Politically Challenged

Canada's Black Mark

2011-08-04T18:44:00.002-04:00

Let's take a step back from the debt woes of the world, a rather immediate danger to the global economy and look at a calmer issue. What to do about the massive poverty in native American (or aboriginal) communities in Canada? There's widespread mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse and even, of all things to happen in a first world nation, a tuberculosis outbreak. How is that even possible given a country with universal healthcare?

And so what to do? I'll skip over the current rhetoric and go straight to a solution.

-Settle land disputes and turn reservations into provinces
-Each native province will conduct its own elections, collect taxes and provide the social services
-Provinces will be part of the equalisation formula, and I would expect, given that most reserves are not doing well economically, they'll be considered have-not provinces

The entire point is to create a direction connection between the taxpayers and the politicians. Ruling chiefs will receive money directly from native tribes through provincial taxation. The chiefs will now have an incentive to listen to the local tribe because their cheque comes from the residents rather than outside the community.

Individuals who prosper in the community, allow the entire community to prosper, creating a positive feedback loop to better everyone. Currently, if a native individual prospers, the community receives no direct benefits because any taxes paid goes to the Ontario government and not the local reserve.

A Canada where all can succeed is beneficial for everyone.

Obscure To-Do List

2011-04-20T16:04:00.002-04:00

The following is the forgotten to-do list for the government. Easily implemented and empirically proven.

1) Digital Telecommunications

The e-commerce growth in Canada has been extremely slow. Lagging behind in this new market sector would be incredibly damaging for the future of Canada.

The government should invest resources into developing the fibre optic backbone (for areas which do not already possess dark fibre) and implement this under a new government-owned crown corporation (let's call it Not-Crackpot Bell). The infrastructure is leased out to ISPs at cost-plus (a little extra for expansion of the network).

This results in an internet service marketplace which has almost no market entry barrier, giving consumers a better price and better service. With the increase in bandwidth, e-commerce is given an environment in which it can thrive.

Cost? Possibly 10s of billions.
Gain? Probably 100s of billions.

2) Space Programme

Throw an extra 100 million into the space programme, effectively doubling its budget. Then commit to every single robotics portion of space programs across the entire world. NASA, ESA, Russian Space program, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and so on will use Canadian robotics from Canadarm to Rovers.

Cost? 100 million
Gain? Depends on how much we sell the robotics for, but we also get ties with every single country's space program which should lead to a brain gain.

3) Medical Nuclear Reactor / Nuclear Medicine

Build a new medical reactor asap. Replace the one at Chalk River, or upgrade existing reactors to this capability, or build a totally new reactor. It's not hard.

With a new set of reactors we can easily edge up control of the radioisotope market to 90%+. This allows us to fund the entire world's anti-cancer programs.

Cost? A few billion.
Gain? Aside from saving millions from cancer, the increase in worker productivity and thus income taxes, we'd also be selling the isotopes to cover most of the costs anyway.

4) Safe Injection Sites

The Lancet journal backed the safe injection site because statistical evidence has shown a 30%+ drop in deaths. There was an accompanying drop in crime rate.

Cost? Put one in every city, probably a million dollars per year per city. So what 100-150 million?
Gain? It's likely to be a decrease in policing and healthcare costs of 1-2 billion dollars.

5) Mental Hospitals

Bring back mental hospitals. Safe, comforting mental hospitals for the mentally ill and take them off the streets.

Cost? Probably 100-150 million across the country.
Gain? Likely 1-2 billion per year due to decreased policing costs.

Shutting Down Government

2011-04-12T14:12:00.002-04:00

The US Budget passed, luckily, avoiding a government shut down. Over 800 000 Federal employees keep on working and 1.4 million soldiers continue to receive their pay cheques. This is of course, very good.

So really we're left with a question in the aftermath of what makes sense to cut and what does not. Certainly at this point, with the size of American deficit, an austerity package makes sense.

But, really, the Tea Party has grown on the concept of "starve the best" and presuming a positive correlation between government spending and oppression. I'd like to point out something written by someone else on the subject before I throw my own view out:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/02/17/government-spending-and-liberty/

The issue is that protecting the rights of the people, upholding the US constitution, is a task that is far more expensive than letting the mighty rule over the weak. Freedom is about choice of action and defence against others who would take away your choices. As far as the United States is concerned, the government does both but it is not the only entity in play.

Many different factors affect one's freedom and combined make out your total ability to succeed in society. We cannot disregard the government as the primary instrument for defending one's freedom simply because it has a capability of also suppressing it. Afterall, most would agree that a world run solely by corporations is likely to be extremely piss poor with such rampant poverty that any amount of legal freedom amounts to naught when you don't even have food to eat.

Starving the government and eliminate essential services is more likely to do such heavy long-term damage to the economy that any temporary relief on the deficit from the cuts are far outweighed by the losses. For instance, one of the obstacles in passing the budget was Planned Parenthood, costly a measly 323 million dollars a year. In a budget that is 3.2 trillion dollars, one would imagine such an item would not even come under scrutiny before larger ones (such as the F-35 purchase which will amount to tens of billions in total). But the prevailing idea is that cutting it would "save" the money when in reality, the preventative measures put into place by Planned Parenthood saves the government tens of billions per year in healthcare costs. A condom costs pennies. Managing a teenage mother who then has decrease employment opportunities costs you a lifetime of social services.

So when we think of an austerity package, what comes into question is what is essential and what is not. Courts, infrastructure and economic multipliers are essential. Preventative measures that save money in the long-term, those are revenue positive measures. Those should stay. Things that are revenue negative in the long run are the services that you tackle. This primarily means the military but there are also non-defence spending measures that can be eliminated as well.

As well, tax revenue collection is another way to tackle the issue. Reducing spending is one prong, but how about increasing tax revenues? Recently, it has been revealed that General Electric paid zero dollars in tax on 12 billion in profit. That means the average American, earning 40k a year, paid more tax than a hundred billion dollar revenue corporation. That is tax money lost and the loss has to be picked up by the middle class in America. Efforts should be made to capture this money to reduce the deficit.

On top of this, congress can work to reduce corporate loopholes in taxation (and thereby make the system more fair to small business who cannot afford the high class accountants necessary to make use of such unfair loopholes), shift more of the tax burden to the rich (and also reduce the loopholes they use) and increase tax revenue.

CBO recently published a long list of items that could be cut in the budget that amounted to six hundred billion a year. Depending on your political ideology, not all of those are cuts that "make sense" but certainly, one can cut more than the forty billion in spending that the current congress has done.

Cut spending, increase tax revenue, and commit to long-term economic goals. That should be what everyone in congress strives for. Shutting down government is an extremist view that does nothing more than damage the very fabric of the United States.

Fighter Jets

2011-04-11T18:50:00.004-04:00

So an election is on and one of the big topics is fighter jet purchase to replace the aging CF-18s. Before we begin I want to express my personal view on "how many" planes that the Canadian Air Force should receive.

The CF-18 purchase under Trudeau was 138 planes. This was in addition another 100+ planes of another type. In the 1970s we had over 200 combat aircraft of various roles (interceptor, heavy fighter etc). Flash forward to today, and we've 80 CF-18s left. The current purchase on the table is from Harper who suggests that we should buy 65 F-35s (which by PBO estimate will be around 130 million a piece and including maintenance costs will total around 30 billion over the lifetime of the aircraft). So, basically the suggestion from Harper is that we should have even less planes than before. Does he also believe we should have one rifle for every two soldiers? Don't worry the rifle is really awesome.

I believe that Canada should at least maintain and airforce of 140 planes or more. Any less and we won't even have pilots for the next generation of soldiers.

Before we begin, these are the key easy points for what I believe should be done in order to secure the purchase of aircraft to replace our existing force.

The Canadian Forces military analysts should be the ones who decide which planes are purchased. This includes the type and number of each. Certainly they should be allowed to choose more than one plane. I believe that we should not allow politicians to make this type of decision for the military.
The government should be clear on how much money should be spent on new plane purchase and allow the military to decide the best way to spend this money. Alternatively, the military can suggest the optimum plane purchase for expected missions in the future (which is likely to be primarily peacekeeping)

So the choice is really down to how many planes we want and how much will it cost. Obviously, the more we can get per dollar the better. It is ridiculous to believe the F-35 is the only plane on the market. For someone like me, who is not a military analyst, I can mention this many planes offhand:

Boeing F-18 super hornet (at a cost of 55 million USD each)
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (at a cost of at least 130 million USD each, estimate)
Dassault Rafale (at a cost of 80-90 million USD each)
Saab JAS 39 (40-61 million USD each)
Eurofighter Typhoon (90-125 million Euros each)
Mikoyan MiG-35 (???)
Sukhoi Su-33 (55 million USD each)

We probably won't buy the MiG or Su since they aren't from NATO countries but they're still planes that could be considered. I leave it up to military analysts to judge the risk/reward factors. (Or hey, we could buy the F-22, I hear we can get them second hand and they've never been in combat missions before!)

Let's not put ourselves into the same problem as the United States, stuck into spending billions into the black hole that is the JSF program that produced the F-35. We don't need to throw tens of billions down the drain needlessly. Let's get the best our military can get.

The Economic Focus

2011-04-01T18:12:00.002-04:00

Economics is the primary focus on any government in a stable society. Within that realm, many countries speak on different topics but in general what is the ultimate goal of the government? Make everyone rich? Eliminate poverty? Get everyone two cars? The best focus for a government is on two fronts: with respect to financial decisions it should focus on long-term growth, with respect to social economic decisions it should focus on eliminate poverty.

When we look at different countries in the world, the presence of affluence is not indicative of a well functioning society. In terms of the United Nations Human Index rating, those with the least poverty almost invariably score higher than those who focus heavily on increasing affluence versus targeting poverty. If we look at countries such as USA or South Africa, we see many of the richest in the world living there and yet, in terms of living conditions, some of the worst for the Western world (and in some cases, just worst in the world in general). In contrast, if we look at a country such as Sweden, with extremely low poverty, it scores very high and always ranks near the top for living conditions.

The reasons are typically simple and somewhat utilitarian. Every additional dollar above what is needed for the average comfortable life style adds very little to happiness. However, simply transferring money from the rich to the poor is an abuse of metrics. The problem is not that the rich hold too much money, hoarding it from the poor, it is that the poor were never given any opportunity to earn that money. Furthermore, opportunity is insufficient. Social mobility is an excellent trait for a society but unless the income divide is actually small, it is relatively meaningless.

So, countries and government should focus on tackling poverty. What are things that may be done?

Income tax versus corporate income tax
Rethinking welfare

Let's talk taxes. There's actually an extremely large variety of taxes today and in history; income tax, harvest tax, land tax, property tax, wealth tax, inheritance tax, tithes, inflation tax, sales tax, tariffs, export taxes, duties, debt interest. But by far, today in the modern age, in the big picture, the largest two are income taxes and corporate taxes.

Corporations pay tax only on profits. Individuals pay tax on everything.

The idea is to encourage corporations to reinvest the money they earn into creating more jobs, capital and generally investing in the economy rather than taking the profits home. On the other hand, individuals are taxed in a manner historically similar to completely broken systems such as the "peasant land tax" or "salt tax". It does not take into account the cost of living which is an important measure in determining poverty.

So, let's rethink welfare and rethink income taxes. We want people who are poor to move up into the middle class. We want the middle class to live comfortably and invest in our country's future (possibly moving up into the rich category by doing so). We want the rich to competently run corporations in an efficient market manner.

Structuring income tax to take into consideration the cost of living requires a measure for determining cost of living. Canada has the LICO (low income cut off) which indicates when you are poor. It would not be difficult to add another measure for "Oh my God, I don't have food", which sits even lower than the LICO. Now we convert income tax into a "individual profit tax" so that if you are having trouble earning enough to put food on the table, the government doesn't come to make your life even harder.

Below the strict panic line, you should receive government money.
Below the LICO line, you should not pay taxes.
Above the LICO, you should pay graduated income taxes.
We provide a variety of tax-free investment opportunities to encourage long-term growth (RRSP, RESP, TFSA etc)

We entirely eliminate provincial welfare systems and replace them with the negative income tax rates in this model. All of the administrative costs of welfare is to be turned over to tax auditing, which one hopes would not cost substantially different under this model.

If one is worried of welfare abuse then think of this; when you are using a spam filter for your email account, would you want it to eliminate all your spam but also blow away several of your good important emails per day or would you rather it let through a little bit of spam and allow all your important emails through to you? The answer is of course the latter (unless you wish to be facetious). I would rather ten poor people be given the chance at a better life than blocking a single welfare abuser from cheating the system.

So what about the other part of the government responsibility on long-term growth? I believe the key is for government to focus on being globally competitive. Ideology is exceptionally damaging to the Canadian economy and the best example is telecommunications. Mobile devices and internet prices are one of the highest in the Western world, with the lowest bandwidth caps and the slowest speeds. This is due entirely to private monopolies owning the market.

Forget neoliberal, supply-side or Chicago school of economics. Do what is best for the country! It is worth little to note that your ideology brings you to call something efficient when it lacks in comparison to the world. We could build our internet infrastructure through private monopolies and allow these companies to act without regulation, gouging customers and hampering the development of our digital economy, all in the name of free market, but at the end of the day, countries such as Japan or Finland forge ahead while we are left in the dust. What comfort is to cling to artificial principles when you live in relative poverty?

Natural monopolies such as energy and infrastructure (including internet) should be socialised. In the case of infrastructure, this can be rented at slightly above cost to private corporations to provide service. For instance, the government laid fibre optic lines which they can then rent out to private ISPs at near cost who then resell to consumers in a highly competitive environment with nearly no bar to entry (afterall, an entrepreneur merely needs to fork out a small amount of capital to serve a small set of customers)
Essential services need to be socialised. Healthcare, basic mail, licensing, regulatory bodies, inspections and so on, should be run by the government to reduce costs and corruption.
Luxuries should be market run. In elastic demand environments, the government should not waste administrative overhead in trying to manage prices.
Research and development. Universities product new technologies, corporations typically produce slight enhancements. The government should focus grants primarily to universities in order to encourage the growth of new industries and markets, which give our country a distinct time advantage versus others.

Growth and opportunity, that is the mandate of any government.

Atlas Did Not Shrug

2010-04-21T08:12:00.006-04:00

Economic theory, a varied and confused mass, where few have certain answers and fewer still can make accurate predictions. Beyond the basics of Keynesian or classical theory, there is little that truly resembles the real world simply because the situation is far too complex. But what of the discussion of the power of a single individual? How much does one man matter?

Individualism, with one of the most extreme forms in Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy, accentuates the power of a single person to make for herself based on her own will power and skill. For Ayn Rand, it became a concept where a few people truly ran society and caused it to progress. In her novel Atlas Shrugged, an oil magnate disappears overnight and an oil well immediately spews its black gold and fire high into the sky. But in fact, such an ideology is ironically an argument against itself. If only a few people could truly achieve then it would make the argument for collectivism all the stronger; place these few people in charge of everyone and run society in a socialist dictatorship.

Beyond this, the general American mood on the issue is likely more accurately portrayed by the nebulous concept of the American Dream; any person can achieve to be the wealthiest most powerful man on Earth but at any given point in time, only one person holds the position. Therefore, by definition, the vast majority of people are in lesser positions. This culture reveres the successful businessman but the adoration of financial acumen intrudes upon society an unhealthy focus on a single aspect of skill. Why else, in contrast to Atlas Shrugged, does a corporation not immediately implode upon itself should its founder disappear? Whereas, in Atlas Shrugged an oil magnate disappears and the oil wells immediately breakdown into ill use, in the real American world, the workers would still continue their duties with someone taking up the mantle of leadership in due time. In fact, the larger the corporation, the less likely the loss of leadership would greatly affect it. Individualism succeeds because, in the real world, the vast majority of people are naturally motivated to work and only this complete skill set does it allow for success. A factory succeeds because a scientist discovered the theory that allowed the engineer to design it. It succeeds because the technicians, skilled labour and menial workers toil in its machinery. It succeeds because the leadership holds to a vision and its management efficiently handles morale and work distribution. Thus, the best addition to the economy is the holistic view of organizations to better understand them.

In the corporate world of today, marketing and sales construe the vast majority of personnel at any given organization. Beyond small businesses, additional workers are mostly non-producing individuals. These are administrative positions, advertising positions, sales positions and so on. When the vast majority of your workforce produces nothing but corporate propaganda and media advertisements, in the false cry of capitalism, it creates a sense that society can achieve much more if these workers had instead produced something tangible, even ideas or simply better products. The engineers, the menial workers, the general staff is largely unaffected by the upper echelons of management beyond the fourth or fifth level. Sales are predicted by the success of advertisements and not product quality. Maple Leaf foods can be responsible for the worst number of deaths due to food poisoning in recent history but still maintain its dominant market position without any adverse affect simply because it handled the public relations issue well. It matters little if the food is any safer. Small businesses are made up mostly of the individuals who produce the product and only a minority perform the business and marketing. If the economy were made up solely of small businesses, efficiency would rise, in terms of workers producing products but one does lose the economies of scale afforded by large corporations. Poorly run businesses with little market share and no power over price would immediately fail but corporations can outlast turmoil by brand recognition. Still, it is hard to predict the actual effect of small business capitalism.

When we see society, especially after the subprime mortgage crisis precipitated by short sighted lenders, dominated by the same individuals who decade after decade cause economic upheaval but government unable to form legislation to combat the waste then we see democracy undermined by financial interests. The corporate entity becomes inefficient because, depending on the industry, once it grows beyond a number of individuals, the extra individuals no longer actually produce tangible products. Thus, for large corporations, they do not obtain money from a superior product but rather from superior market share. Any single person has not the time or patience to sift through the possible products and thus most make a choice on either price or brand; brand if there is something recognizable, price otherwise. This results in a society where government is unable to purchase open source software because it has no one liable for a lawsuit should some component fail to run correctly. It results in people paying for over priced goods because they are unwilling to trust unknown companies. In this world, you never obtain the market price. Corporations become the same entity with all the wastes we blame on government; inefficient bureaucracy, incompetent leadership, money squandered to a few individuals, mass nepotism. No longer true is the argument that corporations fail if inefficient, such only occurs at the small scale but the adage "You're too big to fail" can be seen with only a quick glance to the American bailout packages for banks and lenders (whereas individual people who similarly suffered during the economic crisis obtained nothing, as if to accentuate the point that if you are small you receive no assistance whatsoever).

So, do we have a society where only a few truly run it, or do we not? Perhaps one can take a peek at statistics.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil105g-eng.htm
Ontario population in 2006: 12,160,282
Welfare recipients: 391 800
Above 250k Income: 67,020

So, if we unrealistically presume all individuals above 250k are inheritance bums and all individuals on welfare are also welfare bums then 3.8% of the population consists of complete moochers. This gives us a certain idea of the number of non-contributors to the economy. It also gives us an idea of how few people can actually be moochers in a society with a good economy and stable government. Should the number of economic non-contributors actually rise to 3.8%, it is likely the effects would be readily apparent and beyond this number would seem like an anarchist state in constant conflict and misery.

From http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/famil108a-eng.htm
Above 35k income: 3,737,310
Median Total Income Per Family: 66,600 CAD

This gives us a rough idea that most people are in the middle class, a situation that is most desirable for society.

As individuals come and go, any number of people can take their place in society and continue on. The idea that a single man can be a focal point is not only inaccurate but a dangerous idea to behold. Uplifting single individuals above that of others leads to worship of dictatorial situations, where the collective gives up its right and wealth to a few individuals, to paradoxically support the notion of individualism. Instead, this philosophy should be defined by the idea that every person contributes to society because, as an individual, they possess a unique set of skills necessary for a particular facet of the economy. Much as communists contend that a factory cannot run without workers, capitalists also contend that businesses cannot run without businessmen. One does not need to take any philosophy to an extreme. A holistic view of the situation would ask only one question of any person; what is your skill so that it can be best positioned in the economy?

X-Ray Party

2010-04-15T20:09:00.003-04:00

Here presented in simple format is a list of ideas that can be used for the improvement of Canadian governance.

The system envisioned is a group of intellectuals, for a country of Canada's size and current population of 33 million, of roughly 10 000 to head the various roles of governance. They would have authority over the bureaucracy and direct the projects. In turn, they answer to the elected officials, which currently is the House of Commons (although they would more formally answer to the Senate).

Therefore, the bureaucracy would have several well defined purposes.

-Collect information, likely this would be done through StatCan, as it currently already does so
-Process information for recommendations, this would be done by the intellectuals in charge of each government department to post recommendations on future policy
-Execute projects, the government will put in policies some of which require work to be done, the bureaucracy conducts such work

The possible risks involved is inter-department conflict and self-justifying agencies. In this regard, intellectuals in charge of a particular agency will have a reason to continue to see the agency thrive in the government budget and may attempt to create reports or recommendations which misrepresent the facts in order to better secure funding. A government watchdog, like the Auditor General, may be useful in this regard to axe departments that are not strictly required, as well as eliminating plum posts.

1) The Intellectuals

Much like corporate hiring policies, all applications are posted in an open manner and resumes are selected from this large pool of candidates. Then, depending on the difficulty of the project, there can be a number of rounds of technical interviews.

Intellectuals hired will be for the roles of

-Manager of teams
-Team lead
-Team base member

This is devised into a system that is basically, a manager in charge of a department with multiple teams to work on each project. Each project has a team lead and a number of base level workers. One project, one team. The level higher than a manager is the cabinet minister.

It is largely the expectation that more levels of management will only lead to poor communication and lack of utilization of the intellectuals.

2) The Bureaucracy

The bureaucracy's job is to ensure that the paperwork is done properly. As such you would wish to minimize the overhead. This would include people to ensure all information is filed properly, forms/digital forms are processed from the general public (for instance, a department which issues licences). As it is not an inherently physically dangerous job, there is likely no reason for a union. It can be handled with normal salaried employees.

It is important for the bureaucracy to be streamlined as much as possible to ensure the maximum amount of labour to use for the various purposes of government.

3) The Elected

The task of elected members of parliament is to be a go-between from the intellectual base, consisting of thousands of people, and developing a sense of the situation from the various managers. Each department, as it is now, would be headed by a cabinet minister. Likely, several departments fall under the same minister. The minister's role is to read, analyse and accept the recommendations arising from the managers.

The managers are intended to be hired based on their expertise in their field, so that their recommendations are logical and evidence-based. For instance, a highly qualified accountant may make recommendations for simplifying the tax code in order to achieve greater efficiency and lower overhead costs in the bureaucracy. Then it is up the minister to combine the wants of the people (ie. the political platform for which he/she won the election) and the recommendations of those qualified in their respective fields.

4) The Point?

The concept is to create a government which does both what is most recommendable by scientific analysis and what is wanted by the people. Satisfying both of these conditions would be a far superior situation to western democracy which primarily only concerns itself with satisfying what people want.

The intellectuals identify the problems in society or areas of improvement. They then lead projects to complete this work.

The bureaucracy facilitates the work by performing all the administrative duties. This is likely to be processing forms, issuing of material, collecting material, physical duties and interaction with the population (perhaps even customer service).

The elected officials are to ensure the government is doing what the people want, whereas the intellectuals are attempting to ensure the government is doing what is intelligent.

5) Role of Government

The primary role of government is to improve the economy, protect and guarantee your rights as a citizen and facilitate resolution of disputes. The constitution will largely and the criminal code will take care of most of the legal issues. Other than this, the largest government role is the economy.

Infrastructure:

The private sector is notorious for being the worst at implementing infrastructure. In a globalised society in which we today live, it is imperative that we minimize the time and effort required to install new infrastructure in order to allow the greatest and fastest economic growth. Failure to do so leads to our businesses operating at a disadvantage to other nations.

Governments should employ crown corporations or make a government led effort to install new infrastructures. As of this writing, the most imperative develop is fibre optic backbone for a digital economy, as well as wireless internet, and city-wide hot spots. Failure to develop this infrastructure will result in businesses being unable to utilize the Internet and fail against more technologically advanced competitors.

Employment Opportunity:
Governments should attempt to identify growing businesses and industries and make 5-10 year long plans for each, in the form of small business grants, tax breaks or other incentives, in order to encourage economic growth. Industries older than this should not receive any special government treatment; it would be a waste of tax dollars to support failing industries. Again, this would be the task of intellectuals to properly conduct this analysis and avoid the temptation of protectionism.

Development of Poor Neighbourhoods:
Poor people do not produce tax income, which from a government perspective is terrible. A good solution would be to pour development into poor neighbourhoods. This includes pouring extra money per capita for poor neighbourhoods for economic development, healthcare and education. The idea is not to bring poor people out of those areas. The idea is to make those areas liveable middle-class neighbourhoods because the people are more well off. It is beneficial for everyone to have more middle class to provide more businesses and thus more job opportunities and tax revenue.

Healthcare/Education/Social services:
Obviously one of the biggest expenses is healthcare, education and other social services (such as EI or pension plans). As these are almost entirely technical areas, one should expect technical individuals in charge. The government should strive to do two things. Reduce costs but also expand services. Improvements in social areas increase (rather than decrease) tax revenues because of the multiplicative effect it has in crime reduction, improved worker health (therefore less sick days) and a more efficient workforce (either because they are more well educated or because they can find more appropriate jobs to match their skill set).

6) Roadmap

Largely, we can begin this with more open hiring procedures in the bureaucracy. The first step is for the hiring of individuals in all government jobs to be open, well advertised and easily accessible on government websites and for anyone to be able to apply.

Next, it is likely that the first new job of the watchdog agencies in Canada to look after the hiring procedures to eliminate nepotism.

After this, as the bureaucracy grows more used to an open hiring procedure, it is probable that morale will increase due to improved skill sets in throughout the departments. While this may or may not occur, the next step is to lower the levels of management. Work environments in corporations are notoriously inefficient because of the many layers of management, a government is no different. Reduction in management layers would streamline communication between the base line workers and the people in control. This would hopefully both raise morale and competency.

Clear management mandates make for easier analysis of government agencies. Well defined goals for each agency would be helpful in determining the efficacy of government and bureaucratic policies. There should not be a reliance on metric based analysis but metrics are useful in a sense. Employees should also not be afraid of certain departments being axed, or projects cancelled. An environment in which individuals can suggest improvements of any kind, including cancelling their own projects, should be developed. Morale can be maintained by the fact that they will not lose their jobs and instead merely be transferred to another more useful project. However, the tool of downsizing should still be maintained.

Largely, today, upsizing or downsizing of government is a fickle policy based on the government in power and the ideology to which they aspire. This is a highly unintelligent manner of axing projects. It cares not the efficacy nor the skill of the individuals.

Intelligent government requires that we be prudent but selective about our actions. Well thought plans are far better than impulsive actions to gain a few votes but damage the country in the long run. Take for instance Paul Martin's refusal to deregulate banks based on the recommendations of bureaucrats under his wing. We see now that had the tories been in power, with their ideology of free market, our economy would have collapsed due to subprime mortgages.

No matter how government develops in the future, it is hoped that it develops for the better.

Artificial Unintelligence

2010-03-15T10:53:00.002-04:00

There is an exciting world, where one turns mathematical equations into machine intelligence. The successful build opponents which challenges humans and creates an atmosphere ingenious enough to surprise the player but easy enough for them to win as they overcome obstacles. Some have the resources of hundreds of engineers and billions of dollars. Others have a basement, themselves and the machine they use for playing games.

Paralleling today's self-centred world, what better to speak about than my personal game project. There is one developer working on the graphics engine and one developing the artificial intelligence. Such a high focus on the artificial intelligence allows for more interesting gameplay, for the only opponent that replaces a human is the computer.

The game consists of a hex map, likely 20x20 to 30x30 in size, with each side using up to 10 units. Each unit takes up a single hex square. Units have a number of action points each turn to move, attack, cast spells or use items. The game is turn based.

In the first iteration, lacking any training data, a learning method would be impractical without sufficient resources. Instead, a coherent and consistent is a fairly reasonable compromise. A player requires only an opponent who generally moves his army forward, attacking enemies in range and casting spells. This is a good first iteration for AI, though unintelligent, makes for an excellent "easy" difficulty. A player who can think better than the general scripts used for army movement can then consistently beat an easy AI opponent.

The next iteration requires a set of training data. Usually this consists of a number of played games, with the moves of each side recorded. The victor is considered to have the "better" moves. A large number of games creates enough information to both determine what "to do" and what "not to do", to hand-tune a number of features to look for to calculate the value of a particular move. In this case, the use of simple perceptrons would be useful for calculating a weighted value of the different features. An easy class structure to swap features and an automated training tool can train a "normal" difficulty. This AI is capable of making better short-term (turn to turn) choices for each unit.

In order to build training data there are two methods. The first method is automated, where the AI is made to play against itself. The moves are determined through the slow method of building a decision tree, where all probabilistic values are assumed to be their average value to overcome the stochastic nature of the problem. A pathfinding algorithm is used to determine the optimum move each turn. This training data can then be used to code the next "learning" iteration of the AI. After the AI has been improved, then the training must be run again with the improved AI. As well, different AI seeds should be used and run against one another to avoid bias.

The second method is to use human players to play against one another, or against the computer opponent. Then again, the victor and loser is recorded along with all their moves. With sufficient data, this can be similarly used for the automated training system.

The last iteration to introduce a major component of the AI, the "hard" difficulty would be long-term planning. Again, the same training data from before can be used, but the automated training system would have to look at different features to determine what best for the AI to do overall, with a coherent plan for the whole army. In this way, the AI would no longer simply be greedy, it would attempt to determine the best path with a good ability to estimate the value of any present move. So rather than simply determining the best move for the turn, it determines the best move for a specific goal.

A possible training method could involve the AI playing the same battles repetitively with different battle plans. Then repeating the same battles, even with the same battles, the victor and loser is recorded. Features are then handcrafted based on the data to determine a good battle plan. A genetic algorithm may be a reasonable method to formulate a battle plan (a "solution") while a perceptron is used to determine the value of a particular solution.

Perhaps after years of development work, the full AI can be built with all of these complex components included.

-Ultrapunk

Imaginary Citizen

2009-06-19T01:33:00.002-04:00

Flowing through time, like the ebb and flow of ocean waves, the triumph of liberal thought and the growing trend of participatory regimes hoists its flag after each victory. From the early days, when the biggest club, the strongest man, took his share by force we've progressed to the one-human one-vote republics of the 21st century. These stepping stones to freer society was earned through the philosophy of minds questioning the entrenched ideals to bring us greater benefit.

Once and again, after the birth of a freer society, detractors prey on its flaws. Hard line regimes will rally masses against phantom enemies. Usurpers will claim thrones under the pretext of better rule. People forget the ideals of their society as propaganda becomes the media. These same forces that have hindered progress assault Western democracy on its varied forms from Europe to North America.

The political landscape has deteriorated to the point where individuals rationalize Orwellian society for the comfort of its supposed security. Asked if torture is an acceptable means of interrogation, all citizens should answer with an emphatic "No", but no such refusal has occurred. It is hollow a gesture toward human rights when America refuses to release Chinese muslims to China, for the "fear they may be tortured", after having beaten and raped them for years.

There should be no question as to whether we should condone torture done by anyone. As we cannot condone such torture, we cannot help with such torture. Instead, there are upwards to a half dozen Canadians now who've been arrested, imprisoned without charge and tortured for years in countries such as Syria. Yet, where is the outcry against the implicit assistance offered by the Canadian government to torture these individuals? Instead, there are nothing but rationalizations.

When native protesters have their families threatened by the Ontario police and their phones tapped without warrant, there is silence. We ignore actions by CSIS, CIA, NSA, DHS, FBI and any other acronym the government can fathom, under the ubiquitous defence of "national security".

While we rally our political forces to attack the human right abuses of other nations, going so far as to charge the Sudanese president with crimes against humanity, we've done nothing to solve our own issues. It might be that our society has been so severely damaged and we've been blinded to this fact that when are superceded by an opposing political faction because the masses flock to its superior claim to righteousness, we will be left with only one question; "Where did we go wrong?"

However, reality is not so fatalist. It only takes the imaginary citizen, the one with democratic ideals and the steadfast ability to adhere to them no matter the circumstance. This citizen ignores the siren call of the "war on terror" to give up its freedoms for non-existent security. The grasp on these democratic concepts are well founded in education and reason, defending it against popular propaganda and mob rule. The imaginary citizen sees no clash of civilizations because it does not exist. War is merely a fabrication within the minds of the masses. This person can exist, does exist and merely needs to exist in sufficient number to ensure society progresses forward.

Death and Taxes

2009-04-09T01:17:00.003-04:00

On the international stage Canada represents a multicultural and vibrant high tech society. It is forward thinking, progressive and as democratic as you get in the world. Even still, there are glaring flaws in the social fabric that must be mended to maintain that image into the future. One such hole is the relationship between Canada and its native (or Aboriginals, whatever you prefer) citizens.

The situation as it stands, has natives scrambling to get any possible benefit from a government that earns its mandate from a people resentful of each dollar sent into the hands of natives. Natives receive less, in terms of dollars per capita, social services than other Canadians. The deadly cycle of poverty, its associated social ills and the decreased socioeconomic power to deal with the issue has persisted from when the natives were first conquered to this day.

The question is, what if we treated natives as individuals, their tribes as nations?

Canada negotiates with the native tribes to set up native provinces, of equal status to other provinces, with the ability to collect sales tax, income tax and possibly even the municipal type taxes such as gas tax and property tax. As provinces they are entitled to receive income via the equalization program and thus ensure a proper per capita dollar funding level.

First, this eliminates the need for native communities to beg the province for money. Invariably, if any government program, such as even building a hospital, is discovered by the public, the funding is immediately labelled as "waste". The issue at hand is the flow of money. Natives, like any other Canadian citizen, pay provincial and federal taxes. However, neither tax is received by native bands and thus must flow back down from the province. If native reserves were simply provinces, they would receive funding directly, as well as federal funds through the equalization program and thus be able to spend money immediately.

Secondly, people bitch to who they pay taxes toward and in this case it would be the tribal government. As seen in the past, native protests against government or government-backed corporate actions have led to bloodshed. With provincial status and a tribe installed government, they can take up issues with a more local government rather than create an adversarial environment of "natives vs the government".

Thirdly, as a province, the land natives own by treaty will simply be enshrined. It is and forever will be, their land and under their province. This opens up a lot of economic opportunity without harming the right of natives to their land. For instance, a non-native individual can purchase a house on a native reserve, attend the local school, use local social services and the tribe will not lose an inch of soil. The non-native individual simply pays taxes, especially property tax, to the local government.

Although significant in importance but not the direct intent of creating new native-provinces, one would also assume that only natives can make tribe-altering decisions through a democratic process. The horror of the residential school system and what amounted to systematic abduction, torture and rape, would not be possible because no government except the provincial one could possibly institute such a program.

Hopefully, in several centuries time, when the natives have recovered economically, socially and most importantly, psychologically, there would no longer be a "native vs Canadian" issue. With equal political power comes equality in the long term, albeit a long and slow process. One day, the discrimination would be nothing but a bad memory in Canadian history.

-Ultrapunk

Edumacation

2009-03-27T23:30:00.003-04:00

Education is the foundation of democracy, for a people that is well educated is also well equipped to face the realities and reveal the truths of life. It may be in the political realm, where the better educated can withstand the subterfuge offered by politicians and spin generated in the media. It may be in the science realm, where those with roots in a strong education system can discover the technologies of tomorrow, the medicines to combat the scourges of today and reveal the histories of yesterday. Even in every day life, education produces brighter minds that are able to problem solve, resolve conflicts and produce more responsible individuals because it is sometimes more important how the education shapes minds than what is learned.

In a world moving toward greater scientific knowledge, more complex social and technological systems and solutions to global woes requiring more technical expertise, the rock bed of modern well-performing societies will be the education system. In fact, it has always been the case where better educations systems yielded better societies. With the recent American election of President Obama, this thought has entered into the American administration. It is encouraging to see that the reign of terror of Bush, in his war on science, that anti-intellectualism and the blind refutation of science is beginning to come to an end. Obama offered a general philosophy toward improving the American education system. Here offered is a general philosophy toward improving the Ontario education.

The Gifted and the Struggling

One of the greater issues since the introduction of things such as gifted class and remediation has been the stigma attached to each. Attempts at discovering these individuals through not-very-private standardized testing and humiliating remedial classes have generally resulted in worsening and not improving conditions for students who perform out of the norm.

One of the key components missing from this system, by the opinion of the present philosophy, is a general lack of privacy. Standardized testing to check the performance of students is useful but tests are generally built one-size fits all and cannot be used to accurately judge an individual. Instead, standardized tests with secret results, shared only with the student in question, would be more useful for a teacher-student relationship.

The system would work as such; all schools offer an open to all extra-assistance time after normal classes have ended. This is meant for both gifted and poor-performing students to either receive more education or remedial assistance. Attendance is not required or recorded, the work done by students is private information. Standardized tests are used as a benchmark for students, whether they should consider, for themselves, whether to attend such classes. The results of standardized tests are shared only with the student. As this is all private information, no one may ask for it and should be protected by law.

Allocation of Resources

In Ontario, there is a fairly loose guideline on what subjects a teacher may be allowed to teach. Under the presented philosophy, a teacher may only teach subjects which matches their university education. For instance, individuals with a bachelor's of math (or bachelor's of arts/science in math depending on the university) may only teach math subjects. It would be a misallocation of resources to have biology degree-holders teaching English or Physiology majors teaching math. This assumes that anybody who can outperform in teaching a subject outside of their expertise is an exception and not the statistical norm.

Oversight

As part of the allocation of resources, the Ontario Teacher's Union should agree to subject itself to some type of oversight, however it may be handled, such as a neutral third party that evaluates teachers, in order to give the power to school boards to terminate the contracts of poor performing teachers. In the past, these oversight policies typically were in the form of political scapegoating of teachers and wild witch hunts, which has in turn led the Teacher's Union to simply back any and all teachers from losing their jobs. It reflects poorly on all teachers if the union mistakenly protects a poorly performing teacher.

Some type of agreed upon method of evaluating teachers, whether standardized or made to be more individualistic between schools, is necessary to improve the quality of education offered by the government. If job security is one hundred percent, there is no method of riding the system of bad apples. A fair process is necessary to vet through teachers. It cannot be expected that teachers to evaluate each other, if such evaluation determines contracts, as it would not be fair between teachers for reasons of loyalty and trust.

As part of such a process, there would also be a component where teachers work together to develop better teaching strategies. This might be in the form of random schools being selected for "experimental" education strategies developed by well respected teachers. It could also involve a teacher-internet or teacher-wiki, to gather information from all Ontario teachers. Sharing information would inherently lead to better education. Technology allows us to reach greater heights if we make use of it.

Respect

Lastly, respect for teachers is something which cannot be legislated. The teaching profession is the primary one in shaping our children's minds and building our social building blocks. They give us our future engineers, doctors, electricians, bricklayers and factory workers. It's a position that should be respected and only respected individuals may enter. This is a social value and one in which this philosophy holds dearly.

-Ultrapunk

Private Keys for Everybody!

2008-12-09T21:11:00.011-05:00

There's a certain pleasure in amassing large piles of objects. Usually it's gold, sometimes jewels, other times it's a pirate stash. Few would stockpile passwords until its height surpasses that of the tallest skyscrapers. Instead, people use one perhaps two passwords and maybe a select few use upwards to half a dozen different passwords. In the online world, most accounts handled by a person are almost invariably protected by the same password or many different easy passwords. For a person attempting to break into another's account this is the perfect environment to thrive and fraud has been damaging the global economy for years. Many have offered solutions but it is not the technical issues that create the greatest barricade but political will and planning.

Here is a simple idea, and please comment on any flaws inherent to the scheme. First, the government gives everyone a private key, and we'll arbitrarily state that it will be a 512-bit key. The Canadian government would produce fifty million private keys and individuals will pick it up at a government office. We will pretend this government office is the "Ministry of Private Keys". The government retains the public-key portion of the private-public key and thus only the citizen knows the private key.

This key would be stored on a ROM USB stick, or whatever happens to be the easiest external storage device, and act as a black box with the private key never being accessed directly. This will prevent anyone, short of physically breaking open and manually inspecting each bit on the memory stick, from obtaining the private key. The only other method is through cryptoanalysis, but given a sufficiently strong encryption scheme this should be a futile effort.

When an user logs onto a website, for instance, TD Canadatrust's EasyWeb and accesses online banking, they encounter the typical username and password login screen. The website sends a plaintext challenge to the user, plus whatever is necessary to prevent man in the middle attacks, and the user sends back the encrypted form of the plaintext using his/her private key. The banking website then uses the citizen's public key to decrypt to obtain the original plaintext challenge. As a side note, challenges cannot be repeated in use, in order to prevent dictionary attacks. This adds a layer of authentication to the process.

In addition, challenges will likely have to be blocked from all except "trusted" sources. These would likely be websites certified by the "Ministry of Public Keys" to be using the government provided authentication service. In this way, an attacker cannot easily obtain a large number of plaintext-ciphertext pairs. As well, the physical device used to store the private key will not be wireless, as this would add a mountain of security issues.

If a user loses his username/password due to, for instance, phishing email, the attacker still cannot authenticate him/herself as the citizen because they lack the private key. If a private key is lost, then much like a credit card, it can be reported lost or stolen to the government, and it can be backdated to the date it was lost. The public key attached to that citizen would then be banned from use and all authentication would fail.

The public keys are stored on a "Ministry of Private Keys" server, with its security certificate embedded into Internet browsers. Due to privacy concerns, a bank cannot directly ask for a single public key. Instead, to obfuscate the request, a bank asks for a sufficiently large subset of public keys in order to hide the identity of the individual accessing the bank's website. In addition, the public key server retains no log of public key requests but because this is a weak link in the trust, the aggregated public key retrievals builds more trust. This portion of the scheme could use some more development to guarantee better security without trust.

One of the hardest components is creating a secure factory to build the USB keys with the private keys installed on it. Every single private key must be a potential private key to have been used and there should be no way to know which private keys were used. The bit length of the private key should be sufficiently large that it is statistically impossible to have a collision of two keys. Keys should be sealed until picked up by a citizen at a "Ministry of Private Keys" office. These keys must be placed into a guarded vault, perhaps by mounties, until they are used. In short, there should be sufficient confidence that the keys are never tampered with until they reach the hands of the intended citizen.

The scheme is intended to provide people with better online security with the services they use the most, such as banking, shopping, and other popular activities in an effort to reduce fraud. The two primary aspects intended to be achieved is security without loss of privacy. Only the holder of the private key can know the key, the government has no access. There are far too many ideas and schemes forwarded by political factions attempting to convince their constituents that all privacy must be destroyed in order to obtain a safer society. This is simply not true and an affront to democracy.

This scheme may not be a unique idea, but unless this is backed by a sufficiently empowered entity, such as the state, sporadic use of private key encryption schemes, like PGP, will only be for the technical elite. The common man will simply be left poor in the digital world.

Added Dec 17, 2008
As a change to the system, rather than using Public Key servers, the government would act as a security certificate authority. The certificates, containing a citizen's public key, would be sent to a bank and the bank would then check the certificate's authenticity in order to obtain someone's public key. This way, the only way the government can invade privacy is by monitoring all Internet traffic, a much more gargantuan task.

I also received another suggestion that citizens should be able to create a private key themselves. However, I'd need details on how the common person can be expected to understand the creation of private keys in an easy manner, as well as do it in a clean environment. Clean environment means that the computer system used to generate a private key is free of viruses or trojans capable of compromising a private key from the very beginning. While it is entirely valid and logical to have a citizen create his own private key, I find it somewhat dangerous to leave that task to anyone not well versed in mathematics and cryptology. It is not a very large stretch of the imagination to see social engineering seriously eroding the value of a private key in that manner. The method should be simple but also completely safe (so that no one would easily gain knowledge of the private key in use).

-Ultrapunk

No World Order

2008-07-22T11:22:00.001-04:00

It is never right to castrate a group in society when they are the reigning politically disenfranchised. This simple thought is a theme played out in our greatest literary works, in modern media and yet its understanding is elusive. Empathy for individuals down trodden by the times and unfortunate circumstances is given only when the group feels they belong to the same strata of community. It can be so terribly easy to ostracize those poor in political power and exclude them from the wealth of resources the "majority" enjoys.

There is a lack of perspective for any group in power to understand the plight of those not. If there is a lack of understanding by white individuals in Canada, there is a story that can be read at the footnotes.[1] The racism, the lack of power, the violence endured, the utter humiliation this Canadian endured in China seems so clearly wrong, so clearly horrible and yet when the same act occurs in Canada, where white individuals are in power, the reaction is the same as the Chinese in the story. Anecdotal evidence is easy to come by in Canada such as when a peaceful native protester has his life, family and friends threatened, user comments are filled with congratulations.[2]

If one day a different group is empowered in society, then is the rest no longer Canadian and undeserving of respect and inclusion? This is a question Canadians should ask themselves. When we create a mechanism which can disenfranchise one group, there is no defence against it disenfranchising any other group in the future. Breaking the third person perspective for a moment, I do not wish it upon anyone to experience racism first hand, be its target, feel the fear or humiliation and the powerlessness of your situation, in order for you to gain the lousy split second window for a new perspective or a paradigm shift. It should be unnecessary for a person to have the empathy to understand the situation of those targetted by racism. Yet why is the mantle of community inclusiveness, the rally against racism, held primiarily by the minority groups?

The lack of understanding and respect between communities is the greatest barrier against a mutual comraderie. While everyone is a human being, each individual can and should be respected for what they are without change. It is not an inevitable clash of civilizations that brings Western society against Islamic society, it is the lack of understanding about what makes up each community. China is not some unimaginable monster of growing power anymore than the European Union or the United States. It is not just a matter of human rights and a warm fuzzy feeling in your chest that requires all societies to begin the road to understanding one another; with the development and stockpiling of nuclear weapons to future devices such as nanotechnology and genetic engineering, it becomes a matter for the survival of our species.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_metz/20061025.html
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/22/opp-wiretaps.html

-Ultrapunk

Operating on an Operating System

2008-05-26T23:35:00.003-04:00

In today's market there are two choices; Microsoft and Apple. It is the choice between two vendors each vying to be more vile than the other. One paints the other as horrid and unclean, uncool and nerdy, wracked with viruses and other ailments. The other calmly points out the other is incapable of running a majority of applications. They both contain serious issues and each is prohibitively expensive. Their cost, of several hundred dollars for an operating system, is quietly hidden away in a computer bundle purchase. Hundreds of millions of consumers stand and say in the defence of this pyramid of monopolistic stupidity, "They're just a business!", "This isn't communism!" or perhaps the ubiquitous "They're there to earn money!"

There is a solution to the woes of the operating system world. International standards to create an interoperability test. This test, a suite of simple facsimiles of applications from games to animation to math programs to office tools, comprise a core of applications which must be able to function properly on any accredited operating system. The test applications would be freely available, and a simple download and double click to run. All operating systems must pass this test and thus by passing this test is capable of running all applications in the world.

In a free market, an individual has sole discretion to decide which operating system to use for any application. Perhaps the user wishes to use a light-weight gadget free OS, or perhaps a heavy-weight gadget packed OS, or perhaps one known for its security, or one known for its ability to function with animation tools. The current market provides no such choice. The crown jewel of capitalism, consumer choice, is missing from the operating system market. Developers do not have the resources to build applications capable of functioning on platforms from Windows to Linux, they must pick and choose. They choose the operating system with the most market share. In the early days, Microsoft had luckily obtained a significant market share and by this random chance holds the entire market with their monopoly. Applications should be OS independent but they are not, restricting consumers to few choices. Either they use Windows or they have a computer which they cannot use. This lack of choice is justification for market intervention by the government. Market winners should be determined by innovation and ingenuity; not luck.

The entry cost to the operating systems market is prohibitively high. The development of an operating system is meaningless if there are no applications which can run atop it. The cost of developing both operating system and an accompanying suite of applications is too high for any small team of individuals. This bar against development stifles innovation and product development. Capitalism is the freedom for people to improve society with better products and let consumers decide superiority. If the market does not provide then the government must intervene to eliminate entry costs.

Corporations are built to shareholder value and shareholder profit, not public good. It cannot be expected that corporations will cater to the will of the people for their sake. The monopolies of today will be perpetuated unto tomorrow and again the next day. Only the action of government, through the voice of both reason and people, can pierce the shield the corporations have constructed. It is not an assault on profit-making, nor on market-organization, but on monopolies attacking the very principles the market system was meant to be built upon.

The ability of all operating systems to pass a single interoperability test set by an international organization opens the door for a world where developers create applications that work on any platform, can be judged from any angle and consumers that have a plethora of choices. It is the world capitalism was meant to create.

-Ultrapunk

In Soviet Olympics Gold Medal Gets You

2008-04-23T12:00:00.012-04:00

There is a popular question in western society on its role in the international community. The level of commitment that it must give to developing nations, to each other, to its people and to rising powers. This issue has recently manifested itself over the issue of the Beijing Olympics.

There has been a massive recent outcry over the Beijing Olympics, deploring the country for human rights abuses and lack of freedom. It goes so far as to ask for boycotts for the Olympics and may go beyond that to the thought of attacking trade relations with China but most importantly, Tibetan independence. It is interesting to note that the one missing voice calling for a boycott is the Dalai Lama.[1]

Human rights and freedom are important but one has to steel themselves to the possibility that protesting against China may not be well grounded. The arguments appear to centre upon several items. First, Tibet was free and democratic before communist China had taken it. Second, international hostility will bring positive change in China. Third, western society is superior at dealing with human rights issues than China.

The contention of a free and democratic Tibet is a fabrication by protest groups to legitimize the claim of Tibetan independence. It should be noted that since the Yuan Dynasty when the Mongols conquered the Tibetan Empire in 1230s, the area has been a part of China ever since.[2] Even then, Tibet was never a democracy but rather a theocracy. The Tibetan Empire itself was much the same as any other government of the time with its history of internal and external discord. Creating an idyllic image of Tibet as done in the protests appears to be built largely out of ignorance.[3] It remains an open question of how Tibet may have developed outside of Chinese control for that 700 year period but that is more of a sci-fi story than for any real discussion on today's matters. It's much like questioning what the world would be like if Rome had not fallen. Even today, it is hard to estimate the level of support for separatism inside Tibet, where the support matters, rather than outside Tibet. Even the Dalai Lama asks for autonomy rather than independence.[4]

Under the belief that international hostility and condemnation of China will bring about positive change, protesters in western governments have committed to disrupting the Olympics.[5][6] Whether a rising power like China would even be affected by these actions remains questionable but the largest reactions have been from Chinese individuals. In Wuhan, Chinese protests against the French erupted in the face of what they saw was blatant hostility against the Chinese.[7] While the unnerved communist party of China will stop these protests in due time, the rise of anti-west sentiment is terrible. What few appear to understand with isolation and hostility, is that most actions are reciprocated. If one should act hostile towards China today, China has no obligation to act friendly towards the west tomorrow. Change in China must come from the Chinese not westerners settled in their White Man's Burden mentality. As the Dalai Lama has stated, there is only so much the outside world can do, it's up to the Chinese to decide how they wish to live. We can interact with China, we can trade, we can perform quiet diplomacy and these are the actions that will help us live with in a world that is not merely the west dictating policy to others, but a world where all people can live together and also enjoy human rights and freedom.

There is an underlying belief that the west is immune to human rights abuses. It goes so far as to believe that parallels cannot be drawn with other nations because they are weak or apologist. In the most appropriate parallel, the French crackdown of riots that broke out amongst its North African and other minority neighbourhoods was neither condemned nor even looked poorly upon. Instead, most nations assisted or congratulated the French on stopping the riots despite the deportations and demolition of houses. In the most amazing reversal, the Chinese crackdown of violent Tibetan riots brings worldwide condemnation. Rather than condemn both, only China faces the brunt of human rights abuse allegations. Last week, United States released a Pulitzer prize winning journalist from jail as a suspected terrorist (and there are still others in jail, including a Canadian journalist), but condemnation only reaches China for jailing media personnel.[8] The recent Australian attack on the aboriginal population with forced abductions, relocations and nanny-state laws has gone without notice. The land disputes continuing in Canada earn a few condemnations from the UN but few would even know it had occurred. The United States, in the America-led invasion of Iraq has led to 600 000 dead (according to Lancet Journal) and 4 million refugees (according to the UN).[9] We would condemn the Khartoum government in Sudan for 300 000 deaths in Darfur but refuse to do the same in Washington, now that Iraq is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. It is no surprise that Chinese individuals, born in other nations and in China, feel attacks are being launched for no other reason than to fabricate a new enemy for this day and age when the War on Terror becomes a dull media sensation.

It is our world and everyone should strive to better it. The concepts of cooperation and dialogue should always reign over hostility and suspicion. Without working with one another to improve the world, we only lead ourselves to conflict. When one chooses to take a hostile stance with China it gives the communist party the right and democratic obligation to take a reciprocal stance. Do not believe in the inevitability of war, believe in the inevitability of peace.

-Ultrapunk

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/10/dalai-olympics.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet
[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/dalailama/
[4] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24097313/
[5] http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=428251
[6] http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCASP11894820080419
[7] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/19/china.france/index.html
[8] http://www.ap.org/bilalhussein/
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties

Intelligent Society

2007-12-11T18:29:00.000-05:00

The greatest problem facing Western democracies is not war but like all previous societies, its leaders. The illusion of choice presented by our democracy comes in the form of a vote. This very simple act is supposedly your power to make the government act. The truth is, the vote means little if anything at all, in most democracies.

There is a lack of awareness. The first step to empowerment comes from knowing the legislative acts the government intends to put forward. In a recent example, the Tory regime attempted to pass DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) bill which is anathema to any tech-savvy voter. There was nary a trace of the bill in the media. It is legislation that, in effect, makes illegal most new digital technology for the sole benefit of the music industry. Michael Geist, the Canada research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, successfully managed to rally together tech-savvy citizens to delay the bill. Luckily, the Tories have thus far decided to delay the bill due to the Canadian outcry against its utter stupidity.

There is a lack of knowledge. Individuals today hold specialized, rather than general, knowledge and work in cooperation with others to achieve greater goals. In the political arena, the common voter knows little about most proposed policies during an election campaign. Economists who understand taxes can only speak of the efficacy of tax policies. Only computer experts can discuss the intelligence behind software regulations. None of these voices are ever heard during an election campaign. It is rare, if ever, that the general public of intellectuals is polled for their opinion on specific policies. Why do we not ask the economic professors of Canada which tax policies are sensible given the current condition of the Canadian economy? Why do we not ask the civil engineers of Ontario what best solution is there to solve highway congestion? Despite the wealth of knowledge in Canada, the common individual places her vote based on political striation.

There is a lack of analysis. In the age of positivism, society has forgotten the political process. Government policies should be placed under the same strict conditions that any scientific article or engineering proposal would endure. Constructing a bridge incorrectly can cost lives is an engineer's burden. Choosing the wrong surgery is a doctor's burden. Wiring a house incorrectly is an electrician's burden. A politician's burden affects the entire nation. Entering a war incorrectly can cost hundreds of thousands of lives needlessly, as seen by the recent and ongoing Iraq War. Systematic abuse and negligence can lead to the centuries long assault of Canadian natives people. There should be a process by which, politicians propose policies which are then analyzed by the proper intellectuals and the results of their discussions publicized by the media. Speed and efficiency of government bodies is pointless if all its legislation is detrimental to the people.

Democracy arises not from elections but from empowered citizens. A nation without elections but with constituents with knowledge and power to enact change is more democratic than one with an electoral process. The Canadian vote must be backed by analysis and forethought to combat the tyranny of political subterfuge. Canada can be the first to build an intelligent society.

Ultrapunk

The Illegal Flood

2007-09-02T14:27:00.000-04:00

Lost in the Mexican flag waving hordes of illegal immigrants in America are the legally working individuals plying their trades in the great Republic. The government and the media, fixated on the problem of illegal immigration, have yet to see the problems plaguing legal immigration. Immigration, the concept upon which the United States grew on is now facing new hurdles since the War on Terror.

The rallies of illegal immigrations, presented by the media as if a horde of barbarians were invading the nations the likes of which not seen since 1271, distort the beneficial facets of the practice. The topic is not even about these non-citizens, who leave the American marketplace with a 4.8% unemployment rate.[1] Ignoring the individuals who take those McJobs, those seasonal farming positions, those migrant worker placements, we begin to see the engineers, doctors and other professionals who came to the Republic seeking greater wealth and the benefit of the land of the free. Providing America with labour that most of the domestic population is unqualified to perform, they still are not rewarded with green coloured cards or other statuses leading to citizenship. Instead, they are given the same skepticism of market saturation and "unwantedness" as an illegal immigrant.

By what right do these individuals even claim to have the power of suffrage, the right to social services, the privilege of being American as well as (most likely) being Canadian. The answer is simple, and yet American, "taxation without representation". The Canadian engineer that goes to America to help develop software that tens of millions use across the globe is not living off social welfare. That person is giving the American government thousands of dollars in taxes, providing invaluable labour and without that person, the job goes unfilled without a qualified American to take its place. Where is the right to deny a man these basic privileges and rights when they give more to the society than does the average citizen of America?

The United States founded itself on the principle that no amount of tax should be paid to a regime that affords it no representation. It is ironic to see that America has developed itself a new class of people, the immigrants, the class of people it founded the nation upon, to be the new beleaguered people. Without attention given to address the woes of immigrants, legal or illegal, for what reason is there to move to America? There is no dream of the American dream when a man may never be American. Let them work in Canada, in the European Union, anywhere else where they may live, breathe, work, pay taxes and gain suffrage.

[1] CIA World Factbook

Ultrapunk

CSA: Canadian Shit Agency

2006-12-14T17:46:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in this northern nation is a Canadian Space Agency but no one will ever know. When an opportunity arises, like the ESA Mars Rover, the plan gets scrapped. Could it have been the cost? No, according to the same article, it would have meant zero additional dollars. Could it have been that we were working on something far more important. If anybody can even name a CSA project other than the Canadarm, it would be an impressive feat. Given the opportunity to build ESA's Mars Rover, Ottawa decides to scrap the plan.

At one point in time, a tory regime meant business friendly and middle class enemy. One day perhaps, it shall be again but not this day. Instead, on this day, the tories are just unimaginable and incredibly idiotic. This is the kind of stupidity you expect from giving a basic arithmetic lesson to a pile of rocks sitting in a pool of dumbassness. When even NASA approves of the joint work there really is no reason to refuse.

There is one thing that I liked about the CSA, which was its ability to produce such important robotics components with an exceptionally small budget relative to other space agencies and yet get such renown for it. If it squanders the chance to do more, it only means it will do less in the future as other nations and their space agencies simply fill the void while our government diddles its fingers. It's rather interesting to see that while this government attempted to ridicule the previous Prime Minister who had earned the nickname "Mr. Dithers" yet dithers ever more itself.

Ultrapunk

Islamofacist Jihadists!

2006-10-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

Across the sea, into the continents of old, halfway to the east there lies nations with which contact is infrequent, trade is light and our perspectives biased. This Middle East, as you might name it, has become a turbulent land in recent times. Terrorist organizations and insurgents seek to form regimes so unpleasant and oppressive that few could survive under its harsh laws. They innocuously named it Islamism. Religion controlling the state; a form of government apparently baffling to Americans.

Yet, on the very podiums upon which candidates speak of freedom and justice, American politicians are the same who bring God into the daily discussions of lawmaking. The hallowed halls of the United States government are abound with references to God, not only for the mere symbolism but in earnest belief that it is integral to government. In the same country that speaks out fear against Islamism the constituents demand Christianism.

History has shown us time and again that human institutions holding to the belief that they are the manifestations of God's work are dangerous. The rise of secular government came about because the ability to question authority leads us to a society wherein which individuals need not fear the institution. Instead, questioning leads to a liberal and free society.

These governments as one may state, are two sides of the same coin, leading to oppression and authoritative regimes. The construction of this religious paradigm threatens the very basis of thought and expression. A people can be religious but a state cannot.

Ultrapunk

D is for Deficiency

2006-10-09T00:39:00.000-04:00

The price of competition in the murky waters of the market for electricity is the stability of the grid. Across North America, politicians reach into their grab bag of catch words and they find deregulation at the top of the pile. In deregulated California amongst the unlit lights and rolling blackouts they were confident of the cataclysmic benefits of deregulation to which this day they still enjoy its joyous effects.

As a preface to the giant that is deregulation, one could look toward the sunny and beautiful state of California. Peasants and peons alike have heard of the great beheading of the Enron beast but few know what damage and carnage it had wrought in its time. The culture dish in the California market opened itself to grid manipulation, a corrupt scheme that cost several engineers their licence (and one hopes they never gain it back). Worse still, after Enron blew out transmission lines like it snuffed out competition, there was a void in the entities willing to pay for the repairs.

Deregulation invites competition which in turn brings a market organization of a resource essential to survival. Presuming that Canada is not filled with citizens with the power of the Hulk, getting angry each and every hour during winter, one needs electricity to survive. A corporation which must contend in the market seeks to cut its cost, maximize its profits and reduce overhead. Markets do not provide resources to all, it provides to those who have the most money to give. The first cost that is discarded by the grandmaster in the hierarchy of management is the maintenance of transmission lines and the construction of new lines.

In the state of Ohio beautifully deregulated to the point where concepts such as “maintenance” or “failsafes” became unnecessary. They were obsolete. When another corporation can pay the money to build the failsafe, repair a transmission line or construct new infrastructure why do it yourself? The invisible hand of Adam Smith left the grid unsullied by the hands of these corporations even up to the fateful day in August 2003 when an interconnect rotted through and fifty million people plunged into the darkness.

Our government is not noble in its purpose to bring us electricity with its crown corporations. Intervention does not seek to stifle the capitalist man with the oppressive boot of socialism. Electricity is monopolized simply because it is a natural monopoly wherein which a single corporation provides the product cheaper than do several corporations. The concept is fairly simply to describe in real life. Three electricity corporations each building an electric grid is obviously far more expensive than a single electric grid providing energy.

When you see a market monopolized a reflex reaction is to state, “we need to introduce competition”. The logistical nightmare of multiple electric grids is a technical concern and all electrical engineers can appreciate the difficulty in establishing different grids for different corporations. A quick glance at cell phones show you the confusing soup of cell towers and radio signals that create that annoying ring tone that interrupts your movies and also why it’s so expensive.

In basic economics, there exist three simple choices to the matter at hand. Profit maximizing price, average cost pricing and marginal cost pricing. The knees of the down trodden quake at the sound of profit maximizing price. The coffers of the utilities companies overflow as our country freezer is filled with human popsicles. There is the marginal cost pricing, matching social benefit with industrial cost. When it entitles a loss to the operating utility it’s not a surprise it’s a course not oft pursued. We’ve been left with our last option, average cost pricing. The utility earns normal profit and the consumers are left with the lowest price possible without incurring a loss for the company.

When you can simply regulate, why would you deregulate? An electric grid you can depend on is priceless.

Ultra_punk

Internationally Obscure Policy

2006-09-30T15:23:00.000-04:00

In the golden years of Canada with the likes of Trudeau and Pearson we became internationally recognized for bringing a new method of installing stability to a world in turmoil. When Israel invaded Egypt, it was Canada who came to the General Assembly to bring the policy of peacekeeping to the table. It was several thousand Canadian soldiers on the ground that enforced the otherwise doomed to fail peace treaty the Americans pushed at the Security Council. Those soldiers stopped a war in which hundreds or thousands could have perished.

Now, in the past decade and half, where has our peacekeeping gone? We have only a handful of soldiers in Congo, Romeo Dallaire commander of the failed Rwanda mission had four hundred men to protect millions of people. Our current leader, Harper, thinks bombs and killing is more important job for our soldiers in Afghanistan than building roads and schools.

Society today needs to shift its focus of the armed forces. The days of conquest are over. We no longer steal slaves from our enemies. We cannot take territory. The idea that there is a clash of civilizations or ideologies is nothing but an arbitrary declaration by politicians who stand to gain votes from that position. War as it is no longer serves a purpose. Should there be another world war we will use nuclear weapons to devastate what would otherwise have been useful.

It is not that the military has no purpose whatsoever. The idea is that the military’s purpose has changed. In the early days of humanity, those who were armed were hunters. Later they became raiding forces. Then they became armies to capture land and resources. Now they become something else entirely.

I say to you that the sole purpose of the military is peacekeeping and disaster relief. Granted not all countries will agree to this and still commit themselves to armed conflict, but that does not entitle us to bereft ourselves of morals and commit to the same such acts. Peacekeeping is a mission that is honourable to all individuals. War creates displaced peoples, starvation and disease. It is never really a question of whether we should send soldiers to help them but rather how many we should send. An automatic placement of aid (but not combat) soldiers is preferable to doing nothing.

Disaster relief is another task well handled by the military to be a stop gap measure for more civil entities to take to the task. As we well saw in the tragedy of hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was completely destroyed and the National Guard was in Iraq. The questionable intelligence of the American president combined with the inept bureaucracy of the Department of Homeland Security led to a situation in which Canadian aid workers arrived in the city before even Americans. For what purpose does the American military serve in Iraq when they could have been on American soil, saving real American lives.

Peacekeeping and disaster relief is the new focus for the armed citizens of our society. The world is a global village and we cannot disregard this fact by blinding ourselves to other cultures with anti-immigration policies and firewall borders. We must content ourselves to the fact that we must help one another or continue to live in a society with a debilitating level of strife.

Ultra_punk

I have come

2006-09-30T13:18:00.000-04:00

From the deep recesses of Canada, I have come to this blog to post. As a little heads up I might have to say that my political leanings are toward the left in most cases. We'll see how it goes with the agreeing and such. In any case, if you don't talk about politics, they won't get any better in the future.

Oh and btw, while some of you may think, wow his name is ultra_punk, what songs do you listen to?! The reality of the alias is that it is simply two random words i rammed together in the intellectual space that is the internet to formulate a name that everyone can perceive as uniquely internet-ish. In effect, I have never heard punk music in my life :)

Ultra_punk

In the beginning...

2006-09-29T22:04:00.000-04:00

‘Politically Challenged’ exists as a means to express my social, political and economic views of the world and to create a forum (or a community) for intellectuals to meet and present there own views (with poise and etiquette).

While my personal views generally fall to the left/left of center I hope to have people from the other side here as well. Many of you will call me an “elitist” or a “liberal”, so I’d like to come out and say that… Yes, I am a Liberal (Liberal Democrat) and I am an elitist. I know some of you will agree with my posts, and even more of you will probably disagree with me to some degree, but through intellectual discussion we can all be enlightened (even if we fundamentally disagree).

Anyways, that’s all I wanted to say for now… In a few days I want to get a post up. It’ll be on the name of the blog (Politically Challenged).

Arky