ANTIDOTE

On Our Original Chacha... And Poona Today

2009-11-14T10:00:00.005+05:30

The newspapers today are all full of Nehru – today is the 120th birth anniversary of our Original Chacha. Mint has many articles on the man and quite a few great photos too. I suggest you buy a copy. The Times of India, oddly enough, has many State advertisements – including one paid for by the ministry of steel, on which they quote Nehru’s vision of a State that also makes Steel – or should it be “Steal”?

Anyway, this day is also celebrated as Children’s Day – for legend has it that the Original Chacha loved all his bhateejas and bhateejis – us. Yet, when a loving bhateeja like me finally acquired the wisdom to reassess the man, he was forced to conclude that Chacha Nehru was EVIL. Read that historic article here.

Actually, it was Bastiat who really loved the young. His preface to Economic Harmonies is titled “To The Youth” – and this essay is the first in my The Essential Frederic Bastiat: free download here. The essay begins thus:

Eagerness to learn, the need to believe in something, minds still immune to age-old prejudices, hearts untouched by hatred, zeal for worthy causes, ardent affections, unselfishness, loyalty, good faith, enthusiasm for all that is good, beautiful, sincere, great, wholesome, and spiritual—such are the priceless gifts of youth. That is why I dedicate this book to the youth.

So read Bastiat and don’t read Chacha’s books at all.

And talking about the youth, I must report the horrific tale of what happened as I surfed the ToI website this morning. There is a feature on the homepage called “Cities” where you can choose the city you want and obtain news of happenings there. After looking around here and there, I finally clicked on Pune. And the first item on the list, written in bold letters, was this:

Two killed in road mishap

I was immediately taken back to the few months I spent in Pune some years ago. Not a single day passed without a report of some people, usually motorcyclists, usually young, getting killed on the roads. This happened EVERY SINGLE DAY for a few months.

I recall meeting a retired general who once headed the Armed Forces’ Medical College, which is located in Pune. He told me that a large percentage of his students suffered road accidents when they drove into town, usually on two-wheelers. He joked that it was probably safer to go to war than go to Main Street.

I recall a bus ride from Pune to Mumbai during which my fellow-passenger was a young sardarji from Jalandhar who was in Pune to study something or the other. When quizzed by me about road accidents, he related an eerie tale. He said that whenever a student died his college used to observe a holiday. But now that deaths are so frequent, they merely observe a minute’s silence.

Get it?

And Pune is supposed to be a "student town"!

All I Wanna Say Is That They Don’t Really Care About Us.

So don’t fall for all this Chacha-Bhateeja-Children’s Day nonsense.

Our The State actually hates you.

Which is why they call you The Population Problem.

On Their "Leave This Place Or I Shoot" Theory Of Society

2009-11-13T11:09:00.003+05:30

There are two items in the news today pertaining to our indigenous tribal forest dwellers. The first says that they are to be moved out of their homelands to make space for The Tiger. An incentive of Rs. 100,000 is being offered – but not all want to move out.

This is a recurrent theme in socialist India: people have to physically move homes and hearths for the greater common good. During the Partition, my own people had to shift from East to West Bengal – for “democracy,” I presume. Or was it for majoritarianism? Or even “hindootva”? I wonder. In exactly the same way, millions moved from West Punjab and Sind. And millions moved the other way. And after all this mass movement, the greater common good still eludes us.

Indigenous tribal communities have had a bad time under The Socialist Chacha State because their great Constitution, which does not recognize Private Property as absolute, abets “legal plunder” – as in the case of “nationalization.” These tribals have been asked to move out of their homelands for various reasons ranging from saving The Tiger, to building dams, to quarrying, and so on. This must end. Property must rule.

However, Chacha is going the other way. There is news that says The Chacha State is declaring perpetual war against our forest-dwellers. A report in HT today says that 60,000 armed State policemen are to be unleashed upon the tribals of Bastar. The report is titled “Tribal Bastar prepares for War.” This bit from the report tells of the enormity of the task:

Bastar, 10 times the size of Kashmir Valley, includes the Maoists’ liberated zone — the sprawling, out-of-bounds 4,000 sq km expanse called Abujhmarh (the unknown forest).

What is also worth noting is this remark of the commander-in-chief of these operations:

“Five years,” said Vishwa Ranjan, Chhattisgarh’s director-general of police. “In five years, they will have to leave this area.”

“Leave this area?”

For what? So that State licensees can plunder their mineral-rich lands?

And 5 years of internal war?

I suggest an immediate and unilateral recognition of Property – on the part of the Chacha State. I suggest “political” solutions to this uprising. I oppose this internal war. And, most importantly, I must add that I do not think our poor, ill-equipped constables should be sacrificed thus, at the altar of The Chacha State. This is a political problem that needs politicians to solve, not policemen. But none at the Centre are “politicians” in any sense of the word, are they?

Democracy without politics?

Ha ha. What a JOKE!

On Their Top Professor... And Second-Class Citizens

2009-11-12T11:04:00.005+05:30

Thanks to Hayek Order providing the link, we have the Swaminathan Aiyar-Jean Dreze debate on the NREGA (rural workfare scheme) – the Flagship of the Chacha State – as the first topic on our agenda this misty morning.

Although Aiyar concludes against this corrupt idea, nowhere does he use the term “economic freedom.” Both of them concur that the “Tamil Nadu model” is best, where good roads have made villages into towns. Yet, neither talk of aggressive urbanization as a solution to poverty; indeed, nowhere do they talk of Property for the urban poor. Their entire focus is on the rural poor. A village-centred idea of poverty removal – via The State. In the meantime, villagers are moving in hordes to our cities, where they get fucked by the cops, the municipal authorities and all the other parasites – and end up living in slums without titles to their Property.

What I would like to draw my reader’s attention to is the following extract from Jean Dreze, who is, I believe, Professor Emeritus of Delhi University. He says:

State governments now have an incentive to maximise labour intensity, because the government of India pays for all the wages, but only part of the material costs. And climate change may increase the value of labour-intensive environmental protection works. So, there may be lots of hidden possibilities here.

The man is a Luddite. He champions “labour-intensive” workfare – which means more labour and less capital, so lower productivity and lower wages. And all this at State cost. The man is nutts. And he’s a climate change wallah too. And he’s the State’s top professor. Now do you see why I advise all our youth to drop out of this State Education System?

Next: I would also like to draw my reader’s attention to a news report that says the Orissa government has shut down 64 mines. There seems to be something seriously wrong with the mining sector in India – and the only cure is Property. And this is also the only Law that will deliver Justice to poor rural- and forest-folk who should be the real owners of their mineral-rich lands, and are now turning to Naxalism. I have an earlier post on mining.

Anyway, I do not just surf the web to find interesting things to write about for my reader’s enjoyment; I also surf the city. This morning, I discovered a huge market inside my nearest slum, Govindpuri. From the main road, where I was parked, you cannot see a single shop. But once you step inside, and walk down the extremely narrow pathway, there are shops, shops, and more shops. Someone told me there are over 150 shops – excluding the fish market. I found a music CD shop, and also a VCD DVD shop. There was a barber shop, a sweet shop, some “general stores,” a shop selling cloth. All kinds of little, little shops, in a place where all have little, little rooms to live in. I made inquiries about the cost of these shops, and was told that “property” on this hidden “main street” went for over 200,000 rupees. I advised the people to develop their own Property title system. Perhaps they do have something like that already – for these properties are bought and sold, and rented.

I am back home now, and here we have roads, property titles, sewage lines – and I hate it. I do not believe in cities where over half the population are second-class citizens. There is enough unowned land around Delhi for all these people. If this land was colonized, property prices would fall, for the benefit of the poor.

I too have the interests of the poor at heart. I too go to their slums to actually see things for myself. And my prescription varies significantly from that of the State’s Professor Emeritus:

My prescription is Aggressive Urbanization powered by good roads; colonization of land around cities for the urban poor; Property titles; sound money; free trade; and total economic freedom – the “system of natural liberty.”

Alternative Nation

2009-11-11T10:37:00.002+05:30

Today, let us discuss the great “conflict of visions” between The Chacha State and those who believe in Liberty.

The Chacha State’s vision, a Gandhian one, is of an India comprising hundreds of thousands of “self-sufficient village republics.”

Our vision is that of hundreds of free-trading cities, and thousands of such towns – all self-governing, of course.

Today, there is a small report in Mint titled “India needs hundreds of new cities” – on a panel discussion that transpired during their recent “economic summit.” The report discusses problems developers face – particularly in buying land. I wonder why no one talked about homesteading unowned land.

To add to what the report says, I would like to emphasize transportation, particularly roads. In British India, they built 80 “hill-stations” in 50 years only by understanding the “natural patters” that occur in society. One such pattern is “hubs-and-spokes.” Thus, their hill-stations were laid out on “spokes” extending from the great metropolitian cities – the “hubs.”

So you see Poona, Mahabaleshwar, Matheran, Panchgani, Lonavla, etc. built upon spokes extending from Bombay. Ditto for Darjeeling and Shillong, and Calcutta. From Delhi, spokes were built to Simla, Mussoorie and others; from Madras, there were spokes to Ooty and Kodaikanal. Without these transport connections to the big cities, small towns, or brand new cities, cannot succeed.

In those days, the automobile had not been invented – but the steam locomotive had. The British connected their hill-stations to their cities by rail. You can still see these mountain railways working in Simla, in Darjeeling, and in the Nilgiris. Matheran, which I have yet to visit, had no road connection at all, and it is only recently that its toy train stopped working.

If we are to build successful new cities we must focus on transportation from the existing metros – the hubs of Indian commerce. Even if 20 spokes are built – both rail and road – leading out from each of these hubs, connecting all the existing satellite towns, and also all the “new cities,” the urban scenario in India will be dramatically improved.

Stanmore was the first “ribbon housing” development in London after WWII. It succeeded because the London Underground’s Jubilee Line was extended there – overland, of course. I visited Stanmore just to check – and it is a spaciously laid out new town. But the people living there would never have done so if the direct and fast connection to The City did not exist.

Yeah, we need property titles. But we also need to focus on transportation. Without that, we are doomed. Roads, railways, tramways – the lot.

Further, with free trade, our coastline will urbanize aggressively. We will need twin coastal expressways.

Note that The Chacha State has still not considered "hubs-and-spokes," nor thought of coastal expressways. Their much touted and long delayed "Golden Quadrilateral" is a mere 5-city vision, connecting the 5 overcrowded metros. Chacha possesses no urban vision.

To conclude, some words on “rural development,” the great Gandhian chimera. We have chased this bleak vision for 60 years – this, while millions of villagers have moved to cities, and all these neglected cities have become hell-holes. We even destroyed all the hill-stations.

The records state that the Congress pursued “rural development” even in British times, when they came to occupy ministries after the GoI Act of 1935. Philip Mason was a District Magistrate in Dehra Doon then. This is what ICS officers like him thought of this nonsensical idea:

As to Rural Development, most British officers would have agreed that a great deal of what was proposed was admirable if the villagers would do it themselves, but they were skeptical about trying to change habits from above – and much of the effort put into the attempt seemed to them wasteful and incompetent.

This charade of “rural development” has to end.

The new vision must be of 500 Hong Kongs, Dubais, Singapores…. And thousands and thousands of Stanmores.

Let us not only live better, in excellent urban environs, let us also own great properties, and make the whole of India a great piece of real estate. The beauty of nature is everywhere – a free gift – but all our man-made cities and towns are ugly beyond belief. At fault is their vision. This false vision must be ditched.

For Liberty, Against Democracy

2009-11-10T12:58:00.003+05:30

A bumper sticker Scott Horton sent me reads:

“Bad Criminals Go To Jail, The Best Go To Washington.”

It was shortly after enjoying a great laugh these stickers gave me that I read the news about how MNS chauvinists roughed up an MLA for taking his oath in Hindi. The headline in the Times of India is noteworthy:

MNS lawmakers turn into lawbreakers in Assembly

The philosopher to blame for this is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who exalted the legislator to incredible heights. He is the man who founded the idea of a “general will.” And the “social contract.” Observing the conduct of actual legislators, that too within their “august house,” should make us all skeptical of “democracy.”

[Bastiat took Rousseau apart in “The Law.” You can read “The Law” here.]

In particular, this incident, which is certainly not the first of its kind, should make us doubt legislation as well. We should arrive at an understanding that “Law” and “legislation” are different things, with different purposes. We must not equate man-made legislation with law – something that comes from the past. We must doubt “positive law” – precisely that which is created by legislators: “law that is legally made.” We can then live in a “private law” world governed by Property, Contracts and Torts. If we treat all criminal acts as Torts (as the ancients did) – then we can live in peace and harmony – and Law – without any State interference at all. Legislators only make “public law” – that which is binding on the personnel of The State, whose budgets and policies come under their purview. This would be the “rule of law” – when The State is under the law. Today, their minions are above the law. And then they claim legitimacy to make law!

Getting back to the happenings in Mumbai, all I can add is that this is NOT “politics” – a word born in Ancient Athens. What makes for real politics is a “recognition of restraints.” What the MNS is doing is better called “rowdyism.” It is interesting that the Election Commission “recognizes” the MNS as a genuine “political party” and allots them a “symbol” for using in their “politics.” Raj Thuggeray gets Z Category VVIP security from The Chacha Sate – to protect him from his many enemies. However, the same Chacha State’s judiciary refuses to entertain the plea of SV Raju & Co. to set up a liberal party. This PIL has been pending before the Bombay High Court for over a decade now.

So far, we have concluded that this incident in an august assembly reflects poorly on democracy, on legislation, on politics, and on our recognized political parties. Let us now take the discussions a little further – to “political ideals.” Indeed, all political parties are supposedly different because they subscribe to different ideals.

In socialist Chacha State India, not a single party possesses any political ideal. The Congress is just a bunch of sycophants swarming around a Gandhi, milking the budget, milking the PSUs, milking the banks, etc. The BJP is not “political” because they do not exhibit the “recognition of restraints” so vital to real politics. The CPI(M), I am sure, is no longer faithful to the political ideals of Karl Marx. And the rest of the parties are, like the MNS, just rowdy and corrupt gangs led by some big goonda under State protection.

Do you still call this “democracy”?

I prefer Liberty.

Grant Them Liberty

2009-11-09T11:08:00.004+05:30

Let us stay focused on the Maoist-Naxalite uprising, this sudden civil war. There is news of fresh violence – the killing of 4 more cops. This report also quotes the Maoist leader, Kishanji, as saying: “…the war is on. We will win the war. Let the Centre deploy as many forces they want,"

There is another news report on what West Bengal’s communist chief minister, buddhudeb, had to say, for these cops were killed shortly after his 2-day visit to West Midnapore, the district where all the rebel action is. He wants to “target Maoists at full-tilt and push ahead with development projects in the tribal belt.” This is the famous “carrot & stick” the editors of the Times of India recently advocated. I had discussed the errors in such thinking in this post.

What is worth noting is this para from the ToI report today:

On the second day of his visit to Midnapore, Bhattacharjee on Sunday prepared ‘‘a blueprint for offensive’’ with senior officials of the Maoist-affected districts of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura, ruling out any talks till they drop arms.

Actually, all these “senior officials” have lost their civic authority long ago. Some years back, maybe a decade ago, I met an IAS officer who served as District Magistrate in one of these places. He told me that his writ did not run beyond the gates of his colonial bungalow. There has been a complete breakdown in the civil administration. And what is buddhudeb’s solution?:

NO TALKS.

Just ask the State cops to shoot the fuckers, and dole out more and more of our money to the DMs to spend on “development.”

What an idea, Sirjee.

This is a repeat of Kashmir, of Manipur.

Perpetual internal wars.

And note that the scandal over the Jharkhand CM’s corruption involved mining licenses – once again a negation of Property. Jharkhand is where a police inspector was beheaded. I discussed mining here.

How does the average adivasi view the police? My uncle once told me the story of how he had a tough time obtaining mahua in one of these jungles – because, seeing his big, burly frame, all the forest-dwellers mistook him for a cop. Mahua is a spirit distilled from a jungle flower of the same name. It is an excellent drink. It is illegal – and the only economic activity allowed is mining, for which State cops are used to take over tribal lands.

Cops are not liked too much in these forests. And as for forest guards, the less said the better. Of course, cops are not liked too much in Delhi either.

There comes a time when a huge big State loses its legitimacy completely. This is one such moment. Things have come to such a sorry pass only because the personnel of our The State have persisted in doing wrong things, thinking the people will never revolt. Hubris.

I suggest that Kishanji instruct buddhudeb to withdraw ALL his forces and the ENTIRE district administration from West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. Let these districts be free so that the people can set up their own institutions of local self-government.

Self-rule will bring about peace, and without peace The Market cannot function, so no “development” can ever be possible in a war zone. Keep that in mind. Also note that there cannot be a “civil government” unless the natural order prevails, for such a government exists only to “maintain the peace,” not to “establish” it. That is the task of “politics” – but then I repeat myself.

More On Gold

2009-11-08T11:48:00.003+05:30

Nothing much to blog about today, and I am not really in the mood either.

However, in the debate over gold, Meghnad, Lord Desai has pitched in his bit. His Sunday column is titled “The Golden Hindustan,” and he says this of the RBI’s decision to buy 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF:

It was India’s gentle way of saying that the dollar was on a downslide and indeed needed a healthy devaluation in the interests of the global economy. But it also gave notice to the G20 and the IMF that if the global economy was to wean itself off the dollar as the sole key currency, there was no viable substitute in sight except for gold.

I also found an excellent feature story on Rediff.com listing out the world’s largest gold hoards. India is now 11th on the list. Do click right through to India, where they say:

Analysts feel that it is a very smart move as by buying IMF gold, New Delhi is shoring up its bullion reserves and slowly trying to hedge its bets on the US dollar which has been losing value against other currencies.

So much for ET.

Gold Is Our Saviour

2009-11-07T11:09:00.004+05:30

It was just the other day that I commented on an editorial in the Economic Times which opined that the Reserve Bank of India’s purchase of 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF was “no big deal.” It was in this editorial that ET called gold a “barbarous metal.”

We are indeed fortunate that LewRockwell.com has published an excellent article today on the RBI’s gold purchase. The article, by Michael S Rozeff, a retired professor of finance, compliments the RBI for buying gold. Indeed, Rozeff goes further – he says that RBI will make profits from such transactions by which it replaces dollars with gold. I quote:

This transaction has a significant meaning that goes well beyond the dollar amounts involved, which are not that large. It means that a major central bank has actually disposed of dollar assets and prefers gold instead. It means that it regarded its dollar holdings as excessive. There are more central banks in the same position. They may do the same. China had been suggested again and again as the potential buyer of the 403 tonnes of gold to be offered by the IMF. India’s purchase was a surprise.

In financial terms, RBI is not simply adjusting its reserve position. It is arbitraging. It has a profit incentive to sell dollars and buy gold.

As I surfed through ET today, I found this Reuters story on central banks and gold, a report that suggests Asian central banks are “wary of rushing into gold.” Let them be as wary as they like, but our RBI has done well to buy gold. It should buy even more. The IMF is selling off another 400 tonnes of gold – and the RBI should bid for this too.

At the core of the matter is the status of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. This is now over. Rozeff puts it well:

There is no run on the dollar, but there is a steady movement away from dollars as a reserve asset in the coffers of central banks. A stroll on the dollar has become a brisk walk on the dollar, and there is a threat that this will become a trot on the dollar.

Oddly enough, it is our sedate RBI that is leading the charge. Rozeff says how RBI will profit from this move:

RBI and other central banks hold dollars whose nominal gold backing is about 15 percent of the FED’s monetary base liabilities (currency plus reserves). RBI sells $1,000 worth of U.S. securities and gets 1 oz. of gold. The $1,000 that it gives up have only $150 worth of gold behind them. RBI profits by $850…. this arbitrage is an economic incentive or force for selling of dollars and buying of gold. RBI has availed itself of this opportunity.

This, while ET calls it “no big deal.” Rozeff is quick to compliment the RBI for its decision, and he points out that the mistake made by central bankers in the past has been to support the US Fed, instead of competing with it:

Many foreign central banks have done the opposite. They sometimes have sold gold. They have usually accumulated dollars in substantial amounts in the form of dollar loans. They have not only not competed with the FED and taken advantage of this arbitrage opportunity, they have gone the other way and supported the FED and the U.S. government by their loans. This was one part of the financial side of government-run economic policies.

So, once again, ET bites the dust, and the Ganja Flag flies high.

And talking about “high” reminds me: Hey! Where’s my smoke? Hey! Joint Secretary, roll me a big joint, will you?

For All Our Tribal Chiefs

2009-11-06T12:05:00.005+05:30

While looking at our “tribals” revolting, it might be pertinent to point out that the white people also began as tribes. Further, their tribes were never at peace with one another; wars were perpetual. Ancient English kings, who were nothing but warlords, could never defeat the Danes in battle, and it is on record that these kings had to pay taxes to the Danes – what was called “danegeld.”

Scotland, in the time of Adam Smith (5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790), exhibited many traces of tribal culture. There is the curious incident of a visitor from France dropping by at Glasgow to meet Smith. The visitor was invited by Smith to a music concert. However, when 100 bagpipers started playing their martial tunes, this visitor could scarcely comprehend that this too was “music.” Note that the tunes were martial: the first part was a “call to arms”; the second, the music of the battlefield; and the final part was the wailing over the dead. This is their history, this is their culture, this is their music. The story of Scotland is but a story of battles, battles and more battles.

How did these tribes get civilized? Simple, by preferring to live via The Market. No more looting and plunder. Unfortunately, the gora has still not been able to shake off his tribalism – both “welfare” and “warfare” are atavistic ideas. The welfare is like the chief doling out portions of the kill; and warfare is what gora tribals expect from their king.

It was Adam Smith who informed the people of the then world that civilization and progress lie in The Free Market. Further, that all moral virtues are also inculcated in this market. Smith despised war, the “game of kings.”

Note that Scotland in Smith’s time was extremely backward, way behind England. But the enlightenment of the English happened because of a pucca Scot. Adam Smith complained that he learnt nothing in his 7 years at Oxford. And this view was seconded by many other great men, including Gibbon and Bentham. When the Honourable East India Company set up their Haileybury College to train recruits to the Indian civil services, the greatest emphasis was given to teaching the principles of classical political economy – and the great guru was none other than the long-deceased Adam Smith. The EIC, of course, had to set up this college only because neither Oxford nor Cambridge taught this subject then.

I have no doubt that India’s backward people, including all our indigenous tribes, can speedily proceed on the path of progress and civilization – exactly as the Scots did. Today, on LRC, there is an excellent article by Professor Walter Williams on the decline in education in the USSA. The West is in decline on several fronts – all because of their tribalism. Civilization and free markets are where people become Individuals, where group culture does not exist. It is unfortunate that all our “State politics” focuses on groups – as in the case of caste. This, too, is atavistic. Modernity, free markets, cities and civilization – these are for Individuals. It is here that the need for a warlord is dispensed with. No Big Chief at all. Just a friendly Mayor.

Our poor, oppressed tribals, long treated as anthropological specimens, need to hear this other message – which is all about Liberty, Justice, Peace, Trade, Cities and all the good things of life. They need this enlightenment. As with the Scots in the 18th century, I am confident that these people can progress to great heights. Perhaps, some of them might try and emulate Adam Smith and become a great economist. And I wish them luck.

Reads Like A Constitutional Crisis

2009-11-05T13:18:00.006+05:30

Thank you, PTI, for an excellent report on our great prime minister Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi’s speech at the opening of a conference of tribal development ministers; and thank you, Mint, for publishing this in full. At a time when our poor forest dwellers are up in revolt, this speech is a historic document.

Before getting into what Chacha said, let us look at what appears at the bottom of this report, which is what the tribal affairs minister said:

Tribal affairs minister Kantilal Bhuria, in his address, said there was need for bringing amendment in forest laws and pointed that “innocent” tribals are now taking route to the naxalism as hundreds of them are being “harrassed” under the Forest Act.

Now, let us look at what Chacha said towards the middle of his address:

Singh said administrative machinery in some of such areas is “either weak or virtually non-existent”, the “heavy hand of criminal justice system has become a source of harassment and exploitation” and over the years, a large number of cases have been registered against the tribals…

THIS IS A PREDATORY STATE

Q. E. D.

Chacha goes on to damn his Chacha State further:

“It is clear that we need to reflect on how to improve the laws and mechanisms through which we provide compensation to displaced tribals. The tribals must benefit from the projects for which they have been displaced,” the Prime Minister said.

This is their misuse of “eminent domain.” This is “legal plunder.” This is barbarism – the disrespect for Property. This is Predation.

Our great Chacha, of course, will try and plug in his State “education” at every opportunity, so here is what he said on that:

“The lack of quality education and vocational opportunities for tribals need immediate attention.”

Actually, they can distil mahua; they can brew handia; they can also play their jungle drums; they can dance. Inside the Palamau National Park, now in Jharkhand, an important centre of the Maoist-Naxal uprising, where I lived in 1982, I found that tribal communities were shunning State schools, preferring missionary schools. This applied not only to primary schools, but also to “adult education.”

At this point, let us look at how Chacha began his great speech:

In a clear message to Maoists, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said no sustained economic activity is possible under the shadow of gun in tribal areas where decades of alienation is taking a “dangerous” turn.

He said there has been a “systemic failure” in giving tribals a stake in the modern economic processes and emphasised that the “systematic exploitation and social and economic abuse of our tribal communities can no longer be tolerated.”

Now, do you see why there is a mass uprising in our jungles? They have taken to arms to battle the lawless guns of The Chacha State. It is our The State that is “lawless.” Not these tribals.

Chacha speaks of a solution: The “distribution of land titles.” My suggestion is that our tribals set up local governments and issue themselves their own land titles that are freely transferable and, without which, no land transfers are possible. They must issue themselves gun licenses as well.

Anyway, gotta end this post now. My new-found chillum-yaar, Bablu Das, is coming with some local ganja for me. He is a most peculiar fellow, this Bablu, a property dealer without property. Yes, he survives by arranging rentals and sales of titled properties in Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi. But he lives in Tughlaqabad, in a typical New Delhi slum, where he, and millions like him, possess no property titles.

All these dispossessed people of our cities must join cause with the Maoists and Naxalites from our deep and dark jungles – and the great cause must be Property.

And Liberty.

Magna Carta time, folks.

Respect & Disrespect - for Gold

2009-11-04T13:59:00.005+05:30

Today, Mint has published my column titled “The Case for Private Money.” This must be read along with my previous column, titled “A Return to the Gold Standard.”

I am proudly on the side of gold and private money, totally opposed to the fiat currency system. And gold is in the news today: Our central banksters have just bought 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF.

Now, the editors of the Economic Times declaim that this is “no big deal.” The language used by ET is also revealing. They actually use the word “barbaric” to describe gold – â la their evil mentor, John Maynard Keynes. These eminent editors write that in the past:

“…the barbaric metal commanded a respect quite out of proportion to either its intrinsic value or the return it yielded as an asset class….”

Frankly, I sincerely doubt whether anyone who invested in gold over the last 30 years of a global pure fiat money system has lost money. Gold was some $30 an ounce when Nixon de-linked the dollar from gold, in the early 70s, thereby putting the entire world on a purely fiat money system. Gold has shot over $1000 an ounce now. This is why ordinary common people “respect” gold. These editors worship State-issued papers with Gandhi’s photu on them.

They doubt whether gold possesses “intrinsic value.” Actually, nothing has “intrinsic value,” not even gold. All “value” lies in the minds of valuers. Value is “subjective.” The common people who are buying gold “respect” the value of gold. What, indeed, is respect? The first article of mine ET ever published was titled “Respect Must Be Earned.”

The editors of ET then go on to say that, since the dollar is in terminal decline, and the bulk of RBI’s “reserves” are held in US dollars:

“…gold is a poor alternative. The RBI should, instead, be buying other currencies like, say, the euro or maybe even the Chinese yuan.”

They use the word “currencies.” I would prefer to use the term “fiat papers” – all this funny munny.

Yet, it is their concluding remarks that really take the cake, and the cake-shop as well:

"Total central bank holdings of gold is around 30,000 tonnes, the same level as 60 years ago, over which period world output has grown some 13 times. The relative decline of gold in the affairs of the world, we hope, will have some influence on Indians’ collective craving for gold.”

The editors have just unwittingly disclosed figures that reveal, to me at least, how much funny money has been pumped into each and every national economy by central "banksters," with no link to gold, which was the money people freely chose to use throughout the then world, right upto the time when central banks arose in every nation. Indeed, humanity has chosen gold as money throughout the history of civilization. The classical liberal / libertarian / Austrian conception of The Market is individualistic in its methodology – so people like me merely attempt to predict what these individuals would choose as money. We do not say, “Impose gold as money.” Fiat money is IMPOSED upon us. These editors worship central banks - who wield vast coercive powers.

Further, they are lying baldly when they say that there has been “a relative decline of gold in the affairs of the world.” Their very own newspaper reports almost every day how much gold our common people are buying. Just the other day I read in an ET report that rural post offices in Karnataka have taken to selling gold coins, and business is booming. Indeed, right as we speak, gold prices have surged to over $1000 per ounce. People, and more and more people, are choosing gold. Gold ETFs are doing brisk business. In the “natural order” of a free market society, it is obvious gold would become the chosen money. Our worthy editors have their minds set upon an “artificial order,” where coercion replaces co-operation – and wee, the sheeple are "fleeced" as well.

Why do so many people fall prey to such erroneous thinking? In my view, the critical error in ET’s thinking lies in the false concept of “national economy.” It is this dangerously false idea that is the guiding philosophy of central state control over an economy. In short, it is the guiding philosophy of those who support tyrannies. Never fall prey to this error, my dear reader.

In the world of free markets, there is no “national economy.” Rather, there are millions and millions of “individual economies,” of which each and every individual is the Sole Proprietor. Just as I am the Sole Proprietor of The Antidote Blog. All these individual economies are "private economies."

We are all sailing our little boats on a mighty wide and placid lake, and each is the Captain of his own boat. We are all “minding our own business.” We are “trying to keep the customer satisfied.” And all we do is “row, row, row our boats, gently down the stream.” Merrily, of course.

On Mining, Property, IAS and HEICS

2009-11-03T11:14:00.010+05:30

Mining – this is the sector in the news today, with two editorials on it. The context is political corruption and subversion of democracy. I recommend both: Mint, here; and the Express, here.

What I would like to add to these learned opinions is something my father once told me. He said, “Son, in the USA if there is oil or gold under your property, then this belongs to you and you are rich. But here in India everything belongs to The State.”

True, isn’t it? The millionaires of Texas made their millions by striking oil. They had a California Gold Rush.

About mineral resources, a wise man once told me that it was perhaps the greatest curse to ever befall a people: Look at Africa, with vast quantities of mineral wealth. And look at Hong Kong and Singapore, without any such wealth at all.

As the Express editorial rightly points out, mining is a “primary sector” activity, there along with agriculture. There are many books and ballads about the hard life in mining towns. In our own country, mining towns are the most miserable of towns. As with agriculture, so with mining, it would be preferable if other economic activities are allowed to flourish, and less and less people work in the primary sector. All along the Western Ghats, including in sunny Goa, iron ore mining rules the roost. Entire mountainsides, which could be great real estate, are being exported. Every port there is engaged in iron ore exports – export everything, import nothing: the Kamal D Nutt theory of international trade.

What is the solution? Once again, it is Property. This is a function of the local civilian administration. If they apply this Principle to their work, they can solve the problem. As Leon Louw once told me, “Even if your Constitution does not protect property, the government can.”

In other words, the civil administration has some “work” to do. In British times, the average district was three or four times larger than they are today. And there were no satellite maps. The basic task of land administration appeared to them as daunting as “mapping the waves of the great oceans.” But they did it. Mason’s great book has pictures of their rough, hand-drawn maps. There is another picture of a district officer, smoking his pipe under a tree, talking to the villagers, and sorting out land disputes on the spot: “finding” the Law, not “making” it. Those days, a good district officer was known by the wear on the seat of his pants. He spent much of his time on horseback. The entire mess in India today is only because socialists don’t believe in the Principle of Property. And they have destroyed the entire civilian administration with foolish ideas.

I have done my bit to inform India’s elite administrators of their grave philosophical errors. It must be more than a decade since I first lectured in their Mussoorie academy, accompanied by Parth Shah of the Centre for Civil Society and Yazad Jal of the Association of Youth for a Better India. I lectured there again some years later, this time accompanied by Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute. I smoked a joint or two with Yaduvendra Mathur, then deputy director of the academy. I met Wajahat Habibullah, then director, and we presented him with many of our books. I personally told Habibullah, a Doon School product, that it was ridiculous to have a Marxist professor of economics at this academy after a decade of “liberalization.” Teach them Liberalism, I told him. And it must be 10 years since I appeared on the Barkha Dutt show along with very senior IAS men – Abid Hussain, N Vittal and others. I told them on prime time television that nonsense is being taught in the IAS academy.

How were British administrators taught? It was not too long after the Wealth of Nations came out that the Honourable East India Company established their college at Haileybury to train recruits. The biggest component of their training was Classical Liberal Political Economy – then not taught in either Oxford or Cambridge. Haileybury was in operation right through to 1857, after which the Crown took over India. Hundreds of great HEICS officers were produced by Haileybury. The acronym stands for Honourable East India Company Service, the precursors of the ICS. It is they who "founded" British administration in India.

One IAS man, though, told me something wise: “We are knowledge-proof,” he said.

“Bravo,” I replied.

A Tribute To John Wilkes

2009-11-02T11:58:00.005+05:30

“It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times” – these are the words Dickens employed to describe the French Revolution. Such times are indeed great in the manner in which oppressive regimes are overthrown, but they are often horrible as well. The French people have had many revolutions and installed many republics – and they are still unfree. India too fought for the goal of “freedom” from British rule. And this revolution too did not succeed.

In such difficult times, what I would like to offer my reader is a glimpse of history, for they say “history is a guide.” And history offers us an excellent example of an English politician, a phenomenal libertarian: John Wilkes (1725-1797). It is because of Wilkes that the press is now free. They should erect his statue on Fleet Street. Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg should be renamed after John Wilkes. People indeed named their children after him, as in the case of John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin. The libertarian publishers Fox & Wilkes keep his name alive.

What needs to be emphasized about John Wilkes is his great love for Freedom. He was a man who lived life to the hilt. He was a known “rake,” having fathered half-a-dozen illegitimate children. The club he founded was the Hellfire Club – and their headquarters were in a monastery, of all places. This was on the banks of the Thames, and finds mention in Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. This wonderful book also contains an excellent description of the signing of the Magna Carta – a peaceful revolution. But we were discussing John Wilkes.

As a politician, John Wilkes was primarily a journalist. It is his journalism, which included some pornography, that won him the support of the people; in particular, the London mob. In those happy days, there were no policemen in London. And Wilkes had the mob on his side. The King hated him, referring to him always as “that devil Wilkes.” Even the House of Commons hated him, and expelled him many times. It is only because of John Wilkes that the proceedings of parliament are now reported to the people. Till then, they were kept secret. It is indeed noteworthy that John Wilkes crowned his political career by becoming Lord Mayor of London, second only to The King, and therefore far, far above parliament.

John Wilkes also did not do it for the money. It is recorded that his great political battles ruined him financially. It is also recorded that he happily spent whatever he had living up to the standards befitting London’s Lord Mayor, which has never been an “office of profit.” I strongly suspect that Wilkes did all he did merely for the fuck of it; for fun. Politics, to English people then, was the great game. And he played this great game extremely well.

It should also be noted that John Wilkes enjoyed mob support in a City. Posters saying "Wilkes & Liberty" were put up all over London. History says that when he was elected Lord Mayor, jubiliant crowds unhitched the horses from his grand carriage and dragged it through the City streets.

Why did I suddenly think of John Wilkes? B’coz this meaningless Indian “democracy” does not offer us a single real “politician.” I am writing this from South Delhi, where Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi lost the election. In India, what we call “politics” is not the great civilizing activity that the great philosophers of ancient Greece wrote about. This particular word, “politics,” born in ancient Greece, is floating around the world completely devoid of its original meaning. There is another word that has suffered a similar fate: the word “villain,” which originally meant a simple farmhand, an agricultural worker, a serf, one who lived in a “vill,” a villager. As in the case of “politics,” so too in the case of “villain,” words have acquired sinister meanings on their own.

John Wilkes was no villain. He was a great hero of his times. And he was a City Politician. Think about that…

On Jungle Drums... And Pretty Boys

2009-10-29T10:59:00.009+05:30

Just the other day I discussed a peculiar schizophrenia my perpetually stoned, simple-minded chillum-yaar suffered from. If you recall the tale of Guru, his precise error lay in suggesting “good things” for The State to do. He said: “Why don’t they clean up all the pollution in the Ganga and the Jumna instead of putting bamboos up our backsides?" It took me time and effort to cure him of this delusion, and that story can be read here.

However, today, the venerable Times of India seems to be suffering from this very same mental affliction. Their lead editorial, on the Maoist-Naxalite uprising, is titled “Carrot & Stick.” There is a sub-title too, on the paper but unfortunately not on the webpage, which goes, “Fight Naxals with both guns and development.” These eminent editors, all very learned men, seem to believe that “development,” which is something “good,” can happen from State action. A great delusion indeed. I am reminded of a paper I presented at the very first Freedom Workshop of Liberty Institute some 15 years ago. It was titled, “Bauer Power: Getting The State OUT Of ‘Development.’”

What, indeed, is “development”? And what is the “Role of The State”? The way all classical liberals viewed these issues, from Adam Smith right down to Ludwig von Mises, is that The State is nothing but an instrument of compulsion and coercion, to be exercised only upon the lawless, and, that too, in full accordance with the law and “due process.” The State to them was but magistrates, policemen, judges, jailors and hangmen. How can such an institution – and they all believed it was a vital institution – employing such personnel, achieve “development”?

To all classical liberals, “development” was something DIY. You had to “Do It Yourself.” Individuals, under the “system of natural liberty,” were to develop themselves, through hard work, enterprise, and all the good and great virtues. It is to The Market they all pointed. And they all called for Liberty for this Market: Liberty From The State.

Adam Smith was a staunch Whig in his politics. The Whigs wanted to curb the powers and discretions of the King; to set the markets free; to put and end to all monopolies, restrictions and privileges; to freely trade between national borders unobstructed by States – and thereby put an end to ruinous wars. They were certainly not worshippers of The King.

Adam Smith admired the republicanism of Geneva – and even visited this fair city to breathe its free air for himself. Smith and Hume took an interest in Rousseau, the great democrat – but he turned out to be quite a bum. Yet, I daresay that if Smith could see the modern world, mass democracy â la Rousseau, with legislation, legislation and even more legislation, restrictions, restrictions and even more restrictions, rampant protectionism and perpetual wars, he would emerge shell-shocked. For people like Smith and Hume, and all those who believed in Liberty, had an abiding faith in progress. Looking at our Rousseauesque tyrannies, Smith and Hume would have been forced to concede that we moderns have not progressed at all. Technology, yes; but in politics, no. And let us not forget that technology was progressing rapidly in their time as well, for James Watt developed his steam engine, which powered the progress of the entire 19th century, in a workshop within the University of Glasgow, while Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy there.

The real reason for this retrogression is just this: the grave error of expecting that The State, with its guns, can also achieve “good things.” What good can violence ever achieve? Sure, the State, which is nothing but an institution of coercion and compulsion, can ruthlessly suppress all dissent – the “stick” the editors so gleefully and carelessly recommend. But what of the “carrot”? That can only come from The Market.

This grand delusion is widespread in India, so there is nothing to be ashamed of. After all, the University Grants Commission, of which Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi was once chairman, doles out mammoth funds – “carrots”? – towards teaching us that the Role of The State lies in occupying the “commanding heights of the economy.” To our State professors, like those who taught me, and those who are still teaching our kids, the affairs of entrepreneurs, investors, traders – indeed, the day to day affairs of humanity – are best directed by an institution of coercion. We must all rue the day when this pernicious philosophy was unleashed upon our minds. And it is this error that today’s lead editorial in the Times of India suffers from.

If my reader wants to permanently cure himself of this dreadful mental disease, the alpha and the omega of Statolatry, which is the worship of power, I suggest Bastiat’s short and humorous essay, “The State.” It is here that he offers his famous definition of this peculiar beast:

The State is that grand fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

The editors say that The Chacha State is “planning to pump in big money for infrastructure projects in Naxalite-affected districts.” This is their famous "carrot." This funny money will go to its clients. It will come from us. Some will continue to live off others. Parasitism. No “carrot” at all.

Let us say a loud “NO” to such dreadful ideas. The great goal of “development” has nothing to do with the institution of The State – even if it was the most perfect and law-abiding State ever to have been constituted, entirely staffed by very honest and sincere personnel, which our Chacha State most certainly is not.

As far as the “development” of these poor forest-dwellers is concerned, the editors note what has actually transpired ever since the Brits were chucked out and the CONgress took over. They say:

Tribals have benefited the least from the Indian state and its development policies. Worse still, their lands and livelihoods have been ruthlessly destroyed over time.

Note the term “development policies.” Quite obviously, these ideas are all cock-and-bull. There is a huge mass uprising underway. The editors mention that the rebels “waylaid a train near the West Bengal-Orissa border.” They omit mentioning that this was the prestigious Rajdhani Express, the flagship of the Indian Railways. Not only are they not “getting the message” being tom-tommed by all the drums in all our deep and dark jungles, they are also playing down that message. They are playing ostrich. And their concluding para really shows how deep in the sand their heads are buried:

Naxalites, or anyone else for that matter, do not have the licence to take up arms. Rule of law is a prerequisite not just of democracy but also of development, both of which are negated when armed militias rule the roost. Anyone who breaks the law, whatever may be his motivation, must pay the price. The only way for Naxalites to have a place in this country is to play by the rules of our constitutional democracy.

Oh yeah? Illegal guns flourish throughout India. And all of us break laws, having no respect for them – like the prohibition on ganja, which I proudly and publicly break every single day. Lawlessness is rampant throughout India. Further, and most importantly, it is the State Police who are fundamentally “lawless” – and this implies that there are no “constitutional checks” on State powers. Now, when masses are revolting, these pretty boys find it all too disgusting, as it disturbs their happy make-believe in which the Chacha State is in heaven and all is well with the world. Sitting in their poky little air-conditioned cubicles on, most appropriately, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, they declaim that these rebels from our deepest and darkest jungles have “to play by the rules of our constitutional democracy,” failing which they will have “no place” in our society. As if they have a “place” today. To have a “place” means Property, stupid!

Anyway, I am proudly on the other side. We need more and more rebels. We must shake up The Chacha State. I am extremely happy that these poor, illiterate, and systematically oppressed forest-dwellers have shown the GUTS to take on our Chacha State. I wish them well. I have no sympathies for our The State. They must hear the grievances of the people and redress them. This requires “politics,” not guns.

Get MY Message, Dude?

2009-10-28T11:20:00.014+05:30

Jug Suraiya has written a very thoughtful piece today on something we have also discussed at length in this earlier post – the Naxalite-Maoist armed rebellion. His title, “Leftists and Left-Outs,” says it all: Leftists like the Karats, Yechuri, the entire Politburo – they are very much part and parcel of The Total Chacha State. Karat insists that “Maoists are not leftists.” Certainly not, quips Suraiya – they are “left-outs.”

Ha ha.

Heck, so are all the rest of us. Even right here in New Delhi, a brand new city, where THEY live in British-built bungalows with acres of verdant State-maintained lawns, laid out with sprawling roads in a “hub-and-spoke” design, wide footpaths, leafy avenues, clean air, birds and birdsong, and what have you. And, of course, great “VVIP Security” too, to keep them safe.

The rest of New Delhi has been “left out” of such a well-designed urban layout. Although there are millions of acres of totally unowned land all around New Delhi, our homes are tiny, our roads are a mess. If some foolish people take comfort in the market values of their properties, they also must look around their properties to the city they live in, and realize that they own hideously expensive properties in a truly hideous town.

Suraiya’s article, which I recommend highly, talks about how the Central State Police uses its guns to dispossess forest-dwellers so that State-licensees can mine on land they do not own. Singur, Nandigram, same old story. No Respect For Property. Unlaw.

The Maoists shot dead 4 of these cops. A spokesman of the Central State Police Ministry is quoted as saying:

“"What is the motive behind the attack...? What is the message that the...(Maoists) intend to convey?"

Suraiya uses the term “perception” while employing this quote. Indeed, what does this bozo PERCEIVE? Just the other day a police inspector was beheaded. Just the other day they killed 17 cops in one go. Just yesterday, they hijacked the Rajdhani Express. And the fucking stupid bozo from Laputa-On-High still doesn’t get the “message.” He sure has his ear to the ground.

The King of Laputa, of course, has all his senses completely devoted to economic (mis)management. He wants to occupy the "commanding heights of The Economy." Quite naturally, here too the news is not good – inflation, talk of an “exit strategy,” the problem of the huge deficit – all of which should tell the “Sheeple” that we are quite literally being “fleeced” for this great big party THEY are having on the floating island of Laputa, a party from which all of us, like the Maoists and the Naxalites, have been “left out.”

Jug quotes Arundhati Roy too – but what I took away from his piece is this thought:

Who are the State Police?

I have just returned from a long drive around south Delhi, and I think all of us here know that the State Police have never given traffic safety any thought – ever. This is true throughout India. 1,30,000 people die annually on our roads, or over 350 a day.

What “work” do the State Police in New Delhi do, other than VVIP Security for all the Laputans?

If we ask ordinary people on the streets of this Capital City, the poor, the marginalized, the really and truly “left out” people of New Delhi, they detest the State Police even more strongly than the Maoists do, I daresay.

Anyway, I was stuck on the Bus Rapid Transit Corridor (BRT) for quite a while. The central lanes, reserved for buses, were empty. While we the “left outs” were jam-packed on the left lane, struggling to get ahead.

Struggling to get ahead.

It was then that I saw a lone white Ambassador car, the 1954-vintage English car that is the Flagship of the Chacha State, their "Trabbie," with a red light on its nose, and myriad long radio antennae sticking out of its ample behind, so that its occupant can instantly receive all messages from without, driving grandly down the vacant bus lane, breaking rules which the Sheeple are following, precisely as in the case of Property.

I stuck my right hand out of the window and held it aloft, middle finger extended.

Simple message.

From "a simple, separate person.”

Hope the blind, deaf and dumb on Laputa get this at least.

Another Ugly, Corrupt, Exploitative MONOPOLY

2009-10-27T10:29:00.010+05:30

Mint has come up with an extremely important editorial today, on delays in the judicial system, and their huge economic and social costs. The marginalization of our poor people begins here, they say; this is why the poor take to extremism. All extremist groups operate kangaroo courts. This has increased the costs of policing, and the budget of the police has risen by 25%, they add.

I read an informed article in Manushi once, on the rise of the Shiv Sena in Mumbai, which traced their success precisely to the failure of the justice system. The Shiv Sena delivered justice to ordinary Mumbaikars, which the State courts failed to do.

However, our judicial system also soaks the rich. The editors say:

…poor contract enforcement is ensuring that investment decisions now have risk premia that factor in judicial delays. As a result, the cost of borrowing capital goes up: Many investments that would have been viable become unviable due to these delays.

I daresay the entire logjam is designed to raise the flow of “speed money.” This is typical of any exploitative monopolist. The only solution is to break the monopoly. Let there be other courts that can compete – a “private law” system. The editors of Mint say “it is important that there be alternative mechanisms to resolve disputes.” Professor Robert Cooter, author of the excellent textbook on Law & Economics, personally informed me of the “Rent-a-Judge” companies of California. Disputants choose their own judge. He decides fast and has an incentive to be fair and just – otherwise these parties will not accept his verdict, which he cannot enforce; and, further, he will never get business again.

While my reader wonders about the possibilities of market justice, the southern Express carries not one, but two, stories on judicial corruption at the highest level. These refer directly to the chief justice of the Karnataka high court: one, to his benami properties; the other, to improper and biased decisions favouring his associates.

So our choice should be clear: It is either rent-a-judge or these corrupt monopolists feigning to be possessed of the sublime quality “just.”

Once again, it must be emphasized that the real fault lies in deep philosophical errors. As in Economics, as in Sociology, so also in Law, the evil doctrines of “positivism” have obscured all understanding and appreciation of natural laws. Once again, because of this evil doctrine, in all these important disciplines, a class of “professionals” has emerged, all self-regulating, and all in one way or the other benefiting from The State. The profession of Law is one such parasitic profession. Lawyers become judges, lawyers teach law, and lawyers all start off as private entrepreneurs. The rest of society must therefore see this bunch of black-coats as part and parcel of the overall monopoly, exploitative of the populace, ignorant of the true principles of Law. The only real solution is to treat them all as private entrepreneurs, forcing them to compete in the provision of legal services in a free market, without any supports from The State. Specifically, no more positive law, which increases litigation, thereby benefiting lawyers. We must move to a “private law” world.

It must be remembered that most of us go through life without ever visiting a court or a police station. Most business is based on trust. Our day to day transactions never lead us to the courts. There are natural laws at work here – but legal positivists understand them not. We are extremely fortunate that Friedrich Hayek escaped from the clutches of this evil doctrine, for his own professor of law, Hans Kelsen, was a major positivist. Hayek’s later views on law and legislation were influenced deeply by the great Italian legal philosopher, Bruno Leoni, a truly astounding classical liberal scholar, and, like Hayek, not a product of Anglo-American education. Hayek was a lucky man, indeed, to have escaped the clutches of legal positivism.

However, all this reflects on the character of the Total Chacha Manmohan State. Do they deserve the title "State" at all?

Of course, the Honourable East India Company ran its own courts in its Indian cities, and through its territories. It was because of the better justice and respect for property there, under EIC rule, that Calcutta became the greatest city of Bengal, displacing Murshidabad, the Nawab's capital, where justice was notoriously arbitrary. There are no scandals in the history of the East India Company's judges. And Sir Elijah Impey was libelled by Macaulay in his History, so the standard story of the Nuncoomar case which features Warren Hastings as a judicial murderer can be seriously disputed. Let us not forget that the British parliament was finally forced to exonerate the great Hastings from all charges that had been levelled against him; that too, after a long and protracted trial.

There is a story I read of a ruler of one of the princely states in the 1940s which tells of how he ran his courts. He had hired an eminent retired judge to visit his capital and decide all appeals once every fortnight. As for the lower courts, all delays in delivering judgements of over a fortnight resulted in a cut of pay for the judge. The maxim was that even a flawed judgement is better than a delayed one. This ruler was then interviewed in the 60s, when he laments what has happened since the Chacha Nehru State took over: undertrial prisoners languishing in jail for years, and court cases that never ever come to any conclusion. Lawyers, of course, keep earning their fees. And they alone can become judges.

Break this monopoly!

Guru Finds A Guru

2009-10-26T11:16:00.028+05:30

Guru and I smoked a great chillum last morn, after which he said something wise. Simple stoners are known to do such things quite often. He said:

Saab ji, is desh mein bas Bhola ka naam hai, unka kaam nahin hai. Sadhu-mahatmaon ko bhi charas nahin milti. Hamara kya hoga. Hum tho chhup-chhup ke peetay hain.

He asked me to convey this message of his to the world. So allow me to translate:

Sir, in this country Bhola exists only in name. Reality is starkly different, where He does not exist at all. Here in Bhola Country, even our holy men cannot obtain the Noble Herb. What will happen to us? We must hide and smoke.

[Bhola is the nickname of Lord Shiva, the Destroyer, the greatest god of the Hindoos, who legend holds was much addicted to cannabis. Bhola means "simpleton." There are many, many funny stories of The Destroyer. Whenever a Hindoo lights a chillum, he offers a salutation to Bhola. There are thousands of these salutations. There is no word in either Hindi or Bengali for “Cheers!” – a salutation for a glass of alcohol.]

Well said, I thought, and offered him some wisdom myself. I said that the problem is that we think of Law as something that emerges from the noisy deliberations of some 500 or so “elected representatives” of the masses crammed together in a room called, fittingly, the lok sabha; "lok" meaning masses. 500 people create a new law, indeed, they manufacture new laws every day – and all these new laws are binding on 1000000000 people. Law is brute force. We are ruled not by Law but by brute force.

This is not how Law has ever emerged in the past, I told him. And Law comes always from the past. That is why we value customs and traditions. English law was never written, but always based on local customs and traditions. Law was never "made"; it was "found" - by a discovery process involving the search for decisions in similar cases in the past. This requires serious private scholarship, not noisy parliamentarians.

It is Law that is our biggest problem I told him – and The State teaches all the Law. He seemed to have got my drift, and nodded sagely.

As an aside, these elected representatives should only be allowed to enact “public law” – binding only on the departments of The State whose budgets and activities they are supposed to administer – in the interests of the commonwealth. In India, it is these who are lawless in the strict sense of the term. They are 99.99% “misproductive.” And the lok sabha dictates the lives of all us private citizens instead.

Getting back to our stoned conversation, Guru, like all simple stoned people often do, then said an extremely stupid thing. He said that The State should be asked to do useful things. Why can’t they clean up all the pollution in the Ganga and Jumna instead of shoving bamboos up our backsides? he asked. It struck me Guru needed a guru himself, so I proceeded to cure him of his schizophrenia.

I said: Guru, we cannot expect anything useful to happen from the efforts of The State. It is not The State that is causing the pollution. It is ordinary people, mainly businessmen. They must stop it themselves, under the pressure of public opinion. If we ask The State to do it, we will be asked to pay more taxes, then The State will set up a big baboo department – and things will only get worse for both the Ganga as well as the Jumna and, who knows, perhaps the Saraswati too. Get it, dude? I asked.

It was cheering to see his wide-eyed enlightenment. So I continued to press the point. This applies to education too, I said. If we ask The State to solve the problem of illiteracy, they will extort a new tax, set up baboo departments – and nothing will happen. Illiteracy is a problem among the people. They must cure themselves of this disease through their own efforts. He was grinning widely by now, and there was a dull glimmer in his bloodshot eyes.

Actually, this also applies to endemic violence in parts of India, where people are calling for The State to create order out of chaos. Ultimately, there will always be parts of the world where violence is the norm. It is these people who must opt for civilization. Only then can they be possessed of “civil government.” Only then can they have “local self-government.” Think about that.

Guru seemed to have drifted away, lost in thought, and this also happens often to simple stoners, but I dragged him back to our conversation, thereby driving the lesson home. Alakh! Khol de Teesri Palak!

I said, Guru, there are two kinds of ships on the great oceans. One kind are run by businessmen. They ferry passengers and cargo from here to there. They charge for services rendered. The other kind are pirate ships, who loot the merchant ships. Our The State is one such pirate ship. Nothing good can be expected of it. They are, quite literally, "good for nothing."

Indeed, this is ultimately the result of grave philosophical errors – errors so deep that we have no idea any more as to what is good, what is evil, what is Law, what is a public assembly meant for. We don’t even know what money is.

Anyway, it was nice meeting Guru after a long time. The charas he so generously shared with me lit up my head alright. That too in the morn, when it is best. And one good turn deserved another.

Journalism: Good and Bad

2009-10-25T10:23:00.005+05:30

In their Sunday columns, both Vir Sanghvi and Gurcharan Das have focused on the Maoists, but while Sanghvi’s piece is realistic and balanced, Das sounds like an apologist for the regime, a chamcha, one who is calling for strong State action.

The Maoist-Naxalite rebellions in one-third of the vast territory is an important issue today. They recently beheaded a police inspector; they shot dead 17 policemen in another skirmish; and in Bengal they secured the release of 23 of their jailed comrades in exchange for one policeman they had captured. I just read somewhere that a pitched gun-battle is now raging in Lalgarh. The situation is extremely grim.

Let us begin with what Vir Sanghvi has written, in a column titled “Let’s listen to common sense.”

Sanghvi begins by outlining the contours of a broad consensus among the urban middle class on Maoists and Naxalites. The first point he notes is that we all hold that “Naxalites lie on the margins of our society.” Further, that “they have been shamefully neglected by the Indian State.” He follows this with a damning statement:

“Indian politicians have treated adivasis and others like them with a neglect that borders on contempt, taking the line that they are too weak to protest and can, therefore, be forgotten about.”

He goes on to make another damning statement:

“We understand what this protest is about and we recognise that the Indian State has failed.”

Sanghvi calls for a return to peace, the rule of law, a redressal of wrongs. Sounds like common sense and balanced journalism to me.

Gurcharan Das talks a vastly different language. The title of his column is blunt: “No ifs and buts, defeat Maoist violence.” There is no subtlety in the message of the author of a recent book on the “subtle art of dharma.” He is calling for strong State action against those people who are at the “margins of society.” He believes they are “terrorists.” However, it is this second para of his that somehow does not ring true. He sounds not like an independent thinker, but like a shill for the regime:

[Arundhati] Roy thinks that India pretends to be a democracy in order to impress the world. I think our democracy is as real as my grandson’s thumb. Yes, it has many flaws but it is legitimate. We need to reform the police; speed up justice; make babus accountable; stop criminals from entering politics; etc... Yet, this democracy has done a colossal amount of good. It has raised the prospects and self-esteem of the lowest in our society and protected us from the great genocides of the 20th century. Gujarat, to its disgrace, may have killed 2,000 people…. One may be justified in taking up arms against a loathsome African or Latin American dictator but not against the Indian state.

Methinks Das lives in cloudcuckooland. It is not unsurprising, therefore, that the author of a book on “being good” ends up reposing full faith in the central State’s police minister, in charge of a force that specializes in “being bad”:

For once we have a home minister who understands the Maoist threat to our nation and is determined to act with courage. It is pathetic that he should be slowed by endless debate on development versus police action; or whether helicopters should fire on rebels and risk civilian casualties. We have talked for two decades. Enough is enough. No ifs or buts, you cannot negotiate with someone with a gun. Now is the time for action.

Shoot the fuckers, says Das.

Actually, we cannot negotiate with The State because The State has all the guns. People rise up against such a predatory State not because of any “ideology,” but only to preserve themselves. And most of these people don't have guns. They fight with bows and arrows, spears and machetes.

Das’ unequivocal support for our “democracy” only serves to paint a rosy picture of a huge house of horrors. He professes to be a “free market” kind of thinker – but there is a lot of difference between a free market (which means Liberty from the State) and “democracy,” which is just the meaningless ritual of the vote. The free market allows us to earn our keep, to obtain our needs, to survive. The vote only gets us one group of rogues or the other to plunder and oppress us. I have never supported Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma because all she harps on is about “democracy.” I have never heard her use the terms “free trade” or “free market.” Das’ column also does not advocate free trade and free markets for our poor adivasis. He wants their revolt sternly suppressed. Methinks there is nothing subtle about his dharma at all. His only dharma is The State.

Not Gurcharan Das, it is Vir Sanghvi who is really being good, especially when he says:

We understand what this protest is about and we recognise that the Indian State has failed.

By "we" he is referring to the entire urban middle class.

Get to grips, folks. It’s not just that the cities are hell-holes, that every small town is a disaster – even the jungles are revolting. Manipur, Kashmir, and all these 230 Maoist-Naxalite affected districts – these tell a story of State Failure that is probably unparalleled in the history of the world. So many millions of ordinary people did not revolt against the East India Company in 1857. There is something big happening in India, something called widespread rebellion. We need to wake up. Read Sanghvi. Das' column will put you to sleep. It is opium on a bright Sunday morning. After reading this kinda shit I need a strong joint myself.

For Liberty, Against An Enemy

2009-10-24T10:53:00.003+05:30

Last night, at a little past 10, I drove to my nearest booze shop to pick up some beer and it was closed. I asked around if there were any other shops open at that early hour, and was told to drive to Badarpur, Haryana. Someone else said, “Try the slums. You always get booze there.” But I gave up. Effective demand did not meet supply. The commonwealth lost.

Frankly, I see this “Wee Willie Winkie” policy of The Total Chacha State forcing shutdowns of all businesses in our cities as a massive tyranny; senseless too. Nowhere in the civilized world are cities forced to go to sleep. Indeed, they all say, “Cities Never Sleep.” In such cities, you get booze all night – but it costs more. And there is a full nocturnal economy at work – taxis, bars, restaurants, and so on, a very lucrative nocturnal economy at that. In Amsterdam, I was at the Late Night Bar till 4 am – and they were not closing. The city was wide awake, and brightly lit up, as I staggered to my hotel, smoking my last spliff.

Actually, in our cities, there are many people who work night shifts – taxiwallahs, rickshawallahs, railways personnel, airports, hospitals, chemists, petrol pumps, and many more. It follows that if all these Wee Willie Winkie rules were abolished there would be all-round gains for the commonwealth, because the city economy would now be a 24-hour economy. Such an economy would surely produce much more wealth than an 8-hour economy.

Liberty is all that we need.

Liberty!

However, a senior economist of Indian origin from the USSA, Kaushik Basu of Cornell, has a corny column in the HT today, where he discusses Marxism and Engels in glowing terms. He refers to the “marginal revolution” as having originated in the minds of Walras, Jevons and Pareto (??) – intentionally missing out on Carl Menger, the greatest of them all, founder of the Austrian School. He uses this mistelling of the history of ideas to laud mathematical economics - which every Austrian considers nonsensical. It is his conclusion that is noteworthy for its total wrong-headedness. He writes:

While Marxism as science has failed, it will be a pity if the idealism and the quest for justice that was the moving force behind the lives of Engels and Marx were also abandoned. As Hunt notes at the end of the book, Engels was “convinced that there was a more dignified place for humanity in the modern age. For him and Marx, the welcome abundance offered by capitalism deserved to be distributed through a more equitable system. For millions of people around the world that hope still holds.”

Kaushik Basu’s great ideal is redistribution – by The State. He wants to plunder the rich and spread the money around. He calls this “justice.” I call it theft. See my recent column against “social justice.”

I see this The Total Chacha State as the prime cause of poverty, and champion Liberty.

You decide.

(There is also an earlier post against Kaushik Basu’s nonsense, here.)

Finally, ET has a news report on the fact that over 50% of the recently elected MLAs are crorepatis (millionaires).

I find this a disturbing trend: that politicians get rich while the people stay poor.

This is what 60 years of étatism has bequeathed us. Now do you see why I champion Liberty?

On The CONgress, Westminster, And Olde London

2009-10-23T11:08:00.005+05:30

As we have been religiously doing for 60 years, we have done so again – and voted. And, as usual, the CONgress has won. Chacha has some more bhateejas. Ho hum.

The editorial in the Express is interesting. It specifically refers to the challenge of urbanization that Maharashtra faces. The editors say:

The biggest story of this election is urbanisation. Once again, both the larger cities — Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur — and the many smaller urban agglomerations across the state have been central to determining which combine came out in front. And how this next government handles urbanisation is crucial; managing that process should top its agenda.

As if on cue, the central cabinet has announced its decision to reserve 50% of all seats in municipalities for women. Just as the central Total Chacha State has made every Bhateeja State into a client; just as they have made every panchayat into a client; so too are their efforts directed towards converting municipalities into clients. Their only desire is to inject politics, reservations and clientelism into civic affairs. Under such perverse central direction, India’s teeming cities and towns will never ever be well governed.

History sheds light on how we need to proceed. We call our democracy as based on the “Westminster model.” Westminster is that part of London where parliament meets. Yet, history tells us that Westminster did not exist when the first Lord Mayor of London was elected in 1183, some 30 years prior to the signing of the Magna Carta. In other words, urban local self-government lies at the base of the English constitution. We have imitated Westminster. We now need to emulate the citizens of Olde London, the City, the famous “one square mile.” It is this one square mile of Liberty and self-government that has always been the bastion of British capitalism.

What history reveals is that the Lord Mayor of London was never a client of the King. Indeed, the institution was erected to keep the King out of the city. The title “Lord” was never given by the King; rather, it was bestowed upon the head of the civic government by the citizenry. Throughout history, Lord Mayors of London have been wealthier that the English kings. They lent vast sums to the crown. Indeed, when Henry V set off to Agincourt, he secured the necessary funds from London’s Lord Mayor by pawning some of his jewels. At the civic reception held to wish Henry V well in his forthcoming battle, the Lord Mayor of London was seated to the immediate right of the King. Since then, tradition holds that the Lord Mayor of London is second only to the King of England.

The traditions that have been meticulously maintained till today reveal the seriousness with which civic independence was taken. The Lord Mayor carries the “civic sword.” When the King of England visits the Olde City, the Lord Mayor meets him at the gates and surrenders this sword. The monarch touches the hilt in acceptance. There is much to read in this tradition.

Thus, the King of England cannot march his army through Olde London without the permission of the Lord Mayor. Whereas Bobbies patrol Westminster and the rest of Greater London, the Olde City has its own police force.

It needs to be stressed that these extremely wealthy Lord Mayors of London have never been clients of the King. History also tells us that this was never an “office of profit,” and whoever was elected always spent more money than he received – especially on grand banquets. This is why many, many men refused to accept the office – and they were then fined heavily. It is said that Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor, was built for those who wanted to become Lord Mayor out of the pockets of those who did not.

On the amazing wealth of these gentlemen who not only built English capitalism but also erected and maintained the greatest institution of civic independence the world has ever seen, the best story is of Bartholomew Rede, Lord Mayor in the early 17th century. It is recorded that, at one of his banquets, an Italian approached him offering to sell a big jewel for 1000 guineas. However, this Italian made the mistake of telling the Lord Mayor that the King of England could not afford to buy this jewel. Bartholomew Rede immediately bought the jewel for 1000 guineas, and had it ground into his glass of wine. He then drank the contents of the glass in one big swallow and told the Italian: “Speak honourably of the King of England, for thou hast just seen one of his subjects drink 1000 guineas in one quaff.”

Our “Westminster model” is thus a “con” – a con perpetrated upon us by the CONgress party, the greatest confidence tricksters the world has ever seen. We are made to look upon the mighty central State as the fount of government and democracy. In truth, it is just Laputa. If we want to run our cities and towns well we must develop mayoralties on the “London model.” Think about it.

If you want to read more about the Lord Mayor of London, buy this book.

Bhola On The Stock Exchange

2009-10-22T11:27:00.003+05:30

I have chosen the ganja leaf as my flag not only because I love the Noble Herb. More than that, I would like this leaf to be seen as a symbol of the greatest tyranny ever to have visited a peaceful people.

Orissa is the one province of India where ganja is legally sold. This has to do with the fact that almost everyone there is a smoker – I even met a senior politician with whom I shared a few spliffs. I heard that it is quite common in Orissa to find a grandfather, son and grandson smoking a chillum together. I had the occasion to visit a small hamlet a short distance from Cuttack. Under the banyan tree I found a whole lot of men smoking chillums and joined them. It was a village of about 500 adult males, and my inquiries revealed that over 5 kilos of ganja was smoked in that little village every day.

What is true of Orissa is also true of Bengal, where both ganja and opium were legally sold even as recently as the 1980s. When I was a child, my father used to regale me with funny stories of an eccentric ganja-smoking uncle he had in Khulna, now in Bangladesh; a poet.

Living in a Bengali enclave in Delhi, it is easy to find the deep roots this herb has in Bengali culture. A little shop I discovered in the market, specializing in goods connected with Hindu pujas, sells chillums, what Bengalis call kolkay – not for smoking, but as offerings to the gods. Indeed, they also sell tiny sachets of bhang without which devout Bengalis cannot offer Narayan puja. Thus, in this market of Bengalis, I found a group of hardy chillum smokers – and joined them. They have migrated here from rural Bengal, to sell labour services in this shitty city. They prove that ganja is a part of Bengali culture.

What is true of Orissa and Bengal is equally true of UP, Bihar, Uttaranchal, Himachal, and even Kashmir, where I received great charas delivered right to my houseboat deck. The ganja culture is less prevalent in southern India, but Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra grow some of the best. I recall staying in a tiny town in Karnataka for some time, where there were enough ganja smokers to keep a few dealers in good business. Language makes it impossible for me to communicate with the rural folk of south India; but I have looked deep into the eyes of the men, and I do believe there is widespread use of the noble herb here as well. Too many men with bloodshot eyes wearing beatific smiles.

Having said that, let us turn to the tyranny. The stuff my chillum-friends in the market smoke, the stuff I buy in the nearby slums – this stuff is awful. This is the tyranny. The police have prohibited nothing; rather, they control a lucrative trade. They exploit customers by selling third-rate stuff. They harm public health.

My sympathies lie entirely with the poor people, those who toil and labour, and spend a few bucks on ganja, to obtain some “cannabliss.” In my own case, I know very well that after some hard work I too like to unwind and relax with some of the same stuff myself. There are but a few pleasures in life, but here in India it seems that the official religion is suffering. They suffer, and they make us all suffer.

Yet, my trip to Orissa revealed that limited legalization is no answer. Here, I found the legal shops selling crap. I could buy decent stuff only from the underground. In the little hamlet referred to above, where 5 kilos of ganja was smoked every day, the dealers were all illegal. They could not afford the 75,000 rupee license fee and preferred to operate by paying small bribes to the cops and excise goons. In Bengal too, when ganja was sold through licensed shops, the stuff was awful.

I therefore advocate the entry of Bhola into the stock market – and Bhola traditionally rides a bull. Very auspicious indeed. We could do with a dozen or more cannabliss companies. And let brand names assure us of quality.

In tough, recessionary times, the best way to stimulate an economy is by removing all obstacles to business. Cannabis can be a HUGE business. ITC, the Ambanis, Mallya – they will all look tiny before a majestic Bhola Unlimited Company Ltd. Ganja farmers will prosper. The commonwealth will achieve all-round gains.

So, let’s just do it.

Against Trade Unionism

2009-10-21T11:28:00.003+05:30

There was a big strike in Gurgaon – and one of the eminent opinions on it is in serious error. I was about to start writing when the doorbell called me away. It was the housemaid. And my only thought was this:

If anyone cares about “workers,” they should care about these women. They have no unions. Their wages are market-determined under highly competitive conditions. And they can be fired at will. With 60 years of unionism and industrial unrest behind us, this is a fitting moment to finally arrive at the correct judgement of what economic conditions are in the best interest of ALL workers, those who own and sell labour services.

Responding to the strike, our business papers have demonstrated divergent attitudes. Mint concludes that the profit motive guides unionists – I would have preferred the word “blackmail”: see The Strike-Treat System by WH Hutt. They also write about the fading political strength of these unions; how many are just local thugs. I am looking at the maid, busy with the jhaaru.

However, the Economic Times, while trying to justify unionism as something in the “common good,” has exhibited an ignorance of Say’s Law of Markets. Their specious argument runs as follows:

Rationality at the level of an individual enterprise might suggest that lower wages yield higher profit margins. But once you factor in the fact that one enterprise’s workers are other enterprises’ consumers, the enterprise-level rationality becomes irrational at the level of the economy. The greater the workers’ collective income, the greater the demand for the economy’s produce, growth and profits. The more time away from work workers have, the better for businesses such as books, newspapers, music, movies, sports and TV.

This is something like the famous “Candlemakers’ Petition” of Frederic Bastiat: an attempt to show that if some group is given some privileges, they will buy more of the output of other groups. Farmers could make the same arguments – and probably do. Sarkaari baboons insist that their undeserved salary hikes boost market demand. We are fortunate our housemaids don’t say such things when asking for a much-deserved raise from a cantankerous employer.

The Law of Markets says that “the sale of X gives rise to the demand for all non-X.” The implication is that our interests differ when we are competing, from when we are not. If we want to raise the demand for our products, the only way is to allow a completely free market for all those we do NOT compete with. Of course, other businessmen, knowing this law, will demand similar conditions in our industry too. And this would really be in the true interests of the “commonwealth.”

The vital implication of Say’s Law is that all monopolies and restrictions are bad. They raise the prices of some essentials – like labour. When people spend more on these they have less left over for other goodies on the market. We all lose.

Thus, Say’s Law tells us exactly the opposite of what ET is saying. It tells us that the best economic conditions are those when all goods and services, including labour, are competitively sold – and are therefore cheap.

Those who wish to understand the Law of Markets, which “macroeconomics” knows nothing about, are advised to read WH Hutt’s Towards a Rehabilitation of Say’s Law. This rehab was necessary because the Keynesians had obliterated this law from all official learning. The Mises Institute has thoughtfully provided the world with a copy of this important book online.

The late Professor Hutt has also written some important books against trade unionism. In an essay on immigration, which reduces wages, he argued that this would benefit the commonwealth. He was a great classical liberal, and students would be well advised to study all his works. We must rehabilitate Hutt before we can rehabilitate Say.

The crucial point Professor Hutt keeps driving home is that unionism can never benefit ALL workers. Ask me. The maid is still at work. Unionism has never benefited her. Indeed, the very opposite is true: Unionism has harmed such unorganized, individual workers. They have reduced employment opportunities for all workers outside their “combination.” The true interests of all workers – and especially of workers as consumers – lie in a completely free market for labour services; and free trade.

Let us now proceed to legal issues. Of crucial importance to our conception of the “rule of law” is what constitutes the legitimate use of force. Now, unions are legally authorized to use force to press for their demands. This began gradually in Britain – where all bad ideas also began – as Professor Hutt recounts; but it was slow in the 19th century, the age of Gladstonian liberalism and the reign of Queen Victoria. It was shortly after both had passed away that the British liberals made their greatest error – by passing the Trades Disputes Act of 1906. Bruno Leoni quotes an eminent Law Lord of England describing this legislation as a “violent operation on the body politic.” Thereafter, liberalism declined in Britain. The Labour Party rose. And Britain has been destroyed. Let us learn from this well-meaning, but poorly considered, attempt to improve the lives of workers.

Like the rest of us, workers need competitive markets. And free trade – so they can succeed as consumers. After all, the work itself is disutility. It is when the wages are spent that satisfaction is achieved. So our thinking on this subject is wrong on many fronts.

Finally, it all boils down to our general misconception of “rights.” No one has a “right to a fair wage” as no one has an “obligation” to pay any such wage. The demagogue who propagates such wild delusions should be considered a rogue and a threat to public peace. In reality, the worker who has signed a labour contract has an “obligation” to perform his duties, while his employer has the “right” to demand this work.

The strike in Gurgaon was over the sacking of 16 indisciplined workers. They rioted. The police fired. One guy was killed. Another strike is being planned. They want a reinstatement of the sacked workers. They will never allow NEW workers to be hired. This is the restriction on the market they are legally privileged to enforce. It hurts all other workers, those outside the union. It hurts the commonwealth. It should be illegal to do such things.

Once again, Adam Smith’s words on “the system of natural liberty” are worth mulling over:

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

Good man, Adam Smith. He had the true interests of the poorest in mind, like the maid.

Oops! Disaster! The maid and the maalkin just had a tiff. She quit!

Liberty!

On Politics, Catallactics, Cops, And GUNS!

2009-10-20T12:19:00.010+05:30

Thanks to LRC for directing the world’s attention to an article by Karl Hess (1923–1994) titled “The Death of Politics,” originally published in Playboy magazine in 1969. This essay champions a radical libertarianism while condemning the “State politics” that we mistakenly call “democracy”; and, as I will attempt to show below, we make a bigger mistake by calling “politics” – which are the “public actions of free people,” something very different from the secret wheeling-dealing behind closed doors that contemporary “party politics” is all about. Witness the meetings of the Congress High Command. Hess roundly condemns this kind of “State politics,” ending with these profound and hopeful words:

Power and authority, as substitutes for performance and rational thought, are the specters that haunt the world today. They are the ghosts of awed and superstitious yesterdays. And politics is their familiar. Politics, throughout time, has been an institutionalized denial of man's ability to survive through the exclusive employment of all his own powers for his own welfare. And politics, throughout time, has existed solely through the resources that it has been able to plunder from the creative and productive people whom it has, in the name of many causes and moralities, denied the exclusive employment of all their own powers for their own welfare.

Ultimately, this must mean that politics denies the rational nature of man. Ultimately, it means that politics is just another form of residual magic in our culture — a belief that somehow things come from nothing; that things may be given to some without first taking them from others; that all the tools of man's survival are his by accident or divine right and not by pure and simple inventiveness and work.

Politics has always been the institutionalized and established way in which some men have exercised the power to live off the output of other men. But even in a world made docile to these demands, men do not need to live by devouring other men.

Politics does devour men. A laissez-faire world would liberate men. And it is in that sort of liberation that the most profound revolution of all may be just beginning to stir.

I strongly recommend that you sit back, relax, and read the entire essay. You will emerge hugely enlightened.

Having said that, what I would like to add to the world’s enjoyment of this essay full 40 years after its publication, is that the basic error in Western political thought has been over the idea of “community.” This is the cornerstone of their "conservatism." And their "socialism." This is a remnant of their tribalism; it is “atavistic,” like their socialist sympathies.

In India, a huge multi-cultural sub-continent, there is nothing called “community” in any of our great cities. The great bustling centres of Indian civilization are all melting-pots, especially New Delhi; and we in Delhi sneer at those parochial politicians of “Mumbai” who idealise the Maratha tribes of Shivaji. The BJP’s “Hindootva” agenda has not worked because the Hindoos are not a homogenous tribe, never have been, and never will be.

This is indeed our greatest strength. We are therefore in a position to view our world as a “catallaxy,” where we interact in harmony with complete strangers, and the more strangers the merrier. There is no need for us to think in terms of either "community" or even "society" - the words that lie at the root of "communism" and "socialism," both evil ideas that originated in the West.

Instead, we can conceive of our world as one of Individuals, interacting peacefully and gainfully with previously unknown individuals in markets - a world of friendly strangers, a "catallaxy."

The only requirement is that the strangers be peaceful and friendly, not belligerent and hostile, in which case I discuss below what steps we need to take...

My peaceful idyll in southern Goa became a great catallaxy every winter, when the happy and peaceful tourists of various races, religions and nationalities invaded our shores. And how the local people loved it. They put up a hundred "BAR & REST" shacks (they never write the full word "restaurant") on every beach. The more strangers come, the merrier, they always cry.

In either case, the area was always a catallaxy, there being a mosque, a temple and a church all within walking distance from our cottage. The great event was always the Saturday bazaar - where everyone came well dressed. It is there that I discovered "natural order," for cops were never seen, and also really reflected hard and deep on the MEANING of the word "catallaxy."

The entire section on what would be called “economics” in Mises’ Human Action is called “catallactics.” Mises mentions somewhere that the term was first used by Bishop Whately in the 1850s. The word means “the science of exchange.”

However, Hayek discovered two other meanings of the word in Greek:

The first, “to turn from enemy into friend”;

and the other, “to welcome into the community.”

The future lies in welcoming friendly strangers into every community – in turning communities into “catallaxies.” Through peaceful, voluntary and mutually beneficial exchanges with strangers. But what if the strangers are not friendly and peaceful and turn out to be belligerent and hostile?

First: let us not get too carried away by the great big myth of national defence, or the existence of terrorists, Maoists, Naxals, etc. We cannot depend on The Chacha State to protect us. 200 people were killed by 10 men in Mumbai only because the people have been disarmed – see what happened to Sanjay Dudd.

Anyway, 130,000 people die on our roads every year, or over 350 every day. Ever heard The Chacha State get worked up about that? And these people have all the guns.

Indians need to wake up to their rights to arm and protect themselves. They say, “A gun in the hand is better than a cop on the phone.” They also say that if you phone the cops and phone for a pizza, the pizza always comes first.

I am an old member of Indians For Guns – and they have released an excellent essay on the subject of guns and gun control in India. You can read it here.

At the philosophical level, the man who first mooted the “private provision of security” is Gustave de Molinari, friend and associate of Frederic Bastiat, who was the Editor-in-Chief of their Journal des Economistes. Molinari correctly diagnosed State Police as based on the ideas of “monopoly” and “communism.” You can read Molinari’s brief essay here.

Finally, something to laugh about. A senior Indian cop writing about how his costumed goons “defend our liberties” and even “die for the country.” Of course, in our bazaars we all see that these costumed brutes are more self-interested than the greedy merchants this officer’s JNU professors must have taught him to despise. But this takes the cake for rank hypocrisy.

As if on cue, Aristotle the Geek has provided this "prophesy" of Any Rand on how modern "criminal justice" will turn us all into criminals, because they want the laws broken. It is all about power. Not Law.

We must think in terms of being responsible for our own protection. Guns. If we go on depending on the State Police for our protection we will be like little Linus and his "security blanket." Give me my own guns any day.

Antipolitics. Antistate. Antiwar. Pro-Market.

From Internet Access... To Firewood

2009-10-19T09:35:00.002+05:30

An editorial in the Economic Times today makes the serious intellectual error of asking for internet access being included as a “human right.” In étatist France this has just been proposed; and, as I read sometime ago on the LRC blog, this is going to happen in socialist Sweden as well, where they are going to make extremely high speed broadband access a “human right.”

This blog stands for “private law.” In a private law world, you can only have a “right” if someone else has a matching “obligation” – usually through a signed contract. Thus, I have the “right” to occupy the apartment that I have leased because the landlord has the matching “obligation,” as per signed contract, to hand over peaceful possession of his apartment to me.

In the case of “human rights,” no one has any “obligation.” Our recently acquired “right to education” will therefore go the way of all other human rights enacted by the UN, that great big club of States. And note that it is States that are invariably guilty of “human rights violations.” The solution to these violations lies in constitutional law that will strictly limit the powers of The State. But our Constitution of India is an unlimited constitution, and our The Chacha State is thus a Total State. This State is a violator of our rights, our liberties, and our properties. Our editors must call for strict laws on State functioning – the “public law” – instead of adding to State powers and responsibilities by calling for yet another useless human right.

While ET blabbers about our supposed rights to internet access, their competitors, Mint, have published an important article today on the fuelwood industry. The statistics are perhaps nothing more than guesswork, but the situation described is real enough. Even in prosperous Goa, it is quite common to see women carrying firewood on their heads and heading home.

However, let us take comfort from the fact that such scenes were commonplace in the West even as recently as a century or two ago. I have a vivid recollection of a very old souvenir shop I paid custom to in Interlaken, Switzerland, where they were selling carved wooden figurines of Swiss women carrying firewood on their heads.

The only solution is modern forms of energy – electricity, gas, etc. But these are all State monopolies in India, so there is a huge shortage. This demand-supply gap can only be bridged through privatization and free markets. Let the energy industry compete to supply these poor people dependent on firewood with the cheapest energy possible.

Again, on this score, the climate change / global warming wallahs are only talking about subsidizing “clean” energy. Against this nonsense, Cris Lingle makes this important point in his column in Mint today:

Another issue related to global climate talks is that paying for a shift to “clean” energy requires that taxpayers accept lower living standards. This is because nearly all “clean” energy initiatives involve very large subsidies that must be funded by higher taxes. Only by wilfully ignoring the large government-funded payouts can proponents of alternative energies insist they will lead to net gains.

Thus, all that these bozos will bring about is a huge increase in the numbers of tax parasites among us. They must be defeated.

Cris Lingle’s column is full of good news, though. According to his analysis, the talks in Copenhagen will achieve zilch. They will fail. They must.

Climate change, indeed. Also recommended is my old column on all this “hot air.” Complete nonsense.

On Adam Smith, The Great Free Trader

2009-10-18T10:56:00.003+05:30

We will never understand Adam Smith unless we understand that he stood above all for free trade – and, that too, in the interests of the poorest and the least developed regions.

John Rae’s Life of Adam Smith (1895) contains the full text of a letter he wrote to Lord Carlisle, then First Lord of Trade and Plantations. The letter is dated 8 November, 1779, or about three years since the publication of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s opinion had been asked for by the government on the question of free trade for Ireland. Smith defended the idea wholeheartedly. Ireland was then wretchedly poor, but labour was cheap – “pauper labour,” it was called – she possessed many natural advantages; but the vested manufacturing interests of England were opposing the idea vehemently. This particular paragraph from this letter is truly FANTASTIC:

Should the industry of Ireland, in consequence of freedom and good government, ever equal that of England, so much the better it would it be not only for the whole British Empire, but for the particular province of England. As the wealth and industry of Lancashire does not obstruct but promote that of Yorkshire, so the wealth and industry of Ireland would not obstruct but promote that of England.

In another letter to Henry Dundas, then War Secretary under the younger Pitt, Smith begins by opposing the vested manufacturing interests of England and Scotland. He writes:

I perfectly agree with your Lordship too that to crush the industry of so great and fine a province in order to favour the monopoly of some particular Towns in Scotland or England is equally injurious and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland must certainly, under proper management, afford much greater Resources to Government than can ever be drawn from a few mercantile or manufacturing Towns.

The letter concludes advising the cabinet minister that it would be “madness” not to grant free trade to Ireland. Madness is a strong word, coming from Smith. This, in a letter to a senior cabinet minister.

John Rae points out that Adam Smith was a free trader long before his books were published. He had converted the entire business community in Glasgow to free trade – so much so that a politician canvassing support for protectionist measures in the 1750s found none in Glasgow willing to take up his cause. There is another story of a coach ride between Edinburgh and London during which he converted his traveling companion, a youthful Lord Shelbourne, to free trade.

Cobden, Bright, Bastiat, John Prince-Smith – they all championed free trade guided by Adam Smith’s ideas. It is this idea above all that is in the best interest of all nations, rich and poor. India should set the example by embracing free trade unilaterally. And these words of Adam Smith should be made immortal:

Should the industry of Ireland, in consequence of freedom and good government, ever equal that of England, so much the better it would it be not only for the whole British Empire, but for the particular province of England. As the wealth and industry of Lancashire does not obstruct but promote that of Yorkshire, so the wealth and industry of Ireland would not obstruct but promote that of England.

Hear! Hear!