A few days ago on Oct 14th, Rajesh Jain was at “The Next Billion” event of Quartz India in New Delhi. Rajesh spoke with Bobby Ghosh, editor in chief of Quartz Events. Rajesh spoke about the need for a new constitution for India — the point that Rajesh and I had made in an article in Quartz earlier.
Author: Atanu Dey
Economist.
Rating Achievements Through “Rate of Growth”
“. . . how absurd it is to judge relative performance by rate of growth, which is as often as not evidence of past neglect rather than of present achievement. In many respects it is easier and not more difficult for an undeveloped country to grow rapidly once an appropriate framework has been secured.”
Source: F. A Hayek. The Political Order of a Free People. 1979. Page 190. Volume 3 of Law, Legislation and Liberty.
Snowden’s German TV Interview
This video is from 26th January, 2014. Truthdig.com has the details: The Edward Snowden Interview the U.S. Media Didn’t Want You to Watch. Excerpts from it below the video.
http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=e2ce8368acfc
“Every time you pick up a phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace, and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of a crime.”
That revelation is actually from a second interview given by former Central Intelligence Agency and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, this time to German broadcast giant ARD.
And even though ARD is the second largest public broadcaster in the world (after the British Broadcasting Company), and Snowden’s message easily unearths the largest violations of the Constitution by the US to date, our dinosaur media does not believe this is mainstream enough to cover.To be clear, you cannot find the 30-minute interview – released via the international video-sharing site LiveLeak on Jan. 27 – on one single American news outlet.”
The Proper Role of a Government
People should be free to do whatever they can and wish to do. But that does not give license to people to do such things that cause harm to others. Since it would be too inefficient for each of us to individually protect himself or herself from harm by others, it is prudent to collectively create a mechanism that provides “policing services” that prevent anyone from causing harm to others, and in case harm is caused, to provide a means for the redressal of the harm and the punishment of the culprit. This fundamental function of providing policing services is the government’s proper role. Thus the proper role of the government must be limited to restraining people from harming others but not to forcing people into doing particular things.
In other words, the government’s job is solely to protect the negative right of every person, namely the right to be unharmed by others. Of course, there has to be a mechanism for determining what actions are harmful to others. The design of the mechanism that determine the rules — the rules of just conduct — has to be specified by a set of meta-rules. These meta-rules we call the constitution.
Who won the Nobel Prize?
Actually nobody “won” any Nobel prize in anything ever. Nobody wins a Nobel prize in anything simply because “to win” implies a contest that participants engage in. Nobel prizes — and other prizes of that nature such as the Indian “Bharat Ratna” — are awarded to certain people or institutions based on the judgement of a select group of people. This process of selecting an awardee is more subjective than say the process by which we decide who won the 100-meter dash in the Olympics in 2004 because in the latter uninvolved bystanders can agree whether or not Charlie crossed the finish line ahead of the other sprinters. In the case of Nobel prizes, people outside the selection committee can — and do — disagree with the judgement of the committee.
Continue reading “Who won the Nobel Prize?”
India Needs a New Constitution
Human societies are rule-based. Rules not just define human societies but rules also differentiate between societies. Sufficiently large collectives of of people (say 100,000 or more) are indistinguishable in terms of their endowments because we all belong to the same species and we are just random draws from the same gene pool with minor variations. IF that is so, then what’s the origin of the inequality we observe in the wealth of nations? Why is Burundi not as wealthy as Sweden? The answer is that different societies follow different sets of rules, and the outcomes differ. Out of all the rules, norms, customs and traditions of a people, the formalized high-level set of rules is called the constitution.
In the following piece, co-authored with Rajesh Jain, I argue that India needs a new constitution. It was published today in Quartz. Here it is, for the record.
Continue reading “India Needs a New Constitution”
Violence and Development
A couple of quotes related to violence and development.
“. . . all societies must deal with the problem of violence. In most developing countries, individuals and organizations actively use or threaten to use violence to gather wealth and resources, and violence has to be restrained for development to occur. In many societies the potential for violence is latent: organizations generally refrain from violence in most years, but occasionally find violence a useful tool for pursuing their ends. These societies live in the shadow of violence, and they account for most of human history and for most of today’s world population. Social arrangements deter the use of violence by creating incentives for powerful individuals to coordinate rather than fight.”
Source: In the Shadow of Violence: Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development. Edited by Douglass C. North, et al. Cambridge Univ Press 2013.
“Political development occurs when people domesticate violence, transforming coercion from a means of predation into a productive resource. Coercion becomes productive when it is employed not to seize or to destroy wealth, but rather to safeguard and promote its creation.”
Source: Prosperity and Violence: The Political Economy of Development. Robert H. Bates. (2001)
A related post worth a read is “Of Kakistocracies, Principals and Agents.“
Jinnah, the Realist v. Gandhi, the Delusional Megalomaniac
When a fist fight breaks out between two people, the first step is to immediately separate the two combatants. Bystanders quickly pull the fighters apart and effectively stop the escalation of violence. This action is prompted by intuition and basic common sense. If two people can’t ever get along, it makes no sense in forcing them to be in each other’s faces. This idea that people who cannot get along should be separate is not exactly quantum mechanics. But somehow it seems that the great celebrated Mr Mohandas Gandhi could not — or would not — understand it. His one-time friend and fellow Congress leader, and later the leader of the All India Muslim League, Mr Mohammed Ali Jinnah, understood that idea very well. Clearly Jinnah was intellectually superior to Gandhi (which, I hasten to add, does not elevate Jinnah’s intelligence very much) and certainly more rational.
Below is an excerpt from a speech that Jinnah: Presidential address by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the Muslim League, Lahore, 1940.
Continue reading “Jinnah, the Realist v. Gandhi, the Delusional Megalomaniac”
Open Thread: The Directed Society
Long time since we had an open thread. So say what you will. Today’s quote is by Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974), the celebrated American writer, political commentator and journalist. I am currently reading his book The Good Society (1937). A brief quote below the fold.
Continue reading “Open Thread: The Directed Society”
PM Modi in Silicon Valley
Oh what a circus, oh what a show. Silicon Valley NRIs have gone to town. Over the visit of the Indian PM Narendra Modi.
Thousands have gathered in the SAP Center in San Jose, CA, to hear the great man speak. A lot of self-congratulatory speeches will be made, and the successes of NRIs in the US recounted. There is only one truth that will not be mentioned: that all these NRIs are in the US because they voted with their feet. They voted with their feet and came to the US because of what India is. This fact should actually shame Indians and its leaders. But instead they are oblivious to its implications. And it will be a cold day in hell when Indian leaders will ask themselves, these questions: “Why is it that so many hundreds of thousands of Indians vote with their feet? Why do they create wealth for themselves and for those foreign lands instead of creating wealth in India? Could it be because in India the government of India has put massive barriers to the creation of wealth?”
Dear PM Modi, when the circus is over, when the performers have done their song and dance, when the photos have been taken, when the NRIs have all patted themselves on a great event they made possible, do ponder the simple question of why are there so many NRIs? Because there is another phrase that describes these NRIs — economic refugees and economic migrants. When will India be such a place that there will be very few NRIs to welcome Indian politicians in foreign countries?
I don’t mean to rain on the parade but those questions need some attention if not a response.
I remain an NRI supporter of yours,
Atanu
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 