A liberal definition of an injustice is an act of force initiated by one or more people against another person or group of people. Examples of this would be theft, fraud, murder, enslavement and unprovoked violence, and liberals often sum up such acts as violations against our three natural rights to life, liberty and property.
Other definitions of justice, such as equality, maximum good, and Sharia law, are all in conflict with the liberal definition, because they all imply that force can and should be initiated against individuals in certain situations. Forcible redistribution of wealth and suppression of free speech are just two aspects of the above mentioned alternatives that violate the liberal notion of justice, and most people who support one or more of the alternatives admit this.
However, most people agree that murder, enslavement or theft are unacceptable and repugnant acts regardless of any “higher” purpose, and therefore inherently unjust, and this essay will not go into a lengthy defense of the three natural rights, but simply base the following argument on the liberal definition of justice that states that every individual has a natural right to be protected against coercion.
The primary, and indeed the only, purpose of the state in a liberal society is the enforcement of justice. A liberal state will therefore only have laws that concern itself with coercion. All its laws will have to refer to a perpetrator and a victim, where the perpetrator forces the victim to give up some property or liberty against his or her will, and to have someone convicted of a crime it must be shown that the defendant did indeed violate one of the plaintiff’s natural rights.
There is in fact no need for more than a single law in a truly liberal society, and that law would simply state that the initiation of force against others is illegal. If there is no coercion, no injustice has been made.
For practical purposes, there will be all sorts of secondary laws, legal references to previous court cases, and general rules on how to decide whether or not there has indeed been some form of coercion, but all of this will only be guiding principles and references. In the end, the only thing that matters is whether or not there has been some sort of theft or coercion.
The interesting thing to note here is that justice can in fact be derived from a single law, and that theft and coercion are the only acts that are truly unjust. Any act, however distasteful, unseemly or repulsive, is not inherently criminal if it does not violate anyone’s natural right to life, liberty or property. Running a gay brothel or an opium den is not a violation of anyone’s natural rights if everyone participates by their own free will. However, most countries have laws with strict penalties against such activities.
In fact, most laws in most countries do not refer to natural rights at all, and have nothing to do with justice. They are simply laws to regulate business and everyday private behavior. Norway has laws to regulate when stores can keep open, and where and when alcohol can be sold. Running a business without a license is illegal, and all businesses are regulated by numerous rules and regulation that are illegal to ignore or violate, even if the customer is fully informed and happy to see the shortcuts performed.
The consequence of having a lot of laws that do not relate to natural rights is that many people are pulled into court and have to stand trial for activities that have harmed no one. To be prosecuted for possessing drugs, for prostitution, or for keeping one’s store open after closing hours makes no sense from a liberal perspective, because there is no violation of any natural right. No one has been forced to do or accept anything against their free will, and most people who find themselves punished for this kind of activity feel quite rightly that they have been treated unjustly.
Laws that punish people for doing things they want, either for themselves or with others through mutual agreement, are simply unjust. Such laws ignore the free will, and seek to regulate behavior regardless of what the individuals desire for themselves. They are basically moral laws, based on a sense of what constitutes decent behavior, and they are always derived from the moral conviction of the lawmakers. People who implement such laws put themselves above the free will of individuals and act as priests or moral guides rather than protectors of people’s natural rights to life, freedom and property.
Moral laws are not only unjust they are also criminal from a liberal perspective, because they violate at least one of the natural rights of individuals due to the punishment that they entail. For not only are people forced to stay away from activities they want to take part in, but those who are caught breaking the unjust law are subjected to a fee, a jail term or in some cases even a death penalty.
To enforce a moral law is in fact a sort of oppression. When mutually voluntary activities that do no harm to any third party is deemed criminal and liable to punishment, the freedom of those who would like to participate in that activity is violated.
Being busted for smoking pot at home (illegal in Norway), or playing cards for money with friends (also illegal in Norway), is an intrusion of privacy and a violation of ones freedom to do things that harm no third party. However, law enforcement officers are only concerned with the law, and do not distinguish between just and unjust laws, and the police is therefore just as likely to dedicate resources to law enforcement that limit the freedoms of individuals as to law enforcements that protect and guarantee their natural rights.
Law enforcement is of course a matter of priorities, and these priorities are generally political and determined by the department of justice. New laws are often vigorously enforced for a while until the desired results can be measured and reported as a victory for the administration. Then they fall back on the list of priorities due to other new laws, changes in public opinion, or for pragmatic reasons of finance.
When there are few new laws, or little debate on law and order in the media, law enforcement becomes a pragmatic matter of balancing costs against income. Arresting people and putting them in jail is a cost, while fining people is an income. With a tight budget, it makes sense to collect fines and keep people out of jail, which means that there is a natural incentive for law enforcement officials to focus on the income generating part of law enforcement.
Busting people for minor crimes is a profitable activity, and traffic policing is an example of this. Speeding fines is a reliable source of income. The result of this is that traffic policing has become highly sophisticated and efficient. Automated monitoring of traffic generates fines with a minimum of bureaucratic effort, and very few people with a driving license in Norway have never had to pay a fine for speeding. The next generation of traffic monitoring devices will also be able to detect if seatbelts are being worn, and if the legal distance from the car in front is being kept, and this is expected to generate even more income for the state.
Other minor crimes that generate incomes through fines are gambling, prostitution and the possession of drugs. Violating opening hours and breaking other business related rules are also fined; making this too a source of income.
However, theft and violence related crimes, in other words those crimes that are truly unjust and not merely moral breaches are not income generating but a cost to the state, and they are therefore not very highly prioritized. There must of course be a minimum of effort put into fighting these types of crimes, but it makes no sense from a financial viewpoint to fill up the jails with criminals, and the state is willing to go a long way in order to keep people out of jail. First time offenders are very rarely put in jail, and even repeat offenders get very minimal jail terms.
The net effect of this is that the moral laws that are basically oppressive by nature are enforced vigorously and efficiently, while the just laws concerning theft, violence and coercion are enforced a lot less diligently, and while those breaking moral laws are feed, sometimes quite severely; those committing real injustice are generally punished as little as possible.
lørdag 8. januar 2011
torsdag 6. januar 2011
Welfare, Production and Work
There is at the moment an interesting discussion going on in Norway regarding the welfare state, and how to keep the system from becoming overly burdened by current and future entitlements. With the welfare state viewed as an undividedly good thing by just about everybody, the discussion is centered on how to preserve it, and make sure that it stays with us into the future, rather than how this costly and inefficient system can best be dismantled.
The current estimates show that the number of old people claiming state pensions will double, and the number of people older than 80 years of age, and therefore likely to be in need of extra medical attention, will triple over the next four or five decades. The number of young working age people claiming welfare is sharply increasing, and unemployable immigrants claiming welfare is also on the rise. There are in other words an increasing number of people entitled to welfare benefits while the relative number of people in the work force is falling, and this projected mismatch between contributions and claims to the welfare state is of great concern to both economists and politicians.
The popular rhetorical solution to this problem is that the politicians and employers must encourage people to work more through the creation of a more flexible and dynamic work environment that caters for the various needs of the employees. The idea is that young disabled people and pensioners can work part time, and contribute to the welfare state through a flexible work environment. If everybody works at their maximum potential, goes the thinking, the welfare state will be able to persist, and keep providing the services and payments to its clients.
The unstated assumption in this thinking is that work automatically creates wealth that can be shared by everyone through the welfare state. The thinking conjures up the idea of the factory where every new hand at the factory floor adds to the output of the factory, an idea that work is synonymous with production. However, this is not true, and has never been true. Work is not always productive. In fact, work can often be counter productive.
What matters in an economy is not the number of people working, but the products and services that are produced. A product or service that no one demands does not contribute to the total wealth of the economy, and even useful products and services may not contribute anything if their production demands more effort, and hence cost to the economy, than the value of the output.
Making a workplace flexible and dynamic so that it can include part time employees with special needs is not something that comes for free, and the only way to compensate for this cost is increased production. If the individuals with special needs do not cover this cost themselves with the productivity that they can provide, the overall economy will have to cover the extra cost. Getting a person partially off welfare may look good on the balance sheet of the welfare state, but if the cost of giving this person work is greater than his or her contribution, then the overall economy suffers.
The true challenge for the welfare state of the future is not to keep people employed as long and as much as possible, but to make sure the productive part of the economy produces a surplus large enough to cover the costs of the welfare state. If the health sector will require twice as many beds in the future, the production of health related products and services will have to double. If the number of people on welfare increases, the economy has to produce a surplus large enough to cover this. However, it does not necessarily follow that more people will have to work. The only thing that counts is that the overall economy manages to produce the required products and services, either directly or through commerce and exchange.
The sensible thing that the government has to do in order to preserve the welfare state is therefore to encourage production, and let employment be a secondary issue, and that can best be done by the removal of taxes and fees that discourage investments. However, the deficit that will arise from the removal of such taxes will have to be covered by taxes that hit more broadly, and it will take a very special politician to convince the Norwegian electorate of the fairness of this, even if the overall tax burden can be expected to fall over time when the benefits of the newly encouraged investments take effect.
The net effect of such a change to the tax rules will be that people have to pay more directly for the services they receive from the state, which in effect means a partial dismantling of the welfare state. And the irony of the situation is that the more the welfare state is dismantled, the larger will be the production in the overall economy, and hence more wealth and welfare for the people. Dismantling the welfare state completely will free enormous resources for production and provide the surest solution to the welfare crisis by closing down costly bureaucracy and encouraging investments through lower taxes, but with the welfare state almost universally viewed as an undivided good, no politician will be able to propose such a radical idea and expect to remain in politics.
The current estimates show that the number of old people claiming state pensions will double, and the number of people older than 80 years of age, and therefore likely to be in need of extra medical attention, will triple over the next four or five decades. The number of young working age people claiming welfare is sharply increasing, and unemployable immigrants claiming welfare is also on the rise. There are in other words an increasing number of people entitled to welfare benefits while the relative number of people in the work force is falling, and this projected mismatch between contributions and claims to the welfare state is of great concern to both economists and politicians.
The popular rhetorical solution to this problem is that the politicians and employers must encourage people to work more through the creation of a more flexible and dynamic work environment that caters for the various needs of the employees. The idea is that young disabled people and pensioners can work part time, and contribute to the welfare state through a flexible work environment. If everybody works at their maximum potential, goes the thinking, the welfare state will be able to persist, and keep providing the services and payments to its clients.
The unstated assumption in this thinking is that work automatically creates wealth that can be shared by everyone through the welfare state. The thinking conjures up the idea of the factory where every new hand at the factory floor adds to the output of the factory, an idea that work is synonymous with production. However, this is not true, and has never been true. Work is not always productive. In fact, work can often be counter productive.
What matters in an economy is not the number of people working, but the products and services that are produced. A product or service that no one demands does not contribute to the total wealth of the economy, and even useful products and services may not contribute anything if their production demands more effort, and hence cost to the economy, than the value of the output.
Making a workplace flexible and dynamic so that it can include part time employees with special needs is not something that comes for free, and the only way to compensate for this cost is increased production. If the individuals with special needs do not cover this cost themselves with the productivity that they can provide, the overall economy will have to cover the extra cost. Getting a person partially off welfare may look good on the balance sheet of the welfare state, but if the cost of giving this person work is greater than his or her contribution, then the overall economy suffers.
The true challenge for the welfare state of the future is not to keep people employed as long and as much as possible, but to make sure the productive part of the economy produces a surplus large enough to cover the costs of the welfare state. If the health sector will require twice as many beds in the future, the production of health related products and services will have to double. If the number of people on welfare increases, the economy has to produce a surplus large enough to cover this. However, it does not necessarily follow that more people will have to work. The only thing that counts is that the overall economy manages to produce the required products and services, either directly or through commerce and exchange.
The sensible thing that the government has to do in order to preserve the welfare state is therefore to encourage production, and let employment be a secondary issue, and that can best be done by the removal of taxes and fees that discourage investments. However, the deficit that will arise from the removal of such taxes will have to be covered by taxes that hit more broadly, and it will take a very special politician to convince the Norwegian electorate of the fairness of this, even if the overall tax burden can be expected to fall over time when the benefits of the newly encouraged investments take effect.
The net effect of such a change to the tax rules will be that people have to pay more directly for the services they receive from the state, which in effect means a partial dismantling of the welfare state. And the irony of the situation is that the more the welfare state is dismantled, the larger will be the production in the overall economy, and hence more wealth and welfare for the people. Dismantling the welfare state completely will free enormous resources for production and provide the surest solution to the welfare crisis by closing down costly bureaucracy and encouraging investments through lower taxes, but with the welfare state almost universally viewed as an undivided good, no politician will be able to propose such a radical idea and expect to remain in politics.
onsdag 4. august 2010
The Norwegian Oscar Wilde Law
It is an interesting fact that Oscar Wilde, who was successfully prosecuted for moral crimes in the United Kingdom in 1895, would have been equally successfully prosecuted for his moral indiscretions in Norway in 2010, but would have gone free had he managed to find his way to Norway in 1895.
The new and carefully crafted law against moral indiscretions that has recently been unanimously passed by the Norwegian parliament is extraordinarily well suited for silencing outspoken social commentators, like Oscar Wilde, and is worth a closer look, both in its form and in its effect.
The "Oscar Wilde Law", which is a copy of the "Sex Purchase Law" in Sweden was used as recently as July 2010 to silence the outspoken Swedish parliamentarian Sven Otto Littorin, who resigned completely from Swedish politics on the mere suspicion that he might have broken the law.
Being fed up of Littorin's pointed political comments and biting ironies, Littorin's opponents decided to silence him once and for all by finding a prostitute who would testify that she had sold sex to Littorin, and although this was never proven to be true, the mere prospect of a lengthy court hearing on this indiscretion on Littorin's part in the middle of an election campaign was enough to make Littorin agree to an immediate resignation from politics.
The silencing of Littorin was a great victory for his political opponents, and was only possible due to the ingenious lopsided nature of the law, which makes buying sex illegal, while selling sex remains legal. The prostitute could denounce Littorin freely without any fear of being herself prosecuted, while Littorin would have to defend himself in a court of law.
Controversial politicians and social commentators, such as Sven Otto Littorin and Oscar Wilde, are often quite unconventional people with a tendency to live unconventional lives, and the architects of the "Oscar Wilde Law" must have known this perfectly well. Since they also knew that the "Sex Purchase Law" in Sweden had failed to have the desired effect of reducing prostitution, but that it had been a convenient tool for blackmail and coercion, the impression one is left with is that its true purpose is to silence and control inconvenient people.
The law was pushed through parliament on the false promise that it would reduce prostitution, and the only sure thing to have come from it is that being an unconventional person with political views contrary to that of the establishment has become, as it has been in Sweden for many years, a dangerous position. Prostitutes can at any time be called upon to denounce the social commentator and have him tried and punished for his moral sins, effectively silencing voices critical of the establishment.
Oscar Wilde would no doubt have been an early victim of this law if he had lived in Norway today. And with Oscar Wilde's sincerity and strong belief that his relationship with prostitutes was of no business of the public, he would no doubt have received the maximum sentence, just as he did in England in 1895.
The new and carefully crafted law against moral indiscretions that has recently been unanimously passed by the Norwegian parliament is extraordinarily well suited for silencing outspoken social commentators, like Oscar Wilde, and is worth a closer look, both in its form and in its effect.
The "Oscar Wilde Law", which is a copy of the "Sex Purchase Law" in Sweden was used as recently as July 2010 to silence the outspoken Swedish parliamentarian Sven Otto Littorin, who resigned completely from Swedish politics on the mere suspicion that he might have broken the law.
Being fed up of Littorin's pointed political comments and biting ironies, Littorin's opponents decided to silence him once and for all by finding a prostitute who would testify that she had sold sex to Littorin, and although this was never proven to be true, the mere prospect of a lengthy court hearing on this indiscretion on Littorin's part in the middle of an election campaign was enough to make Littorin agree to an immediate resignation from politics.
The silencing of Littorin was a great victory for his political opponents, and was only possible due to the ingenious lopsided nature of the law, which makes buying sex illegal, while selling sex remains legal. The prostitute could denounce Littorin freely without any fear of being herself prosecuted, while Littorin would have to defend himself in a court of law.
Controversial politicians and social commentators, such as Sven Otto Littorin and Oscar Wilde, are often quite unconventional people with a tendency to live unconventional lives, and the architects of the "Oscar Wilde Law" must have known this perfectly well. Since they also knew that the "Sex Purchase Law" in Sweden had failed to have the desired effect of reducing prostitution, but that it had been a convenient tool for blackmail and coercion, the impression one is left with is that its true purpose is to silence and control inconvenient people.
The law was pushed through parliament on the false promise that it would reduce prostitution, and the only sure thing to have come from it is that being an unconventional person with political views contrary to that of the establishment has become, as it has been in Sweden for many years, a dangerous position. Prostitutes can at any time be called upon to denounce the social commentator and have him tried and punished for his moral sins, effectively silencing voices critical of the establishment.
Oscar Wilde would no doubt have been an early victim of this law if he had lived in Norway today. And with Oscar Wilde's sincerity and strong belief that his relationship with prostitutes was of no business of the public, he would no doubt have received the maximum sentence, just as he did in England in 1895.
søndag 11. april 2010
Deteriorating Infrastructure
There is something strange about Norway. It is one of the richest countries in the world, it is a democracy, and its people are peaceful, well educated and prosperous. It has all the qualities of a highly successful country, yet its infrastructure is in very bad shape. It has the worst roads in Europe, its trains are extremely unreliable and prone to accidents, many of its schools and other public buildings are in need of urgent repair, and the sewage and water system are also in a very bad shape.
Looking at its infrastructure, one would think that Norway was a relatively poor country and not one of the richest in the world, and since this can hardly be due to a lack of money, the policies implemented by successive governments over the years must take the blame for this sorry state of affairs.
Norwegian politicians have neglected vital infrastructure for decades and things are now starting to fall apart, but instead of dealing with the problem, the politicians are blaming each other for the mess. Almost every political party in Norway must take some part of the blame, it is argued, because almost all the political parties have been in power off and on over the period of neglect that stretches back for at least a generation. But spreading the blame does nothing to fix the problem, and apart from this blame game nothing much seems to be happening. Improvements are made every day, we are told, but no policies have been changed, and funding remain largely unchanged, so it is hardly likely that things will become better any time soon.
An interesting feature in Norwegian politics is that politicians seldom refer to experiences from other countries, or lessons from history, but argue within a narrow ideological range of ideas. The large and generous welfare state is never criticized in principle. Only very limited tinkering is discussed. All the parties talk about community and the common good. Only a few parties on the political right talk about individual rights and private initiative. Wealth redistribution is viewed as a political virtue by all the parties, and only the scale of this is a matter of debate. And the large and expanding role of the state in key businesses is largely viewed as uncontroversial.
The infrastructure that is currently falling apart is all state owned, while private infrastructure such as the telecom network is in good shape, yet the state has recently expanded into publishing of school books. It has also increased its stake in key businesses, with the conviction that centralized and large scale companies are more efficient than the free market place. Many politicians are openly skeptical to private ownership, despite the fact that history has pretty much proven once and for all that the free market is superior to centralized planning.
Norwegian politicians do not generally listen to other people than their own advisors, their civil servants and Norwegian university professors when they introduce new laws and reforms. However, the civil servants and professors have often been installed into their offices exclusively out of political considerations, and the advice they are giving is anything but objective and scientific, but simply a confirmation of accepted political dogma. The result is that the civil servants and professors do not function as the neutral advisors that they ought to be. Policies are seldom being scrutinized for adverse effects and flaws, but are more often judged to be desirable or undesirable out of political considerations, with little or no reference to actual results.
A resent school reform made it mandatory for all Norwegian schools to give all its students a PC, and declared that PCs should be used as much as possible. This is of course a very costly reform and illustrates that Norway has no shortage of money. However, independent research has shown that students who pay attention to the teacher and write their notes on paper do better at school than those who have their PC on during regular lessons, and the net result of the costly reform has indeed resulted in a further slide down on the international ranking of Norwegian school children, but the government has not responded to this adverse effect by issuing any form of advice or change in policy when it comes to the prescribed use of PCs in all aspects of school learning.
Norwegian students do not score very well on international tests despite the fact that Norway spends more money per pupil than virtually any other country in the world. Countries that score very well internationally, notably Finland, do not spend nearly as much as Norway, and the successful policies in Finland are well known and presumably easy to replicate. However, Norwegian politicians do not spend their time arguing that we should replicate systems that are shown to be superior by independent research, but discuss loftily whether our students may in fact be better off and happier than students in other countries based on other and less easily defined standards, and get their hopes confirmed by Norwegian university professors, who tell them exactly what they want to hear.
The latest attempt to improve the quality of teaching and cut costs has been the introduction of a state run publishing company that will serve as a monopoly, replacing the private publishing companies that until now have competed in a free market to provide school books. No country has ever done this with success, and history is clear on the likely and dismal consequence of this, yet this is the legislation that was recently passed in order to improve the educational system in Norway, while no effort has been made to replicate the Finns who have a proven record of success.
This aloof attitude towards hard facts presented by independent international research, and refusal to accept unintended effects of implemented policies as problems that should demand objective inquiry, can be seen in all aspects of Norwegian governments.
Norway has the worst roads in Europe, yet does not spend less money on roads than most other countries, so here again, one would naturally expect the government to look into how things are done in other countries, like Switzerland, that have much the same type of technical challenges that Norway has when it comes to building roads in its mountainous terrain, and the conclusion should be self evident and clear, because Norway finances its road projects in a very different manner than what is normal in the rest of Europe.
Almost every country in Europe let independent entrepreneurs build roads with minimal interference from the government, and a predictable budget for the whole stretch under construction. In Norway, however, politicians interfere constantly with road building and give only annual budgets, so that the entrepreneurs never know if they will be allowed to continue building the road the following year. The business of building the roads are also mostly given to companies under state control, and private initiative is generally avoided.
Confronted with simple facts regarding the superior efficiency of alternative policies when it comes to matters of schools, roads and other national infrastructures, the politicians brush it off as irrelevant, not applicable to the special nature of Norwegian circumstances, or simply unfair and undesirable in a larger context. The fact that Sweden recently completed a stretch of road building in their country three times as fast and at a third of the cost to that of a similar Norwegian road project has so far failed to make an impression on the Norwegian government. The cost of building roads in Norway is much higher than in Sweden, it is argued, partly because unemployment is very low in Norway compared to Sweden.
The idea that Swedish or other foreign contractors could be hired to build roads seems not to have occurred to most Norwegian politicians.
The consistently low unemployment rate in Norway is often used by politicians to explain why it is so expensive to build things in Norway, and is also a source of much pride by successive Norwegian governments. Very few people are unemployed. We are all out building stuff, we are told, and there are simply no free hands to do additional work however urgent this may be. Norway is as it were a victim of its own success.
However, 25% of working age Norwegians are on some sort of welfare at any given time. These Norwegians are not unemployed, but they are not working either. They are at home watching TV, despite the fact that Norway has one of the healthiest populations in the world, judged by objective standards such as life expectancy.
The UN has voted Norway the best place to live for several years in a row, and Norwegian politicians have been quick to use this to argue for the virtues of the welfare state, and also to tell people that we have little or nothing to learn from other countries. When the OECD warns that the size of the welfare state is likely to seriously disturb the economy by making it virtually impossible to hire people to do small but vital maintenance jobs, it is brushed off as merely an opinion.
When politicians refuse to look objectively at facts, and stubbornly implement policies that have been proven to have adverse effects, and refuse to copy successful policies of other countries, the result is inevitably inefficiency and failure, and the sorry state of public infrastructure in Norway is ample proof of this.
No amount of money can make up for the shortcomings of bad policies. And policies made independently of hard facts and in the face of evidence that they will not work are inevitably bad. However, future Norwegian governments are not likely to change their policies much, and the downward slide of its public infrastructure is likely to continue for many years to come.
Looking at its infrastructure, one would think that Norway was a relatively poor country and not one of the richest in the world, and since this can hardly be due to a lack of money, the policies implemented by successive governments over the years must take the blame for this sorry state of affairs.
Norwegian politicians have neglected vital infrastructure for decades and things are now starting to fall apart, but instead of dealing with the problem, the politicians are blaming each other for the mess. Almost every political party in Norway must take some part of the blame, it is argued, because almost all the political parties have been in power off and on over the period of neglect that stretches back for at least a generation. But spreading the blame does nothing to fix the problem, and apart from this blame game nothing much seems to be happening. Improvements are made every day, we are told, but no policies have been changed, and funding remain largely unchanged, so it is hardly likely that things will become better any time soon.
An interesting feature in Norwegian politics is that politicians seldom refer to experiences from other countries, or lessons from history, but argue within a narrow ideological range of ideas. The large and generous welfare state is never criticized in principle. Only very limited tinkering is discussed. All the parties talk about community and the common good. Only a few parties on the political right talk about individual rights and private initiative. Wealth redistribution is viewed as a political virtue by all the parties, and only the scale of this is a matter of debate. And the large and expanding role of the state in key businesses is largely viewed as uncontroversial.
The infrastructure that is currently falling apart is all state owned, while private infrastructure such as the telecom network is in good shape, yet the state has recently expanded into publishing of school books. It has also increased its stake in key businesses, with the conviction that centralized and large scale companies are more efficient than the free market place. Many politicians are openly skeptical to private ownership, despite the fact that history has pretty much proven once and for all that the free market is superior to centralized planning.
Norwegian politicians do not generally listen to other people than their own advisors, their civil servants and Norwegian university professors when they introduce new laws and reforms. However, the civil servants and professors have often been installed into their offices exclusively out of political considerations, and the advice they are giving is anything but objective and scientific, but simply a confirmation of accepted political dogma. The result is that the civil servants and professors do not function as the neutral advisors that they ought to be. Policies are seldom being scrutinized for adverse effects and flaws, but are more often judged to be desirable or undesirable out of political considerations, with little or no reference to actual results.
A resent school reform made it mandatory for all Norwegian schools to give all its students a PC, and declared that PCs should be used as much as possible. This is of course a very costly reform and illustrates that Norway has no shortage of money. However, independent research has shown that students who pay attention to the teacher and write their notes on paper do better at school than those who have their PC on during regular lessons, and the net result of the costly reform has indeed resulted in a further slide down on the international ranking of Norwegian school children, but the government has not responded to this adverse effect by issuing any form of advice or change in policy when it comes to the prescribed use of PCs in all aspects of school learning.
Norwegian students do not score very well on international tests despite the fact that Norway spends more money per pupil than virtually any other country in the world. Countries that score very well internationally, notably Finland, do not spend nearly as much as Norway, and the successful policies in Finland are well known and presumably easy to replicate. However, Norwegian politicians do not spend their time arguing that we should replicate systems that are shown to be superior by independent research, but discuss loftily whether our students may in fact be better off and happier than students in other countries based on other and less easily defined standards, and get their hopes confirmed by Norwegian university professors, who tell them exactly what they want to hear.
The latest attempt to improve the quality of teaching and cut costs has been the introduction of a state run publishing company that will serve as a monopoly, replacing the private publishing companies that until now have competed in a free market to provide school books. No country has ever done this with success, and history is clear on the likely and dismal consequence of this, yet this is the legislation that was recently passed in order to improve the educational system in Norway, while no effort has been made to replicate the Finns who have a proven record of success.
This aloof attitude towards hard facts presented by independent international research, and refusal to accept unintended effects of implemented policies as problems that should demand objective inquiry, can be seen in all aspects of Norwegian governments.
Norway has the worst roads in Europe, yet does not spend less money on roads than most other countries, so here again, one would naturally expect the government to look into how things are done in other countries, like Switzerland, that have much the same type of technical challenges that Norway has when it comes to building roads in its mountainous terrain, and the conclusion should be self evident and clear, because Norway finances its road projects in a very different manner than what is normal in the rest of Europe.
Almost every country in Europe let independent entrepreneurs build roads with minimal interference from the government, and a predictable budget for the whole stretch under construction. In Norway, however, politicians interfere constantly with road building and give only annual budgets, so that the entrepreneurs never know if they will be allowed to continue building the road the following year. The business of building the roads are also mostly given to companies under state control, and private initiative is generally avoided.
Confronted with simple facts regarding the superior efficiency of alternative policies when it comes to matters of schools, roads and other national infrastructures, the politicians brush it off as irrelevant, not applicable to the special nature of Norwegian circumstances, or simply unfair and undesirable in a larger context. The fact that Sweden recently completed a stretch of road building in their country three times as fast and at a third of the cost to that of a similar Norwegian road project has so far failed to make an impression on the Norwegian government. The cost of building roads in Norway is much higher than in Sweden, it is argued, partly because unemployment is very low in Norway compared to Sweden.
The idea that Swedish or other foreign contractors could be hired to build roads seems not to have occurred to most Norwegian politicians.
The consistently low unemployment rate in Norway is often used by politicians to explain why it is so expensive to build things in Norway, and is also a source of much pride by successive Norwegian governments. Very few people are unemployed. We are all out building stuff, we are told, and there are simply no free hands to do additional work however urgent this may be. Norway is as it were a victim of its own success.
However, 25% of working age Norwegians are on some sort of welfare at any given time. These Norwegians are not unemployed, but they are not working either. They are at home watching TV, despite the fact that Norway has one of the healthiest populations in the world, judged by objective standards such as life expectancy.
The UN has voted Norway the best place to live for several years in a row, and Norwegian politicians have been quick to use this to argue for the virtues of the welfare state, and also to tell people that we have little or nothing to learn from other countries. When the OECD warns that the size of the welfare state is likely to seriously disturb the economy by making it virtually impossible to hire people to do small but vital maintenance jobs, it is brushed off as merely an opinion.
When politicians refuse to look objectively at facts, and stubbornly implement policies that have been proven to have adverse effects, and refuse to copy successful policies of other countries, the result is inevitably inefficiency and failure, and the sorry state of public infrastructure in Norway is ample proof of this.
No amount of money can make up for the shortcomings of bad policies. And policies made independently of hard facts and in the face of evidence that they will not work are inevitably bad. However, future Norwegian governments are not likely to change their policies much, and the downward slide of its public infrastructure is likely to continue for many years to come.
mandag 5. april 2010
Property
The most controversial of the three natural rights to defend life, liberty and property, is the defense of property. It is therefore often assumed that this is the weakest and least significant of these rights. Life and liberty, it is argued, is clearly more important than mere property, and some go on to argue that only life and liberty are true rights.
However, people arguing that defense of property is not a natural right while still accepting life and liberty to be natural rights, are failing to see the relationship between these three rights. They never ask the simple question why anyone would bother to take away somebody’s life or liberty.
Only deeply irrational people would ever kill or enslave someone for the sole purpose of doing just that. If there is to be any rationale behind an act of murder or enslavement it must be to either defend oneself, or to get at the property, or property/service generating ability of the person being violated.
People who have no desirable qualities, skills or intellect, posess no incriminating evidence against other people, and posses no property have simply no reason to fear that any rational being will violate their freedom or take their life. There is simply nothing to be gained from killing or enslaving such a person. Only people with desirable qualities, skills, knowledge or property have reason to be fearful of others in a rational society. Those who possess no such qualities or knowledge may still have good reasons to be fearful, because they have nothing to sell and must rely entirely on charity for survival. However, they do not need to fear that rational others will take their lives or put them in chains.
The only rational reason for murder is either self defense or theft of property. If there is no reason to fear a person, killing that person is in fact theft. And the same argument holds for enslavement.
However, fear may be a fear of being exposed as a criminal as well as fear of being exposed to crime. If a person is in a position to expose someone as a criminal, that person may indeed be in danger of loosing her life or liberty, but the root of the conflict is always property, because the crime being exposed is either a cover up for another crime, or a crime against property. Crimes committed by rational people are always ultimately theft of property or enslavement for the purpose of gaining a service or property.
The interesting conclusion from this is that property, far from being the least important natural right, is in fact the most important, and the right to life and liberty simply follow as natural consequences.
Using recent history to test this conclusion we can look to the fate of the Soviet Union and that of China. Both countries were seriously dysfunctional towards the end of the 20th century and in great need of reform. The leaders of the Soviet Union chose to give people freedom but virtually no property rights, while China gave people property rights but held back on the other two liberties. The result of these deviating policies turned out to produce widely different outcomes.
While the Soviet economy collapsed after a few years following its reform, China prospered to the extent of becoming a world economic power. A weak democracy emerged out of the ruble of the Soviet Union. Powerful people grabbed hold of all the property they could lay their hands on, power got concentrated in an oligarchy which in turn became suppressed and controlled by central political figures. The tendency in Russia today seems to be towards central control and dictatorship, and oppression of the general public.
China on the other hand avoided economic collapse and social unrest, and managed to preserve its centralized government. However, strong property rights have lead to an increasing need for free communication and public debate. The government tries to hold this back, but is in fact forced to gradually loosen their iron grip on the population. Trade and commerce demand public debate and freedom of speech in order to function well and an ultimate consequence of this is that politics too becomes a matter of pubic debate. China is gradually becoming freer and this can not be stopped without seriously damaging the Chinese economy.
While Russia seems to be on its way towards dictatorship, China is moving towards democracy.
Weak property rights lead a country towards less freedom, while strong property rights leads towards greater freedom. With history also showing that weak property rights result in more poverty while strong property rights lead to more wealth, we can predict that Russians will become increasingly poor and enslaved while the Chinese will become increasingly rich and free if no radical change of policies are implemented in these two countries.
However, people arguing that defense of property is not a natural right while still accepting life and liberty to be natural rights, are failing to see the relationship between these three rights. They never ask the simple question why anyone would bother to take away somebody’s life or liberty.
Only deeply irrational people would ever kill or enslave someone for the sole purpose of doing just that. If there is to be any rationale behind an act of murder or enslavement it must be to either defend oneself, or to get at the property, or property/service generating ability of the person being violated.
People who have no desirable qualities, skills or intellect, posess no incriminating evidence against other people, and posses no property have simply no reason to fear that any rational being will violate their freedom or take their life. There is simply nothing to be gained from killing or enslaving such a person. Only people with desirable qualities, skills, knowledge or property have reason to be fearful of others in a rational society. Those who possess no such qualities or knowledge may still have good reasons to be fearful, because they have nothing to sell and must rely entirely on charity for survival. However, they do not need to fear that rational others will take their lives or put them in chains.
The only rational reason for murder is either self defense or theft of property. If there is no reason to fear a person, killing that person is in fact theft. And the same argument holds for enslavement.
However, fear may be a fear of being exposed as a criminal as well as fear of being exposed to crime. If a person is in a position to expose someone as a criminal, that person may indeed be in danger of loosing her life or liberty, but the root of the conflict is always property, because the crime being exposed is either a cover up for another crime, or a crime against property. Crimes committed by rational people are always ultimately theft of property or enslavement for the purpose of gaining a service or property.
The interesting conclusion from this is that property, far from being the least important natural right, is in fact the most important, and the right to life and liberty simply follow as natural consequences.
Using recent history to test this conclusion we can look to the fate of the Soviet Union and that of China. Both countries were seriously dysfunctional towards the end of the 20th century and in great need of reform. The leaders of the Soviet Union chose to give people freedom but virtually no property rights, while China gave people property rights but held back on the other two liberties. The result of these deviating policies turned out to produce widely different outcomes.
While the Soviet economy collapsed after a few years following its reform, China prospered to the extent of becoming a world economic power. A weak democracy emerged out of the ruble of the Soviet Union. Powerful people grabbed hold of all the property they could lay their hands on, power got concentrated in an oligarchy which in turn became suppressed and controlled by central political figures. The tendency in Russia today seems to be towards central control and dictatorship, and oppression of the general public.
China on the other hand avoided economic collapse and social unrest, and managed to preserve its centralized government. However, strong property rights have lead to an increasing need for free communication and public debate. The government tries to hold this back, but is in fact forced to gradually loosen their iron grip on the population. Trade and commerce demand public debate and freedom of speech in order to function well and an ultimate consequence of this is that politics too becomes a matter of pubic debate. China is gradually becoming freer and this can not be stopped without seriously damaging the Chinese economy.
While Russia seems to be on its way towards dictatorship, China is moving towards democracy.
Weak property rights lead a country towards less freedom, while strong property rights leads towards greater freedom. With history also showing that weak property rights result in more poverty while strong property rights lead to more wealth, we can predict that Russians will become increasingly poor and enslaved while the Chinese will become increasingly rich and free if no radical change of policies are implemented in these two countries.
søndag 4. april 2010
Charity
The most popular argument for the development of a welfare state is that health care and social security is so important that it cannot be left to individuals for the simple reason that some individuals are unable to take properly care of themselves, and that a society with no welfare state will inevitably foster poverty, hunger and social despair, while a well developed welfare state will eliminate such suffering.
The argument against a welfare state is that it is inefficient, open to abuse, expensive and ultimately not able to provide for those most in need of help, and that charity will in fact serve just as well, if not better to fight poverty and social deprivation.
Charity, although considered a good human quality, is generally viewed upon as something of the past, and associated with Dickensian images of condescendence and deprivation, while the welfare state is considered a modern invention that all developed countries will inevitably embrace, and the conclusion is in most cases drawn even before any serious analysis of the two alternatives have been made.
This is unfortunate, because the welfare state seems to be notoriously prone to produce undesired side effects and never quite able to take care of those most in need. Charity seems to be required in order to take care of the most abject of a state’s citizens, regardless of the size and importance of the welfare state.
There is also a good deal of historical evidence that charity becomes less generous as the welfare state increases in size, which is a very bad sign indeed. The Soviet Union had a huge welfare state, and produced people who were shockingly selfish, while the US has a long tradition of generous charity.
Anyone bothering to take a walk in Oslo will easily find examples of human misery of the most heartbreaking kind, which is proof in itself that a very well developed welfare state does not help the most socially deprived. The misery encountered in Oslo is no less than what you can find in New York, Rio or Singapore.
The welfare state seems to take care of only those who are in a pretty good position to take care of themselves anyway, and this leads to the question of cost. If charity in the United States is able to provide for the abject poor, and family, social networks and voluntary help is sufficient to take care of those with temporary needs, while the larger part of the population takes care of itself by paying for private insurance, what is the added value or cost associated with a well developed welfare state?
What we see in Norway is that 25% of the working population is on welfare at any given time, compared to about 10% in the US and less than 4% in Singapore, so a well developed welfare state clearly comes with a high cost. Not only are many people in Norway not working, a lot of important but low paid maintenance work on Norwegian infrastructure is not being done, because the welfare state guarantees a minimum wage, and the required work becomes too costly for the state.
People can simply not be paid to do nothing and be expected to maintain vital infrastructure at one and the same time, and the result of 40 years of welfare in Norway is now starting to show in the form of Norwegian infrastructure falling apart.
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, yet it has the worst roads in Europe, its trains are falling apart and derailing, and notoriously unreliable. School buildings are in such a state that they are being closed due to health hazards. The same is true for other public buildings. Having paid people to stay home rather than do small jobs to keep the infrastructure at an acceptable level has made Norway dangerously deprived in the way of infrastructure, with people loosing their lives as a direct consequence of faulty railroads and bad roads.
The cost associated with a large welfare state is enormous, yet the truly abject and socially deprived are no better off than in other countries, and those down on their luck or off sick are at best only marginally better off than people in the US, Brazil or Singapore.
Charity, it seems, has received a lot of undeserved bad press, and the virtues of the welfare state have been greatly exaggerated.
The argument against a welfare state is that it is inefficient, open to abuse, expensive and ultimately not able to provide for those most in need of help, and that charity will in fact serve just as well, if not better to fight poverty and social deprivation.
Charity, although considered a good human quality, is generally viewed upon as something of the past, and associated with Dickensian images of condescendence and deprivation, while the welfare state is considered a modern invention that all developed countries will inevitably embrace, and the conclusion is in most cases drawn even before any serious analysis of the two alternatives have been made.
This is unfortunate, because the welfare state seems to be notoriously prone to produce undesired side effects and never quite able to take care of those most in need. Charity seems to be required in order to take care of the most abject of a state’s citizens, regardless of the size and importance of the welfare state.
There is also a good deal of historical evidence that charity becomes less generous as the welfare state increases in size, which is a very bad sign indeed. The Soviet Union had a huge welfare state, and produced people who were shockingly selfish, while the US has a long tradition of generous charity.
Anyone bothering to take a walk in Oslo will easily find examples of human misery of the most heartbreaking kind, which is proof in itself that a very well developed welfare state does not help the most socially deprived. The misery encountered in Oslo is no less than what you can find in New York, Rio or Singapore.
The welfare state seems to take care of only those who are in a pretty good position to take care of themselves anyway, and this leads to the question of cost. If charity in the United States is able to provide for the abject poor, and family, social networks and voluntary help is sufficient to take care of those with temporary needs, while the larger part of the population takes care of itself by paying for private insurance, what is the added value or cost associated with a well developed welfare state?
What we see in Norway is that 25% of the working population is on welfare at any given time, compared to about 10% in the US and less than 4% in Singapore, so a well developed welfare state clearly comes with a high cost. Not only are many people in Norway not working, a lot of important but low paid maintenance work on Norwegian infrastructure is not being done, because the welfare state guarantees a minimum wage, and the required work becomes too costly for the state.
People can simply not be paid to do nothing and be expected to maintain vital infrastructure at one and the same time, and the result of 40 years of welfare in Norway is now starting to show in the form of Norwegian infrastructure falling apart.
Norway is one of the richest countries in the world, yet it has the worst roads in Europe, its trains are falling apart and derailing, and notoriously unreliable. School buildings are in such a state that they are being closed due to health hazards. The same is true for other public buildings. Having paid people to stay home rather than do small jobs to keep the infrastructure at an acceptable level has made Norway dangerously deprived in the way of infrastructure, with people loosing their lives as a direct consequence of faulty railroads and bad roads.
The cost associated with a large welfare state is enormous, yet the truly abject and socially deprived are no better off than in other countries, and those down on their luck or off sick are at best only marginally better off than people in the US, Brazil or Singapore.
Charity, it seems, has received a lot of undeserved bad press, and the virtues of the welfare state have been greatly exaggerated.
University Dogma
A resent series of TV programs has caused quite a stir in Norway by exposing a number of university professors as ignorant of research relating to their field of study, and extremely prejudice against views that do not agree with their personal opinion.
The interviewer started each program by asking basic questions about culture vs. biology, for which the university professors gave short and definite answers in defense of culture. The interviewer went on to ask for supporting evidence for the answers, and got some examples from everyday life and personal experiences as an answer, but no numbers or reference to research despite being repeatedly pressed for facts.
Not having gotten anything specific to go by from the Norwegian professors, the interviewer travels abroad to interview international experts on the sciences related to the culture vs. biology problem. These experts are surprised to hear what the interviewer just learned from the Norwegian professors, and show him experiments and research that indicate that biology is an important, but by no means only, factor in determining the behavior of humans.
There was in fact, and contrary to what the Norwegian professors had said, plenty of evidence that biology is an important factor in determining such things as intelligence, gender preferences for certain professions, mother child bonding, etc.
Returning to Norway, the interviewer confront the professors with the facts collected abroad, and unable to say anything sensible about the facts in front of them, the professors proceed to dismiss the facts as irrelevant, flawed and poor, despite the rather obvious weight of the evidence, much of it regarded as the very best science currently available in this field.
How is it possible, one wonders that these professors were ignorant of such research, produced in the very field that they operate? These professors have been very active in public debate and rebuffed biology quite frequently, and must have had first time access to the research that they so categorically dismissed, or else it could not possibly pass as well founded science. And yet, they were ignorant of all the evidence against them, or deliberately lying about their knowledge. Either way it is reason for concern.
The professors that were exposed as frauds in the TV series were all very high profiled personalities, frequently quoted by politicians when proposing reforms in education, health care, equal opportunities legislation and so on. They are also some of the best paid and best funded researchers at the universities, receiving generous grants from the government.
The Norwegian government wields great power over the universities by determining what fields are to be investigated, and what fields are not, granting funding to research deemed valuable, and denying funding to research considered worthless.
Having opinions that are in accordance to official government dogma is in other words of great importance when asking for funding, and the high profiled professors are all supporting the current government view that human nature is dynamic and malleable, which in turn is an important assumption when promoting policies for the common good, rather than laws based on human nature.
The level of power and influence on a detailed level that the current government wields over research at Norwegian universities is currently greater than ever, greater even than it was during the days of the Nazi occupation of Norway. What looks like an exposure of a few professors, is in fact turning out to be an exposure of a political system, in which the universities are being made loyal to government dogma, and opposition is systematically oppressed.
Bearing in mind the enormous influence universities wield over matters of science, and hence government policies, it is interesting to note that not a single political party in Norwegian politics regard the welfare state as anything but a common good, and an essential part of future policies. Not even the progress party which considers itself a classical liberal party suggests that the welfare state needs more than a bit of tinkering in order to give more desirable results.
The introduction of a state run publishing company to provide free schoolbooks to high school students, met only token opposition. Having won control of the universities, the high schools seem to be next on the list of institutions that are to preach the official dogma of the common good, and denounce the notion of natural rights.
The interviewer started each program by asking basic questions about culture vs. biology, for which the university professors gave short and definite answers in defense of culture. The interviewer went on to ask for supporting evidence for the answers, and got some examples from everyday life and personal experiences as an answer, but no numbers or reference to research despite being repeatedly pressed for facts.
Not having gotten anything specific to go by from the Norwegian professors, the interviewer travels abroad to interview international experts on the sciences related to the culture vs. biology problem. These experts are surprised to hear what the interviewer just learned from the Norwegian professors, and show him experiments and research that indicate that biology is an important, but by no means only, factor in determining the behavior of humans.
There was in fact, and contrary to what the Norwegian professors had said, plenty of evidence that biology is an important factor in determining such things as intelligence, gender preferences for certain professions, mother child bonding, etc.
Returning to Norway, the interviewer confront the professors with the facts collected abroad, and unable to say anything sensible about the facts in front of them, the professors proceed to dismiss the facts as irrelevant, flawed and poor, despite the rather obvious weight of the evidence, much of it regarded as the very best science currently available in this field.
How is it possible, one wonders that these professors were ignorant of such research, produced in the very field that they operate? These professors have been very active in public debate and rebuffed biology quite frequently, and must have had first time access to the research that they so categorically dismissed, or else it could not possibly pass as well founded science. And yet, they were ignorant of all the evidence against them, or deliberately lying about their knowledge. Either way it is reason for concern.
The professors that were exposed as frauds in the TV series were all very high profiled personalities, frequently quoted by politicians when proposing reforms in education, health care, equal opportunities legislation and so on. They are also some of the best paid and best funded researchers at the universities, receiving generous grants from the government.
The Norwegian government wields great power over the universities by determining what fields are to be investigated, and what fields are not, granting funding to research deemed valuable, and denying funding to research considered worthless.
Having opinions that are in accordance to official government dogma is in other words of great importance when asking for funding, and the high profiled professors are all supporting the current government view that human nature is dynamic and malleable, which in turn is an important assumption when promoting policies for the common good, rather than laws based on human nature.
The level of power and influence on a detailed level that the current government wields over research at Norwegian universities is currently greater than ever, greater even than it was during the days of the Nazi occupation of Norway. What looks like an exposure of a few professors, is in fact turning out to be an exposure of a political system, in which the universities are being made loyal to government dogma, and opposition is systematically oppressed.
Bearing in mind the enormous influence universities wield over matters of science, and hence government policies, it is interesting to note that not a single political party in Norwegian politics regard the welfare state as anything but a common good, and an essential part of future policies. Not even the progress party which considers itself a classical liberal party suggests that the welfare state needs more than a bit of tinkering in order to give more desirable results.
The introduction of a state run publishing company to provide free schoolbooks to high school students, met only token opposition. Having won control of the universities, the high schools seem to be next on the list of institutions that are to preach the official dogma of the common good, and denounce the notion of natural rights.
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