Specifically,
what those people are usually referring to is the series of
protections, quotas, tariffs, and subsidies that President Park had
given to what were then nascent chaebol companies.
Much
can be said about his books, and I plan to do so in the future. For
now, however, I will focus only on his defense of the
infant industry argument, which is an idea that argues that
emerging businesses and industries require government protection –
in the form of tariffs, subsidies, and quotas – from their more
entrenched competitors, particularly foreign competitors.
In
that article that I linked earlier from The Independent,
Professor Chang compares nascent industries to his six-year-old
child. If this weren't a cringe-worthy moment of stupidity and/or
academic dishonesty, I don't know what is.
Moving
on, in Bad Samaritans, Professor Chang makes the argument that
Korea's economy did not develop because of neo-liberal economic
policies, but rather due to heavy government involvement in the
economy. There is no question that that is true.
There
is also no question that Korea's rapid economic growth was nothing short
of miraculous. There is a reason that it is often referred to as the
Miracle on the Han River. But is that proof that protectionism
was what allowed Korea's economy to develop so quickly? Well, that's
quite hard to confirm considering the fact that Singapore
and Hong
Kong, which practised freer trade policies, went through much
quicker and greater economic development.
“But
they are city-states; they cannot be compared to a country that is so
much bigger like Korea,” I often hear people say.
Fine,
fair enough. Then one has to wonder about China and India. Both
countries are much
bigger than Korea and their economies grew much more quickly after
they began to liberalize their respective economies (see here
and here).
Of
course, this is certainly not to say that government controls and
economic programs are non-existent in Hong Kong or Singapore or China
or India. They are not
free market economies. But they have shown that freer
markets do lead to greater growth.
Another
point that Professor Chang does not mention is that subsidization and
other forms of government protections do not guarantee economic
survival or development in any way, stretch, or form.
Yes,
Korea is an example of an economic success story. However, we also
have to look at other examples where protecting infant industries
were not successful. For example, African
cotton farmers want their governments to end the subsidies programs for their respective national industries so that they can finally compete in the international market; and which African country's economic development could ever compare with
Korea's economic growth?
The
problems of protecting infant industries are not limited to African
countries. In the United States, despite the government's efforts to
prop up Solyndra,
a company that specialized in manufacturing solar cells, with up to
US$535 million of taxpayers' money, the
company still declared bankruptcy.
Similar
examples can be found in Korea, too. Samsung was certainly one of the
chaebol conglomerates that the Korean government helped to protect
and nurture. However, Samsung is not the only business that got so
much love from the government. Another industry that has gotten a
lot of love from the Korean government is the rice industry. So
why has Samsung become an internationally well-known name but there
isn't a single Korean food-producing company that is as well-known
outside of Korea?
In
other words, no amount of subsidies or trade protections ever seems to
be able to prevent what was always doomed to fail from failing.
So
what does Korea owe its economic success to? That is a difficult question to answer; much more difficult than Professor Chang would like for his readers to believe. It's certainly not free market
economics. As Professor Chang has shown, the Korean government
has been heavily involved in Korea's economy. But as I have shown,
freer markets like Hong Kong and Singapore have grown more quickly
than Korea and subsidies do not guarantee success.
Though
that specific question may be harder to answer, what is much easier
to answer is that Korea's economy did not develop because
of
the government's protections, subsidies, and overall involvement in
the economy, but rather in
spite of them.
I
go through the news at least twice a day every day. For those who
frequent this blog, I am sure that it will not surprise you when I
say that I have tailored my newsfeed to focus on news stories that
are focused on business, finance, and economics.
However,
I saw a news story pop up the other day, the kind that doesn't
usually appear on my newsfeed, which grabbed my attention.
At
age 91, Lee Kuan
Yew has certainly lived a long life, and it is only natural that
sooner or later, death comes for saints and sinners alike. And just this morning, I saw that he has finally passed away. No one lives forever, and though his passing was expected, I still feel a deep sense of sadness knowing that he is gone.
I
was fifteen years old when I first read Alex
Josey's book Lee Kuan Yew: The Critical Years (1971-1978)
in my school's library. As I read about the political challenges that
Lee Kuan Yew had to face – striving to have Singapore become
accepted and then eventually being expelled from the Malaysian
Federation, the conflict with the communists, the delicate balancing
act that was needed to ensure Singapore's multicultural population
did not devolve into ethnic strife, the establishment of an
institutional and legal order that were needed to transform Singapore
from a former backwater colony to a developed nation – my respect
and admiration for him knew no bounds.
It was right around the time when the conflagration that came to be known as the Asian Economic Crisis engulfed so many lives when I first read about Lee Kuan Yew. Although Brunei, the country where I was living at the time, was not considered as one of the countries that was directly affected by the crisis, when the indirect effects of the crisis merged with Brunei's own internal problems at the time – which involved a playboy prince who had misspent billions of the country's money to maintain a hedonist lifestyle (see here, here, here, and here) – Brunei's economy went into a tailspin. As I compared him to other Asian leaders who were in power at the time, many of them now disgraced and/or forgotten, I felt bitterly angry that there wasn't anyone else who possessed the
determination, the vision, the self-confidence, and the intelligence
that Lee Kuan Yew possessed. I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was a giant
among men and that he was the kind of leader that Park
Chung-hee could have been; the kind of leader that world leaders
ought to emulate.
Then
for many years after that, I had stopped thinking of Lee Kuan Yew, until now.
The simple reason for it was that despite the ravaging effects of the Asian Economic Crisis and Amadeo's implosion, life still went on. I went on to graduate
from high school, went on to college and then graduated from college
as well, learned and experienced new things, gotten jobs, quit jobs,
paid bills, accumulated debt, went through personal hardships,
overcame some of them, and learned to adapt to those that I could not
overcome. Life has a way of moving on, it seems, and making us forget even things that we once
held most dear.
I
rejected Lee Kuan Yew's tribal
notion of “Asian
Values” – the implication that “Western-style” democracy
is somehow not applicable to Asian nations because of the particular
sets of culture that Asians are born and raised in. I rejected the
notion that culture determines an entire people's societal structure
into perpetuity.
The
United States' military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its
subsequent failures to “impose democracy” on those societies
might have somewhat exonerated Lee Kuan Yew's belief that cultural
differences could cause an imposition of democracy on those societies
to become a failure.
However,
comparing Asian countries – such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
Hong
Kong, and Singapore, which have developed their economies, social
structures, and their political values since the 1950s – to Iraq
which had been ruled by a fascist dictator and to Afghanistan that
had been ruled by the Taliban for decades
is a clear attempt at academic dishonesty. As the former countries' economies transformed from
labor-intensive economies to capital-intensive economies to
technology-intensive economies, people's priorities, thoughts,
beliefs, and political views have changed.
The
idea that people's culture is static is wrong. And it is clear that Lee Kuan Yew could not have failed to have known that. In other words, his notion of “Asian Values” was no more than a bald-faced attempt at retaining his own hold on power.
I
also rejected Lee Kuan Yew's reliance on Orwellian social engineering
programs and Machiavellian politics to curtail social vices that range from chewing
bubble gum to caning people for drug-related charges. His use of the Internal Security Act, Singapore's version of Korea's National Security Act, as well as his penchant for bankrupting his political opponents (see here, here, and here), which effectively banned them from participating in politics due to the country's Bankruptcy Laws, was just as abusive, if not more so. I also found it hypocritical that his government intruded so much into Singaporeans' daily lives
despite his proclaimed
belief that “the ruler or the government does not try to
provide for a person what the family best provides.” The extent that is Singapore's Nanny State is
especially glaring considering the fact that over 80%
of the Singaporean population lives in public housing.
However, Lee Kuan Yew's most lasting legacy, which
will last into the future long after he is gone, is that he was the intellectual
voice behind the foisting of authoritarian capitalism. He succeeded where Park Chung-hee failed. Unsurprisingly,
Singapore has long been China's source of inspiration in its plans to
develop its political structure as well as its socio-economic
engineering programs (see here,
here,
here,
and here).
Considering
China's economic might, it is possible that the authoritarian capitalism that Lee Kuan Yew advocated and championed will define the twenty-first century as much as liberal capitalism
defined the twentieth century, which would seemingly nullify
Francis
Fukuyama's theories in his book, The End of History.
If Lee Kuan Yew's version of capitalism replaces the liberal form of capitalism
in much of the world's zeitgeist, which I think it could, the social changes
it could bring to the world will be enormous, in both good and
terrible ways.
It
has been many years since I thought that Lee Kuan Yew was the kind of
leader that world leaders ought to emulate. As I said earlier, I
stopped believing that a long time ago. Now, I
have lost all faith in the benefits of concentrated
political power even if it is in the hands of wise and benevolent leaders of whom I know none.
Although I now stand firmly against many things that Lee Kuan Yew stood for despite my youthful dalliances with authoritarianism, I am still grieving now that Lee Kuan Yew has breathed his last. Although I have
come to stand opposed to his leadership style and philosophy, and dearly hope that his legacy will not be as widespread as I fear it will be, what no
one can deny is that he was still an intellectual giant among men who
had achieved more than most can even dream. Though perhaps not
goodness, he has certainly achieved greatness and immortality in his
own right. As Richard
Nixon once said, had Lee Kuan Yew “lived in another time and
another place, he might have attained the world stature of a
Churchill,
a Disraeli,
or a Gladstone.”
Though I am grieving his passing, I do not grieve the authoritarian that he became. Rather, I am grieving the man that he could have been – an intellectual titan who
might have attained the world stature of a Locke,
a Jefferson,
or a Tocqueville
– a man who, above all else, might have used his staggering and formidable intelligence to champion the cause of freedom and
liberty.
The
Straw Man Argument is a type of argument that is used to
misrepresent someone else's argument, by way of exaggeration or
misrepresentation or complete fabrication, with the intention of
making the other person's argument easier to attack. It is a
dishonest method that almost always undermines rational debate.
As
such, almost everyone hates this form of argument. However, many
people still resort to this kind of argument on a daily basis –
some deliberately, while others unknowingly. And one of the most
prominent Straw Man Arguments that have been used so excessively that
many people have come to accept the Straw Man as gospel truth is the concept of
Trickle-Down Economics.
Senator
Elizabeth
Warren said that trickle-down economics “devastated
U.S. workers while propping up the wealthy.”
Pope
Francispontificated against it, calling it a “a
crude and naïve
trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the
sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.” (I am not sure if Pope Francis is the right person to talk about naïveté or the idiocy of faith. See here and here.)
The
OECD
released a
report that said that “the benefits of growth do not
automatically trickle down across society.”
Trickle-down
economics has also been attacked and criticized by thinkers,
academics, politicians, activists, and journalists in Korea as well
(see here,
here,
here,
here, here,
and here).
The
case against trickle-down economics is clear. It is also clear that
it has some very powerful enemies.
Trickle-Down
Economics does not actually exist. It is a lie. “Trickle-Down
Economics” was a phrase that was devised in the United States in
the 1980s when the Democratic Party needed a a catchy zinger to
attack President Reagan's
economic policy.
The phrase was a remarkable political slogan as it painted Reagan and
other advocates of tax reduction as sycophants who had all been
bought and paid for by greedy billionaires at the expense of the poor
and the middle class.
One
of the most prolific economists of our time, Thomas
Sowell, once challenged
anybody “to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had
ever advocated this “trickle-down” theory.”
To
date, no one has ever adequately answered that challenge.
Quoting
Thomas Sowell again:
Let’s
do something completely unexpected: Let's stop and think. Why would
anyone advocate that we “give” something to A in hopes that it
would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not
give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because
there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in
the first place.
Those
who advocate lower taxes, of which I am one, have never made their
case by supporting the idea of transferring wealth from the masses to
the rich. Rather, they emphasize the creation of additional wealth
and jobs when businesses are not hampered by burdensome regulations
and steep taxes.
However,
even that is only half of the argument. Those who champion lower
taxes do not support lowering taxes only for the rich, but also for
everyone else. Crazy as it may sound, no free market
capitalist has ever claimed that society
would become wealthier because
the
rich would spend more. Rather, they argue – correctly – that tax
cuts in general would stimulate the economy. That is because lowering
taxes is based on the idea that if the government lowers taxes, the
people – both rich and poor – will have more of their own money
and will, therefore,
tend to engage in more economic activity.
Therefore,
the phrases “trickle-down economics” and “tax cuts for the
rich” are nothing more than the inventions of a desperate political
mind that did not have the ability to debate the merits of an
opposing viewpoint. After all, what easier way can there be to “win”
a debate than to invent a viewpoint that no one holds, attack that
viewpoint, and then claim intellectual victory? This is not to say that there is no need for a real debate about which policies are needed in order to promote economic growth. With all due respect to Grover Norquist, God knows that lowering marginal tax rates alone is not a panacea (see here and here). That debate is badly needed. Unfortunately, however, demagogues are far too busy trying to slay the imaginary “trickle-down” dragon.
On
December 18th 2014, IKEA, the world's largest furniture
retailer, opened its first Korean branch in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi Province.
The store is 25,759 square-meters (approximately 277,267 square-feet)
in size and it is accessible via train
and three inter-city express highways.
It
would appear that IKEA's business is booming. So much so that the
THREE
inter-city express highways that lead to IKEA are congested with cars
– all of them customers who want to buy their next furniture item
from IKEA.
Apparently,
doing well in business is not always a good thing. A little over two
weeks after IKEA opened its doors to the public, the Gwangmyeong
Municipal City has demanded that IKEA come up with a “dramatic
breakthrough” by January 7th
2015 to resolve the problem of the congested roads. The municipal
government threatened that if IKEA fails to come up with a solution
by that date, the government would withdraw the temporary approval
that it gave to IKEA to operate in its city, thus forcing IKEA to
shut its doors starting on January 15th
2015.
The
Gwangmyeong Municipal City is also pressing the central government to
have IKEA registered as a large-scale discount mall, which is
currently registered as a mall specializing in furniture. This
registration change would force IKEA
to shut
its doors twice a month on weekends.
Never
mind the fact that the Seoul High Court already ruled that that
particular regulation was unlawful
because “it was difficult to judge if the rules actually helped
smaller retailers while limiting consumers' choice at the same time.”
What
is the government proposing that IKEA does? Should IKEA stop being a
furniture retailer for a few years and re-brand itself as a
construction company that specializes in road expansion? Or should it
be a railroad company that focuses on adding and updating Korea's
railway system? Or should it be forced to expand its already huge
parking lot, which can house up to 2,000 vehicles?
Or
should IKEA be forced to raise its prices? That way, consumers will
just stop going to IKEA. Oh, wait. IKEA was already investigated
by the Fair Trade Commission for “charging South Korean
customers more than it charges buyers in other countries” even
before it opened!
President
Park Geun-hye can wax poetic about transforming Korea into a creative
economy until her face turns blue. The reality that is Korea's
economy says that the government's rhetoric is just that. Considering
the latest attack on IKEA, the Seoul Metropolitan Government's
persecution
of Uber, Korea's ridiculous
tariffs on agricultural imports, Korea's inability to overturn
its anachronistic
internet laws, Koreans' overall mercantile mindset, and many other illiberal and anti-globalization
tendencies, it is hardly surprising that half
of all foreign firms based in Korea plan on leaving Korea sooner
rather
than later.
Charles
de Gaulle was purported to have once said, “Brazil is the
country of the future... and always will be.” Though I am not sure
if Charles de Gaulle really did say it, regardless of the authenticity
of the source, I cannot think of a more curse-like compliment than
that. After all, it is another way of saying that an entire country
is forever
destined never to fulfill its huge potential.
Unless
there is a real structural economic reform and a genuine change in
the Korean people's attitudes about free trade, and soon, there is a
good chance that that epithet will not apply only to Brazil.
By
now, most people must have heard about the incident in Korean Air
that has been dubbed “Nut
Rage.”
For
those who are still unaware, a
Korean Air executive, Ms. Cho Hyun-ah, who is the airline's head of
cabin service and the daughter of the company's boss, created a
ruckus on one of her company's planes that was headed from New York
to Incheon. Ms. Cho had caused a delay in the flight when she
demanded that a senior crew member be removed from the flight when
the crew member failed to serve macadamia nuts “properly.”
According to the story, the crew member served Ms. Cho the
nuts in a bag, instead of serving
the nuts on a plate.
When
the news broke out on social media, justice was swift and terrible.
Ms. Cho resigned from her position as head of cabin service, but
continued to be an executive at the company. When that failed to
satiate the fury of the Internet mob, she resigned from all of her
roles from the company.
Justice
had been served. Seemingly.
In
a way, I can understand where Ms. Cho came from (assuming that the
anger was purely based on her disappointment over improper service;
and that her attitude having been the result of being her father's
daughter did not play any role in her action).
What
she did lack was tact. She could have resolved the situation so much
more amicably. She could have given a stern one-on-one pep talk. She
could have gently reminded the crew member of the company's
regulations about how to properly serve food to first class
passengers. However, she chose to be as dramatic as possible and
turned herself into a symbol that represents everything that people
hate about the rich.
But
we have to go back to the question. Does capitalism, indeed, breed
nepotism? This question is not without merit. After all, Ms. Cho is
her father's daughter.
However,
I am disinclined to agree with the statement. I do not think that
capitalism breeds nepotism at all.
Firstly,
we have to recognize one thing – no matter how much we may talk
about individualism, human society has always revolved around the
family. Before
meritocracy and individualism, children joining the family was
standard practice, and in many ways, it still is.
Well, not all family businesses are created equal Image Source
As
time has progressed, with social and economic equality becoming more
important to many people, nowadays people like to imagine that they
are more ambivalent about family ties. However, there seems very
little evidence to say that is actually the case.
Therefore,
it would seem that nepotism is far older than capitalism.
Secondly,
generally speaking, the children of wealthy parents tend to be highly
qualified individuals in their own right. Though admittedly they went
to the best schools because their wealthy parents paid for their
pricey education, it does not change the fact that they have often
gone to the best schools. Furthermore, due to the pressure that is
often placed on them to be excellent in whatever they do, they often
excel in their own right.
This,
too, is much older than capitalism.
Thirdly,
what do Benazir
Bhutto, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi, Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, and Park Geun-hye have in common?
I
have heard many people point to these female Asian leaders to express
their disappointment with the American people's
inability/unwillingness to (yet) elect a woman to the White House.
However, those people are only telling a half-truth. What they don't
tend to mention is that people from India, Indonesia, Myanmar,
Pakistan, the Philippines, and Korea appear to be more willing to
elect women because people in those societies tend to value family
affiliations more.
Whether
we like to admit it or not, women's advancement (at least in
politics) often seems to begin at the altar.
So,
due to the historical precedence that nepotism has over capitalism,
and that it is not unique to humans, it would appear that capitalism
does not breed nepotism. However, considering that the rich tend
to marry only among themselves, it would seem that at the very
least, capitalism does enforce nepotism and vice versa. After all,
one of the main reasons why people continue to work to earn more
money than they need for themselves is to ensure that they can
provide a more comfortable life for their children.
Is
there a cure for nepotism? Well, I am not entirely sure if nepotism
is actually a disease that requires a cure. More than anything else,
it seems like it is an ingrained part of our more inner-psyche that
cannot be easily extricated by mere legislation. Perhaps if all
humans evolved to treat the rule of law as sacrosanct, we may see
changing attitudes toward nepotism (and perhaps even toward the
notion of family itself). Until, then, however, whether the
prevailing economic system is based on laissez-faire capitalism,
crony capitalism, corporatism, welfarism, socialism, communism, or
whatever other -ism there is, it seems that we will not be ridding
ourselves of nepotism any time soon.
WARNING:
The following blog post contains a lot of spoilers. If you have not
yet seen Snowpiercer and wish to do so without having the plot
given away, then do not read this.
Snowpiercerhas
been called a sci-fi action film. It’s hardly sci-fi. If people
insist on referring to it as a sci-fi film, those people will have to
admit that it is based on awful sci-fi. The movie begins with the
premise that Mankind finds a way to combat global warming with a
man-made chemical that is used to cool Earth’s atmosphere. And
cool Earth’s atmosphere it does. So much so that the whole planet
undergoes a new Ice Age period, thus leading to a mass extinction of
life as we know it. At least until the very end of the movie when a
polar bear appears on-screen, thus throwing that whole “mass
extinction of life as we know it” plot right out the window.
That
the audience is expected to believe that scientists would not have
tested this Earth-altering chemical ad nauseam before it is unleashed
into the stratosphere is ludicrous. Even more laughable is the fact
that the audience is told to believe that the one thing that not only
survives but also supports what is left of humanity in this freezing
hell is a train that is running around the world non-stop.
Snowpiercer
is
a good sci-fi film just as much asAnimal
Farmis
a reliable farmer’s almanac. That being said, just like Animal
Farm
is a beautiful allegorical story, so is Snowpiercer.
Some might say that Snowpiercer
is a lousy allegory because it doesn’t resemble the real world that we
live in today. Those critics are not wrong. The movie doesn’t
match the world that we live in today. However, Animal
Farm
didn’t resemble real-life 1940s English society that the English
used to live in either.
I
watched Snowpiercer about two weeks ago, and when the movie
ended, two thoughts occurred to me. The first thought that happened
to me was that I had just witnessed a rare find – a film that
respected the audience’s intelligence. The second thought that
occurred to me was that most people are seldom ever
honest about what we know and almost always dishonest about what we
don’t know. In other words, most things that most people claim to
know, especially in regards to the social sciences (such as politics,
economics, and philosophy, themes that this movie touches on), are the pretense of knowledge.
As
such, because this movie operates on the assumption that the audience
is intelligent, and then proceeds to touch on themes that are,
unfortunately, subjected to mind-numbing subjectivity, the conclusion
that I reached was that there were going to be many people who were
going to watch this movie through the lens of very dumbed
down current event stories
that they might have watched on the news.
That
there are only a small
numberof
movie reviews for Snowpiercer
that claims that the central theme that the movie focuses on is class
warfare, a far too simplistic overview, is most likely due to
the fact that Snowpiercer
has yet to be shown in movie theaters outside of Korea just yet.
It’s only a matter of when before harebrained newspaper columnists
who see themselves as enlightened populists decide to hail this movie
as a rallying call for the Occupy Movement. Yes,
class warfare is undoubtedly one of the topics that the film explores
but there is so much more than what meets the eye.
Like
Animal Farm, what
Snowpiercer does is to challenge totalitarianism and all of
the little despotisms that exist within it. Taking on the position
of opposing authoritarianism while not living in a totalitarian state
hardly seems edgy. However, another more subtle criticism that the
movie deals with is the morality (or the lack thereof) of political
leadership regardless of what stripe it comes in. More on this
later.
Throughout
the whole movie, there isn’t a single element that has not been
somehow affected by the totalitarian nature of the train’s
leadership. From the very beginning of the movie, the audience is made to dive right into the deep end of the tense environment that surrounds the tail section of the train – the claustrophobic Dickensian world that is home to the train’s poorest
inhabitants. Crammed into a tight, squalid space, these individuals,
including the movie’s main protagonist, Curtis (played by Chris
Evans),
live, if it can be called that, a miserable existence.
Revolution
is boiling beneath the surface and it doesn’t take long for the
audience to sympathize with the tail-enders; as the audience’s
blood is churned and made to call out for bloody revenge when we see
an anonymous guard brutally smashing his rifle’s butt into the face
of an unarmed elderly woman. Considering the real-life events that
have unfolded around us, such as theArab Springand
the variousanti-austerity
proteststhat
we have seen throughout Europe and the United States, it becomes easy
for people to root for the tail-enders, while at the same time
jumping to the conclusion that the movie is about the oppressed 99
percent fighting for justice against the tyrannical 1 percent.
People
who claim that this movie is an allegorical indictment of the
inherent injustice that exists in capitalism are missing the point of
not just the film but the very nature of capitalism itself.
Many
anti-capitalists would jump to tell anyone who is willing to listen
that income mobility that is claimed to exist in a capitalist economic system is a myth – that one’s economic fate is
predetermined by the socioeconomic status that one is born into and
has no opportunity whatsoever to move up that proverbial ladder. The
fact that there are immigrants
who arrive in developed countries with
very little
money and very little knowledge of the local language, but
nevertheless, persevere and rise in those societies or that many of
their children excel
in school and go on to obtain professional careers and establish
businesses do not seem to detract those anti-capitalists from
their religion.
The
fact that economic classes exist in capitalist societies is
undeniable. However, the anti-capitalists’ insinuation that the
members who make up those classes are static is nothing less than
willful ignorance.
Whereas
the thing that anti-capitalists claim to fight against does not
actually exist in real life societies that practice capitalism, it
does exist in Snowpiecer’sworld.
In Snowpiecer’sworld,
one’s socioeconomic fate is preordained by the tickets that
everyone had purchased (or not purchased) before the train embarked
on its non-stop seventeen-year journey – fist class, economy, and
freeloaders. Even the children of those who are born on the train,
long after the events that initially took place for this story to be
set in motion, are forced to live in the stations that their parents
had first found themselves in. “The people at the front of the
train are the head, and those at the back of the train are the feet,”
claims Mason (played byTilda
Swinton),
one of the movie’s deliciously evil antagonists, who hisses with
authoritarian finality, “Know your place, keep your place!”
The social system that the train operates on is based on a medieval feudalistic system, which is enforced by brutal violence. This is hardly a
capitalist society.
When
people watch this movie without thinking more deeply into it, it
becomes easy to assume that it is about a war between the haves and
have-nots, a situation that capitalism purportedly permitted to
exist. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Capitalism, by its very nature, requirespolitical
freedom, which includes, among other things, the opportunity for
socioeconomic mobility. Snowpiercer
was not an indictment of capitalism, but rather an indictment of
tyranny.
In
another sign that this movie’s challenge is toward tyranny rather
than capitalism, the audience is shown how the tail-enders receive
their food. During mealtime, the tail-enders who are constantly
hungry and malnourished are assembled by the guards and counted each
time so that they may be rationed the appropriate amount of food –
brown gelatinous bars, which are simply referred to as protein bars.
It is later revealed that none of the tail-enders was informed what
those protein bars were made of – mashed cockroaches (the movie
never explains where all those cockroaches came from).
In
the real world, since the mid-nineteenth century, the countries in
the world where famine occurred have been the countries that were run
by tyrannical regimes that attempted to control, distribute, and
ration food and farming based on political decisions. Robert
Mugabe’s Zimbabwe,
the Kim Dynasty’s North
Korea,
Mao Tse Tung’s China,
Mengistu
Haile Mariam’s Ethiopia,
Mohamed
Farrah Aidid’s Somalia.
In the past one hundred and fifty years, every single famine that
the world has witnessed has been the result of, to use a
euphemism, political mismanagement.
However,
toward the end of the movie, it is later revealed that the tail
enders’ diet did not consist of only these mashed cockroach bars.
When Curtis explains his motivation for wanting to take his
revolution all the way to the front of the train, he reveals that
there was a time when he was forced to eat human flesh.
In
the frantic early days when the train was about to begin its journey
as it raced against the oncoming Ice Age, the tail-enders who didn’t
buy a ticket but were fortunate enough to board the train were left
with no food to eat. As a result, when hunger set in, they began to
cannibalize each other. Curtis mentions that he knows what human
meat tastes like and that “babies taste the best.” He confesses
that when Edgar (played byJamie
Bell),
his second-in-command, was a baby, Curtis almost killed and ate him
but was prevented from doing so by Gilliam (played by John
Hurt),
the tail-enders’ elder leader and Curtis’ mentor and
father-figure, who cut off his own hand for the hungry tail-enders to
eat in exchange for letting Edgar live. It was only after many
people had been cannibalized and had voluntarily amputated their own
limbs to feed each other that they were provided rationed protein
bars.
In
Snowpiercer,
the train is the country, which is ruled by a tyrant; the people
forcefully imprisoned in their stations under the penalty of death.
The people’s malnourished state and their being forced to eat bugs and
each other is a story that we have seen far too many times on the
news (here,
here,
here,
here).
As Curtis recounts his past experience in having eaten human flesh,
he says that though it makes intellectual sense for the tail-enders
to show gratitude for being allowed to board the train and live,
considering the hell that they were forced to live through, it was
impossible to feel one iota of gratitude. It is impossible not to
sympathize with him.
Another theme that the movie touches on is how the train’s
leaders treat the tail-enders. Early
on in the film, a mysterious, plump looking woman who wears a bright
yellow coat, in stark contrast to the sooty grey that surrounds the tail end of the train, enters the scene with several armed guards.
Carrying a simple tape measure, she measures the height and width of
two small children and wordlessly whisks them away to the front of
the train. Before the woman can take the two children away, however,
one of the child’s parent throws his shoe at the woman, reminding
the audience of a similar event that occurred in real lifewhen
a desperate man hurled his shoe at the most powerful man in the world.
Such
lawlessness, of course, cannot go unpunished. The train’s inventor
and chief engineer andDear
Leader, the mysterious Wilford (played by Ed
Harris),
sends Mason to punish this act of rebellion. Before the
shoe thrower’s sentence can be carried out, a punishment which
appears to be a method that the Saudi government would have adopted
had the Arabian peninsula been covered in permafrost as opposed to
sun-scorched sand, Mason gives a speech, which the audience feels has
been given to the tail-enders many times before. In the first sign
of Wilford’s cult of personality, not unlike the kind of praisethat
is showered on North Korea’s Kim Dynasty, Mason offers glory to Wilford, stating that he is merciful and kind. Therefore,
any sort of rebellion against such mercy and kindness is that much
more magnified and thus cannot go unpunished. “Know
your place, keep your place.”
It
is later revealed toward the end of the movie that the woman in the
yellow coat took those children to the front of the train to
work as slaves. Wilford explains that in the train’s
seventeen-year journey, parts have needed to be repaired and replaced.
However, in that time, pieces that are required to keep the train
running have “gone extinct” and that, therefore, small children
are needed to crawl into tight spaces that no adult can squeeze into
to manually repair the train. In other words,
the tail-enders are treated no better than cattle. They’re fed
just enough to be kept alive, they are “disciplined” when the
need arises, and they are used as beasts of burden.
As
for Mason, she offers a microcosmic view of what abusive political
power can do to a human being. No one in the world is born evil. As
such, Mason must have, at one point in her life, been a sweet,
innocent, and good-natured child. Had Mason possessed any of these
characteristics, however, none of it was present by the time she
makes her first appearance in the movie. Mason is shown wearing
large spectacles that give her an insect-like appearance, sports a
thick Yorkshire accent, and her imperious lips
appear perfect just to issue orders.
Everything
about Mason – her looks, her dress, her mannerisms, her speech –
shows that she is the end product of having possessed despotic power
over the lives of others for an extended length of time. She is cruel,
mean, petty, and expects the people that she stomps on and treats
like trash to be grateful to her. It is the price that tyrants have
to pay – sacrificing their humanity for power, and reason for
delusions.
The movie could have offered just a simple solution – “The tail
enders succeed in their revolution and once the tyrant and the haves
have been taken out, all the tail-enders whose rights as human beings
had been stripped away live happily ever after.”
But
once again, the movie treats the audience like intelligent adults.
In a short scene, after Gilliam listens to Curtis’ plan on how he
plans to lead his ragtag group of revolutionaries to the front of the train,
he slowly and cryptically asks, “And then what?” It is a deep
philosophical question that has no easy answers. However, Curtis has
no time for all that. “We kill Wilford,” he says without
hesitation, as though somehow that is the solution to all of their
problems.
But
that is a question whose weight has been far too understated in this
movie – “And then what?” This same question is currently being
asked in Egypt and other Arab nations. So the mob finally fought
back and showed the world thatHosni Mubarakwas
nothing more than a paper tiger. And then what? So the mob got back
together and showed the world thatMohamed Morsiwasn’t
even half the paper tiger that Mubarak was. And then what? Judging
from what we see on thenews,
it hardly seems that the Egyptians have found their happily ever
after fairy tale ending.
As
Curtis and his ragtag team of revolutionaries fight their way into
one car after another, they begin to see whole new worlds that the
tail-enders had not even known to exist in their wildest dreams. And
with each progression they make, the more decadent the scenery
becomes. Initially, we see a whole train car that has been fitted to
serve as a horticultural orchard that grows fruits. In another car,
the entire car is used as an aquarium that the front enders harvest
twice a year that they may eat fresh fish while at the same time
making sure that the fish are culled in moderation to avoid
population crashes. This theme gets explored again later.
In
other cars, people enjoy Swedish saunas, and in others, they binge on
alcohol and drugs as they rave the night and day away. However, the most surreal car that the revolutionaries enter is the school car.
In this car, which is designed as a preppy grade school classroom, an
overly cheerful and hyper teacher (played byAlison Pill)
leads about a dozen or so students in their lessons. However, the
studies have less to do with maths or grammar but instead focuses on
singing adulatory praise for Wilford; again, not unlike the education
that we find in tyrannical regimes like in North Korea (here,
here,
here).
Although
this movie is undoubtedly an allegorical tale that criticizes tyranny,
and not capitalism as anti-capitalists would have people believe, it
is difficult to know for sure what kind of economic system exists on
this train. We never get to see a trade transaction. We see food
being rationed out, which implies that production is centrally
planned but the scene where the decadently rich binge excessively on
alcohol and drugs indicate that, assuming that production is centrally
planned, there is an underground economy of sorts that circumvents
the central planning authority, which seems impossible considering
the fact that they are all on a train which no one can get off of.
What
we do know for sure is what had been hinted to us earlier at the
aquarium scene and later spelled out toward the end of the movie –
population control is enforced and based on Malthusian
principles that would have madePaul R.
Ehrlich
proud.
What’s
important to remember about the aquarium scene is that the fish in
the aquarium is culled in moderation twice a year so that the upper
class may enjoy eating fish while avoiding crashing the aquarium’s
fish population. When Curtis finally meets Wilford for the very
first (and the very last) time at the engine room, whose design
looked like a minimalist version of a Plaza Hotel suite, Wilford
reveals that Curtis’ revolution had been planned and orchestrated
all along by him. Throughout the movie, Curtis receives notes from
an anonymous source from the front of the train, which goad him to
keep fighting on. It turned out that the person who sent Curtis those notes of encouragement was none other than Wilford
himself.
So
why would Wilford foment a violent revolution that is aimed at
himself? He explains that he did so to ensure that the
violent proletarian revolution would occur. This would compel both the
tail-enders and the upper class to kill off one another. That way, the population of the train, both the tail-enders and the elites of the upper-class section, would be kept in check. Wilford reveals to Curtis
that he had to make this choice because he could not wait for natural
selection to take its course; had he done so, the exponential
population growth would have outpaced the arithmetical level of food
production, which would have caused everyone to slowly starve to
death.
In
the real world, Malthus limited his apocalyptic prediction to limited
food production. However, even though those predictions
were proven to be false even within Malthus’ own lifetime, his
views never really went away. In fact, neo-Malthusianism has been
the rallying call for
many of the world’s modern-day environmentalists, such as the
aforementioned Paul
R. Ehrlich who
made a similar (debunked) prediction in his 1968 bestseller, The
Population Bomb.
In
his book, he predicted that hundreds of millions of deaths would occur per year throughout
the 1970s and he insisted that the only way to avert this catastrophe
was through mass population control “by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.”
However,
as we all know, instead of the global-scale famine and widespread
death that Ehrlich
predicted, the 1970s witnessed a modern
agricultural revolution,
which continues
to this day.
Despite a doubling of the world’s population, food production
continues to grow as technological innovation creates more and more
food on each acre of farmland. As mentioned earlier, the people in
the world who suffer from starvation and famine suffer not because of
a lack of food but because of, again with the euphemism, political
mismanagement.
In
the real world, Malthus, Ehrlich, and other similar-minded people
have been debunked. But what about aboard the Snowpiercer?
Does Malthus’ apocalyptic prediction bear any weight for the
train’s inhabitants? Sadly, yes. Firstly, food production can
only occur on the train, which, unlike fertile farmland, cannot be
expanded or tilled. Secondly, and more importantly, as the only
human beings left on the planet are all located inside the train,
trade with the outside world is impossible. What that means is that
food production is clearly limited and that the train’s inhabitants
have no choice but to be self-reliant.
In
some ways, the situation that the train’s inhabitants find
themselves in is similar to North Korea’s juchesystem,
an ideology which all but destroyed North Korea’s economy and
social systems. Considering the heavy security apparatus that
Wilford employs (which bears parallels to North Korea’s million-man
army)
who mostly carry rifles that have no ammo (which bears parallels to
North Korea’s ammunition
shortage)
whose job it is to pacify (which bears parallels to North Korean
soldiers being used to terrorize
the people into submission)
the hungry tail-enders (who bear parallels to North Korea’s hungry
citizens),
the fictional world of Snowpiercer
bears
striking resemblance to the Malthusian reality that is North Korea’s
juche ideology.
Under
such conditions, not only does the culling of people become possible,
it becomes necessary. It is the full blossoming of Jeremy
Bentham’sutilitarianism,
the philosophical school of thought that calls for “the greatest
good for the greatest number,” which when one thinks about it, one
begins to realize that it is one of the most vicious slogans ever
foisted on humanity. Utilitarianism is a horror because it never
defines “good” except that it is whatever is good for the
greatest number. Who, in any particular issue, decides what is good
for the greatest number? And why does numerical superiority
immediately mean that it is good? It is a horrific philosophy, but in North Korea and aboard the Snowpiercer,
its horrors take a backseat to its necessity.
The
difference between the leadership that oversees the Snowpiercer
and their real-life counterparts in North Korea is that the former
was forced into its predicament by a rapidly changing climate that
was no longer conducive to human survival whereas the latter
voluntarily chose to create its own hell. Differences in matters of
choice aside, however, it does not change the fact that both leaders
are guilty of overseeing the mass murder of their own peoples. This
was the movie’s stance on Mathusianism; it is a philosophy that
legitimizes mass murder and one that is only possible in a tyrannical
regime.
Lastly,
the movie touches on the morality of the two leaders of the train –
Wilford who rules with an iron fist from the front of the train and
Gilliam who preaches (and practices) self-sacrifice from the back of
the train. Of the two, Wilford is easier to analyze.
When
Wilford and Curtis meet for the first time, besides admitting that
Curtis’ revolution and all the previous revolutions that came
before were pre-planned efforts at keeping a check on the train’s
population, Wilford tells Curtis that everyone on the train has their
place; it just so happens that Wilford’s place is at the front of the train. He then says something remarkable to Curtis. While wearing what appears
to be a silk robe and cooking a steak dinner in his engine room,
which, again, looks like a minimalist version of a Plaza Hotel suite,
Wilford says to the clearly exhausted, soot-covered, malnourished,
and bleeding Curtis that he, too, has to bear a cost for being at the
front of the train; that contrary to what Curtis might think, Wilford
isn’t very happy with his lot in life either.
The audience could easily sneer at the irony of Wilford’s self-pity.
However, I doubt that Wilford was disingenuous. In fact, Wilford is likely the most self-aware and honest character
in the entire movie. Unlike Mason, Wilford doesn’t suffer from any
kind of delusions. He knows what he wants, and he knows the price
that he has to pay for it.
What
he wants is power; he simply wants to rule. The cult-like manner in
which his henchmen worship him is proof of this. He is not destined
for happiness, and he knows this. He simply wants to rule. To rule, Wilford had to design the
world that he wanted. It wasn’t just the train that he designed.
He designed a world of obedience – a world where the thought of
each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess Wilford’s
thoughts. A world where no man will hold a desire for
himself but will direct all his efforts to satisfy Wilford’s
desires. However, Wilford’s thoughts and desires, and everyone
else’s desire to fulfill his thoughts and desires is nothing more
than a circular logic. He wishes to rule, and they want to be ruled.
And the wheels of the bus go round and round.
But
to get what he wants, he has to pay a price. The price that he has
to pay is that he has no purpose except to keep the people, the very
people whom he despises, contented. He has to lie, flatter, praise,
and inflate their vanities and vulgarities. He has less independence
than even the mediocrities that he rules over. At least his henchmen
rule over the tail-enders and torture them for whatever sadistic
pleasure that they derive from it. Wilford, however, is far too
intelligent and self-aware to stoop to that level of stupidity and
barbarism. He merely uses people for the sake of what he can do for
them. It’s his only function. He has no other private purpose.
It’s the price that he has to pay for power.
Gilliam,
on the other hand, is a more complicated case study. Contrary to
Wilford’s regal appearance, Gilliam looks disheveled and wears
what appears to be sackcloth. In some ways, it’s what I have
always imagined John
the Baptist to look like. Furthermore, due to his message of
self-sacrifice, which he also practices, at least an arm and a leg
have been voluntarily amputated to feed the tail-enders before they
were provided with their mashed-cockroach protein bar rations. His
arm has since been replaced by what looks like a crook handle from an
umbrella while his leg has since been replaced by a broomstick.
For
all intents and purposes, Gilliam seems to be Wilford’s polar
opposite. However, during Wilford’s fateful meeting with Curtis,
it is revealed that both Wilford and Gilliam were actually friends
and had been cooperating with one another from the very beginning;
Wilford running things from the front of the train and Gilliam from
the back of the train. Though they seldom met face to face, it is
revealed that they spoke to each other regularly on the phone in the
middle of the night. This was how Wilford knew to send those notes
to Curtis to incite his revolution. This is when we realize that
Gilliam and Wilford are not actually polar opposites, but, in fact,
are mirror images of one another. They are the two sides of the same
coin.
In
essence, whereas Wilford was demanding that everyone sacrifice their
thoughts and their desires to his will, Gilliam was demanding that
everyone sacrifice their thoughts and their desires to each other.
The difference is to whom people are being commanded to sacrifice.
However, it doesn’t change the fact that people are being
ordered to make sacrifices. And it stands to reason that where
there’s sacrifice, someone is collecting sacrificial
offerings. Where there is service, someone is being served.
The man who speaks of sacrifice speaks of slaves and masters, and he
intends to be the master.
However,
Gilliam’s idea of ruling over the masses is more perverse than
Wilford’s. According to Gilliam’s notion of self-sacrifice, the
world that he envisions is one where the thoughts and desires of each
man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thoughts and
desires of the man next to him who in turn will have no thought or
desire of his own. It is a world where everyone is subjugated to the
will of everyone else. It is a world where people are slaves to each
other, a world that does not even offer the dignity of serving a
master.
Wilford’s message was that the individual has no rights; that the Führer,
him, is all that matters. In the order that Wilford offers, no
private motive is permitted. The only motive that he permits is that of service to him.
On the other hand, Gilliam’s message is that the individual has no
rights; that the collective is all that matters. In the order that
Gilliam offers, no private motive is permitted. The only motive that
he permits is that of service to the masses.
Both
men fixed the game from the very beginning. Heads – sacrifice.
Tails – sacrifice. It doesn’t matter whether they give up their
soul to the Führer
or to each other, so long as they give it up; so long as the people
accept that self-abnegation and self-denial are considered
uncompromisable and sacred values.
Self-sacrifice,
however, cannot continue to exist without a leader to collect the
alms. In the real world, traditionally, there have been two kinds of
leaders who collected these alms. As different as they were,
however, like Wilford and Gilliam, they have always been but mirror
images of each other. The leaders have always been either God or
Society. The people who reaped the alms for the leaders could not,
however, be mere mortals. We are mere mortals, and no one
knows better than us just how imperfect that we can be. The reapers
had to possess a certain kind of moral or political authority over
the rest of us. As a result, they have been given various names over
human history – Priests, Commissars, Kings, Parliamentarians, etc.
So
long as individuals are not free to choose to live our own lives the way we see fit, it doesn’t matter whether we serve God or the
Führer
or the Proletariat. At the end of the day, we are all just slaves waiting for our turn to be called to the altar.
That
is the ultimate question that Curtis had to answer. Is the human
race worth saving if we’re nothing more than slaves to each other?
The only correct answer is “No.”
After
the train is destroyed, we see that all the main characters, the
good, the bad, and the ugly, are all dead. It’s all well and good.
All of those characters’ hideous morality was the end result of a
putrid philosophy. No good could have possibly come out of their
survival.
The
only two survivors are a young boy and a slightly older girl, two
characters who were born on the train and whose total combined screen
time couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. With the train
and its contents destroyed and everyone who had been on board dead,
the odds of survival are overwhelmingly stacked against these two
young children.
However,
whether or not the human race survives is irrelevant. What is
relevant is that they are free and that their survival depends
on their own independent minds. This is the movie’s final message: the importance of freedom; damn the odds.
From what I have read online, not only has this movie yet to be released outside of Korea, there isn’t even a release date. Furthermore, according to Collider.com, the Weinstein Company, which owns the rights to distribute Snowpiercer in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, wants to cut twenty minutes from the movie, mainly from the bits that give character details, ‘to make sure the film will be understood by audiences in Iowa... and Oklahoma.’
Though I am not sure how this movie will change when it is released in the rest of the world, I sincerely hope that the changes will not detract too much from the movie’s overall philosophy. This movie is unique because it is intelligent and because it treats the audience as though we were intelligent. To lose that would be to sacrifice what makes this movie special in the first place. And that would be a terrible shame.
EDIT: February 8th, 2014
It has just been announced on IGN that the director’s cut of Snowpiercer, and not the cut version that Harvey Weinstein wanted,will be released in the US. Although there is no word yet about a US release date, it seems that it will only be a matter of time before it is announced.
Bong Joon-ho, the director, appears to have stuck to his guns and refused to compromise on his basic principles. Had he done as Weinstein wanted, and cut twenty minutes from the movie’s more serious story-focused portions, the film would have probably dissatisfied everybody. Mr. Bong could have focused only on his immediate financial earnings and done as was asked by Weinstein, but he instead chose to remain faithful to his vision, his truth. He could have compromised; tried to be all the things that were demanded, but both he and the movie might have ended up being nothing more than a disappointment to everyone.
This speaks volumes about the man’s integrity. As an individual, the best compliment that I can offer him is, despite the world that we live in today, where virtual information is so easily transferable, to say this is one movie that I have paid to watch in the theater and will pay to watch again when it is released on Blu-ray.
