Can You Say “Ideologically-Based Hypocrisy”?
A commentator named ‘Runner’ pointed the following out on a CBC News/Politics story… it seems in a 2008 report entitled “Is Toronto in Decline? Worrying Trends from the Census”, the Fraser Institute says the following:
The best data produced in Canada are the census data. While no data are perfect, the census attempts to reach each and every Canadian. The most recent census was conducted in May 2006. However, the data which reflects directly on the questions raised in this paper were released on May 1 of this year (Income and Earnings) and March 1 of the year (Labor). This paper will present….
If you have been following the strange saga of the long-form census and the current Canadian government’s attempt to abolish it, ostensibly because of an outcry from a handful of people who think it is an invasion of personal privacy, then you might recall that the Fraser Institute is loudly supporting the government by insinuating that it is only (left-wing, progressive?) activists and academics that use census data and that if anyone wants reliable statistics that he/she should, like good little free-marketeers, commission his or her own polls. I am not sure if the Fraser Institute is suddenly wanting to get into the polling business and make oodles of money, but even before I read the above quotation, I found their reasoning very dubious on a number of different counts. In their world, statistics would be the province of those who could afford it (and there is already enough inequality in the world). That would include municipalities and think tanks. I guess that would also mean that governments, especially the federal government, would have to contract with private polling firms and hope that those private interests would not abuse the personal information they gather. In a world (think Facebook) where information is valuable as marketing data, it would be very tempting for a business to sell the data to Axiom or some other, large data-collecting corporation. Also, since the federal government is funded by tax-payers, why is it a problem if a government agency like Statistics Canada makes its aggregated data (where all personal identifiers are stripped away) to anyone in Canada? I mean, we live in an information age where access to reliable information is commonly regarded as a hallmark of living in an advanced country. Also, having Stats. Can. provide such information to anyone is highly efficient and can take advantage of economies of scale, and don’t we want governments/countries to try to be as efficient as possible?
But, perhaps that is too much to expect from an ideologically-driven think tank like the Fraser Institute. They, like many other politicized organizations (along any part of the ideological spectrum) often say whatever is politically convenient no matter how untrue or blatantly hypocritical. And the Fraser Institute prove it best themselves in the very words of their own report.
PS. a screenshot from the pdf version of the report is below:
Iran in August? Some Think the Winds of War are again Blowing
For the past week, I have locked myself in my home office in order to write (basically from scratch) a 30ish-page, 10,000ish-word essay for a journal and its special, double issue on the Cultures of Militarization. So, I have not found much time to read or catch news via any medium.
Now that is has been sent off, I have taken a little break to get caught up in what may or may not be happening in the world. One surprising development was how much Iran as a potential target of Western agression/self-defence. This had been building over the summer, especially the recently-announced economic sanctions and what not, but it seems that things have really taken off in my week’s absence from the world (or it just seems like it).
But it does make a lot of sense. Forces within the U.S., Israel, and other Western nations have been eyeing Iran for some time now. But the events of the recent past, it seems those forces seem to be empowered once again. The global financial near-collapse (war can be very profitable for those accustomed to making lots of money), a weakened U.S. President (wars can be good for rallying the population), a resurgent right-wing/neocon movement (which always looks to war), wary Arab states, and an Israeli government that has been in conflict diplomatically with the current White House.
At any rate, I was surprised to see, again and again, discussion of this topic in a variety of places. Here are a few of the most intriguing I came across today:
VIPS Sends Memo To Obama Warning Israel May Bomb Iran “As Early As This Month”
Obama is Preparing to Bomb Iran
It makes one wonder… and in Canada, I don’t think there would be any question how our current government would react if the Israel/U.S. attacked Iran, especially given recent statements on Israel, how quickly the government announced Canada too would be joining the economic sanctions, the fact that the Conservatives (led by Stephen Harper) were very outspoken about joining the U.S. in the invasion of Iraq when they were the official opposition, and all the recent funding for new weapons/equipment for the military.
If it were to happen, and if it were–as many seem to fear–to expand and proliferate to include other Gulf nations and expanded terrorism… well….
.
Venture Capital and Technology… is the Tech Boom Over?
I have been blabbering on… to anyone who will listen to me… about my fears that the ‘tech boom’ we are living through is likely to end. And by ‘end’ I mean that it will take its place among other (sometimes struggling) industries and reach a level of normalcy. What this means is that the pace of innovation and heated competition–all fuelled by venture capital and the easy credit of the 1990s and 2000s–will be scaled back.
I teach media studies in a New Media department at a well-funded Canadian university. This means I am surrounded by well-meaning but caught-in-the-hype individuals who like to buy lots of iThings and assume (if they think about it at all) that it will all continue like this forever. They do not realize that the industry is extremely resource- and energy-intensive and that it has been heavily subsidized by governments (at all levels), venture capital, and monopoly money in the form of easy credit. Instead, they think that iPads are made in LaLaLaApple Land by happy little fairies (not slave labour) with materials that magically appear out of thin air (not mined by slave, migrant labour in some far off country controlled by some dictator friendly to Western corporations). Or, they assume that all these gadgets are magically powered by the sheer combined genius emanating from the craniums of Bill Gates, Michael Dell and, of course, Steve ‘God’ Jobs (he is the father of the ‘Jesus Phone’ after all) and not by an electrical grid that is increasingly under pressure from our air-conditioned, convenience-at-all-costs lifestyles. Or, they think that when they toss out their months-old smart phone (what makes it ‘smart’ again?) or GPS unit or PSP and then head on down to Sprawl-Mart to buy a newer and better one on their credit cards, that the old unit magically disappears, does not leach toxins into the environment, and certainly is not a waste of all of the labour, engineering, and the increasingly-hard-to-find precious metals and other resources. Today, technology for us Westerners is merely something to buy on a whim (and a credit card), use to a tenth of its capacity, get board with when the lustre (and fashionableness) wears off, and then discard. (One day soon, I am sure, we will be wishing we could rescue some of the mountains of discarded technology that are sitting in landfills.)
That is why I don’t think it is a particularly bad thing that this all will come to an end. With the financial industry (not just the housing market, the entire financial industry) having imploded, the mirage of free money appearing out of thin air starting to disappear, and–most of all–the shrinking of the middle class in Western nations, there is going to be little to continue to fuel the tech boom that laid the foundations for the technology that we are enjoying right now.
“Sure,” you might ask. “But what of the return to profitability? The impressive sales of the gadget and software? The fact mainstream media pundits can only talk about Facebook and Twitter? And that Steve Jobs is a friggin’ god? What do you have to say about all that?”
My reply would be that these things take time to develop. Most people have been convinced (more likely they convinced themselves) that this little ‘recession’ was over, and began spending again, apparently confident that everything would return to ‘normal’ (instead of realizing that we are returning to normal after many years of excess and fantasy). Politicians around the world handed over trillions (trillions!) in monopoly money to prevent the financial sector from melting away (along with their campaign contributions no doubt). And, perhaps most important, many people just cannot be bothered to pay much attention to all this until they are impacted directly.
But, today, I came across an interesting analysis of investment in the broad sector of technology development and it is extremely eye-opening:
“Technology Bubble Ten Years Back: The Money’s Not Back,” iTulip, Aug. 3, 2010.
Looking at some of the information presented in the article is very interesting and eye-opening. The level of investment ten years ago, and which disappeared after the tech- and other bubbles burst, was mind-boggling. One graph in particular shows just how different things were back then:
If you consider the investment made in software, telecom, and networking companies in 2000 as compared to now, the difference is huge. It is no wonder that we are swimming in a sea of tech gadgets today. And remember that it takes years for technology in established industries to make it into the marketplace. (It takes decades for technology in unestablished industries to make it into the marketplace which is why our need to develop alternative energy sources–and new gadgets, including vehicles, that will run off that alternate energy–is so desparate.)
As I said previously, I don’t think this is a bad thing. If we return to normal sure, we might not buy new gadgets like we did in the last decade, but we will learn to live with that. Some sectors of the economy and some in these indstries might be affected, but these are companies that built business models that are entirely reliant upon a creadit-fuelled, highly subsidized system where we act like complete, mindless consumers… and these companies will not be as profitable (and some might not survive) in this new market that looks like it might be based more on reality and not reliant on phantom money and subsidized by future debt and tax-payer money.