Great post Dale. And great to see you out of your science/space schtick again.

Not that I want you to stop that, mind.

Sorry to disappoint Nick... but I was merely wearing my Samizdata Editor's hat on this one. The author is Taylor Dinerman, a sometimes MSM journalist and NYC drinking buddy.

Good post. We should do more like this, although goodness knows I don't have the time to do more of this sort of first-hand reporting myself.

An interestingly informative article overall. But ...

I note, in particular:

Why capitalism, greed, economic freedom and cultural commercialism should be a self evident good thing in Bombay and not in America or Europe is one of those mysteries that defy rational explanation.

It worries me, and is perhaps at least part of the explanation, that greed is equated as of merit, along with capitalism and, particularly, with economic freedom.

Now, in my on-line dictionary (WordNet (r) 2.0) the definition of greed is:

n 1: excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves

2: reprehensible acquisitiveness; insatiable desire for wealth (personified as one of the deadly sins) [syn: {avarice}, {covetousness}, {rapacity}, {avaritia}]

Whilst I accept that many dictionaries limit their definition of greed to 'excessive' rather than 'undeserved', common usage, at least in the society I frequent, definitely includes both.

In my view it would be better, in the main posting, to use something along the lines of 'industrious self-interest' rather than 'greed'.

If one is to claim truly that greed is good, and equate it as worthy as economic freedom, then one deserves (self-evidently in my view) to have one's rationality defied.

Best regards

Nigel, "greed" in the sense that most capitalist critics use it, is a pejorative way of saying "self interest". Greed, from the usual dictionary definition, signifies gluttony, which is unhealthy and against a person's rational self interest.

That many people are nevertheless irrationally obsessed by material wealth at the expense of anything else, such as leisure or family life, is undeniable, but that is not of course peculiar to the market place. Under authortarian, and collectivist arrangements, one of the main examples of greed is the greed for power over other people.

However, I always liked the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" speech. Essentially, I agree with all of it. It is a shame that in the Wall Street movie that Oliver Stone made, he has Gekko later state the lie that capitalism is a "zero sum game". It isn't.

Nigel, and who is to decide what is 'excessive' anyway? At the individual level, excessive greed self-interest can be just as destructive as excessive self-denial. So can be excessive love (and hatred can be useful and productive, as long as it is not 'excessive'). At the societal level, all human traits are just that: integral and undeniable parts of human nature, they are neither bad nor good, the only possible exception being violence, and even that depending on the circumstances.

I was quite disappointed to see The Times suddenly declare that it was going to start referring to Bombay as "Mumbai". None of my colleagues in India call it Mumbai, not even the Marathi-speaking ones. For consistency they should start calling Dublin "Baile atha cliath", Warsaw "Warszawa" and New York "Noo Yowak" too.

Re: hypocrisy, and Rushdie's position on the Sandanistas

I saw Rushdie speak a few months ago on British multiculturalism as a source of terrorism, saying much the same as Mark Steyn. This report makes it look like that is his considered and consistent view.

So, as for the Sandanistas, is it too much to hope that he's changed his mind? The hypocrisy could lie in nothing more than finding it convenient not to mention that quite a long time ago he was quite seriously wrong about something which was rather important then. Hardly the most serious - or uncommon - of sins, I'd venture to suggest.

The naming of places in other languages - and even more so in other scripts - is always going to be problematic. Look at the wide variation in how the capital of China has been rendered into English - Peking, Peiping, Beijing.

As far as I am concerned the name of a place is what the locals call it, modified as necessary to cope with transliteration from other scripts or to let me wrap my tongue around it. Sometimes for historic reasons it may be something entirely different - as with Dublin - but consistency doesn't come into it.

The naming of Mumbai/Bombay was I always assumed part of a process of 'Indianisation' - an assertion of an Indian identity over the colonial one, by using an alternative transliteration. I have no particular problem with that per se, but your comment (and others at different times) seem to imply some sort of PC conspiracy. What do you think is actually going on?

Mary Contrary, anyone who does not sometimes change their mind during the course of their life is usually called a 'fanatic'. Gawd knows I have had several 'paradigm shifts' over the years.

Credit to Rushdie if he has seen the light (he used to be one of my pet hates but I find much of what he says quite reasonable these days).

Calling it Mumbai instead of Bombay isn't really related to throwing off the colonial past, it's to do with pointless local politics; however, we assume the former which is why we fall over ourselves to comply.

In Bangalore there has been an absorbing debate about whether it should in fact be called Bengaluru. This is (arguably) a more accurate transliteration from local language Kannada, but there again a big proportion of the new population isn't from Karnataka (or "the Carnatic", as I won't call it) and aren't that keen, and it's still stalled.

Calcutta is the one that puzzles me as it was actually founded by the Brits as Calcutta and named after a village which transliterates as "Kalikata", so there's not much justification for changing it to Kolkata other than vowel pronunciation changes over time (in both Bengali and English).

Still, I realise that the Indians whom I speak to about this aren't a very representative demographic.

Webster's (Second) New International Dictionary, the one with which I grew up (still, BTW, distinguishing between the widely-different gantlet/gauntlet), has definitions closer to the root "hunger" meaning. Webster's Third is severely dumbed down, and should be avoided when possible; in this case it introduces a notion of reprehensibility that had only been adumbrated in Webster's Second's notion of excess.

Interestingly, there was a parallel negative semantic development in Latin from aveo (crave/desire) through avarus (avaritious; original meaning only poetical) to avaritia (avarice).

"Self interest" - as in working the political game to get bailouts?

"No - self interest as man as man," Rand or some other version of Aristotelianism.

Why not just say a sense of honour?

Why twist language so that honourable conduct (which, in a world like this one, is almost bound to lead to great suffering and then death) is someone "self interest"?

Unless one says "honouring the self" I suppose.

As for economic policy.

Yes - back in the 1950's and 1960's Pakistan was a lot less bad than India.

Then it fell apart.

First socialism (for example the closing of Christian mission schools - not on the grounds of Christianity, but on grounds of there being private) then "Islamism" when the socialism failed.