What is ethics? I knew, but I've forgotten.
"The study of morality.Of the precepts of conduct: of being decorous, noble, decent and honest. Of the heights of goodness, to which probity and morality carry up the human spirit. And of the chasms of evil, into which malice and immorality are flung ..."
'The heights of goodness!' she snorted. 'Probity! Morality! Don't make me laugh, or the scar on my face will burst. You were lucky that you weren't hunted, that they didn't send bounty hunters after you, people like .... You'd see what chasms of evil are. Ethics? Your ethics are worth shit, .... It isn't the evil and indecent who are flung down into the depths, no! Oh, no! The evil and decisive fling down those who are moral, honest and noble but maladroit, hesitant and full of scruples.'
'Thanks for the lesson,' he sneered.'In truth, though one may have lived a century, it is never too late to learn something new. Indeed, it is always worth listening to mature, wordly and inexperienced people.'
'Mock. Go ahead and mock.' She tossed her head.'While you still can.For now it is my turn, now I shall entertain you with a tale.I'll tell you what happened to me.And when I'm done we'll see if you still feel like mocking me.'
INDIA IPPON DESU
Monday, December 26, 2022
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Stanford hates fun
By John Cochrane
Stanford hates fun is the title of the second Stanford article in the Wall Street Journal this week. (On the first, Stanford's guide to acceptable words, enough said already.)
This has been bubbling up for a while. Last June, Ginevra Davis wrote a powerful article in Palladium, "Stanford's war on social life." She recounted how the slightly transgressive Stanford atmosphere in the 90s, which seeded the slightly transgressive get it done attitude of tech in the early 2000s, is being smothered by the Administration. For example, back in the early 90s,
...The brothers were winding down from Kappa Alpha’s annual Cabo-themed party on the house lawn.... a day-to-night extravaganza that would start sometime in the morning and continue long after midnight. The girls wore bikini tops and plastic flower leis, and the boys wore their best Hawaiian shirts.
Uh-oh, I can already smell trouble if you tried that today. But the point,
That year, the brothers had filled the entire main level of Kappa Alpha’s house with a layer of sand six inches deep. The night was almost over; the guests were leaving and the local surf rock band had been paid their customary hundred dollars in beer. The only question was what to do with all the sand.
No one remembers who had the idea to build the island. A group of five or six brothers managed the project. One rented a bulldozer...
Later that year, the brothers installed a zipline from the roof of their house to the center of the island. They also built a barge, which they would paddle around the lake on weekends and between classes.
More generally
Through the late 1990s, Stanford ... featured a wacky campus culture that combined collegiate prep with West Coast laissez-faire. Stanford was home to a rich patchwork of wild and experimental campus life. Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” and lit their houses on fire. Until 2013, Stanford hosted a fully student-run anarchist house, where residents covered the walls with eccentric murals.
Today,
The Kappa Alpha boys have been kicked out of their old house. Lake Lagunita was closed to student activities in 2001,...
...In less than a decade, Stanford’s administration eviscerated a hundred years of undergraduate culture and social groups. They ended decades-old traditions. They drove student groups out of their houses. They scraped names off buildings. They went after long-established hubs of student life, like fraternities and cultural theme houses...
A powerful observation: This spirit of self-organization, slightly transgressive but organized fun taught students how to organize things like the 2000s tech revolution. Stanford’s support for the unconventional pioneered a new breed of elite student: the charismatic builder who excelled at “breaking things” in nearby Silicon Valley.
... unlike most elite schools, ...Stanford ... was also fun. Stanford had created a global talent hub combined with explicit permission for rule-breaking. As a result, students learned a valuable lesson: they had agency; they could create their own norms and culture instead of relying on higher authorities.
Young kids need to be out in the playground negotiating the rules themselves, without lots of parents and coaches around. College students need self-organized parties and pranks to learn to be tech entrepreneurs. I had always disparaged "party schools" as places with too much drinking and not enough studying, and most parties seem to me like a pointless drunken bacchanalia. But the importance of self-organized activity is something I had missed.
The article explains nicely the advantages of fraternities and sororities to young people.
In the middle of my freshman year, I started noticing that students, particularly older ones not in a housed Greek organization, seemed quite aimless and very lonely....
When students live together, united by a shared identity, they tend to look after each other. The boys in one fraternity sleep together in a pile on the floor. Girls in housed sororities leave their doors open and treat their clothes like a communal wardrobe.
The process
In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals. The next year, Stanford drained the remnants of Lake Lagunita, where students used to gather to host bonfires, and ended the annual anything-but-clothes party known as Exotic Erotic. And the year after that, in 2015, the administration put the notoriously anti-establishment Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band on “super-probation,” the culmination of years of increasing restrictions on their antics.
over the ensuing years, the Band mostly lost its raucous, fraternity-esque culture, and stopped doing anything particularly controversial. Once, the Band mocked Stanford’s rivals with crass marching formations; today, the Band designs all their pranks based on pre-approved themes from the university and clears the final plans with a panel of administrators.
Then they came for the fraternities
One night, I was biking home late from the Caltrain. I made it halfway back to my dorm before I realized that something was missing. Music. It was a Friday night, but the campus was completely silent.
Unlike Harvard, which abruptly tried to ban “single-gender social organizations” and was immediately sued by alumni, Stanford picked off the Greek life organizations one by one to avoid student or alumni pushback. The playbook was always the same. Some incident would spark an investigation, and the administration would insist that the offending organization had lost its right to remain on campus. The group would be promptly removed.
...When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” ...
Next year, Outdoor House will be reinstated, but only because house members promised to refocus their theme on “racial and environmental justice in the outdoors.” Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing. Stanford reserves the right to unhouse any organization that does not, in their opinion, uphold these principles.
Covid provided the excuse to really clamp down. The new system sounds awfully bleak.
The first thing Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness” and “community” on campus. Under the system, new freshmen would be assigned to one of eight artificially-created housing groups called “neighborhoods,” each containing a representative sample of campus housing.
The reality of the neighborhood system is that it strips students of their ability to form distinct personalities or formal friend groups. I am in Neighborhood S. Some of my friends are in Neighborhood N. It doesn’t actually matter. The neighborhoods are not based on geography—many houses in the same “neighborhood” are on opposite sides of campus—and have no personalities outside of their letter name. They are distinctions without meaning.
... students in “bad housing”—the labyrinth of themeless, meaningless dorms awaiting most Stanford students—rarely bother to learn their neighbor’s names. Hallways are quiet and doors are locked. Without a strong existing support network, these students can easily bounce from anonymous dorms, to lecture halls, to cavernous dining halls without anyone acknowledging their presence for days.
..Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends.
When I tell current Stanford students the story about JP and his island, I swear their eyes pop out of their heads. Everything was so different then. It sounds like a story from another school—the house, the lake, and the groundskeeper who let the boys pass. But mostly, what feels foreign is the spirit expressed by the six brothers, the wild unfettered joy.
A bottom line
Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands..
***
Izzy Meyerson followed up in the Stanford Daily. Izzy transferred from the University of Chicago,
...the place where “fun goes to die.” Yet, in my first quarter at Stanford, I found myself missing the unique community hubs that so easily brought people together at the University of Chicago: the student run coffee shops, each with its own personality (the one for indie kids, the one for econ bros and their adjacents, the one for more edgy, subversive “alt” students, etc…), the student center, even the silent Harper Library, which was a place for me to hang with friends and meet new people...
When I was at UChicago, there was an active effort underway to make the school more appealing to the general high achieving high school student... This involved embracing looser restrictions ... and a new community-driven student life strategy. It seems to me that Stanford is heading in the opposite direction, embracing the “where fun goes to die” mantra that UChicago is trying so hard to shed.
...when I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021, I saw a dull and tired campus, one that had forgotten it was supposed to be the fun California school... I spent much of my time working in my room, and I am someone that hates working in my room. But there were few social places to work on campus where you could meet new people. I felt awkward and unwelcome when I walked into the first floor of Green to absolute silence and stares from people as the squeak of my shoes seemed to fill the emptiness of the space.
Izzy has a deep point. The lack of campus social life is about a lot more than big alcohol-fueled parties.
...Stanford has been eroding away traditions (such as Full Moon on the Quad) and historical community hubs through the Neighborhood System. This was easy for them to do — there was an entire year of remote schooling in which traditions were not passed down to the incoming class, and so their demise was imminent. Though such traditions may seem frivolous, it is exactly these small, uniquely Stanford events that bring people together...
..what makes college so valuable is the relationships you make with others across wide and varying backgrounds.... But we must have access to abundant social interactions and involvements for such meaningful growth to take place. So, I implore you, Stanford, to embrace “fun” again, revitalize our unique campus culture, not simply for the enjoyment of the student body but to allow your students to build themselves into complex and diverse beings.
The WSJ notes
Stanford began mandating students file an application two weeks ahead of a party including a list of attendees, along with sober monitors, students said.
The number of registered parties dwindled to 45 during the first four weeks of school this fall, down from 158 over the same period in 2019, according to the Stanford Daily.
My jaw dropped. Filing an application for a party two weeks ahead of time? You must be kidding. I went to MIT, lived in a dorm, and even there parties were organized about 5 minutes ahead of time! "List of attendees?" Is this China? The university keeps track of who is invited to what party?
What's going on? It's right there -- "Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing.." " Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness”.." The bureaucrat's vision of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" cannot stand any self-organization by students. Voluntary association might not be sufficiently "diverse" and "inclusive" (except, of course, the "affinity" groups which are deliberately not diverse and inclusive.) The only way to be "equitably" "included," apparently, is to be equally, intensely, lonely and miserable. So even the most minor social organization, like having a party, must be policed by bureaucrats. And smothered in the process.
No wonder there is a mental health crisis! Living all alone in a faceless dorm with closed doors would drive any 18 year old nuts. I found my first years in a college dorm intensely difficult, and only the fellowship of the irreverent Burton Third Bombers got me through. (Thank you all!) I can't imagine living all alone in a motel-like silent dorm a thousand miles from home. I would have cracked too.
***
Stanford's response, per WSJ, could be written by The Onion,
Samuel Santos Jr., associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs, says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere.
The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.
“We want events to be fun, inclusive and safe and those things can happen,” Mr. Santos says. “They just require collaboration and honesty.”
Maybe the problem is reflected in the fact that Stanford has an "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning" in the first place! Streamlining the paperwork to ask mommy for permission to have a party is not the answer. And "more administrators will be hired !" Jaw drops again. Isn't it breathtakingly obvious that the problem is too many administrators in the first place?
***
This may seem minor. Who cares if undergraduates have fun? Well, maybe some people care if undergraduates mature into confident people, capable of organizing a party without guidance and permission from the Ministry of Parties, before they head out into the world to start the next generation of tech companies. Or, more likely take jobs as deputy directors of "inclusion, community and integrative learning" at the newly sclerotic old tech companies.
I hope, however, that Stanford's alumni will wake up and take notice. They are a key constituency for an institution that lives off their generous donations. The loss of academic freedom and free speech doesn't seem to bother them much, even when taken to the ridiculous such as the guide to acceptable words. The imposition of far-left politics under the "IDEAL" banner hasn't woken them up.
But they give money in memory of the great time they had as undergraduates -- and the experiences that made their lifelong friends, molded their personalities, and were core foundations of their current success and personal happiness. Perhaps news that these core fond memories have gone up in smoke will catalyze them.
Stanford hates fun is the title of the second Stanford article in the Wall Street Journal this week. (On the first, Stanford's guide to acceptable words, enough said already.)
This has been bubbling up for a while. Last June, Ginevra Davis wrote a powerful article in Palladium, "Stanford's war on social life." She recounted how the slightly transgressive Stanford atmosphere in the 90s, which seeded the slightly transgressive get it done attitude of tech in the early 2000s, is being smothered by the Administration. For example, back in the early 90s,
...The brothers were winding down from Kappa Alpha’s annual Cabo-themed party on the house lawn.... a day-to-night extravaganza that would start sometime in the morning and continue long after midnight. The girls wore bikini tops and plastic flower leis, and the boys wore their best Hawaiian shirts.
Uh-oh, I can already smell trouble if you tried that today. But the point,
That year, the brothers had filled the entire main level of Kappa Alpha’s house with a layer of sand six inches deep. The night was almost over; the guests were leaving and the local surf rock band had been paid their customary hundred dollars in beer. The only question was what to do with all the sand.
No one remembers who had the idea to build the island. A group of five or six brothers managed the project. One rented a bulldozer...
Later that year, the brothers installed a zipline from the roof of their house to the center of the island. They also built a barge, which they would paddle around the lake on weekends and between classes.
More generally
Through the late 1990s, Stanford ... featured a wacky campus culture that combined collegiate prep with West Coast laissez-faire. Stanford was home to a rich patchwork of wild and experimental campus life. Communal living houses (“co-ops”) encouraged casual nudity, while fraternities threw a raucous annual “Greek Week” and lit their houses on fire. Until 2013, Stanford hosted a fully student-run anarchist house, where residents covered the walls with eccentric murals.
Today,
The Kappa Alpha boys have been kicked out of their old house. Lake Lagunita was closed to student activities in 2001,...
...In less than a decade, Stanford’s administration eviscerated a hundred years of undergraduate culture and social groups. They ended decades-old traditions. They drove student groups out of their houses. They scraped names off buildings. They went after long-established hubs of student life, like fraternities and cultural theme houses...
A powerful observation: This spirit of self-organization, slightly transgressive but organized fun taught students how to organize things like the 2000s tech revolution. Stanford’s support for the unconventional pioneered a new breed of elite student: the charismatic builder who excelled at “breaking things” in nearby Silicon Valley.
... unlike most elite schools, ...Stanford ... was also fun. Stanford had created a global talent hub combined with explicit permission for rule-breaking. As a result, students learned a valuable lesson: they had agency; they could create their own norms and culture instead of relying on higher authorities.
Young kids need to be out in the playground negotiating the rules themselves, without lots of parents and coaches around. College students need self-organized parties and pranks to learn to be tech entrepreneurs. I had always disparaged "party schools" as places with too much drinking and not enough studying, and most parties seem to me like a pointless drunken bacchanalia. But the importance of self-organized activity is something I had missed.
The article explains nicely the advantages of fraternities and sororities to young people.
In the middle of my freshman year, I started noticing that students, particularly older ones not in a housed Greek organization, seemed quite aimless and very lonely....
When students live together, united by a shared identity, they tend to look after each other. The boys in one fraternity sleep together in a pile on the floor. Girls in housed sororities leave their doors open and treat their clothes like a communal wardrobe.
The process
In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals. The next year, Stanford drained the remnants of Lake Lagunita, where students used to gather to host bonfires, and ended the annual anything-but-clothes party known as Exotic Erotic. And the year after that, in 2015, the administration put the notoriously anti-establishment Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band on “super-probation,” the culmination of years of increasing restrictions on their antics.
over the ensuing years, the Band mostly lost its raucous, fraternity-esque culture, and stopped doing anything particularly controversial. Once, the Band mocked Stanford’s rivals with crass marching formations; today, the Band designs all their pranks based on pre-approved themes from the university and clears the final plans with a panel of administrators.
Then they came for the fraternities
One night, I was biking home late from the Caltrain. I made it halfway back to my dorm before I realized that something was missing. Music. It was a Friday night, but the campus was completely silent.
Unlike Harvard, which abruptly tried to ban “single-gender social organizations” and was immediately sued by alumni, Stanford picked off the Greek life organizations one by one to avoid student or alumni pushback. The playbook was always the same. Some incident would spark an investigation, and the administration would insist that the offending organization had lost its right to remain on campus. The group would be promptly removed.
...When Stanford could not remove a student organization for bad behavior, they found other justifications. One such case was the end of Outdoor House, an innocuous haven on the far side of campus for students who liked hiking. The official explanation from Stanford for eliminating the house was that the Outdoor theme “fell short of diversity, equity and inclusion expectations.” ...
Next year, Outdoor House will be reinstated, but only because house members promised to refocus their theme on “racial and environmental justice in the outdoors.” Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing. Stanford reserves the right to unhouse any organization that does not, in their opinion, uphold these principles.
Covid provided the excuse to really clamp down. The new system sounds awfully bleak.
The first thing Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness” and “community” on campus. Under the system, new freshmen would be assigned to one of eight artificially-created housing groups called “neighborhoods,” each containing a representative sample of campus housing.
The reality of the neighborhood system is that it strips students of their ability to form distinct personalities or formal friend groups. I am in Neighborhood S. Some of my friends are in Neighborhood N. It doesn’t actually matter. The neighborhoods are not based on geography—many houses in the same “neighborhood” are on opposite sides of campus—and have no personalities outside of their letter name. They are distinctions without meaning.
... students in “bad housing”—the labyrinth of themeless, meaningless dorms awaiting most Stanford students—rarely bother to learn their neighbor’s names. Hallways are quiet and doors are locked. Without a strong existing support network, these students can easily bounce from anonymous dorms, to lecture halls, to cavernous dining halls without anyone acknowledging their presence for days.
..Stanford students live in brand new buildings with white walls. We have a $20 million dollar meditation center that nobody uses. But students didn’t ask for any of that. We just wanted a dirty house with friends.
When I tell current Stanford students the story about JP and his island, I swear their eyes pop out of their heads. Everything was so different then. It sounds like a story from another school—the house, the lake, and the groundskeeper who let the boys pass. But mostly, what feels foreign is the spirit expressed by the six brothers, the wild unfettered joy.
A bottom line
Stanford’s new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat’s vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands..
***
Izzy Meyerson followed up in the Stanford Daily. Izzy transferred from the University of Chicago,
...the place where “fun goes to die.” Yet, in my first quarter at Stanford, I found myself missing the unique community hubs that so easily brought people together at the University of Chicago: the student run coffee shops, each with its own personality (the one for indie kids, the one for econ bros and their adjacents, the one for more edgy, subversive “alt” students, etc…), the student center, even the silent Harper Library, which was a place for me to hang with friends and meet new people...
When I was at UChicago, there was an active effort underway to make the school more appealing to the general high achieving high school student... This involved embracing looser restrictions ... and a new community-driven student life strategy. It seems to me that Stanford is heading in the opposite direction, embracing the “where fun goes to die” mantra that UChicago is trying so hard to shed.
...when I arrived at Stanford in the fall of 2021, I saw a dull and tired campus, one that had forgotten it was supposed to be the fun California school... I spent much of my time working in my room, and I am someone that hates working in my room. But there were few social places to work on campus where you could meet new people. I felt awkward and unwelcome when I walked into the first floor of Green to absolute silence and stares from people as the squeak of my shoes seemed to fill the emptiness of the space.
Izzy has a deep point. The lack of campus social life is about a lot more than big alcohol-fueled parties.
...Stanford has been eroding away traditions (such as Full Moon on the Quad) and historical community hubs through the Neighborhood System. This was easy for them to do — there was an entire year of remote schooling in which traditions were not passed down to the incoming class, and so their demise was imminent. Though such traditions may seem frivolous, it is exactly these small, uniquely Stanford events that bring people together...
..what makes college so valuable is the relationships you make with others across wide and varying backgrounds.... But we must have access to abundant social interactions and involvements for such meaningful growth to take place. So, I implore you, Stanford, to embrace “fun” again, revitalize our unique campus culture, not simply for the enjoyment of the student body but to allow your students to build themselves into complex and diverse beings.
The WSJ notes
Stanford began mandating students file an application two weeks ahead of a party including a list of attendees, along with sober monitors, students said.
The number of registered parties dwindled to 45 during the first four weeks of school this fall, down from 158 over the same period in 2019, according to the Stanford Daily.
My jaw dropped. Filing an application for a party two weeks ahead of time? You must be kidding. I went to MIT, lived in a dorm, and even there parties were organized about 5 minutes ahead of time! "List of attendees?" Is this China? The university keeps track of who is invited to what party?
What's going on? It's right there -- "Upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is the first of four “ResX principles” that now govern undergraduate housing.." " Stanford announced was the introduction of a new housing system, designed to promote “fairness”.." The bureaucrat's vision of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" cannot stand any self-organization by students. Voluntary association might not be sufficiently "diverse" and "inclusive" (except, of course, the "affinity" groups which are deliberately not diverse and inclusive.) The only way to be "equitably" "included," apparently, is to be equally, intensely, lonely and miserable. So even the most minor social organization, like having a party, must be policed by bureaucrats. And smothered in the process.
No wonder there is a mental health crisis! Living all alone in a faceless dorm with closed doors would drive any 18 year old nuts. I found my first years in a college dorm intensely difficult, and only the fellowship of the irreverent Burton Third Bombers got me through. (Thank you all!) I can't imagine living all alone in a motel-like silent dorm a thousand miles from home. I would have cracked too.
***
Stanford's response, per WSJ, could be written by The Onion,
Samuel Santos Jr., associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning within the Division of Student Affairs, says the school is working to address students’ concerns about Stanford’s social atmosphere.
The party-planning process will be streamlined and more administrators will be hired to help facilitate student social life.
“We want events to be fun, inclusive and safe and those things can happen,” Mr. Santos says. “They just require collaboration and honesty.”
Maybe the problem is reflected in the fact that Stanford has an "associate vice provost of inclusion, community and integrative learning" in the first place! Streamlining the paperwork to ask mommy for permission to have a party is not the answer. And "more administrators will be hired !" Jaw drops again. Isn't it breathtakingly obvious that the problem is too many administrators in the first place?
***
This may seem minor. Who cares if undergraduates have fun? Well, maybe some people care if undergraduates mature into confident people, capable of organizing a party without guidance and permission from the Ministry of Parties, before they head out into the world to start the next generation of tech companies. Or, more likely take jobs as deputy directors of "inclusion, community and integrative learning" at the newly sclerotic old tech companies.
I hope, however, that Stanford's alumni will wake up and take notice. They are a key constituency for an institution that lives off their generous donations. The loss of academic freedom and free speech doesn't seem to bother them much, even when taken to the ridiculous such as the guide to acceptable words. The imposition of far-left politics under the "IDEAL" banner hasn't woken them up.
But they give money in memory of the great time they had as undergraduates -- and the experiences that made their lifelong friends, molded their personalities, and were core foundations of their current success and personal happiness. Perhaps news that these core fond memories have gone up in smoke will catalyze them.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Wednesday, December 07, 2022
Saturday, December 03, 2022
Why are there no more protests in Russia
Sergey Radchenko on Twitter
On the question of why protests are breaking out in China and in Iran but *not* in Russia. This has nothing to do with any kind of predisposition for authoritarianism or some special degree of subservience that the Russians supposedly possess. Let's look at what's happening.
1. The most important factor is economic. Russians today are not doing great but in comparative terms - compared to where they were even twenty years ago - they are still fairly well off. Russian nominal GDP per capita today is 5 times what it was 20 years ago, more than $12,000.
The impact of sanctions is being felt, and inflation is going up, but this is really not the 1990s. In the 1990s, the town I lived in (in the Russian Far East) suffered daily blackouts and the absence of hot or, often, cold water, and no one was even bombing it.
2. Russia is a moderately repressive society. We know for instance that brave, honest activists like Navanly and Kara-Murza are in prison, and there are laws in place to put anyone behind bars for made-up reasons. But people can go much as before if they don't go out on a limb.
There is a certain degree of normality to life in Russia (unlike, say, in China since covid). So life goes on, more or less, as before. Except of course that some are being drafted to die in Ukraine. But - crucially - a relatively small number (still).
3. There is a degree of novelty to this situation. The war began in February - en eternity ago - but its reality has not quite sunk in. Partly, it's related to the above: life more or less goes on as before, and the war is something happening far away, not here and now.
4. Russia still allows people to leave. True, they can't go to Europe but those most opposed to the regime have been able to leave and restart their lives in places like Kazakhstan, Georgia, even Turkey and Mongolia. Russia is not a pressure cooker
5 (crucially). Putin has benefited from the rallying-around-the-flag effect, something denied to the Iranian and Chinese rulers. Although Russia has invaded Ukraine (not the other way around), there is a factor of us-vs-them in this war.
This has of course been helped by Western narratives about de-colonizing Russia, proclaiming it a terrorist state, banning all Russians from Europe, etc. Those who understand the problematic effect of these measures on Russia (including me) have long drawn attention to this.
So, no, I am not surprised that there are no large scale protests in Russia. Are you?
On the question of why protests are breaking out in China and in Iran but *not* in Russia. This has nothing to do with any kind of predisposition for authoritarianism or some special degree of subservience that the Russians supposedly possess. Let's look at what's happening.
1. The most important factor is economic. Russians today are not doing great but in comparative terms - compared to where they were even twenty years ago - they are still fairly well off. Russian nominal GDP per capita today is 5 times what it was 20 years ago, more than $12,000.
The impact of sanctions is being felt, and inflation is going up, but this is really not the 1990s. In the 1990s, the town I lived in (in the Russian Far East) suffered daily blackouts and the absence of hot or, often, cold water, and no one was even bombing it.
2. Russia is a moderately repressive society. We know for instance that brave, honest activists like Navanly and Kara-Murza are in prison, and there are laws in place to put anyone behind bars for made-up reasons. But people can go much as before if they don't go out on a limb.
There is a certain degree of normality to life in Russia (unlike, say, in China since covid). So life goes on, more or less, as before. Except of course that some are being drafted to die in Ukraine. But - crucially - a relatively small number (still).
3. There is a degree of novelty to this situation. The war began in February - en eternity ago - but its reality has not quite sunk in. Partly, it's related to the above: life more or less goes on as before, and the war is something happening far away, not here and now.
4. Russia still allows people to leave. True, they can't go to Europe but those most opposed to the regime have been able to leave and restart their lives in places like Kazakhstan, Georgia, even Turkey and Mongolia. Russia is not a pressure cooker
5 (crucially). Putin has benefited from the rallying-around-the-flag effect, something denied to the Iranian and Chinese rulers. Although Russia has invaded Ukraine (not the other way around), there is a factor of us-vs-them in this war.
This has of course been helped by Western narratives about de-colonizing Russia, proclaiming it a terrorist state, banning all Russians from Europe, etc. Those who understand the problematic effect of these measures on Russia (including me) have long drawn attention to this.
So, no, I am not surprised that there are no large scale protests in Russia. Are you?
Life on Titan
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has a surface temperature of 94 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero, about a third of Earth’s. Titan is located 9.5 times farther than the Earth-Sun separation and the surface temperature of Solar system objects declines roughly as the square-root of their distance from the Sun.
Coincidentally, 94 degrees was the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed, as described in my 2010 book. An object like Titan forming out of gas enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have had this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a new paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to emerge on it.
This coincidence of temperatures raises the fascinating possibility of testing how early life could have arisen in the Universe by studying Titan. In other words, the question of whether Titan hosts life has cosmic implications. It could unravel the roots of Life in the Cosmos, the title of the book I published last year with my former postdoc, Manasvi Lingam.
In the Solar system, Titan is the only object besides Earth that has rivers, lakes and seas on its surface, as well as a cycle of methane and ethane liquids raining from clouds, flowing across its surface and evaporating back into the atmosphere, similarly to Earth’s water cycle. Titan is also thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. Its atmosphere is primarily nitrogen like Earth’s, but with a 5% contribution of methane. Titan’s landscape is covered with dark dunes of hydrocarbon grains, resembling coffee grounds, primarily around the equatorial regions.
Gravity measurements by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed that Titan has an underground ocean of liquid water, likely mixed with salts and ammonia. Radio signals detected by ESA’s Huygens probe in 2005 strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 55 to 80 kilometers below the icy surface, allowing for the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it. In addition, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a foundation for the chemistry of life-as-we-do-not-know-it on the moon’s surface.
Whether the physical conditions on Titan gave birth to these forms of life is unknown. The realization that Titan’s atmosphere is rich in organic compounds led to speculation that chemical precursors of life may have been generated there.
In June 2010, papers analyzing data from the Cassini–Huygens mission reported anomalies in the atmosphere near the surface which could be consistent with the presence of an exotic lifeform of methane-consuming organisms, but may alternatively be due to non-living chemical or meteorological processes.
The Miller–Urey experiment and its follow-ups have shown that UV irradiation of Titan’s atmosphere can generate complex molecules and polymer substances like tholins. The reaction starts with dissociation of nitrogen and methane, forming hydrogen cyanide and acetylene.
After applying energy to a combination of gases like those in Titan’s atmosphere, the planetary scientist Sarah Hörst detected in her laboratory in 2010 the five nucleotide bases which make DNA and RNA, as well as amino acids — the building blocks of protein, among the many compounds produced. In 2013, NASA reported that complex organic chemicals could arise on Titan based on studies simulating the atmosphere of Titan. A few months later a paper reported the detection of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Titan’s upper atmosphere.
In 2015, a model for a hypothetical cell membrane capable of functioning in liquid methane was modeled. The proposed chemical base for these membranes is acrylonitrile, which was detected in Titan’s atmosphere by Cassini and ALMA. Unfortunately, the Cassini–Huygens mission was not equipped to search for biosignatures or complex organics
Here’s hoping that future space probes will reveal whether Titan hosts life in its liquid bodies of methane, ethane, water and ammonia. Finding life on Titan would not only reveal that we are not alone but also that we may be relatively late to the party. The cosmos may have been teeming with life after the first stars formed.
In retrospect, such a finding would be embarrassing to most cosmologists who treated the Universe as lifeless for over a century, while focusing attention on dead objects like stars, black holes and dark matter halos. In reality, the Universe may have been full of life starting from the first generation of Titan-like objects, about a hundred million years after the Big Bang. Our cosmic neighbor, Titan, may be first to reveal this cosmic secret to us.
Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He chairs the advisory board for the Breakthrough Starshot project, and is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. His new book, titled “Interstellar”, is scheduled for publication in August 2023.
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Why shouldn’t Poland be richer than Britain?
It’s not the 80s anymore
Ben Sixsmith on The Critic.co.uk
23 November, 2022
You might have noticed a meme floating around the media about how Britons could become “no better off than people living in Poland”. “If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes, “Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time”:
It sounds like an absurd idea that in 2040 we might see complaints in the Polish press about a flood of British plumbers undercutting wages, or Brytyjski Skleps lining the rougher areas of Warsaw, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
This talking point has also appeared in the Telegraph, the Express and the Financial Times. It often comes with a sense of vague alarm and bewilderment. Poland? The post-communist place? Don’t they live entirely off vodka and potatoes? Don’t they have horses clippety-cloppeting down the streets selling women’s underwear pinched off a truck in Germany? Poland?
A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland
Having lived in Poland for nine years, I can say that I am not at all surprised by these projections. To be clear, that is all they are — projections. A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland.
Still, I think a lot of British people would be surprised by how much better things can be in the land of Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II. Equally, a lot of Polish people would be surprised by how much worse things can be in Britain — given that a lot of Poles of my acquaintance appear to think that getting rich in the U.K. is as easy as walking outside with a wheelbarrow and catching the banknotes that rain down from the sky.
Britain has had minimal economic growth for years. Poland has long been enjoying some of the highest economic growth in Europe. It even emerged from the pandemic better off than other European nations with, as Paweł Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos wrote for the LSE, “a relatively lax approach to economic lockdown and a bit of sheer luck”.
Institutions often seem to work better as well. I can generally visit a GP on the day I call. Britons often have to wait for more than a week. Maternal mortality is higher in the UK — and infant mortality is about the same, despite Britain being much richer overall. Actually, Polish life expectancy as whole is just a touch shorter than British life expectancy, despite the nation having a lot more smokers.
Polish kids have ranked higher on the PISA education rankings than British kids — ranking, indeed, the third highest in Europe in science and maths, and the fourth in reading comprehension. Poland is a more peaceful place than Britain, with murder and rape generally being rarer (granted, statistics in the latter case are famously difficult to trust). Terrorism, for reasons I leave to the reader, has been almost non-existent in Polish society.
Some Polish achievements are more difficult to quantify. In Britain, the 20th century was marked by a curious habit of ripping down beautiful buildings and constructing ugly ones. Poland, meanwhile, has been beautifully renovating and reconstructing many of its urban spaces, pursuing a philosophy of “preservation meets modernisation”. Warsaw and Kraków are famous enough, but travellers could also visit lovely towns and cities like Wrocław, Toruń and Gdańsk — or my own, Tarnowskie Góry.
It would be fantastically condescending, and dishonest, to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops in Polish life. Any Pole could tell you eloquently and knowledgeably about their struggles. You think an inflation rate of 11.1 per cent is bad? How about 17.9? Wages tend to be lower in Poland than in Western Europe, leading to high emigration. Seeing a GP is simple enough, but getting an operation is a right pain in the ass. Poles are bitterly divided on socio-cultural issues like abortion and the role of the Church.
Many people don’t see that decline is not always a fact of life
Nor is Britain failing in all respects. If that were the case we would not have so many Poles who want to live there. My intention is not just to big up Poland — fond as I am of doing that — or to thumb my nose at my homeland. It is to shake Britain by its national shoulders.
It is tempting to imagine that our economic, institutional and cultural conditions are as they are because, well, that’s just how things are. This is not always an instinct that should be resisted. The first premise of conservative philosophy is that individual and collective lives have limits. We can’t click our fingers and be rich, safe and cheerful. Many people, though, have an excess of gloomy acquiescence. They don’t see that decline is not always a fact of life — as natural as the changing colours of the leaves — but a process that is at least somewhat within our leaders’ control. That countries with less solid and deep political, cultural and economic foundations can equal and surpass British outcomes is proof enough of that.
It is understandable that Britons want to be richer than Poles, just as they want to be richer than Germans, Swedes, Norwegians and the French. Shock at the possibility of being overtaken by a bunch of Slavs, of all people, shows how much Britons have ignored not just their own decline but the accomplishments of others. Let’s do our best, going forwards, to succeed together.
Ben Sixsmith on The Critic.co.uk
23 November, 2022
You might have noticed a meme floating around the media about how Britons could become “no better off than people living in Poland”. “If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes, “Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time”:
It sounds like an absurd idea that in 2040 we might see complaints in the Polish press about a flood of British plumbers undercutting wages, or Brytyjski Skleps lining the rougher areas of Warsaw, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.
This talking point has also appeared in the Telegraph, the Express and the Financial Times. It often comes with a sense of vague alarm and bewilderment. Poland? The post-communist place? Don’t they live entirely off vodka and potatoes? Don’t they have horses clippety-cloppeting down the streets selling women’s underwear pinched off a truck in Germany? Poland?
A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland
Having lived in Poland for nine years, I can say that I am not at all surprised by these projections. To be clear, that is all they are — projections. A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland.
Still, I think a lot of British people would be surprised by how much better things can be in the land of Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II. Equally, a lot of Polish people would be surprised by how much worse things can be in Britain — given that a lot of Poles of my acquaintance appear to think that getting rich in the U.K. is as easy as walking outside with a wheelbarrow and catching the banknotes that rain down from the sky.
Britain has had minimal economic growth for years. Poland has long been enjoying some of the highest economic growth in Europe. It even emerged from the pandemic better off than other European nations with, as Paweł Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos wrote for the LSE, “a relatively lax approach to economic lockdown and a bit of sheer luck”.
Institutions often seem to work better as well. I can generally visit a GP on the day I call. Britons often have to wait for more than a week. Maternal mortality is higher in the UK — and infant mortality is about the same, despite Britain being much richer overall. Actually, Polish life expectancy as whole is just a touch shorter than British life expectancy, despite the nation having a lot more smokers.
Polish kids have ranked higher on the PISA education rankings than British kids — ranking, indeed, the third highest in Europe in science and maths, and the fourth in reading comprehension. Poland is a more peaceful place than Britain, with murder and rape generally being rarer (granted, statistics in the latter case are famously difficult to trust). Terrorism, for reasons I leave to the reader, has been almost non-existent in Polish society.
Some Polish achievements are more difficult to quantify. In Britain, the 20th century was marked by a curious habit of ripping down beautiful buildings and constructing ugly ones. Poland, meanwhile, has been beautifully renovating and reconstructing many of its urban spaces, pursuing a philosophy of “preservation meets modernisation”. Warsaw and Kraków are famous enough, but travellers could also visit lovely towns and cities like Wrocław, Toruń and Gdańsk — or my own, Tarnowskie Góry.
It would be fantastically condescending, and dishonest, to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops in Polish life. Any Pole could tell you eloquently and knowledgeably about their struggles. You think an inflation rate of 11.1 per cent is bad? How about 17.9? Wages tend to be lower in Poland than in Western Europe, leading to high emigration. Seeing a GP is simple enough, but getting an operation is a right pain in the ass. Poles are bitterly divided on socio-cultural issues like abortion and the role of the Church.
Many people don’t see that decline is not always a fact of life
Nor is Britain failing in all respects. If that were the case we would not have so many Poles who want to live there. My intention is not just to big up Poland — fond as I am of doing that — or to thumb my nose at my homeland. It is to shake Britain by its national shoulders.
It is tempting to imagine that our economic, institutional and cultural conditions are as they are because, well, that’s just how things are. This is not always an instinct that should be resisted. The first premise of conservative philosophy is that individual and collective lives have limits. We can’t click our fingers and be rich, safe and cheerful. Many people, though, have an excess of gloomy acquiescence. They don’t see that decline is not always a fact of life — as natural as the changing colours of the leaves — but a process that is at least somewhat within our leaders’ control. That countries with less solid and deep political, cultural and economic foundations can equal and surpass British outcomes is proof enough of that.
It is understandable that Britons want to be richer than Poles, just as they want to be richer than Germans, Swedes, Norwegians and the French. Shock at the possibility of being overtaken by a bunch of Slavs, of all people, shows how much Britons have ignored not just their own decline but the accomplishments of others. Let’s do our best, going forwards, to succeed together.
Monday, November 21, 2022
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Sunday, November 13, 2022
The Devils Hour : Amazon Prime Series
The Devil’s Hour review – proof that Peter Capaldi is the world’s most terrifying actor
That face! The grief it conveys! The ex-Doctor’s turn in this new supernatural crime drama is chilling – and joins a stunning performance from Jessica Raine as a harrowed mother
By Lucy Mangan in The Guardian
Fri 28 Oct 2022 15.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 31 Oct 2022 06.00 GMT
I do not damn with faint praise when I say that the back of Peter Capaldi’s head is the most frightening thing in the opening episode of The Devil’s Hour, Amazon Prime Video’s new spooky six-part drama by Tom Moran. I mean only to place on record the underacknowledged truth that Capaldi is the most frightening actor working today. The only reason a generation of children were not permanently traumatised by his years as Doctor Who is because they do not yet know enough of life. If you do, you see that all of it lives in Capaldi’s face and that most of it is suffering, grief and pain.
We see little of that haunted visage at first, though it is clear his character is the pivot around which the whole thing will swing. Our main concern is with Lucy (Jessica Raine), an overstretched social worker also dealing with an aged mother who has dementia, the end of her marriage to Mike (Phil Dunster) and an unreachable, heartbreaking puzzle of a child, Isaac (Benjamin Chivers). He is emotionless, suggestible, vulnerable and given to seeing and hearing from figures invisible to others. Lucy wakes up every night at 3.33am exactly, wrenched from awful visions as she sleeps. Are they ordinary nightmares caused by current stresses and strains, or the results of buried trauma – as other momentary hallucinations and apparent flashbacks suggest? Or are they, as Capaldi’s face implies, something worse?
Meanwhile, DI Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) – a suave young man except when he is vomiting over bloody crime scenes – is investigating a bloody murder. The perpetrator is linked to the disappearance of a young boy years ago and, by the end of the first episode, to Lucy too.
Just about every horror trope you could ask for is here, piling up like poisoned candy in a child’s Halloween bucket. There is the Omen-meets-Sixth Sense character of Isaac. There are flickering figures half-glimpsed and gone. Images of bloodstained soft toys and nightgown hems and a shotgun under a chin. There are shadows everywhere.
And then there’s Capaldi, handcuffed to a table in a darkened interview room, talking gnomically to Lucy about everything that has unfolded for them, to which we are not yet entirely privy. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever experienced?” he asks her – an unsettling enough question anyway, that he is asking with That Face, which should cause all the skin to fly off her body. “All of this!” replies Lucy “You!”
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he replies sorrowfully. “You’ve suffered far worse than me. You just don’t know it yet.” Dum dum DAAAAAH!
It’s great fun. Its many, many pieces – which if they gel will make it a great show in all sorts of other ways – are currently held together by Raine’s absolutely storming performance. She is fantastic as the mother consumed by love and worry, the courageous professional – there is a well-wrought domestic violence storyline that ratchets up the tension – and the possible victim who is afraid she might be losing her grip on sanity (although whether she’s a victim of a past, present or future evil we cannot be sure). The supernatural element is less important so far than the acute psychological horror her performance evokes. It’s brilliantly done. If the rest of the series matches up to her, we are in for a truly terrifying treat
By Lucy Mangan in The Guardian
Fri 28 Oct 2022 15.00 BST
Last modified on Mon 31 Oct 2022 06.00 GMT
I do not damn with faint praise when I say that the back of Peter Capaldi’s head is the most frightening thing in the opening episode of The Devil’s Hour, Amazon Prime Video’s new spooky six-part drama by Tom Moran. I mean only to place on record the underacknowledged truth that Capaldi is the most frightening actor working today. The only reason a generation of children were not permanently traumatised by his years as Doctor Who is because they do not yet know enough of life. If you do, you see that all of it lives in Capaldi’s face and that most of it is suffering, grief and pain.
We see little of that haunted visage at first, though it is clear his character is the pivot around which the whole thing will swing. Our main concern is with Lucy (Jessica Raine), an overstretched social worker also dealing with an aged mother who has dementia, the end of her marriage to Mike (Phil Dunster) and an unreachable, heartbreaking puzzle of a child, Isaac (Benjamin Chivers). He is emotionless, suggestible, vulnerable and given to seeing and hearing from figures invisible to others. Lucy wakes up every night at 3.33am exactly, wrenched from awful visions as she sleeps. Are they ordinary nightmares caused by current stresses and strains, or the results of buried trauma – as other momentary hallucinations and apparent flashbacks suggest? Or are they, as Capaldi’s face implies, something worse?
Meanwhile, DI Ravi Dhillon (Nikesh Patel) – a suave young man except when he is vomiting over bloody crime scenes – is investigating a bloody murder. The perpetrator is linked to the disappearance of a young boy years ago and, by the end of the first episode, to Lucy too.
Just about every horror trope you could ask for is here, piling up like poisoned candy in a child’s Halloween bucket. There is the Omen-meets-Sixth Sense character of Isaac. There are flickering figures half-glimpsed and gone. Images of bloodstained soft toys and nightgown hems and a shotgun under a chin. There are shadows everywhere.
And then there’s Capaldi, handcuffed to a table in a darkened interview room, talking gnomically to Lucy about everything that has unfolded for them, to which we are not yet entirely privy. “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever experienced?” he asks her – an unsettling enough question anyway, that he is asking with That Face, which should cause all the skin to fly off her body. “All of this!” replies Lucy “You!”
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” he replies sorrowfully. “You’ve suffered far worse than me. You just don’t know it yet.” Dum dum DAAAAAH!
It’s great fun. Its many, many pieces – which if they gel will make it a great show in all sorts of other ways – are currently held together by Raine’s absolutely storming performance. She is fantastic as the mother consumed by love and worry, the courageous professional – there is a well-wrought domestic violence storyline that ratchets up the tension – and the possible victim who is afraid she might be losing her grip on sanity (although whether she’s a victim of a past, present or future evil we cannot be sure). The supernatural element is less important so far than the acute psychological horror her performance evokes. It’s brilliantly done. If the rest of the series matches up to her, we are in for a truly terrifying treat
Monday, November 07, 2022
Objectivism : The proper alternative thought
You must attach clear specific meaning to words i.e be able to identify their referents in reality ..... All philosophical con games count on your using words as vague approximations. You must not take catchphrase - or any abstract statement - as if it were approximate. Take it literally. Dont translate it, dont glamorize it, dont make the mistake of thinking, as many people do "Oh nobody could possibly mean this ! and then proceed to endow it with some whitewashed meaning of your own.Take it straight for what it does say and mean.
Instead of dismissing the catch phrase, accept it as true, for a few brief moments. Tell yourself, in effect "If I were to accept it as true , what would follow ?" This is the bet way of unmasking any philosophical fraud...... To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true. Philosophy provides man with a comprehensive view of life. Inorder to evaluate it properly ask yourself what a given theory of accepted , would do to a human life , starting with your own. (Rand, 1982 . P.16)
Instead of dismissing the catch phrase, accept it as true, for a few brief moments. Tell yourself, in effect "If I were to accept it as true , what would follow ?" This is the bet way of unmasking any philosophical fraud...... To take ideas seriously means that you intend to live by, to practice, any idea you accept as true. Philosophy provides man with a comprehensive view of life. Inorder to evaluate it properly ask yourself what a given theory of accepted , would do to a human life , starting with your own. (Rand, 1982 . P.16)
New York Job Transparency Law
By Jennifer Liu in CNBC
Starting Tuesday, businesses hiring workers in NYC are required to list the minimum and maximum salary range for a job on any printed or online posting.
Advocates say it's long overdue that companies become more transparent with their pay practices. Workers hope it will give them more leverage to discuss and negotiate their pay. And the law's main aim is to help close the wage gap.
But as numbers started rolling out this week, New Yorkers began calling out some companies for posting extremely broad ranges: $50,000 to $145,000 for a reporter opening, $125,800 to $211,300 for a senior technical writer, $106,000 to $241,000 for a general counsel position.
In one case, Citigroup listed several jobs with a range of $0 to $2 million, Gothamist reports.
A Citigroup representative told Gothamist it has since updated its ranges, and that the shockingly wide range was an error caused by a computer glitch.
Still, a revised entry for a post for a client services officer listed the salary range between $61,710 and $155,290 as of Wednesday, before it was taken down. A Citi respresentative tells CNBC Make It the company "is proactively reviewing all job postings to ensure the correct salary range is listed" and has "temporarily unposted select job postings and will repost when the salary range is confirmed."
The posting gaffe highlights the numerous ways companies can still find ways around complying with the new salary transparency law, whether intended or not.
Employers test what it means to list a 'good faith' range
The law specifically states businesses hiring in New York City must post a "good faith salary range" for every job, promotion or transfer opportunity.
A "good faith" range is one the employer "honestly believes at the time they are listing the job advertisement that they are willing to pay the successful applicant(s)," says the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which enforces the law.
Businesses may need to offer a wide range if they're open to people of varying levels of experience and to be competitive in a tight hiring market, says Domenique Camacho Moran, a New York-based attorney with Farrell Fritz.
A common strategy for business is to find a target budget for an open role and give a range 20% below and above that point, adds Tony Guadagni, senior principal of research at consulting firm Gartner.
But a $100,000-plus range could be an error or a display that "what an organization is willing to pay for a job could be quite variable," Guadagni says.
"It's hard to imagine that the two agencies that investigate possible violations of the new law — the City's Commission on Human Rights and the Law Enforcement Bureau — would consider a posting that included a minimum salary of $30,000 and a maximum salary of $300,000 a good faith representation of the salary range," he adds. But it's up to investigators to show a salary range isn't in good faith — not on companies to prove it is.
A $90,000 salary range, like the one Citi listed on the amended post that was later taken down, is still "extremely broad" and "does raise the question whether this is a good faith effort," says Beverly Neufeld, president of PowHer New York and a proponent of new law.
Similarly wide ranges could reflect poorly on the business's respect for workers, Neufeld says: "It says a lot about companies when they do use potential loopholes. The spirit of the law is to create transparency, and any company having large salary ranges like that doesn't create any transparency."
Avoiding job posts altogether
Per the law, employers must post the minimum and maximum salary on offer for a particular role when it's listed on an internal job board, as well as external sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and other job search platforms. It also applies to any written description of an open job that's printed on a flyer, distributed at a job fair or submitted to newspaper classifieds.
In response, some businesses may stop advertising jobs outright and instead rely on other means of recruiting and hiring.
Some companies may opt to take down job postings and encourage applicants to submit their resume to a general email address, The Wall Street Journal reports. Others might tap employee search firms to find candidates on their behalf, rather than advertise an opening and have to post the pay range themselves.
Employers could also avoid compliance if they hire remote workers but say the job can't be done from NYC. That happened in Colorado, where a similar law went into effect in January 2021. The state's labor department sent warning to hundreds of employers to comply with the law and, as of July, had fined three businesses for violation.
Camacho Moran rejects the idea that businesses are deliberately trying to skirt around compliance, as doing so and getting caught could result in lawsuits that'll cost an employer time and money.
In NYC, if a company isn't complying with the new law, job seekers and workers can file complaints or leave an anonymous tip with the city's Commission on Human Rights. Businesses will have 30 days to fix the violation, otherwise they could face civil penalties of up to $250,000.
Despite the law's uneven application so far, Neufeld is optimistic businesses will continue to firm up their pay ranges with the help of public account and legal enforcement.
The aftermath of the law could prove beneficial for employers and employees alike. Job seekers are overwhelmingly in favor of salary transparency, and more than half say they wouldn't apply to a job or company if the pay isn't listed, according to Monster.com data. Listing pay could end up being a good recruiting tool.
"It'll take some time for people to comply," Neufeld says, but "in time, companies are going to come around to see this as a benefit, not as a punishment."
Starting Tuesday, businesses hiring workers in NYC are required to list the minimum and maximum salary range for a job on any printed or online posting.
Advocates say it's long overdue that companies become more transparent with their pay practices. Workers hope it will give them more leverage to discuss and negotiate their pay. And the law's main aim is to help close the wage gap.
But as numbers started rolling out this week, New Yorkers began calling out some companies for posting extremely broad ranges: $50,000 to $145,000 for a reporter opening, $125,800 to $211,300 for a senior technical writer, $106,000 to $241,000 for a general counsel position.
In one case, Citigroup listed several jobs with a range of $0 to $2 million, Gothamist reports.
A Citigroup representative told Gothamist it has since updated its ranges, and that the shockingly wide range was an error caused by a computer glitch.
Still, a revised entry for a post for a client services officer listed the salary range between $61,710 and $155,290 as of Wednesday, before it was taken down. A Citi respresentative tells CNBC Make It the company "is proactively reviewing all job postings to ensure the correct salary range is listed" and has "temporarily unposted select job postings and will repost when the salary range is confirmed."
The posting gaffe highlights the numerous ways companies can still find ways around complying with the new salary transparency law, whether intended or not.
Employers test what it means to list a 'good faith' range
The law specifically states businesses hiring in New York City must post a "good faith salary range" for every job, promotion or transfer opportunity.
A "good faith" range is one the employer "honestly believes at the time they are listing the job advertisement that they are willing to pay the successful applicant(s)," says the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which enforces the law.
Businesses may need to offer a wide range if they're open to people of varying levels of experience and to be competitive in a tight hiring market, says Domenique Camacho Moran, a New York-based attorney with Farrell Fritz.
A common strategy for business is to find a target budget for an open role and give a range 20% below and above that point, adds Tony Guadagni, senior principal of research at consulting firm Gartner.
But a $100,000-plus range could be an error or a display that "what an organization is willing to pay for a job could be quite variable," Guadagni says.
"It's hard to imagine that the two agencies that investigate possible violations of the new law — the City's Commission on Human Rights and the Law Enforcement Bureau — would consider a posting that included a minimum salary of $30,000 and a maximum salary of $300,000 a good faith representation of the salary range," he adds. But it's up to investigators to show a salary range isn't in good faith — not on companies to prove it is.
A $90,000 salary range, like the one Citi listed on the amended post that was later taken down, is still "extremely broad" and "does raise the question whether this is a good faith effort," says Beverly Neufeld, president of PowHer New York and a proponent of new law.
Similarly wide ranges could reflect poorly on the business's respect for workers, Neufeld says: "It says a lot about companies when they do use potential loopholes. The spirit of the law is to create transparency, and any company having large salary ranges like that doesn't create any transparency."
Avoiding job posts altogether
Per the law, employers must post the minimum and maximum salary on offer for a particular role when it's listed on an internal job board, as well as external sites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and other job search platforms. It also applies to any written description of an open job that's printed on a flyer, distributed at a job fair or submitted to newspaper classifieds.
In response, some businesses may stop advertising jobs outright and instead rely on other means of recruiting and hiring.
Some companies may opt to take down job postings and encourage applicants to submit their resume to a general email address, The Wall Street Journal reports. Others might tap employee search firms to find candidates on their behalf, rather than advertise an opening and have to post the pay range themselves.
Employers could also avoid compliance if they hire remote workers but say the job can't be done from NYC. That happened in Colorado, where a similar law went into effect in January 2021. The state's labor department sent warning to hundreds of employers to comply with the law and, as of July, had fined three businesses for violation.
Camacho Moran rejects the idea that businesses are deliberately trying to skirt around compliance, as doing so and getting caught could result in lawsuits that'll cost an employer time and money.
In NYC, if a company isn't complying with the new law, job seekers and workers can file complaints or leave an anonymous tip with the city's Commission on Human Rights. Businesses will have 30 days to fix the violation, otherwise they could face civil penalties of up to $250,000.
Despite the law's uneven application so far, Neufeld is optimistic businesses will continue to firm up their pay ranges with the help of public account and legal enforcement.
The aftermath of the law could prove beneficial for employers and employees alike. Job seekers are overwhelmingly in favor of salary transparency, and more than half say they wouldn't apply to a job or company if the pay isn't listed, according to Monster.com data. Listing pay could end up being a good recruiting tool.
"It'll take some time for people to comply," Neufeld says, but "in time, companies are going to come around to see this as a benefit, not as a punishment."
Thursday, November 03, 2022
Tuesday, November 01, 2022
The Liz Truss Tragedy
The Liz Truss Tragedy
The former British prime minister’s downfall holds important lessons for growth-minded policymakers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. While her diagnosis of the country’s economic problem was spot on, she fatally mismanaged both the politics and the messaging of her policy response.
STANFORD – Liz Truss’s stint as British prime minister is over, but she was right that the United Kingdom needs growth. Her downfall is tragic, because growth is the only path out of the country’s economic dilemma.
The UK is surprisingly poor. Its GDP per capita is just $43,000, compared to $60,000 in the United States. The average British home is one-third the size of the average US home. Worse, the country’s economy is not growing. Its GDP per capita is lower than it was in 2007. Productivity – the underlying source of economic growth – has been flat for over a decade.
The UK desperately needs supply-side reforms. Surging inflation tells us that demand-side stimulus is a spent force.
If anything, Truss’s proposed reforms were too mild. A 40% top marginal income tax rate (down from 45%) would not make the UK a low-tax free-market Shangri-La, especially considering that it would also still have a 20% value-added tax (VAT), national insurance taxes, property taxes, corporate taxes, and more. Recall that US President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (a Democrat) cut the top federal marginal rate from 70% to 28%.
Truss also proposed free-market “investment zones.” But if one accepts that pro-investment tax and planning conditions are good in blighted areas, why not the whole country?
The UK is at a post-Brexit crossroads. Will it become a free-trade, entrepreneurial, financial hub – a “Singapore on Thames”? Or does Brexit mean protecting and subsidizing inefficient businesses and places even more than the European Union allows?
Unfortunately, we now know the answer. Truss’s critics have no counterproposal that has any chance of reigniting growth. The stage is set for further high-tax, high-subsidy, over-regulated decline.
As sound as Truss’s plans were in economic-policy terms, her government’s handling of the messaging and the politics was spectacularly inept. That is an important lesson for those of us who want to see more growth-oriented policies in the US, Canada, and Europe.
One obvious mistake was Truss’s announcement of a £60 billion ($68 billion) blowout to hold down gas prices. That is not a good way to launch a pro-growth revolution.
She then moved on to “tax cuts,” predictably raising the ire of the high-tax intelligentsia. In announcing the policy, neither Truss nor her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, explained the point of lowering tax rates. For example, Kwarteng sold tax cuts as “putting money back into people’s pockets.” But such Keynesian stimulus is the last thing the country needs amid historic inflation. Kwarteng should have explained that lower tax rates improve the incentives to work, save, invest, start a business, or, in the case of corporate taxes, move a business to the UK or keep it there. (Ideally, one cuts tax rates but broadens the base, maintaining revenues until spending falls.)
If you can’t explain that clearly and consistently, you either don’t understand or believe your own message, or you think voters are too dumb to comprehend it. Either way, your revolution will fail. In the face of predictable, implacable hostility from the entrenched left-wing media and economic commentariat, a free-market revolution needs great communicators.
By starting with taxes and subsidies, Truss and Kwarteng guaranteed that nobody would pay attention to the most important parts of the plan: the essential pro-growth regulatory reforms that they had described in the 2012 book Britannia Unchained. Britain’s housing restrictions, as in the US, lead to absurdly high prices, which stymies many businesses and the workers they might hire. The situation is especially harmful to less-advantaged people who cannot afford to live near high-productivity jobs. Truss had also planned to bring back North Sea oil production and lift the UK’s ban on fracking. These are sensible responses to a global energy crisis.
The lesson is that growth-minded policymakers should start with microeconomic reforms. Everyone can see that over-regulation and restrictions on housing and energy production are hobbling supply. Even climate-change activists are noticing that it is too difficult to get permits for windmills and transmission lines. Everyone can see that schools are awful and getting worse. Workers as well as business owners and managers can see that labor regulations are straitjacketing their workplaces. People can see in everyday experience how social-program disincentives lead some people not to work at all.
Patiently explaining these problems to voters can also make for good politics. We all long for simple mind-the-store competence in our governments. Fixing dysfunction is a visible achievement that works right away, with no short-run cost.
Truss’s handling of the politics was even worse than her marketing. Margaret Thatcher and Reagan faced the same withering scorn from the chattering classes, and they had to endure years of hardship before their reforms took root. But they held firm.
Truss’s critics seized on UK bond-market hiccups, though these were tiny compared to those of the 1980s. They also were largely attributable to the Bank of England raising rates, and to a pension risk regulation fiasco. [Previous posts ending here.] Nonetheless, Truss quickly gave in. By starting with an energy blowout to placate the left, she already encouraged her opponents to go in for the kill. When a shark is on your trail, you don’t offer it a foot and then assume that you’ll both get along. When an iron lady was needed, Truss proved to be made of straw.
The US, too, is a high-tax, over-regulated, over-subsidized, high-debt, slow-growth economy. For us, too, supply-side reforms are the only way out. Yet many of our conservative voices now pander to voters by advocating big-government big-tax nationalism, protectionism, subsidies, and crony capitalism, albeit directed in different directions than the left.
For those of us who still understand that the only real solution lies in economic freedom and small, competent government, Truss’s downfall offers important lessons. We must heed them so that we don’t blow our chance if we get one.
John H. Cochrane is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute.
Jon Hartley is a PhD student in economics at Stanford University and a research fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
The former British prime minister’s downfall holds important lessons for growth-minded policymakers in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. While her diagnosis of the country’s economic problem was spot on, she fatally mismanaged both the politics and the messaging of her policy response.
STANFORD – Liz Truss’s stint as British prime minister is over, but she was right that the United Kingdom needs growth. Her downfall is tragic, because growth is the only path out of the country’s economic dilemma.
The UK is surprisingly poor. Its GDP per capita is just $43,000, compared to $60,000 in the United States. The average British home is one-third the size of the average US home. Worse, the country’s economy is not growing. Its GDP per capita is lower than it was in 2007. Productivity – the underlying source of economic growth – has been flat for over a decade.
The UK desperately needs supply-side reforms. Surging inflation tells us that demand-side stimulus is a spent force.
If anything, Truss’s proposed reforms were too mild. A 40% top marginal income tax rate (down from 45%) would not make the UK a low-tax free-market Shangri-La, especially considering that it would also still have a 20% value-added tax (VAT), national insurance taxes, property taxes, corporate taxes, and more. Recall that US President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (a Democrat) cut the top federal marginal rate from 70% to 28%.
Truss also proposed free-market “investment zones.” But if one accepts that pro-investment tax and planning conditions are good in blighted areas, why not the whole country?
The UK is at a post-Brexit crossroads. Will it become a free-trade, entrepreneurial, financial hub – a “Singapore on Thames”? Or does Brexit mean protecting and subsidizing inefficient businesses and places even more than the European Union allows?
Unfortunately, we now know the answer. Truss’s critics have no counterproposal that has any chance of reigniting growth. The stage is set for further high-tax, high-subsidy, over-regulated decline.
As sound as Truss’s plans were in economic-policy terms, her government’s handling of the messaging and the politics was spectacularly inept. That is an important lesson for those of us who want to see more growth-oriented policies in the US, Canada, and Europe.
One obvious mistake was Truss’s announcement of a £60 billion ($68 billion) blowout to hold down gas prices. That is not a good way to launch a pro-growth revolution.
She then moved on to “tax cuts,” predictably raising the ire of the high-tax intelligentsia. In announcing the policy, neither Truss nor her chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, explained the point of lowering tax rates. For example, Kwarteng sold tax cuts as “putting money back into people’s pockets.” But such Keynesian stimulus is the last thing the country needs amid historic inflation. Kwarteng should have explained that lower tax rates improve the incentives to work, save, invest, start a business, or, in the case of corporate taxes, move a business to the UK or keep it there. (Ideally, one cuts tax rates but broadens the base, maintaining revenues until spending falls.)
If you can’t explain that clearly and consistently, you either don’t understand or believe your own message, or you think voters are too dumb to comprehend it. Either way, your revolution will fail. In the face of predictable, implacable hostility from the entrenched left-wing media and economic commentariat, a free-market revolution needs great communicators.
By starting with taxes and subsidies, Truss and Kwarteng guaranteed that nobody would pay attention to the most important parts of the plan: the essential pro-growth regulatory reforms that they had described in the 2012 book Britannia Unchained. Britain’s housing restrictions, as in the US, lead to absurdly high prices, which stymies many businesses and the workers they might hire. The situation is especially harmful to less-advantaged people who cannot afford to live near high-productivity jobs. Truss had also planned to bring back North Sea oil production and lift the UK’s ban on fracking. These are sensible responses to a global energy crisis.
The lesson is that growth-minded policymakers should start with microeconomic reforms. Everyone can see that over-regulation and restrictions on housing and energy production are hobbling supply. Even climate-change activists are noticing that it is too difficult to get permits for windmills and transmission lines. Everyone can see that schools are awful and getting worse. Workers as well as business owners and managers can see that labor regulations are straitjacketing their workplaces. People can see in everyday experience how social-program disincentives lead some people not to work at all.
Patiently explaining these problems to voters can also make for good politics. We all long for simple mind-the-store competence in our governments. Fixing dysfunction is a visible achievement that works right away, with no short-run cost.
Truss’s handling of the politics was even worse than her marketing. Margaret Thatcher and Reagan faced the same withering scorn from the chattering classes, and they had to endure years of hardship before their reforms took root. But they held firm.
Truss’s critics seized on UK bond-market hiccups, though these were tiny compared to those of the 1980s. They also were largely attributable to the Bank of England raising rates, and to a pension risk regulation fiasco. [Previous posts ending here.] Nonetheless, Truss quickly gave in. By starting with an energy blowout to placate the left, she already encouraged her opponents to go in for the kill. When a shark is on your trail, you don’t offer it a foot and then assume that you’ll both get along. When an iron lady was needed, Truss proved to be made of straw.
The US, too, is a high-tax, over-regulated, over-subsidized, high-debt, slow-growth economy. For us, too, supply-side reforms are the only way out. Yet many of our conservative voices now pander to voters by advocating big-government big-tax nationalism, protectionism, subsidies, and crony capitalism, albeit directed in different directions than the left.
For those of us who still understand that the only real solution lies in economic freedom and small, competent government, Truss’s downfall offers important lessons. We must heed them so that we don’t blow our chance if we get one.
John H. Cochrane is a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute.
Jon Hartley is a PhD student in economics at Stanford University and a research fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
Monday, October 31, 2022
Dont Fret over the Rupee depreciation
By Dhiraj Nayyar, Chief Economist at Vedanta
There is much fretting about the depreciation of the rupee vis-a-vs the dollar.It is commonplace to equate a strong curency with a strong economy.But that is not true, especially in an emerging economy.As long as there isnt too much volatility and sufficient foreign reserves a depreciation of the rupee is nothing to worry about.
It is important to note that the exchange rate is a price fundamentally determined by the forces of demand and supply.What has happened in the last several weeks is that the Us Federal Reserve has increased the interest rates in a bid to curb the unprecedented inflation in US.This has led to the flight of capital from emerging economies like India back to the US increasing the demand for dollars and the sell off of Indian rupee.
The RBI can sell off their existing dollar reserves inorder to stem off the fall in the rupee.Indeed it has done so,but in the end the quantum of money that trades in the financial markets dwarfs the reserves maintained by the RBI.So the central bank can only mitigate and not reverse the trend.In any case, it is a fallacy to equate a strong or apreciating exhange rate with a strong and prosperous economy.Perhaps the only countries that have prospered with a strong or overvalued exchange rate is the oil producing economies. But they have a peculiar economic structure.They export an epensive commodity which has a price inelastic demand and they need to import practically every other goods.Hence it makes sense for them to maintain a strong currency which makes exports expensive and imports cheap.
Every other country particularly emerging economies prosper when the exchange rate is relatively undervalued against major currencies giving them a competitive advantage for export of goods and services.Chinas entire growth strategy for the past 3 decades depended on a depreciated yuan.In India there has been an implicit preference for a strong currency.Part of the reason is political optics and part of the reason is also economic,India is hugely depndent on pil imports.It imports almost 90% of its oil demand. And a weak rupee makes this critical item more expensive in domestic markets.Since oil is the major input in every other economic activity, it impacts the general level of inflation and even growth.
India or atleast its policymakers would be much more comfortable about the level of rupee if they had energy self reliance.That is a worthwhile goal and requires a two pronged approach - a) Increasing the exploration and supply of oil/gas domestically ,b) Investing in the scaling up of renewable energy technologies.. A weaker would complement the other policis that the union government has put inplace to boost manufacturing in India.
It must also be noted that currently the rupee is not a global currency because there is no full capital account convertability.Again policymakers have been righly cautious about liberalisation which can also open the door to more volatility.However eventually as a major economy, India will open its capital account fully.
A stronger currency rarely lays the foundation for a strong economy. But the strong economy paves the way for a strong currency.
There is much fretting about the depreciation of the rupee vis-a-vs the dollar.It is commonplace to equate a strong curency with a strong economy.But that is not true, especially in an emerging economy.As long as there isnt too much volatility and sufficient foreign reserves a depreciation of the rupee is nothing to worry about.
It is important to note that the exchange rate is a price fundamentally determined by the forces of demand and supply.What has happened in the last several weeks is that the Us Federal Reserve has increased the interest rates in a bid to curb the unprecedented inflation in US.This has led to the flight of capital from emerging economies like India back to the US increasing the demand for dollars and the sell off of Indian rupee.
The RBI can sell off their existing dollar reserves inorder to stem off the fall in the rupee.Indeed it has done so,but in the end the quantum of money that trades in the financial markets dwarfs the reserves maintained by the RBI.So the central bank can only mitigate and not reverse the trend.In any case, it is a fallacy to equate a strong or apreciating exhange rate with a strong and prosperous economy.Perhaps the only countries that have prospered with a strong or overvalued exchange rate is the oil producing economies. But they have a peculiar economic structure.They export an epensive commodity which has a price inelastic demand and they need to import practically every other goods.Hence it makes sense for them to maintain a strong currency which makes exports expensive and imports cheap.
Every other country particularly emerging economies prosper when the exchange rate is relatively undervalued against major currencies giving them a competitive advantage for export of goods and services.Chinas entire growth strategy for the past 3 decades depended on a depreciated yuan.In India there has been an implicit preference for a strong currency.Part of the reason is political optics and part of the reason is also economic,India is hugely depndent on pil imports.It imports almost 90% of its oil demand. And a weak rupee makes this critical item more expensive in domestic markets.Since oil is the major input in every other economic activity, it impacts the general level of inflation and even growth.
India or atleast its policymakers would be much more comfortable about the level of rupee if they had energy self reliance.That is a worthwhile goal and requires a two pronged approach - a) Increasing the exploration and supply of oil/gas domestically ,b) Investing in the scaling up of renewable energy technologies.. A weaker would complement the other policis that the union government has put inplace to boost manufacturing in India.
It must also be noted that currently the rupee is not a global currency because there is no full capital account convertability.Again policymakers have been righly cautious about liberalisation which can also open the door to more volatility.However eventually as a major economy, India will open its capital account fully.
A stronger currency rarely lays the foundation for a strong economy. But the strong economy paves the way for a strong currency.
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Tamil Nadu Fertility rate
TN’s total fertility rate declines to 1.4, lowest in India: SRS data
The state has the highest concentration of the elderly (12.8 per cent) in its urban areas
Tamil Nadu’s total fertility rate declined to 1.4 in 2020 from 1.8 recorded in the 2011 Census, according to latest data released by Sample Registration System (SRS) recently.
The state’s TFR along with West Bengal’s is the lowest in the country. Kerala is slightly ahead with a TFR of 1.5.
“Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have reported the lowest TFR (1.4). It is noteworthy that the replacement level TFR of 2.1 has been attained at the national level,” said the SRS report.
A decline in TFR means a fall in the number of children in the age group of 0-4 years – which is 5.6 per cent of the total population. Children in the age group of 0-14 years form 19.1 per cent of the population. The drastic fall in TFR may translate into the shutdown of primary schools and primary classes in big schools in the future as there may not be enough children to attend these schools or classes.
The number of people in the working age group of 15-58 – 69.2 per cent of the population – is also likely to decline as there are not many children who will reach this age group.
More adults, fewer children
“At the national level, the percentage of aged (60+) population is 8.1 per cent. The composition of 60+ aged female population is higher than males in all of the bigger states and UTs except Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha and Telangana,” the report said.
In rural areas, those above 60 years constitute 8 per cent of the total population. The percentage of adult population in rural areas is the lowest in Bihar and Delhi (5.9 per cent) and highest in Kerala (13.2 per cent). Tamil Nadu’s senior citizen population is 11.7 per cent of its total population and is mostly concentrated in urban areas. This group constitutes 12.8 per cent of the urban population of the state, said the report.
The proportion of aged population in urban areas is 8.4 per cent, ranging from 5.9 per cent in Telangana to 12.8 per cent in Tamil Nadu. In case of females, the aged population (60 years and above) ranges from 6 per cent in Assam to 13.6 per cent in Kerala. The same ranges from 6.1 per cent in Delhi to 12.2 per cent in Kerala for males.
The crude birth rate in Tamil Nadu is also the lowest in the country. Tamil Nadu’s crude birth rate is 13.8 per cent, which is also the lowest in the country and Bihar has the highest crude birth rate of 25.5 per cent, said the report.
Tamil Nadu’s total fertility rate declined to 1.4 in 2020 from 1.8 recorded in the 2011 Census, according to latest data released by Sample Registration System (SRS) recently.
The state’s TFR along with West Bengal’s is the lowest in the country. Kerala is slightly ahead with a TFR of 1.5.
“Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have reported the lowest TFR (1.4). It is noteworthy that the replacement level TFR of 2.1 has been attained at the national level,” said the SRS report.
A decline in TFR means a fall in the number of children in the age group of 0-4 years – which is 5.6 per cent of the total population. Children in the age group of 0-14 years form 19.1 per cent of the population. The drastic fall in TFR may translate into the shutdown of primary schools and primary classes in big schools in the future as there may not be enough children to attend these schools or classes.
The number of people in the working age group of 15-58 – 69.2 per cent of the population – is also likely to decline as there are not many children who will reach this age group.
More adults, fewer children
“At the national level, the percentage of aged (60+) population is 8.1 per cent. The composition of 60+ aged female population is higher than males in all of the bigger states and UTs except Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Odisha and Telangana,” the report said.
In rural areas, those above 60 years constitute 8 per cent of the total population. The percentage of adult population in rural areas is the lowest in Bihar and Delhi (5.9 per cent) and highest in Kerala (13.2 per cent). Tamil Nadu’s senior citizen population is 11.7 per cent of its total population and is mostly concentrated in urban areas. This group constitutes 12.8 per cent of the urban population of the state, said the report.
The proportion of aged population in urban areas is 8.4 per cent, ranging from 5.9 per cent in Telangana to 12.8 per cent in Tamil Nadu. In case of females, the aged population (60 years and above) ranges from 6 per cent in Assam to 13.6 per cent in Kerala. The same ranges from 6.1 per cent in Delhi to 12.2 per cent in Kerala for males.
The crude birth rate in Tamil Nadu is also the lowest in the country. Tamil Nadu’s crude birth rate is 13.8 per cent, which is also the lowest in the country and Bihar has the highest crude birth rate of 25.5 per cent, said the report.
Saturday, October 22, 2022
Sunday, October 16, 2022
The High Speed Rail Germany needs
The High-Speed Rail Germany Needs
Written by Alon Levy
I’ve argued in two previous posts that Germany needs to build a complete high-speed rail network, akin to what China, Japan, France, South Korea, and Spain have built. Here is the network that Germany should build in more detail:
The red lines denote high-speed lines, some legacy 250-280 km/h lines but most built to support 300-320 km/h, that are justifiable within the context of domestic travel. Some of these already exist, such as the Frankfurt-Cologne line and the majority of the Berlin-Munich line; Berlin-Hamburg is a legacy line upgraded to 230, currently tied with Frankfurt-Cologne for fastest average speed between two major cities in Germany. A handful of red lines are key legacy connections, i.e. Dresden-Leipzig and Dortmund-Duisburg. Some more detail on the red lines is available in Google Maps.
The blue lines denote high-speed lines, generally built to 300, that only make sense in an international context. The lines in France are the LGV Est and its short low-speed branch across the border to Saarbrücken. In Belgium the line preexists as well as HSL 3 and HSL 4, but is quite slow, averaging only 140 km/h from Brussels to Aachen thanks to a combination of a slow segment to Leuven and a speed-restricted western approach to Liege. In the Netherlands, Switzerland, Czechia, Austria, and Poland the lines are completely speculative, though in Czechia a high-speed line from Prague to Dresden is under study.
Update 8/19: here is another map of the same network, color-coded differently – red is proposed lines (most by me, a few officially), yellow is lines under construction, blue is existing lines, black is low-speed connections. Note that outside Berlin’s northern approaches, urban approaches are not colored black even if they’re slow.
Trip times
To compute trip times, I dusted off my train performance calculator, linked here. The parameters I used are those planned for the next-generation Velaro (“Velaro Novo“), i.e. a power-to-weight ratio of 20.7 kW/t and an initial acceleration rate of 0.65 m/s^2; the quadratic air resistance term is 0.000012, as any higher term would make it impossible to reach speeds already achieved in tests. On curves, the lateral acceleration in the horizontal plane is set at 2.09 m/s^2 on passenger-priority lines, mirroring what is achieved on Frankfurt-Cologne, and 1.7 elsewhere, accounting for lower superelevation.
These are aggressive assumptions and before running the code, I did not expect Berlin-Munich to be so fast. With intermediate stops at Erfurt, Nuremberg, and maybe also Ingolstadt, this city pair could be connected in 2.5 hours minus a few minutes for interchange time at the terminals. In general, all trip times printed on the map are a few minutes slower than what is achievable even with some schedule padding, corresponding to dwell times at major through-stations plus interchange at terminals. The upshot is that among the largest metro areas in Germany, the longest trips are Hamburg-Stuttgart at 3:30 minus change and Hamburg-Munich at 3:15 minus change; nothing else is longer than 3 hours.
The stopping pattern should be uniform. That is, every 320 km/h train between Berlin and Munich should stop exactly at Berlin Südkreuz, Erfurt, Nuremberg, and maybe Ingolstadt. If these trains skip Ingolstadt, it’s fine to run some 250 km/h trains part of the way, for example between Munich and Nuremberg and then northwest on legacy track to Würzburg and Frankfurt, with the Ingolstadt station added back. Similarly, from Hamburg south, every train should stop at Hanover, Göttingen, Kassel, and Fulda.
In certain cases, the stopping pattern should be decided based on whether trains can make a schedule in an exact number of quarter-hours. That is, if it turns out that Munich-Nuremberg with an intermediate stop in Ingolstadt takes around 42 minutes then the Ingolstadt stop should be kept; but if it takes 46 minutes, then Ingolstadt should be skipped, and instead of running in the depicted alignment, the line should stay near the Autobahn and bypass the city in order to be able to make it in less than 45 minutes. I think Ingolstadt can still be kept, but one place where the map is likely to be too optimistic is Stuttgart-Munich; Ulm may need to be skipped on the fastest trains, and slower trains should pick up extra stops so as to be 15 minutes slower.
Frequency and service planning
Today, the frequency on the major city pairs is hourly. Under the above map, it should be half-hourly, since the faster trip times will induce more ridership. As a sanity check, TGVs connect Paris with each of Lyon’s two stations hourly off-peak and twice an hour at the peak. Paris is somewhat larger than the entire Rhine-Ruhr, Lyon somewhat smaller than Stuttgart or Munich and somewhat larger than the Rhine-Neckar. But the ICE runs somewhat smaller trains and has lower occupancy as it runs trains on a consistent schedule all day, so matching the peak schedule on the TGV is defensible.
The upshot is that Berlin can probably be connected every 30 minutes to each of Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, and the Ruhr proper. Frankfurt-Munich is likely to be every 30 minutes, as are Hamburg-Frankfurt and Hamburg-Munich. To further improve network connectivity, the schedule at Erfurt should be set in such a way that Hamburg-Munich and Berlin-Frankfurt trains are timed with a cross-platform transfer, regardless of the pulse anywhere else. A few connections to smaller cities should be hourly, like Berlin-Bremen (with a timed transfer at Hanover to Hamburg-Frankfurt or Hamburg-Munich), Leipzig-Munich, Leipzig-Frankfurt, and Frankfurt-Basel.
The loop track around Frankfurt is based on a real plan for mainline through-tracks at the station, currently in the early stages of construction. The near-Autobahn loop is not included, but such a connection, if done at-grade, could provide value by letting trains from Munich enter the station from the east and then continue northwest toward Cologne without reversing direction.
If the international connections are built as planned, then additional hourly and even more frequent connections can be attractive. Zurich-Stuttgart might well even support a train every half hour, going all the way to Frankfurt and thence to either Cologne or Berlin. Similarly, Berlin-Frankfurt-Paris could plausibly fill an hourly train if Frankfurt-Paris is cut to 2:30 via Saarbrücken, and maybe even if it takes three hours via Karlsruhe.
The one exception to this interconnected mesh is Fulda-Würzburg. The Hanover-Würzburg line was built as a single 280 km/h spine through West Germany with low-speed branches down to Frankfurt and Munich. Unfortunately, completing the Würzburg-Nuremberg segment has little value: Munich-Frankfurt would be almost as fast via Stuttgart, and Hamburg-Munich would be half an hour faster via Erfurt with not much more construction difficulty on Göttingen-Erfurt. Fulda-Würzburg should thus be a shuttle with timed transfers at Fulda, potentially continuing further south at lower speed to serve smaller markets in Bavaria.
Cost
The domestic network depicted on the map is 1,300 km long, not counting existing or under-construction lines. Some lines require tunneling, like Erfurt-Fulda-Frankfurt, but most do not; the heaviest lifting has already been done, including between Erfurt and Nuremberg and around Stuttgart for Stuttgart 21 and the under-construction high-speed line to Ulm. I doubt 100 km of tunnel are necessary for this network; for comparison, Hanover-Würzburg alone has 120 km of tunnel, as the line has very wide curve radii to support both high-speed passenger rail and low-speed freight without too much superelevation. The cost should be on the order of 30-40 billion euros.
The international network is more complex. Berlin-Prague is easy on the German side and even across the border, and the only real problems are on the Czech side, especially as Czech planners insist on serving Usti on the way with a city center station. But Stuttgart-Zurich is a world of pain, and Frankfurt-Saarbrücken may require some tunneling through rolling terrain as well, especially around Saarbrücken itself.
Even with the international lines added in, the German share of the cost should not be too onerous. Getting everything in less than 50 billion euros should not be hard, even with some compromises with local NIMBYs. Even on an aggressive schedule aiming for completion by 2030, it’s affordable in a country where the budget surplus in 2018 was €58 billion across all levels of government and where there are signs of impending recession rather than inflation.
With its mesh of medium-size cities all over the country following plausible lines, Germany is well-placed to have the largest high-speed rail network in Europe. It has the ability to combine the precise scheduling and connections of Switzerland and the Netherlands with the high point-to-point speeds of France and Spain, creating a system that obsoletes domestic flights and competes well with cars and intercity buses. The government can implement this; all it takes is the political will to invest in a green future.
Written by Alon Levy
I’ve argued in two previous posts that Germany needs to build a complete high-speed rail network, akin to what China, Japan, France, South Korea, and Spain have built. Here is the network that Germany should build in more detail:
The red lines denote high-speed lines, some legacy 250-280 km/h lines but most built to support 300-320 km/h, that are justifiable within the context of domestic travel. Some of these already exist, such as the Frankfurt-Cologne line and the majority of the Berlin-Munich line; Berlin-Hamburg is a legacy line upgraded to 230, currently tied with Frankfurt-Cologne for fastest average speed between two major cities in Germany. A handful of red lines are key legacy connections, i.e. Dresden-Leipzig and Dortmund-Duisburg. Some more detail on the red lines is available in Google Maps.
The blue lines denote high-speed lines, generally built to 300, that only make sense in an international context. The lines in France are the LGV Est and its short low-speed branch across the border to Saarbrücken. In Belgium the line preexists as well as HSL 3 and HSL 4, but is quite slow, averaging only 140 km/h from Brussels to Aachen thanks to a combination of a slow segment to Leuven and a speed-restricted western approach to Liege. In the Netherlands, Switzerland, Czechia, Austria, and Poland the lines are completely speculative, though in Czechia a high-speed line from Prague to Dresden is under study.
Update 8/19: here is another map of the same network, color-coded differently – red is proposed lines (most by me, a few officially), yellow is lines under construction, blue is existing lines, black is low-speed connections. Note that outside Berlin’s northern approaches, urban approaches are not colored black even if they’re slow.
Trip times
To compute trip times, I dusted off my train performance calculator, linked here. The parameters I used are those planned for the next-generation Velaro (“Velaro Novo“), i.e. a power-to-weight ratio of 20.7 kW/t and an initial acceleration rate of 0.65 m/s^2; the quadratic air resistance term is 0.000012, as any higher term would make it impossible to reach speeds already achieved in tests. On curves, the lateral acceleration in the horizontal plane is set at 2.09 m/s^2 on passenger-priority lines, mirroring what is achieved on Frankfurt-Cologne, and 1.7 elsewhere, accounting for lower superelevation.
These are aggressive assumptions and before running the code, I did not expect Berlin-Munich to be so fast. With intermediate stops at Erfurt, Nuremberg, and maybe also Ingolstadt, this city pair could be connected in 2.5 hours minus a few minutes for interchange time at the terminals. In general, all trip times printed on the map are a few minutes slower than what is achievable even with some schedule padding, corresponding to dwell times at major through-stations plus interchange at terminals. The upshot is that among the largest metro areas in Germany, the longest trips are Hamburg-Stuttgart at 3:30 minus change and Hamburg-Munich at 3:15 minus change; nothing else is longer than 3 hours.
The stopping pattern should be uniform. That is, every 320 km/h train between Berlin and Munich should stop exactly at Berlin Südkreuz, Erfurt, Nuremberg, and maybe Ingolstadt. If these trains skip Ingolstadt, it’s fine to run some 250 km/h trains part of the way, for example between Munich and Nuremberg and then northwest on legacy track to Würzburg and Frankfurt, with the Ingolstadt station added back. Similarly, from Hamburg south, every train should stop at Hanover, Göttingen, Kassel, and Fulda.
In certain cases, the stopping pattern should be decided based on whether trains can make a schedule in an exact number of quarter-hours. That is, if it turns out that Munich-Nuremberg with an intermediate stop in Ingolstadt takes around 42 minutes then the Ingolstadt stop should be kept; but if it takes 46 minutes, then Ingolstadt should be skipped, and instead of running in the depicted alignment, the line should stay near the Autobahn and bypass the city in order to be able to make it in less than 45 minutes. I think Ingolstadt can still be kept, but one place where the map is likely to be too optimistic is Stuttgart-Munich; Ulm may need to be skipped on the fastest trains, and slower trains should pick up extra stops so as to be 15 minutes slower.
Frequency and service planning
Today, the frequency on the major city pairs is hourly. Under the above map, it should be half-hourly, since the faster trip times will induce more ridership. As a sanity check, TGVs connect Paris with each of Lyon’s two stations hourly off-peak and twice an hour at the peak. Paris is somewhat larger than the entire Rhine-Ruhr, Lyon somewhat smaller than Stuttgart or Munich and somewhat larger than the Rhine-Neckar. But the ICE runs somewhat smaller trains and has lower occupancy as it runs trains on a consistent schedule all day, so matching the peak schedule on the TGV is defensible.
The upshot is that Berlin can probably be connected every 30 minutes to each of Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Düsseldorf, and the Ruhr proper. Frankfurt-Munich is likely to be every 30 minutes, as are Hamburg-Frankfurt and Hamburg-Munich. To further improve network connectivity, the schedule at Erfurt should be set in such a way that Hamburg-Munich and Berlin-Frankfurt trains are timed with a cross-platform transfer, regardless of the pulse anywhere else. A few connections to smaller cities should be hourly, like Berlin-Bremen (with a timed transfer at Hanover to Hamburg-Frankfurt or Hamburg-Munich), Leipzig-Munich, Leipzig-Frankfurt, and Frankfurt-Basel.
The loop track around Frankfurt is based on a real plan for mainline through-tracks at the station, currently in the early stages of construction. The near-Autobahn loop is not included, but such a connection, if done at-grade, could provide value by letting trains from Munich enter the station from the east and then continue northwest toward Cologne without reversing direction.
If the international connections are built as planned, then additional hourly and even more frequent connections can be attractive. Zurich-Stuttgart might well even support a train every half hour, going all the way to Frankfurt and thence to either Cologne or Berlin. Similarly, Berlin-Frankfurt-Paris could plausibly fill an hourly train if Frankfurt-Paris is cut to 2:30 via Saarbrücken, and maybe even if it takes three hours via Karlsruhe.
The one exception to this interconnected mesh is Fulda-Würzburg. The Hanover-Würzburg line was built as a single 280 km/h spine through West Germany with low-speed branches down to Frankfurt and Munich. Unfortunately, completing the Würzburg-Nuremberg segment has little value: Munich-Frankfurt would be almost as fast via Stuttgart, and Hamburg-Munich would be half an hour faster via Erfurt with not much more construction difficulty on Göttingen-Erfurt. Fulda-Würzburg should thus be a shuttle with timed transfers at Fulda, potentially continuing further south at lower speed to serve smaller markets in Bavaria.
Cost
The domestic network depicted on the map is 1,300 km long, not counting existing or under-construction lines. Some lines require tunneling, like Erfurt-Fulda-Frankfurt, but most do not; the heaviest lifting has already been done, including between Erfurt and Nuremberg and around Stuttgart for Stuttgart 21 and the under-construction high-speed line to Ulm. I doubt 100 km of tunnel are necessary for this network; for comparison, Hanover-Würzburg alone has 120 km of tunnel, as the line has very wide curve radii to support both high-speed passenger rail and low-speed freight without too much superelevation. The cost should be on the order of 30-40 billion euros.
The international network is more complex. Berlin-Prague is easy on the German side and even across the border, and the only real problems are on the Czech side, especially as Czech planners insist on serving Usti on the way with a city center station. But Stuttgart-Zurich is a world of pain, and Frankfurt-Saarbrücken may require some tunneling through rolling terrain as well, especially around Saarbrücken itself.
Even with the international lines added in, the German share of the cost should not be too onerous. Getting everything in less than 50 billion euros should not be hard, even with some compromises with local NIMBYs. Even on an aggressive schedule aiming for completion by 2030, it’s affordable in a country where the budget surplus in 2018 was €58 billion across all levels of government and where there are signs of impending recession rather than inflation.
With its mesh of medium-size cities all over the country following plausible lines, Germany is well-placed to have the largest high-speed rail network in Europe. It has the ability to combine the precise scheduling and connections of Switzerland and the Netherlands with the high point-to-point speeds of France and Spain, creating a system that obsoletes domestic flights and competes well with cars and intercity buses. The government can implement this; all it takes is the political will to invest in a green future.
Saturday, October 08, 2022
Dont call it a Mystery
There is never really one truth
Lets say there are A and B.One day they collide on the stairs and B falls down and gets hurt.B was always getting bullied by A.He claims this time he was pushed on purpose as well,but A never considered himself a bully.He thought they were just playing.He says this instance was just an accident.Neither is lying so what is the truth in this case?
Well.... A wasn't bullying B and B got the wrong impression. They just ran into eachother and fell.
Do you think so? Really ?
The only one who thinks there was no bullying is A .His assumption is just as wrong as B's.People can only see things subjectively.And they can only call that the truth.
If another person,C, saw the whole thing,he might even have another perspective. Without a god like third party, we can't see everything. Thats why opposing sides of wars and conflicts have different versions of what happened. Even if neither is lying nor exaggerating, they will have different stories.To A, A's version is the truth.To B,B's version is the truth. So you see, there is not only one truth, there aren't even two or three truths. There are many truths as there are people.
But... there is one truth. In this case, A and B collided and B was injured. Thats what the police should investigate and not the truth about people.You fail to carry out justice because you are obsessed with an abstract concept like truth.
What the hell.....are you talking about ?
Lets say there are A and B.One day they collide on the stairs and B falls down and gets hurt.B was always getting bullied by A.He claims this time he was pushed on purpose as well,but A never considered himself a bully.He thought they were just playing.He says this instance was just an accident.Neither is lying so what is the truth in this case?
Well.... A wasn't bullying B and B got the wrong impression. They just ran into eachother and fell.
Do you think so? Really ?
The only one who thinks there was no bullying is A .His assumption is just as wrong as B's.People can only see things subjectively.And they can only call that the truth.
If another person,C, saw the whole thing,he might even have another perspective. Without a god like third party, we can't see everything. Thats why opposing sides of wars and conflicts have different versions of what happened. Even if neither is lying nor exaggerating, they will have different stories.To A, A's version is the truth.To B,B's version is the truth. So you see, there is not only one truth, there aren't even two or three truths. There are many truths as there are people.
But... there is one truth. In this case, A and B collided and B was injured. Thats what the police should investigate and not the truth about people.You fail to carry out justice because you are obsessed with an abstract concept like truth.
What the hell.....are you talking about ?
Friday, October 07, 2022
Sunday, October 02, 2022
Pressure on British PM Liz Truss policies
British Prime Minister Liz Truss | Reuters
New British Prime Minister Liz Truss came under growing pressure Wednesday from opponents and inside her Conservative Party to reverse announced tax cuts that are fuelling a financial crisis in an already struggling economy.
The Bank of England stepped in to buy up government bonds in an attempt to stabilise the cost of borrowing after the government said last week that it would slash income tax and scrap a planned corporation tax hike, all while spending billions to cap soaring energy bills for homes and businesses.
Friday's mini-budget sparked market unease about the level of U.K. government debt and sent the pound plunging to a record low against the U.S. dollar.
Neither Truss nor Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng has made a public statement on the turmoil. Conservative lawmakers watched with mounting alarm as the currency struggled along at near-record lows. Britain's central bank signalled a hefty interest rate hike was in the cards for its next meeting, due in November.
This inept madness cannot go on, Simon Hoare, a Conservative member of Parliament, wrote on Twitter. Another Tory legislator, Robert Largan, said he had serious reservations about some of the government's announcements.
There's a lot of concern within the parliamentary party, there's no doubt about that, Mel Stride, the Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Treasury committee, said.
Andrew Griffith, a junior minister in the Treasury, said the government would not reverse course but would get on and deliver" its plan.
All the main opposition parties demanded calling Parliament back early from a two-week break so lawmakers who are not due back in the House of Commons until Oct. 11 could confront the crisis.
Many people will now be extremely worried about their mortgage, about prices going up, and now about their pensions," Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said. "What the government needs to do now is recall Parliament and abandon this budget before any more damage is done.
Truss was appointed prime minister on Sept. 6 after winning a Conservative Party leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson, who stepped down in July after a three-year term tarnished by ethics scandals.
Truss, a champion of low-tax, free-market conservatism who cites 1980s political icons Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as inspirations, promised during her campaign to slash taxes and red tape in order to energize Britain's sluggish economy.
Truss and Kwarteng vowed to challenge economic orthodoxy that they claim is holding Britain back. One of Kwarteng's first acts in office was to fire the top civil servant in the Treasury, Tom Scholar.
But many Conservatives were surprised by the scale of the announced tax cuts and by the strength of the market reaction.
The 45 billion pounds ($49 billion) in cuts, to be funded by borrowing, would come after the government just agreed to spend billions more to help shield homes and businesses from soaring energy prices driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The growing debt raises the prospect the government will have to borrow more, at ever higher cost, and will have to cut public spending as a result.
The government says it will set out on Nov. 23 how it plans to pay for the cuts, alongside an economic forecast by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
I don't think we can wait until November," Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale told the BBC. We need a statement in very short order indeed to steady the nerves, steady the market and set out very clearly what the business plan is.
Adam Tomkins, a former Conservative member of the Scottish Parliament, said Trussonomics was profoundly unconservative.
Tomkins, now a professor of law at the University of Glasgow, said the hammering of the pound is the strongest possible sign that the markets don't buy the newfound recklessness, the dogma that you can tax-cut your way to lower public spending.
What we are witnessing right now is not only the Conservative Party trashing its own brand: it's the Conservative Party trashing the economy, he wrote in the Herald newspaper.
(AP)
New British Prime Minister Liz Truss came under growing pressure Wednesday from opponents and inside her Conservative Party to reverse announced tax cuts that are fuelling a financial crisis in an already struggling economy.
The Bank of England stepped in to buy up government bonds in an attempt to stabilise the cost of borrowing after the government said last week that it would slash income tax and scrap a planned corporation tax hike, all while spending billions to cap soaring energy bills for homes and businesses.
Friday's mini-budget sparked market unease about the level of U.K. government debt and sent the pound plunging to a record low against the U.S. dollar.
Neither Truss nor Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng has made a public statement on the turmoil. Conservative lawmakers watched with mounting alarm as the currency struggled along at near-record lows. Britain's central bank signalled a hefty interest rate hike was in the cards for its next meeting, due in November.
This inept madness cannot go on, Simon Hoare, a Conservative member of Parliament, wrote on Twitter. Another Tory legislator, Robert Largan, said he had serious reservations about some of the government's announcements.
There's a lot of concern within the parliamentary party, there's no doubt about that, Mel Stride, the Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Treasury committee, said.
Andrew Griffith, a junior minister in the Treasury, said the government would not reverse course but would get on and deliver" its plan.
All the main opposition parties demanded calling Parliament back early from a two-week break so lawmakers who are not due back in the House of Commons until Oct. 11 could confront the crisis.
Many people will now be extremely worried about their mortgage, about prices going up, and now about their pensions," Labour Party leader Keir Starmer said. "What the government needs to do now is recall Parliament and abandon this budget before any more damage is done.
Truss was appointed prime minister on Sept. 6 after winning a Conservative Party leadership contest to replace Boris Johnson, who stepped down in July after a three-year term tarnished by ethics scandals.
Truss, a champion of low-tax, free-market conservatism who cites 1980s political icons Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as inspirations, promised during her campaign to slash taxes and red tape in order to energize Britain's sluggish economy.
Truss and Kwarteng vowed to challenge economic orthodoxy that they claim is holding Britain back. One of Kwarteng's first acts in office was to fire the top civil servant in the Treasury, Tom Scholar.
But many Conservatives were surprised by the scale of the announced tax cuts and by the strength of the market reaction.
The 45 billion pounds ($49 billion) in cuts, to be funded by borrowing, would come after the government just agreed to spend billions more to help shield homes and businesses from soaring energy prices driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The growing debt raises the prospect the government will have to borrow more, at ever higher cost, and will have to cut public spending as a result.
The government says it will set out on Nov. 23 how it plans to pay for the cuts, alongside an economic forecast by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility.
I don't think we can wait until November," Conservative lawmaker Roger Gale told the BBC. We need a statement in very short order indeed to steady the nerves, steady the market and set out very clearly what the business plan is.
Adam Tomkins, a former Conservative member of the Scottish Parliament, said Trussonomics was profoundly unconservative.
Tomkins, now a professor of law at the University of Glasgow, said the hammering of the pound is the strongest possible sign that the markets don't buy the newfound recklessness, the dogma that you can tax-cut your way to lower public spending.
What we are witnessing right now is not only the Conservative Party trashing its own brand: it's the Conservative Party trashing the economy, he wrote in the Herald newspaper.
(AP)
How China removes illegally parked cars
China is very advanced in removing illegally parked cars. pic.twitter.com/Z22VDENS0k
— Curiously Curious (@justcurious1313) September 30, 2022
Saturday, September 24, 2022
TOI Article : IITians not interested in overseas jobs
Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology took up jobs outside India last year. This is in sharp contrast to past when a majority of the students went abroad for further studies or jobs. Reason: Most students perceive that India offers more opportunities.
MUMBAI: One leg of an IITian is in India, the other in Air India, went a popular wisecrack in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Every year hundreds of freshly minted engineers from these highly rated institutes would fly westward. This time, the template followed by several graduating classes was disrupted as many turned down international job offers.
Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology took up positions outside India last year. Fifty students, who make up the largest contingent, will be leaving from IIT-Bombay, followed by 40 from Delhi, 25 from Kharagpur, 19 from Kanpur, 13 from Madras, 17 from Roorkee and five from Guwahati. In 2012, 84 IIT-B candidates had accepted international job offers.
“Compared to 20 years ago, a very small percentage of students go abroad today. This is contrary to the general perception ,” says IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao. “Twenty years ago, 80% of the BTech class used to go abroad. Now these numbers are insignificant.”
The count was larger last year, though not dramatically different. While the first phase of placements have concluded, the ensuing edition is unlikely to have international companies flying down to campuses. “When we asked companies why they were coming to campus with fewer offers, they said that their requirement was lower and profiles too had changed,” said professor Kaustubha Mohanty, convenor of the All-IIT Placement Committee.
But that may not be the entire story. Deepak Phatak, chair professor at IIT-Bombay, said that the real question is how many IITians applied for international jobs. “A large number of our students are not seeking jobs outside India,” he said.
In fact Phatak was concerned about the quality of graduates when international offers started dwindling a few years ago. “So I conducted exit interviews and found that students perceive that the land of opportunity is here,” he said. Moreover, with global companies setting up offices in India, students can join Google in Bennigana Halli in Bengaluru instead of Mountain View, California.
In the early ’90s, the outflow of computer science graduates to the US was so high that the World Bank, in a report, had suggested that an exit tax be imposed on IITians and other professionals leaving the country—this, it said, could earn the government over $1 billion (about Rs 4,400 crore then) per annum. This year, the US which used to attract most candidates has been pipped by Japan. For instance, 35 students from IIT-B are headed far east as compared to 10 who are going to the USA (see box).
The concern that state-subsidised educated talent was flying off to the West to build a foreign economy and driving innovation and entrepreneurship there, gave birth to the aching term—brain drain. The turn of events, has led to a new vocable, the euphonious “brain circulation”.
“A small percentage (less than 15% of a graduating batch) of the students go abroad for higher studies. Others stay back,” said IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Biswas. “Many graduates keep moving between countries abroad and India. Indeed, brain drain is a myth now, one may call the paradigm brain circulation.”
MUMBAI: One leg of an IITian is in India, the other in Air India, went a popular wisecrack in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Every year hundreds of freshly minted engineers from these highly rated institutes would fly westward. This time, the template followed by several graduating classes was disrupted as many turned down international job offers.
Not even 200 of the approximate 10,000 students from the Indian Institutes of Technology took up positions outside India last year. Fifty students, who make up the largest contingent, will be leaving from IIT-Bombay, followed by 40 from Delhi, 25 from Kharagpur, 19 from Kanpur, 13 from Madras, 17 from Roorkee and five from Guwahati. In 2012, 84 IIT-B candidates had accepted international job offers.
“Compared to 20 years ago, a very small percentage of students go abroad today. This is contrary to the general perception ,” says IIT-Delhi director V Ramgopal Rao. “Twenty years ago, 80% of the BTech class used to go abroad. Now these numbers are insignificant.”
The count was larger last year, though not dramatically different. While the first phase of placements have concluded, the ensuing edition is unlikely to have international companies flying down to campuses. “When we asked companies why they were coming to campus with fewer offers, they said that their requirement was lower and profiles too had changed,” said professor Kaustubha Mohanty, convenor of the All-IIT Placement Committee.
But that may not be the entire story. Deepak Phatak, chair professor at IIT-Bombay, said that the real question is how many IITians applied for international jobs. “A large number of our students are not seeking jobs outside India,” he said.
In fact Phatak was concerned about the quality of graduates when international offers started dwindling a few years ago. “So I conducted exit interviews and found that students perceive that the land of opportunity is here,” he said. Moreover, with global companies setting up offices in India, students can join Google in Bennigana Halli in Bengaluru instead of Mountain View, California.
In the early ’90s, the outflow of computer science graduates to the US was so high that the World Bank, in a report, had suggested that an exit tax be imposed on IITians and other professionals leaving the country—this, it said, could earn the government over $1 billion (about Rs 4,400 crore then) per annum. This year, the US which used to attract most candidates has been pipped by Japan. For instance, 35 students from IIT-B are headed far east as compared to 10 who are going to the USA (see box).
The concern that state-subsidised educated talent was flying off to the West to build a foreign economy and driving innovation and entrepreneurship there, gave birth to the aching term—brain drain. The turn of events, has led to a new vocable, the euphonious “brain circulation”.
“A small percentage (less than 15% of a graduating batch) of the students go abroad for higher studies. Others stay back,” said IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Biswas. “Many graduates keep moving between countries abroad and India. Indeed, brain drain is a myth now, one may call the paradigm brain circulation.”
Friday, September 16, 2022
London Firm picks up Russian clients in the midst of war
Bloomberg Article
Two-Man London Firm Scoops Up Russia Work Dumped by Big Banks
i2 becomes debt-market middleman for Gazprom, Polyus, Lukoil
Limerick-based firm takes up discarded shell companies
16 September 2022 at 16:54 GMT+5:30
Beaming from behind laptops in the shadows of a lounge bar, Sanjay Jobanputra and Mark Brescacin strike a casual pose in the sole photo on an Instagram account linked to their company.
The former employees of BNY Mellon and advisory firm D.F. King are the founders of London–based firm i2 Capital Markets Ltd. You might not guess it from the informal snapshot and i2’s bare corporate website, but this summer they quietly took over the role of debt-market middlemen to the biggest companies in Russia.
As providers of trust services, they’re responsible for playing intermediary between the Russian companies that issue bonds abroad and the investors who hold them, making sure payments are made, bond terms are adhered to, and votes go ahead on any changes to documentation. It’s an unglamorous yet vital capital-market cog.
The work, which covers about $25 billion of bonds sold before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine, was discarded by established bond service providers like BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank AG and Citigroup Inc. after the war broke out. The big players largely follow European Union and US sanctions, which bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies. The UK hasn’t yet followed suit on implementing that restriction, opening up a lucrative opportunity for anyone willing to stomach the risks.
“You’d always expect someone to fill the gap,” said Alper Kara, a finance professor at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “It seems the larger trustees may think that sanctions and being attached to the Russian market may dent their reputation so they’re backing off.”
i2's Flourishing Business
London firm got trustee roles dropped by big banks
Note: Some trustee appointments still need to be approved by bondholders. Data as of Sept. 16.
It’s a sign of the chaos created by Putin’s war that the work is being conducted by tiny companies. Some of the world’s biggest money managers still hold Russian corporate debt either because they can’t find a buyer due to sanctions or they don’t want to take the hit from selling at a loss.
Previous work undertaken by i2, which was founded in 2016, has included acting as tabulation agent in Libor transactions. They were also an administration agent in a share-pledge deal for Mindgeek Sarl, owner of adult content platform Pornhub, according to filings. Now their client roster reads like a who’s who of Russia Inc., including natural-gas giant Gazprom PJSC, the country’s biggest private oil company Lukoil PJSC, and fertilizer-maker PhosAgro PJSC.
The company’s registered address is a basement of a red-brick office block just north of London’s financial center, but administrative staff in the building said the address is mostly used for incoming mail. Previous addresses include various residential properties around London and the neighboring county of Kent.
Brescacin declined to comment on transactions with Russian firms, citing client confidentiality. The company isn’t involved directly with Mindgeek or Pornhub, he said. Shortly after Bloomberg spoke to Brescacin, a list of deals with Russian clients was removed from public view on the firm’s website and photos of the founders were taken down.
Russian companies doing business with i2 didn’t respond to questions about how they were introduced to the firm. Mindgeek representatives didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment on the share pledge agreement.
Russian corporations with foreign debt also rely on companies to provide directors and accounts for the special-purpose vehicles set up to sell the bonds. A tiny Limerick, Ireland-based firm called Chern & Co has scooped up the contracts for those shell companies after they were ditched by service providers Cafico International, Vistra Group and TMF group earlier this year.
Chern & Co is run by Alex Chernenko, a native of the Ukrainian port-city of Odessa, who also runs a translation company called Translit, which has been offering free translation help to Ukrainian refugees. Cherneko didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The work of both companies could be short lived if sanctions are extended. The UK has said it will bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies, though it’s not clear when and how that will impact outstanding debt. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office didn’t respond to a request for more information.
And while the roles are largely passive, sanctions have made the job more complex. A consent solicitation prepared by i2 for Polyus PJSC, Russia’s largest gold miner, proposed amendments that allow direct transfers to Russian investors, and the use of rubles instead of dollars for payments when servicing the company’s $2 billion of bonds. In addition, the tweaks let the issuer buy back Russian holders’ bonds at a discount and cancel them, as well as extending the grace period before default.
There’s no reason why companies shouldn’t fulfill this gap in the market if it doesn’t go against sanctions, according to Frank Flanagan, who specializes in commercial litigation as a partner at Dublin-based law firm Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. However, it has to be done “on foot of painstaking due diligence and carefully considered and detailed legal advice,” he said.
— With assistance by Yuliya Fedorinova, and Philippe Roubert
Two-Man London Firm Scoops Up Russia Work Dumped by Big Banks
i2 becomes debt-market middleman for Gazprom, Polyus, Lukoil
Limerick-based firm takes up discarded shell companies
16 September 2022 at 16:54 GMT+5:30
Beaming from behind laptops in the shadows of a lounge bar, Sanjay Jobanputra and Mark Brescacin strike a casual pose in the sole photo on an Instagram account linked to their company.
The former employees of BNY Mellon and advisory firm D.F. King are the founders of London–based firm i2 Capital Markets Ltd. You might not guess it from the informal snapshot and i2’s bare corporate website, but this summer they quietly took over the role of debt-market middlemen to the biggest companies in Russia.
As providers of trust services, they’re responsible for playing intermediary between the Russian companies that issue bonds abroad and the investors who hold them, making sure payments are made, bond terms are adhered to, and votes go ahead on any changes to documentation. It’s an unglamorous yet vital capital-market cog.
The work, which covers about $25 billion of bonds sold before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine, was discarded by established bond service providers like BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank AG and Citigroup Inc. after the war broke out. The big players largely follow European Union and US sanctions, which bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies. The UK hasn’t yet followed suit on implementing that restriction, opening up a lucrative opportunity for anyone willing to stomach the risks.
“You’d always expect someone to fill the gap,” said Alper Kara, a finance professor at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “It seems the larger trustees may think that sanctions and being attached to the Russian market may dent their reputation so they’re backing off.”
i2's Flourishing Business
London firm got trustee roles dropped by big banks
Note: Some trustee appointments still need to be approved by bondholders. Data as of Sept. 16.
It’s a sign of the chaos created by Putin’s war that the work is being conducted by tiny companies. Some of the world’s biggest money managers still hold Russian corporate debt either because they can’t find a buyer due to sanctions or they don’t want to take the hit from selling at a loss.
Previous work undertaken by i2, which was founded in 2016, has included acting as tabulation agent in Libor transactions. They were also an administration agent in a share-pledge deal for Mindgeek Sarl, owner of adult content platform Pornhub, according to filings. Now their client roster reads like a who’s who of Russia Inc., including natural-gas giant Gazprom PJSC, the country’s biggest private oil company Lukoil PJSC, and fertilizer-maker PhosAgro PJSC.
The company’s registered address is a basement of a red-brick office block just north of London’s financial center, but administrative staff in the building said the address is mostly used for incoming mail. Previous addresses include various residential properties around London and the neighboring county of Kent.
Brescacin declined to comment on transactions with Russian firms, citing client confidentiality. The company isn’t involved directly with Mindgeek or Pornhub, he said. Shortly after Bloomberg spoke to Brescacin, a list of deals with Russian clients was removed from public view on the firm’s website and photos of the founders were taken down.
Russian companies doing business with i2 didn’t respond to questions about how they were introduced to the firm. Mindgeek representatives didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment on the share pledge agreement.
Russian corporations with foreign debt also rely on companies to provide directors and accounts for the special-purpose vehicles set up to sell the bonds. A tiny Limerick, Ireland-based firm called Chern & Co has scooped up the contracts for those shell companies after they were ditched by service providers Cafico International, Vistra Group and TMF group earlier this year.
Chern & Co is run by Alex Chernenko, a native of the Ukrainian port-city of Odessa, who also runs a translation company called Translit, which has been offering free translation help to Ukrainian refugees. Cherneko didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
The work of both companies could be short lived if sanctions are extended. The UK has said it will bar trustees from doing business with Russian companies, though it’s not clear when and how that will impact outstanding debt. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office didn’t respond to a request for more information.
And while the roles are largely passive, sanctions have made the job more complex. A consent solicitation prepared by i2 for Polyus PJSC, Russia’s largest gold miner, proposed amendments that allow direct transfers to Russian investors, and the use of rubles instead of dollars for payments when servicing the company’s $2 billion of bonds. In addition, the tweaks let the issuer buy back Russian holders’ bonds at a discount and cancel them, as well as extending the grace period before default.
There’s no reason why companies shouldn’t fulfill this gap in the market if it doesn’t go against sanctions, according to Frank Flanagan, who specializes in commercial litigation as a partner at Dublin-based law firm Mason Hayes & Curran LLP. However, it has to be done “on foot of painstaking due diligence and carefully considered and detailed legal advice,” he said.
— With assistance by Yuliya Fedorinova, and Philippe Roubert
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Everything Everywhere All at once : Movie Review
Dir: Dan Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis. 15, 139 minutes.
The multiverse is having a moment. I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious. Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While Marvel executives huddle around conference tables, braiding together franchises in a grand show of corporate synergy, here’s a film that really understands what the infinite might look like.
Everything Everywhere All at Once exists in the outer wilds of the imagination, in the realm of lucid dreaming and liminal spaces. It bounces off familiar representations of altered states, whether it be The Matrix or the phantasmical films of Michel Gondry, while feeling entirely unclassifiable. It’s both proudly puerile, with a running joke about butt plugs, and breathlessly sincere about the daily toil of intergenerational trauma. That curious mixture of tonal extremes will already be familiar to fans of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, otherwise known as The Daniels. Following the success of their music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” – in which a guy smashes crotch-first through several storeys of an apartment building – they made their debut feature Swiss Army Man (2016) about the tender relationship between the survivor of a shipwreck and a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. With Everything Everywhere All at Once, these filmmakers have fully hit their stride.
At the heart of its story is an ordinary woman, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh). In fact, she’s the most ordinary of women, quietly running a laundromat in the Simi Valley, California, with her sweet, sprightly husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Tensions are high. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) is visiting from China and has always looked down on her decision to marry Waymond and move to America. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has brought her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) along, already bitter in the knowledge that her mother is about to shove her back in the closet. Oh, and Evelyn’s being audited. “From a stack of receipts, I can trace the ups and downs of your life,” her assigned IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, delightfully and manically mundane) warns. “And it does not look good.”
Then, out of the blue, a version of Waymond from somewhere called the “Alphaverse” commandeers her husband’s body in order to tell her that she’s the key to saving all reality. Out of all the Evelyns that exist, branching off from every choice she’s ever made, this Evelyn has fared the worst. That means she’s the only one who still has unfulfilled potential. What a beautiful way to look at the world – that a life in stasis is really one of bottomless possibility. We meet quite a few of the other Evelyns: a martial arts star who could easily be Yeoh herself (spot footage of the actor on the Crazy Rich Asians red carpet), a dominatrix, a piñata, a Chinese opera singer, a hibachi chef and a woman with hot dogs for hands. Aided by the freneticism of Larkin Seiple’s cinematography and Paul Rogers’s editing, we shuffle through Evelyns like cards in a deck. There’s an exquisitely constructed homage to Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, alongside full-blown fight scenes choreographed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Brian and Andy Le.
To elaborate any more on the plot would spoil the fun, but the power packed into Everything Everywhere’s punch is that all this elaborate chaos has a distinct purpose to it. The Daniels have fully captured the fractured feeling of modern existence, of never quite being at the wheel of your own life. Evelyn’s task, she’s told, is to “take us back to how it’s supposed to be”. But that proves to be an empty phrase. If every path in life can live side by side, who’s to say any of them is the right one? It’s the sort of philosophy that needs to be tethered to something forceful and absolute – that’s Yeoh, who moves through Everything Everywhere All at Once like she could hold the entire film in the palm of her hand.
You could argue the actor, in a way, has lived a few different lives herself: as the Hong Kong action star in Heroic Trio (1993); the Bond girl of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997); the romcom matriarch in Crazy Rich Asians (2018). But the Evelyns she plays aren’t parodies or costumes; they are a set of emotions placed on a gradient. To say this is a showcase for her talent almost feels like an understatement – the same can be said for Quan, who played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Data in The Goonies (1985) and then learned the hard lesson of how little Hollywood cares for the accomplishments of Asian actors. If the industry has really changed for the better, this return to acting should mark the first role of many.
From The Independent.co.uk by Clarisse Loughrey
The multiverse is having a moment. I’m undecided on whether the decision to chase up Marvel’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Everything Everywhere All at Once – a film grounded in the same concept of parallel realities, yet made with a fraction of the budget – is foolhardy or ingenious. Either way, David has shown Goliath how it’s done. While Marvel executives huddle around conference tables, braiding together franchises in a grand show of corporate synergy, here’s a film that really understands what the infinite might look like.
Everything Everywhere All at Once exists in the outer wilds of the imagination, in the realm of lucid dreaming and liminal spaces. It bounces off familiar representations of altered states, whether it be The Matrix or the phantasmical films of Michel Gondry, while feeling entirely unclassifiable. It’s both proudly puerile, with a running joke about butt plugs, and breathlessly sincere about the daily toil of intergenerational trauma. That curious mixture of tonal extremes will already be familiar to fans of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, otherwise known as The Daniels. Following the success of their music video for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What” – in which a guy smashes crotch-first through several storeys of an apartment building – they made their debut feature Swiss Army Man (2016) about the tender relationship between the survivor of a shipwreck and a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe. With Everything Everywhere All at Once, these filmmakers have fully hit their stride.
At the heart of its story is an ordinary woman, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh). In fact, she’s the most ordinary of women, quietly running a laundromat in the Simi Valley, California, with her sweet, sprightly husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Tensions are high. Evelyn’s father (James Hong) is visiting from China and has always looked down on her decision to marry Waymond and move to America. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has brought her girlfriend Becky (Tallie Medel) along, already bitter in the knowledge that her mother is about to shove her back in the closet. Oh, and Evelyn’s being audited. “From a stack of receipts, I can trace the ups and downs of your life,” her assigned IRS agent Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis, delightfully and manically mundane) warns. “And it does not look good.”
Then, out of the blue, a version of Waymond from somewhere called the “Alphaverse” commandeers her husband’s body in order to tell her that she’s the key to saving all reality. Out of all the Evelyns that exist, branching off from every choice she’s ever made, this Evelyn has fared the worst. That means she’s the only one who still has unfulfilled potential. What a beautiful way to look at the world – that a life in stasis is really one of bottomless possibility. We meet quite a few of the other Evelyns: a martial arts star who could easily be Yeoh herself (spot footage of the actor on the Crazy Rich Asians red carpet), a dominatrix, a piñata, a Chinese opera singer, a hibachi chef and a woman with hot dogs for hands. Aided by the freneticism of Larkin Seiple’s cinematography and Paul Rogers’s editing, we shuffle through Evelyns like cards in a deck. There’s an exquisitely constructed homage to Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love, alongside full-blown fight scenes choreographed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ Brian and Andy Le.
To elaborate any more on the plot would spoil the fun, but the power packed into Everything Everywhere’s punch is that all this elaborate chaos has a distinct purpose to it. The Daniels have fully captured the fractured feeling of modern existence, of never quite being at the wheel of your own life. Evelyn’s task, she’s told, is to “take us back to how it’s supposed to be”. But that proves to be an empty phrase. If every path in life can live side by side, who’s to say any of them is the right one? It’s the sort of philosophy that needs to be tethered to something forceful and absolute – that’s Yeoh, who moves through Everything Everywhere All at Once like she could hold the entire film in the palm of her hand.
You could argue the actor, in a way, has lived a few different lives herself: as the Hong Kong action star in Heroic Trio (1993); the Bond girl of Tomorrow Never Dies (1997); the romcom matriarch in Crazy Rich Asians (2018). But the Evelyns she plays aren’t parodies or costumes; they are a set of emotions placed on a gradient. To say this is a showcase for her talent almost feels like an understatement – the same can be said for Quan, who played Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Data in The Goonies (1985) and then learned the hard lesson of how little Hollywood cares for the accomplishments of Asian actors. If the industry has really changed for the better, this return to acting should mark the first role of many.
From The Independent.co.uk by Clarisse Loughrey
Tuesday, August 30, 2022
Indians guessing the facts about America
theneverendingfall.substack.com
What my friends in India (college educated, urban) guessed about America when I asked them these questions:
1. Almost all of them wrongly guessed MLB/Baseball is the most popular American sport. Most thought basketball/NBA was #2 and football/NFL (called incorrectly Rugby in India) was #3. (Actual rank: NFL > NBA > MLB)
2. When I asked them to guess the demographics of the US, they were in this range: Whites 70-80%, Blacks 25-50%, 5% rest. All of them overestimated the number of Indians in the US. All of them there were shocked to hear that there are more Hispanics than Blacks. (Actual distribution: 61% non-Hispanic Whites, 12% Blacks, 17% Hispanics incl. White Hispanics, 5% Asians)
3. Most of them thought the population of America was 500-700M. One friend thought it was 100M.
4. I told them that the actual population of America is only 330M. I asked them to guess the number of illegal immigrants. All of them underestimated the number. The highest number I heard was 5M. (It is 12-15M or higher)
5. All of them underestimated the divorce rate at 30-40%. That black single-parent rate was >75% was a shocker to them. All of them wrongly guessed higher SES Americans have a higher divorce rate than lower SES Americans. Possibly because celebrities have a high divorce rate.
6. That state capitals are not the biggest cities of their respective states was surprising to them. I asked them to guess the capital of NY and CA; they guessed NYC and LA.
7. None of them guessed correctly that there is a quota system for African Americans (and Hispanics) in colleges in America. All of them said no.
8. All of them guessed the most popular meat wrongly as beef. Some guessed pork (just called pig meat in India, very rare in India). It’s chicken.
9. All of them underestimated how much I make when I told them the median income in America is ~$60K.
What my friends in India (college educated, urban) guessed about America when I asked them these questions:
1. Almost all of them wrongly guessed MLB/Baseball is the most popular American sport. Most thought basketball/NBA was #2 and football/NFL (called incorrectly Rugby in India) was #3. (Actual rank: NFL > NBA > MLB)
2. When I asked them to guess the demographics of the US, they were in this range: Whites 70-80%, Blacks 25-50%, 5% rest. All of them overestimated the number of Indians in the US. All of them there were shocked to hear that there are more Hispanics than Blacks. (Actual distribution: 61% non-Hispanic Whites, 12% Blacks, 17% Hispanics incl. White Hispanics, 5% Asians)
3. Most of them thought the population of America was 500-700M. One friend thought it was 100M.
4. I told them that the actual population of America is only 330M. I asked them to guess the number of illegal immigrants. All of them underestimated the number. The highest number I heard was 5M. (It is 12-15M or higher)
5. All of them underestimated the divorce rate at 30-40%. That black single-parent rate was >75% was a shocker to them. All of them wrongly guessed higher SES Americans have a higher divorce rate than lower SES Americans. Possibly because celebrities have a high divorce rate.
6. That state capitals are not the biggest cities of their respective states was surprising to them. I asked them to guess the capital of NY and CA; they guessed NYC and LA.
7. None of them guessed correctly that there is a quota system for African Americans (and Hispanics) in colleges in America. All of them said no.
8. All of them guessed the most popular meat wrongly as beef. Some guessed pork (just called pig meat in India, very rare in India). It’s chicken.
9. All of them underestimated how much I make when I told them the median income in America is ~$60K.
Changes in Electricity Distribution
The Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2022 was introduced in Lok Sabha on August 8, 2022. The Bill amends the Electricity Act, 2003. The Act regulates the electricity sector in India. It sets up the Central and State Electricity Regulatory Commissions (CERC and SERCs) to regulate inter-state and intra-state matters, respectively.
Key provisions under the Bill are:
Multiple discoms in the same area: The Act provides for multiple distribution licensees (discoms) to operate in the same area of supply. The Act requires discoms to distribute electricity through their own network. The Bill removes this requirement. It adds that a discom must provide non-discriminatory open access to its network to all other discoms operating in the same area, on payment of certain charges. The central government may prescribe the criteria for determining the area of supply.
Power procurement and tariff:
Upon grant of multiple licenses for the same area, the power and associated costs as per the existing power purchase agreements (PPAs) of the existing discoms will be shared between all discoms.
To meet any additional power requirements, a discom may enter into additional PPAs after meeting the obligations of existing agreements. Such additional power need not be shared with other discoms. Under the Act, in case of multiple discoms in the same area of supply, the SERC is required to specify the maximum ceiling for tariff. The Bill adds that the SERC will also specify a minimum tariff for such cases.
Cross-subsidy Balancing Fund:
The Bill adds that upon grant of multiple licenses for the same area, the state government will set up a Cross-subsidy Balancing Fund. Cross-subsidy refers to the arrangement of one consumer category subsidising the consumption of another consumer category. Any surplus with a distribution licensee on account of cross-subsidy will be deposited into the fund. The fund will be used to finance deficits in cross-subsidy for other discoms in the same area or any other area.
The Bill specifies that the above matters related to the operation of multiple discoms in the same area will be regulated in accordance with the rules made by the central government under the Act. License for distribution in multiple states: As per the Bill, the CERC will grant licenses for distribution of electricity in more than one state.
Payment security:
The Bill provides that electricity will not be scheduled or despatched if adequate payment security is not provided by the discom. The central government may prescribe rules regarding payment security.
Contract enforcement:
The Bill empowers the CERC and SERCs to adjudicate disputes related to the performance of contracts. These refer to contracts related to the sale, purchase, or transmission of electricity. Further, the Commissions will have powers of a Civil Court.
Renewable purchase obligation:
The Act empowers SERCs to specify renewable purchase obligations (RPO) for discoms. RPO refers to the mandate to procure a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. The Bill adds that RPO should not be below a minimum percentage prescribed by the central government. Failure to meet RPO will be punishable with a penalty between 25 paise and 50 paise per kilowatt of the shortfall.
Selection committee for SERCs:
Under the Act, the Chairperson of the Central Electricity Authority or the Chairperson of the CERC is one of the members of the selection committee to recommend appointments to the SERCs. Under the Bill, instead of this person, the central government will nominate a member to the selection committee. The nominee should not be below the rank of Additional Secretary to the central government.
Composition of Commissions and APTEL:
The Bill increases the number of members (including the chairperson) in SERCs from three to four. Further, at least one member in both the CERC and SERCs must be from law background. Under the Act, Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) consists of a chairperson and three other members. The Bill instead provides that the APTEL will have three or more members, as may be prescribed by the central government.
Key provisions under the Bill are:
Multiple discoms in the same area: The Act provides for multiple distribution licensees (discoms) to operate in the same area of supply. The Act requires discoms to distribute electricity through their own network. The Bill removes this requirement. It adds that a discom must provide non-discriminatory open access to its network to all other discoms operating in the same area, on payment of certain charges. The central government may prescribe the criteria for determining the area of supply.
Power procurement and tariff:
Upon grant of multiple licenses for the same area, the power and associated costs as per the existing power purchase agreements (PPAs) of the existing discoms will be shared between all discoms.
To meet any additional power requirements, a discom may enter into additional PPAs after meeting the obligations of existing agreements. Such additional power need not be shared with other discoms. Under the Act, in case of multiple discoms in the same area of supply, the SERC is required to specify the maximum ceiling for tariff. The Bill adds that the SERC will also specify a minimum tariff for such cases.
Cross-subsidy Balancing Fund:
The Bill adds that upon grant of multiple licenses for the same area, the state government will set up a Cross-subsidy Balancing Fund. Cross-subsidy refers to the arrangement of one consumer category subsidising the consumption of another consumer category. Any surplus with a distribution licensee on account of cross-subsidy will be deposited into the fund. The fund will be used to finance deficits in cross-subsidy for other discoms in the same area or any other area.
The Bill specifies that the above matters related to the operation of multiple discoms in the same area will be regulated in accordance with the rules made by the central government under the Act. License for distribution in multiple states: As per the Bill, the CERC will grant licenses for distribution of electricity in more than one state.
Payment security:
The Bill provides that electricity will not be scheduled or despatched if adequate payment security is not provided by the discom. The central government may prescribe rules regarding payment security.
Contract enforcement:
The Bill empowers the CERC and SERCs to adjudicate disputes related to the performance of contracts. These refer to contracts related to the sale, purchase, or transmission of electricity. Further, the Commissions will have powers of a Civil Court.
Renewable purchase obligation:
The Act empowers SERCs to specify renewable purchase obligations (RPO) for discoms. RPO refers to the mandate to procure a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. The Bill adds that RPO should not be below a minimum percentage prescribed by the central government. Failure to meet RPO will be punishable with a penalty between 25 paise and 50 paise per kilowatt of the shortfall.
Selection committee for SERCs:
Under the Act, the Chairperson of the Central Electricity Authority or the Chairperson of the CERC is one of the members of the selection committee to recommend appointments to the SERCs. Under the Bill, instead of this person, the central government will nominate a member to the selection committee. The nominee should not be below the rank of Additional Secretary to the central government.
Composition of Commissions and APTEL:
The Bill increases the number of members (including the chairperson) in SERCs from three to four. Further, at least one member in both the CERC and SERCs must be from law background. Under the Act, Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) consists of a chairperson and three other members. The Bill instead provides that the APTEL will have three or more members, as may be prescribed by the central government.
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