Value and Wealth Since this is an essay on poverty (part 1 here), it is useful to consider its polar opposite, namely wealth. Defining wealth precisely is therefore the first order of business. Wealth is anything that is of some… Read More ›
Month: April 2020
An Essay into the Nature and Causes of Poverty — Part 1
Economics In the following, I explore a few fundamental ideas relating to the core subject matter of economics. One can precisely date the founding of the discipline with the publication in 1776 of Adam Smith’s seminal work titled An Inquiry… Read More ›
Einstein’s Ph.D. Thesis
Einstein submitted his PhD thesis in 1905, the “miracle year” (Annus Mirabilis) in which he also published four papers on various matters: Photoelectric effect Brownian motion Special relativity Mass–energy equivalence It was for his discovery of the photoelectric effect that… Read More ›
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
April is the National Poetry Month in the US. “Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together… Read More ›
Who is China’s Bitch?
So last month I tweeted this: A: Who is China's bitch?B: WHO.A: I don't know. You tell me. B: I just told you. WHO is China's bitch.A: Stop doing that. pic.twitter.com/K7Djzi0nWC — Atanu Dey (@atanudey) March 28, 2020 People are… Read More ›
Rectification of the Wuhan Flu Name
Covid-19 is another name for the Wuhan flu that results from a SARS virus, and like the old SARS virus that originated in China, this one also originated in China. Plain enough. Bill Maher is entertaining and quite often informative… Read More ›
Culling Improves the Herd
Culling is a well-known phenomenon in biology — the process of selective removal of weaker individuals from the breeding stock. Although not done deliberately, something similar happens in markets. Entities that are “weak” are selected out of the marketplace, and… Read More ›
Well, China, the Game is Up
Until a few months ago, China was doing spectacularly well in terms of economic growth, and the power and influence that the new wealth bought. But I think China’s goose is cooked, thanks to the Chinese virus that causes the… Read More ›
Best Wishes on Mahavir Jayanti
Bhagavan Mahavir, the last of the 24 Jain Tirthankaras, was born in 599 BCE in the kingdom of Vajji (somewhere in present-day Bihar.) Much of the biographical details of his life are, of course, disputed by various scholars but they… Read More ›
Two Kinds of Capitalism
Ayn Rand is thoroughly despised in leftist circles. The leftists are justifiably incensed because Rand tirelessly criticized government control of the economy, while the coercive power of the government is the primary instrument leftists rely upon to achieve their Utopian… Read More ›