News – Page 11 – John Vincent

Tariffs Fail

Do you need to be a monster brain in economics to get the hang of tariffs? If you deep-dive into all the complexities surrounding every possibility, maybe you do. Nevertheless, the basics are the basics. Much like erecting a wall. Putting up a barrier makes it harder to do business. Harder to communicate. Harder to understand common concerns.

It’s a perfectly human thing to do. We erect barriers all over the place. That garden hedge, wooden fence or brick-built wall are a statement that says, this bit is mine and that bit is yours. Rarely is this absolute. Both sides of these unnatural barriers have mutual interests. Not admitting that reality is a problem. In fact, disputes between neighbours are one of the most common forms of dispute.

A barrier isn’t an invitation for you to disregard the concerns of your neighbours, and vice versa. That all night party, with the music turned up to eleven, maybe fine once a year but don’t do it every week. Well, don’t do it unless you are quarrelsome.

Economic barriers, like tariffs, are going to happen. When perception is all, the idea that one party can protect itself from those who would wish to do harm or take advantage, is very powerful. I say “perception” because a threat doesn’t need to be real. Politics is much about perception.

Trouble is that erecting barriers has a painfully poor history of failure. If we go back to walls, there’s not one that has stood the test of time. Maginot Line[1] is a case in point. The lesson there is that a barrier concentrates the opponents mind on how to overcome it. The elaborate nature of a barrier is no defence to the inventive mind. Barriers are time limited.

Tariffs, and non-tariff barriers are much the same. They may work to advantage for a while only to crumble when their weaknesses have been discovered. Although, I would say that non-tariff barriers are more powerful than straightforward economic barriers. The point being that the former is far more difficult to understand, counter and control.

2025 is a year of volatility, at least so far. Talk of tariffs is on, then it’s off, then it’s on again. It’s the real cat on the hot tin roof. A hop, a jump, and a skip. Everyone is left wondering what comes next. Even if there’s to be any return to a form of reasonable stability anytime soon. That’s the point.

Disruption offers opportunities. At least, for those quick inventive minds with resources to hand. If you don’t fit into that category, then chances are there’s a big downside and a lot of hurt.

To give the monopoly of the home market in the produce of domestic industry…………………must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or hurtful regulation. Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations (1776).

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maginot-Line

Power and Choice

How is it so surprising? This transformation that’s taking place. It’s undeniably so. With notable exceptions. Understandable ones. The stories that have filled the last 65-years of my life have been ones where the good American rides in to save the day.

Black and white movies were replaced by Technicolor images of hearty American hero types beating the bad guys. Batman, in his 1960s persona, would outwit dastardly scheming villains. Mild-mannered, decent, and magnanimous.

Fine. We were warned that the more ruthless side of American life was out there on the streets. Captured by iconic movies like Wall Street[1]. But that was the fashion of the times. The 1980s were, both in the US and UK a time of hard-nosed ambition. Often set against a backdrop of industrial decline and hardship summed up by Bruce Springsteen[2] and alike.

Everything has a price. Or so it’s said. In fact, it’s more accurate to say: “Every man has his price.” That crusty old German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche put it differently. Like fishing, he suggested that a bait that exists that can attract everyman. Can entice and win over.

If this is your sole mantra, I’d suggest counselling. It’s a shallow way of looking at the world. Not entirely wrong. It’s just incomplete. Let’s face it. The biggest decisions we make in life often have nothing to do with enticements, like money. Certainly, there would be no romantic fiction or fantasy if we were all matched by algorithm according to specified needs and wants. Hey, maybe that will happen one day. Afterall, I can’t discount such a development.

My point is that it’s one thing to make an offer to buy something but, in a free market, if you believe in such, then it’s entirely up to the seller as to how they react. Now, of course, the marketplace may be rigged. Powerplay has a part to play. Swaggering powerful entities, companies or people, may wish to “encourage” a seller to sell. Apply pressure. Crooks and hoodlums have been doing this for centuries. Like saying: “I’ll burn down your barn if you don’t let me have the extra pasture that I want.”

Above where I wrote of dastardly scheming villains, I should have painted a less wholesome picture. Indeed, that’s what happened to Batman. He became portrayed as darker as the villains he faced became darker.

So, how does President Trump want to be remembered when history is written? The Good, the Bad or the Ugly, getting back to the movies.

Greenland is not some titbit that a powerful man can grab and possess. It’s a large island. A cold, remote island with a culture and history all of its own. It’s up to the inhabitants of that island as to the future they choose. Is there an enticement that those inhabitants will not be able to resist? Who knows? However, it seems to me extremely unlikely that an aggressive approach will bring about assession to another country.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/

[2] https://youtu.be/W2X0Gf9jfz8?list=RDW2X0Gf9jfz8

The UK’s Path Back to the EU

It’s great to see a debate in the UK Parliament[1]. Monday, 24 March saw a debate on the UK joining the European Union (EU). A public electronic petition[2] called for this debate. UK MPs get the opportunity to speak openly of their experiences of the outcomes of Brexit. There’s little that is positive and an ocean of negative.

Lucky for them, at the end of the debate, MPs are not called to vote on the issues raised in this petition. Nevertheless, there’s enormous merit in putting the facts in the public domain.

The 2016 Brexit vote was an unpatriotic act of self-harm, but it is history. Gradually, bit by bit, every part of British society is coming to the realisation that we need to do differently in the future. One day, I have no doubt that the UK will join the EU. The “will of the people” is not static. It is incredibly arrogant of Brexit supporters to say that it is static.

Besides, the inevitability of change means that new ways of cooperating will be found because it is in the best interest of all the parties. The UK is a liberal free-trading country that believes in the rule of law.

In the debate, Government Ministers can take what is being said and rethink. It is no threat to democracy to consider a rethink. In fact, for democracy to be stuck in a deep rut – now, that would be dangerous.

Today, Brexit has been a wonderful generator of piles of meaningless paperwork. It’s destroyed businesses and ruined lives. The enormous damage that has been caused is clear. Sadly, the people who cause that damage are not inclined to take any accountability for the mess.

In the debate, a shadow minister digs-up the grumpy past. It is shameful that the Conservative Party has nothing useful to say on this important issue. It is like listening to a bad recording of an old set of lies and proven nonsense. In speaking, this politician displayed no interest what-so-ever in improving the position of the country.

With all the talk of “growth” being so important to our future, it is difficult to understand a reluctance to address the festering wound that has been caused by Brexit. We can only be more secure and prosperous if we work more closely with our nearest neighbours.

The Labour Party leans on its election manifesto of last July. It’s an awkward act of sitting on the fence and sticking their head in the sand. Now, that paints a picture.

So called, “ruthless pragmatism” is a peculiar Government policy position. It can mean 101 things to 101 different people in 101 different places. Citing “global headwinds” to excuse obvious failings is no excuse for sustaining a burnt-out Brexit winding on like a runaway train. It would be wiser to question everything as the wholly new circumstances dictate.

2025 is dramatically different from 2015. When I first returned to the UK from Germany. The tectonic plates of global affairs have shifted. The Atlantic is wider. The Channel is narrower.

Oceanus Britannicus should be no barrier to trade and cooperation.

[1] https://youtu.be/yJdFBSAvAhU

[2] https://petition.parliament.uk/

A Key Political Agenda?

Whatever you might think, I think Keir Starmer is turning out to be a better conservative Prime Minister (PM) than most have been in the last couple of decades. On his list of things to do is reforming this, and reforming that, and making bullish statements on the world stage. Agreed that there’s the usual amount of crafted BS. Compromise and dealing with reality, not the world as one might wish it to be, are as they ever are in politics.

He’s in the business of stealing the clothes of the official opposition. Across the chamber they panic. Yes, further along the benches, the howling menace continues to howl. Fighting amongst themselves this week. Questioning their leader is not allowed. However, it’s surprising how high they stand in opinion polls, even if this is meaningless at this point in the electoral cycle.

The normal opposition now comes from the Liberal Democrats and a small number of unhappy Labour Members of Parliament.

This week I was amused to read of the concerns about Quangos[1]. That takes me back. I remember writing a motion for a conference on that subject back in the early 1990s. At that time there was questioning of why there was so many Quangos.

As a country we seem to go through waves. They go like this.

For a while national politicians take the view that day-to-day operational decisions of a sector should be made by dedicated professionals and at arm’s length. This has the advantage of getting politicians out of the complex detail, avoiding blame when things go wrong, a degree of continuity and setting their minds to the higher calling of top-level budgets and policy.

Then, if sector hasn’t performed as well as desired, the Quango at the heart of the storm is set ripe for taking apart. Thus, day-to-day operational decisions go back to “accountable” politicians, surely to do better. This has the advantage of reigniting the pace of change, a chance to be radical, securitising lower-level budgets and the satisfaction of blaming the past system.

I think you can tell which part of the wave that has hit now.

A point of reference here is, as so often is the case, Yes Minister. There’s a story line where the civil service pack the Minister’s red box with so much information and decisions to be made that he’s completely overwhelmed. Initially, he’s keen to have information on everything. Then the realisation that path leads to madness slowly dawns.

Now, it’s not clear what type of civil service, and associated Quangos, the PM thinks work best. It’s not strange to say I don’t like what I’ve got. It’s better to have an idea what it is that you want. A reform agenda in name is a headline grabber. It’s not a substitute to having a plan.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11405840

Life on Mars Remains a Dream

Exploration is part of our DNA. There are parts of the planet that we don’t know well. That said, there are not so many spots where a human foot has not trod. The mysteries of the deep ocean remain to be better known. Only we more often look heavenward than we study deep waters.

Looking up at the night sky the fascination with a twinkling red dot runs through history. It’s surprisingly recent that the notion that Mars might be inhabited prevailed. A 100 years ago a scientist might be frowned upon but wouldn’t get locked up for such a conjecture.

The possibility of Martian life still gets discussed. If existing, it would be extremely rare and unlike the life we take for granted on Earth. Discoveries are more likely to tell us about the history of Mars than the present.

A search for other civilisations goes on. Today, Mars is a planet for robots. Rovers and other contrivances are best equipped to deal with the harshness of the natural environment. If the radiation doesn’t get you the wide-ranging temperature fluctuations will. Humans are not well suited to live in extremely harsh environments.

On a trip to Phoenix in the United States about 30-years ago, I drove out into the desert. This was to have a look at the Biosphere[1]. A curious experiment in human behaviour. The experiment attempted to reproduce what it would be like to live as extraterrestrials. We’d be the alien civilisation on Mars. Living in a huge greenhouse on Earth. As much as to say this brave but shaky experiment proved that extraterrestrial living is very hard. In fact, impossible in the way it was conceived. The lesson from such empirical experiments is to value our unique circumstances even more. Polluting and trashing Earth is about the stupidest act “intelligent” but fragile beings could do.

There are plenty of extremely harsh environments on Earth. Wisely we (humans) choose not to live in them on a permanent basis although we like to make documentaries about them. For example, there must be an exceptional motivator to get people to live in a box in Antarctica.

It’s reported that Musk says that Space X will go to Mars next year. Adding more robots to the Martian population. In the field of exploration this makes sense to me. What doesn’t make any sense at all is the determination to put humans on the surface of Mars.

The only civilisation that is likely to inhabit Mars successfully, in the next century, is an android one. Every sign is that the capability of robotic life will advance ever more rapidly. They can be designed to thrive where we would fall by the wayside. What better use can we put our future robotic friends to than advancing exploration?

Putting a date on the first human footsteps on Mars is about as ridiculous as last century’s imaginative speculation about a Martian invasion. Although, such popular stories make great science fiction.

POST: This remote station has had reported problems. A case in point. Antarctic scientists plead for help after colleague ‘threatens to kill’ team members | The Independent

[1] https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/01/29/living-in-a-bubble-did-this-failed-90s-experiment-predict-the-future

The Human Touch

One of the most irritating aspects of bureaucracy is codification. What I mean is the need to tick a box that describes you or your problem. Restaurants, retailers, charities, religions, politicians and government departments all do the same. Sophisticated or crude administrative systems fall back on the same methods.

It’s immensely unsatisfying. Applicable to me, at this stage in life, is the age tick box. It doesn’t matter where the questionnaire or data gathering exercise comes from there’s always this box that starts at 65 years old. The previous box finishes at 64 years old.

This fits the respondent into the next step-up in age. Following from this simple date is a whole plethora of assumptions about the nature of a persons’ likes and dislikes, needs and wishes. An unsympathetic algorithm can then crunch numbers and send adverts for sheltered retirement homes, medication and certain types of undemanding travel opportunities.

Now, I could join the chorus of cries against bureaucracy. That would be popular but dumb. It’s a bit like the textiles we put on daily. We could go around naked as the day we were born. Trouble is that our present society doesn’t work well in the case where everyone is naked. Cold too.

So, it is with bureaucracy. It’s not going away anytime soon. The best we can do is to hunt for better ways of collecting data and making it useful for decision-makers and those who want to sell us something. Or even political parties that are keen to target us with their messages.

In the News this week is as good a sketch for an updated Yes Minister as any. Revolution is afoot. Suddenly the pen pushers who tie you up in red tape are going to be replaced with super-efficient algorithms and artificial intelligence to return us to paradise.

I think that’s the only reason Adam and Eve had to leave the garden of Eden. Nothing to do with apples. Well, not the ones that hang on trees. It was an iPad that had fallen though a time warp. Filling in a questionnaire on happiness it seems that one of them ticked the wrong box.

I see a difficulty with replacing civil servants with robotic algorithms and artificial intelligence. It might be the case that for routine activities, where the pattern of human behaviour is straightforward and well understood, a set of operations can be undertaken with a high degree of confidence that a good outcome will be provided.

Where I see the difficulty is that humans are notoriously messy. Inclined to irritation and not the least bit logical in their personal lives. Nothing that has been said this week is about truly eliminating bureaucracy, although that’s the illusion. It’s more about mechanising it using whizzy technology that’s so much better that that which has gone before (so they say).

Let’s just grow-up. We need public administration. We need it to work well. Fundamentally, it takes people to make it work. People who are motivated to work for the public good. People who are adaptive, caring and enabled to do a good job. Give them the tools to do the job. But are we kidding ourselves if we think complex algorithms and artificial intelligence are our saviours?

Dealing with Difficult Individuals

Dealing with an objectionable person. There’s a title for a book. Could be 101 things you didn’t know about objectionable people or maybe objectionable people for dummies. I can see it now. Airport bookshelves full of such books. You know those colourful sections on management and self-improvement books that you don’t often see in “normal” book shops.

It’s something I suffer from when travelling. I see an enticing book title in the moments of boredom waiting for my flight to come up on the large electronic display board. The ridiculous thought goes through my head after reading a random page. Now, this erudite tone, obviously read by millions, will help me be a better person. Naturally, the book’s future is to sit in a cardboard box and be moved around, never to be read again.

Back to my theme. How to deal with an objectionable person. Of course, the context matters a lot. If I said the person is your boss, then one approach might be in order. If the person in question is a world leader, you and I are a little removed from impacting the prevailing situation. Quite different. Never-the-less, why not have an opinion?

There’s strength in numbers. Through the whole of human history. Let’s face it, we are puny creatures when faced with natures most threatening circumstances. What we do is gather together and hey-presto[1] suddenly solutions start to bubble to the surface. I’m not talking about escaping a woolly Mammoth. More of a woolly Man-mouth.

Unity is powerful. Trouble is that unity is difficult to assemble. It becomes somewhat easier to assemble when a real threat is looming. An example that is of the moment is Canada. Over the last few weeks Canadians, if the media is to be believed, seemed to be becoming unified. I expect the same is true of Greenlanders.

Europeans are, as we often are, struggling to find unity. It’s there at the core but it’s beset with voices of doubt and voices of unfriendly adversaries. Over intellectualising is a common trait of mature democracies. We like to study the woolly Mammoth before we run away or make a lot of noise and throw spears at it.

Here’s a potential solution for dealing with an objectionable person, or more than one. It’s a borne of primitive schoolboy politics. Smart folk will wince. Push that to one side. Lets’ face it, smart folk have led us down the path we are currently on.

Send them to Coventry[2]. I don’t mean literally send them to the ancient English cathedral city in the West Midlands. If you are fed-up with hanging on every word of someone who is a menace, one approach is to stop listening and walk away. That English idiom about sending someone “to Coventry” is to deliberately ostracise. Avoid their company and act as if they aren’t really that important. You’ve bigger fish to fry.

Just like that. A good way to deal with Colin Robinson[3] is to walk away before it’s too late.

[1] https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/hey-presto.html

[2] https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/phrase-sent-coventry-originate-from-12137441

[3] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11582982/

Navigating Change

Theres’s wisdom in having flexibility when making decisions. Being too high bound by ridged beliefs or a dogmatic creed isn’t a way of sustaining success. The saying, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” is attributed to John Maynard Keynes. It’s nice to have a quote like that to validate the wisdom of flexibility. Is it always true? Well, this is not a physical law like Force equals Mass times Acceleration. So, using the word “always” is not the least bit appropriate.

In the first months of 2025 the US seems to be going through a cycle of extreme plasticity. It goes like this; propose policy that’s drastic and disruptive and that shocks or puts everyone on edge. Let it ride for a day. Watch what happens. Then either double-down or reverse the whole move and start something else equally shocking. Meantime saying how great the achievement has been even if there’s no positive achievement.

Conventional wisdom isn’t wrong because it’s conventional. Reacting to conventional or traditional ways of working by deeming them automatically bad doesn’t add up. I know it’s conservative philosophy, but wisdom is acquired over time.

You could say, I’m burdened with being rational (or reading too much). That’s not wrong. What’s difficult is that a rational person must stretch the imagination a long way to see any good coming from a rapid cycle of change, often for the sake of change.

Setting the cat amongst the pigeons (or bull in a China shop) makes economies and financial systems quiver. Without a certain amount of understanding, or the perception of understanding, assessing risk becomes almost impossible. That’s the first months of 2025.

Where’s the vision? Maybe underlying the impulsiveness is a desire to get from here to there as quickly as possible.

75 years ago, after WWII, America entered a “golden age”. Baby boomers, technology and a sense of optimism drove the good times. The 1950’s ushered in a commercial exposition. Modern marketing and a proliferation of brands changed society, both in America and across the globe. Over the past decade, there’s not been that shiny newness or unbounded naivety that captured the imagination of the time.

If the overall vision is to get back to those times, then reality is going to bite. A sea change in circumstances could happen but it’s unlikely to be the one painted above.

Navigating Political Extremes

There’re arguments that can be made for stability. There’re arguments that can be made for disruption. I don’t think it matters if you are a socialist, centrist, conservative, liberal, oligarch or demigod. The virtue of one over the other is a temporary state of affairs. If this were not the case it would be unlikely that civilization, such as it is, would have ever got this far in its development.

Now, I have discounted the untenable. That is that stability becomes stasis. A moribund inability to do anything, totally regardless. It’s also the case for disruption so catastrophic that that we truly are in an end-of-the-world scenario.

“This too shall pass” has a long history. The temporary nature of everything is encapsulated in those four words. Or as Judas Priest put it “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin”. A thumping beat and screaming chords make great driving music. Put this on a Sony Walkman in the 1980s and the batteries would be flat in minutes.

Am I saying that Biden was stasis and Trump is catastrophic? Maybe. What is it in our minds that mean we flip from one extreme to another? These are question that erudite columnists are wrestling with as they chew over what’s happened with no idea of what’s to come.

In the British system of governance moderation wells up from centuries of tradition and custom and practice. As we are seeing it hardly matters who is in power, history runs so deep that it shapes every move. I never thought I’d have a good word to say for being a country that does NOT having a written constitution. Today, I’m rethinking how it can be advantageous to make things up as we go along.

Writing down sets of rules can be helpful in guiding decision making. Underlying this is the assumption that there’s some continuity and that those rules have a kind of universality. That’s mighty difficult to do given the passage of time.

The problem with writing down sets of rules is that they create something to be circumvented. Let’s use a river plunging over rapids as an analogy. If there is a forceful enough flow of water, it will go around or over any rocks in its way. Strident political forces, ranging from the crude to the cunning, have little difficulty in circumventing established custom and practice. What’s often called the “liberal media” may be horrified even as the river tumbles downhill with increasing speed. Predicting the future with a past perspective doesn’t work.

“This too shall pass” is a motif to hang onto. Just as the river eventually leaves the rapids so we might experience a steadier period ahead.

Look out for extremes. Milking my analogy as far as I can, changing everything, all at once, and relentlessly, is a proven route to disaster. Institutions, accepted norms and the fabric of society getting smashed up on the rapids, forever and a day is the definition of disaster.

Understanding Aviation Safety

The recent dramatic events in Toronto brought to mind the equally dramatic event of Air France Flight 358 back at the latter half of 2005. Then a large aircraft was destroyed but the crew and passengers got away without fatalities. The combination of bad weather and poor decision-making led to a catastrophic runway excursion.

I remember that the year 2005 shook the aviation community. There was a whole succession of fatal aircraft accidents across the globe. In Europe, Helios Airways Flight 522 was particularly tragic. Errors led to the crew suffering hypoxia and as a result the aircraft and everyone onboard was lost. In Italy, lives were lost as an ATR72 aircraft ran out of fuel and plunged into the Mediterranean Sea near Palermo.

West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 fell from the sky killing all on-board. Kam Air Flight 904 hit a mountain killing all on-board. In Indonesian, Mandala Airlines Flight 091 crashed. A few passengers survived but many people were killed on the ground.

I sincerely hope that 2025 is not going to turn into another 2005. However, I do take the view that there is a cyclic element to the occurrence of fatal accidents. We are often proud to be able to say that the time (number of years) between one cluster of aviation accidents and another grows as overall safety improves but we are a long way from zero-accidents.

The global aviation industry is an incredibly safe industry when considering how many passengers are carried every year. However, zero-accidents remain an illusion however it might be touted as the ultimate goal.

As safety practitioners try to be ever more pro-active in our safety regimes there’s inevitably a reactive element to aviation safety. The aftermath of the 2005 experiences led to ICAO holding its first high-level safety conference in 2010 in Montréal. There have been two more such conferences since. One in 2015 and one in 2011.

The results have been to push the aviation industry towards a more pro-active management of safety. It’s not just the industry. In cases, the regulatory weaknesses that exist in individual States has needed to be given attention.

Add all this up over the last 20-years and you would expect everyone to be pro-actively managing aviation safety. Sadly, that’s not the case as some States and organisations are still managing the transition to a more pro-active approach. Some are so resource constrained that they are more inclined to talk about aviation safety than to act upon it.

Regulatory weaknesses exist in some unlikely places. Additionally, with the fashion of the time being to cut “red tape” at every opportunity, more troubles might be just over the horizon.

I’d like to see a break between the association of what is regulatory and what is considered bureaucracy. The two are not necessarily the same. Regulation and standards are synonymous. And what we know is that there is no successful complex industry without standards.

Please let’s not wait for the next accident report to tell us what to do.