Saturday 28 November 2015

Affirmative Action & the Creamy layer

What happens if Colleges declares a quota for a particular identity group under the following conditions?
1) the identity group has relatively few people who can easily study hard and come up to the general level whereas most of its members find it very costly to achieve even a basic level.

In this case, the few will put in just enough work to beat the many so as to secure a place at the College with the lowest possible outlay. However, since they don't have experience of  studying hard they may continue to lag behind the others in the College.

2) the few who can easily study hard come from a 'creamy layer'- i.e. have better connections than the vast majority. (In India, the 'creamy layer' of the Backward Castes, but not the Dalits, is excluded from affirmative action)

In this case, such students would find it rational to put in very little work both at School and at College because they will try to use their connections to get a job rather than rely upon their own merit. If no one can get a job through connections, then students will soon learn that there is no point not studying hard at School, even if one has a guaranteed place thanks to the quota, because if you don't study hard at School you won't have acquired the habit of industriousness and thus will fail at College and end up unemployed and thus worse off than if you never went to College in the first place.
However, if some people can get jobs through connections then this lesson is never learned. On the contrary, what happens is that the lazy fellows who got jobs create a poor impression and so those without connections, even if they were industrious students, find their qualification does not get them employment.
Notice that the 'creamy layer' can remain 'creamy' from generation to generation but only if they can keep up their connections. They can never advance on the basis of merit.  However, since a person who both studied hard and who has connections can make more of his life than one who only has connections, it follows that the 'creamy layer' won't get as much out of education as the general category student who, even if he has connections, still has to compete with people like himself in order to get College entry in the first place. Thus the 'creamy layer', over time, will find itself falling behind what would otherwise have obtained as a result of the very affirmative action from which they benefited in the short run. As for the vast mass of non-creamy layer students, the quota system helped few of them and even those few faced prejudice in getting employment because of the laziness of the 'creamy layer' graduates.
One solution, favored by the creamy layer, is to ensure promotions are subject to quota in all industries.  However, this only postpones the problem. Cosmetically, the creamy layer is getting creamier, but they fall behind nevertheless because they don't have the skills to match their position. Thus they can't manage their own wealth as cleverly as the hard working general category student who went on to be a hard working employee having to cover for the incompetence of his 'creamy layer' colleague. This hard working employee is acquiring skills relevant to his own wealth management and valuable insights relating to the upbringing of his own children.
The Creamy layer may demand a quota of Directorships in the Enterprises set up by the hard working general category people but this will only be granted in a cosmetic manner. All that has happened is that the Creamy layer are extracting a rent based on their Social Identity. But this rent comes at huge cost to the class they claim to represent. They themselves would have been much better off if no quotas had been put in from the outset.
There is one caveat. Suppose some creamy layer types who do the minimum work to get in on the quota are randomly disqualified in favor of others from the same identity class, then they have an incentive to study hard (since this is relatively cheap for them to do) so as to guarantee their place. Similarly, if quotas in jobs and promotions and so on have this random element added on- such that some one who 'just' qualifies is randomly rejected- then Creamy layer candidates who have low cost of skill acquisition have an incentive to work hard so as to guarantee their success.
It might be argued that a better solution is simply to disqualify 'creamy layer' candidates ab ovo. However, there would still be the problem that non-creamy layer candidates with low cost of skill acquisition have an incentive to put in the bare minimum of effort. In other words, there has to be randomization in selection even for first generation 'creamy layer' aspirants, otherwise all that happens is that the second generation 'creamy layer' is skimmed off and behaves like the general category. In this case, there is no incentive to continue to identify with the disadvantaged group for them. They have been co-opted by the general category. Thus they can't act as a mimetic locomotive pulling their entire class upwards. By contrast, with randomized disqualification, the creamy layer has an incentive to work extra hard because the over all quality of their identity class would be lower than otherwise and this would make it more expensive for them to secure their own future through their contacts.
This may well have a 'mimetic effect' within their identity class.

Perhaps, Dr. Ambedkar, who well understood Gabriel Tarde's mimetic theory, favored a sunset clause for Quotas for this purely economic reason.

Friday 27 November 2015

Contra Hayek

'One might almost say that each individual thinks with his past.' (Hayek, 1920)

Be it Plato's plonk at some wonk Symposium
Or Parmenides' singular Ambrosium
All end at last thinking through their peers 
Or, in tears, drinking with their past

Thursday 26 November 2015

die Krone des Naherin

The slaving seamstress has a swain who, her smile to wheedle,
Mimes stitching up his lips lest her heart escape
Beauty's thread, in the eye of its needle,
Is ever Ariadne's abandoned rape


Envoi-       
Prince! Make Drunkenness thy Ind lest Darkness abort
 & Love's bitter ends hold sacred its knot.
and

Monday 16 November 2015

The Folk Theorem & Ontological Dysphoria- I

  The folk theorem of repeated games (or Myserson 'general feasibility theorem') has faded from salience over the last decade for good reason. It yields nothing positive nor effectively computable. At best, it is a stepping stone from Whig pi-jaw into Dawkins type cultic anti-Creationism which in less charismatic hands can't pay its way.

   Essentially, the folk theorem says any Social Outcome known to be feasible with a co-ordinated coercive authority is equally feasible as the product of an 'un-coordinated' or non-synoecist accidental Coalition provided agents are rational and think long-term.

The problem is that the literature produced under this rubric uses the axiom of Utility Maximisation rather than Regret Minimization and is thus ab ovo incompatible with Evolution under Natural Selection- i.e. where hedging endows survival value- and which, in this context, cashes out as Knightian Uncertainty.

  The fact is, Coercive authorities claim to be able to do something to payoff matrices which no non-Coercive or Organisation-less 'spontaneous' Coalition can accomplish even if, objectively, there is no difference in the observable outcome. This is something baked into the maths- vide Alan Kirman- and only in that sense deterministic.
Why? 
  The fact is, under Knightian Uncertainty, incompossible or ontologically dysphoric payoffs have salience for mimetic contestation. This is because the underlying Schelling focal solution is only approximable by methods wholly divergent in terms of Capacitance diversity- and this is univocally 'regret minimization' rational. Thus 'substantive' though wholly fictitious solution gains salience for a large class of underlying Co-ordination and Dis-coordination problems.

  How square the circle between Presentist Utility Maximization and Backward Induction's 'Regret Minimization'? Trivially, one can abolish Knightian Uncertainty- i.e. invent incompossible pay-offs or ontologically dysphoric regimes. Non-trivially, one could actually do some fucking worthwhile research and make chrematistic money off the Market, but for genuine- i.e. very poor, ignorant and stupid- Economists like me, something more fundamental is called for.

  To illustrate the abstraction outlined above with something viscerally empirical, suppose the local Anna Hazare catches me wandering around in a drunken state and ties me to a tree and beats me with his belt till I beg for mercy in front of the entire village and promise to stop drinking. In this case, though my payoff matrix may in fact be worse than that I would have been subjected to by the relevant properly constituted Coercive authority, still, the real difference in my subsequent behaviour arises from things no intersubjective payoff matrix can capture.
  If it was the S.H.O who beat me with his belt and it was the Magistrate who accepted my vow of abstinence then, clearly, I am a great Iyer martyr victimised by the fanatical anti-Hindu Indian State.  Clearly Narendra Modi is orchestrating a campaign against pure and high minded Brahminbandhus like me by surreptitiously changing my pure and holy Gangajal- i.e. Jordan or Ganges Water- into 'Old Monk' Rum. Still, thanks to my unflagging Guru-bhakti to Mahasati Sunny Leone Maharaj, whose electronic darshan- i.e. theophany- on 'Pornhub' I am Googling for even as I write this now, the miracle occurred whereby though I did indeed drink two bottles of Gangajal which had been surreptitiously turned into 'Old Monk' by the evil RSS anti-Manuvadis, nevertheless I did not become inebriated at all.
   Rather, the fact that I removed my clothes, stuck a sprig of coriander up my arse, and ran around the Arya Samaj Prayer Hall singing 'Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai/ Sab se ho teri Maa chuddhai' only goes to prove that, despite the rabidly anti-Hindu attitude of the Indian State, true bhumiputras however 'bahishkrit'- true sons of the soil no matter how much the victim of Social exclusion- are nevertheless so armoured in their devotion to the one true Guru whose darshan all Indians spontaneously seek- viz Sunny Leone tho' gotta say Mia Khalifa's making converts- that the true facts of the case are these- viz.
1) I removed my clothes to show solidarity with Digambara Jains mercilessly persecuted by Emperor Ashoka and his 'sickular' successors e.g the anti-Manuvad RSS.
But, look at the irony!. Jains have been granted minority status. What about me? Just because I belong to the Majority why am I being condemned to not receiving Minority protection?
 British trampled my ancestors into dust. Now Narendra Modi is winning kudos in Downing Street and Wembley because he is doing what even Curzon dared not do- viz accuse a Brahminbandhu like me of drunkenness.
2) Jainism denounces use of alcohol because violence is done to microscopic organisms responsible for yeasting effects. However, Gangajal- water of Ganges- is known to be incorruptible. This is not a physical but spiritual property. It therefore follows that, for a Brahminbandhu taking refuge in incessant darshan of MahaGuru Sunny Leone Maharaj, no intoxication could be caused by the imbibing of Ganga Jal, even if it had been surreptitiously changed to 'Old Monk', because by the Buddha's declaration- 'Chetana ham bhikkave kamam vadami'- the intentionality was lacking for the relevant 'aashrav' of karma binding properties such that, by Pratityasamutpada, a momentary state of the Universe- such as that in which Moksha is gained- gains decoherence. In other words, since no one gained Moksha as a result of my drinking 'Old Monk' thinking it to be 'Gangajal' there was no decoherence event. There was no distinguishable moment in Space-Time where an actual observation could be made since none had Enlightenment's light by which to observe. No doubt, we may still speak in terms of 'wave functions'- i.e probability. But, ask yourself, is it really probable that an elderly Tambram Hindutva blogger, like me, would get roaring drunk and run around the Arya Samaj Hall singing 'Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isai/ Sab se ho teri gand chuddhai', that too in a completely nude state and with a sprig of coriander up my arse?
3) In North India, coriander is called dhania which rhymes with bania- merchant- the caste to which Amit Shah belongs.
  As the Sama Veda says 'I went to the bania to buy me some dhania, but the dhania was dry'. Clearly this is the governing Sassureian 'mot theme' for a properly Gadamerian project of Hermeneutic Recovery in the face of the all-imperilling aporia or semiotic scandal of a senile descendant of Sama Vedic udgatrs being depicted as running around with a sprig of 'dhania' protruding from his sadly sunken and squishy buttocks.
  BTW, fuck you very much Rajiv Malhotra and Prof. Balagangadhara! You didn't lift a finger to help me even though I am the greatest Hindutva blogger ever and like how come youse guys don't even send me a nice bottle or two of Gangajal for Divali or Christmas or whatever?
4) You fucking bastards! You ban me from your comments columns just because I say I will rape and kill you and your family! Fuck is wrong with you? Just because I am not a Brahmin, but a Brahminbandhu, and don't have a PhD, you treat me like a piece of shit! Actually, it is my own fault. Should have pretended to be Prof. Amaresh Mishra. Still, as a genuinely Spiritually Superior Aryan, not a miscegenated Mleccha like you guys- I mean, even if you are celibate it is only by choice, not coz even the most 'Gandhian' g.fs tend to lose their rag, beat seven bells out of you and leave even if you are pretending to be having a heart attack or whatever- , why are you discriminating against me like this? It is people like you, not ISIS or ISI or whatever, who are the true threat, not just to India- which is like a Colony of the West under Narendra Modi; Indian Police treated me just as badly as the British Police, indeed they would have treated me worse if I hadn't got a British passport- anyway, my point is that I am the true martyr here. A martyr, a shaheed, is a WITNESS to the all-terrorising Inequity and Satanic tenor of the Times. I have every sympathy with the families of those martyred in Paris. However, 'those who will not learn from History are condemned to teach it'.  I have suffered brutal discrimination at the hands of not just the Indian or British Police but also from my own mother, grandmother and other relatives and friends! I have been slapped and told to 'shut up' even by people of wholly different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. It is a mark of my superior Spiritual and Moral standing that I do not demand reprisals against the entire, soi disant, 'gentle sex'. My own Guru, whose darshan I am seeking (my internet connection has been disconnected because of 'non-payment' (i.e. Narendra Modi has done a corrupt deal with the City of London to silence Hindu dissent)  so I'm running a program to hack my neighbour's WiFi and, obviously, once that happens not only will I post this but also stop posting the better to be able to focus on Pornhub's sublime theophany of...actually Sunny Leone was always kinda soft core. Mia Khalifa's glasses, on the other hand...





Why ISIS attacked Paris- fracking fucked up their finances.

   Al Qaeda wasn't territorial. It wanted the US to come to attack it in Afghanistan- which had nothing of value- because as Gen. Hamid Gul said, it expected to kill G.Is, take their fancy weapons, and thus re-arm for an invasion of its own resource rich homeland.

   ISIS is territorial. Why is it provoking the French into bombing its oil wells? The answer is that petrol prices have collapsed. ISIS can't pay its recruits. Some are already defecting. Europe talked tough about imprisoning ISIS recruits if they returned but the threat was not credible because, if they were going to let in a million Syrians per year, the screening process could only be perfunctory at best. In any case, Islamists politicians in Europe, along with their 'Liberal' backers, could always raise a hue and cry about Human Rights for people born or already granted asylum in Europe.

  How could ISIS deter defections while simultaneously giving itself an excuse for not paying recruits? The answer, it is now clear, was to get European Islamists- e.g. from the Emirate of Belgistan- to conduct a bestial strike at the heart of European Civilization. Clearly, deserters from ISIS will now find themselves receiving a far less forgiving welcome. ISIS is now saying to its foreign recruits- 'you have no choice but to stay loyal and die fighting. The French won't forgive you. If you fall into their hands you will suffer something worse than Guantanamo'. In any case, a strike against the enemy raises morale and esprit de corps in short run and, the truth is, it is in the recruits interest to pretend to believe the Caliphate's propaganda for the time being.

  This does not alter the fact that ISIS is no longer financially viable. Its best bet is to disappear for a bit- till Petrol prices rise again. When it makes its comeback, people will have forgotten that it was improvident and ran out of money. All they will remember is that the palmy days when recruits lived large on 'ghanima'- the spoils of war.

 I should mention that ISIS declared a Caliphate only so that it could legally, according to Islamic Law, take a share of the loot secured by the freebooters of Jihad, the 'Holy War' which, once again, only a Caliph can legitimately declare.

 Sadly fracking fucked up ISIS's finances. The Petrol price collapsed. Those elements in the Caliphate which have kept lines of communication open with the Gulf and the Saudis can retreat to a comfortable Capua, while the less financially savvy elements are destroyed. Still, once Petrol prices bounce back (which is why fracking must be banned!) they can return. No doubt, they will be welcomed. After all, now the French are involved, hearts and minds have been alienated in advance. Furthermore, we can always trust the French to espouse the worst possible Military Doctrine and the American's to implement the stupidest Energy Policy possible.

 Things like fracking- i.e. technological changes which change ergodics- can defeat Terror- i.e. hysteresis- but, Western Pundits and Policy Makers can always be relied upon to disable or neutralize such technological changes so that the denizens of the 'Cradle of Civilization' continue to so cultivate Terror as to perpetually shit their pants.


Friday 13 November 2015

Why we Britons are protesting against Modi.

Billions of ordinary Britons, like me, have taken to the streets to protest today against Narendra Modi's visit.

Why? 

To answer this question, we must first dredge up deeply traumatic memories of what happened when the President of Turkey made a State Visit to London. I can still recall that nightmarish moment when eager young Britons, eyes glued to their TV screens, first saw the door of the ceremonial Carriage open and, instead of a plump and amiable turkey saying 'gobble gobble', we were faced with the appalling revelation that the President of Turkey is just some boring dude in a Business Suit. The Queen, God bless her, has never recovered from the shock- though it is true that she made a game effort at stuffing the President in a manner he, no doubt, found both gracious and edifying.

Foreigners need to understand that us Britons expect truth in advertising. If you are the President of Turkey you should make an effort to look like a turkey. Anything less is a glaring affront to basic human rights a complete travesty of democratic values.  

I may mention that the Turks call our favorite Christmas dinner 'hindi' i.e. Indian. Clearly, Modi has a duty to look like a turkey to make up for the lapse on the part of his fellow foreigner.

Sunday 8 November 2015

Cow belt votes for beef

Amit Shah refused to offer Bihar a Chief Minister. Instead, he put up an Upper Caste slate who would use the beef bogey to beat up on the Backwards and Muslims not just by cracking down on a lucrative trade but also by undermining the Yadav's claim to be the protectors of the cow. Sushil Modi, the obvious man to have given Nitish a run for his money, was sidelined by the beef issue- and ended up coming across as a money grubbing Bania hypocritically accusing the 'Yadav King' of eating beef to gain votes.

Congress played a positive role by staying away rather than seeking to split the Muslim vote and also by stroking Lalu's ego to cement the Mahagatbandhan. Of course, this is Nitish's well deserved victory but then he wasn't running against anybody- except Amit Shah's arrogance and Modi's bombast. The RSS once again showed its political ineptitude by chiming in at exactly the wrong time with a threat to quotas. The accident prone VK Singh worsened matters by comparing Dalits to dogs. All in all, the 'outsiders' showed themselves to be stupid, condescending and blinded by hypocritical zealotry, while the Biharis displayed intelligence, competence and esprit de corps. The good news is that Beef is now off the table. Cow protection was always a merely Bania shibboleth. Will the repulsive Amit Shah get the message? No. Cow is his mother. Vote for cow. Once cow becomes Prime Minister and is barbecued by Sickular beef eaters, Amitji can inherit power the traditional way.