Early in my study of economics in the 1990s, I came across Tibor Scitovsky’s 1976 book “The Joyless Economy: an inquiry into human satisfaction and consumer dissatisfaction.” Reading it, I realized that I was in the presence of a kindred spirit. I read that book with delight and an increasing understanding of what economics was all about. It was about humans and how they attempt to satisfy their innate drives, most of which derive from their biology and their evolutionary history as primates. Though I lived only a few miles from him (he lived in Stanford), I did not know it then and therefore never attempted to meet him. I later got to know that I also shared my birthday with him. Here’s how.
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Month: November 2015
Steven Pinker on Islamic Terrorism
Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature makes for interesting and informative reading. He answers the question, “Why violence has declined?”, which is the subtitle of the book. It does come as somewhat of a surprise that violence has historically declined in most of the world. The book provokes many “Aha!” moments. Read it for fun and profit, as they say. Here I post an extended excerpt. It’s a bit that will enlighten and delight the pseudo-secularists in India. (I am kidding. The p-secs would rather have red-hot nails hammered into their privates than admit the truth of what Pinker writes in this bit of his book.)
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Hayek on Equality
A brief excerpt from Friedrich Hayek’s essay, “Equality, Value and Merit.”
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality. Our argument will be that, though where the state must use coercion for other reasons, it should treat all people alike, the desire of making people more alike in their condition cannot be accepted in a free society as a justification for further and discriminatory coercion.
A careful reading of that essay (link above) is guaranteed to lead to profit and enlightenment. Read it a few times.
Open Thread: The Daylight Saving Time edition
The twice a year reminder that daylight saving time (DST) is a prime example of collective idiocy is here. This morning (Sunday Nov 1st), at 2 AM, clocks in North America were set back one hour to 1 AM. Today will be 25 hours long, and to reverse this gain of one hour, March 8th 2016 will be only 23 hours long. Oh the insanity!
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Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 