Let's Talk About HABITAT - baby!

Statistic: Over 50 per cent of Delhi’s residents live in slums.

Non-statistic: They do so on just about 5 per cent of the total area.

Another non-statistic: The total area covered by unowned keekar jungles in Delhi exceeds the total area covered by slums by at least 400 per cent.

All these unowned keekar jungles are the “collective property” of the Delhi Destruction Authority (DDA).

The keekar is a completely useless bush. It is not even a tree.

FACT: For a long time now, right there in the swankiest part of Delhi, opposite the sprawling Lodi Gardens, is the centrally air-conditioned HABITAT Centre – comprising offices, a hotel, restaurants and bars, a theatre, and many conference facilities. Spacious underground parking. All around it are ugly staff quarters for lowly State employees.

Lesson: There is something horrible – even predatory – about “collective ownership” as well as “collective responsibility.”

And this collective owns all the forests – ostensibly to look after tigers. Statistics show that tiger population is declining, and tree cover is declining as well.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment has given its “clearance” for setting up a NUCLEAR POWER PLANT in an “ecologically sensitive” virgin forest in the Western Ghats, quite close to Goa, in a place called Jaitapur. This is in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, famous for Alfonso mangoes. Imagine what a nuclear accident will do – and Parliament has “limited” the liability of the foreign nuclear equipment suppliers to just Rs. 1500 crores (1 crore is 10 million).

In almost all our forests, the LOCAL PEOPLE have turned to armed rebellion – which indicates, if nothing else, that they HATE the local administration, including the Forest Department. Policemen, for example, are getting killed in droves. These armed rebels are sometimes called “Naxalites”; more usually they are called “Maoists.”

As I wrote yesterday, the chief ideologue of the Nepal Maoists, right-hand man of Prachanda, holds a PhD in Economics from Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University. Interestingly, this dude I mentioned yesterday with a PhD in Economics from this very same university told me this morning that this Nepal Maoist ideologue is his “friend.”

Maoism is nothing but communism, which is all about “collective ownership” and “collective responsibility.” Socialism – the word now on the Preamble of our Constitution – is the same, just that they say “social ownership” and “social responsibility.” They also say “social contract” – à la Rousseau – but I think we would all be much better off if the “contract” on the rupee note signed by the governor of our central bank is honoured.

Imagine: Parliament passed the draconian Foreign Exchange Regulation Act empowering the dreaded Enforcement Directorate – and Supreme Court lawyers made piles of money (as in paper notes) on the huge amount of litigation that invariably followed.

Collectivism – and its monopolistic justice system.

EVIL!

Back to HABITAT:

RK Pachauri, Nobel laureate - a prize he shared with an American "politician," Al Gore - a global warming pseudo-scientist, has his plush offices in this Habitat Centre. The central air-conditioning uses lots of energy. His “institute” is now called TERI – The Energy Research Institute. It was originally the Tata Energy Research Institute. In the lobby you will find a bust of the Tata director who established Pachauri and TERI – Darbari Seth.

Not unsurprisingly, Manmohan Singh was the first Chairman of this Habitat Centre. He and Pachauri are buddies – and Manmohan is forever flying off to foreign capitals to sign international agreements on environmental issues pertaining to global warming, carbon dioxide emissions, alternative sources of energy, and shit like that. Manmohan is also very "close" to American politicians.

Meanwhile, in those cooler climes, hydroponic indoor cultivation of ganja is widespread, requiring 24-hour high-wattage lamps.

And they all observe Earth Day once every year – and switch off their lights for one hour.

In India, reliable electricity supply is nowhere to be found in the entire sub-continent – because this industry is a State monopoly: which means “collective responsibility.” We have "power cuts" for many hours every single day - everywhere. Pachauri is helping subsidise "alternative energy."

Mrs. Pachauri heads the Population Council.

They hate humans – us.

They love keekars.

They "pretend to love" tigers.


While they actually love the Forest Department. TERI also trains officers of the Forest Department – for a stiff fee.


What they actually love very deeply indeed is The State. Our State, their State - they love any fuckin' State anywhere in the world. They love the paper money any fuckin' The State gives them, of course. Which is why they love the UN, too.

TERI now has a HUGE campus for its TERI University – and thousands of acres of keekars were cleared for that.

They also advise The State on water – which is yet another “collective property.” Hence, all rivers are polluted – and water supply is even more erratic that the electricity. The Earth is 70 per cent water. Desalination is cheap technology these days. But the one desalination plant that has been “approved” – in Chennai – is State-owned: “collective ownership” once again.

THE OTHER PATH:

Human beings first!

Homesteading – which means you can occupy and “own” unowned property by “mixing your labour with the soil,” which is the Lockean Principle. It was John Locke who wrote, in 1691, “Where there is no Property, there is no Justice.”

If Marx or Proudhon had spouted their nonsense in those times, they would surely have been locked up in some loony bin.

And Maoism is spreading in our region – via State-owned universities.

The “radio spectrum” can also be homesteaded. This will avoid all the corruption involved in “auctioning the spectrum” – and these auctions are based on the false notion that whatever God has created belongs to The State.

So, with homesteading, we human beings can all have Property. Thereafter, we will need “titles” to these, which can easily be supplied by local firms using Google Maps. There is also “title insurance.” The “mystery of capital” will be solved. As well as the “mystery of habitat.”

Lebensraum!

The USSA is 350 million people in 200+ cities. We are 1000+ million people in 5 metros – and another dozen or so small cities.

No HABITAT at all!

Because all unowned land is “collective property.”

With Private Property comes Private Responsibility.

So, the electricity generating private firm will be responsible – as will be the rancher of wildlife. And the timber farmer. And the water supplier.

Today, the combined losses of all Electricity Departments nation-wide is a staggering 150,000 crores - and growing.

Torts and Private Property can solve the “pollution problem” easily – as Rothbard points out here. Remember that the former USSR was one of the most heavily polluted places on earth.

Now, go and spread this virus in the jungles – among the Maoist armed rebels.

Interestingly, HABITAT is the name of yet another of those useless tax-parasitical UN organisations. Below is their logo.

So, build a city on rock-n-roll, and make sure that the city flies its own Flag. 

PS: This post is continued here.