Some Thoughts on The Economist April 23rd - 29th 2011

This weekly post has everything to do with me forcing myself to read the whole Economist by Tuesday and nothing to do with you caring. I will try to keep it to less than 10 articles a week because that is the limit for non-subscribers.

Thrusters v Laggers

I am eagerly looking forward to the year that we more or less have a national primary day and we can dispose of this 6 month primary nonsense. I have no facts to back up my case, but I would be willing to guess that the extended primary season contributes heavily to the billions spent on elections. Personally I would love to see a national primary day in the beginning of July followed by a run off for the top two in each party in September followed by 2 months of campaigning and then the final match-up in November. We would save money and vastly shorten the presidential campaign season, maybe this might even benefit governance in someway.

Brazil's Economy: Wild Horses

I really just wanted to call your attention to this graph more than anything. Bad news for US citizens and their Brazilian vacations but good news for those US citizens looking to sell US products to Brazilians.

The River Nile: A dam nuisance

Insult to injury right here, not only is Egypt losing clout due to an internal power struggle (you call it democracy I call it veiled elites vying for power, pun intended) but their upstream neighbors get together and steal the water rights to to one of their national treasures! I'm linking to this because when most of us think about water rights we  imagine Western states jockeying for the ability to keep their grass green in the middle of the desert. This is all about the ability to harness the Nile for energy purposes, which all of Africa is going to need badly when the boom times kick in to top gear. Wars will be fought over water but possible not for drinking purposes.

Croatia and Serbia: Protest days

One country's war hero is the rest of the world's war criminal. Makes you wonder what would have happened to a certain Civil War General if the war was fought in the present international climate.

Others:
Schumpeter: The case against globaloney
Bagehot: No more royal weddings
Direct Democracy: Vox populi or hoi polloi?
Out-of-home advertising: Billboard boom

The Donald

I honestly was not paying attention much to Donald Trump's latest flirtation with politics mostly because that is all it probably will end up being in the end, simple flirtation. That is until I read The Economist this week (love the art btw) and came away from it with a new sense of what the phenomenon is truly about.

What struck me most in Lexington's column was this line, "We'll be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us." Now it may be because I am currently reeling from an episode over Easter in which I feel I was unfairly denied my ability to win, or it may be because I am finely tuned into American culture, regardless, America loves to blame the opposing team, not themselves, and Mr. Trump is acutely aware of that.

We as Americans are never far from insinuating cheating when a situation does not go our way. It's never because the losing team was over matched, because admitting as much would be the same as admitting failure, the real reason is usually because of some shenanigans by our opponents or the referees or both. So when Mr.Trump says we will take the billions back that were wrongly taken from us by those cheating Chinese he is striking at the heart of our inability to admit that we are in fact probably not the best at everything.

We as Americans refuse to admit as much, and why not? We kick ass in every sport that matters to us (See: "World Series" or "World Champions"), we sweep the Olympics every year, we have the best military, Hollywood, and we landed on the moon. We are amazing. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with high confidence, that's precisely why America has gotten where it has gotten. Though we may have been winning the race for the better part of the past century we didn't lose our lead because we were tripped, we did so because we became complacent. And nothing Mr. Trump can say will change that.