Jean Dreze on Amartya Sen

Jean Dreze has lived in India for many years and has become an Indian citizen. Sadly, unlike China, the country Dreze moved to has not changed very greatly. Why? India failed to reform labour and land laws. It didn't shift rural women into factory dormitories. It did spend more money on the poor but it actively prevented large scale resource reallocation thus ensuring that for much of the country poverty would remain endemic. Sooner or later, there will be a fiscal crunch and anti-poverty programs will be rolled back. 

Dreze, in chronicling poverty, devoted himself to a Sisyphean task. Still, since he had come to India so as to live, as far as possible, like the poorest and most wretched creatures on the planet, his career could be considered a success. But that career was one of self-mortification and virtue signalling. It wasn't a career in economics or Social Science. 

By contrast, Amartya Sen parlayed a wholly worthless type of research into a successful career in the Ivy League where, as a matter of intellectual affirmative action, he got a Nobel for being 'the Mother Theresa of Economics'- i.e. a useless tosser. 

Dreze praises his mentor in the introduction to a new book about Sen-

In contrast with the standard framework of neo-classical economics, where “utility” is derived from commodities,

Nonsense! Utility is derived from anything at all. A moment spent cuddling the baby is an Arrow-Debreu commodity. It has an opportunity cost and therefore a price. 

capabilities are not just a matter of commodities.

Capabilities are unknowable and can't be inferred from any fact about the world. Nobody looking at me can know whether I am capable of twerking like Beyonce or composing a poem in Telugu. Indeed, I don't myself know whether I have these capabilities. Still, I am taking on-line classes in twerking.  

Friendship, for instance, can enhance our capabilities (in particular, our freedom to engage in a range of valued activities), aside from being valuable in itself, but it is not a commodity.

In an Arrow Debreu model every instant in time where Friendship is a source of utility is a commodity with an opportunity cost and a notional market and hence a price.  So is utility derived from 'club goods'- like walking in a municipal park- and 'public goods'- like watching a beautiful sunset.

From a common sense point of view, of course, the fact that human freedom is not just a matter of commodities may sound like a “no-brainer”.

Freedom means having, as a matter of common knowledge, a set of Hohfeldian immunities of a specific sort. But it is costly to maintain this set. There is an opportunity cost to maintaining Freedom. It can't be something ordained and maintained from on high because then it can be taken away by a similar ordinance or by a refusal to supply the resources for its maintenance. 

The problem with Sen & Dreze is that they have a paranoid theory of freedom. It is granted in an occult manner and only unceasing, increasingly paranoid, protest will ensure it is kept up. The truth is that Freedom is something that involves securing effective 'hedges' whose efficacy has to be tested from time to time. 

In the old days, a despot- like Fredrick the Great- might grant all sorts of wonderful Freedoms. But his successor might take them away again. Such Freedom was an illusion. The Anglo-Saxon tradition rejected it. We all pay for Law enforcement and then have Laws which can be enforced. This type of Freedom is sustainable provided your Army can defeat that of any invader. However, at the margin, it shrinks or expands, depending on exigent circumstances. 

But economists are so influenced by models where utility (conflated with well-being) is a function of commodities that this simple insight has quite a cutting edge.

It cuts out your brain, replacing it with shit.  

In particular, it vastly enlarges the legitimate domain of public action.

Nonsense! It turns 'public action' into virtue signalling. Sen thinks there are 'second order public goods'- i.e. clamoring for more public goods is itself a public good. This is foolish. If everybody goes on strike demanding that Naughtiness be abolished and only Niceness prevail, life will turn to shit.  

Let me explain. In the standard framework of welfare economics, there are two broad justifications for “intervention” in a competitive market economy: market failures and distributional concerns.

Nonsense! The reason for intervention is to raise revenue for the stationary bandit- i.e. the State. Some interventions may 'pay for themselves' if they improve mechanism design or fix a market failure. Also, the State may want to pretend it isn't just enriching itself and thus dole out a little money to the poor. 

This view derives from the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics,

No. This 'view' came first, then came some silly theorem. 

which states that, under certain conditions, competitive markets ensure a limited form of social optimality known as Pareto optimality or rather Pareto efficiency – no one can be made better off without someone else being made worse off.

Market failures refer to a situation where some of these conditions are violated, due for instance to externalities or asymmetric information.

The only real problem is Knightian Uncertainty. Otherwise there would always be some mechanism such that General Equilibrium wouldn't be 'anything goes'- i.e. hedging and Income effects would not compromise optimality.

In the real world, market failures are pervasive (perhaps more the rule than the exception), but identifying them is still regarded as a useful way of thinking about where, when and how intervention may be required.

Identifying them means finding a profit opportunity. Sadly, if the Government gets there first, they can fuck things up. That's what happens in India. This doesn't mean some can't get rich. It's just that corruption is involved and scalability is compromised.  

Aside from market failures, distributional concerns may justify intervention, since Pareto efficiency is compatible with gross inequalities.

Gross inequalities don't matter if there is a compulsory social insurance scheme. This creates a 'social minimum'. Since Knightian Uncertainty obtains, rational agents pursue a regret-minimizing strategy and buy into a Social Insurance scheme.  There is also going to be Charitable provision as well as curbs on the growth of the pauper class. 

This entire reasoning,

which was confined to relatively poor and stupid Econ Professors and second rate bureaucrats 

however, builds on the assumption that human well-being derives from commodities – the objects of production and exchange.

Nonsense! Dreze is making this shit up. Utility is derived from anything useful. Disutility too exists.  

In fact, as Amartya Sen has argued, it builds on a particular view of the relation between commodities and well-being, which involves multiple confusions between choice, preferences, utility and well-being.

The confusion was in Sen's head. He could have embraced 'regret minimization', Hannan Consistency, Knightian Uncertainty, etc. at the end of the Sixties. He didn't. He chose to write bollocks.  

The capability approach clears this confusion, as Hamilton explains in some detail, but it also takes our understanding of well-being beyond the realm of commodities.

 Exercising a capability yields utility. Either the word 'capability' is meaningless or it means 'yields utility'.  

That, in turn, implies that the legitimate domain of public action is not limited to market failures and distributional concerns. To illustrate with an example that is likely to resonate with Amartya Sen, communalism is not a market failure. Nothing in economic theory tells us that if markets functioned well, communalism would be avoided. Communalism is a pathology of our relations with each other as human beings, including but not restricted to market transactions. And preventing it calls for public action beyond correcting market failures.

WTF? Is Dreze on the side of Macron and against Erdogan? He'd better watch out. He could be fatwa'd and end up with his head chopped off like that French History teacher!

Dreze may believe that Nehru had a duty to go to war with Jinnah's Pakistan to prevent 'communalism' taking root there. But he'd better keep his mouth shut about this belief of his. 

Committed neo-classical economists might respond that communalism is not an economic issue,

That's a relief. India does not have to go to war with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to combat its 'qaumi' communalism. Macron does not have to invade Erdogan's Turkey to restore Secularism.  

and that the fundamental theorems of welfare economics are concerned specifically with the economy. It is understood, they would argue, that social life also exists outside economic activity. That, however, would be an artificial distinction, because economic activity and social life are inextricably intertwined. It may be wiser to admit that there is something misleading about the fundamental theorems of welfare economics.

Which is why few Prime Ministers or Presidents have heard of it. The thing can't 'mislead' because none but a handful of low paid pedagogues bother with the thing.

Sen came from Calcutta- which had attained world-wide notoriety as the arsehole of the Turd World at the end of the Sixties. He could make a name for himself by showing that Indians were not just as stupid as shit, they actually were shit through and through. The transition to Democracy had led to two big famines in East Bengal during Sen's lifetime. His explanation was that Bengalis were beasts. They'd deliberately eat five times as much rice as they would normally simply so as to gloat over those who would starve as a result. Interestingly, Sheikh Mujib- praising the role played by the British RAF during the floods- condemned the Bengali refusal to bury their own people. Some forty years later, Janam Mukherjee revealed that after a Jap air-raid, it was White soldiers who buried the victims. The Bengalis refused to show even this basic sort of human decency to people of their own race.

There is something misleading about the sort of welfare economics taught by a Bengali of this type. 

Seen in this light, the potential domain of public action is very wide.

Because public action is essentially political. Market failures can be fixed by the industry in question which can then lobby to get suitable legislation passed.  

It includes not only dealing with distributional concerns and market failures (especially in fields where these are particularly glaring, such as health and education),

The reason Governments intervened in health and education was so as to have better quality conscript armies 

but also constructive initiatives in matters where even flawless markets would not serve the purpose – ensuring communal harmony,

or, as in Pakistan or Turkey, ensuring infidels get fucked over but good. 

building participatory democracy,

like in Venezuela- right? 

pursuing social justice,

yup, that's Venezuela right enough.  

preventing armed conflicts, annihilating caste, abolishing patriarchy, improving the environment, promoting civil liberties, fostering better social norms, to mention a few. These matters, and the corresponding capabilities, are indeed fundamental to the quality of life.

No. They represent a nuisance. Our quality of life turns to shit when 'woke' nutters fill up the streets with protests about the environment and War and Poverty and the Lizard People from Planet X who have invented this COVID hoax. 

All this may seem like a digression, but I hope that it helps to connect the theoretical ideas discussed in this book with the more practical implications of Sen’s work.

The practical implication of Sen's work is that Professors and Bureaucrats of very low I.Q get to talk and write nonsense. The thing is purely cosmetic. Nobody pays those cretins any attention any more. 

The book focuses primarily on foundational concepts such as objectivity, rationality, well-being, freedom, justice and democracy.

Objectively, this availability cascade is shit. It is not rational to listen to a pedagogue who has never made a single sensible policy suggestion. Well-being is increased when nuisances are curbed- and Sen-ile virtue signalling bullshit is a nuisance simply. Freedom is about investing in effective hedges such that Hohfeldian immunities are maintained. Justice is simply a service industry. Democracy has no magical powers. It may be shit, it may not. This is an ideographic matter.

This conceptual work may seem a little removed from Sen’s urgent concern

so very urgent that he would run from Harvard to Oxbridge and back again decade after decade talking bollocks 

with real-life deprivations and inequities, but the two are integrally connected.

Yes. If Bengal wasn't such a shithole, Sen wouldn't have got the Nobel.  Nor for that matter would Mother Theresa. 

It is on the strength of this groundwork that Sen has developed more practical ideas such as the role of democracy in famine prevention

In Bengal, Democracy precipitated famine not once but twice during his lifetime. 

and the fundamental importance of health and education in development.

they have no importance whatsoever. If Development occurs, both improve. If both improve but Development does not occur, then there is mass emigration.  

In a subtle way, Amartya Sen’s own life shows the value of

bullshiting so as to fool the economists into thinking he is a philosopher and fool the philosophers into thinking he is an economist and fooling the Indians  into thinking he knows about the West and fooling the Westerners into thinking that he knows about India 

building the quality of life on capabilities rather than commodities per se. Amartya likes basic comforts (sometimes a little more), but he is not materialistic by any means. If he stays in a fancy hotel from time to time, it is more for the sake of a hassle-free stopover than for the love of luxury (for one thing, he hates air conditioning). It is in his ancestral house in Shantiniketan, which looks much the same today as it would have looked in his childhood, that he feels really at home.

But if he'd have stayed there he'd have been found out as a mere bullshitter of a widespread Bengali variety. 

His breakfast there consists of the same simple jhalmuri (puffed rice with assorted condiments) he has been eating in Shantiniketan for as long as I have known him.

Dreze is letting his hairshirt show. This stupid cunt thinks eating 'simple jhalmuri' is a sign of virtue.  

Amartya is absorbed in the life of the mind – reading, thinking, writing, arguing, and of course, adda (extended conversation), the favourite pastime of Bengali intellectuals. To that I should add the life of the heart: much like Marx (another scholar he admires), who was not always sitting quietly at the British Museum, Sen has made ample space in his busy life for love, friendship and family.

Good for him. How did he do it? By emigrating, working two jobs, saving money and making a judicious choice of partners and friends. That's pure Arrow Debreu consumption. It is pure 'Comparative Advantage' specialization. He found a niche in the market and recycled the same shite year after year decade after decade. He is a brand.  

In short, he did not seek fulfilment in commodity consumption

yes he did. He also produced a reliably shite product year after year, decade after decade. 

but in the good use of commodities and other means to pursue the freedoms he values.

What freedom? The fellow is a blinkered cart house. He blindly obeys Rothbard's law- Economists specialize in what they are most shite at.

Lawrence Hamilton, a former student of Amartya Sen, is an admirer of his, and his account of Sen’s ideas is mostly appreciative. However, it is not uncritical: the author has also shared valuable thoughts on what he regards as loose ends in Sen’s thinking. For instance, he aptly questions the adequacy of “government by discussion” as an understanding of democracy (inspired by John Stuart Mill), especially when power relations prevent free, fair and equal participation in the discussion.

We rightly question the adequacy of 'discussion by academics' because they have shit for brains.  

It is, of course, not surprising that the notion of democracy as government by discussion (“an academic seminar writ large” in Hamilton’s caricature) appeals to an argumentative intellectual who excels at public reasoning, but discussion on its own does not always move mountains.

Does Dreze think it sometimes move mountains? 

A discussion, say, between a ruthless landlord and landless labourers may not be particularly fruitful if all the power is with the landlord.

In which case, why the fuck would there be a discussion? How stupid is this cunt? 

Sen might respond that in such situations, the term “discussion” must encompass assertive means of expression such as agitation and strikes.

Why not gang rapes and mob violence?

Or he might argue that creating the conditions that make discussion effective, including relatively egalitarian power relations, must be part and parcel of “government by discussion” as an ideal.

In other words, first there must be no problem and then there can't be any problem. That's the ideal. 

A characteristic feature of Sen’s ideas is that they

begin with a pointless distinction and then go nowhere fast 

have grown constructively over time (for instance, moving from entitlements to capabilities, and then extending the capability approach to multiple domains),

Entitlements are unknowable. So are Capabilities. 'Multiple Domains' means 'McKelvey Chaos'. Sen turned his subject- already known to be shit- into yet stinkier shit. 

rarely disowning earlier ideas but often modifying and sharpening them.

though they are made entirely out of shit. 

We are yet to hear the last word on democracy, a critical issue for India where democratic institutions and principles are now going to the dogs at speed.

Because the present administration, like the rest of India, think Dreze and Sen are cretinous nuisances.  

I am delighted that Penguin Random House India has brought out this edition of Lawrence Hamilton’s book, making it more accessible to the Indian audience. It is a sad irony that while Amartya Sen’s towering intellectual contributions have been widely appreciated around the world,

by people who thought he knew about India and had played a useful role there 

they have been devalued a little in India in recent years due to the vilification campaign that followed his criticisms of Hindu nationalism.

No. The cunt presided over a shambolic Nalanda International University where students couldn't get even yoghurt but did get robbed or sexually harassed. Sen resigned in a huff. Now the place has an RSS Chancellor and a good, highly experienced, V.C. it seems to be on an even keel.

Even a certain prime minister indulged in a dig at him when he drew a sarcastic contrast between “Harvard and hard work” (little does he seem to know that few people work harder than Amartya Sen).

Sen has made a niche for himself, through hard work and never underestimating the stupidity of the Drezes of the world. Good for him. The market in which he has done well may be small and deeply repugnant, but it is a perfectly legal market. Let him compete with David Icke.

The truth is only hard work matters.  The Harvard Econ Dept. fucked up Russia in the Nineties like nobody's business.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

This book, therefore, will be of special value to the multitude of critics who have disparaged his work without reading much of it.

i.e. it will show the critics that Sen said even sillier stuff than they had realized.