Transportation and Time

Public domain, courtesy of Jorge Barrios

At a certain time during the Dark Ages, there were no cities in most of Europe, but just thousands of farms, spread across the clearings and meadows of Europe, and old Roman roads built long ago, crisscrossing between them. At the junctions of these roads, there might be ruins, that would go unnoticed as would whatever tiny, insignificant traffic crossed through them. The ports didn't operate in Europe, even as far away as Italy and Turkey, because of Viking raids, except in a few areas like Ireland, Danegild, and Normandy where the Norse set up there own, and the regions became wealthy as a consequence. In those days, all was done out of the manor house, and trade was very limited. Manors were extremely, bitterly poor, and highly self-sufficient, and noble lords had extreme authority and martial responsibility.

But then technology, bit by bit, began to improve. Castles allowed for the defense of harbors, opening the ports and the seas. Modern quarying developed, and with it a supply of marble. Trade with the Islamic empire brought spices and coffee to the new ports, while increases in population and the size and number of manor houses brought about an ecological disaster, the destruction of Europes forests, and with it the need to travel ever further for lumber and its replacements, clay brick and coal.

At the intersections of roads, you have the fastest route on average to anywhere. While going down the road your travel time to one particular place would decrease, for a few limited industrial enterprises that is indeed good enough, your travel time to all the other places those roads go to will increase so much more. Further, more customers and workers and material will cross through the intersection then anywhere else. Lodges, markets and taverns would set themselves up first, and then manufacturers and stables and warehouses would set up near the market, and with all of these little brick houses would sprout along every alleyway and available road as workers too chose the fastest transportation for their life.

Eventually, highly specialized businesses, utilizing the economic base of the city, would set up as well. These would include law offices, accountants, computers (in that day meaning people who would crunch numbers for you), moneylenders, and craftspeople like blacksmiths serving both sword and plowshare. Church and Government too would notice the city, and the workers and citizens serveable through it, setting up bureaucracy and courthouses, which in the dark ages didn't exist, along with fortresses, great cathedrals, universities and libraries, and comissioning artists and clockmakers to celebrate their authority in great squares and plazas. Criminals too would benefit from the economic base of the city, utilizing its many highways, services and people, as would entertainers.

The reality is that cities are a giant device for the conservation of time, by quickening transportation from one place to another, and the conservation of energy, by decreasing the distance that freight and people must travel to get to its customers and clients. Cities, in the end, are the product of their transportation, and the customers, employers, industry and resources they afford within a reasonable distance. If a city loses this, it has nothing, and is only an overpriced piece of land, but it is because of the ability to save people time, and as a result, allow them to live more, and do more, that people will pay 300 times as much as the same quanity of land in the country to own it. In the words of Ali from Burlesque, when talking about why she left Iowa, "I looked around and realized that I didn't see anyone I wanted to be." You can be more and do more in a city because where you go to do what you want to do is reachable in reasonable time.

Now in the recent past, people would live sixty miles out of the city and commute to wherever it was they worked. When people lived and worked in one place their entire lives, that made sense, but in a world where people change jobs on average every 2 years, it makes sense to be as close to as many employers as possible, and since industrial employers will opt for cheaper land along whatever railroad line leads to their suppliers, while extremely common businesses (e.g. drugstores) will opt for more minor, inexpensive junctions that they have the capacity to serve, not all of them will be in the big city. As we go in to the future, we find the employees act more like businesspeople, and the need for speed (and with it, the city) becomes greater then ever.

Some cities, like Seattle, are still stuck in the past imagining that transportation is just a quality of life issue, something we can tinker around with in social engineering and throw immesaurable costs on to, but across the lake from Seattle, Bellevue, on I-405, the eastern bypass of I-5, and the third city eastward on I-90, has expanded and improved its interstates, with its own money. The result has been a building boom, dozens of new towers, 40 stories tall, going up and new businesses moving in. Meanwhile, Seattle has lost its largest bank, Washington Mutual, to the financial slowdown, and no one seems quite set to replace it. But they still continue to toy with forcing people on to trains that zig zag at 35 mph instead of heading straight where they go. Voters constantly complain about transportation expense, but what they don't realize is that transportation is the heart and soul of their city life, is what allows them the opportunities they have.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for the Stabenow Bill

Cartoon by Peter Welleman. Public Domain.

Though in general I am adamantly opposed to any senator who supports the Fairness Doctrine, or any other attempt by the government to control the media, or believes in the Green Jobs Myth (I will reserve a response to that for another time,) this time, she does seem to have a bill that would fill a dangerous void in existing unemployment policy.

The Americans Want to Work Act has been introduced in congress and is being passed around the Committe on Finance right now. You can track its progress here. The full text of the bill, in its' present form, can be found at THOMAS.

So what exactly does this bill do? It extends unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks. In addition, it allows for a "fourth-tier" benefit to kick in when bureaucratic delays relating to the application of this bill are reached. Considering the length of our current recession, this is an absolutely necessary act. One can debate for hours the practicality of unemployment insurance to begin with, but it is not sensible to go changing the world on families already hurting from a bust economy. Such debate is better reserved for the summer of economic growth, when private charity and families can take care of their own during the changeover period, rather then this horrid blizzard, where we would be ripping the coat off of their backs to face the bitter gales.

It also does something much less desirable. It extends the rather poorly thought out temporary subsidy for hiring. This will encourage businesses to act irrationally and hire workers they don't need, creating production that will likely go away when the subsidy does, assuming if it is ever created at all, and wasting tremendous resources that could be instead invested in the economy of our nations future. Even worst, it increases the size of the subsidizing for workers thus hired retained, increasing the effectiveness of this economic laser guided bomb. So why should the senate vote for this bill?

Because right now, the families of those 99ers are on the economic edge of oblivion. Private charity has dried up, the budget (and with it government jobs) are drying up, unemployment is at the point where they may not have relatives or a community that can support them, competition for jobs is fierce, and the government is, for better or worse, the last place they have to turn. It costs relatively little money, and it keeps these people going for 20 more weeks. Like it or not, we signed up to cover them. Sound economic policy, in this one rare case, will just have to wait, as we have to consider the culture of our country and how actual human beings will interact with the system, in this case, by not saving money as a result of the unemployment insurance that our democratically elected (by you and me) government created.

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea." (Matthew 18: 6, New King James Version)

Further, it's a very well-written bill. It covers the technicalities and exceptions even ones (example: Railroad Retirement Taxes) that most people have never heard of. It's clearly written by someone who understands bureaucracy. And yet, it's relatively short. I read it in under 30 minutes. And it doesn't create a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Good job Stabenow. It's the exact kind of bill we should encourage, on principle, to keep the elected leaders accountable to people like you and me. In conclusion, good tidings, but of the slightly smelly variety.

The Road of a Million Forks - the unsung benefits of cancer research

In a time when people are increasingly questioning the good of spending money on healthcare, I think it is useful to remind ourselves that cures and safety are not the only gain. Science, like any discipline worth pursuing, creates new avenues for exploration with every discovery made. Today I'd like to tell you about the potential benefits of cancer research that you probably would not have thought of immediately.

Follow this for a while, for you will not see its relevance at first, but it is there I assure you. All organisms have a death clock, a preprogramming for death that ticks on every second of your life, and of the life of every other thing currently alive, waiting for the time when life shall terminate. This clock is in your DNA, a huge molecule. See, all of your chromosomes have a long tale of unnecesary DNA called the telosome that every time one of your cells divides, loses just a few pieces of that DNA off the end. For most of your life, what it loses is not neccesary, is not used in the encoding of any of the stuff that makes you up, but eventually, it runs out of excess rope, and then it starts cutting what you need. This starts with the cells with the highest rates of replication, the blood, the skin and the hair. As the materials that make up your body and the chemicals required for your bodies processes are miscoded, and made improperly, your bodies reactions spin out of control, resources are wasted, cells die quickly, and finally, the whole organism (you) dies.

Recent studies however, and I will get citations soon from my professor, have shown that cancerous cells actually relengthen their telosomes, reversing this clock. It has long been known that aging partially exists as a defense against Cancer - the wasteful and excessive multiplication of cells eventually starving the body of resources - but now we have far better knowledge as to where structurally in the body, the connection lies. Through cancer research, we may find a way to cure aging as well as cancer.

Cancer by its nature is actually very regenerative, organs like the brain that do not normally produce new cells will mass produce them in a tumor, and not only do such ability hold promise for aging, but when properly tamed, cancer may also help to alleviate the suffering of stroke victims, paralysis victims, liver disease, sever ulcers and ulceration, flesh eating bacteria and many other ailments where the body either never produces new cells after birth, or cannot produce them quickly enough. The very thing that makes cancer so dangerous also makes it potentially a valuable tool for ALL healthcare needs, if the ways to handle it properly could be understood and mastered by science. We could even regenerate limbs and eyes, if only the cells could find again their function and cease multiplication when appropriate. This is exactly what we're trying to do with Stem Cells, and with a modified and controlled cancer, this could be done using a patients existing cells as they already are in the body. I know that's a big "if," but it is a good example.

But beyond the healthcare business itself is the nanotech industry, the industry of building things at the molecular level, of creating out of a chain of carbons the strongest material on earth or an engine that can power a tiny robot. Such machines exist in cells, and have forever, and are among the very things a sequence of DNA encodes for. Your body produces such things automatically, without a hand being laid to it, chemically, wasting hardly any chemicals at all, producing its own energy from the sun or from sugars produce by those that use the sun, and multiplying in great number to create a being, out of these tiny machines, weighing between 90 and 250 pounds and standing 4" 10' to 7" 8' with infinite comlexity and abilities. Cancer creates the highest rate of replication, and thus for industrial purpose, producing vast chains of carbon, superfuels, tiny engines and robots, the optimal process for this manner of manufacturing.

Cancer research may also involve radioactive materials, chemicals of every kind, viruses, machinery, imaging, and all manner of things useful outside of cancer and outside of medicine entirely. Through the research, we understand not only the cancer better, but also the machine, as in the case of CAT Scans and medical x-rays adapted for scanning bags at the airport, and also can learn better production methods for existing technologies with the investment put in for treating a deadly disease and improving the lives of millions.

For the ecology and ecosystem, humankind has much to learn about recycling its own resources and conserving for its own needs from the greatest recycler of all, the mother Earth. From mother nature, through medical research, we can find the ways to live on less, and master much more fully on resources, producing strange new materials out of familiar ingredients, not needing mines or finite quantities of fossil fuels, themselves the product of nature now past, and even, in some limited circumstances, reducing or reversing entropy.

"You have much to learn from your friends, and even more to learn from your enemies." (Chinese folk saying) In our fight with cancer, we may win battles we did not realize were part of the same war.

I wanted to get this article out quickly, but revisions will be made over the next few days. If you find it unclear now, come back in a week and if this message is gone you know its better.

The Dangers of Bandwagons, or The Future of Haiti's Oil Industry

I was reading an op-ed in the New York Times today suggesting that Haiti become like every other country in the Carribean. Why do people never seem to learn?

A lot (though admittedly not all) of what caused the recent US economic crash was the inductive tendency. This is the belief that trends continue forever. Because the Dominican Republic has successful garment producers, lets build garment producers in Haiti! Because LA has seen its housing increase in price, lets build even more housing there. Because that other guy got rich (and served the poor) off of subprimes, I can get rich (and served the poor) off of subprimes too. There's this bizarrely inadequate idea that if we do exactly what the other guy did, it will work for us too. Did it ever occur to them that the need for garments is limited?

Further, demand for the most profitable kind of garment making for small manufacturers, luxury and designer label, is severely hurt by recessions, for the simple reason that people don't like spending outlandishly large amounts of money on a single dress when they don't have a job! It will be a long time before Americans are spending the same amount on designer clothes that they were in 2006, and I doubt it will be much faster for the rest of the world.

The Gulf of Mexico has signifcant crude deposits in it, as do Mexico, Venezuela and Texas. America has insufficient refining capacity to handle all its oil needs, and refuses to build more, and already has to ship some oil a much further distance to Japan. Haiti could also use the Panama Canal to bring in oil from (and send to) Southern California, Argentina, Western Venezuela and Chile. Brazil could also benefit from a Haitian oil terminal.

Oil Refineries would also create support services for other kinds of chemical industries, including Ammonium Producers, Cosmetics makers, Cement plants, Sulfuric Acid producers (which are neccesary for eveyr kind of heavy industry), and perhaps even Steel Mills and Metal Smelters. This could in the end allow Haiti to become the industrial motherland of the Carribean, much as Japan was in the West Pacific.

So why Haiti? Simple. Haiti's not a tourist destination, and even if it was, the tourists were good far to the North, to see the Citadel, Tortuga, and other valuable World Heritage sites and NOT Port-Au-Prince, except maybe the Airport, along with beaches facing open ocean with comparatively few people living near them, in the far North and South. There are some nice(looking) neighborhoods in Port-Au-Prince, but centuries of poverty have destroyed most of the neighborhood businesses that make such places more then a photo moment. As such, there is no economic cost to putting up NIMBY-type industry, of the kind that would kill half the economy in the Bahamas or Saint Thomas.

Further, the destruction in Port-Au-Prince has cleared massive amounts of land. Now, massive amounts of land having nothing in them does nothing good for light industry, which requires a lot of support services, but how many places left on earth are there that have large tracts of available land AND several million unemployed people available to work in your plant in the exact same point on earth. And by the coast too. Likely large enough, in fact, to build a 100-acre Oil Refinery!

Further, Oil Refining would also help repair Haitis infrastructure, both by creating, as a waste product, large amounts of asphalt, good for every kind of pavement including roads, sidewalks, ports, and airport tarmacs, and by using pent-up demand from eco-regulators in Western countries to create a mammoth industrialization involving every kind of support service and industry for these refineries as, building at nearly (but not past) break-even cost is still better then not building at all. This industrialization would also create a large demand for track-laying by railroad companies, in a landscape destroyed by quakes and thus with easilly clearable (and usable at little cost) right of ways.

The better infrastructure would aid in the development of Haitian agriculture and tourism to the North, and allow Port-Au-Prince to grow in to a major port, carrying much of the cargo for the Dominican Republic as well. Port-Au-Prince could build a passanger railway station, allowing for easy and cheap transportation of people throughout Hispaniola. This is especially possible because Port-Au-Prince is located centrally on a large bay that digs deep in to the Island, thus being the shortest railroute to the ocean on average for the entire island. PAP could easilly be the Chicago of Hispaniola, and we all know how much Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco grew after their great fires, with the destruction as their benefactor, clearing way for better design and more profitable businesses like Chicagos great stockyards.

Oil refineries are also much higher profit margin factories then garmentmakers, allowing higher wages and lower unemployment for the Haitian working man in the near future, and gearing Haiti away from heavilly servile low-margin industry that can only lead to poverty for their workers. In the end, oil refining could help not only put Haiti back to work, but put it on the path to wealth and prosperity. After all, it's only been a few centuries since Scotland went from being the poorest nation in Europe to the third wealthiest in a very short period of time.

So why aren't people suggesting this? Because they've already seen the garment factories, and all they can think is, another Carribean Banana Republic.

What's next for Haiti?

John R. Chapins "The Rush for our Lives over Randolph Street Bridge", an image of the Great Chicago Fire, Copyright expired.

When four square miles of Chicago burned to the ground in 1871, many were killed, but it also led to a massive redevelopment of the city that made Chicago among Americas mightiest centers. Further, the wisdom of insurance executives and reformers like Arthur C. Ducat reworked the laws so nothing like Chicagos fire would ever happen again.

A friend of mine who is a civil engineer pointed out that in Port-Au-Prince, a lot of the buildings were 10-stories. If you notice, in most parts of the world 10-story buildings aren't built, and the reason is resonance. If structures are built in a way to aid the natural vibrations of their material, then when severe winds or earthquakes hit them, their vibrations will be magnified to the point of destruction.

Quakes like the one that hit Haiti have hit many other parts of the world without causing that degree of damage. For instance, the 6.7 magnitude Northridge quake in San Fernando killed well under a 100 (out of a population of over 3.8 million affected) in the Los Angeles Area. Not a fair comparison, okay, but even in the third world, the 2009 Honduras Earthquake, out of three countries affected (further away, but 7.3 magnitude in scale) killed "at least 7." The difference is preparation.

Now, everybody feels sorry for Haiti, and a lot of people have been killed or made homeless, but Haiti is not helpless anymore then Chicago was. Sure, they're poor, but the world was poorer in 1871, and technology less sophisticated so wealth didn't even go as far when you did have it. If Haiti takes this opportunity to rebuild Port-Au-Prince, enact the right legislation, and make Haiti a great center of commerce and industry, they will cease being the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and perhaps become among the wealthiest. If they do not, this WILL happen again, maybe next year, maybe the year after, just as many other disasters have routinely killed thousands in that country.

Now, in addition to preparing for future earthquakes, Haiti's transportation should review PAP's transportation systems to see if any improvements would be beneficial. They should also take an opportunity to, in order to raise money for reconstruction and provide work for those who need it, find large plots of relatively uncentral, but well-connected to railway, demolished land to sell to Industrialists, who can build up industry to bring Haiti in to a more prosperous future and provide better work for Haitians. Among other things, any good coastal land could be valuable for a shipyard.

If Haiti is open to construction of things, like nuclear plants and oil refineries, that are difficult to build in other nations, these private projects, built with private money, could bring Haiti a high-level of prosperity. If it cuts down on its corruption, much of the benefit could go to the Haitian working man. In particular, Haiti, if it gets on the ball, could end up reprocessing America's nuclear waste and selling it back to us, since our own government has already shot us in the foot on nuclear waste disposal and reprocessing. This would provide good work for the average Haitian at a high-profit margin, which helps gear a countries working people to higher standards of living by making it possible for them to be paid better. After all, no worker can be made more then he makes for his business, and most will be paid well less.

There's only one nuclear reactor shell foundry in the world night, Haiti would really reduce the price of nuclear energy if they built a second, and they would be among the largest beneficiaries (and benefactors.)

I hope the Haitian government will take this as an opportunity to learn, and if they don't I hope the Haitians will find a chance to ask for a new government, perhaps prepare a very special bowl of chili for the starving...

The California Compromise

Vitrification, a common nuclear waste disposal technique. Image is public domain.

California is a catch-22. The USA already has serious economic problems, with unemployment now over 10% and allowing the destruction of Americas most populous state is only going to make this problems worst. On the flip side, if we do help them, it may encourage both them and other states to fail and get bailed out just like California did.

We have another major problem, energy. We do severe damage to our ecology, our air quality and our public health through the excessive use of coal in power plants. The more orthodox alternative energy sources -wind, solar, geothermal- are decades from being truly practical in the majority of locales, and would all require heavy subsidies. Many companies have already lined up to build nuclear reactors, even willing to pay to lobby for the right to do so, despite a horrific level of regulation and a public relations nightmare with the common voting public. Far from needing subsidies, they'll spend much additional capital beyond the market price to build these facilities in our country.

The inevitable question is, what about the waste? Yucca mountain would have been an ideal site, but politically, the people of Nevada have fought too well against it and the project is now dead in the water. There are deserts in California very similar to those in Nevada, and California needs us.

The less obvious question, but one every bit as important: who wants to live next to a reactor? Most states outside of the Southeast are not willing to allow Nuclear Construction, and Western states like Nevada, Arizona and Oregon are very far from the Southeast. I've also heard that California is a huge energy importer...

In addition, California has resisted allowing oil-drilling off their coasts. Beyond the humiliation factor, this would lower oil prices and boost domestic production, relieving our dependence on the Middle East for oil and lowering prices. If you don't like lower prices, we could collect a tariff on foreign oil. The tariff revenue would also help pay for the California bailout, while the land royalties that California would be allowed to collect, just like Alaska, would help them avoid a new bailout.

We also need more oil refineries, preferably in places with good weather. Our current refineries are on the gulf coast and get hit by hurricanes all the time, and no state in America allows you to build new ones.

All these proposals would create jobs in California through lower energy costs, the introduction of new industries (including Oil, Oil Platform Servicing, Oil Refining, and Nuclear energy related manufacturing and research.)

So here's the deal: California gets a bailout alright, in fact, in entirety, but in exchange, they must 1) dispose of our nuclear waste, 2) build nuclear reactors to power their cities and stop buying up the excess power reserves of the American West, and 3) drill oil off their coast and 4) build oil refineries on Californias sunny hurricane-free coast.

Thus we get past our Catch-22 by being exploitive jerks and manipulating California in to being the optimal economic citizen of the United States of America.

I don't think anyone will want a bailout after this!

Lehman Brothers Burns in Hell

In honor of the mighty fall of a mighty bank, almost exactly (less one day) a year ago. Dedicated to the way the very fabric of our society has been torn to tatters by these and similar rogue companies. And dedicated to all those who have suffered or will suffer as a result of this tragedy of human hubris and pain intolerance.

Image Courtesy of David Shankbone, cc SA 3.0 & GNU 1.2 Licenses under condition of attributing the artist and share alike.

I read an article in the NYT the other day about how Lehman Brothers had to die for the financial sector to live. The crux of the argument is that without Lehman there would've been no federal bailout. This is certainly true. But, did the federal bailout really help us in the end?

Not long after the federal bailout was authorized, AIG gave huge bonuses to their executives. They apparently did this with the full-hearted agreement of certain not-to-be-named Obama cabinet members (okay, it was the Treasury Secretary), and mystified many, who saw this as rewarding the very people who started the crisis. The companies, under intense pressure from the President, underwent the supremely hypocritical and politically caniving action of demanding that the executives give the bonuses back (?) as if they have the right to ask such a thing when it was the company's own sleaziness that distributed the bonuses to begin with. Notice any trends? Perhaps a little systematic incompetence and corruption? A particular AIG exec, Jack DeSantis, wrote a rather impassioned letter pointing out the supreme level of hypocrisy and irresponsibillity involved in such a transfer of blame, especially when his sector of the company was one of the few strong points, and was derided at by a hyperbolically riduclous American public who could not see beyond the size of his bonus. Which brings us to our next point.

What was the very intention of the bank bail-out? What was the point? What's the big idea? Well, Obama said they were "too big to fail" and that rather then letting nature take it's course on these corrupt, tyrannical, unclean, and generally absurd willfully sinning banks, we should come in and save them, both financially, and from themselves.

And here's the big dilemma: if we don't do interfere in their affairs, the natural corruption and self-congratulating nature of these banks up way past their bedtime will cause this to happen AGAIN. And if we do interfere, these mediocre, socialistically controlled banks will stifle all competition and innovation in the financial sector by way of their immense government investments and protections, removing one entire potential for American growth, stunting the development of financial cities like NYC, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and Dallas, and making us completely dependent upon London & Frankfurt for the financial side of our growth. In particular, we can kiss the supremacy of the Dollar goodbye - now it'll be the Euro that's the world's chief currency! Just like rent controls pushing the development out of historic Manhattan to the edges, this bailout will, by way of similar controls, push financial innovation and new markets to other continents.

If we had let these banks fail, there would've been no liquidity in our economy and the price of taking a loan or converting assets would shoot through the roof. Ah, but here's the good news: the high price of loans and low price of assets would create a massive incentive, a veritable gold rush, on the part of private investors to build their own banks. It would also stimulate small business, as new companies could still acquire financing (and through it cheap assets) through selling their original stock on the NASDAQ. Just like how San Francisco, within two years of it's great 1908 earthquake, had rebuilt the city completely (though rents did briefly shoot through to three times their original price), our financial sectors own immense price gouging would rebuild Manhattan, both literally and figuratively, and in the end create a more stable, meritocratic, compartmentalized, dynamic, innovative, and small-business geared economy.

New banks, new financial centers, new small business, new great cities, and new organizations that no longer work on the handshake, wink wink, nudge nudge system. That would be America's financial future. But not now - now that Banks are too big to fail, the market is too crowded to succeed! We've got ourselves a corporate traffic jam, and all 12 lanes on this freeway are packed with old clunker cars that are twenty-feet long, weight 100 tons, and crash every five feet, so prepare for a slowdown and eventually being overtaken by Europeans riding horses.

Maybe part of the problem is we don't appreciate Hell enough. Don't get me wrong, Heaven's great, but sometimes you just need a trashcan or a cattleprod, and hell serves both these. Fear can be quite stimulating, and sometimes things just reach their condemnation. Like Pharoah in Exodus, they run out of chances, their heart is too hard, their actions too geared along the track of evil, destruction is the only place they can go, and if we do not put away "the evil from among us," it will corrupt the hearts of us all who are left and put us in a position where we can't be righteous even if we want to (like Jack De Santis). I was thankful to see this happen with Lehman's, and regret that more unrepentant sinners did not find their demise. Even worse, by not punishing or threatening in any credible way bad behavior, those who have already begun to take this road will never fork off of it, but take it straight to it's scarlet conclusion, destruction, for them or all.

It is obvious that the NYT wants to make Lehman Brothers Christ, but these, these banks, they be willful sinners, the unrepentant kind, the rebels without a cause, the apostates. We should've sent these guys to HELL!!!!

Courtesy of The Immaculate Heart, image shown by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917

Making Keynesianism Work

The Hoover Dam, whose hydrolectric power arguably built Southern California and whose Irrigation makes fruitful much of the Southwest.

Source: National Parks Service and NARA, public domain.

DC Beltway, courtesy of Wikimedia user Jumpy, public domain.

Perfect example of a worthy, but expensive, Keynesian type construction project.

Obama's "Keynesian" stimulus has been a failure. To see exactly how much of a failure, let us just consider Obama's own statement that "there will be no easy fix" from a few months ago. Keynesian stimulus, is, by it's very definition, an easy fix. It is about "stimluating" the sagging demand instantaneously to put the economy back on level. If long-term is what we were concerned about, we'd have nothing to be concerned about, as currency movements and demand changes, like those we saw last year, cannot destroy the economy permaneantly as prices do (slowly) adjust. Thus, the goal was not met.

When you also consider the cost to the "businesses" we were trying to save through this stimulus, the picture is even bleaker, as they will end up paying nearly every cent towards the debt that was used to give them this "easy fix," and to no positive result. Still, it is not entirely Obama's fault, but the fault of a legislative system whose lengthy regulatory structure and impossible land purchasing requirements do not currently make Keynesian stimulus very hard.

When Eisenhower was facing a severe recession in 1952, he built the Interstate Freeway from city to city to clarify routes, shorten travel, increase capacity and further the city radius of all of America's metropoli. Though the bill was large (trillions in todays dollars,) the vast improvements to every kind of productivity and prosperity paid for the freeway many times over. In between the increased spending relieving the death pressure of America's industrialists and the promise of future returns that these larger cities promised for those same businesses and others, this stimulus worked. Of course, Eisenhower was both extremely popular and extremely capable at arm-wrestling what he wanted out of congress and pretty much anyone else, which is part of why this worked. Also part of how he got schools desegregated.

Similarly, in the 30's Hitler brought Germany out of its depression using the Audobohn and millitary and industrial economic stimulus. Of course, Hitler was a dictator. And FDR provided some relief (though not quite as effective) with his many WPA projects, including the triborough bridge in NYC and the very last subway tunnels to be built in New York, and the hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest, Southwest and Tennessee River areas. Of course, FDR made himself a dictator.

One of the common themes of all these projects is that they promised future returns on the investment today to back the current consumption. Otherwise, business sees that, while they have more customers today, they are the skeleton on the banquet table, as tomorrow they will be taxed in full the bill for their prosperity today. What is there response? Well, continue operating today, and plan to shut down (partially or completely) before tomorrow. Or at the very least don't expand production. Best of both worlds and one of the easiest, cheapest shrewd maneuvers anyone can pull off. This previous article discusses the flaws in greater detail.

Only trouble is, we couldn't build effective projects as the planning would take too long and the regulatory and buying process too complex for the money to be spent when it is needed. As a result, we had to build "shovel ready" bridges to cheap easy to buy wilderness. This is a very common problem, a predictable problem, and one that can be easily solved ahead of time, but only ahead of time.

See, you make a list, a list of all the various projects that should be built in the near future but are too expensive to be built when times are good, like the Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel in Seattle, the Second Avenue Subway Line in New York, some new freight rail to handle additional capacity in Chicago, and maybe some new mountain passes or brand new interstates to link more of the countryside in to the metropoli.

First, you get all permits cleared years ahead of time. Have the town hall meetings, have the local voice, but do it while times are still good in the summer of comfort long before the decisions have to be made. Then, if it passes, you buy the land that the project requires, rent it out temporarilly until construction begins (and hold the rent money to pay for the project), and then, when the economy tanks, you evict the tennants within a week (they knew this from the moment they rented, and get a discount for their inconvenience), destroy the properties, and begin construction right away.

Lastly, you use non-traditional Ancient Egyptian style construction methods that exchange the efficiency of gradual construction for the speed of mass-building, erecting your structures in less time with more people employed, distributing the money more quickly and effectively. It is more expensive in accounting terms, but in economic terms is so much more effective as a stimulus that the books likely (though I have not worked out the numbers myself, so please do so before jumping off a cliff) balance. This last aspect was not done by Nazi Germany or Eisenhower, but was to a very mild degree done by FDR with the Hoover Dam, to his credit.

The rental helps with the keynesian process, as it is not the level of consumption but the difference in consumption that creates mayhem, and holding back some currency that tennants pay in rent to pay for the project later on shallows the wound. The speed, of course, also helps with the keynesian process, spending the money more quickly.

This way, the projects can begin within a week of the economy hitting the tank, and they will be the valuable kind that America needs, rather then "shovel-ready" bridges to towns with less then 200 people that spend plenty of money but build little long-term gain.

Uptown Platform, NYC, courtesy of Adam J. Sporka. In the opinion of some, the New York Subway built the city.

The Almighty Dollar -- or Why we SHOULD spend more on Healthcare

From InvestorBizDaily, "The Attack on Doctor's Hippocratic Oath":

Ezekiel Emanuel sees the Hippocratic Oath as one factor driving "overuse" of medical care. He is a policy adviser in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and a brother of Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff.

Dr. Emanuel argues that "peer recognition goes to the most thorough and aggressive physicians." He has lamented that doctors regard the "Hippocratic Oath's admonition to 'use my power to help the patient to the best of my ability and judgment' as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others."

Of course, that is what patients hope their doctor will do.

But President Barack Obama is pledging to rein in the nation's health care spending. The framework for influencing your doctor's decisions was included in the stimulus package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Now, I, being a fallible human being like most other Americans, do not understand completely Obama's health care plan. This is very suspicious, especially since, while I may not like the man's policies, I would generally accredit him with being a decent communicator. But, there is one particularly disturbing aspect of Obama's plans, the algorithms.

Although not quite as sinister as the SkyNet from Terminator, it too may terminate you. If your care is found to be too expensive, your cancer too aweful, you not worth it, it will let you die, not even granting you the dignity of a bullet to the head, another blood offering at the altar of balanced budgets in a manner of cruel neglect.

This is being done in the name of economic progress. Although Obama does not even have the certainty that this will work, he has bet his presidency, his country, and the lives and dignity of many vulnerable people on the idea that through reducing health care expenditures, we can save our "economy." But what is an economy anyways? Why is it so sancrosanct? Why are we willing to sacrifice ourselves and our loved ones for the sake of dollars? And why do we even trust this fellows plan?

In fact, why do we even have an economy? Why do we even have wealth? If we're not even going to take care of our own people, why are we even trying? Why don't we just go home?

Look, I know of fewer better spendings of our wealth on this earth as human beings, our petty dollars, then saving peoples lives and keeping them well. Why are we calling medical research and cutting-edged treatments "waste?" Because they don't make us more money? And is that even true...

The really sad thing is how many people seemed to have jumped aboard this bandwagon. I, as an American, have never felt this discouraged at my own people. That my own fellow citizens cannot seem to see what they are creating through their desire for, I don't even know what, is one of the most striking blows I have ever received when looking back at my own country.

And further, even from the practical side, what happens if we face a new threat? What happens if there's a big virus outbreak, like the Spanish flu, and this entire society we have sacrificed so much for crumbles before us, disgracing us and spitting on our name for our own lack of foresight.

For the sake of the fourth most basic human economic need (after clothes, shelter, and food), 20% (about where it lies) is not unreasonable. But I fear many people do not even realize what they've done. I don't think they even see that it could be their loved one, or themselves. I support making coverage more universal, but this is not the right way to do it. We just need to accept that a little more money to cover the remainder of our population is both right and justified, and seek other, more worthy, places to scratch out a balanced budget.

Nough' Complaining, let's make a plan

I myself on this blog have been guilty often of complaining about what the liberals have proposed economically and not suggesting my own alternative. This is common, human, and an easy reaction to being in the minority, but if I want to be out of the minority we (that's means you) have to bring something to the table. And so, here it goes:

1. Advance Nuclear Energy - energy is critical to the functioning of any industrial economy. With Nuclear Power, we can build a cheap, carbon-free, easy to maintain energy grid that will not run out, if accompanied with reprocessing or breeder reactors, for hundreds of years. Best of all, we can get rid of our coal power while lowering the cost of energy. Critics will say that it is still nonrenewable. This is mostly true (although nuclear recycling by both methods has been achieved up to 90%), but it is also true that no power plant built in the US will last forever, and this power source is guaranteed to outlive the power plants that are built for it. Which is more long-term, a nuclear plant that will remain in service for 100 years or a wind/solar plant that must be rebuilt every 20? Yes, thinking is involved.

2. Proposed TARP III Requirement - "any bank that accepts TARP III money must lend it's offices, facillities and other resources to corporations with large cash reserves that wish to do their own banking..." so Microsoft and other cash-rich businesses can invest their huge cash holdings in growth industries without the capital overhead of a bank. Basically, we're giving AIG and Citigroup to Bill Gates, and could you find a better steward?

3. Place Limitations on Zoning - Large swaths of strategic lands were placed off limits to non-residential development to protect land-values. Although I can understand protecting natural lands for all to visit, I cannot understand using the destruction of industry to profit small numbers of residential home-owners. This kind of behavior is part of what spurred our subprime crisis, as we were effectively subsidizing the real estate industry, and as the real estate industry grew unnaturally in size, it also grew in influence, eventually conquering the state of California's jobs market, and it used that influence for evil. Always be suspicious of an industry that doesn't make anything. (Of course, that's not all it did; it also drove up the land costs of factories to the point where many industries, like metallurgical industries, that are capital intensive and thus natural for America to have, were instead driven to Taiwan, which doesn't have cheap labor but does have many of the same intellectual property, consumer market, and infrastructure advantages as America.)

4. Consumer protections - Institute more rigorous antiusury laws that cap interest rates and remove loopholes. Also institute laws protecting American goods against mercury content and other such fun stuff; won't help the stock market, but what good is prosperity if what you're buying is crap. I have no problem with banks and other corporations making scandalously large profits provided no one gets ripped off.

5. Transportation & Water - If any more stimuli are drafted, make sure they focus on transportation (both road and rail) and water. Investments in such will both increase demands for goods and increase future forecasts through their "stage two" benefits to the supply-side. Also rush construction, so that the money is spent now. Instead, we've taken a philosophy, publicly, of mindless, unneccesary, and heavilly corrupt (cough cough General Motors) spending = good, thus proving that the people who drafted our economic policy are either horrifyingly cruel sadists or have the same mental age as a toddler. I'll guess the first.

With this economic plan, I believe our present situtation, and future, can be addressed. Comments are welcome.

F-22 - An Obituary

Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force

"The Defense Department plans to end the F-22 Raptor fighter jet program that employs 2,000 workers in Marietta. The move is part of one of the most sweeping makeovers of defense spending in recent history." -Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Pentagon plans to ax F-22 project"

The F-22 is a magnificent aircraft capable of striking the enemy before the enemy can strike back. Carrying six missiles and internal guns for firepower, and a stealth build for avoidance, the F-22 makes up for it's size and cost with a level of survivabillity seldom seen in combat aircraft, along with some of the lightest maintenance requirements ever attained. At 44.5 feet of wingspan and 60 feet of length, it is one of the larger fighters ever built, and although not specifically mentioned, this large size no doubt leads to greater crumple and wound room to take damage. Although the F-22's max speed is only Mach 1.8, it's "supercruise" speed of Mach 1.5 can be sustained for long distances without engine damage or excessive fuel expenditure, as no afterburner is necessary. The only possible complaint one could have with this aircraft is that it can't land on a carrier.

A full report on the aircraft can be found here.



Technical Art courtesy of Wikimedia

Back in 1983, when the economy was at the weakest point it had been since 1942, Ronald Reagan spent massive, deemed unwise by some at the time, amounts of money on racing the Soviets for arms. He not only won the Cold War without firing a shot, but within a year, the economy recovered. Barrack Obama spends a similar amount of money on "Stimulus," and then says "we should not expect miracles." Meanwhile, he is ridding Atlanta of 2,000 jobs at Lockheed Martin Marietta, building one of the most incredible aircraft America has ever designed.

Perhaps saddest of all is that, in true Keynesian fashion, it would actually reduce expenditures for the Air Force in the long-run, especially if it replaced our fleet of F-16's, as it's much sturdier, hardier, more expensive but more reliable parts would make maintenance nearly "Plug and Play" (American Federation of Scientists.) It would also be, by a principle called common sense, safer to fly for this reason, saving money on training and saving the most valuable component of all, a human being.




Proletariat of the World, UNITE!

Flawed Spectrum

"Every economic system in the modern world has elements that are both capitalist (private ownership and / or administration) and socialist (public ownership and / or administration)." - Open Left

This polarizing, misleading, and ambiguous definition of socialism rests on several major misunderstandings:

1) The difference between socialism and capitalism is 100% objective.

1a.) There is no "intention difference" between the two systems.

2) Less government guarantees more capitalism.

3) The wealthy are the automatic enemies of the public good.

I see no basis for any of these assertions. Let's examine a few other systems:

Feudalism - In Feudalism, cousin of fascism, a noblemen is entitled to rights over a vast area of land and all the people living on it in exchange for millitary service. Money may or may not be involved at all, but in any case, you won't have a right on how you earn it or spend it, as you, like 95% of the population, will have one job you are given that you must keep for the rest of your life or face execution. Like socialism, government control is universal, even to the point of government slavery, but like capitalism, private property exists and most decisions at the top tier are profit-maximizing.

Anarchosocialism - In Anarchosocialism, no government exists, but no private property exists either. The mob, the posse, serves as the only source of law and order, but redistribution is universal and total. This is based off the philosophy of Karl Marx, but by Open Left's definition of capitalism, is the ultimate capitalist society, as here, even the police are privatized. Can't get more private then the gunhand! (If you are interested, a good Anarchosocialist blog can be found here.)

Fascism - In Fascism, government regulation of businesses reaches the point where they can only serve the state interest. All of society, from the top to the bottom, is geared to serve those in power, and what private property does exist is largely nominal. Some attempt at redistribution is made, but inequality in a large sense is both tolerated and adored. Some businesses are government-owned, but still traded as stocks. Some would consider this system very socialist for it's mammoth level of government control, others very capitalist for it's emphasis on corporate power, efficiency and elitism, and some towards the center. Either way, resort to the public/private distinction and your mind will be twisted in to a slinky when gazing at it, as here the two blur in to nothing.

Tribalism - A tribal society largely shares resources, but still tolerates a strong man who can be seen as the "CEO" of the group. Trade is very free and almost corporate in it's conduct often times, but nearly everything is at whim. Where does it fit?

I think these are enough examples to illustrate my point. Now, back to homework.

Foamy-mouthed taxpayers

Dear AIG, I quit!

Re: Dear AIG, I quit!

Now in the bible, when a rich man does nothing to help the leprosy and starvation suffering beggar Lazarus as he jollily feasts, he loses his name, and all we know about him is "a rich man" and he went to hell. It seems that many taxpayers, seeing VP and AIG in the same sentence, have decided this man is exactly the same, a "rich man" not even worth considering. While I can understand the anger, it seems very misplaced, as a contract is a contract, government legislation is government legislation, and anyways, this VP didn't pick his pay:

Geithner, an Obama crony and public official, did.

He is also helping Lazarus right now with how that pay will be used.

And he didn't partake in the destruction of his company. Those folks are already gone. We are taking away the rights of an innocent man under the excuse of "I have it so hard." We are allowing our morality to be corrupted by the hardship of the world, and are thus ourselves like the seeds that Jesus spreads which fall on vines and are devoured. Reminds me of this old shrapnel of wisdom:

"If you are starving, which will you take first, your vote, or a bag of grain?"

But in a world of "Hope" and "Change" any kind of dilligent study and analysis or even using your common sense is discouraged. See, anger makes you predictable, makes you stupid, makes you like a little cow that can be brought to the stockyard and slaughtered for meat, and by allowing the government to impose penal taxes on a small group of people after the fact, a clever way of getting around the rule of law and the rights of it's citizens, the government has done exactly that. They've served the public hide hot and spiced, with a liberally applied maranade, and a side dish of US constitution.

I'm all for the common man, I know how capable he is and how much he has to offer this world. But that only makes me more angry that 1) our government wants to take away their freedom and thus their abillity, 2) people are allowing themselves to be corrupted and enslaved without even a promise of a better life for themselves. So who are we? Are we the men who built this country, or are we the "Here we are now, entertain us" (Kurt Kobain) crowd?

How a Stimulus Works

Or Honor, Honesty and Confidence:




Keynes (founder of Keynesianism, the economic philosophy of mainstream liberalism) believed that recessions could be evened out by the debt spending of government. He believed that certain "multiplier" effects could be achieved by the way such money was spent. But the basis of the whole argument was confidence.

You see, in a deflationary recession (according to Keynes), demand sags because of a shock to the system or bankruptcies and the resulting loss of business confidence. By allowing government to be the buyer of last resort, you remove such concern and allow them to avoid taking a loss or as large of a loss for a time, preventing their need for new investment (and thus inabillity) later.

They know this will pass, and by way of the multiplier it does, and they will make a profit then.

But what happens when those same businesses see that at this banquet, they are the skeleton on the dinner table?

When they see it is a trap, when they see that they will be paying and subjugated to their "customer," in the here and now, later? What happens when, in the excuse of "a deeper problem," we push a healthcare system that was contrived hastilly, funding for Student Aid that is permaneant and is thus in no way stimulus, bizarre rhetoric about "greed" when business is but a tool, and force the contraction of an industry (healthcare) in the name of "cost" when we are suffering deflation (damage from the reduction of cost, according to Keynes.) What happens when we subject our entire economy to a byzantine carbon cap, instead of a simple carbon tax? What happens when government pulls strange shenanigans with stimulus money and contracts and creates a "scandal"?

And then in "response," they attempt elimination of the right of ex post facto. I don't care how cleverly their little bill is phrased or what kind of strange loopholes they are using to break a legally-binding contract, I have a right not to be prosecuted for something that wasn't illegal at the time I did it. AIG, scoundrels as they are, has that right to. As far as I can tell, we left it in the contract, and if contracts and legal process are not observed, well, why should it end with "scoundrels?"

See, you can debate the ideology all day, but it's the people I'm worried about. And anyways, AIG may be awful, but in their defence, they never agreed to be public servants.