The Chronicles of a Capitalist Lawyer

Here is another post in Indonesian language on why the Indonesian Legislative (DPR) cannot reject the two candidates for Chief of the Indonesian Anti Corruption Commission (KPK). I must admit, writing in Indonesian language is a lot easier, far, far easier than writing here in English :p.

So the Playboy case has been decided by the Supreme Court and its former Editor in Chief will serve 2 years in prison. If you ask me, I don't have any concern with the fact that FPI was the one who reported the Indonesian Playboy magazine to the police. Anyone can do that, including myself. What really concerns me is the considerations of our judges and prosecutors in handling this case, especially with respect to the definition of morality and the acts that can be deemed as against such morality. Further comments will be made after I receive and read the decision. Stay tune.

You can read my post here on why we need to find better alternative sanctions in fighting corruption. Prison is overrated.

In the first part of my post, we have discussed the difference between the Common and Anticommon Tragedy and also some examples that may be familiar to all of us. In reality, gridlock exists and it causes major problem to the society. So the one million dollar question is: "what can we do to solve the issue?" Step 1: Identifying Gridlocks Certain actions can be done, but first thing first, we need to identify those gridlocks before we can solve it. Gridlock is a waste to the society simply because it causes resources to be underused. What really troubles me is the fact that gridlock is mostly hidden. Have we ever thought that the cure of cancer might be already in front of our eyes today if not because of the fight between companies having small patents over genetic samples? Or do we realize how much our economy suffers because of there are too many robber barons along the road to investment, i.e. the regulators? In most cases, the Anticommon Tragedy is a pure human tragedy

You can read my article on public policy making principles here . I have decided that this blog will be dedicated for English version articles, and all Indonesian version articles will be posted at Politikana or any other media as I see fit. No worries though, I will always update this blog whenever I post articles in other media. Kind regards, The Capitalist Lawyer

I would like to tribute this article to the commemoration of Indonesia's 65th Independence Day. We've seen so many people who try to establish an Islamic state (including in Indonesia) and claim that this state shall be eternally blessed by God and will solve all humankind problems. Not only that this is a false hope, it is also a big blunder. The main question is: does Islam actually recognize a specific legal form of Islamic state? My quick answer would be no.    Islamic Political Leadership Succession: Lessons from the 4 Great Caliphs Before we discuss the evolution of Islamic state throughout the history, let us first see how political leadership was formed and passed during the early era of Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad SAW was still alive, he had two authority within his hands, i.e. religion and politic. However, neither the Koran nor the Prophet ever stipulate any specific form of state to begin with. In any case, it was an informal form of leadership. When the Pr

Due to my accident in Bali last Saturday, there will be no post for this week, and thus the second part of the Gridlock Economy will also be postponed. Kind regards, The Capitalist Lawyer

Wow, today is already the official first anniversary of my blog! To commemorate this day, I decide to start writing again (see my post on Gridlock Economy, 2 August 2010). Hopefully, I can maintain my consistency this time. If you ask me where the hell was I for the last 8 months, I can only say, "blame Twitter!" Okay, I admit it, it's a lousy reason :p. Anyway, apart from that lousy reason, the fact is, too much tweeting has caused a real blow to my ability to write fluently in this blog and yes, I think this is the right time to put and end to that. I won't say that tweeting is bad. It's good and I've gained so many ideas from the Twitverse. However, as told by many people, most of those ideas need better elaboration, and what fits better to achieve that purpose other than a blog? So stay tune with the Capitalist Lawyer and for all of you who have visited this blog during my absence, a big thanks from me :)

I am always happy to find new enlightening ideas, and I found them recently in a book titled " The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives ." This book made by Michael Heller, a Law Professor from Columbia Law School, introduces the concept of the tragedy of the anticommons , i.e. a condition where due to over fragmented ownership of a resource (i.e. ownership of a single resource is distributed within too many owners), such resource is highly underused to the extent that it cannot provide any benefits to its owners nor the society. It is the opposite of the tragedy of the commons (" Common Tragedy ") where a resource is overused to near extinction because no one have ownership over such resource and therefore no one cares about the sustainability of such resource. In Part 1 of this Article, we will discuss the basic concepts of the Common Tragedy and the Anticommon Tragedy. Later in Part 2, we will discuss fur