War is an expensive business, I hear 2 billion US dollars are spent every week in Iraq war now (Sep 2007). US is running a huge trade deficit but it is still spending huge amounts of money on war why?
Who benefits from war? Whenever there's crime the first question asked is " who benefits most from the crime?" and many times answering this simple question can solve many crime mysteries. Well for war the answer is simple, the companies who make weapons benefit from the war more than anyone else.
Imagine an industry that doesn't have any customers in peace and suddenly find trillions of dollars worth of revenue in times of war. Wouldn't that industry be interested in having wars every once in a while? Hell yeah. Weapon manufacturing companies would try all possible means of creating wars between nations, or wars inside nations also know as "civil wars".Look at this for sample revenues for 2002 http://www.fas.org/asmp/profiles/top10fy02.html
I'm huge fan of capitalist system and I believe capitalism brings efficiency to everything it touches. In case of war and weapons capitalism helps the world to make most modern weapons in the most efficient way and when a war is real and necessary countries with private weapon manufacturing like US has advantage over countries like India where weapons are manufactured by government controlled companies. Government run weapons companies are inefficient and produces low quality weapons.
The sad part of private war companies is that they have to lobby constantly to keep the industry alive. If there's no war then there are weapons, if there are no weapons there's no revenue no profit. So for war companies civil wars in Africa, Israel Palestinian war, the Iraq war are necessary for providing them revenue. War companies will spend billions of dollars at Washington to lobby the congress, senate, republican and democratic party to make sure that wars keep happening. Its just a simple argument and I don't we need any evidence to prove that these lobbying is real.
How can this negative effect of war capitalism be reduced? Simple naive solution is to prevent congressmen, senators and presidential candidates to from taking contributions from weapon manufacturing companies but this policy will not be effective because investors in wars companies also invest in other non war companies and therefore this non war sister companies of war will lobby for the war companies. An effective solution to this problem would be to take back all the weapon manufacturing from the private companies. Government should take over all war companies including, all kinds of weapons, logistics and ammunition companies. Once government takes over the production of weapons and logistics of war there won't be any lobbying for war, billions of dollars of lobbying money will be saved, trillions of dollars spend in wars will be saved more importantly millions of human life will be saved.
Sometimes capitalism can work against us and war is a good example of that.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Friday, August 03, 2007
Slums are good for the economy
Slums are good for the economy. The portion of land which is currently a slum is best utilized as slum. Had it not been slum it would have been some piece of land owned by the government which is left uncared and unproductive. If government had some need for the this piece of land then the land would not have been left unoccupied and uncared.
Slum land could have been more productive if it were private property but then if the land had been a private property there wouldn't have been any slum in the first place. So slum lands are more or less unoccupied government land.
Though slums make barren lands productive by giving houses to working masses in city. It creates lots of visual pollution and unhygienic life. For all the other disadvantages of slums its necessary to make sure that there is no barren , unoccupied land in cities where ppl are disparate to settle down.
Slums can be removed from a city just like weeds from a garden. Make the land private property of the slum dwellers or remove the slum dwellers and use the land for construction for the government or sell it. Just as the best way to remove weeds to cultivate thick grass or plants so that there is no clear land for the weeds to come up.
If the land is given to the slum dwellers then they will make as productive as other property surrounding it by construction there or by selling it to people who can make it productive.
Slum land could have been more productive if it were private property but then if the land had been a private property there wouldn't have been any slum in the first place. So slum lands are more or less unoccupied government land.
Though slums make barren lands productive by giving houses to working masses in city. It creates lots of visual pollution and unhygienic life. For all the other disadvantages of slums its necessary to make sure that there is no barren , unoccupied land in cities where ppl are disparate to settle down.
Slums can be removed from a city just like weeds from a garden. Make the land private property of the slum dwellers or remove the slum dwellers and use the land for construction for the government or sell it. Just as the best way to remove weeds to cultivate thick grass or plants so that there is no clear land for the weeds to come up.
If the land is given to the slum dwellers then they will make as productive as other property surrounding it by construction there or by selling it to people who can make it productive.
Absence of god impossible to prove
How can anyone conclusively prove that God doesn't exist. Its not possible as long as all possiblities of Gods existence is proved to be wrong.
Forget all possiblities ,its not possible t0 just prove that God doesn't exist in each and every points in the space (universe). Even if we find a method to check the presence of God a point in space the time required to cover the entire universe is unlimited (non deterministic). so the problem is unsolvable.
Well the funny thing is that its also impossible to prove the absence of elfs, fairies under the garden, Aalis's wonderland, or a flying tea pot. The burden of proof for presence of god is then clearly with proponents of god. Will they be able to prove it ?? I don't believe so.
Forget all possiblities ,its not possible t0 just prove that God doesn't exist in each and every points in the space (universe). Even if we find a method to check the presence of God a point in space the time required to cover the entire universe is unlimited (non deterministic). so the problem is unsolvable.
Well the funny thing is that its also impossible to prove the absence of elfs, fairies under the garden, Aalis's wonderland, or a flying tea pot. The burden of proof for presence of god is then clearly with proponents of god. Will they be able to prove it ?? I don't believe so.
Life is a dream
There are hundreds of different philosophical views on what life is and many people have their own versions of what life actually is. Is it a drama as Shakespeare said or is it a game like Sai Baba say or is it a spiritual journey as many of the religions preach or is it just electrical impulses interpreted by the brain as the movie matrix depicts or is it Maya as Buddha has taught.
I am not a Buddhist nor a spiritualist .What is a dream and why do we call a dream a dream and real life real. A dream is something of very short duration say 10 minutes while our life is comparatively long say 100 years or 876060 minutes. In life, life can be experienced by the five senses and can be measured by scientific instruments similarly in dream, dream can be experienced by the five senses of the character in the dream and the scientific instruments “available” in the dream. The effect of the dream is limited to the dream only once you wake up your life has no effect on what kind of dream you have had similarly once you go out of life or you life end there is no effect of your life on your state after life .Just as a the dream ends without a trace your beautiful life ends without a trace of the person who lead the life.
So the real difference seems to be just the differential in the duration of time we spend in our dream and in the real life. Spiritualist may disagree with me because I don’t refer to soul in dream and life but ironically it is much easier for a spiritualist or anybody who believes in soul to convince himself of the irrelevance of our glorified life and why it is no different from a dream or a nightmare. If you believe in soul then you can now clearly imagine a situation where the soul has several lives one after another of different duration in different parts of the universe and many other lives are of duration of 10 100 solar years then the life we spend on this planet as humans would certainly as irrelevant as a dream .The planets and the stars revolve and rotate at the same place as before, universe keeps on expanding irrespective of what kind of life we lead.
For non spiritualists who believe in things that can only be measured scientifically life is a dream because when one person finishes his life just as he finish his dream he no longer can feel the life he had with his five senses neither can he use the scientific tools he had in his life to feel his life he had.
Well what difference does it make to our lives whether it is a dream or it is an important affair as most of us like to believe? Is it not better to end a life when one find it to be a nightmare, if life is just a dream or a nightmare? Well we could do that but the sad truth is that even if we end the nightmare we go through, there is no assurance of a beautiful dream after it so what best we can do is to try to convince ourselves of the irrelevance of the nightmare and have hope in the nightmare we go through that our nightmare has brighter, beautiful future. For all people who run hard among the rats to be the first it is always better to convince ourselves that it is just a dream and no matter how hard we try to decorate it, it has to end .We can have a life like a dream if we can convince ourselves that life is a dream and all the heartburn and stress and strain is just part of our attempt to glorify our humble existence to satisfy our mysterious ego.
I am not a Buddhist nor a spiritualist .What is a dream and why do we call a dream a dream and real life real. A dream is something of very short duration say 10 minutes while our life is comparatively long say 100 years or 876060 minutes. In life, life can be experienced by the five senses and can be measured by scientific instruments similarly in dream, dream can be experienced by the five senses of the character in the dream and the scientific instruments “available” in the dream. The effect of the dream is limited to the dream only once you wake up your life has no effect on what kind of dream you have had similarly once you go out of life or you life end there is no effect of your life on your state after life .Just as a the dream ends without a trace your beautiful life ends without a trace of the person who lead the life.
So the real difference seems to be just the differential in the duration of time we spend in our dream and in the real life. Spiritualist may disagree with me because I don’t refer to soul in dream and life but ironically it is much easier for a spiritualist or anybody who believes in soul to convince himself of the irrelevance of our glorified life and why it is no different from a dream or a nightmare. If you believe in soul then you can now clearly imagine a situation where the soul has several lives one after another of different duration in different parts of the universe and many other lives are of duration of 10 100 solar years then the life we spend on this planet as humans would certainly as irrelevant as a dream .The planets and the stars revolve and rotate at the same place as before, universe keeps on expanding irrespective of what kind of life we lead.
For non spiritualists who believe in things that can only be measured scientifically life is a dream because when one person finishes his life just as he finish his dream he no longer can feel the life he had with his five senses neither can he use the scientific tools he had in his life to feel his life he had.
Well what difference does it make to our lives whether it is a dream or it is an important affair as most of us like to believe? Is it not better to end a life when one find it to be a nightmare, if life is just a dream or a nightmare? Well we could do that but the sad truth is that even if we end the nightmare we go through, there is no assurance of a beautiful dream after it so what best we can do is to try to convince ourselves of the irrelevance of the nightmare and have hope in the nightmare we go through that our nightmare has brighter, beautiful future. For all people who run hard among the rats to be the first it is always better to convince ourselves that it is just a dream and no matter how hard we try to decorate it, it has to end .We can have a life like a dream if we can convince ourselves that life is a dream and all the heartburn and stress and strain is just part of our attempt to glorify our humble existence to satisfy our mysterious ego.
Free software == stealing
The preachers of free software are none but communist and socialist of the new world they dont believe in right to have private wealth. It's a great thing that many people are ready to give away their software for free and such people are noble men but forcing everyone to give up ideas and codes they have created is nothing but stealing..
free software should be promoted like pro bono service of the lawyers or free medical service . It can be a part time thing for software engineers not their only aim in life.
free software should be promoted like pro bono service of the lawyers or free medical service . It can be a part time thing for software engineers not their only aim in life.
globalisation != imperialism
Many opponents of globalisation consider it as the new face of imperialism and use it as a recurring theme in their speeches against globalisation. Globalisation is actually the antithesis of imperialism. If imperial powers wanted to centralize the and monopolizes the means of production in the world and exploit the nations without technology or capital globalisation demands that the means of production be located at the most economically efficient location.
This means globalisation will result in the spread of production units from the labour expensive western world to the labor cheap nations in the developing world. If imperialism ensured that rich nations remained rich by controlling production units globalisation will ensure movement of production to poorer nations until the labor becomes equally expensive or rather people become equally rich .
This means globalisation will result in the spread of production units from the labour expensive western world to the labor cheap nations in the developing world. If imperialism ensured that rich nations remained rich by controlling production units globalisation will ensure movement of production to poorer nations until the labor becomes equally expensive or rather people become equally rich .
Free software not good
I don't want to spark an Linux versus windows here but i just wanted to point out to my view that the fundamental idea ,the philosophy that software must be given away for free propagated by Stallman and others.
There is no way that this world or software developers r gonna benefit by giving away the software developed for free . If some day more and more people start believing in it and some day if there is legislation for giving away software for free then it would be the end of software development at the pace with which it is growing today. Don't assume that the day will never come coz if we cud have so many communist nations few years back then even this is a possibility.
The question of open source or closed source must be completely left to the developer of the code coz he is the best judge in finding if an open source will make his software stronger ,secure as some people claim and at the same time ensure he gets his intellectual property rights. If someday Microsoft or oracle or java ,to name a few, feel that their interests are better served then let them open up their source code.
It will only be discriminatory if software developers are forced to open up the source code through a legislation as most of the other industries still have the right to keep their trade secrets secret .
There is no way that this world or software developers r gonna benefit by giving away the software developed for free . If some day more and more people start believing in it and some day if there is legislation for giving away software for free then it would be the end of software development at the pace with which it is growing today. Don't assume that the day will never come coz if we cud have so many communist nations few years back then even this is a possibility.
The question of open source or closed source must be completely left to the developer of the code coz he is the best judge in finding if an open source will make his software stronger ,secure as some people claim and at the same time ensure he gets his intellectual property rights. If someday Microsoft or oracle or java ,to name a few, feel that their interests are better served then let them open up their source code.
It will only be discriminatory if software developers are forced to open up the source code through a legislation as most of the other industries still have the right to keep their trade secrets secret .
Collapse of communism in China
I want to predict the collapse of communism in china by the year 2012. Democracy is necessary to ensure for the working of a free and fair market economy .
In china there is no accountability for the officers of the communist party and the governemt officials will be hoarding wealth in the name of communism and one day the truth about the uneconomic incvestments made by the government and private will come out and the economy will collapse and thus end communism in china.
Right now as there is no free press and no body knows the truth about what's going on in china. If kingdoms survived it was because there was no alternative and coz in a kingdom the king was the only spendthrift and he ensured that the rest of the system remains free of corruption to a certain extend.
In china there is no accountability for the officers of the communist party and the governemt officials will be hoarding wealth in the name of communism and one day the truth about the uneconomic incvestments made by the government and private will come out and the economy will collapse and thus end communism in china.
Right now as there is no free press and no body knows the truth about what's going on in china. If kingdoms survived it was because there was no alternative and coz in a kingdom the king was the only spendthrift and he ensured that the rest of the system remains free of corruption to a certain extend.
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