A Tribute to Mises
Today is the 125th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig von Mises, a hero not only to a few but also to humanity. This is my simple tribute to him.
Best Wishes and Greetings of Peace
Best wishes and greetings in peace and of peace to Muslims all over the world upon the approaching holy month of self restraint. May we live to deserve the grace of the month and to celebrate a glorious victory that ensues. May this not be a mere poor interlude in which to exhibit piety. May it dawn on us we only deceive ourselves by fooling other people and the Almighty. May we all be refined souls for the sake of our own sanity if not humanity--more gentle and loving persons for our family if not for everyone in the world or this country.
Marhaban, ya Ramadhan!
Marhaban, ya Ramadhan!
New Look, New Outlook
I've given my blogs a new look for the first time ever again. More tweaking's already looming on the horizon, but that can wait because at the moment I'm set to be tweaking and hacking the outlook of my own person--for the betterment of myself, of course, and the few whose souls and lives are closely intertwined with mine.
WWWest
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."
(Samuel P. Huntington)
(Samuel P. Huntington)
Something Good This Way Comes: Jakarta Traffic Light Countdown Timers
I, for one, do care how many seconds lapse before traffic lights change colors. Of course, everyone does; it concerns other things that matter, small or big alike, to us. This post recommends that Pemda Jakarta to install more such gadgets at the city’s busiest crossroads. I do not find installing a countdown timer in a heavily loaded crossroad a silly idea. On the contrary, I find it brilliant. A countdown traffic light timer, in itself, is a brilliant concept, just like the conventional traffic light, not only from the production viewpoint but also from its utility and functionality.
I have liked it ever since I saw one at Slipi crossroads, a while ago now. That gadget was not the only one in town (though perhaps the first one in the country). Some weeks ago I found another one near Warung Buncit. I remember feeling also happy, almost gratified, when I saw it.
Countdown timers count as one of the very few good things about Jakarta’s terrible traffic. Quite possibly, they are among the very few best things one can find amid the city’s awful traffic. That is why, their installation counts as one of the very few good policies.
Let me count down several more whys I like ‘em countdown timers:
Lastly: they show that there’s one common thing, one certainty about what will happen ahead. This in itself is amazing. Every time a conventional traffic light switches colors, it signifies, controls and even commands that the road-user’s right is about to reverse into responsibility and, vice versa, some responsibility into right.
Through the LCD displays, we are allowed the luxury of knowing with certainty the precise seconds when the reversal is bound to happen. Some degree of certainty and order is a necessary condition, an everlasting element that partly makes peaceful living possible--even among an ignorant majority or a society of criminals.
Secondly: related to my last point above, they are good for the road-users’ psychology (to some people, at least). They help instill positive attitude to them due to their capability of precise assurance.
First of all: they are a reliable and impartial reminder of timing and time itself. No matter who one is, he or she is given the same amount of time to wait or pass down the road. When it comes to driving or riding, good timing is crucial. Sometimes it can differentiate between a living road-user from a dead one.
Motorists, pedestrians and drivers are subjected to the relationship between distance and time. They rely heavily on spatial and temporal reckoning in order to make sense of the changing permanence, of the constantly changing horizon. Down the roads or thoroughfares, they are supposed to be always cautious about this two-dimensional relationship between distance and time. The gadget partly enhances amd restores the sense of time.
Some people, though, must find such gadgets silly. In fact, I have come across some fellow bloggers who detested them. (Forgive my not mentioning names here, as it is never my purpose to inflame or defame.)
If traffic countdown timers are silly, what isn’t then? But at least there is something to be learned here: Even about man-made trivias we can be so different--isn’t that stunning?
Above all, I hope to see more such good things.
Intellectual Prostitution
With his/her article in today’s Kompas, “Paradoks Politik dan "Frustrasi Intelektual," a Boni Hargens took the words out of my mouth. Below is my summary:
My posts related to this topic:
- Social Sciences, Power and Our Last Agent of Change
- Our Zero-Deficit Moveable Feast
"Frustration has swung Indonesian intellectuals to two negative extremes: "apathy" towards the political processes, and; opportunism to have affairs with power."
The latter is the more detrimental, which means that intellectual opportunism takes a proactive stance to take part in manufacturing bad politics. This new pathology in today’s Indonesia is ravaging the nation and country. No longer are the same standards referred to in assessing situations. No longer are humanity and morality defined according to universal parameters. Rather, they are measured according to group interests or partial political benefits.
So, whatever means Indonesia is now interpreted according to such ways of thinking. The presence of such intellectuals, far from bringing enlightement, only brings about aggravation.”
My posts related to this topic:
- Social Sciences, Power and Our Last Agent of Change
- Our Zero-Deficit Moveable Feast
Indonesia’s Debt Sustainability
(Formerly titled: Our Zero-Deficit Moveable Feast)
Wealth—personal or national—is created through accumulation of savings earned from production, not consumption. Adam Smith, an ethics professor, in The Inquiries to the Wealth of Nations, underlined the roles of inter-state trade as nothing but an extension of production.
The global economic landscape is never a level playing field. To western countries, the notion has become a paradigm. Emerging economies try to refute it; developing countries don’t get it, or simply forget.
Of course, we're living the world that has increasingly ushered everyone to a fatal illusion mistaking spending as investing that the state of well being can be reached through consuming. We end up being lulled to living with myths or fallacies that regard effects as causes and relational possibilities as causal certainties.
Economics, meanwhile, always provides numbers that can be turned to for solace and comfort: indicators of the number of sacks of cement sold; the number of cars and motorcycles bought; the number of investment potentials, et cetera and so forth. It can always present figures to support any decision any government makes.
***
It’s been years since Adam Schwartz wrote analytical accounts on Indonesia’s politics and economy. The book, titled beautifully as A Nation in Waiting, rings like a poem, suggesting some rays of hope that things will get better with the coming years in the country. No one ever asked what exactly he wanted to intimate with the title.
But, it should not be too hard to tell.
Since the era of our first president, Indonesian governments have developed the deadly habit of borrowing. While most of them may not stand against borrowing per se, it’s been growingly hard to deny that borrowing has been so detrimental it has only benefited a handful of leaders while putting the country into debt overhangs.
To sum up Indonesia’s economic history is accounts of wasted opportunities. The country has been making great mess with resources that belong to its future generation. Put more aptly, it’s been creating a sinful mess to the advantages of foreign sources through exploitations of resources that belong to the future generation.
Had the past foreign borrowings been useful, today’s government would not need them anymore. The lesson can’t be put more clearly; yet is not the one we want to learn; the governments, instead, have chosen to believe that there must be another way of borrowing.
And so the past five years have gone particularly more precarious. Through issuing bonds, the last two governments have had and maintained a new found way of borrowing spree, this time from domestic sources. In less than a decade, our domestic debts have soared to outsize the amount of its foreign debts.
***
What on earth have all the borrowings, foreign and domestic, been for? To cover the budget deficit, some would say, and indeed they can present economic theories supporting that budget deficit is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. But which part of the deficit has exactly the government been wanting to finance? Until we probe into what exactly the purposes of our borrowing, we will not know when not to have a budget deficit. Actually, the latest fourth amendment of its constitution did pave the way towards zero debts; but it has been implemented like a moveable feast, not a resolute intent.
Indonesia’s budget plan for 2007 indicates that the government is about to set to borrow to pay for the cost of past borrowing. In what’s like a tell tale of self-delusion, its accounting strangely puts debt servicing as a source of financing. The fact remains that the severity of our debts is such that even if Indonesia decided to stop borrowing new loans this year, the remaining outstanding will still haunt Indonesian citizens until 30 to 35 years from now.
Restructuring is futile when new debts are joyously committed. Some NGOs, meanwhile, have existed to advocate the government to opt for offshore debt haircuts. Worthy endeavors; but success will only come from within not without. They have taken a diametric and punitive stance against the government. Their approach has been built mostly on some sort of governmental culpability that has understandably led to defensiveness. Some of our leaders may have been development criminals, but we must also admit one thing: we have not been able to govern ourselves with any other style than the one that has come with such a long period of habituation.
Moreover, the country has been musing on setting up a debt management office, to be financed yet through another series of new debts. Maybe it is important; maybe it is better to have one than none. What is definitely important to realize from the beginning and remember throughout our existence is that this country must not create an agency to institute borrowing.
High time that the issue were confronted beyond mere rhetoric. When is the time to really face the music? When is enough enough? Answers to all these have long been overdue--generations ago. The decision to borrow has become too dangerous to be left to the discretion of an incumbent government, the ruling one or the next to come. Efforts to start putting an end to this must come from a national rather than a cabinet’s consensus.
It must come from a strong national will. Will shall attend knowledge.
Wealth—personal or national—is created through accumulation of savings earned from production, not consumption. Adam Smith, an ethics professor, in The Inquiries to the Wealth of Nations, underlined the roles of inter-state trade as nothing but an extension of production.
The global economic landscape is never a level playing field. To western countries, the notion has become a paradigm. Emerging economies try to refute it; developing countries don’t get it, or simply forget.
Of course, we're living the world that has increasingly ushered everyone to a fatal illusion mistaking spending as investing that the state of well being can be reached through consuming. We end up being lulled to living with myths or fallacies that regard effects as causes and relational possibilities as causal certainties.
Economics, meanwhile, always provides numbers that can be turned to for solace and comfort: indicators of the number of sacks of cement sold; the number of cars and motorcycles bought; the number of investment potentials, et cetera and so forth. It can always present figures to support any decision any government makes.
***
It’s been years since Adam Schwartz wrote analytical accounts on Indonesia’s politics and economy. The book, titled beautifully as A Nation in Waiting, rings like a poem, suggesting some rays of hope that things will get better with the coming years in the country. No one ever asked what exactly he wanted to intimate with the title.
But, it should not be too hard to tell.
Since the era of our first president, Indonesian governments have developed the deadly habit of borrowing. While most of them may not stand against borrowing per se, it’s been growingly hard to deny that borrowing has been so detrimental it has only benefited a handful of leaders while putting the country into debt overhangs.
To sum up Indonesia’s economic history is accounts of wasted opportunities. The country has been making great mess with resources that belong to its future generation. Put more aptly, it’s been creating a sinful mess to the advantages of foreign sources through exploitations of resources that belong to the future generation.
Had the past foreign borrowings been useful, today’s government would not need them anymore. The lesson can’t be put more clearly; yet is not the one we want to learn; the governments, instead, have chosen to believe that there must be another way of borrowing.
And so the past five years have gone particularly more precarious. Through issuing bonds, the last two governments have had and maintained a new found way of borrowing spree, this time from domestic sources. In less than a decade, our domestic debts have soared to outsize the amount of its foreign debts.
***
What on earth have all the borrowings, foreign and domestic, been for? To cover the budget deficit, some would say, and indeed they can present economic theories supporting that budget deficit is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. But which part of the deficit has exactly the government been wanting to finance? Until we probe into what exactly the purposes of our borrowing, we will not know when not to have a budget deficit. Actually, the latest fourth amendment of its constitution did pave the way towards zero debts; but it has been implemented like a moveable feast, not a resolute intent.
Indonesia’s budget plan for 2007 indicates that the government is about to set to borrow to pay for the cost of past borrowing. In what’s like a tell tale of self-delusion, its accounting strangely puts debt servicing as a source of financing. The fact remains that the severity of our debts is such that even if Indonesia decided to stop borrowing new loans this year, the remaining outstanding will still haunt Indonesian citizens until 30 to 35 years from now.
Restructuring is futile when new debts are joyously committed. Some NGOs, meanwhile, have existed to advocate the government to opt for offshore debt haircuts. Worthy endeavors; but success will only come from within not without. They have taken a diametric and punitive stance against the government. Their approach has been built mostly on some sort of governmental culpability that has understandably led to defensiveness. Some of our leaders may have been development criminals, but we must also admit one thing: we have not been able to govern ourselves with any other style than the one that has come with such a long period of habituation.
Moreover, the country has been musing on setting up a debt management office, to be financed yet through another series of new debts. Maybe it is important; maybe it is better to have one than none. What is definitely important to realize from the beginning and remember throughout our existence is that this country must not create an agency to institute borrowing.
High time that the issue were confronted beyond mere rhetoric. When is the time to really face the music? When is enough enough? Answers to all these have long been overdue--generations ago. The decision to borrow has become too dangerous to be left to the discretion of an incumbent government, the ruling one or the next to come. Efforts to start putting an end to this must come from a national rather than a cabinet’s consensus.
It must come from a strong national will. Will shall attend knowledge.
Now that Pluto is no longer a planet...
When leading astronomers declared last week in Prague that Pluto was no longer a planet, my first reaction was that of being emotionally stirred. It hit me like a loss, though I was sure I wasn't alone. The knowledge held for so long finally got refuted. Still, with this reminder of the relative validity of scientific theories, that theories are not truths in themselves, I felt thankful. The declaration was stunning but also comforting.
My hope is that such an approach could be used to prove or disprove about the moonlanding, so that the important question that has been with humanity for ages can be settled with satisfactorily: Did man really land on the moon? Do not American and Russian scientists owe it to themselves as much as to other peoples to make such a declaration?
My hope is that such an approach could be used to prove or disprove about the moonlanding, so that the important question that has been with humanity for ages can be settled with satisfactorily: Did man really land on the moon? Do not American and Russian scientists owe it to themselves as much as to other peoples to make such a declaration?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)