CK, over at Yazad’s place, wants to know if we libertarians ever think that corporations are in the wrong in any single instance. Of course we do. But we do believe that in a society with just laws, criminals are in a minority, and when criminals commit crimes, they should be punished for it. Negligience by Union Carbide that resulted in 2000 of Bhopal’s citizens dying almost certainly falls into that category.

But because we believe that criminals are a minority, we don’t believe that a surveillence regime makes sense, whether against citizens or against corporations. In fact, we believe that a society that requires permissions for everything ends up benefiting criminals and hurting honest people. As the ardent capitalist Ram Manohar Lohia said, “Panditji, under your socialism, an honest man cannot become rich and a rich man cannot stay honest”

One example of laws encouraging dishonest people and punishing honest people is found in our system of education. We think that education is so important to us that we have made it impossible for an honest man to benefit from providing education. The system of getting permission to open an engineering college is so difficult and so ridden with corruption that only well-connected politicians can open a college. So it has come to pass that a lot of private engineering colleges run by corrupt politicians and providing education of atrociously poor quality are strewn all over India, especially in Maharashtra and Karnataka. These colleges are used by people as “proof” that the private sector does not do a good job of providing education.

CK will probably want to know what we libertarians think of those private educational “entreprenuers”. Do we think that they are crooks or do we think that it’s the government’s fault that the education system is in a mess? I have no answer except to ask him to look up the meaning of “false dichotomy”

By the way, we don’t just “defend” corporations. Here is Sauvik Chakraverti “defending” Veerappan

It is only with property rights that every natural resource can be conserved. Veerappan also sold ivory. Zimbabwe refused to ban the ivory trade and handed over all the forests and the elephants to the jungle people. Soft-headed environmentalists predicted doom. But even these unlettered jungle people knew that they should not kill the goose that lays golden eggs. They allowed elephant hunting with a $50,000 fee. And they made sure that the mad Texans who came to hunt big game shot only the old ones, or the rogues. They farm ivory. And Zimbabwe is the only country in Africa whose elephant population is rising!

Do we think that Veerappan was a nice man? Well I don’t. In addition to smuggling ivory and sandalwood, he also killed 120 people and kidnapped many. But we libertarians deal with policy and not with human psychology. What Veerappan would have done if forests had not been under the government control, but had been given to the local tribals to manage and “farm” for sandalwood and ivory is a question for his shrink to answer, not for us. Perhaps he would have been a successful sandalwood businessman as Sauvik says, or a petty criminal, or perhaps he would have found another avenue where he could pursued his career of killing and kidnapping. The question we ask is not “Was Veerappan a bad man or not”, but “What policies should the government follow to either prevent such people from taking to crime, or if they do take to crime, to prevent them from going very far in their chosen profession?”