Will someone please shut Krugman up
A view from Britain by Jeremy Warner, at the Telegraph. Read the rest here.
Self-organization, Consciousness, and Unintended Consequence
I realize as I read news and think about it and talk about current events with others that there exists a conceptual gap between how I think about things, and how others might, particularly those with whom I disagree on process despite agreeing on desirable outcomes.
I want a peaceful political environment for my children to live in. I would like it if they could freely pursue their dreams and ambitions. I hope that our environment does not degrade, and that in particular we humans do not knowingly excessively degrade it. I hope that our economies will be sufficiently prosperous that we might not suffer hunger and cold. I hope the rule of law persists.
In all these objectives I find myself agreeing with almost everyone I meet. It is in the processes by which we might achieve these objectives that I find myself in disagreement with all but a small few (thanks Christy!). Yet I know I am right. How can this be? Continue reading “Self-organization, Consciousness, and Unintended Consequence”
WHO Striving for Fairness, not Good Health
There has long been much suspicion about the value of many international organizations, particularly those with three letter acronyms. The IMF and the World Bank have arguably done much more harm than good, saddling the Third World with unmanageable debts, while their tyrants drive golden Rolls Royce’s. So it comes as no surprise, though it still horrified me, to read the WHO’s Director-General, Margaret Chan, musings on H1N1 and the future health of the planet.
She is quoted in the National Post, speaking to the Regional Committee for Europe (I assume some sub-branch of WHO): “Gaps in health outcomes will be reduced and health systems will strive for fairness only when equity is an explicit policy objective, also in sectors well beyond health…. [We need] changes in the functioning of the global economy.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I assumed the WHO was hoping not so much to “reduce gaps in health outcomes” but to improve health outcomes in general. At least, when I go to the doctor, I am concerned about improving my health outcome, not in seeing it approaching that of my neighbour. Perhaps that explains her initial enthusiasm for H1N1: “It is all of humanity that is under threat.” At least that virus attempted to be fair, targeting all, not just the poor.
Continue reading “WHO Striving for Fairness, not Good Health”
Money, Markets, and Trade
“At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly eager to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slave of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
John Maynard Keynes (1936)
Er, um, ah, well, yes, indeed, dear defunct Johnny!
If you seek to understand finance and economics (as much as it can be understood!) it is important to first understand money, and the critical role it plays in allowing economic activity to occur as efficiently as possible. We didn’t always have “money”, it actually had to be invented, and it has been invented and re-invented in many forms many times over. Money has been: tulips in Holland; split wooden sticks in England (from whence we get “stocks” and stock-markets, by the way); seashells in Samoa. The economist will tell you that anything that serves as a measure of value, a medium for conducting trade, and a store of value is money. And he’d be right.
The quest for economic truth
Goebbels: “Control the medium and you control the message”
It seems far more rational these days to quote Goebbels than Marshall McLuhan on this, as one can’t help but get the feeling we are being fed propaganda by the financial media. Plus, Goebbels said it first, and McLuhan plagiarized. To try to get to the bottom of the mess made of our economies, and our currencies, one must now seek alternate sources of news and analysis, which I have been doing for a while, but on a very ad-hoc basis. If you read the mainstream media, at least do so with a skeptics eye.
But keeping a score of tabs open in Firefox, and relying on the good old “Well, this is embarrassing, would you like to restore your session?” message to remember where I have been after billg crashes my machine yet again doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzy I seek. So here I am going to capture a bunch of the tabs I have open, so neither I nor Firefox forgets where I have found what appears like genuine, thoughtful analysis. I’ll get to details and rationale later. For now, here are some other angles on what is going on.
How does it work?
Can I publish in a sub-heading?