| A few days ago, Suman Bery, the director-general of NCAER, wrote in these columns about the need for a market in ideas. That is a good idea. |
| But I would like to point out that a market for ideas already exists but it is mainly for bad ones. So here is my theorem: the worse the idea, the bigger the market for it, where a bad idea is defined simply as being an unworkable one. |
| The problem, of course, is that at the time when a bad idea is adopted by society or government, no one knows that a lemon has just been sold. Indeed, the seller often insists that it is not a lemon at all. The worst case is when the seller actually believes what he is saying. This self-delusion happens all the time. |
| Consider (only) four very large ideas of our time that fit this description""NAM, UN, Commonwealth and Saarc. There can, of course, be many more, such as Marxism. |
| Not only did those who sold each idea believe that it was a good one, they think so even after events have proved them to be otherwise. This suggests the emergence and entrenchment of vested interests because""here is Lemma 1""the worse the idea in terms of being unworkable, the greater are the vested interests that develop while trying to make it work. |
| To see why NAM was a bad idea, you must read the critique by a former foreign minister of Singapore, R Dhanabalan, at the 1983 NAM "Summit". He was so scornful of NAM's pretensions that he didn't even bother to come for it. He just sent his speech to be read out. You could ask, though: why was Singapore a member? |
| There is then the UN, an even bigger forum for ineffectual bleating and make-believe than NAM. Why, the very name contradicts itself. United nations, indeed! The old name, League of Nations, was much more accurate. The UN was always, literally, a panchayat because of the Security Council, where the powerful imposed their will on the weak, usually by dividing them. Ask anyone who has worked at the UN and he will tell you why when matters really came to a head, the idea of non-alignment became completely irrelevant. You needed either the US or the USSR on your side. With the latter now gone, guess whose side you need to be on. |
| So Lemma 2: one bad idea negates the other but the result isn't a better idea. |
| And Lemma 3: the bigger bad idea negates the smaller one, so you are left only with big bad ideas. |
| Indeed, not just NAM but also the Commonwealth was another bad idea. Many former colonies bought into it and the seller, Britain, still thinks it is a good idea, albeit with decreasing conviction. Given how patronising its tone is, I wonder why countries don't walk out of it. The latest example of this came when the meeting of finance ministers of the Commonwealth was held in Colombo earlier this week. The meeting was meant, as the Commonwealth Secretariat put it, "... to prepare Ministers for their discussions at the IMF/ World Bank Meetings which take place immediately after." |
| In other words, the idea is to educate the natives. Thank you, B'wana. |
| Or consider Saarc. It seemed like a good idea only to Bangladesh, which proposed it in 1982, though heaven knows why. India demurred but not for long. South Asia quickly bought it and ever since 1985 everyone has been pretending that all is well with Saarc and writing books about it. |
| The facts, of course, are the opposite. Saarc is as complete a piece of nonsense as the above three were, and are. In the Darwinian world of such things, it is being snipped away, notably by Asean, which has done rather better because its members agreed not to seek political objectives. |
| This offers a clue. If you examine the failed ideas""NAM, UN, Saarc, Commonwealth, etc""you will find that each one of them was primarily political, rather than economic. In the end, that is what rendered them futile. Essentially, political dynamics always ensure self-destruct because they rely excessively on short-term objectives, which are constantly shifting. |
| In contrast, the ideas that have come out of economic imperatives, such as Asean or Nafta, even the EU, have tended to yield better results in that the outcomes are more equitable and therefore less ephemeral. At a lesser level, so have the IMF, the World Bank, Gatt/WTO, etc. |
| An important reason why each of these is failing now is that the US has sought to turn them into political instruments. So countries simply turn away from them because they can't stand up to US pressure. |
| That, indeed, is also why we are seeing a proliferation of bilateral and regional trading arrangements, not to mention the call for alternative monetary unions, such as an Asian one. These, it is hoped, will have a uni-dimensional economic agenda which is uncluttered by politics. (But if China is allowed in, it will be impossible to keep politics out.) |
| Finally, does Gresham's Law operate for ideas, in that do bad ideas chase out good ideas? Well, if they didn't, wouldn't the world be a better place? |
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