Saigon, Saigon

Everything in Saigon seems to be about sex. To be more precise, everything in Saigon seems to be about paid sex. Two mates of mine and myself arrived here last Thursday and I don’t know if it’s the people we’ve run into, but the only thing we’ve found in huge supply is purchasable pussy.

Mind you, we’ve tried finding other things. We’ve tried going to clubs (and somehow end up being dragged to KTV), we’ve tried going out of our skulls (but instead were dragged to KTV) and tried eating good food (here we actually succeeded; the food in Saigon is very good).

The people here are all really jaded. Some of the blokes are real dogs, and treat the prossies like so much meat, for them to fondle and prod at their leisure. The girls’ enjoyment seems to be completely irrelevant, often you can see the obvious resignation to the fact written across their faces, with them not even needing to hide it. The blokes don’t care. They aren’t interested in the faces.

And yet, while they have this outlet they still have far too much testosterone to manage. Last night we had to jump in the middle of two guys we’d only met a few hours earlier to keep them from tearing into each other. They were brothers and they were fine most of the night and then suddenly they were trying to kill each other. They seemed to have many deep seated issues that needed resolution and instead of talking it over they just tucked it away. Of course, real men don’t show emotions, instead they just show the titties of the poor chick who had the misfortune of being ‘theirs’ for the night.

We really need to meet some people who can redeem Saigon for us. Maybe that’s the wrong phrase. It’s not so much ‘redeem’ as show us another side more fitting with the sordid parts of our souls. We shouldn’t pass judgement, as we’re just passing through.

But then it’s so much fun to judge, isn’t it? When they wrote in the bible ‘Thou shalt not judge, lest yea be judged' I don’t think they fully realised what they were asking.

An Inconvenient Truth

I finally managed to find Al Gore's movie, an Inconvenient Truth, online. I was very interested to see what he had done and I was quite pleasantly surprised by the movie. It gets the point of Global Warming across nicely.

Of course, when I watch the movie it is very much him preaching to the choir. That is just how it is, of course. What I'm hoping is that some people who are more skeptical about these ideas sit down and watch this movie. In that vein, I decided to take a look at some people's websites who thought the movie's science was rubbish. It was interesting to see how they had to rely on small insignificant errors and then extrapolate from there that clearly the rest of the movie must be rubbish as well.

This writer is a perfect example. He basically says 'oh evil Al Gore! Why does he only concentrate on all the bad things and not tell about all the fantastic and good things that people have done? Why doesn't he tell about the good things that have come out of science?' That's pretty easy to answer, this movie is about Global Warming! In it, Al Gore is trying to bring across a message. Anytime you do that, you have to edit, in order not let the audience lose sight of the forest through the trees. Yes, you can say that that is Al Gore trying to twist your mind, but only if you then turn around and admit that your side is doing exactly the same kind of twisting. Otherwise you're just a hypocrite.

It's interesting how people (on all sides) have grown so convinced of their enemies' evil ways that they judge the message, based on the messenger. I bet you that those people who are the most fiercely against Al Gore's movie are those that have never watched it.

So even if you don't like Al Gore, don't be one of those and watch the movie.

Reply

This is in response to Pyrrus’ reply to my post ‘Alternative to Minimum Wage’ from a few days ago.

Okay, nice try. Let’s start at the beginning. First off this bit, ‘Handouts do not help the poor. Handouts create dependency on the government.’ It sounds nice, but unfortunately it isn’t completely accurate. If by ‘hand outs’ you mean support and aid (which I hope you meant, because that was what I was originally talking about), then it turns out that these ‘hand outs’ do help the poor.

If your theory was correct then the result would be that social mobility would be higher in America than it is in Europe (since Europe gives out more hand outs, it should create more dependency). It turns out, in study after study, that this is not the case, however. A group of researchers* has discovered that on a scale of one to zero, where one is absolutely no social mobility from parents to children and zero means complete fluidity, Scandinavia scores an average of 0.2, Britain 0.36 and America 0.54, (so the higher the number, the less chance of moving up and down through the social hierarchy). So when the poor get hand outs, they have a better chance of getting out of poverty.

Then for your second point, where you talk about big government, there you’re starting to contradict yourself. Only a few days ago you said that people were really not capable of ruling themselves, now you’re suggesting that a big government is bad. It is either or, you can’t have both a weak government and an un-empowered people. Somebody has to have the power!

Next you move onto equality, stating that modern taxation methods are unfair. I agree with you that modern taxation methods are unfair, but so is the genetic lottery that each of us is forced to play at the beginning of life (i.e. who our parents are and how capable we are). People are not born equal (different levels of schooling, financial assistance stimulation, genetic make ups, social networks, etc.) If they were and then some ended up at the bottom of the pile and some at the top, then I would be far more inclined to say ‘so be it’. But if people are not born with the same opportunities, then we should try, in some way, to bring some sort of balance. Life might not be fair, but we can try to be.

Of course, you can decide to disagree with that (apparently you do) and it is very much an emotive argument, so let me bring up another argument from a completely selfish perspective. This is the fact that those poor people have a voice and if they feel that they are going to lose what little they have they are going to use that voice to protect their interests. Everybody will do that, it’s a natural reaction to your way of life being threatened.

One force that is doing exactly that is globalisation and it is creating exactly that reaction. The poor are starting to yell for protective measures, ones that will safeguard their jobs (as they are initially the ones most likely to bite the dust) and they hold enough sway to get these kinds of measures approved, if there are enough that are upset.

If these measures get approved everybody will suffer, including (maybe even especially) the rich. Giving the poor financial support when they get paid under a certain salary, as in the top up, will turn down the volume on a lot of those voices, allowing globalisation to help make everybody else better off for longer. I think slightly higher taxes are an acceptable cost to the incredible wealth creating opportunities (and associated social upheaval) that come from globalisation.

You also seem to have got yourself stuck on the dole (i.e. the money paid out to the unemployed to help them survive, I think you call it social welfare). The dole is a feature of social support and one that has turned out not to work terribly well. There are, indeed, people who never want to get off it and live off of the backs of others. Though I am for the dole for a limited time to help a person get back on their feet and find new work, it was not what I was discussing in my last post. I was discussing minimum wage, which is something that the rich by and large do not pay for, and an alternative to it that will help all people by reducing the cost of goods, especially basic ones.

As for the Christian comment, it was probably uncalled for, but when I hear you go off about correlations between rich and poor and some sort of debt owed by one group to the other I can’t help but think ‘how unchristian of you’. Some people don’t help people because they feel they owe them something, but they do it because they feel that those with few opportunities deserve more. They don’t do it out of guilt, they do it out of compassion. I feel we should offer everybody as many opportunities as we realistically can, whether they then take them or not is up to them.

*“Non-linearities in Inter-generational Earnings Mobility” (Royal Economics Society, London). “American Exceptionalism in a New Light” (Institute for the Study of Labour, Bonn). Both by Bernt Bratsberg, Knut Roed, Oddbjorn Raaum, Robin Naylor, Markus Jantti, Tor Eriksson, Eva Osterbacka and Anders Bjorklund.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension Blog

So it turns out that the guy who authored the book 'Imagining the Tenth Dimension' (and made the really cool flash presentation on the website that the above link leads to), Rob Bryanton, now has a blog. Only ten entries so far, but it's a space I'll certainly keep an eye on.

The Minimum Wage Alternative

I might disagree with the Singapore government on a lot of things, but one thing I don’t is their economic policies. I read about their new budget in the newspaper this morning, and though admittedly that isn’t the best source of unbiased information in Singapore (in fact, nothing really is, but no matter), what I read impressed me.

I was specifically impressed with one thing, namely their concept of topping up the pay of low income employees. The basic concept is that in order to help the poor in the country the Singapore government will help them out with extra cash on top of their regular salary. This is basically their version of minimum wage. Now, I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but if they are going to do it as they ideally should, then I’m definitely impressed.

You see, I’m actually against minimum wage. Yes, that’s shocking (and will make most if you question my leftist credentials). The reason I’m against minimum wage is that it inflates the prices of low end products. In the high end industries – such as IT, fashion and accessories – minimum wage doesn’t really play a role. The extra cost is insignificant compared to the full price of the product.

In the case of lower end products, however, the cost is quite significant. In order to get food products to your table, for example, huge numbers of low paid employees are involved. You’ve got the farmer’s helper in the field, you’ve got the lorry driver, you’ve got the unloaders and the loaders, you’ve got the supermarket checkout staff, the stackers, etc. All these people have to be paid minimum wage, with the result that all these extra dollars have to be tagged onto the low cost products that are being sold.

The result? The prices of food stuff rises. This isn’t just the case in food stuff, though, it also holds true for most household products and it is here that poor people spend the largest chunk of their budget. So, though poor people get helped out by minimum wage, they also get hurt by it. That doesn’t sound very useful!

Enter the top up concept. Instead of installing a minimum wage, the government says that salaries below a certain level get an extra cash infusion (normally this is fifty percent of the difference between the limit and their actual salary). This basically works the same way as minimum wage, but puts the cost burden on the government instead of the minimum wage paying employer (and by extension the poor consumer). The costs of basic household items should drop considerably.

If the government can’t finance this out of out of its own pocket, they can always decide to do something like raise the GST, which isn’t very nice, but leads to a far more equal distribution of the cost than minimum wage, since GST rises as price rises. What is more, with the poor having more disposable income available, they could choose to purchase more luxury products, for example, offsetting the possible loss to retailers due to an increased GST.

If this is what Singapore is doing (and they are also raising GST, so it seems like it) then they’ve got the stick by the right end, once again. I just wish somebody in the west with enough political clout would have the balls to do something like this.

Blinker

I just stormed through the fascinating book ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell in the last two days. This 265 page novel is a great read (being both intelligent and well written) with only one real drawback. It’s far too short!

You’re left wanting to know more about many of the things that Gladwell talks about, often having the feeling that he’s only really scratched the surface of the many topics he gets into.

The book is concerned with split second decisions and how phenomenally powerful, as well as fundamentally flawed, they can be. I found many of the things discussed absolutely captivating, as well as confronting.

One of the things I have to share with you is what he draws from the website www.implicit.harvard.edu, which is concerned with subconscious associations that we have all formed in our minds.

Basically, Gladwell goes on to demonstrate that all of us are unfortunately seriously primed to make certain associations subconsciously that we would consciously reject as both ridiculous and highly offensive (such as what we associate with the sexes, as well as with different races).

These implicit associations are apparently created through the constant bombardment of our senses by apparently biased stimuli in movies, books, newspapers and our daily lives. Though we can consciously judge the things we see and accept them or reject them as we see fit, our subconscious is probably more generally accepting, weighing things based on the amount of exposure we receive, rather than how agreeable or disagreeable these expressions are.

This is quite a shocking revelation and I really can’t do it justice here, but then I’m not supposed to, I’m actually not supposed to do anything. What I am trying to do, however, is make you read the book. I think it’s well worth your time.

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me."

-Dudley Field Malone

So, in that spirit, I hereby link to Pyrrhus' blog. A man who's personality and enthusiasm I applaud, but who's opinions and views I object to. Let's hope he teaches me something more than that many people don't like president Bush, but some still do.

(Interestingly enough, now that America's opinion has turned against the man, I find that he is no longer as objectionable as he once was. Ironic really, he's finally learned enough to try and correct some of the mistakes he has made, but by now nobody will listen to him anymore.)

Anti-Localisation

I’m still having a lot of trouble understanding the anti-globalisation groups. How can you really be anti-globalisation? I mean, at its heart globalisation is just the process of making sure that things are made as efficiently as possible. If A can make something cheaper and better than B, well then it seems obvious that A should do that and B should concentrate on something else.

To oppose that process is to demand inefficiency.

Now, I understand that displacement is an issue and that there should be a certain amount of cultural sensitivity, after all it takes time to adjust to new situations, but if we would have done from the beginning what the anti-globalisation people suggest, then we would still be protecting our flint knappers and fire makers (Interestingly enough, technology actually displaces far more jobs than outsourcing, but the only people who protest against that are the Amish).

The better we work together, the more efficient we’ll learn to be. The more efficient we learn to be, the better off each individual should ultimately be (as to how wealth should be spread, that is a completely different argument that, at its core, has nothing really to do with globalisation).

What surprises me even more is that many anti-globalisation people claim to be socialist. That might be true on a local scale, but on a global scale I would use a different word, namely racist. Because you weren’t born in our corner of the world, you cannot enjoy the wealth that we have. You are Chinese/ African/ Indian/ South East Asian/ South American so you should therefore remain poor, while we sit here in our might fortresses and enjoy 35 hour work weeks, expensive luxury goods and state welfare.

I say we create a counter movement to the anti-globalisation groups, namely the anti-localisation group. We will refuse to look only at our own neighbourhood and instead look at the international stage, believing that every community should be able to make it to the top of the pile if they’re willing to work hard.

It isn’t just an idealistic group, though, it’s a pragmatic group. This is because no society that has tried to close its borders (e.g. Myanmar, North Korea and even to some extent France) has pulled ahead of the curve. It is only those that have embraced globalisation (e.g. Singapore, China and Ireland) that have recently truly prospered.

The world is changing and we need to change along with it.

The Essence of Me

Ever since I've embraced atheism I've been having trouble with one aspect above all others. It is the aspect of the absolute end.

The problem is born out of fear and it is, as one friend correctly summed up, one of the major reason many people embrace religion. They don't want to have to deal with the idea that once we die there is nothing more. When you've got a heaven, or a hell, when you've got nirvana, or rebirth, or a host of other places for us to go, at least you keep going. Oblivion is, in many ways, far more frightening than any concept of eternal damnation.

Dawkins deals with this problem very easily. When he's asked if he doesn't worry about oblivion at the end he answers with something like this before I was born there was also oblivion and that didn't bother me then and doesn't bother me now, so why should the oblivion at the end bother me?

Now, that's a nice little word play, but there is one little difference between the time before I was born and the time after I died, namely my existence came in between, giving me time to think about the non-existence that is just down the path.

Now that I exist, I I'd rather not like to cease existing. It's probably just my instinctual drive for survival, but nonetheless, it is a very real feeling (fear?) in my breast.

Of course, just because something is unpleasant doesn't mean its less true and I will not embrace religion out of fear (Though I'm sure many people do it for exactly that reason, I think that we should never embrace anything out of fear, especially not something as fundamental as the ultimate answer).

Since I've had that fear, though, I've been thinking a great deal (in a philosophical way) about continuing my existence, either through my works, so that people will remember me; or by extending my life, so that I can remember myself; or through copying myself, so that anther version of me can remember me.

My thoughts about the first two are relatively straight forward, so I won't discuss them here, but the third way has raised some interesting points in my mind about self identity. Would a copy of me, on a main frame for example, be me? If you insist that there is no soul, then there would be no actual difference between me and it, besides the fact that one is physical and one is virtual (something that also shouldn't make a difference, considering we should be able to reprogram all the physical laws into a virtual environment).

Yet, am I it? If I die after I've been copied my own awareness will still end, right? Even if that awareness in the mainframe acts and thinks like me in all ways, is it actually me? If you deny the soul, am I then only my thoughts and my memories, or is there something more? Something that has to be transfered, somehow?

to be continued...

A life not lived

Because of me a cat just died. It got scared by me and ran in front of a car. The car drove on. I watched as the cat went through its death throes. Some lady stopped and asked if it was dead. I told her it was. She said that was a shame, because there was a vet right near by. She gave me a plastic bag, but she wouldn't come near it. I had to do it by myself. I picked it up and brought it to the side of the road. I got blood on my hands. The body was still warm. I wanted to tell somebody but I didn't know who. This was the first time I watched something die.

Indoctrination

How indoctrinated are we?

This question has been bothering me for a while. We constantly talk about how indoctrinated certain civilisations are. How the people there don't have the freedom to think and act as they like. Examples thrown out are the Arabs, the Muslims, the North Koreans and to a slightly lesser extent the Chinese, Fundamental Christians and the anti-globalisation groups.

But how indoctrinated are we?

I can't help but think that those people are just as convinced of our indoctrination as we are of theirs, especially in the case of the leftist anti-globilisation groups. Their educated people must tell them that we are mentally enslaved to an improper paradigm just as our educated people tell us, right?

And who are we to say that they're wrong? We are just as unable to step outside of ourselves as they are. I worry about this, because I've come to the conclusion recently that some of the basic ideas that I base all my other ideas on are nothing more than beliefs. For example, the idea that all people should have a say in whom should govern them, that people deserve equal opportunities and that people do what is inherently best for themselves and their neighbours, but that they just sometimes end up confused and frustrated.

Why do I believe these things? Well, really because that is what I've been told by my parents and my teachers. Isn't that what indoctrination is? These are basic emotional arguments that have no more backing than me saying 'I think these statements are right'. That is not the foundation of a fully functioning moral code, is it?

Yet, it is becoming ever clearer that it is impossible for us to disassociated our logic from our emotions. Without emotions we can't make decisions, without decisions we can't apply logic. So emotions are involved in every single value that we hold dear.

You see my predicament? How can we force our ideas on anybody when it seems they are all emotional. How can we claim not to be indoctrinated when, during our formative years, it is our teachers and parents who tell us what feels good and what doesn't?

How can anybody deny that we are all indoctrinated?

An Ode to Beer

May our glasses be frothy, our beer be cold and golden and our wives accepting. May we never spill more than we can afford and may our mornings be as pleasant as our evenings. May our glasses be full, our bartenders be speedy and, above all, may we become as beautiful to the women as they become to us.

Falling off the edge

'The World is Flat', by Thomas L. Friedman, was lent to me a couple of weeks ago and has proven an interesting read. It's concerned with the effects of globalisation on the world and what that means for all of us (though mainly for Americans).

It is completely opinion based and is about as close to a scientific study as most scientific studies are to enjoyable. Still, I found it entertaining and, in many ways, enlightening. Friedman has made some observations that seem to ring true to my arm chair commentator mind.

The main aim of the book is to make people aware of how the world is changing and what they might do to survive and thrive in the new environment. That’s good advice, because it seems that in many countries, especially western ones, people are really struggling and, what is worse, trying to block out the globalisation process going on.

That, I agree with Friedman, is a bad idea. Though it is just as much an opinion as what Freidman says, I am pretty much convinced that any way up for any country is through trade. Very few countries (I would even hazard no countries) have successfully made it to first world standard through closed borders and, another opinion I’m afraid, I bet that any country that tries to close its borders now will find its wealth decrease relative to the rest of the world.

So, ways must be found to make people adapt better to the world as it is now and as it will be tomorrow. Friedman has some ideas himself, but I’ll let you find that out for yourself.

Fortunately, some of those ideas he’s mentioned apply to me, so hopefully I’ll be able to use those to get ahead myself. So far I seem to be doing alright (though I will hardly be satisfied with only ending ‘middle class’. I have slightly more aspiration than that!)