Federal/National Climate Policy

The Copenhagen Climate Summit failed to impress anybody and despite all the hopes attached with Obama, no significant change was visible. Obviously, Obama administration had a great deal of immediate problems to tackle with including the recession period of 2009, the huge stimulus and highly increasing national debt along with the socialistic burdensome programs like healthcare reforms. However, a change was visible in the attitude of administration and on January 26, 2009, the House of Representatives of US Energy Independence and Climate Legislation, the Congress also passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, both the legislations were meant to encourage renewable energy usage and increase energy efficiency. The Cash for Clunker program suggested the US administration’s initiative towards the greener options, the Cap Carbon Trade plan showed positive approach towards greener US, and US government also started trying to encourage innovators and entrepreneurs to create greener jobs. . The Clean Energy Job and American Power Act provided many programs that will raise funds from government to invest in the inventions and development of greener options for electricity requirements and will provide huge opportunity of green jobs. Yet, on bigger plan, there is no strict path towards achieving and implementing some policies that would lead US to reduce the emission of GHGs to about 5% to 8% below the level of 1990’s.
Not only that, all these positive steps towards clean air, green surroundings, clear atmosphere and cooler globe faced opposition within the senate in the form of The Dirty Air Act. The Dirty Air Act attacks the Clean Air Act directly. Many big oil companies and some senators along with their lobbyists claimed that Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) statement about the dangers of carbon pollution does not show any major threat to public health or welfare. If the Dirty Air Act passes, the US consumption of foreign and domestic oil will increase further and that will undo all the positive steps taken towards greener USA.

Business Partnerships

One of the main reason behind the inability of the Congress of US is the powerful US corporate that funds in electoral campaigns. The business partnerships of US provide a space of such political forum where the motives of big enterprises cannot be ignored. Obviously, the big conglomerate like BP America, DuPont, and General Electric etc cannot afford to let Congress restrict their source of profits. Furthermore, no government would like to hurt the economy of the nation by almost destroying the leading industries of the country. The big oil companies deny accepting Clean Air Act, or any other proposal to reduce the carbon consumption.
William R. Cline in his book The Economics of Global Warming explained the expected economic damages that may be caused by global warming. He suggested that if the damages caused by global warming are smaller than the costs of reduction of emissions from fossil fuels, deforestation and other sources, than the attempt to discourage usage of carbon or fossil fuels is irrational.
Self-interest is the main motive of any person that drives him to take rational decisions and implement them properly. Thus, if it is shown that the economic losses due to global warming are much more than the losses one will face by reducing carbon consumption, than naturally, the person will opt to reduce carbon consumption because that will be lesser loss for him or her and it will be healthier option too. Thus, it is easier for individuals to opt for greener options while it is difficult for the government or Congress to resolve and adopt policies to control carbon footprints. The reason being, as a collective, Congress or US government cannot think for individual losses, they will only think for the better profits of maintaining relations with big conglomerates, big oil companies and industries like GE, DuPont etc. The evil nexus of government and corporate will never let the greener options establish themselves in the market because the government will keep stimulating the conglomerates. Yet, an individual by himself can opt for greener, hybrid cars, which will consumer lesser fuel, the individual as a consumer may rift the market towards the greener options available in the market. The key to the trouble of global warming is consumerism. Consumerism is the principle of Free Market, which states, “free choice of consumer should rule the market, or, the consumer decides the economic structure of the society”.
As it is clear that the public realizes the dangers of global warming much better than the Congress or US government, the citizens should opt for the free market principle rather than waiting for government to take proper actions. If the consumers prefers and demand green alternatives, clearer energy resources, fuel efficient cars, energy efficient appliances, renewable energy resources and other appliances to reduce their individual carbon fingerprints, than the producer, manufacturers and providers will be forced to provide environmental friendly alternatives for the society. Consumerism is the boon for human development (Reason for Liberty, 2010), and hence, if the individuals, the consumers consider that global warming is greater loss and hence they should opt for greener options, than the entrepreneurs, innovators and manufacturers will themselves be heralded towards providing greener options because that will be the more profitable execution for them. Once the big conglomerate start producing greener alternatives, the government will also feel no objection to provide greener policies, also, when consumers themselves will demand green market, green goods, green services and lesser carbon fingerprints, then the role of government will be minimal in case of improving the conditions of global temperatures.

Performance of States on global warming platform

Stephen Lacey reports that some of the states are moving faster towards green renewable energy options than the federal government or Congress. California, New Jersey, New York, Arizona and Ohio are not only proving to be great market for renewable energy resources like solar energy and wind energy, the state governments are also promoting the renewable energy options to far extent. Recently, Texas got rid of its eight coal power plants. Texas not only opted for nuclear alternative, but the Texas government approved plans to supply 35 per cent of power needs through renewable energy resources.
Stephen Lacey further reveal that the interference of state government in market through the SREC program is benefitting few large companies at the expense of many small companies. The picture clarifies the reason why the state governments are running faster towards greener US with lesser carbon footprints. The federal government deals with higher degree of market interference and hence, the Congress remains in effect of big business to create corrupt nexus that cannot decide for better greener options. State governments on the other hand have lesser power to interfere with the market, hence they are a little faster, yet, if somehow the government is decentralized and restricted from interfering the market, that is, if the market is left free, then the market will force the entrepreneurs, manufacturers, producers and business conglomerates to provide better, greener options to reduce the GHGs emission and ease the acute global warming conditions, the reason being, consumers demand “green” solutions to the global warming crisis. The demand of green alternatives by consumers will prompt the free market to create green jobs and will incentivize the entrepreneurs and energy industries to innovate better energy efficient renewable energy resources extraction.

Conclusion: The Actual Way to Improve Climate

It is quite clear that the US congress and federal government is lacking will and strong leadership to bring about any significant change in the policies to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases emission. The nexus between politicians, big business conglomerates and oil companies seems to be evil enough to thwart any possible change in the attitude of Congress towards the acute need of reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emission. It is evident that if nothing would be done to prevent or slow down global warming, there can be disastrous consequences on whole world. US federal government and Congress find it self unable to deal with the situation because the Congress cannot afford the economic turmoil if it breaks relations with the big business conglomerates and oil companies. Instead of taking firm and stern actions to compel the big industries to reduce their carbon footprints, Congress tries to cajole them to agree with a cap on carbon. Pete DuPont stated clearly that “global warming looks like neither the alarmists’ serious threat, nor an immediate crisis that requires governmental control of America’s economy to reduce it”, He suggested that Congress should consider the costs before passing policies on Global Warming. In such a scenario, it is difficult to believe that the big conglomerates like BP America, DuPont, and General Electric etc will accept the necessity of time so easily. Yet, there is a hope to save the earth against the ill-human activities. The individual citizens of U.S and whole round the world can force the conglomerates, politicians and governments too by denying their interference and monopoly in market and by demanding better, greener and feasible energy options.
Once the consumers themselves decide to reduce their own carbon footprints, the big companies will be forced to follow the suit. Congress, federal government and state government meanwhile should stop interfering with the market and let the new players, competitors, entrepreneurs and innovators provide better and efficient energy solutions so that the big conglomerate of US may also feel compelled to work towards a greener future. The key for a better, greener and safer world against the glooming danger of global warming is in the hands of consumer and in the policies of free market. The nexus between government, politicians and big business need to relieve the market to create greener world.

The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism: David Friedman

David Friedman, the freer son of Mr. Milton Friedman wrote this excellent work in 1973. Milton Friedman himself is known as one of the premier economist with Libertarian and anti-Keynesian approach. Yet, David Friedman is way apart from his father. One may feel that David Friedman learnt Economics not from his father, but from the Genius Ludwig Von Mises himself(UPDATE: Just to clarify, he did not). Machinery of Freedom contains a range 48 excellent essays that will not only entertain and provoke your mind to think rationally, but provide you a lot more to think and explore by your own. The essays are short and ranges from defence of property rights and private property to strictest modes of anarchocapitalism. He discusses the exploration of private law enforcement in a free society to great extent and provides a good look on the issue. You will certainly have a better understanding of a model of Free Society after reading the book. The wonderful thing is David Friedman seems to be hugely influenced by Ayn Rand. His assumption, that mostly people are rational and if someone is irrational, he will loose in the free society and the loss will be the teacher to achieve rational behaviour.

The Two Treaties of Government: John Locke

The founding father of classical liberalism or Libertarianism, John Locke still remains the most influential philosopher and thinker of all times. Although, his first treaty seems to be obsolete now, because the first treaty was the direct and vehement opposition to the irrational and obnoxious support of Robert Filmer to Monarchy who claimed that, men are naturally slaves and hence monarchy is the only justifiable government. The Second treaty of the book makes it a grand work. One can find the most systematic and logical defence of Individual Liberty in that book in such an inspiring way that will make you say that John Locke is way better than Aristotle.
The book was written in 1680, yet it is not obsolete. Even now, most of the governments throughout the world keep harassing individual liberty on the name of democracy. The book makes one learn the true nature of proper Miniarchy.

Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand

One can find no better book on Individual Liberty, Rationality and clarity of conscious other than this great Magnum Opus of Ayn Rand. Fountainhead lays the foundation of libertarianism and Atlas Shrugged stands on it as the basic structure of Free Society. The book is still one of the largest selling books throughout the world even after 53 years of its publication. The book is timeless, it will never die, it will never loose its shine and ability to make minds sharper, better, proper and rational. The book clarifies most of the dilemmas of a common reader living in a world where totalitarian governments are harping on controlling the masses, where the individual is faceless and individuality is curse. Atlas Shrugged shows you who is exploiter and who is being exploited and leaves you to decide whether you want to be the exploiter, or will you accept being exploited. The book prompts you to strike against the exploiters. The book fills you up with the energy and idea of liberty for your own self. Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are the best books one can ever read. Ohh by the way, have a reality check, feminists cannot accept these books. Ayn Rand has mocked feminism, just like all other form of collectivism, and being a woman, I am grateful to her for doing that.

Economics in One Lesson: Henry Hazlitt

Nothing can be better than this marvel by Henry Hazlitt, the American Philosopher and economist. The book has the potential to make you learn the actual economics of practical life and practical world in most easy way. The book makes you love economics. Hazlitt, through his immense simplicity explains how Free Market promotes efficiency and how government interference in market ruins the system and creates chaos. Time will Run Back and Economics in One Lesson are the two books that will not only answer all your questions regarding inflation, price control, minimum wages, unions and every other thing that influence your daily life, but will also provide you an assurance that the things can be better. The book leads you to start thinking and striving for Liberty to make world better.

Human Action: Ludwig Von Mises

Ludwig Von Mises is undisputable founding father of Austrian Economics. He along with Ayn Rand is the founding father of modern libertarian approach too. Human Action is the book that will clarify all the illusions about the stories of communism, socialism and collective welfarism. His explanation of Industrial revolution and 2nd world war and the economic effects of the situation are revolutionary. There are many who keep giving excuses for Capitalism and Individual Freedom, the frontier fighter for the sake of Individual Liberty and Human moral rights was Ludwig Von Mises.
He was undoubtedly the best philosopher of 20th century along with Ayn Rand.
In Human Action, he introduces Praxeology as the major foundation of social sciences and economic laws. He further ascertains that economic laws can only be arrived at by means of methodological individualism. He was vehement opponent of positivism, or materialism as a foundation of social sciences and morality. He was one of the truest Individualist, Rationalist and Objectivist. The major theme of all his books is inflation and monetary economics and the rational comparison between Free Society and Government controlled society. Once he said

Efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill.

The failure of USSR makes him the sage who knew the future. His work on theoretical Business Cycles explains all the causes of repeatable Depressions.

The Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith

Everybody knows a little or more about this famous book by Adam Smith. He was the first to explain the importance of social distribution. His example of story of pin-making is used every now and then. People write a lot about the “Invisible Hand” and murk up the essence of the book. The book clearly states that government is redundant and it should let the market free.

The Animal Farm: George Orwell

George Orwell was one of the best Dystopian. His book 1984 is world famous along with Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World”. One can easily see how both of these writers used and criticized the Pavlovian learning and conditioning, and how they showed the world that the way it is going through will lead to certain destruction. Orwell used to say that 1984 was written to change the view of the people about the society they should try to create. The book is a masterpiece undoubtedly, but The Animal Farm is much better book on my scale. The Animal Farm is direct attack on the egalitarianism and collectivism. The Animal Farm, along with 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World” should be read to understand why government is evil, and why people should not sacrifice individualism for the illusionist welfarism.

The Law: Bastiat

Frederick Bastiat was one of the most prominent economists of 19th century who proposed and supported Laissez-Faire system and Individualism strongly. Amongst his all great works, The Law is one of the best. The book suggests the proper nature of Law and the role of legal bodies in a Free Society. The book was published in 1849, the same year when Frederick Bastiat passed away. The book suggest that the proper role of the law is the protection of Individual right, Liberty, defence of life and property. Bastiat and John Locke are the founding teachers of Property rights and Individualism; they are major inspiration behind all forms of Libertarianism.

Free to Choose: Milton Friedman

We started the list with the book of David Freidman on radical libertarianism; we will end with a book by his Father Milton Friedman. The Nobel Laureate, prominent libertarian and opponent of Keynesian economics discusses the Government sponsored education in this book along with many other issues. With his easy logic, he explains how and why big governments are a curse, a big problem. Obviously, he accepts that small governments are smaller “problem”. He shows that government-sponsored education is not improving and they cannot improve. The book is a classical approach for the defence of human freedom against the state.

There are many other books that excellently explain individual liberty and the reason to defend it; I might have missed a few of them. The mentioned above are those that I consider the best ones at the moment.

How the Private coinage will work?

The private coinage will work just like any other commodity (say mobile phones, or jewellery or wrist watches). Minters will produce coins of different shapes, sizes and weight according to the desires and demand of his customers. The free competition of the market will set the price of the coins of the minter. Second issue is about the trouble that the coins may create when weighed or evaluated at every deal or bargain. It is true that it would be difficult to evaluate the purity of gold coins every time a transaction would be made. To solve that issue, the minters will stamp the coins and guaranty the weight and purity of the coin. Private minters can guarantee the coins just like the government do. The profit will be, when government mints, there is no competition for government to be truthful, alert and honest, it is monopoly of government over minting coins, but when the private minters will guarantee their coins, their guarantee will weigh more because if the private minter will cheat, he will loose his market and consumers to other honest minter. Just like a government paper currency or coin holds the governmental promise to pay the bearer of that note an amount equal to the price of that paper currency or coin, the coin of private minters will also hold the promise from the minter that he would pay an amount of gold equal to be mentioned on the gold coin of his brand.
People against the idea of private currency will say that it would increase the chances of frauds. Same people never object to the miserable record of the governmental frauds, swindles and mismanagement. Every time the government issues stimulus to a particular industry, or forgives the loans of some conglomerate by explaining that it is working for social profits, the government actually is committing a fraud against the general public. Every time a person faces the devaluation of his savings in governmental currency because of extreme price rise and inflation, it is the example of regular fraudulent and untrustworthy behavior of the government regarding paper currency issuance and minting coinage. In case of private minters of gold coins, the chances of inflation and abrupt price hikes will lessen to minimum. More over, the free market competition for consumer satisfaction, the various minters will compete to be more honest and better customer service providers. The more a particular private coinage minting agency will be honest and better product and service provider, the more will be its consumer base and profits. Thus, in free market private coinage system, the competition for profits would be competition for honesty and consumer satisfaction. In addition, the problem of fake currency will also be eliminated because each private coinage agency would try to defend their brands by their own and the government also will be able to devote all its energy to safeguard the private minters against duplication and fake currency. In case of private coinage, one can trust that the government will prevent and punish frauds. The integrity of private open market operators cannot be discarded in favor of government monopoly, because in case of monopoly, there is no need for the government to be honest, but in case of private free market operators, to be honest is prerequisite for gaining any profit and healthy share of consumers.
Furthermore, whole market works on guarantee of standards. A medicine store sells a tablet of aspirin of mentioned weight and dosage, a butter seller sells packed butter slices of mentioned grams of butter. The buyer trusts these guarantees, and they prove to be true. In a case when a person buys a product with a certain warranty and guarantee and somehow the product fails to prove the standard mentioned, than in most cases, he gets a replacement for the ill-manufactured product. That is, even if by mistake a product of a company fails to fulfill the standards demanded by the customer and provided by the manufacturer, then either it pays back the money of the customer or replaces the product with new and better one. Market of mobile sets, or laptops or packed meat, butter or cheese, or other things does not fail even though government does not hold a monopoly on any of the products. Thus, we can trust that the customers of a private minter will be safe against any possible fraud because of the presence of other competitors of the minter in market. The minter’s customers themselves will be keenly alert about the weight and fineness of the coins just as they remain while buying and using other commodities.

The problem of wear and tear of currency

The current government regulated currency, paper notes and coins holds no worth in themselves apart from the governor’s pledge to pay the bearer of the note or coin, a definite amount of money. The value of money obviously keeps going low and lower because of inflation and price rise. Along with this, the paper currency issued by government often suffers wear and tear causing further loss of money. Most of the governmental coins are eroded or torn out and government keeps forcing the usage of same old notes and coins. The old rag-tagged coins and paper notes are to be considered of the same value as of a fresh note or coin. By doing so, the government actually forces a certain type of price control over the old paper notes and coins and provide them the equal price as that of newer notes and coins. Because of this, the older coins and notes are overvalued, while the new notes and coins suffer undervaluation. All this amounts to nothing but mal-investment. Everybody loves to circulate the older worn out coins and paper currency while they have a tendency to keep newer notes and coins safe.
Consider the case of free market where minting of coins is not a monopoly of government. Assume that there are gold coins of 10grams well circulated in market. After a few years of constant usage, the coins may suffer wear and tear and lets say that they weigh only 9 grams of gold after 10 years (assume). In a free market, a coin that has been reduced from 10 grams of gold to 9 grams will not be overvalued and it will gain only the price of 9 grams. Obviously, nobody would like to use the 9 grams coins at the price of 10 grams of gold, hence the worn out coins will be driven out of the market, or they may be used at reduced price. Thus, nobody would be deceived by the forced insistence of overvaluation to the older coins. This will avoid malinvestment. To solve out the problem of wear-tear of the coins, the private coin minters can either set a time limit on their stamped guarantees of weight or agree to provide a new coin in exchange of every old coin with reduced weight. Thus, there will not be any compulsory standardization of currency, which is a feature of monopoly of government.
Conclusion:
Since long governments have tried to control the currency circulation in market so that they can restrict and control the progress and prosperity of citizens. Yet, from time to time, private bankers have issued their own minted coins (Know more about Private Coinage and Good Money)) . The gold standard with privatization of issuing currency and minting coins will not only end the monopoly of government over currency, which is the major reason of acute price rise and inflation, but also it will avoid any chance of fraud as the free market will tend the virtue of more honest and better services for gaining more consumer base and high profits. In addition, if coin minting is privatized, the government can also try to serve the public by ensuring security against any sort of fraud. In any case, privatization of currency would be a much better option than the monopoly of government over currency.

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.

Current trend of Bollywood movies

With the liberalization of Indian economy, the civil liberalization is also gaining strengthen and bollywood flicks are portraying the essence and importance of liberty quite well. Ashutosh Gowariker and Amir Khan portrayed the inhuman nature of taxation in the movie Lagaan while Mani Ratnam portrayed Abhishek Bachchan as “Guru” struggling for economic freedom against socialistic governmental odds. The contemporary artistic subjects were merged with the colours of popular cinema and very odd individualistic tales like Tare Zameen Par and Black gained huge success. Such flicks obviously provide a sense of liberty in the individual to seek for his own freedom, his strengths, and his right for living with honour of independence. One can say that bollywood is providing artistic masterpieces depicting the importance of individual liberty and issue of individualism and in the same league, the two big movies of 2009, “Rocket Singh the salesman of the year” and the hugely successful “3 Idiots” confirmed that now Indian society is ready to appraise the libertarian attitude and the Indian youth is daring enough to raise the issues of collectivistic problems and is ready to denounce them, to fight against them. Even “Rang De Basanti” portrayed the current depleted morality of society and the struggle of youth against the social political tyrants, yet it was full of anger, violence, frustration and exhaustion. One may not group “Rang De Basanti” with the other Bollywood films of libertarian approach.

Ranbir Kapoor

We are only trying to say that there are only good people and bad people. There are no good Hindus, bad Hindus, good Christians, bad Christians. Either you are a good person or a bad person. Religion is not the criterion, humanity is.” SRK

Collectivism is not the criterion, individualism is, Individual is.
Another movie “Wake up Sid” depicts the quest of person searching for his existence, rationales, aims, setting his goals and winning over them.
Movies are the mirror of society and more than that, movies are a strong way of propagating the right rational idea. With the current libertarian approach of Indian movies and arts where the art forms with their fictional attributes are depicting the things as they might be and ought to be, one may say that Indian society is progressively improving and is set to accept and evolve as a free society looking for further establishing Individual freedom, his quest for his existence, happiness and letting him win his way against all odds of collectivism.

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.

Changing views of Climatologists

The stratospheric vapour is easing out Global Warming

The Growing Glaciers

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

Alternative solutions for alleged global warming

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

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

Inflation

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

Minimum Wages

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

Government Health Care

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

Higher Education

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

Denial to earn an honest living

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

Way to Oligarchy

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

Conclusion:

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

“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

“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 control causes shortage and hence excruciating conditions for the most poor men of society. He might be thinking of the ill-effects of socialized medicines, 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

Abolish Minimum wage, Abolish Youth Wage

Were the Indian politicians fool enough to be unaware of vicious nature of Minimum Wage, or were they following the footsteps of British dictators to Divide and Rule and exploit the poor Indian?

Who Decides the Prices?

The price of a commodity depends on its demand and its supply. Demand and supply being the amount of commodity the buyers are prepared to buy and sellers are prepared to sell, at all prices.

If supply is constant, The higher the price of a commodity, the lesser is its demand, the lower the price of a commodity, the higher is its demand.

As the speculators and sellers reduce the price of their commodity, the demand of that commodity increases. People obviously are willing to buy more shirts at Rs20/- per shirt and they will buy lesser shirts at price of Rs40/- per shirt. Since the lower price increases consumers, speculators and sellers tend to decrease the price to the minimal possible value so that they can outcompete the other speculators and sellers. Most of the consumers will opt to buy from that seller who is asking the least prices and hence, that seller will make maximum profits. Obviously, a speculator cannot decide price for his stored commodity any less than the actual cost of that commodity plus cost of its storing and his share of profit.
Thus, it should be clear that speculators could not decide the price variation of a commodity as price is directly proportional to the demand of consumers. A speculator or a seller may merely speculate the increasing or decreasing trends of the demand of a commodity and adjust the supply of commodity by either storing it or flooding the stored quantity of the commodity in market in accordance with their share of profit.

Can Government decide and control the prices?

Speculators cannot decide and control prices because they cannot force anybody, they cannot use violence against anybody. So, if a speculator decides to sell stored commodity at higher prices, he will loose his consumers, as they will have choice to go for that speculator and seller that provides the commodity at lower prices.
Yet, government can decide and control the prices because government do not need to look for the supply of a commodity, on the other hand, government works under the pressure of vote banks. In order to obtain maximum of the vote bank, government can actually decide the prices of various commodities lower than the cost of production and storage of those commodities. That is why, just in order to gain maximum vote bank, government can promise to sell wheat or rice at a price of Rs2/- per kg, or even at free of price. This is absolute corruption and fraud because the cost of production of any commodity or service is always higher than the price dictated by the government and hence government always works at loss that ultimately burdens the poor consumers, voters. Government can control the prices too because it has monopoly on violence, government can force all speculators and sellers to sell the product at the dictated prices; it can illegalize speculating and selling and may control selling services completely by collectivizing the market. Government can jail speculators, sellers and dealers if they do anything against the monopoly of government, government can kill them too by means of police force.
Obviously, government has no responsibility or need to look for the quantity, quality and supply of the commodities of which it dictates the prices because the basic means of government income is confiscatory, compulsory taxation. Yet, when supply of a product reaches too much lower and the demand increases too much higher, government succumbs under the pressure of demand and supply and resorts to increase the prices, that again creates havoc for the consumers.

Reason of Price Rise and Consequences of Price Control

In order to hide its irresponsibility and fraud, government often suggests that the reason of price rise is population explosion and scarcity of products. Yet, it is again a myth. It is true that Indian population increased almost 4 times since 1947, yet the thing to be noted is, Indian production increased 100 times (or more). So comparably, production is too much more in relation with present population than what it was in 1947 in relation with the population of 1947.
Price rise is direct consequence of Inflation . As government has monopoly on printing fiat currency out of thin air, it keeps increasing the fiat currency. As a result, the purchasing power of citizens increases. Since the purchasing power of consumers’ increases, their demand also increases and it exceeds the quantity of available supply.
Whenever the quantity of demand of consumers’ increases than the quantity of supply the producers and sellers can provide, the situation of shortage occurs where the consumers are willing to buy, but the sellers and suppliers cannot provide, they have nothing to sell.
Such situations creates tensions within the society and may erupt in violence as every consumers suddenly comes to realize that although they have fiat currency, they have no wealth, they have been robbed and they are poorer than what they were years before. To avoid such situation, government feels forced to increase prices of commodities because price rise actually solves out the problem of shortage. At higher prices, demand of consumers decreases and tends to come closer to the quantity of supply available in market. Yet again, government may loose vote bank because of price rise, hence it resorts to price control again.
Price control is again a fraud and creates chaos in market. Due to lower dictated prices, demand of consumers remains high irrespective of the supply and that increases wastage of scarce products causing shortage. As production and supply never meets the demand of consumers in such scenario, the consumers suffers.

Solution of Price rise and Shortage

Gold Currency

Solving the Shortage of Grains

To understand this, let us take the case of an unexpected flood or drought in an Indian region (say Bihar, or Andhra Pradesh). Because of drought, the production of wheat will be reduced (let us say it reduces by 1/12th of the average wheat production in an year). Obviously, because of the shortage in production, the price of wheat is expected to rise after say, 6 months. The enterprisers looking for making higher profits will speculate this expected price rise and will start storing the wheat at the current lower prices to save it to make higher profits in future by selling the stored wheat at higher prices.
Their speculative storing of wheat will result in a raise of current price of wheat, as there will be lesser wheat available to be sold to consumers, and the enlarged quantity of wheat for future will reduce the future prices of the wheat.
Because of current higher prices, the consumers will also start accommodating themselves to the shortage of wheat by reducing the consumption of wheat and checking the wastage. This thriftiness on behalf of consumers will allow them to sustain the time of absolute scarcity of wheat and that will further reduce the expected future price of wheat. Thus, at one hand, speculators will increase the current prices of wheat by storing it for future sales at higher prices, on the other hand, the increased available quantity of wheat for future and the thriftiness of consumers at present will reduce the expected prices of wheat in future. As a result, the maximum possible increase in price of wheat at the period of most scarcity will also be not very much more than the current price of wheat plus the storing and preserving charges of the wheat by speculators.
In absence of speculators, as most of governments illegalizes speculation for price control, the consumers will never realize the actual shortage of wheat because there will be no sign of scarcity by means of price rise and will continue consuming wheat as normal. On the other hand, although the stored wheat will satisfy the demand of consumers for first 11 months, there will be no wheat left for the next 12th month of year as the total wheat produced is already less by 1/12th of the average required for an year. Such a situation will not only make people suffer starvation but will also fail to reduce wastage when it could have been. In addition, it will provide further chances of bureaucratic governmental corruption.
The profit motive will also alleviate the situation of famine and scarcity by means of another natural force of free market that tends to equalize the price of a commodity at all places. At a time when Andhra Pradesh or Bihar is suffering famine and food shortage, the dealers at other parts (say Uttar Pradesh, Punjab or Tamil Nadu) will seek higher profit rates by selling their stored wheat to the consumers in Bihar or Andhra Pradesh. This will result in a slight increase in price of wheat at the local markets while the increase quantity of wheat available for Bihar or Andhra Pradesh consumers will reduce the unexpected rise in price of wheat at markets there. Thus, the shortage of wheat at a region will be spread to whole India and hence will reduce its effect to minimal, all will share the increase in price of wheat, and that will reduce any extra burden on the consumers of famine suffering area to negligible.
The speculators cannot store the wheat for more than a period of 12 months as by that time, the new crop of wheat will arrive in the market and that will reduce the price of wheat to normal.

Issue of Oil Shortage because of Corrupt Oil Barons

The same principles of free market will also tackle any unwanted situation in the market of crude oil and petroleum or any storable commodity.
In the previous post, while discussing the Market Anarchy , one of my friends raised the issue of Oil Barons, asking what will happen to free market if the Arab Oil Barons tries to control the market because of their influence on oil production.
Let us assume that all Oil Barons of Arab makes a union and tries to control the free market by imposing an artificial scarcity of crude oil (although this is impossible because reducing supply of oil will reduce all income of those oil barons as they have no other means of profitable production).
The speculators of free market will certainly foresee the future shortage of oil and will maintain their oil storage to make higher profits. That will obviously increase the current prices of available oil and hence will introduce the thriftiness in consumers, making them more able to sustain the period of oil shortage. Consequently, it will reduce the chances of unexpected increase in price of oil at extreme periods too.
On the other hand, Indian free market will also tend to increase its oil production to make higher profits. In addition, profit motive will tend the oil producers of other nations (like USA or Russia etc) to sell their oil to the Indian market. That will obviously tend to spread the scarcity of oil through out the world and hence will assuage the problems of Indian market. Hence, although the economy of India and actually whole world, will suffer a comparable loss but that would not be of any considerable degrees. On the other hand, Oil Barons depend only on oil production, their loss at not selling the oil will be huge and directly pointed towards them, and that will break their union.
Conclusion: A free market inadvertently safeguards itself against any sort of scarcity of any commodity by means of the profit motivated market forces. As speculators guard the market and hence the well-being of consumers as true and honest soldiers (as their vested profits and interests are strictly attached with the consumers), the free market necessarily remains free of any discrepancy in the prices of any commodity.
Even the administrators of mixed economy have realizes the power of forces of free market that is why Indian government issued allowance of speculations over wheat few months ago. Certainly, it is a positive step towards the Free Market.

Cycle of profit motivated Innovations

To make profits above average and hence to be successful businessmen, entrepreneurs need to foresee changes in consumers demand before their competitors, to provide new improved products in the market ahead of their competitors or to cut the cost of production before their competitors may do that. Eventually, every innovation becomes general and the other producers and businessmen also either adapt the innovation or improve it further. Thus, the profits of the first businessman who introduced the invention decrease again. The only way for him and others to make higher profits again is to introduce further innovative improvements in the production and quality of products to satisfy the consumers demand at further lower prices. Thus, for any firm to continue making above average profits, it must frequently outrun its competitors and must act as an agent of continuous economic progress.
The competition for making higher profits increases the total production of market many folds and decreases the poverty of masses. A firm that brings upon an innovation in production increases its production, sales revenues and profits at the expense of the other producers who are not yet able to increase their production. Consumers shift to the products of that firm because it has better or equally good product to provide them at considerably lesser prices. The innovator hence makes outrageously high profits while other producers’ lower profits or outright losses compels them either to renovate and improve their production or to duplicate the innovation brought upon by the first producer. In a free-market, innovations hence, are not only necessary to make higher profits, rather they are necessary to make any profit at all, if no innovation and improvement, one may loose his business, profit and consumers totally. As the innovation becomes general, the total production of market increases manifolds, increased supply of products decreases the selling prices, and hence reduces poverty to great extent. Furthermore, generalization of innovation and decreased selling prices reduces the profit of producers and hence compel them to modernize, improve and invent further to bring more satisfaction for the consumers. The result obviously comes out to be in favor of consumers that may gain the better products at lesser prices and this is reduction of poverty. Thus, free market provides the profit impetus to innovate, improve production, and hence reduce poverty of masses. In addition, a special profit of innovation tends to disappear as the innovation become general and every other producer adopts them. In order to maintain higher profits, every producer who want to keep maintaining higher profits to longer periods need to repeatedly innovate and improve the production and hence bring down the poverty in masses.
In absence of freedom as the government regulates the market and bar down the profits, this impetus for innovation and invention decreases substantially and the consumers suffer poverty.

Government regulation is unable to provide impetus for economic progress

In a free market, the production and business is open to everyone. Even a penniless individual newcomer may start his new venture and bring upon innovative techniques of production to make profits. Those who have innovative ideas but lacks investment to implement can offer partnership to others who may invest in their ventures. A free market capitalist society provides enormous resources of investment for the new innovative ideas and that is absolutely impossible in a government regulated mixed socialist economy. In a free-market, where an innovative individual (though he has no money) need only to convince some of the financiers to invest in his innovative ideas, easily gets a chance to progress. In addition, the financiers keep looking and encouraging the innovators for making higher profits as that is necessary for them.
On the other hand, in a socialized government regulated market, the innovator need to convince everyone, a majority or at least a significant minority of his fellow citizens in order to implement his innovation. Even if he succeeds anyhow to convince the majority (most of whom have no idea of production process and innovation), he may not be able to get necessary finance because of government licensing system. Furthermore, while in a free-market he can have any preferable and most profitable agreement of partnership with the few financiers, in case of regulated market, he has no way to bargain for his individual profits as government confiscates his profits for the cause of the majority.
Thus, the government regulated system is such that no new innovator actually feels it profitable to devote his hardship and intellect to actually innovate, as he may never be able to make any high profits. In addition, even if some young innovator tries to bring upon innovation and improved changes, he may never succeed because of the bureaucracy, license raj, and political corruption. In such scenario, only a few already established corporatists that enjoys the government support may succeed in bringing upon any innovation an hence the common man always fails to make any fortune on behalf of his inventive innovation. Furthermore, as such system discourages any innovative improvement, the businessmen of such mixed economy regulated market not only suffers lack of increase in production, they are forced to adapt the already introduced innovation in other freer markets.

India lacks Innovation because Government actually hampers any impetus for innovation

The Socialized Medicines

The idea behind socialized medicines is the forced economic equality of citizens, i.e. no matter you have earned money, you cannot have any better medical treatment than the lazy person who never thought of earning and saving for his medical security. Thus, the socialization of medicines is not only the abolition of causality of individual efforts and his earnings; it is abolition of the cost in spending of income.
As visits to doctor are free to individuals while the taxpayers collectively pays for them in socialized system, each individual realizes the benefit of his visit to the doctor, while millions of taxpayers pays for the visit. Obviously it is an insignificant amount, thus every individual is encouraged to take advantage of the system without considering the wastage. As a result, the number of visits to doctor increases abruptly. The absence of cost to the individual patient results in an enormous increase in the medical tests, hospitalization and surgeries performed, most of which remains unnecessary and that adds to the cost of system furthermore, also the system requires a huge bureaucracy to administer it and that further increases corruption and the cost to the collective. The result of the system is simply to raise the fees of doctors and medical facilities and to create scarcity of hospital beds and doctor’s time. The redundant medical tests and surgeries performed often delays the meeting of genuine needs of the patients and many a times, it becomes impossible for the patient to actually get the required treatment.
To solve out these problems, government thoroughly bureaucratize the medical field by controlling the doctors’ wages and price control of medicines, government also restricts doctors from practicing freely. Ultimately, the profession of doctor and medicines becomes unattractive and unprofitable and the talented individuals prefer not to opt for it. That further creates scarcity of efficient doctors. As government has no rational way to determine the necessary treatment in any individual case, the doctors starts denying the necessary treatment for the people, thus increases corruption.

Socialized System against Advancement of Technology

My Healthcare My Choice

Increase in Bureaucratic Corruption

As the Free Health Care System results in enormously increased demand of services and scarcity of doctors, medical facilities, hospital beds and resources, the medical sector becomes the free zone for political and bureaucratic corruption. As politicians and government official realizes that government cannot satisfy the demand of citizens, they start taking advantages of the situation through bribery, frauds and corruption. In order to contain the spending on collective medical care of whole populace and to increase the profits of the corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and government officials’ including doctors, government begins denying and prohibiting necessary medical procedures too to the common person. Not only the medical advancement is reduced and opposed by government, it also starts denying medical services to those citizens whom the government considers as only marginally valuable to the nation, such as infants or aged. As aged and infants does not pay any additional tax to the government budget, while their necessary demands of medical are high, they suffer neglect. On the other hand, government keep increasing taxes on the taxpayer citizens on the name of trying to provide necessary treatments for the poor, old and infants. Thus, the same socialized medical system that begins with an aim to provide funds for medical care of poor, infants and aged, turns out to be a sacrificial citadel for them.
To believe that there can be something like “free lunch” is a great mistake. If government promises for free lunch, no one should be surprised to find out that it increases malnutrition and starvation. He may find himself on short rations of government in order to have fund for those whom the government considers more valuable than him on social and political priority. Thus, such socialized free-health care, or free-education for all, or free-lunch, food, water for the poor and underprivileged often proves to be phoney, corrupt and inefficient. Yet, government keep propagandizing such issues and programs just in order to keep its hold on political power and vote bank of the masses. Ultimately, all this increases extreme corruption in the system, and poverty and scarcity of resources and services for the masses. In order to reduce and ultimately remove the problem of corruption in India, Indians need to realize the irrationality of collectivism and to abolish it instead of abolishing the causation and cost of individual earning and living.
Huge number of such socialized programs including Universal Medical Care, Education for All, food for al, minimum wage rates and employment for all run by government in India are the actual cause of extreme corruption that we Indian suffers.
The POTUS Barack Obama and his Democrat comrades are also trying to push such forced economic equality on US citizens by means of luring the citizens and propagandizing such socialized programmes of Universal Health Care, Public education for all and many other such programmes. Obviously, their motive is to gain political mileage and promising vote bank to maintain their ruling power. Yet, the American citizens should realize the irrationality of such collective systems and prefer not to be the victim.

Uniformity of Profit

Naturally, every body works to gain profits, everybody lives to sustain and comfort his life, profit is the only motive for a free individual to put up his endeavours in production and prosperity. Yet, the laws of natural anarchy also ride profits and that is the Uniformity of Profit principle. The principle suggests the natural tendency of a free-society towards establishing a uniform rate of profit on capital invested in all the different branches of production, be it steel production, grains production, oil industry, the shoe business or whatever. Profit, obviously is the difference between the sales revenues and cost of production.

The reason for such tendency of natural uniformity is the profit seeking nature of the free-individual. Investors prefer to earn higher rates of profits on their investment rather than the lower rates. That is natural, rational behaviour of man to seek maximum possible profits. Thus, other things being equal, wherever the rates of profits are higher, investors tends to invest their additional wealth, and wherever the profits are lower, they tend to withdraw their previously invested capital from those production sectors. The additional investment that thus reaches to any high profits providing production sector tends to reduce the rate of profits in that sector.

The natural, rational behaviour of man is to seek maximum possible profits

Benefits of Natural Anarchy

In a free-society, as the profit rates tend to be uniform, every sector gains enough investors. As every investor is driven by his profit seeking nature, he remains alert about consumers demand and that reduces the chances of malinvestment and hence over-production or under-production. The natural anarchy thus provides a balance between the production of all the essential products for our life and progress. Anarchy not only prevents but also remedies the mistakes of over-production or under-production if committed. If at the threshold of a high profit-rates providing sector, investors commits mistake of over-investment, it tends to over-production that decreases the rates of profit and hence further investment reduces resulting in lesser production and hence providing the necessary cure to the mistake.
Because of individual freedom and uniformity of rates of profit, each sector not only gains enough investors, it also gains enough human resources in form of workers, specialists, managers, entrepreneurs and inventors and that leads to over-all increase in rate of production leading to reduce poverty and scarcity at all fronts.

Free Society brings the environment of natural freedom for each individual being free to use his talents and endeavour to pursue happiness by earning it honestly and freely

Ills of Interventionism and Central Planning

The government by means of central planning or interventionism often dislocates the harmony of free-market and hence breaks the chain of progress bringing chaos to the society. In presence of government interventions in forms of subsidies, taxation, prohibitions, licensing etc, the profit motive looses its essence, and instead of learning and leading the way of natural profit seeking tendency, investors are forced to invest based on government’s dictatorial interventions. This dependence reduces the investors’ incentive to invest and hence causes lack of investment. In absence of profit motive, neither the government, nor the investors by themselves get any chance to check the threshold of investment and production and that causes loss by means of malinvestment resulting in over-production in some sectors and under-production in different. Also, by means of subsidies, stimulus packages and forced production, government creates bubbles of boom that tends to burst ultimately causing malinvestment that results in loss of production, lack of investment, depression, scarcity, wastage of resources, corruption and unemployment. As the government interventions destroy the division of labour, society suffers lack of freedom, extreme differences between classes, casteism, discriminations and overall underproduction that bring in problems of poverty.
Conclusion: In a free-society, market follows the laws of natural anarchy and that provides freedom, progress, prosperity and increase in the productivity and profits of the free-individuals tending to solve out the social ills if present along with preventing and curing the economical mistakes by means of profit motive that works as a thermostat or the invisible hand to guide the society towards cumulative production and provide the individuals means to pursue their happiness honestly and freely. Government interventions prove to be fatal, destroying the profit motive that is the only possible means of checking the malinvestment, over-production and under-production. This results in economic chaos, making the birth bed for various social-ills by destroying the division of labour.

Burden on Consumers

In an economic system as long as only certain means of productions are controlled by the government or municipalities, the nature of market economy determining economic activities remains unchanged. The Government owned sectors and ventures must fit into the market mechanism of market economics while buying raw material, equipments, labour, and as sellers of goods and services. They are subject to laws of market, as they need to attempt for profits, at least to avoid losses. When government intervenes to eliminate this dependence on market by covering the losses of such enterprises with subsidies or bailouts out of public funds the losses shifts to somewhere else and subsidies are raised by collecting confiscatory taxes. However, the burden of the taxes affects the citizens, not the government collecting the tax.
In a free market, where the market laws either purges out the failed enterprises incurring losses and replace them with other enterprisers to provide better products and services, or force those enterprises to improve their working, production and management, the problem solves out by itself as the malinvestment in enterprises incurring losses gets a reality check. Yet, because of government interventions in mixed economy, such check is impossible as the government keeps promoting the failure by punishing the citizens, burdening them with superfluous taxes and wasting thus collected wealth in failed or meant to be failed enterprises and services in the form of bailouts and subsidies. In absence of check, these enterprises, instead of improving and curing themselves, keep fomenting further and causes further burden. The government interventions at one hand, supports malinvestment in the failed or mismanaged enterprises, on the other hand, government punishes the profitable private enterprises by further cutting out their profits by means of corporate taxes. As the profits of private enterprises reduces, their rate of progress and production also decreases, causing retardation in progress of citizens.

Poverty and Unemployment

Free Market, The only way to reduce poverty is to increase the productivity of individuals.

Price Control and decrease in productivity

Poverty-Government interventions reduces production and causes further poverty

The Only Possible Solution

Irrespective of their supposedly good intentions, interventionists through their planning of mixed economy results in chaos and exact opposite results to their interventions. The middle path between the good (capitalism) and bad (socialism) proves to be an ugly vice (mixed economy). There is no alternative to totalitarianism than liberty, there is no possible profitable planning for freedom and common welfare than to let the market system work freely, There is no other means to attain full employment, rising real wage rates and an always improving standard of living of the common man than private initiative and free market.

Why Participation of Indian citizens in elections is reducing?

In a democracy if a majority of voting population ranging from several hundreds to several hundred millions (depending on level of election –Municipal, state, or national) vote against an existing policy, the policy will likely be changed, replaced or aborted. That does not mean that electorate controls government. As far as an individual citizen is concerned, he has no control over the democratic majority government. For example, in the government controlled retirement savings account and pension policies, if an individual wishes to use his earned savings to pay for the home he want to buy, he must wait until tens of millions of other citizens agrees to join with him to bring about a change in policy to make it possible. He would have to wait for very basic decisions to be made, if a set of parents in a village decide to have a school in their village where their children may get elementary education instead of going to another village 10 miles away, they may be forced to wait until whole majority voters of the city municipality under which the village comes, may decide to make an elementary school in that village. An Individual cannot decide to speculate and accumulate stocks of commodities to ascertain future profits, he cannot decide what prices he can demand from the consumers for his own products, he cannot decide to free a certain sector of production of varied levies and taxes (and subsidies) until he may not gain the approval of big chunk of voters.
If a set of intelligent voters want to restrict government monopoly over printing of fiat currency , they will have to wait until whole populace of the country realizes the basic flaw in fiat currency. An individual by his own cannot decide what wages he may give to a worker, he cannot decide whom he should consider poor or whom he should provide voluntary charity or benevolent help as all relief funds are controlled by the majority rule government and so on. Since an individual electorate have no significant control over government bribery, corruption and frauds are common illnesses of democracies.
As people are realizing the fact that government control under democracy means collectivization of power and hence is a violation of Individual liberty and freedom of choice, that majority government robs the citizens of their power of self-governance and self-responsibility, they voluntarily become uninterested in political elections as they know that their mere voting is in no way capable of bringing about any progressive change.

Destruction of Individual Causal Role in Democracy

Democracy destroys the causal role of an individual. Instead of being the cause of his own success, well-being, and development, he becomes dependent on the majority rule, as until the majority will not agree with him, he cannot act upon his decisions and choices. The destruction of Individual causal role in his life signifies the violation of Individual freedom.
Individual freedom and his right of self-governance are the basic requirement for a definite progressive and developed system of division of labour . Thus, democracy robs and reduces the power of an individual to be the cause of varied economic achievements, success or failure.

Incompatibility of Democracy with Division of Labour causing Poverty

Violation of individual freedom by democratic majorities is as evil as the violations of individual freedom imposed by a tyrant dictator.

Cure of the Problem

Since the fall of Soviet Union, India is gradually turning from collectivism towards principles of self-ownership, individualism and division of labour, and hence the standards of living is improving, of Indian society are also improving. As the Indian government is adopting disinvestment procedure and providing freedom for market and individuals, the proficiency of labour is increasing. The progress itself is a validating example of the fact that government interventions in market cause poverty, reduction in production and impoverishment of citizens while individual freedom, and property rights of means of production brings progress, prosperity and bettering living standards of citizens. Thus, the cure is definitely freedom of citizens establishing a free society in India, that is Limited government system, where the only purpose of government remains to safeguard individual freedom, property rights, restrict initiation of force and to provide justice, and peace by providing a democratic system controlling police and law bodies, strictly maintaining the principles of non-initiation of aggression, self-ownership and property rights, and all means of production including roads, railways, natural resources etc be privatized.
Private security and arbitrary third party justice system would further reduce the role of government only to provide security against external dangers in form of national defence, it would be further move towards anarchocapitalism establishing individual right of self governance and self-responsibility.
It is a basic fact that government monopoly in any form including limited government system represents partial slavery to some order and incurs poverty and destruction of wealth and means of production, for progress and betterment of citizens, freedom lovers advocates Anarchocapitalism rather than government limiting individual freedom.

Egalitarianism against Causality

Causality is the very base of success or failure thus, in a free society; economic equality emerges as the outcome of different individuals performing different degrees of economic causation. Opposition and abolition of economic inequality thus, is obviously against all connections between an individual’s hard work and the result of his efforts, it is abolition of causality in incurring of income by the individual.
In a group of ten people determined to share equally all the income earned by them if one of the person works harder or innovates a way to increase total earning by X amount, his increase in personal earning will merely be 1-tenth of X. If the group consists of 100 people, his increase will be 1-hundreth of X, and if the group is as big as 1 billion, his total increase in earning will be 1 billionth of X. Obviously, it would be such an insignificant amount that he would never get any incentive of all his hard work. It is also to be noted that in such egalitarian society, no significant connection can exist between what an individual produce and what he or any other particular individual receives. That is, even though the total amount of group would be increased by X amount, the overall increase in each individual’s income would be insignificant. Thus, egalitarianism destroys ability of many individuals to achieve progress and development that are of any significance to anyone.

Egalitarianism against Progress

Any compulsion on an individual to improve his own family’s life only insofar as he improves the life and standard of everyone else in the society or country make all of the society or country impoverished. Egalitarianism would certainly provide incentives to not to do any work or improvement as after doing all hard work, an individual will get a meagre increase of 1 billionth in his personal income, if he won’t do any work, his meagre reduction in personal income would be 1 billionth, again an insignificant figure. Thus, increasing one’s production would not be of any significant benefit for anyone and decreasing the work would not be of any significant loss to anyone. Hence, everyone would have an incentive to do nothing.
Equality of income obviously is against freedom as it is “forced labour” because it eliminates the earning of increment in income as an incentive. If people are to work without the incentives of profits, the only way to make them work is using force. Other than income or profits, there are positive incentives for work, such as the enjoyment of the work itself. Yet, as a matter of fact, most of the jobs are such where the incentive of enjoyment of doing work is closely related with the incentive of income. No one makes bricks, sweeps streets, clears drainage system, makes shoes, mines coal or even work as a CEO of a company for the enjoyment of work without considering the significance of income. Even in artistic works like painting, singing or writing, the pleasure of doing work only would not be sufficient to induce amount and quality of work that can be induced in free-society providing income incentives for doing work.

Egalitarianism against Innovations and entrepreneurship

Free society or equal society, these women are always going to be there, its just in a free society they earn much more.

Egalitarianism resulting in Forced Economic Inequality

Often as the failure of bringing egalitarian ideal in practice, socialist regimes results in bringing forced economic inequalities within the society, which is obviously inimical to progress and economic production. Such inequalities results in because of governmental actions such as taxation, subsidies, licensing system, special privileges, quotas and reservations etc. Government’s establishment of such inequalities results in depriving the producers of a significant part of their incentives to work and produce, furthermore, actions like quotas, reservations and licensing system obviously violates the freedom of individuals to produce, hence reduces the production significantly bringing in poverty and chaos. Other governmental acts like corporate taxes etc. appropriates the income of producers and thereby decreases their capacity to invest in production and developments. Such arbitrary economic inequality produced thus deprives the producers of possibility to produce anything by means of monopolistic restrictions against their entry in various streams of production. On the other hand, by giving special privileges, licenses, quotas and reservations to others, government rewards non-producers or less-efficient producers. All of this results in economic chaos. Same things happen in feudalistic systems. The forced economic inequality based on government coercion results in economic destruction.

Free Economic Inequality versus Forced Economic Inequality

Economic inequality based on freedom of individuals to exploit their own intelligence and talent is significantly less visible than the economic inequality that results because of forced planning or government coercion. This is because of the fact that economic inequality based on economic freedom serves to raise the standard of living of all, As a result, in a free society, even the poorest individuals enjoys and consumes substantially increasing quantity of wealth. On the other hand, in feudalistic or socialist regimes, as the very basic power of production and development is reduced to significant degrees, the width of economic inequality becomes too much visible with the poorest suffering starvations and penury while the officials, bureaucrats and politicians enjoying material wealth.
Before 1991, when India accepted the path of liberalization, Indian society was suffering with extreme forced economic inequalities where the standard of living of common man was substantially low graded. With the induction of liberalization movement, not only the production and development of Indian society increased, but also the standard of living of common man also improved significantly. This exactly was the result of loosening the force economic inequality trends and letting the inequalities develop freely, which obviously are less visible.
In further freer societies such as United States, an economic inequality that is based on economic freedom and capitalism are further less visible. The fact is greater freedom results in greater prosperity of whole society and less extreme width of economic inequalities.

Division of Labour and Benefits of Talent

A division of labour system provides enough space and incentive for the individuals occupied in different sets of knowledge of specialization and sub-specializations to devote all their human intellect and efforts to not only use the current knowledge but also to discover, invent and innovate new ways and knowledge to increase production. Division of labour enables a society to use the benefits of geniuses to the maximum extent, while it provides maximum incentive for the genius to use his intellect in development, innovations and entrepreneurship. In a collectivist society, this is not possible, as the genius in such societies, along with other common individuals, must devote most of his time in attaining self-sufficiency first. In India, some decades ago and even at present, division of labour is not definitely present; most of the young students devote their time to achieve degrees from governmental education system in order to gain some or any sort of job in government or private service sector. Hardly anyone devotes his intellect and abilities to any set of specialization of knowledge based on his interest and abilities. Hardly anyone think of devoting his time in research works and furthering knowledge, hence, Indian society lacks innovators. That doesn’t mean that Indian society is or was incompetent of innovations and inventions in present or past, the lack of it only represents the partial slavery imposed by the collectivist system and socialist government under which, the genius amongst the collective is wasted upon. Even if some genius struggle such situation and still manages to radiate his intellect, he never gains the full essence of his own efforts and hence is lost due to the lack of incentives.

Division of labour increases the efficiency of learning process in connection with production by making education and communication and all activities concerned with transmission, storage and development of knowledge into specializations.

Division of labour and consistency with freedom

Private ownership of the means of wealth production is the fundamental pre-condition of the pursuit of self-interest. Division of labour essentially depends on private ownership of means of production, which is based on the nature of gains of free division of labour. The most important ones are the multiplication and transmission of knowledge and benefits of the talented. The rational idea of private property ownership comes out from the fact that individuals possess unique independent minds, which permits and necessitates them to have separate independent knowledge and to make independent judgements, decision, and act on them with his separate independent calibre. In a free society every individual gains from the fact that other people possess knowledge that he does not and an intelligence separate and often much greater than his own. To maintain maximum benefits, it is necessary that others be able to acquire and apply their knowledge in production on their own initiative with perfect decision making freedom, without having his approval, orders, permissions or license, as he would be certainly unable to give in any rational way as he necessary lacks the knowledge and intelligence that would be required to make such decisions. To act, work and produce, people must possess material means of actions and production, In order for them to act independently from one another, they must possess wealth independently from one another that is there must be private property, including private ownership of natural resources and other means of production. Private property rights are essential condition for proficient production, prosperity and more importantly individual freedom as it provides maximum space for efficient usage of resources in virtue of producing wealth hence eradicating poverty of masses.

Private property rights are essential condition for proficient production, prosperity and more importantly individual freedom as it provides maximum space for efficient usage of resources in virtue of producing wealth hence eradicating poverty of masses.

“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.

I understand that not all Libertarians reject IP rights, but this article is not another debate about the rationality and morality of copyrights and patents because we have had those debates in past (For copyrights, and Against copyrights arguments).

Speaking for myself I do not stand for the Intellectual Property rights, because I believe that acquiring the so called “intellectual property” does not devoid a person of his labor. The only thing that person is devoid of is opportunity to earn the money he could have made using the government awarded artificial monopoly on the information. Information should be free to share and without any kind of physical coercion or threat of coercion. This is why Open Source movement represents an important front of Libertarianism. Why would companies like Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, Penguin Publishers, Barnes and Nobles support an Libertarian society when their business is clearly enabled by the Government’s coercion. Currently software, music, and books piracy is the most successful civil disobedience movement against the government’s aggression on your property rights. It has nothing against the creators of the content which is shared against it, but it is a very successful backlash from the market to demonstrate that copyright as a model is a complete failure.

Open Source

Coming to the issue of Open Source, it is a way by which market can actually demonstrate that these information related services can be provided to the people without requiring the institutionalized aggression of the government. The seeming success of Open Source software movements which have pushed the successful Operating Systems such as Linux, Web Browsers and Email clients such as Firefox and Thunderbird, and a Web blogging platform like WordPress on which this website currently runs is a clear demonstration of success of Open Source movement.

Skip to ‘The Linux Paradox’ if you know what Open Source means
Open Source is a belief that a software should be first of all be free(as in freedom and not as in free beer) to be modified upon, to be rebuilt upon, and to be distributed. Open Source in fact literally is a very restrictive term applicable to softwares because they have a source code from which a binary code can be generated which can be distributed to the end user, and opening the source code means providing the source code of the software too, to the end user and giving him full freedom to modify it in any way, rebuilt his own software and distribute it freely without any restrictions. But over the time Open Source movement also comprises attempts to allow a book/music/song/lyrics/images/movies to be distributed freely and modified upon. Technically this branch of open source movement is called “Creative Commons” movement, under which anything is free to be modified, edited, used for commercial purposes or non commercial purposes(or a combination of these things).

To make any software into open source currently you must claim a copyright on the source code and then release it under many of the numerous open source compatible licenses(most famous being GPL), and distribute its source code with the binaries of the software.

The Linux Paradox

Ubuntu

When Amazon had to develop an OS for their ebook reading device Amazon Kindle, they did not have to write an OS from scratch purely for that purpose, rather they just used Linux kernel 2.6 and build their own features around it or modifying into it. Similarly when Adobe had to launch an IDE(Integrated Development Environment), a programming editor for their new Flex technology they didn’t have to develop something from scratch rather they just made a plugin for an already famous open source IDE called Eclipse(although its a shame that they made Adobe Flex Builder closed source).

It becomes difficult to beat Open Source software when it has the same starting point as any other proprietary softwares, but when it comes beating an already established industry accepted software like Microsoft Windows, its penetration into desktops is about 1%. Most of the people who despite of having the technical caliber to deal with any issues arising with desktop Linux, or who might benefit more by using Linux do not use Linux because of many applications or device supports they might need which they can only get from Windows.

Since the market acceptance of Linux is really less, most application developers and device manufacturers do not bother supporting Linux, and since they don’t support Linux, the users don’t use Linux thereby market acceptance never rises.

This is my friends a paradox. The paradox is not only there for Linux but for any Libertarian movement where you wanna remove the government’s aggression. The paradox being, that a Libertarian movement which an actually benefit more number of people, just does not get acceptance because the general public is currently being benefited from the government’s aggression.

Even if you start your own private police force tomorrow serving only the people who want to take your services voluntarily, you will not be able to get many clients, because since most of the people still go to the state police, even the most avid supporters will have to go the state police. One very good example of “Linux Paradox” will be the Free State Project in the coming time.

The Communists

In this issue I don’t really have much against the communists, except that they have hijacked the Open Source movement and turned it into a non-profit-non-monetary movement. By communists I don’t really mean the believers of worker’s paradise as proposed by Karl Marx, but it represents the people who believe that Open Source software movement means there should not be any demand or requirement of money from the part of the programmer. In simple words that if any programmer who works on an Open Source movement talks about money, he is immediately shunned. It is a common practice in the Open Source world that the only way you can actually contribute to an open source software is by actually coding the software(or provide bug reports, usage statistics etc etc). Anyone who donates money must do is if they are using the software for commercial purposes and making money off it.
Because of this culture, most of the non-programmers out there feel like they cannot do anything to actually contribute to the Open Source software. If they really like a software, they must learn to program, then understand the code and then contribute to it.
If you like linux you can jump in and program on it. If you cannot spare the time to program(or do not have the required programming skills) you can take part in reporting the bugs, providing support to other users etc etc. If you cannot even do that, then you can just stand by and just use the software and promote it as much as possible. Because of this most large commercial software companies don’t even look at Linux because they know that there belongs the group of the people who are least inclined to pay for the software.

The Libertarians

Laws for a civilized society

The Libertarian concept of Open Source software is division of labor. That is, not everybody is a programmer to work on the every software they actually use, just like not everyone is a farmer, barber, baker, yet they wanna use the services of a farmer, barber, and a baker. If you like a piece of software, its true that you can use it without paying anyone anything, but if you wanna contribute your labor into the software, you can do that by donating money(or in other words by buying the labor of the core programmer on that Open Source software).

Take for example if you like a piece of open source software, and you wanna work on it, or contribute to it, but since you are not a programmer yourself, what you can do is donate the amount of money you make in the number of hours you wanted to donate. For example if you are a wheat farmer and you earn $25 per hour, and you wanna contribute 5 hours worth of labor to that software then you can give $125 to the open source software, and it will be used to buy the labor of a more apt programmer.

The best pieces of Open source software are managed by an individual or a limited group of people working full time, than a 1000 people working 2 hours a week. On the top of that if this Open Source development is done by hiring programmers to work full time from a country which has a cheaper labor costs like India or Philippines then your labor can be even more usefully converted in programming man hours.

The best example of this is an Open Source Software called Ardour (a digital audio workstation) which is an amazing piece of software for working on creating sounds and music. There is a full time programmer working on it, and his salary is about $54K per year($4500 per month), and although you can take part in the programming, the whole project is best dealt by that individual, so he invites donations from the users on a monthly basis. About 267 people have already committed to give about $2150 on a monthly basis and as of today(30th of May) he has met 95% of his monthly goal which is pretty good.

If this model can actually be copied by other Open Source softwares this could be really a great boost to non-properietary software models.

Solution

Take for example if you wanna give 2 hours every week working on your favorite open source software application. Then you should put down that time(say the last two hours of friday, i.e. your last weekday), and you put on a button like this:
Working for Open Source(click on it to buy it, the proceeds go towards the running of this website),
and you work your same job, except the amount of hours you put in your job wearing that badge you give earnings from that time to the lead programmer of the open source project you wanted to work on.

If you are an insurance salesman, it cannot be expected that you program for the Operating System you use, but at the same time the proprietary software developers make you pay for the software using coercion irrespectively. Because of that the proprietary software will always have an edge on its competing open source software. But by a clear understanding of division of labor the Open Source movement can benefit a lot.

Is Deflation good or Harmful?

Today’s Economic Times has the screaming article Indian Economy staring at deflation. Is it good news ? in its front page that claims that, deflation is a threat, which must be tackled with.
The most common belief about deflation is that falling prices constitute deflation and thus must be feared and, if possible, prevented.
As Economic Times explains the belief

“If deflation lasts for some time, as seems possible, it would be a new experience for India. Japan went through a decade-long deflation in the 1990s, termed as the “lost decade” for that country. At present, most major economies are witnessing disinflation — a lowering of the inflation rate — and some have also seen deflation kicking in. Japan and China have already reported negative inflation rates in the latest data and there are signs that the US, too, could be heading the same way.
While a fall in prices may sound like good news to most laymen, economists see this as an ominous sign of a collapse in demand in the economy. ”

While ET demonstrated, deflation as falling prices, deflation is not falling prices but a decrease in the quantity of money or the measure of spending in the economic system.
Deflation actually is fall in demand. Falling prices are an outcome of deflation, not the deflation itself.
If prices fall even though demand remain steady or may increase, than it is prosperity and profit for the consumer and the producer both, and that happens in a free market with enough options of competitions between producers.
On the other hand, if demand decreases, (that is, deflation occurs) the prices falls as a result of decrease in demand.
Deflation is obviously harmful, yet the falling price is not harmful, in fact, falling prices is the actual and only possible cure for the deflation.
Falling prices are that cure to the economy, which is suffering from deflation that makes it possible for the economy to recover from the situation of deflation and start enjoying the economic progress again.
Let me explain this again. Deflation is decrease in Demand, or decrease in willingness to spend, it is a dangerous situation as it causes unemployment and chaos, the solution is Falling prices, that is, the falling prices indicates that the economy is at the path of recovery from deflation, how is it possible?
Let us consider that before any deflation Mr. Ramesh used to go once a week to buy flour from the shop, he could afford to spend Rs20 for the flour per week, at a price of Rs2 per Kg, he used to buy 10 Kgs of flour. Suddenly the economy suffers deflation and victimizes Mr Ramesh too. Now he is not willing to spend Rs20 for flour and at most, he can spend only Rs10.
If the prices will not fall, Mr Ramesh will be able to buy only 5 Kgs of flour, while his weekly need is of 10 kgs, that is, he will suffer a loss of 5 Kgs of flour, and He may starve. On the other hand, if prices fall from Rs 2 per Kg of flour to Rs 1 per Kg of flour, Mr. Ramesh will be able to buy 10 Kgs of flour for a week at his affordable spending of Rs10.
If one look for the situation properly, they will understand that deflation was Mr. Ramesh’s lack of will to spend Rs 20 to buy 10 Kgs of flour, his demand for flour was forcibly reduced, but as the prices fell down, he again bought 10 Kgs of flour, that is, his demand reached the proper need and that is the cure of deflation.
What is Mr Ramesh deny buying a commodity even at reduced prices, will it help economy?
Let us say Mr Ramesh used to buy 2 Litres of milk every day before deflation at a price of Rs8 per Kg, that is, he was ready to spend Rs16 per day for milk before deflation. Due to deflation, that is, due to lack of money, he reduced his demand to 1 litre per day as he wished to spend only Rs 8 for milk per day. To counter the deflation, the prices of milk fell down to Rs 4 per litre, that is, now he can buy 2 litres of milk for Rs 8. Yet, if Mr Ramesh decide not to buy extra milk, which will save his Rs4 from the amount he decided to spend on milk. Obviously, he will be able to spend that extra Rs 4 on some other commodity, say he will buy a packet of Biscuit Parle G. Overall; the fall in prices will help in reducing and eventually completely curing the effect of deflation.
Thus, although deflation is a sickness to an economy and hence it is harmful, yet the falling prices is the only possible solution for deflation and the current scenario in India where the deflation will soon signify its consequences in form of falling prices, the things will better by themselves.

What is the cause of Deflation; can government intervention solve the situation?

India is facing liquidity crunch since last November. Finance ministry and RBI issued three stimulus packages to solve out the credit crisis, yet it provided no betterment in situation, the bail out of economy in form of economic stimulus absolutely failed. It was obvious as any governmental intervention can never help any market, it may cause havoc though. We explained it here and we discussed why economic stimulus is nothing but robbery of common citizen.
The liquidity crunch in India is because of the bad assets of the government and private banks and the lost money in failed credits. Government and the centralized bank RBI control the repo rates, credit and lending policies in India. In order to increase GDP and profits, government and RBI always try to stimulate government and private banks to lend credit as easily as possible, and that often causes bad assets.
Some times, for the cause of making greater profits, the private banks also make risky adventures and fails miserably, and that all causes credit crunch. As the money in market decreases, the demand starts decreasing and hence the deflation.
The reason for such failure is the obvious monopoly of the government and RBI over currency supply in market, and the flaw in the system is because of the Fiat Currency system. The fiat currency often forces high inflationary rates, which may reach the hyperinflation rates and the forced bad risk dealings in the environment of economic bubbles often leads to a situation causing deflation.
Thus, initially, the fiat currency system, government monopoly and interventionism in market and bad decisions based on fake profits due to economic bubbles causes the cycles of Inflation, hyperinflation and deflation.
As demonstrated earlier, the falling prices cure this sickness of the regulated mixed economies.
The falling prices not only cures the problem of deflation, it also cures the mystery of economic bubbles and provides a clear picture of actual market growth by eliminating almost all the non-productive and non-profitable activities in the market.
As the enforced policies of regulatory government and institutions like RBI causes the cycles of inflation, hyperinflation and deflation in a market by misleadingly regulating the supply of currency in market, we cannot expect further supply of currency by government to solve out the liquidity crisis. That is the reason why the economic stimulus plans of various countries including USA, India and China are actually providing no results.

Will the government interference in form of economic stimulus change the situation?

Government talk of providing economic stimulus to counter the falling prices.
As falling prices are, the solution to deflation, by trying to avoid falling of prices, governments actually increases the tenure of economic crisis. It happens because the stimulus leads people to postpone buying even in situations where they have ability to buy, the consumer prefer to wait for falling of prices. On the other hand, the falling prices stimulate the consumer to buy the commodities.
Thus, whatever interventionism a government adopts to provide economic stimulus, further increases the mess in the economy.
Also, considering the fact that Indian government suffers one of the highest fiscal deficits everyday, we know that Indian government does not have potential to provide any economic stimulus, yet the government already have provided three economic stimulus of amount Rs2000 crores each, and now, the upcoming elections will further cause Rs10,000 crore of spending.
When government is already going in fiscal deficit, how will the government manage these extreme spending?
Government have three ways to support these already provided stimulus packages, the election expenses and further Rs30,000 crores of stimulus government have promised by any of the following ways
1. Higher government taxes
2. More government borrowing
3. More, freshly printed Reserve Bank notes.
Any of these moves will further deteriorate the economy by giving birth to a new cycle of economic boom and burst.
Taxation is a failed measure of revenue projection that is why Indian government always remains in fiscal deficit. Besides, higher tax rates discourage people from saving and investing, especially when such taxes target the rich.
Increasing taxes on middle or poor class makes no sense, and increased tax on rich deprives the economy of the funds necessary to grow production, income, and employment.
Thus, the first option is failure by default.
Indian government already have asked for economic help from World Bank and IMF, thus we can expect that Indian government may take further loans and debts. We know that foreign aids never helps an economy, we discussed how foreign aid actually harms a nation’s economy.
The government monopoly over the currency is the ill-power, by which government can create money from thin air any time, but printing more currency does not help any body, it causes further extreme problems though which we discussed here.
Thus, no matter what way government adopts to fight against the falling prices, the way will lead to further deterioration, not only that, countering the falling prices itself means strengthening the deflation.
We have already seen how economic stimulus proved a big failure in USA, Indian government should take lesson from the failure of Obama stimulus packages and should keep away from market, adopting the policy of free market, no interventionism.