Is the EU on a path to self-destruction?

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The following extract was written for the Daily Telegraph, a right-wing publication, with associated agenda.  Nonetheless, Mr. Warner has a point.

“There are  some Europeans who believe that the UK’s disruptive influence was at the root of all the EU’s problems, and that they can now revert to business as usual. This is a huge mistake, for the same factors that spurred Brexit – concern over immigration, precarious jobs, “increasingly alien law-making” – are just as evident over the Channel. Theresa May has managed to co-opt the groundswell of public alienation and reinterpret it as a vote for a “global Britain”. Yet Europe’s centrist parties are incapable of this sort of “bend-with-the wind leadership”. They resist any concessions to nationalist sentiments, because that runs counter to their precious European project, yet at the same time, they dare not introduce full EU political integration. So they’re just ploughing on. Punishing the UK for leaving is seen as more important than addressing underlying concerns. “It’s an almost willfully self-destructive approach.” (Jeremy Warner, The Daily Telegraph)

I must say, it does appear as if the EU thinks it can just carry on as usual, this in the face of nasty, hate-filled nationalist parties who will quite possibly win upcoming elections.  Then there is the issue of the euro, a currency that some people think should never have been introduced, owing to the very disparate types of economy within the European Union.  Currently  the value of the euro in Germany is (artificially?) kept low, allowing the country to continue to export at low prices, while countries like Greece are struggling to pay with an (artificially?) highly valued euro.  The German banks pile loan upon loan onto local banks in Greece, Spain, Italy and others, and that will probably never be paid off.  We have had one currency crisis recently, and can expect another.  Meanwhile, the EU went mad trying to build an empire that encroached upon an area deemed to be an old Russian sphere of influence, and took NATO along with it, seriously annoying the Russians.  Really stupid, actually.

Some British people think that the EU is doomed and that it is better to get out now, rather than later, when the political and financial mess could Be huge. They may be right.   The runes are against the EU, with a resurgent Russia, an unpredictable America, and a growing continental anti-EU sentiment.

I happen to think that the principle of the EU is one of the finest collective pieces of statesmanship ever devised by Europeans, but the dreamworld that the EU establishment now lives in is rapidly undoing the enterprise.

Music reflecting the times we live in

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We went to a concert the other night.  Tchaikovsky and Beethoven were featured.

Nowadays, if you have them in the program you also need a modern composer as well. In this case the piece was a Trombone Concerto (I won’t mention the name of the very experienced composer for reasons of tact.  I’m sure the composer is a great chap).  It must have been programmed ages ago, but uncannily turned out to precisely reflect the mood of the immediate times.  It was 27 minutes (or in my case 27 hours) of the most dissonant, gloomy, ear-piercing and dystopian music imaginable.  It included some delightful passages of harp playing, but I put in my musician’s earplugs just too late to protect my ears from sound of the most enormous wooden mallet thundering down repeatedly upon something or other, painfully affecting the eardrums. Curiously, the music was composed as a bow to Leonard Bernstein in 1991, when Americans were still confident, positive and could still be heard to exclaim, “Isn’t this just the greatest country?”

What the program didn’t point out was that there was an historical parallel between the Beethoven Symphony No. 8 and the Trombone Concerto.  Beethoven’s Symphony was composed in 1812, in the middle of an era of chaos and disruption caused by Napoleon (who that year reached Moscow with his army).  Yet, Beethoven managed to produce a symphony full of catchy, uplifting  melodies;  no gloom and misery for him – he instinctively knew what audiences needed at that terrible moment. On the other hand the Trombone Concerto, in this current period of foreboding, instead of lifting us up, left this listener more depressed than ever.  And for what?  Why? What is the point?  We actually we needed to evade reality and have a moment of cheer.  There is nothing wrong with escapism; on the contrary, it is a way of maintaining Epicurean ataraxia, or peace of mind. Long live melody and fantasy!

 

Why Epicurean Frenchmen should vote for Macron.

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In my humble opinion, France is one of the world’s greatest countries. It is a beautiful country with elegant cities, magnificent countries, lofty mountains and (albeit decreasingly), unspoilt beaches. It has punched well above its weight in its contributions to philosophy, economics, art, music, science and literature. Having been devastated by World War 2, it successfully rebuilt, surpassing rival powers such as Britain and Russia until the late 1970s, in large part because its leaders decided it would be at the heart of Europe.

Since the late 1970s, France has been in relative decline. Britain’s entry into the Single Market and the ‘Big Bang’ in financial deregulation meant it caught up and has since overtook its fiercest rival. Now unbridled by Communism, Russia has experienced very high levels of economic growth until very recently. Russia has also regained some of its influence it lost on world affairs since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition to this, France’s industries are notably less competitive than Germany’s, despite the two countries being in the Euro and adopting very similar fiscal policies.

The feeling of relative decline from what had been an economic, military and culture superpower, has induced a new nationalism into the French policy. Marine Le Pen, the woman almost certain to finish first in the first round of this year’s presidential election, talks of restoring national greatness. Unbridled by the excessively cosmopolitan and liberal EU, Le Pen promises a new era of French supremacy. Much like Donald Trump or the UK’s Leave campaign, Le Pen’s employment of nostalgia for a bygone era is crucial to her success.

However, French voters should not be fooled. France didn’t get rich by cutting herself off from the international markets, but by being at the heart of them. The country benefits enormously from trade, and would suffer immeasurably from reducing it. Its also worth pointing out that reducing immigration would not restore the country to its former glory. The average Frenchmen is very highly skilled and well educated, which is something to be proud of. But low-skilled work still has to be done, and very often, it is immigrants and their descendants that do work seen by most as undesirable.

Le Pen’s nationalism may have a great deal of emotional appeal, and there is certainly something to be said of it. Too often, the liberal centre has relied on dry statistics and the views of various think tanks, instead of making a compelling argument with an emotional resonance as well as an intellectual one. Having said that, a resurgence of French nationalism would be to the detriment of all of Europe. The continent faces an American administration that is at best, ambivalent about the EU collapsing (http://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/16/14285232/trump-eu-nato-interview). Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin violates European territorial integrity in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and props up Assad, the Syrian dictator that brutally suppressed his political opposition, resulting in a civil war and the worst refugee crisis since the 1940s. Since Europe has no great allies beyond its borders, it can only faces the challenges of today if European nations are willing to work together. Supranational issues- climate change, the refugee crisis and terrorism notwithstanding- demand a coherent supranational response.

Since Le Pen would not work with the EU so much as ally herself with Trump and Putin to undermine it, what of the alternatives? When Francois Fillion won the Republican primary, many French conservatives rejoiced.  Here was a man who would finally reform France’s bloated public sector, and cut it down to size. They also saw his Christian conservatism as a bulwark against the country’s increasingly liberal attitudes, as evident in the introduction of gay marriage under Hollande. For some, Fillion was the respectable face of nationalism- sufficiently anti-immigration and anti-Islam, without the overt jingoism and xenophobia that still plagues the Le Pen dynasty. But regardless of what is to be made of Fillion’s policies, he has come under allegations of severe corruption, having allegedly paid his wife public money to work as a parliamentary assistant. (http://q13fox.com/2017/02/02/evidence-mounts-against-french-presidential-frontrunner-in-penelopegate-scandal-tmswp/) As Clinton’s failed presidential run showed, it is important not to be tainted by allegations of scandal, even if you believe the allegations to be untrue.

The Left’s candidates are equally unsuitable for office. Benoit Hamon may be to the left of Hollande. But he is still a member of the governing Socialist Party, which has presided over continued economic stagnation and has refused to reform the public sector for fear of its union allies. Despite his populist rhetoric, a Hamon presidency would not be very different from Hollande’s. Comparisons between Hamon and Jeremy Corbyn are overblown, with the former being far more friendly to the establishment than the latter. France’s nearest equivalent to Corbyn is Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is running as an alternative left wing candidate. Melenchon’s frustration at France’s poverty and inequality is understandable, and despite spending large sums of money, the French state often provides poor public services to its citizens; education in the working class and ethnic minority banlieues is the obvious example. But Melenchon is too radical to be considered a serious candidate. While France ought to improve public services and reduce inequality, the country can’t afford to spend more money. The over-centralised and inefficient state must be modernised and the budget deficit reduced before additional funding be considered feasible. Melenchon’s Euroscepticism and opposition to NATO, while perhaps having a different ideological grounding than Le Pen’s, would still leave Europe less secure and more divided.

Which leaves Emanuel Macron, who must be considered the man for the job. Macron believes in public sector reform, but unlike Fillion, does not set unrealistic targets for doing so. Macron may be an economic liberal, but he has sufficiently distanced himself from Thatcherism so as not to be considered a threat to the country’s working poor. More importantly, Macron is a friend of the EU. Unlike Le Pen, he does not consider Trump and Putin to be allies, nor Brexit a positive phenomenon. He would strengthen ties with France’s neighbours. He would repudiate the far-right’s xenophobia, by accepting the EU’s quota for refugees. He supports free trade, while expressing a healthy scepticism of some of the details in TTIP. He would work with other European countries to improve the quality and coherence of governance, while empowering local communities through a long-overdue program of decentralisation. Finally, he is the most socially liberal of the presidential candidates, and would seek to create a tolerant and pluralistic society, in France’s fine secular tradition.

 

 

Has anyone noticed? This is ridiculous.

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Trump’s first employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the economy has added 227,000 jobs.  The unemployment rate is currently  4.8 percent.  This is close to full employment.  (Yes, thank you, Obama.  Think of the mess he inherited).

So when the new Administration “supercharges” the economy with big handouts to the already super-rich, where will companies get the extra workers they are going to need?  Of the American citizens  out of work at present some have given up, some are physically unable to work, some have become druggies, but the greatest number are probably people in their late forties,  fifties or early sixties who used to work in manufacturing.  That old style of manufacturing has moved on to become much more automated and based on electronics.

Sitting at home the the older people have become effectively de-skilled and need to be trained for jobs that are needed now, not for jobs that have long gone.  How will this be done?  In other countries the government spends tons of money re-training workers, with mixed success (but at least they try).  Not in the US.  The idea is that when you are young you go to college, get a marketable skill and that will see you through life.  This is now nonsense, and needs a fast re-think.  But Republicans don’t want to raise taxes to pay for things re-training in middle age .  They don’t like paying taxes for other people’s kids to be educated, let alone older people. Betsy deVoss, the pick for Secretary of Education wants everyone in private, fee-paying, schools, so how will the financially struggling, out-of-work guys get re-trained?  Looks like stalemate.

Of course, we know the answer – immigration!  Bingo.

 

 

 

 

Who do you know who might suffer from the Dunning–Kruger effect?

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The  Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. The phenomenon was first observed in a series of experiments by David Dunning and Justin Kruger of the department of psychology at Cornell University in 1999.  They attributed this cognitive bias to a metacognitive incapacity on the part of those with low ability to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
Dunning and Kruger, in 1999, postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in those of low ability, and external misperception in those of high ability: “The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”  The study was inspired by the case of McArthur Wheeler, a man who robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras. The authors noted that earlier studies suggested that ignorance of standards of performance lies behind a great deal of incorrect self-assessment of competence.
This pattern of over-estimating competence was seen in studies of skills as diverse as reading comprehension, practicing medicine, operating a motor vehicle, and playing games such as chess and tennis. Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will fail to recognise
  • their own lack of skill
  •  the extent of their inadequacy
  • fail to accurately gauge skill in others
  • acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill.
Philosophers and scientists have spotted the same thing, including Confucius (“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance”),  Bertrand Russell  (“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision”), Charles Darwin  whom they quoted in their original paper (“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge”) and Shakespeare in As You Like It (“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” .