Met a dude calling himself an "economist." Said he was into "social research." Turned out this meant "measurement of the effectiveness of government welfare programmes."
"Who pays you to conduct these measurements?" I asked.
His answer: Our The State.
"Do you have a phuddhi da dhakkan?" I asked.
Since he looked baffled, I clarified: "I mean a PhD."
"Yes," he relied, adding that he obtained this paper from The State as well: in fact, from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
The chief ideologue of the Maoists in Nepal is also a PhD (Economics) from JNU.
It's the same story at the IAS Academy - and the IAS fella abducted by the Maoists in Chattisgarh the other day is supposedly a fan of Che Guevara!
All their professors are, in reality, nothing but "socialist bureaucrats." They all receive their salaries from The State. As also their big bungalows.
KR Narayanan, a bureaucrat who rose to be President of India, was once Chancellor of JNU. He is a product of the London School of Economics (LSE), and his portrait hangs on one of their walls. He was, it is said, "the favourite pupil of Harold Laski."
In Hayek on Hayek, while discussing the decades he spent at the LSE, Hayek is asked about Laski. And he says, "The man was an inveterate liar." Laski was one of those, like Paul Samuelson, who idolised the Soviet Union to their students. Then when the horrors of Stalinism were made public, they lost face. But Laski, Hayek says, simply went into denial.
Manmohan Singh holds a PhD from Cambridge, where he studied under Keynes' right-hand woman, Joan Robinson, who declared that it was the mission of her life to "destroy Say's Law."
And Amartya Sen, his guru, holds professorial positions at both Oxford as well as Harvard. He is also a Cambridge Keynesian - and was, like Keynes himself, a member of "The Apostles," their secretive student group.
Sen's latest wife - and he has had a good many - is a Rothschild, from a family of international bankers very close to governments and their central banks, of course. In his Rationality and Freedom (2002) Sen argued that the poor are irrational, and hence cannot be allowed to be free. And as I argued a a short while ago, it is the "global financial elite" who are "criminally insane."
Sen's latest wife - and he has had a good many - is a Rothschild, from a family of international bankers very close to governments and their central banks, of course. In his Rationality and Freedom (2002) Sen argued that the poor are irrational, and hence cannot be allowed to be free. And as I argued a a short while ago, it is the "global financial elite" who are "criminally insane."
Harvard has accommodated weirdo pseudo-economists all along - from Thorstein Veblen to John Kenneth Galbraith (US Ambassador to Nehru) to Noam Chomsky (and I am speaking of his views on markets).
PJ O'Rourke's record of a Harvard Big Annual Event he attended speaks for itself - for it becomes evident that this university is nothing but "an extension of the US State."
Kaushik Basu is from Cornell - a favourite student of Amartya Sen during his years at the Delhi School of (Mathematical) Economics.
Measurement. Positivism. Socialism. Planning. Totalitarianism. Keynesianism. Inflationism. Welfarism. Nationalism. Protectionism. And WAR.
All these EVILS have the same root - the PhD phuddhi da dhakkan in Economics from any "elite" institution, anywhere in the world.
Manmohan Singh went to lecture students at JNU a couple of years or more ago - and was loudly heckled for being too "market friendly." I wrote an article titled "The Death of Politics" on this for Outlook, which they published, but under the absurdly stupid title "The Liberal Political Salesman."
My article referred to the fact that "politics is voice," while Manmohan is permanently quiet. Methinks the editors thought I was the "salesman." Reminds me of what Sean Connery told Steve Jobs when the latter asked him to appear for Apple ads: "You may be a computer salesman, but I am Licensed to Kill." Do check out the cover of my first book - on the right - and those are bullet holes on the State Emblem that you see.
I am proud of the fact that I am SELF-TAUGHT.
I spent just one year at the LSE in the late 1980s. Thereafter, I pursued my search for Truth on my own, without any "guide." I relied entirely on my mind's God-given ability to differentiate between what is Right and what is Wrong, or what is Correct and what is Error.
I have never pursued a PhD. This degree is compulsorily required for teaching positions in universities worldwide. And I am extremely happy I chose economic journalism - that too, as a freelancer.
In any university, one is given a "fixed course" to teach, over and over again, year after year. In journalism, you have to write something "fresh" every time. Thus, I kept on studying - and kept expanding on my knowledge stock.
I have never pursued a PhD. This degree is compulsorily required for teaching positions in universities worldwide. And I am extremely happy I chose economic journalism - that too, as a freelancer.
In any university, one is given a "fixed course" to teach, over and over again, year after year. In journalism, you have to write something "fresh" every time. Thus, I kept on studying - and kept expanding on my knowledge stock.
On that path, so many years ago, I become a pen-friend of Sudha Shenoy, the daughter of BR Shenoy. I read an interview she had given to The Austrian Economics Newsletter (you can find it on the Mises Institute website) and immediately got in touch with her - because, in that interview, she made the following astounding statement:
Almost every Economics department in the world could be shut down immediately without having any ill-effect on the world of ideas.
Sudha Shenoy was then a mere "lecturer" on Economic History at some obscure Australian university. But I always addressed my letters to her as, "Dear Professor Shenoy."
It was she who first directed me to the fact that there is either Theory or History - and I now realise that she chose to teach History because all the Theory is bull.
She also told me not to mistake "legislation" for "law" - and that nudged me towards many important studies as well.
She also told me not to mistake "legislation" for "law" - and that nudged me towards many important studies as well.
Song of the Day: That very old Graham Nash classic, "A Man's a Man who Shoots a man - Right Between the Eyes."
