Arjan van Eersel
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Arjan van Eersel is a controversial Dutch businessman and politician.
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[edit] Business
As an entrepreneur van Eersel started quite young, at the age of 18, a company specialised in computer services in the Netherlands. Nowadays his companies are no longer active in the ICT business, but only in legal services, tax planning and real estate.
[edit] Politics
Van Eersel joined the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) at the age of 15 and was active there in several committees about young people interested in politics and the philosophy of liberalism. At the age of 19 van Eersel was elected as member of the municipality council of Schiedam. He still is the youngest member ever elected in the municipality council of Schiedam.
Halfway his term van Eersel broke with the Liberal Party, because, in his opinion the policies of the party can't be identified as liberal anymore. He went further as independent member and identified himself as capitalist instead of liberal, to make the difference in vision more clear.
Van Eersel became known in the whole country because of his extreme and controversial opinions and solutions. He made many political enemies when proposing publicly to change the law so politicians, ministers and civil servants can be held personally liable for failures. He defended this proposal by referring to the laws that already exist to hold directors of legal entities and corporations personally liable in case of mismanagement, irrational management or a lack of separation of personal and business interests and that a law with a similar intention could be made to create personal liability of politicians, ministers and civil servants. Also he has publicly called socialism 'a sick and perverse system that wants to create an enormous institution to make everyone live on other people's expense'.
He also developed a theory that it's in the interest of politicians to make sure a country isn't doing well, because if a country would do well there would be no need for politics and the politicians would lose their well paid jobs. Therefore it's in the interest of politicians to create mess and problems instead of solving them.
Van Eersel announced in 2005 to write a book about his theories, so far this book has not been published.
[edit] Libertarian Party
For a short time van Eersel joined the Dutch Libertarian Party, but left this party together with other members of the board, David Dylan Jessurun and Niek Holtzappel, because of a dispute about the party's goals. The intention was to found a new party, however this party was never founded.
[edit] Former Soviet Union
Van Eersel is often asked as expert in the media on issues about the former Soviet Union.
He is a major supporter of the Mikheil Saakashvili administration in Georgia (country) and has called in one interview the Georgian Minister of Economics Kakha Bendukidze an example of how a minister of economics should act.
Also he supports the Russian business oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yukos. Van Eersel said in one radio interview that Khodorkovsky shouldn't be locked up in a prison, but should get a ribbon for turning a former Soviet institute that only made losses into a profitable enterprise that brought employment to many Russians. "I see in Russia an insane war on businesses and the people running them. The term oligarch is nowadays being used in more or less the same way as Stalin's 'kulak'. People like Khodorkovsky and Roman Abramovich have done more good for Russia as a country than any Russian government ever did or will do.", is one of his quotes in the particular radio interview. Another quote of him in the interview is "It's possible to get Russia out of the Soviet Union, but unfortunately it's not possible to get the Soviet Union out of Russia", he referred here to the bureacracy and corruption that Russia is suffering from.
[edit] Today
Van Eersel has nowadays committed himself to the Capitalism Foundation, of which he is the founder and member of the board of directors. He lives in Waasmunster, Belgium now.
