Say's Law: A Summing Up

Say's Law of Markets, by making a distinction between those who compete with us and those who do not, tells us that the bulk of the market is made up of those who co-operate with us; that too, in two ways: first, by providing us with our needs, the goods and services we do not and cannot produce ourselves; and second, by providing the vital demand for the goods and services we come to the market to sell. 

The market is NOT "pitiless competition." There is more co-operation than competition - and, anyway, "competition is liberty, while the absence of competition is tyranny." There is no "Social Darwinism" in the market.

This is SOCIETY. 

This is the market society built on the principle of the DIVISION OF LABOUR, which is specialisation. This is the polar opposite of Gandhian "self-sufficiency.


Say's Law of Markets thus proves what Thomas Paine wrote in the very first paragraph of Common Sense - that "society is a patron, while government is a punisher." Society is the vast majority, and they are in the market; government is a small minority, set up to apprehend, try, and punish enemies of this market order, who are an even smaller minority. 

This is the "natural order."

To socialists, Society, State and Party are all ONE: "India is Indira." Say's Law proves this vision dead wrong.


Say's Law also tells us much about taxation - that any tax reduces demand. It suggests a minimalist State; it suggests "political economy." Giving taxes to the State hurts market demand for all. Say's Law proves many genuine experts in public finance right when they write that modern taxation is more expropriation - and that indirect taxation, including customs duties, as well as the income tax, should be outlawed by constitution. Say's Law suggests "user fees" ought to replace taxes, wherever possible.


Say's Law can also be used to analyse the effects of interventionism - the key question being how interventionism in one area will hurt non-competing industries, which is the rest of society, the rest of the market order.


Finally, Say's Law "pours lead into the Keynesian's ear" - as one of my readers put it. It shows that government is a cost, not a source of benefits, not a "stimulus to demand." It points to the real source of market demand - which is the production and sale of goods and services, backed by savings and investment. This is the pathway to civilisation. The Keynesians, with their funny money welfarism, heavy taxation and even heavier borrowing, have unleashed the forces of "de-civilisation" - which is rampant capital consumption. All welfare, it may be pointed out, is consumption; nothing is saved; nothing is invested.


As a wise man put it: "It is good if the people support the government - but all hell breaks loose if the government attempts to support the people."


To conclude: In these five posts on this vital Law of Markets  which is currently mistaught universally (the first post is here), I hope I have shown my reader the correct way to look at markets, at society, and at the State. I hope my reader will realise that Keynesian "macroeconomics" must be jettisoned in toto, and replaced by methodological individualism as the epistemology of the Science of Economics.


Thus, as Sudha Shenoy once put it in an interview with Austrian Economics Newsletter in 2003:

Almost every economics department in the world can be immediately shut down without having any ill-effect on the world of ideas. 

This is the power of Jean Baptiste Say's Law of Markets.

Our The State Is Usurping The Role Of Parents

As if hell-bent on proving that legislation is NOT Law, the Maharashtra government has raised the legal age for drinking alcohol from 21 to 25. This has astonished top Bollywood actors. Amitabh Bachhan tweeted:

On drinking age limit increase to 25! Err... old and mature enough to vote for the country, or join army and fight for the nation... but not old and mature enough to be told when you are allowed to drink ??? Strange?

Actress Sonam Kapoor made a similar reaction on Tweeter, saying:

If you can vote, get married, have children, drive a car ... why on earth can't you drink? It's ridiculous, we are not living in the dark ages.

The latest is that the actor Imran Khan is filing an appeal against this order in court.


The key point to note is: What about PARENTS? Don't they have a role to play here - a role that our fucked-up The State is usurping? 


In this connection, I have a story to tell, of the time when, some ten years or more ago, I took my 15-year old son to Pecos, the Hard Rock Pub in Bangalore, for a beer - and they refused to serve him! I pleaded long and hard against this injustice, saying I was the father - but to no avail. Because, as the manager put it, if an Inspector came, he would be in deep trouble. Inspector Raj! 


Anyway, regretfully, my son and I came out of Pecos, where the music was great - and loud - and stood mournfully on the street outside. Then, my son said: "Cheer up, Dad, I know a place they will serve us. Follow me."


A few minutes later, we were outside another Bangalore pub where, seeing my boy, the doorman raised a salute and said, "Hi Gaurav. Welcome!"  We went in and enjoyed a few beers.


The lesson is that all this is ARBITRARY. 


And there is nothing worse for a nation than ARBITRARY LAW.


Further, this causes CORRUPTION. In this case, it is evident that the establishment that pays the Inspector off does business-as-usual, whereas the establishment that does not gets regularly inspected, so its management must harass customers.



What is "adulthood," anyway?


Between 1800 and 1850, the Honourable East India Company ran a Haileybury College for their recruits to the Civil Service, who were all aged between 13 and 15 - and their diet was bread, cheese and beer all day (fish for breakfast)!

What is the "correct" age of adulthood? Once upon a time, in India, it was considered the attainment of puberty. Those days, you were immediately married.


Today, it is a lot of NONSENSE - as the tweets from the movie stars above indicate. One age for driving, another for voting, another for joining the Army (where they give you cheap rum to drink), another for marriage - and yet another for drinking.


NONSENSE!


Congratulations to Imran Khan for taking our The State to court.


Tip: The lawyer must read Murray Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty, which contains much on the rights of children. PDF here.

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.

The Philosopher's Stone

After those horrible weeks in Orissa, it was sheer delight to be in tiny Pondicherry - and civilisation. Shops, shops and more shops, bars and restaurants, masses of people everywhere, and even lots of bright neon lights. 

This small city was built by the French, the roads all neatly arranged in a "grid pattern." The central market area is called Grand Bazaar - and in 1985, I served briefly as the head of Grand Bazaar Police Station. I always recall those days, and those years, for I spent close to three years here, because while I headed Grand Bazaar PS, there was NO CRIME reported. During those years, I noticed that the people are all "god-fearing and law-abiding" and that a "natural order" prevailed. I saw that something was seriously wrong with Thomas Hobbes' view that without The State there would ensue "a war of each against all." There was no such war in Pondicherry. There was only one murder - of an MLA, and that is "political crime." Also, I personally saw the local police tear up the "history sheet" of a newly appointed CONgress minister! I found police work so boring, that I even resigned, but that's another story.

Today, I walked down these streets and their bazaars again, where perfect order prevails, wearing a t-shirt saying:

DON'T STEAL.

The Government Hates Competition.

Today, after over 20 years of "private investigations," a long "intellectual journey," I have found out why this natural order exists. It is so simply because we are all "rule following animals." Apart from religious and cultural rules, we follow commercial rules - and this results in a "commercial culture." Pondicherry exemplifies this culture as, indeed, does any place in this vast sub-continent. The existence of this commercial culture is what civilisation is all about, with its cities, their markets, and all the shops. A "nation of shopkeepers" is really what we are.

Yet, even here, as elsewhere, the truth of what my t-shirt says is evident. Much of the place, especially the commercial areas, is a mess; and traffic is worse than hell itself. In my time, most people rode cycles; today, they have progressed to motorcycles. No one has thought of tramways because I presume they have to apply to some "planner" in Nude Elly for permission. All the "political parties" are centralised, as is the IAS-IPS bureaucracy. All report to Nude Elly. And what an almighty mess Nude Elly is!

I strolled along the Beach Road promenade last night, as I used to do with my dog those long years ago, and passed the Governor's house, with its cannons mounted at the gates. There was a diesel generator on! And it is this The State that produces electricity! Sure enough, the electricity failed in my hotel. I passed a dental college set up by this State, which also runs a University and many schools. I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt saying "Studying Sucks!"

This is the fundamental error our nation has made. We have not sought Prosperity, Peace, Order and Knowledge in The Grand Bazaar; rather, we have asked the guys with the guns, with cannons at their gates, to deliver these to us. Error. The fact that these guys are clueless has already been brought out in previous posts.

Today, what I would like to add is that the guys with cannons at their gates, whether here or in Nude Elly, are issuing wrong commands to their own staff, their personnel. In the liberal scheme of things, the State does NOT command The Market. Rather, it commands its own staff to see that enemies of this market order are brought to justice. This is NOT happening. From Nude Elly you just hear nonsense about free rice for the poor and free and forced education for all, and, of course, the MGNREGA-bullshit; you never hear of all the important things that must be done in each of our cities and towns by the local people themselves, who possess the "local knowledge." They give orders to close down shops at 10pm. They give orders to harass smokers. They don't do any "useful work." This is particularly true of the Traffic Police. And this is true all over India.

Note that the masses of people roaming around in the bazaars are NOT "organised" into any "society." They are truly a "cosmos" of individual stars, an "order without design." Socialists wanted to organise and regiment such a cosmos into what Nehru called a "socialistic pattern of society" based on economic equality. It is from that point on that the guys with the guns got it wrong. And from Chacha Nehru to chacha manmohan it has been a long, downhill journey. As BR Shenoy asked of these planners, way back in the 1950s, is India to achieve "planned progress or planned chaos"? Today, it should be obvious, this IS planned chaos - especially on the streets, and we are fortunate if there are any streets at all, because these guys want to make steel and fly planes - and, of course, "educate" all the kids. 

Over my dead body, I say. For I was one of those "miseducated" kids myself. On my very first day at Hindu College, Delhi University, in 1974, there to study for a BA degree with Honours in Economics, I was taught The Theory of the Vicious Circle of Poverty. This says that poor people and poor nations are destined to remain poor forever - unless they receive outside aid, which can come from their own State, or from "foreign aid."

This was taught to me and millions of other Indians almost exactly 200 years after Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), in which he said we are all blessed by our creator with "a natural propensity to truck, barter and exchange." You see little children exchanging toys and other things amongst each other: like "give me some of your chips and I'll give you a sip of my cola." The instinct to trade is "natural." In my boarding school, we boys even developed our own "medium of exchange" - our money - and these were marbles. If you wanted something from someone else, you gave him some marbles, and different kinds of marbles had different values. That is the miracle of the trading, human mind. It needs NO COMMANDS.

The idea of a "command economy" is what has made this into a Predatory State. The commander is evil. He is possessed of two great big evil eyes. And a great big evil mind. If you want to survive, if you want your children to survive - the same children they call the "population problem" - and, most importantly, if you want this wonderful civilisation to survive, all these cities and towns, these shops and markets, these evil people must be overthrown.

Forthwith! 

If I may add, poverty is a HUGE MOTIVATOR. Poor people always struggle hard to succeed, while the children of the rich usually get addicted to luxury and vice, idling their lives away. A great big fortune made by one generation is usually completely dissipated by the next two, rarely built upon. I hope you see what a great big lie they taught me, on my very first day in class, under the head of "Economic Theory."

Song of the Day: Van Morrison's, here.

New City, East Coast, Same Old Story

I am now in Bhubanashwar, the capital of Orissa - a very old civilisation. I am close to the Sun Temple of Konarak and the beaches of Puri. But I don't see any tourists about. Although ganja is legal here. I bought some from a legit shop - and the up-market hotel I checked into didn't serve beer: LICENSE! What a change from Goa - where beer is legit and ganja isn't. Is this the same country, with one parliament, and the same laws?

The scenery from the train window was wonderful throughout - starting with the splendour of the Western Ghats through the rocky landscape of the plateau right through to the quiet beauty of the Eastern Ghats. What a beautiful country we live in, I thought. And how much free space - abundant is the word to describe how much land we possess to live in. I saw so much unowned, uncultivated land - including all the mountains, each and every one.

My travelling companion was a naval officer whose village lay, he said, 25 kms out of Bhubaneshwar. He said he owned 7 acres of "agrilcultural land" - and added that the going rate for such land was about Rs. 1,25,000 an acre. He added that you cannot build a residence on such land - LICENSE!

I noticed that all the cities and towns I passed through were uniformely ugly and overcrowded: Dharwar-Hubli, Bellary, and the coastal cities and towns in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa I passed through in the morning, like Vizianagaram.

The naval officer disembarked at Khurda Road - just 15 short of Bhubaneshwar. I saw only open land all through this 15 km journey. And when I arrived in Bhubaneshwar, it was overcrowded and traffic was impossible. Chaos, Dirt and filth. And there is no road to the upmarket hotel I now live in - just a patlee gullee. And there is an E-Class Mercedes parked within. I asked the guy how does the car get in and out. He grimaced. The morning newspaper was full of ads for cars. And Bhubaneshwar is a "new city" - like Chandigarh and Gandhinagar. 

Made me think that we suffer from the predatory rule of "urban development authorities" that are entirely unelected - and these monopolise the supply of urban (residential and commercial) land as well as roads. We are being squeezed dry by these twin administrative monopolies. This is where we need "democracy" - so I champion urban self-rule and not grameen swaraj - which is nonsense. 

The newspaper contained a photo of some urban "demolition" going on in nearby Cuttack. Same old story.

There was also a story of some "land acquisition" in and around the port of Paradip by The State for the Korean firm Posco. Why does Paradip, the deepest port in India, only export iron ore and bauxite, and import nothing? Why can't Property be Protected and why can't Posco buy land?

The train offered me an opportunity to think up an example of the Primacy of Private Property. I had a reserved berth in a 2AC compartment. My temporary property right was protected by the guard - and no one was allowed to infringe my absolute right to possess that berth undisturbed.

Yet, there were thousands of poor people hanging out of two unreserved 2nd Class compartments ahead of mine. What would have happened if Property did not exist? Obviously, everyone would have occupied everything and chaos would ensue. In a communist society a "comrade" would come up and demand the keys of your car in the name of "brotherhood." It is this "brotherhood" that is stealing land outside Paradip. It is as if my railway guard had allowed all the unreserved 2nd-classwallahs to take over my berth. What is the "Role of the State" in a Free Society? To protect Property? Or to prey on it?

"Peace, Freedom and Justice are the three blessings of Civilisation," said Bastiat - and that Justice is ultimately founded on the Principle of the Inviolability of Private Property. And the value of "agricultural land" increases with roads. People spread out - and there is lebensraum. Overcrowding ends. There is no "population problem." Bollocks! This is a shortage of roads.

This is the Predatory Urban Development (or should we say "Destruction") Authority.

The fourth blessing of Civilisation is beautiful cities. Think about it. And compare our current civilisation to that of the ancients.

Read about Baba Ramdev's "call to arms." Give him Haridwar, I say. Let him be the Mayor of that Holy City - where you can freely smoke ganja-charas on the ghats, with all the other "holy men." Why then, maybe I'll drop by in Hardwar to have a smoke along the Ganga.

Bum Lehri! Tere Jata Se Ganga Behri!

Private Property - And Public Roads

Abheek Bhattacharya, formerly of Mint and now with The Asian Wall Street Journal, has written a blog post on the recently concluded elections in West Bengal - in which the Commies were trounced by the Trinamool party. The post is titled "Property Rights Fuel Indian Politics" – and concludes thus:

Trinamool's rise is a story not just of how Indian Communism was felled by its internal contradictions. It shows that property rights occupy a pre-eminent place in Indian politics today. The country's eminent domain laws give the state too much power, while constitutional protection for property is weak. This means, barring reform, conflict is inevitable as India industrializes faster.

 

This month, Congress Party scion Rahul Gandhi was arrested in Uttar Pradesh—the state that sends most legislators to Parliament—for agitating against land acquisition. A leader of India's other national party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, went on a fast last week in support of these farmers. Clearly, both parties have learned the lesson from Trinamool's victory: If Communism's bastion in Bengal could fall, no party can afford to be on the wrong side of the land issue.

I am in full agreement with Bhattacharya - but I would like to add a point that has been missed: and that is, roads raise the price of land. Connect Village X to Town Y with a good, motorable road - and the price of land in the village will inevitably rise, while the overall price of land in the city will tend to decline because the supply of urban land has increased.

With more and more Indians owning automobiles, these people will be able to live a little distance away from the city – that too, with more space and open air – and commute to work and back.

The fact that roads raise the price of land is brought out in two stalled “expressway” projects: the first, which was mooted in the late-90s (and is yet to be completed) is the Mysore-Bangalore Expressway; and the second, of course, is the Yamuna Expressway, over which landowners are now battling the Mayawati  government in UP. In both cases, politicians have been hogging up land adjoining the expressway – which will rise in value the most once the road has been completed.

Therefore, one question that needs to be urgently addressed is: How are farmers going to be paid for the land they sell for building these roads? The Land Acquisition Bill now being discussed contains a provision that farmers owning “agricultural land” will be paid according to the prevailing price of agricultural land – and not the price of commercial land, which is what that land will end up becoming. This is cruel; this is also cheating.

If Wal-Mart buys up some mustard fields in the vicinity of Nude Elly, surely they will pay the mustard growers a price for their land that reflects its new use as a supermarket – the mustard farmers will demand it. Road builders must do the same. This applies moreso if the roads are to become “public roads.”

In the case of these expressways, this must apply all the more, because both are going to be tolled, private expressways. Thus, the new use of the land makes it many times more valuable than agricultural land. The project-affected landowners would therefore rejoice over their good fortune – instead of sabotaging the project.

Look at it this way: What is the price of land adjoining the expressway? Let us say it is Z rupees per square foot. In which case, the land on which the road is built must be worth much more – because without the road, all the adjoining land would be practically worthless. Thus, deliberately not paying farmers commercial rates for agricultural land that is to be used for other purposes is fraud – and our The Predatory State is committing this fraud; that too, with great deliberation. The bastards!

Whereas highways, expressways and truckways must be private and tolled, country roads will most probably have to be funded by taxes: local taxes on land and property. Building these roads must be the constitutional duty of the local government – and if landowners have clear titles, if property is inviolable, then these roads will add to the value of all agricultural land.

This is the direction in which we will have to proceed: make Private Property Inviolable by all, including The State; and second, make it the constitutional duty of local governments to connect all properties in their jurisdiction with a pucca, motorable road. It is these local governments who will collect property taxes, award titles in exchange, maintain up-to-date land records, and build, own and maintain local roads.

I conclude with an interesting anecdote: I have a friend who entered the USSA illegally and spent some 15 years there, during which time he took up various occupations, including that of a lumberjack. He tells the story of one forested state in which he worked felling trees, where “homesteading” was The Law.

Once he had got his job, he was told to select a site upon which he wanted to build his house, after which he was to inform the local authorities of his selection, so that they would build a road right up to his residence. The state favoured this policy as it would lead to increased settlement in their underpopulated state.

My friend selected a site a little distance away from the existing road, next to a river. The authorities then cut a swathe through his property in order to build a road right up to his door. In the process, they cut many trees – which were the Property of my friend, because they were on his homestead. He sold the trees – and with the money, built a house. So he had land, house and road completely free. He stayed there a few years, after which he sold the place for a fortune!

Get my drift? Let’s do that on the Western Ghats!

Why Pay Taxes To A Kleptocracy?

It is indeed an ominous sign when a leading business daily publishes an editorial on "India's treacherous roads." The editors of Mint say:

The major estimates are startling: there were 4,90,000 accidents in 2009, killing around 1,25,000 people, and injuring almost five times as many. Beyond the numbers, it shows that accidents have refused to decrease in number despite better and wider road networks. Indeed, estimates suggest the number of road accident deaths in 2010 was close to 1,60,000.

This means that if we add fatalities to injuries, there are over 10,00,000 victims of our treacherous roads every year. There were far less casualties  in the Kargil War! We are "unsafe" on the streets. We might well be far safer in war.

In Goa, over 300 people are killed every year on the roads, and many, many more injured, including lots of foreign tourists. Not a day passes by when the local papers do not mention a road accident death.

All that the cops here do is hang around to impose fines on those who don't wear seat-belts or helmets! 

And, of course, they have the Anti-Narcotics Corps (ANC) who hassle all those "good people" who peddle substances that make tourists happy. And these cops "collect" their huftha: an "illegal tax."

Indeed, just the other day, the chief of Goa Police declared Goa to be a "safe destination" - in these words:

"You get a feeling of safety while moving on the beaches in Goa. There have been some wrong impressions created about Goa and that needs to be corrected. I can say with certainty that Goa is not an unsafe destination," Bassi told reporters.

I, on the other hand, when advising foreign tourists, always tell them to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL on our roads. 

Only the other day, a middle-aged English couple asked me how they could best get to Anjuna (in North Goa) from where we were - Canacona, in South Goa, some 100 km away. Should they drive there on their hired scooter? they asked. I advised them to hire a taxi - and relax on the back seat with a bottle of wine. "It is too dangerous to drive here," I told them.

Note that road safety ought to be a priority - and a specialisation - for the officers of the Indian Police Service (IPS). Yet, it is most certainly not. This is an area they completely overlook when they talk about how "safe" we are. Mint is right when they say that road safety for  pedestrians, cyclists, scooterists and motorcyclists should be a matter of TOP PRIORITY - since they are the "most vulnerable." But in Socialist India, there is no "equality" - and the poor get fucked: right there on the streets.

What do the cops do? That is, apart from VVIP security. 

Do read Bruce Benson's The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without The State which says how we can happily exist without any "criminal justice system" - by imposing fines on all "crimes against the individual," which are Torts. There are no "crimes against The State" in a stateless "private-law society." That is the direction in which our country must head - in my opinion.

Indeed, why just the cops: What does the whole fucking government do? Apart from MGNREGA. And Air India. 

Why do we pay taxes at all? For what "goods and services"?

I conclude with what the BRASS SIGN on my door says:

TAX COLLECTORS WILL BE SHOT!

(This is not a threat; this is a prophesy)

It makes no sense to pay taxes to kleptocrats.

Think about it. And revolt!

With English, We Are The World

There is an almighty fuss going on in Goa these days - with parents demanding English-medium instruction in schools. Some decades ago, these very people had opted for instruction in Konkani - and, indeed, the whole of India was divided into "linguistic states." Then, Hindi was forced into the curriculum, and many states and regions protested - while others fought and died for their language, and states based on that language. Potti Sriramulu is the best example of such a martyr.


In time, India was hopelessly divided - with  people from different areas unable to understand each other. It was forgotten that what brought the Indian National Congress together in the years 1885-1947 was English. This was the language of the INC elite - who had different mother tongues. Yet, independent India did not increase the scope of English - opting for Hindi chauvinism instead. All the states chose the vernacular as the medium of instruction. In West Bengal there was a backlash several years ago - and English was re-introduced by The State. This is exactly what is happening in Goa these days.


One wonders why The State is required to teach English?  Or to teach anything at all? Already, there are many firms offering short English-language learning courses. I even saw one in Margao. I personally know two entrepreneurs of this kind - and one of them has developed a pedagogy that he sells to franchisees all over the land. Our software geeks have all been privately trained by NIIT, etc. Why can't English be taught the same way?


There is a more important point to make here - that India is "globalising" in all seriousness, what with even the poorest preferring that their children study English, which is a World Language. They are all seeing that the biggest opportunities knock on the doors of those who know this language - while they themselves cannot survive outside their home states because they only know their native tongue. A Tamilian who knows only Tamil cannot survive outside Tamil Nadu. For a Tamilian who knows English, "the world is his oyster." The next generation of Indians are going to be like that, it seems.


In his Nation, State, and Economy (1919), Ludwig von Mises began by asserting that the idea of "nation" lies in a "speech community." Western Europe is thus divided. And the vast regions of Eastern Europe that the Hapsburgs ruled comprised many, many linguistic nations. This book was written in Vienna, in German, just after WW1, in the very same year that Keynes wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace.


In this book (PDF here) , Mises made the acute observation that the USA and Great Britain are "one nation" but "different states." He also wrote of how Germans were similar - with the Swiss-Germans and the German-speaking Austrians preferring different states.


Almost 100 years have passed since this book was first published - and it seems in another 20 years, most Indians will be part of an English-speaking globalised "nation." Mises champions a "liberal nationalism," of which he writes:

The nationality principle above all bears no sword against members of other nations. It is directed in tyrannos [at tyrants].

Therefore, above all, there is also no opposition between national and citizen-of-the-world attitudes. The idea of freedom is both national and cosmopolitan. It is revolutionary, for it wants to abolish all rule incompatible with its principles, but it is also pacifistic. What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? Political liberalism concurs on that point with economic liberalism, which proclaims the solidarity of interests among peoples.

He adds that this "liberal nationalism  does not clash with cosmopolitanism, for the unified nation does not want discord with neighboring peoples, but peace and friendship." The example he gives is of the Swiss-Germans: 

... the idea of unity cannot exert its state-destroying and state-creating power where freedom and self-government already prevail and seem assured without it. To this day Switzerland has scarcely been tempted by that idea. The least inclination to secession is shown by the German-Swiss, and very understandably: they could only have exchanged freedom for subjugation in the German authoritarian state. But the French also, and on the whole also the Italians, have felt themselves so free in Switzerland that they felt no desire for political unification with their fellows in nationality.

Mises defines this "liberal-pacifist nationalism" in these words:

Liberalism, which demands full freedom of the economy, seeks to dissolve the difficulties that the diversity of political arrangements pits against the development of trade by separating the economy from the state. It strives for the greatest possible unification of law, in the last analysis for world unity of law. But it does not believe that to reach this goal, great empires or even a world empire must be created. It persists in the position that it adopts for the problem of state boundaries. The peoples themselves may decide how far they want to harmonize their laws; every violation of their will is rejected on principle. Thus a deep chasm separates liberalism from all those views that want forcibly to create a great state for the sake of the economy.

Liberal nationalism has to be clearly distinguished from nationalism of the "militaristic-imperialist" kind. In the former, the economy is separated from The State - and, in this manner, the State itself is made quite redundant to the entire scheme of things. Theirs is a "limited State." In the other kind of nationalism, the militaristic-imperialist kind, the State is joined with the economy, and therefore seeks more territories and subjects. The liberal nation is different, as Mises says:

Liberalism knows no conquests, no annexations; just as it is indifferent towards the state itself, so the problem of the size of the state is unimportant to it. It forces no one against his will into the structure of the state. Whoever wants to emigrate is not held back. When a part of the people of the state wants to drop out of the union, liberalism does not hinder it from doing so. Colonies that want to become independent need only do so. The nation as an organic entity can be neither increased nor reduced by changes in states; the world as a whole can neither win nor lose from them.

As more and more Indians learn English and become part of the global community, it is hoped that a liberal nationalism will prevail here - as it should. In India, a vast sub-continent comprising many linguistic nations (like the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs Mises was familiar with) English remains the uniting factor among the elite. Once the language is learnt by the masses, we will all hopefully become "cosmopolitan" in our outlook.


But then, my optimism may stem from the fact that I am writing this in Goa, where, because of tourism, the people are naturally welcoming to foreigners. There is no reason why the entire country cannot be like that. After all, every region has tourism potential - and tapping this potential requires cosmopolitanism, not the narrow, militaristic-imperialistic nationalism we sometimes find in some regions.


Of course, to me, writing 90 years after Mises, the idea of "free cities" sounds much better than "nationalism." Every Indian city is multi-lingual and multi-cultural. And most Indians speak not one, not two, but three languages: English, Hindi and the mother-tongue. They may not be able to read and write in all three, but they can speak them and be understood. For Indians, therefore, a "national language" makes no sense - and Hindi lost this battle long ago. With language gone, the only other basis for nation are religion and race - and we are too mixed a population for these narrow identities to work. Thus, the "idea of community" must be rejected here in favour of the idea of "catallaxy": which is a free trading market arena where strangers of all kinds can make peaceful and gainful exchanges with us. I have written about this in a column published by Mint.


I am extremely happy that the masses are demanding English language education for their children. It means that the masses are "globalising" while our "political society" is not. In time, these new-kids-on-the-block will all be singing "We are the World." I most certainly hope so.

Money, Taxes, Prices - And A Parade

The governor of our central bank, the RBI, has assured the Sheeple that he "will do everything to bring inflation under control." The strategy he will adopt: "restrain demand pressures." As though inflation is demand-driven. Oh! We poor sheeple.




Similar sounds are also emerging from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the chaps who print US dollars:

In his first press conference as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke discussed rising gasoline prices, blaming higher demand from emerging economies and Mideast oil-supply disruptions as the cause of the zooming prices. Bernanke did not mention the US government's role in the higher energy prices, and he explicitly absolved the Federal Reserve of any blame.

As Mark Brandly points out in this article (in which the above quote is the opening paragraph) on why the US Fed ought to be shut down:

Bernanke's deceitfulness is appalling, although not unexpected. He knows that Federal Reserve monetary policy plays a significant role in gasoline prices. Expansionary monetary policy leads to more dollars being available in world currency markets and weakens the dollar. The weaker dollar results in higher import prices. More than half of the oil consumed in the United States comes from foreign producers....

The word "deceitfulness" is noteworthy. It must be applied to our RBI governor, too. Inflation is a deliberate policy used to finance State expenditure - a very deceitful policy. More dollars or more rupees - the result is the same: the value of the paper note declines. Gold has crossed 23,000 rupees for 10 grams - only because the value of the rupee has fallen. Similarly, in the US, when Nixon de-linked the US dollar from gold, the yellow metal was priced at $35 an ounce. It is more than $1500 an ounce now.

Inflation is nothing but a purely monetary phenomenon - caused by an excess supply of money resulting in the fall of the purchasing power of the monetary unit. To end inflation we must end central banking. Money must be "private money." The country must be put on the gold standard.

In other words, The State must be denied the power to fund its programmes through the deceitful means of printing paper notes to pay for them.

No more MGNREGA, no "right to food" and no "right to free and compulsory education" - that is, no more welfarism to buy votes - and inflation will be ended for ever.

Remember - inflationism robs the poor of their Capital - thereby rendering them poor for ever. Welfarism never benefits the poor in the long run - see the poor in the welfare states of Europe that are now going belly up. Welfarism paid for by inflationism is NONSENSE! It is precisely the "false philathropy" combined with "legal plunder" that Frederic Bastiat warned us about in The Law. This is not socialism; this is anti-social. So much Capital Consumption will destroy our civilisation.

**********************

But we also pay taxes! Should we continue to do so?

I was discussing taxes with a local entrepreneur here - pointing out that all we get in exchange for them is the State Danda: all manner of "inspectors" land up to collect bribes, which are an "illegal tax." We pay taxes in exchange of these bribe-taking inspectors. This is all that is "real" about our The State.

These are not just from the State Police, but also come from the labour department, the health department, the CRZ administrators, the excise department and so on and so forth.

This danda (Hindi word for "stick") is REAL. This is ALL we get for our taxes. We certainly don't get good roads, footpaths, clean cities and towns, scientific traffic management and suchlike. Over 200,000 of us are killed on our unsafe and horrible roads every year - more than get killed in a small war. Why should we pay taxes - that is, after money has been privatised and The State can no longer print paper notes to fund itself?

Think about it!

If we do not pay any taxes to The State - if business is laissez faire, if we inhabit a "private law society," and if everything is privatised, all we would have to pay for whatever we need are PRICES: for electricity, for water, for expressway tolls... The local entrepreneur here affirmed that he would be happier paying prices than taxes. "Starve The State," he cried out loudly.

Yes, in exchange for prices, businessmen will supply us with "goods." All that we get in exchange for our taxes are "bads." The Danda!

***********************

I HATE the danda of our The State - a State that does nothing right. A State that leeches on the people. A Predatory State.

As you all know, one danda I really hate is the Narcotics Act. It denies me good ganja. That drives me even madder. Especially in the morning. Like right now.

I therefore propose a Great Ganja Pride Parade in Goa. Let all smokers of the Holy Herb assemble, smoke and shout slogans for Liberty. And march. Let us show them our numbers. Let us show them our Anger. Let us show them our Pride - and our determination to be free from Tyranny.