You know what the greatest advantage of a democracy is? No, it is not that it gives us the power to elect the right person to power. In my view, the coolest thing about democracy is that it enables us to chuck out the wrong person after five years.

Democracy is a civilised form of civil war. In a real civil war, the winner can kill the loser – literally, not figuratively. Once the winner emerges victorious, he is more or less obliged to commit a huge massacre to give people a warning that any further rebellion will not be tolerated. That buys him some time – usually more than the five years that democracy gives its rulers. But sooner or later someone will plot against him. If not against him, they will plot against his son who, though he is a weakling, has ascended the throne after his father.

Now, in a usual democracy, you don’t get to do that. You can, in theory, have a “democracy” where the winner gets to be an absolute ruler for five years, but it would never work. That’s obviously because the winner can still kill the loser and all potential rivals so that there is no one to challenge him five years later. His rivals will know this, so the election campaign will quickly turn into an actual civil war.

So democracy is meaningless without limited government, which in turn is meaningless without rule of law, and rule of law is meaningless without institutions. This post is about institutions, not about democracy.
Continue reading →

In a comment at Desipundit, Amit Kulkarni provides the best proof that Communism, as a scientific theory, was false.

Yazad, Ravikiran

To address the criticism of you people about Communism, it does not really matter what badge you wear if you are hellbent on killing people either by waging wars or conducting mass genocide, for the sole profit of a few people. In recent memory of last 100-200 years, you could be a ‘Communist’ or ‘Fascist’ or ‘Khmer Rouge’ or ‘Imperial’ or ‘democratic’ or ’socialist’. If you can get away with it, you do it. Just because you can. You coincidentially align with the people in power. You change your stripes when necessary. To justify to your unconscious hidden self, and to the public, you lie. It has been clinically proven, if you tell lies consistently, a point comes when you believe your own lies, and it becomes the truth.

It is just pure coincidence that the Communist Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Khmer Rouge, Fascist Germany, Imperial Japan, etc… killed 100 million. It could very well have been that if Communism had triumped, all that is ‘democratic’ would be villified

Read the whole thing.

Amit asks:

“This leads me to wonder why people in jails should not be allowed to throw parties and suchlike with their own money, if they disturb no one else in the process. Sure, jails are meant to confine criminals, but besides free movement, should all the other rights that an individual normally enjoys also be suspended?”

Umm.. as long as he is talking of convicted criminals, is “Because we want criminals to suffer” a sufficient answer?
Continue reading →

The debate on the whole regulation thing has gone its predictable course, i.e. we libertarians have asked “Are you in favour of free-markets or are you in favour of regulations?” and we’ve got the answer “Being pro-markets does not mean being against regulations” to which we’ve replied “What about the license-quota-permit raj? Do you think the free market could have flourished under those regulations” to which again we’ve got the answer “So are you saying that there is no need for laws at all? If someone does wrong, shouldn’t we punish them?” to which we’ve screamed back “Where have we said that there shouldn’t be laws? We are against regulations. Completely different thing.”

I think the fault is on both sides. We FMSs have never made it clear what we mean by the laws we support and the regulations we oppose, and the NHBs constantly claim that “some regulations are needed” without specifying which ones are.

I had in fact thought of remedying this problem some time back. I will still do it in more detail, as a post on the Indian Economy blog. But in the meantime, let me propose a way to distinguish between “good” regulations and “bad” regulations. We libertarians tend to call those good regulations “laws” but let me drop that terminology for clarity. Also, I must caution you that this is not the only distinction. These “good” and “bad” regulations form the extremes – good ones are unambiguously good for the market, bad ones are unambiguously bad for the market, but there are others in between which are not so clear.
Continue reading →

The Longest Comment In The Indian Blogosphere draws a parallel between the left and libertarians. It is not a particularly original parallel; many others have drawn it before. He is saying that just as the left was saying that “true” communism has not been really tried anywhere, it cannot be said to have failed, we libertarians are saying that just as there is no “true” free market anywhere, it cannot be said to have failed. I don’t think that parallel works, and here is why.
Continue reading →

I think I do need to post more on The Longest Comment In The Indian Blogosphere.

Some 2000 words down the comment, he says that Don Boudreaux “dismisses the phenomena of global warming” and then Chetan launches into a tirade on how Global Warming is in fact occurring. Except, of course, that Don wasn’t saying that global warming was not occurring. He was saying that even if it was occurring, we should not get the government involved in solving the problem, because the government will invariably make things worse.
Continue reading →

Once again, we’ve been accused of condescension – this time it is by The Longest Comment Ever In The Indian Blogosphere. As the condescendingest Cartelian, I am tempted to simply link to what I had said on the subject some time back.
Continue reading →

So continuing from where I left off in the last post, I wanted to tell you why there were no sting operations in “those times”. Actually, I don’t want to be unfair to those times. There was a lot of fine investigative journalism. When I started reading newspapers, it was exciting times, because the Indian Express under Arun Shourie was taking on Rajiv Gandhi’s government. But no, there were no hidden camera stings, and the few who were taking on the government were some exceptionally brave souls.

Let me go over the reasons why there were no hidden camera stings at that time. Some of them apply even today.
Continue reading →

Firstly, you’re welcome. I still remember those days when you interviewed a famous personality, but you couldn’t get the trashy newspaper you were working for to carry that interview. From there to a prominent blogger, you’ve come a long way.;) (Note to others: Inside joke. Please ignore)

Having said that, I must confess that I am utterly baffled by the point you are making. Completely, utterly baffled. Here’s why.
Continue reading →

Abi points to a study which finds that the average Wikipedia article contains four errors while the average Encyclopaedia Britannica article contains three. Abi thinks that the study vindicates Wikipedia, and if you think that Wikipedia is ridden with errors, then indeed it does. But if you, like me, expected Wikipedia to be better than EB, then it must be a bit of a disappointment.

So here is a question. There are two ways to measure the quality of Wikipedia. One is to take a sample of articles in Encyclopaedia Britannica, take their corresponding articles in Wikipedia, and compare the two on quality. The other is to take a sample of articles in WP, take their corresponding articles in EB and compare the two in quality.

Is there a difference between the two methods? If so, why and which is the better way?

To clarify, I don’t mean that he has the other good qualities of Chandrababu Naidu. I am referring to Chandrababu Naidu’s complete takeover of the party from the other more “legitimate” heirs of NTR. My impression is that Raj is much more popular among the Sainiks than his cousin. The question is, is he so popular that after Bal Thackeray, the whole of the party will simply gravitate to him?

Discuss

J Alfred Prufrock, the pseudonymous civil servant of the blogosphere takes exception to Amit’s generalisation of a government servant’s attitude, not because the generalisation is inaccurate, but because it hurts his feelings and will discourage those few who do not fit into that generalisation.

Well sorry about those hurt feelings, but a generalisation doesn’t have to be 100% accurate to be useful. If they were, we’d call them laws of nature, not generalisations. When I say that the traffic police are corrupt, I don’t mean that every single policeman is corrupt. It simply means that if I am stopped by a cop for jumping a red light, I can safely assume that he is out looking for a bribe and he is not out to fine me.
Continue reading →