My Afternoon with Benjamin Netanyahu

I had the opportunity to meet Benjamin Netanyahu and hear him speak.
Not only was he Prime Minister of Israel back in the 90s, Mr Netanyahu was most recently the Finance Minister. During his tenure as Finance Minister, he drove major economic reforms through the country, pulling it back from being the most regulated and government dependent economy to an open market that is now leading the world in patents and technology.

He spoke about 3 things
1. Israel's huge growth and the contributing factors
2. Globalization
3. Anti-globalization

As he put it, taxes, government spending and regulations were problems for Israel. He embarked on cutting taxes, decreasing government spending as a share of GDP, and removing regulation obstacles. It worked: Israel moved into hyper growth the last few years despite fighting a costly low-level war with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu made the case that the lobal trade today is unknown in the history of mankind. That countries will be forced to compete for businesses by lowering barriers. Otherwise, you get malaise like in France. Strong players are not the owners of minerals and raw materials, but the countries that leverage mind-power. He pointed out that the benefits of this rising globalization is a better quality of life for everyone: rich and poor. To paraphrase, would you rather allow a handful of people to get super rich and a significant number of poor become middle class, or would you rather prevent a handful of people from getting super rich and keep the poor in poverty? Countries with truly impoverished people - India and China - have decided to let their people gain wealth and improve their lives. And the consequent result is increasing democracy, better education, more women's rights, and more individual rights.

He concluded by pointing out that there is massive resistance to globalization. We have seen it especially in France, which is losing out to the other Europeans in terms of growth and quality of life. He especially pointed to Militant Islam as the largest force working to fight globalization. Not only do they want to turn back the hands of time to a period 1000 years ago when Islam ruled a wide swathe of the world. They also are not rational. That is, even the Soviets in their peak could be swayed into a rational position (Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin).

I'm not 100% behind Netanyahu's statement that China & Russia are rational. They have massacred millions of their own people.

Netanyahu went on to say that the suicidal component of Militant Islam makes it irrational. They don't care about people, their own or others, because it all brings about a holy apocalypse. His point being that if 1 Billion people follow Islam and a chunk follow Militant Islam, then that's a large number of people who actively seek not only a return to the glory days of Islam, but the death and destruction of their enemies of Islam (the US being the Big Satan).

Powerful stuff. Certainly you can argue that every stage of modernization brings anti-modernization elements out. The Luddites. The Middle East was and, to a large degree still is, incredibly feudal. Suddenly Western ways (aka individual rights and freedoms) are being thrust on them. What do they have to offer instead? Certainly not a better quality of life, but they do offer holy salvation, whcih goes beyond this world.

I suspect that at some point even China will wake up if the West really sees threats. After all, we are the Chinese markets, and an impact on us has a bigger impact on them.