In part 1 of “Constitution, Government, Economy”, I had explored what a state is, what an economy is, the need for a constitution, the restrictions that must be imposed on a government, etc. This is a continuation of the same. In this, I go into some details on redistribution and why it must no be done by government.
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Month: November 2015
Isaac Asimov on Life-long learning
Isaac Asimov, (born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov in Russia in 1920, died in New York in 1992), was a towering intellect. He wrote or edited over 500 fiction and non-fiction books, mainly on science and technology related topics. I place him in the same very tiny class of thinkers as Arthur C Clarke, another science fiction author and furturist. People like him can see farther than average people like you and I. Here’s a quote about learning. It’s from an interview he gave to Bill Moyers in 1988. That was before the world wide web and its phenomenal storehouse of content.
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Hayek on the Abstract Rules of Just Conduct
Hayek’s monumental work “Law, Legislation and Liberty” contains deep insights into what the proper functions of governments are, and how they should be understood and implemented. Every paragraph is worth quoting in full. But here are a few select bits extracted from the 3-volume work to give you a sense of Hayek’s ideas.
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Constitution, Government, Economy – Part 1
Society
The constitution is that set of “top-level rules of the game” that are relatively few, relatively inflexible, general and persist across generations, or periods.
In the extended social order we call society, individual persons are the basic interacting units who attempt to realize their individual objectives, individually and collectively. Some of these objectives or goals can be realized by organizing privately, and others only through collective actions. Organized private activity is called “the market” which meets the private needs of the people. For those goals which require collective action, collective decisions have to be made.
That is what “government” is. In James Buchanan’s view, government is “that complex of institutions through which individuals make collective decisions, and through which they carry out collective as opposed to private activities.” And “politics” according to him “is the activity of persons in the context of such institutions.”
Continue reading “Constitution, Government, Economy – Part 1”
The British Engineered India’s Poverty
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UK is generating a lot of enthusiastic support from many, as expected. I don’t waste time on following the hoopla. It’s all a sideshow that wastes real resources that India can ill afford but gets done because those who enjoy the pomp and circumstance don’t bear the costs. Indian taxpayers — which we must remember are not just those who pay income tax but it includes even the poorest of the poor — pay for the politicians, bureaucrats and their hangers-on to live it up. It is another symptom of the deep malady that inflicts India: Colonial rule.
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Open Thread: Happy Diwali Edition
Greetings and Happy Diwali to all sentient beings. This is an open thread. Feel free to ask me anything.
Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, Los Angeles 2015
I will be in Los Angeles this weekend. There’s a “Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas” (regional non-resident Indian day) in LA. Details here.
I have never been to one. I am going to this one to basically check out what the tamasha is all about. Many years ago I had attended the mother of all tamashas — a PanIIT meeting.
“What’s PanIIT?” you say. It’s a meeting of a group of completely self-absorbed engineers from IITs with very inflated egos who congratulate themselves on how astonishingly amazing they are and how they are the almighty’s gift to humanity, if not the entire creation. Go read my report on the 2006 PanIIT meeting that was held in Mumbai. Also see my thoughts on the 2008 PanIIT where I talk about the funding of new IITs.
Hayek on the Decay of Democracy
Friedrich Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty. Vol. 3 The Political Order of a Free People. 1979. Chapter 13, “The Division of Democratic Powers.” Pg 31-32.
A system which may place any small group in the position to hold a society to ransom if it happens to be the balance between opposing groups, and can extort special privileges for its support of a party, has little to do with democracy or ‘social justice’. But it is the unavoidable product of the unlimited power of a single elective assembly not precluded from discrimination by a restriction of its powers either to true legislation or to government under a law which it cannot alter.
Not only will such a system produce a government driven by blackmail and corruption, but it will also produce laws which are disapproved by the majority and in their long-run effects may lead to the decline of the society. . . .
A further peculiar sort of bias of government created by the necessity to gain votes by benefiting particular groups or activities operates indirectly through the need to gain the support of those second-hand dealers of ideas, mainly in what are now called the ‘media’ , who largely determine public opinion.
Worth pondering.
Hayek on Democracy
Here’s a quote from Friedrich Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty. It appears in the 3rd volume, The Political Order of a Free People, in the chapter on MAJORITY OPINION AND CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACY, page 4:
May it not be true, as has been well said, that ‘the belief in democracy presupposes belief in things higher than democracy’? And is there really no other way for people to maintain a democratic government than by handing over unlimited power to a group of elected representatives whose decisions must be guided by the exigencies of a bargaining process in which they bribe a sufficient number of voters to support an organized group of themselves numerous enough to outvote the rest?
What are things that are higher than democracy? A belief in the sovereignty of law, and obedience to the rules of just conduct.
All That is Good and Living in Us
Nirad C Chaudhuri (1897 – 1999) dedicated his book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951), to the British Empire.
To the memory of the British Empire in India,
Which conferred subjecthood upon us,
But withheld citizenship.
To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
“Civis Britannicus sum”
Because all that was good and living within us
Was made, shaped and quickened
By the same British rule.
Life is a Random Draw 