The “debate” in the Indian houses of parliament on the Lok Pal Bill was a total fiasco. It turned out be a real tryst at midnight with kakistocracy, kleptocracy and hypocrisy.
Two statements made by Winston Churchill are particularly relevant in this context. Firstly, he said, “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the other forms of government that have been tried”. He also said, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”. There is no better example of those contradictions than India.
Democracy is preferable even if it means the voters will elect an absolute moron to public office just because they think he is handsome and that his dimples are ‘cute’. Democracy is still desirable even if an unelected and unelectable individual is not only slimed into parliament through the back door, but also affixed with strings to the Prime Minister’s chair. And democracy remains the best option even if a large number of elected representatives have criminal records. But the challenge is to see how democracy can be made to work despite such characters. And it is not democracy that is to be blamed for the rampant corruption.
Milton Friedman, in his classic book “Capitalism and Freedom”, has clearly explained that the fewer the number of things that are required to be decided through the ballot, the more cohesive the social fabric will be. It is not possible to have a referendum on every issue. Ideally, we would like to have unanimity or consensus. But that is rarely possible. Friedman points out that majority rule itself is only a last resort that we have to fall back on for practical reasons. There is nothing sacrosanct about it. This can be seen by the fact that the extent of majority required varies for different kinds of issues. Clearly, some decisions can never be taken on the basis of majority vote. Even a 99% majority should not have the power to decide that the remaining 1% should be killed. For various other significant decisions, we seek a three-fourths or a two-thirds majority. For less important items, we are satisfied with a simple majority. So, the process of deciding by vote is only a last resort in the absence of unanimity and consensus. The less we need to force certain decisions on unwilling members of society, the less conflict there will be.
If we trust people enough to let them decide who should govern them politically, we can surely give them economic freedom too. Economic freedom implies that we have voluntary exchange. In such an environment, we would want government to maintain law and order, ensure that contracts that have been voluntarily entered into are properly executed; define the meaning of property rights and interpret and enforce such rights; and provide a monetary framework.
A government needs to do little else in the economic sphere. The more power it has, the more opportunity there is for it to become corrupt and favor its cronies.
Elsewhere in the same book, Friedman also talks about the First Amendment to the US Constitution that guarantees citizens the freedom of speech. He asks us to examine what the likely outcome will be if we had to take a vote on whether certain specific issues should be freely discussed, such as abortion or communism or gay marriage. If each of those items became the subject of a referendum, chances are that the majority will want to suppress the freedom of expression of those ideas. But nobody will argue against protection of free speech at an aggregate level because they would want to protect their own rights to speak about causes that are important to them. That’s why it is more effective to have that protection as a generic guarantee.
Similarly, it would be advantageous to protect economic freedom at a consolidated level by constitutionally minimizing the influence of government. It’s not that the people of India are any more or less corrupt than the people of any other country. Human characteristics, including greed, are pretty much uniform across all nationalities, races, cultures and geographies. Yet, some countries are remarkably less corrupt than others. The key to that lies in cutting governmental control and bureaucracy in economic matters.
I do not believe it is possible to restrict the willingness of government to become corrupt. Rather, we must seek to curtail its ability to act in a corrupt manner. If we want to eliminate crony capitalism, we must deny government the authority to change the rules to favor its cronies. If government cannot protect the provider of any product or service from the market forces of demand and supply, no corporation will see any incentive in bribing the government. And that is the change that is required.
Obviously, that is not a transformation that anyone in government will seek to implement. It is in their interest to maximize their power so that they can continue to collect rent by engaging in cronyism. India was forced to undertake economic reforms in 1991 when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. (It is a different matter that the name of the Prime Minister who was in charge then has been redacted from the history books and credit for those changes has been usurped by a lackey who just happened to be at the right place at the right time). Another disaster is probably necessary to create the awareness that there is no alternative to economic freedom. Till that inevitable catastrophe hits the nation, the paralysis induced by a crooked Big Brother government will continue.
Nevertheless, here’s wishing everyone a very Happy New Year.
0 comments:
Post a Comment