Missing In Action (Pranay Kotasthane and RSJ)

I received this book as Rakhi gift in 2023. Due to work and other commitments, I could finish it only now. A brilliant brilliant book!! 

I already got an interesting teaser-trailer, even before laying my hands on the book, when the authors (Pranay Kotasthane and RSJ) appeared in 'The Seen and The Unseen' podcast. Pranay and RSJ both have deep wisdom, a dispassionate attitude and a lucid writing-style.

As I went through the book, I could classify my thoughts about the book in four groups:

1. Highlights: I learnt many entertaining and educative facts, two of which stood out. 
2. Doubts: In couple of places, I had doubts where I could not exactly understand the meaning of the words/context. 
3. Feedback: I guess there are a couple of places where there is a scope for improving the clarity. 
4. Disagreements: There are a few disagreements as well. 

I wish to detail all the four points in this book review.

Highlights:

The book in its entirety can be considered as highlight. So many concepts, studies, incidents… Two stood out for me.

1. The interesting story of Naya Daur and how the movie ran against the Nehruvian ideal of reforming the ills of the society with top-down government diktats. I am now looking forward to watch Naya Daur.
2. The fascinating story of an exchange economy (based on cigarettes as currency) popping-up spontaneously in a PoW jail, was both informative and entertaining. I had read references of this cigarette-based-jail-currency in quite a few policy related blog/podcasts. But now, I know the exact story that unfolded. 

Doubts:

1. On page 27 there is a statement citing Political Economy. The exact sentence being “The other problem is the political economy of India’s sedition law”. What exactly does the term political-economy mean? Does it mean political expediency? Does it mean serving one's narrow selfish gains while following the letter of the law, but breaking the spirit-of-law?
2. On page 38, there is a mention of saving forests by community initiatives in Elinor Ostrom’s work. But I just can’t understand how society can save/maintain forests without use of force. And use of lawful force can only be done with the involvement of government. So how can forest-conservation be done by society alone? I would love to get some details here.  

Feedback:

1. From page# ix to xx, the authors intended to list eight myths of public policy. But on page xvii, in the topic titled Belief7, the authors have listed the correct PoV rather than the myth. I guess the Belief7 should have been titled “There ARE good and bad policies” rather than “There’s no good and bad policies; Only better or worse outcomes”.  I guess, by mistake, the authors wrote the truth instead of the myth.
2. Confusing numbering: On page 242, the sudden mention of option 1, 2 and 3 threw me off balance. It took an extra reading of page 240 and 241 to figure out the three options. The options (and their numbering) have been written implicitly. I would have preferred a more explicit numbering/indication at the places where the options are described.  

Disagreements:

1. On page 42 and 57, education and healthcare have been positioned as government responsibility. I disagree with this line of thought. Despite the huge positive externalities created by educated and healthy citizens, I do NOT consider individual healthcare and education as a government’s tax funded responsibility. I have detailed thoughts on this at  https://oshantomon.blogspot.com/2023/12/education-healthcare-and-free-markets.html?m=1  .
2. In Chapter-24, the authors attempted to explain two contradictory thoughts about India’s approach to secularism. It seems the authors wished to treat both approaches in a non-partisan manner. But I suspect that Nehruvian-secularism angle received slightly more preferential treatment. Many people think that India, wrongly, deviated to a path of appeasing-pseudo secularism under Nehru after independence. I would have liked some more text about this appeasement-critical PoV as well.  

Net net, reading this book was a joy, the couple of difference of opinions notwithstanding. I strongly recommend this book.  

 

Understanding Money

Why is "understanding money" of interest to me:

• I have a lot of curiosity about something as important as money.
• I want to understand the concepts about cryptocurrency. My gut-feel is that crypto-currency is more 'ethical' than fiat currency issued by the government. But gut-feel is all I have, no deeper knowledge. I understand a little about the technology (concepts of distributed-ledger, proof-of-work, etc). But I understand almost nothing about the philosophy of money.
• I have a gut feel that the governments around the world are lying to their citizens. They ban cryptocurrencies under the pretext of criminal usage of these cryptocurrencies. But that is just a pretext. The real reason is that by allowing cryptocurrency they will forego their power to hide inefficiencies (and/or corruption) by printing money out of thin air. They do not want to let go of that power.

One of the effective ways to understand something is to write about it. Hence this attempt to note down what I understand and what I DONT understand about money. 

I understand:

• Destroying cash currency (by burning, or tearing it down) is a help to the government (the currency issuer). Satyanveshi Byomkesh Bakshi burnt bundles of cash in Aadim Ripu. Why does the government punish currency-destroyers then? Possibly in mock anger. Nobody in their right mind will destroy money(instead of buying stuff). And if people do destroy some currency-notes, the government treasury should be very happy about it as they got rid of liability.
• Underlying trust in "currency issuers capability to deliver stuffs" against currency matters. Mr Jana (Jana-da in Bengali sambodhan) ran a stationery supply shop during my engineering years at Shibpur Bengal Engineering College. If Jana-da did not have change, he used to issue a handwritten paper piece with his signature/stamp and the amount outstanding written in his handwriting. Jana-da's notes were honoured widely because you could always get notebooks, pens, and stationery from his store which we students always needed. Students sometimes settled their transactions among themselves using Jana-da-notes. If I had issued handwritten notes, nobody would have bothered to accept it. I had no credibility in delivering 'stuffs' as opposed to Jana-da.
• Printing extra currency notes by the government amounts to stealing real stuff/wealth from the owners. Stuff/wealth owners are coerced (through legal force) into honouring the printed currency.

I don't understand clearly:

• Assume there is an ideal phone network in a country where everyone has a cellphone and they have a UPI system which never fails. In such a scenario, does the government need to print any currency at all? For transaction it is not required because every transaction can happen through UPI, i.e. direct bank to bank. Is there any other need for the government to 'inject' money in such a system?
• If the answer is yes to above question, how shall the government do that? Somebody's account needs to be loaded with extra money. Whose account shall the government choose?
• When the government prints/creates money, how does it send it into circulation? Paying government employee's salary? Repaying debt to creditors with the newly printed-out-of-thin-air money?
• If the wealth of a nation rises (because of its citizen's labour) shall there be a proportional increase in the amount of money (fiat currency) going around?
• If wealth rises, say with industrial revolution, without a proportionate increase in money supply, deflation may occur where price of goods and services reduces. Deflation is considered bad. How exactly? And if deflation is bad, bitcoin is a bad currency as well. Because bitcoin's fixed supply of 21-million is not going to increase in proportion to the wealth increase of the world. Is this understanding correct?
• If I ignore legality and focus only on ethics/morality, is the government printing extra currency and a forger printing paper money, equally immoral vis-a-vis stealing real stuff from producers?
• Why do some Americans (like Elon/Vivek) worry about their ever-increasing national debt? Is it just their morality? Or is there any repercussion they may face in their future? With the dollar being the world's reserve currency (due to military threats or otherwise), the US can simply print cash and steal from all the nations in the world.
• What was great about having a gold standard for money? After all, gold's worth is also an assumption of humanity. Gold, by itself, has very little use in everyday life. Gold is not rice.
• Need confirmation: Bitcoin-mining is a different phenomenon from Bitcoin-usage. If I plan to use Bitcoin for buying/selling stuffs, I need not bother about knowing the details of Bitcoin-mining (as long as mining restrictions remain in place to maintain currency-scarcity).
• Need confirmation: In medieval times, Cowrie shells were effective currency in Bengal even though cowries were possibly abundant, lying on seashores, in Maldives. In Bengal, cowries were still effective because it took significant effort for any Bengali to gather a ship, sail to the Maldives and get the cowries back. This difficulty was necessary and created the condition for currency-scarcity. The increasing difficulty of crypto-mining is designed to mimic the difficulty similar to that involved in "sailing-from-Bengal-to-Maldives-for-cowries".
• Many libertarians consider Central-Bank-Digital-Currency (CBDC) a bad thing. I do not understand why. Vis-a-vis money privacy, why is CBDC any worse than UPI transactions in India? I have seen advertisements to the contrary vis-a-vis privacy/anonymity. It says that e₹ based wallets enable anonymous transfer. I am assuming that e₹ is CBDC for India.