Category: Uncategorized

Are there any examples of governments that only protect negative rights? Reader Sambaran asked that question in the latest AMA.

It may be useful to review what is meant by negative rights, and what distinguished them from positive rights. Negative rights are rights that require others (including the government) to refrain from interfering with an individual’s actions. It is a “freedom from” something. The right to life, liberty, private property, etc. are examples of negative rights. It is freedom from coercion by others. In the securing of negative rights, people are not required to take any action — merely refrain from acting in certain ways. Continue reading “Negative Rights and Minimalist State”

Practical Engineering is a channel I follow on YouTube. The host, Grady, is a brilliant engineer and explainer of things engineered. Consider for instance a video he uploaded yesterday. In it, he talks about the Dallas High Five Interchange.

I have taken that interchange scores of times. My friend Yoga has a home in Allen, TX — a suburb about 30 miles north of Dallas on highway 75.

And there’s a Costco about 10 miles south from Allen on 75 in Plano, TX. Wherever I am in the US, I visit a Costco every week. I get everything from Costco: food, drink, clothes, furniture, fridge, washer/dryer, TV, computers. I even got my most recent car from Costco. As I say, if you can’t get it at Costco, you can do without it.
Continue reading “Texas Interchanges”

The title of this series of posts, “Why I am a Hindu”, is a nod to Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am Not a Christian”, a pamphlet published in 1927, based on a talk he gave earlier that year. About him, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says —

 . . . Russell is generally recognized as one of the founders of modern analytic philosophy. His famous paradox, theory of types and work with A.N. Whitehead on Principia Mathematica invigorated the study of logic throughout the twentieth century . In the public mind, he was famous as much for his evangelical atheism as for his contributions to technical philosophy.

We all are idiots compared to him. No offense to the geniuses (none) who are reading this post.

I feel a strong kinship with Russell. In the brains department I’m of course a minnow compared to the whale that he was. The kinship is purely in our emotional makeup. He could have been describing me when he wrote in his biography —

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. Continue reading “Why I am a Hindu – Part 2”

The short answer to the question “why am I a Hindu” is simply because I was born to a Hindu family. That’s generally the case for all Hindus because one cannot convert to being a Hindu. That distinguishes the Hindu dharma from religions.

Here I have to distinguish between religions and dharmas. There are three major world religions. They are Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the order they arose. That’s the monotheistic family. They all arose in the Middle East. Judaism oral tradition goes back over 4,000 years and the written texts around 3,500 years. Christianity is around 2,000 years old and Islam only 1,400 years old. Continue reading “Why I am a Hindu – Part 1”

Why is the world today so much richer than it used to be any time in the past — whether a few years or a few centuries ago? There are many factors that contributed to the wealth of the world. However if forced to answer in one word, I’d say “trade” or “exchange.”

We trade all the time. We trade our labor for stuff. We earn income by giving up some our leisure time to produce stuff and then exchange the income for stuff we wish to consume. Meaning our production is the means we use for the end goal of consumption. All of this is just common sense and not quantum mechanics.

Trade is a superpower that only we humans possess. In his 1776 masterwork “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith wrote that it was “division of labour” that created the “general opulence” we enjoy. But he stressed that this specialization and division of labor is not because humans figured it out through their wisdom but because of “a certain propensity in human nature . . . : the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Continue reading “Trade”

Of late, things on the US 2024 presidential elections campaign front are getting interesting.

After the first debate between President Biden and former president Trump on June 27th, the democrats started panicking. Biden’s cognitive descent into full-blown dementia and senility became common knowledge[1] and it was no longer possible for the courtiers of the Democrats to pretend that Joe was compos mentis.

The rats started abandoning ship. Continue reading “Trump’s Inevitable Triumph”

It should come as no surprise that governments lie. Lying is a common human moral failing and no one is immune from it. But the average person lying causes no major harm.

However, when the powerful lie, that is a different matter altogether. Major corporations lie and cause immense harm to millions of people, and cost billions of dollars.

That’s bad for sure but nothing comes close to the harm that governments cause when they lie. That ends up causing immense loss of blood and treasure that is borne not by those who did the lying but by innocent citizens. Continue reading “Governments Commit Crimes — and Lie About Them”

It’s 4th of July — the birthday of the greatest country on earth. It was born 248 years ago today in 1776. At the time of its birth, it was a tiny nation with a  population of 2.5 million people. It’s come a long way.

Thomas Paine (born 1737 Norfolk, England, died 1809 New York, N.Y.) wrote, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like me, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” The time is upon the country to undertake the fatigue of securing freedom once again. The Democrats are destroying our country. Continue reading “Happy July 4th”

I was recently asked a very simple question. “Assume India’s total tax revenue is 100 in a year. If you are all-powerful in the government, how will you spend that 100?”

To answer that, we have to ask what should the government do? I take my cue from the classical liberals like John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith from the 18th century and from libertarians like Robert Nozick of the 20th century. The basic and only job of the government is to maintain order in society. In order to maintain order, it has to protect life, liberty and property. That creates the necessary condition for the creation of wealth and prosperity. Continue reading “Funding the State”

The wiki page on the Foreign Policy of the United States states that —

The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America . . . are “to build and sustain a more democratic, secure, and prosperous world for the benefit of the American people and the international community”.

All very noble and praiseworthy no doubt. But what exactly is it in practice and is it anything as advertised? Even if we were interested in understanding it (unlikely at best), we don’t really have the time to figure that out. But we should have at least some passing familiarity with the US foreign policy’s impact on the world. Spoiler alert: the impact is extremely terrible.

I am an enemy of the state. It is part of my nature. The state is to some extent a necessary evil but the bigger the state is, the greater evil it is. Continue reading “Sachs on US Foreign Policy”