Jagdish Bhagwati as Mobile Phone Neurotic

Economics
Author

Stephen Kirchner

Published

March 30, 2006

Should we be surprised when an adjunct scholar at a supposedly free market US think-tank writes a piece calling for regulatory attacks and litigation against mobile phone users and companies, simply because the author finds mobile phone use annoying? 

This is what the AEI’s Jagdish Bhagwati proposes in an article in the FT.  Bhagwati compares mobile phone use to bird flu, suggests mobile phone users are breaching human rights conventions and then turns vindictive, saying:

If providence were just, it would surely affect the brains of the users.

Bhagwati is a long-standing apologist for capital controls, belying his reputation as a defender of free trade and globalisation.  He is also clearly neurotic.