Chess thoughts for today Monday March 17 2014

Reviving this blog as a place to jot down random thoughts and ideas on various topics.

Cheesy lines to use. And random thoughts.

1. I want to know the shape of your soul.
2. We are all alone in our skins as we are born til death.  Only question is how do we approach and live our lives. Do you want to  live like a roaring inferno? Or a steady flame?
3. Confidence: fake it until it becomes real.
4. Confidence is critical to learning. You can't learn if you start off with the belief you cannot.
5. Perfection is the enemy of the good. Watch for those who preach it without taking reality into account for they have been seduced by the power of an idea without morals. In my opinion they are confused servants of evil.
6. Confidence in ability to learn + brute force effort = progress.
7. What is a good relationship?  Based on honesty & deep respect; communication of desires wants; willingness to change without sacrificing yourself; based on deep sympathy for the other petson;most of all  fun.
8. Learning to trust your instincts/gut feelings early saves a butt load of time.
9. Without someone to share things life is sorta boring.

Things I enjoyed this weekend.
Listening to podcasts especially Krista Perry and the writer of a book on Doris Day and other Catholic reformers. How they envisioned a basic world better than they found it.Sunday morn

Black pork bbq lunchbox at hmart on Union St after haircut at Royal Barbershop. Taro milk tea at Quickly on Roosevelt Ave . Taiyaki at Hmart $3.S aturday

Using eharmory to reach out to women.

Heilbroner's <b>The Worldly Philosophers</b>,<i>7th edition</i> - A Great Work

I think that of all the economic books I have encountered, Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers provides an incredibly readable history of economics (at least upto 1950s or so) with an elucidation of the ideas of economics. 

Reading it made me realize that supply siders and libertarians have forgotten or not truly considered economics since Keynes (except to attack him) and that they forget that economics was originally called "Moral Philosphy" indicating a much broader view that how it is used today.

In the book, Heilbroner elucidates the issues about capitalism and economics and about  dozen of its major thinkers. Of those, Adam Smith, Malthus/Ricardo,  Marx, and J. M. Keynes stand out as still very relevant to today. Hayek is briefly mentioned under the Chapter for Keynes, which is interesting in a variety of ways.

  It's also true that only since Keynes has the role of gov't in economic life and in markets so changed the view of economics in many minds.

Things I don't understand about supply side economics or libertarians.

1. They never deal with the consequences of long term tax cutting.
2. They never seem to understand that they are a part of society and seem to be out for "perfect liberty" or "perfect freedom."
3. It's simple business - capitalism runs on marginal profits and the ability to make a profit depends on - you guessed it - DEMAND. If a customer is willing to buy a product but can't pay for it, the prudent business decision is to lower the price or do other things to increase your volume to make up for the lost revenue. It takes 2 - a buyer and a seller to complete a transaction.

4. Tax rates are not the determinant of demand - it may impact demand, but on the whole, not the sole factor to how demand is derived.
5. I wonder why we never ever hear of a rich person who does NOT invest or put the money to productive use. Lowering of taxes on Rich or Corporations results or translates directly into hiring or investment.
6. Also, aren't the rich in a way holding back the capitalist machine by investing in financial products for higher returns? If those savings of the rich are thrown into Wall Street, then how is it productive for the nation or the country as a whole?
7. Trickle down - Top pisses on the Bottom.

8. CEO pay has risen from 50X avg pay in the 1980s to astronomical 2 or 300X in the intervening years. How has this benefitted society and the nation?

Harry Potter Audiobooks - Stephen Fry versus Jim Dale

I have recently came across another audiobook of Harry Potter besides the ever popular Jim Dale - Stephen Fry.


I have so far listened to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (UK title - US release was Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone) and to the middle of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

I have come to a few conclusions:

CONS
1. Stephen Fry's Vocal Range is not as wide or broad as Jim Dale's voice in his readings.
2. His "Harry Potter", "Ron Weasley" voices do not stay consistent during the reading - at one point child like, at others adult like.

PROS
1. His reading is more dramatic than Jim Dales overall, with more emphasis and flair. Don't know if it's better or worse than Jim Dale's yet.

Here is an interesting Philosophy and practical guide from James Altucher which I find might be useful for me.

http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/02/how-to-be-the-luckiest-guy-on-the-planet-in-4-easy-steps/

More thoughts on our lack of growth economy

Other things to note is to consider what kind of society we want to have if our economy cannot grow or grows at a really low rate.

Ideally, we would have a society ready for slower growth through the following:

Peak Oil issues - Decreasing energy footprints

* Fuel efficient cars so we use less fuel overall

• Not using cars (i.e. bicycling) would decrease the energy footprint further

* Designing communities to use less energy in general

• includes urban planning with walking in mind
• includes mass transportation schemes
• Does not have to be High Speed rail
• Regular trains will do
• less sprawl in general 

* Eating locally - this should eliminate a lot of health issues, especially diabetes and others if more vegetables/ fruits were consumed.

• Less processed foods, which cause disease
• more fruits/vegetalbles with a lot less meat

*  Use more energy efficient items at home (Major appliances, especially)


More importantly, we have to figure out what to value in our society and enforce it.

Let's start with a few items:

* Honesty, integrity.
* Rule of Law (updated for modern times to include things like abortion, gay marriage, etc)
* Relationships built on trust and substance.
* Society is built on emotional maturity, not immaturity

• should allow for discussion free of ad-hominem attacks, and such
• more openminded broadened discussion

* distribution of wealth is FAIRER (gap between have/havenots should not be too large).


We cannot let the amoral, sociopathic (or confused and craven) leadership hijack our people power for their own selfish ends.

Economies and Why the Jobless Rate is So High

As a person who was unemployed for a long period of time until my recent job, I had a lot of time to think about why it is that Jobs are so scarce and few in this day and age.

My Main Thesis is simple:

At a certain point in an economy based primarily on growth, there will come a time with growth is no longer possible. Once this point is reached, it becomes more and more difficult for the private sector to hire employees. Especially in a deflationary environment like today with both gas and food increasing in cost while wages have remained stagnant.

I agree mostly with Lord John Maynard Keynes who believed in the Government stimulating the economy with the private sector could no longer to so to even out the boom/bust of the business cycle. The problem is that moneyed interests in the US have captured both political parties (DEMS and REPUBS) and neither will lift a hand to assist the economy in any way.

But even the esteemed Lord Keynes did not imagine a world where growth had already been reached, and what has become normal is the process of firms merging with other firms to be profitable.

The Law of Dinimishing Marginal Returns applies to growth, I think, as it does in the Natural world. I mean look at the APEX predator. Once the predator eats all his prey, he ends up starving and dying. I mean if the market truly was allowed to work, then the too big to fail banks would have gone bankrupt. The TARP - i.e. the taxpayer - bailout out the monied class to stave off the disaster to the monied class - and are then blamed and castigated for being "not frugal enough".

What we have today is a situation where corporations have infiltrated all the institutions and have abandoned any notion of market discipline. It is socialized capitalism, where only those connected to the existing systems can get funds and survive even egregious wrongdoing and fraud.

The US is not IMHO really growing. The firms in it have long since abandoned society itself to pursure the quarterly profit and golden parachutes.

In the other industrialized nations, the solution to growth has been heavily state subsidized export based manufacturing along with manipulating foreign exchange rate through dollar reserves (China and Japan mostly, with Korea as a smaller player in that equation). The US was the target of their trade policy, and we just took it as it was advertised that free market capitalism would lift all boats (not just those of the rich, but all boats). 

In the US, the solution has been to use less people in industry through gains in efficiency and productivity. 

The most costly and expensive item for a firm is maintaining its workforce. And the simplest way for most of the large cap firms to generate profit is to use those efficiencies to have less workers based in the US (where it is expensive - health care, especially). Outsourcing is practiced in most large firms, along with the use of H1B visas.  Although immigration reform is a true issue, what is more basic is to find some way to generate growth in the economy. 

Other ways to generate profit include using tax havens as headquarters.

To do this requires LONG TERM Thinking as well as deep thought and debate on what we want our society to look like. This is definately is not currently being practiced by the powers that be.

It also requires a basic questioning of the assumptions of capitalism and the costs of the "FREE MARKET ECONOMY" religion, especially when I see a world full of resource constraints of all kinds limiting possible growth opportunities (PEAK OIL being the most obvious but others come to mind as well, like PEAK Phosphorus used for farming). 

Anyhow, that's enough rambling on this topic... will post more later when thoughts arise