Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw

4th of July 2026 marks the 250 anniversary of the day Congress approved the text of the Declaration of Independence, and therefore the birth of the United States of America.

The Declaration was signed by 56 patriots. By putting their names on that parchment, they were committing what King George III and British law defined as high treason—a crime traditionally punished by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. In effect they were signing their own death warrants.

They risked their wealth, their families, and their lives on a military gamble. If George Washington’s army had failed, those 56 names would have served as an official British execution list.

The handwritten parchment wasn’t actually signed until August 2, 1776. Even then, not everyone was present; delegates continued to add their names over the coming months. The final signer, Thomas McKean, didn’t sign his name until 1777. Continue reading “Happy 250th”

The word trillionaire has been in the news since SpaceX’s IPO a few weeks ago. I have no idea what it feels like being a trillionaire (and I bet neither do you.) A net worth of a trillion dollars is several orders of magnitude above mine and yours.

Besides, I have a hard time dealing with large numbers.

Large numbers are unnatural. Understanding them is not part of our cognitive endowment. We don’t have an instinctive feel for them. We have to develop the skill needed to do arithmetic using them. The legendary Stanford computer and cognitive scientist John McCarthy (1927 -2011), the man who coined the term artificial intelligence, had in his email signature the line, “He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”

Economists, my tribe, have to do arithmetic and algebra if we are committed to not talking nonsense. Arithmetic and algebra are unnatural. Without instructions, we are totally incapable of learning them.

Speaking and comprehending language comes naturally to us. As does bipedal locomotion. Nor do we need to learn the physics of ballistics to be able to throw and catch a ball. But we have to be taught to learn reading and writing because those two are as unnatural as arithmetic and algebra. Continue reading “Large Numbers”

In this piece, I would like to talk about a favorite movie: Witness starring Harrison Ford. The setting of the 1985 movie is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, among the Amish. I like and admire the Amish. Let me start with a little bit about them.

The Amish are one of the most interesting religious communities in the United States. Their story began in Europe during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. They were originally part of the Anabaptist tradition. Anabaptists believed in baptizing adults rather than infants. In 1693, a Swiss Anabaptist named Jakob Ammann left the church, and his followers became known as the “Amish.”

Facing ongoing religious persecution (not uncommon among various Christian sects), the Amish began migrating to North America in the early 1700s, settling in Pennsylvania. There are no Amish left in Europe now. Their current population of over 360,000 are mainly concentrated in the US states of Pennsylvania (Lancaster County), Ohio and Indiana. Because they have large families (5 or more children), their population is doubling roughly every 20 years. Continue reading “Witness 1985”

TL;DR. Wealth is not distributed; therefore the question whether or not wealth is badly distributed cannot be answered without knowing the process that led to the distribution that was obtained.

In what sense is wealth distributed? Is there some stock of wealth that a society has that gets distributed to the people of that society, and if so, is there someone in charge of doing the distribution, and if so, is that person doing a bad job?

What if wealth is not distributed by someone any more than height is distributed among people? We do recognize that there is a “height distribution” in any population, which in technical terms is called a “normal” distribution, but that does not imply that there is someone who goes about distributing height. Certainly some end up tall and others short but height is not “badly” distributed merely because everyone does not end up exactly having the same height (or weight or looks or intelligence or whathaveyou.) Continue reading “Why is Wealth so Badly Distributed?”

David Deutsch is an awesome thinker. His day job is that of a physicist involved in cosmology and quantum physics. He is considered the “father of quantum computing.” Quantum mechanics is far above my IQ level; I couldn’t possibly understand it. Quantum computation too is beyond my reach.

Deutsch is a genuine genius. What was previously called the “Church-Turing thesis” is now called “Church-Turing-Deutsch thesis.”[1]

Deutsch is a proponent of the “many-world interpretation” of QM proposed by Hugh Everett. For an accessible introduction to MWI I recommend the article on “Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Being a physicist is Deutsch’s day job, as I mentioned before. He moonlights as a deep thinker on other important matters. In an interview on economist Tyler Cowen’s podcast, Tyler characterized Deutsch as the first and only “philosopher of freedom.” I will provide a link to it later. Continue reading “Karl Popper”

Thus spoke Milton Friedman:

“In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from grinding poverty are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.”

A few years ago when I used to waste time on Quora, I couldn’t resist responding to someone who asked, “How has capitalism ruined the world?”

Here’s my response, for the record.

Continue reading “Capitalism Has Ruined the World”

I love cars and I love driving. Not to brag too much but as it happens, I think I’m the second-best driver in the world. The US is perhaps the best place in the world for road trips. I’ve been fortunate enough to have dozens of road trips under my belt in the US, a few of them across the continent.

Recently a friend in the valley bought a mid-sized SUV, a 2026 Hyundai Palisade Hybrid. It has three rows of seats. This one is very luxurious, with all sorts of bells and whistles. Fancy seats. Great sound system. Cameras and sensors all around. Lots of nice driving assist features. I look forward to driving it one of these days soon. The specs are great.[1]

Hybrids are a very clever idea. They have a gasoline engine and also electric motors and batteries. Pure electric vehicles (EV) don’t have the gas bits and regular cars don’t have the electric bits. Continue reading “Hybrid Cars”