Multivariate calculus is different in india and states. And multivariate calculus is well…basic math. Trust me it is….the level of math in US is different. Only ISI or IIT guys have that kind of funda. Believe me …what kytb said is verrrry true.
Indians being good in math is in general a myth. Yes, there are people like CR Rao, but im talking about general public, say like me.:) Most guys said that CAT 2005 math was tough. So in India its like do vedic, learn tricks, buy books by indian authors with lotsa solved examples etc etc….here those tricky stuff in CAT 2005 math which my bro said threw him off would be taught in a coherent way via a sub like ‘Theory of Numbers’…there is a difference….multivariate calc is best understood if u have a strong background in analysis…how many engineering grads in india know real or complex analysis?…and what about linear algebra. most MIT undergrad guys do Rudin. Check the faculty list of most colleges…engineering …lotsa people…math….not many.

Few things are funnier than a man who congenitally underestimates. But if he both underestimates and also thinks labels like “backdoor statist” amount to argument? Hilarious.

Anyway, I’ll just make a comment abt his arithmetic vs math thing of Indians. Sorry to break his bubble, but when ppl talk abt somebody being good in math, EVEN in India, they do not mean arithmetic. They do not mean arithmetic because you do not do arithmetic after middle school. So just cause he received a tad bit of praise for doing a mean 2 + 2 in kindergarten and being appalled that he couldn’t quite translate it to multivariate calculus doesn’t mean that he could transfer that inadequacy to the many Indians who ARE quite good at math; and not as alleged in mere arithmetic.

Arguing for or against regulation of free markets, on the terms that is being done here is utterly redundant. Should monopolies be regulated or not, I think not, because the definition of monopolies is suspect and loose. Is that relevant to most Indians? No!!

Most regulation in India takes the form of restrictions against competition, and the creation of barriers to entry. It relates to average citizens with incomes approaching the per capita from both sides, not to large corporates. The government that the regulators in this debate believe will be able to instigate competition is in fact standing on the chattis and trampling the aspiration of poor citizens.

When I talk about deregulation I think of this form of regulation. I think the Left intellectuals for all their hipocrisy are right on atleast this one count. We the Urban educated elite just don’t care about our poor compatriots. We are not in the least bit concerned that they are being regulated out of their livelihoods. We are bothered about how M$ is vacously cheating us of some notions of choice, which we through our uncritical support for regulation destroy for the poor.

When you think regulation think about the rickshaw driver, the redi/thela wala, the vegetable vendor or the workshopsmen, not of Bill Gates and of coloured water companies.

Thanks for the links man. That CATO article on bank regulation was really good. You are a great man. The least celebrated cartelian and yet the most knowledgable one…. Less noise but more substance.

It’s US centric, but worth a read anyway.

Unfortunately, I have even less time than Amit, so I’ll focus only on Shivam’s comment (#39)

Shivam, self regulation is not regulation by consumers, but regulation by manufacturers (or groups of manufacturers). It’s quite important and provides an alternative to the conventional wisdom about regulation. I’ll leave a few links for you to surf.

Self-Regulation: Regulatory Fad or Market Forces?

Trust for Hire: Voluntary Remedies for Quality and Safety

Ashok Desai’s introduction to Self-Regulation has excellent Indian examples. The book, published by Delhi’s Centre for Civil Society is out of print, but will be available in their library. The intro was online as a pdf file, but the link is broken.

Private Regulation: A Real Alternative for Regulatory Reform

You are a giant. If Chetan’s comment is comment of the year, those 2 comments of yours would easily take positions 2 and 3.

Your fan base is growing at an exponential rate with every passing minute.

Anyways, like you said to Chetan – I am glad that you take the time off to write the comments that you do. Gives me the luxury of having a voice without actually making an effort to pen something down!!

M.

If I start blogging, it will be like Kiruba’s blog sans children, as I don’t have any. Atleast he can proudly say, look at my daughter holding the Brinjal or Drumstick or LadysFinger as the case may be. If I start blogging, I will have to hold that Brinjal myself…

You cracked me up laughing. Such sense of timing! I really wished you blogged! I am looking forward to your email.

Seriously, you can walk into any store, be instantly familiar, grab anything you want, and be out quickly in most major department chains here.

To substitute the familiarity of the local mom n pop store i.e kirana, they are tracking each and every transaction. I follow Jim Zellmer’s site and got the original tip on his site.

I will quote from the NYTimes article
The experts mined the data and found that the stores would indeed need certain products – and not just the usual flashlights. “We didn’t know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,” Ms. Dillman said in a recent interview. “And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.”

Plenty of retailers collect data about their stores and their shoppers, and many use the information to try to improve sales. Target Stores, for example, introduced a branded Visa card in 2001 and has used it, along with an arsenal of gadgetry, to gather data ever since. But Wal-Mart amasses more data about the products it sells and its shoppers’ buying habits than anyone else, so much so that some privacy advocates worry about potential for abuse.

They are sitting on a potential public relations disaster time bomb (Grade A++).

To address the criticism of you people about Communism, it does not really matter what badge you wear if you are hellbent on killing people either by waging wars or conducting mass genocide, for the sole profit of a few people. In recent memory of last 100-200 years, you could be a ‘Communist’ or ‘Fascist’ or ‘Khmer Rouge’ or ‘Imperial’ or ‘democratic’ or ’socialist’. If you can get away with it, you do it. Just because you can. You coincidentially align with the people in power. You change your stripes when necessary. To justify to your unconscious hidden self, and to the public, you lie. It has been clinically proven, if you tell lies consistently, a point comes when you believe your own lies, and it becomes the truth.

It is just pure coincidence that the Communist Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist Khmer Rouge, Fascist Germany, Imperial Japan, etc… killed 100 million. It could very well have been that if Communism had triumped, all that is ‘democratic’ would be villified. To the victor go the spoils of rewriting history. After having seen recently on how history is being rewritten, I would take the past with a barrel full of salt. As it is, ‘democracy’ and ‘free-markets’ is not without its own share of faults, and they have also done enough. As the Bible says “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”. No economic classification is completely sinless, and won’t be. We are all ‘animals’ basically, the war like instinct is there. I went to New Orleans right after ‘the hurricane’, (yep, down here we now call Katrina ‘the hurricane’) it was a completely war-like zone, why? It was down to food, water, and air. Nothing else. The veneer of civilization is very thin upon all of us.

I hope you remember that men have been killing each other for a million years before some distant ancestor of ours even spoke the first word in the first language wherever it was. There is no need to classify somebody as ‘communists’ just because right now you are impatient with the Communists in India or China or wherever, because they are not doing what you all want. Please don’t call somebody as communist as meaning something derogatory. Most everything in the world starts off with good intent, it is the people who misuse it.

Given access to heady power there are very few people who would use it wisely. In the last 100 years, Kemal Ataturk, Lee Kuan Yew are some of the few.

Aaahh, why don’t we move onto realistic issues and real scenarios. When Ravikiran/Ramnath posted their observation about why the reforms have stalled. That is wonderful. Realpolitik. Do some more really incisive analysis like this guys.

I don’t blog…don’t have that much interesting
stuff happening everyday. If I start blogging, it will be like Kiruba’s blog sans children, as I don’t have any. Atleast he can proudly say, look at my daughter holding the Brinjal or Drumstick or LadysFinger as the case may be. If I start blogging, I will have to hold that Brinjal myself…

I admire the cartel’s wisdom, but I do think it is quite abstract, if you will.

Its like NRI kids. They are born here in the USA, live all their lives here, speak with a completely American accent, yet take some short vacation to India & sign up for some Bharatnatyam & Yoga Classes & wear an occasional kurta on Diwali & suddenly they want us to acknowledge their “Indian identity”! I was at a recent Diwali gathering & an 18 year old walks up to me & declares her Indian-ness & her admiration of all things Indian including spicy food, roti, Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood music….I interrupted her quite rudely and said – ‘Lady, no matter how hard you try, you will NEVER be Indian. You will never understand what it means to be from India.’

Her mom, who is a good friend of mine, later on told me to indulge her daughter’s “passing fad of Indian-ness”! Her mom, who, like myself, is from a tiny village in India, completely agrees with me that the girl can never be Indian no matter how hard she tries. Unless you grow up in India & go to school with Indian kids & share their joys & sorrows & watch a corpse on a bier and pull water out of an artisan well, and occasionally go without electricity & study under keroene lamp & pluck a mango from an orchard and ….gosh so many many memories are pouring in! Without any of that, how can you just waltz in & declare yourself Indian ?

Similarly, what ‘right’ does an Amit Varma or a Ravikiran have to talk about Walmart simply by doing some reading on wikipedia & CafeHayek or whatever website ? At best they can argue in the abstract. I have lived here in the US for umpteen years, easily spent over a $100,000 in over 100 Walmarts across 30 states, know enough about the store to walk in blindfolded & find a gallon milk in the dairy section, and I am still not sure if Walmart is good or evil! I have seen strikes outside Walmart, complete devastation of small shops in rural towns as Walmart comes marching in, the enormous increase in traffic along narrow arteries simply unequipped to deal with that number of shoppers, municipalities looking on helplessly as they see the entire town culture change from an idylic retirement paradise to a shopper’s haven, property prices plummet due to excess traffic & noise, the giant Walmart trucks showing up every 4 hours all day & all night, it is simply awe-inspiring, astounding & jawdropping…one doesn’t know whether to go down on all fours & prostrate before Sam Walton, or shake your head vigorously for the complete mess that having a Walmart in your community ensures.
Where I currently live, a small rural town of 20,000 people cutoff from the nearby cities, with a tiny hospital meant to handle a small caseload, the arrival of Walmart has completely swamped the hospital. Walmart employs over a 100 checkout clerks at the cash register & storeboys & stocking room employees, all at $8 to $10 an hour…none of them have health insurance & everybody now shows up at this hospital. The constant hum of Walmart trucks on the single freeway into town, the shoppers from other villages who previously were shopping in their own community in farmers markets now arrive in their 4 by 4s, mobile housing for the employees, whole community has changed…this is the true price of a DVD player, not the $29 I pay at the checkout counter.

A little experience can change, even radically polarize, your opinions about consumerism. But no amount of reading online literature can convince you of the true magnitude of the issue.

If the cartel were based in the hinterland instead of in Mumbai, you would hear very different rhetoric instead of the Ayn Rand worship….Here in the US, even schoolkids scoff at Rand..to think that these morons interpret Galt as some legend…Jesus!

But, timepass ke liye sab chalta hai. So, long live the cartel!

kytb

And this time even if Amit says that post is a joke I am not going to believe him.

You have always intrigued me. I like the perspectives you present in your comments on indianeconomy.org. Also, reading your name itself puts one at ease before reading your comment. The informality in it smoothens any combativeness in your comment itself. Why are you always in the shadows? Do you blog? I would really love you to read your stuff.

That was a nice history you provided. I wasn’t aware of all that. I couldn’t stop laughing at the jokes you cracked at the expense of Kiruba. (whether Kiruba drank rassam or sambar on weekends. LOL!)I agree with you about the cartel earning their rightful marketshare. They certainly are good at what they do. Thanks for those encouraging words.

Now you tell me it is a complement, so I will agree to it.

Ravikiran, the problem is I have no way of knowing it is some insider’s joke on a public blog.

In this post of your’s

http://www.ravikiran.com/2005/07/25/we-are-condescending/

You give a link, so I can understand you are responding to someone and not making a blanket statement. But that North Indian stuff is appalling in its current form.

Edit it, make it easier to understand that it joke. Till then, I find it in very poor taste.