That's fucking stupid

Archive for the ‘Armchair Economist’ Category

James Murdoch has been blathering on about piracy like he knows something about it.

He’s made that classic mistake of saying that piracy is like

going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag.

Of course that’s largely because he’s an idiot. Let’s clear things up shall we?

Piracy is nothing like walking into a store and stealing a handbag or some pringles, it’s more like studying a handbag then buying your own leather and making an exact replica; or in the case of pringles buying your own cocaine and rubbing it on crisps.

Sharing music online is more like taking those aforementioned home made copies and making more copies to give away to your friends for free.

Where you would be crossing the line was if you sold those handbags or crisps to others, and profited from the similarity to the original. This is like downloading a movie and then selling it on DVD down at your local laundrette.

So really, the law has kinda got it licked. They don’t stop you making your own handbags/crisps but they do try to stop people selling counterfeit handbags, although I don’t think there have been many cases of counterfeit pringles.

Can we end this bullshit piracy debate now that we’ve got that cleared up?

From time to time while prowling around the gay community looking for my next kill I will meet some young buck who is enraged and indignant after being declined their god-given right to donate blood to the needy.

It seems that not a week goes by without some poor vulnerable gay realising that they are being discriminated against by the National Blood Service (NBS). They will huff and puff and demand answers; they will surround themselves with sympathetic friends. They will even decry a system that prevents good wholesome homosexuals like them from donating iron rich and extremely meaty red cells, while simultaneously allowing a horde of diseased sluts to spurt their AIDS infected blood/jizz cocktail directly into the veins of virgin children. Some of them may make accusations of unfair discrimination while others may go as far to question why it’s OK to discriminate against gay men and compare it to discriminating against black or asian blood. If you’re really lucky you might be lucky to meet some sort of conspiracy theorist who is certain that there is a political agenda behind it and that the secret council of the NBS is made up of gay bashers who want to stop people from being infected with AIDS blood; and I don’t mean the good sort of AIDS that haemophiliacs get, I mean the bad AIDS that druggies, hookers and arse bandits get.

Student Unions & Guilds, always the sort of places that puts idealism and activism before thought and practicality, have even considered banning the NBS from their buildings on the strength of outrage and disgust from the LGBT welfare & lobby groups. This is deliciously stupid because they are essentially discouraging eligible donors from saving lives because a minority group feel unfairly treated.

There are two main types of screening on blood donations, one is the group profiling and the other is the medical screening for certain diseases. Some people will question why we need to exclude healthy blood from gay men when the samples are all screened anyway; this is likely to be a simple matter of economics.

Any blood collected is screened, but the collection and screening process costs money, around £120 was the estimate I found on the NBS website. A whole bunch of maths that I will explain later on suggests that 3.5% of gay men are HIV+ while only 0.16% of straight people are HIV+.

This means that out of a random sample of 1,000,000 pints of blood from straight donors yields at least 998,400 pints of usable blood which costs £120,000,000 or a fraction over £120 a pint.

Conversely, another random sample of 1,000,000 pints of blood from men who have had sex with other men will yield only 965,000 usable pints. And because it still costs £120,000,000 to collect and test the blood it costs four quid more per usable pint.

So where did those percentages come from? Avert has some stats on HIV infection routes and their estimates of probable transmission vector show that out of the estimated 102,333 people with HIV in the UK at the end of 2008 there were around 44,537 men who will have been infected by sex with another man and 44,617 people who have been infected after having heterosexual contact. If we look at these numbers in the context of the UK population, estimated at around 60,000,000 for argument’s sake, then we can see that overall there is around a 0.075% chance of being one of the unlucky 100,000. If we then divide up the population into gay men and the rest then we can compare the two groups to see which group we’d rather be getting the blood from. Fortunately Avert has some stats on this as well, although they are from 2000 and so not as current: they say that 6.3% of men have had a homosexual experience involving genital contact, that’s in the region of 1,260,000 of which we have already established 44,537 are HIV+. If you do a few sums you’ll see that is as near as damn 3.5%.

For the rest of the population we’ll go with Wikipedia’s stats of 66% of the population between 16 and 64. We’ll then assume that of those 40 million only 90% are ever likely to have sex. The lucky 36 million also include the gays and lesbians, say 8 million total, so we’re only really dealing with 28 million straight people who have a fair shot at doing some fucking. 45,000 HIV+ out of a population of 28 million is as near as matters 0.16% although the risk is likely to be a lot lower if you have access to better statistics than I do.

So let’s get one thing straight: gay men are not discriminated against.

No, really they aren’t: if you are a gay man who has never had sex with another man then you can give as much blood as you please. If, however, you have enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh with another man as a gay man, bisexual man or just plain old curious straighty then you are asked not to donate blood because you belong to a group that has a statistically higher chance of having an STI such as HIV or hepatitis. If you feel that strongly about giving blood after that one time you had too much tequila and got arse fucked by the rest of the boys in your dorm then just tell a porky pie on the form and they’ll test your blood anyway. It’s all done on trust.

Changing the rules would mean more wasted blood (and consequently more wasted money) just to please the sensibilities of those who like to see victimisaton where it does not exist.

Half the HIV-carrying population can be screened out if 6.3% of men are asked keep their blood for themselves. That’s not discrimination, that’s common sense.

The recent UN World Drug Report 2009 (pdf) shows the UK to be a major consumer of cocaine and although it is hardly surprising that a drug popular with bankers would be popular in a country full of bankers, the response that Herr Gordo will opt for is likely to be exactly the opposite of the sensible and reasonable response.

A document which states that the UK has a drug problem is not justification to continue with the existing policies and strategy on drug use in some more draconian form, it’s simply a verification of the failure of the current policy on drug use. Let’s take the war on drugs; probably the least winnable war that the US and UK have entered into together despite very stiff competition. The war on drugs aimed to stem supply and thus drive up the prices, something which was never going to work anyway because drug manufacturers can manipulate the price like any cartel. With cocaine the effect was doubly useless because increased rarity just makes the drug more desirable to the target market.

Coke has this reputation of turning people into arseholes, actually the people who are arseholes on coke tend to also be arseholes the rest of the time because the cost and effect of the drug attracts the brash shouty wanker types. These people are not going to be put off by reduced supply, in fact by making the product more exclusive you push all the right buttons to make an occasional coke user want to carry a sack of the stuff round and show off to everyone just how much of a wanker they are because they have a steady supply of coke.

Incidentally I once knew a bloke who would buy coke at an inflated price in a boozer down one end of the Kings Road in Chelsea (yes, the shit end by the Worlds End estate) and then trot home to the nicer end by where Jane Asher has her cake shop and sell it in another boozer to his posh mates for a loss. The financial cost of operating the ‘business’ at a loss was less than the social capital he gained with his toff mates from being ‘the bloke who can get good deals on coke’.

Coke is a status symbol like cars are. People still defy sense by buying gas guzzling off road cars to use around London but the status of having a large car makes up for it. People are prepared to pay a premium for coke because paying the premium makes the product more exclusive and more desirable.

Oh, and the suppliers have actually reduced street prices for coke over the last decade or so which means the strategy of reducing supply has been a disaster.

So how about attacking the demand? You can make it more risky by imposing harsher sentences but do you really think an arrogant wanker who takes cocaine is going to be put off by that? If anything it’s another encouragement because cocaine users mainly believe that they either won’t get caught or are too fucking la di da to be given anything more than a slap on the wrist. High profile cases involving celebs using coke helps to reinforce the image that the police don’t mind drug use amongst top rate tax payers.

Cocaine, knife crime and gas guzzling cars; that’s three things the government says it does not like while the media constantly sex it up.

I just finished buying some tickets on Ticketmaster and at the end they offered me a choice of how I would like my tickets delivered. There were two options:

1. Get a link sent to me by email, click the link and then visit a page where I can print out the tickets myself. Cost: £2 processing fee.
2. Do absolutely fuck all and let Ticketmaster print the tickets and mail them to me. Cost: £2 processing fee.

Come on cockmonkeys, you’re not even trying. Option 1 clearly costs you less in time and effort than option 2 but you offer no incentive. From the consumer point of view the benefits of 2 are not balanced out by an increased cost so even the most retarded internet user is likely to go for option 2.

Sure, option 1 is more cost effective for Ticketmaster but I don’t give a scampering fuck about their bottom line so if they are cutting the cost of delivering the tickets and giving me the choice I expect there to be a reduction in the amount I pay in return.

Sheesh, c’mon Ticketmaster, it’s not rocket surgery.

I am currently holidaying in Florida and while there is a tropical storm brewing off the coast I have not been on the beach or kayacking in the Everglades and have instead been channel surfing during the rainstorms. I made the mistake yesterday of switching over on to CNN and thought I should share this little insight into how they do things over here:

Watching CNN is basically like punching yourself in the face with stupidity; if you ever wondered how Americans were led to believe things like the invasion and occupation of Iraq were a good idea then you just need to watch CNN for a few minutes to see the twisted version of reality they peddle in order to keep the US public fearful. I was watching a debate piece on the news that there may be stricter controls on the fuel efficiency of cars produced for the US market from 2o16 onwards. Let’s just say that last sentence back to ourselves out loud to make sure we didn’t miss anything. There “may be stricter controls”.  “May be”. Maybe.

That’s not “Obama is going to take away your truck”, that’s “if all goes well and this change in policy gets past all the corrupt senators and their oil lobby buddies, the car companies have got about seven years to start making cars that come somewhere near the sort of fuel economy that the world outside America and Saudi has come to expect for absolutely fucking ages”.

On a side note, I am renting a car here and have got a Toyota Prius and it’s totally the perfect car for the stop/start block by block driving in a country too thick to master roundabouts. I’m getting about 47mpg here and that’s while still driving like a cunt and slamming my foot down alternately on the gas and the brake pedals.

So anyway, CNN wanted to illustrate to the cattle what the new economy standards would mean. The target number is 35.5 mpg so they showed three typical vehicles and their fuel economy. In the blue corner, sporting stars and stripes and probably concealing a host of automatic weapons (for sport hunting, honest) there was a big truck, the sort you see all over the roads of suburban or rural America and parked outside every Steak & Shake. In the green corner was the aforementioned Toyota Prius, a car not suited for long distance journeys but perfect for nipping around town or cruising down a three lane suburban street between the traffic lights that seem to be placed every few hundred meters. In between the two, and set to illustrate exactly the sort of vehicle that Obambi wants the red blooded gun slinging american steak eaters to adopt was the tiny Smart for Two.

Now don’t get me wrong, the Smart car is an excellent vehicle and does indeed manage about 36mpg which is near enough dead on the 35.5mpg target they were discussing but it’s tiny and not something that the average fat bastard American could even fit in, let along work out how to switch on. It’s also painting a pretty bleak picture for them if they think that the roads will be filled with tiny cars that are small enough to fit in their trailers.

Surely a less worrying comparison would have been an Audi A4, a car which does 35mpg in the combined urban and highway tests. Maybe a nice Renault Scenic which can comfortably carry several passengers but is also capable of around 35mpg? How about just about everything in the Volkswagen range which can do high thirties to mid forties? The Smart car made a much more dramatic news piece though because it illustrated the extremes that CNN wants the cattlefolk of America to fear rather than the reality of what will happen if the bill goes through. The rest of the world (or at least the bits outside of Saudi and the US) have been managing quite well with cars that average around 30-40mpg for ages and the only reason the US has never bothered to catch up is because they have never had to, with petrol at around $2.50 a gallon at the pumps (that’s around 35p per litre) a car that pisses petrol out the back is still a cheap one to run, as the US government has never had the stones to tax the great American penis replacement they just have to hope that legislation will gradually force the big dinosaurs of car production to play catch up with the technology in almost every European’s driveway.

Of course the cynical would say that asking GM and Chrysler to sort out their fuel economy is as pointless as telling Jade Goody to sort out her elocution, a little fucking late in the day.