The Article 7 of the Human Rights declaration suggests that

“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.¹ “

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”.
The Bench comprising of Justice P.Sathshivam and H.L Dattu said that poor background of the accused should — along with old age and years spent behind bars while awaiting death sentence — be considered as mitigating factors when courts ponder whether life sentence should be used in an otherwise fit case for death penalty.²
It would be fascinating to know why Supreme Court judges are seeking for the populist issues, is the Supreme legal body of India the Apex Court trying to be the champion of socialism?

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.
The idea behind this is a morally strong, talented, intelligent person is obviously a criminal to some degrees, on the other hand, a lazy, stupid person, who obviously is poor, is certainly innocent to some degrees. Alternatively, the idea can be, to be rich, hardworking and intelligent is a crime in itself.
Obviously, it is akin to show a green flag for all who consider them poor, to be casual about the moral standards and feel free to commit crimes. It is just like showing the shortcut for the poor to be criminals and make money through mean ways.
Apparently, this trend will increase further crime in cities as now; the poor will get a certain “mitigating” security while committing a crime. The police and law bodies are supposed to deal with “poor criminals” with ease.

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”.
Results will be an obvious increase in crimes, further increase in jail maintenance and police expenses, terrorizing environment for middle class individuals and exploitative situations for the poor individuals. The mafia of government, police, politicians and oligarchic corporatists will enjoy the foolery of Indian public that will appreciate the socialistic thought of Supreme Court and Indian government to give priorities for the poor in committing crime, Nonetheless, the Apex Court ruling have provided an easy money making job for the poor. The poor now doesn’t need to be hardworking, morally strong, intelligent and talented for making his life better, he just need to be morally depraved and ready to commit a crime, or to take the responsibility of any already committed 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.³

1. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations [↩]
2. Poverty could mitigate crime, even murder: SC, Times of India [↩]
3. Prospects of Private Judicial System in India, RFL [↩]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Every political leader, a representative of “the people” realizes that nobody in “the people” like to face poverty. Yet, poverty is wide spread. Every government aims its political and ruling program at reducing scarcity and helping the poor. Often the statist argues that government is necessary because if there will not be a government, who will care for the poor, the depraved ones. Politicians often use this “altruistic” propaganda to lure the voters.
The only practical solution to the problem of poverty in masses is to increase the productivity of individuals. In absence of government interventions, for the rational profit motive, free market provides an explainable way to make most efficient way for the usage of resources and to minimize the wastage, thus free market naturally is the solution to poverty. Yet, by means of interventions, government induces irrationality in the market and hence, reduces the productivity while increasing the wastage of resources. Obviously, with reduced productivity and enhanced wastage of resources, the government itself becomes the cause of mass poverty and scarcity.
At the failure of all their agenda to reduce poverty, they further come up with same propaganda of “helping the poor”. Well, the end results of government interventions just come out to be opposite. Does government really want to help poor?

Inflation

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

Minimum Wages¹

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

Government Health Care²

Government health care system is another such propaganda that is meant to help the poor. First of all, government controls the medical fraternity and education board of India and does not allow free market to produce medical practitioners in enough quantity to serve the ever increasing number of patients. Than, government makes the medical education so clumsy, time consuming, tough and costly that seldom youth want to be a medical practitioner. Again, government forces those “so less in number” produced medical practitioners (doctors, nurses, medical assistants) to work “involuntarily” in villages at least salaries for first few years, and hence makes the medical sector unattractive. With so less number of medical practitioners, the cost of health care reaches enormous heights. In addition, doctors employed at government hospitals suffer the pressure of extreme work-load and to reduce that, they start discriminating and ignoring the patients. Obviously, the poor suffers. Government try to help poor by subsidizing some common medicines. Thus, the profit of medicine production reduces and hence investment also reduces resulting in scarcity of not only doctors and equipments, but scarcity of most common drugs and medicines too.
Government hospitals cannot be maintained properly because of lack of incentive of profits and the natural competition to provide cheapest, best and trustworthy services to the patients. Hence, although poor may go to government hospitals, they seldom get any proper services and treatment. On the other hand, the richer government officials often enjoys the benefits of government hospitals while the common middle class men prefers to go to private clinics.
Overall, only the people of the poorest section that suffers lack of medical services because of Government intervention.

Higher Education

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

Denial to earn an honest living

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

Way to Oligarchy

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

Conclusion:

As one can see, not only the aforementioned government interventions but any form of government intervention in market destroys the natural order and ability of the free market to reduce poverty and create peace and prosperity. By means of cost control³ , government actually increases the prices of necessary commodities while production and supply reduces vastly, hence further causing poverty.
Whenever in whatever way government intervenes with market, it creates chaos resulting in wastage of scarce resources, unemployment, and reduced productivity. As a matter of fact, although politicians propagandize their political motives as to help and serve the public and poor society, the government actually is the worst enemy of poor and whatever way it intervenes with Market, it does so just to hurt and inflict poor further.
Hence, in order to really help the poor and let India progress, government needs to leave the Market Free. As free market will reduce the employment rate to zero, (human labour is scarce resource) productivity will increase and poverty will reduce.
No person able to produce and earn a good honest living will choose to be a criminal or beggar.
That will surely reduce the extremes of poverty and hence will reduce the crime rate too.

1. Inhumanity of Minimum Wage law, ReasonforLiberty [↩]
2. Abolition of Cost is Cause of Corruption, A discussion about socialized medicines, Reason for Liberty [↩]
3. Reason of price Rise and effects of Cost Control, Reason for Liberty [↩]

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

The topic of private arbitration has been covered on Reason For Liberty before¹², but the question is what sort of incentives does socialization of justice and security provide to a peoples? How is this different from those of custom law and privatized defense?

Private Law

There is much historical precedence for law without the state. Anglo-Saxon customs law was used up until the invasions of the Normans and other Germanic people. The laws being based on customs and individual consent, first off, they were not violated very often to begin with. If they were, why was it that if the defendant were convicted, he would submit to the judgment? Social ostracism, yes. But more importantly, the law was based on reciprocity of defense and individual and property rights. Crimes were considered not “crimes again humanity”,  “the nation,” “the king,” or “the People” but only as one individual committing a crime against another. Generally, there was some sort of economic restitution paid as opposed to capital punishment and the like. William C Wooldridge mentions one medieval example in Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man³:

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

If you are interested in Bollywood movies then I suggest Bulandi starring Rajanikant, where he plays the role of the village judge, and he punishes a rapist to be out of the village for 18 years and marry the girl he raped(which is a horrible Indian mentality that the solution of a rape is marrying the victim to her rapist), and that osctracization was a worthy punishment.⁴

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

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

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

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

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

Public Law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why capital punishment?

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

Conclusion

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

1. The Prospects of Private Judicial System, Reason For Liberty, Author: Unpretentious Diva [↩]
2. Third Party Arbitration in India, Reason For Liberty, Author: Renegade Division [↩]
3. See William C Wooldridge, Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man (New Rochelle, N Y Arlington House, 1970), pp 111ff. [↩]
4. Third Party Arbitration in India, Reason For Liberty, Author: Renegade Division [↩]

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” -Milton Friedman

One may wonder what the great economist Milton Friedman was thinking while he uttered those words. May be he was thinking of the ill-effects of price controls and how does price control¹ causes shortage and hence excruciating conditions for the most poor men of society. He might be thinking of the ill-effects of socialized medicines², or may be he was thinking about the irrationality of minimum wage law and the manner that the very intention of improving the living conditions of poor workers actually condemns many to acute poverty and unemployment.
Minimum Wage Law in India
In 1920, Mr. K.G.R Chaudhary took the initiative by setting up boards in different industries to determine the minimum wages³ . It must be recognized that in those days, the British government held total control over all of the Indian industries and law bodies and Mr. Chaudhary was an agent of British Government. The idea clearly was not at all to improve the living conditions of Indian workers whom the British government considered as slave; rather it was to pacify any possible insurgencies. It was a British government’s vicious trap to divide and rule the Indian youth and workers for their own profits. At one hand, they were luring the industrial workers by the assumingly better living conditions they were promising to provide; on the other hand, they were simply crushing out any chance by native businessmen and entrepreneurs of British India to be a successful. That initiative also created a rift between those Indians who were engaged in the British government controlled industries as they were being lured for a better life and the other portion of youth that was not working for the benefits of British government. This political step obviously divided the Indian youth and workers and hence decreased strength for struggle of freedom.
After Independence, the new democratic government of India set-up a “Committee for Fair Wage” in 1948 to provide guidelines for wage structure through out the country, it was the beginning of Minimum wage law in India. Were Indian leaders, who are assumed to be the fathers of Independent India such fools that they failed to realize the vicious trap of British Government and hence established the poisonous minimum wage law, or were they simply following the steps of British government (being the new rulers of India) to keep the policy of Divide and Rule?
Consequences of Minimum Wage Law
The rate of unemployment is directly proportional to the overload of labour cost over productivity. Minimum wage law that forcefully raises the costs of unskilled and inexperienced labour and thereby increases the labour cost, while decreasing the productivity, certainly raises unemployment, also as no one can employ a worker at a wage below the minimum wage forced by the law, the unemployed youth fails to get any chance for employment (as it would be illegal) and hence suffers extreme poverty. Often economists ignore the fact that minimum wage law actually causes unemployment and poverty because of the shear fear of politicians and rulers, who just for making their vote bank keep exploiting the poor lot.
Consider a case of a private primary school engaged in providing elementary education to the poor kids of a society. The owner of the school is obviously not a rich person, he is managing the school to earn a living and in return, he is providing job for teachers he employs and a well-managed system of education to the kids of the society at affordable student’s fees. He cannot increase the student fees to that level at which parents would find it difficult to send their children to his school. Initially, he engages 10 teachers, 2 clerks and 4 menial workers at an average salary of Rs 1000-Rs 1500 per month. In September 2007, the national minimum floor wage was increased to Rs 80 per day (that is Rs 2400 per month) for all scheduled employments from Rs66 in 2004, to Rs 45 in 1999, Rs40 in 1998 and Rs 35 in 1996⁴ .
That is, the school owner is actually doing an illegal act by giving lesser salary to the ten teachers he has employed than the salary, which government has admonished to be given to the teachers (workers). Obviously, the teachers would be happy if their salary were increased from Rs1000-Rs1500 to Rs2400 per month, it would almost be double. If government forces the school owner to give the dictated salary to all his employees, he will certainly find himself unable to give that amount to his employees and hence he will be forced to trim the number of teachers, clerks and helpers to half. That is, if government forces the minimal wage law on the school owner, he will simply remove 5 of his teachers, 1 of the clerk and 2 of the menial workers.
That would increase the salary of remaining 8 employees but will certainly throw the unfortunate other 8 people in poverty and unemployment. They will hardly find any other job because all other employers will also suffer the similar inhuman conditions of lack of money to employ the job-seekers.
In case of teachers, the school manager has option to choose the best of the teachers and remove the average or below average teachers. In case of the clerk and the menial workers, he simply does not have such a choice because almost each of his employees is similarly skilled and efficient in those works. So how would he decide whom to remove and whom to keep as his employee? He may choose to employ those, who agrees to sign at the pay slim as admonished by the government, while taking lesser salary in turn of his favour to keep them at job, that is, he would be tempted to promote corruption. Otherwise, he may keep the workers of his caste or religion while removing the workers of other caste or religion. That is, the minimal wage law will force the employer to cause hatred based on religion or caste.
On the other hand, because of lesser teachers, the burden on each to teach the students appropriately will be increased, their working hours may increase. Government can certainly admonish another law to restrict the maximum working hours for employees. In that case, either the teachers will start ignoring the students, or the school owner will have to remove some of the students to balance the workload of teachers. The owner of the school will also suffer losses because he simply cannot increase student’s fees (government can admonish against that) because if he does so, the parents by themselves will feel to remove their children from school and hence stopping their education. At any further increase of minimum wage of the workers, the poor section will suffer further. Thus, the final sufferers of the inhumanity of minimum wage law are always the poor, the workers, the consumers and the producer.
Conclusion
Minimum wage law not only increases unemployment and extreme poverty but also, it increases tensions anger in between the various sects of the society based on religion and castes or race. It promotes racism, poverty and shortage.
It would be wrong even to think that the founders of India were fool enough to miss the true nature of minimum wage law, yet they kept following the British policy of divide and rule just to keep their political vote bank strong enough while the poor public is bound to suffer. Such inhuman policies are necessities of government to exist, hence government and politicians often lure the poor public by misguiding them and pretending that the politicians are with good intentions and want to help the poor, the reality is, government exists on the principle of violence, exploitation and robbery and enslavement of poor citizens.

1. Consequences of Price Control, Reason for Liberty [↩]
2. Abolition of Cost is cause of Corruption, Reason for Liberty [↩]
3. Minimum Wages Act India, Government of India [↩]
4. Minimum Wages Act India, Government of India [↩]

The two major political propagandas of Indian political parties are “Education for All¹” and “Electricity for everyone at every Village”. Despite all the technical advancements government failed to provide electricity for every village of India, not only that, government failed to provide incessant electricity to any city too. India suffers acute electric shortage. Most of the cities suffer brownouts. Generally, any common city or town of India suffers electric cuts for 4-6 hours daily, while some more industrial cities and towns of India (like that of cities of Uttar Pradesh) suffers acute blackouts for even 12 hours a day.
It would be nothing new to stress again that it is impossible for any government to ensure and provide anything like “Free-education” or “Free-electricity” as citizen’s rights in any condition. As it is impossible, governments are bound to fail to meet such promises.
The Destruction of Power Sector under Government
We have seen how the price controls destroys the power of market and producers to supply the required commodity to meet the demands and hence creates shortages². In order to neutralize the effect of price control, government thus tends to exclusively control certain sectors of production completely under the monopoly. As government controls the production and supply of electricity thoroughly in India, it may be assumed that the price control on electricity may not affect the supply because it is the government only, that is producing and supplying electricity and hence government may provide electricity sufficiently at controlled lower prices or even at no price at all. As a matter of fact, government even tries to provide free-electricity for various purposes, yet government suffers acute shortage of electric power and hence fails to meet the demand of electricity. The natural law that price controls brings shortages works even in such exclusively government franchised production sector.
Role of inflation in electric shortages
If there is no inflation and government is providing electricity at lowest minimal prices, government often fails to gain any profit over the power sector and hence suffers acute financial deficits to increase the production of electricity to meet the required demand. Even the minimal possible price for electricity certainly remains much higher than the prices that would have prevailed in free market because not only the electric sector suffers any vital competition to increase production and decrease prices; it actually prohibits any such effort. All efforts to increase production are surmounted by the increase in demand.
If there is a genuine inflation rate, the cost of production of electricity keeps increasing, while the government and regulatory bodies either refuses to increase the price of electric power or allows only insufficient increase in prices. As a result, power sector suffers losses and deficits and ceases to grow rapidly and increase production because it gets no profit to save and invest in further production. Hence, government is forced to provide subsidies and capital for the power sector to keep producing from the compulsory tax collected. As a result, the citizens are forced to pay much higher price for the comparably insufficient and menial electric services than what they would have been paying for much better and sufficient electric services in free market. As the power sector under government regulations remains in deficit and suffer losses, it fails to replace worn-out equipments and service lines at higher prices due to inflation and that increase wastage and forces power sector to actual decline.
Corruption in power sector
Because of the natural losses and deficits in power-sector, government is forced to pay the required amounts to keep the production of electricity from the budgets of compulsory tax collected. This enforces a certain corruption where the more hardworking and able persons who are obviously making higher incomes, are forced to pay much higher prices for the power-sector (or any commodity/service under government monopoly), while the lazy, dishonest and incapable ones are getting the same services of electricity at much lower prices, often at no price at all. This obviously is acute corruption that forces every citizen to actually accept corruption in his own demeanour. As any consumer realizes that he is actually paying much higher prices for the electricity in form of various taxes he is forced to pay than the others, who are paying lesser taxes, he feels cheated, and that increases the tendency of consumer to steal electricity. Often consumers tend to tamper the electric meters and other ways to actually use more electricity and pay less. This seems to be genuine too because they are already paying much higher prices in form of other compulsory taxations. Often, because of controlled prices of electricity people over-consumes and hence waste the electricity. Overall, the power sector is forced to keep suffering great losses, insufficient amount to keep increasing production, to replace worn-out equipments, supplying lines, and almost no amount for development, innovation and inventions to reduce wastage and increase production. The amount that could have been used to increase production of electricity is wasted upon creating better meters to prohibit stealing, which seems impossible because in a way, stealing becomes necessary to reduce the already forced corruption by the government on citizens.
As government is forced to pay for the power sector through the budgets and compulsory tax collected, the amount that could have been used for progress in other sectors is wasted upon the already suffering power sector and that decreases the overall progress.
Will the Nuclear technology reduce the scarcity of power?
It is assumed that nuclear technology may increase the production of electricity and hence reduce the shortage, but it is not possible because the nuclear technology is a replacement for thermal and hydroelectric production. Thus, at one hand the production of electricity will be increased, at other hand, it will be decreased too while the basic reason for the shortage of electricity, that are government monopoly and regulation, price control and inflation, will remain unanswered.
The solution for the acute power shortage India is facing is to reduce the regulation and ultimately culminate the monopoly of government on power sector. If private bodies are allowed to invest in power sector freely with property rights, the production of electricity will increase manifolds; the wastage in supplying electricity will reduce to minimal. Because of competitive free market, the price for electricity will tend to decrease and that will promote the private electric service providers to increase the reach their facilities to more and more consumers at much lesser prices.
Furthermore, the producers and investors, in order to increase their profits will keep investing in innovating and inventing ways to increase progressive technology and production of electricity. As consumers will get their desired electric services at the genuine prices, the tendency to steal electricity will be reduced to minimal and that would further decrease the wastage to much extent.
Conclusion: The new 123 deal is hugely insufficient to solve the shortage of electricity in India. Indian government need to privatize the power sector and let the investors and entrepreneurs to invest in innovative ways and technology (including nuclear technology) to increase production of electricity and hence decrease the actual price of electricity for the consumers.

1. Education For All, Reason For Liberty [↩]
2. Reason of Price Rise and Consequences of Price Control, Reason For Liberty [↩]