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Showing posts with the label Karl Marx

Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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Random Musings on Economics

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  Economics deals with behavior of agents as stated many a times in the past posts. The agents might be individuals, groups of individuals, organizations, families, society, castes, classes, institutions, nations, economies and what not. There might be a behavior observed under individual conditions and something under aggregate conditions. There is behavior which might be innocuous or something independent when viewed through the prism of an individual yet the same when aggregated might result in a totally different behavior. The motives might be micro yet the aggregate behavior might result in something of a macro outcome. It might be simple decision to park a car at some place which if followed by others might set a pattern and thus a macro behavior of sort would emerge. If somebody were to venture a question on why the king has no clothes, there might be no answers. As the economists, Thomas Schelling once remarked, he was addressing a session and he found the first eight rows were
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The May Day

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  May Day celebrated on May 1 every year has two different associations. The first one has pagan origins later adopted by the Church and is a traditional spring festival in many parts of Europe. The more famous and better know is about the International Workers Day and celebrated as a holiday in a number of countries. In fact, the May Day was perhaps the most important of the holidays in Communist countries like the erstwhile Soviet Union, Maoist China or even present day North Korea. It represents the worker’s efforts in seeking to improve the conditions for workers. Its origin goes back to 1889 when the Second International decided to adopt the same. In fact, the US adopted the Labour Day to be celebrated on the second Monday of September and predated the Second International’s adoption by a few years. In fact by 1894, it had become an official holiday in the United States.   Aside of United States, the celebrations were reserved for the first day of May. The seventeenth century
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Polarizing Economic Debate and Shades of Grey

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  Any debate on economics tends to evoke extremes rather than any midway or realistic paths. There is a polarization between those who advocate free markets to the extreme and those who advocate total command and control economy. The former are usually identified with Adam Smith though Smith rarely talked about free markets at its fullest. The latter are usually associated with Karl Marx and communism though Marx was more a reaction to the diminishing returns of capitalism. The schools of thought that evolved over a century and half since Marx have generally associated with a degree of polarization among the two different streams. As the social media gathered momentum, the debate on economics and economic thinking often revolve around these extremes. At times it seems there is little meeting ground between the two. There is something normative as suggested by the proponents on either side of the divide and there is something realistic, something that exists on the ground which might be
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WaPo and the White Man's Burden

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Protests against the Citizens Amendment Act might be the harbinger of the last stand in the civilizational battles between decadent Nehru-Marxian intellectual complex and the emergent mass Hindu resurgence. The intellectual public sphere sees every policy move of Modi 2.0 as another nail in their coffin. Nehru-Marxian post-independent narrative with the ostensible aim is to deracinate the Indian psyche is being dared like never before. Current violent manifestations are pointers towards a rear guard battle being waged by the erstwhile establishment self-styled public intellectuals. Given the high stakes for Nehru-Marxian establishment, a virtual existential battle, it turning uglier should not surprise us. The Indic psyche seems to be waking up from the long sufferings of Stockholm syndrome arising of long years of Islamic invasions followed by British rule. The first signs of the challenge emerged around the early 1980s, imaginably in part as reaction to Meenakshipuram conversi
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