Honorable, moral, and noble economics

An interesting essay on the newsweek was introduced today to me from slate.com. Usually not a big fan of news weeks, it appears to me to be just another TIME wannabe and expired news collector, offering merely skin deep recount and barely any worthwhile analysis of current events. But this article (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201935/output/print) by Fareed (which incidently is a frequent guest on the Daily Show) did prove to be worthwhile even for paying the cover price. His basis thesis of the essay is that a core morality is missing from the global finance and economic system. He also pointed out interesting background helped forming the crash. a 2 trillion dollar war chest from China is such an awesome force to keep interest rate low in the states, and fuel the historically unprecedented shopping spree by the mass American public.

Anyway, a moral finance and economic system? are you kidding? I've always held the view that economics and finance are not to be in the same sentence with morality. To me morality is this vague stuff high in the cloud discussed by literature PHDs and novels from 1800's. The basic instinct of a capitalist, by definition, is to make the maximum amount of profit legally and socially allowable. I say legally first because legal framework in a nation state is always the best example of what is and is not permitted, however subject to how good your attorney is. Morality to me can be bound into this whole social responsibility umbrella because in the end of the day what is going to affect profit is what the entrepreneurs and their capitalist sidekicks are interested. Social responsibility today as we see on tv and ads are to me nothing more than a thin veneer to sugar coat business image, and eventually brand power and pricing leverage. For example, McDonalds boast about their royal mcDonalds hospital for sick kids so that parents feel better about dining at Maccas with the whole family, even when presented with a choice of a KFC, Subway and Hungry Jacks. that's brand power and pricing inelasticity right there folks.

As Fareed said himselves, in the old days where moral people are everywhere and abundant, the competition was much less competitive, so the people in power can all lie back on their leather reclining chairs and talk moral obligations to their junior brethens. fast forward to fast paced 2009 where global economy have pumped more money for grabs than those old leather chair folks can ever dream of, and competition is intensified by the introduction of e-commerce and the JetBlues, morality naturally takes second place to survival instincts. have you even seen a hungry polar bear popping up moral thoughts bubbles when he's been starving for the whole summer and see a precious seal reappear in a hole in front of him? i think not. Politicians are judged by 3 year cycle and live through each newspoll on a daily basis. They won't and shouldn't care about the end result of their current policy 5 years down the line. And anyone who cared wouldn't get elected, simple as that.

MSFT misses the mark on touchscreen phone big time oh yes they did

What is the deal with winMobile 6.5? it has no capacitor screen input and the UI is still so 1990's. The current day microsoft boasts 90,000 people world wide (of which i assume a good majority of them are technically inclined, but god knows the percentage of them are "managers" with bugger all skills), not to mention the countless heads in MSR and MSRA and MSRx, how is it possible for it to get stuffed by apple and google this bad is beyond me. everything except server and tools are bloated these days, and server and tools are not yet bloated because they are still relatively new iterations. the day sql server gets down to IE or Windows level is the day MSFT can officially consider chapter 11 like its former DOW pal GM i reckon. Should i be seriously starting to learn ruby on rails or Java now since android will soon destroy windows? lets hope not

motorbike coolness

Must confess, i've never fully appreciated the inherent danger, the inborn risk, the natural tendency to slide and fall of a modern day, properly powered motorbike. Because in a perfect world, we would adapt to motorbikes gradually from your electric scooters, 50 cc petrol rams, 125 cc tiny crotch rockets, and finally evolve into those proper 250cc road bikes which incidentally will rev your helmet off by shaking your ass. Yes i am biased towards the coolness factor introduced by hunching over a flagrantly coloured sports bike (a honda cbr nonetheless) and roll towards the horizon in a matching outfit and helmet. Dad used to roll around the bustling city without too much trouble so i thought i could too, but apparenlty it's untrue. The main issue i think is to do with the braking characteristics of a bike, as you simply can not indifferently apply brake in all unexpected situations like you do in a car. in a bike other considerations include balance, friction, inertia, and centrifugal force. where a car can skid and slide around a drift patch with joy even, a bike is supremely harmful to your livelihood if you attempt to even slightly imitate. a wet patch can twitch and knock you off in a nano seconds notice. and you ain't gonna do anything about it. you brake and you're off, you accelerate and you slide, you try stay on but it's hard. wot a bucket of bollocks.