Saint Augustine - On The Predatory State

The other day, I wrote a post on the Pope's speech at the German Parliament, in which he began by quoting St. Augustine - "without justice - what is a State but a band of robbers?" - and then went on to call for a public debate on legal positivism. I had then written: "Without sound money - what is the State but a band of robbers?"


Well, thanks to Christopher Manion on the LewRockwell.com blog, we now have the full text of the passage from St. Augustine's City of God from which the Pope took his quote, and I am placing that passage below for my readers. Note that these words are written by a bishop who was beatified by the Church of Rome:

KINGDOMS WITHOUT JUSTICE ARE BUT ROBBER GANGS

Augustine, City of God, Book IV, Chapter 4.

Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

Remember - this saint uses the word "justice," while these robbers use the term "social justice." I hope you all will read the second volume of Hayek's Law, Legislation & Liberty, which is titled "The Mirage of Social Justice." You can buy this book in India here.


And do reflect a long while on the PRECISE MEANING of the word Hayek uses in his TITLE - the word "MIRAGE." Desert travellers are very wary of mirages. They KILL.

We need Economic Freedom - not funny money welfarism - and we need real "natural justice" in a private law society: Property, Contracts and Torts.

And we need to throw out these robbers - because, as God Alone Knows, I need a Decent Smoke!

Bastiat Demolishes The MGNREGS: Take #2

To understand why chacha manmohan’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is an extremely screwed-up idea, it is best to begin with Frédéric Bastiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy” – found in his essay “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.” Hayek considered this essay a work of “true genius.”

Even in France of the 1840s, there were socialists who had the idea of running State-owned “National Workshops” with the intention of providing employment to all. In their case, they employed city mobs and used them to beat up dissenters. A dangerous notion, that The State should employ all.

The Broken Window Fallacy runs as follows:

A mischievous boy hurls a brick into a shop-window and smashes it. He runs away. Local people gather and conclude that this is GOOD for their city, as now the glazier has got some business.

Bastiat points out why these bystanders are dead wrong. They see that the glazier has got business. They do not see that the shopkeeper had saved money for a new suit, which he will now have to use for a new window: that is, the tailor has lost business. This is “what is seen and what is not seen.”


As far as the shopkeeper is concerned, if the boy had not smashed his window, he would have possessed a suit and a window; while now, after the repairs, he has just the window, same as he had before, minus his savings, minus his suit. The city has actually LOST.

Thus, reconstruction after a war is NOT good business. Destruction is never good business. Epidemics are not good because doctors make money. Potholes are not good because mechanics gain by them; our cars get destroyed.

Similarly with MGNREGS: We see the district collector – or should we now call him “District Spender”? – spending MGNREGS money. We think the countryside will be better off. But do we do not see where the money came from.

If we look into that, we would see that the money came from us – the taxpayers. And if we had spent the money ourselves, we could have generated “useful employment” (instead of “tax parasitism”). For example, if we had drunk beer with that money instead of paying taxes, brewers and bartenders would have been employed usefully.

Indeed, even if we had saved the money with commercial banks, they would have lent it out – and even better employment would have occurred. Maybe a borrower would have invested in a brewery.

Further: chacha manmohan is also spending freshly printed rupee notes to fund this MGNREGS: “Inflationary Finance.” This erodes the Precious Capital of all citizens. It makes no sense at all. It makes all of us poorer. The value of the currency unit declines. All prices rise.

Lastly: What kind of stupid idea is it that our The State must employ all? Is that a role of the State? Is not our The State already too bloated with employees? Should they not be cutting down on State employment instead of adding yet more tax parasites?  

And is not this same State misusing force to shut down many, many trades – from ganja-charas to dance bars to nightclubs, discos and casinos? Indeed, in India, there is NO nightlife industry.

If all these trades were free, would not “real, useful employment” occur?

Thus, chacha manmohan is NOT an “economist.” He is best called a “diseconomist” – for he is a “dissaver.” He is consuming capital. His State is always in “deficit.”

All this MGNREGS money is best invested in Capital Goods like roads, sewerage, drainage and the like. With MGNREGS, all this money will just be “consumed,” with NOTHING to show for it – except a huge entry in the Union Budget.

The Trial Of chacha manmohan s gandhi - Part 2: Take #2

Continuing from where I left off yesterday, let me now draw my reader's attention to an excellent and brief essay by Friedrich Hayek that none have ever noticed, titled "Two Kinds of Mind." This essay is to be found in his New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas. In a nutshell, this Nobel laureate says that the "education system" currently in place all over the world - and this applies particularly to India - promotes and encourages those whose minds are good at memorising stuff. The crammers and muggers top the schools, enter the best colleges, and so on. Hayek says that he himself did not possess such a mind. He confesses to having not done too well at school. And he adds that whatever he did cram, for the examinations, he promptly forgot afterwards.

The other kind of mind, Hayek says, is one that assimilates "concepts." This sort of mind is slow. It is no good at memorising. Instead, it slowly and painfully assimilates concepts within it, building one on top of the other. Hayek says that his mind is of this sort. Such minds are NOT encouraged today - and certainly not in India.


Hayek has a chapter in his popular book, The Road to Serfdom, titled "How the Worst Get on Top." The education system is an integral part of this process. Good minds do not rise; the muggers do.

In India, the schools are all meant for muggers and crammers. The "education" youngsters receive is full of "formulae" that must be remembered. This is particularly true of advanced mathematics and statistics. It is also true of physics and chemistry, including organic chemistry. The study of History is NOT conceptual; rather, it requires the mugging up of chronological data: dates. Muggers top the exams. As for the rest, they forget everything they learnt soon after school.

The same continues in college. The study of "Indian Economics" is nothing but the mugging up of useless statistical data. The mathematisation of Economics is likewise. There is zero conceptual learning - that which leads to an "understanding" of the vital issues concerning market exchanges. The higher one climbs up the educational ladder, particularly in Economics, the more bizarre the curriculum becomes, and the more mathematical. And I mean highly advanced mathematics, extremely complex, which requires the memorisation of formulae. 


It is important to note that basic arithmetic is a part of every human being's mental construction. Our language contains numbers - and so we know how to count. In the Market Economy, we need nothing more than Arithmetic: addition, subtraction; and, maybe, division and multiplication. The chairmen of the biggest companies in the world use nothing more to understand their balance sheets. It was Goethe, no one less, who said that double-entry book-keeping was one of the greatest inventions of the human mind. These bastards have given us weirdo maths instead - for all to learn. This is the mathematics of The Devil.

I attended one year of the Master's degree programme at the Delhi School of Economics (and quit!) in 1977-78. We had 8 papers in all; but we also had a Course Zero, titled "Mathematics for Economists." And just the other year, I came across a bright young girl from the DSE - one who had attended some of my privatseminars - who cried on my shoulder and said, "I had come here to study Economics, but all I seem to be studying is mathematics." In my time - and things must surely be the same - the toppers at the DSE were those who took "Six Tricks": that is, six papers in Econometrics  (out of 8). Most of these muggers came from Presidency College, Calcutta. Note that it is easy to "score marks" in mathematics if you get your formulae right. This is how the worst minds get on top.


I also pursued and acquired a Master's degree in Business Economics from Delhi University between 1981-83 with specialisation in International Trade and Transport Economics. Both were taught in mathematics. We in India have NO international trade. All our sea-ports export mineral ores and import nothing. And as for our transport system, it is FUCKED. This is the result of mathematics. To pass the examinations, I even had to take tuition in math! Of course, I have forgotten all that shit.

Engineering students and medical students must, of course, mug formulae. But so do students of Law - and this is particularly harmful. They study "positive law" - that is, the written law - and they mug it all up clause by clause, article by article, Latin maxim by Latin maxim. I have personally seen the room of one such student of Law: he had written all the articles of the Constitution of India, and all the sections of the Indian Penal Code, on the walls of his hostel room, so that he could mug them all. 


It is noteworthy that chacha manmhoan's "human resource destruction minister" is a socialist lawyer. Lawyers are extremely dangerous people - especially when they are in possession of political power. Good lawyers are engaged in "private law." That is, property, contracts and torts. In India, we have NONE of these PROTECTIONS under the law. Even the BJP spokesman, Arun Jaitley, is a "constitutional lawyer." In other words, he possesses political power. He is not in the "enterprise of law." Rather, he has simply mugged up the Constitution of India, much amended, article by article, and beyond that he knows nothing. This is how the "worst get on top" and this is why there is no Justice in socialist India.

The "education system," now in the hands of CONgress lawyer, has always been engaged in the encouragement of "rote-learning." It is a "deliberate device" by which our The State, which controls and monopolises all education, makes the youth dumb and dumber. They memorise everything that our The State wants them to, but they "understand" nothing. The examinations are only a memory test - almost 90 percent of which is unnecessary in a Free Market Economy. In such an economy, where knowledge is "fragmented," people specialise, and only need to know the knowledge relevant to their calling. Just as we save on labour by specialising, so too do we save on knowledge. We do NOT need to know all there is to know. We need to be competent only in one chosen field. Thus, almost 90 percent of schooling is superfluous, and a burden. 


It is particularly shocking that the length of schooling, which was 10 years in the 50s, became 11 years in my time, and is now 12 long years. In the good old days children were only taught the 3R's - that is, reading, writing and arithmetic - after which they were encouraged to "find their calling" and acquire the relevant knowledge, either through apprenticeship, or otherwise. Apprenticeship was paid - and kids earned money, entered the Market Economy early in life, got married early, and so became self-supporting citizens by their mid-teens. Today, most kids cannot afford to marry till their 30s. This is part of the evil designs of our The State, which has delayed marriage deliberately, by legislation, in order to "control the population." It is this State that is the REAL PROBLEM. Not the kids.

Almost all of this protracted education our kids receive from The State is useless. I have simply forgotten all the higher mathematics, trigonometry, algebra, physics and chemistry I studied in school. It is NOT required for all. We need to drastically alter and cut down on education. Instead, our Great Leader, chacha manmohan s gandhi, is conspiring to inject this deadly venom into every innocent child's mind pan-India; and that too, by FORCE.

If a perfect example of the kind of bozos created by this "miseducation system" is required, it is our elite bureaucracy: the IAS-IPS-IFS types. They all cram for a tough examination in their youth - BY MUGGING - and never study anything again. They spend the rest of their lives studying government files. In their "academies" nonsensical Economics is taught - deliberately - thereby dumbing them down even further. They mug up all the "positive law" - including the Constitution of India - and the end result is that nothing from the government works; there is no "functional legitimacy" of our The State; and even the judicial system is a failure. The entire legal system is corrupt. Many judges have been found to be corrupt - in both the High Courts as well as the Supreme Court.


I have myself passed the UPSC examinations to qualify for the "public services" - not once, not twice, but three consecutive times - with Economics and Psychology as my elective subjects. Since then, after over 25 years of daily study - and public writing - I feel that the UPSC examination is nothing but a test of "how well do you know our bullshit." I have lectured twice at the IAS Academy in Mussoorie. After one of my lectures, the then Deputy Director, Yaduvendra Mathur IAS, told me: "We are knowledge-proof." They are also, interestingly, bullet-proof. They have VVIP security. And I have no gun to defend myself against them.

Thus, all the corruption we find in our society is nothing but the "corruption of the minds of the youth." It is for this great crime that chacha must be prosecuted.

This "miseducation system" is designed by our Great Leader, chacha manmohan s gandhi, who is nothing but an "intellectual bodyguard of the House of Nehru," and has served as Chairman of the University Grants Commission. In my book, all schools and colleges in India supported by our The State, or whose curricula are imposed by our The State, must be closed down immediately. This miseducation system will kill every single intellect. It will destroy this bright new generation. Even more importantly, it will WASTE TIME. The years of one's youth are precious. It is then that the mind is keen. As they say, "You cannot teach an old horse new tricks." The flower of Indian youth will be destroyed if our chacha is allowed to pursue his evil plot.

I will continue on this theme tomorrow. Stay tuned for Part 3.

It's Humans versus Apes

The Science of Economics begins with an understanding of the "logical structure of the human mind" and the mental "categories" embedded within it. The first of these categories is Property - or the ability to distinguish what is "mine" from what is "thine." This, indeed, is the basis of trade - for when we trade we trade properties - and this category is exhibited by all good little children when they say to one another, "give me some of YOUR chips and I will give you some of MY cola."

With the onset of maturity, this mental category of Property develops into the category of Capital - and is exhibited even by illiterate nomadic herdsmen who carefully oversee the size of their herds to ensure that their Property, which is their Capital, does not decrease. In other words, a third category is also present, and that is Income. The human mind naturally possesses the ability to distinguish between Capital and Income in order to ensure that capital is not being consumed; rather, it is being accumulated. This accumulation of Capital is the basis of civilisation. 

This "economic calculation" is nothing but basic Arithmetic. Nothing more advanced is required in The Market. Advanced math is for the physical sciences - not the Science of Economics.

When trading individuals interact in busy markets, it is the category of Property, embedded in each human mind, that ensures perfect order prevails. No posses of armed policemen are required to "maintain order" in any crowded bazaar because everyone knows what is "mine" and what is "not mine" and that in order to obtain desired objects, he must trade some Property of his own.

This is the Human Being. And this is Capitalism - embedded in all our minds.

Let us now turn to our closest cousins - the apes.

Apes cannot trade. If a horde of monkeys descends upon a fruit market, widespread plunder will ensue. This is Thomas Hobbes' "war of each against all." Poor Hobbes. He had never seen a monkey ever. And he was a mathematician to boot. Dangerous people, these mathematicians. Both Mises and Hayek studied Law - that is, the "rules of the game." That is how we understand how society works.

Let us now turn to Socialism - which is the "ideal" upon which the Constitution of India is based. Socialists believe in the nationalisation of all Property. They despise markets and traders. Thus, they do not possess the mental category all decent little boys and girls are blessed with by their Creator. They have been created without this mental category - and thus, they are exactly like our closest cousins, the apes. They are NOT human.

The nationalisation of private property, the forcible acquisition of private lands, the cops and other State functionaries who prey on businessmen - they are all ape-like. Of course, they are supposed to be "trained." But then, as I found out to my utter shock and disbelief some years ago, the Professor of Economics at the elite IAS Academy at Mussoorie is a Marxist! An ape.

Let us now turn to the Law.

In the "natural order" of decent human beings trading peacefully in markets, where Property is respected, no outside Law is required. No "legislation" - which would be an interference. Of course, in our more advanced times, other facets of Property would have to be upheld in Law - and these are Contracts and Torts. All three - Property, Contracts, and Torts - are "private law." Human society can happily exist, and human civilisation can gallop along, without any "democratic legislation" at all - such as the prohibition of ganja, or gambling, or alcohol, or anything else. People are free to harm themselves, but they are not free to harm others or their properties - which would be a Tort, for which compensation would have to be paid. Thus, in such a private law world, there would be no "crimes"; or, in effect, all crimes would be torts; that is, they would be crimes against individuals and their properties. There would be no "crimes against The State or its interfering parliaments."

The ape-like character of democratic legislation is best demonstrated in India by the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) - which many called "draconian" but it was I who first deemed it to be "immoral." When the central banker cannot convert his paper note into money, it is he who ought to be in prison: a "debtor's prison," where traditionally such plunderers have been kept on a diet of bread and water until they repay their dues through the auction of their assets. Thus, the Enforcement Directorate, which murdered Rajan Pillai, harassed Ashok Jain to death, jailed and humiliated KL Chugh - these guys belong to the planet of the apes. The judges who tried cases under FERA, the lawyers who pleaded before them - they are all apes.

Lawyers are very dangerous people, too. Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Patel - they were all lawyers. So was Abraham Lincoln - and look what he did to the USSA. Lawyers are a "self-regulating profession" just like medical doctors. Lawyers teach lawyers, and lawyers alone become judges. So, just as we have "medical malpractice" we also have "legal malpractice." This is our precise condition.

Now, the Central State's Minister for "Free and Compulsory" Education is a socialist lawyer!

Wanna go to his schools?

So what should a Constitution of Liberty look like?

I will expound on that tomorrow. It will be very brief - unlike the socialist Constitution of India, which is the longest written constitution in the world.

Stay tuned.

The Gandus... And Their Metaphysics

Orissa is a truly beautiful state, abundant in fertile land, forests and hills, a country that ought to be peopled by a population enjoying life in pretty towns - but the place is an urban disaster. Juggernaut Puri was an almighty mess, and my excursion to Sambalpur revealed the futility of Nehru's Big Dams and our The State's "steel policy." For Sambalpur is the shittiest town I have ever seen - and I quit it as fast as I could.

It struck me that mainstream Economics is entirely "metaphysical" - in the sense that "economic development" is expected from a metaphysical entity like The State. We need a good chief minister to develop Orissa or Bihar, the mainstream editors always write. Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik are media favourites as was chacha manmohan singh. But the fact is that Economics is NOT a Metaphysical Science; rather, it is a Science based on the "laws of thought" that guide human action in exchanges in markets. The laws of demand and supply are not the product of metaphysical "market forces"; rather, they are laws of thought determined by human self-interest. All humans are self-interested, and public choice theory has adequately proved that State actors - politicians, bureaucrats and even voters - are self-interested as well. We cannot replace capitalist self-interest with the planner's "intellectual-moral" values, as Gunnar Myrdal imagined, and he was a victim of the metaphysical delusion that the Science of Economics, especially in the area of "development," has something to do with The State. All this is the Economics of Delusion. Peter Bauer, the only dissenting development economist, therefore penned an important essay titled "The Disregard of Reality." These planners sitting in Nude Elly do not know anything about conditions in Orissa, and the complete urban mess here. And it points to the fact that their "political and bureaucratic organisations" are pure evil. They must be replaced by business organisations, which are benign.

Everything about The State is metaphysical. The Big Dam in Hirakud produces metaphysical electricity, for the power failed in Puri, in Sambalpur, just 10 km from the dam, and even in Bhubaneshwar this morning. In the same way, State Money is "metaphysical" - for the paper note is just a "money substitute" as the promise printed on it, and signed by the RBI Governor, indicates. The whole of "macroeconomics" is metaphysical, being the "knowledge" employed by The State to develop and grow the "national economy." In reality, there is no national economy. All this is bull - for each ordinary person is busy trying to rnind his own, private economy, to accumulate Capital for himself. In this, our The State is not helping at all - rather, it is the hindrance, the rukawat. It is always The Predator.

For example, an extremely fat fire department official landed up in my hotel this morning to inspect the fire-prevention system - and The State has not built a road to the hotel wide enough to accommodate a fire tender! It is a metaphysical notion that The State is looking after all of us, just like a God. CONgressmen like chacha manmohan are no different from the pandas at the Jagannath Temple, who charge for a darshan. Chacha is a panda of sonia. All is metaphysical. Their development economics is metaphysical; the "planning" taught in "Indian Economics" is metaphysical as well; the "macroeconomics" is metaphysical - and I have already shown how "microeconomics" is metaphysical as well. There are no "market forces" out there, like the Rain God or the Wind God. It is all in the Mind of the acting man.

The Science of Economics is the most important science for human survival - that too, in the urban, concrete-and-bitumen jungle, interacting peacefully with strangers. The point about strangers must be emphasised, for we open shops to sell to strangers, and not to our relatives and friends. Market Economics has nothing to do with "society" or "community." Ultimately, this Science must be called Catallactics - the Science of Exchange - because mainstream Economics is complete bullshit. It is a Science of Individualism, and not Collectivism. It proves that political and bureaucratic organisations are evil. It proves that "corporates" who curry favour with The State are evil as well. It proves that Interventionism is evil. It proves that all must be let free - laissez faire - and a "natural order" will prevail.

In Orissa, what is not metaphysical is State Interference. Like the Fire Department. The Police Department. The Forest Department. The Excise Department. The Customs Department. The IAS has destroyed this ancient civilisation with their corrupt and senseless urban administration, licking the boots of socialist politicians who look towards Nude Elly in this non-federation, in this Centralised State. The entire place is a DISASTER writ large. And all the "knowledge" on which it is based is "metaphysical." There is a complete "disregard for reality."

And you want The State to teach your children? You willingly pay chacha manmohan the "education tax."

Yes, what is tangible and real about The State is the Danda - the MISUSE OF FORCE. Every force, every power, is being misused. These are gandus - fucking you in the ass, and all their knowledge is metaphysical, like that of the pandas. Keynes was a gandu too, and in his diary he once recorded how he fucked a pretty liftboy in the ass, and how "it was nice." His metaphysical money is now fucking the whole world in the ass. And Hayek has recorded a speech Keynes delivered in which he made the bold assertion that he was an "amoralist"; further, Keynes added, "it is too late to change, and I will forever remain an amoralist." Both chacha manmohan and amartya sen studied under joan robinson, who was Keynes' #2. This is how the gandus took over the planet, with their ass-fucking metaphysics.

Anyway, I am fucking off from here soon. Stay tuned.

I will leave you with a quote from Mises to mull over:

"The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning." 

It is all metaphysics dude, employed by these fucking gandus. 

The Chakra... And Our Civilisation

In Juggernaut Puri, everything revolves around the chakra - the wheel. The road servicing this area is named Chakratirtha Road - which means "the pilgrimage of the wheel." The skylight in my room in a quaint, old hotel is shaped like the chakra. And I bought a souvenir of carved stone of this chakra. There are 16 spokes around the hub - and the base is held up by 10 elephants. Which means the ancients understood that the power of the spoked wheel was greater than that of 10 elephants. There are other figures holding up the chakra that I bought - and these include strange monstrous creatures as well as pretty dancing girls. I think dancing girls must have been big in our ancient civilisation - for the first hall in the Sun Temple of Konarak is the Hall of the Dancing Girls. But no music and dance on the streets of Puri - or should I say "non-streets."

It rained a bit last morning - and the whole town flooded up. Funny how excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro reveal elaborate storm-water drainage systems - that too, in a desert, where it could not have rained much. Today, our civilisation lacks storm water drainage - it floods up in Nude Elly, where it rains twice a year, at most; and it floods up in Mumbai, too, where the monsoon hits with predictable certainty. So what could be different about Juggernaut Puri.

Read a strange article by the "RTI activist" Aruna Roy trying to define "civil society." I think it might be better if we first tried to define "civilisation" - a word based on civitas, which means "city." If our cities have collapsed, so has our civilisation. And as for "civil society" - it is a meaningless socialist concept. The market order is based on individualism - and it is what Hayek called a cosmos, just like all the individual stars in the night sky, a perfect "order without design." Indeed, one of Hayek's most important books is titled Individualism and Economic Order. 

Aruna Roy is part of our "political society." All her "activism" has resulted in more jobs for the baboos - and there are now "Information Commissioners" everywhere, with their offices and big bungalows, their peons and chaprasis, and their dowdy Ambassador cars. Similarly, Kiran Bedi is "political society" - and Anna Hazare rules a little village, not a city, and it is reported he whips all those who drink alcohol in his "political domain." A real "civilian" would be the owner of the village pub, a "publican." We have none of these.

None of these "civil society activists" have anything to with "civilisation" - which means an amorphous collection of individuals peacefully co-existing in a city, serving customers, surviving thereby, and enjoying life. The emphasis is on "enjoying life" - and the essential reading on civilisation is Plato's Symposium, a word that means "drinking party." Plato tells the tale of one such drinking party that Socrates attended - and, sure enough, there were "flute girls" in attendance. Do read Symposium sometime. It will tell you what is civilisation, or, what was civilisation. We don't possess it anymore - at least not in India.

The Kiran Bedi - Anna Hazare nonsense will also create another government office. They will entrench "political society." We must focus on the root word "civilisation."

And we must also focus on the chakra - the wheel. Our people need wheels - and roads. I had to go out in an auto-rickshaw into town in the morning drizzle - and I got wet. What kind of silly vehicle is this - so open to the elements, and so uncomfortable? Is this "civilisation"? This silly vehicle hogs the non-streets of all our cities because it is "licensed" by The State - and Rahul Bajaj is an MP, a member of "political society."

Last evening, over some whiskies followed by (excellent) Royal Challenge beer, I tried smoking some of the bullshit grass my taxi driver brought me. And I thought of the guy who invented the chakra, the spoked wheel. It struck me that this unsung hero must have had some good chillums to smoke while pondering over the problem. If you remember your Sherlock Holmes, you will recall that for Holmes, a major mystery was always a "three pipe problem." To design the chakra must have taken three or four good chillums, I thought. After all, the chillum was invented long before the wheel, and ganja has been smoked in India from long before the temple of Juggernaut Puri was built. 

Enough of this bullshit grass, and this bullshit town. I am off today, by train, to Sambalpur, in the west, in the jungle, where the ganja is famous, and where Nehru built the Hirakud Dam. That was Nehru - the Dam Builder, unhappy to just sit by and "watch the river flow." Nehru's The State has persisted in blocking everything our free society could be. It was Nehru who established the "license-permit raj." This was his damned Dam Vision.

There are these dams everywhere, and even in Canacona, South Goa, I found a Big Dam (serving no ostensible purpose). 

I hate dams. I like free flowing rivers. I am a Freedom Man - that's how lucky I am.

Between Instinct And Reason

While in Juggernaut Puri, my thoughts turned to Stuttgart, Germany, a beautiful city I once had the good fortune to visit, a city where both Mercedes-Benz as well as Porsche are headquartered. In Stuttgart, it struck me, God is crucified - and the people ride chariots. Here in Puri, it is God that rides the chariot, while the people can barely make their way around town. Funny old world, ain't it? In Stuttgart, the Mercedes-Benz museum displays the first "Popemobile" ever made - they made the chariot for their Supreme Pontiff. And all taxis in Germany are Mercedes - for the people. There are, of course, trains and trams - the railway station is stunningly beautiful - and the Intercity Express (ICE) train I took into town travelled at over 350 kmph. Wheels. Wheels for the people.

My thoughts then went to Friedrich Hayek's last book Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism which begins with the assertion that economic activity lies "between instinct and reason." We have given up the instinct to snatch and grab, to plunder, and prefer to trade instead - but we have not reasoned why. We are guided by a "sense of gain" and we therefore prefer survival through peaceful exchanges - but we have not reasoned beyond that. We trade because it is something we have learnt from childhood, as a "means of obtaining desired objects." The child wanting a chocolate will see his father buy it for him - and he learns that this is the way to obtain all that you need. He does so all his life - and his children and grand-children do the same, without reasoning why. It is the same with the worship of God - these are practices learnt by imitation, by following tradition, without reasoning why.

Now, chariots require roads. The road outside the Juggernaut Temple is broad and wide - but there is NO ROAD to my hotel, a cute little old building close to the sea. It has rained in the morning, and there are mud-filled puddles everytwhere. Messy. You feel icky walking around this Holy City. But in Germany, where God is crucified and people have wheels, they have the most incredible roads. There are signs on German autobahns saying "No Speed Limit" - and I once rode a Porsche Carrera at 235 kmph, feeling like James Dean, though fortunately surviving to tell the tale. In India, we have neither roads nor wheels. This is a "centrally planned economy." A planned disaster.

There are two critical areas where we humans go astray in our thinking - when we think about God, and when we think about our Kings. The Sun Temple at Konarak was built by a king in his own glory - but the people paid the taxes. What should they pay taxes for? No one has thought of this. Jawaharlal Nehru called his Big Dams the "temples of modern India" - and the people paid, people who had neither wheels, nor roads, nor phones, nor electricity. The idea was that The State creates wealth by making steel. None thought this absurd - because everyone operated "between instinct and reason," and they deferred to their King just as they defer to God.

All our politicians who wear khadi uniforms are similarly operating between instinct and reason. I asked a little boy whether he would like to make himself a t-shirt by sitting at a spinning-wheel (charkha), which would take him about two years to make one t-shirt, or whether he would just go to a shop and buy one. The little boy - with his "sense of gain" - said he would buy a t-shirt from a shop. We all specialise in the "division of labour" because of our sense of gain - but we never reason beyond that. Neither do the politicians. They themselves do not manufacture their own uniforms at home. They buy them from the Khadi Bhandar. Even Rahul Gandhi has not sat at a charkha - ever. All we see around us are people - both kings as well as commoners - operating between instinct and reason.

Economics is a very young science. It was unknown to the ancients. Its principles have become known only fairly recently. To the Austrian School, it all begins in 1871 with Carl Menger, though Menger himself studied Adam Smith carefully, and his own Lectures to Crown Prince Rudolf followed the Wealth of Nations, which is dated 1776. 

But young sciences often go wrong. Much has gone wrong with Psychiatry - another young science which also began in Vienna. And so it is with Economics. To me it appears that there are barely a handful of people who understand Economics in the entire world. All that is taught in the universities - macro, micro, welfare - is complete bunk.

Even the eminent professors are operating "between instinct and reason." They merely repeat what they have learnt by imitation - they never think things through for themselves. They are like the priests who recite ancient texts they have memorised. The true Science of Economics requires "mental reconstruction" of human actions in markets. The Marshallian diagrams and the Walrasian equations do no such thing. Junk them all, in toto.

And do read Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism, Hayek's last book. Hayek wrote it hoping to challenge any eminent socialist to a debate - but none dared to debate him. They let him quietly die, hoping no one would read his last great book.

Errors.

They are all in serious error.

And these errors are destroying our civilisation.

Some of these errors are so deep that I think the world is run by "criminally insane" people. And you want to go to them for "education"?

Forever Third World Class

Our environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, is in the news for commenting that our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) are not "world class." Of course, they are most definitely not. The IITs have been there since the 50s - and never could they produce a good car or even a scooter. 

With socialism, all you have is "science" - never "technology." The latter requires Capital, and Capitalism, to come about. James Watt needed Matthew Boulton. (James Watt also needed Adam Smith, but that's another story.)

The highest number of science PhDs per capita was in the former Soviet Union - and they didn't have too much technology either, as with the Lada. Today, if we enjoy many "world class" goods and services, these are entirely because of MNCs - not IITs.

In those days of hard-core socialism, MNCs were considered evil - and one of the IIMs (IIM-Bangalore) specialised in training managers for State-owned companies. Even today, you never find an IIT or IIM professor writing a brief newspaper column to say something about something. One IIT-Delhi professor, Dinesh Mohan, designed and built the Bus Rapid Transit Corridor in Nude Elly - a huge disaster.

Jairam Ramesh's comment was made in a particular context: he was advocating the setting up of a "world class institute" to study marine biodiversity, and he wanted that to be a partnership between Reliance and our The State. As though the Tata Institute of Social Science and the Birla Institute of Technology are world class!

What I would like to tell Jairam Ramesh is that everything about India is "Third World Class" - because our The State is Third World Class itself. How about world class cities and towns? Or world class highways? Not a chance! How about a world class currency? - GOLD.

Of course, Jairam Ramesh is a CONgressman - beholdened to the widow of their late leader. This is a party of blood worshippers - they worship Nehru's blood - and that is Third World Class "politics." 

The latest news emanating from Madam Sonia is that they are readying the "right to food." Our The State is going to borrow and print money in order to buy the votes of "the poor." Never mind that the prices of everything else will rise, the precious Capital and savings of all will be eroded, and a whole lot of Capital will be needlessly consumed - to the detriment of the poor. The Predatory State feigning to be a Welfare State is what Keynesianism is all about, for it was Keynes who designed it "as a means of cheating the working class."

In the old days, and perhaps even now, the IIMs gave preference to IIT graduates. I finally discovered why after reading Friedrich Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason. It becomes clear that the powers-that-be wanted to produce business managers with a fatal "social engineering" (or "positivist") mindset. That is, our Third World Class Socialist State did not desire to "educate" us; rather, they used their powers of force and coercion to control education rigidly and thereby "miseducate" us. It is heartening that today some brave souls are calling for total privatisation of education.

A world class India? No chance of us getting there with Socialism and the Welfare State. And all the cronies. Our only chance of getting there is with laissez faire Capitalism, Private Property, Liberty, and Sound Money. And Private Law.

Further, a decentralised administration with mayors running each city and town. 

The panchayati raj vision - which is combined with "right to food" and "right to work" - is itself a Third World Class vision. They see only peasants, not world citizens.

As far as Jairam Ramesh is concerned, I do think we ought to tell him to get the hell out of Jaitapur. We don't need a Third World Class Socialist State attempting to run a nuclear power facility in the Konkan, where one accident could wipe out the Alfonso mango and put an end to Goan tourism. Privatise power. And respect the Property of others. 

To respect others' properties is civilised behaviour - truly world class. To take over others' properties using the coercive force of The State is barbaric: not world class at all. 

You CONgress barbarians remain what you are: Third World Class.