Are Cost of Living Subsidies for Northern Canada Too Expensive?

Do Canadian First Nations people in the north of Canada really have too high a cost of living?  Do we need to keep subsidizing them? I want to help answer this question.  Here is a comment to start us off.

Mike Zwarich Yesterday 11:00

You have to wonder whether it would help, just a bit, if they moved to a part of Canada where it didn't cost ridiculous amounts of money to ship things to them.
When it costs $20 for a jug of milk, you know you're not going to have the standard of living that we enjoy in most of Canada.

https://plus.google.com/+NationalPost/posts

(I cannot continue without addressing the Freudian slip calling the southern part of Canada "most of Canada".  It's not most of Canada.  Now I can go on.)

In answer not only to Mike Zwarich, but to everyone I know who is at a loss about why Indians and Eskimos (or First Nations people) continue to live in that part of Canada where milk is expensive, it is not because Canadians are a stupid people.  The answer is partly in the subject of  sovereignty. I may have to explain "sovereignty" later, in the meantime you could Google it if you didn't learn it in high school history.
Now, here is a quote from a government of Canada website about our sovereignty.

http://www.northernstrategy.gc.ca/sov/index-eng.asp

With 40% of our landmass in the territories, 162,000 kilometres of Arctic coastline and 25% of the global Arctic – Canada is undeniably an Arctic nation. The Government is firmly exercising our sovereignty over our Arctic lands and waters – sovereignty that is long-standing, well-established and based on historic title, international law and the presence of Inuit and other Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years.
At the same time, international interest in the Arctic region is growing, in part as a result of possibilities for resource development, climate change and new or longer access to transportation routes. Canada is demonstrating effective stewardship and leadership internationally, to promote a stable, rules-based Arctic region where the rights of sovereign states are respected in accordance with international law and diplomacy.

I think there are two problems some Canadians have in understanding the north of Canada.  First is, most Canadians do not live there, have never even visited there, never would want to visit there even if it was an all expenses paid trip.  Most Canadians are huddled close to the US border, and spend more time wishing they could get into the US than wondering about what goes on in 90% of Canada's land territory.  Second, never take "sovereignty" for granted, no matter how uninhabitable the land is, somebody always wants it.  See how Canada is already fighting Denmark over possession of some island nobody even knew existed?  We have fought most wars over sovereignty, believe it or not.

Yes, Canada is the second largest country in the world.  Most Canadians are aware of that fact, although they do not really understand it.  We often call the 49th parallel the border between Canada and the USA, and yet most Canadian cities are on the American (or southern) side of that imaginary line called the 49th parallel.  Feel free to look that one up on a map.  I will concede Winnipeg, Regina, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver are north.  Victoria BC is south of the line, so is Toronto, Montreal, Fredericton NB, Halifax NS,  St. John's NL, and Punkeydoodles Crns., ON.  And (I'm guessing) 80% of the population of the country, along with 3 entire provinces.

Canadians think they understand that Canada is really big, yet they do not understand how much of it they have not seen, how much is almost a wilderness.  That is a problem, when you remember that most Canadians do not really understand why Canada, with a population of only 35 million (now, it used to be less) has sovereignty over this huge land mass, larger than the entire United States of America.

One way to exercise sovereignty is to buy military equipment and train a large army, navy and air force. Canada with only 35 million people, does not actually have the economic ability to do that, and still maintain a high standard of living for it's masses huddled along the border. Russia can hold its territory with a population of 144 million and 17 million square km. (8.4 people/sq km) Canada's 35 million people claim 10 million sq. km. (3.5 people/sq km).  For the Russians, claiming all that territory involved shipping millions of prisoners in chains to Siberia, raising a huge army and keeping everyone's standard of living quite low.  Canada has had a relatively easy time of it, for various reasons that I don't really know right now, but I'm sure it'll come to me.  But part of our equation would have to be our hospitals, schools, airports, harbours, the extensive maps, and the Canadians who live in the far north, and most of them are still First Nations people.

In the end, it is much cheaper and more effective to claim land by treating the First Nations people as part of Canada than to bring them south to live in squalor in Saskatoon and spending a hundred times as much money on new jet fighters.  A ten dollar litre of milk doesn't seem so expensive now, does it?

Picture: From http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/battle-for-the-arctic-heats-up-1.796010

Bankruptcy as it Applies to National Health Care

The word bankruptcy is being used in the news quite a bit lately, referring to how either Obamacare will bankrupt the United States government, or on the other hand, the recent government shutdown could bankrupt the United States.

It's not only in the news, as I hear ordinary people referring to the possible bankruptcy of the US.  As in "Obamacare is going to bankrupt the USA, eh?"  That last quote is from a Canadian. Canada has had a more extreme version of health care for at least 40 years, and Canada is apparently not bankrupt.  So obviously, "bankrupt" is one of those words that everybody thinks they know what it means, but actually nobody understands it any more.

As a public service, I am going to go over the meaning of the word "Bankrupt", and we will see more clearly whether the USA is going bankrupt, and if so, what may cause it.

First, let's try to understand what bankruptcy is.  When a person or a company gets very very much in debt, they sometimes reach a point where they will never be able to repay the money.  In the olden times, this is when the lenders would seize their person and sell them into slavery, and be done with it.  The money they could fetch as a slave was often not as much as their debts, but the lenders were thinking that it was better than nothing.

The key thing to remember is that bankruptcy is not another word for "broke", or "got no money".  It is caused entirely by a decision that the lender makes, whether to give up on the loan, grab whatever assets they can, sell them and be done with it, or to continue on, hoping to be repaid one day.

The concept of bankruptcy really only applies to individuals and companies, and apparently in some cases to municipal governments (I live not too far from Detroit). The USA is a country. What about a country going into bankruptcy?  What is the difference between a country and a company or individual, or local government?

There are a few ways a country can go "bankrupt".  (or we can use the term "sovereign default")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default

One is where the country itself decides to stop honoring any agreement to repay debt or service foreign or domestic loans.  The other is where another country "B" or "C", who is a big lender to country "A", decides they will never get their money back, and so they seize country "A"'s assets.  They can readily seize any assets like bank accounts that are held in country "B" or "C" banks, but they cannot seize important tangible assets without declaring war, and so that is often the way things go.  As an example, the USA sent marines to seize Haiti's assets when they decided that Haiti could not repays its debts.  (July 28 1915)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_occupation_of_Haiti

The USA national debt is well over a trillion dollars, check the national debt clock website.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Also, each American's share of the national debt is $52,000 more or less. (mostly more)

But because the US government can raise money through taxes, most lenders assume they will be repaid eventually and let it ride.  The alternative, of course is either war or at least a break in relations.  By the way, a break in relations usually means a complete trade shutdown.  Which means (probably) no more foreign oil, and so no more giant pickup trucks and Hummers running around at top speed.

Now what will cause the USA to actually go bankrupt?  Obamacare?  Not likely.  The refusal of the US government to pay interest on its loans? Getting warmer.  A complete shutdown of the US government, including the Revenue department?  That starts to be worrisome.

I think the Republican slogan that they want to put an end to big government is more of a problem for bankruptcy than the watered down version of health care that Obama has proposed (actually, not only proposed, but passed into law.)

Back to motorcycling, I was reading on the Advrider site about an American rider who crashed, and would not go to see a doctor partly because he had no insurance.

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=762377

The Royal Bank Foreign Worker Project Goes Too Far

There is a story creating some concern in Canada, about our biggest bank, the Royal Bank of Canada, hiring foreign workers to replace Canadian workers.  All by itself, this would not be enough to cause outrage, as we have been doing this for years. But now there is a combination of circumstances that could make this "the straw that broke the camel's back".

- Canadians are aware that good jobs have been shipped overseas for many years: Computer jobs, phone answering jobs, manufacturing jobs. I don't know how many jobs have gone overseas, but I am aware of many local industries and offices that have simply closed down.  I think it is widespread enough to harm our economy, if not now, sometime in the future.  We know jobs pay a lot lower wages overseas than in Canada, and I guess we understand why.

- Canadians may not be aware that many jobs even in Canada are filled by foreign workers on temporary visas.  Over 100,000 in 2001 growing to over 300,000 in 2012.  It used to make sense, because these are mostly jobs we don't care for such as fruit picking.  They are supposed to pay Canadian wages, though really it's not, because Canadians apparently cannot afford to work for those wages any more.

- There are also high tech jobs, or skilled jobs that not enough Canadians are trained for.  I personally know at least one person who was recruited overseas to work in Canada in such a job.  I think there is a need for a limited amount of this type of recruiting.  These jobs are also supposed to pay Canadian wages.

But this is just too much: Unskilled foreign workers on temporary visas, replacing Canadian workers, at a lower salary, in Canada, recruited to do a job that some Canadians have invested their own time and money at University and college to qualify for.  I don't care if it's a mistake, or a loophole, or an accident, or any other excuse. If this continues, even the CEO's job may be outsourced.  After all, it would improve the corporation profits by $10,000,000 per year (the CEO salary, minus whatever we have to pay the replacement on a temporary CEO work visa).  The resulting executive decisions couldn't be any more short sighted.

I am somewhat at fault myself, as a shareholder in the Royal Bank.  And so the only decent thing to do is begin divesting shares in favour of some company that does not outsource its jobs, if there are any left.

Already, we have a case in Canada going before the court, where Chinese temporary workers were hired by a Chinese mining company to work in a mine in Canada.  Once again, it was a combination of circumstances.  As I understand it, the Chinese company bought mining rights in Canada.  The Canadian government assumed that there would be jobs for Canadians in the deal.  The Chinese company put out help wanted ads, but no Canadian miners qualified, so they were forced to bring in Chinese workers on "temporary" work visas.  Is appears that one of the requirements listed for the job was fluency in speaking Mandarin.

I looked up some of the facts in the Globe and Mail article here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/ottawa-pushes-for-answers-as-uproar-over-rbc-outsourcing-gains-volume/article10870961/

Picture: From a foreign worker application support website
http://www.routleylaw.com/immigration-legal-services-overview/

Nero Fiddled, but Did He Pay His Taxes?

Recently I watched an argument on Fox news about whether the rich should pay more taxes. In the shouting match, several key points were raised.

Patriotic Millionaire Eric Schoenberg leaves Fox Business host Stuart Varney speechless at 3:51 of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdgQnl2tbhs

Stuart Varney belongs to "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength", and was facing a panel on Fox news.

To summarize the existing situation:  The USA is in a fiscal crisis with high debt levels, and President Obama has noted that during the last 50 or so years, tax rates have declined, especially on the rich.  Obama campaigned on the argument that the rich should pay their fair share of taxes.

On the other side of the coin, the rich (represented by Fox News), argue that "it is not a sin to make money" and "making the rich pay will not solve America's debt crisis", and "Jobs are created by the rich, but not if they are taxed too much".

One point that was raised on this program happened when the host Stuart Varney told Eric that if he wanted to pay more taxes, to take out his chequebook and make a payment to the USA government.  And let the other rich people keep their hard earned money.  Stuart explained first, that taxes are not a charitable contribution where you pay whatever you want.  And secondly, if people did pay taxes voluntarily, then those who refuse to pay should not get free government services.  Eric mentioned a list of services including police protection, fire protection, and good roads.

When he brought up the subject of fire protection, one of the Fox Panel jumped in with the fact that there are more fires in slums where people don't even pay taxes.  Apparently rich people's houses don't burn down as frequently, and so do not use up resources from the fire department.  Logically I guess that means that poor people living in slums should pay more for fire services etc.

But wait a minute here.  I am not aware of any study that has determined that poor people living in slums use up more of the government services than rich people. (I'm not talking just about fire services, but police services too.  And roads and infrastructure such as drainage, water, electricity.)  I think it's the opposite, with rich neighbourhoods getting the best support.  I'm not arguing that that is right or wrong, but I cannot tolerate pure bullsh*t that says fire department funding goes mainly to slum dwellers.

Let's get into fire protection, then.  One of the hardest fires to fight, and the most dangerous, are forest fires that can ravage wealthy neighbourhoods as easily as the slums. Wealthy people have a tendency to place their homes in open forested areas, where they are very hard to protect from forest fires.  Poor people cannot afford these expensive home sites because of the cost of land.

A little research on the internet comes up with these facts.

Richard Branson's "cottage" burns to the ground. (Richard Branson is rich)

http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-branson-necker-island-fire-photos-2011-8?op=1

Firefighter lured to their deaths in ambush. This did not take place in a slum, but I'm guessing the gunman was not a millionaire either.  On the other hand, he could easily have been a Fox News watcher.  And Fox does support making guns more available.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/12/25/rochester-firefighters-ambush-condition.html

The Cerro Grande fire, New Mexico, 2000.  400 homes lost.  Also, the Los Alamos National Laboratory was damaged, which brings up the situation where fire fighters are fighting to save Government infrastructure, not just the private dwellings of taxpayers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire

Historically, inner city fires are a boon for the very rich, as slums can be cleared more easily when they are in smoking ruins, and somebody has to redevelop the now-valuable property.  Check out this story about Rome under Emperor Nero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome

Picture: Detroit home target for fire.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012971/From-Motown-Ghost-town-How-mighty-Detroit-heading-long-slow-road-ruin.html

What is a Marxist-Leninist Capitalist Tool?

Another Forbes Magazine article by Mark Hendrickson titled "President Obama's Marxist-Leninist Economics: Fact And Fiction" takes a scholarly look at whether Obama's policies are truly Marxist-Leninist, or whether this is just name-calling.  However, despite the scholarly first paragraph it then soon loses the high road.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2012/07/26/president-obamas-marxist-leninist-economics-fact-and-fiction/

Mark Hendrickson's final paragraph in this article does a better job than I ever could of summarizing the entire article. Here it is in Mark's own words:

"In closing, I repeat that we should not recklessly call Obama a “Marxist-Leninist.” Although it’s too long and cumbersome a label for a generation addicted to sound bites and simplistic labels, a fair description of Obama and his economic goals is to say that he is “an interventionist, corporatist, statist, Big Government progressive, free-market-hating control freak who favors economic policies of a Marxist-Leninist flavor.”"

Whew. That was a mouthful. I had to look up some of the words in his "fair description of Obama".  "Corporatism".. is that a new swearword?  I had to check with Wikipedia, and honestly I don't see how the word could be applied to Obama any more than it could be applied to either the NRA or to Christian Fundamentalists, or even to corporations, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism


And statist too? Wikipedia says

"statism (French: étatisme) is the belief that a government should control either economic or social policy, or both, to some degree.[1][2][3][4] Statism is effectively the opposite of anarchism."

So Obama is opposed to anarchy and favours some degree of state control of economic policy.  Is that all?

I was afraid I was missing something here, and so I went to Conservapedia to see if there was a different definition on Statism.  And I think I found one.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Statism

"A statist government treats its political sovereignty as a platform for moral sovereignty. In other words, as ultimate sovereign, the state is therefore not subject to God, the Bible, natural law, or any other religion or ethical system. A statist government need not be accountable to its own citizens.
The philosopher Georg Hegel described the state as "God walking on earth".[2] In other words, as the state is the ultimate power in life, it assumes the status of God and can do as it pleases. This line of thinking influenced the political thought of Karl Marx. "

So according to conservatives, a statist opposes God's rule. Now back to Wikipedia to define a theocracy (where God does rule):

"Theocracy is a form of government in which a deity is officially recognized as the civil Ruler and official policy is governed by officials regarded as divinely guided, or is pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religion or religious group.[1][2][3]
From the perspective of the theocratic government, "God himself is recognized as the head" of the state,[4]

The arguments against theocracy, taken directly from Conservapedia:

• "Stifling of speech. In a theocracy, it would be counterlogical to allow the citizens to know, or accept other religions or ideologies. Presumably, some mechanism will be placed to prevent dangerous speech, or make the ideas within artificially unwanted.
• Thought is severely engineered, to prevent "dangerous" thoughts (Atheism, etc).
• Unaccountable government. Because the government is supposedly an extension of a deity, they cannot be held accountable."

Sounds to me like high praise for Obama the Statist, from Conservapedia.  But then, wasn't it Conservapedia that defined Hitler as a Leftist, and then defined Leftists as opposed to military spending?

In the end, I think there is a twist of logic in Mark Hendrickson's essay.  Apparently, Obama is not a true perfect Marxist Leninist, but then, neither was Marx or Lenin.  Therefore, according to Hendrickson, it is even more correct to call Obama a Marxist-Leninist.  Because Obama, like Lenin, is not a perfect Marxist-Leninist either.

Mark Hendrickson first states that the standards for being called a Marxist Leninist are set impossibly high. But then he sets the bar impossibly low.

Picture: from the Marxist-Leninist Study Guide http://marxistleninist.wordpress.com/study-guide/

Now Forbes Magazine is Really a Capitalist Tool

An opinion piece in Forbes caught my eye, but only because I remember Malcolm Forbes, the publisher  of Forbes Magazine before he died in 1990.  Malcolm had a motorcycle gang called the "Capitalist Tools" who toured the Soviet Union and China.  He was featured in BMW ads as a man who owned 3 BMW motorcycles, but actually he owned far more Harley Davidsons, and his club rode Harleys while on tour.

Anyhow, back to the article in Forbes Magazine, which was titled "Romney And Ryan Didn't Cut It In A Time For Radicalism" by Mark Hendrickson.  Four lines into the article, we come to the phrase "a president with a Marxist Leninist economic agenda".  The "president" here being the President of the United States of America.

The contrast between Malcolm "The Capitalist Tool" and Hendrickson strikes me.  Malcolm actually got out there in the world and saw how the Russians lived under a Marxist Leninist economic agenda.  Hendrickson sits at home and glibly bandies words with an intent akin to name-calling.  Furthermore, the point of the article seems to be saying that millionaires should not be taxed more than the poor ("Rich people are Americans too"), and yet Malcolm suffered under even higher tax rates than proposed by Obama, and still had money to buy motorbikes, tour the world, and throw multi million dollar birthday parties. And as far as I know, he never referred to his own government as Marxist-Leninist, even as heavily taxed as he was.

The motto of Forbes Magazine is also "Capitalist Tool", and back in Forbes' day, this was an ironic reference to the phrase often used by Communist propagandists, referring to any people, especially political leaders, who were "tools" of the capitalists.  In other words, stooges, or dupes, blindly doing the will of the very rich to keep down the common man.  So the phrase had a humorous meaning, and Malcolm carried that phrase right into the heart of communism, the USSR and China, as the name of his motorcycle club.

Apparently, today, the magazine subtitled The Capitalist Tool has actually become a capitalist tool, without any real understanding of what it means.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhendrickson/2012/12/20/romney-and-ryan-didnt-cut-it-in-a-time-for-radicalism/


Picture from this web page: http://www.bikeme.tv/bm_articles/riders/2006/famous-motorcyclists-of-last-century-iii.asp

Also on this page: Forbes lives on in some of his quotations:

"I made my money the old fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died."

Comparing 2 Movies "The Time Machine" and "Chasing Ice"

 I watched the movie "Chasing Ice" last night, and a few days ago, I also saw a 1960 movie by George Pal, "The Time Machine". The first similarity that struck me was the use of time lapse photography in both movies.  In case you have never seen this classic movie, The Time Machine, maybe you want to skip this review that includes spoilers.  Now go and see the movie, or maybe read the book.

The Time Machine is based on an H.G. Wells science fiction book from 1895, where someone invents a time machine and travels forward 800,000 years to the future to see how the world has progressed. The time lapse photography is used to simulate the effect of moving forward rapidly through time to the future.

Chasing Ice is a documentary by James Balog about our world's beautiful but disappearing ice landscapes.  In this documentary, time lapse photography is used to speed up the shrinking of glaciers so that you can see in one minute, what took five years to occur naturally.

In a way, both movies are about the same thing.   They are predicting the future, and have something to say about humans causing this future.  The main difference is that "The Time Machine" has to go forward 800,000 years to see what will happen, while Chasing Ice only needs to go from 5 years ago to the present time, to see what will happen.  Chasing Ice needs no time machine, nor does it need to  invent a future. It is enough to show what has happened in the last five years, and from there, scientists have told us what will happen next.

In The Time Machine, no global warming seems to be happening.  H. G. Wells is more worried about what will happen to mankind, if the gap between the rich and poor increases, and if we continue having wars with technologically advanced weapons.  According to his vision, 800,000 years in the future, the rich classes (called the Eloi) will have lost their energy and will to succeed, while the working classes (called the Morlocks) have moved underground, and evolved into a different species that now uses the Eloi as feeding stock.  H.G. Wells explains this in terms of evolution and predictable outcomes of social and economic forces.  However he does seem to be discouraged that the Eloi have no will to resist the Morlocks, nor any desire to even rescue each other when danger looms.  The Eloi seem like brainwashed zombies sleepwalking to their doom, not curious about what is happening or why.  The Morlocks, while looking like beasts, at least have drive, cunning, and curiosity.

Now here is where another parallel appears.  If you believe the rapid warming of the planet may have disastrous consequences, then we are already in some ways like the Eloi.  Because humans taken as a whole, do not seem to have the will or even the curiosity to fight back.  Mankind has the same attitude as the Eloi in that we simply accept what will happen.  Another similarity is that our present situation is being controlled and manipulated by present day Morlocks.  I don't mean that they look scary or anything, but there seems to be a split between rich and poor that is growing.  I'm going to call the Morlocks the rich, who benefit materially from a passive working middle class.  I don't mean to imply that the present day Morlocks are eating the present day Eloi.  They are just using them to get richer and more powerful.  And cynically manipulating them through controlled messages on TV, Internet, newspapers, and radio.

H.G. Wells' original Morlocks actually evolved from the poor and working classes, while the Eloi evolved from the rich idle classes.  I'm not sure this is made abundantly clear in the movie, but I read the book after I saw the movie.  The book is far more left wing in it's attitude than a movie (which was made during the cold war) could ever be, and Wells' opinions are made clearer in the book.

My interpretation of Chasing Ice in 2012 has the Morlocks and Eloi in role reversal,  but I think the main point is that in both movies mankind is passively accepting a situation that is within their grasp to change.  And in both movies there exists a class divide that pits an aggressive class against a passive class.

In the end, both movies are looking at how the world changes.  But for H.G. Wells, the changes are so slow as to require 800,000 years and a time machine to see.  For we humans of 2012, cataclysmic changes are so speeded up that a time machine is superfluous.

Do We Really Have to Pay the US to Take Our Electricity?

For a few years now I have been listening to opponents of wind energy make claims that it is too expensive, too erratic, and we have no way of storing the excess energy for use at peak hours.

I have been sceptical of these claims, but one story I read recently tops them all.

On CTV news,  "energy expert Tom Adams, told CTV's Queen's Park bureau chief Paul Bliss. "We have to get rid of it. It's a disposal problem and sometimes our neighbours need to get paid in order to take custody.""

He was of course referring to wind energy, and the claim that Ontario must pay neighboring states to accept energy from our grid when we have too much.

I don't really know if this is blatant propaganda or not, because I can imagine a situation where we would have to pay to get rid of something that might be harmful to us.  In electricity, this is not uncommon actually.  For example, there are times that you need to shut down a high voltage power line, and you need very expensive equipment to do it, because a sudden shut-off builds up the voltage.  If you do not have this equipment, you may need to pay someone to do it for you - in theory anyway.  Another example of excess energy is a car travelling at high speed that needs to stop suddenly.  That kinetic energy has to go somewhere, so hopefully you have brakes to disperse it.  Some cars have brakes that store the energy (like the Prius).  Other cars have no brakes (like my '72 Corolla after it lost a wheel strut), and you have to find some other way to get rid of your energy.  If you plow into another car, that other car takes your energy, but in the end you will have to pay - either direct costs or in insurance premiums.

So are we talking about some kind of shock absorbing system being provided by our neighbours, because Ontario does not possess any way to recapture excess power?  Or is there actually any known way to either recapture excess power, or to at least burn it off?  Wind energy opponents have told us it is not possible to store energy, which I believe is not only false and misleading, but goes against all common sense.  But now apparently they are saying there is no way to even dump energy, without paying the US to do it for us.

Upon researching this story further, I expected to discover that there was some unusual, hopefully temporary, situation that forced Ontario to dump excess energy into the US grid.  For example, an unforeseen spike of wind energy combined with an unforeseen reduction of power requirements.  In a brief span of time, it might have been impossible to shut off the wind turbines or the water power, nuclear power, gas fired, or coal power plants.  So maybe we had to pay money until some parts of the energy generating system plants could be shut down.  I don't know how long this might take, as I am not an "expert".  But it seems to me that a month is a bit excessive simply to reduce our power output just a little.

So in my opinion, this story is planted to mess with our minds, and to soften us up so that we stop questioning the anti-wind power "experts" on their outrageous statements.

I do not believe that it takes a month to reduce our power output to the point where we stop paying a penalty to the US.

I do not believe there is no way to burn off excess energy harmlessly.

I do not believe that there is no way to store energy, although its possible that Ontario needs to build some, or more than they already have.

If you want me to believe those things,  a lot more explanation will be required than the statement of another energy expert.

Tom Adam's blog
http://tomadamsenergy.com/
  Tom Adams refers to this article  "perhaps the most coherent, balanced and accurate explanation of wind power to so far appear in the Canadian print media." in his blog post titled "Excellent Journalism re. Wind in Ontario’s Power System"

http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/wind+power+more+complicated+than+people+imagine/3376723/story.html


Quote from this article (which refers to Tom Adams as a source.)

"For a full month the price of our power was negative — that is, we were paying utilities in Ohio and Michigan to take it off our hands.
Private energy analyst Tom Adams thinks that could happen again when we lean more heavily on wind power. Wind turbines can shut down in high wind, but Ontario would still have to pay them for the power they aren’t generating, like a diner who orders a restaurant meal and doesn’t eat it. It’s called “curtailed output.”"

University of Guelph Economics Department Spreads Corporate Propaganda

My title may be a little unfair, as I have only really heard the opinions of two of its professors, and maybe there are many more who do not spread corporate propaganda. But still, something is going on at the University of Guelph Economics department. For the second time this year I have found out that one of the professors is committed to the anti-global warming cause. A month ago, I wrote about a lecture I attended by Glenn Fox (also a professor in the University of Guelph Faculty of Economics), this blog:

http://lostmotorcycles.blogspot.com/2011/02/glenn-fox-phd-lectures-seniors-on.html

Now I read an article by Ross McKitrick in the Vancouver Sun, about Earth Hour "Why I will leave my lights on".

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Earth+Hour+will+leave+lights/4498889/story.html

He also wrote a book "Taken by Storm" skeptical of global warming.
http://www.takenbystorm.info/

So at least two outspoken critics of global warming or use of green power sources on the UoG faculty of Economics.

Here is McKitrick's CV page at UoG

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/cv.html

And, in case you could not predict, it lists him as Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute, Vancouver B.C.

I find McKitrick's piece in the Vancouver Sun "Why I leave my lights on" to be about as offensive as the drivers who tell bicycle riders "Good thing you ride a bike, it leaves more oil for our Hummers." By the way, I am not accusing McKitrick of saying that, because that would be a "straw man argument" and unfair to him.

But McKitrick did say this: "The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity." Now that is straw man argument. In fact his entire argument against Earth Hour is one long straw man argument, that people who turn off their lights hate electricity, instead of showing respect for our resources. I have never seen one single person who turns out their lights for Earth Hour who "hates" electricity, or is trying to demonize it.

Such arguments are not only illogical, but unworthy of university professors. The University of Guelph is letting itself become a source of corporate propaganda, instead of an institution for learning.

And in case you were wondering, I can tolerate debate and discussion. But neither of these professors seem to stick to logic, nor do they seem to consider both sides of the issue. That's why I think they are propagandists.

America is Rich: So Simple a Caveman Could Understand It

I have found a right wing forwarded email explaining why America is rich. I thought it was worth examining, because so many people have wrong ideas about wealth inequality. It is titled "So Simple a Caveman Could Understand it."

Since the Caveman version is really kind of long and rambling, I will try to edit it down to a manageable size, and then explain it so that a Teabagger can understand why it does not work.

Basically, this is a forwarded email explanation of why America is great and rich, in a way that it is easily understood by the conservatives or libertarians that have not taken a degree in economics. This explanation is not so easily understood by liberals, especially those who have travelled abroad and/or have some further education in how a country's economy works.

By and large, the answer given in the email is that America is capitalistic. Every other economic system is doomed to failure. And anything but pure unadulterated capitalism is also doomed to collapse. To quote from the forward:

"So we're off on a little all-American road trip, this time to figure out why our economy, when sick, is stronger than anyone else's, when healthy. To see if we can figure out how 300 million strangers, all the troublemakers and upstarts from every nation in the world, can come to one vast continent, be given more freedom than any people before or since, and manage to become the most prosperous, powerful, tightly-knit nation in history. And how come we invent everything, too? Must be something in the water out there."

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I have to take issue with two things here: One is that some of those strangers were brought over unwillingly to the USA and forced to work under the lash, for no pay, to make the white slave owners rich. Two: is that the land the slave owners forced the slaves to work on was stolen from the Indians. And please, Americans did not invent everything, there were also trains, guns, and sailing ships. Invented by non-Americans. But that last point is not that important, so go on.

--------------------------------------------------

"I believe that there are three elements -- just three -- that we mix in just the right ratio to perform our national alchemy. Look around you at the rest of the world. Those who use none of these ingredients are disasters, basket cases, failed states where misery and poverty crush the life out of what is almost an indomitable human drive to create, to nurture, and to prosper."

"Stop guessing. Sorry, but it's not God, Guts and Guns. The Arabs have God, the Russians have Guts and the Colombians have Guns -- you want to live there?"

The first of these three pillars has several names: private property, the free market, enlightened self-interest. But the first essential element of the American Trinity, and the hardest to come to grips with, is Capitalism.

"Where you stand on the political spectrum, what you think of rich and poor people, and what you think about rich and poor nations and how they should act in the world, comes down, in my mind, to one single issue, and one only: Can wealth be created, or can it only be redistributed?"

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So this is an interesting question, I suppose. What is wealth? Is wealth gold, or paper money? Or is wealth land, or is wealth natural resources such as oil, water, buildings, tools, weapons ????
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If you believe, as I do, that wealth can be manufactured out of thin air, then there is no limit to the amount of wealth you can amass. And since you are creating it out of thin air, there is no moral onus on making money -- you work hard to create it and have stolen from no one. There is an expression for this: you earned it.

-----------------------------------
OK I got that one wrong. I found in Wikipedia that

"wealth is is context-dependent and there is no universally agreed upon definition. Generally, economists define wealth as "anything of value" which captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept."

Now obviously there are different ways to define value. For one thing, anything that is a necessity of life has value. Its exact value is determined roughly by how important it is to life, and by how scarce it is. Next, a more loose definition of value is "whatever people are willing to pay you for what you have". Obviously this is harder to pin down. Just try to auction off Justin Bieber's hair on eBay, and you'll see what I mean.

I am not that keen on things that only have value because of what other people are willing to pay (Bieber's hairs, diamonds, gold bars, paper money, GM Stock) and I have a lot more faith in things that have more inherent value (farmland, real estate, a house, tools, an education). Mind you, even for things that have inherent value, we often determine that value simply by what others are willing to pay. But if the entire economy was to collapse, which would you rather have? Survival skills, or Bieber's hair? Real Estate, or shares of Bank of America?

I suspect that most wealth that can be generated out of thin air has little or no real inherent value. Even if it is a really good idea like the wheel, or fire, or sliced bread, the idea itself is unlikely to reward the inventor. For sure any wealth generated out of thin air is not going to be stuff like tools, land, or shelter. So now lets continue with the right wing economics lesson for cavemen.

---------------------------------------------------

"Wealth can be created from thin air by human ingenuity and hard work."

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I guess this was written before the 2008 global economic meltdown that debunked derivatives, and mortgage back securities. They were classical examples of wealth being created out of thin air. Unfortunately when wealth is created out of thin air it sometimes goes poof back into thin air. This happens so frequently in economics that there's even an economic term for it. It's called a "Bubble". Apparently every generation has to relearn this lesson again. Returning to the other lesson>>>
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[The anger of Anti-imperialist protesters can be attributed to].. having chosen to believe that there is only so much wealth in the world, and that rich people and rich nations gain and maintain wealth by stealing prosperity from the weak.

This is so idiotic, so demonstrably false, that you really have to wonder why we are having this discussion.

The idea that the United States can steal 10 trillion dollars a year from dirt-poor nations that don't produce anything of value is absolutely insane, and yet, and yet, we hear it again and again and again from the professionally outraged who must be obtuse beyond human understanding to keep making such an absurd lie the basis of their entire philosophy.

-------------------------------------------------------

Wait a minute, did I read "dirt poor nations don't produce anything of value"??? Isn't oil valuable? What about diamonds, gold, bauxite (aluminum ore), iron ore, rare metals, cocoa, coffee (second largest world trade item after oil), bananas, beans, hardwood trees, fish, and many others. All of these things are produced in dirt poor nations, and wind up in rich nations without the common people in the dirt poor nations seeing much benefit from it. It even seems like the more valuable resources that are found in dirt poor nations, the more the poor people actually suffer (environmental degradation, wars for the resources, toxic air). Then what about the sweat shops producing Nike running shoes. You may consider their work to also be of no value, just like you ignored the work of the slaves, but it has value in a way. It is human effort being expended into an enterprise where there is no reward, just work for survival. There are so many questions that can be raised about this inequality of pay between rich and poor countries. But the lesson is not over yet, so for the sake of argument let's go on with "wealth is produced out of thin air":

--------------------------------------------------------------

If we can prove that our core tenet is correct, that wealth is limited only by imagination and the desire to work hard, then not only does the left's economic theory come crashing down like a Statue of Lenin, but their entire view of US power has to be fatally flawed, as well.

Get this through your heads, you socialist ninnies! There is not a big, limited pot of wealth that is filled with the Magic Sweat of Authentic Third World Laborers, that America uses its military to steal from when we run out of wealth here at home.

Here's something even the dimmest hippy protester / poet should be able to wrap his mind around:

You buy a legal pad: $1.29
You steal a Bic pen from the counter at Kinko's: free.
You write the script for Weekend at Bernies 3: Bernie's Revenge!: free.
You hire someone to type it: $30.00
You have Kinko's print 5 copies: $62.20
You mail the 5 copies: $7.82
5 idiots in Hollywood love the idea: free
They enter a bidding war: free
You get a check for: one... million... dollars!

So let's see... that's $1,000,000, minus the $101.30 in expenses... uh... that means... You, the village idiot, have just raised the Gross Domestic Product by, uh, one million freaking dollars, and have made a personal profit of $999,898 dollars and 69 cents.

Where did the $999,898.69 come from? It came from thin air! You created it, out of nothing. You added value to the stock of paper and ink you started with. From the monumental talent you possess, the gift of intellect, the pen that made Shakespeare weep with envy, you have created WB3. You've given millions of people two hours of side-splitting hilarity, for which they will part with $8.00... and you have created wealth. What's more, when you go and blow it all on the pointless material crap that makes life so much fun, you'll be bringing in a little extra for the Sea-Doo distributor, the BMW dealer, the girls at Cheetahs in Las Vegas, and all the others. Not to mention putting -- I dunno -- maybe half a million freaking dollars into welfare, Social Security, Medicare, the National Endowment for the Arts and the world's first fusion-powered, laser-armed, flying stealth submarine, the USS George W. Bush.

You did not have to steal $999,898.69 from a farmer in Angola.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

OK Here's where the lesson starts to get a little heavy handed. I don't know about you, but this is not the tone that my teachers took with me when I was in school. And I hope that I do not take that tone to others.

So to go over the business case that proves wealth is unlimited: I write a script to a movie, and it sells for one million dollars. Forget the price of copies at Kinko's, obviously these costs are so small we can just forget them. However there may be some costs that are substantial, that we have neglected to mention. What are they? An education, where you learn to write properly. And the leisure time to absorb all kinds of interesting ideas, that you can then translate into a clever script. (Do not expect a kid who has worked in a sweat shop all his life to write a movie script. OK maybe if it was a movie about sweat shops???) The education, and the leisure lifestyle, do they have a value? OK, more. What about a legal system that protects your copyright, and forces the big studios to pay you what the script is worth. Any value there? And what about the luck of being born in a country where millions of people can pay $8 each for a movie, and have the time to go and see it.

I suspect that first of all, the movie script is not something with real inherent value, it is more of a "Bieber hair" type of thing, the type of thing you cannot base a real economy on. It's a sideline, a quirk, an amusement. I'm not saying some people don't get rich through this kind of luck, just that it is in fact a zero sum game. Money comes out of other people's pockets (the ones who pay to see the movie), and into yours. This type of transaction also happens when you win the lottery, but I would not base my national economy on it. Because this type of transaction is the very definition of "redistributed wealth". Voluntary redistribution, to be sure, but still redistribution of the same total amount wealth. Yes, it may count toward increasing the Gross National Product, but if it does (I'm not sure about that), it is only because of the way that the GNP is calculated. Your million dollars has in fact made the movie goers a million dollars poorer (all together).

So, core tenet remains unproven. Time to stop, and we have not even found out what the other two pillars of wealth are yet.

By the way, writing a script for "Weekend at Bernie's III" for $1,000,000 does not count as working hard. I just wrote 600 blogs in three years for a total sum of $0.00. Per dollar, I bet I worked a lot harder at writing, but no riches.

Picture: 1982 Far Side panel by Gary Larsen from this blog about cavemen:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7093

Glenn Fox, PhD, Lectures Seniors on the Wastefulness of Green Energy

Yesterday I attended one of the "Third Age Learning" lecture series that Mary Ann has signed up for. I could go for $5, as a guest. Two to three hundred seniors are signed up for these lectures by respected authorities in various subject areas. The subject yesterday was: "Rural Economics and Green Energy in Ontario: It's not easy being green" by Glenn Fox, University of Guelph Professor.

http://fare.uoguelph.ca/users/gfox

I was quite appalled that this turned into what I thought was a one sided presentation of everything that was wrong with the renewable energy initiative in Ontario and in Europe. I didn't hear one thing that was right about green energy.

I am guessing that some of the 300 or so member of the audience were taken in, even though I did not interview every member of the audience afterwards. That's because Glenn Fox did sound "fair and balanced" without actually being fair or balanced. He avoided most of the outrageous claims of the anti-wind power advocates. Even when he was making an obviously outrageous claim, he presented it as an unlikely possibility. Also, being a university professor in economics, you would not have any reason to suspect him of twisting the truth. Of the two people in the audience we did actually talk to after the lecture was over, one of them was outraged at this one-sided presentation, the other stated that they thought it was fair and balanced. I don't see why a lot of other people would not match this very small sample.

The presentation itself was strictly from an economic viewpoint. With many statistics, bar charts etc, the professor made a case that renewable power was more expensive than hydro electricity, coal, gas, oil, or nuclear. In fact many times more expensive, given our current price of electricity to consumers in Ontario.

The same was done in Europe, going especially into Denmark's alternative energy and Spain's. Glenn stated that Denmark lost a huge amount of money to Norway and Sweden, who bought excess wind energy at cheap prices and sold back Hydro energy at peak prices.

Then he matter-of-factly stated that there was no known inexpensive way to store electrical energy from wind power, even though the case of Norway and Denmark was an example of how Hydroelectric generators can be used for this purpose, and how Norway was making money on this principle.

The professor even managed to toss out a few truly outrageous claims without anyone being able to call him on it because of the humorous way he did it, for example some Russian scientists have advanced a theory that oil in the ground does not come from geological plant matter, it it spontaneously generated.

When asked about the fact that oil is non-renewable, Glenn Fox mentioned that new technology could extract ever more oil from the ground, and that we had no idea how much oil could be discovered in the future. And yet, he never pointed out that speculative "new technology" could also help with renewable energy.

One question I asked was about his assertion that 5 jobs in Spain had been lost for every megawatt of wind power installed. I asked how this was possible, and he admitted that while there was more employment in the electrical segment of the economy, the rest of the economy had overall lost jobs because of the increase in the price of electricity, which he said had forced businesses to close. What this sounded like to me, was that this "fact" had assumed that every job lost in Spain was being blamed on wind power, because I don't believe it is actually possible to directly connect any single unrelated job loss in an economy to the cost of electricity. Anyway, this "fact" should have been the subject for a debate, or not presented at all, but it was simply presented as a truth. Many people might have come away with the idea that wind power normally costs the economy 5 jobs per megawatt, simply because it was impossible or unrealistic in the context to challenge the professor. (Questions were to be written on a slip of paper and handed in anonymously, which discouraged confrontation. This is the format of all the lecture series apparently, and yes it makes sense in a fair minded lecture, but not if the professor is only dealing to one side.)

I would not have minded if this lecture was any way fair to the controversy, and yes, there is a controversy. But the professor never even stated why we were trying to use renewable sources in the first place. Unless Mary Ann had asked about running out of oil, I don't think that would have received even a mention. Glenn made no mention of global warming or climate change, other than a reference to possible environmental costs that might theoretically be added to any of the energy alternatives. It was never mentioned how much these costs might be, though. And it was obvious that these costs would never really be added because they could not be quantified by conventional economists or accountants.

There was no mention at all of the amount of money that Middle Eastern wars have cost us, even though I wrote a question about it on a piece of paper and handed it. It was simply skipped over. I could see there were several other questions he also just skipped over without having to even mention. At least if questions are asked from the floor, the audience gets to hear the question and maybe it will give them something to think about, even if it is ignored.

In the end, I was quite resentful of being ambushed by this 2 hour long brainwashing session dressed up as an educational opportunity.

Further research into Glenn Fox finds him on the Fraser Institute website, a conservative think tank in Canada. He participated in "Taking Stock of Environmentalism", a research paper attacking "The Precautionary Principle", which may be one of the philosophical foundations of environmentalism. The paper is available for free download from their site. I hope it's not an April Fool's joke, but the date of the paper is April 1, 2000.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/research/display.aspx?id=12812

Glenn Fox's contribution to the paper was described:

"The Ambiguous Advice of the Precautionary Principle. The manner in which the Precautionary Principle is typically invoked is one-sided. It recognizes one category of unseen consequences but not another."

Picture: Glenn from his UoG web profile. The subliminal message given in Glenn's picture is "gentlemen, start your engines". I should give him some credit, at least, for not being in the driver's seat of a Hummer.

Does Conrad Black Need More Time to Recuperate?

I have never agreed with many of Conrad Black's ideas. Giving up his Canadian citizenship to take a title of Lord in England, summarizes the differences between him and me. But up till now, I had always thought of him as an intellectual, someone who could write well, and researched their ideas. But recently I read this article of his in the National Post "Four Ideas for a Better Canada and a Better World", and I think he is beginning to unravel mentally. Here is the link.

I will take the liberty of summarizing in my own words. Read it for yourself in case I am distorting his ideas.

1. The Canadian government can make money by investing in Chrysler Corporation [instead of taxing the rich]. He didn't mention not taxing the rich in this article, but in "How to revive the Liberal Party" from a few days ago. I simply connected the dots.
2. Encourage immigration from white countries instead of brown or black countries.
3. Make Haiti a joint protectorate of Canada and the USA. That way we can put an end to Haitian piracy and stop the pirates from cutting all the trees in Haiti to build ships. And he calls Cuba a "Stalinist sex slave emporium".
4. Don't incarcerate non-violent offenders if they don't steal as much as Bernie Madoff. i.e Conrad Black

I would normally try to explain what is wrong with these ideas, but I think in this case, I would simply recommend that Conrad get some rest, maybe being in jail in Florida was too much for him.

Picture: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/13/black-britain.html

How Pascal's Wager Underpins Modern Consumerism

Pascal's Wager, I believe, is based on three principles, which to Pascal seemed logical, but I do not accept. They are

- Black and white choice
- Not possible to know the truth
- Self interest dictates our decision

Pascal's Wager was just possibly a tongue in cheek comment. He was famous for using satire and ridicule in his writing. But on the other hand, he was a convert to Christianity, and was reputed to be quite an angry and morose person, so... probably he meant it.

Pascal used his idea of the wager to convince people that they should believe in God. Ironically, it does not argue that God exists, just that you would be better off acting as though God exists. So he was really telling you to pretend you believe in God, even if you really don't. Or at least start by pretending you believe in God and one day maybe you will genuinely believe in God.

Pascal was interested in gambling, and he invented a primitive roulette wheel. Got into a lot of arguments about whether a vacuum could exist. He opposed the "Rationalism" argued by Rene Descartes. i.e. "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification". In politics, this rationalism has led to something between "internationalism" and "realism".

I am beginning to remember why I stayed away from Philosophy courses at University. All these philosophical offshoots seem to be a jumble of ideas that do not follow logically. For example, I might disagree with Pascal's conclusion about the belief in God, and I am more inclined to Rationalism instead. But I don't really see that Rationalism is the opposite of Pascal's Wager, in that Pascal was simply using rational thought about belief in God. In politics, Rationalism apparently leads us to two views, Internationalism, (that I believe in) and Political Realism (which to me seem like just another offshoot of Pascal's Wager).

Internationalism holds that all nations of the Earth are more or less equal and should cooperate rather than try to dominate each other, Political Realism holds that national interest should take precedence over ideology.

Pascal wrote about his wager in the 1600's, and his idea is even more important today as the philosophical underpinning of all spam, lotteries, all propaganda, all consumer marketing, the "invisible hand of the free market" and all of George W. Bush's decisions.

Let's take spam for an example of Pascal's wager, from the point of view of the sucker who falls for it. You receive an email, let's say it is promising you a larger something. First, your mind is focused on a simple choice, which is limited to a binary on/off decision: to have a small one or a large one. Second, you have no way of knowing the truth of any of this: Can this product help you or not? Do you actually have a small one or not? You do not know. And third, your self interest is to be happy, and you are being told that happiness depends on answering this email. Like Pascal's wager about God, you are told you have nothing to lose by answering (money back guarantee), and everything to gain. If everybody was rational, no spam would ever get any replies. But if some people make decisions in the framework of Pascal's Wager, some people will reply.

The converse of Pascal's wager would be something like this.

- There are grey areas in any choice, and other alternatives to the two being presented.
- Ultimate truth may not be possible, but seeking the truth is a moral obligation.
- Self interest should not take precedence over truth.

If everyone made decisions according to the converse of Pascal's Wager, not only would it mean and end to spam, but possibly an end to free enterprise and consumerism as well. But of course, it is one thing to talk about denying self interest, and quite something else to do it.

Picture: That's a modern roulette wheel. Mathematically, you would do better at a roulette wheel than with a lottery ticket. (although in both the odds are that you lose)

There are Limits to Human Intelligence

"We have met the enemy and he is us" has got to be one of my favourite quotes of all time, by cartoonist Walt Kelly who drew the cartoon Pogo.

The meaning is that we are our own worst enemy, or that we do things that ultimately hurt ourselves. It's not like we set out to be our own worst enemy, we probably get there by degrees and through inattention or pure stupidity.

So here is an article "Human Failings Led to Oil Disaster" about how the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was likely caused by human error. And not just one error, but a series of errors that could be referred to as systemic human failure.

In the article is an analysis of typical failures, and mention is made of other large scale human failings, the Financial Meltdown of 2008, and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. It's interesting that while one individual human error is hard to predict, it seems like large scale systemic human failure might be quite predictable.

"This isn’t just about oil. It’s a challenge for people living in an imponderably complex technical society."

New York Times

We had our own massive failure in Ontario back in 1997. Actually, like all massive human failures it started before 1997, but the whistle was blown and the plug was pulled in August 1997. Ontario Hydro, after a run of embarrassing accidents, and finding drug paraphernalia in the control rooms of their nuclear reactors, had called for an independent assessment of the situation, and was persuaded to shut down most of the nuclear power system indefinitely. The verdict, reduced to it's simplest form, was that normal Canadians could not be expected to run something as complicated and dangerous as a nuclear generating system safely.

http://www.ccnr.org/nucaware_hydroletter.html

http://www.encyclopediecanadienne.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011388

The shutdown was huge, and cost Ontario taxpayers billions of dollars, and was more or less the end of nuclear power in Canada.

The cartoon series called "The Simpson's" was based on and around the operation of a nuclear power plant. Homer, pictured above, is the main character, and one of the all time stupidest characters to ever lead a normal life in a cartoon, was the employee in charge of the nuclear reactor's control panel. And for all his stupidity, Homer's behaviour was not really outside the bounds of what you might expect to see in normal people you see in the street, not to mention neighbours, friends, even relatives.

I think there are many more examples of these large scale mental breakdowns, but how about this small one. Back in 1961, people drove around without seatbelts or airbags, drunk out of their minds, with the kids rolling around loose in the back of the car. Today, drivers are sober (more often than not), the babies are in their restraining harnesses, and cars are huge "safe" SUV's with air bags and anti-lock brakes. But now the drivers are reading the newspaper or text messaging at 100 km/hr. Although on a personal scale, it proves that the saying from Pogo "We have met the enemy and he is us." is still as true as ever. As we develop ever more complex systems, the most serious problem to face mankind is plain old lack of brainpower.

Zen and the Art of Traffic Gridlock

Most people think they know what gridlock is, but I want to go over it again because it happens to highlight one of the most important principles in civilization, and if we could solve gridlock, we could solve any human problem.

Lets start with the basics. In a crowded city, such as New York which happens to be laid out in a grid, traffic will occasionally come to a complete halt in a feedback chain reaction. Imagine a city block which has an intersection at each corner, when traffic is very heavy. Now imagine what happens at one of those intersections when the light turns red, but some cars are stuck in the intersection and cannot move forward or back. Now the cars with a green light cannot move either, because of the cars in the middle of the intersection blocking their progress. Immediately, more cars become blocked behind them, and if the line stretches back to their previous intersection, then that one also becomes blocked the same way, and the chain reaction will now occur in all four corners of the block. And with one city block completely stuck, neighbouring blocks will also get stuck the same way. That is what we call gridlock.

In principal, gridlock can happen in places other than a grid, I have seen pictures of gridlock even in a traffic roundabout, where a line of buses in the circle may block and exit to the roundabout, when they get stopped by slow traffic, and the feedback loop quickly travels back around the entire roundabout to lock it down solidly. These traffic jams are apparently very hard to break up.

The root cause of gridlock comes down to human nature. Each independent driver is trying to get through the traffic as quickly as possible. So they may make a decision which superficially may help them get a head a little further. But their decision blocks another driver, and the feedback from that eventually blocks the entire traffic flow for the whole city. The psychology of this is very interesting, because even if you explain to each driver how to act in order to ensure the free movement of traffic, they will continue to behave in such a way as to move themselves ahead of the rest, which gridlocks the traffic, where they themselves will be stuck for hours.

So if I may define the gridlock mentality as one where a person will make some small action to serve themselves. seemingly at the expense of only a few others, but the the effect on the others multiplies around in such a way that it brings down the whole system, including the original perpetrator.

The solution for gridlock is for drivers to not move ahead if doing so will block the cross flow of traffic. After all, the cross flow is not really competing with you. Those divers are not trying to get ahead of you, they are just going their own way, but need to cross your path to get there. You must not enter an intersection even on a green light, if there is no place for you on the other side. But it is hard to get everyone to understand this is the problem. In other words, moving ahead is not always wise if you want to keep moving ahead.

Politics, economics, and war also suffer from gridlock mentality. This is the kind of "self interest" that gives a temporary advantage to one person while starting the chain reaction that brings down the whole system for everyone. Think of the big banks, that get spooked by bad economic news, and withdraw their loans to protect their own interests, which shuts down those borrowers' businesses, which in turn lay off employees, who in turn withdraw their money from the banks, thus driving the banks out of business anyway. The circular chain reaction always comes back to the starting and then spreads further.

This gridlock mentality applies to a military occupation, where soldiers are torturing and killing innocent civilians to get information, the negative effect of which multiplies to more civilians turning against the occupiers until they finally have to give up. A small advantage one minute, torturing and killing happily to "stay safe". But the advantage in temporary security turns millions of people against the occupiers, and the war is lost. Terrorists are always trying to find ways to enhance the "gridlock" effect against the occupying forces.

The temptation to gridlock mentality is the fatal flaw of pure free market capitalism, just as lack of incentive is the fatal flaw of communism.

Two thousand years ago, a man appeared on Earth with the solution to gridlock. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". "love your neighbour and your enemy" and "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Instead of listening to him, he was crucified by the very people who two thousand years later would invent gridlock and laissez faire capitalism.

One day, maybe all people will understand how their own innocent (but self serving) actions sometimes start a chain reaction that comes back to bite them in the rear end.

Pictures: A diagram of gridlock from Wikipedia, and a gridlocked traffic circle.

The Myth of Limitless High Priced Oil

Here is a comment off the Internet about why we should not invest in alternate energy right now.

"Crude oil, next to water, is the most plentiful liquid in our globe. We are not in danger of running out of crude for at least 100 years — probably much longer. The supply during this period would be limited by the price, not by any metaphysical limit of the amount of crude oil. A higher price will produce massive amounts of crude. There is no reason, at this point, to impoverish our nation with a new system of expensive, unproven “sustainable energy.” Does anyone have any doubt that by 2100 we will have found new ways of tapping nature for our energy needs?"
by derekcrane

To me it does not matter whether we have more or less oil than water, or whether oil is second or tenth on the list of earth liquids, or even if oil is a liquid, gas or solid. However, an estimate of the number of years left is worth knowing, and although 100 years seems to have been picked out of the air, I'm going to go with it, as I have nothing better to offer.

Derek is quite right in stating that the price will dictate the amount of oil available. But is he aware that there are two sides to the price issue? Side 1. How much it costs. Side 2. How much you can afford to pay. Derek seems to ignore the affordability, probably thinking that America will always have enough money to pay for the oil no matter how much it costs.

It is very complicated calculating the real cost of oil. It's not just the cost per barrel on the market alone. It's how much more money was wasted, either in trying to obtain oil (whether successful or not), transporting and extracting the oil, in protecting your oil supplies, defending supply routes, or in trying to deny other people access to oil that you want for yourself. Also in trying to fight an evil dictator who happens to be sitting on top of the world's richest oil reserves. All these problems get worse as the oil gets more scarce, and more valuable. For example, the more an oil tanker is worth, the harder pirates will try to capture it.

Was the war in Iraq priced into the cost of oil in the US? Then oil would cost a lot more, but instead the cost of the war was largely assigned to a military budget, and paid for out of the general tax pool. Which means basically money was borrowed from China, because the US tax pool does not want to pay for anything. If an unlimited supply of oil was available in the US, maybe the war would not have taken place. If oil was cheap, Saddam would be no threat.

Another cost that is not being calculated is the cost of global warming. Maybe that cost will turn out to be zero, but it would be prudent to budget for it anyway, starting now. Lets say the US military is right in it's estimate that global warming is going to cause a big (and expensive) security threat. That cost is not being assigned to oil right now, but it probably should be.

As oil gets harder to find, it takes more oil to produce the oil, so the price does not go up linearly, it goes up exponentially. In Canada's tar sands, we may already be operating at less than 50% efficiency, where two barrels of crude are burned to extract one barrel.

Not only is the price of oil going up, but your buying power is decreasing. In fact, already America does not have enough money to pay cash any imports, including oil, imports are financed by borrowing. It takes years to build up a debt but the lender (mostly China) can pull the plug in minutes when they think they no longer need you. At the point where your loans are called in, you no longer have enough credit to continue importing oil. When that happens, do you really care whether or not there is any oil left?

The world used to have lots of alternate sources of energy, but the exploitation of oil has just about eliminated any competing energy source. That's because oil has more bang for the buck than anything but atomic energy. Other energy sources, such as hydroelectric, solar, wind power are at least ten times as dilute, which makes them expensive and non-competitive. Especially so when so much of the secondary cost of oil is being hidden in military budgets and government subsidies.

Why should we invest in alternate energy starting right now? Because if we do nothing now, we are wasting time we will need to develop new technologies. Waiting till the last minute (even if it is more than a hundred years from now) and hoping for the best is not a good plan. Right now we can afford to do the research, and we have unemployment since all our manufacturing process has gone to China. We would not really miss the money invested in developing alternate energy sources, or in reducing our energy consumption. Using a word like "impoverish" is quite an overstatement for a country that spends billions of dollars a year in useless doodads from China, that get tossed in the landfill within weeks for some new toy.

Picture: from http://earthfirst.com/oil-about-to-run-out-leading-energy-expert-says/

Economics 101: The House of Cards

To make sense of economics on a national level, you must first recognize that national economics are not like personal economics. Just because somebody is able to balance their checkbook and pay their utility bills on time does not qualify them to advise the government on economic matters. Especially if those people spend time praying to Jesus to win the lottery. So let's not listen to people who claim that because they have "common sense", that they can tell you what's wrong with the government policies.

On the other hand, it should not be impossible for the average person to understand some of what is going on with the economy nationally. Let's start with money. For an average person, money = wealth. For a country that prints its own money, money does not  equal wealth, because the government is not limited in how much money it prints.  For a sovereign country with its own currency, there are other more meaningful measure of national wealth.

One other difference between national economics and personal economics is the theory of probability. On a personal level, you can decide what day to buy a car, or buy a house, or quit a job. But on a national level, the economy is made up of millions of people making those decisions, and the government tries to control the probability of the decisions through taxation, or interest rates. The reason the government tries to control the probability (or even things out), is because it will never do to have nobody buy a car for three years (for example) then all of a sudden everybody wants one on the same day. The average person is accustomed to being able to go without buying a car for three years, but that only works because other people are buying cars at different times to keep the factory in business. In national economics it's important to understand this concept of probability. Or at least know that it exists.

The reason I brought up the concept of probability now, is that people actually used to understand this much better. It was well known back in the thirties that if everybody tried to take their money out of a bank at the same time, and nobody was putting money in, the bank would collapse. Many banks collapsed for exactly this reason. Since then, the government made rules, and set up institutions, to stop this from happening. The unfortunate side effect is that so many people today have no clue that it could ever happen. And so there is no understanding of the rules or the institutions that keep it from happening.

Just last month, we has a "crisis" with H1N1 flu shots. Why? because on Friday, nobody wanted to get their shots. Saturday a little boy died of H1N1 playing a hockey game. Monday, everybody in Canada wanted their shot on the same day. The fact that there were long lines was not a failure of the government, it was simply a failure of random probability at vaccination centres. I was quite amazed to see that nobody on TV at least, understood this in their commentaries.

We have definitely entered an age where not only are people increasingly ignorant of how things work, including the laws of probability, but they are also ever more vocal in their complaints about how things are getting done. An example of this was the attempted ouster of Stephen Harper last year, that many people misinterpreted as a "coup d'etat" but it was actually part of parliamentary tradition dating back to when Canada was born.

One of the problems with a Free Market Capitalist economy is that it is prone to periodic booms and busts. This the opposite of a communist planned economy. While most people understand that in a free market economy, prices tend to be set by "the invisible hand of the market", they do not understand that, if left alone, this would result in wild swings of prices that would eventually crash the economy. So some fiddling under the table is required to keep things stabilized.

Back in the depression, it was discovered that the government could actually help get the economy going by boosting its spending at a time when all privately owned companies were cutting back. This theory has been tested again and again. Strangely it is still not without controversy, free market extremists believe that Governments should do nothing to interfere with the "invisible hand" of the market. And for some reason you hear a lot of their discredited opinions on TV.

In this controversy, I believe in government intervention, as do almost all serious economists. I see it this way. The government acts kind of like any other business in the economy except that it is much bigger. So when every other business is slashing its costs and laying off people, the government can go ahead and boost its spending to even things out. Of course it's not as simple as that, but you can see how, if the government did the same as everyone else in a recession, you would have your classic panic situation similar to a run on a bank.

One more supposedly common sense idea that needs to be explained. These days, it is common to hear people proclaim that taxes are theft. That is nonsense. Taxes are not theft. Taxes are the price you pay to live in a country that provides services that you use every day, even though many of them you may be unaware of. Police, fire departments, the army, the schools, the justice system, the roads, the safety of food you are served in restaurants. As we learned in Ontario a few years ago, even the purity of the drinking water is assured by the government. We tried to cheap out and people died. Then everybody lost confidence in our drinking water and a new industry sprang up to sell bottled water that was no better than free drinking water but cost a thousand times more. Then our garbage dumps started filling up with empty water bottles, and finally we are starting to go back to drinking water from a tap. All that nonsense and waste, just because our "common sense" conservative government thought it made no sense to check the drinking water.

No matter what you might hear, taxes are a price you pay for living in this country. The only theft that happens is when you cheat and don't pay. And its about time we got some real experts on TV explaining our recession. It may be harder to understand, but there's no excuse for the nonsense that people are being fed daily about economics.