Month: October 2015

India Needs a New Constitution

Human societies are rule-based. Rules not just define human societies but rules also differentiate between societies. Sufficiently large collectives of of people (say 100,000 or more) are indistinguishable in terms of their endowments because we all belong to the same species and we are just random draws from the same gene pool with minor variations. IF that is so, then what’s the origin of the inequality we observe in the wealth of nations? Why is Burundi not as wealthy as Sweden? The answer is that different societies follow different sets of rules, and the outcomes differ. Out of all the rules, norms, customs and traditions of a people, the formalized high-level set of rules is called the constitution.

In the following piece, co-authored with Rajesh Jain, I argue that India needs a new constitution. It was published today in Quartz. Here it is, for the record.
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Violence and Development

A couple of quotes related to violence and development.

“. . . all societies must deal with the problem of violence. In most developing countries, individuals and organizations actively use or threaten to use violence to gather wealth and resources, and violence has to be restrained for development to occur. In many societies the potential for violence is latent: organizations generally refrain from violence in most years, but occasionally find violence a useful tool for pursuing their ends. These societies live in the shadow of violence, and they account for most of human history and for most of today’s world population. Social arrangements deter the use of violence by creating incentives for powerful individuals to coordinate rather than fight.”

Source: In the Shadow of Violence: Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development. Edited by Douglass C. North, et al. Cambridge Univ Press 2013.

“Political development occurs when people domesticate violence, transforming coercion from a means of predation into a productive resource. Coercion becomes productive when it is employed not to seize or to destroy wealth, but rather to safeguard and promote its creation.”

Source: Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. Robert H. Bates. (2001)

A related post worth a read is “Of Kakistocracies, Principals and Agents.“

Jinnah, the Realist v. Gandhi, the Delusional Megalomaniac

When a fist fight breaks out between two people, the first step is to immediately separate the two combatants. Bystanders quickly pull the fighters apart and effectively stop the escalation of violence. This action is prompted by intuition and basic common sense. If two people can’t ever get along, it makes no sense in forcing them to be in each other’s faces. This idea that people who cannot get along should be separate is not exactly quantum mechanics. But somehow it seems that the great celebrated Mr Mohandas Gandhi could not — or would not — understand it. His one-time friend and fellow Congress leader, and later the leader of the All India Muslim League, Mr Mohammed Ali Jinnah, understood that idea very well. Clearly Jinnah was intellectually superior to Gandhi (which, I hasten to add, does not elevate Jinnah’s intelligence very much) and certainly more rational.

Below is an excerpt from a speech that Jinnah: Presidential address by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the Muslim League, Lahore, 1940.
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Open Thread: The Directed Society

Long time since we had an open thread. So say what you will. Today’s quote is by Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974), the celebrated American writer, political commentator and journalist. I am currently reading his book The Good Society (1937). A brief quote below the fold.
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