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Friedman on government

Frist, the scope of government msut be limited. Its major function must be to protect our freedom both from teh enemiew outside our gates and from our fellow-citizen: to preserve law and order, to enforce private contracts, to foster competitive markets. Beyond this major function, government may enable us at times to accompish jointly what we would find more difficult or expensive to accomplish severally. However, any such use of government is fraught with danger.
cover This quote, from Capitalism and Freedom, is the fundament Friedman builds for a liberal (meaning free) society. The key insight of this book is that capitalism ultimately leads to freedom. Governments should be very careful when regulating the market. They risk freedom.
I read this book while I traveled thru China and it made me think about the political system there. Opening the country to capitalism, should -following Friedman- lead to more freedom for the people in China. This is truly happening. And with luck, someday it may even lead to free democracy.

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posted on Saturday, January 22, 2005 link to this post (0) comments
 

Heading back


So Taiwan is international or national??
Anyway, I'm back in Vienna!

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posted on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 link to this post (0) comments
 

Skiing in China


I couldn't help myself. I had to try skiing in China. Not that I couldn't wait a few days before I'm back in Austria. But I had to see what's going on there.
Now I must say that I'm pretty impressed. Surely it's not Austria. But it gives the right feeling about skiing and I guess those Chinese who can afford it, may afford a trip to Austria next time (to get the real thing :-)

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posted on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 link to this post (0) comments
 

From South to North


On my way thru China I basically crossed the nation from south to north. From Hainan to Beijing. I learned quite a bit about this great (big) country. Shanghai and Beijing are both impressive in size and development. In my impression, Shanghai is the shopping mall while Beijing is the cultural center of China.

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posted on Monday, January 10, 2005 link to this post (0) comments
 

Welcome to Shanghai


Finally I reached Shanghai. An impressive city. Crazy about shopping with no sign of communism in sight.
Almost uncommented I posted some pictures below. I will add more details when I get online again.

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posted on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 link to this post (0) comments
 

SungWoo's visit


I'm very happy about SungWoo giving me a visit in Shanghai. We spend a few days enjoying the food in China. Although we mostly had Japanese and Korean food we really liked the cracy low prices. Our highlights were a fun night out in Park97 and shopping for cheap movies (we are talking about high quality -Dual Layer- 0.60 Euro DVD's).
That's now the 3rd time we met since our summer in 2002. Last time I visited SungWoo in Korea and the winter before he gave me a visit in Austria.

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posted on Sunday, January 02, 2005 link to this post (0) comments