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Religion and markets are good for you

My favorite things to ridicule on this blog are religion and marketing, and I generally wish people would be nicer to each other. Imagine, therefore, my surprise at learning that people in societies entrenched in world religions and with well developed market systems are far more likely to be kind and helpful to strangers.
The scientific journal Science tells the story of how members from 15 different societies were asked to play the three “economic games” Ultimatum, Dictator and Third-Party Punishment. As it turned out, people living in isolated non-religious societies without functioning market economies cheated more and were less likely to punish others who cheated.
“A good society is defined more by how people treat strangers than by how they treat those they know,” writes James Surowiecki in The Wisdom of Crowds. If this is true, religious, market-based economies are better than more “natural” ones.
Who knew?

Justice in India

I have earlier on this blog laughed at luxury pen maker Montblanc for marketing a Gandhi pen in India. Not just that it costs 1.1 million rupees ($23,000), the equivalent of an apartment in India, it is also against the law to use the figure of Gandhi without permission from the central government.
Accordingly, Montblanc had to apologize to the Kerala High Court last month for violating the Emblems and Names Act, and has stopped selling the pen in India.
The Financial Times calls the fiasco a “peril of blundering into India’s cultural minefield.” I call it not using your head. When marketing executives take a curious and humble interest in other cultures than their own, these things don’t happen. When they don’t, we get the Honda Cunt, the Mitsubishi Masturbator and the Montblanc Gandhi.
And the rest of us get something to laugh about. Shiva bless ’em.

Go, Latvian Neo!

Gotta love the internet. A hacker in Latvia who calls himself Neo is busy posting the salaries of people masterminding cutbacks for regular citizens. According to the tax records Neo “stole” from the government, some employees of the Latvian central bank take home more than 40,000 dollars a month while wages are being slashed in the rest of the country.

This sort of greed is nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it would be sensational if “leaders” anywhere led by example and cut their own wages. Also familiar is the assignment of blame (“hacker”, “steal”, etc) to the guy who brings this conduct to light. In my view, the problem is the inflated wages of those close to power; not that fact that someone uncovers them. Why are records of government employees kept secret in the first place?

I know we’re not supposed to like hackers, but I’m making an exception in Neo’s case. He deserves a raise.

Alta Velocidad

I just got back from a week in Spain, which included a dizzying ride on the Ave high-speed train between Barcelona and Zaragoza.
Topping 300 km/h, the trip took less than an hour and a half. Last time I travelled the stretch, I spent four hours on a bus. And next year, Madrid will be linked to Valencia by Ave, shortening the train ride between these cities from three hours to 45 minutes.
So now I have to wonder – when is Sweden going to start thinking similar thoughts? To get from Stockholm to Kiruna for some hiking, you have to spend 19 hours on the train. That’s an average speed of 69 km/h. With Ave speeds, that could be shortened to five hours.
As a rich, innovative and stable country, what are we waiting for?

Why worry about Turkey?

So now Turkey is mad at Sweden for adopting some sort of resolution calling the killing of Armenians in 1915 genocide. Here, I can get worked up in several different ways. For instance, doesn’t Turkey have better things to do than worry about what other countries call an event that took place during Ottoman rule? And why does this particular event deserve endless attention decade after decade? Or rather, not the event in itself but what people should be allowed to call it.
Mostly, however, I wonder why the Swedish government feels the need to say anything at all about it. Is the government’s job not to take care of its citizens? Why are they wasting time commenting something that took place in another country 95 years ago?

Liselotte Lööf

I almost always like to show how I’m a man of the people, so whenever I walk past a garbage truck I try not to look disgusted or superior. That’s about to change now, though, since the garbage men at our bostadsrättsförening aren’t picking up our trash anymore. They come now and then, sure, but they’re supposed to be here twice a week and our containers are overflowing.
Anyway, besides being pissed at this, the whole episode has me wondering how happy Liselotte Lööf is about naming her company Liselotte Lööf AB. For about 15 years it was kind of cool for a woman to run a garbage outfit, with her name in big bold letters on trucks all over Stockholm. Now, though, she will be “the lazy bastard who didn’t pick up our garbage like we paid her to” for the rest of her life.
How smart was that?