Thailand or India

On I-280 North in San Jose. Jan 25th at 5:30 PM.

The world of today is changing at an unprecedented pace, and that pace of change is only going to accelerate. The good news is that the change is mostly in the positive direction along multiple dimensions such as material welfare, civic services, infrastructure, security, and so on. The negative aspect of the change is that inequality is increasing. That is to be expected. 

I don’t decry the increasing inequality as long as the economically backward are also advancing at an increasing pace.  Inequality is a feature, not a bug. That is, I don’t particularly care if the rich are getting richer so long as the poor are also getting rich. That has been the trend forever in most parts of the world and there’s no reason to expect that it will not continue into the future.

Let me make the case a bit more concrete by considering the case for India and the US. Compared to 50 years ago, both the US and India are much better off today. But the gap between the two has decreased significantly and evidently. Though the US was — and is — much richer than India, India has seen relatively more progress. Faster economic growth is not that hard when an economy is not at the leading edge of development. Continue reading “Thailand or India”

Maha Shiv Ratri

Today is Mahashiv Ratri, the day that Shiva married Parvati.

As we all know, the Hindu trimurti are Bramha, the creator who brings the universe and life into existence, Vishnu the preserver who sustains the universe, and Shiva who destroys illusion and decay, making way for renewal and transformation. As the transformer, Shiva dissolves the universe at the end of a cosmic cycle making possible regeneration and renewal.

Shiva is also the ultimate ascetic who meditates. He is the primal yogi.

There are aspects of the universe that can only be apprehended symbolically. As a Hindu, I am capable of and comfortable with symbolic reasoning and apprehending the universe symbolically. I am not forced take everything literally.

Bramha, Vishu and Shiva are symbols that refer to deep truths that undergird the incomprehensibly complex universe. Taking them literally reveals ignorance and stupidity. People who are too cognitively challenged cannot distinguish between symbols and what they represent.  Continue reading “Maha Shiv Ratri”

India’s Great Virtue: Democracy

I Grew Up Clueless

Growing up in India, I was fortunate enough to attend a pretty decent school (SFS school) in a second-tier city (Nagpur). I say I was fortunate because at that time only a small percentage of Indian children could attend school and of those who could, most got a fairly mediocre education at best.

Our school was good by the prevailing standards. By sheer good fortune, many of my classmates ended up being fairly successful in various professions. Half a dozen became doctors, a couple very successful lawyers, a dozen engineers, a couple US-trained PhD economists (including yours truly), many teachers, a tenured US professor, and a handful businessmen. A fairly large cohort ended up migrating to the US.

Looking back at it, I’d say that the education we received was passable in math and science but sorely lacking in the social sciences. That was because education was controlled by government bureaucrats who knew little of any relevance and had no clue what education was about. I suspect that they were uneducated themselves. Continue reading “India’s Great Virtue: Democracy”

Boswell’s “Life of Johnson”

Decades ago when I was in high school, I came across a Samuel Johnson quote: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”

It struck a chord with me. That prompted me to read James Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson.”

An interesting bit of trivia. The credit for the first major dictionary of the English language goes to Samuel Johnson, also known as the great lexicographer. His “A Dictionary of the English Language” published in 1755 became the dominant English dictionary for over a century and is considered the first truly authoritative, comprehensive English dictionary.

Today I was reminded of that book during a conversation with a friend. The context was what Trump was doing. I quoted Johnson. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Johnson’s view was that pretended patriotism is often used as a cover for self-interest and deceit. He was critical of people who claimed to be patriots while acting in ways that undermined true national interest. Continue reading “Boswell’s “Life of Johnson””

Pernicious Retardation

Belgian cartoonist Philippe Geluck in his 1995 book Ma Langue au Chat wrote, “La mort, c’est un peu comme la connerie. Le mort, lui, il ne sait pas qu’il est mort . . . ce sont les autres qui sont tristes. Le con c’est pareil.”

Ricky Gervais adapted that insight. In October 2013 he wrote on twitter, “When you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It’s only painful & difficult for others. The same applies when you are stupid.”

Being stupid is not a crime. But beyond a certain point, people with very low IQ damage society. Their retardation is pernicious, particularly if they occupy positions of power and influence. Here’s a recent example. Continue reading “Pernicious Retardation”

Atanu Dey on Gandhi

Gandhi with his nubile young ladies. Courtesy: grok.

AI agents are the coolest innovation of our modern world. Every time you turn around, one more appears. It’s becoming hard to keep up with the advances. I am amazed. So should you be. Just for fun, I gave grok a simple prompt: “Summarize Atanu Dey’s views on Gandhi.”

Here’s the response. Begin quote:

Atanu Dey, an economist and classical liberal, holds highly critical and negative views on Mahatma Gandhi (whom he often refers to as Mohandas K. Gandhi to reject the “Mahatma” title as inaccurate and undeserved).

Based on his blog posts, X (formerly Twitter) statements, and writings, Dey portrays Gandhi as one of the most harmful figures in history, responsible for perpetuating India’s poverty, misery, and underdevelopment. He dismisses Gandhi’s deification as a myth propagated for political control and argues that Gandhi’s ideas and actions were delusional, manipulative, and evil. Below is a structured summary of Dey’s key opinions across themes, drawn from his own content. Continue reading “Atanu Dey on Gandhi”

General Equilibrium

Indra’s Jewel Net

“General equilibrium is the statement that all the different parts of the economy influence each other, even if it’s remote, like mortgage-backed securities and their demands on automobiles.” — Kenneth Arrow

Economists rediscover Indra’s jewel net.

During my graduate school days at Berkeley, I once asked my advisor how she would characterize me. She replied, “You’re an old-world liberal. A classical liberal.” It took me several years to fully understand what she meant and how accurate her assessment was.

The dharmas (Sanatan dharma, Buddha dharma, and Jain dharma) have the concept of reincarnation. Some elements of a particular consciousness get transmitted from one life to another and are reborn in another particular consciousness. It’s possible. And there’s quite a lot of evidence that it could be true.

When I began learning about classical liberal ideas, it was as if I already knew them implicitly but was now merely learning the associated vocabulary. I conjecture that I am in some sense a reincarnated classical liberal.

My advisor was a tough woman. She had served her time in the Israeli army before getting her economics PhD. She was an expert on computable general equilibrium models. (See the notes to this post for a description of CGE models) I looked into them for a few months and concluded that they did not interest me. I was more of a price theory person, not into general equilibrium. Continue reading “General Equilibrium”

Reflections

The historic center of Coro, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Venezuela.

“‘I sometimes think,’ said the Eternal, ‘that the stars never shine more brightly than when reflected in the muddy waters of a wayside ditch.'”

Maduro

On January 3rd, the US Delta Force captured Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, in an overnight operation in Caracas that caught Maduro off-guard. The action was planned for months and executed flawlessly without a single US casualty.

Time.com reports: “President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized in a pre-dawn raid in Caracas by American special operations forces, the culmination of months of covert intelligence work and steadily escalating military pressure ordered by President Donald Trump to oust the authoritarian leader. The operation, officials said, unfolded in less than half an hour overnight but drew on weeks of rehearsals and a vast armada of aircraft and intelligence assets that tracked Maduro’s behavioral habits.”

Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face drug‑trafficking charges. It appears to be the stuff that military action movies are made of.

No doubt there will be a movie soon.

Venezuela has the largest proven crude oil reserves in the world. The crude is heavy and requires petroleum refineries that can handle it. Venezuela does not have the capacity and depended on the US gulf coast refineries. Continue reading “Reflections”

Merry Christmas

Downtown Chicago street in Dec 2024.

December 25th is celebrated as the birthday of the most famous Jew ever, though Jews don’t consider Jesus the son of their god. They continue to wait for the messiah which they have been doing for a few thousand years. It’s interesting that Christians worship a Jew but have been persecuting Jews for over 2000 years. I find that very puzzling.

Christians make up approximately 31% of the world’s population, making Christianity the largest religion globally. Therefore, Christmas is a big deal in a significant part of the world and has been so for centuries.

Christmas is also celebrated in India although Christians constitute a low single-digit percentage minority of Indians. Christmas is big in India because Christianity was the religion of the people who colonized India for a couple of centuries. Indians are given to bending over to their rulers’ creed, be that Islamic or Christian. Christians and Muslims don’t much care for celebrating the major events of the dharmic traditions, but Hindus make a big show of being inclusive. Continue reading “Merry Christmas”

Slavery

Slavery is as old as civilization. As hunter-gatherers, humans could not have held slaves. Only with the advent of settled agriculture it became possible for some people to own other people. Every civilization has had the institution of slavery although one may get the impression that only the whites have enslaved blacks, and that the Americans in particular are guilty of the crime of slavery. 

Although that’s a common enough misconception, there’s no justification for it in this day of easy access to historical information. A quick question to any of the AI engines is all you need to learn about the awful history of slavery.

The Atlantic slave trade is the most cited but was neither unique nor even the worst. During the Atlantic slave trade, which lasted from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, around 12 million Africans were put on slave ships, sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and sold into slavery.  Of this approximately 600,000 were transported to north America, which means that about 5% of all African slaves from the Atlantic slave trade were brought to America.

The Europeans did not capture slaves in Africa. The job of capturing Africans and selling them to Europeans was done by Africans. Africans enslaved Africans. They were the original slavers. Continue reading “Slavery”