Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Do People underinvest in spiritual activities?- continued from previous article




To explain why people might be underinvesting in their spiritual growth and even contributing less than optimally to spiritual activities, we will now increasingly use terms used in "common economic and non economic" usage to convey the certain features of spiritual growth. We have in the previous post referred to spiritual growth as an investment where in "output" begins to flow after a certain period of activity or investment of effort. Without delving too deeply in to what constitutes "spiritual development" , it can be agreed that based on study of major faiths, there is certain final " Goal" to be attained at the end of the process,( known by different names in differnet faiths). Secondly again from the study of well established and widely practiced faiths and literature available on them, we can say that " time of Final Goal" cannot be predicted and is most defintely unknown to the aspirant and finally while there are positive "by products" of the practices, the process of growth towards the goal fromthe point of view of aspirant represents a flattish curve which at or closer to the time of " Final Goal" becomes steeper and steeper thus the spirtual growth curve may look almost like a "L" which has been rotated left on its axis.Finally and partly related to the above, as in "market for second hand cars" (See George Akerlof's book Market for Lemons"), there is asymetric information between buyer and seller about condition of second hand cars ( Buyer doubts car's true value and suspects seller is hiding facts). In case of second hand cars either market for second hand cars collapses or second cars sell for price below their true value .What is the parallel between the above example and our subject?. While there is no "seller" in our subject when we are dealing genuine Spiritual Masters, it is true that Masters know much more than followers when in two distinct ways (1) they know the true value of the methods, and the Final Goal neither of which they can convey fully to the aspirants (2) referring to our previous left rotated L shaped growth curve , it can be said that true growth of aspirants is known to Masters /Teachers which again they cannot fully convey to aspirtants generally. So aspirants for a long time do not know the "true benefits" of the process they may be undergoing through most of the process until the time " they have got in the car and driven it ". Putting it all togther we can summarise the following about the spiritual growth generally ( though there may be and are exceptions to this)a. Spiritual growth is high risk investment from the point of aspirant since unlike material investment, neither "work in progress" is visible nor the final time or true value or taste of the Final Goal is knownb. there is asymetric information betwene the Master and the disciple about the true value of the service being provided by the Teacher/ master/Guru.Hence to the extent people will generally 'Pay" or "invest" on perceived value of the service and on risks associated with the Final Product we can conclude that there may be significant underinvestment in spiritual development.From the above we can also conclude that as people beome more and more closer to the Goal with more "by products" to support their faith in initial and past investments they will increasingly invest more resources in such activity. A second conclusion is that people may be donating more as they grow but here adjustment needs to be made for other factors that might impinge on their ability to donate

To be continued: In the next article we will consider another major reason for sub optimal investment in spiritual growth

Our other sites are www.kal.in and www.astrogurus.com and ckal.mobi ( mobile users) for short term stock market predictions based on a model using Tarot cards

Monday, October 29, 2007

Do People underinvest in spiritual activities?- continued from previous article

To explain why people might be underinvesting in their spiritual growth and even contributing less than optimally to spiritual activities, we will now increasingly use terms used in "common economic and non economic" usage to convey the certain features of spiritual growth. We have in the previous post referred to spiritual growth as an investment where in "output" begins to flow after a certain period of activity or investment of effort. Without delving too deeply in to what constitutes "spiritual development" , it can be agreed that based on study of major faiths, there is certain final " Goal" to be attained at the end of the process,( known by different names in differnet faiths). Secondly again from the study of well established and widely practiced faiths and literature available on them, we can say that " time of Final Goal" cannot be predicted and is most defintely unknown to the aspirant and finally while there are positive "by products" of the practices, the process of growth towards the goal fromthe point of view of aspirant represents a flattish curve which at or closer to the time of " Final Goal" becomes steeper and steeper thus the spirtual growth curve may look almost like a "L" which has been rotated left on its axis.

Finally and partly related to the above, as in "market for second hand cars" (See George Akerlof's book Market for Lemons"), there is asymetric information between buyer and seller about condition of second hand cars ( Buyer doubts car's true value and suspects seller is hiding facts). In case of second hand cars either market for second hand cars collapses or second cars sell for price below their true value .

What is the parallel between the above example and our subject?. While there is no "seller" in our subject when we are dealing genuine Spiritual Masters, it is true that Masters know much more than followers when in two distinct ways (1) they know the true value of the methods, and the Final Goal neither of which they can convey fully to the aspirants (2) referring to our previous left rotated L shaped growth curve , it can be said that true growth of aspirants is known to Masters /Teachers which again they cannot fully convey to aspirtants generally. So aspirants for a long time do not know the "true benefits" of the process they may be undergoing through most of the process until the time " they have got in the car and driven it ". Putting it all togther we can summarise the following about the spiritual growth generally ( though there may be and are exceptions to this)

a. Spiritual growth is high risk investment from the point of aspirant since unlike material investment, neither "work in progress" is visible nor the final time or true value or taste of the Final Goal is known

b. there is asymetric information betwene the Master and the disciple about the true value of the service being provided by the Teacher/ master/Guru.

Hence to the extent people will generally 'Pay" or "invest" on perceived value of the service and on risks associated with the Final Product we can conclude that there may be significant underinvestment in spiritual development.

From the above we can also conclude that as people beome more and more closer to the Goal with more "by products" to support their faith in initial and past investments they will increasingly invest more resources in such activity. A second conclusion is that people may be donating more as they grow but here adjustment needs to be made for other factors that might impinge on their ability to donate

To be continued

In the next article we will consider another major reason for sub optimal investment in spiritual growth

Our other sites are www.kal.in and www.astrogurus.com and ckal.mobi ( mobile users) for short term stock market predictions based on a model using Tarot cards

Friday, October 26, 2007

Do people underinvest in spiritual activities?

To reduce spiritual activities to world of money and economics may seem somwhat gross to the spirituallyinclined.However the larger purpose of the work of which this article forms a small component is to draw attention and engage people to the possibility that rightly framed public policy can spur or be conducive to spiritual development of people generally certainly over the longer term. That is perhaps jumping too far ahead in our quest though a draft paper written two years back does attempt to relate economic development and spiritual growth with its tentative conclusions on role of education)

Spiritual pursuit may seem poles apart from worldly pursuits but both have at their core the common aim of increasing and maintaining happiness and /or removal of pain in its various forms ( See for example "The Science of Religion" by Paramhamsa Yogananda published by Self realisation Fellowship). There are other reasons why spiritual pursuits could be considered/studied with the standard and evolving economic and non-economic instruments ( such as controlled experiments or using data generated through controlled experiments).

1. First the ultimate goal of taking to spiritual endeavour as much in common with the aims/purpose of the worldly pursuits and that would allow us to compare one with the other in a limited way
2. The point (1) thus throws up the question of how people would allocate time and resources between the two category of pursuits since resources are always scarce and there are opportunity costs involved at least in the short and medium term
3. Thirdly there is consensus of what constitutes " Spiritual growth" ( See Varieties of Religious Experience by William James"and works of several spiritual giants over last hundreds of years)and while it cannot be meaured as per our present knowledge like income and expenditure, there may be ways to capture this measurement problem)
4. Fourthly Spiritual development has characterstics of an investment where the "output begins to flow" usually after a time which may vary from person to person

To be continued

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Could people underfund in spiritual activities?

As part of our larger work on relating broad economic themes and spiritual development, we will explore whether there might be reasons that will make people underinvest in spiritual activities or sub optimally fund spiritual development?

Comng soon within a few days

Monday, October 1, 2007

Dollar deluge and subprime woes

In past few months dollar deluge, its effect on appreciating the rupee against the dollar and deletrious impact on India's export sector most visibly the IT sector - engine of India's economic boom in last many years has people of all hue quite worried- whether RBI bankers, IT people, other exporters or Government. The cut in US interest rates may deepen the problem as significant portion of dollar flowing out of bond market and even share market may find santuary in Indian share market. RBI has taken a few steps to check this problem over last few months. Following are some of other options which to best of knowledge RBI has not taken so far (??)

1. Subprime woes in US and Euroepan countries gives a great opportunity for cash rich Indians to buy real estate in US. This will considerably dent US dollar inflows. If such measures couldbe undertaken by other countries like China etc US housing market problem may see a soft landing. Incidentally this also shows that if there are more than one or two truly economically strong countries, suitable policy actions could result in win-win outcomes for all countries, mitigating business cycle impacts in one country and spreading its export around the world. Ofcourse riders could be put ( & will need to be put) on capital gains, repatriation of funds if properties purchased are sold off etc within a certain time period

2 Similary real estate companies could be allowed to take up ambitious projects abroad in JV abroad. This could provide valuable experience in learning by doing in hi-tech secure energy efficient residential and commercial projects with spinoffs in other areas in future . All of this need not by done in US where oversupply is a problem. What is true for share market investing is likely to be good for real estate investments as well- buy when chips are down and sell when prices sky rocket.

3. By extension allow Indian firms to take up /acquire key assets/natural resources abroad in a bigger way.

4. Also surplus dollars couldbe deployed by Govt/firms to take up high risk-high return projects which provided strategic advantage in future- development of state of art defence technologies if these are permissible, technologies which could application in rural areas, in medicine . Given the developments in Indian corporate world in recent years, there is probably a high appetite/unmet demand for highly visible, image enhancing and most importantly truly productive high risk investments in the cash rich corporate world . The list is limited by our imagination.

visit www.kal.in and www.astrogurus.com for stock market predictions. cKal.mobi an mobile internet version of site to be launched soon
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