I am just curious how the politics of your countries is. Is it mainly left or right (or whatever terms you feel is most appropriate)? Is you country becoming more free or less free? And what relation do these political changes have to your libertarianism?
In America, it seems to me that politics isn’t exactly more left or right -the ideological differences between them are effectively dead with only policy differences remaining. That being said the country is becoming much more statist with the pseudo-socialization of banks and finance while the iraq war seems to be improving from a libertarian perspective (some troops are now out of the country) it seems more likely that these troops are just being redeployed into afghanistan while the still remains some 50,000 troops in Iraq itself. Are these troops or combat brigrades because if the latter, then there may be even more troops in Iraq than what I had expected. Oh yes, and money creation is out of control and is the harbinger of future inflation plus the medical system is coming more and more under gov. control. In the next few years we may even be seeing a greater take-over of the internet too.
There are only two things that anybody needs to know about the politics of my place:
a.) they are boring as hell
b.) the leftists always win
There is a left-right divide, but it manifest nowhere in any sort of policy distinctions. It is purely a matter of a culture war. A culture war around WWII and Catholicism and Communism and collaboration. The right wingers are like: “come on guys, we have to take the collaboration in perspective, they didn’t really like the occupiers, it was not like that, we need to cut them some slack, and besides the partisans did bad stuff after the war and aside from resistance to an occupation it was also a Communist Revolution so we have to condemn them too, and also when are you going to give the land you took from the RKC back?”. And the left wingers are like: “TO THE PYRE WITH THEM! CHAAAARGE!!” The folk like the leftwing argument better. The culture war is not as bitter as I make sound to be as it is a small place so the historical experience is relatively uniform, but it is there and it is obvious which the vote-winning argument is.
It was really funny as the main leftwing party The Liberal-Democrats (former Communist Youth Organisation) imploded itself from within to near death a few years ago. You would think this would be a great boon to the rightwing who would now be able to take over. Wrong. The second leftwing party, the Social-Democrats (reformed Communists) simply stepped in their shoes and replaced them as the biggest party. The leftwing win every election, only when the folks has had really enough of them they vote the right in for a single term or even less, just to get the left out to cool for a while.
Even the resident populist-until-we-sell-out, chauvnist-for-the-votes, clown party is staunchly left-wing.
Other than this don’t ask me more about it as I have totaly insulated myself from local politics since it is so inconsequential.
Hey Marko, have you ever considered moving to Bohemia or maybe mainland Austria, and be back in the home of both Austrian Economics and the empire that once ruled over your country?
I would say the politics is just one thing: so very tired. There’s an overall air of tiredness and decay over everything here and politics are no exception.
The only difference between Left and Right is how they relate to the Prime Minister, Mr Berlusconi. Technically speaking politics in Italy have been very left-leaning ever since the “Historical Compromise” of the early '70s and President Einaudi’s death (he was a huge “gold bug” and we are still living on the huge reserves he built up). Mr Berlusconi’s governments have been no exception: despite his (ever diminishing due to declining health) cries “Commies are out to ruin me and the country!” his politics have been very Left-leaning. And one thing I don’t get why he is so adored by foreigner commentators. Maybe because an hedonist and he’s always surrounded by tons of (ugly) women. I even rebuked Eric Margolis about that. Yes, THAT Eric Margolis. At least President Sarkozy nailed Carla Bruni who’s pleasant to look at… but enough with my usual senility-induced ramblings.
The only fresh thing on the menu were the Secessionists but they were destroyed in the same way as the Tea Party and Grassroot movements are being destroyed in the US. I was a militant in the Secessionist movement up to 2003 and left well after it had become apparent they had been turned into yet another stale dish and the leadership had zero interest in anything other than their own cushy jobs. Mind I haven’t given up on Secession, must be my Gaulish blood.
Very much to the right. Socialism is dead in Estonia, for obvious reasons. Two biggest parties are classical liberal and social liberal. Officialy at least, they’re both more populist than anything, especially the “social liberals”. Currently there is a coalition between the Reform Party(Classical liberal) and Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica(Conservative). They’re probably going to win the elections in march and prime minister Andrus Ansip will get a third term(He is a fan of Ludwig von Mises by the way). The economy is quickly improving and the current coalition can claim they fixed it. They did radically cut spending which means Estonia is financially in a great position, almost no debt. I actually like the current government, out of all the possibilities out there. If only the Reform Party was more principled… And I very much wish they could win the elections outright and kick the conservatives out of the coalition, they’re holding back any social reform. For a country where religion is pretty much dead, there is remarkable resistance against allowing gay marriages(even civil unions).
Used to be very freedom-minded, up until 97, after which people are moving slowly but certainly to a leftists mindset. Can’t complain too much about the governments though: both left and right have implemented decent free-market reforms.
South Africa is becoming less free. The ANC is split between the communists and unionists, with their largely urban support, and the nationalist elite with their much larger rural voting base. The communists want greater government control over the economy and so do the nationalists, but there is disagreement over division of spoils. Unions recently threw their toys out of the collective cot when government refused to raise the wages of all their employees by a level three times greater than the published rate of inflation. The unionists say they need our money because they’re poor and we should all feel sorry for them, or something, but they don’t say why they want an increase 3x that of the inflation rate rather than an adjustment of the contrived inflation rate itself to reflect economic reality. They have been attempting to gain public sympathy by blockading schools and hospitals, allowing people to die outside emergency rooms, that kind of thing… The government responded to the crises by calling in the military to staff hospitals, but they responded by threatening to go on strike themselves. They didn’t join the military to do anything like work, after all. Anyway, I think the thugs are ironing out their differences wrt the strike. Whatever they decide to do with our wealth, we all lose.
The government is also trying to get two major pieces of legislation through Parliament against major public outcry. One is to establish a government ‘media tribunal’ to censor the mainstream media to the government’s liking (for the ostensible purpose of making the media better somehow - the specifics are glossed over), and the other is to establish a censorship and filtering system for the internet, no doubt to protect The Children from realising how pathetic and contrived their little lives really are. Everyone and their grandmother outside the Ruling Alliance has voiced their vociferous objection to further government censorship of the mainstream corporate media, but there is less objection to the internet bill, which worries me greatly. Only ISPs seem to really be concerned about that, and they are not very influential here.
I don’t really give a damn about the mainstream media. They’re just a PR firm for the government in any case. I guess the current goons don’t like it because it makes them look incompetant more often than not, but as much as they may claim to hate the media, it makes people believe in the state as an institution and means of solving problems.
The government consists of a coaltion dominated by a nationalist, conservative demo-christian party. They constantly bombard us with campaigns against drugs, alchohol and abortion. They even banned selling alchohol from shops after 7pm so that ‘kids don’t get drunk’. One of the biggest idealogues and appologists of the party is a professor of philosophy. He used to have a column in a paper and in a few of them he attacked Murray Rothbard and other Austrians. The biggest opposing party are the Socialdemocrats and they’re reformed communists (after the break of Yugoslavia). There is the whole ethnic dimension of policts here, there are two big Albanian parties and whoever wants to win elections they have to coaltion with one of them.
I’m in a peculiar position since I study Political science at the state university and a lot of the other students are party members whose dream is to get a cushy government job (and somehow equate political science with politics). Oh, and a former professor of mine is the president of the country now.
Hey James, what is it with anti-multinational-corporation xenophobia in your country?
Just what is so great about domestic businessmen, domestic officials, and domestic capital markets that makes them more reliable for the common man in South Africa?
They think they have positive rights, aka entitlements, aka a right to other people’s property What entitles them to these rights? Their virtue of existing as South African citizens, according to our much-praised constitution. When you believe that, foreigners suddenly become enemies. Those perceived to have/control a lot of money become enemies too. They have no right to all these wonderful and largely fictional things, and you do, by virtue of existing. It’s a recipe for an “our thing” sort of mentality.
There is no rational reason for it. Public education is pretty much the answer. They really have no idea what ‘capitalism’ is - they think it’s just what America calls its version of statism, which is kind of true.
I woke up because I’ve had unfeterred access to a computer with internet since I was ten, and my parents encouraged independent truth-seeking from a much younger age. Very few in this country have access to information which is not controlled. Just imagine what it was like before the internet, under Apartheid, and consider that the folks fighting against Apartheid were being tutored by the Soviets.