Centrally planned haircuts and hypocrisy

Damn! I was hoping to visit Cuba someday and get a socialist haircut. Luckily for me I am bald. A centrally planned hair cut can only cause so much harm.

Cuba liberalises barber shops and beauty salons

Cuban state-owned barber shops face new style: Privatisation

On a more serious note, imagine how much damage a handful of “revolutionary” windbags and buffoons, who think of themselves above laws of nature and economics, can do to society. Imagine how much Cuban society needs to develop to be able to manage a modern economy. Hope the fact that Cuba economy has fallen apart, thanks to Communism, will be a good example for other societies. But that would be asking for too much.

East Germany had West Germany to help. Still they went through a lot of pain. Who will help Cuba? Cuba is a beautiful island with, probably, the warmest people. But Cuba is a tiny, irrelevant island. It gained prominence only because some idiot Americans decided to treat Castro as something special, instead of just another third world thug – who tortures his people by forcing them to listen to his 12 hour speeches. Once Castro is gone, the significance of Cuba disappears.

Though American embargo has been a convenient excuse, given the fact that the rest of the world trades with Cuba, for their failed communist economy, it has been a good cover for the windbag Castro brothers to cover up their mess. Once Castro crocks, the fun begins. There will be the usual tussle between reformers and diehards.

Few interesting points to ponder on world hypocrisy. Two Latin American thugs – A and B. Two different treatment from the so called world community. Thug A comes to power using force and tries socialism first. Thug A survives in power less than 20 years. Thug A and friends cause the death of hundreds of political opponents, students and labour leaders. He later realises that socialism does not work, switches to a market based economy. This dramatically improves the living conditions in his country. In surveys even poor people emphasis that their lives are better today. As expected, as the economy improved, fellow citizens of thug A increasingly demand more political and social freedoms. Thug A steps down when his country is one of the richest nations in the world and soon develops one of the most vibrant democracies in the world. Politicians whom thug A tortured and persecuted come to power. Interestingly, they not only pursue the same market based policies but even improve upon it.

Thug B comes to power using force and imposes communism. His country had an average economy where the citizens were not struggling. Thug B and friends are still well and alive after more than 40 years. They are still in power. Thug B nationalises everything, ruins the economy and turns it into a basket case. As expected in any nationalised economy, political freedoms disappear. Dissidents languish in prison. People desperate to escape this socialist paradise are caught, beaten, tortured and imprisoned. (see Amnesty International.) Entire society is converted into a den of informers where even grandmothers are expected to inform on their children and grandchildren, lest the revolution be harmed. Thug B exports skilled people, especially doctors, in exchange for oil and other resources. Confirming the idea that under thug B’s ideology, people belong to the state, to be exploited as the leader sees fit. He exports his armies to all corners of the world in an attempt to export his brand of economics.

Thug B is felicitated all around the world as a great revolutionary and visionary. He is given a platform everywhere he goes to indulge in windbagging, delivering crazy rants that last hours. No warrants are issued for his arrest for his crimes and violation of human rights of his society”s citizens. Thug B, like his idol Lenin, tries market based solutions to fix the mess he and his friends created. As expected situation improves. Enterprising citizens use the opportunity to create wealth by serving others. Paranoid thug B pulls the plug on fledgling entrepreneurship, lest his system be put to shame while he is alive.

Thug A is hounded by the international community. Charges are brought against him for violation of human rights. Thanks to legal technicalities and his friends who remember that thug A saved his country from falling into the hands of communists, he stays out of prison. He dies while still being hated and condemned by the so called international community.

Thug B lives on, to give glowing accounts of his life and his achievements, standing on the ruins of his society. Glowing under thunderous applause of fawning admirers who don’t have to live under the system thug B created.

Thug B violated every human right one can think of, killed and imprisoned innocent people, presides over a ruined and suppressed society. He is admired.

Thug A violated human rights, killed and imprisoned innocent people, but left behind a wealthy and a freer society. He is hated.

Thug B is Castro. (In fact he is the prominent one among the many socialist thugs that paraded on the 20th century stage). Who is thug A?

The vanishing common sense

Some points TVR Shenoy makes in The vanishing food stock shows you how even well informed columnists think and gives you a glimpse into why the so called food crisis exists:  Shenoy writes:

• our economist prime minister and his team of experts had done a poor job of managing food stocks
• Forget two years ago, was
  anybody in the central secretariat paying attention even four months
  ago? India then had the opportunity to pick up three million tonnes of
  rice from Myanmar (Burma). The great economic experts in Delhi
  dilly-dallied. Today, there is only a million tonnes left — and the
  price is over 40 per cent higher.

Questions for the Shenoys of this world:

1. Why are handful of people (PM, his team of experts and the Central Secretariat) managing the food stock of a billion strong nation which includes millions of farmers and traders? I thought Soviet Union collapsed few years ago and with it the idea that handful of central planners can be substitute for million of humans and their thousands of institutions and organisations, collectively called the market. I guess I was wrong.
2. If three million tonnes of rice was just waiting in Myanmar to be taken, while prices in neighbouring India was going up, what were the millions of evil traders and businessmen, who supposedly put “profits before people” doing? Why didn’t they “exploit” the poor farmers of Myanmar by buying low and “exploit” the poor Indian consumer by selling high?  Are all Indian traders and businessmen as dumb as the Central Secretariat? Or are there some barriers to such trade ?
3. Does the Central Secretariat include the central Agricultural ministry, the food processing ministry, the zillions of central and state government employees in rural areas to “help” farmers, all the state government agricultural ministries and their staff, the gram this and the gram that, krishi this and the krishi that, my favorite the FCI, the zillions of PDS shops, rural dev ministries, the social security ministries, the zillions of subsidies that go directly to inefficient fertilizer companies, the fertilizer and chemical ministries, the panchayati raj ministries, the zillions that go to indirect electricity, water and other subsidies, the loan melas that go to mostly rich farmers, all the nationalised banks that supposedly was nationalised to serve the rural poor whom the evil private banks won’t serve, zillions of barriers to even a simple common market inside India, let alone with the outside world, ………?
4. If yes to question 3, then what more do you expect the Central Sec to do? They have tried all complications and distortions humans can come up with.
   
5. Come to think of it, if yes to question 3, then Central Sec must be full of all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipresent gods. Is it legal to worship them? If so, when can I start?
   

Wait for few weeks and we will be on to the next fad. The current food crisis will fizzle out just like the last big crisis–the rising oil price crisis. The world, thanks to globalisation, liberalisation, technology, etc., has learnt to do more with less. The world could do better, if only the governments–eastern, western, rich and poor–stop distorting the markets with indirect and disingenuous subsidies, putting unnecessary barriers to trade, playing god and market by predicting and subsidising the fuels of the future, etc.

Some Don Quixotes in government will chase windmills of private monopolies, hoarders and exploiters (see earlier post Of men, mice and monopolies).

Traders and speculators will continue to outwit every government plans and scheme. They will buy low from the government and sell high, back to the government. I don’t blame them either since they are usually not allowed to do anything else.   

So while we live in this blameless, Kafkaesque world, doing the tango and the Kabuki with various incarnation of plans-crisis-plan, the world figures out ways to move on, get around stupidity and vanishing common sense.

I wasn’t joking, Mr Feynman

I have heard this lack-of-toilet story many times in education
meetings and seminars. I have read about it in reports. But I had this
tinge of doubt, “can this be true in Tamil Nadu. One of the more
progressive and better governed states”. Well my doubt is cleared now.
Crystal cleared.

A piece by Meera Srinivasan in The Hindu: Toilets, yes; but usable? Hardly clarifies that doubt once and for all.

This is the 21st century. After 60 years of central planning,
passing law after law, regulating and criminalising private initiative,
this is what public education has achieved.

The report said one of the main reasons for girls dropping out of school was the lack of proper toilet and sanitary facilities.

The insanity does not end there. Now we need the UNICEF to teach
these geniuses–administrators, teachers and an alphabet soup of
government programs’ officials– hygiene!

The poor conditions and maintenance of toilets in
schools notwithstanding, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
in an attempt to spread awareness about the importance of clean toilet
habits, is involved in organising workshops as part of the School
Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SSHE) programme. It is intended to
support the State Government implement the Total Sanitation Campaign
(TSC) of the Centre.

Initially, Kancheepuram, Tirunelveli, Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri
were identified as focus districts where officials and teachers were
trained. It was later extended to a few other districts, including
tsunami-affected areas. It is expected to be extended to city schools
this year.

UNICEF’s project officer A. Devaraj said they offered similar
training programmes to Corporation schools in 2003-04. Issues such as
separate toilets for girls and boys and child and girl
students-friendly toilets were addressed.

“We found that awareness about hygienic practices was very poor.
These days, girls attain puberty early. Students of class six upward
need to be sensitised about hygiene during menstruation.” UNICEF has
therefore been insisting that sufficient water be made available for
girls. “We also train students in aspects like safe disposal of
sanitary napkins,” he said.

I especially love this one

It is intended to support the State Government implement the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) of the Centre.

In a five thousand year old civilisation, in the land of Mahatma
Gandhis, Vinoba Bhaves and Baba Amtes, we need the Central government
bureaucracies to teach our state government bureaucracies to teach us
the how-to of total and complete sanitisation.

I guess this is the final state of a centrally planned society. All
citizen become the equivalent of caged monkeys. With zoo keepers and
department officials civilising the enfeebled monkey, teaching him how
to keep himself clean, telling him how to take care of his young ones,
teaching him about the birds and the bees, ….

Yet our NGOwallas and Jholawallas look far and wide, under every
grant and loan, for colonisers–white skinned ones I suppose. All the
while unaware of the true nature and form of colonialism. When
government officials start toilet training you, you know you have been
colonised. Surrender! Resistance is futile!

In the long run, unlike what Keynes said, we are all not dead. We are just monkeyised. Or monkeyed. In the long road to serfdom, we are all enfeebled monkeys. In need of government planned and funded toilet training.

Title of this post is a twist on Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman, a semi-autobiography of Prof Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists ever.

Note to kids: do not try this–language, spelling and attempt at this kind of humour and sarcasm–at
home or school. Some of the words typed above, like monkeyised, do not
exist in the English language. I am not responsible for your failing
the English exam.