This estimation becomes obvious when one goes through this detailed report of the complete nonsense this Harvard MBA said at the IMF-World Bank meet in Tokyo yesterday. Leave aside the absurd "we will engage with rating agency and convince them that India does not deserve a downgrade" - for there are so many such agencies - the real question that this post will seek to answer is: Do MBAs know what Real Capitalism is all about? Like, "What is CAPITAL?"
Answer: Capital - and hence, Capitalism - is all about PRIVATE MONEY, as this extract from my column on the subject makes clear:
Marxists wrongly assert that capitalism is all about “private ownership of the means of production”. All these machines and factories are nothing but capital—and the fundamental aspect of capitalism, which goes deeper than property in machinery, is private ownership and superintendence of capital itself. This is something individuals produce for themselves, through production, exchange, saving and investing. It is private ownership and superintendence of these individual savings that lies at the root of capitalism. This is what capital is all about. And the word “capital” is a word that indicates something of supreme importance—as in “capital city” or “capital punishment”.
Now, it becomes immediately obvious that a socialized, centralized and state-owned and -directed fiat money and banking system is nothing but communism in thin disguise. All our savings are made available to the political needs of the state. All our private capital is denominated in fiat money, as are all our commercial dealings. In every exchange that transpires on the market, one part of that exchange is state money. And this is money of extremely poor quality, deteriorating in value with every passing day. Inflationism means “capital consumption”—the destruction of savings. This means that what is actually happening under this communistic ownership and superintendence of our capital is that capital is being consumed, being eroded, being malinvested and being wasted. In other words, we are hastening down the road towards “decivilization”.
Of course, not! And any MBA who has specialised in Finance proves it.
In my earlier post for MBA students and aspirants I had quoted Ludwig von Mises' Human Action: A Treatise on Economics at length on this degree and its worth - words penned in America of the 1940s - that MBA schools "train subalterns for routine jobs." But things are far worse today. Particularly in India.
Today, we must conclude that MBAs are a part of the global miseducation problem for - and Chidambaram is surely the best example - they display complete ignorance of Economic Science. They study Keynesian "macroeconomics" set in Laputa-on-High and silly Marshallian "microeconomics" of pretty curves and impersonal graphs having nothing to do with real "humans" making purposeful "trading actions"; they therefore fall prey to the "national economy delusion"; they look towards stock market index numbers, "growth rates" and other such absurd measurements of the national economy and seek State intervention - always for their own benefit; and thus become ideologically wedded to CORPORATE FASCISM.
The reasons are not far to seek: With the fatal poison of "macroeconomics" in their brains, they do not know the TRUE SOURCE OF DEMAND. Further, with all the false notions of "national economy statistics" in their minds, they accept monetary and banking interventionism - and all else that goes with it, like legislative interventionism. No wonder every corporate boss is busy "lobbying" and "fixing" interventions for his company's benefit - completely IGNORANT of what the classical political economists called "rightly understood interests." If you are taught wrong, you think wrong - and then ACT wrong.
[IIT = Indian Institute of Technology, 5 State-owned "elite" institutions that never produced any "technology, and only "trained" students in "science." IIM = Indian Institute of Management, 3 State-owned ones in the old days, more today. But almost all IIM grads are IITians.]
To move from "science" to "technology" requires Capital and Capitalism - which is how James Watt's "science" became the Boulton & Watt "steam engine."
[Of course, the FUCKING PATENT issued to them halted all progress in this area for twenty long years. We don't need patents - these State-granted monopolies granted by bureaucRATS that no court of law can ever even scrutinise properly, let alone decide upon, given the technical complexities involved.]
Incidentally, the former USSR had the highest number of PhDs in Science per capita in the world - but NO TECHNOLOGY at all!
All the IITs, all these long decades, could not produce any technology at all.
ZERO!
Even when most IIT grads had IIM degrees as well!
Note that management is a subject with "gurus" - and their "literature" is entirely what people-like-me call "faffing around." There is no "rigorous thinking" in these books, ever.
A great example of one such "management guru" is Harvard's Michael Porter, author of a very heavy tome on the "competitive advantage of NATIONS"! What's that? In the arena of a free competitive market, firms, their products, and all individuals as well compete. - all in different "segments." They compete as sellers - and also as buyers. Further, and most importantly, this "market competition" is NOTHING like Darwinian "survival of the fittest" - for all survive, as the market only "grades" goods and services on offer: the ordinary singer performs at the local bar; the superstar on the World Stage.
The question that arises is: Why is the modern world not an open and competitive market arena - unlike the Victorian Age?
If there is ONE REASON why such an open arena is not happening anywhere - and we have to all suffer the WTO and "political diplomacy" instead - then it is books such as Porter's.
Economic Science is all about universal harmony between INDIVIDUALS - not conflict and competition between NATIONS - and the fundamental LAW that proves this harmony is that of "Human Association" based on "comparative advantage." I have an old column on this Law, from which the following extract should persuade the reader to read the entire piece:
The law of human association tells us that there are eternal harmonies between all our economic relations. The rich, the poor, the unlettered, the scholars and even the blind and the lame can happily coexist in the free market—and all will gain. There are no mutual antagonisms. Rather, all dissensions are the produce of spurious ideologies, from pure xenophobia to protectionism and economic nationalism. These spurious ideologies, when translated into official policies, harm the entire world.
This Law of Human Association is what Ludwig von Mises called "The First Law of Sociology" - and I have outlined the True Sociology in this recent post, while repeated asserting that "socialism is actually anti-social," especially in this post on lunatic French sociologists.
I proceed with my chosen topic of today: MBAs.
I have lectured in only one of the State-owned "prestigious" Indian Institutes of Management - the newer one at Lucknow, and these were over ten years ago. A student who found pleasure in my talk later visited me in my rooms and, during conversation, complained bitterly about the "heavy work load" of his academic studies there. He was a "final year" student - and so I inquired whether there was any course he had actually "enjoyed" in these two years. His reply: "I really enjoyed my 'Summer Placement' marketing beer."
The next day I took a taxi out to town - and looked for a good restaurant where I could enjoy cold beer and the famous kebabs of Lucknow along with them. The driver took me to one such place - but no beer, only kebabs. Then he took me to another, swankier place - with the same disappointing result. And finally I ended up in a luxury hotel of sorts for just beer and kebabs - and I thought to myself:
Wouldn't ECONOMIC FREEDOM be much better than all this "education" - so that people can 'learn on the job' and enjoy it, too?
This is borne out by this excellent report in the Hindustan Times of today, titled "Hot degrees fetch young India lukewarm jobs" - in which the phenomenal rise in engineering as well as management degree-holders is listed, as well as the fact that there are very few employment opportunities for them. Do note the comments quoted from the current Director of IIM-Ahmedabad.
In my youth, things were far worse - but their overall scheme was the same: to force the youth into endless degree chases, preceded as well as followed by endless "competitive examinations," for all of which there were numberless private, for-profit "coaching institutes" - while The Market for Education was not free.
And The Market is general is STILL NOT FREE!
Compulsory miseducation from Manmohan, anyone?
Some years after this "no beer and only kebab" experience in Lucknow, I was in that city once again, as a guest of the Lucknow Management Association - and heard the Director of this IIM deliver an opening address titled "Markets and Hierarchies." But markets are NOT hierarchies - which exist only in bureaucracies and all these socialist "political parties." My talk was on ELIMINATING BUREAUCRACY in the delivery of civic services - what is called New Public Management in a subject that has no "gurus" at all: Public Administration.
The older IIMs have been with us from the 60s. IIM-Ahmedabad is considered "best" - and their most famous Director has been a former RBI governor, IG Patel. This institute co-exists with the prohibition of alcohol - which can be dismissed by Say's Law of Markets alone - as I did in this post written while in Gujarat recently - but then, this Law is something no Keynesian will ever teach. And all central bankers are Keynesians.
IIM-Bangalore originally was meant to train "bureaucrat-managers" - for all the State-owned firms. It was not even meant for The Market. This means IIM-Bangalore was deliberately established in order to extend "bureaucratic management" into an area where it does not belong - which is "management for profit."
IIM-Calcutta co-existed happily with Communists - for 30 years, as Bengal went down the drain.
And have you ever READ even ONE NEWSPAPER ARTICLE by any IIM "bureaucrat-professor" on the side of The Market? The occasional columns from these chaps are always on "finance" - to do with banking and central banking. Keynesian "macroeconomics."
Think of how much young people have had to STRUGGLE and COMPETE just to get admission into one of these IITs and IIMs?
All this, while The Market did not exist.
And none of the BIG INDIAN BUSINESSMEN wanted to compete!
All this, while The Market did not exist.
And none of the BIG INDIAN BUSINESSMEN wanted to compete!
What a colossal WASTE!
Why do youngsters chase MBA degrees? Only one reason: Fascist Corporates prefer hiring such "miseducated" people. They need such "minds" - just as the IAS Academy needs a Keynesian-Marxist-Ricardian follower of Piero Sraffa to train recruits. Only those who do not know their own "rightly understood interests" will get co-opted into their not only corrupt, but also FATALLY FLAWED "scheme" - one that simply cannot go on forever. It is bound to collapse someday - as Keynes himself predicted.
We can contrast these modern "corporatists" with the Honourable East India Company and its Haileybury College to train recruits in "Political Economy" - recruits who were all between 13 and 15 years of age. What a wonderful world the Victorian Age turned out to be because of this "knowledge" - and how much the Keynesians, like Lytton Strachey of Keynes' Blommsbury Group, with his Eminent Victorians, HATED this era for its "morality."
Indeed, the greatest "international bestseller" of the Victorian Age was penned by their "moralist" Samuel Smiles, titled Self-Help. It sat next to the Holy Bible in every Victorian home - indicating that the people of that time did NOT believe in WELFARISM.
It was Keynes who was one of the first to use the "weasel expression" all Keynesian-welfarists, from Paul Krugman and Amartya Sen to our own Manmohan Singh use: SOCIAL JUSTICE, entirely funded by the "immoral means" of inflationism. Keynes used this expression in his The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill - and paved the way from the British Welfare State, what with Beveridge, the Webbs, and the entire Fabian Society in the LSE waiting in the wings. Keynes was surely a "Labour peer" - like Meghnad Desai is today.
We can contrast these modern "corporatists" with the Honourable East India Company and its Haileybury College to train recruits in "Political Economy" - recruits who were all between 13 and 15 years of age. What a wonderful world the Victorian Age turned out to be because of this "knowledge" - and how much the Keynesians, like Lytton Strachey of Keynes' Blommsbury Group, with his Eminent Victorians, HATED this era for its "morality."
Indeed, the greatest "international bestseller" of the Victorian Age was penned by their "moralist" Samuel Smiles, titled Self-Help. It sat next to the Holy Bible in every Victorian home - indicating that the people of that time did NOT believe in WELFARISM.
It was Keynes who was one of the first to use the "weasel expression" all Keynesian-welfarists, from Paul Krugman and Amartya Sen to our own Manmohan Singh use: SOCIAL JUSTICE, entirely funded by the "immoral means" of inflationism. Keynes used this expression in his The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill - and paved the way from the British Welfare State, what with Beveridge, the Webbs, and the entire Fabian Society in the LSE waiting in the wings. Keynes was surely a "Labour peer" - like Meghnad Desai is today.
Many have said Keynes was an "amoralist" - defined as:
Someone who adheres to the doctrine that ordinary moral distinctions are invalid.
But the following quote from Keynes' Two Memoirs (1949) shows him to be a self-confessed "immoralist" - defined as, "A person who advocates or practices immorality."
We entirely repudiated a personal liability on us to obey general rules. We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its merits, and the wisdom, experience, and self-control to do so successfully. This was a very important part of our faith, violently and aggressively held, and for the outer world it was our most obvious and dangerous characteristic. We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists... We recognised no moral obligation, no inner sanction, to conform or obey. Before heaven we claimed to be our own judge in our own case.
Keynes went on to add: "So far as I am concerned, it is too late to change. I remain, and always will remain, an immoralist."
Law is a "moral science" - and, in the ultimate analysis, the great big question on MONEY is a LEGAL ONE:
My old column advocating "a return to the gold standard" proceeded precisely along such a line of argument:
What is MONEY in legal terms?
My old column advocating "a return to the gold standard" proceeded precisely along such a line of argument:
How did it all go so wrong? Without getting into the gross errors that have taken over economic theory, I would like to focus here on legal issues. Money has no legal definition anywhere in the world today. This was never the case before. In 1776, the King’s coin was defined as containing a specific quantity of gold of prescribed fineness. In 1776, when the constitution of the US was being drafted, the federal government was granted the power to mint coinage, not create paper money. If we look at the India of those days, Smith himself was picked to lead a Commission to Bengal—to suggest a reform of the coinage.
Our first effort today, therefore, must be towards once again defining money in law. A rupee must be so much gold. If we do not anchor money to a tangible commodity, we will forever be using a measuring rod for economic calculation that is ever-changing and flexible, thereby throwing all economic decision making astray. This means a return to gold and silver coinage. This must be the real, legal money.
There is thus a huge difference between "training for subaltern jobs" and what used to be called "EDUCATION." And this 1931 lecture by Albert Jay Nock discusses them.
All this "training in management" began in Wharton - and it was called "Scientific Management," all of it having to do with RAISING PRODUCTIVITY in factories, as with "time and motion studies." This was later called "Taylorism" after its founder - Frederic Winslow Taylor. Subsequently, this was dubbed "Fordism" by Marxists, because of Henry Ford's pioneering assembly line manufacturing process. Commies like Charlie Chaplin lampooned Fordism in the film Modern Times.
During all these decades of the IIT-IIM brigade, nothing has been done about PRODUCTIVITY in India - something measured in TIME: like, "How many spindles of yarn can you produce on your charkha in one hour as compared to a modern spinning machine?"
If we look around at TRANSPORTATION in India - a gigantic disaster - it becomes obvious that one of the reasons why Indians are so poor is because we WASTE TIME on a colossal scale. We have the world's slowest roads, highways, city streets, railways, ports, and even airports. Just getting to work takes ages.
Because of poor transportation that wastes time, "Perishable Commodities" - in particular - are WASTED in megatonnes, and when goods do not reach market, DEMAND for all other "non-competing goods" falls by an equivalent amount: Say's Law.
Because of poor transportation that wastes time, "Perishable Commodities" - in particular - are WASTED in megatonnes, and when goods do not reach market, DEMAND for all other "non-competing goods" falls by an equivalent amount: Say's Law.
As Peter Bauer said, "It is the 'limited capacity to produce' that makes poor nations poor."
The CAPACITY TO PRODUCE includes all aspects of INFRASTRUCTURE - especially electricity and transport. Both State Monopolies.
Of course, it also requires MACHINERY - that is, capital goods - something Gandhi and the Gandhians, Luddites all, HATE!
The CAPACITY TO PRODUCE includes all aspects of INFRASTRUCTURE - especially electricity and transport. Both State Monopolies.
Of course, it also requires MACHINERY - that is, capital goods - something Gandhi and the Gandhians, Luddites all, HATE!
The MORONS!
PRIVATISE EVERYTHING!
And END State MISeducation!
And END State MISeducation!
