Nov 14th as the “Day of Shame and Lamentations for India.”

Why Indians celebrate Children’s Day on Nov 14th is a bit of a mystery to me. Of course I know that Jawaharlal Nehru, the father of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty was born on Nov 14th. Why would anyone consider him to be significant for Indian children is the mysterious part. If the facts be considered, Indians should observe Children’s Day on some other day than a day that is somehow related to Nehru. For two very pertinent reasons. First, contrary to the government brainwashing, Nehru wasn’t particularly fond of children. He was, according to some reliable sources, very short-tempered with them and had them removed from his presence immediately after the de rigueur photo ops. Sure, he liked roses and the ladies but I find all claims that he somehow adored children rather incredible.
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The Indian Constitution — Part 2

George Orwell claimed, “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” By that measure, a commitment to telling the truth as one sees it must make one a bit of a revolutionary. Here I continue with my argument that the Indian constitution is the fountainhead of all of India’s troubles. Unless and until it is replaced, India will continue to languish at the bottom of the heap. That claim predictably makes people uncomfortable. In this series I aim to support argue for its truth. (Here is the first part.) In this part, I examine the importance of rules. Continue reading “The Indian Constitution — Part 2”

Shubho Bijoya Greetings

For Bengalis, the five day long worship of Ma Durga is simply pujo. This is the time when Ma Durga comes for a visit to her maternal home. The festival culminates on Bijoy Dashimi with the protima (the idol) given a visarjan (ceremonial immersion in a river or a lake). Then it is time for people to greet each other with “Shubho Bijoya.” The important thing is that you wish people after the visarjan is over. This gets complicated in a world in which people live in different time zones. In India, visarjan is already over and they are wishing Shubho Bijoya but over here California we still have not had visarjan. So with that brief caution, here’s wishing you all Shubho Bijoya.

(Tomorrow I will go to a Durga puja and post some pictures.)

Here’s a song from E.S. Posthumus called Durga from their album “Maraka.” Others songs titles in that album are Kalki, Vishnu, Indra, etc.

Hayek on Valuing Individuals

MWSnap093“A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom.”

Friedrich August von Hayek (1899 – 1992). Austrian economist.

Mr Modi goes to Washington

I make no secret of the fact that I believe Shri Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, is an honest, intelligent, dedicated, sincere and diligent man. I admire him immensely for who he is and what he has accomplished over his many decades as a politician. The set P = {p | famous politician p is honest, intelligent, dedicated, sincere, diligent} is small but non-empty. For all I know, the set P is exhaustively enumerated as P = {Narendra Modi, Arun Shourie}. But at the very least, I am certain that {Narendra Modi, Arun Shourie} ⊂ P. I indulge myself in the frivolity of using set-theoretic notations at the start of this piece only because I have a few serious points to make.
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Geert Wilders: “War Has Been Declared against Us”

Well, what do you know! Amazing things are happening around the world. One of the more positive developments has been that of the Islamic State (formerly known as the ISIS) showing up and demonstrating to the world what “peace” means in the “Religion of Peace.(™)” They are the poster boys of Islam, arguing against the left-lib-tards (that’s the short form for “leftist liberal retards”) who keep on insisting that Islam is a religion of peace.
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Ganapati Vighana Haran Gajanana

It’s that time of the year once again — the time of Ganesha’s visit and therefore this annual post which is a tradition on this blog.
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Whose money is it anyway?

Milton Friedman used to elegantly distinguish between four ways of spending money. First, when you spend your own money on yourself, you are very careful to get the most benefit for your buck. After all, it is your money and you know what you want for yourself. Second, when you spend your own money on someone else. Here too you carefully economize to meet your objective but since you don’t know the other person’s needs as well as you do your own needs, your spending may not be as optimal for the other person. Third, you spend other people’s money on yourself. In this case, your incentive to economize is certainly blunted. You are much more concerned with getting the best and less with what it will cost.

Finally, when you spend other people’s money on someone else. That is, you transfer resources from one group to another group. In such cases, economizing goes out the window, and what is worse, you promote your own ends rather than the ends of those whose money you are spending or those who are the ostensible beneficiaries of the transfer. The most ubiquitous example of this is what he calls the “distributor of welfare funds” — taxpayers money being spent by government officials for welfare. Here’s Friedman in his own words:
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Mises on Bureaucracy

“The characteristic feature of present-day policies is the trend toward a substitution of government control for free enterprise. Powerful political parties and pressure groups are fervently asking for public control of all economic activities, for thorough government planning, and for the nationalization of business. They aim at full government control of education and at the socialization of the medical profession. There is no sphere of human activity that they would not be prepared to subordinate to regimentation by the authorities. In their eyes, state control is the panacea for all ills.”

Ludwig von Mises. “Bureaucracy”. Page 4. Yale University Press. New Haven. 1944.