aggienaut: (Default)


   People have been very friendly here. In my search for housing I made two friends who didn't even have places I was interested in. Harpreet is an American consultant who emailed me about his place after I had already decided on this place. He was very curious about bees though and volunteered to share his tips for life in Brisbane as an American, so we ended up meeting for coffee on Sunday. He was quite nice and I hope we manage to keep in touch.
   Also a girl (also a consultant, as it happens) emailed me asking how my housing search was going (I had an ad in the "looking for housing" section of their craigslist equivalent (Gumtree)), because she was just starting her own search and wanted to know what she was getting into (she's not in Brisbane yet). I sent her the spreadsheet I had nerdily made of my findings ... and recommended the room Harpreet was trying to fill -- so maybe I'll be able to help them both simulteniously! Also she said we should get a drink when she comes to town.

   Later on on Sunday I went down to use the totally sweet lap pool in my building. After thrashing about for a bit I proceeded on to the hot tub. I was a bit skeptical at first because it was already crowded with 5 heads and I didn't want to intrude on some group of friends ... but then I decided to be an American and barge in regardless ;D
   As it turns out it was two groups that hadn't already known eachother so it was all okay. There were three Koreans and one relatively cute Australian girl who looked to be in her later 20s, and her 7 yr old daughter. Both parties lived in this building, and, we were amused to discover, all three of us are the same apartment on different floors.
   The three Koreans all have bachelor degrees (one's something in engineering, one's international relations (like me), I forget the third), but are currently making $20/hr here working as housekeepers. They seemed pretty okay with that. They said in Korea people would look down on people working as housekeepers, but here no one cares. Also hotel housekeepers would probably make about $4/hr back in Korea, according to them.
   The girl is a government lawyer. She commented that here in Australia it's not uncommon for working-class people to make more than professionals, and especially at the mines, a truck driver could make $160,000 a year! She added parenthetically that as a lawyer working for the government, she of course doesn't really make much.

   So there you have it. I feel like it kind of explains things a little. I had previously assumed that EVERYONE made proportionately more here than in the US, and since people who would be making $7.25/hr in the US are making $20 here, I was thinking the people who make more than that in the US must be filthy filthy rich here. But I guess it's just that all those "bottom-rung" / unskilled jobs simply pay a lot here and the other jobs don't pay much more, if that.
   Imagine that, the working-class instead of being paid below the poverty line and having to work 80 hours a week and live 12 to a room to make ends meet can actually live out their lives here with self respect and dignity. That is clearly un-American! :D

   In related news items, it was reported in the news here today that strawberry farmers had found the costs of harvesting to be greater than the prices offered and may just let their crops rot in the field (recall from my earlier post, strawberry pickers earn $22/hr here).
   And in news the other day, about 300 people were "discovered" to be working for the health ministry without any actual job -- ie the job they once had had been eliminated and union rules prevented their termination, so they've been getting paid without an actual job.


At work!

And as the Australian girl turned out to have been born in Canada, I'm not sure I've met a single native Australian yet! Well certainly my boss is, but his grandfather actually went to Berkeley (and as he studied horticulture, and the Berkeley research farms where all over at this little place called Davis, later to become UC Davis, he probably was where I went to school 60 years later! Small world!)

aggienaut: (Spacecat)

   This expedition would be the first ever to this particular planet. The Corporation (and its competitors) had already made contact with alien civilizations in several other systems. This one was a bit further away, but the Corporation had high hopes for it. From what astronomers back home could discern, it was mostly solid, and within the optimum distance from its star -- what you'd call an "Earth-like" planet. The Corporation was eager to get there before its competitors.

   First Mate Running Moon was in command as the first contact came in from the rapidly approaching planet. He immediately sent Ensign Smith to go fetch the captain and called for the communications expert. Captain Turning Rock and First Mate Running Moon eagerly awaited the communications expert's opinion.
   "Well it's definitely a radio signal composed and sent out by a sentient species" reported Communications Specialist Daring Possum excitedly. The whole bridge crew held their breaths for more. When Daring Possum displayed it on the view screen, however, it was an incomprehensible jumble.
   "You, uh, certain that's an intelligent message?" asked the captain.
   "Yes certainly. That message is full of mathematical patterns. They're just trying to be clever."
   "How quaint."

   Weeks passed, and as the planet got closer more communications were received and studied by the communications team. At first it was just the random incomprehensible message that had been purposefully transmitted deep into space by the alien civilization, but presently they started to pick up the aliens' own broadcasts to themselves, which the research team carefully analyzed. Once in range of live (well, with significant delays at first) communication with the alien creatures, research could really proceed.
   The planet had one sentient species, whose bodies consisted of a central body mass with four clumsy tentacles and a pod held above it which contained most of its sensory organs.
   "A peculiar creature indeed!" concluded the Chief Biologist Metal Cloud after presenting his findings, waving an eyestalk to indicate amusement.


   After months in orbit around the planet, studying its inhabitants, the officers meet in the conference room to discuss their findings and move into the next state of the mission:

   Captain Turning Rock - "So do they have anything of value?"
   Chief Geologist Soaring Buffalo - "Sir, they're using it up fast, but I'm pleased to report that they still have fossil fuels!"
   Supercargo Shifting Comet - "Yes, that appears to be their most valuable commodity to us, I believe we should arrange to purchase all their remaining fossil fuels before they squander them."
   Captain Turning Rock - "What do we have that's of value to them?"
   Supercargo Shifting Comet - "As you know, their technology is extremely primitive, and most of them spend a large amount of their time labouring at things which could easily be done by simple robotic trinkets we have. Our onboard manufacturing facilities can easily stamp out enough robotic units to replace millions of their laborers, and they will place a great value on each one as they do not currently have the technology to make a single robot that's effective for anything more than the most simple tasks"
   Captain Turning Rock - "Excellent. Trade them only a small handful at first so they give us the highest price per unit."
   Supercargo Shifting Comet - "However the great chiefs of the nations that control the largest oil deposits already have enough monetary power that their people will be unimpressed with manual labour saving machines. However they have expressed an extreme interest in weapons technology, as they currently do not have parity with the greatest chiefs of this world. It appears we could easily secure contracts for all their oil simply by providing them with weapons which are ancient to us but will make them pre-eminent military powers on their planet."
   Captain Turning Rock - "Excellent. Lest the bigger nation try to also demand weapons, get the robotic-trinkets-for-coal contract with them first"


   Several months later, Chief Biologist Metal Cloud updates the officers: "Well, we've successfully eliminated the need for most of the humans to work, but they don't seem to know what to do now! They're all sitting around doing nothing, and no one is distributing food to them. Peculiar, peculiar creatures!" He waves his eyestalk to indicate amusement.

1 All nouns translated from Ixblehtiquian to analogous English equivalents*
2 Most Ixblehtiquian names follow an "adjective noun" naming convention. Names are passed down through generations and sometimes reflect ancient occupations, such as "Smith" or "Wayne."
3 While Ixblehtiquians don't have possums or buffaloes, the actual creatures mentioned in the names there is no English name for, so in this translation similar Earth bound animals were used in their place.
4 While the Ixblehtequians have long ago developed more efficient energy sources than fossil fuels, they still have many uses for this extremely finite and hard to find resource.

*Yes these are fake footnotes not linked in-line, because they're only meant to be read after the rest.




   When I originally posited the idea of "what if an advanced race of aliens make contact with us and don't want to kill us but TRADE with us... and thus ruin our economy," a whole slew of people commented back with "no, the prime directive!!"
   I think it's pretty silly to assume that for some reason advanced aliens are going to adhere to a guideline from one of our fictional television shows. I think a better guide for how they might behave would probably be to look back at what happened in analogous situations in human history. One doesn't need to go far to see that no "prime directive" seemed to occur to anyone, and discovery of less technologically advanced peoples by explorers invariably resulted in questions of "how can I best exploit these people?" or at best "how can I profit from them?"


See Also: Last Year's First Contact

aggienaut: (Default)

From Ecofoot.org, based on fifteen questions my lifestyle requires the following acrage be dedicated to my upkeep:

ACRES / CATEGORY
5.2 FOOD
0.5 MOBILITY
1.2 SHELTER
1.5 GOODS/SERVICES
8.0 TOTAL FOOTPRINT

IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON.
WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 1.9 PLANETS.


   But what's it all mean? The implication of the webpage is that we're all living horrible gluttonous lives and should be ashamed of ourselves. But let us put this in perspective.

   Going back to the beginning: A popular misperception is that life during the stone age was nasty brutish and short. Modern research indicates that it appears in the stone-age humans, living off the land like hippies, only had to work about three hours a day between food hunting, food preparation, & miscellenious other tasks, and the rest of the time was theirs to lollygag about and doodle on cave walls. This however, was only sustainable if humans kept their population density at 1-2 people per square mile -- that is, having an individual "ecological footprint" of 320 - 640 acres. Over time the population increased and people had to work harder to get the same sustenance from smaller portions of land ... eventually leading to today's conditions where in the United States we have to work eight hours a day and have a footprint of 24 acres a person...

   Now certainly we should try to do whatever we can to be as efficient as possible and thus have the smallest footprint as possible, but we can't reduce our feetprints infinitely. And in the mean time I will not be shamed by guilt-tripping webpages.

   In conclusion, we're on a collision-course with a lack of footroom for our prints and all out world resource war. (=


   This entry shameless cobbled together from comments I made to [livejournal.com profile] insolent_pool's post, which was inspired by [livejournal.com profile] eazyt's post.
   My facts come from Of Cannibals & Kings, by Marvin Harris, which I flipped through one day during a meeting because I found it on someone's coffee table; and also Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond which I flipped through while waiting in an airport once.


Unrelated Picture of the Day

aggienaut: (gunner)

   In 1811 the Luddite movement arose with the concern that technological labour-saving innovations would deprive people of work. Of course, now nearly 200 years later, people (mostly) still have jobs. And the Luddite's are dismissed as having been ridiculous.
   Back when I was an office peon in law offices, it often occured to me that nearly everything I did could probably be automated. Office automation is already a concept in use, but I really think in the not too distant future most office peons could be rendered redundant completely. And thats a fair number of jobs.
   And for example, I could easily picture all the fast food workers of the world being replaced by automated fastfoodbots. In fact, I really think that its not unimaginable, and may in fact be inevitable, that most jobs today will eventually be replaced by automated systems.
   And so the question is, what then, will humans do?

   I see two possibilities. (A) all the humans will eventually be pushed into arts and crafts; (B) the alarmingly communist solution, and I am not a communist, but if everything was automated so there was no need for people to work, but an economy of plenty was still being served up to be consumed, it seems to me if it can be brought about that everyone owns a share of some company or other, they'd still be provided the monetary units to exchange for the products they desire. Communism through the stock market.

   I'm very curious about other people's thoughts on this subject.


Unrelated Picture of the Day


Somewhere south of Santa Cruz, after I made a hundred-mile-wrong-turn the other day
view large

See Also
(1)
Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life - Not so much a "webcomic" so much as a philosophical web- graphic-novel thats takes place in a world where there's only robots left. I found scrolling through it a bit counterintuitive but once you figure that out I think its really neat.

(2) When the Aliens Arrive - Kind of a similar question to the scenario posed in this entry. Basically, what would happen if space aliens made contact and instead of just wanting to probe a few of us they wanted to provide us with an economy of plenty? Economic disaster!

aggienaut: (Fire!)
Employees with too much space on their hands at Budweiser

   If there's one thing I think people should care more about, but instead seem to have a shocking disregard for it is people in other countries.

   Sure people will always express a polite concern about the welfare of people in other countries, maybe even vaguely endorse policies or movements which they've taken a wild guess might help people in another country. But I found when it actually comes to seriously caring about them, people exhibit a shocking geographic discrimination.

   The most blatant example of this I think is during presidential elections, where for months you hear every day about both candidates stumping around about how they're gonna stop "us" from "losing american jobs!!" etc etc. And even outside the context of elections you hear people say that - losing American jobs to anyone in any other country is apparently always considered a tragedy.
   You see, if someone in Ohio loses their job to someone in Guatamala, all I ever hear is that thats an outrage. From politicians, from people in Ohio, from people here thousands of miles from Ohio.
   But the way I see it, someone in Ohio loses their job, three people in Guatamala gain jobs. That unemployed person in Ohio is probably STILL better off than the three people in Guatamala who now have better jobs than they did before.
   And so, I don't care if trade liberalization causes Americans to lose their jobs. And I submit that you too should consider people living outside your border to be just as human as those living within it.

Addressing the Excuses
   As I've run this argument past my friends, as I mentioned yesterday, nearly all of them balked at it. Lets explore some of the counter-arguments they raised:

(1) "Trade with oppresive regimes legitimizes them!!" was one I got from a number of my friends. And this is a convenient out that makes one feel really morally upright for not caring about people, but does it really make sense?
   First and foremost, do you know of any South American (those from elsewhere please bear with me on the focus on trade in the Americas, but it's the terms trade liberalization is usually talked about in here) regimes that are evil and oppressive offhand? I mean, yes there are certainly some sinister ones that come to mind in the past, and there's some now that have corruption problems or are otherwise less-than-optimal, but are any of them actually non-democratic? I think first and foremost this counterargument hinges upon a silly, inaccurate and patronizing idea of what life in South America is like.
   But furthermore, studies show* that democracy only flourishes when per capita GDP is higher than $5,000 per annum. Therefore the answer to helping oppressed people is not to refuse to have anything to do with them but rather support their economic development.

(2) "Yeah now those jobs are being done by people in sweatshops!" -- Yes human slavery does still exist and still do sweatshops. HOWEVER I know of no country, particularly in the Americas, where it's a regular part of the economy. People have a choice in what they do. If they're working in factories in conditions that we'd find deplorable or with a standard of living we'd find unacceptable, it's presumably because they didn't have better options. They chose to work at the factory because without the factory their options would be worse.
   I'm not saying we should call the situation all a-okay because of this logic, I believe everything possible to improve their conditions should still be done, I'm just saying that it's not because of free trade that their conditions are bad. And more to the point, because their conditions aren't optimum is absolutely not a justification for not wanting them to "take American jobs."

(3) "Hey I'M from Ohio!" objects [livejournal.com profile] hereticxxii at my use of Ohio as an example. "LOL but now you work in Korea" say I.

(4) "Well what if it was YOUR job that was taken overseas" Honestly I'm pretty sure if I got edged out by beekeepers in Mexico I'd feel the same way about it if I got edged out by beekeepers in Utah ("the Beehive State") or say that filthy squatter who set up his beehives on empty land not half a mile from our bees last week and the County has been dragging its feet on investigating. His bees are bad-tempered (one stung me in the ear while I was snooping around) and his practices unhygenic (leaving collapsed colonies side by side with healthy ones, is he TRYING to infect them all with something?!) ... but I digress.
   But yeah, if I lost my job I lost my job and blaming the guy that took it would just be focusing frustration in a wrong and negative direction.


What About Those Who Lost Their Jobs
   My main point here is that we shouldn't see Americans losing their jobs due to free trade causing those employment opportunities to move elsewhere as something deplorable, due to the fact that the people receiving those jobs are better off. But so as not to be completely insensitive to my fellow Americans, I thought I'd hit on why it's also better for America.
   The world is a better place when everyone is producing what they have a comparative advantange in producing. That is, everything is being produced by whomever it is most efficient for it to be produced by. The free market causes this to happen, and this is a good thing because it means there is more all around consumer goods being produced, meaning there is more for everyone to consume. To put it more simply, it's better for the economy.
   When we subvert free trade by trade barriers we keep our people happily doing stuff that they are not the best at producing. They may be happy, and if they're in a swing state the politicians will pander shamelessly to them, but they're not actually going to be producing as much as they would if economic restructuring were allowed to follow its natural course. Over time if we were to allow it to sit like this our economy would become increasingly backwards as it would fail to keep up with the global economy.
   Being unemployed sucks. Finding a new career can be daunting. However, these auto workers or factory workers who are losing their jobs DO presumably have the ability to do other things, and would presumably end up doing them if they had to.


In Conclusion
   In conclusion the fact that people care about the welfare and specifically employment status of people belonging to their own country infinitly more than they care about the same for people of a different country is an arbitrary discrimination. You should care just as much about the welfare of people in other countries and you shouldn't try to edge them out with protectionist trade policies.


* I wish I could remember my original source for this but I can't. But if you google for example "democracy $5,000 per capita" you get a number of references to it, including one from JSTOR that is surely a scholarly enough source to cite, but I no longer have JSTOR access /=

** Pictured at upper right: employees making use of gratuitous free space at the Budweiser factory I visited last week

See Also
The Making of Entry 3 - An outtake
Topic 3 Bonus Entry - Probably a better entry than this one!

aggienaut: (star destroyer)

   Many many movies, books, and television series have addressed the idea of what happens if aliens arrive at Earth. Usually the aliens want to kill us all, but sometimes they just want to probe a few people and draw pictures in their fields. But what happens if the aliens are friendly and helpful?

   What if the aliens take pity on us with our populations of impoverished and hungry? Using their alien technology they generously offer to sell anyone and everything anything they need at a price they can afford. Benevolent? Yes. But a disaster for the world economy!! We'd immediately begin to run a huge trade deficit with the aliens!

Starbucks is secretly run by Klingons to make us dependant on them

   Our governments would probably become try to intervene - either with tariffs on space imports or outright embargoes (or militant force?). Even so, our economy would still be mangled as we'd lose our export market due to other countries getting things more cheaply from space. And what if the aliens, like Western Powers used military force to open up the markets of Japan and China in the 19th Century, use military force to compell us not to interfere with them providing us an economy of plenty?

   And would it even be ethical for the government to try to limit the aliens from providing us with everything? As thousands lose their jobs yet cost of living becomes negligible, would America become a welfare state?

   I think this is a really intriguing question.


Unrelated: Picture of me at the Stone Brewery (home of Arrogant Bastard Ale)

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