VABALOG

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Vaata ka: thirdseventh.com

via Overcoming Bias

Some Organizers Protest Their Union’s Tactics – New York Times’is ilmus hiljuti artikkel, kust selgub, et vaatamata soovile ametiühinguid eelkõige esile tõsta kui töötajate inimväärikuste eest seisjaid, siis nii nagu pole täiuslikud inimesed pole ka täiuslikud nende poolt loodud organisatsioonid:

Ms. Rivera and other current and former Unite Here organizers are speaking out against what they say is a longstanding practice in which Unite Here officials pressured subordinates to disclose sensitive personal information — for example, that their mother was an alcoholic or that they were fighting with their spouse.

More than a dozen organizers said in interviews that they had often been pressured to detail such personal anguish — sometimes under the threat of dismissal from their union positions — and that their supervisors later used the information to press them to comply with their orders.

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Does Corporate Money Lead to Political Corruption? – hiljutise USA ülemkohtu otsuses varjus on taas hulgaliselt arvamusi, kuid mida ütlevad uuringud, võrdlused ja valdkonnaga pidevalt tegelevad inimesed. New York Times vahendab:

And what about the corporations that contributed so much of that money? A review of the biggest corporate donors found that their stock prices were unaffected after they stopped giving to the parties. The results suggest that those companies did not lose their influence and may have been giving “because they were shaken down by politicians,” said Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Columbia Law School who has studied the law’s impact.

“There is no evidence that stricter campaign finance rules reduce corruption or raise positive assessments of government,” said Kenneth Mayer, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It seems like such an obvious relationship but it has proven impossible to prove.”

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How public servants became our masters – hiljuti Reason’is ilmunud pikem lugu sellest, millist mõju avaldavad avaliku sektori ametiühingud ja rahvaesindajad California eelarvele ja kuidas see mõjutab osariigi eelarvet ning avalike teenuseid:

Bigger government means more government employees. Those employees then become a permanent lobby for continual government growth. The nation may have reached critical mass; the number of government employees at every level may have gotten so high that it is politically impossible to roll back the bureaucracy, rein in the costs, and restore lost freedoms.

People who are supposed to serve the public have become a privileged elite that exploits political power for financial gain and special perks. Because of its political power, this interest group has rigged the game so there are few meaningful checks on its demands. Government employees now receive far higher pay, benefits, and pensions than the vast majority of Americans working in the private sector. Even when they are incompetent or abusive, they can be fired only after a long process and only for the most grievous offenses.

It’s a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results: Higher taxes, eroded public services, unsustainable levels of debt, and massive roadblocks to reforming even the poorest performing agencies and school systems. If this system is left to grow unchecked, we will end up with a pale imitation of the free society envisioned by the Founders.

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The Psychology of Power: Absolutely – Economist’is ilmus hiljuti artikkel, mis kajastas kolme uuemat uuringut võimu korruptiivsest mõjust inimestele, mis ei ole küll enda metodoloogialt täiuslikud, kuid annavad üpris selge ettekujutuse tendentsidest, mis on heaks põhjuseks võimu teiste üle vältida ja haakub päris hästi eelnevalt viidatud Reason’i artikliga:

These results, then, suggest that the powerful do indeed behave hypocritically, condemning the transgressions of others more than they condemn their own. Which comes as no great surprise, although it is always nice to have everyday observation confirmed by systematic analysis. But another everyday observation is that powerful people who have been caught out often show little sign of contrition. It is not just that they abuse the system; they also seem to feel entitled to abuse it.

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Malcolm Gladwell’s business blindspot – hiljuti ilmus New Yorkeris Malcolm Gladwell’i lugu ettevõtjatest (ei ole kahjuks tasuta saadaval), mis on hulgaliselt kriitikat saanud. Pärast artikli lugemist tundus Luke Johnsoni Financial Times’is ilmunud lühike, kuid kriitiline sõnavõtt igati õigustatud:

A recent issue of The New Yorker magazine includes an essay entitled “The sure thing: How entrepreneurs really succeed”. This is a classic Mr Gladwell piece, suggesting that our preconception of business legends as risk-takers is wrong. He asserts that “successful entrepreneurs are seen as bold gamblers; in reality they’re highly risk-averse”. His speciality is a counter-intuitive revelation about human behaviour that demonstrates that our preconceived ideas are wrong. If this article is anything to go by, I think his journalism is shoddy.

Kusjuures see oli kõige mahedam osa kriitikast.

Celebration, Florida is a census-designated place and an unincorporated master-planned community in Osceola County in the U.S. state of Florida, near Walt Disney World Resort. It was developed by The Walt Disney Company. As of the census of 2000, there were 2,736 people, 952 households, and 716 families residing in the community. The population density was 256.4 people per square mile (99.0/km²).

Plasticine is a brand of modelling clay, a putty-like modelling material made from calcium salts, petroleum jelly and aliphatic acids. The name is a registered trademark of Flair Leisure Products plc. Plasticine was formulated by art teacher William Harbutt of Bathampton, in Bath, England, in 1897.

Oakeshott’s typology of the medieval sword is based on blade morphology. It categorizes swords into 13 main types labelled X to XXII. The system is a continuation of Jan Petersen’s typology of the Viking sword, introduced in De Norske Vikingsverd (”The Norwegian Viking Swords”, 1919), modified in 1927 by R. E. M. Wheeler into a typology of nine types labelled I to IX.

Thaler was a silver coin used throughout Europe for almost four hundred years. Its name lives on in various currencies as the dollar or tolar. Etymologically, “Thaler” is an abbreviation of “Joachimsthaler”, a coin type from the city of Joachimsthal in Bohemia, where some of the first such coins were minted in 1518.

Kolmanskop is a ghost town in the Namib desert in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port town of Lüderitz. It was a small mining village until abandoned in 1956 and is now a popular tourist destination run by the joint firm NamDeb (Namibia-De Beers). The geological forces of the desert mean that tourists can now walk through houses knee-deep in sand.

Tiebout competition is a public choice theory model first described by economist Charles Tiebout in his article “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures” (1956). The essence of the model is that there is in fact a non-political solution to the free rider problem in local governance where through the choice process of individuals, jurisdictions and residents will determine an equilibrium provision of local public goods in accord with the tastes of residents, thereby sorting the population into optimum communities.

Tänases Päevalehes jäi pilke pidama artiklile Ränka hinda nõudnud sisemine devalveerimine toob Eestile head kuulsust ja seda vist eelkõige egoistlikel põhjustel:

“Paljud, kes Balti turge kommenteerisid, nagu [Paul] Krugman ja Nouriel Roubini, ei teadnud Eestist suurt midagi. Võrdlused Argentinaga on olid tõepoolest kohatud,” sõnas Sawikin, viidates Nobeli majanduspreemia laureaadi Paul Krugmani ennustusena kõlanud väitele, et Balti riikidel on kõik eeldused sammuda Argentina jälgedes.

Artikkel on kirjutatud Financial Times’i artikli Estonia takes right route to euro entry alusel.

Kunagi 2008. aasta augustis kirjutasin Vabalogis, miks Eesti ei ole Argentiina:

Eesti ei ole Argentiina ja enamus võrdlusi Argentiinaga, mida mina olen viimastel päevadel lugenud, oleks tõenäoliselt ära jäänud kui oleks vaevutud lugema François J.Gurtner’i 2002. aasta uurimust Currency Board and Debt Trap: Evidence from Argentina and Relevance for Estonia (PDF).

Tõsi, uurimus on praeguseks juba kuus aastata vana, kuid sealt tuleb üpris selgelt välja, miks Argentiina ei ole Eesti. Valuutakomitee kasutamine ei tähenda veel seda, et mõlema riigi saatus on sama. Argentiinlastele keeras nende supi lõplikult kokku ikkagi puudujäägiga eelarve ja varasem majanduspoliitika. Need, kes võrdlevad Eestit Argentiinaga pole tõenäoliselt olukorraga piisavalt kursis.

Lihtsalt üks tähelepanek, mis on siiani õigustatuks osutunud.

Viimased kuud on olnud  helded kõigile, kellele läheb korda Euroopa arenev institutsionaalne korraldus. Kust läheb piir teoreetilise ja reaalselt teostatav vahel ning kui ühtne on Euroopa Liit kui liikmesriikide majanduspoliitilised soovid ja huvid hakkavad lahknema?

Kirjutas Edward Hugh eelmise aasta oktoobris:

d) We have spelt out how the ECB may well now be facing its “finest hour”, as it has to rise to the challenge of adapting a one size fits all interest rate policy to a world where one size evidently doesn’t fit all, and where the danger of fuelling an excessive consumer boom in one country (France) will have to be set against the risk of sending the banking system of into meltdown in another (Spain). This is clearly the banking equivalent of being stuck between a rock and a hard place new tools and new thinking will need to be developed if we are to finally steer that path between the insatiable appetite of Scylla and the never ending thirst of Charybdis.

Hugh on ka Kreekat juba pikemat aega jälginud ja kirjutanud teemal ridamisi postitusi Fistful of Euros blogis. Tema eilne postitus korjab üles lingid olulisematele artiklitele ja tänane postitus annab mõista, et Kreeka pole kaugeltki ainuke murelaps. Jätkuvalt.

Üks lõbusam tsitaat viitamist leidnud Economist’i Charlemagne’s notebook’i postitusest A Greek bailout, and soon?:

The word going out is, don’t panic. Greece only accounts for between two and three percent of Union GDP: its woes are astonishing (and largely self-inflicted, despite the conspiracy theories swirling within Greece), but they are “affordable”, senior figures say. I wonder if people are being too calm. It is one thing to talk about external aid in exchange for tough conditions. But what if those conditions are politically impossible to meet? I am not talking about reliable statistics, it must be possible to parachute in crack EU auditors to watch for political manipulation. But as I wrote in an earlier blog posting, if the EU finds itself asking for IMF-style budget cuts in Greece, the political consequences will be grim. If I were the European Commission delegation office in Athens, I would be buying some fire extinguishers.

Kas Eesti liitumine euroalaga võiks meie väiksuse tõttu olla serveeritav oluliselt suurema saavutusena kui ta tegelikult on, sest poliitiliselt on Euroopa Liidu institutsioonidele hädasti “võitu” vaja?

Minu reaktsioon sarnanes pigem Roonemaa omaga – kena mänguasi, kuid milleks ta hea on – kuid mõned on siiski huvitavaid täheldusi teinud:

Sülearvuti on mul niigi kaasas, telefon ka. Sülearvutiks on iPad liiga väike, ebamugav ja lihtsakoeline. Telefoniks aga liiga suur.

Henrik Roonemaa, Päevalehele.

In the longer run the iPad will compete with your university, or in some ways enhance your university. It will offer homework services and instructional videos and courses, none of which can work well on the current iPhone or Kindle. The device also seems to allow for collaborative use.

Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution’is.

The iPad makes it possible to replace static images with interactive puzzles that MacInnis says burn important concepts in to students’ brains better and longer. He showed me a demo learning module that explained the biological concept of cellular mitosis. It starts with a real microscope image of a cell. A caption, simultaneously spoken by a voiceover (They call this karaoke mode. It turns out to help memory better than either text or speech by itself) instructs me to tap the cells nucleus three times to simulate its breakdown. Further steps in the mitosis process require me to pinch, drag or swipe components in the cell after identifying them. When I’m done, I have a memory of having walked through the process physically, rather than just scanning an illustration with my eyes.

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Besides the interactive color format, Inkling’s technology goes beyond the Kindle and other readers by making it possible to hop around a book, to hand out individual chapters as assignments, and to take notes in highlighter yellow right on the text. The notes are sharable among a social network of students and instructor.

Matt MacInnis, VentureBeat’ile.

Mida rohkem sellele mõelda, seda veenvam see tundub.

The Perfect Prescription – New York Magazine’is ilmunud artikkel uuest (2005. aastal vähemalt) retseptiravimite pakendist, kus kõige olulisem roll oli ühel disainialasel magistritööl:

For her SVA thesis project, called Safe Rx, Adler revamped the familiar canister, then approached the FDA—but one of Target’s creative directors saw her work last summer, snapped up the patent, and rolled it out in record time. It’s already approaching design-classic status: ClearRx will be included in a MoMA exhibit this October. Your medicine cabinet is next.

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Moscow’s stray dogs – vahel suudab Financial Times enda artiklitega tõsiselt üllatada. Kütkestav lugu Moskva metsikutest koertest ja nendest vähestest, kes on õppinud iseseisvalt metrood kasutama. Ühtlasi tuleb juttu ka sellest, et koerad on linna bioloogilise tasakaalu jaoks oluliseks muutunud:

Even though the city budget allocated more than $30m to build 15 animal shelters last year, that is not nearly enough to accommodate the strays. Still, there is pressure from some quarters to return to the practice of catching and culling them. Poyarkov believes this would be dangerous. While the goal, he acknowledges, “is to do away with dogs who carry rabies, tapeworms, toxoplasmosis and other infections, what actually happens is that infected dogs and other animals outside Moscow will come into the city because the biological barrier maintained by the population of strays in Moscow is turned upside down. The environment becomes chaotic and unpredictable and the epidemiological situation worsens.”

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Brewing Up a Civilization – Spiegel pühendas hiljuti artikli ühele üllatavale ent üpriski veenvale hüpoteesile, nimelt hakkasid inimesed paikse põllumajandusega tegelema eelkõige selleks, et tagada pidev juurdepääs alkoholile:

Archaeologists have long pondered the question of which came first, bread or beer. McGovern surmises that these prehistoric humans didn’t initially have the ability to master the very complicated process of brewing beer. However, they were even more incapable of baking bread, for which wild grains are extremely unsuitable. They would have had first to separate the tiny grains from the chaff, with a yield hardly worth the great effort. If anything, the earliest bakers probably made nothing more than a barely palatable type of rough bread, containing the unwanted addition of the grain’s many husks.

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The rise of the capitalist kibbutz – vaatamata sellele, et kibuts on jätkuvalt mitmete eestlaste jaoks atraktiivne kogukondluse ja võrdluse etalone, siis kibutsid ise on järk-järgult loobunud enda sotsialistlikumast poolest ja orienteerunud turumajandusele ning individualismile:

Omer Moav, a former kibbutznik who now teaches economics at London’s Royal Holloway University and advises the Israeli finance minister, argues that the kibbutz movement was always destined to fail. It worked, he says, only as long as kibbutzniks enjoyed a standard of living broadly comparable to, if not better than, the Israeli average. “People respond to incentives. We are happy to work hard for our own quality of life, we like our independence,” he says. “It is all about human nature – and a socialist system like the kibbutz does not fit human nature.”

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NASA’s Next Space Suit – ma ei saa sinna midagi parata, et kosmoseruum ja inimese roll selles vaenulikus keskkonnas on minu jaoks teemad, mis alati pälvivad tähelepanu. Igal juhul tundub, et NASA on valinud välja järgmise põlvkonna skafandri:

The new design will eliminate many of the hard elements that add weight to current space suits and can injure the crew in the event of a rough landing. Instead, engineers are using lightweight composite structures. Furthermore, astronauts will be able to get in and out of the suit more quickly through a rear zippered entrance, or, for the lunar suit, a rear entry hatch. The current suits are made of two pieces that take three hours and a helping hand to put together.

Barry says that a single modular suit will be cheaper to manufacture and will reduce launch mass and logistical complexity. David Clark Company has built an early prototype that will undergo testing next week at NASA with the new crew exploration vehicle, called Orion, which is also being developed for the Constellation program.

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Invasion of the European Economists – City Journal uurib, miks Euroopa parimad majandusteadlased USA’sse kipuvad ja miks nad sealt tagasi ei kiirusta. Artikli lõpus pakuvad mitmed artikli jaoks kommentaare jaganud majandusteadlased, et Euroopa ülikoolidest võib veel asja saada, kuid pigem tuleks puhtalt lehelt alustada:

Obsolete and disproved Marxist and socialist thinking also remained strong within European universities, including in economics departments. Many young economists, scientifically oriented and so recognizing the superiority of free markets, found the climate intellectually stultifying. It remains the case that most French and Italian universities teach economics as a philosophical subject—with opinions mattering as much as facts—not a scientific subject. A Keynesian, statist perspective still dominates most European curricula: free-market professors are an embattled minority.

Harukordne kokkusattumus või lihtsalt juhus, kuid kolm mõtteavaldust, mis üks-teist teatud nurga alt vaadates täiendavad:

Paradoksina on juhtohjad olnud Reformierakonna käes ja Reformierakond on kõigis neis valikutes asunud keskvalitsuse tugevdamise positsioonile. See käib risti vastu Adam Smithi, John Stuart Milli või Friedrich von Hayeki traditsioonile. Risti vastu klassikalise liberalismi põhimõtetele, mida see erakond ise kunagi eeskujuks seadis ja mille nad nüüd, võib vist öelda, on reetnud.

Mikk Salu, Päevalehes.

Kui vaadata viimaste aastate arenguid, siis ei saa ühte erakonda esile tõsta, et see on populistlikum kui teised. Kogu Eesti poliitikat on haaranud populism. Samas kui valija ootab, et talle valmistel lubatakse tuhat krooni peo peale ning ta selle kätte saab ja on sellega rahul, siis loob see pinnase populismiks.

Kui Reformierakond poleks teiste kombel populistlik olnud, siis poleks nad ka viimaseid valimisi võitnud. Ma ei rõõmusta selle üle, et poliitika on lubaduste väljaütlemise kunstiks muutunud.

Meelis Atonen, Päevalehele.

Voters aren’t as stupid as the populists imagine. Voters are capable of holding two ideas in their heads at one time: First, that the rich and the powerful do rig the game in their own favor; and second, that simply bashing the rich and the powerful will still not solve the country’s problems.

Political populists never get that second point. They can’t seem to grasp that a politics based on punishing the elites won’t produce a better-educated work force, more investment, more innovation or any of the other things required for progress and growth.

David Brooks, New York Times’is.

Olen varasemalt Vabalogis juba kirjutanud, et sissetulekute ebavõrdsuse statistika ja Gini koefitsent/indeks ei ole eriti tõsiselt võetavad argumendid mingi poliitika õigustamisel. Kahjuks võib ikka ja jälle lugeda, kuidas üks või teine inimene sellesse lõksu langeb ja hakkab ainuüksi Gini indeksist välja pigistama suurejoonelisi järeldusi, milleks tegelikult erilist alust ei ole.

Kuna viimasest pikemast sissetulekute ebavõrdsuse postitusest on tänaseks möödas üle 3 aasta ja vahepeal on nii mõndagi uut ja huvitavat kirjutatud, siis otsisin üles Will Wilkinsoni eelmisel suvel ilmunud esseelise uurimuse ning kirjutasin ühe postituse, mida huvilistel on võimalik lugeda Cui Bono blogist: Sissetulekute ebavõrdsus: kas ületähtsustatud pseudoprobleem?

The Genesis 2.0 Project – pikem artikkel Vanity Fair’is maailma suurimast masinast ehk osakeste kiirendist Prantsusmaa ja Shveitsi piiril:

The L.H.C. is not merely the world’s largest particle accelerator but the largest machine ever built. At the center of just one of the four main experimental stations installed around its circumference, and not even the biggest of the four, is a magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. And because the super-conducting, super-colliding guts of the collider must be cooled by 120 tons of liquid helium, inside the machine it’s one degree colder than outer space, thus making the L.H.C. the coldest place in the universe.

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The Root of the Financial Crisis – Arnold Kling proovib Hoover’i Instituudi jaoks veel kord finantskriisi tekke narratiive lahti harutada – minu arvates päris edukalt:

A deeper narrative of the financial crisis is that risk-taking tends to be cyclical, and that the housing bubble reflected a boom in risk taking. In the period when the bubble was inflating, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke himself spoke of the “global savings glut” that was helping to feed U.S. credit markets. Rapidly growing economies, particularly in Asia, produced incomes that grew faster than consumption. Having experienced currency crises in the 1990s, Asian investors, including central governments, sought dollar-denominated investments. This large increase in savings found its way into the U.S. housing market. As noted earlier, one could argue that if housing finance had been better regulated, the global savings glut would simply have found its way into another risky arena, leading to a different bubble and a different locus for the crisis.

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The internet: A missing link – kui elad eelkõige inglise keelses veebiruumis, siis tundub loogiline, et see ruum on kõigi jaoks. Tegelikus kipub aga ikka olema mõnevõrra keerulisem ja huvitavam. Hiinlaste interneti kasutamise harjumusi valgustas hiljuti Financial Times:

One reason for these difficulties is that US companies took a long time to realise that Chinese people use the web differently from their counterparts in other markets. Simply put, they tend to roam the web like a huge playground, whereas Europeans and Americans are more likely to use it as a gigantic library. Recent research by the McKinsey consultancy suggests Chinese users spend most of their time online on entertainment while their European peers are much more focused on work.

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Game Theories – pikem artikkel online mängude majanduslikust poolest ja Edward Castronova’st, kellest on Vabalogis ka varem juttu olnud – hea ja ülevaatlik lugu koos paljude huvitavate tähelepanekutega:

Ultimately, Castronova says, EverQuest supports one of Adam Smith’s main points, which is that people actually prefer unequal outcomes. In fact, EverQuest eerily mirrors the state of modern free-market societies: only a small minority of players attain Level 65 power and own castles; most remain quite poor. When game companies offer socialist alternatives, players reject them. “They’ve tried to make games where you can’t amass more property than someone else,” says Castronova, “but everybody hated it. It seems that we definitely do not want everybody to have the same stuff all the time; people find it boring.”

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In N. Korea, a strong movement recoils at Kim Jong Il’s attempt to limit wealth – hiljuti Washington Postis ilmunud artikkel annab hea ettekujutuse viimastest arengutest Põhja-Koreas s.h. sellest, millist rolli mängivad ettevõtlikumad ja rikkamad kohaliku korra õõnestamise:

“The private markets have created a new power elite,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “They pay bribes to bureaucrats in Kim’s government, and they are a threat that is not going away.”

In the past year, the elites in Pyongyang have been granted authorized access to mobile phones — the number is soon expected to reach 120,000. In the border regions with China, unauthorized mobile phone use has also increased among the trading classes. And unlike most of the mobile phones in Pyongyang, the illegal phones are set up to make international calls.

Chinese telecom companies have built relay towers near the border, providing strong mobile signals in many nearby North Korean towns, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a Seoul-based daily.