On A Strike... And Veerappan

There are two stories in the news today worth commenting on.

The first is the strike called by labour unions that will paralyze West Bengal today.

To libertarians, labour unions are an example of a private entity being accorded the right to use force. To keep everything closed all over Bengal today, the unionists will definitely employ force. This should not be allowed under the Rule of Law.

Further, it must also be noted that this unionism can only benefit some workers: under no circumstances can all workers gain. Thus, unions and their members are actually a group of privileged workers, privileged to use force to raise their wages. But they do so at the expense of those workers kept out of the labour combination. Unions in no way represent the working classes in general.

The second interesting story is about a Green Bangalore festival organized by the forest department of The State. The forest department is giving out subsidized saplings for the people to plant and thereby green their city. This sentence caught my attention:

"A variety of trees including Peepal, Mahogany, Glory of India, Neem and Thespecia were planted at the event."

Why are sandalwood saplings excluded? Sandalwood grows easily in Bangalore – and all over the western ghats.

Actually, sandalwood saplings are not being planted because all sandalwood trees belong to The State.

If this monopoly was abolished, there would be sandalwood farming all over the place.

Veerappan too could have been a sandalwood farmer.

We must conclude that he was a victim of Bad Law.

When Veerappan was murdered by the Karnataka Police, I was the only one who defended the right to grow sandalwood privately.

Read that article here.

There is also an earlier post on the teak tree in my garden in Goa – and how I need permission from The State forest department to cut it down. And why, because of these restrictions, teak is unaffordable here, and all doors and windows in my house are made of inferior jackwood.

The forest department is just another vested interest.