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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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Economic Protests and Loan Waivers

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In an earlier post , one attempted to decode the fundamental principles of circular flow of income. While the post elucidates the interlinkages among various actors in an economy, it also brings to the fore certain interesting pointers on the demands of economic protestors in many parts of the world. Some years ago, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, there arose a protest movement in the US called Occupy Wall Street. It had many demands that sounded appealing to many. However, as it goes with many things, the supporters had little idea on what it would mean for them if these ideas were taken to the logical conclusion.   In fact, many protests jump on the bandwagon of anti-corporate image. The imagery that a corporate or the multinational to be more particular evokes is certainly not flattering. In pursuit of their profits and reducing costs, many firms have cut a sorry figure to the society. The imagery is not new and has been pretty old. The working conditions to which many
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Women's Sports in Olympics- A Note

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In 1928, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced the women’s events in athletics for the first time. At the end of the 800 metres race, a journalist writing for a New York paper wrote it was distressing to see 1 wretched women lying in distress after the race. Apparently, to him, five collapsed during the race and five after the race. This set off a debate on the women’s participation in sports and was felt that women were not physically suited to run longer distances. The IOC discontinued the event before its reintroduction in 1960. Yet for the all the claims the writer made, the reality was very different. What he constructed was pure fiction. There was only woman who collapsed but that seemed more of stumble at a finish line than from exhaustion. In fact, the race was run at a then world record pace with five of the nine runners bettering the then world record time. But one writer’s imagination put paid to hopes of rapid advancements in women’s sports.   Women first
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Antifa and Bakasura Syndrome

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Browsing Twitter, one came across this interesting tweet . Some replies to this tweet too are interesting. Further browsing led to this tweet capturing screenshots of tweets by some handle. There is another tweet that captures a screenshot of a Reddit post.   All these tweets pertain to reactions to the ANTIFA sponsored violence currently happening in different places in US. In their own ways, they capture reactions that seek to bring the human behaviour when confronted with separating equilibrium.   When one observes the tweets or the posts on Reddit, there is certain pattern that emerges. One of those tweets is virtually pleading to spare them because they are progressive. It is apparently from an editor of news media outlet. The outlet claims to be progressive or in other words, a supporter of the Antifa cause. Yet it wonders why Antifa is attacking it. Implied is it would be understandable if Antifa attacked a media outlet that was less progressive. The word progressive in th
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Trump, Twitter and Rutherford Hayes

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The war between President Trump and Jack Dorsey of Twitter seems to be escalating. In response to Trump’s action on social media, Twitter now has hidden Trump’s tweet on Minneapolis violence claiming it encourages violence and goes against the norms of Twitter. The retribution from Trump is only to be expected. In a political universe of US, this seems to open a new chapter. While television channels and newspapers are known to create polarising views against candidates and routinely turn partisan, this is unusual given it is one of the earliest instances on the social media. In fact, social media by claiming itself to be a platform has distinguished itself from the print and broadcast media. This distinction has enabled social media firms escape liability from posting of third party content.   Media companies in the West as suggested above find it convenient to become partisan. They go at miles to influence elections using their power of information production, distribution and di
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Trump, Twitter and Intermediate Liability-

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In 2012, there were bills with identical objectives introduced in both houses of the US Congress. One was the Stop Piracy Bill (SOPA) while the other was Protection of Intellectual Property Bill (PIPA). Entertainment and publishing firms were demanding an end to piracy which seemed to be major headache in increasing revenues. The culprits were ostensibly the online platforms that had mushroomed all over. The platforms included YouTube, Facebook, Twitter among others. However, it was YouTube which seem to host maximum pirated videos. The proposals for these legislations was to hold these platforms accountable for hosting the pirated content.   Unsurprisingly there was a huge uproar by these platforms. The platforms claimed they were merely the repositories of user generated content and do not claim responsibility for the authenticity of the content. They claimed that given the traffic on their sites, it was all but impossible to monitor each and every content. Any content flagged as
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Early Memories of Politics- A Journey Back in Times

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A few days back there was this interesting tweet . Like many other tweets, this would fall in the categories of interactive tweets while evoking a sense of nostalgia. The composer of the tweet indicated the fall of Berlin Wall was her first political memory and invited the Twitterati to share their earliest political memories. Like similar interactive tweets, Twitter was full of tweets each pointing towards their earliest memories. Till date it had earned around 9000 retweets with comments with more than 18000 replies. This would not obviously include those who have replied to the retweets or commented on retweets or commented on replies while retweeting. To each one, obviously there is journey back in times when they were young just understanding politics. Certain early memories do have potential shaping of their political leanings and beliefs. On certain occasions, it might be a sort of baptism by fire so as to speak.   The blog posts have usually avoided personal references and
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Decoding the Yogendra Yadav Agenda

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Behind the soft spoken suave urbane face lies a charlatan named Yogendra Yadav. While many might be taken in by his appearance, expression and vocabulary, he perhaps is one of those divisive faces that seek to foster their left liberal anti Hindu anti-India agenda. The psephologist turned political cum farmer activist is again in the news for reasons to do with economics that can be vicious if allowed to implement. He along with other alleged left liberal public intellectuals made public a position paper of sorts on how India should deal with the socio-economic crisis caused by the shutdown imposed in the wake of the pandemic caused by the Chinese virus, COVID-19.   The signatories to the paper are the usual suspects, some of whom do not even stay in India. They are the limousine liberals among whom are Abhijit Sen, Jayati Ghosh, Ramchandra Guha (since dissented on some points), Deepak Nayar, Jean Dreze among many others. For ten years from 2004-14, they were part of the National A
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