The Chronicles of a Capitalist Lawyer

A couple of days ago, I came upon very troubling news about the current draft of our new criminal code that is supposed to replace the one made during the Dutch colonial era. Apparently, the drafters of the new code inserted a provision saying something like this: the Criminal Code will not limit the possibility of applying the laws that stipulate that someone must be penalized even though the penal actions are not regulated in Indonesian regulations.

Even worse, it seems that the senior law professors involved in the process are not strongly opposed to this provision, with some evening showing their support, saying that customary law should be respected in Indonesia. This is preposterous. Under classical legal doctrine, a person can only be penalized if his or her action violates the written provisions of a validly promulgated law, the so called legality principle.

I assume that most of the time, defenders of the use of customary law in the Indonesian legal system believe that customary law represents the indigenous wisdom of the relevant society. The fact that the customary law has existed for a long time means that the practice is good for everyone. This is completely misleading.

There are many explanations given for why certain customs prevail for such a long time. First, the customs are efficient for everyone within the society. Second, the customs are efficient only for the majority of the society. The second type of customs will be our main focus because it is possible that such customs are effective for the majority without putting any burden on the minority, but it is also possible that the customs only benefit the majority at the expense of the minority.

We have a lot of examples for these kinds of customs, especially customs that support discrimination based on race, gender, and religion. It can also be in the form of non-welfare maximizing customs where people cannot avoid such customs because costs of avoidance would be too expensive (imagine the custom of Indonesian people to hold a marriage party). In other words, the persistent existence of such custom does not necessarily indicate that the custom is good for the welfare of the society.

Having said that, putting a provision that people can be penalized for actions that are not legislated in state laws would be a ridiculous idea. First, the standards are not clear (and the diversity of tribes in Indonesia will complicate the standards even more). Second, there is no guarantee that policing transgressions of customary law is justified other than to satisfy the interests of certain groups in the society.

Why do we have criminal law? From a Law and Economics perspective, criminal law exists to deter actions that will cost society. Certain acts must be prevented and we should give incentives to people to avoid such actions because we believe that the existence of those actions will result in a net public loss.

Furthermore, criminal law will only be effective if there is a strong enforcement basis. That would be another cost for society. After all, legal enforcement is not free of charge. That is why some legal scholars argue that the optimum rate of crime might not be zero, because the costs for achieving such a rate might actually outweigh the benefits.

Thus, in order to reach a balance, we should be careful in formulating criminal law provisions. We should only criminalize actions that are clearly harmful to society and where the costs of the enforcement would justify having such criminal provisions. This means that the legal provisions must be clear, people should know what the prohibited actions are and why the actions should be prohibited.

You can’t achieve this goal if you can criminalize other people by using provisions that might be unknown to the public or don’t have legitimate reasons for existing in the first place. If these lawmakers really understand the efficiency principle, their way of thinking should be reversed. Customary law should only be used to exempt a person from being penalized under the provisions of the criminal code provided if the end results will produce net benefits to society.

By this I mean that if the customary law can solve the criminal issues using cheaper measures without having to use the standard state legal enforcement process (which is costly), we should go with the customary law (a good example would be the concept of restorative justice).

I can only hope that the final version of our new criminal code will no longer include the above provision.

I've just read the latest draft of Law on Higher Education, especially the parts related to financing activities and I think the provisions are just fine. Contrary to the majority opinion, I do not believe that the costs of higher education should be cheap. High quality education is actually very expensive, you have to spend a considerable amount of money to maintain the best talents (those who teach younger generations should be the best of the best not the worst of the worst) and to run the organization in compliance with the highest standard of quality. Asking the government to ensure that the cost of higher education will always be cheap would be a naive attempt if not totally ridiculous.

We should realize that government's budget is limited and it would be almost impossible to finance all higher education institutions in Indonesia in a country where we are still fighting for maintaining fuel subsidy. How could you expect the government to pay for the costs of education if you can't really sure on whether the fuel subsidy can be reduced or not?

And we've seen the result of this forcibly cheap education. I assume that the chance of getting admitted into the University of Indonesia might be significantly smaller than the chance of getting admitted into top universities in the United States, yet the outcomes produced by our University of Indonesia are still inferior compared to its counterparts in the United States. How could that happen? If we believe that the entry test has selected the best of the best of Indonesian high school students, how could the output is inferior in so many levels? The answer is simple, how could you expect the institutions to give their best if their budget is too constrained?

Let us talk about talent first. Most of the time, I see that the majority's logic on being an University lecturer is all about dedication to the society. Such logic is totally wrong. Dedication is good, but you need to ensure that the lecturer can also have a good and sustainable life so that they can focus on teaching and researching. The fact is, most of them receive such a small amount of salary that it is actually an insult to their dedication and hard work. Since they don't have enough salary, economic logic dictates that they will try to find additional income, meaning less focus on their primary job. Of course this is bad not only for the lecturer but also the students who should receive their full attention.

Even worse, since the payment cannot attract many candidates, the lecturers will also be overworked. Even if they don't have any additional job, they won't have enough resources to give their best for their own primary job. What a disaster! How could we maintain the logic of cheap education at the expense of the quality of our higher education institutions? The lecturers deserve a better treatment than this. The same analysis is also applicable for the quality of Universities facilities. If you don't have enough money, you can't build state of the art facilities for improving the level of education quality. You pay with peanuts, you get monkeys. As simple as that.

Now if we understand that the state budget is constrained and that further funding is necessary, what should be done? First of all, we need to increase the tuition fee. That's the least thing to do, but it does not mean that it would be the end of our poor friends. What I have in mind is cross subsidy mechanism, meaning that the rich ones should pay more and therefore they can subsidize the poor. This means that the government should permit universities to freely charge the price of their education service, and let the law of supply and demand governs the rest. What is more important to achieve is that the universities must ensure that even the poor ones can still study based on the cross subsidy mechanics.

In the United States, as far as I can see, poor students can still pursue their education at top universities as there are many ways to finance their studies, including scholarship from various institutions and education loan provided by the Government and the universities. We need to be more creative! We understand that education is very important for the development of our nation and we want to ensure that everyone should have access to better education. The solution is not by forcing the costs of education to be cheap, the solution is to find alternative ways of financing for the universities and the students.

I salute University of Indonesia's idea to bring in some expensive restaurants and cafes. If this businesses can target students from middle and high class families to spend their money there, hopefully it will also generate more income to the University. The main question is whether the additional funds are used for improving the University or not. If yes, why not?

Another idea would be to establish chairs of professorship in our universities. I've seen this trick practiced in top universities in the US and I am quite sure some of our most prestigious universities should also be able to do the same. These chairs will provide a good marketing for major businesses and industries while providing additional endowment funds to the university. Again, more money for the universities should be good provided that the universities spend them wisely.

I guess this is the right time to stop asking for false hope. Unless the government can produce money from the sky without causing crazy inflation, the idea of requiring the government to finance the entire higher education would be unpractical and unreasonable. Instead, we should try to find more money from the people. There are a lot of rich people in Indonesia, why not utilizing them by giving them the correct incentives to contribute more? Why not let the universities to be more flexible in finding ways to gather funds for financing their business?

In my view, the government should mainly act as a supervisor in ensuring that universities will not discriminate students based on their financial condition and that they will manage the money for the best interest of lecturers and students. I believe that would be far cheaper than paying for the entire education system. I really care about Indonesian education system and I believe that the best way to improve it is to find a better way of financing. There are a lot of things that we need to catch up. We can't waste our time debating on ideas that are not in line with the reality. Accept the truth and move on!

Just when we are still absorbing the decision of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to create an anti-pornography task force, Cass Sunstein, the head of the United States Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and former professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is reporting his success in fostering a more efficient regulatory environment in the United States, at least from the perspective of government agencies. This news just made my day.

No words can perfectly express my deep envy of the above news. For a lawyer who pursues the art of law and economics, having an Indonesian governmental task force whose main purposes are to evaluate the costs and benefits of all existing regulations and to provide recommendations — or even having power to revise or cancel regulations that are not justified — might be a faraway dream. Yet, the dream is still there and we have many good reasons to pursue it.

Too often we see Indonesian regulations that are not justified, not only based on the costs but also their basic reasoning. What is the purpose of having regulations? Regulations exist to maximize the welfare of the society (which include maintaining order and promoting justice).

The fact that regulations are applicable to and will affect the lives of many people means that no regulations should be promulgated unless we clearly understand the intended and unintended consequences of such regulations to society.

In an age where people demand more accountability from the government with respect to the use of their tax money, doing a cost and benefit analysis prior to issuing a regulation and evaluating the issued regulations periodically should be the norm that must be satisfied at all times. It is a continuous process because no law will ever be perfect for all times and places. Yet, I find that many people cannot understand (or maybe refuse to understand) this very simple principle.

If the president really loves to create task forces, this is the ultimate task force that he should make in the first place. The rest can be disbanded immediately simply because we don’t see any justification for their existence other than for wasting our money.

What would be the task and scope of authority for this task force? The task is simply to evaluate all existing regulations in Indonesia, assessing the costs and benefits of having those regulations, especially the actual benefits and costs of enforcement. The task force should also be authorized to revise any regulations issued by governmental agencies, making it a super body standing at the top of the hierarchy of governmental agencies, ensuring that all policies of the government will be synchronized.

For laws issued by the legislature, the task force should only have the power to make recommendations. After all, the legislative body represents the basic idea of our democracy. While I support an efficient and effective government, it does not mean that I support tyranny. Thus, the authority to change regulations should stay within the scope of governmental agencies.

I don’t think that the task force should be granted the power to issue regulations by itself. That part should still be the main job of various governmental agencies and departments, assuming that they have a comparative advantage in starting the process.

By focusing on evaluating and revising the regulations, we can save the costs from doing a redundant job. In short, one body to make the regulations, another to evaluate the regulations. In addition, we cannot expect the drafters of regulations to review their own products. Hence, naturally, the authorities must be separated.

What ideas should be promoted by the task force in evaluating regulations? First, flexibility within the rules. We should always favor flexible rules except in special circumstances. The fact that the world can change drastically in a short time means that there should be less room for rigidity in the law. More freedom should be given to society while the government ensures stability via security maintenance and institutional support.

Second, efficiency. The regulations should aim at maximizing benefits while reducing the costs. This means less administrative procedures from the government side. Don’t make things more difficult when you can make them easier. It’s as simple as that.

It also means that government should only regulate important things when the costs of enforcement are justified. As an example, government should not waste its time to regulate and enforce the laws on private conduct that might be better enforced by family members such as in the case of pornography. Instead, it should focus enforcement on reducing crimes that are disastrous to the society, such as corruption and money laundering. We have limited resources, so please focus only on the pressing matters.

I guess most of the people know about the latest fatwa issued by one of the National Ulema Council (MUI) members, Mr. Cholil Ridwan, stating that viewing the concert of Lady Gaga is prohibited under Islamic law. In this post, I will not discuss the validity of his opinion under Islamic law principles, rather, I want to discuss a more pressing matter, and that is the market for ridiculous ideas. The distribution speed of such fatwa is ridiculously high as everyone want to give their comments, either agreeing with the content, or just for the purpose of mocking the fatwa.

I find the overall conduct as highly inefficient. Although the article did say that Mr. Ridwan did not represent MUI and that it was only his personal opinion, the title might give a misleading perception to the readers (especially in a world where most people focus only on the headline instead the content of the news), at least evidenced by the multiple comments that I read in my Twitter timeline. And it goes on and on, from saying that such fatwa is a part of fundamentalist thoughts, that the fatwa is being used to blackmail the music promoter, and not to mention people who spend their time explaining to other people that the news is actually misleading. What a waste of time!

Sure, people might say that this is only a single case and the argument of efficiency might not be applicable. But we should also see the facts that this kind of news is only a part of many other stupid news, spreading ridiculous ideas that do not have any social benefit other than to attract readers for the relevant medias. For the media, it is an efficient system. After all, whether the news has a good quality or not is not a problem, the most important thing is that the media can gather as many readers as possible at an instance and engage them in useless debate that will promote the ideas to a new level.

I am a supporter of freedom of speech and I will not say that ridiculous ideas cannot be spread to the general public. But for God's sake, media should act as an effective screening mechanism for useful ideas, somewhat similar to the role of underwriters and investment bankers in capital market. The laws in many countries require these bankers to give their best effort and to satisfy a very high standard of conduct in order to ensure the integrity of the market. We want them to ensure that only the best products that will go to the public or at least that they can give adequate information to the public so that the public can make an informed decision.

The problem with the market of ideas is that it is far more difficult to set the standard for determining a good idea. Different with capital market where we can tag prices to the securities being sold, the value of spreading an idea for a media corporation is not in the idea itself but on how it can attract viewers. And even if the idea is a complete failure and also wasteful, as long as the actual monetary damages to the society is not clear, no one can go to the court and sue the media for spreading such stupid ideas.

I guess this is a good example of market failure where asking for intervention from the government might be more costly than the perceived benefits since I do not want to open any possibilities for the government to censor ideas, even if it is utterly ridiculous. I hope that Indonesian readers would start to treat this kind of news as unimportant and therefore reducing the value of news itself. The more people choose to ignore this kind of news, the more incentives for the media to pick better news to satisfy their readers. That would be an acceptable solution for both parties.

My suggestion for medias, please pick a better source of news, especially when you know that your source is not reliable. Each man is entitled to his own opinion, but it does not mean that each opinion should be treated as important and therefore good for publication. In the short term, doing this kind of thing might be profitable for the media, but I doubt that it will be good for the long term, along with the increase of education level in Indonesia. Smart medias should take this opportunity to establish their own niches as medias that only broadcast high quality materials and attack medias that spread wasteful ideas to attract readers. Who knows, competition might effectively solve this problem sooner that we all expect.

Is burning books an efficient action? It depends. On the one hand, people should be free to do what they want with their own assets, including burning their books. As long as they pay for those books, why should we bother? On the other hand, spreading an idea with a book may be beneficial, so burning them might be costly for society since we’re deprived of the opportunity to receive more knowledge.

But these days, burning books might not be as costly for society anymore. Information can now be transmitted efficiently to a huge audiences that, unless you are the government of China, nothing you do can effectively prevent the spread of the ideas in those books.

With respect to the latest case of book burning, I feel that the action itself was not that significant. Some people wanted to show that they disagreed with certain ideas, bought books they didn’t like and burned them. In a way, such a demonstration is actually good for promoting the books. The burners derived utility from the bonfire, and I assume the costs for buying and burning the books were minuscule for them compared to the benefits they received from burning the books. Life goes on and no one was harmed.

What I am more concerned about is the idea that this action was a symbol of people enforcing the law themselves because the legal authorities did not perform their job properly. In short, the burning was an act of vigilantism. Now that’s a serious matter. Expressing your thoughts publicly is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Enforcing the law by yourself? Not so fast.

Why should people be prevented from enforcing the law by themselves? Why can’t we let them to do what the authorities should actually do in the first place? We’ve seen many cases when we feel so helpless with law enforcement in Indonesia that some of us think it’s acceptable for certain criminals to be tried by the masses. It would be more efficient, and it serves them right. Right?

The answer is no. Despite the alluring character of vigilante acts in movies and comics (who doesn’t love superheroes crushing criminals that cannot be touched by the law?), it is not efficient at all if we allow people to assume the role of judge and jury.

First, there are procedural standards that must be satisfied before we can punish someone for conducting criminal activities. Although there are costs associated with such a process, we still need it simply to avoid additional costs that might occur in case we punish the wrong person. The less the chance of being punished, the cheaper the cost of doing crime and the higher the cost to the society.

Second, there should also be a clear standard of violation for enforcing the law. You can’t simply punish an act if you can’t justify the adverse effects to society or certain individuals. Moreover, even when you think you are being harmed by an act, we should also consider whether the benefits of having such an act would still be bigger than its costs. In antimonopoly law, we call this the rule of reason analysis. We determine whether an act should be deemed illegal based on its economic effects to the welfare of the society.

Third, the remedy should also be clear. If we feel that an act adversely affects a person, such a person would be entitled to a remedy. In such a case, we must ensure that the remedy is fair and proportionate to the damages caused by the act. If you can’t justify the damages, there should be no remedy — it’s as simple as that.

This is why in a war of thoughts, it is very tricky to satisfy the three elements above. We can’t accurately judge the correctness of a thought if it stays only as a thought. We can’t assess the damages caused by a thought if it only affects your thoughts. And therefore, we can’t declare a proper remedy for the damages that are non-existent.

There are better ways to fight a thought, and one of them is making a counterargument which I am currently doing through this article. You are free to attack other people’s thoughts, but that war should stay in the realm of words.

Asking law enforcement to join the debate or thinking that you may represent them will only complicate the process. Without clear guidelines, it will become another waste of tax payer money and create unnecessary social unrest.

Fight your war by yourself and fight it decently.