AN OUTSIDE VIEW

As part of the acrimonious Brexit negotiations, there is a row over protected product names such as Melton Mowbray pies and whiskies generally. This reminds me of something that happened about 30 years ago when some Italians living in Sussex produced a perfectly good Parmesan cheese of their own and sold it as such until they were forced to stop, after which it seems to have disappeared from the shops. Personally I think it was a mistake not to market it in the first place as something new with a local name. There are several villages in Sussex with names beginning with “Par” which would have made the connection. Pirating brand names is a stupid marketing tactic. Products sold on the backs of others’ names are in the long run doomed to failure; Danish Blue cheese is quite similar to Roquefort but stands on its own merits. The genuine producers can protect themselves by packaging with something difficult to forge, like a hologram, on the label. It is a nuisance from one poin...

En artikel i GP diskuterar “släkten som anses styra i Angered” (en av Göteborgs förorter). Familjen verkar vara en riktig Rockefeller för brott istället för finans. Kanske inte en så stor skillnad; finans också har växt till att globalt brott, mer dödligt i verkligheten än det vanliga slags våldsamt brottet. Familjedrivna affärer kan vara bra för familje själv, för samhället och näringslivet. Men omständingheter styr. Tänk på det: att Sveriges skattesystem, vilket vi betrakatar som “rättvis” är ingenting annat än ett system för bestraffning av framgångsrik, legal ekonomiska aktiviteter. Varför då är vi förvånade över att sådant brott har växt och utvecklat till en fullständig industri? Systemet har uppmuntrade den i den högsta grad. Staten har också uppmuntrat drogrelaterade brott, vilka kunde lätt förbyggas genom att sälja legalt villkorligt t ex på Apotek eller Systembolaget. Då blir det inga tillfälle för fösäljning illegalt. Dessa problem är för det mest konstgjorda.

For the first half of the twentieth century, press photographers used Speed-Graphic cameras, with a flash fixed to the side. They used 5x4 sheet film, which is slow to use, and the photographer had just one chance to release the shutter at the critical moment. These were well suited to the technology of the time, when photographs were printed in low resolution half-tone using hot metal processes. For about twenty years from the 1950s, the Koni Omega roll film camera was a popular choice among press photographers. Press photographers were slow to adopt 35 mm cameras because the film was too coarse grained. Solidly build 35 mm cameras such as the Leica and Canon came into use during the time of the Korean war, and SLR types such as the Nikon F series during the Vietnam war. Of course digital photography has changed everything, or should have. I was looking at the photographs of the press of press photographers encircling Dominic Cummings. All of them are encumbered with heavy duty SL...

En artikel i idags GP avslöjar det som vi alltid visste - att Västlänken är ett nästan värdelöst projekt.   Det var uppenbart från början att bara en av tre linjer (Udevalla/Trollhättan/Alingsås) kunde få en direkt förbindelse mot Kungsbacka. Också uppenbart var att restider söderifrån skulle ökas. Och vad är egentligen efterfrågan på direktresor mellan t ex Udevalla och Varberg? Och vad är Haga för ett resemål? Vem vill åka dit?  Det enda sträcka som är till nytta är detta bredvid älven tills Stenpiren. Bästa alternativ är att skrota den resta. Om det är nu för sent, så är det värde att bygga ut till en riktig destination: en tunneln från Haga till en ny station på Linneplatsen, och därefter fortsätter tills Frölunda/Opaltorget på den nuvarande spårväglinje ombyggd för tåg. Tåg kunde också rulla på en del av den gamla Säröbana t ex Askim/Hovås. Det finns också ett behöv för bättre förbindelser mellan Mölndäl, Sisjön och Frölunda - möjligtvis spårväg.

Trust in science is a weakness of those who have not studied the natural sciences. Scientific knowledge is always provisional and open to revision in the light of new observations and reinterpretation of old ones. The scientific community has been insufficiently clear on this point of late. The result has been that, based on the science available at the time, advice has led to harmful public policies and recommendations in many fields eg dietary advice, energy, medicine, agriculture; some of those policies have subsequently been reversed.

Every so often, the statement pops up that economics is not a science, but a product of people’s emotional reactions. Economics, properly termed Political Economy, is a genuine science. If it were not, then there would be no point in any policy intervention as its effects would be completely unpredictable. The “Science of Political Economy” (there is a book with that title by Henry George) progressed from the time of the French Physiocrats, via Smith, Ricardo, J S Mill and Henry George, until the 1880s. After that, the basic principles were buried and covered with a smokescreen of impressive-looking mathematics. Basic principles still apply: if prices are higher, less is sold and supply tends to increase. Then there is the Law of Rent, which every street beggar and musician knows: a busker will collect more at the bottom of the escalators at Victoria than outside the station at West Finchley. The difference is due to the advantages of location ie it is what Ricardo iden...

Sometimes a picture emerges with extreme clarity. One of the reasons why I take part in internet discussions is that it forces one to refine one’s thinking. This was a response to a comment in the Daily Telegraph. Governments create money to pay for their expenses. It should then be removed through the tax system. To ensure that taxes were paid with sound money, the government paid its expenses by putting into circulation an official coinage impressed with the seal of the sovereign; hence ‘Render unto Caesar’. A primary function of government is to defend the territory and the land rights of the inhabitants. Rights of land occupation are normally achieved through land titles, which the government defends through the legal system. Government also provides the infrastructure without which land would be worthless. Thus, owners of land titles are able to collect the economic rent of land which has been created by the money spent by government. The cycle would be completed if go...

Det finns diskutering om vad ska göras för en bättre framtid för Sverige efter viruset? Tänk över. Om målet var att drabba Sveriges ekonomi som hård som möjligt skulle man införa ett skattessystem som vårt, skräddarsyd. Det fungerar som ett straff mot arbetskraft, varor, näringsliv och framgångsrik affärer och tillverkare. Värre än så är knappast tänkbart. I England under 1700-talet fanns det beskattning av fönster, vilket uppmuntrade ägarna av hus att fylla i öppningar med tegel vilka kan fortfarande ses idag i gamla byggnader. Beskattning av arbetskraft är ett bra sätt att främja arbetslöshet. Beskattning av varor t ex mat och kläder, främjar fattigdom. Beskattning av affärer och tillverkare uppmuntrar dem att flyttar fabriker till U-länder där arbetare exploateras. Slutsats: att Sveriges skattessystem passar inte ändamål och behöves byggas om från marken uppåt. Problemet kan inte längre ignoreras. https://arenaide.se/rapporter/den-minst-daliga-skatten/

The expansion of bank credit was traditionally controlled by imposing a lending ratio of about deposits x (a figure less than 12). This was broken in the 1980s but there had long been ‘back doors’ eg the secondary banks. The underlying issue is abuse of credit, the proper purpose of which is to support production eg the farmer must live until the crops are harvested and sold; the shipbuilders’ wages and materials must be paid for while construction is taking place. At the end of the process, the credit is extinguished. However, most credit these days is money created, without limit and at zero cost, for the purchase of land (embedded in real estate eg houses). No additional production takes place and there is no increase in productive capacity. The bank is effectively the landlord for the duration of the loan, and what is labelled ‘interest’ is in reality rent. The banks have thereby transformed themselves into land speculators, and as with all speculative activities, there are perio...

As part of the bad news from the epidemic, GDP figures have been falling all over the world. All the talk now is of getting the economy moving again. However, it is worth keeping in mind that GDP is a rotten measure of economic success and GDP growth is a terrible policy aim. The meal cooked and eaten in a restaurant, and the ready-made meal made in a factory, form part of the GDP figure. The better meal cooked from scratch using mostly ingredients grown in one’s own garden would not register. Policies intended to grow GDP have the damaging effect of driving activities, previously carried out in the domestic and voluntary realm, into the money economy. A secondary consequence is that with additional money incomes coming into households, a lot of it has driven up house prices and had been ending up as mortgage interest payments to fatten the profits of the banks.

UEFI is a feature of motherboards that was introduced about 2012 to prevent users from running operating systems other than those from Microsoft on their computers. It can usually be disabled in the BIOS settings but it takes some rooting around. Its presence explains a lot of the problems I have had trying to install Linux onto more recent computers. It is, in effect, yet another Windows nuisance feature to keep the Microsoft virus alive and in circulation. What happens is this. If you attempt to install a Linux on a machine with UEFI enabled you will be asked to create a small partition with a name like /boot-efi or similar. The kernel would normally then be installed to that partition. It then cannot be updated in the normal way (by downloading and running grub) as the symbolic link cannot be made with the vfat filesystem, so you get an error message and the old version of the kernel remains in use. This is apparently yet another Windows nuisance feature. If you proceed wit...