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I enjoy US road trips immensely. I have driven across the continental United States twice so far: once from San Jose, CA to Newark, DE, via Chicago, IL; and once from Newark, DE to San Jose, CA via Dallas, TX.

Those were nearly 4,000 kms. They were solo trips. I generally drive around 12 to 14 hours, with a couple of gas station breaks. The most recent trip was from Phoenix, AZ to San Jose, CA.

Other important road trips have been to Death Valley National Park (five times), Yosemite National Park (about a dozen times), Grand Canyon (thrice), Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, etc. Most of them involved camping. I love camping, particularly in Death Valley because if you time it right — moonless night — then you can see the Milky Way. Continue reading “Road Trips in the US”

Trade, as we all know, is good for those who trade. If two parties freely choose to exchange stuff, we can be certain of this: that they expect to gain from that, else they would not do so. Free trade is what we call a win-win situation or a positive-sum game.

Trade involves two parties and only two parties. If a third party intervenes uninvited, then it is not free trade. In that case, instead of that win-win game, it could be win-lose or even lose-lose game. The world would be a lot better if it had universal unrestricted trade.

I have a particular interest in trade. That’s because I am an economist, and economics is the study of humans as they go about that peculiar business of exchanging stuff. Trading is as unique to humans as is reading and writing: no other animal does it.

In his 1776 book “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith wrote about specialization and the division of labor. It is the division of labor that gives rise to “general opulence.” One of the causes of wealth is division of labor. Continue reading “International Trade and Food”

One of the joys of being an economist is that I get to meet (nearly always virtually) great minds, of the past and the present. Among those whom I admire immensely are the legendary ancients like David Hume, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the 20th century greats like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell.

Sowell is unique in many ways. Unlike the others I just mentioned, he’s not a dead white man; he’s alive and black. Also, Sowell is not primarily an economics theorist and has not made (as far as I can tell) any fundamental theoretical contributions to economics. However, he’s one of the best social commentators and explainers of basic economics. His work enable lay persons to understand how the world works. He has made—and continues to make—the world understandable to millions of people.

Let’s begin with a brief bio of Dr Sowell. Continue reading “Thomas Sowell, an American Treasure”

As a dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying classical liberal, it is distressing for me to watch the insanity of the “trade wars” that Trump has unleashed around the world. He is a self-centered, myopic, stupid, uncouth ignoramus. His economic policies are not good for the US, never mind the world.  

However, the US is a very rich economy. Although it will be hurt by the perverse tariffs that Trump has imposed on it, the US economy will weather those insults. This too shall pass.

Trump’s tariffs don’t make sense. But what’s worse is that he appears to think that the tariffs are paid for by the exporting countries. I would fail any Econ101 student who doesn’t understand that consumers pay the majority of the tariffs because a tariff is indistinguishable from a sales tax. The incidence of a sales tax is primarily on consumers, not on producers— domestic or foreign. Same goes for tariffs. Continue reading “Trade Wars and Freedom”

Today I am sad. I learned that Tom Lehrer passed away recently. I have loved his songs for decades. He passed away a few days ago at the age of 97 on 26th July in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here’s a brief introduction (edited from an AI answer.)

Continue reading “Goodbye, Tom Lehrer”

A pleasure that I enjoy immeasurably is listening to good talks. Thanks to the magic of the internet, particularly YouTube, we have available an inexhaustible store of great content within easy reach. I would like to tell you about someone who is considered an intellectual giant: literary critic extraordinaire and professor of comparative literature, George Steiner.

I got to know about him around 2010 or so. He was one of the people featured in the Dutch TV documentary series, “Of Beauty and Consolation,” released in 2000. (It is available on YouTube.)

More recently I found a lot more of his talks on YouTube. But first, here’s an introduction to the man. I asked grok to do the needful.

Continue reading “George Steiner on Literacy”

It is widely reported that Kurt Vonnegut gave a commencement address at MIT in 1997 in which he advised the graduating class to “wear sunscreen.” But in fact it was actually a column written by Mary Schmich, published in the Chicago Tribune on June 1, 1997. It was a hypothetical commencement speech which gained fame after being misattributed to Vonnegut that wearing sunscreen was advised.

That’s another example of the phenomenon which Michael Crichton named the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect [1]. But I digress. Here’s what I wish to stress. If I were invited to give a commencement speech, an extremely unlikely event, my main advice would be to “choose your experts wisely.”

Choose very carefully whom you wish to trust. In this complex world of ours, none of us knows what is true. That’s simply because we lack the time and the talent to figure out what’s true for ourselves. Therefore we have to rely on experts. That’s what we economists call specialization.

Some people specialize in climate science, some on economics, some on AI, and so on. Because we specialize, we depend on others with their own special knowledge to tell us what is what.

You have to be careful whom you trust. If you choose as your experts activists who are committed to their agendas, you are likely to be deceived. The ax that they are grinding is meant for your wallets to start with but could end up at your neck. Continue reading “Global Warming and Climate Change”

I think Dawkins is an idiot. But then in his defense we have to admit that every one of us is an idiot in the same sense that I judge him to be an idiot in this piece. 

Here I am not using the clinical definition of an idiot as a person with profound intellectual disability broadly characterized by a mental age below three years and an intelligence quotient (IQ) under 25. Compared to us unwashed masses, Dawkins is an intellectual giant who has made significant contributions in his domain of biology. He has also affected popular culture. He coined the word “meme” half a century ago in his first best-seller “The Selfish Gene”! You don’t get more hard-core than that.

In this case of Dawkins, I am using the term idiot colloquially which means someone who appears to lack basic common sense. Continue reading “Richard Dawkins is an Idiot”

The word guru in the dharmic traditions—namely Sanatana, Buddha and Jaina—refers to someone who dispels the darkness of ignorance. Because ignorance is the primary barrier to enlightenment or moksha, the guru is supremely important.

Today is Guru Purnima. Hindus believe that on this day Bhagwan Shiva became the first guru (adi guru) when he transmitted the knowledge of yoga to the world. Also that sage Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, was born on this day.

For Buddhists, Guru Purnima commemorates the day when Gautama Buddha delivered his first sermon at the Deer Park in Sarnath, setting in motion the Wheel of Dharma. For Jains, it is the day when Mahavira, the 24th tirthankara accepted his first disciple. These two events are dated to around 2,500 years ago. Continue reading “Guru Purnima”

The 4th of July is celebrated in the US as its Independence Day. The independence of the 13 British colonies from the rule of the British crown in the late 18th century CE is probably one of the most consequential events of the modern world.

Very few events in human history, if any, have had such an enormous impact on the future of humanity as did that event. Many countries (including the land of my ancestors, India) gained independence from British rule but none ever attained the heights that the United States of America eventually did: it became the greatest, richest, and the most powerful nation that the world has witnessed so far.

It’s important to remember that when the American colonies decided to not be subject to the British crown sometime around the 1770s, the British Empire, though very powerful, was not then the globe-spanning force that it was to be in the 19th century CE. Though great in some sense, Great Britain’s days of greatness lay a bit in the future at the time of the American Revolution. Continue reading “The Birth of a Nation”