Abolishment of child labour is wrong

Everything that is preached by the so-called crusaders for political and social morality in present day world is senseless and evil. The morality of the modern liberal-leftist elite has lost touch with the reality. There can be nothing more evil than the abolishment of child labour. In a free country, a child should have as much right to earn a living as an adult. Working in a factory is a much better option as compared to begging in the streets.

These crusaders have no time to think what will happen to millions of children from destitute families, and the orphans, if child labour were completely abolished. How will these children find food, where are they going to live? We don’t have that many homes for poor and orphan children. In any case, the condition of many of these homes for destitute children is so bad that the children feel as if they have been jailed and they want to run away at the first chance.

At the corners of many streets in our cities, you can find poor children begging for alms. This is shameful. According to one study, India has maximum number of child beggars in the world. If child labour had not been banned, these children could have  found proper part-time jobs, through which they might even be able to fund their own education. As child beggars they have no future. They can even fall in the trap of prostitution.

A government prohibition can never achieve any good in the society. Child labour will only go down when the state of the economy improves. This needs economic reform.

The liberals, who live in their own Cloud Cuckoo Land, are not interested in letting economic reforms happen. That is why they try to address every social malaise through unworkable prohibitions and restrictions. They think that just an order passed from the pulpit in New Delhi is enough to reform the society. Instead of improving the society, such shortcuts always lead to the further destruction of lives of the poor and the downtrodden.

In an ideal society all children would be able to study in posh schools, they would live with caring elders, they would eat cornflakes every morning, they would have a pet dog or cat, and they would be able to have a vacation on every weekend. But this sort of an ideal society can only exist in the Cloud Cuckoo Land, which is a figment of liberal imagination. The laws have to be made while keeping the ground realities in mind.

Banishment of child labour only leads to begging on the streets and starvation.

State funding of elections is an extremely bad idea

The Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi is right in saying that state funding of elections is no answer to black money. These are brilliant words that he said to an interview to Headlines Today – “State funding will not take care of black money... The voters should be educated about ethical practices.” Black money is generated because of government’s meddling into the economy. If the govt. is interested in curbing black money, then it should bring about economic reforms.

The moment you introduce the idea of “state funding of elections” you send out the signal that voters are incapable of funding the right kind of candidates through donations. This is not true. Voters are quite capable making an informed choice. State funding of elections is undemocratic, as it seeks to take away from the voters the right to fund the candidates of their choice. Voters only need to be educated by “ethical practices,” as the CEC has pointed out.

In a democracy candidates go to the people and collect donations to launch their election campaigns. The candidate whose message resonates with a large number of people will be able to collect more money from the voters and the unpopular candidates will fail to raise enough money. So the amount of money that a political party or candidate has is also directly proportional to its popularity in the country.

Instead of curbing the use of black money, the state funding of elections will lead to “Andher nagri” where every candidate will become entitled to taxpayer’s money, irrespective of his popularity. This will lead to a downfall in the standards of democracy. The size of the government will also become bigger, as new set of bureaucrats will be required to decide the candidates who are eligible for receiving taxpayers’ money. There will be ample scope for petty politics and corruption in this department.

Moreover, in a fractured society like India, there will soon be clamour for distributing the so-called state funding of elections on caste, religious and linguistic lines. The state funding could have religious and caste based quotas, which will further devalue the quality of our democracy. The so called moral crusaders in this country should not be allowed to take away from voters the “right to fund candidates” of their own choice.

The size of a country's problems is directly proportional to the size of its government

As Republicans and Democrats pushed America further and further to the left and Europe approached ever closer to its socialist ideals, Canada's political discussion turned from which party could offer the greatest subsidies to the greatest number, to which party's program of tax cuts would be of more benefit to the economy. For a country where an openly avowed socialist party regularly polls in the top three in provincial and federal elections, this is no small feat. For perhaps the first time in its history, Canada finds itself at the most pro-market limit of the political spectrum among the world's industrialized nations.

Click here to read more of the article on Mises  website

It would be unethical to grant voters the “right to recall” candidates

Perhaps we can compare the relationship between the voter and the elected representative as a short-term marriage, one will last for a term of five years. If voters are happy with the marriage then they will renew it at the time of next elections, and if they are unhappy, the marriage will get annulled. That is how democracy basically works. Even though the marriage is only for five years, it should not be broken for frivolous reasons before the term of the state or the central assembly is over.

If the voters have made a mistake in voting for a wrong candidate in the first instance, then it is only fit that they should suffer a wrong kind of representative for a period of time. They can’t be allowed to recall the representative, who has once been elected. That would amount to breach of contract. If the representative is really bad, then voters can take legal measures to get him punished. But voters can’t foist another election on the country by recalling their candidate.

Why should the entire country pay the price for the mistake that voters in any particular constituency have made? While voting people need to do a thorough research and then vote for the right candidate. They can’t keep changing their mind every second day. For instance, if you buy a TV today, you can’t go to shop tomorrow and say, “I have changed my mind, I want a different model.” The shopkeeper will shoo you away, if you make that kind of claim. You are allowed to buy only once.

Elections are not cheap, it costs hundreds of crores of rupees to conduct elections, we can’t keep wasting money because the voters are fickle minded. In a “loud” democracy like India, it is certainly dangerous to grant voters the right to recall candidates. We could end up having elections every year. There is nothing wrong with the present set of candidates that we have in the parliament. The problem of corruption and inefficiency is a result of the fact that the entire system of governance has collapsed.

Instead of going after the MPs and MLAs, our moral crusaders should campaign for a change in the system. It is the system of socialism that is corrupt. We need economic and political reform. The right to recall candidates is not going to solve our problems.

India’s News TV is ‘of New Delhi, by New Delhi, for New Delhi’

The protests that have been going on in Delhi for the last 12 days have proved one fact – India does not have a national media. The fasts may or may not have exposed the political class, but they have certainly exposed our media. The reach of our TV channels does not extend beyond the borders of the national capital.

Our media is ‘of New Delhi, by New Delhi, for New Delhi.’

If you want to have yourself heard, you have to come to New Delhi and start protesting. Even if you gather 5000 people in New Delhi, you will make headlines, but if lakhs of people march against some atrocity in a remote part of the country, they will get lukewarm coverage.

There is certainly a need for reform the TV media space. There should be a research on the factors that are preventing the expansion of the TV media to other parts of the country. The nation can never be united if our entire TV media remains cocooned in New Delhi. We need many more national  and regional TV channels.

At the debate during news shows, only intellectuals and celebrities based in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai get invited. Why don’t we hear opinion from people living in Imphal, Patna, Cochin, Coimbatore and other places? This is an extremely bad state of affairs.

The unnecessary protests

Once I used to feel really fed up of corruption in this country.  Now I feel fed up of the stentorian and rather anti-democratic way of fighting against corruption of some elite protestors, who seem to be under the impression that it is their birthright to decide what kind of law is the best for the country. I won’t be surprised at all if there is soon a huge sympathy wave in favour of politicians because of the way they are being insulted by the protestors.  

The TV visuals of hysterical crowds in Ram lila maiden are frightening. If these guys were to come to power, the entire country would come at a standstill. All industrial activity would stop. Our bureaucracy is already a gigantic ball of red tape, and the new Jan Lok Pal will further enhance the scope of the red tape. It will become impossible for the common man to move the government. The need of the hour is political and economic reform.

But these protestors are not interested in political reform. Instead of conducting a coherent debate about ways of reforming the government to deal with the problem of corruption, they have started employing tactics, which would be considered befitting of any demagogue. They are asking people to “gherao” the houses of leading politicians. How is that going to solve the problem of corruption! In a democratic society no one should be allowed to use such coercion to influence the way the parliamentarians vote on any legislation.

The existing institutions are already doing a good job in fighting corruption. The Supreme Court, the CAG have exposed so much of corruption. Why can’t we work towards further strengthening the existing institutions? There is hardly any need to create a new govt. department. The Indian Express has an excellent article titled ‘Revolutions eat their own’ by Mihir S Sharma. Mr. Sharma compares the protests with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

He writes: When the dispensers of India’s destiny — by which I mean whoever decides programming at 24-hour news channels — retire to bed tonight, I suggest they take Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with them. It is a rip-roaringly good read, of course, but for those lordly beings, it will also be an instructive moral parable. Seeing any real parallel between an eight-foot tall monster and the short, tired old gentleman in a white vest who eats up all our screen-time, needs much imagination; but imagination’s one thing the rulers of news TV have lots of.


They will be worried already. Anna Hazare’s movement, which they have nurtured and treasured — and in case anyone still thinks they haven’t, a recent survey of their coverage in April found 5592 pro-Anna segments versus 62 that were anti-Anna, a ratio that might raise eyebrows at Fox News — seems to be getting out of control. By which I mean, their control.

Click here to read the complete article at The Indian Express. 

One law cannot become a magic wand for solving the problem of corruption

The Indian Express has published a good article titled, "Just one law won’t do it" by Madhu Kishwar. Here is an interesting excerpt:

"The Lokpal can at best play the role that antibiotics do when our bodies catch an infection. But antibiotics work only if delivered in emergencies, and in judicious doses; an overdose can act as a toxin, or even kill the patient. Anti-corruption institutions work only if carefully crafted systems are put in place that shift the balance of power in favour of citizens, providing them powers to demand transparency and accountability."

Click  here to read the article on IE website.

The Asian Age has an article titled "The  Disinherited" by Swapan Dasgupta.

He writes, "To this generation, intensely proud of an Indian-ness that transcends caste and religion (but not region), corruption is a drag on India and a restrictive practice that they would rather not accept as karma. The Anna movement, quite unwittingly and, perhaps, to its own consternation, has tapped a reservoir of entrepreneurial energy which is not finding a suitable political outlet.In the eyes of the blinkered, the attack is on parliamentary democracy — a term that remains an abstraction to many of those inspired by Anna. Viewed from another angle, the Anna movement could also be an assault on the residual sludge of the licence-permit-quota raj."

What Dasgupta says is true. When many Indians become the followers of Team  Anna, they are actually doing so to fight the residual sludge of licence-permit-quota raj. A vast majority of the public don't fully understand the nature of the monster they are fighting. People still worship socialism. They don't realise that once the Lokpal comes into being, it might lead to a much stronger licence-permit-quota raj in the country.

Click here to read Dasgupta's article.  

Copycat or copymonkey!

Why do we say copycat? Why not say copymonkey? After all, monkeys are better mimics than cats are. This article published in slate has an answer. Click here.

Why Civil Society has turned against UPA – Arvind Panagariya has the right answer

Today’s Times of India has a very interesting article from Arvind Panagariya. The article titled ‘Unsteady at the top’ lists all the reasons due to which the Civil Society in the country has turned against UPA. The UPA has invited this problem on itself by awarding the power of interfering in governmental decisions to a select group of Civil Society activists who became part of the NAC.

If the activists in NAC have the power to draft new legislations and come up with so-called pro-poor schemes like NREGA, then why shouldn’t the other activists enjoy similar powers? You can’t say ‘yes’ to one set of activists and say ‘no’ to other activists. If you let one set of activists come close to the centre of power and ignore others, then the others are bound to get jealous and they will hit back at you with everything they got.

Large number  of voters in this country voted for Shri Manmohan Singh. They did not vote  for Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander and other elite NAC members. So why are the NAC types driving the govt. policy?

Arvind Panagariya and many other commentators have rightly pointed out that the creation of the NAC has led to devaluation in the post of prime minister. The bottom line is that woes of the UPA II started the moment NAC was allowed to come into existence. If the government had relied on “real politicians” and undertaken reform measures, it would have grown from strength to strength.

Here is an interesting excerpt from Arvind Panagariya’s article:

At her National Advisory Council (NAC), Sonia has been an easy target of NGO capture. While with their "on-the-ground" knowledge, these latter can be very effective at bringing to notice issues of importance, drafting legislative Bills is neither their mandate nor their expertise. Yet, that is what they now do at the NAC. For her part, Sonia is at ease with the quick fixes for the poor they propose, often invol-ving ever-rising expenditures. 


But this is a slippery slope. On the one hand, the taste of drafting the country's laws has whetted civil society's appetite leading it to ask for more and more, culminating recently in something even Sonia cannot deliver: a Lokpal with the autho-rity to investigate all including her! On the other hand, the government has lost the moral authority to question the legitimacy of the NGOs to write legislation. Thus, when the prime minister accused Anna Hazare of shortchanging the parliamentary process by drafting the Jan Lokpal Bill, opposition leader Arun Jaitley was quick to point out that the NAC, which wrote Bills for the government, too had civil society activists in it. 


But the greatest harm from this power structure has come from the prime minister losing the authority to govern while remaining answerable for the lapses of his government as well as the party. Because the Cong-ress high command cuts the deals with coalition partners and effectively makes decisions on cabinet appointments, it remains the object of the latter's loyalty. As a result, we have seen ministers getting away without reprimand even after criticising government policies in a foreign country. And since fund-raising for the party too is done at the behest of the high command, ministers often bypass the prime minister on major decisions, further weakening the institution.

Click here to read more on the TOI website.  

Atlas Is Sorta Shrugging

Atlas Is Sorta Shrugging

Referendums are against the fundamental principles of democracy

In context of the ongoing debates and protests on the issue of rampant corruption in the country, some eminent intellectuals have been asking for a national referendum to decide if the country should pass the Jal Lok Pal bill or not. This demand for referendum is very shocking. If we start taking the referendum route for deciding what kind of laws we are going to have in this country, then our democracy will deteriorate into a mobo-cracy, where any cause that is backed by the brute power of the largest mob will get imposed on others.

Referendums are dangerous because they put the onus on the voter to take the final call on what could be a really complicated legal, political or cultural issue. Majority of the voters are not conversant with the political, social and legal theories, so how can anyone expect them to decide the kind of laws that the country should have? The voters can only decide the kind of society that they would like to live in. Once they have decided the kind of society that they wish to have, they can vote for the right kind of leaders. It is the job of the leaders to come up with suitable laws.

If we had conducted a referendum in 1984 at the time when communal riots were raging in most parts of North India, what kind of result would we have had? If a referendum has been conducted on the issue of Ram Janam Bhoomi in 1992, what kind of result would we have had? There are times in every country, when all kinds of passions overtake a vast number of citizens, who then wish to force the country into a certain direction.

That is why in a representative democracy we have a system of taking important decisions through a process of parliamentary debates. The parliament is supposed to be isolated from any kind of mob and hence its decisions are more likely to be based on long-term interests of everyone.

If a diverse country like India picks up the referendum route even once, then we will be forced to have a new referendum every month. This will completely bankrupt the country and there will be an immense law and order problem for ordinary citizens. Someone might even say that courts in the country should deliver their verdict on basis of majority opinion. This will lead to an extremely absurd situation. A judge and a parliamentarian are supposed to take their decision on basis of facts and not on basis of what the largest mob of people want.

People have every right to protest, and it is a good thing that they are protesting against corruption, but no one has the right to demand a referendum on any issue.

Is it ethical to force children to participate in political protests?

Yesterday at around 7 PM in the evening, while I was on my way to meet someone, I noticed an old woman (probably in her 60s or 70s) standing at the gate of a colony with about 6 or 7 children. They were shouting slogans in favour of the protests and fasts that are currently on in Delhi for Jan Lok Pal. This small group was standing at a busy road, but not a single adult person joined them in shouting the slogans. Everyone ignored them and went about their business. I also passed by without giving these six-seven children and one old woman as much as a second look.

Is it ethical to use children, some of whom are less than 10 years old, to shout political slogans? Children are not supposed to know about political ideology and issues. They don’t know whether this Jan Lok Pal will actually lead to lesser corruption in society or it will lead to a decline in the quality of our democracy.  People who use children to score political points are only after misleading the public. Perhaps we should have laws that prohibit vested interests from using children for making a political point.

Moving on to the subject of the articles that I liked in this Sunday’s newspapers, there were two of them.

The Sunday Times of India has a very interesting article by Shobha De. She writes, “Anna Hazare is no Jayaprakash Narayan. He most certainly cannot be described as the 21st Mahatma Gandhi. He is Anna — a simple man with a simple mind. That is his biggest trump card and also his biggest liability. It is his simplicity that has attracted thousands of people to him. But it is the same simplicity that can become his undoing. A great man’s silence is open to interpretation. A diehard fan can read whatever into it. But when the same great man opens his mouth, he risks everything if the content doesn’t match expectations. For all his other attributes, even his most ardent admirers will admit, Anna is no intellectual heavyweight. He is not a statesman, nor has he pretended to be one. What has touched so many people’s lives is his courage to take on the mighty, combined with a childlike obstinacy. Is that enough to ‘save’ India? Or are we being a bit too gullible, a bit too naïve pinning all our hopes on a single individual and his Jan Lokpal Bill?”

Shobha De has made a very pertinent point. The problem of corruption cannot be solved by one individual fasting for few days or by creating a plenipotentiary government organisation. Lot of reform and housecleaning in the government is required to address the problem of corruption. Click here to read Shobha De’s complete article in The Times of India.

In The Indian Express, there is Tavleen Singh’s article titled, The making of a hero. Here is one interesting excerpt, “One of my main objections to Anna’s movement is that his aides are leftists of almost loony proportions who believe that anyone who has made money in India, is a crook. They repeat, ad nauseum, in their television interviews that there would be no corruption in India, if there had not been economic reforms in 1991. It is a ridiculous and dangerous charge but Anna’s middle class supporters seem not to notice that they themselves may not have existed in such large numbers without the economic reforms. In the old, socialist days, middle class Indians were so insignificant that politicians could not be bothered to woo them as a constituency. Most of our political class remains stuck in that time warp which is why the seething rage of urban, middle class Indians went unnoticed till Anna came along.”

Click here to read Tavleen Singh’s article on The Indian Express website.

Shekhar Gupta’s brilliant analysis of the reasons for which middle class feels alienated from UPA

In the article titled “The aam Anna aadmi” published in today’s edition of The Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta has made a brilliant analysis of the reasons due to which the middle class in India feels constrained to support Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption crusade (which actually is a pro-Jan Lok Pal crusade). During its seven years of existence, the government has completely ignored the middle class.

The top leaders of the UPA never make any attempt to address the middle class directly. That is why the urbanites have lost faith in democratically elected leaders. They are now looking for non-parliamentary solutions to their problems. Most people who are supporting the Hazare agitation don’t even understand what the Jan Lok Pal bill is all about. They are only venting their anger and frustration at the economic mismanagement of the country.

This government uses “inflation” as a deliberate policy to fund subsidies whose main beneficiaries are the politically connected elite. Even the telecom tariffs have started rising under UPA2. Ever since an honest minister has taken over the telecom ministry, the tariffs have touched a new high. Of what use is honesty, if the tariffs keep going up.

In his article, Shekhar Gupta writes, “For seven years now, the Congress never bothered to send even a thank-you card to the middle classes that voted so overwhelmingly for it — in fact, in 2009, it voted for Manmohan Singh who was really the party’s first, genuine middle-class icon. Worse, its own povertarian basic instinct had so locked its mind it failed to read the verdict correct. Its Rajya Sabha-ist megaphones continued to boast that its NREGA, loan waiver, increased OBC reservations, cynical oil subsidies and other such populist policies had won it a second term in power. If it continued to reach out to the poorest Indians, an Indira Gandhi kind of sweep was guaranteed for Rahul in 2014. It, therefore, did nothing for the urban middle classes, its leaders never spoke to them, and even indulged in rhetoric that made upwardly mobile, hard-working urban and semi-urban Indians think they were immoral or guilty. That they had no idea that a majority of their countrymen were still stone-poor, nor did they care. As if these aspirational Indians were criminals who vacuum-cleaned all the spoils of economic reform while a vast majority had been left behind. With Sonia and Rahul Gandhi not speaking to them, a sullen prime minister in a shell, and the NAC and other durbari civil society stalwarts and Congressmen constantly maligning reform and the government’s policies, the middle class felt orphaned, alienated and rebuffed. Until they found their new interlocutors, and leaders, in Team Anna.”

He ends the article with a fitting warning to the political class, “The times when you could rule India without its urban middle class are now over. Because the key pivots of democratic governance, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, civil society activists, and of course the media, all come from this class. If you alienate it, there will be hell to pay. This is a disaster the Congress and the UPA have brought upon themselves, and so early in their five-year tenure.”

The needs and the aspirations of the middle class in the country can only be met through reform. Subsidies run by a corrupt and politically biased government are not the best way of redistributing wealth. Market is the best way of redistribution. The government must get out of the economy, so that “natural forces” of market can take over, and the quality of life in the country can improve.

If the likes of Shekhar Gupta had been a part of the NAC (National Advisory Council) then the UPA2 could have been in a much better shape. Unfortunately the powerful leaders decided to rely on the advise of some Jholawala economists, who desire to turn India into a huge NREGA country, where majority of people eke out a living by doing useless labour for petty sums of money.

Click here to read Shekhar Gupta’s article on The Indian Express website. 

Another milestone in Global Warming lunacy

The elite lunatics who have been promoting Global Warming as the latest hip religion and lifestyle mantra have now come up with another bizarre theory. This time they are claming that mankind should stop industrial activity and place curbs on so-called greenhouse emissions because rising greenhouse emissions may tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat.

The most surprising thing is that this ridiculous theory is being attributed to NASA. Once upon a time NASA used to be the place for cutting edge science, now it seems to have become the centre for promotion of anti-development and anti-science ideologies.

The report says, “Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth's atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat.” Wow!

The authors of the report have also listed some beneficial encounters results of the so-called Global Warming led interaction between humans and ET. They speculate that with alien technology we might be able to advance our knowledge and solve global problems such as hunger, poverty and disease.

The authors also foresee a scenario where humanity triumphs over a more powerful alien aggressor, or is even saved by a second group of aliens from outer space. "In these scenarios, humanity benefits not only from the major moral victory of having defeated a daunting rival, but also from the opportunity to reverse-engineer ETI technology," the authors write.

The report can be downloaded from this link.

In a democracy people have the right to lie or exaggerate, but the TV media is now abusing the privilege

I remember the novel The Almighty by Irving Wallace, in which a media mogul, Edward Armstead, becomes so drunk with sense of power that he thinks that he can control everything in the world. For him it is not enough to head a vast news empire, he wants to shape the news, manipulate it and control it. Eventually he starts creating his own news.

Is Edward Armstead running Indian news TV? After seeing the breathless hysterical coverage of the Fast 2.0, I can’t help myself from asking this question. Instead of balanced reports, what we are having on TV is 24-hour cycle of hype, propaganda and innuendos. Some of the leading stars of the small screen have started behaving as if only they have the right to decide what people should think on any issue.

Of course, I concede that the privately owned TV channels have played a very important role in improving the quality of Indian democracy. They have given a voice to millions of people who would never have been heard in the pre-TV revolution era. But now the TV media has lost its direction completely. During the last 3 or 4 years the standards have plummeted to rock bottom.

It has become unbearable to watch news TV these days. I would rather watch HBO or Star Movies than these stentorian and off-key debates.

Instead of giving a fair coverage to any story, TV media gains its eyeballs by twisting & sensationalising the story. Case in point is the coverage of the anti-corruption protests that are going on in the heart of the national capital. From the frantic and hysterical coverage that you see on TV, you get the impression that the entire country has come to a standstill and everyone is with the protestors. That is not the case.

Everyone is fed up of corruption. But that does not mean we should follow the Civil Society activists and the TV media blindly. The institution of Lokpal is not the solution to the problem of corruption. We can get rid of corruption only by reforming the government and the economy. The problem of corruption is there because instead of performing its task of governing the nation, the government spends all its resources in managing different businesses.

How can you not have corruption in the country when we have tens of ministers at helm of businesses ranging from – TV stations, radio stations, liquor companies, liquor shops, 5 star hotels, airlines, steel mills, mining companies, petroleum companies, schools, hospitals, housing companies, cricket teams, football teams, etc. All such businesses can be better managed by private companies.

The Civil Society movement has not spoken word about economic reform. Rather, they want to add another layer of bureaucracy to the government in the form of a new Lokpal department. That is all that the Fast 2.0 is all about. But the media is hyping the Fast 2.0 as if this is the only thing that can ever save the country. When the bill is already in the parliament, what is the Fast 2.0 all about, I fail to understand!

The job of the media is to present accurate news and analysis to the country. But now they seem to have become the vendors of snake oil. It is not just the politics and economics in this country that is in dire need of reform, the media too needs to reform itself. If they fail to reform, if they do not stop the constant moralising and sermonising that emanates from the TV screen, then people are going to loose faith in the media, just as they have lost faith in politicians.

Interesting libertarian poetry

I found this poem at the Lew Rockwell blog.

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like ex-speaker Nan, I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.'
I do not like this spending spree, I'm smart, I know that nothing's free.
I do not like their smug replies, when I complain about their lies.
I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it. nope, nope, nope.

Perhaps I could twist the lines in the above quoted poem a bit in order to reflect on how I feel about the mismanagement of the economy and political culture in my own country. But what’s the use. 

Click here to read the poem on Lew Rockwell blog.

It is time to relax and step back

Lokpal is not the solution to the problem of all the corruption, inefficiency and wastage that has become characteristic of governance in modern India. Most people are supporting this movement blindly because they are fed up of corruption and price rise. If the Lokpal comes into being, there will be one more round of red tape that entrepreneurs, investors, professionals and workers in the country will be forced to navigate. This will lead to more bureaucratic delays and corruption.

Corruption will only go away when the economy, politics and the legal system in the country are reformed.

But the political and cultural elite in the country is determined to ram this bill down our collective throats. Is this because they don’t want the problem of corruption and inefficiency to be solved? This suspicion is completely justified. After all, the present corrupt socialist system has worked very well as far as the nation’s elite is concerned. Instead of the rich subsidising the poor, it is the poor who subsidising the rich in our so-called socialist system.

The ruling elite knows that Lokpal is not the solution to the problem of corruption and yet they go ahead and waste so much of time in holding discussions and developing different versions of bill!

The kind of hype that we seen in the media over this bill is simply amazing. Our journalists have clearly lost their sense of perspective. They are so eager to offer sainthood on anyone who is ready to face the TV cameras and speak a few banalities in favour of the Lokpal. Why is no one talking about economic reform? The huge tidal wave of hype over Lokpal has all but washed way every hope of the economy being reformed and new investments being brought in.

In today’s The Indian Express Pratap Bhanu Mehta has written an excellent article titled, Time to step back. He is right in saying that the present UPA regime has messed up not just the economy of the country, but also the political environment. He writes, “There is no doubt that Anna Hazare’s movement powerfully expressed anger against corruption, even as its own proposed solutions border on unreasonable daftness. But it has to be said that the way in which state power is being exercised to control and squelch protest is a dangerous trend for Indian democracy. Democracy requires a delicacy of moral judgment. So we are now in the awkward position of worrying that though the state is right in asserting the supremacy of institutions, it is becoming dangerously arbitrary and arrogant.”

While commenting on the strategies and the political agenda of the anti-corruption protest, he goes on to say, “The Anna Hazare movement meanwhile continues to propagate the tyranny of virtue. It has elided the distinction between protest and fast-unto-death. The former is legitimate. The latter is blackmail. Second, it has elided the fact that this is not just a contest between two players, the state and the knights in shining armour of the movement. There are many other actors in civil society who disagree with their institutional proposals. By threatening a fast-unto-death, they are violating two norms of democratic society. First, they are not acknowledging that there can be legitimate differences in a democracy. And to insist that only one proposal is correct is to slight not the state but other citizens. Second, they are violating the norms of reciprocity. Their sense of virtue cannot entitle them to deny that other citizens are also making good-faith arguments to better our democracy. And in the case of a disagreement, we have to resort to the only adjudicative mechanism we have agreed on: our representative democracy.”

Click  here to read Pratap Bhanu Mehta's article in The Indian Express.

This is a frightening situation. The Indian government is proving to be completely powerless in safeguarding India’s democratic culture. Perhaps, they have lost the will to govern.

What is the meaning of Independence?

On 64th anniversary of the year 1947, perhaps we can make an attempt to discover what independence really means. There isn't any dictionary in the world that says, “independence means freedom from British.” The greatest mistake we have made is that we allowed ourselves to be deluded by the idea that independence means getting rid of the British imperialists.

Independence is a political concept that stands for freedom from government. Any government at all! A tyrant is a tyrant even if the colour of his skin is same as yours or mine. It hardly matters whether the government is of British or Indian origin. The ethnic or geographical origin of the main leaders of the government is of no consequence as far as the concept of independence is concerned.

A vast majority of tyrants in history have been of the same ethnic origin as the people that they enslaved, tortured and destroyed. Hitler was an ethnic German and he destroyed his people. The Russian tyrant Stalin was not a foreign implant; he was an ethnic Russian, yet under his rule millions of Russians were killed. The Chinese dictator Mao was also an ethnic Chinese. Pol Pot was a native of Cambodia.

Indians will not be able enjoy the fruits of “real independence” as long as we continue to associate the idea of independence with the overthrow of British Empire. It is about time did a reality check on the governments that India has had in the post-British era. Have the governments that we have elected after every five years, allowed us sufficient amount of political, economic and cultural freedom?

When there is so much mismanagement and corruption in the country, when we have government run entities continuously breathing down our necks forcing us to pay bribes in order to be allowed to go on with our lives, then the country is not really free. On 64th anniversary of the year 1947, I find myself sinking into the nadir of cynicism, hopelessness and ennui.

It is Smart to Get a PhD in Economics?

Lokpal versus Lokpal: Who is going to talk about economic reforms!

The public is exasperated at rampant price rise and corruption, the top leaders of the govt. seem to have withdrawn deep inside their well protected mansions, they are completely invisible, critics are multiplying, and no one has an idea how to jump start the stagnant economy. In other words, the situation is ripe for a Civil Society type of “saintly” movement to occupy the political centre stage.

Now they are going to have a hunger fast in the heart of the national capital from August 16th. The Civil Society activists seem to be saying that the parliamentarians should immediately accept their proposal for a new Lok Pal. This is a very perplexing demand. By what criteria are these activists claming that they represent the entire nation. Even if they do, in a democracy the parliament has the sole prerogative of enacting new laws.

If people have lost faith in the current set of parliamentarians, then they should wait for the next elections, when they will have the chance to elect better candidates. We can’t outsource our legislative business to activists and continue to remain a democracy. In this government’s Lokpal versus Civil Society’s Lokpal debate, the critical issue of economic and political reforms has been completely forgotten.

There is corruption in our society because the officials and politicians are enjoying huge discretionary power. The biggest businessman in the country is the govt. The govt. is running five star hotels, fancy hospitals, TV stations, cricket teams, mining companies, steel mills, liquor companies, liquor shops, restaurants, airlines, shipping companies, etc. How can there not be corruption, when the govt. is running so many businesses?

As far as I know the Civil Society has not spoken even once about economic reform, and neither has the govt. So there is a reason to doubt the sincerity of both the entities – Civil Society and the govt. – in their so-called fight against corruption. Both sides seem intent to create a new bureaucratic organisation, which in the final analysis might turn out to a real Jokepal, completely ineffectual in curbing corruption and inefficiency 

Whatever happens after August 16th, one thing is certain, the govt. has lost the debate over Lokpal, corruption and price rise. It is easy to see why – despite enjoying a comfortable majority in both houses of the parliament, they did not pass any reform measures. The management of the economy was outsourced to NAC, which is made out of some jholawala economists, who are completely against reform.

On this Sunday, we have two good articles on this subject.

Tavleen Singh makes some wonderful points in her article titled “Not a Happy Birthday” published in The Indian Express. Here is an interesting excerpt:

The truth is we do not need a Lokpal. He will be able to do no more than add another layer of bureaucracy to the huge infrastructure of underemployed officials we already have. No Lokpal can end corruption as long as we do not make the reforms that would reduce the powers of politicians and bureaucrats. But, government is happy to go along with the Lokpal plan because it diverts attention from its failures of governance. These are so grave that normally reticent businessmen are discussing them openly on television. They point out that nothing is happening on the economic reforms front and that by stopping major projects in which huge investments have been made, the wrong signals have gone out to prospective investors. The same criticism has been levied by the Prime Minister’s economic advisory committee.


From a personal viewpoint, I would like to add that the neglect of reforms in the social sector are now beyond shameful. It is not just the ‘aam aadmi’ who needs better schools and hospitals, it is our vast, urban middle class that needs them as desperately. In a city like Mumbai, which boasts of better healthcare than most, those who cannot afford private hospitals wait months for urgent surgery. As for getting children into good schools and colleges, it is such a difficult task that it leads to despair and nervous breakdowns. Instead of helping create better facilities, the government continues to operate a licence raj.

Click here to read more of Tavleen Singh’s article.

Gurcharan Das’s article "When days are dark, India grows at night" is there is today’s Times of India. He says, “i am less than enthusiastic about the Lokpal Bill. In its obsession with the Lokpal, the civil society movement has forgotten the urgent need for accountability in existing institutions. Reforming the bureaucracy, judiciary , police, and the political system will reduce corruption far more than the Lokpal. For example, a honest and transparent tax collecting machinery will do far more for the Indian character. Nevertheless, something good is bound to come out of the Lokpal movement and we should be grateful to those who have persisted. In the end, we want the rule of law, not the rule of men, and our greatest hope is for a government run by persons of restraint who are accountable to the rule of law.”

Click here to read Gurcharan Das’s article.

Stop The Environment

Really Funny Video

Stop The Environment from Ed Asner

Where are our roads?

The condition of Indian roads is atrocious. During the last few years our political leaders have been pouring truckloads of money into the “bottomless pit,” which we now know as the CWG scam. It is surprising that a so-called socialist govt. is prepared to spend tens of billions of dollars on false prestige, which is what the CWG enterprise was all about, but they can't do anything for improving the condition of our roads. Hardly anything seems to have been invested on building new roads and on maintaining existing ones.

If the condition of roads had been better, the rural areas could become as prosperous as the urban areas, and then there would be no need for schemes like NREGA. People in all parts of the country can and will find "real" jobs once there are proper roads. Interconnectivity through decent roads will lead to a boom in industrial and trading related activity. Farmers will be able to bring their produce to urban areas and sell them at a much higher price. Labourers and professionals will be able to travel to areas where salaries are higher. We don't have to depend on doles from the government.

Roads are the arteries of the nation, it is through roads that the fresh blood of the country flows in different directions and carries along new political and cultural ideas, new products, and new ways of doing things. Currently most of India’s arteries are clogged. The condition of roads can never improve as long as they are managed by inefficient government entities. The government should have mercy on its citizens and back out completely from the roadways sector. The Indian roads need a solid dose of freedom from government.

Today’s Indian Express has an editorial on how the roadways sector has been ignored completely by the UPA government. The editorial titled Road Rage says:

The pathetic state of its highways continues to hold India back. Poor roads prevent the modernisation of agriculture, preventing farmers in remote areas from accessing markets that would fund capital investment. They exacerbate unevenness in development, forcing the clustering of industrialisation. They make it expensive to haul materials cross-country, bolstering inflationary pressures along the supply chain. But on the UPA’s watch, despite many promises, little has been done to advance highway-building, or even maintenance. This was brought home quite effectively by BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, which wrote to the Centre asking that 10 much-travelled intercity roads in the state be de-notified, arguing that the state government would do a better job maintaining them than the Centre. To back up their assertion, they attached photographs of the roads — potholed, flooded, jammed solid.

Criticism of the Centre is very valid in this case. Highway-building has been plagued by cost and time overruns. As the MP photos make clear, these are not necessarily caused by land acquisition problems but by genuine inefficiency and badly designed contracts; indeed, recent government numbers suggest that when the private sector is implementing publicly funded and internationally funded projects, almost all suffer over-runs. This is not the case for projects being constructed on a build-operate-transfer basis, in which the private partner is penalised for delays.

The UPA’s consistent neglect of the road sector is one of the blackest marks on its governance record. These problems in the implementation of construction projects have been understood for years, but little effort has been made to correct them. The embarrassing note from MP should spur the new roads minister, C. P. Joshi, to effect change.

Click here to read the editorial on The Indian Express website.

The Sun Never Sets On The British Welfare System

Here is a list of some of the most interesting and thought provoking lines in this article by Ann Coulter:

1. With a welfare system far more advanced than the United States, the British have achieved the remarkable result of turning entire communities of ancestral British people into tattooed, drunken brutes.

2. I guess we now have the proof of what conservatives have been saying since forever: Looting is a result of liberal welfare policies. And Britain is in the end stages of the welfare state.

3. But liberal elites here and in Britain will blame anything but the welfare state they adore. They drone on about the strict British class system or the lack of jobs or the nation's history of racism.

4. Inciting violent mobs is the essence of the left's agenda: Promote class warfare, illegitimate children and an utterly debased citizenry.

5. This is how civilizations die. It can happen overnight, as it did in Revolutionary France. If Britain of 1939 were composed of the current British population, the entirety of Europe would today be doing the "Heil Hitler" salute and singing the "Horst Wessel Song."


Click here to read the complete article.

We’re running out of freedom, not oil

The idea that the world is running out oil, food or some other critical commodity is a conspiracy of the political forces whose only agenda is to force everyone to live in a tightly regulated, scarcity prone economy, where vast majority of people survive on doles from a dictatorial government. The dictator at the top decides who gets to eat how much and who gets access to how much petrol at what price.

Few centuries ago, we had Thomas Malthus making pessimistic projections on overpopulation. History has proved Malthus to be wrong; today the population of the world is close to 7 billion, and people are enjoying much better quality of life. The earth can easily support more than 13 billion people. With proper technology any number of people can survive on a planet.

We should never take the ideologues, who try to frighten people in the name of overpopulation, scarcity of food, oil and living space, seriously.

As long as technology keeps pace with growth in population, there is absolutely no danger of human beings ever running out of oil, food or any other essential commodity. It is only in dictatorships that there is scarcity. Dictators thrive whenever there is scarcity, because they are able to use the lack of resources in the economy to divide and rule the population. That is why the economic policies of dictators are designed to create myriad scarcities in the country.

India has so many religious and caste related riots, which often released in deaths of hundreds of people, because we are a tightly regulated economy. All our governments since independence have tried to subsidise one section of population at the cost of some other section. This is the reason why we are unable to develop into a healthy and peaceful society. It is the regime of subsidies and reservations that fuel tensions in the society.

Alex Epstein has written a very interesting article in The Daily Caller. Here is an excerpt from the article:

“…despite the fact that civilization has consumed one trillion barrels of oil to date, the amount of oil available to us has never been greater. Forecaster Michael Lynch says, “The consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there,” adding: “A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent — another 2.5 trillion barrels — in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands …” This exciting potential is on display in North Dakota’s Bakken shale oil fields, a former backwater that now produces a quarter-million barrels a day while helping slash the state’s unemployment rate to 3.8%. That’s the good news. The bad news is that every single one of the technologies that could lead us to petroleum prosperity is being slowed or stunted by government, in America and around the globe.”

Click here to read more. 

Is God a communist?

I have always been of the opinion that God is a communist. That is the reason why every religion preaches altruism, or sacrificing the self for some mythical good of the community, the collective.

It is the concept of altruism that is preached by religions that has spawned ideologies like communism, fascism, fundamentalism and even terrorism.

There is no alternative to Godless objectivism. The Time magazine has published an interesting article titled: Ayn Rand: The GOP’s Godless Philosopher.

Three Minute Philosophy: Pythagoras

The political temperature has soared too high. The mess of corruption in high places is driving everyone crazy. Perhaps it is time to take a break from politics. Time to hide into some Pythagorean thoughts.

Who is responsible for messing up Connaught Place market?

The report published on page 2 of today’s Time of India shows just how bad the condition of Connaught Place market is. This market was in a much better condition before the so-called beautification work in name of CWG games started. After the so-called beautification in which hundreds of crores of rupees were spent, the market looks like a bombed out place.

The Delhi government is responsible for this mess. There has to be accountability somewhere. Who is responsible for destroying what used to be India’s most famous shopping destination? The UPA is made out of leaders who swear by the name of “Swadeshi,” and yet a vast majority of the contracts for the CWG was given to firms owned by foreign fly-by-night operators?

It is laughable that more than a year has passed since the scandalous CWG games were held, but the work on most of the CWG projects is still going on. Corrupt officials and politicians are still making money from these ongoing projects. At this rate the work at Connaught Place is not going to be over for next four or five years. The shoppers and the shopkeepers of CP have suffered an incredible amount of loss; only people who are profiting from the mess are the political elite.

The virus of elitism

This article titled “The Inexplicables” by Victor Davis Hanson has been written in context of some other socialist country, one that has recently lost its AAA status. But I strong empathise with what Victor Hanson has said about hypocritical elites.

It has become so common for political and social elites to hector and disparage the less fortunate members of the society on all kinds of issues – from Global Warming, to saving the environment, maintaining the country’s prestige, helping the poor, etc.

These elites seldom practise what they preach. The altruism that they preach is meant to be funded by other people’s money.

Governance in the modern world has devolved into an intricate system of taking control of hard working people’s money, through taxation or outright extortion, and using the funds to enable a lavish lifestyle for the political and cultural elite.

The farce called compassionate government

America’s capitalistic system is been totally handcuffed by the neo-liberal (leftist) ideology. Even the so-called conservatives are in favour of big government. Time magazine has published an article titled: Did Austerity Politics Kill Compassionate Conservatism?

‘Compassionate’ is such a disgusting word. More lives in the world have been destroyed due to so-called compassionate rulers. These compassionate rulers have a perfect society in mind, reached through universal taxation, inefficient subsides and a bloated government. This does not work.

Click here to read this article in Time magazine.

In the Obama era USA has become as socialist as India. No wonder then the country has lost its AAA status. India can never loose its AAA status. This is because we have always been ZZZ in the economic sense. The compassionate rulers of this country have ensured that the fruits of the labour of the hardworking people in this country keeps getting wasted, and we remain mired in poverty. 

The idea of a compassionate government working for the welfare of people is a complete farce. When you hear of a compassionate leader coming in your direction, run for your life, run as you would run from a poisonous snake.

The India story could end

This article by Tavleen Singh accurately captures the mood of people like me in the country. There is unbelievable amount of corruption and inefficiency in the government. What are these guys ever going to do with the kind of money they have looted? Do they expect to live forever! Here are some excerpts from the article:

"As has been pointed out ad nauseum in this column, nearly all corruption in India is connected to government. Politicians regularly use their so-called educational trusts to garner private wealth and election funds. Businessmen, especially big ones, have little choice but to pay if they want to continue doing business. They would not have to if election funds were collected more openly and if political parties were made to render public accounts of their revenue and expenses. Why is it so hard to make this happen?

What is most important now is for the India story not to become mired in loose charges of corruption and cronyism. The Prime Minister has to come forward and lead as he did in his first term in office. He needs to sack ministers who obstruct reforms and show licence raj proclivities. And, Parliament must take back its central role in law making. No more amateur efforts from NGOs, please, either in the NAC or in Anna’s team. It is not their job to make laws so it is not surprising that their documents are either flawed or hysterical."

Click here to read more of Tavleen Singh's article published in The Indian Express.
 

CAG report on CWG exposes miserable amount of corruption

The CAG’s expose of CWG corruption is by itself a proof of just how atrociously the government works. The CAG report does not indict a particular political party; it indicts the entire political system. Our socialism has deteriorated into elitism, the elite can get away with all kinds of loot and there is nothing that the citizens can do about it. It was very depressing and frustrating to read today’s newspapers.

Had CWG been entrusted to a private entity, it would have been India’s pride, a great success. Look at the kind of success that the IPL cricket matches are! CWG could have been a similar success. The organisation of CWG was such an incredible bureaucratic maze that it will take someone like Sherlock Holmes to pin responsibility on anyone. This is the atrocious way in which governments work.

This particular report, titled “Who called the shots? It was a bhool bulaiya of committees” published in today’s Times of India is worthy of being quoted in its entirety.  

Nowhere is the tangled web of deceit in which the CWG was trapped more starkly visible than in the structure set up to organize it. The CAG has a double spread, color-coded organogram showing the tangled web in all its glory.

There were at least 31 decision making bodies, 22 advisory bodies and 16 implementing agencies, apart from 34 'functional area', another name for 'work to be done'. You can imagine the number of criss-crossing lines that connect all these to each other. It is a bhool bhulaiya, with committees, sub-committees and groups that are created and disbanded for over five years, even as 10 central ministries, the PMO, central bureaucracy engaged with the Delhi government, its Lt-Governor. On top of this, there is an OC with its committees, officers and fast track panels.

Here's a slice from the top: the PMO set up a Core Group of Ministers, an Interim Group of Ministers, a new Group Of Ministers, an Apex Committee (with five sub-groups) - even as the Cabinet set up a committee of secretaries, a finance sub committee, an empowered finance sub-committee. This is just the central government's top echelon's getting a piece of action. Imagine what is going on under each of the 10 ministries.

Now here's a slice from the bottom: sports is about venues - basically, stadiums. CWG venues were 'owned' by 15 different bodies. Their development was under a stadium committee, itself under a venue coordination committee, overseen by an Infrastructure Monitoring Committee, supervised by a general Coordination Committee and also an Infrastructure Coordination Committee, all under the sports ministry.

The venue owners were themselves under seven different ministries apart from the LG and the NDMC. Besides, the COO and the CEO of the OC chaired by Suresh Kalmadi were also 'looking after' the venues, including purchases. Meanwhile the PWD was under the Delhi government .....you get the idea.

Click here to read  the report on Times of India website.

Mises Explodes Marxism

What is Praxeology?

Nullification: A documentary film on an idea whose time has come

How Reasonable is Libertarianism?

Conservatives as well as liberals have started going after libertarians. But that to my mind is a good sign. It is a proof of the fact that libertarianism is now becoming a politically potent ideology. Click here to read this interesting article on Slate.

"Libertarians will blanch at lumping their revered Vons—Mises and Hayek—in with the nutters and the shills. But between them, Von Hayek and Von Mises never seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn't involve a corporate sponsor. Even the renowned law and economics movement at the University of Chicago was, in its inception, heavily subsidized by business interests. ("Radical movements in capitalist societies," as Milton Friedman patiently explained, "have typically been supported by a few wealthy individuals.")"

Why Capitalism Is Worth Defending

Here is an excerpt from the article by Anthony Gregory:

"It is simply a fact that capitalism, even hampered by the state, has dragged most of the world out of the pitiful poverty that characterized all of human existence for millennia. It was industrialization that saved the common worker from the constant tedium of primitive agriculture. It was the commodification of labor that doomed slavery, serfdom, and feudalism. Capitalism is the liberator of women and the benefactor of all children who enjoy time for study and play rather than endure uninterrupted toil on the farm. Capitalism is the great mediator between tribes and nations, which first put aside their weapons and hatreds in the prospect of benefiting from mutual exchange."

Click here to read more. 

What is the meaning of honesty?

Due to our corrupt and inefficient system of governance, the meaning of even a most elementary concept like “honesty” is getting distorted. Many of our over-hyped celebrities and crusaders against corruption are doing their best to prove that honesty of any individual is inversely proportional to his net worth. If their reasoning is taken as truth, then a person’s material possession becomes the sole criteria on the basis of which his character can be judged. I am poorer than you are, so I am more honest. What kind of silly reasoning is this!

One celebrity activist against corruption, who tends to get cloyingly sanctimonious in all his TV appearances, has made it a habit of saying, “I have only one flat and very small bank balance.” He makes such statements while offering, what in his eyes, is the ultimate proof of honesty. If a person who has one flat can be judged as being more honest than the one who has two flats or someone else who has 100 flats, then the person who does not have even a single flat in his name should be the most honest. There are millions of homeless in this country, why not hand over the certificate of honesty to all of them!

We are making a grave error by allowing certain forces to equate honesty with poverty. Instead of promoting an honest political culture, these forces are only interested in glorifying poverty. It seems as if these crusaders against corruption, are ideologically inclined to believe that a perfect way of life is one that is mired in poverty and hopelessness. Perhaps that is why they keep getting nostalgic about the pre-1991 era, when reforms were yet to take off and the country led a ship to mouth existence.

Why should honesty be equated with lack of prosperity? There is no law that says that a person with one house cannot be a thief and a dacoit. A homeless person can also be a burglar. In fact, majority of the thieves in the world end their life in penury. Theft does not pay in the long run.

It is possible for people to be well off material and yet be honest, and it is possible for someone to dirt poor and yet be dishonest. If a person has only one flat after a very long career then it can be due to many reasons. It is possible that he is not interested in having more property, or he failed to make good investment decisions, he might be plain unlucky when it comes to money. It is also possible that he is really foolish when it comes to managing financial affairs. It makes no sense at all to equate honesty with material possessions.

Honesty is a concept that is directly linked with an individual’s sense integrity and his respect for the fundamental rights of other individuals. If an individual desires to corner disproportionate amount of power by spreading falsehoods, then he is not honest. He is dishonest because he lusts for attaining power over other people’s lives. A tyrant can never be honest. Lets not forget that the German tyrant Hitler didn’t have any property at all. He didn’t have a bank account; he didn’t have a single piece of property registered in his name.

Living in a country ruled by democratically elected politicians, where private entrepreneurs are free to make as much money as they can by creating values for society, is much more bearable and safe, as compared to living under a dictatorship of sanctimonious poverty-worshipping crusaders.

Acid rain theory refuted by "science"

The acid rain theory is a product of the imagination of leftist intellectuals masquerading as scientists. It has been refuted so many times in past by real scientific evidence. For the latest refutation – click here.

The Fibonacci Sequence

‘Atlas Shrugged’ Comes To Detroit

Forbes blog has published a good article by Daniel J. Mitchell, tilted. The article talks about how Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged has mentioned Detriot:

"No railroad was mentioned by name in the speeches that preceded the voting. The speeches dealt only with the public welfare. It was said that while the public welfare was threatened by shortages of transportation, railroads were destroying each other through vicious competition, on “the brutal policy of dog-eat-dog.” While there existed blighted areas where rail service had been discontinued, there existed at the same time large regions where two or more railroads were competing for a traffic barely sufficient for one. It was said that there were great opportunities for younger railroads in the blighted areas. While it was true that such areas offered little economic incentive at present, a public-spirited railroad, it was said, would undertake to provide transportation for the struggling inhabitants, since the prime purpose of a railroad was public service, not profit."

Daniel J. Mitchell goes on to draw this conclusion: "Many people say that Atlas Shrugged is not very good literature, despite the amazing sales figures. Others say Ayn Rand’s philosophy is flawed, despite the profound influence of her writings.

I’m not competent to comment on those debates, but I can say that Atlas Shrugged does an amazing job of capturing the statist mindset and it tells a compelling story of how excessive government is self-destructive.

Fifty years ago, the book was viewed as a dystopian fantasy. Today, Greece, Illinois, and Detroit are making Ayn Rand seem like a prophet."

Click here to read the complete article.

Stalin & Mind Control

The woodbineRed channel on YouTube has posted a number of videos of great historical interest. These are full-length documentary movies from some of the darkest chapters of history. I saw the videos on the communist tyrant Stalin. I might see the other videos when I have the time.