Information is great. The web is full of it. But so far I haven’t come up with a great way of organising and integrating all the stuff I find online and reminding me to check specific sites for news. I basically still do it manually every now and then.
I wonder if someone else has done a better job and come up with useful software?. Any suggestions?
The political debate on Turkey’s membership is likely going to be put off again. Given the Franco-German agreement, next weeks EU summit will probably announce a revision of Turkey’s reform effort in 2004. Should the result be positive, membership negotiations could begin in 2005.
I am plainly impressed by the result of the recent diplomatic success. It’s hardly imaginable without silent – but effective – US background management. The US effort has obviously become a lot easier following the transatlantic repercussions produced by Schröder’s “No war in Iraq” campaign. Tying up Turkey with Europe is old US goal and a good reason for the US administration to keep up some pressure on Germany – which usually wasn’t too supportive of the idea of Turkish membership for a lot of reasons. The nee Turkish government’s successes should thus also be seen in the light of the US presenting Schröder with the diplomatic bill.
But it seems there’s more to the Turkish question now than there was ever before. As opposed to the formal political debate which will be adjourned next week it seems a debate about the “Europeaness” of Turkey is beginning all over Europe. This week’s Economist’s editorial is but one indicator. We’ll see if there will be less of that debate once the formal question has been dealt with. My guess is – short term, yes. Medium term, no.
Let’s not be fooled. The question of Turkish membership is probably the most crucial decision the EU has to take since the Single Eurpean Act in 1986. Not simply for geographical reasons. Giscard d’Estaing, president of the European Constitutional Convention, said a month or so ago, that Turkish membership would mean “the end of the European Union”. Well, that might be slightly exaggerated, but I guess what d’Estaing wanted to say was something else anyway and he is certainly right there : Turkish membership will mean the end of the European Union the way we know it.
The question of European finalities will have to be restated in new ways. But that might even be a good thing. I don’t agree with the Economist’s awkward British attitude towards looser integration, but they are clearly pointing out an increasingly true fact about Europe. The more people, the more governments, the more ideas about where European institutional cooperation should headed:
“It is hard to answer that question without deciding what the ultimate purpose of the EU is. But here there is no consensus: the habit of the EU has been to invent itself as it goes along. Its shape and purpose are evolving. It is plainly becoming a hybrid: much more than just a free-trade area but much less than a superstate. For many of its members, not just for those awkward Britons but also for prickly newcomers such as the 40m Poles, a headlong drive towards political and even military integration will be resisted. […] As for Russia, or Morocco, why should geography, or religion, dictate who might join? If the European idea is to inspire, it ought to be about values, not maps or tribes. Countries that can subscribe to the core values of democracy and freedom should be eligible as candidates, be they Slavs or Muslims, and no matter how far they are in miles from Paris or Berlin.”
Very true. But as the last sentence indicates, political cooperation is not only about values. And it is no wonder the Britsh Economist would like to see the looser kind of integration which is the likely outcome of increased European heterogeneity. It follows the (generalised) British idea of Europe and no longer the one of the EU’s (dare I say it? federal!) founders.
“The Economist would prefer this looser sort of Europe, perhaps comprising overlapping inner clubs of those who wish to integrate more tightly.”
I fear history is going to repeat itself. A larger European Union (or however the larger thing will be called) with closer cooperation around the classic core (probably without Italy in the beginning. The first proposal for a core Europe, the now famous “Schäuble-Lamers-paper” from 1994 will become very popular in the near future, I suppose. The renewed Franco-German cooperation is likely as much a result of the perceived widening gap between Europe and the (Republican) US administration as an understanding of this deeper European dynamic.
And the Brits will be out again – until they will realise they are missing something. Churchill’s three spheres of British influence (US, Commonwealth, Europe) may have shifted in salience and to some extent overlap these days. But they still exist – in the form of British ambivalence towards the Continent.
If history is giong to repeat itself, let’s hope it’s gooing to be a farce, not a tragedy. It won’t all be about Turkey. But without Turkey, the European heterogeneity would be a lot easier to handle. We’re approaching interesting times.
I was just about to tell you about the following press statement by Forrester Research – eloquently titled “Downloads Did Not Cause The Music Slump, But They Can Cure It” – concerning their understanding of the whining record industry’s situation when I went to the kitchen to get some coffee. While waiting for the coffee getting ready, I switched on the tv and witnessed something I was not prepared to see tonight: The real reason for the record industry slump. Bad artists, lack of creative impulses. Short term product/cash flow orientation. Here’s what I am talking about. A semi-rap song which features the chorus of Glenn Madeiros’s 1987 one-hit-wonder “Nothing’s gonna kill my love for you” – sung by a female singer who is not the artist being marketed.
The guy is a former semi-popular soap opera actor. And he has had a hit in 1998 with yet another cover version. All that sounds favourably to the account managers of the banking industry labels havbe become today.
Now I don’t think that starring in a soap opera automatically disqualifies people to call themselves musical artists, as the Kylie experiment clearly demonstrates. But it doesn’t reduce the burden of proof. For Oli P that burden is clearly too much to bear.
But back to the press statement referred to above. It’s announcing yet another study regarding the once famed and now bashed market for digital music. Forrester is basically agreeing with me and the record industry manager Argumention below that things will get better once the industry finally comes to terms with reduced excludability and concentrates on improving the customer value of its product. This is the core of the statement (note: The music bill of rights is a set of features designed to enhance the musical expericence defined by Forrester):
In the next two years, labels will struggle to deliver on the promise of digital music, but their services will fall short because they fail to match the Music Bill of Rights. But by 2005, labels will endorse a standard download contract that supports burning and a greater range of devices. Downloading will start to soar in 2005 as finding content becomes effortless and impulse buys easy. Labels will make content available on equal terms to all distributors, while online retailers become hubs for downloading. By 2007, the new business model will generate $2.1 billion, or 17 percent of the music business. Big hits will spark traffic, as people download music directly to their cell phones, portable players, or PCs.
We’ll see if they will still need semi-singing semi-popular soap opera semi-heros by then.
Last year, I sent a protest mail to Guido Westerwelle, the chairman of the German Liberal Party (FDP) after he supported a proposition to implement finger prints in the national IDs. A staffer replied that “fingerprints on IDs are not in opposition to a liberal worldview”, as I had stipulated in my email. I had also jokingly proposed to use DNA as a far superior means of tracking people. This, the staff member explained to me, would be far too costly to be implemented. She had taken the proposition seriously (probably a consequence of having to reply to 300 letters a day ;-)).
But there will be people who won’t be joking about implementing DNA scans. And there will be more soon, if this article is somewhat close to reality.This world is becoming an increasingly scary place. Just wait for someone to present a “pre-crime” system in the mall down the street.
Can I please leave this planet before it gets worse?
This article in the Economist – about virtual Christman shopping and AOL TimeWarner’s hopes to get their by creating a new e-commerce platform – prompts me to tell you three things:
Firstly, my spacebar justbroke for no obvious reason (but being sick of being hit several thousand times a day).
Secondly, AOLTW is a tad bit late to establish a general shopping platform. It will cost them a fortune to get the critical mass anytime soon which limits their ability to lower prices as the competitors can and do (and is important especially in these economically troublesome days). This leads me to the last� – only somewhat related point:
Thirdly, I wanted to let you know the one quote that will make you relax about everything digital-good-commerce-profitbility related for at least three years to come. It is from some now likely fired e-record-company executive who mentioned back in 1999 that Ecommerce companies (especially those companies trading digital goods) “… will fuck up the pricing for at least five years.” Very true. But they haven’t quite understood yet that negotiating tougher measures on Capitol Hill and its equivalents, coming up with yet more international regulation will not solve the fundamental problem of creating value for the customer. Scientifically put, you can find the argument in this article from ! 1988 –
Pethig, Rüdiger, Copyright and copying costs, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics/Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 144 (1988), 462-495
The same point has been made a little more eloquently by some Microsoft employees who last week published this paper. Here’s a useful quote:
Consider an MP3 file sold on a web site: this costs money, but the purchased object is as useful as a version acquired from the darknet. However, a securely DRM [aka Digital-Rights-Management -the system in your computer that is supposed to stop you from copying from a CD, for ecample] wrapped song is strictly less attractive: although the industry is striving for flexible licensing rules, customers will be restricted in their actions if the system is to provide meaningful security. This means that a vendor will probably make more money by selling unprotected objects than protected objects.
Interesting, isn’t it? Well, legality can increase utility for a customer. Virus-proof downloading can do the same. A whole series of other stuff can, too. There’s a lot of variables to be worked on.
But as long as the relevant people don’t understand that they need to make buying a download more valuable than getting it at the p2p-service of the day, as long as they don’t understand that hackers are negotiating the prices for the rest of the digital community, the will continue to fuck up their pricing.
That record company executive said five years backin 1999. Actually, I think he was an optimist.
But time will tell.
For all those not familiar with German copyright law, the codified German equivalent of the US principle of “fair use” of copyrighted material is §53 UrhG. In general the clause states that copies (in this case of songs) for personal use are legal. Standing jurisdiction upholds the right of everyone to give away 7 copies of, say, a CD (no idea how they arrived at that number – maybe that was a statistic average number people involved in close knit interaction at the time the law was challenged in court decades ago).
That is absolutely legal in Germany, as long as you don’t take money from your friends. The soon to be implemented European directive on digital age copyright makes things a lot more complicated, but at least tries to keep that fundamental right in the legislation – personal non profit copies will generally remain legal (then Europewide).
No one has ever disputed that offering ripped mp3 files through a file sharing service is an infringement of copyrights. The person offering has no license to do so and the anonymity and amount of downloads of p2p services basically does not favour arguments based on the “copy to friends”-provision.
But downloading is a bit trickier. Lawyers were arguing back and forth to come a conclusion wether it would matter for a download to be covered by the protection of §53 UrhG if the copy obtained by the person downloading has been legally licensed for distribution or if the person downloading would have acted in bad faith on the presumption that was not. The record industry’s position was always that a legally licensed original was necessary for the private copy privilege. That is – until last thursday, I suppose. I was so shocked by the statement that I almost forgot to mention it:
The President of BMG Europe, Thomas M. Stein, was a guest at Johannes B. Kerner’s daily talkshow because he’s a member of the Jury of the currently broadcast German version of “American Idol”. And after admitting that he could have never become a “German Idol” due to his bad voice he simply let it slip out like the most natural thing in the world. Downloading mp3s is legal in Germany, according to Thomas Stein, CEO of BMG Europe.
Now I don’t know if that is a consequence of a court ruling or of a revised industry policy in light of the soon to be implemented EU directive or legally correct (to make that necessary disclaimer). But it certainly is a bold statement for a record company executive.
the video file in question is no longer available
This is a video file of Mr Stein’s appearance on the show. You will find the statement I am talking at about 12′ 08” – the host asks – “downloading mp3 files is illegal?” to which Mr. Stein replies “not if you do it only for private purposes…”. Those of you speaking German, please check, as I still don’t believe what I heard.
This week’s “Der Spiegel” is concerned with the increasingly problematic relation between nominal tax rates and actual fiscal revenues in Germany. The Cover-wide headline asks “Why the state is asking ever more money from its citizens but gets less and less of it”? Its a good question – one with a simple theortical answer (that, at least, is something) but a fearful complexity in practice. The simple answer looks like the curve below.
(Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Laffer_curve.png/220px-Laffer_curve.png)
It’s the famous “Laffer Curve”, named after Arthur Laffer who was the theoretical support behind Reagonomics. The relationship the curve depicts is pretty straightforward: If you increase the (overall national average) tax rate (t) from 0% the tax revenue (T) will first increase to a maximum (T*) before finally declining back to zero once the tax rate reaches 100%.
The general assumption is that taxes are a disincentive to economic activity and once a certain level of taxes is reached – where the tangent to the curve is parallel to the axis – econmic activity will either stop or be transferred to black (and therefore non-taxed) markets. In both instances, the overall effect for a tax collecting state will be declining revenues.
Thus, if a polity actually knows that it is currently on the right hand side of the Laffer curve, the only reasonable action would be to reduce taxes as it would both increase legal economic activity and the fill the coffers of the state. That’s what Reagan argued. That’s what never happened (that is, if there was any effect at all, the lag was so large attributing it to Reagan became a Republican exercise in epistemolgy in the late 1990s). As so often with a convincing and simple theoretical point, reality is not a friend of those trying to implement such a strategy. There simply is no way of really telling which tax rate would constitute a Laffer maximum.
The Laffer curve is a nice explanatory and propaganda tool, but is not actually helpful in construing useful fiscal policy.
Economics and the people making individual decisions simply are too complicated to easily devise policy around a general idea like the Laffer curve. Check this document for a more technical analysis of the curve and some implications. This is also where I found the beautiful illustrations.
So, knowing about the curve, we can suggest a closer look at tax rates as the simple theoretical answer to the question posed by “Der Spiegel”. But we also know that it is by no means clear it is the right suggestion in the fearfully complex economic reality. Too bad.
(Link) I don’t know what kind of organisation the group “citizen’s for tax justice” are. So I would not rely too much on the information – but in case they are reporting correct figures for the averge US income (and the ranges seem not implausible – note: not GDP/capita but income per working person) on this website that I found today, then it would be even more astonishing that 19% of Americans believe they are in the top 1% income range and another 20% believe they will be there at some point.
According to the figures reported on the page, the average income for the top 1% of tax payers in the USA in 2001 was 1,028,000 USD. Thus given the usual outliers, I think the top 1% will start somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 USD, as the avergae top 5% income is 204,000 USD. The general average is 56,500 USD – again, according to this source.
On November 28 Tony Blair gave a speech in Cardiff outlining his and Britain’s “clear course for Europe”, indicating the British stance on several important issues for the final round of institutional reform debates of the EU framework including the Convention preparing a European constitution in preparation for the actual execution of the Eastern European enlargement. You can find the speech here – I am only commenting on a few parts of it.
Blair may be a Europhile, but above all, he’s a Blairite, of course. Thus, it is no wonder that the “clear course for Europe” is not so clear in all respects, especially concerning the anticipated debates about the Common European Foreign and Security Policy. Admitting that Britain has “chosen to follow” rather than to lead in Europe for the last 50 years and expressing the clear determination to change her role and perception among her partners –
“First, we must end the nonsense of “this far and no further”. There are areas in which Europe should and will integrate more: in fighting crime and illegal immigration; to secure economic reform; in having a more effective defence and security policy. Britain should not be at the back of the file on such issues but at the front. On the Euro we should of course join if the economic conditions are right. A single currency with a single market for Europe makes economic sense.”
– he also leaves no doubt that more multilateral decision making in some areas will have to be offset by a straightforward implementation of the (somewhat elusive) subsidiarity principle and a clear constitutional statement that the Union has no will to become federal in any sense for some time –
“… we do need a proper Constitution for Europe, one which makes it clear that the driving ideology is indeed a union of nations not a superstate subsuming national sovereignty and national identity. This should be spelt out in simple language. A new Constitution for Europe can bring a new stability to the shape of Europe – not a finality which would prevent any future evolution, but a settlement to last a generation or more.”
– thus, only a slight change of attitude with respect to the above mentioned “this far and not further” position. A recognition of the dynamic nature of the process and some linguistic modernisation rather than a fundamental change in the underlying position.
Concerning the question of an appointed/elected Chairman of the European Council, he proposes a “team presidency” in which different councils would be led by different nations following a rotation scheme like the one currently used for the Council presidency. While the smaller nations will naturally be wary of a long-term Chairman of the European Council, the idea of splitting the presidency will likely appeal to many, as it seems to be a way to increase the number of national representatives without increasing the number of decision making bodies.
But I presume the biggest rows will concern the Common Foreign and Security Policy, especially after the recently floated Franco-German ideas about the Common European Defense. In the end, it’s all about Nato and the currently strained trans-Atlantic relationship. It’s a question of cultural ties as well as of history and of military ability. Very difficult to project any outcome apart from increased defense spending in Europe to somewhat close the apparent capability gap to the US. Realising that foreign policy is again much more related to military engagement, albeit of a very different kind, than it has been for European nations during the cold war years, Blair is favouring European cooperation, but ruling out a communised foreign policy – and he’s got some point there –
I favour the strengthening of European foreign policy, step by step, from the Balkans, to Europe’s “near abroad” and then beyond. In this area, however, the lead responsibility should remain with the Council of Foreign Ministers. Britain cannot agree to the communitisation of defence or foreign policy. It is not practical or right in principle. Foreign policy can only be built by gathering a consensus among the Member States who possess the resources necessary to conduct it – the diplomatic skills, the bulk of aid budgets, and of course the armed forces.”
It will be very hard to come to an agreement regarding extended multilateral decision making in this area. Even Germany, long standing propagator of multilateral decision making is pursuing a unilateral course of (verbal) non-participation regarding a possible US-led attack on Iraq.
In this speech, Blair only slightly touched one of the most difficult things to solve in the future – Turkey. He somewhat confusingly states with respect to Europe’s borders –
“Stretching from Lapland in the north to Malta in the south, from the coast of County Kerry in the West to the Black Sea, and ultimately – yes – to Turkey’s borders in the East, it will contain over 500 million people, a political and economic entity bigger than the USA and Japan put together.”
I haven’t counted if Europe contains over 500 million people without Turkey’s 80 million. But I like the way of getting around the subject by claiming that “Europe will extend to Turkey’s borders” without saying whether he means those with Greece or those with Iraq. That leaves a lot of room for discussion – all of Anatolia, actually.
My guess is, Europe will not be any simpler after this round of institutional changes. It will probably be a lot more complicated.
There is an episode of the tv series “friends” in which some of the friends are playing a game for which they have to write a list of all US states. Ross Geller phd is struggling with his last one. He simply can’t remember one of those little ones. So eventually he gives up and asks Joey how many he had remembered. Joey instantly replies – all of them. All 56. Laughter.
In a different episode, after having confessed his love to Rachel and having been rejected, Joey thinks about emigrating to – Vermont (and getting Vermont Dollars ;-)). Laughter, again.
In light of this recent poll by the US edition of National Geographic, I wonder how many people in the audience actually did get those jokes?
When young Americans were asked to find ten specific states on a map of the United States, only California and Texas could be located by a large majority, only 51% could find New York and only 30% New Jersey, the state just across the river.
Slightly disturbing, I have to say, but no reason to be too smug – those states can be tricky, after all… But there was also an international element to the survey, which finally provides a good reason for Western military involvement overseas – as educational policy – and that clearly not only for young Americans: The survey asked young people in the Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Britain and the United States to answer 56 geographic and current event questions. Sweden won the contest with a score of 40, followed by Germany and Italy with 38 each. On average, the American youngsters answered 23 questions correctly.
Another striking detail: according to the survey, only 13% of those surveyed knew where to find Iraq, 17% in the case of Afghanistan. Both countries have been covered intensely in the media over the last few months. A significant number of Americans are still fighting in Afghanistan, an even more significant number might be fighting in Iraq soon. So if those 13% are any indication of the general geographical knowledge in the US (specific figures for the other countries haven not been indicated) then I can’t avoid the question why a majority of people (more or less) supports an armed intervention in a country they can’t even find on a map. I have no real answer to that question.
But Michael Moore has some. And I watched his answer last night – “Bowling for Columbine” is quite a documentary. I will document my thoughts on it later. Just one thing, for him, it’s about fear. Fear that creates a vicious circle of ever growing fear. But there’s a lot more to it, so I will stop here for today.
