Coffee house economics

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Studies show that women are far better than men in predicting the flow of finance. My mother is no exception.

I was conversing with her over Skype when she shared with me her insight on price and wealth.

In my current residence in Cairo I have noticed the great disparity of prices even within the downtown area. A bottle of water which on average costs less than a dollar (4 LE) in a local Egyptian hotel lobby or shop easily becomes three or four times in tourist destinations. This makes absolute sense, a tourist is willing to pay a higher price because even the inflated price is equal to or below what he is used to back home. However, upon closer observation, this disparity in prices appear as a symptom of a wider problem.

Why are the tourists unable to leave their hotels and take advantage of the cheaper products? Tourist destinations like the Egyptian antiquities museum is not like a sports stadium where you are not allowed to bring in anything nor is it the case that you cannot reenter once you exit the compound. There are many shops across the street from the museum that sell bottles of water for a cheaper price, yet the tourists opt for the more expensive shops within the museum compound.

From what I have seen, I believe that the tourists are absolutely frightened by Egyptian society. The streets are filled with trash and the traffic system is an absolute nightmare. On top of this women have a legitimate cause to be afraid of Egypt. Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in July 2008 reported that 98 percent of foreign women and 60 percent of Egyptian women are harassed on a daily basis. Another report from the government stated that 47 percent of married women between 15 and 49 are subjected at least once to physical violence.

As a result, tourists travel in packs and never come face to face with the real Egyptian society. The shops in tourist destinations are able to take advantage of the tourists’ fears and sell at prices that seem absurd for Egypt’s cost of living, keeping the Egyptians out. Furthermore, the wealth from tourism is never spread among the masses despite the presence of cheaper local shops across the street or closer.

While my family lived in Amsterdam my mother observed that the price for a cup of coffee in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam, was the same as one in downtown Amsterdam. The reason for this is because the flow of tourists and population is unregulated by the risk of hazard in the Netherlands. A person is as likely to go to a bar in Amstelveen as she is to go to a bar in Amsterdam because there are no major inhibiting factors.

If Egypt truly wishes to maximize its return from the vast number of tourists it needs to shape up and make serious changes. People need to take care of their own streets and stop pestering foreigners for tips. The dispersion of the tourists into Egyptian society will bolster not only the wealth of the local people but also ease the travel expenses of the tourists themselves.

I say the first step will be to establish a democracy. More on this later.

Best,
Yong Kwon

p.s. an interesting article here

This aggression will not stand, man

Dear Sirs and Madams,

Historicism dictates that the specific rhetoric utilized in deliberating our moral dilemmas indicates our society’s attitude, culture, and values. Observing the political language since and before the Bush administration betrays something highly disturbing. Enshrouded within the popular rhetoric exist the oppressive institutionalized suppositions that falsely pose as mediums for debate while marginalizing independent assessment.

Observe the value of justice. The debate in the popular media following the invasion of Iraq was whether or not the war in Iraq was just. However, to even contemplate the matter seems redundant. It is absolutely unjust for any state actor to contemplate the exchange value of individuals' lives and demean the basis of life, liberty, and justice by sacrificing innocent civilians without their consent. To debate whether or not a specific war is unjust would be to imply the plausibility of certain wars to be just.

The very fact that we have a rhetorical medium in place that could possibly justify war is unsightly. Presupposing that wars ‘should be just’ alters the inherent nature of war and undermines the premise of any argument against war. This makes any engagement in a debate a concession.

With this semantic shift, war itself enters into a definitive crisis. It goes from a form of excessive brutality to a legitimate solution, bolstered by human rationale. Robert McNamara said that the problem with war is that the human race have not yet grappled with the rules of war. However, how do we produce civility out of something that is inherently uncivil. Today, official terminologies such as “smart bombs” and “minimized collateral damage” work to exacerbate the basic fallacy in society’s perception of war.

Rationalization of war is not a modern construct, but there is a clear difference in rhetoric used in the past and today. When Britain engaged France during the Napoleonic War, Pitt never proclaimed that British victory would in any way better the French people. To the extent of my knowledge, even during the Second World War, the Allied forces never used the liberation of the German people from Nazism as a cause for war. In fact, the only precedence upon which the western civilization took it upon themselves to impose the benefits of war upon the opposing peoples was during the brutal imperial aggression against the peoples of colonial possessions.

The misuse the utilitarian value to justify war is a modern construct and is rooted in the perverse language used by the imperial powers with racist presuppositions. Journalist and author Chris Hedges writes that war "corrupts language... preoccupied with the grim perversities of smut and death". War rhetoric and war stories are addictive. Moral philosophers like Adam Smith recognized this danger in the Wealth of Nations. This corruption of reasoning through attractive rhetoric may be best depicted in the Coen brothers' movie The Big Lebowski in which the protagonist repeats President Bush's (senior) quip "this aggression will not stand".

We are deeply engaged in the semantic game established for the specific purpose of controlling independent public interpretations and institutionalizing the acceptable debates. Our entire society, regardless of whether or not we are for or against state intervention, has been duped into a trap. An illusion of a plausible ‘just war’ is created by establishing parameters on the rhetoric utilized in debates. The public conscience is effectively limited to a foregone conclusion established by the ideological apparatuses of control. The current mass media perpetuates and consolidates these parameters. For the sake of providing legitimacy to an illegitimate debate, the public rationale was sacrificed, processed, and institutionalized.

As we again charge into Afghanistan and Pakistan with renewed resolve under the new administration, let us not forget that no war is just. There will be many more innocent deaths and lives ruined despite the best intentions of the United States. This is the reality of war and I guarantee there will be unintended consequences.

Let us be always skeptical of our governments' best intentions.
Afterall, intellectual laziness leads to state abuse.

Best,
Yong Kwon

"Smokey, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules... Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?" - Walter Sobchak from The Big Lebowski

Quote of the day

"Indeed, the test of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence of starvation among its masses."

- Mahatma Gandhi, Economic and Moral Progress, December 22, 1921.

Adam Smith on popular conformity to war

Dear Sirs and Madams,

I would like to briefly exalt the genius of Adam Smith. His commentary on the relationship between society and government still has great relevance to our society today despite being written more than two centuries ago. I found this quote in the Wealth of Nations and I thought I would share it here.

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

- Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 3

Just as in Vietnam, where the death of middle class adolescents sparked the anti-war movement, the reversal of popular sentiments on the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan may require a more close-to-home impact for the middle class, suburban Americans. It's a sad reality, yet one that needs to be engrved in our memories as our new president prepares to jump further into the mountains of Hindu Kush.

Best,
Yong Kwon