Rethinking Rethinking Development

Please check out this video vis-a-vis Rethinking Development series that a whole lot of folks are doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4NijLf3M-A
Australia's John Anderson & Dr. Jordan B Peterson: In Conversation -Jordan B Peterson, 2018-04-03

I'm also reading the speaker's book right now that is delving into this in great detail.

I particularly want to know why these aspects of 20th century history have been all but censored in our various interactions about capitalism in the alternatives sector and I expect in many political science, social studies type courses, especially since they involve explorations done at massive scales in the name of bringing about alternatives to capitalism. You'd think they'd merit a case study at least.

And whatever we say today about them in post-mortem analysis (including the most immature of them all: "Oh that wasn't REAL ___ism, my way will be sso much better"), the people who were "in the arena" in these events, the ones who were calling the shots and had vast resources at their disposal, themselves were very clear and had all rational backing to show that they were consciously doing something that is devoutly anti-capitalism, anti-hierarchy, pro-masses etc etc.

This shouldn't be something worth neglecting if we truly want to cover post-industrial-revolution human history. Getting to know not-so-good answers to capitalism can be crucial in the quest to find better ones and to avoid repeating past mistakes. Large collective experiences always have something to learn from, so dismissing them isn't a good idea. I'd have been comfortable with alternative reporting / explanation of what happened, but instead (and your experience may be different but hey mine counts too) what I've experienced is a blanket censorship, a conspiracy of silence about these things, accompanied by a very energetic, resourceful demonization of whoever speaks about these things including branding them as simply too evil to listen to, and that makes me uncomfortable and question whom to trust.

Especially regarding "Rethinking Development", I really want to know from that perspective, what happened in Cambodia. My personal take at the moment (subject to change on intelligent responses and stratify on angry ones) is that Pol Pot attended a Rethinking Development course and got a chance to put his learnings to practice.

[Let that sentence sink in for a bit..]

Do note that the word "rethinking" always involves challenging long-held assumptions, so naturally you will find plenty of recommendations from sources that you trust a lot, against considering any of what I'm sharing with you. Going by my anti-authoritarian leanings I suppose that shall always be the case. They will very likely want to make sure you never, ever get to the main content of these things. Why so, now there's a good question to ask. I think it was Aristotle who beckoned us to be able to consider competing ideas without needed to believe in them. I have preferred to get down to the content and make my own damn mind instead of seeking protection from self-assigned protectors, but I'll leave you to choose your own way.


PS: For those who are very concerned about fake news: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/576390452279831352/

PPS: Not offended yet? Check out more posts from my Rethinking series.

What if the world's environmentalists focused on pesticides / soil health instead of CO2?

... then Monsanto wouldn't have been allowed to get away with calling their products a solution to climate change at least. They wouldn't have been allowed to net billions in subsidies based on that false claim. 

Imagine billions of dollars of taxpayer money focused on restoring small, real farms producing real food, overturning fraudulent court cases filed by GMO companies against small farmers, instead of being put to line the pockets of billionaire energy company bosses and politicians like Al Gore. 

Imagine not seeing state-sized toxic lakes forming as a by-product of a taxpayer-funded green push. 

Imagine thousands of environmental studies courses around the globe spending just as much time on teaching about soil health as they do about CO2. 

Imagine an intergovernmental organisation under the aegis of the United Nations collating a 97% consensus from the world's scientists and calling on all world governments to put a halt to subsidizing runaway pesticide companies.

CO2 and the single-minded, monocropping-style obsession with it and it only, has been a major distraction from real environmental solutions that would have prevented the problem far upstream. But the people who will point that out have been classified by our high-horsed friends as climate change deniers to kill off their voices. Their inputs will not make it to policy consultations because they have been demonized.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Josh & Rebecca Tickell
Date: Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 12:24 AM
Subject: What's up Bay Area? Kiss The Ground Book tour coming your way...

If you're going to San Francisco be sure to check out these Kiss The Ground events!

Dear friends and family, Maybe you saw the cover of the New York Times this week, maybe you heard your neighbor talking about it, or maybe you're already a soil hero amongst us but if you haven't heard yet? SOIL (aka "dirt") has been the hot topic lately. I know I know, we've been talking about it for years but guess what, the world is finally waking up. And now is a more critical time than ever to keep the movement alive and turn this conversation into action! If you live in the Bay Area or want an excuse to get out of town next week, join us for these very exciting Kiss The Ground events happening (and stay tuned for more dates and cities to come in the Kiss the Ground book tour!) Tuesday May 1st 7pm-9pm PST at Book Passage, Corte Madera space is limited so reserve your spot here Kiss The Ground Book Signing & conversation with Josh Tickell and Carla Vernon, President of Annie's Homegrown Join Carla Vernon, the President of Annie's Homegrown and Kiss The Ground book author, Josh Tickell for a Conversation about the importance of regenerative agriculture and healing our soils. Learn about Annie's commitment to advancing regeneration through their production model and get an inside scoop on how a big business was able to commit themselves to soil health.  Oh, and get your Kiss The Ground Book copy signed by Josh while you're at it! Wednesday May 2nd 7pm-9pm PST at The Victorian Theatre, San Francisco space is limited so reserve your spot here How to Regenerate the Earth and Reverse Climate Change – a talk by Kiss The Ground Book author, Josh Tickell. Featuring opening acts by the SeaStars Join Sundance Award-Winning, Oscar Shortlisted, NY Times Critics' Pick author/filmmaker, Josh Tickell for an eye-opening, heart-palpitating presentation that reveals the true hidden story of what is happening to Earth's climate and how to fix and reverse some of the largest trends we are experiencing today. Drawing from his book and upcoming film, Kiss the Ground, Tickell  will unravel a powerful story with hope, tools and life-changing takeaways.  Help bring about a rapid shift from a degenerative economy to one that supports the mutual thriving of people and planet. Join Josh May 1st - May 4th in SF for the ReGen18 conference where hundreds of world changers in philanthropy, business, government and citizen activism will convene to foster the emergence of a new regenerative society.  In other news, as part of Ojai's Earth Day celebration, Rebecca organized a friendly but firm protest against the spraying of Roundup herbicide on our local public parks. (Roundup contains an ingredient called glyphosate which is suspected to cause cancer). As a result of the political action, which was joined by a number of local concerned parents, children and citizens, the Ojai valley Land Conservancy agreed to stop spraying Roundup at a popular local park. Not only did the protest make an impact, but the community is now looking at natural weed reduction methods like using goats and herbivores, as well as organizing community hand and mechanical removal of weeds. Thank you to all who showed up to voice your support this Earth Day! We are so excited to show the Bay Area some love next week and can't wait to see you there! As always, if you can't make it, you can always catch up with us on Facebook or instagram :) Love, Josh, Rebecca, and the team at Big Picture Ranch

Why I don't agree with putting Climate Change education in schools (as if it's not already there)

I'll recommend watching a movie called "Tomorrowland" to see the flip side of the "let's make it compulsory in schools" argument, from the psychological perspective. It's been out since some years now, had George Clooney in it, and comes on movie channels too now and again, probably also available online. Just the first half hour will show you the effects of the future-less hell we have unleashed on our next generations through the gloom and doom way.

From the perspective of schoolchildren, I'll state that the best way to make someone hate a topic is by making it part of the mandatory curriculum. And there is a major need right now to remove several specializations from compulsory school syllabi, for the simple reason that the specialists who pioneered those fields did so by not having to study 100 other specializations at the same time before they even hit adulthood.

Coming to more inconvenient territory, just got this in the inbox next to the email arguing for putting climate change education in school curriculum (and last time I checked, it's already very much in!) :

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-04-17-new-politically-incorrect-climate-change-book-sells-out-everywhere.html

And I'll advise using a more neutral search engine that doesn't tinker with rankings when looking it up.. 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Politically+Incorrect+Guide+to+Climate+Change%2C+by+Marc+Morano&atb=v79-7__&ia=web

It's interesting how in the West, the anti-GMO folks have been saying all this time that the attention lavished on climate change has seriously distracted from the much-needed attention on environmental toxins, GMOs, heavy metal contaminations, cancer-causing pesticides, additives, fluoridation of water supplies, etc. NaturalNews is one source that I see consistently breaking the demonization I've been taught in our circles, that anyone who objects to climate change agenda must necessarily be a pro-pollution pro-fossil-fuel person and they must be doing it because they're being paid millions by evil polluters. Reality, in my experience, is a bit more nuanced. 

Instead I now see billions in taxpayer as well as billionaire funds being spent on a small (and by now quite priestly) class of scientists and career NGOs to focus completely and exclusively on CO2, and nothing is left for investigating much more tangible issues of pollution. There is no intergovernmental panel or all-world-leaders-summit to investigate and legislate at the global level against harmful pesticides or toxins in our environment.. that part we've been told only penny-less grassroots activists and mothers of disabled children have to deal with and governments will back the polluter side only as far as that topic is concerned. No action for change needed there apparently. Resources that were meant to be dedicated to combat pollution have been diverted en masse to climate change, and the polluters have been given a free pass. So much so that major polluters like Monsanto are getting away with claims that their products are helping in combating climate change.

There's also the problem I have with folks thinking that destroying democracy and bringing in more laws and tightly controlling each and every thing that moves and censoring 99% of humanity to only let qualified phd's call the shots (aka technocracy) is the best way to solve any problem. I see a lot of those tendencies in the climate change world, and I can confidently say that the whole skeptic movement exists primarily because of these technocratic urges that people who have spent much their lives behind ivory gates in privileged institutions (non-reality that is being paid for by others) of academia seem to be more prone to. This is even why I don't see the left-wing as a satisfactory counter to right-wing politics. "My dictator will be better that your dictator" doesn't quite ring a bell for me, sorry. So the push to target children to teach about climate change to.. let's remove the rose-tinted glasses of innocence and nobility and break this down to what it really is:

It's a more gullible population that is under your absolute psychological and physical control and doesn't have the ability or agency to question or walk away from what you are telling them. Its a population that will gladly mirror back your opinions in exchange for grades and artificially magnify your self-righteousness, where brown-nosers will win your favor and free-thinkers will get into your bad books. It's a component of the human population that is much easier for you to indoctrinate (well, at least that's what it appears) as you need not worry about feedback mechanisms. Their only means of countering your onslaught is disinterestedness in life itself which is reportedly on an extreme rise. That's the reality of schools, and increasingly of colleges too with bans on diversity of thought on either side of the spectrum. They are dictatorships. That you prefer shifting your discourse from democracy to dictatorship, from grownups to minors, from the real world to gated institutions with captive audiences, is an indication not of democracy being bad but of your discourse and possibly your ideology itself being too weak to survive reality.

-------------

This came as a response to an article shared below. I couldn't help but notice that a side that has been pushing their side to millions are complaining about the other side 

Climate  Olivia Rosane

Apr. 13, 2018 01:18PM EST

iStock

Majority of Americans Want Climate Education in Schools

In a rebuke to efforts by the Heartland Institute and at least 10 state legislatures, a large majority of Americans believe climate change should be taught in schools, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC) reported Wednesday.

When the YPCCC asked Americans, "Should schools teach our children about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming?", a national average of 78 percent either somewhat or strongly agreed that they should.

Moreover, a large majority shared that view in all of the 50 states and more than 3,000 counties surveyed, whether or not they favored Republicans or Democrats in elections.

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

The results suggest that efforts in at least 10 states to alter how climate change is addressed in state educational standards are out of step with voters.

For example, YPCCC holds up the case of Idaho, where state legislators argued that no section on human-caused climate change should be included in state science standards, but instead arguments for and against a human role should be presented. Scientists and educators successfully argued that such a move would damage the education and futures of students by presenting a scientific consensus on an urgent issue as up-for-debate. The final decision was in line with the majority of Idahoans views, since, according to YPCCC data, 76 percent of them support climate education.

The same is true for the residents of other states debating their science standards, including Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky.

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

National Center for Science Education Deputy Director Glenn Branch told Business Insider in 2017 that, when it comes to determining state science standards, "the two topics that arouse the most discontent and controversy are climate change and evolution."

But the YPCCC data suggests that that controversy is manufactured at the political level and not felt by most Americans.

One key controversy-monger, according to YPCCC, is the climate-denying think tank the Heartland Institute. In March 2017, the fossil-fuel-funded group sent out 25,000 copies of a book called Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming to science teachers nationwide.

Which of these is a better driver?

This is inspired by a tweet I saw some time ago. I can't track it down now, but the message here covers more.

Given the same journey distance and time and nearly identical cars, we have two kinds of car drivers:

A. Someone who pressed the accelerator and brake a lot in the journey

B. Someone who uses them sparingly, and only when needed.

Of the two, which would you say is more proficient at using the accelerator and the brake? Or, overall, in driving the car?

--------------

Let's change tracks. Apply the lines above to emotions.

Which one would you say is of higher emotional intelligence? A or B?

Would you say that the people whom you see being more emotional more of the time are automatically more qualified when it comes to emotional intelligence?

Who do you see talking about things like emotional intelligence more often?

Ok, changing gears again now. Let's see... 

Political choices?

Physical strength?

Military strength?

Police force?

Judiciary?

Discipline?

Conversation?

Love?

Programming?

Patriotism?

Religion?

Science?

Research?

Protests?

Outrage?

Moral Indignation?

Farming?

Carpentry?

Plumbing?

Which is the better driver? The one who is seen and heard doing a whole lot of it all the time, or the one who manages things such that minimal doing is required?

Are your value systems equipped to handle the differences between the two? Are your ways of measurement and judgement designed to bias you toward one or the other?

Trump is more of a Kejriwal than a Modi

The way the US establishment and mainstream media is treating Donald Trump, it's clear to me he's more of a Kejriwal than a Modi. 

Unfortunately the Indian civil society, pro-democracy folks, dissenters against totalitarianism etc are still trapped in identity politics and left-right paradigms will keep analoguing Modi with Trump despite piles of evidence to the contrary. 

They will accept blindly what the US mainstream has given them and then tell their fellow Indians not to blindly accept what the Indian mainstream gives them. 

This false slotting together of Modi and Trump has only bolstered Modi's electoral chances as people who know better about US politics take Trump's positives and hastily ascribe them to Modi, and in converse, they will hastily ascribe the Clintons' corruption and the deep state to everybody who dares to stand against Modi.

https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-04-11-fbi-raids-trumps-personal-lawyer-on-referral-from-special-counsel-mueller.html

The ceiling isn't entirely made of glass.

Sharing some food for thought... I intend to write further on this topic but not now.

The idea proposal : The ceiling isn't entirely made of glass.

Sharing a video.. with a request: Please WATCH the content (clippings from various Jordan Peterson's talks) of the video and don't directly get triggered by the title. The title is put by the uploader for clicks. It does NOT reflect the actual content of the video. Instead, the video brings the reality behind the differences and the reason for being compassionate about it. It promotes inclusion, whereas the blind ignorance of these differences under the guise of political correctness is only making things more difficult for everyone and ultimately will lead to workplaces where employers (even female employers) are simply too scared of employing women at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIi0_QFyeg

#FreeCountDankula

Q: What is the difference between Hitler and Scotland-2018?

A: Hitler withdrew charges against a comedian who mocked him. Scotland is jailing a comedian for mocking Hitler.

#FreeCountDankula #SJWsGoneWild #LiterallyHitler 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23freecountdankula

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FreeCountDankula

In other news, if you distributed leaflets saying "Jesus is Gay", would you get banned for life from entering a European country?

Check out this social experiment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxjH5hZYTbQ

How SJWs are messing up religious tolerance

While SJWs are not mentioned in this article, I will beg the common sense that obviously the school adminstration that did this correspondence and brought this about, are SJWs with very noble intentions about building inclusive spaces for people from all backgrounds.

https://www.infowars.com/san-diego-schools-ordered-to-reveal-correspondence-with-muslim-advocacy-group/
SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS ORDERED TO REVEAL CORRESPONDENCE WITH MUSLIM ADVOCACY GROUP
An anti-bullying plan called for adding Muslim holidays to staff calendars

... Hanif gave pamphlets to students that advised Muslim youth to contact CAIR if they faced bullying, which according to CAIR includes "insulting comments about Islam."
... A lawsuit filed in May by the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (FCDF) accused the school district of entangling itself with CAIR to set up a "subtle, discriminatory scheme that establishes Muslim students as the privileged religious group."

>> Think about the false negatives of such an anti-bullying program that specifically targets those speaking anything about Islam that can be taken offense to. A group of atheist-leaning students is sitting on a lawn, cracking jokes about various religious figures and traditions. Christianity get impaled. Hinduism gets fried. Buddhism gets poked. Jews get upnosed. And then in the same spirit. somebody cracks a joke about Islam. 

Some student passing by overhears this and co-incidentally is bearing a grudge against one of those students, and decides to report just the Islam joke. The whole group gets instantly dismissed from school, AND defamed in their community thanks to liberal media outlets catching and reporting the story as if it's some outbreak of right-wing hatred. Google their names and the whole story is there for all to see forever, meaning they'll never get admission or employment. 

SJWs genuinely believe that schools are the LAST places in the world to find anyone saying something dishonest or bearing grudges or cracking politically incorrect jokes. They also seem to genuinely believe that "forgiveness" doesn't exist, especially in matters of children, and that "justice" can be achieved in human society without ever having to bother about "forgiveness". 

Would you send your kid to a school where cracking a joke can ruin his entire life?

And for all the advocates of religious tolerance, how about a tolerant religion that is as unaffected by jokes about Islam as Christians are unaffected by jokes about Christianity? How about equal treatment of religions for a change?

Commentary on workplace harassment and women's role in it

This commentary got provoked by this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZrSrZpX5l8

Incredible dishonest cutting & editing of Jordan Petersons Vice interview -todoke, 2018-02-24

The content of the video is an interview of Jordan Peterson conducted by VICE news. They heavily edited the original interview, and the uploader has put in commendable effort to show us exactly what they edited out, with a direct before-after comparison.

My comment sprang from an assertion made by the interviewer, which in itself ran counter to his overall argument. And yes, my ending line IS a frustration point for me.

10:10 : "You know it when you see it" >> So you agree  that it is subjective. Now what if different people happen to "know" it at different times? What if the woman dressing and/or behaving provocatively in the workplace manages to fool herself into believing she isn't doing so but her colleagues think she does? If her right to "know it when I see it" is valid, why isn't anyone else's? Conversely, what if the woman is "feeling" that her colleague is desiring her but the thought has never crossed the colleague's mind? Don't women like being seen, like other people getting attracted to them? Doesn't a significant part of their self-worth assessment come from whether they got noticed that day? Haven't women confessed inasmuch in candid times? Isn't our culture and literature replete with that longing? What if a mistaken brush by the body is interpreted by this woman, who's on the lookout for confirming cues, as a confirmation that the colleague IS trying to get at her? Speaking of which, why do women even think that circumstantial physical contact is a viable tactic for men to wriggle their way into their pants, as opposed to a formal proposal for a date? Could it be because they have been complicit in that? [Addendum: Could it be because that's what THEY have been doing, are used to and hence expect it of others?] Could it be because they have been favouring men directly making physical contact and "wriggling in" at the "right opportunity" over and above men respectfully approaching and making a formal proposal?

Addendum: Do you want a harmonious workplace that's safe for both sexes instead of only one? Then imagine a world where women get turned OFF by men who deliberately touch them and try to wriggle their way into their pants. Imagine living in a world where immoral and opportunistic behaviour hasn't consistently been rewarded by women.

And.. here's another comment that came out after finishing watching the video:
Dear Feminsts and SJWs, Jordan Peterson's core argument is : WE DON'T KNOW enough yet to be able to slam ARBITRARY RULES with disastrous real life consequences in workplaces and campuses and dictate from on top what is and isn't sexual harassment. Your position is : You are CERTAIN that each and everything you deem to be harassment and microaggressions is exactly that, depending on only YOUR subjective perspectives. And you are demanding that each and every thing you have claimed be absolutely overturned, else each and every thing you have claimed is absolutely true. You have taken an all-or-nothing extremist stance whereas rational dialogue is all about rejecting the all-or-nothing stance and getting into nuance and specifics. If you don't budge from your extremist stances, you're going to end up with nothing. Workplaces will STOP HIRING WOMEN, period. This is how you will accomplish White Sharia : an absolute division of society along gender lines.

And another:

The top-down application of ruthless laws that have the potential of destroying the lives of innocents, versus allowing society room and time to reason its way through the complex situation [and the rules stick to basics where there IS consensus]. Straight-jacketing versus evolution. That's what this culture war is about, that's what the resistance to militant feminism is about. It's not about legitimizing oppression of females as the SJWs are putting it.

We need to confront weed pushers like we needed to confront smoking pushers

This twitter post and thread pretty much describes my problem with people on the pro-weed side. It started as a movement against state intrusion into people's lives. Upon reaching critical mass and public acceptance, It's turning into an excuse for more intrusion into people's lives. If smoking pot doesn't make you less of an intrusionist then perhaps its not truly helping you.

https://twitter.com/hawillisdc/status/967079441708060673

Have we considered the possibility that psychoactive herbs may influence momentary feelings, help creative expression, help deal with some toxins, but aren't supposed to be credited with making people better human beings overall? Use your toolbox, don't worship it.

Rethinking series: The things we're doing in the name of Social Justice

Greetings!

Starting this thread on Social Justice off with a video chronicling live cases of what top-down institutions are already doing under the excuse of respecting people's feelings. For many in India, this may look like it's a whole world away, yet try to see these incidents after bouncing them off a mental mirror. 

To me the most frightening part of these cases is : The opposites look terrifyingly identical. I ran and ran away from the one monster I so despised, only to slam face-first into its twin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Uo57iJIGQ

Why Are You Even Here You Dirty Statist? Lauren Southern at Anarchapulco 2017 -Anarchapulco, 2017-11-04

PS: Not offended yet? Check out more posts from my Rethinking series

Rethinking series : Feminism, Masculinity, Patriarchy

Holy crap, It's me again ;)

I'd like to invite you to a story.

Imagine that your whole life as a child you had to live inside the jaws of a monster.

Then when you came of age, you peeked outside and saw a much better world.

You got out and got as far away from that monster as you could.

Your focus was now on making sure you avoid / push back that monster come what may.

But you didn't notice there were other monsters around too.

Because you had experienced only one, you assumed that there was only one monster in the entire world. Or maybe you just haven't given it much thought yet.

And while doing your best to avoid the one monster you really, really want to keep away because you know it, 

You don't notice that you're stepping into the jaws of another monster.

What happens when a binary mindset collides with a multi-layered perspective of reality?

This BBC Channel 4 interview of Jordan Peterson by TV journalist Cathy Newman kind of broke the internet recently. 

Having personally experienced and also acted in the phenomenon of wholly misrepresenting something by "so you're saying that  ________ <insert the worst thing you can possibly imagine>", I totally loved it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests and postmodernism -Channel 4 News, 2018-01-16

(30 mins)

By the end of the interview, the links between the gender battles and liberty-authoritarian face-offs just come tumbling out.

And in the middle he does a "jab dil pe lagegi, tabhi toh baat banegi" moment too which brings home the importance of freedom of speech especially when we don't approve of the speech.

Here's an NVC-types lady talking about the interview, linking it to feminism and dialogue. Bit weird but made a lot of great points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyggRvJUOxQ

A Psychologist and a Former Channel 4 Producer Discuss Cathy Newman -PhilosophyInsights, 2018-02-04

(11 mins)

One phrase from this that stuck in my mind:

"Blind projection of rage"

Side-track: It ties in loosely to my problem with leaderless movements.

One more video, a follow-up interview of Peterson, talking about the first interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-T0QZOqCvE

Cathy Newman Thought She Won The Debate -H3 Podcast Highlights, 2018-02-03

(i frankly disagree with the title; the content is about more than that)

PS: When it says "Rethinking", that's what it means.

Stable Government

The meaning of stable government

You are getting screwed by the system : overcharges by utility, refused pension, property document not given, road, water connection not happening, scholarship fund never came, subsidy not being released, reimbursements not coming, bank account got emptied, trees getting chopped for no reason, whatever. You go to various offices with your issue:

Local corporator(s): Go f**k yourself
MLA: Go f**k yourself
MP: Go f**k yourself
Police: Go f**k yourself
Courts: Pay our lawyers all your money, spend decades and then go f**k yourself.
NGOs: Did we tell you to vote those assholes into power? Go f**k yourself.
RTI: Apellate authority seats are lying vacant! Go f**k yourself.
Jan Lokpal : Doesn't exist because you didn't care. Go f**k yourself.
Mohalla Sabha: Doesn't exist because you thought a GREAT leader at the top was the magic bullet for all problems. Go f**k yourself.
PM's citizens portal : There's a billion of you. What did you expect other than a 1:1billion lottery system? Go f**k yourself.

That's STABLE government. It's MONOPOLY, re-branded. What you wish for and what's advertised may be any other thing, but this is what it boils down to. Stable government = monopoly.
So, apni life toh dubaa di screensaver se impress hokar. Do you want your children also to live under a "stable" government? Or would you prefer a stable citizen's democracy that must, by definition, mean unstable, competition-based political uncertainty.

Unstable government = Stable democracy.
Dimaag ladao, Desh bachao.

My thoughts on increasing taxes on electricity and petrol for promoting sustainability

This is regarding a statement I saw in a survey where we had to agree or disagree:

"I would oppose policies that increase taxes on electricity and petrol because they make them more expensive for me."

I felt the part "because they make them more expensive for me" disabled me from agreeing or disagreeing, because now the statement assumes there can only be one reason for opposing such policies : that if I don't support them then it is automatically assumed I am selfish.

I'd like to explain my thoughts on it here.

The original purpose of taxation, when invented, was to fund the various governmental mechanisms needed to ensure smooth functioning of society. Example: transport, law and order, public infrastructure, education, healthcare services. The purpose of taxation was not to discourage use of said service. Tariffs and duties were used, of course for that.

At a macro level, there are many arguments against increasing taxation, saying that money collected by force only ends to doing harm, that the people collecting more taxes don't really have our best interests in mind, that forcing people into something increases the likelihood that they will act to damage it.

Even while keeping all the ills of capitalism in mind, Socialist policies of infinite government expansion haven't been so good either, and their combination that we see today is even worse (subsidies and cheap credit for the rich, burdensome regulations for the small entrepreneurs, and poorer part of population paying more taxes than richer part). History is witness to the fact that many things are too inefficiently and insensitively done by putting governments in charge of everything. Taxing our way out of problems has not really worked out as theorized, because it assumes that those collecting the taxes are Gods or Angels.

In the case of India, recollect the various reportings of massive funds collected by the government for clean energy, environmental work etc lying unspent for long time, and/or redirected into something else totally (like GST reimbursements recently)

In a research project on Pune's Budget data, we found that a large part of expenditures being done under some green label turned out to be unsustainable things like cementing the banks of rivers, streams, canals : a move that kills biodiversity, prevents water retention, increases runoff and leads to floods. Rather, our team felt that if those funds had been directly given to local citizens bodies who actually live there, they would have taken far better decisions and promoted sustainability.

Another problem with taxing essentials (as of today) like electricity and petrol is that you end up burdening everybody, and the people living more sustainably are far more burdened than the people living unsustainably. There is a compounding effect on costs of living. Raising a rupee here will have a 10-fold impact elsewhere.

Another major effect of taxation is a reduced sense of responsibilty. Because I am already being taxed "for sustainability", I will opt for styrofoam or plastic plates etc to cut costs. If I'm paying a swachh bharat cess then I don't care about segregating my waste. My sense of civic duty towards a cause is reduced when you're already pulling money out of my pocket for that cause (and then ending up not doing much good as highlighted above). (Note: I'm just putting myself in the shoes of people around me here)

So, I would say that if we cannot guarantee proper accountability and transparency of our government (which, frankly, we cannot), then it is a bad idea to promote taxation of electricity, petrol and other such baseline things as a way to promote sustainablity. I fully support taxing jewellery (update : GST on diamonds slashed to 0.25%, on biofuel buses to 18%. See the priorities of our leaders? ), imported cars, liquor, cigarettes and stuff through the roof, sure, but let's call it "duty" or "tariff" and not call them taxes. There are more chances of citizens voluntarily putting money into sustainability causes if it stays in their pockets instead of being fleeced out by overbearing governments. Between placing my faith in citizens or government, I choose citizens. I'd rather have folks like Azim Premji creating places like APU than getting taxed out only to fund river cementing :P