Category: Economics

Categories
Economics Society

[534] Of Friday sermon at Ann Arbor Islamic Center

Every Friday around noon, I’m supposed to attend a Friday prayer at a nearby mosque. I have not missed any one yet lately, save the one day that I departed for San Francisco.

As it typically goes, there is a sermon prior to the actual prayer. Unlike in Malaysia where the sermon is almost for certain boring, politically biased and lacks logical flows, the sermon at Ann Arbor most of the time gets the wheel inside of my head cranking. The sermon is interesting because most of the time, it relates to issues that I follow.

Lately however here in Ann Arbor, the Friday sermon has somewhat become a fundraising session. Every recent Friday sermon that I’ve attended as far as I can recall, the sermonizer will start on how donating is good and god will reward a person that gives in the afterlife and what’s not. The sermonizer will continue rambling until a punch line – “there is a poor community in Charlotte, South Carolina that is building a mosque” or “your brothers and sisters in Columbus, Ohio need your help to complete an Islamic center”.

I have nothing against fundraising. As I wading through a very difficult jungle out there, I do see how almost everything needs capital. The statement becomes especially true when it concerns religion. No matter how much cash is thrown into the mosque, the church, the temple or anything, it will needs more and more money. Plus, a couple more cents.

However, I feel it is outrageous to see somebody explicitly soliciting for monetary contribution during a Friday sermon. In my opinion, an announcement before or after the whole praying session would suffice. A flier would suffice. A sandwich man would serve the purpose too. Imagine a sandwich man wandering around soliciting for donation at religious sites – would love to see that!

I don’t know. I don’t get myself involve into the local Muslim community too much. Perhaps that might nullify my opinion. Nevertheless, seeing a sermon session becoming a soliciting session is distasteful.

Oh, well. I guess I should be looking forward to attend another fundraising session before performing the Friday prayer, or I could skip the soliciting session, or, skip the prayer altogether and play Warcraft 24/7 until I rot in hell.

But I wonder, if I had stopped attending the prayer because I hate the sermon cum soliciting session, would I pull the sermonizer cum solicitor into hell with me?

This of course, assuming that God exists, I’m in the right religion, heaven and hell exist, blah, blah, blah…

Categories
Economics Environment

[532] Of the next step

The Kyoto Protocol has been in force for than three months now. I haven’t read much development on it save that some countries are planning to leave the Protocol and its legacy behind after it expires. They say it is too costly to do a Kyoto part two. At the same time, I doubt many parties of the Protocol will be able to meet the reduction goal by the year 2012.

Don’t get me wrong. Though Kyoto is not as effective as most would want it with people on one side says it’s too costly and the other saying too little too late, it is still an important step to be taken. It essentially set the pace towards greener future.

But still, one will have to wonder what is going to happen after Kyoto. Many have mentioned the need to get China, India and other developing nations to join hand in hand. But whatever is going to happen, I’m noticing a new trend in combating climate change.

Kyoto has been targeting governments. Maneuvering with such target in mind is hard given the fact that the Protocol almost died with the pullout of the US. The Protocol only got through with Russian ratification.

The near death experience probably made a lot of people to have a second thought. Hence, attention has shifted from government to organizations down the hierarchy – states, cities, private firms.

Some states in the US have their own initiative to reduce emission despite the federal government refusal to ratify Kyoto. Development in those states, California in particular has been rather encouraging. California, San Francisco in fact, has always been a leader when it comes to taking care for the environment. When I was in San Francisco, I saw first hand why – large fleet of its buses is zero-emission buses, electrically powered. I have not seen anything like it before.

Today, UN World Environment Day that is be held in San Francisco. Though the conference itself is not about climate change in particular, it will however touch on renewable energy and in general, sustainability, which go in line with methods to cut emission down.

And all these sustainability ideas won’t come true without the green technologies which come from many firms such as Toyota, Honda and General Electrics. General Electrics lately has been campaigning hard to reinvent itself as a green company. Its Ecoimagination campaign to me is impressive so far. I’m not however sure whether this is a real effort or simply another green-washing as done by Exxon and others.

Yet, all of the steps and trend is useless if there is no green grassroots. Then again, these green steps started because of expanding green grassroots. What makes me wonder is how the green grassroots started and then skipped everything between private citizens and the governments. It is weird to see only after the jump was made, everything in between starts to build up.

But in the end, it is good to see green ideas are being embraced by the bases and more importantly at the moment, privates firms. I’d guess it is not too premature or showing too much confidence to say, welcome to the green century, despite the death of environmentalism.

Categories
Economics Gaming Humor

[529] Of auctioning in World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft in-game economy is confusing to say the least. To be fair, it’s confusing at the first glance and it will make sense after awhile.

While I was browsing an in-game auction house for materials that I needed to brew a few potions, I found that that the price of the end product is lower than the total cost of materials needed to make the end product. I’ve heard about this phenomenon earlier in World of Warcraft forum but never really had the curiosity to investigate it myself. I was more interested in killing some other players and brag about it. But

For instance, to make a major healing potion, one needs mountain silversage, two golden sansams and a crystal vial. When I checked the price of silversage, it was priced at 99 silver (1 gold = 100 silver = 1000 copper). According to a census by Allakhazam, the average price is 72 silver. A sansam costs 39 silver on average while a crystal vial cost 20 silver from an NPC vendor.

And guest how much, on average, does it cost to buy a major healing potion.

If you’d guess around 1.70 gold (which comes from 72 + (39*2) + 20), you’re wrong. On average, the potion costs just 1 gold.

Funny isn’t it?

This sort of pricing is ruining my in-game profession, which is an alchemist. I gather all the materials and make those materials into potions. Most of the time, I buy the materials instead of looking for them. Gathering the materials takes extensive effort.

By looking at the current trend, it seems that I should simply collect the materials and immediately later, sell them straight to the market instead of using up the materials for potions and then offer the market the end product. This is a way to get around the weirdness of the in-game economy. But it certainly doesn’t explain the anomaly of the economy.

One explanation for what seems to be a weird pricing is that some sellers actually gather (or in fact, gotten it for free) the material instead of buying it off from someone else. With that, their cost, strictly speaking from monetary perspective while ignoring the effort needed to search for the materials, is lower than those that get their material from the market.

This explanation makes perfect sense. However, I wouldn’t these people that gathered the material by themselves gain higher mark-up if they had priced their items as if they had bought it from the market? Shouldn’t more profit and more gold be the goal? Moreover, these sellers don’t seem to add their effort into the price, which is ludicrous. As if, their effort shouldn’t be rewarded. Or maybe they just have different preferences, which is generally lower than those that think like me.

Because of these people, which I call “deflationers”, prices of everything related to alchemy are deflated, save those highest levels potions. In the end, every decent alchemist is forced to sell at lower prices.

Then, I realized, this is game theory, with a pun.

p/s – Leeeeeerrrroooooyyyyy Jeeeenkiiinnsss. Warning, large vid file. 16 meg.

Categories
Economics Humor

[525] Of crisis of the pockets

I’m a person that always carries a camera with me; that one pocket filled. Then I bought an mp3 player and bring it to almost anywhere with me; another pocket filled. Usually, I put in my keys along with the mp3 player on the same side of my pant.

I wore a pant with three pockets yesterday. My wallet made the third pocket full.

And then I bought a cell phone. Never really wanted it nor needed it until I moved to an apartment 14 floors scaling up the charming blue May sky that was plagued with December cloud and wind just a few days earlier. The apartment has everything but a phone. So, I figured, I needed a phone. Well, my friend had some influence in that decision but that’s not the point.

When I received the phone from the sales representative, I found something odd was happening – I was out of pockets! It might be just a problem of the uglier sex; I don’t know about the fairer one. I don’t think girls have pockets at all, all the time; or at most maybe just two pockets, most of the time. No pocket. It must be sucked to be a girl-wearing-dress. Boy, it’s hard to not to digress.

Anyway, moments after that awkward moment, I realized that I had with me too many gadgets. I usually bring a couple electronics with me and in the future, I would probably carry more along – laptop, PDA, crab, crap – all the stuff that I plan to purchase soon. Hence, this crisis of the pockets hits hard on me.

Why this is a crisis?

Imagine this – increasing demand for pockets with a constant supply of it. This could only mean one thing – shortage of pockets! I should be paying for more pockets. Heck, I should kill for more pockets!

I’ve come to one conclusion – I need cargo pants and a small bag for future cool gadgets. Pant with three pockets is obsolete. Demanding to wear a three-pocket pant in the light of increasing number of fun stuff is bad. Actually, it’s not too bad stuffing all in that three pockets. It is uncomfortable nevertheless.

I need a pocket subsidy to finance my more-pocket plan. But of course, there is no such thing as a pocket subsidy, or is it? If there is, I should well damn take it. If those people back in Malaysia can have their oil subsidy, I want my pocket subsidy too!

Categories
Economics Environment Politics & government Pop culture Sci-fi

[524] Of The Economist and oil

Exactly a year ago, Paul Krugman wrote an article entitled The Oil Cunch. He started off with:

Before the start of the Iraq war his media empire did so much to promote, Rupert Murdoch explained the payoff: “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil.” Crude oil prices in New York rose to almost $40 a barrel yesterday, a 13-year high.

Rose almost to $40 per barrel; about a year later, it is hovering more or less above the $50 per barrel benchmark. There was a time when lots of people thought $50 per barrel has too much fantasy in it. Now, nobody dare to question the $60 level too much.

The Economist latest edition has oil has its main focus. From one of its articles, it is clear than the team at The Economist doesn’t approve the plan to drill ANWR. The magazine bills such action as “This is mad”, or was it “This is madness”.

I agree so much that this is madness. Drilling the nature reserve in Alaska won’t alleviate the current crisis. The drilling return on investment won’t come immediately and by the time the extraction hit full speed, given the increasing global demand and little sign of slowing demand in the near future, oil from ANWR won’t be able to make a noticeable impact. It won’t make a lasting impact at all.

Believing the act of opening ANWR would relax the oil price is similar to believing one is Superman; able to stop a speeding bullet train by standing in the middle of the track, head to head.

The only solution is renewable energy. Or nuclear. We need to act now. Oil won’t last forever; renewable will.

p/s – I’ve come to a conclusion that The Economist is environmentally-friendly.

pp/s – can you feel it?

Because I do.