The term “Yellow Pill” derives from the popular designation of socio-economic-political positions by names like the “Blue Pill” (surrender your individuality to the system), “Red Pill” (fight the system to get your individuality), “Green Pill” (replace the current system by a new one), etc. In the cacophony of ideologies, the discussion about the moral purpose of life and how it is achieved through society is missing. This book hopes to fill that gap; it talks about how society cannot be organized without a transcending purpose, and when such a purpose exists, the conflicts between competition and cooperation, government and business, the individual and the system, are resolved. It discusses a social model that is neither left-wing nor right-wing, and yet brings the benefits of both systems. This system is based on the ancient theory of Varna or four classes described in the Vedic texts. The book discusses the foundational ideas of this system in the context of modern social, economic, and political theories showing how stability is more important than growth, how localization is more important than globalization, and how a society organized hierarchically based on merit is better than one where everyone pretends to have equal rights. The book has 12 chapters, divided into 3 parts.
Part 1: The Description of the Modern World
Chapter 1: The Modern World Order
This chapter surveys the flaws in the modern capitalist and socialist systems, the notion of economic value derived from supply and demand rather than from an objective notion of value inherent in the goods and services themselves, the illusory pursuit of economic growth as opposed to economic stability, how capital infusion (attained by printing money) leads to cycles of boom and bust, the causes of economic inflation or price rise, the increase in debt which has to be repaid by higher taxes, how borrowing and lending has become standard economic practice exploited by the moneyed class to perpetuate an increased economic dependence of the masses on the borrowed wealth, and why both supply-side and demand-side economics exacerbate the problem because they deal with only one side of the equation—supply or demand.
Chapter 2: Supply and Demand Economics
This chapter delves deeper into the modern idea that economic value is not based on the cost of production—i.e. “fair pricing”—but rather on the demand and supply for goods and services. Fair pricing requires that economic value is objective rather than subjective; that it should be based on the costs incurred in producing them. The demand and supply system exploits human perception to command a higher price by advertising a value far beyond the actual value and letting the consumers fall prey to illusory benefits based on this advertising. In the supply and demand system, some middlemen separate the producers and consumers by globalization—on one hand reducing the costs by producing in low-cost facilities while on the other hand increasing the prices by ensuring that consumers have no direct access to the producers.
Chapter 3: Dialectical Materialism
If you thought that the answer to the problems of capitalism lay in socialism, then it is important to unearth the problems in the philosophy of Marx and Engels which hoped to create a classless society that destroys the incentive in people to excel and succeed based on merit. This chapter discusses the original thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic that Hegel had created, from which Marx and Engels removed antithesis and synthesis. While in Hegelian philosophy the contradictions of this world are resolved by a deeper level synthesis, in Marxian philosophy the class-conflict between the different levels must be dissolved to eliminate the possibility of the conflict itself. The problem is that if you take out one of the opposites, both sides of the opposition collapse, and that results in the dissolution of all variety in nature. With the loss of variety emerges the loss of meaning and purpose in life, as everyone surrenders their individuality to the government.
Chapter 4: The Ownership of Property
Capitalism allows the private ownership of property, however, the limitations on this ownership are not well-recognized. As wealth is concentrated in a few hands, it is used to create monopolies and subvert fair competition. Therefore, while private ownership of property should be allowed, to keep the market open to competition, this ownership must be limited. The chapter discusses how this limitation can be achieved simply by disbanding the ownership of ideas and processes, without limiting the ownership of physical things. When everyone has open access to ideas, without infringing patents and intellectual property, then private ownership of physical things doesn’t limit the innovators from winning in the free marketplace, and wealth is naturally redistributed by this competition. Society, therefore, doesn’t have to limit the physical ownership of things but only eliminate the ownership of ideas and processes. The chapter discusses why individual things can be owned but the ideas that span across many things must remain accessible to everyone.
Part 2: Foundations of a New World Order
Chapter 5: Theoretical Foundations
This chapter discusses how a closed system attains stability, in which unilateral changes are automatically reversed. Change in the marketplace can only occur when the entire market evolves from one state to another. Therefore, there are two types of dynamics that constitute macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macroeconomics is the study of the evolution of the entire market, while microeconomics is the study of changing roles of the individual actors in the market. Macroeconomic control rests in the hands of the government which under the illusion of growth infuses capital by printing money and causes the system to go through cycles of boom and bust. To attain stability, the government must stop infusing capital and allow the citizens to invest their wealth in legitimate businesses. Economic prosperity has to be created by the citizens and not by the government. The role of the government is limited to governing a fair pricing system. The end of capital infusion and a fair price system drive the economic system toward gradual but steady growth.
Chapter 6: Economic Philosophy
The chapter argues that economic value is an objective property of matter, rather than merely our perception. Value is based on the complexity encoded into matter by the use of the mind and senses, and the cost of a commodity equals this value. For every commodity, there is the shortest path to attain it, which constitutes the lowest cost needed to produce it, and human inventiveness can be used to attain the lowest cost allowed by nature. Therefore, lower cost is a laudable goal, but it must not be attained by exploiting desperate people with lower wages but rather by innovation that sees the shortest path from raw materials to finished product. In fact, costs are lowered when the means of production and consumption are localized rather than globalized. To be inventive, a society must be educated and creative, and every economy must strive to locally reduce costs by localizing the economy and educating the people to be creative and inventive.
Chapter 7: Social Philosophy
The chapter critiques the idea that an “invisible hand” creates the best outcome when people act in self-interest. It shows that acting in self-interest—or what is sometimes called competition—only constitutes one section of the society called the businessmen. The government cannot act in self-interest; it must rather act in the public interest, and create cooperation between different segments of society. Similarly, workers employed by a business must work consistently rather than at cross-purposes. The chapter compares society to a meal in which each food item is internally consistent, there is a competition between different food items to occupy greater parts of the plate, there must be cooperation between the various types of food items to create a complete meal of various items, and the meal is meant to serve a hungry person. The chapter identifies four fundamental principles, namely, consistency, competition, cooperation, and completion that play a role in organizing society, and these principles should be embodied by different types of social classes. The chapter presents a theory of four social classes based not on wealth and power, but based on the above-mentioned four elementary principles of organization.
Chapter 8: Political Philosophy
This chapter delineates the role of the government. It argues that the government has no role in providing healthcare, education, social security, etc. except in times of emergencies such as natural disasters. Its primary role is enacting the laws of fair economic pricing, ensuring that there is free competition in the marketplace, maintaining a stable currency, taxing the production (but not taxing the income), maintaining the security and law and order in the country, creating a public infrastructure such as roads, and funding the pursuit of higher knowledge. Governments must realize that the laws they enact must be in accordance with the natural laws of morality, which arise because nature itself has the power of judgment of right and wrong. Laws that are not in accordance with natural morality are themselves governmental crime and society cannot hope to become lawful when the government is itself indulging in crimes. The government must also punish the wrongdoers, not in lieu of natural punishment, but only to illustrate and reinforce the understanding of natural laws.
Part 3: The Description of the Varna System
Chapter 9: Time, Space, and Causality
To understand the Varna system, we must grasp some important ideas theoretically. First, we must understand that space and time are hierarchical in nature, therefore no two things in this universe are ever equal to each other. The ideas of egalitarian equality are illusory and based on the notion of a flat space and time, and this equality must be replaced by merit-based hierarchy. Second, we must understand that causality in nature is moral—every action produces two things: an effect and a consequence; the consequences create the opportunities for further action. Therefore, morality is a natural principle and not a man-made system that can be freely reinvented. Third, that every system in the universe is organized and divided based on four principles of competition, cooperation, consistency, and completeness. The principles may seem contradictory but they are reconciled when these principles are prioritized hierarchically. This hierarchy is embodied in the four classes called the Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya, and Sudra which constitute the Varna system. It is not a “caste system” because there is no inheritance of these classes. This is also not a man-made system because it is based on a natural organizing principle.
Chapter 10: Hierarchical Socio-Economics
This chapter argues that society is not a human construction, but a natural construction because it is based on four fundamental principles of organizing which must exist in every type of organization. The definition of the four social classes is not an arbitrary human definition of roles but one that divides society based on natural principles of competition, cooperation, consistency, and completeness. These principles have a natural hierarchy with completeness at the top, followed by cooperation, followed by competition, followed by consistency. Accordingly, the four sections of society embodying these principles also have a hierarchy. Based on this principle, the chapter discusses the separation of nation and state: a nation is defined by ideology, but the state is defined as a particular implementation of this ideology. The entire earthly planet therefore can be a single nation based on ideology even though it is divided into many small states for governance. The chapter traces the relation between this idea and the cosmological equation of the earthly planet to a single nation.
Chapter 11: Religion and Society
The chapter argues that each religion depends on a social system, and if the social system is changed then religion is also changed. For example, some religions are based on individualist sociology and they emphasize a direct connection between the soul and God. Other religions are based on collectivist sociology and they emphasize the performance of moral duties within this world. The Vedic religion is based on a hierarchical social system and it emphasizes how each person can transcend the material world by performing different kinds of duties; the duties are not in relation to the other people in the world, nor is the rejection of duty to simply pursue individualism the correct path to salvation. The intricate weaving of culture and religion entails that religions cannot survive outside the culture, which means that a religion that emphasizes moral duties cannot survive in an individualist society, and a religion of individual salvation cannot work in a collectivist society. The Vedic religion too cannot succeed without the social order called the Varna system.
Chapter 12: Spiritual Society
This chapter discusses the differences between the spiritual and material Varna systems. The chapter illustrates many such differences. On one hand, the spiritual Varna system is more restrictive in disallowing many things (e.g. meat-eating for the Kshatriya, drinking, and prostitution for the Sudra, etc.) that are allowed in the material Varna system. On the other hand, the spiritual Varna system is more egalitarian than the material Varna system (e.g. with respect to the rights of women, the study of scripture by all the classes, the possibility that all the classes can become teachers and gurus in society, etc.). The spiritual Varna system is guided by the classful society in the spiritual world, rather than the classful society of this world. On this basis, we can understand that there are two kinds of Varna system which share in many principles (such as the division of society into four classes) but also differ in many respect from each other.