2 posts tagged with "notes"

I recently came across an old AMA by Sridhar Vembu, where he talks about his interests in economics, and how it helps him put things in perspective. In his words:

Economics is a highly  contentious discipline. I will recommend what I personally am drawn to.  This may not agree with the “mainstream” (for example Paul Krugman would  disagree!):

To get started, I would go with this excellent and practical book  (and also free!) – How the Economic Machine Works, by Ray Dalio.

I would get deeper into political and economic philosophy with The Road to Serfdom, which explains why liberty is important.

Then spend time browsing through https://mises.org – there are a lot of books there

Hayek & Dalio are some of my favorite thinkers in economics. I have written a post in past which was summary of one of the chapters from Road to Serfdom.

Why the worst get on top in politics and governance? Why don't intellectuals and more moral candidates succeed? Some thoughts here 👇 https://t.co/1U2nTRaekW — Pranay Prateek (@pranay01) April 5, 2020

Read Mises has been on my list for a long time, but I have not managed to go through the whole text. Here are few of my notes from reading Ludwig von Mises' magnum opus Human Action

“The ultimate goal of human action is always the satisfaction of the acting man's desire”

Human actions are the key to all decisions. Humans take actions to exit from a state of uneasiness, i.e. go from a state of less pleasant state to more pleasant state. How this "happier" state is defined is completely up to them. It could be earning materialistic wealth like money, property, etc. It could be helping other or it could be contributing to see some ideas be brought to fruition.

“For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.”

Austrian Economics puts individual interests at the centre when thinking about economic questions. The insights they come up with with just this minor change is very impressive.

Today, Prime Minister Modi announced lock down of the whole nation for 21 days. Apparently the threat of corona virus is much higher than it was envisaged to be.

More crucially, the US is having  hard time coping with it. India, with a much poorer healthcare infra is at a much higher risk.

What this means for us is:

• More time spent locked down in front of computer
• No outside running & exercises

Since, there will be lot more time at hand, and looking into screens gets boring & stressful after sometime. I have decided 2 things

• Spend the extra time after work on reading books. I went through my personal library and dug out some older books which I always wanted to read. Hopefully, will post notes from them here in coming days.
• Write a blog daily at night till the lock down is in effect. This would help me clear my head and hopefully share some notes here

Today I picked upon Glimpses of World History by Nehru. Its amazing how long term he plans. He is in a jail near Allahabad circa 1931 but is writing letters to his daughter Indira - to educate her.

I am still in the early history of ancient world. Two points which stuck with me:

• India & China are the only civilizations which have continued in some form or other throughout the last 5000 years. Other ancient civilizations like Egypt only have some remains from the past, but there's no thread of culture/traditions running from the ancient Egyptian civilization to modern day Egypt.
• Greece, though a very advanced civilization, always preferred to have City states. They never had a large kingdom like Persia or later day India. Is it because of any geographical factors or is it just that they are fiercely independent? Also, the Ancient Greeks are from a branch of Aryan race - Greek Aryans. Similar to the branch which came to India and was called Indo-Aryans.