The Virtues of a Free Market

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The Irrational Modern Woman, Sexual Anarchy, & 'Rape Culture'.

Consider that every choice, every decision, every plan, and every venture requires picking between goods, a selection of a certain path to the exclusion of all others. The ability to choose greater over lesser goods and higher over lower paths is known as reason -- the mind projecting consciousness forward, attempting to predict outcome and choosing for itself which is superior toward the pursuit of happiness (whether by conscience, Law, urge, or intellect).

Choice cannot be avoided.  Supposing a woman chooses marriage, she forfeits the liberty to choose partners at will; supposing she chooses to work, she forfeits care of her children. In every decision, something is gained, and something else is either lost or lessened.  We choose because we believe that our choice is best, and when we choose wrongly, the spirit of liberty -- to those possessive of it -- accepts responsibility for any unpleasant ramifications. Those who cannot accept responsibility cannot maintain liberty, and those who deserve liberty constantly assert their own responsibility.

But modern woman, high on the mind-numbing intoxicants of unwarranted self-esteem and vanity, believes herself exempt from the laws of nature, proclaiming herself capable of achieving all ends without suffering any ramifications of choice -- a proclamation which would but for the obstinacy of womankind need no examples. She demands liberty for all women to portray themselves as sexual objects and then complains when objectified by random men on the street. She lambasts her father and brothers with lyrics such as "I'm just a girl ... and they won't let me walk the streets at night" and then blames patriarchy for her lack of safety. She demands liberty to keep company with drunkards and have sex at random but then desires laws to jeopardize anyone who has sex with her while drinking (see: rape laws of Washington State). She demands to be treated as equally capable and yet claims that women need stronger legal protection because they are the weaker sex. She wants men to defend her against lewd sexual advances and then derides men for using terms such as "slut" while she accepts them. She wants the security of marriage and the liberty of the girlfriend alike -- the legal status of an adult but the marital contract rights of the mentally incapacitate...

In the world of sexual relations, there is no path honorable besides chivalry -- the exaltation of women as endowed with beauty and worthy of protection and service. But we would be mistaken to say that chastity's opposite, sexual degradation -- total disavowal of the necessity of manners, of special protection, and of marriage -- is the most despicable alternative. No, that infamy is left forchivalry compromised, the idea that chivalry is good but can be forfeited at any moment depending upon the situation itself. For it is better to have no morals at all and be known a devil than to compromise in any way the angelic.

But show me a woman with grace and charm, sensibility and righteousness -- goodness and beauty combined! This woman, this angel, this gift of God to men -- may she be adored, and not just adored, but protected by all men! And wherever such women are -- buried, for the present moment, beneath mountains of feminist propaganda and slander -- let us love them; and for the rest, may we wake them from their slumber! Let men stand together in unanimity, and testify that whatever woman thinks of us, we will be gentlemen -- and we expect women to be ladies!

- Jeremy Egerer (is a convert to biblical conservatism from radical liberalism and the editor of the Seattle website www.americanclarity.com. American Clarity welcomes friend requests on Facebook.)

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The Socialist helps no one but himself

So, what about survival at Rs. 32/day? Well unless you want a malnourished, hungry, underproductive worker class, its time to raise that number for sure! Maybe Steve Jobs was trying to reach out to our planning commission literally when he said “Stay hungry, stay foolish”. Food for thought?

That's the from the Rs100aday Blog.

The greatest tragedy of our country is the lack of academic and research institutions that teach us the merits of free markets, and influence public policy. That is why we are continuously bombarded with the kind of nonsense the Blog above espouses. The guys behind the blog think government should up their payouts to the poor (from 32 to 72 a day). They think that will help mitigate poverty. 

Fat chance. 

All that will do is keep the poor poor, and burn bigger holes in taxpayer pockets. Who benefits when government burns bigger holes? The corrupt socialist-political economy.

I know it'll take while before we get it. That we have no rights, except that to our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Every other 'right' exercised via government  including right to food, healthcare, education is both immoral in design, and implementation. Such 'rights' are doled out in plenty in socialistic countries, not because government cares, but because that's what keeps them in power via the votes of the handout-receiving classes. Its a pity such rights get exercised via the wealth of the industrious that is taken away to be distributed amongst the slothful.

Note.

Free markets do not absolve us citizens of our moral responsibility.  Meaning if our industrious nature brings us wealth, it still is our responsibility to lend a helping hand to those less fortunate than us. Just that such helping needs to be voluntarily, not coerced.

Socialist economies assume helping hands won't exist if people are given the choice. Socialist economies believe if people are given a choice they will remain hoarders, and not bother about the less fortunate. So they come up with the 'Right To' idiocies.

Do such 'rights' work?

Sure they do. In filling the coffers of those that are behind such schemes.

For the rest of us, the story remains the same. The taxpayer keeps paying, burning holes. The recipients supposed to benefit from such payouts continue to wallow in poverty.

Its status-quo all around.

Pity.

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Why Dumb is good for Marketers

According to a survey by market research company YouGov 70 percent British women would follow the preventive double mastectomy path Angelina Jolie's taken, if tests showed they had a high chance of developing breast cancer.

Imagine that.

70 percent British women will do what is necessary to save their lives, now that Angie's doing it. Now why do I think 70 percent British women need to have their heads checked?

As much as the thought of women following Angie depresses me (she's the current 'hero' to liberals because she chose to save HER life; our standards have dropped much, self-saving acts qualify for heroism), it kinda makes me elated too.  You see, this is why marketers are always going to be in business. This is why marketers rule.

All psychological value in marketing solutions is 'constructed' value. It isn't real. But marketing history shows 'psychological value' as outstripping 'functional value'. So for the consumer it isn't the sneaker that's as important as it being Nike.

Thank the good Lord 70 percent British women are swayed by Angie.

Its dumb, but its good. 

For marketers. 

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Pray & Grow Rich

'THE GOSPEL OF PROSPERITY has been around for decades. It has flourished in good times and — oddly enough — in bad. It was first expounded in the 1950s by Oral Roberts in books like God’s Formula for Success and Prosperity, but it wasn’t until the charismatic Oral Roberts University-educated Osteen took up the cause that the gospel really started to pay off.

Proponents cite chapter and verse to bolster the legitimacy of their message. The Parable of the Talents. Much of Deuteronomy. Opponents likewise evoke the Sermon on the Plain (“Blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of God”), St. Paul (“I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties”), and the Book of Job in which the righteous man loses everything. Between these two gospels, the gospel of prosperity and the gospel of the cross, there is a great gulf. Perhaps Beliefnet’s Scot McKnight said it best: “The problem with the prosperity gospel is it focuses on ‘getting our wants.’ The cross gospel focuses on ‘giving ourselves.’”

Living a Christian life would seem to be self-evidently beneficial to success. That is if success means more than wealth and power. A Christian life theoretically means you are living a pious, selfless existence, while committing few of the vices that would seem to militate against wealth and success, like sloth, greed, lust, wrath, and envy. In other words, a man living a virtuous life is guaranteed a better chance at success than the lazy drunkard who cheats on his wife and gambles away her paycheck.

Jesus certainly promised riches to those who followed his way. But they were riches of a permanent kind. They were riches you can take with you. Perhaps, eventually, the converts will realize that the prosperity they were promised has failed to materialize and they may as well return to their original homes where the emphasis is not on material riches, nor on romanticizing poverty, but on advocating for the dignity for the poor.'

- Christopher Orlet, 'Pray and grow rich.'

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Shiva Kumar in IIM-C is Capitalism at its best!

N Shiva Kumar's IIM-C admission story is as inspirational as it is an illustration of capitalism at its best.

Beating the odds, the boy's made it completely on his own merit. It isn't government handouts that have helped him. Its his industriousness coupled with his toil that's gotten him to IIM-C.

That's capitalism for you. Work hard and smart, and you will reap your very 'personal' benefits.

N Shivakumar's inspirational story also includes another character, his newspaper customer, Krishna Veda Vyas. The latter paid for Shiva's studies at school. Note, this funding came after Krishna checked on how Shiva was doing at school. Finding the kid to be a topper at his studies, Krishna didn't hesitate.

That's again capitalism for you. The funding Shiva received wasn't a government handout. Truth is, handouts carry no value. They turn recipients into slothful unproductive citizens. Shiva's funding came after the giver, a private citizen, evaluated the boy on merit. In capitalism driven free markets, you get funded because the lenders believe in your ability to create value, and rake in generous ROIs.

In socialist paradises, you get funded due to your proximity to government, and bureaucracy.

What India doesn't need is a regulating government, and their hare-brained sloth-creating handout schemes. What India needs is hard-working industrious private citizens like Shiva Kumar, and generous responsible private citizens like Krishna Veda Vyas.

Here's hoping for more Shivas & Krishnas.

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Leftist-Socialist Policies breed Poverty!

If Jean Dreze (in the company of Amartya Sen) is the guy focusing on hunger in India, I bet the going will only be downhill. 

Hasn't socialism and government intervention on poverty taken us downhill for the last fifty years? Jean's the current poster guy for the continuation of leftist-socialist nonsense in India, legitimized and legalized by grand sounding bills like the right to food (Food Security Bill)!

For God's sake, let's not go down the path we've been taking all this while. Government intervention and socialism is what causes poverty! Its free enterprises and capitalism that can lift people out of poverty, by enabling them to earn and feed themselves!

Note Milton Friedman (video above) on the reasons for poverty.

Also note, Thomas Sowell on Poverty,

Curing Poverty or Using Poverty?

"China is lifting a million people a month out of poverty."

It is just one statement in an interesting new book titled "The Undercover Economist" by Tim Harford. But it has huge implications.

I haven't checked out the statistics but they sound reasonable. If so, this is something worth everyone's attention.

People on the political left make a lot of noise about poverty and advocate all sorts of programs and policies to reduce it but they show incredibly little interest in how poverty has actually been reduced, whether in China or anywhere else.

You can bet the rent money that the left will show little or no interest in how Chinese by the millions are rising out of poverty every year. The left showed far more interest in China back when it was run by Mao in far left fashion -- and when millions of Chinese were starving.

Those of us who are not on the left ought to take a closer look at today's Chinese rising out of poverty.

First of all, what does it even mean to say that "China is lifting a million people a month out of poverty"? Where would the Chinese government get the money to do that?

The only people the Chinese government can tax are mainly the people in China. A country can't lift itself up by its own bootstraps that way. Nor has there ever been enough foreign aid to lift a million people a month out of poverty.

If the Chinese government hasn't done it, then who has? The Chinese people. They did not rise out of poverty by receiving largess from anybody.

The only thing that can cure poverty is wealth. The Chinese acquired wealth the old-fashioned way: They created it.

After the death of Mao, government controls over the market began to be relaxed -- first tentatively, in selected places and for selected industries. Then, as those places and those industries began to prosper dramatically, similar relaxations of government control took place elsewhere, with similar results.

Even foreigners were allowed to come in and invest in China and sell their goods in China. But this was not just a transfer of wealth.

Foreigners did not come in to help the Chinese but to help themselves. The only way they could benefit, and the Chinese benefit at the same time, was if more total wealth was created. That is what happened but the political left has virtually no interest in the creation of wealth, in China or anywhere else, despite all of their proclaimed concern for "the poor."

Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong.

When it comes to lifting people out of poverty, redistribution of income and wealth has a much poorer and more spotty track record than the creation of wealth. In some places, such as Zimbabwe today, attempts at a redistribution of wealth have turned out to be a redistribution of poverty.

While the creation of wealth may be more effective for enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty, it provides no special role for the political left, no puffed up importance, no moral superiority, no power for them to wield over others. Redistribution is clearly better for the left.

Leftist emphasis on "the poor" proceeds as if the poor were some separate group. But, in most Western countries, at least, millions of people who are "poor" at one period of their lives are "rich" at another period of their lives -- as these terms are conventionally defined.

How can that be? People tend to become more productive -- create more wealth -- over time, with more experience and an accumulation of skills and training.

That is reflected in incomes that are two or three times higher in later years than at the beginning of a career. But that too is of little or no interest to the political left.

Things that work for millions of people offer little to the left, and ultimately the left is about the left, not about the people they claim to want to lift out of poverty.

Note SA Aiyer's take on economic growth versus legislation on food security

Amartya Sen wants to estimate the number of deaths caused by the delay in passing the Food Security Bill. He thinks this may shame Opposition politicians into ceasing disruption of proceedings in the Lok Sabha. “To capture people’s attention, you have to have a number,” he says.

Fine, but let’s hope Sen will also estimate deaths caused by faulty policies that historically kept India’s GDP growth slow, and have once again slowed growth today. He loves to emphasise that for any given GDP growth, better social investment will improve outcomes. Why not equally emphasise that, for any given level of social investment, faster growth will also improve outcomes and reduce deaths?...

What about poverty? Delayed reform and slower growth kept an additional 109 million people below the poverty line. This calculation used the old Lakdawala poverty line — the more recent Tendulkar poverty line would yield a far larger number. Insum, delayed reform, resulting in slower economic growth, led to a huge social disaster — 14.5 million “missing children” , 261 million “missing literates” and 109 million “missing non-poor”. 

Critics can say these calculations are simplistic: social indicators are affected by many factors other than growth. Yes, but exactly the same criticism was made of Sen’s calculation of “missing women,” yet this did not affect the relevance or importance of his paper. 

I invite Sen and others to rework my calculations. Maybe some critic will estimate, for instance, that Nehru-Indira socialism killed only say 10 million children and not 14.5 million. That will not change the fact that it was a monumental social tragedy. 

The proportion of people saying they are hungry in any month fell from 15 per cent in 1983 to 2% in 2004. The 2011-12 survey will probably show it at just 1%. This has been achieved by faster growth, and it eclipses anything the Food Security Bill will achieve.

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The Incompatibility of Porn & Healthy Sexual Behavior

'Another thing the state needs to do is to encourage the dissemination of pornography. Ideally, it would introduce sex education in schools since the data indicate that reduces pathological sexual behaviour. But this is politically impossible since a broad spectrum of leaders believe formal sex education is incompatible with Indian culture.

Hence, pornography is pretty much the only way for Indian youngsters to learn what goes where. The government not only needs to decriminalise the distribution of porn, it should set up channels to distribute the right kind of porn.

Yes, some pornography is violent. No, banning porn, as a recent petition to the Supreme Court demands, will not work because such a ban would be utterly unenforceable and a waste of resources. What may work (in the absence of sex on the syllabus) is the government selecting, grading and promoting porn that encourages healthy sexual behaviour. Much suitable content is already readily available and free to use. So it would actually be cheaper than commissioning textbooks.

It would be easy to implement such an initiative through the proper channels. A "Blue Department" could be set up by the health and family welfare ministry and headed by the joint secretary (Pornography). Officers could be deputed from the IT ministry and the Films Division of India to review technical details. A "Pornography Promotion Board" (PPB) could be formed to review and recommend suitable content. Political consensus on this could surely be reached by forming a joint parliamentary committee for an in-depth analysis of the issues.'

The idiocy just keeps rolling in, non-stop.

FYI, the 'porn in the classroom' method is Devangshu's answer to encouraging 'healthy sexual behavior'. 

Unbelievable! 

Turning the world into one big deviant madhouse is the liberal's answer to social problems!

Unbelievable.

Tell you what, if the liberals have their way, we will all be riding a death-wish. Here's how, courtesy Melanie Phillips.

'A group of sex education ‘experts’ has suggested that pupils should be taught in school about pornography, on the grounds that it is not ‘all bad’ and can even be ‘helpful’ to them.

Yes, you read that right.

The Sex Education Forum says in a new publication for schools that pornography should be taught in terms of ‘media literacy and representation, gender, sexual behaviour and body image’.

Behind the gobbledegook, this seems to be at least in part a confused attempt to deal with the fact that children are now accessing all manner of dubious or harmful material on the internet.

Accordingly, this publication warns that the sex and bodies in pornography ‘are mostly unrealistic’, and that it may involve coercing participants into performing sex acts.

But it also suggests showing such images to children at age 14. Moreover, it states that they might find some of the positions in such porn films ‘helpful’, while being made aware that ‘the so-called pleasure ‘they see ‘may be anything but’.

So schoolchildren are to be taught sexual positions from pornography -- with a pious health warning that they may not get much pleasure out of them!

Pinch yourself -- we’re talking 14 year-olds here. Whatever happened to childhood innocence? Whatever happened to teaching?

The Forum says that this will equip children with ‘filters in their head’ to apply to the disturbing or damaging media images available to them.

What an amazing argument, that for children to handle situations that are harmful to them they must be exposed to that harm! What next -- teaching them how to smoke a crack pipe?

There is no such thing as harmless porn, let alone porn that is actually helpful to children.

This is because, even at its least extreme, porn invariably turns the human body into a dehumanised sexual object and degrades the people involved, particularly women.

Yet the Forum’s publication suggests that pornography may not in fact lead people to view women with contempt or disgust.

Whatever happened to feminism, and its fierce campaigns against pornography for putting women in danger by representing them as sexual objects?

These dangers move onto a different plane altogether when children are exposed to porn. Some will see these images before they are old enough fully to understand human sexuality. Indeed, porn may shape their whole view of sexuality, doing untold harm as a result.

It also inescapably makes the viewer complicit in a voyeuristic exercise which uses sex as a salacious peep-show. Exposing children to these disgusting images is therefore itself a type of child abuse.

Lucy Emmerson, co-ordinator of the Forum, has said the magazine aims to help teachers ‘offer factually correct information and an opportunity for safe discussion that matches the maturity of the child’.

But it is never safe to subject a child to pornographic images. At 14 a child is not yet mature enough to handle all the implications of healthy sexuality, let alone its perversions.

Among these ‘sexperts’, there is a shocking confusion between adults and children. Exposing children to pornography in this way is to treat them wholly inappropriately as quasi-adults, supposedly able to apply adult values and considerations to behaviour which would trouble many adults themselves.

The Forum’s publication also contains some all-too telling details: a hypothetical correspondence with parents who would be horrified to hear that their children are to be exposed to porn in school.

To these imagined (but all-too realistic) parents protesting that they are trying to keep their children away from such images, this document replies with patronising idiocy that avoiding such things gives children the impression that it is wrong to talk about sex in any context.

How extraordinary to imply that there is nothing between ignorance and porn! And how revealing to dismiss such all-too proper parental concern as damaging!

A teacher named Boo Spurgeon writes that, since children start accessing porn at around the age of 11, teachers need then to start talking to them about it.

This is the argument that says if you can’t beat them, join them: innocence is already being abused, so teachers might as well finish the job.

What an abandonment of adult responsibility. The adult world needs to set boundaries for children by saying that certain things are simply wrong -- and only talking about matters that belong to the adult world when children are fully able to understand that world.

Indeed, destroy the innocence of a child and you destroy what it is tobe a child -- and as a result, damage the adult into whom the child then grows.

In any event, children almost instinctively filter out from their minds much information that is too grown-up for them to understand.

No chance of that, however, in many of today’s sex education lessons and teaching materials which introduce even pre-pubescent children to the full range of sexual practices, positions and perversions.

Indeed, since many such lessons are themselves a kind of pornography, it is perhaps not really surprising that teachers are now being advised to go the whole hog and introduce their pupils to the real stuff.

An adult world which thinks some pornography is acceptable fare for 14 year-olds can no longer can grasp the difference between children and adults, nor between sexuality and pornography. It can no longer make the essential distinction between healthy and harmful behaviour.

A quite different campaign illustrates this terrible confusion. Brecon Cathedral has joined forces with a number of children’s charities in a campaign to end what they call ‘legalised violence against children’ -- which in the real world is called sometimes giving a child a smack.

The Dean of Brecon, Geoffrey Marshall, says ‘resorting to violence and smacking is not effective and should no longer be seen as acceptable behaviour or reasonable punishment’.

Such language elides the acceptable and the intolerable. Beating a child is wrong; a one-off smack is not in the same league. To call that ‘violence’ is to minimise, and thus effectively deny, what real violence actually is.

It fails to draw the proper distinction between loving discipline, without which a child cannot flourish, and child abuse.

What has our society come to when it treats as a war criminal anyone who admits to giving their child an occasional smack, and yet advocates exposing children to pornography?

The answer is that, for several decades now, a small number of determined zealots have wormed their way into influential positions from where they have set about undermining traditional moral precepts and replacing parental authority with their own, in order to brainwash children with the doctrine of ‘anything goes’ and ‘the right to choose’.

The Sex Education Forum, which describes itself as ‘the national authority on sex and relationships education’, is actually a bunch of activists with a ‘lifestyle choice’ agenda who have been busy thus undermining parental authority and traditional moral values for the past quarter of a century.

Lo and behold, the organisations supporting the Brecon campaign against smacking include Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau and Relate -- which are also listed as members of the Sex Education Forum.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that parental discipline is treated as child abuse while children are force-fed pornography in the classroom -- and anyone who dares protest faces instant vilification, ostracism and scorn.

But don’t worry. Children may have their innocence corrupted and become brutalised and degraded as a result -- but they won’t be smacked. So that’s ok then.

There’s a name for this. It’s society’s death wish.'

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Bureaucracy erodes value, creates none!

While congratulating Haritha, this year's IAS topper, the NDTV news anchor asked the topper why she chose country over a corporate job.

Did I hear right? Country over corporate? You mean, the Indian bureaucracy once called the most dangerous animal by Minister Jairam Ramesh, serves the country while the johnnies who slave it out in the corporate world, choose greed?

Ha ha ha. That's probably the joke of the decade!

Truth is, the Indian bureaucracy is quite the reason why as a country we are in the mess we are. In fact Richard Boucher, deputy secretary-general, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) lists the Indian bureaucracy as one of the biggest troubles India faces today. Bureaucracy, whether in India or elsewhere, is the prime value eroder in an economy! Those johnnies on the other hand, who sweat it out in an insecure (they can get fired at any time, while the bureaucrat is forever ) private marketplace are the real value creators. They take in input materials, put it through a value creating process, derive as output, products and services which they sell at a price, and then get paid for the effort. Now that's value creation. That's 'earned' money!

Bureaucracy on the other hand is an enormous cost center that's a drain on the economy, and that eats into value created by private businesses!

To understand the bureaucratic drain better, listen to Mark Levin talk to a 'bureaucrat' at the Department of Energy in the US..

If you still don't get it, you're probably a liberal dimwit, and God save us all!

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What will save lives?

Amartya Sen wants to estimate the number of deaths caused by the delay in passing the Food Security Bill. He thinks this may shame Opposition politicians into ceasing disruption of proceedings in the Lok Sabha. “To capture people’s attention, you have to have a number,” he says. 

Fine, but let’s hope Sen will also estimate deaths caused by faulty policies that historically kept India’s GDP growth slow, and have once again slowed growth today. He loves to emphasise that for any given GDP growth, better social investment will improve outcomes. Why not equally emphasise that, for any given level of social investment, faster growth will also improve outcomes and reduce deaths?...

What about poverty? Delayed reform and slower growth kept an additional 109 million people below the poverty line. This calculation used the old Lakdawala poverty line — the more recent Tendulkar poverty line would yield a far larger number. Insum, delayed reform, resulting in slower economic growth, led to a huge social disaster — 14.5 million “missing children” , 261 million “missing literates” and 109 million “missing non-poor”. 

Critics can say these calculations are simplistic: social indicators are affected by many factors other than growth. Yes, but exactly the same criticism was made of Sen’s calculation of “missing women,” yet this did not affect the relevance or importance of his paper. 

I invite Sen and others to rework my calculations. Maybe some critic will estimate, for instance, that Nehru-Indira socialism killed only say 10 million children and not 14.5 million. That will not change the fact that it was a monumental social tragedy. 

The proportion of people saying they are hungry in any month fell from 15 per cent in 1983 to 2% in 2004. The 2011-12 survey will probably show it at just 1%. This has been achieved by faster growth, and it eclipses anything the Food Security Bill will achieve.

- S A Aiyer, 'Fast growth will save lives not the Food Security Bill.'

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Know why its in his kiss?

I've been firm in the belief that marketers err most when they subject consumers to information overload via their communiques. Now I'm having a rethink on that. Sure, overload still is the problem, but the cardinal sin is not being able to engage all of the consumer's senses. Meaning the solutions (read, products) marketers pitch are mostly heard and seen. That's them missing out on three senses. Marketers offer almost nothing that can be tasted, smelt, or felt.

Pity.

My rethink on the marketer's error has been prompted by this brilliant book titled, 'Customer Sense: How The Five Senses Influence Buying Behavior' by Aradhna Krishna. Note, in reaching consumption decisions, consumers first form perceptions, then learn, and finally cultivate attitudes. Engaging the consumer on all his senses means being a step ahead to competitors in ensuring consumers not just make the brand part of the consideration set, but also give it 'greater' consideration.

Aradhna draws on both research and marketing practice to illustrate how each of the senses can be engaged by brands to build favorable attitudes. What makes her book pioneering is that it focuses on how consumer senses can be leveraged to influence consumption decision making. Aradhna also mentions there's more research to be done on knowing how the senses interact and its subsequent impact on decision making.

In our quest to know consumers better, I believe future databases on them won't just be populated by 'bland data', instead they will contain comprehensive information on the response of all consumer senses to stimuli.

I recommend Aradhna's book to everyone in business, and not just marketers. Why, I even recommend it to anyone who has a social life, or even a love-life. Remember, its not just about how you look. Its about how you sound, smell, feel, and even taste. If you don't believe me on the latter two, just ask anyone who's kissed, and whether they wanted to do it again with the same person, and why!

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Yes Logos!

Being a parent to a six and a two year old means your life won't seem like yours for a long-long time. Now if that has you having a rethink on being a parent, think again. There's nothing (I can bet a million bucks!) that can give you what being a parent can.

Like when I hear Brooklyn, my two year old express herself. Just now a kid from the neighborhood dropped in. Brooklyn wanted the rest of us to know he dropped in late 'cos he was sleeping. She said his name out loud and followed it up with a guttural throaty noise. The latter was meant to convey he was 'sleeping'. Brooklyn doesn't yet know the word 'sleep', but she doesn't allow that to stop her expressing. She uses the guttural sound to convey sleep. I guess she must have picked the sound up from the snores she's heard around the house. :)

Brooklyn's language always brings a smile to our face, the kind nothing else can. :) :)

Truth is, as humans we are wired to express, and we'll do it every and any way we can. Brooklyn uses noises, grown-ups use language. Despite that, I must admit there are many things we wanna say that we don't. That's cause we aren't sure if language's the best way to do the expression. Brands drop in when language can't. The kid who wants to scream rebellion knows if he does it with language,they'll probably consign him to a shrink. So he trucks with brands. A torn denim, a psychedelic T with a slogan, and dirty floaters do the talking for him. The girl who's out to seduce does it with her painted nails, fragrance, and stilletoed legs. That's her potent language designed to ensnare!

Brands do the talking for us when can't, when we mustn't.

A world without brands is one where we are muted. Naomi Klein got it wrong with no logo. Its logos we want, so we can speak!

Here's to brands, and to their enabling us our expressions.

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Mirrors

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Society's Death Wish

'What has our society come to when it treats as a war criminal anyone who admits to giving their child an occasional smack, and yet advocates exposing children to pornography?

The answer is that, for several decades now, a small number of determined zealots have wormed their way into influential positions from where they have set about undermining traditional moral precepts and replacing parental authority with their own, in order to brainwash children with the doctrine of ‘anything goes’ and ‘the right to choose’. 

The Sex Education Forum, which describes itself as ‘the national authority on sex and relationships education’, is actually a bunch of activists with a ‘lifestyle choice’ agenda who have been busy thus undermining parental authority and traditional moral values for the past quarter of a century.

Lo and behold, the organisations supporting the Brecon campaign against smacking include Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau and Relate -- which are also listed as members of the Sex Education Forum.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that parental discipline is treated as child abuse while children are force-fed pornography in the classroom -- and anyone who dares protest faces instant vilification, ostracism and scorn.

But don’t worry. Children may have their innocence corrupted and become brutalised and degraded as a result -- but they won’t be smacked. So that’s ok then.

There’s a name for this. It’s society’s death wish.'

- Melanie Phillips, 'Spare the rod -- and bring on the porn...'

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The Social-Self Expression in Barack Obama's 'Laid-Back' Style

Vanity Fair thinks it his 'lean back style'. I know its his insolence coming through. 

Truth is, Barack doesn't deserve to be President of the United States of America. Its another thing he is, and we know why.

Barack's 'style' represents who he is. In this case (the pic.), it isn't a put-on. His exhibition of 'lean back' is actually his telling the rest of the world he can put his feet on the Resolute Desk, and no one can do cr*p about it! Barack's telling us, 'Go fly a kite, I am President, I was elected, and so I can do what I want, and you can't do anything about it!' 

Barack's probably the luckiest guy on earth. He gets to be president when he isn't even fit for a proper job. Remember, he's a community organizer who got to be president because they were too many moochers who decided they wanted their slothful ways preserved!

Now marketers on their part want to tap into people's social-self images. So if someone wants a display of insolence to go out to the rest the world, marketers will oblige them through products and brands.  In fact, without the products and brands there can be no convincing social self displays. Sure, one can without help put an insolent smirk on display. But what completes the picture are the clothes, the cuff-links, the shoes, the desk to keep one's feet on, and so on.

Barack's social image thus gets completed, and the message to the rest of the world, especially conservatives, is comprehensively constructed and propagated.

Its pity Barack's President. Its a pity America has more moochers now than value-creators. 

Here's hoping the trend's reversed. Here's hoping the office of President is treated with dignity. 

Pic: VF

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Homosexuality & the Rights of Children

'Regarding the rights of children: they undoubtedly will be involved in the question at hand, given that the men and women with homosexual tendencies will no doubt seek to adopt children.

It seems to me that the right of the child to a father or mother is absolutely being ignored in our society. I submit that the greatest discrimination in our day and age is against the most vulnerable who have no say and are not able to argue for themselves for the need and importance of both father and mother. The need for two parents, one of each gender, is an unwritten need of the child, but one which in justice cannot be ignored.

Our current trajectory to deny the child his right to a father and a mother from the moment of birth should come as no surprise. For more than 40 years, America has denied the child in the womb his right to protection against bodily harm (caused by abortion), owed to him as a scientifically verifiable member of the human species.  The same legal system that has condoned this now contemplates denying some of those that are allowed to be born a father and a mother. Having eliminated the first fundamental right, through abortion, in positive law, they continue down that path, logically consistent and undeterred.

It is, indeed, nothing  surprising  that, after U.S. law and its citizens have allowed the child in the womb to be massively exterminated in the most brutal fashion, the nation is proceeding to claim (as Bill O'Reilly now seems to be doing), that depriving children of a father and mother is also reasonable, or irrelevant. Indeed, if you grant that depriving him of the right to life is also acceptable.

But children have this ius (debt in justice) from us all: a mother and a father. Most can see the moral, social, and economic consequences of the lack of a father or a mother in the home. No one likes this. The family is breaking up and we are reaping the bitter fruit of these breakdowns in society. To now legislate for the institutionalized denial of a father and mother from birth, is to enshrine in law, that which from the outset is prejudicial and gravely disadvantageous to children. To deny a father and a mother to some children by law would be to institutionalize a situation we are in fact trying to correct in our society. For law to positively make this situation into an institution, are to deliver an unjust verdict on the fate of many children, from the get go. Fairness to all children should not be trampled so trivially.

Not to foresee the consequences of denying a child a father and mother is obtuse. It is not a question of having two adults in a family; it is a question of having a father (male) and a mother (female). To not see the difference is to deny that gender per se exists, since the implicit claim is that gender makes no difference. Indeed, good nuns can raise children, but as even Mother Teresa always stated, their love and care cannot replace the father and the mother. Mr. O'Reilly claims to love common sense, and I hope he can see this much. Why would you normalize in law, something that is so hindering child development in our society--namely the absence of a father and a mother? I argue that to set in law the possibility for this to be the fate of a child from birth is clearly a violation of justice against that child.

The innovators of society wish to deprive the child without an argument, of something most of us had and are grateful for, the just right to a father and a mother. This is the real discrimination of our days. Nothing in our empirical data or experience should lead anyone to believe that this absence will be a good for the child.

Furthermore, there are other problems one can easily foresee. Given that men and women in same sex arrangements would seek to have children who are at least partly genetically theirs, we can expect the continued and increased production of babies in laboratories, the destruction of embryos, and the freezing of other members of our species.  Trivialities as well, Bill?'

- Rev. Marcel Guamizo, 'A Response to Bill O'Reilly on Homosexuality and Marriage'.

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Death to the Deviants

Source: HT

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The Guts you get from Guns

'All the people in that Watertown neighborhood, hiding, doors locked. ... How many of them, do you think -- and worried that this guy might get into their home, maybe take them hostage -- how many of them, do you think, might like a gun? To be able to protect themselves and defend their homes.'

- Chris Wallace on Fox News (while the second Boston Bomber was still on the loose).

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Liberal Jholawalahs are wrong! Death is a deterrent!

Mark my words.

Part of the danger we face as a society comes from liberal jholawalahs who advocate abolishing the death penalty. They lie when they say its been proved that death penalty is not a deterrent.

The truth is, it is!

As a li'l five year old battles for her life, victim to unspeakable bestiality, its important we put to death the perpetrator (once proven guilty after due judicial process)!

Remember, death is a deterrent!

Here's Jay Gaskill again, from his essay, 'Death, Deterrence and Reform'.

The deterrence effect of the death penalty for deliberate killings has been widely studied with allegedly “inconclusive” results. A number of experts and organizations still claim that the death penalty doesn't work. But no respected study actually rules out death penalty deterrence, and some experts have found strong indications of a deterrence effect.

On this topic, many of my good hearted humanitarian friends are deeply out of touch with the common wisdom. I have listened for three decades to all the arguments that the death penalty is not a deterrent. Death penalty opponents usually talk about crimes of passion, pointing out that the jealous husband was too filled with rage to give a thought to penalty, or on the homicidal maniac who is on a suicidal run. This is all beside the point. As a realist, I have come to understand that that death penalty can deter certain murders, especially for the criminals who have gotten used to prison life. Indeed, several categories of criminals are capable of being deterred by little else. Think of those carjackings where the victim is in the trunk. Some are shot, others not. Many criminals think of the consequences, especially when they are as simple and vivid as the prospect of eventual execution. In general, the death penalty deters at least some murders within the entire class of killings where there is a moment to reflect before killing. This includes most drug dealer turf shootings, gang warfare, witness killings, robbery murders, and so on.

The most persuasive recent studies have been conducted by experts with formal training in economics. The field of economics is often called the “dismal science” because of its tendency to generate honest assessments, in spite of political hopes and expectations. Many death penalty opponents resist the basic assumption of economic science that, over time, incentives and disincentives will change behavior. Regrettably, an anti-death penalty bias has introduced an element of intellectual dishonesty into the deterrence debate. Evidence that the death penalty “disincentive” produces genuine results is ignored, marginalized, or denied because executions are thought to be immoral under all circumstances. “Don’t confuse me with the facts” is the motto of the true believers.

When the overall data are looked at square on, the conclusion is inescapable: The death penalty deters some murders. Having been responsible for saving clients lives, I am not at all enthusiastic about executions, but the murders of innocent people are far more immoral than the judicially ordered execution of culpable murderers. Killings affect the community at large, and the problem calls all of us to get outside our biases and roles.

I find the evidence in favor of the death penalty’s deterrent effect on homicidal behavior to be highly persuasive, leaving aside the more difficult issue of measurement of the power of the effect on a given, demographically mixed population. The so called side-by-side studies that purport not to reveal any deterrent effect (for example comparing death penalty enforcing state A with non-death penalty state B over the same time frame) fail to normalize for demographic differences. There are always higher “crime prone” sub-populations in any geographic area. At any given moment, virtually all states differ in political and social attitudes, police funding and activities, and in the detailed operation of their respective criminal justice processes.

The temporary imposition of a well publicized death penalty moratorium in a given jurisdiction provides a better quasi-controlled experiment, particularly when demographic factors remain relatively stable over the sample period. And, in these samples, the larger the population that is included, the less that pockets of demographic variations will skew the outcome. That said, there can be demographic and cultural changes with time.

With those qualifications, analysis of the available data has persuaded me that the death penalty for murder may have saved a significant number of lives over the last decade in those jurisdictions where it was used. If my analysis is correct, it follows that any death penalty moratorium, however well intentioned, will come at a high social cost.

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Queer is Cool, Fastrack's Cool

Expert opinions are in. Fastrack's closet campaign has been construed as challenging prevalent social mores. Some think that's a good idea, others think otherwise.

I think they've missed the wood for the trees.

Fastrack couldn't care less if people moved on, or didn't. What it cares for is sales. Sales happen when their target consumers buy. To get them to buy, Fastrack has to connect to their sensibilities via positioning. The brand's putting on the progressive front 'cos it knows its target consumers take to such 'progression'. LGBT is no big deal to Fastrack's target, the urban youth. My bet is, the latter even thinks Fastrack's cool for the LGBT-allied identity.

Queer is cool.

Fastrack's cool.

Plus don't forget the eyeballs and PR such an Ad can draw!  

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Why Apathy is Normal

If you think Kanhaiya Lal lost his wife and baby to apathy, think again. 

It wasn't apathy. It was what was expected. 

Any society that gives discrimination social sanction and institutionalizes it, is bound to ascribe zero value to human life. I must admit, there may be exceptions to such 'expected' behavior in such societies, but they are just that, exceptions!

For now, we must mourn the death of a mother and her baby. What we must mourn more is our collective lack of humanity! The surviving Kanhaiya and his son didn't stand a chance at getting help. When our time comes, we won't too.

Shame on us!

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The Nanny State Push

At times a Nanny State is what products need!

Socialist Daddy Bloomberg regulates soda and consumers buy more of it, 'bundled'.

Socialist Community Organizer Barack intends to go after guns, sales of firearms spike!

Good going, Nanny State!

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Gold

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The Soul Problem

Deepak Chopra thinks India's facing a crisis of the soul. He bases this conclusion on Gallup data that shows 33% of Indian workers as being disengaged, and only 9% as actively engaged.

My bet is,the data's spot on. But I have to scratch my head when Deepak terms it an issue of the soul. Employee engagement is soul related?

What nonsense!

What India's needs is the exact opposite of soul. The fifty years post Independence had been about soul and spirituality, and look where it got us to! Scraping the bottom of the barrel.

If 9 out of 10 people in organisations aren't engaged, blame the firm's culture. I bet these are firms that don't care much for merit. I bet these are firms that reward apple polishers. How did these firms come to be that way? Its easy. Take a look at the country's culture. Institutions are an aggregation of people. People draw their personal sensibilities from their community and society. So when they get together as an enterprise, they draw in the very same mindsets that have been shaped in them by their society.

The spirituality Deepak puts his hope in, to turn things around in India, is the real problem. Our culture is our stumbling block. What we need isn't more of the same nonsense. Its time to abandon it, and embrace wholeheartedly the principles of merit.

Merit reigns in organisations that adopt the principles of a free market place. After all, in free markets its the superior value creators that survive. Sure, its survival of the fittest, but tell you what, its such survival that brings the best out of employees. Their participation in the process of enterprise value creation isn't out of lofty spiritual ideals, instead its a pursuit of their own well being. Employees in meritocracies will know merit matters, and it pays too. Being engaged is good for the enterprise. Its good for their own selves too!

Spirituality and soul won't get us or the enterprise anywhere. It may put us in a state of delirium for a while, but soon our everyday struggles will bring us back to what's real. And what's real calls for real people doing real work.

Sitting cross-legged in a state of trance isn't anywhere close to real. Its an escape route we seek when we can't, or don't want to face up to what our responsibilities are. Here's hoping we abandon it sooner than soon so we can engage ourselves on a path to prosperity. 

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Christ Alone

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Regulations Kill!

Witnessing the Thane tragedy and its aftermath is heartbreaking. What's scary is the realization this is commonplace in India and could happen at any time, in any form to any one of us. Come to think of it we probably know this so well we've numbed to it.

What's also disturbing is how the story is being played out. The usual politician-bureaucrat-businessman nexus is facing flak from all quarters. After all the shouting's over, guess what will be recommended?

Stronger and greater regulations, so buildings don't collapse.

Pray, what will be the outcome to that? Buildings in India will continue with their descent to the ground, because the nexus will only get stronger (that's what happens when regulations are strengthened). Plus the stronger regulations will ensure the good guy trying to build something will go through hell and high water in getting whatever he's building, built!

Regulations by design penalize the good and foster the corrupt! Regulations harass the good citizen and pave smooth pathways for the wicked.

But despite the Thane tragedy and others that will follow, I bet there'll be no takers for free markets, 'cos people will assume the worst. No regulations will be perceived as laissez-faire where the corrupt will thrive. The truth is, the exact opposite is what will happen. Businesses will face greater competition (as entry barriers will go) and their quest to exact consumer patronage will have them go the extra mile to ace competition, resulting in the creation of better products and services.

The lousy builder problem that takes people's lives is a regulation problem. Regulation kills. Regulation is why the corrupt thrive (India's the best example to that).

Free markets that foster competition is the answer to lousy quality. Free markets are the answer to better buildings.

Free markets can and will save lives!

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The Tyranny in Right to Education

The socilaist idiocy in the Right to Education Act is illustrated well by the power it gives government to shut down 'unrecognized' schools that do not comply with the Act's stipulations.

Unrecognized?

In any 'free' country unrecognized must become the norm, because recognition means subjugation. Subjugation to the collective's will, as represented by government. An act of trade where one sells and another buys if effected by the free will of both parties concerned requires no recognition by a third party.

Why should it?

If unrecognized schools sell their services and there are takers to such 'unrecognized' education, should anyone have a problem?

Recognition is regulation in disguise. The public's fooled into believing recognition/regulation will get them better products and services. The fifty years post Independence in India when regulation ruled, and products and services were the worst ever, has proven comprehensively it doesn't work. LPG (read, loosening of regulations) is what bettered products and services for the consumer.

On the question of the rights, including the Right to Education, its important we realize as a nation we have no rights except that of our right to life and liberty. The only society that understood this (currently being undone by socialist Barack and his acolytes) was the one in the United States of America, which explains why its constitution enshrined right to life and liberty as its core tenet.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Note, Ayn Rand says it best on rights,

A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self- sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.

Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.

The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave....

To violate man’s rights means to compel him to act against his own judgment, or to expropriate his values. Basically, there is only one way to do it: by the use of physical force. There are two potential violators of man’s rights: the criminals and the government. The great achievement of the United States was to draw a distinction between these two—by forbidding to the second the legalized version of the activities of the first.

The Declaration of Independence laid down the principle that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” This provided the only valid justification of a government and defined its only proper purpose: to protect man’s rights by protecting him from physical violence.

Thus the government’s function was changed from the role of ruler to the role of servant. The government was set to protect man from criminals—and the Constitution was written to protect man from the government. The Bill of Rights was not directed against private citizens, but against the government—as an explicit declaration that individual rights supersede any public or social power.

The result was the pattern of a civilized society which—for the brief span of some hundred and fifty years—America came close to achieving. A civilized society is one in which physical force is banned from human relationships—in which the government, acting as a policeman, may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.

This was the essential meaning and intent of America’s political philosophy, implicit in the principle of individual rights. But it was not formulated explicitly, nor fully accepted nor consistently practiced.

America’s inner contradiction was the altruist-collectivist ethics. Altruism is incompatible with freedom, with capitalism and with individual rights. One cannot combine the pursuit of happiness with the moral status of a sacrificial animal.

It was the concept of individual rights that had given birth to a free society. It was with the destruction of individual rights that the destruction of freedom had to begin.

A collectivist tyranny dare not enslave a country by an outright confiscation of its values, material or moral. It has to be done by a process of internal corruption. Just as in the material realm the plundering of a country’s wealth is accomplished by inflating the currency—so today one may witness the process of inflation being applied to the realm of rights. The process entails such a growth of newly promulgated “rights” that people do not notice the fact that the meaning of the concept is being reversed. Just as bad money drives out good money, so these “printing-press rights” negate authentic rights.

Consider the curious fact that never has there been such a proliferation, all over the world, of two contradictory phenomena: of alleged new “rights” and of slave-labor camps.

The “gimmick” was the switch of the concept of rights from the political to the economic realm.

The Democratic Party platform of 1960 summarizes the switch boldly and explicitly. It declares that a Democratic Administration “will reaffirm the economic bill of rights which Franklin Roosevelt wrote into our national conscience sixteen years ago.”

Bear clearly in mind the meaning of the concept of “rights” when you read the list which the platform offers:

“1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

“2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

“3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.

“4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad.

“5. The right of every family to a decent home.

“6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

“7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accidents and unemployment.

“8. The right to a good education.”

A single question added to each of the above eight clauses would make the issue clear:At whose expense?

Jobs, food, clothing, recreation(!), homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values—goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them?

If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor.

Any alleged “right” of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.

No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as “the right to enslave.”

A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one’s own effort.

Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness—not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it doesnot mean that others must make him happy.

The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life....

I rest my case.

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The Kid & The Zombie Act

The buses that cart Bangalore's tech. workforce travelling cattle-class to their workplaces make for a depressing sight. Peer inside and the feeling gets worse. Its as if the clunkers on wheels are transporting the lifeless. I guess it must be the work that awaits these people. Service assembly lines, especially those to do with software can do the zombie-turning act real quick.

What saves the morning scene in Bangalore are school buses. Filled with chattering li'l kids, (those that have orderly ones have older kids who go to schools and log onto assembly lines ) these buses are a sight for sore eyes. The animated discussions, laughter, group choruses, are infectious. Pass by such school buses and your heart skips, your soul leaps within.

For the kids, its both the journey, and the anticipation of time together at school. For the zombies, 'together' is a mirage.

As consumers we've done both the kid and the zombie act. If its repetitive-inertia-driven consumption, the zombie in us goes through the motions of purchase. If its the non-repetitive once-in-a-long-time buy, its the kid doing the animated act. The challenge for marketers is to get the kid out of consumers every time they buy. That means making the anticipation and the experience pleasurable.

That also means enduring loyalty, and zero inertia.

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In Murder We Trust

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Why Ford Figo should be celebrating

JWT India has been penalized for the leaked (online) 'tasteless' adverts on Ford Figo?

I don't get it.

Ford should be thanking JWT. Their drowning Figo is now climbing the recall charts. What's more, we even know its got a spacious boot! Imagine that. In an era where brands earn zero recall despite millions of Ad dollars, Figo's inadvertently (who knows?) engineered learning and recall with a zero spend!

Oh, I get it. It was tasteless.

Really?

Why am I not surprised liberals have their priorities all messed up? In an era where the real gets swept under perceptual carpets, browbeating over the tasteless will surely take precedence over real violence against women.

Onward liberals, let the charades roll on!

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