The latest from Spokane
Spokane invaded by thousands of porta-potties.
"Once a toilet has been used on a construction site, you don't want to put it anywhere but a construction site," Corn said "You wouldn't take one of those toilets and send it to a wedding."
The fish in the Spokane River are poisoned.
Spokane River fish have higher levels of some toxic man-made chemicals than those found anywhere else in Washington, the state Department of Ecology said Thursday in recommending an ambitious cleanup.
The department released preliminary results of water quality studies and said concentrations of some toxic chemicals must be reduced by as much as 99 percent to meet health standards.
The studies over the past three years looked at concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls - PCBs - polybrominated diphenyl ethers - PBDEs - dioxins and heavy metals, all of which can accumulate in fish tissue.
The studies found levels of PCBs are decreasing in fish, while amounts of dioxins found in trout downstream from Spokane are the highest found in the state.
Yes folks in Spokane still go swimming in that same river.
Spokane Valley Fire Marshal Kevin Miller says relatives of the 22-year-old man saw him struggling in deep water at Plante's Ferry Park, north of the Upriver Dam at about 4:45 p.m. Sunday.
And the cops in Spokane still aren't solving violent crime.
Steven Allison had a chance to tell police who had beaten him but refused. Days later he was dead and now, nearly a year later, the investigation has stalled.
Investigators have been focusing on two individuals but have little to show for their efforts to bring whoever was responsible for the death of Allison, 44, of Spokane, to justice, said Sgt. Joseph Peterson, head of the major crimes unit, and the lead detective on the case, Timothy Madsen.
I'm betting they won't solve this one, either:
A homeless, wheelchair-bound man was hospitalized with extensive burns after being set afire in downtown Spokane, police said.
Because the cops in Spokane don't solve crimes, they commit them:
A mentally disabled man buying a burrito ends up dead in March after being repeatedly shocked with police Taser guns and hog-tied on the floor of a Spokane convenience store.
One month earlier, two police detectives order the deletion of sexually explicit digital camera pictures of a city firefighter having on-duty sex with a 16-year-old girl.
And the month before that, in January, a delusional man suffering alcohol withdrawal dies in the Spokane County Jail after fighting with guards and getting a "donkey kick" to the torso by a jailer who is now a city police officer."
Spokane, where you can get away with murder, if your a cop, or a Catholic priest. And if you're a pedophile, too much is never enough.
Jim on 06.27.06 @ 02:09 AM PST [link]
Channeling Russell Nelson
Russell Nelson, a self-described "economist" (though he makes a poor one at best) once opined that "blacks are lazy?", which got him kicked out of his seat at the head of the "OSI".
Here is likely what Russell wishes he had said instead.
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Back in 1860s America, the U.S involved itself in the Civil War. We all know about this war--the bloodiest, least profitable war in the history of the U.S., a war in which unbelievably huge amounts of money went right down the drain.
Of course, this war is most famous for having effected a mighty change in the management paradigm from a central-owner hierarchical model to a much more decentralized, fluid model--a real "hippie revolution" kind of paradigm shift!
We'll talk about this misunderstanding in a moment--but first, a bit of background.
Believe it or not, even many Americans don't know what caused the Civil War. Why did people fight and die and lose money? The answer is really really simple, but it is surprising.
It comes down to one word: FREEDOM.
By the 1860s, the South was utterly flush with cash. It had recently benefitted from the cotton gin, an invention that took the seeds out of cotton and the South out of its pre-industrial past. Hundreds of thousands of workers, previously unemployed in their countries of origin, were given useful jobs in textiles.
Into this rosy picture of freedom and boon stepped... you guessed it: the NORTH.
The South, of course, wanted to buy industrial equipment where it was cheapest, and to sell raw cotton where it fetched the highest price--in Britain. The North, however, decided the South should NOT have the FREEDOM to do this, but instead should HAVE to do business with the North, and only with the North.
The North used its majority stake in the country's governance to exploit the Southern landowners and deny them their freedom to choose the cheapest prices; this of course made them very angry. You'd be angry too if you were denied your freedom of choice! And so the North's abusive tariff practices basically caused what otherwise was a perfectly good market to spiral into a hideously unprofitable war.
Now some Civil-War apologists have said that the Civil War, for all its faults, at least had the effect of outlawing an Involuntarily Imported Workforce. Now such a labor model is of course a terrible thing. I myself am an abolitionist. But in fact there is no doubt that left to their own devices, markets would have eventually replaced slavery with "cleaner" sources of labor anyhow.
To prove my point, join me in what Albert Einstein used to call a "thought experiment".
Suppose Involuntarily Imported Labor had never been outlawed, that slaves still existed and that it were easy to own one. What do you think it would cost today to profitably maintain a slave--say, here in Potsdam, N.Y.?
Let's see.... A modern set of clothing costs $50 at the very least. Two meals from McDonalds cost $10 or so. The cheapest small room probably runs for $250 / month. To function well, you have to pay for your slave's health care--if its country of origin was polluted, this could get very expensive. And of course what with child labor laws, much of the youth market is simply not available.
Now leave the same slave back at home--let's say, Gabon. In Gabon, $10 pays for two weeks of food, not just one day. $250 pays for two years' housing, not a month's. $50 pays for a lifetime of budget clothing! Health care is likewise much cheaper. On top of it all, youth can be gainfully employed without restriction.
The biggest benefit of the remote labor system, though, is to the slave--because in Gabon, there is no need for the slave not to be free! This is primarily because there are no one-time slave transport costs to recoup, and so the potential losses from fleeing are limited to the slave's rudimentary training. So since the slave can be free, he or she suddenly becomes a worker rather than a slave! Also terrific for morale is that slaves--workers!--have the luxury of remaining in their native habitat and don’t have to relocate to places they would be subject to such unpleasantries as homesickness and racism.
Is there any competition between these two models of life, for either side?
I think it is clear from this little thought experiment that if the North and South had simply let the market sort it out without protectionist tariffs, they would have quickly given up slavery for something more efficient anyway. By forcing the issue, the North not only committed a terrible injustice against the freedom of the South, but also deprived slavery of its natural development into remote labor.
From an economic point of view, the Civil War was the least profitable of all our wars, because the destruction of lives and property involved Americans on both sides. In our other wars, most of the lives and property belonged to foreigners. The war was fought to abolish slavery, but slavery would soon have faded away on its own, because it made no economic sense.
For a different example, lets look at the British occupation of India. In 19th century Britain, just like in the South, things had never looked better. The country was flush with cash and potential and freedom, thanks to new technology--the spinning jenny. Like the cotton gin in the South--for turning raw cotton into useable cotton--Britain's spinning jenny turned useable cotton into finished textiles, so the British could suddenly mass-produce clothing.
Like in the South, all that was needed was a workforce to produce the raw materials that these new tools required. The British, being more advanced, took a modern approach: instead of expensively importing workers, they located their employment opportunities where workers already lived: India.
There were problems, right from the start. For thousands of years India had made the finest cotton garments in the world--so Indian workers felt humiliated when they had to just provide raw materials to British industry.
The main rabble-rouser--literally--was Mohandas Gandhi, a likeable, well-meaning fellow who wanted to help his fellow workers along, but did not understand the benefits of open markets and free trade. Gandhi thought that through "self-reliance"--protectionism against textiles trade with Britain--India could become strong and relearn its own ancient ways of textiles.
These rather naive ideas became extremely popular, and a big proportion of the citizenry rose up against the British management system. The British eventually had to leave!!!
The big problem in India was clearly a grave lack of management rapport with workers. By making only small adjustments, British management could have kept India on the path to modernity.
For example, one of the things Gandhi and his anti-globalization followers did was make their own clothing at home, to symbolize their independence from the cotton trade that they perceived as imposed and oppressive. Now as any student can tell you, if management in England had been properly in touch with worker concerns, they could have responded in a timely way--e.g. by making available clothes in the home-spun style that the Indians craved. Today you can see clothes like that in many clothing catalogues, like the Whole Earth Catalogue, for example.... But of course they didn't have that sort of perspective in Britain and so they couldn't do it.
India still has a long road to recovery from Gandhi's legacy of protectionism. Bill Gates really summed it up on his recent visit to India when he said, "India faces big challenges, such as the existence of well-meaning laws that hinder entrepreneurs. For example, there are laws that say people can't be laid off and that companies can't go bankrupt. As its technological, political, and economic systems are modernized, India's progress will accelerate."
The involuntary servitude of imported labor, which is what slavery amounts to, has been replaced in our times by the much more efficient system of exporting jobs to countries that are poor to begin with, and thus have lower maintenance costs for labor. This "remote labor" is the natural alternative to slavery, and, as a bonus, there is no reason for the worker not to be free. Thus he is responsible for his own housing, feeding and medical care -- which can be at a cost level much lower than a slave owner could safely provide.
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This text is, of course, a slightly modified version of a speech the Yes Men gave in Finland. Still, it sounds way too much like the self-indulgent navel-gazing that Nelson terms "economics" to me.
Jim on 06.27.06 @ 01:10 AM PST [link]
