AnarCapLib

April Blogger Meet

My suggestion for the April Meet of the Bombay Blogger's Blah.

Date: Sunday, April 10, 2004
Time: 3 pm
Venue: Cafe Coffee Day, near Pritam Hotel, Dadar East (very close to the station and ideal for both Eastern and Western suburbies)

And hey, it'll be great if we can have some LJers as well.

This is not restricted to the Mumbai community of bloggers. If you're visiting or just want to come here to meet us, we'd love to meet you!

The govt evaluates guidelines for ART clinics

According to the Indian Express, the Indian govt is evaluating a set of guidelines for Infertility clinics. Quote from IE:

"When there were no rules, there was no question of prosecution,’’ said a senior ICMR official, adding, ‘‘there is no reliable information on the number of ART clinics in India as there is no registry available.’’

Justice, truth and reconciliation

Dilip D'Souza on the incompleteness of "divine" or "inner conscience" justice.

We've had innumerable horrible crimes in India -- the Delhi massacre of 1984, the Bombay one of 1992-93, the Gujarat one of 2002, the Bhagalpur blindings, assorted ghastly caste slaughters in Bihar, add your own. Pretty much never have we been able to punish the guilty for these atrocities.

Faced with this failure of justice, many people make the argument that the perpetrators "will have to answer to god", or "must look at themselves every day in the mirror", or "will have to live with themselves from now on."

All of which might be true, I don't know. What I do know is, nobody seems to be in any particular suffering because of the daily view in the mirror. What I do know is, they must know they have committed great crime and got away with it. What I do know is, other would-be criminals must look at this and know that they, too, can commit crime and get away with it.

At the very least, we need to have a non partisan Truth and Reconciliation Commission for these crimes in post independance India.

Gandhi and Nobel

Ever wondered why Mahatma Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize? He was nominated five times: 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948. The Nobel Foundation's site has an article explaining the omission. Interesting commentary, more on the Nobel Prize process than on Gandhi's "suitability."

Daylight versus nicks

Good cricket writing is a delight to read, especially while you're follwing a match. Here's a small vignette from a bulletin by Amit Varma.

Rahul Dravid and Tendulkar had added 98 in 168 balls when Bucknor struck. Tendulkar was beaten by the late swing of a ball from Abdul Razzaq, and the daylight between bat and ball was visible from the press box, at the furthest and highest part of the ground. Bucknor, after his usual deliberation, lifted his finger. Tendulkar shook his head and walked off. India have been hard done by Bucknor before, but they were still in a strong position as the day ended. (Emphasis mine)

BTW, apart from me, has anyone noticed that when bad light stopped play today, India were 133/3 in 33.3 overs? I imagine David Shepherd would be doing a tandav if he was umpiring. (If you're a cricket doofus and want to know why, click here)

Demoting Manmohan Singh?

While googling for VKRV Rao, I came across this webpage of the Delhi School of Economics. Manmohan Singh became the 14th Prime Minister of India nearly a year back (May 22, 2004) but the Delhi School, where he taught international trade between 1969-71, still thinks he's a former Finance Minister!

Maybe someone should suggest that there does exist a concept called "website update."

Connecting Norberg and Friedman

Johan Norberg, the defender of global capitalism had an interesting experience while giving a talk in Jordan.

Yesterday at an overcrowded lecture at the university in Amman, I got a lot of interested responses and questions from the students, until the moderator, a teatcher and supervisor, intervened and said that my book was offensive, and that it was an attempt to force western concepts of human rights and free markets on Arab countries, that the girls here were perfectly happy with the traditions and the arranged marriages and that I should really stay at home.

Shocking, but not terribly novel. It reminded me of another story where the speaker was Milton Friedman, the teacher VKRV Rao (then Director of the Delhi School of Economics) and the venue was the same Delhi School—in the fifties. Friedman’s critique of India’s socialist planning and promotion of free markets did not go down too well with Rao who, in the presence of Friedman, told his students that if they wrote what Professor Friedman espoused, he would fail them.

I heard this story first from Parth Shah. Parth’s Centre for Civil Society in New Delhi published the Friedman’s work when he was here in the fifties and sixties in a neat little volume called Friedman on India. Worth a read just to see how right Friedman was way back in the fifties and lament why it took India forty years to start implementing those ideas of economic freedom.

Flog, stab and hang

It's the Iranian style. And has a new supporter in Eugene Volokh. Sometime back I'd written about the death penalty and the right to life being compatible. Some of the comments, especially Ravikiran's and Gautam's are worth a relook.

Volokh takes the argument further.

Blog bites big media in Germany

It happens rarely, but the blog Medienkritik has pulled off a little coup by getting the website of Stern, a major newsmagazine in Germany to acknowledge a mistake and change it. Bravo!

Link courtesy: Samizdata.

The riddle of anarchy; solved through ethics

As a guest blogger on AnarchoCapitalistLibertarian, a term as yet to be defined by the proprietor of the blog, or by his infamous “cartel”, I have taken this pleasant task upon myself.

The term anarcho-capitalist was coined by the late Professor Murray N Rothbard to describe his political credo. Since then, very few people – like Yazad – have adopted this expression to describe their political ideals, since “anarchy” means “no ruler”: i.e. no government at all. All libertarians agree on “limited government”; but precious few are willing to go the whole hog and rule out government altogether, since they fundamentally believe, like Ayn Rand, that there does exist a “proper” role for the state (pdf file) in human affairs. Or perhaps, they feel that if they use this expression, they will lose either credibility or support or both.

It must be noted, of course, that most of these people belong to the Western world, where their governments are widely perceived to be doing at least some things right. For people like us Indians, in the clutches of a “predatory state” (see chapter 2:State in my Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State ) for a proof of the fact that the socialist Indian state is a “predator”) – a state that does nothing right and everything wrong – it becomes an imperative that we examine the possibilities of “anarcho-capitalism” realistically, for it is definitely a realistic possibility: in fact, I will not hesitate to say that is the only realistic possibility that is there before us Indians.

How will “anarcho-capitalism” work?

Very simple: through ethics. In a completely free society made up of millions and millions of free individuals, where each and every individual is “governing himself” (or herself) – the ideal of “democracy” – each and every individual will have to perforce follow certain ethics. Now the word “perforce” implies a “ruler” or a “government” or a “state”, but Professor Murray N Rothbard solved the problem through his magnificent work, The Ethics of Liberty.

What this book offers are the ethics which common courts, like that of the judicial magistrate, must apply in decision-making. Thus, “anarcho-capitalism” implicitly implies the rule of law. But very simple law, based on “natural law”, as simple as The Ten Commandments – not a whole pile of repressive legislations emanating from this “parliament” or that.

It is not necessary that each and every citizen must be well versed in Rothbard – though that is eminently desirable: but the courts must be so. This can be achieved without “democracy”.

There are three very interesting appendices to The Ethics of Liberty:

1. In the first, Rothbard takes on his teacher, the great Ludwig von Mises, who preached, most strictly, the virtues of a “value-free” (or wertfrei) economics. (See this article by Professor Israel Kirzner, another student of Mises, on the necessity of economics being “value free”). Since valuations in economics are subjective, and at the “margin”, economics must be wertfrei. I smoke ganja, you smoke tobacco, and she is a teetotaler: no “values” – like “good” and “evil”, are attached to these actions of ours. In this first appendix, Rothbard asserts that once we step into the Law & Economics interaction, our analyses must include ethics. For example: If A is seen snatching B’s wristwatch, it does not follow that A is a thief; since B may have stolen the watch first from A, and A is only trying to regain his just property.

2. In the second appendix, Rothbard takes on the Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek, another bright student of Mises, for what Hayek called “The Constitution of Liberty”. According to Rothbard, once these ethics are in place, such “constitutions” are unnecessary. Britain has no written constitution and when the Common Law courts began operations (well before the Magna Carta) there were no statutes in the entire realm. (See Professor AR Hogue’s Origins of the Common Law).
3. In the third appendix, Rothbard takes on the great libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who wrote that famous tract, Anarchy, State and Utopia, for what he calls the “immaculate conception of the state”. Like Mancur Olson, Rothbard sees the state emerging out of a “stationary bandit” (again refer to Antidote’s Chapter 2 for more on this), refusing to believe that the state was ever justly conceived. That is, no state was ever conceived with the intention of doing anything good for society.

Thus, Rothbard went well beyond not only his teacher, but also his peers.

It is important to realise that in a free market economy, and a free society governed by The Ethics of Liberty, there will be very little crime and very few criminals. The common courts (at the lowest level) can easily deal with them. There will be very few cases before these courts. Lawyers will not be very busy; and certainly not very rich. Judges will sit around bored in empty courtrooms.

Thus, there will be rule of law.

But no governments.

And no states.

This, in brief, is the manifesto of anarcho-capitalist-libertarianism.

How to blog

While going through the bloggies, I came across this perky article on how to blog. (It won the bloggie for Best Article or Essay About Weblogs). Some nice points. The brackets encapsulate my two paise contribution.

1. write every day.

2. if you think youre a good writer, write twice a day.

6. have comments. dont be upset if no one writes in your comments for a long time. eventually they'll write in there. if people start acting mean in your comments, ask them to stop, they probably will. (Amit, Gaurav, this is for you ;-)

7. have an email address clearly displayed on your blog. sometimes people want to tell you that you rock in private.

8. dont worry very much about the design of your blog. image is a fakeout. (I agree, though I think certain webgurus might not)

15. dont be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out.

18. before you hit Save as Draft or Publish Post, select all and copy your masterpiece. you are using a computer and the internet, shit can happen. no need to lose a good post. (happened many many times. now most posts are written offline)

23. constantly write about the town that you live in.

29. dont apologize about not blogging. nobody cares. just start blogging again. (aka stop whining, start writing. never heard truer advice about life)

30. read tons of blogs and leave nice comments. (you can disagree and still be nice, I suppose)

Earthquake? Didn't feel it!

While Bombay rocked yesterday afternoon; I, surprisingly, felt nothing. Some of my colleagues rushed out, consulted our neighbours, and all agreed that they'd felt a tremor. All, that is, except me.

It seems that I'm not easily swayed!

Here's a piece on it in today's Mid-Day. Interesting para below:

BMC’s disaster management cell

Vilas Vaidya, in-charge of the control room says that they received 25 calls as soon the tremors were felt.

“I called up the weather bureau to confirm and checked whether there were any casualties or not,” says Vaidya.

One of those 25 calls (only 25 in a city of 12 million?) was from me. And the disaster management cell staff was clueless.

Energy or ecological economics, anyone?

One of the most interesting challenges to the doctrine of free market economics comes from environmentalists who postulate that resources on earth are limited and we are exhausting them rapidly. Normally, they mention that classic liberal economics was created in a more abundant time where the finiteness of our natural resources was not visible. The base of their arguments goes as forth – The laws of thermo dynamics prevent any perpetual motion machines from existing. The evenly rotating economy as a model is ultimately wrong because it is a classic perpetual motion machine. On earth, there is a finite amount of resources and that will eventually hit us back. They point out to all the environmental problems as an example. They are also advocates of the “peak oil” theory that states that very soon we’ll be putting in more energy to extract oil than the energy in the oil itself.

Thoreau's blog

Came across Thoreau's blog via Under the Fire Star. Wonderful concept. And this post hit home as well.

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature,—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you,—know that the morning and the spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

Jackwa aur Jillwa

Jackwa aur Jillwa
Gaye upar Hillwa
Paani bhari ke waaste...

Jackwa gir gawa
Uka khopdiya phoot gawa
Aur Jillwa awat ludkan pooore raaste...

Got the joke from here. Imagine Laloo as Jackwa and Rabri as Jillwa. Splits me up completely!

February Blogger Meet

We had a cozy meet that started in Café Coffee Day, InOrbit Mall, Malad. Amit, Veer and Anand (yes, unlike last time, he located us) were already there. After all the high reviews, I had to have a Qahwah in Malad. I confess it was my second Qahwah in February, but the VT Coffee Day makes it best.

Coffee shops in malls on a Sunday afternoon are not the quietest places around, so after Gaurav and Sarika arrived we wandered in search for a conversation place and eventually found a quiet corner in the food court. As I foraged around for food (long train journeys from deep south Bombay to distant suburbs make me hungry), the rest got into various debates. For once I restricted myself to just two bits and not more.

I love malls, and especially large supermarkets. Amid vociferous protests I checked out the "giant hypermarket." Nice, but very clautrophobic. Bought some strawberries to pacify the irate bloggers waiting for me! We had a final coffee (where I had to fight to get milk on the side for my Americano) and parted.

Anand, Veer and I hopped into an autorickshaw to take us to Malad station. During the auto ride and the return train journey, I had some wonderful conversations with both on diverse topics ranging from blogstreet's new initiatives to mathematics (Anand is an expert in Galois theory).

Next bloggers meet will be on the last sunday of March, (the 27th) but I will be in Lucknow then. As I check the calendar, I see the last sunday of April is the 24th -- Mr. Tendulkar's birthday (but more importantly, it's also my sweetheart's birthday), so May it may be before I hobnob with Bombay's bloggers again!

Update (March 3): Amit Varma posts his version of the meet here. Apologies to Rahul Bhatia for forgetting that he too was there--old age does things to my memory!

Update (March 4): Anand of Locana posts briefly on the meet. I knew he'd never been to a blogger's meet, but didn't know he was a complete virgin in the area!

I had never met a blogger before this meet. I find it tough to believe but that's the truth.

z over s

Alex Singleton of the London based Globalization Institute explains why it's spelt with a z and not an s. And the reason is not as American as you would think!

Jai Shivaji

I resurrected this old joke on the political aspect of name changes while I was on an ego surf sometime back. It focusses on the misuse of Shivaji's name, but you can easily substitute Gandhi / Nehru / your favourite political icon and it will still be as sharp. When I first posted this on the IndiaPolicy list, there was a small bit of uproar, which can be followed on this thread.

Birthday with MPs!

I just discovered that I share a birthday with two Lok Sabha MPs: Jivabhai Patel from Mehsana in Gujarat (Congress) and Guharam Ajgalley from Sarangarh in Chhattisgarh (BJP). Unfortunately, as of now, no Rajya Sabha MP shares my birthday. Sob!

It's instructive to note how badly laid out the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha sites are. Go on and have a dekho yourself!

Blog Mela and Blog Meet

This week's blog mela is up at India Uncut. Sterling stuff. Go right there, right now!

And if you're a blogger and you find yourself in Bombay tomorrow, come over and meet us.

Where? Café Coffee Day, InOrbit Mall, Malad
When? 3 pm
Why? Supply the answer yourself. If you can't come over and we'll give you one ;)

More details here.