The Meaning of Real Transformation

There is a chapter in Fredrik Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom that explains why the worst get to the top.  The main reason it seems if we interpret it in modern terms, is that people are willing to suspend reality in exchange for a sanitized world. People do not want to believe that if you have an intrinsically bad system, however good you are at the beginning, you are eventually going to degenerate.  They dont want to accept that. 

Say we begin by assuming Najib is a good person (he probably is) but the system which sustains him will cause him to turn bad.  So it isn’t enough to transform society by changing the people leading it, but the system that structures our society must be changed too.That is our agenda now. Not just changing of guards, but changing the system that structures our society. 

Hayek tells of the danger of people accommodating totalitarian system believing that it isn’t the system that is at wrong. Totalitarianism may even be good if only good people are helming it. 

Just as a free market requires a libertarian system or liberal democracy, so do good people at the top who can stay good only if we have a good system of government. The leader who respects the opinions of the people he leads stays a good leader, if the system sustains him so. Najib can’t stay as a good leader because UMNO structures the world around us in a bad way. 

Najib’s New Economic Model in reality is just an extension of Mahathir’s way of renouncing the NEP and choosing to jump start Malay economics by picking and choosing winners. He has chosen mostly devils he knows and enriching them. Najib is now continuing to do the same by his market driven affirmative action that forms his NEM. Affirming the choice of selected individuals as economic drivers and trophy-ing them as paragons of Malay economics. 

After that, believing he has accomplished much, Najib and gang can party to celebrate the crowning achievements of his economic transformation where the missus sings and serenades the invited crowd. That is why dear readers, the disparity of income within the Malay community is the greater when compared to income disparities of other Malaysian races. 12% of the Malay population still lives under poverty while there are not more than 3% of the other races falling under the poor group. 

if we believe good men can overcome a bad system, we are wrong. as Hayek points out, this is a dangerous kind of thinking. Malaysia appears to be in that situation. We adjust ourselves and accommodate totalitarian tendencies believing that such system or political arrangement is not at fault. The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlingstranslates into the fault lies, dear citizens is not in the system but in ourselves if we are slaves. 

We may even be able to adopt a totalitarian system if only we can ensure that good men lead it. We have seen so many totalitarian tendencies being played out recently.

The refusal and dismissive attitude of the finance minister when the leader of the Malaysian opposition presented his rebuttal can only be interpreted as a totalitarian behavior. PM Najib lays out his budget demanding it to be accepted lock, stock and barrel.  The PM and his government continues in their rapacious spending and we accommodate that behavior as nothing wrong.

 Only in Malaysia we see the court allowing murder accused wearing masks in court so that the public cannot identify the perpetrators. How do we know, those paraded in court with masks on are not some Indonesians and other illegals dressed up as the principal accused to be the fall guys? 

Sharizat’s family members can do as they pleased with the RM 250 million because they know they can get away with the wrong. The PM’s wife can continue behaving as did Marie Antoinette because she believes the opinions of the enslaved people do not matter. 

You have the classic case that there is nothing wrong in the system. That we change the present bad people with good and decent people, everything is all right.

Nothing is farther from the truth. The agenda that we seek is not only changing the bad people on top, but reforming the structure of this country. if we don’t put the correct structure in place, even when good men lead the system, they will soon be overwhelmed by the system and become tyrannical in the end.

Posted by sakmongkol AK47