Skaris' tidbits

The open lid of pandoras box

2005-02-20T22:10:00.000+01:00

Hey, i've been away. I have two major time-consuming things going on right now, one which is a university exam and the other that is my presidency for the Liberal students of Sweden. That exam has sort of kept me off the net for a bit.

Now, i remember that something like two years ago, i read this book by Singaporean dissident academic James Gomez. The most imporant thing i learned from that book is how and why Singaporeans are generally known to avoid and censor topics of conversation that are political. Opinion-building and debate is very tightly controlled in Singapore, the PAP government, in power since 1959, handing out permits for print and broadcast media at will. Leading government officials, especially Lee Kuan Yew, are known for taking divergent views that are heard in public all the way to court and sue for defamation. This is the most recent example.

Knowing this, everyone realizes it's suicide to advocate change in Singapore. Samuel Huntington argues in "The Third Wave" that a common factor for the democratization taking place in the world since the 70's is that the opposition in authoritarian countries has maintained unity, been able to mobilize the public and got their message across through some kind of mass media. The degree to which this has happened is of course different from country to country. None, however, had as little social space to mobilize as the Singapore of today. Even on web sites many stay anonymous for fear of the Internal Security Department watching them. Unless a space is opened up for free discussion and liberal expression, dissent can never organize sufficiently to make for a change in regime.

In light of Huntington, i think Singapore is going to change. just take the recently popping up mass of blogs in there as an example. Take a look at these:

Xenoboy SG
James Gomez
Wendy Cheng
Steven McDermott
Gilbert Koh
Think Centre
Awakening Redux
Deus Ex Machina
Alfian
Mr Brown
Yawning Bread
And more....

The are two important conclusions to draw out of this. First, all of this has been created and came about outside of the government media permit process. The government cannot control the expression of a large number of "life-style" liberals and individualists. Not all of these blogs are overtly political - they need not be. The fact that they exist is a manifestatition of freedom that is 'out of pandoras box'. In various ways they turn against the regime in Singapore. Xenoboy goes against politics and they don't want that. Wendy Cheng is an expressive on-spot comedian that uses 'foul' symbols and language, that is - 'dissident' culture - that they don't want. Alfian is a poet and criticizes censorship - the richness of his examples speak for themselves. They don't like him and what he does. Gilbert Koh offers short poems of criticism against national symbols like the armed services and the laughable "speakers corner". They certainly don't like that. And so on....

Watch this TV sequence feat. interviews with some of the bloggers (Linked from xiaxue.blogspot.com).

These people are potential enemies of the state, because they dare put their chins out and be
individuals. Some of them probably don't even consider themselves 'media dissidents'. The fact that they express without permit makes them, perhaps unvoluntarily, very political nonetheless.

The second conclusion is the optimistic one. The latent opposition to the ways of the PAP government in all of these independent and personal voices is the basis for change in Singapore. We know that what James Gomez wrote in 2000 about the self-censorship and self-shaving off of the edges of common Singaporeans is not true in all cases. Some need to lead the way.

I will end this pretentious piece with a reference to one of my favourite authors, 1974 nobel laureate in economics Friedrich August von Hayek. He said that the "bon vivants", the performers in the art of life and expression, are the ones that will invent new life styles than can then be followed by others. The state may want to forbid and fight the free experimentation that these bloggers represent, but technically it can't unless it wants to set up an authority for controlling who can use computers and internet and for what. Hayek believed that if we stop some from experimenting with lifestyle and expression just because we don't like some things they do, we will all in the end be materially and spiritually poor.

The best thing about all this is that Singaporeans are expressing their individuality, it is really funny and interesting and there is nothing the PAP can do about it! It is a fundamental challenge to the PAP's system that it can never win. Singaporeans learn fast and they will learn from the examples of these self-styled opinion-makers.

Okay, i just wanna say before i shut down that 30 cm of snow and ice with -10C next week will really suck. I'll complain about the weather until it betters itself.

The emperor's new hat part 2

2005-02-08T09:54:00.000+01:00

The head of the Institue against bribery writes today in Dagens Nyheter that he has asked the national attourney to investigate the Prime minister's new honorary doctorship in medicine as alleged bribery.

Actually, he mentions in the article that even the explicit reason given for the PM's appointment to doctorate status was his upgrading of Örebro to a university back in 1999.

During the last few months, we have seen a string of corruption scandals, with union and social democrat hotshots stealing from the state and also the needy that they claim to represent. Too much power for too long corrupts you.

The ones who pay the price for this sad little story are the student of Örebro University. They can no longer be sure that the university achieved it's status by producing good research and education but rather a case of political back-rubbing. They invest 4 or maybe more years, and the question will remain in their heads long after this issue is out of the public light: Could my university not apply to become a full-fledged university because of merits?

It is these people that are compromised and have to take the blow from careless, self-centered and short-sighted politicians, whether they are prime minsiters or members of a university board.

DPP and the "New Tide"

2005-02-07T20:08:00.000+01:00

Taipei Times reports today that the new Chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party Su Tseng-chang (a favourite for the presidential elections in 2008), has appointed a stalwart member from the left-leaning "New Tide" faction as a deputy secretary-general for the party. The New Tide is widely regarded as the biggest and best organized of all factions in the DPP (a highly factionalized party). The New Tide is like a social democratic "party within the party" while The DPP as a whole can be regarded mainstream social liberal, much like the american democrats or european ALDE.

As Andreas Martin Fulda describes in his paper on DPP factions, the New Tide is a group that centers around the belief in the big state as a means for solving social problems. They are also allied to the labour movement, more specifically the more dogmatic TCTU. Seriously, not even the Swedish socialist union has that much venom to spare for the word "neo-liberalism".

What we see is that the leftists in Taiwan understand how to do politics; how to bargain and attain influence in a party, how to build alliances with NGO:s, how to slowly try to change the debate, intellectual climate and values of a greater portion of the public.

The liberals, that are expected to defend individual empowerment, self-ownership, non-discrimintion and the equality of all before the law are nowhere to be found as some of these things can be pitched away slowly in a confused game of politics where few factions have real ideologies and principles except for the New Tide.

Due to the influence of the New Tide, we cannot be sure that the DPP defends Taiwan's economic freedom - a force that ensures growth, which in turn brings down remaining poverty brick by brick.

What about the KMT? Well, they still don't concede their defeat in the 2004 presidential election, and use their majority in the legislative Yuan to appoint a committee that is supposed to find evidence that president Chen's re-election last year was a conspiracy. Like small children, the KMT leaders, lacking evidence to back up their claim, still point fingers at the "fake" president. The KMT thus effectively singles itself out of the really important, defining moments of the debate on Taiwan's future direction.

I'll keep nagging about this: Where are the liberals?

Acamdemic freedom under threat in Taiwan?

2005-02-06T13:20:00.000+01:00

On the subject of academic freedom, i demonstrated below that the meaning of the word in Sweden lapses by the day. This happens when the state lacks effective limits and is run for a long time by the same elite.

Unfortunately, i found these news from the Taipei Times, january 7. It appears the Ministry of Education in Taiwan wants to curtail the rights of professors to appoint their own dean. The ruling DPP, which is party i prefer over the KMT, is making a serious mistake. Already Taiwan suffers from the same problem as Sweden in the sense that the budget for higher education is spread out over too many state-funded institutions. i don't think the Taiwanese would like this proposal if they see what has happens when politicians run the academia as in Sweden. Hopefully the ministry's proposal gets thumbs down in the Legistlative Yuan.

The degree of freedom in Taiwan is essentially what separates it from China, what makes it a civilized, mature and impressive country. More people need to realize this and oppose these proposals that attack the soul of Taiwan. Taiwan without a great deal of individual freedom will be only marginally different to China.

The emperor's new hat

2005-02-06T11:14:00.000+01:00

PM Göran Persson was promoted yesterday to honorary doctor in medicine at Örebro University. Interestingly, the event does not appear as news on their homepage, only a reference to criticism published in today's Svenska Dagbladet. Obviously they are not 100% proud of this.

As Johan Norberg writes, This is clearly a matter of sucking up to the very same political leadership that turned Örebro College into a university. Svenska Dagbladet reports that the university board, responsible for the decision, includes 8 people and that 5 of these are social democrats. On top of that, the principal is the former municipal council president in the northern city of Umeå, also a social democrat, of course.

However sad a story of academic corruption this is, we have reason to believe it is the top of the iceberg in our "egaliatarian" and "socially just" country. The Christian Democrat party recently published a report measuring the social democratic supremacy in university boards.

I study at Stockholm university. Last year the wife of the PM was replaced by a former social democratic minister as chairman of the board. How wonderful that we have so many competent social democratic party activists that are so very competent, in fact so competent that they and their allies have a majority in all 11 university boards in the nation!

On another note, we must have really bad academics, clearly not competent enough to run the universities they put down their entire careers for themselves. How grateful we should be to the social democrats for ensuring that the academy is controlled by the democratically appointed majority, in the best interests of the people, to ensure the best democratic and qualitative academic work.

I will say it again. Every university student in this country studies at a university run by politically appointed, social democratic loyalists. And people ask why the americans get all nobel prizes. Gee, i wonder why.

Democracy and Singapore - the liberal perspective

2005-02-04T11:45:00.000+01:00

As a classical liberal, i have a different view of what is a "good" democracy as opposed to the mainstream one.

Most supporters of democracy claim it is a system where the people rule over their common affairs, where everyone is equal in the sense of one man-one vote and that the citizens will depose of politicians that do not further the (diffuse) concept of the "common good".

Karl Popper, the 20th-century Austrian liberal that invented the term "The open society", argued in "The open society and it's enemies" that democracy is to be understood not as a means to sort out the best leaders but rather as a means to stop the bad leaders from doing harm. I think that the purpose of democracy is to uphold individual freedom and the rule of law, equal for everyone. Those must be the foundations of a good society. The spontaneous order that individuals carve out on these foundations by voluntary cooperation with each other, following their own personal interests, according to this worldview, brings us the best possible development and welfare for all.

Singapore is rich and prosperous because Lee Kuan Yew understands some of this - he understands that general rules for human behaviour must be applied indiscriminately and that the purpose of this law is to allow some individual freedom. He also understand the need for some freedom, notably economic.

What he does not understand (or maybe he does but doesn't care), is that all of these values are threatened in the long term if the country is not a democracy where citizens can get rid of rulers that sit a little too long on their thrones. In my country, the Social Democrats have ruled 90% of the time the last 70 years. This is a problem not essentially because of the party's platform and because of the fact that corruption scandals involving this party are in the news every so often.

It is a problem because power itself corrupts. If you are in office for too long, staying there is at the top of the agenda, and the price you are prepared to make citizens pay for it increases by the day. Thus, less and less means are taboo the longer you are there. The civil service, first upholding and ideal of neutrality towards different parties, slowly become infested by servants associated to a specific party. Not because that is good for rule of law, but because it is easier for the party to rule that way.

You don't need to be Einstein to realize that the courts in Singapore treat cases threatening to the monopoly on political power by the PAP according to this logic. Of course, the court functionaries want to keep their jobs and be able to stay with their families in Singapore.

Shelley Rigger on Taiwanese political parties

2005-02-03T22:37:00.000+01:00

Great, finally someone "you ming de" (famous) that agrees with me about one very imporant problem in Taiwanese politics. Shelley Rigger, accomplished Taiwan studies scholar, points out a lack of ideological coherent foundation as a major problem behind the contemporary unability of Taiwans politicians to impress it's subjects.

It's irony folks, that in Taiwan, after the long reign of a more dogmatic KMT with totalitarian ambitions, Taiwanese associate "ideology" to be inherently bad. Ideology in Taiwan in itself has a bad name.

During my time at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy last year, one of my central conclusions are on the role and need for a stronger, more independent youth involvement in politics. When you are young in a political party's youth wing you are not immediately exposed to the details and warring of negotiation, compromise and majority-gaining pork-barrel politics and log-rolling. To resist and avoid the most incoherent, corrupted, populist and short-sighted of the honorable representatives of the Legislative and Executive Yuan, it would sure help if they at least agree on some basic political philosophy before they start pushing buttons and spending other people's money, lest politics will result in contradictory policies and a complete waste of resources that were accumulated by the hard-working Taiwanese people.

Is is really not that complicated, since the relevant question in this context is: what kind of society do we want? Should the state be further restricted and society rely more on market forces and individual initiatives to lead ut into development or should the state do this by more social rights and european-type Keynesian welfare states. I dare say that the understanding of this fundamental conflict in social science is very little understood in mainstream politics in Taiwan.

Taiwanese can, and will, do this. It is a matter of time. Perhaps the youth just need to say "sod off!" the next time some politician wants to use them to hand out flyers and look cute for the cameras.

A wise young Taiwanese woman wrote me "conflicts happen everywhere, no conflicts - no improvements". This is a conflict that Taiwan's youth will handle adn turn into improvements, because they are tired of being treated as stereotypes that "are politically apathic and care only about vicious and funny things". The DPP, which is the party i have knowledge on in this sense, is still waiting to set up it's youth/ student wing. Will that happen during Su Tseng-Chang's tenure?

See an exchange i had in the Taipei Times with a Taiwanese socialist ph d candidate (here and here). I will defend the liberal view since still few others seem interested in doing so. Come on, Taiwan! Even China has free-market liberalism think tanks.

Storm the fort?

2005-02-03T11:49:00.000+01:00

In the Straits Times, there is a story describing a recent exchange of views between a university student and Lee Kuan Yew. The student clearly thinks that no matter how good a despot Lee is, he is still a despot. Lee claims to want everyone with political views to formulate them and step out into the open. As a leader of a political organization, i will say the same thing to my members; if you wanna do something, change something that you believe is wrong, just take a clear stand and start at that, then formulate how to get there.

Unfortunately, Lee will not be consequent in what he says. The day that the student has his political programme and steps out to spread it in the open, including explanations of why the government is wrong and he is right, he will be swarmed, cornered, and destroyed just like Chia Thye Poh, Francis Seow, JB Jeyaretnam, Tang Liang Hong, Chee Soon Juan and so on. This is an empirical fact. Singaporeans give it their silent consent. Singapore is the way it is not because there are evil people who feed on the good, it is because regular, good, harmless citizens accept this order by consent, passive or active. More on this by Murray N Rothbard's discussion of a french 16th-century young rebellious student.

Developments in Taiwan

2005-02-03T11:23:00.000+01:00

Taiwanese politics if often deadlocked, predictable and boring (not counting people fighting and throwing lunch boxes in parliament). Now, due to the death of Taiwanese cross-strait negotiator Koo Chen-fu, who contributed to dialogue, there seems to be some opening for further discussions (Straits Times).

President Chen is deadlocked. After failing to gain a legislative yuan majority in the december polls, he has had no choice but to extend an olive branch to James Soong and the People First Party in the opposition, attempting to win some concessions and at the same time isolate the KMT from political power. Now, with the PFP backing the KMT candidate for Legislative Yuan speakership, there are doubts as to whether this idea is going to work.

China's motives can, as usual, not be trusted. Next month China will adopt an "anti-seccesion" law clearly directed at threatening Taiwan and raising the stakes in the chicken race with Taiwan independence forces.

Considering Chen's delicate position and close call in passing into history as a looser after a possibly pyrrhic victory in the presidential election last year, he needs cross-strait breakthrough and negotiations with China. China probably knows this and will exploit that weakness, for that i agree with the Straits Times.

We have to keep hoping that some Chinese leaders keep away from strong-man tactics and realize that it is in the interest of China and Taiwan to negotiate and achieve small steps at a time, such as constant air routes Taipei-Shanghai and Taipei-Beijing. Anyone who negotiates deals like that will go down in history as a responsible leader.

Swedish corporatism: Mandatory student unions

2005-02-03T10:04:00.000+01:00

Well, this is interesting. As the president of the Liberal students of Sweden i want to fuel and challenge the fact that all Swedish students by law are required to be members of a certain organisation (www.sfs.se) that is given a legal monopoly to represent us. I mentioned before the lack of freedom to organize in Singapore, and of course this issue is the issue at stake here - the basic human right to organize according to individual decisions and desires is breached by SFS's monopoly, and for a liberal there can be no compromise on basic human rights.

One of the arguments used to legitimize this order is that "SFS is politically independent and does not take controversial political stance but rather focus on the common interests of the students". Thus, SFS should not take politically sensitive or controversial positions. However, this is contradicted by the president of SFS by raising the issue of affirmative action or "positive discrimination", for the alleged purpose of creating and egalitarian and equal society, here.

Obviously the SFS president thinks the anti-discrimination law and the very legal principle of consequently treating individuals equally is a big barrier to achieve his current static view of what percentage of what ethnicity where is "equal". He represents the commonly used and very arbitrary socialist view of equality. In my eyes, equality is being treated equally as individuals by predictable legal rules that make sense.

Anyway, i wrote, together with other liberal-leaning student organizations, a reply focusing on the need of not compromising with the rule of law, a basic principle of civilized and modern society that has meant a great deal to human development. It can be found here. A local debate at one university over this issue can be found here.

Now, SFS answers and refers to structural discrimination in all of societal life, here. Besides some trivial arguments that pretend to adress our points but consciously and conveniently misses them, there are some imporant conclusions to be drawn.

Without hopefully turning too pretentious, i want to compare this to the debate in foreign affairs in 1994 between Lee Kuan Yew and Kim Dae Jung. Kim writes that the differences in their worldviews and basic assumptions about humanity are so great that only history kan decide the outcome of their debate.

Isn't it the same thing here? We liberals have to defend, in this debate, the formal equality of all before the law as a primary means to achieve a human development and better life for all. History has proven us right here - it is when the same rights and freedoms are accorded to all individuals in society that it can grow and be more civilized to the benefit of all, not least the least well off. It is, historically, when this principle is strictly applied in the law that real wages increase by 5% every year for the common person, such as was the case in late 19th century Sweden. People were poor, but rapidly grew. Nowadays, this is hardly the case in Sweden or any other western european nation for that matter, except maybe Ireland. We have to see what this development means for the life opportunities of minorities and women, how economic development, laws of individual equality, globalization and openness improves the chances and lives of women faster than men, how the multitude of possible life choices eradicate the previous powerlessness of non-white, non-male and non-majority. But we also have to be able to distinct that this force is allowed to manifest more in America than i Europe, where minorities are shut out by powerful legally privileged special interests and how women are subjugated to work in state monopolies that offer broken backs and small paychecks.

And we have to understand that the current of thought in SFS, a ghost of corporativism such as it is, will not adapt this liberal perspective on development. Therefore, our differences are irreconcilable in the short run and cannot be decided in debates, whether in Aftonbladet or in Upsala Nya Tidning. I really believe this is a matter of historical attrition.

ARDA's new democracy index

2005-02-03T01:07:00.000+01:00

I'm a member of the organization ARDA (Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia, http://www.asiademocracy.biz). ARDA is a totally new concept in the sense that it brings Asian democracy advocates from all persuasions, professions and schools of life together in furthering democracy. The idea is not so much to press for a specific type of democracy but rahter for the organization to support individual activists in member countries fight for democracy.

ARDA has now declared an intent to produce a "democracy index" (http://www.asiademocracy.biz/content_view.php?section_id=3&content_id=308) obviously to rank countries according to which is the most "democratic". Indices for individual freedom and political rights are provided by, among others, Freedomhouse (www.freedomhouse.org). Indices for economic freedom are provided by such actors as the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/) and the "Economic freedom of the world network" (http://www.freetheworld.com/).

ARDA mentions on the web page that existing indices have shortcomings, notably the reliance on government-provided information sources in authoritarian countries. However, they also mention that existing indices share an "over-emphasis" on economic freedom. This implies that someone believes that there is a point when economic freedom and democracy go against each other.

I believe, from my liberal point of view, that economic freedom is the only economic regime compatible with democracy in the long run. The idea of individual freedom (be it economic or other) arose at the same time and was akin to the concept of democracy. Democracy, as Karl Popper wrote, is not a system for electing the best leaders but a system for depriving the bad leaders quick routes to tyranny.

A state with comparably less economic freedom than others have comparably larger states, for the purpose of filling the void. Sweden is an excellent example of this, with the state redistributing more than half of the economy according to a plan which is essentially about creating more income equality and retaining public monopolies in the area of health care, schooling, daycare - social and welfare services in general terms.

This order relies on the ability of elected representatives to plan the production of these services, which will always fail. It fails not because the politicians are evil or incompetent, but because the nature of the situation effectively makes sure they fail every time.

The brilliant and simple explanation as to why is provided by the 1974 nobel prize winner in economics, a certain dr von Hayek (http://www.hayekcenter.org/friedrichhayek/hayek.html) . Hayek makes the following point in his 1944 classic "The road to serfdom" (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226320618/103-1608085-3637429).

A plan, to work correctly, must be followed according to it's blueprint. If the plan is changed along the way to be different from what the creator had in mind, it may achieve nothing or in the worst case something entirely unforseen and undesirable. Democracy is a political system for arriving at political decisions through compromise, negotiation and peaceful accomodation. To attain the necessary majority for a certain plan to create the desired redistribution and social service production, the creator's plan must, in a democracy, be subjected to this process. If we give this some thought, we realize that the end result of the plan will be totally different from what was originally intended, and actually the more so the "better" the democracy is working. Thus, democracy becomes and arbitrary process for producing that stated in the plan. Also, for the planning to work, market solutions on the side cannot be allowed.

The best way, in other words, to efficiently plan an economic process is to have a strong-man rule where the word of the ruler is the highest law. That kind of arrangement always ends up in tyranny. Economic freedom, meaning here absence of economic planning and instead market solutions, is crucial for democracy to work.

What i want to end up with here is really only the realisation that economic freedom is a good thing, and not something we can have in excess. I know that this is not very politically correct at the time being, but like Lee Kuan Yew said in his memoirs "I care about being correct, not politically correct". Lee is by the way of course not a role model when it comes to freedom, especially not when one ponders what he did to Chia Thye Poh.

We who fight for democracy must at the same time defend economic freedom, as the amazing force it is for individual empowerment and destroying poverty. On of the amazing things about Taiwan for example is the action of thousands of small business owners, from the department stores to the smallest tea-shack , all working with their own ends in sight but serving others by following these ends. Most may not own much, but they can own and the fact that they can is a powerful force for development.

I just hope ARDA heeds this point and fully integrates the meaning of economic freedom in their democracy index. The fact that they aim to rely on less government information though, is a very good thing if they have a grass-roots network efficient enough to get the information some other way. If they make it happen we know that ARDA is here to stay.

Why do i need a blog?

2005-02-02T22:23:00.000+01:00

Well, everybody else has one....

No, seriously, there's nothing nouvelle about a Swedish 24-year old neoliberal with a blog, probably most of them do have one. The only reason i could have for starting one is the fact that i am sort of personally involved in politics in some Asian countries, such as Singapore and Taiwan.

Singapore, because of my friendship with and support for the man that has above all others demonstrated the meaning of sacrifice, Dr Chee Soon Juan of the rag-tag opposition Singapore democratic party (http://www.singaporedemocrat.org). Armed with little else than conviction, compassion and intellect, he has devoted his life to bringing about an opening of the more illiberal sides of Singapore, most notably the freedom to speak and the freedom to organize. I am responsible for managing a joint liberal, moderate and social democratic project to support the opposition with what we can. I guess the fact that it happens can be labelled "political globalization at the less-than-fashionable level".

Taiwan, because of my recent half-year stint in Taipei, where i worked on a study comparing the political self-organization of youth in Sweden and Taiwan as represented by the swedish liberal party youth wing and the taiwanese governing party, the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party). It's funny, because whereas 60% of Taiwanese high school kids consider starting their own business in a few years after gradutation, they are certainly far from as entrepreneurial in the political field, although some initiatives like Vision Youth Action (http://www.vya.org.tw) have popped up in recent years. The best example of politically organized youth in Taiwan is, in my opinion, the Taiwan Young Intellectuals (http://26.to/taiwan_st/, use babelfish.altavista.com if you don't read chinese). The organizational culture of the DPP does not encourage youth to organize themselves, but it's rather more of a "don't call us we call you when we need someone to hand out flyers" kind of deal. Taiwanese are hard working and ambitious, and once a good organization that favour independent thinking is set up by some brave students it should take off.

There, i just found a raison d'être for this blog.