Life and the World

Cosmologists burbling on about dark matter and dark energy (and now, I read in New Scientist, "phantom energy"). Gah! Just admit you don't know! Apply a good dose of Occam's Razor please. Which is a simpler explanation:

(a) there exists in the universe an unknown, unseen, undetectable form or matter and an unknown, unseen, undetectable form of energy; or

(b) you've got your cosmological sums and concepts in a twist.

I predict a paradigm shift sometime soon (because of course I am an expert in such things).

The fact that the basic economic unit of our world is the "consumer". It makes us sound like voracious ants, forever stuffing ourselves silly until eventually we'll eat the planet. Actually, it would be quite useful if people could remember that that is what "consumer" means - i.e. one who consumes - but it has become a word stripped of its real meaning to become just a unit of measurement. Ugh.

Tasteless, but funny. I'll lose my PC badge for this:

http://static.flickr.com/15/90998892_c5135c6694_o.jpg

And also this:


http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/index.php/archives/2005/11/22/banned-xbox-360-ad-best-ad-ever/

Technical issue here. I may have inadvertently cocked up the comments setting. About a week ago I got my first ever comment spam and in the process of attempting to delete I might have set up a comment approval process without any way to actually approve the comments. Der.

It's possible I suppose that hoards of people have been trying to post comments and the economic debate of the decade could have been kicked off by my posts below about wine corks. Possible, but unlikely.

Rest assured though that this is now sorted out, so please feel free to comment at will.

I've been thinking about this subject recently, wondering how I can write a post about it in any way relevant to anything else that's going on at the moment, trying I think just to out a childhood memory of mine. Happily (or not) the news and blogs runneth over today with the subject of the chastisement of children, and I can whip out a vaguely topical post.

So, the story: I am a child of 8, sitting in a classroom full of 8 year olds, our teacher trying to teach us something basic about something-or-other. The reason I can't remember what the teacher is trying to get across to us (apart from the fact that I was 8 quite a long time ago) is because emanating from the headmaster's office right next door are the loud and terrified screams of a fellow 8 year old. Yes, the toe rag of the school is getting caned again. Or possibly slippered. I forget which was our headmaster's weapon of choice. Either way, the shrieks of "no!', 'please!' and "don't!" are rather getting in the way of our teacher's efforts to fill our eager 8 year old brains will lovely knowledge. All I remember from the teacher is a sense of ackwardness.

Do you think being slippered taught our school toe rag respect, or even Respect (copyright T.Blair)? No. It taught him to hate and fear school. I don't recall much of him after that, mostly because he had the world's worst truancy record. Yep, that sure taught him.

You're probably thinking from this that I am not a fan of corporal punishment, and you'd be right. I am generally disapproving of physical chastisement of any form. Partly because it is always the strong chastising the weak. Partly because 50 or so ago, perfectly reasonable men would have argued that, as a woman, a good bit of discipline wouldn't hurt me.

This topic raises its head because of the recent proposal of some child commissioner or other that smacking (spanking, hitting, whatever) children be banned. Various bloggers are frothing at the mouth on this one (see Devil's Kitchen - http://devilskitchen.blogspot.com/2006/01/smack-my-bitch-up.html - or Talk Politics - http://talkpolitics.users20.donhost.co.uk/index.php?title=gong_clarkson&more - if you must).

Let me make myself clear. I think that smacking children is bad parenting. Occasionally perpetrated by good parents. I've read more 'it's the only way to stop them running out in front of cars/throwing themselves on fires/slitting their own wrists with kitchen knives' reasons than I could possibly need to read to understand that there is always an excuse and it's always a crap one. All these justifications seem to say is that physical chastisement is the most effective form of discipline there is but we only use it when we really really need to, honest guv'nor. Quite why these particular occasions make the use of force necessary is never explained, so it must just be "common sense" (as in, can't explain, it just is). Short, sharp shock, yes?

But I digress. You might also be forgiven for thinking that I would therefore be in favour of such a ban, yes? Well, you'd be wrong. Thing is, I'd love to see the day when it was generally accepted that smacking (slapping, striking, assaulting, whatever) was the wrong way to go about delivering any kind of lesson to a child. But in such cases, government must follow, not lead (cajole, force, prosecute, whatever) wherever society happens leads them (regardless of whether or not that is where I personally want society to go).

60 years ago, averagely decent people were puffing away at fags in the cinema. 20 years ago, the equivalent averagely decent people were puffing away at fags on the back seats of buses. Now, your averagely decent smoker tries hard to keep it to themselves. And the jury of society is still out and debating on whether the averagely decent smoker smokes in the pub any more. 500 years ago, averagely decent men were physically chastising their wives and more. I'd like to see them trying it now and expect much support from present-day averagely decent men.

So now, averagely decent parents sometimes smack their children. I wish they wouldn't. And I rather hope that in 60 years time the averagely decent parent will be slightly shocked that their own averagely decent grandparents did so. And then in that theoretical future it might I suppose be a time that government might think about banning it; but by then it won't mean the same thing, because by that point only the less-than-averagely decent parent will be hit (spanked, chastised, whatever) by it.

I have been posting a lot about economics, mostly I think because it is something I don't know much about and I dislike finding such a huge gap in my knowledge. And it is an important, world-changing subject.

On the other hand, there's a good reason why it is such a huge gap: it's not a terribly inspiring. It raises no fire in my soul. So whilst I think it is worth me continuing to read about it, get various points of view about it, I'm not going to be blogging random thoughts about it forever.

And I don't want to forget the things that really get me fired up: politics, feminism, theology, philosophy. So normal service will be resumed shortly.

A quick wave back to a post I made nearly a year ago here - http://lifeandtheworld.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_lifeandtheworld_archive.html - wherein I ranted about cosmetics advertising (oooooh, don't get me started... too late!).

I was right all along! Woo hoo! It's all bollocks and canard! See http://www.inkycircus.com/jargon/2006/01/skincare_expose.html and http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/ARTICLES/skincare.asp.

But alas, the truth as revealed in InkyCircus.com and firstscience.com has little chance I fear against the mighty power (and budget) of L'Oreal, Garnier and the like. And thus I again grow sceptical about the power of the informed consumer in the free market.

To steal a badly-remembered quote, "lies will have made it half way round the world before the truth has even got its running shoes on".

An interesting point on the nature of the free market and the informed consumer occurred to me last week. Well okay, for a given value of "interesting". Interesting to me, anyway. But who the heck else is listening? Not even my husband. Hear that Mark? Nope, thought not.

I refer you to the honourable gentleman, Tim Worstall, who could I suppose be described a free market environmentalist, who posted on the subject of wine corks ( http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2006/01/the_guardian_in.html ) describing the unfortunate demise of the real cork. Unfortunate from an environmental perspective anyway, it would appear. I enquired as to Mr Worstall's views on his views on the fact that it would appear therefore that the free market was acting against environment concerns. The answer, in simple terms, is that the fully adjusted free market requires the participants to be fully informed. He then went on to say that he thought that "the environmental task ahead of us is to make sure that prices do indeed reflect the externalities" - i.e. prices should reflect environmental impact, if I understood him correctly.

Given his earlier statement as the informed participants, do I understand him correctly to mean informed consumers?

Playing Devil's Advocate, I can see a few issues with this concept:

1. Getting consumers informed. Well, that's an obvious one that, and a genuine problem I think. Even within the comments section on Tim's own blog there was disagreement about the extent of the environmental impact. So for the "externalities", as he puts it, to be taken into account, does there not need to be agreement as to the nature and extent of their externalities?

2. Getting consumers to care. Say we have agreement as to the environmental affect, negative thereof, of synthetic corks, I have no doubt that there will be plenty of people out there who don't give a fuck. They want cheaper and, in this rather shoddily designed thought experiment, synthetic corks are cheaper and we assume therefore that the wine is consequently cheaper. How does the environmental free marketeer get the consumer to care? Or am I even understanding the concept here? Does the free market have a mechanism for making people care? I dunno.

3. Getting producers to offer the choice. Sounds simple, n'est pas? I see a bottle with a real cork, I see a bottle with a synthetic cork, I am an informed consumer and I care. So I buy the bottle with the real cork, right? But I don't always know. Most of the bottles I have in my cupboard at the moment have the foil over the whole lot. I can't tell, I couldn't exercise choice even if I knew there was a choice to be exercised and want to do so. Perhaps I'm think too micro here rather than macro. Any thoughts?

I have been reading a lot recently about free markets and free marketeerism and it has been, honestly, interested. I have learned a lot. I have learned, for example, that when free marketeers talk about wanting to be free from the shackles of regulation, what some of them seem to mean is government regulation. The idea is, apparently, that the markets can regulate instead. Take a look at this for a bit more explanation of this view (ignoring the anti-left polemic throughout):

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=193&sortorder=articledate

Now, I'm not an economist, but neither am I a complete ignoramus. I've read newspapers, I've watched the news and political discussion programmes, and I must say that all those business bods going on about red tape rather gave me the impression that they would quite happily leave those spikes in kiddies' toys and the possibly-toxic dye in the tomato sauce if it meant lower production costs. Especially when they said so.

Word to the wise guys. Get some better PR.

More, much more, to follow on this topic.

UPDATE: Oops - link now corrected.

"Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. "

Ambrose Bierce

Particularly relevant to me at the moment, given my current project...

Ignorance alert! A special prize goes to the person who can tell me who Ambrose Bierce is. A booby prize goes to the person who tells me to look him up on Wikipedia; yes, I know I can find out myself, but it is sometimes nice to get an individual's slant on something.

I'm not doing party politics at the moment - loyalty to any cause, name or movement not being terribly conducive to the old 'blank slate' - but good grief, what on earth is going on? In yesterday's episode of the Political Twilight Zone Charlie Kennedy got all contrite in front of the cameras and George Galloway entered the Celebrity Big Brother House. Tabloid headlines writers must be thanking the gods for this duet of gifts. Go wild, I say. I could do with a bit of comedy to perk up January.

On the subject of labelling, I happened to be blog hopping (yes, I am bored at work, again) and came across Chris at http://www.strange_stuff.blogspot.com confessing to a certain fondness for online tests at http://strange_stuff.blogspot.com/2006/01/another-self-test-thingy.html

The designation "socially liberal, economically conservative" comes up a lot and seemingly translates as "do what you like, don't take my money". Correct guestimate?

All sounds very common sense, salt-of-the-earth stuff, except that it's, well, a bit lazy isn't it? A bit passive. And eventually a bit la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you about things not going so well for others.

Whither social justice, in this context? Do you just hope for the best and assume that things will get better inevitably? Somewhat over-optimistic that, isn't it? The introduction of, say, old age pensions after all the Parliamentary fisticuffs of 1911 took place against massive opposition from those of the Victorian laissez-faire attitude. It is impossible I know to predict what might have happened without them, but are there any realistic arguments out there that without the introduction of such a safety net poverty stricken OAP's would be better off?

I confess! It's me! We have a badge, and a secret handshake and a straw man as our emblem. We share our offices with the Gay Mafia and are closely allied with the Human Rights Brigade. Although they stole our name, the bastards (sorry, differently parented people).

So what do we believe in? Well, right at the start of the movement, the idea was that words have power. Power to hurt and harm. And that perhaps people could debate respectfully without being offensive. So, using the word 'nigger' was out and the word 'paki' frowned upon, until, before we knew it, the whole world has fallen within our clutches such that all freedom of speech has been eliminated. Success! Ignore the fact that people frequently have debates about any number of things without being thrown into 'Political Correctness Prisons' - that is your imagination and not in any way a sign of a thriving democracy.

Ignore also the fact that there is no government Department of Political Correctness - the fact that this is a social movement without any statutory authority whatsoever just ignores the fact that we are obviously a global conspiracy with our tendrils deep inside every branch of government, business and the media. We only allow constant disagreement with and denigration of our aims because we are sneaky buggers (sorry, differently sexually activated people).

Of course, some people have gone to extremes in the name of Political Correctness and stories of over-zealous members of the Brigade banning things like 'black bags' (rubbish bags please) or 'blackboards' (no no - chalkboards) is not in any way the invention or exaggeration of an over-excited and unimaginative tabloid media and should be bundled in with stuff like, I dunno, calling disabled people Spakkers. All such things are of course Political Correctness Gone Mad and we in the Loony Left embrace that.

We are a broad church - such that we are clearly responsible for anything that anyone disagrees with but can't be bothered to argue with coherently. We believe in everything and anything so long as it will help our nefarious aim to be generally respectful to human beings without defining them by reference to external physical factors. Clearly, we are evil.

I myself am a member of just a splinter group of the Political Correctness Brigade, known as "Being Polite, Mostly", and would like to apologise for taking over the world.