The Buddhist religion is very important for Tibetan, and has
a strong influence over all aspects of their lives. We can feel it even we walk
in the main shopping district, Barkhor Street. "Barkhor" in Tibetan
means "Holy Path", as it has been the pathway for pilgrims. According
to Tibetan Buddhism, the pilgrims must walk in Barkhor Street in a clockwise circular
direction around the Jokhang Temple as to worship the figure of the Buddha inside
the temple.
More than that, walking on Barkhor Street is somewhat
different, it gives a mystical feeling. It has maintained the ancient original
style of Tibet buildings for almost 1,400 years. The whole street is paved by
stones alongside the exotic buildings. On the street, four large incense
burners in the four cardinal directions burning incense and aromatic plants
continuously, raising fragrant smokes into the air.
Everywhere in the Barkhor Street is filled with hustle and
bustle, we can hear the shouts of street vendors, and the chatting sounds of
visitors are mixed with the chanting rhymes of pilgrims. The shops and street
vendors offer prayer wheels, butter lamps, incense, turquoise, local meat and
other Tibetan traditional food. Also, we can find here Tibetan style house ornaments, cushions,
leather bags and handmade art wares.
We can notice that the traditional women in Tibet mostly
have long hair and most of time they braided the hair neatly and affix them
with ornaments. The arrangement of the hair indicates a woman’s social status,
the style of the region or tribe, but also reflect fashions of the time.
Generally, Tibetans believe that hair can serve as a
material support connected with prosperity. They didn't cut their hair from the
time they were born. But with the influence of modernity, shorter hair has become
the trend in Tibet. An increasing number of women often dye their hair in many
colors to follow the fashions of pop stars. We can find in Barkhor Street many
beauty parlours visited by young women whom are particular about hair fashion
and spent money for that. Our tour guide said: “It is a sign that Tibet is
opening the road to modern society."
Academically, Milton had established himself as an expert on
inflation and consumer behavior. He predicted in 1967 that a sustained period
of inflation would not drive down unemployment, directly contrary to the
mainstream view at the time. He predicted it correctly, in the period of 1973
of soaring inflation, unemployment in USA remained high, a phenomenon known as
stagflation, which was exactly what he had warned of.
I met this advocate of ‘liberal free market’ at his office
in his ‘home-base’ University of Chicago to talk about his visions on economy.
His personality and the nice smelling coffee helped warmed the cold and windy
weather of Chicago that day.
I said:
“As the leader of the Chicago school of economics, and the
winner of Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976, The Economist magazine described
you as ‘the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th
century...possibly of all of it.’ You strongly support the virtues of a free
market economic system with minimum government intervention. You even went as
far as writing an Op-ed in the New York Times that ‘The Social Responsibility of
Business Is to Increase Its Profits’, that there is one and only one social
responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities
designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the
game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception
or fraud. This is a very controversial statement, considering that in this recent
time, the trend is that corporates, especially the large ones, are encouraged
to accept broader social responsibility.”
Milton said:
“As I wrote in the New York Times, in a free‐enterprise,
private‐property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of
the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That
responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires,
which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to
the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied
in ethical custom.
Of course, the corporate executive is also a person in his
own right. As a person, he may have many other responsibilities that he
recognizes or assumes voluntarily—to his family, his conscience, his feelings
of charity, his church, his clubs, his city, his country. If we wish, we may
refer to some of these responsibilities as ‘social responsibilities.’ But in
these respects he is acting as a principal, not an agent; he is spending his
own money or time or energy, not the money of his employers or the time or
energy he has contracted to devote to their purposes. If these are ‘social
responsibilities,’ they are the social responsibilities of individuals, not of
business.”
I said:
“In August 2019, the Business Roundtable, an organization
representing America’s largest corporations, issued a statement calling upon
all businesses to take greater responsibility for ensuring that the interests
of every stakeholder are addressed in corporate policy. The statement also said
that shareholders are not only concerned with short-term profits but long-term
profitability, and that an excessive focus on the former could damage the
latter.
And by 2018, Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s
largest investment fund, expressed concern that the profits-at-all-cost model
of corporate enterprise was creating excessive social costs, particularly for
the environment, that were unsustainable. He pledged to use the voting power of
the trillions of dollars of shares he controlled to improve corporate social
responsibility.”
Milton said:
“The newer phenomenon of calling upon stockholders to
require corporations to exercise social responsibility, in most of these cases,
what is in effect involved is some stockholders trying to get other
stockholders, or customers or employees, to contribute against their will to ‘social’
causes favored by the activists. Insofar as they succeed, they are imposing
taxes and spending the proceeds. They are in effect imposing taxes, on the one
hand, and deciding how the tax proceeds shall be spent, on the other. This
process raises political questions on two levels: principle and consequences.
On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the
expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions.
I said:
“Adam Smith famously remarked: ‘It is not from the benevolence
of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from
their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity
but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of
their advantages'. We are not in business to serve public goods let alone to
perform altruistic deeds; we need to provide for ourselves and our families. In
business, both parties need to benefit, the one who sells the bread and the one
who buys it. In this sense it is our gain that there are bakers, butchers and
brewers attending to their own interests, as ultimately that serves our
interests best.”
Milton said:
“Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it
is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they
pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the
missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist
seeking to bring comfort to the needy - all are pursuing their interests, as
they see them, as they judge them by their own value.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate
interests… The record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no
alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people
that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a
free enterprise system.”
I said:
“Nevertheless, self-interest and profit motive frequently
gone badly off track, as we experience in Lehman Brothers case in 2008. Soon
after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and global markets panicked, the
stock market collapsed. The Federal Reserve provided $9 trillion of emergency
loans to banks, and nationalized the nation’s largest insurance company, AIG.”
Milton said:
“First, tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t
run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t
run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It’s only the
other fellow who’s greedy.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate
interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government
bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat.
Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only
cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty, the
only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely
free trade.
If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly
in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history
is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far
discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people.
In economy a whole lot of things can go wrong as Adam Smith
said: ‘There is much ruin in a nation’ and government can mess things up in
many ways, but the desire to better ourselves can still make markets work.”
I said:
“Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street said: ‘ greed – for
lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies,
cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in
all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked
the upward surge of mankind.’
So may I ask you whether capitalism is good from morality
point of view?”
Milton said:
“The problem with that is in moral values are individual,
they are not collective. Moral values have to do with what each of us
separately believes in holds true. What our own individual values are:
capitalism, socialism, central planning our means, not ends they in and of
themselves. They need a more alluring world, humane or humility in human. We
have to ask what are their results?
The degree of social injustice and torture in a place like
in incarceration in a place like Russia is of a different order of magnitude
than it is in those Western countries where most of us have grown up and in
which we have been accustomed to.
Where do you have the greatest degree of inequality in the
world? In Soviet Union enormous inequality in the immediate literal sense that
there is a small select group that has all of the services and amenities of
life and very large masses that are in a very, very low standard of living. Indeed,
in a more direct way, if you take the wage rate of foremen versus the wage rate
of ordinary workers in the Soviet Union, the ratio is much greater than it is
in the United States.
China, too, is a nation with wide differences in income,
between the politically powerful and the rest; between city and countryside;
between some workers in the cities and other workers.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is a system of organization
that relies on private property and voluntary exchange. It has repelled people,
it’s driven them away from supporting it because they have thought it
emphasized self-interest in a narrow way, because they were repelled by the
idea of people pursuing their own interests rather than some broader interest. Yet
if you look at the results, it’s clear that the results go the other way
around.
If you had both freedom and prosperity, the greatest
measures of freedom, if you look at the Western countries where freedom
prevails. There has been more social justice and less inequality. So has
capitalism succeeded despite the immoral values that pervade it? The results
have arisen because each system, capitalism and socialism, has been true to its
own values, or rather the system doesn’t have values.
What we’re concerned with in discussing moral values here
are those that have to do with the relations between people. It is important to
distinguish between two sets of moral considerations, the morality that is
relevant to each of us in our private life. How we, each individually conduct
ourselves, behave and then what’s relevant to systems of government and
organization.”
I said:
“Over the past decades China’s has yielded steady progress
in economic growth and development. While most observers agree the pace of
transformation in China has been extraordinary, some remain concerned about the
increasing income inequality. However China claimed that the gap is closing as
rural income rises in China.”
Milton said:
“In late 1979, I was astonished when I received an official
invitation to visit China. This was a
phenomenon that I find almost literally incredible, and I quickly accepted it.
I and my wife Rose arrived in China in 1980. The trip was a struggle from the
start. The general impression on walking or driving down the streets is one of
drabness and dullness and dirt. Almost the only place there is light and beauty
and cleanliness and variety is on the stage.
This poor socialist country invited me, of all people, to
provide economic advice on inflation. I delivered four lectures on topics such
as “the mystery of money” and “the Western world in the 1980s” to an audience
of officials and scholars. I dismissed the idea that inflation appeared only in
capitalist societies. Inflation was neither innately ‘capitalist’ nor ‘communist’.
Instead, government itself was the root cause of inflation, which could be
cured only by ‘free private markets’.
I said:
“How did the audience receive your lectures?”
Milton said:
“They seemed completely unaware of my commitment to the free
market. To the Chinese economists these
ideas were radical. In a society that had not yet accepted free private markets,
this approach was unacceptable. A Chinese researcher mentioned ‘the internal
contradictions of capitalism’, a standard Marxist phrase about the widening gap
between the income of the owner and the labor. I asserted that there were no
such contradictions, and gave my observations about Marx’s incorrect
predictions about the future of capitalist development. And I said it is a fact
that ordinary people would always live better in capitalist countries than in
socialist countries.
I said:
“Then you were invited again to China in 1988, for what
occasion?”
Milton said:
“The occasion was a conference on economic reform hosted in
Shanghai by the Cato Institute and Fudan University. I advocated the widest
possible use of not the market but ‘free, private markets’. The words ‘free’
and ‘private’ are more important than the word ‘market’. Every society, whether
communist, socialist, or whatever you will, uses the market. Rather, the crucial
distinction is private property or no private property. Who are the
participants, government bureaucrats who are operating on behalf of something
called the state? Or are they individuals operating directly or indirectly on
their own behalf?
In China, the substantial freeing of many prices,
particularly those of agricultural and similar goods, has not been accompanied
by the privatization of the banking system. As I understand it, the Chinese
government indirectly determines what happens to the money supply through the
credits it grants state enterprises. The results include a rapid increase in
the quantity of money and, not surprisingly, a rapid upward pressure on prices,
so that inflation, both open and repressed, has reared its ugly head.”
I said :
“In the trip’s most dramatic development, you received word
that Zhao Ziyang the Communist Party General Secretary had requested to meet
with you. What did you discuss?”
Milton said:
“Zhao laid out the challenges facing China’s economy, what
they intended to do in carrying the reform further was to reduce the number of
prices that are under the dual-track system and state control. However, just as
they were ready to go a step further toward price reform, they were faced with
difficult problems, especially sizable inflation. He asked my assessment of the
effects of inflation. Can the people take such a shock, both economically and
psychologically? Then he raised an even more fundamental question: ‘Why did
inflation occur in China?’
I pointed to the dual-track system as one cause of inflation
because it produced so many inefficiencies in the economy, from queuing to
shortages, and pumped up prices in the sectors that were open to the market
forces of supply and demand. I was similarly dismissive of other ‘halfway’measures
that delayed what I saw as the only real solution: full privatization and
marketization.
The conversation continued, touching on proposed reforms to
exchange rates, state-owned enterprise management, and the central government’s
authority over the economy. Zhao begged me to understand China’s special
circumstances: without a developed banking system, China could not tighten the
money supply to control inflation, as the U.S. Federal Reserve does. But I continued
to push for immediate, sweeping market reforms. After nearly two hours of
heated exchanges, we ended the conversation with no consensus on the best path
for China.”
I said:
“Even so, you were welcomed back to China in 1993 for
official meetings. How did you see China that time?”
Milton said:
“Traveling to Shanghai and Beijing I was astonished at the
rapid pace of development in China. At the end of the trip, I returned to the
Great Hall of the People, the site of my fateful encounter with Zhao Ziyang, to
meet with China’s new president, Jiang Zemin. He delivered what I perceived as
a canned speech about the successes and challenges of the Chinese economy, and
the meeting ended quickly. I conjecture that Jiang Zemin did not really want to
hear what we had to say.”
I said:
“Thank you Milton for this great interview.”
THE END
This is an imaginary interview in memory of Milton Friedman.
About 8
kms west of Lhasa, we can find Drepung Monastery, located a slope of Mount
Gephel. Surrounding the monastery we will see many houses and building with
white walls and roofs scattered along the hill. Because of this the monastery
is also called “rice heap” monastery.
On the way to the monastery we can see a large stone painting
on the hill which seems to depict a deity. It is the painting of Tsong Kha Pa,
the founder of the Gelug School of thought in Buddhism. In this tradition, the classical
Indian treatises are studied with great detail using dialectical method.
Drepung
monastery was founded in 1416 by Jamyang Choge Tashi Palden, one of Tsong
Kha Pa main
disciples and also known as the second Dalai Lama. Drepung was the largest
monastery in the world, and was housing around 7,700 monks during the hey days.
Historically, Drepung used to be the seat of political and religious power in
Tibet, before the Potala Palace was built, in part due to it being the primary
seat of the Gelug School. In 1530, the second Dalai Lama built his palace here,
known as the Ganden Palace, which was used until the Potala Palace was built.
Drepung
monastery complex is large, and if we wish to visit all main buildings, it will
take you all day. Most of the visitors choose the most important buildings,
such as the Grand Sutra Hall, the Ganden Palace and a few chapels nearby.
The Grand Sutra Hall (Tsogchen)
is the largest structure in the complex
and the most impressive. The Grand Sutra Hallis a 3 storey building with the large terrace
overlooking the city of Lhasa and the valley. The main statue there is the
3-floors high Maitreya (Future) Buddha. In addition, there are statues of
Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama) , Tsong Kha Pa, 13th Dalai Lama and
protectors in the chapels.
The
middle row of the Grand Sutra Hall contains holy stupa for the 3rd Dalai Lama; the
northern one contains the holy stupa for the 4th Dalai Lama; and the southern
one contains the holy stupa for Chilai Gyamco.
On the way to Vatican, we saw a huge round building that
looked like a cholate tart, on the bank of the river Tiber. It is Castel
Sant’Angelo, affectionately nicknamed ‘The Wedding Cake’ by locals due to its appearance.
It is now a museum and has a long history which dates back to ancient Rome. Started
as an ancient imperial tomb of Emperor Hadrian in the year 138, turned into
fortress in the year 401, then functioning also as prison for many centuries. Among the prisoners were the sculptor Benvenuto
Cellini, charged with crime of sodomy; the philosopher Giordano Bruno, sentenced
to death as a hardline heretic; Giuseppe Balsamo, known as a conman sorcerer; Beatrice
Cenci, a noblewoman sentenced to death accused for having killed her abusive
father. The prison was also the drama setting for the third act opera of
Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.In this tragic
scene, Tosca, overwhelmed by the death of her lover, jumps to death to escape
capture by her enemies from the wall of the prison.
On top of the castle we can see a statue of an angel holding
a sword but not in a brandishing way, rather the angel is depicted to lower his
sword to return it to the sheath. Why is it like that? According to legend, at the end of the sixth
century AD, a terrible plague fell upon the city, named as the Justinian plague, with thousands
falling ill and the bodies of the dead choking the street. The disease spread
as far north as Denmark and west to Ireland, then further to Africa, the Middle
East and Asia Minor.
Pope Gregory then led a procession through the city, praying
to God to spare those who still lived. Looking up to the old mausoleum of Emperor
Hadrian, long fallen into disuse and ruin, Pope Gregory had a vision of a radiant
figure high atop the massive tomb. It was the Archangel Michael, his
outstretched wings, glowing brightly and holding a bloody sword and then lowering
it to return it back in the sheath. The Pope saw this as a sign of the end of
the plague that had been raging for about 50 years. Indeed, after this vision,
the plague ended, therefore the Castle was named as Castel Sant Angelo – Castle
of the Holy Angel. The current bronze statue of Archangel Michael on top of the
building was created in 1748 by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, a Flemish
sculptor, to replace the marble statue damaged by time.
Photo: Wikimedia
Castel Sant’Angelo was slowly turned into a fortress and in
1277 it was acquired by the papacy. Popes used the castle as a refuge in this fortified
structure in times of danger. Living conditions inside the fortress were
probably not very comfortable, so Pope Paulus III decorated many of the rooms
inside the Castel with beautiful frescoes, mostly done by Perino del Vaga. The
most beautiful room is undoubtedly the Sala Paolina, with its lavishly
decorated walls and ceiling. In the beginning of the 14th century,
the Castle became the summer castle for the Pope. In 1901 it was converted to become
a national museum, named the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo.
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