UID card to tame Corruption

Unique Identity Card is yet another attempt of the government to assert that socialism, and welfarism actually works, and if it is not working than it is because of the corrupt nature of individuals rather than the corrupt nature of system, government is thus hell bent to prevent any corruption involved in its various welfare programs like National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission, Bharat Nirman etc.
The government says that it will set up a UID Authority of India that will provide a unique identity for the targeted population of those welfare schemes and hence, the corruption inherited in such schemes may be reduced. That is, government yet again declines the fact that such welfare schemes are basically impotent and impractical while asserting that if government weave yet another security thread against the individual freedom, the corruption may reduce and things may work better. There is a basic problem in such a viewpoint. At present, government issues many of such identity cards that are being used to insure the proper beneficiary of the welfare schemes run by government. Yet, it is very easy to produce “fake credentials” and identity cards such as “Ration card”, voter ID card etc. So, by providing a UID smart card, that will contain a magnetic flash memory chip to secure the true information about the card holder that may not be duplicated without government officers concern, government thinks that corruption will be reduced, that is, its not the government officers, clerks and “babus” who are corrupt, but the public is corrupt, public provide bribes to the government officials to enjoy the benefits of schemes meant for helping the poor, while the poor as they cannot bribe, suffers. That may be true, yet how will the smart UID change the scenario? We already have a smart card for Driving Licenses since many years, which are no less sophisticated and technically sound than a UID, yet it fails to tame any corruption.

Biometric Identification

UID card for security reasons

Naxalism and Terrorism

Misusage of UID

The governmental and political terrorists can also misuse the UID. The miscreants of MNS or Shivsena Hooligans may use the UID to confirm their victims and harass them. It would be very easy for government police to ‘identify’ innocent Muslims to attack and harass them after any incident like that of Godhra case, and to plan an attack like that of “Best Bakery” in much sophisticated way. After the assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Sikhs were brutalized throughout the India, because of which, many Sikhs tried to save themselves by cutting down their hairs “Juda to Munda Sardar conversion”. That helped many Sikhs to save their lives, but with UID, it would be impossible for any Sikh in such a case to save himself. In a way, UID will be a breach of the freedom of an innocent citizen and he would be an easy target for the government or politically imposed terrorism.
Conclusion: The UID can not increase the competency of government in either the case of security of citizens or the welfare of poor lot. The incompetent government and government officers may waste any amount of money on any such UID card, but I doubt it would help even a bit, yet the economic cost of the UID program is excessively high, that money could have been used for some real welfare purpose. Secondly, the UID will again threaten the individual liberty and government will further start controlling the innocent citizens while it is simply incompetent to catch and control Naxals, Maoists and Islamic terrorists.
“Just as we must not allow terrorists to threaten our lives, we must not allow government to threaten our liberties.” Ron Paul

She doesn't need reservation to be able to work and earn. She knows she can

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition!

Although feminism speaks the language of liberation, self-fulfillment, options, and the removal of barriers, these phrases invariably mean their opposites and disguise an agenda at variance with the ideals of a free society.
Michael Levin

Doctrine of Double Effect

Again, government supporters claim that US forces did not aim to murder those innocents rather those innocents were unavoidably in the region of attack hence they were killed. This is known as Doctrine of Double Effect. It states that, if the injury to the innocent is controllable and proportionate, than only one can attack the culprit without considering the harm to the innocent. One cannot bombard a cricket stadium full of thirty to forty thousand audiences just because one of those audiences is a supposedly high profile terrorist. That is, just in order to encounter one terrorist or tyrant, one cannot jeopardize the life of whole audience of the cricket stadium. At most, one may try to shoot the terrorist with his gun without fearing that his missed shot may kill an innocent. Yet, in case of Iraq invasion or Drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the killing of innocents is obviously wayward and absurd. Many more innocents were killed without any proper success of actually killing or punishing the terrorists.

Government can be the killer under the mask of saviour

Attacks on our own citizens

It is not that a government can only kill the innocents in other countries. Many a times, government does not even flinch away from the possibility of killing its own citizens and that too for their own welfare.
During the Indira Gandhi regime in 1984, when a handful of terrorists lead by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Golden Temple, Indian government ordered attack and firing on the Golden Temple. That act was named as Operation Blue Star that killed Thousands of Innocent people along with Bhindranwale’s supporters. Those innocent people were simple religious people and Indian government actually was supposed to safeguard them. Similarly, many innocents were killed during the formation of Bangladesh by the Pakistani government.
The programmed massacre of Muslims in Gujarat against Narendra Modi’s state Gujarat government after the Godhra attack is yet to be forgotten. The list of fake encounter cases of central and state government police and special task forces keep on increasing month by month and it is all done under the mask of protecting and providing a secure welfare state for the same innocent citizens who are being butchered.
Conclusion: Just like other social welfare policies of government, the war and conflict safety policy of government also fails absurdly and instead of being a welfare state, a government lead state often turns out to be a warfare state, while wars brings no good for any one ever.

Similarly its very important for people who support freedom, liberty and capitalism to understand the operations of a market player. we all are drilled about how to use state as a solution for everything, if there is a possibility that the car manufacturers might make an unsafe car, our statist upbringing immediately kicks in and tells us the statist solution, “Lets have the govt make car safety regulations, after all the govt’s only valid job is to protect life, liberty and property, so that seems to be a proper justified role”, but the truth is this statist solution always causes more problem and deaths than its equivalent free market solution. You will be only and immediately be able to see how undynamic and faulty this solution is when you manage to think like a market operator, rather than a government beaurecrat.

This is why to understand the market and support it properly its important to train yourself in the most important of market’s operations, buying and selling of means of production(aka trading stocks). I know a lot of us are very excited about stock market trading, and those with good money might already be in the market, but if you jump in directly with real money in the market then you might get turned off very quickly by successive losses. That is my I strongly suggest trading with virtual money on real stocks as long as possible. Those who are impatient to start as soon as possible please scroll down to the bottom of the document to click on the best virtual trading website, and join it, but I would highly suggest to read the rest of the article because I attempt explain stock market and its function in as less boring possible.

Stock Market

A stock market in a capitalist society is the brain of the market. Remember that in the most basic level a capitalist society like USA differs from a socialist society like Cuba because the former has a stock market. The whole concept of a socialist society is based on non-private ownership of means of production, and stock market is a place to trade the ownership of means of production.
Lets say if the city of London has a requirement of oranges, city of Tel Aviv has a huge infrastructure to produce those oranges then that means that there is an opportunity to supply oranges to the city of London from Tel Aviv. Any company having the infrastructure, or which starts to establish an infrastructure to buy oranges from Tel Aviv and supply it to London, is doing the right thing, and stock market investors would start appreciating the means of production of this company. The stock price of this company would go up, which means a better credit line for the company and more money flow. This will enable the company to invest in a bigger infrastructure and transport more oranges from Tel Aviv to London.
Similarly, if a company is in the business of producing cup cakes, and a report comes which concludes that having cup cakes is really really harmful to your health, this clearly means that people will now start buying less cupcakes, so the stock owners of that cupcake company will sell their shares, resulting in undervaluing of the stock price of that company(it won’t go down to zero unless company is really going bankrupt, there would still be some sales of cupcakes therefore stock price will just go down and settle to something less).
By correctly identifying the stock prices, the stock market investors earn huge profits in this process. If you come from one of the socialists or quasi-socialist countries like India, and Soviet Russia, you will realize that a stock market works a lot like the central planning commission, it moves resources and capital goods from one venture to the other. Where it needs less to where it needs more. In the above example if at the same time Coffee demand in USA is going down(and it receives huge amount of Coffee from Brazil), then a stock market will start depreciating the value of any Coffee company doing business from Brazil to US, maybe making it get rid of its now excess capital goods(such as cargo airplanes and crew), and the added capital flow to the orange company will enable it to buy more cargo airplanes and crew. In a central planning scenario this thing should have been done exactly be a central planner, where he reallocates the cargo airplanes, from import-export of coffee to oranges, from Brazil-US route to Israel-UK route.

Stock Market is not a casino or a horse racing game

It is shockingly disappointing that a large number of people believe that stock markets are nothing more than places where you gamble with your money. I recently found some individual on an economics chat room who had an opinion about everything, sounded quite smart, but when I asked him what does he think about Stock Markets, or if he thought Stock Markets served any utility or not. His answer was, “I think stock markets harm small businesses”. This is by far the dumbest thing I have heard someone say. Stock Markets are the brains of a market, without them, market cannot function. A casino is a place where everybody has equal odds, and you play for the fun of luck. A casino’s only utility is entertainment, but a stock market is far from being entertaining. But it would be very unfair to not realize why people think so low of stock markets.
The reason why people think Stock Markets are nothing more than Casinos because of the massive uncertainty in the markets. A lot of people invest a lot of money in the markets, and most of their odds are not better than winning on a roulette table. Also there are times when stock market rises at once and falls at once, you might wonder if Stock Markets are all about putting capital at the right method or venture of business, then how come in 2008, 2001, 1987, 1929, the stock market crashed at once. Or why is it that people treat it as gambling tables, after all most people just look at the technical trends, and follow them, most stock market traders don’t worry about the exact business model of a company.
The answer of all these questions comes down to single most important problem bugging all the ‘capitalist’ societies in the world, and that is the Fiat Currency. Due to high inflation, the prices of consumer goods rises really fast, and all the people who want to save their capital, find their capital depleting at a really fast rate. So people are forced to somehow try to keep up with rising consumer prices. Stock market provides some very high returns compared to say fixed deposits or other investment opportunities.
Similarly the massive amounts of regulations on the stock market creates this fog which makes it really hard for real prices to appear. For example short selling(selling without owning the stocks) has a huge set of regulations. Whenever market crashes the government steps in and makes short selling of the major stocks illegal. All this cripples the real functionality of a stock market, and most people end up losing a lot of money.

The Solution

What should you do if you are someone who is interested in stock markets, and who has found the life of a stock market very fascinating? Or you could simply be a capitalism enthusiast who wants to understand the brain of the free markets. Or you think its an evil thing that companies are liable only to their stock holders(there is a big surprise waiting for those who think so).
The solution is simple, start trading in stock markets, but without using real money. There are some very good virtual stock market softwares available, but my personal favorite is Wall Street Survivor. Its a web based stock market game, and it allows you to invest in real stocks and real prices but by using virtual money and virtual portfolio. I really like it because it allows you to create a variety of portfolios in the same account(say you want to try to parallel strategies at once without complicating things too much, for example I have two portfolios on guessing which would be the next bubble, and I invest in two industries, keeping the portfolios separate).

Wall Street Survivor - The best Stock Market Game

Socialism Trickle up Poverty

“I worry that in resolving this financial crisis perhaps we are sowing the seeds of the next crisis…next crisis could be a currency or a fiscal crisis,” Subbarao said.

India is no new to the threat of extreme debt and bankruptcy. India faced the similar situation in 1990 when Indian government was forced to accept liberalization. Obviously, nobody would like to have a repeat of 1990 fiscal crisis. Yet, it is a possibility. To reduce that risk, Indian government strictly needs to control its expenditure and reduce the burden of welfare state, that is, government need to disinvest further.

The Fiscal Crisis of Euro Zone

The evidential repercussions of governmental expenditures and debt burden on the Euro zone countries are a matter of thought for financial world. The crisis began in Greece and is expanding to Spain and Portugal. It would be foolhardy to believe that the crisis will constrain itself to the weaker economies of Europe alone.
In 2008, when Pakistan faced bankruptcy due to its fiscal debt, economist warned that Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Argentina could also slide into a downward spiral towards bankruptcy, and to that list, now we have added Greece, Spain and Portugal. Ex-IMF chief economist Simon Johnson openly stated that the UK should also be considered in the category of nations at the verge of bankruptcy because of huge governmental fiscal deficits. There is no reason to doubt the ex-Chief economist of IMF because of the fact that the euro-zone governments are predominantly welfare states with extreme high fiscal deficits year by year. The budget situation in all European countries is extremely weak with no hope for a manageable budget any soon. The government obviously provides huge welfare benefits for the citizens in shapes of free-education, Universal Health Care systems and other socialistic patterns that obviously increase huge collective wastage of resources produced by citizens.
Simon Jones said, “They seem to show no awareness at all that much of Europe is facing a serious crisis and it’s not limited to Spain, Greece and Portugal, it’s also going to include Ireland. I think Italy is also very much in the line of fire. There’s a very serious crisis inside the Euro zone.”
The only way for these economies to avoid the situation of bankruptcy is to reduce their fiscal deficit to minimal and that is possible only by reducing the governmental expenditures, i.e. by restricting government to very limited or no power to interfere with market.
During the Global Meltdown, when the government of major countries were announcing “economic stimulus” for the market, socialists were claiming how the Market is unable to be free and needs governmental help. I mentioned how the Economical Stimulus are not a Cure it is Venom . The current situation throughout the world is evidential proof for that opinion.
The world is still to learn a simple fact that there is no such thing as a Keynesian free lunch, that government does not produce anything, and whenever it robs individuals of their wealth for the purpose of welfare of society or nation, such crisis evolves to brutalize every individual.

US, the most powerful Borrower

Larry Summer once asked in US Congress “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”
The question signified its strength when Moody’s Investors Service cautioned that the triple A credit rating of the US could not be taken for granted.

President Obama has also dreams of Universal Health-care and Free Education for US citizens.

The long-run projections of the Congressional Budget Office suggest that the US will never again run a balanced budget. That’s right, never.

Such huge national debt increases the fears of default and currency depreciation, and an immediate hyperinflation that push up real interest rates. The higher interest rates drag down the growth further while the private sector also suffers the burden of debt. In addition, to pay back and avoid bankruptcy, government tries to increase revenues by confiscating private property, increasing taxes that in turn dilapidate the private sector completely causing extreme unemployment, poverty, food crisis, riots and complete chaos.
According to International Monetary Fund, the developed countries need to manage their fiscal deficit within a decade in order to avoid defaults. Worst condition of nations under debt is of Japan and UK, than Ireland, Spain, Greece and at sixth place, is US.
Conclusion: The economic stimulus proved out to be venom; the western countries are now in a deep fiscal crisis while India and China are facing the huge inflation problems. The collective welfare statist ideology is wrong at its base and the world need to understand that the only cure for the Market is Freedom from any sort of Governmental interference.
With such huge debt burdens, the governments now need to heed the libertarian urge for free market. Governments need to restrict their welfare programs. There should be no government interference in market. Governments now need to work for reduction of expenditures and reduction of debts.

So what can help to eradicate the poverty?

As per World Bank’s estimates, 60% of Indian population was living in poverty in 1981, during the socialistic regime of Indian government.
Since 1991, India enjoyed the streams of economic liberalization and stepped towards the making of a free society. As a result, the current estimates of World Bank suggests that 42% of the total Indian population now live under the global poverty line of $1.25 per day (PPP). That is quite a big sweep.
Similarly, in China, since the far changing economic reforms and liberalization were made in the late 1970s, the growth fuelled a noteworthy decline in the poverty rate from 64% at the beginning of reform to 10% in 2004.
Obviously, the data suggests that economic reforms and liberalization is the key to the eradication of poverty. Before 1991, the government controlled almost all industries and production sectors of India but after that, step by step liberalization of industries from public sector to private sector took place and the OECD states the result in following words

Annual growth in GDP per capita has accelerated from just 1¼ per cent in the three decades after Independence to 7½ per cent currently, a rate of growth that will double average income in a decade. […] In service sectors where government regulation has been eased significantly or is less burdensome – such as communications, insurance, asset management and information technology – output has grown rapidly, with exports of information technology enabled services particularly strong. In those infrastructure sectors which have been opened to competition, such as telecoms and civil aviation, the private sector has proven to be extremely effective and growth has been phenomenal. – OECD

Similarly, China confronted economic reforms and liberalization in 1978 and now, as of 2005, 70% of China’s GDP is in the private sector. The relatively small public sector is dominated by about 200 large state enterprises concentrating mostly in utilities, heavy industries, and energy resources.

Free Market Entrepreneurship is the Key to riddle of Poverty

happy eating rice

A Balance of Payments crisis in 1991 pushed the country to near bankruptcy. In return for an IMF bailout, gold was transferred to London as collateral, the Rupee devalued and economic reforms were forced upon India. That low point was the catalyst required to transform the economy through badly needed reforms to unshackle the economy. Controls started to be dismantled, tariffs, duties and taxes progressively lowered, state monopolies broken, the economy was opened to trade and investment, private sector enterprise and competition were encouraged and globalisation was slowly embraced. The reforms process continues today and is accepted by all political parties, but the speed is often held hostage by coalition politics and vested interests. – India Report, Astaire Research

Another example of entrepreneurs helping the cause of eradicating poverty is the success of entrepreneurs like Vikram Akula or Irfan Alam.
Irfan Alam an MBA from prestigious IIM-Alhmedabad is the founder and chairman of the SAMMAAN Foundation. His enterprise innovated for the help of the millions of Rickshaw pullers across the country. Most of them are illiterate and poor. Over 90% of them are farm workers who migrate to cities for want of employment at home. They hire rickshaws for which they pay owners Rs 30 to Rs 40 per day and end up with a pittance for themselves.

Highway to Prosperity Highway to Free Market

“All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. ”

The law is supposed to be enforced uniformly, and without any discrimination against the guilty based on their economic and social background.
Yet recently, the Indian Apex Court decided to go against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On Monday, the Supreme Court said that the courts should consider the economic status of a murderer before sentencing him to death penalty of life sentence even in cases of crimes falling in the category of “rare of rarest”.

Quota in Crime

Significance of the Supreme Court Statement

Reservation for the Poor in Crime
The Supreme Court believes that socio-economic factors might not dilute guilt, but they may amount to mitigating circumstances. That is, if a girl walking on road is raped and murdered by a rich tycoon, than he is surely guilty and must be punished in the harshest manner, but if the rapist murderer belongs to middle class, than the punishment should not be that harsh, furthermore, if the rapist belongs to lower-middle class, than the punishment must be further “mitigated” and if the rapist is a poor (there is no definite definition of poor), than the punishment can only be for the name-sake. After all, he is poor, he should have reservation to be morally depraved, and he should be having freedom to rape or murder, steal, or rob.

Should the poor have the right to rape, murder or rob the others?

Consequences of Such Ridiculous Ruling

As now poor have reservation in committing the crime, they can easily innovate and employ themselves in various crimes. Not only they will feel free to commit robbery, theft, rapes or murders for their benefits, they may be employed by the other “richer” criminals to pursue their benefits. Furthermore, any criminal, if he is rich, can easily deal with some poor and pay him a chunk of money to take the responsibility of the crime. The poor will also feel no harm in taking the responsibility of the crime as that will provide him high money and the Supreme Court has already provided him an assurance that his punishment will be much “mitigated”.

Result of Quota in Crime would be an abrupt increase in crime!

Trailing the Law further

Indian politicians always remain hungry for any such populism so that they may divide the society in various fragments; cause them to struggle within and than rule over them. Yet this time, the Apex Court of India has taken the route of populism. No politician could have thought such a new sector to be divided in various sects of society. SC has already announced the reservation for the poor eventually the High Court of various states may announce a similar quota for Muslims in crime too and then being a Muslim will also be a mitigating factor for punishment for a crime. Well, terrorism is also a crime, so if a terrorist is poor, SC suggests that he should not be punished severely, if High Court of West Bengal announces similar mitigating quota for Muslims, then if a terrorist is a Muslim, he will also not be punished severely.
Quota for crime based on economical state has been announced, sooner or later politicians will again install some committee’s recommendation, suggesting that Muslims should also get reservation in crime, after all Muslims are predominantly minority, no less than poor. After that, politicians may further divide the criminals among their various castes as SC criminals, ST criminals or OBC criminals, with various “mitigating” degrees that would certainly be prescribed by the Supreme Court bench of judges. Ultimately, government and law authority have started encouraging the crime and producing the criminals.
Conclusion:: Socialism, or the idea altruism, that is, the obligatory immorality of having “pity” on the poor ultimately leads to the destruction of not only the poor but also of the whole social set-up. Whenever the government or central collective law authority takes such altruistic step, irrespective of their good intentions, the results come out to be devastatingly opposite. The recent statement of Supreme Court to discriminate the criminals based on economical class will certainly increase the crime in society and will further cause deterioration. The best way a society can assert uniform justice is by providing free or privatized legal services.

A panel of “experts” appointed by the Government has recommended raising fuel prices.  The panel, headed by Kirit Parikh,  recommended a hike in domestic LPG by Rs 100 a cylinder and PDS Kerosene by Rs 6 a litre. It is not certain that what the panel called for will be implemented. Rangarajan Committee and the Chaturvedi Committee reports in the past went unimplemented.  Many newspapers reported that the panel is for deregulating fuel prices. It is not at all evident that a Government orchestrated hike in prices would be a genuine deregulation. If these goods are underpriced, certainly, the hike would be a welcome move. A hike in prices will certainly reduce fuel subsidy burden.

The findings of the panel, it is said, will be unpalatable to the government battling inflation. An increase in fuel prices, however, can’t cause a general rise in prices. Only an increase in money supply would lead to “price inflation”. If fuel prices rise, people will cut down consumption of fuel or other goods. There will not be an increase in aggregate demand. There will be no “cascading effect on food prices”. When subsidies to maintain low fuel prices are removed, the prices of other goods might come down. It will also reduce the fiscal deficit. (A subsidy of over Rs 71,000 crores was given in 2008-2009, at the expense of the innocent, long-suffering tax payer.) Price controls, needless to mention, are not a solution to price rise. Government enforced price controls to deal with price rise, as several economists have noted, is like “trying to hold down expanding pressure in a boiler by manipulating the needle in the boiler’s pressure gauge”.

Unfortunately, in India, the prices of fuels and fertilizers are administered by the Government. It should be obvious that no bureaucrat has the necessary information to set the prices of these goods. Lacking profit-loss signals, the prices set by the government would only be arbitrary. It is true that sometimes the market sets the price higher or lower than necessary to clear the market, but no one has the wisdom to correct these discrepancies. The market, left to itself will set this right. If fuel prices are higher than justified, it will send out the signal that it is profitable to produce fuel. More people will enter the market. The supply of fuel will rise. This will bring down the prices. If fuel is priced lower, producers will get the signal that it is not profitable to produce it. Some producers will leave the market. Soon prices will move towards a level which will clear the market. The market is self regulating.

It is important to recognize how the profit mechanism coordinates the market if we are to understand the harmful effects of price controls. Usually, price controls are thought of as a way to curb excess profits. But, in the market there is a tendency towards equalization of profits in all sectors. No sector can be more profitable than any other in the long run. If a sector is more profitable, there will be excess investment in two forms. One, more people will invest I the sector. At the same time, people already involved in the sector will plough back the “excessive” profits.

Government price fixing has harmful, unintended consequences. If the government sets the prices below the market level, there will be chronic shortage. Such a policy fails to take in account why prices are higher. Prices can be high only when there is an increase in money supply or a decrease in supply of goods. Price controls do nothing to cure inflation, which is purely a monetary phenomenon. When prices are set low, less people will produce the goods and the shortage becomes more problematic. The product disappears from the market, and there will be immense pressure on the Government to raise prices, if it is to cure the shortage. If the Government sets the price above the market level, it would lead to unsaleable surplus.

It is true that if the Government gets out of the price fixing business, there would be a sudden rise in prices. It might be painful to most people. But such short term pain is much better than the chaos price controls create. Shortages and unsaleable surpluses are just two such consequence of price fixing. There are several other consequences. Price controls create black markets. Customers become a menace to sellers. The quality of service comes down tremendously. People will have to resort to means of production which are expensive. There will be hoarding and delays in production. People will waste time standing in queues and searching for products. Price controls lead to further controls, and may ultimately lead to socialism, which will entirely wreck the economy. In short, Government price fixing creates chaos.

Read more on it “Reason of Price Rise and Consequences of Price Control”

The Ministry of Home affairs, Government of India, is on the way to amend the Arms and ammunitions policy. The document issued by MHA says “Proliferation of arms and ammunition in the country disrupt the social order and development.” How true is it? As in many other issues, the conventional wisdom could be wrong. India has very strict gun control laws. In India, people were prevented from bearing arms by the British under Lord Lytton as Viceroy through the Arms act of 1878 after the mutiny of 1857. Though the Arms act, 1858 was repealed in 1959, Arms Act, 1959 was put in place, supplemented by the Arms Rules, 1962. As a result, there was improvement in several development indicators, after Independence, but crime rates in India have gone up several times, mostly in urban areas.

With all these gun control laws, we were not able to prevent the terrorist attacks in 2008, Mumbai. A reporter in the location was caught saying he wished he had a gun instead of a camera. Only people loyal to the British were allowed to possess arms. Many freedom fighters were opposed to this rule. Even Mahatma Gandhi opined in his Autobiography:”Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest. “I do believe that when there is only a choice between cowardice and violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless victim to her own dishonor.”

Proponents of gun control usually argue that gun rights will lead to high crime rates. Firstly, a criminal is a person who violates the law. Is it logical to assume that such a violator will obey gun control laws? A criminal planning to attempt a murder won’t think “Oh, I am sorry. I don’t have a gun. So, I am not going to do this!” In one way or the other, he will get hold of a gun or some other powerful weapon. Vikram Kona writes: “There are around 40 million illegal small arms in circulation in India. Most of them are either illegally smuggled in or manufactured in the illegal cottage industries. Criminals never apply for licenses, nor do they spend a fortune to buy illegal guns. They get them cheaply and easily on the black market, and use them against law abiding citizens with impunity.” Gun control would only disarm innocent, law abiding citizens. Secondly, there is no empirical evidence to prove that gun rights lead to severe crimes. Quite the contrary, in fact! Nations with the highest crime rates are the ones with the strictest gun control laws. The low crime rate of Switzerland is illuminating. Violent crime skyrocketed after gun measures were prohibited in Australia in the last 90’s. When Washington D.C. enacted a ban on handguns, homicide rate rose 200%, while the U.S. rate rose 12%. Often, it is argued that Gun controls are the reason for the low crime rate in UK. There are two points to be noted here. Crime rates were extremely low in UK, even before the hand gun ban. Crime rate rocketed after the ban. As it is said, “Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York.” A study by the US Department of Justice found that there were 40 percent more muggings in England, and burglary rates were almost 100 percent higher than in the United States.

It follows from the philosophy of self-ownership and the right to own property that people have the right to defend their lives and property- If necessary, by force. If so, people should have the right to bear arms. It goes without saying that people should be held accountable for their actions too. But, it makes no sense to punish a person before the criminal act is performed. It is absurd to prevent some people from being armed simply because there are people who use guns for wrong purposes. Why should ones rights be determined by the actions of others? Should a person be prevented from driving an automobile as others drive recklessly? (People killed by their own guns are an extremely rare minority) Charles Reese perceptively noted: “To believe that guns cause crime is as stupid as believing that hammers and saws cause houses. Cars and doctors kill a lot more people than firearms, but nobody wants to ban them.” There is even an NRA slogan: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

Not for a single moment am I saying that gun rights will prevent crimes. But, people will have a more chance of protecting themselves if they are free to defend themselves. Murderers, thieves and terrorists would think twice before attacking their victims if there is a chance that they are armed. Women and physically weak people could be made strong only through gun rights. It’s ridiculous to expect policemen to be omnipresent. Defending oneself is a skill which anyone can acquire.

It should also be said that a ban of guns won’t eliminate guns from the society. There will always be people who get hold of guns, just like people have access to drugs despite of strict penalty. Such laws can only be enforced selectively. Almost always, people who are not in good terms with the authorities will be punished. The real intention of the people in power is to increase their power through disarming people. Gun control is the greatest threat to individual liberty.

Changing views of Climatologists

The stratospheric vapour is easing out Global Warming

The Growing Glaciers

Despite all hullabaloo of global warming, the glaciers are growing all around the world. How is that possible that IPCC issues an unauthentic report about the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers, while the scientists from other group make a documentary about how the Himalayan glaciers are ever increasing since the last three decades?
Here is a list of 12 glaciers that have not heard the news about Global warming. They are growing and growing fast.
It is a fact that the fake calls of apocalyptic dangers of global warming are not going to pay the socialist set of environmentalists any success. Yet, it would also be wrong to say that climate is not changing, climate is always changing and so do the human beings and other life forms. We evolve with time we change.
Professor Ian Plimer (University of Adelaide) in his book “Heaven an Earth” explains why CO2 cannot be a cause of global warming; here is a transcript of his scientifically recognized book Heaven and Earth.
Despite the 21st century decrease in global temperature, we are perpetually warned of dangerous global warming. Every evening one can see a disturbing documentary over some news channel showing some absurd claims (just like that of IPCC claims of disappearing Himalayan glaciers etc.) all these environmentalists and green activists obviously want us to believe that if we try to live a happy, healthy prosperous life, we will be no better than the devil ready to cause havoc on earth. Obviously, they want the governments to control us and force us to sacrifice ourselves, our progress for the greater cause of saving the environment from the alleged threat of global warming.

Alternative solutions for alleged global warming

In the book Super Freakonomics the author argues that even if CO2 is causing global warming and if global warming is a real threat, then also it is not necessary that governments all around the world need to enforce draconian laws and cuts in carbon dioxide emission that would cost many trillions of dollars and will force the poor to be poorer. Rather some better geo-engineering solutions can be adopted to keep the earth cool despite the increased concentration of green house gases in the atmosphere.
Just like the present water vapor in the stratosphere can actually cause the globe to cool down irrespective of increased concentration of carbon dioxide, engineers can pump sulphur dioxide in stratosphere by a suspended hose using helium balloons. There can be numerous ways to actually control any global warming if it is occurring at any dangerous rate, but the fact is, since the 21st century, the earth is cooling off.
The environmentalists knows that it would be hard for them to contend at the issue of global warming because the evidences are totally against them and hence they are playing the new trick. Now days, the catastrophe lovers does not shout for Global Warming, rather they call for Climate Change. Climate change is a reality, climate keep changing since ever and forever. Mainstream economists, along with scientists and engineers, are increasingly joining in the climate change debate as technical experts, with the prospects of lucrative funding ultimately paid for through coercive taxation. The evolution of the climate change debate mirrors the almost universal support of economists as expert technical advisers for central banking and Keynesian policy prescriptions such as Cap and Trade policy etc.
Conclusion: Global warming is gradually proving out to be another fake call of the socialists just to dishearten the freedom loving individuals and to force common public to suffer under governmental duress and keep thinking that freedom is sinful and progress is evil. We need to save ourselves from such unholy misguiding tirade of socialist environmentalists, economists and media persons who are trying to baffle public to enforce governmental control over their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Update: A good article against Global warming fraud in “Open” : http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/international/the-hottest-hoax-in-the-world

Indian Environment Minister Jairam ramesh says:: There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am all for climate science but not for climate evangelism. I think people misused the IPCC report,” Ramesh told a news channel here.
Stressing that the IPCC’s weakness was that it didn’t do original research and derives assessments from published literature, the minister announced a climate change panel for India. Economic Times

I wrote this ‘controversial’ article Was Gandhi a Libertarian? last month which had many positive and belligerently negative responses from the readers as well as the other RFL team members. The question which came up again and again(Gandhi was asked this during in his lifetime as well), which I unfortunately couldn’t answer satisfactorily. In fact I haven’t seen anyone answer that question satisfactorily. The question is, how would Gandhian philosophy help the Jews in Nazi Germany. What could have Jews in the Nazi Germany have done consistent to Non-violence principle to deter Nazis.

This argument seems to be like the lynchpin of Gandhian philosophy. Gandhi himself wasn’t very informed of the situation in the Nazi Germany. So even his own answer is not sufficient in my opinion. Upon being asked about the Nazi persecution of Jews, Gandhi answered:

If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy […] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.

This answer is very unpopular in the western world. Gandhi is called anti-semite(try typing the terms Gandhi and Jews in your favorite search engine and see what shows up in results). The question almost always asked is “How do you think Jews in Nazi Germany should have followed the philosophy of non-violence, the Jews were slaughtered in millions without any resistance anyway. In fact the task of the Nazis would have been much more easier had they just gone to the gas chambers peacefully”

I really had to think a lot about the possible solution of this issue. What I came up with was simple, the person who asks the above question actually doesn’t really understand Gandhian method. He confuses Gandhism with non-violence, but it is really important to differentiate between the two. Not all non-violence is Gandhism. Nor all civil disobedience is Gandhism. If few people want to bring Socialism(which is an inherently violent philosophy) through non-violent civil diobedience, they may or may not succeed for a short period of time, but in long term they will fail, because they are not being a Satyagrahi.

As I wrote in my previous article on Gandhian philosophy, what Gandhi managed to do was to remove the the color of righteousness from a morally wrong aggressor. If a thief steals something from someone, and then tries to be all non-violent when the person tries to take back his property through violence, then that’s not Gandhism. This is why Gandhi coined the term ‘Satyagraha’, because civil disobedience does not capture the essense of Gandhian philosophy.

Lets come back to the original question, what could Jews have done as they were standing in front of the gas chambers, consistent with the Gandhian philosophy. The answer would be NOTHING. They could not have done anything as they stood in front of the gas chambers, that is not the time to become Gandhist, its just too late. Then what is the right application of Gandhian philosophy in case of Jews in Nazi Germany? The answer is simple, the Jews in Germany should have done Satyagraha long before they were shipped to the concentration camps.

What Jews should have done is the moment Hitler gave the order that the Jews must stop owning all the businesses, the Jewish businessmen should have done Satyagraha against it. The moment the government took away the guns from the people in Nazi Germany they should have started Satyagraha against it. The moment Hitler ordered all the Jews to get registered and move to the ghettos the jews should have started Satyagraha against it. There are two possible outcomes of this situation:

1. The German government backs out and allows Jewish businessmen to continue doing businesses, allow people to own guns, give up trying to register and move Jews to ghettos, which solves our problem but is highly unlikely, knowing what we know about the history.
2. The Germany government orders shooting of the Jewish Satyagrahis or forcefully ship them to the concentration camps.

We don’t have to worry about the first outcome, so we will just discuss the second. There are some historical facts you must know about the Nazi Germany, at that particular time nobody in the world knew about the concentration camps. These gas chambers and concentration camps were not publicly known until the war ended. The only news about such atrocity were regarded as mere rumor and war gossip. When Hitler forced Germans to give up their guns, it wasn’t foreseen by anyone that he is disarming the Jewish people in some diabolical plot to eventually have his ‘Final Solution’. I am not saying that the Jews walked gladly into the concentration camps, but all I am saying is had Jewish businessmen not followed the Nazi instructions, had Jews not given up their guns so gladly for the ‘peace’ in Germany, had the Jewish people not registered and moved to the Ghettos, but instead refused to follow the orders from the exact point where they were living their lives exactly how they wanted, they would have been able to expose the Nazis WAY EARLIER, and that exposure would have been the most effective thing to do to fight against the Nazis.

When the news spread about how the Nazis shot 500 Jewish businessmen because they refused to stop owning businesses, or that they sent 1000 people to places from where they were never seen just for refusing to turn over their weapons, or that German soldiers shot 20 families inside their homes in Warsaw who refused to move to the ghettos or registered, this would have uncovered the truth of the Nazi Germany. This would have shown Jews what was coming up for them. A lot of jewish people would have still died, no doubt about that. In fact I can’t even say if more jews or less jews would die in this scenario, either way the number of people killed by the Nazis would have been much much less. It would have mobilized people against the Nazi Germany. Remember, Nazi Germany did not look as monsterous as it looks now to us. Imagine Nazi Germany just as Germany who is invading its neighboring countries without all the holocaust stuff. This is what Allies thought they were fighting during Second World War.

Conclusion

Gandhian philosophy is not applicable for the Jews already standing in front of the firing squad or gas ovens. The correct application of Gandhian philosophy is on the day when the German government first aggressed against them, when the German government wanted to take away their guns, when the German government wanted to them to move to ghettos, when the Germany government wanted them to move to concentration camps. As the aggression of Germany government increased against the Jews, the time to do anything slipped away with every new aggression. We are facing the same situation here, we trade our liberties for temporary security or peace. The UK government orders every citizen to give up their guns, and the British follow the orders, after all who wants to risk getting arrested, so people fool themselves that this will help in maintaining law and order, what they are doing is laying the ground work for another possible Hitler. Yeah the current UK government may not do anything like what Hitler did, but trust me, the new Hitler will not be racist(it won’t be Nick Griffin of British Nationalist Party, it won’t be the Klan association in US, and it won’t be Bal Thakarey in India), whomsoever it would be, you wouldn’t be able to expect him.

Today US government is installing checkpoints across the border to look for illegal immigrants. Indian government is creating a national database of all citizens and every citizen have an ID card. Whatever reasons given for these things, however rational these actions may sound, the fact is you are giving up your liberties! Once you have given up your civil liberties they are much more difficult for you to get them back. Do not give in to evil! Lets say you live in India and you think we cannot allow Indian citizens to have guns otherwise we will have a gun culture like we have in America (where our kids are shooting each other in schools). The thing is, if China attacks in India again or any foreign government for that matter, tries to disable our government and military, we will lose so many lives and property that few disturbed kids shooting each other will sound such a fair deal to the possible resistance Indian citizens could have done to a foreign invasion.

What is a Right!

The term “Rights” is a moral political term, Right is defined as a definite course of behavior of Individuals in a society that is sanctioned, proper, allowed, a privilege to be respected by all others and if anybody violates any individual “Right”, he is wrong, immoral, unsanctioned, evil, a criminal.
Now, if education is a right, then anybody arguing that Education cannot be free, education cannot be a privilege, education cannot be a right is obviously a criminal, an evil-doer, and that creates a certain anomaly, a serious contradiction with the term Right. As per the viewpoint of Individual sovereignty and free citizenship in a society, our only rights are the rights to life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness. That is, we are not born with a right to a trip to visit Taj Mahal, or a dinner at Hotel Taj or a cosmetic surgery or a degree in aeronautical engineering. Why cannot we have such rights? We cannot have such rights because the Individual Rights in a free society does not impose any obligation on other people except that of a negative obligation to leave the individual alone, to not to interfere with his life, to not to exploit his Rights. The Individual Rights guarantees you the freedom and chance to work and put efforts for what you want, rights are not to be given to you without any effort by somebody else. That is, you do not have a right to be fed, to be clothed, or to have a house, a car, an AC etc. Although, you have proper right to work and earn your living but you also have complete freedom to use your earning according to your wishes, you have a right to pursue your happiness. More clearly saying, one has the right to act and to keep the fruits of his actions, to produce and to keep his products or to trade them to others if he prefers. However, he has no right over the actions and products of others, except on the terms of which they voluntarily agree. That is, we all have a right to have a mutually beneficial deal voluntarily. Similarly, the right to the pursuit of happiness guarantees you the freedom and right to act to pursue your happiness and to be happy, to keep the results of your actions. It does not guarantee that other people will make you happy or will try to make you happy. If one’s desire for something imposes a duty on others to satisfy his desire, then the others have no choice in their life. They are merely slaves. One’s right to happiness at the expense of others means that the others become rightless slaves. Your right for anything at other’s expense means that the others become your rightless slaves.

The Immorality of Current Politicians

Just in order to gain a vote bank, politicians distorts the meaning of right. They say that you are entitled for something because it exists and you want it. You do not need to work for it or earn it; government should provide it to you. The question arises, from where will the government get it? What will the government do to the free individuals and their individual rights to make it possible to shower free gifts, free lunch, free education, free health-care etc on you?

There are no free lunches, but there are lunches being paid for by somebody else.

Failure of Government

Often government is considered as obligatory for the working of a society, yet, the more perfect and free a society is, the less it needs a government to govern it. A free society obviously governs itself and provides enough free domains for each individual the right to self govern. All the specific laws of any society or country are basically the very natural laws based on the rational mutual self-interests of the individuals involved. All the laws of trades and commerce with respect to intercourse of individuals or different groups of individuals are based on laws of mutual and reciprocal self-interest. Individuals or groups of free individuals are tend to follow such natural laws of peace and prosperity not because of fear of any formal government, but because of the inherent mutual benefits and profits they are seeking for.
It is quite obvious that if a society is left free, and each individual of that society is provided complete freedom to pursue his progress and happiness, there seldom will be a need of any governing authority. Yet how often is the case where various operations of government destroy the natural peace and mutually beneficial state of free society?
If one look back at the riots and tumults that happened in India at various times, he will find out that government did not want any of those riots, but the government itself was the generating cause. Instead of consolidating the society, government divided it; it deprived the society of its natural cohesion and engendered discontent and disorder. That is, the government itself became the cause of chaos. The riots of 1948 were not because of any misgivings between Hindus or Muslims, both of them were living peacefully in India since hundreds of years, those riots occurred because of governmental want of divide and rule. The bloody conflict of Kashmir is not because of some Islamic group of militants, it is because of the want of two governments to control a peace of land and rule over the people living there. The militants of Punjab demanding for Khalistan were not inspired for any better cause of Sikh community, rather they were looking for making another coercive government, the 1984 riots against Sikh’s again were not because of any sect of society, but they happened because of the impulsiveness of government. The emergency period and all the killings in that period again were because of the government. The opening of Babri Mosque gate was obviously a political step of the government that infuriated the society and became the cause of Hindu-Muslim riots, Babri mosque was demolished because of aspirations of government, and whole society suffered the consequential riots and killings. The burning of Godhra train was again a consequence of the division that the government and the aspirants of government created and that became the cause to further Gujarat violence.
Overall, there seldom occurs a riot or act of violence within the free individuals of a free society, but whenever a self-imposed government intends to interfere within the society; it becomes the cause of riots, tumults, destruction and violence.
The various acts of government, tax-impositions, caste reservations, reservations based on religion etc ultimately divides the society and creates an environment of dissatisfaction an frustration that ultimately leads to violence in various forms and to avoid that, government again tend to divide the society further and deprive it of the natural strength and mutually beneficial state a free and self-governed society may achieve. The recent case of Telangana struggle is also nothing but an example of governmental act going sour, and the very infamous Mumbai riots against the people of UP and Bihar are also nothing but the ill-effects of governmental ill-policies and the war-mongering character of the political aspirants.
What good a farmer ploughing his land will find in leaving his peaceful pursuit of prosperity and happiness and going for a war against a farmer of other religion, state or country ploughing his own land? Why will a manufacturer of a certain religion, caste, state or country wager a war against the manufacturer of another religion, caste, state or country? Does any such war, riot or struggle adds up any acre of land for that farmer, does it increases the productive capacity of the manufacturer, does such wars and tumults and bloodshed increases the venturing probabilities of any entrepreneur or enterprise? No, it adds nothing for any common man, it do no good for any common folk, rather, all such wars, riots, strikes and tumults deprives them of their peaceful pursuit of happiness, their basic right of freedom and security. Though this reasoning is good for a society or a nation and its people to avoid and hate wars, and try to maintain love an peace to pursue their progress, yet it is not so for the government. A society earns nothing from divisions, wars, strikes, tumults and riots, yet a government earns a lot. War is the game of government and the nation and public are the pawns.
In spite of all these depressing and destructive acts of government, the individuals keep striving for their progress, for their living. No matter how high inflation may go, the poor man seeks out a way to feed his children. It is obviously a wonderful attribute of the society that in spite of being ruined and ruled by the government keeps providing enough aid for the individual constituent to survive the harshness and inhumanity of the government.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil, in its worst state, an intolerable one. Thomas Paine

I, a libertine, was very much interested in the communist politics in my young adulthood, as that appeared to be the only party which was addressing the real issues and moving away from cast and religion. Many of our friends came to join the party, but soon became disillusioned not because the party was proposing communism, which we did not like, rather because, it was going in the same direction as the others. But all those people from the previous generation, who wanted to vote on economic basis, had no option but to vote for them, and it is sad, for their demise proves that the field for true libertine philosophies is almost non-existent and is violently opposed by the present parties.
Now, the Indian Nation identity is very much limited to that of being born in this country to a mother and father who are Indians. And hence, the rate of emergence of separatist movement is increasing every year, and the government has to bribe to keep the nation integrated. Perhaps, someday, the identity shall be established on economic and philosophical terms, and citizenship by birth be abolished in favour of citizenship by choice. But then, what would limit the boundaries of such a state? A global mega state brought about without the use of arms, perhaps!

Her bones are brittle. Her skin is like ‘papier mache’ stretched over a skeleton. Her wrists are twisted inwards; her fingers are bent and fisted towards her palms, resulting in growing nails tearing into the flesh very often. Her teeth are decayed and giving her pain. Food is mashed and given to her in semi-solid form. She is in a persistent vegetative state.

She has a right to live, should she be punished for that right? How human is it to force her to suffer all the pain regularly? Does the “right to live” include the “right to die”?

The right to Live

Freedom is so little understood in this “land of the free” that it is often confused with its opposite.

Current norms of Right to Life

India is considered as a free nation, a land of free individuals.
Freedom is so little understood in this “land of the free” that it is often confused with its opposite. The current example of Shanbaug is evidence to that prevailing confusion. The Apex court of India that negated the pleas of termination of pregnancy of mentally retarded girl resulting from a rape at Nari Niketan in Chandigarh and a similar plea from a Mumbai couple for terminating a diseased fetus , raised questions against the plea of Shanbaug to terminate her own life. The objection was obsolete and rhetoric. ‘‘Do you mean right to life includes right to die?’’
In no way a man’s right to dignified life can be alienated from his proper right to die. If the society or legal codes of society rule over the individual moral code of life, than it means that the individual is not free and certainly have no sovereignty, rather the individual is mere a subject of legal socio-political norms of collective society.
The Apex Court of India now has accepted the plea of Shanbaug to be debated at Supreme Court. The question is why should the Apex Court be considered as more powerful than the individual’s own right to self-sovereignty and Freedom?
Most probably, Apex-court may dictate a directive to discuss the provision of certain amendment in IPC to include the provision of Physician Assisted Suicide; they may subject it to a public constitutional debate. The Supreme Court may totally reject the plea to voluntary suicide too. Yet, if Apex Court accepts Shanbaug’s plea, as doctors have told her there is no chance of any improvement in her state, will it be any positive step towards Individual Freedom? Will the Supreme Court of Free India ever realize that Indians are not a subject of rule of Supreme Court or national government rather they are entitled to individual sovereignty and a dignified life?

In no way a man’s right to dignified life can be alienated from his proper right to die.

Economical Aspects of Euthanasia

Since last 36 years, government hospital is “force-feeding” Shanbaug, keeping her alive with permanent care, which technology has made an option in an overwhelming number of hospitalized cases. It is not the only case and it requires resources that someone must relinquish in order to make it possible. That is, Government is forcing a person to keep living miserably with no dignity against her will like a slave, while the same government is exceptionally unable to provide any proper medical treatment or help to millions of other Indians who often suffers health hazards and deaths because of lack of medical facilities. How proper it is to waste resources and money on simply forcing and enslaving a person who by her own will want to die, at the expense of misery and poverty of millions of other person who may need the welfare health resources desperately?
No matter how much Indian government spent on people like Shanbaug, they will remain vegetative and unwilling to live, they will keep suffering and feeling like encaged, enslaved, undignified things for governmental medical experiments, no better than rats and dogs. Obviously, we the tax-payers are being robbed for such inhuman acts.
In absence of government control over health care, the decision of life or death of Shanbaug would have been in her own hands. Had government not been paying for her hospital care, perhaps interested individuals would have been willing to contribute to her care. As long as private individuals were voluntarily giving of their funds to keep her alive, it would have been much more difficult for a court to order her feeding tube disconnected. However, because the state is paying for it, ultimately, life and death decisions is to come from a high arbitrary government power. Neither Shanbaug nor her close relatives have any say in that, they may keep pleading like miserable beggars for mercy and humanity to the Supreme Court.

Conclusion:

Right to a dignified life is a fundamental moral right that confirms the right to die itself. If right to life is left not as Individual freedom but as a subject of governmental legal whims of lawyers, magistrates and physicians, than it simply means that Individual is not free even to decide for his life, it would certainly be a breach of his right to life. Moreover, by means of coercive tax-collection and universal health-care, Government again breaches the individual’s fundamental right to dignified life at one hand; on the other hand, it is huge wastage of very limited and scarce medical resources.

The society considers income inequality as a curse upon itself. In a general argument between a ‘Capitalist’ and a ‘Socialist’, or a ‘Liberal’ and a ‘Conservative’, generally the Socialist/Liberal individual accuses free market or Capitalism of creating economic inequality in the society. A general example given is of US society where top 1% of the people own 40% of the wealth in US(or a variation of the statistics). This makes the people who stand for free market and capitalism generally go on a defensive by either attacking the statistics, or by comparing the worst person in a ‘seemingly’ capitalist society like United States being better than most average or well rich individuals in a seemingly socialist or an equal society like North Korea and Cuba.

My point here is not to argue whether the statistics is correct or not or to argue whether poor people in United States are better than poor people in Cuba, but to see whether ‘inequality’ is a negative attribute of a society on its own.

Society with an all knowing Superman

Imagine a society where there is one human being which knows each and everything. Consider him as knowledgable as God. He knows how much exactly its going to rain or snow, how much wheat is going to be produced, how much metal is there in a gold mine, and when its going to become uneconomical to dig more gold. He knows everything, if you ask him what is the best job you could do, he could even tell you that. He has all these information of the time till he dies. In a free market society this man will end up owning everything in the world. There will be no investors in the stock market but only him, he could plan the resources in such a way that it gives him maximum profit. He pulls out capital from a oil company exactly when the oil extraction will not be economical anymore and invests in alternate energy. He shorts the shares of the companies the moment its CEO tries to be dishonest or to cook the books. He bursts the bubbles and lifts up the recessions by investing in such time. Overall he owns everything in the world. Everybody works for him now.

The question which comes now ‘Is this a terrible society to live in?’, or ‘Is there something wrong with this society?’. Initial reactions would be, ‘Of course, this is a horrible society to live in, one employer and he owns everything. You can never become rich in this society. He will be consuming everything.’. But give it a little bit more thought. What this guy has managed to do is eliminate the risk from the society. There is no risk. When you start a business, you see a demand and you see a supply, and you hope to match the supply and demand and hope to undertake the leftover of that operation. In this society, all demands which can be met by supplies are already been met by this guy.

People of city A want a train to the city B, but they don’t really wanna pay enough money which facilitates the operations of a train, so they use buses instead. The day people of city A get enough fed up and decide that they would be willing to pay enough money for a ticket of this train, this Superman sends his men who start to build a railway line between city A and city B. Sure Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and all the successful Stock market Investors and businessmen would not wanna live in this economy, but common people like you and me are much better off in this city than we are in our current situations.

Imagine there are no shortages of wheat and rice, because this Superman who has the insight of demand/supply fluctuations always buys/sells the wheat and rice in such a way that maximum people are able to buy maximum amount of rice all the time. Imagine there is no stock market crash which proceeded 9/11 because this guy has already smoothed it out. Imagine no real estate bubble because when people overvalued the houses, this guy shorted them.

Is this society better?

You see the reason why the people of this society would be so much better than our current society because there is no risk in this society. Sure someone might say that you can never dream of starting a business and becoming a billionaire, well don’t forget this is a hypothetical society where we are presuming this superman knows everything. We dream over the possibilities. We don’t dream that we will go to school tomorrow, because we are pretty sure we are going to school tommorrow like every day(though we may dream of NOT going to school tommorrow for the possibility of a rain storm or something). Imagine it to be like this, on a roulette table, some people win and some people lose. If you told everyone the outcome of the game, the people who lose will never play the game, and the people who will win, now have nothing left to win from. Roulette is a zero sum game and real life is not, but in our example, if you play knowing that you will lose, you still lose and nothing changes(lets say you decide to run an airplane service from City A to B whereas they don’t really wanna pay that much, so now you lose all your money by investing in it). If you are correct on your entrepreneurship decision, and you wanna run a railway line from City A to B, you will be either beaten to it by the super investor and your train will run in a loss, or if you are really lucky you may beat the super investor to it.

Even if he lived in a socialist society, you will have to make him the central planner, performing the same functions as he did in a free market economy.

The point is that although this society may not be as thrilling to live in as our current society, it will have a lot less poverty. Except for that superman guy everybody else would be more or less equally rich.

Society with real life men

In our society there is no such human being who knows each and everything about the economy. Nobody can really be that accurate, so that situation is highly unrealistic. But it tells us something, it tells us that inequality of wealth isn’t really a objectively bad or good thing. Sure if in North Korea if Kim Jong-Il is the richest man and his family owns everything and everybody else is terribly poor then that sure is a bad kind fo inequality, but for economies with private ownership of means of production(countries with stock market), if the stock investors are the richest people then that isn’t neccessarily bad thing. It would be a bad thing if they made all their money through government coercion, like being a politician’s relative who knows which property will be picked up for Olympics stadiusm etc etc.

Conclusion

Inequality figures on their own are completely useless piece of infromation. They don’t convey any information. Someone supporting equality, or someone being egalitarian as in someone desiring an equal society does not say anything about them. Although whether someone supports use of violence(like supporting welfare and income redistribution schemes) or just social movement for voluntary charity is a completely different issue. Most economists in America support income redistribution and welfare programs. General trend was that the more elite institution they were affiliated from the more they supported redistribution. In an earlier article I explained why Hollywood is so leftist, probably the similar mentality affects the economists.

Inflation

In order to hide the evil result of government interventions, it becomes necessary for the government to play with its own issued “Fiat Currency” to manipulate the illusionary GDP figures. As a result, poor people become further poor while government keep emphasizing on the increased GDP rates. When a common man asks, how is that possible that with increase in GDP, poverty is also increasing? He gets the answer that although GDP is increasing at a fixed positive rate (Indian GDP is supposed to be 7%); the prices are increasing at much higher rate. Government than stress that although Gross Domestic Product is appreciable, but inflation is the cause of concern. When government decides the prices and inflationary rate, why is it increasing? Terms like Gross Domestic Product or National Domestic Product has no meaningful relation with productivity of market. When government introduces new currency either by printing currency, purchasing bonds, manipulating interest rates, or by announcing bailouts and help packages, those who use the money at first (obviously, the rich), may get benefits, but the same money becomes the reason of Inflation (Price Rise) and Poverty. No government takes responsibility of Poverty though.

Minimum Wages

Minimum wage law is commonly known as the saviour of poor and unskilled minority workers. What are its real effects? Minimum wage law forces employer to pay workers no less than Rs80/- per day. At a higher wage, more workers seek employment, but the employer suffers loss of income and hence desires fewer workers to employ. It is simple, if price of sugar will increase, one will use lesser sugar, if price of labour will increase, one will wish to employ lesser workers. In addition, when one can employ a better and skilled worker at say Rs100, why will he employ an unskilled workers at Rs 80/-? That is, the chances of employment for the poor become further less and he is forced to absurd poverty. On the other hand, because of general decrease in will to employ people, even the skilled labour suffers unemployment. Without employment, unskilled worker never gets a chance to work and improve his skills. Thus, he remains without work with any chance to gain any skills. He may choose to beg or be a robber. Obviously, unemployment increases crime rate too, further causing problems to poor.
Thusly, Minimum wage law is compulsory unemployment, reduction in production and it is an incentive to crimes in society.
Furthermore, employers, knowing demand for employment is more, can afford to discriminate between workers. They may employ only the workers of their own caste or religion, as they will have to give Rs80/- to whosoever they employ. Thus, minimum wage law creates caste and religious tensions, hence further crime in society.

Government Health Care

only the people of the poorest section that suffers lack of medical services

Higher Education

As explained above, Government has a unique fetish to control the Higher education sector. Universities and higher colleges get massive government funding via tax-payers. Seldom has a poor kid gone to higher education. On the other hand, among the rich, it is customary to graduate, no matter they many of them never learns anything and even if they learn, they never uses it ever. While the poor, because of government intervention in education sector, suffers even a scarcity of good and cheap primary education.

Denial to earn an honest living

Government surely causes poverty through its interventions in market, yet government let the poor to earn a proper living, Government is not stopping any poor person to work hard and make fortunes, is it? Yes, government strictly denies the poor to earn honest living by enforcing various barring laws like permits, licenses, regulations, bureaucratic hurdles, zoning laws etc. A rich person can simply bribe the government official and start making money through his business, a poor man even cannot get enough land to open his tea stall nearby a main road. He will have to bribe the police constable, the municipality officials and many more. Thus, by stamping out potential competition from small business, government serves the big business of rich people. On the other hand, the poor again suffers unemployment, as they can not pertain to self-employment. Thus, they find only two possible ways for them, either to be a beggar, or to be some sort of criminal.

Way to Oligarchy

Government control over market is the reason of all types of corruption. In a free market, if a person want to accomplish a project, he need to pay the exact price that the project will cost, not more, nor less. Under government, the person can simply bribe the politicians and bureaucrats to favour him by employing certain policies to reduce the cost of his project. Thus, government control over market always turns out to be oligarchic in nature where some politicians and rich businessmen makes a cartel to maintain the monopoly and control the poor public.

Conclusion:

As one can see, not only the aforementioned government interventions but any form of government intervention in market destroys the natural order and ability of the free market to reduce poverty and create peace and prosperity. By means of cost control , government actually increases the prices of necessary commodities while production and supply reduces vastly, hence further causing poverty.
Whenever in whatever way government intervenes with market, it creates chaos resulting in wastage of scarce resources, unemployment, and reduced productivity. As a matter of fact, although politicians propagandize their political motives as to help and serve the public and poor society, the government actually is the worst enemy of poor and whatever way it intervenes with Market, it does so just to hurt and inflict poor further.
Hence, in order to really help the poor and let India progress, government needs to leave the Market Free. As free market will reduce the employment rate to zero, (human labour is scarce resource) productivity will increase and poverty will reduce.
No person able to produce and earn a good honest living will choose to be a criminal or beggar.
That will surely reduce the extremes of poverty and hence will reduce the crime rate too.

Noble Laureate Obama, A Pacifist

Mahatma Gandhi on Wars

As Obama reverberates himself as being a disciple of Gandhi, we should look at Gandhi’s attitude about Wars. Gandhi ji was obviously against staging any war, he was a supporter of Non-violence, yet there was not a war that he did not support. He supported all the wars in his life time. The apostle of peace Gandhi himself supported British in the Boer War, Zulu War, WW1, WW2.
In 1914, Gandhi himself joined British army as volunteer for the Ambulance corp. to serve the injured Indian and British soldiers at Zulu war. One may understand his compassion for the suffering of soldiers; he was not taking part in active violence.
Yet, in April 1918, Mahatma Gandhi urged Indian youth to take part in British army as war recruits. Perhaps to show his support for the Empire and help his case for India’s independence, he deemed it necessary to take part in the war. He might have considered it as pacifist way of non-violence, that is rather than fighting against the British rulers, let the Indian youth fight for the British Empire and in turn demand or beg independence as reward. It should be mentioned that while he openly demanded Indian youths to help British army in World War1, he felt aghast when some Indian youth tried to protest against British brutality on Indians “violently” and because of that, he took his Non-cooperation movement back in 1922. Obviously, Gandhi was strictly against any form of violence against British Empire by Indians, yet he was ready to recruit Indian youths to kill enemies of British empire, including the Zulu protesters. For Gandhi, the most necessary peace was, peace of Indians against British Empire.
For Gandhi, the pacifist form of war in order to establish and sustain peace was non-violent, hence although he urged Indian youths to fight and die in battle grounds for British Empire, he also maintained that Indian youths must not fight against British rulers in India, because that would be direct violence, and that was not acceptable to Gandhi. Why was Gandhi ready to recruit Indian youths to “co-operate” with British Army in Imperial wars, while he himself was launching the Non-cooperation movement?
During the WW2 again, Pacifist Mahatma Gandhi again favored offering Indian moral support to British army in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Obviously, it seemed right decision as Nazi Germany obviously was violent. Yet, when other leaders of India objected Indian youth’s inclusion in British war, Gandhi declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom, while that freedom was denied to India itself. As the war progressed, Gandhi drafted a resolution demanding for British to Quit India. Obviously, his pacifist support for British army during the wars became the saddle of deal for Indian independence. Gandhi realized that British Empire would be exhausted after the two consecutive world wars and hence he declared that even if some Indians directly fight violently against British Empire, he would not take his Quit India demand this time as he did after the World War1.
He knew it was the ripe time to force exhausted British Empire to Quit India.
Thus, it can be seen that if Obama mentions that he took his inspirations from Mahatma Gandhi, he does not sound hypocrite or wrong.

Changing standards of Noble peace prize community

Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for Noble Peace prize many a times, but he was rejected every time. The last time Gandhi was nominated, the Noble prize committee rejected Gandhi because of his known support for Indo-Pak war.
Based on a telegram from Reuters, The Times, on September 27, 1947, under the headline “Mr. Gandhi on ‘war’ with Pakistan” reported:

“Mr. Gandhi told his prayer meeting to-night that, though he had always opposed all warfare, if there was no other way of securing justice from Pakistan and if Pakistan persistently refused to see its proved error and continued to minimise it, the Indian Union Government would have to go to war against it. No one wanted war, but he could never advise anyone to put up with injustice. If all Hindus were annihilated for a just cause, he would not mind. If there was war, the Hindus in Pakistan could not be fifth columnists. If their loyalty lay not with Pakistan, they should leave it. Similarly Muslims whose loyalty was with Pakistan should not stay in the Indian Union.”

That became the reason for Gandhi’s rejection for Noble price of peace.
Yet now, when every body is familiar with Obama’s support for Afghanistan war, when Obama himself argues and justifies his decision to escalate combat against Afghanistan on the platform while receiving the Noble price, nobody really think that he should not get a Noble because his support to wars.
Maybe now, the Noble Committee agrees that War is necessary for maintaining peace and that preventive war are a part of establishment of peace. Obviously, this is a change in the attitude. Gandhi was rejected the Noble for his support to war against Pakistan in order to keep peace, while Obama has been given Noble despite of his support to war at Afghanistan to keep peace.

How Gandhian Idea would help Afghanistan Situation?

Pacifism of Gandhi suggest that the native Afghans should openly help US troops in order to fight against Taliban and Osama Bin Laden and after the end of Taliban and Osama Bin Laden, the Afghans should peaceful demand evacuation of US troops from Afghanistan. That is the appropriate way and it will ensure the non-violence of Afghans supporting US army against Taliban. Gandhi might have urged Afghan youth to recruit themselves along with US troops to fight against Taliban. A Gandhian may request Indian government too, to help US army to fight against Taliban as a “pre-emptive non-violent measure to maintain peace.”

Libertarian Idea on Pre-emptive Wars

Unlike Pacifists, a libertarian does not believe in preventive wars. A libertarian cannot support an attack on a nation or a person on the name of defensive necessity. The right to self-defense does not mean to attack first in order to remove any chances of being under attack. Libertarian sense of Self-Defense necessarily means No use of Violence at first but full right to defend yourself within your limits if you are being attacked. An Indian libertarian might not have thought of fighting for British Empire and than to argue for his own independence. Rather he would have preferred to fight against the British Empire, as they were the invaders, attackers because self-defense is not a right, it is basically a duty of a freedom lover, a Libertarian, or a Libertarian might have simply adopted non-cooperation in all accounts, including no-operation for British Empire in their wars too.
Unlike a pacifist Gandhian, a libertarian will oppose Obama’s decision to increase troops in Afghanistan and will demand a sudden end to all war fronts, just like Ron Paul did during his famous Libertarian speech “What If” in assembly — 

Law: The rule of conduct and the mechanism for applying those rules

The topic of private arbitration has been covered on Reason For Liberty before, but the question is what sort of incentives does socialization of justice and security provide to a peoples? How is this different from those of custom law and privatized defense?

Private Law

There is much historical precedence for law without the state. Anglo-Saxon customs law was used up until the invasions of the Normans and other Germanic people. The laws being based on customs and individual consent, first off, they were not violated very often to begin with. If they were, why was it that if the defendant were convicted, he would submit to the judgment? Social ostracism, yes. But more importantly, the law was based on reciprocity of defense and individual and property rights. Crimes were considered not “crimes again humanity”,  “the nation,” “the king,” or “the People” but only as one individual committing a crime against another. Generally, there was some sort of economic restitution paid as opposed to capital punishment and the like. William C Wooldridge mentions one medieval example in Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man:

Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows, and their power over his goods, proved if anything more effective than physical coercion. Take John of Homing, who made his living marketing wholesale quantities of fish. When John sold a lot of herring on the representation that it conformed to a three-barrel sample, but which, his fellow merchants found, was actually mixed with “sticklebacks and putrid herring,” he made good the deficiency on pain of economic ostracism.

If you are interested in Bollywood movies then I suggest Bulandi starring Rajanikant, where he plays the role of the village judge, and he punishes a rapist to be out of the village for 18 years and marry the girl he raped(which is a horrible Indian mentality that the solution of a rape is marrying the victim to her rapist), and that osctracization was a worthy punishment.

Why did these “barbarians” not resort to killing often? Because they had more to gain from the mutual defense that person would provide after they had suffered their punishment then from any imagined idea of something being brought to “Justice” by taking a criminals life. If the defendant did not meet his obligation, the plaintiff had the right to kill him. So, each person submitted to the law not only because they were generally accepted social mores, but because if you did not submit, you were kept outside of the protection of the fellows in your group. Should someone harm you in any way, you alone will have to defend yourself(and your opinion alone, as a criminal, has no credence).

The Law Merchant, established in the 11th century, was also a stateless judicial system. They were extremely speedy because as most people were traveling merchants, they needed the courts to decide immediately so as not to incur extra economic hardships. This was based on economic transfers, all parties had entered into direct and voluntary contracts which established a moral and legal duty, and both parties roles were reversible: buyers become sellers and vice-versa. If the accused party does not heed the rulings and compensate the aggrieved, they would no longer be traded with, which also meant, if he was traded with, there would be nothing stopping any one from harming them in a transaction.

Again, we see a mutual benefit. People responded to the economic and security incentives by not committing the crime, and if they did, obeying the judgments because it would harm them economically; leave them defenseless against attacks both by people inside a certain legal system and outside; and general social ostracism since it was all based customs and commerce. From the actual judicial perspective, you would

1. lose your position as an arbiter if you were not just and
2. then be brought to trial for your tort against whomever you were unjust.

Another interesting fact is, in the administration of justice in historically private law, there is either the absence of a fee or a nominal one. Other examples of private law societies include the Kapaku of Papau New Guinea, many Native American tribes, Medieval Iceland and Ireland.

Public Law

From Common Law in England, we eventually got to what we have today — the civil and criminal law system. Each step that was taken in our travel from common law to authoritarian law was taken to consolidate power and money to the king and politically strong interest groups. Eventually, as now happens, criminal law became a matter of the “King’s Peace”. When once, if a crime was committed, the defendant paid the plaintiff and the settled the disputes locally, eventually the king started sending out representatives to make sure every group administered justice properly, and collected a fee when disputes were settled and a fee if the courts allowed a dispute to be settled outside of the court; if the defendant one, he paid a fee and if the accuser won, he paid a fee for wasting the king’s time. Being in the justice system is now a for-profit system based on politics.

As opposed to customs law where everybody agrees on the rules because they are customs, the State legal system is a law that comes from the top and works it way down. That means that there is less and less consensus among the people, more things become crimes due to special interest lobbying, and the cost of enforcement is higher because it is not agreed upon by the majority of people that it should be a crime.

Lets look at what sort of incentives this system has given us.

For all of the victimless crimes out there, we have a massive amount of lawyers prosecuting people for harming their own bodies — through drug and prostitution laws. Lawyers and defense attorneys have an incentive to prosecute as much as possible because it will further their career. Johnny gets a hooker. Who is hurt? Nobody. If the state finds out about it, we have to pay minimally for the

1. The district attorney
2. A grand jury of 23 people to indict and
3. A defense lawyer for the defendant and
4. A trial jury to find them guilty or innocent.

Should the trial jury find them guilty we pay for housing, food, rehabilitation programs, a GED program, and maybe job training through the correctional system.
This gives a huge incentive for those in the state system, defense attorneys, police, correctional officers, as well as those with special interests who want their morality impressed upon people a huge incentive to lobby for these victimless crime laws. After pressuring congress to pass them, they no longer have to deal with the burden of the costs incurred by enforcing such laws. As usual, the third-party paying system gives us an over-abundance of laws and criminals. Lawyers, since they get paid by the hour, have a very good reason to drag cases out as long as possible.

What about the courts themselves? They are free to everybody. We have back logs of cases that go for miles because people bring things to court more than they otherwise would because, again, people do not incur the costs. How do we divide the time? First come, first serve — so, I get caught smoking pot and a week later, your daughter is killed. If this were a private system, you would probably have the ability to get your case brought to the forefront through monetary compensation. But not in the public system.

Your daughter is killed and it takes months to present the case because we have a backlog of petty and/or victimless crimes. What happens? The criminal gets a plea-bargain, also stated as, you get less than you otherwise would have because all of our tax money goes into prosecuting pot-smokers. How about immunity? If a criminal agrees to give testimony against another criminal, they cannot have charges pressed against them about anything that they talk about. This says, it is okay to be a criminal if you also are not loyal.

The overuse of police is the most obvious. Again, because it is done on a first come, first serve basis, and the people using the police do not incur the costs of their call, it is totally abused. First off, people will call the police because of “noise pollution”. You have a party at your house and the cop comes, but really you weren’t that loud and anyhow, whose business is that? While the cop is on this call, there are real crimes happening that they now cannot attend to because your neighbor likes to eat his meal quietly. The police also work for the same people that the courts do. What happens when a police officer commits a crime? If he even gets brought to trial, and he probably won’t, he more than likely will not be convicted and if he is, it will be a much less harsh sentence than it otherwise would be. This creates a group of people who do not have to abide by the law.

And for the plaintiff? Well, whatever crime has been done to you, first you have to hire a lawyer, then you have to wait months and months for it to go to trial. Let’s say the criminal doesn’t have much money, so then your taxes are going to provide defense for him. They try to get a plea bargain to keep it out of court. You don’t want to accept that so you bring him to court. The process goes on for months and months and keep in mind, on top of your own legal fees and through taxes part of the criminals, your taxes are also going to running the entire court system. Then, he goes to jail and you have to help pay for the rest of his life but that is all. You get nothing in return for your effort, no justice is served unless paying for his room and board is the prize that you should be considered awarded.

Why capital punishment?

Rarely, because the State took over the legal system, were people killed because of crimes. Why was this? Criminals had to pay restitution with their own money or their own work if they didn’t have it, meaning the injustice was rectified. When it got to the point where that did not happen in criminal cases as now happens — when the court system gets paid, the lawyers gets paid, the police get paid — but the person who the crime was committed against gets nothing in the way of compensation, they want something to happen. Although we do it less and less often, the system that arose was taking the criminals life.

Conclusion

Instead of creating a system where law and justice prevail and the needs of people are met to their highest possible consensus, the State becoming the legal system has de-harmonized the organization of society, created perverse incentives for criminals and those that are part of the system, and created disincentives for those harmed to actually pursue justice because of the negative cost-benefit.

“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”
- One of the last notes left behind by Gandhi in 1948, expressing his deepest social thought.

Gandhi and Radical Egalitarianism

“The State represents violence in a concentrated and organised form. The individual has a soul but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned away from violence to which it owes its very existence”. — Mahatma Gandhi

Yet, was Mahatma Gandhi supporting the idea of freedom of the individual, the smallest minority, to decide for his self and his pursuit of good and happiness?
Was Mahatma Gandhi an existentialist, individualist, supporter of Individual rights and ability to be free and independent to rule and decide for his own life? Was Mahatma Gandhi a Libertarian? No, he was not, his idea of “organized anarchy” constitute a meaningful government and bureaucracy.
Based on Indian ethos and values, Gandhi added some powerful features for containing consumption and promoting social justice and equity. These are:
1) Village governments in which the village assembly controls resources and decision-making;
2) Decentralised production systems to curb distress migration to urban centres;
3) Self-sustaining local economies providing resilience to regional and global economic turbulence;
4) A low expense clean election system;
5) National governments accountable to local governance as a check against arrogance of the state;
6) Industry as trusteeship of the people, reinvesting in production of goods and services and not indulging in ostentatious consumption; and
7) Religions integrated as a positive force at the grassroots level.
Gandhi was not a Libertarian; rather he was a socialist, a deep rooted supporter of the philosophy of Kant, the very basis of Marxism and Socialism. He was not an Individualist, nor he was supporter of Lockean law of homestead and property rights, he was not capitalist. Yet, he did not want the majority to rule over government and dictate for what is good or what is bad. In a sense, Gandhi was Minarchist, yet was he an Objectivist?
Who if not the majority elected government be the dictator for the individual to learn and act for what is good or beautiful for all?
According to Gandhi ji, materialism was corrupt and despicable thus, he was against the theory of capitalism, which gains its roots from the Lockean principles of Property rights. Gandhi ji also supported Marxism and defined class competition as the evil of society, he was a radical egalitarian and hence he considered the theory of Division of Labour as a poison to society.
According to Gandhi ji, one should not be self-righteous, self-dependent and self-interested while performing any action, rather, before acting, one must consider whether his act would be of any good for the poorest, weakest person one knows. That is, no one should be free to decide for his own pursuit of happiness, rather he should consider and chase the happiness of the poorest and weakest person one knows. Gandhi ji dreamed of the rule of weaklings and deprived, where the stronger and better workers, producers, creators are willfully subjected to serve the weakest, most depraved person one knows. Obviously, Ahimsa was his second most important mantra, as he knew that stronger could not be enforced to serve the weaker by means of violence, rather it could be done only by means of democratically renouncing self-interest, self-reliance, selfishness. Gandhi ji was the saint of selflessness. He wanted every one to devote his life willfully and peacefully with utmost devotion, for the improvement and goodness of the weakest of the person by means of Trusteeship .
Argumentatively, if every one becomes as spiritual as Gandhi was and determines to be selfless, always willing and acting only to serve the good of the Most poor and weak person he knows, it would be very easy to make the dream of Egalitarianism to be true. If every strong and better person were working willfully to fulfill the good of not his self, but of the poorest person, the materialistic, capitalistic, or individualistic difference between the stronger or weaker would be nil. For this, he proposed the idea of Trusteeship .
Gandhi ji’s Talisman, which we Indians have been indoctrinated throughout our student life, is actually the mystical potion of spiritual socialism that tends everyone to willfully and peacefully accept his duty to serve the poorest person one knows. Gandhi ji simply declined the importance of Individual life, and his right to pursue his happiness, his good, rather he inspired everyone to willfully accept the servitude of the weakest person one knows and to devote his actions for the goodwill of the poorest person.
Here comes the undeniable hypocrisy and psychological illness. How can one be selfless? How can one devote himself to think before acting, not his good, his profit, but the good of the other, the poorest? Gandhi ji’s talisman becomes a psychological poison for an individual because he naturally is selfish and tends to serve his own good. Gandhi ji’s talisman enforces him philosophically to consider himself a wrong-doer.
Conclusion: Gandhi was a Radical Egalitarian , his philosophical idea was socialism, yet he was a supporter of anarchism and opposed majority rule of state government. He was proponent of Non violence, yet, he wanted to destroy class differences and hence Division of Labour and capitalism but peacefully through spiritual indoctrinations. If capitalism and Individual freedom can be sacrificed for the cause of socialism, than one may call Gandhi a libertarian, otherwise he was not a Libertarian.

I am inviting those people who consider themselves as owners today to act as trustees, i.e., owners, not in their own right, but owners in the right of those whom they have exploited.
Supposing I have come by a fair amount of wealth—either by way of legacy, or by means of trade and industry—I must know that all that wealth does not belong to me; what belongs to me is the right to an honourable livelihood, no better than that enjoyed by millions of others. The rest of my wealth belongs to the community and must be used for the welfare of the community. Mahatma Gandhi

Contrary to what a lot of people in west think about India and Gandhi, I know that not everybody in India likes Gandhi. In fact I grew up hating Gandhi because I was so much indoctrinated in statism that although the State tries its best to preach Gandhism, the obvious disjunct between being loyal to a state and being Gandhian pacifist makes no sense. Its really a funny thing that on 2nd of October each year, the government celebrates Gandhi’s birthday and Gandhian philosophy by prohibiting sale of liquor all across the nation, you might as well celebrate Valentine’s day by hanging all the intercaste lovers, Buddha’s birthday by drinking animal blood, and Channukka by saluting to Hitler. Even more funnier fact, recently someone filed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court of India, requesting to make insulting Gandhi illegal and any individual who insults Gandhi be thrown in prison. People just don’t understand what Gandhian philosophy is all about.

Now when I finally understood the libertarian philosophy and the principle of non-initiation of aggression, the question which really bugs me is how do we get the liberty which we so much deserve. Its impossible to physically fight the state, its so big, and not just that, it has the most legitimacy that even though they could do the worst things to the humanity, it will all be seen in the good light of justice. I have been closely following the fight for achieving liberty in our lifetime going on in New Hampshire by the members of Free State Project. Its because of my desire to figure out the most effective way to fight the state, I have been forced to reconsider Gandhian philosophy in a new light of libertarianism.

The question in front of us is, how do we fight the mammoth in front of us. The problem isn’t only on defeating a powerful enemy, but how to eliminate a righteous enemy. Of course the state isn’t right, but it has the color of righteousness. The people believe it to be right, and just people believing that state is being excessive doesn’t solve our problems, or motivates people against the state. There are many people who believe in conspiracies regarding US government behind the 9/11 attacks, but if you ask them if should we eliminate state or eliminating the state would be a good idea to solve the problem of an evil force from our lives, most of them will answer “No, we just need to CHANGE the people in the system”.

We all realize that even if we had bigger guns than state, we could still not kill the spirit of the state, it will rise again. People would want to recreate the state. So we get this feeling that the state cannot be defeated with violence, and using violence against the state sounds like the worst possible method to fight it, but then the libertarian philosophy comes into the picture which says that its acceptable to respond to aggression with (same amounts of)aggression and not many of us really believe that if a robber comes to our house and wants to rape your wife, then allowing him to rape your wife and then turning your daughter in too, will change his mind in any way.

We realize that responding to a common thief with aggression makes sense, but responding to state with aggression does not make any sense. How is that? Is this an inconsistency with the libertarian philosophy(which suggests responding violence with violence as a just solution) or with the philosophy of pacifism(which suggests responding violence with non-violence).

When I reconsidered the Gandhian philosophy I realized something very important something which the Indian society and the government greatly distorts about his philosophy, that Gandhi used these philosophy against a similar environment. He was fighting a mighty British Empire which had ruled India for over 150 years until then. There were Indian soldiers in British Army, fighting FOR the government against their own people. Contrary to what we might believe, it wasn’t until 1930 that people in India made an official declaration of getting rid India of British Rule, until then it was all about home-rule or more autonomy. Until 1930 people the idea that India can be completely independent on its own was too far-fetched and radical.

The Indian people are generally very peaceful, and the call to everyone to raise weapons against the British government would not have gathered many people behind you.
What Gandhi managed to do was, he declared that he would not raise a weapon against any individual, because of this, he gained a upper moral status against the British Government. The British rule in India wasn’t really like the current US occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, but more like current US occupation of South Korea and Japan. People continued to live their lives, do business being unaffected by the foreign army, living under British law, courts, using roads, and railroads built by British Empire. In fact India got independence in 1947 and until 1st Jan 1930 they weren’t even fighting for completely independence. I must point it out that Gandhi had been fighting the British Rule in India since 1915, before the official declaration for complete independence, Indians were merely fighting for a self-rule, like Libertarian Party and Republican Party striving for a Small government(and call for complete independence being equal to call for no government).

When Gandhi declared that he would not commit violence against any individual, leave alone British government, he made himself more righteous than the British Government. If British Government orders to shoots a violent revolutionary, its soldiers would readily comply, they will follow the orders because in their own head they are thinking that they are preserving themselves, if they don’t shoot this violent revolutionary he will shoot them. So in their own head, it becomes a very easy decision to make. On the other hand, when the government gives the order to shoot someone like Gandhi, they don’t want to shoot a guy who would not harm an ant. Even if someone DOES end up shooting Gandhi, one fallen revolutionary may raise 10 more revolutionaries, but one fallen Gandhi, raises 1000s of people to take his place, because most people do not sympathize with the violent revolutionary, even if they do they rationalize it as he chose the path of gun, and he was shot down by a gun, but when Gandhi, a guy who chose to never commit violence, is killed by the state, then people realize that nobody is safe, there must be something greatly wrong with the state.

The British government never tried to kill Gandhi, because they understood it pretty well that if they did it, their empire will lose all its legitimacy, and the only way a few handful people can rule millions of people is through legitimacy(or the color of legitimacy).

So what is the guiding principle here, how do we establish consistency between being Gandhian and being libertarian. It all comes down to a simple principle which makes Gandhian non-violence consistent with libertarianism. If the aggressor’s right and wrong are twisted around, his polarities are reversed, if what you consider right is wrong for them, and what you consider is wrong is right for them, then there is no way you could win against them by responding to their aggression with more aggression.

Just consider it for a minute. If a thief tries to steal something you own, he knows he is committing a crime, he is trying to acquire something he does not own. If you punish him for his crime or acquire restitution, then that would be a possible way to deal with that thief. But if a government employee comes to your property to take away your house for non-payment of property taxes, he thinks he is just following the orders, and he is the righteous individual, you are the aggressor against the society by not paying your property taxes like everybody else.

If you try to punish that government employee, by trying to take away his property, him and his peers will just come after you because now its a matter of their own life and property, and they will commit more aggression against you.

If a cop tries to arrest you for some made up victim-less crime and you shoot him back, you don’t defeat the state, his son, his wife, his friends will all see him has a brave martyr shot by some violent drug dealer in the line of duty. His son would want to grow up and become like him. On the other hand, if you are a non-violent person like Gandhi and all you did was stood in front of the police station and tried to smoke some marijuana, first of all no officer would shoot you, but if some officer DOES shoot you, he ends up taking this huge guilt over his conscience whether he really stands for a right thing or not, similarly his family will see him as a murderer and not a brave police officer who shot a pacifist marijuana drug user. Even if nobody understands what you really stand for, the first question a cop’s wife would ask, ‘what wrong thing was that guy doing?’, ‘Was he selling marijuana?’, ‘Was he making profit by selling drugs?’, ‘Was he threatening your life in any way?’, and they see what really happened, nobody would really respect that cop in long term.

You will realize that Gandhi was a libertarian(there are many other libertarian things about Gandhi, but he wasn’t a statist), who mastered the art of fighting the aggressor with convoluted morals. We the contemporary libertarians have managed to figure out that the State is the aggressor, but what we have not managed to figure out is how to fight this aggressor. Everything Gandhi did, was against state. Every Gandhian principle becomes libertarian if you consider it a libertarian principle applicable against an aggressor with twisted right and wrong.

Gandhi said “If someone slaps you, don’t slap him back, but turn the other cheek around”.  Imagine it to be like this, “if a cop slaps you, don’t slap him back, but turn your other cheek around”.
Gandhi said “Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner”, imagine it to be like “Hate the State, Love the Statists or people who form the State”.

When I first started understanding these things, there were many things which did not make any sense, but over the time it all made sense. For example, there is a common objection that Gandhi was anti-technology and materialism, the truth is, Gandhi held those positions because these rules were only applicable to soldier against aggression. The state relies on punishing you by throwing you in a prison and devoiding you of all materials, if you devoid yourself of those materials, the state has left with no recourse to punish you in any way other than to come out of the cloak of morality and openly aggress against you(and like the cop who shot a peaceful marijuana protester in front of the police station) and lose all the morality and respect it claims, or to just let you go(like the British did) and let you build more people against the system.

Contrary to what you many people think, Gandhi only ran his non-cooperation movement for less than 2 years(out of his 30+ years of Satyagraha), he ended the movement in the middle long before he achieved his goals because a bunch of protesters in a small town in India, burnt a police station and many cops in it. By cancelling the non-cooperation movement he became immensely unpopular among the extremist revolutionaries because right when the movement was going so strong Gandhi ended it. When this incident was portrayed in a Bollywood movie, this caused people watching this movie to chant anti-Gandhi slogans at the end of it. It didn’t make any sense to me, but now it does. What Gandhi did was, he took away any, and by that I mean ANY accusation British could bring upon Gandhian followers as being violent people.  If Gandhi had allowed the movement to continue and allowed more incidences of violence to go on, then that would have made the British government a good incentive to violently deal with all the people taking part in the non-cooperation movement. The wikipedia page of Chauri Chaura says “Many modern historians view the Chauri Chaura incident as a minor episode of violence, which while regrettable, did not merit the cancellation of a nation’s demand for political freedom.”, its a sad thing that most modern historians do not understand the core reason behind the philosophy of non-violence.

Gandhian philosophy of non-violence is not for weak people, but surprisingly this is a common viewpoint that Gandhian philosophy worked because it gave weak people a weapon to fight with, it is not true. Gandhian philosophy of non-violence and Satyagraha isn’t a weapon for weak people, its a weapon by which strong people eliminate the legitimacy of a powerful aggressor.

Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly. – Mahatma Gandhi