Game of chicken

Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany bowed to the will Turk president Erdogan and allowed prosecution of comedian Jan Boehmermann for insulting the turkish president.

The Chancellor of Germany swerved aside last year when president Putin invaded Crimeea.

Angela Merkel is constantly avoiding conflict.

The base of the submission is conflict avoidance. The lions listen to the tamer's whip because they avoid conflict not because they are weak and the tamer strong.

We listen to our bosses not because they can beat us but because we want to avoid a conflict that can finish bad for us.

The human race it seems started as a matriarchy, Pharaoh's married their sister because the power was transmitted from mother to daughter. Some populations from remote Tibet and Tuareg from Sahara, are still ruled by matriarchs.

But now the patriarchy in the rule, even in most democratic countries, the politics is a boy's game, in which from time to time a brilliant woman has success.
Why?
The answer is in the Agela Merkel''s actions:
She is superior to Erdogan and Putin as education.( Erdogan was footbal player, Putin was a KGB officer, while she was a physics researcher.)
She is a better ruler than both. Germany didn't had internal unrest till the arrival of Syrian refugees. Turkey has problems with kurds. Russia with every nation that they occupied, mainly with muslims.
She stayed 11 years in power in a democracy where you cannot use force to intimidate opponents as in Russia, or close down newspaper and block youtube as in Turkey.
She is modest and doesn't have dreams of grandeur as Putin the Tzar of Soviet Union and Erdogan the Sultan of the new Turkish empire.
She is a leader of an economic power, in which citizens from both Turkey and Russia want to emigrate.
Yet, she makes concessions to both leaders.
Males play often the game of chicken. One classic case is when 2 men drive one toward each other in a collision course, and the one who swerves is "chicken" and lost status and respect of the spectators.
The best example is in movie "Rebel without a cause" with James Dean.
When 2 men compete the level of testosterone rises and the most rational thinker can be attracted in a deadly game.
Also in this game, being rational doesn't pay off. If you see a drunk men driving the other car, you will swerve, you cannot intimidate an irrational man.
The chicken game is game of guts, the most irrational and determined opponents wins.
Image now a chicken game between a man and a woman.
The man emboldened by testosterone, will forge ahead, while the woman thinking about future deadly consequences will swerve.
Angela Merkel swerved when Putin entered in Crimea because she thought at long term consequences on the German economy.
She swerved again,when Erdogan requested punishment for the German comedian, because she doesn't want to break relationship with ally that can keep millions of Syrians arriving in Germany.

History is a long list of wars, or chicken games between different groups.
Who swerved, or avoided a confrontation lost, not only that battle but also the future battles because they send the message that they do what ever it takes to avoid war, and they attracted other enemies who wanted their land and women.
Because women are tend to avoid conflict the most they swerved most and the matriarchy has lost ground in face of patriarchy.
The chicken game is fatal for both sides, and the only rational choice is to not playing it or both players to swerve.
If the women would ruled the empires from beginning of XX century we would not have WWI, because one of women leader would swerve, in that particular game of chicken.

The terrorism is a game of chicken between state and terrorists.
The terrorists as in a classic game of chicken show that they are irrational, (they behead hostages and destroy monuments) in hope that the government will swerve and make concessions.
The government must show it efficiency and ruthless, in order to discourage terrorist from taking action.

How to gain a game of chicken ?
Don't enter in a game of chicken. The game of chicken is a game of status. Go somewhere where the status is not important.
Make sure that the opponent that doesn't swerves gets a heavy loss if he wins.
For example: the Moldavian light cavalry in the Battle of Grunwald, run away in forest when they met Teutonic knights. The Teutonic knights believing that they won this "chicken game" they follow them in the forest were were butchered by hidden Moldavian forces.

European office for migration

The EU bureaucrats have use their imagination to invent different committees, but they miss an office to handle the emigration towards Europe,
With imposed quota of emigrants, the  Eastern Europeans  are afraid that the Western states will dump all the unwanted refugees in their countries.
And the refugees that put their hopes in reaching Germany will arrive in Romania.
This will create tensions between locals wary of these emigrants that they were forced to accept and the grumpy refugees who see their hopes shattered.
Germany and Sweden cannot accept all the refugees and some of them must be distributed in all Europe, but how to make this without herding people into trains like Hitler and Stalin did?
You send some of the refugees in Poland for example but how you keep them there?
The solution is to distribute them directly from the refugee camps from Turkey or Liban.
You can make there an office for processing paper of refugees.
Each country, will specify a quota of refugees. Let's say Romania will accept 1000 and Germany 100000.
Many refugees will apply for Germany and in this case the process will be slow, and few of them will apply for Romania, in this case the process will be faster.
If you are sick and tired of a refugee camp and you will want to get out of there you will find appealing the faster route to Romania. So the humanitarian cases will arrive in Romania, and they will be supported by EU.
The economic migrants will arrive in Germany were they need workforce, and they will strengthen the economy.
After the refugee will be accepted he will be sent in destination country where he will have the right to work, in order to self sustained.
The paper work will be done by European functionaries from countries different from the destination.
Germans will process papers for Romania, and Romanians will process paper work for Germans. So neither country will slow down artificially the process.
The advantages are clear:
- we avoid human trafficking across
- we ease the burden on Lebanon and Turkey
- we distribute the refugees across Europe
- we have the agreement of the refugees for moving in respective countries.
To stop migration from East we must suspend also the Schengen treaty.

Smart tactic, stupid strategy

Who lives in Eastern Europe it is not surprised at all about Putin intention to occupy Ukraine, but many US analysts are surprised, they expected that Putin should behave rationally,and to gain ground in Crimea via political pressure and diplomacy . They consider him a smart person who cannot make such a blunder.
But let's analyze another smart man who made a big mistake: Osama bin Laden.
He was smart, you cannot be stupid if you organize a terrorist network the size  of Al-Quida and plot the 11 September attacks. But the idea to attack US and wake the sleeping giant, was not a good one, and Al-Quida received blow after blow and finally bin Laden was killed.
So Osama was smart in applying the tactics, but was a weak strategist and attacked at the wrong time at the wrong place.
The politics in US is ruled by the public opinion, which demands what it is told to via media channels.
Usually the US public opinion doesn't care about Afghanistan, Somalia or other country, but September 11 attacks  made them care, and request a strong response.I don't think any president would have survived politically without doing something after the September 11.
The other mistake, was that US is a young nation, who knew only success in foreign politics till now, and doesn't accept failure. The 11 September attacks were a failure and a shame for US  and public opinion demanded a decisive action to be taken, to restore the status and the pride of US, so they went after Osama.
The attacks from Madrid Atocha Railroad station from 2004 didn't determine the same response from public opinion, because Spain it is a nation in decline, it has lost its empire and desire for expansion, it has no status to defend.
An the third mistake that Osama has been made, it is that attacked during the presidency of a republican.
National Rifle Association and christian churches vote republican, and these people are not alianated by a war against arabs.
The forth mistake of bin Laden it is his narrow and strong religious beliefs, who limited his thinking and options.Maybe he had fanatic followers but he has lost a lot of Muslim allies.

Now let's see what mistakes Putin has done:
He comes from KGB, it respect black ops,order and discipline, but a strong army must have a strong economy. A strong economy produced diverse things to cover a wide variety of needs.
To produce a great variety of needs you need diverse economic agents and diverse technologies.
An army needs gun,fuel, but also bread,socks, clothes. And for having bread you need fertilizers,tractors and so on.
The quality of civilian industry is very important for an army.
For example:
During the world war a British toy factory was converted in an arms factory that produced Sten gun, this meant that it produced cheap and good, an it was forced to do so by the years of market competition.
In the same war, US supplied armament for 2 fronts and for Soviet Union, who cannot produced trucks,cans and other goods, this because it had a diverse economy.
Putin thinks if we has a grip on the resources, and his security forces crush any dissidents, he will have the liberty to do what he wants abroad.
Concentrating power in his hands and his cronies he didn't allowed the diversity to emerge and to offer an alternative to a resource based economy.And with a few undifferentiated resources he can be easily be embargoed. Maybe Germany won't sell VW in Russia. It can sell elsewhere with same success because it has few competitors.
Cuban cigars are sold despite the embargo because they can differentiate. They cannot be easily replaced.
Can you tell me the difference between gas from Qatar and from Russia?
Putin was good at tactic.He timed his invasion well, Soci Olympics distracted  the world outside the Eastern Europe, the US was busy with China expansion near Philippines, Ukraine is in disarray,Europeans are some sissies that want cheap gas and contracts with Russia, also at White House you have a weak president, who tries to reduce military costs, because some greedy bankers wasted some trillion dollars.
Maybe Europeans are some sissies, but they are traumatized by wold war 2, and nobody wants to see another one. Especially East Europeans, who endured Russian occupation for more than 50 years.
UE is used with soft power and and brutal actions of Russia reignited their fear,and now will take more concentrating actions.Till now the focus of EU politics was inside, now it will be outside.
Fear can be a strong motivation to put aside quarrels and cooperate.
The biggest mistake of Putin is that he lives in past, and like Osama bin Laden is so brainwashed that he cannot acknowledge, that the system was wrong and crumbled by internal causes.
To understand him rationally you must understand his irrationality.

Why the youth unemployment is low in Germany?

While the Germany in 1945 was in ruins, now it overpassing the ancient rivals France and Great Britain.
According to the data from www.indexmundi.com the unemployment is decreasing, the current account balance is higher, as well as the growth of industrial production

Unemployment rate in %

Current Account Balance (US$)

Industrial production growth rate (%)

We can say that the lower unemployment rate is cause by the decrease of population caused by low immigration and low birth rate:

Population growth rate in %

But it is interesting that the young unemployment rate is the lowest in Europe according to the eurostat:

Youth unemployment rate in %

How the Germany achieved such results? Why Germany survived crisis?

After reading few articles (see links below) in my opinion are several factors:

1.Long term planning:

Even before the ending of world war 2 the business and the government created a plan for post war reconstruction and charged  Ludwig Erhard to do this. During the occupation the Americans liked his ideas and give him free hand.
Many big German companies have and had an interlinked ownerships (a bank has shares of a big company who has shares to a assurance company, who owns shares to the bank ) and few shares are traded on the market, this allows a long term planning ,disconnected from short term gain from financial speculation or dividend gain.


2.Educated workforce:

After the war the workforce rose with 2 million people, mostly German emigrants from Eastern Europe.Many were educated and skilled, and those who were not, found plenty of jobs in farming.

The tradition of  apprenticeships for young workers was adapted to modern times, this tradition existed in Europe, since Middle Ages, but in Germany tradition is kept till today.

In Germany instead of laying off workers during though times, it is preferred to be reduced the working time, this allows to keep experienced workers.

3.Excess of industrial production

The war effort boosted German industry and science, and despite Allied bombing, Germany had a surplus of  industrial power.
At the end of the war Allies focused on bombing railways,electricity plants, coal mines, and synthetic fuel plants, in order to stop the inflow of raw materials into factories. This strategy spared some industrial plants.

After the war the Germany's steel production was capped, this was good for long term because steel industry lost it's profitability.

The Korean war created a boost for industrial goods that filled German coffers.

4.Foreign aid and state aid:

The Marshal plan invested heavily in high capital industries like coal,steel,transportation and electricity providing an industrial backbone for existing manufacturing.
The difference between Marshal plan and other foreign aids, was that the expenses were supervised directly by American donors.
The Americans supplied dollars to the government's  German reconstruction institute, which in turn credited the business in Deutsch Marks. The loans were payed in DM. After the load was payed the institute credited again another business. The German reconstruction institute was still functioning in 1990.
It was unique among the countries that received Marshal plan help and provided a more efficient spending.
Also some debts were written off , easing the burden of external debt, reducing the internal taxes.
Rents were kept artificially low, and heavy federal subsidies were provided for residential construction

5.Government continuity:

The difference between Germany after the end of the war in 1945 and the fall of the communist in 1989 is that in 1945 the main state institutions were intact and were adapted to the market economy.

If the Weimar Republic was too lax and  the Third Reich was controlling, the post war regime was somewhat in the middle: it was strong but had limited scope, it encouraged formation of industrial and trade union organization in order negotiate wage and working conditions.
It allowed collective labor bargaining.
This resulted in reducing working time instead of laying off workers, better working conditions for workers and a moderate request for salary increase from trade unions.

Links:
West German Growth and Institutions, 1945-90
Understanding West German economic growth in the 1950s