Writing
1) Collect your thoughts. Usually thoughts occur to us over a long time. If you start writing as soon as first few thoughts come to your mind the writing will be incomplete. Therefore, first collect all your thoughts in once place before you start organizing them into your prose.
2) Organize your thoughts and write the first draft - Once thoughts are collected organize them according to the main ideas to which they are related. This collection of main ideas and their related thoughts will become your paragraphs. You should then write the individual paragraphs and prepare your first draft.
3) Rewrite - Write and rewrite your prose till you are satisfied. During rewriting you should pay attention to purpose of your writing, any size, format, etc. restrictions, rules of style and so on. You should review your writing with your friends and editors.
4) Finish your writing and publish - This should be self-explainatory.
Bussiness Ideas
One of the frequent things office-goers do is to get groceries, vegetables, fruits and few such things on their way home! Imagine if somebody takes their order when they reach office and delivers the goods by the time they are ready to go home! Wouldn't that be great?
There are a lot of enterprising youths in India! They can easily provide the above service! What they need in guidance and micro-finance to implement such business ideas!
Libertarian ideals and its critics
I think the core feature of libertarian philosophy to me is very simple: nobody should be forced into involuntary servitude. In other words, nobody should be forced to sacrifice, even for the good of the larger humanity! It is thus a direct refutation of the communist philosophy of "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs"! What can possibly other people have against this libertarian ideal?
I think the problem with libertarians is that when others (that is those which are not declared themselves libertarians) give up their freedom voluntarily they protest! Now this is ridiculous! Apparently, it looks as if individuals have all the freedom in the world except the freedom to give up their freedom!
Nevertheless, I understand why libertarians feel that way! Unfortunately, because of huge transaction costs involved, when majority people in a society give up their freedom in return for better security or other such benefits from the Govt., libertarians who do not want to make that compromise are forced to do just that! Therefore, what is voluntary loss of freedom for majority becomes forced servitude for freedom-minded people! That's why libertarians attack Patriot Act because of loss of civil liberties while majority of the people blame them for being in-sensitive to the security needs of the society!
In reply to such criticisms, libertarians try to show that compromising freedom in order to gain security is a stupid idea! Remember the phrase: “Those who give up their freedom to gain a little security, neither deserve the freedom neither the security”. However, this kind of libertarian arguments about freedom-security trade-off actually gives rise to a very different practical debate and misleads people about true libertarian ideals! I know this because it happened with me!
The real issue in implementation of libertarian ideals is the question of transaction costs! If we can bring down transaction costs then it is possible to have a society in which individuals will be able to make their own tradeoffs between freedom and other goods! Nobody will be forced to live others compromises! Now, obviously that is an ideal!
However, we can certainly march towards that goal if not completely reach it!
As I mentioned earlier many practically minded people are not actually against the libertarian ideals as such, but think libertarians are too stupid or naive to believe such an ideal situation can actually happen! However, many people in this world believe implicitly or explicitly in communist philosophy and thus are against libertarian ideals!
To reduce the confusion libertarians needs to deals with these two classes of people differently! For the former, they need to accept improbability (not impossibility) of their ideals but should explain the need to work together to move in that direction by reducing transaction costs! I am sure very few practical minded people would have any problems with that! With the latter, I think it is an ideological fight! Believe me, without libertarians taking on burden of this fight, world will be a very dangerous place to live (if there is any life left at all) because of fascism or communism!
Practical minded people need to acknowledge the contribution of libertarian idealists in winning this fight!
Invisible hand and National Interest
Many times you read editorials in various newspapers that politics is based on narrow self-interest and not national interest. So what exactly is the national interest? And how do we know if a particular policy is in national interest or not? And how do we motivate politicians to look after the national interest without expecting sacrificies from them?
National interest could be defined as interest of a Nation as a collective entity. Or it could be addition of interests of all the people of the Nation. However, a Nation as a whole should be greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, we have to understand National interest as a separate entity from the sum of the interests of its constituents.
One way to measure the National interest is to treat GNP (Gross National Product) as a proxy for National interest. It is calculated and published by Government regularly and is used by large number of economists, analysts and organizations like United Nations. Granted, it is not perfected but given the alternatives, it is the only thing that comes close to the National interest.
Once we define and find a way to measure our National interest, we need to figure out a way to motivate our politicians to look after our National interest. If we are going to ask our politicians to look after our National interests, wouldn't it be easier if we also compensate them according to the National interest? If we keep asking them to look after our National interests without tying their compensation to the National interest, what motivation will they have?
So, how do we tie the compensation of our politicians to the GNP? One way is that their annual pay and benefits should be proportional to the GNP of that year. That way, they earn more if GNP goes up. Also, their pension and retirement benefits should also be tied to the GNP of the year in which they are due. That way, we will motivate our politicians to look after our long-term National interests and not just short-term National interest during the period in which they are in power.
Not only this will improve living standards of our Nation in monetary terms, but it will also increase justice and fairness in our Nation. How? Here, I have a theory that any injustice or unfairness will decrease our GNP! Let's take an example. Injustice is caused when you forcibly take (or help take) something that belongs to others. When that happens, there is only wealth transfer. Thus, there would no increase in the GNP. Worst, because of the fight that will ensure (court case, dharnas etc.) and the ensuing decrease in the productivity of both the aggressor and the victim, the GNP of the Nation will decrease. The aggressor will enjoy something that is not rightfully his and hence will lack motivation to produce more on his own. Also, the victim will get disappointed because of the injustice done and will not produce as much as he would have produce without the injustice. In other words, injustice is a negative-sum game. This will reduce the current and future compensation of the politicans and hence will serve as an powerful disincentive against any policies that might cause injustice.
Now the question is, who decides the proportional compensation of the politicians! If politicians are themselves allowed (after getting elected) to decide their compensation they might overcharge! Why not let voters decides the compensation of the politicians? If yes, how? The best way would be to treat voters as buyers of the services of the politicians in serving the National interests. Thus, politicians who stand for elections also indicate what price they want in return for their services should voters decide to elect them. The voters, based on the compensation demanded by each candidate and plus any other factors that they use today, vote for the candidate they select. After a particular set of candidates are elected, their compensation is fixed according to the information they have put on ballot paper regarding the compensation demanded.
Another problem is that politicians can fudge the GNP data in order to increase their compensation. This is another form of injustice. And remember, injustice is a negative-sum game. That means, any nominal increase in GNP today by politicians in order to increase their pay will cause GNP to decrease tomorrow. And since, their pension is tied to future GNP values, this serves as an powerful disincentive against overvaluing GNP. And this in addition to the usual risk of detection of the fraud after power is lost.
In fact, if voters are smart, they will select politicians who demand greater proportion of their compensation in future (after their years of power and during retirement) and not in current years. Because, this indicates confidence in the policies they are promoting as well as greater synergy between politicians' self-interest and National interest.
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process of leaving out the details from observation and thoughts. It is essentially a selective focussing process.
There are various levels of abstraction. One can look at "forest" or an individual tree or an individual branch and so on. Thus one can zoom in and out.
The zoom depends on our ability to collect information or concentrate our focus. Powerful telescopes, which can collect hugh amount of signals over a wide area allows us to look at galaxies. Microscopes allows us to look at cell level details.
At a greater distance, we see container object by ignoring component objects. As we go near, components themselves look like container containing further subcomponents themselves.
Universe is the ultimate container. We still don't know what to call the ultimate component or element.
Zooming in and out is nothing but mathematical differentiation and integration.
The criteria of what should be our zoom in given circumstances is our Life. In order to prevent environmental catastrophes we need Satelites and Telescopes and to prevent diseases we need microscopes.
