If you’ve read any of my recent posts on the subject (see panel to your right), you’ll understand that the fight for global abolition is just beginning. Questions surrounding definition, policy, will, and ability have kept governments from acting for generations.  For the victims, it is a matter unimaginable fear and uncertainty that has kept most from speaking out.

But today, on Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday, solace can be drawn in knowing that the plight of these voiceless millions are at least being discussed.

The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) just released its first ever Global Report on the subject and although the message wasn’t overwhelmingly positive, a significant progress is being made.

During the press conference, Antonio Maria Costa spoke about a great number of worrisome trends that have taken shape. Below are a few quick points listed early on:

• Of the 155 countries that provided information, a large number of them have not taken it seriously to the extent that 40% have not convicted a single person. Suggesting instruments put in place by the UN to assist these countries are not active. (chart taken from report)
• 80% of human slavery is based around sexual exploitation but he went on to warn that, “this may be an optical illusion in the sense that it is the most commonly reported because it is the most commonly visible.” He especially noted this to be true in richer areas like North America and Europe.
• Globally, minors represent approximately 20% of the problem but make up to the majority in some locations.
• Women play a large part not only as victims, but also make up a very high percentage of traffickers in Eastern Europe and much of Africa.

(Related media regarding Slavery and the Economic Crisis and on an Individual Level found can be found at the bottom of this page.)

Regardless of the grim message given out during the press conference and discussion panel, it is important to know that the fight is just beginning and that the UN appears to be in it for the long haul.

Philanthropy and National Government answer the call

Not only are the international organizations stepping up their efforts, but national governments and powerful members of the private sector are making it clear that 2009 can be the year where the tide finally turns.

In October, former President Bill Clinton spoke out during the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative Conference on the topic of slavery, “this is something I intend to take up next year” while referring to Kevin Bales book “Ending Slavery: How we Free Today’s Slaves”. He further accurately concluded that “it’s hard for me to believe that we can solve it [slavery] on a sustainable basis unless in every country there is an economic model that can at least minimize the inequality trap.”

Without a doubt, any pledge from a large philanthropist organization is a reason to rejoice. In the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2007 Annual Report, not once were the words “trafficking” or “slavery” mentioned, but with $131,450,000 worth of revenue, and a reported $7.3 billion already committed for the coming years, his pledge to fight slavery in 2009 is extremely promising.

Working on the momentum that George W. Bush’s administration helped bring about, Barack Obama spoke out on trafficking during his campaign. “This has to be a top priority… What we have to do is to create better, more effective tools for prosecuting those who are engaging in human trafficking… Sadly, there are thousands who are trapped in various forms of enslavement here in our country… It is a debasement of our common humanity.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged “to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery; we have wage slavery. And it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.”

During the recent Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged “to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery; we have wage slavery. And it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.”

Coming out and using the word slavery is in itself a big step forward

Frederick Douglass spoke out in caution shortly after Lincoln’s congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment that “it has been called a great many names, and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth.”

His words could not have been more true with everything I’ve been commenting on in the last few weeks.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the United Arab Emeriates, a former Tier 3 country has been contributing an incredible amount of energy to changing their image.

Even with the Harper government still in power in my country of Canada, baby steps have been taken by making the end of human trafficking within and without of our national borders a priority. In early 2007, a motion (C-153) was unanimously passed in the House of Commons that we need a national strategy to combat human trafficking. Furthermore, amendments to the criminal code for mandatory minimum prison terms of five years for the trafficking of children have been put in place.

Whether it be baby steps as just mentioned, or major steps, whether by strong words by the new US administration and promises by philanthropist organizations, the acknowledgement and new commitment is something beautiful to behold.

Related Media:

• Audio comments on Slavery on the individual Level
• Full UNODC Report on Human Trafficking
• Executive Summary of the Report

Below is a list of cognitive traps we fall for when it comes to dealing with the economy:

1. Availability bias, which causes us to base decisions on information that is more readily available in our memories, rather than the data we really need.
2. Hindsight bias, which causes us to attach higher probabilities to events after they have happened (ex post) than we did before they happened (ex ante).
3. The problem of induction, which leads us to formulate general rules on the basis of insufficient information.
4. The fallacy of conjunction (or disjunction), which means we tend to overestimate the probability that seven events of 90 per cent probability will all occur, while underestimating the probability that at least one of seven events of 10 per cent probability will occur.
5. Confirmation bias, which inclines us to look for confirming evidence of an initial hypothesis, rather than falsifying evidence that would disprove it.
6. Contamination effects, whereby we allow irrelevant but proximate information to influence a decision.
7. The affect heuristic, whereby preconceived value-judgements interfere with our assessment of costs and benefits.
8. Scope neglect, which prevents us from proportionately adjusting what we should be willing to sacrifice to avoid harms of different orders of magnitude.
9. Overconfidence in calibration, which leads us to underestimate the confidence intervals within which our estimates will be robust (e.g. to conflate the ‘best case’ scenario with the ‘most probable’).
10. Bystander apathy, which inclines us to abdicate individual responsibility when in a crowd.

Further to the above list, taken from Niall Ferguson’s book “The Ascent of Money” (But it, read it!)) below are a few further study extractions:

In a famous article, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky demonstrated with a series of experiments the tendency that people have to miscalculate probabilities when confronted with simple financial choices. First, they gave their sample group 1,000 Israeli pounds each. Then they offered them a choice between either a) a 50 per cent chance of winning an additional 1,000 pounds or b) a 100 per cent chance of winning an additional 500 pounds. Only 16 per cent of people chose a); everyone else (84 per cent) chose b). Next, they asked the same group to imagine having received 2,000 Israeli pounds each and confronted them with another choice between either c) a 50 per cent chance of losing 1,000 pounds or b) a 100 per cent chance of losing 500 pounds. This time the majority (69 per cent) chose a); only 31 per cent chose b). Yet, viewed in terms of their payoffs, the two problems are identical. In both cases you have a choice between a 50 per cent chance of ending up with I,OOO pounds and an equal chance of ending up with 2,000 pounds (a and c) or a certainty of ending up with I,500 pounds (b and d). In this and other experiments, Kahneman and T versky identify a striking asymmetry: risk aversion for positive prospects, but risk seeking for negative ones. A loss has about two and a half times the impact of a gain of the same magnitude.

If you still doubt the hard-wired fallibility of human beings, ask yourself the following question. A bat and ball, together, cost a total of £1.10 and the bat costs £1 more than the ball. How much is the ball? The wrong answer is the one that roughly one in every two people blurts out: 10 pence. The correct answer is 5 pence, since only with a bat worth £ 1.05 and a ball worth 5 pence are both conditions satisfied.

I remember wondering if the city would see its glorious completion or if it will instead become a ghost-city; a blistering reminder of the folly’s of reaching for the for sun too soon. As we drove around the city I was told to look at the rail system, amusement parks, desalination plant, downtown cores and any of the several mega projects. All of which were under construction.

I also remember being told about the supposed issues regarding human right violations that had to do with the migrant work force. At the time, beyond registering the words, I thought nothing of it and continued with my tour.

Fast forward a few years…

It appears as if the world economy really is bringing the city to a halt. As of a few days ago, reports are coming out that up to 52.8 percent of projects ($582 billion worth) are going on hold or being cancelled outright in 2009 because to the global crisis.

Consequently, I began thinking of human rights violations mentioned on my bus ride.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the United Arab Emirates received a fairly large black eye in the human rights department when an HBO report revealed the child camel jockey abuses taking place.

To summarize, children from poorer parts of the world were sold as camel jockeys, fed practically nothing to remain small, lived in miserable cage-like environments and suffered physical and mental abuses by the hands of their captors.

Further along, migrant workers (making up an astounding 90% of the country’s workforce) had their passports  illegally taken from them so to prevent them the option of changing jobs, lived in tight living quarters (typically eight to a room), reported salary’s being withheld completely for months at a time and so on.

Lastly, the trafficking of sex workers became a strong industry thanks in part to the growing tourist industry in the area.

So I was a little surprised when I found out that the UAE had donated $15 million to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT).

So I was a little surprised when I found out that the UAE had donated $15 million to the United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT). This was no small donation as evidenced by the overview released early last year.

“Formally launched in March 2007 by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and made possible by a generous grant from the United Arab Emirates, UN.GIFT is a call to action, reminding Governments, civil society actors, and the media, the business community and concerned indivuduals of their common commitments to fight trafficking in persons, and that this battle can not be fought, or won, alone.”

Initially this all seemed a bit like a way for the UAE to buy themselves out of the international dog house. But after doing a bit of snooping around, it appears the policy makers in the UAE are serious about reforming their human rights image. 

Scanning through their 2007 Annual Report on Combating Human Trafficking I found nearly all of the UN recommendations on migrant worker reform.

Some direct quotes from the report below:

“The UAE is fully cooperating with all appropriate international and regional law enforcement officials to apprehend and punish anyone who violates the UAE’s human trafficking laws. This cooperation also extends to ensuring the swift prosecution of human traffickers who may attempt to use the UAE as a conduit to violate the anti-trafficking laws of other countries”

“In parallel to the UAE’s tough stand on anyone convicted of trafficking, the UAE is deeply concerned about the victims of this crime and their physical and emotional well-being. We are committed to the development of ongoing nationwide social support programs that protect and care for these victims, humanely, promptly, and justly. Identified victims are also being provided all possible financial and human resources to support, strengthen, and expand initiatives that seek to help them at every level. “

They have further broken down their route of action with what they call the Four-Pillar Action plan which include legislation, enforcement, victim support, bilateral agreements and international partnerships.

Strict laws regarding violation can be found in Federal Law 51 of November 2006 which states: “The 16-article law spells stiff penalties against traffickers ranging from one year to life in prison and fines of 100,000 dirhams and one million dirhams (US$ 27,500 and US$ 275,000).

Other checks and balances include:

• Salary to be paid out electronically so to prevent cash payment of salaries. This is supposed to ensure timely payment of funds while giving government access for monitoring purposes.
• Working and living condition improvements such as the prohibition of work in open labor sites during the midday summer hours.
• Company fines of up to US$8,000 and the banning for any addition contracts for three months for any violation.
• A new unified contract valid for two years (employment security), 
• Copies of the contract provided in both English and Arabic to the two parties plus the government (transparency)
• A month’s paid leave in two years and medical aid provision
• In case of death of the domestic worker, employer is responsible.
• Special labor courts for speedy resolution of cases.
• Direct government involvement in negotiations to increase salaries of workers in some sectors.

The list goes on and I recommend giving it a look.

These guarantees are something that migrant workers in my home country of Canada are not even close to getting. This complete 180 turnaround in policy as far as the UAE is concerned is very welcome considering the worsening of policy toward human trafficking in much of the world but there remain many questions that only time can answer.

As with everything else (as mentioned in a recent article on slavery and government), it is difficult to tell how many of these rules will be enforced and to what degree. As one considers the economic crisis we’re in today, it’s possible that sudden financial constraints will prohibit these policy changes from ever taking shape.

As it stands however, it appears the UAE is doing everything in their power to rid their country of the blemish of human trafficking and other violations that have been plaguing them in recent years. 

Tick tock.

Not wanting to be all doom and gloom, I’ll start by suggesting that there are indeed pockets of light to be found in the middle of this seemingly unending tunnel of despair. In a future post, I promise to shine some of this light for you. But for the time being, there is solution in understanding that broken policy, broken execution and finally broken government need to be addressed before the possibility of ending slavery can be considered.

Firstly, there is an issue of policy

The creation of an admirably minded policy can be conceived and outlined without too much controversy or concern. Its execution however, is an entirely different monster. Execution regarding the abolition of human trafficking has been fumbled into oblivion with contradiction and missteps for longer than you can possibly remember. 

To put things into perspective, allow me to formally introduce to you the tiered grading system the United States has been using since 2000.

• Tier 1: Countries working hard toward abolition, and succeeding.
• Tier 2: Countries working hard toward abolition, and failing.
• Tier 2 Watch List: Countries on Tier 2 requiring scrutiny because of an increasing number of victims or failure to provide evidence on efforts toward abolition.
• Tier 3: Countries making no effort toward abolition at all.

A country ranked in the first two tiers are treated with anything ranging from a thumbs up to a snarling frown from US officials depending on their apparent success. Once a country is relegated to the third tier however, mandatory nontrade sanctions are placed upon them. Sounds fair enough doesn’t it?

Fair, yes. Properly executed, no.

Part of the problem is being able to convince the powers that be who exactly belongs on the list and where. As usual, powerful trading partners that probably belong on Tier 3 are often placed lower on the list while the typical evil-doers (I can’t really use that term anymore can I? This is no fun without good ol’ W.) are almost certainly placed there. 

Benjamin Skinner writes in his A Crime So Monstrous:

“The only states that regularly faced sanctions read like a rogue’s gallery of reprobate American enemies: North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, and Myanmar (formerly Burma). If a friend of the United States wound up on Tier Three — as did the United Arab Emirates in 2005– it would invariably demonstrate “significant progress,” and the Secretary of State would reassess it as a Tier Two watch list country before the sanctions provisions kicked in.”

The UAE was the only country thanked in the introductory paragraph of the UNGIFT’s initial overview on slavery.”

The UAE has made news fairly consistently throughout the last few years for major infractions (Construction Workers, Camel Jockey, Sex Trade) but they also have a lot of money. Some of this money was used to finance the recently established United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT). The UAE was the only country thanked in the introductory paragraph of the UNGIFT’s initial overview on slavery. (More on this here)

UN.GIFT is days away from releasing their first ever comprehensive report on human trafficking, we will soon find out exactly where the UAE stands.

Further to the political motivations behind the tiered system comes the power of veto that the U.S. President holds. A good example of this veto power took place in 2005 and benefited none other than the good folks in Saudi Arabia. 

Benjamin Skinner writes,

“Miller won a symbolic victory when he convinced Condoleeza Rice to drop Saudi Arabia to Tier Three. The Saudis abolished legal slavery in 1962. But international organizations reported that the malfeasant rulers and other elites countenanced domestic slavery, and often held slaves themselves. Surprising no one, President Bush waived sanctions against the kingdom. With Iraq disintegrating, the United States was increasing reliant on its authoritarian partners in the region. None was bigger than Saudi Arabia, against whom Miller later acknowledged that the sanctions threat was always “purely theoretical.”

It’s the same old story that we’ve been hearing on Saudi Arabia for years. They appear to have a lot of nasty policies regarding human rights but also have a lot of money. Alas.

Similar struggles to relegate countries such as India to Tier 3 have ended in similar ways. It’s just like Pirate Code in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. The entire system is based around “more what you’d call “guidelines than actual rules.” (I threw that in there for kids)

Moving on to the actual execution of things

There is an unimaginable number of simultaneous happenings taking place around the world today. Government’s have to deal with a great number of these things and even in the best of times, compromises are made.

George W. Bush did more to free modern-day slaves than any other president yet, as Skinner writes, “on the subject of human bondage, history does not grade on a curve.”

… on average, the Bush administration spent as much money in two days to free Iraqis as it did in six years to free slaves.”

It is true that the Bush years did bring about some good things, but when the Iraq War began in 2003, many of these things were put out to the curb. Quoting Skinner again, “Just as Vietnam undid Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, Iraq undid Bush’s war on slavery. On average, the Bush administration spent as much money in two days to free Iraqis as it did in six years to free slaves.”

Still, compared to the UN, the United States remains as the front-runner fighting modern day slavery around the world today.

Until 2007, there was no UN body specifically designed to work toward abolition at all. Partly because of this, a clear focus was never provided to the several under-funded branches of the United Nations that are spread out around the world.

Below is a basket of words that are repeated over and over by Skinner throughout his research:

“UN organizations approached the issue of Haitian slavery as they handled modern slavery in many other countries. Without drama, without creativity, without effectiveness. The UN Human Rights Commission continued, as it had for fifteen years, to “express concern”. From its air-conditioned and heavily fortified headquarters in Port-au-Prince, UNICEF issued lengthy studies on the problem of “children in domesticity,” dancing around the issue of slavery, but explicitly refusing to employ the term.”

Even worse than complacency is when the sworn protectors become part of the problem. John Miller, the anti slavery tsar until his resignation in 2006, had several reports in which the UN Peacekeepers “pressed girls into slavery in the Congo, purchased sex slaves outright in Cambodia and Eritrea, and became-known “less for peace than for rape.””

These cases are surely part of the vast minority of peacekeepers out there. It is worth mentioning nonetheless. In matters of action, the question of urgency is always key. Sadly, more often than not, there simply is none.

Finally, there is the issue of broken government

Regardless of intent, whether genuine or not, a weak or non-existent government doesn’t have the capacity to end any type of slavery that might exist within its borders. Some of the strongest offending countries are either devastatingly poor, corrupt, uninterested or all of the above.

When former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was moved into exile during the 2004 rebellion, “foreign donors recalled millions of dollars in pledged aid. Haiti’s GDP shrank nearly 4 percent while its population grew by 2.3 percent. Parts of Haiti fell out of government control entirely.” It was during this period that the rural Haitian children fell into bondage in greater numbers than ever before.

The 2008 Human Trafficking Report has a number of countries that are in neither of the three tiers and are instead listed as special cases. In nearly all of these cases (Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia to list a few), there is simply not enough information available to adequately rank, the government simply doesn’t exist, or the population at large doesn’t understand or accept a problem even exists.

There is no doubt that government on every level need to provide the proper infrastructure and institutional surroundings to make the battle winnable. And there is much hope that they are doing exactly this.

It can easily be argued that national and international governments have been late in stepping in to win the fight, but at least it appears that they are coming together to make an effort.

It remains a David Vs. Goliath type battle, but at least there is a battle.

According to Google, a lot of people are writing about, and searching for a lot of the same stuff in great numbers. Below is a list of descriptive/emotional adjectives people search for. Click the Links to see photo gallery.

• I eat: 33 000 calories a day, too much, your skin, people
• I am tired: all the time, of life, of being fat, of living, of being alone, of being broke
• I am scared: of dying, of the dark, of the dentist, of Barack Obama, of people, of dogs
• I am sick of: my life, being fat, everything, being alone
• I am insane: and you are my insanity, with anger, -ly bored, -ly jealous
• I am going: to die, to commit suicide, to be a dad, to be a big brother, to die alone, to hire a wino
• I am not: a paper cup, a crook, obsessed, a plastic bag, an animal, a cop, happy
• I pooped: my pants, a hammer, blood, in my pants, my diaper, too much
• I ate: a pie, everybody, a big red candle, his liver, too much today, a raw chicken, moldy bread, the plums in the icebox
• I am never: happy, satisfied, full, horny, gonna give you up, gonna let you down, broken, late
• I am the: walrus, cheese, warrior, avalanche, way the truth and the life, the very model of a modern major general
• I lost: the game, my social security card, my voter registration card, my voice, on jeopardy, my phone, my passport, my job, my iphone
• I forgot my: administrator, windows, yahoo, myspace, gmail, hotmail, aim passwords and to remember to forget
• I drank: your milkshake, before I knew I was pregnant, too much, while pregnant, a fifth of vodka dare me to drive
• I smoked: pot with johnny hopkins, two joints, while pregnant, a lot of grass, but didn’t inhale, weed
• I had: a dream, the time of my life, a bad day, an abortion, too much to dream last night
• I: love you, can has cheezburger, kissed a girl, am bored, am legend, love money, touch
• I am very: bored, sad, depressed, appreciated, lonely, shy, bothered, well, angry, interested in this position

Everything except not break that is

About two months ago I, as per standard notebook operating procedure, raised the screen of my MBA when without warning I heard a rather unpleasant cracking noise. That didn’t sound healthy, I thought to myself. Lo and behold, the right-hinge attaching the screen to the rest of the machine was now broken. There was a little piece of plastic on my desk that wasn’t there a second before and something that I could only invent as a storm of fury poured through my entire being.

If you know anything about hinges, they exist for a reason. The newly broken hinge forced the weight of the monitor onto the unfortunate, suddenly lonely left hinge. Overcompensation like this can only lead to further trouble, so I was forced to prop up the right side with whatever I could MacGyver at the time. This sucks, I realized, as I picked up the pieces and slowly went through the steps of making things right.

Fortunately for me, my story has a happy ending

After bringing the MBA into the Apple Store for a technician (aka. Genius) to take a look, I was told that it would be replaced under warranty. I was told that cosmetic damage of this sort isn’t typically covered, but since the rest of the laptop body was in perfect condition, an exception could be made. Hurrah!

Unfortunately for others, they were not so lucky…

… the cost to repair the damage has been quoted at anywhere from $450 to $800!”

After browsing the web for the same thing, I found a good amount of people with the same problem. However, many of these people couldn’t convince their Genius that the screen wasn’t dropped or opened too far back so they had to pay for the repair out of their own pocket.

You figure a little hinge couldn’t cost more than the price of a bag of gold fish right? Wrong! The cost to repair the damage has been quoted at anywhere from $450 to $800! This is because the entire screen needs to be replaced instead just the hinge.

It is a bit worrisome to me that you can either be charged upwards of $800 for what now appears to be an obvious design flaw OR have everything covered under warranty, all depending on the mood of the Genius you randomly approach.

Also of note, this seems to be happening at an alarmingly increasing rate. Most of the complaints have happened within the last month or two. It’s as if, presumably unbeknownst to the machine’s creator, the hinge can only handle a years month of regular use before the break occurs.

I’m not looking forward to being warranty free at the end of this year and have the same thing happen again.

I contacted The Consumerist about the problem and they’re looking into it.

For now, here are  some relevant links I found on the subject:

• Minspace Blog (see comments)
• Scoopz Blog (excellent photo gallery)
• Apple Forum
• On Flickr - 1, 2, 3
• On YouTube - 1, 2, 3 (this happened to mine before the break. Possibly related)

1. Learn about this generation’s challenges: Become acquainted with the underlying science of sustainable development. Educate yourself in the environment, development economics, climate change, public health and other relevant fields. Keep up to date with weekly and monthly scientific magazines and websites.
2. Travel: Seeing other places and cultures is the best way to understand the common interests, aspirations and challenges that are unique to different parts of the world.
3. Get Involved: Start or join an organization committed to sustainable development. Scale is of lesser importance than any effort given to activism regarding extreme poverty, public health, and environmental threats. Some of the most successful efforts started as tiny grassroots efforts (Grameen Bank, Partners in Health, CIMMYT)
4. Encourage Community Engagement: Your outreach efforts can inspire others to join the cause of global sustainable development.
5. Utilize Modern Technology: Use Social Networking and Bookmarking sites to spread and support social activism as a cost free way of reaching a large number of people.
6. Get Politically Engaged: Demand out of your local politicians that they need to push to honor your government’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. They work for you, they just aren’t reminded of this enough!
7. Engage Your Workplace: Every Company can add to global sustainable development. Make sure the company you work for complies with the standards of corporate social responsible by adhering to the standards of the United Nations Global Compact. Going green can make for good business practice.
8. Live personally according to the standards of the Millennium Promises: Seek out contacts across countries, cultures, and class divides to ensure that we can each appreciate the common interests of our generation. Lead among your friends and collegues by acting as an sustainability conscious consumer.

The actual book has examples and a more thorough breakdown on all of these points. Pick it up if you’re at all interested.

In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s bestseller “The Black Swan”, he discusses the inherent flaws of prediction while asking the reader to focus on the under valued likeliness of randomness and uncertainty. The title itself derives from actual black swans that, until seen by Western eyes when Australia was discovered, were unknown to exist.

Until this point, it would have been perfectly reasonable to say that all swans are white. But when the first black swan was introduced into the mix, all bets were off and each of the notion that all swans are white would have become obsolete.

Throughout history, there have been major instances that could fall into the black swan category. Events like Black Monday, the fall of the Soviet Union, the monumental rise of the Internet, and 9/11 are all black swans in their own right. Human hindsight and historical reconstruction are responsible for coming up with the explanations of why these events took place after the fact.

Think About the Thanksgiving Turkey if You Will

Every time the bird fed, the notion that the human keepers are simply looking after it would be reinforced (provided the turkey had the capacity for these thoughts). After a thousand days of the same feeding schedule, the poor turkey would have no reason to believe that suddenly, on an apparently random day, the pattern will end and snap, life will come to a sudden and unexpected end. But that exactly what happens.

I’m going to leave the explanations vague and unsatisfied right there (check here or the book for more) so that I can start tying it into Jeffrey Sachs’ predictions on sustainable growth.

Throughout his most recent book “Common Wealth: Economics For a Crowded Planet” Sachs uses recent economic, social and environmental trends to predict things like the convergence of global income per capita, rising ocean levels and all the typical Al Gore.

The statistical culmination of these trends are then used to back up just about every prediction in the book. Many of these predictions look so far into the future, without considering black swans, that it’s likely the numbers would have to be reworked every few years.

For example, he uses the average US economic growth of 1.7% per year as a guide for predicting where their economy will stand in relation to others by the year 2050. Since many other developing countries have a higher percentage of annual growth (on a smaller scale of course) he suggests the gap between everyone will one day converge. 

I find it difficult to believe that everything will go exactly according to plan based on historical averages for the next 50 years. Those pesky Black Swans are sure to pop up every once in a while. I accept that he is simply making an effort to organize the topics in the book as a strategy for figuring everything out. It is just my of my humble opinion that the scale of his approach detracts from the optimism he presents.

I wonder how his approach would have differed had he released the book after the black swan that is the current recession instead of months prior.”

He does at times acknowledge the possibility of Black Swans with words like, “Of course, this scenario is highly optimistic in that it assumes the world avoids any prolonged crisis, that the United States grows at the historical average, and that all other countries achieve convergent growth.” But these scattered bits remain more as an afterthought than an actual concern throughout the book. 

I wonder how his approach would have differed had he released the book after the black swan that is the current recession instead of months prior. I suspect his optimism would be dulled down quite a bit.

Making far reaching predictions based around a loosely defined, unpredictable human system is impossible to do with any certainty. Nobody can guess what surprises are in store for us in the next fifty years. He is simply one of thousands of modern day Nostradamus’s that hopes some of his guesses stand up against the test of time.

Ultimately, I suppose he is making an effort with the information he has available to him. This playing with the future on this scale is too much. I think these concepts were once explained to me during Back to The Future II, but I have since forgotten the what to make of it.

This entire argument was full of holes wasn’t it?

In conclusion, I’ll just repeat that the future is uncertain and that all predictions, no matter how thoroughly they were researched, are simply guesses. It seems Jeffrey Sachs forgets this sometimes.

My brain hurts, I think it’s time for some pink lemonade.