Capitalism & Morality: Twin Pillars of the West, 12/17, with @JayantBhandari5
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Guest: Jayant Bhandari, a resident of Singapore, is constantly traveling the world to understand it and to look for investment opportunities, particularly in the natural resource sector. He advises institutional investors about his finds. He also runs a yearly seminar in Vancouver titled “Capitalism & Morality.”
See his work on Jayantbhandari.com, or on Twitter @Jayantbhandari5.
Jayant Bhandari is not afraid to sound politically incorrect when he speaks about the importance of western capitalist institutions to the third world.
An Indian-born Canadian citizen, Bhandari is often asked why he left one socialist country for another. To this, he points out that the difference of dysfunction is an order of magnitude — while Canada’s health care system may require people to wait in line for procedures, India’s general lack of a sewage system forces its citizens to wait in a different kind of line.
The narrative of progress in the developing world, at the hand of technocratic institutions like the World Bank and IMF, is false, says Bhandari:
“Unfortunately, so-called emerging markets are probably headed for a chaotic future. The likeliest prospect is that these countries will continue to cater to irrational forces, particularly tribalism, and that they will consequently cease to exist, disintegrating into much smaller entities.”
His harsh words are not reserved for the third-world, but also for the European leaders who left a vacuum in the wake of colonialism, now filled by irrationality, demagoguery and superstition. He puts the enlightenment value of reason at the center of the moral fabric that holds the West together —those institutions that grant equality before the law, and encourage empathy and compassion. When the state assumes the people’s responsibility to take care of themselves and one another, the result is corruption — governmentally and, he adds, mentally.
Dysfunctional socialist democracies like India and Venezuela can be contrasted to more capitalistic countries, which grant the maximum individual liberty in the economic arena that is compatible with rule of law.
Are morality and liberty are intrinsically linked?
Bhandari’s opposition to modern democracies — which are increasingly hostile to capitalism and personal liberty —is best understood as an effort to restore the morality and humanity of the developing world. He has hosted the Capitalism & Morality seminar for eight years running, featuring speakers like @LawrenceWR of FEE.org, @StefanMolyneux of @Freedomain Radio show, and Doug French.
At last year’s seminar, Bhandari gave a rousing talk on the West’s march to self-destruction, which contrasts the norms he grew up with in India to those that made Europe and the United States desirable places for immigrants to flee to in the first place.
His main points might be considered hate speech if he wasn’t an immigrant himself. However, while many Westerners want to shut their eyes to the ugly truth of third-world cultural poverty, it would be just as big a mistake to congratulate ourselves for inheriting the system that has fostered a capitalist ethos that now appears to be fraying at the edges.
To the libertarian who assumes that capitalism will continue to function without its leaders and citizens exercising their moral responsibility, Bhandari’s message could come as a wake-up call.
How Socialism Corrupts Society’s Moral Fabric
What makes Bhandari’s such an effective messenger is his direct experience with the failures of socialism. These are not technical failures to allocate resources efficiently, but a deep corruption of the human psyche. The assumption of government “protection” from all want or need breeds material dependence, and an associated materialist ideology.
Socialism doesn’t lead to a worker’s paradise — it leads to a corrupted version of capitalism.
By founding welfare on coercion, rather than compassion, it robs both giver and recipient of dignity.
In his talk, “Socialism: A Fraud the Corrupts Society,” Bhandari notes that socialism and coercion make citizens more gullible, passive and compliant. People are more likely to accept propaganda and regulations from the hands that feed them.
Further, he says that there is no generosity in socialism. People don’t differentiate whether the money comes from theft or productive activity, so they take for granted whatever gifts might come from someone’s voluntary act of kindness.
When he first moved to Britain from India, Bhandari struggled with the system that demanded work and enterprise. But soon he began to notice a deep personal transformation. Even his facial muscles and eyes began to change, as these demands enlivened his spirit. He escaped poverty and now works as an advisor to investors in the natural resource sector, thanks to the combination of hard work and good institutions — neither of which would have been sufficient by itself.
The World in 2017
With so many different economic systems masquerading as “capitalism” — including the mixed economies of most of the western world — it’s worth pausing to think about where the world may be headed in the remainder of the 21st century.
Will we follow the model of India’s large-scale central planning? The results, says Bhandari, should warn us against this course of action.
In the above article, he documents several recent failures of technocratic leadership in India, where the Prime Minister recently attempted a “demonetization,” eliminating large-note currency from circulation to move towards digital currency. Much of the money deposited before the deadline to convert cash to digital bank deposits was counterfeit, and much of the real currency remains in use across the country.
After noting several other instances of the chaos wrought by democracy run-amok, Bhandari concludes with the following:
My interest has been to show that without the British to run them, Indian institutions are now rapidly regressing to their pre-colonial, quasi-medieval, tribal past. Indian culture is tribal and irrational. It simply cannot maintain, let alone create, institutions of the type the British left behind.
Freedom of speech is one of the last surviving major pillars of the British legacy, but it has weakened significantly and is rapidly crumbling further, with Modi as a major catalyst.
These biases against free speech and other pillars of individualism in the west are carried by a majority of Indian immigrants. Bhandari thinks this should worry us.
He is much more optimistic about Japan, where he sees the cultural values — though strange to outsiders—as having been preserved from outside corruption by stringent immigration policies. Japan, which westernized early, is an exception to the current trend in the rest of the west of embracing multi-culturalism.
His immigration views put Bhandari at odds with Bob’s preferred policy for the United States of “Let Them All In.” Is there a way to preserve western ideas without keeping out “the huddled masses yearning to breath free”? Find out, on this Sunday’s edition of the show of ideas, not attitudes.
Tune in to hear Bhandari’s international perspective on capitalism and morality, on the show of ideas, not attitude:
Links:
Capitalism & Morality — annual seminar in Vancouver, hosted by Bhandari
India: The Genie of Lawlessness is out of the Bottle, Acting Man,
The Future of the Third World, Acting Man,
Japan: A Love Song, libertyunbound.com
Related Shows:
Dr. Tom Palmer on Self Control vs. State Control, January 15, 2017
The Morality of Capitalism, October 28, 2012
