To Jasjit Sign: RE: [world-vedic] Cost of War will Be in Human Terms

[Guest guest]

Dear Jasjit,

 

I very much appreciated your article. I have a few comments, but ask

that you look over this introduction before I do. This will give my

comments context.

 

In short, there is a clearly defined economic cost of taking peoples

lives and those countries that do so, should pay it. What that cost is,

who should pay and why they should pay will be explained in greater

detail once I've heard your back from you.

 

Sorry I have to post this on the conference (which has already seen the

following essay) but there is no way to contact you given that

conference hides your email address so left to post this to everyone.

 

More later,

 

Happy new year,

 

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 posted on the net under

ROOPA.org.

 

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

Raghu

 

808 935-8829, 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.

 

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. They are posted at

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

Raghu

 

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