Categories
Politics & government

[1518] Of Ayatollah Huckabee lost

Mr. Mike “I-want-to-change-the-Constitution” Huckabee lost the South Carolina’s primaries. Just days before the South Coralina’s primaries, Huckabee said this (via):

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view. [Huckabee: Amend Constitution to be in ‘God’s standards’. The Raw Story. January 15 2008]

Though it is hard to say how his call for God’s standard affected his odd of winning the primaries, I am sure we will find out soon. But why his loss in South Carolina is so important?

Mr. Huckabee’s loss in a Southern state with a strong turnout of religious voters was a setback to his campaign as it heads toward potentially less hospitable states. [McCain Has Big Win in South Carolina; Huckabee Falls Short. NYT. January 20 2008]

As for Iowa where he won earlier (before the Ayatollah expressed his desire to undo secularism in the US), his appeals to the Christian right might actually put the Catholics off:

One of the commenters to my post below suggested that Mike Huckabee was unlikely to do well among Catholics. Philip Klinkner (who is really blogging interesting stuff on the races) has some county-level data from Iowa suggesting that this is true. [Huckabee, Romney and Catholics. Crooked Timber. January 7 2008]

The Crooked Timber has graphics to show how Huckabee fared in Catholic-dominated countries in Iowa.

And yes, Ron Paul has outdone Giuliani for four out of six times now: Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and South Carolina all prefer Paul to Giuliani. In Nevada, Ron Paul is second!

I am not the only one whom are excited of Dr. Paul’s consistent performance against Giuliani:

In case you’re wondering how fringe candidate Ron Paul has fared against “front-runner” Rudy Giuliani, here are the approximate popular vote totals for both candidates so far this primary season (including 93% reporting from South Carolina):
Paul: 105,848 votes
Giuliani: 60,213 votes [Go Ron Paul. Daily Kos. January 19 2008]

As a result so far, Paul has approximately 6 delegates behind him. Giuliani has only abot 2. The front runner is Romney with possibly 68 delegates.[1]

I used to have high hope for Giuliani but as time progressed and as I learned more about each Republican as well as Democrat candidate, it became clear that his position on the question liberty and security does not match mine. With other candidates possibly mirroring his more palatable positions, it was not hard to remove him from my list.

I know that Ron Paul has no chance of winning but I think, like all that support him, it is mostly about principles and issues rather than a bandwagon effect that plagues many observers and voters alike. David Brooks may have described many voters succinctly two days ago:

In reality, we voters — all of us — make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices that were already made beneath conscious awareness. ”People often act without knowing why they do what they do,” Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner, noted in an e-mail message to me this week. ”The fashion of political writing this year is to suggest that people choose their candidate by their stand on the issues, but this strikes me as highly implausible.” [How Voters Think. David Brooks. NYT. January 18 2008]

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

[1] — See Results of the 2008 Republican presidential primaries at Wikipedia. [↩]

Categories
Economics

[1517] Of a basket of currencies please

When opining on the strength of the Malaysian ringgit, many implicitly use the US dollar as a benchmark. That has caused some people to overstate the relevance of trends generated by the two currencies to the Malaysian economy while missing out the bigger picture altogether.

The United States is an important export destination for Malaysian goods and this is why the MYR-USD exchange rate receives the special attention in the public sphere. However important it might be, trend associated with movement of the rate blurs out the actual meaning of changes of the rate.

There are a number of factors that affect a currency’s strength but essentially, it comes down to capital flow. An inflow strengthens the currency and an outflow does otherwise. The MYR has been strengthening against the USD ever since the pegging of the former currency to the latter was removed back in July 2005. Meanwhile, the USD has been slacking against various currencies, including against the MYR. If the MYR and the USD were the only currencies in the world, one would assume that capital is flowing from the US to Malaysia. The issue is that there are more than two countries in this world.

One will reach the same assumption, albeit wrongfully, if one concentrates on the MYR-USD exchange rate alone. Through that, it is easy to get a feeling that the MYR is appreciating in general. Coupled with the perception that a strong currency is a good currency — a strong currency is not necessarily a good thing; it depends on the composition of the economy; an export-oriented country would hate a strong currency — among lay observers of local economy and politics, it contributes to a kind of unfounded optimism.

It is unfounded because not all of the strengthening of the MYR against the USD is caused by attraction that the Malaysian economy creates. Part of it is contributed by uncertainties in the US economy which has nothing to do with the Malaysian economy. On top of that, not all of the capital that flows out of the US economy is flowing into Malaysia. There are other countries out there but yet, a lot of laypersons seem to overlook that fact.

The truth is that while the MYR has been strengthening against the USD, it has not really shown the same trend against our other major trading partners like Singapore and Japan. The USD on the other hand has been growing weaker against a majority of other currencies.

The USD can become weaker against the MYR if capital flows out of the US to a third country. In other words, the MYR can appreciate against the USD without the Malaysian economy doing anything positive. Indeed, with enough outflow from the US economy to a third country, the MYR could appreciate against the USD even when the Malaysian economy is bleeding to death!

So, I guess what I am trying to say is that please do not measure the strength of the MYR solely against just the USD and then make a conclusion about the Malaysian economy. Instead, take a basket of currencies or more precisely, currency of Malaysia’s main trading partners. The latter method will help anybody to arrive at a more accurate conclusion than the former method will ever allow.

Categories
Economics

[1516] Of stupidité

Hilarity of stupidity (via):

Did you hear the one about Amazon? It offered free shipping in France, got sued for it by the French Booksellers’ Union, and lost. Now it’s choosing to pay €1,000 a day rather than follow the court’s order. Ba-da-bing!

No, it’s not funny, but that’s because it’s not a joke. The Tribunal de Grande Instance (a French appeals court) in Versailles ruled back in December that Amazon was violating the country’s 1981 Lang law with its free shipping offer. That law forbids booksellers from offering discounts of more than 5 percent off the list price, and Amazon was found to be exceeding that discount when the free shipping was factored in. [Amazon’s free shipping costing €1,000 per day in France. Nate Anderson. ars technica. January 15 2008]

Protectionism is funny!

Categories
Liberty Society

[1515] Of boogeyman stay away. We have CCTVs!

With two high-profile kidnapping cases along with perception of high crime rate, the Malaysian authority is advocating mass installation of closed circuit TV to fight crime. Advocates of CCTVs are convinced that the device will help in bringing crime rate down. While that may be so — there are debates on whether presence of CCTVs reduces or merely displaces crime — I am not too keen on the plan. Given authority’s reputation in disrespecting individual liberty, I fear that the authority will misuse the cameras installed in public spaces for other purposes.

I would imagine that self-proclaimed moral police would be the first to celebrate mass installation of CCTVs. With it, they could more effectively enforce their moral standard on others. No more would the moral police as well as vigilantes need to make rounds to catch those that reject certain moral standard. It happened before and it will happen again if the plan to install CCTVs in public face goes through.

With CCTVs sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, gone would be the days when one could sit on the bench alone to savor the evening. Deep in one’s heart, there is knowledge that somebody is watching him diligently, trying to catch the smallest of mistakes in the name of some questionable order.

The religious right would like to believe that god watches each one of us. It maybe absurd but with CCTVs everywhere, that would not be too absurd at all anymore. God is now equipped with cameras and lots of them. God now is omnipresent, wherever CCTV is available.

God is a dictator and mortal dictators love to be gods. These gods employ dogs to do their biddings and this has been true for the longest time. Gods want to know everything that private citizens do for they are jealous. While it was hard to do so in the past, cameras CCTV cameras lift godly burden off the gods.

Unchecked conflict of interest occurs widely in our government. We have seen how public fund is being used to tighten the incumbents’ grip on power without the slightest of shame. Extrapolating that trend, it is not at all too remote for the government to misuse the CCTVs for purposes other than fighting crime like theft or murder. The facilities could be use to fight “crime” such as practicing liberty.

From a terminal connected to a wide network of CCTVs, the state would be able to keep an eye anybody for whatever reasons, be it a tyrant scheming to force all into obedience or simply peeping-tom the dog running his own errands while the gods sleep soundly in their thrones far abovenaway from the wretched earth.

But surely, they would not do that. CCTVs are for fighting crime!

And maybe my liberty should be sacrifice for Sharlinie and in honor of Nurin. How selfish of me to not to sacrifice my liberty for the two children. Never mind that the parents made mistakes that cost them their children. Never mind that a lot more parents never learn from that mistakes and when somebody points out that they need to change, they fiercely bark back at that somebody. Never mind that. Forgive me. It is now the responsibility of the police, the state, to keep children safe, not parents anymore. Forgive me to not noticing that changing zeitgeist. I suppose personal responsibility is outdated.

Maybe we need the CCTVs after all. Maybe, we need the gods to install those CCTVs in our bedroom to protect us from the monsters that lurk under our beds, outside our windows at night. We need to be assured that somebody is watching us, keeping us safe all the time so that we could sleep well at night, away from the boogeyman.

Or maybe just for those whom are too scared to have personal responsibility.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

A version of this article was first published at Bolehland.

Categories
Economics

[1514] Of bread subsidy in Egypt

Something that Malaysian politicians as well as advocates of subsidy need to learn. Quoted below are the effects of subsidy at another place on another commodity:

It is hard to make ends meet in Egypt, where about 45 percent of the population survives on just $2 a day. That is one reason trying to buy subsidized bread can be a fierce affair, with fists and elbows flying, men shoving and little children dodging blows to get up to the counter.

Egypt is a state where corruption is widely viewed as systemic, which is also why the crowd gets aggressive trying to buy up the subsidized bread. Cheap state bread can be resold, often for double the original price.

[…]

Egypt started subsidizing staples like bread, sugar and tea around World War II, and has done so ever since. When it tried to stop subsidizing bread in 1977 there were riots. Egyptians are generally not known as explosive people, but tell them you are raising the price of bread — of life — and beware.

[…]

The inspector explained why the system was so open to abuse. The government sells bakeries 25-pound bags of flour for 8 Egyptian pounds, the equivalent of about $1.50. The bakeries are then supposed to sell the flatbread at the subsidized rate, which gives them a profit of about $10 from each sack. Or the baker can simply sell the flour on the black market for $15 a bag.

[…] So they fight for cheap bread. They begin gathering outside the bare one-room bakery at about 11 a.m. every day except Friday, the day of prayer.

Over the course of an hour one recent day, 14-year-old Mahmoud Ahmed managed four trips to the counter. His job, he said, was to ensure a steady stream of bread for a nearby food vendor, who then resold it in sandwiches. It appeared that the baker let him push his way to the front to get bread before others. Was there a deal going? Mahmoud would not say.

Down the road, five blocks away, a 12-year-old, Muhammad Abdul Nabi, was selling bread, the same kind of bread, from a makeshift table for more than double the price at the bakery. But there were no lines. [Egypt’s Problem and Its Challenge: Bread Corrupts. Michael Slackman, Nadim Audi. NYT. January 17 2008]

Subsidy, lines and pressure to sell the commodity at a higher price. Sounds familiar?