Author: Atanu Dey

Dame Jane Morris Goodall (3 April 1934 – 1 October 2025), was an English primatologist and anthropologist. She was considered the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, having studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for over 60 years. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960. (Source: wiki.) She passed away yesterday, 1st Oct., in Los Angeles, CA.

Her work with the chimps at the Gombe National Park was phenomenal. I first came to know about her work through a talk she gave at the National Press Club sometime in the late 1990s. I heard the talk on my local public radio station KQED 88.5. (Those were the days when NPR had not generated to the woke nonsense station it has become now.) Continue reading “Goodbye, Dr. Jane Goodall”

As you probably know that on the afternoon of Sept 10th (Mountain standard time), a 31-year old conservative activist, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated in a public event at the Utah Valley University in Utah.

A committed Christian, Charlie was extremely influential in the Republican camp. He was reasonable and always willing to engage in debate with his opponents. He graciously and consistently gave them the opportunity to argue their case to prove him wrong. As an American, he was committed to the freedom of speech that the US constitution protects (and most other “democracies” such as the UK, Australia, and India lack.)

Charlie Kirk was truly exceptional. Too much has been written about him for me to waste time on repeating his (sadly brief) life story. I have the same response to his passing as I have for the passing of any person famous or otherwise. Since he was a Christian, I recall the words of a Christian poet, John Donne. His meditation written in 1623 read in part: Continue reading “Gun Violence”

I am excited to announce that this Saturday, 16th August, Akshar Prabhudesai is hosting a zoom event on Indicforum.org with yours truly as the guest. We will talk about trade, tariffs and international trade. Hope you can join us.

The event is on Saturday at 9:30 PM IST (9:00 AM Pacific, 11:00 AM Central.)

Registration is required and free. Click on any link in this page to register. Talk to you on Saturday.

I enjoy US road trips immensely. I have driven across the continental United States twice so far: once from San Jose, CA to Newark, DE, via Chicago, IL; and once from Newark, DE to San Jose, CA via Dallas, TX.

Those were nearly 4,000 kms. They were solo trips. I generally drive around 12 to 14 hours, with a couple of gas station breaks. The most recent trip was from Phoenix, AZ to San Jose, CA.

Other important road trips have been to Death Valley National Park (five times), Yosemite National Park (about a dozen times), Grand Canyon (thrice), Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, etc. Most of them involved camping. I love camping, particularly in Death Valley because if you time it right — moonless night — then you can see the Milky Way. Continue reading “Road Trips in the US”

Trade, as we all know, is good for those who trade. If two parties freely choose to exchange stuff, we can be certain of this: that they expect to gain from that, else they would not do so. Free trade is what we call a win-win situation or a positive-sum game.

Trade involves two parties and only two parties. If a third party intervenes uninvited, then it is not free trade. In that case, instead of that win-win game, it could be win-lose or even lose-lose game. The world would be a lot better if it had universal unrestricted trade.

I have a particular interest in trade. That’s because I am an economist, and economics is the study of humans as they go about that peculiar business of exchanging stuff. Trading is as unique to humans as is reading and writing: no other animal does it.

In his 1776 book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith wrote about specialization and the division of labor. It is the division of labor that gives rise to “general opulence.” One of the causes of wealth is division of labor. Continue reading “International Trade and Food”

One of the joys of being an economist is that I get to meet (nearly always virtually) great minds, of the past and the present. Among those whom I admire immensely are the legendary ancients like David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the 20th century greats like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell.

Sowell is unique in many ways. Unlike the others I just mentioned, he’s not a dead white man; he’s alive and black. Also, Sowell is not primarily an economics theorist and has not made (as far as I can tell) any fundamental theoretical contributions to economics. However, he’s one of the best social commentators and explainers of basic economics. His work enable lay persons to understand how the world works. He has made—and continues to make—the world understandable to millions of people.

Let’s begin with a brief bio of Dr Sowell. Continue reading “Thomas Sowell, an American Treasure”

As a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying classical liberal, it is distressing for me to watch the insanity of the “trade wars” that Trump has unleashed around the world. He is a self-centered, myopic, stupid, uncouth ignoramus. His economic policies are not good for the US, never mind the world.  

However, the US is a very rich economy. Although it will be hurt by the perverse tariffs that Trump has imposed on it, the US economy will weather those insults. This too shall pass.

Trump’s tariffs don’t make sense. But what’s worse is that he appears to think that the tariffs are paid for by the exporting countries. I would fail any Econ101 student who doesn’t understand that consumers pay the majority of the tariffs because a tariff is indistinguishable from a sales tax. The incidence of a sales tax is primarily on consumers, not on producers— domestic or foreign. Same goes for tariffs. Continue reading “Trade Wars and Freedom”

Today I am sad. I learned that Tom Lehrer passed away recently. I have loved his songs for decades. He passed away a few days ago at the age of 97 on 26th July in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here’s a brief introduction (edited from an AI answer.)

Continue reading “Goodbye, Tom Lehrer”

A pleasure that I enjoy immeasurably is listening to good talks. Thanks to the magic of the internet, particularly YouTube, we have available an inexhaustible store of great content within easy reach. I would like to tell you about someone who is considered an intellectual giant: literary critic extraordinaire and professor of comparative literature, George Steiner.

I got to know about him around 2010 or so. He was one of the people featured in the Dutch TV documentary series, “Of Beauty and Consolation,” released in 2000. (It is available on YouTube.)

More recently I found a lot more of his talks on YouTube. But first, here’s an introduction to the man. I asked grok to do the needful.

Continue reading “George Steiner on Literacy”

It is widely reported that Kurt Vonnegut gave a commencement address at MIT in 1997 in which he advised the graduating class to “wear sunscreen.” But in fact it was actually a column written by Mary Schmich, published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997. It was a hypothetical commencement speech which gained fame after being misattributed to Vonnegut that wearing sunscreen was advised.

That’s another example of the phenomenon which Michael Crichton named the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect [1]. But I digress. Here’s what I wish to stress. If I were invited to give a commencement speech, an extremely unlikely event, my main advice would be to “choose your experts wisely.”

Choose very carefully whom you wish to trust. In this complex world of ours, none of us knows what is true. That’s simply because we lack the time and the talent to figure out what’s true for ourselves. Therefore we have to rely on experts. That’s what we economists call specialization.

Some people specialize in climate science, some on economics, some on AI, and so on. Because we specialize, we depend on others with their own special knowledge to tell us what is what.

You have to be careful whom you trust. If you choose as your experts activists who are committed to their agendas, you are likely to be deceived. The ax that they are grinding is meant for your wallets to start with but could end up at your neck. Continue reading “Global Warming and Climate Change”