Murali caught only a glimpse of Penny as he piloted his private jet towards Hyderabad airport. Though he was a high powered Micro-finance Maven and she was just a poor girl from a backward caste toiling in the fields of Evil Landlord Johnny Reddy; just the sight of her, back bent, plucking cotton in the Vidarbha wasteland was enough to convince Murali that she read Ayn Rand and coitus would occur, perhaps even including anal, in a most satisfactory but also socially meaningful way, such that both their lives would be completely transformed.
Meanwhile, back at the Palace of Evil Landlord Johnny Reddy, a dastardly plan was being hatched to violate the honor of Penny. Penny did not know this but- as she looked up at the sky from which not one drop of rain had fallen due to one hundred years of solitude- she remembered the words of Ayn Rand- 'true Objectivism rejects Compassion because only the Individual can be Truly Objectivist and therefore worthy of being called a votary of True Objectivism.'
Because of the Indian Government's lack of True Objectivism- not that the U.S.A is any better as Murali well knew because he had a PhD from the University of Arizona- hundreds of billions of women like Penny were being cruelly exploited thus presenting a great opportunity for building a Globalized Private Equity Brand through grass-roots For Profit Micro-finance.
Evil landlord Johnny Reddy, who was a Socialist Member of Parliament, laid hands upon Penny in a brazen attempt to force her to give up the pearl of her virginity to him. He was rather hairy. Penny protested as follows- 'Due to True Objectivism requires the rejection of the False God of Socialized Medicine- including rape- I will not at all surrender the pearl of my virginity to you- unhand me hairy fellow!'
Just then Murali's parachute descended into that cotton field in Vidarbha where, the cunning Landlord, Johnny Reddy, was seeking to deflower Penny by putting his penis into her vag.
'How now!' said Penny, addressing Murali as he wafted into view, 'What strange manner of wooing is this? Do you think to win my maiden heart by such providential parachuting? Fie upon thee! I am a True Obectivist and can not be swayed by such theatrics and fandango!"
"Madam! You mistake me!" Murali replied, "I am a Micro-finance Maven. Just, I jumped out of my plane because, due to Red Tape and Bureaucratic Delay, I didn't want to waste time at Hyderabad Airport. Furthermore, for your kind information, let me tell you I have parachuted here not at all on your account but on my own behalf. I mean to start a grass roots Micro-finance initiative focused on poor women. That my arrival has providentially rescued you from rape at the hands of Evil Landlord Johnny Reddy, whom I knocked unconscious whilst landing, is not due to Compassion or Chivalry or Etiquette or any other such Sentimental- but at heart Socialistic- Nonsense which True Objectivism abhors.'
"I see." said Penny, her heart beating fiercely as she looked into the eyes of Murali- he had two of them and was using both to look Penny in the eye, though she too had two eyes- 'Your explanation is satisfactory. You may proceed with your Micro-finance initiative in a timely fashion. But, stay! My mind misgives me. Might not your Micro-finance initiative itself be a sort of altruism rather than a pure For Profit Globalised Private Equity Brand building exercise?'
"Impossible!' said Murali raising his eyes haughtily.'I have PhDs from not just Georgetown and Jones Town but numerous others from the University of Arizona- which gives them away with every Happy Meal."
"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much!" replied Penny her eyes flashing though in truth she was very anxious to surrender her virginity to him- perhaps including anal- because she sensed in him a masterly spirit that was indomitable and Truly Objectivist.
Meanwhile, Johhny Reddy had recovered consciousness and, with the help of his evil henchmen, had founded a rival Micro-finance initiative based on giving Government handouts to very poor women and not asking for that money back..
Pointing this out to Penny, Murali pleaded time constraints and suggested postponement of their wooing and eventual coition- definitely including anal- to a more propitious time.
"Methinks the gentleman protests too much!" Penny replied haughtily- for Hell hath no Fury like a woman scorned.
'You said that already.'' Murali pointed out.
'Methinks the gentleman protests too much,' Penny's heart was breaking but she consoled herself that at least she was getting the last word.
'Nay, for sooth!" it was the Evil Landlord Johhny Reddy at the head of millions of poor women, 'it is not the gentleman who protests too much but these millions of protesting poor women you see behind me. They are protesting against the high interest rates charged by For Profit Microfinance. They have all taken a vow never to repay loans from Micro-finance initiatives."
"By Jove, this is a blow!" Murali replied despondently, 'Ye Heavens I cry fie upon thee! You think it sport to hurl me from the airy zephyr where my plane I piloted sans care, down to the black earth of benighted Vidarbha- whose harvest is bountiful in but the smoking pyres of farmer-suicides- only to have the last laugh upon me by denying me even the opportunity to build a Globalized Private Equity Brand through For Profit Micro Finance! I am crushed! I despair! I swoon! I faint! Nay, more- let me declare without meiosis- I die!"
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" said Johhny Reddy laughing evilly, "Thus have I vanquished he who thought to come between me and my prize- where stands the fair Penny that I may without delay ravish her by putting my penis in her vag? What? She has disappeared! That too bearing away the lifeless body of my foe? Can such things be? Argal, if be they must then I must let be! Yet 'ware Penny! for this I swear which I hold most true. Neither sky-bolt nor earthquake shall halt my mounting you!'
Meanwhile, Penny had joined Sanjeev Sabhlok in condemning Arvind Kejriwal as a Satanic Socialist and, taking her message to the Masses, was leaping from teerth to teerth all over India's sacred geography, still clutching the decomposing corpse of her beloved Murali with which she was enjoying coition, albeit entirely of anal variety, by regularly sodomizing him with her rolled up copy of 'The Fountainhead'. So vigorous was this bookish buggery that pieces of Murali's body began to fall on different parts of India, thus creating the sacred Lingas of a Truly Indian True Objectivism whose aim is to ensure that everybody gets a PhD from the University of Arizona- if not a Happy Meal.
Showing posts with label sabhlok. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sabhlok. Show all posts
Sunday, 12 January 2014
Thursday, 4 April 2013
Landsburg, Efficiency and Rape.
Steve Landsburg has been getting very hot and bothered about the Stuebenville rape. He asks 'Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?
As usually happens with Landsburg's lucubrations, there is something obvious he is missing.
What is it? Public policy, in Econ, is about balancing costs and benefits. It is the latter he has forgotten to speak off so as to elide the obvious fact that Laws are created by either
1) the 'Stationary Bandit' of the State which taxes benefits accruing to individual agents for which task it gains legitimacy by levying punitive fines and/or imposing corporal punishment on transgressors of Social Conventions. One reason people may acquiesce in the State's policing functions is that their own property and personal rights are safeguarded in their absence or other state of non-competency. In the rape case, the State became the guardian of the girl once she lost competency by reason of intoxication and has, as a matter of empirical fact not moral speculation, the duty to punish the transgressors- perhaps in a way that sets an example and creates a deterrent.
2) Communities bound together by some tie- perhaps contiguity, perhaps genealogy, perhaps identity of interest cab create Laws vesting different types of Rights. Once again, it is the essence of rights possessed by virtue of belonging to the Community that they continue to operate and remain enforceable in the absence or non-competence of the agent concerned.
In neither case, does any philosophical puzzle for Utilitarianism arise from the Stuebenville rape case because that ideology has always recognized that
a) doing righteous things itself generates Utility
b) present Utility can be the capitalized value of a future stream
c) (since Wicksteed) that the correct Utility calculus in (b) concerns true opportunity cost- i.e. is computed globally across all possible worlds.
Now, following H.L.A Hart, it is entirely uncontroversial to say that it is of the essence of the Law and Social Conventions that they are defeasible especially under the rubric of a change in the information set regarding Wicksteed opportunity cost. But this does not give rise to any great quandary for the layman nor any aporia for the intellectual.
What is it? Public policy, in Econ, is about balancing costs and benefits. It is the latter he has forgotten to speak off so as to elide the obvious fact that Laws are created by either
1) the 'Stationary Bandit' of the State which taxes benefits accruing to individual agents for which task it gains legitimacy by levying punitive fines and/or imposing corporal punishment on transgressors of Social Conventions. One reason people may acquiesce in the State's policing functions is that their own property and personal rights are safeguarded in their absence or other state of non-competency. In the rape case, the State became the guardian of the girl once she lost competency by reason of intoxication and has, as a matter of empirical fact not moral speculation, the duty to punish the transgressors- perhaps in a way that sets an example and creates a deterrent.
2) Communities bound together by some tie- perhaps contiguity, perhaps genealogy, perhaps identity of interest cab create Laws vesting different types of Rights. Once again, it is the essence of rights possessed by virtue of belonging to the Community that they continue to operate and remain enforceable in the absence or non-competence of the agent concerned.
In neither case, does any philosophical puzzle for Utilitarianism arise from the Stuebenville rape case because that ideology has always recognized that
a) doing righteous things itself generates Utility
b) present Utility can be the capitalized value of a future stream
c) (since Wicksteed) that the correct Utility calculus in (b) concerns true opportunity cost- i.e. is computed globally across all possible worlds.
Now, following H.L.A Hart, it is entirely uncontroversial to say that it is of the essence of the Law and Social Conventions that they are defeasible especially under the rubric of a change in the information set regarding Wicksteed opportunity cost. But this does not give rise to any great quandary for the layman nor any aporia for the intellectual.
To see why, suppose the following-
We learn that an act of necrophilia has been committed on a corpse in a mortuary. The immediate friends and family of the victim bear a terrible psychic cost. The friends and families of other eligible corpses handled by that mortuary also bear a high psychic cost. Anybody about to die or who has friends or family about to die also bears a psychic cost. More generally, there is a diffused psychic cost of an ‘what sort of world are we living in?’ type.
Now let us look at an actual case- a young woman in Taiwan was raped by a mortuary attendant. The rape caused her to come back to life. Her family decided to forgive the mortuary attendant. Here the ‘victim’ who previously bore no psychic cost receives such a large psychic benefit that it makes sense for Public Policy to make an exception to the rule ‘punish necrophiliacs’ such that it becomes ‘punish necrophiliacs IFF their horrible crime fails to restore life to the corpse they violate AND Society is so constituted that the victim may be reasonably be expected not to suffer so extreme a stigma as to prefer death’.True, the Social Cost of such a Law may be more cases of necrophilia but the pay off might be more victims brought back to life who might otherwise have been killed by their violators.
By failing to take notice of psychic benefits- or Kenneth Boulding's notion of psychic capital- Landsburg condemns himself, and his readers, to an exercise in futility. He refuses to give himself access to the Econ theory which made talk of costs relevant to issues of Public Policy. One reason why he might be inclined to do so has to do with the redistributional consequences of external costs, including psychic costs. Now, standard Econ- e.g. in constructing Cost of Living indices- distinguishes an Income effect from a Substitution effect such that one can meaningfully speak of Hicks-Kaldor improvements- i.e. situations where Society is made better off because it is possible for the people gaining a benefit to compensate those incurring a cost such that the latter are no worse off than before. If one does not distinguish the Income effect from the plain fact that an adversely affected agent has accepted some substitute by way of compensation, one can't say if a Hicks-Kaldor improvement has occurred. For e.g. Paul Pennyfeather, in Waugh's first novel, suffers a catastrophic loss by reason of the drunken loutishness of a fellow undergraduate at his Oxford College. Paul loses a valuable scholarship, his place at University and his chance to rise in the world. The offending student, Sir Alastair Digby Trumpe, sends him Five pounds by way of compensation. Since Paul is now a much poorer man he has to take the compensation- but this does not mean it is adequate. (In the novel, his High Victorian scruple that 'a gentleman never accepts an illicit perquisite' is shown to be deontological pi-jaw simply). Later, however, it turns out that being expelled from College is what permits Paul to marry a wealthy widow with whom he is infatuated. Alastair now qualifies as his true benefactor and best man. However, it turns out that the widow is running a White Slavery syndicate- for which Paul receives the blame and has to go to Jail. Oddly, Jail suits Paul and he is perhaps better off than in his original position.
In Waugh's books- Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust- though people have consistent preferences under the rubric of the Substitution effect- they continue to prefer caviare to bacon and Dickens to Maeterlinck whatever their socio-economic position- the reverse tends to be the case for massive reversals of Fortune which Economists study under the rubric of the Income effect. The upshot is that Waugh, inheritor of the High Victorian Gothic style, is able to arrive at a sort of Stoic ataraxia such that the Efficient cause of Happiness is immune to Externality. True, the Substitution effect, at the level of cocktails and canapes, continues to operate and, absent transaction costs, can be brought under the banner of the market; but radical Income effects open the gates to a Catholicity of inwardness.
Returning to Landsburg, for whom the Income effect is anathema because it raises the question of Income distribution in Society (vide his misreading of the Ramsey rule) , every access and approach to ataraxia must be vitiated by the putting forward of the following false question to The Law.
' When we say that the law should encourage all and only those actions that are efficient, what, exactly, should we mean?'
further to which he offers the following analysis.
Definition 1. The action is efficient if my willingness to pay exceeds your willingness to accept. For example, if I’m willing to pay $100 for the privilege of harvesting the tree, and if you’d accept less than $100 to part with it, then the tree-cutting is efficient.
Definition 2. The tree-cutting is efficient if it would occur in a world with no transactions costs (i.e. a world in which there are no impediments to bargaining).
In many circumstances (ones where Income effects are negligible, for example) these definitions are equivalent, and economists often pretend they’re equivalent always — (well, bad economists do when writing stupid blogs) but sometimes they’re not
Example 1. I want to punch you in the nose non-consensually. (The non-consensuality is a big part of my enjoyment.) I’d pay $100 to punch you in the nose, and you’d accept $50 to take the punch. By Definition 1, the punch is efficient. But the punch would be unlikely to occur in a world with no transactions costs, because it would require bargaining, hence consensuality on your part, which kills my interest. So by Definition 2, the punch is inefficient.
Example 2. I am willing to pay $100 to cut down a tree; you are willing to accept no less than $150 to part with it. By Definition 1, the cutting is inefficient. But part of the reason I’m willing to pay only $100 is that I’m credit constrained. In a world with no transactions costs, I’d borrow more, and would be willing to pay $200 to cut down the tree. So by Definition 2, the cutting is efficient.
Example 3. I am willing to pay $1000 to cut down a tree; you are willing to accept $500 to part with it. By Definition 1, the cutting is efficient. But the only reason I’m willing to pay so much is that I make an excellent living in my job as a mediator who helps people overcome transactions costs. In a world with no transactions costs, I’d be much poorer and would be willing to pay only $200 to cut the tree. So by Definition 2, the cutting is inefficient.
Landsburg's confusion, which arises out of his failure to do a proper Cost/Benefit, Income distinguished from Substitution effect, Econ analysis, nevertheless reveals a fundamental problem re. Counterfactuals and Revealed Preferences. Essentially, to be able to speak of efficiency we have to have something like a David Lewis/Stalnacker notion of ‘closest possible worlds’. But, once we grant the metaphysical reality of these worlds strange things start to happen which beg the question of whether Preferences can be consistent. If they can’t, then talk of efficiency is stymied- it’s an anything goes universe.
In
Example 1) we might make a sort of Konus index over possible worlds so that you get to non-consensually punch a guy whom we know (by examining the closest possible world) would settle for less than you are prepared to pay. But this does not really get rid of the problem. If your Preferences are consistent and robust to small perturbations of the Information set, you don’t want to non-consensually punch the guy whose closest, possible world, counter-part consents. This is when things get spooky. There are a whole lot of things you want to do now, and would happily pay for, but which you wouldn’t if you knew how easy, uncontroversial and therefore the reverse of thrilling, they are in the closest possible world. In other words, knowledge of your Konus Preference Map over all possible worlds would cause you to change that very Preference Map, more especially for positional goods or thymotic services.
There are a lot of problems with modal realism of this sort even though Lewis developed it going forward from a Schelling type analysis of the Co-ordination problem. Essentially, for this approach to work, there has to be some underlying ‘basic preferences’ that can be objectively determined which agents ‘ought’ to have. But if such basic preferences are inter-subjectively discoverable in some possible world then who needs markets? An altruistic Central Planning Authority, setting each agent's ration, would eliminate a source of Pareto inefficiency.
2) This same consideration arises with respect to Landsburg's Second Example.
Here the credit constraint mentioned is equivalent to assuming imperfect arbitrage relating to information available from possible worlds. Clearly, in this scenario, my ‘true’ credit worthiness, based on modal realism, is greater than what obtains in this world and this creates the inefficiency. Again, spooky stuff starts happening when we think about this. If modal realism is true, why don’t we know more about possible worlds? Or perhaps we do have this knowledge at some ‘basic’ level.
Here we come up against Lewis’s arguments that there is some ‘elite eligible’ criterion which is just better at determining the truth of things than that which arises out of our, this world, conventions.
Example 3) The transaction cost arbitrageur here, to be successful, must have better ‘Lewis elite eligible’ criteria yet he is an agent in this world just like any other. But this means the quest of Efficiency must give rise to a Rent. The spooky bit arises because, admitting a notion of meta-preferences, the arbitrageur can have a rent dissipation ratio higher than One. This is because self-contestation of the rent can outweigh the Rent to Information or potential Efficiency gain.In any case, iff, as I think plausible, the diachronous nature of meta-preferences makes them essentially ontologically dysphoric, then Consequentialism is empty.
I suppose Paul Pennyfeather, who returned to College to study Theology, might well have changed his name to Frank Ramsey. Landsburg, on the other hand, in a glaring example of a blogger becoming as egregiously shite as the type of bigot attracted to his blog, might just as well change his name to Sanjeev Sabhlok and get himself a Baba already.
Friday, 8 March 2013
Sanjeev Sabhlok vs Vivek Iyer
I will fuck you up- kill your family in front of your eyes and shove them all up your arse- or further up your arse- and I will do this because I am a patriot of Australia- the Earls Court Region having been annexed by Barry Humphrey 40 years ago- and your own arse being well known to be the largest coal producing mine in the world.
True, by my threats, I've tried to tighten your sphincter- but it was only to boost Australian diamond production.
Mind it kindly.
Who wrote that and to whom? Me to Sanjeev Sabhlok. Why?
Well, on his website he published allegations against himself and his father of (that time honoured past-time of the Provincial Bureaucrat from his particular caste and mentality) raping children- AN ALLEGATION HE DID NOT DENY- OR EVEN RESENT! No doubt, Sabhlok thought he was being very clever. He hadn't told a lie and believed that I could be prosecuted for threatening his life just because I said I'd fuck him over and smash his ugly face in and rip various organs out of his chest.
Sadly, the Law does not operate in the way Sabhlok thinks. It is entirely proper for me, a man whom he states in the same blog-post to have been very helpful and intelligent, to address him familiarly and to express my disgust and hatred for his and his father's raping of children. I said I'd kill him myself. As a Hindu, I believe it is usual for people of my station to use such terms as I employed to him to mark my extreme disapprobation of his conduct and my feeling of revulsion and hatred for him and his father.
Was Sabhlok- who tells us he automatically deleted my comments- being disingenuous when he stated that what I said to him in a comment on his blog was a 'Death Threat'? Or was there something more sinister afoot?
By my bringing the child rape charge out into the open now rather than when those best able to prosecute this cunt were fully prepared, was Sabhlok trying to minimize the damage to himself and his family?
If so, his strategy has backfired.
I am not a lawyer or a police-man nor have I the means or the empathic skills to counsel the victims of Sabhlok's crimes.
A senior person contacted me about Sabhlok after he published his unmanly anti-Iyer idiocy. He hastened to assure me that he had the lowest opinion of Sabhlok's intellect and integrity. But were the allegations true?
I append this email exchange with someone Sabhlok professes to admire and which, incidentally, I posted on Sabhlok's blog as a comment but, sadly, like everything not conforming to his World View, you won't find there now.
to xxxx
I received your facebook message today. Unfortunately, I can’t respond on Facebook immediately and so I choose to acknowledge your message by Email.
I regarded Sabhlok as a harmless nit-wit till he angered the son of a friend of mine, a distinguished lady who had made the mistake of trying to reason with that nit-wit on his execrable blog. Rather than let the younger man- an Economist currently visiting South Asia- get involved himself, I rattled Sabhlok’s cage with the sort of information which comes only too readily to hand for someone of my connections. I didn’t really have much hope that Sabhlok would be foolish enough to publish my comments as he edits out anything which is unflattering to himself. My gamble paid off, because it turns out he has a delusive self image as some sort of martyr of sufficient significance to receive death threats. I thought it worthwhile to pile on the pressure- not so much to make the coward squirm- but in the hope that he will be foolish enough to take legal action or issue a police complaint- both of which gives me locus standi and removes the danger of libel action for the third party I am concerned with. Since Sabhlok is literally incapable of telling the truth, any statement of his would be sufficient to convict him of perjury, bad faith and- since he is bound to dig himself deeper into the mess- a criminal conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
I suppose Sabhlok represents a particular type of what Alok Rai called the ‘damaged modernity- at once embryonic and addled’ or the provincial Indian Babu class. I recall reading a novel some ten or so years ago about an Indian bureaucrat- one engaged in extracting bribes out of Schools which don’t have the regulation amount of play-ground space- who is also a sexual pervert who preys on little girls. Perhaps, there is some deeper depth psychological connection between a hateful perversion of that description and Alok Rai’s comic ‘damaged modernity’. What is certain is that a man like Sabhlok does a great dis-service to the liberal cause by his antics. He is now a sort of chamcha of Baba Ramdev.
xxxx
02:50 (54 minutes ago)
I received your facebook message today. Unfortunately, I can’t respond on Facebook immediately and so I choose to acknowledge your message by Email.
I regarded Sabhlok as a harmless nit-wit till he angered the son of a friend of mine, a distinguished lady who had made the mistake of trying to reason with that nit-wit on his execrable blog. Rather than let the younger man- an Economist currently visiting South Asia- get involved himself, I rattled Sabhlok’s cage with the sort of information which comes only too readily to hand for someone of my connections. I didn’t really have much hope that Sabhlok would be foolish enough to publish my comments as he edits out anything which is unflattering to himself. My gamble paid off, because it turns out he has a delusive self image as some sort of martyr of sufficient significance to receive death threats. I thought it worthwhile to pile on the pressure- not so much to make the coward squirm- but in the hope that he will be foolish enough to take legal action or issue a police complaint- both of which gives me locus standi and removes the danger of libel action for the third party I am concerned with. Since Sabhlok is literally incapable of telling the truth, any statement of his would be sufficient to convict him of perjury, bad faith and- since he is bound to dig himself deeper into the mess- a criminal conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
I suppose Sabhlok represents a particular type of what Alok Rai called the ‘damaged modernity- at once embryonic and addled’ or the provincial Indian Babu class. I recall reading a novel some ten or so years ago about an Indian bureaucrat- one engaged in extracting bribes out of Schools which don’t have the regulation amount of play-ground space- who is also a sexual pervert who preys on little girls. Perhaps, there is some deeper depth psychological connection between a hateful perversion of that description and Alok Rai’s comic ‘damaged modernity’. What is certain is that a man like Sabhlok does a great dis-service to the liberal cause by his antics. He is now a sort of chamcha of Baba Ramdev.
xxxx
02:50 (54 minutes ago)
to me
Many thanks for your kind and lengthy email. I was asked yesterday by someone close to Sabhlok if I knew whether there was truth to your charges, I replied I did not know; I surmise from what you say that you have wished to merely provoke him.
Many thanks for your kind and lengthy email. I was asked yesterday by someone close to Sabhlok if I knew whether there was truth to your charges, I replied I did not know; I surmise from what you say that you have wished to merely provoke him.
Cordially,
xxxxx
Vivek Iyer
03:00 (43 minutes ago)
03:00 (43 minutes ago)
I am afraid that I can’t confirm that. My information is that there are files on this- remember child rape includes things which were not considered such (by reason of ‘habituation to intercourse’ proven by ‘three finger’ test etc)- but I can’t say that to anyone except him without the third party running the risk of getting done on a put-up case ‘libel’ charge.
I don’t give him a clean chit- but I’m not a policeman- it is not my svadharma to track him down and extradite him and so on. The reason I took this action was that a younger man might have gone down that road and he is not a citizen, he doesn’t have my background.
Don’t forget where Sabhlok served. Sooner of later these files are going to come out. At present there is some notion that he has a ‘Protector’- so that was what I was looking for- i.e. evidence of a Coal connection to here in London.
It does not exist- either because I’m too well known here or because Sabhlok is just a nitwit as I thought he was. He isn’t getting paid for making a fool of himself. He just is a fool.
Hope this clarifies matters.
I don’t give him a clean chit- but I’m not a policeman- it is not my svadharma to track him down and extradite him and so on. The reason I took this action was that a younger man might have gone down that road and he is not a citizen, he doesn’t have my background.
Don’t forget where Sabhlok served. Sooner of later these files are going to come out. At present there is some notion that he has a ‘Protector’- so that was what I was looking for- i.e. evidence of a Coal connection to here in London.
It does not exist- either because I’m too well known here or because Sabhlok is just a nitwit as I thought he was. He isn’t getting paid for making a fool of himself. He just is a fool.
Hope this clarifies matters.
Vivek Iyer
03:15 (29 minutes ago)
03:15 (29 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
I should add- if your friend is interested in vetting ex-Babus turned angels for their sordid (hence black-mailable) past- I certainly know a few senior people, whose reputations speak for themselves, who could give assuarances if that is what is called for.
I’ve just turned 50 and I’ve developed my own way of sizing up people. In this case- I think the guy is guilty. But, he’s also stupid. He is easy to manipulate once you understand the root of his Messiah complex. He’s going to put his hands up to the statutory rape charge coz he thinks it’s like what Ayn Rand commands or something equally stupid. The problem is- it isn’t statutory rape- it’s fucking rape and deep down he knows it and his Daddy taught him to do it.
I should add- if your friend is interested in vetting ex-Babus turned angels for their sordid (hence black-mailable) past- I certainly know a few senior people, whose reputations speak for themselves, who could give assuarances if that is what is called for.
I’ve just turned 50 and I’ve developed my own way of sizing up people. In this case- I think the guy is guilty. But, he’s also stupid. He is easy to manipulate once you understand the root of his Messiah complex. He’s going to put his hands up to the statutory rape charge coz he thinks it’s like what Ayn Rand commands or something equally stupid. The problem is- it isn’t statutory rape- it’s fucking rape and deep down he knows it and his Daddy taught him to do it.
The problem for me is that I’m a Hindu- gunning for this idiot isn’t good karmically. It isn’t even good mental exercise.
best wishes
best wishes
Vivek Iyer
03:29 (15 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
Incidentally, I just re-read my original e-mail and can’t see how you could possibly have come to the conclusion that I was simply trying to provoke him.
If I leave a comment on your blog saying I will kill you because you rape children would you publish that comment and then say ‘Iyer is very intelligent’ so- this is all part of some deep scheme- ergo it is a death threat!
No. If you were indeed provoked, you would say ‘I will chastise you for implying that I could ever do such a disgusting action’. You won’t ignore the disgusting part ‘child rape’ to concentrate on the purely phatic part ‘I’ll kill you’. This is because we use the phrase ‘I will kill you’ very often but the phrase ‘you and your father are both guilty of raping children’ very seldom.
I suppose there is a caveat I’d better make explicit. Neither you nor I are policemen. There is no point being manipulated by people who are or have been policemen because, for me, the suspicion will always remain that the fellow will get off lighter if I take action now rather than for the case to hang fire till the right prosecutor comes along.
03:29 (15 minutes ago)
Dear xxxx
Incidentally, I just re-read my original e-mail and can’t see how you could possibly have come to the conclusion that I was simply trying to provoke him.
If I leave a comment on your blog saying I will kill you because you rape children would you publish that comment and then say ‘Iyer is very intelligent’ so- this is all part of some deep scheme- ergo it is a death threat!
No. If you were indeed provoked, you would say ‘I will chastise you for implying that I could ever do such a disgusting action’. You won’t ignore the disgusting part ‘child rape’ to concentrate on the purely phatic part ‘I’ll kill you’. This is because we use the phrase ‘I will kill you’ very often but the phrase ‘you and your father are both guilty of raping children’ very seldom.
I suppose there is a caveat I’d better make explicit. Neither you nor I are policemen. There is no point being manipulated by people who are or have been policemen because, for me, the suspicion will always remain that the fellow will get off lighter if I take action now rather than for the case to hang fire till the right prosecutor comes along.
You say your friend is close to Sabhlok. Is his daughter in danger? Well- maybe. Sabhlok isn’t really aware of what he is doing any more. My recommendation- stay away from the fuckwit.
Cordially
Vivek Iyer
Cordially
Vivek Iyer
update
- Conversation started today
- Subroto Roy
I was asked my opinion of Sabhlok today as a result of your current interaction with him. My opinion has been negative and remains so. I do not know the factual basis of your interaction with him. - Today
- Vivek Iyer
Hi, I received your facebook message earlier today and replied by email to your hotmail account.
I looked up a book of yours and realize I had read it some years back. I have a feeling that you were the young genius my Mum and Dad spoke to me about back in 1977- when my dad came to London as Press Counsellor. My memory is that Dr. Basu- well there was more than one distinguished Basu (as there always will be) at that time- a senior banker, if memory serves me right, sang your praises. I have tender memories of the Bengali intelligentsia of that period- strange that 'gentleman' Jyoti Basu should have turned the succeeding generations into witless thugs- perhaps, this is something you could write about. I was 14 and, till I joined the LSE in 79, for 2 years the Bengali womenfolk- of all ages from grannies to undergraduates- here in London enraptured me in that peculiarly bhadralok manner by which each individual haecceity of feminine beauty and grace was effortlessly transmuted into an shifting and irridescent theophany of the collective Muses. The consequence, of course, is that to this day I have an undying hatred of handsome Bengali boys like yourself. How dare you marry and turn to domestic uses such ethereal beings? Sadly there were no Bengali beauties- or swains come to that- amongst the undergrads at the LSE when I was there- they all went to Oxbridge- which explains perhaps the markedly socio-proctological turn in my poetry and the fact that I am the Zatalli (Gandunama) not the Tagore of my age and milieu.
In my impecunious Thirties, I used to help foreign diplomats with their PhD theses here in London- this, I felt, was in the Bengali tradition of kids giving tuition to kids- surely an advance on the German Romantic model- and, in the process, acquired a sort of vicarious methexis in Credentialist paideia- but one eliciting cynicism, or Pyrrhonism, to be more precise and this I believe to be the only tenable default position for a community.
This is a link to my thoughts on Hilary Putnam's senile attempt to do something you did better twenty years ago-http://socioproctology.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Hilary%20Putnam
Best wishes - Subroto Roy
Many thanks for your kind and lengthy email. I was asked yesterday by someone close to Sabhlok if I knew whether there was truth to your charges, I replied I did not know; I surmise from what you say that you have wished to merely provoke him.
Cordially,Suby Roy - Vivek Iyer
I've taken the liberty of quoting you, without revealing your identity, here http://socioproctology.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/sanjeev-sabhlok-vs-vivek-iyer.html - Vivek Iyer
I tend to get a lot of information but in dibs and drabs. I know very little about Bengal and Assam, politics wise but in India everybody knows everybody.
My guess is that Sabhlok wanted me to play a spoiler because he'd be a batchmate of someone in my network and that this same person or his proxy is the origin of your query.
Silly me. - Subroto Roy
Hello, may I ask you please delete my words? My style is recognisable easily. Thanks. I would ask our correspondence end on this.
- Vivek Iyer
Well, I've now experientially proved that all Rightwing Hindutva crap-Econ type bloggers are not just well and truly shite but more worthless than the Nehruvian Babus they claim to be better than.
This includes me.
Shave your fucking face Subroto, throw away your rudraksha beads and shawl and behave like a gentleman. I personally am undergoing Champagne therapy to get over my hereditary tendency to turn into- well you, you silly old sausage.
- Vivek Iyer
Okay- maybe this is a sophisticated Haileybury & Cambridge wind-up- you couldn't possibly be so pompous as to say 'my style is recognisable easily'- could you?
Urm... sure you could.
What I don't get about people like you and Sabhlok is your sense of entitlement, your feeling that it engrosses all of the World that you know.
Rather than resent the politesse of my friendly insult to you- viz. the elaborate suggestion that you are a Bengali mule and your books worthless Babu-ese- you seek to put me in my place.
What place is that- you worthless Credentialist Cunt?
Won't you now do the proper Bengali thing and challenge me to a fight?
I won't hurt you- much.
Still, a display of spirit would restore you to my good books. BTW my books are good, unlike yours, but you are too stupid to read them.
Do the right thing, Bengali mule- kick over the traces!- become a good little Jholawallah and be re-admitted to the fold.
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Impossibility of an Indian Liberal Party
We know about the impossibility of a Paretian Liberal, what about an Indian Liberal Party?
Under the Raj there were plenty of Indian Liberals but when it became apparent the Brits wanted out, Liberalism simply curled up and died. Why? Well, the Brit's 'dominance without hegemony' meant what you actually had was a lot of competing local Tiebout models rather than any one overarching 'Classical Liberal' regime which one could either support or rebel against.
Indeed, Jinnah, Iqbal, Shurawardy and so on embrace Pakistan without ceasing to be 'Indian Liberals' precisely because that option was the pre-existing Tiebout eqbm. which could only improve dynamically, i.e. fructify more swiftly, with violent ethnic cleansing rather than just old fashioned voting-with-one's-feet. Sikhs also wanted a Tiebout model local public good utopia and pursued ethnic cleansing just as strategically to achieve their aim.
In general, dominant castes have been able to get their desired Tiebout equilibrium because the fundamentally weak Center chose to pretend to be doing Economic planning when all it was actually doing was creating Rents to be divided up on the basis of dominant caste elite competition.
Briefly, 'Liberal' parties or alignments- like the Swatantra Party in the 60's- had an evanescent Parliamentary existence but only because of a mismatch between dominant caste Tiebout preference and that of the intermediate Congress political class. Once the old 'Freedom Struggle' interessement mechanism was disintermediated, there was no check on 'intermediate class' (i.e. dominant caste in Gramscian guise) Tiebout model rent maximization- I mean what happens when local public goods are more than fully funded and this rent is divided up according to a power law- and this is the reason Indian Liberalism ceased to exist. It got what it really wanted and the price was not getting rich quite as fast. But getting rich would have either reduced rents to Tiebout local public good provision or reduced uncertainty in a manner which reduced their capitalized value. So, at the margin, the decisive voter will acquiesce in keeping the marginal efficiency of Capital low so as to keep the inertial utility of maintaining the same portfolio profile (in which implicit rents bulk higher) as this is both dynamically efficient and evolutionarily stable.
So that's why we can't have an Indian Liberal Party- except one composed of Australian citizens who haven't yet met or talked to each other and thus haven't had an opportunity to anathematize each other and split the Party into
1) Indian Liberal Party (Australia)- sole member Sanjeev Sabhlok
2) The Genuinely Indian Liberal Party (Australia)- sole member also Sanjeev Sabhlok because I've just expelled that other guy I saw leering at me in the mirror coz he's probably got the hots for Narendra Modi and just wants to use me for his own vile ends.
Under the Raj there were plenty of Indian Liberals but when it became apparent the Brits wanted out, Liberalism simply curled up and died. Why? Well, the Brit's 'dominance without hegemony' meant what you actually had was a lot of competing local Tiebout models rather than any one overarching 'Classical Liberal' regime which one could either support or rebel against.
Indeed, Jinnah, Iqbal, Shurawardy and so on embrace Pakistan without ceasing to be 'Indian Liberals' precisely because that option was the pre-existing Tiebout eqbm. which could only improve dynamically, i.e. fructify more swiftly, with violent ethnic cleansing rather than just old fashioned voting-with-one's-feet. Sikhs also wanted a Tiebout model local public good utopia and pursued ethnic cleansing just as strategically to achieve their aim.
In general, dominant castes have been able to get their desired Tiebout equilibrium because the fundamentally weak Center chose to pretend to be doing Economic planning when all it was actually doing was creating Rents to be divided up on the basis of dominant caste elite competition.
Briefly, 'Liberal' parties or alignments- like the Swatantra Party in the 60's- had an evanescent Parliamentary existence but only because of a mismatch between dominant caste Tiebout preference and that of the intermediate Congress political class. Once the old 'Freedom Struggle' interessement mechanism was disintermediated, there was no check on 'intermediate class' (i.e. dominant caste in Gramscian guise) Tiebout model rent maximization- I mean what happens when local public goods are more than fully funded and this rent is divided up according to a power law- and this is the reason Indian Liberalism ceased to exist. It got what it really wanted and the price was not getting rich quite as fast. But getting rich would have either reduced rents to Tiebout local public good provision or reduced uncertainty in a manner which reduced their capitalized value. So, at the margin, the decisive voter will acquiesce in keeping the marginal efficiency of Capital low so as to keep the inertial utility of maintaining the same portfolio profile (in which implicit rents bulk higher) as this is both dynamically efficient and evolutionarily stable.
So that's why we can't have an Indian Liberal Party- except one composed of Australian citizens who haven't yet met or talked to each other and thus haven't had an opportunity to anathematize each other and split the Party into
1) Indian Liberal Party (Australia)- sole member Sanjeev Sabhlok
2) The Genuinely Indian Liberal Party (Australia)- sole member also Sanjeev Sabhlok because I've just expelled that other guy I saw leering at me in the mirror coz he's probably got the hots for Narendra Modi and just wants to use me for his own vile ends.
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