Fukuyama, Hayek, Sen - and a Cop

Francis Fukuyama, who once wrote a book arguing that liberal democracy is the "end of history," has reviewed a new edition of Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty for the New York Times, in which he has pitted Amartya Sen against Hayek. Fukuyama writes:

There have always been two major critiques of Hayek’s arguments, neither of which are fully answered by a re­reading of “The Constitution of Liberty.” The first comes from the left. Hayek provides a very minimalist definition of freedom as freedom from coercion, and particularly coercion by a central government. But as the economist Amartya Sen has argued, the ability to actually take advantage of freedom depends on other things like resources, health and education that many people in a typical society do not possess.

Fukuyama does well to categorise Amartya Sen's critique of Hayek as "coming from the left." Sen is a "welfarist" – he won the 1998 Nobel prize for his work on “welfare economics” - and it is he who has championed and supported the "right to free and compulsory education" as well as the "right to food" and the "right to work." These are all disastrous ideas that merely serve the bureaucracy by giving them very big budgets to spend. All this big government spending does nothing for the poor - indeed, it actually hurts them by consuming precious capital and causing inflation.

Today, in India, we are suffering because Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi has followed Sen's ideas - as expressed in his Development as Freedom (1999) and its sequel Rationality and Freedom (2003). Sen's acolyte, the professor of sociology Jean Dreze, is a senior member of the National Advisory Council attached to Sonia Gandhi. In that position, Dreze supported all kinds of rights - except the Right to Property!

Fukuyama notes that:

Hayek always had problems getting the respect he deserved; even when he was awarded the Nobel in economic science in 1974, the awards committee paired him with the left-leaning economist Gunnar Myrdal.

Actually, Myrdal and Sen are more or less identical in their thinking: both believe that the masses are stupid - without "the ability to actually take advantage of freedom" - and that the baboos of our The State are an "intellectual-moral elite" who must plan the economy and take "collective decisions" on behalf of these dumb masses. These baboos must impart "education" to them, too.

It was Peter Bauer who demolished these nonsensical ideas – so contemptuous of the poor, and so much in praise of The State. And Bauer was a “development economist” who had studied the Third World - and the “informal sector” in which the poor operate - very closely.

Fukuyama therefore treads dangerous ground when he pits Sen against Hayek by writing in support of Sen’s claim that “the ability to actually take advantage of freedom depends on other things like resources, health and education that many people in a typical society do not possess.”

Did the bar dancers of Bombay lack “resources, health and education”? Do ganja farmers need freedom or welfare? Is Sen’s welfarism going to “help the poor”? Or do they need Freedom from the Centralised State? What about the Right to Property – the only solution to the “mystery of capital.”

Think things over – but I am on Peter Bauer’s side, opposed to both Myrdal as well as Sen. You can read my (unfavourable) review of Sen’s Rationality and Freedom, published in the New York Sun, here.


As far as the critique of Hayek that "comes from the right" - the charge of "moral relativism" that Fukuyama mentions - the philosopher Tibor Machan rebuts it roundly here. Machan concludes:

The relationship between objective personal morality and the principles of politics which are basic to a constitution such as Hayek's constitution of liberty is a challenging aspect of political philosophy. It does not help to casually dismiss Hayek's approach by caricaturing it as moral relativism.

After writing The Constitution of Liberty (1960), Hayek published three volumes on Law, Legislation & Liberty between 1973-79, and then The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism in 1988. He died in 1992 – at the age of 92. So it cannot be said that The Constitution of Liberty was his last word on the subject. Indeed, in Law, Legislation & Liberty he outlined the respective spheres of “private law” and “public law” – the latter being legislation. These pioneering ideas have been carried forward by many since then: you can read Hans-Hermann Hoppe arguing very strongly in favour of a private law society here. I have also written a brief column on this subject, available here.

Fukuyama concludes his review by saying that Hayek “proves himself to be far more of a hubristic Cartesian than a true Hayekian.” Actually, it is in the first volume of Law, Legislation & Liberty – titled “Rules and Order” – that Hayek demolished Cartesian rationalism and “legal positivism.” Fukuyama ought to read this too. Also, the Hayekian insight that when we buy and sell in the market we do so “between instinct and reason” – the opening chapter of The Fatal Conceit – proves that Fukuyama’s assessment of Hayek is totally unfounded.

To conclude: Here in Goa, the people suffer from various repressive pieces of legislation passed by the Central State – from the Coastal Zone Regulation Act to the Narcotics & Psychotropic Substances Act. Both are in violation of the Right to Property – a right not guaranteed to us by the socialist Constitution of India.

The other day I had a chance to interact with a Goan cop. I told him to resign from service – pointing out that he was doing “bad work” and not “good work.” There were quite a few Goan people listening in on our discussions – and they all agreed with me. In the end, the cop agreed too!

This itself is proof of the fact that our The State is repressive – and that the people need Freedom and Property. It was a vindication of Hayek’s contention that “liberty, property and law are an inseparable trinity.” So much for Amartya Sen and his “welfarism.” This welfarism funded by Keynesianism is the bane of India, detrimental to the poor. It must give way to Liberty and Sound Money.

Self-Interest, Competition & Property: Are They Good or Evil?

A young English lad - educated entirely in England, that too - came up to me the other day and said he doesn't approve of Capitalism "because Capitalism means self-interest, competition and private property - and these are dividing humanity." He was particularly harsh on Private Property - saying that once upon a time we could pluck berries in the wild and eat them, but now everything has become private property, and we must buy them.

Actually, berries survive because someone looks after them on his private farm. It's far easier to buy berries than to hunt for them in the wild. The human population on this planet would be far smaller if we returned to hunting and gathering. 

Note that the lad has been "educated" for 16 continuous years in England!

And he dreams of a world where we are all generous and altruistic, where competition does not exist, and property does not either.

I was then half-way through my "Adam Smith Lunch" - a steak, some bread, and a beer - and so promptly reminded him of that great Scotsman's infinite wisdom:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer, that we expect our lunch, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Smith added that he had "never seen much good come from those who purport to trade for the public benefit" - like Air India or SAIL.

Self-interest is a powerful drive - and surely it would have led to mutual annihilation without The Market. Without markets, we would snatch, grab, loot, kill and plunder to obtain what we need. With the market, we peacefully trade and exchange. We never camouflage ourselves in the market, as predators do in the jungle; rather, we loudly advertise! The market is not the jungle.

An added fact is that there is much we do that is neither selfish nor altruistic. I liked Kenneth Minogue's words quoted on this blogpost of a friend:

The defect of this whole way of thinking is that it fails to take seriously the fact that a great deal of what humans get up to is neither self-interested nor altruistic. It is disinterested, activities that people enter into just because they happen to want to be thus engaged—with no thought of personal advantage or the world's benefit. Many pursuits, from playing a musical instrument to making academic inquiry (the "disinterested pursuit of truth," as it is sometimes described), fit into this vital category. It is a place where many of Western civilization's great achievements originated. 

Moving on to the English lad's second grouse: Competition. Now, we all hate competition when we go to the market to sell what we produce - but we love competition when we go to the market to buy. It pitches each self-interested businessman against others who are equally self-interested. And this works in our interest as consumers. This "catallactic competition" is also NOT the law of the jungle - and it is certainly not true that only the fittest survive. All survive in market competition. The best whisky sells alongside a bottle of the worst plonk, and so on. Note that if there was no competition - because of the Tyranny of protectionism - no one would work, as in the case of the sales manager of Bajaj Auto in the bad old days.

And as for Private Property - it is the unwritten law in all our bazaars, where goods arrayed before every street vendor are presumed to belong to him: "possession is nine-tenths of the law." If someone declared everything in the bazaar to be "collective property" chaos and looting would immediately ensue - and all in the name of the "Brotherhood of Man." This was John Lennon's dream too, when he sang, "Imagine no possessions... " The American poet, Robert Frost, got it right when he wrote, "Good fences make good neighbours." And it was, of course, Ludwig von Mises who defended the Institution of Private Property most forcefully:

If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being. . . . Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature." 

Self-interest, competition and private property are NOT dividing humanity. On the contrary, they are providing us with the means of co-operation; the "rules of the game." In the market, there is social co-operation because we take burdens off others' backs by producing for them. This is why we specialise in the "division of labour." What we produce is Property - our property - and these we exchange with others, for theirs.

Finally, it must be noted that The Market is based on Individualism: each entrepreneur taking his own risks, answerable to none but himself for his gains and losses (or to shareholders, in the case of joint stock companies). The motto of such a society is "each man for himself; each man by himself." The motto of such a society is certainly NOT "all for one and one for all."

Indeed, the market economy has nothing to do with the Brotherhood of Man. The chief advantage of the crowded urban bazaar is that it allows us to gainfully trade with COMPLETE STRANGERS.

This last point is most evident in Goa - where each shack-owner is looking out for, and serving, the needs of endless foreign tourists whom he has never met before. Interestingly, while the "educated" English lad was unconvinced, our unlettered waiter, who was listening-in, saw that I was right. He later told me that he liked my emphasis on Individualism and Private Property - he said he wanted to be his own boss one day. He agreed there was no Brotherhood of Man; there was no "society"; and that all the people out there were almost entirely strangers. 

That complete strangers can gainfully interact and make exchanges is the greatest benefit of the market order and its commercial culture - which have come to us from the past, as a part of our heritage, as we have evolved intellectually. 

Celebrate The Market!

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.

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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!

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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.  

State Education - or How The West Was Lost

Why are the ideas of Liberty so scarce among "educated" westerners today? Why did that young German I met the other day sing praises of a "social market"? One clear answer does emerge in the following extract from Ludwig von Mises' The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (pdf here: go to Chapter 4, pages 55-56).

In dealing with the liberal social philosophy there is a disposition to overlook the power of an important factor that worked in favor of the idea of liberty, viz., the eminent role assigned to the literature of ancient Greece in the education of the elite. There were among the Greek authors also champions of government omnipotence such as Plato. But the essential tenor of Greek ideology was the pursuit of liberty. Judged by the standards of modern institutions, the Greek city states must be called oligarchies. The liberty which the Greek statesmen, philosophers and historians glorified as the most precious good of man was a privilege reserved to a minority. In denying it to metics and slaves they virtually advocated the despotic rule of a hereditary caste of oligarchs. Yet it would be a grave error to dismiss their hymns to liberty as mendacious. They were no less sincere in their praise and quest of freedom than were, two thousand years later, the slaveholders among the signers of the American Declaration of Independence. It was the political literature of the ancient Greeks that begot the ideas of the Monarchomachs, the philosophy of the Whigs, the doctrines of Althusius, Grotius and John Locke and the ideology of the fathers of modern constitutions and bills of rights. It was the classical studies, the essential feature of a liberal education, that kept awake the spirit of freedom in the England of the Stuarts, in the France of the Bourbons, and in Italy subject to the despotism of a galaxy of princes. No less a man than Bismarck, among the nineteenth-century statesmen next to Metternich the foremost foe of liberty, bears witness to the fact that, even in the Prussia of Frederick William III, the Gymnasium, the education based on Greek and Roman literature, was a stronghold of republicanism. The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.

It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the overpowering momentum which the antilibertarian ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it. It is true, it would have been a hopeless venture to attack freedom openly and to advocate unfeignedly a return to subjection and bondage. But antiliberalism got hold of peoples’ minds camouflaged as superliberalism, as the fulfillment and consummation of the very ideas of freedom and liberty. It came disguised as socialism, communism, planning.

As far as Britain is concerned, Labour Party politicians have always tried to ensure the removal of classical studies from the curriculum. Indeed, here is a very recent article by Boris Johnson, the Conservative party Mayor of London, lambasting one such Labour party secretary of state for education who called for the ending of classical studies. The subtitle is apt:

How can we understand our world unless we understand the ancient world first, asks Boris Johnson.

Yes, this has been their strategy - to blind the populace by "educating" them such that they know neither History nor Theory: they are completely confused, worse than the illiterate, who at least retain their innate "common sense."

Those who get educated, for them, instead of the wisdom of the past, they only imbibe "new" - and dangerously false - ideas, from socialism to Keynesianism. Students of Economics certainly do not study classical liberalism. They know nothing of the "history of ideas."

If politicians in the West have screwed up education deliberately - and this is reflected in Mises' academic career in the USSA - then what can be said about State Education in India? - where "history" means not much more than the "freedom struggle" from 1905 to 1947. British colonial history is not studied at all any more. And as for our The State's theories - you have "Indian Economics."

We form our ideas of the social world only through Theory, and through History. If both are false, the student's mind is killed.

No politician, no political party, and no State ought to be allowed to interfere in education. This is precisely how the West got lost.

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Recommended reading: Mises' Theory and History. I think students should read this book first, and then proceed to Human Action.

Why Osama's Ghost Is Smiling

Writes Eric Margolis, author of American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World, in a column published by LewRockwell.com:

Bin Laden is dead, but bin-Ladenism lives on. Osama’s primary goal was to end Western domination of the Muslim world, and exploitation of its resources, which he claimed were being plundered. The Western-backed dictators, generals and kings that ruled the Muslim world as overseers for foreign interests had to be overthrown proclaimed bin Laden. 

The Muslim world rejected bin Laden’s bloody-mindedness and his utopian calls for a reborn Islamic caliphate, but many of its people, particularly so younger ones, embraced his calls for revolutions to liberate the region from brutal dictatorships that licked the West’s boots, spread corruption, and betrayed the cause of Palestine. Husni Mubarak’s Egypt amply fit this description. 

Osama bin Laden lived long enough to see the revolutions that he had helped ignite among young people burst into towering flames. In this sense, bin Ladenism will prosper and spread, enhanced by the image of Osama the martyr. 

The Saudi revolutionary leaves another legacy. He repeatedly stated that the only way to drive the US from the Muslim world and defeat its satraps was by drawing the United States into a series of small but expensive wars that would ultimately bankrupt it. The United States under President George W. Bush and then Barack Obama rushed right into bin Laden’s carefully laid trap. 

Today, the nearly bankrupt United States is spending hundreds of billions annually waging small wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and the Sahara. Grotesquely overblown military spending and debt addiction are crippling United States. That is why the ghost of bin Laden may be smiling.

Read the full article here.

The Myth of the "Philosopher-King"

Few could have missed the curious fact that, at the recent royal wedding, all the men of the British royal family were in military uniform.

The English king has always been a warlord - and not a law-maker.

Now, we have "parliamentary sovereignty" - and parliament has become the law-maker, something no English sovereign ever was. And therein lies to root of all democratic tyranny: "unlimited democracy."

 As Ludwig von Mises wrote:

The main political problem is how to prevent the rulers from becoming despots and enslaving the citizenry.

Right upto the early 19th century, it was clear that THE LAW was something that was not to be tinkered with. The sovereign must provide an "exact administration of justice," wrote Adam Smith in 1776. He did not say that the sovereign must make law.

All this changed after socialism gained ascendancy - for socialists must rely on legislation. And then came the era of what Bruno Leoni called "inflated legislation." Parliaments became despotic and enslaved us all.

If we examine the Olde English Constitution, we see another sword apart from the Sword of State which the king wields - and that is the Civic Sword, which the Lord Mayor of London upholds, a sword that is older than the Magna Carta.

These merchants of the Olde City were far richer than their king. You have seen the carriages in which the royal family rode back to Buckingham Palace; below is the Lord Mayor of London's carriage - made of gold. 

Capitalism, Liberty, Civil Government... they all go together. The idea: civic independence by keeping the King out of the City. Till today, the King of England cannot march his army through the Olde City without the Lord Mayor's permission. Even the title "lord" was given to the mayor by the people - and did not come from the king.

If the English king is nothing more than a warlord, what do we make of Plato's notion of a "philosopher-king"? It is nonsense, of course. The philosopher is never the king - and he must philosophise only because there is something amiss with the king.

However, in India - and in much of the world - the idea that The State must educate the young persists; the idea that The  State is headed by a philosopher-king. 

Our Great Leader, chacha manmohan s gandhi, is considered to be one such philosopher-king, centrally planning all economic activity - and also giving all the kids "free and compulsory education." What fools we all are. We willingly fork out the "education tax" too. A nation of fools, that's us.

A philosopher in State employ, in my opinion, is no philosopher at all. My ideal is Diogenes the Cynic, who told Alexander the Great "don't stand between me and the sun." He was an ascetic, of course, and that is what those who philosophise must be. 

Ludwig von Mises said, "I will write a great deal about money, but never make much myself." That's my kind of philosopher - not manmohan.

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Recommended reading: My column titled "For a Private Law Society."

I also recommend Hayek's Law, Legislation & Liberty, Vol. 1, "Rules and Order."

In addition, the reader would also benefit from Bruno Leoni's excellent Freedom & The Law.