Want to buy shares? Go and vote first!
It is pretty obvious to most of us, but still it deserves a mention ….here…
Stock exchange is the ultimate tool of personal thought. If you think Infosys share price is going to go up, put your money behind it.
This is very difficult in a Russia or a China – so the basic thing is GO AND VOTE.
Also remember only a democracy allows plurality of thoughts. One person can feel that Tata Motors is doing well in China and US and is therefore worth buying….and another can feel that Tata Motors is not doing well and therefore worth selling.
The worlds Free Markets – a pre-requisite for a stock exchange to be able to run successfully – can survive ONLY in a democracy. So France, UK, US, India, …..are the equity markets of the world. Sure, you have a market in China – but how much of the truth and how much of the fear is captured is not known.
The equity market is the most efficient allocator of resources – it rewards companies which are doing well and punishes the laggards. This happens seamlessly, regularly, and efficiently.
However in a ‘Centrally’ run state like China assets are allocated by one government babu and that leads to corruption. Also there is no research recognised, or encouraged. It is virtually impossible to get accurate figures in China – what you get is govt. doctored figures which may be far far away from the truth!
THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON from this post is:
EQUITY MARKETS WORK ONLY IN A DEMOCRACY……..SO GO OUT THERE AND VOTE………….LET INDIA BE RULED BY INDIANS…..
http://english.caixin.com/2013-10-29/100597004.html
aditya modi
never had such a revelation in such a small post
thank you subra..glad you are back with regular posts.
LuckyOye
Not so sure Indian Markets are that free and fair for investment journalism. Does anybody remember the negative report about Indiabulls Securities put out by a Veritas analyst? He suffered the same fate after Indiabulls filed a police complaint against him.
Just google for the words ‘veritas indiabulls report’
I wonder how my voting or that Indiabulls analyst voting would have helped avoid this. But I would no doubt agree that a liberal society is worth putting a struggle for. It is more important for men of good character to come together and set things right than one man to just go out and vote on election day.
Pravin
I dont buy the belief that voting = democracy. Voting in national elections is actually a waste of your precious time if you are a thinking person. Voting is important and useful,especially if the stakes are high and your vote is valuable ,example: your housing society consisting of 28 flats.Your vote value is 1/28. In a lok sabha election,you vote is 1 in a few million.mathematically insignificant.
also,democracy is correlated to economic freedom in theory,but it is not seen that much in practice.
in the so called democracy we have,which is based on welfare state(ie robin hood theory) and redistribution of resources ,it is far easier to garner votes by promising peter to be paid by robbing paul.
a good book which convinced me never to vote in large elections is bryan caplan’s The Myth of the Rational voter.
ps: before anyone says that I should not crib if the policies implemented are horrible since I dont vote, please note that it is the voter who loses the right to crib since he/she plays by the rigged rule (first past the post) and if his candidate loses,well hard luck.
so,there it is: be a principled NON voter.
pps: the election commission clarified that NOTA is basically time pass.if NOTA wins,then the fellow with maximum positive votes is declared winner.
subra
Pravin ‘not understanding the power of small numbers’ is one of the forms of innumeracy. There is no shortage of such people.
Pravin
subra,not sure if you are calling non voters as innumerate or voters as innumerate.
anyway,here is a transcript of freakanomics author interviewing bryan caplan if anyone wants to see his rationale:
http://freakonomics.com/2012/10/25/we-the-sheeple-full-transcript/
he makes another good point: voting is useful in a market. a democracy is a commons and not a market.so the tragedy of commons is inevitable.
Sambaran Mitra
Pravin, thanks for the link. I went through it.
I am an enthusiastic voter.
I think one of the reasons I vote is indeed because it is fun.
Moreover, I still believe 1 in a million vote may count. It is a bit of philosophical debate here.