If I were in charge of the partition of India, I’d do it bottom-up. Starting with the smallest practical districts, ask in each one: For each of your neighbors, would you amalgamate? Do the most favored mergers (skipping any that would create enclaves), and ask again.

(It appears that I had this idea first for Iraq after US occupation and later applied it to India.)

I imagine the result as perhaps a hundred unitary states in twenty confederations, each including both new republics and old monarchies.

A new thought. Suppose that, where mergers are least popular, we make the boundary permanent and not ask again. We might end up with some C-shaped states, partly divided by an internal boundary (imagine that France’s borders include the Loire). What would that mean?

Looks like I’m staying home alone until a vaccine comes; it’s what I mostly do anyway, though I miss the weekly card games. As a libertarian, I do not presume to know what’s best for others. So, lucky me, I need not obsess about policy.

Hm, the first two links here have been lying around for five years; guess I ought to shove them out.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry on restructuring the banks

“Zomia”, a large region in Asia that was effectively stateless until recently

James Leroy Wilson on The Limits of Utilitarianism. The payoff is near the bottom.

Would not a government prudently looking to the wellbeing of its people, like a prudent parent, encourage the people to learn to provide for themselves in its absence – i.e., encourage private provision of vital services – rather than risk sudden failure of those services in some political crisis?

A free market would not say to the poor, “It’s cute that you want to earn money by providing a service, but first we need you to save up for a license.”

The second-weirdest argument for statism that I’ve heard is: “We are social animals!” … implying, I guess, that if not for the constant threat of force we would not behave according to our nature.

The weirdest (which I’ve only heard twice) is: “There are always some people who will seek to dominate others, and there needs to be a structure to facilitate that ambition.”

A Mother’s White Privilege

To admit white privilege is to admit a stake, however small, in ongoing injustice. It’s to see a world different than your previous perception. Acknowledging that your own group enjoys social and economic benefits of systemic racism is frightening and uncomfortable.

She lists a bunch of ugly things that are unlikely to happen to her sons, as well as some offensive things not said to her by the ignorant, thanks to their blondness.

What’s missing from the piece is any description of “benefits” — any reason to believe that we as Whites would be any worse off if, for example, the Blue Gang were to stop abusing Blacks.

Not being murdered by cops is not a “privilege”. Nobody ever said, “Let’s organize and arm a gang of bullies so that they can spend their days not murdering our kind of people.” Absence of SWAT raids is the state of nature, not an artificial benefit.