Information on Solar Power

You can try looking up the "Rainbow Power Company" in Nimbin. They have a website. - something like www.rpc.com.au. Its a pretty good site. I couldn't find any prices though.

Time to invest in Solar stocks?

Patrick Henry:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/120605C.html

Doctor Thomas:

AUD40 per tonne is the tipping point where solar becomes cost competitive with Coal.

The article suggests the market is somewhere between 10 and 40 EUR. Time to invest in Solar stocks?

(I'd better check my data, right?)

Why I Am Too Busy to Keep a Blog

Because I am writing important papers.

Class war all over again in Australia

WorkChoices more about class war than economics

ROSS GITTINS
Ross Gittins is The Sydney Morning Herald's Economics Editor.
21 November 2005

Whenever anyone says the rich don't pay enough tax or wants to cut back his generous grants to top private schools, John Howard always accuses them of trying to take us back to the bad old, long-gone days of class conflict.

But, though it's had remarkably little acknowledgment from commentators, his own industrial relations changes are an undisguised assault on the Liberal Party's traditional class enemies: the unions, unionised workers and workers generally.

...

[snipped]

Document SMHH000020051120e1bl0001m

Doctor Thomas:

I think that the solution to the problem is for people who are currently "employees" to quit their jobs, become shareholders in "Labour Corporations", buy up the factories and then EMPLOY the people who are currently "employers" as managers on wages....

Historical Psychology

Patrick Henry:

[Following a discussion about the price of copper.] Have you ever read the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov, with the concept of Historical Psychology or something - the science ofpredicting the future, which was hopelessly inaccurate when used on individuals but became more accurate the more people were involved, so that you could accurately predict the fate of civilisations? I wonder if there is something to it, and the price of copper can be predicted by some sort of mass psychometrics?

Doctor Thomas:

Modern chaos theories do not support the causal premiss on which the idea of historical psychology in the Foundation series was based. The gross macro-behaviour of complex dynamical systems can bifurcate in future possibility space. The premiss behind the Foundation series idea was of stable systems dynamics which result in reversion to a mean trajectory. Nonlinear system in general don't display this sort of stability. I can't remember the precise reference unfortunately...

What is 'Real' Wealth?

Patrick Henry:

I have been thinking a lot about sustainability. Not about hugging trees, but about preserving wealth.

Also, I've been thinking about what is economically 'real', inspired bythe remarks of the character Goto Dengo towards the end of the novel Cryptonomicon.

As world population declines, this will become more and more difficult. I can't see how anything can retain its value if there is less demand. On the other hand, the pie may stay the same size and simply be divided into larger pieces.

Population decline shouldn't be too much of a problem in places where people would like to move to, such as Australia.

Still, what is permanent?

Land is permanent, as long as the state stands. Although value may decline if population shrinks - people need fewer places to live, people need less food - it should still retain some value.

VCRs are great but not necessary and cannot be produced without oil and modern industrial infrastructure.

Energy is not permanent but energy is the one thing people of anything more than a subsistence existence require. Energy is the one universal input.

Doctor Thomas:

I can't see how anything can retain its value if there is less demand.

Patrick Henry, I really think that you have put the value cart before the demand horse. You don't need demand, I don't need demand, no-one needs demand. The economy doesn't need demand. The purpose of the economy is to provide supply in order to meet demand that (supposedly) exists independently of it. No demand - no need for an economy - no problem.

Less population, less demand, less of a problem (fewer human needs to meet).

The only concern that I would have with the prospect of a declining population is a population too small to have the critical mass requiredfor the economies of scale for a complex, technologically advanced society to supply all the sorts of nice material things that I like (you need a lot of farmers and manufacturers to be able support individuals like myself who hang around and Universities and conduct "research" and other valuable cultural activities like art and music). But I don't think that will happen in a hurry: projections are for a stabilisingpopulation by 2100 - not declining.

Human DEATH on a large scale is (strongly) undesirable for welfare reasons, but population decline is probably not of concern for reasonsof sustainability of wealth.

In order to maintain "value", what you essentially require issufficient control over resources/ assets in order to meet your ownneeds (perhaps indirectly, by convincing others to meet your needs in exchange for meeting some of theirs).

NB: I'm just writing up some lecture notes in which I point out thatENERGY is not limited (First law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be either created or destroyed). What is limited is negentropy (Second law of thermodynamics: entropy increases all the time). As an industrial culture, humans need to find ways of efficiently using the sources of negentropy at its disposal (eg re-using "waste" energy like using the steam from turbines to heat houses etc.)

Is finance 'real'?

Patrick Henry:

I was going to mention, but decided not to, that money is merely a formof stored energy.

Thus a bank is kind of like a generator, or perhaps a battery.

If I am right, then finance is a third 'real' area for investment.

Doctor Thomas:

In my way of thinking, finance is not "real" and bank is not like a battery. What is "real" are the REAL investments (in built capitalstock, infrastructure, natural capital stocks such as forests andnatural ecosystems which provide necessary services for supporting lifesuch as nutrient and biochemical recycling, human capital in education - skills, organisational capital in the way that our economies areorganised - established economic relationships).

Money is merely a unit of account that flows in the opposite direction to real flows of materials, energy, services. [Hey! Like an electric current! - PH]

BTW: I appreciate your remark about Keynes. It took me a while to figure out a response. Keynes made the observation that in practice, the quantities of supply and demand do actually influence each other. From the point of view of "designing" a global economy, ideally, demand should not be influenced by supply - rather demand should be taken as arising exogenously and thereby provides the problem that needs to be solved. (Keynes makes an empirical observation, I'm making a normative claim).

Patrick Henry:

PS: I can't remember what I meant by 'real'.

Basic Concepts for Life

Patrick Henry:

What are the basic concepts and techniques that are important to know for getting through life?

e.g. mindmapping (which i don't actually use myself but it's a good example)

Doctor Thomas:

In today's complex and changing world, the only thing you need is the capacity for self-directed anticipative learning.

That is, you need a generalised ability to anticipate interaction processes and evaluate your performance.

End of story.

Patrick Henry:

You mean, you need the ability to:

1. Guess what you need to learn
2. Learn it
3. Evalutate your performance

Doctor Thomas:

You've pretty much got it.

You need to:

1. Guess what skills you need to learn

a. Guess what will be good ways of performing the skills

i. Guess what the outcome of various alternative ways ofperforming will be

ii. Evaluate your ability to guess the outcome of various alternative ways of performing

iii. Improve your ability to guess the outcome of variousalternative ways of performing

b. Evaluate alternative ways of performing

c. Improve your performance2. Evaluate your ability to guess what skills you need to learn

3. Improve your ability to guess what skills you need to learn

4. Repeat

You'll be so confused that by the time you've figured out what's going on, you'll be dead, and you won't need to worry any more.

Ideas Are Real

Households 'key' to infrastructure
By Leon Gettler
April 15, 2005

Former Treasury secretary Tony Cole has asked Australian governments to stop focusing on budget surpluses and start taking on debt to build badly needed infrastructure.

Writing in a report from the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, Mr Cole said governments should follow the example of households and businesses, which used debt to build wealth.

[snipped]...

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Business/Households-key-to-infrastructure/2005/04/14/1113251736970.html?from=moreStories

Patrick Henry:

A few years ago I met a Local Government regulator who said that theproblem was the current mania for balanced budgets when they should beinvesting in infrastructure to deal with upcoming growth.

I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. Governments should not finance salaries and paperclips through debt, but financing real, useful infrastructure is a good idea, especially if it pays itself off.

Doctor Thomas:

Ideas are real.

The simple idea of "a balanced budget is good" has profound material consequences.

Patrick Henry:

"Ideas are real" - didn't I read something about that somewhere in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?

Drawbacks of Freedom of Choice in Modern Society

Doctor Thomas:

The private equity trust fund is at least temporarily in the red, andmay be permanently. Macquarie's earlier PET fund returned about 30%paover four years.Private Equity is not supposed to mean "stealing the investors money" -it wouldn't do the Bank's reputation if they did it too often, but I'llwager they won't be spending money on advertising the results of theirlatest effort. Furthermore, the bank gets paid their massive "managementfees" irrespective of how well the fund does. When McBank is called the "millionaire factory" they are referring to senior executives, not investors!

Patrick Henry:

Correctamundo.

We need to do something about the fee structures, like do a Virginisation - offer a good product at a fair price...

Doctor Thomas:

My immediate response is, yes but....

Customers are sufficiently qualified to evaluate the quality of anairline service (though not, admittedly, its safety risk). But (small)investors are not sufficiently qualified to evaluate the difference between a savvy investment bank and dodgy/lucky outfit. In today's complex economic world, investment is a professional skill on par with engineering and medicine (with a corresponding ethical obligation to theclient, in my opinion.)

A Book Fills a Much-Needed Gap

My boss once mentioned another book review that claimed that the book filled a "much-needed gap". He thought it was the most hilariously clever insult ever. But you have to be quite literally (not literarily)minded to understand why it is an insult.

Freedom of the Press in Australia v in Vietnam

Patrick Henry:

This says very clearly what I've wanted to say on this topic.

The difference between Australia and Vietnam is one degree rather than... "speciation"? [Doctor Thomas, is this the correct use or a Humpty-Dumpty use of the word?]

Nevertheless, this difference indegree, I argue, is vital. Anyway, half a loaf is better than none, etc. I'm sure censorship in Australia is not sinister (in the short term anyway, I am alert but not alarmed about the long term), but it does exist due to: bribery; self-censorship due to fear of offending a jingoistic public; self-censorship due to political machinations of the proprietor; self-censorship as a price for a source; libel laws.

Doctor Thomas:

I believe the phrase is "difference of degree rather than kind".

Actually, when you really dig deeply, the difference between"differences of degree" rather than "differences of kind" is adifference of degree, rather than kind.

We Are Unnecessarily Fuel-Inefficient

Patrick Henry:

Wow!

Because of oil's role in the War on Terror, the U.S. stands to benefit enormously from reducing its dependence on petroleum. A coalition ofWashington think tanks has shown that the U.S. can cut oil imports byhalf within two decades by deploying available technologies. This $12billion "Set America Free" proposal enumerates ways to increase fuel efficiency and use domestically produced fuels that are notpetroleum-based.

http://www.iags.org/n0124052.htm

Doctor Thomas:

It is reasonably common "knowledge" among greenie engineers that improving energy efficiency at zero economic cost can easily be achieved with available technologies of the order of two-to-four times, if not up to ten and more times in some cases.

We Are Unnecessarily Fuel-Inefficient

Patrick Henry:

Wow!

Because of oil's role in the War on Terror, the U.S. stands to benefit enormously from reducing its dependence on petroleum. A coalition ofWashington think tanks has shown that the U.S. can cut oil imports byhalf within two decades by deploying available technologies. This $12billion "Set America Free" proposal enumerates ways to increase fuel efficiency and use domestically produced fuels that are notpetroleum-based.

http://www.iags.org/n0124052.htm

Doctor Thomas:

It is reasonably common "knowledge" among greenie engineers that improving energy efficiency at zero economic cost can easily be achieved with available technologies of the order of two-to-four times, if not up to ten and more times in some cases.

Committees v Individuals

A horse, not a camel

May 26th 2005
From The Economist print edition

Committees are better at setting interest rates than individuals, it seems. Why?

THE old jokes about the uselessness of committees go unheeded in the world's central banks. Most of them rely on several heads to set interest rates. An experiment* by three economists at the Bank of England*which eight years ago this month took over rate-setting powers from the once omnipotent chancellor of the exchequer, and has enjoyed conspicuous success since*suggests that collective wisdom is exactly that.

...

* Committees Versus Individuals: An Experimental Analysis of Monetary Policy Decision Making, by Clare Lombardelli, James Proudman and James Talbot. International Journal of Central Banking, May 2005

Doctor Thomas:

The decision of a committee will have lower variance than that of a single individual.

Therefore a committee will make better decisions than an individual when lower variance is required (as perhaps is required by interest rate settings - controlling a system with high inertia such as an economy). I conjecture that an individual will make better decisions than a committee when higher variance and more aggressive control is required (eg driving a car?).

The decision of a committee will be less coherent, in general, than that of an individual. This doesn't matter when the decision is constrained to a single variable as it is when setting interest rates, but it may matter for more complex decisions, such as setting corporate or military strategy.

Typical bloody economists and journalists - one point on a curve is a trend, one trend is a scientific fact... (I'm just jealous that the LSE is so widely reknowned and I'm not).

Fuel Cell Motorcycle

http://www.envbike.com/

See alsohttp://www.intelligent-energy.com/

Brewtopia, the open source beer company

The company website...http://www.brewtopia.com.au/pages.aspx?pageid=23

The Bulletin Article http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/articleIDs/4AEDCBA5C0BE3F06CA25704D0003B1DD

Drinking the profits
08/10/2005

An Australian brewer plans to chug-a-lug its way to riches via the stock exchange. Simon Sharwood reports.

Not even the most radical economist would suggest drinking beer as a route to wealth. But that's the deadly serious plan of Sydney's Brewtopia, an upstart brewer that plans to list on the Newcastle Stock Exchange this year.

"We started as a marketing experiment to see if you could bring a new product to market without spending money on advertising," says CEO Liam Mulhall. That experiment saw the company give customers the right to a share in the company when they joined its email list, plus another each time four friends sign up.

There's also an option up for grabs each time customers buy a case of Blowfly beer.

Blowfly was created by people on the email list, who were polled to design the beer, a loyalty-enhancing practice the company wants to reward. "The whole point of the business model was to be a beer company by the people for the people," Mulhall says.

"The public built our business. They designed the product. We always said we would float the business and make the rights worth something. This is the closing of the loop."

The company surveyed some of its customers - by email of course - and 97% of responses approved the idea of a sharemarket listing to turn their options into real equities which, hopefully, will appreciate in value the more beer is drunk.

Mulhall and his team are creating the formal business structures required to float, with the knowledge that those polled indicated they were willing to invest $1.5m. The money will go towards a push into retail, then new beers. "Unless you drop your stuff in a shop people don't believe you are a real company," Mulhall says. "We've made a great start. It's time for the next step."

The Wish That Got Away

Patrick Henry:

I just had a brilliant idea while doing the dishes but then I got distracted and continued doing the dishes instead of rushing to my desk and writing it down immediately.

Now I can't remember what it was.

I must train myself to write down my ideas immediately.

Doctor Thomas:

Dear Patrick Henry,

I expect that you will find that if the idea really is all that brilliant, and - equally if not - more to the point, relevant to your either your practical or intellectual life, it is bound to pop up again, upon which time you will be able to capture it. I have a rule of thumb to help me decide which ideas to write down so that I don't end up spending all my time writing down ideas - the "same" idea has to pop up spontaneously in my head in three apparently "separate" contexts. But this is possible really only necessary if you start running out of time.

Maybe writing down ALL of your good ideas as soon as they happen is a good way of practicing to remember them (you have to remember them in enough detail to have time to find a pen). Later, you will possibly find that you become so practiced at remembering your good ideas so that you can write them down, that you will actually become aware of more good ideas than you can actually write down. At this point, you would only write down the excellent ones. (That is, perhaps a better strategy than training yourself to write down your ideas immediately is to train yourself to remember your ideas well enough so that you can write them down in a few minutes...) Or maybe not so much a better strategy NOW, as a more advanced skill to EVENTUALLY aim for.

Doctor Thomas

Yes, Vice Chancellor

Dear THOMAS,

We thought you would be interested to learn that, subject to relevant approvals, NUSport will be opening a health and fitness centre inNewcastle's Honeysuckle precinct in 2006. This new city fitness centre,The Forum Harbourside, will offer similar gymnasium, group fitness and private training services and classes to those currently provided on campus at The Forum Sports and Aquatic Centre. In order to fine tunethe mix of products and services to be offered to our members at The Forum Harbourside, we are conducting an online survey of Universitystaff and students.

The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete, and everyperson who completes the survey will go into a draw for a three month Forum PLUS membership valued at $250.

Before we send you the details of how to complete the survey online, we need you to REPLY TO this email to signify your agreement to being part of the survey population. Once the reply is received by the survey administrator you will be sent another email with details of logon id and password.

I hope you will take this opportunity to assist us in providing thevery best health and fitness facilities for university staff andstudents.

Kind Regards

Samantha Martin
General Manager
NUSport

---

Dear SAMANTHA,

I object to electronically "personalised" broadcasted form emails and letters for unsolicited marketing. While in the short term, such tactics may attract increased attention from potential sales leads, in the long term recipients will learn to ignore them, and will thus be unable to quickly distinguish genuinely personal communication. If you can't take the time to type my name and press the email send button, or can't afford to pay someone to do it for you, please do not address me on a first name basis. It's a form of communicative pollution.

Sincerely,

Doctor "What is the world coming to?" Thomas

---

Dear Thomas

As discussed on the phone this afternoon, thank you for your feedback. Itrust now you are more aware of the constraints NUSport faced in administering this survey given University HR Departmental protocol.

Warm regards

Samantha

Samantha Martin
General Manager
Newcastle University Sport

---

Dear Sam,

Thank you for taking the trouble to both telephone and email to explain the circumstances under which an automatically personalised mass marketing email came to be delivered to my inbox bearing your electronic signature. In hastily compiling my previous email missive in exasperation, I was neither expecting nor hoping for a response, and I hope that you did not find my email overly strongly worded.

While my email was, strictly speaking, addressed to you personally, the contents were - in a certain sense - intended to be "addressed" to the world at large - in particular a modern culture that appears intent on sacrificing any last vestige of individual humanity (like the intimacy implied by being addressed on a first name basis) to the demands of the economic marketplace. It was an expression of frustration in which I felt somewhat like a King Canute objecting to the rising tide. Indeed, you'll notice that I didn't even complain about the use of email for mass marketing, just the social falseness of automated personalisation. (And the email was sent on the understanding that Sam the community member would appreciate that the "complaint" was addressed to Samantha Martin NUSport General Manager, the institutional role).

I understand that the social offense of automated "personalisation" over which I spent ten minutes fussing in an email (while not attending to the less weighty issues of anti-terrorism legislation, industrial relations reform, the restructure of the higher education sector, political interference in academic research, and global environmental sustainability) was in fact (or rather, if I'm to be more careful, allegedly) committed by the University administrative bureaucracy. I will not forward my concerns in that direction, partly because I think that it would most likely be a waste of time, but mostly because I am scared of them.

I apologise for taking your time in this matter, particularly if I have caused Sam the community member any distress.

Sincerely,

Thomas, the niche-audience social critic

Nobel author sees parallel in terror laws

Nobel author sees parallel in terror laws
Matt Price
October 24, 2005

NOBEL Prize-winning author JM Coetzee yesterday launched a thinly veiled attack on Australia's proposed anti-terrorism laws, likening the Howard Government's controversial reforms to human rights abuses under apartheid in his native South Africa.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17011315%255E601,00.html

Doctor Thomas:

Don't forget - Nelson Mandela is a convicted criminal.

Now he is a "hero" - profiting from his former crimes.

Should governments fund themselves through a lending arm?

Patrick Henry:

You asked why the government doesn't save and invest capital. I am not totally against this idea - I myself have considered it - but I think it would be complicated and difficult to do well.

You probably know that Singapore does precisely that: http://www.temasekholdings.com.sg/

I think not doing that is a good way of aligning the government's interests with the people's: the government only has a lot of spending money if the people does well.

Also, look at the government of Nauru's brilliant use of the guano money....

Doctor Thomas:

A government shouldn't invest too heavily in the stockmarket, otherwise it will be biased in favour of policies that encourage profit growth. A government shouldn't invest too little in the stockmarket, otherwise it will be biased in favour of policies that ignore profit growth. In order to be neutral, a government should own as many financial and real capital assets as a proportion of its budget as financial and real capital assets are important as a proportion of our social, economic and ecological systems that the goverment is responsible for managing.

Note that if the government owned enough private market type investments, it wouldn't have to tax people from their income tax - all it would need to do is spend the interest, rent and profits to provide all the social services that we need. If the investments were proper financial investments getting a proper return, then this would not distort the economy by providing unfair competition of loss-making enterprises. (A believer in small government would suggest that government ownership of assets is wrong - the asset should be owned by the people, and the government should ask for permission all the time to raise taxes in order to warrant taking any action. A fair enough notion from one perspective, but the unfortunate side effect of this is that invariably when they ask for taxes it is not a fixed absolute sum, but a proportion of everybodies income. At 50%, this arguable stifles incentive to earn. If the government simply owned 30% of the economy's financial assets, then the effective marginal tax rate could be taken down to 0-10%.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

Randy Bentwick:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Is that the saying?

It simply doesn't make sense in the real world. Why would a smarter, more industrious, more ambitious person put in all that effort forsomeone dumber and lazier. It is like an attractive and interesting male using his seductive skills to get everyone but himself laid. Who does that?

Also, don't forget that communism fails to give to each according totheir need... Both sides of the promise are broken.

Doctor Thomas:

Someone smarter, more industrious, and more ambitious person might put in all that effort for someone dumber and lazier IF they were sufficiently rewarded socially. (Think of some of the best motivations for joining the public service, or commitment to charity, or a decision to become a scientist, environmental activist, or a war hero).

Not saying that it SHOULD be done (this is a separate social/cultural design issue), but I reckon it COULD be done. All we need to do is to convince woment to want to have sex with "high social contributors".

What was that quote by Aristotle Onasis "If it weren't for women, all the money in the world would have no meaning"...

Patrick Henry:

You are right, Thomas. Hence the massive commitment of millions to Communism in the 20th century.

And Edwards is right. When everyone saw that the promise wasn't fulfilled, they gave up.

For me, the key is "God helps those who help themselves". I don't mind giving someone a leg-up, but I hate long-term freeloaders.

Doctor Thomas:

Patrick Henry, why do business executives care about the long term survival of their company (some care about it well beyond their prospective retirement age). Why does Warren Buffet care about the future of America (he'll be dead soon). Identification with causes beyond immediate gratification of the self is possible (provided people's immediate material needs are satisfied), but it would require significant shift before it were to become culturally entrenched, and wouldn't be possible to change quickly.

Arnold Kling argues for a more representative democracy with smaller political units. Doctor Thomas discusses.

It is always costly to ensure that agents [government officials] act on behalf of the citizens and that they do not use their power to extract rents from their constituents...

The costs of monitoring agents increase not only with the geographic size of the collective but also with the number of people in the collective. This is because in a larger collective each member captures a smaller share of the rents created by collective enforcement and therefore has less incentive to monitor the agent...With the stake in the collective inversely related to group size, we can expect less monitoring and more rent seeking and rent extraction as group size increases. -- Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, The Not So Wild, Wild West, p. 30

Terry Anderson and Peter Hill make an argument that suggests that democracy does not scale well. As the size of the constituency group gets large, the politician becomes less accountable. Politicians find it easier to extract rents and abuse powers.

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=081505A

Doctor Thomas:

Just a quick point. The concept of "economic rent" is, I believe, not well-defined in the absence of defined (what I will call)"policy-property rights". Stripped of its intellectual sounding justification, "economic rent" can possibly be substituted with "the accrual of advantage to a group of persons that the speaker doesn't believe are morally justified in receiving", usually a group of which the speaker is not a member.

Indeed the "consumer surplus" is (I believe) technically the equivalent (analogue) of producer "economic rent". Civil libertarians whinge andwhine about bureaucrats and governments--- but in democracies they can'tbe that bad. If these alternative ideas of political organisation wereso good, why not run for office and implement them? (This is theanalogue of the argument "nothing that business does can be wrongbecause otherwise their customers would buy from somewhere else/employees would go work for someone else). [Alternatively - bureaucratsmay have it so much better than you, but they deserve it because theywere smart enough to pick that as a career, its a free country and youhad every equal opportunity to be in their position].

One of the things about so-called "special interest groups" which critics of existing political processes seem to fail to acknowledge isthat they are composed of individuals, who presumedly, ought to have aright to pursue their own interests (according to almost all westerntheories of political economy). For example the so-called "specialinterest group" that one of the following diatribe criticises, includes unionists, feminists, lawyers, financiers, intellectuals, entertainers, journalists, public sector employees, employees of organisations assisted by government, people who receive government benefits. That's apretty sizable proportion of the population. If (and I emphasise IF)they form a majority then they aren't some illegitimate "specialinterest group" - they are the mainstream, and meeting their interests is just the "proper" functioning of democracy.

But the following does give some food for thought. Part of the problem with lots of states is that its difficult to achieve co-ordination when required. This has similar ideas with the notions of direct democracy and participatory governance (which suffers from similar challenges regarding co-ordination). A semi-practical way of getting this sort of idea going is to start small and scale up slowly, one step at a time.Presumedly the distributed nature of the political organisationsuggested would not require uniformity across the entire nation (and ifit did, then what particular form of political organisation does theauthor suggest would be able to implement and maintain that sort ofcoordination, if not a centralised one?).

Patrick Henry:

What about a definition like:

An economic rent is a parasitic income. A robber baron is a parasite: he takes but does not contribute. A normal baron is not parasitic. He takes, but he organises defence, creates laws, arbitrates disputes, etc.

Perhaps there is also an element of illegitimacy. A public servant's salary is not 'rent', the bribes he collects are.

Doctor Thomas:

I don't know about your definition, unless we can have a well-defined distinction between a positive act and a negative act.

A robber baron is not a parasite, he takes, but in return he contributes by not beating the fuck out of you.

A factory may collect a payment from the townspeople in the countryside, but in return, it contributes by not polluting their air.

If NOT doing something can be considered a "contribution" then we are stuck... And then it just seems arbitrary and to be resolved as the outcome of argy-bargy political bickering.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance towork hard at work worth doing.

- Theodore Roosevelt

Patrick Henry:

I find it's not actually hard to work hard at something worth doing.It's finding something worth doing that's hard.

Doctor Thomas:

As a recent convert the THEORY (that's irony for you) of action learning, I am pleased to advise you that in many cases, the best way to find out to what extent something is worth doing is to research/investigate it, and actualy DOING it is generally a good way of doingthat research - not necessarily all of it, not necessarily completely,not necessarily with absolute dedication.

After trying to do it a little bit, you generally start to get a bit of a better idea about in what particular sense it might be "worth" doing, what it might cost, etc. You often can't predict the best option by pontificating, but if you only try one option, you'll never find out about the others - this is a good argument for initial dillentantism, followed by increasing focus (but be careful on the time scales, I reckon that thinking to doing should be about 1:2).

Randy Bentwick:

Excellent reply Doctor Thomas. I also find that "knowing what you want" makes it much easier to evaluate the value of any activity. The activity either helps or hinders your goals. Unfortunately, this requires quite thoroughly defined goals. Simply"wanting to be rich" is too vague to be useful.

Patrick Henry:

The problem is: when are you doing something worthwhile and when are you just being self-indulgent? What about those rats pressing the pleasure button instead of the food button over and over until they starved to death?

Doctor Thomas:

I can't tell you that know, I'm too young. Ask someone who is old and has though about it and has a better idea.

Until then, don't worry - if you can't work it out by asking someone else, and we sure as hell can't work it out by thinking about it, the the only answer is to learn by experience. You can reflect on past experience - when were you doing something worthwhile and when were you just being self-indulgent? Now that you are older and wiser, what clues would you look for to tell you whether you are doing something worthwhile or being self-indulgent? If past experience is no guide, then you have to build up some experience in the future, and then reflect. We can't work this stuff out completely theoretically - it has to be based on some experience.

Bending the Rules

Patrick Henry:

I sometimes wonder to what extent the rules can be permitted to be bent.

Doctor Thomas:

What rules?Bent in what way?

Patrick Henry:

THE rules. Bent any way. Perhaps definable as being bent towards achieving the proactical outcomes the rules were intended to achieve in the first place.

Doctor Thomas:

Bending the "rules" in a valuable way is the essence of intelligent ethical judgement. Its supposed to be what you might learn at university in an ethics subject.

The question "to what extent" cannot, logically speaking, have an answer. If it did, then this answer could serve as a rule.

My rough rule of thumb - weigh up the consequences of the advantages of bending the rules in this particular case, and the disadvantages - including the disadvantage of impacting on the culture of rule keeping. It's a bit of a subtle judgement, and depends on the relevant cultural system - if you are surrounded by idiots who only understand formal rules and rule keeping, its better to stick to the rules. If you are surrounded by enlightened individuals who understand that bending the rules doesn't amount to the collapse of civilisation, but that nevertheless rule bending requires sound judgement, then it might be better to bend them.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but if the minds really are actually unredeemably constrained in their littleness, then foolish consistency is probably preferable to anarchy.That's my normative theory of rule bending.