"Who will run the country?" - that's a common question posed to me, and surely the dumbest, ever.
My usual, brusque response is, "What exactly is 'running' in this country?" After all, even in the capital, Nude Elly, the electricity fails several times every day - and night, as well. And it's a State Monopoly!
Dumb!
Brings to mind something Mises wrote about the misplaced faith classical liberals had in the "reason" of the common man - and, therefore, in mass democracy. Mises said that they did not see that most ordinary people are woefully "dull" and are easily fooled by demagogues and sophists. This is particularly true about economic issues - which is why we have this huge mess all over the world today. One of Bastiat's best books is titled Economic Sophisms. And Henry Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson tells of many more, current to this very day.
For example: It is easy to sway a crowd of labourers into thinking that "machines cause unemployment" - but it takes much, much longer to take them, step-by-step, towards the realisation that labour-saving devices are a boon for humanity. And they rarely possess the necessary "attention span" to listen to logical arguments, anyway.
Or, to take another piece of demagoguery: the fatal error that State spending, even through deficits financed by printing paper notes, "create employment."
All these foolish ideas that dullards buy into, and more, are covered in Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson - and you can obtain a free download of this great book here.
The dumb idea that someone is required to "run the country" is akin to that of the Greek god Atlas, pictured above, who "holds aloft the Earth."
But do check out the strong, broad shoulders of the Greek god - and the wizened, bony frames of all those who accept huge "public responsibilities." And therein lies the difference.
Most of us would "shirk" responsibilities we do not want to, or cannot, bear.
And then, there are these fellas who take upon themselves so much - knowing full well, I am sure, that they simply cannot handle them.
It's not just electricity in India. Look at the fiscal deficit: there is a column in Mint today on how these jokers cannot mange their own finances - and they have taken on the responsibility of "running the economy"! They want to "balance external trade" - and they cannot balance their own books!
They cannot "regulate road traffic" - 1000+ Indians DIE on the roads every single day; and they even have an RTO, apart from the cops and the PWD, to "run the roads."
And they want to "regulate the market"!
And we let them - because we think, like dullards, that someone must "run the country," just as the Greeks thought Atlas holds aloft the Earth.
Mythology!
Whereas this is what "public responsibility" is really all about - FRAUD! - the sorry fact is that these jokers are relentlessly thwarting every effort of private individuals to exercise their own "private responsibility" over their own affairs. Like Private Education. And not the fascist idea of Corporate Social Responsibility.
While a huge amount of "economic repression" continues, and we Indians are one of the world's "least free" people, these jokers are promising all the dullards "welfare" - with money they do not have! Look at each and every one of them - and none of them "create wealth"; they are all "tax parasites."
And all the dullards fall flat for this hoax.
But the question does arise: Who or what should "rule" a country?
Should any "man" rule a country, or should the country be governed by LAW?
This morning, an Indian cop actually told me that in our country all the books of law are "merely paper." No one follows the law - not even the cops!
And we all need "driving licenses" from the RTO!
Lawless cops?
Bandar ke haath mein talwar?
So, let us once again look at the following extremely
important extract from Nirad C Chaudhuri’s Autobiography:
Overhead there appeared to be,
coinciding with the sky, an immutable sphere of justice and order, brooding
sleeplessly over what was happening below. But that feeling vanished at one
stroke with the coming of the nationalist agitation in 1905.
Queen Victoria was mourning in a remote castle in the highlands of Scotland.
"Empire of laws - and not of men," that was the British Empire.
And this “immutable sphere of justice and order” VANISHED with the onset of NATIONALIST POLITICS.
Socialism and interventionism perverted the law even further - with discretionary authority, which is the rule of men.
Chaos and corruption followed - predictably.
On Law, as Mises wrote of the ideals of classical liberalism in
his Nation, State and Economy:
Liberalism, which demands full freedom of the economy, seeks to dissolve the difficulties that the diversity of political arrangements pits against the development of trade by separating the economy from the state. It strives for the greatest possible unification of law, in the last analysis for world unity of law. But it does not believe that to reach this goal, great empires or even a world empire must be created.
And for what I wrote as to what "good law" is all about - do read my column advocating a "private law society."
We don't need "lawmakers."
Just as stupid an idea as Atlas.
Look at the USSA, for example - their Great World Empire held aloft by their Atlas, while they themselves are all "born to be jailed" at home! And their Atlas is heading into a "sovereign debt default," too.
What about their utterly depraved "War on Drugs"?
What about their "co-ordinated devaluation" with the partnership of central banks worldwide?
Global downward spiral - caused by "global public irresponsibility."
Public responsibility!
ATLAS!
Myths to live by - and to die for - only if you are a dullard.
Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream...
That's what "private responsibility" is all about.
It's all about PRIVATE ECONOMIES - and not this mythical "national economy" that requires "great economists" for their proper "running."
And there is the Other God - good ol' Bholay Shankar sitting stoned atop Mount Kailash, meditating. Not interfering. Not even bothered. Not 'running" anything at all. Not holding anything aloft.
Just sitting happily stoned on the Roof of the World.
Mount Kailash is now in CHINA!
So what?
