In a war of ideology, everyone loses

Not long ago a naive younger version of myself decided he would be ‘left-wing’.  For many years I subscribed to this ideology. I amongst many others took part in partisan flame-wars on news article comments. “Everyone on the right doesn’t have a clue”, I told myself.

Five years later, my perspective has changed considerably. I no longer identify with any ideology. Today I rarely even bother to look at what our politicians are saying, because I already know what they are saying. They are promoting whatever ideology they have subscribed to. They will paint today’s issues with a partisan brush and explain how only their ideology can work. It seems that no matter what sort of problem society encounters all it will take to solve it is a subscription to a specific ideology.

Reality tends to dictate though, that whatever your plan is unforseen circumstances will likely screw with it. This is why life on this planet is adaptive. Life adapts to the circumstances of which it finds itself in. In the last 100 years, with the advent of the petroleum based society which arguably for the first time in human history has provided more surplus than we know how to handle a new problem emerged. How do we control and distribute these resources? It is from this question that the modern left and right ideologies formed. Free market vs. Communism.

Today the world faces vastly different problems than it did 100 years ago and yet  we continue to frame all debates within these two very limited views on society. These views are not adaptive, they do not acount for unforseen circumstances. No one who subscribes to these views truly lives by either of them 100%. Many of those on the right are all too happy during a natural disaster to have governmental disaster relief. Take for instance the recent fire in ultra-conservative Alberta. Even though the government is giving money for rebuilding efforts no one is saying this defies the free market response. Albertans have been accepting of government intervention in this unforseen circumstance.

When push comes to shove in society, ideology goes out the window in favour of critical thinking. The rules of our virtual ideologies do not apply when the “greater good” is deemed imminently threatened. When a crisis is occurring most people are focused on what needs to be done, not who and how they are going to do it. These considerations do not matter in a crisis, there’s a job to be done and someone’s got to do it.

Yet when the crisis subsides the ideologies take hold again. The petty arguing between citizens resumes over petty issues. Who they think should provide health care, the government or corporations for instance. Both sides overlook the fact they both want the best healthcare to be provided, and that should be the primary concern or ‘root’ problem to solve.

Anyone who has ever debated me in politics may or may not have noticed that I refuse to use political labels. When I discuss issues you will not hear the words socialism, capitalism, etc, etc. I don’t use them because they don’t really mean anything when there is a problem to solve.

Since I’m a programmer, I will explain this using a programming analogy. Many people today have a favorite O/S of which you can find flame wars all over the internet debating which is “better”. Few of these arguments though put the phrase “better” in a circumstance.

IE:

“Windows is better for new users.”

“Linux is better for security professionals.”

“Android is better for embedded devices.”

Instead most of these discussions are absolutes, “Windows is better.”

When I’m approached for a development contract, my first question is always “what is the exact problem you are trying to solve?”. I don’t ask what their favorite O/S is, or if they have a preferred language. The reason? The preferred language or platform may not be the best choice for the particular problem. You might want a desktop app to manage your database, but I insist a centralized corporate website is better!

I can tell them what is the best solution to their problem because I evaluate all tools available without bias. Just because I do not like Windows does not mean I automatically rule out Windows as a tool to solve problems. This is the approach that is needed today in politics. As a society we must learn to address the root problem, and use all tools available to do it. Just as Linux is not the best O/S for every situation, the left (or right) is not always the best ideology for a given situation.

What we need to do to solve today’s problems is focus on critical thinking first and foremost. Not until all available tools are given equal weight will a true solution to our problems emerge. I don’t just mean left and right either, as I mentioned before these ideologies are mostly about resource distribution. None of the mainstream ideologies account for things like “finite resources”, instead opting for infintie growth. These ideologies were developed at a time when things like oil production and consumption might have been a sidenote on someone’s napkin at best. They were developed at a time when the majority of economic activity took place within a countries borders. We need to fully step back and address today’s problems without bias. We need to be open to modern technology, and the infinite amount of tools available to us. We need to understand that today’s world is neither socialist, nor capitalist.

Canada's Economy: The Good, The Bad, and the Bullshit.

Seems to be a lot of confusion out there about why exactly Canada's economy isn't entirely under water like the rest of the world. Is it Conservative policy, was it Liberal policy? No one seems to really know, and both parties claim it was their doing.

Reality Check: The people make the economy and not the politicians. So in this article I will explain to you why our economy is currently percieved as being stable (which in reality it is not anymore stable than the currencies we depend on).

Canadians have all heard the stories about how "stable" our banking system is. The reality couldn't be further from the truth and a little known fact is our banks were bailed out by the U.S. Federal Reserve. This was an under the table deal which was only revealed this year and it was on top of the Canadian stimulus package put forth by the Harper Government and the Liberals. It coincidently didn't make Canadian news, and I'm sure most people reading this never heard about it. You were never meant to hear about it as it would fly directly in the face of the 'deep integration' plans currently underway.

Now I know my detractors will point at the "AAA" rating of our banks in the article and simply say they were just looking for more profit, so let me remind you the banks that failed in the U.S. all had "AAA" ratings. Rating agencies are run by the ratees. This should be obvious given that the S&P is only just now warning about U.S. debt even though U.S. debt has been a problem for awhile. The S&P is only now saying something because their credibility is being seriously questioned by those who bought into the USD koolaid.

So what's so great about the Canadian economy? Well we export resources, and this isn't because of political policy in the last few years. We are one of the few energy exporting countries left, in fact just recently Russia announced it would be cutting off petroleum exports in the month of May. This is just one more sign that the dawn of the post-petroleum age has begun due to peak oil.

What is bad about our economy? Well, about 60% of our economy relies on trade with the U.S. We give them valuable resources, and they give us USD. Unfortunately the USD continues to push towards record lows due to the QE programs while gold continues to push for new record highs. So what exactly is Canada getting for it's valuable resources? Not much. We are trading resources that are only increasing in value, for worthless digital paper that is not worth the paper it's not printed on, and is also decreasing in value. Sound like a good deal to you? Well it gets better.

What does Canada use to import pretty well everything? USD. Unfortunately for us, China has begun dumping the USD meaning that as our politicians push for more integrated trade between the U.S. and Canada, the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to dump the U.S. and not get stuck holding the empty bag. Canada will be the empty bag holder, as none of our politicians have the political will to say no to the United States. In other words, all 4 politicians telling us the economy will be fine are completely full of shit. We have no control over the economy, we are an exporting nation. This means as long as there are buyers, we can be sellers -- but if no one is buying, we won't be selling. We experienced this briefly in 2008 before the U.S. initiated the TARP programs.

So Canada, we have a big decision ahead of us. Do we decouple the CAD from the USD, effectively cutting off trade with them, but returning our dollar to a reasonable value? Or do we keep the trade going by devaluing our own currency and thrusting 8% or more inflation on Canadian citizens. I'll be honest, neither option is without it's downfalls. We will not escape this crisis pain-free.

* Updated | 11/09/2011:The decision is now ahead of us. As I predicted when I wrote this article on April 30th (posted just after midnight on May 1st), Canada is faced with a decision on whether to break the peg to the USD. Raising interest rates would prevent the inflation I mentioned (for a time) at the cost of our exports to the United States. However, as I mentioned in 'Miss Canada' our political "leaders" have no political will and this probably won't happen. This includes the NDP which voted alongside the Liberals and Conservatives to continue our illegal war against Lybia, in which we are actually backing Al-Qaeda. They are all puppets.

* Updated | 18/09/2011: Surprise, surprise, the truth about Canadian banks is coming out. Like I said, our banks are only as stable as the currencies we depend on. Look around the world... all of them are failing.

Canada is a country in economic denial.

Automatic Trading: How the human race has become a slave to market speculation

While not an article on Alberta, I feel this article is important to understanding how markets have started to work everywhere in the world.

Once upon a time the stock market was used for mostly honest investing. It was a vehicle designed to manage an emerging national scale of supply and demand principles. It allowed fledging new industries to embark on capital adventures that would otherwise be impossible because of the amount of resources needed to get started. The market was the needed elixir to solve the old world problem of “to make money, you need money”.

The [free market] system fostered the growth of the economy as it allowed both average and wealthy people alike to invest their money by taking calculated risks with the chance for profit based off investment size and future speculated profitability. While savvy wealthy investors always had an edge, everyone had a chance to reap a reward.

Today the market is a rather different beast. For instance, it is not uncommon for 60%+ of market activity to be completely automated. Those in control of that 60% claim it is not detrimental to market stability or industry. They purport that it is the evolution of stock trading and is another tool in the box. What most of the public are unaware of is that automated trading not only destabilizes the stock market, but in fact obliterates the original purpose of the stock market which is public investing and adventure capital.

My experience in automated trading comes from 3 years of working on a trading engine indirectly for Wall Street. During this time I had Wall Street traders teaching our team personally what they look for on the stock market and what they do when they find it so that I could program their thoughts and have a computer make the same decisions they would, but much faster. When I left the company our prototype automatic trader could send thousands of trading signals per second. This is hundreds of times the speed of Wall Street’s best traders and in fact redefines the entire trading game. This has made automated traders one of the top products in the trading industry and is rapidly rendering the human trader obsolete.

“Why is this important? Why should we be concerned about this new investment marvel?”
The reality is that morally-incapable machines are making decisions that are purely market driven and leave out the value-added human factor that spins off of investments placed in risky but potentially game changing innovation. To illustrate the detrimental impact automated trading has and the potential disaster it represents, it is important to have a rudimentary understanding as to how it works.

An automated trading application see’s essentially two things. It sees a basket of symbols (stocks to trade), and it sees a series of real time market signals (The buys/sells of stocks in the basket). The fact that decisions are made in “real time” is what’s the most important here. The fact that the computer can read an incoming signal, process it, and respond to it before a human trader even sees the signal is what gives automated trading an upper hand; it is also why the stock market has essentially run away from human control. Essentially, by the time now that any human receives information about the stock market, that information is already out of date because 60% of the activity that will respond to that event has already done so. In essence this means machines are leading the market, with traders making decisions based on the decisions made by machines to attempt to pull what little money remains from those transactions. You can also imagine that if the traders are essentially along for the ride determined by the machines, investors are holding onto the back of the rollercoaster praying the machines don’t take another dive.

True investing has become a thing of the past. Regardless of whether you believe a company will do well or even if every single person that comprises the 40% of market activity believes a company will do well, should the machines disagree, then that company will not be getting a rise to its stock price. The reason of course is that the weight of the machines versus the weight of the people is now lopsided in favor of the automated trading at current ratio of 60% v.s. 40%.
Essentially, computers now have more power to speculate future market events than the humans in control of the events do. One of the main problems with this is computers will always make decisions based on a “sure thing”. Humanistic and moral considerations never factor into the machines decision making process.

Consider the computer identifies two corporations: Weapon corporation A and Medical corporation B; To the computer, it does not see a “weapons” corporation and it does not see a “medical” corporation, it sees two stock symbols and considers them to be equals. It has no idea that the weapons symbol makes weapons. It is seeing a set of 3-6 different letters that it can cross reference with news articles, other symbols, and that symbols history. So the computer starts processing on this symbol and finds many references to it. It finds a good stable history of price increases and see’s patterns emerging that this symbol is likely to go up in the near future. The computer has no idea that reason these patterns are emerging is because a new war is breaking out among third world nations. It goes ahead and starts *long positions on the symbol, thus giving the weapons manufacturer more money to go ahead and propagate the war with. At the same time, the computer is dealing with the symbol for this new start up, Medical Corporation. This companies symbol has little in the way of references, its history is flat and unstable, and is not a good candidate without the emotional perspective to go long on. The computer once again has no idea the reason that the Medical corporation is not doing well is because they are dealing with high end, test phase medication to cure aids or cancer (keep in mind the example is fictitious, it is done to illustrate why decisions are made) and would be
spending far more money than they are currently making (again, the need money to make money logical problem). The computer, seeing this company as a bad bet will not put money towards it, and in fact may decide it’s a good bet for losing money and short the stock (with the long term effect of bringing the companies stocks down when 60% of the market is shorting it). The unmanned, morally unbound computers have the power to put the medical corporation out of business. The computer does this because what they are working on is not a sure thing, and their historical pattern would show this.

The problem is that independent innovation, which is normally funded by investors, can be and is destroyed by automated traders with no concept of the benefit of advancing technology that advance humanity. That example “medical corporation” could be any type of corporation whose direction is innovation from clean energy, aqua-culture and nanotechnology; all could be regarded as risky and therefore potentially shorted .

As it becomes self-evident that humanity is nearing the peak of the oil-age, future technologies are not going to be luxurious experimentation but imperative undertakings tied to establishing a sustainable existence and quite likely the future of mankind. The automated market will starve innovation based corporations for investment funds because the computers will decide it is a bad bet. The traders and investors must go along with that decision or risk huge losses since the computers carry more trading weight so the stock will likely be valued less. Consequentially it will be humanity who suffers. Innovation based corporations could cease to benefit from the corporate model and be relegated to finding private investors which would drastically reduce the potential money going into them.

Communities are being subject to the whims of an automated market that is likely to favor corporations that make weapons , cigarettes and alcohol among many others because they’ve always been good bets in the market historically, despite being detrimental to human progress.