Votes For Sale or Goods For Sale?

Julian Assange has done India the favour of exposing the fact that MPs traded their votes in Parliament for cash from the CONgress.

How is that different from voters in Tamil Nadu trading their votes for freebies from Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha, or both?

There was a scandal many years ago when a BJP guy in Lucknow distributed sarees free on behalf of Atal Behari Vajpayee - and many women died in the stampede that followed.

All this is not new to Public Choice Theory, where "vote trading" has been carefully studied for decades. Do study Gordon Tullock's The Vote Motive. It will introduce you to the idea of "State Failure." That is, even in "liberal democratic" states. This is the very opposite of "market failure" - which Economics textbooks teach these days.

Markets do not fail. Freedom cannot fail. I will never forget the first time I was taken to Main Street  in Poona - the central market area from British times - and my guide waved her arm about and said, "You get everything here."

Yeah, Everything.

We get nothing from our The State - except Persecution. If every State Monopoly was privatised, including forests, our lives would be much, much better. We would have electricity 24 x 7. We would be possessed of toll highways and truckways of international quality. Our railways would be first class. And there would be trams in every small town. There would be lots of different meats to eat - like wild boar. And timber would be plentiful and cheap. This includes sandalwood. Poor Veerappan - murdered by our The State without a public trial.

So, screw The State.

And love The Market.

And remember these words of Ludwig von Mises, always:

It is precisely the necessity of making profits and avoiding losses that gives to the consumers a firm hold over the entrepreneurs and forces them to comply with the wishes of the people.

Better to have The Market - where mass production for mass consumption means We The People control entrepreneurs.

The "rupee vote" in The Market works - for our benefit.

And screw Democracy - for MPs just sell their votes, just as voters themselves do. The "vote motive" underlines the "vote market." We The People become wee, the sheeple.

We can happily do without the vote market and the vote motive.

All we need is The Perfect Rule - which is The Inviolability of Private Property - as I wrote about some days ago.

Natural Order. Natural Law. Natural Liberty.