Tag Archives: economy

in english

Report from Paris


Graffitti

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado.

As readers of this blog know, I spent the last 3 nights in Paris. Even though I really like the city, this time around I was slightly disappointed by the state is seems to be in. Of course, in all the tourist areas everything is as pristine and glorious as only Paris can be, but just walking a little bit away from that you find out that the city is dirtier than I remembered.

The contrast is even starker given that 5 months ago I spent a week in London. Even though both are very beautiful cities with monumental architecture, the British capital is much better preserved. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the British economy is doing much better than the French one. Maybe it is related to the British having embraced globalisation, whereas large swathes of French society don’t know what to do with it/about it.

Furthermore, another detail that caught my attention is not really the amount of foreigners in the city, but the fact that they don’t seem to be economically integrated. Even though of course this is purely anecdotical, and it was a long weekend, I didn’t see a lot of middle-class Frenchmen of non-European descent around their city.

in english

The Space Elevator

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We know that the world financial markets are still reeling from the China effect, but let’s think a little bit longer term.

The first time I read about the concept of space elevators was in Kim Stanley Robinson‘s excellent and highly recommended Mars trilogy. I found them again while playing Civilization IV. So the question is, what is a space elevator and why do I mention it in this blog along the rest of my musings and ruminations?

A space elevator, as this article from Space.com might make clearer, is exactly what its name denotes: a lift between the surface of our planet (or any planet) and outer space. The physics of it are rather simple, as they follow similar patters as such for geosynchronous satellites. Technologically speaking it doesn’t require the development of completely unknown technologies, but rather of areas currently on the works. Why does it matter? Simply because it makes the transport of payloads to space much more cost-effective (and furthermore, enjoys economies of scale), which basically means that once the huge initial invesment is made, space exploration (and potentially exploitation, such as asteroid mining) becomes cheap enough to be performed on a larger scale than currently.

Given that it can be argued that exploration ages spur economic growth, as was the case with the discovery of the Americas by European explorers in the 16th century, this project could be the key for humanity to regain theinitiative in its own development.

Daydreaming? Maybe. But so were the internet, automobiles and many, many other things that we now take for granted.

in english

Economics

I agree that capitalism is probably not the best way to solve our problems, but it’s the best so far that we have found to create wealth. Wealth distribution, that’s another story, and the attitude towards it varies greatly among societies.

Now I should go back to studying for my exams.

in english

Recommended book: Freakonomics


Recommended book: Freakonomics, originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado.

Borrowed this book from a friend. Very interesting idea: using tools from economics to answer day-to-day questions. The second edition has also some posts from their blog (where I could lose myself for hours).

in english

The Economist Mexico Survey

I read during the weekend the Economist Mexico Survey. If you follow the situation in the country the conclusions they reached won’t surprise you very much.

  • The economy hasn’t collapsed, but is growing very slowly.
  • The country needs structural reforms in order to grow.
  • The informal part of the economy is unhealthily big, and the tax collection rates are abysmal.
  • Mexico is still too dependent on oil, especially for its public finances.
  • Security is a bigger concern than it should be.
  • The new government should focus on improving its standing with the part of the population that doesn’t share its programme.

I have to say, that it didn’t make me happy, but could’ve been worse. If only the politicians read this…