I began discussing the evils of the stock markets of today
in this post, and went further yesterday. I will continue on the same theme
today.
Today, with inflationism, the small saver is SCREWED.
Today, because corporates prefer debt to equity (artificially
low – or even ZERO! – interest rates because of Keynesianism), the small
shareholder is also SCREWED.
The corporates obey the “banksters.” FASCISM results. All
corporates prefer to hire MBAs; and all MBAs are “trained” Keynesians. Methinks
this choice is DELIBERATE.
Fascism proceeds – and because all “material rewards” lie
in “rigging the system” to the benefit of your own company and, thereby,
yourself, interventionist measures of all kinds are ENCOURAGED.
The beauty and MORALITY of pure Capitalism is actually
UNKNOWN to them all – surely because of their MISEDUCATION.
Around 1600 or so, when the Honourable East India Company
announced its First Voyage to the East, gold was money and money was gold.
There was no Bank of England. They did not borrow, and preferred equity to debt
because raising loans would have cost them Real Interest. So they asked for
subscriptions, and they honestly declared and also justly shared all profits
with their shareholders, because if they had cheated, none would have
subscribed their Second Voyage. This is why “honesty is the best policy” in a
Free Market, which is precisely where “cheats never prosper.”
The adventurous “ventured” their capital because they
thought the prospects of handsome returns were reasonably good; and they also
trusted the Honourable Directors of the Company, one of whom had already served
as Lord Mayor of the Old City of London.
A century or so later, the Company began administering
some parts of Bengal – and, over time, after correcting some early errors, a
“covenanted civil service” was formed, whose “prophet” was John Locke. Thus,
the emphasis of the civilian administration was Property: accurate land
ownership records, titles, the prompt settlement of disputes, and also the
prompt payment of taxes that were – and they prided themselves on this –
“moderately assessed.”
These moderate taxes were invested in CAPITAL – “roads,
bridges, canals.”
They did this because the peasant were all dirt poor, and
they knew only these time-tested methods – tested in their own country – by
which a poor population could accumulate capital, slowly but surely. Only then,
they knew, could such poor people enter the market as consumers. And
only then could the overseas trading company, which they served – though not in
its trading activities – sell them anything.
Note: NO WELFARE. Such weird ideas as to what a “civil
government” is supposed to do did not exist then, and Locke’s Two Treatises
on Civil Government is dated 1691. America was then being colonized. This
book fired not only the Company’s “civilians” in India; it also inspired the
Whigs. It was a “staunch Whig” of the next century, Adam Smith, who penned Wealth
of Nations - and this appeared in
the same year that America won its independence from Britain: 1776. In this
book, Smith outlined a “System of Natural Liberty,” with really very little for
any “sovereign” to do. And he demolished all the mendacious as well as specious
arguments favouring State intervention in foreign trade. Smith’s “duties of the
sovereign,” for example, did not include the provision of money; nor did it
include “making law.” The administration of Justice, yes; but no making of law;
no NEW LAW (which is legislation). Those days, mass democracy was unthinkable,
as was legislationism.
Smith died in 1790 – after producing four editions of this
book. By 1800, its impact on the minds of the Honourable Court of Directors of
the East India Company was complete and total – for which reason they
established their very own East India College in Haileybury to train their own
recruits in “political economy” – which is nothing but the ideas and principles
of Liberty and minimal government. This subject was not taught then in either
Oxford or Cambridge.
From 1700 to 1860 – when Haileybury was closed down by the
Crown – the civil government of the Company was entirely based on the
PRINCIPLES of classical liberal political economy, laissez faire, free overseas
trade, and a minimalist government that performed only “basic functions,” and
nothing more. It worked wonders – many grand new cities came up on the coasts
of India, as well as in the interior, and many, many “princely states” came
under this “strong moral influence.”
The peasants and ryots not only prospered because
of the increased opportunities for economic achievement; they also received
Justice – in the very Lockean sense of the word. Both were a first for them.
“Where there is no Property there is no Justice,” wrote Locke.
They were taxed far less as compared to the Mughals. The
added fact that these collections made by the Company were invested in Capital
– roads, bridges and canals – as also in so many new cities and towns, all
bursting with economic opportunities, enabled them to slowly accumulate wealth.
The Company prospered as well – which provoked much jealousy and even envy back
in England, evidenced most clearly in the long drawn-out parliamentary trial of
Warren Hastings, who was finally acquitted, but was worn out by the ordeal.
The picture alongside is of a typical city slum in India –
the sort of conditions in which over half of India’s urban population live.
WITHOUT PROPERTY TITLES.
How will all the “corporates” – the big companies who
engage in “mass production for mass consumption” – begin to sell them their
stuff?
Welfarism?
Keynesianism?
Interventionism?
Protectionism?
Environmmentalism?
DUMBOS – all these MBAs.
Recommended reads (for this section of this post):
1. My recent post on one of
India’s “corporate biggies,” Gurcharan Das, and his “corporatism,” which is
another word for FASCISM.
2. This HT column by a retired
IAS officer, Harsh Mander, who “advises” Sonia Gandhi towards welfarism, which
is “budget maximization” for his tribe, and tax-maximisation as well. Anyway,
all this welfare is funded not by taxes, but by inflationism, which means they are "cheating the poor."
It is only because of such IAS
bozos that today we have a “right to food,” a “right to education,” a “right to
employment,” and even a “right to information” – but NO PROPERTY! Which means
NO JUSTICE! And, therefore, NO LIBERTY as well.
I have an earlier post on the
IAS Academy in Mussoorie, where I lectured twice a decade or more ago – and how
shocked I was to find that their Professor of Economics is a Marxist-Ricardian,
follower of Piero Sraffa of Cambridge, who was another of those “intellectual
servants” of Lord Keynes. India had been “liberalizing” for long – and Maoism
was being fought with bullets; yet, the IAS Academy was teaching this bull. I
also related this experience during my one-and-only appearance on the Barkha
Dutt Show – more than ten years ago.
Anyway, when I met the then
Director of the IAS Academy, Wajahat Habibullah (“very close to Sonia Gandhi,”
his Deputy told me, in hushed tones), exchanged pleasantries, during which I even
presented his Academy with some books, and took the opportunity to refute many
socialist beliefs, he told me: “We are knowledge-proof!”
I have therefore always loved
the title Hayek chose for his last book: Fatal Conceit: The Errors of
Socialism.
3. I have already referred my
readers to Philip Mason’s Men Who Ruled India – written by a retired ICS
officer.
4. To read an account by an
academic historian of repute, I suggest S. Ambirajan’s Classical Political
Economy and British Policy in India - which is available as a Google Book.
The Indian Council for Historical Research is a
State-owned entity, like the Delhi School of Economics, the Indian Council for
Social Science Research, and all the IIMs and IITs.
Today, almost all the PhDs in History awarded in India’s
State-owned universities are on the “freedom struggle” – all the propaganda on
Nehru-Gandhi and all that. Many theses are “copied.” And those who finally
obtain these degrees get “government jobs” as university teachers.
The Establishment refers to the “Sepoy Mutiny” of 1857 as
“India’s First War of Independence.”
But it was nothing but a mutiny – by “soldiers of a
mercenary army” – that was sparked off by something that went woefully amiss in
clearing the use of new cartridges for their Lee-Enfield rifles. There was no
“mass discontent” among the people. Many white district officers and other
Europeans were actually sheltered from the rebels by ordinary people. And as
for the rebels, they perpetrated great atrocities on innocent English civilians,
including women and children: Tantia Tope in Kanpur, for example.
There was no Curzon, and no Dyer either, during the
Company’s rule. There was also NO POLICE. The Indian Police Act is dated 1861. There was no Indian Penal Code (1860); no Indian Evidence Act (1871) - there was only this vital "sense of justice" that prevailed because "Locke was their prophet," and it was John Locke who wrote, "where there is no Property, there is no Justice."
When an “Intelligence Bureau” was established, it was to find hard “evidence” on the THUGGEE GANGS who murdered and looted travelers on highways. It was headed by Sleeman – a Haileybury man – and he and his men expended enormous efforts in collecting and collating all the “evidence” so that many thousands of these murderous gangsters could be “convicted” in a court of law. The menace was wiped out – by law. Today, over 1000 Indians die on the roads in “traffic accidents.” The “criminal justice system” does not work, which is putting it very mildly. And as for Intelligence Bureaus – for they have multiplied – they have their heads deep in matters pertaining to “national security,” whatever that means, especially when thousands are needlessly dying on the roads and streets every single day, only because of State NEGLIGENCE of “public security.”
When an “Intelligence Bureau” was established, it was to find hard “evidence” on the THUGGEE GANGS who murdered and looted travelers on highways. It was headed by Sleeman – a Haileybury man – and he and his men expended enormous efforts in collecting and collating all the “evidence” so that many thousands of these murderous gangsters could be “convicted” in a court of law. The menace was wiped out – by law. Today, over 1000 Indians die on the roads in “traffic accidents.” The “criminal justice system” does not work, which is putting it very mildly. And as for Intelligence Bureaus – for they have multiplied – they have their heads deep in matters pertaining to “national security,” whatever that means, especially when thousands are needlessly dying on the roads and streets every single day, only because of State NEGLIGENCE of “public security.”
The “civil government” of the Honourable Company did not
govern using “information” obtained by “spying” on the people. Its government
was based on KNOWLEDGE – which provided them with GUIDING PRINCIPLES – and on
Law. Thus was slowly built, in an area far exceeding modern, independent India,
“an empire of laws and not of men.”
A NEW INDIAN CIVILISATION!
Curzon, Dyer, the nationalist uprising, the Hindu-Muslim
communal divide, Jalianwallah Bagh – all these happened after the ouster of the
Company, because of the “Sepoy Mutiny,” and the “excuse” this gave Parliament
to takeover India in the name of the Crown.
Parliament was always jealous of the Company’s territory
in India – and the opportunities it could give them for patronage.
Then, and only then, did all the horrors begin. Peaceful
Crown rule lasted just about 50 years – for by 1905, because of Curzon, the
“nationalist agitation” began, which finally ended in the horrors of
“democratic and communal Partition.”
We are yet to recover from its effects.
Incidentally, the first action of the Crown in Britain was
to CLOSE DOWN the East India College at Haileybury.
But Allan Octavian Hume, who “founded” the Indian National
CONgress in 1885, was a Haileybury man. And this outfit, during his time, was
staunchly liberal – in the old, classical sense. Just read this extract from
Surendranath Banerjea’s Presidential Address in 1895.
In my view, the civil government of the Company in India
was the BEST THING that EVER happened to this backward country, inhabited by a
dispirited, ignorant and superstitious people.
The “civil government” of the Honourable East India
Company in India was entirely “blameless” – and they ought to be historically
“acquitted” exactly as one of their greatest men, Warren Hastings, was.
History – as well as Theory – are wrongly taught today.
By The State.
These two are the only means we have to know the world in
which we live.
The “historical evidence” provided above – on how
classical liberal political economy “developed” India between 1600 and 1850 –
should therefore lead to a total and complete REVOLTION in “development
economics”: the WRONG THEORIES that are the ROOT CAUSE of mass poverty,
corruption, and tyranny as well.
The works of Peter Bauer, the great DISSENTING development
economist, are vital today.
It is noteworthy that Margaret Thatcher once told an
assembly of Third World Commonwealth “heads of state”:
GO AND READ PETER BAUER!
It was she who elevated him to the peerage – as Lord Bauer
of Market Yard.
As a classical liberal economist looking for “solutions”
to Third World poverty, Peter Bauer did not agree with all the rest, who
invariably and almost entirely without exception, advocated STATE ACTION:
development planning, development administration, and everything else that has
not worked in India for 60 years and more. These State-directed measures also
included “population control”: the babies are the problem! Bauer dissented on
all these – each and every single one of them.
I like these lines of his best:
Poverty indicates just one thing – the absence of economic achievement. And economic achievements are made in markets.
It is his handsome bust, pictured above, that should grace every bazaar, everywhere in the Third World.
And if you are in Britain, do read his maiden speech in
the House of Lords – and get SHOCKED!
The power of philosophy,
Floats through my head.
Light as a feather,
Heavy as lead.
Who sang that? Why, someone who smokes ganja, of course!
So, how about The Honourable Bhola Unlimited Company Limited - makers of Bhola Spliffs?
Surely much better than the "rural development," "enironmentalist," and pro-UN ITC Limited, "protected" makers of swadeshi cigarettes?
Read this post to know what ITC "cronyism" is really all about.
