Category: Uncategorized

I am a 2nd Amendment fundamentalist. The right to life and liberty is not something that one has because of the benevolence of one’s potential aggressors but because one has the power to resist aggression and tyranny. The greatest danger to one’s right to life and liberty is from the state because the state has a legal monopoly on the initiation of force, which it frequently exercises without any moral or ethical justification.

The primary reason for having arms to protect oneself is not because it deters the garden variety burglar (although that is a definite benefit) but because it puts the state on guard that it better behave or else. Continue reading “Opposing Gun Control”

Baransam1 asked in response to the latest AMA:

In the past, conquering Islam has broken many temples and erected mosques over the ruined temples. What should be our ideal stance in modern India? Shall we remove all those mosques and resurrect the temples? Or shall we let the mosques stand because the original criminals (breaking those temples) are all dead? I am not comfortable punishing descendants for their ancestor’s crimes. Instead of breaking and building mosques/temples, shall we remember and remind future Hindu generations of the atrocities committed by some violent rulers in the name of Islam? That will enable the future generation to be on their guard without committing new crimes (like the forceful demolition of Babri Masjid).

Let’s begin with an issue that is not as emotion-laden for Indians as the destruction of thousands of Hindu temples that accompanied the Islamic invasion of India, beginning with Muhammad Bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh in 712 CE. Let’s begin with the loot by European colonial powers in the more recent past. Colonialism and looting go hand in hand. The British, as the most successful colonizers, are understandably the most successful looters. The British museum is the world’s largest receiver of stolen goods.

Continue reading “Distributive Justice”

Decades ago, I came across Kahlil Gibran’s book “The Prophet” and later an audio version of the book read by the Irish actor Richard Harris (1930 – 2002.) I read the book and listened to the recording so many times that I can recite the whole book from memory.

It is poetry in prose. It resonates deeply with my soul (whatever that is.) The background music elevate the words. I still listen to Harris’s recording whenever the mood strikes me, which is often. Here is the first chapter.

Below the fold, I have the text of the first chapter. (Project Gutenberg has the whole book.) I recommend reading it while listening to Harris’s recitation of the book. Listen.

Let me know if you want the rest of the audio.
Continue reading “The Prophet”

In a comment to the post “Not Guilty“, Anirudh wrote:

Would you be in favor of bringing the jury system back to the Indian courts?

Are you familiar with the case of Nanavati vs. The State of Maharashtra? Even though the case was an open and shut case, the jury declared Commander Nanavati as not guilty. Wouldn’t that have been a miscarriage of justice? As in this case, is the jury not likely to be influenced or misled by popular media?

Why do you say a jury trial is “the least flawed compromise”?

Continue reading “Jury Duty”

In a field south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, exactly 118 years ago today, Dec 17th, 1903, Orville Wright took off in what is described as “the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft.” He and his older brother, Wilbur, were mechanics from Dayton, Ohio. What they invented has revolutionized the world. Continue reading “First Powered Flight”

“Perhaps the single most important and most thoroughly documented yet obstinately rejected proposition is that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” That proposition has been known by some scholars and men of affairs for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Yet it has not prevented governmental authorities from yielding to the temptation to mulct their subjects by debasing their money—taxation without representation—while vigorously denying that they are doing anything of the kind and attributing the resulting inflation to all sorts of other devils incarnate.”

That quote is from Milton Friedman’s final chapter “An Epilogue” of his 1992 book Money Mischief. Governments, he correctly notes, cheat people out of their wealth by inflating the currency. It’s a pernicious way of levying taxes. This is exactly what the US government is recently doing with gay abandon. But as certain as the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow is the fact that inflating the dollar will end up badly.

Let’s continue with what Friedman wrote: Continue reading “Friedman on Inflation”

Devout Muslims do feel insulted and murder at the slightest suspicion that perhaps someone may have insulted their prophet. Here’s a very recent — and horrifying — example:

Nothing to see here, folks. Just peaceful people doing what their Religion of Peace commands them to do. Continue reading “Modi’s Jizya”

“Maybe the main function of economics in general is not, as we usually think, the systematic building of theories and models, or their empirical estimation. Maybe we are intellectual sanitation workers. The world is full of nonsense … Maybe the higher function of economics is to hold out against nonsense, … All those theories and models we invent and teach are just nature’s way of making people who know nonsense when they see it.”    — Robert Solow[1]

It takes only a bit of economics to realize how much intellectual garbage there is in the world. Learning economics is depressing in that regard. You see piles of intellectual garbage all around. And you cannot do anything about it. You clean up a bit and it keeps piling up. It’s enough for a body to despair.

People’s minds are so full of garbage that it’s a wonder that the world functions at all. That’s when one realizes, if one understands basic economics, how truly marvelous the Smithian invisible hand is: even though people generally systematically believe in all sorts of garbage, their self-interested actions produce an aggregate outcome that they don’t really intend or even comprehend. The good that arises is accidental, not intentional.

Warning: This is a long read — about 12 minutes. Continue reading “Eliminate Poverty, not the Rich”