French dilemma / Externality / Distances / Singular things / Quiet day

Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power. Benjamin Franklin

French dilemma

The French have a dilemma at their hands. Their society dearly needs some reforms, but all reforms incite furious protests and the government is too weak to tell the protesters to screw themselves. Once again, the mob won by saying "non", but the mob does not have any constructive proposal. Or at least I have not seen any such proposals. And it is not clear that it is democracy that won. See also what NY Times has to say on this issue.

Externality

In most cases, employees must pay an externality due to cost cutting and re-location of offices to cheaper parts of towns. It seems to be profitable for corporations to play cities against each other, get cheap lots for new office buildings and assume that employees will keep on coming. The employees must pay the cost of commuting, in cars and time. Not fair.

Distances

The distance from place A to place B is seldom same as the distance from place B to place A. Distancies from the center to the periphery are always longer than distances from the periphery to the center.
Distances to native towns, places of childhood, are always shorter than the other way around.

Singular things

All our acts, all the things we do, are singular. We cannot do them again, time flies and we cannot go back. Some acts are repetitive and failing to do something well, or at all, now does not really matter. Like brushing teeth, or even cutting hair. If I do them poorly now, I most likely have an opportunity to try again. But some things are not repetitive, some are truly singular. If I fail to try a singular action, when the time comes, or fail to do it, I will never have another opportunity.
Most human tragedies take place because we cannot tell repetitive actions from truly singular ones.

Quiet day

It is now 9.15pm. I have not discussed beyond a few how do you dos since I left home at 8am. This was, indeed, a quite day in both literal and metaphorical sense. I took a bus and a train to work, hacked this and that in my room, watched it snowing outside. After the snowing ended, I walked back to Helsinki by the sea while reading Mandelbrot's Misbehaviour of the markets, a truly marvellous a book.
I have to make sure that tomorrow is less quiet, less ordinary. Otherwise I have to take some action, as they say...

Alun perin julkaistu kuukausikoosteessa "Blogs March to June 2006".