What would my cat say about the world?

Madness of Extremists

2011-07-31T02:27:00.000-07:00

Potential madness is in all of us, but some sail closer to the wind than others.

James Delingpole or Breivik?

Dresses up in military uniform.

messianic zeal: In his delusion, he thinks he has saved Western Civilisation. 30 seconds in, "[climategate]..saved western civilisation..] And knows he is in some sort of ideological crusade against the left: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/11/climate-sceptic-james-delingpole-driven-by-ideological-war/

Organises action against those who disagree with him:
Organises his degenerate fans into action(he published the name and address of a private letter to a conservative mp asking questions about the MP's position on globlal warming)

Demonises the left with aggressive language.
- Ecofascist, Watermelons etc.

Fantasises about bullets for those who disagree with him:
And also by the BBC, the Prince of Wales, almost every national newspaper, the European Union, the Royal Society, the New York Times, CNBC, the Obama administration, the Australian and New Zealand governments, your children’s schools, our major universities, our minor universities, the University of East Anglia, your local council….
Truly there just aren’t enough bullets!

Options to advance socialism from a local gov?

2011-04-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

If the national government won't see sense. are there any ways our local councils can advance socialism?

brain storming ideas will tidy up later:

Favour co-ops? how can we do that? is it possible to have special support for co-ops such that combines with business rates there is effectively favourable tax regime?

That co-ops will out compete even large stores?

Can we selectively target parts of a town with higher rates or use road planning changes to disrupt trade to large super stores.

Philosophically we should not worry about the 'employment' offered by companies such as Tesco and Asda: Although they provide cheaper goods, so that local citizens have more money to spend, the wealth is no longer circulating in the council area. But bleeding out towards the owners of the supermarkets. After serveral years, local towns become paradoxically blighted and poorer by cheaper prices.

What about local currencies? What can be done with these?

Call for UK to withdraw from IP laws?

2011-04-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

Intellectual Property is justified to be an exclusive reward for those who come up with new content for entertainment purposes, or with regards to patents; new technology.

The profit motive should encourage advances.

-----------------------------
music/dvds/games:
What if a major economy such as the UK decides to break with international trade laws on IP? There would be tit for tat - but we are a major economy. So large that many trading partners might follow suit.

IP laws favour super corporations over small tech companies. And are used to hammer pirates. Piracy being a mass activity, we socialists should not continue to ban it. And so should adapt. clearly we still need to create decent content. So we would have a small extra tax to make up for what we think the average person pays out of their pocket currently for entertainment. It is just a different way of paying.

patents:
get rid of patents. Then any company can exploit foreign technology for UK needs and export (to nations relaxed about adhering to international ip laws) because we're a big economy, its likely we can help break this open.

pharmacutical companies will now be able to produce cheap drugs here which will benefit our citizens and citizens abroad alike we would export to.

We will gain trade enemies. But the pressure as a major economy we can impose might force others into our alignment. And that is definately a left wing direction:

To maintain research without the lock in of IP laws. the worlds major economies will have to raise taxes in order to fund research. This should be more effective as big pharma is driven by advantage of most profitable treatments wereas the nation states will want real cures and utilitarian outcomes.

And likewise for other areas of the economy. Companies may still obtain a patent like advantage, but only through industrial secrecy and first to market.

a serious blog

2010-10-29T03:43:00.000-07:00

I've started another blog

http://a-new-red-dawn.blogspot.com/

I'm really pissed off that tory news websites are able to rant at the left willy nilly. the have garbage ideas about economics, morals, climate change

2009-05-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Thinking of doing some self study in agent based economics again.

I feel that a significant part of my views on the world emerge from what i've read about agent based economics, how it seems to smash the case of ivory tower neoliberal economics. But I am a programmer, and I can repeat and explore the realm of agent based economics with my own models.

So this was an attempt at this sort of thing. I see agent based economics as really artificial life where you ponder how it relates to the real world. Attempting check fundamental economic beliefs - for example, is it really the case that in trade there is a tendency towards equilibrium - that you mostly be paying the right price for things, if only you let the market decide?

That is one of the fundamental assumptions some economists use, and then ideologues build up on to justify a particular view of the world. In Sugar and Spice model prices never achieve equilibrium and meritocracy fails when there is little or no redistribution of wealth.

And so my motivation is to explore and perhaps expand on sugar and spice. Dobbsspawn was a first attempt, written in dinner times whilst working at juice games. There are some things that become apparent with the system:

There is a constant supply of energy, yet an inconsistent amount of activity. populations rise and fall with spectacular crashes before recovering. Whilst watching the simulation, its obvious that intervention in the system would increase efficiency. So that's interesting. Markets also grow and crash. But we're told that is natural, and therefore correct - that it would be inefficient to constrain the markets, then intervene. This to neoliberals who wrecked our world economy - called meddling in the markets.

Dobbsspawn is not as advanced as sugar+spice though. There is no concept of trade, its merely a struggle to survive and exploit available resources.

growing spinach

2009-03-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

In biodegradable containers, I now have seeded nearly a hundred spinach seeds. I have a notion of some random planting in public spaces on some of my walks. I wonder if i can establish some, 'wild' growing spinach and strawberry areas.

I do wonder about irrigation. it is really rain fed agriculture so the project will probably fail.

religion. not good for our mental health as death draws near.

2009-03-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

People with strong religious beliefs appear to want doctors to do everything they can to keep them alive as death approaches, a US study suggests. (link)

Nuclear Power Folly

2009-03-17T06:19:00.000-07:00

In light of the credit crunch our dear leader, Gordon Brown recently admited that the washington concensus of free markets and unregulate trade is over (link).

Yet with regards to energy policy appears to rely on market direction. The market price of uranium currently looks good but:
Uranium reserves cannot possibly match future demand (link)

"The global uranium resources with mining costs up to US $ 130 per kilogram amount to about 3.3 million tonnes. With 3.3 million tonnes, all 436 world-wide operating nuclear power plants can be supplied for several decades. The deposits with large uranium reserves which can be mined in a cost-effective way are distributed to many countries."

..
presetly the EROEI for uranium is (link) not particularly high in comparison to other sources of energy.

the currently relatively low market price of uranium drives governments to herd like sheeple into strategically inept energy policy. For the policy to work over the lifetime of new proposed reactors, we have to hope that other nations don't do the same otherwise with ever rising energy demands of this country and the developing world and the fact that uranium usage at current low rates lasts a mere century... ...in the more realistic scenario of many countries opting nuclear, with rising usage of uranium to match - the century or so of uranium supply will not last more than a few decades. By the time our new reactors are in mid operation, they will quite likely be uneconomical.

Having recognised that markets don't work over the long period, we should not let current market prices dictate a strategic energy policy that we will have to live with for decades.

Not Enough Listen to the True Commentariat

2009-03-16T18:38:00.001-07:00

I felt like I wanted to commented on the demented ranting of Daily Telegraph commentator who basically rants that the popular press is too inline with the prevailing opinion of climate scientists on the matter of global warming, but the comments page seemed closed at the time.

The neoliberal right is existentially terrified of climate science.

these fools believe in a unregulated markets and small governments, when in fact science suggests strongly that the optimum approach to dealing with massive known problems is to tackle them head on - modifying the market and for governments to do so supranationally.

People cling to belief because it is their sense of identity. Its rare that an ideology is proven wrong - and climate science has with 90% certaincy destroyed any possible basis in present times for neoliberalism.

And that was before the credit crunch disaster which further undermined the neoliberal right.

And so we get the likes of Christopher Booker, foaming at the mouth. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/4990704/Nobody-listens-to-the-real-climate-change-experts.html

The Rightwing Narrative.

2009-03-16T18:17:00.000-07:00

Thinking of the credit crunch and the right wing narrative of free market fundamentalists. In the UK they focus on the ruling party, New Labour and attempt to pin all the blame on them whilst upholding a false alternative, the Conservatives as a way forward. The right wing narrative attacks New Labours economic performance saying they have increased the national debt massively - that they have been especially incompetent.

I'm not a fan of new labour, but is misleading to claim labour has increased the national debt. The UK fiscal stance remains no better or worse than under the tory era. See the graph above.

you can see around 1920's the rise of UK debt due to world war 1. Then after you see it hovering around 150% of GDP. Then another war came and our debt rose to over 200% of GDP (world war 2)...

...then at last we had a period of left wing or socialist leaning governments and our debt levels did not stay static, they fell, and fell fast. For 20 years we had left leaning economic policies and in just that short period our fiscal stance returned to that almost of days of empire.. but rather than through the breaking of other peoples backs; through good honest, solid, left leaning social and economic policy. That is your wider context.

After Thatcher/New Labour experiment with neoliberal social-economic policy our fiscal stance stayed static.