ultranomics

Every crime has a motive. To actually pick up a gun or knife or whatever and then take a human being’s life usually needs a planned state of mind which caters for that motive.

I used to read stories of the Indian and Pakistani police when the British were ruling and just after the partition. In those days they knew the art of investigation. Back then they used people called “khojis” [the C.S.I. of back then] who could find the clues and track the foot steps of the criminals helping the law enforcers to the motive of that crime! Coming back to these Bombay….oops Mumbai….attacks sit down and relax and then think why don’t the police or investigators with all the modern tools of the trade not actually investigate and plainly start naming names of their arch enemies [or ex arch enemies]? Could it be procrastination or maybe some ulterior motives – but tell me one thing if you can, who has most to gain from an on going Pakistan India scuffle? Now narrow it down to one nation. I don’t have to write the name you know it already.

Imagine India & Pakistan at peace with no lingering Kashmir or river water issues then we can move on to become an economic hub of power, with China we can take on the world, but somehow this probably won’t happen – the “un-named” nation won’t let it happen.

It is all to do with the Art of War which incidentally is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It has had a huge influence on Eastern as well as Western military thinking, business tactics and beyond. Its writer Sun Tzu was the first to recognize in 6th century BC the importance of positioning in strategy, and that your position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of the competitive actors [there may well be an Oscar category for politicians] in that environment.

He taught that strategy was not about ‘Planning’ in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions [for example in recession create a war to get the economy moving or in case of the subprime crisis create an arch enemy or better still create an alien attack].

‘Planning’ works in a controlled environment but in a competitive environment competing plans collide [race to the moon, missiles and anti-missiles defences etc] creating unexpected situations [9/11, attacks on Pakistan, attacks on India]. So WAR is indeed RAW [incidentally RAW is also the acronym for the Indian spy agency Research And Analysis Wing!]

New World Order

Somehow this reminds me of the term New World Order which refers to a conspiracy theory in which a powerful and secretive group is plotting to eventually rule the world via an autonomous world government. This powerful group would apparently replace sovereign states and other checks and balances in world power struggles.

H.G. Wells advised in his 1940 work “The New World Order” that “when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people will hate the new world order and will die protesting against it”.

You may ask it can’t be. How come sovereign governments are following old bygone theories of H.G. Wells or Big Brother like controlling tactics thought of by George Orwell in 1944 but look around you. Isn’t this world full of seeds of doubt sprinkled everywhere, surveillance cameras to protect us! [normally they are not where protection is really required] speed cameras to protect lives [see my article on speed cameras] biometric passports to protect our identities [we need more protection from bureaucrats losing our identities in the first place] identity cards to protect our freedom from invaders [to be trialled on poor foreign students who have no say hence are targeted to up the statistics in the labours' favour] pay as you drive road charging system that keeps track of your movement! And best of the lot is an airport scanner that can read your mind [for George Orwell's thought police in action see Tom Cruise's action flick Minority Report]

Read the full story here of the real thought police in today’s world

Need I say more to prove that we are slowly moving towards a totalitarian police state at least in the Western world [I am humming hold me kiss me thrill me kill me as I type].

One of the more enduring myths in Western society is that wars are somehow good for the economy. Many people see a great deal of evidence to support this myth, after all World War II came directly after the Great Depression.

I believe it is a faulty belief which stems from short sighted and shallow economics thinking. Let me explain. The flawed logic of this myth is an example of something economists call “The Broken Window Fallacy” which is brilliantly illustrated in Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book “Economics in One Lesson.”

In it Hazlitt gives the example of a vandal throwing a brick through a shopkeeper’s window. The shopkeeper will have to purchase a new window from a glass shop for a sum of money say £250. A crowd of people who see the broken window decide that the broken window may have positive benefits after all. If windows were never broken what would happen to the glass business? Then of course the train of thought is endless. The glass merchant will have £250 more to spend with other merchants and these in turn will have £250 to spend with still other merchants and so on. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in an ongoing stream.

The logical conclusion from all this would be that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace was in fact a public benefactor [Britain has quite a few of these benefactors in ASBO rich areas although they have yet to stir up some economic activity - perhaps not enough bricks - Gordon Brown may consider distributing free bricks at Tesco].

The crowd is correct in realizing that the local glass shop will benefit from this act of vandalism. What they have not considered however is that the shopkeeper would have spent those £250 on something else if he did not have to replace the window. He might have been saving that money for a new set of golf clubs, but since he has now spent the money he cannot do so and the golf shop has lost a sale.

He might have used the money to purchase new equipment for his business or to take a vacation or maybe to purchase new clothing. Instead of having a window and £250 the poor shopkeeper now merely has a window which was there anyway. Or as he was planning to buy a suit that very afternoon instead of having both a window and a suit he must now be content with the window or the suit. If we think of him as a part of a given community then that community has actually lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being and is just that much poorer. So the glass store’s gain is another store’s loss hence there has not been a net gain in economic activity. In fact there has been a decline in the economy of that community!

No wonder I see the sun of tomorrow shining in the east and it is shining its brightest over China because the only bricks they carry are for building new projects. They don’t seem to plan on breaking neighbourhood windows or even the windows of the next town and they are certainly not trying to “SORT” the world.