Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

Hello from Bangalore

Greetings from Bangalore. I arrived this morning to visit with friends. The journey from the airport to the city was predictably hellish. It looks like Bangalore’s traffic woes are going to get worse before it starts improving.

Charity should be voluntary, not coerced

All actions of a just society should be principles-based. One of the primary guiding principles of a just society is that coercion is kept at a minimum. That is, people should be free of coercion from others, including the government. Certainly, a case can be made for why there will have to be some coercion — but that has to be reserved for matters that are essential for the functioning of society. For these matters, government coercion is justified for raising revenues required for funding certain activities. Examples of such matters are policing (to maintain law and order) and the provisioning of collective goods such as public access roads or sanitation, etc. Aside from those limited exemptions, coercion is not justified.
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Where in the World is Yours Truly

This is for the information of friends and family. I am traveling a bit. I am in Nasik until Tuesday 29th. I leave for Bangalore from Mumbai on Wed 30th morning, and get back to Mumbai 3rd morning. Between 7th and 10th, I am in Pune. Jan 11, 12 & 13 I am in Mumbai. I leave for N Delhi 13th evening and get back to Mumbai 17th. I leave for Brussels on Jan 23rd morning. Then off to the East coast on Jan 25th. In the East coast, I will be in NJ, NY, Washington DC and Boston. Ping me in case you wish to meet up.

Constitution, Government, Economy – Part 3

In the previous parts (first and second) of this essay, I discussed some aspects of constitutions and governments. The discussion was general and was principles based. In this part, I examine the particular case of the Indian constitution and the governments that it gives rise to. And I conclude that the constitution needs to be replaced.
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Charlie Munger on Costco

I am a fierce Costco loyalist. I have been a card-carrying member of Costco for over 20 years, and have bought tens of thousands bucks worth of stuff from the store. It is somewhat comical this habit of mine: to my friends and acquaintances, I keep insisting that they get a Costco membership and buy stuff there. There’s something about Costco that warms the cockles of this economist’s heart. I end up going to Costco about twice a week at least. And since there’s one within a 12-minute walk — less than a mile — of where I live, I sometimes go there just for a slice of pizza. Did you know that Costco is the largest pizza retailer in the US?
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Fermi’s Martians

Enrico Fermi (1901 – 1954), the Italian-American physicist, Nobel laureate, etc etc, asked the famous question “Where are they?” That question became known as the Fermi paradox. The universe should be teeming with life. But the striking lack of any evidence of extraterrestrials is puzzling. Where are they?
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Constitution, Government, Economy – Part 2

In part 1 of “Constitution, Government, Economy”, I had explored what a state is, what an economy is, the need for a constitution, the restrictions that must be imposed on a government, etc. This is a continuation of the same. In this, I go into some details on redistribution and why it must no be done by government.
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Isaac Asimov on Life-long learning

Isaac Asimov, (born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov in Russia in 1920, died in New York in 1992), was a towering intellect. He wrote or edited over 500 fiction and non-fiction books, mainly on science and technology related topics. I place him in the same very tiny class of thinkers as Arthur C Clarke, another science fiction author and furturist. People like him can see farther than average people like you and I. Here’s a quote about learning. It’s from an interview he gave to Bill Moyers in 1988. That was before the world wide web and its phenomenal storehouse of content.
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Hayek on the Abstract Rules of Just Conduct

Hayek’s monumental work “Law, Legislation and Liberty” contains deep insights into what the proper functions of governments are, and how they should be understood and implemented. Every paragraph is worth quoting in full. But here are a few select bits extracted from the 3-volume work to give you a sense of Hayek’s ideas.
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