Category: Uncategorized

Hong Kong is at the top of the class in economic freedom and among the most prosperous in the world. Just note the change between 1980 and 2017: 255 percent increase in GDP per capita on PPP basis. Singapore, thanks to Lee Kuan Yew, did even better: #2 in economic freedom ranking, its GDP pc increased over 3x. Here’s a graphic illustration of the correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. The causal link is from freedom to prosperity.

Venezuela, much beloved of socialists like Bernie Sanders, went from moderately well-off to desperate poverty in the same period thanks to socialism. I note in passing that India was declared a socialist country by Indira Gandhi, and it shows. Continue reading “Economic Freedom and Well-being”

I find it curious that people unthinkingly claim credit where none is due. “I proud to be an Indian” and “I am proud to be a Hindu” are examples. Here’s an example from a Youtube comments’ section.

My answer to Supriya Varma went thus: Continue reading “I am Happy that I’m a Hindu”

One of the markers of an uncivilized society is that mobs resort to vigilantism which are acts of summary justice without legal authority or due process. When the police engage in vigilantism, it signals a failed society. That’s what happened last week in Hyderabad in India.

Four people were killed murdered by the police (led by one Mr Sajjanar) in what is referred to as an “encounter.” The four were accused of a singularly horrific crime — the gang rape and murder of a young woman –and were in police custody. Note the word accused. Continue reading “Vigilante Justice in India”

This is just a test. Please ignore. Thanks.

You can listen to this test track or download it.

Download (right click and “Save as”) Morning_Mandolin.

Greetings, all. Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. Among all the American holidays, this one is my favorite. Never mind the genesis and history of this tradition — some of it is not very pretty. What matters to me is the idea of thanksgiving.

Gratitude is one of the most healthy emotions we have. Life is not always nice but every now and then it is good for our mental health to pause and say, “I am thankful that I have so much to be thankful about.”

Here’s the Sanskrit mantra that expresses my core desire

• • • लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु
    • Lokah samastah sukhino bhavantu.
    • May all beings be happy.

Happy Thanksgiving Day.

As a liberal — in the classical sense of the word meaning one who believes in liberty — I have special respect for Albert Jay Nock (1870 – 1945), the American libertarian who was a radical anti-statist.

It’s astonishing to me how much our views match. Perhaps I am one of Nock’s reincarnations. (I should write about reincarnation one of these days.) Like him, I am a philosophical anarchist: I hold the state in contempt and believe that it lacks moral legitimacy but I am also against the use of violence to overthrow the state. Like him, I am opposed to centralization, regulation, the income tax, state welfare, majoritarian democracy and state mandated education. Continue reading “Like Albert J Nock, I’m an Anarchist”

James Buchanan proposed a simple test to distinguish economists from non-economists. It was that economists would not agree with the old adage that “whatever is worth doing, is worth doing well.” If you’re confused by that, you aren’t an economist.

Economists know that everything has costs and benefits. Not just this or that thing but everything. That includes good things and bad things. Even good things have costs, and bad things have benefits. Furthermore, economists “think at the margin.” And finally, there’s such a thing as “sunk costs.”

To keep this brief, let’s just say that an economist would stop before reaching that nebulous “well done” stage. He would stop when the marginal cost exceeds the marginal benefit. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing as long as the net benefit is positive. And then stop.

Back to our topic at hand on billionaires (the previous bits are part 1 and part 2.) Continue reading “Billionaires are Different — Part 3”

I concluded the previous part of this piece with the claim that “it is not possible to create wealth without also creating inequality. Inequality in a modern free society is a healthy sign, just as inequality in an un-free society signals disease.”

There are different ways of amassing wealth. In the past, most of what was produced was consumed. That’s because nearly everyone was almost uniformly poor in the past. There wasn’t much left over, and therefore there was not much accumulated wealth.

Still over hundreds of years, wealth in the form of precious metals and gems accumulated in certain parts of the world, which tempted barbarian invaders to do their killing and plundering. That’s the old way to acquire wealth: don’t bother producing any wealth, just take it from others by force.

Then around 250 years ago, some people figured out how to use energy sources (fossil fuels like coal) effectively and wealth production took off. That’s the first Industrial Revolution. That made it possible to produce a lot more wealth and gradually people started climbing out of extreme poverty. Continue reading “Billionaires are Different — Part 2”

South Korea is weird. Meaning, it is “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.”

The last bit was not always true. It was a military dictatorship or autocracy until 1997 when it became a modern democracy with the election of Kim Dae-jung. Here’s some interesting facts about South Korea from the wiki: Continue reading “South Korea is Weird”

Billionaires are Better

Let me tell you about the billionaires. They are different from you and me. They create and possess immense wealth, and they benefit society immeasurably. They are different from you and me. They are better. [1]

The rest of this piece is a justification of the previous bit. To get started, it’s important to properly understand what we mean by rich people. They have more wealth compared to the non-rich. What’s wealth? It is whatever we as a collective commonly value.

Wealth is always reported in monetary terms (Bill Gates is worth $113 billion, for example) but money is not wealth: it’s only convenient to measure wealth in terms of units of money. This distinction is very important. Those who are unable to make that distinction end up writing nonsense, as did one opinion writer of the New York Times [2] recently. More about that later. Continue reading “Billionaires are Different”