Pandemic Economopathy

This is my analysis of the world's economic illness.

1. The diagnosis is global trade imbalances, and their consequences.

Globalisation has crashed. Elementary economic principles were ignored, because it was profitable and fashionable to do so.

2. Open borders, free trade, and similar economic nostrums can be sustained if and only if flows of goods and money are in balance over time. Similar standards of living, and of state welfare provision, energy prices, social structures and cultures - these are essential for such a balance among the nations in a free trade area. This forces industries and commerce to compete by increasing factors such as design, quality and efficiency, not by a race to the bottom in employment and other costs.

All these factors are present in the United States of America, still the world's largest and most successful free trade area. They are absent in a globalised economy; they are absent in the European Union, in which the strains of the global economy are replicated.

This principle of balance was simply ignored, if not denied.

3. Exchange rates between the currencies of a free trade zone must float freely, to offer a self-correcting mechanism against trade imbalances.

This principle was openly or covertly evaded by China and other important trading partners. The Euro inhibited self-correction in Europe.

4. The consequence of this economic folly is to divide the industrialised world into producer and consumer blocks, especially the USA and Britain as consumers, and China, Russia and petroleum exporters as producers.

Producer countries build up huge reserves of consumer currencies: industries in consumer countries wither and die; poverty eroding prosperity.

In some producer countries individuals now control wealth sufficient to perturb global markets in finance and goods: one man can move the world of finance to his advantage.

Producers' seek profitable investments for their new wealth; consumers' money must be recycled so trading can continue. These are the roots of the present crisis.

5. The producers' accumulated dollars, pounds and other currencies were deposited in American, British and European banks; the banks in turn had to generate returns for the tsunami of money flowing into the system. Housing and other assets were easy and popular choices.

Abundant money and cheap borrowing set the stage for a property boom, which moved towards frenzy as rising property prices fed back into demand.

6. In Britain and the USA banks were released from government regulation. Bankers are prudent, wise, honest and good; they can surely be trusted to govern themselves. So they argued; politicians listened and were convinced.

Our trust was betrayed. Abundant deposits, cheap to borrow, profitable to lend on - in these conditions bankers encouraged reckless short term behaviour, paid themselves fortunes, and devised clever 'instruments' to conceal the insecurity of many loans. Deliberate, criminal fraud was disguised, rewarded, celebrated. 'Toxic' debt was diffused into sound investments, poisoning trust in all.

Elementary rules of sound banking were declared obsolete. Bankers gambled with other peoples' money; the City of London is now a vast casino.

It needed a simple rise in interest rates to expose the rot in the system. The consequences of global banking collapse appalled governments, so unprecedented public wealth and credit has been committed to shore up the system. The long-term consequences of this panicky response cannot be evaluated with confidence. We can expect unemployment, taxation and inflation unto the second generation.

The Gods of the Copy-book Headings were mocked; they are back, jealous and vengeful.

Reckless bankers were a symptom, not the cause, of the global economic sickness.

7. New money was not being created; the process was inflationary only to asset values. Central bankers were not moved to raise interest rates - in Britain a new inflation index ensured house prices were removed from inflation evaluation. Most people felt more prosperous; politicians claimed credit for achieving non-inflationary growth, at last; bankers made easy fortunes, paid taxes, and spent their lavish bonuses.

Inflating asset values gave security for another boom in consumer borrowing. These loans supported continued purchasing from the producer nations, increasing their currency surpluses further, feeding even more purchasing power back into Western banks.

A system of obvious instability and unsustainability.

8. Why was this dangerous cycle not recognised and stabilised? Were world leaders and bankers stupid, short-sighted, or deceived by their own rhetoric? The few who spoke out were scorned. The dangers were obvious to people in my circle: how come those paid handsomely to manage these things failed so dismally?

As always, money talked. We'd never had it so good, why heed those crying 'woe'? Surely this time the world has changed, the old cautions and rules no longer apply. Prosperity is here to stay: the value of your house can only increase, release this new equity and enjoy your good fortune. Go with the flow.

And learned commentators agreed.

Pone merum et talus. Pereat qui crastina curat.

[Set down the wine and the dice. May he perish who cares for tomorrow.]

The motto of the New Labour years.

9. What can be done? Never get into this position is sound advice, but far too late. There is no salvation in trying to recreate the failed globalised system. The prevailing economic dogmas must be rethought, modified, in some respects reversed. Britain needs an election now; we need a government with an electoral mandate to think clearly and act rationally in the national long-term interest; free, for a while, of the shackles of electoral calculation.

Fags, Face, Figure, Future

[I wrote this in a previous blog, but it's a message I want to shout at street corners, so it bears repeating.]

Why do women smoke, in particular, why do young women addict themselves to tobacco? The epidemic of tobacco addiction is our biggest threat to womens' health, with alcohol excess a close second.

An answer often given is that men smoke for good reasons, and women for bad. Men smoke in a foolish attempt to prove themselves tough, mature, macho. Women smoke to be like their friends, to appear liberated and sophisticated, and to satisfy hunger without gaining weight. Few seem to appreciate how potent tobacco addiction is, how difficult it is to give up. My impression is that the heroin habit is easier to kick. Tobacco really should be a class A++ drug.

What are the big interests of young women? Look at the many glossy magazines for them. Five topics dominate the covers: beauty, health, clothes, relationships, sex. Does nobody tell women how badly tobacco damages at least two of these - beauty and health - and threatens two more - relationships and sex?

If a teenager starts regular smoking, the habit is visibly affecting her face and health within a few weeks. Cyanide and other toxins in tobacco smoke inhibit the synthesis of skin proteins, notably elastin, but also collagen and keratin.
Her facial skin loses its healthy bloom, her hair loses gloss and weight.

She doesn't eat well, she will lose weight: she begins to look drawn and haggard.
After months of smoking defective elastin and collagen production makes the skin prone to wrinkle, and precocious wrinkling becomes more prominent as years pass. Tars and pigments from smoke slowly accumulate in the skin, giving a sallow colour.
The loss of supporting fibre-proteins affects her figure too: her breasts sag, her buttocks droop. She loses the subcutaneous fat which gives women their curves.

Carbon monoxide displaces oxygen from haemoglobin, and the body increases haemoglobin production to compensate. Her lips and cheeks show a hint of purple, and her performance in sports is impaired.
And, of course, she smells like an old ash-tray.

Young women who smoke wear more make-up than women who don't [I think that is common observation]. They are aware of their facial deterioration, and try to cover it.

It should be written on every cigarette packet: FAGS F*** YOUR FACE *.

As for tobacco and womens' health, consider the expected life-story of a female tobacco addict; smoking, say, 20 per day.

Age 15 - she thinks she's cool and mature. She thinks she can handle it.
Age 25 - she is severely addicted. She show all the signs I have described. In pregnancy she is at increased risk of toxaemia; her babies will be born, on average, 1 week early and 1 pound underweight.
Age 35 - she is a fag-hag: wrinkled, sallow, thin, slovenly. On average her children miss twice as much schooling as the children of non-smokers, mostly because of recurrent respiratory infections. She is likely to be chronically short of money.
Age 45 - she has chronic bronchitis: cough, phlegm, frequent infections, short of breath on mild exercise. She is at risk of stroke, coronary thrombosis, cancer.
Age 55 - respiratory cripple ....

Why do they do it? I despair.

[* NB F*** is code for FOUL: what else could I mean?]

Heroes at the Hot Gates

ΘΕΡΜΟΠΥΛΕΣ THERMOPYLES

So says the sign on the new GR1 motorway north from Athens to Thessaloniki. Looking south from the motorway the stranger passing by sees the white stone wall of the monument, and, to the right, steam rising from the hot springs which give the place its name. Behind the monument the small conical wooded hill of Kolonos is hard to discern against the background of the steep forests, crags and gullies of the northern face of Mount Kallidromos.

To the north of the motorway maybe two kilometres of flat marshy land end at the shore of the Malian Gulf.

The scene was different in August 480 BCE - 2,489 years ago. The land surface was sea-bed, maybe 20 metres below the present level, the shore was then at the foot of the mountain slopes. There was only a narrow passage through between mountain and sea, hence the 'gates' in the place-name.

Rivers depositing silt in the head of the Malian Gulf produced this change of geography during the intervening millennia.

The hot springs are still prominent to the west of Kolonos. The largest is the source of a small river of water almost too hot for the hand, stinking of hydrogen sulphide.

Look at Thermopyles on Google Earth and you will see the white deposits from the thermal springs and streams.

There is a small spa establishment by the hot water; let us hope it is not developed for profit, now there is motorway access.

This passage between mountain and sea was the site of the most famous battle, when King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan hoplites led another 4,000 or so troops from the districts east and south of Thermopyles. It was a desperate attempt to delay the remorseless advances of The Great King of Persia, Xerxes, into Greece. Xerxes' army included forces from the vast Persian empire, extending from Anatolia to the Punjab, and south to Egypt and Ethiopia. It is hard to be sure of numbers, but Xerxes commanded well over a million soldiers, carrying a great diversity of arms and armour. A large number of camp-followers came too - women. servants, slaves, traders.

Through Thermopyles the invaders could pass only a few abreast, in small numbers. They had to wade the hot smelly river to confront a phalanx of grim, determined, ruthlessly trained Spartans, backed by the other Greek soldiers; less determined, less disciplined.

It was the heroic mind-set in open, stubborn defiance of overwhelming odds, that mind-set which has been the stuff off fame, legend, and epic since the dawn of man.

It may be stated thus: fame is the only sure immortality; therefore act so that your deeds will be remembered with honour and admiration, even though you go down to defeat.

So, the last words of Beowulf, the lay of a great hero, are lof-geornost - most hungry for fame.

We find it well declared in Macauley's Horatius:

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the Gate:

"To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods".

And in Tolkien, at the great battle of Pelennor Fields:

"Stern now was Eomer's mood, and his mind clear again. He let blow the horns to rally all men to his banner that could come thither; for he thought to make a great shield-wall at the last, and stand, and fight there on foot till all fell, and do deeds of song on the fields of Pelennor, though no man should be left in the West to remember the last King of the Mark."

And, most recently:

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour'."

So too Leonidas and his Spartans, bracing themselves to the duty they lived to fulfil, knowing the odds against them were overwhelming, and believing they should go well-groomed to the Gods:

" 'The King with half the east at heel is come from lands of morning,

His fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air,

And he that fights will fall for nought, for home there's no returning.'

The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair."

At the hill of Kolonos the Spartans made their last stand on the third day of the battle. The summit of Kolonos bears a modern slab of reddish stone from Sparta, inscribed with the lines written by Simonides, perhaps the most famous of all epitaphs [it isn't easy to read].

Ὦ ξεῖν’, ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε

κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

O ksein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tude

keimetha tois keinon rhumasi peithomenoi.

[Writing u for upsilon, long ee, in the Welsh fashion.]

O stranger, report to the Lakedaimonians that here

we lie, as they commanded our obedience.

Leonidas and his 300 achieved the fame they sought. After 2-1/2 millennia they are remembered as heroes.

Xerxes' lasting shame is his order to decapitate and dishonour Leonidas' body, setting up the head on a pole.

The Greek who betrayed Leonidas by showing the Persians a path through the mountain to Leonidas' rear has great and permanent dishonour: his name - Ephialtes - is the modern Greek word for nightmare.

The least said the better about the monument erected by American Greeks at Thermopyles: a vainglorious monster, which Leonidas' would view with contempt.

Autopoiesis

This is a first attempt to write down ideas which interest and excite me. This is a brief, preliminary, incomplete and inadequate outline. Obviously these theories demand careful elaboration, precise exposition, critical evaluation, and discussion. A lengthy task, but a start must be made.

1. It is evident that the complexity of our planet earth has increased since its origin, maybe 4.5 billion years ago. A biosphere has evolved from an initial assembly of elements and simple compounds. At least one member of the biosphere is now conscious, with the facility of intelligent information processing.

2. There is no evidence that earth's evolution requires an external designer or controller: all processes on the earth are intrinsic and spontaneous. Therefore the potential of self-assembly - autopoiesis - must be included in our studies of the properties of matter.

The mechanisms of autopoiesis are poorly understood. Our knowledge is best for the biosphere, but insights into pre-biotic evolution are beginning.

Autopoiesis: the theory of natural self-assembly: The Autopoietic Earth: Gaia Autopoietika.

3. Gravity is the great creative force, causing the aggregation of materials and energy release necessary for autopoiesis.

4. Why stop with earth? Physics and chemistry do not vary across the kosmos. Our sun is one of millions of similar stars in our galaxy alone, and there are millions of galaxies: the probability that earth is the only planet suitable for life is vanishingly small. What we perceive here may be a very small sample, but there is no reason to believe it is atypical or unique.

The Kepler spacecraft will be a test of this evaluation.

There is a high probability that life is abundant in the kosmos: conscious, intelligent life must be out there, and may well be common. We can but hope that eventually a means of communication across vast distances will be found; perhaps then we shall find a kosmos full of voices.

5. The increase in complexity from kosmic primordia to stars and planets extends autopoiesis back almost to the singularity which we believe was in the beginning.

An Autopoietic Kosmos - Kosmos Autopoietikos: the grandest of unifying theories.

6. In broadest outline, autopoiesis proceeds:

- from hydrogen gas to generations of stars, and synthesis of all other elements;

- from early, simple stars to later, complex star-systems, with planets of elements and compounds;

- from simple to complex planetary chemistry;

- from complex molecules to simple life;

- from simple to complex life, increasingly homeostatic [independent of the environment];

- in homeostasis increasingly complex neural structures, permitting functions of increasing sophistication; finally consciousness and intelligence.

7. From the theory of autopoiesis we may predict as follows - safe in the knowledge that no practical test is likely.

Given enough hydrogen, enough space, and enough time; first life and then conscious intelligence will develop by natural, intrinsic mechanisms.

8. Autopoiesis - to what end? A question we cannot answer. That the kosmos has meaning and purpose must be assumed, for now. That is the only item of faith I can accept in my kataphusin philosophy. It is the first axiom for any evidence-based theology.