Jón Ólafsson

Bad Politics and Good Politics

jonolafs — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:44:59 +0000

How can we distinguish good politics from bad politics? One could do it formally or procedurally and one could do it substantially or from the point of view of the content. The formal part is easy. One can most often determine whether or not some given formal requirements have been fulfilled or not, if they are clear and explicit at least. Parliamentary proceedings or the proper discussion of policy issues in terms of how long it was conducted, how and to what extent the discussion included those it was supposed to include and so on. The substantial part is less easy, but still not very difficult to determine, i.e. one can enumerate the issues discussed, how thoroughly each item was discussed and so on. But it is more difficult to identify rhetorical tricks, or whether or not non-sequiturs appear in a discussion, and generally to assess the logical quality of the discussion. But that one has to do in order to judge a discussion as bad politics or good politics. You have to judge the logical force of the arguments (as opposed to their rhetorical force). One may still recognize bad politics for what it is, it may not be difficult to make the distinction intuitively, one knows a flawed piece of argument when one hears it. But to claim that it is bad logic is a totally different story. It depends eventually on everyone’s being able to see the logical flaws. That’s simply unrealistic.

The fundamentally unjust

jonolafs — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 15:32:09 +0000

Our world is fundamentally unjust in so many ways. Take justice itself: It seems not even worth questioning that most people engaged in some kind of public work (politics, business etc.) will recognize (with Machiavelli, Glaucon and others) the necessity of appearing to be „just“ i.e. appearing to respect (as a matter of moral choice) other people, other views and other interests than one’s own. But to recognize this necessity is not to recognize as a necessity to be „just“. Success in life may certainly depend on seeming to be a morally good person, but being a morally good person is something different. It can even be detrimental to success. So the winner is who seems to be just, while not having to put up with the limitations of being just. The looser is the one who is just, yet seems to be unjust. I have examples in mind. Her is a specimen illustrating the winner. This is the looser.

Global Institutional Reform

jonolafs — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:11:36 +0000

Thomas Pogge argues that the sum needed for a serious offensive against poverty on a global scale is relatively small (300 billion USD). Yet too large for it to be realistic to raise the money in the traditional way by appealing to affluent donors, moral sensitivity etc. In other words it is an easy task through an international institutional reform, if such a reform could be achieved, where the global order would become “less burdensome” for the poor. These reforms would be minor adjustments to rules of international transactions, with an almost imperceptible effect on the lives of the affluent. We can all see that achieving much with a lower cost than achieving little, sharing contributions in a fair way and doing something about poverty that leads to change in structures, so that the same actions need not be repeated is desirable from all perspectives. So why is it so unrealistic? (See Pogge 2010, p. 53-56).

Success as beginning and as end

jonolafs — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:59:30 +0000

One would tend to think about any political agenda that it is, if it brings success, a beginning, rather than the end of something. Or, if it is a beginning, that it is not also the end. In Iceland, this is different. Here success of a program or initiative, seems to be seal its death. Take Icesave. An enormous movement, a momentum, a decisive victory of NO to aggreeing to pay anything out of state budget to compensate those who lost their money in Britan and Holland when Landsbankinn went bankrupt. And then what? Nothing, as if the steam was out for good. Those who dreamed of forcing the government out of power suddenly look helpless. What they participated in as an action that would lead to a series of events where the government would eventually have to resign, brought nothing. It just deepened the mess, increased the likelihood of a longer crisis, served certain political forces in other countries and as an emotional outburst for Icelanders in need of such outburst. Then nothing. But in this case that is precisely the good news.

Petersburg Iceland Crisis

jonolafs — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 15:49:57 +0000

This article in Konsul 1 (24) is a more or less accurate description of my talk in St. Petersburg 14 March.

Stoic on wealth

jonolafs — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 00:16:55 +0000

Quoting the Romans always sounds a little affected, but “primus habere quod necesse est, proximus quod sat est” (Seneca Letters I,2) is too striking not to repeat it. Its form expresses what it says even better than its content. The limit to wealth is not hard to see: necessity and sufficiency. To be wealthy is to have what is essential for survival and what allows one to live and act as a free individual. It captures the absolute and relative aspects of poverty and wealth. Anything beyond is beyond the proper limits of wealth (divitiarum modus). Very simple.

The Wisdom of Crowds

jonolafs — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:10:09 +0000

We know very well that a group of people may show more competence than the best single person in that group. Therefore collective decisionmaking makes perfect sense and a democratic decision may bring out a better solution than any single person could. Using this criterion for the collective decision of Icelanders to reject the Icesave deal, a hopeful optimistic assessment might that this must, therefore, have been better decision, whatever one may belive oneself. But then there is the repertoir of bad to horrible decisions made democratically where crowds follow leaders. The interesting thing about Icesave is that there is no tangible leader. Those who thought they would profit from rejection don’t. The rejection has made no one king. Everything is unchanged. I met an octogenarian last Thursday who said to me with excitement flashing in his eyes: We may have gotten rid of this government by Monday. But he was wrong. The crowds perhaps made the wrong choice, but they were wise enough not to crown any one. The old guard of the right, recently turned anti-global and radical, are still what they always were. Defenders of small-state corruption. Hopeless demogogues.

Putinesque

jonolafs — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:11:19 +0000

There is a man standing close to the door when I enter the train at Aeroport metro station heading downtown. He might be coming from Sokol or even all the way from Rechnoi Vokzal. He is not tall but well built. Broad shoulders, thinning light hair. His features are manly. He is reading a magazine and entirely calm he leafes through the pages, reading some and looking at the pictures. It is about military aircraft. He does not seem to be an expert on military aircraft, but you never know. Most likely he is an amateur. Perhaps he has a job in admininstration where such knowledge is necessary or at least desirable. He is wearing a dark woolen jacket, the sailor type. Greyish trousers. Black shoes, worn, leather, the typical design. Narrow toe. The Dobby like features from behind make me think of the former president as we enter the Mayakovskaya station. Living the image. Putin in the suburbs.

Brim – Undercurrent

jonolafs — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:28:40 +0000

The selection of films available from the back of the seat in front of you tends to shape the expectations you have about each film (rather than for example whether some of them won the Icelandic EDDA award). Maybe that is why Brim was such a nice surprise. Is it a noir? (I always seem to have difficulty with that concept). It is pretty dark, literally, at least. An old Icelandic trawler ridden with power failures. A captain who seems sunken into the sullen distractedness of private capitulation. He does not even care to sail far enough to hit grounds where fish actually might be found, and when he eventually does pick up the decisiveness to do that, things go wrong. A dead and delusional sailor appearing without a clear distinction between the flashback and the supernatural. The name of the film in Icelandic makes no sense. Brim is surf. Undercurrent makes much more sense, although it is difficult to understand what exactly the undercurrent is. There are many undercurrents, attached to each person in the film, with the possible exception of the mechanic. Actually, the point of the film is entirely unclear. A judgment made in the film about another film, which is said to be lacking in “motivation” seems to fit with this one. Brim is one of these rare films, which turns out to be quite good for reasons that usually would justify the opposite view.

The King of Kleifarvatn

jonolafs — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:32:40 +0000

The area around Kleifarvatn is eerie this time of the year and maybe it always is, at any time of the year. The lake, partly dried out, yet still there, very very quiet. Except for the pieces of ice forming a broad band along the shores and rattling like icecubes in a big half-filled glass of whisky. It’s the perfect place to sit in the car on a suddenly greyish Sunday, listen to broadcasts on the radio, bringing events that are taking place at that very moment elsewhere. One slowly feels redirected towards the issue of death. Death of a system. Death of a biosphere. Death of a planet. Death of an individual human being.
Does nature react to politics? The opposite is true. Politics reacts to nature. In the spring the king of these realms, reacting to a volcano eruption, two rather than one, predicted the third. It was perceived as a threat. He did not realize that it would. Now he is not threatening but rather struggling to find ways to rationally explain what he felt an urge to do. So irresistible that he actually did it.
Nature is unaffected and as the days ahead will show, so is the big world. The king expects world media to come flocking (again), and he says they do, but they do not, not in great numbers. In his unpredictability he has become predictable.