The Road to Political Freedom

Thomas Friedman claims there is a close connection between economic freedom and political freedom in his book Capitalism and Freedom from 1962. He points out that there is no place with political freedom that does not have economic freedom but he also says that economic freedom does not guarantee political freedom. Seems up to date today! However, Francis Fukuyama discusses the political without the economical in his latest book The Origins of Political Order. I did wonder about that but it is of course a simplification for clarity. Cultural matters might not be sufficiently independent of economic issues to be treated separately.

Fareed Zakaria writes on the Global Public Square blog that President Obama thinks the US has gone “soft”. One thing is that he for example has apologized for America’s conduct, which I think is way out of line. I wonder what he meant by soft? Is it staying democratic and free that is soft nowadays?

There is a tendency to think that China’s and the East Asian authoritative economic miracle is a discovery of a short cut to material wellbeing. The cumbersome and confusing democratic parliamentary way is passé. But if you add the J curve of Ian Bremmer to transit from economic freedom to political freedom there is indeed an obstacle to pass. There is no country that made that pass without exterior help so far. Is it possible? Perhaps the soft nation is rather on the right track and China on its traditional 2,500 year authoritative ditto. You simply have to believe in America like Mitt Romney stated in his recent speech that countered Obama’s idea.

How important is then political freedom? After all Friedman says that economic freedom is an extensive part of total freedom. Is it worth dying for? That is not an obvious question in Europe for example where defense budgets are slashed. The Arab Spring tells a story where people non-violently demonstrate for freedom non ultra descriptus. Is this a reminder?

If political freedom does not add benefits to society in the form of a more developed material wellbeing, the West might be in for trouble of convincing the rest of its glory. This is another way of asking what President Obama meant by going soft. Losing faith in a way of life on a higher qualitative level! I for one think political freedom offers a higher quality life.

What Obama actually said was this:

“The way I think about it is, you know, this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft and, you know, we didn't have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track."

This might mean that Obama does believe in democracy but somehow thinks people were a little too “lazy”. But I was not of the understanding that the US had been less competitive rather succumbed to a financial disaster. So, I still wonder what he meant by soft which apparently the two GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry also did.

So, was Friedman right? Is there really a close connection between economic freedom and political freedom? This remains the crucial question for the upcoming decades and perhaps this century.

Our Posthuman Future?

Francis Fukuyama has pondered the consequences of biotechnology in his book from 2002 called Our Posthuman Future. Again it is kind of the end of something. The air of the book is skeptical. He sees problems where I see opportunity.

The progress in molecular biology continues to be record breaking. One way of improving our situation, that might still be a little science fictionesque, is to speed up evolution of positive traits. How would it be, for example, to start producing humans that lack aggression at the current levels. In my humble mind and with my experience this could actually be done today by neuropharmacology, which Fukuyama might be calling the technology that no one dares to talk about.

If you are a fan of Hegel, however, this might mean that we rob future men of the experiences that deepen their personalities. It would, as Fukuyama points out, be dangerous to remove too much of human nature without saving some of the old varieties.

Another development is Artificial Intelligence. Fukuyama is pessimistic on the birth of consciousness in computers. I also have a feeling that the water-based computation that the brain does might be necessary and unique but I would really like to see us reaching the "singularity", where it would be possible to download one's mind in a computer and continue living forever with a potentially sharper intellect and a tremendous memory. A shortcut in evolution. Human nature will change and a new species would be born. A political concern would be who should be in control. The new species or the old one.

It remains very interesting to speculate on what regular evolution would do with our intellects. What kind of human we would have in 1m years. It is 60,000 years since Homo sapiens left Africa the first time and most people do not think there is any significant genetic differences between now and then. The work they are doing in Germany on the Neanderthal DNA might shed some light on this. Is there an upper limit in the intelligence that is possible to create on the current platform? This would be interesting to know because perhaps the new man made evolution via computers would be the only way of significantly improving our position.

Stem cell research has great potential but is hampered by problems with so called innocent life. The use of embryos for research should in my opinion not be problematic. Due to the unfortunate atrocities of war, we have learned that mental retardation in children from mothers living through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings happened between week 8 to 15. This should mean that the nervous system is assembled during this time and that no functioning brain which could give rise to human life, ie pain and sorrow, could be present earlier than this period. An embryo is just cells like those in your finger, which actually also has potential for life today via cloning. The Catholic Church actually has a dogma that stipulates that life begins with sperm/egg fusion which is problematic today anyhow because life can be produced via cloning bypassing the fusion of sperm and egg.

Despite a continuous rise of the GDP per capita in the West people have not become happier. Are we wasting GDP or is science benefitting from the improvement and can deliver solutions to the stagnation in experienced happiness? Fukuyama describes how we take drugs like Prozac to improve our life. Stability is a problem these days and it is interesting that Fukuyama predicted the Arab Spring in principle by stating that demographic research says we would have old women deciding in Europe with angry young men in the Middle East. It is problematic, of course, with a giant computer dispensing wellbeing to the masses of Europe to prevent people from demonstrating in the streets and to care less about hardship. The question is how tempting it would be in the name of Peace.

Obama is going to be active on the Israel-Palstinian issue again

Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post writes on her blog that Netanyahu and Obama are going to meet again in Washington and discuss the fact that Fatah and Hamas has supposedly fused and how this is going to result in demands on Israel to give up land in Jerusalem and the West bank. Prior to the meeting with Netanyahu, Obama will give a speech to the Muslims again where he praises the populist movements causing the Arab spring.

The Arab spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden have remade the situation around Israel. Amr Moussa, the prospective new president of Egypt, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish premier since 2003, have apparently said recently that Hamas does not do terror anymore. Hamas has killed more Israelis than Al-Qaeda has killed Americans, Glick says, and they still do not recognize Israel. It is also going to be interesting how Hamas' militia is going to fuse with Fatah's US-trained ditto. The Fatah militia was apparently so good there was at least a theoretical possibility that they could provide security for a Palestinian state. The unification sounds on scrutiny impossible at best.

But pressure is building on Israel not only from the US but also from the EU. However, what is going to happen in the Middle East depends a little on what exactly the Arab spring turns out to be. Egypt is apparently going to dump their peace agreement with Israel and the US want to endorse the Muslim Brotherhood. It is perhaps all and well that Obama is going to praise the Arab spring but from the reports I'm reading it is not clear whether or not the populist movements really are friendly towards the West. After all the movement were against Western supported dictators. We should also remind ourselves on the hostility shown towards Western journalists so far. Progress after the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia is also very slow.