Tag: egalitarianism

Categories
Liberty Politics & government Society

[1917] Of revisiting the roles of government and other matters

Friend Ho Yi Jian[1] currently at the National University of Singapore asks several questions pertaining libertarianism. One question asks what many have asked: how small is a small government? The second question is about wealth inequality. Third, is there a way to overcome speculation associated with the operations of free market?

Let us explore the three questions one at a time.

The hardest question is the first. How small — or big — should a small government be?

There is no objective way of measuring the size of government but there are principles. In no way however these principles are universally adopted throughout the schools of libertarianism.

In the famed Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, Judeans were against Roman rule and there were multiple resistance groups. They however just could not agree with each other. In the classic comedy, the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea seemed to hate each other more than the Romans though both groups shared a common goal of ridding Judea of Roman presence. The same is applicable for libertarianism.

Different strains of libertarianism have their own idiosyncrasies which one libertarian may disagree with each other. I therefore cannot provide an answer to represent all libertarianisms. But I can present my version of libertarianism and that is green libertarianism. This is the green-blue alliance that is probably currently seen in form of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom under the exciting David Cameron.

In this kind of libertarianism, the purpose of the state defines the boundary and hence size of the state. The purpose in my libertarianism — with regards to this particular purpose — is uncontroversial in common libertarian circle because it is the universal truth in libertarianism. The first and foremost purpose of the state is the protection of individual negative liberty. This is further enhanced with rights egalitarianism: all are granted the same negative rights as long as the person respects others’ same rights.

As first formally rationalized by Isaiah Berlin, negative liberty is the freedom from interference. This definitely includes protection from coercion and fraud. This freedom is mostly bounded by the non-aggression axiom.

Sidetracking, the non-aggression axiom does not eliminate force as an option. It merely prevents libertarian from initiating force. If coercion was initiated by the other, then by all means pick up your arms and fight. The state motto of New Hampshire describes it all: live free or die.

I would like to think I am a Friedman libertarian to a certain extent. This is mostly because while preferring for a small government which at the very least defined by protection of individual negative rights and non-aggression axiom, the government has a crucial role in education. A liberal society as in libertarian society requires an educated society and education is the sculpture of society. Without education, individuals would not be empowered to take destiny into their hands and that would bring the downfall of a liberal society. Its importance can never be overemphasized in sustaining a liberal society.

While we are at it, allow me to answer Jed Yoong’s question posed much earlier[2] and answer Yi Jian’s second question too.

Before we begin, it is crucial to point out of problematic label liberalism as utilized by Jed. It is problematic because of the inconsistency of her usage of the word, which is probably due to her unfamiliarity with US politics. The title of her entry betrays that fact. She carelessly uses liberalism to describe the free market sort by including me and John Lee[3] as adherents of liberalism in the same line as the US liberals — more accurately the Democrats. This is a misuse of label because in US tradition, the liberals are the social democrats and I am definitely not a social democrat. Admittedly, libertarians in the classical liberalism sense may support the Democrats but that is due to employment of pragmatism and nothing more.

Under the flawed definition, she asked, how egalitarian will your (here, I take it as me. Others can answer that question for themselves; the two other names mentioned were John Lee and Nik Nazmi) NEP-free Malaysia truly be?

A loaded question with flawed assumption is hard to answer. She fails to understand the libertarians are not quite concerned with wealth egalitarianism. Instead, libertarians are firm believers of rights egalitarianism. Libertarians are not supportive of and oppose to any effort at achieving equality of outcome.

This is why libertarians or classical liberals are the great philosophical enemies of communists and socialists.

The question of endowment does disturb me however. Here, my concern is poverty and not wealth inequality.

In my opinion, poverty has greater propensity to create instability than wealth inequality. Proof: supposedly equal communist state always without fail, fail. Less communistic and socialist state and more capitalist countries have proven to outlast communist state, so far. But of course, there is no absolute capitalist state in the world at the moment. What are there are states on a spectrum sitting close to capitalistic end, vis-à-vis the other end in a simple two dimensional spectrum.

Take note of my concern for poverty. I hold that poverty is the problem, not wealth inequality. I also hold that a lot of people accidentally mixed the two concepts together without realizing it because the two concepts are similar on the surface. Below the skin, the difference cannot be missed.

It is that endowment question, or if your will, the question of poverty, that led me to rationalize the need for government’s active role in education. It is education that is capable of breaking the cycle of poverty, the great machine which provides equality of opportunities. Education may also create a more wealth egalitarian society, but only as a side effect, not as an expressed goal.

But if — and that is a damn big if — affirmative action is a must, I prefer it to be inclusive, not exclusive, need-conscious affirmative action.

Coming back to the first question, one final factor in defining the size of government is market failure. While market is the superior form of social technology in its class — and definitely far more superior than socialism — it does suffer weakness and that is market failure. Many libertarians, especially the minarchists of minarchist somehow choose to ignore this but market failure presents both theoretical and practical problems.

It is important to define market failure, lest others misconstrue losses caused by corrections made by the market for bad decisions made by actors as market failure. Bad decisions made by actors are actors’ failure, not market’s. This is applicable to bubble bursting, from tulips, to dot com, to housing. In those cases, the market is merely turning around and saying, hey, you made a mistake and you have to pay for it.

Market failure here is in the line of tragedy of the commons. The problems associated with pollution and harvesting of public goods in situations where there is consistent and systemic divergence of social and private costs called externality, especially negative externality are market failure. In this, the government has a role to narrow wide gap between social and private cost. This can happen through introduction of Pigovian taxes — of special interest is the informal Pigovian Club founded by economist Greg Mankiw — or issuance of permits.

Finally, the third question: speculation is a problem, what can we do about it? Here, he qualifies speculation as over-speculation.

In answering the question, I would like to begin from the top. Is speculation a problem?

The question, much like Jed’s question of egalitarianism, is loaded. I do not accept that speculation is a problem. What I consider as a problem is incomplete information or more accurately, asymmetric information. It is especially so when it is associated with fraud. Does the government have a role to play in that?

Yes. Refer back to the first purpose of government: protection of individual negative rights.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — [Labour Politics, Libertarianism and Business Cycles. Thoughtstreak II.V. March 6 2009]

[2] — [Liberalism In America + Malaysia, 1968 vs 2008 Jed Yoong. January 3 2009]

[3] — John Lee blogs at Infernal Ramblings of a Thoughtless Mind.

Categories
Education Society

[1745] Of quid pro quo for an egalitarian society

Ethnic integration does not top my list as an issue we as a society face. I used to be bothered a lot by it but I have long learned to accept the wisdom that birds of the same feather tend to flock together.

More importantly, I have accepted that organic integration is a painfully slow process. This effectively means the idea of Bangsa Malaysia for me remains a dream in the near future. Nevertheless, if indeed ethnic integration is a goal, then I think the special rights enjoyed by the Malays as well as the vernacular schools would have to go.

The idea of Bangsa Malaysia has never been satisfactorily and properly defined. What exists are competing definitions. For me personally, I take Bangsa Malaysia — or the Malaysian nation and not the Malaysian race — as simply the concept of rights egalitarianism embedded in the idea of Malaysian citizenship. That means the state does not discriminate its own citizens on anything except, mostly, merits.

I do not have to demonstrate about how large a role race and religion play in our society and I think a lot of us realize how central race and religion are to our society, for better or for worse. While I have resigned to the fact that it takes years to restructure our society organically, I still despise how race and religion are exceptionally central to our society and how both factors have been manipulated to the effect that they erode liberty.

As a result, a tiny insignificant part of me wants to throw liberty out of the equation and use coercion to encourage integration, to do away with factors which encourage ethnic division in this country. Part of me wants to hasten the integration process, preferring an inorganic method over organic.

But I am a libertarian and I am proud of it. I plan to neither resort nor consent to forced integration or assimilation. For others without libertarian tendencies and who are fiercely working for a more integrated society, coercion through the elimination of public funded vernacular schools and streamlining the education system with just one national school stream may indeed be a tool of great use.

Embracing the concept of rights egalitarian would be the first step in encouraging ethnic integration. Any policy which discriminates people based on creed and skin color only fuels anger of the discriminated against the favored. As long as the hatred is there, ethnic integration will be a pie in the sky.

Equality has the greatest potential in dousing the fire of communal hatred. Within the Malaysian context, this calls for the dismantling of various policies which discriminate our own citizens. It goes as far as requiring the Constitution to be amended to conform to the spirit of rights egalitarianism, where all are truly equal before the law which is ever conscious of individual liberty.

The dismantling of discriminatory policies, however, will not be popular with the majority power, which is Malay. In as much as the Malay community is not monolithic in its political outlook, considerable members of the Malay community do hold dearly to policies which grant them special privileges. The continuous support which UMNO receives from a majority of Malays proves that.

Due to that, removal of policies derived from the New Economic Policy will be highly unpopular. As a direct result, the political support for a rights egalitarian society may not be there. If equality of rights is a goal to be achieved, it is the Malays that the advocates of egalitarianism need to convince, especially in the illiberal democracy that we live in.

The first step in convincing the majority is an exposition of the weaknesses of the current race-based affirmative action policies and juxtaposing it with a better merit-based alternative. The majority has to be persuaded that if the majority of Malays are really poorer than the average Malaysian, a merit-based affirmative action would aid them anyway. Therefore, there is no reason for those who truly require aid to worry about the switch from a race-conscious to race-blind and merit-based policy.

I have come to believe that this is the strongest point that exists against the status quo. It is so because it appeals to the concepts of justice and fairness apart from being an economically superior policy compared to race-conscious affirmative action.

Theoretically, it is impeccable and I have seen it work in practice, especially during the election. This very line has been used from time to time. With patience and good orators at hand, many Malays who are genuinely concerned with the welfare of impoverished Malays are convinced by this point.

That notwithstanding, I personally do not subscribe to any kind of state-based affirmative action. A merit-based policy nevertheless is a potent tool to bring down the current policy; my support for a merit-based over race-based policy only exists due to the virtue of thinking on the margin.

But why should only the Malays sacrifice their position?

I am convinced that rights egalitarianism is one of few ideas that is capable of bringing this country forward. It is one of those abstract developments that this country needs more than physical developments. Our current societal structure is not conducive to attracting talents and egalitarianism — as well as liberty — is one of our best bets to catalyze our economy forward, which at this point, is stagnating.

So, I tend to think that this is not a zero-sum game. Rights egalitarianism has the prospect of increasing the economic pie but while the point is taken but a lot of Malays seem unconvinced about why they should give up their privileges.

It is possible that this is a matter of time horizon. While it is beneficial in the long run to have an egalitarian society for everybody, in the short run, the Malays really do not have the incentive to give up their privileges. This is even more so when there is a heavy discount on future gains.

This sounds like a bias called loss aversion. To explain the phenomenon slightly deeper, loss aversion describes a situation when a person considers a loss as unacceptable even when there is an eventual net gain.

This bias later transforms the original question into “Why should the Malays sacrifice their position while the rest have everything to gain?”

Failure to answer this question may cause the Malays to question the sincerity of others in building a less ethnic-conscious society. I think I can safely say that the conservative Malays see vernacular schools as the special privileges of others as how others see affirmative action enjoyed by the Malays as special privileges.

I have been thinking and I do not pretend I have given it very deep thought but my initial feeling is that the abolition of vernacular schools funded by public money could be the answer to that question.

This absolutely makes sense if we return to the original intention of ethnic integration. This is also important to demonstrate to the conservative Malays that there is sincerity in building unity among various communities. There are Malays whom distrust calls for equality because of the question. A sacrifice by the other sides do a lot in proving the sincerity in building an egalitarian society and thus renders the question irrelevant.

One cannot expect to have an integrated society when children are not given the opportunity to mingle with their peers of different backgrounds. Vernacular schools, be they Chinese, Indian or even schools like the Malay College, work like silos, isolating children in the same community from one another. It is the silo nature of vernacular schools that is detrimental to the idea of ethnic integration.

Surely separation from the very beginning does little in bridging the gap that already exists between cultures. If bridging the gap is truly the goal, then the silos have to be removed and replaced with the grand mixer that is the national school. Concerns about languages and religions, which are the typical criticism directed at the idea of national schools, could be addressed by making language classes available and making the national school neutral of religious influence.

All in all, in the abolition of both Malay privileges and vernacular schools, there would be a quid pro quo arrangement, solving the question of “why should the Malays sacrifice their position while the rest have everything to gain?” It gives the appearance that both are sacrificing something in the name of unity.

On a final note, I want to reiterate that I do not consider ethnic integration a burning question. With regards to school systems, I prefer the concept of charter schools to typical public-funded ones, which schools are given the liberty to do whatever they like as long as they deliver results. With a charter school system in place, it would be likely that the abolition of vernacular schools would lead to merely a change in label, which would render abolition meaningless.

Abolition furthermore seems to be an act to force individuals into a system with the system trying to mold an individual with a template. That disturbs me.

Thus, my agnosticism to abolition. And since I am agnostic to the idea of ethnic integration anyway, preferring to take the time to organically integrate our society instead, I really could not care less for abolition.

For those dreaming of a rights egalitarian society, however, the proposed quid pro quo arrangement is something for all egalitarians to consider. If the arrangement is rejected, the egalitarians would still have to answer the question why should the Malays sacrifice their position while the rest have everything to gain.

Unless that question is satisfactorily answered, I do not think we can see the rise of a rights egalitarian society anytime soon.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

A version of this article was first published in The Malaysian Insider.

I felt the original version does not have a smooth logical transition. This is most likely due to me rushing the article through. Regardless, I have added a sentence or two in this version. In the TMI version, there are  no sentences on sincerity.

Categories
Economics Liberty Society

[1435] Of it is poverty that matters, not wealth inequality

The issue of wealth redistribution and inequality in wealth can be overly stressed by many in Malaysia. Up goes the Gini coefficient for Malaysia and there goes the alarmists. These alarmists, wealth egalitarians do not quite understand that it is poverty that matters, not wealth inequality.

Individuals are different and different persons follow different paths in their life; that rationalizes the difference in wealth; the difference in wealth is synonymous to difference in outcomes. Egalitarians effectively demand all to achieve the same outcome; the best way to achieve such equality is to force everybody to be the same — uniformity is cherished while difference is scorned upon — or to forcefully redistribute wealth after differences manifest itself in the society. For this, egalitarianism violates liberty. Communism and socialism seek this egalitarianism and in the past, as history has noted, the results were disastrous. Yet, communists and socialists still roam this earth, seemingly ignoring lessons in history.

Despite failure of systems that hold wealth equality close to heart, egalitarianism has been identified by the masses as an idea markedly friendly to the poor while non-egalitarian free market advocates are recognized as the manipulative monsters ever-hostile against the poor. This stereotype is beginning to annoy me especially when egalitarianism is increasingly becoming more about hating the rich than about helping the poor. In 1999, economist Martin Feldstein recognized these people with such thinking as spiteful egalitarians.

Wealth inequality is not necessarily, or usually the problem in a society. There are several factors that contribute to wealth inequality; the sources of inequality must be identified to demonstrate why inequality is not an issue one should be concerned about.

At the very top, those factors can be categorized into two groups: deterministic and non-deterministic factors.

For deterministic factors, for example, it is a case of when one is born into the world. One cannot choose their parents, so to speak. And it is not too rare for one to be born without a limp, or be blind or deaf or endowed with any other unfortunate deformation that later affects one’s ability to wade through this life, which can be beautiful or cruel, at birth. It all comes down to one word: luck. Inequality caused by these factors may justify wealth redistribution under pragmatic terms. I am comfortable to suggest that this inequality is the unfavorable type for it adversely affects opportunities; liberty-conscious affirmative action to overcome inequality caused by deterministic factors is essentially action to create equality in opportunity.

Another cause of inequality is the one determined purely by wit and effort by the human spirit. Inequality arises by this group of factors is a direct consequence of success and failure; of reward and punishment. One of the greatest lessons in economics is that individual responses to incentives. In order to encourage success, reward must be granted to those that succeed while failure is punished; in many instances, lack of reward itself suffices as punishment. For one to be successful, effort is required and for effort to be there, the reward must justify the effort. As long as there are winners and losers; as long as we cherish meritocracy, there will be inequality in outcome. Meritocracy is meaningless amid egalitarianism.

If losers are granted that same reward as granted to the victors in the name of egalitarianism, or for any reason for that matter, the victors would have not the incentive to work to be successful. Equality in outcome, equality in wealth means one gets rewarded regardless of effort, even for no effort at all. If fruits of effort could be plucked without effort, why commit effort at all?

Consider education level; it has been well documented that on average, greater years of education increases income level, given everything else is the same. Consider further two persons of the same gender enjoying the same endowment granted by their parents or some entity but have different attitude or capability to mental prowess. The person (let us call him, or her, E) with the greater mental capability will be able to endure longer years of sitting on in front of desk, in front of a book or a computer, working on theses, enriching his, or her, faculty, compared to another person (person F) whom invests less in education. The end result: E will have greater income that F. In the long run, wealth inequality will exist; what was a scenario wealth equality at the beginning is modified by difference in education which leads to difference in income level and finally, wealth inequality. It is the result of meritocracy.

This pattern could be expanded internationally. Different levels or paths of investment will lead to different levels of income. This differences lead to inequality among countries. Luck does have a role but luck, or in a more respectable term, history, can be overcome with enough will. Where there is a will, there is a way.

For this reason, it is far more helpful to concentrate on fighting poverty rather than dreaming for wealth egalitarianism. To achieve an egalitarian society, it is necessary to slow down growth of all people, waiting for those at the bottom to play catch-up; it brings everybody down instead of raising all boats. More worryingly it is becoming a fad lately among self-proclaimed wealth egalitarians to express clear hostility against the successful in hope of achieving an egalitarian society; they seeks to bring the top down rather than the bottom up.

One need not be spiteful to create a better society. For a better society, poverty fighting is enough; egalitarianism is unhelpful in many cases. We should fight for equality in opportunity, not equality in outcome. If one is really concerned for the poor, one should concentrate on fighting poverty, not on achieving an egalitarian society.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

p/s — this entry was first published at Bolehland.