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An article in The Conversation caught my eye. Below I share five economists' rules that apparently we generally ignore. Having worked through these, I return to my complaint with this paper (source), that 'journalistic flair' ruins the 'academic rigour' they claim. On this occasion the author (Renaud Foucart, Lancaster University) has linked to sensible reports that support the comments; this is good. The editing has distorted 'things that economists know' into something far nearer clickbait. Here we go:-
1. A lowest price guarantee means you will end up paying too much.
The observation is that guarantees of this general sort imply collusion to maintain a price. Collusion is illegal, so if we assume that collusion is not physically occurring we must have an economic rule applying. Business A offers to match any lower price in the locality; Business B wants more trade and offers a lower price; but the customers have no reason to move, since they can claim the difference while with Business A, if they can be bothered to claim it. So the discount provides a limited benefit and, even if B drops a price without loss (say while maintaining the expected minimum profit margin), then at best this drops the local price down to 'reasonable'. In general, the trend will be to keep prices much as they are; they may go up, but they won't trend downwards. I do not think that means the result is 'paying too much'. I think the lowest price guarantee achieves very little. Further, as a reluctant shopper, I now accept that some value attaches to the shopping experience; I really do not enjoy the exit routine at Aldi and would rather pay the odd percentage more for a less unpleasant experience, such as I find at Asda, Sainsbury and Tesco. In a sense, I see how Aldi can undercut the competition but I don't like the result enough to want to join the experience. My wife feels quite differently, which is why we shop at Aldi; more accurately, she shops and I stay in the car.
2. Housing subsidies given to tenants often benefit landlords.
I see this as unforeseen consequences, unforeseen by politicians, at least. At the same time I don't believe this is an economist's rule but a specific example, in this case that subsidies often do not benefit the targeted group. My first thought was of Help to Buy, which seems to put money in the pockets of the bigger house builders (bigger companies, smaller houses). The argument offered as being from the economist would be to simply give money to the targeted group (those who rent, say) and let them decide how best to use the funds. Politically, I cannot see this ever being a viable option. The economic argument here is that, thinking of rented housing, if you add funds to tenants they aim higher (larger); the market is very inelastic, so the price rises for the larger property and it is the landlords in general who benefit. in the same way, cutting housing benefits [53] drives people to smaller properties and those at the bottom of this scale, not-quite-managing, are left with bigger bills, while the landlords in general are the ones out of pocket. So rental subsidies go, pretty directly, into landlords' pockets. Change would occur if a lot more housing became (suddenly) available, or if rents were (more) regulated. It may be that this is a general criticism of subsidies, that they actually don't work at all well.
3. Cost of living concerns are never a valid reason to avoid taxing pollution.
I have difficulty believing this is an economist's rule; there must be a more general statement that applies, such as the cost of living issue being short-term and the climate issue long-term. In which case the economists' observation might be that short-term reasoning does not help long-term reasoning, especially when the long-term goal is significant. In the case of these two particular issues, any fuel rebates seem to be funding energy suppliers, not least Russia. Of course, this does nothing to ease emissions. The article suggests that almost the reverse would be a better approach; adding tariffs to Russian oil and then using this money directly to ease the CoL crisis, but by lowering taxes, not discounting fuel costs.
4. Politicians are often more credible when they delegate.
I agree; the example I thought of before reading it in the article was moving the setting of interest rates to the Bank of England. Centralised funds are of course prone to favouritism and political patronage, which in the UK would reduce the credibility of the government in its plans to “level up” the country. One of the linked articles [51. Well done, Conversation] looks at allocation of public funds in Indonesia, using a formula to avoid bias; the results show that non-formula-based special allocation grants are systematically biased toward Indonesia's national Budget Commission members' home districts. The home districts of the same set of Budget Commission members do not, in contrast, receive significantly higher per capita transfers under the formula-based transfer design. So avoidance of distorted results (patronage, cronyism, favouritism, etc) can be done.
5. Investors consistently beating the market are probably doing something illegal,
I have no problem with this; if it looks too good to be true, it probably isn't true. What occurs may not quite be insider trading, but the end result is the same as if insider trading had occurred. Perhaps the very successful trader is very good at reading hints? But then there will be other trades, such as favours...
[51] https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/243265
[52] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-12/france-plans-2-2-billion-fuel-rebate-in-bid-to-help-motorists Discusses France's fuel rebates.
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The Biden administration is looking to increase housing by encouraging (back into existence) the house manufacturing business. The last time this had legislation attached, the whole idea was high-jacked by the residential home builders interests, so that one of two scenarios was required; the building arrived complete on a frame or it had to comply with the local regulations, not federal ones. The result was trailer-park, where the intent had been more along the lines of multiple housing inserts.
On the affordability side, Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae are looking for investors. Given that, over here, those are the names associated with the last financial fiasco (2008), I wish them well, but there won't be much support from over here.
Action within California removes planning restriction on adding a permanent house-standard unit to your property. One assumes that building code still has to be met, but this might well be a grand opportunity to raise housing density. One suspects that the infrastructure is largely insufficient to cope with a doubled occupation density. One also suspects that, as would happen here, those with capital will leap upon a chance to make some more, and, still applying British rich-think, that will include moving out and on, leaving behind two smaller units. If it is built properly and to regulation, what's not to like about that?
[61] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mac Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC),
[62] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Mae Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA),
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New media scare over monkeypox, MPXV. Endemic in the DRC, spreading currently, and particularly among LGBT+ males in the west, but these are low numbers and we should not jump to conclusions. Coloured map; A (top) is case count change from Aug70 to May18 while B is for only the last 17 months, Jan17 to May18. [71]. Infection has been encouraged by the lack of vaccination against smallpox – thought to be eradicated, vaccination stopped in 1980. The case count is probably markedly higher than reported in West Africa.
Case count in the UK was 7 on 20220515, 20 on 20220520 and 56 on 20220523. I've added a chart to show this, with an exponential trendline.
[70] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/monkeypox-virus
[71] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00241/full
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The three entries that referred to Ukraine, Russia and NATO moved to essay 385 in mid-May. The consequential consideration of a new leap in fossil fuel prices moved to §386.
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I was reading about microplastics in farm soil. We have reasonable success at filtering out microplastics from sewage, which removes these particles from waste water so that what is turned to the water delivery system is 'clean'. But what we do with the consequential waste, the filtrate, seems idiotic. One article I read explains that much of the sewage waste is spread upon farmland, with the direct result that we have a high measure of plastics in our soil, which then of course works its way back into the water courses. Where we have to filter it out all over again, adding to theperception of plastic pollution.
Micro plastics are nominally particles under 5mm but realistically we mean particles big enough to see but otherwise a good deal smaller than the millimetre. A report from 2018 estimated that there is more plastic on land than in the ocean, even that there is more in the 'west' than in the oceans. This assumes that 50% of sewage sludge is used as fertiliser. We have a code of practice, also dated 2018. I have so far failed to find how much we return to farmland, but if we don't do that, what can we sensibly do with this waste? A 2020 report is relevant and describes the changes in regulation to be made with a view to improvement. We generate more than a million tonnes of (dry) sewage sludge each year (from 12 million tonnes of wastewater per day) and 'most' ends up on farmland. In 2020 we even imported a large amount of this waste.
The article that prompted my search was this one, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722008270; I was led to this by media comment. Picking items to share, we're talking about 3.5 miilion (wet) tonnes of sludge each year being moved to the soil, so clearly whatever we have left in this sludge is entering the soil. Looking only at microplastics, the count is numbers of particles, not weight and I do not see why that would be relevant or useful, but the volumes described suggest that we're talking about the odd bucketful. Which is not only very unhelpful, it means that the editor pushing the headline has no real idea what is going on; "Big number! Print that!"
I've written a page of maths questions at Y8 level, what we might call functional maths. My look at the numbers agree that we are setting up a legacy contamination where we should expect that the exisiting particles shrink, multiply and so become (even) more pervasive – that we're setting up conditions where this will become entirely normal. On the way we will either kill off some species or they will adapt to accommodate plastic as, again, entirely normal. The volume of plastic is not, I think, the issue—unless you're on the side that wants to argue this is all irrelevant, a body-sized amount in the UK each month—I think the issue is the surface area of plastic offered, since we have learned from ocean studies that microplastics becoming nanoplastics is how the plastics become ever more pervasive.
Almost inevitably, the following day there is a better article from George Monbiot, who has found the numbers I wanted to see. He says 87% of the sewage sludge is sent to farms. (Link) Surely the general idea is a good one and surely we should be choosing to recycle the waste. It is those elements which do relatively more damage to which we need to direct more attention. Plastics are increasingly shown to be doing damage to the ecosystem and so we need to find ways to abstract the plastics, almost to consider this a form of mining, and, if we're going to spend that sort of resource, we need to place significant value on having achieved recovery. What we then do with this recoverd specialist waste is another problem but ideally we should still be looking to recycle it. We need plastic recovery in the same way that we need to recapture carbon. I suspect that our best use of long-lifed materials like plastic is to use them for building, but only after recovery.
It is very easy to view far too many issues to do with climate change and sustainability as simply too hard. Even when we accept that action must occur, the need for action is not incentivised in ways that we seem prepared to act upon. At the domestic national level we don't mind that GB is a bit warmer. In too many ways something like tidying up our waste plastic is like the need to tidy up somethign lkke the garden; we're very happy to tuck difficult materials out of sight rather than deal with them 'properly'. So what is missing is a connection between the problem as described and the need to take action – and for the actions to be complete, in the sense that we actually remove the problem altogether. If we call this sustainability (I don't think we do), might we stretch this to also mean we're taking responsibility for our actions? Is that the subtle but important step we need to take, to accept a different level of responsibility?
If we were to accept that plastic granules in our soils are a Bad Thing then we should be duly horrified to discover that there are farming practices where fertiliser is encapsulated (i.e., wrapped in a plastic film) so as to slow its addition to the soil. That is deliberately adding (more) plastic to our soils. See, and here. What actually bothers me more is that if we're recycling this plastic, we are probably also recycling a shedload of Really Bad Stuff, such as the 'forever chemicals' that we happily dump down the drains after doing construction work. Where is there any incentive at all to do differently? PFAS, liquid waste in construction.
Much of this contamination could be avoided if we paid more attention to the life-cycle of a product and costed it accordingly. That requires us all to buy into the idea that the required actions—to reduce contamination to a minimum, an equivalent of the leave-no-trace attitude of wild campers—are essential actions. We need to move this sort of attitude to a consensus position, not something that only extremists worry about. It is much too easy to dump the difficult issue, to metaphorically shove the dirt under the carpet. It would be a marginal improvement if we made it easy to dump (at the local tip, dump as noun in US English) and thus hope to move such problems towards a specialist – but we most certainly have to pay for this and so it is imperative to have high penalties for not complying. Better then to make it appear that the service is free (pay for it in taxes, so it is in a sense already paid for) and have significant penalties (financial and social) for Not Bothering. Suppose soil had to be tested before a land sale could occur; suppose that (repairing) any form of contamination became a charge (reflecting a cost to the state clearling up) upon the sale; suppose that legacy infractions were deemed irrelevant, that the landowner is responsible irrespective of how the contaminant appeared? Then, what about fly-tipping, which is already a significant problem, so there'd have to be a time delay on historical contaminant. We are our own worst enemies.
Once more I conclude that we don't deserve to continue in existence. We are thoroughly confused as to what is important. Not least, our society pushes any attempts for one to change how they rank matters of importance towards positions where only the significantly well-off can have the luxury of living differently. One wonders then if such advantage was come by in compliance with the very same ranking system; surely the system works against that being true. In our siciety, advantage comes from more advantage, with only rare exceptions.
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Sitting in one of our local community centres, having a coffee, a man in late middle age arrived on his own, wearing a smart shiny suit. I noticed him at the moment where a member of staff engaged him in conversation. Across the intervening space, 6 to 10metres, I clearly heard his first response, "Do you know who I am?". My instant mental responses were many and several, none positive. The kindest thought was "What an unfortunate place to begin". It turned out that this was our local MP, out on a meet-and-greet exercise. He appeared several more times in that same space across the next hour; this centre is large and I was sat in what is called the community space in a group of like-minded (and elderly) folk. Sadly, it did not seem to me that he sat down to listen but all parties in his presence were talking at rather than talking with – and, as far as I could tellm this applied to the MP quite as much as those in his presence, but that may be unfair. It seems to me that the role of a politician is to listen and perhaps to persuade; talking at someone is presentation of result (opinion, conclusion) and not persuasion of the other party (to the conversation) towards one's own position. More particularly, in my world, a conversation worth the term involves two parties discovering how it is they reach(ed) opinions by sharing experiences and perceptions; an exchange of information that has beneficial result to both. Further, one of the reasons the group spent so long stood in my eye-line was because the group of a dozen sat at the very large table with me were demonstrating such (better, balanced, listening) conversational behaviour. You need to recognise that across this time period there were two groups; one seated, elderly and conversing and the other standing, cycling around and doing the other version of conversation, with little observed exchange of information. What happens around a VIP most of the time, perhaps.
I don't see the perceived political loss as much as the failure of the man as much as a failure of the consensus behaviour in his very immediate neighbourhood, both the habituated behaviour in the House and in the space across which he could converse onsite at the time; he is paid far too much to be able to understand those with very little and yet at the same time that is exactly why he is paid. It was perfectly obvious to me that the man has a long-term disability and that standing was a problem, so I wanted to see him seated. But I also wanted him to be engaged with the sample of very ordinary people in the building, asking questions and listening - basically learning what it is he needs to know to do his job better.
The response of the individuals within the seated group was surprisingly negative; the visit of an MP was obviously not going to include them and the individual reactions were quite aggressive, without being communicated to any of those around the VIP honey-pot. No doubt if actually approached for phatic conversation everyone would have been polite, but phatic conversation is not what is needed with one's representative.
Phatic conversation is that largely meaningless noise we make that does little more than recognise the existence of others. It has no more meaning than what a dog finds to sniff on a post and perhaps less.
If you think I'm being too kind, it is perhaps because he ordered a coffee but never got to drink it, being dragged off to, presumably, be talked at. And I drank his coffee.
Subsequently I looked up my own MP (I live close to the constituency border), who I have met in the street, but only because, I think, there was a party conference in town at the time. Wikipedia says he stood on a campaign focused on delivering Brexit, reopening Blackpool Airport for commercial flights and opposing the plans for development on Stanley Park Golf Course. I disagree with the first two and the golf course development seems to be proceeding.
I've had a look at the processes that the golf course development has gone through and it seems to me to stink of corruption. What will result is a space that caters to imagined holiday-makers, while at the same time reducing the green public-owned space available to locals and increasing the traffic on the space that is useable. The council is all excited, it says, about the incoming money, when it looks to me as if they have sold very valuable land that was held in trust (for those who pay local council taxes). I do not see these holiday-makers adding significantly to Blackpool's general turnover, but instead adding to the coffers of the developer. I see very little incentive to move off the developed site - and I see no additional infrastructure to encourage that, either. In my head, the result has a list of negatives for me as a (frequent) user of adjacent spaces and no positives at all. I can find no plans that shows the size of the large carpark and therefore the loss of green space, which is a thing that the council is supposed to safeguard. Safeguarding in this instance ought to mean keeping that land green. Of course (and off course) any pictures of what is proposed only show the most attractive aspects and from the best possible viewpoint, without declaring what is already here and what is to be lost. As I said, it stinks. Further, those in opposition don't seem to be faring any better than myself in discovering any detail. I would relish opportunity to nudge any planning towards something more acceptable, less destructive and less intrusive. For a start I'd want very much less accommodation onsite; I see the occupation rate of two other holiday villages most days (as I run past); we have no sort of shortage.
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We managed to have a holiday in Ireland. Yes, both bits. We were struck by the variety of languages we heard. We both already understood that English is expected across the whole island, some six million people. We also understood that Irish, a form of Gaelic, is encouraged in Eire. Investigating while there, we discovered that there are many schools teaching in Irish, that Irish is a compulsory subject through secondary school and on offer in Northern Ireland, where there are some 30 Irish-medium schools. Some 50,000 students (that's about 6%) attend Irish-medium schools on the island. While not having a noted ear for Irish we were not at all sure that the non-English we were hearing was Irish. Around 98% of all Irish speakers live on the island; the global total is around 1.2 million Irish speakers and around 170,000 speak it as their first language. Wikipedia [11] says that in 2016 1.76 million in the Republic claimed to speak Irish, plus 105,000 (5.5%, 0.2% as main language) in the north. Those that have studied the language —which is the first official language of Eire, with English the second official language—constitute some (176k/4761k) 3.6%. I am amused that the number of Irish speakers is the same as the population increase in the previous 5 years. Quoting [13], and referring to those speaking outside the education system (so we count students speaking Irish outside school), 17.4% speak some Irish and 1.7%, a tenth of those, speak Irish on a daily basis, i.e. outside education. Among what I'd call six-formers about a third say they don't speak Irish and two-thirds say they can. See fig 7.2.
So what were these other languages? Staying with 2016 data, there were more than half a million non-Irish nationals, say 12% of the population. Of those nationals these were most often Polish. See [15, table 1.2]. The non-Irish tend to gather in towns (Eire is 66% rural), raising some town's 'foreign' populations past the 30% mark. Monaghan, for example, has 30% non-Irish in 7600 people, a whole thousand of whom are Lithuanian. Longford, also a county seat, has 27% non-Irish in 10,000 people, 1000 of whom are Polish. At the 2016 census, 80% of the population were Irish, 2.6% Polish, 2% British, 2% from Romania, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Czech and Ukraine (say north and eastern Europe), 0.2% from each of Spain, Italy, France, Brazil, Germany, China and the US and smaller numbers from elsewhere.
This distribution is subject to change. I note that the rise in population is more from immigration than from excess births (1.9 births per woman is below replacement rate). The 2022 (Eire) population has just passed the 5 million mark and, for the April 20220/21 growth of 34,000 a third is migration and the remainder excess births (over deaths). Since 1990 this is pretty linear growth, but if there are observable trends, it is that natural increase is slowly declining and net migration has shrunk. The Ukraine war may change that; they've taken 5500 already this year.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_the_Irish_language
[13] https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart1/Census2016SummaryPart1.pdf See pp66-9. One really wants to see the 2022 census information, but it has only just occurred (20220403, our first day on the island))
[15] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp7md/p7md/p7anii/ See table 1.2
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In a very similar way, an article moaning about the loss of girls to Physics accurately observes that girls have the same success rate as boys in the subject, but that evident gender stereo-typing has occurred by the time subject choices are required. This is presented as a loss to Physics, which it is. But there must be balancing losses, subjects that boys might have chosen if there was less stereotyping - here I'd suggest languages, including Eng.Lit.. But the issue is surely about desire (of Physics over Spanish), not about ability. The suggestion that people duck Physics because the maths is hard have not looked at both – for the maths in Physics only rarely goes beyond GCSE maths, and provides an excellent argument for logs to return to GCSE, or for a bridging maths unit of a few weeks to provide to non-mathematicians wanting Physics. [I've seen this and provided it.] AS Maths would easily suffice. There is a converse viewpoint, which is that from [57] it is clear that takers of A-level maths are already achieving well and that those who do Physics without maths are achieving less already and will do so in the end result by about a grade.
As for why, could it perhaps be that it is as simple as a preference for/against writing at length? I don't think that stands scrutiny. It is Physics and Comp Sci that stand out as non-girl and science, while the guys are clearly spurning arts in general, all the way to History in 7th (but 8th for girls). Chemistry is the balance point and History next closest. Eng Lit is, as I'd guessed, the polar opposite—in gender take-up terms—to Physics. And Sociology to Further Maths.
[57] https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2021/09/which-a-level-subjects-have-the-best-and-worst-gender-balance/ This is a good source if you're in education and concerned what is occurring. For example, why English/Arts have low take-up; to an extent, they've moved from English towards Psychology and Sociology. I'll bet that, at school level, these are seen as more transferable knowledge, more 'useful'.
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There's a decline in insect population, at the very least in the UK. I think it is very likely that a decline here implies a decline elsewhere, too. In particular, the UK survey shows that there is a severe decline in flying insects. Just a little looking on google shows that there is a wealth of data pointing to this as a global issue. Now, like global warming, at a personal level this is a good thing—I too want to be warm and free of insect interference at an individual level—but the implications for our production of food is not at all good.
How fast is the drop and what does this imply? [32] suggests that the number of flying insects is declining by an average of 34% per decade. Now there's a figure to work with. Giving a figure across a decade allows for population variability, which I already know from teaching A-level differential equations is often a cyclic (oscillating) matter. 34% a decade is very close to 3% a year (2.97) and so, if we have 97% of the previous population every year then in 30 years we have a mere 40% of 'now', in 50 years 22% and in a century a mere 5%. All of which assumes we continue as we are and that these rates remain so. Even over another generation (30 years) we're clearly predicting massive loss of species, which must include extinction.
Nor should we expect such change to be uniform. [33] is a survey of a particular piece of rainforest in Puerto Rico, showed a 98% loss of insect life across 35 years. That's equivalent to a 10% loss every year (how is shown below). In Germany a study [34] showed 75% loss (of flying insects) across 25 years (5.4% a year). Of course, if we lose insects, we soon lose the consequences of insects; the life that lives off them, the processes that they promote, such as decay or pollination; no doubt a range of activities that we won't recognise until they are lost.
Of course, this is yet another Thing we should be worried about. One of those Things that pales into comparison with how to pay for food and heating. Yet if we encouraged insects in only our gardens, this would make a significant impact. The total domestic land is 5% of total land area, and I found a sensible estimate [35] that total land area is around 4330 km². Though we ought to recognise that the rules for new build produces small(er) gardens, means about 113m² rather than 190m². Garden trees amount to 30 million — we have 13% of UK area under woodland, but this is not the same as counting hedgerow or garden trees, so exploration of this is difficult since so much data is simply absent. Indeed, what counts as a tree? I found a count of about 3 billion trees in the UK, so garden trees represent a mere 1% of that total. I found a count of three trillion trees in total: we lose around ten million hectares per year (4.8 Wales-areas (i.e wales, see units and measures) per year) which is at least 1000 times that in trees, possibly five times as much, so that is 10-50 billion trees lost each year, around a percent of all trees every year, but up to ten times that. We need very much better records.
So if we turned our gardens into places that encouraged insects, we might stem the decay in numbers that is going to blight our landscapes. As we move towards a position where we measure much more carefully how we produce food, this may turn out to be a significant matter.
None of which changes my attitude (Out, out, damn spot) to insects within the house.
[32] My prompt towards this topic. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/05/flying-insect-numbers-have-plunged-by-60-since-2004-gb-survey-finds
[35]
If decay is x across n years resulting in L% loss, then (1-x)ⁿ = 1-L. So 75% loss over 25 years gives (1-x)²⁵ = 0.25, so 25 log(1-x) = log 0.25, leading to x=0.0539, which I call 5.4% because I started with at best 2 figure resolution. 98% loss over 35 years gives (1-x)³⁵= 0.02, x=10.5752%. Working around the other way, a steady loss of 2.97% means each year we have 1-.0297=0.9703, 97% of what we had the year before; so across 50 years, 0.9703⁵⁰=0.2215, implying that at that loss rate we would have 22% remaining after 50 years.
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Not entirely unrelated to the last topic, is a work that seems to be referred to by a significant formula Y=arctgX. I think this is a corruption of arctan, the inverse tangent. The book referenced is by Max Ostrovsky and typically £59 (way too much to buy). I've copied a description from [42] below.
As I understand it, the argument runs that a political unification begins with war, one way or another. If the borders are closed (China under the Han), then unification occurs; if the borders are open (Rome) then the fighting at the edges will eventually cause a breakdown. Ostrovsky (again, as I understand it) suggests that the modern world leaves us with everywhere within reach, so that while we might close a border, such as China did and might repeat, it is more likely that we share the planet, so there is a potential to have no more borders in the sense that applied to an empire of the past. Therefore the Chinese model applies and there is little to cause a world empire, once formed, to collapse. I can disagree with a lot of assumption based on so few data points—even if Ostrovsky uses all the data we have, it is still sparse information—but there is an unmistakable trend for political units to grow in both territory and population, and so to conclude that it implies political unification of the planet is acceptable.
En route to this grand conclusion there are some wonderful discoveries, such as the correlation between ability to grow crops, especially grain, and the borders of the empire. Repeating, there is a correlation between the areas where grain can be grown and where the empire holds sway (and that the edges are pretty well defined). As ever, correlation does not guarantee causation. More, that the land required to grow grain appears to define the geographical limits of empire. Allied strongly to this is whether the system political is circumscribed; the observation is that the more a system is circumscribed, the sooner it unifies and the longer its unity persists. Thus we have the conclusion that the moment of the New World Order (described in 1990) is upon us, in the historical sense; the trend is towards a unipolar hegemonic world order. So, the view is that we either dissolve back into multipolarity or we turn into a global empire.
The question then to consider is those forces acting in either direction. Ostrovsky argues that because we have global communication, we have circumscription (the planet) and so an empire should be the result. Inevitably, then, what we have at the moment is those competing ideas (to be that empire) and the push against anything anti-hegemonic is to be expected. Thus we should expect one of two extreme conditions: nuclear devastation and the consequent utter collapse of civilisation as we recognise it; or in a different meaning of nuclear, the genesis of a world state. One wonders how close to the brink we might come and still avoid disaster.
The link to cereals / grains is not obvious. However, the effect of this book (2006) shows if you look up 'cereal'. The ability to supply food (and, at its most basic, that means cereals) generates the ability to employ a rising percentage of people (their time, their work) toward the objectives of the society (and think nation-state, empire here). In a sense, the fewer people we need to generate food, the more we have to service the objectives of that society. Maize, wheat, and rice together accounted for 89% of all cereal production worldwide in 2012, and 43% of the global supply of food energy in 2009 [43] Ostrovsky outlined that the cereal power determines the percentage of manpower available to non-agricultural sectors including the heavy industry vital for military power. [44] Taken from space, map of the global illumination is said to indicate by its brightest parts the industrial regions.[18] These regions coincide with cereal regions. Ostrovsky formulized a universal indicator of national power valid for all periods: total cereal tonnage produced by one percent of nation's manpower. For the present, this indicator demonstrates a unipolar international hierarchy.[Ostrovsky, p119]
What I find disturbing about this work, the little I can discover without shelling out £60 for a book I am no longer certain I want to read, is that the current situation in the Ukraine fits so very well. We do have several competing forms of rule; the competition can very easily be seen as an exercise in military might, and while it remains unclear to me what the Russian model is pursuing (heads? land? resources? reduction of competitors?), it is simultaneously clear that if cannot rub along in friendly competition seen as beneficial to all, then we will at some point descend into violent competition. And eventually we will go nuclear and risk the end of practically everything. Well, that won't solve the ecological problems but those all stem from humans being an infestation, so it would be a fix of sorts. We have to form a planetary consensus or we go to war first. And, if we go to war, we risk having so few of us left, and so little left to work with, that we deserve these consequences. It remains obvious to me that we could dodge this. But, in order to do so, we have to find agreement. It is the greed, of wanting-what-I-want-and-I-don't-care-about-you that prevents the accommodations that compromise requires. The failure to produce meaningful consensus action over the climate crisis demonstrates, to my mind, that we are not yet ready to form any global society since we appear still unable to view the position as a whole – that the planet is threatened and that this is more important than any national position. While we persist in claiming ownership / belonging to very small groups, we continue to push in the wrong direction. That says to me that we actually move closer to those positions at which the larger systems (usually described academically as chaotic) flip in a sudden and usually catastrophic way to a different state.
Of course, history takes the long view. Man tends to do the opposite and so (far too) many people will grab all the short-term advantage that they can so as to advance their own tiny interests. Meanwhile each such action pushes us more towards that catastrophic moment. So I conclude that Ostrovsky is probably right, but at the same time whether the tipping point is now or in another fifty years means nothing from a truly historical perspective. Yet at the same time I feel that we could be right at the very edge of the precipice.
When disaster is imminent we have few choices. For most of us, the only perceivable action is any route to survival. For a few, those who can see the wider picture and have the capacity for premeditated action, there may be routes to avoidance for the whole. But every one such body is countered by others who see the opportunity quite differently, one in which they can pursue their own ends. This is why history says we have a war before we have an empire. The issue for us as a species is that we may have too few of us left after the coming war for there to be a peace; in which case we are as likely to fall back into fractured and competing systems as to have a consolidation and hence, however small and weak, the predicted empire.
Not good.
DJS 20220505
[41] http://www.kotoba.ne.jp/word/11/Comparative%20studies%20of%20the%20Roman%20and%20Han%20empires
[42] http://www.kotoba.ne.jp/word/11/Y%20=%20Arctg%20X:%20The%20Hyperbola%20of%20the%20World%20Order
[43] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cereal
[44] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal includes some of the content of [43]
[42]: Y = Arctg X: The Hyperbola of the World Order
''Y = Arctg X: The Hyperbola of the World Order'' is a nonfiction world history and world politics book by historian Max Ostrovsky with a "Foreword" by anthropologist Robert Carneiro. It aims to explain why certain civilizations existed as systems of independent states while others evolved into universal empires, what conditions cause the pendulum to swing one way or the other, what the drawn theory implies for the future of the modern civilization, and where we stand now.
==Overview==
An inexorable trend occurred throughout the human history: political units strove to grow larger in size and fewer in number. Leafing through pages of historical atlases, this trend strikes the observer. With scientific regularity appeared record-breaking empires in terms of both territory and population.〔List of Largest Empires〕 It looks as expanding pulsation of mathematically describable social trend.〔Hart, Hornell, "The Logistic Growth of Political Areas", ''Social Forces'', 26, (1948), 396-408; Naroll, Raoul, "Imperial Cycles and World Order", ''Peace Research Society'', 7, (1967), 83-101; Marano, Louis A., "A Macrohistoric Trend Towards World Government", ''Behavior Science Notes'', 8, (1973), 35-40.〕
The implication of this trend is obvious and its significance is hard to overestimate. The trend actually represents a process of the ongoing political unification of the world. The projection of the trend into very close future suggests the appearance of a single world-wide empire.〔K'ang Yu-wei, ''The One World Philosophy'', (tr. Thompson, Lawrence G., London, 1958); Vacher de Lapouge; George, ''L'Aryen: Son Rôle Social'', (Nantes, 1899, chapter "L`Avenir des Aryens,"); Robert Carneiro, "Political Expansion as an Expression of the Principle of Competitive Exclusion", ''Studying War: Anthropological Perspective'', (eds. Reyna, Stephen P. & Dawns, Richard Erskine, Gordon and Breach, New Hampshire, 1994); Robert Carneiro, "The Political Unification of the World", ''Cross Cultural Survey'', 38/2, (2004), 162-177.〕
''Y = Arctg X: The Hyperbola of the World Order'' analyzes the trend in order to offer an explanatory theory and project the theory into future. Based on four civilizations—Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and the Mediterranean—the theory is tested on the whole world. Beginning since the dawn of history, it proceeds through the present stage into future. It combines the theories devoted to the theme from the earliest, drawn by Shang Yang,〔Shang Yang, ''The Book of the Governor of Shang Region'', (tr. Perelomov, L.S., Moscow, 1993).〕 Kautilya,〔Kautilya, ''Arthasastra'', (tr. Ramaswamy, T. N., Asia Publishers, London, 1962).〕 and Polybius,〔Polybius, ''Histories'', (tr. Tijev, A. J., Ladomir, Petersburg, 1994).〕 until the latest ones, by Edward Luttwak〔Edward Luttwak, ''The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third'', (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).〕 and Zbigniew Brzezinski.〔Zbigniew Brzezinski, ''The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives'', (Perseus Books, New York, 1997).〕
The analysis finds that any political system with a firm agricultural foundation is pre-destined to politically unify and turn the state of unity into norm. A long list of secondary factors lacks determinative influence but merely deflects the process whether accelerating or decelerating it. The main secondary factor is geopolitical circumscription〔Robert Carneiro, "The Circumscription Theory: Challenge and Response", ''American Behavioral Scientist'', 31/4, (1988), 497-511.〕—the degree to which a political system is spatially compact, static and isolated from other systems. The more a system is circumscribed, the sooner it unifies and the longer its unity persists.
Circumscription explains the difference between the European and the Chinese patterns. Circumscribed China mostly existed as universal empire while ever-expanding Europe perpetuated the model of independent states. The same had held true for the difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia.〔Mario Liverani, ''International Relations in the Ancient Near East, 1600-1100 BC'', (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Mario Liverani, ''Prestige and Interest: International Relations in the Near East ca. 1600-1100 BC'', (Padova: Palgrave, 1990).〕
In history, two synchronous political processes occurred—external expansion and internal consolidation. Expansion complicated and sometimes outpaced consolidation. But the gap between the two processes was doomed to close due to the fact that the space of the earth is definite.
The space ended towards the 20th century. The sovereign void of the world ended. No outlet for further expansion was left.〔Halford J. Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History, (London: J. Murray, 1904); Fredrick Jackson Turner, ''The Frontier in American History'', (New York: Holt, Rinchart and Winston, 1920).〕 The factor of circumscription became enacted and that moment our civilization headed straight towards overall unity. The Long Peace of La Belle Epoque was doomed; instead followed the era of World Wars. The time had come for great powers to clash in the fight of elimination.
This time, the centripetal factor of circumscription was multiplied by the modern technology of warfare and communication. The technological progress reduced space and caused the world to shrink in terms of time required to overcome distance. Due to technological progress within circumscribed space, warfare drastically increased and within less than a century we overcame the centuries-old balance of power and reached a unipolar hegemonic world order.
The macro-historical view reveals the true meaning of the ''unipolar moment'' we have witnessed. Underestimated by contemporary observers, the proclamation of the New World Order in 1990 signifies a milestone in the millennia-old trend of the political unification of the world.
The synthesis of the theory with modern conditions suggests that the genesis of the World State is much closer at hand than it seems to most of us. Persistent multipolar and bipolar worlds passed their event horizon. Modern conditions swing the pendulum into the opposite direction—towards ever greater political consolidation. That is, the present global hegemony is supposed not to dissolve back into multipolarity but to turn into global empire.〔Hegemony and empire are distinguished according to Thucydides-the former as controlling only external affairs of other states and the latter their both external and internal affairs. Thucydides, ''History'', (tr. Stratanovsky, G. A., Moscow: Ladomir, 1981).〕
How hegemony is transformed into empire is exemplified by transformations of similar hegemonies in the past—Rome〔Edward N. Luttwak, ''The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third'', (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).〕 and Ch'in. Both adhered to the pattern of defensive imperialism, both began with isolationism (the earliest in history instances of the Monroe Doctrine) and both evolved from isolationism through hegemony into empire. The thesis shows that all three grand strategic transformations—of Rome, Ch'in and the United States—are essentially the same with the modern process being currently uncompleted.
The two previous hegemonies produced anti-hegemonic back-clashes, defeated anti-hegemonic powers and established universal empires. Mainstream theories of International Relations expect anti-hegemonic power-balancing in our world too.〔Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, (McGraw Hill, 1979); Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Emerging Structure of International Politics,"' ''International Security'', 18/2, (1993), 44-79;John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,"' ''International Security'', 15/1, (1990), 5-56; Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise?" ''International Security'', 17/4, (1993), 5-51; Christopher Layne, "The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment", ''International Security'', 31/2, (2006), 7–41.〕 This work indicates plenty of symptoms confirming the gathering storm, mainly over the Eurasian land mass. The restoration of multipolarity became a universal aspiration across this continent; the transatlantic split revealed its tectonic depth; strategic partnership between major Eurasian powers is evolving; and the geopolitical doctrine of Eurasianism in Russia rose like a phoenix.〔Eurasia Movement; Alexander Dugin, ''Основы геополитики: геополитическое будущее России'' (''Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia''), (Moscow: Arctogaia, 1997); Alexander Dugin, "Манифест: Евразия превыше всего," (Manifest: Eurasia over All), http://newright.il.if.ua/evrazia.html; Alexander Dugin, ''Проект Евразия'', (''Project Eurasia''), )Moscow: Jauza, 2004); Mark Bassin, "Classical Eurasianism and the Geopolitics of Russian Identity" (2001) http://www.dartmouth.edu/~crn/crn_papers/Bassin.pdf; Mark Bassin, "Eurasianism "Classical" and "Neo": The Lines of Continuity," src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/coe21/publish/no17.../14bassin.pdf; Mark Bassin, "Geopolitical Culture in the Post-9/11 Era: The Masks of Prometeus Revisited", (2007), http://www.colorado.edu/IBS/PEC/johno/pub/nazi; Mark Bassin, "Classical Eurasianism and the Geopolitics of Russian Identity," ''Ab Imperio'' 2, (2003), 257-267.〕 The beating pulse of Eurasia is still beating.
The clash of civilizations is not plausible. Rather, the forthcoming clash is of Hemispheres—the Western based on North America versus the Eastern based on Eurasia. Turning to the school of geopolitics, this scenario is confirmed by the fondest of geopolitical theories.〔Halford J. Mackinder, The Geographical Pivot of History, (London: J. Murray, 1904).; Halford J. Mackinder, ''Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction'', (New York: Henri Holt & Company, 1919); Homer Lea, ''The Day of the Saxon''. (New York & London: Harper and Brothers, 1912); Alfred Thayer Mahan, ''The Problem of Asia and the Effects upon International Politics'', (Washington & London: Kennikat Press, 1920); Karl Haushofer, "Continental Bloc: Mittel Europa – Eurasia - Japan," 1941, in ''On Geopolitics'', (tr. Usachev I. G., Moscow: Mysl', 2004]; Nicholas John Spykman, ''America's Strategy in World Politics: the United States and the Balance of Power'', (New York: Archon Books, 1942); Nicholas John Spykman, ''The Geography of Peace'', (New York: Archon Books, 1944; Henry Kissinger, ''Diplomacy'', (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Zbigniew Brzezinski, ''The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives'', (New York: Perseus Books, 1997); Alexander Dugin, ''Основы геополитики: геополитическое будущее России'' (Foundations of Geopolitics), (Moscow: Arctogaia, 1997).〕 The geopolitical motion of the Eurasian land mass seems to indicate that close is the moment when a fight for global power would erupt mightier than the earth has ever seen, an ''Endkampf'' of epic dimensions. The two Hemispheres would clash on four fronts, exchanging multi-megaton salvos across all four oceans.
In previous civilizations, warfare of any kind and scale was not eliminated but by universal unity. The nuclear warfare, as the record of human nature strongly suggests, will not be an exception. This book is devoid of maudlin sentiment or pious exhortation. It does not flinch to state: the mightiest war on this earth is yet to be fought, whether civilization is to survive or not. Either we will have a nuclear apocalypse or a nuclear genesis of the World State.
In case the world survives World War III in one piece physically, a certain winning people would weld it into one piece politically. The War would be followed by sweeping conquest and annexation by a victorious power of the most of the world. The universal annexation would proceed under the known device: "one world or none." All weapons of mass destruction would be outlawed. The rest of strategic armor would be monopolized by the central power. The hegemonic strategy would be discredited once and for all in favor of the imperial.
With shorter interruptions, the universal empires of ancient Egypt and China persisted for two-and-a-half millennia of their circumscribed existence, until they were engulfed by larger systems. The modern system, being global, is totally circumscribed. It can neither expand, nor be engulfed by a larger system, and this geopolitical condition will remain until the end of history. We are already in the global hegemony, we can expect its transformation into the global empire already within the span of this generation, but we should not expect its fall already after two-and-a-half millennia. Reversing the famous thesis,〔Charles Krauthammer, "The Unipolar Moment," ''Foreign Affairs'', 70/1, (Winter 1990/1), 23-33.〕 the "unipolar moment" proved to be not moment but state and hence onward is not supposed to be interrupted but by rare and brief, albeit deadly and destructive, multipolar moments.
The image on the front cover (see above) shows two Egyptian gods, Horus and Seth, holding the hieroglyphic icon of unity. This 4000-year-old image illustrates the model of civilization which, besides being an exotic past, is our own very long future.
''Y = Arctg X: The Hyperbola of the World Order'' differs from the post-modern research, alternating between case-studies devoid of broader implication and broader topics described in relativist terms. The present theory of history is an instance of Realpolitik and Geopolitik, leading to a sweeping determinist theory and a clear future project. The world-historical trend is mathematically expressed by one short formula.
This kind of theory seems to be debut by a professional historian. The science of history neither recognizes theories nor is used to multi-disciplinary approach. On the other hand, social sciences accustomed to theories take only a little note in primary sources. This theory, by contrast, is built on a firm factual basis of primary sources comparable in their quantity and diversity only to historical source-books. They range from the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' to ''Herald Tribune'', from Bible to ''Mein Kampf'', and from the Shang bones inscriptions to the Pentagon tapes. The uniqueness of this theory of history is a combination of the primary-sources research common for historians with the theoretical and multi-disciplinary approach common for other social scientists.
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I watched a film, The Dressmaker, (2015) in which the sillier inhabitants of Dungatar, outback Oz, jumped (repeatedly) onto the crop in a silo. According to the story, one can land on wheat but will drown in sorghum. I found myself laughing (not at the death, which was an unexpected turn of the story) several times (lol proper), which is rare indeed these days. You really can drown in a seed silo, most especially if the grain is flowing out, or moving at all. Wikipedia. You would think that a rope around the person would provide a safe route to rescue (and people find reasons to work inside a silo), but the drag to pull someone from total immersion is something like 6 times body weight, which implies permanent skeletal injury.
Avoidance is obvious; there should be no entries into the silo that humans could use. However, when a crop has spoiled in whole or part, this often needs to be reconsidered. Grain can 'stick' and there is a traditional behaviour, 'walking the grain', to avoid the bridging that can occur, disrupting the outward flow. Silos need to be cleaned, too, so an understanding of the minimum safe depth (less than half your height, I think) is necessary. Fundamentally, such situations need to be recognised as (very) dangerous and for there to be corresponding caution. Because many grain silos are remote, there are likely to continue to be deaths from such causes. I failed to find explanation what grain characteristics determine the degree of danger. Looking at the (largely US) commentary, More than half the recorded entrapments and engulfments have occurred in corn, and overwhelmingly corn stored in bins. Other grains in which victims have become entrapped include soybeans, oats, wheat, flax and canola. There are, generally, fewer cases where the seed is drier and smaller. Additional reading. Youtube video.
I suspect that rice is too small for entrapment to occur, around 1 mm² in two dimensions and 7-9mm long. Wheat grains are about the same length but much larger in section, 8 to 24 mm². Sorghum is more nearly spherical, at around 4 mm diameter, which makes any section 4π mm², say 12 mm². I think that more the spherical seeds will move against each other more easily, acting more as a fluid. Soybeans are more of an ellipsoid, dimensions around 8 in two dimensions and 5 in the other, ±1mm in all cases. Taking the observation from the US that the smaller drier grains have fewer accidents associated with them, this suggests that rice is relatively safe but that wheat, while marginally less dangerous than the more spherical sorghum, is probably no safer any other grain of a similar shape.
Book form; The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham, 1996. My copy is 2.7Mb, 252 pages long (so, not very long at all).
There is a distinction to observe between a general silo, which will contain the not-grain parts of a crop for eventual silage (that which comes from a silo) and a grain silo, a relatively temporary store of grain intended for market.
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Pluralistic Ignorance
This term applies where the majority think they are in the minority. I discovered this morning that this applies to the people who would like some of the changes we've undergone thanks to the pandemic to stay in place. WfH is a very good example. The perception is that those wanting this to stay think they are a minority; therefore their expectation that <good things> might continue is low, simply because they perceive everyone else (their perceived majority) to want something else.
It appears that those who think WfH is a good idea is actually a majority.
The obvious counter is (very) much better information. How could we know what public opinion is? What would have to happen to cause us to believe that the results were in any sense true? There is significant research that shows that the perception of majority opinion causes a shift towards that centre – all of this is perception, not truth. So this tendency to want to conform actually pushes us (all, by implication) towards whatever it is that we are fed as 'truth'. Hence we might understand the wishes of the very powerful to control the media. Simultaneously we might, at an individual level, decide that we are prepared to support (£££) any and every media outlet that we think might be behaving independently. Of course, the response from any / every other media outlet is to scream that 'we' are already <list of positive attributes> and also independent and that our truth—what we want you to believe—is the real truth. The result is that no-one trusts anything very much, but at the very same time makes little effort to separate out opinion and discovered fact/truth.
Which, I think, ought to be a major element of what we call education. Indeed, I seem to remember being told that this was a major benefit of studying history at school these days, with the repeated insistence that you seek reliable sources.. I fail to see how we might discern what public opinion might be without having far more openness about the collection and reflection of collected opinions. Yet, without even attempting to improve the situation we are failing to be served by democracy – if everything tends to the middle (the perceived majority perception, which is not tautology) that makes change remarkably unlikely.
No wonder that we persist with FPTP then.
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I discovered that the un-jabbed in Blackpool is 20%, while nationally it is 10%. So there is a measure, though it is presumptive to call inaction an expression of attitude. I wonder then if someone who is a conscious vaccine refusnik feels differently knowing that they are in a minority of 10% or 20%? Does a refusnik in Blackpool feel twice as 'right' as one from Inkbarrow, south of Brum?
Inkbarrow & Flyford Flavell 1st dose 94%, 2nd 90%, 3rd 77% (between Evesham and Redditch)
Blackpool 1st dose 80%, 2nd 73%, 3rd 53%
Manchester 1st dose 67%, 2nd 59%, 3rd 35%
Newcastle centre 1st dose 47%, 2nd 39%, 3rd 19%
The very low uptake areas are (all) within major cities.
Article, should you wish to read it.