It is election season in Tamilnadu and we can see parties promising to spend left, right and centre. The promises range from an arbitrary direct transfer of money to reserving 75% of jobs for locals. These are certified bad ideas. These have been bad ideas for a very long time now. But they still seem to find an audience in power circles. Apart from the fact that these are populist ideas that help in electoral campaigns, it seems to be that the people advocating them believe they work. That brings us to the question namely if Tamil politicians have thought about the role of government and its impact on society in detail.

One of the main reasons for writing this blog is to make familiar the ideas of liberalism and liberal thought to our readers. We have argued for the same in many of our posts earlier. We believe in keeping the government in check and using power only where it is absolutely necessary. Unless there are market failures caused by externalities, society is better off without interventions from the government. Moreover, the government has a moral obligation to be frugal because it is spending taxpayer’s money on behalf of the taxpayer. These basic ideas seem to have evaded Tamil politicians.

Policies are being judged only on their merits or so-called merits, ignoring the unintended consequences that make things complex. These unintended consequences have made it possible for the government machinery to grow and take roots like a creeper to a point where one cannot imagine society surviving without the government. We are not blaming the people in the government for any of this; it is the instinct of power itself, to grow and control. We think Friedman is more eloquent- “As Adam Smith wrote 200 years ago ‘In the economic market, people who intend to serve only their private interests are led by an invisible hand to serve the public interest that it was no part of their intention to promote’. In the political market, there is an invisible hand operating as well. But unfortunately, it operates in the opposite direction. People who intend to serve public interests are led by an invisible hand to serve private interests that it was no part of their intention to promote”. 

So when parties come out with these ill-thought-out policies which we know will pave the way in diamonds and pearls for unintended consequences, we must resist them. We have already argued why the reservation of jobs for locals in the private sector is a bad idea in an earlier piece. We also find some of the ideas premature for India’s developmental stage- we saw this while discussing the paper by Shruti Rajagopalan and Alex Tabarrok on India’s policy system. 

Ignoring the specifics, we think Tamil politicians have not thought deeply about the role of government in society and the plethora of unintended consequences caused by it. Now, we are not saying that they have not at all thought about the government’s role in society; they have tried to engineer social progression for decades now. What we are claiming is that they have not been aware of the unseen costs and abridgements to freedom caused by this spree of government spending and government interventions. This is not surprising given that the liberal school has not quite caught the imagination of Tamil politicians yet. The book fair clearly illustrates our point. We saw at least one ‘Left classic’ in all Tamil stores, but was not able to find even one book, translation or otherwise, relating to liberalism. 

For the Tamil land to grow and prosper, these old Statist notions of trying to engineer and plan the economy according to the whims and fancies of the person in power have to stop. Policies should be formulated based on need and not some random idea that is irrelevant. Take the reservation promise for example- it is unconstitutional, immoral and ineffective. 

We believe there is a need for people to get to know more about liberalism and free markets. Incidentally, I know a place where you can start. I started writing this blog post to share the same but it digressed into a rant. Anyway, here it is- this is a docu-series of 10 episodes, 1 hour each. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman put together this series which first aired in the 80s. It deals with various ideas ranging from the concept of tyranny to equality, workers’ rights, consumer rights and so on. 

Each episode has a 30-minute movie followed by a 20-minute discussion with field experts. The discussions are rich and informative- not premeditated. Friedman tackles questions honestly without any ad hominem shit. 

I’ll end this post also with another Friedman quote from the documentary- “Freedom is not the natural state of mankind. It is a rare and wonderful achievement. It will take an understanding of what freedom is, of where the dangers to freedom come from. It will take the courage to act on that understanding if we are not only to preserve the freedoms that we have but to realise the full potential of a truly free society.” 

Watch and enjoy!