In general, we equate a rising GDP as good, and that growing economic activity to be something to be desired.  When we consider nations such as Japan, with shrinking populations, and ever older average age, people wring their hands and ask how to "kickstart" growth again.  

I'm all for making life better, but is recorded economic activity something that should pursued at all costs?

Obviously, I don't think so.  The environment does matter.  Try breathing in air in Hawaii.  It's such a treat.  

Work life balance also matters.  Angry citizens shouldn't be a goal.  

GDP is a number that can be manipulated, and changing the denominator through devaluation and inflation can create an illusion of progress.  Increasing the population size to grow the GDP is asking for the same resources to be shared by more people.  It shouldn't be an end unto itself.

Tending the garden - being a steward to the earth - is a responsibility.  Some of it is executed through industriousness, but wisdom should be exercised.  Pursuing growth at all costs, especially debt financed growth - doesn't make sense.

I love this verse:

Isaiah 5:8 (NIV)

 ⁸ Woe to you who add house to house 
   and join field to field 
till no space is left 
   and you live alone in the land.

Sometimes, reading economic news makes me sad.  Not all economic activity is productive.  I have strong reservations about living in an economy in which so much activity relates to exchanging money between individuals.  I'd rather put those minds to something else.

Ash

10.03.2011

I've written little about politics - more about economics and policy.  The last time I posted about the political goings-on was during the Obama vs. McCain campaign, before Palin was selected as McCain's number 2.  At that point, I would have voted for either, and both had my respect.  Palin, for all her photogenecity, and some of her ability to act as a lightning rod for conservative ideas, was not the sort of person I wanted as VP.  Her selection took McCain off the table, and made him unelectable in my eyes.

The current crop of Republican would-be contenders are an interesting lot.  Of the group that started the race, I liked Huntsman best, and Paul/Romney in a tie for second for different reasons.  I would have happily voted for Huntsman based on his grasp of issues, willingness to work with both parties, and his understanding of the most significant FP relationship that the US has at present (bias acknowledged), China.

Paul has amazing ideas, and I really wish he were more electable.  I think the public, while resonating with his ideas, would be too worried about what he'd actually do if elected.  As Popper puts it (paraphrasing) social change is best done incrementally.  The revolutionary is arrogant when he thinks he can create a whole new functional system en masse/en bloc.

Romney has a number of problems, but chief among them is his lack of passion.  He's technocratic and doesn't connect - he's made too much money for some to stomach - yet I believe that he's the best of the current crop of candidates, bar none, to reform finance laws.  Only an idiot in finance would fail to make money from the system.  The system is there, if you don't take advantage of it, you're daft.  After all, it's legal.

Who then, best to reform such a system than one that used it?  I think many wealthy actually understand that the system is broken - but the people that are in place to change it, don't understand it, and stand to benefit by leaving it in place.  Politicians that have the most to gain for leaving it in place are the corrupt, and are the ones likely to be given contributions by corrupt/unscrupulous financiers.

It's hard to say whether Romney was squeeky clean as an investor, but he strikes me as cleaner.

The religious issue is an issue - but given that many of our executives may or may not be sincere in their expressions of faith, I'd rather have a competent governor that disagrees with me theologically, than a theologically sound governor that doesn't know what he's doing - or worse, is simply corrupt and malignant.

Which brings me to Gingrich.

With three marriages, a tempestuous temper, overweening arrogance, a penchant for bending the truth, and a farcically selective memory, it boggles my mind why he's gotten any votes at all.  Yes, he's more interesting than Romney, but how on earth can you trust Gingrich to run a country?  He can't even run his own life...

If the Republican party selects Gingrich, I will yet again, be unable to vote for the Republican candidate.

I'm center-right, policy wise, with libertarian instincts when it comes to individual liberties, and fiscal policy.  I do believe gov't regulation is needed to hold in check surging power groups, corporations included.  It's sad, when the supposed center right party cannot get a center right politician.  That is, of course, the problem with the US these days.  Maybe, multiparty is better?  Get a fringe party for extremists, leaving moderates on the left and right in a much more tenable political position.

http://polymath.xanga.com/469006671/leaving-2046/

And strangely, someone else blogged on this...!

http://tinear.net/2005/05/25/leaving-2046

Reflections to follow...

Currency devaluation has been used by many nations to deal with trade deficits and sovereign debt.  If the denomination of debt is in currency x, if currency x is devalued, then it can pay back x in inflated terms, thus reducing its effective debt.

However, this disproportionately hurts the middle class - and in the middle class, I'm basically including all wage-earners - wage, not people who make their money in trading equities, or own large companies. 

Helps:
People in massive debt.  Their debt is now worth less.  They are less in the red.  These people spent too much/borrowed too much, and the devaluation helps.

Neutral to negative:

Business owners.  There is a negative effect, but inflation forces them to raise prices, changing the transactional amounts, so their business re-scales to the new inflated/devalued currency.

Neutral to positive:

mutlinational businesses

Locally, they can slowly raise wages to new inflated terms (lowering costs temporarily).  Internationally, they become more competitive with better margins temporarily, bringing in revenues in non-devalued currency.

Local cash reserves are devalued, but this may be offset in the medium to long term by continuing to do business, and recalibrating sale prices accordingly.

Neutral

Equity owners, non-ceo

People who trade stocks end up with greater liquidity in the markets eventually - devalued currency means, eventually higher stock prices - as the equities re-calibrate to reflect inflated currency.

Hurts:

Wage earners with savings.  Savings are devalued, wages are devalued.  Wages will slowly go to new norms.

Hurts most:

Retirees or people at the end of their working lives.  Savings devalued, no more time to earn more wages - will not experience wage recalibration.

Recently, in the Economist, the Blog Johnson put forth a message that has netted over 1450 comments on the above topic.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/12/chinese

There is no way I'm going to even try to summarize the entire discourse - and I'm not even going to read the entire discussion, for that matter.  A good deal of the arguments boil down to, can you get rid of Hanzi (the characters) and use a pure phonetic system to capture the language?  Many would advocate using pinyin (or Zhuyin) to teach pronunciation - and why not go further, simply write everything in a phonetic form.

Justification?  Easier to use, less memorization, more standardized.  Makes a possible lingua franca, exportable to other cultures easily.  After all, spoken language is the root of written language.

What are the problems with this?

I think a fundamental problem with most western language users analyzing Chinese and other sinitic writing systems is that they assume that written language is for capturing sound.  Given that most western languages are now either Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, or even sanskrit based, it makes some sense.  But the reality is that written Chinese might as well be a separate language from spoken chinese - and it's origins different as well.

In the west, most words aren't symbols, they're descriptors of sound.  Sometimes, like emoticons, they become symbols, and interestingly, when you "read" a picture, you can say what it is, "smiley" for instance, but the picture doesn't need to be pronounced for you to know what it is.  I think that's the biggest difference between Hanzi, hanja, kanji based writing and western - the visual and symbolic elements create a pseudo pictorial element in the mode of communication that is less evident/prominent in alphabetic systems.

ONe of the assertions was that Chinese read Hanzi faster than pinyin - and I think the above concept is related/causative.

Another reaction to the debate:

Chinese writing can be reduced to a phonetic.

Not really possible - which phonetic?  Should the phonetic be Northern, Central, Southern, Mandarin, Canto, Shanghainese, Hakka, Minnan?  The phonetics are all different for the same character.  Which do you pick?

Strangely, Hanzi has evolved to a system where two people can communicate with the characters without knowing how to pronounce them in the other's language.  I've seen situations where Japanese and PRC or TW persons can exchange ideas without spoken words via writing characters.  I find this absolutely amazing.  This isn't a characteristic present in a phonetic language.  You either understand the language by sound, or not.  I've certainly read words I can't pronounce, but know what they mean.

Lastly, poetry and writing in Chinese have a level of visual beauty that's hard to describe in western language.  There are visual elements to characters that can be played with for instance: 請,語,詩- all have the same root on the left.  It creates a visual harmony/resonance - as well as meaning resonance.  In english, you can use assonance or alliteration, or you can duplicate a morpheme (pseudonym, pseudopod, etc), but it's the same morpheme with the same pronunciation in the first part of the word - they're locked.  On the other hand, in chinese, you can use discordant sounds with visual similarity, and vice versa.  Additionally, because of the monosyllabic relationships characters have, syllabic schema are naturally bounded by the cadence of the language - often in 2 word pairs.

Creating dense poems with 16 characters is possible, one could also do that with internal visual play using character elements and so forth.

All this goes away with a pure phonetic system.

I'd rather keep the written language the way it is... and enjoy the fact that there is such discordance in the pronunciation.

Spending time in one of the centres of world finance on Christmas Day leaves me a great moment to reflect on some matters on which I've been pondering for some time.  In a couple hours, I'll be off for Christmas service at Island Evangelical Christian Church.  It'll be good to be back, despite the fact that Christmas services are frequently the most theologically dilute services of the year. 

So, Capital and Labour.

Let's start with money.

Defining money is like defining love - you could write books, and still not be done.  On the surface, money is what we use to abstract value from products, services and influence.  It is a neutral conceptual asset that can be used to relate the relative value of things one does or has or can be done; two people with different subjective views can attach a quantitative assessment to exchange things.

Because of its central position in transactional relationships, money ends up being used as a proxy for valuation of many things that shouldn't be intrinsically assigned value - like romantic relationships, self worth... and more.

Storing money allows one to leverage present work for future gain, at risk that inflation devalues the stored valuation unit.

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In general, Labour is the part of the economy that works for money, leveraging their time and skills for money, with which they can purchase/barter for what they want or need.  Capital is the part of the economy that possesses (or borrows) enough money so that they can pay labour for their services, leveraging their knowledge of the market/economy, wagering that they can accrue greater amounts of money by investing that capital into an enterprise.

Labour and Capital may be framed as adversarial with conflicting interests.  By diminishing payment to labour, Capital can increase their relative gain of money.  The major risk from a Marxist perspective (eventuality?) is when Labour is sufficiently incensed from being taken advantage of, Labour can overthrow capital.

This is, in some ways, oversimplified, but they are the general definitions with which I'm going to discuss the next portions.

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" ⁴ Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain."  Deuteronomy 25:4

" For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain," and "The worker deserves his wages." 1 Timothy 5:18

I think the Scripture teaches us that the relationship between Labour and Capital shouldn't be adversarial...  It is possible to maximize profits by reducing wages to subsistence levels - but this is ultimately temporary.  In a sense, for the aggregate business community, the long term best environment is one where consumer assets are plentiful.  The Consumer ranges between the reasonably poor all the way to the possessor of capital themself - and when there's plenty of money in their hands, there's a lot of economic activity that can occur.

You starve the ox, it works less, and produces less, although in the short term, it appears that you're producing more grain, by disallowing it from eating.  Similarly, you can produce longer term gains by feeding your workers, and paying them something reasonable from your margins.

While Marxism loosely portrays capital and labour to be in conflict, and Adam Smith seems to assert that capital, by doing what it does, eventually benefits labour, I think the Christian prospective of business should encourage cooperatively - they don't have to be in conflict.  Capital can serve labour, and thereby, over multiple quarters or years, result in a much more active economy.

I'm going to stay away from the topic of finance for now...

Okay, so Christmas and capital...

Jesus was born in a place where the government was oppressive, and amenities minimal...  as we celebrate his birth, what is the point of emphasis?  Christmas celebrates Christ - who is God's gift to men - he brings eternal life and peace with God, for those who choose to believe in him.  It's a powerful message, though often forgotten in modern materialism.  It would be good to remember, from Labour and Capital, that Jesus sees both sides - he is management, and he is born with the lowest of the low.

We humans really ought to be a lot more humble, don't you think - we don't nearly deserve as much as we think we ought to receive...

I grew up sympathetic to Capital, believing that efficient allocation of assets would benefit man most, whatever Labour believed.  While I still believe the former to be true, the question is what is efficient, and how do we get there?  Screwing labour is not the way to go.

One added complexity is the abstraction of capital into the finance industry.  Now you have investment grade capital run by people that have no direct interest in the welfare of labour.  I think a founder-CEO of a company frequently is more sympathetic to the affairs of the labour.  The company goes under, the labour goes out of a job... you should feel responsible for putting food on your worker's table.

This has been increasingly loss in the US CEO/equity market perspective.  Companies are entities, and the workforce is part of that entity - not merely a resource.  Too bad, sometimes the only perspective modern capital has is that of maximizing "shareholder" value.  I think there is a place for subsistent business models, so long as the provide steady revenue to the entire group.  What law of business requires all businesses to have explosive growth?

As Christmas in HK draws to a close with a beautiful sunset out my window, I ask this - Jesus, help me remember your birth and your purpose.  Help me be a gift to others as you have been a gift for me.  Should you allow me to ever run a business, may I allow the oxen to graze upon the grain fairly.

Amen.

Standing outside a friend's restaurant under a gray sky and feeling the light brush of the drizzling rain upon my face and exposed hands, I couldn't help but remember and enjoy how beautiful Taiwan is.  I have always been partial to gray skies and rainy weather - and the gentle almost mist-like rain is almost like a breath upon the skin - so close and unassuming.  But minutes ago, I walked out from 大直捷運站, wandered mapless in approximately the direction I remembered from Google Maps, and wandered through sparsely populated streets lined by endless mopeds on every side.

The sound of construction near and far was almost like white noise - a fitting soundtrack for the gray day - and yet oddly comforting.

Standing outside Season Cuisine Patissiartism, I saw the host make his way out of the shop an into the rain to ask me whether I wanted to come inside.  I shook my head, instead wanting to simply enjoy the rain.  Too often, I hustle and bustle my way to and from work, too seldom really drinking in the atmosphere.  Today was an exception, breathing in the air, the faint scent of dust and exhaust - but just so faint.  Taipei is a far cleaner city to breathe in than say, Beijing.

After about 10 minutes of just absorbing the scene, looking and reading the various signs, and wondering what each design element was derived from, I finally made my way in.  They told me that my lunch date/dining partner would be slightly late.

They served me bread, warm water and a sweet amuse bouche that was both refreshing and inviting.  A small shot glass filled with a lavender-pink blended liquid, slightly sweet and a little tart.  Finally, my friend arrived, and then came the vinaigrette drizzled salad, mushroom bisque, his pork and my lamb - delicately seasoned, but with the slightly sugary undertone that so pleases the Taiwanese palate.  The concluding dessert tofu/Lychee dish was fantastic.

The venue itself is filled with clean, open lines in the decor and furnishings, dominated by slightly grayish whites, creams, and lightly stained woods.  A well lit, open entrance, with large windows gives the whole scene a sense of spaciousness that exceeds the space that it actually occupies.  Hand written chalk boards identify specials and highlights to menu, and the actual single sheet paper list of foods is printed on heavy paper lightly dusted with silvery, glittering accents.  

The general style is French-ish.  I understand that the head chef spent time at Robuchon's, and the base cuisine is probably from that tradition - but the actual flavors, reasonably delicate and lightly spiced/seasoned plays well with the local sensibilities and the general aversion to drowning the primary material with any manner of condiment or  marinade - that's a sensibility I applaud.

Catching up with my friend over such meal was quite pleasant - to be topped off by an Espresso Doppio.  

A little out of the way in Dazhi, Season's fresh raw materials shine in the hands of the executive chef.  Like the decor, the ethos of the food invites, rather than commands - it's welcoming, self-assured yet whimsical.

Definitely worth a try.

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W - Kitchen - Taipei

すごい！確かに、太てになるよ！

The Taiwanese Beef Noodle and this that I had in the W was... excessive, but very tasty.

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I've always had interesting conversations with people in the limo.  The driver was sharing about the perils of too much private ownership and the relative advantages of a command economy. Interestingly, I had a similar conversation with a young entrepreneur the day before.  I wonder where these thought paths are coming from?

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God is good.  I'm so very very thankful for my time in Taipei.  I've never lived here, nor do I have any family here - and yet this is one of the cities in which I feel most at home - perhaps moreso than even Hong Kong.  Hong Kong is familiar, but Taipei is comforting.

Just walking around and watching the people move about at their own pace, with their own stories - the sound of the mandarin spoken - the smattering of 台語，and tourists chatting in Japanese, Korean and northern-accented Mandarin...  It's so familiar and comfortable.

In 1999, I had such a blessed time, sharing, living and growing in the conversations I had in Taipei.  This short trip was no different.  God is Good.

I'm seeing my parents and brother tonight/tomorrow in HK.  It'll be awesome - but I might just miss Taipei a bit more than a bit.

Dear God,

  謝謝你給我這個機會回到台北。遇到老朋友，跟他們聊天，真的感覺到你的存在。你真的對我太好，孩子不配。謝謝你給我們你的寶血，你的兒子。你就是我的救主。感謝您。

阿門。

As a first conversation back in Hong Kong, it might take one aback to discuss human trafficking and child prostitution.  And yet, as a discussion during the Christmas season, it's apropos to ask, why do men do what they do to little children?

With my philosophical moorings in an evangelical Judeo-Christian framework, I believe that man is inherently depraved with an unending tendency towards self-gratification and self-aggrandizement.  For some reason, over a bottle of Bordeaux, we found ourselves sharing stories about prostitutes and their sufferings.  Indeed, I think few women, especially in brothels, truly choose their mode of employment - especially when given other options.  Many are forced and many are abducted.  My memories discussing such things in Singapore related to a well known red-light district in which many were abused and forced by the men in their lives.

One of the stories shared related to a young woman who had been raped and forced to serve as a prostitute from age 6-12 or so.  Sold by her aunt after her parents passed away, she did her best to fight those that would sell her body to men - paedophillic men.  Yet, handcuffed and beaten, what could a pre-teen girl do?  Raped repeatedly by hundreds if not thousands of men, she became mute - and being constantly handcuffed, her hands grew deformed and twisted.

And yet, when IJM came to figure out who was in that brother against their will, she eventually was released into houses for girls who suffered thus... 

And in time, she began to learn that she was prized - by God - and could make things, beautiful things...

In time, she even encountered a young man who would not judge her for being raped and abused - would not judge her for being maligned and mangled by those who did not and could not love her.

She told this young man all about her history, things that would disturb or disgust many a man.  Yet his response was, ultimately, "perhaps I can give back a little of what was taken from you."  

Grace.

Despite the STDs the girl had contracted, the scarring, injuries and infections that had damaged her reproductive track and organs - despite being told that she would never conceive, God gave her the grace to become with child - with the young man who would not give up pursuing this woman.  A young man that would not relent being God's gift to her.

Grace.

Christmas is about a child that was and is God, coming into the world impoverished, without means, and into persecution.  In that vulnerability, God decided to show his grace and presence; Immanuel. 

Redemption is about finding beauty - indeed, imbuing beauty, into that which was discarded.  Christ loved this gal through the young lad... He covers us with love and beauty, despite our wretchedness.

In this Christmas season, let us remember the giver of that greatest gift, and seek to give of ourselves likewise.  And giving of self always means sacrifice.

Did I mention that in time, the young lady did conceive?

Eulaleo

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PS.

Why do men rape children?

I propose it's about power and domination - I propose this based on interviews I've read from rapists and paedophiles...