Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would a bank even accept it? Genuinely curious if it's even possible to register a null transaction like that.
Zero is not null!
It is in Germany.
Zero Rupee Note
201–210 of 241 posts
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Thi…
Agree with you entirely. When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited by the people. Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant…
Could you recommend some reading to dive deeper into this narrative?
It is very interesting, reminds me something I couldn't grasp now. Probably some theory about an inherent nature of Russia's failures or something like. But, you know, it is hard to think of such a matters when the main example is your own country, it is hard to keep objectivity. I'd be happy to read about India.
By the way, I believe, that a bloody revolution wouldn't help India to create a different society. Take a Russia as an example: there was revolution of 1917, which overthrown Tzar, but communists came and they built authoritarian state just like in old times. With a Stalin as a dictator instead of Tzar. Tzar was meant to have a God given rights to rule, Stalin had the same rights given him by a proletariat. Even the scale of a corruptions the same, and one of the theories explaining them goes as far as to X century to track the start of bribery as a way to pay wages to government representatives, then bribes were made illegal, but it lasts for a centuries without a much success. Tzar, communists, now "democrats" are all failed to change it.
In 1991 USSR had failed, and there were a failure of a society, but in a few years a new society emerged, then gathered strength and finally we have all the same, the only difference are flags and slogans. We see the return of a God, though for now no one claims yet that Putin is a God given ruler.
The kind state you could build in a society are constrained heavily by a culture of a society (not the painting and architecture, but the culture in almost biological meaning, something that goes from mother to a child, something that is almost as sticky as a genetics). At the same time the culture of a society have a great inertia, you couldn't change it in a few years of a bloody revolution and a civil war.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Thi…
>>Some of these things are not exceptions but the rule. You could be downvoted, the real reason is so many Indians don't even think this is anything wrong. Globalization has presented an opportunity for Indians like me to travel abroad and see how well the systems work outside. For a lot of Indians, something like this is invisible. Often the exposure is to infrastructure seen through Hollywood movies or these days,…
Clean parks and friendly transit staff!? San Francisco must have changed since I left. :-p
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find it surprising how we have a functioning society with such underfinanced and overworked police, even in the well to do urban areas. At the risk of being downvoted, I feel compelled to offer a foreigner's perspective here. As a foreigner who has lived in Bangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for 2 to 6 months many times, I have to agree with the other commenter that I did not find a functioning society. Thi…
Agree with you entirely. When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited by the people. Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant…
You’ve diagnosed the problem well, but I don’t understand how that leads to “smaller government” being a solution. In many regards are relate to civic responsibility, India probably needs bigger government. They need it both to enforce the small laws (litter, traffic rules, safety regulations) as well as building the sustained infrastructure to make life more convenient (mass transit to deal with traffic, public housing so people aren’t in slums, sanitation services to clean up after everything, etc.) And then there is the need to create and maintain the public spaces to accommodate all these people, like parks and libraries.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
For example to calculate the expected time left to pay the remaining debt if you make a monthly payment of that amount.
So dividing by number of months, which is not dividing by an amount of money.
var balance = 0
var lastPayment = 0
var remainingPaymentsAtThisRate = balance/lastPayment
// divide by zero error
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#206Could negative currency be useful? For instance a fungible, negotiable debt instrument, registered on a blockchain so it can't be unilaterally destroyed. Put contractual language on it to the effect that "Registering acceptance of this note obligates you to pay $X to the U.S. treasury by date Y." Bob buys an apple from Alice but doesn't have the cash, so instead accepts/registers a -$1 note from Alice, who now has le…
What's to stop someone throwing negative value currency in the trash and thereby gaining money?
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because people are getting away with ignoring the law, and in turn that makes bad laws more transparent, which in turn give people even more incentives to bribe their way out of situations. Bribes are also tax-exempt.
> Bribes are also tax-exempt It's not a terrible idea. I heard that post-war Germany had a massive corruption problem so they made bribing legal (but not bribe taking) and bribes tax-exempt. So everyone declared their bribes on their tax returns, the bribees were discouraged (or prosecuted) and the problem was solved. But this only works if you pursue the bribe takers.
Fascinating.
"See Implementing the 1996 OECD Recommendation on the Tax Deductibility of Bribes to Foreign Public Officials, OECD (May 26, 1997) (Report by the Committee on Fiscal Affairs ("CFA") to the OECD Council at Ministerial Level) [hereinafter Implementation of Tax Deductibility Recommendation] (describing current member state practices regarding the tax treatment of overseas bribes). Attitudes of OECD Member countries concerning the deductibility of bribes to foreign officials vary greatly. See id. at 7. The laws vary accordingly but in most countries, bribes across borders are deductible as business expenses. See id. at 7-8; M. Javade Chaudri, OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (Conference on Corruption, American University, Washington College of Law. April 6. 1998). in 2 COMBATING CORRUPTION-RECENT MULTILATERAL INITIATIVES 252 (1998) [hereinafter 2 COMBATING CORRUPTION I (on file with author) (summarizing and analyzing the OECD Convention, listing the signatories to its provisions, and noting that foreign bribery and related tax-deductibility is an accepted German business practice). The OECD Member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium. Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland. France. Germany. Greece. Hungary. Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands. New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain. Sweden. Switzerland. Turkey. United Kingdom, United States. See id. at 261."
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a... (PDF)
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, India reads like a libertarian paradise. I'd expect it to be an economic powershi.
It's literally the opposite of that. Corrupt government is still the presence of a government/state.
Right, the Government gets in your way (Bribes, red tape for everything etc.) in every step instead of staying out of it, because they have every intention to extract maximal resources through corrupt means. While this may not have been the intention of the Government polity (indeed, the corrupt wealth isn't reflected in tax receipts, but a flourishing black market) it is what ends up happening.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with you entirely. When the British left India, there was officially a transfer of power to the congress party. The first prime minister was appointed by the party. The constitution, the police, the bureaucracy and the court system was inherited by the people. Unlike the developed world or China or Vietnam, India did not go through a bloody revolution. What that meant is that systems that were explicitly meant…
You’ve diagnosed the problem well, but I don’t understand how that leads to “smaller government” being a solution. In many regards are relate to civic responsibility, India probably needs bigger government. They need it both to enforce the small laws (litter, traffic rules, safety regulations) as well as building the sustained infrastructure to make life more convenient (mass transit to deal with traffic, public hous…
I think both of you are right. We need a smaller existing type of government, and we need a bigger new type of government, which is more answerable to the people.
Consider, for example, the police force. They are not customer (inasmuch as you can call the voter/taxpayer a customer) oriented force; they are a subjugation force. They carry sticks around, which they wield with gay abandon. Many of the forms of power in the current system are meant to keep the people down and subservient.
To continue this example: what we need are fewer state-level (where "state" is the region in question) police, and more local (city-level or district-level) police. We need more power on quality-of-life issues devolved to the local bodies, and less with the state or the feds.
Re: Zero Rupee Note
#210Earlier 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…
> What do you guys make in India?
> It was a fairly simple question, it was a kind of brutal self appraisal, but apart from making soaps and clothing and ball point pens, you really struggle to answer the question. What IP do we build here? and what do we make that we sell, like products?
Just to add to what others had said:
1. Moser Bauer is (was?) the largest manufacturer of CDs in the world. Sure, few people use CDs anymore these days, but 20 years ago, MB was a giant.
2. Essel Propack is the leader by far of packaging material like the tubes your toothpaste comes in.
3. India had a pivotal role in stopping the AIDS epidemic in Africa. India offered a year's supply of anti-retroviral drugs (for AIDS patients) to Africans for $300/year; companies in the West were demanding 100x as much. Just imagine the number of lives saved thanks to this move alone.
4. Lifestyle ideas like yoga, meditation, vegetarianism are all heavily influenced by India.
5. India had been doing "organic farming" for millennia; Albert Howard learned organic farming techniques from Indian farmers, and spread them in the West. He's known as the "father of modern organic farming". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Howard