Blue Balloon

“There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.” - Margaret Thatcher

It doesn’t sound as romantic as you’d like, but probably economic liberty is a more fundamental kind of freedom than political liberty. The past few years, China entered capitalistic reform. Now, the leaders of its autocra

tic ex-communistic regime start thinking of turning to democracy. The steps towards political freedom are minor for the moment and the process, if successful, will probably take long. But it’s totally amazing that, under other circumstances, it would take a bloody revolution for such a turn. It’s a ‘capitalistic revolution‘ this time that paves the way for a peaceful democratic reform.

The Greeks Liberals (libertarians for the North Americans) take action and support Kareem in a peaceful and orderly protest outside the Egyptian embassy in Athens. The event will take place this Friday, 6pm. The event was announced through e-rooster, a greek liberal blog.

Here you can find Kareem’s post and here you can read about the event on which Kareem commented, from the BBC website.

Read also this interesting article from Economist on bloggers and the political trouble they cause to authoritarian Arab governments. Economist is probably right. This might be only the beginning of a critical fight for free speech.

Economist supports Sarcozy, one week before the first round of French elections. And continued the tradition of great covers. I wonder if they’ll support Giuliani, too. Although for his case, there is a long way to run.

This is the official site of Sarkozy’s campaign. I think the people who designed it did a good job reflecting Sarcozy’s powerful and no-nonsense image on the site.

http://www.sarkozy.fr/home/

Ubi dubium ibi libertas

Libertarian thought provided the basic axes on which the modern western civilization was, and still is, built today - that is, individual liberty, the rule of law and capitalism. And not only it prevailed against marxism, collectivism, fascism and communism, but more than this, where applied, it helped create the necessary conditions for progress.

For nearly one century, libertarianism was the voice of reason against an irrational, dogmatic, mystical system of beliefs. But the most important thing to point out here is that the kind of ‘reason’ libertarianism is based upon and made it so special, actually relates to a negative sense of knowledge. Libertarianism’s principles proved to be better than others, because they embodied the fact that sometimes we just do not know what solution is good for a problem and that the right way to find it out is the hard way.

I am, as a libertarian, in favor of individual liberty and (of course) responsibility, not because I see humans as beings that live or should live alone (which I do not), neither because I believe that individuals do not need help (again, I do not). But because, if we begin building a system that tells people how to live or decides what kind of help they need, there will be a time when the smallest fault in the system (lack of knowledge is only one possible reason for such faults) will have the worst consequences for everyone. I support capitalism for similar reasons with individual liberty - because numerous ‘local’ economic decisions prove to be in the long run more safe than big central decisions. And finally, I support the rule of law because, together with a democratic mechanism for the limitation of arbitrary power, it provides a slow but safe way to capitilize on our experience and make changes when we know that they will be in the right direction.

None of the above is a golden rule for all the problems we might face as humans or humanity. There might well be cases where the above fail and other political ‘tools’ are needed (there is no society that is organized based on only these three principles). But remember, we do not have to choose between a perfect system and a faulty one. Nor we live after a perfect past where every problem was solved. The important thing to keep from libertarianism’s legacy is that individual liberty, rule of law and capitalism provide approximate rules of thumb that manage to avoid a lot of worst case scenarios and help in the creation of good life conditions. And they work well in expectation. Far better than every other political system tried on Earth. This happened because we managed to reason not only on what we know, but also on what we do not know.

I believe that the predominance of libertarianism was a big leap forward for the western societies that practiced its principles. It would be even greater if people could consider why this happened. It is essential, if we want to take still some leaps further.

From time to time, I try to get a better idea about who Obama Barack is and what he would possibly do if he became a president.

I saw parts of his speech in Southern Carolina. Part 1 Part 2 I didn’t like it because, as most the events of its kind, it was held mainly to create hope - but not by providing rational solutions.

However, I found out about a bill he passed in September 2006 with Republican senator Coburn and I found it rather impressive. The bill’s aim is “to establish federal searchable databases of all government contracts, loans, grants and special-interest spending”. You can find it here.

Furthermore, I like the fact that, as I can read in his senate webpage, he “worked with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit, which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families across the state”.

Rudy Giuliani is running for president. This is what he said on Larry King’s “Live” on February 14th.It will be nice if the Republicans finally choose a fiscal conservative and social liberal as a candidate for 2008 elections.

See more on NY Times and read the transcript from CNN.

Obama Barack officially entered presidential race today. See his speech on NY Times.My work took me to some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. I joined with pastors and lay-people to deal with communities that had been ravaged by plant closings. I saw that the problems people faced weren’t simply local in nature – that the decision to close a steel mill was made by distant executives; that the lack of textbooks and computers in schools could be traced to the skewed priorities of politicians a thousand miles away; and that when a child turns to violence, there’s a hole in his heart no government could ever fill.

[...]All of us know what those challenges are today – a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren’t learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can.

He also stated what he regards as the reasons for these failures.

For the last six years we’ve been told that our mounting debts don’t matter, we’ve been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we’ve been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight. And when all else fails, when Katrina happens, or the death toll in Iraq mounts, we’ve been told that our crises are somebody else’s fault. We’re distracted from our real failures, and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants.

And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what’s filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who’ve turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we’re here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It’s time to turn the page.

So, after some point, I expected him to admit that government often fails, especially when they decide for other people’s interests and that individual responsibility would be a better way than governmental responsibility for peoples’ lives. But the speech did not develope as I expected.

Let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age. Let’s set high standards for our schools and give them the resources they need to succeed. Let’s recruit a new army of teachers, and give them better pay and more support in exchange for more accountability. Let’s make college more affordable, and let’s invest in scientific research, and let’s lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America.

Let’s be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis. We can control costs by focusing on prevention, by providing better treatment to the chronically ill, and using technology to cut the bureaucracy.

Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil. We can harness homegrown, alternative fuels like ethanol and spur the production of more fuel-efficient cars. We can set up a system for capping greenhouse gases.

Most of all, let’s be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we’ve got. We can work together to track terrorists down with a stronger military, we can tighten the net around their finances, and we can improve our intelligence capabilities.

But all of this cannot come to pass until we bring an end to this war in Iraq. It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war. Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace.

So, he actually gives a concrete idea on what people should expect from him on several matters, if he becomes president. It’s more government action for schools, health care (hopefully in the right way this time), more war against terrorism and exit from Iraq. What I really don’t like in his viewpoint is that he puts too much weight on collective hope, agreement and action . Collective or centrally directed action might work fine (although I would still doubt it) when people really do have the same hopes and ends. Maybe governmental action is really needed in some cases. But let’s keep in mind that USA is not a uniform collective union of people. So, in case he becomes president, will he know where to stop his action? Or will he still be taking decisions that are “local in nature”?

By ourselves, this change will not happen. Divided, we are bound to fail. But the life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible. He tells us that there is power in words. He tells us that there is power in conviction. That beneath all the differences of race and region, faith and station, we are one people. He tells us that there is power in hope.

There might be power in (nice) words and hope. But Americans should ask more than that. USA is not hopeless. They should ask for reasonable answers to reasonable questions. And the first question is why and how an Obama Barack’s government could be better than the previous one. Hoping for a better government is not enough.

I found this great video from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show on Comedy Central Motherload. Unite Korea!!!

Rudy Giulliani is probably running for GOP candidate for president. But if so, he ought to speak more clearly on issues that matter in America.See this article of NY Times, about Giulliani’s recent statements on abortion.

Today I had a discussion with some friends about capitalism and political beliefs. So, I remembered this interview that Milton Friedman gave on 21 September 2006 to e-rooster, a greek liberal weblog .

Q. Dr. Friedman, I wish to thank you for the great opportunity to present your views through our website. I would like to start by asking you how do you view the status of individual freedom worldwide today, compared to how it looked when you started your career.

A. The situation has improved greatly. When I started my career in the 1930s and then just after the war, intellectual opinion worldwide was dominated by collectivism. A large fraction of the world’s population lived in communist regimes, collectivist and
dictatorial. Even in the so-called West there was a strong sentiment in favour of collectivism. We came through World War II with a great deal of government intervention which gave government planning a good name although the results were hard to see.

As of today the situation is very different. Socialism has been discredited. The original dictionary definition of socialism is “government ownership and operation of the means of production.” No one any longer believes that that is an appropriate way to govern. There are only a few small places in the world where that is how government now runs. Today it is simply taken for granted that free private enterprise and free private markets are the way to achieve prosperity and wealth as well as to foster individual and personal freedom. Much of this change in opinion must be attributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. That demonstrated that central direction is not a way to run a prosperous and free society.

Q. What was in your opinion the contribution of free markets and property rights in this change?

A. The contribution was not of free markets and property rights but of the absence of free markets and property rights. It was the absence of free markets and property rights that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was the absence of free markets and property rights that led to the desperate poverty of China and to the basic change in economic policy within China as well as more recently in India. What is also true is that wherever you have had a considerable degree of prosperity there has been a
very large element of free markets and private property.

Q. Why is individual freedom such an important factor for prosperity and democracy?

A. Fundamentally because nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Therefore a world in which the economy is organized through some people spending other people’s money is unlikely to be an economy which has any
degree of prosperity or much freedom.

Q. Do you see liberal ideas and policies advancing or retreating today?

A. Liberal ideas are clearly advancing today. If you look at the past thirty years, there have been efforts worldwide to promote liberal ideas and policies. The Atlas Foundation, for example, is an organization of free market think tanks around the world which has something like 150 or more free market think tanks linked to it. The
Fraser Institute has organized around the world cooperation with think tanks in connection with producing once a year a ranking of individual countries by their extent of free markets. On all sides there is intellectual and cultural activity directed at promoting human freedom. The effect of such action is retarded by the special interests which in many cases control the political systems in various countries, but they cannot last forever.

Q. After fighting against totalitarian systems and socialist/conservative welfare systems in the twentieth century, who do you recognize as the modern intellectual and political enemies of individual economic and political freedom? What are the new threats we are facing?

A. We are not facing any new threats; we are facing old threats, the same threats as before. They all derive from excessive governmental action. They all derive from some individuals within the community trying to take advantage of the concentrated power of the government to benefit themselves and provide themselves with special privileges and monopolies. Government intervention is the fundamental threat
to human freedom.

Q. Do you believe the environmental movement is trying to set us on a new “green road to serfdom”?

A. No, I do not. The environmental movement has many strands. There are some groups within the environmental movement who believe that environmental objectives can be and should be obtained by command and control, by central direction. That would lead to the result you fear. On the other hand, there are also large groups in the environmental movement who believe that markets are the most effective and efficient way to achieve their objectives. Many of the measures they propose would expand rather than reduce human freedom.

Experience has shown that the greater the role of free markets in a country, the greener in fact that country is.

Q. In Europe, and in Greece in particular, there is a big discussion about a possible fusion between liberalism and social-democracy. Do you believe there could be a middle ground between the opposite fundamental principles and values of these ideologies?

A. I do not believe there can be a clear fusion. The liberal ideal rests on individual freedom and individual responsibility. The social democracy ideal rests on collective responsibility. Oil and water will not mix and neither will collectivism and freedom. That does not mean that a liberal society cannot tolerate, and indeed require patches of social democracy.

Q. Last year European Union failed to establish a common constitution. How do you see the economic and political future of European Union? Has it lived up to the expectations you had for it when it started?

A. When the European Union was started with the Treaty of Rome, the aim was to promote free trade among the members of the European Union. That task it has achieved quite well. There has been a large increase in the volume of trade among the nations composing the European Union. That increase in trade has contributed to the well-being and prosperity of Europe without imposing any restrictions on human freedom. On the contrary, it has expanded it.

Since then there have been two major additions. The first is a bureaucratic administration in Brussels consisting of unelected, appointed individuals who have charge of various areas of the economy. The rule-making that comes from Brussels has in my opinion probably done more harm than good.

The other major addition is the European Monetary Union. I believe it was a mistake to adopt the euro. It is unique in monetary history. I know of no other case in which politically independent countries have adopted a paper money as their common standard. There are many cases in which different countries have used the same standard-the gold standard, the silver standard and the like-but in all of those cases the individual countries retained the right to depart from the standard or to remain with it, and the standard itself was not something created by human beings but a commodity existing in nature. In my opinion, the euro will become more of a source of disagreement among the members of the community than a source of agreement and will sooner or later break down.

As to the failure to adopt the proposed constitution, in my opinion that was a good thing. The constitution would have established a really centralized, non-democratic political body which would have had considerable power over the residents of the European Union, arbitrary power not subject to effective check and balance.