idlethreat
A single seed of grain bursts, sending its roots out into the soil.
This is how economics begins. Economics is the study of wealth: how it is developed, transferred, and consumed. And it begins here, with a single seed.
That seed is a part of a large crop of wheat. Acres upon acres of wheat, growing up from the ground from water and sunlight, transforming solar energy into chemical. Once it has matured, each acre of grain is sold to a mill. You might say that wealth begins there, that the flow of money started with the sale of goods. But that sale actually began months ago.
Many farmers, in order to have the money to buy seed in the first place, rely on what are called ‘futures’ – essentially, a long-term contract. The contract states that the purchaser of the wheat will pay X amount of dollars in exchange for Y tons of wheat. They sell this contract on the market, and use this money to buy the seed. They have sold a promise of the future in exchange for money now. This is also excellent for the farmer – they know that if they produce that much wheat, they can rely on having a buyer.
Who might buy such a contract? Someone who needs the grain when it matures, certainly. It makes good business sense to fix your costs in advance, to be able to plan for your future. A speculator who believes that wheat may be more valuable in the future than what the farmer believes might also buy the contract, gambling on the possibility that when it comes due, someone will want a few hundred tons of wheat very badly at that negotiated price.
Even with the money from the contract, farmers often don’t have enough money to buy essential farm equipment. Combines and tractors often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars – sometimes millions. The farmers have to take out loans from banks. They borrow money from the bank, with the promise that over the next ten or twenty years, they’ll pay it back in increments with the money generated from the wheat those machines can produce.
You see, money is not wealth. Money is the promise of wealth. Money is only tenuously connected to the concept of wealth by people’s perceptions of value and by current conditions. It fluctuates constantly, rolling with the tides and the seasons. A pound of flour in deep winter is worth more than a pound of flour in the summer. It’s worth more to a baker than to a banker. To a starving man, it’s invaluable. For a well-fed man, merely useful. Anyone who has tried to save some pennies on gas knows how prices can fluctuate, seemingly at random.
This concept of the perception of value being relative helps explain why economics is not a zero-sum game. If I have a chocolate cake, and you have a blueberry pie, we both have a certain amount of wealth and value. But if I much prefer blueberry pie, and you adore chocolate, when we trade these items between the two of us, we both end up better off than we were before in terms of value. Additional wealth was not created – but the relative value increased. This is what makes trade possible.
Unfortunately, cakes do not spring readily from the ground. Effort has to be put into producing it, finding the raw ingredients, storing them until they’re necessary, shipping the ones that absolutely must be fresh immediately as they’re harvested. Everything from cocoa beans to flour from the mills needs to be processed together by someone with the necessary skills for a cake to even exist. At each stage of transformation, from wheat to flour, flour to batter, batter to cake, effort is expended and the value increases, until you finally have a chocolate cake, ready to be sold.
Remember, though, all of this, the creation of the cake, the speculation of a futures contract, the interest on a farmer’s bank loan; it is all impossible without the first step.
The sun shines down on the soil, and a sprout of wheat reaches for the sky.
I don’t spend enough time working on odd-ball weekend projects. Used to code all the time, but have fallen out of the habit.
Randomly, in the middle of the night, I got curious about the Arduino random function, and how that might actually look if you mapped it all the way out. So, I pinned down some boilerplate code I could modify and input into a Processing sketch to do the visuals.
long randNumber1;
long randNumber2;
long randColor;
void setup(){
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
randomSeed(analogRead(1));
randNumber1 = random(1000);
String stringOne = String(randNumber1, DEC);
randomSeed(analogRead(4));
randNumber2 = random(1000);
String stringTwo = String(randNumber2, DEC);
//////
randomSeed(analogRead(5));
randColor = random(255);
String stringColor = String(randColor, DEC);
Serial.println("fill(" + stringColor + ");");
Serial.println("rect(" + stringOne + "," + stringTwo + ",10,10);");
delay(1000);
}
The results I think are interesting. I would assume there would be some number collisions, even some incrementing lines, but nothing quite like what I ended up getting. Lots of incrementing lines showed up, making it look like a poor choice if you happen to be building an encryption product using it.
Not to say anyone is, just found the effect to be pretty cool overall.
Next step will be to just pull in the serial data direct from the Arduino into Processing and let it map the entries live. Will save that one for next weekend.
Next, I got a chance to hack on Powerswitch Tail along with a PIR motion sensor and a desk lamp.
I leave stuff running all the damn time. Lamps on, soldering irons hot, heaters blazing, you get the picture. Romp away and start cooking dinner and don’t realize until an hour after the fact that anything important was still running in the other room. Well, with this project, if I happen to disappear for a bit, whatever happens to be plugged into the PST will cheerfully shut itself off and await my glorious re-arrival.
Code works, just the motion sensor bounces like crazy and one hand swipe turns the lamp into a speed-metal light show. Aah, well. Back to the drawing board. Not a difficult project, just one I probably shouldn’t have started at three in the morning, expecting it to work the first time.
All I have for the moment. Cheers,
tom
Want to know why your House Rep or Senator isn’t reading every bill passed through their office? This is some of the provisions in bill H112-1540, a bill for military funding that my state rep voted ‘Aye’ on. I wanted to know what he said ‘yes’ to, so I started reading.
This is only approximately 10% of the bill’s provisions – the bill includes many other provisions, including those that enact new laws and new criminal punishments. Also keep in mind, this is the ‘human readable’ summary of the bill – the actual bill is much, much more dense.
101: Navy Appropriations, per table later in the bill.
121: Authority for contracts for MH-60R/S (Sikorsky Seahawk, General Purpose Helicopter) avionics/cockpits.
131: $3.1 billion for 2 Military Advanced Extremely High Frequency (EHF) satellites (Military satellite communications)
132: $20 million for R&D into capabilities for the B-2 Bomber
133: $15 million for EHF comm equipment for B-2 Bomber.
134: Intent to not retire more than 6 B-1 bombers, sustaining B-1 bombers through 2022.
135: Maintain U-2 aircraft through 2016, or until Global Hawk UAVs can be used for less
136: Maintain at least 301 strategic airlift (heavy cargo transport) aircraft (down from 344)
137: When retiring C-23 aircraft, state CEO may take over the aircraft for National Guard service without charge. State bears all operational costs.
151: Modifies reports on use of combat mission funds: increases report detail.
152: Authorize fixed-price contract for the F-35 Lightning II JSF (multipurpose strike aircraft)
153: DoD must submit report on JSF aircraft program.
154: Authority for contracts for UH-60M and MH-60R helicopters.
155: Undersea mobility acquisition is a major defense acquisition program.
156: Transfer C-12 Liberty surveillance aircraft to the army.
157: Audit JSTARS re-engining program.
158: Report on development of F-35B STOL JSF
159: Authorize exchange with UK of F-35 Lightning II JSF aircraft.
201: DoD R&D Appropriations, per table
211: No funds for tests on F136 engine.
212: No funds authorized for B-2 EHF comms until report from Air Force Secretary
213: No more than 50% for Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborn Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program until report.
214: Limit Marine Personnel Carrier program until report on analysis of alternatives
231: Modify reports on missile defense acquisition: include achieved goals, recommendations for future
232: Report on Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (interceptor missiles) required
233: Report from President on status of efforts to reach agreement with Russia on missile defense cooperation
234: Secretary of Defense Report on homeland missile defense hedging strategy
251: Requirement of roadmap and review for Hypersonic missiles pushed back from 2012 to 2020
261: Contractors must bear half cost of program protection strategies or exportability features of some defense systems
262: Army purchase of 18.5 acres in New Hampshire for Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory
There you go – a small fraction of what’s actually in the bill. I hadn’t even reached the new sections of law yet and my brain already hurts from untangling the legal language of the bill. Ultimately, this bill was passed with lukewarm bi-partisan support – I suspect because most of the people voting on it didn’t want to vote against something that keeps the military from shutting down.
Recently, the House managed to cut funding for a second version of the F-35′s engine, meant to upgrade its performance and capabilities. This program was going to cost $450 million dollars this year. I’m not examining this particular bill’s merits or flaws – I’m going to examine, quite simply, the monetary value of their time in cutting it.
Congress in generally in session the whole year, with a small gap of two weeks December for the holidays. But they frequently recess the session for weekends, holidays, or for some months to reconnect with their constituents. On average, they spend about 120 days in session each year.
Congress passed 1100 bills last year. Many of these were bills passed to honor the acheivements of notable people – laudable, and often unopposed, bills like that can be passed quite quickly. Let’s assume that they can get bills to cut $450 million passed with equal speed. That’s a huge assumption, mind – the $450 million dollar cut took a great deal longer just for debate. To put this in perspective, that’s roughly nine bills a day – less than an hour to introduce, debate, and pass each bill. And that’s assuming Congress works for the full eight hours when in session. I couldn’t find any figures on how long they spend for lunch each day.
In order to bring down the $1.7 trillion deficit to a fully balanced budget with $450 million bills, they’ll have to pass bills continuously with nothing but budget cuts for 412 days – for the next 3.4 years of sessions. And that’s just assuming we keep spending at the current rate.
Cutting millions out of the budget is laudable, but means practically nothing in the face of the deficit we’re currently running. It’s like the old joke goes – a few billion here, a few billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about some real money.
“We did as we would do” spat out the haggered ex-Nazi capain to his ghostly tormentor. “We just heard you offer an apology for all the monsters of our times.” the former Dachau concentration inmate retorted.
I don’t know if there will be such good writing in the future. In the classic Twilight Zone episode Death’s Head Revisited, we peek in on a revenge of the hosts of dead Jewish concentration camp ghosts on the mind and spirit of a beligerent (and unrepentant) ex Nazi.
Other episodes, like “Two” where the lovely Elizabeth Mongomery and a much younger Charles Bronson point rifles at each other across a shattered city, the last two survivors of a global war. In “The After Hours” we follow the lovely Anne Francis as she remembers that she is a manaquin at a large department store, watch William Shatner flip the fuck out at 20,000 feet with a monster on the wing, and watch in sadness as Burgess Meredith shatters his only pair of glasses as the last man on earth with a hankering to read.
All the Twilight Zone episodes I recently caught on the new Tivo is turning me back on to the superb storytelling and acting of the early 60′s when all the great actors of my time were just getting started. This is really great stuff. Amazing to think how steeply downhill popular television has went in the intervening years. Take away the actors and put in “real people”. Take away the plot and put in “real life”. Take away the production and replace it with enough piping hot stupid to keep people tuning in for next week’s turd flinging party.
While it’s different, I’m not convinced it’s all for the better.
