Billionaires are Different — Part 2

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

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 Different

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”

The Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Case

The big news in town is the verdict by the Supreme Court of India on the matter of the Ram Janmabhoomi site. It appears that the land has been “awarded” to those who want to have a temple dedicated to the birthplace of Bhagwan Ram. There’s much jubilation among Hindus. But why?

Fact is that that site was a temple in the first place. Islamic invaders destroyed that temple as is their religious duty, and they built a mosque at that site to demonstrate their supremacy. In a polity that rejects Islamic supremacy, it’s easy to conclude that building mosques on temple property is immoral, unethical, uncivilized and just plain wrong. Why did it take decades for the Supreme Court to decide this case? Is the court merely incompetent or just lazy or stupid or what?
Continue reading “The Ram Janmabhoomi Temple Case”

Why we misapprehend the world

We all have an intuitive understanding of our world. We make sense of the world by looking at it through “common sense” lenses. These are almost instinctive, or hard-wired as they say in computerese. And the surprising truth is that nearly all of these intuitions are wrong. They are incompatible with the world we live in today.

Anatomically modern humans have existed for at least 200,000 years (or maybe even 300,000 years). For nearly all of that extended time, humans lived in small bands of around 150 individuals and survived as hunter-gatherers. Continue reading “Why we misapprehend the world”

From the archives: Bhagwati on Markets and Democracy

Jagdish Bhagwati

This one is hauled from the archives from Aug 2013. Bhagwati on Democracy and Markets. In that post I quote Bhagwati’s three broad lessons that arise from his typology of countries into a democracy-market space. Continue reading “From the archives: Bhagwati on Markets and Democracy”

Nella Fantasia

Music is of one of my most enduring passions. I can’t play any musical instrument to save my life. But I am grateful that I love music and my taste is eclectic. And I am happy that I live in an age in which I have access to an inexhaustible source of music of all kinds.

I enjoy a wide range — from Hindustani classical to Western classical; from Hindi popular cinema songs (from the 1960s through 1980s only) to Western pop songs; and world music also. I love contemporary composers like Philip Glass and Ennio Morricone.

Talking of Morricone, here’s a favorite tune from the master. It’s based on the theme from the movie The Mission for which he gave the music. He’s written the scores of scores of movies — including the spaghetti westerns (For a Few Dollars More, and the like). I hope you like this song.

What’s Wrong with the Climate

What’s wrong with the climate? Nothing that has not been wrong before — and will not be wrong in the future. What’s wrong is that the climate changes, with or without human help.

At the current state of the art of human technology, humans cannot at a reasonable cost affect climate to any significant degree. There are far greater forces — geologic and solar — at play than just what humans do, and can do, to the earth.

The earth doesn’t need saving. It’s been around for around 4.5 billion years and is likely to be around for another 5 billion. Compared to that deep time, humans with their technology have been around for 200,000 years (give or take a bit.) As a fraction of life-time of the earth (~10 billion years), humans have been around so far for only 0.002%. That’s a vanishingly small number. Continue reading “What’s Wrong with the Climate”

Ask Me Anything — Is Economics Hard?

There’s a funny story in Robert Heilbroner’s 1953 book The Worldly Philosophers (which has been republished dozens of times):

One evening Keynes was having dinner with Max Planck, the physicist who was responsible for the development of quantum mechanics. Planck turned to Keynes and told him that he had once considered going into economics himself. But he decided against it – it was too hard. Keynes repeated this story with relish to a friend back at Cambridge. “Why, that’s odd,” said the friend. “Bertrand Russell was telling me just the other day that he’d also thought about going into economics. But he decided it was too easy.” Continue reading “Ask Me Anything — Is Economics Hard?”

Train driver’s view

Probably because I associate trains with holidays when we were growing up I love trains. One time many years ago I even got to ride a diesel-electric locomotive hauling a passenger train in India — a rare treat. Thanks to YouTube, these days you can get a virtual ride in a locomotive. My favorite train-driver’s view channel is one that goes by the handle HinduCowGirl.

The driver is a Norwegian lady, who I believe is also a sky-diving instructor. She has heaps of videos of the trains she drives. I confess that I spend an inordinate amount of time watching them. All of them are pre-recorded since they don’t have the internet connectivity to live-stream the videos but many are streamed with live chat. It’s fun to hang out with others who share the love of trains. OK, so here’s one of those videos.
Continue reading “Train driver’s view”