China Even Bootlegs American Laws!

Remember all the (often libertarian) China bulls who were telling us about a decade ago that China is more business-friendly than the U.S. Remember hearing them say the Chinese had observed and learned from the mistakes of the fading West, "money goes where it is treated best" and all that? Yeah, about that...

China bans major shareholders from selling their stakes for next six months

China’s securities regulator took the drastic step of banning shareholders with stakes of more than 5% from selling shares for the next six months in a bid to halt a plunge in stock prices that is starting to roil global financial markets.

It almost reminds me of something...oh right, that time in 2008 when America did the same thing.

I thought vibrant China had learned from calcified America's mistakes and was doing an Opposite George on all things red, white, and blue. Apparently what they learned is how to repeat them.

Is New York America's Unhappiest City?

New York, America’s unhappiest city

New York City has been declared America’s unhappiest city by researchers from the University of British Columbia and Harvard.

The paper, “Unhappy Cities,” leaned on survey data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that asked respondents: “In general, how satisfied are you with your life?”

Researchers then tweaked that data for control factors such as race, education, marital status and family size. They concluded that New York, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Milwaukee and Detroit are, in that order, America’s least happy cities.

Envy contributes indefatigably to unhappiness, and it is difficult to avoid envy in New York. I don’t subscribe to the idea that neighborhoods with diverse incomes generally make people happier. When you’re in a building with kingly penthouses and you’re in a claustrophobic studio – like my last apartment – you really see up close how the other class lives. In Manhattan at least, those situations are common. It is much easier to keep up with the Joneses when the Joneses are a fellow suburban neighbor with a lifestyle roughly the same as yours. Subdivisions don't usually have a McMansion next door to a Steinbeckian shack.

A lot of people move here to build an identity, to reinvent themselves as winners. They don't just come to be a lawyer, they come to be a New York lawyer. Many of these transplants were large fish in cramped ponds. They arrive and suddenly realize that in Manhattan they’re just average (or worse). They're whole scheme to be the crème de la crème goes sour, and overachievers don’t take underachievement well. They probably would have been happier staying in Omaha, being the best lawyer in town and sucking on a small regret about what might have been in New York (and telling themselves, and probably believing it, that they would have conquered New York). 

Those who do try to keep up with the manic Manhattan competition do so at the expense of health and social lives, which of course begets unhappiness. Those competing in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx have a hard time even saying they're in the competition (Staten Island is actually a floating car dealership).

A city with a lot of dreamers is going to have a lot of broken dreams.

Killing 'Em Profitably

Here's a theory about the globe's nagging economic stagnation: The Lack of Major Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth

One of the arguments for immigration, in the U.S. and Europe, is that these young transplanted workers will pay taxes and save the pension systems. Well, who is likely to be killed in these ostensibly prosperity-inducing wars? Young people.

If large swathes of the young are killed off, who is left? The pension-expectant elderly. Then you really have global Japan-like malaise.

Workers of the World, Download!

Calls for an increased minimum wage are echoing coast to coast. Many of those doing the calling are millennials; the Piracy Generation. The generation that wants everything for free - music, movies, TV - are upset that someone is trying to give them less money for their services.

Funny how they decided "labor rights" didn't matter when they suddenly had a chance to obtain music for free. Funny how they decided a living wage wasn't necessary for musicians. Funny how they didn't worry about royalty checks keeping up with inflation. "Workers should control the means of production," except when I can horde their services with the click of a mouse.

Isn't it convenient that these anti-business folks started using the term business model when it came time to justify the "business model" of musicians no longer getting compensated for their songs? Don't ya just love watching these anti-globalists participate in the movement of goods across borders without paying for them?

Apple takes flak for what it pays people. Millenials use Apple products to behave like Apple.

The running away of the bulls

They're Dying at Their Desks in China as Epidemic of Stress Proves Fatal 

China is facing an epidemic of overwork, to hear the state-controlled press and Chinese social media tell it. About 600,000 Chinese a year die from working too hard, according to the China Youth Daily. China Radio International in April reported a toll of 1,600 every day.

In America in the late '80s, stories like these appeared, only they concerned Japan. The American narrative about China surpassing the US has been similar to the narrative about Japan's. The narrative moves in stages:

1)            Everyone starts mentioning everything they own is from that country.

2)            Everyone starts complaining that country is taking American jobs.

3)            Politicians start pretending they’re going to do something about it. People believe them.

4)            All the pundits and business leaders start saying in public that the Japanese/Chinese way is better (in the ‘80s Japanese conformity/homogeneity was seen as a positive). Before the 2008 Crash everyone in the West was saying China had a smarter command economy and a much smarter citizenry (hence their explosion); post-crisis they said China’s system could better react because they didn’t have to answer to voters (even the NYT got on board with this).

5)            Cracks start showing, and suddenly people stop viewing the country's system as a monochrome positive (even my mother now knows about Chinese ghost cities). 

6)            The top-down bulls capitulate and the country that couldn’t be stopped stops hard.

The question is whether China will crash like Japan or just slow down significantly. My guess is the latter.

A way to make big money on the movement against big money?

The fervor against the 1% (and by proxy, “tax avoiding” corporations) will continue to amass. In the 2016 election, “income equality” will be the new “war on women.”

 

This fervor has legs because unlike the Occupy movement, which was unfocused and blemished with easily mocked supporters, folks protesting for an increased minimum wage are sympathetic. Their message is also specific, easily understood, which keeps it from becoming a wad of social justice spam that goes straight to the mental junk folder. Companies like McDonald's are currently under fire for their allegedly anti-99% policies, and my guess is they will likely have to throw some (soy-based) red meat to those picketing them. Starbucks has already succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome (I think Starbucks could have brushed off the barbs pretty easily).

 

Actual members of the 1% aren't going to be hurt by this fervor of course. "Outsider" Obama golfs with oil execs and Wall Street heavyweights without incurring any long term criticism. Generic Republican targets will take some hits for mirroring Obama's lambada with the 1%, but my hunch is the rage at the upper-upper crust will primarily be expressed through campaigns against companies like McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. Piketty’s book will be the new Earth is Flat for a while.

 

I'm not betting against the stock of any of the aforementioned companies, but one wonders what kind of volatility they might suffer if their profits and (already execrable) reputations start slipping. Tiffany’s will probably continue to be fine, even though those raging against their customers will be under the tragic impression they've made a difference. Come to think of it, maybe the way to capitalize is to start a protest sign company (whomever created the Che shirts certainly made a killing). I always knew I could be a job creator!

Kept Crusaders

Thanks to the joblessness following the Crash of '08, America's young have become a "lost generation" of sorts. Not the good kind of Lost Generation, the kind with Fitzgeralds and Hemingways. More the kind that gets in shouting matches over whether Daredevil would benefit from Lasik surgery.

When you don't have a job after college, it is predictable that your maturity will also be put on hold. You can remain irresponsible, sheltered, flaky, and hold tight to all the idealistic teeth gnashing programmed into you on campus.

Not only does this career delay mean not having to enter the workplace and adapt to its discipline and compromise, it means not being exposed to tyrannical HR departments; whose power and wingnuttery are the predictable result of elevating political correctness to a religion. If this lost generation got a dose of today's HR National Socialism perhaps they could finally see where their unthinking "social justice" boosterism leads.

Today's lost youth were also weaned on social media crusading and shaming. (Their age is also the age of campaigns against Internet bullying, which somehow isn't called bullying when done in the name of political correctness). They've grown up in an age where it's quite normal to form an Internet lynch mob to attack those with whom you disagree, and the Internet comforts of anonymity and distance only embolden these attacks. When you can bully others without consequence and in the process convince yourself you're a soldier fighting for the "right side of history," of course you're going to double down. That these bearded babies have plenty of free time to obsess over villain-slaying superheroes with secret identities probably fuels this fevered stone throwing.

It is beyond obvious that leaving a generation to continue stewing in the cupidity of their salad days long after the leaves have turned brown isn't going to result in nuanced converstion. So if you were wondering who's to blame for the shrill, sophomoric flavor of social media (and ultimately youth level) discourse, you should probably start with Alan Greenspan.

It's not the economy, stupid

Have you heard: right now there is a "struggle for the heart of the Republican Party." The call has gone out for a Moderate Messiah, and the Republican establishment is pushing Jeb Bush hard. The messiah's ostensible mission: Forget the social issues and focus on the economy!

The reality is the Republican version of social issue politics and economic politics will fail at the ballot box.

Ladies and gentlemen of the calculatorless establishment: we have an electoral college, and the social issues are liabilities in every important electoral state except Texas. They are such liabilities that the mere whiff of a pro-life bent automatically disqualifies you. Though they don't realize it and gleefully mock Red Staters for their steadfast commitment to social issues, left-leaning US voters are just as much culture war/single issue voters as Republicans.* You hear progressives talking "social justice" more often than you hear them mentioning fiscal issues. 

And for progressives, especially today's young ones, it isn't enough for the culture to morph towards a flavor that accommodates their predilections. "Social justice" isn't justice until it is sanctified by the government (don't look for a movement, even a fake one, touting "live and let live" progressivism), which denudes any crossover with faux "libertarian" Republicans; including semi-genuine ones like Rand Paul. Today young people endorse live and let live...as long as you live the way they tell you you can live, and as long as the state gives it a tax-laden thumbs up! The state is all too happy to do this.

But wait, isn't it all about "jobs, jobs, jobs?" No it isn't. The fiscal conservatism pitch about creating jobs through reduced regulation and taxes has a .08% chance of resonating with young voters. Many of today's young voters have never had steady jobs and expect the government to rectify this through increased laws and spending.** They feel they're owed home ownership, student loan relief, etc. They don't expect to become the Steve Jobs heirs apparent Paul Ryan pinched his dimples about. Progressives/young people associate the economy with the government. Telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is just north of pointless. The Republican strategy of instructing voters to emulate "our most productive citizens," by which they mean the wealthier, also isn't going to stir young voter hearts.

If Republicans try to capture these voters by campaigning in favor of more activist government, it will merely brand them as slightly more "socially conservative" Democrats (which is actually what they are now). Who are young people and progressive-leaning independents going to trust in such an scenario?

As for old people: they don't care about jobs; they care about being able to retire from jobs. They feel no guilt about sticking someone else with the bill.

Saying "Focus on the economy, it's a no-brainer" could only be said by a no-brainer.


*This isn't my Republican Party!...not shocking that when there is a movement to shift the party leftward on social issues the media can't get enough of "rebellious Republicans." When there was a chorus of anti-Iraq invasion/anti-War on Terror conservatives, the media was strangely uninterested in hearing them out.

**Extended adolescence combined with scant real world experience only increases one's zealotry for fundamentalist social justice religion.

It's not easy being green (which is why everyone fakes it)

Every woman I know claims to work for a "non-profit." Yet somehow these non-profit workers are able to afford gorgeous Manhattan apartments and 218 pairs of shoes. Many of them rent a separate studio just for their boots.

All of these crusaders express deep, deep concern for the environment. After all, those corporations are bloody mean to Mother Earth (probably another form of misogyny!).

It isn't just shoes. Every woman's house festers with extraneous gee-gaws from Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Sur La Table. It teems with unnecessary, constantly updated electronic gizmos. Plenty of waste there (Gaia hates Candy Crush). On OKCupid, half the women list their passport as one of the five things they can't live without. All those plane fights are heavy on the carbon.

The only way to be "green" is not to buy things. Even "green" products still produce waste and burn resources. If you don't consume anything in the first place there is nothing to recycle. Flying around the world so you can call yourself a "global citizen" makes you a bad global citizen.

These gals also pretend to be deeply, terribly, spasmodically concerned about the plight of the Third World. We need to educate (education as we definite it) their women! We need to erase their poverty. Sounds great. Everyone want to see poverty vanish. But now that some of that poverty is fading (market forces are boosting living standards in China, India, Ethiopia, etc.) and some of these gals' affected concerns are being addressed, there is going to be a lot more consumption. And I hate to break it to you, but the rising Third World ain't going to adhere to your (pretended) ideal of the green life. They're going to want air conditioning. And bigger cars. And much more protein. These granola crusaders have no inkling that their brand of "social justice" generates ecological havoc. How do you say pollution in Cantonese and Hindi? WHO KNEW THE EAST HAD SUCH A MATRICIDAL GRUDGE AGAINST MOTHER EARTH???!!!!

These sloganistas want to have their green Earth and their greenhouse gasses too. They work at "non-profits" to "help the Earth" and use their rather profitable salaries to conspicuously consume and fly around seeing the world their flights are contaminating. They seem to think they can absolve themselves by shopping at Whole Foods. Too bad a thousand trips to Whole Foods doesn't undo the effects of your closet full of nonsense. Of course many of them are probably so dense they don't even realize they should feel guilty.

Women in China are being educated and learning to contribute to pollution. Look for Shanghai to experience a Whole Foods explosion any day now.

A college "death spiral" could breathe new life into education

Small U.S. Colleges Battle Death Spiral as Enrollment Drops

“What we’re concerned about is the death spiral -- this continuing downward momentum for some institutions,” said Susan Fitzgerald, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in New York. “We will see more closures than in the past.”

Moody’s, which rates more than 500 public and private nonprofit colleges and universities, downgraded an average of 28 institutions annually in the five years through 2013, more than double the average of 12 in the prior five-year period.

Dozens of schools have seen drops of more than 10 percent in enrollment, according to Moody’s. As faculty and staff have been cut and programs closed, some students have faced a choice between transferring or finishing degrees that may have diminished value.

Such a death spiral* would be wel-diddly-come. No reason for kids to accrue farcical debt attaining unremunerative liberal arts degrees. The education bubble, which is even more sacrosanct and absurd than the "American dream of owning a home," continues to attract scrutiny, and it's about time. Predictably, all of the "solutions" being offered are written in 19-year-old girl speak.

We keep hearing we have do something about the cost of education, but never examine the factors behind the cost: government backstopping student loan debt* and the absurd level of demand created by bamboozling everyone to pursue college (regardless of whether they're qualified).

We keep hearing that we need to "close the skills gap," that we need to "educate our young folks to get those high-skill, high-paying jobs," but say nothing about whether an innate skills gap - in our age number crunching smarts engender far more opportunities than verbal smarts - can be bridged by throwing more money at the problem (spoiler alert: it can't). A kid who isn't wired to handle algebra isn't going to become an engineer no matter how many shiny iPads you bequeath to him. Speaking of money and education, America spends more on education than anyone, and well, you've seen the results.

In the meantime, while pundits and hollow-eyed pig-men pat themselves on the back for offering useless, pandering prescriptions, we continue encouraging EVERYONE, qualified or not, to attend college and accumulate more debt they'll never repay. It's like Nero writing a syllabus as Rome University burns.

INCOME INEQUALITY TALK IS CURRENTLY ALL THE RAGE, and "closing the skills gap" through "education" comes up constantly when the matter is discussed. With apologies to those who were born yesterday: more "education" isn't going to solve "income inequality." We live in the era of the Long Tail; the winners are going to keep winning bigger and the losers are going to keep losing bigger. This skew is a byproduct of the very technology politicians/pundits are pretending every kid can learn to harness. Automation, which is being accelerated by those with number crunching skills, is leaving those without similar cognitive tools in an even deeper hole. And automation isn't the only radical change being catalyzed by technology; like I've written about before, a great education didn't shield American engineers from the outsourcing revolution. So much for a heady technology education being a turnkey answer to the jobs crisis.

Looking back on my teen years, one thing that stands out in my mind is the HUGE stigma that was attached to vocational school (called VoTech where I lived). When I was in middle and high school there were teachers who tried to scare us by saying if we didn't get it together we'd end up going to VoTech. At the time I joked about VoTech too. Now I look back and realize what a dope I was: what was so wrong with VoTech? Many kids would have been better off attending VoTech to become an employable electrician or auto body worker than trying to attend a college in which they didn't belong. How many of them dabbled in community college and junior college (neither institution is free, by the way) for years before finally giving up without earning a degree? How many settled into waitressing because their college difficulties made them think there was no hope? Meanwhile they might have been mechanically inclined and could have established solid careers as tradesmen.

And how many kids scraped by, barely managing to get a degree in something soft like sociology, and rang up all that debt to acquire a degree that at best set them up to be teachers? The line to become a full-time liberal arts teacher is much longer than the line to become a full-time electrician.

With all this talk of self-esteem, think of how much better the self-esteem of those kids would have been being surrounded by other VoTech students rather than struggling like mad in Algebra II and becoming convinced they were stupid.

Electricians and carpenters aren't being outsourced. Encouraging kids who can't do algebra to focus on college and Silicon Valley-type jobs is putting them on a kamikaze career path. They aren't going to Silicon Valley, but with the right encouragement they could fix Silicon Valley's toilets for a very respectable wage.

Education won't solve income inequality. Piling up student loan debt for useless degrees only furthers it.


*This very death spiral is going to leave even more verbal intellectuals (would-be humanities professors) out of work and out of luck.

*The government backstop of mortgage debt helped foster the housing bubble.

Make Deals, Not War

George Carlin had many unfunny pseudobits about "businesscriminals," but this one is probably the worst:

"They don't even trust each other. When a businessman sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who's trying to fuck him out of his money, so he's gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder."

I have heard rants with the same spirit from other comedians, and often when I'm at a party - especially post-credit crisis - someone corners me and stumbles his way through a feckless sermon on the evil world of negotiated transactions. Bargaining, negotiating, dealmaking, and guys in suits sporting briefcases have long been safe targets of scorn for artists and wannabe artists alike.

The alternative to bargaining is brute force. If you think the world is violent and unequal now, imagine a world where a 110-pound woman was not assumed to be able to negotiate with a 300-pound-man to get what she was after. She would lose every time. Thankfully, homo sapiens negotiate most of the time, or else the pipsqueaks among us would very quickly go extinct.

Speaking of preventing extinction, flirtation is negotiation. When you flirt, you are bargaining to get someone to give you her number, sleep with you, and so on. The alternative to this negotiation, clubbing her and dragging her back to your cave, seems uncouth in comparison. If we eliminated this form of negotiation, chivalry would be dead, along with a lot of women. We'd see commercials telling us: "Every six seconds a woman isn't negotiated with."

A handful of the countries that took brave stands against bargaining:

Soviet Union
North Korea
Red China
East Germany
Ethiopia
Romania
Somalia

You may have noticed their cups failed to overfloweth. Plenty of people died trying to sneak into West Germany. I don't recall too many West Germans trying to break into East Germany. Surprising, since in East Germany bargaining was eliminated and everything was free!!! Negotiationless North Korea also doesn't seem to have much of an illegal immigration problem. And I don't remember hordes of people defecting to the non-negotiation countenancing Soviet Union, but that's probably my bourgeois pig brain lying to me.

Desires and wants are bottomless. Everyone wants everything all the time. As we go to print, no one has yet invented a magic wand that can make whatever we want appear free of charge. If you're upset about this, email your complaints to Isaac Newton. Bargaining allows us to at least get some of the things we want without having to resort to outright banditry.

It is an extraordinary irony that many of these anti-negotiation "progressives" are also anti-"bullying." Negotiation, not bumper stickers denouncing bullying, is what keeps bullying from being the first resort in every human exchange. Without an expectation of negotiation, the Biggest and Baddest would simply stomp you and take everything you had. The big fish really would eat the little ones. Get rid of negotiation, and the only folks who will have food and shelter will be MMA fighters, NFL linebackers, and Ted Nugent.

Anti-negotiation hipster nerds certainly wouldn't do well in an all brute force world. Funny how everyone always assumes they'd be on the winning side of their fantasy revolutions (guess that's why they're called fantasies). But anyway, in the spirit of tolerance, we should give these crybabies a week of exposure to the No Negotiation World they want. This experiment would also serve their desire to "return to nature," as a week without negotiation would leave them naked, homeless, and starving.

Putting a businessperson in the White House won't give us a "CEO in Chief"

Wanna hear a joke?

Unemployment is high in America.

How high is it?

It's so high even the dishonest government measurement of unemployment clocks it above 7%. Oh, and yo' mama so fat they count her as two unemployed people.

In a time of high unemployment and flagrant government oafishness like Obamacare, it isn't surprising to hear murmurings about how we "need a businessperson in office." He'll know how to get the economy going! Romney tried leaning on this, and for years Donald Trump had used it to generate publicity.

Businesspeople can't improve the government. Part of the reason businesspeople can achieve things is because they don't have to get votes. Businesspeople only have to provide products. They don't have to whisper sweet nothings in consumers' ears. You can be unlikable and still monumentally successful as long as people like your products. See Steve Jobs.

Politicians have to sugarcoat. They have to whisper sweet nothings. They have to appear likeable. Politicians themselves are the product. That means is they have to lie constantly. The "which candidate would you rather have a beer with" matters big time. In 2008, apart from the media's pornographic love affair with the symbolism of Barack, I think a big part of his prevailing is that every non-lesbian (and probably most lesbians) would rather drink with Barack than Hillary. Barack is probably an interesting enough guy to have a Guinness with. Hillary is lame enough to turn wine into seltzer.

Also, when a CEO promises a new iPhone, he actually has to deliver a new iPhone. He can't not provide one and then just claim he did. He won't have a million propagandizing media subnormals working 'round the clock to convince the nation he provided this nonexistent iPhone. People will notice the lack of a new iPhone and punish him by buying his competitors' phones.

A politician can say he's going to do something like close Gitmo and then simply not do it. Almost nothing ever happens when a politician breaks a promise. People are trained to expect broken promises from politicians (or at least politicians who aren't members of "their" party). CEOs and businesspeople don't have this luxury. If anything, folks are trained to complain vociferously to businesspeople ("the customer is always right"). Therefore, businesspeople have to follow up to some extent on their promises, or else customers and activist shareholders will topple them. See JC Penney.

Once a politician is in office, he is there for at least two years. Unlike a CEO, you're stuck with him. Sometimes you're stuck with him for four or six years, so he can go right on lying for his entire reign, and there is nothing that can be done about it. A businessperson's approval rating results in immediate profits and losses, and he can be put out of business or fired from the CEO position in a matter of months, not years. Parties of all political persuasions are always complaining about voters' short attention spans. They're right. If a guy is in office six years there is plenty of time for each storm to blow over and be forgotten. In business, even a short term storm can topple someone in no time flat. If that businessperson could count on six years of tenure, chances are his sins would be forgotten the way they are for politicians.

CEOs and businesspeople almost never have the advantage of a monopoly. Government by its very definition is a monopoly. There is one DMV. There is one police force. You can only have two Senators in each state. There is no such thing as an upstart third, fourth, or fifth Senator who can suddenly appear and immediately start taking market share. There is no limit to how many different smartphone brands there can be, which is why CEOs and businesspeople must be nimble and responsive to customers if they are to survive. Government, and its mascots in the Congress and White House, is a monopoly, and it acts like one. A politician with the greatest business background still couldn't do anything to change the clumsy, unaccoutable nature of monopolies. The only thing he could do once in office is privatize everything, and forgetting for a moment that that is impossible under our current system, what politician is going to ride in and start diluting his own power by privatizing everything? The last President to use anti-government rhetoric was Reagan, and as we all know he greatly expanded the government.

By believing a businessperson is going to fix government, market-minded people are adopting the same defective mentality as the most anti-business egalitarian: assuming if we could just get the right person in there, things would be better. Wrong. The institution itself isn't fixable. Getting a different mascot to be its face won't render it fixable.

I've heard champions of the marketplace say it is the only real democracy, the only place where you truly have a voice. The reason that is so is because it is democracy without force. Government is nothing but monopoly and force. Government is democracy without the whole "having a voice" part.

A Question on Sanctions

A big media topic of late has been "comprehensive immigration reform." Talking heads keep saying increased immigration means increased economic growth; more people=more potential consumers, etc.

That same media goes right along with any suggestion of sanctions and penalties for countries like Iran. OK...if more consumers means more economic growth, doesn't cutting off the potential consumers of Iran and Cuba and Burma from US output also limit economic growth?

You might retort that the average Iranian or Cuban consumer isn't particularly prosperous. The same is true of many of the immigrants who would arrive in the US via comprehensive immigration reform. It's not like the Statue of Liberty says: "Send us your posh, your one-percenters, your moneyed masses yearning to spend freely." Far from it. So if the media doesn't consider the poverty of those migrating here an impediment, the poverty of those potential consumers in Iran, Cuba, and Burma shouldn't be used as an excuse to cut them off from American markets.

Don't expect anyone on TV to raise this point. The establishment media is firmly in favor of all forms of belligerence against "rogue states," especially those containing Arabs and Persians. When it comes to Americans and the Middle East, economics takes a back seat, and practical foreign policy analysis gets thrown in the trunk.

Education can't create the real high-skill of the future: imagination

Ancient languages reconstructed by computer program

A new tool has been developed that can reconstruct long-dead languages.

Researchers have created software that can rebuild protolanguages - the ancient tongues from which our modern languages evolved.

Currently language reconstructions are carried out by linguists - but the process is slow and labour-intensive.

Another esteemed profession, this time linguistics, is being made less esteemed by the advance of technology. Linguists have actual skill, so it makes sense they have traditionally been esteemed. Speaking of technology, today all we hear is that America needs to "invest in education" so that our countrymen can compete in the 21st Century. But increasingly, the workforce of the 21st Century doesn't involve our humans or anyone else's. Both low-skill AND high-skill jobs are feeling the bite of automation.

The journalism job market (another prestige profession) has been hemorrhaging for years thanks to the Internet revolution. How long can the education cartels hold off a similar onslaught from online academies? Of course no one will miss the thousands of malevolently worthless college professors made obsolete by technology; the tweedbots with elbow patches on their toupee who always sound like they're in the middle of a sneeze as they spew another hollow lecture on Applied Applications.

But it won't just hit the professors who teach twaddle. The fact that online classrooms can teach so many students at once (and at such a low cost, a trend that is going to be hard for the cartels to hide as tuition inflation continues attracting attention) also lessens the need for professors of real subjects like engineering.

Education is a cure-all word that everyone uses for every situation. What many don't grasp is that just because someone is educated doesn't mean he can synthetize info. If all he can do is memorize and regurgitate info., even high-skill info., he isn't going to be as secure as you might think. That's because we have computers (and robots) who can do that. Robotic humans - no matter how many degrees they have - are likely to be eminently replaceable.

Focusing on education is all fine and dandy, but education does not equal imagination. The folks who will survive will be the ones whose real high skill is idea generation, because so far, AI hasn't perfected brainstorming robots (yet). Picasso's quote still holds true (for now). Many of today's well-educated, well-paid, high-skill, low-imagination workers could become tomorrow's secretaries (or temps). All the education in the world couldn't protect American engineers from the outsourcing revolution.

Thanks to the speedy advance of technology, it seems there is going to be less need for everyone. The anthem for computers and robots will be "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better". If there is to be any role for non-cyborg humans, it will be for those with imagination. So if you have kids, teach them to daydream.


My Twitter feed is still crafted with human hands: https://twitter.com/greatMikePayne

How do you put a price on priceless art? Very easily; you ask someone to buy it.

Vincent Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime. In 1990 his Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82.5 million. How could there be such a disconnect?

The answer is simple: If no one values what you do, it has no value. You are producing your art (or any product) to be consumed by humans, which is why their rejection of what you have produced devalues it. You may scoff, but stop and think: if humans aren't the target audience...who is? Bugs? Trees? If you think Parisians are a tough crowd, try making a cactus laugh.

In Van Gogh's time, no one had any interest in his work. Forget potential buyers outbidding each other: the guy had to mooch off his brother to make ends meet. After he died, circumstances changed, and suddenly a large portion of humanity fell deeply in love with his work; giving it the value it now enjoys. Van Gogh's contemporaries put the price at zero. Today's humans put the price in the millions. And if some drastic change in taste should occur and there is a backlash against Vincent's paintings, their price could fall right back to zero.

We weep for the great artists who died in obscurity (it is primarily artists we transform from failures to martyrs). We discuss their works now and wonder: How could people fail to recognize the brilliance? But of course there are artists working right this second who will die in obscurity and become famous posthumously. Right now, they can't give their work away (you probably don't even know it exists). Someday that work will be priceless. And someday your children or grandchildren won't be able to believe people like you didn't discover its brilliance.

Poor guy. Literally.

Thought Experiment Involving Mobile, Alabama (no, really)

Everyone says money doesn't buy happiness, especially rich people concerned with sounding well rounded.

But if you were to give people the following choice: switch places with an unhappy rich person living in a mansion in Beverly Hills, or switch places with a happy person living in a trailer in Mobile, Alabama, which option do you think most people would choose? Despite all their claims to the contrary, I think the vast majority would choose Beverly Hills and unhappiness. They cannot comprehend being poor and happy in a Mobile mobile home. They prefer the appearance of "having it all" to the prospect of being content with nothing.

People will return from a vacation in a poor country and rhapsodize about "how happy everyone seemed. Maybe having a simple life makes you more grateful and happy. Maybe we don't really need all this..."

But they never move to that country or adjust their lives to mirror the simpler lives of those "happy, grateful poor people." [Sounds like an REM song. Actually, it sounds better.]


Maybe the facsimile of happiness is as close as most are likely to get to happiness.

Economic Value: Books vs. Music

Compared to other forms of entertainment, the pleasurable effects of music are less likely to wear off. People turn to a favorite album far more often than a favorite short story or favorite film. All entertainment experiences diminishing returns, but on balance, the returns from music are more consistent and stable than its competitors.

A telling example of this: You read a book in a bookstore so you don't have to buy it. You listen to an album in a record store (when they existed) to see if you want to buy it.

An average album doesn't "end" for you. The greatest book does.

How to Call a Different Kind of Market Top

A contradiction that agitates me: Nearly every school of thought on this celestial orb named Earth believes the following: Money doesn't buy happiness. Yet what happens when a rich person complains? "Oh, what does he have to complain about? He's rich."

So money can't buy happiness, but the rich have no right to be unhappy because they're rich? If the rich can't be unhappy, then money must buy happiness (a snake eating its own tail enters stage left). What's cute is people make these statements back to back without noting the conflict.

Around the start of the 21st Century, hip-hop introduced the world to the concept of player/playa-hating. From urbandictionary.com: "when someone is a player, and your [sic] jealous of them, you are a Player hater."

Stars like Puffy managed to deflect criticism simply by accusing the critic of being jealous of his money and success. It couldn't be that Puffy's songs were blander than moisture-free water. The only possible motive for criticizing him was jealousy and "hate;" even if the critic was Keith Richards, who had enough money and success to overdose on drugs and fame. Soon everyone carried a deck full of "you're a playa hater" trump cards.

Today nobody says "hata." Quite the opposite. Major celebs like the Kardashians and Charlie Sheen get hammered non-stop. Sometimes it's hard to tell if Twitter is a marketing tool or a firing squad.

Post-credit crisis we seem to be living through an inversion of playa hating. Everyone is welcome to throw tomatoes at those on top, and those on top aren't supposed to complain or fight back because they're on top. "C'mon, he's a big, rich guy and I've been out of work for six months..."

Today it appears the successful can't respond to criticism without attracting criticism. The less successful have free reign, and the elites have to sit there and take it, because, after all, they're rich and powerful, so what do they have to complain about?

Perhaps it is only in good economic times that concepts like playa hater can flourish. In periods of broad economic strain, the 99% feel they have less chance of becoming playas themselves and lash out accordingly. When they feel the ladder is open to them, they wonder if the critics really are just jealous. You've heard about the hemline index; the theory that hemlines rise as stocks rise. Maybe we need a hata index. When Taylor Swift starts accusing everyone of jealousy and regular people join in the chorus, maybe the market is nearing a top and it is time to sell.

What happens in European banks stays in European...oh wait, nevermind

Cyprus-style deposit tax now possible in New Zealand?

New Zealand savers could see a Cyprus-style tax on their bank accounts, the Green Party is warning, accusing the Government of planning similar solutions for the country.

Canadian "bail-ins" possible should certain "systemically important banks" fail (pages 144-145, h/t www.silverdoctors.com)?

The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada.

Not every precedent becomes a trend, but given how the unthinkable has become both thinkable and predictable, it doesn't hurt to be paranoid. If Canada, the "model for global banking," the financial system that was celebrated for being far less reckless than those in the US and Europe, is using bail-in language reminiscent of what was heard during that "one-off" event in Cyprus, it is definitely time to contemplate the risk of having your savings cut and pasted from your bank account.

When authorities cross a line and it doesn't trigger revolt, they keep moving until they cross the next line, and the one after that. I would be a bit suprised if we didn't see more Cyprus-like "solutions." The European Union is the world's largest economy, and is a place that seems to fancy itself the supreme repository of all things moral and just, so if such a thing can happen there (and in front of the world, no less), my guess is that other countries will at least attempt similar measures; under the guise that depositor haircuts are now part of "international law."

Those who dream of international law delivering the world from giant villians never consider that it can just as easily be used against puny non-villians. In fact, it is more likely to be used against puny non-villians because puny non-villians can't push back. 

Ah well, there is probably some cosmic lesson in the fact that the originator of the word "utopia" wound up getting beheaded.

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Ladies and Gentlemen! Introducing...A NEW ECONOMIC TERM!

I've coined a new term for unstable, one trick pony financial economies like Iceland and Cyprus: A Bank Branch Republic.

And how about that Malta? From Wikipedia:

Lombard Bank is one of Malta's major banks. Today, Cyprus Popular Bank of Cyprus is the largest shareholder with an equity stake of about 49%. Over 1,200 shareholders, including investment funds, hold the remaining shares. The Bank has a 60% stake in Maltapost plc., the Maltese postal service.


Yowsa!


Now that banks no longer offer interest OR security, they have basically just become mattresses with fees...