Avast ye! I be needing your warez!

China is setting up a piracy court.

 

Because, apparently, the country has a, "burgeoning market for fake goods."

 

Yeah.  Right.

 

China might have an ENORMOUS market for fake goods.  It's probably the biggest in the world.  But I don't know that it would be possible to call it, "burgeoning."

 

Burgeon:

1 a : to send forth new growth (as buds or branches) : SPROUT b : BLOOM
2 : to grow and expand rapidly : FLOURISH

 

I'm going to have to call, "no way" on this one.

 

China's "fake goods market" is already SO big.  SO huge. SO 'endemic' that the idea that it would grow or expand significantly is just something I can't fathom.  Why is this?  Because the last time I was there--last June--the only "legal" CD or DVD's I saw were simply pirated copies of the material, sold at U.S. prices in Chinese-government run stores.  The rest of the goods were for sale at market prices (between 35 and 75 cents per disc) by entrepreneuring sole-proprietors. 

 

NEXT. The idea that American businesses lose $3.8 Bln a year to piracy in China is absurd.  Based on nothing but my own conjecture, I'm guessing Microsoft ALONE loses more money than that every year to China.  Or at least, that's one way to look at it.  On the other hand, Microsoft does make some money in China.  And the fact that it's product is so widely available--for next to nothing--gives it some room to maneuver.  Specifically, it discourages any competitor from setting up in China, and developing a better product that Microsoft for use in the Chinese market.  Music companies/MPAA?  I'm not going there.

 

Finally.  The concept that a "piracy court" is going to do anything to stem the trade in pirate goods in China?   Sure.  Just like prohibition stopped people from drinking, and just like the "war on drugs/terror" has stopped either of those enterprises in this country.  Until individuals have legal property rights, and until companies start targeting their prices to the countries their goods are for sale in (i.e. not trying to charge Chinese folks two month's salary for MS Office), people will continue to buy the warez at market prices.  The Chinese judicial and law-enforcement systems are in no place to curtail the Chinese market.  It doesn't matter how much U.S. business complains about it.

Are Singaporeans really --that-- dirty?

A story in today's BBC has to make one ask, "how clean is clean enough?"

 

A good friend of mine is from Singapore, and it's a place I've never been. Both reasons to hesitate when criticizing.  There is still a question though: how clean is clean enough?

 

The statement, attributed to a "manpower ministry" official is rather unambiguous:

 

"Prescribing minimum terms and conditions for the maids would inconvenience many households, a manpower ministry official said."

 

Another person I know--a doctor--has described Singapore as very similar to a hospital: You're glad to go there when you need to, but you're also happy to leave.  It's clean, it's orderly, it's sterile. 

 

Maybe Singaporeans aren't actual as clean as their image belies.  Maybe it's all the Indonesian, Sri Lankan, and Philippina maids who keep the place tidy.

Nature is cruel

Today in our nation's capital it is 77 degrees.  I don't mean Kelvin.  I mean real degrees.  Check it out.

 

We have not yet had winter, and we're already plunging headlong into summer.  Who says global warming isn't occurring? Several of my colleagues are unhappy that the air conditioning is on instead of the heat today.  It's the first day I've been comfortable in the office since November.  So I guess global warming isn't all bad.

I like North Koreans

Sing it with me now...to the tune of Monty Python's "I like Chinese..."

 

For the past year + I’ve been working on writing a paper on N. Korea.  It’s getting to the point where 4 friends have asked me in the last week if I was done yet.  I’ve wondered, why have I been working on this for so long.  And then, reading the news today, it became clear.

 

I like North Koreans.

 

Wait.  No, really, wait.  It’s not some sort of allegiance transferring fixation.  I share approximately none of their fervor for socialism, nor do I have a great deal of respect for the cult of Kim Jong-Il that is pervasive in the Hermit Kingdom.

 

But how can you not love a people who’s government is so brazen, has such little regard for consequence, that they’ll release a statement with the conditions like the one below.  North Korea left negotiations about their nuclear program a while back, over the perceived insults that the United States wasn’t being an honest broker: we had stopped all U.S. transactions with a bank in Macao believed to be used by North Korea to launder money and transport counterfeit U.S. currency into the world market (because when you’re a country that doesn’t believe in trade, but you have a leader who likes Japanese chefs, you have to pay them with something… and the drug market is already busy supporting your military).

 

So, because they don’t believe the U.S. has been fair towards their put-upon and much maligned repressive regime, North Korea has placed some “reasonable” stipulations on its return to negotiations (from the Washington Post):

 

“Li Gun, the senior North Korean official at the meeting, made four requests, according to a U.S. official familiar with the talks. They included demanding that the United States remove what he called "financial sanctions," form a joint U.S.-North Korean task force to examine the counterfeiting concerns, give North Korea access to the U.S. banking system, and provide North Korea with technical help on identifying counterfeit bills.”

 

There are four demands.  We’ll take them 1 at a time for easy reasoning.

1. The U.S. should remove “financial sanctions.”  First of all, either there are financial sanctions or there are not.  What are “financial sanctions”?  Maybe North Korea is talking about the fact that it doesn’t really like to trade with the outside world, except under enormously circumscribed situations (though there are bright spots of change).  So North Korea would like the U.S. to end its trade sanctions, so North Korea could sell us all thing things it makes—like starving people.  Or nuclear weapons.  Or Heroin.  Hmm…
2. Form a joint U.S.-North Korea task-force to examine counterfeiting concerns.  Actually, sounds good.  Get U.S. and North Koreans to work together on something.  My only concern is—apart from POW-MIA remains joint-ventures—no U.S.-DPRK cooperation has led to anything besides vituperation from both sides.  So this might just be a short-circuit to conflict as opposed to a way to resolve differences (like, U.S.: “You counterfeit our currency, please stop.”  North Korea: “We don’t counterfeit your currency.  Here, I’ll pick up the lunch tab with my shiny new $100 bill from Pyongyang.  I got it from a nice shop-keeper in Pyongyang, where it is illegal for North Koreans to have U.S. currency.”)
3. Give North Korea access to the U.S. banking system.  Because that’s exactly what a country (the U.S.) which has concerns about another country (North Korea’s) money laundering plans is going to do.  Especially when a country (the United States) closes down another country’s (North Korea) international money-laundering bank in Macao.  Right, North Korea.  You don’t need to counterfeit U.S. currency any more, and then launder it through Macao.  We’ll let you launder directly in the U.S.  Mmm hmm.  

 

Oh, and how do you have any international currency?  What do you sell on the world market?  You don’t have, officially, any exports.  Ohh!  Wait!  More Heroin and illegal drug-running money.  Just the kinds of things Uncle Sam (and the Heartland) want you to be able to deposit in our banks.  Good try though.

 

4. Provide North Korea with technical help on identifying counterfeit bills.  Yes.  This is exactly what we need to do.  We need to help a country that has—through some miracle of twisted government resource allocation (theirs, not U.S.)—become a leading counterfeiter of U.S. currency, learn what the U.S. does to catch counterfeiters so they can do it better.

 

Can I just say that this whole chain of stipulations is one of the greatest acts of diplomatic nicety I’ve witnessed in a while that is actually no more than a great, and giant nose-thumbing at the recipient country.  And when the country you’re flicking off has a whole slew of bombs, guns, and big people standing ready to jump into, drop on, or shoot at your country, sticking it to them requires more than a little bit of hubris.  Go North Korea.  Way to be a shining light for reason and progress to all those less fortunate than yourself.

 

Large ironies in the Middle Kingdom

A BBC headline today reads,

 

China's foreign minister has urged the US, Taiwan's biggest arms provider, to take "concrete measures" against any Taiwanese bids for independence.

 

Coming from a foreign ministry which has repeatedly warned the U.S. in the past that Taiwan is a breakaway province, and a purely domestic issue, it would seem that China is changing its policy, and asking for U.S. help in ensuring domestic tranquility.

 

How is it that the Taiwan-China conflict can both be a purely domestic issue--one which China wants the U.S. taking no part in, AND be one where China needs the U.S.'s help to take "'concrete measures' against Taiwanese bids for independence"?  Sounds like having their jiaozi, and eating it too.

Dogmatic adherence to stagnant policies

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has been speaking a great deal recently on the need to improve opportunities and investment in rural China.

According to some critics, what is needed isn't just greater government investment in rural areas, but giving rural people (farmers) a stake in the system by granting land ownership to them. Currently, Chinese farmers take out long-term leases of the land from the government, who still owns the land. This system has led to a great deal of unrest among China's farmers as they feel corrupt town and county officials have been selling off land they have leased to developers in order to pocket large profits. (Anecdotal evidence suggests the farmers suspicions are right.)

In his most recent statement about central government investment in rural China, Premier Wen said, "[W]e must build a new socialist countryside." It seems to me that the socialist countryside is exactly the problem.

With government owning the means of production in rural China (land) and the people who use it having no control over how it is allocated, in spite leases they are contract to, there is little incentive for the system to improve.

That's why I have a suggestion:
Give farmers in rural China property rights. Grant them deeds to the land they currently lease from the government. This will give them rights and claims in China's developing legal system. By causing individual investiture across the whole of the country, the CCP would also be catapulting the legal system from one where there is little independent judicial decision, to the type needed to allow it's commerce and industry to continue developing at the pace needed for job growth to keep apace population growth. (sorry for the convoluted sentences.)

As with any system involving rapid privatization and granting of capital to previously impoverished individuals, there is a risk that the unscroupulous will come along and buy up the resources for far less than they are worth--and people will sell for any number of seemingly valid reasons.

To get around this, I propose having an arbiter of land-sales during the first 5 years after privatization. This should be an independent not-for-profit organization (possibly funded by the World Bank) whose purpose is to give advice to the parties involved in land-sales; and make sure the farmers interested in selling their land are aware of its actual value, and the mechanisms which it can be put to: using it as collateral, leasing it rather than selling it, establishing coops with neighboring farmers (yes, I'm cognicent of the cultural and historical concerns on that subject). Basically, to give farmers every opportunity to make the most of their private property.

Let's face it, every country that has succeeded in the long term has managed to create a system where everyone was able to use the resources available to them to further their own goals. Until China is able to do this for it's 750 million rural citizens, it will be walking a tightrope stretched over a chasm with anarchy on the left and repression on the right.

"They Hate Our Health"*

Osh Kosh, WISC—Addressing the annual meeting of the Association of American Towns that Used to Support Textiles (AATUST), Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona presented the Bush administration position on why more Americans need vaccinations.

 

“These diseases, they hate our health,” said Carmona. 

 

“Just like we have to take off our shoes and belts at airports, and we need to become comfortable with the idea of our phone conversations being listened to by the good people at Langley, we need to start coming to grips with the degree to which the world hates our way of life.”

 

The speech, presented before a hand-picked audience of xenophobic former textile-town elected officials, was recorded by the same subversives who founded the school “How to audiotape a supreme court justice against his will, while he’s talking about the first amendment.”

 

Carmona continued, “It was one thing when just liberals hated America.  Many of us in the administration grew up with Joe McCarthy, and the besmirching of his good name taught us one thing: liberals hate it when America is strong.  But there is something more significantly wrong with the world right now than silly “constitutional protections” for liberals.  I mean, oppressed people around the world are protesting freedom.  Why?  The President has made this pretty clear: because they hate freedom.  Real Americans have these freedoms, and oppressed people hate freedom.  That’s why they haven’t risen up and taken it for themselves.”

 

Expanding into an entirely new area, later in the speech, Carmona said, “The hate directed at Americans has reached new heights.  The chief of the eco-terrorists, known variously as “Gaia,” “Mother Earth,” or simply “Earth,” has bioengineered numerous new diseases in a terroristic methodology known as “evolution” to target healthy, industrious, freedom (fry) loving Americans.  Why?  It’s so insidious as to be nearly unbelievable.  First we’re hated because we’re rich.  Then we’re hated because we have better movies.  In the early 90s it became clear that we were hated because our basketball teams were just eons ahead of the rest of the world. Most recently, people hate us because we’re free.  But now.  Now.  Now, we are hated because we are healthy.  And that puppet-master behind the disease puppets she controls, “Mother Earth” wants Americans to be sick.  These diseases, they hate our health.”

 

At the end of the speech, Carmona was reported to have asked if Osh Kosh was close enough to Canada that he could cross the border and buy some much-needed prescription medication at discount prices, according to unnamed sources.

 

 

*The preceding story isn’t real.  It hasn’t even been published in “America’s Finest News Source” the Onion.  It’s a joke.  Have a great weekend!

 

Out Republicanning the Republicans, or How the Democrats have Lost America.

Paul Wellstone defined politics as, “who wins, who loses, and who decides.”  Another definition is, “a means to solve conflict without the use of force.”  There are innumerable definitions for politics, but they all come down to a simple fact: politics is about winning.  And winning necessitates an opposite: losing.

 

So, at it’s core, politics is like war: you can either win or lose.  And as generals and emperors throughout history have discovered, in war one can lose even if one wins. 

 

The current insane debate about Dubai Ports owning operating leases at U.S. ports is demonstrative of the way American politics is no longer about one side winning or losing, but about both sides dragging everyone down with the ship.

 

There are three parts to the conflict in American politics today.  First there are Democrats, and second are Republicans.  Feel free to invert the order if it makes you more comfortable.  They share equal responsibility in this.  The third element is the American people, or, as I like to call us, America.

 

The two pugilists in this conflict: Republicans and Democrats, are fighting tooth and nail against the other.  Each side is doing everything within its considerable power to ensure the other side doesn’t gain any advantage.  To ensure that the other side is presented in the worst possible light, and to ensure that the other side comes out of any skirmish as broken and bloody as possible.

That’s great.  Any student of human nature will tell you that mobs react well to spectacles of violence and gore (look up “gladiator” or “coliseum” on wikipedia if you have any doubts).  The problem is, the senators and emperors who kept the Roman empire running for about 1000 years weren’t the guys in the ring fighting.  They also weren’t trying to win over their subjects through the fights.

 

This is exactly what the Democrats and Republicans are doing with and to America today: we are the trophy to be won, and the prize to be denied.  The fight is no longer about doing what is best for America—about pursuing some form of reasoned (or even unreasoned) dialogue about what is best for the country, and arriving at a resolution that is less than what either side had hoped, but more than they could have rammed through without the dialogue. 

 

The Dubai Ports situation shows us that, for whatever its faults, the Bush administration may be right: In today’s political environment, the more discussion of a topic, the less likely there is to be something intelligent said about it, and the harder it will be to achieve a responsible solution.

 

I wonder if the founding fathers ever envisioned a time where more secrecy would actually be the best option for a faltering democracy?  I wonder what they would say to us now, watching us flail about in cycloptic rage?