Sunday, March 18, 2018

More on Government

So basically I don't like the party political system: instead of representing the will of the people they impose their political ideologies.

As far as I understand at both State and Federal level, we elect representatives to two houses these representatives along with the governor or governor general constitute our government. From the government an executive council is selected by the governor or governor general. The executive councils task is to advise the governor on the will of the government and execute the will of the government.

The government has many department or organisations, and each of these has its own chief executive officer (CEO). all that is required for operations as usually is for funds to be transferred from the treasury to the operational budgets of these departments. The governor could do that without any interference. The point of calling assembly of the representatives is to implement change demanded by the will of the people.

So we have various government agencies responsible for things like: water, sewage, solid wastes, gas, electricity, telecommunications, housing, transportation, land use, the environment, education, and health care, just to list a few.

So health care needs to be provided to the 2/3rds of the population within the Adelaide metropolitan area, and the remaining 1/3rd scattered across the rest of the state. The first and foremost requirement is technical: a matter of resource management, the role of the education department. How many schools do we need, and where? Logistics: the right goods and services, of the right quality, and right quantity, in the right place at the right time, at the right cost. There is likely more than one way to achieve the objectives. For starters we can either put the school buildings with the population or require the population to move to the schools. Thus two options immediately. Each option has a cost, and a collection of benefits and disadvantages. None of the options may be affordable, its the role of the education department to find an option which is affordable. It should have a budget to cover operational costs, and an additional discretionary budget for optional and infrequent tasks (eg. building a new school.). There should be an imposition that recurrent operational costs decrease with time. Just because population increases doesn't mean budget should increase in proportion: the departments task should be to maximise the benefit from the available but otherwise limited resources. Not keep demanding more resources, declaring don't have enough resources. Such declarations indicate the employees of the departments lack the necessary ingenuity to find real solutions to the problems and difficulties encountered.

Political parties are not concerned with solving problems, they are concerned with imposing their ideologies: more typically creating problems rather than solving. Providing health care and education to remote regions is a technical problem it should not be a political problem. As a political problem, if want competition, and want to exercise power and dominion, then we raise a new model army and take parliament and throw the politicians out.

All members of parliament constitute the government, whoever gets elected for your electorate irrespective of the political party they belong to is there to represent you and I: we the people. It is not acceptable for one political party to hijack the government and appoint themselves as the executive council and consider that the executive council, the council alone constitutes the government. There should be no split in parliament: all members constitute the government there is no government and shadow government. The concept of government and shadow government residing in the houses of government is plain stupid and unacceptable. If a shadow government exists then it exists outside the houses: it indicates that those in the government houses the MP's are going to be ousted.

Labor was in, Liberals are apparently set to replace in South Australia. But let's get things straight, both labor and liberal sat in parliament before the election. If things are a mess it is because both Labor (ALP) and Liberal(LIB) sat in government. So election results thus far indicate that LIB(37.4%) and ALP(33.9%), collectively 71.3% , making the rest 28.7%. On the other hand, it also means that those not in LIB, represent 62.6%. Thus LIB cannot hijack the government unless all the MP's sat in parliament allow them to do so. Assuming similar situation previously, then the LIB's are just as responsible for the mess imposed by ALP as ALP itself, because the LIBS were right there in government alongside ALP.

My proposal is that we limit the seats and percent of the vote to 20% overall. So LIB and ALP have too much of the vote. They therefore have to shed some votes. This shouldn't be a problem as we have preferential voting, these parties didn't get those percentages without 2nd and 3rd choice distributions. So without any prior rules in place, we just find those seats where each party got the lowest percentage of the primary vote and drop  the party from that electorate and redistribute the preferences. That is those electorates where they got less than 20% of the primary vote, or if none that low, less than 50% of the primary vote.

With the statistics available it's not that easy to identify such electorates. But just as an example consider Heysen. Here LIB got around 40% of primary, but with 2 party preferred, they get 52.1% whilst SAB gets 47.9%.  So we take this as an electorate where LIB is dropped. The preferences are then redistributed, if ALP bubbles to the top, then the ALP is dropped because they already have to many votes. Without knowing what the distribution of the preferences, my guess is that SAB will then bubble to the top, and so SAB will then have an overall showing of greater than 13.7%.

The minor parties thus gain more representation in the government. The next part of the my requirement is that the members of the executive council are selected in proportion to the seats held by each party. Since none is permitted more than 20%,  none can have greater than a 20% representation in the executive council. So if the executive council comprises of say 10 people, (I don't know how many people there usually are and it seems to change from time to time), then no party can appoint more than 2 people to the executive council. In working out the numbers the numbers are rounded down, so 1.8 members is reduced to 1, and 0.9 is reduced to zero. The only exception is if the number of members is short then those less than 1 are rounded up, so 0.9 becomes 1. So as to get the maximum representation of all parties on the council.

From the council the premier is selected, by the remainder of the parliament: the members of the council don't get to vote on the matter (they are the candidates). The ministers of the council find out from the CEO's of the government agencies what needs to be done. The agencies should have a clear understanding of shortages and failures which need to be rectified. For example the cost of electricity to pump water to irrigate farm properties. Why are they pumping water and how sustainable is such activity?

A farming region has a representative, and that region makes it clear to the representative what their woes are. That representative doesn't merely sit in parliament, that person speaks in parliament on behalf of the people they represent. However irrigation is a technical matter as is pumping, and storing water in the region. So first question is why do they have a water supply which is pumped? Why isn't the water supplied under gravity? Is the cost of electricity an indirect charge to the farmers in the cost of their water supply, or is it a direct charge because they are pumping the water themselves? If they are pumping water themselves, how is it a state problem? First  they need to employ the appropriate people to design appropriate technology for the task at hand. Do not need to pay for electricity if do not need to use it. If use lower priced off peak electricity to pump water to elevated tanks, then gravity feed can be used for irrigation and electricity costs can be reduced. So where is the government agency providing appropriate advice on agricultural technology and engineering? So do we have the appropriate government agencies, are there suitable private organisations available to provide the required expertise? Given the problem held by the farmers either suitably qualified private enterprises are not available, or those that are available charge too much, are otherwise less than competent, or the farmers simply didn't make use of the appropriate technical services. So what is the real matter that the government needs to look into? Better educate the farmers maybe, provide farmers with better access to technical services?

Who or which political party the representative belongs to is largely irrelevant. The person is part of the government (they sit and speak in parliament), they are responsible and accountable to your electorate.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but anyone who needs political office to get things done, is likely the last person who should be given political office. If you need political office, then likely don't have the necessary skills, nor appropriate contacts to get the job done.

So a platform of : "if I get in power I will improve education", is generally an indication no capability whatsoever to do so. Education and health care can be improved by persons who do not have political office. The woes of the farmers can be resolved without political office.

As I said, the government agencies should know what the problems each region has. South Australia is the driest state on the driest continent on earth. Supply of water is fundamental to our survival. It cannot be resolved by business: not when the purpose of business is to maximise profit. A non-government private enterprise maybe able to resolve the problems, if its focus is supply rather than monetary profit.

One other thing we need to do is get rid of trade unions. I am not against unions, just against trade unions, they are obsolete. When trade unions initially emerged they were typically community based, because employment was bound to a geographical area: mining town, ship building town etc... Trade unions step outside geographical bounds, and no longer provide benefit to local communities. For want of better description, employees have now emerged as the new age capitalists. The downtrodden workers have become the greed ridden capitalist employees, exploiting communities, and little concern for the existence of society.

We need community cooperatives, where emphasis is placed on our geographical regions. It is important, because whilst humans have legs and are meant to be mobile, we exist in regions where we are held prisoner. We are required to have permanent home addresses, and need permits (visas and passports) to leave the boundaries of our prisons. If we do not have freedom to roam, then we have to protect our geographically constrained homes. We have to achieve a balance and stability with respect to what flows in and flows out.

If shipbuilding flows away from a ship building town then the population of that town is in trouble. Mining will eventually flow away from a mining town as the mine is exhausted. Market gardens eventually disappear under residential neighbourhoods. Whilst farmland is otherwise exhausted of its nutrients and becomes useless. If we are trapped in place, then none of this is acceptable. And our government is bound to geography, it is about place.

If a political party places its ideology above the needs of place then it is of no use to us as a population. We don't want wages increased in one place, and made possible because we shut down business on the other side of the town, state or country, and thus displaced/stole the work.

We need to forget about the political parties, push them out off the government, and implement dynamically adaptive systems which ensure our needs are met both by private enterprise and government agencies. If we occupy a region, then we occupy the region, we don't want towns to become ghost towns. The South Australian government is responsible and accountable to the people of the geographically bound region that is South Australia. Population occupies the whole region: even if it is scattered and the bulk of the population is in Adelaide metropolitan area.

The remote areas are where mining and agriculture take place, and whilst these industries only account for some 5% of employment collectively: they account for a large portion of the states and countries income. Employment wise most people are employed in healthcare, education and retail: there are no geographical constraints on these activities. Education and retail can occur over the internet. All 3 services can be supplied to the world, and the world can either come here or the services can go to the world. Education can be provided globally independent of any national government, and likewise for healthcare. So we don't need a government building and owning hospitals, we just need a government managing the proper supply of health care services. Part of which task would be determining how many hospitals are required, how big each should be and where each is to be located, or whether the service should be mobile.

When everything is boiled down, we just have technical problems to be solved, and some  choices to make. The representative government is to make the choice between the available options on behalf of the population of the regions: not for the benefit of a political party.

Part of the choice to be made however, is do we fund education or healthcare the most? As I said each department should have an operational budget. Dynamically adaptive the budget will decrease with improved technology, increase with inflation and population, and on balance remain unchanged. If the agency needs more funding it is probably doing something wrong: like paying too many employees too much for too little. So the number of employees needs to be made dynamically adaptive. For example an agency has a small stable core of employees, who are assisted by part-time employees, casual employees, contract workers, and volunteers.

Volunteers are important for fulfilling intermittent service needs. People providing services as a consequence of their interests and motivations during their spare time outside paid employment. Some jobs we have people paid to be on standby for emergencies, such as firefighters, who otherwise train between their need to actually provide their services. However, such model is not appropriate for all services, and is otherwise expensive and prohibitive. A culture of volunteering is thus important, and voluntary services displaced by paid services doesn't tend to fair well in terms of supply of service. Modern business is not about supplying needs, it is about monetary profit and only monetary profit. If it doesn't make a profit, if it only breaks even, then business tends to shutdown the service. Government agencies are not meant to make profits, they are meant to provide services.

Wages of government employees being matched against those of private industry, to increase them only, is not acceptable. Private industry comes and goes, and so do the respective employees. Government agencies are more long lived, and costs simply escalate if wages are not properly constrained. Government employees are public servants, they are there to serve the people,they are not masters of the people. If anything government job functions should set the minimum wages for industrial awards and private industry matched against the government, not the other way around.

So private industry offers above award wages and attracts the best talent. Says who? So talent only goes to where the high wages are? No! It does not! Talent goes where talent can be unleashed, not where get the highest wages. There is no point doubling wage, if got no use for half the wage currently get. For talent there is no difference between work and play: life is putting talent to use. Talent doesn't comprise of assembly line workers sticking cherries on cakes as flow pass on a conveyor. Talent works on what interests it. Talent seeks opportunity to work. Talent doesn't make choice based on wages (mercenaries do that), talent looks for the best opportunity to do the most good with the talent. Talent likely works 24/7, so bigger houses and flashy cars and lots of other superficial materialistic junk have little value to talent. Talent wants access to research laboratories, or any other resources it may require to get to work. Put more simply bludgers seek higher wages not talent. Any votes for proving we now have more bludgers in the agencies now than talent? That any talent that is there is hampered due to lack of resources and lack of opportunity. The lack of resources is because of lack of funds, due to funds draining to pay unnecessary employees.

We need to shake up government agencies, the get our due and proper representation, and destroy the political parties and their ideologies. It is our regions which need representing not the political parties.

So my electorate region is Narrunga. Apparently a Liberal stronghold. The farmers apparently have problems. And who are the first preferences biased towards: Liberal. Thus no change. But, but , but ...

Yes I get it. You've rearranged the furniture. The Liberals get to hijack government instead of Labor. You wanted change, but you didn't change. The change, you sought, depended on other parts of the state changing their preferences.

It doesn't matter which twit you vote into the parliament. What matters, is knowing who the twit is, that actually wins the seat in parliament. Not whether that seat is held by the party dictator. All that matters is they have a seat in parliament, and that should mean they are part of the government of the day. That this person is now beholden to you the people of the region. Now accountable and responsible to the people of the region: irrespective of whether all of those people actually voted for the twit. {I suppose I could use the word "candidate" rather than the word "twit". But a person would have to be a fool to believe they can properly represent and aid the needs of their community by joining a political party. If they otherwise intentionally joined the political party in preference to its policies rather than the needs of the people: then the word "twit" is the least derogatory term I can currently conjure up.}

So it would seem the change for Narrunga electorate is from the Liberal Steven Griffiths to the Liberal Fraser Ellis. And the reasoning this is a change, is because the previous liberal incumbent was subject to the dominion which came from the ALP having hijacked government. Now the Liberals can hijack parliament: and that will apparently allow them to get stuff done. Really?

We the people don't call on either Labor or Liberal to get things done, we call on the government. And the government isn't Labor or Liberal it is all the people who sit and speak in parliament, and  those who are not the Labor or Liberal majority actually hold the majority. So do not have to allow one party to hold dominion and dictate the odds. Rather can crush the dominant party.

So here's the thing, everyone sat in parliament voted for what the ALP did, and it would seem they did not have absolute power to vote everything through on their own, which would make debate a pointless exercise. So if don't like what the Liberals are about to do, the real government, the true government can stop them.

So don't complain about what Labor did or what the Liberals are doing (or going to do), neither of them is the true government. And neither political party should be granted power to ignore the will of the people.

So people get represented. Speak and Get heard!



Related Posts

Revisions:
[18/03/2018] : Original

Friday, March 16, 2018

Current Views on What is Engineering?

May consider that I have little respect for engineers. Not entirely true, I have respect for people of history which we grant the title engineer. I have little respect, zero respect for those who claim the title engineer as exclusively theirs. (eg. I have zero respect for Engineers Australia and equally little respect for its MIAust/FIEAust membership {a few exceptions}, as for Queensland's RPEQ's I believe them to be a bunch of self-certifying incompetents who wouldn't know their knee from their elbow. RPEQ's seem to be little more than a rubber stamp brigade who fill in silly numbered forms. Of course that is based on my experience of the self-certified manufactured structural products which flow into South Australia. I have a certain expectation that those RPEQ's responsible for highway bridges and multistorey buildings are more capable than those responsible for simple structural products. But since all lumped into the same bag, I cannot consider that RPEQ is more competent than someone who merely as an appropriate education in technical design.)

Engineers Australia being incapable of defining anything, came up with the notion that engineering is that work done by persons with the 4 year B.Eng (the fake honours degree). That is a stupid definition and hampers the use of the English language. Additionally it seems they deliberately absorbed the institute of engineering associates to downgrade and remove the occupation from the workplace. We originally had 2 year qualified engineering associates and 2 year qualified drafters. Drafters were not engineering associates. They had different qualifications, for example Associate Diploma Mechanical Drafting versus Associate Diploma Mechanical Engineering. The latter learnt mechanical engineering design from first principles (eg. derivation of beam theory etc...). A 4 year B.Eng is not required to design, beams and columns or other mechanical/structural elements. More important than the scientific basis of the design methods, is being fully conversant with the technology being designed. Whilst a drive shaft and a house rafter may both be beams they both have characteristics beyond simply supporting a load as a beam.

We had an on again/ off again construction and mining boom because Engineers Australia indicated we had a shortage of engineers. A shortage of engineers is highly questionable. Clearly over on LinkedIn that are a lot of unhappy migrants.

I have various concepts of engineering:
  1. Technicians Appy, Technologists Adapt, Engineers Originate
  2. Engineering takes place at the frontiers of science and technology
  3. Engineering is the art and science of maximising the benefit from the available but otherwise limited resources.
  4. Engineering is a rational scientific process of design.
If engineering is maximising the benefit from the available but limited resources, then if those persons calling themselves engineers declare a shortage of engineers, then we have a problem. Clearly those persons calling themselves engineers, are not engineers, as they do not have the capability of getting the job done with the available resources. Thus the shortage isn't concerned with getting more of what we have, but replacing what we have with real engineers. On the other hand that is just misdirection as the work doesn't require engineers.

My understanding of the WFEO accords (Washington, Sydney, Dublin) is that they define certain occupational roles and education considered suitable to fulfil those roles. These don't match existing roles, and therefore expect some upheaval. The problem is that the so called engineers haven't got the picture. We have silly industrial relations system which says higher the education the higher the pay, irrespective of employer and value to that employer. Those with the fake 4 year honours degree get a higher starting salary than those with the typical 3 year bachelor degree. School leavers want high paying jobs so they opt for the higher level qualification: if they have the capability then why not? Problem is they don't really have the capability required of the engineer. Those people of the past with with 3 year B.Sc degrees or no degrees at all seem to have contributed a lot more to society than those with the B.Eng. These graduates are claiming  they should have status and prestige which is not due to them: neither they nor their immediate predecessors gave us civilisation or our scientific knowledge.

Which have a distorted culture, whereby if people are taught then apparently they don't know. with that kind of attitude we wouldn't have any knowledge in the first place to be disseminated via the schools. Our scientific knowledge and our technology came from people with curiosity, motivation and the necessary aptitude to asks questions and seek answers.

When the 2 year qualified engineering associate was taught beam theory the purpose was and is to understand  the limitations of such theory. When the 4 year qualified "engineer" is taught beam theory it is so that when they encounter the unusual they can derive similar theory. The purpose of the B.Eng is not so that someone can spend 40 years stuffing numbers through M=wL^2/8, someone with a 1 year AQF-Diploma can do that. Similarly  building models with Bentley RAM Build is not engineering. The fact such software can be written is an indication of established technology with established body of knowledge to assess suitability of purpose.

Engineering requires access to workshop laboratories to build and test prototypes. Engineering is not the mere testing and collecting of technical data, technicians can do that. Engineering seeks scientific understanding where there is none. Bridges, buildings, aircraft, ships, and machines can all for the most part be designed by engineering associates (those that existed before Engineers Australia downgraded their skills). Since the skills have been downgraded and different occupations defined, the former engineering associates are now effectively replaced by 3 year qualified engineering technologists (Sydney Accord), and the role of the new engineering associates equated to Dublin Accord engineering technicians (persons more skilled than drafters but not as skilled as our original engineering associates).

Given the WFEO definitions, technologists and technicians are more important than engineers. The prime need of our society is to implement more instances of established technologies, and maintain those that we have. Such activity requires people highly conversant with the technology and the technical science used to evaluate and assess suitability of purpose. A 4 year B.Eng contains breadth in scientific knowledge, it  does not contain depth nor breadth/depth of knowledge with respect to established technologies. Those with the B.Eng need industry to impart the necessary knowledge of the established technologies, this can take anything from 3 years to 6 years to get a minimum grasp of the technology. Though 20 years experience is probably more preferable. Clearly a 3 year B.Tech cannot make up for 20 years experience, but it can resolve that initial minimum 3 years to get up to speed with the technology. A 4 year B.Eng in civil engineering does not involve 4 years studying stormwater drainage, nor structural design. Likewise a B.Eng in mechanical doesn't involve 4 years studying strength of materials and machine design, nor HVAC.

Some 80% of all technical design is within the scope of those educated in an appropriate 2 year qualification, to spend 4 years is a waste of national resources. Professional cults and modern day rum corp need to be stopped in their tracks. There is work to be done, and we need the resources to get it done: we have the population to do it. But the population doesn't have the appropriate education or training.

It is also unhelpful to keep creating fake B.Eng degrees the likes of mechatronics, computer systems, manufacturing management, transportation, to name a few. Clearly these areas of practice are concerned with specific technologies: the engineering has been done, technical design and implementation of the associated technologies is the current task.

Where's the engineering in the electric car? Or Roma the Engineer, good that she is promoting engineering, but 6 years involvement in the design of the footings and spire of one building: that seems duller than watching paint dry: and the building, the Shard how useful is that? What were the challenges, what frontiers were encountered? To my mind a frontier of technology, without a frontier of science doesn't equate to engineering. A frontier of technology, without frontier of science, merely requires the application of the established body of science to the technology. Ok! It maybe more involved than mere application: the point is the science is there, but it's never before been applied to such technology, and therefore how to apply is the unknown factor: not the science itself.

Similarly RoboGals (founded by Marita Cheng), good that introducing kids to engineering: but clearly don't need a degree in engineering to program robots, nor to design and build them from available component parts.

Engineering is the frontier, the problems for which we don't have text book solutions, the problems for which you will not find a suitable technique in the published literature. Engineering is where the engineer is the pioneer of both the science and the technology. The rest is rational scientific design: technical design to get away from using the term engineering design.  I need a new phrase because Engineers Australia is in the way. The last thing Australia needs to follow is Queensland and the USA, they have messed up engineering. The Queensland registration and American PE licenses distort engineering: diminish engineers to technical lawyers and rubber stamp brigade. They have these definitions, and the registration and licenses they grant are for technicians yet they refer to them as engineers. These registered and licensed individuals are not the people who will put a human colony beyond Pluto: they have neither the imagination nor ingenuity so solve such problem {Whilst we have the technology to achieve this, it is not very practical and therefore we need to invent new technology and that will involve knowledge at the frontiers of science.}

If engineering is that work done by engineers, and engineering is simply a rational scientific approach to planning, design and management. Then a  1 year qualification AQF-Diploma is that is required of an engineer. If engineering is at the frontier, and taking that current B.Eng is a fake honours degree, then accepting the 2 cycle approach of  the Bologna process seems the way forward. A 3 year B.Tech to get on with the work that needs doing, followed by either a 2 year M.Tech or M.Eng, depending on focus. The M.Eng by reasearch only, the M.Tech by extended studies. The role of the engineer is to push knowledge into the system and down the line towards the technicians. People expect that we can design and assess things by calculation not by building and testing prototypes.

If the word "engineer" on the other hand is to be reserved as an elist title by an occupational cult, then the rational scientific planning, design, and management of technology needs to be named using some word other than "engineering". Then new legislation needs to take this into consideration, and old legislation (eg. that in the USA and Queensland) needs to be revised accordingly.

Take the 2010-2011 Queensland floods for example, one of the persons involved with management of the Wivenhoe Dam was according to the policy manuals required to be an RPEQ, that person wasn't. The person was qualified to be so registered, but their registration had not been renewed. As I understand the manuals were revised and the requirement for RPEQ removed, no indication of what the qualification requirements were replaced with. My point is that requirement isn't for an engineer, but for a competent technologist fully conversant in water resources management and its associated technology. That is 3 year B.Tech, studying water resources management and its associated technology, not a 4 year B.Eng studying this, that and the other.

It is the not the B.Eng that we need to modify to meet the needs of industry, or of society. It is industry which needs to understand the person they require does not require the same qualifications as the person currently holding a job function. Last year's engineer is this years technician. 

Last year had a problem needed to solve that problem, this year we have a technology and a body of technical science to assist us with planning, design and managing the implementation and operation of such technology. This year we need to educate people about the technology and its associated science. We want stormwater drainage systems which are fit for purpose, we want air conditioning systems which are fit for purpose. This isn't engineering, we as a society know how to assess fitness for purpose of such technological systems. If a system is implemented and not fit-for-purpose we can typically identify a failure to make use of the established body of scientific knowledge: we rarely find we have hot some frontier of science and have some new phenomenon to investigate.

If we are going to grant exclusive use of the title "engineer" to an elite few then let's make sure that when they operate in industry they are significantly more capable than engineering associates. Let's make sure than when I visit a site I don't have to listen to how useless the typical B.Eng MIEAust is: people who seem more intent on causing problems rather than solving them: people who seem to be arrogant and disrespectful to the rest of the community {sure such incompetence creates work for my father and myself fixing the mess up: but the problems could have been avoided in the first place that's the point of employing people with advanced technical education.}.

These people did not give us our civilisation and they are not required to maintain it into the future. Engineers may well have given us our civilisation, but the B.Eng, MIEAust, CP.Eng NER's, are not those engineers, they just have a mass of post nominal detritus after their names: which indicates little more than they have a 4 year B.Eng with some trite experience under the supervision of someone with equally trite experience. The last time I checked the assessment criteria was so generic, irrelevant and independent of technical competence that it did little more than determine a person would make a suitable employee: working at McDonalds for example testing starch content of spuds. The people to definitely stay away from are those who have also purchased "Ing." to tack in front of their name: don't confuse these fools with those having valid German/European qualifications.

The lack of status granted to those with a B.Eng is largely because they desire more status than they deserve. They seem to want credit for the work of our ancestors than for their own actual contribution to society. Mostly they do not put the B.Eng to work, and do not pursue work of the nature, for which the B.Eng was invented. If simply designing established technologies along established principles, then the work can be done by technologists, the role does not need to be filled by an "engineer", and the future replacement for that job can be and should be a technologist.

Let's make sure those with the B.Eng are actually capable of doing the work, for which they were supposedly educated. Whilst there are few frontiers of science and technology, there are plenty of frontiers where science has not yet been appropriately applied to existing technology, and where scientific data needs collecting and useful design models need developing.

Engineering is not just about crunching numbers: a mindless unimaginative block of silicon can do that. We now live in an age where computer models can be developed and placed in the hands of sales people and even the customer without any need for training. Customers can play around with parameters and search out their own parametric variant of an established technology, and at significantly less cost than paying one of those things called an "engineer". Paying one of them "engineery" things could cost a small fortune and not find a suitable solution for your needs. So computer software is clearly going to pave the way to better adapting existing technology to better suit the needs of end-users. So merely having something, as insignificant as a scrap of paper with B.Eng written on it, doesn't make you an engineer, neither does designing technology to meet your own needs or the needs of others.

We need new terminology, and we need legislation which benefits society over and above the wants and whims of professional cults. Professional cults should not be granted monopolies and those with such, should have their benefits and privileges taken away (eg. doctors, lawyers, architects, and "engineers").



Related Posts

Revisions:
[16/03/2018] : Original

Sunday, March 11, 2018

We need Centrally Planned Economies?

Read an email, which took me to some politics on free trade agreements. Which brought me back to protecting diversity, and the need for centrally planned economies. One thing I noticed on the wikipedia articles on economics were the statistics which indicated the agreement between economists on various topics. Put another way economists lack independent thought and are very good at regurgitating what they were taught, irrespective of whether it makes any sense. The diagram explaining Free Trade on the Wikipedia article is not very helpful: but then I'm usually more concerned with logistics and production quantities versus demand forecast. A straight line implies that unit price or unit cost is constant: thus unit production cost doesn't decrease with larger production quantities. Is it price on the y-axis for both demand and supply, or is one cost, or what is the economic meaning of price? Anycase assuming the diagram is correct, it doesn't easy the explanation of the supposed benefits of free trade.

When I refer to centrally planned economies I am not referring to geographically bound government of nations. When studying business I remember a case study involving Ford: the car maker. The case study indicated that Ford had centralised autocratic control over all its global production facilities. The result was imposing American designed cars in regions for which the vehicles were ill suited and otherwise not what the locals wanted: and sales dropping. By providing more autonomous control to the local production facilities, including design of vehicles to suit local markets: there was some improvement to sales.

So on the one hand an example of central planning imposed on us which is not by our national government, and a case that central planning is probably a bad thing when exercised by corporations. Though the latter is questionable, as it requires central planning to grant autonomous decision making at the local level.

The point is we don't need national government for a centrally planned economy, we just need the appropriate co-operatives, and these co-operatives can be either local, regional, or global. It was already recognised in the 1990's that some corporations were more powerful (economically) than some nations.

If we had truth in advertising then some of our adverts would be along the lines of: "Eat more meat so we can kill more animals". Some people need to be eating less of everything, not just meat, whilst others need to add meat to their diet. I consider it a case where we need to produce the right amount, therefore we need to know what the right amount is: something which is not entirely possible. Retailers know when they have shortages, but would seldom have an accurate knowledge of the shortfall. Secondly retailers would need to purchase in multiples of the economic order quantity (EOQ) imposed by wholesalers. The wholesalers may then impose or have imposed on them EOQ by the producers. So expect some inefficiency of either surplus or shortage. Surplus is probably preferable than shortage, but it disadvantages the supplier. However surplus could be equated to zero, if surplus is deliberately produced as a reserve for future emergencies, or is otherwise a deliberate buffer to balance variations in demand.

The problem is appropriately defining the magnitude of the required reserve or buffer. Past and existing trials by government seem to result in farmers producing to sell to the government rather than the consumers. That is they increase production way beyond real demand. The government then has a problem paying for stuff it has no need of, thus quotas are then imposed.

What we need are dynamically adaptive systems which protect local producers from the pressure to adopt systems for supplying to global markets. We need to protect the diversity of small and large. We have a society and we need to protect the values of community, culture and society.

So sticking with my idea of protecting diversity, by imposing a 20% constraint and otherwise minimum of 5 entities, we need something like 5 regional exporters which supply to 5 national exporters. Similarly have 5 regional importers receiving from 5 national importers.

The local producer, produces to supply local demand, with surplus to pass onto the regional exporter: say no more than 20% of their production and then only if local demand is satisfied. If local demand cannot be satisfied, then regional import is permitted to supply the shortfall. If local producers can supply local demand if time was granted to increase production capacity, then imports are constrained by time: imports are on a diminishing supply schedule at the end of which import is zero.

Society having granted such benefit to local suppliers it doesn't expect to be held to ransom by them. On the other hand geography and history can provide advantages to certain businesses which results in lower production costs. These lower production costs are so low that they are not negated by the cost of transport over large distances. In such situation local suppliers are at a disadvantage: as they cannot reduce price any lower and otherwise have the minimum quality of life imposed by local standards.

The important issue is minimum quality of life imposed by local standards, not the absolute minimum quality of life. Just because the traditional Australian dream home is a 1/4 acre block with large single storey house, doesn't mean such nonsense should be imposed on the population of the world. Some people want small houses, some want mobility. Furthermore a lot of the large houses are unoccupied for a large part of the time. Most people don't work at home, so that's around 1/3rd of the time a house is unoccupied. Secondly around 1/3rd of time people are asleep: when asleep how big does the space need to be?

So whilst some people in the world, do live in conditions which we would call poverty, raising them out off such poverty doesn't involve imposing the lifestyles of industrial society on them. The people in poverty are not typically involved with trade with cities: as they have nothing to trade, hence poverty.

Some places have advantage because of low labour costs and low standards of living. Local trade between these people will improve living conditions if the people so desire, and there is some external assistance with respect to supply of suitable resources which are otherwise absent. For example cannot produce a steel axe if there is no steel, cannot produce steel if no iron ore. Cannot have water pipes if no materials to make water pipes.

Certain resources are not available everywhere, however if people are in a place, then expectation that water and food are available in such place. If the essentials are not available in a place then how sustainable is such a place for humans? However, even if resources are available there is still an issue of: how long will those resources remain available?

There is only so much biomass on the planet. The biomass on earth can be in either
  1. human form,
  2. resources used by humans
  3. or wildlife
As human population grows there is less biomass available in the other two forms, and one of those forms needs to feed the humans. So we need some limits in place, but we don't want limits to be imposed by authoritarian regime with penalties. We don't want to think about zero population growth, and the kind of constraints which would be required to control population growth.

We don't need to provide constraints if we have some common data for planning. For example we could take 10 billion as the maximum human population for earth. It may not be the correct value for the maximum sustainable population, but it is larger than the current 7 billion, and we are not currently capable of satisfying their needs. The current 7 billion are alive, so they have access to water and food: but their life's are likely short, uncomfortable and unpleasant.

By planning for 10 billion we are planning with a surplus built in, and also with a constraint. The constraint can be  moved, for example increased to 20 billion if it seems such is achievable or decreased to 8 billion if that seems more acceptable. Dropping to 5 billion however would pose some major concerns. As indicated previously the land mass can be divided into cells 5 km in diameter, and the world has a population which could place 1000 people in each cell. Assuming an industrial city-state has a limiting population of 10 million, and is 100 km in diameter, then only 1000 such cities would be required in the world. A 1 km square, with a 500m square hub can provide 5000 individual single storey dwellings around the hub. Such dwellings equally suitable for a couple and baby: with 2 storeys the dwelling suitable for a family of 4. Thus 20,000 people can occupy 1 square kilometre. So for the 5km diameter cell, 1000 people could be concentrated in a 1 km diameter hub, leaving a ring 2 km wide ring around the cell. A region 4 km wide between adjacent hubs. How much land to feed the people so that can determine how much of the ring is wilderness and how much used for agriculture. One suggestion is 0.5 hectares per person (though this figure seems to vary widely) required for food production: thus for population of 10 billion need 5 billion hectares of land for food production. Whilst 1000 people would need 500 hectares, provided by a outer ring 800m wide around a 1000m square hub: thats a 2.6km x 2.6km square in 5 km diameter cell. {1.4*(2.6/2)=1.8 km radius, 2.5-1.8=0.7km wide ring: 1.4 km wide region between adjacent population centres}

Implication seems to be that more concentrated populations of humans more preferable for preservation of the wilderness that equally distributing humans over the surface of the planet. Still has mentioned in earlier post individuals can still be custodians and responsible for a region: they defend it remaining wilderness.

So first issue in central planning for a cooperative is land usage and occupancy. Zoning isn't just a local issue, or national issue, it needs to be global. How much land in the world needs to be set aside for beef production and where can it be located? Clearly cannot locate beef production in countries where cows are sacred animals. What percentage of the world population naturally desires beef, as opposed to advertising imposing such desire. Does the world produce enough beef or does it produce too much? If it doesn't produce enough is it practical or desirable to produce more? If the world produces too much, how can production be reduced in a practicable and acceptable manner? If produce too much is it acceptable to increase demand by advertising? {Eat more beef so we can slaughter more cows.}

Forget about beef and meat: what about wheat, rice, potatoes? What about flour and bread? What about water?

As far as I am aware two international decades of water have failed to ensure a secure water supply for the world population. The  primary reasons being a failure to account for maintenance of the installed technology, and failure to account for population growth. Failure of the technology means cannot support the original population, and thus population growth magnifies the original problem.

Heritage is good if it provides a foundation on which to build the future, otherwise its an hindrance. Heritage however needs to be maintained. Whilst its a benefit to have a house that lasts 100 years rather than 1 year, and thus each year provides time which can be spent on other activity, eventually need to spend time replacing or at least maintaining such house. The same goes for the rest of the technology, and especially the nationally {geographically constrained} infrastructure, which we depend on.

But to a certain extent the building and construction industry build stuff just to stay occupied or is that employed: not building stuff because we really need it. So we have plenty of buildings, construction activity still occuring and yet have a housing shortage. How can that be? Its because the market is not capable of meeting social needs. The speculators buy up land and build houses for financial investment, for monetary profit, not to satisfy a social need. So they unwisely build large houses not affordable by the majority of people in the market. So the market provides goods which few people can afford. Better planning provides goods society actually needs.

Therefore we need to separate essential from the optional. The optional can fluctuate with the market, the essential has to be supplied. Population needs to be constrained in terms of its size, and its proximity to needed resources. That needs planning not just a free market.

Population doesn't migrate between countries it migrates between cities. So where is the world population going to be located? Population is an import, and such population needs health care, education and housing. On the other hand we can export, health care, education and housing. Humans have legs they are meant to be mobile.

One documentary a few years back indicated that in the industrialised West, towns were becoming ghost towns as the next generation left for the big cities: especially around mediterranean countries and coastal towns around Italy and Greece. These towns thus can import population: house the world's refugees. A mass migration of population around the world into the big cities and the smaller  towns. Especially migration of those people forced into lands which do not have the resources to sustain people.

This cannot be done by nations as nations have geographical constraints, it has to be done by multinational organisations, by peoples cooperatives. A nation builds hospitals locally, a non-government organisation (NGO) or co-op provides hospitals globally.  A global co-op needs to know where hospitals are required globally. Such an enterprise is unlikely to have built Adelaide Hospital when the populations primary concern was supply of health care to people in the rural towns and mining towns.

If we know we have 10 billion people distributed around 1000 city-states, with 10 million people each, then how many hospitals does each city need? How many people are needed outside the city centres, who also need to be served, and how are they to be served?

If there were at least 5 global providers of health care,would the needs of the world population be better served than by national governments? Not if the purpose of the provider is to make a monetary profit rather than satisfy the needs of the population: those with greatest need wouldn't get any services as likely least able to pay directly for such service. 

Users paying for services isn't the issue, the issue is users paying directly for services at the time of need. Users can either pay for services now to cater for future need, or they can take the service now and pay for the service at some future date. If people are unhealthy or in poverty, they cannot pay for the services now, irrespective of whether they get the benefit now or in the future. They thus need to gain benefit now and pay in the future. However going into debt isn't a good thing, rather than reap future benefit it's more likely to make things worse. But can those in need afford to put a penny in a penny savings bank? It worked in the past but would such penny savings banks work now? If you don't have enough to survive, how can you put something aside? Sometimes a gift without debt is necessary to make the necessary change. A surplus generated in one place funding a shortage elsewhere. For example the traditional harley street doctors generating high incomes by providing services to the rich, and using to provide free clinics to the poor.

The question is have professionals become less noble and more greedy, or have surpluses decreased and cost of providing free services been increased by increasing regulations. when it comes to things like the following:


then greed seems to dominate the thinking of these professional cults and  modern day rum corp. the time someone spends in training has little to do with how much they should get paid, it does matter if its a 3 year apprenticeship, or a 4 year degree followed by a 6 year internship. Just like it doesn't matter if GMH spent $1 billion on developing a new car. Either the market wants to pay the price or it doesn't? Either they want the product or they don't?

We the public are not stupid and there is no asymmetry of knowledge unless a monopoly deliberately creates one. Engineers Australia with a monopoly, with no other organisation to say its membership wouldn't know their knee from their elbow, intentionally removed the institute of engineering associates to push up prices and have trite work carried out by individuals whose qualifications are not appropriate to the task at hand. The fake honours degree (B.Eng) does not make a graduate conversant with the technology these people claim expertise. Furthermore these graduates do not have the aptitude and capability the degree is supposed to impart: if civilisation was dependent on these people then civilisation wouldn't exist because there would be no discovery of knowledge to pass on through educational institutions. They are not creative, not imaginative, and certainly not ingenious, and mostly not technically competent. To grant them monopoly through legislation is not acceptable. If anything we should take monopoly away from professions.

Does the monopoly granted to the medical profession benefit society with the health care system its needs or does the monopoly impede every attempt to provide a better system? Do lawyers defend the innocent or put killers on the streets? And architects they just pollute the environment with over sized junk.

No! Take monopoly away from such professions and don't grant any to a profession which designs weapons of mass destruction.

[break for tea and telly [(11/03/2018) 17:43]]

[back from tea [(11/03/2018) 21:36]]

Waffle rules!

So there is a problem, pinning it down so that it can be defined clearly is no easy task. If it isn't defined clearly then no solution can be properly implemented. The world is full of people with solutions: but few of these solutions have relevance to real world problems: they are solutions looking for problems. That's the wrong way round.

The basic problem is one of logistics: provide the right product, in the right condition, in the right quantity, to the right people, at the right time, in the right place at the right time.

The internet with online ordering systems helps with identifying the right products, quantities and frequency of supply. But wish lists are probably much better than actual orders.

Basic expectation is that employment in retail will diminish, in terms of working in bricks and mortar stores. These stores will mostly become showrooms, display centres. Sales will mostly be online, and employment will therefore increase in terms of courier services. Letter/mail boxes will increase in size to receive large parcels. Whilst won't be able to pick item up from showroom, the item will arrive at the persons home before they themselves arrive home. Though initially won't expect or be able to supply better than within 48 hours.

The central planning system will be the internet: the so called big data. However it is relatively clear the people currently dealing with big data are less than competent at interpreting such data. Popularity contests do not properly represent the views and values of the people. Just because have traffic passing a building doesn't mean that the traffic is a market. Likewise just because people visit a website or view an individual page doesn't mean people are a market or have any liking for such page. It certainly doesn't represent a mechanism indicating the need to supply more of such stuff. Peoples curiosity will eventually taper, they will have identified a source of rubbish and move on, and yet the evidence would have suggested people liked the rubbish. It's the all swans are white versus problem. As Karl Popper pointed out, we have to do more than accumulate evidence to support an idea, we also need to seek evidence against the idea, we need the imagination to consider alternatives.

Central planning for example is typically rejected on the basis that the USSR was a centrally planned military dictatorship, and that was bad. Cats have four legs, dogs have four legs, therefore all cats are dogs. And thus all central planning ideas are bad, with false assumption that free market capitalism is good.

Free market capitalism however has no social conscience. Society however has to have a social conscience, it is what makes it a society. A capitalist society is therefore a contradiction of terms.

For certain society needs to be dynamically adaptive to survive in a dynamic world. Society was largely created to provide a buffer against the vagaries of the natural world. Then capitalism threw us back into the maelstrom of chaos. The natural tendency of the universe towards increasing entropy (disorder). Though life tends to resist such disorder, with life, information and wealth considered as negentropy.

So ...

beats me I've written more than one paragraph, and therefore lost in my own thoughts.

[(11/03/2018) 22:15]



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Revisions:
[11/03/2018] : Original

Saturday, March 03, 2018

South Australian State Election 2018 and other Thoughts

So for some reason the other day I received a message from the electoral commission, indicating a election in coming weeks, and the availability of an app. General indications from reviews was that the app is flawed. If download app, then you will not be sent voting card. Apparently voting card, provides a number which speeds up finding name in the registers: I didn't know finding name and address was that difficult or slow. Probably the real reason is large population of people with non-European names, which most people crossing names off in the register cannot understand, nor spell. Apparently the app will provide the required number, if it works for you. Anycase I don't know why I got the notification, I guess I must have registered my phone number when I changed my address online. The electoral commision also has a app which is a pseudo simulator for filling in the ballot slip: pseudo because it doesn't simulate the real world allowing a voter to abstain, rejecting all candidates, by making their vote null and void.

So We Have an Election

So we have an election: your chance to ride roughshod over everyone and become a dictator. No that's not right we have a democracy. So!?

Not sure what the South Australian constitution is or if we have one. But from school social science a long time back, the basic structure of the South Australian system seems to be the same as the federal. Thus we the people, elect representatives which form a government, from which an executive council is selected by the governor. The executive council is then responsible for executing the will of the government through the provision of services to the public by government agencies.

If everyone is happy with the status quo, then all that is required is to transfer funds from the state treasury to meet the budgets of the government agencies so that they can continue operations as usual. All that we need for that to occur is the governor.

Part of the reason for representatives and parliamentary debate is to prevent the "tyranny of the majority". Each representative argues the wants and whims of their electorate, they don't just turn up at parliament and listen to the party platform. The task of the executive council is to bring all these wants and whims together into a consolidated whole, and present something that the government will then agree on.

Just to clarify. Members of both the Labor party and the Liberal both sit in the House of Assembly. There is no government and opposition: both these sets of jokers and incompetents constitute our government. The governor should select and executive council fairly from all political parties to properly represent the diversity of the government. Under my proposal in previous post no political party would be permitted more than 20% of the vote: the executive council would have to be formed with representatives from at least 5 parties.

Right now we can only have a Labor government if the Labor party has hijacked the electoral process and dictates to the government: debate is a sham and all bills will be pushed through, as a consequence of the peoples representatives ignoring the people and following party lines: the party platform. We the people are not duly and properly represented: we are dictated to.

It is extremely inefficient. Labor is in, Liberal comes along and displaces them, dismantling everything in their path and implementing something else. Then Labor hijacks parliament again dismantles everything Liberals did and builds their own stuff back. Everything oscillates between black and white. With due and proper representation, we get a compromise, a murky shade of grey. No one is ecstatic, but everyone is fairly served. The disgruntled will largely be the greedy, irrespective of whether rich or poor: those that want more than their fair share.

Meanderings on Needs

I take the primary purpose of the tax system is to keep the money system working. Money isn't entirely earned, it flows and accumulates to those who are fortunate to control those things for which all have a need. Ultimately there is potential for the whole system to grind to a halt. The market doesn't have any planned or designed circulatory system which ensures money flows around and benefits all that it passes. Money can just flow from, or through and provide no benefit to the entity it passes (could be a person or organisation).

So taxes are to take money from where it is unacceptably accumulating and circulate it to where it is unacceptably disappearing. Also it is not possible to provide everything at a profit, or even for everything to be self-sufficient through user pays. Thus once again an issue of taking from where money accumulates and placing it where it is needed.

Government isn't a business, so not business as usual, but operations as usual.So consider we have a nation, the nation is developed, the nation is built: as such there is no need for anything new. However, the environment the nation operates in is dynamic, therefore it has to be dynamically adaptive. There is thus need for occasional change, adaptation to new circumstances, but not change for changes sake. therefore expect an occasional upheaval as everything adapts.

Thus knowing that there is necessary change some 20% of the available funds could be put aside for discretionary needs, nonrecurring. Whilst recurring needs are met by 80% of the budget, each government agency in turn puts aside 20% of its funds for discretionary needs. Any government agency using more than 80% of its funds to meet ongoing operations is thus ineffective: forget about efficiency its barely capable of meeting its objectives.

So for example we should have government agencies providing services with no changes occuring unless there is a bill passed to implement. So for example the following stock journal article: Inspection confusion causes rural concern. Why? The article has a call for all political parties to have a policy on such issue. Once again why?

Do farm vehicles travel along suburban streets from one household garden to another? No! Farm vehicles travel along rural roads from one rural property to another. The issue is one for rural regions, the representatives of rural regions. It is not a party political issue: it is a geographical issue, a regional issue. If agricultural machinery is damaging rural roads, it is still a regional issue. The region needs funds to maintain roads.

So roads maybe under the jurisdiction of local government authorities (LGA's), state government or Federal government. Either way, each level of government has certain responsibilities to provide roads and maintain them once constructed. Construction of a new road is a discretionary cost, maintenance then becomes a necessary ongoing cost. Funds for maintenance of roads cannot, or should not be redirected to construction of hospitals. Each new road, and new hospital increases ongoing maintenance costs. At first sight the only place to get these funds from is the 20% put aside for discretionary expenses. A developing nation is rapidly going to lose the reserve funds, and run out off funds for further development. On the other hand heritage becomes a foundation on which to build the future: if its a solid foundation. Some things don't need replacing for 100 years, other things need  replacing every year. However, we cannot neglect that in 100 years time, we will need funds to replace such systems, if our civilisation is not going to collapse.

Australia is not a developed country, most of the interior is wilderness, even if used for large sheep and cattle stations it is still largely undeveloped wilderness. The central strip of Australia is certainly a neglected region: the central strip comprising Northern Territory and South Australia.

The state of South Australia is largely under too much influence from the Adelaide council, with state development policies being to concentrate population around Adelaide: to contract the population and stop urban sprawl.

But what is urban sprawl? It isn't really about remote towns being connected to capital cities. It isn't really about cars. It is mostly a consequence of multistorey buildings and large facilities located in a central business district: and needing population far greater than can or does reside in the vicinity of such facilities.

For example consider the World Trade Center as an extreme example: 110 storeys accommodating 50,000 workers, and with 200,000 daily visitors. So South Australia with a population of approximately 1.5 million, only needs 30 such buildings for workers assuming all are working. But then we also need additional buildings for workers to live. We probably could collapse the entire population into the main hub of Adelaide city. We probably can stuff people into concrete beehives, assimilate them to the borg and wire them to the matrix. But it is highly unlikely that they would want such. If we do such then South Australia is irrelevant, cease talking about the state, it is wilderness, the only region of relevance is the city of Adelaide.

Australia is considered to be a primary producer, and such is where we should focus. Why? Around 2.5% of the population is employed in agriculture, and around 2.5% involved in mining. The definition of industrialised nation is less than 10% employed in agriculture. So if people are not employed in agriculture and growing their own food, what are the rest of the people to do in exchange for their food? Apparently be employed by government agencies, employed in health care, education and retail. Apparently manufacturing is not important. Though construction industry always wanting more land to be released for house construction. Why? Household occupancy is less than 3 persons per household, and car ownership is also around 2 vehicles per household. Have no real need for houses, nor for cars. One vehicle assembly plant could provide that 3rd person with a vehicle and private space in 5 years. The housing industry would take some 25 years to provide a house, so that occupancy is 2 persons per household. Apparently we have a housing shortage. But is it real? Do we need to reduce occupancy to 2 persons to each household: what is a household? Is a household an isolated building, or an isolated room?

Working with my 5 km diameter cells: at least one person per cell to define occupation of land. Then SA has about 50,088 such cells, and a population which would permit around 34 persons per cell. Australia has enough such cells that it could appoint one person per cell, and eliminate unemployment. What do they do: they take responsibility for development and maintenance of the cell or otherwise protecting the natural wilderness. The person is the assigned representative and custodian of the cell. Which raises another issue should our representation be proportional to land area of an electorate or proportional to population? For further consideration the Yorke Peninsula council area has a population to appoint 37 people to each cell.

Consider that instead of people merely belonging to some massive electorate they are assigned responsibility for a 5 km cell. They don't have to live there, they are just responsible for the area. A cell has a defined usage or purpose, such purpose has required resources and thus necessary funding. The cell cannot be neglected. Its purpose maybe maintained wilderness. However even though it is wilderness, should there be any human habitat, should there be a through road? If there is human habitat then need some means of getting people in and out, as well as needed resources. At the very minimum all the cells should be connected by footpaths: not necessarily paved/sealed, but an obvious and passable track.

Back to the Government

Ok! Enough with the diversion. Point is that the government is off the people and off the land. The government does not exist without connection to land. An organisation can be global, can be universal, it has no geographical constraint. A government, a nation, however is tied to the land. The government's task therefore is to manage that land. It is therefore not acceptable for the government to focus on the needs of a single city in that land.

The government is the appointed custodian of the land and all its living occupants, and all the resources the land provides. The government's first task therefore is to appoint an agency to monitor and account for all the occupants and resources. To then determine the needs of the living occupants, and the conflicts between those needs. Once the agencies are appointed there is no longer need for the representative government. The government only needs to be assembled when change is necessary: when the established systems are failing.

So currently Labor and Liberal sit in government. No they don't! Ok! Labor currently dictates to the government, and you may desire to change the situation so that Liberal dictates to the government. If you believe that such dictatorship is acceptable you are part of the problem. After the election we will in the main still have the same bunch of jokers representing the Labor and Liberal parties sat in parliament and forming the government: they will have merely changed seats. Shifting the bunch of jokers from one side of the house to the other doesn't achieve effective change. Changing who dictates policy does not constitute effective nor efficient government.

The mess we have is not because of Labor, it is because both Labor and Liberals sit in the house. To effect change both bunch of incompetents need to be removed. We need to limit the number of votes any party can get: we need at least 5 parties in the house. And when no political party can hijack parliament and appoint itself as the executive council: then we are one step closer to due and proper representation. We should not consider such situation a hung parliament: it isn't a problem, it is what should occur. The governor then as the task of selecting members of the executive council: the executive council is not the government. The executive council is selected from the members of the government: to execute the will of the government.  The will of the government should properly represent the will of the people: not the wants and whims of political parties.

So we have rural region, with needs for hospitals, schools and roads. How does it get them? Does it need a political party with a rural platform? No!

The proper function of government is to provide for the needs of the people who occupy the land it governs. The people in the city get their food from the rural regions don't they? Probably not, the retailers probably import everything. In which case probably don't need rural communities, so we can implement a massive exodus and migrate all the rural communities into the city of Adelaide. Import all our food and be heavily dependent on mechanised transport, political instabilities in foreign countries. Sounds like a plan. Also sounds like a major security and defence issue. Free markets have no care for society. The wants and whims of markets does not provide for effective supply of needed goods and services. No buts, doubts or maybes. It doesn't, it hasn't, it isn't.

So we have one representative for a region what can they do? What can they do if they belong to a party? If they belong to a political party do they really have a voice for their electorate and its needs? I doubt they do, everything which happens biased towards Adelaide city (eg. Hospital which cannot effectively service the rural regions), indicates they don't. So toss the political parties, they are obsolete, they have had their day.

Local MP's

It's time for a revolution. Your local MP is part of the government, irrespective of whether they are a member of the executive council, or the political party which has hijacked government. You voted for them to represent you. If you voted for them because some ancestor, intelligently made the right choice for themselves, then you are a fool, and should not be permitted to vote. You should vote for the person who will properly represent your needs, your communities needs: the person who will get things done, if it is possible to get the things done.

Are healthcare needs a Labor or Liberal party issue? No! Healthcare is a people's need. How it is effectively provided is the issue. Can private enterprise effectively provide the healthcare services the population needs? I doubt it. And I doubt it because the modern business mantra is not about satisfying needs it is purely about monetary profits. No profit, no extortionate profit, then no supply.: business shutdown. And we are told we should think about all the ma and pa shareholders. No we shouldn't.

In effect the government is little more than a corporation, a limited company, and we are all shareholders. The government are the board of directors: we the shareholders can sack each and everyone of them if they are not considered competent to do the job we have appointed to them. The nation is a Co-op, and we expect certain goods and services from them in exchange for the taxes we pay. More over the government provides a safety net, a universal insurance policy. Most especially the government provides insurance for those situations when the market fails to achieve, what wishful thinking hopes it will achieve.

If you as an individual do not know what you need, then how can your representative properly know what you need? How many people does one representative represent? What happens when 50,000 drowns, bombards one representative with their needs? What happens when 50,000 people stand on the steps of parliament and demand their needs are met? Such number of people clearly out numbers the politicians. The population of Yorke Peninsula council area also clearly out numbers the members of the LGA, as do the people of Copper Coast and Barunga West council areas.

You start with your LGA, put pressure on the state, and then pressure on the nation. So say the LGA says hospitals are state issue. So what? Is there a state embassy in the LGA area? No! Is there a state MP? Possibly. But who cares? The local community needs one or more hospitals, similarly for schools, housing, and employment. It needs roads, shops and other facilities. The people pay the LGA, and the LGA is the local central planning authority. The LGA is the one place we can centralise all our visions for the area. So sure the hospital maybe state or federal issue: but the need is a local requirement. The state and federal electorates cross LGA boundaries: preferably with no overlap.

So several LGA's make up a state or federal electorate. The representative of the region therefore, has to determine and balance the needs of several LGA's. Do all the LGA's get a hospital, or just one with centralised accessibility to all the others.

... [(03/03/2018) 18:01] Tea time


Related Posts

Revisions:
[03/03/2018] : Original

Sunday, February 04, 2018

Protect Diversity Not Competition

I have mentioned before we should get rid of the competition watchdog, and have laws to protect diversity not competition. If we protect competition then there can "only be one", and then the competition is over: everything else is wiped out. Not a very sensible thing to do.

So following on from the previous post about political parties, a similar approach could be applied to other areas. That is limit market share to 20%, in all its variations. So having the big 2 is not acceptable but the big 5 is tolerable.

Currently when the competition watchdog investigates, the big department store or supermarket is seen to do no wrong, and is permitted to move into an area and wipe out all local business. Protecting diversity rather than competition should prevent such action.

A big supermarket may only have 15% of the market nationally, but locally it can hold 100% of the market. The latter is not acceptable, it violates the 20% rule. But what is local?

Previously, I have indicated that a circular cell 5 km in diameter can be surveyed by one person in one day, assuming they can walk at 5km/h and otherwise walk for 5 hours/day. Such cell can be traversed in 1 hour, its takes 30 minutes to get from perimeter to the centre. It takes a day to walk from the centre around the perimeter and return to the centre. Various zigzag paths can be taken around the cell to explore it in 1 day. The world's land mass contains over 7 million such cells, and with a population of around 7 billion, then 1000 people can occupy each cell. A 1 km square cell with a hub 500m x 500m, can provide home to some 5000 people in single person single storey dwellings. Such dwellings are equally suitable for 2 persons and a baby, extended to two stories and the dwellings are suitable for two adults and two children. Thus 20 thousand people in a 1km square.

Any cell greater than 5km diameter is likely to require mechanised transport, at the very minimum a handcart or bicycle.  A cell 1km in diameter is potentially the more walkable, and less dependent on machinery. Though mechanised transport is likely required to get goods in and out of such cells.

Any case it provides a starting point for setting some limits. Population limited to 200 to 4,000 people, or radial extents limits to a distance from 0.5km to 2.5km.

So if we pick a supermarket at random and locate it at the centre of a 5km diameter cell, then inside that cell there should be found, at least another 4 similar independent stores. If not then the supermarket has too large a market. A second check is the size of the population, it actually serves compared to available population: if it supplies more than 4,000 people from the one store then it is too large. That is the simple check.

An alternative check is to move the centre of the 5km cell until it captures 5 stores within its boundaries. Here on the York Peninsula in South Australia, the distance between towns is about 25 km, and each town typically has a population less than 1000 people, some have populations less than 100. The rural roads between towns typically have speeds at 100km/h, so each town is around quarter of an hour away, though a town with a commercial hub could be 1 hour to 2 hours away.

In such situation the hinterlands (catchment areas), need to be larger in diameter to capture a large enough population to make the businesses viable in the first place. Which raises the question of the minimum population required to serve for the business to be viable. The initial assumption was local population of 1000 to 20,000 people to be served by a minimum of 5 businesses: so an individual business can only serve 200 to 4000 customers.

Clearly businesses which supply carports and verandahs or sheds, serve the entire Adelaide metropolitan region, even the entire state of South Australia, and some companies the whole of Australia. Most builders have indicated they sell 40 carports/verandahs a month. Since the number is so common I doubt that is reality, more like some ideal figure dreamed up by some common source, now lost in time.

In terms of timber , most such structures take carpenter 2 days, with help of one assistant. However there may be some preliminary factory work done before site works, such as cutting, and painting. So assuming 5 days in a working week, and 4 weeks in a month, then 20 days a month: then one team can only supply 10 canopies each month, not 40. Or assuming 50 productive weeks a year, then 250 productive days in a year, then only supply 125 canopies a year, not 12*40=480. And who wants these?

For some reason houses aren't designed and built with verandahs.Taking South Australia with my rough and ready, easy to remember statistics, there is approximately 1.5 million people, with household occupancy less than 3 persons per dwelling. An old Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) report indicates that some 5% of dwellings each year get some form of renovation: kitchen, bathroom, extra room, outdoor living (decking and/or verandah). So first requirement for the industry would be to supply the 500,000 dwellings. Thereafter provide replacements, at the rate of 25,000 each year. So would require 200 teams, or individual businesses. Of course this can be made more complicated by taking population growth into consideration. Last time I looked, the number of dwellings were around 600,000 and occupancy around 2.8 persons.

Any case, the simple numbers puts each business serving around 7,500 people, spread around the whole of South Australia. Local business however is unlikely to be viable. As move away from the hub of Adelaide, the size of hinterland needs to change for local business, from 5km diameter to possibly over 300 km radius: a radius for the latter because most likely only serve in a small sector rather than a full circular cell. For example Kadina, in South Australia, basically serves everything to its South on the York Peninsula. Everything south of Kadina, has a both a smaller population and fewer facilities. Kadina has a population of around 5000 people, everything to its south has a population less than 1000 people. Kadina is in the Copper Coast council district, and that to the south is in the Yorke Peninsula council district, each district having a population around 12,000  people. For such region, before consider protecting competition or diversity, the first requirement is to provide service. Whilst some specialist stores are viable, more likely to find general stores providing a broad range of goods: and having 100% of the market with respect to those goods. Likewise the specialist stores also hold 100% of the local market. Local with respect to the limits of the township. People in such regions also likely to work part-time across a range of activities. This is because no single activity is likely to provide adequate income to make a living, secondly because it is difficult to get people into the regions and so people have to "wear different hats" if anything is to get done. The problem however is that makes the towns like ghost towns, as stores are closed and services only available by appointment: not at all welcoming to visiting tourists. Not only do businesses need to be in a network but so do their customers need to be in such network: because without network connections no one would know the services are available.

So we have an environment different than that in the big city. But Australia itself is an environment different than that in other industrialised nations. My typical reference is that Australia is akin to a remote mining colony on Mars. Except if were on Mars, the long wait for the bat bringing goods and services in would be more apparent, and the remote location would be better managed. Then again Australia is only remote from the west, it is not remote from the east. If we were on Mars, then we would more likely develop better relationship with the martians (assuming they may exist), than we have done with Asia.

But that is the other problem with protecting diversity, its attack from external competition. Local towns are not just under attack by national companies, they are also under attack from foreign powers. My other common point is that if land defines a nation, then land should not be permitted to be bought and sold. Land should be owned by the nation state, and the state should only grant license to occupy and use the land: not own the land.

Protecting the land is important with respect to farms and mines. The 20% limit, would restrict ownership of resources, or license to resources. So no farming business could hold license to more than 20% of the farmland, to 20% of the irrigation water resources. Further restriction to no more than 20% of milk production, nor more than 20% of beef production, etc... Similarly no mining company hold more than 20% of steel production, 20% of aluminium production.

As done above for the canopies, can work out how much work one person or a team of people can produce in one year. Secondly need to check the demand for such work over one year, and determine if that is repetitive from one year to the next, growing or decaying. Once population stabilises, with basically one person born for each person who dies, there is no need for increased house construction: unless people want multiple houses scattered all over the planet: but then once the planet is fully occupied by humans, then house construction no longer needed. However, house maintenance and/or replacement will then need to occur. If something is needed then we can get some idea of demand, compared to pointless widgets which are just made and sold just for the purpose of surviving in a market system.

Government services increasingly privatised. So once again, supplier should be restricted to 20% of the market, and the choice available locally, not just nationally. The construction of Adelaide Hospital for example would not be permitted, its expected catchment area is too large, and it has been constructed at the expense of largely ignoring rural and regional hospital services. The principle would require that South Australia has at least 5 large regional hospitals. Such would require South Australia to be divided into 5 regions, with a central hospital which can serve such region. Not 5 hospitals located based on population, but based on geographical area. The point of the state or nation is development of the geographical region, having the capability to occupy, hold and serve the region.

So we start by dividing regions progressively by 5. Thus Australia has 5 or more regions, then each of these regions further divided by 5, and then each of these in turn is further divided by 5. So South Australia is one of the national divisions, which gets divided into 5 regions.

Why 5? Because in group dynamics, two people can easily disagree and then nothing gets done, with 3 people, it can easily split into two groups, whilst get a 2/3rds majority can otherwise loose 1/3rd taking any interest. With a group of 4, there is a possibility of an even split, and thus two groups working against one another. With 5 people, need 3/5ths to create a majority, there is no even split, and whilst may have a 2/5ths opposition, its likely get two opposing groups of 1/5th each. A group of 5 is therefore the smallest odd number group which seems practical.

Geographically however, hexagons are important to filling space uniformly. A hexagon can be split into 6 segments: 6 being an even number can provide an equal split, no majority view. However hexagons, and circles form clusters of 7: an odd number and potentially better  than 5. Adopting 7 would reduce acceptable market share down to 14% limit. Each 7 cell  cluster would form a community, but persons could seek service from any of the 7 hubs. I don't have a problem with that, however most businesses with market dominance typically have market share between 20% and 30%, so adopting 20% limit doesn't impose too much of a burden on existing business except those which really do hold a majority of the market. Microsoft for example with near 100% market share of computer operating systems.

So what to do about companies like Microsoft? First back to the division of regions. So South Australia gets divided into 5 regions, most of those regions would be without any significant population, and furthermore the distance to any central hospital would be too far to travel for an emergency: hence why investment in the one Adelaide hospital is not acceptable for the state. We therefore continue dividing the area by 5 until create cells with populations and within reasonable distance of the needed facility, which could be hospital, school, shop etc... Those cells with populations should get facilities, but if the land is to be considered occupied then need to consider how to service the remote unpopulated cells assuming it is permitted to visit these cells. For example if helicopters have operational radius of 250 km, then need heliports at no more than 500 km centres if expect to be able to search the Australian interior for lost tourists. Heliports need fuel for the helicopters and other supplies for the personnel: how are those resources going to get there? It is not really appropriate to consider markets for everything, but if going to get held to ransom by lone supplier, then protecting diversity is important.

Diversity however doesn't help if there are pressures to supply at equal price. For example Engineers Australia, and Institute of Architects, and institute of building designers all have members who complain about undercutting fees, and attempt to publish guidelines to what fees should be. The fee guidelines typically take an elitist unrealistic viewpoint: not everyone gets to rip the government off,charging extortionate fees for public infrastructure. Engineering effort unlike construction effort is not proportional to the size of a structure or other system, but proportional to the complexity: if two structures have the same structural form but only vary in size, then they require the same effort to design. The engineers and architects working on the larger project will get the higher fees.

Consider that a garden shed takes the same design effort as a large industrial building. Say the garden shed costs $500, whilst the larger structure costs $1 million dollars, they both have the same structural form. The consulting fees for large projects may be defined in terms of percent fee, typically less than 5% and apparently usually around 1%. So for the garden shed the consulting fee would be $5, whilst that for the industrial building would be $10,000.

Australia's federal minimum wage is $17.20, so for the sake of argument assume work capable by one person producing drawings and calculations, no site supervision. Assume design effort capable of being completed in 1 week, of 40 hours. So labour cost is $688, the percent fee doesn't cover the cost for the garden shed, but the fee for the industrial building is 14.5 times larger than cost. However ignored operational costs of the business, assume needs of business is similar to a person and minimum rate is same as federal minimum wage: so we multiply by 2. Therefore cost is $1366, most definitely not the kind of fee the person buying a garden shed wants to pay. Whilst the fee for the industrial building is still 7.3 times larger. Is such multiplier an acceptable relativity between wage earners?

Now the cost for the small garden shed indicates that really needs to be designed once and made many times: but most manufacturers also do not find the fee acceptable. They want lower price. That therefore means the cost of the drawings and calculations need to be dropped below 40 hours: the process needs to be automated: electronic computers are needed. When automation of design takes place then the market held by the architects and engineers is displaced over to the manufacturers. The high fees they once demanded disappears: the value of their services diminishes. A service which mostly was imposed on projects, where such need was never previously required. A monopoly given by legislation, taken away by technology and market forces, a monopoly which should have never been permitted in the first place. Impose purchase of something which wasn't previous needed, and the buyers will take measures to remove such imposition. If a market imposes a need or generates a demand where  need is not necessary, then market will also seek to remove. A dynamically adaptive system will attempt to return to some lower energy level: the level before unwanted impositions.

Australian industrial awards and Federal minimum wages  give some idea of minimum costs, if buying and selling time is the only thing of concern. Thankfully at the moment industrial awards haven't been pushed up to match market rates. Thankfully because the awards tend to only go upwards, and therefore stifles new business, and favours big business with large markets. More to the point it benefits employees with big business to increase minimum wages in awards, as it can close down smaller business, destroy the competition, destroy diversity. Then once other suppliers removed the big business steps in and supplies a larger market, and potentially at higher prices.

Local community groups are better than labour and trade unions. Trade unions were historically more committed to local communities and did more social good than harm. Now most trade unions are limited companies, full trading businesses, national, and no real care about community. Communities however can fight back. Back in 70's, one local community blocked a trade union picket line. The union was potentially going to shut off the power supply, blocking access to power station: the community prevented the union members from leaving the picket line and from refreshed members reaching the line. The community could hold out longer, than employees and unionists who didn't live in the area. A community doesn't have to be held to ransom by outsiders.

Similarly communities do not have to tolerate privatisation of their resources. They can buy resources back. I recollect a documentary about water supply where one French village regained control of their local water resources after it had been privatised. Communities should have control over that which their survival is dependent on: sovereignty over dependent resources. What is the point of nations, of fortified towns, if they are permitted to be attacked by economics?

Should have free markets, open markets, no regulation? Who does this benefit? Mostly big multinationals: entities which have no geographical boundaries, and no social responsibilities, and which are increasingly more powerful (economically) than many nations. However if they are highly specialised they are not overly sustainable. If they are involved in everything, are corporations with voting shareholders, then we have a future world, governed by something other than nations and without geographical limits. Instead of being a citizen of a nation, you will be a member of an world corporation. There would have to be at least 5 such citizen corporations in the world.

People don't migrate between countries, they migrate between cities. People in cities may migrate to more remote rural regions, in the main however people in rural regions migrate to cities. People changing countries are really changing cities. It concerns the critical mass of population required to make certain goods and services available. The difference between making one combined harvester every 10 years, or making several hundred each and every year. What is the critical population required to design and produce computer chips? The population required to get started from scratch is not the same as required to start up once the technology exists.

One article I read indicated something along the lines that Britain took 200 years to industrialise, the USA with import of technology from Britain took 100 years, and Japan with technology imported from the USA took 50 years. After the second world war, redevelopment took 25 years, nations with the help of Japanese industry have taken 15 years to become industrialised. Developing technology requires people and time. With technology development takes less and less time, as all existing technology is a foundation and building block for future technology.

So geography may not be relevant to the future. Brexit for example could turn out to be an entirely pointless exercise: as corporations become increasingly more relevant than geographically bound nations. Passports and visas shouldn't be necessary, no one should need a permanent home address and all should be citizens of the world.

Protecting national boundaries from illegal immigrants is it really important? I doubt it! I would say the current problem isn't so much that illegal immigrants get into the country, but that they cannot get out. I suggest that it is easier to get out of Africa, and get to London, than it is to get out off London: one way traffic. Thus having discovered that no economic benefit to being in London, it is going to require a lot more effort to get to somewhere else. But where else: New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Paris, Berlin, Rome. Where? Is life going to be better there? Want to learn a third language? What are the 5 most common languages? Where are the 5 most popular cities?

Population doesn't need to move if local town provides for its needs. So protecting diversity also includes protecting the survival of local towns. In Greece and Italy I believe some towns have become ghost towns, where only the retired remain: the younger generation have left leaving the retired behind. The big cities stealing the population. So the 20% limit can apply to the population of cities, to the employment of people by business.

As for companies like Microsoft. Their upgrades are not upgrades they are different products, we are held to ransom, forces to adopt new product, and new way of doing things. But there are people attempting to create alternatives like FreeDOS to keep old software going, others attempting to replicate Windows XP. The propaganda machine says such software is a security risk: well it wasn't when we first bought it, and it was operating perfectly fine for the majority of people. So no real need to change.

So here's an idea. If Microsoft no longer wishes to sell or support MS DOS or Windows XP, it doesn't have to. On the other hand it shouldn't be permitted to prevent others from supporting such software. So it could be required to release its source for its abandoned software, thus FreeDOS doesn't need to reinvent the operating system: rather it can develop it in another direction. In other words microsoft releases products (it can license) development of its old products until usage of any given product drops to 20%.

... interrupted for tea and telly. [17:47]

[22:25] ...
Would Windows be a prime target for attack if it only represented 20% of computer users, and another 4 systems were available for attack. Currently has I understand the majority of users are on Windows 10, then earlier versions of windows, Apple, and various distributions of Linux: all largely determined from connections to the internet. Computers however do not need to be connected to the internet, and such computers do not need need security protections. So MS DOS is perfectly fine for crunching numbers, writing letters, as is CPM/80.

SunOS used to be able to spawn an MS DOS process in its own window. As far as I know it was not a virtual machine, it was an independent process. Early MS DOS installed on 720 kb, 3.5" floppy disks, whilst CPM/80 installed on 360 kB 3.5" floppy disks. Gigabytes of data are not required for the operating systems: so Windows 10 should be able to run separate windows with any of the earlier versions of Windows and all prior software should still be able to run. But it doesn't, and since software ceases to run when replace hardware and operating system: the software is not an upgrade it is a different product.

So amongst first things to do is impose the 20% on the types of licenses. For example could restrict OEM licences to 20% of licenses, or require at least 20% of licenses  are NON-OEM. But would need to split market into sectors. If not split into sectors likely to have the suppliers declare that the 20% has been reached by supply to governments and large corporations, and so no need to supply to individuals. By separating business from personal, the 20% limit can be imposed on each sector.

Similarly can require that 20% of hardware is supplied without any operating system, and is capable of having any operating system installed. Can require that the hardware is suitable for at least 5 different operating systems, that there are at least 5 different operating systems available.

Here the limit is placed on the product not necessarily the business. So Microsoft can license its earlier operating systems to be developed and maintained by others, so that there is a greater diversity of products in the market. It doesn't necessarily have to license or provide access to the source code. So MS DOS can be licensed as a foundation for building variants. For example FreeDOS is not entirely capable of running all earlier MS DOS software. On the other hand FreeDOS can be installed and operate on hardware which wasn't available when MS DOS was originally available. Many of the original external commands in MS DOS could be replaced by Linux tools. Linux operating systems could run MS DOS in a separate process.

Historical cars can be kept going because the parts do not require any significant infrastructure to fabricate. People can machine parts in a small workshop. Computers and other electronic hardware however are more complicated to build than is possible with tools found in the family garage.  But with 3D printers, then maybe it will one day be possible to fabricate digital chips in the home.

Any case markets can comprise of products, and should protect diversity of products. Cars for example there should be at least 5 manufacturers. And following what I said for computers, each component should have 5 potential substitutes. So 5 different, independent suppliers of tyres, 5 suppliers of spark plugs, think of a component then that component should have 5 suppliers: not just suppliers 5 different manufacturers.

If there is a definable market, and a business holds more than 20% of that market, then its share is too high. A business doesn't necessarily have to do anything, since next week, it could hold a smaller proportion of the market. The big issue is when a business holds more than 50% of the market, and other businesses hold less than 20%. In such situation may have diversity, but the situation is heading towards monopoly with the other players potentially being removed from the market. Such situation doesn't necessarily represent what people want, but rather what they can get. The other players just don't have the resources to produce quantities large enough to flood the market: they don't have the distribution network and therefore people have neither knowledge nor access to alternative products.

It is not just a matter of reducing the 50% dominance of the market down to 20%, it is a matter of boosting the other players so that they have nearer to 20% of the market. Rather than manufacturers being the problem in such situation, it maybe the wholesalers and retailers who are the problem: they are not giving other manufacturers the opportunity.

So the supermarket shelves have to have products from at least 5 different producers in each and every product category. This doesn't mean one box from 4 suppliers and a 100 boxes from one dominant supplier. The stores product mix has to include 5 suppliers with near equal demand quantities. Unless there is clear bias in the local community. In which case it can cater to the bias, but it should otherwise seek to break such bias. It should break the bias because such is not good for the future survival of the community and not good for the survival of the store: shouldn't have all eggs in one basket. To ensure security of future supply, should have a diversity of products on offer, and individuals themselves should also use a diverse range of resources rather than relying on one.

Economy of scale maybe efficient, but it is not secure. Economy of scale gives greater importance to efficiency over effectiveness. A system cannot be efficient or economical if it is not effective. The system will not be effective if it is not secure. Diversity provides security because if loose one resource there are 4 alternatives to take its place. If only have one resource and lose it, then lose everything.

It's the problem with energy. Fossil fuels are not so much the problem, the problem is that such fuels dominate the market. Adopting solar power or wind power in the place of fossil fuels will just create a different set of environmental and economical problems. We need a diversity of energy sources with no single one permitted to dominate. Coal, Gas, and Oil are not 3 independent fuel supplies, so having these 3 supplies isn't adequate diversity: we need independent alternatives. Solar and wind are likewise related, both driven by the Sun.

Whilst the 20% rule may not be entirely practical to implement, it does give a guideline to direct investigation. Smaller business doesn't need to grow to dominate the market, but it does need to prevent others from dominating the market, it does need to help ensure diversity is sustainable.

[23:40]



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Revisions:

  1. [04/02/2018] : Original