Cuba, no hay ni papas

@yoanisanchez.

#cuba No se ria, comprendame: llevo 2 horas en una larga cola para comprar papas. Pero que voy a hacer? No pruebo una papa desde hace meses.


#cuba No he logrado alcanzar papas. Regreso a casa, con la bolsa vacia pero esta noche estara la revista Voces... alimento espiritual.

En Arabia Saudi, un tweet que “ofende” a Mahoma te puede condenar a muerte

Amnistía Internacional (Firmar petición).

Unos mensajes escritos en Twitter sobre el profeta Mahoma han provocado una cadena de desdichas para el joven twittero Hamza Kashgari. Los mensajes, considerados ofensivos, han herido muchas susceptibilidades en Arabia Saudí: destacados clérigos lo han acusado de apostasía (renegar de su fe) e incluso el propio Rey ha pedido al Ministro del Interior que detenga a Hamza y se le exijan responsabilidades. 

Hamza empezó a recibir amenazas de muerte y huyó del país, pero su vuelo a Nueva Zelanda hacía escala en el aeropuerto de Kuala Lumpur. Allí fue detenido y devuelto a Arabia Saudí, acto que convierte a las a las autoridades malasias en cómplices de lo que le suceda.

Hamza Kashgari está detenido y en peligro inminente de ser condenado a muerte. Existen precedentes de personas condenadas a muerte en Arabia Saudí por comentarios considerados contrarios al islam y por lo tanto, apóstatas. La apostasía es uno de los muchos delitos por los que se aplica la pena de muerte en Arabia Saudí, país con el triste honor de ser uno de los máximos ejecutores del mundo. 

Por otro lado, es poco probable que Hamza reciba un juicio justo. En Arabia Saudí rara vez se permite a los acusados contar formalmente con un abogado, en muchos casos no son informados de la marcha de los procedimientos judiciales contra ellos y pueden ser declarados culpables sin más pruebas que confesiones obtenidas con coacción o engaño.

Walter Lewin

Antonio Martínez Ron.

Más física - More Physics.

Returning to the classics

Russ Roberts.

I recently had a chance to talk with Steven Kates and he drew my attention to an essay of John Stuart Mill, Of the Influence of Consumption on Production. There really is nothing new under the sun. The obsession with consumption is just a little older than Keynes. Mill’s essay, an attack on the idea that inadequate consumption is a problem, was published in 1844. Here is how it begins:

Before the appearance of those great writers whose discoveries have given to political economy its present comparatively scientific character, the ideas universally entertained both by theorists and by practical men, on the causes of national wealth, were grounded upon certain general views, which almost all who have given any considerable attention to the subject now justly hold to be completely erroneous.

II.2
Among the mistakes which were most pernicious in their direct consequences, and tended in the greatest degree to prevent a just conception of the objects of the science, or of the test to be applied to the solution of the questions which it presents, was the immense importance attached to consumption. The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, according to the prevalent opinion, was to create consumers. A great and rapid consumption was what the producers, of all classes and denominations, wanted, to enrich themselves and the country. This object, under the varying names of an extensive demand, a brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and sometimes totidem verbis a large consumption, was conceived to be the great condition of prosperity.

II.3
It is not necessary, in the present state of the science, to contest this doctrine in the most flagrantly absurd of its forms or of its applications. The utility of a large government expenditure, for the purpose of encouraging industry, is no longer maintained. Taxes are not now esteemed to be “like the dews of heaven, which return again in prolific showers.” It is no longer supposed that you benefit the producer by taking his money, provided you give it to him again in exchange for his goods. There is nothing which impresses a person of reflection with a stronger sense of the shallowness of the political reasonings of the last two centuries, than the general reception so long given to a doctrine which, if it proves anything, proves that the more you take from the pockets of the people to spend on your own pleasures, the richer they grow; that the man who steals money out of a shop, provided he expends it all again at the same shop, is a benefactor to the tradesman whom he robs, and that the same operation, repeated sufficiently often, would make the tradesman’s fortune.

II.4
In opposition to these palpable absurdities, it was triumphantly established by political economists, that consumption never needs encouragement. All which is produced is already consumed, either for the purpose of reproduction or of enjoyment. The person who saves his income is no less a consumer than he who spends it: he consumes it in a different way; it supplies food and clothing to be consumed, tools and materials to be used, by productive labourers. Consumption, therefore, already takes place to the greatest extent which the amount of production admits of; but, of the two kinds of consumption, reproductive and unproductive, the former alone adds to the national wealth, the latter impairs it. What is consumed for mere enjoyment, is gone; what is consumed for reproduction, leaves commodities of equal value, commonly with the addition of a profit. The usual effect of the attempts of government to encourage consumption, is merely to prevent saving; that is, to promote unproductive consumption at the expense of reproductive, and diminish the national wealth by the very means which were intended to increase it.

II.5
What a country wants to make it richer, is never consumption, but production.

He was on to something.

Sobre la reforma Laboral

La destrucción del derecho laboral: ¡qué miedo! Francisco Capella.

Reforma Laboral. Xavier Sala i Martín.

Reforma Laboral: ¿Y ahora qué? Xavier Sala i Martín.

No es nuestra reforma, pero es una buena reforma (con un riesgo importante). Luis Garicano.