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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”

Inflation is what the government does. By printing fiat money, the government imposes a vicious tax on people. Taxation is theft and inflation is the most damaging of theft. Yesterday I paid twice as much for gas as I did just a year and a half ago. In April 2020, I paid $1.69 a gallon (see the image above and note the date stamp; also note it says 1.69 for regular, and 1.89 for premium) and yesterday I paid $3.40 a gallon for regular at the same gas station.

May Biden rot in hell. Let’s go, Brandon.

Prabhudesai, in a comment to the recent post on inequality, wrote that envy motivates the concern for inequality; otherwise, to demonstrate their commitment to equality, people would give away that portion of their wealth that exceeds the average wealth of the society (or the world at large, if they are really sincere.) I agree. 

People who are exercised about what they consider to be an “unfair distribution” of wealth insist that the wealth of the super-rich should be confiscated and distributed “fairly” to all. Bezos, Musk and other multi-billionaires come in for special censure. Why, the cry goes out, should they have billions when there are starving millions? They have more than they could possibly consume while there are people who are starving. It’s immoral and sinful. The government must do something about that.

I disagree for various reasons. First, I present a consequentialist argument why the wealth of the super-rich should not be redistributed by government edict. As I am not a utilitarian, I reject this argument for a much stronger claim. Continue reading “Inequality – Part 2”