Thank heavens their phone monopoly has gone!

Sauvik has great piece in the Outlook Business. Some excerpts: 

• Now, if corporations act in this way—serving the self-interest of their shareholders and customers—then, as Adam Smith says, “society benefits as though by an invisible hand.” The mobile phone with a built-in torch is a great example in India, where the socialist State, with all its social responsibility, cannot provide reliable, uninterrupted electricity, which it has monopolised. Thank heavens their phone monopoly has gone!

• Indeed, all the goodies we enjoy consuming today are produced by private corporations—cars, phones, computers, software, beer, wine, fashionable clothes, and so much more. Because of these “selfish capitalists” the invisible hand ensures that the whole of society benefits. 

• Indeed, all the goodies we enjoy consuming today are produced by private corporations—cars, phones, computers, software, beer, wine, fashionable clothes, and so much more. Because of these “selfish capitalists” the invisible hand ensures that the whole of society benefits.

• “I have never seen much good come out of those who purport to trade for the public benefit,” added Smith, and this point is worth pondering in socialist India, where the State owns and operates hundreds of companies that “purport to trade for the public benefit”—from Air India and SAIL to ONGC and ITDC to banks, phone and electricity companies. Our experience with a State-owned industrial sector ought to have convinced us that private corporations serve us—the members of society—far better than public sector firms. The former produce for us our “common wealth,” while the latter are our “common loss”.

• In other words, it ought to be apparent to all of us that “social responsibility” is a hoax, just as “socialism” is a hoax. If a socially responsible government were to take power, its first duty would be to liquidate all the PSUs. Social responsibility, indeed! Friedrich Hayek, the only Austrian School economist to win the Nobel prize so far, called “social” a “weasel word” —and we must watch out for it. The weasel is an animal that feeds by making a tiny hole and sucking everything out of an egg, leaving behind the empty shell. In precisely the same way, if any other word is attached to “social” then it loses its meaning entirely. For example, “social justice”. Justice, we all know, is fair exchange: “the principle of Justice is the principle of Trade.” But what “justice” is there in “social justice”—which means the State robs Peter to pay Paul? Social justice is just a “mirage,” said Hayek. Look at the MGNREGA.