Buchanan is a hero of mine, though- because I come from India which was the victim of the Enlightenment (Grotius considered enslavement of Tamils by the Dutch to be a good thing)- I don't share his belief in 'constitutional economics' or the mission of the Federalist Society or some unique 'civilizing mission' attributable to Buchanan's, but not my, ancestors. Sen could feel an affinity with Buchanan because he, as a 'Brahmo', could legitimately claim spiritual descent from the Benthamite Raja Ramohan Roy. In other words, Sen- like Niradh Chaudhri before him- had an attitude which was very acceptable to a certain type of White intellectual, more particularly because they kept playing the race card and dilating on the poverty of their country of origin which, quite naturally, flattered their hosts' sense of noblesse oblige.



You have highlighted Sen's 'graciousness'. Is it not rather selective? Peter Bowbrick, who later averted an actual famine in Africa, took apart Sen's work on famines . Sen sneered at him and obfuscated the issue- a tactic he uses every time the issue comes up. He has never acknowledged that he was egregiously wrong. In honoring Buchanan, Sen says that it is a striking fact that no famine has occurred in a Democracy. Yet he comes from East Bengal where, in his life time, there were two big famines directly attributable to the transition to democratically elected, popular, governments. In the first instance, a soldier- Lord Wavell- ended the famine, while there was no second Bangladesh famine once a soldier had taken charge.

Sen does respond to 'reasoned critiques' which are as nonsensical as his own oeuvre but only so more such nonsense might burgeon. The Buchanan-Sen dialog is a case in point. The former, though a student of Frank Knight, forgot about Uncertainty in order to talk Rawlsian nonsense . Still, he provided intellectual cover for a movement within American law vastly agreeable to his own constituency. Indeed, the Bench may soon reverse Smullyvan v NYT- i.e. Trump will get to sue any newspaper which exposes his lewd conduct! Sen may have thought he was providing intellectual cover for a leftward shift to 'transformative constitutionalism' in India. But the effect has been the reverse. Right wing parties do better because they can do mechanism design for better 'last mile delivery'. Rent seeking can burgeon- it is rational to turn profit into rent- but rent dissipation falls. If we compare mathematical economists from Taiwan- Sho-Chieh Tsiang & Ta-Chung Liu- with their Indian counterparts, Mahalnobis, Raj and Sen's own mentor Sukhamoy Chakroborty- what do we find? The former did useful work- Liu steered econometricans toward 'reduced form'estimation and is mentioned as an influence by two Nobel winners- and, what's more, steered their country towards export-led growth in '58. The latter, that is the Indians, were equally talented but doubled down on 'begging bowl' diplomacy and 'turnpike' based import-substitution. Sen escaped this fate but only by crossing over from Economics into something which looked like Philosophy but was actually quite useless. By the end of the Seventies, Econ Journals refused to publish Social Choice papers. The Research Program had crashed and burned but, by Rothbard's Law, its most foolish exponents continued to go through the motions. In the process, they became relentless self-promoters. Sen was described as the 'Mother Theresa' of Economics and got the Nobel as a type of affirmative action. Yet, in Pakistan, there was another European nun- Dr. Ruth Pfau. She was an actual doctor and her work with the lepers etc. won her the admiration even of the Taliban. In Calcutta, there was Dr. Jack Prager. He explained why India had such terrible health outcomes in the Public Sector. But Sen wasn't listening. He has been repeating the same nonsense decade after decade. That is why people have stopped listening to him. I think this is a terrible tragedy because unless good people stand together against the evil forces of Fascism, Nazism and the Spanish Inquisition everybody's heads will explode and this may cause the Environment to cancel its Netflix subscription. As is well known, Development-as-Freedom uses the Environment's password to watch Netflix and so there may well be a negative impact on aggregate Human Capabilities despite the fact that everybody's heads had already exploded.