Shahid Bolsen on the heart of a healthy economy

Your recent video criticizing the performance of the Anwar Ibrahim government got a lot of attention on social media, some supportive and some negative. What are your thoughts about the response?

I'm very surprised by, the excessive reaction to my comments on the unwarrant Ibrahim government and my perception that there seems to be a lack of vision or or planning going on. I didn't expect that at all. I didn't expect that would generate so much attention. But there have been some comments here and there saying sort of, well, you can criticize all you want, but what are your suggestions? What what do you propose?

You know? Of course, missing out on the fact that I'm not the prime minister, it's not my job to come up with the solutions, nor am I someone who said that he had the solutions. Whereas Anwar, of course, went into office, promising that everything was gonna be better overnight. But anyway, leave that aside. Criticism is free.

Advice comes with a fee. You know? That's a professional service. But okay. Let's talk about it.

I mean, obviously, actually, in many of my videos, I do give suggestions. I do give advice. I do give, recommendations, not just for Malaysia, but for Indonesia, for Saudi Arabia, for UAE, for, Chile, for many countries in the global south. But, of course, you know, given the format, those are gonna be general recommendations and not getting into great detail or trying to sort of work out the nitty gritty of those types of things. And, again, that's why I said in the other video that maybe Anwar would have been better cut out for being an analyst or being a a commentator rather than being a politician because it's not easy to be a politician.

I mean, I I I give that responsibility its due. It's not an easy job to run a country. And, yeah, it is much easier to criticize from the sidelines for sure. But if you're gonna get into politics, if you're gonna seek office and seek a position in the government, then you don't have that latitude to just sort of be general. You have to have specifics.

You have to have a very detailed plan, and that's that's my criticism. I don't see that there's a vision or a detailed plan. You know, of course, when you're making a policy or you're making a, when you're trying to actually tackle problems practically, the situation has to be a little bit fluid because things come up and you and you have to tinker with it a little bit and tweak your plans. But you should have at least an overarching vision of how you think things should go or what you should be trying to achieve. So on my channel, I've repeated many times that my own personal priorities, are for Muslim majority countries and countries across the global South to secure their economic sovereignty and independence, particularly at this pivotal moment in history when the global order is transitioning.

The post World War II world order is being dismantled, that presents great opportunities for all of the countries that have, for the last fifty, sixty, seventy years, been the victims of so called globalization or what you could more accurately call Western corporate imperialism. They have an opportunity now that they haven't had in my lifetime and and in my mother's lifetime. They have an opportunity now to break free from Western economic exploitation and political subjugation. This is why so many of my videos have actually focused on the destabilization of Europe and how the owners and controllers of global financialized capital are pivoting away from Europe and away from the West. They're pivoting away from the old economic models that prioritized maintaining the prosperity of Western nations.

So I focus on that a lot in many of my videos, and I talk about it a great deal because that signals that that era is ending and a new era is beginning. So the countries across the global South and in the Muslim world have to recalibrate their approach to the world, particularly in terms of their economic approach to the rest of the world and specifically to the Western world. So let's look at the issue of the devaluation of the ringgit. And this is just an example because it can apply to any devaluation of any currency in a developing economy or any situation or any country that's in a similar position as Malaysia. So, okay, whether you think that the reason for the devaluation of the ringgit is because Malaysia has maintained a low interest rate for too long or whether it's because you think that global oil prices have declined over the last six months or whether you think it's because globally investors and the owners of capital are bracing for, further rate hikes by the United States Federal Reserve.

The underlying structural issue that gives any of those plausible factors any weight is Malaysia's uneven integration into the global economic system, and specifically its connection to Western economies and dollar dependence. That leaves Malaysia and any similarly positioned country vulnerable to external shocks. And the only way that they are allowed in this position to cushion themselves from those shocks or remedy the impact of those shocks is to make their economic management conform with the needs of Western economies. So it's like if you're squeezed into a seat on an airplane and you're sitting next to some giant passenger, Every time he shifts his position, you have to shift your position. Your position is entirely dictated by his position.

If he moves, you have to move. Okay. So that is not economic sovereignty. That's not economic independence. So your real problem, isn't this or that shock that happens when Western economies shift their position.

Your real problem is that you are exposed to those shocks and you're vulnerable to those shocks. And that is the problem that you have to solve. And that means decoupling as much as possible from domineering Western economies, growing your domestic economy, and building stronger and more active trading and investment partnerships with regional economies, as well as with smaller economies even outside your region. Because when you're tied to an economy that's so big, like I said, it's like you're stuck on an airplane seat next to a giant. You have no room to move.

You have to move however they move. But if you're if you if you regionalize your economic relationships and interconnections or else you restrict yourself, your your economic connections and your partnerships with similar sized economies to your own or smaller ones, then you have a lot more freedom to move and operate. The most viable approach to effectively combat both inflation and the devaluation of your currency is to foster the growth of your domestic market, decrease dependence on imports and reduce your reliance on commodity, export of raw commodities. Now for a country like Malaysia, easily the most important area in which decoupling should be prioritized is food. Malaysia is far too reliant on food imports.

This creates the most dangerous type of uneven integration with the global economic system and it makes Malaysia incredibly vulnerable. So any economic plan for combating both inflation and the devaluation of the ringgit should begin with agriculture and food production. The government's first priority, in my opinion, should be the expansion of the domestic food market through fully localized supply chains. I mean, this this would generate a ripple effect that would diversify and enhance other sectors of the econ, even including high technology. So step one, promote domestic food production, give incentives to farmers, including small farmers, ranchers, etcetera, and to local agribusinesses, diversify crops, increase fertilizer production, improve farming, transport, logistical infrastructure, research and development in agriculture to boost productivity and efficiency in the agricultural sector, and of course promote domestic consumption of locally produced food and other goods so that you can reduce the dependence on imported goods imported food and eventually reduce even the presence of imported food and imported goods in your market.

Food security is at the heart of a healthy independent economy and a stable currency because you are insulating yourself from the impact of external shocks. And we really have to also change our mindset with regards to FDI, for example. For way too long, we have accepted as truisms the neoliberalist perspective on trade and investment and so called open economies. Everyone is competing to have, you know, the much coveted top spot ranking in the World Bank's, ease of doing business index. The idea is that, you know, the easier it is for multinational corporations to enter your economy, the better.

Whoever gets the most FDI wins. But FDI is not an absolute good. FDI can be either good or bad depending on the terms and conditions that are applied to it and depending on whether or not that investment helps to foster and grow and develop domestic industries or whether or not it actually just serves the purpose of overtaking those industries. I mean, the neoliberal approach, the neoliberal system tends towards enabling Western economies to exploit weaker economies and to undermine the economic sovereignty of countries in the global South. And a great deal of this is accomplished through FDI.

Now we've learned over the decades to sort of console ourselves with the argument that, exploitation at least does create jobs. Even if those jobs mean, embedding our companies, our countries, embedding our workforces in the value chains of foreign companies. As if multinational corporations are doing us a favor by letting them use our workers to boost their profits. That mindset has to change. Foreign investment needs to boost domestic businesses, boost domestic companies, boost domestic skills, domestic technology, domestic industry, and so on.

It must be used to make our companies and our industries competitive. It must not be used to remove us from competition. Now, in a lot of ways, I think that Malaysia has actually done quite well in this regard, Particularly, like when you look at, say, the semiconductor industry. Malaysia is not exclusively, you know, a factory for Intel or Texas Instruments or something like that. They have developed their own domestic companies, their own vibrant companies in that sector.

So even though, yes, a good deal of the integrated circuits that Malaysia exports are actually just transfers internal to Western companies. But a growing proportion of that is actually, comprised of Malaysian produced, Malaysian products for Malaysian profits, for for Malaysian companies. And that's excellent. MashaAllah. This has to be further supported and potentially replicated in other sectors.

They've done very well, for example, also in the automotive industry. I mean, think most of the of the top most popular cars that are driven in Malaysia are Malaysian made. Wallahi, Malaysia has so much going for it. It can definitely become an economic superpower in the region and a manufacturing hub. No question about it.

And it can secure its economic sovereignty and independence. There just has to be a confident and clear vision for that. And again, now is the time to do this. Now is the time for that kind of shift in how Malaysia or Indonesia or any of the Muslim countries or any of the countries in the Global South and all of the countries in the Global South. For that kind of a shift in how we deal with the West.

Because the owners and controllers of global financialized capital are pivoting to the Global South, in part precisely because neoliberal globalization has facilitated the transcendence of corporate power and the creation of a financial elite who are not beholden to any particular nation, and therefore they are not particularly committed to ensuring the prosperity of any particular nation because they are a nation unto themselves, and thus they're not as interested anymore in making sure that profits and money exclusively flows westward. The consumer pools and the workforces in Europe are depleting, but they remain, robust in the global South, particularly in Asia. So our countries, the Muslim countries, the countries of the global South, are in a position now to be more confident and demanding in setting the conditions and the terms on investment and for focusing on self centered economic and industrial development. But of course if we fail to set such terms, if we fail to take a self centered approach, Western multinationals and investors will be happy to still exploit us if we let them. And we have to develop an approach whereby we can treat our labor like a raw commodity, the same as coal or nickel or rubber or palm oil.

And the same way that, for example, Jakawi banned the export of raw nickel from Indonesia to force investment in Indonesia's capacity for, refining so that they could produce higher end goods from their own nickel rather than others using their raw nickel, to produce profits for themselves. We have to figure out a way to do that without labor. So in other words, if you want to use our workers, if you want to use our labor to make higher end products, to produce profits for you downstream, no. Instead, you have to help us produce those products here. Not assembly of those products, not components of those products, not packaging of those products, but the products themselves.

That has to be made here if you want to use our workers. If you want to use our workers, then the the entire process has to be done in our country. Not you give us just a little something to do, because our labor is cheap just like our raw materials are cheap, you wanna use those to make a higher end product down the line that you make the profit from. The same way with our workers. If you want to use our workers to make, to add value to what's going to eventually be a much more profitable item or goods or product, down the line, no, you have to make the whole thing in our country.

Our workers have to learn how and you have to help them get the know how and the technology and the skills to produce the entire product in our country. Just like what Jakawi is doing with nickel, we should be able to do that with our labor. Because look, the developed economies developed by doing all of the things that they're telling us not to do. They were self centered in their development. They were isolationist.

They placed restrictions on imports. They had capital controls. They did all of that. And that's how they became advanced economies. Now they're saying that all of those things are impediments to the free market.

All of those things, amount to unfair trade, and it interferes with having an even playing field. It's unfair. But they only talk about an even playing field to distract you from the fact that the players on the field are uneven. So absolutely, a country should be biased in favor of its own business, own industry, its own companies. It should play favorites in favor of its domestic businesses, in favor of its own industry.

When our strawweight companies become heavyweights like yours, then we can start talking about an even playing field. And, yeah, the first step to becoming a heavyweight is food security, food independence, and treating your workforce like, precious raw materials that will no longer be sold, to produce downstream profits for foreign companies, but which can only be used, in conjunction with the development of domestic industry. It's not the nineties anymore. It's not the early two thousands anymore. We don't have to just kowtow to rich western nations and get happy because they're generous enough to let us have our own McDonald's or our own Starbucks in our own countries.

We don't have to feel that our economies are prosperous because we see Western goods in our markets. Our economies are prosperous when our markets are dominated by our own goods, produced by our own companies, and when our economies are insulated from external shocks. Integration into Western economies or integration with Western economies is no longer the criteria for success. I mean, you looked at their economies recently? The largest and most powerful economy in Europe is grinding to a halt, Germany.

Most people in The United States can't even pay their bills and they're drowning in debt. Who are they to integrate with? Their economies carry a contagion at this point, and the devaluation of the ringgit is a symptom of that contagion. Decoupling as much as possible from Western economies and de dollarization have to be the cornerstones of economic policy for Malaysia and for countries across the global South and the Muslim world. And again, the time is absolutely ripe for pursuing this.