Nail, Standing Up

The Power of Credit

I just finished reading Hernando Desoto's Mystery of Capital.  Although it is not a new book it was new to me and quite timely in this era of spreading freedom through culture and military force. 

In my day job I spend significant amounts of time with microfinance organizations, the most well known of which is the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.  Microfinance, and microcredit, is a powerful tool in battling poverty worldwide.  It is amazing how poor people -- mostly women -- are turning US$150 loans into successful businesses that provide a path out of poverty for their families.  Microlending programs worldwide have been so successful and the total outstanding loan portfolio of this group is so large (~US$15 billion) that many organizations are beginning to to tap traditional commercial capital markets to finance the loans.  The  great thing about these loan portfolios is that they are characterized by low risk -- turns out these people are extremely low risks for default -- and high return.

Desoto takes a look at this same issue of issuing credit to poor people, but from a more macro level.  His hypothesis is that capitalism's success in western countries is due to their formal property ownership structures.  People with property leverage the value inherent in the property, through credit, to create more value.  Owning property in the US is fairly straightforward:  find the property, negotiate a price, arrange financing, and file the appropriate documents.  Boom.  You own property.   What you may not realize is that this simple system in the US is the result of over a hundred years of formalizing different extralegal structures and processes into one unified legal system throughout the 19th century.

If only it was this easy in the Philippines or Haiti, or Egypt.  In these places, buying property is so cumbersome that only very small numbers of people are able to do it.  In the Philippines for instance, it takes over 15 years and 168 bureaucratic steps to gain formal ownership of property.  This, of course, protects current land owners; who would buy property through the formal system when it is cheaper and easier to gain property through less-than-legal-but-informally-recognized means?  All is fine and dandy then, except that it is impossible to raise credit against property you don't own.  Without credit, capitalism fails.

All this makes me wonder if this "spreading freedom" thing is happening in the most effective way.  I am aware enough of my naivety on the subject to know that creating peace in Iraq is not as easy as imposing simple, friction-free property ownership processes and then easy credit to property owners.  Still, I cannot stop thinking that focusing a few of the hundreds of US$billions we are spending winning the hearts and RPGs of Iraqis to build a catcher's mitt for capitalism there might be a good thing to consider.

Traffic

Seven hours to and from Oregon in a car crystallized one thing for me: does no one know how to cruise on the right and pass on the left?  Man, it is annoying.   

The best part was the guy who was cruising in the left lane of a four lane highway (two lanes each way) up above Willits at about 55 when the limit was 65.  I pulled up to him, stayed a safe distance behind him, and after a while flashed my brights to let him know that I was there.  Seriously, I wasn't being aggressive.   He still didn't move so I went around on the right.  As I pass him I look over and he is flipping me off.  I do everything by the book and he is flipping me off.  I spent the next half hour trying to figure out how this was George W's fault.

When I become king I definitely push the CHP to enforce that law. 

Manners

I'm clearly getting old before my time, even though I am still looking at the soft underbelly of 40 from below.  I cannot get over how rude little kids are.  I have two small ones (under 5) and we have taught them very simple things like "please" and "thank you" and to just be aware of others sharing this little planet with them.  Honestly, it's not that hard.

One effect of this is that folks treat us like we have just cured malaria when they ask one of our kids if she wants a cookie.  When the response is "Yes, please,"  we are showered with all sorts of "isn't that precious?" and "what nice manners" types of comments.  I have to suppress the urge to spoil the moment and inform these folks that no, there is nothing special about my kids.  They just have the manners that we all should have if we want to counter the rude-ification of our civilization that is a symptom of the societal dark period we have entered.

Another effect, though, is noticing how rude other kids my kids age are.  I don't see it so much in our neighborhood but we were at the Monterey Bay Aquarium the other day.   So many of the kids there were  unbehaved and rude, it was as if they had been raised by wolves.  The pentultimate example was an experience we had in one of the areas of the aquarium build for kids' experimentation.  One of our children asked my wife to help her figure out how to use an experiment to catch fake krill in a net.  As my wife was showing her how to use the little handle, someone else's child comes up and starts attempting to take the handle out of my wife's hand.  Assuming that the child was just absentmindedly doing what kids in the haze of being a kid do, she gently reminded the child that she was using it.  The response?  "Well, let me use it!"  Uh, no, and so the kid went running off, presumably to sic his parents on my wife.

This whole bully/victim ratio seems to have reversed itself since I was a kid.  It is disturbing that in this era where "character" is driving so much of the national debate,  we are raising our children to have anything but.

Those BART train blues

Sent to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Board today:

"I am finally numb. I give in. You've made me weak.

"I am discussing an amazing phenomena that is apparent at the BART station in Millbrae. Nine times out of ten when the northbound CalTrain arrives in the evening during commute time and there is also a BART train waiting on the opposite platform, the BART doors close and the train leaves just as the Caltrain doors open to let people off. This is unbelievable. After millions (billions?) of dollars spent to bring BART to SFO and then also to Millbrae where the Caltrain station was, BART can't seem to make the obvious leap in thought that the folks on Caltrain might possibly be interested in riding BART. Actually, it's worse than that. By waiting until the Caltrain doors open to leave, it is as if we are being taunted by BART.

"There are only four reasons that this could be happening:

1. The dispatcher and/or train operator can't see or hear the Caltrain.
2. The schedule requires the BART train to leave at a proscribed time.
3. BART employees are too uneducated and dim-witted to figure out that folks want to make a transfer.
4. BART employees are wretched, depressed folk who fulfill their dark fantasies for revenge on those responsible for their bleak lives by using the only power they have against innocent customers who simply want to get home at night.

"Unless the dispatcher and operator are blind and deaf, they can see and hear the Caltrain coming for miles, so it can't be #1. BART plays fast and loose with the schedules at all sorts of other times, so #2 is clearly not the answer. I've seen what the BART folks get paid...they must be smart with those wages so "no" on #3. That only leaves #4 unless you can come up with a better explanation.

"I am a big supporter of public transportation in general and BART in particular. But other than riding BART (because I have no choice) I will not be supporting any effort to raise fares, buy more bonds to improve the service, or perform any other action supportive of BART employees or management. Clearly, any organization that can't figure out how to make a tiny, no-cost adjustment to their service priorities resulting in huge numbers of happier riders can't be trusted with real money to make any real improvements.

Vote, baby, vote!

The time has come. The simplest and most effective way to participate in this little democracy of ours is to go out and earn your "I voted" sticker the hard way.

Cake!

I-Name

Just got my I-Name. Hope this works.

You can call me rob.hayes.

It's been a while

In looking back at the post I wrote late (too late, really) last night, two things come to mind:

1) There was a time that I used to know how to write. That period of my life has apparently escaped me. Time to break out the Strunk and White for the first time in fifteen years.

-and-

2) Is blogging really about fine writing? It seems to me that many folks just write the equivalent of a "what's up?" type of post. I'd love to be able to write like my friend Tim who can write like a sonuvagun. But is that really necessary?

I know. I'm wavering.

The news media sucks. Your point would be....?

I admit that I became just as embroiled in the Jon Stewart/Crossfire firestorm as many others. I agree that he showed real courage to stand up and call Tucker Carlson out on the carpet for being the putz he is. And I sent the link to the iFilm around to anyone who would listen.... "Isn't that Jon Stewart just great! Jon Stewart for President!"

So what happens now?

The most appalling thing is the backlash that Stewart is receiving from the media themselves. He is being derided for being a comedian who doesn't know his place. Yep. He's a comedian. Your point would be....?

I know what my point is. Media, really news media is what I am talking about here, has transformed into entertainment. People used to turn to Walter Cronkite because what he said counted for something. He reflected opinion and he affected policy. Today, people turn to new programs for reasons that are beyond me. To see the "theater" that Stewart so deftly exposed? To see shills spew a particular candidate's talking points over and over? Because Jerry Springer is no longer on the air?

The issues that I want to see covered aren't being covered. I have no confidence that on any given day that I am being told the truth instead of marketed to. I want a media that is less concerned with losing it's coveted seat in the press cabin on Air Force One and is more concerned about holding both candidates feet to the fire on how honest they are being, asking hard questions, and investigating greed, corruption, and misdeeds by the people we elect to represent us.

The Fourth Estate is forgetting their rights and responsibilities and in doing so will lose both those rights and responsibilities. They will try to ignore or even destroy anyone who has the gall to point this out to them. Thankfully, the change is inevitable. I just hope the transition from traditional media to whatever takes its place happens before the next presidential election so we don't have to go through the agony of, once again, picking the least vile of two uninteresting, corrupt, unrepresentative candidates.

Okay, so one is more uninteresting, corrupt, and unrepresentative than the other, but you get my point.

You can ignore this

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster.

Well, you can but it isn't really going to do anything.