On Siachen... And Gordon Brown

There are two interesting news reports today worth commenting on.

The first is about a US army general visiting Siachen – or, more precisely, the Siachen Base Camp. No VIP goes to the glacier proper, the "world's highest battlefield," where the Indian and Pakistani armies have been fighting a pointless war for over 25 years. It used to cost 2 crore rupees a day in the 80s, when I visited the area. An army colonel told me it costs over 60 crore rupees a day now.

I knew this colonel when he was just an NDA recruit, when he was a Captain, and when he was a Major. He was one of the toughest commandos I have ever met. He spent 6 months on the Siachen Glacier and is now a skeleton of a man, his health ruined permanently. That is, of course, what happens to those who "follow orders" without thinking.

There is also no Economics in this high altitude war. The glacier is worth nothing. If it was auctioned, no bidders would turn up. No tourist can survive there.

The news report ends with these words:

"The objection to Gen Casey's Siachen visit is seen here as part of a series of confused responses from the out-of-kilter Pakistani establishment that seems to be working at cross purposes. While Pakistan's newly elected president Asif Ali Zardari has been pushing for peace with New Delhi, going to the extent of saying India has never been a threat to Pakistan, the military establishment, whose budgets depend on a confrontational posture with India, had been chafing at the bit."

I would say that in India too, the Defence Ministry is only interested in the Siachen War Budget. There is no other point to this "war."

The second interesting story I found today is the British prime minister Gordon Brown's comments on markets. He is quoted here as saying:

"…we do not live by markets alone. I have long understood that markets rely on values that they cannot generate themselves. Values as important as treating people fairly, acting responsibly, co-operating for the benefit of all."

Actually, we do live by markets alone. All our needs are supplied by markets – from pizzas to potatoes to plasma TVs.

As far as the "values" Brown talks about, these are propagated by churches, by religions, by philanthropists. It would be ridiculous to expect markets to generate these "values."

Markets are impersonal and competitive. The results have nothing to do with "fairness." Rather, they have a lot to do with luck. Countless entrepreneurs fail. Yet, civilized society cannot exist without the market.

At a time when the USA has totally lost its leadership over the idea of free markets, it is a further tragedy that the UK has lost it too. It is hard to believe that this is the same country that gave rise to the Manchesterites, to Cobden and Bright, and to Gladstonian liberalism. Our collective understanding of markets was better then. British socialism, championed by Brown's Labour Party, killed British liberalism – but that's another story, for another post.