Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

Albert Einstein: „The problems that exist in the world cannot be solved by the level that created them.“

Thomas Bata: "Every human activity is always reflected in numbers in the end."

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A fundamental question: The virus is constantly changing and is always one step ahead. Isn't it better to rely on the immune system, which is certainly better prepared to defend the body, than quickly produced and untested vaccines? Vaccination makes sense in the old where the IS is weakened, not in the young where it is at full strength. The damage done by various, opaque and confusing measures causes more material, health and psychological damage than the virus itself. Optimism strengthens the immune system. Fear-mongering and denial weaken it. Smiling is a higher level of intelligence, so let's smile. Smiles and optimism have much more power than vaccines and viruses. Smiling and humor is a kind of much needed courage today. J.Š.

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Majorities tend to live at the expense of productive minorities through state redistribution. In a majority-rule democracy, therefore, there is a need for politically inviolable rights to freedom - Freedom has a long-term future. People do not want to turn into collectivized ants. People who seek freedom are often in the minority and form a vanguard that must persevere against the shifting coalitions of majorities hostile to freedom for the sake of all.

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Commentary by Robert Nef in NZZ 10.10.2021

Those who wish to protect freedom from being abolished must be prepared to limit the principle of democracy without abolishing it. Is the principle of majority rule as a collective decision-making procedure permanently compatible with the idea of freedom? Anyone who observes the current reality of the welfare state from a strictly liberal perspective will quickly doubt its compatibility. However, it is part of the nature of many principles that they are not entirely compatible and that they force us to consider when applying them. If, for example, a majority of net recipients can continually outvote a minority of net payers, the effect is to infringe on their liberty and property. Those who wish to avoid this must be prepared to set such limits to the majority principle as will prevent the principle of liberty from being weakened.

The vicious circle of interventionism.

At first sight, it is impossible to combine the principle of the majority with a permanent guarantee of liberty for all. Every unrestricted democracy leads to compulsory redistributive social democracy and to the increasing politicisation, statistisation and centralisation of all areas of life. Those who want to protect freedom from gradual nationalization or even from abolition must be prepared to limit the principle of democracy without abolishing it.

In the 19th century, there was a heated debate in Switzerland between liberals and democrats, in which Jeremias Gotthelf took part on the side of the liberals and Gottfried Keller on the side of the democrats. Among the critics of mass democracy was the clear-sighted Basel historian Jacob Burckhardt. The liberals, who warned in the 19th century against the tendency of the majority principle to limit freedom, are now, in retrospect, sadly right in the 21st century. The majority principle is compatible with liberty only if it is institutionally protected by politically inviolable rights to liberty on the one hand, and applied in small political communities that compete on taxes and services and where political co-determination is always accompanied by the open possibility of leaving.

Unlimited democracy is the path to serfdom in a total redistributive and paternalistic state.

The combination of liberalism and democracy is only possible if a majority can be reliably and sustainably won to maintain an order that effectively protects life, property and liberty and maintains open competition for the forms and contents of life that suit the individual. Otherwise, sooner or later, majorities will band together to have greater security at the expense of more creative and productive minorities by increasingly restricting the freedom of all. This would not be catastrophic if this restriction could at least be limited and not lead to a vicious cycle of further restrictions, where it is hoped that the shortcomings that arise as a result of the restrictions will be eliminated by the imposition of further collective restrictions.

The vicious circle of interventionism described above leads to the so-called law of increasing governmental tasks and governmental expenditures, formulated by Adolph Wagner in 1863.

It is further reinforced by the tendency towards bureaucratisation described by C. Northcote Parkinson, which in turn contributes to the seemingly inexorable tendency towards centralisation. Majorities tend to live at the expense of productive minorities through state redistribution and to enforce them on the basis of the majority principle. Forced redistribution, like revolution and like Saturn, the god of time, literally eats its own children, or, in a more modern variant, already prevents their emergence. The result is a decline in productivity, because redistribution is less productive than investment in technological and economic progress, which is always also based on risk capital. Massively rising government spending may have been financed or pre-financed so far by the similarly rising productivity of a technically and electronically interconnected economy, and by borrowing through speculation on stable economic growth, and probably also partly by ecological over-exploitation of largely nationalised resources. However, there are legitimate doubts about the sustainability of this politically flawed redistributive economy. As productivity declines, international competitiveness declines, which may translate at the national level into a general decline in prosperity. 

It is doubtful, based on past experience, that the majority will be prepared to make a timely decision to move away from politically flawed structures and return to economic sanity.

At all levels, the willingness to renounce is better driven by economics than by majority-supported politics. Those thinking about the future will therefore seek, first and foremost, less state intervention, less state apparatus, less state tasks and spending, and less state debt. It is usually unable to win a majority initially, but it is successful and has some chance of winning in the medium and long term, at least in political competition for seats, unless centralisation makes it impossible. The anti-centralism and anti-democracy of liberal doubters of the majority principle are not relics of the 19th century; they are also a prescription for a way out of the statist left and right collectivism of the 20th century, whose evil consequences have not yet been overcome.

Freedom has a long-term future. People do not want to turn into collectivized ants. People who seek freedom are often in the minority and form a vanguard that must persevere against the shifting coalitions of majorities hostile to freedom for the sake of all.

Robert Nef is a columnist; he co-founded the Liberal Institute and now serves on its board of directors.

NZZ 10.10.2021

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