[world-vedic] Digest Number 61

[Guest guest]

Haribol Prabhus,

 

I may have missed some info on this, but do any of you know more details

about Shambala? The Bhagavatam says this is the villiage that Lord Kalki

appears in. Do we have information on where this area is? Is it in the

Himaliyas? Is there a history? ys Visokadasa

[Guest guest]

Here's the intro to the book I mentioned in our last email. Read through and

let me know if you find it of interest to your gathering.

 

raghu

The Economics Of Love: Varna-Asrama Dharma

 

The following letter to Maharaja is an outline for a new social reform

movement based upon the principles of Varna-Asrama Dharma. It's an

introduction to the latest volume of 13 chapters that will be posted on the

net under ROOPA.org by July 10th, 2000.

 

I've been off line for a few months while I took my massage course in Hawaii

and completed this latest volume. I hope this general discussion can lead to

a new interest in such reforms from the Vedic perspective and provide an

outline for better organizing our own ideas on them.

Raghunatha Anudasa

Anudasa

PO Box 1108

Hilo HI 96721

 

Jai Maharaja,

 

Please accept my humble obeisance. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

I've been working on a book called The Economics of Love. It's a rather

simple model for instituting Varna-asrama Dharma into a broad-based,

contemporary political platform.

 

I think you will enjoy this work for several reasons. You may find this a

refreshing testament of guru-kula's training and a unique confirmation to the

soundness of Prabhupada's principles for social reform. You may also

recognize its mass appeal and the newfound relevancy it brings to our

movement.

 

The first policy is called ROOPA: Responsibility Of One's Products & Actions.

In short, it requests people to take full responsibility for the economic

cost of their activities and products. Millions of legal precedents and

thousands of political reforms already use this system wherein the guilty pay

for the "monetary damages" of their actions. ROOPA streamlines this universal

legal practice into a formal system of economic policy and "justice for all."

 

Here's where it gets interesting. Those things generally considered "bad" or

vice, just so happen to have expensive economic liabilities associated with

them. This is not so much a moral crusade as it is an economic observation.

 

Volume One takes the case of tobacco. Tobacco has an undisputed medical cost

to this country of $100 billion a year. This comes to $2,500 per smoker,

$1,000 per American family. The government's court settlement only requires

the tobacco industry to pay $10 billion of this expense. Paying full price

would make smoking prohibitively expensive, about $10 per pack of cigarettes.

 

This is true of all vices avoided by devotees: meat eating, intoxication,

gambling and prostitution. Combined, these four activities represent the

world's single greatest ECONOMIC liabilities. They cost us trillions. This

means each person engaged in vice is actually costing millions in social harm

or "social-cost."

 

Again, this is not a moral judgement. Who is to be the judge of right or

wrong? Not ROOPA. ROOPA only makes the economic observation that these

particular activities happen to create a great deal of economic liability.

ROOPA only ask of those engaged in them, to kindly cover the FULL cost of

them.

 

People fail to cover the FULL cost of their vices. This leaves the rest of us

to subsidize their cost with ever-higher insurance premiums, taxes and

reduced benefits. This is more then unfair. It's the economics of a zero sum

game.

 

The 45 million American's priced-out of health insurance is one of many

examples. This all-time record can only grow with today's increasing

vice-subsidies. These vice-subsidies will increase growing disparity in all

areas of social development.

 

Smokers repaying the American taxpayers would offset these social

discrepancies. A repayment of all vice-subsidies would retire all public debt

with change to spare for universal coverage of every needed social program.

Instead, our resources are spent covering the social-cost of these vices.

 

ROOPA also provides a host of benefits to smokers and those of vice. ROOPA

replaces most government regulations, taxes, insurance premiums and criminal

penalties. They are already covered in the products up-front price.

 

Cigarettes may be five bucks more, for example, but the smoker's health

insurance premium for things as lung cancer and rehab are already covered.

There will be no such thing as a lack of access to treatment though provided

free to all smokers. These costs will have been covered in the upfront price

of their cigarettes.

 

In short, if vice always has an economic liability, then paying all its

potential cost upfront becomes the activities natural regulation. Greater the

vice, greater the price. Greater the price, the less affordable the product.

 

Net result: consumption reduced. The price becomes the products own NATURAL

prohibition. No need for further government interference. Today's volumes of

government regulations, layers of bureaucracy and their numerous watchdogs

will be replaced by this "true-price" tag. ROOPA is complete de-regulation

and yet provides fair and effective social accountability. ROOPA is as simple

and fair as it is effective.

 

As consumption slows, so too does the social-cost. This in turn reduces the

retail price. When consumption again rises, prices follow suit. TRUE "free

market" economics at its purest.

 

This is all discussed in Volume 1 thru 3. Volume 1: ROOPA, Economic Democracy

is now complete for a total of 13 chapters. It should be up on the net by

July 10th, 2000, under ROOPA.org

 

 

 

This is only half of the ROOPA equation. The flip side is even more

revealing. Good deeds, virtue, happen to offer great economic rewards.

Greater the virtue, greater the economic benefits. Love is the greatest

virtue of all. Motherhood captures the essence of love. Mom also provides

more economic benefit then most any other `job' in the world.

 

According to studies, it would cost "$507,000 a year…at standard professional

rates" to replace the work mom does at home.

 

We spend 40% of each year working until `May 15th' just to pay our taxes. A

two-parent-working household means one works just to pay the Feds. Mom is

sent off to work to pay taxes so government can now care for our family. The

government then charges us twice as much for the same job mom did better.

 

The alternative is obvious: replacing government care with family care. ROOPA

makes a simple request. Let our own family bid on providing these family

services. We should be allowed to at least get half the amount of money the

state now takes for the same jobs as senior-care or after-school and

pre-school programs. A true `free market' would demand as much. Who ever can

provide a better service for less should be allowed equal market access as

any of the multinational monopolies.

 

About 80% of all family care is still provided by mom. Some find this

appalling in an age of women's liberation. However, let us not over look the

credit this task demands. 80% of that credit belongs to mom alone. This

recognition of a mother's role in the home as well as the trend towards

family-provided-care is reflected in such highly successful programs as the

MOMs Club and MOPS: Mom's Of Pre-Schoolers, or the Mom's of Teens.

 

Mothers facing the multi-task, unforgiving demands of today maybe justly

described as "Super-Mom." The advantages Super-Mom provides over government

care: No bureaucracy, half the cost, double the service.

 

Specifically, family-provided care could cover all the country's seniors,

children and most of the poor on just half the Feds $1.4 trillion budget

already used for these `entitlement programs.' These points are covered in

Volumes 4 thru 6 with a total of about 15 chapters between them. These

volumes need a rewrite and editing. They should be done by the end of July.

These unedited works are available upon request.

 

This ROOPA principle in a nutshell: greater the love, greater the economic

returns. By this measure, "love of God" or bhakti, is the greatest love of

all.

 

Lovers of God or bhakta's, offer the greatest economic contributions. They

save society millions with each person they convert from vice to the ways of

virtue. Inspiring people to quit smoking, drinking and drugs, etc translates

into big savings for society at large.

 

Prabhupada's work inspired hundreds of thousands of people representing

savings worth billions. This is true of all religions that provide their

communities with a newfound sobriety, chastity and social participation. The

spirit and deeds of such individuals provide the most cost effective social

climate. Such an economic ideal is referred to as Bhakta ROOPA.

 

If this ROOPA model proves accurate, then morality can be judged by simply

measuring the economic out come of any given activity. Greater the vice,

greater the cost. Greater the virtue, greater the returns. This model has

been tested against hundreds of scenarios over these last 8 years. The

findings have been uncanny.

 

Applying this ROOPA formula to agriculture and industry is even more

startling. Ox-powered, agrarian based, cottage industry proves far more cost

effective then the petroleum based modern industry faced with repairing ALL

its environmental damage. Eco-technologies like solar and wind power are

similarly more cost effective against their Eco-destructive nuclear-petroleum

counter-parts. Manufacturing aside, the Eco-cost of gasoline runs into

hundreds of dollars per gallon. This environmental damage is nothing short of

an ECO-nomic subsidy to modern industry and paid for by the billions now

living in the wake of its global desolation.

 

In conclusion, if this system of ROOPA is followed, one end ups with a

society identical in life-style and social development to the Vedic system of

Varna-Asrama Dharma. The reason is evident; Varna-Asrama is the most cost

effective and equitable economic system. Today's Western model is bogged down

in massive vice-subsidies while leaving billions destitute in the name of

progress. ROOPA clearly demonstrates the flaws of this global, modern economy

as well as providing a simple, effective alternative already practice in

courtrooms throughout the world.

 

ROOPA provides a host of reforms. ROOPA transforms morality from the realm of

subjective religious zealots to that of a measurable science. ROOPA may prove

the cure-all for corporate-government corruption, incompetence or

conspiracies. All responsible public & private parties will now simply pay

their corresponding social-economic cost in full. Better still, it removes

the need for most other insurance premiums, taxes, government regulations or

economic policies. Taxes and state regulations are a sloppy imitation of what

ROOPA automatically accomplishes. Best of all, this places God and morality

center-stage after being outcaste from all economic policy planning over the

centuries.

 

ROOPA can provide the movement a new and timely preaching focus and offer as

much appeal to other religious denominations as it does a public hungry for

third party reforms. The devotees should find a great deal of interest from

both the Indian community and political parties in India as well as other

contacts throughout N and S America, Asia and South Africa.

 

All of this is more thoroughly discussed in the six volumes of The Economics

Of Love. It now needs to be independently verified by an academic institution

or social-economic professors.

 

I have been requested to present ROOPA at the WAVES conference or the World

Association of VEdic Studies. It's an annual gathering of dozens of

professors from around the world wherein they share their latest findings in

different areas of academic study from archaeology and astronomy to

linguistics and mathematics, etc. The professor of economics who invited me

to the conference may also partner with me in this presentation.

 

You may also know of professors, institutions, or members of the Indian

community that may be interested in researching or sponsoring such a project.

Such sponsorship will prove valuable. I look forward to hearing your thoughts

on ROOPA in general and would be happy for any suggestions on developing this

project further.

 

ROOPA provides a new and important framework to re-evaluate these issues from

a Godly perspective missing from today's public policy debates. For this

reason alone, it should be pursued vigorously. The fact that it mirrors

Varna-asrama dharma is a bonus for all students of the Vedic sciences.

 

I will send you a summary outline of two chapters. If you like them, I will

send the rest.

 

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Your servant,

 

Raghunatha

 

Anudasa

 

If you like these ideas, contact me and send a copy to others.