Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

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”

Sundry Sunday

Looking north-east from the Evergreen area of San Jose. (Click to embiggen)

I looked at the title of this post and realized that the two words in it differ only in one letter. Funny, isn’t it? It’s going to be a sunny Sunday. Funny and sunny rhyme. I’m quite the wordsmith today. Which reminds me that I learned William Wordsmith’s 1804 poem Daffodils by heart in middle school and can still recite it by heart. Its final lines are the best:

“And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”

So, what’s happening? Yesterday Courtenay drove down from Oakland to visit for a bit. Hadn’t seen her since January. She had tales of woe. Got fired from her job a few days ago; car’s leaking oil and could set her back a few thousand in repairs; husband and teenage son are tearing around the house breaking stuff; bills to pay; neighbors are being jerks, etc. But she’s a good sport and laughs it off.

You can take the girl out of Toledo, Ohio but you cannot take the Toledo, Ohio out of the girl, is what they say. Continue reading “Sundry Sunday”

Thomas Schelling

Sunnyvale Public Library (c. 1995) Click to embiggen

Life is a random draw. Much of life is contingent and it’s like a random walk with many unpredictable twists and turns. Many unforeseen events have taken me down roads that I had no inkling about even a few months before I embarked on an adventure. One of those lucky turns happened around 33 years ago.

I was at the Sunnyvale Public Library, waiting in line to check out a few books. SPL was close to home. I would go there a few times a month. While waiting to check out books, I randomly picked up a book from a sorting cart. It was titled “Micromotives and Macrobehavior.” I glanced at a few paragraphs and decided to borrow the book.

That evening, I started reading the book. In a day, I had read the book. I found it fascinating. The author, it turned out, was someone named Thomas Schelling. He was an economist. It dawned on me for the first time that I was an economist. Until that point, I had not only not known what economics was but I had no idea that I was actually an economist.

A few months later, I was telling about that to a friend of mine, VA, in Palo Alto. He said, “Hey, I think you should get a Ph.D. in economics!” That planted a seed. Continue reading “Thomas Schelling”

Wine and Bread

I love homemade bread, and I love red wines. I am partial to the cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot noir varieties. The first two are from the Bordeaux and the third from the Burgundy regions of France. They are also great places to visit, as I did many years ago.

My close friend and host — A in San Jose — occasionally bakes bread at home. A few days ago, we had some fresh out of the oven bread with Kerrygold Irish butter (from Costco, where else!) and paired it with some cabernet sauvignon (probably from Trader Joe’s.) The picture of the bread and wine appears at the top of this post. Click to embiggen. Continue reading “Wine and Bread”

AI’s view of this blog

I am impressed by AI models. They are amazing. We’ve come a long way from Eliza. If you’ve never heard of Eliza, it makes my point that we’ve come a long way. What’s Eliza? Let an AI answer.

“ELIZA is a pioneering AI program created in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. It was designed to simulate human-like conversations using simple pattern matching and substitution techniques. ELIZA’s most famous script, the DOCTOR script, mimics a psychotherapist by rephrasing user statements into questions, creating the illusion of understanding. Despite its limitations, ELIZA captured the imagination of users, leading to a phenomenon known as the Eliza effect, where people felt emotionally connected to the program, even though it was not genuinely intelligent. ELIZA laid the foundation for modern conversational AI and continues to influence the development of AI technologies today.” Continue reading “AI’s view of this blog”