Freer enterprise

Suppose you wanted to do an experiment to see what the natural set of economic arrangements in society might be, perhaps curious to see if free enterprise is a self-emergent property of economic systems that lack central co-ordination (as it is in World of Warcraft, for example).

The thing to do would be to go somewhere where there is no government and see. Well, the experiment is underway even as we speak. There is a place where the writ of government does not run and people are free to pursue their dreams. Not in some dreary Welsh commune full of welfare warriors, but in everyone's favourite seaside tropical paradise, Somalia.

In Somalia's main pirate lair of Haradheere, the sea gangs have set up a cooperative to fund their hijackings offshore, a sort of stock exchange meets criminal syndicate.

[From Somali sea gangs lure investors at pirate lair | Reuters]

"Criminal" is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but this is exactly what my sons and their friends get up to in World of Warcraft: pool effort and go off and kill people and steal their stuff. Anyway, these enterprising heirs to Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, absent Spanish treasure fleets from South America have been raiding treasure fleets from the new Eldorado, the Gulf. And a pretty profitable business it is too.

"I am really happy and lucky. I have made $75,000 in only 38 days since I joined the 'company'."

[From Somali sea gangs lure investors at pirate lair | Reuters]

Yes, it's the Indian Ocean Bubble!

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Security matters

There was a report on the news tonight about the new strip scanners at British airports. I had a brilliant idea about this that I mentioned on twitter a while back: let's crowdsource airport security. Take the output from the scanners and send it up to Flickr, partly to increase the sum total of gaiety in the nation (there's no privacy issues since you won't know who any of the pictures actually are) and then people at home with nothing to do can look through the pictures and see if there are any suspicious-looking images. Then they can e-mail to some central government security centre. The government security centre will pretty soon learn which public-spirited websters are good at spotting the terrorists and so a ranking system will quickly develop to direct the attention of the security services (a bit like eBay stars) and at the end of the year we can award OBE's to the top 10. Tell me: how is my idea any more stupid than reality (remember that these scanner won't detect rectum bombs etc)...

A Manchester airport spokesman said their trial had started in December, but only with passengers over 18 until the legal situation with children was clarified. So far 500 people have taken part on a voluntary basis with positive feedback from nearly all those involved.

[From New scanners break child porn laws | Politics |The Guardian ]

So 17-year old jihadis can get through with detonating underpants intact -- let's hope that Osama bin Laden doesn't cotton on to this. But this led me on to wonder if there is any point in any of this? Hugo Rifkind is surely right when he points out that the whole colossal enterprise of homeland security is an almost total waste of money.

Before the World Trade Center came down, flying was a breeze, and there was a tiny chance you might get blown up. Now it’s a nightmare, and there’s still a tiny chance you might get blown up. In what way is this progress? Our attitude towards getting onto aeroplanes is starting to look weird. It’s like a disorder. It’s like they’ve won.

[From Airport security is a giant exercise in arse-covering — and it doesn’t work (obviously) | The Spectator]

If the 9/11 guys tried that same stunt again today, they would fail. Not because of airport security but because the passengers wouldn't let them. I'm an overweight, unfit middle-aged man, but if the guy in front of gets up and holds a knife to a stewardesses' throat, then I'll go for him. Ah, you might say, but what if he has explosives in his underpants? That's why we need the new stripscanners. Well, if you scan his underpants, then he'll stuff the TNT up his arse. Or buy a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile, or go an blow up a Eurostar instead. There comes a point where we have to see that we are into a zone of diminishing returns, so if there's a need to spend extra money on airport security, then spend it the Israeli way: on profiling, on interviewing, on intelligence and not on pointless scanners that can't detect underpants bombs or rectum bombs anyway.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Citizens Dave

We're having some work done on our house at the moment. I had to pop in to see the builder's estimator at the house this morning. He is called Dave. The painter is called Dave. The chippie is Dave and he has an assistant called Dave. When he wasn't available, they sent another chippie for a couple of days: yes, he was called Dave. The plumber is called Brian.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Looney bins

Here in Gordon Brown's Looking Glass Britain, the Land of Perverse Incentives, there has been a steady shift of focus in law enforcement. While the underclass continue to beat their children to death, while honest citizens are stabbed in the street and gangs of feral youths are allowed to roam free,

Leicester City Council recently began fining residents £100 if their wheelie bins were put out on the wrong day.

[From The laughing policemen: 'Inaccurate' data boosts arrest rate - Crime, UK - The Independent]

The idea that law enforcement is about revenues and targets rather than right and wrong is hateful, but you can't blame the police. The government's plan is clear: criminalise things that middle class homeowners might do (eg, overfill the recycling bin) and then target them to push up the revenues, since they are easy to catch and will always pay up

Householders who fail to nominate a neighbour to turn off their alarm while they are away from home can be breaking the law.

[From Blair's 'frenzied law making' : a new offence for every day spent in office - UK Politics, UK - The Independent]

I notice, by the way, that under the torrent of new laws introduced by the Labour government since 1997, such as the crackdown on the wheelie menaces, it is now an offence to set off nuclear explosion in the United Kingdom.

It is now illegal to sell grey squirrels, impersonate a traffic warden or offer Air Traffic Control services without a licence. Creating a nuclear explosion was outlawed in 1998.

[From Blair's 'frenzied law making' : a new offence for every day spent in office - UK Politics, UK - The Independent]

Presumably, had the Iranians managed to float a fission bomb up the Thames and set it off outside Parliament before 1998, we would have only been able to charge them under some noise abatement regulations or perhaps press a more serious case under environmental protection laws. We can all sleep more safely now, knowing that it is a criminal offence.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

It's not really democracy, is it?

The government doesn't do what the majority want, by a long way. Since the general public are pretty thick (according to official government statistics, not just my opinion), that's probably a good thing. But we ought to change our mental model and stop thinking of ourselves as a democracy anyway.

It is a sad fact of British elections that the event is decided by about 100,000 swing voters in swing seats. The election campaign which ‘started’ this week showed the same safety-first formula: all parties battling for the 1 per cent which their computers tell them hold the key to power.

[From A golden age for fascism | The Spectator]

This really bothers me. It means that I know deep down that it doesn't really matter what I think about the great issues of the day, because my vote is almost worthless. Woking is a safe Tory seat, with a majority of several thousand, so my vote is irrelevant here. But it's also true that it doesn't matter what most other people think either. Those 100,000 swing voters are sick of Marxist clown Gordon Brown so will vote for Eton Dave, and none of them will really care what manifesto promises either side makes or what policies they will adopt. It's a sick society.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

[posted with ecto]

May contain nuts

With all of the stories in the news about airport security, together with traveller's tales of three hour delays at Heathrow security, I'm really not enthusiastic about getting on a plane again. But I saw a story today that gave me some hope.

Air Canada (AC.B-T1.29-0.03-2.27%) has been told to create a special “buffer zone” on flights for people who are allergic to nuts.

[From Air Canada told to provide nut-free zone - The Globe and Mail]

Brilliant! I don't want to sit next to someone who thinks that shampoo causes autism, Gordon Brown or whoever. But sadly, this isn't what they mean.

The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that passengers who have nut allergies should be considered disabled and accommodated by the airline. The CTA has advised Air Canada to come up with an appropriate section of seats where passengers with nut allergies would be seated... Air Canada stopped serving peanuts years ago, but the airline still serves cashews and other snacks that contain nuts.

[From Air Canada told to provide nut-free zone - The Globe and Mail]

Someone one with a "nut allergy" apparently sued the airline after having to lock herself in a bathroom for 40 minutes while the food services was underway, in case a molecule from someone else's cashew nut reached her. Ridiculous? Probably: will Air Canada be liable if one of the other passengers starts eating a Snickers in the nut free zone? As always, it will be lawyers who obtain maximum benefit from this attempt to alleviate the potential suffering of others. Anaphylactic shock does actually exist though, although it's not clear to me why it is so prevalent.

unless you're a character on "Heroes," genes don't mutate fast enough to have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do. Yuppiedom does.

[From Nut allergies -- a Yuppie invention - latimes.com]

I notice that disability legislation has also been in the news in the US as well as Canada.

A group of Santa Fe residents recently attempted to get all public Wi-Fi hotspots in the city banned [because of] "electromagnetic allergies." More curious perhaps was how the group tried to use the Americans With Disabilities Act to force the city's hand

[From Santa Fe Wi-Fi Fears Keep Getting Weirder - Man sues neighbor for refusing to turn off wireless - dslreports.com]

Whether you can use disability legislation with respect to a disability that doesn't actually exist is an interesting point. Bear in mind that there is no evidence whatsoever that anyone is allergic to wifi. I imagine that it is only a matter of time before a judge in this United Kingdom rules that if people consider themselves to be disabled, then they are disabled and therefore covered by the appropriate equality legislation. This will happen. And then we'll all have to provide wifi free zones in our offices and streets.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Capital

No.2 son had to write something about capital punishment for a school essay. He said that he was against it, because you might execute the wrong person and then you couldn't bring them back. This is indeed the central argument against it, I would have thought. He also said that even in the US, it would be better to sentence murderers to life imprisonment (as we don't do in the UK). Again, a sophisticated case against the death penalty, especially given the enormous cost of appeals and lawyers in the US system. All very good.

No. 2 might have also pointed out that there is no correlation between the murder rate and which States have the death penalty, so it's not even a deterrent.

Tricky.

So when he asked me what I thought, I said that I was in favour of the death penalty, but not for murderers, since it clearly doesn't deter them and you might get the wrong person. Surely it makes more sense to use the death penalty in places where it might deter behaviour and where you are certain have the right perpetrator. In this case, for example:

A woman made an emergency 999 call to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to say her cat was "doing her head in" because it was playing with string.

[From BBC News - Woman's 999 call over playful cat]

Of course, to be really beneficial to society, the death penalty would need to be carried out before she could reproduce, but you have to start somewhere. I expect that my new green campaign (I think the death penalty should be remarketed as an environmentally-friendly alternative to both prison and keeping people alive in general) is certain to attract high-level celebrity support, so it may well become government policy before not too long.

Think about it. David Cameron needs a populist big idea that is simple enough for our moronic public to understand: what better one to choose than green capital punishment. This helps us to kill two birds with one stone (although that needn't necessarily be the only executive method) because it tackles the twin evils of stupidity and population growth. If we can execute enough stupid people, we can make a real impact on global warming without having to turn down the central heating.

Leading scientists, like Martin Rees, head of the Royal Society, Britain’s academy of science, also assert that population growth must be constrained in order to successfully confront global warming.

[From Population Growth and Global Warming - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com]

I see persons such as eco do-gooder Jonathan Porrit and British actress Susan Hampshire support something called the "Optimum Population Trust". I'm sure they will be right behind me, I must get in touch.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]