GRASS IN REVIEW

GRASSROOT INSTITUTE OF HAWAII

Nurturing the rights and responsibilities of the individual in a civil society.

 WEEKLY GRASS IN REVIEW   -    June 25, 2008

Individual Liberty in the Pacific Rim
By Nonoy Oplas

Editor’s Note: Dick Rowland, President Emeritus of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, recently attended the very important Pacific Rim Policy Exchange meeting in Hong Kong. Before he could find time to write about his experiences, his friend and fellow attendee Nonoy Oplas wrote the following excellent report.

Individual liberty is a subject that is often subsumed, if ever considered at all, under general concepts like collective liberty and national sovereignty. This is wrong because if liberty and freedom are to have serious meanings, they must redound to individual liberty. The collective is composed of individuals. If individuals are considered as plain adjuncts and appendages of the collective, then only the leaders of the collective have liberty and power to selectively choose what rights and liberty the individuals can have, and what rights and liberty they cannot have.

This subject was the theme of the recent Pacific Rim Policy Exchange held in Hong Kong earlier this month. It was sponsored by four free market-oriented think tanks: the U.S.-based Property Rights Alliance and Americans for Tax Reform, U.K.-based International Policy Network (IPN), and Hong Kong-based Lion Rock Institute.

The HK meeting was the second event after the first Pacific Rim Conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii in May 2007. It was jointly sponsored by the same institutes, plus the State Policy Network (U.S.) and the Asia Forum-Japan. I attended both conferences, courtesy of IPN sponsorship.

The HK event was composed of six panels or subjects, three per day. Speakers came from a variety of countries, including China, India, S. Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, U.S., U.K. and Peru.

Among the panels that attracted me most were those on real property rights, intellectual property rights, and taming the beast (the State). It’s very enlightening, or perhaps depressing, to know that many governments around the world are responsible for very complicated, time-consuming and costly procedures in registering property so that many real owners of land, for instance, do not have peace of mind in saying that they indeed have full control of their lands, whether to keep it for whatever use, or sell and exchange it for money or other real properties.

Protecting intellectual property – someone’s song composition, research data and methodology, technological invention, medical innovation, and so on – is also very important. If another singer can just steal a lesser-known musician’s songs and record them and claim them as his own compositions, the latter would feel robbed. If other companies, including state enterprises, can just steal the formula of an effective and best-selling pharmaceutical product because they are allowed to do so by the State in the name of “national emergencies”, the company that invented that medical product (and spent many years and several hundred million dollars in research and development) would also feel robbed. And there are many governments, upon the prodding of some activist groups, itching to do this kind of intervention and legalized stealing.

To me, such unnecessary bureaucracies – in registering real or physical properties, and in disrespecting the intellectual property rights of an innovator company – are examples of “government failure”. I firmly believe that protection of the citizens’ right to life, right to dignity, and right to private property is the State’s main function. Running and operating banks, power plants, pension funds, hospitals, universities, or engaging in rice trading and broadband deals, are secondary or unnecessary State functions because these are better left to the private sector in a deregulated and competitive business environment. There is pressure on private enterprises to perform well and satisfy customers in a competitive and level playing field, while there is complacency – resulting in mediocrity – when a service is under the hands of government. This is because private enterprises depend on revenues from customers who voluntarily come to get their services, while government enterprises depend on subsidies from taxes and fees that are forcibly collected from the people.

And how could one tame the beast? A speaker from Hong Kong suggested to “declaw it, one claw at a time, and blind it, if you can”. I agree with this proposal, although achieving it is very difficult because the number of claws; those various regulations seem to be increasing, not decreasing. And very often, those regulations are not transparent; one would not know them all, including the fees, hidden requirements, and the number of days, weeks, or months to wait, until he/she gets there, in front of the concerned regulatory office. Forcing the government, both national and local, to become more transparent should be a good challenge for citizens since the total cost of (a) taxes and fees + (b) cost of compliance can be high, which siphons the people’s energy and resources away from actual productive undertaking.

Aside from the six panels, the conference also featured two luncheon speakers and two dinner speakers during those two days, and all of them were articulate speakers. But the most influential of them all was Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Media communications in HK. He was also the main character in a documentary called The Call of the Entrepreneur, produced by the Acton Institute. The man has a typical rags-to-riches story due to non-typical character of super-hard work and strict business ethics. He was emotional in the documentary when he related how difficult his and his family’s life was, both in mainland China and when he was a teenaged migrant worker in HK, and how his philosophy in life changed after he read Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.

Is democracy a political condition? Many people would nod in answering this question. But Jimmy Lai says NO, because for him, democracy is a moral issue. The freedom that people enjoy in a democracy is a deep moral right, something that they will not experience in a dictatorship where the citizens are worth nothing except as adjuncts and slaves of the State and State leaders, the dictators. Most importantly, Jimmy Lai says that what matters most is individual responsibility, how individuals should conduct their lives. Yes, individuals have the option whether to be ambitious and hardworking, or to be lazy and dependent on family or State subsidies. So Lai's message to the State is, “leave us alone.” Incidentally, the recently-published book by Mr. Grover Norquist, the president of the Americans for Tax Reform, has the same title: Leave Us Alone.

Bienvenido "Nonoy" Oplas, Jr. is Secretary-General of Philippine Taxpayers Union (PTU), which is campaigning for "No tax on work, shift tax to consumption", or a movement for a zero-tax income tax. He is also President of the Minimal Government Movement (MGM), a small group of professionals in the Philippines advocating free markets, small government, small taxes and individual freedom and responsibility.

TRY OUR BLOGS
Use these links to access various topics.

Dash of Calabash>>>It’s Time for Socialism

The Mystery of Hawaiian History>>>Cato Institute Capitol Hill Briefing: "The One-Drop Rule in Hawaii? The Akaka Bill and the Future of Race-Based Government"

Read what others have written or add your own thoughts by clicking here.

LIBERTY NETWORK

1. GRIH President Jamie Story and GRIH President Emeritus/Special Advisor Dick Rowland travelled to Maui on June 24th to speak to members there and editors at the Maui News.

2. GRIH Grassroot Insights Podcast #4: Rep. Marcus Oshiro, Chair of the Hawaii House of Representatives Finance Committee, is the featured guest in the fourth of GRIH's periodic podcasts with leaders in the community and beyond. In this podcast, Rep. Oshiro discusses government fiscal transparency, as well as Act 272, which he authored during the last legislative session. Click here to listen.

3. The Law Now Free Audiobook! One of the favorite books around the GRIH offices is Frederic Bastiat's The Law. First published as a pamphlet in June 1850, the book is more than a hundred years old but the truths it explores are more timely than ever. And the book is now available FREE as an audio book from freeaudio.org.

   FreeAudio.org is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the spread of liberty by providing audio books to the public in either a free or an easily affordable format. People can download the audio books and listen to them on their MP3 player or burn them to CD.

   Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before -- and immediately following -- the Revolution of 1848. This was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism. As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared. Even though it was written over 150 years ago, The Law is still timely today, as socialist ideas are sweeping across America.

   To hear the book, please visit the FreeAudio.org web site at http://www.freeaudio.org/fbastiat/thelaw.html

4. Please let us know of any candidates who may be interested in signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. For more information about the pledge, please visit www.atr.org.