Happy new year 2016

Happy new year, 2016. Let us stay positive and optimistic this year and the succeeding years. On this note, I am reposting 9 of the 16 reasons given by Daniel Hannan, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament (he blogs at www.hannan.co.uk), and I added the 10th reason, with two charts from Human Progress.

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http://www.capx.co/16-reasons-to-be-cheerful-about-2016/

16 reasons to be cheerful about 2016

By Daniel Hannan  @DanHannanMEP

1 January 2016

Iain Martin closed the old year with 15 reasons to be cheerful about 2015. Let me open the new one with 16 reasons to be cheerful about 2016.

1. The world will be richer. According to the IMF, global GDP will increase by 3.8 per cent in 2016, up from 3.3 per cent in 2015. It’s easy, when you’re sitting at a computer screen in a developed country, to say “GDP isn’t everything”. But, in most of the world, 3.8 per cent growth means vaccines and schoolbooks and clean water and bicycles and electricity.

2. The world will be cleverer. IQ is rising by around three points a decade. There are various explanations as to why: better nutrition, smaller families, a greater propensity to abstract reasoning in post-agrarian societies. Whatever its cause, the trend shows no sign of slowing. As well as getting better at using our brains, we know more. We now have a better understanding of evolution than Darwin, a better understanding of economics than Hayek – not because we are brighter than those titans, but because we are a click away from information beyond their imagining.

3. Humanity will become interconnected. In developed countries, we will benefit from the spread of social media and Uber and Airbnb. But the real breakthrough is in poorer countries, where the challenge has been getting Internet access at all. Various schemes are now underway to bring the world online, including a plan by Google to use balloons. It’s worth noting that these networks are developing because of the profit motive, not because of state aid.

4. Energy will be cheap. Some analysts expect the price of oil to continue to slide, perhaps to as little as $20 a barrel. Others forecast a slight recovery. But no one thinks it will return to the three-figure sums that we recently took for granted. Cheap energy isn’t just good news for consumers. It also means cheaper production costs, and a competitive lift to the entire economy.

5. Despots will be weaker. Which countries stand to lose most from the plummeting oil price? Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela. And populist socialism will peak.

6. Poverty will fall. According to the World Bank, fewer than ten per cent of the world now live in extreme poverty, defined as $1.90 a day or less. That figure has fallen by more than two thirds since 1990, as previously closed economies joined the global market system. The total eradication of extreme poverty now looks not just feasible but likely.

7. India will become a global power. The world’s largest democracy is, for the first time, becoming an active international sponsor of democracy.

8. The world will be greener. The Paris Conference marked a shift toward achievable carbon targets embraced voluntarily by nation-states – a far more realistic policy than the previous idea of rules enforced by a global bureaucracy. But there is more to environmentalism than global warming. Indoor cooking fires, which are arguably the most noxious pollutant of all, are being dispaced. More agrarian land will be “rewilded” in 2016, as modern farming leads to greater yields from the same acreage. More species will be taken off the endangered list.

9. The world will be healthier. It looks as though we have seen the last case of polio in Africa, and the disease may be eradicated from its last hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan this year. Yaws and malaria may not be far behind; even measles and rubella are on their way to extinction.

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10. Food world prices will continue to stabilize, if not decline. Here are 3 charts to support this optimism.

After peaking in early 2011, Vietnam rice price has declined. One more reason why rice protectionism in the Philippines should end and allow the poor to have more access to cheaper rice from our neighbors in East Asia.

source: http://humanprogress.org/static/2602

Overall world food prices have increased in the past decade. The massive conversion of food output to biofuel is partly responsible for this. Corn and other crops were used to feed cars and trucks, not people. By 2013, prices have stabilized and mildly declined.

source: http://humanprogress.org/static/2617

We have entered a world of rising prosperity, rising food security, rising human freedom. Not abruptly but slowly and surely. Happy new year, once again.
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See also:
Fireworks and Liberty: New Year 2012, January 01, 2012 
Happy New Year, January 01, 2013 
Top 10 News in 2014, Happy New Year 2015, December 31, 2014 
Thank you, 2015, December 31, 2015 
Top 10 good news about the world, Happy new year, December 31, 2015

Top 10 News in 2014, Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year friends.
May we be even happier in 2015 compared to 2014 and  previous years.
Well, there are reasons for optimism, and here is my list of the

Top 10 global news of 2014

1. Economics 1, Cheap  oil.

Thank you competitive capitalism for reasserting yourself. OPEC cartelization and cronyism is boink, shale oil and gas capitalism is cool. We have entered a world of rising abundance. The on-going cheap world oil further affirms that.

That's for the last five years. Here is the chart for the last 45 years.

2. Economics 2, Inequality de Piketty

Inequality is good and natural, and Piketty and the UN, WB, IMF, ADB, governments, socialists are wrong to complain about rising inequality. If my statement is wrong, then I demand that my income should be at least 1/10 that of Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, even if I work only two hours a day and drink and party 10 hours a day. Today's poor are better off compared to the super-rich 100 or 50 years ago.

3. Economics 3, No fiscal crisis and low interest rates

This is from The Economist magazine, November 20th 2014 issue. Fiscal crisis by many fiscally irresponsible governments (FIGs) in Europe and elsewhere in 2014, all they do is spend-tax-borrow-borrow more. If supply of credit does not keep up with demand forl credit and debts, interest rates should go up. This did not happen. Which means capitalism worldwide is adjusting and getting  more efficient, producing  more surplus that it can  continue to bailout those FIGs with low interest rates even if they continue with their endless borrowings policy.

4. Politics Asia, Hong Kong protests and call for democratization

To hell with you communism, hehehe. China communism and dictatorship is lousy; to extend that dictatorship to a former British colony that championed free trade, yes, unilateral free trade, is lousy too. 

But as I argued repeatedly, freedom of expression should not curtail freedom of mobility of other people. Thus, I did not support prolonged occupation of HK's streets and thus, I support the clearing of those unoccupied tents that block major roads. 

5. Politics Mid-east, IS in Syria and Iraq

Lots of violence and intolerance. Their big problem is that people, including their fellow Muslims in many countries, are getting more intolerant with intolerance and  violence. Thus, while they gained prominence at the start, they later gained notoriety and condemnation later.

6. Politics Europe, Russia and Ukraine

Booo, Vladimir Putin. Military invasion and occupation is too taboo these days. Only dictators and insecure leaders would do that.

Now #1 above, cheap oil, is piercing huge holes on your dictatorial leadership. Fellow dictatorship in China is now bailing you out. 

7. Climate, Climate extortion

$500 B a year of climate money from rich countries to developing countries? wow. Actually some extortionists are joking. While they demanded $100 B a year in 2009, revised the estimates to $500 B a year, the UN climate spokesperson suggested $6 trillion a year. Wow.

Money money money, always sunny, in the climate alarmism and extortion world.

8. Health, MERS-CoV and Ebola

One of the many faces of MERS-CoV victims in the Middle East, my sister in law, Gemma B. Oplas, In this photo, she was holding my elder daughter while they were in Bacolod City in 2010, her lone kid Lois looking on. 

An ER nurse in a Saudi government hospital in Riyadh, she was taking care of a MERS patient who ironically survived, she was infected, she did not survive.

MERS-CoV, Ebola, dengue, HIV, H1N1 and other infectious diseases, are living and evolving microorganisms, They will keep evolving and spreading themselves. There is nothing we can  do about them except have proper isolation  system  of victims, and have evolving treatment to evolving diseases. More science, more innovator medicines, less politics.

9. Sports, World Cup

Horrible loss for Brazil, the host of 2014 soccer World Cup. After barreling its way to the championships, it lost to Germany 1-7, agghh!

But the common global excitement of Europe vs S. America in the Finals or semi-finals has been affirmed. I wish to see an Asian team in the finals someday.

10. My 2^nd book :-)

Published by FNF PH office, this book reaffirms the beauty of classical liberalism, rule of law (not rule of men) and more civil society (and less government, less coercion).

Happy new year guys.

Happy New Year

Fireworks, nice food, wine, beer, other high octane or low octane drinks. Good way to greet the new year, always looking up, hopeful and cheerful for the coming year.

A good friend, Boye Quiambao, posted this in her facebook wall yesterday, I like it, so am reposting here.

Recipe for a Happy New Year
(Anonymous)

Take twelve fine, full-grown months and see that these are thoroughly free from old memories of bitterness, rancor and hate. Cleanse them completely from every clinging spite. Pick off all specks of pettiness and littleness. In short, see that these months are freed from all the past -- have them fresh and clean as when they first came from the great storehouse of Time. Cut these months into thirty or thirty-one equal parts. Do not attempt to make up the whole batch at one time (so many persons spoil the entire lot this way) but prepare one day at a time.

Into each day put equal parts of faith, patience, courage, work (some people omit this ingredient and so spoil the flavor of the rest), hope, fidelity, liberality, kindness, rest (leaving this out is like leaving the oil out of the salad dressing— don’t do it), prayer, meditation, and one well-selected resolution. Put in about one teaspoonful of good spirits, a dash of fun, a pinch of folly, a sprinkling of play, and a heaping cupful of good humor.

Amen to that. Although it seems hard to follow all those gems of thought...  

On New Year's eve, I noted that the previous night, December 30, I did not hear firecrackers in our area in Makati. I took it as a good sign that many Filipinos have abandoned the idea of spending their money on costly, noisy and sometimes dangerous firecrackers.


I was wrong. By December 31, starting around 10:30pm, various loud blasts could be heard, getting louder and more frequent as 12am was approaching. My wife stayed inside the house, in bed with our two young girls, while I got out of the house before 12 midnight, I saw many people on the street, a few  were lighting various firecrackers while most were just looking on and cheering.

On the right, that's the "sinturon ni Judas" or Judas' belt, a long line of firecrackers attached to each other. Once lighted on one end, there will be hundreds of explosions one after the other, really loud, one has to stay at a distance. And see the remains after those long belts have exploded.  Photos not from my camera, got them from the web.

Some of the victims of those firecracker explosions on their hands, previous years. Photos from the web.

A friend called that firecracker addiction as "national insanity". Well, not exactly, more of personal insanity. I notice that less and less people are buying and exploding those firecrackers, they would rather look up the sky and watch various colorful fireworks on display at various parts of Metro Manila. Thanks to some rich individuals and corporations who spend big time for those elaborate and expensive fireworks, they entertain thousands of people.

Late last year, I attended three different parties/events in two weeks and they all have live band performers.



I like jamming with good and friendly bands. Just sing one or two songs and that's it. Usually I'm the first to do it, then other people in the audience later come up the stage and sing with the band too.

Hoping that 2013 will be better than 2012. Career wise, economically and financially, good health to my family and friends.

Cheers.

Fireworks and Liberty: New Year 2012

Happy New Year, 2012!
It's 6am here in Manila as I write this. Europe will have their 12:01 am of January 1, 2012 in two hours. Just one advanctage of being in East Asia, we're +7 to +8 hours GMT.

One good thing this new year -- there are less firecracker explosions than in previous years. Or there may be about the same, but they end quick.

Fireworks in Beijing. The fireworks culture has slowly set in among the Filipinos. There are many fireworks display in big cities around the country, especially in Metro Manila. Here in Iloilo City, there were also several fireworks display. It should be a case of the price of fireworks coming down, they are becoming more affordable to the middle class, thanks to competition among various fireworks manufacturers.

Another is that the gory photos and videos of people who lose their arms and other body parts has scared many people from buying those powerful firecrackers. There are also government campaigns, led by the DOH, to discourage people from lighting those firecrackers.

Fireworks in Taipei and Sydney. Luckily, I've been to these two cities. In October last year in Sydney, and November this year in Taipei, both to attend a conference. Taipei isn't really glitzy compared to say, Hong Kong or Singapore or Seoul, but Taipei 101 building is really tall and very prominent in the city.

Singapore and Sydney fireworks today. My trip to Sydney last year was my first and last, so far. I like that city, but like all other big and modern cities worldwide, it is expensive.

Fireworks mean glitzy and colorful lights on the evening sky. They also symbolize economic prosperity of the people, or some wealth (even borrowed one) of governments, who sponsor the celebration and light up the sky. And only liberty and economic freedom can guarantee economic prosperity. Economic monopolization and centralization, usually by political dictatorships, always result in disaster and mass poverty.

Once more from Sydney. Photocredit from Daily Mail, Here comes 2012! Spectacular fireworks light up the skylines as countries across the world welcome the new year

New year means new challenges. Or looking at old challenges in a newer perspective. Each passing day, month and year is a stepping stone to acquire new knowledge and new perspectives. Slowly we are building a more modern, more plural, more diverse but more peaceful society. There is less war around the world, and any existing wars are always sponsored by BIG governments with big armies and big debts.

And slowly we are building a more free society into the future. For ourselves, our children and the generations to come.