The curse of American monopolies

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Three quarters of all US industries became more concentrated between 1997 and 2012. Ten pharmaceutical companies control the production and sales of the world’s medicine. Three chemical companies control the supply of seeds and pesticides. One corporation controls nearly all the non-craft beer for sale on the planet. Industrial concentration has now reached the highest level in a century. Large companies restrict (or discourage) private initiative, restrict competition and innovation – and on top of all that they are inefficient, cumbersome and frustrating to deal with. My personal bete noir is Verizon (phone and internet), was originally part of the massive monopoly Ma Bell. This was broken up only to be resurrected in the form of a duopoly with AT&T.

After the Second World War a vibrant anti-monopoly policy was regarded as essential for a thriving democracy, This policy ruled until the early 1980s, when right wing economists and politicians, led by Robert Bork and the Chicago school of economics, managed to persuade the Republican party that monopoly power was not only legal but a positive good, and that capitalism self-regulates. According to the new Bork paradigm “the opportunity to charge monopoly prices…induces risk taking that produces innovation and economic growth”. In fact monopolies block competition, erect barriers to entry and dampen economic growth. But put loyal Fepublican voters at the top of monopoly companies and you have a steady and reliable source of election funding, and an army of sympathetic and well-funded lobbyists, aside from anything else.

In the best interests of the nation? The policy of true patriots? Decide for yourself.

Brief update on British university grade inflation

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An official British report has found that grades at more than 80% of universities have inflated beyond a level attributable to rising standards. Last year, 18% of students who got CCD or below at A level graduated with a first; 50% of students at Surrey University got a first; at Bristol, UCL and Durham, 2:2 and third-class degrees were given to fewer than 10% of students.

The age of rapid disruption, Part 2

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These are some of the industries due to be overtaken by new technologyy in the next 5-10 years:

– Hotels: Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

– Artificial intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. Last year a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

– The legal profession: In the US, young lawyers are not getting jobs. On IBM’s Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. So if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future; only specialists will remain.

– Diagnostics: Watson already helps nurses diagnose cancer, it is 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

– Face recognition: Facebook now has pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

– Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self driving cars appeared. Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted. You don’t want to own a car anymore. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it: only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. Our kids will never get a driver’s licence and will never own a car. It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

– Road accidents: 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles (100,000 km), with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles (10 million km). That will save a million lives each year.

– Motor car manufacture: Most car companies will probably become bankrupt. Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will follow the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

– Electric cars will become mainstream about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

– Taxis: Already partly upended. Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and yet are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

– Insurance: Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100 times cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

– Real estate: will change because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighbourhood.

– Electricity: will become incredibly cheap and clean. Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

– Solar energy: More solar energy is being installed worldwide than fossil fuel installations. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can’t last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

– Clean fresh water: With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2 kWh per cubic meter (@0.25 cents). We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water. Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, at nearly no cost.

– Health: There are companies who will build a medical device called the “Tricorder” (from Star Trek) that works with your phone, takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you can breath into it. It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, and in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medical analysis, nearly for free. Goodbye, medical establishment.

– 3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from $18,000 to $400 within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies have already started 3D printing shoes. Some spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large number of spare parts they used to have in the past.

– Scanning: New smart phones will have 3D scanning possibilities. Rather than go to a shoe shop you will soon be able to 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home. In China, they have already 3D printed and built a complete 6-storey office building. By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.

– Agriculture : There will be a $100 agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all day in their fields.

– Aeroponics will need much less water. The first Petri dish produced veal, is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural areas are used for cows. Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore.

– Protein There are several start-ups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly. It contains more protein than meat. It will be labelled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

The age of rapid disruption. Part 1

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In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years and, most people won’t see it coming.

Did you foresee in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first digital cameras only had 10,000 pixels and were a disappointment at first, but became superior and mainstream in a just a few short years. It will now happen again with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Some general points:

– Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go into, first ask yourself: “In the future, do I think the public will take to that?” and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

– If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea.

– An idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed to failure in the 21st century.

– Work : 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years. There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs created in such a short time. This will require a rethink on wealth distribution. (not before time!)

Tomorrow I will mention the industries and activities that seem destined for huge change.

Gerrymandering

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The 2018 election results are a powerful demonstration of why American politicians want to keep control of redistricting to themselves, thus exposing one of the most blatently undemocratic aspects of elections.

Successful partisan gerrymandering of constituences rests on one major concept: distributing the votes for your political party more evenly among districts than your opponent. One way to measure how successfully a party is distributing its votes is through what political scientists call “wasted votes”. Most of the votes for Democrats would be considered “wasted” because they are packed into heavily Democratic urban and suburban districts rather than being distributed throughout the state. Republicans have been very successful in adjusting boundaries to have just enough Republican votes in rach district to carry most countrified districts.

GOP lawmakers around the country have ruthlessly used their control of the redistricting process to cement statehouse and congressional majorities in states such as Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. In addition to increasing the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, GOP control in those states has also led to policy shifts in favor of lower taxes, deregulation, weakened labor unions and making abortion more difficult.

Although Democrats have benefited from gerrymanders in states they control (most notably in Maryland), the party has generally begun to embrace nonpartisan redistricting proposals as good policy and good politics. Earlier this month, Democrats in New Jersey’s Legislature attempted to change the redistricting process in ways that would have cemented the party’s power, only to see grassroots Democratic activists scuttle the effort.

The Courts have been even-handed, rejecting multiple congressional maps around the country, declaring they were unfairly drawn to handicap political opponents. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court even redrew all 18 of the state’s congressional districts after finding the Republican Legislature had tilted the map too far in the GOP’s favor. (Adapted from an article on NPR)

My comment: being allowed as a politician to adjust your electoral districts to benefit your party should be (is?) unconstitutional. The right way of handling this is to get a non-party-political, independent body to spread the voters evenly and fairly. Their decisions have to be final. Take redistricting out of the hands of party politicians!

Opioids

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When it comes to taking opioids, the United States has the dubious honour of leading the world. For every one million Americans, almost 50,000 doses of opioids are taken every day. That’s four times the rate in the UK. Take too many and you have a problem, and America certainly has a problem. The number of opioid prescriptions has fallen by 18% from its peak in 2010, but the total is still three times higher than in 1999.

Nationally, opioids killed more than 33,000 people in 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That figure includes deaths from heroin, an illegal opioid. But almost half involved a prescription opioid – that is, a painkiller available from a pharmacy with a note from a doctor.

So why does America – more than any country in the world – have an opioid problem? There is more than one cause, but one issue is that American doctors prescribe – a lot. Most insurance, especially for poor people, won’t pay for anything but a pill. Often the best thing is physical therapy, but no one will pay for that, and in any case it often needs prior long-winded pre-authorisation (for bureaucracy and procrastination healthcare insurers beat the Federal government). So doctors write a prescription.

Then there is the incessant advertising for drugs on TV, which use medical gobbledegook and are seldom explained. What they want you to focus on are the beautiful, healthy “patients” gambolling on stunning Caribbean beaches, better, presumably, for having taken the unpronounceable drug.

The US and New Zealand are the only countries that allow prescription drugs to be advertised on television. Pharmaceutical company spending in the US reached $6.4 billion in 2016 – a rise of 64% since 2012. None of the 10 most-advertised brands in 2016 was an opioid, but mass-marketing of drugs has accustomed the public to a plethors of advertised drugs that collectively promise to cure almost everything. In 2015, the American Medical Association called for a ban on adverts for prescription drugs, but they were not going to prevail against Big Pharma, whose only nod towards medical safety seems to be to include in every ad a warning “not to take the drug if you are allergic to it “. Well, yes!

It is cheaper to order American-made harmceuticals from Canada, but Big Pharma hit that idea out of the stadium. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the breathtaking profiteering of some pharmceutical companies with effective monopolies.

Irreparable damage

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Recently Theresa May strongly rejected the idea of holding a second Brexit referendum. Calls for such a vote have been growing among MPs, who claim it’s the only way of breaking the parliamentary deadlock. But May, who survived a Tory leadership challenge, insisted that another referendum would do “irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics”.

What does she mean: “‘would do’ irreparable damage to the integrity of our politics”? “Would do? The irreparable damage is already done! The political class has shown themselves to be incompetent, unable to analyse the problems associated with leaving the EU, to take a measured view of what could and could not be done, or to devise a strategy on exit from the EU membership without wrecking the relationship with Britain’s biggest trading partners, and undermining the way of life, prosperity and security of the people who elected them. The problem in the UK is the same as in the US – the politicians don’t actually initiate ideas or make the decisions any more; they are ciphers. It is the donors who tell them what to do, but on this issue the rich backers of Brexit are as ignorant and incapable of homework as the politicians.

Brexit was always going to be immoderate in the hands of the extreme right wing of what is inaccurately and euphemistally called the “Conservative” Party. Brexit, for sure, is very far from being a conservative idea. It is certainly an un-Epicurean one.

Something really useful: How to save your battery’s life

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In a healthy battery, ions flow freely between the anode and the cathode, and back again. Batteries degrade mainly because the surfaces of these electrodes become encrusted with oxidised electrolyte, and because other “parasitic” reactions follow on from that. Apple says that the lithium-ion batteries in its iPhones lose about 20% of their capacity after 500 charge cycles; most manufacturers rate their devices at about 300-500 cycles. Every time you recharge your laptop, you shave a few seconds off its battery life.

Many of us have the idea that it’s better to charge your phone all the way up, and then to use it until the battery’s nearly dead. This is quite wrong. Lithium-ion batteries don’t need to be fully charged; in fact, a high voltage stresses the battery. Most of the time, you’re better off charging it to 80% and then plugging it in again if it gets below 50%. Don’t let it drop to zero, and only charge it to 100% once a month or so. Leaving it to charge overnight is also bad. It keeps the battery in a high-tension state, wearing down the chemistry within. Batteries hate high temperatures, so don’t leave your phone in the sun, or your laptop on a bed with its cooling vents blocked. And if you’re not going to use a device for a bit, try to leave it charged to about 50%.
(The Week 15 December 2018)

A take on committees

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Some people love a good committee,
And revel in its nitty-gritty:
Arcane debates on last year’s failings,
The contents of circulars and mailings;
The annual dinner, drink and eats;
Optimization of receipts.

Chairpersons, regardless of their gender
Like to set their own agenda.
This, their most important role,
Gives them what they want – control.
They’re happy to keep debate in play,
Provided they have the final say.

Others hold forth, expound, expand
On the minor stuff they understand – –
Like weather, beds and movie stars
And email spam and parking cars.
With substance they’re inclined to freeze,
More often they are absentees.

Then there are those, about a third,
Who, if they have views, are seldom heard.
They arrive, they sit, look lost in thought,
But are they thinking, as what they ought?
As supernumeraries they shirk,
Avoiding tasks and paperwork.

Meanwhile, some champing at the bit,
Are pondering if they should quit.
They are not there for social fun,
But simply, yes, to get things done.
They move, they shake, their presence fleeting,
And off they flash to their next meeting.

Their exit quickly ends debate.
The chairman asks about the date
(making the remaining members fidget)
Of a meeting to discuss the budget.
Members naturally avoid the rigors
Of digesting all those boring figures.

Thus they progress much like a snail.
Faced with demands, most people bail,
Leaving achievement satisfaction
To that rarity, the man of action.

Comment: I have never joined a committee that I didn’t want to resign from.

The conundrum of internship

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What to think about the ubiquitous issue of internship? On the one hand taking on an intern from college (extraordinarily popular in America) gives the young person an introduction to commerce or politics and a transition to the real world. It allows the organisation to assess the person’s usefulness and adaptability without immediate commitment or legal entanglement and the disagreeable possibility of having to fire a young, maybe vulnerable employee. For the internee it is a foot in the door.

On the other hand, some interns are paid something, but mainly a nominal amount; others are paid nothing, and the message is “you are lucky to be here at all”. The implication of this is that you have to come from a well heeled family prepared to subsidise you, and this is both unfair to the people without private financial help, very divisive, and no doubt annoying to parents who thought the end of college was the end of endless educational expenses.

In my day I never heard of internship at all. You were either offered a paid job or told your face didn’t fit. The starting pay was, of course, modest, but if you messed up the company had, by law, to warn you, point out your failings and make arrangements to train you better. This is/was the civilised way of conducting employee relations. I have a feeling that Epicurus would have a single word to describe internship: exploitation, a way of getting enthusiastic free labour for nothing. Of course, if there is an understanding that a permanent job is waiting for you, and this is merely a trial period, then I suppose internship is better than no work at all. But, were I still a company boss I would have nothing to do with it: either hire the young person after interview, or don’t. It is not Epicurean to keep a person trying like mad, only to wave goodbye to them, come what may, having benefitted from their work.

A few thoughts on Epicureanism

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Epicureanism stands for charity, friendship, foregiveness, and suspicion of ambition and politics. What Epicurus offered was not help in dying, but help in living. Liberated from superstition, he taught, you are free to pursue a pleasant life.

Here are some further thoughts:

“It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, honorably snd justly, and also without living courageously, temperately and magnanimously, and without making friends, and without being philanthropic”.(Philodemus)

And this is the explanation of the universe espoused by Epicurus, to be found on page 63 of “The Swerve” by Stephen Greenblatt (highly recommended and very readable).

“In constant motion, atoms collide with each other, and, in certain circumstances, they form larger and larger bodies….the sun and the moon are made of atoms, as are human beings , water, flies and grains of sand. There are no super-categories of matter, no hierarchy of elements. Heavenly bodies are not divine beings who shape our destiny for good or ill. ……they are part of the natural order….subject to the same principle of creation and destruction, they govern everything that exists”.

Thought for a special day

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Epicurus would, were he alive today, strongly advise us to avoid getting distraught and upset about the state of the world, the ugly politics, the chaos, the partisanship, the rudeness and vulgarity that has been stoked by extremists, modern media and mutual intolerance. Even on this Christmas day this is a difficult thing to do, and I personally struggle to practice what I preach – it is sometimes incredibly difficult. But we have to remember that we cannot single-handedly change the world; all we can do is to be resolutely courteous, kind and thoughtful of others, listening and contributing constructively, respecting other points of view and setting an example of tolerance and relaxed good humour.

Afghanistan – the futile war

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It’s now more than 17 years later, years in which American commanding generals in Afghanistan repeatedly hailed the U.S. military’s “progress” there and regularly applauded the way we had finally “turned a corner” in the Afghan War — only to find more Taliban fighters armed with RPGs around that very corner.

Finally, in the 18th year of the war, an American general — to be specific, Joseph Dunford, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — has come to a somewhat different conclusion. This, mind you, at a moment when the Taliban has taken control of more territory than at any time since they were forced from power by the U.S. invasion of 2001. His assessment also comes in the face of the worst casualties (“unsustainable”) for the American-backed Afghan security forces in memory (more than 28,000 deaths since 2015, according to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani). In response, Dunford offered the shocking news that — get a grip on yourself here — the Taliban “are not losing right now, I think that is fair to say…” (Adapted from Tom Dispatch, 28 Nov 2018)

Hmm… give America’s top general for finally offering up the bad news, even if a few years late. In the twenty-first-century annals of the U.S. military, this passes for realism of the first order. Trumps reaction is to immediately remove half the American soldiers in Afghanistan, without consultation with anyone. This leaves the other half in acute danger, not to mention the Afghan army, whose members likely will be massacred. This reminds me of the scuttle out of Vietnam, the previous major American defeat. If you are going to withdraw, just withdraw, not half, but all the troops. This puts the remaining troops in jeopardy.

The Catholic church and sexual abuse

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At the Second Lateran Council 1139 Rome imposed mandatory celibacy for priests. The issue was money because, under primogeniture (now disappeared) the sons of bishops and priests had a legal claim on the land and holdings of the priestly “living.” Celibacy was instituted, but at the same time the Church, not then or since, has addressed sexual activity among priests.

Catholics are now in silent revolt, the more obvious sign being the new habit of placing one or two pennies in the collection box. More serious are the Five Demands:

– Stop the prevarications of the church and cooperate with the lay authorities to deal with errant priests accused of abuse.
– Stop wearing royalty-like garb and dress simply.
– Give space in every church newspaper to abuse survivors.
– empower the priests to cooperate with their parishioners local councils and committees.
– re- introduce women priests (women had a big role in the early church, until the misogynists
took control).

These ideas would help bring a measure of accountability and democracy to the church, but they do not address the reasons for the extraordinary number of accusations of sexual abuse.

The Pope has just announced that the church will not defend sexual predators, but he evades the real point.

The fact is that celibacy is the main driver in the wave of abuse. Celibacy has no scriptural validity; it is just a human construct. Human beings are gregarious and sexual beings. They yearn for love and emotional and physical closeness. This is a fact that cannot be ignored. Telling priests that love of Jesus is sufficient is not sufficient, and I guess both Jesus (who might or might not have been married), and his disciple Paul, the first Pope (believed to have been married) would probably agree were they to re-visit the planet. In short, celibacy is ridiculous and unnecessary, and by foisting it on the priesthood the church was asking for trouble, even if that trouble was postponed for nine hundred years.