Comparing Capitalism and Socialism:
Finding a system capable of supporting the human head
We have confirmed a few very simple things by now.
(b) An independently thinking brain, that challenges all brains - living or dead - is the one that creates wealth. Copycats die.
b) forces the brain to innovate.
There are two important things to note here: no one person decides whether an idea is a gold mine or junk. It is the market that decides that. And second, there is no regret in this system for closing down hundreds of factories and enterprises which were based on junk ideas. Just like there is no regret for those entrepreneurs who go bankrupt, so also there is no sympathy for workers who are kicked out of their jobs if they were working with these failed entrepreneurs.
Destruction of False Ideas was - as you saw earlier, a crucial part of the sudden spurt of human development in the past 2,500 years. So also, destruction - nay, the annihilation of junk ideas, is the key to the success of Western economies. Not only is creation important. Destruction is perhaps even more important than that. It is destruction that enables, nay, forces, the creation of good ideas. If forces of Nature were not to control the reproduction of flies, these creatures - like bad ideas in a Socialistic environment - would soon engulf a nation and then the world. Control of bad ideas through a severe competition in the market is the exact environment which forces the brain to create its best ideas.
On the other hand, in a Socialist system the brain is treated like a pile of dung. Even cowshit is treated with greater respect. Fifty years ago, a top civil servant in India drew Rs. 3,000 per month when the salary of the Peon was Rs. 50. That was before the disease of Socialism struck us. Today, when a newly recruited civil servant joins the service, many peons draw more than him and when the civil servant retires as Cabinet Secretary, the difference in salary between his wage and that of his Peon is about 5 times. We do not distinguish between the heads of the Cabinet Secretary and the peon. This man (or woman), the Cabinet Secretary, was one of the brightest persons in the entire country when he or she joined; he (or she) manned the highest posts anywhere in the nation for 30 years, he (or she) dealt with matters of state and policy that the Peon has absolutely no clue about, and at the end of these 30 years, he (or she) gets paid 5 times that of a Peon. Is that all this head is worth? Well, you create a system like that and you find all the heads of India bidding farewell to India.
Today, the US is able to attract the best heads (brains) from all over the world. Successful nations throughout the world pay their top policy makers what they are truly worth. In Singapore, a senior civil servant draws a salary of about $100,000 (USD) a year. The Prime Minister draws about a million dollars. Respect the head and you will get success. Treat it like shit and you will get shit. Socialism has everywhere defiled its heads. In the times of Stalin, millions of heads were severed from the limbs. These heads had in them the potential to make USSR one of the richest nations in the world. But the USSR simply threw away its heads, and scared the other heads to stop thinking completely. And look at what happened to it in the end. It just does not exist any longer.
Marx was the quintessential fool who thought that labor could produce anything worthwhile. That is why he wrote about the "labor theory of value." Of course he was wrong. Even his own creations (books/ thoughts) were not an outcome of his limbs, but of his brain. Labor in its purest form is a mere conglomeration of limbs which can unfortunately do only what the brain tells it to do. Labor cannot create. It can only obey. The US funds research and development in a huge manner. That is how the new products arise.
The head needs a fertilizer: the fertilizer of freedom and competition. Take the case of Korea. Consider it to be a big flower bed. In 1953, it was partitioned into two halves. Each half applied a different fertilizer to that flower bed. In the southern half, freedom was given, and competition was encouraged. If the people are considered its fruit, then of the fruit, the brain was valued much more highly than the limbs and good people everywhere were paid the best price that they deserved. In the northern flower bed, however, freedom and competition were banned. The brain of everyone was treated equally. The limb was respected. North Korea went in for a big army. Result: after 45 years, North Korea is starving. South Korea is a great success. This is a true experiment. The results are obvious. Anyone failing to derive the correct conclusion from this is a fool and should be fired.
There were equally big fools all over the world. People who thought they would worship the limb (labor). All over Africa, people gave power to military dictators. These (strong) limbs of course could not produce anything of value. Limbs do not possess brain cells. They had to import even their guns from other countries. The result: those countries which gave value to the soldier as the primary creature, starved.
But the coolest and most dispassionate thinking ultimately prevails. And so the capiltalist system with democracy prevails and will prevail, since it allows for the biggest competition of all: the competition of human brains. Brains contest each other in the marketplace and brains contest each other for being the leaders of the sheep. The sheep are asked to think and to vote for the goods they want as well as for the leaders they want. They are not forced, with guns poking into their back, to jump into a well.
In this booklet much has been said. What has been said has been said with great gusto and boldness. I believe, truly, and would urge unto you, what (Hugo I think - check ) said: boldness has .. magic in it. Be bold, go out and be independent. Dream big. Dream for YOURSELF. Care not the least for India. India will take care of itself if all of us take care of ourselves. Make your own money. Make your own dreams come true. But do not beg - either for money or for mercy, from any other human being. Be the superman that you are destined to be. Do not be a sheep. Vote not for the beggar nor for the cheat. Vote for those who make you strong. Those who enable your mind to grow. Those who make you think for yourself.
Competition of ideas and the survival of the fittest ideas
In the ultimate analysis, all science and human progress originates from the competition of ideas. In this jungle of ideas, all idealogues are competing for our attention, from communists to capitalists, from dictators to democrats. Which ever idea we buy (i.e., agree with) then determines our destiny. Long ago, the human race found that it could overcome other animal species by its intelligence. Since then, human beings who came up with superior ideas (such as superior technology or superior cunning) have always overcome other animals and other human beings. They have not merely been content to exploit them. At many times, those with the superior idea, or superior technology, have tortured, even killed other human beings, and in other ways, grabbed their wealth.
I am a strong believer in exploitation. That is the only choice I have as a human animal that has to feed his children and pass on his genes to the future. I would rather be the exploiter than the exploited. I would rather defeat you in competition than be defeated. I don't believe in appealing to the charitable intentions of others. I don't believe that true charity exists; I sneer at those who give or take charity. Outside my family, I am in competition with everyone else in the world. I defeated hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, intelligent Indians in my quest to get into the IAS so that I can be the one that decides their destiny than being the one whose destiny is decided by others. I gain power by learning more and more; buying all the books that my money can possibly buy. I am on the rampage for learning and power. I will defeat anyone that comes in my way, by learning what they are doing and then overcoming them with better ideas and better solutions. My power is in my brain, my mind waves (believe me, I am a pudgy, bespectacled, soul who can defeat no one in a physical combat!). I know where true power comes from. I know that the only reason I was a Deputy Commissioner getting the salutes of every police official in the district was my brain. Any of these police personnel could have knocked me down in a second and crushed me. I am too weak physically. Therefore I never tried to waste time developing my muscles. I developed my knowledge and brain. If I did not do that I know where I would have been today - a clerk or a peon in some government office in India, saluting my wife (would she have been my wife then?) ! Or a politician, maybe.
To us the West appears rich, sexy and plush. Smart, handsome guys like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates stride the world's television screens. But the West is not one homogeneous entity with the same powerful persons at the top all the time. Each individual here is in ferocious, though gentlemanly, battle with all the others. Superior ideas give rise to superior technology, which gives rise to superior products and superior companies which then give rise to riches. Till another person (usually from the West, so far, including Japan) comes along with an even more correct idea, even more superior technology, and battles it out in the open for the prize - which is More Riches. You should observe the tremendous volatility in the fate of companies, be these large or small. All companies are perpetually on notice: slacken and you will be crushed. Apple is a well known, recent example. When it started it had almost the entire PC market. Today its share of the world's personal computer market has shrunk rapidly to about 3%. The company is dying out. No requiems will be sung for Apple's CEO and the thousands of workers who are being - and the many more that might be - kicked out onto the streets. That is what Apple deserved (according to the market). That is what it will get. Notice carefully three lessons from this:
2. The labor (in this case, brain labor) was just a tool, an extension of the brain of these one or two men. Labor per se is a piece of human flesh - essentially worthless in the larger scheme of things of the Universe. [No, I am not heartless, but I am crude and plain-speaking, for sure]
3. The brain of these two people who started Apple was no match for the brain of others like Mr. Dell who battled for the treasure in the streets (in the shops) and defeated Mr. Jobs. Big dogs have to die. The battle might be bigger, the stakes higher. But for the success of the USA, no mercy is shown even to the biggest dog.
That my ideas are stolen from the West does not count. What counts is my ability to assemble (like the ability of the popular Mr. Dell who assembles the world's best computers from spare parts made all over the world) the best book ever written in South Asia, by pulling out of the sky the best ideas found anywhere and everywhere in the world. Quality. That is what this book is about. Quality thoughts. These ideas are guaranteed to pump adrenalin into your system and kick you off into space. By the way, how will I know that my book was the best - or worst - book ever written in South Asia? By the number of copies of the book sold in shops all over the world. I trust the market to tell me if I was merely being a joker or possibly the greatest thinker (or idea pirate!) ever born in India!
As you can well see by now, the West is so used to fighting it out to get its money that it is very stingy about giving aid to other nations, and even to its own poor. That is not how they became rich. No one gave them aid when they were poor, 200 years ago, so why should they give to others? I fully agree with them. They are not hiding the secrets of their success from us. They are in fact, always telling us (in the guise of advice from the IMF or the World Bank): "Come, join our party. Follow these principles and riches will follow you." But they don't want to give us free money. They have seen that free money being sucked up by our blood sucking political leaders and top bureaucrats, as well as how this free money corrupts entire societies, entire engineering departments. I truly support their stinginess. If I were in their place, I would only part with advice, and that too, not for free. Give not a penny to that beggar nation that beseeches me for alms. Begone, beggar. You are able-bodied, but think the wrong things. Go, think correctly and make your own wealth. And if they insist on continuing their incorrect thinking, I would let them die - which is the law of Nature - till, from the ashes of these dead fools, one wise man would sprout who would realize the correctness of The Idea, and lead his remaining people to self-reliance and the ability to feed themselves by being productive members of the world economy.
How I stole the fire of the West (in their full view)
Knowing that their charity is not what is going to make me successful, I decided to steal (buy?) their best ideas. I scrounged their libraries and journals, I took the courses in which they discuss and teach ideas such as capitalism and communism, and looked around their stock markets and their country-side, and stole their ways of functioning. Fortunately, they are fools and do not hide their ideas well like we do [we have this efficient way of hiding things under the Official Secrets Act. No one can get our precious thoughts from us so easily, except by exhuming dead politicans and dead bureaucrats who leave no notes, anyway!]. So I was able to steal openly and well. In fact, it seemed that the librarians did not mind my reading these ideas at all. How strange! As a result of many years of stealing, my pockets and my arms and hands (actually, my head) are now spilling over with gems that I stole from these libraries.
I now bring these shining and glistening ideas to you. I am an explorer and a spy returing to the shores of his native lands with gems and riches so profound that I can now generate unfathomable wealth from within my nations.
I wish to give you their recipe of success, a recipe which we will use to contest them and then vanquish them and buy their lands out! We will then be the imperialists and the exploiters. What a delicious thought: to be the exploiter, after hundreds of years of having been exploited! I will sell high quality, technologically unparalleled goods to these nations. I will also sell cheap goods of good quality to them and I will bring home their dollars. I will devour their wealth. I bring you this brazen and previously unimaginable dream of victory over these "exploiter" nations, because I know that I have stolen their fire, and that when we cultivate this fire and burn out our false ideas then they won't know what hit them! They will be pinned down by our victorious businessmen and producers of wealth. Pakistan, India and Bangladesh will take over the world!
We now have to battle our bad ideas. This book does both things. It not only brings you the good ideas but tells of things that are bad and will not work. Unfortunately, it turns out that many of our crucial ideas were actually quite bad because they have almost killed us off in the world. We have lost all battles. We have lost all wars. We are impotent - as nations, on the stage of world. I don't accept this as a given for our people. We are not like this. Remember, as I said above, and as your religion says, correctly, God created everybody equal. Therefore you are innately rich and powerful. You have to simply do the right thinking. Then the invisible hand of the market will show you the right action, and your wealth will be manifested unto you.
This book is also a part of the competition that I have talked about and will talk more elsewhere. Merely saying that the ideas that I bring to you are gems, does not make them so. Various possibilities exist which need to be examined by you before you put any value on these ideas.
2. Or it could happen that I am actually an idiot who somehow managed to get very lucky in life and got these degrees and jobs, but who is incapable of understanding anything.
3. Or it might happen that I am actually speaking the truth, and that this is the truth about making money.
I know that as they read this, some of my more senior colleagues in the IAS will gasp (am I not breaking Conduct Rules and all that crap? Am I?), political leaders who are preaching false ideas will try to proscribe these ideas, feudal leaders and the elite everywhere who have exploited the weak within their own nations will cringe and cry foul. I say, exploit! But exploit others outside your nations, if you can. I am throwing a gauntlet! Buy out the West, if you can! Japan has done that in a mere 100 years after its economic reform began. We can do it faster. But do not imagine that you can run a false system forever in the Indian sub-continent.
India the sinking ship
Today we are doing hard work, but in the wrong system. We are creating work which is redundant and un-necessary. We are tying ourselves into knots. We are not doing things which we need to. That is the problem. Only that hard work which is directed toward correct ideas will translate into wealth and power. Hard work done by people under the current Indian system of socialistic policies will fail to achieve anything no matter how hard they work. Period.
The False idea behind India's Plight: Socialism
Socialist command economies are characterized by three basic tenets:
Let us see how this mammoth titled entity has fared since its birth two generations ago. If you look at the chart of history, you will find a strong resemblance between India and the Titanic. These are huge projects visualized to create wonders (remember our "tryst with destiny"?) but with a shaky and creaky bulwark. Defenceless against the ordinary obstacles of the journey, the Titanic sank, while the Indian ship is tipping over, in the process of sinking. And the people have begun to bail out. In both cases, the few who bailed out first not only survived, but many of them will thrive. The ones who are hanging on, watching, tightening their belts even more, being driven to the edge of the railings as the water pours in, and are refusing to bail out, will die, just as the ones in the Titanic. OK, maybe this characterization was too dramatic. You don't believe me.
But don't forget North Korea. Both the Koreas were exactly at the same level of income before 1950. Then, South Korea adopted some primitive form of capitalism, while North Korea took up socialism. Now, for decades, no South Korean has starved. In fact they are as close to being stinking rich as one can ever hope for India to ever be in the future. As for the North Koreans, even their children do not get to eat; their entire generation is shrivelled up and starving. For food. What shame! The same genes, the same blood, the same brains. Only the economic system was different, and that killed them off. Do you want more proof that Socialism kills? Well, read on.
In any case there is much more to this book than just socialism. So perhaps it is worth giving this book a shot. You never know, at the end of it, you might actually get rich. Actually, I PROMISE you. I will publicly slash my wrists and neck if you follow ALL the prescriptions of this book and don't become immensely rich and powerful - as a nation - in less than 20 years. With that kind of guarantee there is nothing to fear. Just do it. China adopted capitalism in an even more primitive form than South Korea did, in 1979. It is a huge success now, in less than 20 years since it started that. I know my life is not at stake when I give such guarantees. But I know that my life and yours, and the lives of my and your children, and their children, are at stake in the future, unless we throw out Socialism and stupid politicians believing in Socialism, lock stock and barrel, into the Indian Ocean. Right now! OK Hold it! Don't touch anyone. Just talk to them. They are our people. They will understand. If they don't, vote them out.
Today, many smart Indians are clamoring to leave the ship of India. Our best brains are nowhere to be sighted for miles from our shores. Outside the confines of the sinking ship, these ordinary folk are creating wonders, becoming, inexorably, the richest ethnic community in the world. And the citizens don't even know what hit them. Our politicians like dozos or bozos or gozos or whatever they are, only talk of communalism and stupid things like that as being our enemy. Nonsense. Socialism is THE enemy. The moment we are all rich, communalism and casteism will fizzle out just like segratation fizzled out in the USA after the Blacks made it a practice to become millionnaires on a routine basis. When the Scheduled caste millionaire in India will employ a dozen brahmins to sweep his house, casteism will be over that very day. There are single blacks today in the USA who can buy out the entire North Korea. Tomorrow our lowest Scheduled Caste will have the money and power to do that too (provided North Korea continues dutifully to try to aim for the ultimate bottom of the world's economic pyramid).
The worst part of this, you will notice, is that Socialists are violent creatures. They behave suspiciously, they don't trust anyone else, and so on. Paranoids. Psychos. They always like to IMPOSE their policies on you, the citizen, through force. Capitalists, and good economists (like me?) and honest bureaucrats (like me, too!), are gentlemen. They debate. They talk. They discuss. They persuade. They are too rich to behave badly. You can well imagine that this book is going to be found to be dangerous drivel by many people in this world. Just watch their reactions. Look for the kind of people who cry against this plain speaking book. All of them will be dictatorial Socialists, Feudal lords and Communally driven bullies, ruling poor nations.
The rich guys will not even bother to review this kind of a book. Having made tons of money, they will be simply enjoying their lives in Las Vegas and reading Playboy over a glass of wine, or taking their children to Disneland. Life is not that serious, belive you me. You can actually ENJOY it and live like a gentleman! What! I can enjoy life! How can that be? I thought that life is a permanent struggle to feed my children sattu and onion! Aren't we the spiritual leaders of the world and aren't we supposed to show the world the way to the Heaven by leading pathetic lives? Look at pictures of beatiful girls? Give my wife a brasierre costing more than ten thousand rupees? Are you off your rocker? You are going to spoil the morals of this nation! Begone! OK shut this book and go home NOW, baby boy. You get the System you Deserve. Intellectual babies get the "security" and "amorality" of Socialism. Babies are overpowered by adults. Did you know that?
But then wait for a second! I am not telling you to watch beautiful women or to give your wife a costly bra. I would never do that, too, really! What I am saying is that I and you - as grown up adults - should have the freedom to do that. To do whatever we want with our time, money or property, without hurting other human beings. I do not want anyone to control my expenses. To tell me where I am to spend my money. I give you taxes. After that you better shut up. I am not your baby boy. I am a grown up adult. Treat me like one. You stupid politician and bureaucrat. You can't make us rich. You squeeze out whatever my money I have on every pretext, on every checkpost on the road, and through every person you employ in your ever expanding Hydra headed government. And you treat me like a baby. Get out of my life. I will choose what I do with my life and with my money.
Capitalist societies are the only ones which allow you the FREEDOM to do what you want provided you are an adult. In socialist countries, on the other hand, the politicians (who have their own harems and whose children have all seen Disneyland and are studying in the most expensive English medium schools in India or in various universities in the USA, funded by money squeeqed out from you through corruption) treat their grown up citizens like children. Adults are "controlled" and prevented from deciding for themselves what they have to produce, what price they have to fix for their work, and what girlie pictures they have to watch (or not watch).
I have no faith in this "tryst with destiny" which has led us to a position below Sub-Saharan Africa in almost all indicators, when we were one of the richest nations in the world just 250 years ago, and even 50 years ago, we were wealthier than the East Asian nations. This proud nation - the Golden Peacock of the Orient, courted, admired, and even feared at one time [for did not we teach something valuable to the pupil of the great Aristotle himself?] - is lying gasping for breath today, injured, unable to rise. [By the way, please recollect what we taught to Alexander, even after Porus lost in battle to him: We respect you, the victor, but we don't want your CHARITY. Treat me as a vanquished king, who lost a mere battle, not as an inferior race.] It is not that today our people have suddenly become impotent. As I mentioned above, Indians in America are the richest ethnic community when measured by the median family income (???verify statistics: The median income for whites in 1994, was $40,884. What was it for Indians?). That is proof enough that our people are very, very potent. So, if our people have not become impotent, then why is India impotent?
We the people have still not learnt our lesson. In 1965, Mother India, in tattered clothes, went to the USA begging for foodgrain. We survived for years on that wheat. I wonder what debates took place at that time in our political circles. I know for sure that people like Manmohan Singh had no clue what was wrong with our system, then. And we never cared to listen to Bhagwati and other Indian economists then. We were Fabian Socialists and we went into "Planning" using some ridiculous models created by a physicist. And then we nationalized our banks, ruining the efficiency of the banking system completely.
It was becoming clear by then that our system was unsustainable, as we saw were forced to make a series of major devaluations of the Indian rupee which basically made foreign books and products ever more expensive and our ignorance ever more pervasive. Then we kicked out IBM. We closed off all relationships with foreign oil companies. We shut ourselves out from the whole world. And then began the real growth of our incestuous socialism. Politicians were bedmates of industrialists and industrialists were bedmates of bureaucrats. They created the situation where Japan was able to import iron ore from us, convert it into steel at a fraction of the cost at which we produced it in India, and sell it back to us at profit, because we had put ceilings on the production of steel. Imagine someone taking mud and rock for thousands of miles by ship, then produce something out of it at a cheaper price than us, and to top it all, sell it back to us at a profit!
And lo and behold! By 1991, despite our foolish claims of "Mera Bharat Mahaan" we were close to bankruptcy. These misguided people who had fictitiously claimed that Bharat was Mahaan for the sake of your votes, were back in business. They undressed Mother India in front of the world, took out her meager jewellery, and pawned her bangles to the Bank of England (while their personal accounts worth millions of dollars were happily growing in size in Switzerland). We were forced to fly out our gold reserves from the Reserve Bank of India to England: merely in order to get the West to lend us a measly five billion dollars. Nobody in the world trusted us with their money; so they wanted to get our gold first. Can we ever do that to the USA? Ask it to fly its gold reserves to our Reserve Bank so that we can lend it a few billion dollars (the USA, by the way, produces 7,500 billion dollars of incomes each year)?
The West (basically US trained economists) then set certain conditions on our economic policy which we pretended were our own. Beggars can't be choosers. We called it our own liberalization. But of course it was not "our own" reform. We did not understand the need for reform from within. Our political parties did not try to communicate the need for reform to the people. They are governed by fools who don't even know how humiated Mother India had been. Mother India, asking for borrowing an amount equal to THREE HOURS OF INCOME EARNINGS of the USA, and being forced to pawn its bangles because nobody believed in our Mother's ablitity to repay. They carried on as if nothing ever happened. Our communist parties - who rule the states which have beggared their citizens the most - even railed against the IMF and World Bank saying that we don't want their advice (the stupid fools did not realize that if we had not followed these policies and borrowed that money, the Indian rupee today would have been worth less than one tenth of what it is today).
Sorry boys! You have no choice. Once you have become bad boys and squandered away your little money, you have to listen to Big Brother. Also, remember. Those who hide from the truth can often face a very bitter consequence. Remember the USSR? For long, it claimed that its rouble was worth more than a US dollar. But the black markets had long started devaluing the rouble. Finally, when the USSR broke up, do you know what happened to the once proud rouble? It needed 2000 roubles to buy one dollar. Today it needs 5,333 roubles to buy one dollar. Russia saw 2,500% inflation in 1992. Today, most of its industry is owned by foreigners, and even though salaries have risen in rouble terms, the real purchasing power of the rouble has collapsed. The cause for which millions of people were murdered and massacred by Lenin and Stalin was a bogus and wasteful cause. Corpses that litter the landscape of the USSR were in vain. Far from becoming a nation which would be a boon for the workers, it made the workers bankrupt. They stood in lines to get tiny bits of bread. They were all made corrupt and became thieves (stealing from their factories and farms) and drunkards. Families were broken up to the extent that a son would complain against the father to gain power and prestige. Socialism dissipated completely the wealth of the Russians even after millions were thrown into the sacrificial fire at its alter.
In my view, the rupee can drop anywhere between Rs. 100 to Rs.100,000 to the dollar in a few years or decades if we keep on the same insane path of socialism. It will not do for our politicians to tell us that our level of Rs. 40 to a dollar is a "reasonable" level. I really don't care about that. My salary in India is indexed to inflation in such a way that I and all bureaucrats are consistently sliding down the income brackets. My predecessors in 1947 received as much as Rs. 3,000 per month, and I receive Rs. 10,000. What matters it to me if my Rs. 10,000 can only buy goods that were worth Rs. 50 in 1947? Inflation is an insiduous enemy, prompted invariably by socialistic policies which rely on what is called a Welfare State: print more and more money to feed the ever widening mouth of politicians, on the pretext of feeding the poor. That way the poor get nothing and everyone but the politician gets rich. Today, there is talk of spending Rs. 3 crore per political party per constituency in order to contest elections. Can a poor, honest citizen ever think of contesting elections in his own country in such a situation. Imagine this. I may want to be your Prime Minister or Defence Minister, but there is no way that I can even hope of being one. Keep your expectations low. Be happy if you can somehow build a small one bedroom house in the corner of a big city after you retire. Leave the running of the country to us: the blood sucking politicians and their pseudo-capitalist mentors - who earn money not through honest competition but through preferences and quotas.
The only reason why a total collapse of the rupee has not taken place is because we have some kind of a "mixed" economy where there is at least a semblance of capitalism. But this is so weak that it won't help us at all during a global downturn and competition from the now much more competitive South East Asian economies. Don't imagine that your country's value is protected by socialism. Socialism completely wipes out the value of entire economies. The socialistic politicians and bureucrats and policemen suck your blood for breakfast, and once they make you sufficiently weak and powerless, they sell out your nation to the capitalists. Socialism is a plague bigger than all the plagues of the world combined because it atrophies your competitive muscle. Socialists are greater traitors than even Mir Jafar was. You love the country. Then make it STRONG. Develop its mind. Build its muscle. Don't make it effeminate. Fight. Compete. Let the fittest survive.
Socialism is like living an easy life. I am cushioned from the truth and the reality. I can produce junk and yet I am protected by regulations and so I can sell my junk for a profit. Like our useless cars (Ambassadors, Fiats, etc.). Capitalism, on the other hand, hurts. There is no job security, no one to cushion your firm from bankruptcy. It is the ultimate form of mental tension. I can't sleep because my products are suddenly not selling. I can't stop working because I have a commitment to deliver an upgrade by a particular date and my credibility is crucial for my getting future bookings and orders. I am forced to be on my toes all the time. But at the end of it, I am performing on all four cylinders, all the time. My best output is visible to the world and to me. I have the intense sense of satisfaction of having worked to my best capacity. I can finally see the victory against all competition and my goods being bought like hot cakes by millions of people all over the world. Capitalism is like being a full-blooded human being. The Superman of Nietszche. My muscles are taut, my mind is agile, my thoughts are simple and clear. I am truly living. Not being a miserable fat slob hiding from the rest of the world. Kill these useless slobs!
[Oh! but look at our growth rates in the past five years! weren't these wonderful! Of course not! The truth is that the USA has seen real GNP growth rates of over 5% per year for 40 years from 1840-1880. Then its growth rates came down a bit, but remained generally above 3% ever since. Per capita rates have been at around 2% for over a century. To catch up with such mighty growth rates, we need to truly speed up. The growth rate of our GDP has to be over 10% per year for 30 years for us to even hope to sometime in the future catch up with the West. Therefore there is nothing to gloat about the trivial growth rates observed in the past five years.
In fact, the only thing that one say is that these growth rates simply PROVE the entire point of this book. RELEASE the bonds and restrictions placed on our brains. Even the most lukewarmk liberalization possible, enabled us to shoot up our exports immediately, and our industrial production reached somewhat OK levels. There were even a number of Indians settled abroad who went back to India for a while thinking they would set up shop there. But of course that was not to be. Our rules and procedures are still the same. Our bureaucrats and other government servants resist the aspersion arising from the very need of reform that they are incompetent, and since we had very weak governments in this period, which were basically struggling for their own survival, there was no real change anywhere. There was no understanding nor any real committment to FREE India from the clutches of Fabian and other socialists, and deeply entrenched bureaucracy.]
The Titanic called India therefore moves into the dangerous waters of the 21st century where competition is getting even hotter, and where it is becoming ever more difficult to export, without having made our economy competitive, without getting rid of bad policies, and without trimming our bureaucracy. Therefore, as surely as Z comes after A, our rupee will collapse to nothingness [I will of course get very very rich when that happens since I possess a few hundred dollars that I have saved as a student in the USA: I will perhaps be able to buy out Reliance and Tatas combined!]. The truth is that when that happens, we will have to sell out our entire industries and even our land to foreigners, since we will be unable to repay the debt that we owe to the peoples of the world. Selling our land sounds bad, but is really not that bad. Today, if you like, you can buy land and property in the USA, if you can afford it. What is bad is that we could have been the ones buying out the rest of the world instead, now, had we followed good policies for 50 years. Japan, a tiny country, was able to buy out lands, buildings, and film studios in the West, even after being defeated and economically ruined after the World War II. If they could do it, we can too. Period.
Do we need a Dictator to rescue the ship?
We need strong means to save this tottering ship. When I use such language in my conversations with friends, some exclaim, "We need a dicator: look at the great discipline we had during the Emergency!" No, please save me from this kind of foolish talk. We do not need dictatorships, nor the Emergency, nor any violence, nor any bureaucratic or Police ruthlessness. Just plain and simple good economic policy, cutting out the useless, ill-educated, confused and completely misguided intervention by untrained and pompous bureaucrats strutting about the stage of our nations in the uniform and guise given to them by foreigners who left our shores long ago.
If there are any "trained senior bureaucrats" in India, that list should include people like me, a person who has spent six years out of 15 in the service, studying, and in addition, has secured a degree as well as a Graduate Diploma during the period of work. But I - a "trained bureaucrat" - know, because of my training, that I am completely incapable of guiding a business where I have no financial stake (ownership). That is what I can say after being trained so much that the Government of India uses my services to teach IAS officers financial management and economics. But now I say loudly and clearly unto them: "You cannot manage unless you own." So stop this drama and pretence of managing business. At once.
[Bureaucrats in Business, a World Bank Policy Research Report]
Under such circumstances, what do you call a bureaucrat who is untrained - as most are, yet who:
I happen to have the advantage of knowing what drives these officers like me to these jobs. The conditions of work of honest senior IAS officers are getting so bad in New Delhi (most cannot get admissions for their children in good schools, most cannot afford to drive a car and so have to travel by bus) that what actually drives officers like me to take up these jobs are the "perks" - a chauffeaur driven car, and a big rest-house in New Delhi where they can take their family and friends whenever they like. Also, frequent air trips to New Delhi and plenty of TA/DA (i.e., money for travelling). Finally, a few foreign trips that they can make to visit other factories in the world. They are otherwise completely innocent of any relevant knowledge. They know not a thing about business. They lose no sleep if the company goes into perennial loss. Fools! These are the things for which they sell their intellectual integrity and try to do things for which they should know they are completely ill-equipped. Get out of business, bureaucrats, and do your own jobs efficiently. Provide us with safe and secure governance. Provide us with a sound land administration. And let our millions run the country's businesses while we provide them with the correct incentives for work.
So what is to be done? Well, I know what is NOT to be done. We definitely don't need any dictators. We don't want to give absolute power to any one person, no matter how intelligent and wise he or she may be. We want the people to vote out Socialists. We want to knock out the world "Socialist" from our Preamble. We want our elected representatives to know basic economics. [We want this book to be compulsory reading for anyone filing for election in India!]
A few notes
In retrospect, I only wish that a book like this had been available to me (cheaply) when I was really young. Just like other youth, I was fed on wrong ideas. But never mind, I am making a start. I hope the people and in particular the youth will read this. The older people are almost out of reach of such ideas. Many of them are "horsetraders." They don't know anything else of value to anyone. And by now they are almost too old to learn. So we can safely write them off without any loss of value to anyone in the world.
While addressing readers from these three great nations of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, I can unfortunately, only illustrate many of the arguments using my limited experience and study of India. Therefore if India finds too prominent a place in this write-up, it does not mean that I have ignored my brothers, but simply that I have limits to my knowledge. If anyone from Pakistan or from Bangladesh wishes to participate in this dialogue, and add a (brief) chapter or two to this book, I would be most gratified .
In this never-ending search for truth, everyone must participate in their own way. And only the truth will triumph. I have a very, very long-term vision for the triumph of truth. A truth has to last forever else it is not a truth. As Machiavelli said, "time is the mother of truth." Therefore a mere fifty years is nothing to my mind. My lifetime is but a drop of time that does not count for much. Hence, if anything said in this book is found hovering anywhere in the vicinity of truth, that something will survive the test of time - which means that there will be at least one person reading this material after a hundred years and saying that there was at least one seed of truth in it. And if most or everything in this book is false, it will fade away, well before a hundred years. As it rightly should.
I want to take your permission to quote what Ronald H. Coase so ably said in his Nobel lecture in 1991: "I am very much aware that many will not agree with the opinions I have expressed and some may even be offended by them. But a scholar must be content with the knowledge that what is false in what he says will soon be exposed and, as for what is true, he can count on ultimately seeing it accepted, if only he lives long enough." No, I am in no way comparing this trifling collection of thoughts with the kind of work that Coase or others have done. Instead, I am merely trying to express the hope that as I participate in this search for the truth, along with you, the reader, I desire nothing more than to be disproved, and as quickly as possible. I wish all falsehoods of understanding to be scalded away by the truth.
OK. Now let us calm down and get serious. A few formalties first. Since the academic style has been avoided in this book, you would find little referencing, if at all. Also, it is fair to mention that (at this stage) this material has been only very partly edited. If you do stumble over an incomprehensible sentence or bad spelling or an argument which is left incomplete, please bear with me; I have been writing this book during the short breaks between periods of work and study. I am also editing this only during such short breaks. Once this work reaches a particular stage of completion, I will devote more time to it try to clear away at least some of the cobwebs found littered across this book. A book of this nature has been in my mind from over ten years and has now been in the writing for two years. It does not matter if it takes a few more years to complete, though I have a personal target to competete it by mid-1998. The goal is to write less than 150 pages and to have no useless word or sentence, nor any falsehood or unsustainable generalization. Let us see to what extent I succeed in this enterprise.