Equitable Public Policies and Laws

Your right to make decisions which affects others and, their right to such decisions or choices too and, the ethical / moral justification of such rights should be the foundational basis of an equitable public policy:

How do you tell right from wrong and good from evil? Here the concepts of morality, equity, justice and fair play come into consideration in guiding and limiting our choices.

Also, when you grant to yourself the right to make a decision, you also, must then accept the responsibility of living with your choice or decision and its consequences.

Laws should not attempt to be written for all future and be so detailed as to foresee and block every loophole, that would be impossible. They should be general guidelines or directive principles which can be appropriately interpreted by the Courts from time to time to fit the then context. Preferably all Laws other than the Foundational Laws should have a ‘Sunset’ clause, calling for their termination unless duly reviewed after a suitable period as deemed fit.

Quotations for Consideration

1. “A man is morally free when he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity” – George Santayana
2. “Public policy should not be designed to advance moral instincts that we reject everyday of our lives.” – Steven.E.Landsburg

As Ayn Rand writes:

1. “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
2. “You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity”.
3. “What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.”
4. “The Government cannot give anybody anything that the Government does not first take from someone else”.
5. “You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it”.
6. “When half the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation”. (See Annexure – I – Socialism in action and also the story of the Ants and the Grasshoppers in annexure to ‘Equity in Taxation & Comments on I.T.& G.S.T. ).

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes:
Modernity has replaced ethics with legalese, and the law can be ‘gamed’ by a good lawyer. People arbitrating the system should be named.If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud. Just as being nice to the arrogant is no better than being arrogant to the nice, being accommodating to anyone committing an infamous action condones it. Many problems of Society come from the argument- ‘Other people are doing it’ Try not to add to such problems.

Action Points

a). Live with your choices / decisions:

If two children in your care are given a choice between seeing TV now and doing the homework later, or completing the homework now and seeing the TV later, and one chooses to see the TV now while the other chooses to first finish the homework and watch TV later, would it be fair for the first child to see TV first and later cry foul that she was not also, getting to see TV again? Of course she has no case. The first child was given the same choices and had chosen to take her reward upfront, while the second child chose to wait and take it later. Choices have consequences and you seek to teach the children to understand this and live with the consequences of their choices. Hence, it is clearly wrong, as an adult, to yourself claim that the better consequences of your neighbours’ different choices are inherently unfair or unequal.

So then why is it that in adult life, when one person chooses to work only 40 hours a week and for the security of a guaranteed wage and leisure time, and another chooses to work round the clock to create a new enterprise with uncertain rewards and many risks, we allow the first person to cry foul and shout about inequality, if say after 30 years, the entrepreneur ends up successful and rich while he is relatively poor? It was after all his choice to make. How should he now value the security and the extra hours of leisure he enjoyed because of his choice? How about the many other entrepreneurs who tried and failed and are now even worse off than him?

If the income gap has grown favouring the rich, then the leisure gap has grown favouring the poor (the least skilled and the least educated). In 1965 the average man spent 48-50 hrs working at the office or the factory, throw in coffee and lunch breaks. Today he spends only 35 to 40 hrs. The extra free time is his to spend as he wishes, 6 to 8 hrs of leisure a week is equivalent to over 10 extra weeks of vacation/family time each year. Shouldn’t he rightly put a value to this too, both monetarily and otherwise? (See – ‘Equality for All or are ALL Equal?’).

After all as the saying goes – “Being Rich is having MONEY, while being Wealthy is having TIME! ” Of course what one does with this TIME is as much one’s choice as what one does with one’s money”.