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.