"... On Jul 16, 8:27 pm, archytas <[email protected]> wrote: ..."
> We have a hosepipe ban here Gruff - water shortage in NW England! I'm > looking for a bet that all Lancashire cricket will now be washed out! > Our Bulgarian neighbours can't work out why they don't just shut the > stuff off 8 hours a day like back home. They still dig wells to > irrigate crops on the family farm over there. Given how incompetent > we are in government in the West I'm often amazed we get anything > built,until I think of my experience elsewhere. My sense is that we > did do a fair day's pay better than most others and need to get back > to that. The cuts here will hurt more than most expect -and all over > Europe as the private sector will probably have no bounce or > innovation. I hope I'm wrong, but the kind of private sector I worked > in has gone. What keeps springing up are management agencies for > essentially public sector work, done at cheaper prices. I suspect > this is wrong in principle. I'm all in favour of efficiency, but we > need more than just this. Human incompetence and stupidity is pandemic and I think always has been and yes, I too am continually astounded that things we manage to accomplish in spite of it. Clearly it does not take a majority of the population to bring about positive change. There was a book very popular over here back in the '80s called The Peter Principle which argued that people in any sort of organizational situation will rise to the highest level of their own incompetence. In government it's called the bureaucracy and it works the same way in any large corporation. Entities may or may not be too big to fail but they are definitely big enough to be incredibly stupid, inefficient, inept, self-centered, paranoid and self-destructive in their attempts to be self-perpetuating. Yet in spite of it all, I feel positive about the future. I used to have that confidence because I always figured that competent good people outnumbered the idiots 51% to 49%. I have a new theory these days. As I noted above, I think it only takes a small number of people working at their best and in the best interests of society to move us forward. > My suspicion is that the business models are outdated. Our pubs are > closing everywhere, screwed by taxes, costly buildings, equipment, > position and being just crap places. Nothing new is replacing them. > I can think of nowhere where the old smoke stacks have really been > replaced, and all the shipping and such is in other labour markets - > we could draw up along list. Kids are being told to get educated, but > frankly the factories and big companies did a much better job at that > than universities and colleges. There is no vision and I think the > 'invisible hand' is broken. Charles Murray talked about this 30 years > ago. The new government is basically saying there is no money, so sod > off and find new ways to do stuff. While some business models are clearly outdated, others that currently don't seem to work would show progress if they were properly and rationally applied. But outmoded industry and industry that has become far too labor expensive ( vs being labor intensive) is gone for good to emerging nations. I think our education system -- and probably yours too -- is geared toward the old assembly line industry and needs to be redirected toward a more complex technical industrial and business world. Over here that shows up clearly in our huge influx of high tech workers from other nations because we can't find them among our own. This seems especially prevalent in the medical profession and is creating a new problem in the area of communication. These technicians and health care workers may be technically proficient but there is a language problem that is causing a high degree of mistakes. Secondly, and this is strictly my own opinion with no supporting evidence, but I find many nurses are coming here from Asia and have a cultural background that places different values on human life and comfort than what we in the west have. > The single Gaussian copula (or multiple) is not of much interest,other > than that our financial institutions waste a lot of electricity > cooling CPUs to run it - Wiki has a reasonable explanation. I;m fairly > good in the area and can't see that it's much more than another magic > wand covering insider trading and betting with more knowledge than the > market as a whole. I took a look at the Wiki entry and while it might be a reasonable explanation for someone in that specialty it was greek to me. I'll take your word that it's pretty much another magic wand. But trading is nothing more than a more reputable form of casino gaming and the casinos have allowed, welcomed and even financed some people to come in and try out their systems for beating the odds. The house always winds up with its take regardless. The only system that's a proven winner is counting cards at blackjack or '21' and the state made it illegal. I understand the comparison is superficial because the market can be manipulated much easier than a casino can be taken, but there is still that element that's present. People are complaining that more regulation will raise the cost of finance and possibly may smother the economy. I don't think so. People are always devising protection schemes that others find their way around almost immediately. It just takes an ever higher level of being clever. But the system continues on, so clearly the deviousity (sic) is not that much a hindrance to continual profits. > I'm all for shaking out the apples, but I want to > see more than vague, old and failed hopes of entrepreneurial > enterprise and such. Most public debates are clapped out. Science > would be looking for a new core programme for capitalism 4. According to my theory the growth of human awareness, innate morality, and civil behavior always lags scientific and business innovation and advancement but that gap is getting smaller as the demands of a fast moving world pull us along. The theory, knowledge and practice will follow in logical order. Just keep on reminding yourself that it's a fiat economy -- a fiction by any other name -- and we're the authors. We can write it any way we wish.
