I have watched this video of Richard Koo, and it is a very good twenty-minute talk on the economy of the World, using Japan as a good example. Where he starts to go wrong is where he says that the money the Japanese government borrowed to keep the economy from commiting seppuku was money well-spent. He even has the devious dishonesty to prop up his argument by using false dilemmas and counter-factuals that assume there is no middle ground—or even that economic collapse from unsustainable bubble highs is necessarily a bad thing.

His discussion, because of having a Japan pivot, seems to be very in line with this book, The Return of the Great Depression, which I have only read a few pages of (using Amazon’s feature of looking inside).

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But Laban said to him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, please stay. I have learned by divination that the LORD has blessed me because of you.”

Source: Genesis 30:27

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Ah, now I see why I hate cars! It is the Commie in me! This article:

When the car was invented, it was to provide a few of the very rich with a completely unprecedented privilege: that of travelling much faster than everyone else. No one up to then had ever dreamt of it. The speed of all coaches was essentially the same, whether you were rich or poor. The carriages of the rich didn't go any faster than the carts of the peasants, and trains carried everyone at the same speed (they didn't begin to have different speeds until they began to compete with the automobile and the aeroplane). Thus, until the turn of the century, the elite did not travel at a different speed from the people. The motorcar was going to change all that. For the first time class differences were to be extended to speed and to the means of transportation.

But more-seriously, the article has a very interesting take on cars. Personally, I still maintain that there is a car bubble on. When it bursts, it will be more-profitable to not have bought at the peak of it. And the point that needs to be restated is this: you probably do not need a car. Look, a motor bike goes from Entebbe to Kampala in roughly an hour—same as the car, if the car gets stuck in a traffic jam, as indeed it does all the time save for Sunday afternoon—but to use a car you need 10 litres of fuel, while for a motor bike you need 3 litres. Stop and think. Which follows beautifully, I think, from this (same article):

Unlike the horse rider, the wagon driver, or the cyclist, the motorist was going to depend for the fuel supply, as well as for the smallest kind of repair, on dealers and specialists in engines, lubrication, and ignition, and on the interchangeability of parts. Unlike all previous owners of a means of locomotion, the motorist's relationship to his or her vehicle was to be that of user and consumer-and not owner and master. This vehicle, in other words, would oblige the owner to consume and use a host of commercial services and industrial products that could only be provided by some third party. The apparent independence of the automobile owner was only concealing the actual radical dependency.

The oil magnates were the first to perceive the prize that could be extracted from the wide distribution of the motorcar. If people could be induced to travel in cars, they could be sold the fuel necessary to move them. For the first time in history, people would become dependent for their locomotion on a commercial source of energy. There would be as many customers for the oil industry as there were motorists-and since there would be as many motorists as there were families, the entire population would become the oil merchants' customers. The dream of every capitalist was about to come true. Everyone was going to depend for their daily needs on a commodity that a single industry held as a monopoly.

Before you buy a car, I posit, buy a powerful motor bike (like the kind used for boda-boda). Before you buy a powerful motor bike, buy a scooter. Before you buy a scooter, buy a bicycle. And, at any point, buy a horse. :o)

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Some time ago, I announced that I had given up to-do lists (as they are conventionally understood). Now, there is this article that cheers me on.

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Reading predictions made in 1899^[1], you get the sense that China was considered the Timbuktu whose name could be spelt. I mean, people used “China” to mean “very far-away corner where savagaes can at least be reached”. In light of that, see this NYT piece.

[1] I got the link from Le Monde.

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When the World shits, do you know what happens?
It goes to the toilet, and this comes out of its rear end:
Pro-Gaddafi forces take back Bani Walid.
Iran: The oil embargos are useless.
The Big Ben is stooping.

Ain’t this World such a crazy place?

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I suspect, vaguely, that Ismaël Lo’s La femme sans haïne is written about the last Moorish ruler of Granada, for those heavily-poetic words in the chorus sound suspiciously like the French version of what the mother of the deposed ruler said to him, when he threw one last glance Andalusia-ward and cried. The mother would have been replaced with the queen, but same thing. At the very least, it would be based on that event. I am done transcribing the lyrics, and it is a good song to mumble along with. (I’ll compare my transcription’s accuracy with that of some online fanatic later on.)

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I used to think that it was impractical to have a car with a steam engine, because the engine would have to be massive. It turns out that I was wrong: the steam engine is even smaller than the usual internal combustion type.

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The Americans, shocked by the depth of the corruption of their system—makes Uganda look amateur—are doing the wrong thing to combat it. For example, this pitiable fool:

So maybe, instead of waiting for the MPAA’s next law and changing our Twitter avatars for a few days in protest, it would be more productive to significantly reduce or eliminate our support of the MPAA member companies starting today, and start supporting campaign finance reform.

Emphasis in the original; but it stupid anyway.

There are several problems with this situation.
If you have democracy, you are going to have support of this kind—support that depends on which people a politician is going to give favours. So democracy is the problem. (If you have a “king by divine right,” he need not appeal for support—which is what corruption is.) But not just that. Even if you did not have undue campaign financing practices, you would still have politicians who have to bow to their supporters, no matter who or how they happen to be. The correct boycott is of the movie industry. Boycott big media—stop watching movies and playing their pop music. Then you will have truly defanged MPAA (and SOPA and PIPA and whatever other acronym has grown a tail and horns just now). But if you have willingly turned yourselves into media addicts, do not blame anybody for taking advantage of your being dumbed-down and in constant need of a 3D story-telling session to numb your vast mental emptiness.

And these campaign reforms: who is going to enact them? The people who benefit from the status quo, that’s who. Good luck getting that.

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Now that Britain has scrapped the mandatory retirement age thing, people are calling a victory against age segregation. Guys, all movements in history—be it the end of slavery, be it the end of institutionalised racial segregation, be it the legalisation of homosexuality, be it the enforcement of superficial equality between men and women, be it animal rights, be it whatever—the driving factor is always very close to this: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

When tractors and steam engines came, plantation slaves were no longer needed. When washing machines and vacuum cleaners came, house helps were no longer really needed. When oil came, vast farms of working animals were no longer needed. You get my direction. When the Westerners started needing two incomes just to stay afloat, women had to join the workforce. When the American empire grew overstretched, women had to join the combat army.

So, Britain is scrapping retirement age. Other people I respect have long held that retirement is a myth born in times of unprecedented plenty. The Westerners could afford to keep getting a steady pay without working for it. But as their economies have wound down, that is becoming untenable, so they dress up the regression to normalcy as “victory against ageism”. It is not. It is the growth, ageing, and death of the Western supereconomy. Get used to this normalcy.

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Leading in from the ealier post about Martin Jacques, I now give you this NYT article.

“The overall strength of Chinese culture and its international influence is not commensurate with China’s international status,” Mr. Hu said in his essay, according to another translation.

“The international culture of the West is strong while we are weak,” he added.

But, of course, trust NYT to miss the point (unlike Martin Jacques).

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Libération has a pictorial on the human zoo. O my God.

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It is easy to see why a Europe-based African artiste (emphasis on the terminal “e”) would be like this in the 1980s and 1990s, but Khadja Nin’s music is too left-wing. It would appear that the only ones that survive this infection are the ones too late-20th-century for me to care about. As it goes, in fact, all her music has that left-wing issue with being sad in the midst of happiness, and happy in the midst of sadness (because most people live poorly, and the Left has this praiseworthy tendency to want to share the loads of the suffering, and to be happy with shared unhappiness and to be sad about unshared happiness). And then, of course, the little issue with the over glorification of people; like Mandela, for example. That is another problem with the left wing, and the music thereof.

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I have been reading this book review. I would not buy that book, because it seems like a feeble, and failed, attempt to write The Master and his Emissary. It probably succeeds as a footnote to the book, though.
In the review, I see:

Behavioralists, Kahneman included, have been cataloging people’s systematic mistakes and nonlogical patterns for years. A few of the examples he cites: 1. Framing. Test subjects are more likely to opt for surgery if told that the “survival” rate is 90 percent, rather than that the mortality rate is 10 percent. 2. The sunk-cost fallacy. People seek to avoid feelings of regret; thus, they invest more money and time in a project with dubious results rather than give it up and admit they were wrong. 3. Loss aversion. In experiments, most subjects would prefer to receive a sure $46 than have a 50 percent chance of making $100. A rational agent would take the bet.

No wonder the West is fucked. They are too rational.
The sunk cost fallacy is what keeps people from giving up on anything. At some point, we have invested so little resources into a goal, and yet the work that remains is still roughly as huge, and the results as dim, as when we just began, that the rational thing is to give up. It happens every time. To keep fighting against the Nazis was irrational for the Brits; but “Never give up!” was their irrational call, and irrational outlived rational. The sunk cost fallacy helps most marriages through the brief hard spots. But now everyone is going to be wondering why the West divorces a lot …
Same thing for framing (positive information comes from positive people, who are better to enter into business with; framing may be irrational, but it is good). Same thing for loss aversion. Why is irrationality presented as a weakness? Guys listen: not everything ought to be (done) rational(ly)! Sheesh … no wonder you are all fucked.

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When you meet so French a name speaking in so British an accent, you get tempted—and you succumb thereto—into saying « Il a raison, » but in English.

Martin Jacques writes things like this, basically saying that China will modernise into the 21^st century, and take over from the West—and it is already bigger than the West, even when we do not count its tributary states, both future and present, like Japan, Pakistan, and the like—such that the future will be like China more than China will be like the present.

He has a TED talk that will do well to make these points, with a British accent coming out of a French-named man.

One of the points he makes, which seems weakest at the start, is that China will not Westernise. It may seem weak, until you realise that far weaker systems have done it before. The Dubai buses, in spite of being very modern, still have segregated seating for men and women. This kind of thing is what would become normal, if Dubai were China. But since it is China we are talking about, look more towards seeing a rise in Chinese things. Confucianist tendencies—“mandate of heaven”—for example.

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I tell you now: higher education is a bubble. I already reported Peter Thiel (and others) saying this same thing, but I am now pointing specifically at Uganda.
That brings it to two things about which I have pronounced the certainty of a bubble in Uganda: cars, higher education. (Primary education, and some of secondary education, is not a bubble, as it is necessary; but since it is being done the wrong way, it is still better to use an alternative.)

Apparently, Uganda graduates 400,000 people a year, while youth unemployment stands at 83%. Now, why would anyone spend 5 million every year to buy into such a crap deal? The received wisdom was that a degree would be a sound investment; but it has been a long time since that was true. The bubble a-go pop. In line with that, here is another news item.

In the meantime, people in Uganda—and Africa in general—have been fooled by the Americans into believing that economies should enjoy a perpetual good time. (They can do that, but it would be a miracle.) So, when they realise that demand-supply has shown its muscle and things that people use a lot are costing more, they … cut back on their over-consumption and live and invest wiser? No. They protest. Democracy will destroy everything we have before it kills itself by implosion. God, save us. Consider electricity, for example. Democratic leaders, eager for populism and votes, seek to bankrupt the nation so long as they keep looking good, because their looking good is the pampering of the stupid, wasteful, and unsustainable habits of Ugandans. Democracy will destroy everything we have before it kills itself by implosion. God, save us.

Or consider bank interest rates. The bankers were given two options: fixed rate, changing rate. They chose changing rate. When the rate changes, they cry uncle. And yet, at the time these loans were taken out, anybody (who cared to look) would have seen that the economies of the World were going to endure such shitty times as to make inflation of the kind we are seeing a necessary thing.

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So, Wikipedia is going to be blacked out to protest American laws. I know it is hosted in America and all that—color, neighbor, defense, scrutinize, login, logout, different than, could care less, and so on—but why should all of anglophonia be concerned that America has greedy tyrants in power? Fuck off, all of you. I am going to download me a static copy of Wikipedia (takes 7GB of disk space).

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It follows “logically” that, since core countries of the European bail-out system have been downgraded (I mean their credit rating), the bail-out itself has been downgraded. In other words, while market ideals would have us assume that Greece and Italy should be bailed out so that they, ultimately, become AAA borrowers (which, in theory, is the only way to not make catastrophic losses, since they were lent as AAA borrowers), it follows “logically” that since their bail-out meisters are not AAA, this is never going to happen. But we can all pretend for a while, of course.

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Je m’attendait pas qu’il était même possible d’être un immigrant clandestin dans un pays si rigereux (au sujet de l’immigration) comme l’Israël avec ses frontières quis font des fronts de guerre (et quis donc doivent être sous surviellance toujours) ! Mais on découvre un nouveauté chaque jour. Ce qui m’ettone même plus c’est que je vois des clandestins noirs ! Comment est-ce que des non-jiufs de la peau noire ont arrivés à rester dans le pays hébreu sans permission, etant non-juifs et noir ? (Il est plus difficile, peut-être, de y rester comme chrétien … voir aussi.)

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If it had pleased God to bless earlier generations of the children of Adam, it would have been in their lifetimes that Salif Keita’s Kuma was released. But it pleased God to, in our generation, pour out blessing previously not seen; and this song is but one such bonne chose.
I have found it on YouTube!

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Being a sufficiently-careful student of Communist propaganda posters, I knew already the strains that propaganda strives to put on the mind in order to achieve agreement. I think a more-useful medium to study would be Hollywood movies. It is a much more-expensive way to spread propaganda, but once you achieve the capacity for it, there is no need for iron curtains.

At any rate: John Powers linked to this article. It is about how people use black-and-white photos to set the mood for propaganda of a weird kind that we have come to know as aid porn.
Reading that, I remembered two links: one, two. Propaganda, apparently, is a form of magic. I am ashamed to not have truly realised that until recently.

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I have just read this paragraph from someone, and I am wondering what shocking effects—both good and bad—a guild system would have on our modern jobs and the results thereof:

Here’s how it worked. Each city – and “city” in this context means anything down to a town of a few thousand people – was an independent economic center; it might have a few industries of more than local fame, but most of its business consisted of manufacturing and selling things to its own citizens and the surrounding countryside. The manufacturing and selling was managed by guilds, which were cooperatives of master craftsmen. To get into a guild-run profession, you had to serve an apprenticeship, usually seven years, during which you got room and board in exchange for learning the craft and working for your master; you then became a journeyman, and worked for a master for wages, until you could produce your masterpiece – yes, that’s where the word came from – which was an example of craftwork fine enough to convince the other masters to accept you as an equal. Then you became a master, with voting rights in the guild.

The guild had the legal responsibility under feudal municipal laws to establish minimum standards for the quality of goods, to regulate working hours and conditions, and to control prices. The economic theory of the time held that there was a “just price” for any good or service, usually the price that had been customary in the region since time out of mind, and the municipal authorities could be counted on to crack down on attempts to push prices above the just price unless there was some very pressing reason for it. Most forms of competition between masters were off limits; if you made your apprentices and journeymen work evenings and weekends to outproduce your competitors, for example, or sold goods below the just price, you’d get in trouble with the guild, and could be barred from doing business in the town. The only form of competition that was encouraged was to make and sell a superior product.

Heh.

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Some few weeks ago, I found a Chinese man at the National Theatre, and my Chinese was too poor to communicate much. I am actually surprised by just how much we managed to communicate by sheer gesticulation and drawing.
However, if my Chinese was bad, his English was non-existent.

What struck me the most was how he pronounced where I told him I stay, Entebbe. It came out mangled. I know that, since the Chinese have a severely restricted phonotactics, they cannot comprehensibly speak another language, except with a lot of hard training. (It works both ways; to learn to live in the phonotactic minimalism of Chinese is quite torturous.) The solution they have, when they have to speak a name that calls upon a wider phonotactics, is to use nonsense sentences which nevertheless sound close enough to the original. So, for example, “Uganda” is hard to pronounce, so they convert it to “Woo-gun-duh”—乌干达. That phrase does not mean anything else otherwise.

But, today, while looking at a Google Map of Uganda, I saw how they write Entebbe. And guess what. Remember this post? It was about the Chinese word for “grace”. It is 恩 (“en”). Which, as you may have guessed, is the first character in “Entebbe”.

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Security must have a trust element. Even if you have a large and well-trained bodyguard: do you trust the bodyguard? Laurent Kabila was shot by his own bodyguard. I could multiply the examples into the millions.
The point I want to make here is that for all such cases of futility, the answer is one: have faith.

Plato was too foolish to realise this. He said that the answer to “Who will guard the guardians?” was “Someone should tell the guardians a lie …” Well: who will ensure that the lie is told? How to ensure that? Infinite series of lies? No. Faith, guys.

However, in comes the Electronic Frontier Foundation with very little knowledge of history, and so doomed to repeat it. They are working on setting up guardians for the guardians of the guardians’ guardians. In not very long, they will have yet more bleeding-heart sessions to add a layer of guardians. And all the while, one thing is all that is lacking: faith.

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When someone does not get work done due to distractions, it is not the distractions that have to be dealt with. It is the lethargy regarding the more-legitimate work that has to be done. If I want to get something done, no distractions will stop me. After all, me I always have sleep as a simple and ready distraction. But whether I take it or not depends on the work, not the availability of sleep. The same goes for all other distractions. Of course, a life with fewer distractions to pick from is nicer; life is richer and has more in it when you cut out what you do not need.

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It seems like a ploy of the Chinese to spread their influence—certainly to make adoption of their influences quicker and simpler. They are not as talented as the Americans are at making engaging propaganda stories (“Hollywood blockbusters”), so they decided to just do an internation TV channel—aptly named in the Orwellian tradition: CCTV—and make even the most-random show carry subtitles. Helps us learn, if we can watch (their) TV.

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Reality strikes—with the improbably viciousness of a double back-hand slap—their foolishness is revealed, and then, instead of doing the classical “change your mind and turn from your financially-foolish ways,” they protest in the streets, calling on other men to work hard to maintain and uphold the foolishness of other men.
Now that electricity costs more, will they turn off their TVs and their un-used lights, and other such energy-saving moves? Come on: you remember how they protested because they could not afford to waste fuel anymore—they now protest because they cannot afford to waste energy anymore. —They do not stop living beyond their means; they protest. The economy is bad in Uganda and (even worse) in Europe. But no turning from our foolishness; only a lot of protesting that the foolishness continue.

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