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by Sauvik Chakraverti: Austro-Libertarian Opinion From Indyeah
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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.
Posted by Sauvik on Wednesday, May 04, 2011 0 comments
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Labels: Activism, Bastiat, Bureaucracy, Ganja, Goa, Gold, Inflation, Interventionism, Liberty, Morality, Predatory State, Privatisation, Roads, Role of State, Taxation, Union Budget
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Recommended reading: Mises' Theory and History. I think students should read this book first, and then proceed to Human Action.
Posted by Sauvik on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 0 comments
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Labels: Constitutional Issues, Education, History, Liberty, Mises, Role of State
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.
Posted by Sauvik on Tuesday, May 03, 2011 0 comments
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Labels: Miscellaneous, War and Peace
Monday, 2 May 2011
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.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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.
Posted by Sauvik on Monday, May 02, 2011 1 comments
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Labels: Adam Smith, Capitalism, civil government, Constitutional Issues, Education, Philosophy, Role of State
Sunday, 1 May 2011
Our "Rightly Understood Interests"
I concluded my post of yesterday, in which I discussed the evils that arise from interventionism, with a promise to reveal to businessmen why their "rightly understood interests" lie in laissez faire. So, here goes:

Let us begin with Say's Law of Markets - a pillar of classical economics that Keynes and his acolytes hated. Jean-Baptiste Say was the "Adam Smith of France" - and John Rae records that Say travelled to Glasgow just to sit in Smith's chair at the university! Those were the days...

In a nutshell, Say's Law asserts that the production of X creates the demand for all non-X. Thus, if farmers grow wheat, this creates the demand for wine, shoes, and everything else, except wheat. This is because when the farmers sell their wheat, they will not buy wheat; rather, they will buy other goods and services.

Keynesians deliberately distorted Say's Law by teaching their unfortunate students that it means "supply creates its own demand." But the supply of wheat does not create the demand for wheat. Rather the supply of wheat creates the demand for all non-competing goods. And the demand for wheat comes from the supply of all non-competing goods. Savvy?

There are innumerable implications of Say's Law - but here I will detail only two of them: first - and this is what the Keynesians hate - that demand is created by producing goods and services, not paper money. Say's Law rules out "overproduction" - and asserts that anything produced will get sold, even as junk. That is, its price will drop until it is finally sold. This applies to labour too. Markets clear.


The second implication of Say's Law is that businessmen must see that the demand for their produce is entirely dependent on the production and sale of ALL NON-COMPETING GOODS.


Thus, when India Inc. gathers together and demands protectionist tariff barriers, they only hurt themselves. It might benefit Bajaj if foreign scooters are disallowed entry into the Indian market - but that does not benefit Mallya, whose booze would sell better if more scooters were sold, and more cars too, and TV sets as well.


So, if Bajaj, Mallya, Kurien, Tata, Mahindra et. al. lobby for protection - and get it - they all will actually come off losing, because overall demand will drop, despite all the Keynesian policies of the central bank. If cheese imports were free, for example, all except Kurien would gain. And so on...


The "collusion" between these businessmen is wrong-headed: they do not know their "true interests." They do not know the Science of Economics.


Indians of my age can find proof of the veracity of this classical law of markets by comparing demand in the years preceding 1991 to conditions today. Then, the shop shelves were bare. There was not much to be sold - and so overall demand was low. Markets possessed little catallactic energy.


Today, a host of goods and services are sold, many of them imported - like mobile phones, cameras, TV sets, jeans and so on. Cars and scooters and motorcycles are available off the shelf. Thus, the overall catallactic energy in our markets has multiplied - thereby raising the demand for everything that is NON-COMPETING.


The crux of the matter is that businesses that do not compete with each other hurt only themselves through protectionist collusion. Further, those employed in these businesses hurt themselves further as consumers. A sales manager in Bajaj
Auto in the bad old days might love his job because he has no work to do - but when he goes to market with his wages... It is there that he loses.


In yesterday's post I spoke of the "politicisation of economic life" that occurs because of interventionism - and I mentioned one of the"costs": that businessmen must devote more and more attention to cheap and dirty politics instead of simply tending to their businesses as they ought to. But there are other costs as well. If we add up all these costs of lobbying to the other costs of lowered demand and losses as consumers, surely any businessman will see that his "rightly understood interests" lie in laissez faire, in a completely Free Market.


While our businessmen mull over this, the fact remains that the vast majority are workers and peasants. For them, fully competitive, free trading societies are best - because, despite their meagre earnings, they succeed as consumers: they buy the best products in the world at the lowest prices. Thus, laissez faire - and not socialism or communism - leads to a "workers' paradise." American workers enjoy life - unlike their counterparts in the former Soviet Union. The East German worker always envied his counterpart in West Germany - who drove real cars, and not the silly Trabant.


Think it over - and you will realise laissez faire is best.


Recommended readings:
1. My old column on Say's Law, available here.
2. WH Hutt's A Rehabilitation of Say's Law, which you can download free here.
Posted by Sauvik on Sunday, May 01, 2011 1 comments
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Labels: Adam Smith, Capitalism, Constitutional Issues, Free Trade, History, Interventionism, Labour, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Role of State, WH Hutt
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Interventionism - and The Vision of the Anointed
A question was posed by a reader today - with reference to my morning post on Prashant Bhushan & Co. - regarding corporate corruption. I have posted a reply - but let me take the discussion of this important matter to the main page.

Socialists practise "interventionism." They are always to be found loudly proclaiming that The Market may be fine - but the State must "regulate." This is their ideology. What is "regulation" and how is it carried out?

Regulations are the product of parliaments and bureaus (government departments). Parliaments produce Legislation; and bureaus are empowered by "subordinate legislation." All these rules and regulations are "enforced" upon human beings during their actions in The Market. Thus, they are unfree.

Understand this "vision of the damned": this is their "command economy." They want to turn society into a machine that must obey their commands issued via Legislation. Socialist democracy is nothing but Legislation: the "social market economy."

The immediate effect of such interventionism is what Peter Bauer called "the politicisation of economic life." Businessmen, realising they must influence the rules under which they will be regulated (by force), begin "lobbying," thereby diverting their attention to worthless politics, rather that tending to their businesses. To the uncritical eye - this is "democracy."

In the US of the 1940s, Ludwig von Mises pointed out how rampant interventionism was destroying American democracy. He said the "representatives of the people" have all become "representatives of special interests" - from agriculture to mining, to whatever. No one represents his "constituency" - and it's all about special interests. The politicisation of economic life through interventionism destroys both politics as well as democracy - and destroys the character of the business community, too.

Then, there is the Vision of the Anointed: those who see Market Society as the Wondrous Creation of God - an "order without design"; something that is "the result of human action but not human design." If humans did not design it - who did? We could call him God. His is the "invisible hand."

This is the laissez faire vision - of a completely Free Market. A natural, spontaneous order based on rules all of us follow - without knowing why. This Golden Rule of Property comes from the past. All I have done is articulate this rule - the Inviolability of Property - but I did not make this rule, nor did anyone else. It is a part of human evolution, which includes our "intellectual evolution" - an "order without design"; the "result of human action, but not human design." It took millions of years before any intellect could articulate this rule - as for example, the Greek philosopher Strabo did in 40 AD, whom I quoted in my post of yesterday.

This commercial, bazaar culture is our real "cultural heritage." It is a culture of of peaceful and gainful exchange. A "commercial culture." A bania can buy from a Scot and sell to a Jew and still emerge with a profit - or so they say in London!

This natural order of the Free Market is what Hayek called a Great Society - as did Adam Smith. And since Smith influenced Darwin, the latter's evolutionary theories also looked at the natural world as an "order without design." This cannot be coincidental.

Similarly, Frederic Bastiat, battling socialists and protectionists in France circa 1850, wrote an entire volume titled Economic Harmonies. There is no "class war." The motive of self-interest does not destroy society - rather, it enriches it, by creating Competition, which is the essence of Liberty, its biggest fruit. Everything and everyone improves all the time. "Competition is Liberty - and the Absence of Competition is Tyranny," said Bastiat.

He was a devout Catholic, and he proclaimed his faith thus: "To believe in Liberty is to believe in God - and have faith in His creation, Man."

These classical liberals believed in "natural honesty" - and the Scottish Enlightenment was all about "natural religion." This was their vision - of a natural, harmonious order among all mankind, all based on gainful trade, because God planted in all of us "a natural propensity to truck, barter and exchange."


If the State is completely separated from The Market - laissez faire, private money, free banking under law, private law, unilateral free trade - all businessmen will find that their only way to preserve and accumulate capital will be by "serving the consumer" - and not the politicians and their bureaus. Only then will corporate corruption cease.

Of course, businessmen must realise that their "rightfully understood interests" do not lie in interventionism. That is also the task of the economist. I will address that task in my post of tomorrow morning.

Recommended reading: Ludwig von Mises' Interventionism: An Economic Analysis. This was written in German in the 1940s, shortly after the Miseses had migrated to America to escape Hitler. Mises was working for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) then, and this was translated into English by two NBER staff - but never published till after his death! You can download the book from the Mises Institute here. Obviously, this is how the USA became the USSA - by preferring democracy to liberty, confusing the two, confusing means and ends.
Posted by Sauvik on Saturday, April 30, 2011 0 comments
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Labels: Bauer, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Constitutional Issues, Economic Freedom, Interventionism, Liberty, Mises, Morality, Natural Order, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Role of State, War and Peace
Prashant Bhushan - Yet Another Socialist Lawyer
The lawyer Prashant Bhushan is a leading light of the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement currently underway, along with his father, Shanti Bhushan, who is also a lawyer.

Today, the Express reports Prashant, while speaking at a public rally, insisting that "post-1991 economic policies, and privatisation, are the root cause of corruption." To Prashant, the freeing of enterprise from the clutches of our The State is the "precise reason" why corruption has grown. Ominously, the report begins by saying:

What was initially showcased as an anti-politician front against corruption seemed to blur into an anti-economic liberalisation coalition...


Prashant was joined on the dais by Arundhati Roy, who said:

As long as we have these [liberal] economic policies in place, the National Employment Guarantee Act will never be able to do away with hunger and malnutrition, anti-corruption laws will not do away with injustice, and criminal laws will not do away with communal fascism, the twin sibling of economic totalitarianism. They will, at best, be mitigating measures. As the historian Howard Zinn said “the rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and power in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered."


Arundhati Roy added that "I have known Prashant Bhushan for years. First as a comrade and now as a close friend."

Other "activists" on the podium, according to the report, were Aruna Roy who championed the MGNREGA "right to employment" and now champions the "right to food." She never supports the "right to Property."

Aruna Roy, interestingly, is a Member of the National Advisory Council attached to Sonia Gandhi.

So, these are not rebels; they are socialist sympathisers posing as rebels. They are not "against the System." They are against The Market. They are opposed to Liberty - and Property. They champion useless rights while ignoring Property. And they are led by lawyers - that is, socialist lawyers. I have just written a post against socialist judges - all of whom start off as socialist lawyers. Beware of socialist lawyers: Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Patel - all were socialist lawyers.

Since Prashant Bhushan is a "comrade-turned-friend" of Arundhati Roy, let us examine her words quoted above - for the two obviously agree on their politics. Let is begin with her assertion that "as long as we have these [liberal] economic policies in place, the National Employment Guarantee Act will never be able to do away with hunger and malnutrition... " Does she think that if we close all markets down, the masses will be fed by our The State? Where does The State get revenue from to feed anyone - but from wealth producers of The Market?

Arundhati Roy favourably quotes a pseudo-historian who wrote that “the rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of wealth and power, but reinforces that inequality with the authority of law. It allocates wealth and power in such complicated and indirect ways as to leave the victim bewildered."

This is NONSENSE!

The Rule of Law protects Private Property from State predation. Apart from the security of possession, this yields the sweet fruit of Liberty. As Mises put it:

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power.


Thus, the Rule of Law does not "allocate" anything. Its motto is "to each his own." Then, with Liberty and Free Markets, individuals speculate on how they can serve their customers better, competition enters the picture, people strive, some succeed, some fail, and the previous arrangement of wealth is altered, and keeps on altering forever. Mises says:

It is precisely the necessity of making profits and avoiding losses that gives to the consumers a firm hold over the entrepreneurs and forces them to comply with the wishes of the people.


This Free Market is an "economic democracy" - and not the "economic totalitarianism" Arundhati Roy rails against. Central economic planning is totalitarian - not Free Markets, which are a creature of Liberty, and in which each is free to challenge the superiority of another - to compete. Further, as consumers are "sovereign" in The Market, and every businessman is trying to woo the consumer, there is an "economic democracy" that works even better than the political one. As Mises put it:

The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is precisely the necessity of making profits and avoiding losses that gives to the consumers a firm hold over the entrepreneurs and forces them to comply with the wishes of the people.

We are "served" by businesses. We are never served by politicians and bureaucrats, who are "self-serving." They are the Predatory State. Prashant Bhushan, Arundhati Roy and Aruna Roy are actually on their side - though they may pretend otherwise.

There is either The Market - or there is The State. There is nothing else. These anti-corruption activists who are opposed to The Market are all in favour of a Bigger State - a Big Welfare State that will feed, house, clothe, educate, develop and uplift the sheeple.

They support useless "rights" - while ignoring Property, from which alone can Liberty arise. These useless rights only serve politicians and bureaucrats (whose budgets grow exponentially).

Thus, they are not against corruption; rather, they will reinforce corruption - and even enlarge it.

They are looking for State Power themselves. The Jan Lok Pal will be their little bit of The State.

In exchange, they will allow the socialists at the helm to continue to operate a Big Welfare State - which will consume all our precious Capital and therefore keep our masses permanently poverty-stricken, and our civilisation will soon collapse.

For the progress of civilisation we must "accumulate capital" - and not consume it through welfarism. All welfare is about consumption, not investment.

I have an earlier post on Anna Hazare's tin-pot dictatorship in his village.

Add to that this nonsense from his closest aide, the lawyer Prashant Bhushan, and you realise that this is another false dawn.

So, I shall stick to my prescription: The Sheeple must rise En-Masse and FORCE our The State to sign a New Magna Carta guaranteeing the inviolability of our properties, the freedom to trade by land and sea, and the freedom to run our cities and towns without interference from higher authorities. The corruption inherent in inflationism must be ended, so that our wealth is preserved with sound, hard money.

We must "Seize Liberty and End Tyranny." Our focus must be to fight tyranny, not corruption.

Our battle must be for Liberty and Property - and we must never accept any freebies doled out by The State. These freebies are paid for by us, anyway.

Lawyers are very dangerous people - look at Kapil Sibal and Arun Jaitley. Lawyers - like doctors - are a "self-regulating profession." Lawyers become judges, and lawyers teach law. Just as doctors misuse their monopoly of knowledge, so do lawyers. The only cure - the citizens must know law too. That is, the Laws of Liberty and Property.
Posted by Sauvik on Saturday, April 30, 2011 2 comments
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Labels: Activism, Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Constitutional Issues, Education, Liberty, Morality, Private Property, Rule of Law, Sound Money
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Money, Taxes, Prices - And A Parade
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Popular Posts

To End Corruption, End Statism
Anna Hazare and his cohorts have thought of a strange way to end corruption - by creating another job for another bureaucrat in our The Sta...
Get An Illegal Gun, Dude
When I was young, there was a little ditty we guys would sing: This is my rifle, And this is my gun, This is for shooting, This is for fun....
Prashant Bhushan - Yet Another Socialist Lawyer
The lawyer Prashant Bhushan is a leading light of the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement currently underway, along with his father, Sh...
Goa's Image - Good & Bad
The "image of Goa" is a big issue here these days, what with a Bollywood film on the "drug scene" being shot here. The majority opinion seem...
Happiness @ One Rupee
It looked like an ordinary pack of gutka or paan masala. But "Ananda Munakka" was different. A Dutch tourist handed a packet to me with the...
What Is "Governance"?
The lead editorial in Mint today says that our Great Leader, prime minister chacha manmohan s gandhi, has "plumbed new depths." India is fa...
Ashoka's Chakra... And Gandhi's Charkha
In yesterday's post , I discussed our State Emblem, which has the chakra (wheel) of the Emperor Ashoka at its base. The fact that this whee...
What Is An Indian "Political Party" Today?
What is a "political party" in modern India's "socialist democracy"? This becomes a serious question at a time when the CONgress is morally...
Ganja-Charas, Alcohol, Tobacco - And Public Health
In my post of yesterday, I republished a 1998 newspaper debate I had conducted on cannabis legalisation between the head of the department o...
The Horrendous Prohibition In Gujarat
I have spent a week or more in Gujarat, supposedly one of India's richest and best governed states. I am currently preparing a monograph-tra...

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