NREGA for newspapers

It seems as if our benevolent government has also started a NREGA (employment & profit guarantee scheme) for top players in the Indian media. That is why we see so many useless ads by government departments in all our newspapers.

Case in point is today’s newspapers. Almost every page has an advertisement regarding Shrimati Indira Gandhi on its pages. All of these advertisements are from govt. departments. Today is not an isolated case. You see such advertisements on the birth or death anniversary of any top leader.

These must be paid ads. I don’t know how much it takes to carry out a large colourful ad in the pages of any top newspaper, but the money could run into hundreds or even thousands of crores every year.

This is almost like NREGA for newspapers. Public money is being used to sustain the profitability of the media. Even if these newspapers publish rubbish, and they don’t earn anything, they can still make a living through govt. ads. Why should top journalists and newspaper owners who are already quite rich be beneficiaries of some kind of NREGA scheme that guarantees govt. ads.

The newspapers will never talk about the issue of govt. ads, because the money goes into their pocket. Indian socialism only caters to the rich and the powerful. The newspapers are able to corner a huge chunk of govt. money because they are already very rich and powerful.

The government is facing severe cash crunch, which is forcing it to indulge in massive borrowing. The middle class and the poor class are suffering due to huge inflation. It seems as if the prices of the food items are touching a new high every month. And yet the government departments continue to squander money on this huge orgy of ads in our newspapers.

If the Indian media is earning such huge sums of money through govt. ads then is it really free?  How can you be free when a huge chunk of your newspaper is made out of ads from the govt?

Have Indian newspapers forgotten the middle class?

How many “real” newspapers are there in this country? I can’t say for sure. I am not reading all the newspapers that are being published in this great country of ours. I can’t afford to buy all the newspapers being published. But I do spend about an hour of my time on 2 or 3 important daily newspapers.

Some of the very high profile newspapers have these days started carrying articles that are about a “million miles away from the small patch of land where I exist.” Majority of their articles are focussed on expressing the views of the exceedingly rich (the jet-set limousine liberal class). From time to time they do seem to carry articles that are about to the so-called “aam-admi.” But I have no idea who “aam-admi in this country is. I can’t empathise with their writing.  

I think the basic problem is that our newspapers have for last few years been so rich that they now exist in the stratosphere of billionaires. They seem to have completely forgotten the middle class. Instead of reporting on real stories, they fill their pages with frivolous hype of issues, personalities and events that are of no real consequence.

One newspaper whose articles I like is The Indian Express. This newspaper often talks about the issues that are essentially middle class. In today’s The Indian Express, we have this article titled “The incredible powers of a junior minister” by Tavleen Singh.

Tavleen Singh writes, “They failed to notice that on his watch not a single one of our rivers became less polluted or our forests safer and that none of the decisions he took will serve to ever improve our tragically degraded environment. This is because at no stage did Mr Ramesh come up with a list of universally applicable norms and standards. This should have been his most urgent task.”

This is completely true. I am an environmentalist at heart. Given a chance I would like to leave the city and live in a clean village, but the truth is that currently most Indian villages are unliveable. That is why millions of Indians keep migrating to our congested & filthy cities. What has Jairam Ramesh’s so-called environmental activism done to clean up our rivers, our forests, our villages and even our cities? He just played a “losing game” of politics with environment.

Why don’t other “great” newspapers in the country notice such problems! Have these guys completely forgotten the real India? The elite in politics have something in common with the elite in media – they are completely cut off from real life, and that is why they can’t stay at the top for long.

Capitalism is not the problem. It is lack of capitalism that deserves the blame...

Everyone ought to read this article titled “Who are the real cronies?” by Surjit S Bhalla. Once again, Surjit S Bhalla uses the microscope of hard-core analysis to dissect the can-kicking escapades of socialist ideologues. Here’s a really interesting excerpt:

The real lie, and the real tragedy, is that state-administered, state-directed, in-the-name-of-the-poor programmes are the croniest of all. Not surprising, because the best way to sell corruption is if it is disguised with a human face. This administration, this government, and the ruling party, yes the Congress, have been involved in spreading the anti-market lie disguised as gospel.


Examples abound. Just to name three — the public distribution system of foodgrains, the employment guarantee scheme, and the government pricing of foodgrains. All three assume that capitalism, markets do not work in the most basic of human endeavours. Labour markets do not work — so we need controls. Food cannot be marketed by the private sector — so we need the government to procure, price, market, and export food.


What nails the government lie is the open recognition by government experts that the public distribution system (PDS) of foodgrains is an ongoing corrupt system before which all other corruption (including 2G) pales. After recognising this lie, and this corruption, Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council recommends the “right to food”.


And how will the right to food become a reality? By expanding the longest-running corruption-prone system in India — the PDS. If this were not enough, the NAC recognises that food for work programmes have been massively corrupt. How do you reduce this corruption? By expanding such programmes. And then they make fun of Americans, who stated in a parallel context that they had to destroy a Vietnamese village in order to save it.

I’ve always been shocked to see how little we learn from history. We don’t learn from the other governments in history that taxed the economy to death in order to fund their unworkable bureaucratic schemes to help the poor. Many of the worst scams and atrocities have been carried out in the name of helping the poor or some other lofty ideal. The so-called "saintly and compassionate" regimes are always based on brute force. In the end they fade into the dustbin of history. No regime lasts forever. So why loot so much? Why waste so much?

Click here to read more of Surjit S Bhalla’s article.

Jon2012girls Smokin' Ad

I think that I have found a the kind of ad that can enable any politician to get noticed and perhaps be elected. People who wish to have a political career should watch this ad carefully. :-)

The Birth Of Straw Men!

There’s an excellent article by James Taylor on the Forbes blog:

It is indeed the truth that instead of conducting a logical debate on any issue, some parties resort to creating "straw men."

Here’s a quote: Far from marking the death of skepticism, the media’s over-the-top sensationalism of the Muller paper shows just how far global warming advocates are from supporting their assertions of a human-induced global warming crisis. The straw man may be dead, but skepticism of a human-induced global warming crisis is alive and well.

Click here to read more of the article.

Majet Jagava Kasa

Shivraaj Gorle’s bestseller ‘Majet Jagava Kasa’ was published in 2006 when motivational writing was a rare concept in Marathi.

Click here to read more about the author.

Why the State Demands Control of Money?

First and foremost, more paper money does not in the slightest affect the quantity or quality of all other, nonmonetary goods. There exist just as many other goods around as before. This immediately refutes the notion — apparently held by most if not all mainstream economists — that "more" money can somehow increase "social wealth." To believe this, as everyone proposing a so-called easy-money policy as an efficient and "socially responsible" way out of economic troubles apparently does, is to believe in magic: that stones — or rather paper — can be turned into bread.

Click here to read more of  the brilliant article by Professor Hoppe.

Milton Friedman - Greed

On this day of Diwali everyone should watch Milton Friedman speak on the subject of capitalism and greed.

Our benevolent government that is supposedly full of non-greedy people has led to such price rise that is difficult for most people to make ends meet. Perhaps we would be better off if the country were being run by some really "greedy capitalist" types.

The socialists only talk of welfare, what they actually create is a system where there is massive corruption, price rise and wastage.

Here is the Milton Friedman video.



Best wishes for Diwali to everyone.

The "Straw Man" Fallacy

Broken Window Fallacy

When government starts acting like an academic think tank, it is the common man who suffers

Do we still have “real politicians” governing this country? If we still have real politicians in the present government, I can’t find them. All I can see on TV are the super-elite academic type theorists, who can shed crocodile tears for hours in name of helping the poor, but they come up with policies that only help the corrupt and the inefficient.

The government is being run like an obstinate and obsolete academic think tank, which treats the entire country like a really large university campus.

The policy makers seem to be under the impression that even if their decisions have adverse consequences, they will be able to correct them by a using a little bit of red ink on the thesis paper. Since they are not real politicians, they can’t be held accountable for the lousy policies that they keep inflicting on this country.

Inflation is hitting new highs all the time, the government does not have any real money, and the policy makers keep coming up with social sector schemes like free food, free healthcare etc. Such schemes never help the poor, or the middle class. In the end all the funds are lost due to corruption and inefficiency.

If the policy makers of this government had been working for any private company, they would have been sacked for incompetence by now. For last five years, they have been promising us that inflation will be brought under control. They have been promising all things to all the people; none of the promises have been kept.

These guys have constantly missed their projections, yet they keep holding their job. Where is the accountability! Devising policy for the government is not same as making a hypocritical speech to a gathering of those limousine liberals from the West (Cloud Cuckoo Land).

The self styled academic think tanks need to be kicked out of the corridors of power immediately. It is time the government brought in some real politicians. By real politicians I mean the leaders who have come up due to their grassroots support and have an understanding of the needs and aspirations of the country.

It is these real politicians who should have the power to take economic decisions.

India suffers from Intellectualism

The most nefarious kind of “ism” that plagues this country of ours is Intellectualism. Unlike Marxism and communism, which stands for dictatorship of the so-called proletariat, or capitalism that stands for free movement of capital, Intellectualism (in my lexicon) simply refers to rule by intellectuals’… so-called intellectuals, to be precise. Many of the so-called Intellectuals in India are probably the world's largest repository of leftist and liberal cliches. They live like kings and yet they advocate simple and dirt poor life for everyone else.

Before I go on with rest of my post, I would like to recommend this book by Thomas Sowell – “Intellectuals and Society”. The Flipkart link from where the book can be purchased is given at the top.

India has too many intellectuals who think that it is their birthright to meddle in the affairs of the “common man.” These intellectuals find it hard to believe that the common man can manage without their guidance. They pretend that they are only interested in providing a gentle guidance, but what they are actually lusting for is dictatorial control over everyone’s lives. Instead of real politicians, who represent a natural outgrowth of society, these intellectuals are created and indoctrinated in the campuses of elite universities.

When you hear these intellectuals speak, you realize how little they know about real life. They think that the entire world is like the campus of any elite university, preferably in US or UK. These guys would be completely lost in a real world situation.

There is an excellent article titled, “NGOs in glass houses,” by Tavleen Singh in today’s The Indian Express. She writes, “In order for India to become a halfway developed country, we need new roads, airports, ports, modern railways and masses more electricity. In addition, according to experts, we need 500 more cities by 2050. The odd thing is that the NGOs who oppose steel plants, nuclear power stations, dams and aluminum refineries in India never object to the same things in China. What is going on? How has the Prime Minister not noticed that the current economic slowdown in India has been brought about by NGOs stopping major projects in which huge investments have been made?”

What Tavleen Singh says is completely correct. A vast majority of our NGOs are acting as a roadblock for major infrastructure products. It is intellectuals who are the main force behind these anti-development NGOs. Intellectualism, in India, has now gone mainstream. The intellectuals are no longer content with playing the role of advisers to the government; they are now propagating their anti-development agenda openly in the cities and remote villages.

No country in the world can progress if it surrenders its decision making process to “self-proclaimed intellectuals, who in most cases carry a Made in Harvard or Oxford label.” History is a proof of the fact that majority of these over hyped intellectuals have harboured outright crazy ideas. For instance, Geroge Bernard Shaw, the UK intellectual whom many Indian intellectuals like to worship, is known to have said, “Dictatorship is the only way in which government can accomplish anything. See what a mess democracy has led to. Why are you afraid of dictatorship?” Another so-called intellectual Bertrand Russell actually supported appeasement of Hitler.

The stupidity with which these supposedly intelligent men and women conduct themselves in their personal life is simply stunning. If you read the personal biographies some really famous intellectuals like Russel, Shaw and others, you will realize that they have behaved like outright lunatics. And their stupidity is not random; it tends to almost always go in the same direction, that of failing to understand that the biggest oppression that the common man faces is from government departments. They fail to understand that the countries with big governments and too many goody-goody type of NGOs are always the poorest and the most miserable.

Perhaps it is time we, the common citizens, in this country started fighting for independence from these so-called intellectuals. The doctrine of Intellectualism, which we foolishly accepted, is the biggest cause of our poverty and lack of happiness.

On the article, "Holier than cow," by Shekhar Gupta

Saturdays are much awaited, because that is when Shekhar Gupta gives us his take on some important issue. I have no problems in agreeing with what Gupta has said in today’s article, titled Holier than cow. I am totally put off by the squeaky clean, divine angel-like, portrayal of Team Anna members by certain sections of the media. Apparently some senior  journalists continue to believe in angels.

It is possible that the Team Anna members have never taken a bribe, but they are also human beings. And being human beings they must be fallible. They can make mistakes. They can compromise with their own sense of integrity. There might have been moments when they were plagued with irrationality. So no one should ever set oneself as an infallible angel. Even the demigods in mythology have their weaknesses, and these are just human beings.

More than anything else, it is the sanctimonious attitude of some of the anti-corruption protestors that are putting “normal” human beings like me totally off. If these people want to have their support they should first accept that they are as human as all of us.

Even Mahatma Gandhi has written a book called, “My Experiments with Truth.”  In this wonderful book he has frankly accepted some of his moral weaknesses. The Team Anna members should publish their own biographies. They should start measuring themselves against the “comically impossible moral ideal” that they have set before lesser mortals like us.

In the final paragraph of his article, Shekhar Gupta writes:

“The truth is that members of Team Anna are, individually, decent, well-meaning people. But the politics they have constructed is dangerously faulty, and the basic premise it is built on carries the trigger for self-destruction. They have built a highly personalised campaign, basically as if these 790 members of Parliament were responsible for all that is rotten with India. Unless their own past was perfect even by the impossibly high standards they have set for the rest of us, they should have expected a vicious fightback. Enough evidence has now surfaced that this Team Anna is no Team Gandhi. The more outrage it shows in its defence, the more hollow it sounds. The price, indeed, for holier-than-cow arrogance, hypocrisy and hubris.”

Click here to read more of the article.

The top ten signs that you might be a zombie

I have always been of the opinion that majority of people in the world are zombies. If they were not zombies then they would not fall prey to irrational, undemocratic and socialist ideas so easily. How might you realize you're a zombie? Click on this line to find out the top ten signs that you just might be a zombie...

Going green with other people’s money is so easy

The only moral reason for which a government exists is protection of private property rights. It is not the job of the government to start transferring huge amounts of cash to politically correct causes. We are having too many instances where companies or individuals who do not have political connections are being denied a so-called environmental clearance to proceed with their projects.

What makes the top leaders an expert on environment? Have the top leaders taken a special degree in environmentalism from some elite university like – Harvard or Oxford? What about their personal life styles? Do they practise what they preach?

Private companies have made all the major advances in science and technology. It is not government that invented electricity; it is not government that invented the way of transforming the energy in coal or petroleum products into electricity. It is private inventors and entrepreneurs who have brought these things to us. The smartphones that we take for granted today would not be possible without private initiative.

So what about a source of energy that is cleaner and cheaper than coal and petroleum products? These will be discovered by science, and brought to the market by entrepreneurs. Government is not going to bring a cleaner source of energy to us. The top leaders can only sit in their taxpayer funded huge mansions and pontificate all the time, but they have no power to lead us to a better source of energy.

It is not government that moved our civilisation from the bullock-cart era to that of cars and planes. It is entrepreneurs like Henry Ford and others who took all the risk and engineered this amazing change in human society. In a civilised society the government should never have the power to deal with environmental matters. When the government enters the environmental debate, things get politicised and there is ample scope for lobbying and corruption.

A vast majority of people are stupid enough to believe that the government can be a guardian of our environment. Look at our cities. How filthy our roads are? Our cities are filthy because the entities owned by government and funded by taxpayer’s money have a monopoly on keeping it clean. If private entities had been given the same responsibility we would be living in a much cleaner environment.

One of the main reasons behind the soaring inflation that we are having today is the so-called environmentalist policy that we are following. Everyday you hear on TV about some big or small project that can’t go ahead because its permissions are stuck in corridors of power in New Delhi. When a big chunk of our private economy is unable to function, then there is bound to be inflation.

Occupy Wall Street (Hearts) Wall Street

The worst thing about Occupy Wall Street is that it's ruining a good cause: hating Wall Street. Just when opposing Wall Street was gaining momentum, these brain-dead zombies are forcing us to choose between thieving bankers and them.

If the Flea Party were really concerned about the greedy "Wall Street 1 Percent," shifting money around to make themselves richer and everyone else poorer, their No. 1 target should be George Soros.

Click here to read more of this wonderful article. 

Economic Ideas and Their Consequences

The public standing of economics and economists has been declining for some time. In the 1960s and 1970s, economists were seen, and they saw themselves, as the saviors of the economy. They talked of “fine-tuning” the economy, of changing government spending and taxes up and down (this was called fiscal policy) to keep the economy at full employment without inflation. But in the following years, unemployment and inflation grew together.

Click here to  read  more.

Crony Journalism is destroying media’s credibility

It has become fashionable for celeb-speakers on TV to go ballistic about Crony Capitalism or Crony Socialism, but for obvious reasons no one is ready to talk about Crony Journalism. The most glaring example of Crony Journalism lies in the biased coverage of some of the high profile protests in India and abroad.

Look at the way networks are covering the Occupy Wall Street Protests. Most networks are sending out the message that these protests are justified. If everyone in the world gets free healthcare, free education, job guarantees, higher wages (which is what the protesters are demanding), then who will be left to provide these things. Government's legislative powers are not the magic wand to create goods and services.

No one cares to tell the protesters that they are behaving foolishly. Healthcare, education, etc. cannot be created by government's legislation. It is the thought and the hard work of individuals that creates all the good things in life.  But individuals will only use their mind and work hard if they have an incentive. If one group of people demands services for free, then why should the hard working individuals bother to create these services. Atlas will shrug like in Ayn Rand's famous novel - Atlas Shrugged.

Even the coverage of some of the recent high-profile protests in India has been very sub-standard. Hardly any media outlet cares to expose the hidden agenda of these groups. The Crony Journalists have aligned themselves to not just the political establishment in every country, but also to the very large network of well-funded and powerful leftist-liberal institutions, which operate on global level.

Crony Journalism has become a powerful international force. It is the political movement of the elite, who are out of touch with reality. The mainstream media networks are in the grip of a powerful liberal and egalitarian club. The private media networks (which owe their rise to the limited amount of capitalism that we have in the world) have now become the drummer boys of the most absurd kind of socialist and even extreme leftist ideas.

Instead of providing us with unbiased and unadulterated news, the mainstream media keeps spouting politically correct banalities and falsehoods. It almost seems as if the private media networks are no longer being controlled by “real businessmen,” instead their control has passed into the hands of people or groups with an agenda.

We simply can’t trust our high profile editors and talk show hosts any more. How can we trust them when these guys seem so eager to sacrifice truth on the altar of political correctness? There is acute need for more competition in the media space. We need new players in the media space to counter the influence of the Crony Journalists.

Interesting talk about freedom: Judge Napolitano

Are political beliefs genetically influenced?

I have strong reasons to believe that genetics or the biological makeup of the brain might have something to do with political believes. As I look back on my own life, I realise that I have been an objectivist, libertarian, free market believer, even before I knew the meaning of these terms. I used to believe that human freedom is the greatest possible value since I was ten years old.

I have never ever believed that it was someone else’s job to help me in life and provide me with any kind of freebies. You got to work for whatever you can have in life, and if you are not capable of getting what you wish, then that is your personal bad luck. Society cannot be blamed for that.

I started reading books on philosophical and political theories relatively late in my life. But the thing is that I was automatically drown towards the works of Ayn Rand, Mises, Victor Hugo, Aristotle, etc. I can automatically detect people who harbour egalitarian and leftist beliefs and I do my best to avoid them.

The moment I see someone on the TV screen, I can instantly say if this person is speaking from his heart or is an outright repository of leftist-liberal clichés. It has already been proven that genetics plays a role in all kinds of human interaction and makeup. So there is no reason for us to exclude political beliefs and attitudes.

My life is by itself a proof of the fact that genetics and possibly the biological makeup of the brain have a role to play in the political beliefs of any individual. If it is not genetics and the biological make up the brain, then how would I be attracted towards the ideas of freedom and rationalism before I learned anything on political ideology?  There has to be a biological connection to a person’s politics.

The bottom line is that it is possible for us the isolate and identify the genetic or biological anomalies, or the environmental reasons that leads a vast majority of human beings to develop all kinds of absurd political beliefs. There could even be a cure for those infected by the virus of “cloud cuckoo land liberals,” “power hungry lefties,” and “outright idiotic egalitarians.”

The politically un-dead who are currently rampaging across the world’s cities (in the so-called Occupy Wall Street Protests) whining for freebies like free healthcare, education, jobs with higher wages, etc. from government are doing so because they have been infected by the some anomaly in their genes. You are not to be blamed guys, all of you are really sick. Hope you get cured soon.

Capitalism, socialism and democracy by Joseph Schumpeter

Joseph Schumpeter, the author of the famous work, “Capitalism, socialism and democracy,” is one of the very few economists whose ideas make sense to me. The first section of the book is devoted to an analysis and refutation of Marxist thought. Schumpeter agrees with Marx that eventually capitalism will lead to socialism. But he disagrees with Marx on the reasons due to which capitalism will collapse into socialism.

The book - Capitalism, socialism and democracy – also describes Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction. Schumpeter argues that capitalism exists in the state of ferment he dubbed "creative destruction," with spurts of innovation destroying established enterprises and yielding new ones.

He says that the transformation of capitalism into socialism will not be due to any economic crisis; it will be due to the breed of intellectuals who will persistently advocate change in a socialistic direction. In Schumpeter’s lexicon, the term "intellectuals" denotes a class of people who are in a position to come up with critiques of societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and are able to stand up for the interests of strata to which they themselves do not belong.

This definition of intellectuals is so correct. So many such intellectuals, who preach nonsense from the safety and security of their well-guarded million dollar ivory towers, plague the modern world. Joseph Schumpeter theory of capitalism’s eventual collapse into socialism is coming true not just in India but also around the world. In India, the license-permit-quota raj is back with vengeance. The government has started poking its big nose in every sector of the economy.

In USA, a bunch of philistines, who get their moral support from socialist intellectuals, have started the so-called Occupy Wall Street Movement. The protestors demand higher taxes on the rich and all kinds of freebies for a so-called poor class. We are also having copy cat demonstrations around the world. The real purpose of these demonstrations is not to help the poor but to end whatever is left of capitalism around the world.

These protestors don’t even understand the meaning of capitalism. In a capitalist society, the role of government is confined to protecting the property rights of the people and maintaining law and order. People are left alone to conduct their economic affairs as they see fit. In a capitalist society, the government has no right to intervene in the market for picking up winners or losers. The government has no right to bailout or subsidies or cheap loans to business houses.

But the Occupy Wall Street protestors are not calling for an end to governmental interference in economic markets. These retards want to increase the role of government. Many of these protestors can be seen smoking dope and using iPhones and other costly gadgets. They don’t seem to realise that it is not the government that creates and markets the costly gadgets. It is the private companies that create the best things in life.

Joseph Schumpeter was a supporter of capitalism. But he predicted the transformation of capitalism into a shoddy socialism because that is the way the world works. In his book, Capitalism, socialism and democracy, he wrote, “If a doctor predicts that his patient will die presently, this does not mean that he desires it.”

The dictatorship of quack economists

99% of economists in this world are outright quacks. But it is the quack economists who always win the trust of powerful governments and thereby have the chance of messing up the economy and the lives of the ordinary people. A number of these quack economists are able to use their political and social connections to get prestigious international awards conferred upon themselves. Such awards only add to their aura and influence.

When you read the written works of these celebrity economists, you can hardly make any sense out of it. On many occasions you feel like tearing their books into pieces and throwing them into the nearest garbage dump. They write stylishly, but any amount of style cannot turn garbage into gold. When you see them on TV, you realise that these economists are the world’s biggest repositories of leftist-liberal clichés. They are so eager to sacrifice truth on the altar of political correctness.

I have lost much of my faith in the breed of people who call themselves economists. I agree such loss of faith is unfortunate, because economics is a necessary science. But in a world where so many charlatans masquerade as genius economists one can’t avoid loosing faith in the profession.

Snafu - Inflation

This video looks interesting to watch, but it is full of false propaganda. It does not have the truth about inflation.

Inflation in modern society is caused when the ruling elite resorts to printing tonnes of paper money. The governments don't dare to raise the tax levels; people will revolt if the taxes are raised unrealistically.

Hence the powerful elite resorts to a method of indirect taxation, which consists of inflationionary policies.

They print tonnes of worthless paper money, which eats into the savings of the middle class and the poor. So part your and my small savings end up in the bottomless pit owned by the rulers.

Inflation is a deliberate policy of the government to steal our savings. It is a big mistake to call inflation, Private Snafu. Inflation is Governmental Snafu.

Occupy Wall Street's Values Will Destroy the Middle Class

Without capitalism, including even the hampered capitalism we have known, there would be no middle class. Blaming the problems of the middle class on capitalism is like blaming disease on oxygen. "Why, if we couldn't breathe, there would be no possibility of catching disease."

Yes, that's true. If we weren't alive we wouldn't have to worry about dying. But this is the attitude of someone who's suicidal. Let’s hope that America is not that far gone.

There is hope for the middle class, but it's the opposite of what these protestors claim. The middle class should want thriving, profit-making businesses. The only alternative is the stagnation and despair of socialism. Poverty for all? That’s equal, all right. If these protestors want poverty, they’re entitled to it, but they have no right to impose it on the rest of us.

Click here to  read more of this excellent article.

Steve Jobs's Iconic '1984' Ad for Apple

The significance of “i” in iPod, iPhone & iPad

The iPod, iPhone and iPad are tantalizing devices that everyone wants to own. That is one way of looking at them. But it is also possible for us to look at them from the perspective of individualism, the philosophy that puts the “individual” above all those muck-racking dogmas, which preach so-called egalitarian utopia. Perhaps the most important element in the iPod, iPhone and iPad is not their cutting edge technology, or their stylish looks, or their successful marketing strategy, it is the suffix ‘i.’

“i” stands for individualism

Steve Jobs was an individualist. He did not see the Apple users as some kind of cult or mob. He saw them as proud individuals. He looked at them as individual men and women, and he came up with products that could be useful to them. The ‘i’ in his devices is indicative of his individualism; in his own way Jobs was a champion of liberty. Even though the world knows him solely as a very successful entrepreneur, he has also made monumental contribution to the field of ideas.
The iPhone might not have been as successful had it been named “wePhone.” An ‘i’ sounds much more pleasing than a ‘we’ because ‘i’ caters to the rational mind of an individual, whereas ‘we’ has all the connotations of an unthinking mob.

The Fountainhead Syndrome

In many ways Steve Jobs is like Howard Roark, the protagonist in Ayn Rand’s timeless classic, The Fountainhead.

According to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, “He [Jobs] was never driven by a vision of a better world; he was driven by a vision of himself as a person whose decisions guide the world. He wanted to build a device that moved the world forward, that would take people further. He wanted to build a reality that wasn’t there. He wanted to be one of the important ones. He either likes what he’s looking at or he doesn’t. He’s not concerned with what contribution he’s making. He wants to astound himself, for himself.”

Click here to read more.

Third world plays Santa Claus to Uncle Sam’s children

Ann Coulter has written a really interesting article, titled – “Wingless, Bloodsucking and Parasitic: Meet the Flea Party!”

Ann Coulter writes, “Oddly enough for such a respectable-looking group -- a mixture of adolescents looking for a cause, public sector union members, drug dealers, criminals, teenage runaways, people who have been at every protest since the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, people 95 percent of whose hair is concentrated in their ponytails, Andrea Dworkin look-alikes and other average Democrats -- they can't even explain what they're protesting.” Great set of words.

This is true for every part of the world - it is only the richest and the most powerful sections of the population who clamour for subsidies, bailouts and freebies from the government. Sitting in dirt poor India, it is absolutely shocking to watch the ugly spectacle of these rich iPhone-flaunting, flamboyantly attired, lazy Americans whining for subsidised lifestyle during a so-called Occupy Wall Street protest.

There was a time when many “liberty loving” people from all over the world used to have respect for USA because they believed that it was the land of the hard working, brave, enterprising and free people. But now all we can have is contempt. The American dream has soured. The American landscape has turned into a den of whiners.

The visuals from Wall Street showcase groups of elite whiners for subsidised healthcare, subsidised education, subsidised drugs, and perhaps subsidised bottles of Viagra. Uncle Sam is the new Santa Claus. It is amazing that these 20 to 60 year old adolescents who are part of the whining protests continue to believe in Santa Claus.

Only thing is that that Uncle Sam is now bankrupt. Overall national debt of USA is around $14 trillion. Dirt-poor third world countries in Asia and Africa are holding bulk of this debt. America has been successful in exporting its inflation to the entire world. India holds more than $41 billion of this debt. Why is our money being used to fund the lavish lifestyle of rich Americans?

It is a well-known fact that subsidies within India are not well targeted. Instead of helping the poor, the subsidies end up into the pockets of the politically connected rich class. But it is completely atrocious that a country like ours, where millions are forced to live on starvation diets, should be buying American debt.

This is a gigantic scam by itself. According to media reports, India is one of the 15-largest foreign creditors to the US, India's exposure to the United States' ballooning debts is estimated at USD 41 billion, which is higher than the money America owes to countries like France and Australia.

We have so many beggars who are forced to live and die on the streets and yet we are transporting more than $41 billion to USA! This is completely unethical on part of our government. Why should the hard earned money of Indians, who labour for more than 10 hours each day be used to fund the lifestyle of Americans who are already well off!

I have no problem in lending money to an upright and hardworking person (after all, anyone can have hard times), but I am TOTALLY against funding the lavish lifestyle of what appears to be a bunch of lazy, retarded and malicious whiners. These people don’t deserve any financial assistance because they are not prepared to work hard.

Forget the money lying in Swiss bank accounts; our Indian govt. must first of all get our $41 billion back from the land of lazy whiners.

Occupy Wall Street Protests - The dance of economically naïve millionaires

The more I see the “ugly visuals” of these Occupy Wall Street protestors, the more contempt I develop for them. I mean they are asking the govt. for minimum wages, free school education, universal healthcare and job guarantees. Now wages, quality schooling and jobs don’t grow on trees, someone needs to work hard and invest for creating these things.

These protestors even want trade barriers in their country. Welcome to “Swadeshi America.” Perhaps they will ditch their designer jeans and go for hand-woven khadi attire.

Moreover, these protestors at Wall Street are not really poor. They are “obscenely rich” by Indian standards. I am f******* jealous of the designer dresses they wear, the gadgets that they flaunt. They are showing off their costly watches, smartphones and notebooks and they think that they are poor. They are even smoking designer drugs. Idiots are sipping mineral water and coke. Eating burgers by the dozen.

Fools! They should come to India and see for themselves what poverty is really like. They have NO IDEA how degrading, how dehumanizing "real" poverty can be. You got to experience it personally in order to understand that. 

In India we have been enjoying minimum wages, free school education, universal healthcare and job guarantees from our “compassionate government” since independence. That is precisely the reason why this country is so poor. Tens of thousands of people die every year due to starvation, poor healthcare, road accidents and the like. At every street corner in cities, you can find beggars who have nothing to eat, nowhere to live and no future at all. 

But I don’t expect the retarded protestors who are singing, dancing and playing video games during the so-called Occupy Wall Street protests to have any basic economic sense. These guys have never worked hard any day of their live. They have never experienced real poverty. Real poverty is when you have nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep. What do they know of life!

I hope these guys get what they want. Let the USA govt. pass all kinds of stupid laws. The economy will then collapse and these retards will have the chance to experience real poverty.

Poverty, they say, is good for building character. Character – that is what is in short supply in this shoddy gathering at Occupy Wall Street. Let these guys starve for a few days, and they will be able to get hold of some character. We Indians have already built lot of character, all thanks to the mind-numbing amount of poverty that we have experienced due to the policies of our various compassionate governments.

Here is a picture that I downloaded from Lew RockwellBlog.

Occupy Wall Street Should Instead Protest Federal Reserve

Inflation is a “Divine Tool” that God uses to punish fiscally irresponsible governments

These days we are having so much blather in national and international media about just how bad inflation is. Prices have become so high that the common man cannot afford to buy fresh vegetables and pulses. But there is no point in criticising inflation. Inflation is natural phenomenon. It occurs according to the laws of nature, which are as absolute as Newton’s laws of motion.

Just as 2 + 2 will always equal 4, financial irresponsibility on part of the government will always lead to inflation. It is simple mathematics.

Governments deliberately use inflationary policies, like printing hundreds of tonnes of paper money, etc, to steal the hard earned money from the pockets of the hardworking poor and middle class. The plan, in most cases, is to use this stolen money to fund unnecessary wars or so-called social sector schemes, which rather than helping the poor end up massaging the gigantic egos of the ruling elite.

The large army of smooth talking economists that fiscally irresponsible governments tend to employ are totally powerless to change the laws of nature. The Laws of Nature are the physical manifestation of God. You can't bribe God; you can’t negotiate with Him. Inflation cannot be stopped by smooth talk, stupid economic theories, or prayers and pleas. On the basis of laws of nature, inflation always strikes.

Prices of essential commodities shoot up so sharply that there is a massive public outcry. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have wars, irresponsible economic policies and a stable economy at the same time. You can't spend what you don't have.

If we look at the history of last 2000 years, we find that a large number of regimes have been destroyed due to inflation. We have so much history in front of us, yet various governments in the world continue to make the same mistake. They deliberately follow policies that are likely to fuel inflation. A normal street hawker probably knows more about economic theory than most economists.

The intransigent individualist

When Steve Jobs took the stage in October 2001, he was a man resurrected, returned home from a classic hero’s journey, still true to his singular vision, but battle-hardened from 12 years wandering the business wilderness as a castoff from the tribe he founded. He was grayer and leaner, yet still sharp-edged like tempered steel emerging from the fire, himself the sword the journeying hero forges in the great myths. Click here to read more.

China's "Red" Revival

Red is once again the dominant colour in China. Click here.

Did Steve Jobs Hate the State?

Of course, Steve Jobs hated the State. The idea of hating the State comes naturally to every honest and sensible person who values personal liberty. Click here to read this really interesting article.

Poverty is the most lucrative business in the world

In his excellent article, titled “Everyone loves a good poverty business,” published in The Sunday Times of India Swapan Das Gupta says, “Why, it needs to be asked, does India need a Planning Commission? The question is not necessarily related to the obvious redundancy of an institution that was empowered to implement India’s transition from colonial backwardness to a ‘socialistic’ pattern of society. This becomes more relevant in the context of tell-tale evidence that the empirical basis of planning is horribly flawed.”

Why, indeed, does India need a Planning Commission? We have the right to know - why the taxpayers’ money is being used to fund this completely ineffective and money guzzling Planning Commission. Instead of helping the poor, the Planning Commission has become a den of high-profile leftist thinkers whose only job is to keep coming up with “politically correct” economic ideas that not only cause divisions in society, but also ensure that the poor have absolutely no chance of becoming economically self sufficient.

The idea of alleviating poverty in India has become the last refuge of smooth talking scoundrels.

The main problem is that in India we tend to give too much importance to people who flaunt Ivy League certification and prestigious awards from liberal western organisations. We also give too much importance to people who speak in a phoney Harvard or Oxford style English. The Planning Commission is made out of these Ivy League types, who have no practical experience of the world. We need to understand that even a man with Ivy League certification and a phoney Harvard accent can be a perfect jackass. In most cases he is.

We should stop being impressed by Ivy League degrees, Nobel Prizes, and extra smooth (phoney) Harvard style accent. Any idiot, with some connections and a little bit of luck, can get hold of these things.

The Indian economy is not a little Money Plant that grows out of a glass bottle kept on table of the Planning Commission members. The economy is like a vibrant and dense jungle that flourishes only when it is left to grow in its natural state. Any attempt by the Planning Commission members or other govt. entities  to regulate Indian economy will fail, as it should. Swapan Das Gupta is perfectly right in saying that for all these years India has been practising "Voodoo economics." More of what has not worked won’t magically start to work.

Someone should tell the poverty-specialists in this govt. that populism and high life don’t mix.

Shocking News: Govt puts TV channels on tight leash

This shocking news published in today’s Times of India, says, “The government on Friday introduced stricter norms for television channels, putting in jeopardy renewal of licence of those channels that have violated the programme and advertisement code on five occasions or more. The government gives permission to operate a channel for a period of 10 years.” Click here to read rest of the story.

Now it is obvious that the present government in this country is made out of some kind of control freaks. They want to control each and every aspect of our lives. They want to decide what anyone can eat, what he can drink, what kind of political opinions he can be allowed to hold, what kind of entertainments he can have access to and what kind of news related programming he can watch. 

Perhaps someday they will like to pass a law defining how much oxygen we can be allowed to inhale with each breath.

Someone should tell our policy makers that the more they try to control the population, the more the people will rebel. The most stable, admired and successful governments in history are those that allow maximum freedom to the population. Our govt. has proved completely incapable of controlling the various ministries and coalition partners, yet they believe that they can control the TV channels. This is completely ridiculous.

Instead of focussing on TV channels, our power hungry politicians should focus on managing their own house.

Why should the govt. have the power to give license to TV channels? Why should the govt. have the sole right to decide what is not in national interest and what is? Why should govt. have the right to decide what is vulgar and what is in good taste? The govt. is not qualified to take such decisions and it is completely unethical of the ruling establishment to arrogate such powers and responsibilities on themselves.

Complete freedom should be awarded to our TV channels. Yes, there are lot many problems in our TV channels, but with govt. intervention the problems will only get worse. Only way out is to allow complete freedom in the TV market. Once the license-quota-permit raj of the TV space ends, more enterprenuers will start their channels and with a healthy amount of competition the quality will improve.

What Steve Jobs Was, And Wasn't

He was a demanding, mercurial perfectionist. He could be, and often was, an incredible pain in the butt. He was the first technology diva. He needed "enemies" the way a fish needs water. He was more like Howard Roark, the protagonist of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, than he was Thomas Edison.

Click  here to read more.

Funny, lol

What We Owe Steve Jobs

Far from holding up the great producers as moral exemplars, we lump them in with the Al Capones and the Bernie Madoffs as people who must be stopped or at least shackled until they learn to selflessly serve others. Even Jobs was criticized because he devoted his life to Apple rather than philanthropy.

This perverse attitude has led us to deny creative heroes like Jobs the third thing we owe them: freedom. Innovators by definition challenge convention, and it is only freedom that protects their right to do it. When government infringes on freedom by initiating force against producers–by regulating their actions, by controlling their choices, by seizing their wealth–it stifles and ultimately crushes the creative mind.

Jobs was able to thrive because the tech industry has been left relatively free. But what if it had been subject to the same regulatory morass as the automotive industry? What if bureaucrats in the 1970s had started dictating the specifications for making microprocessors, or if they had dictated energy efficiency standards for server farms? It is doubtful we would have ever had the information revolution.

Click here to read more of the article by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins.

What If Steve Jobs Had Chosen Politics Instead of Tech?

In his Stanford commencement speech Steve Jobs had some advice for the graduates that day that could serve our political discourse today:

“Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Click  here to read more.

Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged

What Amanda Knox Tells Us About Justice

Duels, vendettas and other forms of familial justice worked well for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years. The current insanity of modern justice, with its endless, numbing incarceration of tens of millions around the world for nonsensical crimes (for victimless "crimes" like smoking marijuana) would finally subside if a private justice paradigm were to be applied.

Click  here to read more.

A $35 tablet for Indian Students! What an atrocious idea!

The ridiculous idea of offering a $35 tablet to Indian students would not seem as bizarre if we take into account the fact that this is a govt. that expects the hapless “aam admi” to subsist at mere Rs. 32 per day. The top leaders of this govt. expect Indians to lead a substandard life in every possible way. They expect us to live on Rs 32 a day and use a lousy so-called tablet, which is less powerful than the mobile devices we are currently using. How little understanding these leaders have of the needs and aspirations of the people.

The fact that the govt. is totally non-serious about education in India is borne out by the high-profile launch of the low-tech Aakash. Can we even imagine countries like China, Korea, Japan, USA, France and UK foisting such low-tech device like Aakash on their students! In an era when developed countries in the world are teaching their youngsters to race ahead with super iPhones, iPads, Galaxy Tabs, Mac and Dell laptops, India, in keeping with its third world mentality, is doing its best to encumber its students with a technological equivalent of a bullock cart.

Aakash is quite slow, and its touchscreen is not very agile. The tablet has 256MB of RAM and comes with 2GB of internal storage. Well, with low horsepower with its 366MHz processor, all you can have is a “real snail” of the tablet space. What kind of computer related education will students in this country have with a device that is so substandard? As it connects via WiFi, its usefulness in rural areas is seriously compromised. In urban areas students probably have access to better devices.

I am surprised that they are expecting Indian students to pay $35 (About Rs. 1700) for the device. Who would like to own this piece of plastic junk, even if it came for free? It can’t be of any use for students who are used to high-speed surfing and high intensity multimedia applications. If the govt. wants Indian students to have access to best quality software and hardware, then why doesn’t it remove the taxes and duties on such products?

The worse thing about Aakash is that its battery life is only 3 hours (it might turn out to be even less than that). With the power situation in the country being what it is, the poor students who get hold of this device might find it difficult to keep it powered. The people who are behind this fiasco called Aakash should have known that a tablet computer is not only about “price,” it is also about functionality. Aakash does not have any of the features that we have come to expect from a modern tablet, then why are the calling it a tablet? Only because it is rectangular in shape!

At a time when HP is conducting a fire sale of its super-advanced Tablet, the TouchPad, at $99, and Amazon is retailing its brand new tablet, Kindle Fire, at just $199, we are trying to palm off $35 piece of plastic packed with obsolete hardware and software on our students! Give me a break.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Steve Jobs has died at the age of 56. His family, in a statement released by Apple, said Mr. Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family."

The story of Apple co-founder Steven Paul Jobs’ life has been quite a tale. Awesome, as the man himself might say. That tale ended Wednesday. Jobs was 56.

Here is a video of the standout commencement address that Steve Jobs made at Stanford University in 2005.

The conspiracy of politically connected billionaires

The so-called environmentalist movement has gone completely out of control. The politically connected academic elite, the mainstream media, the celebrities and the billionaires have hijacked environmentalist agenda. They have turned environmentalism into an ideological battle. There is not even a figment of science or empirical evidence.

In other words, the environmentalist movement is green on the outside and red on the inside.

Most people in government, academia, foundations and large corporations are environmentalists. Like ancient prophets and saints, these guys think that they have the answers to everything. They live like ancient maharajas and they want the middle class and the poor class to sacrifice the smallest comforts of their life in the name of some environmental mumbo-jumbo.

This so-called “go-no-go” policy of coal mining and industrial development that an ex-environment minister has imposed on this country is one of the reasons behind the slow-down in our economy. Like communism, this green environmentalism has also been imported to India from Europe and USA. If we don’t get rid of this “go-no-go” farce soon, there will be no future for this country.

Why should the environment ministry have the "discretionary power" to classify "go-no-go" areas? Such discretionary powers can lead to corruption in future. At present such powers are leading to lack of development and soaring inflation.

The govt. and the unions are on the same side

The current liberal belief is that we can trust government to protect us by ensuring that laws, regulations, health care delivery, tax policy, fees, education, and so on are fair.  It is difficult to recall an expansion of government power that liberals have been against.

But if government is the protector of the working man, and since public sector workers are employees of the government, then there should be no reason for public sector workers to want or need a union, because the government can be trusted to be fair.

If the liberal premise about the fairness of government were true, then the only workers who don't need union representation are public sector employees.

From these facts it is clear that liberal leaders must not really believe that government has the public worker's best interests at heart.  If public sector employees can't trust the government to be fair in terms of wages and benefits, then why do liberals advocate that we the people trust the government to control more and more of our lives?  They want us to turn over health care, education, regulation, and many of our liberties to the government that they themselves do not trust.

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Click  here to read more.

Hindutva by V D Savarkar

I had read Savarkar’s Hindutva many years ago. Yesterday I started turning the pages of this book once again. This is the most important book on Indian culture. Whenever I have time, I would like to write its full-length review.

Savarkar’s Hindutva is full of insights and perspectives that are far more important than what we have in Discovery of India, which is written by another very important leader. Unfortunately, Savarkar’s work has not been granted its due place in the elite circles of contemporary Indian intellectuals.

Savarkar’s Hindutva can be purchased from here. 

Funny song on "Money"

Who is real John Galt?

So, who is John Galt? He’s the small businessman drowning in the red tape of regulation. He’s the business owner afraid to hire because he doesn’t know what government will throw at him next. He’s the individual who, when asked by government how to fix the economy, had but one thing to say: “Get the hell out of my way!” That’s an idea worth trying.

Click here to read the complete  article.

Bangalore will grow 30 feet under: Krishnarao Jaisim

Interesting views on architecture.  Well, at least it sounds different from what all the copycat architects are doing. 

Property, Freedom and Society | Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Literature as tool for political propaganda

Although literary concerns may seem, on the surface, to be somewhat irrelevant to pressing social or economical issues, great literature almost always has a political or ideological dimension: The works of Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Molière, Cervantès, Voltaire and countless other giants were nourished by their socio-political views and by the ideological conflicts in which they took part.

Given that writers were, and are, often endowed with a certain kind of intellectual prestige and that their opinions tend to weigh heavily in the social discourse, it stands to reason that the elites have sought to orient the literary discourse, through patronage and other means, and to use renowned authors as spokespersons for spreading their ideologies.

However, in contrast to professional music-making or scientific research, the opportunity cost of writing is relatively small, with a low barrier to entry, and it has become comparatively easy, at least since the invention of the printing press, to reach a wide audience through the written medium. Thus, the arrival of the Gutenberg era, while facilitating the spread of information, created significant obstacles to the elites' ability to control the written discourse, a point that has been made before on these pages.

The above quoted lines are from a very interesting article published by The Daily Bell. Click here to read more.

Decide on the Doctor

Shekhar Gupta’s article "Decide on the Doctor" in today’s The Indian Express is of great interest, because it clearly articulates the fact that Shri Manmohan Singh no longer seems capable of leading India’s most powerful cricket team, which is the govt.

Here is an interesting excerpt, “First of all, the Congress has to decide whether it wants to continue with Manmohan Singh as its prime minister. If it doesn’t, it should end his agony now, and appoint a replacement. And if they do, which I presume is the case, they should say so to their rank and file, and even more importantly to the utterly unruly Congress contingent in the Union cabinet, so self-destructively unruly indeed that the only comparison you would find appropriate is the Pakistani cricket team. The party leadership has to then ask all its Shoaib Akhtars (it has a bunch of them compared to Pakistan’s one) to fall in line, or be dropped. No scuttling of cabinet proposals backed by the prime minister, and the political equivalent of capital punishment if anybody is seen undermining his authority (“my conscience would not have allowed it but I was under pressure from the PMO” kind of stuff). You either make sure your prime minister’s writ runs, or people will choose another prime minister. People now have choices, and no patience. And they may not share your self-serving contempt for your opposition.”

If Shekhar Gupta has lost faith in the prime minister, then the game is surely up. Now the party leadership must make arrangements for another game to be played under a different prime minister, who, hopefully for the country, will be capable of bringing about some much needed economic and political reforms.

The editorial piece “The slowdown cloud” in today’s The Indian Express succinctly narrates the story of how the present govt. has failed to deliver on its promise of economic reform. In place of economic reforms we have had a series of populist schemes that are pro-poor only in name, in reality these so-called pro-poor schemes only benefit the corrupt politicians and officials. With unprecedented price rise and lack of proper jobs, life is becoming difficult for the poor and the middle class.

Here is an excerpt from the editorial:

The threats to India’s growth story have become terrifyingly real. Foreign institutional investors, essential to keep funds flowing into much-needed but underfunded infrastructure projects, are fleeing India and heading to other, better-performing Asian markets or to the safe havens that are commodities and precious metals. Even Indian companies capable of investing abroad prefer to do so. India cannot export itself out of this mess, because the destinations for its exports — America and Europe — are in even worse trouble. Nor can domestic demand be relied on, as consumer sentiment collapses, eroded by uncertainty and persistently high inflation. Without an increase in growth prospects, sentiment will not recover; without improved sentiment, high growth will not return. India is in a classic trap.

Interesting Debate on The Daily Show

In new episode of The Daily Show Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart to debate taxes for millionaires and other issues. “We shouldn’t act like returning to the tax rate of the 90s is class warfare on par with Lenin and Marx,” Stewart argued. “I’ll pay the higher tax bracket if they start to cut and watch the dough–that’s fair,” O’Reilly fired back.

The Daily Show
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The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook