Friday, December 26, 2014

Political Chart of Ideologies and Nations based on The Rational Spectrum: Redefining the Political Spectrum



The category of social left has been fundamentally revised. On this revised version of the Rational Spectrum, the social left is authoritarian promoting not only secularism (Separation of religion from state) but also intensive anti-aggression i.e. passiveness. This group excessively thinks highly of "harmony" and avoids wars with others even by discouraging individuals' autonomy and emotional passion.

Stalin put an excessive priority on his national interest and engaged in various international wars. His racial discrimination was intense especially against Asian ethnic groups in the USSR and her surrounding middle Asian satellite nations. Under the communist party he formed a basis of, Russian gender policy was chauvinist, and hardly followed the original Marxist gender policy. His economic policy was rather a corporatist one instead of a communist/socialist counterpart: He and his liking peer groups monopolised wealth with their collectivist force, and he neglected providing public welfare.

By contrast, Mao Zedong actively promoted multiculturalism integrating all races, and radically transformed China into a more gender equal nation. However, it does not mean he was tolerant; Actually, he was ruthless against those who disagree with his idea of the "harmony". So, he was disharmonious against those who are not joining his dreaming harmony. He provided various radical public welfare programmes even by sacrificing China's aggregate economic strength. Even he inevitably needed to sacrifice his well-beings although he did not intentionally attempted to because of his radical collective economic policy following his believing socialist principle.

Meanwhile Stalin was harsh against those who are against Russian race and his corporate interests in his actively participating domestic and international wars, Mao Zedong was harsh against the reactionary rebels in his ruling nation China. Meanwhile Stalin was more tolerant toward traditional Russian cultures, Mao Zedong was abysmally destroying all the basis of Chinese traditional cultures.

After revising this part of this spectrum, now it is much clearer to define where the Brave New World is. Unlike Fascism, the Brave New World excessively regards highly of "harmony" and avoids wars with others even by discouraging individuals' autonomy and emotional passion. In this extreme case scenario shown in this fictional world, all individuals are fundamentally equal enough to lose their individuality and sovereignty. Its maxim is "War is bad for business".



Also, it is more able to indicate where Japan after WW2 has been since 1945. Japan has adapted a radical pacifist constitution which technically prohibits Japan owing military (The Self-Defence force is not technically categorised as a military force even though it is actually the world second most advanced modern military force). So, even her neighbour nations are threatening by force, it is restrained from counter-attacking.

Since its establishment, Japan has been known as an extremely secular nation where citizens have no consistently believing religion or other faith and they hardly have their own principle to pursue in their life. However, it does not imply that Japan is a rational liberal nation: It is actually opposite. Majority of Japanese are highly subservient to their authority, and they are somehow superstitious even though they have no religious faith.

Except a certain time period of the modern era when Japan adapted a chauvinistic Prussian militaristic politics, Japan has been known as a matriarchy nation since her establishment. So, Japanese females actually hold a high degree of freedom and sovereignty meanwhile many Japanese men are struggling to obtain less demanding female partners than majority of Japanese females.

Japanese economy is not intensively monopolistic unlike the other Asian nations. Japanese market structure is more Westernised so that it is fairly balanced interventionist. But, its interventionism is not considered as the Left-wing and so it is more the Right-wing. Even though Japan provides small&medium enterprises with the government expenditure, the government expenditure for big scale industries is high. Therefore, their government intervention is relatively more favouring for corporatist causes than socialist counterparts.

Japan also suffers from the negative impact of the big government such as excessive privileges of public bureaucrats and corporate elites and excess regulations disrupting free market competition and individuals' freedom of expression. Even tough it is not at the intolerant level as much as all socialist=communist models and some European models,




* Europe:


* The modern US politics:


Sunday, November 30, 2014

Autocratic Law Enforcement is not only about restriction but also about permission: Libertarians of the Natural Right side v.s. the Positivist/Utilitarian side

1. The Law Enforcement and the Culture Code

- The self-proclaimed liberals claim that anarchy permits the chaos and the reasonless massacres caused by unrestricted control of lethal weapons.

- As Montesquieu described, the law code is firmly influenced by the culture code of the region where the law is created.

- The government as the guardian of the Natural Right, an abstracted universal principle, may not only restrict but also permit what majority individuals and talented minority individuals disagree to do so.

- The universality of the Natural Right which many anti-Positivist Libertarians believe in needs to be questioned.


2. Both the Natural Law Libertarian, most notably Nozickians, and the modern self-proclaimed liberals are misguided

- The culture code and the individuals' will are more relative to time, place, and occasion than the Natural Right Libertarian, most notably Nozickian ones, assume.

- In an anarchism, people may decide to agree with each other restrict, rather than permit, them to hold lethal weapons freely in order to rationally decide and choose to derive their expected liberal consequence.



3. Not all human individuals are rational: Attack to Nozick style Libertarianism

- There is no such a thing like a naturally endowed universal right for all individuals: All rights are artificially created and the word "natural" is merely an antithesis of artificial.

- The right shall be given to those who are responsible and reliable to own.

- The law permitting all human-individuals to hold the equal right tends to hinder the others and the whole system.

- Thus, the consequence induced by providing all human-individuals with the universal liberal right is more likely to be illiberal.


4. Common Characteristics of Socialism and The Natural Right (Nozickian) Libertarianism

- Both reject the inequality, of both opportunity and outcome, and any regrettable situations such as inevitably occurring accidents and undesired and/or irrational choices which they have unintentionally or spontaneously chosen

- Both stick to their own abstract principle which they hypocritically claim it is the universal absolute principle.

- The government as the guardian of the Natural Right, an abstracted universal principle, may divert from what the market equilibrium

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

God and Liberalism

- God

This substantial world is mainly composed of the four base criteria, wedge/longitude, length/latitude, height/altitude, and time. The mind of enlightened human individuals is independent from the world of physical substances. Therefore, these four criteria of the substantial world do not base their mind.

Everything is originated from something, and the one originating is the base criterion of it. As enlightened human individuals are free from the pressures from the outside of their own will, they are independent of any. There shall be the origin having induced them to be independent of any. The criterion, the liberator of these enlightened ones, shall be called God. God exist as the criterion of their mind forming their free will.

If the mind were only the biological phenomenon caused by the brain function, why these enlightened individuals would be such innovative and sometimes rebellious against their surrounding nature and oppression from both various natural environment and tyrannical oppression by the others? Often, they suffer from unnecessary harms, and they sometimes sacrifice their life, even though they are healthy and able to survive well in a longer term, for something divine.

The independent mind from the barrier of the substantial world enables individuals to rationally understand the spontaneous exogenous factors inevitably affecting their life regardless of their own ability and will. The independent mind detaches individuals from unconsciously taking their surrounding situation for granted, and then enables them to understand them objectively. Therefore, instead of either attempting to irrationally control these factors or expecting some superstition to endogenously change these factors.

There factors can be called as the objective realities such as the natural resource limitation, mathematical and scientific factors, and the market mechanism. Individuals are then enabled to analyse these objective realities in order to learn how to be adapted to various situations created by these objective realities. These individuals are no longer forced by either nature or tyranny; they live themselves by following their free will based on their independent mind.

Some human individuals have been pursuing something can be explained as either an extra terrestrial perfect being or a criterion of enlighten individuals' mind which is unable to be reduced furthermore. They have never known what it exactly is while they have realised it shall certainly exist. They have called it as God or something God derive. Their main loyal aim is to discover their ultimate method and goal to liberate themselves. They have chosen to believe in God to detach their mind from the substantial world to objectively rationally observe and analyse themselves and their living world. Then, they have realised they exist "As I think, I am!".


- Liberalism

The interaction effect of all individuals' wills is called as God's invisible hand in the market mechanism. These individuals think themselves to act instead of being forced or taught by anything. As previously mentioned, the fundamental criterion basing their thought shall be God. So, their freedom of thoughts encouraging them to optimise their resource gain is based on God's will.

When individuals' free will is emancipated to enable them to act and think freely by following their rational independent mind, the distribution system and the sum of their utility are eventually miximised when they produce the merit which God expect us to derive. By contrast, those who follow other than God are suffering from their misery caused by maldistribution and lack of spiritual satisfaction.

Liberal individuals are those who materially and spiritually gain a lot, and a Liberal world is where many individuals accomplish it. Those who accomplish are those who are enlightened with their free independent mind and wise enough to know the invisible hand of the market distribution.


There are many modern self-proclaimed liberals who misunderstand these concepts. These liberals believe that their action principles and wills can be completely deviated from the substantial world mechanism. The criterion of individuals' mind differs from the criteria of the substantial world. However, the limitation of their available actions and the consequences derived by their actions are still influenced by the limited resource of the substantial world because their physical body is still a part of this substantial world.

Furthermore, there are interactions of the others acting and thinking in another way around. When their wills differ from each other, they are in conflict unless they agree with each other with an equitable contract with each other. There is no need of law & order and understanding of the market mechanism i.e. the invisible hand unless there is no resource limitation. By contrast, there is certainly a resource limitation, and they are indeed required to exist.

Many of these self-proclaimed liberals also defy the existence of God. They assume that all human individuals are unconditionally the essentially rational beings, and the criterion of their rationales is created by human individuals' own will instead of endowed by an extra terrestrial, God, as they defy the existence of any extra terrestrial. Nevertheless, since more human individuals started denying the existence of God as the criterion of their mind in the modern era, more humans have lived servilely without seeking any noble reason to live.

Although these self-proclaimed liberals claim that the detachment from divinity will lead them to create an alternative transcendental rationale of their mind, the observed reality seems to be far away from their expectation. Regardless of various debates about the necessity of religion, it seems to be highly suspicious to expect human-beings themselves are able to create their alternative universal principle which is expected to function as though it were a substitute of God.


These self-proclaimed liberals argue that religions are irrational, the classical Liberalism (The legitimate Liberalism) is incomplete, and their claiming rational secularism is the best alternative option. But, the age of their claiming rational secularism is only a few decades meanwhile various world religions have existed for thousands years. These religions have developed various rationales within their norms and values which were were merely suitable to the contemporary time period just after a while this religion was established. Therefore, many of them revise and amend their norms and values gradually without deleting their irreplaceable fundamental principle, which is often called as the unmovable mover or the divine law, gradually to be adapted to this constantly changing world.

There is no norm and value naturally impregnable and rigid in the world: All norms and values are artificially created so that should be flexibly transformed, altered, newly created, and deleted. This change may occur either he nature, the antinomy of artificial concepts, or technology, the mixed factor of nature and artificial, evolves. Therefore, their norms and values might not perfectly fit in with what the current world requires to enable individuals to be happy all the time. Nonetheless, their wisdom having been assessed and evaluated through errors and trials is priceless and something should not be underestimated to consider about liberating individuals and establishing a liberal world.



Thursday, October 30, 2014

Political Compass Revised The Comparison between the Old and the New, Left and Right wing --- Part 3

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6. New Right-wing
The New Right-wing represents Neoliberalism, Utilitarianism, Objectivism, and the developmental dictatorship. This is the political ideology which many human individuals love to hate, and the previously introduced New Left-wingers regard of as their arch-enemy. Unlike the other political ideology groups on the other sides of spectrum, the New Right-wing does not offer any sweet-sounding dream song.

The other political ideology groups on the other sides of spectrum may provide them with some instant satisfaction for promoting their superstition and their rights to act and acquire something. However, these ideologies are less likely to induce the prosperous consequence they would want to induce. These individuals only believe that their believing policy induces the prosperous outcome meanwhile they are not practically guaranteed at all.


The New Right-wing supports the justice determined by the equitable reward and punishment rather than the principle. The incentive to reward for something profitable and comfortable and to punish for something deteriorating the living standard and violating fairness is effective in order to keep the stable and productive distribution and the stable and progressive order. In addition, the principle base of law and contracts should be simple but flexible and practical rather than an ideal abstract one.

As same as the Old Left-wingers, they think highly of the responsibility of acquiring right and liberty and the inevitable conditions imposed by the objective realities so that they insist on the equitable reward and punishment instead of protecting the unconditional right based on the abstract principle. Their difference from the Old Left-wingers is whether they regard of liberty as an impregnable natural right or a useful tool to derive a desirable consequence.

The New Right-wingers regard of the social class as an inevitable factor under. But, unlike the Old Right-wing, the class stratification shall not be based on the zealous worship of superstition and the rigid social norm and value. This stratification process needs to be formed under what the objective realities such as the natural resource limitation, mathematical and scientific factors, and the market mechanism, of the world instruct as.

There is no need of law & order and any structured institutes such as family, company, government, and nation unless there is no resource limitation. Furthermore, there is no norm and value naturally impregnable and rigid in the world: All norms and values are artificially created so that should be flexibly transformed, altered, newly created, and deleted. This change may occur either he nature, the antinomy of artificial concepts, or technology, the mixed factor of nature and artificial, evolves.

Instead if either a human sovereign, such as monarchy and dictator, or an unproductive illogical superstition, individuals ought to be directed by these objectives and treated differently owing to the exogenous objective realities which are based on either the interaction effects of various individuals and the nature or the technological evolution not fully controllable by each one human individual’s effort. Then, individuals can optimise their resource distribution, the incentive to encourage them contributing to increase the greatest sum of the aggregate utility, and cohabit together under an agreeable contract with each other.

The level of both the law enforcement authority and the government intervention into economy depends upon different material and spiritual development of each civilisation and individuals themselves living there. When majority of individuals are rational enough to understand the previously mentioned objective realities and the mechanism to be adapted to, any authority over distribution system and contract creation and management is less likely to be demanded. By contrast, when either majority of individuals are ignorant and immature enough to be unable to understand he previously mentioned objective realities and the mechanism to be adapted to, then some rational paternalistic guardian selected by means of the feasibility to adapting to the objective realities to guide the majority.



Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The IS-LM Model is wrong!

* Preface *

Many students of economics may have studied about the IS-LM model, and then tackled with various homework assignments requiring to solve the excessively complex formulas and understand the theoretical reasoning behind them. These macroeconomic teachers always expect students to consume their precious time and energy to solve a ton of equations and memorise the theory to explain what these algebras denote. The mathematical formulas applied to this model are mostly linear and straightforwardly simple but all equations are interconnected to all the others. As long as they are familiar with economics in general, it should not be a big problem to understand the theoretical bases. But, these teachers require these students to interlink all the necessary theories which textbooks show to all equations. In addition, when the interpretation of these students differ from what the textbooks and the teachers expect, their mark tends to be lowered. Therefore, studying the IS-LM model is very exhausting.

Nevertheless, despite their efforts and well-understanding, there is a big scepticism about the IS-LM model. There are still many debates about whether or not this model successfully explain the real world economy. Of course, there is always a residual gap between what the prediction model estimates and what the real world phenomenon is in real. This is why the IS-LM model is a problem because of its complex tangle of a bunch of the equations. Especially in social science, when many mathematical equations are used and interlinked together, the total sum of the residuals tends to be significantly magnified, and the bias and the inconsistency of the model also tend to take place much often. Furthermore, these estimate mathematical models are not statistically tested as their formulas are merely based on the literature of economic theories. Therefore, it is really a natural fact that the IS-LM model often fails to fit into what really happens in real.

Even in the pure literature based economic theories and the logical economic theories also counter to the IS-LM model. This report introduces some significant counter-arguments against the IS-LM model as follows.


1. The Ricardian Equivalence


This theory implies that providing economic agents with extra income by the stimulus package does not successfully induce them to spend enough to stimulate their economy. When they prefer consuming/invest less and saving more at the present time to the extra consumption&investment, the extra income available by the tax cut and/or the government expenditure rather causes the negative impact on economy than the positive impact. The cost incurred by the tax cut and/or the government expenditure at the present time period has to be paid back in the future. As the economic stimulus becomes unsuccessful due to their preference of spending less than expected, the tax revenue in the future time period is lowered meanwhile the cost remains.

Those who disagree with the Ricardian Equilibrium argue that there are many economic agents with the low income insufficient to satisfy their needs and wants during the recessionary period so that they happily spend their extra income provided by the stimulus package to stimulate economy.

However, their extra income spent for consumption/investment is eventually transferred to owners of the means of production who produce the consumptions and own the assets invested. These owners will rather want to shift their income earnt from their capital investment to their assets in this downward market to either saving in their bank account or investing more active foreign markets.

When an economy become at the point that even these owners of the means of production become deprived enough to cling to the extra income provided by the stimulus package, the national government is less likely to be able to issue their bonds to incur the debt as the bond credibility is substantially lowered.


2. Liquidity Trap


The stimulus package by the monetary policy channel still does not work due to the liquidity trap. As mentioned in the Ricardian Equivalence, economic agents tend to be reluctant to spend their extra income available during the recession. Even the monetary policy is less likely to incur the cost like the previously mentioned fiscal policy channel, the result is identical to the previously mentioned scenario.

This phenomenon is explained as the liquidity trap. As shown in the graph above, although the extra money supply becomes available to transform to the extra income available for economic agents to spend, the effect is substantially low or even nothing under a very low liquidity level i.e. the investment motive is very low. The little effect on the interest rate reveals little impact of the money supply increase on economy. This means that the factors determining the interest rate such as the price indices, the business activity rate, and the value of this money currency in the foreign currency exchange market hardly changed by this monetary policy.

On the other hand, this interest rate shown in this LM graph merely implies the central bank interest rate, and this only partially affect on the banks' interest rate setting for their borrowers. The rest of this report explains the effect on these interest rates. The IS-LM model neglects explaining the following factors because the IS-LM model assumes all these factors are positively correlated to what it indicates in the model. Nonetheless, the more real economy is obviously different from this false assumption.


3. Under the Banking Monopoly in case of Risk Neutral


The supporters of the IS-LM model assume that their margin rate tends to be always positively correlated to the central bank interest rate so that the final interest rate for both investment and saving is always controlled by the central bank interest rate affected by the fiscal and monetary policy.

The IS-LM model is based on the assumption that all or majority of private banks and the other financial institutes are under the perfectly competitive market. By contrast, the real world economic situation is even not close to this assumption and actually far away from it. They are in the less competitive market due to the nature of the financial industry and market.

The interest rate is the price of money rent and borrowed. So, the private banks and the other financial institutes need to add the extra rate on the central bank interest rate after borrowing from the central bank to rend their money to their customers in order to compensate for the renders' service cost and reward.

Also, in a market economy, the characteristics and the quality of the financial service is heterogeneous to each other, and the demand is severely affected by their geographical situations e.g. access to customers and clients (both quantitative and qualitative), cultural attitudes toward finance, and the infrastructure for obtaining information and technology available there.

On the top of the service quality issue, the service users are difficult to change their service providers often as much as the mainstream economists assume due to the contract binding them together and the transaction cost to close and open their bank accounts. So, these service users are more likely to be bound to their already contracted financial services.

All in all, the market nature is far more monopolistic owing to these aspects. Then, the interest rates are set at the quantity of money invested where the marginal revenue becomes equal to the cost which is the interest payment for savers for this case. So, the quantity invested is lower than the quantity at the investment and saving intersection, and the interest rate charge for borrowing is always significantly way higher than the interest rate payment for savers.

The interest rate payment for savers may be affected by rise of the central bank interest rate increase but not often by fall of the central bank interest rate unless the market is very competitive. These financial service providers take advantage of this situation so that the interest rate payment for savers often tend to be notably lower than the interest rate charge to borrowers.

The following charts explain the different situations to set the final interest rates.

3.1. When the Central Bank Interest Rate is high


When the central bank interest rate is high, then the interest rate paid to savers is adjusted to be equal to the central bank interest rate.

The quantity of money invested is adjusted to the point where the marginal revenue from the return from investment intersects with the central bank interest rate, and then the interest rate charged for investment becomes higher as the central bank interest rate becomes higher.


3.2. When the Central Bank Interest Rate is low


When the central bank interest rate is low enough to be able to split from the investors' profit margin, then no change of both interest rates tends to take place as shown in the graph above.

This aspect completely contradicts what the IS-LM model assumes. As the market is less competitive, the monopoly power is stronger enough to maintain their high interest charge for investment payment unchanged.


3.3. The extreme case: The Central Bank Interest Rate is either zero or minus



In this extreme case which seems to occur frequently under the world economic crisis period nowadays, many central banks of this world have set their interest rate notably close to zero. Even some claim that they should set the rate zero.

Nonetheless, as shown in the previously mentioned mechanisms, the previously mentioned interest rate setting under the low liquidity, the money supply offered by the central bank with a sizably low interest rate hardly stimulates economy.

The interest payment for savers cannot be set below zero because they will no longer save in these banks or any other financial institutes setting such a negative interest rate.


4. Risk Taking Patterns

On the top of the gap between the interest rates, the IS-LM model over-simplifies the investment pattern influenced by the psychological characteristics of banks, investors, and other financial administrators.

What should be concerned is that the interest rate setting based on the investment volume is not always counter-cyclical to the business cycle, and not all economic agents are risk neutral as many mainstream macro-economists tend to assume.

The following examples are based on the situation of the fiscal and monetary policy is tightened to repress the economic boom or the recession repressing the aggregate income level.

The Y_t denotes the aggregate income invested to economy by these investors, and X_t denotes the investment safety (A higher value indicates the lower investment risk).


4.1 Risk Neutral: The IS-LM Curve assumes all agents are as such


This is the way which the risk neutral agents regularly react to the business cycle downturn causing the aggregate income shrinking.

They simply reduce the investment volume, and passively react to the investment risk change.

The IS-LM model may work as long as all the economic agents act as such.


4.2. Risk Averse


The risk averse economic agents put priority on their investment safety to their nominal income gain from their investment volume.

When their investment opportunity becomes more limited, they tend to take this situation warning of losing their business opportunity and potential collapse of their investing clients.

Even in the case where the fiscal and monetary policy represses the booming economy, they imagine about the negative side effect of the over-expansion which the policy alerts, and then they prefer preparing for the worst case scenario.

In particular during the recession, more agents tend to become the risk averse because their perspective tends to be more pessimistic about the future.

All in all, the income downturn exaggerates the investment discouragement furthermore.


4.3. Risk Lover


What the mainstream macro-economists supporting the IS-LM model ignores is this psychological characteristics of economic agents the risk loving attitude toward investment.

When the macroeconomic level of the aggregate income goes down during either the policy tightening or the recession, these risk loving investors start investing more in order to compensate for their loss by the downturn. Even though their action notably increases, they tend to be willing to invest a lot for increase the nominal investment return furthermore.

Their prior objective is to maximise the gross income growth despite the high risk reducing the average expected investment return. So, they will either maintain the current investment volume or even increase the volume in spite both the investment risk, the high central bank interest rate, and the high tax and/or the less government expenditure.

In particular during the economic bubble, an euphoria severely affects people's mind enough to lose their rationality. So, they often tend to become the risk lovers while the economic bubble.



5. Risk Premium in case of the Perfect Competition

Even in the Perfect Competition Model fails in the real investment mechanism because it ignores the interest rate influenced by the risk premium of investment. When renders invest, they add the extra interest rate charge on the top of the risk free interest rate which the mainstream economists supporting the IS-LM model use in the macroeconomic model.

The graph indicates the interest rate setting of a bank under the monopoly:

Under the monopoly or a less competitive market, these firms simply takes the cost incurred by the investment risk by spiriting the expense from their profit.

By contrast, in the perfect competition, it is very complicated to explain with only the saving=investment curves so that the graph will be a overly complicated mess if it attempts to explain the risk premium rate setting under the perfect competition.

So, this analysis introduces the cost denoted as C, which indicates the cost of attracting savers, the interest payment to the central bank, and then the risk premium all together.

The graph below sets the saving motive and the central bank interest rate as rigid so that takes account of only the investment motive and the risk premium.


In this case, the interest rate is not guaranteed to be counter-cyclical to the business cycle, and it can be acyclical or even possibly pro-cyclical to the business cycle.

Some economists argue that the risk premium factor may affect the investment cost more than the other factors such as the central bank interest rate, the saving ratio, and the aggregate income/productivity level.

So, the final interest rate influencing the investment volume may rather rise during the recession because the risk premium rises meanwhile the rate may fall due to the lower risk premium during the stable or booming period.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Political Compass Revised The Comparison between the Old and the New, Left and Right wing --- Part 2

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4. Old Left-wing
After civilisation of human individuals became matured enough to preserve the record of their knowledge and wisdom, they started thinking differently and the notion of individualism was born among these human individuals. They started realising that they are able to overwhelm the fear and improve their living standard by developing technology and individuals’ voluntary will under right procedures. They researched and developed the procedures from learning about the objective realities such as resource limitation in the substantial world, the market mechanism, and mathematical and scientific factors. They became also enlightened to know that their social norm and value can be flexibly changed by not sticking to their rigid tradition and loyalty to their human authorities. This enlightenment has enabled them to act and think by means of their own invincible will and mind influenced by neither their authority and superstition nor any others.

Various liberation and revolution in the early modern period originated from this enlightenment movement. These revolting individuals became sceptical about their old common sense basing their old ruling traditional status quo, and then started claiming that they would form and develop their civilisation far better than their traditional status quo. Then, they also started believing that there is an impregnable individual right naturally endowed to all individuals equally, and then started claiming for abolition of any social class.

Under this revolutionary ideal, technically speaking, all individuals must be treated equal as long as the distributable resource is available and these individuals claiming for their right bear responsibility to negotiate with the others. In addition, their freedom of speech, thoughts, and choices is widely permitted as it is their right. Those who believe in this ideal expect that the material and spiritual development is eternally unlimited as long as the power of their imagination prevails. But, many of them also affirm that there is a limitation to provide individuals with their right and require, and it is required to spend sufficient time to increase the resource to offer a higher degree of liberty for individuals. Therefore, individual right and liberty are mandate but highly conditional to provide under the natural restriction.


5. New Left-wing
Meanwhile some of these revolutionaries affirm that right and liberty for all individuals are conditional, the other newly emerging revolutionaries argue that they shall be unconditional. These new radicals explain that their scientific ethical theory enables individuals to acquire their ultimate freedom of living as long as they follow the required ethical code. These revolutionary radicals, collectively called the New Left-wingers in this essay, insist that individuals with their unlimited ethical imagination and aspiration rooted on it may overwhelm the barrier of the objective realities, and eventually control over these objective realities. Moreover, they claim that distribution of the rights and protection of individuals’ life security must unconditionally be a top priority over anything regardless of the disequilibrium condition of the resource distribution.

According to their idea, their logical inference to conceive what has been claimed as the objective reality is a false hypothesis deserving their enemy camps. They also claim that which fundamental principle, equivalent to a mathematical axiom, they refer to is far more important than the logical inference for deriving their desiring outcome. According to this theorem, all the logics are subjective because there is no unified objective measure like a mathematical axiom enabling their logical inference to self-contradict and self-verify itself. Therefore, they “invented” an axiom for ethics like an axiom of mathematics which, they think, leads individuals to preserve their unconditional human right. Then, they express that this invented ethical axiom ought to be enthrone in order to alter the whole world natural and social structure.

However, even though they say their new alternative principle shall be objective but this principle is invented from their mere faith which is equally subjective and irrational as much as the superstition maintained in the Old Right-wing world. The mathematical axiom is merely the mathematical theorem which is used in mathematical procedures and their theoretical application. This only exists, as a rule set by the peer groups, to enable the applied theories based on mathematical modelling to self-verify and self-contradict so that it only affect their validity of theories and hardly directly affects the decision making processes of daily politics and individuals’ personal lifestyle. By contrast, their claiming ethical principle as the axiom of our politics and personal life directly affects decision making processes and daily life choices. The fundamental concern is who and how to determine what the leading universal ethical principle is. The universality of moral is still debatable to judge whether the moral validity measurement is universal and relative. Therefore, even though they claim that their claiming ethical principle is an ultimate objective and universal, it still sounds hypothetical by means of the perspective of majority others who are either not familiar with the study of ethics or sceptical about their logical deduction.

It is also the matter of who control the resource distribution to adjust it to their claiming ethically desired state. It requires a huge degree of controlling both moral and material distribution in order to accomplish their desired state. First of all, it ignores the equitable reward and punishment for individuals to motivate to increase their productivity, discourage from causing civil-disorder, and maintain the stable and productive equilibrium of the distribution. When the justice is determined by the principle rather than the equitable reward and punishment, these peer groups who sound more plausible to these peer groups taking the actual controlling power over the court of judgement. In order to keep the stable and productive distribution and the stable and progressive order, then the positive equitable law is more desired. But, these New Left-wingers deny this aspect to zealously cling to their claiming ethically correct state which is merely a utopian dream world. They believe that, even though their claiming ethic base order may disturb the short term instability and unproductivity, the human individuals’ aspiration of pursing their ethics enables individuals to resist against the temporary harms. Thus, rather than the fairness, these New Left-wingers cling to expecting individuals’ genuine patience and collective responsibility based on altruism i.e. sacrificing individuality for collectively protecting all individuals’ survival and morally well-being.

... continue reading:

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Political Compass Revised The Comparison between the Old and the New, Left and Right wing --- Part 1


1. The Critique of the Original Political Compass
The original political compass based on the Left/Right (Collectivism/Capitalism) axis of the economic and the Authoritarian/Libertarian axis succeeds in explaining about the complex characteristics of political ideologies which are not enough to be explained by the single linear political spectrum. Nevertheless, this political compass analysis seems to over-simplify the philosophical backgrounds of these political theories. Firstly, it easily equalise Authoritarian to Theocracy, and Secularism to Libertarian. Secondly, it lacks differentiating between the teleological focus (consequence first) and the deontological focus (Duty/Will first). Overall, this cannot distinguish the philosophical intention, the rationality behind determining the degree of intervention.



First of all, this neglects considering about the necessary law enforcement whose principle is rational enough to be fair, and about the critical difference between chaos and self-governance. Many political philosophers affirm that, in order to secure liberty for individual citizens, the rule by law and its enforcement are essential. For instance, Montesquieu argued that liberty and equality require significance of law. The original political compass seems to mix up the rule by law with the law by rule.

Secondly, this original compass equalises the theocratic regimes to the authoritarian left. It can be easily imagined that these two camps, the secular authoritarian left and the theocratic authoritarian left, would strongly condemn its labelling based on this compass. Even though both Authoritarian-Leftists are anti-capitalism and highly authoritarian, their philosophical principle is completely opposite to each other.

Thirdly, the original political puts an excessive emphasis on distinguishing their policy practice and ideal, which majority of the New Left-wing nowadays believe in, from the state socialism imposed by the socialist nations under various Communist party regimes. Nonetheless, even though their external characteristics is different, their quality is still essentially identical to each other in both good and bad way. Both are fundamentalistic secular as though it were a fundamentalist monotheism without God, and supporting revolutionary subversion of the world. Only the difference is their process and the tools they apply to their aim.

2. How the Revised Political Compass is Revised
The revised compass presented here takes account of both the consequence they aspire to induce and the duty they are obliged to. Unlike the original political compass, the axis introduced does not mention about the scale of intervention by either government or any other autocratic institute such as a feudal lord, religious organisation, or private corporation into both economic and social schemes. By contrast, this revised compass based on these axes representing political thinkers’ action planning and mind principle enables to analyse how the intervention is applied more or less by means of their philosophical objective.
The vertical axis represents political thinkers’ action planning. It measures whether political thinkers focus on individuals’ right and duty or the overall consequence induced by individuals’ actions. The Deontologists on the left hand side scale claim that politics must put the highest priority on the universally absolute principle, basing individuals’ right and duty, all individuals ought to follow over any hypothetical estimation and thought. By contrast, the Teleologists on the right hand side scale think that politics has to be functional as a whole part so that the hypothetical estimation and thought to draw the big picture of their governing state are essential. Then, the Teleologists argue that fundamentally sticking to the absoluteness of moral right and duty is meaningless because these measure vary across different times, places, and occasions in order to form a stable functional structure in each different situation.

The horizontal axis represents political thinkers’ mind principle basing their action planning. It measures how the principle individuals’ actions and mind are base on. The bottom scale indicates the principle which individuals pursue in by means of their subjective wish, emotional attachment, and fear of the others. Those who obey this principle follow what individuals are taught or commanded to believe or what is wished to become true in real. The top scale indicates the principle guided by the objective realities such as resource limitation in the substantial world, the market mechanism, and mathematical and scientific factors. Those who understand this principle use analyses based on logical inference to determine their decisions and establish their rule.

3. How the 4 Category groups are characterised on this compass
- Old Right-wing
When the technological development and the civility of individuals are at the primitive level, politics tends to be a primitive form as the simplicity, more than the complexity, prevails to satisfy their needs and wants. These individuals living there are often under the constant threat of harsh disasters, fatal endemic diseases and persistent lethal assaults by neighbouring tribes. They have little methods to protect themselves from these threats because technology and civility of individuals living in this kind of world are significantly insufficient enough to prevent these threats. Then, their mind tends to dominated by fear, and their priority is to prevent their haunting fear. Furthermore, such a situation is less likely to enable individuals to form their rational mind set and voluntarily fairly compete and cooperate together. Therefore, the first political priority is establishing a strong cohesion bundling individuals to one community group.

In this case, resource distribution is too limited to distribute equally among all individuals, and there tends to be little technology and wisdom to develop their rationality encouraging fairness. So, the wealth and the opportunity are inevitably unequally as well as unfairly, and majority individuals tend to take their situation for granted. Under the substantially low resource and technology level, this unequal distribution prevented from a competition is an effective way to concentrate all the resources available to one authorised institute to use them for sustaining one strong figurehead charisma and mature the cultural standard within one family or religious organisational structure. In such a world, majority subordinates obey and unconditionally contribute to their powerful minority such as feudal lords and religious authorities because of the majestic charisma as an authority figure of their belonging community. These individuals strictly follow their retained tradition and worship a superstition which they are emotionally attached to. They feel secured under an umbrella of one cohesive community even with a sacrifice of their material well-beings and their individual rights.

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Monday, June 16, 2014

The Western ethics, Asian Life, Japan, and Libertarianism: Part 3

8. Concern on the interventionists’ view on the free market economy
Without a doubt, the free market economy is the most productive form of economy. The free market economy promotes individuals’ free voluntary will motivating them to do what they are the best at doing and/or they desire to do. It also allows individuals to freely trade their goods and services so that they offer the best possible rewards for their best possible efforts and merits put into practice. Therefore, this economy naturally encourages individual humans to provide their best possible commitments increasing the aggregate productivity without any artificial forcible enforcement.

The majority of nations nowadays have partially adopted the free market economy to their national economy to a certain degree because they have realised its previously mentioned huge benefits especially since the fall of the command economy in the socialist collectivist nations. The USSR-style socialist/collectivist economy, the big historic experiment using several national economies themselves, failed. Then, this historic event has proven that the command economy is materially and ethically failure.

Some of these nations experienced in the radical political transformation in which their mainstream political regime was replaced by another. The other nations sustained the regime of their status quo by simply replacing their command economy with the mixed economy. Only Cuba and North Korea are the nations remaining their staunch command economy. But, North Korea is still suffering from crucial despairs such as famine, high mortality, and considerably low standard of cultural living. Cuba has gradually been adapting the market economy so that her economy should be categorised more as the mixed economy nowadays.

The mixed economy, the blending of the command economy and the free market economy, seems to be the popular form of national economies nowadays. The reason why most of the all nations do not encourage the pure free market economy is the misguided scepticism created by Marxist and the self-proclaimed Keynesian economists. Even though there are critical theoretical failures and deluded judgements in their theories, their teachings were cogent enough to convince many people to believe as though they were true. The contemporarily popular Reactionism against the virtue ethics and individuals’ free voluntary will also reinforced the cogency of these theories.

Their scepticism is based on their prejudice about the world economic crisis in 1929. As mentioned in the previous chapter, both Marxists and the Keynesians disagree with the pure market economy. So, as soon as they observed the world economic crisis, they seriously thought that their predicted failure of the free market economy became true, and they were happy to observe that event. In addition, regardless of their diagnosis, their prescription was deluded as explained in the previous chapter. But, they thought that the crisis was just the opportunity to advertise their prescription to put it into practice in the real world. This is a typical repugnant personality of theoreticians explained by Lev Tolstoy in his novel War and Peace. These theoreticians expect to observe that the world encounters with troubles when the world does not follow their theory. Then, they take an advantage of this situation to promote their theory as the right salvation.

In 1929, the spirit of the free market economy was already deteriorated due to the epidemic influence of the previously mentioned Reactionism originated from Kantian philosophy and innovated by the other modern idealists and the nihilists. Even though the contemporary world still partially retained the free market economic structure, the free market economy was compromised under the decaying spirit of the virtue ethics and the free voluntary will. The other forms of economic policy do not necessarily require individual citizens’ voluntary participation into sustaining and developing their economy because their appointed authorities and specialists manage handling their economy and politics. By contrast, the free market economy requires individual citizens’ competence and commitment are unavoidable to sustain and develop economy further as well as stabilising their politics.

These interventionists, supporting the mixed economy, who are nihilistic about the free market economy blame the market structure of the pre-crisis period where the monopoly by few big enterprises prevailed. They argue that the reason why the contemporary Anglo-Saxon countries the USA and Great Britain experienced the crisis was due to their free market economy. They insist that the monopoly, causing the unequal distribution and the deprivation of majority citizens, naturally takes place in the free market economy in the pre-crisis world economy.

Nevertheless, this is totally a fallacy because no monopoly can be naturally created as long as individuals’ free voluntary will is largely permitted. When the monopoly dominated in the pre-crisis period, the free market had already being compromised since the state government in these Anglo-Saxon countries operated the protectionist policy preventing their enterprises from the world free market competition. This protectionism prevented their citizens from the opportunity to purchase the inexpensive products from abroad. Furthermore, the state governments’ recommendation for their favourite enterprises to do their public work projects caused the discrimination between suppliers in the domestic market. Even before the New Deal programme started, the government subsidy and the government assisted privilege for a certain social status existed to artificially prevent the new market entrants. All in all, the monopoly was artificially created by the government intervention in these countries at the pre-crisis periods.

In addition, these anti-free market interventionists tend to assume that all economic agents in any market participate into their economy with a passive attitude. They hardly realise that economic agents often become very proactive to influence their market situation. For example, they create their product advertisements to attract customers when they consider about newly entering into a particular market. The blockage of the information flow disrupting these new market entrants’ advertisement is not a free market mechanism. Therefore, when the market entrants struggles to enter the market, it can be because either their goods and services are not attractive to the potential customers or the market freedom is disrupted by the tyranny of authority or mobs.

These interventionists also excessively focus on the real market whereas they tend to neglect focusing on the capital/financial market mechanism in the free market economy. The investors are willing to invest to the assets whose future growth expectation is at least positive, and avoid concentrating on investing to the safety assets and the already high value assets. These assets’ value tends to have already reached at the significantly low marginal growth rate. By contrast, the asset value of some small and medium sized enterprises and the low value assets still have a potential to increase their value with a high marginal revenue of investment. So, even though some new entrants do not have their own saving enough to spend for their initial investment cost, the rich investors will be willing to invest to them as long as their business looks becoming prospering.

Regarding to the ethical issue about the monopoly, it is really questionable to categorise the monopoly as the cause of the stagnation. For example, the contemporary market share of the oil industry was significantly small that the monopoly of this market share was not significant to the market competition. Also, this industry required the big scale enough to diminish the marginal total variable costs so that the investment needed to be concentrated into one or few companies into this kind of industries. When several companies participate into to that kind of industries, the total cost per company will be high because their business scale is too small to diminish the marginal costs. Therefore, the monopoly by one or few can occasionally offer more reasonable prices than the competition by many.

Moreover, when the product price becomes high relative to income, this simply means that the demand exceeds the product supply capacity, which causes the price rise, and/or the excess supply of the unproductive labour force, which causes the income down fall. The excess demand and the unproductive labour supply are also related to the excess human population relative to the natural resource available. After the industrial revolution, the human population has been exponentially growing meanwhile the technological growth offering the high product supply has been only growing arithmetically. Since then, the labour supply has become more exceeding the product supply capacity. In the free market economy, individual citizens are allowed to bargain their wage in order to match their need and want as they are no longer enforced to participate into economic activities as slaves with the fixed wage. Only in the command economy, of either feudalism or socialism, the slave labour exists because they are commanded to work under the wage fixed by the tyranny.

The naiveness discouraging the self-esteem of individual humans prevents the liberalisation of both market structure and personal life style. Their false belief imprinted by both the modern idealism and the postmodern nihilism. The current compromised form of the world market and political economy remain to be stagnated. The haunting economic and communal stagnation is bad for not only the material wealth but also the mental/spiritual state. This stagnation induces people to suffer from boredom, which is the true root of all the evils (Kierkegaard, 1813), and the loss of their means of living which results in the anomie causing people committing suicide and many kinds of dysfunctional behaviour (Durkheim, 1897).

In order to expect the growth i.e. the progress whose level was seen in the ancient Greco-Roman civilisation and the early modern Western world, the following two conditions are needed. The world market needs to be more liberalised. The virtue ethics motivating individuals’ self-confidence in their free voluntary will needs to be reincarnated. Thus, the ethical counter-revolution against the mixed economy promoted by the interventionists, the materialistic nihilist against the free individualism, shall be held out.

9. Population: Rising British Industrialisation and Failing Japan
Thomas Malthus, the remarkable British classical economist, thus had warned of discouraging the excess population growth during his time period when Britain enjoyed their material prosperity in her post industrial revolution time periods. Socialists whinge how miserable deprivation the contemporary working class citizens were in then. However, their analysis to conclude as they whinge is very questionable and sound awfully superstitious.

The socialist mythology about the industrial revolution and the post industrial revolution world is simply a propaganda scripture. Pseudo-intellectuals and irrational mobs are frustrated due to their madness but want to believe they are suffering from a conspiracy plotted by some others. So, this socialist propaganda accusing the post industrialisation world is based on the conspiracy these mad people wish to believe in. Then, they have become socialists after being deluded by socialism i.e. the anti-industrialisation. This is also called the historical revisionism because these socialist revisionists revise the interpretation of the world history to translate into their favourable way of understanding. This is why their anti-industrialisation perspective contains plenty questionable stories and illogical superstitious fallacies.

The working class population was dramatically rising even at the level that Malthus warned of the excess population growth. The infant mortality dropped down due to the notable aggregate productivity after the industrial revolution. Human-beings in civilisation feel secured to reproduce when they are optimistic about future. It is the same rationale as the financial investment. These people at the contemporary time period were so optimistic about the future of their prospering nation that they were relieved enough to manipulate their population fast.

The poverty existed inevitably because of the previously mentioned population overgrowth in the contemporary Great Britain. Even in the prospering moment, the error such as an excess population growth relative to the production supply capacity so that there always needs some spontaneous error correction. The poverty inevitably takes place when the population becomes excess compared to the productivity capacity and the natural resource storage. Furthermore, the working class citizens tend to reproduce more than the middle and the upper class counterparts. The working class citizens tend to spend their energy and time for their sensual pleasure because their cultural standard is too low to pursue in the other forms of amusements. Therefore, the working class citizens were more likely to suffer from the poverty than the middle and the upper class counterparts. But, this problem would have eventually been solved by knowing they needed to correct their own error, the excess reproduction.

All the other negative interpretations about the industrialisation by socialist historical revisionists are misguided. In Great Britain, the rapid productivity growth stimulated by the market liberalisation and the philosophical enlightenment liberalising individual citizens’ mentality has improved the living standard for all British citizens. The sanitary condition was dramatically improved from the pre-industrialisation to the post-industrialisation. The literacy rate rose up due to the flexible information flow and the freedom of speech and competition in the free market economy. Despite the falling down working class wage, their real wage went up dramatically due to the average price decline caused by the aggregate productivity increase. The property right and its equal legal application to all the citizens, the fundamental complements of the market economy development, has been highly emphasised. So, all individuals in all the classes have been benefitted and enjoyed their freedom and autonomy.


The reverse case scenario has taken place in Japan after the economic bubble burst. Since the economic bubble burst in 1990s, Japanese population has been notably declining due to Japanese citizens’ pessimism about their future. This downfall has occurred due to the inevitable economic decline after the artificially stimulated economic growth in the post-WW2 era. Afterward, since this economic collapse only the remaining national debts and the loss in the future political direction have been left out, and all the other Asian nations’ productivity level were catching up with Japan. So, Japan has lost its initiative in the global economy and its uniqueness in Asia. Due to the lack of the virtue ethics and the individuality in Japan explained in the precious chapter, majority of Japanese have lost their own will to improve and enrich their life. All these aspects induced Japanese to feel a strong pessimism about their future.

The population decline itself is beneficial to a nation and individual citizens living there. Because Japanese life expectancy and health condition are high enough to be the world top level, the mortality rate is considerably low. Then, the birth rate should be rather restricted in order to avoid the excess population by comparison with the capacity of the natural resource reserve and the available technology. The negative aspect of the decreasing birth rate is that the working population is declining against the growing retirement population so that the tax contribution per capita of the workforce for looking after the retired elders has become painfully high. But, the low population implies less unemployment and more demand for the workforce. So, the average income per capita may rise unless the productivity goes down. Therefore, the population decline is not the cause of the fall of the productivity: The negative perspective about the expected future productivity growth decreases the motivation of reproduction. The productivity loss is fundamentally caused by the philosophical and political structural background.

The poverty in the current Japan takes place due to the dramatic fall down of the aggregate productivity whose speed is faster than the population decline. Japan used to maintain its noble ethics retained from the political transformation inspired by the Western legal philosophies and the Continental Confucianism in 19th century. This noble ethics has been the key engine to enable Japanese to become able to create their own objectives i.e. their life goals. But, as time passed, their competence of preserving this ethics became gradually deteriorated. Then, their aim to live something productive has been lost so that the power of their voluntary will is also lost out. Therefore, the nihilism has been spread among Japanese citizens, and their mental level has turned back to be primitive.

As long as a nation rely on the philosophically inconsistent mixed economy, the overall productivity capacity will be gradually ebbing. The voluntary will and the self-esteem of individuals are fundamentally necessary to enable them to be self-governable and self-sustainable to raise their own national economy themselves. In order to encourage the sustainable and active economic growth, each individual citizen must have their own voluntary will to create and follow their own clear objectives to achieve what they are good at. The currently ongoing ethical nihilism perpetuates the lack of strong mind growing their voluntary will. Unless Japan introduces a political economy encouraging Japanese self-governability based on a strong voluntary will, innovation and proactivity, the essential keys to stimulate their economy and their personal freedom, will stay stagnated.

The unavoidable problem of the whole Asia is that these Asian nations will inevitably import this harming characteristics of Japanese political economy when they imitate Japanese political economic model. Unfortunately, almost all Asian nations have adopted the Japanese style mixed economic model to their national economy, and the epidemic of the nihilism hindering the current Japanese political economy will gradually be spread.




Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Western ethics, Asian Life, Japan, and Libertarianism: Part 2


4. Capitalism is different: Asian inconsistent economic models
There is no such an economic model called capitalism: There are only three types of the economic system, the command economy, the free market (The laissez-faire) economy, and the mixed economy. The term called capitalism is rather political than economic. It is an awkward prejudice to frequently quote capitalism to describe about a national economic model.

The prejudice about the economic model has taken place since the Cold War broke out. The world was divided into the two sides, the (Soviet) socialist side and the liberal democratic side. The socialists and their sympathisers frequently called the liberal democratic side as the capitalist side so that the others have started using the term “capitalism”. So, even some mixed economies which are close to the command economy were categorised into the capitalist side as long as they oppose to the Soviet and its satellite nations.

Nowadays, there is an ultimately awkward expression that the socialist nations ruled by a communist party adapted capitalism, and some call its political economy as capitalistic communism. Well, this is just an ultimately inconsistent definition, and it does never sound natural at all. Then, the basic definition of economic models has to be recalled in order to prevent such confusion about naming a national economy. These communist parties have simply transformed from the traditional pure command economy to the mixed economy combining their totalitarian political economy with the market economy. This is that simple to explain when the basic knowledge of economics is remembered.

This kind of phenomena has frequently taken place in not only the former Soviet leaning nations but also the liberal democratic counterparts in Asia. Japan, South Korea, and Singapore are the typical examples.

In Japan, even before the Cold War period, there are many Marxists and their sympathisers in the political administration. They were not officially categorised as Marxists or the Soviet spies only because they supported either Japanese monarchy or the United States of America (The USA) and her liberal democratic satellites, or both. During the WW2, Japanese economy was a complete resemblance to the Stalinist Russian economy, and Japan was not regarded as Stalinist because it kept its monarchy. Then, Japan adapted the free market economy after it restored democracy (The market economy is an unavoidable essence of democracy). However, even though Japan politically adapted the market economy, its economy and culture are still far from those of the market economy. The collectiveness is still tremendously intense in both economic and cultural norms and values in Japan.

South Korean mixed economy has been very close to the command economy since its modernisation in 20th century. South Korean economy is controlled by the monopoly of few big corporations which are realistically under the control of South Korean government. So, the market competition mechanism hardly works because South Korean economic agents are not free from the monopolistic power of the corporations and therefore their authoritarian government. Actions and plans of all South Korean economic agents are severely constrained and controlled by the performances and the decision of these authoritarians.

Unlike Japan and South Korea, Singaporeans were much more eager to adapt the free market economy as their fundamental political economic principle. However, in such a geopolitically unstable region during the Cold War, Singapore could not let all people living in Singapore free, Singapore needed to unify all people’s political and moral decision and will in order to avoid the chaotic conflicts in Singapore. Thus, the contemporary Singaporeans thought that an intense paternalism was required to stabilise Singaporean politics as well as economy.

Singaporean political economy has been then called as the developmental dictatorship. The contemporary Singaporean government insisted that the political stability was their first priority to enable Singaporean economy to grow at the initial stage. After both the geopolitical situation is stabilised and all Singaporean citizens start identifying themselves as autonomous Singaporean citizens who are loyal to their own nation, Singaporean political economy should be decentralised to become close to the free market model, Singaporean government have planned to.

After the Cold War, Asian mixed economies from both the former Soviet leaning side and the liberal democratic side have been regarding Japanese political economic model based on the mixed economy as their role model for their economic development plan. Because Japan has been the only one developed independent Asian nation in the world for such a long time, these Asians started thinking that their nations could become like Japan when they imitate Japanese model. Even they promise to determine they are anti Japan, they are implicitly interested in imitating the Japanese model. On the other hand, both Japan and the other Asian emerging nations do not seem to have realised the critical failure and the expected long term instability of Japanese economy.


5. A digression: Marxism and Keynesian
Before talking about the political economics of Japan and other Asian nations, the belief knowledge and disadvantages of Marxist and Keynesian economic theories need to be revised. They are critically important to know in order to understand the nature of the Asian mixed economies.

The classical economic theories strictly warn that the supply volume is precious and difficult to increase meanwhile the demand volume is always fluctuant and easy to exceed the supply capacity. The supply volume is rigidly constrained by the resource and the technology available at the current moment. The notably low demand volume relative to the available supply discourages both discovery of furthermore extractable natural resources and the further technological innovation. But, the excess demand volume causes various negative impacts on economies such as the extinction of all resources and production inventories and the high price inflation which causes political havocs and decreases the real income of all the people. Therefore, the demand volume has to be repressed all the time not to exceed the supply capability.

This economic common-sense has been neglected since the two schools, Marxism and Keynesian, of economics emerged. These two schools of economics have completely replaced the previously mentioned common-sense of the classical economics with the dangerous witchcraft misleadingly regarding the demand volume determines the supply volume.

Marxism blames the rich individuals for their ultimate monopolising the right of extracting the available supply and enticing the rest poor individuals to work for the interests of these rich. Marxism affirms that the redistribution of the supply and the unnecessary desire of the rich is the key to stabilise the demand.

However, the problem is that Marxist model requires enabling one intensive autocratic government holding the monopolistic power to diversify the whole distribution flow. So, this implies that replacing the monopoly by few with the monopoly by one. Even though the autocratic government have initially pledged to keep the equal and fair distribution, the government officials can change their mind to deserve themselves more than others instead of deserving the all equally.

Marxism excessively arrogates the responsibility to the rich individuals and overestimates the morality of the poor. There is no guarantee that all the educated poor individuals become altruistic and humble. The fundamental problem is how to measure the feasible amount of want to lead to the optimised ideal distribution. The majority of human desire seems to be unlimited so that the poor individuals may demand more than they can afford when they start being able to interfere the entire distribution system to deserve for their will. This will thus eventually results in either the asymmetric distribution, which is more unequal than the free market economy, or equally impoverishing all individuals.

Keynesian theory and its followers Keynesians assume that the demand stimulus induces the increase in the supply capacity. They even claim that the excess demand is not always harmful because it encourages the eager economic agents to discover and/or improve the new way to constantly increase the supply capacity. These Keynesians insist on the different method of the redistribution from Marxist counterparts: Keynesians support the government intervention while maintaining the market mechanism itself. Keynesians attempt to control the climates of economy, instead of commanding the whole economy, by the positive intervention whose intervention method varies across the different climate situations.

Although the original idea of John Maynard Keynes was not straight-forward like their assumption, his theory has been over simplified since these self-proclaimed Keynesians interpreted Keynes’s analyses. Keynes only attempted to explain what the classical economists had not mentioned such as the various different characteristics of the investment motive, the various real causes of the economic stagnation, and the short term effect of the money supply. He could provide the articulately analysed diagnosis about the economic stagnation meanwhile he was still struggling to prescribe the effective and stable solution.

The government intervention was only one of his prescriptions, and he could have thought various other solutions. So, he was far more objective than these narrow minded simplified the fellow (self-proclaimed) Keynesians. Keynes only affirmed that it occasionally requires to stimulate the demand volume to match it with the supply capability to overcome from the economic stagnation. But, these (self-proclaimed) Keynesians misinterpreted it to be that the high demand is always required to keep the high supply capacity.

The common characteristic of Marxism and Keynesian is their pure materialism ignoring the ethical controversy about the involuntary force of the government economic intervention. Their goal purely focuses on the success in the material distribution, and severely neglecting the voluntary will and virtuous self-esteem individual human-beings.

Since Adam Smith invented economics, the high productivity can be achieved when individuals are allowed to think and act by means of their free voluntary will. When they are willing to do something by means of their own need and want, they are eventually doing better than being commanded. Furthermore, the full amount of information sets and the degree of individuals’ freedom are extended, they will be able to find their own way to improve and enrich their life.

The primary objective of Smith’s economic theory was to liberate people to live with a wide range of freedom of choices under their responsibility. This ethics retains the wisdom of encouraging individual human-beings to pursue in a virtuous way of life in which they voluntarily discover the true virtue themselves from Aristotle. The material well-beings such as the high aggregate productivity like Marxism and Keynesian regard highly of are important to provide individuals with more choices and more chance to acquire their virtuous life style. However, the high productivity is only one of the essential tools to achieve in an individual liberty and a virtuous life: Marxists and Keynesians have labelled the high productivity is the goal rather than the method/tool. Then, Asian nations have installed Marxism and Keynesian without knowing the wisdom retained from the classical economics and Aristotlean ethics.


6. Japanese economy, the model of Asian emerging economies, fails
There was the high political reason that Japanese government could be concentrated on stimulating their rapid economic growth: During the Cold War period just immediately after the WW2, because Japan was under the military protection of the USA, Japanese government was allowed to be concentrated on only economy and rarely take the military pressure from abroad and foreign diplomatic concerns into the consideration. But, at this essay, the low politics such as economics and cultural aspects are the main topic to be debated so that it focuses on the low political analyses. Also, it has to be remembered that the Marxist and Keynesian economic theories were dominant in the Japanese academics and the politics so that the contemporary Japanese mainstream economic policy makers were the interventionists encouraging the government interventionism into Japanese economy.

The remarkable rapid economic growth in the post war Japan has astonished people of the world. Nobody had predicted that an Asian nation could achieve in its gross domestic production (GDP) level surpassing all the European nations and then becoming the best next to the USA. Even the after the two decades recession from 1990s, Japan still keeps its high GDP. Many people have been believing that the intense government interventionist economic model of Japan is the key factor of succeeding in its rapid economic growth. So, many Asian nations from both the former (Soviet) socialist side and the liberal democratic side have admired this Japanese economy as their role model, and believed that they would be able to achieve the same rapid economic growth as Japan.

Nevertheless, the free market economists and the classical liberalist political philosophers have argued that the post war Japanese economic growth has rather been artificially, than naturally, stimulated. Because its artificiality of the growth stimulus, the negative side effect severely affected Japan after the economic bubble burst in 1990s. Of course there was a natural cause of the economic growth such as the remarkable technological innovation and the growth in the number of the diligent educated labour force. By contrast, the economic growth was too rapid to be recognised as natural.

The huge public work projects and the bankruptcy rehabilitation policy heavily fund by the government expenditure unnaturally over-stimulated the post war Japanese economic growth. The consequence after the bubble burst is the notoriously high national fiscal deficit which is almost twice as much as the current Japanese GDP. The government intervention perpetuated the private sectors’ reliance on the government fiscal assistance without rationalising their own fiscal management so that their management became inefficient.

In addition, the reliance of Japanese economy on the government intervention has enlarged the bureaucracy of Japan, which incurs the high public sector administration cost. As long as the size of the national bureaucracy is kept at the minimum optimum size, it helps the public sector economies and various other public administrations to run smooth and stable. But, the bureaucracy is a monopolistic structure, which is not under the pressure of competition, and is not competent to increase the economic productivity and activity alone by its nature. So, when the size expands larger than the optimum size, then its total cost exceeds its total benefit. Because the bureaucrats in Japan have secured their charisma and political authority, the heavy bureaucratic structure is severely difficult to diminish. Therefore, this costly bureaucracy still remains, and requires the government to spend a lot for sustaining it.

While the natural resource supply is abundant and there is a sufficient demand for the production supply, this interventionist policy continues stimulating the rapid economic growth. By contrast, when both the natural resource supply and the demand for the production supply go down, both the financial revenue goes down and they lose the opportunity for new projects. Then, the high fixed cost incurred by the inefficient management and the excess bureaucracy have caused a severe financial loss, and then the unemployment and the sunk cost incurred by the closing industries increase. This results in a huge loss of the government tax revenue and then the huge deficit.

The old Marxism which claims for restoring the pure command economy has been no longer convincing for majority citizens of the world since the USSR economy collapsed. This has meant that the experiment of the command economy of the old Marxism failed. Even almost all former socialist nations have installed the mixed economy, i.e. partially installed the market economy to their originally command economy, to improve their national economy. The experiment of the command economy has been proven that the market economy is essential for all national economies to sustain their economy especially after that experiment. Therefore, there are no longer many of those who claim for installing the command economy in Japan. Most of those who are in charge of Japanese economy are various different interventionists supporting the mixed economy. The voice of the free market economists for liberalising Japanese economy is still neither popular nor influential yet.

The hard-core interventionist economists have argued that this was the cyclical shock so that the government has been responsible for re-stimulating Japanese economy once more again. They believe that Japan can repay their national debts back when the tax revenue starts going up by the economic recovery. Their calculus indicates that the tax revenue and the international credibility of Japanese economy will be high enough to cover the extra cost incurred by the intervention programme.

The benign interventionist economists support the quantitative easing i.e. increasing the money supply to inject it into economy. They support purchasing the national debts and the company bonds with the extra money supplied by the central bank. Instead of the government expenditure requiring the tax revenue and/or incurring the national debts, supplying extra money suffers less from the political controversy because the taxation directly confiscates citizens’ income meanwhile the money supply does not directly. It may cause the depreciation of the currency value so that it may cause the high price inflation. But, these interventionists claim that the depreciation of the currency value will encourage the international demand for Japanese exports so that it will stimulate Japanese economy.

On the other hand, the estimation model of the interventionists is only based on their subjective assumption and logical inference. Unlike pure mathematics, the logical inference does not have an objective measurement, such as an axiom in mathematics, to be able to self-contradict itself. So, the base judgement for its validity is simply their belief. Therefore, the prediction based on their logical inference is more likely to be not objectively reliable. Furthermore, as it has been mentioned already, the demand, which affects the average revenue of enterprises, is fluctuant and unpredictable meanwhile the supply side factors such as the various costs are rigid and certain.

The optimistic aspect of Japanese is that some economists and academics have realised that Japanese economy needs to install the free market (the laissez-fare) economic policy. They insist on the free market economy to transform Japanese economy to the self-sustainable economy without the controversial government intervention. However, it takes a considerably long time length and Japanese people’s patience to overcome from the stagnation caused by the still haunting costly assets retained from the past interventionist economic policy. So, the interventionists putting emphasis on the quick short term solution tend to be popular among Japanese citizens even though it will repeats the same negative consequence in the longer term.

As mentioned in the previous chapters, Japanese lack individuals’ own voluntary will and the objective reasoning skill born in the virtue ethics invented by Aristotle and developed by various philosophers in the Western and the Middle-Eastern world. Individual’s motivation encouraged by voluntary will is essential to sustain and develop the free market competition. The objective reasoning skill is required to maintain their individuals’ virtue to be self-governable as well as to admit the autonomy of other individuals. Meanwhile the Western nations have matured individuals’ own voluntary will and the objective reasoning skill through the long time period, Japan and Asia are still not familiar with it.

The current Japanese stagnation is also caused by the lack of these previously mentioned cultural and spiritual backgrounds. Japanese mass expect their authorities to sort their political and economic problems all the time, and lack the consciousness of respecting for individual autonomy. They are not culturally and spiritually enlightened enough to become proactive to overcome from this stagnation. Then, they overly rely on their authorities, such as government politicians, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs of big corporations, for solving this problem. They have not realised that, under the democracy, citizens have to be proactive to be responsible for the government’s and other authorities’ decisions. Instead, they expect their obeying authorities to be altruistic to be responsible for their life.

Who else can be a saintlike enough to be altruistic especially when this person gains the monopolistic power to control over distribution of resources and wealth? The probability of such a person comes into this world might be once thousands years. So, when this monopolistic power is held by several human-beings, they can take an advantage of using this power for their own interests, and it is generally the innate characteristics of human-beings.

Moreover, whenever some courageous autonomous individuals attempt to change this situation to expect a significant progress, these Japanese mass simply think of this courageous ones as deviants and hardly understand their progressive mind. Because they lack the notion of respecting individual autonomy, the unique individuality is the target of condemnation and individuals severely struggle to be free from any cohesive peer pressure. This typical characteristics of the tyranny of mass dominates not only in Japan but also many parts of Asia. Thus, it encounters with various tough challenges to evolve these Asian nations to the further progress.


7. Rise of the Nihilism in the West
Lack of both voluntary will and objective reasoning skill is crucially disadvantageous for the healthy stable economic growth. The virtue ethics, which was invented by the ancient Greek philosophers, most notably Aristotle, innovated by Aquinas and the enlightened European modern Liberalist philosophers, and preserved by Libertarians in the U.S.A., has encouraged both voluntary will and objective reasoning skill. This was the essential qualities required to fuel the growth of the market economy, the self-sustainable political economic system securing and promoting individuals’ autonomy, freedom of choice, and material and spiritual prosperity. Because Asia does not historically and ethnically retain the philosophical root of seeking in this kind of the virtue ethics, Asia experiences the inevitable stagnation.

Nonetheless, this sort of the stagnation taking place in Asia is also recognised in the entire post-WW2 Europe and the rest part of the current Western world. Majority of the Western individual citizens have lost their aspiration for seeking their individual liberty as well as their pride in their own self esteem. Then, they have become more reliant on the collective cohesive force which promises to take responsibility for these citizens’ life security at the sacrifice of their individual liberty.

Something like an epidemic disease castrating their mind seems to have stricken since the 20th century. Since then, they have started thinking of having their own objective reason to pursue their liberty as hypocritical and nonsense. In addition, they have become more reliant and overprotective of themselves rather than being self-confident and free. This tragic phenomenon is not ignorable in not only Asia but also the large part of the Western world especially Europe.

The nihilism is the name of this epidemic disease spread among the Western nations in the postmodern world. In 20th century, the inventive but dangerous ethics was established by an eccentric philosopher called Immanuel Kant stimulated the radical criticism of reasoning in Europe. This was a radical reaction against the virtue ethics regarding highly of individuals’ free voluntary will and their objective reasoning skill.

This Kantian ethical Reactionism firmly contradict individuals’ freedom of choice based on their autonomous voluntary will because these choices and will have to be assessed by the absolutely true ethically correct universal moral principle (subjectively determined by Kantian ethics) before putting them into practice. Moreover this ethical Reactionism also defies objective reasoning process because there is no purely objective ration without fulfilling the ethical axiom (subjectively determined by Kantian ethics). Afterward, the objectivity has been interpreted as the hypothetical and the free voluntary will and individuals’ self-esteem have been seen as vice.

The ethical principle of Kantian and the others influenced by Kant was too abstract to define what it actually is as well as too hypocritical to define it as universal. It is an extremely arrogant attempt to hypocritically define what is absolutely universally valid and plan everything by following their believing absolute principle as though human-beings had become God. They were tremendously sceptical about the inevitable nature and its spontaneity so that they suspected they would be able to control the nature without admitting the inevitability and the spontaneity.

The characteristics of Kantians is resemblance to the pre-Aquinasian Catholics and any fundamentalist Christians. In spite of the characteristic that Kantians deny the existence of God, they believe in something equivalent to the monotheistic God, and their devotion is a complete resemblance to the fundamentalist monotheist. They have simply replaced the traditional theisms with a Godless monotheism, and replaced genuine liberty with their claiming alternative liberty. Since then, the charismatic authorities, such as academic peer groups, political pressure groups, and financial specialists, have been more likely to have their cohesive peer power pressure to convince the rest.

Kantian ethics influenced to create the modern idealism (Basing socialism and Rawlsian political liberalism) and the postmodern nihilism (includes not only the Existentialism but also the Pragmatism and the Logical Positivism). These two categories are significantly different from each other: The former insists on the absolute and universal ethical principle as the only reason for all individual humans. The latter denies the existence of ethical principle and then affirms moral is relative to different time, places, and occasions. The common characteristic of them is that both are sceptical about each individual’s own free voluntary will and objective reasoning process based on it. The former philosophy does not provide the freedom for the voluntary will and the latter rejects the notion of the free voluntary will itself. The former, the modern idealism, used to be strong in the earlier 20th century whereas the latter, the postmodern nihilism, has gradually become more influential than the former since the mid-20th century.

The “planning” had been the boom during the age of the modern idealism as they overestimated their artificial power of their subjective determination meanwhile they underestimated the spontaneous power of the nature. They were called the collectivists or the old socialists. These collectivists had an intense faith in their abstract absolute universal moral principle defined by their subjective prejudice, which caused the dreadful political fanaticism in the 20th century world. With their faith, they put their intensive command economy under the intolerant undemocratic totalitarian politics, which eventually failed due to neglecting the inevitable spontaneous nature of the market mechanism. These events have highly disappointed the world.

This disappointment has encouraged the nothingness of seeking something despite Kantian wish for accomplishment of fulfilling the universal morality. Kant and the other modern European idealists discouraged the freedom for individuals’ voluntary will and self-reasoning skill. Then, after their collectively determined political and ethical reasoning process based on their believing moral universalism failed, the human-beings started thinking that any objective reasoning process, based on either free voluntary will or collective duty, is nonsense. Then, the idea to care about fulfilling the objectives which are more achievable in the short term and less abstract principle has become more epidemically influential in the Western world especially in Europe than it used to be.

* Ref:
The Objective Standard: Aristotle Versus Religion
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2014-spring/aristotle-versus-religion/