A friend few days ago posted an outstanding video on social media explaining how the entrepreneurship works. In that video he made very important point when he said that there is no upper limit on the money we can have in the world. That is, it is not that we can only redistribute the existing money, money can actually grow in amount in the world.
And no, he did not mean currency printing, he meant money as expressed in total production.
This is the point the Leftist infantiles have not been able to grasp since Marx published his Das Kapital in 1867. That quantity of money/wealth is not fixed in the world, the pie can and does grow.
It is a tragedy that man believes what suits him in the moment. People fall for the Leftist rhetoric because it nurses their ego: they are poor not because they are dishonest, but because Mukesh Ambani has misappropriated their share.
Fact is, money is only our imagination, our inter-subjective imagination. An imaginary thing that works like real because we all believe in it. Not only the currency notes that are actually just paper and ink, in fact just another collection of atoms bound together. Even gold is just another metal capable of nothing if we do not give meaning to it as the object to be used as the medium of exchange and as the material we like to wear to decorate ourselves. Can’t get the point? Send Bhappi Lahiri to Sentinelese. Make him offer them all his gold. See if they welcome him with anything other than arrows. Because they do not give any meaning to gold.
So if money is imagination, what exactly grows? Answer is our work. Money is just a medium of exchange of our work. So when we all work more than before, total work available in the market for exchange grows, and we get more of everything we desire, because we offer more in exchange. That is why printing currency notes doesn’t make us rich, it actually destroys the currency itself. Because when government is printing more currency and giving it away without people working more, more currency notes do not buy us more, they buy us same work as before. So we say that there is inflation, that is, to buy the same work, we need more currency notes. Soon people start losing belief in the currency notes, that is, the inter-subjective imagination starts evaporating, and the currency collapses.
So why do people not work more? Are they lazy?
No, actually people do not work more only because of one reason: if their work is stolen/looted. Work can be stolen/looted in thousand different ways: not paying the promised wages: labour stolen/looted. Not paying the cost of products received, products stolen/looted. Not returning the money borrowed, receipt for the work done stolen/looted (money we receive by selling our labour/product is just a receipt of that labour/product, by surrendering which we buy others’ labour/product. So when a borrower doesn’t return our money, he is in reality stealing/looting our labour/product surrendered elsewhere.). Property seized by Party/mafia, is sum of our labour and product sold in our life till that point stolen/looted.
Actually to become rich a society does not need land or minerals or infrastructure or education. All it needs is integrity. An absolute respect for private property, and an absolute determination to keep the promises made.
All else is time pass, one huge racket to self-fool.
Category: Politics
Of The Annual Floods Of India
Time of floods, and time for my annual letter to the galaxies beyond Milky Way (Perhaps they may listen.)
We are not suffering from floods. We are suffering from poverty.
Netherlands has only 50% of its land that is higher than 1 m from the sea. 26% of its area and 21% of its population are below sea level. Still it doesn’t get flooded. Its life doesn’t get paralysed for days, three four times every year. In fact, it is one of the richest countries in the world, is second largest exporter of food after the USA, and has more FDI into it than whole of the African continent put together.
Netherlands is the first Capitalist country of the world. It pioneered the concept of free market, modern banking, debts and credits, and rule of law that recognised the sanctity of contracts. In short, the whole system which was called Capitalism and denounced for being so by Marx, is the creation of Netherlands.
It doesn’t worship environment, it tames it. It creates artificial hills on which it builds it cities and villages, and then joins them with dykes that form its canals also. It reclaims land from the sea, instead of having some foolish Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) rules which prohibit construction of structures close to sea. In fact, 17% of its area has been reclaimed from sea. It has 3000 km of primary sea dykes, and 10000 km of secondary dykes.
Netherlands suffered heavy floods in 1953, which killed about 1800. Instead of chest beating in TV studios, it drew up 30 year plans and has strengthened the dykes to withstand 10000 year return period floods instead of 4000 years earlier. In fact unlike us, instead of planning to commit economic suicide in the worship of fraud called Global Warming/Climate change, it has already drawn plans and started work to face it. Anticipating a sea level rise of 1.2 m, it is already raising dykes by that height.
India is a country which now has development plans controlled by NGO bosses. They can block any intervention planned against natural disasters, because they want to preserve our environment in some pristine state. They are also the first to rush to TV studios to denounce government for not doing anything to prevent flooding, and at the same time work to put laws and rules in place to make sure that nothing can be done to prevent flooding.
There is no way to control floods except to rise above the water, literally.
In Bihar, in Assam, in every state, High Flood Levels are known. Raise all villages and towns by constructing artificial hills like Netherlands did. And raise all roads above that level. Or enclose them inside dykes all around and keep pumps ready. Keeping plinth level 1 m above High Flood Level is the norm.
For doing so, we will need money, and to have money, we will need industrialisation, and to have industrialisation, in addition to having free market economy, we will need to shut up those who claim that industrialisation causes floods. Industrialisation does not cause floods. It equips us to fight it.
In 1947, if we had leaders with brains, instead of egos and mediocrity, all this could have been accomplished by now. But there is never too late. Within a decade or two, flood waters entering into our homes will become a distant memory, instead that water will be stored and pumped to rain deficient areas of the country.
In the intensive agriculture areas, that is Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP, water table is going dangerously down. On the other hand, each year Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal get submerged in water. If we become rich, that is, if we become Capitalists, all that water will be umped, piped to Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP, and used to recharge the ground water.
But most likely our thuggish ruling elite will do nothing towards that. It will instead ration irrigation water in Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP, impoverishing those areas and killing our food security. Socialists love nothing more than scarcity and rationing. Next to rationing, they love to fight natural disasters through relief, instead of preventing the disasters. So, they will have annual relief money in the flood prone areas, instead of making them flood proof.
And of course, may be people who elect the thugs as their rulers, perhaps deserve the rain water into their homes mixed with all the dirt around, and diseases which follow. People with sub-human intellect are condemned to the sub-human lives.
Impossibility Of Economic Calculations In A Communist/Socialist Economy
सौ साल में पूंजीवाद ने कैसे दुनिया को ट्रान्स्फ़ोर्म कर दिया, कैसे वो सुविधाए जो केवल राजाओं के भाग्य में होती थी हर ग़रीब के घर पहुँचा दी, इस पर पोस्ट लिखी तो वही घिसा पिटा रिकॉर्ड बजने लगा: “अगर सारे उद्यम सरकारी होते तो तब भी वही होता, वो तो कॉम्युनिस्ट इसलिए असफल हो गए क्यूँकि कॉम्युनिज़म ठीक से लागू ही नहीं हुआ क्यूँकि वे योग्य नहीं थे, सत्यनिष्ठ नहीं थे, कॉम्युनिज़म असफल नहीं हुआ उसे लागू करने वाले असफल हुए।”
अंधविश्वास का कोई उत्तर नहीं होता। अंधविश्वासी के पास हर परिणाम की व्याख्या explanation होती है। “वर्षा हुई तो मेरी प्रार्थना से हुई, नही हुई तो ऊपरवाला मेरी परीक्षा ले रहा है।” और बोलो………
फिर भी, कर्त्तव्य ही जीवन है। प्रयास सदैव करते रहना चाहिए।
हाँ तो अगर सारे सरकारी नौकर सत्यनिष्ठ हो जाय तो क्या समाजवाद सफल हो जाएगा? सत्यनिष्ठ होना योग्य होना नहीं होता है। सत्यनिष्ठ व्यक्ति एकदम अयोग्य, निरा मूर्ख हो सकता है। चलो अगर UPSC ने योग्य व्यक्ति भी चुन लिए। तो क्या समाजवाद सफल हो जाएगा? जिसने अपने विषय की परीक्षा में अन्य सबसे अधिक अंक पाए हो वह उद्यमी ही हो आवश्यक नहीं होता। दुनिया की कोई परीक्षा नहीं है जो उद्यमी को ढूँढ सके। तो अगर UPSC ने चमत्कार कर ऐसी परीक्षा भी बना ली जो उद्यमी ढूँढ सके तो क्या समाजवाद सफल हो जाएगा?
नहीं, तब भी समाजवाद सफल नहीं हो पाएगा।
क्यूँकि अगर मार्केट नहीं है, बाज़ार नहीं है जिसमें सभी लोग ख़रीदने के लिए ही नही बेचने के लिए, उत्पादन करने के लिए भी स्वतंत्र है, तो किस वस्तु का क्या मूल्य हो सरकारी उद्यमी को पता ही नहीं चल सकता। उसे यह भी पता नहीं चल सकता कि कोई वस्तु कितनी बनाए: लिप्स्टिक कितनी बनाए व शैम्पू कितने बनाए, क्यूँकि मूल्य नहीं है तो माँग का भी पता नहीं चल सकता। जी, मूल्य, price वह पोईंट होता है जिस पर माँग व आपूर्ति, demand व supply बराबर हो जाते है। इसी पोईंट के उतार चढ़ाव से उद्यमी पता करता है कहाँ कितना पैसा लगाए या न लगाए। अगर मार्केट नहीं है तो price भी नहीं है क्यूँकि किसी भी वस्तु का अपना कोई निहित मूल्य नहीं होता है, जो मनुष्य मूल्य लगाए, वही उसका मूल्य होता है, व मूल्य लगाने वाले दो लोग होते है: बेचने वाला व ख़रीदने वाला। अगर दोनो स्वतंत्र नहीं है तो price का पता नहीं चल सकता, व अगर price का पता नहीं चल सकता तो कोई भी economic calculation सम्भव नहीं है, आर्थिक गणना सम्भव नहीं है, बिना गणना कुछ भी अन्य सम्भव नहीं है। अगर गणना ही उपलब्ध नहीं है तो इन्वेस्टमेंट का निर्णय ही सम्भव नहीं है।
कॉम्युनिज़म का ये fatal flaw मूल दोष 1920s में ही पता चल गया था। लेकिन जैसे वे धर्म जिनकी उनके भगवान द्वारा दी गयी किताब में धरती चपटी लिखी है, धरती गोल सिद्ध होने पर भी समाप्त नहीं हुए, उसी तरह से कॉम्युनिज़म/समाजवाद भी समाप्त नहीं हुआ। क्यूँकि अंधविश्वास व्यक्ति का सोचने का उत्तरदायित्व समाप्त कर देता है, व बहुत कम लोग है इस दुनिया में जो सोचना चाहते है, अधिकतर लोग केवल विश्वास करना चाहते है।
फिर कुछ समाजवादीयो ने कहा कि हम उद्यम सरकारी रखेंगे, लेकिन उपभोक्ता स्वतंत्र होंगे, क्या ख़रीदे, क्या न ख़रीदे। याने money समाप्त नहीं करेंगे, यद्यपि कॉम्युनिज़म ने मनी को समाप्त करने की बात की थी। तो क्या इस परिवर्तन से समाजवाद सफल हो जाएगा? नहीं होगा, न हुआ, क्यूँकि मूल्य price ज्ञात होने के लिए ख़रीदने वाला व बेचने वाला दोनो स्वतंत्र होने चाहिए। लोहे की खदान का मालिक सरकारी बाबू कभी नहीं जान पाएगा कि स्टील मिल को लोहे का खनिज कितने में बेचे (खदान व मिल दोनो सरकारी है।)
विषय तकनीकी है, फिर भी मैंने प्रयास किया है। यद्यपि मूल assumptions ही कभी सम्भव नहीं है (कि सारे सरकारी कर्मचारी सत्यनिष्ठ, योग्य, व उद्यमी हो)। ऐसे आदर्श व्यक्ति पैदा करने के लिए कॉम्युनिस्ट अभी तक बारह करोड़ लोग मार चुके है, लेकिन हाथ आया तो केवल क्यूबा, नोर्थ कोरिया व वेनेज़ुएला।
लेकिन “समाजवाद सही से लागू ही नहीं हुआ” चलता रहेगा व इसका कोई उत्तर भी कभी नहीं होगा। मुक्त बाज़ार व्यवस्था को प्राप्त करने के लिए संघर्ष अनंत है, क्यूँकि ऐसे लोग सदैव आते ही रहेंगे जो लोगों से कहते रहेंगे कि वे उन्हें नौकरी, घर, अस्पताल, स्कूल सब मुफ़्त देंगे, बस सत्ता मिल जाय एक बार……..
सड़क किनारे पौरुष की दवा सदियों से लोग बेच रहे है, व लोग ख़रीदते भी है।
(यद्यपि वियाग्रा भी अंत्तत पूँजीवाद ही लाया…….) ( उस उद्यमी को भी धन्यवाद कहने के बजाय माँग करेंगे लोग कि बहुत महँगी बेचता है ये, इसका राष्ट्रीयकरण करो, व अगले चुनाव में केजरीवाल मुफ़्त वियाग्रा का चुनावी वायदा कर चुनाव भी जीत जाएगा।)
The Re-animalisation Of Man
It is said that a calf can locate its mother among a herd of thousands. Mother. Not father. Because it doesn’t even know who its father was. Not even the mother may know who the father was. Because they are animals, and that is why they are animals.
When a Homo Sapiens baby is born, it only has neurons. The connections between neurons and among neurons, the connections called synapses, are almost all formed after birth. The connections lead to circuits, and circuits are what we call mind and memory. In the language of computers, at birth, a human baby only has a blank hard disk, the brain, and not only all apps, even the operating system is installed after birth. That is, we get mind only after birth in our early years, in childhood.
So who installs the operating system and apps? Answer is family. The parents, grandparents, and siblings. Parents basically form our mind, and create memory in us. They are the first and most potent influencers. Next come siblings and grandparents. Research says that more full sentences a child hears in her early years, more intelligent academic achiever she becomes later in life. Child after birth has only one agenda: observe his parents and do as they do. That is how babies learn to sit, to walk, and to talk. And their nature also gets fixated in these years. If they see a loving and peaceful family, they grow to become confident and loving and strong. Otherwise various dysfunctions, the wrong apps, and in unfortunate cases, the wrong operating system itself, take root in the mind which may or may not heal in the later years.
So what happens if there are no grandparents and siblings? The child has a smaller pool of words and actions to draw from in the formative years. That is what happened when we lost joint families. If either parent is dysfunctional, there are no mitigating grandparents or siblings: to take away the child to play outside as the parents are reminding each other about their parents. And what happens if there is only one parent? Destruction ensues.
In most of the first world, divorce rates are now anywhere upto 50%, and in many ethnic groups they reach as high as 70%. Result is that babies have to grow up with just one parent, and even she has to be absent for greater part of the day to earn the livelihood.
And result is on your TV screens every evening: mobs of savages burning down the Civilisation. The animals. The result of the re-animalisation of man.
Marriage is coming together of two human beings from two different families. 100% match is impossible. Whatever doesn’t match, has to be readjusted, reframed, recreated, or discarded. And remember, we are talking here of only that which is within minds. So, it is reprogramming of the minds. It is not pleasant, even though it may not be painful in all cases. We do not do unpleasant things unless there is some external pressure. The external pressure was the society, the समाज, the लोग क्या कहेंगे।
Enter the thug called Leftist. He came up with Welfare State that replaced society. Society was a safety net that took care of members in difficult times. Leftists gave that function to a nameless, faceless distant entity called State. And as a result, the society died. And with that disappeared the pressure that led to adjustments within the family.
But the Leftist was not through with his destruction as yet. He next came for the family. He told the women that they are being exploited. They work and do not get paid. As if men rushing to office/factories in the morning were going for a picnic. And women listened to the Leftist. He was saying all the attractive things: you will have money, no dishes to do, money will give you freedom. Freedom from what? He did not specify. Leftists never talk in specifics.
And so women walked out of homes to work. The first thing the leftists do is erasing the past. Otherwise women would have known that all through the history, they worked alongside men: in the hunts in the hunter gathering days, and in the fields in the settled agriculture days. They got freedom from work only after industrial revolution. In fact it was considered the biggest success of the industrial revolution, freeing women from work. That finally they were free to take care of their children without worrying about livelihood.
But the Leftist thug claimed he was freeing women when he again convinced them to go out for work. And result is the onset of the re-animalisation of man. Man is product of his family, of his society. Without the family and the society, he can not grow up to be a man as we understand from the term. He will de-evolve to ape. In fact he may even disappear altogether. As women go out for work and fear that the husband will someday simply walk out, they are now more and more refusing to have children. Fertility rates in all developed countries with few exceptions are between 1.5 to 1.0. Anthropologists says that no tribe with fertility rates below 2.1 survives more than few decades.
Marx said that everything that exists must be destroyed. His followers have truly achieved that.
Because the good men refuse to do anything. The dumbs who could not figure out why their ancestors insisted on a seven-birth long marriage. Because those wise men knew that anything less than that, and it will soon be free-for-all. We thought seven-birth long marriage was too long, and soon discovered that once that was relaxed, marriages are refusing to last even one birth.
(And what did women achieve by going to work again? Nothing except very high real-estate prices and extortionist school fees and hospital bills. Because, beyond a certain point, prices depend upon what the market can carry. So if both husband and wife are earning why would the school not jack up the fees?)
Capitalism: The Orphan Idea
I learnt Economics from the Americans. The Leftists in India have made sure that nothing that contradicts Marx can be allowed to reach us. The Leftists with the saffron flags hate the money itself, so they also have signed up on the Left’s Economic illiteracy programme. Internet came, and through it I discovered Economics.
But alas, now I see that even the leading lights of American Conservativism fail to put up a proper defence of Capitalism. Yesterday I happened to see a Ben Shapiro clip in which he was answering to a boy who said that the profit was created by the workers who work the machines, but it is all appropriated by the owner because he owns the machines. Workers generate the profit, but owner takes it away all because he had the Capital. If Capital is instead owned by the workers, they will retain the profit also. Ben Shapiro said that the owner had the Capital because he or his parents had saved it, and he gets the profit because he takes the risk.
No Mr Shapiro, that is not how it is. The owner gets the profit because he has skills. He is an entrepreneur. Profit is his earnings generated by his skills, not by Capital.
1. If machines and workers generate the profit, then no factory would ever make losses. Because it has workers and machines. But daily we see factories with machines and workers run into losses and getting shut down.
2. If machines and workers create profit, then USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea would not have gone bankrupt, because when commies seized these countries they had factories with machines and workers.
3. If workers and machines create profit, then why are India’s all public sector undertakings making losses? Are the workers being paid more than they are creating? Will the trade unions accept their own argument and accept such pay cuts which will make these undertakings profitable? Will workers in every private factory of the world which starts making losses accept such successive pay cuts which will keep these factories always profitable? Will you, comrade? Will you? Com’on man, be true to your own words.
Actually comrades will do nothing like that. Because in their hearts they know that they are living a fraud. These thugs know that they are living a lie.
Anil Ambani had same Capital as his brother. If Capital created profits, he would not have been bankrupt today with zero net worth, instead he would also have been sixth richest person in the world like his brother is as per today’s, 14th July’s, rankings. Their father, son of a school teacher and with zero Capital would not have become the biggest industrialist of India. Same for Mark Zuckerberg. Same for countless others. And nobody with Capital, no owner of factories would have ever gone bankrupt if it were machines and workers who created profit.
Profit is a result of the entrepreneur’s skills. He makes calculations based on all inputs, including CAPITAL, that if he transforms all inputs together into something else, inputs which include labour of a worker, then he will sell the output at a price which will be greater than the cost of all inputs, including the cost of Capital, of machines, and of labour. So long as his skills enable him to make these calculations correctly, he continues to make profit. The day his skills reach their limits, or are rendered obsolete because of market conditions which are always, continuously, changing, and he fails to acquire new skills in time, he starts making losses, inspite of all the machines and workers being where they were: in his factory shed.
And this is all about Capitalism. It is nothing but a system in which men are free to exercise their skills. A large number of men are continuously making these calculations, some get it right and make profits, some get it wrong, and lose everything. Some get Capital, even half of the wealth of Dhiru Bhai Ambani, and taking the Leftist seriously that Capital and workers create profit, start setting up factories and soon lose everything. Only machines are left rusting in their sheds.
Capital is not something available only to those who saved it or whose parents saved it. It is available to all of us, unlimited, right now. Go to market, Capital has a cost, pay it and get as much of it as you want. You do not have the price to pay for it? No problem, no down payment is required. Just demonstrate to your fellow men that you will be able to pay for it in the future. How will you demonstrate? Well, start by selling somosa, or chat, or paan, and create a profit. If your fellow men see you generating profit, they will rush to invest in your samosa stall. Soon you can own all the samosa stalls of the world.
Fact is that profit is reward of the entrepreneur. Capital is just one of the inputs the entrepreneur assembles together, and creates profit. And no, having money, even half of Dhiru Bhai’s wealth, doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. Profit is not even a reward of the risk taking. If that were so, the folks in circus walking on the wire without the net below, thus risking their lives itself, would have been the richest folks in the world. Or the matadors who stand before a raging bull, they would have been the richest, but they are not.
And no, even the inventors do not make profits, because they are inventors, not entrepreneurs. Tesla created AC electric system on which entire world runs today, but he died a very poor man. Goodyear, ho invented vulcanized rubber, died in abject poverty because he also thought that inventor is also an entrepreneur. No, inventors, scientists, engineers, MBAs, CAs are not entrepreneurs, though they all like to think like the workers of Marx, that they create profit which the “owner” misappropriates. If they fancy themselves to entrepreneurs, they can also start with a samosa and paan stall and see if they can sell even a single samosa or paan by the evening. Do not believe the lies of the Leftist thugs just because the lies nurse your ego: “Mukesh Ambani is rich because he had Capital, how unjust I did not have that Capital. World is indeed unfair. It is controlled by moneyed.” If you believe these lies, you will remain and die poor, and so will your children. If not for yourself, for the sake of your children at least, learn Economics, save something and invest in the stock market if you do not have the skills to make even samosas. Your money will only grow if you do not get too greedy.
Means Of Production: A Fraud That Is Marxism
Marxism (Leftism/Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism) is a proof that man will always fall for any lie that promises utopia, irrespective of education, modern means of communication, progress, prosperity, etc. In fact once taken in, man will kill any number of human beings to serve the lie, instead of critically examining the lie itself.
As against the organised religions before him which promised salvation to their folks after death, Marx came with a new radical idea that History has told him that utopia was not only possible here on earth itself, but inevitable. He claimed that the rich are rich because they own the means of production which were created by the accumulation of Capital which was created by the workers. Since the workers created the means of production, so they must take them back, and once they own the means of production, they can decide their wages and therefore will no longer be poor and no longer exploited.
Marx had a primitive mind. The primitive mind sees material things: machines. And thinks that the production is made possible by those machines. Primitive mind sees land and thinks that land grows the crops.
Countless countries, including India, seized machines, that is factories, and discovered that they have soon turned to dust. Many countries seized land, and soon discovered that they have started starving, though the land remains the same.
But like the religions whose founding books have been proven to be false refuse to die, so is Marxism. It can destroy any number of countries, can kill millions, but it is always on the march. It is now marching through the cities of the West, burning and looting the cities. In fact in the US it is not killing while looting only because its intended victims own guns.
Fact is, there are no means of production on this planet. No machines, no factories, no mines, no land. Only men of production.
Yes, only men of production. They spot a demand, they fulfil it. To fulfil the demand, they sometime set up factories, sometime develop a mine, sometime develop a farm, sometime they just source the product from somebody already producing. In exchange for this labour of theirs, they get others’ labour. The labour of others’ comes to them either in the form of money (a medium of exchange) or in the form of goods themselves. They take this labour to somebody else and give it to them in exchange for some other form of labour, some other goods. Those who are poor, are actually poor because they are not participating in this exchange of labour, they are not producing anything which is wanted by somebody else. There is no other reason of poverty. It may be that they are being prevented from participating using violence. But even violence is made possible by their refusal to be human. Because human beings are always capable of coming together and defeating the violent. If they are not coming together, they are not behaving like human beings. And if they are not behaving like human beings, they can only be poor. prosperity is a typical human trait. Animals do not know it.
So, know that the machine is just a lump of iron even in the hands of its operator. It becomes machine when somebody takes its production and sells it at a price that pays for the machine itself, the salary of its operator, and the skills of the man who sells its product. As was discovered by the oil oligarchs during the lockdown, their black liquid gold turns to dust if men of production withdraw into their homes. The factories can’t feed the workers, the mines reduce to just pits, though workers are all there.
Economy is a self-evolving system. No evil Capitalists designed it. And because it was not designed to begin with, no Leftist murderer can bring a better design.
But like a seed, like a human baby, economy needs a suitable environment to evolve, to grow. That environment is absence of violence, sanctity of contracts, sanctity of private property, and freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is actually freedom of mind, because mind expresses itself through speech, verbal and written. When free speech is prohibited, actually minds are locked. And man is his mind. So as minds shut down, man disappears, and so does the man of production.
So survey all societies and countries in the world. They are rich to the degree violence is absent, contracts are honoured, private property is held sacred, and men are free to express themselves. Only these factors decide whether a country is poor or rich.
So there are no means of production to be seized by the workers of the world. There are men of production of course, but even they can’t be seized. Because if they have been seized, they are no longer men, and therefore can not be men of production either. The most basic premise itself of Marx is therefore a fraud for all to see, if they care to see, if they care to be prosperous. If they want to be human beings.
Government Control Of Health Sector: To Be Or Not To Be
The allegations of loot by private hospitals in India are getting louder and louder. Even those in favour of free market economy suggest that some government regulations of private hospitals and private schools is a must.
Firstly about the government regulator. There are two complaints against private hospitals: They do unnecessary surgeries, and they charge huge amounts. So, how will the undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Truth, and Fairness know whether the surgery was required or not? How? How exactly? Will he hire another doctor to do the check? Why will the first corrupt doctor not bribe the second doctor doing the check? Why? I hope you do not believe in the joke that the doctor appointed by the undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Truth, and Fairness will be honest. Doctors come from the same society, study in the same colleges, and where they practice makes no difference to their integrity. So you will end up paying the salaries and bribes of undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Truth, and Fairness and his doctor, in addition to the fees of the corrupt doctor you are paying now.
About the second allegation, high charges. What are the reasonable charges? Which you can pay? Which the rich can pay? Which the upper middle class can pay? Which the middle class can pay? Which the landless labourer in the village can pay? What exactly are the reasonable charges. If you want that the undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Truth, Fairness, and Reasonable Charges should fix the fees of the private hospitals, remember that he reports to politicians and is answerable to Courts. Just one round of elections and three PILs in the Supreme Court, and charges will come to rupee ten for the registration and rupees hundred for the knee replacement. Everybody will become eligible for Medanta, there will be a ten year long waiting list, and you will die waiting for the rupees hundred knee replacement surgery.
Ridiculous, facetious, you say? In the UK and most OECD countries the medical services are totally free. But then the catch kicks in. In the UK, you may have to wait upto three weeks to see the General Practitioner (GP), the non-specialist who decides where you go next. And after that, the government target for a cancer patient, that is the patient who is suspected to have cancer by the GP, to see the specialist is 62 days. 62 days. In 62 days he should be able to see the cancer specialist after being suspected of having cancer and start his treatment. And even this target is not being met. For non-urgent but essential surgeries, the target is 18 weeks, and last year there was 40 lakh patient long waiting list waiting for surgeries. इतने दिन में तो AIIMS में ही नम्बर आ जाएगा आपका। क्यूँ हल्ला मचा रहे हो? AIIMS में नाम नोट कराओ और प्रतीक्षा करो। जिसको निजी अस्पताल में जाकर “लुटना” है उसके options की क्यूँ वाट लगा रहे हो?
Next consequence will be that the private hospitals will die. Capital goes where it sees profit. Both, the money Capital and human Capital goes where it sees highest returns. That is why choices for various Engineering branches is always changing, and the choice of Services in UPSC exams is always changing. Once people realise that private hospitals are making losses, they will not set up new hospitals, and existing ones will shut down. Young people will stop studying medicine. And your waiting list at the AIIMS will stretch to ten years in no time.
A country that was under socialist boot for 40 years should have known that government controls do not work. Government controls only make things costlier, more scarce, and eventually create black market. Black market attracts criminals. Once criminals enter the market, the country dies. No exceptions to the rule are found.
Some friends say that government control must not be there in any thing, but in medicine and in education it is a must. If government control is bad for everything else, how it can be good in medicine and education? Why can’t you think?
Now the solution. Solution is simple. Completely dismantle government control, regulation (regulation as in process regulation, not legal rules), permit, license, clearance, and NOC raj. Government control makes people corrupt. And if people are corrupt, doctors will not be honest either. With government control gone, you will have job explosion and huge growth in incomes, and your hospital charges will become a simple fraction of your income. No? You say no? Mumbai Delhi airfare was 25% more than my salary when I joined service. Today it is 7% of the salary of the new entrant in the same service. It happened not because of government regulation. But because government regulators were sent home. Retired. Sent off with their विदाई वाला नारीयल एंड माला। Exactly same will happen with hospital charges and school fees once all regulations of every sector of economy are removed: they will become absurdly small fractions of your salary.
Still you are not ready to agree? बहुत सताते हो यार। In India, home loan interest rates are 10% per annum and above. So, with a 10% interest rate and 20 year tenure if you take a 30 lakh home loan, you will pay 40 lakh interest in addition to the 30 lakh principal. In the US, the home loan rates are 4% and below. So if you obtain the same loan in the US, you will pay only about 11 lakh in interest, in addition to the principal. Lo, and voila, you save about 28 lakhs in interest and that will take care of all your medical expenses for the entire life. That is the magic of free market your Leftist doesn’t want you to know. And you will similarly save in every other expense. So, do not demand regulation. You demand regulation of hospitals, because you think you are the only pressure group. But pressure group are numerous, and once the principle is accepted that government knows the fair charges of a commodity/service, pressure groups force it to regulate everything. And economy dies. You job disappears. Your salary becomes a pittance. And all you are left with are the waiting lists, for everything.
And now the cruel and heartless part. If you think carefully, you will realise that we rarely fall sick before 60 years of age. May be some fevers. Very rare and unfortunate cases require hospitalisation and surgeries before the age of 60. And they are clean cases. Ailment is definitive, and treatments are straight forward. Allegations of overcharging mostly come in case of patients above 60 years of age, and become very common in the patients of above 70 years of age. Because doctors are also helpless in such cases. Senescence is something we do not talk about, but it is a reality. So doctor operates on such patients, and discovers something else also has gone non-responsive, some other organ is threatening to fail as a result of the surgery, and he is forced to operate, and relatives start crying “Loot, where is the government?” Fact is, avoid hospital if you are above 60 if the procedure is not going to add at least ten years to your life. And if you are above 70, do not go to hospital for surgeries. You will only end up bankrupting your family, and get between two to four years of life. Those too mostly of very poor quality of life. Children can not take such decisions for the elders. So, in the west government takes such decisions, indirectly. By putting them on waiting list.They depart the world, waiting for the surgery. In the US, even the closest relatives are not allowed to donate liver to the patient who requires liver transplant. They say they will not mutilate the healthy for the sake of the sick. So the patient waits for the liver in the cadaver programme, and if he survives the wait, he gets the liver. If government regulations come in India also, such patients will not start getting surgery on demand. They will only get waiting lists, but at least the children will not feel guilty. But children will also not get the healthcare they need even at young age.
We are genetically programmed to live the years assigned to us. Our lifestyle can shorten them, not increase. But even for a healthy life style but genetically programmed to depart at 70/80 years of age, medicine can add two to four years at the most, but will bankrupt the family in doing so. Maharana Pratap, Guru Govind Singh ji Maharaj, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, all departed around the age of 50. We still remember them. They lived a full life. If you have lived 70/80, you are lucky. But nothing spectacular is going to happen now. When the call from the maker comes, go gracefully, without bankrupting your family. And without destroying economy of the country by forcing government regulations.
Western Civilisation And The Barbarians At The Gates
A man sets up a factory, advertises jobs, people on their free will agree to do the work in the predetermined time at the predetermined wages.
Law comes into picture only if the owner then refuses to pay (breach of contract) or holds workers against their will (taking hostage).
What if the workers say that the owner must pay them so and so wages, and if he doesn’t pay they won’t work? Fair enough, they are free born human beings, they have all the right to demand price of their effort they deem fit.
But what if they say that they want these wages, and if not given, not only they won’t work, but will also not allow anybody else to work in that factory?
What should law do? Law should remove them from the factory or its gate, wherever they are. It is gangsterism, not worker rights.
But law doesn’t do anything. Law has been convinced that the workers are lower down on the power ladder, and therefore are entitled to use of violence.
And so the factory dies. Factories in all the democratic countries are dying because of this abdication by law, and are being reborn in China. Yes, manufacturing going to China is the result of workers writing for themselves fantastic entitlements: wages they wanted, pensions, health insurance, and what not, using their right to violence secured for them by the Leftists. And so between 3 to 10% of world population will die.
Corona is a pandemic. There is little any government can do. But medicine has improved a lot. Had the world not been so intricately linked to China, its spread could have been manageable. Slow spread would have meant that hospitals could have faced it better. Now they can’t. And so between 3 to 10% of world population will get killed again. And nobody would know that Leftists killed them.
With factories gone to China, Leftists have moved to general population. Now they have convinced the western governments that if a person is aggrieved, if he feels victim, if he belongs to a victim class (so defined by the Leftists), he has a right to violence, not to be resisted by police, not to be penalised. And so, the “aggrieved, the victims, the oppressed” now routinely burn western cities.
Violence is an antidote to Civilisation. Civilisation appeared when men agreed not to use violence to resolve their disputes but to refer them to courts. Dumb western leaders do not know that the way license to violence of Trade Unions killed their factories, so the right of violence of various “victim groups” of the Left will kill their Civilisation. Factories could move to China. The leaders will not have that luxury. Mobs will eventually come for them. And police will just stand down, as taught by them.
Hospitals In India: Private & Government
On ZEE TV just saw two reports. First on a private hospital in Mumbai having Corona ward. Ward cleaner than a five star hotel room, every damn equipment available, staff fully provided.Second report was on KEM hospital Mumbai. No staff visible. Patients on the floor, because on the beds are dead bodies. The ward has not been swept in last 24 hours. Hardly any equipment by the beds. You become sick even looking at the bedding.What will Mumbaikars/Indians demand after watching the reports? Either of the following they will demand.
- Government must nationalise the private hospitals. You dumbs, then private hospitals will no longer be private hospitals. They will become government hospital. And KEM is government hospital. They will also become KEM hospital.
- Government must cap the fees of the private hospitals. Once government does that, the private hospitals will simply shut shop. The patients there will have to go to government hospital to die. They are also paying the taxes that run the government hospital. With no taxes, the government hospital will also die.
- Government must allow everybody to go to private hospitals and reimburse the costs. But government doesn’t have that kind of money, so it will promise to reimburse, but it will ration the reimbursement. Rationing will be done by the bureaucrats/politicians. They will have Secretary quota, MP quota, etc. So their family members, relatives, hangers on, and bribe givers will enjoy the private hospital treatment and government, means you the honest taxpayers, will bear the cost. With government paying, private hospitals will simply jack up the cost. In fact they will make arrangements with babus to get paid for the patients who were never there on the beds which existed only on paper in the hospital which also existed on paper.
There is only one way you can be in that five star hospital, my fellow countrymen: earn enough to pay for it. Or just shut up and get lost. Do not destroy everything by demanding which you can not buy because you did not earn for it because you do not allow the factory to run where you can earn enough because there also you want to get paid without working.
Similar is the story of schools. People do not want to send their children to government schools because they also present the same school scene as KEM presents the hospital scene. But after admitting their children to private schools, they immediately turn to government and demand that it should regulate them. Little realising that if government were any good in regulating things, it could have regulated the government schools themselves, making them better than the private schools. But government loves regulations, so government immediately jumps in, starts regulating the private schools. So private schools also degenerate, and that is why education in India has become the biggest and cruelest and costliest joke ever told in the history of Homo Sapiens.
Why Do Indian Government Employees Love Congress (Or Why Do They Love DA)?
Suppose there are 1000 articles produced in a country. Suppose there are 1000 people in that country, and suppose there are 1000 currency notes in that country, and everybody has 1 rupee. Each article has the same price: 1 rupee each. And they trade among themselves.
Now, suppose the government in that country goes populist, and tries to make people rich by printing currency notes. It prints 1000 more currency notes of 1 rupee each, but production of articles is still same as before: 1000 articles. So everybody now has 2 rupees to buy the same number of articles. So every article will now go for 2 rupees each. That is what we say that things have become dearer, i.e., costlier. महंगाई आ गई। (वास्तव में रुपए का मूल्य गिरता है अगर वह आवश्यकता से अधिक छापा जाय। पहले एक वस्तु में एक रुपया मिलता था, अब दो रुपए मिलते है।)
Eventually the new currency notes reach everybody. And everybody has 2 rupees. But there is one intermediate stage, and that is where the real loot lies.
When a government prints new currency, it doesn’t give it to everybody at the same time. It releases it into market through payments to people closest to it: the government employees and the contractors who work for the government, and cronies who get loans from it. So, initially, government employees will have two rupees each, but others still have only 1 rupee each. So articles still cost 1 rupee each. So government employees get to buy two articles. As the new currency moves through the population, everybody gets the 1 rupee printed extra. But by the time the people last in the queue get the extra rupee, things have become costlier, that is, 1 article for 2 rupees, as I explained earlier. So the people last in the queue sold their production at 1 rupee each, but had to buy articles at 2 rupees each. So those who first got the extra currency got to buy two articles, and articles are the real wealth, whereas, the last people in queue, the farmers and labourers, still got only 1 article for their 2 rupees. In fact in the situation assumed initially, they will have only 2 rupees each, and no articles available to buy. So they wait for the next production cycle and buy articles at 2 rupees each. This is repeated in each cycle of currency printing. People last in the queue, farmers and labourers in villages, go without buying anything in each alternate year if the production has not increased, so their wealth halves each year.
So currency printing results into transfer of wealth from the poorest, farmers and labourers in villages, to the richest, government contractors, cronies, and government employees.
And to cap it all, as the new currency spreads into society as explained above, inflation happens, and to compensate for it, government grants Dearness Allowance (DA) to government employees, that is, increases their salaries. So they get double advantage: they get to buy cheaper, and also get salary raise. And so they soooo love Congress, which is playing this inflation game for last 70 years.
When you learn the Games Looters Play, you want to line up them all, and shoot them. But the thugs have guns, and an army of economic illiterates who will crush you without a bullet being fired. So you try to teach the dumbs some Economics. After all, if you can not run, you walk, if you can not walk, you crawl, but you never stop.
There must be some way to bring this House of Loot down. World can’t be that unjust and unfair.
(The example of 1000 currency notes and 1000 articles was taken merely to simplify the explanation. In the real world also, when a government prints extra currency, those who get it, are able to buy the articles in that economy at the old rates, but to whom the extra currency reaches the last, now have to buy the articles of that economy at the new rates, after the inflation. So they sold cheap, and had to buy costlier, because of extra currency printing. Inflation always results into this internal transfer of the wealth from the poorest to those close to government, the richest. This is the real evil consequence of inflation, which the economists who mostly come from the class which benefits from the extra currency printing, never reveal. And the Leftists thugs who cry “Disparity between the rich and the poor is increasing” either do not know, as they also do not know the economics, or carefully keep hidden, like the economists. But so long as extra currency printing continues, that is the inflation, the rich-poor disparity can only increase. In fact Modi, by his direct benefit transfers to the poorest, may have actually finally broken the vicious cycle.)