Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

Excellent visualization in the NYT showing how Americans spend their time.

Debt as GDP % for the top 20 debtor nations — if you notice, despite our high debt, we are quite a bit lower on the totem pole.

Data was sourced from Index Mundi.

I have talked about India’s merchandise trade here before. Looking at the First Quarter Review for 2009-2010 published by the RBI, things don’t seem to have improved a whole lot (although the markets certainly are showing some signs of an upturn).

…this is how it would be spent.

So, more debt stuff. Here’s a chart showing the comparison of debt between the US, China and the World, with percentages.

Data was sourced from Index Mundi.

Based on my previous debt pie chart, I’ve had several people ask me for a population comparison on the side. I’ve done one better – here’s a chart showing debt owed per person.

And shown below is a comparison of percentage debt with the percentage population. Click on the population chart to view a bigger version with values added.

Data was sourced from Index Mundi and Wolfram Alpha.

Here’s a comparison of world debt by percentage. Data is sourced from Index Mundi.

…is receding. Or so it would seem, at least according to Google Insights’ web search interest for the term recession.

Either that, of people have finally figured out for themselves what on earth a recession is all about.

How much surface area would be needed to power the world, entirely through solar panels?  Not all that much, it would seem.

(Source: Information Is Beautiful)

The Augustine Commission’s report last week released a summary of NASA’s human spaceflight initiatives. While the findings are not necessarily surprising, Rand Simberg raises an rather valid question on the consequences of taking risk out of space travel.

One of my very favorite books of all time is Isaac Asimov’s End of Eternity. The story is about humanity discovering time travel. However, unlike other time travel stories, End of Eternity examines a humanity which uses it as an instrument of “good”.

It is often said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it is with humanity’s ability to alter its past. After all, if we could go back and undo all the bad and unfortunate events in our past, why wouldn’t we?

However, the end result isn’t quite so pleasing as one would think. A civilization that has failed to take chances and fall on its face has learnt little, and has little to show for experience in dealing with hard situations. Therefore, progress is severely constrained and civilization stagnates.

I will neither spoil the story nor reveal the ending for my readers, but suffice it to say that today, we are fast moving towards a risk averse society. People are unhappy with risk in life, in society and in science. Children are taught not to take risk and learn from their mistakes, but are rather taught to fear failure when in fact they should be taught to take their chances.

Of course, one must understand where this stems from. After all, every unseen specter in life can be taken care of by insurance (or lawsuits).

Unfortunately today, even those who understand risk aren’t always the ones who stand for it. This has been exacerbated in part by the current financial crisis, where it is often portrayed as the bogeyman for the risk-challenged*. Given the effect of human perception of probability, risk and uncertainty in human decision making, this is to be expected. It should therefore surprise nobody that risk is the most feared thing in an all too frightened society.

Western society’s increasing aversion to risk is a surprising shift from just a few hundred years ago. Back then, the very foundation of colonialism was rooted in adventurers seeking new territories to explore, conquer, convert — but mostly — to exploit. People took their chances, and if a few died, well that is just an unfortunate risk that they signed up for.

Today, however, exploration is not looked at quite the same way. If anything, most nation states are becoming increasingly risk averse. Worse yet, the ones that are not are the totalitarian regimes and regimes with scant regard for human rights. That is a conundrum because the nations with the technology and the means to explore space are risk averse, and the ones that are willing lack the technology. And even if they did not, they would be exploiting their populations to achieve their goals.

Let me step back a moment and admit that the extreme aversion towards risk is a foreign concept to me. Oh, I can certainly understand why people would be afraid of something — after all, as a bad horrible swimmer, I would be nervous to jump into the deeper parts of an ocean lest I drown. However, I would at the very least be willing to try my luck in the shallower waters to see if my worries were justified. In fact, I have cliff-jumped from over 80 feet into the deep end of a river and have almost drowned — but at the very least, I established a data point that deep water and me do not quite mix (at least not when jumping off a cliff).

Therefore, as someone who gets his adrenaline high from climbing (and on occasion, stock trading and bad driving), I think that a deep fear of risk is not only irrational, but also detrimental to our survival as a species. After all, while there is certainly a risk, there is also a reward.

Given this, let us say that I am offered the chance of going to Mars on what is certifiably a one-way trip. Would I jump at the chance? Absolutely. In fact, I am far from a minority. I have several friends — pilots, climbers and assorted adventure-seekers who would be more than willing to put their life at risk in the achievement of what could be an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

After all, given a chance between base-jumping and going to Moon or Mars, I know what I will choose.

(*Ed note: I have the greatest respect for Taleb and Mandelbrot; however, risk is not the enemy – a poor understanding of risk is.)

“Get on with the times, man. 9/15 is the new 9/11. The day Lehman collapsed.”

(The friend shall go unnamed — unless he chooses to comment here, of course.)

Scott Sumner over at The Money Illusion talks about the best prediction of the past twenty years. He makes the case that Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 prediction that the victory of democracy backed capitalism is pretty much a forgone conclusion is the most impressive of them all.

1. The world has gotten much more peaceful. I recall reading that the last couple years were the most peaceful in all of human history (and pre-history for that matter.) Perhaps someone can find the article.

2. The world has gotten much more democratic. The number of democratic countries has soared at the fastest rate in history, by far.

3. The world has gotten much more market-oriented. There has been a huge wave of privatization and deregulation of prices and market access. And this trend extends far beyond the formerly communist countries.

So the obvious choice for most successful prediction is Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 claim that “history was ending,” that the great ideological battle between democratic capitalism and other isms was essentially over, and that henceforth the world would become gradually more democratic, peaceful, and market-oriented.

While it is an interesting idea, I am unsure that this is necessarily the case, for a variety of reasons. Just like economic booms and busts, political systems also go through periods of maturity. Right now, with aging populations in the west and rising populations across the world, looming food and water shortages and several nations (including nuclear-capable ones) hurting economically, we are at the perfect cusp for war.

Professor Sumner’s argument for China, while interesting, is also questionable:

I get very annoyed when I see people say “the Chinese case proves that economic development doesn’t inevitably lead to political liberalization.” There are so many problems with this sort of statement that one hardly knows were to begin. China has seen incredible political liberalization since 1978, indeed even some progress since 1998. But what about western-style democracy? To answer that question, consider the list above. I would argue that China most resembles Thailand. Both have similar per capita GDPs, both have a huge split between the urban elite and the rural poor. My hunch is that consciously or subconsciously, the urban residents of China are not thrilled by the idea of a pure democracy that would effectively turn the country over to the rural poor. But wait a few decades, when China goes from being 60%-70% rural, to 60%-70% urban, and from mostly poor to mostly middle-income, and from mostly undereducated to mostly educated. Then let’s see how Fukuyama’s thesis holds up.

The perfect anti-thesis of this is India, where despite the educated elite feeling thus, democracy succeeded. But no, more fundamentally, my argument is that democracy by its very nature will squash minorities. His example with the Christians of Lebanon highlights this — would a Christian in Jordan want a liberal western-educated ruling monarchy, or would they prefer a democracy where the majority pretty much consider them mortal enemies? And unless the minority has critical mass, democracy as a system will seek homogeneity, which sooner or later begins to resemble a socialist structure (at least socio-economically).

In this regard, I do not think we’ve ever really seen a “democratic” system evolve through to completion.  And until we do, it is too early to say whether Fukuyama is right, or just plain mad. After all, most of Fukuyama’s statements are normative at best — isn’t it the hallmark of science and rigor to at least aspire to be positive?