Rubénerd Blog :)

Or perhaps a more pertinent question: even if we want it, can fairness exist?

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I know these two quick observations are oversimplifications of broader, more complex issues, but I’m going to observe anyway. Have you ever noticed oversimplification is a less simple word than simplification?

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Wikipedia’s article on the OECD:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, in French: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, OCDE) is a Paris-based international economic organisation of 30 countries.

[...]

In 1961, it was reformed into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development by the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This blog post on the Rubénerd Blog is a blog post on the Rubénerd Blog, written and published by Ruben Schade, the creator of blog posts on the Rubénerd Blog found on the Rubénerd Blog.

Amongst all the rules Wikipedia administrators impose, at times far too strictly I may add, I suggest this one be added:

WP:IO — Wikipedia Intuitively Obvious
If the title of an article accurately and succinctly describes the subject in question, further clarification is not necessary!

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism?

~ Bill Maher

In other news, the photo above by Bbsrock on Wikipedia of Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins at the Atheist Alliance International conference in Burbank, California is the definition of awesomeness ^_^.

I value government integrity and I’m willing to pay for it!

This evening while grabbing a bite to eat I made the mistake of reading the Adelaide Sunday Mail. I know, I know, it was reckless and irresponsible, but sometimes I feel as though with my news sources from around the world on Twitter and predominately from Singapore I forget about more local news. Ah but The Sunday Mail tabloid newspaper has nothing to do with news… touché sir/madam.

What I did read though in the opinion section was a brief letter from someone in Hahndorf (beautiful place in the Adelaide Hills) talking about how having a registry of lobbyists won’t solve any problems. Now right off the bat I don’t have the faintest idea what this proposed lobbyist registry is, but I’m assuming its something lobbyists have to register with before they can pay politicians to do their bidding. Maybe?

Onto the primary issue though: can anyone actually explain to me why lobbyists are tolerated at all? Isn’t the idea of paying off or financially persuading a politician to advance your position in the hopes of legislation in your favour going against everything democracy stands for? Doesn’t lobbying concentrate the power in the hands of the few instead of the many that democracy is supposed to be about?

I’m not a legal student, but I am an economics student (and computer science, but not sure what bearing that has) and all I see of lobbying from my perspective is the means for the rich or powerful in business to institute change or to get around perceived government "problems" in their businesses which may or may not be in place for a reason. For example, not being allowed to dump waste into rivers or allowing people to grill cheese sandwiches in areas where the population is lactose intolerant.

Leaving aside the more sarcastic answers that could be given, why is it that lobbying is legal in most democracies? Do they serve a legitimate function I’m not aware of? Am I being overly simplistic by dismissing them?

I did the Australian Political Party quiz and got… the Australian Greens. I never would have guessed!

I do protest the last line in the description of the party though; yes short term profits will be affected, but to be blunt if we don’t take action now, business won’t matter. We also have to stop valuing a society just on how much money it makes. Money is critically important, but how useful or valuable is it if generating it results in irreversible damage? I’m a huge fan of sustainable economics not just because in the long term it’s the only model that will actually work (refer to the current financial crisis to see this) but because it takes into account social issues and the environment.

I’m not [entirely] a socialist because I think capitalism is still more efficient than governments in determining what gets produced and at what price because purely socialist systems don’t have the market price mechanism to gauge demand in real time. That said, completely unfettered capitalism is efficient only for those in positions of economic and business power, and without [effective!] government oversight and checks, businesses will only serve their own interests and will price goods out of the range of some who need it (think healthcare, food, education). And that none of this matters if we wreck the planet.

Perhaps I should just stick to talking about green economics! Standing down from my soapbox now.

I must admit when I first heard of Wolfram Alpha I shrugged and relegated it to the same area of my brain as Citizendium, a novel idea but one that probably doesn’t do much more than other current sites already do to be worth the effort. I was way off base; having since played with it for a couple of hours I have to say I’m impressed by what I’ve see so far and it’s potential, even if right now some queries might only get limited results.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been obsessed with cartography (my favourite book growing up was an early 1980s atlas) so my exploration of Wolfram Alpha has so far been mostly geographic, political and economic type searches. By entering a query containing a series of countries, cities and the like you can get a very clean, professionally presented comparison. While the maps themselves are a bit crude, the information is all there on the page, and other tables containing data such as age distribution can be toggled with links.

At least for me it’s been fascinating, and a bit scary, to compare parcels of the world that are so wildly different not for any geographic reasons necessarily, but just because of politics. For example, Singapore is less than 2 kilometres away from Malaysia across the straits of Johor and have a shared heritage but they may as well be on different planets! Doing a search for Israel, West Bank is an eye opener. Israel, Gaza Strip is shocking. @Tekhelet on Twitter warned me not to trust "leftist [P]alestinian sympathisers who distort facts to make [Israel] look bad." which I’d lend credence to if the pages were generated from one or two sources, but the over thirty separate, independent ones you can find out by clicking the Source Information link speak for themselves. And even if it weren’t entirely true, people are still suffering. Anyway we’re going on a tangent now aren’t we?

Then there are searches that expose similarities, for example Australia and Canada have very similar Gini coefficients, even if the site does call them Gini Indexes! I’m old fashioned you see.

Even though it is possible to mix and match cities, states and countries, it seems there’s still insufficient data to do them well. For example, if you were to compare the population densities of Japan and Singapore you’d see Singapore’s density is an order of magnitude higher, but I’d wager more than a few grilled cheese sandwiches the numbers would be reversed if we compared Singapore to Tokyo.

While we’re talking about cities, what I appreciate is being able to see local times and being able to calculate differences between places and the rough travel time. For example, to fly to Anchorage from Adelaide would take… a while! I guess it would have made more sense to go via Singapore.

Lots of disjointed, rapid-fire observations, and I’m sure to be making plenty more: as I said on Twitter, I’m a junkie for this kind of stuff!

ANZ and Westpac bank buildings on an appropriately drizzly day in central Adelaide, by Dodge 76 on Flickr

After reading the headline, I was expecting this news story from the ABC (Australia) to be about predatory lending,exploitation or other unwarranted behavior on the part of financial institutions. Alas no, it was a report on how people are becoming victims to people who steal their credit card information, not banks!

ABC News: Credit card fraud on the rise: report

By Online business reporter Michael Janda and staff

An industry report has identified a rise in the rate of internet and telephone credit card fraud.

Figures from the Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) show the credit card fraud rate was 45 cents per $1,000 in 2007, but in 2008 it had climbed to 53 cents.

Original Clipmark link

There were very good points regarding why banks themselves don’t in fact do more to prevent fraud which I encourage you to look at if you’re interested.

Several comments though were about using your credit card to shop online, but they were mostly limited to discussing virus protection. I usually just click the "Agree" link next to comments because people on the ABC News website are generally more eloquent and succinct than I am, but this time I figured an explanation was in order.

Kudos to people saying they were expecting the article to be about exorbitant credit interest rates, I did too!

As for the technical question, virus protection and firewalls are only a tiny part of the equation. Especially if you run Microsoft Windows you absolutely MUST keep your system current with patches and security fixes. Viruses, worms and trojan horses (three very different beasts) take advantage of weaknesses that often have already been fixed but that people haven’t bothered to guard against. Confiker is the latest example of this.

There’s also the issue of “social engineering” where instead of blindly sending messages out to millions of addresses, they watch your online activity so they can gather enough information about you to send you an email as a trusted person who you may let your guard down for.

If you use Mozilla Firefox (anyone still using Internet Explorer is dumb, sorry that’s just accepted fact now) the SSL Blacklist plugin from CodeFromThe70s.org helps guard you against suspicious “secure” web authorities, and the “BetterPrivacy” plugin (just Google it) helps guards against the next generation of malicious cookie spying. The weakest part of any system though is the USER, so just stay vigilant and remember if something is too good to be true it usually is. Like those misleading “low balance transfer” advertisements!

In retrospect I shouldn’t have called Internet Explorer users dumb. Some casual computer users may still not know, other people like my dad wish they could change but can’t because their company machines can’t be altered.

Kallen doesn’t like predatory mail credit card applications either!

As I’ve previously blogged about here on several occasions under the economics category, when I moved back to Australia on a part time basis to study, I decided to go with a credit union instead of a bank. My decision was based on my previously poor experiences with banks such as the long queues at branches where half the teller desks are closed; what I consider exorbitant fees; having to prove I’m a student every five minutes to keep my rates down; being bullied into purchasing services I don’t want or need; I could go on. I also take issue with some of their business practises such as predatory lending and their seemingly indifferent view to consumer rights.

While I still stand by my decision, the honeymoon period with credit unions for me is now officially over thanks to a personally addressed letter from the Australian Central Credit Union I received this morning. Inside was a letter explaining how I can use balance transfers to lower my interest repayments along with a “fast track” application form to apply for one of their MasterCard plastics.

Financial regulations in Australia are some of the strictest in the developed world, but as far as I know there’s no law against sending people letters like this which I consider akin to predatory lending. Encouraging people to take advantage of lower interest rates on credit transfers only to crank up the interest rates to the same or higher than the debtor had before reeks of misinformation at best and exploitation at worst.

What also worries me about this is what criteria they used to send these credit card application forms. I still use my bank account in Singapore for most tasks, relegating my credit union account here in Australia for small purchases and for paying bills. If I were a responsible financial institution I wouldn’t offer to lend someone like me money in this form if I had the knowledge that they only had this amount of money in their accounts.

To play Devil’s advocate, on the application form they do ask for employment and income details, but my point above still stands. The Australian Central Credit Union knew my balance and transaction history, and they offered me an application for credit.

It’s reckless lending behaviour like this that was part of the reason for the current financial crisis. If I get time I’ll be writing a brief letter to the Australian Central Credit Union telling them that I’ll be keeping my account with them because their service is still exemplary especially when compared to dealing with banks, but that I’m disappointed with their behaviour and hope they reconsider sending out such material to people in the future.