Blogger and control+S

My previous post, Right-wing means for left-wing ends, wasn’t really a rant, though I suppose I could have written it in a more ranting style. However, while I was composing it something rant-worthy happened.

When I’m composing email messages, Microsoft Word documents, and other things, I frequently press control+S to save my work, so that if the application or the operating system crashes I won’t lose it. I expect I’m far from alone in doing that. But Blogger, the system I’ve been using to publish my blogs, takes control+S to mean “publish now”. So the post got published before I was finished, and I scrambled to finish it before anyone read it, in the meantime adding a note at the top to please come back later.

Unfortunate design decision. I wish they’d add an option to disable this “feature”.

Right-wing means for left-wing ends

That’s my philosophy: right-wing means for left-wing ends. I’ve never seen or heard anyone else use this phrase, so let me explain what I mean by it.

I like “social justice”, “sustainability”, and similar lefty things. But I stopped being a socialist at the age of 14, when I realized that not only does socialism not work but it’s also anti-freedom.

Socialism being just “communism lite”, let me start with the communist ideal as wonderfully expressed by Karl Marx: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”. To me this sounds great. But not enough people voluntarily use their abilities for the benefit of those other than themselves and their families, and many people try to get more than others would say they really need.

Those problems are addressed by communist and socialist governments by forcing people to do what they won’t do by themselves: redistribute income via taxes and income supports, and maintain price controls at least on essentials such as housing, all backed up by penalties for noncompliance that include prison terms. And resources are allocated through varying degrees of central planning.

Governments never do a good job of such things. Greedy individuals always exist, and often come up with innovative ways of getting around the existing laws and regulations. Governments spend a lot of time catching up with them, creating more and more laws that require bigger and bigger bureaucracies that work less and less effectively. And speaking of innovation, anything new requires that the government figure out how to deal with it, and then put controls in place. As for central planning, bureaucrats can’t make good decisions ahead of time for things that can only be effectively decided at the time and place of the activity (I hope that neither my wife nor I ever needs a type of medical treatment that was underplanned by the healthcare czars in Ontario, Canada, where we live). The ideal system ends up being an inefficient mess. (I hear the objection now: Everyone may be poor, but at least they’re equally poor! Or, Nobody may be rich, but at least nobody’s richer than anyone else!)

Now that communism is almost entirely gone and socialism is also in decline, can we still achieve worthy lefty goals? I believe that the answer is to work with human nature, not against it. My leader in this is a network of related organizations based here in Toronto. In 1970, an energy team was formed at Pollution Probe, a prominent anti-pollution organization, and in 1980 the team left over a difference in philosophy and created its own organization, Energy Probe. Since then additional organizations have been formed to focus on non-energy areas as well, all under the umbrella of the Energy Probe Research Foundation (EPRF). Although the EPRF isn’t well known outside policy circles, its directors have included such notables as urban thought-leader Jane Jacobs, Canadian science and nature icon David Suzuki, and George Ignatieff, currently deputy leader of the Canadian Liberal Party. From one of those organizations’ web pages:

Environment Probe is a division of Energy Probe Research Foundation, one of Canada’s leading environmental and public policy research institutes. Established in 1980, the foundation is often viewed as a maverick, taking positions that are sometimes out of step with other citizens’ groups. The foundation has always championed market mechanisms and sound, democratic processes to protect consumers and the environment.

One 1995 book title nicely illustrates the philosophy: Elizabeth Brubaker’s Property Rights in the Defence of Nature. (It’s available online at no charge. You may notice my name on the list of “sponsors”.) The argument is that if property rights are properly respected, pollution of other people’s property will be prohibited, thus greatly discouraging pollution: what the government fails to enforce, landowners can enforce through the threat and practice of lawsuits. Unfortunately, in the name of “progress”, and in the service of friends in big business, industrial pollution and other environmental damage has been tolerated and even explicitly permitted through legislation.

Clearly we cannot rely on governments to consistently protect our environment or work for the benefit of consumers. Market forces, on the other hand, are remarkably effective, because they align with individual incentive instead of trying to fight it.

It’s not just the environment. It’s healthcare, it’s public transit, it’s access to decent housing, ... it’s all those things that good lefties care about! Right-wing means for left-wing ends.

For more on this I’m going to direct you to something that is short yet packed with significance: the EPRF’s 10 principles that guide us. If you’ve read this far, it won’t take much more time.

Peak Oil

A reference I just saw to “Peak Oil” reminded me that this subject is well worth a rant.

“Peak Oil” is a term that refers to the peaking, and subsequent decline, of oil production as existing reserves get drawn down. But what it refers to, and the way it tends to be used these days, are two different things. Scaremongers use it to mean that “we’re running out of oil”.

Doomsayers rarely bother with simple economics. If the world’s oil reserves decline, it will take quite a few decades for them to actually run out. And during that period the price goes up, which causes two things to happen:

1. Oil users now have an incentive to look at alternate energy sources where practical, such as electricity generated from various non-oil sources. Often oil is used rather than something else simply because it’s the cheapest choice. And when some people switch away from oil, that reduces the problem for those who remain.
   
2. There is now an incentive to tap sources of oil that were not previously counted in the reserves because they were too expensive to exploit. For instance, the Alberta oil sands used to be uneconomic because it cost more to obtain a barrel of oil than the barrel was worth at then-current prices. Now that prices are higher, those oil sands have become a major source of oil, about 1 million barrels a day in fact. Canada is a significant world supplier of oil, and the oil sands now provide about 40 percent of Canada’s production of crude oil and equivalent. And they contain trillions (with a “t”) of barrels of oil. There are also oil sands in Venezuela, and there are other alternative sources as well, such as shale oil in the USA.
   

The net result is that oil costs go up in a manageable way, not that the world ends.

Quaker Oatmeal packets

First, I need to rant about how Firefox crashed while I was writing this (it was trying to download and open a PDF that contained reference material for this post), and then how Blogger’s “Recover post” feature failed to recover anything. Oh, wait, the 3-word title was preserved! Lucky me. Hey, Googlemeisters, are you aware of this problem with the supposedly improved Blogger?

So, here goes again:

Traditionally, if a package of plain Acme Yummies sold for $2.99, Acme Yummies With Almonds might sell for something like $3.29. But in the last few years I’ve noticed that manufacturers have made things easier for everyone by keeping the price constant but varying the quantity, e.g. $2.99 for both, but contents of 350 g and 320 g respectively.

Quaker Instant Oatmeal is now like this. A box of Regular contains 12 packets, while the flavoured varieties each contain only 10. So far so good.

However, the different flavours have different costs. Rather than further varying the number of packets, which would be a reasonable (and consistent) solution, the “brilliant” “geniuses” at Quaker have chosen to vary the amount you get in a single-serving packet! Here in Canada (the numbers are different in the USA, though the structure is the same), Maple & Brown Sugar packets contain 47 g, while Peaches & Cream packets contain only 32.5 g!

32.5 g isn’t enough for me for breakfast, so I only buy the flavours that have at least 45 g, which is only three of them that I’ve seen. Too bad, as Peaches & Cream used to be my favourite. And no, I’m not going to solve the problem by using two packets at a time, because 65 g is too much.

To further show how confused this all is, remember how I said that a box of Regular has more packets than a box of flavoured? My guess is that the “brilliant” “geniuses” wanted to appeal to the frugal buyer by providing “extra packets” in Regular. In fact, each Regular packet contains only 31.25 g. That’s even less than Peaches & Cream. Per gram, Regular is actually priced significantly higher than Maple & Brown Sugar or Raisins & Spice.

Noisy vehicles

A minivan without a functioning muffler just drove past, which prompted this post.

Motorcycles are a major culprit. I’ve heard that it’s usual practice after buying one to cut the muffler off. To impress certain people, I suppose.

Here in Toronto, the Municipal Code contains Chapter 591, Noise, which in addition to the “general prohibition” that

No person shall make, cause or permit noise or vibration, at any time, which is likely to disturb the quiet, peace, rest, enjoyment, comfort or convenience of the inhabitants of the City.

also contains the “specific prohibition” against

The operation of a vehicle, engine, motor, construction equipment, or pneumatic device without an effective exhaust, intake-muffling device or other sound attenuation device of a type specified by the manufacturer, which is in good working order, and in constant operation.

Have any readers in Toronto ever heard of any enforcement activity? Readers outside Toronto, what’s the situation like where you live?

Soundtracks ahead of their time

Often, films and TV shows have a scene change — and the audio for the second scene begins while the video for the first scene is still running.

So I’ll be watching a scene, and somebody starts speaking who isn’t there. This confuses me until the new scene begins. It’s not for long, but it’s still unnerving.

And this is intentional: someone has to do extra work to make this happen!

What’s up with that?

Stop it, editors or directors or whoever you are! If it was new and hip once, it isn’t any more, and if you think it improves the experience for the audience, I’d bet you don’t have anything to back that up.

Pharmaceutical prices and the Canadian Health Minister

Here in Canada we generally pay less for prescription drugs than Americans do, because of government controls that do not exist in the States. Consequently there are businesses that buy drugs in Canada and sell them across the border, though legality is iffy at best.

According to a front-page story in today’s Globe and Mail, four organizations representing Canadian pharmacists and drug distributors have asked the Canadian Health Minister to ban the export of prescription drugs to the United States. They fear that a bill introduced in Congress last Wednesday, which would allow drug imports to the USA from certain other countries, including Canada, would cause the manufacturers to end their willingness to keep Canadian prices low.

Health Minister Tony Clement has said in the past that he doesn’t expect possible U.S. legislative changes to affect Canada’s supply of drugs. And his spokesman has commented that the southward flow has actually dropped since 2004.

Wait a minute. If the flow has indeed dropped in the past, that is irrelevant, because the threat is of a change that would increase the flow in the future. Why would the minister’s spokesman try to misdirect the public? Something doesn’t smell right here.

Tony Clement is well known in Ontario, as he was a minister in the widely hated Mike Harris government (which gained power only because the majority of the voting population split its vote between two other major parties). Based on his past behaviour, my suspicion is that he is ideologically against price controls, and would be happy with an end to artificially low drug prices in Canada. But he won’t admit it for obvious reasons.

If I’m right about what’s happening then he’s being dishonest. (Something he would be well used to from his Mike Harris days.)

Blog 2.0

In April 2006 I started writing a blog about Web 2.0. Sometimes I want to write about something else, but as I’ve written before, I don’t like it when a blog that claims to be on a particular topic strays too much. (I can relate anything to Web 2.0, but sometimes the explanation will be longer than the actual post.)

Thanks to prompting last Saturday at EnterpriseCampToronto by Mark Kuznicki, I’ve finally created a second blog where I can write about other things. Topics will be varied: whatever I want to rant about. There will be no shortage of topics. There will only be a shortage of time to write everything I’d like to.