Good News, Crazy News, Bad News

First the good news: Immigration into the USA is likely to get easier. This is an increase in Liberty, and should be celebrated. Indeed, Indians could buy up all the USA’s unsold housing stock if they’d just staple a green card onto every property title.

This is the best way to solve the problem without inflating the currency.

If the US chooses the other way, there will be hell to pay, as Ron Paul says in his speech before the US House of Representatives. Fine oratory too. Watch the video.

Getting back to India, I was not amused to find the crazy news that a shop in New Delhi – one of the worst cities in the world – has fetched the highest rent in the world. If we want the poor to enter the urban catallaxy, we must make commercial space cheaper by building more of it. The hawker of today will be the shopkeeper of tomorrow.

The “urban planners” of New Delhi have undersupplied commercial space. And zoning laws are in force as far as the rest of the urban area is concerned. The city has never been considered as an economic system. The Mughals had Chandni Chowk; the Brits built Connaught Place and laid out the city in a “hub-and-spoke” design. But these “urban planners” destroyed the city by laying all new areas along T-junctions. They undersupplied roads and commercial space. Just see the pathetic markets of Vasant Kunj.

The Metro is a grand diversion. At Ground Zero it is obvious that a roads solution is a must. Note that the short expressways to Gurgaon and Noida are both toll roads. Our The State has no money to build a road that tax payers can use for free.

Now for the even more crazy news: Our The State from On High has just gifted a 218 kilometre highway to Afghanistan. So this landlocked country can access the sea via Iran, ending its complete dependence on Pakistan for a sea route.

Then why not link Madhya Pradesh to the sea too – that is, both to the Bay of Bengal as well as the Arabian Sea. And institute free trade. Won’t this be good for Madhya Pradesh? Just as two sea links are good for Afghanistan? Let’s ask Kamal Nutt: his constituency is in land-locked Madhya Pradesh, and all his constituents are surely “subsistence farmers and landless labourers.” He wants to keep them that way. I hope not.

Actually, 218 km is enough to link Goa end to end.

And here’s the best part: One Indian soldier laid down his life for every kilometre and a half of this highway in Afghanistan.

Our foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, is quoted as saying:

“In effect, one human sacrifice was made for every kilometre and a half constructed.”

Yes, many a human sacrifice is required for The State, the Flag, the Country, the Collective. Hear Leonard Cohen's Story of Isaac.

Actually, the Taliban are no different: they want the most perfect Islamic State. Repeat: A Perfect State, a Collective. They also demand "human sacrifice."

Liberty is about Individualism. This Idea must challenge the idea of the Collective. That is the only way for the whole of humanity to be Free.

Pranab Mukherjee is engaged in statist diplomacy, in war and coercion. This is costing Indian lives.

No one is challenging the Idea behind the Taliban.

I am confident the “Goa Model of Liberty” will send the Taliban for a Six in the Department of Ideas! Boom Shankar!

Finally, the bad news: Government economists are spreading the falsehood that inflation, measured by a statistical price index they produce, is falling. This is to calm the people who expect inflation to rise with any “stimulus package” our The State may indulge in.

In the precise terminology of economic science, the rate of inflation is the rate at which the money supply is increasing.

Yesterday, I spoke to an eminent economist who tracks these things and he said that the money supply is increasing at 19.6 per cent, despite the fact that inflows of foreign capital are going down. So we must expect high inflation in the future. Bad news.