Categories
Liberty Society

[2439] When it comes, they will run

The return of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China was imminent. After years of a hands-free approach taken by the colonial government, the citizens of Hong Kong were used to a liberal atmosphere. The prospect of a continuous liberal environment after the 1997 handover was unclear however. The uncertainty convinced many to fear the worst. Rather than suffer the uncertainty, they took action and sought refuge elsewhere. They applied for permanent residency and citizenship in other countries to escape the possibility of living in an oppressive society. The PRC, regardless of what it is now with all of its contradictions, was perceived as a repressive and decidedly communist country. The 1989 Tiananmen Square incident was still fresh in everybody’s minds.

Money is not always the only consideration in any decision regarding migration. There are other factors that are not necessarily less important than money. Security is one. Love is two. Freedom has often been cited as a factor. A way of life is another.

The implementation of hudud or the adoption of more comprehensive Islamic laws will affect the way of life in Malaysia.

Proponents of hudud argue that the implementation of such laws will be applicable to Muslims only. They guarantee it.

Neither their argument nor their guarantee are good.

The argument of exclusive application is unlikely to be true. Previous conflicts from child custody to death and burial have proven that even the milder version of Islamic laws as practised in Malaysia impacts non-Muslims. These proponents might have forgotten these episodes. They must be reminded of it because these conflicts do create a fear of creeping Islamization in the hearts of non-Muslims as well as others who care for religious freedom.

These past conflicts can tell us what to expect in the future.

The likelier outcome of the wider implementation of Islamic laws is this: whatever affecting the majority will likely affect the minority. A more comprehensive version will not leave non-Muslims alone, even if the legal rights are discriminated among citizens so strongly.

It is naïve to believe such an incredible guarantee.

The minority will float along with the majority, whether they like it or not, for better or for worse. The wider implementation of Islamic laws will be a change in lifestyle for everybody. It will first affect the lifestyle of Muslims, regardless of their piety. The group will become more conservative, voluntarily or otherwise.

Then through the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims, the lifestyle of the latter will be affected. The rest will have to respect the new conservativeness.

In the end, whatever is the way of life that prevails will change. Whatever openness and liberalness within the society that exists will gradually vanish to satisfy rising conservativeness. Whatever lifestyle that was will have to give way to the Islamic one, however those in power define the Islamic laws. The outlook of Malaysian society itself will change. None will escape such a wholesome change unless they leave.

There is a point where the religious and non-religious minorities along with Muslims who hold more relaxed religious positions will choose migration over further tolerance of growing Islamization within their society. The potential lifestyle change can be too drastic to stomach. There is a point where enough is enough.

If it comes, there will be those who will walk off to a more open society permanently. They have the means to do so, just like many former citizens of Hong Kong.

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 Malaysian Insider on October 6 2011.

Categories
Economics

[2438] Malaysia could have smaller deficit

The 2012 budget is an election budget. From civil servants to police officers to students to teachers to the armed forces, the whole public sector workers, even pensioners, will get their own share of handouts next year if this budget is passed, which it will.

With all the handouts, it got me thinking. We could do better with the federal government’s fiscal deficit. A lot of this handouts with the exception of the 2% annual increase of salary for civil servants and free education are one-off gifts. If those gifts were not made, Malaysia would have smaller fiscal deficit.

I will expand this thought for my column at The Malaysian Insider.

Categories
Science & technology Society

[2437] Thanks Steve

I am not an Apple fanboy. I was anti-Apple even.

I remember the first Apple computer I used long ago. Wikipedia tells me that it was Macintosh Classic. Its screen had only two colors: green and black. I was happy of playing Karate-Ka on it, and other games that for the life of me, I cannot remember. It was my first vivid recollection of a computer. This was the time when large diskettes were used, not a flash drive, not even a CD.

My next encounter with Apple would come 8 or 9 years later when the University of Michigan had iMacs littering its computer labs. I spotted the largest collection of iMacs in Angell Hall’s Fishbowl. I had thought Apple was dead, but no. I was wrong.

These Macs were not these modern days slick-looking Macs. It was an odd one piece machine with the CPU and the monitor wedded together. The G3, Wikipedia says. The weirdest of all was the one-button mouse. Who would use that?
 
I was decidedly anti-Apple then.

But Apple progressed tremendously after the odd-looking bright-colored Macs. Its notebooks were becoming extremely slick and I remember spotting a 23” Powerbook, probably the first of its kind, in an Apple Store in Novi, Michigan, somewhere outside of Ann Arbor. Despite being impressed, I remember blogging my somewhat negative sentiment against Apple.

From there on, it was all up for Apple.
 
First, it was the iPod.
 
I had always wanted an mp3 player as an undergraduate but I decided against buying an iPod back in 2004. I bought a Creative Zen instead, all because I believed the iPod was overpriced, and all hype. Five years later, I am the owner of a fifth-generation iPod Nano. I did not buy it. I got it as a gift.
 
And I love it.
 
I remember bragging about having a Nano to my ex-girlfriend through Skype. She was unimpressed, showing to me that she had a Nano too. Purple. Mine was blue. There she was, a cute French girl smiling with her purple iPod.

There are of course the revolutionary iPhone and the even more revolutionary iPad. To say these gadgets were revolutionary on its own rights is an understatement. Apple not only revolutionized consumer goods. It revolutionized the global culture.

That was because of one human legend, Steve Jobs. At least, as far as I am concerned.

So, when he died today, the world has just lost one of its biggest culture icons. We are living in an exciting time, partly thanks to Steve Jobs. I do not think anybody can deny that.

You do not have to be a tech-writer to know that. You do not have to be part of the tech or creative industry to know that. You just need to live to know that.

Apple wrote on its website, it “has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being.” Aye to that.

Categories
Liberty

[2436] Bellamy mistook public-private dichotomy as the universe

In Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, which is kind of the ideological polar opposite of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, there is one particular argument that denies the legitimacy of private property in favor of public property.

Bellamy believed that a person uses all of his or her knowledge and experience to produce a good or a service. All of those knowledge and experience were derived from past thinkers and inventors, through interaction with society. All those goods are public properties said Bellamy, produced by humanity and none can privatize it.

Since any further inventions or innovations will necessarily use those goods defined as public properties, new inventions and innovations will continue to be public properties. The usage of public property as an input is sufficient to classify a product as public property.

The inventors and innovators have no moral right to appropriate the products of public property as private properties. It belongs to everybody, so Bellamy held. Just as a person used all these public goods for free, the person must repay it back to the owner of these public properties, which is the society or more practically, the government. As you can see, it is a pretty collectivist idea.

This idea is set within a thought complex where money does not exist and a central planner is all-knowing in terms of productive and distributive efficiency. The central planner assigns all labor based on needs and capability into an “industrial army” and the problem of scarcity has been solved. More generally, the central planner manages all input of production. The whole book was decidedly painted by the statist version of communism all around.

This line of thinking is attractive for those who are against the idea of private property, never mind the impracticability of the matter. In the book, the idea was practical only because of the existence of an omnipresent government that does everything and can enforce the status of a good as a public property. But I am not really interested in its practicality, or impractically rather. I am more interested in its morality, and its origination, which Bellamy based Looking Backward on, despite its elaborate description of Bellamy’s prefered economic system.

The problem with this kind of thinking is its initial state assumption. Bellamy assumed past knowledge is the product of humanity and a person that uses that product owes humanity something in return. In short and more clearly, if you use it, you must return it back. It assumes collective ownership of all things and it preserves collective ownership regardless of circumstances. It is an effort at drawing a perfect circle that goes round and round.

But going back to the first men when none owned anything, or rather without making any assumption on ownership, consider the first state when men were beasts far back in history. The question is who owned what in the very first state of affairs?

Did the first men own the lands, the air and the water, or did these resources were not owned?

If they owned these resources, did they own it privately or collectively?

Bellamy necessarily assumed that these resources were owned collectively by the first men. The mere use of these resources make these resources public property.

I differ. I refuse the relationship between usage as a sufficient condition to turn a good into ownership, hence turning the good into either private or public property.

I differ because unlike Bellamy, I hold that these resources were not owned by anybody. It was a common owned by none. Consider this: if I used the water from a free-flowing river owned by none, would I automatically own the river?

No.

Furthermore, if I used the water and others used it as well, would it automatically mean all the users collectively own the river?

No.

My point is that usage does not translate into ownership, privately or publicly. Bellamy assumed otherwise.

More importantly, lack of private ownership does not automatically suggest public ownership. Within the realm of property ownership, there is a dichotomy between private and public property. But within the universe, there is a dichotomy of ownership and absence of ownership.

Bellamy, I think, worked within the dichotomy of private-public ownership and mistook that as the universe.

But this relates to physical resources. How about something intangible, like calculus?

It is true that knowledge, like calculus, is the product of contribution of hundreds or thousands of men and women throughout the ages. Without any exaggeration, it is a product of humanity. But although it is, it is not owned by humanity. The discoverers of various laws, theorems, rules, lemma and anything that has logical value in the case of calculus made it free for society to use. But free does not automatically translate into ownership, just like physical resources. None own it but they are free to use or learn it.

Recall the universe and the place of ownership dichotomy within the universe.

Categories
Economics

[2435] Oh the fickle markets

The stock markets all around the world are on a rollercoaster ride. It is yet another proof of the interconnectedness of our world and in a time like this, such interconnectedness can be a bane. The slightest news of little relevance—never mind the more substantial developments—from the other side of the world can rally or rattle the markets. These are days of pessimism and this kind of pessimism it is a little bit unhealthy.

It is painful to observe the stock markets. If to keep an eye on it is an exercise perfectly suited for sadists, to have a direct stake in the markets makes the whole enterprise all the worse.

Each day brings a kind of consternation. Will tomorrow be better or worse? Should I buy or sell now? Will tomorrow be delightfully unexpected or depressingly expected? Is that light at the end of the tunnel? Or is that a headlight for a speeding train?

These questions and its variants have been asked increasingly frequent over the past few weeks. The answers are not always forthcoming unfortunately. Sometimes, there is none to be had.

That is partly the fickleness of the markets resulting from the markets trying to incorporate everything it could. That fickleness grants rest to none, forcing all to stand guard around the clock.

The fickleness and volatility of the market are tiring. Whatever the benefits of the markets as a leading indicator of the wider economy, all the attention it demands is tiring. It consumes too much time and energy, all just for the small satisfaction of not losing money in a blink of an eye in this kind of prevailing environment we live in.

As a graduate student once, I had to model certain relationships involving the stock market. The volatility of the market presented a challenge because too much data can lead to the wrong conclusion. The data series was too “noisy.”

A friend suggested cutting the frequency of data from daily to weekly as a solution. Others suggested logarithmic difference. There was a bunch of other novel methods aimed at doing the same: filtering out the incessant noise in hope of squeezing something tangible and real out of the data series.

The stock markets do tell something, but its fickleness neither tells everything nor is everything it tells is necessarily true or relevant.

There lies some wisdom to go beyond the mathematics and economics puzzles. I find the wisdom helpful in keeping myself from frowning yet again, sighing continuously and from suffering mood swing as wild as the market.

I have decided that I will not go mad over the market. I have applied less weight to the importance of the stock market with respect to myself.  At least for now, I have decided to have less exposure to the craziness of it all.

If European politicians and bureaucrats could go on summer holidays amid a frighteningly global crisis, surely others inconsequential to world’s history can take some justifiable break of their own. The grand narrative of world’s history is unlikely to twitch for me.

I do not want to be the guy who sits in front of the screen staring in a broker house, hoping for the slightest opportunity to make money. Or that guy drawing meaningless lines trying to outsmart the market, the efficient-market hypothesis be damned.

No, I have decided to live a life more, and worry a little less.

There is money to be had, and it is always nice to have a little bit more money in the pocket. Yet, one has to asked, at what cost?

There is more to life, and the economy even, than the fickleness of the stock markets.

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 September 30 2011.