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Zero Rupee Note

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Re: Zero Rupee Note

#131

Post by Semaphor »

aij wrote: post #105

That reminds me of when my university kept sending me a $0 bill every month after I graduated. They kept sending them, so eventually I wrote a $0 check and sent it back in the business-reply envelope. I guess they were happy I had paid my bill because they finally stopped sending them.

I had a similar experience. I wanted to cancel my old credit card but couldn't find a way to do it online. As there were no fees I just ignored it. Well, it turned out that my VPN still had it as the payment method and so I got a bill to please pay my negative balance (they require at least 10% to be paid off after a month).

Of course, I paid. But it turns out that I need to contact them to unlock the card after I had a negative balance. I kept postponing it and kept getting 0€ bills every month. After 3 months they told me they are sorry to see me go but they'd have to cancel my account because of a balance of -0€.

It was kinda funny but worked out well :D

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#133

Post by dsl »

aij wrote: post #105

That reminds me of when my university kept sending me a $0 bill every month after I graduated. They kept sending them, so eventually I wrote a $0 check and sent it back in the business-reply envelope. I guess they were happy I had paid my bill because they finally stopped sending them.

Or you might be remembering this story from an email your mom forwarded to your MSN account in the mid '90s?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/zero-dollars-and-zero-sens...

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#134

Post by gowld »

pm90 wrote: post #106
fellellor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to see the worst in people. The bribe accepting police is also, in many cases, not doing this out of malice. Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Anyways if you are the police in that situation, it makes much more sense to let the "activist" sort of g…

> how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. The answer is that we don't. If we did have better functioning police systems, you would see a lot more growth in a lot of Indian cities. The biggest cities escape the tyranny of local powers simply because people living in these cities accumulate vast financial resources to essentially circumvent Go…

Interesting, India reads like a libertarian paradise. I'd expect it to be an economic powershi.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#135

Post by msiyer »

oconnor663 wrote: post #50
vbezhenar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Policemen are getting pretty low wages. But there are always a lot of people who want to work there, because they can get bribes. And they actually paying percentage of those bribes to their higher-ups and so on, so it's like a pyramid. And a lot of people want things to stay that way. Policemen are getting good income. Their masters are getting huge income. Ordinary people can pay much less to policeman, than t…

> It's that terrible win-win to everyone situation and that makes it very hard to destroy. It does make it sound like there's a bribery-free equilibrium really close by though. Like imagine all of these things happened as part of a single reform: - Policeman and management salaries go up. - Fines go down. - Taxes go up. - Anti-bribery enforcement goes way up. The idea would be to acknowledge that regardless of the br…

"The Big Bribe Industry" is a very organized sector and unofficially official. It is absolutely naive to believe that it can be destroyed. It is almost impossible to get a job done in a timely manner without bribing the official.

The rates are fixed. The collection mechanisms are solid. Everyone, from the peon to the minister, gets a cut.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#136

Post by frosted-flakes »

kamaal wrote: post #118
fellellor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to see the worst in people. The bribe accepting police is also, in many cases, not doing this out of malice. Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Anyways if you are the police in that situation, it makes much more sense to let the "activist" sort of g…

>>Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Sorry sir, but this is plain wrong. Only two months back I was stopped by the police for 'fast driving', this is around a corner while I was turning at may be 10 kmph, in fact he just waved his hand in front of me. Irony be damne…

What are lacs and crores?

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#137

Post by jogjayr »

kamaal wrote: post #130
winter_blue wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, a functioning government is non-existent in India. The primary activity of both the federal/central and state governments in India is theft (through bribes as well as taxes), and being a drag on the economy. It's not unlike a Mafia-run protection racket. If you don't pay bribes or taxes, you either get in trouble, or don't get basic services. A good chunk of the tax revenue is robbed by at various…

>>Up until around 1990, the governments agenda was perpetual poverty as they made it impossible for people to start businesses, by imposing significant red tape, and requiring regulatory approval for almost every little thing. (look up "License Raj"). The more things change, the more they remain same. You can't exactly fix these things with laws. You need to have cultural change at some point in time. I remember a co…

> India is all about reselling things we don't make

Boy, you are a downer! Things are not the best, but they're not all bad either. Here are some important things India makes:

1. Movies - it has the largest (by number of productions) film industry in the world, and third largest by revenue (admittedly the latter is expected and it's third by a fair distance)

2. Satellite launch services - Antrix corporation, run by the Indian government no less.[1] And it makes a profit, what a crazy world we live in!

3. Generic medicines - Largest manufacturer of these in the world[2].

4. Motorcycles - The 2 largest motorcycle manufacturers in the world are Indian companies. [3][4] Are their bikes household names in developed countries today? No, but neither were Honda or Toyota in 1960.

5. Steel and cement - Apparently the 2nd largest steel and cement producer in the world (I didn't know this)[5][6] but also admittedly a long way off first place.

I didn't have the time or patience to research more, but you get the idea.

> What IP do we build here?

Most countries don't produce that much valuable IP in this stage of their growth. That comes later, when the basics - manufacturing, laws, financial systems, transport - have been firmed up. Having said that I'm sure there's a non-zero amount of useful research from the IITs or IIS or ISRO or BARC.

> Compare this with any top world economy today like US, China, Germany, UK etc. You begin to realize how far behind we are.

That's why (apart from China) they're referred to as "developed" countries and India is not.

> Programmers want to be managers ASAP.

You may find that outside the technology industry, it's like that everywhere. Anecdote: a few years ago, I caught up with an old acquaintance (who was raised in the US) working at an American consulting company in the Midwest. When he found out I'm a software engineer in the Bay Area he said "Oh, you're just a programmer." and sounded disappointed.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antrix_Corporation

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry_in_Ind...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajaj_Auto

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_MotoCorp

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cement_pr...

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#138

Post by jogjayr »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #136
kamaal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Police financing in India is pretty fucked up, and I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. Sorry sir, but this is plain wrong. Only two months back I was stopped by the police for 'fast driving', this is around a corner while I was turning at may be 10 kmph, in fact he just waved his hand in front of me. Irony be damne…

What are lacs and crores?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#139

Post by ankit219 »

aij wrote: post #105

That reminds me of when my university kept sending me a $0 bill every month after I graduated. They kept sending them, so eventually I wrote a $0 check and sent it back in the business-reply envelope. I guess they were happy I had paid my bill because they finally stopped sending them.

AWS once sent me reminders to clear pending dues and pay the bills else service will be terminated. The bill was of $0.01.

Re: Zero Rupee Note

#140

Post by jogjayr »

erklik wrote: post #63
emaster wrote: post #23

Interestingly, the number zero was invented in India

The ancient Egyptians had a conception of zero, and used a herioglypical symbol for zero. China had a counting rod system, with an empty space being a zero and Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections had a round symbol being used for zero. Other authors were familiar with the concept of negative numbers. These are alll before Indian "invention" (probably be discovery) of zero.

What the GP actually means is the "Arabic" numeral system was invented in India[1]. The "zero" is an essential part of this system.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_s...

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