Joya Chatterji joyless legacy

Which was the first non-Settler Colony to become independent? This is a tricky question. Egypt might appear to have become independent in 1922, but it was never a colony and, in any case, Britain retained a lot of power. Something similar could be said of Iraq, a League of Nations 'mandated territory' which became independent in 1932 though the Brits retained a lot of power and toppled the pro-Axis regime during the Second World War. Iran was never a colony but, once again, the Brits had the capacity to exile the Monarch if he showed signs of being pro-Axis.

I suppose the Philippines, which became independent in July 1946 was the first non-Settler ex-colony to become fully independent. The French, the Dutch and the Portuguese were foolish enough to try to resist decolonization, but America and England had seen the writing on the wall- or, rather, done the arithmetic- and decided to get out before they were driven out or, even, incurred much of a financial loss.

Joya Chatterji, in 'Partition's Legacy,' writes

Decolonisation was a global process whose scale, pace, and implications are not best captured by a regional study.

Indeed. It was only around 1917 that it became obvious that the age of multi-ethnic Empires was over.  The inter-war period, more particular after the Wall St. Crash, was one where everybody did stupid shit. Post Smoot-Hawley, there was a revival of 'Imperial Preference' type arguments for Colonization. Keynes helped propagate this foolishness. In his 'Economic consequences' he had warned that Germany would starve unless it grabbed land to its East. This was because, Keynes thought diminishing returns to agriculture had set in and the US was already a net food importer! I suppose one may mention the Lees-Mody agreement (i.e. the deal between Mumbai & Manchester) as pushing Japan further down an expansionist path. But, the truth is, gangster regimes are going to do crazy gangster shit sooner or later regardless of wider economic or geopolitical trends.  

So what, one might ask, is gained by approaching the process from the perspective of South Asia?

India could have got what Ireland and Afghanistan and Egypt had got in 1922. But the Indians didn't really want the Brits to depart. They wanted to pretend to be fighting the Brits with might and main while either enriching themselves or quietly sulking in jail. In the end, it was the Brits who brusquely pulled the flush on the shitshow that was Indian politics.  

There are, I believe, compelling reasons for giving decolonisation in the region special attention. India was the first colony to achieve independence,

No. That was the Philippines. During the Great Depression, the Americans woke up to the fact that people from that beautiful country were smart and could take jobs from Whites. So as to close the door to immigration, the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 set a ten year deadline for full Independence.  

albeit as two separate nation states, India and Pakistan. Britain’s abrupt withdrawal from India after the Second World War – so swift that many have denounced it as a scuttle – raised questions that have helped frame the debate about decolonisation, not just in India but elsewhere. Did Britain jump or was it pushed?

Sir Henry Wilson, Britain's Army Chief, saw that Britain did not have the troops to keep India, Egypt, Ireland- even England, in the event of a Bolshevik uprising. His farewell talk to the War College was titled 'The Passing of Empire'. This was in 1921. Had Gandhi not unilaterally surrendered in February 1922, India would have got the sort of cosmetic Independence Egypt got. Perhaps, the 'big-gun' Princes would have taken turns presiding over some sort of cobbled together Central Government, while, instead of dyarchy, there would have been rapid transition to Provincial autonomy. Indeed, Willingdon, as Governor of Madras, thought Madras was ready for it.

Gandhi made a silly excuse to break with the Muslims because he genuinely feared them. Hindus like him had a fatalistic belief in the superior martial spirit and cohesiveness of Islam. In 1939, just when War broke out, Gandhi wrote an article saying since Congress was a Hindu party and since Hindus are wedded to Ahimsa, if the Brits left without handing control of the Army to Congress, then the Punjabis and Muslims would overrun the country. It wasn't till it looked like the Japs would replace the Brits as the protector of the Hindus that Gandhi told the Brits to 'Quit India'. He changed his mind after the Japs started losing. But, he firmly believed that Hindus should appease Muslims as much as possible so that when they took over, they might prove merciful.  

If it jumped, was the prime agency of decolonisation situated in the metropolis, as some historians argue? In their view, Attlee’s Labour government chose to “transfer power” to independent nations from a Britain battered by war and mired in debt, thereby engineering a convenient “escape” from their Indian empire, while retaining, so it was hoped, informal influence over the region.

Mountbatten retained influence in New Delhi till Nehru's death in 1964. After that, he was of no further use to Number 10.  

Atlee could have off set the UK's debt to the subcontinent against British financial claims. As the debtor, London had the whip-hand. Still, the Indian affection for England appeared like infantile dependence. 

Others who insist that Britain was pushed, by contrast, are more attentive to local or “peripheral” forces and pressures:

Wavell, as Viceroy, was indeed defeatist. But, the fact is, Westminster was sick and tired of India. The hope was that the Indians could cobble together a Federal Government on the basis of the 1935 Act and Westminster's headache would end. The alternative, which Atlee was ruthless enough to contemplate, was to simply transfer power to whoever was around to take it- i.e. Princes and Provincial Premiers- and to evacuate the White population. 

Why did Gandhi- or, more to the point, his financial backers- surrender in 1922? The answer is obvious. Imperialism was dead but Nationalism was based on language and religion- with religion trumping language. This was shown by the fact that Greek speaking Muslims went to Turkey while Turkish speaking Christians were assigned to Greece. The partition of Ireland was a little more complicated because many Southern Protestants were loyal to the Republic. Still, the message for India was clear. If the Brits left precipitately, there was a risk of communal violence on the one hand and Chinese style War-Lordism on the other. 

Once the Indian industrialists did a deal with Manchester, there was no money on the table for intransigence in India- as Nehru bitterly complained. India was on the same trajectory as the Philippines with just a one year time lag. 

Joya, with typical Bengali bigotry and bombast, writes

In arriving at this historic decision (viz. Partition) there was a rare unanimity between Congress leaders: liberals, socialists, and the hard men of the Hindu right all backed the high command’s line.

Because Hindus and Sikhs refused to remain part of Provinces where Muslims were in the overall majority. In any case, there had been big population exchanges after both World Wars and nobody wanted any sizable 'Sudenten' type minorities within their borders.  

It also had the support of Hindu nationalists in Bengal – the largest Muslim majority province – who refused to be subjected to “Muslim tyranny”

Why the scare quotes? Hindus have actually been ethnically cleansed from East Bengal.  

and demanded a partition (ironically not dissimilar to Curzon’s partition of 1905)

no irony was involved. The 'buddhijivis' had previously thought they could dominate the Province. But they were as stupid as shit. They will be squeezed out of West Bengal sooner or later. 

that would give them a homeland of their own inside a divided India. 

The departing viceroy,

was Wavell. Mountbatten was sent in with a clear mission- get out within a year. He did it in half the time. Azad, who hated him, has to admit that this Jolly Jack Tar was a wiz at admin. He also understood the importance of ceremonial. Thus, he got the 'natural' (i.e. non-arbitrary) solution militated for by the 1946 election result- viz. Partition. Jinnah didn't have long to live and thus took the post of Governor General of the new State rather than throw a spanner in the works by backtracking. 

Mountbatten, lacked the vision or the will to resist a solution that offered Britain a quick exit from a desperate and dangerous situation.

Joya does not understand how the British Constitution works. Even the King, not to speak of Governors or Viceroys, have to do what the Cabinet- representing the Crown in Parliament- tells them to do. In the case of a soldier or sailor, the option of resigning so as to preserve one's popularity or reputation, would be considered dereliction of duty. Mountbatten had been given a shitty job. But he did it with aplomb and, later on, was careful to project himself as having shown leadership. Had he not done so, Atlee's policy would have been impugned. As things stand, Britain is not damaged if some handsome Aristocrat is blamed for vanity and ignorance and myopia etc. Indeed, Mountbatten showed his patriotism and sense of public service by taking credit for something rather discreditable about Atlee and the Labour party.   

With his particular mix of opportunism and vainglory,

This is nonsense. Mountbatten knew nothing about India. Atlee had been part of the Simon Commission and, in 1938, had shown Nehru Labour's plan for India which, as Nehru said, gave the INC 'everything it wanted'. The trouble was that the INC had shat the bed during the War. The Muslim League had not. Gandhi, with typical maladroitness, had made Jinnah his equal. The 1946 election result confirmed this outcome. Thus Mountbatten got Nehru the best deal he could get. Furthermore, Radcliffe was pressurised to draw the boundary in India's favour as even Hindu Bengali historians recognize. It is a different matter that Nehru and the INC were so utterly shite that by the end of Nehru's life, Pakistan, which was as poor but much smaller than India, thought it could defeat that country in battle and help itself to a Kashmir which Nehru would probably have surrendered had he lived.  

he persuaded London to accept the Congress demand for a limited partition,

London knew that the Indians hadn't objected to Buddhist Burma going its own way (incidentally, Hindu Manipur was given the option of joining Burma but chose India) and that Hindu Bengalis and Hindu and Sikh Punjabis preferred partition to living under Muslim majority rule. In other words, it was obvious that Religion would be the basis of post-colonial states in the sub-continent. Mountbatten was discreet enough not to mention religion and, later on, to make Jinnah the bad guy. He also shielded Atlee though I believe he was more vehement in this matter when there was a Labour Prime Minister at Number 10. But it is absurd to think that any Viceroy could act as a pro-Consul and implement his own policy in India.  

pushed it through, and presented it to India and the world as his own idea.

Mountbatten and Atlee both knew that the real danger lay in Provincial and Princely revolts against the 'barristocrats'. The sub-continent could have degenerated into Warlordism punctuated by Maoist peasant insurgencies. Instead, India and Pakistan became deeply boring shitholes administered by 'Macaulay's bastards' or else faux Sandhurst type military officers. 

Joya thinks Partition and the refugee problem had a big impact on India. This is foolish. The vast majority of Indians were Hindu and were wholly unaffected by the refugee problem. West Bengal would have turned to shit anyway because buddhijivis are as stupid as shit. East Punjab would have risen up, because Punjabis are sensible people- even if they have a PhD in Econ.  

For good and ill, 1947 ushered in large changes to “the everyday states” of the subcontinent. Partition profoundly shaped and marked citizenship in India and Pakistan, and later in Bangladesh.

It made no fucking difference to 95 percent of Hindus. The one change was that subjects of Princely States became British subjects on accession.  

It framed notions of belonging, and coloured attitudes towards government servants and the state itself.

Only a tiny percentage of Indians were refugees. Nothing changed as far as 'attitudes' to anything were concerned. 

As Gould, Sherman, and Ansari have pointed out, assumptions about the loyalty of officers and men were fundamentally altered by Partition

but the problem of disloyalty was more acute in 1946 than 1948. Once a Muslim had made his election, the matter was settled though, no doubt, in India, Muslim officers would never be put in charge of anything strategic or possibly controversial.  

everywhere in the subcontinent, even in its most remote district. Government workers who did not belong to the majority community were particularly vulnerable to charges of disloyalty and corruption, even as popular perceptions of corruption and partiality among bureaucrats grew more commonplace.

This had been true even twenty or thirty years previously. Morarji was forced out of the Provincial Civil Service because he was accused of partiality to Hindus in Godhra.  

What was novel was harassment by the Custodian of Evacuee Property.

The discourses of “corruption” and “anti corruption”, Gould notes, were “often used as a means of creating or consolidating social advantage”;

The discourse of corruption first made itself felt in my ancestral District back in the 1840's. By the 1890s there were plenty of pamphlets and posters accusing this official or that of corruption or being under the thumb of their wives or some other such nonsense. Sensible officials ignored this sort of thing because it would turn out that the thing had been written by the sixteen year old grand-nephew of your own Munim or Munshi. 

and in a context where flux and change intensified these struggles for advantage, the discourse of corruption undermined public faith in government itself.

Fuck off! Even in the time of Kautilya, Indians had zero faith in any type of government. 

It quickly led to a mood of disillusionment and put a dampener on the euphoria of freedom,

Malnourishment has that effect.  

a mood brilliantly captured in R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi novels.

What fucking Refugee problem did Mysore face? Anyway, Malgudi didn't change after Independence because Provincial Autonomy already existed when Narayan was first published. Compare 'Murugan the Tiller' with 'Swami'. There is no English umpire in the latter. For all practical purposes, the English had left or were a purely ornamental presence. One interesting aspect of British rule was that an Eighth Standard Pass, like VP Menon, could become Reform Commissioner purely on the basis of ability. Under Nehru, only the most brilliant Cambridge graduates got to fuck up the Economy. RK Narayan and Laxman understood this aspect of the comedy of elite Indian politics. Joya Chatterji does not. As an immigrant to this country, she feels her job is to teach the descendants of immigrants like herself that Whitey be Debil. It is outrageous that many White peeps are still refusing to at least emulate the zebra by painting black stripes on their skins. 

सावन की बून्दनियाँ

If we inherit, not Wine, but the Divine's urinary effluent

Thank Mum- her Merit merely Condign or Congruent

Not, slap-the-black-off-you, Strict

For, by Krishna, all are tricked

That what is seen is orthogonal to what is heard

Love is the arrow wounded by the Word

Yam's Divine niyam  so binds Memory

Yami yearns, as Wine, to be Free 

Envoi-

Shravan! balancing your parents on an ever lengthening beam,

Yourself the bridge over Death's murmuring stream.

Riposte- 

Ravan! Sorrow, as Symbiote of its but perfect Ekphrasis,

Is all Competency, Congruency & Cataphasis

Matam- 

That aught Positive in Law, Logic, or Divinity

Exists Necessarily by but its own Asininity

Properties are arbitrary- no ultrafilter

Isn't, to itself, totes out of kilter

Vigyan- 

Expressed in tait Khalistani, Lowehneim-Skolem

Can only state- no Canadian aint Golem.

Why Romila Thapar has such low status

The following is an excerpt, published in Scroll, from the always absurd Romila Thapar's new book 'the future is the past'.  

Women were equal to men in early Aryan culture.

i.e. the Vedic Age when female Rishis contributed to the Rg Veda. At that time, it was quite usual for men to give birth to babies. That's why men were the equal of women. Moreover, it was easy to change gender. 

It changed when they settled on Ganga plains

 Early cultures of all types had higher equality and lower social stratification, division of labour, gender inequality etc. All ancient peoples went through pretty much the same process of evolving from low fertility hunter gathering to higher fertility settled agriculture. Whether or not modern feminists thought the women in those societies were free or oppressed made no fucking difference to anything.  All that mattered was fertility and demographic replacement. 

As for 'Aryans' or 'Dravidians' or any other linguistic group- no doubt, they all had different sub-cultures with different fertility rates, but what won out, thanks to demographic replacement, was a regime where women worked hard at home while having babies like crazy. Whether they liked their husbands didn't matter. Indeed, it didn't even matter if their life expectancy was low. What mattered was that they bred like rabbits.

Romila, speaking of her Aryan ancestors, is merely affirming what is obvious- viz.  by the time any language group expanded into a different territory, it had greater social stratification and gender inequality. But the same could be said of heterogenous populations with a similar habitus. 

On the other hand, nomadic pastoralists could suddenly have a baby boom fuelling very rapid expansion and the propagation of particular X chromosome lineages- e.g the 'Genghis Khan gene'. But this didn't necessarily lead to linguistic replacement or any change in religion or habitus. 

The Brahmanical religious sects were strongly patriarchal

but this applied only to some priestly lineages which were small relative to the population. It appears that some areas in the North West had greater gender equality and sexual license than other areas. But this sort of variation was quite usual around the world at that time. Ancient writers were always describing the women of certain neighbouring regions as incredibly liberated and licentious. 

However, it is still the case that hereditary priestly or monastic lineages are patriarchal. The Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Grand Mufti or Ayatollah or Dalai Lama etc. can't be a woman. 

and were in confrontation with Shramanic sects mainly Buddhist and Jaina.

Which were and are highly patriarchal. A female Buddhist or Jain ascetic has to reborn as a male monk to attain Nirvana. Just as in Catholicism, even the highest female Abbess is inferior to the lowest ordained male. 

Since Thapars are Khattri, Romila  thinks Brahmins are bad and Kshatriyas are good. The Shraman religions were founded by Kshatriyas so they are very sweet and nice. But Kshatriyas are more patriarchal than other castes. Men do the fighting. Sons inherit from fathers. Daughters are used to build alliances. Indeed, they may be- as in Anglo Saxon times- 'peace-weavers'- i.e. if a guy from your clan kills a guy from another clan then our clan gives daughters to the other clan as compensation. 

Thus Kshatriya dominance is worse for women than priestly dominance. Sadly, India's Kshatriyas- including Romila's Uncle, General Prem Nath Thapar- were somewhat shit at fighting and so Hinduism declined. 

The Brahmanical sects gave little freedom to women in the form of personal choice and social activity.

The Kshatriyas gave even less. If a Brahmin lass chose to run off with someone from another caste, nobody greatly cared. Indeed, as Nehru pointed out, when Thapar was born, a Brahmin woman's marriage to a non-Brahmin was no marriage in law. She was simply a concubine or, alternatively, she was using the guy for sex.  But if a Princess eloped, she and her husband had to be killed because inheritance rights were at stake. 

Thapar is truly as stupid as shit. She is also very very fucking old. She lived in India. She must have seen with her own eyes that ladies from Royal or 'Thakur' or other such families had less freedom than Brahmin women. Consider the Rani of Jhansi. She was Brahmin. Which Rajput or other Kshatriya Princess personally led troops in battle? None at all. There were Princesses who ruled Kingdoms and expanded the patrimony of their sons- e.g. the Guleri Rani mentioned by Spivak- but these women kept purdah and their names remained unknown to wider history.  

The code of social behaviour as set out in the Dharmashastras and enjoined on Hindu society

enjoined only on Brahmins- that too notionally. Every other caste kept its traditional customs. Had Thapar studied Law, she would have known that, in India, female autonomy was inversely related to ritual status. But this was also true in England. Aristocratic ladies had less chance of going to University than girls from the middle class. 

made it clear that women had virtually no freedom as they were to be controlled by their father, husband, and son, in the three phases of their life as daughter, wife, and mother.

They had no inheritance rights except to 'sthridhan'. But if they decided to set up in business for themselves or marry into some other community, they were free to do so.  

The Shramana sects were much more liberal in the freedom they allowed women.

Because they were mainly recruited from the Brahmin caste. Kshatriya females who became Shramanas gained no extra freedom. Indeed, Lord Buddha stipulated that they could only be admitted to the Sangha if their families agreed. Kshatriyas had less freedom because of greater possibility of conflict over heritable claims to territory. 

There was an initial controversy about whether women could become nuns. But soon after, this was allowed, although permission from the husband was required of married women. Shramana texts present a picture of women being active in social life.

While the Vedas have female Rishis who were equal to men. There is also a lady who renowned for affluence and generosity. An impecunious poet asks Night to convey the message that if she marries him then (since wife and husband are equal) he would gain great religious merit! This is the Bollywood theme of poor boy wanting to marry the rich girl given a religious justification. Romila, being a stupid Khatri woman unversed in the Vedas, would have no idea which chapter of the Rg Veda this episode features in. 

 Shramana Religions assert the absolute superiority of male preceptors though, just recently, some Jains recognize one particular female Acharya. On the other hand, some Shvetambara sects did recognise a female Tirthankar but her story underlines my point. Kshatriya women had less freedom. They were pawns in a game of arranged 'peace-weaving' marriages where they weren't simply breeding stock.

In the Hindu case there is a curious contradiction where the woman has little freedom as she has to observe Shastric norms,

unless she doesn't want to in which case she is welcome to get rich and just give the Brahmins a little money from time to time in return for some ceremonial and astrological services. 

Hindu wives were always permitted to worship their own kula and ishtadeva. They were  welcome to adopt Shramana or Bhakti or any other sort of belief. If they gained wealth and influence, no doubt they might be pestered a little to build a temple or whatever. But, as the Vyadha Gita reveals, they were welcome to tell any fucking Rishi or Sadhu or whatever to go fuck himself. Don't come round here with your begging bowl or I'll set the dogs on you. If this happens- just as when some mad fellow beats you and urinates on your head- it is de rigueur to claim that the Supreme Lord, Himself, had taken the form of that rude housewife or drunken ruffian so as to open your eyes to the illusory nature of the phenomenal Universe. 

nevertheless the same society observes an intense and almost desperate worship of the female goddess.

your worship can be as intense as you like. But there is nothing desperate about it at all. Only if you are literally starving or getting repeatedly fucked in the ass by all and sundry might your worship become 'desperate'. But, in that case, you very quickly give up any type of worship. Beat people and they will feed you rather than fuck you in the ass incessantly. Violence is the best type of worship if you are desperate to stop being pestered or slowly starved by a dilatory type of cook or waiter.

God knows what it is Thapar so desperately worships. All we can say is that this stupid Khattri lass is bigoted against Brahmins. But it wasn't Brahmins who chased her people out of their ancestral homes in Lahore, was it? Still, as a Khattri woman we can't expect too much from her.  After all, bigotry is a type of loyalty.  

The deity is all powerful and is adorned by all the symbols of power. The worshipper is abject in his worship of her.

This cretin is abjectly repeating stupid anti-Brahmin lies.  

Yet this is not referred to as a matrilineal society

There were matrilocal societies- e.g. Kerala- but this had nothing to do with the gender of the Deity. It is simply a fact that women were never the equal of men in India. A particular widow or daughter might exercise power as a Regent, so to speak, but, as with the rest of the world, there was no fucking gender equality. Sonia didn't exactly bitch slap Rajiv. Priyanka, it must be said, is the last word in loyalty to the elder brother. What's not to like about this ultra-Aryan dynasty- save that the heir by primogeniture is a fucking moon-calf? 

but one that is asserting patriarchy.

Fuck is Thapar asserting? That Buddha had a vagina?  

In subsequent history there are variations in degrees of freedom for women.

If women had greater freedom they had lower fertility and thus contributed less to the subsequent gene-pool.  

But despite some concessions in special cases the essentials of matriarchy did not exist.

Anywhere. The Amazons were a myth. Gender dimorphism prevailed. It may be that, as fertility rates for 'liberated women' collapse around the world, there will be de facto demographic replacement by pious patriarchal 'handmaids'. 

The governance and administration of a political entity was not in the hands of women although occasionally women did succeed to the throne, with hesitant control.

This was true all over the fucking world! Why is Thapar mentioning it? There were no Brahmins or Aryans in the Aztec Empire. Yet there was no gender equality there. Women stayed at home and made tortillas. By contrast, Buddhist women in Africa were setting up Merchant Banks when not exploring the Galaxy in Rocket Ships. This is because there were no Brahmins around to ruin things for them. 

Lineages recording power going through matrilineal descent were rare.

Because Mummies who were good at looking after babies, tended to be shit at killing people or conquering territory. 

The history of certain Upanishadic teachers identified by their mother’s name was known but not common.

like whom? Krishna Devaki-putra?  

Such markers of identities were not the norm.

They may have been. We have no means of knowing. It is likely that widows managed property or were heads of households and the sons of such women would be known by a matronymic. 

Women do occasionally comment on the morality of ascetics

especially if those ascetics keep jizzing on them 

but moral authority was rarely in the purview of women.

Mummies had no moral authority back then probably because Buddhist ascetics kept jizzing on them- right? 

Property was equally rarely owned solely by women.

unless they were whores who charged for being jizzed upon 

However some did have a minimal ownership of property because they are known to have made donations to religious institutions, as for example in the construction of stupas.

Just as some women are known to have donated money for the construction of Temples, Churches, Mosques etc.  

In medieval times royal women or wives of the wealthy donated wealth to temples and some religious buildings. This was charity and not strictly a secular ownership of property. The women had no control over the use that this wealth was put to.

Men making donations would have been in a similar position. 

Women at the two ends of the social spectrum possibly had a freer life,

No. Those at the bottom had more freedom because no inheritance issue was involved no matter what they got up to.  

but for different reasons. Those of the elite were symbols of status where freedom was in any case more for effect than for actual function. Those at the very lowest occupation where they either laboured themselves or assisted their husbands in their work, such women were also relatively more free except when the mores of the upper castes reached down and their freedom was curtailed. For example, what did rules such as forbidding women to touch the plough or the wheel of the potter do to their self-esteem?

They were also forbidden to grab the dicks of ascetics.  

Women laboured in various occupations but had no control over the result of the labour.

Only to the same extent as male laborers. Nowadays, on the other hand, a male working on the assembly line of a car factory gets to decide who should buy the car in question whereas his female colleagues have no such right.  

It was the women of the middle castes who loyally followed the rules laid down for all women.

Only if the men of the middle castes were loyally following that shite.  

It is thought by some that there was a time, many centuries back, when matrilineal societies were the accepted initial social pattern in the Indian subcontinent.

India had matrilineal or matrilocal groups in certain places or certain occupational niches. This was independent of ethnicity or religion. But, it didn't matter very much one way or another.  

This was in the days before the coming of the Aryans who brought with them a patriarchal culture.

Is this woman utterly senile? I suppose so. What she is saying is 'non-Aryans were too stupid to understand that the guy who habitually jizzed in their Mummy's vagina was actually their Daddy.'

Vestiges of the matrilineal system have remained and are met with more frequently in peninsular India or the Northeast, where the impact of Aryan culture is thought to have been less.

The impact of 'Aryan culture' was even less on Semitic countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan- where, by law, a woman can't leave her house without the permission of her father, husband or other male guardian.  

Initially, the arrival of the Aryans soon after 1500 bc perpetuated the system of clan societies in northern India.

Though every part of the world had 'clan societies' back then.  

Despite the patriarchal form, the fact that the clans were nomadic pastoralist, moving from place to place with their herds of cattle ensured an equal status for women as is suggested in the early hymns of the Rig Veda.

Fuck off! Pastoralists don't give equal status to women. They are less valuable than cattle and may be bought and sold for less than a particularly good heifer or bull or whatever.  

But as the Aryans moved into the Ganga plain, cleared the forests, settled in village communities and changed from being pastoralists to agriculturalists, the patriarchal element was asserted.

This stupid, senile, fool doesn't get that there was an expansion of agriculturalists separate from the expansion of pastoralists. The former traded grain for milk and meat with the latter. It is likely that the languages of the latter prevailed thus creating Aryan, Dravidian and other such linguistic groups.  

The unit of Aryan society was now the patriarchal family,

Just as it was the unit of Dravidian or other types of society.  

with authority invested in the eldest male, and lineage being traced through the males in the family.

Unless, like Rajiv & Rahul, it is more prestigious to trace that lineage through the maternal side of the family. By contrast, Jinnah's descendants in India, trace their descent through their male, Parsi, ancestors who were as rich as fuck. Since they too are as rich as fuck, there is no problem in their being accepted as Zorastrians, just as Rahul is accepted as a janeodhari, Dattatreya gotra, Brahmin.   

Incidentally, when Indira married Feroze, some Parsis pointed out that she had become his concubine. Obviously, the reverse was the case. Feroze was just a supplier of sperm which is why, at a later point, various Hindu, female, politicians raped the fat cunt. 

This was coupled with the fact that property was inherited by the sons and not the daughters. The increase in the status of the male led to a proportionate decline in the status of the female.

No. What led to the decline in the status of females is that they were shit at fighting but good at making and nursing babies. If you see the same phenomenon all over the world, then the explanation for it can have nothing to do with the mores of a particular ethnicity. It is simply a fact that male domination was better at demographic replacement. Women who are baby-making machines outbreed and thus replace women who have just one or two kids.  

First Divisions

The Aryan distancing from existing social norms is clear from the initial division between Aryan and non-Aryan.

Every linguistic group makes such a division.  

A carefully formulated theory of dividing society into castes followed.

But this type of division was found all over the world.  

The Aryans were included among the twice-born castes

unless they weren't.  

and the non-Aryans were the Shudras and, later, some were the untouchables.

Again, this pattern can be found all over the world. The fact is, there is an 'Aryan' untouchable caste in Tamil Nadu just as there is an Indian origin ethnicity of the lowest possible status in Eastern Europe at the present day.  

Such a total refusal to allow for assimilation, albeit theoretical, prevented the possibility of the earlier kinship system modifying Aryan patriarchal society.

Unless that is precisely what happened. Look at the 'sambandham' system in Kerala.  

In the working out of the social and legal framework, Aryan orthodoxy supported the privileged position of the male.

Unless it didn't- as in Kerala. Still, wherever women were shit at fighting either their status was lower or else there was demographic replacement of the community which awarded higher status to females. 

Aryan orthodoxy did not however dominate every level of society. It had its effective following amongst those who were grouped in the three upper castes. The Shudras and the outcastes were outside the social pale and evolved their own norms of social behaviour, in spite of the fact that they formed a larger percentage of the total population than any of the other castes.

Those 'outside the social pale' are the guys who are shit at fighting. If, like the Nairs in Kerala, they are good at fighting, they impose their own norms on Society.

In addition, they also formed, from an early period, the majority of the pastoralists and peasants. Shudra society would have retained far more of the pre-Aryan tradition than upper-caste society. This accounts in part for the fact that women in peasant society have a better status within their own society than the women of upper-caste society, both in the rural areas and in towns.

Poor Romila! Because she was Aryan- that too Hindu, not Buddhist- she had very low status. That's why she had to become a Professor of stupid shite. Dalit ladies- like Mayawati- are laughing at her. This is very sad. Khattri girls should convert to Islam and emigrate. Otherwise they too may be forced to teach worthless shite.  

Tyler Cowen wrong on Externalities

Externalities are benefits received or damages inflicted outside the market.  They exist even if no market exists. There may be a legal framework or customary conflict resolution mechanism such that 'torts'- i.e. harmful actions by another- or benefits received from another but not properly reciprocated- give rise to some sort of sanction or mandatory transfer of assets. 

Equally, when exchanges occur on the basis of presumed reciprocity or equity, one party who feels aggrieved that the other gained much more benefit may be able to gain compensation. Since, in Life, most 'contracts'- other than open market transactions- are 'incomplete', even the stupidest Economist now understands that 'relationships'- which is what you actually end up having with those you only wanted sexual relations with- are what actually binds our Lebenswelts together such that such a thing as Society exists.

Open markets- i.e. one's where no one has 'market power'; everybody is a 'price taker'- are situations where you can't complain that the seller gained more than you, the buyer, because the seller could have been anybody and the buyer could have been anybody. There is no real 'relationship'. There is only a transaction. But, though 'transactions' have burgeoned- I buy and sell a lot of goods and services off the internet now whereas, though I was richer forty years ago, most of my significant transactions were relationship based. That's why I used to talk with a posh accent back then and took some little trouble not to look like a big fat loser of a slob.

Tyler Cowen doesn't get this- essentially 'Old World' Oikumene aspect of the notion of externality. This is because, as Ronald Coase pointed out, Americans also don't understand the global nature of the concept of opportunity cost.

Thus Cowen writes-

Externalities occur when one person's actions affect another person's well-being and the relevant costs and benefits are not reflected in market prices.

Relevant costs and benefits are never reflected in market prices because Knightian Uncertainty is pervasive. If it weren't, we would never have evolved into Language speakers. An Arrow Debreu world is one where all possible future states of the world are known and agents are either in a Leibnizian Occasionalist monads synchronised  in a pre-established harmony, or else the elementary particles of the ultimate Grand Unified Theory whose 'atomic propositions' have the property of 'carving up the world along its joints'.

This is Theology. Americans may be better Christians, or Taoists, or Hindus than yours truly, but they don't get that a non-dissipative Economia- or Artha Shastra- must concern itself exclusively with what is Secular about Relationships- that is Society- not Theological or Teleological. 

A positive externality arises when my neighbors benefit from my cleaning up my yard.

This may be reflected in market prices if there are restrictive covenants or else well enforced local by-laws. People may pay more to live in such areas. 

If I cannot charge them for these benefits,

They may be entitled to them. That is a justiciable matter. The law may say that your neighbour has a legal right to enjoying a salubrious neighbourhood. Your backyard is not salubrious. The Court forces you to clean it up. Suppose your neighbour does not bother to complain about your dirty backyard. Then you have a situation analogous to petty theft. The neighbour has been deprived of something illegally but can't be bothered to go to law over the matter.

Contract enforcement is a service which costs money. No externality is involved if you choose not to pay for that service. This is not an externality because if the cost of gaining redressal was low enough, people would avail of that service. 

I will not clean the yard as often as they would like.

It is a separate matter that other people may want me to change my behaviour but are unable to do so because I have a Hohfeldian immunity in that respect. But they can offer me money to do what they want me to do. There is no externality here.  

(Note that the free-rider problem and positive externalities are two sides of the same coin.)

Not if there are Hohfledian entitlements which are not being asserted because it is too costly to do so. In that case, there is no externality though there may be a case for finding ways to lower the cost involved.  

A negative externality arises when one person's actions harm another.

Not if that harm is done through the market. I am harmed if a guy who owns a dog moves in next door because I have a deathly fear of dogs. But the law permits him to own a dog. Indeed, most people like dogs and become friendly to the neighbour dogs or cats. This is a case of bad luck, not market failure. I suppose I could move to a place where no pets are allowed. There may be a premium on such properties.  

When polluting, factory owners may not consider the costs that pollution imposes on others.

Just as thieves may not consider the costs that theft imposes on the victims of robbery. Either you have bought the right to pollute- which may involve paying a premium or moving to a place which is already extremely shitty- or else what you are doing is analogous to theft.  

Policy debates usually focus on free-rider and externalities problems, which are considered more serious problems than nonrivalrous consumption.

This is because policy debates are stupid. Courts, as well as Legislatures, can create remedies and public policy can lower the cost of making those remedies cheaper and more accessible Sadly, such interventions may be counterproductive. 

The notion of externality becomes empty if any and every thing you don't like is described as a negative externality. The fact is, if a market for a remedy to the nuisance you are complaining of exists, then the problem is that its price is too high or your real income is too low, or you simply can't be arsed to get the remedy because you enjoy complaining about it. 

Consider the notion of a 'pecuniary externality' which is merely the Slutsky 'Income effect' of a price change. But if substitutability is high then this should not matter. If wheat becomes more expensive but potatoes remain at the same price, then people aren't really any worse off. Being flexible in these matters is itself a good thing. 

Cowen writes- 

Economists try to make a distinction between pecuniary externalities — changes in price which merely redistribute wealth

in the short term when demand is inelastic- sure. But medium to long-term, demand is elastic because substitutes become available or relatively attractive. So the 'economic rent' accruing to the producer vanishes. 

If people are changing their behaviour on the basis of price changes, that is actually a good thing. The question of the illicit use of market power, however, is a separate matter. 

— and non-pecuniary externalities, which involve a real good or service being provided or denied at the margin. If the price of wheat rises, wheat consumers suffer a pecuniary externality.

No. There is no external effect. There is merely an 'Income effect' which, however, disappears as people switch to potatoes or rice etc. They may come to prefer their new staple foodstuff.  

If you dump garbage on my lawn,

you have committed a crime. 

that's a non-pecuniary externality,

No. It is a crime. Similarly, if you are sodomized and decapitated by a maniac you have not suffered a non-pecuniary externality. You have been the victim of a horrible crime.  

although it may be accompanied by a pecuniary externality, namely a decline in the value of the house. In the meantime, the lawn stinks.

Which won't matter to you if your neighbour has sodomized and decapitated you.  

The distinction is often a tricky one, especially in the absence of perfect markets.

It is utterly foolish. 

A lot of the complaints about health care markets are actually complaints about pecuniary externalities, namely that some people get priced out of the market

No. These are complaints about market power more particularly where the marginal cost is low. Being priced out of a market doesn't matter if there is a good enough substitute. I might whine about not being able to attend the Opera, but watching it on TV is good enough for my purposes. 

. Alternatively, the risk of facing high prices for cancer treatment may

as opposed the risk of dying of cancer 

make people nervous and insecure. The notion of "risk"

relates to possible states of the world. 

often bundles together pecuniary and non-pecuniary externalities in a not-too-easy-to-separate form.

There is no externality here. Either cancer treatment is being provided by the market, in which case it is rationed by price; or, it is provided by the State, in which case it is rationed in some other way.  

Efficiency and distribution are not always possible to separate, no matter what the first and second welfare theorems seem to imply.

Pareto efficiency depends on information availability and the cost of transactions. The internet has increased the one and reduced the other. That's why I can sell stuff I no longer use and buy stuff some other guy half way around the world wants to get rid off. Distribution depends on mobility which determines elasticity. If you have perfect substitutes, nobody can extract rent from you. The message here is simple. Encourage things which 

1) improve information availablity

2) lower transactions costs 

3) increase elasticity of supply and demand thus eliminating 'rent extaction' or 'Marxian exploitation'. 

Babbling about 'externalities' is fine provided you are finding Coasian 'mechanism design' type solutions. But that's not what Cowen is doing. 

What about people near subsistence? Say you redistribute $500 from a poor Haitian

Try it, and she will kick your head in. Haitians threw out the French. They are not weak or cowardly. 

to a somewhat less poor Mexican, and the Haitian dies and the Mexican buys a used motorbike. Is that "just a transfer"?

No. It is theft. But the Haitians will track you down and kill you or, at the very least, set Baron Samedi on your trail.  

Or is it "a real resource loss"? I say it's the latter, but then virtually any redistribution will destroy some complementary value from the portfolio of the individual losing the money. What is then left to count as a pure transfer?

A pure transfer is the poor Haitian gratuitously sending money to the Mexican- perhaps for an altruistic reason.

There is also no such thing as a pure lump-sum transfer when population is endogenous, either through child-bearing decisions or through taking risks with one's life.

Nonsense! Anybody is welcome to make a pure lump-sum transfer to anybody else.  

The distinction between pecuniary and non-pecuniary externalities is useful,

only if you also like talking about your experience of being beaten and sodomized as a 'negative externality' you received.  

and hard to do without, but its foundations are shaky. In practical terms the weakness of the foundations matters most when we are doing health care economics or analyzing food subsidies (or comparable forms of aid) in poor countries.

In other words, this shite is only used by people paid a little money to say 'other-people's-money' is being appropriately wasted by some bunch of bureaucratic shitheads.  

The richer and healthier the people are, the more likely the distinction can be invoked without much trouble.

Because talking stupid shite doesn't affect rich, healthy, people. 

And Samson is correct to think that large numbers of transactions involve pecuniary externalities,

only if 'market power' exists. Where everybody is a 'price taker' there are no externalities though, in the short run, there may be 'income effects' because of low mobility/ elasticity. BTW a free-rider is, by definition, not a 'price taker'. Some additional mechanism may be needed to ensure that he is. Thus, a Cinema may employ people to check that customers have tickets. This stuff aint rocket science.  

at least whenever the particular actions of a buyer or seller influence market price.

In which case there is 'market power' and thus comes under the rubric of competition policy. The Coase Posner Law & Econ tradition can take account of external effects while a 'deontological'- i.e. rule based- competition policy may treat any instance of 'market power' as prima facie illegal. 

Tyler Cowen wrong on congestion charges

A NIMBY- i.e. one who says 'not in my backyard'- wants higher economic growth for the economy but doesn't want the negative 'external effects' associated with higher growth to show their ugly face in his own neighbourhood. This isn't irrational. It is an example of rational self-interest. 

If everybody is a NIMBY, then, in a large enough, democratic, market economy with good factor mobility, there will be something like 'Tiebout sorting'. Some areas will have a regulatory environment/local authority fiscal mix, and level of economic activity (this is called a 'Tiebout model') which appeals to wealthy enough, or non-materialistic enough, NIMBYs and everybody else puts up with growth in the hope of getting rich enough to retire to NIMBY-land. 

Tyler Cowan invites us to consider the case of the YIMBY- i.e.  someone who says 'Yes in my backyard! I want higher population density/ hostels for paroled paedophiles/Nuclear reactors etc. in my neighbourhood.' 

Such people don't exist. It is a different matter that we may trade off greater congestion or other nuisances in return for money or sex or some ideological or moral gratification.  But, ceteris paribus, everybody is NIMBY, not YIMBY just as everybody is for sending bad guys to jail unless that bad guy happens to be their own beloved son. 

Cowan writes on his blog- 

Ask a YIMBY person: “What about the extra traffic from all those new people moving in?

New people moving in, as opposed to commuting in, would reduce road congestion. Property taxes would rise as would revenues for Club Good providers which would mean more investment and thus quality improvement over the medium to long term. If people are moving out, rather than moving in, infrastructure provision is bound to decline sooner or later. 

Won’t the ambulance arrival times be slower?

They would be slower if more were passing through rather than moving in. It might be less if those moving in are more productive than average which means more ambulance crews paid for through higher property taxes.  

Won’t the air pollution be worse?

Not necessarily. Places which get richer by doing smarter things have the resources to improve air quality.  

Won’t….?” and you will get a reassuring answer that a) yes there will be some problems but they can be managed by other means,

a locality which is good at 'managing by other means' is one which will attract better quality migrants which means more tax revenue. 

and b) the external benefits of new arrivals will outweigh those problems.

A locality with some control over regulations and fiscal-mix is a Tiebout model. People moving in are buying a set of services from the Local Authority. Thus, no Cost or Benefit is being received outside the market. Thus no 'externality' is involved.

Fair enough.

But then ask that same YIMBY person: “What about the extra traffic coming from all these out-of-NYC visitors?” …and you will get a very different answer. “Tax them!”

Because they don't pay local taxes. They are free-riders. Also, a tax is a screening device such that those gaining little 'consumer surplus' are deterred. High value adding transactions don't fall because the tax is trifling relative to the consumer or producer 'surplus'. Also there is a 'signalling' aspect. Putting in congestion charges suggests that the locality is serious about improving quality of life. At the margin, this can affect quality of 'entry'. 

So the basic view, at current margins, is “residents good, visitors bad.”

No. The view is 'paying customers are good. Free-riders are bad.'  

Maybe! But, to follow up on the recent debate, that differential treatment is never justified.

Paying customers should be treated better than free-riders.  

What if a guy starts visiting a girlfriend in the East Village — by car — for one night every two weeks?

Charge him by all means. If he values the girl he will pay otherwise he'll choose a slut in a cheaper neighbourhood. This may actually be good for the girl.  

Then he is a visitor to be taxed. Say the relationship goes well, he is there 2/3 of the time, and he rents a space for his car

in which case, some of that rental expense goes to the local authority. This is not an externality. The thing is reflected in a market transaction.  

in her apartment building garage and uses it periodically. Is he then “a resident”? Are his per hour externalities for the world then suddenly so much more positive? (Does he stop spitting on the sidewalk?)

If he is paying rent, he is contributing, albeit indirectly, to the property tax take.  Some of that money may be used to curb nuisances. 

Again, maybe, but you can see the a priorism embedded in the standard “YIMBY plus congestion tax” mix of proposals. Somehow the differential views on residents and visitors do not need to be justified.

Because residents are not visitors. Residents either pay property tax or local income tax or 'rates' or 'community charge' or something of that sort or else their landlord does. Some visitors may be contributing to property taxes levied on local retail and other such enterprises dependent on the tourist trade. But, ceteris paribus, it is better to get high value adding residents rather than scraping the bottom of the tourist barrel. 

If you wish, think of the cars issue in terms of quantity allocation. There is only so much space for cars in lower Manhattan. How much of that space do you wish to allocate to residents with cars or to visitors with cars? (This question can hold whether you are doing the allocating with prices, with planning, or by some other method.)

Residents want to park close to home. The market for resident parking permits has a political component. Residents have votes. The profit maximizing solution is pre-empted. Local authority parking meter market faces competition from private car-parks. There is also the cost of collection to be factored in. A congestion charge is a different matter. The monopolist can do price discrimination to a greater degree and thus extract more surplus. The actual allocation between residents and visitors will change but, what's important, is that the revenue will be predictable. That's what matters for the Local Authority. More stable, predictable, revenue means better budgeting. 

If you favor YIMBY plus a congestion tax, in essence you think resident car use is better than visitor car use.

Which is rational. If you are a resident, you favour residents. If you are a visitor, you feel that residents should lick your boots and offer you the virginity of their nubile daughters. 

But how do you know that? Repeating to me on Twitter that pollution is bad, traffic in NYC is too slow, externalities are present, and so on is a non sequitur that does not address the question.

There is an uncorrelated asymmetry here. If you are a Resident, your 'bourgeois strategy' is to favour Residents. If only residents have votes in local elections, sooner or later. they will prevail.  

Alternatively, you might think visitor car use is better at the margin.

If you are a fucking tourist trap incessantly lowering standards, sure.  

Then you might place bigger taxes on cars garaged in lower Manhattan,

because Wall Street isn't generating tax revenue. It's the out-of-towners who keep the City solvent by buying hot-dogs and pretzels  

and lower the tolls on the George Washington Bridge.

Why not pay visitors to come buy a hotdog in your fair city?  

I don’t see a good a priori case against the visitors. Maybe there are diminishing returns to being exposed to the genius of NYC,

There is a 'Pareto Law' at work here. A congestion charge or a change in transport policy won't destroy the advantage of the biggest City. However, if the City goes off a fiscal cliff, it may experience self-segregation and fewer of its people will be exposed to 'genius' as opposed to muggers. 

and at the margin we want to encourage the dad who drives from Westchester County with his 15 year old son to see a concert at the Village Vanguard, to get the kid excited about the saxophone.

Why not get him excited about fentanyl?

Or maybe there are increasing returns to being exposed to the genius of NYC (you have to soak up book wisdom at the Strand for twenty years running), which would then cut the other way.

People who excel at the saxophone or in 'book wisdom' are bound to end up in NYC or some other such great City. 

We do observe a lot of people living in NYC for a few years when they are younger, and then leaving for saner pastures.

We also see a lot of young people working in second tier Cities before finally getting the big promotion to Head Office in NYC. 

But they move there to be moved and inspired for a while.

Or they move there after they have become famous but their inspiration has run out.  

That suggests there is some temporary nature to the net benefits from the exposure to NYC.

Individuals get old and die. Everything is temporary for them. But, centres of excellence may remain so from generation to generation. What matters is fiscal solvency and military security.  

We also see more generally, for political economy reasons, that status quo urban policies tend to favor residents and punish visitors to an undue degree.

Not necessarily. It depends on what those urban policies were to start off with. It is possible they favoured visitors and so 'residents' tended to move out only to be replaced by a transient population.  

And, if we stick with the pro-YIMBY intuitions and reallocate more road resources toward residents, do we not have to worry about the traffic, noise, and congestion from the required extra construction?

YIMBYs may like 'extra construction' because it confirms them in their belief that they will be richer by and by. But traffic and noise can certainly be curbed.  

These arguments don’t prove any conclusion, but they do suggest there should not be an a priori bias against reallocating some traffic space away from residents and toward visitors.

It is perfectly proper for people to be biased in their own favour. Milking visitors is what townsfolk have done since the time of Hammurabi.  

The point here is to have consistent views across YIMBY and a congestion tax.

YIMBYism is only consistent with utility maximization if the expected value of the gain in Wealth compensates for present disutility.  A person m-otivated by ideology or other non-economic considerations is unlikely to display consistent behaviour. Indeed, the fellow may be a hypocrite or virtue signaler. It doesn't matter what nonsense we utter when we are lying or talking merely for the sake of creating an effect.

And if you think we should reallocate vehicle space more toward residents and away from visitors, please make a comparative argument to that effect.

Residents have the advantage in filling up local 'vehicle space'. Parking meters and pricey 'resident parking permits' (which charge more for a second or environmentally less friendly car) constrain the amount of 'vehicle space' residents can take up. Venues frequented by visitors are welcome to pay for parking for their customers. Mass transit systems can increase profits by providing underground or other such parking facilities at specific 'loop' locations. The fact that there are two types of customer militates for price or product differentiation. 

Repeating observations about crowding and externalities is not an argument on either of these questions.

Arguments don't matter. Money talks. Bullshit walks. There is a 'bourgeois strategy' here. It favours high value adding residents. It takes a dim view of 'trippers'. On the other hand, great Cities have always been associated with 'Zip Code' segregation. The servant class can't be too far away from the Bosses' mansions. The aspirational and the criminal and the refugee will get stitched into this patchwork. But, fucking over the out-of-towners one way or another is what the City has always been about. 

Addendum: For an extra point, “throughput” and “demand” are not the same.

Effective demand can find a way to sway the decision making process such that uncorrelated asymmetries and bourgeois strategies prevail. Sadly, academic economists and other such shitheads can prevent this happening and thus do much to reduce our quality of life.

I’ve been seeing this error frequently. Congestion pricing may well increase throughput, which is how many users get through a road or some other chokepoint in a discrete period of time, say an hour.

But effective demand is a function of expected journey time which is a function of throughput.  It is obvious that the big selling point of congestion charges for voters is that some of them will get lower opportunity cost of daily travel. 

It is much harder for congestion pricing to increase overall demand.

No. Poorer people will take cross-town buses to get to jobs which previously they could not take because traffic congestion meant round-trip travel time of three or four hours. The same is true for salesmen and entrepreneurs who have to factor in travel time. Less traffic means a delivery service can cater to a wider area.  

For instance, at a zero explicit price the ride takes much longer but overall more people will travel through than if you charge them $20 to do the trip.

We don't know that. If you get paid to sit in traffic, fuck you care about throughput? The guys who pay for people to sit in traffic, however, have an incentive to increase throughput. But this means that more people who don't get paid to sit in traffic are zipping along the roads the way God, or Henry Ford, intended. 

Currently, bus users in Karnataka are facing much longer journey times because women, who have recently been granted free travel, are filling up the buses and going sight-seeing. But this means the number of people using buses will decline because women with nothing else to do are spending their day hopping from bus to bus.  

That said, the $20 price may well increase throughput, but if it decreases demand there is still an opportunity cost from the policy.

There is an opportunity cost to everything that costs money to somebody or other. In Karnataka, the opportunity cost of gangs of elderly women sightseeing on buses is the fact that some workers may well quit commuting and return to subsistence farming. 

Don’t use the possibility of higher throughput to argue the congestion toll does not have costs for many of the visitors (of course some visitors will gain due to heterogeneity effects).

Visitors are heterogenous. Where there is a social cost of a journey higher than the price paid, it is perfectly rational to impose a Pigouvian tax. This does not mean that meritorious travel can't be separately subsidized. 

NYC does indeed have wonderful galleries and concerts and so forth. Why not make them free so that homeless people can spend their days there? True, this may deter connoisseurs of the Arts. Fathers may not be too keen to take their 15 year olds to such places so that they can experience the delights of being stabbed or sodomized. 

On the other hand,  wonderful Artistic and Intellectual venues, which charge money to deter people with little interest in what they purvey, can subsidize access for those who have the ability to appreciate their product but who currently lack the means to pay. 

Local businesses which benefit from serving wealthy connoisseurs pay taxes to the City. Some of that money can be spent on the homeless and others who lack recreational opportunities more suited to their needs. 

Fukuyama's incontinent discontent

Francis Fukuyama writes in 'Liberalism and its Discontents'- 

Human beings are not free-floating agents capable of reshaping themselves in any way they choose;

This is meaningless. We may conceive of ourselves in any way we like and we can speak of reshaping ourselves in the manner we choose. I am at liberty to describe myself as the Galactic incarnation of the Giant Spaghetti monster. I am currently reshaping myself into Beyonce- but with a moustache and a thick Tamil accent. 

this only happens in online virtual worlds.

Only if we choose for it to happen. But, there were off-line virtual worlds- e.g. Dungeons & Dragons- before there was the internet or virtual reality.  One may think of World Religions- like Catholicism or Buddhism or Islam- as a virtual reality which, for believers, is more real than this second rate planet our species will but briefly inhabit. 

We are limited in the first instance by our physical bodies.

No. We are limited by technology and access to resources and the fact that people at cocktail parties run away when they see us approach.  

Technology has done a lot to free people from the constraints imposed by their physical natures.

Science and Technology has greatly advanced precisely because some human beings act like 'free floating agents' such that a doctrine and a praxis can arise which actually reshapes lives in, first an incremental, then an exponential fashion.  

It has liberated people from backbreaking physical labor,

Nope. There's still plenty of that around which is why God created immigrants. 

vastly increased life spans,

No. But that may be about to change. 

overcome many forms of disease and disability, and multiplied the experiences and information that each one of us is able to process.

What made this possible? The answer is that human beings can act like 'free floating' agents, unhampered by their 'facticity' and that the doctrine and practice of some such agents have enabled the complete transformation of the planet and the life-worlds of its dominant species.  

Some techno-libertarians imagine a future in which we could each become a completely disembodied consciousness that can be uploaded into a computer, allowing us to in effect live forever.

Just as some alchemists imagined a future where they would themselves drink the elixir of immortality while industriously transforming lead into gold. They may have failed, but they did help advance Chemistry as a highly utile Science.  

Our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by screens that allow us to easily imagine ourselves in alternative realities or as alternative beings.]

Listening to boring lectures has always had that effect. Many years ago, I taught Economics. My female students slept peacefully. The males were immediately plunged into alternative realities of a Jungian type where they had splendid adventures and were led to metanoiac wisdom by their own, otherwise fractious, anima.  

The real world, however, continues to be different:

Fuck would Fukuyama know about the real world? He's a pedant of some especially useless sort. 

wills are embedded in physical bodies

This guy has never heard of Wills as Last Testaments. They can create a Trust which gives effect to the testator's will long after his corpse has turned to dust.  

that structure and also limit the extent of individual agency.

Nonsense! Any day now, my farts will become powerful enough to propel me into outer space.  

It is not clear that most people want to be liberated from their own natures.

Which is why we don't like people who keep trying to knife us.  

Our individual identities remain rooted in the physical bodies that we are born with, and in the interactions of those bodies with the environment in which we live.

This is a hypothesis. We don't know for sure whether 'Yogijivas'- who exist simultaneously in several physical bodies- exist. Identities are epistemic or 'intensional'.  

Who we are as individuals is the product of the interaction of our conscious minds and physical bodies, and the memories of those interactions over time.

Again, this is a hypothesis- not a very interesting one. Who we are as individuals can change very dramatically depending on our choices- even those we make when out of our conscious minds.  

The emotions we experience are rooted in our experience of our physical bodies.

No. We may feel emotions about experiences we've never had but which are depicted to us- even if not very graphically.  

And our rights as citizens are built upon the need to protect both those physical bodies and our autonomous minds.

No. Rights are built on the incentive compatibility of remedies under bonds of Law. The need to protect bodies and minds is the reason we acquire weapons or hire people with weapons to defend us.  

A general principle for a liberal society would borrow a page from the playbook of the ancient Greeks.

No it wouldn't. The ancient Greeks did not have liberal Societies. Slavery? Sure. Tyrants? Plenty. Liberalism? Fuck off!

They had a saying, μηδεν αγαν (mēden agan),

which is like अति सर्वत्र वर्जयेत्. Which language doesn't have some similar saying?

which meant ‘nothing in excess,’

 We only say a thing is excessive if there is an opportunity cost to it. If the thing is a free good- i.e. no scarce resources are used up- there is no question of excess. 

and they regarded σωφροσύνη (sōphrosýnē), or ‘moderation,’ as one of their four cardinal virtues.

The Greek word σώφρων (sophron) means wisdom. Which culture counts Ignorance or Stupidity as cardinal virtues? What will Fukuyama tell us next? That the ancient valued breathing over suffocation? 

This emphasis on moderation has been largely discarded in modern times:

No. Economics has become more mathematical and new technology has helped greatly increase allocative efficiency. If we achieve more with less, no question of excess or immoderate behaviour arises. Opportunity cost is declining. That's a good thing. True, some Ancient Greek pedants published stupid shite under the rubric of 'Economics' but the Epicureans took down their pants and made fun of their tiny genitals. 

university graduates are routinely told to ‘follow their passions,’

No. They are told to find some promising line of research and pursue it passionately so as to advance their discipline.  

and people who live to excess are criticized only when it harms their physical health.

No. They are criticised if the opportunity cost of what they are doing is positive and rising exponentially. This happens if their health or wealth or relationships or productivity are declining or are likely to decline catastrophically. 

Moderation implies and requires self-restraint,

No. It requires minimising opportunity cost. It does not require the use of restraints to stop you fisting yourself incessantly.  

the deliberate effort not to seek the greatest emotion or the fullest accomplishment.

Nonsense! The Greeks were cool with having the bestest orgasm ever or writing the funniest comedy ever. It's just that, more often than not, less is more. One reason my production of 'Lysistra' failed was because I sought to enhance Aristophanes' witty barbs by getting all the actors to fart incessantly.  I'm not saying this didn't get laughs. It's just that, sooner or later, farts turn into sharts and Mum slaps you and pulls down the curtain on your one-man show. 

Moderation is seen as an artificial constraint on the inner self,

by whom? Oscar fucking Wilde?  

whose full expression is said to be the source of human happiness and achievement.

said by whom? There may be boring shitheads who talk in that way but we give them a wide berth. 

But the Greeks may have been on to something, both with regard to individual life, and in politics.

Nonsense! They kept getting beaten and conquered.  

Moderation is not a bad political principle in general,

Only in the sense that Niceness is not a bad political principle- but only because it is stupid and useless.  

and especially for a liberal order that was meant to calm political passions from the start.

The liberal order was meant to promote enterprise and opulence. Passionate attachment to the Patria was cool. Passionate opposition to getting richer and more secure wasn't cool at all.  

If the economic freedom to buy, sell, and invest is a good thing, that does not mean that removing all constraints from economic activity will be even better.

Constraints on economic activity are either natural or contrived. The latter sort use up resources. The problem is that if circumventing those constraints becomes profitable, then there may be a disintermediation effect. The agency imposing the constraint loses salience. It can but toothlessly snarl as it is kicked in the testicles or, more cruelly, simply ignored.  

If personal autonomy is the source of an individual’s fulfillment, that does not mean

anything at all. Pedants of useless shite may babble about such things but nobody pays them any attention. We assume they are 'diversity hires' or have a history of drug addiction and incestuous sexual abuse. 

that unlimited freedom and the constant disrupting of constraints will make a person more fulfilled.

It may do. But then anything at all can be said to make a person more fulfilled. I have often argued that Amartya Sen's 'capabilities and functionings' can be enhanced by adding more dog poo to his diet. If he acts on my suggestion, I will feel very fulfilled indeed.  

Sometimes fulfillment comes from the acceptance of limits.

and sometimes limits come from the fulfilment of acceptance whereas, acceptance, more often than not, comes from the limits of fulfilment and so and so forth. This is an algorithmic method to produce vacuous, pseudo-intellectual, shite. 

Recovering a sense of moderation, both individual and communal, is therefore the key to the revival – indeed, to the survival – of liberalism itself.

No. For any 'ism' to flourish, the guys promoting it have to say interesting or at least potentially informative things. Gassing on about ancient Greek pedophiles hasn't cut the mustard since Gladstone's second Ministry.  

Is Fukuyama's entire book utterly foolish? The following quotations from it are given on 'Goodreads'. Is even one of them sensible or informative? Let us see.

“Even though individualism may be historically contingent,

What 'ism' isn't? 

it has become so deeply part of the way that modern people understand themselves

No it hasn't. Modern peeps listen to rap music, not stupid Professors.  

that it is hard to see how it gets walked back.

No it isn't. Wars lead to individuals coming together. Big enough wars completely change the nature of the Societies that participate in them. The American Revolution and the Civil War and then the Second World War profoundly changed America. The stupidity and pointlessness of the Vietnam war, too had an effect though there was a subsequent backlash.  

Modern market economies depend heavily on flexibility, labor mobility, and innovation.

Communist China's economy depends on these things. All successful economies do and did and will continue to do so. 

If transactions need to take place within limited cultural boundaries, the size of markets and the kind of innovation that comes from cultural diversity will necessarily be limited.

No. A limited market may lead to more intense innovation. France's 'Minitel' had a much bigger market than the Internet in 1993. But the latter was expanding exponentially through what was essentially a process of cannibalization precisely because the market was so much smaller and more specialized. 

Cultural diversity drives a search for the lowest common denominator. A bigger market may lead to less diversity a la Hotelling's theorem.  

Individualism is not a fixed cultural characteristic of Western culture as alleged by certain versions of critical theory.

The theories of cretins are cretinous not critical.  

It is a by-product of socioeconomic modernization that gradually takes place across different societies.”

Which is why the individualistic Japanese are so similar to the individualistic Dutch- right?  

“The postmodernist critique of liberalism

like the modernist critique of the pieties of Nineteenth Century liberals in their top hats and frock-coats 

and its associated cognitive methods has now drifted over to the right.

But postmodernism drew on Far Right nutters like Heidegger and Schmitt.  

White nationalist groups today regard themselves as a beleaguered identity group.

Whites, in America, started off as a beleaguered identity group. Smallpox and gunpowder enabled them to beleaguer the fuck out of the original inhabitants. 

During the Covid epidemic, a much broader group of conservatives around the world used the same conspiratorial critique of modern natural science that had been pioneered by critical theory and the left.”

But so did Agamben and Jeremy Corbyn's elder, smarter, brother.  

“The substantive conservative critique of liberalism

consists of farting noisily. There is a story about F.E Smith who always made a point of taking a dump at the National Liberal Club. On being confronted by a porter who asked if he was a member of the Liberal Party, the future Earl of Birkenhead expressed surprise that a decent enough lavatory had become the nucleus of a political association.  

—that liberal societies provide no strong common moral horizon around which community can be built—is true enough.

No it isn't. Gladstone was plenty moral. He spent his spare time picking up hookers and scolding them till they took up a less strenuous profession.  

This is indeed a feature and not a bug of liberalism.

Nonsense! British Liberalism always had an Evangelical aspect- except in the Celtic fringe where it went hand in hand with Temperance and the natural consequence of abstention from strong drink- viz. Adultery.   

The question for conservatives is whether there is a realistic way to roll back the secularism of contemporary liberal societies and reimpose a thicker moral order.”

I suppose Fukuyama is taking a dig at the American Catholics here. Sadly, the Pope appears to be totes cool with the LGBTQ community. Perhaps he got round to reading the Sermon on the Mount. Seriously, the Bible should have a trigger warning. 

“The self-care and wellness movements are simply contemporary manifestations of Rousseau’s vision of the “plenitude” of the inner self.

No. Rousseau gave himself a hernia jacking off. He was as crazy as a shithouse rat. The self-care and wellness movement is about sad, fat, losers like me trying to stave of Type 2 diabetes.  

That self is good, and its recovery is the original fount of human happiness.

My self is not good. It likes eating pizza and watching Netflix. It doesn't like going to the gym or eating salad. The original fount of human happiness is money. As you get older, a secondary fount arises- viz. postponing death.  

But it has been polluted by an outer society that feeds us unhealthy foods full of pesticides and artificial flavors,

if you have enough money you can eat healthy food which doesn't taste like shit.  

that sets goals and expectations that build anxiety and self-doubt,

not if you have a hundred billion dollars in the bank. Elon Musk doesn't exactly reek of anxiety and self-doubt.  

and by competitive urges that undermine our self-esteem.”

Only if you don't have billions of dollars and plenty of super-yachts and supermodel girl friends. 

“Liberal individualism does not preclude or deny human sociability; it simply means that most social engagements in a liberal society will ideally be voluntary. You can join with other people, but what groups you join are, to the maximum extent possible, a matter of personal choice.”

Very true. I can chose to belong to the British Royal Family. Liberalism is not antithetical to notions of 'natural' oikeiosis. It is comfortable with the 'bourgeois strategies' which arise by reason of uncorrelated asymmetries- e.g. being the child of this Mummy and Daddy rather than that Mummy and Daddy. Furthermore, though the Roman notion of the 'bonus pater familias' observing a higher standard of diligence or duty of care, was translated in the Anglo-American notion of 'the reasonable man', most lawyers were aware of the relevant genealogy. True, in the Twentieth Century, Cicero's influence declined but then so did Classical Liberalism. 

“Liberalism was one of the early driving forces of the French Revolution,

It was reasonable to want something like the English 'Glorious Revolution'. The problem was that France wasn't an island. It had an invasion to deal with. 

It should be remembered that registering voters for adult manhood suffrage is a tacit way of conducting a census and enabling conscription. Still one must be careful to rig things such that only those representatives are chosen who will most help in extracting tax revenue because of their superior local knowledge and 'social capital'. 

and was initially an ally of democratic forces that wanted to expand political participation beyond the narrow circle of upper- and middle-class elites.

Napoleon did give adult males the vote even in occupied territory, but the results were rigged in multiple ways. The upshot was that, though the principle of universal manhood suffrage was upheld, it was understood that the results could be far from popular. Indeed, 'narrow circles' didn't matter. Nationalism was a fact of life. For forms of government only fools contest when what is urgent is throwing out the foreign invader.  

The partisans of equality, however, broke with the partisans of liberty,

Phillipe Egalite, who voted to put his cousin to death soon met the same fate. His son's reign ended in the same way as that of Charles X.  

and created a revolutionary dictatorship that ultimately gave way to the new empire under Napoleon. The latter, nonetheless, played a critical role in spreading liberalism in the form of law—the Code Napoléon—to the far corners of Europe. This then became the anchor for a liberal rule of law on the Continent.”

No. Austria and Prussia had already been at work on Codes which were intended to be universal. Speaking generally, German, Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon legal regimes have been better for private enterprise and economic growth than the statist Napoleonic code. Moreover, the former give more scope for judicial law making. Liberal in the Continental context often meant 'enlightened absolutism' or Beamtenliberalismus- i.e. the liberalism of senior Civil Servants.  

“an idea that became foundational in modern thought, that we have deeply hidden inner natures that are smothered by the layers of social rules imposed on us by the society surrounding us.

this is an ancient idea. Enkidu, in the Gilgamesh legend, is the 'natural' man. But behind the Rousseauvian 'Social Contract' is the barnyard economics whereby animals content to dwell with us do so only on a transactional basis. I suppose, the reverse is also true. I once gave up the tenancy of a flat because its vast population of cockroaches made themselves scarce anytime I started reciting my poetry. 

Autonomy for him meant recovery of that authentic inner self, and escape from the social rules that imprisoned it.”

Enkidu dies. A grief-stricken Gilgamesh tries to find the elixir of immortality. He fails. Escaping social rules is all very well. It is death we want to cheat.  

“Kant picked up on Rousseau’s idea of perfectibility, and turned it into the core of his moral philosophy.

Rousseau helped turn Kant away from Scottish 'moral sentiment' towards rationalism and deontology. This involved seeing any contradictory impulse as imperfection and gave rise to a notion of perfectibility as the power of self-rule and moral progress to create a species-wide solidarity and irenic harmony. Sadly, death would still exist. Plain old religious solidarity was preferable coz God might let you into Heaven for all eternity. Better yet, God might grant you madness. 

Still, Kant and Hegel and so on were happy to be 'Beamten'- i.e. not so much pedants as Civil Servants- and thus their notions of 'duty' and 'autonomy' and 'freedom' and so so forth were hilariously topsy-turvey. 

At the beginning of the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, he says that the only thing that is unconditionally good is a good will,

why not a good soul? What's the point of taking God out of your pi-jaw if all that is left is stupid shit? A Professor who has a good will won't teach worthless shite. 

and that the capacity to make moral choices is what makes us distinctively human.

These fuckers used to confuse birds and insects with human beings till they discovered this distinction. The trouble is animals aren't really Cartesian meat machines. Some dogs make moral choices.  Some humans don't. 

Human beings are ends in themselves and should never be treated as a means to other ends.”

Which is why you should never pay money to gain instruction from a Professor. You are treating him as a means to some end you yourself find valuable. You should just pay your fees and then abstain from attending lectures. At any rate, that's what I did when I was at Uni.  

“an autonomous self that has been detached from all prior loyalties and commitments

is desirable if you wish to avoid Agent-Principal hazard or ensure that adjudication will be free from bias.  

“is not to conceive of an ideally free and rational agent, but to imagine a person wholly without character, without moral depth”:”

No it isn't. The Stoic sage has reached a higher level of oikeiosis such that all the world is his family. He may have plenty of character- e.g. he may be witty, he may be dull- and may have great moral depth arising from a superior theory of mind or else a better conception of moral sentiments.

Fukuyama, on the evidence of the above, lacks intelligence. He misunderstood everything he read but regurgitated it in a blander and more bigoted fashion so as to get ahead in a worthless profession. Alternatively, maybe the guy is smart. For some Straussian reason, he wishes to appear an ignorant fool. That's how you make money if you peddle worthless shite. This is a Keynesian beauty contest in which everybody assumes other people are as stupid as shit and thus will value the vapourings of a worthless wanker. Also, it helps to have a foreign sounding name- like Amartya or Fukuyama or Zizek. People may think your bunch of backward barbarians are only now discovering that Kant said it was wrong to eat all your babies while Hegel pointed out that History is about the Past. We live in the Present. Stop hanging by your tails from trees. Darwin didn't say we are monkeys. He said our species evolved from monkeys millions of years ago.