We shouldn't just scowl - we should also laugh at their folly

The continual refusal of the EU to reform its Common Agricultural Policy(CAP) has been widely cited as helping itself, at the expense of third world farmers. But the truth is, they are doing even more damage to their own economies than they do to third world countries. By failing to keep their own agricultural industries competitive, they have given free reign to Brazil and Australia (for example) on even products such as olive oil and wine. The truth is they can't afford to protect everything they hold dear for ever, and as each new niche presents itself in agriculture, they will be stuck making boring commodities at high cost, missing every possible new product and even variations on the commodities due to their regulated regime. In fact, the longer they persist in lavish subsidies, the lower the percentage of agricultural products that will have distorted markets. The inevitable demographic time bomb will mean that due to all of the pensions/aged health care increased costs, they just won't be able to afford the costs of the CAP for too much longer. I sniggered when the EU accused the Australian Wheat Board (AWB)of monopoly power abuse etc. The truth is that EU's subsidised wheat can't compete with Australia's unsubsidised Wheat especially when quality and service is factored in. EU took the opportunity now that the sugar price is high to reduce its subsidies on that commodity. They should have given up on sugar long ago anyway. I figure they will start to see the light too late to keep competitiveness in any of their remaining agricultural exports. I laugh at their folly, and us Australians should say "Thanks EU! You've made it so much easier for us." The lesson is - If a country, whether third world or first world wants to export agricultural products, reduce its subsidies especially on those products (instead use money to compensate struggling or exiting farmers), reduce tariffs on everything possible, and let the market do the hard work of allocating money correctly.

My "vision" for the future "Pax Islam"

Preamble
This is more prediction than what I believe ought to happen or be made to happen. It is based on my theory that the net effect of people acting selfishly is fairly immune to "brute force" courses of action which try to change the world. It is also resistant to "self-fulfilling prophecies" and self-defeating ones, where the prediction itself can change the course of history. That is only because nobody will actually take much notice of my predictions due to my lack of qualifications in this regard.

The predictions are based on my own "thought experiments" based on elements of game theory and the political dynamics, at least the bits which show a non-random pattern. The initial precept is that Israel-Palestine will not reach lasting peace until Iran and Syria stop financing terror against Israel. This will not stop until these countries become democratic and peace-loving. Therefore, a lasting peace treaty there will be the last thing to happen in my prediction. I foresee "Pax Islam" not as a threat or a country swallowing monster, but as just another multi-country institution competing with all the others. If the constituent countries are all democratic. Israel will no longer be besieged.




This is my rough outline of order of significant events.
1) Presidents of democratic Iraq and Afghanistan sign a "peace and co-operation" agreement.
2) Popular revolt in Iran overthrows the council of clerics - a new constitution is drafted and voted for in a referendum - replacing Shi ite doctrine with more generalised mandate to not make laws contrary to Islam.
3) Syria becomes democratic in a process which involves incalculable casualties.
4) Iran's new president signs on its country to the "peace and co-operation" treaty, and gives it a name - say "Pan-Islam peace and free trade treaty" renamed to "Pax Islam" for short - you heard it here first.
5) Saudi Arabian royal family, under pressure from their population, re-writes constitution to allow democratic progress, then step down as supreme leaders.
6) With most surrounding Islamic countries now democratic, a US sponsored peace treaty in Israel becomes not only realistic, but guaranteed.

I Love Christmas

What I really hate is any combination of hot humid weather, drippy airconditioners, excessive family reunions, no money, bad business conditions, my house cluttered with little toys, cleaning up after parties, high electricity bills, not having back to school stock ready in time and people whinging about me being so negative.

Non-scientific medicine and healing

I am a little ambivalent about doctors at the best of times. To me there is a yawning gap between the assumption or theory of doctors using science to give every patient the best chance of healing and health, and the reality where for 99% of patients, scientific method has nothing to do with either typical or best possible results. That brings me to my thoughts on say, accupuncture, which has been practised for centuries (millenia?) before any scientific work was done on it. This goes for all mainland provinces medicine, I guess. Whatever the actual benefits of accupuncture, I don't think it has much to do with Yin and Yang energy flows. Just because it isn't scientific, doesn't necessarily mean practitioners are loopy, nor that we can generalise from any particular case that they are proven wrong to say that they always are, or even that they are more often wrong than are non-mainland provinces medicine. The placebo effect is a mighty powerful thing sometimes. It is way stronger when there is complete trust of the practitioner by the patient. What is my point here - Healing is often an art form rather than a science. I may therefore trust an experienced healer without a university degree, more than an inexperienced doctor with a degree. But if it is about advice, I trust my own research on the internet more than any professional's advice about anything to do with health.

When BIG FEAR is over

Anonymous said...
When CHEAP OIL is over, Forecast to start in 2008, we will see a world wide depression, see http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
When this occurs the FULL force of the Laws will occur.
Unfortunetly, I do believe the Labour Party will gain control of both Houses of the Federal Parliment in the next election. If they do, that will be excellent. If they don't, we will have the Laws for a LONG time. So, we MUST find new innovative ways to make the IR Laws in operative. Can anyone make a CONSTRUCIVE suggestion.

This was a reply to my unfair dismissal entry of long ago, referenced due to the new IR laws coming in. As far as cheap oil is concerned, I confidently predict a fragmentation of the market, absolutely no economic depression, but a gradual uptake of competing alternatives to oil. I also confidently predict that the good effects of these IR laws will become obvious by the next election, meaning Labor might not even get in. The fear will evaporate with the pre-election optimistic vote-buying goodies always on offer on election years. These are my dated and confident predictions, fearmongering will recommence after the next election :-).

What on earth did I mean by Pax Islam

I had mentioned "pax Islam" in the context of various multi-country groupings or organisations, that I felt would compete yet coexist with UN, NATO, EU etc. in the near future until the next world war in a few centuries time. When the new Afghani constitution was first posted in english on the net, I had a quick read to see what they had to say about separation of "church" and state. Not unexpectedly, the very first line states that no law under the constitution is to be contrary to the law of Islam. That got me thinking that the Iraqi constitution is bound to have something similar, and that therefore three adjacent countries would have national laws under the overall umbrella of Islam - caliphate style (Of course without the "Caliph" for the moment). Of course, Mohammed would be the ultimate interpreter of the scriptures as to how they apply in the modern world, but he's dead. Without a central governing structure to Islam, this makes for a difficult balance of power between various religious officials and elected politicians, but perhaps time will tell whether that will matter. I don't see much chance of anything much like US's evolution of churches, given that religious freedoms are restricted, and Imam's get a say in public policy somewhat.

Another gem - game theory and democracy

This clipped article, People Power is a book review on a book which studies the formation of democracies. It perhaps elucidates my various thoughts on game theory and democracy, that I've gone on about from time to time (separately).

Invisible hands - the point

The net result of individuals selfishly pursuing self interest can make society "better". That is Adam Smith's economic tenet. In theory, greed should instead cause a lot of exploitative and abuse of power kind of behaviour. Economic structures such as competition policy, free trade, property law tend to lessen exploitative behaviour because it becomes less profitable. Dr Clam is theorising that because "voters" pursue selfish interests, the greater good can't be served. He also says that because we don't vote daily, the competitive pursuit of votes doesn't have a day to day influence on government policy. On both counts, my point is that economic and democratic process policies, have indirect effects far greater than the direct effects of any one mandate or another. These are somewhat measurable by experts, and many of the indirect effects are counter-intuitive.

Invisible hands - another try

The "invisible hand" concept I am trying to illucidate I believe can simplify complex topics. So I am stating some examples of how visible cause and effect is often countered and is weaker than the much less visible but stronger indirect cause and effects.

Unfair dismissal legislation - direct (visible hand) effect - Employer sacks or lays off staff whenever needed increasing unemployment rate.
Indirect (invisible hand) effect - Unfair dismissal legislation scares the bijeepers out of employers and they underemploy increasing unemployment rate. Careful studies show that the indirect effects have significantly more influence to the unemployment rate than the direct effects.

Unilaterally lowering trade barriers - direct effects - increase in imports, decrease in exports = worse balance of payments.

indirect effects - medium term self balancing of trade - cheaper and wider variety of goods to population. Increased scope of competition.

Supernanny style family analysis will become compulsory

Or at least it should. So many family problems that end up being family breakers or worse, can be nipped in the bud by a few weeks of analysis and training of the parents by experienced "nannies". The excerpts from the show seem extreme, but they are extremely common problems. Each family is a special case, and all parents have gaps in the understanding of the potential solutions. This is why watching the show isn't really enough. The three week program just has to be gone through for maximal society benefit.

Pod-sibling ebay link

Pod Sibling t-shirts available on THIS LINK.

My pod-sibling went to Earth and all I got was this lousy human host

I have managed to manufacture 30 of these in sizes M to XXL, and I will be posting them on ebay on THIS LINK. Some will be on auction, some at fixed price (maybe $15) any remaining will still be auctioned before Christmas (My guess is that the last ones may end up fetching the most)

The problem with invisible hand arguments

There is of course Adam Smith's invisible hand, but I believe in a rather larger number of them than the one associated with "greed is good" in relation to money. In the political sphere, if you translate money to votes one can imagine the invisible hand of democracy ensuring a country's well being, where even a well-meaning dictator, Pope or whatever cannot self-adjust to changing political, cultural and economic landscapes.
The real problem with promoting invisible hands as a "fact" as opposed to "unproven theory" is that, like black holes, dark matter and truthful politicians is that they are invisible. One can only look at the indirect effects and claim them as due to economic structure rather than direct visible action by a particular entity. Just as I grudgingly think that we should take the cosmologists word as to the existence of black holes because they are the experts; we should trust the economists when their studies show that lower awards, zero tariffs, less red tape etc. etc. are good for the country as a whole, and the compensation for those that may lose is cheaper than the cost of not making these changes.

The market is our guarantee

Do I really need a law to state that bread must be always available at every corner shop, that it be priced under $2.00 a loaf, and that it has to taste good? By rejecting bread (and sometimes all products from a particular shop) when a) It is more expensive than you’re willing to pay ; b) If they never seem to have the bread you want left or c) the bread is not nice in one way or another – we are acting as agents enforcing an implicit guarantee that we are getting acceptable value for money. * a statement saying that bread sellers should not overcharge is absolving ourselves of responsibility to keep them honest *
Why have a government agency to enforce bread standards when we are perfectly capable, as individual consumers, to in our own way dictate the standard by what we choose to buy. Poor quality, service or overpricing can still legally happen, but more efficiently adjusts to market pressure, than it could by direct mandates.
Similarly, do we need a law that states what hours you are allowed to work, that it must be at least a certain amount per hour, and that it should be fulfilling? All these criteria are important both for an employee and an employer, but by denying flexibility in the first two distorts the market mechanisms for all three. Different employees will have different priorities between remuneration, hours that can be worked and overall fulfilment in the job. Countries with price controls on bread end up having all bread at the same maximum allowed cost, not being readily available, and generally having dubious quality and no variety of choice. The free market in bread doesn’t necessarily make bread cheaper, but makes suppliers of bread compete to find breads that people will pay a high price for, while consumers will compete to find cheap but good quality breads.
A freer market in jobs will make employees and employers reputations much more important. Power will move from large unions and big companies to agencies, individuals, contractors, small employee groupings and nimble small businesses. The main difference to be seen will be a rise in the importance of job fulfilment over the letter of the industrial relations laws. The guarantees explicit in most awards are also guaranteeing that job fulfilment is a lower priority for employers than getting a reasonable fit in the costs and hours allowable.
Although large unions will lose a great deal of their power and influence, smaller unions and alternative worker groupings may actually have more clout by being able to favour certain employers over others for a range of tangible or intangible offerings.

If you quote someone on your weblog, they may find you!

This has happened to me. Appropriately with the Industrial relations changes happening in parliament, this person is a champion of the working mother. She has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of lower socio-economic disadvantaged recent migrants. She has done it by attacking certain unhelpful law provisions that were proposed. Ironically, she is now being made to work up to 18 hours a day by her employer just to try to make a better life for her children. The system that allows this to happen is not being challenged......


Her employer is of course *herself* - The system that allows unlimited work hours is *EBAY*, the unhelpful law provisions she was attacking was the "fairwear" ones, which I also attacked - and migrants from a lower socio-economic status often have industrial sewing skills, children, and are perfect for helping out our sewer shortage, if only they were "free" to work from home, where they could be with their children. Vanthida Lao - You are a champion. Stop by my weblog anytime.

Evolution as a ladder

The entire evolution vs special creation debate as I have researched it, has been completely hijacked by people who refer indirectly to evolution as a ladder with amoebas (or whatever) at the bottom and humans at the top. Creationists arguments often centre on there being "missing links" (on the chain from bottom to top) , that the transformation from random jumbles of molecules to sentient beings breaks fundamental laws of entropy in a natural process. On the other side of the argument, David Attenborough's "Life on Earth" show moved episode by episode up the ladder. Even Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" (ok. these are 80's shows but I haven't seen much change) had one episode where they were calculating the approximate probability of life on other planets - by calculating the probability of life moving up the ladder of creation to sentient beings.

Role of the catholic church

This Economist article has an interesting slant on the pope's reign and the church's future direction. However because it focuses on foreseeable consequences of policy, rather than moral principles of right and wrong: to be kind, the economist is showing fairly extreme moral contextualism - hinting that contraception and abortion policy may have to be more liberal in some contexts for the greater good of the world.

Kashmir

I had commented sometime last year that I was not confident of a solution in Kashmir for peace without some serious bloodshed. I also commented how the Tsunami in Aceh had improved the prospects for long term peace there. I suspect the inevitable international relief effort due to the earthquake in the disputed areas would improve the chances of successful mediation leading to possible compromises. The bloodshed has basically already happened now.

Why am I mysteriously confident in ethanol?

It's not the technology - there has been no breakthrough in the burning of ethanol in an internal combustion engine.

It's not the economics. Even if the current high oil prices are prolonged, the economics of bio-ethanol is still marginal.(Although the future is hard to predict in this regard)

It's not the environment - I would be happy if we exclusively used fossil fuels until we had to mine Mars (Earth first! We'll strip mine the other planets later)

My reasoning is entirely "evolutionary". There is clearly going to be fragmentation of the fuel market as fossil-based fuels becomes less and less convenient over time. Which fuels become somewhat successful will depend on how we get from "here" to "there" - "Here" being little or no economies of scale to "There" being generally available at service stations. This is where ethanol is advantageous - Due to the economies of scale developed by Brazil (a huge loss making venture by its government so far) there is good availability of flex-fuel engines and ethanol producing capacity. Add in the fact that blends can be adapted to take advantage of price differentials between oil, ethanol and sugar, and ethanol blends can be increased when the price of oil is high, decreased again if need be, self regulated by the market, temporary shocks in oil price changes can be spread out to a few other commodities at the very least, and if oil becomes scarce permanently the market will allow for 100% ethanol to overtake fossil fuels.

Australia's lost ethanol opportunity

A couple of years ago, there was a plan to introduce broad scale ethanol blended fuel Australia wide. The plan hit a hiccup because there was just not enough domestic industrial production of ethanol in Aus. One avenue open was to import ethanol from Brazil as a stopgap until such time as local production could increase. However the (local) sugarcane lobby was feared by the government and the whole project got put in the back-burner. Because blended fuel then became a niche, car problems started being blamed on ethanol. This would not have happened if we had started to import heavily from Brazil. The sugar price may well have increased with the extra demand from cars, helping our farmers. We could be importing ethanol technologies while exporting sugar cane technologies.