Indeed, our language still continues with it - as in the idiomatic expression phooti cowrie, referring to one that is devoid of value.
No king, no state, no one great mind, no "common will" invented money - and, as Mises pointed out with reference to the subsequent use of gold:
The use of money in a market economy is a praxeologically necessary fact. That gold, and not something else, is used as money is merely a historical fact and as such cannot be conceived by catallactics.
The Daily Noose says our Parliament has been stalled for over 10 days now. This is only because not a single one of the dozens and more "political parties" occupying it possess any POLITICAL PRINCIPLES on the basis of which they can "discuss" or even "debate" the coal mining allotment scandal - for example, whether its cause is "socialist collective property" and hence a permanent solution lies only in the inviolability of private property.
The lead editorial in Mint today says:
While the government has abdicated its primary responsibility of running the House, the opposition has boxed itself in by its extreme demands: the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his alleged involvement in the allocation of coal mines. With neither side willing to blink, the end outcome has been gridlock in Parliament, something rapidly becoming the norm. Not surprising then that the 15th Lok Sabha has the worst record in productivity.
Of course, if you or I had the "worst record in productivity" we would not be worth a phooti cowrie.
And of course, both the CONgress and the main opposition party BJP are deep into mining scams - in sunny Goa, in Karnataka, and hence, everywhere else as well, wherever their cronies can dig out and sell anything worthwhile under any "collective property."
In my old column dated 2003 rejecting collective property, I proved the following theorem:
There is no such thing called public property. Whatever goes under that name is very much private property, in the hands of someone or a group that claims to represent the public.
They are proving my theorem true with every passing day.
Thus, what we see in this socialist Parliament are mere "factions seeking unlimited powers and unlimited budgets." All these factions therefore swear by the socialist Constitution that has established this unlimited The State. This is why inflationism continues - and their fiat paper money is now worth a phooti cowrie, or less.
Or less - and that brings me to the "constitutional bureaucracies" whose "policy advice" to governments that come and go with every passing majority in worth even less than a phooti cowrie.
Their policy advice is supposed to be based on hard knowledge and law - what Max Weber called "rational-legal legitimacy" - which matters even more in a nation such as ours, where the popularly elected politician is more often than not a "representative of illiterates."
But again the Daily Noose mentions Jairam Ramesh, the minister for Rural Development, asking the Ministry of Finance for funds for the ages-old Indira Awaas Yojana (rural housing scheme).
Obviously, none of the constitutional bureaucrats in either ministry possess the hard knowledge of either Economics or Law, or they would have rejected this "scheme" outright - and recommended homesteading, property titles, and all the good things that come out of Capitalism and Private Property; and that too, without either taxation or inflationist finance.
(I wrote about Jairam Ramesh yesterday as well.)
Yes indeed, this constitutional bureaucracy is worth less than a phooti cowrie - and they must be knowing it, because it was more than a decade ago that I, along with Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute, delivered some lectures at the IAS Academy in Mussoorie, after which the then Director, Wajahat Habibullah, told me, in Barun's presence:
"We are knowledge-proof."
(I have another post on these "State Academics" here.)
The exact context in which Habibullah made this proud claim was my astonishment at finding that his Professor of Economics was a Marxist - and this was April, 2001, so "voodoo liberalisation" is what was going on.
Habibullah retorted to my scorn at his choice of faculty with, "Marx's Economics may have been wrong, but his Politics was right."
(And we thought these elite constitutional bureaucrats are supposed to be "apolitical"!)
From "Locke is our prophet" to "Marx is our prophet"!
Which means they are churning out "trained Maoists" as constitutional bureaucrats!
Not surprising - for the Chief Ideologue of the Nepal Maoists is a PhD (Economics) from Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
And I have a column dated 2006 referring to how JNU students "heckled" prime minister Manmohan Singh for his alleged "liberalism."
Note:
My title for this column was:
"The Death of Politics."
Politics is still DEAD - for this prime minster has sworn himself to SILENCE.
The word "parliament" came to England with the French-speaking Norman conquerors - and its root lies in parlez, which means "to speak." Parliament is a "place to speak." Not to be SILENT!
Note: The "alternative" Anna Hazare movement is equally devoid of political principles. They are "playing politics" - seeking to expand the State, expand the Constitution, expand the bureaucracy, and thus, nothing more than manifestations of the same disease: turf- and budget-maximisation.
As the coal mining scandal has proved, we need to think in terms of political principles - and I commend Jug Suraiya for being the first to categorically state that the root of the mess is NATIONALISATION.
It's private property vs. collective property, dudes!
This confirms all I have written so far - about how Parliament has within it "factions" devoid of PRINCIPLES. And how the constitutional bureaucracy is worth even less than a phooti cowrie.
Let me continue to hammer the point:
In 2001, some months after returning from the IAS Academy in Mussoorie, I was invited to the Barkha Dutt Show on Undie TV where I mentioned the curious fact that, in this age of supposed "liberalisation," the IAS Academy was teaching Marxism to its recruits.
When I said, "These recruits to our bureaucracy do not study Law" a senior member of their tribe who was present, N Vittal, blurted out:
"Of course we study Law. We study the Constitution."
Precisely!
They ought to be studying Frederic Bastiat's The Law.
In any case, The Citizenry should!
(PS: I was never invited to that TV show again!)
Vittal went on to be Central Vigilance Commissioner - a "constitutional post" - but he could not stop corruption. It is rooted in socialism, collective property, interventionism, welfarism, and inflationism. Thus, no Lok Pal established by amending this socialist Constitution can end corruption, either. The CBI charge-sheeting some MPs and firms for coal-related irregularities is just a diversion. The real culprit is WRONG PRINCIPLES IN LAW.
This also proves that the other "constitutional bureaucracy" - the Indian Police Service - is worthless: politicised, ineffective, budget- and turf-maximising, and ignorant, to boot. More phooti cowries.
I have already written about the IPS's disgraceful record on road safety - and their minister's hot air about "national security threats." This minister is another socialist lawyer.
Talking about LAW - let us now turn to one of their most eminent "bureaucrat-professors" of this vital subject, Professor NL Mitra, former Vice Chancellor of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and this report in Mint today about how this legal eagle is now a member of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group (EPAG) to the the Competition Commission of India etc. etc. etc.
But aren't Air India and BSNL "unfair competition" to all PRIVATE ENTREPRENEURS?
After all, in "fair competition," any firm making chronic losses would see a change in ownership. But these guys go on and on, with State support, and continue to STEAL customers from all the good guys.
Frederic Bastiat, author of The Law (1850), wrote the following very important words on Competition - which these socialist bureaucrats and their socialist bureaucrat-professors should all note; but The Citizenry should note them in BOLD LETTERS:
Competition is Liberty.
And the absence of competition is TYRANNY!
All that free competition needs is FREEDOM TO ENTER THE MARKET AND COMPETE. This is precisely what Bastiat meant by "competition is liberty."
So, remember the TYRANNY of those MRTPC decades?
To these voodoo liberalisers, "everything changes but everything remains the same." Or so they hope.
Yes, or so they hoped - but things are not turning out according to their "political schemes." These factions in the ruling coalition had made a "Devil's Gambit" - best explained, I think, by Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Mint's Managing Editor, in his column of today, in which he quotes what he had written a full year ago:
At the heart of this problem is the political strategy of the ruling alliance. “It gambled on the fact that the economy would continue to cruise in the fast lane, and thus generating ample tax revenues for the government to fund social programmes that would win elections. The fundamental flaw in this assumption is that growth requires investments, while the pattern of government spending has been skewed towards consumption… Much of our fiscal deficit is made up of the revenue deficit, a perverse stimulus to consumption in an economy that needs investment. The flaw is not just economic. It reflects a fundamental problem in the political strategy of the UPA,” this column had noted in November 2011.
This is precisely what the UGLY, modern Vote Motive is all about.
Niranjan's conclusion tells us where the "factions" in Parliament have landed us:
Weakening growth, high inflation, external imbalances, falling savings, an investment collapse—it is not a pretty picture.
Phooti cowrie, if you ask me.
Again, let us turn to the "worth less than a phooti cowrie" constitutional bureaucrats - like Governor Subbarao of the Reserve Bank of India, an IAS man, a former Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. Niranjan quotes the following from the RBI Report:
“The trend of falling savings rate, particularly that of public sector savings, needs to be reversed for adequate resources to be available to support a high-growth trajectory during the 12th Plan."
What exactly does "public sector savings" mean - when our The State does NOT "earn," and when all it does is CONSUME CAPITAL it does not even possess?
Who SAVES? Yes, ordinary people save - but inflationism erodes the value of their savings. Hence Niranjan, in the same column, points out:
Not only has the savings rate been dropping because of fiscal profligacy, but households are also diverting money away from financial instruments and into physical assets such as real estate and gold. So while the savings of Indian households as a proportion of GDP has inched up by 0.9 percentage points of GDP, the break up is interesting. Financial savings are down 0.6 percentage points, while physical savings are up 1.5 percentage points. In fact, in absolute terms, financial savings are down by Rs22,300 crore between FY11 and FY12, despite modest economic growth.
And who borrows - apart from our The State?
Well, here is this report from Mint today, on the Anil Ambani Reliance Group:
According to a 2 August report by brokerage firm Credit Suisse, the Reliance Group had total debt of Rs.86,700 crore by fiscal 2012 (FY12), up from Rs.26,100 crore in FY07.
And, let The Citizenry never forget, they have raised taxes and customs duty on gold in this year's Union Budget - which I called an act of High Treason. My opening words then were:
They have doubled customs duties on gold and platinum imports and, to make things even worse worse, high taxes have been imposed on real estate transactions. Private capital and savings will thus be further eroded – and this at a time of surging price inflation. The people will be frustrated in their efforts to preserve their wealth, and their every attempt to take the “flight into real value” will be hindered by deliberate State action. They will be indirectly forced to store value in the falling Indian paper rupee, printed at will by this State. This is anti-people. Period.
Let us hope gold smugglers come to our rescue.
So, let us get things straight: THEY ARE ALL ADDICTED TO DEBT!
Why? Because THEY GAIN from it, for inflation benefits borrowers.
"Public sector savings are going to support a high-growth trajectory during the 12th Plan," says the RBI.
Worth less than a phooti cowrie, these constitutional bureaucrats of ours.
Hence the concluding para of Niranjan's column - which tells us where these knowledge-proof constitutional bureaucrats have landed us:
Weakening growth, high inflation, external imbalances, falling savings, an investment collapse—it is not a pretty picture.
Well, if you ask me, the really ugly picture is of these vote-motivated and debt-addicted sociopaths - as pictured alongside.
Recommended reading: "The Economic Irrationality Of The State" - another excellent article from the Mises Institute, which will tell you why (if you think things through) the Honourable East India Company's presence in our sub-continent from about 1605 to 1850 was BENIGN; while within just a few decades, the British Crown messed everything up, not only for them, but more importantly, for us as well.
I also recommend the biography of Frederic Bastiat - "a man alone," as it is titled, not because he was either friendless or a loner, but because of the way he voted in the French Assembly, always examining each issue according to his FIXED PRINCIPLES.
So, SPEAK UP FOR TRUTH, FOR LIBERTY, FOR PROPERTY, AND FOR JUSTICE - even if you do so alone.
And I, suitably inspired, did all that - calling for hard, PRIVATE MONEY.
And I, suitably inspired, did all that - calling for hard, PRIVATE MONEY.
