Picturing the future Objectivist state of Israel, I consider it trivial to imagine how it would look. Business and employment-wise, the last two decades had already provided lot more opportunities than the decades before them. Sure, you had no government position waiting for you when you were 21, but with a little resourcefulness and imagination, you had many doors open to you and many directions to chose from.
What about education? I went to government-owned schools. Out of five schools and a university, one was excellent, one was terrible and the others were somewhere in between. How’s my son’s kindergarden doing in comparison? I think it’s doing pretty good. Kids at the ages of 4 and 5 know more math than I knew at the age of 7 (they count to 100, add to 20 and subtract to 10, most of them read at least a little, they group child books by authors, and so on). Kindergardens in Israel are mostly private, and they influence the government-owned as well. I’ll return to this fact later on: the fact that you have a privately held kindergarden, and free competition, improves the government-owned kindergardens.
Now, what about defending the state of Israel?
What if we had 5 to 10 private armies? What if the army unit that is in charge for the border with Gaza were private? The common believe is that the last time a western civilization had more than a single, centralized army, it looked like hell.
How do we know? Well, we all read Hobbs at school.
I believe that the basic concept that gets someone to win a war is not the concept of a centralized government and a single army. The concept is to be always prepared (invented by the Romans, and helped them to last for a thousand years). To what extent, and how to accomplish this preparedness? The Objectivist answer is that the it is up to you.
The IDF – the Israeli army – is doing very lousy. Should the southern command be privatized as a whole? Maybe not. Should tank and infantry divisions all be privatized? Again, maybe not. Should a contractor apply for a government contract for defeating Hamas? This is an option I’d consider a good sandbox to gather information from.
Is this contractor going to take us to 12th century England (here’s an excellent Atlasphere article on Ken Folett’s mediavel novells)? not if you don’t subject yourself to the church and accept the fact that practicing your sword for several hours a week can’t be all to bad.
I guess we all agree privatization is good. Starting a private business won’t corrupt you, right? Getting you close to money won’t corrupt you, either.
The privatization of the army shouldn’t scare the Objectivist mind, certainly not for Hobbsian reasons.
The Israeli military failure is second only to its economic one. Indeed, in 130 years of Zionism we have managed to establish a state. However, it seems that we (I know that “we” is not a valid objectivist word. What I mean here is “those individuals who chose to care of the future of Israel”) have managed to pay the highest price possible. As of today, Israel is completely incapable of defending itself, its PM is willing to divide its capital and a 3rd Intifada is underway.
How have we got here?
The military problem of Israel emerges from the following two causes: the state’s monopoly on defence and the obligatory draft.
These two approaches were born in the beginning of 19th century Europe (Napoleon is said to have his initial victories due to a draft, and Prussia managed to win him due to a centralized military effort). The European initiative has won Prussia the war of 1870, but has also failed each and every European empire in WWI and certainly in WWII. These empires flourished in the age of private armies; they completely failed at the moment they tried an obligatory draft.
Israel never even bothered to these principles (aside two cases, I will discuss them shortly). The Zionist movement turned into Socialism in the 1920s. The military disasters of 1921 and 1929 resulted in an organized military power. This power was managed by the Zionist movement, and fought not only the enemy, but other Israeli military organizations who chose to act on their own. The socialist army had its finest hour in 1948, where it killed 14 Israeli soldiers of a private army (the “Irgun”), and suffered 6000 casualties in a war that should have been a walk in the park, losing the majority of battles throughout this war.
The Israeli government had tried to create a military force outside the IDF as soon as in 1953. This force was unbelievably successful. However, plain collectivist politics called for its assimilation within the IDF and completely destroying it. In 1970 there was a second try – from within the army itself – that was destructed through an assimilation of this force into other units of the IDF.
The IDF suffered an increasing toll of casualties. This has caused the Israeli society to resent the IDF altogether and to object any Israeli ambition to take responsibility on its international affairs (Winning the conflict with its neighbours, that is).
In 1982, Israel has sent its army into Lebanon, chasing several tens of thousands of Arafat’s terrorists. Hell broke loose. The Israeli public was openly against this war. Moreover, the poor conduct of the IDF in the battlefield caused the Israeli public to refuse to win the Intifada of 1987. There is a war, the public didn’t deny, but instead of failing in the battlefield, they offered to try to make piece with the enemy.
Then came Oslo, and the reset is history. As of today, Israel consistently fails in each and every military purpose it aims to achieve.
(This was an absolutely brief survey of our military history, if you want me to emphasis on any part of it, just ask.)
Now, it is obvious that Israel can’t just reset its army, start it all over, and anticipate its enemies to sit still. We do need a constant capability of defence. This is why I don’t call for an immediate abolition of the IDF.
I call for the privatization of the military power in Israel and the abolition of the compulsory draft, though. So, I think that Israel should let out parts of its defence tasks to private contractors. I’m willing to take Gaza on me. The IDF spends there 1.5 Billion NIS a year (around $M500). I’m willing to generate better results for 10% of this price. Don’t get me wrong, Gaza is going to look like Dresden 1945 (or Tokyo…). This is how a war looks like.
Little by little, Israel should dismantle the IDF, leaving its defensive concerns to those who are willing to do something. “Those” can’t come from the ranks of the ever-failing IDF.
The mission of the education-inspiring Israeli is threefold: forgetting everything he was taught in the government mandatory education system, pay for the tuition on top of the taxes paid for funding – among other things – a huge government system and put whatever left on the not too many private schools and universities available in Israel.
The common objection of the government mandated education system is that the government is not permitted to tell someone how to educate their kids, nor to take their money for this purpose (I apologize for putting ‘government’ and “purpose’ in the same sentence).
This objection is thorough and complete. It calls not for the privatization of the government education system, but for its abolition.
Privatization won’t benefit me. I don’t want to be handed with the school that I am currently paying for. I don’t want to be forced to make education my business, as I would like to put my efforts on my kid, not on yours.
Now, I know that not all Israeli schools are equally bad. One of the ways to ensure proper education for your kids is to move to a rural town that is already known for its good schools. Rural towns are relatively small, so the parents can easily get a hold on what is going on in schools. I have to say that I am very pleased with the kindergarten Amir attends to. Nevertheless, I was forced to send him there and I wish this was not the case.
The costs of education, we are told, are the same with private education as well as the government-owned (NIS800-1000 for half-day, NIS2000 and up for a full day). The budget of the ministry of education is NIS-Billion-25, which is divided onto 2.5 million kids, hence NIS10K per kid per years. This money is taken from my income tax, on top of the direct payment made to the kindergarten. Hence, I pay twice the cost for my kid’s tuition.
The objectivist abolition of government education system will reduce my costs by half. I don’t even mention the years that I did pay taxes but had no kids.
The main problem with government-mandated education is not the money I spend, though. The bigger problem is that the system itself is of a very low quality. It teaches very little and educate for brutality and violent behavior. The schools are too big, with too little personnel. The studies are dull and the kids, being kids, are turning the boredom into playful, however purposeless behavior. The school finds itself responding to insubordination and violence. In the past decades – at least ever since I went to school – the education system has monotonously deteriorated.
If you want your kid to be able to study computer science, you have to teach him all the math he needs by yourself. This is an easy task, though; as it is not that difficult to surpass the math level being taught at school.
So your kid might evade the violence and purposeless of school life. What about the others? What about the other kids that don’t have parents such as yourself?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that they are doomed. The are doomed to violent, purposeless life. These are the kids that took a rifle and shot at a school bus in Rosh Haayin earlier this year (and killed two kids). These are the thousands of kids that are growing to be adults that don’t make a living without the help of the state. They are doomed to live on welfare and breed the next generation of voters that favor big government. Ooops, maybe I am onto something here.
The government education system has to be abolished altogether. This system’s budget has to return to the taxpayer. Let us chose how to educate our kids and fund this education on our own.
The 21st century can be the Israeli century.
They say that Israel is going places.
Indeed, there are opportunities all over. It turns that the last failing wars Israel waged (Lebanon 2006, Gaza 2008) had done more harm to its enemies than to Israel itself; The global economic crisis lasts for over a year now; Europe is getting older and is expected to lose influence; Russia is virtually disappearing. All of these cases bring opportunities to the entire free world.
For Israel, it means an opportunity to get rid of the Palestinian Authority and fix a 17 years old problem; An opportunity to get rid of Hezbollah and fix a 28 years old problem; How about getting rid of Iran? This will bring the Middle East to where it was in 1916 (when France and Britain dissected the soon-to-fall Ottoman Empire and invented Muslim nationalism).
Israel has an opportunity to enjoy a chance of a life time and actually become a superpower. Not just military (although an Arab-less Middle East is a tempting option). Let’s take a look at a non-military example: the world is looking for a new stable currency. It’s hard to believe that there is a currency that can replace the Dollar. However, how about replacing the Euro? A decade from today, aging Europe will be run by Muslims. How long will this hold? How about providing the world with a solid currency that beats the Dollar for over a decade (for the Israeli reader: I purposely don’t take into account the 1990s and Commissioner Frankel).
An Arab-free Middle East; a currency that is second only to the Dollar.
It can’t be too bad.
But, who is this state of Israel that will soon be blessed with all that?
In the next articles I’m going to show that Israel has a very long way to walk before it deserve to pick such a prize. The problem of Israel is threefold:
- Compulsory military service that caused Israel to lose each and every war in the past four decades
- Enormous tax burden that drives Israeli talent and money out
- Compulsory educational system that generates and increasingly violent and dumb population
Now, freedom to the individual goes well with prosperity, purpose, happiness and success. It is not that the Israelis doesn’t know that. It’s that they chose otherwise and don’t know how to revert to the right values.
If Israel desires to make the 21st century the Israeli century, it has a long way to walk and it’s about time to make the first step.
In the next articles:
- How to eliminate the military service?
- How to eliminate government-owned education?
- How to get rid of taxes?
- Other Objectivist values to keep in mind
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