Climate policy mandate?

Posted on November 18, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

One of the eternal frustrations of the way our democracy works is that at elections we get just one vote.

We are somehow expected to synthesise down to one choice our opinions and decisions on many complex issues ranging from matters mainly of conscience like foreign aid, asylum seekers, euthanasia and so on, to fearsomely complex matters like government regulation in the economy, climate change, deficit spending and debt, and where in the economy should tax burdens fall. That’s a pretty tough ask for anyone, but do it we must …

… or not … as unfortunately is the case with most voters.

That’s why we end up with slogans and sound-bites: with a “presidential style” election.

It’s the short-cut way: get voters to decide who they think is the “best bloke” – the rest is detail. Because we have just one vote and because there are only two genuine candidates for leader, we are all forced to synthesise our decisions about everything down to: “is it to be him (Abbott) or him (Rudd)?”

Short of changing our constitution and democratic model to one like Switzerland (where real power rests with the small Cantons (states) and most major decisions result from frequent single issue referenda), we are destined always to face elections like the recent Federal election.

Then, the winner always vociferously claims a mandate to legislate for everything they they have ever thought was a good idea.

The most striking current example of this is the current Abbott Government claiming a mandate for their climate and carbon abatement policies. Some Ministers are even claiming the election was a “referendum” on the carbon tax!

That is absolute bunk …

But maybe a more cunning reaction is to say “OK, if there was a referendum on that issue alone, what did the view of the Australian electorate look like on that one issue?

During the recent election campaign, the ABC hosted a opinion gathering tool built by the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne called Vote Compass. This was an attempt to harvest opinion on a broad range of policy issues: well over 20 distinct issues were canvassed.

The website received 1.4 million responses. The analysts equate this to a sample size of 573,000. That’s a huge sample, and a pretty good indication of opinion. The final analysis is found here. No other data or analysis would come close to throwing light on this issue.

So what does it tell us about the community view about climate change?

Even with classic hip pocket nerve in play, half the community thinks there should be a price on carbon. A good chunk doesn’t know/care. A clear minority were opposed to a price on carbon.

carbon price

Then on the more generic question “should we do more?”, the opposed minority was way smaller. And just have a look at the views of those to whom this is likely to be really important in their lifetime, the 18-34 generation.

do more on climate

Now really, how can Abbott, Hunt and Pyne claim a mandate for their policies (that lack professional, scientific and economic credibility) in the face of opinion like this?

50,000 to 60,000 people turned out last weekend to protest about the lack of Government action/conviction/policy on climate change. By Australian standards, that’s a big protest. Based on the above, it’s no wonder. But will anyone in the Government pause?

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Banks. Don’t you just love ’em?

Posted on November 17, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

Before 2008 there were five enormous investment banks on Wall Street. These were not banks with tellers and branches looking after ordinary people and businesses. These were the deal makers.

As the financial crisis unfolded, first Bears Sterns got into trouble and the federal Reserve and Treasury orchestrated a controversial shotgun marriage with JP Morgan Chase. Merrill Lynch disappeared into Bank of America in similar circumstances. Two down.

Then on 15th September 2008 the Fed and Treasury decided not to do a similar deal for Lehman Brothers and it went bankrupt. Three down.

Immediately all hell broke loose. The last two, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs were under extreme pressure. And so was the Government. To avoid total calamity Mitsubishi Bank and Warren Buffet rode to the rescue with billions and Morgan and Goldman were forcibly converted into normal regulated banks. That allowed the Fed to pump in more billions of dollars to hold the two ships upright. It just worked. Sort of. But for investment banking it was five out of five down.

Wall Street investment banking had disappeared. Banking would never be the same again. (The best account I have read of this saga is “Too Big to Fail” by Andrew Ross Sorkin. It’s as breath-taking a read as anything by John le Carre).

As the years have rolled by, investigators and regulators have peered into the murky practices of these enormous Wall Street institutions. Collectively they have been fined or settled damages amounting to more than $50 billion (that’s after just my quick look, it’s bound to be bigger). But not a single senior executive has been charged, let alone gone to goal.

Needless to say the reputation of the banks, particularly Goldman and more recently JP Morgan, has been on the nose among the majority. (Remember Occupy Wall Street.) But not to worry. A huge lobbying effort in Washington means those who do matter are still friendly enough.

Banks are in no danger of being properly regulated by Washington, that’s for sure. The failure to learn from 2008 and sufficiently change banking practices will surely lead to more calamity in future.

There is an occasional lighter side (for this Sunday morning read). Last week someone at JP Morgan Chase decided they would use a Twitter hashtag event to try to get a positive conversation going, and perhaps improve the general public perception of the bank. But the users took over and JPM lost control of the conversation. #AskJPM was hastily shut down by the embarrassed bank. Here, courtesy of the Big Picture blog by Barry Ritholz, is a selection of the tweets. Sums up JPM quite nicely in my view …

ASK-Jpm

Remember also that Goldman secretly helped the Greek Government cook the books to make Greece look good enough to enter the Eurozone in 2001. Look how well that has played out now for the average Greek!

They are indeed an out-of-control bunch … they make Gordon Gecko look amateur …

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Knowledge work

Posted on November 16, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

What a week!

Lightning strike. Without computers, the internet and phones, we were crippled. So, no alternative but to call in the “techo cavalry” and put in huge hours and effort into restoring the infrastructure of the business. After almost fours days we’re fully recovered. Friday night: I fall into bed for 13 straight hours! (Hence not a lot of pondering this week.)

A salutary reminder of the importance of digital technology to the performance of work in our small business.

Like many these days, our business employs knowledge workers. They have finely tuned skills and experience. They work with large amounts of data and all sorts of electronically filed records and information. Efficiency depends on all this being searchable and always “at their fingertips”.

Why do we depend so much on technology? Because it allows us to deliver better customer service with less people and less cost. It’s that simple.

Will continuing advances in technology allow us to keep going in that direction? Yes.

Relatively, technology is cheap and skilled employees are expensive. So not only will we keep going, we must, to remain competitive in our business. We need to create, collect, organise, store and retrieve ever larger amounts of information and data. And it’s not on paper: it’s digital, held in an almost in-comprehensively small space.

But there is absolutely nothing special about us in this context. Huge numbers of small service and professional businesses are like us.

Now magnify that principle to large employers of knowledge workers: Government departments like the Tax Office, Centrelink; banks; insurance companies; big law and accounting firms; airlines. Without exception, these businesses and organisations will do more and employ less.

The implication for the future of work in this field is obvious. Less jobs available for more people means downward pressure on wages and salaries and more unemployment for “white collar” workers.

So the transformation of work in this large sector of the workforce joins the similar changes to work in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining and retail created by smarter machines, computers, robots and the internet.

Hmmm. We can’t all be tourist guides and coffee shop operators …

Have you heard any politician or government official addressing this big systemic issue? I haven’t. Rather, they tend to blather on about the need for improved productivity to make the economy more efficient. I wonder do they realise what the implications are of what they are saying when it comes to the future of work for a growing population? I doubt it.

But over the long haul this is a major problem for society. Less productively employed people struggling to support more unemployed people. Are we ready?

Posted in employment, technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Lightning strike

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

The sudden flash was so bright and the bang so loud that Jan and I and the two little dogs all levitated six inches off the bed a bit after midnight on Monday. A storm that Singaporeans would regard as quite normal. But not here in Bowral.

7am Tuesday morning, no email. Hmmm …

The lightning strike turned out to be a direct hit on the Highlands Property office 300 metres away (the source of my email). It destroyed the electronics of the air conditioning, the phone system and half the computer network. Being the handy IT guy, it fell to me to figure out what was going on and call in the various “techo’s” to help. They all turned up and did their thing the same day (even Telstra). By the end of the day the computer network was essentially restored, and the phones and air conditioning that need major replacements will be right by Friday morning.

A frustrating, time consuming, costly and disruptive disaster? Looking at it one way, sure.

But wait … I’m alright …

… the news on Tuesday evening was headed by real natural disaster in the Philippines.

Here are tens of thousands of people, hit by a natural disaster like I was, that had absolutely nothing left. Gone were relatives, friends, neighbours, infrastructure and buildings of all kinds along with everything in them. No food, no water, no power … nothing!

Unlike me, help couldn’t get to them the same day and have everything right again in a few days. And unlike me, insurance wouldn’t soften their loss.

But here is the real story.

Almost every country in the world is represented at a key climate change conference this week in Warsaw. The Philippines delegate delivered an impassioned (and in the end tearful) speech. He linked this recent typhoon weather event to climate change. When he pleaded for co-ordinated world action on climate change, most of the delegates stood and applauded him.

I wonder if the Australian delegation was on their feet? I wonder what message they will bring back to Abbott and Hunt and the others?

I wonder if this might be the crisis moment the world always seems to need to change it’s political course on just about any big policy thinking? This time, on carbon emissions policy. Could Warsaw go down in history as a tipping point?

Just things to watch. Things to ponder.

And here’s one thing I have pondered already. As you can see here, the Lowy research shows Australian attitudes on climate change changed very significantly after 2007. I suspect self-interested concern about the impact of the financial crisis was a key driver of this shift from 2008.

art-nrg9glwarming-620x349
Now attitudes are changing again and my guess is this. There will be enough typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, droughts and wild fires to keep driving this concern up over the next few years. By the time The Government takes us to the polls again in 2016 the curve will be well above 50% and heading for the highs of 2006/7. Climate change, and it’s attendant policy issues will be front and centre in the next election.

If I’m right about that shift in attitudes, look for one of the biggest and most fundamental political back-flips of all time from Abbott to keep himself in government. Will he find a way to be convincing?

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Is the US economy growing?

Posted on November 11, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

In the last several days we have seen these economic news items out of the US. This from the Sydney Morning Herald on the 8th:

The Australian dollar is lower after very strong US economic growth figures … [my emphasis]

The US economy grew by 2.8 per cent in the 12 months to September, much stronger than the 1.9 per cent analysts were expecting.

That sounds like pretty good growth in the context of the last 5 years. It even seems to be better than Australia is doing right now.

And then later on Friday, this straight from the US Government BLS news release:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 204,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

The optimism biased Bloomberg reported this this way:

Employers added 204,000 workers in October, according to the Labor Department report, compared with a median estimate of a 120,000 gain in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

One conclusion we could draw from the above is that “analysts” and “economists” haven’t a clue what’s going on and their estimates and forecasts are next to useless … but I digress.

The headline 204,000 “new jobs” comes from one of two monthly surveys conducted by the BLS to measure the labour force and employment in the US. This one is a count of jobs taken from a survey of employers, regardless of hours worked. In this survey method, a worker with 2 jobs will get counted twice; one with 3 jobs, three times. In a world where part time work is becoming more prevalent, surely this data is suspect … But it’s the headline news!

The second survey counts people. Ah, that sounds intuitively better, doesn’t it.

So what does the BLS’s so called “Household Data” survey tell us? (Actually the October data looks a bit dodgy to me, but let’s run with it, straight off the BLS website).

In the year to October 2013:

  • The population of civilians of working age (excludes: military, prisoners, kids under 16, folk in aged care institutions) rose 2.4 million to 246.4 million. (This increase seems high to me, given the growth rate of total population – now 317 million – but I’ll plow on.)
  • But, the number of the people employed rose only 240,000 to 143.6 million.

What? … only 10% of the people who added to the working age population found work? Doesn’t sound like solid, broad-based economic growth to me. Meanwhile …

  • The number “unemployed” fell 976,000 to 11.3 million. (The unemployed does not include anyone who has done any work at all in the survey week, or anyone who has not looked for work in the prior 4 weeks.)

But hey, the number counted as unemployed fell by a million in a year. That must be good news. But what about this:

  • The number “Not in labor force” (in BLS parlance), rose over 3.1 million to over 91.5 million.

And there’s a problem. A huge increase in the number of people that do not work, dependent on the barely increasing number of people that do. That’s a trend. It’s a trend that doesn’t seem to be reversing. It’s a trend that will start to hurt more and more: socially and politically.

Printing money and handing it to bankers, won’t fix it: they just play in the casino. The Fed is pushing on a string, trying to drive unemployment down and employment up. $1 trillion printed in the last year appears to have helped increase employment by just 240,000. Pretty poor return on a mountain of new money.

Political rhetoric won’t fix it either. “We must get back to work!” “We will create more jobs!” are just slogans. What is the work these unemployed and disengaged people can productively do? And who is going to pay them?

But let’s go back to the increase in GDP of 2.8%. If that is correct, where did the benefits of that flow? Based on this data, very little of it to the 155 million US work force and their dependents. Most of must have flowed to the financial engineers, the money men, the 1%.

More soon …

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The pain in Spain

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

The 2013 Spanish peak tourist season ended in September. And, as a consequence …

… the number of registered unemployed in Spain went up by 87,000 in one month between September and October.

Data published last Tuesday by the Ministry of Employment and Social Security gave the the total registered unemployed as 4,811,383. That’s just the registered people. The National Institute of Statistics (INE) also surveys the population (like they do in Australia and the US) to estimate employment and unemployment. This survey catches those not registered with the Ministry.

The last data from the INE has a total of 5.9 million unemployed, (before the tourist season ended). Employment was measured at 16.8 million. So about 26% of the total potential economically active population of 22.7 million is unemployed. That’s pretty awful.

But it gets worse. Of those under 25 seeking jobs, 54% are unemployed. And, the total population of Spain is about 47.1 million. So only 48% of the population is potentially economically active and only 35.7% of the population is employed.

Compare that with Australia. The total population is 23.3 million. 53% of the population is potentially economically active and 50% of the population is employed.

The difference here is huge. In Australia, each worker is supporting one other in a growing economy: in Spain, each worker is supporting 1.8 others is a shrinking economy.

So what’s to be done …

Well … the politicians, the economists and the bankers say that Spain just needs to grow and create new jobs. They’re deluded … this problem is much bigger than that.

Let’s suppose the objective was to get unemployment down to about 6% instead of 26%. That requires the creation of 4.5 million jobs, now. And each year that requirement for new jobs goes up by another 100,000 to 130,000 jobs just to keep up with the growing population. (Lots of people migrate to Spain.)

The Chinese might be able to create jobs on that scale over several years, but Spain has no hope. Look at the worldwide total employment by these massive multinationals:

Volkswagen                                              502,000
Toyota                                                       333,000
Daimler                                                      271,000
General Motors                                        205,000
Ford                                                           166,000

Shell + Exxon + BP                                  272,000

China National Petroleum                   1,668,000
State Grid                                              1,583,000
Sinopec                                                   1,022,000

WalMart (US only)                              1,300,000
WalMart                                                2,200,000

  • Five of the largest car makers in the world employ a total of almost 1.5 million, total: Spain needs 3 times that many jobs.
  • The largest private employer in the world, WalMart, employs 2.2 million: Spain needs twice that many jobs.
  • The 3 biggest state owned enterprises in China (they turnover US$1 trillion between them) employ about 4.3 million people: Spain needs that many new jobs. (Spain’s current GDP is about US$1.35 trillion, by the way.) 

Spain is in bad shape. Traditional thinking and traditional economics and politics will not fix it. Productive jobs just can’t be created for 4.5 million Spaniards out of thin air.

Moreover, Spain is just the worst case. Much of Europe in particular, and indeed the whole world, faces similar problems of huge over supply of labour.

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Twitter IPO

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

I use Twitter every day. But not to tweet. Configured to follow the right news sources (BBC, NYT, Reuters, The Economist, RT and others) it makes a truly excellent news feed to keep up with what was going on.

Today my news feed lit up with the story of the Twitter IPO on Wall Street. Bloomberg has the closing share price at $44.90, a 73% jump on the IPO price. That “values” the company at $24,990,000,000. Apparently Twitter has about 1000 employees and has never made a profit.

So what does that mean? Let’s get some context with a random comparison.

Everyone knows what Ford does and how long it’s been around. There’s probably a Ford truck, tractor or car in every country in the world, rich or poor, wired or not. Ford employs about 166,000 people and has about 70 plants around the world. Despite everything going against it in the last 5 years, it makes a profit: around $6,500,000,000 a year. So what does the market value Ford at? $65,340,000,000 according to Bloomberg today.

So, according to the “efficient” Wall Street stock market, Ford is only worth 2.6 times the value of Twitter. Give me a break – that has to be nonsense. Think about all the Ford vehicles around the world that do, and will, contribute to what goes on in the real productive economy – transporting goods and people, plowing fields. Oh, and how will Twitter contribute to that real economy? Hmmm.

What is going on?

Given current economic circumstances around the world, all the theory of business values, and Ford’s history, prospects, industry and financial performance, it would be hard to argue that Ford is not at a value that is about right.

Applying the same tested rules, Twitter is overvalued by an impossibly large multiple. It’s IPO has been caught up in the Wall Street casino.

In the casino, value is determined only by the greater fool game. Prices are bid up on the bet that some greater fool will come along and pay you more than you paid. It’s a game played by bankers and money men in a “market” awash with dollars “printed” out of thin air by the Federal Reserve. It’s a game mostly played out in the huge and opaque $600+ trillion derivatives “market”. But the Twitter IPO just gave Wall Street the opportunity to create a “product” that had a veneer of respectibility (because it is actually a handy tool for your smart phone).

It’s this mentality that blew things up in 2008. It will happen again … probably soon.

Posted in financial markets, technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The climate debate

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

You can look forward to a few posts from me on this debate … so let’s get started …

This from the Guardian on November 5th …

Carbon taxes and emissions trading systems are the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions and should be “at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change”, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

An OECD study, called Effective Carbon Prices, found that other policies, such as feed-in tariffs, industry regulation and subsidies, are far less economically preferable than carbon pricing.

The findings are the latest evidence-based blow to the Coalition government’s climate policy, which involves dismantling carbon pricing and replacing it with its Direct Action system of financial handouts to businesses that want to reduce their emissions …

… The OECD’s ringing endorsement of carbon pricing follows the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which have both recently backed the system as the best way to slash emissions.

It is noteworthy that all three of these major economic policy thinking bodies, the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank, have long left behind the debates about whether climate change is real and about whether human activity is contributing. They accept that that governments need to attack it – that’s a given – they have moved on to analyse, discuss and recommend what policy responses governments should implement to reduce emissions.

So where does that leave the Australian government?

  • Equivocal about the science. Tony Abbott has made many comments about the carbon tax and about climate change in the last few years. Some have been outright denials of scientific evidence and reality. Others have been nervy, equivocal comments that climate change is real. But, have you ever heard a statement from Abbott that convinces you that he really believes that climate change warrants serious government and societal action? I haven’t. Or, do you find little Greg Hunt convincing? Look at them. Read the body language.
  • Now the Government is flying in the face of almost unanimous advice about the appropriate economic policy to attack the problem they really don’t think needs attacking. So politics trumps science and economics.

I wonder if we got an insight today into Abbott’s thinking. His mentor went all the way to London and made a speech reported in the Sydney Morning Herald here:

Former prime minister John Howard has poured scorn on the “alarmist” scientific consensus on global warming in a speech to a gathering of British climate sceptics, comparing those calling for action on climate change to religious zealots.

“I am unconvinced that catastrophe is around the corner.”

Howard is, of course, a well researched expert on the subject. Hmmm. The Herald again:

Mr Howard revealed before the speech that the only book he had read on climate change was Lawson’s An Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming, published in 2008.

Mr Howard said he read it twice, once when he was writing his autobiography, when he used it to counter advice for stronger action on climate change given to him by government departments when he had been prime minister.

So that’s how he made decisions on matters important to humanity. Ignore the science and the paid public service, and rely on one book by another politician! What was that I said about group think a few days ago?

Howard clearly needs to upgrade his reading list, perhaps starting with the quite readable recent summary from the IPCC. Then he could move on a wonderful article by Naomi Klein in the Russell Brand edited New Statesman last week (more about Russell soon). She is an author of the utmost integrity, relying on years of research to produce each of her books. Read it. It’s important.

Posted in climate change | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Indians to Mars?

Posted on November 5, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

Today, India is launching a rocket to Mars. The Guardian newspaper has the story:

The cyclone season is almost over, the planets are in alignment, the countdown has started. On Tuesday at 2.46pm local time, a rocket will blast off from the Indian space port on a small island in the Bay of Bengal, heading for Mars.

Its course will be closely followed. The $70m (£45m) mission – India’s first attempt to reach the red planet – aims not just to gather information that might indicate if life has ever existed or could exist there, nor simply to showcase Indian technology, but to steal an interplanetary march on its regional rival, China.

Why?

Does any sane person really care if there is “life” on Mars? I’ve never seen or heard any explanation of what we humans stand to benefit from knowing one way or the other.

Is it likely that a $70 million project will produce technology spin-offs like teflon or the micro-chip? To put this in some context, $70 million might buy you just one Boeing 737 commuter airliner with enough left to buy fuel to fly it for a year or so.

What drives the leaders of a nation beset by the earthly problems that India has to do this? The “mission” (just the use of that word says a lot) was announced a while ago, in the week that 600 million people were hit by the world’s worst power cut.

The Guardian explains:

“In the last century the space race meant the US against the Soviets. In the 21st century it means India against China,” said Pallava Bagla, one of India’s best known science commentators. “There is a lot of national pride involved in this.”

That the mission was about national pride was never in doubt. It was announced last year by prime minister Manmohan Singh in his annual address from the battlements of Delhi’s famous Red Fort, the bastion of the Mughal emperors. Its success would mean the Indians would join the Russians, the US and the European space agency which have all also reached Mars.

Ahh. So it’s not about pushing the boundaries of technology to find a way to improve the lot of Indians, or the rest of mankind. It’s about “national pride”. It’s about keeping up with the Jones’ whether you can afford it or not.

A plunging currency, ailing economy and the state’s seeming inability to deliver basic services have led many Indians to question whether their nation is quite as close to becoming a global superpower as it seemed in the heady years of the last decade when economic growth pushed the 10%. For a government beset by charges of corruption and mismanagement, the Mars mission is one way to repair its battered image …

Really? … In whose eyes? …

… Such expenditure is, however, controversial, with some questioning whether India, where more than 40% of children are malnourished and half the population have no toilets, can afford the mission. One development economist called it a symptom of “the Indian elite’s delusional quest for superpower status”.

Controversial indeed …

It’s priorities all wrong. It’s mindless. It’s the 1% grinding the 99%. It’s hubris.

Let’s hope the rocket gets to Mars, because that way a few Indian scientists and politicians can at least have their day of pride. If it doesn’t, the waste and stupidity will be absolute.

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The optimism bias

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Geoff O'Reilly

Are we born to be optimistic, rather than realistic? It seems we are.

Yesterday I cautioned about the optimism bias. So what is it?

The optimism bias is the belief that the future will be better, much better, than the past or present. Apparently, research shows that 80% of us display this bias.

How do we see this play out in practice? Folk believe bad things won’t happen to them:

  • ask a couple on their wedding day about the likelihood of their divorce – 0% will acknowledge the possibility, despite experience showing that these days 2 out of 5 couples will divorce
  • thousands of times a year a smoker will pull a cigarette from a packet that says their habit will KILL them – but they think “no, I’m the exception, that will only happen to the other guy”
  • drink driving – “nah, I won’t have an accident … or get caught”
  • risky behaviour “these drugs are fun … they won’t do me any harm”

It plays out on the other side of the equation too – good things will happen to them:

  • the TV news says that house prices are going up in Sydney, so suddenly everyone (even those in a different market, not in Sydney) thinks their house is worth much much more
  • in a triumph of hope, folk start a small business – “I can run a coffee shop better than those dopes that have just gone broke in this shop” – (Most fail a short time later)
  • inexperienced share traders jump on the bull thinking the only way is up
  • “I can beat this poker machine”

And we see this bias in the big picture all the time:

  • the politicians tell us: things will get better; economic growth will return; we’ll chase and catch all the bad guys – they play our bias to be optimistic – and most folk are lazily sucked in
  • the climate deniers: “it’s a gas you can’t see or smell”, how can it possibly bother us – climate change has been happening forever – we’ll be alright!
  • many technologists have a fond belief that man’s brain and technological prowess will develop a solution to all our problems … Hmmmm!

If you’d like to see more about the optimism bias go here to see a brilliant and entertaining short talk by Tali Sharot, an eloquent researcher on the subject.

And let’s not forget this wildly optimistic little guy. Wile E Coyote thought that his brain, his cunning and all manner of technological aids would solve his problem … he persevered for years (as I remember it) … didn’t happen … roadrunner 1,000’s, coyote 0!

roadrunner

Posted in why do people do what they do | 2 Comments