ma.....CHINGA!

Yet another marvellous week has just passed
in a liberty english camp in Lithuania. This one
was titled: Casey Youth Conference on Liberty
and Entrepreneurship (CYCLE) [check it out at:
profitfromfreedom.org]

It was very exciting for me this time, because
though I had been a teacher in previous camps;
the teaching had always been done in small group sessions.
This time however, I had my first opportunity
to give a large group lecture for over 50 people!
I was nervous, but I think it went well, and I was
very happy about it. My talk was on the different
classifications of goods and services (rivalrous
and excludable), and particularly public goods.
I gave examples of public goods that people
generally assume must be provided by the government,
and how they are morally and practically provided in
better ways by the market. Roads were one example.
Then I encouraged them to always consider how
the market should be the solution; entrepreneurs
are incredibly creative and with the incentive
of profit serve consumers best. Thus, such principles
should be applied to even the toughest of issues where people
automatically think that the government must be involved.


The talent show was even more magnificent
than those last year, which I thought would be
near impossible to beat. One tradition that carried
on was that of the "laughing contest" which was absolutely hilarious:


Finally, the group picture looks just about the
same as last year (same colours and all)
but I am including it anyway:


Overall it was marvellously fun stuff.
There was a greater emphasis put on entrepreneurship,
with some real live extremely successful investors
to inspire us. My head is filled with business plans
and the intentions to 1) discover opportunities
and 2) execute! Hopefully the inspiration lasts.
Oh, and I even bought a 1/2 oz. of gold from Lobo.
It was all definitely a great experience, but one that
was very different from the extreme intellectual and
philosophical stimulation that took place during previous camps.
And, I still might have to concede that nothing could beat last year's camp...

Dear communists,

According to Marx, communism is achieved
after first having feudalism (thesis) then capitalism (antithesis).
Capitalism will eventually collapse and socialism will occur (synthesis).

In this case, in order to gain a natural socialist system
you should encourage capitalism to its fullest extent. This will
advance the progress towards its collapse and bring about socialism.

If capitalism were allowed to function freely, and it capitulated
as an unsustainable system; then sure, I'd be down to try socialism.
As for now however, let capitalism happen without interference, give it a chance.
Trust me, according to Marx it's all a part of the recipe for a lovely socialist society.

Love, Kenli

elevator music.

People have mentioned to me before that their level
of effort in classes depends greatly upon their teachers
and whether or not they were inspired by them.
I had never really thought this to be the case with me,
but I am starting to realise how incredibly it actually is.

Last term I had two wonderful engaging lecturers
and I absolutely loved attending their sessions and
doing the work for their courses. The professor for
my third course was quite dull but not entirely miserable,
and I discovered that I was doing only the bare minimum
(in my standards anyway) for his class. Luckily I had
taken the subject previously so I managed to do well
without spending much effort.

Also, one of the professors I enjoyed was actually not
even that great at teaching, but his passion and liveliness
were enough to inspire me to study on my own. So though
I may not have actually learned all that much from his
lectures themselves, I still learned a great deal more
just because his attitude made me appreciate the subject.

This term I have the more incredibly dull professor.
Her lectures are like elevator music in that it goes on in
a unexciting monotone that no matter how much focus
is paid to her nothing she says is memorable in the slightest.
Not only that, but she does not add a single thing
to her powerpoint presentations, and thus her lectures
are entirely not worth attending.

This provides quite a dilemma for me because I
am accustomed to attending all my lectures and tutorials,
but for once I truly think that either sleeping through
those two hours or spending that time just reading the
textbook would be vastly more beneficial.
Ah, what to do, what to do?

25 random things about me

Sorry to let you down, but I'm not actually
going to do the survey. This is thing on
facebook that is annoying so many people
because they're getting tagged so many times.
You know, I really don't mind. I actually quite enjoy
reading them sometimes, provided that the
content is funny and not just like 14. I like travelling.
I think however, I'll save my answers for the next of such
fads, because hopefully the topic will be better :)

Well here's one random fact:
25. I've dyed my hair almost every colour on the spectrum:
yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, and black.
yepp, I have actually.
ANYWAY, I bring this up because I'm in the process
of dyeing my hair right now. It's been over a year
since I have, because I suppose I've changed over time.
I realised it over the break when George said to me:
"Why don't you dye your hair any more?
Have you like, grown up or something?"
Hahh, well perhaps I have. Which could also be why
even though I'm dyeing it, it isn't something
oh so radical as i would have done before.
Kekoa even said to me that he remembered
when I had yellow hair, and he said "that's when I first fell in love!"
jokingly of course, but I do admit that it is strange
that I've drifted so far from my previous trademark
of a new colour every week. It's funny how things
change like that, but it's to be expected.

Here's the most vibrant picture I can find:

déchiré!

Je suis déchiré comme Phoebus.
Hahha, pas vraiment, mais un peu.
Je sais que j'ai beaucoup de chance,
et je suis très heureuse pour ça.
Mais avec beaucoup de choix sont
trop de décisions. Peut-être je peux
comprendre pourquoi des gens ne
veulent pas trop de résponsabilités
dans ses vies, parce qu'ils doivent penser.
Et plus, ils doivent vivre avec les
conséquences. C'est une chose dificile.
C'est comme Dostoyevski a écrit dans
sa texte << Les Frères Karamasov >> qui
est un de mes livres favorits.
Je sais que les décisions sont dificiles
mais je pense surtout que je les veux.
Avec la liberté, il y a beaucoup de
responsabilités; mais je préférais de
me décider plus que la gouvernement
décider pour moi. Je sais ce que je veux
plus qu'ils savent.

[C'est amusant que j'ai commencé avec
le sujet d'amour, et comme toujours j'ai
parlé de la sujet de la liberté. Mais les deux
sont liés. Qu'est-ce qu'on pense de la liberté
déterminer tout.]



Maintenant je suis contente avec ce que
j'ai choisi, mais il y aussi les autres choix
qui j'espère que je peux choisir aussi.
Si je peux vivre les vies multiples je serai
vraiment satisfait! Malheureusement, j'ai
seulement une vie, alors je dois décider et
aussi prendre des resultats. En fin, je suis
vachement contente avec la vie. C'est le
première fois que je suis heureuse avec quelqu'un!
Quelle surprise!

Je ne sais pas pourquoi, mais cette vidéo ne marche
pas sur mon blog, alors regarde-la ici:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3KSuVtvhmU

there's no business, when there's snow business

[blog title credit to Alec :)]

ANYWAY, there has been brilliant amounts of
snow these past days here in England. It hasn't
snowed this much here for some 18 years I think.
Transportation and businesses were closed across
the country, and they even ran out of salt for
de-icing the roads!

It has been absolutely fantastic for me to experience
seeing that I never had any snow in my childhood.
I grew up with movies about snow days and winter
adventures, but never had them myself.
We used to make sand angels and have sandball
fights, but that's nothing compared to snow!



PS. Watch the video I made for Ire:
[I made it because he finds the way americans
say "Laboratory" to be absolutely hilarious]

VAT

Walking down the street to Tesco
I noticed that many shop windows advertised
action regarding the recent lowering of the VAT.
I even got a text from O2 saying that
they would give me back a few pence with
each top-up because of the VAT policy.

This all made me think of Robert E. Lucas'
assertions on rational expectations. I wrote about
this not too long ago in my macroeconomics essay
for uni, and it was a really interesting concept to me.
According to Lucas, rational expectations negated
fiscal policy actions because humans were not
so easily fooled by the policies and continued
to act according to the reality of the economy.

For example, the government may put forth policy,
such as the lowering of VAT in order to make things
cheaper, which using Keynes' model they expect
to stimulate spending in the economy with a multiplied effect.
Nonetheless, people are not imbeciles,
they do not just see the lower tax rate and
say "Ooh, I think this means I should go on a shopping spree!"

The present situation of Marks and Spencers
is a testament to the ineffectiveness of the fiscal policy:
"The swift repeat of the M&S sale day suggests that
high street stores have seen little impact in their tills
of this week's 2.5 percentage point cut in VAT."
-So good it is doing it twice The Guardian 3 Dec 2008.
(see the article here)

Particularly in the current situation, the news of
the credit crunch and recession have been so
widely discussed that all are aware of it.
Therefore even though people know that they will
save a few pence on their groceries, they are not
going to drastically change their spending habits
because they know that the economy is not looking good
in the near future so they must be cautious.

In any case, what is so wrong with being cautious?
There is a atrocious amount of debt in developed countries
from the excessive use of credit cards. Perhaps
people should take this opportunity to give their
credit cards a rest and have a lesson in saving.