What is Prostitution?

Prostitution involves buying and selling of sexual services, it is simple act of mutual benefits between two consenting individuals without any compulsion.
Having sex is not a crime; exchange of money is also not a crime because there is nothing wrong or illegal in exchange of money between two individuals. So, why is it illegal?

Most of the critics against the legalization of prostitution usually claim that if prostitution is allowed freely, the strong evil men may force women to involve in prostitution.
Forcing anyone to do anything is an obvious crime, force or compulsion is simply against the individual rights of any civilized society, but prostitution does not involve any force or compulsion on anybody, it is simple exchange of money for the service provided with mutual agreement.

Sex as a Trade

Preparing for work

Prohibition never helps

Prohibition never helps

Legalization reduces crime rate

Prohibitionists suggest that legalizing prostitution may increase crime, but the facts say opposite. Serious crimes, such as rapes, homicides, robbery, kidnapping are noticed to be increasing because of prohibition. Countries that allow prostitution as legal activity do not suffer from high frequency of violent crimes. Canada, France, Israel, Singapore, United Kingdom all allows prostitution and all have lower crime rates than the crime rates in US.
After being charged with a sex-crime, a woman faces the social stigma and she becomes unemployable and hence forced to get involved with further criminal acts. Once she is jailed, it becomes impossible for her to gain any other means of living and that enforces her to work as prostitute for longer than they otherwise would. The experience of jail further makes women prone to get involved in other serious crimes.
When police bans brothels, motels or other places where prostitution might generally be practiced, prostitutes find themselves forced to work in neighbouring streets and hence spoiling the neighbourhood. The dangers for prostitutes also increase many folds and they find themselves unable to care for health and safety precautions. Such prostitutes can easily be soft target for serial killers and sociopaths.
Better way is to legalize prostitution in certain areas of cities where the prostitutes and their clients may work in safe environment.
Other criminals who consider prostitutes and their customers as easy target to rob, blackmail, or rape also remains unchecked. Many a times, even the corrupt police also engage in corrupt exploitation of prostitutes. Thus, the criminals realize that prostitutes or their customers are most unlikely to report to police and that provides them an incentive to commit crimes against such people.
If prostitution is legalized, such people would not flinch from reporting any criminal activity against them and that will reduce crime rate.

Legalization promotes health care

Prohibition causes health hazards. Because of laws against prostitution, most of the prostitutes often find themselves forced to involve in unsafe sexual activities. They cannot go for medical help too because of the fear of police. Prohibition on prostitution thus increases the probability of unsafe sex and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhoea, Chlamydia and herpes. If prostitution is legalized, the prostitution can be monitored and medical facilities can be provided to them and that will control the spread of such diseases.
A public health review of World Health Organization states:

“In Kenya, where the importance of chancroid in HIV transmission was first described in the late 1980s, interventions targeting sex workers and STD patients were implemented. Reported condom use by sex workers has since increased to over 80% in project areas and the incidence of genital ulcers has declined. Chancroid, once the most common ulcer etiology, now accounts for fewer than 10% of genital ulcers seen in clinics in Nairobi, Kenya.
In Senegal, HIV prevalence among pregnant women has been below 1% for more than a decade. A strong multisectoral response, an effective STD control programme and early legalization of prostitution have been credited for this low level. Special clinical services, for example, offer regular examination and treatment for registered sex workers. Not only has there been a significant decline in STD rates among sex workers and pregnant women between 1991 and 1996, but genital ulcers are also no longer common and chancroid is reportedly rare.”

It is very reasonable to legalize and regulate prostitution and medically monitoring the sex-workers and hence providing a safe environment to their client. Legalizing prostitution will also encourage the sex-workers to learn more about health issues, and ways of prevention. Canada, France, Denmark, Israel, Singapore and many other countries that have legalized prostitution have much less number of people living with HIV AIDS and the number of deaths due to HIV when compared with the records of US.

Legalization of Prostitution and Social Condition

The societies that have allowed prostitution as a legal activity are providing much better social environment for the individuals. Countries like Canada, France, Denmark, Israel etc are spending much more of the percentage of their GDP on education and health-care than what US government spends. The suicide rates in such countries is also lesser.
Legalization of prostitution promotes individual liberty and privacy; it also provides a way for the poor to alleviate their situation. In a free society, it makes no sense for the government to dictate people, specially the poor one that they cannot take money in exchange of the service they are willing to provide freely. Legalizing prostitution will also promote the privacy of individuals about their intimate relations and it will reduce the stigma the sex-workers suffer.
Prohibition on prostitution causes a lot of wastage of resources. The law-enforcement bodies that devote a lot to monitor the prohibition on a harmless activity in between consenting adults can be used for better works and prevention of serious crimes. That will certainly help the society to reduce the crime rate and establish peace. Legalization will also reduce the police corruption and dangers of underground industry and provide safety for the sex-workers against organized crimes.

Conclusion: Prostitution is such an activity that harms nobody. Legalizing prostitution will serve the society in better way because that will tend the police to direct their efforts towards preventing and solving actual crimes which involves clear exploiter and victims and that will help the cause of justice. Legalizing prostitution will also help in improving the health care and social condition of United States.

Do we want better technology, superior products and services that are more effective?

Human desires are infinite and so is his potential. We want better medical services, information technology, better telecommunication services, better heating and cooling devices in our homes and office rooms. We desire better toothpastes, toothbrushes, better hair oils and shampoos, better and more verities of food, wine, better cleaning products, better cell phone, better ipods, better televisions, better laptops, better internet, we all want better and improved.
It is our want that drives the market to innovate and provide new technologies, services and products.
We want better and faster vehicles, satellite phones, and internet access. We need clean and filtered water, we need lifts and elevators, we need homes, we need security we need better services, we want more options.

Consumerism makes it possible. We are receiving everything we wish for and the market is providing them. Free market is nothing but a group of billions of people working together with free will, innovating and inventing further for the improvement, free market is also a system that joins billions of people together, yet provide full freedom for each individual to live for himself, at his own conditions with his own efforts. Nobody is pulling legs of other to rise higher. Market competition is nothing but a constant try of innovators and entrepreneurs to learn and satisfy the hearts and minds of consumers. Consumers are undoubtedly the kings of free market.
It is all consumerism, to desire better and to have full freedom to make one’s dream come true.
The socialists call it devilish, they say people do not need improvement, they say materialistic quest for making life better is futile. They say all this improvement in standards of life is waste. They ignore the real effect of all these changes. While blaming consumerism and crying anti-consumerism songs, they just hide away the evidences of improvement in human conditions.

Since the start of civilization, wise people are trying to search a self-sustaining system that may serve the common person rather than just the aristocrats and the rulers.
Free market is the quest for that riddle. Free market provide the system through which, the billions of unplanned desires and wants, billions of unorganized and independent economic choices succeeds in creating a self-sustaining system of production and provision to satisfy and serve everyone.
Now socialists, anti-consumerists decries against this system, they say consumerism provides too much for too many, they say it is not necessary and it is wastage. They say people does not need these things, they are mere senseless materialistic wants.
The question is, are the consumers buying those things that are not required? Who dictates the difference between a need and a want? Some religious guru, or some socialist dictator?

One’s desperate need is fulfilled by Other’s want for Leisure

The fact, which makes the free market sustainable, is “the need of a person is fulfilled as a resulting effect of fulfilment of other’s want. That is, wants and needs are interlinked in a free market.

Shiksha India CII

“Support Shiksha, lead a child to the path of education, Buy large packs of Tide, Ariel, Pantene, H&S, Rejoice, Vicks VapoRub, Whisper, Gillette Mach 3 Turbo, or Pampers, & lead a child to the path of education.”

The advertisement simply suggests that the more you consume, the more poor kids get proper education.

Consider another example, a person’s child is badly sick, he is trying to get her to a doctor. The urgent clinic is open until late night; the neighboring drug store is also open. The desperate father goes out; get the proper medicine and gets in, to save his daughter. There is nothing phony demand in this entire act of saving a child’s life.
However, the urgent clinic can remain open late because its office is situated in a dense mall with low rents and higher access. The medicine store is open late night because cosmetic store, bakery, bear bar, sports shop, a swimming pool, a hotel facilitating late night parties and discotheque also share the area where the medicine store is situated. All of these stores are selling superfluous things. They pay rent too. The owner of the mall would not have made that place if those less desperate needs were not to be sold there. That is, the want of leisure and pleasure of other people became the reason for the prompt and urgent health-care of that child. Some of the Indian cities are experiencing development, socialists call it redundant, Indian villages does not have such superfluous stores, they do not have proper schools and hospitals too.

The demand of public for the non-essential wants became the background of hospital facilities for the needful.
The same is the case of luxury goods such as mobile phone. Mobiles were meant to be available for the rich alone. It was not an essential demand it was a luxury good. Only the rich could use them. The innovators created cheaper versions; the capitalists increased the production and made it affordable even by the middle class and lower middle class person, now even the poorest of Indians is likely to have his mobile phone.

Quality of life improved even for the poorest person. He is more resourceful now and able to earn more.
Some people believe that quality of life does not matter, for them; equality of life is better idea. The question for such people is, why not the poorest should get easy access to vast grocery stores, medical stores, better food, technology, and other not-so-essential luxuries? Consumerism helps the facilities, better services, and technological comfort to reach to the poorest strata of society. Consumerism actually reduces poverty. In addition, the better quality of life provided by consumerism has its own importance. It is natural right of the people to have freedom to choose and buy market products, as they want. Free market provides this freedom to the consumer, the people. Free market keeps providing better technology and products at cheaper rates, and this ability of free market is driven by the motive of consumerism.

Better quality of life has improved the average life of people too. The average life of women and men in 1900 were 48 and 46 years respectively. Now, the average life of women and men consumers is 80 and 77 years respectively. Obviously, consumerism is serving consumers. Infancy death rates dropped hugely because consumerism brought better medical help and vaccines. Death toll due to epidemics reduced to great extent. Overall consumerism is serving humanity to lead human for better, more comfortable and more satisfactory quality of life.

Conclusion:
Either those who oppose and criticize consumerism are misled or they have some evil motives against the developing humanity.

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.

“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.

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

Photo taken by jrodmanjr under Creative Commons license

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.

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.

“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

Life is Consciousness of Desires

Intellect

So what is that, which helps a man to decide which of his desires is to be sacrificed and which desire he should fulfil? One may say his intellect helps him decide which desire is more important, so does the intellect of a man masters his life.
Intellect of a man is his tool to estimate and understand the relative importance of various desires of his present and the future. As intellect is his only tool, it cannot be his master, rather it is his slave on whose loyalty, the success of his life resides. How his intellect does helps him find which desire is more urgent and needs his attention more and which desire he may sacrifice?
He uses his intellect to be aware or conscious of the varying degrees of urgencies of his desires. If a man does not have desires, he cannot have intellect too, because he will not have any need or purpose of intellect, even if he has some intellect he will never improve it nor will use it. He thinks to solve problems he faces in fulfilling his desires, if he has no desire, he has no problem and hence he does not need to think.

Desires, Man remains enmeshed between the struggles of various desires, and he tilts towards that desire which is most necessary

“I”

Now one may say, desires are not the master; rather he himself is the master, or the master is I or me, or myself. How can one define “I”? What is “I”?
“I” actually represents totality; it represents a person’s body, intellect, mind, memory, imaginations and his desires in total at a given moment as a single unit. Without his body, he cannot define “I” he cannot remove his mind while defining “I” too and so on. When one say, “I” am running, he mean that his legs are running, carrying the rest of his body, his brain, intellect and memory with them, when he says, “I” am thinking, he means his intellect is thinking, his eyes are not thinking, his ears doesn’t think and so on. Similarly, when one say, “I” decide to do this now, what he means to say is, the urgency of that desire to be fulfilled is maximum at that moment relating to other of his desires. He decided that by experiencing the varying intensities of the desires he is aware of, his desires rules his decision, he uses his intellect as a tool to understand the order of the desires and then he acts in accordance with his desires to fulfil them. So, saying “I” rule myself is equivalent to saying his desires masters him.
Desires can be good, can be bad, a man can have desire to help others, a man can have desire for welfare of his family, or his locality, or his city, his country or whole mankind, he can have desire for love, prestige and self-respect, in all cases, it is his own desire to achieve which, he uses his intellect, thinks and acts, and hence in any case, he depends on his self, his desires, he remains selfish, his own desire becomes his motivating force.

Will and Will Power

Sometimes, people create a mystical illusion of spirituality by stating that to overcome your desires is the way for emancipation, or freedom. They further suggest that one may overcome his desires by the virtue of his “will” or “will-power”.
So what is will or will-power?
Actually, “will” is the synonym of the desires itself. What people ignore is the fact that to overcome one’s desires itself is a basic desire of his and that is his will.
What is the difference between an animal and a rational being? All animals follow their impulses, so do the rational being, yet there is a difference. An animal does not have the rational ability to be conscious of the varying degrees of his desires, he lacks the tool to signify the various desires and dignify the most important or rational one. On the other hand, a rational being have that tool to perfect his sense or conscious of the varying degrees of his impulses or desires. A savage is slave to his immediate impulses, he will not save for old age, and he will not think for better life (or improved conscious of desires and varying degrees), he has no tool to do so. While a rational being has that tool, so he thinks and relates, he experiences which desire is most important, or rational, and properly makes a plan to achieve it.
What happens when the intellect of a man fails to signify the rational degrees of his desires? In such situations, he often commits mistakes of varying degrees, and is vulnerable to undesired complications, because he has to pay the price of each of his desire. His life becomes a chaos.
Nearly all of his desires follows the same trend, he has to pay for a desire by sacrificing some of his other desires. For his desire of emancipation, heaven, spiritual pleasure, knowing the omnipotent etc, he sacrifices his other materialistic desires. That is, will, or will power indicates the exact desire, which that particular man has decided to be strongest for himself at a given moment with the help of his intellect, hence, will is synonymous of desire, and will-power is synonymous of the power of the desire, which masters the man at that moment.

Freedom

Freedom-A Man’s most Urgent Desire

“So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate — do you hear me? No man may start — the use of physical force against others.”

Freedom is based on Non-Initiation of Aggression axiom that no man or group of men may aggress against a person or the property of any person. A human body is the natural border of the individual thus; using the body of another without his or her consent is aggression against him and hence is impermissible. This definitely confirms the idea of property rights in one’s body, that is, each person is the owner of his body; he has the right to control his body, to decide whether or not he consumes alcohol or narcotics, use his body for prostitution, joins an army, becomes a farmer, decide to be a mother or to abort a child and so on. One should understand that wealth is not necessarily property possessing market value, for example, various legal rights and licenses provided by government, like liquor license, patents, stocks, bonds, copyrights etc, do possess market value and are property, but they are not wealth, rather they restricts the production of wealth. Similarly, in a society allowing human slavery, the number of slaves does indicate property, but slaves are not wealth. Such property, which is not wealth, indeed destroys the wealth; slavery in any form thus, destroys the wealth, as it provides no incentive for production.
Thus, human are property but they are not wealth; also, human labour is the most essential requirement for production of wealth. Hence, for unrestricted production of wealth and hence prosperity, it is a necessary condition that all individuals remain free owning themselves, because only than they will gain the full incentives of their expenditure of intellect and labour in the production of wealth and material prosperity.
The societies that do not consider man free enough to have complete property rights on his body restricts his freedom to use and decide for his body by means of partial slavery. Such societies do maintain that each person has some “limited rights” to his own body, yet not complete rights. Society or government acting as such society’s agent- has some right in a citizen’s body too, in other words, the government owns the citizen in some way and the citizen is partially a slave to the government. This partial slavery is implicit in government laws prohibiting individual freedoms like censors and bans, state prohibitions or illegalization and state actions like taxation, conscription, fines, interest rates and price control etc confirms the nature of partial slavery imposed by the government on common citizens.

As in India, individuals are partial slaves to the government and there are no specific property rights for the individuals.

It should be clear that freedom strictly means economic freedom along with political and religious freedom, because without economic freedom, freedom neither can be defined nor it can be explained.

The system of such society, where the man is free to govern himself cannot interfere in the life and realms of neither an individual’s life nor it can dictate the rule and terms for the possible mutual agreements and dealings. Such a system represents a free market society where each and every man is free to govern himself and is free to use all his potential and talent to live, work hard and earn and pursue his happiness.
It should be clear that freedom strictly means economic freedom along with political and religious freedom, because without economic freedom, freedom neither can be defined nor it can be explained. Thus, in a free society that provides sovereignty for every individual and a harmonious atmosphere for having mutually beneficial contracts, any individual or a group of individuals representing the government will not have any sort of interference in the economic sector, that is, the government will not interfere in education, agriculture, health-care, public services, industries and other productive activities, the government will not control the money supply and create the business cycles of booms and busts. Government would not enforce quotas and reservations, provide taxes and subsidies, rather it would be left free for the market ruled by the individuals and their mutually beneficial agreements because that is their right, right to govern themselves and decide for themselves freely.

Hijab in itself is not oppression, but the suppression of the right to wear a Hijab is.

Such a society would be free from the “irrational self-interest” as it would be thoroughly dependent on the rational sense of self-interest with complete freedom for all individuals to pursue their “rational self-interests” freely that is their won’t be any governmental interference in the market to provide special privileges, quotas, reservations based on religion, caste or sex, there won’t be any government subsidies, price supports, tariffs, licensing laws, exclusive government franchises, labor-union privileges, immigration quotas and the like.
Freedom is a natural right, as the responsibility to be self-dependent is natural. Self-dependence means one will not be demanding anything from anyone else or even the government, rather he would be working to earn for it and as he would earn it, it would be his right to enjoy his earning.

Licensing system, state governed education system, state governed currency system and state backed paper-currency, reservation and quota policies, health-care policies, subsidies, price-control, tariffs and like all comes as the physical force against the individual as all such acts are strictly the acts of fraud. In a free system, an individual would have complete security from such governmental frauds.
In the current system, the representatives of the majority decides for the individual, and individual remains a slave for the majority law, paying for it and obeying it, this is not freedom.
We, the children of our ancestors who fought for the independence considering the right to self-govern as every individual’s birthright, actually have forgotten the real sense of freedom that is why we consider ourselves free and accepts the current form of government to rule over us. We never got that right to rule ourselves to decide for our own hard-work and its consequences, rather our ruler and the system of ruling changed and we remained under the slavery of government, interfering in the market and our lives as it wished. We did get the right to choose our ruler to govern us as in form of democracy and political freedom, but we never got the right to govern ourselves, that is, we never got the freedom for which our ancestors were fighting.
It is the time for us to be responsible, to assert that we as individuals are capable of responsibility and freedom, of fidelity and endurance and courage, that we not only can distinguish good and evil but we can individually choose good from evil as it would necessarily be in our interest, that we strictly do not need government to rule us, to tell us what we are capable of and what we are not. It is the time for us to resist the control of government over the individual and call for the sovereignty of the individual and his inalienable natural right to govern himself to pursue his self-interest and happiness.

If you are a loyal reader of this blog you know that two of the major contributor of this blog greatly disagree with each other over the issue of legitimacy of Intellectual property rights. I for one am against intellectual property rights, and I have tried my share to convince my co-author towards my viewpoint. I believe that upto some extent I have managed to convince her, except for I guess patent laws for innovation in Pharmaceutical industry. But this article is not about whether copyrights are justified or not, in this article I want to convince the readers to utilize the innovation supporting framework of Creative Commons licensing which exists within copyright framework, and release their works under this licensing.

Copyrights Model

Under the copyrights model you release a work of your labor under the Copyright license as defined by your government. Most of the copyrights licenses over the world are similar to each other, and they grant the author/creator exclusive rights to use and sell that work. If a non-copyright holder wants to utilize the the copyrighted work, for commercial or personal uses then he must take the permission from the copyright holder to use that product. For personal usage, this permission is usually granted through the sale of the individual copies of the work. For example when you buy a book you are given the right of reading that book for personal use by the author. If you want to print that book and sell it, then you will need special permissions from the author. If you want to translate that book into another language, if you want to create a movie on that book, if you want to use the characters of that book, you will need special permissions from the author.

Creative Commons Model

In the Creative Commons licensing model, you first acquire the copyright of your work(as I mentioned earlier, its a framework within a framework), and then you let go of some rights on your work. For example you could allow people to use your work as long as they attribute it to you, use it for non-commercial purposes, and release the derivative work under a similar license, or you could release a work under Attribution license which means the user must attribute the usage back to you(otherwise he could do whatever he or she wants with it). A list of these rights which can be released on their own or in a combination with others are:

• Attribution (by) - Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.
• ShareAlike (sa): Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

For a detailed explanation please refer to the Wikipedia entry on Creative Common licenses

Choose Creative Commons over Copyright

If you are a content creator, that is you write for a living, you are an architect, you are a rising or an established music artist, then all your creations are automatically covered under copyright. As a copyright holder only you can release your creation under a CC license. I am going to cover these cases of each individual content creators as examples and their reasonings on choosing CC over Copyright mode.

1. Architect: If you are an architect, then releasing your architectural designs under CC licenses benefits you more than anything. There are a very little things which change for you. Your work can be freely copied and distributed among students and other architects, and they all will bear your name underneath it. Even if you allow commercial usage of your designs, there is little in there for another architect to benefit from your design, at max he can modify your works and charge only the derivation fees from a client. Customers can freely build based on your designs, but then who really wants to create another Sears Tower in the same city, if a customer really likes your design, and wants to build his building exactly like that, chances are he will do it in a far enough city, from the original constuction and it will only spread your name, as the building will bear “Designed by: <your name>”.
   Even if you allow the least restrictive licensing of CC(that is as long as you are attributed all the usages are allowed, including commercial and derivates), no matter who uses that design to build their own, they will need to put your name over it as “Original Design: <your name>”. If you think this will enable someone from using your design and not attributing you, well then it does not prevent anyone from using your design under a copyright license either. You are free to form any commercial deals with any individual as long as you don’t grant them exclusive rights of your design.
   Warning: If you release a design under Creative Commons license, you cannot revoke it, that designs is now a part of the public domain. If you rely on selling same design to many many individuals, then don’t expect some profits which you usually would expect in a copyright model, although if you are the only Creative Commons architect in the city, then expect the city to be mapped out only in your designs. If you have never resold a design to more than one client, then this is ok.
2. Writer: If you are a budding writer, then releasing your works under Creative Commons allows the wider audience to be able to read your works. Consider this, you are not famous, but you release your work under Creative Commons license under which the general public is able to read your works. If someone decides to use your short story for their story collection(presuming you allowed commercial use of your work) then it gives you the fame, and more people are now going to know you. If someone wants to put your novel on their website they are free to do so as long as they are not selling it(if you chose it that way),this way more and more readers will come to know about your works.
   If you are already an established writer, then releasing your next major work under Creative Commons license(providing you don’t already have an agreement which prevents you from doing so), helps you reach more and more readers. I cannot comment on the amount of money you will make by releasing it under CC license, but you will be more famous than ever.
   Warning: If you release a book under Creative Commons license, you cannot revoke it, that book is now a part of the ever increasing public domain. If you are a writer to make money, then Creative Commons has nothing much to offer, but i
   f you are a writer because you love writing, then there is no better way to show your love for your readers than to release it under a CC license. There is no way of actually telling whether you will be making more money or less, but then be the first one to experiment.
3. Musician: If you are a music artist, then considering the massive monopoly a few artists have over the music industry you have a little chance of achieving any real success. If you get signed by a major recording label, you can become famous, otherwise there is little chance for you to achieve any major success. If you belong to a less famous genre(for example Goth-Metal, Reggaeton, or say Metal in India), then even a major recording labels will not come near you considering the small market for such music. If you release your music under a Creative Commons license you allow your music to be freely shared over the internet, used by podcastes, posted on the blogs, etc etc. Your chances of being heard by more and more people greatly increases. There is a great website for musicians who want to release their music under Creative Commons licences and that is Jamendo(http://www.jamendo.com/). Whether you are a music artist, or just a music lover, there is a great amount of music on that website which is freely available for download. If you would like to use any of those music for your production, there is a very easy and fast licensing process on Jamendo PRO! If you are going to create a youtube video and need a track go to Jamendo and freely download any track you like and use it freely in your personal non-commercial production.
   Nine Inch Nails(NIN) is the most famous band ever to experiment with Creative Commons licensing. They have managed to reach way more audience by their CC licensed music than they would have had they released the albums under the restrictions of Copyright.
   Warning: If you release a music piece under Creative Commons, you cannot revoke it, that music is now a part of the public domain. Other than that, if you are reading this blog post, chances are you aren’t really as famous as Metallica or Michael Jackson. If you want to stick with the Copyright model and want to be as rich as a Rock Star, go ahead, but let me warn you, the copyright model is failing miserably in the Music industry. People still go and buy paper novels because they like to hold the book in their hands, but the copyright model in music industry is on a demise. Release your music under Creative Commons on Jamendo, and post your link on the commens, and we will guarantee a few loyal listeners to you if not much.

I have tried to create a utilitarian argument for individuals to release their work under a lesser restrictive licensing scheme. But to be honest, the biggest reason why I support avoiding the use of Copyright is because I believe that copyright is only possible through government coercion. A free market will never prevent an individual from using his property in any manner shape or form by creating and respecting artificial property rights. If you are a liberty loving individual, then none of the above listed pros and cons should matter to you, just go ahead and pick up the least restrictive CC license for your next work and share ideas with the whole world. One of the biggest reason why in India we had an IT revolution is because of the lack of copyright enforcement in software industry, we learned to work on the most costliest software and ideas flew freely. Our whole IT industry is a service based industry, and there is little development of commercial software in India. We will not see software development of commercial products for a long time(well as long as American government keeps on creating artificial innovation in America through the artificial monopoly of IP rights).

We have released all contents on this blog under Creative Commons license, our reason is simple, if you like the content, and want to post it somewhere else, do it, but make sure to attribute it back to our site. The more people read about rationality and liberty, the better it is for us. If you would like to print our articles and distribute them for free among other people, please feel free to do so. If you would like to work on our articles and create a better version or your own version of those articles, feel free to do it as long as you link it back to us. Personally speaking I find nothing more smug than petty bloggers putting heavy handed copyright notices in their blog posts, or worse putting “DO NOT COPY” notices on their blogs.

My point:If both the parties don’t agree upon one common arbitration then you both can go to your own respective third party arbitrations and they can settle down on a common resolution.

His Rebuttal: This could be quite sufficient had there been a fight between two saints.

But this doesn’t happen in real world. A fraud or killer will simply not accept that he has done something wrong. Especially when he know he will be facing consequences.

At the end, I must state the biggest limitation of this system -
This system takes human as robots, fully programmed to act in a specific fashion. System should work fine as long as this balance is maintained.

The moment, people start using their unpredictable/irrational mind, without being afraid of people banishing them, the system will be in big trouble.

Its clear the people are somehow so much distorted into the current political system that looking as much as 60 years back would be too unrealistic of a scenario.

India has had a long tradition of seeking third party arbitration justice. Considering most of the India resides in villages, they developed their own dispute resolution system, called as “Panchayat”. No don’t mistake it as the current mess the government has made in the name of Panchayati Raj.

The britishers did not care about how indian villagers solved their disputes, they did set up their courts, but most of the time the villagers preferred to go to the Panchayat.

Let me give you an overview of how Panchayat system worked. A Panchayat literally means an assembly of five elders chosen and accepted by the village. If anyone in the village had a dispute they can call the Panchayat, and pick out a mutually agreed “Surpanch”(Head of the five). This Surpanch would then question and listen to both the sides and give a solution. If either parties refuse to agree with the judgment or comply with it, they were ostracized by the whole village.

Make no mistake that this was a perfect system, or that it worked because it occurred in a different era with a different kind of people. It occurred right here in India, among the same kind of people. There was a bit of politics, people made their own groups. But the main question is, people got their justice really fast as compared to the current legal system.

But the main thing is the system worked, until it was totally ruined by the Indian govt by making it an extension of the government. Panchayats are so famous in Indian villages that “Panchayati Raj” is an election slogan, and you know it if politicians are promising it, it HAS to be famous among people.

A very good snapshot into the lives of Panchayats(especially before independence) was captured by the legendary Hindi novelist Munshi Premchand in his novel Panch Parmeshwar(पंच परमेश्वर). Its about a story of two friends who are respectively picked up as a Surpanch(सरपंच) in cases against each other, and they contrary to what you may believe do not always give decisions for each other.

You can read the novel(in Hindi) here:
 http://lti1.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/पंच-परमेश्वर-प्रेमचंद/

I wish I could put an English translation of the novel, I tried, but could not find an English translation of the novel.

I really like this line from the novel:
पंच के पद पर बैठ कर न कोई किसी का दोस्त है, न दुश्मन। न्याय के सिवा उसे और कुछ नहीं सूझता। आज मुझे विश्वास हो गया कि पंच की जबान से खुदा बोलता है।
Translation: When someone sits on the seat of the Panch(the 3rd party arbitrator), he is neither a friend nor an enemy of anyone. He cannot think of anything but justice. Today I have come to believe that God himself speaks from the tongue of the Panch(the 3rd party arbitrator).

In addition to that Rajnikant’s movie Bulandi also demonstrates a third party arbitration system where Shakti Kapoor rapes a girl, and he is punished to be ostracized by the whole village for 18 years, and be married to the girl he raped.

A detailed analysis of the Panchayati Raj System and Gram Swaraj as supported by Gandhi has been covered earlier by Unpretentious Diva at:

The prospects of a private judicial system..

Its clear that India is no alien to the concept of private judiciary. Considering that now we have a much more matured market, its not difficult to imagine private companies in India handling justice system.

Education is a valuable tool required for survival of which the formal education forms a very small part. There isn’t anything special about education which makes it a birth right. Yet, I have found that a lot many libertarians make exceptions for education. Inspired by economists like Milton Friedman, they support programs such as “School Choice”. It makes one wonder whether they have any real understanding of the market economy. If they really believed in the superiority of the market in providing for the society, they wouldn’t have supported School Vouchers. They would have let the market take care of the situation.
There are several problems with the voucher system. The most important one is that School Vouchers don’t eliminate taxation. Public funded education is the exemplification of the Marxian idea “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. Every one, including homeschooling parents, and childless ones are forced to pay for the education of the children who they may or may not care for. Tax payers pay according to their ability. Parents who recklessly produce children get according to their need. Nothing can be more monstrous than that. Taxation diverts production to fields which may not satisfy the needs which are more urgent for the people.
What most of the supporters of the voucher system pretend not to understand is that if Government is to fund the education of children in private schools through taxation, it is obvious that Government would have a say in how these funds are being utilized. One who pays the piper calls the tune. It would eventually lead to a total control of the education system by the Government. It goes without saying that under this system most of what children would be taught under this system in the name of Social sciences would be mostly Government propaganda. There wouldn’t be autonomy even in the case of private institutions. There would be a call for more accountability and regulation which would lead to stagnation and less innovation in the field of education.
On an entirely free market, schools would have to compete with each other in providing better education at a lower price. The voucher system clearly tampers with it. It reduces all incentives for cutting costs as the fee is not given out of the parent’s pocket, but from the Government. The result would be inefficiency and a high cost for maintaining the system. It in turn leads to less children receiving quality education.
Some schools would be out of business due to the voucher system. Schools which don’t accept the vouchers would find less people to pay for the education which it provides. Voucher system, needless to mention, breeds parasitism and dependency.
What most libertarians forget is that the voucher system is against the founding principle of libertarianism: The Non Aggression principle. No one has the right to take from other in the name of noble motives. To begin with, it is not a noble motive to take from the producer to give to the parasite. Coercion is hardly a libertarian principle.
It is interesting that the supporters of this program call it “School Choice”. What does that mean? Should the tax payer be molested in order to provide parents with enough choice? There are always enough options to choose from under a free market. The voucher program would only reduce this choices by leading to Government dictated syllabus and curriculum. It is utterly naïve to think that Government would fund the education without having a say in it. Notice the secret admission of the proponents of this policy that the government is a failure in providing its citizens with quality education.
Why are these libertarians calling for free food, housing or health care when it is well evident that these are more important and urgent needs than education? If they have real faith in the superiority of the market, why don’t they call for an all-out privatization? The answers are not obvious.

Child Marriage

There is another twist in all this, parents are free to choose what sort of upbringing they provide to their children, one cannot force any sort of necessities on parents. As for example, one can suggest that providing health boosters like Bourn-vita or Complain, parents can remove any fear of malnutrition for their kids, yet there cannot be and should not be any law, which makes it compulsory for the every parent to provide Bourn-vita, Complain, Boost, or any other sort of tonic for their kids.
That is, although parents have duty towards their kids, the nature of duty is not forcible it is voluntary. Similarly, a couple may decide to send their kid to the best schools of their city to get education, other couple may decide for home-schooling, and some other couple may decide for alternative-education to provide certain skills to their kids.
In addition, there are child’s rights, which suggests that parents cannot make any such decision regarding their kids which essentially need a personal able consent of the child, as for example, if parents decide to marry their child, it is against the child’s right, child marriage is not proper, because it will be child’s freedom in future to decide for his/her sex partner when they will be able to make meaningful decisions with consent. Thus, although parents are free to decide how to grow up their kids there are certain restrictions in form of child’s rights.

Can Parents sell their Parental Rights?

Krishna’s-foster-mother-Yashoda-with-the-infant-Krishna

Child Labour

Now there again erupts the question of child labor. If we can oppose pedophile actions and make laws against it, why cannot we make laws against child labour?
The issue is of the differentiation of various works categorized as per the risk involved.
We can make laws against child labor in dangerous or more risky zones of work, yet we cannot stop child artists from working, we cannot stop child painters, musicians, dancers, singers, actors, players etc from working, practicing, performing, that is their basic education. We cannot stop a child from working at a tea stall or a hotel or even at home. We can certainly stop a child to work in risky industrial works and other sort of risky works involved including sex-works, yet again, here also we will have to study each case with unbiased perspective to check for age of consent.
My intentions with this article are to raise the issue of freedom of parents about how to raise their kids, my intentions are to raise this issue towards the gender inequalities and issues of inheritance.
We have maintained that although parenthood is a voluntary relationship, parents are free to choose about how to grow-up their kids, kids do not have much to say about that yet, can children demand any inherent right in parental property?
The only right an Individual possess is right to live free, he cannot have any such right as to own a property without earning it or getting it freely gifted for him. Thus, parents possess the right to disinherit their child after a certain age of consent .
I will discuss the Indian laws of inheritance and the parental right to disinherit in next addition and my intentions will be to raise the issue against son or daughter’s right to demand partition of parental property.

“As the idea of contract enters the Law of Marriage, it breaks the rule of the male, and makes the wife a partner with equal rights. From a one-sided relationship resting on force, marriage thus becomes a mutual agreement. Nowadays the position of the woman differs from the position of the man only in so far as their peculiar ways of earning a living differ. Woman’s position in marriage was improved as the principle of violence was thrust back, and as the idea of contract advanced in other fields of the Law of Property it necessarily transformed the property relations between the married couple. The wife was freed from the power of her husband for the first time when she gained legal rights ever the wealth which she brought into marriage and which she acquired during marriage. That marriage unites one man and one woman that it can be entered into only with the free will of both parties that the rights of husband and wife are essentially the same — these principles develop from the contractual attitude to the problem of married life.”

Dowry is also a case of voluntary trade for mutual benefit. Some might find it crass to link marriage to trade. In their eyes, marriage must be done solely out of love. They totally miss the point. No one is forcing anyone to pay dowry or accept it. If a girl wants a boy who loves her without any monetary ties associated with it, she is free to seek such a person. Then she should be willing to wait for such a person and accept him when she finds him. She would have to narrow her search. If she is consistent, she wouldn’t look at the job or income of the guy she is going to marry. That too would be crass and materialistic. She would marry solely for love!
Some people mistakenly say that dowry has made marriage a trade and bride a commodity. In the first place, marriage would be a trade even in the absence of dowry as people are trading sex and love to get back the same in return. In the second place, it is the bride’s family which pays dowry. Certainly, it is the groom who is treated as commodity here. It should also be noted that usually the bride’s family look at the job and income of the groom. Doesn’t that make it a trade? Doesn’t that make that girl a prostitute, as she is trading love and sex for money? Feminists usually say that marriage is slavery. But, as Murray Rothbard had pointed out, in most families the husband goes for work and looks after his wife. It certainly means that it is the husband who is treated as slave here.
Collectivists usually bring up the case of work place sexual harassment. They ask what would be done if the employer sexually harasses the employee in a libertarian society. What they fail to understand is that sexual harassment is a crime and the employer who sexually harasses his employee would be punished if the victim files a case and proves it. Law would be much more efficient in a libertarian society as the lawyers have both moral and financial incentive to be objective. In a statist society the lawyers have only a moral responsibility. Moreover, in a private organization it would be in the interest of the employer to avoid such incidents as it is expensive and would keep female employees away. In a government organization, that is not the case. What is implicit in the collectivists question is that they assume that in most cases, women submit to such harassment. If that is case, it would mean that women are trading sex for her salary, job and all the benefits which come with it. Doesn’t that make her a prostitute? Do these collectivists sympathize with prostitutes?

“Even if it were true that there is a Hindu temple under every mosque in India, what was under the temple? Most likely an Adivasi Shrine. How deep shall we dig?”

This is the reason I am not at all sympathetic towards Anti-Reservation activists. It is also not at all evident that confiscating all property and distributing would cure the problem of poverty. It would only lead to chaos and poverty for all.
Let me quote some libertarian theorists in this issue. Rothbard writes in “Egalitarianism-As A Revolt Against Nature” that “It is not enough to call simply for defense of the “rights of private property”; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be private” must now be defended by Libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.”
Or of the man who might be the current possessor by purchasing the land from Henry Jones X? If Smith and his descendants are lost to antiquity, then title to the land properly and legitimately belongs to the current Jones (or the man who has purchased it from him), direct application of our theory of property titles.” “Suppose that centuries ago, Smith was tilling the soil and therefore legitimately owning the land; and then that Jones came along and settled down near Smith, claiming by use of coercion the title to Smith’s land, and extracting payment or “rent” from Smith for the privilege of continuing to till the soil. Suppose that now, centuries later, Smith’s descendants (or, for that matter, other unrelated families) are now tilling the soil, while Jones’s descendants, or those who purchased their claims, still continue to exact tribute from the modern tillers. Where is the true property right in such a case? It should be clear that here, just as in the case of slavery, we have a case of aggression against the true owners-the true possessors — of the land, the tillers, or peasants, by the illegitimate owner, the man whose original and continuing claim to the land and its fruits has come from coercion and violence. Just as the original Jones was a continuing aggressor against the original Smith, so the modern peasants are being aggressive against by the modern holder of the Jones-derived land title. In this case of what we might call “feudalism” or “land monopoly,” the feudal or monopolist landlords have no legitimate claim to the property. The current “tenants,” or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property, and, as in the case of slavery, the land titles should be transferred to the peasants, without compensation to the monopoly.
Ludwig Von Mises’ ideas are entirely opposite in this regard. He writes in “Economic Freedom And Interventionism :“Under the conditions of the capitalistic market society this program of land reform no longer makes any sense. In the market economy the consumers daily decide anew who should own the material factors of production and how much anybody should own. By their buying or abstention from buying the consumers allot control of the material factors of production to those who know how to use them in the best and cheapest way for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. Ownership of land means in the market economy the sovereignty of the consumers. The owners are mandatory of the consumers as it were, bound to employ their property as if it were entrusted to them by the people. When they fail in this regard, they suffer losses. Then they are forced to improve their management or, finally, they go bankrupt. Others who know better how to serve the consumers replace them.”
I would have to state that I am totally in agreement with the views of Rothbard in this issue. Property appropriated wrongfully should be given back to the victims of his descendants wherever they can be traced.

(4) In a seat where there are only about 500 Jain voters, we give a ticket to a Jaini knowing that the BJP candidate is also from this community.

Obviously, he clarifies that it is not his personal view, but a political view about why Congress lost election in the recent assembly elections of Chhattisgarh. That is, even if he is a libertarian, even if he does not believe in racism, caste and religion based politics and discrimination, to gather power, he and the Congress party need to look at that “logic” of discrimination and division of vote bank. On libertarian point of view, it is irrational and almost a political crime. One should not think of caste, creed, race, religion and other personal attribute while deciding for an authoritative office, what he should think of is the compatibility, ability and accessibility of the person willing to hold the office of power.
There are rumours that Mr Amit Jogi is a Hayekian economist that he does not believe in excessive control of government over economics, more promptly, he is Miniarchist.
His own written blog defies this rumour or allegation (for Congress, Libertarianism is a crime; socialism is the sword of congress.)
During the No-Confidence motion against congress last year, Mr. Amit Jogi claimed the achievement’s of UPA government as such-

The NREGA ensures that the sons & daughters of farmers no longer have to go begging for jobs in faraway city slums; now, hundreds of millions living in the villages can claim employment as a birth right. Not only do they live with self-respect, thanks to the NREGA, but in doing so, they are creating billions of rupees worth of rural infrastructure. Also, under the UPA, Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for foodgrains have more than tripled; farmers’ loans have been waived across the board. Never before in the history of India have the farmers got higher prices for their crops than now.

The comment not only shows that Mr Amit Jogi is an egalitarian, a deep socialist, and a supporter of total governmental control over economy. He forgot that despite all governmental support and planning, Indian farmers are committing suicide. He even supports the fake ideas of right to education and right to employment. I know, for most of the Indians, this would become a reason to support Mr Amit Jogi, but for a libertarian, this much is enough to oppose him, he simply can not be Hayekian; he cannot be Libertarian, nor a supporter of Miniarchy.
I have seen people comparing Mr Amit Jogi with Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is a consistent Libertarian who never digressed from his position of laissez-faire free-market, Austrian economy and Miniarchy. (Here is Ron Paul watch the video) there can be no comparison.
Mr. Amit Jogi is strong supporter of Indian version of secularism (pseudo secularism) which suggests that State must support all religion. For a libertarian, state, science and religion must remain free of each other. People accuses BJP for the BABRI Mosque demolition and consequential riots in UP, The truth is, if it were not the bad vote bank politics and pseudo-secularism of Congress, to involve religion in state politics, it might never had happened.
Obviously, none of Mr Amit Jogi’s stand on ethics and politics is libertarian; rather he is a staunch state control supporter over Individual life. He is a Keynesian with no sense of Hayekian ethics of politics and economics. He is a state supporter and not a Miniarchist. He is anti-liberty and not a Libertarian.
It can be true, that he might have a good idea about the concept of libertarianism and individual liberty and Austrian economics too, but to grab power, he has to show-case a double personality.
I can not support him because he is a masquerade. He can be either a libertarian, or a power hungry state supporter. Mr Ron Paul is an ideal Libertarian, an Ideal Miniarchist. Once for a while, I may denounce the doubts of Mr. Amit Jogi as a criminal, he may be innocent and the criminal cases filed against him may be just a conspiracy against him, but he is not a Libertarian.