Reservations:A Moral Perspective

Craver once observed that one wouldn’t be appointed to a professorial chair if he has three strikes against him- if 1) he is Jewish 2) a laissez faire liberal 3) uncompromising. Marx, Darwin, Freud and Einstein, all Jews, never had a prestigious academic post. Von Mises, Rothbard and Machlup too weren’t treated any better. It certainly wasn’t a coincidence that many of 20th Century free market advocates were Jews-Mises, Rand, Rothbard, Branden, Peikoff, Chodorov, Sombart, Sennholz, Greenspan-the list is endless. Something to think about!

Jews and Indian immigrants are the affluent of classes in the United States, despite of the Anti-Semitism and racial discrimination which prevails. Why do things go differently in the academia? It could only be that government interventions and pressure group politics have made it that way. In North America, as of higher economic freedom, blacks are much better off in comparison to their Southern counterparts. In unionized trades, higher the pay is, lower the proportion of blacks, while it is not always the case otherwise. It leads us to the following conclusion- If there is any cure for racial discrimination, it is the unhampered market.

It is perfectly moral to discriminate on a free market, on the basis of race or political affiliation as non-coercive boycotting doesn’t infringe any one’s personal freedom. One should also be willing to bear the consequences, and as a result, to go out of business. In a similar manner, workers and consumers too are free to discriminate and suffer the loss which comes with it! Even if discrimination is likely to happen on a free market, a cause can’t be made for more controls as it would make the victims worse off. It is the very regulations which pave way for coercive and sometime not so coercive boycotting. Tact, diplomacy and personality are usually considered more of importance than competence only because tariff-freight rates, import-export licenses, foreign exchange applications and tax rates are left to the discretion of politicians and bureaucrats. On an unregulated market there wouldn’t be any discrimination in favor of the ‘aristocracy of bootlicking’ too!

The nation-wide anti-quota protests held months back were of deep significance, though not quite in the sense the media have got it. It was an apparent demonstration of emotions taking precedence over rationality and youngsters being defenders of the status quo. When rationality would have taken them to a supposedly inconvenient conclusion, they had to repress it. The conclusion had to be the removal of education from clutches of the government. Instead, we saw students giving moral sanction to Government funded education, and yet, protesting at the expense of tax payers, their patients. How moral is to punish X for Y’s fault? How reservations are any different from subsidized education other than that one is based on alleged deprivation, while the other on supposed merit? It proved beyond doubt that most of the errors we think as intellectual are of a much evil origin.


If you are opposing reservations for the right reasons, go for it. I am with you. No double standards or undefined ‘values’ and ‘principles’. No compromise on ‘equality’, ‘efficiency’ and 'social justice’. No ‘free quality primary education’. No 'public funded quality higher education' for the meritorious or reservations for the ‘real poor’. Needless to mention, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. They were against reservations for the ‘backward’, but for reservations for the ‘meritorious’. How are ‘reservations for the meritorious’ any different from government privileges for Big Businesses?


Whatever the popular media might have made you believe, education is not a birth right of the 'meritorious’, as it is not any one’s birthright. There is no such thing as a positive birthright. No one has the right to say "I am smarter than you all. So pay up for my education, and it means, at the exclusion of everyone else.” Who is the one to decide who is smart and who is not? Definitely, it shouldn't be the Government. While it is true that the privileged among the backward classes avail of the benefits of caste based reservations, same goes for subsidized higher education where the relatively affluent avails of benefits denied to the rest. The solution isn’t ‘Free quality Primary Education’ or “Reservations for the meritorious’, but an uncontrolled, unregulated economy. The meritorious wouldn’t have problems educating themselves, or paying up through scholarships on a free market.A homeschooled child wouldn't be dragged into a public shool at threat of a bayonet either.


Let us dig deep into the oft-repeated arguments against the quota system. Hues and cries are made over the likeliness of quota doctors to kill patients. I have no means to get to know opinions of each and everybody, but what I surmise is most, if not all believe in the prevalent politico-economic system. It is a system in which the rulers are elected by public polls, not on the basis of ‘merit’. It is a system in which the majority, which constitutes of the uneducated, illiterate, and the mindless sheep, votes out the minority, the intellectuals, and ones eligibility is decided by public support, not by grasp of economic fundamentals or knowledge. A politician or bureaucrat can easily thwart the dreams of a nation of a billion people with its ill informed or evil intentioned populist policies. An ill informed Economic policy of a politician, however well intentioned it maybe, may lead to starvation deaths, many going penniless & committing suicide, more than any number of doctors can ever do. What about Government school teachers messing up lives of hundreds of millions of children?


Medical services are just like any other service. Government regulations deny medical advice at a low cost which would have been possible without it. It also prevents men with a different theory of medicine from practicing it. It would be better to leave it to the private sector and people to fix on which doctor to go to and not. Government in all probability is not the right body to tell us which one to choose and which to not. Is that right when one is forced to concede to the majority and wrong when one is let free to decide for himself?


Reservations are not to be opposed pretending not to see the high correlation between caste and poverty. While it is mysticism and the earlier social institutions that have made the blacks and dalits poor, it is collectivism, the welfare state that has kept them that way. Add to this: Labor unions restricting membership to the poorest. Add to this: Minimum wage laws which keep them from getting a job which they would have had otherwise. Add to this: License raj which expects them to report to a bureaucrat not driven by any objective standards, in proper legal language. Add to this: The fact that we hadn’t really a private sector until the 90’s.


If reservations aren’t implemented well, so isn’t government funded primary education. Why are reservations opposed, but public funded education supported? Isn’t it social injustice? Isn’t forceful taxation from the ‘deserving’ for income redistribution social injustice? You say 60 years of reservations haven't helped all the poor, so it probably isn't the solution.60 years of Public funded education too haven't helped the situation. Why aren't you opposing it when it is well evident it isn't the right solution? You say if a student knows a seat is reserved for him he is not going to work towards it. Ask yourself- If a person knows education is subsidized for his kids, food items are subsidized for him, is he going to work? Isn’t it harming the economy? Isn’t the highly subsidized education we avail a classic example of social injustice? What is subsidized higher education other than the subsidization of the educated upper middle class at the expense of the poor?

“Reservations are not, but providing quality education and creating equal opportunities is the right solution to this problem” may seem to be a sensible argument, but such an argument will inevitably founder on a simple, but devastating question “Isn’t it true subsidization of education is not, but creating opportunities for wealth creation & raising income levels till a situation arises when no sort of subvention is necessary is the real way out?” Any well-meaning and intellectually sound person may ask either both or none of these questions. There is no other choice. Moral hypocrisy is explicit when one asks the first and evades the second.


Such questions are not to be asked. It’s a world where hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy is the default state. It is a world where Microsoft’s Intuit acquisition is considered as the ‘too much power’, but Government monopolization of education as an act of ‘social commitment’. It is a world where the denial of primary education by private schools is considered as denial of ‘social justice’, but the same thing done by the Government in the higher education sector is considered as “social good”. It is ‘insane elitism’ when done by DPS, ‘meritocracy’ when done by IIT’s and IIM’s. It is ‘cut-throat competition’ when done in the primary education sector, but ‘recognition of merit’ when done in the higher education sector.

One is both cruel and unsympathetic if he says providing Quality Primary Education will be a solution to this problem. First of all, they don't really mean it. Pay attention to the fact that they repeat Government must provide quality primary educations for hundreds of millions of children. It is the very same people who say Government doesn't have enough funds to raise the intake of IIT's and IIM’s. It only takes a half-wit to figure out their intentions. I won't insult their intelligence saying they believe what they say.


How could one expect the government to educate tens of crores of kids free of cost? There are only two possibilities-1) They are too unaware of the economic situation 2) They pretend to be unaware of it. Which rings true? “There is 'Free Primary Education’. There is 'Quality Primary Education’. There is no such thing as 'Free Quality Primary Education’. There is no such thing as free lunch.” The harm these schools have done is incalculable. “If you are for subsidization of education, let me ask you one question - Would you recommend distributing rotten vegetable’s and torn clothes to the `poor because they can't afford them?


“If you say you are against reservations but for providing the poor quality primary education, you are contradicting the very principles of equality, efficiency and freedom you are projecting. Is Quality Primary Education absorbed from the atmosphere? Does Quality Primary Education grow simply in the nature? Quality primary education doesn't grow on trees, but is at the expense of higher unemployment, lower wages & less capital accumulation.” They were once screaming against the ‘Kill of Merit’, but later went on to claim they are for economic reservations. Does an economic benchmark mean ‘merit’ is protected? No answer! Don’t ever talk of merit when you yourself aren’t meritorious, intelligent or knowledgeable by any normal definitions of these terms. Don’t ever go to the battle field without a well thought out ideology. You will be torn down mercilessly by your opponents if you ever do!


Public ownership always creates a lot of complications which can only be done away with an all out privatization-Giving it to the highest bidder. Public ownership creates more snags and questions on right to management and avail of the services. I can only suggest that the best conceivable solution is an all out privatization.


Quality Education at the expense of no one is the one and only solution to these problems - Friction-Free Capitalism, which means, Laissez Faire Capitalism.

I’ll ask you some questions ---

If a teacher gets no benefit at all for innovating, for his diligence, for his knowledge ability, is he going to remain the same?

If the salaries of the professors have to be sanctioned by the officialdom and the bureaucrat never allows their salary to exceed that of him, will the professor be happy with his job?

If a fresh graduate is paid a salary many a times higher than a professor, will he be happy with his job?Is he likely to treat his students badly, shout at them, rationalize his complexes sneering at them?Will students be happy in such an atmosphere?

A professor - who doesn’t get the picture of the market system at all, one who looks down to it, one who gets beleaguered by his colleagues for working on a research project, for being money hungry out of their cheap inferiority complex –Will he be able to provide World class education to his students?


If it is true that when they want to buy an oscilloscope, they have to go through a tendering process, get three quotations and send them to some ‘babu’ in a government department and by the time ‘babu’ clears the file and sends it back, the prices are no longer valid, the technology has possibly changed, and they have to start the same sequence again, will such a system impart World class education?


For any level-headed, honest person the answers of the above questions are ‘No’-A Big ‘No’

Every Private School or College in India exists on Government permission and is bound by its bureaucratic control. Government is not only unable to innovate, but also impedes innovation in the private sector. If Government is not to stay out of it, our schools will all be the same even after decades. Government subsidization weakens the incentives one has in taking his child out of public school. Private institutions are forced to compete with ones providing a similar service at no cost. It undermines their profits, hence capital investment and later innovation.


The supposed goal of the Government policy to regulate fee structure is to make Higher Education within the means of the deprived. So much for the façade! The adverse effect of this policy is less obvious to the general public, the mindless sheep who can’t perceive beyond the proximate benefits. In the short run, a minuscule percentage of the poor may benefit from this policy. What then, is the long run story? The managements start retorting slowly to the market conditions & regulations imposed on them. Less people start up institutions & create a huge gap in the supply-demand ratio taking the growing population in account. Most of the times, seats will be allocated to students willing to pay huge capitation fee and this brings the fee much above what a free market could have ever reached. Some may give preference to students belonging to the same community or political pull. The managements lose spur to innovate & adapt to new technologies. Why should they when a college which invests heavily in infrastructure and one which just meets the stipulated conditions can charge the very same fees? Why should they, when students wait to get in? In the end students get poor quality education for fee higher than they would have paid otherwise. The benefits of fee regulations are seen immediately, while the cost, which is deterioration of the quality and the huge gap in the supply-demand ratio, may take years to manifest.



One can’t be farther from truth if he believes the stipulated conditions by the Government will push these institutions to high standards. What if you were to prove your competence by academic performance and not by your work? The slog your butts off ant will spend the whole year on it, striving to meet the criteria putting in all the effort possible. The naturally brilliant grasshopper gets bored, will find ways not to study, reasons to put it off, till he can’t do it anymore. The ant, the filthy minded mugger is covertly pleased with this rotten ‘system’ which takes the dignity out of the naturally brilliant grasshopper. The pitiable creature is very much happy with the ‘system’ which makes the otherwise talented kids look suckers in front of him. He doesn’t want the ‘system’ which helps him simulate a sense of preeminence to change. The grasshopper isn’t asking any help from the ‘system’. He isn’t begging for help from people he despise. All he wants is the ‘system’ to get out of his way or as a last-ditch effort to be flexible enough not to create hassles. Should I now tell you what the managements would do to meet the stipulated criteria? What if the certification restricted to a selected few will fetch them pots of gold? Will they have any incentive to innovate?

Kanwal Rekhi once made a proposal that IIT's be privatized and he would raise a billion dollars from IITians in favor of it.In a meeting between an education ministry bureaucrat and IITians,the bureaucrat aired his opinion that donations to the IIT's must be strings free.Rekhi stood up and said-"If you are telling me that I give money and I don't have a say on how that money would be used,I say: "Screw You".Do you want my money or not? Do you think you are doing me a favor by taking my money?Get Real."Politicians and bureaucrats would do anything,but logical.

War And Capitalism

Semantics are often manipulated to cash in on the virtues of certain concepts. In the earlier times this strategy was adopted by religion. Presently, it is politics which plays the game. The underlying tactic is simple. When a virtuous concept is given a bad connotation, or lumped with the worst of men, it is obvious who would be the profiteers. It is hard to believe that such a smear tactic is done with no such intention at all.

Spirituality means related to intellect or soul, but, it was turned around to mean religiousness. Idealism meant accordance to high values and principles, but it presently is identified with the left. No one is more impractical than the so called pragmatist or ‘practical man’. Morality, which was to be used to distinguish between the right and wrong courses of action, too is turned around in a way that no man can survive being moral. There is in fact, no clash between idealism and realism, or the moral and practical. Earlier the word ‘internationalist’ meant laissez faire liberals opposing war, but now it means men standing for crusading around the globe. The very word isolationist was coined to scoff at their laissez faire opponents. ‘Extremism’ is now synonymous with terrorism. Until twentieth century the word ‘liberal’ meant men fighting for a limited government, but now the left have taken it too up. Joseph Schumpeter was right when he said that the fact that the left took it up is the greatest of all compliments we can get. This entire smear means the mystics and collectivists, in fact, know what they are doing. Their mistakes in fact aren’t of an intellectual nature, but a character issue.


The word ‘Capitalism’, a pejorative term coined by Marx, too is no exception. Everyone seem to be lamenting on the evils of capitalism, but few, very few men on earth really know what it means. Even among those men, there is wide disagreement on how we should go about it. Some are market anarchists. Most believe in a limited government. Some are of the opinion Government should step in to tackle security and environmental issues. A lot many businessmen, economists and intellectuals equate it with corporativism to cash in on its virtues. If a Bush is shown as an exemplifier of Capitalism, there is no wonder in idealists turning to the left and me-too-ists to the right. Most men, as they have never cared to define it, pick up their notions from the popular media and writers, and hence believe Capitalism is a system in which the Government and big business colludes to exploit the poor. Is there any wonder if they turn to the left? Such definitions and contentions should not concern us here. Let’s define Capitalism in its right sense, as, ‘a system in which all property and services, including defense and security are privately owned’.


Among opponents of capitalism, as far as they are honest, understanding is on an emotional level-a term which they hate, but never cares to define. Whenever they hear “capitalism’, like leftist club woman, they denounce it with all the anger they can muster up, turn on their heels and stomp off. There is, to be honest, nothing inherently wrong in the phrase ‘laissez-faire capitalism’. When Colbert, the chief advisor of Louis XIV asked businessmen, of what help should be of the Government to them, a manufacturer Legendre answered, ‘Laissez-nous fairel’. It simply meant ‘let us alone’. No hand outs to the poor or special privileges for the rich. It means let no man initiate force against any other, except in retaliation. A Capitalist society is in essence, a pacifist society in which no man forces any one into what he doesn’t want to be dragged in. Why should anyone be against it?



Reasons are various for the smear on capitalism. Few books, if any, are available in most of the developing countries, to learn the issue all in and out. Laissez faire books and their authors are ignored and despised by the academia and media. A lot many of the French and German works remain not translated to the day. In China, communist conspirators, beneath their moralistic pretense have banned many websites dedicated to individual freedom, including that of Lysander Spooner. In most Middle East countries, the whole literature of liberty, including novels of Ayn Rand is banned. In Iran, youngsters who had never known what freedom means, spread those books by typing out five copies & handing it out to friends on the condition that they would be doing the same. In India, students interested in a career in Social Sciences still have no book at all to start with. The growing availability of internet access, luckily, has made considerable difference.



I am yet to see an article in support of laissez-faire in any Indian publication. Political agendas, threat of annulations of special privileges & fear of censorship makes things only a little better off than dictatorships. Unions never hesitant on using a ‘little bit of force’, hold insurmountable power over media houses. Historical & foreign policy documents are usually not in the reach of honest & capable writers. The Government threatens publishers keen on such works. Book clubs & other avenues for sale are under the power of parasitic union leaders. They threaten to boycott the whole publishing house if they set out to publish such works. Boycotting is perfectly moral if there is no initiation of force, or seeking of privileges handed out by force behind that move. Such is not the case here. Universities are even worse in this regard. Economics education is prohibited in all parts of the world. Universities, controlled by political pressure groups, as a rule don’t let in professors dedicated to Capitalism, who, in fact are the only men capable of imparting Economics education. Competent theorists usually have a hard time finding publishers, as the private publishers are incapable of taking upon them the task.


We’ll now move on to certain phrases such as ‘capitalistic war’ and ‘capitalistic imperialism’. What are those phrases supposed to mean? When one says free trade is imperialistic, one should keep in mind that it is not free trade, but some organizations such as Nafta which cash in on the virtues of that phrase, which are imperialistic. Such notions could be traced back to Lenin, who foolishly declared that Imperialism is the next stage of Capitalism. United States is widely believed to be a Capitalistic nation. This much is true: United States was the first nation to form their constitution upon the principles of a limited government in the late half of the eighteenth century. The prevalence of slavery and tariffs were in opposition to his principle, though. It should be noted here that Capitalism persisted in the feudal South, not in the Capitalistic North. United States, needless to mention was the most imperialistic nation of the twentieth century. Why is it so? People have come to believe that Capitalism is on the blame for it all. Nothing could be more farther from the truth. Capitalism means pacifism. If an honest person lies, is honesty to be put on trial?


One should understand the underlying causes before casting stones upon Capitalism. It was not Capitalism, but the growing ‘progressive movement’ and interventionist policies of United States which were responsible for all these tyrannies. It was Lincoln, who the left-liberals hail as an anti-slavery hero who provoked the fire at Fort Sumter for reasons having nothing at all to do with slavery. His real intention was to break free from the tradition of limited Government-To break free from near-capitalism into a more tyrannical government and it was Capitalism which got the blame. Left Liberals constantly remind us that things have gone worse since the First World War. They are certainly right in saying so, and they have only their own policies to blame for it all. Sixteenth Amendment, giving the government the power for arbitrary taxation was introduced in 1913.US Government now takes in 40% as taxes. Then came the Seventeenth Amendment giving power to the people to elect the ‘US Senators’ rather than the state legislators. It was only since then introduction of these laws that things got the way it is.


Federal Reserve System too was introduced in the same year, placing monetary control in the hands of manipulators. It’s a still prevailing myth that it was Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire policies that led to the Great Depression. Hoover, the secretary of Commerce in the early 20’s was never able to convince President Harding to intervene recklessly. He did it when he was the President in 1929.It wasn’t the Free Market, but government manipulation of money & credit which caused the Great Depression.


It was Woodrow Wilson, promoted by the progressive movement, who led America to the First World War and finally led to the wreckage of the world economies through the expansion of credit, and finally the Depression of 1929. It was the humanitarian Roosevelt’s acts, which provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor. He even withheld the information from the military commanders stationed in the Pearl Harbor that an attack is being ripe. It was he who worked to enhance communism in Russia and China.


As of a gross misrepresentation of terms, left liberals now hail Bush as a laissez-faireist. As everyone, including left liberals know, a full free Capitalism never existed anywhere in the world. All nations known as Capitalist are mixed economies. Isn’t it the same men who remind us this fact when we point out the fact that higher the degree of freedom, higher the prosperity who blame all these evils on Capitalism? When a ‘Capitalistic’ nation is imperialistic, value judgment is placed on the system, ‘Capitalism’ and when a Socialistic nation is tyrannical, value judgment is placed on individual leaders and not on Socialism. It just obviates that they know the truth deep inside. In a mixture of Statism and Capitalism, it is Statism which causes all the evils and it is Capitalism which takes the blame. Statism means force and Capitalism means freedom.


Why is it that the freest nation on the world has become the most imperialistic of all? It is not always necessary that a nation should be tyrannical on its own men to be imperialistic out of the border. US allowed semi-freedom to its own men, but was interventionist outside the borders. Some libertarians would like to believe that it is always dictatorial nations and controlled economies which initiate war. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Some governments are inconceivably brutal on their own men, but never venture to take it outside their borders. No government had initiated an attack on the United States in its whole history. (Pearl Harbor was the result of Roosevelt’s provocations. The attack on September 11th was that of a terrorist organization, which, not coincidentally, grew out of Unites States own foreign policies.)


These facts, however doesn’t mean that it is Capitalism which is responsible for all these evils. It is the governments which wages war, not Big businesses or individual men. It is certainly true that some armament businesses profit from wars, and it motivates some governments to step into war. It was Lenin’s view that when Capitalists are done with their exploitation inside their borders, they step outside. To begin with, Capitalism and Free trade simply means that men should be allowed to trade as they wish and there isn’t anything aggressive in that. It is true that some men use these terms in an entirely different sense, but it is they who are to be placed on the blame, not these terms.


Why it is not stated that Fabian Socialists, Shaw, Annie Besant, Sidney and Beatrice Webb all were imperialists? Why don’t they pay attention to the fact that the left sided with the British in times of the Quit India Movement? What irks me is that all those men who seem to be against US imperialism never utter a single word against the greatest butchers of the 20th Century-Stalin, Mao, and Hitler of the National Socialist Party (NAZI). Lenin was wrong in his analysis, but it could appear true when it comes to certain facts. A state grown rich feeding itself upon tax payers money steps outside the borders and turns imperialistic and that exactly was what happened in the case of Unites States. It is not Capitalism, but Statism which is the root of wars and imperialism.

Anti-Socialism Classics

Socialism By Ludwig Von Mises

Marxism Unmasked By Ludwig Von Mises


Planned Chaos By Ludwig Von Mises


Economic Calculation In The Socialist Commonwealth By Ludwig Von Mises


Karl Marx And the Close Of His System By Bohm Bawerk


Socialistic Fallacies By Guyot


The Tyrrany of Socialism By Guyot


Where And Why Public Enterprises have Failed By Guyot

A Plea For Liberty By Mackay


The Methods Of Social Reform By Jevons


Essays On Economics And Society By John Stuart Mill


Pictures Of The Socialistic Future By Eugene Richter

The Three Letter Word

If I am to request you to take off one word from your vocabulary, which should be it? Which ‘word’? Are you asking me? The word by which we were bound right from the moment we were born. The ‘word’ responsible in one way or another for anything that fit the description “evil”. From caste-ism to Sati system, gender inequality to witch hunt, astrology to terrorism. The word responsible for the mass slaughter of nameless, faceless millions. The filthiest word man has ever coined – “GOD”. Shall I repeat? “GOD”.