If you care to look at the sidebar, you’ll find that I’ve found time to bother you with only 10 posts last month. Troubled times are the reason. A detailed account of the chaos in my life would bore you and would put me back into The Bell Jar, so I won’t stray in that direction. Besides, the purpose of this blog is not to unburden myself, it’s to share my infinite =) wisdom with you. So pull up a chair Andrew, and listen to my dregs of wheat.

Golden rules. You see them around you every day, and you follow it unthinkingly because it is the product of collective wisdom. I’ll extinguish my wrath on a particularly stupid one: “Two people, two children.”

First off, why is it absurd? You would think that if everyone were to follow this rule, then the problems of overpopulation (which is particularly drastic in my country) would simply go away. I don’t have any problem with the basic premise, what I do have a problem with is that this kind of a message is sent to people in the form of compulsion rather than education. If this were rephrased to something like “Don’t have more children than you can afford to bring up” I would be very happy. Of course, the collolary states that “Do have more children if you can afford it”, and it’s a sentiment that I have no opposition towards. Rich people can definitely have more children. If they can bring up their children well, how are they harming others?

They are harming others, you say. Everybody has a social responsibilty, you say. The rich kids are taking away a chance in life that could’ve gone to a poor kid. There are some strong flaws in this stream of logic:

1. Poor kids are more worthy: So the poor kids are more deserving of a chance? Says who? Are rich kids somehow less worthy than poor ones?
2. Social responsibility: If by creating more rich kids, we are creating less poor ones, isn’t the world a better place that way? Aren’t we fulfilling our social responsibility then?
3. The rich can become successful easier: Success doesn’t depend on how rich or poor you are. Economics is driven by four factors: Land, Labour, Capital and Entrepreneurship. If you don’t have the skill to utilize your resources, whatever they are, it doesn’t matter how rich or poor you are. Success, is thus independent of capital. It depends only on abililty.