The Shared Mistake. A shared mistake is a term that's used by some economists when they refer to a situation where there is an overwhelming consensus opinion and that overwhelming consensus opinion turns out to be wrong. In the past there have been a number of shared mistakes.

The dot.com boom is probably the best example of one. The mistake was the belief of unlimited and unprecedented growth due to the introduction of the internet.

Whoops.

Anyways, I think I've found what could be another shared mistake.

I found a link on another website (macromouse.blogspot.com), to a paper published by Paul Samuelsson, who is a Professor of Economics at MIT. The paper has the terribly boring and unbelievably long title , 'Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization'. But its not as hard to understand as it is to read the title. In a nutshell...

Globalization might not work after all.

Basically, what Samuelsson says is that in its initial stages economic theory teaches us that the benefits of globalization will raise the standards of living of all countries involved. The richer countries get cheaper goods and the poorer countries get higher wages. Everyone benefits from the increased productivity of countries focusing on the goods they produce best.

However, once those initial stages give way to a stage of more advanced production by the poorer nations, so that the poorer nation begins to produce the goods that the richer nation had up until then held a monopoly over, the richer nation may 'suffer permanent measurable loss in per capita real income', in other words they might not be as well off.

This is important because the argument for globalization has always been an economic argument, and its often presented as one that we don't dare argue against because we don't understand the theory.

The argument went something like this: 'Yes, there may be losses to individuals, but the gains of the winners will outweigh the losses of the losers and overall society will be richer as a result.' So the theory went.

Samuelsson's paper shows that this isn't necessarily so.

It would be correct to say that we have embarked long down a road of globalization under the assumption that the economic forces behind free trade will work to benefit society in the long run.

If Samuelsson is correct, this assumption may be flawed.

Thus, there may have been a shared mistake among those who wielded the power to make it.

It might occur to an objective observer that if the theory behind the policies is flawed, the next step would be to reopen the debate and then possibly to reexamine those policies.

But we won't. There's too much profit at stake.

- posted by Sigurd12/29/2004 11:54:00 PM

 
This is a town without trees.

It wasn't always a town without trees. There was a time when trees lined the lengths of the narrow, dirt roads. The trees were large and magnificient, taller then any building. Their branches arched across the roads, stretching to touch their brothers on the other side. They protected the town from the empty sky.

The trees gave the town its beauty in fall, when the leaves were yellow and red, and in spring, when the buds began to sprout. The trees were the town; it seemed more likely that the houses had been planted in the spaces between.


The man who took away the trees was not an evil man.

The man who took away the trees ran a business for many years. He was respectable to his customers, and successful in his work. He brought much prosperity to the town.

And so it turned out, being a respectable man of the town, and being that it was a small town, that he eventually became the mayor. And his first business as mayor was to decide that the trees must go.

It was not that the man did not appreciate the beauty of the trees. He did. Often he would walk among the trees on his way home from work, listening to the rustle of the fallen leaves beneath his feet, and then he would marvel at the beauty of the colors all around him.

But when the man became the mayor, he decided that he must look beyond such aesthetics. To be moved irrationally was fine for a layman, but with his new responsibility he felt he should not allow his judgement to be clouded.

‘I must do what is best for the town,’ he thought.

He determined that what was best for the town was to take away the trees.

He reasoned that the trees were a hazard. He argued to the council that they were an accident waiting to happen. He noted the evidence. During big storms you could hear the trees creaking and groaning; it was only a matter of time before they snapped, he argued. Already after a storm you would see small branches that had fallen to the ground. On a few occasions, after particularly fearsome storms, the street would be littered with the carcass of branches, having cracked beneath the momentum created by their sway. With great concern he pointed out that some of these branches were noteable in their size, and that they might do serious damage if they fell on an unsuspecting passerby.

‘We cannot tolerate such a danger!’ the man argued. ‘What if one of these branches were to fall on a house? What if one of our children were to be crushed by one?’

The council at first resisted, but the man refused to give in, and eventually he won out. His reasoning had no answer.

‘After all, he said, ‘These trees are a risk, and they are unnecessary. They have no reason to be here. We do not need these trees. And so they should be gotten rid of. For then we can live in peace, and not in fear of some fateful day.’

The next spring the trees were brought down in a cloud a sawdust and chainsaws. And now the town does not have to think anymore about falling branches, and no one worries when a big rain storm comes.

But now the town is treeless. The streets are no longer shrouded from the sky, and the bright sun beats down on the barren gravel and illuminates all its imperfections. The beauty that the trees held has disappeared. The houses are now misplaced, seperated by parched grass and stumps, naked to behold the chipped paint and crumbling foundation.

But worse is that the town itself was held together by the trees. The roots were the roots of families, their leaves the sign of life. Since the trees came down the children don’t come out as much anymore. The couples no longer walk through the streets holding hands and laughing. The old men no longer sit on their porches through the long summer days, rocking and watching the shadows pass.

The mayor has since moved on. He found work in another town, and no one has heard much from him since. But his legacy will only be forgotten when the stump of a town finally withers and dies.

- posted by Sigurd12/28/2004 07:01:00 PM

 
Tonight is one of those nights where I would really like to write something, but I don't have a single idea in my head to write. Its too bad. There's lots of nights where the ideas are floating around like schools of fish, but I'm just too lazy to put them down to words. Those nights aren't too bad, at least for me, because the ideas are there and really what do I care whether they're here or there. But these nights, when I'd love to put them there, but I can't because they just aren't here, well then that's too bad.

So instead I'm sitting here watching the Red Dragon, and I think I'm going to switch the channel cuz its freaking me out and Ralph Fiennes just took off his robe and showed this weird-ass dragon tattoo on his back to Phillip Seymour Hoffman and oh - that's the last straw - he just ate Hoffman's tongue... yikes! Time to turn the channel.

That's not inspiring at all. That's just wiggy. I think the most inspiring thing I heard on TV tonight was buddy on the trailer park boys reminding us all that Christmas is not about gifts and stress and any of that crap but instead about getting drunk and stoned with your family. That's the true meaning.

and that is life.
- posted by Sigurd12/25/2004 10:41:00 PM

 
Atlas Sucks

'Then don't be that yourself,' said he with elven ears, 'That drunken fool you laugh at is truly the greatest sage.'

'Surely you jest!' replied his neighbour, 'He must be three sheets to the wind, if not more. And I dare say those winds would make a nasty knot!'

The neighbour had a laugh, but the man with elven ears just shook his head and frowned.

'I don't kid you,' he said, 'And don't mistake a fool for despair.'

'Despair?' replied the neighbour, 'What nonsense is that? And now I know he is a fool. So don't conjure that old relic to this world.'

The elven fellow sighed, defeated. 'Yes, I know. What you say is true. But I still can't doubt his wisdom. At least not enough to leave me undisturbed.'

The neighbour only scoffed. 'Well don't be disturbed. That's just your mind playing tricks. Leave that relic in the past as well. Now look, over there, at this so-called sage. He's drowning from the empty glass. Blames it on despair you say. I do scoff. Indeed I do. It sounds suspiciously like an excuse to me. An excuse to indulge himself while holding a more comfortable illusion.'

A third man, who had been speaking to an overappetized maid while keeping tabs on the discussion, now piped up.

'Its a lazy man who calls it despair. In my eyes that crushed soul is a pity of waste. I for one will not condone it with doubt.'

'Hear, hear!' cried the neighbour, and then, looking over at the sage, 'Look at him. He's trying to get up. He can barely stand. He must have been here since noon.'

With that the three fellows all turned on their own stools, on which they had sat themselves since almost noon, and watched as the old sage staggered to the exit. The only other who gave him notice was the bartender, and he did not like the company and was glad to see him go. He would tell his door to be more discerning tomorrow, even at only noon.

The door slammed shut and briefly let in snow. A cold breeze swept by and sent the patrons back on their stools.

and then, a few minutes after the old drunk left, following a flurry of discussion, a slight argument by the elven man, the three patrons were quick to pay their tab, uncheck their coats, and then they too made their way unforgivingly into the desperate night.

- posted by Sigurd12/21/2004 08:45:00 PM

 
Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

In the January 26th issue of Mcleans, Donald Coxe, who is an economist, wrote an article discussing economic forecasts. The sub-title of the article was 'are you and optimist or a pessimist?'

Coxe went on to say that you can look at the economy and make an eloquent case for optimism, or for pessimism. It has less to do with the facts and more to do with the bias.

And really, the bias is what it all comes down to.

I read a lot of economics. My reaction is interesting. When I read the optimists, I begin to think that things are going to be all right. Yes, there are problems, but there have been problems before and we've made it through them in the past. If you look at things on a long-term scale, the world seems to be getting better. Certainly, there are more people living in better conditions then there were a couple hundred years ago.

When I read the pessimists, I begin to think that the world could be on the verge of collapse. The global economy is woefully out of balance, there are still huge numbers of people living in poverty, we are stealing from the future to satisfy the over consumption of the present.

The problem, I think, is not that I'm wishy-washy. Its that the answer really isn't that clear. Its hard to predict the future. And its hard to predict how the past may have turned out if it had travelled a different course.

Lately I've been reading a lot about global warming. Its the same problem. There's a lot we just don't know. We know that we are changing the environment. That's for sure. But no one can be sure what the affect is, and what its going to be. No one can even be sure how much we've affected things so far. So the optimists can have their optimistic predictions, and the pessimists can have their pessimistic predictions. And the two can't really be reconciled until its too late.

The world economy is a complex system. The global environment is a complex system. We, as human beings, just aren't smart enough to understand them. Both the optimist and the pessimist are wrong. Because they are biased. Because they are trying to extrapolate a fixed opinion on a system that we just don't understand enough to fix anything on.

I think we need to change the basis of our thinking a bit. The key word there is basis. No more is the basis blind optimism. No more is it blind pessimism. Instead, the basis should be that we really don't know. And from that, all else follows.
- posted by Sigurd12/18/2004 11:21:00 AM

 
...When you feel very sick, as I did, you quickly realise how unimportant it is. You realise that, and you realise how happily you should embrace the boring days of nothing, and just be content with that...

...and so She kept telling me, as I was throwing up for the fifteenth time, to just let it go. And I tried, but I just couldn't. Even though I had an inkling she was right, I just couldn't let go. I couldn't watch myself be sick. I wasn't strong enough...

...today though, I was convinced I was having some sort of relapse, initiated by splitting headache, but all it was was coffee withdrawal. sigh...
- posted by Sigurd12/14/2004 08:44:00 PM

 
Flowers for the Chief

I reached the island by boat. It was in the early eighties I guess. I had come from the prairies, where the boom had ended and there was no work to be had and so there was no reason to stay. I headed west without much of an idea of where I was going, and I guess I stopped there as much because I ran out of land as for any other reason.

For five years I stayed with them. For four and a half I planted the flowers.

With every year the Chief's condition got worse. He took to the bed soon after I arrived, and he didn't leave it until he passed away some five years later. He was an old man, and he was dying of cancer, and so it was only a matter of time.

But it wasn't just the Chief that was wasting away. It was the whole place. It was all dying with him.

It had become the kind of place, you see, where one man held them all together. I never knew the Chief when he was well. When I first arrived he was already too sick to speak for more then a minute. And if you had seen him on that first day, you would have said he'd had less then a year.

He lasted five. Those other four are a testament to his strength.

And as that strength left, and the color drained from his face, the wrinkles becoming sags that masked his features, well the town took on a similar complexion.

But that alone does not explain it.

Of course there was the abuse, and that had something to do with it. Yes, it had been over a half century before, but that isn't much time for those kind of crimes. It takes more then just a generation to heal those wounds.

But I don't know. All I know is whatever it was, they were all dying, and I think they knew it. They seemed to appreciate me though. And I appreciated that. I think it was welcomed that I was an outsider. They needed to be reminded there was something else.

After a few months of doing the handiwork that needed to be done, the job I'd been hired for, I had gotten mostly caught up with the repairs. And so it was about then that I took to planting the flowers around the cabin. Just in my spare time at first, here and there, to give the place some color.

And as the fighting got worse, and as the Chief lapsed into those long periods of unconsciousness that we all thought would be the last, I kpet on planting more.

Now I wasn't much of a gardener, never had any training or anything, and in a way that was a blessing. I'd plant the buds where they'd want to go, and I didn't give much thought to what it would all look like in a few months. There wasn't much order to any of it when they'd come up.

And that was the beauty of it.

I like to think that the flowers helped bring back a bit of balance to the place. That they slowed down the process a tad.

In the end of course it was all too much. You couldn't replace the Chief with a bunch of flowers. But I like to think they helped, that maybe they were the reason that it all held together as long as it did. At least the Chief, when he finally did die, didn't have to witness the pain that came next.

- posted by Sigurd12/12/2004 01:07:00 AM

 

Together we sat round the table. The feast was upon us. Laughing and talking, spurred by the drink to converse with our neighbours, we divulged ever more of our past. Soon the gifts would come, and they would come in mountains, and then would begin the frenzy. All looked forward with expectation. All except for one. He sat there quite alone amidst the revelry and sipped his wine more slowly then the others. He spoke when spoken to, not to be rude, but he did not join in with rapacious stories of his own. He stayed still while the others ran.

And he wondered to himself how it could be that he had come upon these others, and whether their ways and his could ever be reconciled.

He doubted it.

And that was very well, for if anything he was becoming more distant, so that in years past he may have taken part in the orgy, but not now. Now it was too much to task, too foreign to accept, and he could not have beared to join in. He knew that soon he would excuse himself, and his life would be changed.

It was strength, and he had always wished for it, but now that it was here it did not bring any joy. It brought nothing at all. The irony was that the source of this triumph was the same as that which would mute such emotion and so keep him from enjoying his moment of victory.

Thus it was that while trying to endure the increasingly less polite conversation, the lechorous advance, that he felt nothing, only a sterile sense of necessity. He would soon leave. And it would all be over. There was no other choice to make.

- posted by Sigurd12/11/2004 08:52:00 PM

 
Crimes and...

But could you really live with yourself?
he seems to think so.
And he didn't.
But could you? You've certainly lived with lessor crimes. But this?

And the righteous will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished.

They aren't. They aren't. Fuck it all they aren't.
And the why would you be too?
Is he right? he can't be right?
But its in your mind. So why not? Under distress, why not. Out of necessity, why not change your mind. In this as in everything else.
It shouldn't be though. Its not fair. In some things the mind shouldn't be allowed to change.
I hope so at least.

- posted by Sigurd12/09/2004 04:50:00 PM

 
Last night I dreamt about her. I was at her work. I don't know what I was doing there. I don't even know if she still works there.

At first I saw her from the back. I wasn't sure it was her because she had short hair and she used to have long hair and she was wearing a long coat that didn't seem familiar. But later as I was leaving she was coming in and it was definitely her.

Her hair was short and her clothes were different with the long dark coat but yes it was her and she was as beautiful as ever. She came up to me and I was surprised because there were all these people around, people from her work, and I still knew we couldn't be seen together and it couldn't be known but it seemed that she didn't care now so she just came up and talked and we talked and talked about stuff, lots of stuff. She was going back to University and she was mad about it, and I thought isn't that just like her to get all mad and grumpy over something like that. It was cute and she was beautiful.

Well I don't know what brought it about, whether it was the emotion of seeing each other or something one of us said, but all of a sudden she was in my arms. I thought we can't possibly do this with all these people around because no one can know and what if somebody tells. But we did. It didn't matter. Perhaps we both knew it was only a dream and so the consequences would never appear. And as I was holding her I whispered in her ear that I loved her and she whispered that she still loved me.

Sometimes I wish that dreams could be transported through the air and that she could be dreaming the same thing that I dreamed. So at least we could be in love together in our dreams.
- posted by Sigurd12/07/2004 04:54:00 PM

 
I had a dream last night. And I dreamed the mice were gone.

I was home and you weren't and there was someone else there but I don't know who it was.

He (or she or whomever it was) was trying to tell me to just open the door. He was telling me that it would all be ok if I opened the door, but I was defiant and I told him that I couldn't open the door because the mice would get in. And I remember I was convinced that he was crazy and I had this picture of all these mice outside the door just waiting to come in. So I didn't open the door.

Well, some time passed, you know how time passes in dreams where it doesn't really pass but you know it has passed. And I guess somehow he must have convinced me to open the door because after the time passed I was going to the door, but I wasn't very happy about it, and I was shaking my head and grumbling about how the mice were going to come in and this was crazy. But I was still going to the door and maybe I was just going to open it to prove my point and let the mice in. But I opened it.

And when I opened the door, all these mice, from everywhere, under the couch and in the kitchen and in your room and just everywhere, they all ran into the living room, there were dozens of them, and flew past me and out of the house. And then they were gone.

- posted by Sigurd12/03/2004 02:38:00 PM

 
Yeah well I haven't written in a while. And that's just the way it is. I haven't felt terribly creative. Or excellently creative or any other type for that matter. Ho hum. I might have to turn this into, god forbid, a regular blog for a while and write about myself. Or at least someone like me.

I wonder if people every write blogs about other people. I don't mean make shit up about themselves, but actually create this completely different person that has a completely made up life that they write about every day. If they do, I think that's cool. If you can write every day about someone else's life, that's cool.

Unless you do it because you skipped your meds.

So I was listening to that song 'The Warrior' at some gelato place off of kensington with my roommate tonight. We weren't there to listen to it mind you. It just happened to be on. Gelato is good. So is The Warrior. Aren't the 80's great? I mean, here's this dude, and he's probably got some weird ass frilled up poofy bleach blonde hair down to his ass crack, and he's wearing purple eye shadow, and fake press on nails, and he's holding a half finished bottle of scotch in the one hand and spilling it out onto the stage and belting out 'I am a Warrior' into a mic in the other. That's good shit. Cheers to the 80s Warrior's, and the double wide trailers they now live in.


- posted by Sigurd12/02/2004 09:48:00 PM