Archive for the 'Opinion' Category
Paradox of Civilization Issue.
With boat loads of refugees turning up in Australian waters once again I find the situation to be a perfect example of the “Paradox Of Civilization” highlighted previously.
Now normally I would revise the definitions and try to express the issue in terms of the some concepts I have been playing with lately. Intellectual masturbation though makes for a boring read. So this time I will leave the philosophical wank for another post and just get to the point.
We have all seen the images of burning boats and bandaged people being rescued by the Australian Navy. What is not being discussed is that this whole asylum seeker issue the world over is an abuse of civilization. To force the civilized into a situation where their own moral and ethical standards are used against them is abhorrent. It is simply emotional blackmail, no different to the beggar breaking his child’s legs to get more money from passers by.
“Let me into your country or I will set myself on fire….”.
The debate that must occur.
A more serious issue behind all of this is that of closing the borders. It is a debate that must occur, but which because of the Paradox of Civilization the civilized world world finds extremely difficult to do.
Unfortunately whether it occurs this year or in a hundred years it is inevitable but in a democracy where the personal desires of an immigrant population affects political policy is a debate that may be impossible in a century. The simple mathematics of an exponentially growing world population on a finite and fixed land mass mean that there will always be increasing numbers of less fortunate wanting to cross your borders and those you do bring in will always find ways around your laws to sponsor their friends and family.
The Paradox of Civilization pushes us into a position where if we don’t open our borders then we according to our own standards are behaving in an uncivilized manner, but if we do then we put stresses on our infrastructure that damages ourselves.
The pain associated with this debate does not lessen by deferring it. At some point nations will be faced with the choice of pushing their own social and physical infrastructure beyond breaking point or saying no. If they take the first option then they themselves become the “less fortunate” and will become a burden on neighboring countries resulting in the whole house of cards collapsing.
Western infrastructure is already close to breaking point. Whether it be laziness or stupidity in the West I do not know, but we are currently unable to meet our own demands for medical and engineering skills and rely on skills from the developing world to supply our own needs. We no longer are able to manufacture our own products and rely on other nations to provide them for us.
Taking skilled resources away from the countries that need them is a serious issue. An Indian doctor on Harley St filling a gap that an Anglo Saxon is unwilling or unable to fill is not helping raise India’s standard of health. An African engineer building western oil platforms is not helping to develop Africa’s infrastructure. And that in turn increases immigration pressure.
This is a key problem. The asylum seeker and refugee issue will not go away until the developing world builds enough of it’s own infrastructure to support it’s own population. That can’t occur while the skilled from the developing world turn their back on their own to seek greener pastures elsewhere.
At some point an individual has to have loyalty to their own culture and history and put their own people ahead of personal wealth and status.
From a longer term Western view we need to reduce the immigration pressure and to do that we need to take steps to ensure skills are retained within the developing world. We also need to have a real hard look at ourselves to work out why with all the education, resources and opportunity we have why our own children won’t do mathematics, science and engineering. Why is it we have a demand for skilled labor we are unable to meet? Do we think of ourselves as some “elite” ruling class for whom doing real work is somehow something for those “brown and yellow people” lower down in the international pecking order.
Many of you have arts law history – have a think about what happened to the old European ruling classes last time the “I am too good for that” attitude became popular….
April 29 2009 | Economics and Opinion | No Comments »
Who To Blame
Well the Dow has turned down again. Technically it was overbought so this was due to happen, but we are also seeing the rumor mill go into overdrive with everything from “leaks” of the financial stress tests over at the Turner blog, to theories of China trying to escape toxic US debt.
Underlying this is the continual blame for this mess on the credit market meltdown. Well folks you are looking at the car wreck and blaming the telegraph pole. As I began discussing back in Park Bench Mortgages the meltdown in the credit market is a symptom not a cause. You should be asking yourselves why the driver didn’t see the pole in the first place.
The financial meltdown occurred because the pressure came off the housing market resulting in a situation where the value of the assets was not rising enough to cover the loans. All those “Sub Prime” loans were perfectly good as long as the demand for housing kept up. It would not have mattered if our friend on the park bench defaulted. The lender could have sold the property and covered themselves.
The real issue is the fact that demand for housing slowed and no one saw it coming and for that I have to blame the absolutely crappy level of mathematics education amongst our business, economics, banking, financial and political leadership. How many of them have at least two years uni level mathematics – or in fact how many of them have good enough high school mathematics to even get into first year uni math….
To see where I am coming from remember back a bit to all those home improvement shows that swamped TV a few years back during the real estate boom. “Auction Squad”, “Room for Improvement” etc. We were at a period in history in which the Baby Boomers were in the family home and their children where getting married and buying their first homes. Both these groups were competing in the same housing market. Once the after boomers had their new home their minds turned to having families and the demand cooled. At the time you could see the pregnant bellies morph into new mothers turning up at work to show off their latest, which morphed into masses of prams on the sidewalk, then pushers and demand for day care centers.
All of this is was predictable to anyone with even the slightest level of mathematics. Population versus age data is obtained by all the departments of statistics across the western world. All it would have taken to work out that the real estate demand was going to cool off and to adjust lending and risk management appropriately would have been for someone to look at the data.
It would not have been hard to ask “what do people in the twenty to thirty age group do”. “What will the effect on real estate of the baby boomers children themselves settling down be”…
You could literally see it happening around you at the time.
Why the mathematics? Quite simply because the leadership of the western world are mathematically challenged. They can not think in terms of data that is represented by anything more complex than 
. They don’t think first to look at the data and try to understand cause and effect. Statistics to them is a tool to highlight their opinion rather than a tool that should be used to form the opinion in the first place.
This is all compounded by the fact that all these guys have MBA’s. They all have masters level degrees implying a higher level of education. Did they learn anything or was it simply a case of paying their $20k for a ticket to senior management that the universities were happy to take…..
I don’t know about you, but I have known a lot of these guys. They are not smart. Well connected, well spoken and aggressive yes. Some of them are canny and street smart, but you wouldn’t want them in control of anything more complicated than a profit and loss statement for a fish and chip shop.
These guys aren’t good enough. Your lives depend upon their decisions. They make a mistake you get hurt.
Get rid of them – aggressively.
April 21 2009 | Economics and Market and Opinion and Politics | No Comments »
Treading On Your Own Foot.
With the worry about the US auto industry I thought I would trot over and have a look at General Motors website. Now I understand all too well the near impossibility for Western manufacturing to compete against countries that do not have to contend with the welfare and social costs that we consider the norm, but the General Motors product portfolio is pure insanity.
Keep in mind I am an Aussie and all I see of GM is their Australian flavour Holden. In the US though they have Buick, Cadillac, Chevorlet, Pontiac, Saturn and SAAB all of which are essentially what you would call a normal car. Cadillac of course being up market and SAAB being Swedish. Add into this GMC and Hummer.
All of Buick Cadillac, Chevorlet, Pontiac and Saturn sell the same bloody thing!!! They are competing head on in exactly the same bloody marketplace. Doh! No wonder the individual product lines are not profitable. Then to compound the error GMC and Chevy compete with light trucks and the whole bloody lot of them seem to sell SUV’s.
There aren’t even very many key product differentiators here. It’s not like comparing Honda with Mazda with Toyota. Three brands all of which offer significantly different cars. Can someone tell me what the difference between these brands are? Particularly between Buick, Pontiac and Saturn.
And they don’t seem to export them. In fact that is a US problem in general. Chrysler recently dipped it’s toe back into the Australian market after an absence of thirty years, but imported American cars simply are not on Australian roads. American products are simply not on Australian shelves. But then again American products are probably becoming scarce on American shelves as well.
I have no idea what the management of these companies learned at MBA school or did they just pay their $20k+ in fees for a ticket to an executive job…..
So advice guys, it is not Just Pontiac that needs to become a niche car. They all do. Work out where you have duplication in your product placement and which brand that product should live under.
With the cars that you keep, they have to be better. Better design, better engines, better performance, better handling, better everything. A production line can make a great car with the same effort it can make a lousy one.
Take the real niche sports cars and design, build and sell them from a single factory. That should be a business in it’s own right and should target export heavily. There would be people all over the world that would pay good money for a ‘vette.
Find out who in the management tree has held back innovation in design and fire them. Then fire the suck arses who supported them. Rehire they guys you did fire for challenging the status quo.
In fact get a whole lot of new blood into management anyway. Get rid of all the people responsible for product and development and strategy. It hasn’t worked so why reward them.
March 31 2009 | Economics and Opinion | No Comments »
A Sobering Thought.
When the threats of peace are greater than those of war we live in dangerous times.
The reason for my concern is that historically nations have a habit of responding to economic crisis by building tanks, guns and marching on their neighbors. The mobilization of “idle men” that I have seen goes back to at least Louis IX and the Crusades as described in Joinville’s memoirs of the early thirteenth century. I would suspect it is a strategy that traces itself to times long before that.
I am not even sure that war is the intentional goal. What we have during such times is an increase in government spend, a build up of matériel and an increase in available human resources.
During times of economic crisis unemployment is high, the private sector is not spending and governments are under extreme pressure to create work. If they don’t their opposition will. They almost have no choice.
One way they tend to do this is by increasing government purchasing of military equipment. It is one of those solutions that would be very hard to avoid. To keep the wheels of industry turning, governments have to spend large amounts of money on something. That something also can’t just be road building or welfare handouts. The spend has to be carefully managed so it doesn’t flow out of the economy, it keeps vital industries alive and it needs to be done in such a way that it has the largest impact.
Deficit Spend
Such spend needs to go in to the top of the economic food chain so that it can flow through the maximal number of industries. A single dollar spent on food goes to a farmer. A dollar spent on a fighter jet flows through a systems supplier, who in turn spends on another technology supplier, who spends on a component supplier and so on until that single dollar touches the hands of hundreds of people before it is finally spent on subsistence items.
The natural solution to this is defense spend. Not only for its broad impact, but also because it can be locked inside national borders for national security reasons. America spending trillions on a bail out that flows to China for clothes and TV sets without touching American hands does not help the American taxpayer who is paying for it.
With reference to current events it must be extremely tempting to bail out General Motors and Chrysler through the purchase of a hundred thousand trucks and cars for the Army and the Marines.
The problem comes when you have a build up of military equipment, high unemployment and international tensions, perhaps created by the military build up itself. When this occurs you have the perfect conditions for war. Not only to you have the motive, but you have the means and opportunity.
Just remember you can not go to war if you do not have the men and the guns to do so. The build up of matériel and of men is a necessary prerequisite.
The Alternative.
The scary bit is to consider the alternative. What happens if there is not massive government spend. What happens if we do not keep the wheels of our manufacturing industries turning. What happens if we have government spend and it pours out of our economies. What happens if we do not have the economic activity to generate taxes to pay for medicine, education and welfare?
In the relatively civilized times we live in an oft asked question amongst the young is “why do countries go to war?”. With the specter of wide scale unemployment, industrial and economic stagnation, governments unable to provide basic services and the polis marching in the streets, we might be about to find out the reason why civilized people take to the field.
Scaremongering perhaps. But it would not be the first time we have done this. And perhaps not the first time the polis has cheered on as the tanks roll off the production line.
The military build up preceding WWII is what ended the great depression. Hitler almost had no choice following the Treaty of Versailles other than to deficit spend. The US was dragged out of depression only when it started it’s own arms build up in response to the European and Pacific tensions.
A megalomaniac is one thing, a heavily armed megalomaniac quite another.
In fact WWII may have been caused by the build up of arms produced by the deficit spend response to the depression rather than the build up of arms being driven by the desire to have a war.
It need not be the US that initiates an arms build up. China, India as well as Russia, Europe and the UK all face slowing economies and all the social ill’s and political instability associated with a deep recession or depression.
It only takes one of them to find themselves in a position where they have no choice but to ramp up military spend or find their political opponents carried into office on the shoulders and cheers of the unemployed polis.
Worth a thought.
As a post scripts, it should be mentioned that this is not the only way to acheive the same thing. A very close alternative without the military risk was achieved by the “Space Race” in the 1960′s where a large amount of US federal funds were poured into the depressed southern states.
January 22 2009 | Economics and Opinion | No Comments »
Back to Engineering 101 I think.
Reportedly large hunks of the Antarctic Ice Shelf are breaking off. Why? Well it turns out that the reason is that they are sticking out too far to be supported by the internal mechanical structure of the ice.
The question should not be why are they breaking off, but why are they sticking out so far.
Think about it. Imagine the picture in your mind. A region of land surrounded by ocean with a layer of ice on top. How do you get the ice to stick out further?
Needless to say a force is being exerted on the ice. Imagine the ice layer being squashed out as something presses down on it.
What is most likely to be the mass pressing on it?
Most likely increased snowfall over the Antarctic in recent years increasing the snow mass.
To find out what melt would look like, get a large slab of ice and hang it out over a table edge and watch it. Does it melt from the inside out, or the outside in? Does it break in the middle as it thins out? It wouldn’t cost a lot to find out. Let me know with pictures if you get an answer.
It is actually an interesting engineering question.
- Whether the mass of the ice hanging over the edge causes it to break as the ice thins. Imaging a big slab of ice with heat applied in the middle.
- Does the thinning ice reduce the mass keeping the ice shelf below the structural breaking point even as the ice thins. Imagine the ice melting from one end.
But it’s melting! Because someone you don’t know, using data you didn’t critically analyze yourself said so.
Don’t worry I have bought shares before because someone I didn’t know using data I had not seen said was a good idea as well.
I suggest you read my post on Truth. As a general rule, by the time the main stream politicians jump on an issue, the truth has probably moved forward.
January 01 2009 | Opinion | No Comments »
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act 101
America, just found the FISA 101 Act on your Justice Department Website. Now I know you have a war on, and I know that you need the ability to identify threats to yourselves. Probably do ourselves.
Just in case you may have forgotten, the Australians (thats us mate), the British, the Canadians, The New Zealanders, the Germans, the Poles and a whole lot more are all on the same side, many are taking casualties both military and civilian, all are facing the same threats. So why do you want to spy on us?
By the way we wouldn’t have a situation where the British spy on you, and you on the British and you swap information would we?
Imagine if you found one of your oldest and best buddies setting up a web cam in his backyard, or worse in your backyard that would let him perv on your wife, even if he swore he was just doing some bird watching.
So take some advice from an old mate, take your whiz bang electronic snoopery gadgetry, some of which is in our backyard and as a hint, bugger off.
In other words I understand your needs, we all have these urges, but find a better way to do it.
November 29 2008 | Opinion | No Comments »
Monash, Front And Center!
The man who gave us victory at Le Hamel, took Mont St Quentin and Peronne, not to mention breaking the Hindenburg Line. And no I have not forgotten Villers-Bretonneux.
More important than all that, at least to us Aussies, the man who managed to keep the flaming Poms off our back. A condition that lasts to this day.
As warfare is about to undergo it’s greatest change in a few millenia, we take Monash’s charge a few steps further forward.
The true role of infantry is not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward.
General Sir John Monash, GCMG,KCB,VD
I must agree with the call for his achievements and these words to be recognised.
Give the man his baton.
And today happens to be remembrance day I should add;
For the fallen, the lost, and those that will never return.
Lest We Forget.
Sic ‘Em Rex
November 11 2008 | Opinion | No Comments »
Can We Have Some Consistency In Policy Please
This is bullshit guys. You can’t on one hand be celebrating the execution of the Bali bombers with numerous news stories seemingly applauding the gory details of the execution. Then on the other hand be calling for a moratorium on the death penalty the day after you get what you want.
One or the other please. Either have a consistent policy that accepts the death penalty as a deterrent in cases where a deterrent will actually work. Or get rid of it. But you can’t have a policy that calls for an end of it while at the same time making political capital supporting it.
And we vote these bastards in?
Sheesh.
For the fallen, the lost, and those that will never return.
Lest We Forget.
Sic ‘Em Rex
November 09 2008 | Opinion | No Comments »
There is only one way from the top.
As expected and to a large extent hoped for, we have a new era, or at least a new president. A person that came to office on the hopes and aspirations of millions. A man who promised change and sparked the dreams of a generation.
Interestingly this is not a new phenomena.
Down here in Oz the current Prime Minister came to office after thirteen years of a conservative government. There was a whole generation of voters that had never known anything except the Liberal party. The refrain “The King Is Dead” can be found in songs referring to John Howard the previous leader, from people who would only have started school when he came to office.
Like Barack Obama, the current Prime Minister came to power on a wave of youthful emotion. High on promises to “Save the Aboriginals”, “Save the Whales”, “Save the Environment”, he pulled out his pen, and with a few short, swift, strokes he was spent.
He no longer holds the moral high ground over the opposition. He has nothing to differentiate himself from any other government in this country. Apart of course, in peoples memories of a booming economy under the previous and a looming recession, evaporating superannuation funds and a weak dollar with the current one.
The dumb thing is that the latter is probably not his fault. Politicians are just little men in a small row boat on a massive economic tide. When the sea rises they clap their backs and cheer their prowess and when it falls they blame each other.
The electorate though is not so poetic. They are simply just going to blame the current government for all their problems.
In this country that does not mean the end of the Labor government. The current Prime Ministers greatest asset is interestingly the opposition, who really should bulk buy the orange wigs, silly hats, red noses, and face paint to save the tax payer unnecessary expense.
For the US the concern is that that with such high hopes and high expectations, if the new president fails to meet the mark, real or perceived, in any way, the electorate could savage him. People react badly when their dreams don’t meet reality.
November 07 2008 | Opinion | No Comments »
Gratz to President ….
Well it’s election day and fan blogs like this one and the more serious blogs such as the Huffington Post are full of coverage of Barack Obama with a prediction of his win. Well I can’t say one way or the other till the polls close, but I would like to congratulate the winner, the loser and George W Bush in any case.
On Barack Obama
Pleasantries aside here I do have an problem. The undercurrent of Baracks Obama’s campaign whether he wanted it or not is the concept of America’s first African American president. Now Barack, bless his little heart, certainly has an African father and an American mother. But does that make him an African American?
Did he grow up in a house whose parents, grand parents and great grand parents learned to despise the word “Boy”. Was his grandfather denied the right to fight for his country, was his mother denied the right to sit where she chose on a bus.
Did his family and his culture bring us Jazz, Swing, the Blues, Hip Hop and all those good things. Did he and his ancestors put the colour into the West? We know white man can’t dance, but can Barack Obama?
So Barack Obama my good man, you are a bit of a conundrum to me. Perhaps because you were not burdened by the chains of your forefathers, the concept of a run at that office was no big deal. You didn’t have to overcome centuries of cultural cringe, you weren’t carrying the baggage and you sure have the gift of the gab. But do you really understand our cousins, our people, that new tribe hanging around the West, the Black Anglo’s.
Time will tell. Best of luck man.
On John McCain.
Well he didn’t really make much of an impact here in Oz although his running mate scares the pants off me. In a background of the Iraq war, a declining economy and an incumbent republican president it is a hard ask.
On George W
The dust has not settled on George W Bush’s presidency so this is a hard one to call. Personally when he came to office I actually liked the man. He is a dumblefuck for sure, but a down to earth one with his heart in the right place.
I did have and always will have serious issues with the merging of church and state. Needless to say idolators get in my craw. The damage his faith based initiatives caused the developing world are massive. The approach foreign governments have taken to dealing with HIV in order to ensure they have access to American aid is unforgivable. Abstinence as a solution to the AIDS crisis….
On the Iraq War.
Ok this one is nasty and I am still getting to the bottom of it. What I want to know is who provided the US intelligence community with the information about Iraq’s weapons of Mass Destruction.
When I look at a map of the region I see red flags fall back as the Soviet Union crumbles. These are replaced by green flags as Islam rises. The thing separating the green flags in Iran and the green flags in Syria, Jordan, Saudi was the red white and blue flag sitting on Iraq. From my read of the situation someone, perhaps the little blue and white flag to the south west or perhaps the green flag to the east decided to bring the Eagle in.
There are rumors that Iran created the false data and fed it to the US in order to wipe out Saddam Hussein. On the other hand it could have been Israel. With either argument I have problems. Israel may have felt far more secure within range of the eagles air cap, but surely Israel would realize that the US would hold elections, which in a Shi’ite dominated country would result in a solid band of green from Persia to Jordan. That certainly suits Iran, but why would Iran want the eagle on their border?
Be very careful coming to any conclusions here. Nothing in the middle East is as it appears. Everything is a conspiracy. Smoke and Mirrors the norm not the exception.
In any case, getting into Iraq was a screw up. The West has to learn to treat all the Semitic peoples equally. We can not side with one of the Semitic groups against the others. When the red flags fell back, the West should have rolled the line forward. We didn’t. We sat on the blue and white island and watched green fill the the power vacuum. Now we have a situation where the Semitic tribes see us as supporting the Jewish Semites against all the others. That is the real danger and that is the danger we must address in order to lower the threat against the West.
Were these faults with George W Bush? That I don’t know. Like I said the dust has not settled. He took office as a president that was intent on focusing on domestic issues. He inherited the policies of fifty years of inaction in the middle east. In his first term he was hit with the West’s greatest threat of modern history. With all this as context I will reserve judgment on the man.
He had a hell of a job in a hell of a time.
Sic ‘Em Rex.
November 04 2008 | Opinion | No Comments »
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