Month: May 2009

Lynching is too good for them

There are some topics that make me see red. In that state, I cannot even think rationally, leave alone write coherently. I am so angry that this is not going to read well for sure. But this has to be said. Those who are ultimately responsible for the violence against the Indian students in Australia should not be lynched. Lynching would be too good for them. I am not talking about the red-necks and skinheads (or whatever their Australian equivalents are) who attack foreign students. I am talking of the Indian politicians and bureaucrats that have brought about the conditions that force Indians to go abroad looking for a decent education to places where they are viciously and mercilessly attacked.
Continue reading “Lynching is too good for them”

Rajeev Mantri on India’s Technological Potential

Rajeev Mantri, executive director of Navam Capital, a Kolkata-based venture capital firm, writes in his piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on “Harnessing India’s Technological Potential” that “VCs typically consider India to be just a technology deployment market. That view is too narrow: India has not just the entrepreneurial competence but also the scientific talent to invent and lead in science-driven innovation.”
Continue reading “Rajeev Mantri on India’s Technological Potential”

Missing Friedman, Missing Markets

Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal has an article today, “Missing Milton: Who Will Speak for Free Markets“, which makes me despair for India. Milton Friedman was arguably one of the greatest proponents of freedom, and naturally therefore, an advocate of free markets. Trading is a uniquely human activity and humans engage in trade spontaneously and therefore human freedom must necessarily imply the freedom to trade. Human freedom without free markets is a fairly vacuous and meaningless idea. Prohibiting free markets is a necessary and often sufficient for guaranteeing poverty. That’s what all oppressors do — whether they are colonial powers or homegrown communists or socialists.
Continue reading “Missing Friedman, Missing Markets”

On Massive Education Interventions

Much of the benefits of modern life we enjoy and take for granted arises from scale economies in manufacturing — the larger the quantity manufactured by a firm, the lower the average cost. But there is a countervailing effect. Up to a certain size, the overheads of managing a firm goes down as the size increases. Beyond that point, the costs of managing go up with size. That limits how large firms can get. The market weeds out firms that grow too big because the inefficiencies show up in higher cost of production. That process is not unlike Darwinian natural selection in the biological world. There are creatures of all sorts of sizes but there are natural limits to how large even the largest can become. Become too large and you get sorted out.
Continue reading “On Massive Education Interventions”

Antipathy to Social Networks

I am not really anti-social and neither am I a misanthrope. I love humanity in the abstract but I admit that I find most not worth the bother, and consider a significant number pretty intolerable. Upon reflection, I concluded that the behavior that most bothers me is herding. Herding is alright for sheep and their ilk but when humans do it, it is pitiable.
Continue reading “Antipathy to Social Networks”

Links are good: David Weinberger

You never thought of the web reflecting the morality that permeates human behavior, did you? I did not. I just read a fine article on the topic. The article title by David Weinberger, “The Morality of Links“, is a tad disturbing to me because it smacks of anthropomorphism but the article is a delight to read. The article is from a collection in the book, “The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age“, Joseph Turow and Lokman Tsui, editors.

Weinberger starts off with the simple declaration “Links are good” and then goes deep into what makes us human. Here are a few excerpts, for the record.
Continue reading “Links are good: David Weinberger”

The Bank for your Next Life

They say you can’t take it with you. So the only alternative is to keep it in safekeeping till you get back and reclaim what was yours when you reincarnate. Now you need not wonder where to stash your cash. There’s Reincarnation Bank for you.
Continue reading “The Bank for your Next Life”