Kaushik's Basu's 'Crossings at Benares Junction'

Funniest line ever in an Indglish play-
Mr. Gosh- 'National bard of India is not Rabindranath Tagore. Peacock is the correct answer."


Prof Kaushik Basu, the contriver of the 'Traveler's dilemma' as a critique of 'backwards induction' in Game theory has also written a hilarious little play - Crossings at Benares Junction' which combines old fashioned romanticism with game theoretic insights into intentionality and ethics.

Basu’s protagonist is a 39 year old bachelor, Siddharta, a professor of philosophy, who has just won an International prize and, as such, for complex socio-biological reasons, has suddenly become the ultimate matrimonial trophy for brainy women on the prowl for- I will not say Bengali beefcake, as that would be culturally insensitive- but a slippery, cerebral, hilsa-like husband from the right side of the Hooghly.


In the first scene, the improbably named Melba Iyengar- an ambitious philosophy lecturer/documentary film-maker, who combines the emotional crassness of her generation (she is in her late 20’s) with the cultural illiteracy and naked careerism of the bien pensant N.G.O do-goodniks- makes indelicate advances to our blushing Bengali boy.

(En passant- I may note the curious attribution of sexual aggression to Iyengar females in Indglish fiction- vide Shoba De, Mukul Kesavan but not, I hasten to add, my own 'Samlee's daughter')


Miss Iyengar presses her suit on Siddhart using two powerful arguments. Firstly, the fact that if he proposes she is sure to say yes- thus greatly increasing the expected value of proposing. Secondly, three other people are competing for her hand. By delaying proposing, Siddharta keeps three others waiting in limbo.

Hence, altruism would dictate proposing sooner rather than later so that three other men can get on with their lives.

Siddharta has till now played a Stoic’s part- as indicated by his choice of Hindi song to play on the stereo.
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii Kaa Saath Nibhaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Har Fikr Ko Dhu.Ne.N Me.N U.Daataa Chalaa Gayaa
Barabaadiyo.N Kaa Soz Manaanaa Fizuul Thaa 
Barabaadiyo.N Kaa Jashn Manaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...
Jo Mil Gayaa Usii Ko Muqaddar Samajh Liyaa 
Jo Kho Gayaa Mai.N Usako Bhulaataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...
Gam Aur Khushii Me.N Fark Na Mahasuus Ho Jahaa.N
Mai.N Dil Ko Us Muqaam Pe Laataa Chalaa Gayaa
Mai.N Zi.Ndagii...
I went on my way keeping faith with Life
Blowing away anxieties like smoke from a cigarette
Grief over disasters is a futile thing
I celebrated my calamities along life’s way
Whatever I received, I considered my fated portion
Whatever I lost, I resolved to forget and move on
I move my heart towards that (mystic) station where sorrow and joy are indistinguishable


He parries Melba’s crass attempt at seduction by claiming, firstly, that he is not at all sure that she will not reject him if he proposes and, secondly, that her mention of three other suitors is 'double counting' since only one of them could have her. This is a disingenuous argument, since Melba's point was about a duty to minimize the total waiting time of the other suitors- that being the only opportunity cost that arises where a woman is determined to marry a particular man and the fellow is dragging his heels.

Siddharta, clearly, is either really stupid or clever enough to appear so when his happiness is at stake- in other words, the man is a born philosopher.


Fortunately, the arrival of other guests prevents Melba from raping the hero, thus ‘ruining’ him and leaving him no option but marriage to his assailant- so backward is Bharat, such things happening all the time, I yam telling you- simply to save his family’s izzat.


In the next Act, we meet Siddharta’s lost love- June. Or so we conclude from Siddharta’s choice of song.
June points out, she was almost ten years older than him and did the right thing in marrying a pompous ass of an academic closer to herself in age. She counsels Siddharta to marry, to trust in God, and keep promises.

‘Nibhana’- to abide by a commitment- is a key value expressed in the two songs- from the Dev Anand vehicle ‘Hum Donon’- Siddharta has played so far. Since the lyricist was Sahir Ludhianvi we see that both faithfulness in love and integrity in political engagement are meant. In this case, resistance to Right Wing Hindutva hooliganism is the righteous path.

Siddharta had promised God that he would give thanks in a temple if he gets the prize, but he is agnostic not only about God but also about the value of Prizes and- more to the point- the incentive compatibility of Marriage as an institution. Yet he is lonely. He has to ‘go out into the dark night’ not from fear of God but because fear is the biggest sin.

Here the text is a little unclear- is there a temple in ‘Plaza gardens’ or is there to be a political demonstration there, or is it a place to meet girls?- so we can’t be sure exactly what June is counselling Siddharta to do.

Siddharta announces that he is not a coward. He will walk out into the dark night. He is prepared to take the risk.

Siddharta’s dilemma is the classic Romantic dilemma- most fully realised in Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa- whereby ‘a boy loves with his full heart, a man loves with a full stomach’ (Kipling). However, the boy with the full heart can’t feed the beloved. She marries the fat older guy. But what happens when, a few years down the line, the boy wins a big prize and becomes an attractive prospect? How can he get a bride after his own heart rather than the full wallet that nestles against it?


The problematic that, where meaning is gamed, where emotions are strategic, where the subject matter of both epistemology and Aristotelian ethics- in other words both Knowledge and ‘Character’- are in flux for defined, as it were, by backward induction from the reference point of a mercenary, memoryless, game- then, but not only then, it is not only the fraudulent ‘businessman’ but also the scholar, the lover, the spouse, everybody in every relationship, who keeps going only by introducing more and more chaos into the system- but that system itself a Ponzi scheme that feeds off its own ever widening circle of ruination to make itself the only game in town…


The one rather artificial assumption in the above is that modern life is a memoryless- i.e hysteresis free- game. Siddharta is worried by what happens if things suddenly stop- how can the world suddenly start up again.

Siddharth: I have not thought it through well enough to know the answer myself. But see, if everything stops, the earth, you, the protons and atoms inside you and inside me… everything. It does seem obvious, right? That things cannot re-start again?
One way to reason is that whatever happens at any time is caused by the state of the world just before that. Now, if the world is motionless for some time, no matter how brief, there is a time when the world is motionless and just before that the world was motionless. Hence, motionlessness causes motionlessness. Hence, once there is no motion, there cannot be any motion.
This has lots of interesting implications. It means that we can never invent a TV set that can switch itself on. If it does, it is because we have programmed that in and there are small actions occurring inside it all the time. (Pause) What I wonder is, are we reaching this conclusion purely by deduction, or is this just a fact of life — that motion cannot come out of motionlessness.
Kavita: The fact that you reach this conclusion without ever having experienced the stoppage of everything suggests, doesn’t it, that you come to this conclusion by deduction.
Siddharth stares at her in disbelief.
Siddharth: Are you a philosopher? I am sorry to inflict this trivia on you…
Kavita: No, but I was taught philosophy. In fact, by you — at NDU.
Siddharth: Really?

Basu enrolled at the Delhi School of Econ when it was full of ambitious cretins- Manmohan had spurned Prebisch in Geneva, at UNESCO- to return to that impostume of Export Pessimism and Socio-Democratic Defeatism- not to mention swinish subservience to the Dynasty- which poisoned Indian discourse from about the time that I became fluent in it. 

What he wasn't taught that Von Neumann had invented cellular automata theory at the same time that he and Morgenstern established Game Theory as a paying proposition- for cretins. 

The Delhi School- which turned me away though I had an LSE degree at the age of 19 and could have aced their puerile Entrance exam- was a shitty little darbari clique of an 'ICS Gotra' casteist type. So was the supply of 'independent' Econ Advisers to Govt. I had married an Italian whose half-sister was married to a guy whose Dad had been a great pal of Sonia's daddy. Youth Congress leader, Anil Mathrani- later our man in Belgrade (whose whores he did much degrade) but also the guy who did for Natkat Singh- could have gotten me in on the inside track. Sadly, my Dad put his foot down. Fuck off back to Blighty. Only Covenanted officers or Additional Secretary level 'lateral entrants' can be permitted to fuck up India. 


Returning to Basu's play, we have to ask why his protagonist- a 'philosopher'!- is so fucking ignorant.  Did the cunt not read popular, Leftist, articles re. Ilya Prigogine, Jacques Monod, chemical clocks & Conway's game of life and so forth? 

I suppose, the answer is that D School was a shit place to study. It encouraged ambition but inhibited intelligence. 

To be clear, we are all thoroughly familiar with the notion that 'everything can stop'- or more precisely 'nothing happening' can occur for any given number of time periods before novelty starts to appear or things to start up again. In other words, for any given specifiable world state there is a cellular automata model such that everything stops at time t and everything starts up again at time t+i.Thus, Siddharta's puzzling over this is either the author justifying an implausible assumption- viz. the trope of a memoryless game- or else it is a pointer to the protagonist's emotional state. Well, d'uh!, it is both- so that's okay. 

Basu’s delightful, Shavian, jeu d’esprit has a happy ending and will be appreciated by all who read it- if hopelessly stuck in an early Seventies time-warp. Except, of course, it would be even more fun to watch in an auditorium- if no Colosseum is available for lions to feast on the flesh of the actors and author and director. And if anyone asks-
'Enjoying?'
'Simply!"
- will be my reply.

Gier on Matilal on Virtue Ethics

This is Gier on Matilal's 'Epic and Ethics'-

'Matilal finds a caricature of Kantianism in R¹ma, whose inflexibility with regard to duty leads to absurd and/or harsh decisions.  As Matilal quips: "Rama's dharma was rigid; Kant's was flaccid."[35]  Even though he was encouraged to do so by the sage Jabali, Rama was not going to break a promise, even if it meant that he could regain his kingdom and avoid 14 years of exile. One of Rama's lame excuses for shooting Valin in the back was that a person has no duties to animals, Valin being a member of Hanuman's monkey army. (Kant held that mistreatment of animals was blameworthy at least as a reflection of the person's character.) Rama's extreme interpretation of a wife's duty to her husband has led generations of Indian women to conform to an impossible ideal. Following Sati's example, Indian women are required to stay with their husbands no matter what they ask of them and no matter how much they are abused.'

Why is this fucked?
The Ramayana is a widely available text- you might try reading it if you're going to write about it. What was 'Ram's extreme idea of a wife's duty to her husband?'- The answer is that she is free to leave him and then marry anyone or simply fornicate with anyone who takes her fancy.  Ram actually tells Seeta she is free to marry his own brother, Laxman, or the demon King, Vibishina, or the Vanar King, Sugriva (this forecloses the possibility of their appealing against Sita's decision to commit Suttee, because they will immediately be upbraided by that wrathful lady- who, consistent with Universal Dharma- gets the last word and upstages everybody) or that she may just go off on her own wherever she might please, even though Ram had just expended a lot of blood and treasure to get her back. 
Rama is saying a woman whose husband is living can, if he abandons her, marry whom she wills- even his own brother or someone of an enemy race or different status. There is absolutely no evidence that Ram held that a woman's duty is to stay with a husband who mistreats her. Gier, whose personal Virtue Ethic does not include being truthful, says ' , Indian women are required to stay with their husbands no matter what they ask of them and no matter how much they are abused.' I am Indian and though not a woman have a sharp temper and often sing 'main maike chali jaunge, tu dekhte rahiyo' while in the shower to hint at my displeasure with my domestic arrangements. Women are not required to stay with their husbands if they feel someone or other has insulted them or put their nose out of joint or failed to lavish compliments etc. and are constantly traipsing off to their 'maike' for a nice holiday. I recall reading a book by Wendy O'Doniger Flaherty in which she wrote 'The South Indian Brahmin female bites off the penis of her husband before beheading him' - which was the basis of my own refusal to marry within my caste, which was just as well because, ever since the invention of contact lenses, even the vainest of our myopic Iyer girls have been turning up their noses at me. However, Gier's statement that Indian women will stay with their husbands even if they are mistreated is even more misleading- indeed, it is potentially fatal! The husband of that heroine of Hindutva, Rajini Narayan, must have been reading Gier when he called his wife a 'fat, dumb, bitch' when she purified his penis with fire, according to an ancient Hindu custom (invented, presumably, by Wendy O'Doniger) and burnt the fellow to death. 
No doubt, Gier will blame Ram for this and amend his statement to read 'Indian women are required to stay with their husbands no matter how much they are abused because Lord Ram said they have a duty to purify their husband's penis with fire and burn the fellow to ashes- unless, of course, they are South Indian Brahmin females, in which case as Prof. Wendy O'Doniger has pointed out their duty is to bite off their consort's penis before neatly beheading the fellow. This is because Rama had a 'rigid' Virtue Ethics whereas Kant had a 'flaccid' one.'
Gier and Matilal fail to spot that, according to the Ramayana, Rama was God. There was some stuff he had ordained for himself to do, but ordained that he do all unawares, e.g. kill such and such devotee so that devotee might gain immediate union with the Godhead and so on. There is a perfectly coherent philosophical position- Occassionalism- which fully describes the universe of the Ramayana. As for the dramatic portions pertaining to Dharma- this arises from what we may call not just Agency Hazard but Policy Actor Hazard.
But, Matilal and Gier- being philosophers and therefore under occultation w.r.t the text (in Matilal's case) they have read in the original- ignore facts like this and write worthless shite.

Gier is much taken with this 'insight' of his-

 The Buddha once said that "they who know causation know the dharma,"[44] a great example of how dharma, as J. N. Mohanty observes, connects "what one ought and what in fact is."[45] This happy violation of the Humean prohibition of deriving an Ought from an Is demonstrates how virtues are derived from the facts of our personal histories and how this contextualizes all moral decision-making. The famous "mirror of dharma" is not a common one in which individual identities are dissolved, as some later Buddhist believed, but it is actually a myriad of mirrors reflecting individual histories. The truths they discover in their mirrors will be very personal truths, moral and spiritual truths that are, as Aristotle says of moral virtues, "relative to us."

Why is this fucked?
Dharma aint a happy violation of a Humean prohibition on deriving deontics from alethics. Maybe the Professor was thinking of Jack Kerouac's 'Dharma Bums' or something. It does not concern itself with 'the facts of our personal histories' at all. No statement re. dharma or vyavahara takes the form 'reflection on my personal history leads me to hold that such and such is enjoined on me'. On the contrary, we have statements of the order 'the seers have laid down x, y, z' or 'Scripture says x, y, z'  or, as in the story of Yuddishtra and the demon of the pool, a particular question- viz which of the Pandavas is to be brought back to life- is answered by applying a Universal maxim re. 'paro dharma' (the higher duty) such that the King chooses a half-brother rather than a full brother to be brought back to life.

Buddhism is a one period universe- kshanika vada- there isn't any time to discover anything and, no matter how many mirrors are all busy reflecting away, not time to look at them. There's only time enough for an intention to exist-Chetana ham bhikkhave kamam vadami. Chetyitva kammam karoti kaena vacha manasa- nothing else.

Neither an occassionalist not a momentary universe permits the drawing of the sort of conclusions Gier and Matilal arrive at.

The truth is talk of Morality and Ethics is worthless shite and has always been recognised as worthless shite. People who talk it are immediately recognized as fuckwits, frauds or murderous fanatics. The only categorical imperative that isn't fucked is to repay cunt pi-jaw gobshites in their own coin. 

Gier says- Matilal's insights now allows me to do something that I thought that I could not do in my own comparative virtue ethics--namely, to add Krishna to the Buddha, Confucius, and Aristotle. The problem of course is that Krishna appears to be the least virtuous person in this list and can hardly be seen as practitioner of the Middle Way.  Nonetheless, Matilal declares that his "dark Lord" as a "paradigmatic person . . . in the moral field," who "becomes a perspectivist and understands the contingency of the human situation,"[49] both necessary elements of virtue ethics.  He also describes him, as opposed to the rigid Rama or Yudhishtra, as an "imaginative poet" in the moral realm: "He is the poet who accepts the constraints of metres, verses, and metaphors.  But he is also the strong poet who has absolute control over them. . . . He governs from above but does not dictate."  This guarantees that Krishna 's "flexibility never means the 'anything goes' kind of morality."[50]

Why is this fucked?

Krishna spends a lot of time telling us that he is the only efficient cause. His Creation is an Occassionalist Universe but he isn't its 'strong poet'. Rather, as he declares, 
muninam apy aham vyasah
kavinam usana kavih
he is the sort of muni-kavi whose Shukra seeds Shuka who, having gone beyond that other Krishna, Vyasa,  already leaves him  behind, though at the morning of the world,  mourning and bereft. 

What actually happens in the Bhagvad Gita, is a discussion of Agency Hazard because, to preserve symmetry and 'balance the Game', both Krishna and Arjuna are Agents not Principals. Ultimately, Krishna offers himself up as sacrifice. He slays himself. The Mahabharata shows that even if a work is so constructed as to conserve karma and dharma as symmetries of the system, that system can't be purely relationist and must cash out as a substantivalism.

Gier proposes a sort of aesthetic autonomy in which virtue ethics has a domain and therefore some content. The problem here is that it really isn't true that any aesthetic degree of freedom is good or bad by itself. Auerbach, in his Mimesis, shows that the opposite is the case. Rasabhasa- the use of low style for high matter or the reverse- drives precisely the same process that Gier valorizes- viz. self-discovery within a relationist field of interacting reals.

the fine arts, I believe, give us a very rich analogue for the development and performance of the virtues. Most significantly, this analogy allows us to confirm both normativity and creative individuality at the same time.  Even within the most duty bound roles one can easily conceive of a unique "making one's own."  Even though the Confucians must have had a set choreography for their dances, one can imagine each of them having their own distinctive style.  The score for a violin concerto is the same for all who perform it, but each virtuoso will play it in a unique way.  The best judges have the same law before them and yet one can detect the creative marks of judicial craft excellence. Even the younger brother who defers to his elder brother will have his own style of performing this duty, his own dharma (svadharma).

Yes, but the point about playing the fucking violin is that, sooner or later, you evolve into a coke-head Nigel Kennedy type and get jiggy with like Spice Girls or summat. For all Art aspires to the condition of Music and Music aspires to banging groupies in your limo while off your head on coke.

As opposed to a rule based ethics, where the most that we can know is that we always fall short of the norm, virtue ethics is truly a voyage of personal discovery.

So true! Virtue ethics is about Harry Potter discovering his wand really is magic if he rubs it. However, this voyage of personal discovery has to end when he finally works out where to put it so it will do most good (I believe it was in Ron Beezley's sister- yuck-eee!) and engender future generations of young wizards who go off to Hogwarts to play with their wands.
Gier, whose oeuvre, like Simmel, is a manic protestation against the universal ontological dysphoria his own project virtuously discloses, ends on this lapidary note- 
'Virtue ethics is emulative--using the sage or savior as a model for virtue--whereas rule ethics involves conformity and obedience.  The emulative approach engages the imagination and personalizes and thoroughly grounds individual moral action and responsibility.  Such an ethics naturally lends itself to Matilal's moral poets and a virtue aesthetics: the crafting of a good and beautiful soul, a unique gem among other gems.'
This reminds me of a T-shirt I saw in the gym the other day- Idaho? No u da Ho!
Says it all really.

Valentine's Day is anti Hindu.

Valentine's Day is nothing but a Christian Conspiracy aimed at destroying Hindutva by encouraging lechery, promiscuity and Carbon Dating. When I was young man- no Carbon Dating Shating- just Carbon was getting monogamously hitched to Oxygen and staying home to poison the childrens.

Personally, I blame Sumit Sarkar

That boy aint right.

Justice as Fairness requires you to cut your foot off and sew it to your neck

Like Utilitarianism, Contractarian Theories of Justice suffer from the flaw that they all require you, personally, to cut your foot off and sew it to your neck- or shoulder, if- like many ageing Social Choice theorists- you no longer have a neck.

Why? Well, there is some offer you would accept in return for undergoing this procedure. I make you that offer and throw in a 0.000001 pennies to every other member of your society. So kindly get busy sawing off your leg and sewing it to your shoulder.
What? You don't believe me? You don't think I'll make good on my promise to compensate you? But, if you don't believe me why should I believe any undertaking you give? Even if you have an unimpeachable reputation and have never cheated the million people you have dealt with so far- still, maybe you believed them and thus acted in a manner which caused them to continue to believe you. Me, I know you don't believe. How am I supposed to gain certainty that you won't betray my trust?
You may say- well that wasn't what I had in mind- the rules as I frame them forbid it. But, I reply, your rules as I frame them don't. Why should I accept you as an umpire when you won't accept me as an umpire?
You might then appeal to 'strains of commitment' and say well- Econ 101 and Psychology 101 and Biology 101 (all of which we're assumed to know behind the veil of ignorance) condemn what you suggest as an argument made in bad faith. The trouble here is that if Evolution is true, then it is the fitness landscape which decides what is or isn't an E.S.S of good faith/bad faith mixes. Think of Kavka's toxin- good faith may disguise its own bad faith because that's what made it adaptive- i.e. it wouldn't have evolved otherwise. Indeed, even assuming identical preferences, my forecast of a future fitness landscape may motivate my offer- you have no apodictic way of ruling it out a priori.
In any case, on the evidence of the last forty years, Justice as Fairness can't give us an answer to any problem we face in real life- but, happily, it can tell you- you personally- to get busy cutting off your foot and sewing it to your neck. (Your cheque is in the post- and always will be.)

Queen Olga's anima naturaliter christiana

That our Sainted Queen was humbly born is suggested by two facts
From villagers, who widowed her, mild vengeance she exacts

A hut tax, on each thatch, of a mere three sparrows and a pigeon.
She sets homing ablaze, Souls Mir to raze, Soviet Religion

Landsburg getting it wrong about public debt.

   Steve Landsburg says 'When the U.S. government borrows from Chinese investors, it’s exactly as if U.S. taxpayers had borrowed from the U.S. government. (That is, the effect on Americans is the same either way.) Since the assets of the U.S. government are, ultimately, the assets of the taxpayers, it’s exactly as if the U.s. taxpayers had borrowed from themselves.'

   Landsburg is assuming there is no principal-agent problem. Taxpayers are the principal and the Govt is a perfect agent which has no agenda of its own and which does what is in the best interests of its boss- the taxpayer.

    Landsburg says- ‘debt, by itself, is not a terribly compelling reason either to cut entitlements or to raise taxes’. 

Even assuming zero agency dilemma, I think this statement is misleading. A Govt. debt level which is foreseen and budgeted for and universally accepted would not, in any meaningful sense, be Govt. debt any more than Shareholder Equity is considered debt in a limited Company. Indeed, the Govt can get such debts off its books simply by selling off the rights to its future income streams immediately. Under perfect information, no uncertainty or agency hazard,zero transaction costs etc. the Govt is always just one instantaneous market transaction away from having a balanced budget. It can't meaningfully be said to carry debt at any time.

However, where debt levels diverge from what they were predicted to be (which can only happen if some risk was overlooked or some information not properly discounted) then a compelling reason arises to cut entitlements and raise taxes just the same as transpires when Balance Sheet weakness compels a Business to cut dividends or restructure or issue a call on partly paid up Equity.

Landsburg concludes by saying- ‘As Krugman point out, this is not to say that all government debt is harmless. It is to say that if it’s harmful, it’s harmful for different reasons, and probably to a much lesser extent, than is commonly believed.’

I am curious to learn more of that transcendentally mystic state in which even Landsburg begins to find Govt. Debt to be harmful. 
I believe,  he will then have to invoke either uncertainty, or agency hazard or both. IN other words, he first banishes reality so as to say one silly and counter-intuitive thing but then, so as not to appear a complete nut-job- has to bring back that bogeyman to justify saying the reverse. Landsburg is a reverse Talmud Golem. He won't print my objections on his website- well, he did a couple coz he thought I didn't know from OLM- but when the going got tough he just shut me down and carried on regardless. 

Meanwhile, this is Landsburg being misguided by Ricardian Equivalence to come to the conclusion that Public debt isn't really a serious 'burden on our grand-kids'.

'Murphy objects to formulations along the lines of “government debt is not a burden because we owe it to ourselves” and offers a parable that he thinks illustrates all the key issues. I agree that his parable illustrates all the key issues, so let’s review it — and see what it really illustrates.

In Year One, Abraham (who is old) owns an old apple tree and Isaac (who is young) owns a young apple tree. Each tree delivers 100 apples to its owner. Shortly thereafter, Abraham’s tree dies and Abraham follows suit. In Year Two, Isaac’s tree delivers him another 100 apples, and then both the tree and Isaac die.

Now in Year One, Abraham’s government decides to give him a present of 10 extra apples, which it borrows from Isaac. As a result, Abraham gets to eat 110 apples and Isaac eats only 90. In Year Two, the government owes Isaac 11 apples (including interest). It gets these apples the only way it can, by taxing Isaac. Therefore Isaac pays 11 apples tax, receives an 11 apple bond payment, and eats 100 apples. Bottom line: The government policy has increased Abraham’s lifetime apple consumption at the expense of Isaac’s. Therefore, says Bob, it’s clear that the government’s debt constitutes a burden to Isaac.

Fine. Here’s my counter-parable. In Year One, Abraham’s government decides to give him a present of 10 apples, which it gets by taxing Isaac. In Year Two, the government does nothing. The government policy has increased Abraham’s lifetime apple consumption at the expense of Isaac’s exactly as in Bob’s story. The Landsburg-Isaac feels exactly the same burden as the Murphy-Isaac, even though there is no debt in the Landsburg world. Therefore debt cannot be the source of Isaac’s burden.

Indeed, the source of Isaac’s burden, plain and simple, is that his government decided to transfer resources from him to Abraham. Whether they do this via debt or via taxation is as irrelevant as whether they deliver the apples to Abraham by truck or by train.

If the apples are delivered to Abraham in a wheelbarrow, one could, I suppose, blame everything on the wheelbarrow and talk about the “burden of the wheelbarrow”. And in some very contorted sense, one could defend that position. But why would you want to?

Why is this silly? Well, we have a story about a guy who goes and buys Govt bonds which can only be retired by a lump-sum tax upon him self! In other words, buying bonds today is what determines how much tax you're going to pay tomorrow! Who would do that? Certainly not someone with Rational Expectations. But Ricardian Equivalence (which is what has misled Landsburg into buying into Murphy's  parable) is crucially dependent on people having Rational Expectations and being free to costlessly enter into financial transactions.

Ask yourself this question- suppose your kid comes to you and asks you to lend him 1000000 pounds. You ask how he is going to repay it. He shrugs his shoulders and suggests you just raise his allowance and deduct from that. Would you lend your kid the money?

In real life, the Govt isn't your 5 year old kid, nor is it a perfect servant. Murphy is assuming that the Govt. can levy a lump-sum tax at any time. He further assumes that people only know the lumpsum tax in the current time period, not what it will be in the next time period and also not that the lump-sum tax is dependent on how many bonds the Govt has to retire. But Murphy's assumptions violate Rational Expectations.  His parable is simply silly. He doesn't have a subsistence lower bound nor a satiation upper-bound- very silly in economies (like ours) where zero Marginal Cost commodities exist.
More ludicrously yet, he doesn't understand that if bonds are tradeable then no borrow/tax mix can hit a specific redistribution target - i.e. the Govt would have to be irrational to be using this policy instrument. In so far as, under his assumptions, present transfers are funded by tax payers hundreds of years in the future- this only happens because the Govt has created a new Econ good- viz. a hedge (not perfect) against starvation in the future, or method of saving- Still, Murphy is a happy camper coz his ludicrous model lets him have think he's proved something- even though it's the opposite of what he needs to show.


Murphy aint stupid, but, assuming people are stupid in a pre-specified way in your model lets you show anything you like.  And that's stupid. Landsburg doesn't point this out. No, because he has a wheelbarrow to bring in. The Govt takes Isaac's apples to give to Abraham in a wheelbarrow. Notice, if Isaac was stupid enough to have bought bonds with apples, he has only himself to blame. Not the malevolence of the wheelbarrow, but his own stupidity in lending to the Govt has harmed him. If Isaac learns to 'just say no' there is no lump-sum tax for him to pay in future years. He no longer suffers from 'fiscal illusion' because he now has Rational Expectations. True, the Govt can just take stuff from one guy and give it to another but, if agents are risk averse there will be a coalition which hedges against lump-sum tax/entitlement uncertainty such that within that coalition Govt. actions are immediately cancelled out.  Under plausible assumptions, this coalition will dominate and crowd out the Govt by making an equal or better offer to anyone with whom the Govt wishes to interact.

Landsburg really has no answer to points like this. He feels that, because certain sorts of assumptions are standard in 'over lapping generations' models of Murphy's sort, there is no need to use one's common sense. True, common sense isn't common, but consistency should be second nature to a Math maven. Landsburg isn't applying Rational Expectations consistently- incidentally, Rational Choice theory with Schutzian ideal types get round his objection that people in an identity class, in Murphy's OLG model, don't know what proportion of their bond purchases will be clawed back. This doesn't matter, so long as they have enough cognitive capacity to achieve a Rational Choice Verstehen- similar to my not buying into a pyramid scheme though not being sure whether I mightn't be one of the lucky ones who get rich off it. 

Landsburg says- 'deficit finance does not allow an entire generation to increase the burden on its descendants beyond what it could have done anyway (and in that sense is nothing like a time machine). It only allows some families to increase the burden on their descendants. The greatest damage one generation can inflict on the next is to consume everything in sight, and this is always possible without deficit finance.'

This is not true. Deficit finance can lead to hyperinflation, the collapse of the market for Govt bonds, collapse of confidence in the regime, the rise of extremist political parties, War, Genocide, Slavery.

Lansburg thinks the only way we can fuck up our grand-kids is if we eat up all the non renewable resources and let all capital goods depreciate away to nothingness. But, countries which have been invaded and denuded of all productive capacity and natural resources can still bounce back if they inherit Institutions with a reputation for, or even new found dedication to,  thrift, transparency, zero agency hazard etc. 

Indeed, under plausible assumptions and assuming factor mobility, they may well stand taller than the rest- as happened to West Germany and Japan- within a relatively short time.

To misread Ricardian Equivalence as justifying Landsburg's indifference to the level (especially in that it was unforeseen) of Public debt is to succumb to a particularly witless pedagogic, rather than truly academic, availability cascade.

Not in Time's tessitura is the Surah al Yaseen

More unmeaning than the Ghazal's use of tazmin

& less musical than the muezzin's new Tannoy

Not in Time's tessitura is the Surah al Yaseen

What is Death that you yet so annoy?