[God wants You to be Rich: The Theology of Economics, by Paul Zane Pilzer. S&S. buy it. Also: HB71.P617 1990 Doheny: Unlimited wealth : the theory and practice of economic alchemy / Paul Zane Pilfer.]
The Importance of Making a Lot of Money
(alias "Economic Development")
and Being
the Big Gun in the World
[20 times inferior when measured in purchasing power parity terms; 80 times inferior when measured in dollar terms]
This is a book about India, Pakistan and Bangladesh - three estranged brothers, united by many more things than a shared past. These brothers are united also by common, persistent, follies. They both possess a common set of self-created problems such as feudalism, socialism, bad economic policy, bad political leaders and bad administrations. Individual members of these three nations can clearly rank at the top of the heap in the world in terms of sheer brain-power. But collectively, these three have managed to endanger their own futures in a way that few nations of their size have ever attempted before. It is not a surprise therefore that these three nations, holding between themselves about a fourth of the world's population, manage to eke out a very tiny fraction of the world's income.
I have never reconciled to the fact that I am not a "full" Indian. I have my roots in what is called Pakistan today. My parents and their parents and so on were born and lived there. That soil sustained them. Gave them their flesh and blood. And there are those who were borne by the soils of what is now called India, but have been forced to move to Pakistan. I do not believe that something that someone did fifty years ago is binding on me forever. Or on you. When I look at my Pakistani friends, I do not "see" a foreigner. I see a brother, I see a friend. I see a face exactly the same as mine, looking back at me, equally puzzled as to why we are not of the same nation though we are of the same race.
When I see what has happened to West and East Germany and what is happening inexorably to North and South Korea today, I am more confident about my future: I see myself belonging to one of the greatest nations of the world of tomorrow: The United Nation of India (or whatever else it might be called). But actually I don't really care for such a nation (or for any nation for that matter) if it is poor. If this United Nation of India cannot be the richest nation in the world, where the human mind and brain can produce the best output that can be ever created by the human mind, then I really don't care for such a nation. Let these three nations fight then, and split up into a thousand bits. If poverty, misery, corruption and AIDS is all that these nations can produce, then let them produce it any way they like it. Who cares, really?
Therefore if at all we want a United India, we want it to be the richest United India possible. Else, the entire discussion is a waste of time.
This book is a plain speaking book, meant to make the reality of the rich and mighty United India come true. I invite you to share in my dream and in my determination. I invite you to become rich and powerful, and a major force in the world.
I assure you of one thing however. This future will not come about unless all of us dream of it, think about it and work toward it. You - Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi - are reconciled to letting the "leaders" make decisions for you. You know that something is terribly wrong here. You know in your heart of hearts that this partition is unsustainable. You may even know the truth about the poverty-causing Disease that afflicts us, but you cannot articulate these things. You are actually afraid to articulate it, for risk of losing your job, for risk of not being able to feed your baby. Therefore I am articulating these things for you.
Because I really don't care. I must speak the truth as I see it and I must make my Nation rich and powerful. Else my life would have been in vain. I really don't care much for toiling all my life in the midst of heart-rending poverty and stupidity; in the midst of lecherous politicians squeezing out our blood; in the midst of the clouds of hot air generated by our economicts and policy analysts who always hide from the "sensitive issues." If we continue to be shy of discussing the crude and simple realities of the world, then we will be trampled over by the rest of the world, even more than we are being trampled over today. It is a do or die thing for me. And I hope to show you why it is a do or die thing for you, too, and for your future generations.
Before going further, let me elaborate why I have titled this book the way I have. Why do I focus on money and power? Why this sense of urgency and forthrightness about making money and getting power? Why do I not write in a veiled language, such as things like "the economic development of South Asia"? This kind of veiled language, I feel, dilutes the entire focus of thought. It is wishy-washy, and detracts from the fact that money and power are intimately linked together and that the creation of wealth in the poorer nations cannot come about without a great struggle against the political power of the richer nations and more importantly, a Great Struggle against the entrenched socialist, reactionary and feudalist forces within their own nations.
I also don't like the euphemistic style of writing which is good in academic circles but which is unable to communicate the sense of urgency I feel about my Nation. I don't care for doing small and silly things things to "alleviate" poverty. I care for the much bigger question of creation of wealth and the question of how to conquer the world. Therefore this book, while dealing with urgent economic topics, is not a book about economic development. It is simply a book about making money and clawing one's way back from the ditch one finds oneself in, to the position where these three nations, unitedly, can influence the world in much greater proportion than their size, much like the West does today.
I want to first of all get away from these pretences about money ("money is not everything; money does not give happiness" and all that crap.) But wait a minute! You know what! - I'd better warn you before I go on. I will be using street language freely in this book since the world is actally a major "street fight." Language is not the key thing in this book. The key thing is the Will to Power. The key thing is my message. If you are of sensitive morals or prudish manner (much as I actually am), then please shut this book and go home.
I need only the brave, those who can rough out the truth, those who are willing to be 'street smart', as my journey friends in this treacherous journey to determine whether we are genetically inferior to the rich nations or whether there are some gangs of rascals holding us back. The journey will take you across the sunken dark alleyways of political intrigue and socialistic corruption, across the skulduggery of the feudal lords and the beggary of our well-heeled diplomats, of dismembered bodies blown apart by frustrated youth who have turned to terrorism and despair. Too much have I seen in this long life of mine. And much it is that I think I have understood. I don't want all this to have been in vain. So don't expect me to be the "gentleman" that I am. I am desperate to pass on my message to you. Every second is important. Matters of style having thus been disposed of, let me proceed.
The first thing to note is that, given the same background, money matters, above everything else. As a student in Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh, you do not have the money to buy the latest books in the discipline because your rupee is all screwed up by years of suffering from The Disease. Your school and college libraries are parched for budgets and cannot buy new books and research journals; and so you cannot learn, no matter how hard you try. This amounts to - without their saying so - your Socialist and Feudal leaders hiding the latest information from your view. You of course cannot invent the research work of thousands of top class scientists and researchers in the top class institutions of the world whose work is published in the latest journals and books. And since you cannot buy these journals or books, you are effectively blinded. The Disease leads to blindness. Did you know that?
But you know - I hope - that Books are the ultimate source of wealth. There is no way on earth that you can get Voltaire to teach you. That blighter is a dead duck, rotting in his grave, sending out foul smells from his perpetual repose. But that fellow's mind still lives. His brain ticks. His books speak. They teach you and me. Books are the writings of the greatest teachers in the world. But if you have no money, you can't even get these dead teachers to speak. Did you know: the true secret of the USA's success lies in its libraries? There are so many libraries. On every street corner. And these libraries are so huge and so many millions of books are stored in them, that you can easily find more books on India in most of these libraries in the USA than you will ever find in the biggest libraries in India.
Lack of money prevents good reasearch, lack of money prevents the development of good technology. Lack of money prevents you from having good roads so that you are forced to waste a lot of time commuting. Lack of money prevents you from building major networks of computers and providing computers to every student, and thus prevents you from learning at the cutting edge. Lack of money prevents you from travelling widely and therefore constricts your horizon. The Westerners know what India and Pakistan are like. They travel across the globe at the drop of a hat. We, unfortunately, don't know what the West is like. The West is not Michael Jackson alone. Definitely not. Knowledge is the ultimate power, which comes from study and travel alone, and we are handicapped by lack of money in obtaining it. Lack of money prevents us from reaching our full potential as human beings.
Lack of money attracts charity givers and missionaries from all over the world, determined to save our souls (but actually - and rightly so - interested in saving their own), like fleas are attracted to a decaying and dirty body. Self respecting individuals do not take charity. But some of us have no self-respect, including in particular, many of our top ranking ministers and bureaucrats who are beggars for money from international agencies. Some of them are also bribe-takers from the lowly workers of multinational companies who have official budgets for the purpose of "bribing" these developing country beggars who rule us. I only care for those Indians who can either sell goods to the West or at least are capable of saving the souls of the West, like many of our Godmen go about doing.
Money is also power in a more direct way. Those who have money have huge armies and thousands of nuclear weapons, and therefore exercise a dis-proportionately greater control over your destiny and mine. They even possess the might to almost wipe out other peoples and races, as almost happened to the American Indians and to the Australian Aborigines in the past few hundred years.
Money is more important than we know or care to admit. Money is something to be ceaselessly acquired and retained by nations and individuals without shame. There is nothing like being "sufficiently rich." You want to stink of riches rather than stink of poverty and Diseased sores. You want to consume all the oil of the world rather than let others consume it. You want to kill rather than get killed. You want to exterminate others rather than be exterminated. Do not be afraid of working in the proper manner for getting money for yourself and for your nation. Do not be afraid of creating untold riches with your brain.
If a secret poll is taken of what people ask from God, money would be close to the top of the list. Let us admit that spiritual success is also enhanced by wealth. People who pay the priest a lot of money get a special hearing with God, or even with one's favorite Godman. If you are rich, you can buy shinier, bigger and more beautiful residential accomodation for your God; also your God's words can be told to more people if you have money to print millions of books of your God's sayings and distribute them freely across the globe. If you really care for the welfare of the people, then you must also care for money, as do the Daughters of Charity, who manage a chain of hospitals in the USA with annual revenues far greater than any single company in the subcontinent: Their revenue is $6 billion, and they are quite ruthless in closing down loss-making hospitals. They are thus able to do the work of God in a better way because they know that money counts.
And finally, if you are very very rich and beautiful, your passage to the heavens is blessed with the flowers and tears of millions of people. Television screens light up with the sadness and tragedy we feel when a rich person who always had silken clothes and velvet sofas, and plenty of food to waste on dogs, cats, and horses, dies in some accident. Not so if you are poor (and hence ugly and weak) and dying in the arms of one of the "saints." People may cry for a bit when the saint has passed on, but the world has no time to cry over the poor and the meek, defenceless person, who was enticed into dying in the arms of the saint on promises of a meal of gruel, a bed and a sheet over the body. Though it is the poor who suffer the most and whose lives are worth crying about.
If ever there was any human condition in the world worse than any other, it is poverty. I don't sing in praise for the poor - nor for the rich. I don't hate them, either, nor pity them. They - as much as I - are simple animals with the same set of dreams and desires that anyone can have.
I claim that the poor could not become what they were meant to be, because of what we gave them: an environment so poisonous for the human brain that perhaps even the most evil bacteria would not live in this "tissue culture." I am the doctor who claims that the poverty of South Asia is not genetic. It is self-inflicted. That the People have caused it upon themselves and therefore they deserve no pity.
I will take you now through a set of issues and facts and figures and information that will end in the extermination of the poor. Not by exterminating the poor people, but by exterminating the poisonous environment which rots the human brain. We shall thusly, promote the extermination of poverty from the face of the earth since we own most of the poverty on the Blue Planet.
Bur first of all, therefore, let us admit that money is absolutely crucial and let us now begin the study of the wealth and determine the nature of the Disease that afflicts us.
We are almost done for this first, introductory chapter. Brief, crisp and to the point:
But ...
But we do not want to ask God nor the Americans or the Japanese, to give us ANY money or ANYTHING at all. Just like God cannot (or will not) give you good grades in an exam if you have not studied for it, so also you cannot make money if you do not build the right kind of thinking and the correct kind of muscles for it.
Therefore, it is time for me to distinguish amongst the varieties of readers of this book, at this stage, to determine whether you are capable of making money or not. I am going to ask you a few questions and I want your first and most honest answers:
2. Do you think that we as a nation should get money from those who "exploited" us in the past or who are polluting the world's environment now?
3. If you live in a place like Assam, or some other backward state or province, do you believe that the richer states "owe" you something or that they are somehow responsible for you?
4. Do you think that your elected representative is obliged to give you a job anywhere or do you some other personal favor?
5. Do you think you should get your business going by bribing anyone for a license or a favor?
Remember, I don't need you. You need me. That is why you are going through this book. If you are Bill Gates you would toss all such books into a pile of rubbish since you don't need to be shown how to make money. I am doing you a favor by writing this book. You are not doing me any favor: you cannot do me a favor. I have been "favored" enough. I have been pampered enough. Everywhere I go in India, I gain access to any person no matter how high or low. Even in the USA when I need to meet the Consul of the Indian Embassy in his monthly visit to Los Angeles, I do not need to stand in lines like you do. I get to break the line at once and a seat is pulled up for me. When I return to India and need to collect my unaccompanied baggage, I do not pay a bribe, like you have to (either directly, or indirectly through "agents") to the Customs inspector and his cronies. I go to the chief of the International Airport and I am escorted to my luggage and a "reasonable" fee is assessed on my baggage.
In the same vein, it was not part of my obligations as a civil servant to write anything for you - the public - to read. My only obligation was to scribble a few comments or append my tiny initials - on the millions of "confidential" files that come my way, each containing "cases" relating to you. My job was to "determine" your "fate," your license, the tax that you are liable to pay. Your immediate destiny was to wait in lines for an audience with me. I was your Deputy Commissioner and then your state government's Secretary. Pretty soon I would be your national government's Secretary and a decider of budgets of thousands of crores or rupees.
But now that I am writing this stuff for you to peruse, and opening up my brain to you, exposing my weaknesses to you, risking being misunderstood by you, I will not have any fool read this book. I reserve the right to choose my reader. I only want to give the privilege of reading further to those who are clear that
b) You are worth exactly what people will buy of you. If people buy what you produce, then you get paid for what it is valued. If people value your service, then you get paid for what your service is worth. In my understanding of the world, only a legal, mutually beneficial trade bestows money value on any human life. Some things might be valued more than money but even that has to be put in terms of money or of life, sooner or later.
You've probably noticed by now a trace of "harshness" or even a scolding tone, in my voice and might well ask why. But really, what do you want? Should I be very mild, proper and well-mannered while millions in India rot in self-created poverty? I know for sure that we are not 60 times inferior to the Americans to be able to earn 60 times less than the American. Our problems are not at all genetic. They are self-created. You and I are jointly responsible for creating or at least sustaining this mess.
I feel like tearing my hair off when I see this mess. I hereby withdraw my blessings, as a citizen of India, from the causes that have led to this mess. I will not participate in this rigmarole of kicking out our best brains and sucking our people's blood. I just don't have time to be propah(!) and all that. I might sound a bit scolding but it is like a father scolding a son to wake up and be about in the morning. I am scolding you to not squander a minute more in considering the false polemic of those who make you poor and then suck your blood.
I also know that the solutions to our problems are much harsher than you might like. So also, I have to speak harshly, lest I gloss over the difficult times that many will face when such solutions are put into place. The solution could involve your losing your job if you are a secure worker anywhere. The solution might involve your working for many more hours a day than you already work. The solution might involve your learning a lot more than you thought you needed in order to survive in this world. If you are 40 years or older that might mean your returning to the University to study some more. Maybe attending evening or night classes.
Whatever be the case, there is no love lost between me and the fools or the lazy (both of whose money value as human animals tends to approximate zero in the limit). I am no lover of yours who has to pamper you. I am your self-appointed teacher. And my job is to teach so that at the end of this book, you will know exactly how to make yourself rich and thus to make India rich. This is a "hands-on" book on economic development and I promise that I will actually make you rich if you go through this book with an open mind.
As I said, I need an open mind, first. Like that of a child. So I will now devote a chapter to prying open your mind, if your mind is not sufficiently open to receive my ideas.