OSCAR robbery and bad medicine

They were robbed. Thats right, the Oscar for Best Picture at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards should have gone to The Social Network. Instead The King's Speech, another very good movie won. The Fighter was also a very good movie, and I'm sure Inception (did not yet see) was as well. My problem is I really don't have much respect for the monarchy or monarchists in general.
Yes, the The King's Speech was about overcoming stuttering, a real problem (especially for a King), and certainly I was sympathetic and even moved by the acting.....I get it. Maybe Colin Firth even deserved Best Actor, but a movie that portrayed how an elitist overcame a problem so that he could fulfil the job which he received by right of inherited entitlement, well, I have a problem with glorifying and celebrating that. So I'm prejudiced against arbitrary rule. What else is new?

The Social Network is a different kind of movie and I remember after watching it that the writing (adapted screenplay) was wonderful, and so was the editing, and each of the actors together did a fabulous and convincing job. It was amazing to me that such a great movie was made about what could be a very dry topic.
A column in the National Post last week said it best for me. Shaun Francis wrote this before Oscar night: "The Facebook story proves that a great idea, combined with good timing and an evangelical founder, can flourish in a system that allows it to quickly attract money, resources and talent. That system is, of course, the free market, capitalist, forprofit economy." He continues by adding: "...I am most struck by what was not part of the Facebook story: government. The Social Network doesn't include a cast credit for "faceless bureaucrat." Nor did the screenplay include any lines about statesponsored venture funds. No science and research tax credits. No federal regulations stipulating who could own Zuckerberg's company, or specifying the language or disclaimers for his home page." Mr. Francis continues by speculating about what would have happened if government were involved (disaster) in creating Facebook and then compares it to the Canadian and Ontario government's "bungled attempts to create electronic medical records."
Mr. Francis adds: "Mainstream political parties and academics claim for-profit medicine will make health care more expensive. Yet despite governments spending bigger and bigger budgets on health care, wait times lengthen and services are delisted. Clearly, taxpayers are not getting value for their money in our monopoly-payer system." 

Facebook has 500-million voluntary users, produces scads of money, and has absolutely nothing to do with government. Mr. Francis concludes that the film The Social Network: "teaches us to value the individual and the free market as agents of change. It proves it's possible to transform the world without a tax credit. It shows that you can make money and make a difference.
"I'm from the government," the man says. "And I'm here to help." When we hear those words, The Social Network suggests we should run in the opposite direction." Absolutely right!

Bringing people to the light

Why is capitalism portrayed as evil by many artists? Because its easy to suspend thought, much easier than thinking. Here are a couple of interesting views:

The case for gold

Some of my libertarian friends will tell me that gold has no intrinsic value, and pays no dividend so why bother owning it? Of course that is true. You can't eat gold, but it makes great jewellery, can be used in the electronics industry in small amounts, is still used by dentists, has a minor role in space exploration, but not much else. The point that is often missed in their argument, is this: for whatever reason gold has been used as a method exchange among people for thousands years. That is indisputable. Gold can, and has been used as money. However dragging around bullion or any other precious metals in your pockets has its downside, literally. The weight of the metal and the problems of storage have created proxies for gold. Once-upon-a-time paper money was a proxy for gold; no longer, too bad. Today if you want to buy gold you can at some banks, or other outlets. The other way to buy gold is through the proxy of an exchange traded fund (ETF), a little more scary but much more convenient. One of the largest ETF's, has the symbol GLD on the New York Stock Exchange. A friend of mine posted an article on the mises.org website today that simply must be read to understand why gold could be important soon. Have a look here.

Pope declares: The end of antisemitism?

It took a German Pope to exonerate the Jews for killing Jesus. From now on the phrase "a day late and a dollar short" will be directly referenced to that pronouncement in the Pope's new book.

I'm sure Jews around the world will breathe a sigh of relief when they read:
"Now we must ask: Who exactly were Jesus' accusers?" the pope asks, adding that the gospel of St. John simply says it was "the Jews."

"But John's use of this expression does not in any way indicate -- as the modern reader might suppose -- the people of Israel in general, even less is it 'racist' in character," he writes.

"After all John himself was ethnically a Jew, as were Jesus and all his followers. The entire early Christian community was made up of Jews," he writes.

So John was not a self-hating Jew. Apparently it was the Temple aristocracy that was the guilty party, not all of Jewry. What a relief! Oops, sorry for this and this! Who says religion is irrelevant.

What is the tipping point to economic strangulation?

That is the question posed at the end of an article in the National Post by Kevin Libin. Apparently in Egypt more than one-third of the working population was employed by the state. That may have been the tipping point that brought down the Mubarak regime earlier this month.
The same kind of situation is happening in many jurisdictions around the world. When the size and cost of the public sector is factored together with their near and longterm entitlements, and the private sector is so burdened and disadvantaged, something has got to give. That maybe what is playing out in Wisconsin and what prompted an article in the New York Times to ask: Is Wisconsin the Tunisia of collective bargaining rights? Talk about mixing metaphors.
In Canada the same kinds of problems occurred in the 1990's when the Liberal government of the time instituted severe cuts to the size and spending of the federal government with very positive economic results. These same problems are beginning to appear again (see the graph); the Conservatives are in power now, but no matter, they spend like Liberals. This of course provides ample evidence that all the major parties in Canada are identical in power - spend and tax or borrow from the future. They all do it.
Even in smaller jurisdictions like cities in Canada or the US something will have to give and soon. The City of Toronto has frozen municipal taxes for 2011, but he future looks bleak for the new cost conscious administration, with a possible $770 million dollar shortfall for 2012. I'll predict an interesting and possibly violent next few months/years.

Incentives work better than disincentives

Would you pay for plastic bags at a store checkout counter? That is an issue in the Toronto region. Of course retailers pay for the bags they provide customers at checkout. The price per bag is minuscule because the number of bags used is large. But efforts to change human behaviour by penalizing them often just create resentment, antagonism or worse.
In libertarian philosophy, choice is always preferred and coercion is always shunned. So whether it's a ban on plastic bags or recreational drugs the operative word "ban" is antithetical to libertarian thinking. Even a surcharge on plastic bags rankles most libertarians. There must be a better way to change behaviour if that is a goal.
I'll put aside for a moment whether plastic bags are desirable or not (here is an opinion I would support). Personally, I have no problem with plastic bags, but if I was a store keeper, I would at the very least offer a choice, like they used to: paper or plastic, very sensible.
Of course store keepers feel compelled to abide by the government edict that prohibits "free" bags and they feel no obligation to offer a choice. Why? Because they were not offered a choice, and orders are orders. But imagine the goodwill that customers would feel if indeed some entrepreneurial store keeper started offering recyclable paper bags to their customers in the spirit of "you can catch more flies using honey than vinegar."
Some people at Volkswagen had thoughts along those lines a while back, so they sponsored what they call "The Fun Theory." The video below was part of that enterprise which causes people to change their behaviour if they are incentivized to do it. Watch the video and go see the others here.

The School Sucks Project - Part 2

A new philosophy magazine called Kontext is looking for readers and contributors. The magazine is published bimonthly out of the United Kingdom and its first issue as a pdf is available for free download. The hard copy may be purchased for about $12US.
Stefan Molyneux is a contributing author (my link), and the first issue is entirely about education which is what tweaked my interest, see Part 1.

The website of Kontext has links to Freedomain Radio and Mises.org which also makes it interesting to me. But what really got me involved was the link to The School Sucks Project.
As a former teacher, I am painfully aware of some of the problems in the government-run educational bureaucracies that exist in the English speaking Western democracies, particularly Ontario. The School Sucks Project (TSSP) uses a surgeons precision to splay open the entire body of the educational system (especially in the United States) and examine the entrails, and it's not pretty. TSSP looks at everything, the origins, the purpose, the immediate and long lasting effects of the school system that has shaped each us in some way for good or ill.
This first issue of Kontext and its link TSSP, asks the right questions about our school system.  How can a system that is regulated and funded by a government bureaucracy, administered by bureaucrats whose primary job is to manage public funds, and executed by unionized teachers whose allegiance is to the system and each other rather than the clientele, deliver good service, a good education? How? It boggles the mind. Mass-produced indoctrination and socialization must by its very nature create oddities, freaks, widgets that don't work. Whose child is so worthless that s/he can be tossed aside as unfit to proceed (like a malformed widget) as so many children are now? The system truly sucks. Is it any wonder that today the political structure of these same Western democracies employs the same sorts of coercion that were ingrained into each of us by the school system? If you are instilled with collectivist ideas for 12 years you begin to think that is normal, to think like a collectivist. It's not normal, we are each of us different in some way, and those differences cannot not be accommodated by the school system as it is.
Kontext offers its readers an alternative to the established model, its worth reading and promoting. I look forward to the next issue in April that will look at "People and Movements." Good luck!

Watson wins Jeopardy!

If you missed the historic win of Watson the computer on TV, here is the brief YouTube version, enjoy:

"Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you"

Did anyone seriously believe that the humans could beat IBM's Watson computer in Jeopardy! last week? Did you seriously think that IBM would screwup the advertising coup of the year to Ken Jennings? I didn't even bother watching, but that does not mean I'm not impressed with the result. This was a major step since IBM's Chess contests with Gary Kasparov in 1996 and 97. Deep Blue beat Kasparov in May 1997, after first losing to him the previous year. That computers can play chess is no big deal these days, but understanding Jeopardy! clues, is another issue.
Next year (2012) is The Alan Turing Year and maybe IBM is planning to crack the Turing Test and win the Loebner Prize for the first computer to fool humans into thinking they are talking to a human, maybe. Passing The Turing Test would be a major step in Artificial Intelligence research and since it took 25 researchers and four years to teach Watson to play Jeopardy!, I have my doubts.
Both chess and Jeopardy! have much in common, they are both games, somewhat predictable with rules, although Jeopardy! is much broader in scope, and more difficult because of the language aspect, neither really compares well to real life situations. However if the "real-life" situation is somewhat confined to a particular occupation, Watson may become an interesting help mate. This link will open a TED webpage that features a discussion with one of Watson's creators and some of the implications of this type of technology.
It seems Canadian medical schools are being accused of bad-mouthing family practitioners at a time when a shortage of this type of physician is possible because of aging boomers like me. Medical schools seem to have a bias to specialties for their students instead of family practice, and as a result less than one-third of medical students show interest in that field.
Here is a possible role for Watson, that is, program it so that it might be able to interact with human patients in a medical practice. Could Watson in real time assist in diagnosing ailments while freeing up physicians to do physical exams or other things? One of the major complaints that I can see in Canadian medicine is face time with physicians so that they can hear the patient's whole story. Of course this is the value of the family practitioner, s/he can discover all aspects of patient health IF they had the time. Furthermore, computers never have bad days, spats with their spouse or partner, headaches or get sidetracked by chatty patients. Computers will execute their program, ask ALL the pertinent questions, and a nuanced computer like a Watson, could get a useful chunk of data that a human doctor could miss. It's a thought anyway, but not that far-fetched as you can see here. 

Welcome to New Hampshire.....

No income tax, no general sales tax, less taxes in general and relatively limited government, if you think like a libertarian, you might like New Hampshire.
ReasonTV has a very interesting interview with one of the producers of a documentary that:  "follows one man who is walking across the country to raise awareness about the Free State Project, another who already moved to New Hampshire and works as an advocate for medical marijuana patients, and a Ron Paul-inspired teenager who decides to leave his friends and family in California to live in New Hampshire."