Nirad C Chaudhuri (1897 – 1999) dedicated his book, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951), to the British Empire.
To the memory of the British Empire in India,
Which conferred subjecthood upon us,
But withheld citizenship.
To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
“Civis Britannicus sum”
Because all that was good and living within us
Was made, shaped and quickened
By the same British rule.
Early in my study of economics in the 1990s, I came across Tibor Scitovsky’s 1976 book “The Joyless Economy: an inquiry into human satisfaction and consumer dissatisfaction.” Reading it, I realized that I was in the presence of a kindred spirit. I read that book with delight and an increasing understanding of what economics was all about. It was about humans and how they attempt to satisfy their innate drives, most of which derive from their biology and their evolutionary history as primates. Though I lived only a few miles from him (he lived in Stanford), I did not know it then and therefore never attempted to meet him. I later got to know that I also shared my birthday with him. Here’s how.
Continue reading “Happy Birthday, Tibor Scitovsky”
Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature makes for interesting and informative reading. He answers the question, “Why violence has declined?”, which is the subtitle of the book. It does come as somewhat of a surprise that violence has historically declined in most of the world. The book provokes many “Aha!” moments. Read it for fun and profit, as they say. Here I post an extended excerpt. It’s a bit that will enlighten and delight the pseudo-secularists in India. (I am kidding. The p-secs would rather have red-hot nails hammered into their privates than admit the truth of what Pinker writes in this bit of his book.)
Continue reading “Steven Pinker on Islamic Terrorism”
A brief excerpt from Friedrich Hayek’s essay, “Equality, Value and Merit.”
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality. Our argument will be that, though where the state must use coercion for other reasons, it should treat all people alike, the desire of making people more alike in their condition cannot be accepted in a free society as a justification for further and discriminatory coercion.
A careful reading of that essay (link above) is guaranteed to lead to profit and enlightenment. Read it a few times.
The twice a year reminder that daylight saving time (DST) is a prime example of collective idiocy is here. This morning (Sunday Nov 1st), at 2 AM, clocks in North America were set back one hour to 1 AM. Today will be 25 hours long, and to reverse this gain of one hour, March 8th 2016 will be only 23 hours long. Oh the insanity!
Continue reading “Open Thread: The Daylight Saving Time edition”
Markets work. That’s the “First Law” of the Extended Order of Social Interactions. I just made up that EOoSI bit but the ‘markets work’ bit is a genuine law in the sense that it expresses an observed regularity in human societies.
What does it mean? Among other things, it means that when the need (the demand) for something arises, the market spontaneously figures out a solution (the supply) without the need for some controlling authority passing orders to get that need met. Those who address the needs of people are sometimes referred to as entrepreneurs. These are the people who look around for unmet needs and figure out some way of meeting those needs.
Continue reading “Fast Food Enlightenment”
People all across the world follow personalities. There’s something in the human psyche that makes this particular failing so prevalent. Perhaps it confers some selective survival advantage to groups that follow personalities instead of principles. Maybe principles-based thinking is hard for people and there are gains from “outsourcing” the thinking to some chosen person who is believed to be wiser. It shows up everywhere, from messiahs (Jesus is the prototypical example), to gurus (the Pope and other charlatans come to mind), to politicians (Mohandas Gandhi, Hitler, Stalin, etc are exemplars of this breed).
Continue reading “Cult of Personality”
On Wednesday, it was Mahanabami of Durgotsav or pujo as we Bengalis refer to it in short. I went to check out some puja in the neighborhood with a friend Sudipta and his wife Suvagata. We first went to the Bay Area Durga Utsav Santa Clara, and then to the Paschimi Durga Puja at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. Both were done quite nicely. The crowds were reasonably large, all dressed up and excited to be there. Pujo is always fun.
Continue reading “Shubho Bijoya Greetings”
I find fast trains fascinating. Hence this little item caught my attention.
A Japanese magnetic levitation train has broken its own world speed record, hitting 603km/h (374mph) in a test run near Mount Fuji. The train beat the 590km/h speed it had set last week in another test.
Maglev trains use electrically charged magnets to lift and move carriages above the rail tracks.
Central Japan Railway (JR Central), which owns the trains, wants to introduce the service between Tokyo and the central city of Nagoya by 2027. The 280km journey would take only about 40 minutes, less than half the current time. [BBC. April 2015.]
I find it interesting that the BBC did not explicitly mention the French TGV in the list of fast trains. The “Eurostar” category subsumes the TGV trains. Anyway, the TGV are the only fast trains I have had the pleasure of traveling in. Here are a few facts about the TGV:
“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.” ~ F. A. Hayek
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 