Indian government declared Education as a fundamental right for all Indians on 1st of April 2010. Was it a fool’s exercise on the April Fools day? It seems so.
By staging education as a fundamental right, government obviously insured a very well crafted vote bank issue based on altruism that will keep the ruling political parties in good colours. Political parties will not only gain votes over the issue, rather the government will also gain a further seemingly appropriate cause to rob the wealth-producers by means of taxes to implement all the required infrastructural development programs for the fulfilling of the dream of “Education for All”. Certainly, that will provide a vast canvas for further scams and swindles in the infrastructural development sector. Thus, for the political parties with their political motives, education as a fundamental right looks pretty good. There will be many new government schools that will provide governmental jobs for many Indians in education sector. The problem is will the new schools overcome the failure of the already existing governmental schools?

What about the drop-out rates?

There is a governmental school within the range of 2-5 KM near almost every village or slum of India, that is, lack of governmental schools is clearly not a big issue.
The problem is not about the children who never attend school. Such students are separate and very fast diminishing category. About 50% of children who join up in Class I drop out by Class VIII and that can be suggested as the major problem.
Despite all the mid-day meals and similar programs, governmental schools fail to keep the children intact with their governmental education. Now no matter whether government declares it a fundamental right or necessity, if the parents and their children simply do not prefer the idea of investing their time in such governmental schools, than this idea of education as a fundamental right will remain only a paper exercise that will never be a reality, although the governmental robbers will keep robbing the middle class of India and will burden them with more and more taxes to facilitate the education for all those who does not want that education and are certainly not interested in it.
According to the National University for Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) total enrolment in primary classes (Class I to V) was 134.4 million in 2008-09. In Classes VI to VIII, the total enrolment had dramatically dropped to 53.4 million. Now, if government considers that education is literacy, than it is acceptable that primary classes will provide the required education as a fundamental right, but what if more than half of the total students decide not to study any further the primary classes? Will government force them to continue their “governmental schooling” until all do not clear out the VIII class?
The problem is not that parents do not have money to educate their children properly; the problem is the poor quality of governmental education. Governmental education actually provides nothing to an upcoming citizen rather it burdens them with heavy books and senseless exercises that will never help him by any means throughout his life. Even if every Indian becomes a well educated graduate, not everyone can become an IAS officer, some may prefer to be a barber, or a shopkeeper, or a gardener, farmer, or may be taxi-driver. As some prefer to be a doctors and engineers, some other may prefer to be peons and beetle shop owners, or snacks vendors or simply “chai-wala”. Now no school provides any fundamental knowledge about how to be a better “chai-wala” or a better “paan-wala” or a better barber, or a better street-sweeper. There are so many jobs that people may prefer to do rather than going and wasting their time in the schools to clear out the VIIIth class exam. Can Government Issue a law that no person can be allowed to work and earn if he is not VIII class pass? That is, one cannot work as a laundryman, or a barber, or home-helper, or a “bawarchi” or chai-wala or any similar minion works if he is not VIIIth pass.
The Right to Education Act covers children in the 6 to 14 years age group, precisely for the classes from VI to VIII. So may be the idea behind the right to “governmental education” is meant to abolish child labour.
However, that will be a fraud against the children who prefer to go for all those minion works that are never touched by school education. Why should a child work so hard and waste all his time in learning the maths, science and languages of VI to VIIIth classes when he knows that it will never help him to be a good barber or taxi driver? For him, better education would be to attend a barbers shop and learn how to cut hairs with ease and provide consumer satisfaction for the consumers. If a child is looking for maintaining a shop owned by his father, he will certainly learn educate himself much more in his father’s shop under the tutelage of his father rather than in a governmental school. For such children, if government forces them to attend schools up to VIII or Xth class, than it will actually be forced child labour for those children and they will not earn even a penny for that unwanted labour.

Market is the Best Educator

A doctor practicing medicines in market since last 5 years is obviously much more apt than a freshly graduated medical student is. The market actually teaches the medical student how to treat the consumers, how to fight the diseases and save the patients. School and college education provides the base, and market furnishes the education.
In case of a barber though, no college, no school provides any base for becoming a successful barber. One needs to go to a barbers shop and practice there. For a forthcoming doctor, if he attends school and than college, education helps in strengthening his base, but for a forthcoming barber, only the market, that barbers shop can provide the necessary education and practice. Forcing him to go to school to get “governmental education” will be similar to burdening him with child labour and disallowing him the “necessary education”.
Conclusion: right to education may prove to be a good vote gainer for the ruling parties in upcoming elections, it will certainly increase the vast canvas of governmental corruption and swindles and will burden the Indians with extra taxes, yet it will remain only a paper exercise meant to fool the public and that is why education was announced as “fundamental right” right on fools day. It is inappropriate and unnecessary to expect every child of age group 6 to 14 years to go to school because for many such children, governmental school education itself proves to be child labour, while the market provides them the proper necessary education they require and search for. Thus, if government does not make it compulsory for every citizen to be at least VIIIth pass if he wants to work and earn an honest living, it is impossible to expect the RTE to work any better than a paper exercise. But if government makes it compulsory, than education will not remain a right, it will become a torturous duty imposed by dictatorial despotic altruistic politicians, because than, the certificate of VIII class pass will become the necessary license even to work and earn an honest living freely. Most of the times, these politicians displays slavery in the colours of freedom and compels the citizens to buy their enslavement at the expense of freedom.

Generally speaking I hate the phrases such as ‘true so and so’ or ‘perfect so and so’, but its important that people who support free market understand what and how a market player works. Imagine if you are a football fan, you support your football team, you probably know all the rules of the game, but since you haven’t played the game yourself you just don’t feel it exactly how a football player feels.
You know that if the ball leaves the emarkated boundary then the opposite team gets to throw in the ball from that point on the boundary, but what you don’t know is what does the player really have to go through or consider when he gets that chance in order to win.

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).

Before I go on let me warn you this, virtual stock trading will not enable you to make money in real stock market, the only way you can learn to make real money in real markets is by investing in real, but there is something very important virtual stock trading will help you learn is to get rid of the initial quirks new investors face. Let me put it this way, if you practice on a virtual stock trading account, it will help you not make huge losses new investors make(purely because they are unaccustomed to the ups and downs of the market).
Most people lose money in stock markets when they start into this thing because they don’t have this investor’s mentality. They just go with their feelings, and the moment they make a little bit more money they go crazy with the power, and end up losing not only the profit they made but their initial investment capital too. Some sitcoms(Seinfeld, King of the Queens) captured this roller coaster experience new investors face beautifully in their series. Overall it goes on something like this, you invest, you make some good profit, then you hit a losing streak and you end up at 50% loss of what you started with. In real life that’s when most people bid stock markets good bye, but if you stick through this experience you have just managed to achieve some stability and a great experience which will help you in making profits at a later stage.
I practiced with all sorts of stock market simulators for over 2 years before I dealt with real money, and I have tried all sorts of markets, stock markets, options markets, futures trading, forex markets, and overall my conclusion is(and its only applicable for me), that I should only put a very small amount of money capital into the markets. I should never do technical trading(technical trading is when you trade only on the basis of prices, and nothing else, business model doesn’t matter), stick with options(you can do options trading in Wall Street Survivor). It has helped me to learn and understand futures and most importanly Options(which are a bit complicated). Thankfully I am now as comfortable with options as I am with stocks themselves.
So use the above link to sign up on Wall Stree Survivor(https://wallstreetsurvivor.com/), and start playing. If you want to add me as buddies on WSS, send me a mail at renegade.division+wss@reasonforliberty.com and I will add you.

Often people suggest that free-education is a moral, well-intentioned noble idea that somehow fails to work. Free education obviously is impractical but the issue of free education is really a noble moral idea? Can education be designated as a fundamental right and more than that, is education compulsorily needed?
Socialized education just as socialized health-care is not a case of dignified speculation but failure in practice; rather it is a case of inhuman hypothesis that is impractical. Yet, politicians always keep pushing the issue of education upfront for their political motive, painting it as a moral obligation for all and for doing so; they often try to declare education as an Individual’s right. Moreover, by doing so, politicians ensure a very productive education sector under totalitarian governmental control.

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?
Let us assume that tomorrow, government and politicians assert that you are born with a moral right to hair-care and that government will benevolently provide free hair-care services for all those who want it. Haircuts and shaving would be free. Some people will show up everyday for a new hair-style, eye-brow setting, beard and mustache setting, government will keep showering the governmental hair-saloons with more and more governmental funds collected by taxing middle class citizens. Every bald man would love to come to the governmental hair-saloon to have a hair seeding and implantation. Nobody would be bald and there will be as many hair styles as there are citizens in India. Government will govern the profession of barbers and they will make huge incomes, every second person would like to be a barber, there would be competitive examinations for Indian Barbers Services (IBS). The government will pay for all expenses. Obviously, there will be government schools and colleges providing specific training, certificates and degrees for professional barbers. Government will install a huge administration for the maintenance of the hair-cut sector. The dishonest barbers will make huge profits and so, will the honest one. They will work and spend like mad, trying to satisfy every second person’s desire regarding his hairs, which certainly can be a millions worth specific hair care and services. The budget will start going out of control, government will suffer the pressure to provide enough budgets to maintain the proper services for hair-care. Corruption will rise , soon government will start providing directives regarding hair cuts to control the budget, government will limit the number of barbers, the time spent for one hair-cut, government will start licensing an permitting only certain type of hair cuts, taking away the individual’s liberty regarding his own hairs. Government will start limiting the number of hairs a barber can split, the number of razors a barber can buy. There will be inspectors to check the corruption in governmental barber shops, there will be a new department just to keep records of barbers in a definite constituency and the profession of barbers will be thoroughly red-taped.
It is the case of education. Government controls the education sector and tries to establish education as a right. Obviously, government fails to provide any sort of education to the masses and whatever education it provides always remains way below the required standards. Also, government doesn’t produce the required resources for the provision of free lunch and free education, so who will pay for all that?
The rich people are very few in India and even if government snatches away all the property of the top 100 richest families of India, it cannot sustain the expenditures required for free education. So, who will pay for that? It is us, we poor and middle class people who pay as slave for the government’s immoral desire to provide free education through the taxation system. By stressing free education as a right, government makes all Indians as the slaves who are obligated to pay for the governmental education program without questioning anything about it. By befooling us by the term free education as an individual’s right, government robs us of our very basic right to earn and to hold the fruits and results of our work and efforts. Government taxes us and takes away our hard earned money an in return; we get nothing but a highly imperfect education system. There are no free lunches, but there are lunches being paid for by somebody else.
Conclusion: Rights does not confirm anything freely available for anybody at the expense of others. By terming education, or health-care, or free lunch as individual’s right, politicians try to enslave the public and rob them of their very basic individual right of life, liberty, property and pursuit of happiness. In a free society there can be only the right to live freely, to work and earn freely, to enjoy the produced an earned property freely and to pursue one’s happiness by furthering his efforts and results of his efforts freely. Other than the man’s free will, he has to earn everything honestly in a free society, no other one, not even government is obligated to feed, or cloth or educate him freely.

For those who went to public schools in America, perhaps you can remember being excited your first day. Although anxious, I was invigorated by the idea of learning, of getting away my mothers knees, being turned out into what seemed like a vast new world of unlimited opportunity where I would learn how to be an adult, how to discern good information from bad, and how to use my faculties to become the best person I could be. I was excited to prove myself to the world and to myself, to know all of my colors, letters and numbers, and whatever came after that. At this age, school was what you expected it to be.
What occurs though when you get into the more “advanced” stages of learning where you have to learn critical thinking skills? When you begin to notice the disparity between some children and others? When it is easy to discern whose is of intellectual strength and who is weaker? Or else, who has mathematical ability, who has language ability, spatial, athletic? Out of necessity, as always happens when people are forced into association, you are all put in the same group: the middle. You are taught to a T how to be exactly mediocre in all aspects of the general “liberal” education that is purported in schools. If you are not good at interpreting metaphors or absorbing literature, too bad. You will learn to be, or else fail, or put in remedial classes where you will then be ostracized by your classmates. If you are excellent at this task, too bad. You will be forced to slow down your reading, to stop challenging the author, to stop abstracting from their words. Or else, you will be put into advanced classes, where you may again be cast out by your peers.
To modify a Rand sentence, public schooling sells “Mediocrity boastfully [impressed].” You may not get ahead if your classmates may not, because you are making them feel bad.¹ You will hurt their confidence. If you need more help in a subject, you may either work hard to understand something you cannot grasp, decide to fail, or ask for extra help and opena world of criticism—and school children are ready to be mean-spirited.
What does this do to the relationship that man may have with their fellows? It seems to me to breed animosity. Hatred of those dissimilar from you, not necessarily because their differences, but because their ability or lack thereof is put upon you as a standard which is not your own and which you could not or would not want to live up or sink down to. You are constantly being either pushed back or thrust forward by those who have other talents and understandings than you do.
Now, public education is a multi-fold problem. Aside from the fact that we are plundering some to give to others, which propagates malice between those who must pay taxes in order to provide for these schools, who may very well disagree completely with their educational philosophy, and who also could lose the opportunity to send their children to schools with which they do agree because of the taxes so inflicted; you also have a brand new generation, learning to regard their fellow man as people who will always be working to put the brakes on their progress or who will try to get them to move into uncharted territory which they do not understand.
In a system of private schooling, not only would children be allowed to advance as quickly or as slowly as they needed, but teachers would also be able to cater to individual capacity, or else to that type of learning which was the intent of the school set up. If you are attracted to technology, why should you not be allowed to focus your studies on this so that you can become the best at it? If your interests most lie in the study of social affairs, why should you have to study so many maths? If you respond better to audio stimuli than to words on a page, should not a teacher be allowed to facilitate this so you can learn to the best of you ability? This is impossible in the current system. There is such a wide degree of varying interests that the best a teach can do is come to the highest possible consensus between one child to the next; and further, to the highest consensus between Federal, State and Local laws mandating certain standards.
In private schooling, even if schools were set up only for certain purposes, i.e., the study of mechanics, or of fine arts or of law, it is not as though you would not know other people’s interests existed. Surely, persons in your family, or neighborhood kids, would be going to a different school that utilized their natural propensities. You would learn be constantly striving to fulfill your potentiality, and you would also understand from a very young age that people are naturally different, but that this is of great benefit to you. The division of labor² would become apparent at such a young age, and you could understand what sort of important role this plays in the organizing of all life, of every industry.
Why, it is so absurdly asked without a thought, are children today so angry? Why the school shootings, and the misanthropic attitudes? Why the higher rates of suicide, the self-mutilation, the fights, the drugs? It is blamed on music or whatever other scapegoat is most convenient at the moment. Does anybody ever stop to think that the inherently anti-social institutions enforced upon so many children may have something to do with the anti-social feelings they then have? For how many generations, or how many years, do you expect a person to be forced into fraternity to people with whom he cannot relate, and still feel it an honor to deal with other men, as it ought to be?

1. It is a common trend going on these days. School children commit suicides because of the “oppressive school system”. It is “Oppression” that some students get higher marks while some fails. Thus, there should be a grading system. Anybody getting 80% and above, should be graded A+. Alas! So, there is no incentive for a student to master a subject and gain 100% marks. Even if he gets 80%, he will be at the top. In addition, he can never fail. It is the making of mediocre.,ReasonForLiberty [↩]
2. Division of labor, ReasonforLiberty [↩]

In a free-society with individuals having complete self-ownership, (Capitalist society) the production of wealth vitally depends on division of labor, a system of production in which all the labor required is broken down into separate, distinct occupations. Obviously, each individual is free and self-responsible enough to decide at his own to what occupation suits him well and serves his self-interests in most proficient way. A society of free self-governing individuals essentially depends on each individual’s self-interest and his ability to exploit his own talent and efforts for fulfilling his needs, desires and self-interests and that makes rational-selfishness as the virtue of the free individual. Division of labor increases the amount of knowledge used in production in ratio to the number of specializations and sub-specializations involved in the process of production. Auto producers have different body of knowledge than that of petroleum, refinery producers, wheat producers have different set of knowledge from both of the previous, and further they have different set of knowledge than the farmers engaged in producing other foodstuffs, vegetable growers, or dairy farmers.
In a non-division of labour system like that of socialist system or the collectivist systems, self-sufficiency becomes the central motive of individuals as they acts as collectivist and self-interest is forgotten. The total capacity of society to incur and further develop knowledge decreases abruptly as all individuals engage in acquiring self-sufficiency by means of adopting and following the common set of wealth production.

Division of Labour and Benefits of Talent

A division of labour system provides enough space and incentive for the individuals occupied in different sets of knowledge of specialization and sub-specializations to devote all their human intellect and efforts to not only use the current knowledge but also to discover, invent and innovate new ways and knowledge to increase production. Division of labour enables a society to use the benefits of geniuses to the maximum extent, while it provides maximum incentive for the genius to use his intellect in development, innovations and entrepreneurship. In a collectivist society, this is not possible, as the genius in such societies, along with other common individuals, must devote most of his time in attaining self-sufficiency first. In India, some decades ago and even at present, division of labour is not definitely present; most of the young students devote their time to achieve degrees from governmental education system in order to gain some or any sort of job in government or private service sector. Hardly anyone devotes his intellect and abilities to any set of specialization of knowledge based on his interest and abilities. Hardly anyone think of devoting his time in research works and furthering knowledge, hence, Indian society lacks innovators. That doesn’t mean that Indian society is or was incompetent of innovations and inventions in present or past, the lack of it only represents the partial slavery imposed by the collectivist system and socialist government under which, the genius amongst the collective is wasted upon. Even if some genius struggle such situation and still manages to radiate his intellect, he never gains the full essence of his own efforts and hence is lost due to the lack of incentives.
In a free society with division of labor, geniuses are able to devote their time to science, invention, organization and direction of productive activity of others and thus instead of being lost in obscurity, they becomes Einsteins, Darwins, Brails and Fords. In a free society not only the genius but everyone is enabled to concentrate on the kind of work he is best suited and that promotes his self-interest based on his intellectual capacity and body endowments. Hence, such a society helps the individuals with rare talents in music, arts, sports, medicines, engineering, etc. In absence of division of labour, along with productive geniuses, such people with specific talents to be athletes, or painters, writers, philosophers, actors, sculptors, musicians, surgeons, engineers etc often lacks enough opportunities and are forced either to forget about their specific interests and talents, or to pursue their talents and suffer poverty and scarcity of opportunities. Since division of labour provides enough opportunities and complete freedom for the innovators, inventors, developers and directors of labour, such a free society necessarily provides enough space for machinery usage and modernization of process of production, also, it provides complete freedom for the genius and common producers to use the resources with utmost efficiencies hence increase the wealth production manifolds. Division of labour increases the efficiency of learning process in connection with production by making education and communication and all activities concerned with transmission, storage and development of knowledge into specializations. In a free society with individual sovereignty, individual may remain unemployed only because of his own choice; otherwise, market provides enough opportunities for the individual to engage in any productive process or service to earn self-dependency. Such few, who by nature lacks any potential to attain self-dependence (naturally disabled or victims of accidents etc) can easily attain benevolent support from the free individuals of the society in attaining self-dependency. As a free-society essentially represents most beneficial conditions for wealth production under division of labour, individuals in such society prospers with ease and further their life in the pursuit of their happiness.

Division of labour and consistency with freedom

Private ownership of the means of wealth production is the fundamental pre-condition of the pursuit of self-interest. Division of labour essentially depends on private ownership of means of production, which is based on the nature of gains of free division of labour. The most important ones are the multiplication and transmission of knowledge and benefits of the talented. The rational idea of private property ownership comes out from the fact that individuals possess unique independent minds, which permits and necessitates them to have separate independent knowledge and to make independent judgements, decision, and act on them with his separate independent calibre. In a free society every individual gains from the fact that other people possess knowledge that he does not and an intelligence separate and often much greater than his own. To maintain maximum benefits, it is necessary that others be able to acquire and apply their knowledge in production on their own initiative with perfect decision making freedom, without having his approval, orders, permissions or license, as he would be certainly unable to give in any rational way as he necessary lacks the knowledge and intelligence that would be required to make such decisions. To act, work and produce, people must possess material means of actions and production, In order for them to act independently from one another, they must possess wealth independently from one another that is there must be private property, including private ownership of natural resources and other means of production. Private property rights are essential condition for proficient production, prosperity and more importantly individual freedom as it provides maximum space for efficient usage of resources in virtue of producing wealth hence eradicating poverty of masses.
A libertarian society provides property rights in order to provide peaceful, justified, conflict-free and productive usage of resources. Unlike human body, external bodies and natural resources are not directly controlled by one’s will and initially they are unowned. In order to provide a rational, conflict-free rule of assignment of property rights, a libertarian society prefers the Lockean law of homestead that provides the relevant objective link of appropriation that is the transformation and using of the previously unowned resource. This approach provides the relevant objective motive of justice as the first user of a previously unowned resource naturally have a better claim than the second or consequent users. This is pertinent with independence of Individuals as the first owner of the resource can definitely let others to possess the resource for production at some rent or dealing for a period, or he may completely sell-off his property rights to other. The relevant question in such situations is not that who possess the resource; rather it is who the owner of the resource is. As explained earlier, a natural resource is not wealth until a man uses his talent and labour to make the resource productive and useful for the men, as the first user transformed that unowned resource into wealth making it possible to be used for the benefits of men, he naturally is the reasonable owner of the resource and deserves complete property rights over it. Obviously all the consequent wealth produced by the help of that resource is also inadvertently the rightful property (in fact, the results of his labour and intellect) and he holds complete right over it. In case, he suffers lack of talent to use the resource to maximum beneficial extent, he obviously gains the chance to sell-off his property right freely to other individual interested and able in using that resource proficiently. Such a system essentially provides justice and peace as it avoids any specific conflict, it is based on reason as the first user of the resource definitely posses a far important link with the resource than the later users. Once the first comer sells his property right to others, he naturally abolishes any objective link with that resource, wealth or property. Self-ownership and property rights essentially provide complete freedom for individuals to possess and accumulate wealth and further produce it freely and hence abolishes the common norms of partially slavery under government in the form of compulsory taxation, fiat currency, licensing system, censors, bans and criminalization of acts that in no way involves any aggression of a man by other.

Even in the modern day India, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru are considered as “Gods”. Any attempt to criticize them is met by denial and hatred. I remember that years back, when I made a case against the socialist policies of Nehru in my college hostel, every one of them present there turned emotional. They argued that India is a poor country, and hence need intelligent planning, to which Nehru made significant contributions. Their response was similar to what you would get from sulky children when you point out that their parents could be wrong. “Breaking Free of Nehru”, by Sanjeev Sabhlok, a resigned IAS officer, flies in the face of such an attitude. Sabhlok is one of the very few Indian authors I have read who has a reasonably good understanding of Free Market Economics. He points out with extreme clarity and precision that the legacy of Nehruvian Socialism has done incalculable harm to India.

The author begins by clearly stating that this is not a book about blaming Nehru. He doesn’t question the allegedly “good” motives of Nehru, and is of the opinion that he was an honorable man. It is not the ends Nehru had in mind he questions, but the means he used to achieve them. He takes for granted that not many would argue against helping the poor. Using violent coercive means to achieve this end, however, produces the exact opposite result. This should be obvious. Nothing good was ever done through coercive means.

Sabhlok, who served the Indian Government for eighteen years, knows from his own experience that such policies breed corruption, poverty and inefficiency. He remembers an IAS officer who joined with him in 1982 saying that his “sole objective in joining the service was to make money”. He was once asked by a young man whether he moved to the Assam cadre from Haryana cadre as more money is to be made in Assam. In all the years he served the Indian Government, he didn’t come across a single officer who even compares with the public officials he met in Australia, where he works now. I don’t have to quote extensively from his work. Everyone knows these facts.

I find it really sad that Sabhlok’s attempt to set up a liberal political party in India didn’t succeed. India badly needs politicians who have studied political economy from a Classical and Austrian point of view. India, needless to mention, has never known the concept of liberty. Even when our freedom fighters and other politicians used words like “freedom”, they never clearly understood what it really means. A hampered market economy was the intellectual default. This wouldn’t have happened if people who know better had spoken up for the cause of Individual liberty. And that precisely is what books like “Breaking Free of Nehru” do.

I have, however, several differences with the book. I would like to mention it here. I don’t think Nehru’s motives were good. I think we should be really careful when branding the motives of a person as good, when the end result is chaos. Good-By what standard? We should remember the words of Ayn Rand-“Do not ever say that desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither stupidity, nor power lust is a good motive”.

The author says that, in India, there was forceful expropriation of property and land in the manner of Robin Hood. Several thinkers, including Ayn Rand and her followers, have made this mistake. Robin Hood, in my opinion, was actually a good guy. I shall quote the philosopher Tibor Machan: “Often it is Robin Hood who is held up as the role model for justifying taxation: Didn’t he “steal” from the rich to “give” to the poor? Well, not, not really. In the original version of the legend, Robin Hood did just the opposite: He stole from those who stole from the poor and returned the loot to the rightful owners. In those days the upper classes, from the king to all his cronies, routinely engaged in extortion. They disguised this, however, with the phony claim that everything belongs to the king and his cronies. Yes, monarchs and those who rationalized monarchy spun this fantasy and managed to sell it to the people that they where the rightful owners “of the realm,” that they had a “divine right” to rule us. This way when the bulk of the country went to work on the farm or wherever, they had to pay “rent” to the monarch and his cronies.”

Like the author, I don’t think that progressive taxation is compatible with Capitalism. It is true that marginal utility of money decreases with increase in wealth, and a rich person cares far less for a thousand Rupees than a poor person. However, this doesn’t contradict my position. There is a limitless need for wealth. The total utility of the wealth a person has should go on increasing so long as wealth has any positive marginal utility to him. There is a need for more wealth so long as additional wealth has any marginal utility. Progressive taxation would only undermine savings and capital accumulation. Taxation is completely incompatible with Capitalism. There is also the Inherent immorality of taxing Peter to pay Paul.

There are some statements in the book, which libertarians like me can’t agree with. Freedom, the author says, is good, and anarchy is bad. I can’t disagree more. Anarchy is the logical end result of total freedom. Anarchy and Capitalism are fully compatible. There is no justification for a bunch of robbers to take money forcefully from you and providing you services, forbidding that you buy from others. All services, including defense and security services could be provided by private individuals. Government is in fact a criminal organization which robs murders and drafts the citizens in a particular geographical area.

The author makes a case for Government regulations quoting an example of a coal miner working under dangerous conditions. However, it is not at all evident that there is a need for a Government to ensure safety for the worker. In case a worker dies in a free society, the Insurance Company of the employer would have to compensate the employee’s family. Insurance companies, hence, would have a policy to make sure that its customers ensure safe working conditions, as their profits would depend on it.

Another point where I disagree with Sabhlok is on social security and public funded education. We libertarians don’t want the poor to starve or children to go without education. Quite the contrary! We believe that the society would deal with these issues in a better manner in the absence of Government coercion. Under Capitalism, people who deserve such aid would not be many and could easily be taken care of by private organizations and voluntary charity.

All said, I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand Individual liberty in an Indian context. Also visit his Freedom Team Of India website, and consider joining the Freedom team.

Someone forwarded me a link to this video:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVrHW2suW2A]

Those who do not wanna watch it, its an investigative report on Chennai private colleges where Taliban-style rules were enforced on the students. There is so much segregation among guys and girls in those colleges that Americans are going to be reminded of the Jim Crow laws era when blacks and whites were made to attend school separately.

This did not come to me as news, I had friends from those universities who told me about these things years ago. I went to a much more liberal private college so all those things came as a big shock to me. I was told that if a guy was found talking to a girl, he was fined(not always through money, but through social service etc etc).

Contrary to the natural reaction(which would be appalling at the horror of these policies), my topic is different. Considering the fact that all the colleges covered were Deemed Universities(they don’t receive any funding from the government, but only have accreditation from the government regarding their course work), that is they are private colleges, it begs the question, would free market serve Taliban and enforce Talibani rules if its participants demanded things that way? Would salons refuse to cut beards? Would private roads refuse to allow cars with female drivers in them? Would a private pond owner refuse to allow Buddhists to drink water from their pond?

The answer to all these questions is a shocking YES. The truth is, for all theoretical purposes, it is clearly possible that the Market would serve those things. There can be salons which refuse to shave men, private roads where women are not allowed to drive, and ponds which do not serve Buddhists, blacks, or the lower caste people. Just like in Chennai Deemed universities do not allow their boys and girls to mix socially.

But to understand why it is so, we must first ask the question, are any of these an act of aggression against anybody’s private property rights? Second question is, if it is not an act of aggression against private property rights of any individual, is it any kind of moral violation of an individual’s right to equality(if not right against his liberty). The answer to the first question is clear, when a salon refuses to employ its employees and its property to be used in a manner they don’t deem fit, when a private road does not deem fit to allow a certain type of individuals to use their property, when a pond owner does not allow the people of a certain religion, race or caste to use his property, none of these actions are a violation of anybody’s private property rights. In fact the whole point of “property” is to restrict non-owners from using the object against the wishes of the owner.

If I can prevent you from entering my house without actually violating your rights in any manner, how come by not allowing you(a black guy) in my saloon a violation of your rights of any kind.

Similarly when the Chennai private college owners refuse to allow their male and female students to mingle with each other, its their private property rights to enforce any laws they deem fit. If the parents do not think that their kids should be brought under this rule they are free to take their kids out and put in a more liberal college. The only place where this kind of rules would be private property rights violations if parents were forced to pay for these colleges through taxation and they had no choice.

In addition to that, the college cannot beat the students, or physically punish the student in any form for any kind of non-aggressive violation, because the body of the student is his property, irrespective of where it is located. Colleges have full rights to fail such a student or kick him out from the college for violation of their rules.

Second question which I asked earlier whether it is some sort of moralistic violation of an individual’s right to equality, well the answer is, that there is no such thing as universal “right to equality”. I might be a barber who promises right to equality to all my customers, but that does not mean everybody must be obliged to do the same in a free society. A white supremacist should be equally free to serve only white customers.

In a liberal(and free) society there will be standardized label adopted by the companies, claiming to be “equal treatment business establishment”(that is they serve all customers equally), and liberal minded customers would flock to businesses bearing such labels. Just like there will be “Whites Only” labeled restaurants who would shoot in their foot by not serving all the non-white customers, and white liberal customers.

What is the Market’s nature against such discriminatory institutions?

Market forces clearly work against the discriminatory institutions. The road owner refusing to allow women to drive through his road is directing all that traffic to other road owners. Since private roads will operate on subscription basis, families with women drivers will have even their male drivers using the non-discriminatory road networks, clearly damaging the male-drivers only road owner.

Similarly a college institution which pops into Chennai which puts no such Talibani restrictions on their students will attract all sorts of liberal students. The conservative schools must find other ways to actually attract the market. For example in America private catholic schools are more desirable even among the non-Catholics because of their performances. Also if you are a liberal, there is no more liberal school than the public schools in America. So all the Market demand for a Liberal school is crunched in by the public schools, therefore most of the good private schools in America are run by conservative Catholics.

Conclusion

If a newspaper editor refuses to publish your opinions, it is not a violation of your constitutional “freedom of speech” or “first amendment” rights. There is no right to equality on private property, because guaranteeing a right to equality means violating the right to liberty. Only one of these can be upheld at a time.

The market serves its participants. If there are enough number of irrational individuals who wanna follow their own irrational way of life, the market will serve them without prejudice. It may be an issue of rationality vs irrationality, but it is not an issue of Libertarianism.

About the above mentioned Chennai colleges, they will have more to worry about in the coming years when they will realize that Gay and Lesbian rights movement get huge support from their colleges.