yazadjal.com

Cato Institute provides a great daily commentary on libertarian issues. They focus largely on the US, but many are universal gems.
The Meaning of Laissez Faire by Ludwig von Mises is one such classic, written in the socialist hey-days of the late forties.
Laissez faire means: Let the common man choose and act; do not force […]

Jivha says
Pramod Mutalik, VHP organising secretary and Bajrang Dal South India convenor(not exactly the best of references I know!), says that even though the “means” adopted by Mattennavar(planting bombs) might be wrong, the purpose was “genuine”.
Such arguments are so alarmingly stupid that refuting them debase the intellect of the person doing so, but nevertheless, refuted […]

The Supreme Court in Commissioner, Hindu Religious Endowments, Madras v. Lakshmindra Tirtha Swamiar (1954) points out that
tax is the compulsory extraction of money by public authority for public purpose enforceable by law and is not payment for service rendered.
This little gem I got while studying The Consumer Protection Act, 1986. A taxpayer cannot be considered […]

As I was saying, the unions and the government failed Mumbai.
Unions are supposed to get a good deal for their workers. Instead, they got what must be the worst possible deal.
Advocates of government planning assured us that the government could manage Mumbai’s transition from a factory city to a financial hub, with […]

Andy Duncan at Samizdata, still drunk over the English Rugby victory (can’t blame him, England seems to win precious little in sports these days), visualizes a functioning system of competing laws.
Competitive laws? As in more than one legal system? You can choose which court to go to? What about the other side? What if […]

The 38th Bharatiya Blog Mela will be hosted on AnarCapLib next week. Send in your entries either in the comments section of this post or to yazadjal AT vsnl.net
The mela will be posted here on Tuesday, December 2, 2003.
The usual rules apply. Send in posts dated between November 23 and December 1, 2003.

I had mentioned to Yazad that I would do a post on sweatshops, but I haven’t done so. Instead, I’ve written about Ayodhya and something about mechanisms.
Now I think I will post about malls and multiplexes.

You know we have a lot of them coming up all over Mumbai. All of them are being built […]

Indira!…
This morning’s Asian Age, has an editorial by H.Y Sharada Prasad about Indira Gandhi titled “What did she do for India?”. This is quite an important question, because whether it is far flung villages or Upper Middle Class dinner parties, she is considered oddly enough as a Martyr, a Saintly governess, who took a battered […]

Note:
This was supposed to be a draft, but inadvertantly got published. I’d have changed its status, but as there is a comment already, I’ve left it as it is and only removed the unfinished sentence.
Yes CK, I had you in mind while I was composing the post, and the reason I had put this as […]

Sauvik’s suggestion (also Parth Shah’s) to auction off the Ayodhya site is a really bad one.
That’s because- I thought I’d choke before I say this - in this case, theory and practice do not match.
If the government actually conducts the auction, the bidding match will come down to a fight between a […]

It’s rare than a lead op-ed in the Times has the power to energise me. But Sauvik Chakraverti’s pieces generally do have that effect.
He talks about an area close to my heart — law and economics.
Let us begin by understanding the origin and purpose of law. It is because of property that law was necessary. […]

Something that has been bothering me in the context of Libertarian thought and India, has been the brutal treatment in Indian society, almost exclusively reserved for Dalits. Though some comparisons maybe drawn with slavery, and colour discrimination, possibly even to the Tutsi-Hutu rivalry in Central Africa. But one thing that distinguishes it is the length […]

The Department of Philosophy at the Univ. Of Mumbai, snagged Dr. Peter Koslowski to give a couple of lectures for them, the first one was on “The EU and the end of the association of the Nation and the State”. A very promising topic indeed.

He started out by talking about the origins of the modern […]

The spirit of community in Texas. I am touched and humbled.
A few weeks after September 11, 2001, Vasudev Patel, a Hindu immigrant from northern India and U.S. citizen, was shot and killed in his convenience store/gas station in Mesquite. Since then, his wife Alka has bravely kept the convenience store open and has been raising […]

Ankh talks about “introducing” a jury based legal system in India.
Well, until 1959 India had a jury based system. The landmark Nanavati murder case changed it all. Kawas Nanavati, a Commander in the Indian Navy, was accused of murdering his wife’s lover. The evidence was against Nanavati. However, he was a young and […]

An interesting idea for a blog. In their own words:
Kabul:Reconstructions is an installation and public dialogue project that explores the multiple meanings and resonances of the idea of reconstruction — as both process and metaphor — in the context of present-day Kabul.
www.kabul-reconstructions.net is an online discussion forum, information resource, and medium for the communication […]

Hollywood actress Minnie Driver is taking a break from films to work in a sweatshop in Cambodia

“I hope that doing this will help raise standards, pay and conditions of employment in developing countries.”

If Ms. Driver is serious, she should also spend a few months unemployed in Cambodia (or Honduras or Bangladesh or India) without her millions, of course. I wonder if she’ll be willing to live on the streets, hungry and poor. Because that is what the alternatives to sweatshops are to many people in the “developing countries.”