An open letter to Traycho Traykov from a right-wing voter

Mr. Traykov,

I am writing you this letter because I am desperate. As a young politically engaged person who shares "right-wing" beliefs, I cannot help but be deeply disappointed by the state of the political scene in Bulgaria. That is precisely why I initially intended to vote for you, because in these elections you are presented as the only hope of the right-wing political space in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, however, in recent days, reading and listening to your interviews, I have begun to dissuade myself.

I regret to say that I am no longer sure whether your political views and principles correspond to mine and, accordingly, to those of many other young people with "right-wing" understandings. I consider myself "right-wing" because I share the principles of historical figures such as Edmund Burke, Thomas Jefferson, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Ronald Reagan. Figures who to this day are considered some of the brightest representatives of "right-wing" political thought. You, as a person familiar with it, can probably understand my disappointment with the farce that is playing out on the Bulgarian political scene these days. But I am a person who values my vote, Mr. Traykov, and I would not want to give it to a candidate for whom I am not sure that he shares my principles, especially when it comes to the extremely important post of head of state.

That is why in this letter I want to share my reservations about your candidacy, addressing some of your comments in an interview with OffNews with the impressive title “The Rule of Law, Meritocracy and the Right,” which was published last week. While I completely agree with a large part of what you say, I disagree with others, and it is on these that I want to emphasize.

Грешка ли е съкращаването на държавния сектор?

To begin with, let's start with that part of the interview with which I completely agree. You are absolutely right, Mr. Traykov, when you point out the acceptance of meritocracy as a basic value as a fundamental feature of right-wing political philosophy. One of the main distinguishing lines between the "left" and the "right" political space is precisely their vision of what the social structure of a society should be. And while the meritocratic social structure is the ideal of every "right" voter, the egalitarian social structure is the ideal of every "left".

However, since you, as a "right-wing" politician, support meritocracy, I cannot help but be puzzled by your comments about the "ideologies" of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. More than any other Western statesman in the last half century, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were defenders of freedom and meritocracy as the foundation of any prosperous society, at a time when the violent egalitarianism of left-wing ideologies had taken over almost the entire world. Meritocracy requires free competition, and in the public sector there is none. And therefore, the smaller the public sector, the more meritocratic a society is. The political and economic programs of Reagan and Thatcher were not perfect, but they were certainly the best series of reforms in the Western world at that time, and proof of this is the economic growth that they managed to create in the USA and the UK, specifically between the years 1983 and 1990.

Contrary to what you say, Mr. Traykov, you will find almost no former member of the Reagan or Thatcher cabinets who will tell you that they regret the pro-market reforms that were carried out at that time. Nor will you find anyone who will tell you that they regret advising the socialist countries of Eastern Europe to take the same path. Quite the opposite. Some of the architects of Reagan's economic program, such as economist David Stockman, actually left the administration during Reagan's second term not because they believed that state intervention in the economy had been limited too much, but because they believed that it had not been limited enough (Stockman even wrote a book criticizing the lack of sufficient initiative in this direction at the time - "The Great Deformation").

While Bulgaria delayed necessary pro-market reforms, others prospered thanks to them

The main problem with your criticism of the advice for "less government" is that it is not supported by the facts. You imply that the "mistakes" of this type of policy (cutting the state sector) become clear after they fail in Eastern Europe. But what kind of failure are we talking about anyway? The Cato Institute, based in Washington, recently published a study on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the USSR, in which it analyzes the pro-market reforms carried out in the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe since 1990 and their results. What it shows is that the countries that carry out the most comprehensive liberalization of the economy in the shortest possible period of time achieve the best improvement in the rate of economic growth and social development in the long run. Countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Estonia, which carry out extremely large-scale pro-market (read: right-wing) economic reforms in a short period of time, now have the highest standard of living in Central and Eastern Europe. GDP per capita in these countries is almost twice as high as in countries that have approached the necessary reforms much more timidly and slowly, perhaps because they feared that their state would become too "weak."

Bulgaria falls into the group of those Eastern European countries in which the notorious "radical" pro-market reforms are more of a legend than a reality. History shows that Bulgaria is one of the countries that approaches the implementation of the reforms in question most timidly, to the extent that such reforms occur at all, and that is why we still lag behind many of the other former socialist republics. After the fall of the totalitarian regime, the necessary policies, including large-scale cuts in the state sector and market liberalization, were postponed until the last moment. The first (and in fact the only serious) wave of such reforms came only after the economic crisis and hyperinflation in 1996, which practically destroyed the Bulgarian currency. After the reforms carried out at that time, especially in the fiscal and monetary spheres through the introduction of a currency board, stabilized the situation, the native politicians again continued as before.

Reforms to reduce state intervention in the economy have been slowing down more and more, and in recent years the process has even been reversed. We have not heard of tax cuts for more than eight years, the budget suffers from chronic deficits, and the state pension system is de facto bankrupt. There have been several attempts to nationalize private pension funds to save the National Social Security Institute, which were fortunately thwarted thanks to public discontent (from people with right-wing political views).

The larger the public sector, the more abuses there are

You say that what is important is not whether the state is small or large, but whether it is strong, in the sense of whether its institutions function effectively. But Mr. Traykov, other things being equal, a large, in the sense of the scale of its intervention in social and economic life, state always functions less effectively than a smaller one. This fact has been proven not only within the framework of economic and political theory by economists such as Ludwig von Mises and James Buchanan, but also in practice, especially over the past century. Compare, for example, the USSR and the USA during the Cold War. History shows that at that time in the USA state institutions, as well as the economy as a whole, functioned more effectively, because it was the country that continued to prosper, while the USSR began to disintegrate from within. This is precisely because the state sector in the USA was many times smaller than that in the USSR, which covered the entire economy. In the study I cited above, the former socialist republics are also compared in terms of the development of their state institutions. And what is noticeable is that it is precisely those countries that achieve the highest levels of economic growth thanks to rapid and deep liberalization of the economy that, as of 2015, have the lowest levels of corruption in the region. Do you think this is a coincidence?

Let us recall that the state itself is at best a necessary evil. According to the standard definition, the state exists because we assume that, due to human shortcomings, there is no social order that does not require the monopolization of the imposition of violence in order to maintain social order. As we know, any expansion of state intervention in social and economic life requires the imposition of additional violence on citizens through more taxes and regulations. This means that the expansion of the state sector (assuming that it is indeed necessary) is far from being a sign of more advanced civilizational development, in fact it is the exact opposite. It is a sign of the degradation of social relations, of the erosion of social order and harmony, because the preservation of their integrity requires ever higher levels of violent intervention in interpersonal relations by the state. In other words, more state means that human shortcomings are not reduced, but multiplied. That's precisely why, as a right-wing voter, the increase in the state sector cannot help but scare me, or at least make me sad.

Let us never forget that the state is a monopolist, and the largest and strongest monopolist that can ever exist. You, Mr. Traykov, very often talk about how Russia abuses its monopoly position in the Bulgarian energy market and in general about the importance of market competition. That is why you should also be aware of how politicians and state bureaucrats can abuse their monopoly power. And as I am sure you know, through your professional expertise, the possibilities for abuse of monopoly power increase proportionally to how large the given monopoly is and what share of the relevant market it occupies. The state, in the sectors in which it operates, has if not absolute, then almost absolute monopoly power, which even if it is competed by private initiatives, is fully guaranteed because the "clients" of state services are taxpayers, who, purely legally, do not have the right to stop paying for these services. If you believe that a private monopolist can "abuse" its market position, then you should be aware that a state monopolist is in an even more comfortable position to do the same. That is why I cannot help but be puzzled by your opinion that whether the state sector is large or small is irrelevant.

The rule of law is important, but it is not enough on its own

Another fact that should be noted is that the abuse of state power ultimately does not require any corruption; on the contrary, this abuse occurs in completely official and legal ways, through the very laws that the state introduces. You very often talk about the importance of the "rule of law" as a key step towards solving the problem of corruption and improving the quality of state governance in Bulgaria. And you are largely right, but we should not think that the triumph of the "rule of law" in itself is some kind of panacea for all political and social problems. In the Bulgarian public space, the phrase "rule of law" is thrown around by everyone these days for everything to such an extent that it has become the biggest cliché of our contemporary political "thought". As for the elimination of corruption, you have very rightly noted several times that this requires the establishment of the rule of law, i.e. the consistent application of legislation, not selectively, in service of the interests of specific related persons. But for those well versed in the subject, it is clear that by saying that the problem of corruption is solved through the rule of law, you are in practice simply stating a tautology.

As important as it is, eliminating corruption alone does not guarantee good governance and a good life for citizens, and many historical examples confirm this. Let me give a provocative example - Nazi Germany. After coming to power, the National Socialist Party introduced an extremely strict legal regime and brought order to a country that had been in an extremely chaotic state since the end of World War I. In the 1920s, Germany went through a series of political and economic crises, even a period of hyperinflation that devalued the German currency (this sounds a little familiar). After Hitler came to power, he managed to restore order, eliminate corruption and of course restore the "rule of law" - something that many Western politicians and intellectuals at the time considered a serious achievement.

Of course, the fact that in Nazi Germany there is almost no corruption and the rule of law reigns does not make it a pleasant country to live in, especially for that part of society that is repressed by the said "supreme" laws. The situation was similar in many communist countries. The lesson from these examples is that the content of the laws is much more important than how consistently they are applied by the judiciary. If the laws are unjust, then their consistent application is not a reason for any joy at all, quite the opposite. However, what the content of the laws should be is very rarely discussed in Bulgaria. We all agree that the laws must be respected, but whether the laws are just or not is very rarely discussed as a topic. And that is precisely the difficult question.

Whether we are "left" or "right" depends on which laws we consider fair

In "De Legibus " (Latin: "On the Laws") , Cicero says that unjust "laws" should not even be considered laws, because in order to deserve the name "law", a legislative decision must be just, otherwise it is simply an expression of the tyrannical whims of the state. That laws must be obeyed if they are just has been abundantly clear. But since Cicero's time, the much more important question is what makes a law just in the first place, what philosophy we follow in defining justice in our legislation. How a statesman judges whether a law is just or not depends on the political philosophy he professes, even on the ethical system he follows in his life. This is precisely what reveals to us whether he is "left" or "right", the laws themselves have a "left" or "right" political bias in view of the philosophical premise that justifies their introduction. It is precisely because of all this that, by saying that the "right" supports the rule of law, we completely avoid the question of what is "right" and what is "left."

How you distinguish between fair and unfair laws is an extremely important question, because one of the main powers of the President of Bulgaria is the right to veto legislative decisions of the parliament. If you want to convince a right-wing voter like me to vote for you, he must at least be confident that you share the principles, political and moral, according to which he judges whether a law is fair or not. How can a right-wing voter trust that you will use your veto right in a way that is consistent with his or her principles, without knowing what yours are? Unfortunately, so far what you have shared regarding your political and economic views makes me think that they do not correspond entirely with the "right", as I and many others, mainly young people like me, understand them. I would be happy for you to refute me.

Do not take this letter as just a criticism, Mr. Traykov. It is mostly an invitation for conversation. If you want us, the right-wing voters, to vote for you for president, you must convince us that you are a candidate whose principles correspond to ours. The fact that you have a Euro-Atlantic bias in terms of foreign policy is a definite plus, but it is not enough. Let us not forget that the presidency is an institution with serious domestic political powers and, through its influence, can tilt the political direction of other state institutions in one direction or another. Ultimately, Mr. Traykov, in order for me to decide to vote for a presidential candidate, I, as a "right-wing" voter, must be sure that this person will uphold the principles, these notorious "right-wing" principles, that I profess, both to the world and in Bulgaria.

Respectfully,
A right-wing voter

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