Among the Sunday columns, Tavleen Singh’s was to my mind the most significant: she is calling for an end to the license raj in education. She emphasises that this must come First in the new education policy. I am in full agreement.
Of course, edupreneurs could go ahead and simply ignore the complex rules and regulations of our The State. One of our problems is that we take these silly rules too seriously. I have in my travels met at least one edupreneur who advertises his management institute as “unrecognised.”
I plan to do so, too, one day when I set up a Catallactics Institute. You don’t recognise Us. And we don’t recognise You. Ha ha.
The entire problem, of course, is “statolatry”: the worship of The State. While we may find it difficult to argue with the use of police power in Lalgarh, we surely do not need such a power interfering in education. In reality, as we all know only too well, the “knowledge” that guides the actions of our The State, like “central economic planning,” is highly suspect. Some of their pet theories, taught in school, college and university, like the “population problem” or the “vicious circle of poverty,” are pure drivel. The State must have no role to play in education.
And the same argument applies to The Market, which is a social institution. This market is driven by private entrepreneurs eager to satisfy discerning consumers. There is private saving, private investment, private profit and private loss. There is no role here for “police power.” The State must be kept out of The Market. All those who follow the laws of Justice – which is trade – should be free from police power. That is Economic Freedom. That is Capitalism.
Note that this is the very opposite of Statolatry. In this view, the government is nothing but police power, a force of compulsion and coercion, whose role in society must be limited by Law – a law that ought to be the Constitution of the Second Indian Republic.
Aristotle the Geek drew me to these thoughts with his excellent post on “Statolatry and Chaos,” wherein he quotes at length from Mises’s Planned Chaos. There is much to be gained by reading his post carefully, for he discusses in depth the disastrous policy of “interventionism.”
Libertarians do not support interventionism in any form. Not in education. Not in religion. Not in The Market. Not in Money. There is Liberty Under Law only when the use of police power is severely restricted. That is the ideal of “constitutional government.” What we possess today is the very antithesis of this ideal: a State that interferes in anything and everything, that produces steel, runs hotels and airlines, monopolises roads, electricity, water, gas, petroleum and whatnot, that even “plans.” Yet it cannot govern. This is why “political order” eludes the nation.
How long will this “planned chaos” continue?
In the meantime, the Maoists are retreating into the jungles of Midnapore, from where they will surely regroup and strike elsewhere. One report says that they are also of the predatory sort, which is inevitable wherever “power flows through the barrel of a gun.” The State too relies on force. But its continuance is based on consent.
A regular district administration must be installed in all the Maoist- and Naxalite-affected districts, which number over 150, spread over one-third of the territory.
This is your only job, Manmohan.
Leave everything else alone.
"The State too relies on force. But its continuance is based on consent."
ReplyDeleteThis is only superficially true. There is no way to withdraw consent from a State, except (where allowed) by leaving the territorial area where the State claims monopoly on violence.
Of course, if a large enough number of citizens withdraw consent, a State may fail. But at an individual level, there is little difference between the force of the democratic State and the Maoists, except that State is usually less arbitrary in its application of force.