Category: The end is nigh

Every problem has a solution

Billy/ / China Flu, Free Speech, General, Identity Politics, The end is nigh, Vifence

The culture war has come for England rugby supporters; calls to ban “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” as it is cultural appropriation.

Bill’s Opinion

This former frequenter of Twickenham Stadium does not appreciate being “told” to do or not do things.

You can try politely asking me, of course.

In the meantime, even if you aren’t a rugby fan, it might be worth tuning in to the next fixture just to watch how precisely they think they’ll enforce this ban, particularly when the fans could legitimately wear these to cover their mouths:

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.

Risky business

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, General, The end is nigh, Wokepac

Over the last few decades, there has been a proliferation and expansion of career categories and roles within large organisations, many of which add dubious value to their stakeholders.

Examples might include the exponential growth of the previously named “Personnel” department; the size of the Human Resources’ departments as a ratio of the entire company has generally expanded exponentially since, say, the 1980s.

This spawned the utterly pointless diversity military industrial complex, based mainly on a ridiculous 1989 essay by Peggy McIntosh.

Another example, perhaps less obvious, is the Risk department.

Financial institutions in particular, have an increasing footprint of staff with “Risk” in their job title. For those who have been lucky enough to not work with these people, “risk” is a code for “no responsibilities“.

Being a “risk professional” means never having to be accountable for anything.

That might sound like an inflammatory statement but it’s easily empirically-checked; there have been plenty of documented failure in organisations’ risk management over the last few years. Examples include Wokepac’s Paedophile Enablement Programme, CBA’s Mafia Laundry Scheme, and dozens of leaks of personal data by private and public sector organisations.

How many of those resulted in the resignation or firing of the most senior risk officer? Perhaps you could let us know in the comments if any “risk professional” lost their job as a consequence.

The Audit team, at least, serve a useful purpose of checking compliance occurred as required for critical activities. By contrast, the Risk team are generally worse than useless as they advise on avoiding things that might happen. Proving they have helped is an impossible task as it is like proving a negative; the car didn’t crash because we took the keys from you.

Risk is one of those departments capable of parthenogenesis. Decades ago, risk was mainly a safety or financial function; what can we do to not kill workers or how do we hedge against this financial transaction going to shit?

These days though, all sorts of risks are documented in Excel spreadsheets or expensive software products that are just glorified versions of spreadsheets. Risk “professionals” in a crappy mediocre retail bank pretend they can somehow quantity geopolitical risks or mitigate for earthquakes in Indonesia by facilititing post-it note workshops and acting like over-promoted junior police officers bullying and pestering those people whose job it is to actually generate revenue.

The science behind risk management is complete bollocks. Depending on which source you select, you’ll be shown a complicated methodology which pretends it can somehow grade probability and impact to provide a credibility-lite relative score of the risks to the organisation.

Of course, with all models, the input parameters and assumptions behind the calculations are critical to the likely accuracy of the result they give. GIGO – garbage in, garbage out.

The people in these risk roles are never impressive individuals either. As with any kind of critic, they are most likely providing feedback on people whose job they simply couldn’t do themselves.

Those who can, do.

Those who can’t, teach.

Those who can’t even teach, measure risk”.

An classic example comes to mind from my recent experience in an Australian bank. My interlocutor was a chap who seemingly had made a career out of being deeply unpleasant.

In one of those frequent coincidences with ugly personalities, he was also physically repulsive; no chin, terrible dentistry, a lopsided face (think Thom York without the talent). Better still, he suffered from extreme rhoticism; he pronounced “th” as “f” or “v” and “r” as “w”.

“Hi, I’m ve genewal manager of wisk and I fink we must gwade vese wisks“.

We once had an illuminating conversation over a corporate slide deck; there was wholesome picture of a young child on scooter. The kid was wearing a helmet and open-toed shoes. We had an argument about which was the greater problem.

My view; it’s almost certain the kid will rip her foot whilst scooting.

His view; if she bangs her head she might suffer a brain injury.

He seemed somewhat offended when I asked him how many children he had (spoiler alert; none, and little chance of that changing).

So how did it go for us, corporately and in government, with this massive army of risk managers keeping us safe?

Bill’s Opinion

Just as the lawyers of the world mainly missed writing the word “pandemic” in their definition of Force Majeure, the Risk team in most organisations have completely failed to do their job.

Of course, the most likely response to this will be to hire more, not fewer/better risk managers.

Wince and wepeat.

Freedom ‘20

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, China Flu, Economics, General, The end is nigh, Too much government

1993

Many lifetimes ago, a young worker in the City of London watched as, in response to a large IRA bomb attack, armed police officers were deployed to patrol the streets and the road entrances to the area had permanent checkpoints installed and manned around the clock.

That young worker watched in horror as his fellow citizens happily accepted this radical change to the method of policing in response to a single event which, arguably, was a result of a multiple failures of policing and intelligence-gathering (for example; how did a purchase of 1 tonne of ammonia nitrate go unrecorded?).

2001, 2005, 2006

Eight years later, further radical changes were made to anti-terror legislation following the 911 terror attacks in New York and Washington DC. A further increase in powers was implemented in 2005 and yet again the following year as a reaction to the London attacks in 2005, including the ability to hold suspects without charge for 28 days and impose house arrest without a conviction.

Similar legislation was passed in other countries throughout this period.

Australia, for example, has passed 82 anti-terrorism laws since 2001. It might be argued that, given the comparative low level of attacks since 2001 (12 deaths, including the perpetrators) in Australia, this legislation has been incredibly successful. An alternate opinion might be that there’s been significant overreach relative to the low level of domestic threat.

2018

A decade following the financial crisis of 2008, Australia passed the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Act 2018 creating further powers to handle future financial crises.

The media scrutiny of this legislation was woefully shallow, otherwise you might have read somewhere, anywhere, that the legislation allows for “bail-ins”. That is, the funds in your bank account can be accessed by the Reserve Bank of Australia to bail out the retail banks.

2020

In response to the unclear threat of the China virus, legislative and policing precedents were overturned in a matter of days by governments around the world. In the largest abuse of Eminent Domain since 1066, businesses were ordered to cease trading, police were given powers to fine and arrest those who were not complying with highly dubious and contradictory guidelines for social distancing.

Social and tradition media has plenty of examples of police overreach as a consequence, from police drones buzzing hikers in the Derbyshire Peak District, to Yorkshire police threatening, “to make something up, who they gonna believe, me or you?”, and a lone swimmer manhandled and arrested in Bondi for the crime of exercising alone.

The Australian Prime Minister expressed a desire for a social tracking app to be made compulsory for all citizens (and then changed his mind after some horror was expressed by anyone with the IQ above a gnat).

Many of these emergency measures will eventually be challenged in the courts and will be overturned or reduced in severity. The precedent suggested by the chronology described above is the legislation will then be amended to a form less likely to fail in the courts. i.e. the powers will remain, just with tighter legal wording.

Bill’s Opinion

As far as I’m aware, none of this legislation has ever been wound back. For example, the UK’s prevention of terrorism acts were initially designed to be temporary and had to be frequently renewed by Parliament. These measures are now permanent.

Similarly, financial and taxation legislation has only moved in one direction since, well, since the creation of the concept of income tax to pay for the Napoleonic Wars.

It is looking increasingly likely the fatality rate of this virus is nowhere near that predicted by the experts (who’d have thought that multi-variable computer models might not give accurate results?). Potentially, the final fatality rate is going to fall within the range of 0.1 – 0.6%, or about as bad as strong version of the seasonal ‘flu.

In which case, the global governmental response is disproportionate and should be wound back immediately.

But that’s not the point. Even if this virus was as dangerous or worse than, say, the Spanish Flu (2.5% fatality rate), there’s a bigger question you need to ask yourself:

“Am I OK with all of this?”.

Well punk, are ya?

The death of Princess Diana, 2020 reboot

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

Initial results are in from a programme of antibody testing.

The first large-scale community test of 3,300 people in Santa Clara County found that 2.5 to 4.2% of those tested were positive for antibodies — a number suggesting a far higher past infection rate than the official count.

Based on the initial data, researchers estimate that the range of people who may have had the virus to be between 48,000 and 81,000 in the county of 2 million — as opposed to the approximately 1,000 in the county’s official tally at the time the samples were taken.

Early days, first proper study, risk of confirmation bias in terms of selection, etc. BUT…..

This takes us closer to learning at least the order of magnitude of the critically important denominator; how widespread is this virus already?

Extrapolating the mid-range of the estimated scale (50-80 times greater than originally thought), the UK’s infection rate might be 7 million (65 x 108,000).

With an idea of the denominator, we can apply the numerator – the official statistics suggest 14,000 COVID19 deaths. Assume it’s more than that due to a lag in reporting, let’s say 20,000.

20,000 / 7,000,000 x 100 = 0.3%

A “regular” ‘flu has a fatality rate of around 0.1%.

Bill’s Opinion

The probability of COVID19 killing millions in a short period of time is looking increasingly unlikely.

The probability of increased deaths, long term harm and hardship due to shutting the global economy is absolutely certain.

Which is more likely to be worse? Last week, we might have said the effects of the virus. This week, that’s not such a compelling argument.

The reasons given for the suspension of economic activity and personal freedoms were twofold; this is highly contagious and highly fatal and due to this, our health systems will be overwhelmed.

It’s starting to look like the “fatal” part of that argument was incorrect. Excess hospital capacity isn’t even close to being used in most locations. Our numerator/denominator question is starting to be answered.

In a moment of collective madness based on mendacious Chinese statistics and by listening to an Imperial College academic with a dubious track record, we’ve created The Great Depression 2020/21.

The antibody testing must continue in other locations and rapidly so we can make informed decisions about rebuilding what is left of the spark of the miracle that has saved more lives than any other invention; a freely moving economy.

In the meantime, reopen and keep a close watch on hotspots of infection as they arise.

There is a war….

Billy/ / China Flu, Cultural Marxism, Economics, General, The end is nigh, Too much government

There is a war between the rich and poor,

A war between the man and the woman.

There is a war between the ones who say there is a war

And the ones who say there isn’t.

Why don’t you come on back to the war, that’s right, get in it,

Why don’t you come on back to the war, it’s just beginning.

Leonard Cohen 1974

Modern wars are funny beasts; they happen all the time but very rarely does anyone ever bother to formally declare it.

In the USA, Congress has the Constitutional duty/sole prerogative to declare war. Did you know that? How many times do you think they’ve done so since, say, 1942?

That part of the USA Constitution was broken once intercontinental ballistic missiles were capable of delivering nuclear warheads and a 3 minute warning was not long enough to hold a vote.

To Marxists, the real war used to be between the workers and the owners of capital. Since the Soviets lost the argument, many Marxists pivoted to looking for wars between ethnicities and gender, resulting in much of the lunacy in which this organ finds hilarity.

In the meantime, a massive war is playing out, hiding in plain sight, as illustrated by our Hierarchy of Kung Flu:

Where do you sit on this scale? Have you been Instagramming pictures of inedible home-baked sourdough and stodgy cakes?

Chances are you’re currently on the winning side of the war.

Now flip all of those statements upside down and put yourself in the shoes of that person. Obviously, the lower levels regarding health are universal, they could happen to all of us.

The real point of bifurcation between the combatants is the level 3rd from top; “I am a keyboard warrior; my income is unaffected“.

Depending on whether this is true for you is the difference between this period being a relaxing skive on your sofa, consisting of lazy mornings, online yoga, perfecting your barista technique on your Gaggia, chatting with your colleagues on Zoom, baking sourdough like an 18th century crofter, some online shopping, an early start on the Briar Ridge rosé and a pleasant evening with the significant other binge watching a streaming series OR absolute desperation as you deplete your sparse savings and watch your livelihood destroyed in just a few days by the stroke of a ministerial pen.

At its bluntest level, this is war between white-collar and blue-collar workers. Sure, it’s a fuzzy line; there are previously well-paid office workers who are now unemployed and wondering why they took out such large mortgages and there are blue collar workers who are still building and billing for their time.

In general though, the metropolitan types are having a lovely war, the people in the ‘burbs are staring down the barrel of destitution.

Magnify that out from your comfortable 1st world reality and look at the less developed countries.

India has hit “CTRL C/V” on the western world’s approach to COVID19 and enforced a 21 day lock down. Millions of the lowest paid workers have been told to somehow travel back to their home villages and have no additional source of income.

The human cost to this, in terms of malnutrition, riots, suicides, murders, etc. will clearly not be zero. Quite the opposite, in fact, it is probable there will be an appalling increase in harm to the population.

It puts the current 1st world problems into context but they are versions of the same issue.

Bill’s Opinion

The modern global economy has a complexity that is beyond the reach of current human understanding. Dismantling it at the stroke of a government pen has unintended consequences. It is not yet obvious from the available data which is worse; the effects of the virus or the consequences of the lockdowns.

It’s possibly a false dichotomy anyway. The choice isn’t and shouldn’t be framed as binary. Shutting down India as if it had an economy and society that operates like Switzerland seems like a regrettably poor choice.

Similarly, shutting down an economy in a consistent way across an entire national geography without reference to the multiple differentiating factors between regions isn’t logical.

The result is highly likely to be a continuation of the decades-old wealth transfer from the poorest to the richest. If you think you’re in the second category, I would warn against complacency; this trend is coming for you and yours.

Have a look at your luxury car, 2nd home, children’s private school, photos from expensive overseas holidays, etc. and take a moment to appreciate what might prove to be a view of the past during the “Roaring 2,000s“.

Morality in the time of Coronavirus

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, General, Incentives Matter, The end is nigh

Imagine yourself in the following scenario:

You are working as a relatively well-paid consultant, on a precarious day rate contract. Your client is a large government agency. You’ve been hired to bring commercial acumen to a project that, by any reasonable measure, has been an abject failure (a year overdue on an 18 month timeline, tens of millions in overspend).

The supplier has a global track record of sharp practice and, a few years ago, was found guilty of bribing public officials.

In your work, you find two major errors or omissions in the supplier’s work and recommend these are used as commercial leverage to improve the outcomes for the taxpayer.

A peer actively works against this advice and commences a campaign of attacking you personally.

In your experience, this behaviour is highly suspicious. The best explanation is incompetence and commercial naivety, but there is also a not insignificant chance of corruption.

A cursory background search of the individual reveals almost a decade working at an organisation that was shut down due to deep and systemic corruption. The individual also has an active Ltd company, despite being a salaried public servant, with a contractual restriction against “moonlighting”.

What do you do?

Bill’s Opinion

At any other time of my career, I would be gunning for this person using the auditors and whistleblower legislation.

In this time of COVID19 shutdowns and imminent recession, I’m less keen to put my family’s financial well-being at risk however.

Any suggestions on how I can manage my way through this without utterly compromising my personal values?

Covid-19 proves the government is not your Mum or Dad

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, Economics, General, The end is nigh, Whither Government?

Judging by the comments on here, regular readers have a solid independent mindset and don’t tend to be victims of lazy thinking.

This is a useful character trait at the best of times but more so during a crisis.

Why?

Because the government is not your Mum or Dad.

A million Mums on Facebook are reading this and saying, “well, duh“.

(actually, they’re not, because only about 3 of us read this blog, but for the sake of keeping me motivated, let’s pretend).

At the risk of building a strawMum argument, these are often the same people who write long posts about how the government should tackle climate change but happily post family holiday snaps from Aspen or Hakuba each year.

The growing panic around the spread of Kung Flu is likely to rapidly challenge many people’s internally-held instincts that the government is concerned for their well-being at a personal level.

Breaking News; the government doesn’t have an opinion about you. In fact, as we’ve explained previously, the government doesn’t have an opinion. Period.

It’s an easy misconception to make though, one might see how someone could fall for it. From cradle to grave, the government is smoothing the path for us all, every single hour of the day:

When you wake up in your house built to government-defined specifications, you use government-provided water and plumbing services in the bathroom, make breakfast using government-regulated (or even owned) power, read the post delivered by the government-provided mail services, drive your government-approved vehicle on the government-built road to your child’s government school and then to your heavily government regulated place of work, probably whilst listening to your government provided radio station.

It must be quite a shock, therefore to find even a single crack in the facade that all this isn’t for you individually but us collectively. Sure, the two concepts don’t clash for 99.9% of the time but they are about to.

Let me offer some pertinent examples;

The use of masks to prevent catching Covid-19

The government message is that they are not effective.

Ok, so why do medical professionals and other key workers wear them?

The reality the government is grappling with is more likely that masks are somewhat effective but there is a finite supply which the government needs to secure for medical professionals.

There is not yet a requirement to close schools

Ok, but at some point a critical mass of schools will have an infection and pupils at those first schools to be infected will be at a greater risk than the ones closed before infection.

The reality the government is facing is that, by closing the schools too soon, they reduce the number of available medical professionals as a large percentage will stay home to care for their children.

There is no need to stockpile.

Ok, but we’ve now run out of toilet paper and don’t have any paracetamol in the house and our three nearest supermarkets are empty.

It turns out that early stockpiling makes absolute rational sense if you believe everyone else is about to start doing the same tomorrow.

Bill’s Opinion

As we’ve pointed out many times here, the government is a non-sentient being that responds to stimuli. Projecting an ability to feel empathy, guilt, or a sense of duty onto a mass of thousands of individuals just because they have a group noun is a massive personal misjudgment.

The government, at best, act in your interest as a member of a collective. It can never act in your individual best interest when that is in conflict or even at slight variance to the collective.

Therefore, it’s very rational for you to think seriously about wearing masks in public, better still staying home from work, keeping your children at home, buying enough supplies for two or three weeks at home and preparing to sit things out.

Think positively; Netflix, YouTube, Skype, FaceTime are all available and, hopefully, your broadband stays up.

In the meantime, here’s a YouTube video to get you started. While watching it, consider quite how unprepared the world is for a crisis after we’ve accepted two generations of 100% career politicians as being appropriate leaders for our nations.

Seriously, there isn’t a single person in either the government or the opposition who has any experience even remotely appropriate to qualify them to lead a crisis response; they’ve gone from a PPE or Law degree, into a union position or legal firm, parachuted into a safe seat, to a cabinet position to being the leader of a major nation.

We would have done better by selecting the PM by jury service, lottery or Rock Paper Scissors.

Take it away Prime Minister Morrison, tell us all about the economic response, because that’s what everyone is really worried about isn’t it? We all care more about what’s going to happen to house prices rather than whether or not granny will end her life lying on a gurney in a hospital car park:

Scott Morrison’s blood sweat and tears speech.

Compare and convirus

Billy/ / Australia; Frontier Nation, General, The end is nigh, Whither Aussie House Prices

Readers outside of Australia might not be aware of the slightly mad scenes in some Australian supermarkets over the previous week, with panic buying (“hamsterkauf” as the Germans call it) in preparation for the inevitable COVID-19 impact on daily life.

This is the status of the flour section of our local supermarket:

There’s suddenly been a spike in interest for home baking. They’ve wiped out both the plain and self-raising flour shelves.

Walking around the neighbourhood, the olfactory delights of home-baked sourdough and delicious sponge cakes are everywhere.

No, not so much.

The same scene is repeated in the dried pasta section.

Panic buying flour and pasta at least makes some sense; they’re sources of food with very long shelf life that wouldn’t be regretted if there were to be shortages later. You’ll use it all up eventually.

Toilet roll, however?

Nobody wants to be caught short of bog roll but, seriously, that’s the item you want to fill your spare room with in anticipation of the zombie apocalypse?

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of a billion Indians typing into Google, “toilet paper kya hai?”.

Imagine a world where, simultaneously, this happens:

And this:

Bill’s Opinion

In this age of “big data” it would be fascinating to learn what the Venn Diagram looks like describing the relationship between two schools of thought; those who believe Australia is about to enter a period of shortages and mass sickness and those who believe the price of property will continue to increase at multiple percentage points this year.

Speaking of which, our tracker is updated below.