state now becomes overly sensitive to government servants, and less so to the citizens at large.

The 19th century American author Edward Bellamy somewhat circumvented the problem by making everybody the employees of the state. He detailed his views in his work of fiction, Looking Backward.

Ingenious, except he dreamed of a very different society. He dreamed of a utopian communist society where all wants and desires are fulfilled, and men and women work not for monetary reward but merely for recognition that scout boys proudly wear. Men and women of Looking Backward believe the government does everything for the benefits of the masses, ever so efficiently.

Where Bellamy spotted a utopia, Orwell saw a dystopia.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved
First published in The Sun on November 25 2011.