Author: Atanu Dey

A non sequitur in a recent comment[1] caught my attention: “And then there’s Elon Musk, who has earned much more than all deeshaa readers combined, whose respect for his “hard-earned” money is demonstrated by buying … Twitter!”

Elon Musk earned much more than the all the readers of deeshaa combined!? That surely wins the understatement of the year award hands down. Try “Musk earned more than all the readers of all blogs ever combined.” That’d be closer to the truth.

Let’s reflect on the fact of Musk buying Twitter. It’s his money. He earned it. He gets to do whatever he wants to do with his money. Smoke ’em if you got ’em, is the principle. Continue reading “Twitter and Musk”

Friedrich August von Hayek was born 123 years ago on March 8th, 1899 in Vienna. His profile at Mises.org says that “Born to a distinguished family of Viennese intellectuals, Hayek attended the University of Vienna, earning doctorates in 1921 and 1923. Hayek came to the University at age 19 just after World War I, when it was one of the three best places in the world to study economics (the others being Stockholm and Cambridge).

“Like many students of economics then and since, Hayek chose the subject not for its own sake, but because he wanted to improve social conditions—the poverty of postwar Vienna serving as a daily reminder of such a need. Socialism seemed to provide a solution.” Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Friedrich August von Hayek”

Happy Mother’s Day, all. May all beings be happy, may all beings be free of suffering, may all beings become enlightened.

With that benediction taken care of, I should get back to being a curmudgeon. First, I think the whole idea of one day in a year being dedicated to one’s mother is needlessly restrictive. If one values being born[1], then one must revere one’s mother every single day. Surely, marking only one day in a whole year to express one’s love and gratitude to the one person who was most directly involved in bringing one into being is not enough.

Second, I resent the MacDonaldization of the world, part of which is the adoption of American traditions as if one’s own tradition is somehow inadequate and inferior. It is undignified. To use an Americanism (I know, the irony), it is cringe-worthy. Continue reading “Happy Mother’s Day”

Democracy is a sacred word in India. As a concept, it is poorly understood (not just in India but across the world) but like people’s attitude towards their own religion, they uncritically subscribe to it without bothering to understand what it is, what it implies, what its premises are, whether or not those premises are true, whether it delivers what it promises, what its track record is, what the alternatives to it are, and whether or not they would be better off without it.

Democracy has a quasi-religious status in India (though not exclusively so) that places it beyond any scrutiny or criticism. The general attitude in India is that democracy and what’s the public good are synonymous. From that arises the comforting syllogism for Indians which says that since (1) democracy is good; and (2) India is the largest democracy; therefore (3) India is the best. QED.

In my view, democracy is not all that it’s cracked up to be. In fact, I think it is seriously flawed and, although in certain limited contexts it is better than the alternatives, people who get ecstatic at the mention of the word democracy are seriously deluded and what’s worse, their delusion is not harmless. That delusion has pernicious effects, the most serious of which is its negative impact on individual freedom. Democracy, as practiced, is contrary and antagonistic to freedom, and therefore inconsistent with human flourishing. Continue reading “Democracy – Part 1”

I am happy to note that ancient Indian tradition did not suffer from that delusion. See, for example, how the Panchatantra approached the matter of money in this post here. But people rarely understand what money actually represents, what it signifies and why. Ayn Rand provides a spirited defense of the importance of money in her book Atlas Shrugged. She had a character, Francisco, say:

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.”

The extended excerpt follows. Continue reading “Money”

Freedom is a potent word that evokes strong emotions and motivates major upheavals in human society. The degree of freedom around the world that humans enjoy has been steadily on the rise, although with the occasional temporary declines.

It’s worth noting that not all societies have the same attachment to freedom. Some societies systematically value freedom a lot more than others. That presents us with an empirical fact: the positive correlation between freedom and human flourishing. If one assumes that all humans value flourishing, then the question arises why some societies appear to not value freedom, even though they suffer as a consequence of a lack of freedom. Continue reading “Economic Freedom”

As far back as I can recall, I’ve had a deep interest in philosophy and cosmology. Those disciples raise and seek answers to some of our most insistent questions: what is the nature of the universe and what does it all mean?

The night sky holds particular fascination for us: what are those points of lights, and why do some of them move across the sky and the others stay absolutely motionless? Who or what created them? “Who knows, who can here declare whence it all came, and how creation happened?” as the Rig Veda asks in the Creation Hymn.[1]

Some people believe that religion is what humans developed in an attempt to make sense of the world. It could be true because I get the religious impulse when contemplating the universe as I perceive it.

Since I’m brought up in the religious traditions of India, I have a singular fascination for ancient Indian temples. I’ve been to dozens of them. Thanks to the generosity and kindness of my friend K, I got to visit three amazing temples in Tamil Nadu on a 4-day road trip last month that I had never been to before. They were amazing, astonishing, magnificent, beautiful and awe-inspiring. Continue reading “Chola Temples”

Adam Smith was a giant figure of the Scottish Enlightenment and his two major works — The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and In Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) — have advanced our understanding of what motivates us and how human society works.

Isaac Newton postulated the existence of a force called gravity to explain part of the emergent order we observe in the world of matter. Charles Darwin explained the observed evolution and diversity of life by postulating a mechanism that leads to speciation, namely, natural selection. Alike to them, Smith explained how our human-created social world works. Continue reading “Adam Smith”

A man of extraordinary genius, the late great Freeman Dyson is one of my favorite people. I have listened to recording of his talks, presentations and interviews for hours on end. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, practically everyone has the opportunity to learn from his wisdom and enjoy his delightful sense of humor. I realize of course that he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, especially those who are wedded to conventional idiotic ideas (global warming, for example) and long divorced from free inquiry.

Here’s one that I watched this morning. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to watch this conversation with Dyson at the University of Oregon (which I assume was recorded in 2016) and share with us in the comments section what you found to be the most interesting, or insightful, or surprising, or amusing. To avoid spoilers, I will reserve my answer(s) until Monday. Continue reading “Freeman Dyson”