Just read a lengthy wordy article. Inequality at a dead end. Setting out yet again the case for the damage being done by the growing economic inequality. Then, significantly moving on to assess whether or how the existing institutions could bring about the changes necessary. The conclusion was they could not, we are doomed to stalemate, there is too much invested into the status quo. However it then when on to explore the new ways that people are coming together to tackle one aspect or another of the impact of inequality. Hurrah.
Far from claiming to have any solutions, what my blogs over these years have been grappling with is, seeking out suggestions for alternate ways that we can work together. Smack on trend. Not solutions but indications of where and how. Looking back over my blogs you will see that I have been exploring different ways to raise finance, different ways to benefit and protect our resource, finding a different relationship to big corporation but most of all how we can come together to look after ourselves, locally driven, not imposed by a central authoritarian government.
This exploration in an age where we are all (largely) self-centred, seeking instant gratification and indifferent to the wider social needs. Yet despite this, I do believe, we do have to rediscover a new community connection, relevant to the 21C, where we can come together as a caring community and forge solutions meaningful to us.
To find those new solutions means having the courage to join the debate, exchanging views, sharing experiences. learning from each other and slowly working out answers together. United we can own the world. Silent or as individuals, we are at the buffers, going nowhere. So your view is............
Showing posts with label financial. Show all posts
Showing posts with label financial. Show all posts
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Axis of Power
It is absolutely clear China with a developing independent space programme, including its own GPS system, having been highly proactive in buying up or obtaining primary access to most of the key materials and rare materials around the world and with most of the developed nations credit held by China, China has entered the World Stage in a major way. They are not bit players on the sidelines but has put itself in a position to dictate terms to the rest of the World. When the rest of the old Western former powers eventually pull themselves out of their stupor they are not going to relinquish their previous world dominance. We have the classic power struggle building up with China determining its allies to form its axis and the rest of the west developed nations lumbering into some coalition axis of opposition. The key questions are the buffer nations caught up inbetween these two axis, the Middle East and Australia/New Zealand, naturally a western alliance but too close to the China axis and too far for close support but perhaps most of all Russia sharing common borders.
We are not talking political arm wrestling, the west will not accept subservience to China without a fight. Can you really imagine the USofA meekly submitting to China's terms? I think not. We are talking about a walk towards WWIII. The only possible setback to China's progress to world dominance, planned or coincidental, is whether it can successfully continue to exercise total authoritarian rule and sit and contain the bubbling ferment of all their numerous minority racial groups. A resentment against the power and privilege the ruling Hans have surrounded themselves with.
Thursday, 16 January 2014
My House is my fortune
Once my house was my castle, the bastion of security and stability. The solid core binding the family together and the fortress to repel all invaders or those seeking to undermine our chosen way of life.
No longer.
My house is my fortune. Just an asset to be exploited, a transitory thing with no emotional ties to be dumped when the next opportunity presents itself. No point spending time or effort, investing in the properties future, unless it can be shown to produce an immediate return increase. So quick-fix, eye candy, on trend solutions, never mind getting to the bottom of the rot or decay. Several problems emerge out of this differing attitude. For a start house are not short-lived consumer goods to be re-cycled at the next fashion of technology change. They will outlive us by hundreds of years, we do need to keep them in good shape and relevant to the society of the time. That may require more than a quick immediate return, someone might have to invest in a longer term outcome.
A house is also a home, a home to a family. Family ties are not just those between each member of the family but with the wider community. If we are all doomed to be rootless, migrants, always on the move, never having the time or inclination for other than shallow superficial connections with our neighbours, what sort of sustainable society is that? We have to root ourselves and engage and care about the community that we live within. It is that community that shapes and defines us. It is what makes our family a family, the network of connections to those around us and the environment within which it is set.
So why this urgent need to move on, to move up the property ladder, to get to the next plateau of possibilities? It is fear, the fear of missing out of the ever remorseless spiralling upward of house prices. Fear of being left behind, fear of falling off and not being able to get back on. A fear generated and inflated by all the media, ever harping on about the latest price rises and easy sales to made. But houses are not consumer goods.Their price rise has nothing (or at least very little direct connection to) to do with the cost of land or the floor area or the actual cost of construction. Remember house prices are established by some bloke with a clipboard walking up and down a street, comparing this one to the others and to the prices similar houses have sold for. The price of a house is not its cost, but a reflective valuation of something deemed to be everlasting, someone's guess as to what it might sell for. So long as someone is prepared to pay that price then that is its worth. And why not when we are constantly reassured house prices can only go up. In this present very uncertain economic world where else can you put money that will grow? Houses are the only assured place because their value just goes on going up and up. The bubble just gets bigger and bigger, what is not to lose? Well for one thing, the bubble is so large it has cut off its renewal source. No new players can afford to come into the bottom of the market to sustain the chain. Second thing those player that do manage to join take on debts well beyond a sensible ratio to their income. Thirdly there is a rapidly diminishing pool of punters able to buy at the top end. Fourthly the only thing keeping the bubble growing is confidence, the expectation that the price will rise tomorrow and all the tomorrows.
I cannot think of any clearer indicators that the bubble is poised to burst. All such seemingly unstoppable bubbles have always burst in the past, there is no reason to believe this bubble is going to be any different. The fact that the world economies are dependant on the bubble continuing, their 'growth' coming from the increase in house loans, will not stop it happening despite various governments desperate attempts to shore it up. Their concern at the financial mess it will cause is not sufficient rationale to stop the burst, but just makes it louder and messier. When the inevitable burst comes and we somehow claw out of the ensuing mess perhaps we can once again get back to our house being our home and castle, a place of permanence and security.
No longer.
My house is my fortune. Just an asset to be exploited, a transitory thing with no emotional ties to be dumped when the next opportunity presents itself. No point spending time or effort, investing in the properties future, unless it can be shown to produce an immediate return increase. So quick-fix, eye candy, on trend solutions, never mind getting to the bottom of the rot or decay. Several problems emerge out of this differing attitude. For a start house are not short-lived consumer goods to be re-cycled at the next fashion of technology change. They will outlive us by hundreds of years, we do need to keep them in good shape and relevant to the society of the time. That may require more than a quick immediate return, someone might have to invest in a longer term outcome.
A house is also a home, a home to a family. Family ties are not just those between each member of the family but with the wider community. If we are all doomed to be rootless, migrants, always on the move, never having the time or inclination for other than shallow superficial connections with our neighbours, what sort of sustainable society is that? We have to root ourselves and engage and care about the community that we live within. It is that community that shapes and defines us. It is what makes our family a family, the network of connections to those around us and the environment within which it is set.
So why this urgent need to move on, to move up the property ladder, to get to the next plateau of possibilities? It is fear, the fear of missing out of the ever remorseless spiralling upward of house prices. Fear of being left behind, fear of falling off and not being able to get back on. A fear generated and inflated by all the media, ever harping on about the latest price rises and easy sales to made. But houses are not consumer goods.Their price rise has nothing (or at least very little direct connection to) to do with the cost of land or the floor area or the actual cost of construction. Remember house prices are established by some bloke with a clipboard walking up and down a street, comparing this one to the others and to the prices similar houses have sold for. The price of a house is not its cost, but a reflective valuation of something deemed to be everlasting, someone's guess as to what it might sell for. So long as someone is prepared to pay that price then that is its worth. And why not when we are constantly reassured house prices can only go up. In this present very uncertain economic world where else can you put money that will grow? Houses are the only assured place because their value just goes on going up and up. The bubble just gets bigger and bigger, what is not to lose? Well for one thing, the bubble is so large it has cut off its renewal source. No new players can afford to come into the bottom of the market to sustain the chain. Second thing those player that do manage to join take on debts well beyond a sensible ratio to their income. Thirdly there is a rapidly diminishing pool of punters able to buy at the top end. Fourthly the only thing keeping the bubble growing is confidence, the expectation that the price will rise tomorrow and all the tomorrows.
I cannot think of any clearer indicators that the bubble is poised to burst. All such seemingly unstoppable bubbles have always burst in the past, there is no reason to believe this bubble is going to be any different. The fact that the world economies are dependant on the bubble continuing, their 'growth' coming from the increase in house loans, will not stop it happening despite various governments desperate attempts to shore it up. Their concern at the financial mess it will cause is not sufficient rationale to stop the burst, but just makes it louder and messier. When the inevitable burst comes and we somehow claw out of the ensuing mess perhaps we can once again get back to our house being our home and castle, a place of permanence and security.
Tuesday, 5 February 2013
What it is worth
We should be daily on guard against our instinctive presumption that what we asked to pay for something equates in anyway to what it is worth. By the time the seller has added on his profit, made allowance for stocking space and expected rate of turnover, the distributor has taken off his slice for double handling, storage waiting for and then transporting, and, assuming there are no middlemen taking a slice before handing on, the prime producer has to cover the advertising, product packaging, verification of standards met, recoup his product design, plant rightoff and premises, insurance against adverse events, stocking levels only then do we get to the nitty gritty, the payroll to produce and the purchase and stocking of the raw materials;finally we get close to the 'value' of the product.
We expect an intimate relationship between what we pay for something and it what it costs in terms of labour and raw materials, yet what is costs actually is ethereal. A figure derived from gut or more probably prior experience of what degree of ancillary costs can be born by the expected market, and still sell and still make a profit. It has a lot closer relationship to the vagaries of house selling, what does the market bear or expect for this size house in this location. Pricing is not hard wired to actual costs but is pitched at market expectations and precedences.
This divorce from the actual cost of things is not just about the products we buy, but as I have explored previously in Government Savings, it is also true of the cost of how we choose to manage and administer ourselves. The 'cost' of government is not a balance sheet figure derived from what it takes to run or administer a set of procedures but reflects a historic norm. This is what has been relied on in the past to produce this end result and that with these adjustments this what it costs us now.
We got here for a sliding progression of perfectly reasonable and at the time right and fully justifiable choices. Right here and now being required to pay what others expect is their due and entitlement just does not seem right. Clearly we cannot go back to barter. Can you imagine the furore at the Supermarket as we all came in with our trade goods to exchange for our weekly shop. Equally we just cannot make and keep contact with the worldwide spread of sources and suppliers to individually barter an exchange for all those everyday items we now so desperately depend. Yet we have to get back to making some connection to what it actually costs, for something, as against what the marketplace thiks it can get away with.
I take heart from EBay. There is a model here, the dutch auction, products are offered at an optimum price then, depending on stock levels, degrees of demand and closeness to spoiling date, the price decreases until the consumers decides that it is worth it. Services might operate in an inverse way, with the rate for the service increasing until some provider snaps it up. Quality is the bug bear, we know only too well how the supermarkets dumb down the specification until it is a pale shadow of its former, introductory, self. With the growth of consumer feedback and instant consumer vitriol when things are wrong, maybe there is is this growing tool that will keep suppliers and providers sharp on their toes. Maybe, just maybe they can claim back from the domineering supermarkets, accountability for the what they provide. That would be the dawn of a new age.
We expect an intimate relationship between what we pay for something and it what it costs in terms of labour and raw materials, yet what is costs actually is ethereal. A figure derived from gut or more probably prior experience of what degree of ancillary costs can be born by the expected market, and still sell and still make a profit. It has a lot closer relationship to the vagaries of house selling, what does the market bear or expect for this size house in this location. Pricing is not hard wired to actual costs but is pitched at market expectations and precedences.
This divorce from the actual cost of things is not just about the products we buy, but as I have explored previously in Government Savings, it is also true of the cost of how we choose to manage and administer ourselves. The 'cost' of government is not a balance sheet figure derived from what it takes to run or administer a set of procedures but reflects a historic norm. This is what has been relied on in the past to produce this end result and that with these adjustments this what it costs us now.
We got here for a sliding progression of perfectly reasonable and at the time right and fully justifiable choices. Right here and now being required to pay what others expect is their due and entitlement just does not seem right. Clearly we cannot go back to barter. Can you imagine the furore at the Supermarket as we all came in with our trade goods to exchange for our weekly shop. Equally we just cannot make and keep contact with the worldwide spread of sources and suppliers to individually barter an exchange for all those everyday items we now so desperately depend. Yet we have to get back to making some connection to what it actually costs, for something, as against what the marketplace thiks it can get away with.
I take heart from EBay. There is a model here, the dutch auction, products are offered at an optimum price then, depending on stock levels, degrees of demand and closeness to spoiling date, the price decreases until the consumers decides that it is worth it. Services might operate in an inverse way, with the rate for the service increasing until some provider snaps it up. Quality is the bug bear, we know only too well how the supermarkets dumb down the specification until it is a pale shadow of its former, introductory, self. With the growth of consumer feedback and instant consumer vitriol when things are wrong, maybe there is is this growing tool that will keep suppliers and providers sharp on their toes. Maybe, just maybe they can claim back from the domineering supermarkets, accountability for the what they provide. That would be the dawn of a new age.
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Going it Alone
The best analogy I can come up with is, you do not venture out into a wild, unpredictable, rapidly changing, volatile environment with complete uncertainty as to availability of food or shelter on your own. You just don't do it. Anything happens to you, no one will know or will be able to find you. Only if you are extraordinarily rich, well equipped with instant access to a rescue team might you possibly consider it. Harsh places are not for the sole venturer.
Harsh places are for teams, then there is always some part of the group that can go and arrange for help or rescue. More than this, in a harsh climate you have to carry everything you might possibly need. The basics are a change of gear, food and water. These make up the bulk of what you must carry and limit your time out in the terrain. Then there are the also necessary but more optional items of shelter, cooking equipment, first aid, navigation, communications and so on and on. The bigger the team the more support you can consider which extends further the time possible out exposed. Each extra spread out amongst the load carrying capacity of the team, in addition to their own personal survival requirements. So where does a rogue with you but not with you fit in? Wanting independence but not willing to carry any collective load.
Team work brings with it conflict of aims, personalities, abilities and contribution. Managed well teams can way out perform any aggregate of solo contributions. Handled badly and they tear themselves apart without making progress. Finding the leader, for the challenges of any particular stage, who has a commonality of vision and restrained ego is crucial. So how does this loner, part of but not part of the team, fit in? What contribution can he make? How are any opinions offered by this loner going to be regarded by the real team members? Are his claims of pending doom and disaster going to cut any ice? The answer is self-evident.
Obviously what I have in mind is that the basics we each carry of food, which is the nation's currency, and the water, which is the nation's wealth creation mechanisms of industry, commerce and services. The hostile environment is the global multi-national trading environment and the team of course is the EU. Our best and only chance of keeping our head up and making a contribution in this savage world of prey on the weak and defer to the strong and powerful.
Harsh places are for teams, then there is always some part of the group that can go and arrange for help or rescue. More than this, in a harsh climate you have to carry everything you might possibly need. The basics are a change of gear, food and water. These make up the bulk of what you must carry and limit your time out in the terrain. Then there are the also necessary but more optional items of shelter, cooking equipment, first aid, navigation, communications and so on and on. The bigger the team the more support you can consider which extends further the time possible out exposed. Each extra spread out amongst the load carrying capacity of the team, in addition to their own personal survival requirements. So where does a rogue with you but not with you fit in? Wanting independence but not willing to carry any collective load.
Team work brings with it conflict of aims, personalities, abilities and contribution. Managed well teams can way out perform any aggregate of solo contributions. Handled badly and they tear themselves apart without making progress. Finding the leader, for the challenges of any particular stage, who has a commonality of vision and restrained ego is crucial. So how does this loner, part of but not part of the team, fit in? What contribution can he make? How are any opinions offered by this loner going to be regarded by the real team members? Are his claims of pending doom and disaster going to cut any ice? The answer is self-evident.
Obviously what I have in mind is that the basics we each carry of food, which is the nation's currency, and the water, which is the nation's wealth creation mechanisms of industry, commerce and services. The hostile environment is the global multi-national trading environment and the team of course is the EU. Our best and only chance of keeping our head up and making a contribution in this savage world of prey on the weak and defer to the strong and powerful.
Monday, 4 October 2010
Who needs Education?
The question is of course rhetorical, we all know we need education. The debate that has continued to rage over the past four hundred years is what form this education should take. Should it be practical, about life skills, or academic, exploring the furthest reaches of human endeavour.
For me the issue is simple. Industry is best placed to know what it wants and needs from the workforce and pay for its training. It is for them to take the raw talent and turn them into the skilled operative best suited to their particular industry. It is not for government to best guess their ever changing needs and skills expectations. We do need a new take on the old apprenticeship model however. It needs to be a lot more inclusive and wider ranging. For example the building industry now needs operatives that have a background understanding of working with concrete, steelwork, masonry and carpentry and all their associated specialist tools and equipment before specialising in their chosen trade. Likewise a machinist needs to develop the hand-eye coordination skills working with a range of materials from wood, plastics to specialist metals, at nanoscale through to massive and all the attendant specialist machine operations before further training in their chosen work area. That is for industry to fund and focus on.
Aside of that the Nation needs to develop its raw talent intellectually to the fullest extent possible, utilising all the available technology to encourage each young citizen to reach for their limits.
What we all have to face up to is the logarithmic expansion of the knowledge we have to encompass inorder to utilise our everyday skills. In any particular subject as the frontier of knowledge pushes ever forward, so the bandwidth of knowledge that has to be covered also increases. To make sense of a small specific item entails an absorption of a huge background of related information together with all its attendant sideways interrelated matter, necessary to make sense of, to fully understand and be able to manipulate the subject at hand. Subjects have not for some time been discrete packets that stand alone in isolation. Not for a long time is it sufficient to just learn by rote the times tables or the spelling-bee lists of words, life's complexities have broadened and spread out. We need to educate all of our citizens to the limits that they can reach for. That means galvanising and exciting our students to push on further and faster, grabbing every technological aid available. Yes there will be loss of precision at the small scale, faltering mental sums, grammatical or spelling errors. Better by far to reach forward knowing that life's harsh expediency will ensure these small scale loss of accuracy can and will be picked up later. The overriding challenge is to excite them to reach forward as only then are impossible targets suddenly attainable. That is what we so desperately need as a Nation . Every single student should be encouraged to reach for that limit, a university degree should be everyone's free birth right and expectation. For these citizens are our torch-bearers for all our futures and hopes. This has to be our single most important and vital investment into our Nation's future, without limitations of financial resource or fear of future debt or hardship. Without a proven provenience into a solid dependable life career. We simply need skilled citizens to cope with the incomprehensible complexities lurching just around the corner. The Nation and its citizens will have to fast on their feet and quick in mind to survive all of tomorrows great uncertainties. Invest upto the hilt in our stock, our citizens, now, as we just don't know what is coming next.
No better time than right now to redefine our education qualifications and notch them up a gear, expect more of everyone. I see more of an AO exam leading to a degree course similar in structure to a six-form college, acquiring the fundamentals, slowly focusing on the particular area of interest, but broad based, covering all the inter-related skills necessary to be an adroit citizen. Only then moving to a redefined University course with a much higher expectation in both input skills and output, say more of an upgraded Master, applying and extending a initial overview of a subject into a narrowly focused specialisation. These graduates would then leave with a degree of competence at the leading edge of their chosen subject. Our Nation will the beneficiary or not as these citizens use their new-found enthusiasm with perhaps some entrepreneurial flair thrown in to exploit and incidentally create wealth with their new found knowledge and skills. No guarantees of pay back to the Nation, but with such an uncertain future ahead and no clear path to follow this is our best chance of survival. One we must grasp it confidently and pool all our financial resources into it.
For me the issue is simple. Industry is best placed to know what it wants and needs from the workforce and pay for its training. It is for them to take the raw talent and turn them into the skilled operative best suited to their particular industry. It is not for government to best guess their ever changing needs and skills expectations. We do need a new take on the old apprenticeship model however. It needs to be a lot more inclusive and wider ranging. For example the building industry now needs operatives that have a background understanding of working with concrete, steelwork, masonry and carpentry and all their associated specialist tools and equipment before specialising in their chosen trade. Likewise a machinist needs to develop the hand-eye coordination skills working with a range of materials from wood, plastics to specialist metals, at nanoscale through to massive and all the attendant specialist machine operations before further training in their chosen work area. That is for industry to fund and focus on.
Aside of that the Nation needs to develop its raw talent intellectually to the fullest extent possible, utilising all the available technology to encourage each young citizen to reach for their limits.
What we all have to face up to is the logarithmic expansion of the knowledge we have to encompass inorder to utilise our everyday skills. In any particular subject as the frontier of knowledge pushes ever forward, so the bandwidth of knowledge that has to be covered also increases. To make sense of a small specific item entails an absorption of a huge background of related information together with all its attendant sideways interrelated matter, necessary to make sense of, to fully understand and be able to manipulate the subject at hand. Subjects have not for some time been discrete packets that stand alone in isolation. Not for a long time is it sufficient to just learn by rote the times tables or the spelling-bee lists of words, life's complexities have broadened and spread out. We need to educate all of our citizens to the limits that they can reach for. That means galvanising and exciting our students to push on further and faster, grabbing every technological aid available. Yes there will be loss of precision at the small scale, faltering mental sums, grammatical or spelling errors. Better by far to reach forward knowing that life's harsh expediency will ensure these small scale loss of accuracy can and will be picked up later. The overriding challenge is to excite them to reach forward as only then are impossible targets suddenly attainable. That is what we so desperately need as a Nation . Every single student should be encouraged to reach for that limit, a university degree should be everyone's free birth right and expectation. For these citizens are our torch-bearers for all our futures and hopes. This has to be our single most important and vital investment into our Nation's future, without limitations of financial resource or fear of future debt or hardship. Without a proven provenience into a solid dependable life career. We simply need skilled citizens to cope with the incomprehensible complexities lurching just around the corner. The Nation and its citizens will have to fast on their feet and quick in mind to survive all of tomorrows great uncertainties. Invest upto the hilt in our stock, our citizens, now, as we just don't know what is coming next.
No better time than right now to redefine our education qualifications and notch them up a gear, expect more of everyone. I see more of an AO exam leading to a degree course similar in structure to a six-form college, acquiring the fundamentals, slowly focusing on the particular area of interest, but broad based, covering all the inter-related skills necessary to be an adroit citizen. Only then moving to a redefined University course with a much higher expectation in both input skills and output, say more of an upgraded Master, applying and extending a initial overview of a subject into a narrowly focused specialisation. These graduates would then leave with a degree of competence at the leading edge of their chosen subject. Our Nation will the beneficiary or not as these citizens use their new-found enthusiasm with perhaps some entrepreneurial flair thrown in to exploit and incidentally create wealth with their new found knowledge and skills. No guarantees of pay back to the Nation, but with such an uncertain future ahead and no clear path to follow this is our best chance of survival. One we must grasp it confidently and pool all our financial resources into it.
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