Manmohan Pyaray has written a letter to the chief minister of Maharashtra accusing him of being “too lenient” with Raj Thuggeray.
Actually, the ROOT of the problem lies in collectivist thinking – and the consequent neglect of the rights of the individual.
Note that all “politics” in India is by definition “socialist” and liberals who champion individual liberty and individual rights are barred.
This “socialist politics” is all about groups.
To be more precise, it is about doing favours to some groups at the expense of targeted individuals.
Congress politics has always been about expropriating the properties of the rich, both capitalists as well as landlords, in order to give to the poor. They call this “social justice” but it is really injustice as far as the individuals expropriated are concerned. The property rights of individual capitalists and landlords are given the go-by.
Liberals believe in “justice without an adjective.”
That is real justice, an equal justice, in which every individual is protected by Law.
Note that BJP politics is also similar. Their idea of “cultural nationalism” is all about a “collective identity.” In their Hindooo utopia, Muslims and Christians will lose their rights. Actually, they already have.
So why should the Thuggerays be any different?
They are also trying to forge a “collective identity” comprising all the marathi manooses – and they too have therefore no concern for the rights of individuals, in this case, Biharis and UP wallahs.
The root cause: Socialism and collective identities.
The basic design flaw: Contempt for the individual and his rights under law.
The only solution: A new politics based on Liberalism, Private Property, and Individualism.
It is in this context that the news that our The State has made education “free and compulsory” for all our children must be viewed with HORROR.
What utter nonsense will these collectivists teach?
Note that “free and compulsory” means double use of force: first, to tax us in order to fund this shit; and second, to compel school attendance.
HORROR!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
My Beloved Teacher
I am an alumnus of St. Columba's High School, New Delhi, run by the Christian Brothers, a teaching order from Ireland. My principal was Brother J N Foley, who was also my class teacher in Class XI. We in XI- C were an exceptional class: all 45 of us passed the ISC examinations in the First Division. Three got the coveted 5 points. We all have Brother Foley to thank for that.
(And Brother Fitzpatrick too – but that's another story.)
One day, we were taken on an outing from school to see a film in Odeon theatre in Connaught Place. However, Brother Foley did not show up. It was a great film, "Where Eagles Dare," and we all loved it.
The next day I ran into Brother Foley in the hallway and politely inquired as to why he had opted out of seeing such a fantastic movie.
His reply, which I will never forget:
"I stopped seeing films after they banned smoking in cinema halls."
Yes. My beloved teacher and principal was a chain smoker. His fingers were yellow, as were his teeth, and he was always to be seen (outside the classroom) puffing away at his little roll-your-owns.
Take that, pmk ramadoss!
Now see why I stand up for the rights of smokers.
And why I myself am a teacher of the youth just like my own teacher was.
And why I never frequent movie halls.
(And Brother Fitzpatrick too – but that's another story.)
One day, we were taken on an outing from school to see a film in Odeon theatre in Connaught Place. However, Brother Foley did not show up. It was a great film, "Where Eagles Dare," and we all loved it.
The next day I ran into Brother Foley in the hallway and politely inquired as to why he had opted out of seeing such a fantastic movie.
His reply, which I will never forget:
"I stopped seeing films after they banned smoking in cinema halls."
Yes. My beloved teacher and principal was a chain smoker. His fingers were yellow, as were his teeth, and he was always to be seen (outside the classroom) puffing away at his little roll-your-owns.
Take that, pmk ramadoss!
Now see why I stand up for the rights of smokers.
And why I myself am a teacher of the youth just like my own teacher was.
And why I never frequent movie halls.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The Real Gandoos
In a country of miserable ass-lickers, it was indeed heartening to see a photo in a daily newspaper showing the gay community of Mumbai protesting against police harassment. It takes guts to say you are gay in public. It must surely take even more guts to go out in public and protest against the Injustice System.
However, I sincerely doubt whether any gay person actually pays huftha to the local thana in order to carry on with his sex life.
Now look at our miserable ganja smoking ass-lickers who pay huftha, who get hassled day in and day out by the Injustice System – and who never protest.
Maybe it is because the "holy smoke" makes you peaceful Or "dopey." Maybe they are just a bunch of "dopes." Maybe they never heard Marley or Tosh.
And then, if ganja smokers do not protest, what about the biggest ass-lickers of them all – the tobacco smokers. They have all bowed down to kiss pmk ramadoss' ass. If our The State can ban tobacco smoking, what hope is there for the ganja guys? I say, no hope at all. Only because they are ass-lickers.
Liberty requires ass-kickers.
As Bernard Crick, a socialist, wrote:
"Liberty requires courage. Free men stick their necks out."
The gays of India have shown this courage.
While the ganja smokers and tobacco smokers have proved themselves to be just a bunch of gandoos.
However, I sincerely doubt whether any gay person actually pays huftha to the local thana in order to carry on with his sex life.
Now look at our miserable ganja smoking ass-lickers who pay huftha, who get hassled day in and day out by the Injustice System – and who never protest.
Maybe it is because the "holy smoke" makes you peaceful Or "dopey." Maybe they are just a bunch of "dopes." Maybe they never heard Marley or Tosh.
And then, if ganja smokers do not protest, what about the biggest ass-lickers of them all – the tobacco smokers. They have all bowed down to kiss pmk ramadoss' ass. If our The State can ban tobacco smoking, what hope is there for the ganja guys? I say, no hope at all. Only because they are ass-lickers.
Liberty requires ass-kickers.
As Bernard Crick, a socialist, wrote:
"Liberty requires courage. Free men stick their necks out."
The gays of India have shown this courage.
While the ganja smokers and tobacco smokers have proved themselves to be just a bunch of gandoos.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Bungalows For All
There is an interesting editorial in today's New Indian Express that says the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Hyderabad are but Special Real Estate Zones.
Brings to mind what I had written when this stupid idea was first mooted: that they should just be called "Company Towns," and if they are treated such, the middle classes will benefit from better urban areas to live and work in.
Since then, I have written a longish piece on urbanization in the Indian context, entitled "Bungalows For All: A Critical Assessment of India's Human Habitat." In this I have maintained that our The State, while claiming to "protect" the habitat of The Tiger, has destroyed The Habitat of The Human Being, which is The City. Here are the first 400 words of that essay:
"There is no shortage of land in India. There is, rather, a shortage of urban land.
The country measures over 3 million square kilometers. It is a huge sub-continent. And much of this land is "unowned," in the sense that it is virgin territory. Unfortunately, the socialist Indian State is the default owner of all this unowned land. And the shortage of urban land is caused precisely by this default ownership. As Milton Friedman once said, "if you give the Sahara Desert to the government, there will be a shortage of sand in five years." Indians do not have a decent habitat because of their socialist government and the socialistic deification of collective property, especially land.
There are slums in every Indian metropolis. Even in a totally new city like New Delhi, there are over 900 slum clusters in which the poor, who constitute over half the city's population, live cheek-by-jowl. There are no toilets in these slums – not because of "poverty," for most slum-dwellers own television sets and mobile phones. There are no toilets because these are not "legal" colonies wherein sewage lines can be legally laid. Slum dwellers have no property titles to their homes. Therefore, their properties cannot be leveraged in the capital market: the "mystery of capital" continues to stupefy them. This also means that they have no postal address. In addition, there is filth and disease. Slums are a living hell.
Yet, this only proves that life in an Indian village must be much worse. As praxeologists we need only record the fact that increasing numbers of villagers are preferring urban slums to the idylls of rural life. They are "voting with their feet." This action of preferring by vast hordes can only be indicative of the truth inherent in a remark attributed to Arundhati Roy: "India does not live in her villages; India dies in her villages." Masses are fleeing the rural utopia of the central planners' romantic imagination. Why?
As Madhi Kishwar once noted, "even rag pickers in Delhi send back money to their villages." A rag picker is an urban entrepreneur. Like all entrepreneurs, he must find hidden value in what has been undervalued by the market. The rag picker is an exceptional entrepreneur who finds hidden value in waste – and this is where his profit lies. But this activity cannot be carried out in a village: there are no mounds of garbage to sift through there."
If you want to read the balance 3600 words, click here to download the document.
Brings to mind what I had written when this stupid idea was first mooted: that they should just be called "Company Towns," and if they are treated such, the middle classes will benefit from better urban areas to live and work in.
Since then, I have written a longish piece on urbanization in the Indian context, entitled "Bungalows For All: A Critical Assessment of India's Human Habitat." In this I have maintained that our The State, while claiming to "protect" the habitat of The Tiger, has destroyed The Habitat of The Human Being, which is The City. Here are the first 400 words of that essay:
"There is no shortage of land in India. There is, rather, a shortage of urban land.
The country measures over 3 million square kilometers. It is a huge sub-continent. And much of this land is "unowned," in the sense that it is virgin territory. Unfortunately, the socialist Indian State is the default owner of all this unowned land. And the shortage of urban land is caused precisely by this default ownership. As Milton Friedman once said, "if you give the Sahara Desert to the government, there will be a shortage of sand in five years." Indians do not have a decent habitat because of their socialist government and the socialistic deification of collective property, especially land.
There are slums in every Indian metropolis. Even in a totally new city like New Delhi, there are over 900 slum clusters in which the poor, who constitute over half the city's population, live cheek-by-jowl. There are no toilets in these slums – not because of "poverty," for most slum-dwellers own television sets and mobile phones. There are no toilets because these are not "legal" colonies wherein sewage lines can be legally laid. Slum dwellers have no property titles to their homes. Therefore, their properties cannot be leveraged in the capital market: the "mystery of capital" continues to stupefy them. This also means that they have no postal address. In addition, there is filth and disease. Slums are a living hell.
Yet, this only proves that life in an Indian village must be much worse. As praxeologists we need only record the fact that increasing numbers of villagers are preferring urban slums to the idylls of rural life. They are "voting with their feet." This action of preferring by vast hordes can only be indicative of the truth inherent in a remark attributed to Arundhati Roy: "India does not live in her villages; India dies in her villages." Masses are fleeing the rural utopia of the central planners' romantic imagination. Why?
As Madhi Kishwar once noted, "even rag pickers in Delhi send back money to their villages." A rag picker is an urban entrepreneur. Like all entrepreneurs, he must find hidden value in what has been undervalued by the market. The rag picker is an exceptional entrepreneur who finds hidden value in waste – and this is where his profit lies. But this activity cannot be carried out in a village: there are no mounds of garbage to sift through there."
If you want to read the balance 3600 words, click here to download the document.
Monday, October 27, 2008
A Diwali Investment Advisory
Happy Diwali to you all.
On this auspicious day when we light lamps, burst crackers and gamble, all with a view of earning the blessings of the Goddess of Wealth, allow me to offer some second-hand advice on how to invest if you want to escape the financial turmoil gripping the world today.
And that is: Watch this video clip of an interview with Jim Rogers.
Here, he says – "Get out of paper assets and into real assets, including gold." Indeed, he even takes out two gold biscuits from his pocket and shows them off!
But he goes further: He says that the future lies in commodities, including agricultural commodities. As he anticipates, quite correctly in my opinion, a huge amount of inflation, investments in commodities are bound to pay off handsomely.
He also goes over the top a bit when he predicts that farmers will be driving Maseratis in the near future, while the Wall Street types drive tractors. (I hope my farmer friend Rajesh is reading this. Baluchar has a great future!)
He is anti-Fed, for sound money, and no bailout.
I have been watching Jim Rogers speak for a long time – thanks to LRC – and he is great.
Hope you enjoy the video too.
Good luck on your investments.
And a very happy Diwali once again.
On this auspicious day when we light lamps, burst crackers and gamble, all with a view of earning the blessings of the Goddess of Wealth, allow me to offer some second-hand advice on how to invest if you want to escape the financial turmoil gripping the world today.
And that is: Watch this video clip of an interview with Jim Rogers.
Here, he says – "Get out of paper assets and into real assets, including gold." Indeed, he even takes out two gold biscuits from his pocket and shows them off!
But he goes further: He says that the future lies in commodities, including agricultural commodities. As he anticipates, quite correctly in my opinion, a huge amount of inflation, investments in commodities are bound to pay off handsomely.
He also goes over the top a bit when he predicts that farmers will be driving Maseratis in the near future, while the Wall Street types drive tractors. (I hope my farmer friend Rajesh is reading this. Baluchar has a great future!)
He is anti-Fed, for sound money, and no bailout.
I have been watching Jim Rogers speak for a long time – thanks to LRC – and he is great.
Hope you enjoy the video too.
Good luck on your investments.
And a very happy Diwali once again.
I Told You So
This article of mine was published in the Times of India on the 3rd of March, 2006, a day when George Bush was in New Delhi. In this, I had predicted the financial crisis of today:
When a bad king of yore 'debased' his currency by mixing some 'base' metal with the gold in his coins, he and the officials of his royal mint acted as counterfeiters.
The 'false' coins were then used to take over 'real' properties of his subjects, and finance his banquets, palaces and wars. The same is done with currency notes by modern-day governments, but the process is far more insidious.
A currency note is, in truth, a 'property title': The note is supposed to entitle the note-holder to obtain, from the issuer of the note, on demand, 'real' money in exchange for the note.
However, each and every central bank in the modern world issues notes that are irredeemable. Even the 'mighty' US dollar is not convertible into anything.
Thus, all the governments of the world today use 'false' money to take over 'real' resources. In effect, then, all the governments in the world are guilty of acting in the manner of counterfeiters.
All the currency notes issued in the world today are 'property titles without property'. As this false money pervades the global market, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
The immediate effect of currency debasement is that those who first get to use the 'new money' buy up resources at current prices.
First users of the 'new money' are politicians, bureaucrats, government contractors and those 'crony' businessmen who get generous loans from banks. Those who lose most are those who get to use the notes last: The poor, and those who save.
There is thus a 'transfer of wealth' from the poor to the rich, and from creditors to debtors, due to the step-by-step process of creeping monetary inflation.
The world economy is headed towards a monetary crisis as the lead counterfeiter, the US Fed, becomes unable to cope with its 'twin deficits': A huge fiscal deficit combined with a huge trade deficit.
This time, the blame should not fall on markets and speculators, the blame should fall squarely on central bankers. As we inch towards global capitalism, we need to ditch the false ideas that created central banking (and the IMF). Then only can a true capitalism arise and leftists be put permanently in their place.
To read the original article, click here.
When a bad king of yore 'debased' his currency by mixing some 'base' metal with the gold in his coins, he and the officials of his royal mint acted as counterfeiters.
The 'false' coins were then used to take over 'real' properties of his subjects, and finance his banquets, palaces and wars. The same is done with currency notes by modern-day governments, but the process is far more insidious.
A currency note is, in truth, a 'property title': The note is supposed to entitle the note-holder to obtain, from the issuer of the note, on demand, 'real' money in exchange for the note.
However, each and every central bank in the modern world issues notes that are irredeemable. Even the 'mighty' US dollar is not convertible into anything.
Thus, all the governments of the world today use 'false' money to take over 'real' resources. In effect, then, all the governments in the world are guilty of acting in the manner of counterfeiters.
All the currency notes issued in the world today are 'property titles without property'. As this false money pervades the global market, the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
The immediate effect of currency debasement is that those who first get to use the 'new money' buy up resources at current prices.
First users of the 'new money' are politicians, bureaucrats, government contractors and those 'crony' businessmen who get generous loans from banks. Those who lose most are those who get to use the notes last: The poor, and those who save.
There is thus a 'transfer of wealth' from the poor to the rich, and from creditors to debtors, due to the step-by-step process of creeping monetary inflation.
The world economy is headed towards a monetary crisis as the lead counterfeiter, the US Fed, becomes unable to cope with its 'twin deficits': A huge fiscal deficit combined with a huge trade deficit.
This time, the blame should not fall on markets and speculators, the blame should fall squarely on central bankers. As we inch towards global capitalism, we need to ditch the false ideas that created central banking (and the IMF). Then only can a true capitalism arise and leftists be put permanently in their place.
To read the original article, click here.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Some Light For Rajesh
My friend Rajesh attended a seminar in Delhi on the financial crisis – and returned unimpressed.
He has raised the following questions, which the panelists at the seminar did not address. They are:
1) I am not convinced that inflation is not a problem.
2) That trade deficit is also not a problem.
3) That printing fiat money is also not a problem.
4) That only liqudity is a problem?
5) How will it affect me, if I do not get loans anyway, do not invest in stocks- basically if I live in a village, like rest of India?
I will attempt to answer these:
First, trade deficit is not a problem. Since individuals trade, each individual must balance his own account. If money is sound, trade deficits are meaningless. The idea of the trade deficit as a "problem" is based on "national economy," central banking, fiat money and mercantilism.
Second: "Liquidity" will definitely be a problem for those banks that invested in these "securities" that were not secure. They should be forced into making big losses. The injections of "liquidity" are based on fiat money and the banking cartel's ability to create credit without matching savings. These are inflationary.
Thus, we arrive at our conclusion: Fiat money is a problem. Inflation is a problem. And the common man in the village will get screwed by the "inflation tax."
Hope that helps, Rajesh.
And you owe me a kilo of Baluchar for that!
He has raised the following questions, which the panelists at the seminar did not address. They are:
1) I am not convinced that inflation is not a problem.
2) That trade deficit is also not a problem.
3) That printing fiat money is also not a problem.
4) That only liqudity is a problem?
5) How will it affect me, if I do not get loans anyway, do not invest in stocks- basically if I live in a village, like rest of India?
I will attempt to answer these:
First, trade deficit is not a problem. Since individuals trade, each individual must balance his own account. If money is sound, trade deficits are meaningless. The idea of the trade deficit as a "problem" is based on "national economy," central banking, fiat money and mercantilism.
Second: "Liquidity" will definitely be a problem for those banks that invested in these "securities" that were not secure. They should be forced into making big losses. The injections of "liquidity" are based on fiat money and the banking cartel's ability to create credit without matching savings. These are inflationary.
Thus, we arrive at our conclusion: Fiat money is a problem. Inflation is a problem. And the common man in the village will get screwed by the "inflation tax."
Hope that helps, Rajesh.
And you owe me a kilo of Baluchar for that!
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