Ramnath wants me to know what I think of “Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists”, the link to the first chapter of which he has helpfully provided.
Now it is very difficult for me to disagree with something I agree with for the most part, but I will do it nonetheless. But in the meantime, just to warm up, I will pick on an easier target.
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Nature’s way is to make it harder the second time if you fail the first time.
For example if you are climbing and we fall and injure ourselves, carrying your injured self upwards is tougher.
Civilisation affords you the luxury of a slower-paced programme if you can’t cope with the normal one.
Civilization’s way is better, but do not expect to go that way as a matter of right.
Sorry, but if an Indian residing in the US who speaks “for the other side” is a “House Nigger”, what does that make the other Indians who reside in the US?
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Good article on Gmail and privacy.
Frankly, I am more concerned about the unfair bundling of Gmail with Blogger. I hate Blogger even more now. If Google doesn’t give me a gmail account fast, I will start hoping that the US Justice department starts investigating Google for monopolistic trade practices and discrimination against MovableType bloggers.
Japanese hostages returning from Iraq were humiliated(NY Times free registration required. Link will be inaccessible after a month) by their countrymen on their return for causing trouble to their government.
“You got what you deserve!” one Japanese held up a hand-written sign at the airport where they landed. “You are Japan’s shame,” another wrote on the Web site of one of the hostages. They had “caused trouble” for everybody. The government, not to be outdone, announced it would bill them $6,000 for airfare.
I don’t know what to think of this. On the one hand I sympathise with the sentiment that if you disregard your government’s advice and go to a dangerous place, then you shouldn’t expect the government to bail you out. On the other hand, I dislike the spirit of conformism that expects an entire country to do just what the government says.
My first attack in the You Libertarians are so Impractical! series is on Sathish VM. Last heard, he was arguing with me that one cannot decide whether killing a lot of people is wrong or not unless we know whether the decision to kill the people was democratically taken or not. Now in his blog, he seems to be tired of seeing that though more and more rules are being made, companies are finding ways to wriggle out of them. So he has proposed a Pareto test rule. In his words
We can use the pareto test here? Only those corporate activities that bring the maximum wellbeing to all stakeholders, without making even any one of them worse off – is legal. Anything else is unlawful, not just immoral! Will this work?
Ok people, it is summer, the weather is hot and I am itching for a fight because I am irritated. I am irritated because I have heard the stupid argument “You libertarians are living in an impractical world of dreams!” too many times.
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Swami asks what “strategic” use non-voting could be put to.
Why, that’s simple. Suppose that you are a hardcore BJP supporter. I mean, so hardcore that building a Ram Temple at Ayodhya is the only issue you are concerned with and is your life’s mission. Suppose further that the BJP (not just NDA) has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha and cannot give the compulsions of coalition politics as an excuse anymore. And yet the BJP isn’t bothering to build a temple in Ayodhya, because it has other things to do, like building a shining India and making money for its own ministers.
So what do you do? You can’t vote for the Congress because the Congress isn’t going to build a temple for you either. You can’t vote for an even more extreme right-wing party, because either it doesn’t exist or because it has no serious chance of capturing power at the Centre. Your only choice is to stay at home and hope that the BJP gets a message that it can’t take you for granted.
By a remarkable coincidence, two of my readers sent me two links, both of them from the most excellent blog Marginal Revolution and both of them deal with the impact of competitiveness on performance.
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About my post on how our forex reserves are hurting us, Nitin sends me a Rediff link which says that it is also helping the US, because every dollar we keep in the reserve is a loan to the US (in the same sense that keeping a rupee in the bank is a loan to the bank).
Quite right. I got into a long argument the last time I made such an statement, It is a long story and deserves to go down as one of The Examined Life classics. I was fisking a truly awful piece by S Gurumurthy which essentially claimed that a) The US is surviving on the savings of other countries like India and Japan, b) That is a horrible thing to do and hence c) We should save [and because he pointed out that saving by India is equivalent to investing in an undeserving country like the US, we should continue to do the same stupid thing even more]
That was when I started realising that most people’s knowledge of Economics rested on a very shaky foundation.
Yazad has a persuasive list of reasons not to vote. I agree with a lot of them. Voting as a right is meaningless unless you have the right not to vote. The claim that those who don’t vote have no right to crib later implies that those who did vote for the party in power are also responsible for all the foolish things they do while in power. Claiming that unless you vote you don’t have any right to enjoy the fruits of living in democratic society makes sense only if you also agree that those who didn’t vote (or indeed those who didn’t vote for the party in power) can withhold their taxes, because their party is not in power and they don’t have a right to enjoy what benefits comes from living in society.
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Sandeep says that the Vajpayee succession issue isn’t settled in Advani’s favour after all, and it could be – heaven help us – Joshi the lunatic. Well I agree that Joshi is a strong contender after Advani, but after Vajpayee? No way.
I want to explain why I am saying this, and also want to make a few complicated points, so bear with me as I go on a detour.
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