Atlas Shrugged in India - 600 million left without electricity

Once again there was power outage in India. According to this Times of India report, more than 600 million were left without power. The energy blackout that we are facing is the direct result of the government's tight control of the energy sector.

The Indian energy sector  is probably the most inefficient and corrupt in the entire world. The energy sector is being destroyed by corruption and a bombardment of paper — of governmental rules, regulations, directives, edicts, commands. The electricity generation industry does not face any “natural” or geological crisis; there is an enormous political one.

By the way, the top ministers and bureaucrats continued to enjoy uninterrupted electricity, while rest of the country suffered. During the current power cut, I was almost expecting to hear, "This is John Galt speaking..." Perhaps there  is a John Galt at  work somewhere. 

Moral corruption is more corrosive than financial corruption: Tavleen Singh

In her new column in The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh writes:


Anna is a simple-minded fellow and so may not be personally aware of such complicated issues but his clever team members must know. So if they have continued to bang on about the Lokpal, knowing that it cannot work, then it is either for reasons of self-aggrandisement or because they are morally corrupt. Moral corruption is more corrosive than financial corruption.


From what I have seen of the activities of some of Anna’s team members, I would like to humbly suggest that they are morally corrupt. I say this because I have seen them lend their names to causes that should be sacred, without being serious about them. In doing this they have defiled such sacrosanct ideas as protecting the environment and fighting the scourge of poverty.


The fight against corruption in public life must be continued but it cannot be fought by fasting-unto-death in Jantar Mantar road. In a year of agitations and hunger strikes, why has Anna’s team not been able to come up with a workable agenda for changes in governance?


As for me, I am totally in agreement with Baba Sahib Ambedkar when it comes to fasts-unto-death. Even in those heady days of the freedom movement when India was fighting to break the shackles of colonial rule, he warned the Mahatma that his hunger strikes bore the seeds of the ‘grammar of anarchy’. He was right.

I agree, it is a good thing that "Anarchy" has flopped in modern India. Modern Indians are obviously more realistic than the Indians of pre-independence generation.

Politics, Money, and Banking | Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe, distinguished fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society, explains the links between politicians, money, and banking, from the point of view of the Rothbardian Austrian School. The introduction is by the late, great Nev Kennard.

Bailouts are anti middle class

Rothbard on Alan Greenspan

In this video, Rothbard says Greenspan had the persuasiveness of a dead mackerel. In Nathaniel Branden's memoir, My Years with Ayn Rand,Branden says that because of his lack of charisma Rand used to call him (behind his back) the undertaker.

Something New Coming Your Way....

Inflation is a Monetary Phenomenon

In his new article published in The Daily Bell, Ron Paul writes, "The true evil of inflation is that newly created money benefits politically favored financial interests, especially banks, on the front end. Over time, however, the net result of monetary inflation is always the devaluation of savings and purchasing power. This devaluation discourages saving, which is the key to capital accumulation and investment in a healthy economy. Inflation also tends to hurt seniors and those living on fixed incomes the most."

Click here to read more...

Perhaps this is how we need to drive in Delhi

Don't Eat Your Dog: The Surprising Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Ed and Ethan

Which is more Important: Creating Wealth or “Giving Back”?

Instead of handing out meals at a soup kitchen or building homes for the homeless, as businesspeople we should focus on creating as much wealth as possible by producing and trading goods and services. This is a far superior way of making everyone in society more prosperous (thus reducing the need for soup kitchens and the problem of homelessness), due to the better and/or cheaper products and services and employment and business opportunities that would ensue. The fact remains: if no wealth is created, there is no money for charity nor time for volunteering. Wealth creation is the central activity of business and businesspeople; charity and volunteering are optional—and they are not a duty.

Click here to read more.

Central Banks around the world of are running out of ideas

In his new article Detlev Schlichter makes many interesting points. He says:

The advocates of ever more ‘stimulus’ are grasping at straws. What else can they do? Their pretty little world-view according to which, in a system of unlimited fiat money, the central bank can always create some additional ‘aggregate demand’ by giving a bit more artificially cheap funding to the banks lies in tatters.

Detlev Schlichter goes on to say:


That monetary policy would finally end in this cul-de-sac is no surprise. It only surprises those who share the mainstream’s simplistic view of monetary stimulus. Phrases such as “the ECB is attempting to unlock the flow of credit in the Eurozone”, are masking the complexity of the true effects of money creation and interest rate manipulation, and they make ongoing monetary stimulus look unduly harmless and straightforwardly positive. Who could object to unlocking credit, to liquefying markets or stimulating activity?


One of the major contributions of Ludwig von Mises’s monetary theory was his proof of the categorical non-neutrality of money. He demonstrated “that changes in purchasing power of money cause prices of different commodities and services to change neither simultaneously nor evenly, and that it is incorrect to maintain that changes in the quantity of money, yield simultaneous and proportional changes in the ‘level’ of prices.”

In the final paragraphs of the article, Detlev Schlichter makes this interesting point:


The point I am making here is this: It is either naïve or a sign of incredible hubris to believe that the central bankers can anticipate the myriad of consequences their monetary interventions will have. To say that they are simply, in aggregate, in the interest of the public is simply incorrect. We are dealing here with a financial bureaucracy that has lost touch with the complexity of economic reality but that has now dug itself such a deep hole that any self-motivated turn-around can safely be ruled out.

The elites are on wrong side of history

Because of the Internet's success, numerous attempts have been made to weaken it and make it less of a problem for the power elite that it is inconveniencing and exposing.

We call the process the Internet Reformation and we're creating a society to formalize support for a free and open Internet among other things. The Internet itself is only one part of a larger inevitable freedom movement that has been stimulated by the Internet Reformation – just as the Reformation itself eventually shifted the parameters of power and authority throughout Europe.

This is surely what the power elite fears today, even though many on the Internet writing for the alternative media maintain that the top elites are implacable and even all-powerful in certain ways.

Click here to read more

Population keeps growing but labor force does not

Demographics suggests the labor force would be growing at a smaller rate, but still growing. Instead, the labor force has stalled for four years. For example: in 2000 it took about 150,000 jobs per month to keep up with birthrate and immigration. In 2007 it took about 125,000 jobs per month. Click here to read more.

Tampa Rally Update

Leonard Peikoff Interview

This guy, Leonard, has gone completely bananas. Too bad for him...

Difference between American and French revolutions

It has become fashionable to equate the French and American revolutions, but they share absolutely nothing beyond the word “revolution.” The American Revolution was a movement based on ideas, painstakingly argued by serious men in the process of creating what would become the freest, most prosperous nation in world history.

The French Revolution was a revolt of the mob. It was the primogenitor of the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler’s Nazi Party, Mao’s cultural revolution, Pol Pot’s slaughter, and America’s periodic mob uprisings from Shays’ rebellion to today’s dirty waifs in the “Occupy Wallstreet” crowd.

Click here to read more

Has God arisen as a particle?

The Daily Bell finds some interesting answers. Click here. 

A poem by Charles Bukowski

What can we do?
at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of courage.
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it’s best at brutality, selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.
what can we do with it, this Humanity?
nothing.
avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious, and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted law to protect itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.
it’s up to you to figure a plan.
I have met nobody who has escaped.
I have met some of the great and famous but they have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within Humanity.
I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and again.
before my death I hope to obtain my life.
— Charles Bukowski

Our system of governance has remained unreformed since colonial times....

In her new column in The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh writes:


To build anything in India, even a toilet in your own house, requires so many complicated permissions and encounters with so many obdurate officials that most people are defeated before they get started. Imagine then what happens to those brave entrepreneurs who dare to build big government projects like dams and highways? There are delays to get permission, then there are delays to get advance payment to buy necessary materials and then there are delays caused by officials who think they have a right to interfere in the laying of every slab of concrete. And then there is the Ministry of Environment.


Has the Prime Minister checked how long it takes to get environmental clearances for a project? Has he checked how many major projects continue to be blocked by this ministry? There would be no need to block anything if the Ministry of Environment could come up with clear rules and measurable standards. This has not happened. Every project is dealt with individually so it can take months and even years before a vital infrastructure project gets clearance.


At the root of these problems is a system of governance that has remained unreformed since colonial times. An official who is a good example of how little has been changed is the collector. It was a post created by the British Raj to collect taxes from us unruly natives and it should have been abolished long ago. But, the collector continues to be the most important official in rural India and usually behaves like a minor potentate. Without his permission even such ordinary things as repairs to the local school are not possible. Why?

Click here to read more.