Two quotes (hauled from this Dec 2012 post) that are worth remembering.
“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them . . . The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), American abolitionist.
“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” Edward R Murrow (1908 – 1965), American journalist & broadcaster.
Political parties are like firms in the marketplace. The same principles that drive the behavior of firms drive the behavior of political parties. They collude if they can, and gain from their collusion at the expense of the consumers.
Here I will outline my conjecture about the two major national political parties in India. If you are a supporter of either the Congress or the BJP, you may be disappointed by my analysis. Especially if you are a BJP supporter, you may wish to skip this post. BJP is complicit in Congress’s crimes.
In the following, I will lay out briefly how markets are structured (to take up where I left off in my previous post on the matter) and then reason analogically that the BJP and the Congress are not competing but rather they are colluding.
Continue reading “Market Structure, Political Parties and Collusion”
Markets
I maintain that the idea of markets ranks amongst the greatest inventions of humankind, up there with the wheel, fire and zero. It is also among the most misunderstood and underappreciated of ideas. That’s unfortunate since the misunderstanding of the idea of markets has negative consequences, primary among them being missed opportunities for human welfare.
Continue reading “Markets are the Greatest Invention”
A tweet of mine from May 14th:
Don’t know the source.
We spend a great deal of time in mostly trivial pursuits on the web. But the web has an enormous wealth of content that could be of value to us. However we have to invest time and concentration to take what we are given so freely. This talk by Roger Ebert is worth the time.
Continue reading ““Have empathy” says Roger Ebert in the 11th Hour Series”
The 3rd president of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan, must be the original “My Name is Khan.” In 1971 he instructed the Pakistani army to “Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands.” He was talking about his compatriots in the eastern half of Pakistan, present day Bangladesh.
Samuel Huntington in his book The Clash of Civilizations pointed out bluntly that not only are Islam’s borders bloody but that its innards are bloody as well. Pakistan is a fine illustration of that brutal truth. Anyway, in 1971 in accordance with General Yahya Khan’s orders, the Pakistani army proceeded with the job of killing three million and by some estimates, achieved that target. India helped in bringing the killing spree to a close but at an enormous price. The humanitarian costs were staggering. The Indian army suffered thousands of casualties; around 10 million refugees flooded into India (most of whom never returned). I don’t know if anyone can reliably estimate the economic costs. What bothers me is that too many people did not learn an important lesson even after this.
Continue reading “If you want peace, prepare to be ruthlessly just and fair”
I deleted two recently posted comments on this blog. My policy regarding comments is to allow all comments except those that are irrelevant or abusive. I don’t mind someone ranting in the comments but it has to be a relevant rant. If the post is about India and someone decides to rant on about the US, I will not allow it. Keeping on topic is important to me. But what if there’s something on your mind which you need to talk about? Here’s where you can express yourself. Write what you will here. Thanks.
I have had the privilege of calling both India and the US home, and have had the opportunity of observing both from near as well as from afar. I am not an impartial observer because I am too emotionally invested in both countries. However precisely because I care for both countries that I bother to observe them so carefully and criticize them so relentlessly. The words of an old song express my feelings well: “I love you too much to ever start liking you // So don’t expect me to be your friend.” I feel pity, sorrow, anger, fear and loathing for what they have done (and are doing) to India.
Continue reading “India is a Democracy — but that’s not all that it is”
“It was 20 years ago today, Sgt Peppers taught the band to play . . .” Actually, I got carried away. What I really meant was that it was 20 years ago today, on April 30th 1993, that a bunch of researchers at CERN, a physics lab in Switzerland, decided that they would put some of the software they had created for sharing data in the public domain. That was the birth of the World Wide Web. And the first website, you ask? Here is a screen capture. (Click on the image to visit the world’s first website.
Continue reading “It was 20 years ago today, the World Wide Web was born to the Public Domain”
Money does grow on trees. Quite a bit of it is printed on stuff that is grown — wood cellulose & cotton. But money is not wealth. It is easy to confuse money with wealth but they are not the same. Governments create fiat money but that does not mean that governments create wealth. People through their effort create wealth. The government merely takes some of that wealth and uses it for various purposes, only some of which are defensible and some are not.
Today I read that the Bengal government is going to spend Rs 500 crores to compensate the victims of a chit-fund scam. The chit-fund scam is a crime but I believe it is also criminal to use public money to compensate the victims of fraud. I have argued against the use of public funds even in cases involving victims of accidents and crimes such as rape. I wrote the following for Quartz (March 13th, 2013).
Continue reading “The Case Against Government Compensation of Crime Victims”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 