Camil Stoenescu's blog

Viitorul sună bine doar în Star-Trek și reclamele autohtone vechi. Realitatea este cea de mai jos:

FROM a helicopter, East Kalimantan, a province in the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, presents a dreary view. Where little over a decade ago rainforest transpired under a vaporous haze, the ground has been cleared, raked and gouged. Every few minutes, a black smudge, smattered with muddy puddles, denotes a coalmine. Angular plantations, 10km and more across, are studded with dark green oil palms. Tin roofs glitter on the shacks of loggers, miners and planters, each with a smallholding hacked out around it. Just a few straggly patches of forest remain, with greying logs scattered at their edges.[…]

 

Yet in the national accounts the clearance is recorded as progress. About a quarter of Indonesian output comes from forestry, agriculture and mining, all of which, in a country more than half-covered in trees, involve felling. But this is bad accounting. It captures very few of the multiple costs exacted by the clearance, which fall not so much on loggers and planters but on poor locals, all Indonesians and the world at large.

 

The Indonesian exchequer, for one, is missing out. Illegal logging is estimated to cost it $2 billion a year in lost revenues. But that can be fixed by policing. A bigger problem is that most of the goods and services the country’s forests provide are invisible to the bean-counters. Many of them are public goods: things like clean air and reliable rains that everyone wants and nobody is prepared to pay for. And where they are traded, they are often undervalued because their worth or scarcity is not fully appreciated.

 

Forest economics is plagued by these problems, partly because forests provide so many benefits. A UN-backed project in 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, identified 24 main ecosystem services, most of which are found in forests: from preventing natural hazards, such as landslides, to providing the eco- in ecotourism. Yet most relate to forests’ role in the carbon and water cycles and in safeguarding biodiversity. And almost none is priced on markets. Forests are usually valued solely for their main commercial resource, timber, which is why they are so wantonly logged and cleared.[…]

De aici.

As announced earlier this month, the European Commission today assessed recent developments in France and discussed the overall situation of the Roma and EU law on free movement of EU citizens.[…]

 

The Commission concluded the following:

 

1. The right of every EU citizen to free movement within the Union is one of the fundamental principles of the EU. As the guardian of the Treaties, it is the Commission’s duty to ensure its full and effective implementation by all Member States.

 

2. The Member States are responsible for and entitled to take the measures to protect public safety and public order on their territory. In doing so, they must respect the rules laid down in the 2004 Directive on Free Movement, the fundamental rights of EU citizens and avoid discrimination, notably on grounds of nationality or the belonging to an ethnic minority.

 

3. Recent developments in France have led to a detailed exchange between the Commission and the French authorities on the application of EU law on free movement of people. The Commission took note today of the assurances given by France at the highest political level on 22 September 2010 that

• Measures taken by the French authorities since this summer did not have the objective or the effect of targeting a specific ethnic minority, but treated all EU citizens in the same manner;

• The administrative instruction ("circulaire") of 5 August 2010 that was not in conformity with this orientation was annulled and replaced by a different instruction on 13 September 2010;

• The French authorities fully ensure an effective and non-discriminatory application of EU law in line with the Treaties and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.[…]

7. The Commission reiterated today that the social and economic integration of the Roma represents a common challenge and a common responsibility for all EU Member States. The Commission’s Communication on this issue adopted on 7 April 2010 lists a series of important measures that need to be taken at national and EU level to improve the situation of the Roma as quickly as possible.

De aici.

Integrați, sprijiniți, tolerați – cuvinte frumoase și goale de conținut, atunci când realitatea „din teren”, palpabilă și urât-mirositoare, nu lasă loc de iluzii și sloganuri bruxelleze.

From a neural point of view:

Humans are the most sociable species on earth – for better and for worse.

On the one hand, we have the greatest capacities for empathy, communication, friendship, romance, complex social structures, and altruism. On the other, we have the greatest capacities for shaming, emotional cruelty, sadism, envy, jealousy, discrimination and other forms of dehumanization, and wholesale slaughter of our fellow humans.

 

In other words, to paraphrase a Native American teaching, a wolf of love and a wolf of hate live in the heart of every person.

 

Many factors shape each of these two wolves, including biological evolution, culture, economics, and personal history. Here, I’d like to comment on key elements of the neural substrate of bonding and love; in next week’s blog, I’ll write about the evolution of aggression and hate; then, in the next several posts, we’ll explore the crucial skill of empathy, perhaps the premier way to feed the wolf of love.

 

These are complex subjects, so I hope you’ll forgive some simplifications. Here we go:

 

Evolution

The growing length of childhood coevolved with the enlarging of the brain – which has tripled in size over the last 2.5 million years, since the time of the first tool-making hominids – and with the development of complex bonding, which includes friendship, romantic love, parent-child attachment, and loyalty to a group.

 

As the brain grew bigger, childhood needed to be longer since there was so much to learn. To keep a vulnerable child alive for many years, we evolved strong bonds between parents and children, between mates, within extended family groups, and within bands as a whole – all in order to sustain “the village it takes to raise a child.” Bands with better teamwork outcompeted other bands for scarce resources; since breeding occurred primarily within bands, genes for bonding, cooperation, and altruism proliferated within the human genome.

 

Numerous physical, social, and psychological factors promote bonding. Let’s focus on physical factors, and then drill down further to examine two chemicals inside your brain:dopamine and oxytocin. Both are neurotransmitters, and oxytocin also functions as a hormone when it acts outside the nervous system.

 

(By the way, dopamine and oxytocin, like many other biochemical factors, are present in other mammals, too, but as with most things human, their effects are much more nuanced and elaborated with us.)

Further reading – here.

Este un fenomen economic simplu, dar cu implicații esențiale în oricare economie modernă, enunțat pentru prima dată de către economistul american Arthur Laffer, în 1974. Curba Laffer descrie relația dintre nivelul general al taxării și cel al veniturilor înregistrate de către bugetul de stat. Pe scurt, creșterea taxelor peste un anumit nivel produce, în realitate, scăderea veniturilor la buget, în loc să le crească – conform scopului inițial al unei asemenea măsuri. Explicația este logică: taxele mari descurajează inițiativa privată și favorizează dezvoltarea economiei subterane și evaziunii fiscale.

As Arthur Laffer has noted, "There are always two tax rates thatyield the same revenues." When an aide to President Gerald Ford asked him once to elaborate, Laffer (who is Professor of Business Economies at the University of Southern California) drew a simple curve, shown on the next page, to illustrate his point. The point, too, is simple enoughthough, like so many simple points, it is also powerful in its implications. When the tax rate is 100 percent, all production ceases in the money economy (as distinct from the barter economy, which exists largely to escape taxation). People will not work in the money economy if all the fruits of their labors are confiscated by the government. And because production ceases, there is nothing for the 100-percent rate to confiscate, so government revenues are zero.

On the other hand, if the tax rate is zero, people can keep 100 percent of what they produce in the money economy. There is no governmental „wedge” between earnings and after-tax income, and thus no governmental barrier to production. Production is therefore maximized, and the output of the money economy is limited only by the desire of workers for leisure. But because the tax rate is zero, government revenues are again zero, and there can be no government. So at a 0-percent tax rate the economy is in a state of anarchy, and at a 100-percent tax rate the economy is functioning entirely through barter. In between lies the curve. If the government reduces its rate to something less than 100 percent, say to point A, some segment of the barter economy will be able to gain so many efflciencies by being in the money economy that, even with near-confiscatory tax rates, after-tax production would still exceed that of the barter economy. Production will start up, and revenues will flow into the government treasury. By lowering the tax rate, we find an increase in revenues.

On the bottom end of the curve, the same thing is happening. If people feel that they need a minimal government and thus institute a low tax rate, some segment of the economy, finding that the marginal loss of income exceeds the efficiencies gained in the money economy, is shifted into either barter or leisure. But with that tax rate, revenues do flow into the government treasury. This is the situation at point B. Point A represents a very high tax rate and very low production. Point B represents a very low tax rate and very high production. Yet they both yield the same revenue to the government. The same is true of points C and D. The government finds that by a further lowering of the tax rate, say from point A to point C, revenues increase with the further expansion of output. And by raising the tax rate, say from point B to point D, revenues also increase, by the same amount.

Revenues and production are maximized at point E. If, at point E, the government lowers the tax rate again, output will increase, but revenues will fall. And if, at point E, the tax rate is raised, both output and revenue will decline. The shaded area is the prohibitive range for government, where rates are unnecessarily high and can be reduced with gains in both output and revenue.

The next important thing to observe is that, except for the 0-percent and 100-percent rates, there are no numbers along the "Laffer curve." Point E is not 50 percent, although it may be, but rather a variable number: It is the point at which the electorate desires to be taxed. At points B and D, the electorate desires more government goods and services and is willing-without reducing its productivity-to pay the higher rates consistent with the revenues at point E. And at points A and C, the electorate desires more private goods and services in the money economy, and wishes to pay the lower rates consistent with the revenues at point E. It is the task of the statesman to determine the location of point E, and follow its variations as closely as possible.

Lucrarea originală poate fi găsită aici și ar trebui să fie lectură obligatorie pentru oricare ministru de finanțe.

Cum ar vedea un astronom extraterestru sistemul solar:

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a

saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

Except for the War till the day he retired

He worked in a factory and never got fired,

But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.

Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,

For his Union reports that he paid his dues,

(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)

And our Social Psychology workers found

That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.

The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day

And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.

Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,

And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.

Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare

He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan

And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,

A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.

He was married and added five children to the population,

Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his

generation.

And our teachers report that he never interfered with their

education.

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

 

                                                                                                     W.H. Auden – The Unknown Citizen

Omul modern, descris în 1939.

Explicația – aici. Fizică aplicată

Lectură interesantă, atât pentru atei, cât și pentru credincioși:

There is a story about Bertrand Russell giving a public lecture somewhere or other, defending his atheism. A furious woman stood up at the end of the lecture and asked: “And Lord Russell, what will you say when you stand in front of the throne of God on judgment day?” Russell replied: “I will say: ‘I’m terribly sorry, but you didn’t give us enough evidence.’ ”

 

This is a very natural way for atheists to react to religious claims: to ask for evidence, and reject these claims in the absence of it. Many of the several hundred comments that followed two earlier Stone posts “Philosophy and Faith” and “On Dawkins’s Atheism: A Response,” both by Gary Gutting, took this stance. Certainly this is the way that today’s “new atheists”  tend to approach religion. According to their view, religions — by this they mean basically Christianity, Judaism and Islam and I will follow them in this — are largely in the business of making claims about the universe that are a bit like scientific hypotheses. In other words, they are claims — like the claim that God created the world — that are supported by evidence, that are proved by arguments and tested against our experience of the world. And against the evidence, these hypotheses do not seem to fare well.

Textul integral – aici.

2005-2008 – în buna sa tradiție socialistă, Franța conduce plutonul greviștilor:

Plus de 1,4 million de jours de travail perdus en 2008 pour cause de grèves en France. Les chiffres bruts (nombre de grévistes multipliés par nombre de jours de grèves) sont conséquents. Mais il faut relativiser leur importance. «Les journées de travail perdues pour cause de grève représentent peu de choses, rapportées aux autres absences, notamment pour raison de santé», rappelle Andrew Watt, économiste à l’Institut syndical européen (ETUI). Un exemple: en Belgique, les jours de grèves représentent moins de 1% du total des jours «perdus» pour cause d’arrêts maladies ou autres. Surtout, la grève semble avoir perdu du terrain ces dernières années. Entre 1997 et 2006, le nombre moyen de jours perdus à la suite de grève s’est élevé à 39, contre 30,6 journées entre 2005 et 2009, note l’Observatoire européen des relations au travail (EIRO). Tour d’horizon des traditions sociales en Europe.[…] Entre 2005 et 2008, la France a compté en moyenne 132 jours de travail par an et par employé, selon les chiffres de l’EIRO. Presque un record: seul le Danemark la dépasse en raison d’une mobilisation inhabituelle des infirmières et des aides maternelles en 2008.

Din Le Figaro.

În studiul intitulat „Beyond GDP? Welfare across countries and time”, doi cercetători de la Stanford University, Charles I. Jones and Peter J. Klenow, elaborează o nouă metodă de măsurare a bunăstării unui stat, mai complexă și mai precisă decât indicatorul uzual folosit – venitul mediu pe cap de locuitor (gdp per capita). Pentru a măsura bunăstarea unui anumit stat – și pentru a putea compara state diferite între ele – cei doi propun un nou indicator, obținut din combinarea a 4 variabile: speranță de viață, consum, timp liber și inegalitate socială:

We propose a simple summary statistic for a nation’s flow of welfare, measured as a consumption equivalent, and compute its level and growth rate for a broad set of countries. This welfare metric combines data on consumption, leisure, inequality, and mortality. Although it is highly correlated with per capita GDP, deviations are often economically significant: Western Europe looks considerably closer to U.S. living standards, emerging Asia has not caught up as much, and many African and Latin American countries are farther behind due to lower levels of life expectancy and higher levels of inequality. In recent decades, rising life expectancy boosts annual growth in welfare by more than a full percentage point throughout much of the world. The notable exception is sub-Saharan Africa, where life expectancy actually declines.

Dincolo de aparatul matematic destul de complicat, folosit pentru a calcula nivelul bunăstării, principalele concluzii ale studiului sunt următoarele:

• există o corelație foarte puternică (0.95) între venitul mediu pe cap de locuitor și bunăstare, cu toate acestea adesea indicatorul unic gdp/capita este insuficient pentru a oferi o imagine obiectivă și pentru a putea compara nivelurile bunăstării din țări diferite; deviațiile apărute pot fi destul de mari (de pildă venitul mediu în Franța este sensibil mai mic decât cel din Statele Unite, totuși – luându-se în calcul speranța de viață mai mare a francezilor și timpul liber de care aceștia se bucură, se ajunge la paritate cu americanii):

• gradul de bunăstare al națiunilor a crescut mai repede decât venitul pe cap de locuitor, datorită creșterii accelerate a celorlalți indicatori enumerați anterior (speranța de viață, timpul liber etc);

• standardul de viață din Europa Occidentală este mult mai apropiat de cel american decât ar lăsa să se întrevadă doar valoarea veniturilor, datorită speranței de viață mai mari, timpului liber și prezenței unui nivel mai mic al inegalității sociale;
• țările în curs de dezvoltare din Africa sub-sahariană, America Latină sau Asia de Sud au un nivel al bunăstării mai scăzut chiar decât indică venitul mediu pe cap de locuitor, deoarece aici speranța de viață este considerabil mai mică decât în Vest, iar inegalitățile în cadrul societății – foarte mari;

The Economist sintetizează concluziile studiului în graficul de mai jos:

În cuvintele autorilor:

For a given specification of preferences, we calculate consumption-equivalent welfare for various countries and years using widely available data on average consumption, average leisure, consumption inequality, and average life expectancy. Several findings stand out. First, the correlation between our welfare index and income per capita is very high. This is because average consumption differs so much across countries and is strongly correlated with income. Second, living standards in Western Europe are much closer to those in the United States than it would appear from GDP per capita. Longer lives with more leisure time and more equal consumption in Western Europe largely offset their lower average consumption vis a vis the United States. Third, in most developing economies, welfare is markedly lower than income, due primarily to shorter lives but also to more inequality. Finally, rising life expectancy accounts for about 1/3 of welfare growth in the U.S. and Western Europe and all of average welfare growth in Latin America (given declining welfare fromother sources). In contrast, life expectancy actually declines between 1980 and 2000 in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, reducing welfare and expanding the development gap between these countries and the rest of the world.

Resurse suplimentare:

• Human Development Index
• Coeficientul Gini