This was taken exactly one year ago Down Under. The coast guard was partying on the boat.
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Month: December 2011
Before this, nominal GDP is hardly a statistics one would look at. Things are starting to change with the rise of market monetarism.
Here is how the nominal GDP for Malaysia looks like, in comparison to real GDP. As you can see, there is a big gap between potential and actual output in nominal GDP.
A market monetarist will want the loss in potential output in nominal terms be dealt with. If the person had gotten his way, there would not have been a drop in the nominal GDP. Or rather, the nominal trend would have been more constant instead of exhibiting large variation year after year.
The same loss can be seen in terms of growth.
A market monetarist at Bank Negara would have engaged in big expansion of money supply in late 2008 and 2009 to stabilize the nominal GDP. And he would have tightened supply in 2007 and much of 2008.
This raises a question for me. While I do see the virtues of market monetarism, especially when inflation is persistently too low like in the US, would it work in Malaysia?
The reason I am asking is that I am worried about stagflation. We know that the stagflation of the 1970s was terrible but would that be better than what we experienced in 2009?
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[2479] That feeling again
It is tiring riding a roller coaster ride sometimes, running the full gamut of emotions from cycle to cycle. Already I feel unhappy about general everyday things. I recognize this sensation. The loathing of knowing another day coming; the judgmental attitude towards things that I really should not care about; the coldness towards others; the passive hostility underneath the polite surface; a swear word is just sitting at the tip of the tongue, ready to lash at somebody else who would just tip the scale.
It happened not too long ago when I finally decided I had enough and left the country. I never really explained to friends why I did so. I just told them, I needed a long break. It worked. Most of the days I found myself in Sydney, I would wake up feeling good. It is a wonder who waking up on the right side of the bed affects one’s life. Songs would play in one’s head, smiling to strangers greeting them good morning.
Now that I am back in Malaysia for nearly 10 months, that very feeling that sought escape from has returned. I never thought it would be back so soon.
I do not know what is the source of this anger but I have a feeling it is just the way society works in Malaysia. It could just be me, but if I found myself cheery and happy abroad but not at home, I would think the answer lies outside of me. Something at home makes me bitter.
There are thousands of things that make me angry. I could name them one by one, spending the whole day complaining about Malaysia. The whole thing is disagreeable and it bugs me. But I find it outrageous that any one of them could make me as bitter as I am now. It is killing me slowly.
Maybe, it is the accumulation of all things, but I am having trouble putting my finger on it regardless. Yet, I suspect it has something to do with the country. Maybe Malaysia with all of its idiosyncrasies is just not for me.
I am starting to think returning to Malaysia was a mistake. I should set a deadline and if by that deadline I feel worse or the same, I should leave for good. I know how it felt before and I do not like it. There is no reason I should endure it again. I have come to think that I rather be nobody and happy, than somebody but tortured.
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[2478] The banality of mass opinions
I found myself in a party full of strangers once. I generally dislike this kind of parties (I like small intimate parties) but there I was in a middle of conversation among strangers. I was disinterested. I did not show it but tiring facade that is social etiquette demands participation and I had really nowhere to go without being rude. The settings was not a one-time encounter where I could risk being labeled as an impolite stranger. They know me personally, even if superficially, and I know them personally, even if superficially. One lesson arising from “repeated game” is that reputation matters. I did not want to be known that rude person. And I have been labeled as anti-social, sometimes even arrogant by some, but I guess, not without basis. Some stereotypes like being an alum of certain schools also work against me.
So, I try to be friendlier sometimes, but I distrust strangers, and that is a huge barrier for me.
But I listened to the conversation at hand even as I wished I was somewhere else, even as the topic of the conversation switched from one that bores to one that dulls.
Many have short attention span, forgetting what was said five sentences ago. I marked every single point of switch of topic, trying to entertain myself amid banality of mass opinions regurgitated to me, as if these opinions were the product of individual creative endeavor that worth the seconds and minutes and heavens, the hour it consumed. In truth, those opinions were first maybe written or said very well and good, but later repackaged for popular consumption, for the masses.
The mass opinions focus on the punch line, because it is easy. The logic, the rationale, the origin, the context, all pushed to the backroom, hidden, doors locked. Slowly, voila! The development of clichés. Gradually and suddenly, an argument designed for specific issue became the general punch line for all issues, losing its context.
There I was, listening to clichéd arguments on 1,001 issues by the conversationists, being polite.
From those precursors of food production already practiced by hunter-gatherers, it developed stepwise. Not all the necessary techniques were developed within a short time, and not all the wild plants and animals that were eventually domesticated in a given area were domesticated simultaneously. Even in the cases of most rapid independent development of food production from a hunting-gathering lifestyle, it took thousands of years to shift from complete dependence on wild foods to a diet with very few wild foods. In early stages of food production, people simultaneously collected wild foods and raised cultivated ones, and diverse types of collecting activities diminished in importance at different times as reliance on crops increased.
The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate decisions about allocation time and effort. Foraging humans, like foraging animals, have only finite time and energy, which they can spend in various ways. We can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking: Shall I spend today hoeing my garden (predictably yielding a lot of vegetables several months from now), gathering shellfish (predictably yielding a little meat today)? or hunting deer (yielding possibly a lot of meat today, but more likely nothing)? Human and animal foragers are constantly prioritizing and making effort-allocation decisions, even if only unconsciously. The concentrate first on favorite foods, or ones that yield the highest payoff. If these are unavailable, they shift to less and less preferred foods. [Guns, Germs, and Steel. Chapter 6: To Farm or Not to Farm. Page 107. Jared Diamond. 1999]
A lot of words.
Luckily, any economics student who has his or her bases covered will understand this as [latex]\frac{dy}{dx} = \frac{P_x}{P_y}[/latex] in one way or the other. Simple! We can thank the marginal revolution that began in the late 19th century for that. Marginal revolution also solved the paradox of value. Indeed, marginalism is the foundation of modern microeconomics, regardless of your cup of tea.
And oh, did you know that the marginal revolution also made Marxian economics in its original interpretation completely obsolete?