Western identity & Residual Privacy

Conflicts between public order and private liberties are as old as jurisprudence. The only conclusion, however, that was able to survive after centuries of critical thinking and political experience, is that whenever privacy disappears and the limits to public control are lifted, law becomes a mere shadow of itself. There may be, as a matter of fact, no better definition of totalitarianism and tyranny than the crossing of these borders by governments and public force.

It is also a constant lesson of history that, at any given point of time, excellent reasons can be found for shrinking somehow the sphere of privacy or violating it altogether. Authorities can always point to some actual or imaginary danger, coming from some inside or outside enemy, to justify such abuse. Every time the argument remains the same: “honest people have nothing to fear: their life can be turned into a glass house at no risk to them, as only the guilty has motives to protest”. Opponents to invasions of privacy are thus accused of criminal inclinations, absence of civic sense or lack of patriotism. Submission at all costs to the supposedly superior interests of law enforcement authorities becomes the sign of a good citizen, while taking at heart the principles of law in a civilized society is seen as proof of moral weakness, as if  hoping for a good police prevented  from blaming a bad one.

Perfectly aware of the implications of so dangerous an ideology, the fathers of modern constitutions were unanimous in safeguarding privacy against recurrent attacks. All over the Western hemisphere, these men thought that individual freedom is together with dignity the only value to be placed above any other consideration, even when efficiency and security are at stake.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights thus sets forth: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.” Few principles are now turned into more mockery. The “War on terrorism” was the occasion for the United States and the United Kingdom to ridicule all such rules. Germany, the most protective country for privacy, and France, against its own constitution, are now on the move. Spyware – ironically renamed ‘policeware’ – will be officially allowed, putting the entire content of private computers at the disposal of law enforcement authorities. At all times and from any place, all communications and data belonging to the targeted persons will be available online for analysis and storage, – an invasion of privacy in many ways much worse than putting cameras in bedrooms.

The fact that these new methods of surveillance are initially placed under the control of a judge is far from insignificant, but is certainly not a sufficient protection. As long as judges are not granted the appropriate tools allowing them to verify effectively the strict application of their orders, as well as the destruction of data irrelevant to specifically authorized investigation, the door is more than open to abuse. No one of course will give judges access to spyware allowing them to check the computers belonging to law enforcement agencies.

These methods are relatively inefficient against criminals, as was shown by the inability to catch Osama bin Laden in spite of the largest deployment ever of surveillance technologies. Criminals will use pigeons if need be. They are on the contrary very efficient against the average man, generally unaware of such threats and always defenceless against them.

There was a time when the Western legal system could be arguably opposed to Eastern despotism. This time is no more. The only residual differences are between primitive methods of coercion, such as actively blocking access to selected website, and the more sophisticated invasions of privacy through spyware or similar instruments.

The main combat of the 21^st century will not be between Right or Left or West and East, it will be between the defence of civil liberties and the submission to the universal tyranny which taking shape in front of us. Time has come to take sides.

This how the world goes.

No post today

I am now traveling in Dubai, a more hectic city than expected. Yesterday, I heard someone say: ‘If you want a quiet job, go to New-York!’

Cassandra’s principle (Part 1)

A law of incertitude applies to political events: if they could be forecast, most could be prevented from happening, therefore most forecasts would be proven wrong. If anyone can predict political events, he is a Cassandra no one believes or listens to. One can nevertheless get a feeling on how things are going. The main question is whether we are in stable environment, i.e. one in which few events have a high probability to upset the present overall situation, or in an environment close to chaos and full of crossroads, i.e. one in which anyone of a large range of possible local events can trigger dramatic changes.

Obviously, no period of history is either completely stable or chaotic (total anarchy almost never happens), but some are shakier than others. It would seem to me that we have entered an age of particular fragility, in some ways similar to the first decade of the 20th century. From an optimistic point of view, things look rather good. The great confrontation between East and West, Communism and Democracies, Soviet Union and the USA, which had been very close to terminate mankind (all direct actors now admit that the Cuban missiles crisis had put during three days the world’s future at the mercy of a dice roll), is now over. The globalization of the economy has opened gigantic markets made of billions of new consumers, while massive transfers of technology have allowed these populations to acquire solvability. The parliamentary regime is an accepted model, at least as a matter of principle. In real terms, production has reached a point where starvation is not far from being under control. Global public health is gradually improving.

On the other hand, several lines of fractures can be noted. Nuclear proliferation is the most visible danger, especially in connection with the Middle-East, a zone of extreme instability and major implications for all strategic interests in the world. Both Israel and Pakistan are nuclear powers; Iran is actively trying to become one; Several NATO countries and Russia are located in the immediate neighborhood; the U.S. have concentrated most of their troops in the region, a majority of which are already in a situation of combat. Organized liberation forces are willing and financially capable of acquiring nuclear substances usable as ‘dirty bombs’, and perhaps ‘lost’ tactic missiles from the former Soviet Union. Iran and the Hezbollah have emphasized their stance of refusal of the Israel’s existence. Israel in turn is now a fortress, physically surrounded by a wall, threatened by a new generation of Palestinians born and raised in refugee camps outside the wall, or humiliated by the intense security controls they are subject to inside the wall. This population, which could not be integrated in either Lebanon or Jordan, and which is being denied an actual ‘right of return’ by all peace agreements that have been contemplated, receives a strong ideological backing from a Muslim world composed of 1.2 billion individuals, including most surrounding governments. Deprived of classical military forces, Palestinians can only oppose their enemy by civilian disobedience or rebellion, as well as terrorist attacks which have become a standard mode of action. Such attacks are renewed, in a vicious circle, by the inevitable repression following each of them. No Israeli administration would ever consider a withdrawal, and if the country was to be placed in a situation of ultimate danger, the chance of nuclear weapons being used can be estimated as high. The vital assistance Israel is receiving from the U.S. is an additional motive for alienating neighboring populations and governments who tend to view the Jewish state as a colonial instrument in the hands of the Superpower. The US, having vainly attempted to dissuade opposition to their views by conquering altogether Iraq, one of the major local powers, and threatening both Syria and Iran of extending military actions to their territories, are now suffering from a drastic credibility decrease. Failure to control the civil war in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as a confusion between the notion of ‘peace process’ and the mere enforcement of their own immediate interests, are preventing them from stabilizing the area. Iran finds itself reinforced by prospects of either a formal or an informal partition of Iraq, thanks to strong ties with the Shiite majority. Pakistan, a key player, is entering a new phase of incertitude. Pressured for years by the US for a better assistance in the Afghanistan conflict and elimination of Al Quaeda, General Musharaff had to accentuate the dictatorial aspects of his regime, and is now on the verge of being ousted. Even if he his replaced in the short-term by new leaders agreeable to the West, history has shown that such evolutions can take an unpredictable turn, as the exile of the Shah demonstrated in Iran against all the Carter administration’s plans. A nuclear Pakistan eventually falling in radical Islamist hands would probably mean a catastrophic change for Western interests. Waves would be likely to reach the shores of Saudi Arabia and other fragile monarchies hosting critical reserves of mineral energy.

Even if the Middle East was the only zone of strategic concern, and even putting aside long term (but serious) climatic risks, other lines of fracture must also be taken into consideration

(To be continued)

The formation of public opinion

Public opinion is not an aggregate of individual opinions which would have been formed independently. Quite the opposite, really: opinions are for the largest part products of a preexisting public opinion. Naturally, public opinion acts in a circle, as it is reproduced through the very elements it has produced, the individual opinions.

Within its workings, Individuals are not passive, but they are restrained. All they can generally do is select according to their own preferences or interests (what Mark Twain used to call their ‘corn-pone opinions’) among a limited set of possible opinions deemed as legitimate and previously authorized by public opinion. In practice I may, for instance, entertain an opinion favorable to Obama, Clinton or McCain, not an ’illegitimate’ opinion, i.e. one which would be considered as eccentric, ridiculous, foolish, extremist or mad by public opinion. Well, I can, but I may not, at least if want my opinions to be discussed, respected or spread by others on any significant scale, and unless I don’t mind being ridiculed, isolated, silenced or persecuted. Actually, if I am obstinate enough not to mind this kind of social pressure, my attitude is likely to be interpreted as an additional confirmation of the illegitimacy of my opinions.

No individual or group of individuals can control public opinion which is essentially a-centric. Believers in conspiracy theories do not understand the mechanisms at work. The most one can do is influence public opinion, propaganda being the primary tool. Advertising – as we shall see – is the other one.

Not all individuals, however, were born equal before public opinion. Some of them are simply more intelligent, they have the capacity to question received ideas. Those can be extremely influential, usually after their death, when the previous ideas have lost momentum. They are very rare.

Another group are the so-called ‘opinion makers’. These do not actually ‘make’ anything, but have the power to focus public attention on a specific opinion rather than on others. These people are the actors of the Media. Their role is to increase the legitimacy of a subset of opinions, first by mentioning it, then by relaying it. In the general case, their audience already shares their subset of opinions. Very few people read a newspaper promoting adverse opinions. All they are looking for is a reinforcement of their established opinions, by the proper selection of appropriate facts and points of view. The more an opinion is reinforced, the better it spreads. Media backing such opinions get more following, and become more legitimate and influential.

The surge of the Internet did not entail any dramatic change until now. Assuming that the entire range of possible opinions is present on the web (a reasonable assumption), each of them remains almost invisible and diluted until some mass media directs public attention onto them. This can be done by non-digital media (a newspaper or a TV program mentioning an opinion expressed on the Internet, or adopting such opinion), or by digital media (e.g. major blogs). Self-organized buzz can in some cases spread virally, although none – to this date – have been able to become influential on a macroscopic scale without the leverage or traditional media.

In order to survive, traditional media need resources. Subscribers not being enough in most occurrences, advertising does the rest or does it all. In other words, any non-digital media is dependent on advertising. As advertising has also become the main source of revenues over the Internet (see previous post), the rule applies basically to all media of any kind.

Theoretically, advertisers on a perfect market are indifferent to the content of the support. They are supposed to advertise strictly according to the size of the audience. They don’t. They advertise only in ‘legitimate’ media, i.e. media relaying ‘legitimate’ ideas. Not only they are human beings, reluctant to help in any way people spreading dissenting ideas, but they are also aware that the ‘illegitimacy’ of the content can affect the image of whatever they have to sell. Even in the rare occasions where they accept a certain amount of scandal to draw more attention, things are kept within strict boundaries. For instance, Benetton ‘shocking’ marketing campaigns remained politically correct, until they had to be stopped altogether.

This means that media and therefore people working for them cannot afford emphasizing anything else than mainstream or innocuous ideas, unless they have a niche and motivated subscribers. Any opinion deemed to be illegitimate, no matter how sound or well documented it may be, is put aside or condemned. This includes original ideas, as well as views opposed to those of most people, or contrary to the interests of the advertisers.

Large corporations do not have to plot to impose their views. They don’t even have to plan it or think about it (although they of course can if need be). They simply have to advertise. Directly taking over the media is also an option, but not a necessary one. This is easily done, their opinions being usually of the mainstream kind or, more precisely, representing the subset of mainstream opinions the most compatible with their own interests.

The American people will soon elect the next President. Their choice will be limited however to candidates acknowledged as being legitimate by the media. May be a good group, may be not. Nothing can be done about it.

By the way, this post is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is how the world goes.

Please make me pay!

The more we use the Internet, the least we seem to have to pay for anything. I couldn’t list the almost unlimited number of things that are offered for free. Free search, free delivery, free trial, free software, free email account, free download, just name it (even THIS blog is free). Everything is free, gratis, no strings attached. What a wonderful world.

Of course you know the secret: the so-called ‘ad-funded’ model. You don’t pay for anything, as the nice, the sweet, the generous advertisers do it for you. The ad-funded model is what allowed Google, one of the smallest companies in the world to become almost overnight one of the largest ones. Every day the add-funded model gains more ground. Forecasts are clear: the future is there. Web 2.0 or Web 99.0 simply means more and more advertising all over the web. In the event you are an entrepreneur, don’t even think of raising a dime for anything else than a project under an ad-funded model.

Yes, I know there is no free lunch and you sometimes wonder if the whole thing is really that healthy. Let’s not be paranoid. Why bother when such a galore of free stuff lies beyond the keyboard? Do I really care if my mailbox is limited in size or if the software I downloaded will only work for 2 weeks? Or if I lose my account when I change my ADSL subscription? Is it more meaningful that search results showing advertised links at the top, quickly followed by garbage at the bottom, or scientific information drawn from an unedited encyclopedia? Is it of any importance to me that my email address and all information gathered about me are being resold all over the planet, generating spam and opening the fascinating possibility of identity theft? Why should I worry about discreet cookies allowing gentle advertisers to better target me? A minor inconvenience compared to all the money I save. Because I save, don’t I? It is after all the well-known purpose of advertising to make people spend less and save money. On top of it, all the messages advertisers send me are for my own good. Thanks to them I am more intelligent and better informed. I had no clue, for instance, that my next car was a transformer and that it would make me a better father. Now, I know.

What would be really great is a fully ad-funded universe. What if I id not even have to pay for my car? Well, in fact, I don’t have to. They will give me such extended credit that buying it is definitely a no brainer. Can you imagine calling long-distance for free, and simply having a reliable soda company interrupt the boring conversation every 2 minutes for always more instructive news?

I am dreaming. Things are not that perfect yet. For some bizarre reason, some of the things I need most still carry a price-tag, including my high-speed Internet connection. Can’t I change that, for a marvelously free and sluggish connection, full of funny pop-up screens? Yes, you can.

This is how the world goes.

Schedule

Next post on Monday

How smart are the cynics?

Political cynics are people who support or implement some ‘dirty work’ in order to protect their own personal or national interests. They view themselves as smarter than people who simply think their best interest is to promote the goals they believe in, using means that do not contradict the very goal. The cynics call themselves realists and practical minds. They call their opponents idealists and dreamers.

Realpolitics is to deal with other people as they are, not as they should be. Even idealists can accept to interact with their enemies, and compromise on certain points to obtain more important ones. Cynics seldom compromise with anyone who does not share their views, with the exception of pawns whom they think they can manipulate. Their nature is to adopt the same methods they condemn in others, and fight anyone different from what they would themselves like to be (and are not). Starting from such illogical principles, they tend to come up with schemes generally too complex to be successfully implemented, entailing incontrollable implications. Cynics, as a matter of fact, are the ones who back dictatorship to protect democracy or reduce civil liberties to warrant them, attack weak countries to threaten powerful ones, torture advocates just as well as opponents of free speech, bomb civilian populations to deter terrorists, or take any such inconsistent course of action.

Cynics are extremely inefficient. They engage in covert operations, overlooking the fact that they almost always end up in being publicized. They back political regimes contrary to what they would like for themselves, blurring their own image, and alienating therefore masses of potential supporters. They spend vastly more in attempting to control resources than in simply purchasing them, or in plotting against the nationalization of a company than in accepting a reduction of its expected profits. They start wars they rarely win and cannot end. Too confident is the absence of limits of what they are ready to do, they bet on total victory in such a way that humiliation inevitably follows any reversal of fortune .

Absence of scruples is not enough to make a political cynic. It also takes a complete misunderstanding of social dynamics, as well as a rare degree of historical ignorance. Al Capone never became the richest man in America, Adolph Hitler’s death was not full of glory, and most dictators end up executed, assassinated or in exile. Gandhi and Mandela, sticking to means compatible with their own goals, and proclaiming their actual intentions directly, were much more successful. As always, really smart people are scarce. They prefer simplicity to complications, plain truth to tangled lies. Being aware of the incertitude of events, they contemplate failure as a permanent possibility, and take steps that have a value in themselves, each one of them still making sense even if it was to be the last one. They also are the only ones capable of turning their opponents into followers, by the force of example.

The cynics, a widespread species, do not belong to a specific place or ideology. They survive not because they achieve anything, but only because there are so many of them that there is plenty of supply to replace those who fail. By the laws of randomness, some can still get lucky.

This is how the world goes.

Dealing with socialist leaders in Latin America

Of the three main diplomatic issues the future administration in Washington will be confronted to, one can be considered as more easily manageable than the others, i.e. the relationship with socialist leaders in Latin America. It is disconnected from the intricacies of the Middle Eastern situation, and free from direct involvement of foreign powers.

This was not always the case. Until the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, Latin America had been a major field of confrontation between East and West. The following decade was the time of an illusion for the U.S., then contemplating the prospects of unbound hyper-power. Concerns were limited to minor local conflicts, and the strategy was to focus on imposing the Washington consensus (also dated 1989) to the global economy, including obviously South and Central America. The possibility to enforce unopposed both the Monroe doctrine and the Washington consensus led to pursue a policy of eradication of socialism in Latin America. Masterminds of covert and clandestine operations went unleashed. The debt crisis of the 1980s (when banks had been losing almost overnight in the region a century of profits) was forgotten. Military dictatorships received full support.

After 2001came the discovery that hyper-power has limits. No matter how many troops, how much money, how many restrictions to civil liberties, how much acceptance of the deterioration of one’s public image, the best that could be achieved, even in the absence of any strategic rival, was the abduction and execution of an obnoxious leader in a weak country. Almost everyone came to understand that time had come for revised foreign policies.

Unfortunately, instead of considering the easiest problem at hand (Latin America), the attention remained focused on the most difficult one (Iraq and the Middle-East). Escaping the mud pit in Iraq will be almost as tricky as calming down the hornet’s nest in Palestine. Things can certainly be put on a better track. No free ride can yet be expected. The more, however, Washington will pull back from the East, the more important dealing with issues in the West will become.

Discussing a strategy for Latin America should not remain a parlor conversation, and should move up in the priority list, even though socialism in Latin America certainly does not attract masses of supporters in Washington. Introducing the topic in the presidential campaign would even be a dangerous move: who, other than a radical or a wimp, could even think of softening the hard-line? On the other hand, Latin America can become a problem.

The danger does not come from governments. Putting propaganda aside, any one who does not get his primary information from TV, knows that Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Raul Castro, Alan Garcia, Daniel Ortega, and of course Lula da Silva, Tabaré Vasquez or Michelle Bachelet, are no threat at all for the security of the United States. The danger is more in the fact that – except the Castros who are a legacy from the past – all of them have been democratically elected, in spite of powerful opponents strongly backed from the North. Even Chavez was able to lose a referendum (not something that would happen frequently in a regular dictatorship). He had previously managed to be reinstated after a coup attempt supported by the local media. This means that the majority of the population of the entire subcontinent has now shifted to left-wing opinions, an evolution not to be taken lightly, and which cannot be countered anymore by series of military coups like during the good old days. The reasons for this are well-known: extreme poverty, extreme inequalities, resentment against right-wing authoritarian regimes, discredit of the U.S. administration.

None of these leaders obviously intends to serve the U.S. economic interests and it may be unpleasant to see Chavez pressuring ExxonMobile Corp. for more tax income, unpleasant and yet certainly not tragic. Not only the amounts at stake are limited, but the motivations are also understandable. Let’s try a thought experiment: let’s imagine that Venezuela is by far the largest economic and military power in the world or that Bolivian oil companies are the biggest, while extreme poverty and unemployment is dominant in the North, a handful of billionaires close to Caracas pushing for always more international control over U.S. companies. Who in Washington would not be tempted by reclaiming part of the oil fields in Texas, and preventing some Bolivian TV network based in D.C. from pouring its propaganda all over the country? Not even going as far as imagining Nicaraguan covert operations in Virginia, the whole thing sounds like a joke or madness. It nevertheless reflects a widely spread feeling down there.

There are only two ways to go about it. One is ” too bad, tough life, that’s how things are, in any case this could not happen as socialism cannot build strong companies (what about Gazprom?), so let’s continue as before”. The other way is to compromise in order to avoid further radicalization, as well as a possible connection with other sources of radicalism elsewhere. One can be a believer in the virtues of free market economy and still understand than certain situations, such as the one which justified the New Deal, require a modified treatment. Persistent extreme poverty and growing inequalities in Latin America are a long term problem which can only made worse by short-sighted views.

Normalizing the relations with socialist leaders is a two-way street. In all fairness, there is a double cost attached to it: ideological, as the Washington consensus may have to be softened down; and financial, as one would have to allow theses countries to reclaim some of their national resources. In exchange, a consolidation of Latin America (including Cuba) as a safe strategic area may be obtained, together with an much improved image of the U.S. in the world, a weakening of purely revolutionary movements, and a reduction in sovereign risks.

Unfortunately manly hardliners often look better than long-term and more pacific strategists. Brutal thinking is an all-time bestseller.

This is how the world goes.

Czar and Emir

Russia is now the last great colonial power in the world, ruling over 160 ethnic groups speaking 100 languages, on a vast territory (the largest in the world). Three quarters of its surface is located east of the Urals, i.e. outside the metropolitan part of the empire.

Russia’s economy (smaller than Brazil’s) is predominantly based on the exploitation of natural resources inside its colonial domain: commodities, raw materials, agricultural inputs. Oil & Gas by themselves account for about 30% of the total tax revenues. At 10 to 15 dollar per barrel, the second largest producer of crude oil after Saudi Arabia was a former communist country; at $100 it turns into an Emirate.

Russia is a somewhat unusual emirate, being governed by an elected Czar chosen by the KGB aristocracy. It is not a particularly efficient one, with a GDP growing by 5 to 8% a year, while the price of commodities was multiplied about 4 times over a period of ten years.

As most emirates, Russia is also bound to be conservative in foreign policy. Soviet Union was backing every movement of independence. Russia is not. The main goals it can now achieve are formal respect for its national pride and be left alone in Chechnya.

More awkward than anything for an emirate, Russia is not a friend of Islam. Afghanistan is the name of its worst humiliation, more painful perhaps than the loss of Central Europe. Muslims are the only potential danger for the internal peace of the realm. Orthodox Russia is thus coming back with a vengeance. Hence the significance of Serbia, and the hostility to Kosovo’s independence, a multiple blow to the new Russian values.

Can the Kremlin do much about it? Not really. A move against the Baltic Republics, the only one to be technically feasible, would entail long-term isolation and would not achieve much. The almost inevitable partitioning of Kosovo, the northern province rejoining Serbia, may be enough of a nominal consolation.

In any case, the Russian public opinion is currently focused on a more extraordinary event: the turning of the Emir into a Vizier after next elections. A good subject of conversation.

This is how the world goes.

Nationalities in Europe: Confederacy or Commonwealth?

The European Union started as a future confederacy, all it has become is an intricate commonwealth. Both have their own advantage. It is however important to neither mix the two things up, nor consider them as mutually exclusive. A confederacy or confederation can emerge within a commonwealth and be a part of it. Conversely, not all members of the commonwealth wish to participate in a confederacy. Trying to reform the European commonwealth in order to turn it into a confederation would be a mistake, for members actively resisting such integration will always be found. The two entities are compatible as long as they remain separate.

The British (or should I rather say the English?) are experienced and comfortable with commonwealths. They reject the idea of a confederation, for a good reason among many. UK is the only country in Europe entirely made of clearly distinct nations placed under the domination of one, and odds are high that several of them would obtain quasi-independence as autonomous parts of a confederation. Scotland and Wales do not have the critical mass to be actual countries in the modern world, but could become direct participants in a confederation, severing more ties with England than what they have already been doing. The more diluted the European Union, the safer Westminster is. Italians, for symmetrical motives, are inclined towards a confederation: as none of their rival regions ever succeeds in dominating all others, more European integration can only reduce their persistent tensions, while preserving the concept of Italian unity. Belgium is placed in a similar situation, with none of the two provinces being able to takeover.

Some other countries in Europe also have serious problems with their nationalities, but these are minority problems of a different nature. Spain is the main one with Basques and Catalans, followed by Greece with the Turks in Cyprus. Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia, or Corsican separatists in France do not have as much momentum and resolve. As Greece, Romania and Slovakia are most unlikely to be initial members of a European confederation, the only real question mark comes from Spain which, until now, has been demonstrating strong pro-European inclinations (while keeping a close eye on its historical ties with Latin America).

A commonwealth, in any case, doesn’t help solve such issues. Being indefinitely extensive, even the presence of Turkey in the current commonwealth is easily conceivable, whereas its presence in a European confederation would hardly make any sense. A confederation can only happen between countries willing to share at least the same currency, and common physical borders, a step already taken by many. They must also accept to form a joint constituency and elect a confederate administration endowed with actual (yet not exclusive) judiciary, diplomatic and military responsibilities. This does not look totally unrealistic if we consider at least the initial core countries of the EU, too strong to leave all their military decisions to NATO, too weak to act separately and by themselves on any significant scale. In agreement on most international issues, they also share more or less the same economic and social model.

European integration was put at a standstill by its extension to Central European nations. No matter the structure of institutions, there was no way so many actors could to be in agreement on all major policies, or could build anything else than a forced free market economy, opposed to the views an traditions of countries that had initiated EU. France was the first one to back off, vetoing by referendum the treaty of Nice. This does not mean that the confederal idea is dead. Having supported and ratified the so-called ‘mini-treaty’, which effectively ends the institutional deadlock, France has proven to be back in Europe. With his Mediterranean Union initiative, the French President is also trying to show that a loose commonwealth can be added to a tighter one, a concept Germany is reluctant to accept. Would a loose confederacy within a tight commonwealth be agreeable to both of them? That’s about all it would take to make it happen.

A small European confederation would inevitably become the dominant element in the large European commonwealth, an unpleasant prospect for some other members, but one they could do little to prevent, as any move towards unification can be made within the framework of the established system of “reinforced cooperation”.

As it is already hard to understand the past, I shall certainly refrain from predicting the future. All I can hope is that clarifying what EU has become, i.e. an over-administrated (and under-managed) commonwealth, may help find new and perhaps more reasonable solutions. Reasonable solutions are rarely the most probable, and yet may never be deemed impossible.

This is how the world goes.

Re-educating educators

The education system in France, which used to be among the best in the world, undergoes a deep crisis, for reasons of wider interest than the local problems encountered by this specific nation.

The most-cited causes are lack of public funding and rigidity of the unions. Lack of public funding is a relative notion, especially when the entire proceeds of the national income tax are devoted to education (€77 billion in 2007, equivalent to 28% of government spending, almost 6% of GDP, compared to about 5.5%. in the U.S.). Private funding is missing much more, as the total expenditure for all levels of education reaches 7.5% of GDP in the US against 6.4% in France, a spread that could not possibly be reduced by a further increase in public spending.

Improper diagnosis and subsequent mistreatment only add to the intricacies of any serious illness. What motivates teachers’ unions to oppose almost any reform is a combination of constant decline in relative income together with a severe degradation of their working conditions. Masses of students are now unfit to classical forms of education for which they show little or no respect at all. It should be said in their defence that the system was not designed for their current needs, leaving them with high levels of unemployment.

The key to these issues is that a small-scale production system was turned into a mass-production with no structural change. This would be true in almost any country. Shameless demagogy only made things worse in France. Politicians, who had received an ultra-elitist education, promised the baccalaureate to everyone (a target of 80% of each generation was proudly announced in 1985).Putting aside the pure and simple impossibility to do this by other means than devaluating diplomas, professional training at primary school level was abandoned, secondary education being put on the same track in the name of equality, while overcrowded universities were discreetly postponing the necessary selection until it was too late.

Before WWII, a university such as Sorbonne had a faculty of hardly a few dozens people and a few thousands students. Secondary school teachers were recruited among the best students, paid like superior army officers, and treated as notables. Most jobs were obtained after primary school. Faculties are now measured in thousands, upper education in millions, teachers are underpaid, students spend years unwillingly sitting in classes where they remain unprepared to the real world. Those of them who do not dream of becoming drug-dealers or civil servants struggle to obtain internships from corporations terrified by what they see as hordes of unreliable barbarians.

Well-off families spend fortunes in private lessons to help their children keep up with the most exclusive private or public schools which, in any case, eliminate all students not on a par with their statistics, leaving others with the prospects of always more assistance from their parents or of a shaky future.

Few students are good or bad in maths by themselves. Some are lucky to have had a good math teacher, while others were not. The same applies to most fields of knowledge. No country can produce tens of thousands of good maths teachers. It is even more difficult to train at once new teachers for new branches of education better corresponding to the actual marketplace: accounting, law, electronics, general problem solving, design, etc.

The goal therefore is not to have more teachers leading more students to upper education, but teachers better paid, preparing all students to citizenship and employment.

One way to do this is to include professional training at every level, instead of turning it into mockery and a dead-end for the least gifted. One doesn’t need to be a follower of Mao to understand the advantage of having been trained in several skills during one’s youth. Some notions of say carpentry learnt at primary school and of software development learnt at secondary school would not make a worse lawyer after he got his PhD. Conversely, the basics of citizenship (introduction to the legal system, tax returns, world history, etc) should be considered a must for everyone.

The other way is to switch from the archaic system of one teacher in his class, to fully interactive digital learning. Richard Feynman, a leading physicist of the 20^th century, was also a great pedagogue. He could have planted the seeds of science in to the mind of lemmings. Minds of such quality are scarce, and yet can be found in every generation. We can however leverage their talents by massive investments in the production of multimedia courses by people of this kind. Regular teachers should be retrained as coaches for the controlled and efficient use of digital lessons and related tests. A smaller number of more efficient teachers would select these courses as they used to do with manuals, customizing their usage for their various types of students. A large part of school time would be spent at multimedia libraries and workshops, requiring less physical supervision. Work could be seamlessly continued from home. Programs could easily evolve according to the economical or technological developments.

The goal is clear, the money is there. Will it happen soon enough?

You know how the world goes.

Please do not write novels

I shall never write novels.

When I was a little boy, a priest confiscated the novel I was about to read. I now understand he did it for the completely wrong reasons. His idea was that various sexual references included in the book were a threat for the purity of my soul. He did not realize that familiarity with sex and romance is part of a good education and a precious stock of knowledge. The problem with novels is elsewhere.

There is nothing neutral about a literary genre. Each one conveys a specific view of things. The vision of the world you can find in a novel will never be the same than the one you get from a tragedy or from epics. They cannot be translated into one another other. A Shakespearian novel would be a total impossibility. Each society puts some genre above all others and for good reasons: our favourite literature reflects who we are. The novel is the democratic genre par excellence. No matter the author, the message is the same: do not worry about your low level of self-esteem, other people, particularly the ones with noble aspirations, grand ambitions or romantic hopes, can be much more miserable than you could possibly fear to be. The entire art of the novelist is to tell their story, torture them like an entomologist pinning an insect on a piece of cork, humiliate them in all imaginable manners, show their weaknesses and - above all – make sure not a drop of illusion does remain in their heart when we turn the last page.

Tragedy does exactly the opposite. Shakespeare always treats his monsters with utmost respect, and shows divine forces animating their dark projects. Lady Macbeth, Gloucester, even Shylock are never mocked. The grandeur of their crimes is what brings them onto the scene. They stand there with as much dignity as Juliet.

“Lost Illusions” could be the title of any good novel. “Journey to the end of Night” is an alternative. No wonder Louis-Ferdinand Celine, immense genius and abject man, is by far the best French novelist in the 20^th century. His character was the person he despised most and knew best, i.e. himself. Debasing so much and so well one’s own double cannot be the act of a good man. But who told us after all that an artist should be a moral person?

If modern novels are a long exploration of the gutters of the mind, the spirit and of society, classical novels were already of the same vein. It all started with Cervantes depicting a brave man trying to restore the values of chivalry and exert the proud virtues of knighthood, as a grotesque example of the vanity of men. Mrs de Lafayette turned the loving Princess of Cleves into a harlot. Flaubert forbade mutual love or even intelligence to all his characters. For a while, however, American novels kept an epic tilt, while Russian authors were still breathing the sharp air of the steppes. Melville could not help being fascinated by Ahab’s folly. Dostoyevsky felt visible compassion for Raskholnikov’s. But when Jack London’s Martin Eden came, the game was finally over. Humiliation was to be from now on the only reward of extraordinary men.

I read novels. I must confess I do it with great pleasure when they help me discover aspects of the human heart I did not know existed or could not understand. I have generally little personal sympathy for the imaginary world novelists live in. All they can get is my admiration. This is not enough to want to be one of them.

No matter what my own preferences are, novels will remain one of the best expressions of our time.

This is how the world goes.

Intellectual Improperty (Part 3 – end)

In the same manner that new technology and market forces are undermining the role of copyrights in performing arts and related industries (see previous post), plastic arts (sculpture, painting, photography, etc.) are being forced to change directions and return to more traditional solutions.

Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol are landmarks of contemporary art which cannot be fully understood without their contributions. Although both were gifted artists under classical standards, showing great talent at creating individual and carefully crafted masterpieces, their fame came from their opposite stand that major art may come from minor displacements in our relationship to highly reproducible objects. Duchamp introduced ‘ready-mades’ and his famous ‘Fountain’ (a mere urinal) as a proof that industrial objects of minimal value can acquire an entirely new meaning when the very exhibition of art is used as an artistic tool. Warhol continued the demonstration with reproducible images of commodities, such as Campbell cans, Brillo boxes or icons of movie stars.

The irony was that while both artists were denouncing the fetishism traditionally associated with art, their own works became subjects of more veneration and more fetishism than anything before. Collectors started purchasing at prices never heard of and storing inside vaults objects which could have been obtained for a dime, and that a better understanding of the artists’ explicit intentions should have led to acquire preferably from supermarkets. The comedy was to reach a climax when Duchamp’s Fountain was hammered by a fan at the Beaubourg museum. During his trial the iconoclast explained that he agreed to pay for the repair, within the limits of what a decent plumber could ask for, as opposed to the half million requested by the museum as the actual cost of the restoration by experts trained in works from the Renaissance. He also claimed to be recognized as a co-contributor to the piece and a co-beneficiary to all related copyrights. Hilarious indeed and a good example of the paradoxes of copyright…

For a while photography was threatening sculpture and painting to become the major form of contemporary art. Serial art was reaching the same prices than unique pieces. Things have been recently calming down, and the specific quality of each singular copy is again considered as an essential factor of its economic value.

Absurdity, however, has not completely left the field of photography, as owners of rights to the objects that are being photographed are also granted rights to the picture itself. I am not talking of the legitimate right to privacy and control over one’s own image, but the strange idea that the mere image of material objects should be appropriated by someone. The city of Paris has a claim, for instance, on any picture taken of the Eiffel Tower. One could understand that smaller museums with limited funding would ask for a modest fee for using a camera within their premises. There is no justification, however, to limiting the passive reproduction of images of things already offered to public view, unless we adopt the metaphysical and rather primitive creed that the essence of things resides in their image.

In the distribution of digital copies of images of any kind, a part of the value comes from the service of distributing them, sometimes more than from the image itself. An image bank can draw revenues from gathering pictures, classifying them and making them available for downloading. The bank still has to pay for procurement, particularly when images are associated to trademarks, as trademarks imply contractual arrangements with their respective owners. A photographer’s trademark may or may not be important, only the market can decide. What is certain is that no one can contract on behalf of Leonardo when dealing with a picture of the Mona Lisa!

Protecting artists against unauthorized commercial use of their work does not mean preventing unlimited duplication for private use, nor the free secondary reproduction of images taken of any primary work.

Analogue is the situation of writers. In the case of journalism or screenplays, the work being created at someone else’s request for immediate release, a simple contractual arrangement is sufficient to generate payment. Such contract may very well include an override on future revenues. If the signature of the author has any residual value, then it can be treated as a trademark and protected as such for a while against infringements during secondary distribution. If on the contrary the market does not acknowledge any value to the trademark, i.e. if the text is completely dissociated from the author’s name when reproduced or used, such text has become a commodity, and I frankly would see no reason to grant it any privilege, compared to ideas or concepts. I feel sorry while writing this for one of my closest friends who specializes in remakes of foreign films. I simply hope he will see the advantage the recommended change could mean for the creation of films in general.

It is considered ignorance or bad taste to refer to a concept without mentioning the name of its first author, unless the reference is implicit or obvious. Nevertheless, it would not cross anybody’s mind to initiate lawsuits for payment of fees to Freud’s or Lenin’s heirs for use of their respective notions of the unconscious or the proletariat. Why then should we be fined for having bought a cheap copy of a Gucci © handbag, at least when the trademark is not used? Infringement of the trademark should be repressed (through sellers not buyers), as it can induce the consumer in error about the genuine quality of the object. In the absence of a trademark, however, the transaction bears on the idea of a Gucci © handbag, which is a totally different reality.

A world with no patent and copyright (and yet with trademarks) would be a better world, more logical and efficient. Creators would still create, and their creations would be used more. Trade would continue, based on services rendered and contractual arrangements. Lawyers and monopolies only would have something to lose. Who do you think will win, at least on the short term?

This is how the world goes ©.

Intellectual Improperty (Part 2)

Copyright is the minefield of intellectual property. Its main beneficiaries seldom are intellectuals, and yet find among the intellectuals their best allies, copyrights applying to books, newspapers, plays, films, software, websites, painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, etc.

As post-Guttenberg kings were trying their best to make sure no publication would escape their control, free minds were left with no other choice then than finding publishers in foreign republics, drawing small income from their works, if any at all. At the end of the 18^th century, an awkward alliance took place between the censorship of governments and the greed of authors. Beaumarchais, the author of the ‘Marriage of Figaro’, also an arms dealer and a tirelessly litigious character, succeeded in combining things at his best advantage: from now on the legal control of printing would be used not only for censorship but also for remunerating authors. This was the beginning of copyright.

Not a philosopher nor a mathematician, Beaumarchais did not bother to protect ideas or concepts, no matter how valuable they were. As a matter of fact copyrights do not protect any such things, or for that matter, anything immaterial. They only protect the material form of the specific types of immaterial creations people like Beaumarchais could produce. No wonder paradoxes and contradictions would flourish on such grounds.

The current problems are quite different depending on the area of we consider: e.g. performing arts, writing and plastic arts. Performing arts have found themselves in the eye of the cyclone since the introduction of digital technologies. Verdi never sold music; he contracted with owners of theatres to sell seats, and became rich. One would purchase a ticket to listen to his performances, and the Italian wall painters whistling his best airs next morning on their scale were not asked for a fee. A contemporary Verdi can do exactly the same, leaving Sony Music desperate. Record companies had a short moment of glory. Among the mass of would-be musicians, they used to pick talents on a commercial basis. In the digital world, the audience is in charge of discovering new artists, for free, mostly though websites and (still illegal) copies. No one can impose purely commercial choices anymore, and talents can emerge as they did in older times, by the force buzz. Successful artists give concerts and can make fortunes. Copyright in music is useless and should therefore disappear. It will unless an irrational protection is given to an obsolete industry.

The next victim, obviously, will be the film industry. The disaster is soon to occur. There is simply no way to prevent a digital copy of a film to spread over the Internet in a matter of hours. The good news for the industry is that most people would probably be ready to pay for the service of a guarantied quality of the files, and of large bandwidth for faster downloads. The bad news is they would only pay a modest fee, unlikely to be sufficient to amortize the cost of Hollywood productions. The only reasonable solution I can see, other than fighting lost legal battles against millions of consumers, is to change the very nature of future films, dividing them into two completely different types. The first group would be productions so spectacular that it would make little sense to watch them on a TV or computer monitor. Such films would be placed in a situation very similar to live concerts. After all, who would bother downloading a digital copy of an Imax movie? The second group would be inexpensive and smaller films, typically shot with video cams, and perhaps pre-financed by subscriptions. The film industry is likely to resist as much as possible this evolution which will however open new paths to creation. Yet, inertia guarded by lawyers is a losing strategy.

(to be continued)

Opinions & readers’ mail

An interesting entry today in Opinions & reader’s mail

(see tab)

Intellectual Improperty (Part 1)

The choice of words is a powerful weapon. For years Marxists were the great masters in this art, naming single-party dictatorships ‘Popular Democracies’, a cynical antiphrasis among many others. After enough harsh lessons, Conservatives have achieved equivalent mastery.

‘Intellectual property’ is one of these magical expressions which can trigger instant approval as soon as pronounced. Who can oppose ‘intellectual property’ but an idiot, an anarchist or a thief? Property is a universal right. The epithet ‘intellectual’ gives it full sanctity. Intellectual property, as it would seem, is the reward of genius and a key to human progress.

One might nevertheless wonder why it took so long for mankind to discover such obvious a concept, and why it does not apply to the most valuable products of the human mind. I am not referring only to Homer, Plato, Mozart or the inventor of the wheel, none of whom where protected by any kind of intellectual property; but also to Einstein whose ‘E=MC2’ was immediately appropriated by the world. Why is it that reproducing the last video clip of a rapper can lead you to jail, while one can freely use any major theorem even if discovered last month? What makes Mickey Mouse so important and so special that his very name and image still belongs to a single corporation after so many years, while no philosopher can retain the least control upon his own ideas?

From a legal standpoint, the confusing notion of ‘intellectual property’ (which remarkably belongs to no one) includes 3 main and somewhat unrelated components: trademarks, patents and copyrights. Trademarks are certainly a good invention. They play a role similar to measures. Measures have been controlled and guarantied by governments since markets started being in existence. As buyers can seldom verify by themselves the nature of what they intend to purchase, a public control of weights and measures remains an essential service. Verified trademarks carry important information on the quality of crafts. It is critical for instance to make sure that such or such pill contains the right molecule, something patients could never check by themselves. The manufacturer’s reputation being a strong indication in this respect, the presence of an appropriate trademark should not be overlooked. Even people involved in “piracy” over the web, insist on the value of their own informal trademark as a guaranty that their DVD ripping is state of the art.

Patents are a completely different animal. They inconsitently apply to certain sectors of the economy, not to others, with no better justification that old habits and vested interests. Manufacturing is much better protected by patents than any other area. Different countries choose to include extremely different types of inventions in the bizarre list of what may or may not be patented. Isn’t it quite irrational to allow the patenting of human genes (oh my!) on a continent and not on another? It makes little sense to protect a chemical process, not a financial invention.

This being said, the most important aspect of patents is the way they work: a patent does not allow someone to use an invention, it only excludes others from doing it. In other words, by their very structure, patents do not spread new knowledge but help slowing down its expansion. The main argument in their favour is that they are supposed to stimulate research and discovery by rewarding inventors. Inventors however are not the ones who are protected by patents but those who invest in their creations. Elizabeth Maggie was the inventor of the ‘Landlord’s game’ soon to be made famous, after minor modifications, under the name of Monopoly ©. Parker had bought her out for $500 and no royalty. Albert Fert, Nobel Prize in physics (2007) is responsible for an invention which changed the order of magnitude of data storage. He could easily have claimed a patent and become one of the richest men. His deliberate choice was not to delay the advantage for mankind of a discovery all of us are using today, rather than accumulating a wealth almost impossible to efficiently spend in charities.

Even if we consider investment in research, as opposed to inventors, as a valid object of protection, it remains to be seen whether or not patents are good at stimulating research, and whether or not the larger number of economic sectors in which patents play a minor role, have been less inventive or prosperous than the others. Finance and banking have been doing rather well (or at least did until ‘subprimes’ were invented!). They continuously bring to market highly sophisticated products, and the people who come up with these concepts for them are generally well paid. When traveler’s checks were introduced by American Express in 1891, the absence of patents did not impede success, this company having kept a leadership for over a century. Patented electronic traveler’s checks are hardly used by anyone. Pharmaceutical industries are patent-freaks, a feature which turns out to be counterproductive not for their revenues but for their discoveries: when was last time new antibiotics (a major need) appeared on the market? Not a convincing change from old times when universities and hospitals did the primary work in medical research, and when discoveries were almost immediately published and rarely patented. The cliché that patents are made necessary by the sky-rocketing costs of biomedical research rests on shaky grounds. Patenting is a partial cause of the increase, together with lobbying (and corruption in various countries). The associated secrecy is another one, making evaluation and clinical trials such an inefficient process that in the U.S. only public funding (through the National Institutes of Health, not to mention other public sources) has had to be raised to almost $30 billion a year.

I personally would be inclined to get rid of all patents altogether; not for the sake of an ideology but for a better release innovation in the economy, and a faster cross-seeding of ideas. The most inventive corporations would still retain a decisive advantage under the form of acquired market-shares, experience and know-how.

(to be continued)

 

 

Italian discipline and stability

Seen from abroad, Italians are undisciplined and their politics chaotic. Forget the cliché. Having inherited from Ancient Rome, one of the most militarily societies in history, they are disciplined. Having inherited from the Florentines, they consider politics as a science.

When a bill of law was introduced a few years ago prohibiting smoking in restaurants, bars and public buildings overnight, you might have bet anything that it would have been treated as a joke. You would have lost. The rule was instantly enforced with total efficiency. Likewise, if you believe that the Italian government is utterly unable to collect taxes, you may find it difficult to explain why this is the only place on earth where any citizen has a personal tax number which must be reported on every invoice.

It is true that each and every Italian citizen violates some law at any given time. The reason for this is not a bizarre anthropological inclination against law and order, but a legal system cunningly designed to make it impossible to abide fully with the law. Such system allowing the authorities to go after you whenever you start being a nuisance, it is necessary for anyone to belong to a political network which will be of critical assistance in many circumstances: finding a job, avoiding a fine, obtaining a market, just name it.

Political networks are the very essence of the Italian society. They have little to do with ideology, although (minor) differences can still be noticed between right and left. Tens of millions of Italians, for instance, are or have been “communists”, including a large majority of artists (an essential profession in the Peninsula), intellectuals and journalists, and communists have participated in dozens of governments. None of them are bolsheviks. Being a communist simply means you belong to a certain network (often since your birth), and you dislike Berlusconi. You can be a billionaire, an aristocrat and a dandy, you are still a communist as long as other communists are the first people you call when you are in trouble, and vote for the left.

These various networks interact under the form of mutual checks and balances. This is why the Italian constitution favours proportional elections instead of majorities, and protects regional powers from federal authorities. No one is allowed to be dominant or dominant for very long, and no government can take the country into dramatically different directions. Cabinets succeed each other at high speed (61 governments since 1945) and Italy is nevertheless stable, being ruled on a day to day basis by a bureaucratic elite, formed of members of all networks, closely connected to the corporate world, unions and/or to the Church, with a Pro-European tilt and a strong Western commitment. When something important needs to be done, such as cleaning up a gigantic public debt to adopt the European currency, or reducing the influence of the Mafia, it gets done.

Although it would take a lifetime for a foreigner to fully understand Italy, this highly sophisticated democracy remains one of the richest and most pleasant countries to be in, and is a threat to no one. Instead of analyzing its mysteries or bothering about the name of the next Prime Minister, count Italy as an ally, open a bottle of Chianti, walk slowly in the streets of almost any village, and enjoy!

This is also how the world goes.

Poor Shivas, Happy sports fans

Most or may be all the women I know have a deteriorated image of themselves. When I say all, I do not mean the ones who could find some reasonable motive for doubting from themselves, after for instance a big emotional shock, reversal of fortune, or professional blow. I mean all, including the “Shivas”, these modern deities using their multiple arms to be at the same time at the peak of an impressive career, and great mothers, reliable friends, athletes, bright, healthy, community aware, politically enlightened, wonderful lovers and/or perfect wives.

The situation is quite different for men. Even the laziest, ugliest, most stupid, uneducated loser can have an excellent opinion of himself. Don’t worry, boys, I am not giving names. But how to explain this privilege?

The main reason, I believe, is the intense propaganda any woman is subject to from the age of 2 until her death. Dr Goebbels never dreamt of a budget close to the ones L’Oreal or Armani mobilize each year for brainwashing the entire female gender. Take the 20 most beautiful girls on the planet. As they are still not good looking enough, do spend fortunes editing the best pictures major artists have taken of them. Now invest billions in persuading women by all possible means that is they do not end up looking like this handful of supernatural women, their life is irrevocably doomed. Unless, in way or another, they adapt their own figure and very existence to these extraordinary criteria, no one will ever want or love them. They will be ridiculed and abandoned.

The simple and mundane goal of such psychological warfare is of course limited to selling perfumes, lipsticks, leather and apparel. The impact, however, is deep and far reaching. As it is utterly impossible for any of them, including the models , to really look like such icons and happily identify with them, any woman feels miserable in front of what she inevitably feels as the outcome of her own failure. Courage being one of the undeniable female qualities, few leave the battlefield before the end of a lifelong fight. Most submit to everlasting half-starvation and money-bleeding, purchasing unlimited numbers of shoes at outrageous price. Rare are the ones who accept early defeat, making the opposite choice of obesity and self-neglect.

Another implication of the fashion propaganda is to increase the dependence of women. Confronted to the material consequences of the related expenses, even the most autonomous ones are mechanically tempted by male subsidies. Mass prostitution exists in several places (Japanese school girls or Russian students as I am told). In the Western world, things for being less blatant are not ideal. Even when no monetary exchange is directly or indirectly performed, fashion demands that success be measured in the other sex’s eye. Not a good sign for a pursuit of self-reliance.

As if such public health and social equality issues were not sufficient to ensure pervasive ill-being, the female population is also placed into a double-bind between fashion system and sex-liberation. No matter how much energy she spends in conforming to all the norms of propaganda, and how dependent she thus becomes in her relationship with men, a woman is also supposed to achieve identical professional goals. Once she has overcome discrimination in the responsibilities she can obtain, often by accepting lower income, she still has to prove she can overwork herself at the office while fulfilling all duties of traditional motherhood. Survivors of one combat often fall in the next. And the rare super-heroes, who have succeeded everywhere, now fear their fifties as their final ordeal. Heavy schedules and the prospects of menopause are not favourable to keeping one’s mate faithful. Competing younger women are a danger by themselves, particularly in a society where feminism has liberated men from their ancient responsibilities. “We have spend wonderful years together, my darling, now time has come to part, I will always love you, let’s be friends, I trust you are strong, and wish you the very best for the rest of your life” is the speech that comes next, and yet soon turns into sheer hatred after the courts have performed their malefic duties and children started to show resentment.

Fashion industries have decided to expand by making the male population their next targets. Forecasts indicate men will spend even more than women in creams and clothes by 2020. They are, however, protected by a wonderful system in a society that does everything to reassure its males. TV sports culture, by all means not the only instrument to this purpose, is a good example. Take an imbecile, with absolutely no personal talent in any sport, sit him in front a TV set, sell him a six-pack of beer, and show him the most remarkable athletes you can possibly find. The man is already satisfied. Now train your athletes for a team sport which can take the appearance of a battle. Give these guys the best available coaches. See how the imbecile starts jumping, screaming, making all kind of noise, convinced as he is that HE knows better! HE has the right tactics; HE can value the players better than anyone; HE can tell; He is the man! If you repeat this at least once a week for at least 16 years, your imbecile is armoured forever against any concern for his self-esteem. When he encounters other men visibly more talented or successful than he is, his opinion of himself remains totally unaltered. This guy is gorgeous? No problem, he must be gay! This other guy is a genius? How boring, he surely doesn’t know anything about what’s good in real life! The third one made a fortune? No worries, just another unreliable bastard! The last one is an actual champion in a sport? Yeah, he has nothing better to do! Girls find you disgusting? Who cares about these sluts?

All right. That’s for sex equality at the dawn of a new millennium. What can I say other than:

This is how the world goes?

Whatever happened to Democracy?

When considering democracy it’s always a good thing to remember the Greeks, at least to measure how different we are from them. Their notion of democracy was twofold. In the strictest sense, it meant direct government by the people, a regime strongly disapproved by all ancient philosophers (in fact, probably the only thing they would unanimously agree upon). No matter how attached we are to the word of democracy, most of us partake in the old consensus. We prefer elections to direct government which is now limited to juries and referendums of minor scope. The reason direct government is disliked are basically the same than they were before: masses are prone to hysteria, lynching and mass murder, as we were reminded in our lifetime by Red Guards and by Red Khmers. Although, according to their very definition, elections produce elites, our oligarchies (government by the few) are placed under the control of the popular vote. This is the essence of the so called “mixed regime” that the very wise Aristotle always recommended.

The second sense of democracy, and the most important, is equality before the law, a concept that Greeks called “isonomy”. The presence or absence of isonomy is much more critical than any other aspect for the evaluation of a regime. The constitutional form of government (presidential or not, republican or not, federalist or not) is a mere technicality compared to it. We are (really) equals before the law or we are not, courts (efficiently) protect the weak from the strong and the individual from the State or do not. That is the question, or at least the main one.

There was a short period of time when the Western world could claim a clear superiority in both its “isonomy” and its technology. Is it still the case today and, if it is, for how long? Recent trends hardly allow any optimistic prognosis. The judicial system, the very key to actual “isonomy”, is turning mad. The Ancients used to say “too much law kill the law”, and they were right. We have too many laws, almost impossible to understand and enforce. One should add “too many legal fees give it the final blow”. Where is justice when you may have to spend more to obtain justice than what you can expect from it? Where is it when defenders can buy their peace out? As if all this was not threatening enough, governments can now escape the most basic constraints; in such a way that the more we fear our enemies the less protected we are from our own protectors. Privacy is no longer a reasonable claim, when even your turned off cell phone can be used as a microphone against you by the authorities. Waterboarding as a regular technique of government is the last symbol of what habeas corpus has become.

In theory, public opinion could react and citizens could demand a return to more respect. But how is public opinion now formed? This question needs to be discussed in another sad post.

This is unfortunately how the world goes.

On Beautiful Taxes

As much as we usually dislike taxes (at least those applicable to us), we avoid to even think too deeply about them. This is unfortunate, as they would make a great topic for philosophers, as important perhaps as justice or death.

Although I have more practical knowledge of the matter than proper theoretical training, I feel that the field should start with asserting of a couple of eternal truths, such as: “at the end of the day, there are only taxes on the money you have or make and on the things you use or buy”. After all, even a poll tax bears on your main asset (your own person), and even taxes on production or sales are paid by consumers.

This being said, taxes can be beautiful or ugly. Suggested definitions: “Is ugly a tax which tends to always increase the need for more of the same tax. Is beautiful a tax which contributes to eliminate its own purpose”. This is admittedly the kind of beauty one can encounter in mathematics more than in nature, but one may reckon that the term of “beauty” still applies.

Taxes on labour, a French specialty, are particularly ugly, as the more labour is taxed, the more expensive labour becomes, the less labour remains available for taxing, and the more tax rates must be raised to sustain tax revenues and cover the artificially created need for compensating the unemployed.

Replacing a tax on labour by a tax on sales makes things much less ugly. According to the eternal truth stated above, a tax on labour is paid by the consumer just like a sales tax, for the cost of any labour tax is incorporated into the sales price. Provided applicable rates are adjusted in accordance to the respective sectors of the economy, the final price level remains the same, as you have simply substituted a new cost (the sales tax) to a former one (the labour tax). The main difference is that by doing so you also eliminated a distortion against labour, labour being after all the very thing you were willing to promote! Automation and shifting production overseas can still occur. They have however ceased to be the main priority of good management. Beautiful also is the fact that by reducing unemployment in this manner you also reduced related costs, and the very need for your tax. Last and not least, you do not impose anymore artificial costs to your exports as you were doing before, which is excellent news for your economy, while also eliminating a former bias in favour of slave work in certain countries, as your imports from them will from now on carry the same tax. Free trade is maintained as it is your local consumer and your local consumer only who will pay the price of purchased goods and finance your public needs.

A similar concept applies to pollution. An environment tax can be very ugly if you apply it directly to production, for its outcome might be to delocalise production from countries were pollution is taxed to countries where it is not, increasing the global level of the very pollution you were hoping to reduce! If on the other hand, if you start applying it to products instead, basing the tax on the quantities of pollution incorporated into them, you have introduced a strong incentive for reducing pollution in your own country without favouring countries indifferent to their pollution levels anymore. Additionally, the tax being paid by your own local consumer, and applied to products of any origin, the principles of free trade are maintained. The chimera of an easy consensus for a worldwide treaty on climate becomes much less necessary (and in fact much more realistic).

There have been many talks about such beautiful taxes and very limited action. I shall easily concede that some technicalities must be taken into consideration, starting with the different situation of the various economic sectors with respect to labour intensiveness for instance. Resolving this kind of issues though is not rocket science, once the logics are clearly understood. The main objections that have been raised hardly make any sense at all: for instance, the notion that taxing the (poor) consumer would be unfair, justice demanding that only the (rich) producer should be taxed. This is quite ironical really, as if producers paid production costs (which include production taxes) from their own pocket without incorporating them into their prices!

Smaller minds seem to prefer ugly taxes.

This is how the world goes.

Springtime for Nukes

If you ever doubted that hierarchy of information is as important as content of information, your opinion may have to change. On January 22, 2008 The Guardian published an article announcing that five of the former armed forces chiefs from the main Western countries had formally recommended a radical change in NATO’s strategy, focussed on pre-emptive nuclear strikes. You may not have heard of this, as the announcement was better echoed in Iran than anywhere else. But I suggest you take it seriously.

John Shalikashvili was supreme allied commander in Europe, before serving as chairman of the US joint chiefs. Klaus Naumann was chairman of Nato’s military committee and top strategist of the alliance. Lord Inge was chief of the general staff, then chief of the defence staff in UK. Henk van den Breemen was Dutch chief of staff. Admiral Jacques Lanxade was French chief of staff and head of intelligence. Five people, no less than 25 stars among them. Persons of this kind are rarely prone to whims, particularly when acting together, and taking a most official step. They were probably feeling that their respective governments and the administration of NATO were favourably disposed. They are not academics, philosophers or theorists. They are doers, fully convinced of the superiority of action.

Without entering into the details of their manifesto, we are clearly confronted with a complete reversal of the accepted nuclear strategy of “dissuasion”: nuclear weapons where to be used only in retaliation, making rival nuclear powers who might have contemplated an idea of first strike think twice. The new concept is to actually make nuclear strikes even in the absence of an immediate nuclear threat, or even against an enemy deprived of nuclear weapons.

This carries severe logical implications. The probability of nuclear blasts taking place will surge dramatically, especially as the manifesto also recommends switching from a unanimity rule to a majority one. The range of possible targets will extend from a limited number of nuclear powers to the entire world. The nature of events justifying a strike will now include any threat subjectively perceived as major by the strikers. Non-NATO nuclear powers will be led to adopting the same strategy for their own account. Countries allied to victims of such strikes will be placed in a situation of retaliation.

The paradox is that these events are taking place at a time when the US are now strong of half of all classical forces existing on the surface of the earth, and possibly over two thirds if NATO is included, an imbalance never seen since the beginning of mankind. It is true that nuclear forces, which are cheaper to build and maintain than classical armies, represent a limit to the use of classical forces. No one for instance would consider lightly attacking North Korea. By the way, this is the main motive of the acceleration of nuclear programs both in North Korea and Iran. Thus, a rational mind would have thought that the best strategy for the West would be, not the extension of nuclear strategies, but just the opposite: a global and concerted elimination of nuclear warfare, in order to guaranty a complete superiority of classical forces.

Seen from a political angle, it would be much easier and would appear much more legitimate to avoid proliferation in a formally denuclearised world than in a world where a handful of nations are nuclear (including the only one having actually used them) and all others are to be considered second-rate or rogue states.

Let’s have a nightmare. One of these days General Musharraf’s regime will fall (want to bet?), and is most unlikely to be replaced by a government more favourable to Western interests. Now, what would you prefer? A Pakistan having already accepted to denuclearise together with all nuclear powers including India, or a nuclear Pakistan in hostile hands against which NATO would be contemplating a first strike?

The future administration in Washington will decide for us. Technically it has the capacity to lead a drastic move which would be both favourable to US interests (due to their classical dominance) and would strongly contribute to restoring America’s image in the world. Russia is not unlikely to follow, as this would mean getting rid of the ballistic missile defence that the US are expanding in Europe. Other nuclear states are mostly US allies, with the exception of China which is the only power in actual grade to kill such a project. This last element implies that the attempt may fail. If it does, we would not be worse off than before. If it succeeds the world will be definitely safer.

Do you think that our 25 stars generals have considered this before launching their first strike initiative?

You probably know by now how the world goes.

The mortal trap of innovation

For over 20 years European countries have done everything they could possibly think of in order to “modernize”. Even socialist governments have privatized their formerly enormous public sectors and deregulated. Continental economies have adopted a single currency. Corporations went for the whole shebang: concentrating, shifting production overseas, and downsizing personnel. Apparently to no avail, as it would take sheer blindness not to see Europe’s economy and therefore rank in the world sliding down in relative terms.

The reasons for this decline are many and well known. The main one, in my opinion, is that economic dominance is always based on innovation, a dimension under which Europe is now lagging. As long as you are on the edge of technological discovery, you are doing fine. Except in the case of natural resources, which are distributed at random, the industrious introduction of more efficient products or services remains the best way to obtain domination in a sector. Of course, cheaper manpower elsewhere, together with the natural diffusion of knowledge, will slowly generate competition abroad. Don’t worry, you may still benefit from this competition in several ways. Your accumulated investment capacity allows you to control in variable proportions your main “competitors”. Their countries become markets for your new products. Lower procurement costs increase either your standards of living or your own competitively or both. In other words, while surfing on renewed waves of technology, you constantly dominate new sectors, transfer older industries to other countries under your control, and improve your costs while your markets grow. I should add that profits made by foreign countries tend to be recycled in your own economy, as successful innovation is generally a better investment than cheap manpower, and as more developed governments are also normally more stable. Last bit not least, brain drain plays at your advantage.

This looks like magic, except for 2 problems. The first one is that countries which are competitive in older sectors will try their best to enter directly the new ones. After all, you can easily fight this by imposing them “free trade” (use your armies when need be), preventing them from raising temporary barriers to your own products, in such a way they can never build up any strength in any new sector. The second problem is you have to make really sure you stay on the edge of innovation, but cannot take your superiority as granted.

Unless I am mistaken, there is no better path to critical innovation than intense research: even serendipity occurs in the right environment. This is where the trap is to be found. The best research is long term research, as it is the only one which favours thinking out of the box. Corporations by themselves are not very good at this, for the simple reason that their value is measured on short term scales. Only governments can afford thinking on longer terms. There are basically two ways to do this: one, the “European” way, is directly through public universities, public research agencies, and public sector research labs; the other, more “American” is to subsidize private research by military contracts. When subsidized corporations don’t find anything, things are still ok, as they are in any case reinforced by the subsidies they receive. When they do find something, it’s even better, as they can now invade markets with the subsequent innovations. Another advantage of military contracts is to appear not as subsidies, but as mere contracts that may be reserved to nationals. When this is done, in the name of free trade you can now prevent other countries (with more limited military budgets and/or using civilian channels) to subsidize their own companies.

The more European countries “modernized”, the more they reduced their public sectors and military spending, the less research they had. Inevitably they started losing market share to US companies directly or indirectly benefiting from growing military contracts, as well as to emerging countries where they had been moving their production.

Europeans are still wondering what went wrong.

This is how the world goes.

Can museums make money?

I am not sure art gained much from deserting the service of the gods for the service of money. Once the harm has been done, however, better be consistent. New puritans of art, replacing older puritans of religion, frown at the opening of a branch of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi (next to the Guggenheim’s).

This is strange, really. None of us has had time to see all the works belonging to the Louvre, or, for that matter, all works exposed in the regional museums participating in the project. So, the “Oh no, we won’t see these 300 works for 30 years!” sounds hypocritical to say the least. Why not start by having a better look at the tens of thousands of remaining works we keep neglecting every day?

As to the so-called “alienation of national treasures”, one should remember that many of these works were stolen by French armies or bought at a time when France had more cash than Abu Dhabi, and that they will be back anyway.

More importantly, even if museums are now quite uncertain of their missions, education certainly remains one of them. Educating other people to European art sounds like a decent idea. Doing it for a price makes perfect sense when you lack money and such people hardly know what to do with theirs.

The problem is that we are not very clear either about what education is. Understanding a work of art implies some knowledge of its iconography (another word for its “meaning”) and historical context. In order to acquire this kind of knowledge, digital copies can be used until a minimal level of familiarity is reached. They can easily be multiplied all over the world, while original works are used to show the real thing to people in grade of appreciating them. We are not exporting this to Abu Dhabi for a good reason: we don’t have it even at the Louvre. All we seem to offer to the masses of tourists invading the premises every morning are “Da Vinci Code trails”. Lucky Abu Dhabians who will be deprived of such achievements!

This is how the world goes

Das Kapital 2008: the exploitation of fools by fools

You probably heard by now of Jerome Kerviel, world champion of trading scams, who was capable of generating by himself a loss of no less than €5 billion (yes) to his employer, the giant Societe Generale.

Being a reasonable person, your guess is of course that the young man is a genius and/or a criminal, one of these overpaid traders seized by some hubris. He is not. He was actually one of the least paid traders in the Western world: € 35.000 (before tax and social insurances, equivalent to € 20.000 net) + a gross bonus (still before tax etc.) of € 60.000.

Understandably the young man wanted to increase his bonus. The employer’s response was: “Are you kidding us? First increase your profits for the bank and we shall see to raising your bonus”. All right, thought the young man, and as there is no way I can increase my profits by regular means (after all, all traders have more or less the same training, information and skill), I shall increase them by taking more risks. Well, not really more risks, because there is a well know trick: if you go wrong one day, simply double the stake the next day, until you are back to profits. Renew the operation as long as necessary. This takes a deep pocket, but Societe Generale does (did) definitely have a deep pocket.

As a matter of fact it did work! On December 31, 2007 Kerviel had made € 1.4 billion in undisclosed profits. Why undisclosed? Because there was simply no way to announce such a gigantic amount without revealing at the same time the unauthorized risks that had made it possible. Stupid isn’t it?

A criminal mind would have cashed in the € 1.4 billion by putting it onto some offshore account, then resigned from the bank and gone for a long cruise with at least a couple of Russian models. Kerviel however was honest! As a new kind of proletarian banker, he simply was looking for a better salary. As a fool, he was using a method that cannot be disclosed, and cannot therefore trigger a bonus. There was only one way out left: going on like this for ever, until you reach irreparable losses (with stakes superior to the very capital of the bank). And so he did.

Now, if we consider the employer, underpaying traders may look rational at first sight (after all, as I said, they are all about the same, with simply more or less individual luck). But if you do, better enforce your procedures! Even if you have never been a banker, you know that limits must be documented and checked by third parties. It was not the case. And if you have been a banker you also know that the most basic rule applicable to anyone in a bank, including a mere cashier, is to have people take their vacations! When they go on vacation they have to release their books and positions to someone else. Thus, should there be a scam, it gets discovered. Kerviel did not take any vacation and the bank was happy to have an underpaid trader doing overwork.

Hence, the title of this paper: New capitalism is turning into the exploitation of fools by fools. As to Societé Generale, due to be taken over after such a loss: requiescat in pace!

This is how the world goes.

How to turn a good idea into a bad one

During a recent press conference, President Sarkozy (one new idea a day) announced he would prohibit advertising on public TV networks in order to free them from market constraints and let them pursue quality. Excellent goal indeed: why would we need public networks if their programs are more or less identical to commercial TV’s? He suggested that from now on public networks would be financed by some new tax on TV advertising. Brilliant idea: advertising masses remain unchanged and public TV is freed from advertisers.

A few days later, when asked about this project, staff members start saying that, after all, the new tax could be based on TV sets or cell phones, or God knows what else. Now an absurd imbalance in created in favour of commercial TV (benefiting from a huge and unjustified increase in their advertising income), allowing them to crush Public TV. A couple of other sectors, starting with electronic appliances, suddenly become victims of a distortion.

This is how the world goes.

How to turn a bad idea into a good one

French taxi drivers, a strong force within French politics, now loathe President Sarkozy. Do you want to know why? Sarkozy had asked Jacques Attali , a former aid to President Mitterrand, to suggest a few new ideas on how to modernize the country. The man came up with 135 or so proposals (yes I know, but this is France). The most remarked output of this improvised think tank was not to alter the course of the Brahmaputra river (a former intention of the modest Attali), but to increase the number of taxi cabs inside Paris, by lifting the obligation of a paid license.

I do not intend to minimize the importance of such a move. Anyone who has tried to find a cab in Paris to take him or her to a restaurant knows that taxi drivers in the city of Descartes usually take their one and a half hour long meals during rush hour!

The thing is there are now 16.000 cabdrivers in Paris as opposed to 25.000 in 1920, and 42.000 in New York. No wonder: they have to purchase a licence at outrageous market prices (reaching $ 200.000).

If you tell them that their main asset overnight will be worth nothing, they understandably go crazy and this is what happened, with a nationwide strike and Sarkozy collapsing in the polls.

Hmm. You wonder why no one thought of a very simple idea to resolve this matter: release new paid licenses and distribute the proceeds to former owners of a license. Everyone would be happy: new cab drivers (now unemployed) would find a job, older cab drivers would receive a new source of income, Sarkozy would rise back in the polls, Attali would be comforted in his opinion of himself, and you and I would find a cab when we need one!

Too simple probably.

This is how the world goes.