Rich countries Achille's heel

The Stanford marshmallow experiment states that if we delay our immediate rewards in order to obtain later bigger rewards, we would have bigger success in life.

A man or a woman from a poor country is forced to delay the immediate rewards in order to obtain gain later. 

In childhood he or she didn't get what all he/she want, and it is used with frustrations and delayed gratification.

On the other hand people from rich countries get always what they want, and they are not used with frustrations, and delayed gratifications, and it is hard for them to follow careers which require long term effort.

The ease of emigration drains the motivated individuals from poor countries into rich countries, taking jobs of the least competitive locals and keeping the advantage of the rich countries, at the expense of the least qualified locals.

These least qualified locals if they will not acquire new skills they will be marginalized, and they will increase the ranks of extremist parties.

De ce Omar Hayssam a ajuns asa tarziu in Romania?

Unele ziare/site-uri zic ca Omar Hayssam a venit in Romania deoarece cei de la Bucuresti l-au santajat pe socrul unui var de al presedintelui Bashar Al-Assad.
L-au santajat ca ii inchid toate afacerile din Romania.
Daca puteau sa-l santajeze asa usor, de ce nu au facut-o mai devreme? Ce au asteptat?
De ce sirienii nu au raspuns la santaj mai repede?

National pride will ever boost the economy?

After the fall of comunism in '89, the national pride fell sharply in Eastern Europe and in my particular  case, in Romania.
If before '89 the propaganda led people to believe that you live in best country of the world, and it would be better if the imperialist enemy would not sabotage our efforts to create a better world, now people are depressed by the comparisons with western Europe, and they have an underdeserved low self esteem.
Some people argue that if we will rebuild our esteem and national pride, we will be mobilize together our energies and we will change things.
I don't agree with this because as the proverb says:"Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.", this will makes us arrogant, and not willing to change.
Usually the pride comes after a success and before a long slow fall, and not before a success.
Spaniards conquered America, and they became proud and arrogant and they didn't adapt, then they lost Holland, who became succesfull in creating an comercial empire. Then Holland became proud and arrogant and lost it's empire to the british.
France under Napoleon conquered half of Europe, became proud and arrogant, and then lost all.
Britain freed from the problems with France, created it's empire, became proud and arrogant, and lost all.
Germany became proud and arrogant, and lost 2 world wars.
Now USA is proud.(Not the proudest, as you will see below.)
But many nations remained just proud without any significant success.
Some will argue, maybe the spaniards,the netherlanders,the british,the french,the germans were proud before and that drived their expansion.
If the national proud is the main driver for the economical development, then we should see a direct corelation between and economic indicator such as GDP per capita and national pride.
I started to search some data, and I found a study from University of Chicago regarding the national pride.

Then for each country I have search the GDP per capita, and Gini index.
(I wanted to use Gini index of inequality of incomes to compensate for GDP information.)

And the prize for the proudest nation on Earth goes to (drum beat): Venezuela.

As you can see from the graphic below the people from Venezuela are a little bit prouder that the USA despite the fact that they produce per capita 4 time less.
As the study says: "National pride is shaped by the unique societal and historical circumstance existing in each country and by ones socio-demographic position within each society." (In Venezuela case: who wants to leave a warm climate country filled with beautiful women?)

But if we explore the boring data's we observe that to the same GDP per capita, Hungary,Uruguay and Russia are more proud than Latvia.
Also Austria,Canada and Denmark are more proud than Germany,France and Sweden at the same GDP.
Why Austria is more proud than the Germany? And why Denmark is more proud than Sweden?
It is clear that not the economic differences are determining these differences.

The diagram of proudness vs inequality index shows that national pride increases a little bit with income inequality:


In conclusion the national pride doesn't ensure economic welfare. So fuck off nationalistic politicians, try to come with some solutions not with demagogic speech.
And romanians,keep the low esteem, this will not affect the economy but it wil determine you to change.
In order to survive you must adapt and change.

 PS.The data I used for diagrams, you can find it under the following link.

Rasism a natural evolution of the nation state?

The idea of nationalism appeared because a wider national teritory had to be controlled, and it wasn't enough fot this the loyalty of the local lords. The nation state, had to have the loyalty of the people in order not to fell in civil war.
So a bond of common history,mithology and blood was created in order to maintain the loyalty of citizens towards the nation states.

When nation state became colonial empire,the need for a stronger support for this new political conception grew.

But the colony was something new, it wasn't the land of the ancestors that had to be defended against enemies, so the history and mithology could not justify the effort to conquer the new colonies.


And what was left in the concontion of nationalism was only blood.
So men were united only by their genetic traits, and their blood line, became their new home land that had to be defended against foreign invadors.

Spy or whisleblower?

I wonder if Edward Snowden didn't think for a moment to become a spy instead of a whisleblower, when he was sleeping on a bench in the Moscow airport.

These are some significant advantages if you are a spy:

If you are arested you can be swaped with other agents (see case of Anna Chapman).
Or better: you employer could exfiltrate you from the target country.

You are honoured: Kim Philby received an honorary colonel title from Soviet Union.Meanwhile Snowden is treated like a beggar in Moscow airport.

You have a better pay: Aldrich Ames bought himself a Jaguar and a 540000$ house with the money from russians.

True, the workload is bigger: you have to operate years, and transmit secret information many times, but if you will enjoy thrilling sensantions.

I hope that Snowden is not a spy, because a spy does much harm to it's country, than a whisleblower.
If the whisleblower leaks some documents, then the goverment knows the problem in time, fix the hole, some scapegoates are punished for appeasing the public thirst for blood, the secret agencies become more discreet in their actions, and in the fortunate case some policies are changed and the goverment becomes more open and democratic.
In case of a spy, the foreign country knows your moves and you don't know that your policy is manipulated by a foreign country. When you find out that you have a problem the cost are bigger, because you don't know what was exposed, you become paranoid, and mistrustfull.
Also the foreign country could make public you actions, and tarn your reputation.(See case Hruschiov and U2 spy plane shut down in Soviet Union. Or maybe Snowden case is another example?)
I think is better for the americans to convince Snowden to comeback , before he spills everything he knows to russians,chinese,venezueleans,iranians and god knows who. It will be lame to sell secrets for a bowl of hot soup.
But the fact that US is not offering a milder sentence, shows that he didn't knew too much, and it is good only as a punishing example, to discourage other whisleblowers.

The whisleblowers appears because higher you go in ranking in a organisation, the higher is the hypocrisy.

Let's say you join a religious group to help people. The religious group declares that it protects poor and the week, but their top clergy is laudering money, support terorist groups, and/or is full of sodomist.

Most people will blend in with the group, say that the emperor has the most beautifull clothes, despite the fact they see the imperial fat belly and the imperial small hairy nuts.

The whilseblower is the only nut who will shout that the emperor is naked.And everybody will try to kill the whisleblower because they want  to maintan a mask of honesty and common interest while they robb you.

Speaking about the hypocrisy: the Europeans "didn't know" that they were spied by US.
They knew it (at least their secret services),and I bet that all the EU goverments have a similar spy program, but they didn't have the guts to tell it to US to back off.
Now they take advantage of this scandal, and make a lot of political noise maybe US will step back in this issue.

Facebook and imortality

Many things can be said against Facebook, it is a waste of time, the data is collected and sold, we lose privacy.
But when you visit the page of a dead friend, you feel that a part of her still lives. You feel that you share with her, the joy of a funny video or a enjoy with her some nice pictures.
Her clothes will be given to charity, her friends will continue their lives and forget her, her grave will be buried by grass but her Facebook page could outlive the only persons that will never forget her: her parents.
It should be a posibility to save the social network profile on a server and store it indefinitly like in a time capsule.
The people feel the need to fight the death, many make children, few build pyramids, some make extraordinary deeds: conquer Hymalaya, smash Da Vinci's "Pieta" with a hammer.
Maybe the inexpensive Facebook could be the answer, and information written somewhere, where the rain could not wash it, the fire could not burn it, indigestible for magots and bugs,affected only by the fadding memory of the people, will outlive you for centuries.

Nastase se taraie spre atentia noastra

Nastase a fost chemat la TVR sa comenteze politica externa.
Spune niste truisme pe care le stiu si eu. China e mare, problemele Turciei au ajutat Rusia etc.
Plictisitor.
Nastase lasa-ne. Esti expirat ca Mubarak sau Morsi.