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The cliché “they don’t make ’em like that anymore” can’t be more true about political satire than about the Yes, Minister (1980-84) and Yes, Prime Minister (1986-88) BBC TV series. When I first watched them on PBS, I didn’t have a clue about economics, and more particuarly about public choice theory — which Buchanan described as “politics without romance.” Now that I know the basic principles of economics and political economy, my appreciation of the series has deepened.

The characters are priceless, the writing flawless, the casting brilliant. The principals are Jim Hacker, the minister and later the prime minister, played by Paul Eddington; Hacker’s permanent secretary, Sir Humphrey, played by Sir Nigel Hawthorne; and Sir Humphrey’s principal private secretary, Bernard, played by Derek Fowlds. Here’s a scene that tells you more about what governments actually do, quite contrary to popular romantic notions about governments.

Sir Humphrey is the consummate cynic. He doesn’t question the ends — he just gets on with getting things done.

“Bernard, I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I had believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel. And of denationalising it and renationalising it. On capital punishment, I’d have been a fervent retentionist and an ardent abolitionist. I would’ve been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite, a grammar school preserver and destroyer, a nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac; but above all, I would have been a stark, staring, raving schizophrenic.”

Sometimes I think that if every politician and bureaucrat were to watch the whole series, perhaps governance would not be so pathetic. They should make it required viewing in the Indian Administrative Services, at the very least. The babus may learn something. But then maybe they won’t learn anything. Still, we non-babus get a better understanding of how babu-dom works. Thank goodness.

PS: I forgot to point out to a brilliant pun in the conversation. 

Humphrey: The sale of arms abroad is one of those areas of government that we do not examine too closely.
Hacker: Well I have to, now that I know.
Humphrey: You could say you don’t know.
Hacker: You’re suggesting I should lie?
Humphrey: Oh, not you, minister.
Hacker: Who should lie?
Humphrey: Sleeping dogs. 

This video explains a great deal about how a well-functioning economy works.

Let’s start with a conjecture. The more rigid and government dominated a country’s education system is, the poorer the country; and conversely, the more flexible and accommodating the education system is, the more prosperous the country. India belongs to the first kind, and is remarkably poor; the US belongs to the second kind, and is remarkably prosperous.

It’s just a conjecture, not an established fact. But something to think about.

Unchanging

If Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the father of the modern discipline called economics, were to find himself in the 21st century CE, he’d probably not recognize anything from his time — except the educational system. Everything has been unrecognizably transformed except schooling. Like in his time, it’s essentially the same system in which students are age-segregated and instructed in an uniform way, with teachers transferring information to a group of generally unmotivated young people. Continue reading “This Policy Alone – Part 6”

Among the infinite variety of things that people do, one of the most puzzling to me is the act of prayer. It’s some sort of a special communication. The message is addressed to some supernatural entity. If spoken, the message is transmitted magically to the realm where the entity resides — usually heaven. You don’t need the postal service, or the telephone, or any material medium. But prayer can be unspoken too: one just has to think in some particular way and once again magically it gets to that special being.

This special being is, among the monotheists, the One True God^TM. Hindus, who don’t go for the monotheist nonsense and believe in a vast multitude of gods (all of whom are radically different from the One True God^TM), usually direct their special communications to specific gods depending on the situation. For example, my favorite god Ganesh — the one with the crooked trunk, immense body, and the brilliance of a billion suns, the remover of obstacles — is the one to address if you want to succeed in your ventures. Continue reading “A Call to Prayer”

So what’s on your mind? Here are a few random pictures for your entertainment. The relative frequency of English words used:

Continue reading “AMA — October Edition”

The universe is amazing. The more you learn about it, the more you realize how absolutely, unbelieveably amazing it is. A related amazing thing is that these days you can learn about the universe from the comfort of your living room or study.

This may seem unrelated to what has been a major focus of this blog recently but actually it is related. I will point out the connection later. For now, let’s talk about Eta Carinae, which xkcd notes (click on the image above) is a luminous blue hypergiant with anomalous Fe^II emission spectra. Continue reading “Eta Carinae”

The dictionary definition of a sideshow is “a minor show offered in addition to a main exhibition (as of a circus); an incidental diversion or spectacle.” I think all elections are sideshows. I used to consider them as mostly innocuous but I have been persuaded that they are actually a significant part of the pernicious scheme that enslaves people.

Elections are used to maintain the illusion that the people are in charge of their lives, that they are involved in their government and therefore the government they elect is legitimate, and consequently whatever the government does is also legitimate. Democracy is a big fat lie that the people have been brainwashed into swallowing. This will naturally stick in the craw of many of my readers (the majority of whom are Indians.)

I wrote the following piece in Oct 2012, just before the US presidential election. Much of what I wrote holds true in this US presidential election season. Please note that the trade figures mentioned in the following must have changed over time. Continue reading “From the Archives: US Elections are a Sideshow”

Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) — Austrian school American economist, economic historian and political theorist — was committed to individual liberty. He was dedicated to analysing the nature of the state and why it is always an enemy of freedom. His book Anatomy of the State (free download at Mises.org) is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding how the state functions and why. About the book:

[It] gives a succinct account of Rothbard’s view of the state. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard regards the state as a predatory entity. It does not produce anything but rather steals resources from those engaged in production. … How can an organization of this type sustain itself? It must engage in propaganda to induce popular support for its policies. …

Continue reading “Anatomy of the State”

There’s something peculiar about the world today that was not true about the world of the past. It’s this: the world of today is about ideas whereas the world of the past before the recent 500 years or so was a world that was about objects. Ideas, and not objects, characterize today’s world. This distinction between ideas and objects lies at the core of the argument of why freeing education from the clutches of the government of India is central to India reaching its potential. Continue reading “This Policy, Alone – Part 5”

Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution is one of my favorites. Historian and classicist, he helps make sense of the world. Here’s an audio extract from one of his videos. The video is around 24 minutes long; the excerpt is half as long. In it he addresses the question of why people migrate to the West and not from the West.

As I am an immigrant, I can relate to the topic. After I got to the US, I began to understand that countries differ significantly in what they have to offer. The US is obviously more prosperous than India. At first I did not know nor did I particularly care why the US was so rich. But soon enough the matter intrigued me. Why was India so poor in comparison to the US? Continue reading “Victor Davis Hanson on Immigration”