Twisting News

Tags

economy, fake news, Kaczynski, Poland, Trump, USA

It is definitely not news what I noticed recently, but it is something worth being aware of: a lot of so-called news are either fake, or are being twisted towards whoever broadcasts them. One of the areas where that happens a lot recently is economy.

Economy (and I am talking here country economy) is like a big super tanker on the sea. You cannot turn it around on a dime. You cannot stop it whenever you wish. When you turn your steering wheel, it takes some time before tanker reacts. Too much speed, and you end up destroying the port. Too little, and you will never get there. Currents and wind (respective world trends) can help you out or not.

Unfortunately people in general believe what politicos advertise as their success, although in fact it comes from their predecessors. Economy happens to react to changes with some delay, as that big tanker – make a decision today, reap benefits in some years. Or deal with grave consequences in some years. So populists use past decisions resulting in today’s success in their respective countries as their doing. Poland is one example, US is the other.

Trump is using trends in world economy as his doing. Most of the corporate decisions (especially in public companies) are not spur of the moment things, it is not so that on Monday someone decides to build a factory in the USA and on Tuesday same week construction work starts. Mostly those decisions are being carefully prepared. That takes time, often years. People making those decisions (usually groups of them) consider trends and each one is still a risk. Some fail, some don’t. Those which don’t are being advertised as result of something that Trump did. He didn’t. His decisions will show their consequences in years to come, when other president will have to deal with them.

Same in Poland. Mr Kaczynski and his propaganda use current trends in Polish economy as a result of changes he introduces. Not true. Fake news and twisting news to own advantage can only be seen from historical perspective, not from today’s media news. Result of those changes will be seen possibly after current government. It may very well be that those will give good reason for that new government to become unpopular.

Not many people think that way. What counts, is today. Forget the future and the fact where the country goes. Different thinking is required – I dare say, thinking as such is required. People, start thinking. Please.

 

Hopes of Change

Tags

change, economy, election, politics, populism, president, promises, Trump

I just came back from a trip to South Africa and there too new American president, Mr. Trump, is being discussed widely and often. Some people have really high hopes for the new president and this looks to me like a confirmation of what I wrote before about populist choices. Your heart wants things to happen. But… logically Mr. Trump as any other president needs to follow (or observe) some rules which are beyond his control.

For example: he wants to build a wall and let us say that he does. Someone needs to pay for it, regardless of the cost. If he will pay for it from taxes, there will be nothing left for anything else. If he will print money, the country will end up in a downward inflation spiral.

I have no idea how he wants to “convince” private companies to manufacture in the US… nationalize them? This also will send a wrong signal, which may result in companies moving their offices abroad. Massively. If he does convince them to produce in the US, the prices will probably get higher. Both results are bad for the consumers.

Immigration: if he will start deporting people, he has to have agreements with other countries to take those people in. Takes time and result is very questionable. If he here pays them (with some sort of trade or debt incentives) US will lose and the result may be more national debt, less money for other projects (such as infrastructure revamp) or again, inflation. If he will just dump people at the border somewhere, this may result in unrest and riots. Not pretty prospect either.

I could go on and on, and I didn’t even mention global political issues where Mr. Trump has no training and no experience. If in terms of business acumen he may be able to use his knowledge, in area of global politics he will need to rely on advisors and those people will follow old way of doing things – at best result will be more of same old stuff.

At best, choosing Mr. Trump will not change much and result in big disappointment. At worst, he will drag the country into even bigger debt and loose global leadership position to China and/or Russia, which will take years to change.

There is one area though where he could do something: change the tax laws and simplify them. Through that, he may achieve at least economic change. But here he will need to fight establishment currently taking profits from existing situation. I personally doubt if he will manage to do that… but good luck American people. You have chosen. Live with it.

 

Be Average Or Else…

Tags

economy, life, nassim nicholas taleb, organisation, rules, science, society, The Black Swan

Finally I have finished Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “Black Swan”. I enjoyed it, I fully agree with ideas presented there, although those are not easy to understand. Some of those ideas are close to my own view at so-called “sciences”, especially managerial or social. I think (and the book seems to confirm my point) that making up rules which organisations built out of humans (such as companies, communities, etc) is a nonsense, people who stubbornly try to use those rules should not be surprised that things don’t work out the way “science” said that they should. Reason is simple: each human being introduces unknown factor and predictions are pointless. We often fall victims to self-confirmation, seeing that in some rare cases rules do work, we are forced to believe that they should work in any case. Not so. In this there is a hidden reason why only experienced managers, who can draw on lessons learned while dealing with people, should be getting the MBA degrees. Theory is just wishful thinking without practical experience and case by case approach. This is one side of the coin.

The other side is that those rules are accepted and approved be people who simply don’t like, or cannot live, in chaos. Therefore we are made to fit them. Any behaviour, even truly normal, but nevertheless not “average”, is being frown upon. Rules don’t deal with extremities at all. For those rules, extreme differences don’t exist. If you behave outside of them, you are being frowned upon. On top of this, majority (all averages) dictate what the markets approve. Hence niche markets are getting smaller and smaller. Pop music forces rock and roll out, cars look pretty much the same and cost the same in their respective segments (offering the same options), companies unite and swallow each other up on the way to duopolies or monopolies in various industries. I don’t know if you agree with me, but I have a feeling that not only rules are made which do not fit reality, but we are made to fit those rules. Double whammy.

The “Black Swan” of course deals with a lot of other, important issues, the one described above is just something which struck me when I was reading that book. We follow people who call themselves “experts” having no right to do so, we base our (financial) future on people who have no idea what they are doing. And at the end, we pay. And accept that too.

I don’t want to be average. I want to be me, unique sample of human species. I don’t want to be forced to like pop music just because someone said that everybody likes it. I don’t want to be forced to save failing banks just because some idiot says it’s for my good. You get the picture. I enjoy being unique me…

Democracy – death of an idea?

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Austria, democracy, democratic elections, dictatorship, economy, elections, oligarchy, Poland, politics, racism, South Africa

According to the Wikipedia (see it here), there are many forms of democracy. As all things in life, it has evolved and changed and now it is far away from its Greek origins of the system of the “rule by the governed”. 

Democracy (or what is being sold to us as democracy) can no longer satisfy social requirements from today.

In the USA, which considers itself as one of the bastions of Democracy (of whatever kind, I will simply use Democracy as term for all kinds mentioned by Wikipedia); people get to choose their representatives from their own ranks. This is theory. Reality is a little bit different: to be chosen, you have to be known. In order to be known, you need to run a campaign to present your views and get yourself in front of people – meaning on TV screens and billboards. In order to do this, you need money. The money comes from sponsors, which then obviously require return on their investment. The return in form of favourable laws or rules which then chosen representative has to pass or create. The other form of reciprocation is of course blocking unfavourable laws being proposed by opposing parties. The poorer you are at the start of the whole process, the more you need to pay back at the end. Therefore it should be clear to all, that what the US has is hidden oligarchy – the rich few govern the many poor.

In Russia, which also aspires to be democratic, two chosen representatives of the people have just recently announced that in the upcoming elections they will simply swap places. In essence, they have foretold and foreseen the results of the democratic elections. Therefore here we have a dictatorship hidden under democracy. This kind of democracy (if you can call it that at all) may be the right choice for such a vast and corrupt country, but why then lie to everyone? The reason is simple – we do business with Russia. Doing business with dictatorship is considered to be passé. Doing business with democracy is cool.

In South Africa, where the whole world was so happy about the fall of apartheid, 40 million (or so) of black people and 4,5 million of whites (data from here) are voting for their government, taking advantage of democratic elections. Obviously the resulting government is all black (related article here). Regardless of whatever is being told to the world, whites are in effect and all reality discriminated when it comes to governmental jobs and all things related. What we have then is oppression of one side by the other – the tables have turned. Whites are now a minority and being treated as such with a healthy dose of vendetta. There is no doubt that democracy does not work in this case either, but admitting this would mean the same as confirmation that apartheid was better. Especially that you can see degradation of the country year by year – the only province which is now still holding on to normalcy (repaired roads, functioning public offices, comparable safety) is the last one still governed by whites. This is the truth which can be observed (having nothing to do whatsoever with racism), however harsh it may sound.

In many countries, people taking part in politics are members of tightly knit clubs where governmental (and all related to it) jobs are simply shuffled around. This is what happens in Austria, Poland and many other small countries. In essence, again we are dealing with oligarchy of “established establishment”. Once you become a member of the inner circle – which is very difficult and if it happens, it happens if you already know someone on the inside – you are being taken care of and continue being a member of the clique, even if you handle different jobs. The difficulty of getting into the core has its impact on the participation in elections. Citizens do see that their vote does not change anything and they are not going.

What is somewhat related to it is the fact that in many countries political party expenditures are being reimbursed to parties through laws which those party members created. Of course such ideas find no opponents in parliament, as cost are being returned to all parties, opposing or governing alike. For me this is a clear abuse of rights – if a party wants to finance itself, this should be done through voluntary donations and member fees, not through tax payer’s money.

All of the above means that an idea, which possibly worked eons ago, has been raped, used and abused today, to guarantee good monetary return to the few today. No wonder that people start to see through all the democratic smoke screen and go on the streets. The difference between the rich politicians and poor tax payers is starting to hurt beyond the pain threshold – just have a look at the Wall Street.

Greece Again…

Tags

cash, cash-less economy, economy, Greece, Greece financial problems

As a follow-up to my post from two days ago, please see article here. As it turned out, I was not the first with my idea, but as I also wrote about plans for Italy, I did not expect anything different.

I don’t think that cash is the source of all evil, humans are with their greed. Taxes are also at fault, it is widely known that bigger taxes cause bigger tax evasion. In this sense Greece has no chance – deadly spiral is already in full swing and everyone except stubborn politicians know that this story will not have a happy end.

Unfortunately although the money given to Greece now is ours we have no saying as per how this money should be spent. People throwing it away have no sense of ownership and, to top it off, some of them may actually have stakes in banks which did lend money to Greece in the first place. One of the ugly faces of so-called democracy…