[43] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: LIVING WAGE SIT-IN AT HARVARD (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sourav K. Mandal)
Thu Apr 19 16:51:14 2001
Message-Id: <200104192050.QAA11854@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>
From: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
Reply-To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
To: mit-talk@mit.edu
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:50:15 -0400
"Ray Jones <rjones@pobox.com>" wrote:
> I don't mind if Sourav spouts warmed-over Ayn Randism until the cows
> come home, but I just thought I'd point out that the graph at this
> URL:
>
> "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com> writes:
> > http://www.heritage.org/index/2001/wealth.html
>
> ...could just as easily be flipped on the X=Y axis to yield evidence
> for a "richer countries tend to allow more freedom" hypothesis, which
> I think is just as valid, but less ideologically motivated.
Do you really think that is plausible? Wealth grows, instead of
remaining static, because economic efficiencies get exploited. How can
this happen without the freedom to do so? Conversely, I don't see the
causal link from wealth to freedom. Our freedoms are being etched away
daily in the US (Drug War, political correctness, taxes), though wealth
in increasing (though this rate of increase has slowed recently). In
China, Internet and press are censored, and capital activity has to be
okayed by party bosses, despite booming trade. And, women are still
subjugated in the Middle East, even in oil rich countries.
> So, the authors of the study that featured this graph (2 leaders of
> the Heritage Foundation, and an assistant editor at the Wall Street
> Journal) ranked various, highly subjective factors to produce data
> that shows that more freedom _under their rankings_ yield a higher
> GDP. That's some solid scientific work there, yup.
Their dataset is free to download -- go for it. At any rate, their
methodology, while qualitative, is no less objective than that used by
various left-wing orgs to gauge human rights and poverty.
Sourav
------------------------------------------------------------
Sourav K. Mandal
Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com
http://www.ikaran.com/Sourav.Mandal/
