Category: Uncategorized

A long time ago, maybe a thousand years ago but certainly a little over a hundred years ago, Bengal was remarkably prosperous. Something happened that led to its transformation from past prosperity to present destitution. What was it? A natural disaster, meaning something that was not humanly caused but something had natural causes? Or was it something that humans brought about by choice?

Let’s be very clear about one feature of this universe we inhabit. That is, nothing stays the same. Ceaseless change is unavoidable. The great, the seemingly invincible invariably decline and are replaced. The Buddhist call it anicca — impermanence. If you expect a changeless world, you are guaranteed to be disappointed.

Continue reading “The Decline and Fall of Bengal”

One of the more distinctive features of the universe is that it is unequal. It is unequal in the sense that it is not one mass of undifferentiated goo. It has differentiated features, starting with the distinction between inanimate and animate matter. A lump of coal is quite distinct from a squirrel even though at the most basic level, both are collections of atoms, each atom a composite of protons, neutrons and electrons–which reduces to two types of quarks and electrons.

In this essary I consider the matter of inequality and what it implies about the human condition and what therefore are its normative implications.[1]

Technology

What’s technology? I define technology broadly as “know how” — the knowledge of how to do something. The products of the technology have “know how” embodied in them. Every human artifact and process of production is, in that sense, a technology product. How to convert ore into metal, how to communicate using writing, how to transmit information using wires, or wirelessly, how to build a transistor, how to put 21 billion transistors on a tiny silicon chip, how to build a commercial jetliner starting from materials that are provided by nature, … ad infinitum. Continue reading “Inequality, the Universe, and Technology”

Doing Good is Always a Good Excuse

If you want to be loved and admired by the people, do good to others. Unfortunately that only works sometimes. But if you wish do well for yourself, even if it means that it causes harm to others, make the people believe that what you are doing is for the good of others. That’s always guaranteed to work. It has worked like a charm in the past, works now, and will work in the future. Public perception trumps reality. Billions spent on false advertising attest to the fact that it works.

The past masters in this game of duping the public into believing blatant falsehoods are governments of all stripes, be they communists, socialists, fascists — and especially democracies.

One of the more important lessons to be learned from the British Colonial regime is the absolute necessity for governments to hoodwink the public. The British rulers cloaked their imperial drive with the noble enterprise of helping the natives as part of the “White man’s burden” to better the “half-devil and half-child” (phrases that the bigoted racist Rudyard Kipling so memorably penned in 1899.) Continue reading “Government of India Carries the White Man’s Burden”

As a matter of principle, I don’t vote. Why not? Because it is taken as signalling endorsement of democracy and by extension, an endorsement of government as it exists. I believe that governments should be abolished. They are the primary agents of war. As long as governments exist, humanity cannot know peace.  Continue reading “Ron Paul in conversation with Charlie Rose”

Getting around in most Indian cities is no cake walk given the awful traffic. What makes the experience worse is that quite frequently addresses are hard to locate. I was in Delhi recently and was trying to locate L-1/18 in Hauz Khas Enclave. It is never easy. I’ve been there about half a dozen times, and each time it involved a good deal of driving around because the numbering is random and unpredictable.

Why Indians have not figured out the simple street numbering system used in much of the world is a mystery to me. Another mystery is the naming of streets. Street names manifest what I call a “personality cult disorder” or PCD.

Continue reading “Personality Cult Disorder and the Naming of Roads”

I like to quote Ludwig von Mises to my socialist friends (who also do double-duty as the enemies of humanity in keeping with their ideology). Mises wrote, “A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.”

Socialism Equals Misery

That it’s not mere exaggeration and hyperbole is clear from the fate of socialist economies, both contemporary and of the past. Socialism impoverishes nations. But why? Because socialism does not use markets to conduct economic activities. Instead of voluntary exchange in free markets, socialism uses force and coercion, command and control. That leads invariably to the disintegration of society.

Continue reading “Wealth of Nations — Part 5: Markets”

Visiting India for even a short while reminds me of a favorite quote from Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784). In his 1775 work Taxation No Tyranny he pointed out the terrible hypocrisy of the American leaders who were fighting for their freedom from the British. Johnson asked, “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

I ask, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps of concern for the poor from those who engineer the very poverty that the poor endlessly suffer?

Continue reading “Friends of Poverty, not the Poor”

On board Turkish Airlines flight 80 from San Francisco to Mumbai via Istanbul. 

This too

I was recently asked my opinion on Islamic banking. I know next to nothing about that. I am told that it is against Islamic principles to charge interest on loans. As a liberal, I take the position that people ought to be free to do whatever they want with their property. They should be free to lend their money at whatever interest they want (including zero interest or a million percent interest.) The only condition is that there must be no coercion involved.

Therefore, anyone who is handing out interest free loans out of their own wealth will find a willing borrower in me. Although it is obvious that giving out interest-free loans is an idiotic thing to do, I don’t believe it is anyone’s business to force people to avoid folly.

Continue reading “On Islamic Banking”