With the financial crisis in the world, causing a real debacle in Iceland and eastern Europe, liberals should now be honest and scrutinize their support for these countries. A leopard never changes its spots, or will at least have a rough time to do so. Iceland was until the liberalization era starting in 1991 an extremely isolationistic and nationalistic socialist country. And the history of Eastern Europe probably don’t need any further detailed exposition. Incredible changes HAVE occurred and it would be dishonest (like the Left-wing does) to neglect this. Only a real fool would deny them this. But we have to keep an open mind still towards these countries. You won’t change something like their past situation over a fortnight.
Iceland have no longer a privatized banking system. All banks here belong now to the State. Prior this, it was illegal for outsiders (everyone not being an Icelander (especially NOT Danes)) to own banks, and it still is. Until 1998-1999, everyone moving to Iceland had to name their father’s name and have their old family name removed and were then given an Icelandic patronymic. All foreign loan words are still carefully removed and replaced with an Icelandic analogous.
Latvia is next to the scaffold. The old Soviet state has moved beyond a poverty-stricken eastern Europe country to become a modern up-to-date capitalist country with a truly romantic capital city on the shores of the Baltic Sea. But times are hard and Latvia has been suffering from it. However, other problems have followed in its tracks. A college lecturer arrested by police on charges of attempting to undermine the Latvian economy said Thursday he would be more careful about his public statements in future (?).
The professor was detained by police and has been banned from leaving the country pending further inquiries. And this is not all. In a second case, a local pop singer was detained by police for a remark he did against the nationalization of Parex Banka, the country’s largest indigenous financial institution, at a concert he held in Jelgava on November 9. Apparently, in order to crack down on talk that could worsen the economic situation, the government has enforced some sort of emergency power act. Unfortunately, once you start banning rumors about the financial situation you don’t have too far to go before you have a totalitarian dictatorship, and that is something that we must keep in mind. :S Strangely, this has been totally absent on the news in the rest of Europe. A great blog dealing solely with this topic however is the sc. “Free Speech Emergency in Latvia“. The guy running the blog apparently speaks Swedish. He has made an interview for Swedish radio.
It would be good if this would be better elucidated on blogs elsewhere. European bloggers especially should really try to shed a light upon this issue. A big shout out to all of you!
As Roberto Zahler once said, “you do not transform yourself into a tiger overnight if you have been a cat for far too long“. And now is the time to be honest and oversee our “tigers” and see how they manage storms. We can only help them move towards the tiger stage if we regonize them for what they are, not for what we want them to be in the future.
Before you go an putting this onto the backs of liberals, you might consider noting that both the law supporting it and the action of arresting the lecturer were the work of a right wing, nationalistic government.
Objections to these actions come from across the political spectrum.
And, it has not been ignored in Europe as anyone who goes to the LV blog you linked to would learn.
As always, when I write “liberal” I of course refer to the original classical meaning, thus “right-wing”. I’m a liberal and I am far more right-wing than George W Bush. But of course has “nationalistic” nothing to do with it, but that is also what I say in my post when mentioning Iceland.
It has been neglected due to the fact that this is hot sauce and has only been mentioned this little that the blog I linked to says. I think it is a shame it hasn’t been on the agenda on top execs level in the EU.
It is also important for you to learn that Latvia and the Baltic states have been lifted to the skies in my home country and in many other countries in Europe amongst liberals and market-economists such as myself. What I want to state with this post is that we need to be careful when dealing with these countries, due to their past.
I am of course significantly to left of you. I am curious, how have Latvia (I live in LV) and others been lifted to the skies? When I visit Sweden, Norway and deal with business partners from Finland I get the feeling that LV is seen as pretty far down in the development dirt.
And what is it specifically about the LV past that causes you concern? We have an insidious strain of authoritarianism but I am not sure if that is a gift of the soviets or of the Ulmanis era.
This stuff scares me. I had an experience recently of being at lunch with Finnish business colleagues and having to politely ask them not to talk about devaluation at lunch. Our society here is afraid, but more cynical about the incredible incompetence of the people in charge. We have crony-capitalism and crony-government at its worst.
Of course.
Latvia, Iceland, but especially Estonia, have been lifted to the skies by libertarians and free marketeers around the globe for your liberal reformation from the stagnant socialist societies you were before. Of course a lot of other people still have a negative view on these countries, at least the former Soviet block, but that is because of that they have a hard time to forget their childhood image of this region. I love to go to Latvia or Estonia. I feel much more free there than I do in Sweden, my native country, for instance. I have much more personal freedom and I can do much more. I believe it is a sad thing that authoritarianism and nationalism still are factors that trouble these countries.
I think you need less of that and more of capitalism, not less of the latter.
If that lifting is perceived, it is a big mistake. As with Russia, we had a very controlled privatization, with the best bits going to a select few. Even today it is not rare to find govt officials trying to privatize land for a few pennies.
As regards your personal freedom; you would find yourself considerably more constrained if you were gay or black or….
The rush to wealth of a few has left many scraping along. Privatization certificates were a joke and never led to any real public (as in corporation) ownership.
I have a basic question for you though- after reading more in your blog. It seems that you are true market believer. Why is it that the providers of capital own the results of production? Why not the worker? Both are needed and easily (in many cases) substitutable. In fact the capital is much more replaceable. This is a funny question for me to ask because I work on the other side- I am a strategic management and development consultant.