Random Thoughts
Nay, Yea and
Questions with
No Right Answers
Richard Ney, a
farsighted man with an analytic mind, an un-fogged vision and a modicum of
integrity, saw many decades ago the conflict and potential abuse of the
specialist system of the NYSE. He postulated that it was the greatest
secretive and sanctioned larceny in the history of markets. It is now
proved with the indictment of a number of specialists by their
profiteering abuse by taking advantage of their knowledge of the book of
the advanced orders and by abusing the privilege. This is not a new
revelation and confirms my analysis of human nature and the inevitable
weaknesses of the capitalist system and the free unregulated markets.
Markets are the legal means for the powerful to manipulate the foolish to
impoverish them without animosity or resentment. it is the foolish
bourgeois that suffer the consequences of the market meltdown. The other
side of the coin is that the middle class bourgeois in spite of their
economic greed are the foundations of democracy and the hope for a better
future. Thus the seeds of a better or worse harvest for humanity are sowed
in the schizophrenic reality of ethical dilemmas.
This is no
defense of the communist ideology which is equally bankrupt in its
ideological blindness of the proclivities of human nature. Evolution
fashioned us to be greedy, uncaring, unjust and selfish without remorse or
reflection. It was the resultant injustice, tyranny and misery, that led
to the evolution of religion, afterlife, heaven and hell and the invention
of religion and god, which priests and privileged persons have used
throughout history to exploit the ignorant masses. One of the sorry
lessons of history and the unresolved dilemma is, whether the enlightened
liberals can ever correct this anomaly or are they themselves exploiting
this fact for their advancement under the guise of doing good. These
benign and rationally justified solaces inevitably led to their own
atrocities far greater than their benign basis to pogroms, inquisitions
and the current terror of radical Islam, thus proving the theorem of
unintended consequences.
Let us take some examples of conflict of interest. Many market makers in
NASDAQ and other listed stocks are allowed by the corrupt SEC and other
regulator bodies to issue recommendations about the very stocks that they
make a market in. The Indian SEBI is even worse because it fails to
monitor or police insider trading. This is a classic example of the fox
guarding the chicken coop. Similar examples abound in the case of
lobbyists writing legislation and the revolving door between regulators,
lobbyists and elected officials in America. A congressman who passed
favorable legislation for drug companies and a senator whose ethics stink,
left their place gorging at the public trough, to pig out at positions
with greater benefits at the same sectors that they passed warped
legislation to benefit. Indian ministers and regulators have committed
worse sins. This confirms the psychological stupidity of the masses
confined to the glass ceiling of their lowest common multiple of
stupidity, ignorance and emotionalism, that manipulating crooks take
advantage of. Is it ever possible to change humanity or are we cursed by
its natural ignorance, apathy and short-sighted greed to the inevitable
exploitation by the knowing, rich, privileged and unconscionable, to
perpetual exploitation and misery. It is my firm belief that this is an
irremediable situation because the masses are ignorant, uninterested,
uneducated, uncaring and restrained by the necessity of day to day
existence, time constraints and misleading by the conniving free press
manipulated by vested interests, which the privileged exploit by the
specter of insecurity, patriotism and other propaganda to the detriment of
the blind ignorant and mercurial sheep.
My rant is not
an idle tirade against any one form of government, as much as a
philosophical query for a form of government taking into consideration the
facts and reality of the ignorant masses that constitute the bulk of
humanity. We come back to Plato and his thesis of the philosopher king or
the Hindu philosophy of the benevolent Rama, which are unrealistic ideals.
The only pragmatic solution is to put Lakshmanrekha restraints on
the governing elite. Hindu philosophy banks on the limitations of greed
that would naturally apply when one becomes aware of the finite span of
one’s life and the facing of one’s physical limitations of sexual
gratification with age. It is to its credit that it still regales the
weaknesses of Shantanu, Yayati and Nahush for the undying desire for
sexual gratification, youth and power, while indulging in amusing irony of
these follies. Its greatest fault is that it ignores the reality of the
day to day life of the common man while ascribing intelligent reflection
and analytical capability to the unthinking masses. Its elitist philosophy
combined with the common appeal of Christianity and Islam and their
affluence to bribe the poor oppressed by the abuses of caste
discrimination, is the greatest potential future nightmare facing India.
Converted fanatics are our worst nightmare as our experience with Islam
should teach us.
Much as we aspire for "Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam", it is an unachievable
aspiration. Ethnic and religious divisions are an invincible curse of
human nature. We should follow the example of the latter day enlightened
EU to guarantee economic security to our masses, while ensuring military
security for ourselves. This may require radical changes in our economic
laws to guarantee ownership or profit sharing in our corporations, which
while anti-capitalistic is not against the original precepts of Adam Smith
that never envisaged the current neo-liberal globalization, that leads to
enrichment of the rich by beggaring the poor. As Paul Kennedy observed by
analyzing historical facts, no nation can maintain its primacy when its
economic supremacy falls behind its military hegemony over time. As the
verse of the Bhagwad Gita that Oppenheimer misinterpreted at the
detonation of the atomic bomb at Almogardo, when he translated it as,
"Now I have become death the destroyer of everything", which really
means, "Now I am time, the destroyer of everything". Affluence
leads to increased desires, lesser willingness to sacrifice for the common
good and increased selfishness and greed. We Indians are philosophically
aware of the impermanence of everything. There is a schizoid reality in
the voting preferences of the Indian electorate. They voted against the
BJP for its philosophy to enrich the have-nots, while ignoring the foreign
origins of the current leader Sonia of the Congress. This is a reflection
of the naturally self-centered attitude of the Indian impoverished,
oppressed and exploited masses, who never saw their salvation in
government and are not yet enlightened enough politically like the Chinese
to have a nationalistic perspective. Like some Iraqis, they still believe
in economic benefits while ignoring reality due to their indifference to
changing economic and political trends of the current world. They have no
hopes to benefit from whosoever rules and this is the prime cause of
India’s long colonial status. Even today many ordinary people long for the
British Raj and its lack of corruption while forgetting its oppressive
racist exploitation.
From the defense point of view, we should keep our mind open to the
transfer of technology to obtain F-18 super hornets while negotiating for
the transfer of technology for the French Rafaeles or Mig-35s, continuing
the negotiations for the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline for gas, working
with China, be wary of Pakistan, stop giving credence to the film-stars
and cricketers with vested interests who would sell us down the river for
their own economic benefits and view with sensible suspicion Musharraf and
his progeny who were the architects of Kargil and have a sordid history of
betrayal and double-dealing.
So what should India do? It would be utopian to educate the masses to the
level that they would vote for India’s benefit. That is as equally
impossible as honest and upright elected representatives in America or
India. Thus the only compromise possible is to restrain the destructive
selfishness of the elected and minimize the damage due to the ignorant
apathy of the stupid electorate to protect the nation from these Scylla
and Charybdis. China, not a democracy and America, a pretense of democracy
have sought to do this by inflaming jingoistic patriotism by sacrificing
truth and democracy.
In the long-term, this is likely to lead to greater chauvinism, more
conflicts,
a falsifying of history as Japan and America have done. These wrong means
are justified by achieving a desired good end, but they sow the seeds of
further catastrophes like Panama, Haiti, Iraq and future Iran, North
Korea, Venezuela and Colombia. Direct participatory democracy with
national referenda, like that of Switzerland is impossible for countries
like America and India with large land masses and populations. The EU
model just results in a bloated ineffective and corrupt bureaucracy of
Brussels. Some questions have no clear answers as In Vaital’s question to
Vikramaditya of the relationship between the child of a king who married
the princess and that of his son who married the queen who was the mother
of the princess!
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