Saint Rantic

Are we staring at bubble 2.0? I certainly think so!

Consider the case of the Chinese search Engine:- Baidu! Baidu went for an IPO sometime ago and guess what :- they are now valued at $3 billion (Source) and some claim that its near $5 billion(Source). I am no economist, though I have a strong economic orientation, but I would say that this either shows over-confidence or foolishness. Over-confidence, though not necessarilly always, is a sign of foolishness.

A market cap of $5 billion is a HUGE thing. What this means is something like this: Say the Chinese net browsing population is something like 400 million, and say 80% of the people use Baidu. This means that the advertizers have partial access to some 320 million chinese, which is a very substancial thing because it represents a critical mass of people which can generate a substancial ‘advertisable’ base. Let us for the moment (highly) optimistically assume that the net browsing population will double in the next 10 years. That means Baidu will generate enough revenue of about $ 8-10 billion ($5 billion is the discounted valuation) in the coming years by selling ad-space to advertizers who intend to benefit from the , undoubtedly large, net-savy population of China!

If that does not ring a bell (I ain’t no economist ) then consider the side-effect of the above: To spend $8-10 billion in advertizing, the ad companies have to allot a percentage of their profits (which is an indicator of the growth of the economy , something also related, in some sense, to the risk free rate of returns), lets say they allot some 20% of their profits to advertizing. And say some 60% of that goes into i-net advertizing. That means 12% of the profits go to advertizing. Which means that the companies that do business with Baidu should make around 80 - 100 billion $ (i.e they should be valued something like 45 - 50 billion $ now) in profits in order for the market cap of Baidu to be the same as its true value. If I were having stocks of Baidu now… there is one thing that I should be doing SELL! You decide!

Philosophically, this more or less represents the trouble with the internet or to be more precise ‘high-tech’ firms! The valuations are hyped up by innacurate information and incommensurable entities. This was , in my opinion, the reason for bubble - 1.0. Everyone who had some amount of money was going tech-savy, over-valuing everything that was remotely related to i-net. This is the next generation bubble, which has become more mobile, more technologically nascent and more irrational.

May the bubble Hail!

This is a comment i recieved from my friend Bharat. Very interesting view points to say the least. Please give it a read.

I appreciate our outrage at the direction our fabled fatherland is going.
That’s good news coz it tells us that we take India and its debacles
personal. I’m afraid I haven’t had the patience to read the transcript. I
must admit I haven’t watched the interview on TV either. But I know one
thing for sure. What politicians say to the media is hardly of
significance. What matters is the decisions they make. The justifiability
(in a socio-economic sense) and the motivation behind political decisions
are easy to read into, even when the politician doesn’t part his lips for
a moment.

Reservations (wherever they might be) as we all know is a powerful weapon
in vote bank politics. When we know that it is vote bank politics at work,
does it make a difference as to what the venerable Arjun Singh says about
it?

Anyways, let’s for a moment take focus off the statements of Arjun Singh
and take a look at his actions. Vote bank politics is what is called
‘principal agent problem’ in economics. The principal is the stakeholder
in a country, company or contract. The agent is someone who makes
decisions on behalf of the principal. In a publicly traded company, these
terms translate to shareholders and managers. In a democracy they
translate to the people and the politicians. The sheer number of people in
a country and their inability to make collective, coherent decisions by
themselves and be accountable to those decisions gives rise to
politicians. (The assumption here is political decisions have to be made
and we can’t live without them. This assumption can be challenged by
extreme libertarian/anarchist thinking. But let’s stay prgamatic and go
with the assumption). However we need to realize that the agent
(politician) is a self intererested individual too at the end of the day.
There is a conflict of interest to some extent (the extent varies with the
individual) between the role of the politician and his personal desires
and motivations. It’s impossible to separate the two personalities,
however much we may want it as principals (people in a democracy). Looking
at it from the politician’s perspective, there is hardly any conflict of
interest between his roles. His office is meant to further his personal
goals. (I’m not making a statement on individual
goals are holy or unholy. They are just personal and have a bearing on
political decisions. Mahatma Gandhi, to the best of my knowledge, was a
man of holy intentions. Yet, when we made him our agent, he forced
perpetual appeasement of Muslims on us, for he thought it’s good to be
secular and had an extremely lopsided view of secularism.)

Democracy is, in a way, like consumer marketing. It’s all about the
numbers. The unit of money is here a vote! Different parties and politicians
target different demographic groups (based on economic status, religion,
caste, ideology….), much like automobile manufacturers do. Democracy is
egalitarianism are directly at conflict with each other. If a
politician/party can impress his core segment of consumers, even at the
cost of disparaging some other segment, that’s fantastic enough. That
brings us to the conclusion, a politician is not the representative of
everyone. A politician is the representative of only those who vote him or
are likely to do so at least. The incentives of the politician are not
aligned with the incentives of the entire populace, but those of a niche
segment of people with the numbers to catapult the politician to the
office next time. (I’m afraid, men like Arjun Singh, don’t have the
incentive to capture the office next time either, coz they are guaranteed
not to live that long!). In fact the interests of the principal are never fully
aligned with those of the agent. When you got to a doctor, your interest is to
get yourself cured of your disease, probably at the least cost (if you pay), while
the doctor’s interest is to charge you the highest fee he can to cure the disease.
Health insurance is a good way to align these orthogonal incentives.

I fully understand the frustration against reservation. But, I’m afraid,
it has become a sacred cow in Indian politics, much like agricultural
subsidies and perpetual tax holidays for farmers. (You can even compare
it with the funding for public universities in the US). The politicians
who introduced reservation first did so to gain a competitive advantage in
the electoral box office, much like Intel developing a new 64 bit
microprocessor). The moment they did it, it skewed the whole equation of
Indian politics. It became a Darwinian place for the politicians and
parties “adapt to reservation or perish, much like what happens to AMD
when Intel develops a killer product. It’s interesting to note that the
good or bad of the reserved castes is nowhere in sight in my argument.
Well, it’s nowhere in sight even in the minds of politicians either!

Reservation for OBCs in IITs/IIMs is just a tiny manifestation of the
colossal problem of reservation itself. The same holds for reservation
in medical colleges. There are some changes in
phraseology. That’s about it. I’ve heard people many times say that they
are ok with reservation but not ok with the way it is being implemented.
Let’s accept the truth.

1) It doesn’t matter whether reservation is acceptable to us or not. It’s
a game of numbers.
2) Reservation can’t be acceptable to all people and all demographic
groups no matter how it is phrased. The only thing that has a chance of
being acceptable to all, at least over time, is meritocracy.

If we want to fight against reservation, let’s fight about the very idea
of reservation, rather than the phraseology of it. Abolishing reservation
can discomfit the classes dubbed backward (I find it to unsulting a
nomenclature though) for a while, max for a generation. After that, their
survival instincts will take over and they will end up as competitive as
the other classes. I dare to prophecy like this, coz, I believe (somewhat
utopically) that all men are created equal. If there is nothing inferior
in the genes of the so called backward classes, there is no reason why
they should be disadvantaged in any way in a meritocratic system. If at
all they suffer from any disadvantage, it’s because of 56 years of
mollycoddling by the government. If we have to end reservation, we have to
stop this mollycoddling some day and give the normal men, unfortunately
branded backward, a chance to prove their competency. The longer we take
to stop the mollycoddling, the more painful we make it for the backward
classes to transition themselves to meritocracy.

Lastly, I’d again want to emphasize my de-emphasis on IITs/IIMs. Mates,
I’m afraid, India is a lot bigger than these places. There is no way
reservation can be acceptable at BMSCE and unacceptable at IIT Delhi.
There is no way reservation can be acceptable for SC/STs and unacceptable
for OBCs. (By the way we have silently accepted reservation for SC/STs
for 56 years. What sin have the OBCs committed to be excluded from the
coveted title of backwardness? If you are jealous of an unworthy
reservation candidate going to IIMA and landing the job of a
hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs or HSBC, let me
assure you of something. If the candidate is really unworthy he is not
going to make it to Goldman. Goldman Sachs is not a govt organization and
has no obligation to social justice. (Or shall we say injustice?) There is
every reason for recruitment at Goldman or HSBC to work the free market
way. In fact the private sector job market is very close to a free market.
If a reservation candidate makes it to HSBC, you can rest assured that he
is worthy of it and would have made it anyway with or without reservation.
While we allay our fears this way, it is very important to note that the
proposal for reservation in the private sector must be fought with the
greatest fury. We simply can’t afford to destroy one of the very few
meritocratic systems we have managed to build. But this is where corruption
helps our otherwise medieval political landscape orient toward the free
market. Thanks to corruption and alliance between politics and business
(holy or unholy), I believe that business leaders will make sure that the
job market remains a free market, coz it is in the interest of business.

More similiar stuff by Atanu Dey here.

Hard-Work is an excuse to make lazy people look dumb!

Dear Reservation Protestor,

I whole heartedly agree to your frustration and completely disagree with the reservation policies. I agree that our government has destroyed democracy in all its forms and also introduced ethnic fundamentalism between the predominantly Aryan “Upper Castes” and the predominantly dravidian “Lower Caste”.

I only have a few questions, and I would love to join you with all the spirit if I get a well justified answer.

What difference does it make to a homeless person out there if there was 30% reservations or 50 % reservations?

If the pie grows bigger then it does not mean that if another man eats more, I should eat less. Instead of protesting about the IIT seats being eaten away by the reservations; Why not make the pie BIG by demanding that the government build more IITs and IIMs?

CAn you convince me that indeed the IIT-JEE and CAT select those by “merit” when there are more than 150,000 candidates in the fray?

There are a few more questions and I shall post them here. Please reply if u can

Warm regards

Laks

Proof that we are not secular -> is THIS NDTV news.

What i fail to understand is why to even care about a religion when we brand ourselves as secular. Secular means that we do NOT bother about the religion and that INCLUDES religious sentiment. Moral policing by these religious buffoons aint gonna take our nation anywhere.

Take these set of buffoons for example:

In Mumbai, members of the Catholic Secular Forum of India have threatened to shut down movies halls showing the film.

First the name: Catholic SECULAR Forum: Slake my fucking curiosity how in the WORLD would Catholic people be secular.. i mean the NAME itself is an oxymoron, what contradictory buffoons. I know I will be burned at the stakes for this the moment i land in India.. but what to do.. I have to shout that the king is Naked!

Second: They have THREATENED to shut down the movie halls. Now excuse me: Please show me the difference between our brothers in Cath. SECULAR forum and Al-Quaeda. The only difference is perhaps one kill more brutually than the other. Fucking morons!!!!
A secular country SHOULD release Da-Vinci Code.. those people who DO NOT want to see it NEED NOT see it.. why IMPOSE their sentiments on OTHERS? Fucking morons we are!

Our citizens dont care anyways, while thier freedom is eaten away by the church or the temple or the mosque…

Freedom.. what is that? I am sure 50% of India is much the same as it was when the mother-fucking british left us.. .what freedom are you talking about!

Ofcourse for the great Congress party, which has successfully practiced divide and rule in India (do u need a proof- u must be kidding)Its a good way to keep the people divided.. U dont really need to pass any legislation. Just make a hue and cry about our the religious sentiments and get the maximum possible votes for the next election… who cares about unity and our secular nature… Constitution… well what is that?

(more…)

If u take things day by day, I guess you’d live long enough. And if you live long enough you’d see things that you thought you’d never see

Arthur Winston 1906-2006 Metro LA Employee of the Century.

How can spam be looked at in a constitutional manner? Is it ok to spam. Or rather is it ok constitutionally to get angry and feel frustrated when you get bombarded with spam? Does my anger violate the constitutional freedom of speech of another individual?

When I was a software engineer back home, I was troubled by incessant phone calls for a new credit card/or a new home. On one hand I was rejected by citibank when I applied for one and on the other they used to call up my cell/mobile and my office line, during my working hours.

Once I was in an important meeting with my project manager, I got a call from one of those fine young women in HSBC asking me whether I needed a credit card. Under normal circumstances I would not have bothered to take the call, but since I was expecting an important call, I decided that the call should be attended, only to find someone asking me to apply for a credit card. I knew at that particular point that I was having a bad day and, by giving a fine lecture on privacy, I let her have it too.

After a few days the calls stopped because of this, and they resumed soon too, because they found some new loopholes to get past the law.
Call it plagiarism, the Ancient Greeks wrote most of our constitution. Whether our founding fathers had a notion of freedom is a debatable issue. It is debatable albeit without a resolution and without much of pragmatic utility.

Our Constitution Preamble is given in the next paragraph. I have emboldened those words which having been violated from virtually the first day. It is also of interest to note the word socialist in the first line of the preamble. I would say that this is a philosophical error, the same mistake that U.S.S.R made. Socialism is a philosophy in itself and so is any constitution. The preamble represents the metaphysics/axioms of the constitution and it is easy to run into inconsistencies if they themselves state an abstract and not well defined term such as socialism. In short this preamble needs another preamble which defines what they mean by socialism. All the other terms are pretty axiomatic and well defined. Contrast this with the US constitution. The word dignity is also of a questionable nature, in the sense it has to be objectively defined to avoid inconsistencies.

Preamble
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political;
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship;
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity; and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation;
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November, 1949, do HEREBY ADOPT, ENACT AND GIVE TO OURSELVES THIS CONSTITUTION.

When I first saw the constitution I was really amused at the level at which the preamble was violated. The issue about socialism was pointed out by my Professor:- Prof.Bart Kosko, who is also a lawyer. It is interesting to note that socialism also prevents economic liberty. It also kills much of economic justice, by assuming the society to be primary over the individual. This assumption is what created the USSR and it is the same flawed assumption that made it go down the drain.

Arguing over something that is inherently prone to inconsistencies will never yield any constructive outcomes. Neverthless, let us try to analyse spam in a constitutional manner.

Does SPAM represent freedom of speech? Does it allow another individual to shout what he wants on any forum that he wants to shout on? Before we argue further, let us try to define the terms in the question.

Freedom of speech can be constructed in a consistent manner from our preamble combine Justice and Liberty:- translated into concrete terms it says:- I believe in what I believe and I dont get shot for saying it out.

All this breaks down on the internet. In one case it destroys the boudaries set by nature and the society (like geographical distance, religion etc), on the other it also destroys the definition of an Individual. Viewed from that angle our constition would be erring in the FIRST word i.e. the word “WE”. Who are we? How many identiies can an individual have? Does “WE” include all those identities? Does “WE” include the chat bots and the automatic bulk emailers?.

Our preamble assumes that “WE” are a set of individual associated in the formation, and the running of a society called nation. “WE”, our constitution assumes, are mature enough to understand what our constitution means.

In a press conference, you have to be really cranky to go and boo at someone like say, Deve Gowda. You know that consequences of such an event and you would not be doing it. Nor would you go and boo at a press conference of someone like Arundhati Roy or Medha Patkar. The main problem there is the individual identity, which gets exposed! It is a risky thing to do though our constitution protects us for the boo-ing.

Contrast the same with an hypothetical online press conference of Shri. Deve Gowda. There will be a few hundred people who would aggressively spam it, shouting Deve Gowda Murdabad, booing all over, with their thousand faced identities. That would be a sad sight to watch.

Therefore we have the wrong constitution for the internet. I support the notion that internet should remain free. I also subscribe to the notion that forums and groups that form within the free internet should have well defined constitution.

One can view this in an evolutionary form. Suppose we need a system to evolve. We would set some rules in the system, which are fundamentally held true all the times (for example “Survival of the fittest!” or “Adapt or Perish”, “Do or die”). Then let the system free. There would be an infinite possibilities of the growth of the system, but we can approximately predict where it would evolve into. For example one can easily see that socialistic organization almost corrupt entirely in very less time.

What defines these fundamental rules , in the case of a society, is its constitution. Internet does not have one. So we dont think for a second before creating alternate identities, sending a scary email to a friend from a junk id, spamming, flooding forums with noise, noise to such an extent that some of the well meaning people leave the forum and hide.

A society without a constitution, or one that does not follow a constitution can be aptly called as a crowd. Internet is a crowd and not a community. Its a jungle filled with bots, sites, viruses, a scary ecosystem to say the least:- The only fundamental rule is that performance of anything is bound by technology. This is a clinical rule with no ethical information involved. No set of definitive actions to act. This is a crude world much like what our ancestors would have been through.

Forums are the next evolutionary step, where a group of individuals come together and form a community which follows its own rules. Is there a rule in that forum such as “Don’t like it : Don’t join it!”. Well if there is then we have a controlled society which protects its citizens from the bots, the spammers and viruses of the external internet. If there is no rule like that then we have an open society which fails to protect its contributors from external attacks. The only choice it leaves to an individual is either leave the forum or fend for himself/herself.

I wish I knew the solution to this problem. The best thing would be to come up with a very strong set of axioms, which define the ethical behaviour one should follow in the forum. There should be well set terms and conditions for posting a comment. And if these are by any chance violated, then the comment should be deleted without mercy and care should be taken not to send the email to the author of the post.

My only contention is that we form a society that protects every sensible individual in it from external irrational elements. Lets build an electric fence. Why not?

We know that the word bollywood itself is plagiarized from the word Hollywood , which is just another area in Los Angeles. There is another place called West Wood right behind UCLA here and , if one investigates into the Geography of Los Angeles County one shall find that there are many more ‘woods’ out here in LA and San Diego. Basically ‘wood’ has an equivalent meaning of Chowk in Hindi.

Hollywood is just another Chowk out here which used to have all the movie shootings going on. Our philum industry also wanted to show off their ’status’ by giving some name which is larger than life. The un-creativity of the Indian mind set in and they chose to give themselves a name by replacing the H in hollywood by ‘B’!!! (B for Bombay I suppose).

This name would not have done any justice to a philum industry which is creative. It simply cannot work that way. BUT since we are not bothered about originality and creativity the name Bollywood, I suppose, is apt for the ‘industry’. Our culture of creative impotence also raises its head in Hindi movies, and is euphemistically referred to as ‘loosely inspired’.

Our laws are loose too, allowing serious lapses and loopholes in intellectual property.

This is a site where one can find more such details of whom stole from whom. I urge everyone who is serious about intellectual property rights to visiit the site and see for themselves.

There is an even bigger and worser tragedy happening which is aptly pointed out by Sakshi on desicritics and it is the sad story of a bigger fish eating a smaller fish.

—More to come

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Hello Guys,

welcome to my new home in the web world.

My previous home was here. I shall try to mirror this blog at blogspot, but i dont know how long that is going to take.

The name of my site may sound a lil bit odd.. well, i kept it that way..

This marks a serious change in my direction, due to many events in recent times.

I shall post more on this soon.