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I concluded the post on well-being with: “The trend of increasing wealth, income and consumption is undeniable. The question is what is the trend in inequality? And what of well-being? While the level of well-being is undoubtedly rising around the world, is it also becoming more unequal?”

The world is unequal in terms of wealth and income for certain. Empirical evidence shows that inequality in wealth and income is increasing monotonically. Since wealth and income are positively correlated with consumption, and are also causally linked, one can conclude that inequality of consumption must be growing as well. It is.

That much is clear. Now let’s talk about well-being. What is it? It’s a feeling of being well. It’s about having our needs — physiological, psychological, emotional — satisfied. These needs are met through consumption. We consume water to meet the physiological need to satisfy thirst, for instance. We need stuff to meet our needs; stuff that may be in short supply relative to demand. Continue reading “Convergence”

In the previous bit, I claimed that the monotheistic religions’ concept of god has no counterpart in the dharmas (Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.) In the former set, you have an entity that creates the world much like a watchmaker fabricates a watch. The watchmaker and the watch are necessarily distinct. They describe the world with an engineering metaphor. The world is a fabrication.

In Hinduism, however, the world is not a fabrication but is an expression of the ultimate reality or “Brahman.” Nobody knows what Brahman is but whatever it is, it pervades the entire world, and is in fact congruent with the world. Brahman is not a creator god because all of existence and Brahman are identical. Continue reading “Good God – Part 2”

Even if syntactically correct, some questions and propositions are not well-formed. Chomsky famously illustrated this with a sentence — “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” — which though grammatically correct is meaningless. It is syntactically fine but devoid of any semantic content.

I think the question “Do you believe in god” to be an example of a question that is syntactically fine but is semantically pure nonsense. Why? Because the word “god” is imprecise and undefined in the general context. The most appropriate response to that question is “what do you mean by that?” Continue reading “Good God – Part 1”

In a recent comment, Anirudh wrote: “I notice that the RISC model is in contrast to the development of SEZs( Special Economic Zones), where the focus is on developing certain areas, and giving them special privileges like tax cuts, etc… What do you think about SEZs, which were originally conceived as engines of economic growth? Should we have more of them?”

The RISC model is indeed distinct from “Special Economic Zones”. The RISC model is immersed in the prevailing economic rules. RISC is about what can be done under prevailing rules. SEZs are special, by definition. They have special rules.

I keep insisting that outcomes are a result of rules which govern economic activities — what’s allowed, what’s mandated, what’s prohibited. As I wrote in a recent post, “People as individuals are fairly indistinguishable across the world, save for their history, their culture, the geographies and so on. But as groups, their destinies are astonishingly diverse. I believe that this divergence is due to different set of rules. Rules and norms matter enormously.” Continue reading “SEZ”

Weather reports a few days ago predicted severe rainfall and flooding in Northern and Central California but it turned out to be a storm in a teacup.

After a few weeks in San Jose CA at a friend’s home, I was in Palo Alto CA at another friend’s home for a few days. Being in Palo Alto was interesting for two unrelated events. First, the mega-fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried of the FTX and Alameda Research fame was/is confined at his parents’ home in Palo Alto. So “SBF” was a neighbor of sorts for a bit.

As it happens, SBF was at a New York court on Jan 3rd for his arraignment and pleaded not guilty to all the charges. We’re sure to hear more about his embezzlement in the coming months. Continue reading “Weather Report”

The iron pillar in Delhi is an amazing object. At over 7 meters in length and weighing over three tonnes, it was made about 16 centuries ago from forge-welded wrought iron pieces. It is so corrosion resistant that it has survived the ravages of nature, and is strong enough that it even withstood destruction by cannon fire by Nadir Shah’s army about three centuries ago.

The people who cast that pillar had the technology to make that pillar. Which means that they knew how to make an iron pillar which resists corrosion for over a millennium and a half. The operative phrase in the previous sentence is “knew how to” — which is the definition of technology that we focus on. Continue reading “Technology”

The good news is that Elon Musk bought twitter. The better news is that Musk fired the CEO Parag Agrawal, and the CFO Ned Segal. Best of all, he fired Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy. She had made the decision to permanently suspend Donald Trump.

Musk sent a message to twitter advertisers. In it, he lays out his reason for taking total control of twitter. Here it is: Continue reading “Twitter”

It’s important for us to realize the great progress humanity has made in the last 200 or so years. Life expectancy at birth is a summary measure of human wellbeing.

For nearly all of human history, life expectancy at birth was around 30 years in all regions of the world. Then around 200 years ago, global health inequality became a reality. The website, Our World in Data, presents data extraordinarily well. Continue reading “Progress in Life Expectancy”

Before the advent of television in India, people who could afford a radio were definitely familiar with the signature tune of “All India Radio”, the government run public radio channel.

We had a radio at home when I was growing up. I remember with great fondness the AIR signature tune. I post it below. First a bit about AIR, also known as Akashvani (literally “voice from the sky.”) The wiki says: Continue reading “All India Radio Signature Tune”