I've only read the exec summary, but here are my initial thoughts.
>
> One major issue is that they seem to play down or ignore the general
> problems of government. For example, regulations and policies with
> unintended consequences were large contributing factors to the GFC.
> Fannie and Freddie were essentially told by the govt to take on
> sub-prime mortgages to increase the number of home owners.
>
> Throughout they seem to assume that it's possible for government to
> set appropriate price levels that include social costs. In principle I
> agree that we often don't include social costs, but the answer isn't
> central price setting. I don't think there's a single historical
> example where that's worked out well.
>
> Basically I think they base their entire implementation on the ability
> and independence of government. I don't think governments are
> (generally) malicious: they believe that their actions are helpful.
> But regulatory capture, campaign funding and the incestuous
> relationship between industry and regulatory heads makes it hard for
> impossible for govt to make truly independent decisions. I don't think
> that we can rely on govt to "save" us.
>
> Possibly the biggest problem I have is with the 2nd last paragraph:
>
> "...but also to finally rid the world of the scourge of poverty and
> inequality. Business as usual has also failed in this regard. Just as
> within countries, trickle down approaches at global level have brought
> us to the brink of environmental disaster, while also increasing
> inequalities and entrenching grinding poverty in many parts of the
> world"
>
> That's demonstrably false. The 200 years has taken the West from
> $5/day and a life expectancy of 40 to $100/day and a life expectancy
> of 75. It has taken the Chinese from $5/day to $30/day, and in two
> generations they'll have caught up with the west. I can't take
> seriously any proposal that ignores the single largest improvement in
> human living conditions ever known.
>
> It's not all bad though: their tax policies are solid. Progressive
> consumption tax has a lot of nice side-effects (encourages saving,
> discourages debt) and taxing socially harmful activity, while a bit on
> the authoritarian side, is probably a the best way to combat
> undesirable behaviour. It has to be done carefully though (do you
> think the alcopops tax had any impact on teen binge drinking?)
>
> I liked what they were saying about moving decision making to the
> lowest level possible, but that seems in conflict with their desire to
> centrally plan things like prices and the size of industries.
>
> Resilience (in individuals, communities, businesses, society) is A
> Good Thing. I'm not entirely sure how we should encourage it, but we
> should aim for it.
>
> Although it also has a bunch of things that bug me, I think The New
> Capitalist Manifesto does a better job of addressing the ways in which
> the current Western corporatist states are failing.
>
> Anyway, that's my 2c.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Todotxt.net is my first real open source project. I’ve written and shared some dodgy PHP scripts in the past and thrown some code up on google code, but this is the first time I’ve engaged with the OSS community. And I’ve learnt a couple of things.

Open standards are better than open source

The thing that drew me to using Todo.txt in the first place was that at its heart is a plain text file that you can hack in whatever editior, on whichever platform, you choose. It turns out that that also makes it a very attractive thing to develop for.

No matter how open Gina’s source was, if I had to dick around with some proprietary storage format I wouldn’t have even looked at creating a Windows client for it. In fact, I didn’t look at any of the existing source code when writing todotxt.net – I just wrote to the standard.

Open source is awesome

I was pretty blown away when people started downloading my little app and even taking the time to report bugs. After all, it was at v0.1 and appropriately hacky and buggy. But then something awesome happened.

I woke up one morning and saw that someone had submitted a bug report. As I started to reply I noticed that I had a github pull request fixing the same bug. While I was sleeping, someone reported a bug in my app and someone else fixed it.

Inexpressibly awesome.

Have an upgrade mechanism in place. Always

At version 0.8 things were humming along nicely – a couple of dozen people had downloaded the app and a couple of people were contributing code. Then Gina blogged about it and Lifehacker picked it up. Suddenly I was getting 600 downloads a day.

The only problem was, v0.8 had the new intellisense functionality which turned out to be pretty buggy. I got a fix out quickly, but had no way to tell the 600 people who had already downloaded the buggy version. I’m sure more than a few people were put off by the random crashing and probably never looked back to see if there was an update.

A couple of point releases later I added in an upgrade notification. It’s terribly basic, but it works. In future projects I’m going to have update notifications in some from in before I release even an early alpha.

Git’s not scary, and github is awesome

I’d hackily played with Git a couple of times, thinking my Mercurial knowlege would let me wing it. It didn’t. Because I wanted to use github (it’s what all the cool kids are doing) I figured I should put some time into finding my way around the basics. To my releif and surprise, it’s not as forboding as it intially seems.

And github, well, you can see why it’s become the defacto OSS repository. The cool kids are using it becuase it’s frakking fantastic. It’s just so easy to share code, track changes, accept patches, manage issues. It’s really pretty special.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

It’s taken me 15 years to feel like I have some control over my asthma. This is how I do it – maybe it will be useful for someone.

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor, I have no experience other than my own. Asthma affects people differently – trying something like this could literally kill you. If you choose to do it, be careful, and make sure you always have your inhaler with you

Step 0: Get as cardio fit as possible

When I first met my wife I was in the best shape of my life – not too much body fat, and a decent amount of muscle. I ate well and lifted weights a lot. But I did almost no cardio and my asthma, although much better than when I was fat and inactive, still wasn’t great.

A few years later (after I’d let marriage, kids and work eat into my gym time ;)) I had little muscle or cardio fitness. My asthma was quite bad. I started the Couch to 5K program and felt like I was going to die. But by the time I could run 5km (combined with the steps below), my asthma was almost non-existent. I could go months at a time without using a preventative or an inhaler.

(For a whole swag of reason I’ve slackened off on my cardio over the past few months and am paying for it now. Step 0 is as much a reminder to myself as anything else).

So get fit. It makes everything else work a whole lot better.

Step 1: Exhale

Although asthma seems to effect everyone differently, the most common advice you’ll find is to ensure you exhale fully. I’ve read scientific stuff about excess carbon dioxide exacerbating the restriction of your airways, but the why doesn’t really matter. 

I can almost on-demand give myself an attack by intentionally not exhaling properly. 

If I can stay calm (see step 2) I can usually control an asthma attack by forcing myself to breath slowly, shallowly and exhaling as much as possible. Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth is a handy way to help do this.

Step 2: Stay calm

This is the hardest part. I don’t know about you, but I freak as soon as I feel an attack starting. I’m minutely conscious of my breath, my heart rate rises and I just want to gulp air in as fast as possible. All of which just makes things worse.

You have to train yourself to not freak out. In part I do that by not taking Ventolin straight away. I get it out, take the cap off, then sit with it in my hand and try and relax myself. But my brain is already in panic mode so it’s pretty hard to control. 

You’d be surprised how far you can go. I admit to being kinda stupid on a few occaisions, taking it to the point of being dangerous. When I was running I would get furious at being held back by asthma attacks, so I decided to run through them. I really wouldn’t recommend this – getting light-headed and seeing stars and still running is pretty stupid. But in a way finding out how far I could push myself was quite valuable. 

Ideally though, you want to practice building your resiliance without putting yourself in (as much) danger. Which brings us to …

Step 3: Stop breathing

To control the fear, you need to expose yourself to the trigger, preferably in a controlled, relatively safe way. Ever since I’ve had asthma holding my breath for more than a couple of seconds kicks my “OMFG I’m going to die” reflex into action. So that’s what I practice doing.

The best way I’ve found to practice is kneeling on all fours, exhaling as much as possible, sucking my stomach as hard as possible towards my spine, and holding it for as long as I can. With your stomach sucked in it’s very hard to sneak in accidental cheat breaths.

I usually last around 10 seconds. By the 5th rep I’m clawing the floor and praying for the end. By the 10th I’m usually somewhat calm, though the end can never come quick enough.

Messing with your breathing can bring on an attack so make sure you have your meds with you if you do something like this.

You can also try swimming, although I’m not sure if that’s more or less disturbing. The combination of exercise, water, and controlled breathing has certainly been enough to scare the shit out of me. The nice thing is, if you can relax into it you can gradually increase the strokes between breaths (or just reduce the stroke rate). You can’t cheat-breath when your head’s under water.

And then…

So long as I keep practicing holding my breath, I am usually able to stay calm when I do have an asthma attack. That lets me properly concentrate on my breathing. 95% of the time (when I’m fit, probably 75% when I’m not) I can control the attack without medication, breathing my way through it until it passes. 

I’m not sure if it’s causal or coincidental, but not using meds seems to drastically reduce the number of attacks I have. The more quickly I reach for the Ventolin, the more regular the attacks. 

Doctors

Doctors have told me that it’s best to take Ventolin as soon as you feel the attack starting. I’m sure they’re completly correct. You’re not going to die from having Ventolin a little earlier than you needed it.

But it’s a shitty way to live, especially when I can control and reduce the attacks without a huge amount of effort. 

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

A month in and my information diet is going well. I’m still fiddling with how Twitter fits, but otherwise I’m liking it a lot. One of the goals was to consume more “complete thoughts” like books, articles and music, and so far I’ve heavily leaned towards getting through my reading backlist.

Last week I subscribed to Rdio, the first real subscription music streaming service to hit Australia. And tonight, as I walked past the bookshelf, it occurred to me that I can do something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time but which has never been practical: listen to all the albums in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

It’s a toss-up between music and reading for my first real hobby. I remember in early primary school converting Mum and Dad’s LPs to cassette so I could listen to them on my tape deck. As I teenager I spent an inordinate amount of time listening to borrowed, recorded, and (once I had a job) purchased albums. I’d spend hours reading the liner notes. Honestly, between music and books I don’t know when I found time for the important high school stuff like working, studying and drinking.

I still listen to music a lot, but mostly in the background while I’m working. On occasion I’ll make the time to really listen to an album, but it’s becoming more rare. And for the most part I’m not discovering a lot of new music (although I have found two of my top 10 bands in the last year or so). I’d like to change that.

With some notable exceptions, my musical knowledge is a mix of the 40s/50s/early 60s pop stuff my parents listened to, and 90s+ alt/metal. The 70s and 80s barely exist, and the rest isn’t really that well rounded. I mean, sure, I love Cash, and Bowie, Miles Davis and Pink Floyd get decent rotation time. But I’m missing a lot.

And that’s where 1001 Albums comes in. A mix of genres across 5 decades. I can’t wait! I’m already up to my 4th album for the night. If you want to follow what I’m listening to and what I think of it, head over to Twitter

As an aside, rdio has been flawless so far. It has had every album I’ve looked for, and other than some missing playlist/queuing stuff, the iPad app is very usable.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I’ve decided that I either need to quit Twitter fully, or re-engage with it in a different way. For the next week or two I’m going to try out out the following rules, then take it from there:

• filter out tweets with URLs
• not use it during family time
• not use it during work pomodoros (a given)
• turn notifications off

Filtering out URLs is a very heavy-handed way to reduce the amount of news I see. This means I’ve had to switch Twitter clients to ones that allow filtering, namely the TweetDeck Chrome app and Twicca for Android.

I’ll also try a combination of lists to further filter out news.

I’m aiming to see if:

• it’s viable to avoid news
• Twitter is still fun an interesting without news
• I can maintain the presence, engagement and clarity I’ve been feeling lately

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Week two of my slow-info diet is done, and I’m currently gorging myself on news. Last week I wondered how much of my experience was down to lack of sleep, and how much was genuine.

Without news, I’m getting massively more reading done. In the last week I’ve read about 35% of A Dance With Dragons, along with a few chapters of The New Capitalist Manifesto.

I feel calmer, more peaceful and more patient. I’m losing tht feeling that there’s so much I’m missing out on, so much I need to learn.

This week I feel less disenfranchised with Twitter, so I’m putting a lot of that down to poor sleep. But I still don’t know quite what to do with it, as a medium. Most of the people I follow on Twitter post a lot of interesting news-y articles, and most discussion I have is around that. I still intend to keep my news consumption down to one day a week, so what, if any, place does Twitter have? I’m still not sure.

I don’t think appearing once a week is viable. It feels disingenuous. So I think it’s either quit fully or go back to regular/daily usage.

If I do go back I’m going to impose some usage rules around what and how much I share. For the most part I’ve stopped continually observing my life, so I’m more present and engaged. It’s a really nice feeling that I don’t want to lose.

Overall, I’m still very much liking this diet. While in part it’s “ignorance is bliss”, I’d like to think I’m becoming ignorant of things that don’t truly matter while slowly becoming less ignorant of those that do.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Yesterday was the first ‘go nuts’ day in my slow info diet, which means I had been without Twitter and news for a week. Here are my brief observations, which may or may not be coloured by only having 3hrs sleep the night before.

I had to force myself back into info-sugar consumption, much more so than with real sugar in my slow carb diet. I just wasn’t very interested. It took effort to constantly check Twitter and to read Zite and Read It Later.

I found it a lot harder to be present with the kids. I had more trouble keeping my cool. 3hrs sleep and a pregant wife in hospital would have also been contributing here, but the info-sugar seemed to be making it significantly worse.

I didn’t want to share as much on Twitter. I found myself without anything to say, which is, well, atypical. Even stranger, I felt much less connection to the people I follow. It also didn’t seem like anyone had particularly missed me. Again, that could be the lack of sleep talking.

Over all I felt frustrated and, paradoxically, disconnected. I missed the peace of the previous week.

I did learn about some cool stuff, and to a degree caught up with people’s lives. Read It Later and particularly Zite were even more useful than with my previous info consumption habits. If trunk.ly was still around it would have been remarkably handy. I got to watch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Navy SEALs, so it wasn’t all bad ;–)

I am looking forward to a week without news, so in that respect the diet is working exactly as-designed.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Clay Johnson’s The Information Diet, although flawed, has some very thought-provoking ideas. It’s certainly worth checking out.

The core idea is that it makes more sense to treat information like food: rather than concentrating on how much we consume, we would get more benefit from concentrating on the type of information and its value.

This is a surprisingly good analogy and Clay plays it out well throughout the book. My experience with food makes me think that a different approach than that outlined in the book would work better for me, though.

I’m a self-confessed Tim Ferris fan-boi, because his ideas have worked really well for me. The thing that has impressed me the most about the Tim’s slow carb diet is that it is effortless to stick to. I think some of the attributes that make it that way will also apply to an information diet.

Even though Clay off-handedly dismisses Ferris a couple of times, I’m using a hybrid of their ideas to create my own slow-information diet.

The Rules

• no news (Twitter, newspapers/sites, news-y podcasts)
• consume full thoughts (eg books, music, interviews, non-news blog posts, pre-planned TV)
• use the pomodoro technique at work
• create stuff
• take one day off a week and go nuts

Explanation

News is my info-sugar: addictive, unsatisfying and tasty. I’ve been thinking about reducing my intake since reading Taleb’s The Black Swan. It’s the main area I want to focus on.

The other aim is to reduce the amount of thought fragements I have in my head. Twitter is awash with half-ideas, which in one way is what I love about it. You can see (and use) ideas as they evolve. But it makes it hard for me to shut my brain off.

I’m using the pomodoro technique rather than Clay’s timing recommendation simply because I’ve used it with success in the past.

Creating stuff is directed ripped from Clay. It’s a good idea and something I hadn’t considered as part of my information diet before.

The major way I depart from Clay is the ‘one day off and go nuts’ rule. As with the slow carb diet, this is a rule – you have to go nuts. I’ve written before about the benefits of containing behaviours that are hard to eliminate. Clay advocates this to an extent with his pomodoro-like work schedule. but to me it sounds like it would be way too easy to slip into old habits. A week between indulgences is long enough that it breaks your dependence, whereas every half an hour would certainly not do it for me.

So far, so good

I took a break from Twitter on Saturday night. On Sunday I bought Clay’s book, and finished it that night. That in itself is quite an achievement: lately I’ve had a dozen or more books on the go. I usually read a couple of pages, check Twitter, get distracted…

On Monday I finished another book that I’ve been reading since April. Tonight (Tuesday) I’ve written a complete blog post. It usually takes me weeks or months to get my ideas in order. I’ve also listened to an interview, read a couple of chapters of yet another book and spent a good amount of time listening to a new album.

The pomodoro technique is working well at work, as it has in the past. I get more done and the day goes more quickly. Despite having a frustrating day my mind is clearer and calmer than usual.

I’m starting (slowly) to stop observing my life and summarising it in 140 character chunks.

Friday is my ‘go nuts’ day. I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading it. I’ll stick with this ‘diet’ for a month and report back on how it goes.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I think that's about the same as last time I did it a year or so back:

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

from Capitalism and Freedom

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

The 99%/Occupy stuff has me thinking…

Subjectively I don’t buy the argument that life hasn’t improved since the 70s. There are serious problems with the ultra-Corporatist/crony Capitalist system that has developed, but I can’t think of anyone who would swap today’s housing, healthcare, computing, transport or leisure for that of the 70s. So I have a lot of doubts about how accurate (or appropriate) the “stagnation” measurements are.

There’s certainly something irking people though. Part of it is societies failing to live up to their implied promises, particularly the availability of well-paying, fulfilling jobs. But I think it’s more than that.

For the last few decades, (by historical standards) life in the Western world has been pretty damn amazing. Politicians haven’t been able to get passionate support for improvement programs, because on the whole things have been pretty comfortable. Our wealth has made us complacent. So, to generate passionate support, politics has turned negative.

For a long time we’ve had both sides of politics consistently telling us how bad things are. And now, we’re starting to believe them. But instead of rushing to support the traditional parties, people are instead rejecting politics (and IMO more worryingly, liberal capitalism). And what other choice do we have? We know they’ve been lying to us. We know they’ll say anything to get elected, then continue to look after their contributors and big business mates*.

That’s not to say politicians are cynical and soulless. Honestly, I believe most of them think that they’re doing the right thing. That’s the tragedy: that they believe bailing out failing financial institutions, propping up monopolies, going to war and playing hate politics is worth it, just to keep The Other Party out.

Combine the negative rhetoric with the real problems brought on by Corporatism and people finally have the trigger they need to start forcing societal change. But they’re not getting political, they’re getting anti-political.

I won’t mourn the loss of our current grubby politicking, but I do worry about what will replace it.

• I don’t have a problem with big business (some of my best friends are big businesses….) but I do have a problem with governments providing them with disproportionate support and political influence.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Many years ago I published a couple of PHP scripts for pulling images from PicasaWeb. Once I stopped using them for my site I let them wither a bit. Now that I've caught the github bug, I've decided to publish them there. They still seem to work just fine, thanks to Google for keeping the API consistant over 4 years.

Picasa Albums

This is a really simple script that lists the albums from a specified picasa account and lets you link to another URL using the album name. It's handy if you're using...

PicasaBox

Another simple script that displays all the images from a given album using Lightbox 2

The point of both scripts is to let you take advantage of Picasa's free and fast image hosting, but integrating it into your own site (replacing the rather drab Picasa UI). Both are available from my github account.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Some good discussion on Twitter has had me thinking more and more about how I shifted from being particularly left, bordering on socialist, to being quite liberal, bordering on libertarian.

When I left Uni I was relatively naive (although quite opinionated) about politics, and my basic stance was: the inevitable cost of left policy implementation (in efficiency and freedom) was more than offset by the benefit to society as a whole. My fierce individualist streak was attracted to the left’s social progressiveness, and I either didn’t know about or forgave the more invasive policies.

But the older I get, and the more I learn, the more the left seems like an inconsistent, contradictory and self-serving mess.

The core principles of the left ideology (as I understand it) are egalitarianism, opportunity and fairness. But there’s so many inconsistencies in the application of those principles it’s hard to be sure.

For example, how can you be pro-choice for abortion, but not for bicycle helmets? How can your heart bleed for the world’s poor while you support trade protection and limitations on immigration?

More and more I get the feeling that the left is about looking and feeling like you care, without doing anything that would either help those who need it or endanger your own wealth.

One of my favourite examples is sweatshop factories in third world countries. The left are (quite appropriately) outraged by the conditions, so they boycott the companies and campaign to have the factories closed, then go away feeling happy because people don’t have to work in those conditions. But they completely ignore the fact that those workers have now lost their jobs. The alternative work is either non-existent or undeniably worse.

To me this seems more about relieving first world guilt than actually helping people. It’s easy to feel partly responsible if someone was “exploited” to make your shoes, but less so if circumstances have led to them needing to dig through piles of garbage for food.

The irony is that the left look and feel like they’re helping, while really looking after themselves. Whereas libertarians look selfish, but actually help people.

That’s a pretty big call, I know.

One of the most attractive things about libertarianism is that it is based on a single, righteous principle: that everyone should be free to make their own decisions, provided they don’t interfere with another person’s ability to do the same. Every truly libertarian position, no matter how nutty, should be able to trace its intellectual lineage back to that principle.

As a result, it is the only truly egalitarian political philosophy that I’ve come across. The left make a show of being egalitarian, but in reality it only applies to the in crowd. The unionists who are such a large part of the left believe in equality for workers, so long as those workers happen to be in Australia. Even the bleeding heart Greens have particularly nationalist policies when it comes to “food security” and immigration.

A lot of left’s policies are inherently racist. What else do you call refusing someone the opportunity to live and work based on where they were born?

If libertarians had their way, people could move between countries at will, but most of us would just settle for increased immigration. And immigration is the single most effective method of helping third world countries: not only do a portion of the population get to find well-paid work, but in most cases the money immigrants send home to their extended families outweighs foreign aid.

Essentially, I find libertarianism more humane, consistent and fundamentally useful than left socialism. It’s just a shame that libertarians are naturally adverse to careers in politics.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Two of my Facebook friends are having a rough time with their dogs; paying a lot of vet bills and worrying themselve sick over the wellbeing of their pet. But they’re handling it completely differently.

One friend is from a decently well off family, is University educated and from the look of her Facebook updates, lives pretty comfortably.

The other friend left school early and is currently a house cleaner. She is spending pretty well everything she has trying to give her terminally ill dog as nice an exit from this world as she can. When she really has to, she relies on the kindness of the vet to waive or reduce their fees.

To the bemusement of a few of us, my well-off friend has started asking for donations to cover her vet bills.

This is not a “rich kids are brats with a sense of entitlement” rant. A few of the friends who were shocked by the dog-donation-fund also grew up fairly well off.

But I think you have to have grown up with money to be able to ask for a handout

I grew up poor. My parents lost everything they had when the small family business folded, and soon after Dad was put on to a disabilty pension, which he remained on until he died. He needed Mum around to care for him, so we lived solely on a poverty-line pension for most of my school years. Although he often resented the relentless need to prove his disability to Centrelink, I don’t think Dad ever thought we were entitled to the pension. He was grateful for it. He knew that without it we wouldn’t survive.

The child care rebate cut-off discussion has made me realise something that I find a bit embarassing: our household is in the top 10% (give or take 5%, depending who you read) of incomes in the country. And that’s true for most of our friends, too. Given that the poverty-line in Australia would be upper-class in ¾ of the world, it really is hubmling, shocking and as I said, a little embarassing.

So I have some experience at a lot of points along the Australian income scale.

I’ve never known someone who was poor who would ask their friends for money unless it was literally life and death. I’ve never known someone who was poor who thought they deserved Centrelink payments.

There’s a shame that comes with being poor, particularly when you’re reliant on government handouts. I still feel it, although less and less. But whenever I deal with Centrelink about some form of government payment, that shame comes rushing back.

Well off people wonder why poor people support welfare for the rich. In part I think it’s because you learn to not begrudge people their wealth. The poor don’t hate the rich; they’re not even jealous of them. In a very real sense, it gives them hope that their children may have better lives.

It also feels less shameful if everyone is on welfare.

But there is something perverse about my family getting government benefits, in the same way as its perverse to ask for money for a dog when you could pay for it yourself. That money could be helping people that really need it. People who, like me as a kid, really cannot survive by modern standards without that help.

It’s easy to lose a sense of income relativity. We mostly hang out with people in a similar income bracket, and regardless of how much money you have there’s always times that seem hard. But in the same way as Australian poverty is not the same as Cambodian poverty, hard times on $150k a year are not the same as hard times on $25k a year.

If you’ve ready my blog or Twitter feed or been silly enough to talk to me about politics, you know I’m not a socialist. I firmly believe that total income equality would a terrible thing for everyone. But I do, strongly believe that as a society, as people, we have a duty to look after those that can’t look after themselves. To help them get to a point, if possible, where they can be independent. It breaks my heart to think that money that could be used to help the many, many people in genuine need is spent making me more comfortable. It breaks my heart that the welfare process shames and belittles those people that need it the most.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

See the full gallery on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Cory Doctorow is one if my go-to sci-fi writers: I’m always completely caught up in his characters. His writing flows so well and I find it hard to put his books down.

His latest collection of short stories, With A Little Help, isn’t just a book: it’s an experiment in a new business model. In the spirit of trying new things, I’m going to write a short review of each part. Here’s the first.

The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away

In a sentance:

A data mining monk gets into some Orwellian trouble when he needs to leave the monastery to chase down an Anomaly in the data.

I was completely caught up in protagonist Lawrence’s adventures, but in the end the plot left me disappointed. It’s basically Anathem meets 1984, without the depth of either.

It’s amazing that Cory gets so many ideas into 80-odd flowing pages of engrossing fiction, and if you haven’t read Anathem or 1984 it would be a great read. But it borrows too much from those books without bringing any ideas of its own for it to be anything more than a bit of fun.

Next up, part 2: The Right Book

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Most people think of Libertarians as either big-wig top-hat-wearing heartless Scrooges or militant gun-toting white supremacists. So why, as a Greens voter and generally left-leaning guy, do I consider myself a Libertarian?

Well, here’s some things libertarians believe which may surprise you. Libertarians are

• anti-war
• pro-immigration
• pro-gay marriage
• pro-democracy
• pro-science
• pro-free-trade
• pro-drug legalisation
• pro-abortion
• pro-equality regardless of race, sex, sexual preference, country of birth, religion or just about anything else

Some Libertarians (like me) are also

• pro welfare
• pro public education
• pro public health

Can you see why I vote for the Greens yet?

OK, so what is Libertarianism?

The core concept of Libertarianism is that everyone is best placed to make decisions affecting their own lives. As David Boaz puts it

Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to live his life in any way he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others"

Everything else stems from that. That sounds OK, right?

There are a of a lot of strands of Libertarianism: everything from complete anarchy to social liberalism. It’s sorta hard to pin down.

So why the bad rep?

There are two big reasons that Libertarians have a bad name.

Firstly, the massive number of strands mean that it’s pretty easy to find a variation that you don’t like. The vast majority don’t do much for me at all (I’m a classically-leaning social liberal, if you must know :–) ).

On top of that, the ‘personal freedom’ thing attracts nutters who don’t want anyone interfering with their right to own WMDs, to not pay taxes, or to be racist fuckheads. These people aren’t Libertarians in the real sense of the word because they generally believe that they can and should assert their will over others.

If you’re so good, why are you pro-Capitalism?

Oh yeah. That.

There are two reasons, at least for me. Firstly, on a fundamental level who you trade with and how you do it very much falls into that “personal decision” space, so Capitalism is a particularly liberal-compatible way to organise an economy.

The other, and much less obvious reason, is because it’s the best way we know of to get people out of poverty (more on that in a sec). When societies move out of poverty they become more free, more democratic, more respectful of human rights, live longer, and are healthier.

Capitalism has its downsides, no doubt about that. But it’s the least worse system we have.

But aren’t Libertarians all greedy and soulless?

Libertarianism and Capitalism allow for selfishness and greed, but they do not require it. An individual’s best interest may very well be served by helping others – in fact it’s human nature to do so.

As I said, Libertarians believe deeply in human rights and equality. If you spend much time studying history it becomes clear very quickly that the quickest, most efficient way to get people our of poverty is to encourage Capitalistic free trade.

But that is a hard argument to make.

The Right will both point to specific groups of people (farmers, factory workers) and say that free trade is costing those people their jobs.

The Left will point to specific groups (the ultra-poor in developing Capitalist nations) and say that they are getting a massively inequitable slice of the growth while the top X% get the majority of the spoils.

Both of them are right.

But here’s the thing: despite its flaws Capitalism is still the best way to improve people’s lives over the long term. The short term costs are real and often devastating – but without them long term growth is incredibly difficult.

What the Right don’t tell you is that when the factory work moves to Mexico, the Mexicans get much more benefit in aggregate than the Americans lose. What the Left don’t tell you is that, although wealth disparity is growing, in absolute terms those ultra-poor are becoming much less poor – just at a much slower rate then their richer countrymen.

It is long term, sustained growth that in 200 years has taken the West from $5/day and a life expectancy of 40 to $100/day and a life expectancy of 75. It has taken the Chinese from $5/day to $30/day. If you haven’t already, you really should watch Hans Rosling’s 200 Years demonstration. It’s one of the most compelling, unbiased and optimistic things I’ve seen.

And so…

If you truly want to help people, you should choose the best data-backed method we have to do so. There’s a lot of things you can do to make it feel like you’re helping, but compared to the benefits flowing from a robust Capitalist society, you’re pissing in the wind at best. At worst, you’re holding back the progress that will change people’s lives at an almost unfathomable scale.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

When I was a kid I remember thinking that it was strange that people were surprised when Mike Tyson turned out to not be a very nice guy. I mean, we're paying these guys to beat each other up; surely a few of them will take that violence out of the ring.

The Charlie Sheen storm has helped me finally finish evolving an idea which has been bouncing around in my head since the Tyson rape charges:

Why do we expect people who are successful because of their extreme behaviour to be normal in the other aspects of their lives?

The examples are almost endless. Ben Cousins was in the top handful of AFL players until he was suspended for recreational drug use. The drugs didn't negatively affect his playing ability; he was using when at the top of his game. Suspension for drug use, not the usage itself,  is what irreparably damaged his career. 

Cousins was extreme: in his training; in  his performance. He looked and moved like he was from a different league. That was while he was playing with and against some of the all-time greats.

In the tech business many of the massively successful people also have less acceptable extremes. At the worst, Jobs is arrogant and controlling; Gates is ruthless and underhanded; Zuckerberg is cold and impersonal. Even Woz, the most lovable of geeks, comes across as a bit of a know-it-all.

In sport you have the brilliance but borderline on-track sociopathy of Michael Schumacher; Tiger Woods; Mike Tyson; and the seemingly never-ending stream of AFL and NRL players involved in violence and drugs.

And then there's Sheen. Two and a half Men isn't exactly my sort of sitcom, but the guy knows how to do his job. Not only was he the highest paid guy on TV, but more often than not he reportedly shot his scenes in a single take. That's exceptional. 

The destructive side of success isn't universal. Some people channel their extremism into other, more acceptable areas like extreme sports. Some, like Trent Reznor, manage to pull themselves out of their destructiveness while not fundamentally damaging their success. He is still making incredible (Oscar winning!) music, albeit a lot less fucked up that early Nine Inch Nails.  But the extremism is still there.

Looking at the relationship between success and destructiveness isn't condoning it. But there's something going on here: a pattern that repeats over and over that we seem to ignore.

Exceptional people by definition are not like the rest of us. The cost of the dedication it takes to become extremely successful is not something most of us are willing, or able, to bear. And while we certainly shouldn't accept illegal behaviour, expecting normality from fundamentally abnormal people is naive. We can't in good conscience celebrate positive extremism while ignoring its related, and often destructive, flip side.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »