Bjp- Idea Traps and the Great Escape

8/9/2019 Bjp- Idea Traps and the Great Escape

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BJP

IDEA TRAPS AND THE GREAT ESCAPE

NEW WORLD STUDY CIRCLE

IDEA TRAPS AND

THE GREAT ESCAPE

An Essay in- The Dilemma of Getting Caught in

Idea Traps laid by Obsolete and Diabolical Ideologies

By

Aron

(Disclaimer- contents from Online Encylopedia used here merely for study purposes among such

private study circles and not meant to be published without original hosts permission)

Divisive policies which democratic competition forces the adversary state to adopt are promoted by

the liberal ideology as contributing to universally agreed values.

- Anthony de Jasay

The Great escape

The Great escape is a classic film about the escape attempt of Prisoners of War from a Nazi

camp.

They eventually break free and make it to freedom.


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But then that is a movie. Where, always the good guys win.

In real life however, we cannot be so sure.

The mixture of socialism, in the garb of national industry, and to speciously advance socialist

selective protectionism is to promote National Socialism, an unclean thing.

It is the very defilement of nationalism, which is based on the free right of men to come in to

an association, that had already been agreed upon, the constitution, until the time, this

agreement is undone by the wrongful renegement of the contract from, within by sedition

and secession, or from without, by an invasion that infringes and violently tramples upon this

right of association.

It is the very defilement of something sacred.

The right of men to trade freely and to enjoy rightful ownership of their choice, fruits of labor

and its free choice of exchange and hence of property, is also clearly a precious and

fundamentally sacred thing.

While, Protectionism in the garb of protecting just a section of national industry, which is

once again a group under this sacred agreement of a nation with a constitution that

acknowledges equality and fairness under its scheme, can confer its protective advantage only

at the cost of the other constituent members, and to the detriment of their full scope for an

advantageous exchange of the same, and hence an injustice done to the very idea of a free and

fair national association.

It is not only a step taken towards socialism, but contaminates and defiles what is essentially

sacred and benign, into its very opposite- a malevolent and evil National socialism.

Further, as Caplan explains, it sets in motion the wrong chain of events.

More of bad policies, leading to more of bad choice.


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In this case, it would mean a return to, out of vogue and trashed socialist ideas back into

circulation, as legitimate currency.

The resultant weakening and ruining of growth and vicious cycle of good policies leading to

good outcomes, in turn leading to more making of good choices gets painfully reversed.

If the BJP which was an advocate of fair and free trade, got caught in this idea trap

It was in reaction to what a section among its nationalist elements felt, in the reforms

measures that indiscriminately and in view of no particular gain to its own industry, to the

loosening of the socialist grip on the nations economy.

Because the former vice had given some undue advantages by nature of its closedness,

to its national industries, and encouraged incompetence in monopolies dictated by acommand economy.

By dismantling that self injurious mechanism, the national industry was left to face up to its

task as a viable business, based on fair exchange, instead on an unfair exchange principle, of a

nations consumers being denied any choice to buy than from him.

When it comes to scrapping such legislative injustice, and self injurious policies, we can learn

something from West Germany, at the end of the World War II.

Germany was in ruins. Food production was at half of 1938 levels, wages were paid in acurrency that made no sense to turn up- for work. Instead half the workers went scurrying for

food and bartering things for food, to the countryside.

Germany had been driven back to the dark ages.

The Nazis, had enforced Food rations. Price control system thrust upon by death penalty,

Somehow, the Occupation Authority continued these measures.

The Nazis took over whatever they pleased, by conscription. The system continued.

The world had written off, Germany as a lost cause.

By 1947, Industrial output was just a third of 1938 levels.


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Eucken was the leader of a school of economic thought, called the Soziale

Marktwirtschaft, or social free market, based at Germanys University of

Freiburg. Members of this school hated totalitarianism and had propounded their

views at some risk during Hitlers regime. During the Nazi period, wrote Henry

Wallich, the school represented a kind of intellectual resistance movement,

requiring great personal courage as well as independence of mind (p. 114). The

schools members believed in FREE MARKETs, along with some slight degree of

progression in the income tax system and government action to limit MONOPOLY.

(CARTELS in Germany had been explicitly legal before the war.) The Soziale

Marktwirtschaft was very much like the Chicago school, whose budding members

MILTON FRIEDMAN and GEORGE STIGLERalso believed in a heavy dose of free

markets, slight government REDISTRIBUTION through the tax system, and

ANTITRUST laws to prevent monopoly.

Among the members of the German school were Wilhelm Rpke and Ludwig

Erhard. To clean up the postwar mess, Rpke advocated currency reform, so

that the amount of currency could be in line with the amount of goods, and the

abolition of price controls. Both were necessary, he thought, to end repressed

INFLATION. The currency reform would end inflation; price decontrol would end

repression.

Ludwig Erhard agreed with Rpke. Erhard himself had written a memorandumduring the war laying out his vision of a market economy. His memorandum

made clear that he wanted the Nazis to be defeated.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD), on the other hand, wanted to keep

government control. The SPDs main economic ideologue, Dr. Kreyssig, argued

in June 1948 that decontrol of prices and currency reform would be ineffective

and instead supported central government direction. Agreeing with the SPD were

labor union leaders, the British authorities, most West German manufacturing

interests, and some of the American authorities.

Ludwig Erhard won the debate. Because the Allies want ed non-Nazis in the new

German government, Erhard, whose anti-Nazi views were clear (he had refused

to join the Nazi Association of University Teachers), was appointed Bavarian

minister of finance in 1945. In 1947 he became the director of the bizonal Offi ce


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of Economic Opportunity and, in that capacity, advised U.S. General Lucius D.

Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone. After the Soviets withdrew from the

Allied Control Authority, Clay, along with his French and British counterparts,

undertook a currency reform on Sunday, June 20, 1948. The basic idea was to

substitute a much smaller number of deutsche marks (DM), the new legalcurrency, for reichsmarks. The MONEY SUPPLY would thus contract substantially

so that even at the controlled prices, now stated in deutsche marks, there would

be fewer shortages. The currency reform was highly complex, with many people

taking a substantial reduction in their net wealth. The net result was about a 9 3

percent contraction in the money supply.

It is simply a question of undoing the mess that socialist ideation had put up in

the fisrt place.

The solution precedes the problem indeed.

The BJP should be credited with the installation of a Disinvestment Ministry.

Restrained by the logic of numbers, in the Parliament, the coalition could undo

very little, but they have made a bold start.

Just as the Socialist democrats would make a shrill pitched shouting campaign

against it, India too will start to shine a little.

Just as East Germany performed dismally in contrast to the West that was

quickly undoing the socialist State policies, the two Communistans of kerela

and West Bengal will have a dismal show.

As Caplan, puts it, it

Erhard spent the summer de-Nazifying the West German economy. From June

through August 1948, wrote Fred Klopstock, an economist at the Federal

Reserve Bank of New York, directive followed directive removing price,

allocation, and rationing regulations (p. 283). Vegetables, fru it, eggs, and

almost all manufactured goods were freed of controls. Ceiling prices on many

other goods were raised substantially, and many remaining controls were no


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longer enforced. Erhards motto could have been: Dont just sit there; undo

something.

The beauty of it was that, the real correctivemeasures, were all done in a jiffy, just in a matter of few weeks.

Hartrich reported an anectode, of Erhards confrontation with a U.S. Army

colonel the same month:

Colonel:How dare you relax our rationing system, when there is a widespread food

shortage?

Erhard:But, Herr Oberst. I have not relaxed rationing; I have abolished it!

Henceforth, the only rationing ticket the people will need will be the

deutschemark. And they will work hard to get these deutschemarks, just wait

and see.3

Of course, Erhards prediction was on target. Decontrol of prices allowed buyers

to transmit their demands to sellers, without a rationing system getting in the

way, and the higher prices gave sellers an incentive to supply more.

Along with currency reform and decontrol of prices, the government also cut tax

rates

The results were stunning.

Even as the Socialist Democrats were made to look like fools, Germany will

The effect on the West German economy was electric. Wallich wrote: The spirit

of the country changed overnight. The gray, hungry, dead -looking figures

wandering about the streets in their everlasting search for food came to life (p.

71).

Shops on Monday, June 21, were filled with goods as people realized that the

money they sold them for would be worth much more than the old money.


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Walter Heller wrote that the reforms quickly reestablished money as th e

preferred medium of exchange and monetary incentives as the prime mover of

economic activity (p. 215).

Absenteeism also plummeted. In May 1948 workers had stayed away from their

jobs for an average of 9.5 hours per week, partly because the money they

worked for was not worth much and partly because they were out foraging or

bartering for money. By October average absenteeism was down to 4.2 hours

per week. In June 1948 the bizonal index of industrial production was at only 51

percent of its 1936 level; by December the index had risen to 78 percent. In

other words, industrial production had increased by more than 50 percent.

Output continued to grow by leaps and bounds after 1948. By 1958 industrial

production was more than four times its annual rate for the six months in 1948

preceding currency reform. Industrial production per capita was more than three

times as high. East Germanys communist economy, by contrast, stagnated.

They watched all this and went back to read Marx and engels, to understand the new world

order and what to make out of all this.

Communist-Socialist East Germany will become a massive prison state.

Hence, when Liberalisationstarted happening, it was a vindication of

Bharatiya Jan Sanghs and Swatantra Partys vision that Free Trade must be our road to

prosperity.

By the late time it came, Socialist indoctrination had by then infiltrated every sphere of the

national psyche.

It was a subtle infiltration, that could be barely suspected, because it was concealed beneath

good intentions.


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Like the Social Democrats of Germany, the future along Free trade was alien, to its

accustomed air.

Coming out of oceans depths, is tough indeed.

Emerging from a milleu of tight controls, it is difficult to envisage a loosening of controls as

something good for itself.

Indian industry was apprehensive about a sudden withdrawal of the safety of protectionist

state.

Naturally the national industry would gain by extending and expanding its range across other

nations markets, but it had chosen an easy way out, by crying for protection, even if it means

the loss of opportunities abroad.

This short sighted segment of the industry would then resort to lobby.

For this unfair deal to be thrusted upon all of us, through the successful persuasion of the BJP

into taking it up as a Nationalist cause.

In truth, it was only the National Socialist cause.

This pioneer of free market, would then falter, and set in motion a chain of events that Caplan

calls the Idea trap and the momentum of good and bad ideas.

1.In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what

is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable,the peasant says, "There should be a law about parish roads." If a park-keeper takes advantage of the

want of spirit in those who follow him with servile obedience and insults one of them, the insulted man

says, "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon the park-keepers." If there is stagnation

in agriculture or commerce, the husbandman, cattle-breeder, or corn- speculator argues, "It is

protective legislation which we require." Down to the old clothesman there is not one who does not

demand a law to protect his own little trade. If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of

labor, the politician in embryo explains, "We must have a law to put all that to rights." In short, a law


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everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a

law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.

--Peter Kropotkin,

"Law and Authority"

2. Mercantilism is economic nationalism for the purpose of building a wealthy andpowerful state. ADAM SMITH coined the term mercantile system to describe the systemof political economy that sought to enrich the country by restraining imports andencouraging exports. This system dominated Western European economic thought andpolicies from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth centuries.

Explains Laura LaHaye,

(Laura LaHaye is an adjunct professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology).

These policies took many forms. Domestically, governments would provide capital to

new industries, exempt new industries from guild rules and taxes, establish monopolies

over local and colonial markets, and grant titles and PENSIONS to successful producers.

In trade policy the government assisted local industry by imposing tariffs, quotas, and

prohibitions on imports of goods t hat competed with local manufacturers. Governments

also prohibited the export of tools and capital equipment and the emigration of skilled

labor that would allow foreign countries, and even the colonies of the home country, to

compete in the production of manufactured goods. At the same time, diplomats

encouraged foreign manufacturers to move to the diplomats own countries.

During the mercantilist era it was often suggested, if not actually believed, that the

principal benefit of foreign trade was the impo rtation of gold and silver. According to this

view the benefits to one nation were matched by costs to the other nations that exported

gold and silver, and there were no net gains from trade. For nations almost constantly

on the verge of war, draining one another of valuable gold and silver was thought to be

almost as desirable as the direct benefits of trade. Adam Smith refuted the idea that the

wealth of a nation is measured by the size of the treasury in his famous treatise The

Wealth of Nations, a book considered to be the foundation of modern economic theory.

Smith made a number of important criticisms of mercantilist doctrine.

First, he demonstrated that trade, when freely initiated, benefits both parties. Second,he argued that specialization in production allows for economies of scale, which improves

EFFICIENCY and growth. Finally, Smith argued that the collusive re lationship between

government and industry was harmful to the general POPULATION. While the mercantilist

policies were designed to benefit the government and the commercial class, the

doctrines of laissez-faire, or free markets, which originated with Smith, interpreted

economic welfare in a far wider sense of encompassing the entire population.


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These policies took many forms. Domestically, governments would provide capital to

new industries, exempt new industries from guild rules and taxes, establish monopolies

over local and colonial markets, and grant titles and PENSIONS to successful producers.

In trade policy the government assisted local industry by imposing tariffs, quotas, and

prohibitions on imports of goods that competed with local manufacturers. Governmentsalso prohibited the export of tools and capital equipment and the emigration of skilled

labor that would allow foreign countries, and even the colonies of the home country, to

compete in the production of manufactured goods. At the same time, diplomats

encouraged foreign manufacturers to move to the diplomats own countries.

By 1860 England had removed the last vestiges of the mercantile era. Industrial

regulations, monopolies, and tariffs were abolished, and emigration and machinery

exports were freed. In large part because of its FREE TRADE policies, England became thedominant economic power in Europe. Englands success as a manufacturing and financial

power, coupled with the United States as an emerging agricultural powerhouse, led to

the resumption of protectionist pressures in Europe and the arms race between

Germany, France, and England that ultimately resulted in World War I.

PROTECTIONISMremained important in the interwar period. World War I had destroyed

the international monetary system based on the GOLD STANDARD. After the war,

manipulation of the exchange rate was added to governments lists of trade weapons. A

country could simultaneously lower the international prices of its exports and increase

the local currency price of its imports by devaluing its currency against the currencies of

its trading partners. This competitive devaluation was practiced by many countries

during the GREAT DEPRESSION of the 1930s and led to a sharp reduction in world trade.

A number of factors led to the reemergence of mercantilist policies after World War II.

The Great Depression created doubts about the efficacy and stability of free-market

economies, and an emerging body of economic thought ranging from Keynesian

countercyclical policies to Marxist centrally planned systems created a new role for

governments in the control of economic affairs. In addition, the wartime partnershipbetween government and industry in the United States created a relationshipthe

military-industrial complex, in Dwight D. Eisenhowers wordsthat also encouraged

activist government policies.

The mercantilist era has passed. Modern economists accept Adam Smiths insight that

free trade leads to international specialization of labor and, usually, to greater economic

well-being for all nations. But some mercantilist policies continue to exist. Indeed, the


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surge of protectionist sentiment that began with the oil crisis in the mid -1970s and

expanded with the global recession of the early 1980s has led some economists to label

the modern pro-export, anti-import attitude neomercantilism.

Modern mercantilist practices arise from the same source as the mercantilist policies of

the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Groups with political power use that power

to secure government intervention to protect their interests while claiming to seek

benefits for the nation as a whole.

Of the false tenets of mercantilism that remain today, the most pernicious is the idea

that imports reduce domestic employment. LABOR UNIONS have used this argument to

justify protection from imports originating in low-wage countries, and there has been

much political and media debate about the implications of offshoring of service sector

jobs for national employment. Many opponents have claimed that offshoring of services

puts U.S. jobs at risk. While it does threaten some U.S. jobs, it puts no jobs at risk in the

aggregate, however, but simply causes a reallocation of jobs among industries.

Another mercantilist view that persists today is that a current account deficit is bad.

When a country runs a current account deficit, it is either borrowing from or selling

assets to the rest of the world to finance expenditure on imports in excess of export

revenue. However, even when this results in an increase of net foreign indebtedness,

and associated future debtservicing requirements, it will promote economic wealth if the

spending is for productive purposes that yield a greater return than is forgone on the

assets exchanged to finance the spending. Many developing countries with high rates of

return on capital have run current account deficits for extremely long periods while

enjoying rapid growth and solvency. The United States was one of these for a large part

of the nineteenth century, borrowing from English investors to build railroads (see

INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL FLOWS). Furthermore, persistent surpluses may primarily reflect

a lack of viable INVESTMENT opportunities at home or a growing demand for money in a

rapidly developing country, and not a mercantile accumulation of international reserves

at the expense of the trading partners.

The Congress, that vociferous and most blighted undertaker of communist ideas, had come in

full circle, and had begun to see the tail of its creation.

They had to break free from this vicious cycle.

Break out of the socialist idea trap.


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Instead of welcoming this initiative, that would gain mind space among its masses who would

see the patently advantageous benefits of free exchange instead of a dictated one, it saw only

the seeming disadvantages which again would later be shown to be beneficial,

to just one section of national society, namely the indigenous national industry.

It hastily took up its cause, under Swadeshi which was a call to an indirect return good old

socialist protectionism, or mercantilism as it felt it is its duty to protect its national wealth

generators.

If it could see that the national wealth generators could in fact generate more wealth, by

opening up and exchanging their products by widening the horizons and make its markets as

wide as possible, just as it had opened its own, making its access to capital as wide as the

world itself, and by letting in the same to turn out more entrepreneurs restrained by lack of

capital, and generate wealth by more job creation, it did the most unexpected and

anachronistic thing.

It returned to the fold of old socialist logic, of controlled economy and the unjust

protectionism of robbing Peter to pay Paul..

It also stood on the same side of this conflict, alongside the communist and old socialists, who

were getting isolated by the growing ground swell of opinion favorable to liberalization, as

Kaplan says- getting out of the idea trap.

It did more harm to its own cause, and eventually when the truth dawned that the loss of old

protectionist socialist policy was infact no loss at all, and proving the very opposite, to widen

the scope and reach of wealth generators, the national industry quickly adapted and went

global.

Now, how is this possible if the other nations too, prevented our industry and capital from

moving in freely and how on earth we could do that without their giving up of unjust

protectionism on their side?

And lastly, not the least, how could they have done that, if it was not evident to them that by

allowing us to trade freely, they were in fact enriching their own businesses, workers and

consumers?


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The BJP shot itself in its foot by succumbing to the fallacy of socialist ideation, and although a

pioneer in its own way save the Swatantra Party, of the advocacy of free market economy in

the heady days of populist Nehruvian socialism, by falling into this idea trap, just as all three-

the Policy maker, the so far protected Industry, and even its socialist indoctrinated workers

were just escaping its jaws.

A thing wrongful can never ever become right by forceful legislation.

When that is done, it becomes a Socialist and a Quasi-Fascist State, an Interventionist State.

A thing that is based on blind injustice can never become sacred.

When such a mixture happens, Nationalism loses its sacredness, because it looses its fairness.

Such an unsacred Nationalism can only be called National Socialism alias Nazism.

Nationalism is always in danger of its loosing its sacredness, because of the constant populist

appeal of socialism, to the well meaning but nave patriot, in his nationalist impulse to nourish

selectively his nations industry.

It is a matter of controversy whether President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal was

directly influenced by fascist economic policies, notes Sheldon Richman writing about

fascism, but points out that-

Mussolini praised the New Deal as boldly . . . interventionist in the field of economics,

and Roosevelt complimented Mussolini for his honest purpose of restoring Italy and

acknowledged that he kept in fairly close touch with that admirabl e Italian gentleman.

Is it not then a surprise that both the industry and workers, and the middle classes, coming

out of the idea trap that was hoped to be left behind and marginalized, would then eventually

marginalise both the Left and the BJP?

However, that would be another story in that the Congress, that would swear our deliverance

from the socialist idea trap, would only embark on a widespread laying of the same socialistIdea trap.

Infact, it would now go on to lay a nation-wide minefield.


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If BJP was piqued by the stealing of its show, of an economic miracle, of merely loosening a

few shackles of a fallacious protectionist socialist policy, mainly aimed so far at the national

industry, and even if they seemed to have made India Shine, the socialist lobby was amused.

They would increasingly, point out that the masses still are yet to benefit by this wholeenterprise, of an attempt at prosperity through freedom, which to them is not possible with

freedom, and can happen only abolishing all freedom, through a socialist revolution.

An entire segment on the country side and the peasants of the urban areas, they will remind

are not a part of this India that is shinning.

They would not and cannot wait, although they had been waiting so long for the opposite

socialist miracle to happen for ages, or that it never happened in a single country followingsocialism.

But now they would have the gall to tell you, that you were wrong and they were right, and to

prove that point would ask you to do so by doing more of what they expect by socialist logic to

work, which never had worked anywhere?

The Congress will be quick on its feet to take up the cause of the other side of this story, which

is the proletariat, the am admi, the common man, the peasant and the really nobody, whohad become all that in the first place by undertaking an enterprise based on socialism on such

a complete and sweeping fashion for over half a century.

Now, it had been seen that loosening oneself from the grip of socialist policies does bring an

all round growth doubling the GDP, or even trebling it, and hence patently evident.

But, how are we reconcile the fact that such reformsan euphemism to ditching socialism in a

graded fashion, had not instantaneously delivered these masses, our am admi.

When socialism couldnt bring about that instantaneous result, and never could, they didnt

ask this question.

It would take them a full half a century for it taking us nowhere, and yet they wouldnt ask of

socialism why it hasnt delivered them or whether seems to do that.


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They would wait and theorise more in line of Marxian dialectics, as the masses sank lower and

lower into a colossal morass of poverty and blight.

But when by merely dismantling a few absurd prison wall pol icies, that would naturally show

some lopsided since it is half done, results, and even if they should be breath taking andimpressive enough to strengthen our conviction, and gain a consensus that we must indeed

move in that direction, the very opposite and contradictory policy, which is that of halting the

reforms, reversing the direction, on one hand by the BJP towards protectionsm of industry

and on the other by the congress of a bleeding heart for the masses so left behind due to

decades of socialism, who demand now an instantaneous uplift, or else a return to the good

old days, of subsidies and unearned rights.

The Maoists will assume leadership for such an instaneous miracle, by recruiting the

unlettered and the unemployable zombies who can now become the real bosses.

No need for any hard work, industrious self grooming, becoming more competent to run the

country.

All you need is the gun to do it.

The entire countryside and the hinterlands, with its left behind populace due to socialst closed

and command market economics for decades, will be further closed and removed from any

arrival of capital that could profitably employ this cheap labor and the locked up natural

resources, that could enrich these imprisoned souls of this hellish Socialist idea trap.

Instead, the zombies would have them believe in a socialist manna from heaven and a resort

to a violent turning away of their only chance for survival, in a world that has already, left

them behind.

The congress will now assume the role of the Robin Hood.


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To succeed in chaining the multitude, you must seem to wear the same fetters.

-Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary

Robert Zoellick, World banks president recently remarks Its not a one-way street talking

about the strides India has made towards a freer market economy.

today, Toll-(Gate)s roads are fairly common in India, but would be a revolutuionary concept

in many U.S. States.

You have some of the worlds finest minds, impressive companies and dynamic entrepreneurs.

There are still huge challenges, but India has made progress in developoing progress that

reach people. We believe that, in reference to the freeing up, and quickness in suchinnovations like toll-roads, and not a reference to massive dole-outs.

I believe the world has a lot to learn from India, he concludes.

We wish our inherently inferiority complex driven brains of Macaulay education should hear

that.

India too can have a thing or two to teach the world, and had this humilty, instead of

arrogance compensating their own sense of inferiority. Gone now are the days when we ran

upto the World bank, and take our home works and weekend assignments, and be asked tobehave in the class room.

Certainly a good turn, but he doesnt point out from where we fell from grace - Two centuries

ago, India and china probably, accounted for 20 to 25% of the worlds GDP each.

For a variety of reasons, their share dropped dramatically thereafter. Its natural that their

share will increase again.

From over 20% of worlds GDP to single digit figures, thanks to English Mercantilism which

got transferred in essence in the form of Monolpolist and closed national economic policy of

Nehruvian Socialism.

How we wish we had our own erhard when we became free, and would have scremed and

driven us from day one- Dont just sit there. Go undo something.

Instead we will send home even our Johnny come lately after frustrating him from undoing

anything.


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We would like to have undone him instead, - our first Minister of disinvestment- Arun

Shourie.

If protectionism has been shown by us as an unsacred defilement of nationalism which issacred, and hence necessarily therefore anti-national, we dare say that the Robin hood

sponsored subsidy and dole outs, would come to the very negation of all economic reforms,and sure path towards national disintegration, and a needless imprisonment of the am admi,

the masses left behind, yet to share the benefits and are impatient, but would only be

condemning themselves to another generation of poverty.

This would accentuate the conflict of interest and an unsustainable and vicious cycle that

would spiral down, ever down driving the growth downwards, stunting the economic uplift

and the demand and clamor for more of such socialist measures, till the time it gets

indistinguishable from the misnomered hindu rate of growth, which is actually an Indian

Socialist growth rate.

However, when the growth rate of India began to get spectacular, and second only to the

other ditcher of socialist economic idea, China, you would expect them to call it appreciatively

the neo-hindu growth rate.

How can you expect that?

The term Hindu, can lend itself to things we only depreciate it seems.

Nevertheless, all this would be contuitive, to the growth of only a single profession, to thrive,

which is that of the political Marxist and the Maoist.

It is precisely for that reason that they welcome this U-turn, and the return of the escapees

back into the clutches of the Socialist Logic.

They eagerly await, upon a return to the idea trap, a downward vicious growth and a

deepening economic crisis.

Then they can hope to extend the revolution, which is now in control of one-third of India, to

the rest.

By then, predictably, the industry would be national socialist, and the workers communist,

and the stage would be set for characters like Lenin who neednt go look for some truly hard

men, and do experiments with human lives and properties, under some genius like Mao-

On an unprecedented and vast scale.

What if things turn out not exactly as bad as these, indeed predictable lines, and what if

everything pans out alright?


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Infact, in some instances they did have good outcomes in spite of socialist muddling, and how

are we to understand that?

Kaplan with a disarming simplicity and humor, says in that case you were just plain lucky.

You were lucky, you escaped, you made it, the Great escape.

Now let us consider what this Robin Hood had done, in the n ame of redistributing wealth.

He had agreed and evolved an across the board consensus, for the need to reform, to open up

the economy, in otherwords, agreed to abandon his old socialist ways, reform as apposed to

the word criminal, and he uses the humanitarian sympathy and legitimate self interest, of the

free trading capitalist to bait foreign capital.

Now, when that Capital starts generating together with the national industry that was so far

cut off, from accessing likewise the wider markets, and the two bring home wealth, he

becomes Robin Hood.

He is seized with a sudden concern for the am admi the nobody, and the have nots, whom he

himself had created in the first place by following socialist politics, and instead of freeing him

like he had the national industry and set in motion the upwardly mobile bourgeoise,

Which has now become the largest market of the world in itself, he is seized with an urge do

some bandit style justice, socialist justice.

And why not, the kitty is growing ever bigger, and someone elses money is easier to do

charity.

He begins, a long program, not unlike the Five Year plans, all named after the same architects

of temples of modern India.

That simply enshrined poverty.

Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, and so on as so many charitable trusts.

The National Wealth that accrued by the hard toil of a diligent and highly competitive

industry and its middle classes, which must have been put to use for the purpose of further


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avenues of wealth generation for the people, since it is public wealth, will now be diverted on

a mission to destroy peoples wealth.

Nor would the production of a surplus of good and its bestowal be sufficient to

earn consent for the state. If a given subject came to hold that the activities of the

state do generate additional end-fulfilment for him, he would for that reason alone

have no interest to support the state any more than he was already doing. As far

as he was concerned, the state's bounty might be falling from heaven and

changing his own conduct vis--vis the state could not make it fall any thicker. If

he became a more docile subject and a more convinced supporter of the

"government party," he may have done so out of admiration for good government,

or gratitude, but not out of rational self-interest in the narrow sense, on which

political calculus can be based. This is possibly the abstract and general common

element in the political failures of Enlightened Absolutism, the reformist good

governments of Catherine the Great, the Emperor Joseph II and (less obviously)Louis XV, each of which met mainly with stony indifference and ingratitude on the

part of the intended beneficiaries.

In other words, such a populist strategy has been historically ineffective, to obtain consent, or

if you wish a democratic mandate to rule in the long run.

Still, it might apparently bestow some competitive advantage.

Rewards, to elicit self-interested support, must be contingent on performance.

They must be embedded in implicit contracts of the "you will get this for doing

thus" kind notes Jason, but-

Consequently, it is difficult to envisage the politics of consent without a type

or types of political markets joining rulers and ruled, to enable bargains to be

struck and revised and in turn, Democracy might be regarded as one or both of

such types of markets functioning side by side.

One is the majority-rule, one-man-one-vote type of pure electoral

democracy, where the state at intervals engages in a competitive auction with

(actual or potential) rivals for votes.

The other, much older and less formal type of market, now usually called "pluralistic" or

"group interest" democracy, is an endless series of parallel bilateral negotiations between the

state and what one could, vulgarly but tellingly, call the wielders of clout within civil society.


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Clout must be seen not only as the capacity to deliver votes, but also as any other form of

support useful for maintenance of the state's power over its subjects, as a substitute for

outright repression by the state itself.

Let us consider the Rural Employment Guarantee as a token of this

Instead of opening the hinterlands to capital and allow market to reach them and the people

to access the market, which means to generate jobs, by freeing all natural resources, from

state monopoly and selective licensing such as that of mines, and strengthen the supply chain

of a free market based Retailing, that would compete to take off the produces of the peasant

and the agro-industry, which will fuel further a vicious cycle, of rural wealth generation, let us

see what they have done.

Firstly they gave in to socialist opposition to Retail and denied widespread and uniform access

to the rural producer of goods.

With that gone, and burdened with so many logistic barriers, the avenues of profiting got

narrower, and the demand for an artificial price that should be supported by pubic money

arose, because of poor purchase power.

It wouldnt have, if he has a chance to sell it to the highest bidder who will be increasing thevolumes off take as the other segment have admis of an upwardly mobile and expanding

market would have demanded. And he couldnt now, because he was forbidden by un -

organized retail, that the socialists mobilized.

In this bickering, precious years were lost and our brave socialists went about exposing a

income gap that was getting wider by their own acts.

Now, it is this gap, of the left behind am admi, who is bitter that he is left behind, b ecause hechose to follow the socialist idea, that our Robin Hood and Chairman Mao would both

embark upon narrowing, using still more socialist ideas.

The unprecedented Socialist Charity, depends on the continous replenishment of the Kitty,

and this is possible only when free market is let to operate unhindered in the other side of this

spectrum and divide.


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So, now we have two Indias, that Rahul Gandhi would start up studying as alien to his

upbringing and the real world as a martian would look at us.

The Charity they had Founded using the Nations Wealth, can now promote a new icon.

Nehru will be back.

From his career to his personal life and his political moves Rahul Gandhi has managed to

inspire and leave people in awe.- declares Yahoo in December 1 2009.

He is the news maker of the year.

The builder of a secular, modern India, with whom the youth can now identify, without resort

to a back slide into a reactionary Hindutva.

They believe they have found the magic potion.

For it is arguable that the state relies on consent basically out of short-sightedness,

weakness of will and the corollary liking for the line of least resistance.

It usually seems easier to give than to withhold, to extend and dilute rewards than to

restrict and concentrate them, to please more rather than less and to wear a bland

rather than a stern face.

Repression, moreover, has in fact often involved close identification of the state with an

ally in civil society, a group, stratum or (in Marxist sociology, invariably) a class such as

the nobility, the landed interest, the capitalists.

Rightly or wrongly, states tended to judge that close alliance with some such narrow

subset of society made them a captive of class, caste or group and negated their

autonomy.

As kings from medieval times sought to lessen their dependence on the nobility bysoliciting the support of town burghers, so did the state in more modern times

emancipate itself from the bourgeoisie by enfranchising and buying the votes of

successively broader masses of people.

Or what we call the Vote-banks politics.


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Nehru was unable to, because he made the mistake of choosing centralized command

economy, and was in no position to afford, a gigantic Charity.

Nor was Nehru able to hold any hope to the Bourgeoise, with any upward mobility, to cheer

him up.

He could sustain himself only on an empty promise of a socialist paradise.

The Kitty would be barely enough to fund his Five Year Plans and Dams.

Of course, he had his cult-head like image.

It is another matter that this personality cult would suffice, than policies in an environment of

socialist indoctrination.

Infact, yyyyy notes that it was at the very height of the horrors of Joseph Stalin, that

The masses were receptive and full of admiration for the communist regime and the

leadership.

Note-

Taking these democratic ways out of the predicament which repressive

government represents for the state (rather like committing the moral fault by

which the protagonist tries to escape his fate in a properly constructed tragedy),

entails its own punishment. "Punishment" for the state comes in the form of having

to put up with political competition with rivals for power, whose consequences are

ultimately destructive of the very ends the state was attempting to fulfil.

When you are at it, this might not be readily apparent.

You will disinsentivise, progressively by a process ofexclusion.

While you would call that inclusion.

Not only in the economic sense.


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Either, you join to eliminate the common enemy, who is the Hindutva rat, or you be left out.

But since the Hindutva rat, is only a proxy to serve your need to build your clout, and also

because this issue is used simply to drive home the message, that it is unwise to be associated

with that group if you really want be a part of the system.

It pays to be not a hindutva rat. Even if you are at the very bottom of the pyramid.

The American example, where material inequalities were for a long period more admired

than resented and rich-to-poor and rich-to-middle-class redistribution has only recently

become the central tool of consent-building, lends itself poorly to clarifying the relation

of consent by vote to consent by clout.

Take instead any "country" which is perfectly repressive to begin with, say aconcentration camp says Jasay.

For its successful functioning according to the purposes of its commandant, the

allegiance or support of its cowed and emaciated inmates is immaterial, no matter how

numerous they are; that of the less numerous band of well-fed trusties is relatively more

important; and that of the handful of well-armed guards is essential. Even if he could,

the camp commandant would be ill-advised to try and win over the inmates by promising

to give them the guards' rations. The subset of camp society containing the commandant

and the guards is essentially a pure electoral democracy in that, with all the guards

about equally well armed, the commandant must find the support of a majority of them,and it is the headcount that matters (even if there is no formal voting). If a larger subset

including the trusties were carved out, the greater clout of the guards would have to be

used to sway the "vote" of the trusties and secure the consent of their majority to the

commandant's way of running the camp. The implicit threat of throwing dissenters to the

inmates would normally suffice. If, for some reason, the democratic subset were to be

further enlarged and the rule of consent extended to the inmates, they would have to be

divided and the support of one part obtained (if that was at all possible) by promising

them the rations of another part. The less the clout of the guards and trusties or the less

use one could make of it, the more the whole camp would approximate pure electoral

democracy giving consent by headcount, with the majority getting the minority's rations.

The rationale behind Dole out populism, and Reservational handouts seeking Social Justice.


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This also is the origin of our secular Minority appeasement, and encouragement to

Seperatism.

I propose to call "democratic values" the preferences subjects reveal in responding to

interpersonal balancing by the state. These are likings for ends which can only be

realized at another party's expense.

If the other party is an unwilling loser the attainment of such ends typically requires the

threat of coercion.

They are realized in the course of the imposition of a particular kind of equality in place

of another kind, or in place of an inequality. These imposed equalities can be thought ofas primarily political or primarily economic

If that shouldnt be hard to understand, he explains that it necessarily implies a different

understanding of democratic justice, where inequity is inevitable.

In a society of equals, then, democracy would act in the opposite sense to the levelling

we associate with it; using some convenient criterion for separating some subjects from

others, it would have to carve out a majority and sacrifice the minority to it, the end-

effect being some new inequality. This inequality would then function as a democratic

value approved by the majority. In a society of equals, then, democracy would act in the

opposite sense to the levelling we associate with it; using some convenient criterion for

separating some subjects from others, it would have to carve out a majority and

sacrifice the minority to it, the end-effect being some new inequality. This inequality

would then function as a democratic value approved by the majority. If democracy ever

created a "society of equals," it is possibly along such lines that it might then develop

further, calling for an ideological adjustment which does not look unduly difficult.

What Jasay says is that, what we call as the popular mandate is an agreement between a set

majority, (not necessarily an identity group), which means the groups that conferred the

mandate to rule, on an understanding that a given beneficial gain would be conferred upon it,

from or at the cost of a group that hadnt conferred this mandate.

Put simply, it will result in an i nequity done to the group that stayed out of this majority vote

count.


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The majority vote count backed Party however, would do an iniquitous leveling, and transfer

benefit to this group at the cost of the other that didnt support or could enable him to for m

the governance.

This in turn will make his competitor in Opposition to offer a better deal to the majority -vote

count and at the cost of the other minority vote-count.

Then both together will arrive at an iniquitous democratic value, which would be a new

inequity.

The Hindus thus, would more and more be trampled upon, in this democratic value, where

they had no majority vote count, since secularism forbade them selectively from any assertion.

They were included provided they gave this up, even if they chose a lesser identity, say for

instance a caste identity, they are with the majority mandate, only as long as they come in

fragmented.

Since this new majority is an identity offragmentation.

It is incompatible with a homogenous identity, which is unabl e to deliver the majority

mandate.

Further, that identity threatens this combination by such association.

The religious identity of the minorities, on the other hand- however, contribute assuredly to

the bulk of its newmajority mandate. Thus paradoxically, this secularism can readily find what

in Hindus it despises as communalism, this religious assertivity of non-Hindus, quiteacceptable.

Hindus thus are in real political terms, the minority-vote count.

However, Jasay holds out a hope for redeeming the situation-

it is possibly along such lines that it might then develop further, calling for an

ideological adjustment which does not look unduly difficult.

Unless, ofcourse you dont get into an Idea Trap.

So, even as the free market driven India drifts ahead and away from this socialist India that is

a political necessity, we have two possible outcomes.


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Firstly, will this Dole out to the inmates of this massive economic prison, by the state, suffice?

Next, will this dole be sustainable?

Further, will it be able to increase like real wages with inflation?

In other words, will they be able to guarantee employment, generate meaningful jobs?

Before asking this, what should be our answer to the question, whether a State alone by itself

devoid of competition can generate wealth?

Then, what was our experience to that question using socialist ideas, and that of other

nations that attempted to achieve wealth for all, by socialist ideation?

If answer to that had been a big negative, what else could be the outcome of this meaningless

exercise squandering National Wealth by our RobinHood.

If it were merely an allievation of their uncertain and precarious existence, no one could

disagree.

Even there, it would be better if we remove the remaining hurdles, to a faster growth in the

rural economy and the agricultural sector.

But that cannot be done, because we are all in a socialist idea trap.

Instead of creating the conditions for an assuredlyfair, because it isfree market- for their

labor, the Robin Hood had come up with a ready deal that cannot be matched by other buyers

of labor.

Firstly, he had disallowed other buyers of labour from the rural country sides, who would

competetively market the produces of his labor through a supply chain to his exploding

market, that even the world eagerly seeks to sell in.


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He had made this paradox, of Tropicana able to sell at a profit and take home money, while

our am admi cannot with his fruit juices.

Because even if there would be many to buy from him at his desired price from the very same

market- from the supermarket shelves, he had been poisoned by socialist logic that somehowthat isnt good , and hence it had to be stopped.

He had been successfully persuaded, to lend his support to the crowds, to smash up the

Organised outlets, disrupting his own supply chain

Infact, it is he who is being stropped, from access to market, and he who is being denied that

choice.

Now, having done that, and having driven away the competitors to his labor, from his labor

market, our Robin Hood magnanimously and so generously announces that he would wipe his

tears away.

He would from now on, guarantee him that he is employed, but at a wage rate, for which

others cannot.

He would also be told that, this guaranteed employment, will place no demand upon him

further.

That is, he need not compete with others, strive to acquire skills, not even have the fear of

having to work to any agreed amount of labor.

For, he is told, it is a charity.

It will be handed out to him by a Colossal machinery, which he had to collude with, so as to

make this labor demanded of him, a mere signing formality.

After all, he knows only too well, that Robin Hood is at his bidding, and owes his job to him.

Taking these democratic ways out of the predicament which repressive

government represents for the state (rather like committing the moral fault by

which the protagonist tries to escape his fate in a properly constructed tragedy),

entails its own punishment. "Punishment" for the state comes in the form of having

to put up with political competition with rivals for power, whose consequences are

ultimately destructive of the very ends the state was attempting to fulfil.


28/55

He not only knows Robin Hood knows that he knows, he would remind constantly that there

were other hoods aspiring to be the new Sherrif.

The stage is set for a competitive bidding based on socialist dole outs.

Now, having allured the rural labor and peasantry, in a massive program of dole outs, and

having dis incentivised in a wide scale, an entire population to a sedant lifestyle, RobinHood

looks around to see that he had destroyed whatever competition left for rural labor.

He emerges in the eyes of the observer, as a magnanimous saint and a saviour.

With the servile masses, who had been made increasingly dependant on his dole.

And finally, accepted as the only choice, the only hope.

Talking about the advocacy of Socialist ideas, citing the current economic crisis, Anthony de

Jasay explains how an aberration is used to advocate a return to another proven error.

The choice of a particular order, symmetry, rule or equality over its

alternatives needs either habit, custom, or the force of substantive argument to

explain it; if it is the former, political theory gets swallowed up in history (which

might be a well-deserved fate) and if it is the latter, we will be back to square one,

making derivative cases for a liberty-securing, a utility-maximizing or a justice-dispensing equality rather than proving the claim that equality for its own sake is

intrinsically desirable.

As Engels puts it-

The idea of socialist society as the realm of equality... should now be overcome, for it only produces confusion in

people's heads.*52

Marx would explain this equity of inequity,-

The right of the producers is proportional to the labour they supply.... This equalright is an unequal right for

unequal labour. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it


29/55

tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment and thus productive capacity as natural privileges .It is,

therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every r ight. Right by its very nature can consist only in the

application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they

were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard in so far as they are brought under an equal point of

view, are taken from one definite side only, for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and

nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored . Further, one worker is married, another not; one hasmore children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an

equal share in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than

another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society.... I have dealt... with "equal right" and

"fair distribution"... in order to show what a crime it is to attempt... to fo rce on our Party again, as dogmas, ideas

which in a certain period had some meaning but have now become obsolete verbal rubbish ... ideological nonsense

about right and other trash so common among the democrats and French Socialists-

Marx would further add-

Quite apart from the analysis so far given, it was in general a mistake to make a fuss about so -called distribution

and put the principal stress on it.*51

In other words, this inequity would be there only in the initial stages of the communist

society.

Inequitous Distribution, is inevitable at the dawn of communist society.

We shouldnt make a fuss about it he says.

We thought that was all the fuss about communists.

This would suffice however, for Robin Hoods purpose.

We have a following, left with no choice on both ends of the social spectrum.

All you need is for someone to adorn the throne.


30/55

Nehru will be back.

Order in place of chaos may provide its own justification, but order as conformity to one

rule in place of conformity to another does not entail the superiority of either rule;

unless one rule can be proven to be "better," more conducive to an agreed value thanthe other, the choice between them is best regarded as a matter of taste.

In other words, it is a result of bias.

If personality cult, is what behind the choosing that kind of policy maker, ( say, Nehru

and his Nehruvian socialism over say Rajaji and his free market).

One, who might land our country in an economic and political quandary, over the other who

should be a better choice ?

If we use the method of a rational choice based solely on the merits and demerits of each of

these policies, which could also have averted this disaster, then should it not be held that

personality cult is divorced of reality and hence could lead to a bad outcome?

But as Jasay, points out- it is a matter of taste.

If you were already inclined to believe that centralized Stalinist State system is superior to free

market economics of others, then you would prefer only the former.

Further, the resultant choice of personality and its cult like following, serves to merely

strengthen your conviction.

That command economics is inevitable and good, and that market economy is being rejected

by the people.

Since personality cult is itself erected upon the shoulders of what this personality

stands for, and your own personal inclination to believe in that theory, your subjective

personal choice colors the facts behind.

Personality being thus representative of ideas, for anyone caught in this idea trap of selective

bias, it can only reinforce a choice not necessarily based upon sound reason.

Hence, Rajiv Gandhi is more desirable than Rahul Gandhi.

While both are images of your own Schizophrenic mind caught in the dilemma of an idea trap.

It selectively listens to the one, and his ideas, since it reinforces your own beliefs of what

should be good.

It demonizes the other.


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What ifboth are equallybad?

Or, one is worserthan the other?

It was always a product of personal taste.

And that taste itself is based on your grooming.

Since, Hinduism is humanistic, that is being poly syncretism, and the fact that you also

happen to be, a Hindu or rose up in such an environment, - Pluralism for you is an obvious

choice, over any perceived assertive religious identity.

It would not have been the case, if for instance you were a Muslim or happen to be raised in

Pakistan.

A Poly-Syncretism would then be the last thing you can approve.

Since, Islam considers Polytheism to be the worst sin.

No wonder, then M J Akbar exclaims at some point over the vicious cycle of sectarian violence,

thank God India is Hindu majority.

Divisive policies which democratic competition forces the adversary state to adopt are promoted by

the liberal ideology as contributing to universally agreed values.

From a seemingly such a rational choice, is built a bias.

Soon that bias makes you selectively to hear fully well what is closer to your belief of what is

true, which again is built upon Hinduisms inherent nature of Pluralism over assertive

Monotheistic identity and separatism, and dismiss the other as a negation of truth.

An atmosphere of bias can only eventually lead to a prejudice.

What was a biased public opinion, of Christian aversion to the Jews, would then materialize

slowly as a public bias and would put the Jews and all that he stands for in the dock.

Into- an absurd reductionism, of all that stands for the very opposite of good- as un-hindu.

He is the champion of usury, and is behind all the calamities that befell Germany.

We should dismiss him before he can even begin to explain.

We can only read into his lines of thought, a sinister conspiracy.

And having done all this, there is very little that Nazis need to complete their task, because, by

then, a defender of Jews must necessarily come to mean an enemy of the Public.


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And in an atmosphere of prejudice, there was no way he could escape the subsequent fate.

Such indeed is the position of any spokesman of even the legitimate rights of the Hindus now

in India.

He is put in the defensive.

As an antithesis, an image of all that his Religion actually stands for.

So that there would be lesser and ever lesser men who would dare come to articulate the

Hindu position.

Or unabashedly own up such an awe fully bad identity.

The atmosphere having been created, not un-similar to the Jews before the ascendancy of

Hitler, the outspoken Hindu today is a reactionary, the champion of usury, the traitor and

In short a rat, a hindutva rat, we should eradicate the rats.

Let the Hindutva rats be driven out from everywhere.

Along with his pernicious and diabolical twists.

He is a traitor, and there is nothing personal in this.

We admire Hinduism, as long as it lends to our sole interpretation.

I admire Marx says Hitler. Marxism is what we are completing in Germany.

We are the real Marxists, he would say.

Was not Marx a Jew?

We are the real followers of Hinduism.

Varun Gandhi must go read the Behaved Gita- Rahul would say.

How can we have the rats have a say?

Rewards, finally, do not spontaneously grow on trees, nor are they generated

and distributed to good citizens by good government. They are bargaining counters


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which the state acquires for distribution to its supporters by taking sides. A

presumptive adversary of all in civil society, to obtain the support of some, it must

become the actual adversary of others; if there were no class struggle, the state

could usefully invent it.

The Hindutva rats.

It seems to be a strange confusion, and one suffered by many states no less

than by their subjects, to want to have the state rely on consent and to be

everybody's state, standing above classes and group interests, beholden to no

group and impartially realizing its conception of society's greatest good.

But that exactly would be their selling point, and it is an illusion suffered no less by the St ate,

than by their subjects.

The pretender of secularism and the mandate he flaunts to legitimize such pretensions.

What in fact the electorate is doing is to pretend that his choice is impartial.

It is a game of deception, where all the players have agreed to a rule of mutual self deception.

Any political doctrine must, in order to look complete, incorporate liberty among its

ultimate ends in some fashion.

The rules of ordinary speech guarantee that it is a solid value: it sounds as absurd to say

"I dislike liberty, I want to be unfree" as to assert that good is bad. *16

Moreover, one is safe to feel dispensed of any obligation to derive the goodness of

liberty from some other value, to which liberty may lead as a means leads to an end,

and which may turn out to be contestable. Happiness (freely translated as "utility") and

justice are on the same footing. Any political doctrine must, in order to look complete,

incorporate liberty among its ultimate ends in some fashion. The rules of ordinary speech

guarantee that it is a solid value: it sounds as absurd to say "I dislike liberty, I want to

be unfree" as to assert that good is bad.*16 Moreover, one is safe to feel dispensed of any

obligation to derive the goodness of liberty from some other value, to which liberty maylead as a means leads to an end, and which may turn out to be contestable.

Happiness (freely translated as "utility") and justice are on the same footing. It is

impossible to say "I am against justice," "there is a lot to be said for unfairness" and

"utility is useless."


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Such ultimate, uncontested ends can be made to play a particular role in validating

other ends that an ideology seeks to promote.

Sometimes, as we see in our desire for communal harmony, the promotion of the very thing

that would endanger and destroy it.

A classic example of this is Mahatma Gandhis support for the Kilafat agitation, to restore the

Caliphate in Turkey that no body wanted, neither the Turks themselves nor the Arabs, but

only the dogmatists and the fundamentalists.

It was validated circularly by the desirability of having Muslims mobilized, solely based on

their antagonist religious fervor, that ran contrary to the validating factor- communalharmony or as Gandhiji would obsessively call Hindu-Muslim Unity.

Gary S. Becker received the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics for havingextended the domain of economic theory to aspects of human behavior which

had previously been dealt withif at allby other social science disciplines such

as sociology, demography and criminology.

Beckers unusually wide applications of economics started early. In 1955 he

wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Chicago on the economics of

DISCRIMINATION. Among other things, Becker successfully challenged the

Marxist view that discrimination helps the person who discriminates. Becker

pointed out that if an employer refuses to hire a productive worker simply

because of skin color, that employer loses out on a valuable opportunity. In

short, discrimination is costly to the person who discriminates

Becker showed that discrimination will be less pervasive in more competitive

industries because companies that discriminate will lose market share to

companies that do not. He also presented evidence that discrimination is more

pervasive in more-regulated, and therefore less-competitive, industries. The idea


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that discrimination is costly to the discriminator is common sense among

economists today, and that is due to Becker.

The Reservation Issue

In the early 1960s Becker moved on to the fledgling area of HUMAN CAPITAL. One

of the founders of the concept (the other being THEODORE SCHULTZ), Becker

pointed out what again seems like common sense but was new at the time:

EDUCATION is an INVESTMENT. Education adds to our human capital just as other

investments add to physical capital. For more on this, see Beckers article,

Human Capital, in this encyclopedia.)

In other words, Reverse discrimination.

Why not reparation for Hindus, since Islamic rule discriminated

during its long rule of India as Dhimmies ?

-using the same logic of equalising and correcting historical wrongs.

At any rate the other question if muslims and minorities in general must stay forever

alienated?- the congress line here depends on such a polarisation than over BJPs, to nurture

this constituency.

Inclusion we will discuss elsewhere in another work but it is clear that a completebowdlerization or censorship of critical material pertaining to Islamic theology, history and

psyche- even scholarly studies make out a case for considering whether Islam but not Muslims

is the unaddressed issue.

Meanwhile, in the real world, since no viable business, can thrivebased on an artificial wage rate, that has no relation to labor done, rural businesses will get to

feel the heat.


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Since they are not a charity, whatever little that is left of rural industry and agro-businesses,

that had been shown earlier to be cut off from access to one of worlds fastest growing

markets, can now be expected to throw the towel, shut business and go elsewhere, where they

can do some meaningful business and continue to thrive.

The other small businesses without that option can only shut shop and join the long Queue

for the dole outs.

In either case, the last remaining competitors of his labor would be driven out from the

market.

He will come to do work for a State that would arbitrarily fix his wage.

And leave no other source of meaningful employment, since the Rural Industrys back bone

had been broken, for it stood upon cheap labor, which was already

A result of socialist denial of market access, and now has no chance of any increase of wageswhatsoever, other than what the State dictates.

With the every single increase and expansion of the Robin Hood Charity, to lure this labor

force to an easy existence, the already struggling rural industry will be increasingly crushed

out of existence.

The am admis will be left content in a massive open prison, where there are no such things as

competitive wage levels, job market, no other industry and hence no other avenues of

economic growth or wealth creation, and hence a prison in perpetuity.

By then, when rural industry and agro-industries die out, as result of chaining them and

denying market access, and now driving them altogether out of business, by luring the gullible

peasants to walk into this massive socialist trap, and a nightmare, Robin Hood would not only

lock them up in an open prison, but throw away the keys.

When the state takes sides, not only is it building the required base of consent. Perhaps

unconsciously and unwittingly, it is also "learning by doing." With every measure it takes

to favor a subject or group of subjects, to modify the system of rewards and obligations

which derives from past custom or voluntary contracts, to change social and economic

arrangements that would prevail but for its intervention, it acquires more knowledge of

its subjects' affairs, a better and bigger administrative apparatus and, hence, an addedcapacity both to imagine and to carry out further measures.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the other segment of India and the world

capital that would fuel an unprecedented wealth creation would be able to sustain this prison

state setup at its backyards.


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Two channels of unanticipated causation are dug in this manner, and end by forming a

self-sustaining circuit. One leads from intervention to capacity for intervention, as

physical labor leads to bigger muscle. The other leads from a larger state apparatus to

an altered balance of interests in society, tilted in favor of more state intervention; for

by self-aggrandizement the state increases the activist constituency.

There are two possibilities- one that it could afford to, progressively do so, which means

continuously destroying national wealth after having destroyed completely rural wealth.

In which case it would act as a drag and at the best would create a well off India and an India

that it cannot afford to fix but only dole out.

The other scenario is that it finds it increasingly difficult to do so, to dole out and balloon its

deficits, and hence has to stop in its track.

This is an explosive situation.

Politically not a paying one, and was being postponed.

But when the tap runs dry and the dole stops?

These channels run within the state apparatus and not between it and civil society.Another and probably more potent circuit runs from state benefactions to a condition of

dependence or addiction in civil society, calling for further benefactions.

Having accustomed to an easy dole out, and a sedate vegetative life, it would be highly

impossible to start working again, and with Rural industry having been destroyed, and

nowhere else to turn, it is a perfect recipe for a disastrous chain reaction.

It is unlikely that neither Maoists nor the enemies that surround us would let slip such an

opportunity to foment a massive uprising.

This is also the reason that Maoists are now demanding the implementation of Rural Charity

by Robin Hood in Bengal.

It is easier to grasp the mechanics of such circuits than to have confidence in their

stability, in the capacity of built-in regulators ultimately to prevent them from getting

out of control.


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In other words, it will threaten you with destabilization.

Regardless of your confidence that could regulate it, and have it under control, it would run

out of control.

Caplan says, outcomes are more or less predictable, but sometimes you can get good results

that are good outcomes, good growth rates, in spite of bad policies, in which case you mightescape.

But it is a situation as grim as for the inmates, who attempted the Great Escape.

To sum up. Jasay concludes- While in a political system requiring consent and allowing

competition the state seems logically bound to engender redistribution, it does not in the

everyday sense "determine" its scope and scale. Once begun, the addictive nature of

redistribution sets in motion unintended changes in individual character and the family

and group structure of society. Though some may be regarded well and others bad, no

selective control over them appears practicable. These changes react back upon the kindand extent of redistribution the state is obliged to undertake.

Probabilities increase that a variety of cumulative processes may be set in motion. In

each such process, redistribution and some social change mutually drive each other. The

internal dynamics of these processes point ever onward; they do not seem to contain

limiting, equilibrating mechanisms.

Attempts by the state to limit them provoke withdrawal symptoms and may be

incompatible with political survival in democratic settings.

Anthony de Jasay concludes-

By helping to create entitlements and to form interest groups, the

state changes society in its image and at its peril.

The Stability of Free fall


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The solution precedes the problem

That would be like a Zen insight.

But if you apply the simple and cardinal rules of free trade, a fair and just exchange -

is seldom found to be the cause behind any economic problem, more oftener than it be by

chance but as a rule a lack, or tampering with it so as to make it unfair to at least one of the

party, be it the labor, capitalist or the consumer.

If we adapt this simple rule of thumb, then we gain an insight better than anyone else.

Because, to tell the truth, the basic rules of economy are straight and simple enough.

Since, they are based on more than anything else on a central principle of fairness.

Business cannot be done, smoothly without that.

If you are unfair, it is unnatural to expect a fair return.

So, even for ones own sake fairness is a desirable thing, and a self serving ground upon which

we can proceed to profit, than its opposite.

It seems then, that the Laws of economics too, like the Laws of Physics, like every action has

an equal and opposite reaction, follow some Laws, and by studying the effects, causatively we

can deduce- like a falling apple, and connect it to a causative law, such as Gravity, or in this

case a Law of Fairness and Free Trade.

When we violate that, we produce naturally a complex series of events that trap you in ever

more errors that keep violating this rule, and keep piling up the errors into a monumental

blunder that is often called an Economic Crisis.

Bastiat must be remembered, to have highlighted this simple truth.

What we do is usually, in our eagerness to restore by artificial device and without this single

principle of fairness to each one in this transaction being checked, we attempt at an arrival of

justice that ignores the fact that we have been unfair to one or more of the parties to an

economic transaction.

If that was not enough, we confound the issue.

We, tend to draw the very opposite conclusions.

Instead of checking if we had not been unfair somewhere, in order to favor one or more

parties involved to the detriment of the other, we proceed to condemn the market forces

themselves, as if they are forces of greed, and fall into socialist traps.

We begin to do more injustices, to some of the involved parties, and that comes back to


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haunt us, in the form of a monstrous crisis, punishing invariably the party for whose benefit

the principle of fairness was violated in the first place.

Bastiat had made it clear, that in a fair and just milieu of Trade, there should be no prejudice

or bias, which confers any undue advantage or places any disadvantage with a view toinfluence the outcome of such a trade, especially by way of legislation.

He also was not advocating as most presume, in the guise of fairness, the cause of the

Capitalist.

Emphatically, he states that, the transaction must be free of choice and of all fairness to each

of the party concerned, the buyer, the seller of goods and services, and the worker.

No particular advantage must be conferred on any to the detriment of each of the other, and

we find it is no rocket science to get a basic understanding of this principle of fair trade.

The problems arise, and indeed they do, because this principle is somewhere, ignored.

Note on 2008

Take for example, the current Economic melt down.

The one certain outcome of the current Meltdown of 2008, leading to a world wide economic

crisis, and the attempts of central banks and governments, to fix it as best as they thought it

would fix it, is that people in general have come to loose their former awe and respect for

Economic Theorists.

If they were so wise, after all as we were persuaded to believe, how come they were caught so

unaware when the so called sub-prime credit crisis hit home?

Why didnt the wise men at the Federal Reserve not raise interest rates soon enough to stem a

bubble formation in the housing sector, that pivotal propeller of all booms?


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Further, as in all other economic crisis, the defunct Socialist political economist with his now

discredited and thrown out prescriptions, is going around saying that in the end, the measures

now taken are they any different from communism?

How are we to reply, when it is pointed out that the American government is now the owner

of Banks and makers of cars, and that is what you were telling him why he failed and why you

prevailed?

Is this something unique, or is this something happening that could be easily foretold if you

had applied some consistent and simple rules of the thumb, say you can violate the rules of

fairness and what common sense could easily deter, only at the risk of multiplying the results

of your mistakes?

Firstly, regarding the Socialist Political economist, we straight away dismiss him, because he is

the first in line to fish in troubled waters, as and when things go wrong.

He is the doomsday prophet holding the placard, Repent, Return.

Then, let us merely see, if old is indeed gold, and vintage Free Trade, if it h olds true for itsaxioms and theorems.

The new classical macroeconomics is a school of economic thought that originated in the

early 1970s in the work of economists centered at the Universities of Chicago and

Minnesotaparticularly, ROBERT LUCAS (recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1995), Thomas

Sargent, Neil Wallace, and EDWARD PRESCOTT (co recipient of the Nobel Prize in 2004).

The name draws on JOHN MAYNARD KEYNESs evocative contrast between his own

macroeconomics and that of his intellectual forebears. Keynes had knowingly stretched apoint by lumping his contemporaries, A. C. PIGOU and ALFRED MARSHALL, in with the older

classical political economists, such as DAVID RICARDO, and calling them all classical.


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According to Keynes, the classics saw the price system in a free economy as efficiently

guiding the mutual adjustment ofSUPPLY and DEMAND in all markets, including the labor

market.

UNEMPLOYMENT could arise only because of a market imperfectionthe intervention of

the government or the action ofLABOR UNIONSand could be eliminated through

removing the imperfection.

That is, monetary policy or regulations, and the Labor unions or the workers refusal to

negotiate downwardly, to meet the demand in the labor market.

In contrast, Keynes shifted the focus of his analysis away from individual markets to the

whole economy. He argued that even without market imperfections, aggregate demand

(equal, in a closed economy, to consumption plus INVESTMENT plus government

expenditure) might fall short of the aggregate productive capacity of its labor and capital

(plant, equipment, raw material, and infrastructure). In such a situation, unemployment

is largely involuntarythat is, workers may be unemployed even though they are willing

to work at a wage lower than the wage the firms pay their current workers.

Later Keynesian economists achieved a measure of reconciliation with the classics.

PAUL SAMU

Documents

Bjp- Idea Traps and the Great Escape