GlobLog - June 2007
A direct link to each entry is obtained by using the button below the entry.

00:27 - ATTENTION MUBARAK AND PUTIN: 

In Defence of Global Capitalism is now more global than ever, since the Arabic and Russian editions of my book have just been published.

From the bottom of my heart I´d like to thank everybody who have worked so hard to make my ideas available in these languages. And a special thanks to Tom Palmer, whose enthusiasm and persistence made it possible.

02:45 - ATLAS IRL: 

In my series "You don´t have to read Atlas Shrugged, just follow the news", it´s time to look at Argentina:

President Kirchner wanted cheap fuel for Argenitians, so five years ago he took control of the market and introduced harsh price controls. The Economist reports about the recent results: No energy investments and a severe fuel shortage. Parts of Buenos Aires lost power, industries didn´t get the electricity they needed and cars stopped when service stations ran out of fuel.

Argentina´s official news agency reported happily that there were fewer traffic jams than usual.

17:55 - DEADLINE APPROACHING: 

16:12 - AND HE IS DEFINITELY NOT FAKING IT: 

42 year old Roger Tullgren is so obsessed with heavy metal music that he has lost many jobs when he´s played it too loud at work, or gone to concerts when he was supposed to work. Now the Swedish employment agency has decided that tax-payers should subsidise Roger´s salary, since they consider his heavy metal interest to be a handicap in the workplace.

Being an old synth/new romantic/EBM/goth-fan (heavy metal-fans were our biggest enemies in the schoolyards in 1984), I can only agree with this enlightened assessement.

22:29 - TOO IMPORTANT TO LEAVE IT TO ME: 

So now the Swedish center-right wants to deny me the right to choose if my son should start school when he is 6 or when he is 7 years old, whereas the red-green opposition wants me to retain that right.

This seems to confirm Ayn Rand´s old analysis, that many politicians only accept freedom in the areas they don´t care about - the Marxists didn´t care about culture and sexuality and the conservatives didn´t care about the economy. But when they care about something, they think it´s too important to leave it to people´s voluntary decisions.

Well, the Swedish center-right cares a lot about education right now. Stay tuned for more regulation.

10:04 - MÅNGFALD I PODDEN: 

Den politiska journalistiken är välrepresenterad i radions sommarprogram i år - i form av Helle Klein, Gustav Fridolin och Åsa Linderborg. Mångfald: tre nyanser av rödgrönt. Den som tycker att public service åtminstone kunde ha kostat på sig ett liberalt alibi vänder sig med fördel till Timbros alternativa sommarprogram, som görs av marxister, feminister, liberaler och individualister.

Och lyssna gärna på Anders Hjemdahls program från förra året. En makalös uppgörelse med de egna socialistiska idealen som du aldrig kommer att få höra i SR.

12:09 - WHAT A WASTE IT WOULD BE WITHOUT TRADE: 

One aspect of international trade that most people condemn is the shipping of rich countries´ waste to poor countries. While agreeing that serious health hazards are involved in some of these practices, The Economist publishes an interesting defense:

If someone pays for your waste, you can suspect that they will put it to good use. Many forms of recycling are labour intense, and poor countries can do it larger scale and at a lower enviromental cost. Furthermore, it means an efficient use of transport, since container  ships that come to the west with goods would otherwise return empty.

13:47 - GOOD NEWS FROM CHINA: 

The European Comission warns that China´s spending on research and development is catching up with EU´s, according to Financial Times today.

Excellent.

In many ways, research is a public good. New ideas and innovations travel rapidly across borders. For a long time, the OECD countries have been responsible for financing almost all of it. Now countries like China and India are shouldering some of the burden.That´s a wonderful opportunity for us - if we keep our minds and markets open.

Hands up everybody who think that cars, phones, microprocessors and the internet only benefited the countries where they were invented.

11:57 - OK, OK, WE GET IT, HE STILL HAS FRIENDS: 

"Bush finds a friend in Albania"

"Microsoft has a friend in president Bush"

- Two of the cover stories in the paper edition of International Herald Tribune today.

08:10 - REINFELDT SAID WHAT HU WANTED TO HEAR: 

The consensus seems to be that prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt proved his critics wrong and sent a strong message to the visiting Chinese president Hu Jintao, by saying that "we like human rights" and that "human rights are important for Europeans".

But that is not a strong message, that is just the kind of relativism the Chinese leaders want to hear. They know that we like human rights, just like they like labour camps and someone else likes ice cream. What Reinfeldt should have said is of course that we think that human rights are universal and that human rights are important for the Chinese.

11:48 - DRESS CODE: 

"threat against public order, homeland security, public health or international relations with one or many EU countries."

- The reason the border police gave for throwing the young Swedish G8-critic Tomas Eriksson out of Germany, after they found an anti-copyright t-shirt in his girlfriends luggage. (via Dagens Nyheter)

09:31 - CHARLEMAGNE ON ME AND BRUSSELS: 

In this week´s The Economist, Charlemagne asks why there is no interesting intellectual debate in Brussels, and you can imagine that I find it flattering that the transfer of my think tank affiliation overseas is mentioned in this context. Several possible explanations are mentioned in the article, and personally I think that the strongest one is that Brussels is a consensus culture where you win when you make friends with everybody - which is always bad if you want people to think and talk freely.

11:25 - MER RIKSDAGSMAGI: 

På allmän begäran, som det brukar heta, kommer här ytterligare ett citat från Johan August Gripenstedt. En storslagen hyllning till det frivilliga utbytets princip och allt det skapar, ur ett riksdagsanförande 8 februari 1866: 

"Om man nämligen besinnar den oändliga mångfalden av alla de behov, som sammanhänger med vårt närvarande kulturtillstånd; den arbetsfördelning, som utgör första villkoret för deras uppfyllande; de oräkneliga utbyten av tjänster och värden, såväl andliga som materiella, som är en följd och en nödvändighet härav: då måste man nästan häpna över storheten av denna företeelse, så alldaglig som den än är. Man skall då också lätt inse att man här vidrör själva roten till hela den nyare civilisationen och att man verkligen befinner sig inne på en av de stora frågorna, som bestämmer skillnaden mellan människan isolerad och människan i beröring med sina likar på jorden.

Ja, mina herrar! Det fordras blott en hastig blick på allt vad vi behöver, allt vad vi varje dag, varje stund begagna, på alla de ansträngningar, alla de omflyttningar, som härtill varit nödvändiga, för att övertyga oss om att miljoner människor varit verksamma och arbetat för att bereda oss dessa förmåner; och tanken nästan svindlar, då den söker genomlöpa alla de oräkneliga kombinationer, som därvid uppkommit. Och likväl har allt detta skett, utan våld, utan förtryck, utan att någon lidit orätt. Men hur skulle väl sådant varit möjligt, om inte en stor, mäktig och sann grundsats varit den verkande kraften, den ledande tanken, som ordnat det hela?! Och denna stora grundsats, denna fruktbärande tanke, som allena förmått frambringa allt detta, den heter frihet – frihet i avtal – frihet i handling."

02:08 - VARFÖR TALAR DE INTE SÅ I RIKSDAGEN LÄNGRE?: 

Jag läste ett utdrag ur Johan August Gripenstedts tal vid 150-årsjubiléet tidigare i kväll, och lovade en av deltagarna att publicera avslutningen på bloggen. Det är värt att publiceras. Tänk på att Gripenstedt förklarar detta strax efter att andra talare har hävdat att import är skadligt och att Sverige bör minimera sitt handelsutbyte med andra länder…

”Om man besinnar att till och med polarländernas tillgångar, t ex av fisk och späck, genom handeln kommer den civiliserade världen till nytta, att Kinas och Indiens överflöd på angenäma, närande och upplivande livsmedel genom handelns medverkan är till låga priser tillgängliga för oss alla dagligen, att det ena landets överflöd fyller det andras brist, att själva öknens innevånare kommer att skatta till våra behov, ja, att samlingarna på söderhavets klippor förs hit för att befrukta våra fält – allt genom handeln; då syns mig denna näringsgren redan av dessa skäl förtjäna att bedömas skonsammare.

Men långt högre än dessa materiella tjänster ställer jag dem som handeln gjort och gör åt mänskligheten i odlingens och upplysningens intresse. Ty då inkräktaren endast lämnar efter sig nedbrända och blodbestänkta ruiner i erövrade länder, och agget i besegrade hjärtan; när missionären och vetenskapsmannen, vars nit ingen kan skatta högre än jag, framgår blott såsom den ensliga farkosten på havet, vars fåra sammanfaller i det ögonblick kölen genomskurit vattenspegeln; då framtränger handeln såsom en murbräcka som nedbryter varje hinder som en förvillad statskonst eller förvillade seder uppställt mot den mänskliga odlingens framsteg.

Och jag förirrar mig därför visserligen inte då jag tror att handeln i sin stora världsomfattande utsträckning utgör det mäktigaste redskapet i Försynens hand till människosläktets lyftning, ja, att den är den stora och djupa, fastän stilla flod, som tyst, men säkert i sin famn för vårt släktes öden fram till större odling, till högre ljus och till en allmännare människors förbrödring. Därför säger jag än en gång: ära åt handelns storartade och för mänskligheten gagnande yrke!”

(Ur Tal af J A Gripenstedt I, även publicerad i Frihetens klassiker) 

01:22 - WE OWE HIM A LOT: 

Tonight I talked about Johan August Gripenstedt when the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise celebrated the 150th anniversary of finance minister Gripenstedt´s most important speech in the Swedish parliament. The subject was the introduction of railways in Sweden, but Gripenstedt used this day in the summer of 1857 to present an entire worldview, inspired by the French liberal economist Frédéric Bastiat.

Gripenstedt explained how producers and traders, freed from regulations and tariffs, would create wealth on an unprecedented scale, and that a liberal, open Sweden would become one of the richest countries in Europe. He told the surprised audience that this would benefit all classes and that even the poor would be able to afford luxury goods like coffee and cotton in the future.

With rhetorical and tactical skill, Gripenstedt lead the way during Sweden´s most intense reform decades, which gave Sweden free markets, free trade, a modern financial market, open immigration, more religious freedom, an expansion of women´s rights and a democratised parliament.

And he was right to be optimistic. In 100 years, Swedish incomes increased 8-fold and average life expectancy increased almost 30 years. And growth rates remained impressive until the 1970s when politicans begun to dismantle "the Gripenstedt system".

I wrote about him in my history of Swedish liberalism, and write about him in Dagens Industri today.

Per T Ohlsson has written an excellent biography of Gripenstedt. I won´t stop nagging until it´s back in print.

02:12 - WHAT AMERICANS TALK ABOUT III: 

There was also a lot of discussions about growing income inequality in the US. Federal Reserve data clearly documents growing gaps, and resulted in a worrying USA Today cover story. But in itself, growing gaps is not a problem, if it´s not the same as less social mobility. And it´s not. If you read the story closely you see that this is a result of two trends:

1) People get much richer late in life, partly as a result of growing returns to education. Inequality does not seem to grow much within generations, but between generations. So what we see is growing inequality between me today and me in the future. This sounds a lot like more social mobility than in the past.

2) There are more Hispanics than ever in the US and their incomes have soared and inequality within the group has declined. But at the same time, as the Hispanic population grows inequality increases, because they are still less rich than white baby boomers.

To sum up, an increase in social mobility, the fact that more Americans get really rich, and the fact that more Hispanics get the chance to make their life better, results in more inequality in the statistics. Now if that is inequality, why do so many people still think that equality is a worthy goal?

15:11 - THINGS AMERICANS TALK ABOUT II: 

Many Californians I met were tempted to declare e-mail bankruptcy. That´s what you do when you are too far behind, and decide to erase everything and start all over again. Hi-tech venture capitalist Fred Wilson re-started the trend when he wrote what the rest of us do only in our dreams:

"I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy.

If you´ve sent me an email (and you aren´t my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again.

I am starting over."

Yes, I am tempted to do the same, but instead I have spontaneously created a disincentive for senders - I wait a looong time to respond to most of the email I receive.