Liberty and Property
Rights in the Pacific Rim
June 2008
Liberty is a concept, an
ideal, that is often associated with the collective. Individual liberty is
often subsumed under general concepts like collective liberty and national sovereignty.
This is wrong because if liberty and freedom is to have serious meaning, 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.
The main reason why
individual liberty is often restrained in favor of “collective liberty”, is
supposedly to ensure equality in society. Growth without equity, in this
belief, is undesirable and thus, the state must always step in to take away the
“excess” income and savings of the hard-working individuals and “excess” profit
and surpluses of efficient corporations. Then use the collections to pay for
the salaries and benefits of the administrators of the collective (the
bureaucracy and politicians in government) and the excess be distributed to the
poor, state enterprises, and some inefficient but favored private enterprises,
in the form of subsidies.
The subjects of liberty
and property rights were at the center of the recent PRPX in Hong Kong. It was the
second event after the 1st PRPX held in Honolulu, Hawaii,
last May 2007.
The HK event was composed
of 6 panels or subjects, three per day. These were
(1) Real property rights:
traditional rights, formal protection and economic growth;
(2) Taming the beast:
accountability, deregulation and transparency;
(3) Free market health care reform:
keeping healthy with a healthy market;
(4) Intellectual property rights (IPR):
protecting the engine of innovation;
(5) Adaptation or accommodation: energy
production and its consequences; and
(6) Globalization: trade, regulation and
international markets.
The speakers came from China, India, S. Korea, Sri
Lanka, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, US, UK and Peru. Other
participants came from other Asian countries.
Among the panels that
attracted me most were those on real property rights, IPR 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 a property. The result is
that many owners of real properties like land, 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.
This lack of peace of mind force them to sell their land at a much lower price,
or discourage them from putting in new and bigger investment to develop their
real properties.
Protecting IPR – 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 composition, 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 were 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 R&D) 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.
Above photo, Barun Mitra from India and Maria del Carmen
Delgado from Peru speaking on real property rights. Below, Alec Van Gelder of IPN speaking
about IPR.
To me, such unnecessary
bureaucracies in registering real or physical properties, and disrespect of the
IPR of an innovator company, is one example of “government failure”. I firmly
believe that protection of the citizens’ right to life, right to dignity and
right to private property, are 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 Hong Kong speaker suggested “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 government units, 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 or
subjects, the conference also featured 2 luncheon speakers and 2 dinner
speakers on those 2 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 Acton Institute. The man had 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 hard his and his family’s life was, both in mainland China until he was a
teen-age 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 adjunct and slaves
of the state and state leaders, the dictators. And most importantly, Jimmy Lai says
what matters most is individual responsibility, how individuals should conduct
their lives. Yes, individuals have the option whether they can be ambitious and
hard-working, or be lazy and dependent on family or state subsidies. So his
message to the state, “leave us alone.”
Incidentally, the recently
published book by ATR President Grover Norquist, has the same title, “Leave us Alone [Getting the government’s
hands off our money, our guns, our lives]”. Grover distributed his fascinating
book to all conference participants FREE! And not only that I got my copy signed
by Grover himself, I also got extra copies for some friends and officers of our
think tank.
Participants do
not just listen to the speakers. They also meet old and new
friends and exchange ideas on various issues, as well as how to further improve
their work in promoting individual liberty, protecting private property rights,
and advancing freedom in general. I particularly enjoy this networking aspect
of big international conferences and meetings.
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See also:
Liberty and Choice, Atlanta and HK Conferences, June 09, 2008
3rd PRPX, October 2009, Singapore, October 17, 2009
4th Pacific Rim Policy Exchange, Sydney, Sept 28-30, August 10, 2010
4th PRPX, Sydney, September 29, 2010
The 1st PRPX, May 2007 in Hawaii, Photos, May 04, 2015
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