Concerned Artists

How to save the planet earth - primer!
Dec 22, 2009 5:38 PM
Stephen W Hawking and others have said that there is little hope for the continuation of life on earth given present trends which move life towards premature death and the planet into a cycle of poisonous gases and fumes!

My first try at a conservationist 'Save the Planet Theme' emphasizing the green artist thinking about the picture he wants to paint of the future earth. It is based on the innocence of a Norman Rockwell character. This is only a preliminary sketch!

He is puzzled as the systems are already there staring him in the face as he looks out the window to the sea and sees the surplus energy of the sun, the wind, and the waves. He is puzzled because these are the only sources of energy that earthly things can use if they are not to destroy the earth by altering a balance of chemicals and gases that has evolved over millions of years. We are closer to earth's destruction than we would admit because of our greed. In such a case, we are closer to an unprecedented period of violence than we can imagine. To many, the negative outlook would be a step towards a widespread war that would be the only solution.

In such a future era the love of God would not exist, most certainly would be dead to life on earth!

Everything that flows from inside the earth, it's gas, methane, petroleum, coal, volcanoes, and derivatives of methane that silently doom the earth to become again a dead planet like Murcury and Venus.

He sees how close we are to the tipping point and knows that the earth like all things will die a premature death without the love of caring artists in the use of what comes to us from the sun and the stars, the light, the sprites and solar winds.

We must make solar energy catchers such as sails, to drive our needs fir motion. By using the sun, we have no need to release further pollutants such as natural gas from the history of earth when it did not support life.

How to save the planet earth - primer!

Stephen W Hawking and others have said that there is little hope for the continuation of life on earth given present trends which move life towards premature death and the planet into a cycle of poisonous gases and fumes!

My first try at a conservationist 'Save the Planet Theme' emphasizing the green artist thinking about the picture he wants to paint of the future earth. It is based on the innocence of a Norman Rockwell character. This is only a preliminary sketch!

He is puzzled as the systems are already there staring him in the face as he looks out the window to the sea and sees the surplus energy of the sun, the wind, and the waves. He is puzzled because these are the only sources of energy that earthly things can use if they are not to destroy the earth by altering a balance of chemicals and gases that has evolved over millions of years. We are closer to earth's destruction than we would admit because of our greed. In such a case, we are closer to an unprecedented period of violence than we can imagine. To many, the negative outlook would be a step towards a widespread war that would be the only solution.

In such a future era the love of God would not exist, most certainly would be dead to life on earth!

Everything that flows from inside the earth, it's gas, methane, petroleum, coal, volcanoes, and derivatives of methane that silently doom the earth to become again a dead planet like Murcury and Venus.

He sees how close we are to the tipping point and knows that the earth like all things will die a premature death without the love of caring artists in the use of what comes to us from the sun and the stars, the light, the sprites and solar winds.

We must make solar energy catchers such as sails, to drive our needs fir motion. By using the sun, we have no need to release further pollutants such as natural gas from the history of earth when it did not support life.

Sales tax revision for Ontario

Why it's simpler to quote the final cost to the buyer which includes all taxes!

For those of us who have been used to more advanced tax systems such as VAT, it comes as a big shock when we are in a backward tax country like Canada.

Ontario has just decided that instead of two taxes on top of the quoted prices seen by the consumer, the province will move to a simpler single tax amount that does not betray the split.

Wow, that must have had the professors of economics at U of T up all night! This no brainer for most Europeans used to advanced levels of social cooperation does not deminish the effort Ontario authorities have put on to get their sales tax onto a non-controversial plane.

Sure people may dislike the fact there are provincial and federal sales taxes, but the math need not be after what the buyer makes a decision on. Get the final number out there so that the consumer can make a sensible decision based on simple calculations like the net amounting one's pocket after a purchase.

It would be better had Ontario moved to a full progressive VAT tax system now that the systems are built into machinery and documentation worldwide and it's not such a burden for the seller!

Getting Ontario onto the modern age is a real struggle.

A Novel Method for Keeping Time

Decimal time

Have you heard of the idea to take time into decimals ending a three thousand year old tradition?

The idea floated would consist of a ten sip clock instead of twenty four hours. Instead of working eight hours people would work only three sips.

There would be a working day starting at three sips then a cup of coffee at four sips and lunch at five sips. At six sips, one would end one's working day. With four sips remaining and at least two further sips for sleep, one could fashion quite an easy life.

In a week, a labourer would put in 15 sips and about sixty sips in a month.

For the seasons, there would be about 900 sips per season and about 3600 per annum.

A few fanatics have proposed the word bell instead of sip. There was quite a debate whether ten bells seemed better than ten sips. The bell proposers were mainly from rural parts where the idea of ringing bells was very popular. The drinkers preferred sips and their larger numbers won the day.

Bigger Problems Ahead for Liberalized Financial Sectors

Maturity Mismatch and Why the Multi-billion SDR IMF Measures For The World Economy Miss the Mark by a Wide Margin








When the likes of Ron Ball and Tom Everett of Barclays innovated the inter-bank market in the 1960s, big banks had the sound internal oversight of a single individual Treasurer, and respected their international departments that contained a reliable economics unit or group of economists familiar with competitive processes of the real world and not just some abstract theories of higher mathematics or obtuse economics logic based on political leanings and ignoring historical analysis. These people kept banks away from gross mismatches of liquidity or extreme policies that the competitive reaction response between banks produces. Banks live in a highly competitive international economy for financial instruments and arrangements. It is only to easy to forget, the close links of the IMF and the World Bank that now exist through operations of central banks to this world of risky finance. The definitions of growth and of inflation have been lost or hidden within so much abstraction as to become meaningless for practical purposes. It has become fashionable to try to finance one's way out of difficulties without addressing the glaring weaknesses in competitive environment and gross abuses of the legal and moral frameworks that societies rely on to live in peace! It is not a question of freedom, but one of balance, of art in management and of appropriately using the skills contained in more sound social arrangements. This is not a problem only of money but also of system and structure and history!

Over time, however, the financing of the world economy and the liquidity of commercial banking have moved increasingly in concert with each other. The point is that the IMF and World Bank have moved so far into cooperation with private banking that they promoted each other's goals and formed tighter and tighter relationships originating from the major financial centers and central banking communities.

What was hidden from view was the goal of the IMF to keep inflation rates down and provide the basis for growth because of the history of hyper-inflations and lack of trust between major political and financial groups. Behind this distrust was competition between the UK and Germany. Jealousy of the British Colonial system produced a rivalry that enveloped the world in conflict and disarray despite the League of Nations. The IMF economists do not understand very well the importance of technology and Schumpeterian economics and the dynamics of growth that arise with innovation and science.

When maturity mismatch between the debt of Germany and the rest of the world resulted in the collapse of the Austrian banks and then spread throughout the financial world of the time, it was determined that the solution lay in forming central banks to provide liquidity in periods of liquidity mismatch, especially for the agricultural sectors.

In the 1970s this approach led to the financing of the mismatch of the energy sectors founded on oil. In the 1980s this approach led to the financing of the mismatch of the property sectors in the US, especially Texas. In the 1990s this approach led to the financing of the mismatch of Asian economies advancing their trade to the US but unable to continuue with borrowing in the dollar. Mismatches occurred for
Brasil, Mexico, Argentina, and resulted in extreme social hardships in these economies as well as in Asia.

That there should be a maturity mismatch in the US housing market that feeds into the financial of the world economy begins with a targeting of the wrong inflation indices by the US banking authorities, who instead of long term inflation targeted short term inflation. As property values representing long term inflation demands increased the authorities turned a blind eye.

In the distant past, the trust and ethical ethos of management staff were sufficient to ensure that enormous mismatches of liquidity did not and could not occur. Come to the year 2010 and banks have evolved and inspections by reps of equity holders of their operations have become weaker because of financial liberalizations innovated under the umbrella of the IMF.

The VP or DMG that proposes the impossible is not laughed out of court, but taken seriously. Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes are weeping.

Unfortunately, the IMF Advisory departments and the Central Bankers are probably missing the practical experience needed and no authoritative persons understand the enormous structural risks of mismatched maturities and everything derived from the funds mismatched. Even worse, if the mismatch is structural and no-one watches out for it, almost certainly another enormous crash could occur. This has already happened recently. Reoccurence should come as no surprise. We have now to watch for the bounce or as they say, the Hicksian or Harrodian growth dynamics. I might also throw Lord Kaldor onto the fray!

My fear is a return of extreme right wing politics that could occur with social disintegration. Are we to watch the collapse of the IMF and UN as we did the BIS and League of Nations? The IMF does not realize it's impotency for such structural issues arising as they do from competitive situations it has itself created, though unwittingly!

I really do expect that as a result of financial market liberalization, and weak liquidity understandings at the IMF and World Banks, we have now systemic mismatches that will produce the continuous and inevitable eventual collapses of the international financial system until the mismatch is permanently and systemically at the core of it's structure, removed. Something to do with grains of sand piling up.

The OECD us the entity to address these issues of destructive competition between banks that will widen the mismatches. I do not think the IMF or World Bank have the inclination nor wherewithall!!
I do not see the IMF people and the type of staff they employ understanding what the problem is nor the central bankers. I can therefore predict the stupendous risky period ahead with the very real possibility of other major crashes and series of crashes in the international financial markets. These could destroy London, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore as key financial centers as trust, the key ingredient of business disappears. I expect that it will necessitate the rebuilding of new structures systemically matched in maturities. So, don't be surprised when that happens!

Look for yourself and see if as a banker or historical economist you do not agree!

Bias of Inflation in Valueless Assets

Unrepentent Debt Brokers and Bankers?

The fear of deflation from an asset value freefall so scared central bankers that revaluation of assets artificially through money supply creation was a jerk reaction.



The only problem now is that the jerk owns the assets and will always have a jerk reaction!

The Swine Flu's Second Wave is a Real Bummer

Mutating H1N1 Flu Virus




It seems that H1N1 is not so benign! Vigilance is necessary as the virus progresses through the world population taking many people unawares and before vacination. Death toll is already not looking good, and people are much much too complacent about the risks!

People who have had the flu have no way of telling what kind they have had, but at the very least need to avoid pneumonia which attacks silently and too often is destructive and deadly!

Decision Taking Abilities

The Role of Thinking in Decisions



Now that the ability to make decisions is regarded as unmeasured in IQ tests, one might ask what the ability comprises.

In it's simplest form the making of a decision based on what we call thought as compared with instinct requires anticipation of a future event. One wonders where thought begins and instinct ends. Also, might one include intuition as a contributor to thought, as something standing on it's own right, or as an aspect of instinct.

In any event, thought may not be conscious, but a product of drill, practice, brain washing or propaganda, feelings translated into words on which decisions are based.

Thinking is normally considered to be a verbal activity, but as we know any of the senses might be involved and some of the senses bypassed. Decisions might thus arise before verbal reasoning, as would occur in many athletic activities, in art, creativity, symbolic reasoning.

How a decision making entity arrives at a decision is obviously varied. At some point, however, sufficient energy is released to make a decision have effect in action. Decision taking is thus a different stage of activity when compared with considering.

All decisions are a result of a trigger and once the trigger is activated a result representing a choice occurs. One aspect of this is to consider whether decisions arise from triggers that are sufficiently well understood. We make many choices, and often very quickly. How effectively we arrive at a choice that requires no correction is critical in evaluating decision making ability.

Obviously, many people will make decisions thinking that they can revise them later on based on a variety of criteria. The ability to move along the decision taking course of actions will also vary from person to person. Some will make few revisions and fast decisions while others will make many revisions and innumerable choices to refine decisions further and further over time.

Thus, it is not simple to measure decision taking abilities as these may themselves be a matter if style, which again may be a matter of intelligence, memory abilities, visualization, patience, breadth of consideration, and so on. Gets pretty complex doesn't it. That should teach us how divided seemingly simple processes can become, and even Occam's Razor may need a prior Razor!

It's Wheat Free Cake and Coffee at Neros in Exeter UK

Types of motion





Once, you are familiar with physics and physics theories, you are familar with the idea that motion amd useable space that we see as three dimensions comes out of the big bang, an almighty explosion that theory claims occured over 13.6 billion years ago.




There is an additional motion that we see as time that can be thought of as motion of the components of the three dimensions of space, but it is different from conventional thinking.

Time occurs as the fabric of space itself expands at every point in all three directions simultaneuosly ! What we know as the past is very very tiny and what we will know as the future is very very large. Time does not exist except as our motion in space that exists now as present, but that is because the present is a present and we are presented with it. The past present and future in our reality co-exist. Exept that, we choose to think incorrectly that we can go only in one direction of their prior or future existence. This is our real delusion. We will not, however always be presented with this limitation.

In the PPF world we all will experience the full dimensions of other spaces, but not governed by time our mind's viewpoint in the now as we know it.

Thinking Small About What's Very Big

Hot Fusion and the Economics of Large Scale and Tokamak / Tocamac Devices Based on Solar Energy Research



China, South Korea, Russia, Japan, the European Union, the United States and India are investing billions of SDRs, and potentially trillions in the future towards a large scale energy producing technology called Tokamak under the auspices of ITER, an international technology giant. The Tore Supra tokamak in France and the TRIAM-1M tokamak in Japan both produced long duration hot fusion energy. These are large units and produce temperatures of several million degrees Centigrade, very hot.

The target yield from energy going in to energy coming out is a power factor of 10, so that 100 MW going in would produce 1000 MW coming out.

So what are the economics of the tokamak? We know that the investment requirement is that of several monster large scale operations serving Europe, the Americas, and Asia. To say that the technology is capable of producing a new nation of technologies is probably an understatement. To also say that the implementation of the technology is not easily rushed, is also an understatement. Tokamac energy will take at least a generation to implement, and the people working on the tokamac projects are like modern day pyramid or cathedral builders.

Our future governments will be shaped by what these pyramid builders accomplish for instead of watching and worshiping the sun, they will be trying go build tiny suns here on earth. They will truly create the sun of light. We will organize nations of people and technologies around these gargantuan devices of the energy energy age.

The age of water is the age of energy is the age of the tokamac. Sounds almost religious until you realize that it is a form of sun worship and icon of the sun made here on earth to avoid using the sun that we have shining on us daily for free! Will our worship of our own sun blind us from properly using the real sun?





What seems to me that ITER is presently to a badly focused project that needs to be re-engineered somewhat to capitalize on what we are creating in parallel. The Tokamac has it's place, but we need to activate a more widespread field of operation that is more inclusive of the energy technologies we are developing in the here and now! Why do I say that? Tokamak's present focus has been on heat generation which drives heat based generators. Complementary to heat generation is chemical transformation to create chemicals. This is not to say that tokamak should produce chemicals, but it will have the capacity to do that!

Another thing tokamak creates is light. We should develop technologies that use the light directly and independently of technologies that use the heat, and those that create chemicals. From the light, we have also chemicals and heat.

Thus it seems to me that the scaling up of tokamak should be parallelled by our development of technologies that make use of the sun. These could then be complementary to large scale tokamac units, but in addition would be able scale down the technologies to produce economies of scale of mass production of small units that would be widely available when tokamac finally arrives for our great grand kids.

Getting the Economic Statistics into Perspective

The Little Understood Mathematics of Economic Growth







An economist who went by the name of Moore lived through the depression, but his economic and mathematics were never really applied or developed. They, nevertheless, contained an important element of business economics called the product cycle.

Product cycles for a firm tend to follow a pattern of slow growth, faster growth, and slow growth reflecting the life cycle of acceptance, penetration, and maturation of single product.

When economists look at the product cycle they can do so at various levels of aggregation from the individual firm with one product right up to all firms, many with a multitude of products at different stages of their life cycles.

Overall for the whole economy, it is important that economists really understand the maturity distribution of the product cycles of the firms operating in their economy. Yet, you would be surprised how little research into product cycles at the aggregate actually is undertaken. Why could this be? Are the mathematics so difficult?

The answer is an aversion by teachers of economics for situational or historical analysis based on statistical theory that looks at progress of individual technologies and products forming the product cycles of economies and firms. Yet, these product cycles are at the heart of understanding the mathematics of the Stock Market, consumption and investment of an economy. Instead, economics training has separated itself from the real world and moved into mathematical conjecturing that not only is not easy to understand, but ultimately misleading.





I come from a school of thought that if you want to know how something works, you get to know everything about that something. This means that you study it's history. You look at the world economy as made up of millions of products that each have a history and you develop a mathematics that is suited to understanding those histories individually and in total. You do a form of product historical accounting. Distinct patterns do emerge.

In some industries you find that there is very little competition. This is reflected in the distribution of firms and products historically. These industries are at a definable stage in their life cycles reflected in the products of these industries that are predominately at definable stages.

Understanding of industrial cycles and business cycles go hand in hand. It has been popular among some economists to claim that business cycles no longer exist or are not that important. Such claims are fanciful!

What emerges is conflicts between the approaches of individuals coming to the table from different ends. Some try to look at the total without understanding the composition. This can only go so far. Others look at individual cases without looking at the total. Both approaches have serious shortcomings, and yet people continue to behave as though the shortcomings do not exist.

To be able to predict economic growth and real growth rates a balanced approach coming from both ends of the table is required.

The Ancient Secret to Long Life

Yawning and Longetivity




This must be the craziest idea yet coming from this iPhone. It is that yawning has an ancient purpose as part of the long life ritual!

First, most of us have not even heard of the long life ritual! Yet, this ritual can promote long life. It is something like yoga, but originates in groups in ancient Britain.

Second, it began as a response to early ancestors giving speaches and expecting everyone to sit hours and hours on end listening intentively.

Third, when you have the urge to clear your head and awaken, you yawn. The ancient long life ritual began as some one listening to old Lax go on and on about the importance of having a personal relationship with the invisible universal constant.

A young child in the audience yawned. Soon everyone was yawning like mad. It was so infectuous that old Lax himself yawned, and then yawned again, and then yawned again.

Well that's when the long life ritual began. Everyone yawned, and yawned, then fell asleep.

Well, you know that sleep is the long life ritual, but you must always begin it with a yawn. The more you yawn the longer your life will be. That is because you activate those passages to your brain that get clogged up during the day. A good session of yawning clears the airways and gets those hormones going that promote a good sleep and a great feeling of contentment.

Ode to Stoic and Sufic Insight

The art of aiming high means being somewhat abstract!




In a world in which short term profit is the measure of success, one wonders whether it is sustainable. It's fashionable these days to realize that we owe more to what is far away than to what is close by. That is a good fashion trend.

Less fashionable is the notion that we owe more to what is infinitely far away. When the universe generated itself into large scale existence from a tiny existence, we tend to think of the matter as being somewhat far away. In actuality, the furthest things from us are those closest to us. We just fail to grasp the notions of dimension. The worst failing of human thought is that of assuming that a human being is somehow fundamentally different from an idea.

I find it impossible to explain to other human beings that they are moving internally in a extraordinarily fast as an outward exploding wave structure that defines them and all of existence. That they are abstract structures is something human beings fail to grasp.

That time is an exploding structure is something humans seem determined not to understand. That the reason physical laws derive from kinetic energy moving outward into space is something their localized minds cannot comprehend no matter how hard they try. I refer to this problem in Wuh Lax adventures as the problem of calibration. Without calibration the human mind is only partially there and misses the mark of what life is for. Uncalibrated brains cannot see the why of existence!

That all the laws of physics derive from outward explosive kinetic energy is beyond the grasp of human understanding. That the physics of strings and string theory in physics is in reality the music of an inflating reality going on within us now at this very moment is not easily fathomed by the brightest of human scientific or religious minds.

We are not only abstract structures but these structures that we call "us or me" are inflating at hypergeometric speeds. And, so it is that we have time.

What happens when you explode something? You get kinetic energy and inflation in scale of what you blow up. Such is time!

More wonderful than blowing something up is the imponderable realization that all our past continues to exist. All our futures also exist though in slightly different patterns that we experience in our sleep.

Our misunderstood reality is like a strike of lightning that once occuring releases so much kinetic energy that motion occurs almost simultaneously in two directions billions of occurences over.

Such is our time, that it reoccurs billions of occurences as our so pondered universe generates and regenerates itself billions of generations over and over again!

Don't seek perfection, however, for when you repeat, things may not quite be the same as before! No one knows!

Comparing our Potential with our Realization

Being Human Means Being Alone in Your Responsibilies and Sharing in Love







We know that an important part of out being is within the group. We play sports. We have meetings and gatherings. We join in and vote for governments and councils of the wise and wonderful. We engage ourselves in competition with others.

When we are in groups, we adopt a framework that is often less than our human potential. Our efforts and contributions get averaged out over larger and larger numbers. At worst, we lose that very important part of our nature, which is that of our being close to God.

Being close to God is when we are at our best and when we are most alone with respect to others. We often need to check whether our best measures up to the standards that God sets for us. It is one thing to lose oneself in the croud, but quite another to lose oneself whilst alone with the almighty creator and all of creation.

If we are not big in our own eyes, how can we expect God to see us as good in the same way that he sees our potential. When we compare our potential with our current capacity, we do it alone with God who is always there to tell us that we have more potential for good than what we know to be our present realization.

God is potential for good. If one does not experience good nor God, one is certainly less than our human potential for being human is to be increasingly alone and once completely alone we are truly with God our creator.

And, yet when we are with others in God's name, then we are at the crossing between people and Christ, who is the link between people and is often experienced in the form of shared love. When we meet in God's name or in the cause of love, Jesus claims that he as a force will be sitting there with us! God and his derived son in the form of Christ is then a shared experience, and we as humans are not alone from each other, but sit with the Son of God, a powerful force even though an abstract or unseen and frequently unsung being whom we as Christians know as Jesus the Christ, the ultimate expression and being of love in almost all cultures though appearing in many guises.

Being Christian is more than just being. It is a sharing of one's life with the supreme being through the ethereal connection provided in the form of Jesus Christ, the force of good when we are with God or the Son of God!

This is highly abstract until one is alone and tells oneself that one is alone in God's name. In reality we are just as abstract. We are ethereal to the physical universes. We are only a force because we have the gift of life which is truly the most abstract of forms, a form where we can observe the nature if our being!

Alternatively, one can meet with others in God's name and know that the Son of God will be amongst that group. The Son of God will be evident in the sharing of good between people, and for that sharing we use the word love as the noun and the verb. We love and we give love!

The gift of giving

Joys of Thanksgiving!




We almost all of us realize that we have been given gifts of love and caring.

This is no more apparent than at our personal family gatherings. You know that you are most sane when you know that you are happy to have love coming at you from all directions.

God gave you life and watches you fulfil it. Your family gives you company and happy memories along with enormous challenges and experiences. Your friends give you interesting ideas and provoke you to develop and explore the world given to you.




One's biggest concern is whether one can give something back in return. When you think on that you know that you are sane and that you have even more than you thought you had!

Who is the big bad wolf?

My well runs deeper still!



Often in seeking to reassure oneself we engage in castle building. It starts with the three little pigs. One had a house of straw, the other a shack of wood and the third a magnificent abode built of stone.

The straw and stick constructs were demolished by the wolf who blew very hard. So there was one piglet remaining inside a dwelling of stone. The wolf sat outside and thought to hisself! What am I going to do about that ugly monstrosity?

So the wolf called out to the piglet inside the cosy abode. "Heh pig, you got a problem with your little old house."

The frightened little critter looked out his window and wondered what the haggard looking drinking sodden ugly wolf was talking about.

"Look there!" the kind wolf said smerking sadly to hisself. "On the corner you have a crack in your castle and if you are not careful it will leak when the rains come. I'm forecasting heavy showers tonight"

"Really!" exclaimed the surprised piglet, now very worried. He opened the door to have a look and came outside where the wolf was studying his home, his mouth watering!

"I can fix it for you," said the wolf smiling kind to the last bite!

The moral of this tale is never to take your eye off your real problems because the wolf may want you to!

Blessed are the Peace Makers

Congratulations President Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize



You deserve it! You have done more for peace in your first year than many Presidents over several terms of office. What amazes me is that so many fellow Americans do not see what you have accomplished. That says it all!

What is a miracle?

God as the supreme observer!




We sometimes are prone to leave the observer outside of physics only to rediscover that the observer is the most important component of any physical process.

This is because the observer has an opportunity to transform what has no meaning into something glorious and full of meaning.

It is the observer's capacity to create meaning through observation and participation in a wondrous creation that makes life what it is, a miracle!

What is freedom?

Normal and Lognormal Distributions of Income and Wealth



A normal distribution of incomes has a bell shape. Real economic growth may be faster in such economies because people generally buy into the growth process. Competition in normal economies tends to be benign and leads to higher overall incomes without distortion of the overall incomes distribution. There are few normal economies, but we are under the illusion that they are the actual norm!

People have normal income distribution illusion not seeing that they are relatively worse off than they think they are.

A lognormal incomes distribution is not so bell shaped and tends to reflect economic growth arising from economies of scale, inflation, monopolization, restrictive practices, unfair competition, hoarding, black market activity, poor overall education, disasters, wars, goose stepping and comradery in societal organization, and so on!

Most people live in communities where the lognormal distribution of incomes prevails and they are not aware of how much of of skew in the distribution against them actually exists. This is relative incomes or relative wealth illusion. That is, not seeing the poor distribution when it is staring them in the face. They might even deny it's prevalence.

Some lognormal tendency arises out of competition if the distribution of supports for competition are already badly distributed. The log normal has in fact become normal because economists have their own illusions of not seeing bad or unfair competive conditions that are staring them in the face. They deny they are bad, that they exist or both!

Listen! You are in a bad income distribution situation if you think like a foot ball fan, goose step, or seek comrade. These are not normal behaviours but the consequence if your group fed illusions! Step outside of them and see yourself as an individual who is being skrewed by a biased mentality of the herd animal.

Raise your sights to that of an active liberated individual. Liberty, equality and fraternity are not normal. Fraternity is not comradery but respect for others! Equality is eqality of opportunity...thoroughly enforced and not the illusion of opportunity, and liberty is being a self sufficient individual and not a codependent member of a semi- feudal society!

Wither the Middle Class

Growth, Democracy and the Middle Class






Economic growth if not distributed according to the normal dustribution leads to a persistent social syndrome which is the decline of the middle class and the birth of the goose stepping and comradery classes.

Too fast nominal economic growth leads to a lognormal distribution of incomes and depoverishment of the middle class. In it's worse cases of extremely rapid nominal income growth the distribution of incomes is a very highly skewed lognormal distrution with almost every one in the base of low incomes and a very few in the top tail.

How does an economy remain normal instead of lognormal in it's distribution of incomes? Easy answer!! To create a normal income distribution one has to have a normal economic generator of incomes.

Thus one has to avoid several generators of the lognormal growth pattern in nominal incomes and wealth.

The main one is inflation in sectors of long term investment, the so called capital goods sectors such as housing, automobiles, land, plant and machinery, and even education and skilled individuals.

Second in importance is overall inflation, which generally can be contained by limiting money supply growth rates.

A third is monopolies. These tend to destroy a normal distribution of incomes. They are usually based on technical economies of scale, but can arise from patents, monosony or monopolizing protections of government, government organizations, unrestricted uncompetitive practices, acquisitions and mergers financed through credit.

Such distortions as listed above are inherited from and promote modern forms of feudelism based on lognormal distributions of the benefits of economic growth. They predispose societies towards instability and unnecessary or excessively rapid evolutionary economic changes that lead to boot stepping or comradery mentalities.

Rough Ride Ahead for World Economy

The Illusion of Recovery and Why Things are Much Worse Than They Seem




My reading of the present situation is largely pessimistic despite potential for strong sustained economic and business development growth outside of real estate markets.

Things seem bad, but they are really much worse than bad. The problem is that the downswing is not a correction but a consequence of doing nothing that really corrects a deep underlying problem. The underlying problem is that of overvalued assets, property, and debt. What caused the problem was excessive growth in the real estate Market unsupported by the growth in real incomes. Now real incomes have fallen further and further away from the real estate costs and imputed values which means an even greater unsupported overhang and the real possibility of major collapse leading to even further distancing of real incomes from supportable real estate values.

What policy makers have not done is link real incomes in America and Britain to supportable real estate values over the longer term. The forces of recession are increasing more than ever as money value illusion creates a larger and larger disjoint!

To resolve the issues it us important that policy makers create the bridge between real incomes and the real value of property that these real incomes must support.

Banks will need to lock in their losses rather than pretend they do not exist. Governments need to provide a bridge to banks in order to do this. If there is no lock in or no government support associated with a lock in, there will be a real reduction in growth, an explosion of debt, and an implosion of bank balance sheets.

I see no efforts to lock in consumers of real estate to property vales and real incomes. Instead banks are propping up real estate values artificially. This will not produce a long term solution because of stop go economic swings that will result over the longer term as economies swing in and out of financial crises several times over the next two decades associated with political and social forces, as governments fail to produce stable economic environments for growth!

My earlier blogs indicated what I think needs to be done to correct the imbalance between excessive real estate expansion and slow growth in real average personal incomes.

Asia is Following an Unbeatable Economic Strategy

Borrowing your way to disaster and the devil of future histories to come for Britain and United States

Or, why Britain and Canada will probably join neighbouring Currency Areas and lose policy making indendence!

Right now the world's worst economic transformation is looming and the two countries at the source of it, the UK and the US are totally impotent to change their borrowing and consuming habits. Driving straight for the cliff, the lemings rush forward to their ultimate transformation into bony skeletons and they take the world with them.

Such a thesis starts from the premise that house and land prices in USA should be stagnant, level, low, whatever word that you understand to mean, there should be no inflation in land or houses. House orices have not been stable nor have not been for many years. What does that mean? It means that land and real estate is still being used by these major debtor countries to pay for their enormous overseas debts that have built up through the imbalance of their trade with Asia.

Much of the debt is in Asian hands and property in USA and the UK will ultimately be owned by Asians. This will occur after the largest deflation in history as the exchange rates of these two countries swing to bring about a balance. Never in history has the imbalance of trade been so great for so long for so much. Asia may see forces that bring about a balance, but it will be eventually through the ownership of land and real estate in the UK and the US. Paper assets will not be enough to satisfy Asian demands for payment. Issuing currency will not be sufficient to offset demands for real assets.

This is not a disaster if it were to stop at increasing Asian ownership, but it won't.

The UK and the US are increasingly beholden to Asian interests and will eventually surrender their independence of economic policy. Made in Asia will be US and UK interest rates. As Americans are removed from their houses through the inability to pay deposits they will become renters of land and real estate. Ownership and control will fall to Asian interests.




The form of ownership will be as multinational firms with Asian names. These companies will produce in America, but they will not necessarily export from America. Profits will go to shareholders and these will increasingly be pension funds of Asian based multinationals.

The degree of imbalance can be reduced, but as the process is like that of climate change, it will not be seen until it us irreversable. Why? Because America and Britain fail to take action to get their savings rates up.

The problem is one of attitude. The British and Americans presently have the attitude that there is no problem with going eternally into debt to Asian interests. However, we sense a different reality, don't we. We know what goes as present policy does not address the debt issues.

Be aware of your independence

Drawing Active Conclusions From Your Feelings

Many readers will be living within countries or cultures where the act of being independent or taking an independent view is discouraged if not flatly forbidden!

It is not experience that prepares you for understanding so much as it is your head being in touch with your feelings.

No amount of feelings are good if you do not have the head to interpret them accurately. No amount of headwork is enough if you do not have feelings to go along with your brainwork. Such is the balance between what you reason and what you feel that they say these activities take place in different parts of your brain. Right side brainwork without left side brainwork predisposes one to lopsided results.

There are internal feelings and there are internal reasonings. Your head may use visual, auditory or touch tools in combination or balanced. When we use all three in conjunction with internal feelings we have more instruments and information to get our reasoning closer to the truth.



Add smell and taste and one is well away. Not only that but your mind can remember all five major senses as well as an infinite amount of internal processes to pin down accuracy. But such use of our bodies requires effort and self confidence!

Use all your senses and capabilities to gain your indendence. Borrow, beg or steal from others to get at the truth, then struggle within yourself to remember it when you most need it. Such self awareness and knowledge may save your life and those of others around you.

Wimteldum's Law

Stability and Instability and Maintaining a Sound Balance

It is a sad fact that one's conservative side tries to maintain endless stability, but in so doing creates the very instability it is seeking to avoid. And, so it is that in history those that sought stability and were conservative foreshortened their existence as they were overwhelmed by those necessary and unnecessary forces that predispose our world to endless unceasing change.

The irony is that we need to change in order to be stable and survive longer.

For example, we need to acquire foreign language skills to survive healthy and competitive lives. It is healthy to do so and may forestall the onset of dementia.

By seeking to be pure, we become impure. If we do not allow a little sinning to taste the bad side of our nature how are we to strengthen our struggle against it and recognize it fir what it is. Without a few vices, we become inexperienced when new vices do hit with fierce temptations. Priests without expression of their sexual personality can fail in their struggle not to become perverted and may seek excess on what they really want to avoid. Balance of forces of the good and the bad help to bring about positive changes that can give us confidence and capability. It you have potential and you don't test it, you probably will lose it.

Wimteldum's Law

Stability and Instability and Maintaining a Sound Balance

It is a sad fact that one's conservative side tries to maintain endless stability, but in so doing creates the very instability it us seeking to avoid. And, so it us that in history those that sought stability and were conservative foreshortened their existence as they were overwhelmed by those necessary and unnecessary forces that predispose our world to endless unceasing change.

The irony is that we need to change in order to be stable and survive longer. For example, we need to acquire foreign language skills to survive healthy and competitive lives. How many of my readers are learning a new language. It is healthy to do so and may forestall the onset of dementia.

By seeking to be pure we become impure if we do not allow a little sinning to taste the bad side of our nature. Without a few vices, we become inexperienced when vices do hit with fierce temptations. Priests without expression of their sexual personality become perverted and seek excess. Balance of forces good and bad help bring about positive changes that give us confidence and capability. It you have potential and you don't test it, you lose it.

The Problem with Free Trade

An arguable thesis is that free trade makes us worse off economically despite it's proclaimed long and short term benefits!

Fact is that no existing school of economists would voluntarily give a PhD for such a thesis ecen though it shines as a sensible alternative to less pragmatic economic treatises. If all economic dissertations were forced to contain practicality we would all be better off, in my view.

Economics theory not history is bunk on the question of theorized benefits from free trade which invariably accrue more abundantly to monopolizing initiatives over the longer term. This in time leads to political change unfavourable to democratic institutions. Examples in history abound as in the rise of many large multinational firms, financial and banking institutions that restrain trade by their corporate practices.

Contravailing policies are always needed to weaken the negative effects of monoplization, but the attempts to curb the negative impacts of monopolization are weakest in regimes of free trade.

There is an economic law that free trade leads to lower total employment in the long run and to maldistribution of the returns to trade in favour of countries and companies seeking to reduce competition and replace whatever competition exists with near monoplies or forms of monopolistic competition.

In the absence of competition we get forms of management of society and its institutions that resemble dictatorships. This changes political institutions towards greater and greater control and eventually fascism where big financial interests dominate.

Free trade concepts are like like perfect competition concepts are hangovesr of failed economic concepts that bear little resemblance with reality.

What goes as free trade is invariably a progress towards monopoly. The problems of free trade are that they do not create competition as text books might profess. On the contrary forms of free trade because of technologies of scale always leads to a reduction of competition a slowing down of growth and employment in total and progress towards monopolies and unfair distributions of incomes.

Instead of free trade one needs balanced trade and investment in which both trading partners as communities voluntarily manage their scale of operation to limits within which real competition of quality survives and dominates. This is hardly the monolithic Monsanto world.

Bad Competitive Situation

Received as email! Think whether you would like this affecting your services. More on this bad economics in Canada in future blogs!

Hello,

We need your help -- we need you to lend us your voice and state your opinion on a recent CRTC decision that could allow the incumbent phone companies (such as Bell and Telus) to discontinue offering services (Internet and phone) to wholesale providers which in effect would eliminate competition in Canada.

With no competition to help fuel the market; Internet innovation could come to stand still and prices for broadband access could skyrocket out of control. The incumbents would also be free to do with the lines as they please. This would open up future privacy invading Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies and direct marketing/advertising based on *you* and *your families* internet activities and habits.

They could also use this same technology to turn the Internet into a pay-per-website service the same way that TV is a pay-per-channel service.

Can you imagine a world where you have to pay to use the Google website to search for information? Then, if you find what you are looking for you may be restricted to the content because your ISP doesn't have a "peering"
agreement with said company.

Please help us stop this major potential catastrophe.

All concerned consumers please visit:
http://www.competitivebroadband.com/consumer/

All concerned businesses please visit:
http://www.competitivebroadband.com

Read the information presented and decide for yourself.

Once you've decided what you think is right, you can click the "Make a Difference" link, fill out the form with your details and send a pre-written

message to Minister of Industry Tony Clement, Prime Minister Harper, the Opposition Leader, and your local MP or choose to write your own.

Together we can make a difference.
Thank you,

TekSavvy Solutions, Inc.

It could never happen again?

A review of 'Defying Hitler' a memoir by Sebastian Haffner

We live in extraordinary times! Some would say that we could in a few years say 2011 have a repeat of a cycle of confluent political and economic forces similar to what occured after Frances invasion of the German Ruhr in 1923, but with the world convulsing in runaway inflation and social upheaval with some gaining riches beyond all imaginings standing alongside those too poor to buy a loaf of bread.

Could this happen? Yes! Will it happen? Probably! And what will be the end result.

The end result could be roaring prosperity and moral depravity on the scale of the 1920's, which brought about the real depression.

Make no mistake Haffner's book is a must read for those willing to look ahead and view the dangers embedded in our extraordinary times.

The choices that we have now are not so diifferent from then except that conflagration that may result will make WWII look much like a picnic in the park!

Oh! It could never happen you say! But, that is before you read 'Defying Hitler' to envision what can and may happen all over again, different actors and different players, but a repeat of a familiar cycle into worldwide insanity !!!

Demon Chaser

Come sit with me!

Sometimes when you are with someone old or infirmed, all you can do us go sit with them quietly. My ninety-four year old father lay near death's door, and I knew that it was too much to expect of him that he would carry on a conversation. With failing tunnel-vision eyesight he could not see who I was and asked very politely, "And, who are you?"

"It's Arthur," I replied.

"Ah hah," he responded, "Arthur, Arthur, ah hah!"

I could not tell whether he understood or not, for he fell silent as if all his energy were devoted to listening or just plain ordinary enjoying the presence of his middle son. That was conversation ended and my father's breathing was constant and deliberate. He knew I was there and he had a soft gentle smile as he stared silently at the ceiling.

I found the book that I had been reading to him. It was the story of Ellen Acland written by her mother Eleanor. I read another chapter, the last chapter of the book, and left.

That night my father passed away.

He left a memory of a Don Quixote character, a hero in his own mind and a conqueror of demons. As his son, I was always reminded of these demons. Dad took great care to make sure that I did not forget that they were around. His practice was to warn all and sundry about the demons of the world at least once, but his family endlessly. As a son, if my father thought that you did not hear what he said, he felt obligated, no driven, to tell you once more. I developed the habit of repeating to him what he had just told me and always agreeing.

On reflection, many of my best friends are like my father in telling me of the world's demons. It's best practice friendship and my father was throughout my life, my best male friend. My mother was my best female friend and she lived to the age of ninety-two.

My mother rarely spoke to me of my demons or anyone elses, but always guided me in the direction of worthwhile challenges. She fed me well and demanded little or nothing in return other than my telling her I was alive and sensibly happy at whatever I was about.

Mom supported the demon chasing and recognized that for a man peace came only after he had given warning or had fought off the demons.

Some iPhone blog editors annoy me

When one types a word into a text editor it will correct some obvious misprllkngs that occur because one's fingers are bigger than the key letters if the touch key pad. ( I am leaving my errors to illustrate the limitations of self correcting text editors.). I don't have a proof reader that us human.

Lately, the editor has corrected the word hole to whole. Either that or I am brain dead at least some of the time!

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Golf and the economy

What imponderables drive the economy? Golfing and forecasting are similar in that they require an understanding of non-linear topographies.

This note is for Cedric who wants to become a proficient derivatives manager.

This is not an idle question as it defines the outcomes that we see from the economy. My view changes from time to time just as the imponderables that drive an economy change from time to time. The driving forces behind economic activity are akin to states of mind. They are almost just as ethereal in appearance, but in effect they are very real, just as states of mind are very real and can have driven outcomes.

Economies are extremely complex in many ways, but they are not unpredictable. They are extremely predictable. They are predictable just as states of mind are predictable and weather is predictable. To predict an economy one needs oversight, an ability to see over the whole landscape of what forces drive an economy. Ronald Brech the author of 'Britain 1984' taught me many things about economy forecasting and most important was that the economy was a balancing act like a teeder-tauter, but one in which there were many vectors that were in or out of balance.

Oversight means that one has to have in view all the vectors that matter in view and comprehend how they are balanced, then apply a host of understandings about what drives each vector in or out of balance and then how each vector's balance with affect the other.

Unfortunately, models of the economy are still very partial examinations of the vectors driving an economy, and that us because of the way habit persistence in the theory of economic forces persists.

Forecasting requires thinking outside the boxes of conventional theories to get an oversight of what is going on. Some vectors will be like a clear day while others will be like a hazy day and still others like a foggy day. A good forecast comes only when all vectors are like clear days and the topography relatively easy to understand. At such times it is relatively easy to make a forecast of a vector and know it will happen as envisaged. At such times we say that the forecast is predefined because the vectors are driven. With a driven system it is easier to see where things are going.

The problem remains of non-linearity. Getting a forecast right is like playing golf and get the ball in the whole. The course has non-linearities and the green has non-linearities. Approximating with a line put will not get the ball in the whole. No linear forecasting system works and no linear golfing system works because the topography is eternally non-linear!

Repeating one's life

Killing!

When you fell a tree, what do you kill?

It seems to me that a tree is not just one living creature, but billions. Thus for me the killing of a single tree is like the killing of a billion creatures dependent on that tree to live.

We think of tree leaves as part of a tree and so they are, but each leaf has it's own individuality and life and death process. Each leaf is a living system dependent on a larger system which is the tree.

The seeds that create leaves are not automatic. They individually need to be warmed, watered and fed by the tree that sustains them. There are billions and billions of creations we call leaves. Each leaf has it's own birth, life, and death.

Have you ever asked yourself whether after a leaf dies, it comes back to life again as the same or a new leaf? What form of awareness does such a simple creation have? Or is it too simple to have any awareness at all? It must have something that we would think of as primitive awareness or it would not develop. Is it water that gives it that awareness? Or light?

That question may seem trivial to you, but are you sure it is not trivial to you. What if your reoccurance is like the seed that produces a leaf and each leaf is like a life. Does the leaf of 2009 bear any common relationship with the leaf of 2008, or are they completely different leaves/ lives? What is the memory and full experience of the leaf? When it dies, does it die each season, or does it die only when the tree dies? What dies?

What one dimensional experience constitutes the life of a leaf?

Death

Killing! What is death and killing all about?

When you fell a tree, what do you kill?

It seems to me that a tree is not just one living creature, but billions. Thus for me the killing of a single tree is like the killing of a billion creatures dependent on that tree to live.

We think of tree leaves as part of a tree and so they are, but each leaf has it's own individuality and life and death process. Each leaf is a living system dependent on a larger system which is the tree.

The seeds that create leaves are not automatic. They individually need to be warmed, watered and fed by the tree that sustains them. There are billions and billions of creations that we call leaves and they all have origins in seeds of some form.

What are these seeds that produce life or leaves? Are they just proteins, DNA, or RNA? Or are they more than that? We see them and we see that they live and that they are like leaves and like lives. Each strand of code that makes up a leaf or life comes from a generator of that code and the history of that generator goes back endlessly in time, or so it appears.

Each leaf has it's own birth, life, and death. Have you ever asked yourself whether after a leaf dies, it comes back to life again as the same or a new leaf? That question may seem trivial to you, but are you sure it is not trivial to you?

What if your re-occurance is like the seed the produces a leaf and each leaf is like a life. Does the leaf of 2009 bear any common relationship with the leaf of 2008, or are they completely different leaves/ lives? What is the experience of the leaf? When it dies, does it die each season, or does it die when the tree dies? What one dimensional experience constitutes the life of a leaf?

Who or what is editing your life in order to create the perfected or improved you? Or have you ever thought of the universe as your editor? It is what generated you. But, who or what are you? When all the coding is complete, are you something more? Do you fall like a leaf forever gone, or do you reappear as a new leaf reborn from the tree that is your generator?

When you fall asleep, you know that you will reawaken a better you. You know that sleep is when your generator rebuilds and works on you! Your awareness on awakening you regard as residing in you. But, what if you are like a cell phone and you are processed outside of you? What if you are reprogramned and your memory is outside of what you think is you and that you are only the instrument and not the complete whole of what is you?

What if time is recorded? What if your brain travels back to that recording? And, wait for it! What if the recording that your brain uses is not in our three dimensional world? Our future is not in this universe, or is it. What if your life is the way a living organism corrects it's mistakes?

It's all about me!

The only things that make any sense.

When I find time to think about such things as cosmology and the big question "why am I a human being and here on earth in the year 2009," there is little in the way of facts that make for handy or convincing explanations. It is not kust me. This question arises for us all. So, how do we explain the universe to ourselves?

I think one of the greatest gifts that we can have is that it is something we can ponder. There is no one forcing me to any particular opinion. I can research the issue and come to my own conclusions. Wow!

What a wonderful gift that is! My brain is relatively clear. I can reason pretty well and my parents are dead so I don't have to believe what they believed. I don't even have to be respectful of what others believe. I can think for myself and make my own mistakes in coming to my own conclusions. I can get lost in the wilderness of ideas and only have myself to blame if I get it wrong. Most of my readers enjoy the same privileges. Not all, but many! Well at least a few! I hope! Oh, please a few, at least. No, I am not the only one.

I can count on one hand the number of people that I know who also have the conviction that everything repeats on some way. I mean everything! Well almost everything! Well, everything that I can ever know or experience. That is the only reality for me that makes it all worthwhile.

I have to conclude that I am totally illogical. Everyone, I know believes in time and that one cannot go back in time. I don't! Time for me is like a line on a field. Every one I know is on the field, and most refuse to move off the line. I am so happy that I do not stand on the line of time on that field. That's what makes sense to me. It is that time is not a line. Time at the very least is a plane. I am thinking it is at the very least a torus and that what I am seeing now repeats itself over and over again not because it exists more than once, and it may, but that it is available to me to experience more than once.

There is probably more than one me, but that is not necessary, as the me that I am is and will always be sufficient because I will re-occur in some space sooner or later just as my world has re-occured for me, this time.

Thanks for reading.

Lost Blog

Using my iPhone I accidently zapped my blog on the film by Nikita Mikhalkov so here it us below for those who did not see it the first time, plus a few comments on Michael Moore's new film on capitalism. If you like to think, these are must films.


In Praise of '12' - A film by Nikita Mikhalkov
Posted: 12 Sep 2009 07:49 AM PDT
This Russian film is an amazing tribute to how far Russia has progressed over the last decade. The story of the film follows the deliberations of the 12 jurors who had to decide the fate of a young man caught up in the violence of post USSR conflict. Entirely in Russian, the subtitles on English were more than adequate.

I think that you will enjoy the many faces of Russian society revealed in this story which is a masterpiece of dialogue.

See it, learn, and enjoy the changing experience from what you thought about Russia to what you can think about Russia!

Michael Moore has produced a film on capitalism. I have not seen the film but Jay Leno says that it is a balanced view of what ails the economic system of the best country in the world, the United States.

What will ail all economies are the two human traits of imitation and habit persistence combined with the technological law of economies of scale, which together lead to the Pareto distribution of incomes, i.e. badly skewed in favour of a few people. It's sad that the economist of Italian fascism was so close to understanding why civilizations fail and could do nothing about it.

The Short Sighted Economist

The New Economy

The new economy is an economy that is based on the notion that it is not beneficial to save. It is an economy produced by governments that want revenue increases that arise from increased nominal and real incomes. The implementation of the new economy has serious consequences for real saving.

As governments keep interest rates extraordinarily low people don't save, but rather make long term decisions that commit them mire and more to a culture if low saving over the long term. This may mean greater spending and stock market growth, and rising property values for extended periods, but it reduces the proportion of long term incomes that people are willing to save in cautious savings media, such as bank deposits.

It means that only very profitable short term activities are supported in the stock markets of advanced economies. Long term investments struggle for financing in industrial economies while short term profitability of increasing production in low wage economies takes precedence. This gradually erodes the capacity of industrial countries to produce and compete because they have not invested enough.

Eventually, low interest rates produce a sagging long term economic equation similar to that seen in Japan.

Dangerous lending

Linking our future to China and larger scale enterprise

It's no secret that there is a close link between research and development and the discovery of useful knowledge, science, iinvention, and possibly innovation. R and D requires a redirection of econonomic activities towards low return activities. But, such cost is not attractive in many sectors, industries, firms, and indeed households of an economy.

Dominant firms protect their positions by reducing the profitability of their competitors positions so as to reduce their rivals ability to conduct competitve or novel r and d. Ultimately, such a process would result in a stifling of competition, and in turn a lowering of the profit rates for all but the most dominant of commercial entities.

In a world of industries based on economies of scale, those with economies will attempt to achieve more and more such economies until the distribution of profit in their area of competition is monopolized.

How then is discovery outside of established industries and concerns possible? Technology is notoriously difficult to dominate in a society where their is independent r and d. Hiwever, discovery isn't possible in societies that are dominated by huge firms the stife novelty as on Africa or in a world dominated by economies of scale unless the dominant firms themselves create new industries. But, one must ask why they would do that.

As a dominant firm, in addition to ruining your competition through economies if scale, you can ruin them by buying their shares and by trying to take control through public markets. Thus, for example, Cadbury's is bought by rival firms. And thus large firms increasingly stifle competition through the profits they mainly gather through achieving economies of scale, domination of profit, and accumulation of competitors shares acquired by higher profit margins.

In addition, the pace of domination can be accelerated without saving when interest rates are low. Borrowing to prevent competition in times of low interest rates means that innovation and growth in an economy can be stifled sooner. The money large firms gather is thus used directly to stifle competition. This process is speeded up when money is too cheap.

Low interest rates hasten the appearance of many undesirable side effects of the modern economy. People can buy houses only to see them lost when their incomes decline. Their incomes decline because solid growth dud not occur in their economy. Apparent growth was in real estate markets as developers achieved economies of scale and gambled on dominating the property markets. The competition arising from low lending rates fir money priduced house price inflation and a dakse sense of economic well being. The profits to builders and banks resulted in monopolization of profit and further maldistribution of profits, savings, and incomes. They banks were bailed out, but the lessons of the period were not understood and the process of destructive market forces in the US and UK will repeat as in the case of Thailand.

The low interest rates do not encourage people to pay off debt as they should, but

In the longer term easy money borrowed from China where economies if scale are enormous hasten the maldistribution of incomes on the US, slow the rates of meaningful innovation and bring about the disappearance of the middle class of society.

Low interest rates, aka easy money, hastens the destruction of social fabrics in the US that leads to fascism, yes fascism and not socialism. The greatest danger from low interest rates is social conflict leading to the many forms of fascism: communism, dictatorship, and outright fascism. Thus a dictatorship can result in the US which was the home of democracy, but is increasingly a place of social conflict and unruly goverance.

Underlying low interest rates is the competition between banks and between the finance rooms of large companies to stifle competition, redistribute profit towards their goals of greater economies of scale and dominance of society's income streams.

The process is addictive and repetitive and can only be foreshortened by slowing down the accumulation of excess savings arising in profits of large firms and banks.

We all, through the IMF, have flooded the world with cheap money thinking that it will produce a solution to the financial market turmoil arising from banks trying to achieve economies of scale by lending more and more at looser and looser terms.

It can only hasten the rise of fascist dictatorial tendencues of industries, countries and firms. Throwing easy money at the problem is not the solution.

Ask yourself why Africa us in such a mess after all the money poured into it through aid, and World Bank development loans. The problem is the weaknesses inherent in the solution that we opted for.

Throwing more money at our economic issues does not solve them when it makes them worse!

We think money in the hands of bankers will promote stability when it will only lead to more competition between banks. Banks are trying to dominate other banks and the more money they get to do this the less they will lend to small industry and the less stability there will be on the world economy.

The best policy right now is the most difficult to swallow if you are dominated by large industry and you are heavily into debt with banks. The policy is that of high interest rates to curb the growth of easy money and to ultimately slow down the pace of political change that is heading towards fascism brought about by social conflict.

The lending binge of the twenties and thirties in the last century led to the most dangerous of periods for humankind as people were pursuaded that the Jewish bankers were to blame for their economic ills. The real culprit was government spending and government demands for reparations. Governments brought about the first and second great wars! Will they bring about another?

Profit Motivation and Incentive Motivation Questioned by Research

What creates wealth? Pink's TED video

In his TED video Dan Pink, a failed law student turned creativity advisor, refers to research that establishes as fact that the profit motive of incentive for business development does not produce the goods as well as other motives! This fact has been well documented by economists of the Schumpeterian School of economics but ignord by orthodox teaching of economics in most US grad schools that do not have a strong historical analytical base.

Economic history demonstrates that innovation is not the result of the search for profit and incidently security.

Rather individuals who are entrepreneurs and innovators are driven by other motivations. This is known by PHD studies of market development as conducted by myself at Cambridge university in the 1970s. The orthodox view of the supremacy of profit as the driver of market development I determined to be false, but most left and right wing economists at the time at Cambridge were hostile to my ideas that other motives drove business innovation and market development.

Now Dan Pink refers to many studies that reinforce my earlier views which are not so different from those of Schumpeterian economists who were ignored by macro economists unwilling to recognize the serious gaps in their thinking and historical realities.

Indeed as Pink says invention and innovation by such companies as Google, Apple and Microsoft tend to follow other economic models where they achieve actual market development. I would humbly add that these models are of my school of thought.

Where companies have perpetrated social injustice frequently is where the profit motive has stifled other motives and resulted in market stagnation and the severe limiting of competition.

Artists Art and the Personality Behind the Image

It's more than personality! It can be genes, sexual preference, religion, culture, predisposition in any direction almost. That's why Dick said to me that there were no rules in art. Another, might say it's in the eyes of the beholder. In my views. for I have more than one, it comes down to states of mind and predominant states of mind. There are no rules to states of mind. We might wish there were!

Art works in many directions simultaneously. We tend to think that we are recipients of art, but the reality is more often than not that we define the art around us and place ourselves where we feel we would be most comfortable with the art we have selected to be near! We fill our homes with art the reinforces our predominant states of mind.

Artists may play along with this and lose themselves forgetting their role as creators of new states of mind. In other words, art can complement existing states of mind or it can attempt to create new ones.

Those artists that swim against the stream may be poor in pocket as well as skills. Or, they may be great artists attempting to create new states of mind.

There are many examples of art work that is strange and leads us down pathways to new ways of thinking. I like to compare the art work of Scientific American magazine with that if the New Scientist. If you have read both, you will grasp what I mean about creativity versus conformity. I won't go into the details here.

In societies where there is considerable social integration such as India, the art contains many layers is social information that is absent in the art if say Canada or Sweden, both of which are highly social communities, but which are rich in providing for fairly specific groups of states of mind.

And, so it is with art. We can surround ourselves with images that mirror our surroundings in some way, or we can use art to build states of mind that we would otherwise have difficulty in sustaining.

The Pfizer Fraud

Ignorance is not bliss. The Pfizer case pin points another enemy of the ordinary person. How is it possible to fight an enemy that uses tactics reminiscent of Nazi Germany? If one had any doubts that one must always always be on one's guard, the frauds by Pfizer should be telling you something.

It is not enough that you yourself research into hidden dangers. It us not enough that you trust only respected brand names. It is not enough that you work within established social norms. And, the reason is because of people and groups like Pfizer who break all the normal rules of society and still get away with it. Who are these people?

Learning one's way to success

Success and Achievement

The meanings of success and achievement are different. For example, it is possible to be very successful without achievement. Most of my achievements come through failures which seems counter logical.

It is even possible that one's greatest failures lead to one's greatest achievements. These one may regard as successes, but it seems more satisfying to think of them as achievements.

The notion of achievement carries with it a struggle against some sort of challenge to one's being successful. If success comes too easily it is downgraded. Why! The reason is that achievement tells you something about the passage to success. And, easy passage may be a success, but it is not so much of an achievement.

Making one's way from A to B blindfolded is more of an achievement than with vision. Doing a blog on the iPhone us more of an achievement than sitting at a large mobile or desk top computer.

An achievement may not be regarded as a success. Because a success and an achievement appear to be the same they may not be regarded as different. After all getting from A to B means that one is still at B no matter how one got there.

Many people view success as the object of it all failing to recognize that achievement on the road to success is also to be valued. Why?

The reason seems to me to arise because of the mistakes one makes getting to a goal. The more mistakes one makes and overcomes may have a value greater than reaching success without mistakes. Of one is very lucky one may make very few mistakes for a time and even for a long time. Nevertheless, the person who has made a lot of mistakes and learned from them is a very different person from the one who made few mistakes and had a relatively easy time becoming succesful.

There may be a price to be paid because of easy successes. A portfolio manager may be very successful and yet not have achieved much because the stock market was bullish most of the time. Boasting of success put of an easy market is, however, foolhardy. Another manager in a bear market may have had less success, but indeed be better prepared because of the smaller achievements sting from cutting one's teeth in periods of hardship. The two managers are very different in their capacities and though one may be regarded as more successful, that person may not be able to manage a more difficult market. This is only one of many examples one can think of.

The problem with today's world is that it fails to see the difference between achievement and success. This is extremely important when evaluating the performance of people or larger units such as economies or firms. An economy such as that of India achieved much to get it's agriculture where it us today. Industrial economies may be more successful in producing crops on large scale and bringing prices down, but have they achieved as much. They can destroy the agricultural sector of India without achieving anything that has lasting value. This is because it is much easier to be successful with economies if scale in agriculture even though it is a minor achievement, easy peasy.

We are in danger of misinterpreting successes as achievements and so miss the point of it all. It is far more important to promote achievement in the grand scheme of things. Having a thriving agricultural sector in India is far more important in it's achievement than the short term success of other countries being able to easily out price Indian agriculture and produce more misery and unemployment in that country while a few firms with machinery in Canada producing wheat make bigger profits.

Say no to free trade. It is not a success story for humanity.

What is Love to You?

Sanity and Love

The feeling of love in the popular mind is very often associated with being out of control. My favourite association of the feeling of love is that of sanity and being in full control.

One might say that a precondition of my favourite notion of love is when one has full control of ones feelings, emotions and rational thought, and yet has that additional process going on of love.

This does not occur when one is overwhelmed or underwhelmed, but when one can calmly experience a deep feeling and know the qualities of that feeling and be guided by those qualities. Such for me is love. It is the height of being sain and healthy, being relaxed and in control, wanting and anticipating without artificial substances, physical or mental imbalances. It is awareness when one is at one's best on health and in surroundings.

Love to ya!