Kalmadi Improves Indyeah's Image

Suresh Kalmadi, who organized the CONgresswealth Games and has claimed responsibility for the mess, has IMPROVED Indyeah’s image. He has proved to the entire world that what works in Indyeah is The Market – look at the Sensex – and what does NOT work in India is our The State. First class citizens in a third-rate country. The people are the resource; the government is The Problem. And Kalmadi is a long-serving CONgress MP from the disaster-city called Pune (formerly “Poona.”)

Moreover, it is important to note that voluntary exchanges in The Market are NOT “games.” Both parties gain in voluntary exchange – both thank each other at its conclusion: “win-win.” On the contrary, in games, you must defeat an opponent according to rules. India may be poor at most games - and our greatest past-time, cricket, is now mired in scandal - but we have a deep-rooted “culture” of peaceful, voluntary exchange, and this is our strength. Our society’s bane is our Predatory State.

The difference between market exchanges and “games” has been beautifully brought out by Ludwig von Mises in this section from his magnum opus Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. This is from Chapter VI on “Uncertainty,” from Section 6 on “Betting, Gambling and Playing Games,” pp. 116-17 in the PDF here. You can buy the book in India here.

This is what Ludwig von Mises writes:

Embarking upon games can be either an end or a means. It is an end for people who yearn for the stimulation and excitement with which the vicissitudes of a game provide them, or whose vanity is flattered by the display of their skill and superiority in playing a game which requires cunning and expertness. It is a means for professionals who want to make money by winning.

Playing a game can therefore be called an action. But it is not permissible to reverse this statement and to call every action a game or to deal with all actions as if they were games. The immediate aim in playing a game is to defeat the partner according to the rules of the game. This is a peculiar and special case of acting. Most actions do not aim at anybody’s defeat or loss. They aim at an improvement in conditions. It can happen that this improvement is attained at some other men’s expense. But this is certainly not always the case. It is, to put it mildly, certainly not the case within the regular operation of a social system based on the division of labor.

There is not the slightest analogy between playing games and the conduct of business within a market society. The card player wins money by outsmarting his antagonist. The businessman makes money by supplying customers with goods they want to acquire. There may exist an analogy between the strategy of a card player and that of a bluffer. There is no need to investigate this problem. He who interprets the conduct of business as trickery is on the wrong path. The characteristic feature of games is the antagonism of two or more players or groups of players. The characteristic feature of business within a society, i.e., within an order based on the division of labor, is concord in the endeavors of its members. As soon as they begin to antagonize one another, a tendency toward social disintegration emerges.

Within the frame of a market economy competition does not involve antagonism in the sense in which this term is applied to the hostile clash of incompatible interests. Competition, it is true, may sometimes or even often evoke in the competitors those passions of hatred and malice which usually accompany the intention of inflicting evil on other people. Psychologists are therefore prone to confuse combat and competition. But praxeology must beware of such artificial and misleading difference between catallactic competition and combat. Competitors aim at excellence and preeminence in accomplishments within a system of mutual cooperation. The function of competition is to assign to every member of a social system that position in which he can best serve the whole ofsociety and all its members. It is a method of selecting the most able man for each performance. Where there is social cooperation, there some variety of selection must be applied. Only where the assignment of various individuals to various tasks is effected by the dictator’s decisions alone and the individuals concerned do not aid the dictator by endeavors to represent their own virtues and abilities in the most favorable light, is there no competition.

We will have to deal at a later stage of our investigations with the function of competition. At this point we must only emphasize that it is misleading to apply the terminology of mutual extermination to the problems of mutual cooperation as it works within a society. Military terms are inappropriate for the description of business operations. It is, e.g., a bad metaphor to speak of the conquest of a market. There is no conquest in the fact that one firm offers better or cheaper products than its competitors. Only in a metaphorical sense is there strategy in business operations.

A good example of catallactic competition is music. Some musicians make it big, but all musicians co-operate in keeping the competition alive. The crooner at the local bar does not want to “equalize” the star; rather, she aspires to similar success. The competition is not destructive, as in war, or aimed at making the other party “lose,” as in games.

So, think about it. Something great has come out of the CWG: the world has got a clear and shining image of Indyeah – finally: that is, Market Works; State Doesn’t.

And if the “games” suffered, let us not fret too much, for survival is based on market exchanges, and in that department we are pretty good. Among the best, if I may add. In London, I once overheard a man say, “A Bania can buy from a Jew and sell to a Scot and still emerge with a profit.” Ha ha ha.