Free Market & Economics*

While I am a physicist by background, my current job requires a basic knowledge of a great many other subjects, which is exactly the way I like it. My boss, despite being a scientist by background also, is a very clever economist, which proves that one really needn't limit one's self to just the one field of study. You'll often find that people trained in more than one field, have an unusual and often interesting perspective on things.

To do my job well, it would be handy to have a better grasp on the basic principles of economics. So I've decided to spend a few weeks studying the subject in my spare time. And I have to say, I find it fascinating.

I'm guilty of participating in many a naive student protest against globalisation and free-market economies. While my peers and I undoubtedly had our hearts in the right place, I think few of us really knew what we were demonstrating against. And if we did, we certainly didn't have any alternatives on offer. These days, I firmly believe that it is pointless to argue something's rebuttal until you have a solid alternative. Which means you should study hard to find one.

In reality, there seems to be no such thing as a free-market. At least not a working example of it. Authorative regulations are strewn throughout the global market. And I believe this is neither a good nor a bad thing.

To me, it seems that our current economic model is first a reflection of our human nature and second, an endpoint of an intricate system seeking its natural balance. Those who know a little about Complexity Theory, will know that when many small components (like humans, businesses, governments) interact, some regular and predictable patterns emerge, often evolving towards some statistical state of balance (or in mathematical terms: towards an attractor).

To clarify my viewpoint, an example:

There are many rules in place to regulate the approval of new medicines. Before a drug can be put onto the market, it needs to go through a lengthy approval process. A patent needs to be applied for, the Company needs to prove that it is safe and efficient by means of extensive clinical data and if it wants to be reimbursed by the state, it will need to prove that is differentiated from other existing products and provides a substantial benefit for the patient... and so on.

Not only is this process lengthy, it is a costly investment too. While the government has put these regulations in place to protect society, it has led to a predictable downside: Because the cost of bringing a new product to market is high, it is justifiable only if there is a big market for it. In other words, unless Companies know that the product will be bought by a large group of individuals, it's hardly worth making it. They want a big profit margin, and a large return on investment.

As a direct result, Companies stopped trying to find medications for rare diseases. Fairly logical and predictable, if you think about it. Not enough people will buy it, so the return on investment is too small to even be considered as a viable option.

But our system keeps itself in balance: The Authorities came up with a new way to counter this downside. It created the status of "Orphan Drug". An Orphan Drug is a drug designed to treat rare conditions, generally with a prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 people. If a company invests in making an Orphan Drug, the authorities reward the company with an extra 10 years of Market Exclusivity for that product.

Basically, products are standardly protected by a 20-year patent. This gives the Company up to 20-years of market monopoly, in which they can try to make enough money to regain their investment. After those 20-years, the patent generally expires (unless legal action is taken to extend it), and other companies can start making their own versions of it. But if you have invested in an Orphan Drug, the Authorities will grant you an extra 10-years of Market Exclusivity and this makes it more appealing for drug Companies to develop medicines to treat rare diseases. This new rule ensures that the general public gets what it needs and that the companies are happy.

Many would argue that this proves that a Free Market doesn't work, because the Authorities had to interfere. But this situation (in which companies stopped investing in rare diseases) was created by Authority interference in the first place, so it wasn't a Free Market to start with. At least, that's what I think. I believe the idea of a Free Market is a utopic idea. It'll never exist.

Instead, I feel that the current Market is an excellent example of action-reaction at work between many small components and a fairly balanced system emerging as a result of that interaction. I also believe, and I may be very wrong about this: that the Authorities are an intrinsic part of that economic system. It's not an external meddler, but an intrinsic part or our current economic model. I don't think you can think of the Market and the Authorities as individual systems entirely. They constantly feed on and into eachother and without the other, they wouldn't exist. The Market represents our human nature. So do the Authorities. They are driven by the same underlying principles (albeit with differing motives, humans have conflicting interests after all) and are simply smaller parts of the whole.

And like many dynamic complex systems, the balance will continuously shift. It's evolving. The recent move towards organic food, is a good example. It's due to an interplay between people's wants (healthy food) and people's needs (new money-earning products).

We are the key-players in this. It is our intrinsic nature that drives the economy. Our choices, needs and nature drive the economy. So I find it highly simplistic to pronounce our current economic model "bad" or "good".

It's simplistic nor simple. But fascinating, if anything.

*Disclaimer: my knowledge of economics is in an ongoing state of flux. My opinions and insights are likely to evolve. Deductions made in this blogpost are mine. As are fallacies in logic. Feel very free to comment and put me right.

Crisis

Postman Pat is on strike. At least he seems to be in Ghent. I've not received any mail for a week now, which is highly annoying.

While I'm normally quite partial to a bit of socialist/communist rallying, right now, all I can think of is that huge order I've put in for spray-paints, stanley knives and canvasses from Schleiper. They're not likely to arrive any time soon now, what with the humongous backlog at the postal distribution center.

My workhours overlap with the store's opening hours, so there's no other option for me but to order them online and await their arrival patiently. But it's a bit of a dud having 10 stencils cut out and ready to go, when you've run out of spray-paint and canvasses. I desperately need white-spray paint to finish off some of the multi-coloured stencils I've started, and it pains me to see them unfinished. It's like an itch you can't scratch.

The real bitch of it is that while the government can't seem to be arsed to mediate in the postal crisis, it still managed to get its own electoral cards delivered to our mailboxes exactly as planned, because I received mine today.

It would be marginally less annoying if I had a clue who to vote for this time around. I assumed my ideals hadn't changed all that much since the last elections, but when I took the online survey it told me: "your answers most closely match the political pamphlet of the christian democrats (read: conservatives)". I almost cried. Either I have gotten really old, in which case I'm going to have to go back into therapy, OR, the whole political arena suddenly made a staggering shift towards libertarianism, in which case I'd say we're just about done saving the world.

To check whether my ideals had indeed changed significantly, I decided to re-take the political compass questionnaire. It appears I have changed very little since I took it two years ago:

The hilarious thing is that this result points me to be ever so slightly more leftist and libertarian than the Dalai Lama appears to be. In my opinion, the Lama is a right authoritarion rightwing b@*%@rd ;-)

To be honest, I think the questionnaire is ever so slightly contrived. It may be my autistic inclinations but when someone asks me to rate the statement:

"A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system."

I feel slightly ill at ease with the phrasing. Am I to judge this statement on pure logic? Because if that's the case, then of course this is a significant advantage in favor of a one-party state. But if I am to interpret this question to mean: "Is this advantage enough to warrant a one-party state", then my answer is of course completely different.

Another example:

"Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers."

Now this is a tricky one. If this statement had said: "Women" instead of "Mothers" then I would have instantly replied "Strongly disagree". But here it says "Mothers". I very strongly believe that if a woman decides to pop out a few childeren, then it is her first duty to provide a "home" for them in every meaning of the word. But this statement is highly likely meant to be probative of underlying sexist ideals, and as such, my answer will be entirely misinterpreted.

This last statement, however, had me tangled up the longest:

"Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified."

First of all, I feel that laws should continuously be challenged and re-appraised. If a law fails to hit the mark or is inadequate in one way or other, then it needs to either be revised or ignored. There's nothing more stupid than blind faith in or docile obedience to set laws. But... and this is a big "but"... if the sentence is meant to mean the current international law on military intervention, and surreptitiously hints at US infringement of international law by invading Iraq, then my answer is "strongly disagree". Because this political compass was designed in 2001, it's highly likely that this question was set up with Iraq in mind and that its answers are judged in this light.

Anyway, I'm rambling, and I've forgotten what my point was. At any rate, I won't be voting Christian Democrat. I'm a libertarian lesbian scientist for chrissakes... who in their right mind.... ?!?!

Beware: Rant On The Way

I came out off the geek closet at work today. I'd received a few comments on my supposed use of expensive words (apparently the word "contamination" is classified as expensive these days) and on the fact that I was reading an English book during our breaks. So, I finally decided to out myself. Told all about how I've been living a double life and how I hope they will accept me for the geek that I am *grin*.

The response was really surprising. I had anticipated little more than a few shrugs and a stone-cold banishment from the social room. But instead, people started coming to me with more and more questions the further the day progressed. At first, it was just one of the girls. She told me she'd never had a chance to study, but had always been interested in science and its relation to things like religion, spirituality etc... We had a very pleasant conversation about this topic and I noticed that the others around us were listening intently, despite not participating.

After a while, someone else moved a little closer and said: "Would you mind if I asked you something? I've always wanted to know... birds... the way they all fly together, like... do you know how they do that, or is that not something you've studied". It's funny that this question should've come up, as it's the token example of Emergence in Complexity Studies. So I got VERY enthusiastic and explained as far as my limited knowledge stretched.

After that, the questions just kept coming from all corners. It'd turned into a game. They were testing my knowledge, but also, asking questions to which they'd apparently never found the answers themselves. And I have to say, the questions were interesting and insightful.

One of the questions though, turned the game into a rather poignant realisation. The person had been to see the doctor last week and was diagnosed with a virus, but was told by her doctor that there was no reason she shouldn't be at work. She said she couldn't remember the name of the virus, and hadn't really understood the doctor's explanation. She was worried, but afraid to ask him for more info, because she felt stupid. So I asked her if she could describe her symptoms and I said that while I was no doctor, it DID sound like a standard bout of mononucleosis. She said that that wasn't the word he had used, so I ventured a guess and said: "Well, did he maybe call it the Epstein-Barr virus?" She instantly recognised it and said: "YES!!"

It made me realise how seriously wrong we are. Us scientists, doctors, people responsible for communicating facts to laymen... we have got it seriously wrong. If a doctor doesn't sense that he should use less jargon when dealing with people who have no medical background and sends them home without answers because they are afraid to ask... then seriously, he shouldn't be a doctor.

I'm the first to admit that while I have some very libertarian-socialist viewpoints, I believe that a liberal/capitalist system is far more workable for everyone in our current global climate. We will always need people who do menial jobs... jobs that keep our economy floating. And sure, not everyone is up to the task to do high-flying jobs, but I very strongly believe that it is important that we keep including everyone into our information dispersal systems. Regardless of "status" (if you can call it that), people should always be made to feel that they belong. That they matter as much as the next person does. Because if we don't, we are re-widening a gap between the different social groups, our grandparents fought so hard for to close. Perhaps the gap will be less about money, but more about the possession of information.

The people I work with have thousands of questions. Interesting questions. And they are eager to listen if only someone would explain it to them in an understandable way. They might not read books, or browse the Internet for answers, but they like getting answers to things that pop into their heads during the experiences of every day life.

And I was thinking... maybe the government or several scientific institutes should subsidize something like an Info-Crew. Like a group of scientists/medics/experts who visit factories to work alongside the people there for a day or two, to just chat with them during work and over lunch breaks. So they get conversations going in an informal manner and people can just fire away their questions. No teaching. No lecturing. Just an easy access point to get answers to THEIR specific questions. It would certainly help to re-align the opinions about science and medicine. We'd probably start re-gaining our credibility if people felt that they OWNED the science as much as the researchers do.

Anyway. Just my two cents.

To apologize for this rant, I shall leave you with a little gem of an mp3: Metric - The Twist. Just click the file name in the box below to start listening. (Cool text as well)


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Dialogue

This might be a bit of a controversial post. I apologize in advance if it offends anyone.

A friend of mine recently told me that since her relationship fell apart, she's struggling to suppress the urge to take painkillers to numb herself. She seemed embarrassed yet relieved to be able to admit to such a thing. But I don't think she's an exception. I think this happens more often than people are willing to admit.

Some people seem perfectly capable of placing their emotions on a manageable platform: if everything around them comes crashing down, they can keep functioning. I'm not sure how they do it. I suspect they simply take some distance. But how one achieves this distance is beyond me.

The other type of people, they crash when everything else does. There's no more levels to it than that: they simply are their emotions. I know for a fact that I am part of this latter group. Everything comes to a halt and you just have to let yourself fall into whatever safety net you can find. I'm lucky. I have a tremendously patient, understanding and constructively supportive family and group of friends. Whenever I've been faced with situations I couldn't cope with, I've had a place to fall. A place to simply stop "being", for a little while.

But even then, I completely understand my friend's urges. It is ridiculously tempting to just numb yourself at times, to drown out your emotions. If you're one of those people who needs to go to the depths of their emotions to be able to resurface full strength, then a bit of numbing every now and then is very welcome. There's so many tempting external ways to help you take a break when your emotions can't give you one.

Alcohol is probably the most socially accepted form of numbing. I know quite a few people who are clearly purposefully sedating themselves on a regular basis, but no one ever comments, because drinking is socially acceptable in a lot of circumstances. Painkillers are less visible, but easy to get. Drugs, more dangerous and less socially accepted, but highly effective.

I rarely drink. My number of units a month probably amounts to no more than 8. If that. I have taken class A-type drugs on no more than maybe a dozen occasions. But in retrospect, it is quite obvious that when I did drink lots or did take drugs, it was at times where I felt emotionally unstable. I'm fortunate in that I am aware of this. I know what and why I am doing such things, when I am doing them. And this keeps me from falling into a destructive pattern at those times. It enables me to make those moments a rarity.

I think it should be socially acceptable for people to give themselves a breather before facing their issues head on. And I really don't think my friend had any reason to be embarrassed about admitting such a thing. If anything, an open conversation will make her feel less alone. But I also think society should be more tuned into dependencies. If people continue to sedate themselves with latent societally accepted aids, then they simply uphold a status quo. Nothing ever improves. We don't question enough. And so there is no dialogue. The threshold to admit to problems still seems insurmountably high for some people. And others still feel shame at admitting a very human problem.

People often ask me why I am as direct as I am, in my communications with others. It's because I want dialogue. I don't want to worry about stuff I needn't worry about. Things are complicated enough as they are. I have an incredible need to be open about things. To get feedback off others so I can put myself and what goes on in and around me, in the proper perspective. I don't want to second guess other people's actions. I don't want to hide emotions. Directness might make people uncomfortable, but everyone will know exactly where I am at and where they are with me. I'm sure that's the reason my friend chose to tell me about her worries. Openness breeds openness. We're all drawing the same line here, after all. We're all just as fallible as the next person.

No Missfires Please

Wrong Way to Employment

Hmmm.... well, I guess there's no point applying for a job with GSK anymore. They *might* be on to my blogpost "Spinning Words".

- Excerpt of my webstatistics -

Disclaimer: I do appologize to all the sincere scientists that work there. No need to tar everyone with the same brush.

Spinning Words

I know this is a familiar story: "Drug company 'hid' suicide link".

"Panorama reveals that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) attempted to show that Seroxat worked for depressed children despite failed clinical trials. And that GSK-employed ghostwriters influenced 'independent' academics."

But while we've all seen programs or read articles that have focussed on the topic of drug trial manipulations and the aggressive marketing style of some Pharmaceutical companies, this documentary takes on a slightly different perspective. It explores how the manipulation is achieved: through clever strategic use of spin-doctors and ghostwriters with a knack for "re-phrasing" the specifics and how their skills are used to reel in supposedly independent academics. It focusses largely on the power of word and perception.

I am interested in this topic for quite obvious reasons, but also because most -if not all- of the freelance translation work I do on the side, involves documents related to phase I and phase II clinical trials. It is interesting to study the wording in certain documents and I can only hope that if any of my family members or friends ever were to face the decision to participate in a drug trial because of health reasons, they will be guided through the sometimes ambiguous wording by someone who's got their best interest at heart.

Moreover, how do we keep ourselves from conveying the wrong messages? Language is clearly a very subtle, powerful tool. Are we always that concious of our choice of words? If I trawl through the archives of this blog, I am sure to find misleading statements, while I might not purposefully have written them in as such. We inherently rely on our own common sense and that of those nearest to us, to be corrected in our use of language and to be pointed out the hidden messages behind the facade of linguistics.

I think all of this pinpoints a process that underlies many misgivings and failures in democracy: the manipulation of language in politics, science, medicine, trade, economics, sales and education. And by extention, their (ab)use of the most powerful forum of words: The Media.
A fact that was worded incredibly well in Manufacturing Consent:


“Media is to a democracy, what violence is to a dictatorship.”


To watch the abovementioned BBC documentary, Click Here. (35-minute feature)

Addendum: I would like to point out that while the documentary itself reports on manipulation, it in itself is not entirely devoid of somewhat ambiguous, sensationalist spins.

Pulling Hairs

I am much too tired to write a complete typical Pew rant about the following, but I rather suspect this topic will be picked up by more blogs over the next few days. I hope they manage to word the frustrations better than I can at this very moment.

Climateprediction.net quite cleverly teamed up with the BBC to carry out what has been labelled the largest and most important Climate Change Experiment. I am all in favor of the idea of involving the general public by making use of their computers to distribute experimental/theoretical computations that would otherwise take years to complete in a single lab. NASA started a similar project a few years back as part of the SETI-project. I think it's brilliant.

However. There's as always a downside to such "popularisations" of science.

I dare assume that most of us are aware of the chaotic principles underlying the Earth's weather system. Most of us also know that when it comes down to the current forecasting models, the probabilities of the forecast being accurate drops off sharply after day 5 into the forecast. That is why most MetOffices generally dont give out weather bulletins more than 5 days ahead of time.

Whilst I am aware that slightly different probabilities are involved with larger scale, whole system predictions, it is safe to assume that due to the non-linear nature of climate, any prediction in the long term needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The actual methods of calculation and the reasoning behind the conclusion-forming is explained on the BBC site, and I would suggest you all have a look at it. I am fairly confident most amongst you will raise a few eyebrows when they then check the actual result page as displayed on the BBC site.

To state that Britain SHOULD expect a 4 degree rise in temperature by 2080 is simply absurd. It is the type of uncautious generalisation seen all too often in the media and makes me feel embarassed to be a scientist. Because we let the media get away with it. I am all the more annoyed because I generally regard the BBC as one of the last remaining flagships of genuine journalism out there.

I believe a little nuancing is desperately needed in the whole climate change debate. There are most certainly problems that urgently need to be dealt with, but before we all jump on the "end-of-time-catastrophe" bandwagon, let's just point out a few other bits of science that seem to tell a somewhat more balanced story alltogether...

In terms of glacier melting, I have two very fine examples right here:

A New Alpine Melt Theory

Too Cold to Snow?

Helen Margerison, who wrote the latter, was a 2005 New Scientist Essay Competition finalist and as such, I actually saw her present her findings at an award event in London. It stunned me at the time, because this sort of information generally doesn't get spread out over the newspages. It is far too nuanced. Far too "unexciting". Just pay attention to her statement that "... the odd thing about glaciers in the Dry Valleys is that they don’t melt when the climate gets warmer, they actually begin to grow..."

It's a sad time when people only care about environmental issues if there's a doomsday scenario attached to it. I'd like to believe that even if we nuance the situations correctly, people will still realise that we are doing some serious damage and that action is always justified, whether we are causing these natural events or not.

G8 Alternatives

Scotland is hosting the next G8 meeting in July, so I suppose it's only natural that we've been hearing quite a lot about anti-globalisation & anti-G8 demos. I have to admit that despite my vast amount of education *cough*, I am still relatively ignorant about the actual political agenda the G8 pursues. So in order to find out why people feel the need to demonstrate against the G8, I went along to a G8 Alternatives meeting yesterday.

I have to say it wasn't all that enlightening and a lot of the rhetoric used by the speaker undermined her own agenda. Most of the arguments in favour of action against the G8 were arguments which can be used to counter any capitalist body. And although they are highly valid in their own right, I was left wondering, why target specifically the G8? I suppose I will have to do my own bit of research into that topic once I have more time. Hopefully before July, so I can make up my own mind about whether or not I really should be there flanking the movement, despite the promise of policecordons with rubber bullets, teargas and watercanons.

If anything, I will go along to the G8 Alternatives Counter Summit in Edinburgh on July 3rd. Pro-action, in my opinion is a far more worthy cause than Anti-action. Making moves towards a solution, rather than a focus of destructive efforts on trying to halt the current establishment.



There's a video-link up to a Noam Chomsky talk on Tuesday, which should be interesting. Although again, I have to delve deeper into his writings when I have more time (The PhD is a bit time consuming at the moment ;-), I find his rhetoric on the Responsibility of Intellectuals incredibly gripping. After reading this and watching "Manufacturing Consent", I can no longer justify sitting in a pub philosophizing about the world without taking any action myself. Better late than never I suppose :s

On a lighter note, the Toxoplast is now responsible for three sleepless nights in a row, so pardon me for grabbing the plant-waterspray this morning to squirt him off my head. Although he now looks like a disgruntled wet gremlin, I think he may finally have gotten the message.

Freedom of Speech

I was half asleep last night when Fi mumbled something about freedom of speech. She was reading an article in the New Statesman about Labour's plans to introduce a new offence of incitement to religious hatred.

We got into a discussion about how to define the boundaries of Freedom of Speech. Or whether or not any curtailment of it by boundaries is even appropriate. No matter who you'll talk to, you'll hear the same hesitations about this topic.

I don't pretend to know much of the legal aspects of Freedom of Speech. I can merely talk about my own inner conflict with this topic. I think most of us will instinctively want to make others with different opinions (of the extreme kind: religious zealots, homophobes, fascists,...) shut up. Because that gives us a feeling that the problem is dealt with. If it can't be talked about... it can't spread... right? The fact is though, that taking away someone's right to speak out about their opinions, doesn't make the opinion go away. And who's to say it should?

It's a conflict of the two big forces of freedom. Allowing anyone to speak their mind. And protecting everyone's rights to do so. Even if people that attempt to breach the latter, make use of the first to do so.

In the end, I feel Freedom of Speech should be preserved in it's purest and most unbound form possible. I hope Labours experiment fails, and that with it will come the realisation that the incitement of hate, in itself, is not what needs to be solved. And that it's perhaps the issues that feed the urge for this incitement that ought to be tackled.