Left and Right

One of the biggest plusses of the 2014 elections has been that fact that Indian youth has become more engaged in the political process. We see more political discussions online, see fearless expression from youngsters and an overall increase in curiosity levels as well.

I sense that youngsters in the Country want to talk politics more, especially the ones that have cast their votes for the very first time. Very often they find themselves unable to partake in discussions because they do not know the jargon or are unable to place the different names that the older generation refers to (I went through this when I was younger, I would never know any of the names or terms). This very often turns off the youngsters and they become disengaged. This is a shame.

This piece is a bid to improve the vocabulary of political discussion. I never understood these terms left or right or center-left, center-right, etc. And when I started understanding them, I realized that a great many were using these monikers incorrectly.

There are two axes on which we can define Left and Right, the Economic axis and the Socio-Cultural axis. Very often, the parties to the right on one axis are also on the right on another axis, so we do not care to distinguish between the axes. But it helps to know both axes.

Left vs. Right - The Economic Axis.

Essentially, the left espouses the role of government; and the right wants more freedom for the market (private sector)


Left and Right - The Socio Cultural Axis

On this axis, the right is conservative, holds the idea of "values" dear, holds religion to be important and is proud of lineage and tradition. The "left" is liberal, prizes the idea of individual freedom, and believes that the state has no role in prescribing morality.

Countries placed on this matrix

Caveat Emptor: The above diagram is merely thematic. I have put this here in order to encourage some form of thinking/discussion. So, if you have any views on where some country ought to be placed, please voice those.

Indian leaders, parties placed on a matrix

Again, the above chart is subjective. Kindly bear that in mind. Might be a fun exercise to think in terms of where you would fit in.

I am mildly right of center economically, and sharply left of center socio-culturally. So, I will probably occupy (2, -5) in what will henceforth be termed as the enlightened quadrant.

Thoughts, comments are welcome.

Greenhouse gas emissions, India and China

The good professor has this article on his blog http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/07/does-poverty-give-a-country-the-right-to-pollute-the-atmosphere/#more-4091 .(The professor is one of the best Economics bloggers around and one of my favourites.)

Usually, I try to resist the chip-on-the-shoulder response to articles on the western media, but this time I thought the article was painting a wholly inaccurate picture and chose to comment. My comment was as follows

Dear Sir,
An interesting article. But unlike your usual articles, there are some specious bits of reasoning which are thrown in into the mix here. 1. You say that the NBP's are wrong to say "your ancestors broke it, you fix it". Mainly because their ancestors dramatically increased population.

Your exact rant reads thus - The logic in the argument of the NBPs comes unstuck especially badly here. If the overdeveloped world is held accountable for the choices of past and present generations that produced large past emissions of CO2E and resulted in today’s high atmospheric concentration of CO2E, then surely today’s inhabitants of China and India should be held accountable for the individual and collective choices of past and present generations of Indians and Chinese that have resulted in the oversized populations of these countries? The selective application of the ‘your ancestors broke it, you own it’ logic by those who advocate special lenient treatment for today’s poor countries in global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is deeply intellectually dishonest.

Sir, I cannot imagine you actually drew out this comparison. The previous generation of OECD's pillaged the world. The previous generation of NBP's had kids (because they were poor and did not know about contraceptives, by the way). I agree with your original contention that inter-temporal punishment is morally unjustifiable. But your counter-argument is built on spurious ground.The argument from the NBP's need not be stated as "It is our turn to pollute". It can be interpreted as "You have taken the lead in polluting, now take the lead in cleaning up". A stance that I find very justifiable, morally.

2. You set out to try to establish that per-capita comparisons are incorrect. Your passage says - First, the externality associated with greenhouse gas emissions relates to the total amount added to the atmosphere, not to the amount emitted per capita. A given quantum of CO2E emissions does an equal amount of global harm, regardless of whether it is produced by 2 over-fed Americans or Europeans or by 100 under-fed Indians. Those who bang on about per capita emissions appear not to understand the ‘technology’ of the global environmental externality created by CO2E emissions.From here on you draw the conclusion that per-capita emissions are an inaccurate measure.

It is undeniable that overall emissions matter to the world's well-being and per-capita is but a diversion. But when on the issue of determining how we can morally justify how much EACH country can pollute, per-capita measure is perhaps as good as any other. Would the world stop writing articles on global warming if India were broken down into 30 smaller countries, each not being big enough to be part of your global 20?

3. When you start your argument, you get in your disclaimers early; and further hedge your positions well by citing the precautionary principle. I guess George Bush's justification for the Iraq war could have been constructed on similar grounds. 1) Weapons of Mass destruction are a bad thing 2) Human-made WMD are capable of destroying the world (and very quickly) 3) That WMD can be created by some dictator-run state is a reality. Invoking the precautionary principle, one should attack everyone in sight. The green-mongers have succeeded in depicting anyone debating climate-models as someone who is out to destroy this world.

The debate on how much we need to do is very crucial to the debate on who has to do what? In the current setting, the way you have put things, it appears as if the OECD countries have woken up to the threat posed by global warming, have taken a lead in cleaning the act for the world and given the time constraint everyone (read NBPs) has to chip in. An alternate interpretation could be, the OECDs have had their fun, now that they are losing out, they are throwing the toys out of the pram. The NBPs perhaps have this view.

OECD carrying the moral high-ground on the global warming debate. Now, that is hilarious.

In case it was not obvious, I am from one of the NBPs that you have mentioned. And although I am sceptical of the climate models (from a scientific point of view), I agree to the premise that the entire world must pull together to reduce emissions. I also agree that India and China should do more to reduce emissions. What I disagree with (and vehemently) is that the OECD countries should be pontificating on moral high ground.

My stand on this global warming debate is straightforward. India should fight tooth and nail against any restrictions, be it on geopolitical or moral grounds. I belong to the Henry Kissinger school of thought - His guiding philosophy was that foreign policy should serve the national interest.

On the more global issue of global warming, I think the debate should cover the grounds on which scientists are claiming that the world is heating rapidly. Invoking the precautionary principle in defence of going green is unacceptable in a world full of vested interests. As a student of science, I am inclined to give credence to scientists' claim that the globe might be warming. On the same basis, I think there should be room for healthy scepticism for the scientists and their models.
The world is already reeling under the impact of one group of self-appointed geniuses believing the infallibility of their models; we can ill-afford another screw up like this. Let us by all means reduce CO2 emissions; but let the freedom to question these models not disappear either.

After all, it was only 35 years ago when the world was damn scared of the Ice age; and even these scientists will tell you that climate changes will take a century to take shape.

Elections and Physics

There is a principle called the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. It goes like this “The product of the uncertainties involved in predicting the exact location and velocity of any particle is greater than a constant”. In the arena of Physics, this law has relevance only for sub atomic particles, but the law lends itself to several interpretations and variations.

Stated in English, the law can be taken to mean “Any measuring device that is used to measure any parameter sufficiently distorts that parameter during the process of measurement so as to not make the measurement completely accurate”.

Let me explain the above interpretation with an example (stolen from the stable of my physics professor). Assume that in a particular school, there is a particular noisy corridor occupied by boisterous students. The principal of the school decides to pay a surprise visit to this corridor to find out who the miscreants are and to what extent these students were making noise. Unfortunately for the principal, one particular student notices him walking down the corridor and promptly sounds the warning as a result of which the entire corridor becomes quiet. This is an ideal illustration of an extreme case of the presence of a measuring device altering the measuring parameter sufficiently so as to defeat the entire purpose of the experiment.

Taking the above illustration as a proxy for the Heisenberg principle let me build this theory further and incorporate certain corollaries. To make this process scientific, let us define certain terms; the teacher becomes the “measurer”, the teacher’s walk becomes “measuring process”, the teacher’s cane is the “feedback”, the guy who watches the teacher is the “signal”, the noisy classroom is the “object of observation”, and the entire exercise is the “experiment”.

Corollaries
1. When the experiment is conducted in a finite interval of time, i.e. it is not a continuous function of time (the teacher does not continuously walk up and down the corridor), the single observation made by the measurer often becomes the proxy for the performance of object of observation over a period of time.
2. If the principal walks the corridor once every ‘T’ units of time, it eliminates the necessity for the signal and the object of observation has that much more freedom to misbehave and not get noticed.
3. This implication is perhaps the most important implication in the context of the forthcoming example. Over a period of time “Effectiveness” of the object of observation gets determined solely by its performance in the experiment so much so that the only thing the object of observation does during the entire period is to create scenarios for better performance during the next experiment.

Replace “measurer” with “people”, “measuring process” with “Elections”, “object under observation” with “government” and the “experiment” with “the great democratic way of functioning” and you have uncovered what can be termed as the “Electoral Fallacy”.