Abort the ruling class!

One of the more controversial chapters in "Freakonomics" (2005) suggested that abortion among the lower classes helped to reduce crime by killing off potential offenders in the womb (though pro-lifers now argue the opposite case). The authors hastened to repudiate the implication that this should influence public policy, but people do now sometimes cite that vicious factoid as a ho-ho response to the problems of our economy; if we were to take them seriously, then like King Herod, they would be prepared to kill a whole town's infants in order to nail the future threat represented by a single child.

But when considering crime and social class, we run into difficulties of definition with respect to crime. If the underlying principle of the common law is "do no harm", then whether by incompetence or callous negligence, far greater crimes have been committed by financial manipulators than by common criminals - and the former are not only unpunished, but continue to be unbelievably well-rewarded for it. Indeed during the emergency bailouts, some bankers got bumper bonuses because they included the bailout money as part of the turnover on which their payouts were based.

Looking at conventional crime, a Home Office study issued in 2000 estimated the total economic cost to the UK at £59.9 billion p.a (about £1,000 per head of population).:



http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hors217.pdf

 

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/rds.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hors217.pdf

Compare that with the IMF's 2009 estimate of the cost to the UK of the 2008 banking crisis: £1,227 billion; the equivalent of some £20,500 per man, woman and child in this country - in one year! Not to mention the £375 billion p.a. "quantitative easing" still ongoing.

We can also ask, how do we define cost? John Mortimer's fictional barrister Horace Rumpole points out that criminals make a good living for professionals like himself. GDP, employment and tax revenues (though not real net wealth) are increased by all this economic "activity". But how much prosperity and employment did the financial rescue create? Not that it is actually a rescue: I suspect that disaster has merely been deferred, and possibly exacerbated to boot.

I do not support abortion; but if I did, I should rather be looking to terminate potential bankers than potential burglars.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Great God! this is an awful place

Do Captain Scott’s words chime with you? They certainly do with me. I can’t read anything about the Antarctic without being reminded of his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. Beryl Bainbridge wrote a fine novel about it called The Birthday Boys. Worth reading if you come across a copy.

From Wikipedia

For this and other reasons, Antarctic sea ice extent is one of the parameters I keep an eye on in my fruitless desire to anticipate the global climate’s next move.

So this chart of Antarctic sea ice extent concerns me a little, but it’s an emotional concern all concerns must be. As you see, Antarctic sea ice has been spending quite a bit of time well above the 1981-2010 average.

Is it a herald of anything? Well for me there is something awesome and scary about the Antarctic, much of it deriving from Scott’s words and what we know of that tiny tent where he finally succumbed only eleven miles short of One Ton Depot and safety. Defeated by hunger, exhaustion and the implacable cold of the Antarctic.

My head says it doesn’t mean much in terms of climate change and it probably doesn’t, but my heart says keep an eye on it all the same.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Agribusiness: the Skynet moment...

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Another question

How come a person with a bone problem can see an osteopath, but one with an emotional problem doesn't consult a psychopath?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Pedestrian power

Video of a driverless Nissan Leaf being tested in the UK. The stated aim is to test it on public roads if permission is granted.

Note how the car reacts when a pedestrian walks into the road. Changes the balance of power between motorist and pedestrian doesn't it? Cyclists too presumably.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Chekhov on teaching

How can we undertake to bring up the young? In old days people were simpler and thought less, and so settled problems boldly. But we think too much, we are eaten up by logic. 

The more developed a man is, the more he reflects and gives himself up to subtleties, the more undecided and scrupulous he becomes, and the more timidity he shows in taking action. How much courage and self-confidence it needs, when one comes to look into it closely, to undertake to teach, to judge, to write a thick book.

Anton Chekhov – Home (short story published in 1887)

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Lost words

There are things we can’t say concisely and with sufficient emphasis because too many words have been softened by political familiarity.

A good word for authoritarian politics is one we could do with as a matter of some urgency. We have communist, Marxist, Stalinist, Maoist, fascist and one or two others but we already know them to be inadequate. They fail to capture the acute political danger of centralising all decisions. They fail to get behind the fluffy velvet glove.

Communist and Marxist have been shorn of their terrors by cartloads of fellow travellers infesting western politics and academia. Somehow, the human horror of killing innocent people by the millions has left no seriously indelible mark on our language. How convenient that is for modern central planners - but surely not a healthy situation for the rest of us.

As for Stalinist and Maoist I think the same problem applies. Many people of a certain age once knew self-professed Maoists and comfortable middle class faux radicals with Soviet sympathies. They were those for whom Stalin and Mao were no more than over-enthusiastic in their ruthless application of industrial scale murder.

As for fascist, it has evolved into little more than a term of abuse, although very often it is all we have. So we drift towards a kind of soft fascism because even our language has betrayal woven into its threadbare and endlessly ameliorative fabric.

What else can one say – without better words?

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.