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.