1997 calling

Was surfing Westlaw and found the thought below. Remarkable, how little things have actually changed since 1997.

“The question facing Estonia is whether its independence can co-exist with Russian strength. The answer to this question likely depends on Estonia’s reconciling itself to the paradox that, while it can be independent of Russia, it can never be free of Russia. An important step in this reconciliation will be the realization on the part of Estonia that it cannot be restored to its relative ethnic purity of 1940. Rather, Estonia must move beyond ethnic nationalism and pursue a civic-based model of the nation state which will foster a shared identity and loyalty between its ethnic Estonian and ethnic Russian populations. Quite simply, restoration does not require exclusion.”

Source: CREATING THE ETHNIC ELECTORATE THROUGH LEGAL RESTORATIONISM: CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS IN ESTONIA Richard C. Visek, Harvard International Law Journal Spring, 1997

Psychological shield for Estonians?

Unfortunately it is not possible to rely only on peasant common sense when thwarting hostile attacks to influence us, because big states use billions for this war without frontiers. Estonia needs an immune system. Our national psychological defence must be constructed to a wide and strong base. Then the external influences and crises will not break our internal connections, society and the state as a whole during bad times.  (my translation)

No, this is not a quote from ‘1984′. It is from the speech made on the occasion of the 92nd birthday of the Republic of Estonia by the head of our defence forces. I have never understood why a high-ranking military person should be allowed to make these kind of political speeches at all, but using this kind of Orwellian rhetoric and nobody really caring about it is for me a dangerous sign. Connect it to the recent gaffe by our Minister of Defence who claimed that Estonian independence was a “triumph of national will” which seemed similar to the title of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

Nationalism is dangerous: the national unification function it provides threatens individual liberties, and discourages dissent or unpopular opinions, which in turn makes the society more closed. Do not get me wrong, I consider myself proud to be Estonian, but I do understand that the fact that I was born Estonian is random and does not mean that I am somehow better than someone who was born with a different nationality.

In my opinion our concept of nation state must be reconsidered. It is difficult to justify in today’s world the preservation of the Estonian nation as the primary reason for having the Republic of Estonia. We need a separation of the nation and the state.

Who to vote for?

I have already voted at the upcoming local government elections in Estonia, but I have been thinking about my choice (or rather lack of good choices). Here is my take on the Estonian politicial party landscape:

1. Keskerakond (Centre Party): They are dishonest and populist to the extreme. Although they have certain redeeming features in what they want to achieve, I could not vote for them because of how they behave in politics.

2. Reformierakond (Reform Party): I have been disappointed with them in recent years. In their hunt for popularity they have let go of their principles and become more populist than I would have expected. If you have to change your principles in order to get more votes, then what point is there to having power if you cannot do what you would want? They have disappointed me with many things, but mostly with dropping their fight to end compulsory military service. They have changed from a less popular party that got things done to more popular party that gets nothing substantial done.

3. Isamaa ja Res Publica Liit (Pro Patria and Res Publica Union): They are simply too conservative, nationalistic and sometimes even fascist to appeal to me. I cannot consider voting for them until they become less radical.

4. Sotsiaaldemokraatlik Partei (Social Democrat Party): They lack consistent ideology that would offer a specific plan for Estonia. They have locked themselves to oppositionary thinking and rather than coming up with new and interesting ideas, they just rehash the same old stuff. They are economically not credible and their leadership is completely uncharismatic.

5. Erakond Eestimaa Rohelised (Greens): It is just a big mess, not a party. They are not organised, which means they will remain marginal. I have severe issues with several people who belong to that party.

6. Rahvaliit (People’s Union): Like Centre Party Light, but with no clout or support. Politically a lame duck, deservedly. Hopefully these elections will end their misery and they will finally disintegrate completely.

I made the choice reluctantly by voting for the party I thought might be least capable of completely screwing up, but for a long time there has not been anyone to really vote for.

Catching internet trolls

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.  John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

In the memokraat blog, the Short Guide to Catching Trolls (Lühike trolliküti käsiraamat ehk ettepanekud online diskussioonitehnoloogia arendamiseks Eestis) was posted discussing the issue of trolling at the reader comment sections of Estonian online news media sites. I briefly participated in the debate, but now will provide here an overview of some issues and questions that I have been thinking about since then.

1. Defining the troll. The Guide defines troll as someone who posts insulting comments in an online environment with the purpose of provoking others and disturb the discussion. What constitutes an insult, provocation or disturbance is subjective to a certain level and depends on the cultural and social background of a person. My comments for the Guide as posted in the comment thread could be considered trolling as at least some people thought that part of my arguments were arrogant (when I suggested that people who are so thin-skinned that they could not tolerate hostile commentary should not read it), the style I write and express my opinions is usually a little provocational and some people might think that it disturbed the discussion. Thus in a wide reading of the definition I am a troll and so is nearly anyone who does not conform to a certain subjective criteria defined by the owner of the site. The banning of such trolls as myself results in discussions that are perhaps non-insulting and uncontroversial, but at the same time also rather valueless in terms of expanding the scope of discussion and bringing in alternative views.

2. Defining the problems? The trollhunters claim that the problems are caused by the technology used for commenting at Estonian online news sites. They claim the technology used is to blame for the exclusion of certain other people (who in a bizarre twist are claimed to be unable to freely use their freedom of speech because they are afraid of others also using it but critically), that this leads to radicalisation of public opinion and intolerance and distorts public opinion. All these claims lack evidence, studies or any research: we are expected to accept these premises as self-evident, when they are actually not.

The biggest unsupported assumption the authors of the Guide make* is that the root of all evil is anonymous commenting, which may or may not be the case.

3. Freedom of speech in an online setting. It is true that freedom of speech is not absolute and the exercise of it also requires responsibility for one’s opinions. However, for acts that bring criminal liability there already is a possibility to identify almost anyone online so the anonymity is only superficial. Thus it is possible at least in theory to make people accountable for their words also now.

50 years ago internet did not exist and therefore the human rights standards we have need to be adopted to the internet era. Certain principles remain the same, but the internet might change the content of certain rights subtantially, including freedom of speech. Offline analogies do not always work in the global unregulated internet with low barriers to entry.

4. Self-regulation is not always best when dealing with human rights issues. The trollhunters state that the least they want is state intervention or regulation. They propose a system of self-regulation, whereby the parties who control the commentary space make an agreement which is then adopted and implemented. In my mind it is dangerous when private entities make deals that involve limits to freedom of speech, because questions of accountability and transparency rise. I also believe that this might be even worse than state regulation, because the state is much more bound by international human rights obligations. So in cases that involve human rights I think it is preferential to have state regulation, rather than allow for private parties who control substantial public discussion space to make their own agreements to limit certain aspects of online activities. In many many spheres self-regulation is possible and works very well, but I am not sure if this is it.

—

In general terms there is another fundamental point why I think any regulation of online commentary space is not beneficial. Net neutrality means that content providers should not restrict specific parts of the internet depending on subjective criteria. The internet has flourished partly because of the freedom it provides and the abscence of walled gardens. What the trollhunters want to create is a walled garden, admittedly with very low walls, but still access to commenting would become more limited.

I also disagree that this discussion should be framed in terms of media freedom. Online commentaries do not constitute media or journalism in my opinion, it is a separate issue and therefore references to media and press freedom indexes do not really matter. The public debate in the matter has also included mostly people from the media sphere and not other areas who have framed the debate in their own terms.

Short rebuttal of the trollhunters critique of anonymity online:

1. The whistle-blower effect. The trollhunters claim that an anonymous tip option might be sufficient cannot be accepted because it is media-centric and would require an interested journalist to pursue the topic and lack of self-censorship in the media. Anonymous hints cannot replace anonymous commentary, they are different things. The trollhunters agree that certain levels of anonymity might be necessary for informing the public, I say it is essential.

2. Balance between insulting and constructive comments. This depends on the topic, but in most cases I would say based on my experience that insulting comments do not prevail over more insightful ones. Again, there are no studies made or statistical data available other than Delfi claiming that insulting comments are only a fraction of the total body of comments. Even if the majority of comments would bring nothing to the debate, is it worth not having the few that do?

3. Censorship. The trollhunters here refer to the right of newspaper editors to choose what to publish. The commentary space is not in my understanding part of the newspaper and can function without it. The fact that newspapers have always edited their stories have been due to physical lack of room in the paper and the need to provide a concentrated overview. The internet does not have these physical limits and there is nothing lost with adding to concentrated overviews and officially sanctioned opinions other stuff as well. The claims of this leading to mob censorship are speculation.

4. Impact of insulting anonymous comments. It is true that some people are more sensitive to criticism and insults than others, but again, there is no need to censor everyone because of this. Some views are controversial and people get offended. If I want to claim that there is no god, then this is offends people and I will be branded a troll. I believe that online commentary space must allow for expression of those less conformist views, which are not published by newspapers. I disagree that it is right to take away the freedom of expression from one group for the benefit of another.

5. Strength or importance of message. See above. I still refuse to accept the approach that it is somehow justified to prefer one group of people to another in terms of who may or may not express their views.

6. Vox populi, vox dei. I agree with the trollhunters that there needs to be no correlation between general public opinion and views expressed in comments, but I think it also depends on the topic. Likewise, I have seen no statistics which confirm that people believe that views expressed in online commentaries represent the general views in the society.

7. Video game violence argument. The idea is that people can insult others virtually so they will not do it offline. I think there is no correlation here, but no studies have been provided saying one thing or the other. The anger people have is in my own opinion a consequence, and not a cause of the processes in the society.

8. Moderated comments loses valuable discussion. This is subjective. If in some specialist finance related forum it works and likeminded people can express themselves better and feel good about it then fine. I do not think that discussion space for general public should work the same way (the danger to stifling of dissent and danger of conformism).

9. Too many comments to moderate. I think the notice and take-down system works pretty well.

10. Topic already discussed. Nothing to say here. Everything should be open for discussion.

11. Notice and take-down. Probably the system could be improved, I think it is disproportional to ban all anonymous comments due to imperfections of the notice and take-down system.

12. Turn to police. In case there is no real threat police should not be involved. If a person says to another that go jump off a cliff then this obviously is not a real threat. Again, in those cases where there is real threat police should be involved. It does not mean that all anonymous comments need to be banned because police does not do their work.

13. Economic factor. I am not sure if the commenting option is ecnomically beneficial or not, but of course that should not be the prevailing argument for or against limiting free speech online.

14. Freedom of speech is why comments are kept. Not a convincing argument, I agree. But I do think that once they have been introduced, stopping the ability to comment wold be problematic as it has almost become a service of general public interest.

15. Historical perspectives. There has been no time like this and therefore parallels with the past might or might not provide insight into dealing with the issue at hand.

* As pointed out by Daniel, I have put words in the mouths of the trollhunters that they think that anonymous commenting is the root of all evil. The trollhunter guide does not state this and it was an exaggeration on my part. However, I still think that the general tone of the Guide seems to connect anonymous expression with the existence of insulting and derogatory comments. I guess it would be fair to say that the authors consider it as a not an insignificant part of all evil

The bizarro-world of Tallinn city government

People tend to think of municipal politicians all over the world as more corrupt and less talented as those governing a state. Tallinn however is in a class of its own. All traditional elements of corruption are present: nepotism, favouritism, special deals with certain businessmen, shady advisors, city officials forced to become members of the ruling party, increasing propaganda-machine to hold power, rigorous court actions to defend against supervision etc. Corruption in Tallinn has become so commonplace that people have ceased to expect more and kind of accepted dishonesty as a part of a political ideology used by the Centre Party. No one in their right mind would tolerate the kind of behaviour exhibited by those governing Tallinn among their friends, or in their workplace.

“They are all the same” is just another way for them to shift blame for corruptive acts to someone else, to the democratic system.

The idea for this blog came, as I took trolleybus no 3 back home from work I saw the new “conductor” the Centrist city government has put to many of the public transport buses, trolleybuses and trams in order to create “social” jobs ahead of the local government elections in October. There is nothing social about these people, to me this particular individual seemed to be bored out of his mind. No-one spoke to him, no-one even looked at him during the 25 minute ride. He strolled back and forth through the trolley-bus (which fortunately was not very crowded), fiddled with his phone and tried hard to look important.

In my opinion these people are not conductors, rather they are people who the city government pays to ride the buses and trolleybuses and trams the whole day. I think that being paid to be a commuter is a horrible job, because commuting already for half and hour is quite difficult task. I probably would not survive the full workday in this meanial, boring job. This reminds me of the film where it showed how Nazis tried to break the will of their prisoners in concentration camps by having them move a pile of rocks back and forth between one place and another. I don’t understand why they don’t just pay these “professional commuters” their small salary and let them do something productive. Or put them all in one bus that takes more diverse, scenic routes and where they could play chess, read books. This saves us, the commuters who are not paid to commute, some space and allows to travel comfortably, without having to tolerate watching a person who is in the brink of being bored to death.

I plan to vote for someone who is sane and sensible in the coming local elections and not for someone who only looks at everything through narrow ideological perpective.

Solutions for Estonia’s economic problems

This post is partly inspired by Edward Hugh’s post on Latvia’s economic problems, where he offers three solutions (after devaluation happens, which he thinks is inevitable):

I think this deterioration needs to be addressed as soon as possible, and I see three large issue.

i) Productive capacity needs to be increased substantially. This means increasing the labour force, and this means (as outlined in the World Bank Report, From Red To Grey) facilitating large scale inward migration. Given the serious political implications of encouraging ethnic Russian migration into your country, I see only two viable source regions, the Central Asian Republics in the CIS, and Sub. Saharan Africa. Possibly this solution will not be widely popular with Latvian voters. Well, they do have the right to choose. Your country can take the measures needed to become sustainable, or you can watch it die, as the economy shrinks, and the young people leave. That, I think, is your choice.

The other two measures you need to take are contingent on the first being implemented, since without the first measure you will simply not dispose of the economic resources for the other two.

ii) A serious policy to support those Latvian women who do wish to have children. But with major financial advantages, not half measures, and propaganda stunts. You need policies that can work, and I know plenty of demographers with ideas.But this needs money. Important quantities of money. And gender empowerment, right across the economy, at every level. We have formal legal equality in the labour market, but evident biological and reproductive inequality, in that only one of the parties gets to bear the children. The institutional resources of the state need to redress this imbalance.

iii) Major reforms in the health system to address the underlying male life expectancy problem. You can only seriously hope to raise the labour force participation rates at 65 and over if people arrive at these ages in a fundamentally healthy condition. In economic terms, simple investment theory shows why this is the case. A given society spends a given quantity of resources on producing a given number of children, those who have citizens who live and work longer evidently get a better return on their investment. If you want to raise Latvian living standards, you have to raise the life expectancy. And this apart from the evident human issues.

I think all of this applies to Estonia as well. The last two are already somewhat handled in Estonia, there are programs which support young families and although male life expectancy is still rather low, more effort is being put in sport promotion programmes for general public, healthy lifestyles are promoted etc. The nordic nature of Estonians (and the Finnish role-model) might also contribute to helping Estonians live longer, although at the moment it looks rather bleak.

I tend to agree with Edward Hugh that many of the problems of Estonia’s economic crises have been caused by lack of people. This was true during the boom times (the labour force shortage helped to push the salaries up quickly) and is even worse now that many truly skilled people move abroad where they are offered better salaries and ways of self-improvement, leaving in Estonia a mass of former construction workers and factory workers who have been laid off and who are probably unable neither to leave Estonia nor re-qualify for another job. Meanwhile, it is still difficult to find well-educated people in many areas, regardless of the growing unemployment rate.

A part of the solution is to train those people at our universities. Fortunately, Estonian public policy of pushing people to go to professional education and not to universities has failed and people are still going to universities en-masse (this year’s admissions has been the highest in recent years). It seems, however, that the funds used for the ill-fated push for professional education could have been used better at supporting universities. It is questionable if the big public universities themselves, still bureaucratic behemots with Soviet-era legacies, can provide the skills, knowledge and values required to educate them. The universities could do more with continuing education as well, offering a range of specialised courses for those seeking to update or refresh their skills and knowledge, but not willing to spend time (and money) on full Master or Doctoral programs.

The second part of the solution is increased immigration of unskilled workers from other non-EU countries. This means a change of paradigm in mainstream politics and suppression of strong nationalistic moods prevalent in the society. None of the major political parties in Estonia recognises or debates is the need to increase immigration. Walking around even in Tallinn’s streets it would be very difficult to spot any people who are non-ethnic Estonians or Russians and are not tourists. This is probably due to the effecient work of the Citizenship and Migration Board, which seems to pride itself on keeping the foreigners (at least those not from EU or US) out. One only needs to look at the low numbers of accepted refugees and asylum seekers for this.

Where should the new immigrants come from? The most obvious (and easiest to stomach politically) might be immigrants from Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other countries which many Estonians have compassion to. I am not so sure that a large scale inward migration from Africa will be as welcomed, although sooner or later there will also be more ethnically diverse mix of people in Estonia as well.

In order to have a long-term and sustainable solution instead of the race to the Euro at all costs, immigration policies must be reviewed and inward immigration increased gradually.

Constructing realities

Each person has his or her own reality, or rather a view of reality. It more or less overlaps with the realities of other people. People create these realities in order to understand the world, feel better, or be happier. There are rational realities and not so rational ones, but on the whole, in order for the human society to work, most people need to have a similar understanding of the world.

There are people who like to construct their reality and then impose it on others. The trouble Russia, China, and other autocratic nations are in, is that they have constructed (or rather the reality has been constrcuted for them) is not compatible with what other people or nations consider to be fair or just. The leaders of  countries should have the obligation to enable people to co-exist peacefully, they should bring people together. Whenever the realities of large numbers of people substantially conflicting and have as their aim to exclude others, everyone will be in trouble.

This does not mean that everyone’s realities should be identical, rather opposite. The diversity of opinions is great, and allows to expand your mind, but people should be more understanding of the realities others have constructed.

On economy, the environment and other stuff

The 700 billion dollar bailout bill was passed by US Congress and signed into law by still president Bush yesterday. As I watched the vote, I thought about the complexity of it all. It seems that the financial world had created a monster, much like the SkyNet self-aware computer in the Terminator movies, which was moving in unpredictable ways and for which we cannot fight. The markets have globalised without any real oversight or control. The banks have behaved irresponsibly beyond belief, motivated by the forces of competition to fight for customers in a way which has destroyed some of them and forced the taxpayers to take over others.

Nobody knows if the US economic stimulus package works or not. There are those who claim that it makes no difference, as worldwide trust in the US government is still very low. Perhaps this will change if Obama is elected president.

Whether we want this or not, the US has been a longtime leading force in the world, the only superpower in the democratic world since 1945, and in the world since 1991. However, the last eight years have seen American leadership turn sour, with the Iraq war, the Russian attack on Georgia, and the global credit crises. The US cannot have it both ways: they are either responsible leader of the world and expect to be treated like this, or they are not. For the last eight years they have not provided the kind of leadership as required, which means that there is a power vacuum, which created fear and uncertainty, which in turn brings more volatility and less prosperity.

Perhaps this economic crisis was necessary for the economy to be rebuilt using more sustainable methods. Perhaps this will be the big chance to combat the looming environmental catastrophe. Perhaps not. Perhaps it will provide distraction for enacting greedy, self-serving policies.

Talking about the environment: is not having children the most environmentally friendly thing anyone could do? I am not sure I agree with this completely, but perhaps the answer would be to promote more adoption as an eco-friendly solution to the overcrowding of the world with people. At least in Estonia, where having more (Estonian) babies is the percieved raison d’être of the Estonian state, one would probably be ostracised for making this argument.

Hectic times and the Moment of Truth

As always, the beginning of September is time-wise extremely constrained for me. Therefore I do not have enough time to write anything. In any case, I’ll soon be back with a more regular updates to the blog.

In the meantime I have had a nice birthday and other things are developing nicely.

I wanted to give a new remark about the new TV show Tõehetk (The Estonian version of the Moment of Truth). I think the show is especially vicious and it is a crime against the human civilization. It plays on the vice of greed to satisfy the public’s almost unlimited infringement on the game participant’s privacy, which I value as especially precious. I am scum for having watched it and I’ll try not to watch it any more.

Recession?!

Technically, Estonia seems to be in a recession, as our GDP growth has been negative for two quarters in a row. There are some important factors that do not make this a regular recession:

1. Unemployment rates are 4% (which is 0,2% below last quarter and 1% less than last year’s same quarter). So people still have jobs and the incomes of people actually should be growing at a normal rate. People seemed to have been scared off by the media’s talk about a possible recession and the rising prices and simply stopped spending as much as they used to.

2. The real estate market has not collapsed. In July actually the number of transactions rose slightly, which might (or might not) be an early indication of a recovery in that sector and the economy as a whole.

3. The statistics are always behind the times. As we live in August, we get the picture of the state of the economy in the quarter ending 30 June. It is important to see what are the numbers for this quarter, if it is going to be more than this quarter’s growth, the worse will be over.

4. The external factors are looking better as well. Oil prices are falling, euro is weakening slightly (helping exports).

So the thought should be do not panic, there is light at the end of the tunnel.