The blame-game must go on

Everyone knows about the terrible things going on in and around the Indian Ocean these days. Truly a catastrophic situation which I feel terrible about. However, without trying to take the issue lightly, I can't escape one thought: How are Leftists planning on blaming global warming for the horrible things going on, like they usually do when natural disasters occur?

The Christian Right?

The other day I heard a man talking about politics in the United States, and in that respect he divided the political spectrum into "the liberal left" and "the Christian right". How might that be? What has the Left to do with being liberal, and how come the Right is associated with Christianity?

A part of the answer is the political landscape in America. Those calling themselves "liberal" in America are more often than not those who are willing to allow homosexuals to live together, and want as much as possible in the hands of the state. Those calling themselves "conservatives" (or to the right) are more often than not those who are reluctant to grant homosexuals the right to live together, but show understanding towards allowing the private enterprise to prosper without the state butting in all the time. (I am only speaking very roughly and not literally about the political landscape in America - counterexamples of my examples are easy to find).

So there we have it - the Christian Right and the liberal Left. But something doesn't add up. Those who want the state to grow in power economically, Leftists, are those who want the state to stay out of peoples private lives (excluding John Kerry and other canons in the Democratic Party). Those who want the state to grow in power socially, Rightist, are those who want the state to stay out of the market. Does this add up? In this formulation we have two groups of people, each wanting the state to strengthen in one area and weaken in another, and still we call them Leftists and Rightists! No, this won't do.

The fact of the matter is that those who want the state to gain power and increase control are one group, and those who want the opposite are another. Since Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Social Democratism and other inventions of the Left are generally associated with state-control and limited market-laws, we shall call those who want the state to control either people or markets Leftists, and the others Rightists. This would mean that when it comes to the mainstream politics, Americans only have Leftists with different views on exacly what the state should have a stranglehold on, but not whether or not it should have any kind of stranglehold.

The word "liberal" is nothing which suits the American Left. The word "Christian" or "conservative" is nothing which fits to the American Right.

EU: Good or bad?

A friend of mine wondered the other day whether the European Union (EU) is a good or bad thing. Roughly he said:

That peace remains within Europe and human rights are generally respected. People not being killed in state-run concentration-camps and private property rights are sacred as far as that goes. That no wars are in Europe anymore and so on. Acid not being pored on people as punishment in Turkey, and more.

Or how much bureaucracy the EU stands for, which costs people loads of money each month and prevents tax-cuts etc.

Is the EU good or bad? Are the pluses bigger than the minuses? In my opinion: Yes.

But the European Union has evolved a lot since its founding after World War II. Originally it was a free-trade union between the biggest economies in Europe, and as such grew into tighter and tighter relations on the whole political spectrum. Today the EU has become a huge block of red tape and regulations and the economy of Europe as a whole has as a result grown to an almost complete standstill. The free trade, which eliminated wars and resulted in great increase of wealth, respect for human rights and clear protection of the private property right, has evolved into a superstate of regulations and restrictions with regards to relations outside Europe and flexibility within Europe, and an ever-increasing reluctance to give back freedom which has been tied into institutions and state-supervision.

I have no doubts about the peace-keeping role of the EU, and the EU itself forces its member-states to do many good things they would otherwise not do, or do only when they have no other choices (e.g. liberate various markets from state-monopoly, and suppress customs and trade-barriers within the member-states). However, if the trend of state-merger continues I fear that the EU will crumble from within, having forced one too many regulation down the throat of its members. There are limits to how much a single, centralized government can do for hundreds of millions of people, especially when it continues to remove power from local authorities to the global one. History teaches us that when a superpower of bureaucracy grows too much in ambition, power and size, it will eventually disintegrate from within, splitting up into blocks or collapse totally into its elements. I hope this won't happen to the EU since some of its members have a great tendency to fights its neighbors, but the risk is there.

Why doesn't the EU aim on looking more like the World Trade Organization, which only holds limited power over its member-states, and has no interest in making detailed plans for individuals - instead focusing on keeping governments on track when it comes to freedom of trade and respect for private property rights and human rights?

False logic

Being an Icelander living in Denmark has opened my mind for many new things. A few of them are:

• Compared to Danish people, Icelanders are surprisingly aware of the power of private enterprise.
• Compared to people with basic history-knowledge, Danish people are surprisingly ignorant.
• Compared to a nation of rich, hardworking people, the Danish are surprisingly willing to hand the state problems to solve, thereby increasing the damage of the problems.
• Compared to how much Danish people enjoy the fruits of free competition in the free market, they are surprisingly willing to monopolize systems of e.g. health care and education by leaving them in the hands of the state.

This list is only to name a few of my surprises with the Danish people. They are hardcore-capitalists in most classical meanings of the word: They are vicious consumers and punish overprising and lack of quality without hesitation. They are naggers to the bone, making everything around them sound like the worst in the world, and criticize bad management and bad choices until ears drop off. However, they are also very willing to push problems out of their way by pointing at politicians and blame them for what is wrong. As a result, many problems (and "problems") are sucked into the state's supervision, and it's then when the nagging starts for real.

Denmark is a rich country filled with well-educated, hard-working, creative people who strive to improve their lives in every sense of the word. Danish people enjoy the fruits of the free market more than inhabitants of many other states, and Denmark is a magnet for those who enjoy the very best of what a free society has to offer. But they have a socialistic bone in them which tells them that some things are best left in the hands of bureaucrats, politicians and public officials, and as a result the Danish people are worse off than they could be. The newspapers are filled with left-oriented slogans and analyses, and it seems that the Right in Denmark (or 'de borgerlige liberals' like they call themselves to avoid comparison with national socialists) is careful of keeping its mouth very shut in the public discussion, hoping that people's common sense outwins the Leftist-anger. Sad and risky, to say the least.

But maybe I've just been focusing on seeing the bad for the last few months. Last week the idea was dropped that the best "family policy" for Denmark would be to lower taxes, thereby giving parents more flexibility to live of a single or one and a half income instead of two today, and this week it was suggested that the state should give up state-support in the housing-sector in exchange for more freedom and flexibility (which then would give more people better chances of finding appropriate, affordable housing). Maybe are some things okay in this country of pseudo-socialistic capitalism.

A lesson not learned

A friend of mine once asked: "Isn't old-fashion and out of date to fight against communism?" I was wearing a button which said "Communism kills", and for him it seemed weird - the communism being dead and all that.

Unfortunately, it isn't so. In my latest post on this website I said a few words about my Left-Right theory, which is that generally all people can be divided into two simple categories, depending on what they believe in in politics. In my opinion there is no fundamental difference between today's "social democrats", "greenies", "liberals" (in the American meaning of the word), and so on. The mentality is still the same as with the communists in the beginning of the 20th century: The state can organize the society, and then we can see what is left to be "free". My way of thinking is the opposite - everything should be left free from government interference, except perhaps very few and special tasks (one, for example, being law-enforcement and protection of the private property right).

But the good-old fashion communists are still not extinct. In Denmark, a street-paper/internet-magazine called Socialistisk Standpunkt is published by some self-acclaimed marxists, and sold and I couldn't believe my own eyes when I read the following:

Hvis en kommende regering af arbejderpartier skal gøre noget reelt ved beskæftigelsen, må den have kontrol, dvs. ejerskab, over de væsentligste dele af økonomien. Gennem en demokratisk planlægning af økonomien kan man sætte en virkelig plan for velfærd og arbejde i gang, og man kan gennemføre den første betingelse for et rigtigt opgør med arbejdsløsheden: en drastisk nedsættelse af arbejdstiden med fuld løn- og personalekompensation.

There you have it - the state should own in order to control and organize. Regrettable, this thought-process is more widespread than many thinks, and it seems that all the theoretical and empirical data from the last 200 years hasn't made a dent in the unsatisfying belief in government-control over individuals and their companies/organizations.

Actually, the quote here above included the world "nationalize" in the print-version. I thought I would never see that word again in writings about the future.

What are you in politics?

A question I hear from time to time is "what" I am in politics, and sometimes whether I'm a libertarian or even an anarchist! I have a hard time answering questions like these. I could call myself a liberal right-winger, but then I might be liberal in the USA-meaning of the word (statist and fond of increased government) and a right-winger in the European meaning of the word (national socialist). What I would be meaning is that I couldn't care less about social matters and what people do and don't do = liberal, and that I think the less there is of the state, the better = right-winged.

I could also call myself a libertarian. However, that isn't as straight forward as one might think. Some people confuse libertarianism with liberalism, and better yet - neoliberalism. If I'm not mistaken then neoliberalism is at its best in the USA, where the ruling "class" of the US-state believes in a relatively free economy, but wants a stranglehold on the American social-behavior. I'm not one of those.

It might be complicated to roll around in the definition-flood of the political spectrum. But maybe it's not. Maybe it's enough to divide the political spectrum into two poles - Left and Right - and do little else. Why so? Because I think people in general only have two approaches when it comes to politics and social thoughts, and everything else is derived from that.

1. Right: The general thought that society should more or less be left by itself, without government interference. This holds for economic and social affairs. Private property right is the foundation. Freedom to trade, communicate, do business, make contracts and so on. The state should only busy itself with protecting the freedom to do whatever, and government-run companies and institutions are the exception, but not the general rule.
2. Left: The general thought that society should be organized as much as possible, and that elected or self-acclaimed leaders can do that with the right tools and a right state of mind. Government-ownership is the foundation, and all of which has any value, or could have any value, should be left to the government to take care of. The state should run most institutions and companies, but a free market might be allowed to operate in exceptional cases or in cases where the government doesn't think something is worth the effort to control.

What derives from this are two constantly fighting poles, each one trying to push the other. We see for example what is happening for the Left in the United States: The health-care system is increasingly moving into the hands of the state, where it's to be organized by politicians. We see what has happened in Europe a long time ago: The state has/does most of which has to do with health-care, education, traffic, pension-plans and natural resources. Looking at it from the other side, the Right has also had its winnings. The World Trade Organization, the European Union and other multinational institutions have forbidden many government-actions which were taken for granted in previous times, such as state-support of selected industries, trade-barriers and harm to peoples personal property.

It can be seen that when the Left is strong, the state gets more and more "important" projects to take control of, or makes them up and "solves" by itself. Likewise, when the Right is on the move, the state is given stronger and stronger restrictions to roll over people, companies and the free market in general.

I'm to the Right. I'm not sure I need to say more.

Global warming = global propaganda

Last night a refreshing documentary was shown on one of Denmarks government television-stations, DR1. The documentary was about global warming, and had the amusing title, "Dommedag aflyst", or "Judgment Day cancelled" in English.

In short the documentary ass-kicked those who claim the Earth is warming up because of human activities. It was shown that it might be warming up, but then at most about a tenth of a degree over the last 25 years. In comparison, some claim that mans activities could increase the worlds temperature of about 6 degrees.

Also it was shown that the Earth has a solid system of stabilizing its temperature, using rain, clouds, evaporation, ice-formation, to name a few examples. It was even reasoned that if the Earths temperature would rise, say 10 degrees Celsius, it would actually increase the ice on the Antartica, thus lowering the ocean levels globally.

But are Danish people happy about hearing something else than constant propaganda about the need for Kyoto, need to reduce the usage of this and that, and not to mention the need for more taxes to fund these and that special government projects aimed on "saving" the environment?

I would say no and point to these discussion, out of which the following text is roughly translated:

This with the C02 not warming up the planet is completely wrong in my opinion. C02 grabs, along with H20, various wave-frequencies of infrared light, that is it catches the suns energy, which it then moves on to other molecules in the air, which then can warm up the atmosphere. It is true that water is the biggest greenhouse-gas, but many small springs can make up a large river. So if we burn all those coals and gases we have on the planet, we will significantly increase the amount of C02 in the atmosphere, which then will warm up the atmosphere.

The author of this text must have been on the toilet when last nights documentary showed that C02 itself is a very weak measurement of the potential global warming we might possible see in the future, if we burn up "all" the coals and gases in the world. Shouldn't we stop volcanoes from erupting also, since they are a huge producer of C02 in the atmosphere?