Hope Danes do not dismantle their welfare state but others learn from it

I read this news about the welfare state of Denmark with a lot of interest. The tone of the report was distinctly negative. It implies that something is wrong - the state is discouraging people from working.

It seems to me that the Danes are well off because they have hit upon the solution for the modern predicament - jobless growth! I may agree with Erik Brynjolfsson: The key to growth? Race with the machines; however, I find it hard to believe that all or even most human beings can be productively employed in a robotic future.

People may be able to spend their time, exactly as I am doing - writing a blog, reading and sharing news, spending some time on Google+ and, even, Facebook. But I am not earning anything from these activities. I have earned this 'right' to do nothing by 'retiring'. Society may have to face up to the reality that a fair fraction of the population will never be employed as appears to be happening in Spain.

I have to admit that anyone can do well in the new economy - what else can one say about Honey Boo Boo. Logic, though, tells us that anyone can does not imply everyone will. The best anti-dote for optimism remains A Cool Million!

New industries like Google, Facebook need an audience and content creators - an audience who are in a position to spend money making it worthwhile for advertiser to pay these companies.  We may have trouble doing so in India but the richer countries should be able to pay people to spend time on social media instead of working just like they pay farmers to not grow food. If the option boils down to dying or paying higher corporate taxes, the latter is bound to win.

I was surprised to find that the concept of negative income tax has been around so long and even more surprised that one of its first proponents was Milton Friedman.

Negative income tax may interesting side effects, e.g. better services. People may work in a coffee shop or a bar not to earn money but to interact with people. Many jobs may move from their lowly economic status to a higher socially conscious status. I recall reading that a prominent author worked as a nightwatchman so that he could work on his novel in peace!

For Indians in India, the future does not look rosy. We need to accept that robots are cheaper even in China! This news confirms the absurdity of the idea of demographic dividend. We have a large unemployed and unemployable population, unfit even for blogging or creating YouTube videos. It seems absurd to brag about it rather than working frantically to reduce population growth and move towards Danish style welfare state when each of us becomes a socially conscious rag-picker.

Cyprus Crisis and the Realisation that we are Poorer

A tax on bank account savings seemed so strange that I was wondering who could have thought of it.

I then had the opportunity to send a gift to New Zealand. I would not have noticed the exchange rate except that we had received a gift from New Zealand just a year ago. And how I wish the sequence of events was inverted. The New Zealand dollar was worth about Rs. 35 then and about Rs. 45 now :(

So, effectively, I am poorer by almost 30% and I wish I could swap places with Cypriots and pay 10% but only  of my bank deposits! But I am sure that paying the 10% would have hurt a lot more than the Indian rupee going downhill :(

Robots will do the work but who will own them?

In the good old days, the Noblemen had a great time. Their serfs and slaves did the work while they appreciated the good things of life.

We won't need slaves. Robots will do just fine. There is just one little hitch. Will we be the owners of the robots. Not likely if we look at these statistics.

So, I suppose without any job or the wealth generated by the robots, we can spend our time creating content for youtube or facebook and, even better, consuming the content.

This brings up a contradiction. These sites need enough of us to click on ads and SPEND money. Unfortunately, most of us may not have any!

So, is the future bright with robots removing the drudgery or bleak with most of us surviving on dole - even if we are very well educated.

Robots are coming. Are we safe?

Computers and robots are taking over many of the jobs. This is very nicely and positively presented by Andrew McAfee: Are droids taking our jobs?

I was reminded today of IBM's Watson becoming a chef.

In the 60's, the Avengers had a lovely episode in which the computer churns out romance novels with just a few parameters. It wouldn't be a surprise today if it is revealed that the computer software is already assisting a prolific author.

While digital version of Audrey Hepburn may not match the original, I may prefer the digital Audrey to many real life alternates :)

But one thing is still assured. Most organizations want us and not robots to consume their content. Watson may create the recipe but we will need to eat the outcome. Computer programs may create books or videos but we will be needed to read and view them.

We seem to be safe. Robots and computer software will need us to give relevance and meaning to their creations.

Waiting for Streaming TV Options

It is very disappointing. I look forward to 6:30 to 8:30 on weekdays to watch TV5 Monde's fiction programs. Today, the channel disappeared.

I had been surprised to find that the local cable was broadcasting TV5 Monde and DW after switching to digital cable. I was worried that the cable operator may have been sending these signals out of ignorance. My fears for these channels may have been correct.

It is particularly painful to realize that better television exists but we are stuck with 100's of un-watchable options :(

I wonder when we will have streaming options available in India. 

Update - The channels have re-appeared after 3 days. I hope they will stay :)

Shouldn't society be more helpful to victims of crime?

Two crime news items struck my attention, especially with a show I saw on TV5 Monde this week. 

The first news was about a person accused under the IT act possibly because the police did not know that the American date format is mmddyy and not ddmmyy :) A fairly obvious case of mistaken identity creating havoc in the life of an ordinary person.

The second news was the arrest of a landlord for not getting antecedents of his tenants checked! The tenants got into a fight and murdered a neighbour. As it is, getting someone to give accommodation on rent is very-very hard. I am sure filing papers with police will make it even harder and it is very doubtful if it makes the city any safer. I would be inclined to look at the landlord as a victim of the crime. His life is bound to be affected by what his tenants did.

The show on French tv was about victims of crime. In this episode, it was identity theft. One woman discovers that she is supposedly married when she tried to get married! Some woman had used her identity to get married. Why would one need to do that? Anyway, the victim has been struggling to get her past cleaned up.

In another incident, someone had defrauded a lot of banks by overdrawing on accounts by using the identity of a person. He is now stranded without any credit cards and is trying to clean up his fake past. He has to suffer little indignities like his clients looking at him strangely when he pays a large restaurant bill in cash!

It is easy to find that huge sums of money are spent on fighting crime and punishing criminals. Usually, few object to spending even more for these activities. Yet, I am not sure if any money at all is spent by the society in helping the victims.

Wouldn't it be more reasonable to accept that given human nature and our knowledge of biology, some crime will happen. Shouldn't we balance the expenditure - spend less on hopelessly trying to eliminate crime and spend some money on helping the victims cope.

A Shootout over Parking near City Beautiful - Inevitable

The first news I noticed today was about a shooting in Mohali over a quarrel over parking. I can sympathize with the victims family as I have bottled up a lot of anger against neighbours who have at least 4 cars and we have had to learn how to park and take out our car with relatively complex maneuver for people our age.

The sadness is that the people who can have many expensive cars can show off their wealth by buying such vehicles. However, they are not well off enough to buy or rent a place where they can park such objects of 'desire'. Actually, come to think of it, people like us could not possibly have bought the place where we are staying were it not for our grandparents' and parents' foresight -  even if accidental.

So, the general hostility towards even 4 storey "high rises!" amuses and saddens me. It is indeed highly undesirable to have tiny plots with 4 storeys with narrow roads leading up to them. Solution would be to find ways by which a whole area can be redeveloped rather than merely blocking haphazard growth. If no solution is allowed, people will find ways of circumventing the rules.

I used to work on the 4th floor(ground + 4) of a building in the commercial heart of Chandigarh - Sector 17. Each block consists of adjoining but independent plots. So, each little building has a narrow, ugly stairway. Our building had a non-functional lift, most likely because it was too expensive to maintain. In general, the ground floor is very  valuable but, I expect, that the upper floors are not.

What if the all the adjoining plots were consolidated and a single complex built. It would be economical to have nice lifts, escalators, toilet facilities and each floor would be commercially valuable. Everyone but the shops on the ground floor would benefit.

The same setup is true for each of the markets in each sector. Originally, the space above the shop was probably intended for the residence of the shop owners. I know of only one such instance now in our sector's market.  The sector markets need urgent redevelopment. Most shoppers even from within the sector come on cars and not walk. The shop owners have cars. The parking is a mess. The traffic flow is already chaotic.

And we still advertise is as city beautiful and want to insist that everything should be as per the original Le Corbousier plan :(