If you remember the 1960s and '70s in India, in fact, right here in New Delhi - the shop shelves were all EMPTY as well. Because central economic planning is not "rational." It does not work because it simply cannot. One "supermind" like Montek cannot plan for all the myriad things we all need, a billion+ of us, all over this vast sub-continent.
Let us look at a bazaar in any of our cities or towns. The shop-keepers, the street vendors, and the hawkers - they have all "invested" yesterday in trying to anticipate what people-like-us might demand today.
"The social function of the entrepreneur is to make provision for the uncertain future," wrote Mises. And that is precisely what each of them has done - with fragments of private investments, and fragments of knowledge. Further, ALL their actions have been SPECULATIVE - for, without such entrepreneurial speculation, we could never ever move from today to tomorrow.
Now, while planners claim to be looking ahead - 5-years ahead - shop-keepers, street-hawkers and vendors look at market fluctuations that are natural or seasonal: like weekends, or the tourist season, or the festivals, or whatever. On such "peak" occasions, they invest even more to ensure that no customer is left unsatisfied.
The electricity fails every single day in Delhi, in summer, which is the "peak load." Just as it fails everywhere else throughout India. The central planner has "estimated demand" and has "allocated funds" for State-owned NUCLEAR POWER!
There is also something called "local knowledge." And most small enterprises are based on this.
As is local self-government.
Let us first look at electricity: Nuclear power plants under State-ownership are NOT "investment" - rather, thay are "plan allocations" that accrue to bureaus; in this case, to the Department of Atomic Energy. These bureaucRATS are but "agents of politicians," so everything gets politicised (unlike private investments) - and UGLY "international politics" enters the picture, like "political deals" between the Indian State and those of the USSA and France. Even the "liabilities" of foreign nuclear equipment suppliers are frozen - so that OUR LIVES are sold cheap!
Meanwhile, power cuts continue, and will continue forever. If planning continues.
Planning, welfarism, and all State expenditure is best defined as:
Some people spending other people's money on other people.
Hence, it never works.
It is the ROOT of CAPITAL CONSUMPTION.
What about private investments in electricity in India? Don't we all have UPSs, invertors, domestic, commercial and even industrial generators? Aren't all these privately manufactured? Can we even survive without them? Then why don't we THINK of electricity privatisation - complete and total?
Private investments come from private savings, aiming at the satisfaction of the needs of people-like-us. The profits earned ADD to capital accumulation - which leads to further investments in more and more businesses which supply us with more and more goodies. Civilisation grows. As does happiness. Even technology improves.
Meanwhile, the accumulated losses of all the State-owned Electricity Boards exceed Rs.200,000 crore rupees (1 crore = 10 million) - and this is nothing but capital consumption. They are all corrupt and inefficient. The technology they use is shoddy and outdated. They claim poor people "steal electricity" - but if The State cannot prevent theft, then private operators surely will. With high technology.
Let us now turn to roads: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is a State-MONOPOLY. All its "national highways" are but "notional highways." Shouldn't highways be privatised? Cannot we have electronic "shadow tolling" instead of these roadblock tolling booths as on the FAILED 25km long Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway?
And what about the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (rural roads plan)? Wouldn't "local knowledge" based on REPUBLICANISM be better? Independent cities and towns would need to connect with their surrounds - from which they obtain essentials, and to which they sell much, too?
Private highways - and private buses on them - could compete with railways as well as airways on distances up to 500km at least.
Multi-modal transport.
What about State-owned METROS - as in Delhi and Bangalore - versus PRIVATE TRAMWAYS in all our thousands of small cities and towns? Wanna wait for the Central All-Knowing Planner to "allocate funds" or just ask big, private investors to "just do it." They can have property rights on sections of important public roads. The local municipality can do the needful.
Railways next: Everyone knows it is close to impossible to get a railway berth booked in a hurry. Which means a monopolist is lowering supply and maximising his own profits. These railways have scarcely expanded since the Brits left - and in British times these were all private lines, dating back to an era before the invention of the automobile. What choice do we have but to private these, and also allow fresh competition from other private players? Today, the Indian Railways consume all their own capital by being the "world's largest employer" after the Chinese Red Army and the British National Health Service. Overemployment - or "jobs for the boys" - is waste. Capital consumption. Same with each and every State-owned undertaking (PSU).
What about WATER? The Earth is 70 per cent water - and there is desalination available cheap nowadays. Water-starved Madras now has a "planned" desalination plant, but under State-ownership! If this business was privatised, if the private investors deemed it worth their while, water pipelines would run everywhere, even to every farmer in the deserts of Rajasthan.
Note that bottled water is PLENTIFUL today.
There is a huge water shortage in Delhi - for decades now - and there is a barrage on the Yamuna near Dehra Doon that diverts this river water to Punjab farmers for free!
Who owns the river water? Private property rights are the answer - to pollution as well.
The Delhi Jal Board sends private water tankers to homes - but cannot pipe the same water! MONOPOLY! PLANNING!
Nehru's big idea was BIG DAMS - and I wrote a post on the dreary town of Sambalpur, Orissa, near the Hirakud Dam.
My song is "Old Man River." I like to just "sit back and watch the river flow."
FREEDOM!
Ditto for city streets: I think the FAILED BRT Corridors of Delhi ought to be simply PRIVATISED!
The private owners would scientifically manage traffic, parking (they might even buy roadside properties for parking towers) and even organise hawkers and vendors is a businesslike (non-predatory) way.
I have written earlier that the main Vasant Kunj-Mahipalpur Road (over 10km and without any footpaths) ought to be privatised as well. Private owners would FIX THINGS - and no State can do that. DAA, MCD, these State-organisations possess neither the knowledge nor the incentives.
The same applies to "central monetary policy."
And to "central legislation" as well.
Hence, a "private law society."
Well then, what about centralised "education"?
And what about privatised forests and timber plantations? Private wildlife ranching? Think about it. The current State-ownership is not working at all. And all the jungle-dwellers are up in armed revolt.
Let us also look at Centralised Law & Order - as in Kashmir and Manipur; and as just the other day when the "para-military" Central Reserve Police Force gunned down innocent, unarmed, poor tribals in Bastar, Chattisharh.
Under our Constitution, Law & Order is a "State Subject" - and under the Indian Penal Code all powers are vested in the Station House Officer on the spot. How then can the Central State have some 300 battalions of these "para military forces"?
Has anything like this even happened in British India - most certainly not in the days of the Honourable Company, which did not even have a police!
I wrote about the need for a proper understanding of the ideals of Republicanism the other day: that, for both India as well as the USSA, what this very important word that lies at the "bedrock of liberty" means is we must not aim to be "the world's largest democracies": on the contrary, we must aim to be comprised of thousands and thousands of little republics, run by mayors who are wealthy businessmen themselves, and who establish honest civic corporations for all their successors.
ENOUGH OF THIS BIG, CENTRALISED USSR-STYLE STATE!
