Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience...
The Daily Noose has it that Jairam Ramesh is hell-bent on DECLARING THIS WAR AGAINST THE PEOPLE.
Leave aside the NONSENSE that he is actually opposing his socialist Cabinet colleagues, who think he is being too generous on compensation, etc. - and that this will be "anti-industry."
In reality, they are ALL "anti-people."
Anti-law - so read Frederic Bastiat's The Law (1850).
Anti-justice.
"Where there is no Property, there is no Justice."
John Locke (1691)
They want to LEGALLY PLUNDER land - for various "politically desirable" purposes: Special Economic Zones, National Industrialisation, Highways...
And as for whatever "compensation" and even "rehabilitation" that Jairam is faffing on about, these are but socialist FALSE PHILANTHROPY yet again.
Note: These two expressions, LEGAL PLUNDER and FALSE PHILANTHROPY, occur over and over again in Bastiat's The Law - to describe socialist legislation.
In any case, Jairam Ramesh is NOT a politician "elected by the people": he is another of those Rajya Sabha MPs, elected "indirectly" by members of a State Assembly; in his case, Andhra Pradesh. He was Environment Minister when State-owned nuclear powers plants were allowed to take over "ecologically sensitive" forests in the Konkan; and he is currently Rural Development Minister, with a Huge Budget to do whatever nonsense this is all about.
Allow me to now dwell on the ROOTS of this crisis - which is "Parliament and People in a State of War," as Locke put it.
Once again, its roots lie in our ignorance of our own History.
None of these things ever happened during the glorious centuries of the reign of the Honourable East India Company - when tea estates were homesteaded, when innumerable "hill stations" were built, and when first, roads, and then, railways were constructed: all this without any "land acquisition" by force, which is precisely what "legislative fiat" is all about.
This is only because, for the Company's civilians, "Locke was their Prophet."
Thus, they "protected" Property - always.
They surveyed lands and fields, issuing clear titles, settling disputes promptly by maintaining records up-to-date. Do read my essay titled "Platonic Guardians: Comments on British Colonial Rule by Civilians from a ‘Covenanted Civil Service’" in my online publication dated 2007 for more.
After 1800, the Company established Haileybury College to train their recruits in "classical liberal political economy" - which meant laissez faire was added to Property. The "Haileybury mind" was best described by one of those civilians trained here in these words:
At Haileybury, everyone had learnt that political economy was a matter of laws, that money and goods would move by themselves in ways beneficial to mankind. The less any government interfered with natural movements, the better
All this changed after takeover by the Crown - which meant Parliament.
This is why Ludwig von Mises has written the following about legislatures in the interventionist (Western) world of today:
"Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law . . . economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics." - Austrian Economics: An Anthology
Note the difference: Haileybury men "learnt that political economy was a matter of laws"; while "Democratic Majorities drunk with power" have only achieved the extremely dubious distinction of "a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
Thus, they do not know Law - that is, Property; hence they can never deliver Justice; and, to top it all, all their economic policies are "designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
UNLAW and LAWLESSNESS writ large!
Hence the HIGHEST DEGREE OF DISORDER I wrote about the other day; and which I continued with here.
And YOU want them to teach all YOUR children!
Whereas I opposed this ridiculous idea way back in 2004!
In an earlier post I wrote that the first thing Parliament did after taking over India from the Honourable Company was to set up a police force by passing the Indian Police Act in 1861, and the Indian Penal Code the following year.
WRONG!
Actually, their FIRST ACT was to close down Haileybury College!
In 1800, this "East India College" taught classical liberal political economy because the extremely wealthy merchants who ran the Company thought this knowledge was essential for their recruits - if they were to rule India well, and not end up like the British Crown just did in America, where they got thrown out. Then, this vital subject was NOT taught at either Oxford or Cambridge - although Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was about a quarter of a century old, and the author had passed away in 1790.
But since Haileybury men continued to serve in India - the last of them perhaps being AO Hume - not much harm could be done to the "basic administrative system" the Company had founded, as with the work of Munro in the South.
Now, the Land Acquisition Act is always portrayed in the media and the utterances of the socialist politicians as "colonial law." But it has come from the Crown - and its Parliament. It is dated 1894. This is NOT something that existed during the centuries of Company rule.
I do not really know how the Indian Civil Service (ICS) - who replaced the Honourable East India Company Service (HEICS) - were trained; but if we look at whatever they did, it becomes clear that they were INTERVENTIONISTS. This is precisely why they failed. And why in 1947 those that remained were extremely happy to serve socialists like Nehru - while thanking Patel profusely for making them a "constitutional bureaucracy," and also giving them "free reign" over the former Princely States, some 650 of them, all of which are hell-holes today.
As for the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) of today - I have this old post on how the Director of their Academy at Mussoorie very proudly told me:
"We are knowledge-proof."
So, let me quote John Locke again for these socialist-bureaucratic-welfarist-administrators - "budget-maximisers," all:
Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience...
Watch out - you "constitutional bureaucrats": for when your socialist political masters in their democratic legislature "put themselves into a state of war with the people," being knowledge-proof will not help much, and you must make sure that you are "bullet proof" too.
