Market economy invented in Greece!

A couple of years ago I wrote about a local currency project in Helsinki. People in Kumpula are exchanging work to credits called kumpenni. This is nice, but there's the little issue that if the scheme actually becomes in any way significant, it will be stamped down by tax authorities because those local exchange money units are still taxable income.

Now, with the financial collapse of the Hellenic state, a bit similar system is gaining ground in Greece, as Guardian reports about the local alternative currency system called tems. Apparently on a somewhat larger scale than the tiny bartering system in Helsinki.

What is funny here is that Guardian is usually very strongly againts tax evasion. Now it has no problem:

Tems has been up and running for barely 18 months, said Maria Choupis, one of its founder members. Prompted by ever more swingeing salary cuts and tax increases, she reckons there are now around 15 such networks active around Greece, and more planned. "They are as much social structures as economic ones," she said. "They foster intimacy and mutual support."

Fine. But I do have a problem. What about employment insurances, income tax, VAT, all those taxes that The Guardian would normally think are definitely due to be paid by the employer and employee, and if you don't pay, you're a baddie? (Unless you are Ken Livingstone, that is.)

I'm the guy in Finland, one of the least corrupted countries in the world. I'm supposed to pay my taxes. I'm actually supposed to pay higher VAT (24 %) soon, now that the government wants to balance its budgets - so that it can afford the bail-outs given to Greece - and pay a higher membership fee to the EU (which takes a proportion of the VAT intake). And I'm supposed to pay a hiked income tax.

The Greek government is getting guaranteed bail-out money from my government, while it provides an official non-profit status for this barter network:

The Greek parliament recently passed a law encouraging "alternative forms of entrepreneurship and local development", including exchange networks such as Volos's, giving them official non-profit status for tax purposes.

And The Guardian is actually admiring this  way of showing practical solidarity – of building relationships. This is mind-boggling.

English language is weird

I mean, the English as used in England.

A Telegraph headline: Police refuse to say if shooting victim Anthony Grainger was armed. This was a suspected robber. Anywhere else - including ,astonishingly, Finland, Sweden etc - the headline would speak about "suspected robber", not "shooting victim".

The victimisation culture of serious criminals is really out of hand in Britain.

The police won't say if the man was armed. That is hardly surprising. Whatever the police says, if there is a tiniest error or debatable detail, it will be used against the officers in question and in justification for just about anything (including, but not limited to, arranging a riot, burning down a section of London, or emptying an electronics store of big screen TV's.

Lumitöiden tekemisestä

Koska sähköpostinjakelu Espoon kaupungille pompahtaa takaisin merkinnällä "Local Policy Violation (state 14)", julkaisen tämän avoimena kirjeenä.


From: pjt@iki.fi
To: mauri.suurperko@espoo.fi
Subject: Lumityöt

Arvoisa liiketoimintajohtaja

Luin ällistyksellä kommenttejanne lumitöistä Uudessa Suomessa - "älkää tehkö lumitöitä". Että kaupunkilaisten tulee "käyttää joukkoliikennettä ja olla kärsivällisiä".

Me kaupunkilaiset joudumme käymään töissä. Usein emme voi käyttää joukkoliikennettä mm. siksi, että emme voi luottaa sen kulkemiseen. Erityisesti huonolla säällä, jolloin näitä kehotuksia päästellään, on parasta luottaa omaan autoonsa, koska juuri silloin raideliikenne puuroutuu.

Sunnuntaina 19.2. joukko autoja jäi jumiin Jänismetsäntielle. Oli satanut lunta. Tietä ei ollut aurattu.

On toki ymmärrettävää, että sunnuntaipäivänä täytyy pitää taukoa aurauksessa, jotta kuljettajat saavat levätä ja kalusto saadaan tielle taas maanantaiaamuna. Eikä se olisi ollut ongelma nytkään: viisitoista senttiä irtolunta ei ole mikään mahdoton määrä, ja tavallinen liikenne selviää siitä kyllä.

Mutta liikenne ei selvinnyt siitä, että aura ei ollut käynyt paikalla edellisen, viikontakaisen lumisateen jäljiltä. Eikä sitä edellisen. Voi olla, että teidän kirjanpidossanne ja raportoinnissanne tie on aurattu; omalta osaltani voin vain kertoa että tosiasiassa tiet olivat auraamatta ja olivat olleet viikkokausia. Kun tie on auraamatta, lumi tamppautuu raiteille, ja lopulta sitä on niin paksu kerros, että kun päälle tulee uutta lunta ja tiellä ajava auto putoaa pois raiteen päältä, ajoneuvo on pohjastaan lumen varassa, pyörät eivät yletä maahan, ja eteneminen pysähtyy. Liikenne kulkee silloin, kun kukaan ei tule vastaan, jolloin voi pitää yllä riittävää vauhtia, mutta jos joutuu vaikkapa väistämään toista autoa tai jalan kulkevaa lasta tai vanhusta, niin meno tyssää siihen.

Lausumanne, että kaupunkilaisten ei itse tulisi kolata teitä, on käsittämätön. Kiinni jumiutuneet autot olisivat olleet Jänismetsäntiellä maanantaiaamuun, ellemme olisi hankkineet lähitaloista väkeä, jolla oli lumilapioita, kolia, hiekoitussepeliä, laudanpätkiä ynnä muita tarvikkeita, joita tarvitaan autojen irroittamiseksi ja tamppautuneen lumen irti hakkaamiseksi ja pois lapioimiseksi. Tunnin ahkeroinnilla saimme suman purettua ja enimmät lumet lapioitua pois tukkeutuneelta risteysalueelta.

Ymmärrän toki, että kun Espoo rakentaa eteläosiinsa metroa, se joutuu keskittämään kunnallistekniikan resurssit tuolle työmaalle ja sen ympärille rakennettavalle uudelle uljaalle asutukselle. Tiet ja kadut muualla on jätettävä vähemmälle hoidolle. 

Ehdottaisin, että Espoon kaupunki varautuu hieman nykyistä vähemmän ilmaston lämpenemiseen ja hieman enemmän talveen. Eikä ainakaan kannata paheksua sitä että kaupunkilaiset hankkivat nelivetomaastureita - tämä muuten pätee vielä paremmin naapuriin Helsinkiin.

Todettakoon vielä, että maanantaina 20.2. aamulla aura oli käynyt naapurustossamme. Jalkakäytävät ovat tietenkin auraamatta vielä tiistainakin ja ajourille tamppaantuneen lumen poistamiseen tarvitaan tiekarhu, mutta nyt tielle ei jää jumiin, kunhan autossa on hyvät renkaat. Polkupyöräilijät kantakoot kulkupelinsä. Hiihtäjät pärjäävät hyvin. Potkukelkkailijoiden mahdollisuudet pilataan paikoitellen hiekalla. Rollaattorit pysyvät sisällä.

Ehdottaisin, että jatkossa rajoitatte lehdistölle antamanne lausunnot yhteen sanaan, joka sisältää kaiken tarvittavan, ja ärsyttää vähemmän: "anteeksi".

Guggenheim for Helsinki?

Story by Telegraph.

As a Finn, I am not enthralled. Guggenheim wants license fees. Under this plan, they are guaranteed. By the taxpayer, who is giving a steady source of income for Guggenheim.

The studies alone have cost us a couple of million €. We're not the first one. There was to be another Guggenheim on lower Manhattan. There was to be Guggenheim Rio de Janeiro. For Guggenheim Guadalaraja, the city paid for plans and donated the plot, but it didn't come up. Guggenheim Hermitage Vilnius should be by now up and running but it is not.  Et cetera. Most of these projects have found that the original funding plans were unrealistic, as explained by Alaston kriitikko.

There was Guggenheim Hermitage Las Vegas - now, this plan had an an impressive combination of artistic heritage and money, and they actually built it, but it didn't fly; it was shut down in 2008.

Bilbao is quoted as a success story with so many tourists visiting the city, but I think that the sudden availability of £20 flights for the benefit of  British and other booze cruisers - brought to you by European flight deregulation which happened at the time - to go get some cheap wine is a better explanation than artistic ambitions. I don't say it wouldn't be a nice museum. I just don't trust the business case.

Now, if the funding structure for Guggenheim Helsinki would be built a bit differently, I would be all for it. Just make the contracts so that Guggenheim, not taxpayer, takes the risk. You're OK to use the current calculations for visitors and revenue. Just show them you're serious with them. If the planned numbers of visitors are reached, Guggenheim gets to keep 90 % of additional profits. That'll suit me.

If their numbers are to be trusted, they should have no problem accepting this. If they don't accept, that should tell us something: it could be that those who are behind this plan are keen to take risks, with other people's money, not their own.

Cynically riding a dead girl

A hit-and-run drunk driver killed an 11-year-old girl  in Helsinki three days ago.

The story itself is familiar- though less common than what people think - from previous cases: man is drunk, goes driving, does gross DUI. Hits a girl at a zebra crossing on a dark evening, panics, drives away leaving the girl to die, feels bad, tells someone, goes to his workplace, drinks more, and gets arrested when the police find him.

Now, people are furious. This is pretty understandable, because the man's action was deplorable. I listened to the radio the following morning:

"They should lock him up for the REST OF HIS LIFE!"
"Drink drivers should NEVER get their license back!"
"Alco-lock must be made COMPULSORY in all cars!"
"The legal limit for drink driving must be made lower! ZERO!"
"Speed limits must be lowered!"
"This must never happen again! Anything must be done to prevent another case like this!"

And so on.

I'm very sorry for the girl and her family. I'm even a little bit frightened: I don't drive under influence, but accidents can happen, and if I had an accident - perfectly sober - the reaction could still be something similar.

What happened was dreadful. But these responses are silly. What troubles me is the  knee-jerk reactions, populism and cynical exploitation of a dead child. This may result in bad legislation and unwise decisions.

They should lock him up for the rest of his life!

In Finland, it is generally recognized that harsh punishment does not prevent crime. We don't have the death penalty, and even for pre-meditated murder - the most severe of crimes - the standard jail term is around 14 years. Why should DUI be more harshly punished than e.g. intentionally stabbing someone?

Yes, this man, who had a history of many drink driving offences, drove under influence and hit a small girl. But as far as we know, he didn't intend to kill the girl. It was an accident. He did take a risk that should be considered reckless behaviour. What made it worse was that after the accident, he drove away and left the girl to die. He should not have panicked, he should have stopped there, he should have tried to help the girl, he should have called an ambulance. He did not. This was bad, but it was far short of pre-meditated murder. In mitigating factors, it seems he had a troubled past but was now actually working, and had a clean record for long enough time to get his driving license back. In my opinion, he should get something that is close to the maximum penalty for gross unintentional homicide, which is six years, plus some additional time for the DUI. For that, because he is a "first-timer" (meaning he has not been inside during the past three years), he would do maybe 2 years in prison.

Now, in my opinion that is a ridiculously short sentence for what he did, but it is in line with other sentences given in this country. He should get justice, not more, not less, and this is what is considered justice in Finland. The system in this country believes that putting criminals in prison does not help. Why would we think that drink drivers are somehow more responsive to harsh punishment? I would think to the contrary.

There seems to be some kind of an emotional reaction that goes with certain kinds of crime - drink driving and sex crimes come to mind - but it's really very illogical. These are the kinds of crime where the criminal probably does less risk analysis before the act concerning the possible punishment if he is caught. I mean, who would do DUI if you were sober? If we were logical, we would rather first make the sentences tougher for crimes where there is more risk analysis beforehand, such as economic crimes, burglaries, the all-so-common organized bicycle theft racket, metal theft, drug trade, human trafficking and so on.

Driving under influence is bad but it is not that dangerous. Drink drivers kill about five outside victims each year. About 30 000 drink drivers are convicted per annum. How many are actually driving under influence? A conservative estimate is that the chances of getting caught are 1 to 200 (though it could be 1 to 2000). So, with this conservative estimate, there would be 6 million drink driving cases in a year, 30 000 caught, five people killed. It means that a drink driver's probability of actually killing someone is in the order of 1 ppm (part per million).

Really. A chance of one in a million. It's not a lot. It's not something that we should approve, but when you think of it, it is actually extremely rare that a drink driver kills someone. (It is slightly more common that a drink driver kills him- or herself, or other people travelling with him or her. This we could call poetic justice.)

Drink drivers should NEVER get their license back!

For any other types of crimes, you don't have punishment for the rest of your life. Even "life in prison" is  institutionalized with a process so that it actually means about 14 years in prison, perhaps less you behave well, and even notorious criminals like Juha Valjakkala will be released eventually despite constant escape attempts. There's always a term of some kind.

It would be extraordinary and an unusual punishment to ban driving for all life. Still, for repeat gross offenders, I wouldn't consider it too harsh to really make the loss of driving license permanent.

But this helps very little. You see, very many drink drivers don't have a license anyway. The one who killed the 11-year-old did, but this I would consider exceptional (and as a sentencing factor not against him). Pretty much every day you can read news about some reckless guy who runs away from the police at dangerous speeds, with five times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood. Most of the time, the guy does not have a driving license in the first place.

So what does it help to take away the license? You don't need a license to be able to drive. What would help? Perhaps amputation of the hands. But I have a better idea: mandatory antabus for those who have a severe alcohol problem.


Alco-lock must be made compulsory in all cars!

Another knee-jerk reaction. Whether the alco-locks work to stop drink drivers is dubious. What is certain is that there is a cost that would be carried by all drivers for the installation of device to all cars, and it is not small: in the order of 1000 € per car. No one else is going to pay for this. It won't be a factory-installed feature; Finland is just a too small market for that.

It would of course be very convenient for the state, because this mandatory gadget could only be installed by "official" importers, so it would act as a deterrent against the importing of used cars to Finland. The cozy relationship of "official" car importers and ministries would no longer be disturbed by those pests, citizens.

The state already takes about six times as much money from car owners than it puts into maintaining traffic infrastructure. The Finnish state is well-known to resort to illegal practices to extort tax money from drivers in the import taxes. This is well-planned fraud, by the government. The cost of alco-locks would be on top of this, and it would be out of proportion considering how much it would really have any  impact on road safety (we are talking about something like a thousand million euros, which would save many more lives if used better; drink drivers kill around five people each year in Finland, and a billion euros, if used on road safety, would save perhaps ten times as many).

A more significant impact of the alco-lock would be that your car doesn't start on a cold morning when you are supposed to go to work. They are known to malfunction, particularly in our climate. Perhaps not an issue if you get to work in a minister's limo, but for the rest of us this is an issue.

The legal limit for drink driving must be made lower!

Another illogical move. Our hit-and-run driver was already above the legal limit for gross DUI. With a lower limit, it would still be gross DUI, except that with the lower limit you would also convict people who are not really drunk. 0.02 % BAC does not impact the ability to drive a car. The driving ability may actually improve with blood alcohol content until 0.02 % or so. The driver performance only starts to weaken at 0.05 %, which is why the current limit is good.

Ministers also say that because DUI cases are increasing, the limit must be tightened. But why are the cases increasing? Two factors:

The so-called moped-cars have become more common, and under-18-year-olds drive them - and get caught. They are not supposed to get any alcohol from anywhere in the first place, so why go for the limit, when you actually should do something to the problem that minors drink?

Other drugs than alcohol are an increasing reason for DUI convictions. Now, lowering the alcohol limit when the actual drug is amphetamine or other illegal drugs is silly.

Speed limits must be lowered!

More illogical proposals. Our killer driver was probably not just drunk but also exceeding the existing speed limit. A lower limit would not have stopped him. The very next day, there was a guy running away from the police at 170 km/h. He did not care about the speed limit, and he would not have cared about a lower speed limit. He was also gross DUI. He also did not have a license. He was also under influence of illegal drugs. That's about five different severe breaches of law in one go, and a different speed limit would have made absolutely no difference.

What lowering the speed limits would do is make people more annoyed with the limits and lead us to think that it is okay to break the limits because they are not reasonable. The respect of law would be diminished, and that would be the main impact.

This must never happen again! Anything must be done to prevent another case like this!

It will happen again. People do get killed in traffic. If not hit by a car, then hit by a bus or a train or a kick-sled or just slip, fall, hit head on the ground. Humans err. What we can do is make the possibility of error smaller, make the traffic environment safer. The speed limits are already mostly low enough, or even too low. The drink driving limit is already at the right place, the BAC level where driver performance starts to be impacted negatively.

Having the alco-lock in cars of past offenders might be reasonable, as a part of the punishment. Stronger sentences would be good not only for drink drivers but all sorts of intentional, violent or economic crime. Especially multiple offenders who show no respect for any laws at all should be dealt with (like the 170 km/h police-runaway person mentioned above).

But we can't make the world a place where everything is perfectly safe. If we try, we'll just create a dystopia, a bad place to live.

Government ministers don't seem to care what really works and what does not. They'll be perfectly happy to exploit the public fury in order to get more government control, squeeze some more money from car owners, and shine up their public image. Cynical.

Comical Olli and an epidemic loss of influence

If you read European news these days, you see the same kind of things being said, whatever the country. Almost every EU state is in the same, unique position.

UK: Cameron puts Britain offside and offshore in Europe.  "UK has isolated itself and lost critical influence for no gain whatsoever," said Sony Kapoor, head of the Brussels economic think-tank Re-Define.

Sweden: "If we stay outside the deal, we are more in the periphery", says prime minister Reinfeldt.

Finland: "Finland must stay in the core of EU" says presidential candidate Paavo Lipponen.

Ireland: "Government must ensure Ireland is at core of EU summit"

I don't really read Dutch or Estonian, but I'd be surprised if news in the Netherlands and Estonia or Austria   would be any different. Everybody says the same:

If we don't do as the EU Commission says, we'll lose our influence! We'll be in the periphery! We must stay in the core of EU!

What sort of influence is it when you have to do everything you're told to do, otherwise you don't have influence?

How is it possible that everyone is risking this horrible fate of being in the periphery: you must not disagree about anything? What does it help you to be "in the core" of EU if that just means that you be a nice boy and pay up, just as you are told?

I do understand that you do lose influence if you make a constant nuisance of yourself. If you make trouble of every little thing. Or if you screw up constantly and consistently, over a longer period of time. This is what Greece has done, and that has got people irritated. I can surely say that not many people take seriously anything the Greeks say about economy or European integration, so Greece has lost "influence". But I don't think the problem is that Greece is not in the "core" of the EU. The problem is negligence approaching criminal. This is not the case with Britain, Finland or Sweden, who are net contributors to EU budget (although themselves in debt and in need of austerity).

We won't lose influence if we sometimes disagree. I've got a piece of news for you: the only way you apply influence is that you try to change something. And a good time to change things is starting now. The countries are not losing influence. It's these guys  in "think-tanks", parties and government departments who may lose influence, and some really well-paid jobs as conductors in gravy trains between  Brussels and Strasbourg, to which no one has any influence whatsoever.

Well, I suppose this rant isn't going to change too much. We can continue to admire the gall of Comical Olli:

Justice served

Normally it is considered bad manners to ridicule someone for the way they have killed themselves, but I can't help feeling some satisfaction with this Darwin award: a metal thief dies when trying to steal 240 VAC electricity for his power jigsaw using snap-on cables designed for 12 V.

The emergence of metal theft is a sign of a disintegrating society in West Europe. Some of these audacious thieves have appeared also in Finland, disassembling e.g. copper and iron from roofs and garden fences. In a rather amusing episode, the organised and tax-funded supporters of illegal migrants ended up having parts of the copper roof of their social center stolen.

In England, metal thieves are a much bigger problem, now "recycling" everything from electric and communication cables (disused or active), railways (the rails, I mean), church bells, garden gates and even plaques from war memorials. England built a welfare society before us, and is now reaping the harvest before us. Sweden's there, too.  But we are catching up. And so is Austria, where someone stole the organ pipes from a church to sell as scrap metal.

Sure, metal theft has been a problem all the time in Russia, for instance, up to a 200 tonne bridge vanishing overnight. But that I see is more "normalnaya situatsiya", to be expected in post-Communist countries. We know the societies somewhat collapsed and public and private property was for anyone to grab if you just could. Why do we allow that to happen in formerly prosperous Western societies?

The sentences these people get for theft are generally laughable. They are no deterrence. The inability of our justice system to react to this kind of intolerable insolence is a partial explanation for why China and other emerging economies are catching up and overtaking. Sure, there is corruption there as well, but it isn't tolerated like here.

The coroner's comments for the demise of our jigsaw hero tell us how difficult it is for the officialdom to understand how deep we are:

''I very much hope that anyone who has been here today or reads the reports gives cause to consider the perils of trespassing unlawfully on to a property and then engaging in an activity like this.
''It is an absolute tragedy that this has happened. It is a senseless waste of a young life.''

No, it wasn't an absolute tragedy. It was a rather logical consequence of having a society where schools fail and the justice system is no longer capable of delivering justice. And I think this coroner is misguided in his belief that the metal thieves are going to read coroner's reports. I very much doubt they read absolutely anything.

There's one thing I wonder. Why aren't the metal recyclers, who buy obviously stolen material, prosecuted? Is recycling and material re-use such a holy cow that it's above any and all investigations?