Category: Uncategorized

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”

Born in England in 1737, Thomas Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774. He anonymously published a pamphlet titled Common Sense in 1776, which inspired the American patriots to declare independence from Great Britain in the same year.

The wiki says, “Virtually every rebel read (or listened to a reading of) his 47-page pamphlet Common Sense, proportionally the all-time best-selling American title, which catalysed the rebellious demand for independence from Great Britain.”

Common Sense opens with the following paragraph. Continue reading “Common Sense”

After the success of the How the World Works – Part Uh, I have been pressured to offer Part Duh of the same. So if you, dear reader, were so unlucky as to have missed the first part, despair not — Part Duh is finally here. Even if you did catch parts of the first offering, you are sure to get a lot more in this new series. But there’s a catch!

This time around you have to pay. This part, unlike the first part, is not free. Why not? you may ask. Because there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Why not? Ah, you’d learn why not if you attend this part of “How the World Works.”

Seriously, you’ll get it. And when you get it, you’d be delighted. And if you’re not delighted, it’d be entirely your fault. Guaranteed or your money back. Promise. So here are the details.

Continue reading “How the World Works — Part Duh”

Here I am not referring to the off-Broadway theatrical review Oh! Calcutta! which debuted in 1970 and “ran in London for over 3,900 performances, and in New York … including a Broadway revival that ran for 5,959 performances, making the show the longest-running revue in Broadway history at the time,” (according to the Wikipedia.)

I am referring to a speech ostensibly made by one Adit Jain of IMA in June 2021. No doubt Jain in the title to his talk is cleverly referencing that play but that’s not material here. The fact is that Bengal has descended into disaster because … Wait, let me not get ahead of the story. Continue reading “Oh! Calcutta!”

FJB

Today I learned about a Boeing 720 (not the one pictured on the left) which was parked at the airport at Nagpur (my old home town where I was born) for 24 years. This is the first time I came across Nagpur mentioned in a tweet on my twitter feed.

It’s an interestingly crazy story. Here’s the introduction to a twitter thread that tells the backstory.

Kenneth Copeland ditched a B-720 he owned at the Brown Field Municipal airport around 1988. A couple of years later, Mick Croy, a mechanic at the airport, noticed a guy hanging out near the abandoned plane. It was Sam Veder Verma, an Indian tire magnate. Sam asked Mick if he could fix the 29-year old plane. Mick said yes and got on the job. Continue reading “The Boeing 720 in Nagpur”

The notion that the individual owns himself or herself is the essential, axiomatic, necessary, defining condition of a civilized society. It’s axiomatic in the sense that it is a priori, self-evident, categorical, certain and beyond dispute. It’s apodictic — a necessary truth, an absolute certainty not requiring proof. It’s an assumption the truth of which if not assumed can never be established.

It’s necessary because without self-ownership, there can be no freedom. Civilization and freedom are inseparable concepts. The essence of civilization is the freedom of the individual. Continue reading “Slavery”

The news item reads, “UP makes it mandatory to obtain license for home bar.” It’s just one more small step on the road to serfdom.

The population should be alarmed at the proliferation of the license mandates and the steady encroachment by unaccountable bureaucrats into the private lives of citizens. The license-permit-quota-control raj continues relentlessly imposing its will on a powerless people. This would not be tolerated by any population that values freedom — which in our case we do not have.

Licenses and permits may be justified only under specific circumstances. For example, if the activity could lead to harm to others, it would be permissible to require that a person is sufficiently skilled in the activity. An untrained operator of heavy construction or transportation equipment could kill innocent people. Pilots of commercial airliners must be certified to fly. Continue reading “Licenses”

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you are prepared to understand why Elon Musk is a remarkably intelligent man.

I’m not saying that you would have become capable of judging his business sense or his rocket designing abilities by reading my blog; what I mean is that you have a pretty good understanding of how governments fail and what should be done to reduce the harm that governments do. Here’s a rough edited transcript of what Elon said in an interview, part of which was published on YouTube on Sept 3rd, a few days ago: Continue reading “Elon Musk on Laws”

These are two remarkable facts about our modern world. One is that it is incredibly amazing, and the other is that we’re incredibly blasé about that amazingness. Our attitude is just boring ho-hum. It takes effort to step back and realize how astonishing our world is — even compared to only a couple of decades ago. I think it would do us good to pause once in a while and admire what humans have been able to achieve in a relatively short period.

Here I will point out a little bit of that amazing stuff that I experienced yesterday. Continue reading “Amazing Internet”