megaspora » Economy

Subsidies produce lazy individuals

By: psr, 2009-09-27

Spanish daily newspaper ‘El País’ published an interview with surgeon Pedro Cavadas, using a sentence by him as the title: ‘Subsidies produce lazy individuals‘.

Gladly, El País is publishing something like this in big letters. Dr. Cavadas is just saying one of those paramount truths very few people date to admit. Subsidies produce lazy individuals, damaging those who receive them because subsidies are strong private initiate deterrents, while they represent severe burden on taxpayers, whose taxes pay for those subsidies. Moreover, subsidies also impose dependencies, inefficiency, and only drive people to both economic and spiritual poverty. Subsidies are simply free money in exchange for nothing, and as anything that’s free, they are not valued nor appreciated. The very
nature of subsidies makes them prey …

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2009-09-27 | Economy - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

False privacy protection

By: psr, 2009-03-18

Finland’s Parliament passed a law allowing companies to track workers’ e-mail messages, but not to read the messages themselves. With this law in effect, companies will be able to retain information about the e-mails, such as the sender, recipient, the sent and received time and date, and whether the email contained attachments [ref].

Even with such a weak law (it does not permit reading the content of messages), some opposed it arguing it “gives employers more powers than the police, and could lead to an erosion of Finland’s proud heritage as a world leader in human rights” [ref].

It is rumoured that Nokia was pushing for such a law to pass (for it was dubbed “Lex Nokia”). If it were so, they should be applauded for …

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2009-03-18 | Economy - Europe - Rights | Trackback | No Comments »

Intellectual Property and liberties

By: psr, 2009-02-21

In a friend’s blog I see a critic of a statement by a representative of the Spanish Ministry of Culture: “Without intellectual property, there is no free thought”.

Well… this sentence is not untrue: Let us imagine a world without intellectual property. Anything created by an individual would be nobody’s, not even the individual’s own property. There is no recognition for that individual for all the work that led to the production of that idea, of that new thing. Without acknowledgement there is no incentive to put effort into anything, and without that effort there is no thought: not free, and not captive. There is nothing.

Part of the very nature of humans is to associate ideas with people who published them. Such …

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2009-02-21 | Economy - Rights - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Disreputable business practices go unpunished

By: psr, 2009-01-25

Ryanair lost a court battle in Spain against an intermediary travel agency (Atrapalo)
that was selling Ryanair flight tickets irregularly.

Ryanair has no agreements with this travel agency. Ryanair sells its own flights through its own web page, directly to its customers. The Ryanair website usage policy states that their website may be used exclusively for private and non-commercial purposes. Atrapalo was using automatic mechanisms to use Ryanair’s end-customer service, introducing itself as an intermediary, and offering Ryanair flight tickets to its own customers, thereby using Ryanair’s website for commercial purposes and thus clearly violating the website usage policy.

Even so, the Spanish court has ruled against Ryanair. Ryanair was right to claim that this travel agency (Atrapalo) and others (e-Dreams, Rumbo, Opodo, Bravofly, V-Tours …

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2009-01-25 | Economy - Europe - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Public demonstration to denounce public stealing

By: psr, 2008-11-18

The state budget (public money of the Spanish people) is plagued with items destined for subsidies of all kinds. There are public subsidies to finance private economic activities which do not benefit society nor the country as a whole. There are public subsidies for deficitary businesses that cannot stand on their own. There are public subsidies for private film industry productions that insult part of the very society which is paying for those subsidies. There are subsidies financing inefficient energy sources. Public money is also thrown away on car races, paying musicians at town fairs, paying for so-called “art works”, paying for regional politician’s whims, and paying to support politics of repression on part of the population, among many other ways of wasting …

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2008-11-18 | Economy - Rights - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

Renewable corruption

By: psr, 2008-10-26

The October 24, 2008 edition of Spanish financial newspaper “Expansión” reports that the Ministry of Industry is investigating fraudulent practices in renewable energy subsidies.

What a surprise. How naive can the Ministry be?

The desire to promote renewable energy at all cost, almost obsessively, has drawn governments to offer juicy subsidies on any attempt to research or produce energy from new sources. It is all framed, of course, in the human-caused climate change dogma, which ought to make humans change our habits.

How to implement such change? By pouring loads of public money in subsidies for private companies, to make new businesses with energy sources (wind, solar, bio-fuels) which will supposedly help the planet.

There are two basic problems with such policy:

It is nonsense to think that those energy sources can …

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2008-10-26 | Economy - Spain | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Let it all fall down

By: psr, 2008-10-14

Governments around the world are trying out different formulae to tackle the financial crisis. They claim they are trying to reactivate the financial sector, to encourage banks to offer loans to small businesses and people, and to other banks. Other cases of government intervention are focused on preventing banks from going bankrupt.

This is all wrong. If the financial sector is in a financial crisis, let the financial sector sweat out its own illness. Any part of it that cannot survive the crisis should simply be left to die, because its demise means that it has no value. The crisis must be allowed to work as it should, promoting consolidation, discarding some old players and creating opportunities for new players to enter.

Government intervention is absolutely wrong. …

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2008-10-14 | Economy - Europe - World | Trackback | No Comments »

Spain’s fake unemployment rates

By: psr, 2008-09-07

The recent unemployment rate hike in Spain in the last month of August led the Minister of Labour to announce that Spain would end the recruitment of foreigners, to have jobs filled with Spanish manpower, and thus reduce unemployment.

The solution proposed by the Minister is action on jobs demand. In order to reduce unemployment, it is necessary to reduce the number of job seekers (act on the demand) or stimulate economic activity to generate more jobs (acting on jobs supply), although of course it is normal to act on both the demand and the supply.

Regarding demand, there are ways of acting on it. The proposal of the Minister is not preposterous, but it ignores a key factor influencing demand: unemployment benefits. This allowance is an incentive not to …

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2008-09-07 | Economy - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

In capitalism’s defence.

By: psr, 2008-06-25

There are plenty of anti-capitalism opinions reflected in print, the media and on the Internet. When I read such material, I feel the need to reply in the form of an article in this blog, but I can rarely find the time.

Recently, however, I came across another such article in the blog of a friend of mine (the English text is a Google translation from the Spanish original), which has motivated me to write back.

The above-linked article presents capitalism as the source of corruption, slavery, drug trafficking, real state speculation, and several more calamities and misfortunes. It also describes capitalism as a system consisting of robbery, oppression of people, exploitation of workers, all for the benefit of just a few people (the capitalists). It even …

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2008-06-25 | Economy - General - Rights - World | Trackback | 1 Comment »

Oil prices, carriers and the Spanish government

By: psr, 2008-06-14

ï»¿The recent increase in oil prices affects all transport. Air, ground and sea transportation, passenger and cargo alike, have seen their costs rising in the last few months.

Analysts have provided several theories on the causes behind the oil price hike. Some put the blame on the credit crisis in the USA, others blame oil producers, others point at the US Federal Reserve, and others remind us of the significant increase in energy demand. I am not going to analyze the reasons here.

This week Spain saw a strike by some truck drivers (apparently about 20% of them), demanding Government intervention to help their activity, after fuel price increases are rendering their business a loss-making operation. Their strike blocked major communication roads around the main …

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2008-06-14 | Braindead - Economy - Europe - Spain | Trackback | No Comments »

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Archive for the 'Economy' Category

Subsidies produce lazy individuals

False privacy protection

Intellectual Property and liberties

Disreputable business practices go unpunished

Public demonstration to denounce public stealing

Renewable corruption

Let it all fall down

Spain’s fake unemployment rates

In capitalism’s defence.

Oil prices, carriers and the Spanish government

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