No more off-shore wind power in Ontario

It seems like the future of energy policy under the Liberal government of Ontario is a game of spin the bottle. One day, they announce a commitment to something and the next day they scrap it. Truthfully, I believe what we are observing is much more calculated and sinister. Cronies are struggling to protect their turf in the energy market.

The Canadian Wind Energy Association is disappointed that the Ontario government is stopping offshore wind farm developments but I am disappointed too. I would like to see people free to build their windmills on their own land (or water, depending on how pedantic the detractors need to be) and sell the electricity to the public. If the CanWEA folks have any real technology to offer, let them build it and sell their product without resorting to government privilege, favoritism nor subsidy.

The problem is not that the Ontario government put a moratorium on a wide range of technology. The problem is that the government controls entry into the market or electricity.

CBC provokes confusion in Canadian poultry market

Message to producers of consumer advocacy news-magazine-show “Marketplace” broadcast on CBC television:
Cook your chicken before you eat it. Duh. Yeah, you knew that already just like everybody else.

There is nothing exceptionally dangerous about Canadian chickens just because there are anti-biotic resistant bacteria on their flesh. The premise of the CBC program starts on the wrong foot: “Canadians are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.” and is a completely ignorant statement at best. Knowing the CBC, my bet is that the motivations behind this program are at their worst: deliberate fear-mongering and dishonest sensationalism.

The fact is that humans do not develop resistance to antibiotics. Only microbes develop antibiotic resistance. The premise of the “Marketplace” program is probably chosen to mislead the public into demonizing poultry farmers who use antibiotics.

There are probably better reasons to demonize the modern poultry industry — cruelty in the elevation is one of them — but antibiotic resistant bacteria is not an intelligent one.

WikiLeaks nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Snorre Valen, MP from Norway, explains why he nominates WikiLeaks as a Nobel Peace Prize candidate.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps — a movie review from a market perspective

What a shame. Oliver Stone came within inches of making a perfectly sound economic picture with “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” but failed. The failure is his target on speculators.

The main character Gordon Gekko states: “The mother of all evil is speculation.” Sadly, this is the misguided attitude of the socialists because they do not understand markets.

Speculation is actually a blessing to people who want market stability. When prices are high, speculators enter the markets to sell. When prices are low, speculators enter the markets to buy with the hopes of making it up when prices rise — again — presumably again — that is the gamble speculators take. By entering markets at the extremes, speculators buffer the business cycles. The rising prices are reduced because the speculators increase supply. The falling prices are pulled up because the speculators increase demand. This is the most basic application of demand and supply theory. Maybe Stone slept through the “Demand curves go down. Supply curves go up.” part of the Economics 101 lesson.

One laudable aspect of the movie is that it points out that a lot of speculation is made from debt, fabricated equity financing and printed money. Certainly that is a bad thing because they are artificial inflationary activities in the market. However, the speculation is not the root of the problem.

If OIiver Stone wanted to create an economically sound movie, his main character would have told us: “Printing money is the mother of all evil.” Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I highly recommend it.

Hypocritical or Flip Flopping? Take Your Pick…

Ivison points out that the Liberal party has launch its own set of campaign attack ads to counter the Conservative’s attack ads:

The Grits released two new television ads Friday, with the tagline: “Is this your Canada or Harper’s?”

One takes aim at the Conservative government’s decision to sole source the new generation of fighter jets, at a cost of $16-billion. The other targets the government’s move to reduce corporate taxes.

Except of course it was the Liberal Party of Canada that first signed onto the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program in 2002.

In addition to that history lesson lets see what the Liberal Party had to say in 2008  about corporate tax cuts:

“We will accelerate and deepen the currently planned corporate tax cuts, reducing the general corporate tax rate by an additional one per cent within four years. That means the federal corporate tax rate in Canada will be only 14 per cent by the 2012.” – Liberal press release, June 19, 2008

Anarchy in Belgium? not likely

This is a glorious development to witness:

A caretaker government has been running Belgium since June, setting a post-war record for a period without government.

I wonder how long it will take before people wake up and realize that they do not need government the way they thought they did.

The longer this ship sails, the sooner it will dawn on folks that the names on the ballot boxes do not identify the power of the state.

Public Funding for Political Parties

The Conservative Party will make campaign finance a central pillar of its reelection platform in the next federal election, which observers expect this coming spring or fall.

Under the Conservatives’ plan, political parties will retain the power to issue tax receipts to individual donors. Political parties will also remain entitled to receive reimbursements for authorized campaign expenditures. But gone will be the direct subsidies that grant political parties roughly $2 for every vote they get at the polls.

That strikes me as not only fair and reasonable, but also quite right. I think it’s a winner.

If there is a compelling reason to disagree with the Conservative Party on campaign finance, I cannot think of it, particularly given how well Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the point here:

I think we’ve been pretty clear that we don’t think there’s really strong justification for this direct subsidy to parties. … Our view is that there is a role for some public finance, but it has got to be tied to a party’s own efforts, or to the willingness of voters to actually contribute this money.

It remains to be seen, though, whether the rest of the Conservative Party’s platform will earn my similarly enthusiastic support.

The Social Network — a movie review from a market perspective

I enjoyed the movie “The Social Network” released last year. Two things stood out like shining stars:
1) Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective on what defines originality in the software market and the validity of ownership claims;
2) Shawn Parker’s perspective on how he beat the record industry.

Three guys at Harvard asked Zuckerberg to develop their social networking program which went on to become ConnectU. The originators of ConnectU sued him for copying. When Zuckerberg was accused of stealing the idea to create Facebook, his reflexive response was to make it known that his computer code for Facebook was completely different from the code of ConnectU. Thus, in his eyes, he did not copy nor did he steal. From his frame of reference, he is right. Personally, I do not think there is anything wrong with his frame of reference.

Zuckerberg is also portrayed as a copy-cat in the software for his FaceMash program which used his friend’s algorithm to rank the attractiveness of female students. Other than being a springboard for the development of FaceBook, FaceMash never went anywhere commercially. His friend Eduardo Saverin created an algorithm to rank chess players and he wrote it on a window with wax crayon on Zuckerberg’s window. Zuckerberg felt free to copy this algorithm because Saverin essentially tossed it into the public domain by leaving it for an extended period of time on display.

I make these observations to point out that the laws we chose for handling intellectual property disputes are arbitrary.

Shawn Parker created Napster and was sued by record companies. He was ordered to pay up by the courts he chose to declare bankruptcy instead. His acquaintances in the movie said he was delusional. To demonstrate his delusion, Parker says that he beat the record companies. The other characters gently reminded him that he lost against them. In an awesome cinematic twist, the presumed delusional Parker completes their sentence by clarifying that he only lost in court. He then asks them if any of them would be willing to buy Tower Records. We all know that the record industry is collapsing due to lack of retail sales. Parker beat the record industry in their own market.

The originality in these two young people in how they view markets and rightful competitive practices is refreshing. The door is opening wider.

Dear Royal Gendarmerie of Canada

Full disclosure to the defence is essential to justice. Complete the paper work or turn in your badge and S&W 9 mm. End of story.

Police waste taxes on Olympic ticket scam

The police should not be wasting our taxes settling scores between crooks:

West Vancouver police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for a man alleged to have collected over $60,000 in an Internet Winter Olympics ticket scam.

The way I figure is that if I make a deal with a thief to buy stolen property from him and that deal goes sour, at the very minimum I deserve to take the loss. The Olympics were held on stolen land.

The fools who gambled their money buying tickets from Sean McConnell Stuart through Craigslist and Kijiji should pay for their own frivolous security by getting insurance on their purchases.

« Previous Page — Next Page »