The last time around, his “bleeding-heart inflationist-welfarism” moaned on and on about “malnutrition” and “anemia” in India’s villages – and supported bigger budgets for bureaucRATS of the Food Corporation of India and the Public Distribution System.
Can INFLATIONISM boost consumption – of the poor, who
SAVE, and do not BORROW?
So, look very closely at the COPPER COIN pictured
alongside, with Ludwig von Mises’ handsome visage upon it – and THINK!
HARD MONEY.
REAL MONEY.
PRIVATE PROPERTY.
In which case, whaddya think will happen if GOLD is money?
Obviously, since the value of gold is rising – and it will
go on rising for as long as anyone can foresee – all prices, of anything and
everything, as expressed in terms of gold, will keep on FALLING, right from now
all the way into the foreseeable future.
DEFLATION.
What will happen to CONSUMPTION – especially of the POOR?
Let us take, for example, mobile phones, computers, and
Internet usage. Their prices have been falling – not just steadily, but rapidly
– DESPITE inflationism.
DESPITE heavy INDIRECT TAXATION.
DESPITE “collective ownership” of the radio spectrum –
which raises costs for private firms providing these services.
Obviously, with GOLD AS MONEY, the story would then read
INDIA SHINING! – and really mean it.
I would add LEGITIMATE FREE BANKING – which would mean
high interest rates, for SAVERS.
Artificially low interest rates in a centrally planned and
manipulated monetary and banking system based on “funny money” does NOT
stimulate economic activity; it only causes MALINVESTMENTS – and thus, the
endless “business cycles” of boom-and-bust.
Just as subsidised diesel raises market demand for
diesel-powered automobiles, subsidised interest rates renders those projects
“economically viable” that otherwise would not have been so. Thus begins the
“boom” – as more and more such projects are invested in, by “herds” of
investors attracted to any particular sector, all utilising “cheap” bank
credit.
Obviously, all cannot succeed.
In the end will come the inevitable “bust,” with calls for
“bailouts” for banks that are supposedly “too big to fail.”
Yeah, this – while each and every SMALL SAVER FAILS!
Hard money and legitimate free banking would therefore
raise the consumption of the poor and even the poorest – without any
“microfinance” nonsense; without any “consumer loans” from banks; without any
State Welfare, either.
For example:
I often see newspaper reports carrying photos of State
Education Ministers showing off some “cheap computer” or the other for “poor
children.”
The next 5-Year Plan allocates a truly huge amount of
“funny money” for this “miseducation.”
If this Ministry of Human Resource Destruction is SIMPLY
ABOLISHED – and if money is hard; and banking free as well as
legitimate – even the poorest would be able to buy their own computers, and
mobile phones, and access the Internet.
Homesteading unowned properties and obtaining insurable
titles to these matters as well – especially for the poor, as this is what
solves the “mystery of capital” for them.
For example: Homesteading the radio spectrum would raise
consumption of such services by the poorest.
This “Lockean Principle” on homesteading unowned
properties asserts, “Property is not a Right, but arises from a Liberty” – and
its “logic” is really like the chicken-and-egg question, for which the correct
answer is:
Both the chicken and the egg happened when the first caveman “domesticated” wildfowl and made them his Property: which is HOMESTEADING.
Today, with scientific poultry farming, chicken and eggs
are abundant as never before – and no one goes hunting for wildfowl.
Therein lies a lesson for “wildlife protectionists” – and
one can easily think of commercial timber farming and deer ranching, for
example, as preferable to the current, socialist-communist forestry paradigm,
stuck in the boondocks of “collective property,” with all the jungles, all the
timbers, and all the wildlife effectively owned by Jairam Ramesh, Rajya Sabha
CONgress MP, who “claims to REPRESENT the public.”
This brings me to the Goa iron ore mining scandal, which
has swallowed up the CONgress, both in Goa as well as in Delhi – in which
context I quote the following extract from a column in Mint today, which
says both URBAN OVERCROWDING in Goa as well as all this low-grade iron ore
poverty-perpetuating nonsense has its root in a Regional Land Use Plan, itself
based on the very same socialist-communist “collective property” FICTION:
From 2005, instances of strong-arm tactics by construction interests surfaced in local media. This was followed by news of similar instances in the iron-ore mining areas of southern and eastern Goa. Relatively isolated public anger coalesced into mass outrage with the outing of the Goa Regional Plan 2011, over 2008-09, which activists exposed as a brazen attempt by both construction and mining lobbies—endorsed by government—to grab land. Meticulous investigation by activists showed wholesale marking of arable, community and forested lands as being suitable for construction and mining.
Massive public protests led to the scrapping of that plan. The modified Regional Plan 2021, also riddled with irregularities, is now on ice.
Obviously, with homesteading – human settlements, private
properties, real estate, commercial timber farming, plantations of exotic
fruit, flowers and spices, and wildlife ranching – no private owner of these
would find any gain in digging up his property to extract some low-grade ore or
the other.
Further, if these lands are settled thus, and all these
“goods” produced and sold, market demand for all other, non-competing goods and
services would rise by a corresponding amount – and unilateral free trade would
raise the QUALITY OF CONSUMPTION of all these happy homesteaders.
So, what can be said of the LUNACY of the USSA and the
EUSSR, except this:
If only it was so easy to make nations and peoples wealthy without any “productive work,” and simply by expanding the supply of “funny money.”Like: If only the poverty of workers could be wiped out by an act of legislation like “minimum wages.” Pass the Act – and all the “workers of the world” are RICH!
These “miseducated” western nations and peoples are
seriously DELUDED. They cannot see DE-CIVILISATION looming only because of
technological advancements and stock market indices.
Technological advancements require Capital – for modern
Capitalism is but “mass production for mass consumption.” All this will cease –
sooner rather than later – because their REPRESENTATIVES are “consuming” all
their precious Capital.
Which private American citizen, I ask you, has actually
ENTRUSTED all his savings with the US Federal Reserve – which has no reserves,
actually, the reason why the good man Ron Paul has for long been raising the
shout:
AUDIT THE FED!
He has also authored a “bestseller” titled:
What can we do in our miserably poor country when the
“Advanced West” is heading at breakneck speed down the Highway to Hell?
Below, the final paragraph of my old column advocating “A
Return to the Gold Standard” for India:
Any nation can unilaterally revert to the gold standard whenever it chooses. If we do so, our rupee, now pegged to gold, will always appreciate against the rest of the world’s fiat papers. This will help us become big importers. And cheap imports, including of capital goods and components, will make our manufactured exports competitive in terms of technology, quality and price. Our banks will attract the world’s savings, and we will possess capital, the vital ingredient of “capitalism”. All prices will steadily fall and the consumption of the poor will rise in leaps and bounds. This is the power of “sound money”.
Note the emphasised words – on CONSUMPTION.
Thus, I am forced to conclude that Mint’s lead editorial of today is NONSENSE.
The bigger the State Budget, the worse for the people, and
the private market economy.
What does the term “political economy” mean, dudes?
We need to put an end to welfarism, subsidies, PSUs, et.
al.
I recommend this Mises Daily Article on the so-called
“Fiscal Cliff” – for it tells why it won’t be us, the people, who will fall of
this cliff, but they, the tax-parasites, the budget- and turf-maximisers, who
will, when political economy kicks in.
We also need to PRIVATISE EVERYTHING – so let’s say “NO!”
to Kamal D Nutt’s “plan” of State-owned “metro railways” in all cities with a
population of 2 million – another CONgress “gravy train,” if you ask me.
Has Kamal D Nutt managed to build even a single highway in
all these years?
And why cannot even smaller cities and towns have PRIVATE
TRAMWAYS?
We also need to promote the ethic of Self-Help among the
poor – while MOTIVATING them to strive for honest economic success:
First: They, and their kids, are NOT the “population problem.”Second: There is no “vicious circle of poverty” – which is why poor people strive harder to succeed, while the spoilt kids of the wealthy easily fall into lives of idleness and vice.Thus, the “softie” youth of the advanced West are never going to struggle as hard as our poor people – and their kids.These are the “ultimate resource.”It is our The State that is, in truth, The Real Problem.
Free their Minds.
Fire their Spirits.
And then, when we are ready to TAKE OFF, make the usual announcement on the Public Address System:
Ladies and Gentlemen! Fasten Your Seatbelts. Extinguish Your Cigarettes – And Light Up Your SPLIFFS!For We are “Fighting Against Isms And Schisms, And Jah Will Never Let Us Down."
