Month: May 2020

Don’t ya know that it Hertz so good

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, Economics, General

… to paraphrase Susan Cadogan.

One of the first corporate dominoes fell this week as the car rental company, Hertz, commenced the bankruptcy process in the USA.

That a car rental company might file for Chapter 11 after 6 weeks of almost total cessation of global and domestic travel might not be so surprising, perhaps.

There’s an analogy to be had here though, which can be summarised by one question.

Before I pose that question, I will explain that this is the second time I posed it. The first was last night when we finally managed to visit friends for dinner. One of the couple was very much of the “one death is too many, regardless of the economic and long term social costs” attitude, so prevalent in all of the media class and nearly every national government.

She was also absolutely certain the published figures for fatalities from around the world were 100% accurate, despite also conceding the data collection methodologies varied by country and local jurisdiction.

Her reaction when I asked the following question was visceral; she physically moved and paused in her conversation. Depending on which psychology source you read, this can sometimes be an indication of a moment of cognitive dissonance. The question was this:

“Over recent years, Hertz has taken on $19bn of debt, so do you think Hertz died of the virus or simply with it?”.

Bill’s Opinion

The virus might have hurried Hertz and Virgin along to an early grave, but the debt level both companies had taken on was unsustainable by any objective measure.

What do we think will the Receiver will write as the cause of death on their death certificates?

Cradle to grave

Billy/ / China Flu, The end is nigh, Too much government

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours?… Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

Some of are us may be old enough to remember, all those long years ago, when the official line was the following:

Bill’s Opinion

If 2020 has no other positive consequences than a massive realisation that the government isn’t your Mum or Dad, perhaps that’s enough.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Faulty maps have brought the earth to a halt

Billy/ / China Flu, General, Incentives Matter, The end is nigh, Too much government

Caught between the twisted stars the plotted lines the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York

Betwixt between the East and west he calls on her wearing a leather vest, the earth squeals and shudders to a halt.

“Romeo had Juliette” Lou Reed

The Drake Equation was created by Dr. Frank Drake. From wiki:

The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy.

The equation relies on 7 variables to produce the answer to the question, how many alien civilisations are there out there?

The 7 variables are:

R∗ = the average rate of star formation in our galaxy.

fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets.

ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets.

fl = the fraction of planets that could support life that actually develop life at some point.

fi = the fraction of planets with life that actually go on to develop intelligent life (civilizations).

fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space.

L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

Depending on the estimated values of each of these variables, we find that the number of alien civilisations in the universe sits somewhere in a range between zero and 50 million.

Let me repeat that. Between zero to 50 million.

So, the Drake Equation is an interesting intellectual exercise but of absolutely no use in determining any kind of tangible action to be taken. We’re not going to start sending Matthew McConaughay out light years away to make contact. Similarly, it’s probably a waste of time and resources building global defences against invading Martians.

Which brings us to the infamous Imperial College computer model used to produce the report which the UK and many other world governments relied on to determine their response to the China Flu.

Spoiler alert; the model is shit.

You didn’t need a programming expert to tell you that though, the evidence is flooding in from around the globe.

The model’s predictions are falling apart wherever we look. Hospitals are not overwhelmed anywhere. No, not even in New York City.

Awkwardly, Sweden seems to have magically saved tens of thousands of predicted fatalities despite ignoring the report’s recommended actions.

The holy church of the UK’s National Health Service is being applauded every Thursday evening like an inverse Emmanuel Goldstein whilst having barely any of the predicted volume of patients.

What’s going on? Well, one possible explanation is that we’ve made the biggest peacetime policy decision ever, based on shit maths.

How shit? Really fucking shit.

But it’s ok though, no need worry, the UK government have a plan out of this mess. Boris Johnson is basing his decisions to release the public and economy on the “R number”.

Great!

Curious minds might have one or two questions perhaps, such as:

What is the R number currently, and how is it measured?

To which the answers are, dunno and using guesswork.

Bill’s Opinion

The infamous pederast, John Maynard Keynes, said, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?“.

My current opinion is that the initial responses to close borders and enforce some restrictions on public gatherings was correct and rational behaviour in the face of a new virus that has reached pandemic status.

However, the justification given for these suspensions of freedom was that we couldn’t afford to overwhelm our hospitals.

Tick. We didn’t overwhelm the hospitals.

It is not at all clear how using the R number as a reason to release restrictions can be reconciled to that original justification.

If we have managed to flatten the curve (remember when that phrase was fashionable?), it doesn’t mean the area beneath the curve has reduced. To be clear; the same number of infections and deaths occur under every model where hospitals are not overwhelmed.

Has any politician had the cojones to come out and say that yet? Of course not.

And this is the problem; going into lockdown was easy by comparison with the political courage required to end it.

As the Chinese (oh, the irony) proverb says:

He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.

Unintended consequences are governments’ only consequences

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, General, The “Are we there yet, Mum?” index, Whither Government?

Anyone who has previously met a human might be forgiven for reading the following quote and laughing like a drain:

“There is no better time to rid the states of inefficient taxes that hold back economic growth and I am talking stamp duty and payroll taxes,” Mr Perrottet said.

“We are not going to tax our way back into prosperity. Increasing or decreasing taxes is not tax reform.”

When asked which state tax was at the top of his reform agenda Mr Perrottet replied: “Stamp duty. I’ve raised it before, I think we need to get rid of inefficient taxes.”

Stamp duty, also known as transfer duty, taxes the sale of all properties in NSW and last year raised $7.5 billion for the state’s coffers. After payroll tax, stamp duty is the biggest source of taxation revenue for the states.

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the sound of a thousand Estate Agents each unwrapping a shiny new razor blade and settling into a final warm bath, whilst cradling a single malt.

Bill’s Opinion

I can’t read Dominic Perrottet’s mind, but I’m assuming his motivation for foreshadowing the idea of a replacement of Stamp Duty was to show the public the government was actively pursuing ways to get the economy moving. After all, “something must be done” is all the encouragement politicians need to hear to get on with fiddling with complex systems they don’t fully comprehend.

A quick dekko at the CV of the NSW Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, tells you everything you need to know; his last “real” job was when he was 28 years old. Saying that, the profession was lawyer, so one assumes he’d only managed to gain three of four years post graduation and law school before he was dropped into a safe seat.

Let’s face it, he’s a career politician with practically zero experience in the real world.

If he had even the mildest understanding of how humans make important life decisions such as buying property, he’d have kept his mouth firmly shut until the legislation had been drafted, agreed and had a good chance of being passed into law.

Instead, he’s just told everyone who was considering buying or selling property in NSW that a very expensive tax might be replaced or even removed at some point in the near future, so it might be regrettable to go ahead with the transaction until clarity has been provided.

In related news, the chart has been updated.

Does anyone want to make a prediction on what the next 6 months might look like?

Orange line down, flat or up?

The blue line has never dropped below 0.2% since the 1970s, by the way.

Casually sinister, Prime Minister

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, General, Legacy Press (c), Too much government

Headlines are often misleading, usually written by someone other than the article’s author.

Regardless of that, the casual manner in which this is written, seemingly without considering the alternate ways it might be read and received, is truly frightening:

“Earn“. As in, “earn” your freedom.

“…more app downloads are needed“. All that’s needed to complete the sentence is, “or else“.

Perhaps the headline doesn’t reflect the facts contained within the story. After all, the Sydney Morning Herald had hundreds of headlines about Russian hacking of various elections without providing any evidence within those articles.

Sadly, no; The Prime Minister really went there:

About 3.6 million people, or 15 per cent of the population, have downloaded the CovidSafe app, used to determine who has had contact with an individual carrying the virus, since its release last Sunday. This is far short of the government’s target for 40 per cent adoption, with a focus on those over the age of 16.

“That is the ticket to opening up our economy – to getting people back into jobs and getting businesses open again,” Mr Morrison said.

Great. Suddenly that “voluntary” app (that still hasn’t had the associated privacy legislation passed, by the way) is starting to feel a little less of a free choice with no negative consequences for conscientious objectors.

In fact, who else wonders whether, if 80% of the population vote “nien danke” to the app, there won’t be further legislation defining what public services and spaces one is unable to use without showing it running on your device?

Bill’s Opinion

The opinions about this app are polarised. It’s yet again another Brexit/Trump/gay marriage type issue; if you’re on one side of the conversation, you are able to loudly express your opinion without fear of censure. The other side, however, sit quietly seething in the knowledge they will be shouted down for even suggesting there may be a microscopic smidgen of merit to the suggestion the app is government overreach.

Personally, I’m not downloading the app voluntarily. If I find myself restricted in society as a consequence, I’d reconsider that for precisely as long as it takes me to emigrate.

The question would be at that point, to where? The entire globe seems to have pivoted overnight to a socialist, Keynesian, semi-authoritarian dystopia.