Category Archives: Politics

Technology and the Evolution of Diplomacy

Idle Speculation, Organizing Systems, Politics

How has diplomacy[1] evolved through the eons? We postulate that humans have changed, but do you think that a Roman senator would feel that out of place in the U.S. Senate? That the job of an ambassador has really changed in the last three thousand years?

It feels like the largest difference has been in the speed of communication. It used to be that the phrase ‘I have to go consult with my government. This may take some days.’ meant travel time. Now it means ‘We need to get used to this idea’ exclusively.

Advances in dentistry and water fluoridation probably mean that people are less cranky because their teeth hurt, advances in chemistry mean that we no longer sprinkle lead on our food. Advances in travel and communications mean that larger empires are more governable and longer-range diplomacy and trade are more viable.

But have any of these really fundamentally changed diplomacy? It remains, as they say ‘the art of letting someone else have your way‘[2]. Even the techniques of ‘Getting to Yes‘ must have been known in some form to the ancients.

Perhaps the spread of democracy[3] has had the greatest effect. If you look at human history (especially the relatively recent colonialism), those nations or organizations which were the most stable and had the greatest longevity tended to become the most powerful (provided they had the desire and resources/room to expand). But once you control for that, once countries reach that higher stability plateau, they end up competing with each other in very familiar ways.

But most probably, the spread of nuclear weapons has actually had the greatest effect. Great powers have warred with each other since time immemorial. The relative power of offensive and defensive technology has waxed and waned throughout history, but Mutually Assured Destruction was never present absent a larger third party.

Maybe we’ll use this opportunity to talk a little bit more, and understand each other a little bit better.

[1]Diplomacy has remained largely unchanged, except for the use of plastic game pieces in some editions.

[2]Attributed to Daniel Varè an Italian diplomat and author from the early 20th century.

[3]Many would argue for ‘Representative Democracy‘, ‘Constitutional Monarchy‘, or ‘Republic‘. These are all valid positions, and this discussion is out of scope.

Cross-Border Taxation and Money Laundering Incentives

Economics, Idle Speculation, Politics

So, there’s an interesting game being played by governments around the world.

From a purely game theory[1] perspective, to optimize tax income, it makes sense for governments to do two things:

1) Find all the people all over the world they can tax and tax them.
2) Convince people from all over the world to move to their jurisdiction for lower taxes

Now, if this is ‘tax avoidance‘, this is still legal[2]. But it seems to often veer into ‘tax evasion‘, which is not legal.

All this is leading up to say that while the United States is talking about tax avoidance and tax evasion around the world, it seems that Congress seems to be one of the largest stumbling blocks to solving the problem[3].

[1]I am informed that from a purely grammar theoretical perspective, ‘From a purely game theoretical perspective’ is incorrect.

[2]Although, when you can purchase laws…

[3]Note that this article tries to get more hits by using the word ‘Rothschild’.

Pink, and Purple, and Princesses, Oh My!

Idle Speculation, Politics, Teaching

This past weekend, I was at a ‘Saturday Night Meatballs'[1] event with some old friends. Amongst other things, I was watching how the children interacted with each other. There were a collection of children of various ages, from a few different families. Seeing them interacting with their parents, they were all well-loved, and each of the parents were practicing what I would consider modern parenting, setting down firm, well-defined, sensible rules, and encouraging their children to resolve problems themselves by thinking of solutions and implementing them[2].

At the same time, I saw the children self-segregating by gender, both in behaviour and location. One of the parents, talking about a female child mentioned that before they went to daycare, they were into a variety of non-gender-stereotypical things. Almost immediately afterwards, it was Pink and Purple and Princesses. For me, this was a huge stark reminder of the uphill parents face. One could see that even if all of the parents were giving their all to make a non-gender binary household at home, that a culture could persist in a playground or daycare, passed down from year to year by the children.

You can also see it other children’s behaviours. One of the girls wanted to go play with the boys, but was too afraid to go downstairs to the basement[3]. The group of girls sat downstairs for much of the afternoon/evening while the boys ran around and yelled upstairs. When the girls went up to join them, that lasted for a while, the yelling intensified, then they came down to complain about how they were being treated (which prompted the solution-finding conversations above).

I don’t have good answers, just a few observations. I’m sure this is better than it was decades ago, but there’s still a large amount of genderism that we still have to unpack as a society, and it needs to be unpacked early and unconsciously, for the sake of our children.

[1]It’s a great idea, in the tradition of eating together with family and friends to build community. There’s a great description of the ‘original’ Friday Night Meatballs here.

[2]I particularly liked this tactic. The first question is ‘Can I help you think of more options?’, to help the kids develop the coping and problem solving skills to deal with others.

[3]This could also have been because she was new to the group.

Tax Freedom Day

Analysis, Economics, Politics

Note: I am choosing to engage the concept of ‘Tax Freedom Day’ on a methodological basis rather than commenting on the fact that it focuses on costs rather than doing a cost/benefit analysis. If you want more on that topic, comment below!

*****

Tax Freedom Day. A popular phrase and concept, but what is it really measuring?

In Canada, it is published by the Fraser Institute. You can read their report from 2013 here[1].

On its face, it seems like a totally reasonable thing. There are lots of hidden taxes, manufacturing taxes, the employer portion of CPP, QPP, and EI, etc…

They also make the (I think reasonable) statement that the total tax burden on businesses ultimately expresses itself in the goods and services they sell:

“Although businesses pay these taxes directly, the cost of business taxation is ultimately passed onto ordinary Canadians.”

Leaving the main purpose of these taxes as social engineering, implementing the decisions we have made as a society as to how to incentivize people to spend their money. (But then, all taxation decisions do this, and that is a much larger topic.)

They even say nice things like “Most Canadians would have little difficultly determining how much income tax they pay; a quick look at their income tax return or pay stub would suffice.”

1) Capital gains (unknown number of days)

But here’s the catch. They compare ‘Cash Income’ with tax from all sources. For example, they include ‘Income tax’, including all taxes on income, which includes all taxes on capital gains, but not the income from capital gains, or as they put it, in their own words:

“…total income before taxes includes deferred incomes such as investment income accumulated by pension plans, interest accumulated on insurance policies, and corporate retained earnings. While these types of incomes are accumulated, they are not paid to Canadian families in the current year, and thus should not be considered as part of their income for Tax Freedom Day calculations.”

So their conclusion is that any time shifting of income qualifies it as ‘not income’.

Anyways, the point is that their methodology includes capital gains taxes, but not capital gains income.

2) ‘Average’ vs. ‘Median’ (11 days)

The Fraser Institute notes that the ‘Average’ (arithmetic mean) family income is $97,254, and ‘pay[s] a total of $42,400 in taxes’. Note that this is 43.6%. This will be important later.

Combining the report with StatsCan data:

The StatCan Income by Decile:

We can intuit that the median 2+ person ‘economic family’ as an annual cash income of $72,300, or about 7.55% of the total, and pays about 6.85% of the tax burden or about $29,065, or about 40.55% of their ‘cash income’ in taxes. This is a difference of 11 days.

(Compare with the Fraser Institute report table 9 on page 9, note that unlike the provincial comparison table (table 7, page 7), it does not include the income levels of the deciles)

Looking at their own table 9, their usage of ‘average’ income means that the ‘tax freedom day’ is overstated for roughly 65% of the population.

3) ‘Economic Families’ of two or more people vs. those living alone. (8 days)

This is a smaller point, but in table 6 on page 6, they show that the ‘families with two or more individuals’ tax rate of 43.6% (their headline number), when ‘unattached individuals’ are included is reduced to 42.4%

If they weren’t trying so hard to convince people that taxes are high, it would feel like they’re making the social judgement that families of two or more are the default, and anything else is odd.

Bottom line: Don’t believe everything you read. With very little work, I’ve shaved 19 days off the headline number used by any number of mainstream news publications. I’m sure there’s a lot one could say in addition on this topic, about income redistribution and income sources.

The Fraser Institute has a very specific agenda that they are pushing, however much they proclaim otherwise. Caveat Emptor.

Note: Incidentally, whoever decided that copy-paste from .pdf files should break all the formatting and insert all kinds of line breaks should be made to manually fix all of the files by hand.

[1]I’m using 2013 as a basis, because I can easily find the 2013 StatsCan decile data. If you want to read the 2015 Fraser institute report, you can read it here:

Resisting Regulatory Capture

Economics, Nostalgia, Organizing Systems, Politics

Most people, if you asked them, would agree that corruption is a bad thing, and should be reduced or avoided. Most of them will not have heard about Regulatory Capture, though.

‘Regulatory Capture’ is the process by which an industry ‘captures’ the governmental bodies which are assigned to regulate that industry. It is generally thought to happen because of two factors:
– The people who are assigned to perform the regulatory tasks spend most of their time talking to people in the industry they’re regulating
– There are huge financial incentives for the industry to persuade the regulators to change the rules in their favour

These rule changes can take many forms. They can be laws, regulations, even constitutional changes.

The rule changes can diminish penalties, replace jail time with company-paid fines, make it more difficult for new competitors to disrupt oligopolies or monopolies, lessen oversight or protections against fraud, and many other forms.

The bribery or coercion of regulators can also take many forms. Most countries have rules in place which make it difficult to perform the obvious ‘money in brown paper bags’, but there are many other ways to induce regulators to rule* in your favour:
– Many industries have laws about the amount of time between when you can work in an industry and when you can regulate it (and vice versa), but this does not seem to have stopped anyone
– Many industry consortia write the regulations** which regulate them, so the regulator (who may feel overworked and underpaid) doesn’t have to spend the time to do so.
– Most people have family or other tribal associations of some sort. A spouse’s job has been suggested to influence even supreme court justices
– The politicians who are in charge of the regulators are often persuaded by campaign contributions
– Various illegal inducements such as drugs or ‘favours’
– Threats, extortion, etc. may also come into play

So, how do we solve this? The closest we seem to have come to this is an interlocking set of checks and balances, including freedom of speech, lobbying laws, freedom of information acts, and the occasional incorruptible investigator.

We haven’t solved this yet, and it might not be solvable, given the power dynamics. Next time, we’ll talk about some current and possible solutions.

*Ha!

**There is a lot to be said for including industry as major stakeholders when regulations are written, as for the same goal, there may be very different ways to implement them, which would have vastly different costs.

Facebook, Consent, and Pictures of your Kids

Idle Speculation, Internet Culture, Politics, Thoughts on Thoughts

Earlier today, I was having a conversation with an old friend of mine about the idea that parents oversharing about their children is ‘ruining their lives’, as mentioned in this article:

http://aplus.com/a/sharenting-parents-oversharing-facebook-social-media

My initial response was to say that this was a social change that people were going to need to ‘learn to get over’, and that they should focus on doing the things they want to do, and ignoring those who want to judge them over unimportant things.

After some discussion, I realized that my opinion was coming from a place of significant privilege, not just cis/white/male/etc, but because I’d never experienced that horribly invasive mocking and worse that so often happens to people on social media.

I think this really revolves around issues of consent, and I wonder how much the posting of pictures of children without their consent is similar to giving them a hug without their consent. It could be that in a few years, this will be seen as just as important.

We have very stringent laws about privacy of medical records. Why not for photos? I’m assuming this is mostly about the ability of photographers to do their jobs and the total unenforceability of such an idea.

But if you can be denied a job because of something you did in your spare time the same way you could be denied a job because of an existing condition, why would we not extend those protections?

The 0.6th world

Analysis, Economics, Internet Culture, Politics

One of my fondest memories from high school is learning about different types of infinities. The Cantor Diagonal proof is a as beautiful piece of argument as exists anywhere. Also present in that course was discussion of fractional dimensions, especially as to how they pertained to fractals.

Those who are familiar with the Gamma Function, or the Kardashev Scale will know of the technique of interpolating between the integer points of a numerical scale. (The Kardashev scale is cool enough to deserve its own post, and beyond the scope today.)

I was originally planning to talk about the First World/Second World/Third World model most often talked about in the media, but Mao’s Three Worlds Theory feels like it offers a slightly more linear progression between the three worlds.

The question is: What numbering would you give the world of the Internet? Of 4chan? Is this even a sensical question?

There are a number of different ways* you can try and quantify this. Using the West’s ‘Three-world Model’:

– “Alignment with ‘The West'”: This is where the ‘1st world’ is ‘The West’, the ‘2nd world’ is aligned opposite to ‘The West’, the ‘3rd world’ is not aligned with respect to the ‘West’. A ‘4th world’ or ‘0th world’ might be against the entire concept of ‘Alignment’ (Nations with multiple internal factions or with governments not exclusively beholden to one of the blocs might be part of the ‘1.3 world’. This becomes difficult with nations which are partially non-aligned, and partially aligned with the ‘1st world’, as the math doesn’t work out. You’d want a numerical Venn diagram** for this.)

– “Economic Development”: (This is problematic, as you have one of the groups deciding on its own the hierarchy of the groups, and for many other reasons.) In this case, though, you might be able to have worlds which have sprung up since the Three Worlds Theory was conceived be put on the chart. In this case, the Internet might indeed be the 0.6th world…

Using Mao’s ‘Three Worlds Theory’:

– You could classify Internet opinion and culture as a new lesser power, or perhaps even superpower. I think the Internet is not quite organized, and probably still too easily manipulated, to be a superpower. More like a regional power, with its region being spread around most of the world. Thinking about it like this, it might qualify as a 2.0 or 2.1 power.
– If you think about the division as ‘Imperial Superpowers’, ‘Lesser Powers’, and ‘Exploited nations’, the Internet is somewhat ‘Imperial’, in that its culture permeates and is conquering and eating entire industries. To qualify as a ‘Lesser Power’, it must be at least nominally be independent. Under this definition, the Internet might qualify as 1.6 power, higher or lower depending on how much ‘The Internet’ includes Internet companies

*I tried my best to 4-box this (in best business book fashion), but couldn’t come up with anything reasonable. The ‘unaligned’ nature of the ‘3rd world’ fills up two of the four boxes with most models. The closest I could get was to have Switzerland and maybe a few others in the 4th box, with the axes being GDP and alignment.

**Stay tuned for a later post…This is a fun concept!

Regulatory Capture and NP-Completeness

Economics, Politics, Software Development

A common conversation in our household:

S: “So, why do you think happens?”
Me: “Regulatory Capture.”
S: “Oh. Right. :(”

I like to sort this with my general wont to cut Gordian knots*, but perhaps it is also useful because it allows you to reduce the problem under discussion to a well-known problem, which is known to be insoluble in very specific ways.

Perhaps we will find that the solution to the P=?NP problem is the same as the problem of regulatory capture**. I think it’s more likely that P=?NP will be solved first.

*Or to be a troll.

**Regulatory capture I think was first described for me in ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, as the inevitable co-option of the body which regulates an industry by the industry which it regulates. This is generally because they talk to each other the most, combined with the huge financial incentives.

What Canadians want from their Government

History, Politics

Apparently, the new PM’s office thinks it’s:
– Recalls & Safety Alerts
– Weather
– Find A Job
– Write to the Troops
Home Page of the Prime Minister of Canada, November 8th, 2015

Which is actually probably not a bad top four, given what people care about and the time of year.

Digging a little deeper, I had no idea that there were Canadian soldiers involved in so many overseas missions:

http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/write-to-the-troops/mailing-instructions.page

OP CALUMET- Sinai, Egypte
OP CROCODILE – Democratic Republic of the Congo
OP FOUNDATION or IMPACT – Qatar
OP FOUNDATION (Bahrain)
OP FOUNDATION – Jordan
OP HAMLET – Port-au-Prince, Haïti
OP JADE – Middle East
OP KOBOLD – Pristina, Kosovo
OP PROTEUS – Jerusalem
OP SATURN and SOPRANO – Sudan
OP SNOWGOOSE – Cyprus
OP IMPACT – Kuwait
OP IMPACT – Baghdad, Iraq
Operational Support (OS) Detachment – Kuwait
CFS Alert – Alert, Nunavut, Canada
Canadian Ships
OP ADDENDA – Kabul, Afghanistan
OP REASSURANCE – Land Component
OP SIRONA (Sierra Leone)
OP UNIFIER (Ukraine)

It also seems to me that Justin Trudeau emphasizes his support and mention of Canadian Soldiers, perhaps to defray the (generally incorrect) notion that Conservative governments are better for the military. But perhaps this is just me being oversensitive.

”
“It’s the responsibility of government not to put soldiers into harm’s way except as a last resort, when it’s absolutely necessary to do so,” he said. “When we do send them into harm’s way we have to ensure that we’ve done everything in our power to find other methods to reach our objectives.”
”
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/11/04/opinion/you-have-no-idea-how-badass-trudeaus-defence-minister-really

http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng

Canadian Election, 2015

Idle Speculation, Politics

It was an interesting campaign. People seem to always talk about the length of it, but my favourite article talked about how it allowed each of the issues to come out one at a time, and actually receive some due consideration.

Anyways, a few random thoughts:

It felt at the start of the campaign that it was Mulcair’s election to lose. It felt like for whatever reason he didn’t seem to connect well with the electorate, definitely not like Jack Layton had been able to. Interestingly, it felt (at least from the few speeches I heard) like Justin Trudeau was the spiritual successor to Jack’s legacy, at least in the triumph of hope and science over fear.

There were also comments about ‘strategic voting’…My definition of strategic voting is for the rational voter to look at the possible outcomes, rank order them by desirability, and choose one of the choices they have within their power to push things along that track as far as possible. In Canada, this generally currently seems to mean voting for the person most likely to defeat the Conservative candidate in their riding. In Alberta, that’s probably a Liberal candidate, downtown*, much more likely an NDP candidate.

But for many people, the definition** of ‘strategic voting’ seems to be different, meaning ‘vote for the Liberals so the Conservatives don’t win, no matter how much you like the Liberals’. There were many ‘safe’ downtown non-Conservative seats, where people were ‘free to vote their conscience’, but it seems that those ridings went solidly Liberal as people took ‘strategic voting’ to mean ‘vote for the Liberals’. Or perhaps they were all voting for the Liberals. We may never know.

*I originally put ‘Quebec’ here, but that was before I saw this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_2015_Federal_Election.svg, which shows the Liberal party with a plurality of votes and majority of seats in Quebec in 2015.

**There is a secondary, more subtle option here, which only takes place when there’s a minority. After the 2008 election, the Conservatives were able to control parliament with only 124 out of 308 seats. Had the Liberals or NDP had all of the 132 seats between them, there would not have been the constitutional crisis of 2008-9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute Recently, it seems that the party with the most seats governs, and there do not seem to be stable coalitions between the 2nd and 3rd parties. This may have been a result of the Bloc Quebecois.

Interestingly, coalition governments seem to be much less common than one might think… This article suggests it may be because the leader of the party is no longer elected by backbenchers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_government#Canada