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Banda Aceh Shore, Indonesia, 23 June, 2004
Banda Aceh Shore, Indonesia, 28 December, 2004
Images: DigitalGlobe
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2:
At the heart of the Rhone fuelled wine works of Provence, the large town of Orange has rested for centuries. Orange, as a Roman colony, was founded in 35BC and the famous ampitheatre and archway remain standing today as a World Heritage Site. In the c4th AD a Bishop was appointed, and a university formed and the town later became a sovereign principality. Passing through the Baux dynasty, in 1530 Prince Rene of Chalon came to power. He was the son of Hendrik III of Nassau-Breda, and Claudia of Chalon-Orange. Thus Burgundy and Holland were bonded in blood. In 1544 Prince Rene was succeeded by his nephew, William IX, of Nassau. William incorporated Orange in his association of land titles, and became William I (“The Silent”) of Orange-Nassau. The principality was a strategic acquisition in his battle with the Catholic French and expansionary Spanish, and was a focal point in the Wars of Religion.
At the time Spain was the richest nation on earth, and under Philip II began to persecute the Protestant inhabitants in the Low Countries. In spite of the accumulation of wealth from the New World, Spain was not a generating prosperity of its own – merely lavishly funding zero-sum projects. Indeed modern capitalism was fermenting in Holland, where the Dutch pioneered banking and commercialism. William responded to the imperial threat and such was his impact, Philip II ordered his assassination in 1584.
Louis XIV reclaimed the city for France in 1672 but the titles of Orange were continued in the Dutch Republic, which later became the Netherlands, and is still ruled by the house of Orange-Nassau. The coincidence in name explains the infusion of the colour orange in Dutch history, and of Protestantism also.
When a large store of a retail chain closes down, what is left is a big vacant, empty space. The retailer in question generally doesn't resell or lease the property to its competitors. So what happens to these "big boxes"?
Julia Christensen began investigating how Communities are Re-Using the Big Box in January of 2004. Throughout the spring and summer of 2004, she traveled over 17,000 miles around the country in her car, visiting the sites and meeting the people who are making these transformations possible.Highlights include the Spam Musem (a renovated K-Mart) in Austin, the RPM Indoor Raceway (a renovated Wal-Mart) in Round Rock, Nelson County Justice Center (ex-Wal-Mart Lot) in Bardstown, KY, TX and the Jen Library of Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA. Check out How Communities are Re-Using the Big Box - a well-designed presentation of an interesting research.
Viva the Orange Revolution. I'm very busy with a project called "The Orange Path", tapping into the positive ideological bent of liberal, constrained democracy. As expected, the religious issues are prickly, not only because my fiancee is a Catholic, and I am a lapsed atheist.
My position is that William III was liberal and Protestant, and the Glorious Revolution, and subsequent Battle of the Boyne were triumphs of parliamentary rule over authoritarian Monarchy - a relative improvement. As the timeline of Northern Ireland extends, the Protestantism was more central than the liberty. The Orange Order is thus loosely related to William since Protestantism is only a subset of liberalism, and only in contrast to the Catholic rule at the time. Victors in the war, they have forgotten that the original purpose was religious tolerence.
Hence Orangeism can be rescued for liberalism, without affiliating itself to the events in Northern Ireland.
Here is the The Parable of the Orange Tree, and I'll leave you with the words of Pastor George Wise:
If they take away St. Domingo Pit just because 400 0r 500 yards from the Pit there is a Bishop's house. where can we speak in the open air? You cannot go to Stanley Park after sunset, and the Pit is situated in a Protestant center which literally smells of Orange. I do not say the Battle of the Boyne was fought there, but I do say a battle for Protestants is being fought there at this moment, and we in the name of God intend to conquer.
'twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house,
the sound of Ant glugging back cans of Nat Ice.
Faith and I have just got back from watching The Polar Express; an exceptionally well-crafted, charming and magical film. It's rare that I venture to the cinema but we wanted to start a tradition.
Used to me being hard to please at such moments, Faith asked me if i'd enjoyed it. "Well", I said... "it was a shame there was so much Communist propaganda". And in forming an explanation, I cheered myself rather - here's why.
The Polar Express is a train that picks up children who've lost faith in Father Christmas, treating them to a fantasy journey to the North Pole. The North Pole is portrayed as a utopia. The city is imposing and industrial, indeed the brickwork reminded me of Manchester, the toy factory was what the Trafford Centre wants to be, and the "Town Hall" from which Santa appeared looked just like the Liver Building. In the film the children discover the central intelligence room where elves monitor the behaviour of all children: video screens display every child in the world, and fax machines express any "naughtiness". George Orwell, or a paedophile, would have loved the possibility.
All buildings homogenous, and populated with a mass of unvaryingly attired elves that were perfectly happy as equals, yet subordinate to their "master". Santa's entrance was the height of the film, the culmination of intense longing, his form only perceptable to "true believers". To great laudation he lived as master - as central planner - to the efforts of his elves. All of the North Pole, his operation, and Christmas itself, was the object of his own mind.
This version of society, was what Lenin intended.
So why were those kids on the train? At some point, they performed the most important gift we humans posses: to question what we've been told. And they'd decided that it is impossible for one man, on one night, to distribute presents to every child. They say to their parents "he'd need to travel beyond the speed of light", and "he'd need a sleigh the size of an ocean liner", and they'd be right - it can't be done!
Father Christmas doesn't exist because the process by which our presents appear is far more romantic. There is no great, benevolent dictator with an army of workers. Instead, the millions of mothers and fathers coordinate with each other, without even knowing each other, to make, distribute and exchange all of the toys in the world. The presents sat under my sparkling tree did not come from the icy idyll of the North Pole. They came from hundreds of different countries, and were produced by millions of different people.
So forget the Lapland utopia, for that is not of this world. Instead, rejoice at the best we can do. When we arrived back at the Krupnik Parlour a handsome parcel was waiting at the door, it's journey just as extraordinary as the Polar Express.
To those who read The Filter^: thank you, sincerely, and have a very Merry Christmas.
It's easy to worry about the future, and fret that prosperity can't continue unabated. Consider Odessa - once a galloping free port providing riches and culture for it's inhabitants, then burdoned by the bust of the shipping trade, falling into decline. It's easy to assume that capitalism breeds a cyclical passage.
It's also cheap to form the opinion that as we've passed from agricultural, to industrial, to service based economy's there's nowhere else to go, and developing lands like India and China will "steel all our jobs". And although this belief is dispicable, there's even non-racists who believe it, so the debate must be engaged in.
Most shipping ports lived well past their sell by date as a result of labour unions securing heavy government subsidy. In this instance, the market is not to blame. The cyclical "boom-bust" is merely a creative destruction, moving resources to higher valued uses. This undeniably benefits the economy over any reasonable time period, and over a medium term will benefit even those who've lost jobs. For those who worry where extra jobs will come from, free-market economist's like to point out the industries being created every day, the one's unimaginable to those without faith in free men.
But we must be careful to talk about constraints. To say that markets are good, and markets are everywhere is not enough - since many people, quite rightly, disagree. Some scenarios will prosper without markets - those that have alternative means of allocating resources - and we can welcome them. The family, for example, is an economic organisation. And while some good occurs outside of markets, not all markets are welcome. For example no economist should endorse the Dutch prison swap market since it violates contracts.
Markets aren't everywhere, and they're not always welcome. In their place, however - and that place is a regime of private property rights, freedom of exchange, etc - markets will provide an extraordinary and beautiful service in facilitating the lives of us all.
There are three arguments that can be made to justify the influx of mathematics into economics.
1. Mathematics is useful
This is perhaps the most common argument I hear, and am yet to discover anyone that would disagree. Such is the dearth of accesible scientific works, I have read a fair few books on maths and the story of Andrew Wiles was a major influence on my decision to persue a career generating ideas. I love mathematics and find it immensely stimulating. Alas, my comparative advantage lies elsewhere, and so I chose not to pursue it beyond A-level.
2. Mathematics is useful for studying economics
This is a stronger argument, and is, I believe, the point of Steve's post below. Economics is a science, and requires abtraction to make sense of so many variables. Mathematics is a tool, a device, to progress in economics. I'll add the words of Paul Krugman:
"the equations and diagrams of formal economics are, more often than
not, no more than a scaffolding used to help construct an intellectual
edifice. Once that edifice has been built to a certain point, the
scaffolding can be stripped away, leaving only the plain English
behind."
If only... but the point is right - mathematics can substantialy improve any scientific exploration precisely in the same way that metaphor or allegory can be employed to heighten a story.
The problem, however, is forgetting to remove the ladder. And if the use of the ladder makes people reliant upon it, we have a problem. I believe that it does: if you need a ladder to proceed, only people with ladders will be able to join the profession, and once atop I see no incentive to come down. Much of the last 60 years of economics has seen an increasing sophistication of presentation, but a constant underlying theory. Coase asks us to compare economics to biology - shouldn't the collapse of communisim radically have altered our discipline, in the same way that Darwinism, or DNA changed biology?
Indeed the onset of mathematisation was down to the economists role in central planning - replacing individuals with computers and trying to "clear" the market. This was a nonsense. The problem is not the abstract "utilisation of maths in economics" but how it is being utilised.
3. Mathematics is sufficiently more useful than any other discipline for the use of economists
This is the argument that needs to be made, and this is the one I've yet to hear. It rather neatly underlines the claim that mathematisation rusts economic intuition, to show that those who argue for mathematics in economics have forgotten the fundamental principle of opportunity cost. For a PhD program to require a year of calculus, it necessarily neglects a knowledge of history, sociology, biology, geology, art history, etc. I am not convinced that a good economist should have a greater knowledge of mathematics than all these other disciplines. Indeed by using mathematical ability as a filtering device for a PhD education. the science of economics precludes scholars who have alternative abilities. I agree that mathematics benefits economics, but would someone deny that history does? And even if mathematics "beats" history overall, does this mean that every student should know more maths than history? Why can't some students specialise in maths, and head to MIT, and some specialise in History. The root problem is the lack of diversity in academia, which is a consequence of non-market provision!
This has been a simplistic treatment of the issue. I can't complain too much about the level on maths in economics since I overcame it, and now benefit from having stunted competition. My main fear is that the discipline misses out on a lot of potentially rich constributions, by overplaying the importance of mathematical techniques. Regardless, it would be nice if those who defend the mathematisation can encorporate the fundemental concepts of opportunity cost, a division of labour, and comparative advantage.
And I'll respond to that....
...He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it...Tractatus, 6.54
People complain about the mathematisation of economics. The same dissatisfaction was expressed by 20th philosophers when their subject became highly technical and mathematical. These complaints are usually made by two kinds of people - on the one side, by people who understand the limitation of mathematical modeling, via some hard work and having understood the mathematics employed; others raise the same complaint because they cannot see the connection between maths and deductive reasoning.
While Coase's plead for economists to observe the real world more carefully (after that, go-ahead and formulate mathematical models!!!) is sincere and illuminating, we hear over and over again, from younger scholars or non-academics, that maths is irrelevant in economics. I will leave you with Deirdre McCloskey's The Secret Sins of Economics - it's entertaining and even-handedly illustrates the importance of maths in economics, or any inducto-deductive enquiry:
So mathematics, too, is not the sin of economics, but in itself a virtue. Getting deductions right is the Lord’s work, if not the onlywork the Lord favors. Like all virtues it can be carried too far, and be unbalanced with other virtues, becoming the Devil’s work, sin. But all virtues are like that.Don't throw away the ladder before you have climbed up it...
According to the BBC,
"Alcohol consumption rises around Christmas by a wider margin in the UK than in any other leading Western country, a new survey has found."
Well, now that I'm in the US, and Thomas is in Japan perhaps The Filter^ editors can balance things out...
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