Category: Uncategorized

Stocks Plunge in India

Sonja Ghandi recently won elections in India. She is the latest incantation of the socialist ruling family that mired India in decades of poverty. Shortly after her victory, she appealed to the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (there’s a difference?) to form the ruling coalition. In response, “India’s stock market took the biggest one-day drop in its 129-year history” until regulators shut down the markets
in a (futile) response to halt it. I believe that the drop was motivated by two factors: the potential for the reversal of 13 years of economic liberalization and uncertainty over how a socialist/Communist coalition can reconcile its ideology with a commitment “to the orderly and healthy development of financial markets that reflect the fundamentals of the economy” and a policy that “will be pro growth, pro-investment, pro-savings and pro-employment.” It is of course impossible to reconcile a socialist ideology with a market economy. The
response of the new finance minister is pragmatism: “We are not pursuing privatization as an ideology…wherever privatization is necessary in the national interest it will be carried forward.” In other words, the idea is to reap the benefits of a free market, while not actually allowing any economic freedom – or to have one’s cake and eat it too. It’s interesting to note that the practical value of
liberalism has been almost universally recognized, especially since the end of the cold war, even by socialist and communist parties. This is significant because the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is opposed to the very notion of freedom. The prerequisite of individual rights however, is still universally ignored. Until the moral case for freedom replaces “national interest” as the basis for a market economy, endemic global economic instability will remind us of the
consequences of a mixed economy.

What I'm Up To

Last Monday, I finished my semester, and the last classes needed for my degree. I have to complete my internship before I graduate, but that is all that is standing between me and the “real world.” That is unexpected, because I will be able to finish my MIS degree much earlier than I expected. I have not blogged very much this week because I have been thinking about my past and future plans. Here is what I want to accomplish between now and August:

  • Finish Master’s degree.
  • Finish the project for my university job.
  • Buy a car.
  • Learn to drive (again)
  • Find a new place to live.
  • Move to San Antonio.
  • Learn Java.
  • Code Java like a pro at my internship.
  • Find a sweet job.

New MT Version

I have updated the Movable Type install for this blog to 3.0. Let me know if everything is working ok. I’ll set it up to require TypeKey registration once the final version is released and I have the kinks in the templates worked out. I am still offering free blogging from my domain, but I may have to switch to another blog because of the licensing changes for Movable Type.

I also signed up for an account with Gmail, Google’s new email service that offers 1GB of storage space. The storage space is certainly handy, though I miss some of the features Hotmail’s advanced features. My new email address is heroic at gmail.com

Censorship in China

After attempting to shut down or censor most of its cyber cafe’s, China has launched another effort to shut down cybercafes “because of fears that the Net could corrupt the minds of youngsters….”

“We must take utmost resolutions and make utmost efforts in the clean-up campaign to achieve our anticipated goal, for Internet cafe management has an important bearing on the healthy growing of juveniles.” … As if to prove a point, Xinhuanet cites the tragic case of two youths who were crushed to death by a train when they fell asleep on a railway track after spending 48 hours in a cybercafe. … He cites the case of a 19-year old who, after surfing the next for five to six hours everyday for five years who had come to believe that “invisible pairs of eyes in cyber-space were peeping at
him and examining him all the time”

Of course the real reason China bans uncensored internet access is obvious:

“They have brought great harm to the mental health of teenagers and interfered with the school teaching, which has aroused strong reactions from the public.”

Translated from newspeak, that means “interfered with the indoctrination of communist propaganda, which arouses strong fear within the Communist Party.”

“National Prayer Day?” What the hell? Since when is faith and humbleness the mark of a proud nation based on reason and individual rights? This sounds like something they do in Iran or Saudi Arabia. For a truly American holiday, how about a National Day of Reason instead?