More Regulation or Less?

Funny how many people simplify the economy to just two options: Regulations are "good" or "bad".

A more realistic list of our options would be:

1. Idiotic regulations.
2. Idiotic deregulations.
3. Clever well thought through regulations.
4. Clever well thought through deregulations.

A large number of people clearly choose 1 over 4. And a similarly large number of people choose 2 over 3.


Personally, I pick both 3 and 4 over both 1 and 2.

Amazon's Business Model - Eternal Debt

What is the realistic business model for the e-Book market? Let's say I pay $10 to Amazon for a book for my Kindle. For that price, I can read it on all my Kindle-devices: a Mac, a PC, an iPhone, an iPad, and so on. I can remove it from those devices and download it again a few months later. Or a few years later. Or a few decades later. Or a few centuries later. Or millennia.

Clearly there is no time when we customers expect to be cut off from books we paid for. That means that we expect Amazon to provide a server for all future, with all our books downloadable to all Kindle-enabled devices we or our descendants may have available. And that without having to pay another cent. Ever.

How does Amazon's balance sheet handle this eternal debt? Let's say that it costs them 0.001 cent to keep a book available on their servers for one hundred years. Then the cost to keep that book available for eternity is 0.001 time infinity, which is... Let's see... It is an infinity cents, which means roughly one infinity dollars, or if you are European, converted to Euro: one infinity Euro in debt for all eternity.

It does not seem like a great business to me.

Grandma Duck's Electric Car

Today I learnt that Granma Duck's car is electric. It turns out that it is based on a Detroit Electric, an electric car that was produced 1907-1939. This goes to prove that there is nothing new with electric cars.

The picture above is a 1915 model at Tekniska Museet in Stockholm.

I knew that Tintin's cars mostly were based on real cars, but it was news to me that members of the Donald Duck family had real cars as well.

Promises Frighten Me

The state of the world economy frightens me after all. First the Federal Reserve says it does not expect to raise rates until 2013. Then US vice president Joe Biden says that the US will never default. How can they possibly know that?

If the economy had really been in any kind of acceptable shape, they could have given figures instead of verbal promises. The more frequent promises are, the more likely it is that they cannot be backed up by facts.

Downhill to a refreshing bath

Last time there was turmoil on the stock exchanges in the world in 2008, I was deeply worried. Now, when the DAX has gone down 30%, it simply feels like business as usual. We are having a really cold shower, and that can be refreshing.

Period!

Whenever I read a posting on the web that contains the single-word sentence "Period.", I stop reading and go elsewhere. The phrase is an excellent indication that the author is too lazy or daft to apply logical reasoning, and that he is delusional enough to believe that other people would be interested in his unfounded assertions. Reading such an entry is always a complete waste of time. Exclamation mark!

One Past - Many Futures

There is only one past but there are an infinite number of futures.

Isn't that unfair?

The Story of a Picture in Public Domain

About five years ago, I submitted a photo of an orca to Wikipedia, suggesting that someone might want to add it to the English page about orcas. No one did, as far as I could tell. I forgot all about the picture, until today, when the owner of the site Animalandia sent me a nice mail thanking me for having released the photo to public domain.

I then accessed the photo's page at Mediawiki  and discovered that the photo actually is used in Wikipedia articles in Arabic, Breton, Spanish, Hungarian, Korean, New Norwegian, Norwegian, Polish, Slovak, Swahili, Vietnamese and Chinese. It is also used in some articles in English, but not the one about orcas, which I had intended it for. In the Spanish Wikipedia, it is even used as a "Medalla de Orca saltarina" for editors who have made important contributions to Wikipedia.

What about the rest of the internet? I googled around and quickly found several pages where the picture is used:

• http://drumm.wikispaces.com/TandavaJ+-+SelinaF 
• http://www.xray-mag.com/node/42 
• http://nellybarbe.blogspot.com/2009/12/orca.html 
• http://www.herradurasport.net/2008/12/la-orcaballena-asesina.html 
• http://www.marefa.org/index.php/%D9%85%D9%84%D9%81:JumpingOrca.jpg 
• https://www.facebook.com/pages/Orca/110393985655465?sk=wall#!/pages/Orca/110393985655465?sk=info 
• http://lasaventurasdevitinho.blogspot.com/2009/08/tecnicas-de-caza-de-las-orcas.html 
• http://babybel.over-blog.com/article-29016565.html 
• http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=han1344&logNo=120126839994 
• http://wiadomosci.ekologia.pl/ciekawostki/Orki-inteligentni-lowcy-dziesiatkuja-wieloryby,13888.html 
• http://www.gofeminin.de/my-world/silver21031/comment-1.html 
• http://meeres-bucht.over-blog.de/article-31746356.html 
• http://herramientas.educa.madrid.org/animalandia/imagen.php?id=29988

To me this, is how public domain should work. A simple picture is released and dozens of people who happen to need such a photo simply use it. No hassle. Just use it.

That Nobel Prize Winner is an Idiot

The Nobel memorial economy prize laureate Paul Krugman yesterday wrote that one should not apply austerity measures in an economic crisis - a theme he often comes back to.

The problem with the whole article, as with many of his articles, is that he does not set any criteria. He claims that the problems in Portugal, Britain and Ireland have become worse because of slashed spending. That may be true or not. However, even if it were true, there clearly is a limit as to what a country can afford. If there is no money, there is no money. You can go out and borrow to some extent, but not infinite amounts. There must mathematically be a limit.

Personally, I could easily take a loan to buy a Toyota Yaris for €10 000. However, no bank in their right mind would lend me €200 000 to buy a Bentley. I would not be in my right mind myself if I applied for such a loan, even if I needed that particular car for some good reason. The economic potential is not there. Somewhere there is a limit.

If I had to go through some expensive medical treatment, I might need €10 000 000. Does that mean that I would pay for it? No. The money is not there. I might need it, but I could not afford it. Would that be a tragic situation? Yes, but there would be no way around it.

Likewise for a country's economy. Increased spending or quantitative easing may be the right measure in some situations: When the conditions allow it. If the conditions are not there, increased national bond yields and unemployment will unfortunately follow, but there is no way around it.

Increased spending cannot always be good for all economic situations. It may have been the way Britain should have gone (something I'm not convinced of), but that would not mean that it necessarily has to be the way the US should go. They are two different countries. The conditions are different.

If Krugman can provide data that shows that the US currently is in the kind of situation where increased spending makes sense, by all means, that is the way to go.

However, the argument that increased spending always makes sense for all countries in all situations does not work.

Computers and Skilled Jobs - Who is Skilled?

In a New York Times article called Degrees and Dollars, Paul Krugman writes about how computers may be able to replace a lot of activities that traditionally were considered skilled labour, like some of the things lawyers and engineers do.

There is a twist on that subject. Traditionally, corporations set "measurable" targets for their employees. That means that they put more weight on a task like "sell x number of units" than on "gain an understanding of customer needs". The former can easily be measured. The latter cannot.

Now, the "skilled" activities a computer can perform are repeatable and easily measured. In other words, the traditional company prioritises tasks that computers can do over humans. Setting measurable objectives is a fairly measurable objective, so even management of those companies could to some extent be replaced by computers.

And if management is a computer that very efficiently assigns tasks to other computers to earn money, what do the computers use the money for?

Luckily computers are not yet good at imagining fun things to do with money.

Say have you met Libya, Libya, the Tattooed Lady?

It is difficult to judge what the West should do or have done with Libya and the current crisis. Actually, it is not that difficult to judge - the difficulty is to come with the right judgement.

The Libyan map is tattooed with numerous peoples and religions: Arabs, Berber, Touareg, Tebou, Barasa, Majabrah, Sunni, Ibadi and so on. There are city dwellers, farmers, people who live by the coast and people who live in the desert.

Some of those different groups surely feel more distant to Muammar Gaddafi (معمر القذافي‎) than others. But how many of the Libyans feel primarily that they are Libyans?

That is the snag. Libya right now is in a horrible state, and at first glance it might seem like the human thing would be to send an international army to the country to put things in order. However, every outsider who tries to change the country in one direction or another, may contribute to a united "anti-foreigner" feeling in the country, and that movement would certainly be exploited by Gaddafi.

Yes, he has his own foreign mercenaries who fight for him, but they fight on Libyan orders. Not the orders of "the people" or of a democratically elected government, but the orders of the leader of the country since many decades, and that may give it some kind of legality in the eyes of some.

Sending foreign troops from the outside is a sensitive thing, and it is impossible to predict how the different Libyan groups would perceive it, no matter whose side the foreigners were to fight on. It might make some of the Libyans feel more nationalistic and loyal to Gaddafi. A foreign invasion might actually help Gaddafi. Or not.

On the other hand, it is horrible to stand without doing anything at the sideline and see the Libyans kill each other.

So what should be done? I do not know. I'm afraid I am agnostic.

Scientists surprised

At a recent physics convention in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a group of scientists from the university of Bratislava (Portugal) were walking to a nearby café, when a little girl jumped out from behind a corner and shouted "Booh!" Reports reveal that they were all surprised. "I think none of us had expected anything like this", said one of the visitors.