Amartya Sen, the only Indian "economist" to win the Nobel prize, received this award for his "contributions to the economics of welfare." This is an entirely metaphysical discipline, resting, as it does, on a mythical "social welfare function" that supposedly inhabits the minds of the wise, caring and benevolent personnel of The State. He has thus championed the "right to work" programmes of the mammoth MGNREGA, and his protege, Jean Dreze the "sociologist" - another metaphysical discipline - sits on the National Advisory Council with soniaji and they are now coming up with more and more nonsensical ideas, from cheap rice to what not. Mint has an editorial today on "another flawed rural scheme" - designed to "promote rural livelihood." This is the metaphysical social welfare function at work.
Reality suggest something else is at work - a Predatory State. I am living on Station Road, Bhubaneshwar; there is no road to my hotel, and the establishment does not possess a license to serve alcohol. There are very few such shops on this road, and last evening I had to walk more than a mile - through slush and filth - to obtain some beer, which has been heavily overtaxed. Poor people cannot afford this healthy drink - and their traditional toddy is banned. There goes an important "rural livelihood."
The same is true for ganja. There is a hole-in-the-wall shop just outside the station where I bought a tola of fuck-all smoke. If the stuff is being sold, then why not sell it openly? Liberate the people. Let them enjoy quality. Let us think like Amsterdam. Cannabliss Indica - and not the Tata Indica.
Amartya Sen does not believe in Liberty. His two anti-market and pro-State books are Development as Freedom and Rationality and Freedom. In the former he has argued that people cannot be free without "development" - which is something the chaps with the "social welfare function" embedded in their brains must bring about. In the latter, he has argued, quite unabashedly, that poor people cannot be free because they are NOT "rational." Hence they need his "education." I reviewed this book - most unfavourably - for the New York Sun, and you can find it online here. The review was titled "Why Amartya Sen Is An Enemy Of The Poor: Freedom Matters More Than Education."
Talking about education, I met some young students of electrical engineering on the train to Sambalpur. When I asked about their career prospects, they said their hopes lay in State employment - that is, working for the Orissa State Electricity Department. I advised them against it, saying they would be not only corrupted, they would also never learn anything about modern "technology." I advised them to work for private firms, preferably cutting-edge foreign firms. To drive my point home, I have the example of the State Railway we were riding. It did the 350km journey from Puri to Sambalpur in 7 hours, averaging 70 km an hour. A modern bus on a modern highway could have done the distance in less than three hours, I told them. So if you work for the State Railway, you will never "learn" anything about technology; all you will learn is corruption.
They are corrupting the minds of the youth with their metaphysics. They are corrupting all whom they employ. And there is surely no "social welfare function" in the mind of the Railway Minister, is there?
Amartya Sen comes from a generation that claims to have "fought for freedom." Utter nonsense! These guys merely wanted State Power - to unleash their own horrors on the poor people.
We need to fight for freedom again. This must begin with a freeing of our minds from their metaphysical delusions and seeing reality as what it is - a Predatory State writ large.
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