Do you find you never have enough time on your hands? I am always busy, especially now that credit is crunchier than burnt toast with a topping of unbuttered peanuts from a jar that had been inappropriately labelled as crunchy peanut butter. As part of my personal cutbacks, I have had to insource all manner of menial jobs, and had to let go of the Polish Doctor who used to wash my car and the Professor of Ancient History from Budapest who previously hoovered my carpet. That is a little bit of an exaggeration, the car washing and carpet-hoovering have only been un-outsourced, as I have yet to find to fully insource them by doing them myself. I scarcely have time, as I am already so darned busy with other critical activities like writing this blog and implementing my many other economy-beating plans. This week, for example, I purchased two televisions. This will both save money and time spent on going out. Not only will that save me money on non-essentials like going to the cinema, but it will save me the time and cost involved in walking the half a mile to get there. Just think of the reduced expenditure on shoe leather. I can also save on bread as I will burn less calories by spending more time on the sofa. As an accountant who likes to keep up to date with best practice from top CFOs around the globe, I intend to realize, in my own ledgers, all the future gains from reduced cinema, shoe and bread expenditure immediately, whilst thanks to the improving reliability of modern technology I fully intend to spread the cost of the televisions over the next ten years. Credit being what it currently is, I still had to find the cash for the televisions straight away, but you have to spend to save the economy, so it made sense to me. Best of all, I made an arbitrary decision to upwardly revise my forecast of future trips to the cinema. My previous cinema-visitation policy of “only if it’s with a sexually available female” was replaced with a substitute assumption of “must see every ‘must-see’ Hollywood blockbuster”. This generated a 400,000% increase in the number of predicted cinema visits. Because the televisions enable me to cut this much greater number of visits all the way back down to zero, the savings on shoes, bread and cinema tickets will be far higher. This approach has been so effective at saving me money, I could afford to buy two televisions instead of just one. To increase the benefits even more, I am thinking of revising my forecast of would-have-been cinema visits once more, this time based on the assumption that I also would have seen every foreign language film put on general release and every movie featuring either Seth Rogan or Simon Pegg. I calculated that not going to foreign language films that I would not have gone to anyway will reduce my shoe and bread costs by another 0.00062%, whilst not seeing any of the Rogan or Pegg films slated to be released this year will save me about 1,400 hours of otherwise wasted time.

The two-TV plan is not the only scheme I have been working on this week. Everybody knows the world makes too much junk. The lending crisis will prevent many people from upgrading their house, but cuts in tax and massive going-out-of-business sales will leave many bargain-hunters unsure where to put all the new junk they will now accumulate. They could save time and just have the new junk delivered directly to the nearest tip, but that would remove the fun in breaking it first. Putting the junk in storage is expensive, and not a good investment. So I devised a little home enterprise to capitalize on the demand. I planned to offer allocated space in my loft, for a fraction of the price charged by professional self-storage firms. Returning from the DIY store with a new stapladder, I ventured into the roofspace to see how much space could be rented out. This was the first time I had ever been up there, what with being so busy directing the Croatian Doctor of Jurisprudence who remodelled my garden (you really cannot trust these people to do the work unsupervised). I found to my dismay that in my loft there was no space available. Instead of the bare beams and scraggy insulation I had expected, I was devastated to find a modern and well-equipped research laboratory. Pouring through the meticulous notes about the experiments that had been performed there, I found detailed descriptions of a systematic attempt to clone human life. I surmised that Bovis Homes were looking to diversify. As well as making row after row of identical homes for people to live in, they also intended to make row after row of identical people to live in them. Whilst appalled at Bovis’ cynical attempts to drive up demand and house prices, and disappointed that my roofspace storage scheme would come to nothing, I nevertheless spied a new opportunity to save myself valuable time. I called over the lady who does my ironing, formerly the Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at the University of Bratislava, and asked her to assist in some of my own experiments.

Needless to say, we both worked long into the evening. My ironing lady exploited the scarcity of good genetic scientists living in my neighbourhood, and for her trouble she charged me double the going rate for a five kilo bag of mixed laundry. However, it was a good investment, as by the end of the day we had put twenty miniature copies of me into the rapid maturation chambers we built that afternoon. Then it was time for a well earned night of rest. Next morning I eagerly scampered up to the lab to see how the clones were coming along. Fishing them out of the specially-concocted soup of vitamins, egg whites and ProVitaLift anti-wrinkle & firming moisturizer, I was rather disappointed with the results. This was not an army of superhumans fit to seize power and dominate the world’s destiny for all eternity. They were not even very good copies of me, as they each exhibited their own characteristics. Nevertheless, they were mine, or me, or something similar to me at least, and I resolved them to teach them everything I knew, as if they were my own children. I hence sat them down, switched on the telly, and turned the channel to BBC News 24.

One of the more promising clones was labelled #5 in batch M, sample A. Christening himself MaV-Eric, he had a forceful personality and a strong inclination to take the initiative. Having decided that four hours was enough time spent watching the news, I was about to order him downstairs to do the washing-up, but before I could do so he jumped up and announced that he was going to go to Davos to sort out the world’s economic malaise. Perhaps I should have rotated the television channels a little more often, as obviously MaV-Eric had been stirred up by the regular updates about what was happening at the World Economic Forum. Naturally I was against his going, as there was a baking dish with three day old lasagne burnt on to it soaking in the sink, and I had recently had to part ways with the dear old former Soviet rocket scientist who used to do my dishes. However, there was no stopping MaV-Eric and he bounded out of the door, intent on getting to Davos and putting the world’s economy to rights. Whilst anxious about what mischief my clone might get into, I consoled myself with the thought that if he did fix the world’s economy, I could rehire my various Eastern European helpers and get my life back on track. Meanwhile I ordered another clone to get on with the dishes.

Since MaV-Eric left for Davos, he has been sending me regular texts and email updates of what has been happening at the World Economic Forum. As I am far too busy to write this blog, I thought it best to just pass on his highlights:

Off to a bad start. Confused Davos, Swiss ski resort that hosts the World Economic Forum, with Davros, nemesis of Doctor Who and creator of the Daleks. Found Davros in a retirement village just outside of Weston-super-Mare. Took the whole day to hitch-hike there. Not a total waste, as Davros had some interesting ideas about how to run the world differently (amusingly, he always insists on saying ‘rule’ the world differently). He has also made some real scientific breakthroughs in the field of electric transport, having replaced his own legs with wheels that run for ever, create no pollution, and rather marvelously still allow him to get up and down stairs. He offered to make similar modifications to me but I said I wanted to experience my body a little longer before I start to make any changes, which he was initially angry about. He sulked a little while but soon brightened up and agreed to go with me to Davos so he can chip in with his ideas on how to run/rule the world. He has some kind of electric rocket ship so we should be there in a jiffy.

Looked at the signage around the World Economic Forum: “entrepreneurship in the global public interest”. Hmmm. The same people have been coming here, serving the global public interest for over thirty years. Imagine the mess the world would be in without them. Now imagine the mess the world is in with them. Then take a look at the expense accounts to get all these people to this up-market ski resort. It makes me wonder if the world would be a better place if they all stayed home and did something useful instead. Then again, maybe these people don’t do anything useful - their skill is getting ahead in the global rat race, not in reforming it. Davros is fed up because nobody is interested in his electric wheels and is threatening to obliterate the whole town as an act of revenge. I’m trying to persuade him to go back to Weston-super-Mare and have a cup of tea. But before I do I’m going to enjoy the one thing this town is good for, and the one thing that all these world leaders do seem to be able to deliver: a long downhill slide.

Those were the highlights from my clone, MaV-Eric, who spent the week at the World Economic Forum at Davos. I do hope he is not going to go next year, as it sounds like he does not really understand what globalization is all about. Perhaps instead of making him watch TV news, I should have introduced him to my next-door neighbour, the former economics professor from the University of Warsaw. I would have had him over to talk to the clones, but I did not want to disturb him. He has been working the night shift, stacking shelves at Asda, which is the only job he can get now his building skills are no longer needed by the once rampant hordes of buy-to-let “property developers”.

That is all from me, as I am far too busy to write any more on this blog. All the time I saved by getting my new clones to do the household chores has been spent investigating options to outsource my blogging. Apparently there’s a guy in the Philippines who will ghost-write my blog for less than ten cents per thousand words. That sounds like a good deal to me, but first I will experiment with allowing a monkey to do it by hitting a keyboard randomly. According to the internet, Shakespeare used monkeys to write all his plays. The “Do It With Monkeys” group on Facebook also says monkeys do no worse than average when it comes to making investment decisions. If MaV-Eric does go back to Davos next year, perhaps he should take some monkeys with him and see what mischief they get up to. After all, they are unlikely to make things worse than they already are.

US President Barack Obama was inaugurated this week. President of the USA is an unusual job. There are not many jobs where they throw you a really big party on your first day. I guess it makes sense for Presidents, as the first day usually represents the height of their popularity, at least whilst in office. I wonder, does he get paid to attend the party? I imagine he did, or maybe he only clocks on after he makes the oath. Obama probably enjoyed the party, but if he has any sense he should fear his popularity too. The expectations of Obama’s supporters go beyond sky high. They left orbit a while ago and, when last sighted, were half way to Jupiter. I almost feel sorry for the new ‘leader of the free world’ (whatever that means). He will have to go down in history as the greatest ever President, if the trajectory of his delivery is to match the giddy heights of the hopes he has raised.

Next time you’re found, with your chin on the ground
There’s a lot to be learned, so look around

I did not want to write about Obama this week. I was going to wait until the end of his first one hundred days, once he had the chance to actually do something. The US is taking an economic beating. That followed the sucker punches of Iraq and Afghanistan. The collective American chin has hit the canvas. The US deserves at least an eight count before we expect it to get back on its feet. Obama needs time to do his job. However, whilst I would like to let him be, the intensity of media coverage means he is not letting me be. Obama the pop star is all over the place. He dances, people sing to him. People bought lottery tickets in the hope of attending his inauguration and hear him make some speech. If you make a donation at his website, you can get an Obama t-shirt in return. The world of celebrity and politics is getting so similar, I half expect Bono to join the President’s staff. No, I do not want to write about Obama. But like a gadfly, Obama keeps demanding my attention, whether I want to give it or not.

I cannot escape Obama at present, and I do not even live in the US. I live in Britain. Often I feel that Brits go too far in their criticism of Americans. There is a class of Brit that believes they are superior, and look down on their American kin like they are the hyperactive grandkids to Britain’s worldly-wise grandparents. To this segment of British society, Americans are too easily excited, too optimistic, and too willing to let themselves get carried away. To my mind, Brits could learn a lot from American enthusiasm. The American’s pursuit of dreams often carries them much further than a Brit dares imagine possible. Usually I think that. But this week I do not. This week, my ears are ringing with the words of hope. This week, I will not be looking across the ocean to learn from Americans. Even the Brits around me seem to be infected with the same irrational exuberance. This week I am putting my fingers in my ears because all this hope is not teaching me anything. There is enough hope already. Hope is good, but good news is better. I want to hear some news about Obama, and not just that he is the first black President, like being black or being President, or being a combination of the two, should be a cause for celebration in itself.

Just what makes that little old ant
Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
Anyone knows an ant, can’t
Move a rubber tree plant

Obama has some big jobs to do. But he is one man, in the final reckoning. He is a human being. He is the 44th in a line of human beings that includes Washington and Lincoln and FDR and JFK and Ronnie Reagan and Bill Clinton and a couple of Bushes. He is not that different to any of them. Brain. Two arms, two legs. Mouth. Speaks English. Okay, he is way ahead of the 43rd President on that last score, but most of the rest of them were able to talk coherently. He may be a President, but he is not that different to you or me. He has no special God-given gifts or superpowers. He talks, he listens, he thinks, he makes decisions. Some he will get right, some he will get wrong, and that is an end of it. He is an ant in the great hive of humans that infest this lump of rock. Maybe he is a bigger ant than you or me, but an ant all the same. Whatever his hopes and accomplishments, there is nothing he can do that could not be done by somebody else, and nothing he can do as a leader that does not depend on the consent of many others.

Obama’s greatest accomplishment so far, as infernally repeated in every news story, is that he won the election and he is black and that is novel. Forgive me, but I do not find that to be a special accomplishment, compared to the other 43 people in the Presidential line-up. Prejudice cannot be measured on the scale of a single man. Everybody encounters prejudice in this world. Some encounter more, some encounter less. Some prejudices are common, others are not. Some are easy to categorize, others are not. Some are easy to describe, others are not. Everybody could complain about prejudice. Beautiful women complain about not being taken seriously. Young people are ignored. Old people are disregarded. Some people have the wrong accent. Some people went to the wrong school. White middle class men are branded as white middle class men - and hence damned for being the supposed oppressors of everyone else. There are probably people with irrational prejudices against anyone with a long nose, or against anyone who grows a beard, or against anyone less than five foot tall, or against anyone who folds their arms left over right instead of right over left. Abraham Lincoln probably suffered prejudice because he was pig ugly. I am sorry for the people who have the prejudices, and I am sorry for the people who suffer the prejudices. If Barack Obama encountered some prejudice in this world because he had a black father, then I am sorry for that, but that does not mean his accomplishments are automatically greater because of it. I do not know about all the prejudices, all the obstacles, all the trials and tribulations of Obama, and not do I know about them for the other candidates for his high office. Less still do I know about the prejudices faced by all the people who might have, would have, should have, could have been President if only the world worked out differently. What if Obama had been killed in a car accident whilst a teenager? What if some teenager killed in an accident had not? Our fates, whether President or a porter, are determined by a myriad of factors. Our appearance is only one of those factors. There is no divine destiny that made Obama President. If you think elections are determined by a deity, you might as well stay at home and not cast your vote. No, men and women picked Obama to be President. They made a choice, using their human faculties. They, like many others, made a decision, and that helped shape Obama’s life like his decisions will shape ours. I cannot objectively measure the good luck, bad luck, advantages and prejudices that were heaped on to the scales of Barack Obama’s fortunes, and I am not sure if anyone can. I cannot truly measure Obama’s burdens against those of his peers and rivals. None can compare Obama’s achievements to the achievements of all the people on this Earth. There are people today who will struggle hard just to live until tomorrow. It is not for me to say their struggle was more or less noble than Obama’s ambition to be President. What we do know is that Obama won a popularity contest. He is black and he won a popularity contest. Good for him that he won the contest, and I do not care if he is black. Please, will everybody stop mentioning he is black. I promise not mention it again if everybody else does the same. I simply do not care. Obama’s blackness is, in the most important sense, unimportant to his being the President. If I keep hearing about him being black, I am going to put my fingers in my ears. That would be a shame, as I would like to hear what he is going to do.

Do ants care about the way they look as much as humans seem to do? I suffer from the affliction of being colour-blind. I can tell red from green and blue from yellow. I just cannot tell the difference between a black person and a white person and a brown person and a yellow person. At least, I cannot tell the difference in any way I find to be remotely interesting. Because other people think there are important differences, that does not mean I have to respect their point of view. Obama looks a little different from the other Presidents. For example, his ears stick out. But I do not find Obama’s exterior to be the least bit interesting, whether it is the tone of his skin or the spots on his bum. In a similar way, I am gender-blind, and disability-blind, and religion-blind and pretty much blind to anything or everything that has nothing to do with how good a person is or how their mind works or how good they are at the things that they do. If I had a hope, it would be that everybody was colour-blind. But reading about Obama being black, and hearing about Obama being black, and generally getting bored of the fact that Obama is black, I find it obvious that plenty of people are a long, long way from being colour-blind. Seeing colour as something interesting is like being a six year old and having a favourite colour of crayon. The colour of skin is trivial. It is a trivial cause for celebration. It is a trivial basis for two people to consider themselves as having something in common. It is a trivial reason to dislike somebody. It is a trivial way to judge somebody’s worth. It is trivial, and there are no two ways about it. Colour is unimportant. If colour is unimportant, you prove that by treating it as unimportant, not by treating it as important-but-only-because-other-people-make-it-important. White good, black bad, black good, white bad… all nonsense, all trivial. Time to move on. Obama, a half-black guy, won the most important election in the world. Time to move on. Time for Obama to be a President, not just somebody with a few black genes in his genetic makeup. Obama was born with a skin and it had a colour. That did not take any effort on his part. His mother made most of the effort on the day Obama was born (not that any mother has joined the 44). He was born, and the other six billion people on the planet can attest there is nothing so special about that. Now comes the special part. Now comes the effort. Now we see what he is made of.

The victory of colourblindness, as manifest in his election victory, is a good thing, but it is the victory of normalcy in eternal human values, after a terrible and prolonged aberration. I doubt cavemen cared so much about appearances, and we should not either. There has been enough talk about appearances. Now, Obama needs to get on with being President, and we need to let him get on with that. We must file all this tedious nonsense about his colour in an historical archive for people who care about trivial things. File it under ‘B’ for ‘Boring’, not ‘B’ for ‘Black’. I am hoping the inauguration is the final full stop on this silly repetition of the same superficial non-story. Was there really anybody, anywhere on the planet, listening to the news this week, that learned something new when it was repeated, yet again, that Obama is black and that is unusual for an American President? If they do not know now, they never will, so let us move on anyway. New. News. Please.

But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes
He’s got high apple pie, in the sky hopes

For the moment, I have stopped believing that the US President is called Barack Obama. As far as I am concerned, he is Bore-ama. I am bored of him. That must be some kind of record, to be bored of a US President before he completed his first day in office. He has all the potential to be the most exciting President ever, but right now, he is Boreama. Maybe I spent too long following the campaign. Maybe I listened to too many of his speeches. Maybe he would be more exciting if I only noticed politics a week or so before an election takes place. Unfortunately, I did not. I noticed him when everyone else noticed him - when he seemed to have a reasonable chance of winning the Democrat nomination. Since then, he has been on parole. Every move has been scrutinized. He has rarely put a foot wrong, but he has not done very much that is interesting, either. He has been safe, steady, dull. People get very excited about him. They do odd things, like going to stadiums to hear him say things that could just hear him say on television. They are already planning to tell their great grandchildren about how they listened to Obama in person. Presumably they will not be so keen to tell the story if he turns out to be a stinker of a President. He is President Boreama, at least for now. As far as I am concerned, he will win his reprieve from Boreamadom if he does half of the things he hopes to. Good luck to him. He will need all the luck and help he can get if those hopes are to be realized.

Okay, so Boreama has now made a few phone calls to the Middle East, and he asked the judges to put Guantanamo Bay on hold. That is a reasonable start, but nothing too exciting yet. It would have been odd not to call the Middle East. It is just polite to remind them that there is a new guy wielding the biggest stick in the world. It only makes sense for the new guy to say how lovely it would be if they could all play nice and find a way to stop killing each other and stop moving us closer and closer to World War III. As for Guantanamo, even McCain wanted to end that stain on America’s legal bedsheets. Obama also wants to spend some money revitalizing the economy. He is hardly alone in having identified that as a plan. Anybody with a cursory understanding of the Great Depression would realize they tried the do-nothing plan and it did not work out so well, so then they tried the spend-lots plan and that worked out better. Even Bush was happy to spend money the government did not have, though you could argue he was working hard to make the government bankrupt long before the financial crisis struck. The interesting decision is not the decision to spend money. The interesting decision is deciding what to spend it on. If you gave me 800 billion dollars, to spend as I like, I would stimulate the economy of the US, and plenty of other places too. The question is whether Obama spends the money as effectively as possible. Can this ant turn the tide of economic history? Or will he spend a fortune and end up with an ant-sized economy?

So any time you’re gettin’ low
’stead of lettin’ go
Just remember that ant
Oops there goes another rubber tree plant

Bore-ama. I did not listen to his inauguration speech. I was expecting it to be boring. I was expecting he would say nothing new. Then it got reported everywhere, and mindful as I am of journalistic bias, I found myself having to listen to it anyway. First I read it. When you read it, it is pretty short. Obama is such an orator. His masterful pauses and elegant turning of phrases can transform two minutes’ worth of sketchy ideas into twenty minutes of uplifting, sketchy ideas. So first I read it, then I listened to it, not listening to the words, but to the inflections, to the tones, to the stagemanship in his voice. It was impressive. He is very good at delivering a speech. He makes it sound good. In another world, he would have made a fine presenter of the weather news. I wonder if he could make a recipe or a shopping list sound exciting. I can just imagine what he was like when he was a student, telling his peers about his trip to the store…

“My fellow citizens, colleagues, and friends, you ask if I have purchased the potatoes for tonight’s supper. I can tell you that I went to the grocery store, and I searched for the potatoes. I looked up one aisle, and down another aisle. I looked long, and I looked hard. But there were no potatoes that were fit for our good, honest, simple table. There were no potatoes fit to sustain our daily endeavours. There were no potatoes fit to nourish the flesh, the blood, the souls of we tireless workers gathered in this kitchen today. There were no good potatoes. There were only bad potatoes, old potatoes and potatoes that had gone slightly mouldy. These were not the potatoes that sustained our peoples when they came to this land from the corners of the world. These were not the potatoes that our grandparents pulled form the earth, the reward for their toil. We need a renewal of our vegetable visions for the future. We need to broaden our search for good grocery stores, as we renew and broaden the hopes of our generation. Whether we worked today at a part-time job in the local pharmacy, studied our books diligently, helped old ladies to cross the street, or went to the grocery store to buy potatoes, we have worked hard today and we have much hard work yet to do. We need nourishment for our body, and for our souls. We can do it, we can get there, not with the potatoes, but with the half pound of broccoli I bought instead. Can we make a wholesome, good and palatable meal with this broccoli? Yes, we can.”

But the words of his inauguration speech, when read on paper, I found to be dull and lifeless. Boring. Boring ideas from a 21st Century popularity contest winner, President Boreama.

When troubles call, and your back’s to the wall
There’s a lot to be learned, that wall could fall

I’m not sure it is possible for anyone to have a rational debate about Obama any more. He won, so there is no point debating whether he was the best candidate. He has not done anything yet, so you cannot debate his record. So many people have already formed an emotional attachment to Boreama - some terrifyingly sentimental need for him - that there is no point trying to be rational with them. You had soon as well bang your head against the wall, as suggest that people might temper their expectations of Obama, and go easy with their hopes for his Presidency. But then, he never does. In his inauguration, he promised to do it all: outlive his enemies, end nuclear war, feed the world’s hungry, make the waters flow, save the planet… the list went on and on. Every great promise was in there, short of a cure for cancer and a guaranteed method to lose weight fast. He was so good at making impossible promises I wondered if the banking industry would have employed him to sell mortgages. Every one of Boreama’s promises were presented in glorious technicolour, glorious widescreen, and glorious low-definition soft focus. Obama, on a cold day in Washington D.C., wrapped himself within his misty-eyed gift for words. Those words paint pictures of places that, so far, only exist in our imagination.

Once there was a silly old ram
Thought he’d punch a hole in a dam
No one could make that ram scram
He kept buttin’ that dam

I have this terrible jaded feeling about Boreama. To be fair to him, it is not his fault especially, although he keeps riding the crest of the wave created by the people who are to blame. It is a product of a ridiculous insistence that here, and now, is always the most amazing moment, the most amazing place in history. How silly. Some people must live in boring times. We live in boring times, on a relative scale. It is so boring, that people got carried away with how good and boring it is. They borrowed heavily against the boring, predictable, safe and wonderful future, as they saw it. Risk? There was no risk. Why worry about risk, when the future is so boring and safe and predictable, they thought. Incomeless homeowners and wealthy bankers agreed - these are boring times. Not worried about war, or disease, or pestilence, or any of the interesting things that have happened to humanity through the ages, they borrowed and borrowed and borrowed against the future. They borrowed so much they had no way to pay it all back. People borrowed money they could not pay, and lent money they did not have. Their extraordinary over-confidence backfired, and royally messed up the economy. That is the most exciting thing that has happened to most people recently. People got greedy and now they are sorry. People banged their heads against the dam, so hard, and so long, that it started to crack. That does not sound like the behaviour of people who lives in exciting times. It sounds like the behaviour of people so bored they messed up the world because they had nothing better to do.

Boreama’s exactly the right President for a boring era. He makes everything sound exciting, even when it is not. His campaign strategy was remorseless in playing it safe. There can never have been a President who encouraged so much whilst promising so little. He makes our era sound special, even when what makes it special is how mundane our era is. We live in an era where tedious, soulless material acquisition grew so quickly and grew so unchecked that we ended up puking the remnants all over the economy.

The last President who tried to make his era sound special was George W. Bush. He is not unusual, because every President wants to be the Great President who served in Important Times. Big egos inevitably go with big jobs. Bush took a different approach to making here, and now, special. Like everything else in his Presidency he was meandering along, bereft of any real ideas, and was prompted into action by a crisis made whilst his guard was down. Bush started a ‘war on terror’, and some real wars, as an absurd overreaction to a terrorist attack. The devastation of the twin towers was horrifying, but hardly a justification to the irrational response it prompted from the US government. It sickens to play a numbers game, but only 2,974 people died in the attack on the World Trade Center. Compare that to the million people who die from malaria each year. By my calculator, that is about 2,740 deaths from malaria every single day. According to the 2006 WHO report, 90% of those deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. 75% of the dead were five or younger. If you want to make the world a safer place, spending mosquito nets and drugs would give a much better return than chasing around Iraq for terrorist WMDs. Every President wants to be important. The problem is that not every President knows what is important.

If Obama is to be believed, he would have not made the mistakes of Bush’s government. He believes he has a cooler head. Maybe so, but cooler heads need to encourage other heads to keep cool too. So far, he has been happy to ride a wave of euphoria, not to dampen it. That mood is positive right now, but he is doing nothing to temper it in advance of the times when cool heads will really be needed.

’cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes
He had high apple pie, in the sky hopes

Obama’s mother must have been an optimist. She raised him. She must have passed on her values. She traveled the world, worked hard, and did the job of a mother too. However, she was not mentioned in her son’s inauguration speech. Obama’s father was mentioned, twice. It makes me feel like she is gently sidelined by Obama. Obama’s self-image seems to hinge on his black, absent, father, not his white, present, mother. Talk of Obama’s father smells of political expediency. We hear about a black African overcoming hurdles, but not about the hurdles overcome by his White, American mother. Perhaps she does not fit so conveniently into the stereotypes that Obama wishes to trade in, the personal mythology he seeks to create for himself. Obama’s face is a lot like his mother’s. That is not the aspect of his looks that Obama dwells upon. He would rather dwell on colour, what made him different from his mother, not what made him the same.

So any time your feelin’ bad
’stead of feelin’ sad
Just remember that ram
Oops there goes a billion kilowatt dam

The devil is in the details. Destroying a billion kilowatt dam sounds like a mighty achievement, of sorts, but the ram must have got a mighty headache first. From Obama, I am hoping to see grit and a capacity to deal with the world’s problems hands-on. The oratory and the inspiration can take a back seat. There is no need for inspiration if there is no direction. The Obama program has ruthlessly demonstrated its ability to inspire. It inspired plenty to go to the polling booths. If Obama has a genius for politics, he needs to remember the famous quote from Edison, the great American inventor and entrepreneur: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” It is time for Obama to start sweating.

The last Democrat glamour-puss President was JFK. He raised high hopes too. Hopes were so high, that Frank Sinatra sang a special version of his 1959 hit “High Hopes” when campaigning for him. In the modified lyrics, Sinatra sang “Jack’s the nations favourite guy” and “vote for Kennedy, keep America strong.” When I was young, the aura of JFK led me to believe Kennedy was a great President. Then I learned something about history and realized he was a spoilt rich-kid who screwed around, caused crisis after crisis over Cuba, and was hailed a hero just because none of his crises lead to a nuclear war. Oh, and he sanctioned the overthrow of the South Vietnamese government and the installation of more American troops in that country - and we all know how US interference in Vietnam worked out in the end. Kennedy also raised Frank Sinatra’s hopes. Sinatra, with his Rat Pack buddy Peter Lawford, organized Kennedy’s inaugural gala. It was a star-studded affair. The next year, Sinatra spent a lot of money on building accommodation for Kennedy and his entourage for a highly anticipated and heavily publicized visit to the West Coast. Sinatra’s seedy connections were just fine when Kennedy wanted to get laid, or to help win votes in Illinois, but caused Kennedy to snub Sinatra and stay at Bing Crosby’s house instead. Bing Crosby was not just Sinatra’s singing rival, he was a supporter of the Republican Party. Sinatra was bitter about that for a long time after, and ended up becoming a Republican supporter as well. In 1980, Sinatra donated US$4 million to Reagan’s Presidential campaign. When Reagan won, Sinatra arranged his Presidential gala too. Given the high hopes raised by, and the disappointing reality of JFK’s Presidency, Boreama should be careful to learn from history, and to avoid letting too many people down.

Yes we can, yes we did, yes we will, yes, yes sir, yessur, yessum’ boss. The word ‘yes’. You can say ‘yes’ to terrible things. You can do terrible things. These positive disembodied words, words that hang in the air but stubbornly refuse to describe any real actions. Verbs are a problem with Obama. Can what? Did what? Do what?

Bore-ama. I’m bored of Boreama already. We need less talk. More action.

What kind of action is Boreama offering? You would hope his inauguration speech would give some clues. The thing with Obama is that he’s a regular Stalin or Castro when it comes to speeches. He wants everybody to be listening to him, as he gives out the answers. He want you to know, that he has the answers. He does not want to sound immodest, but nobody should walk away with doubt. Obama has the answers. That means we have the answers. Boreama just tells us the answers that we knew he knew we knew all along.

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.”

The words are so beautifully and simply worded, so intellectually confused. Who is doing this work? “We”. Then why do “we” need to be reminded to do it? Did we do before? If we did, did we stop? Why did we stop? If we never stopped, then what is new?

It is easy to pick apart a speech like this, but that does not mean it is not worth picking it apart. How many of Boreama’s supporters, so eager to attend the inauguration, remembering to hold the new President to account right from his very first words in office, remembering to play their part in the democratic process of holding this new government to account?

Obama plays a nice line in nostalgia. There was always a wonderful past, and recent events are just a blip in the natural procession of American history. This is American history presented as destiny, with progress always onwards and upwards, for the good of Americans and the world. What tosh. What cynical rewriting of history this is. Obama should take a look at American governments through history. They were small. They did little, taxed little, interfered little. Either Boreama likes them for those virtues, or he does not. He is an historical pickpocket, if he steals what he likes from American history but ignores the things he does not like.

I want less “we” and more “me” and “you”. I am not “we”, I am me. A leader needs to talk to individuals and tell them what he wants from them as individuals. Tell a group to do something, and nobody does it. Tell a person to do something, and you have a chance they will do it. Enough of generality, Boreama needs to start dealing with specifics, starting with specific people, starting with himself.

“Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.” Now “we” are leading, or they are leading, or he is leading, I am not sure which. I want to hear what he wants and expects other people to do. Less of the “we”. Break this great, mighty job down. The abusers at Abu Ghraib were Americans. Were they friends to Iraqis? Obama is a friend to every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity? What if they want peace and dignity, but are not so keen on American leadership? What if they did not vote for Obama, and find it repellent that he talks of himself, or his nation (it is too vague to tell what he is saying here) as leaders, as if they were elected by the world? Obama needs to break it down into tasks and give them to individuals. Some of those tasks will be performed by the President. Some by others. But break it down.

“Their memories are short.” Whose memories are short? None shorter than Obama’s. The day before Boreama was President, the same people lived in the same country. What changed? They were free men and women, the day before. If they were not harnessing the sun and wielding technology’s wonders, why not? Was it because nobody was telling them to do so? Can nobody think of a good idea and pull their finger out and build the roads and create the jobs without waiting for Boreama? Fiddlesticks. The people were free in 2000, free in 2004, free in the years between. What were they doing with their freedom? Did George W. Bush hypnotize them? Were they enslaved by his zombie spell, unable to act, unable to do anything to help themselves? Did they have to summon their last drop of energy showing up to the voting booths in order to elect Boreama? Were they all sat around waiting like morons, waiting for Boreama to tell them “we” can do it? What was stopping them? What is Obama going to do to start them? Is he going to speech them into submission, talk at them until they do what is needed? Or is Boreama planning to do some things himself, as an individual. I hope so. Fine deeds matter more than fine words.

No matter how I try, I cannot escape Obama right now. On the radio, the BBC offered one of those imbecilic vox pop exercises about Obama, as if three carefully chosen people could ever be the voices of “the people”. The outcome was typical, one for Obama, one against Obama, one on the fence about Obama. You can always judge the journalistic slant of a vox pop by the order in which the voices are presented. The last one defines the tone of the piece. The last voice was pro-Obama. She carefully pointed out, when dealing with the journalist’s scepticism about how much Obama could really do in practice, that it was not up to Obama to do things singlehanded. She made it clear, that it was up to the “we” to do it. Yes “we” can. So what has this woman been waiting for? She has the same hands, mind, conscience, soul. What difference does Obama make to how she lives her life? Instead of talking about the difference Obama makes - using that airy language that describes a far-off landscape, I want to hear what steps people are taking, from one day to the next, to get to this promised land. Of course, the journalist did not ask this voice what she was doing to make those dreams come true, other than generally be supportive of Obama and what he says the “we” will do. Presumably asking such a question would be rude.

“Ask not what can your country do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

J.F. Kennedy, Presidential Inauguration, January 20th, 1961

Great lines from great speeches. Inspiring stuff. But what, exactly, does it inspire. Hope? Is that a substitute for action? Is that the same kind of hope you get at church: life is terrible now, but there is no point complaining, as it will all come good in the end? Just do as you are told and God will sort out the rest? I am not one for waiting for God, or leaders, or the “we” to sort things out. From my experience, they never do. I prefer complaining. You may have noticed. Complaining changes the world. You cannot change from bad to better, bad to good, okay to great, without identifying what should be changed, what could be better. But complaints are no good if they are not specific. What specifically is going to change? What, specifically, are the complaints that the “we” will address?

“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Obama the earthquake: he shifts the very ground beneath us. The religious parallels are obvious. He could send plagues of locusts, but he is not that kind of prophet. He is more the type to focus on parting the seas and turning water into wine, except when he does it, we does it. Obama the inspiration, who is also Obama the pragmatist, who is also Obama the answer to any question. His government will change government. Only cynics would oppose him. There will be no cynics around him. There will be no cynics who support him, use him, manipulate his popularity, his mandate, his agenda for their selfish ends. No, no, no… that cannot happen. The Reverend Boreama will not allow that to happen. “We” will not allow that to happen. He and his political allies are reborn in the new faith. They have given up their old god, the false idol of government. They have a new god, the one true god of Government! (Did you notice the change?) They were converted on the road to Damascus, or possibly on the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the road to the White House. If you cannot see the difference, it must be because you do not believe hard enough. Have faith, brother.

I need to be converted. George W missed the point when becoming an evangelical Christian. The point is not to be converted, it is to convert. Obama’s the great converter. Obama’s the real baptist of our times. Hilary Clinton, born again into the new government. Tom Daschle, born again into the new government. Joe Biden, born again into the new government. If they look the same on the outside, that is just their bodies. That is just their superficial appearance, their skins, not that Boreama cares about such things. Their souls are born again, supposedly. They are re-born to the new creed of government changed, thanks to Obama the baptist.

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

Ask not what the President will do for you. He asks what you will do for him. At the inauguration they should have answered the preacher, and told them what they would do. I mean, if they were not believers, committed to the cause of doing something (not sure what, but something) then who is? Then again, they may have all shouted out different answers about what the “we” would do, what tasks the “we” would undertake. That would spoil the ceremony. That would have ruined the fine words of the speech. Better shout “yes we can, yes we will, yes we did” instead, even if you are not clear on the details of what you are supposed to be doing.

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers.” How very embracing. All different, but all “we”. All converted to the one truth, the one true path, the one true leader who will return us to the true path. “This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.” Got that, all you secular non-believers? There cannot be any confusion there. Even non-believers are confident in the knowledge of God’s call. With an infallible plan like that, surely the cynics have no reason to fear any prospect of division in Boreama’s America. You have to be confident in your knowledge to shape an uncertain destiny. If it is not God that calls you, although you are confident (Boreama told you so, it must be true) in your knowledge that God calls you, then Obama will help by filling in the blanks and pointing you in the right direction. If God is pointing you the other way, to hate America, to hate what it stands for, you must be listening to the wrong God. You must be listening to the God of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If you think Obama’s wrong, and misguided, and will lead America down the wrong path, you must be listening to the wrong God. You must be listening to the God of George W. Bush. God never lets people disagree or be confused, and nor will Boreama. God is pointing the way, Obama is pointing the way - it just looks a long way off in the distance, and the path is a little confused, and we all are going in different directions, but we will get there. Yes we can.

“…Why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.” Ah yes, the perpetual glorification of the absent Obama father. Obama’s father was a remarkable man. Whilst a student, he fathered a child, and left a year later. What an ideal role model, somebody we should all seek to emulate. Obama’s mother dropped out of college to raise her son. She paid the family bills, taught her son, made her son proud of his black ancestry and his black father. Obama repaid her by writing a book about his father. The son was not there when the mother died, but the father is always there in the son’s speeches. There is no mention of Obama’s mother. Bore-ama’s dwelling on his father is justified, of course. Obama’s father suffered terrible prejudice, we can know for sure, because he was black. Not that Boreama witnessed this prejudice first hand, but we can reasonably infer it. Obama’s father might not have been served at a local restaurant. Might not. Look on the bright side. His father was probably too busy to worry about that, too busy to raise or pay for his own son. He had to leave to study for his PhD in Economics at Harvard. He needed to learn about how money turns the world around, not how to pay for his own offspring. What terrible discrimination Obama’s father probably suffered at Harvard too. What a guy. How generous of Obama, to always grieve, in so many public speeches, for the supposed sufferings of somebody he did not know. His father’s scholarship forced him to make so many sacrifices, to give up so much. His scholarship would not pay for his wife and son, so he had to leave them behind. “How can I refuse the best education?” he told his wife, when explaining his decision not to take the more generous scholarship offered him in New York, that would have allowed him to take his wife and child with him. This is the man who gets cited in a speech about inspiration, about overcoming obstacles, about how “we” can change the world, about how “we” make the world a better place. An inspiring figure, one worth recalling at every opportunity. His father, Our Father, the inspiration, from far off. Always there, always overcoming unimaginable hurdles, just not getting involved in the messy detail of real people’s lives.

“Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

This is a gift, passed from father to son. It is in Obama’s case, this gift of oratory, this gift of being the centre of attention, this freedom to shape the world by thought and word. It is a journey, that we embark upon. In this story, the takers are eulogized, and the givers are forgotten, even by Boreama himself. But what a journey we have before us, biblical in its epic proportions, as we happily set out on the path. We are going to the promised land. Obama has painted the picture, and it is a beautiful landscape. There is no map, but we have the Obama’s watercolour landscape painting so we know what it looks like. We are all ready to go. Yes, we can do it, we can make it, we can get there. Now all we need is someone to point us in the right direction.

All problems just a toy balloon
They’ll be bursted soon
They’re just bound to go pop
Oops there goes another problem kerplop

High Hopes: words & music by Sammy Cahn & Jimmy Van Heusen, recorded by Frank Sinatra, from the 1959 movie Hole in the Head

High hopes. High hopes. It is almost like we solved all our problems already. Can you feel the confidence all around? Great. Great!!! Nobody and nothing can stop us now. We are on the way. We will get there. We can do it. Yes we can.

So when do we begin?

In part one, I imagined a scenario where one hundred people, selected at random, are stranded on a desert island. They have no hope of escape, but they can survive indefinitely thanks to the resources available to them. In fact, only forty need to work to satisfy the needs of the whole population. So how would this group divide the work between themselves?

Let us begin by defining a few likely characteristics of our island population. To begin with, let us be realistic about what a random sample of people would be like. Every individual would be different. People would differ in their attitudes, in their capabilities, in their generosity and so forth. There may, arguably, be different degrees of need. Some people may need a higher calorie intake, others may require special medical care, such as treatment for diabetes or asthma. Some people will be more naturally inclined to give, others will be more selfish. Some will be assertive, some passive. Some will arrive on the island with skills that are more immediately useful than others. For example, perhaps there are some with a good working knowledge of how to build and maintain shelter. Others will possess fewer skills or skills that are less relevant to the circumstances. A croupier or jockey will offer little if there is no gambling tables or horses. Dividing the work between this population is not a simple case of taking a task, dividing it by 100, and giving everybody an equal share of it. Even if it was possible to segment work that perfectly, it would be less efficient to give all the islanders an equal share of a job that could be performed by one person with the most relevant talents.

Soon after their arrival, the individuals most capable of building shelter and getting food may set about the task, without waiting to be asked. Whether they are doing it for the community as a whole, or just for themselves, they will likely employ themselves in essential work. This will be motivated by their own desire to survive, if nothing else. Others, with less relevant skills, will be in more of a quandary. Do they emulate their peers, even if it means they do an inferior job? Do they work as individuals, only providing for themselves, and hence suffer from being relatively impoverished as they fashion an inferior habitation and struggle to feed themselves? Or do they seek to embrace community, and form relationships with the strongest providers? Whatever relations are formed will depend heavily on the ethical values and worldviews of the people on the island. A strong provider who also has a strong sense of moral obligation may decide to build shelter for others, as well as himself. Individualists who can support their own needs may choose to limit their interaction with the rest of the group, and retain the fruits of their labours for themselves. Those who cannot provide for themselves so easily, will need to adopt one of three basic postures towards the strongest providers: seeking charity (or taking what they need), seeking education or offering an exchange. Charity, or theft, may be a viable strategy if the strongest providers are happy to carry the extra burden, are willing to tolerate the implications for an uneven distribution of work, or calculate that the effort involved in preventing theft is greater than the effort needed to replace what was stolen. Education, in the form of learning new skills, would permit weaker providers to become stronger providers. This has the merit that it should reduce the burden on the strongest providers. However, it has disadvantages too. If the strongest providers educate their peers, they create an extra burden on themselves whilst they do so, and if successful they ultimately reduce their status and bargaining power within the community. From the perspective of the weaker providers, improved skills may make them more independent, but they will still need to go to the effort of learning those skills, and they may feel they will never be as adept as the stronger providers. In our world today, charity, theft and education are important factors in determining how we are organized, but it is the principle of exchange that dominates.

Trade is a basis for ordering society. It permits specialization and flexibility. The principles of trade are simple and personal enough that humans adopt it readily, even when they are forbidden to do it. Because only forty of the inhabitants need to be engaged in necessary work, the islanders could engage in a relatively large amount of work which is performed not out of need, but in order to satisfy other desires. For example, as garments become threadbare, they may be replaced by new clothing that is decorative, as well as functional. Perhaps somebody on the island makes jewellery, whilst another tells stories and sings songs for the amusement of onlookers. Base desires may also be satisfied through trade. One or more inhabitants may engage in the world’s oldest profession, especially if there is a mismatch between the genders and ages in the island’s population. A poor mix of potential sexual partners may make prostitution very lucrative.

Criminal activity, if completely unchecked, may become a serious threat to the well-being of the islanders. If relatively large numbers thrive by taking what they want, and relatively small numbers bear the burden of providing not just for themselves but for the thieves as well, it will not only demotivate the providers but potentially encourage more inhabitants to prosper at the expense of others. Theft is, at base, a zero-sum game. What the thief wins, the victim loses, leaving the sum unchanged and only changing the distribution. However, a zero-sum game may be very profitable to the winners of the game. Why go to a lot of effort to collect your own mangoes, when it is easier to take them from somebody else? If there is no reprisal, the thief is better off by not contributing and just taking. However, a zero-sum game is ultimately unproductive. If all one hundred inhabitants stopped producing, and tried to survive through stealing, they would all die. If a society is to be sustained, either everybody has to meet their own needs, or some people have to make a surplus that will support themselves and provide for others.

As the island is far from ordinary society, it is far from any established legal system. Even so, the islanders are likely to adopt their own laws and customs to govern behaviour. This may initially be inspired by the morality of the cultures they came from, but shorn of that influence, it could evolve in unpredictable ways. Laws are an expression of government. The islanders cannot have them without some mechanism to intervene in each other’s affairs. Whether it be effected by mob rule, by a form of voting, by a dictatorship, or by some hybrid of the familiar forms of government, laws can only be enforced if there is a kind of government to enforce them. Government greatly changes the potential for organization amongst the community. The aspirations for laws could be limited. It may be that they only serve to regulate trade and enshrine the idea of ownership and property, in order to encourage people to provide for themselves and discourage anyone wanting to help themselves to their neighbour’s possessions. Laws can also go a lot further. They may become an expression of moral will. For example, prostitution may be banned. To reduce dissent and enforce community, rituals and beliefs may become a matter of law. In modern secular societies, it is possible to forget that laws, through the ages, have often been used to enforce religious practices and points of view. The principle of law, and of government, also offers an alternative way for some individuals to provide for their own needs. Instead of picking mangoes themselves, a legislator, governor, despot or judge may have their needs provided for in exchange for the role they perform. This may be an attractive option to anyone who lacks the skills to provide for themselves, and is not keen on relying on charity or theft to maintain themselves. The option may not just be attractive, it may be very enriching. The ruler may be the richest person on the island, although in productive terms, they only arrange and orchestrate what others do, and provide nothing themselves. To someone of an individualist frame of mind, such a government may represent the most terrifying form of criminal behaviour: the creation of a legal system whose very purpose is to enrich some at the expense of others. That such a system can be enforced is not proof that it is moral. There is little difference between the basis of payment and reward given to a fascist blackshirt or to a Mafia goon. In the imagined island, only forty people need to work to satisfy everyone’s needs. That means even the simplest democratic check to ensure ‘fairness’ in government - the requirement for votes won by a majority - could be compatible with the effective enslavement of the producers for the benefit of all others. If the other sixty inhabitants were unified, it would not even matter if the forty workers were allowed to vote.

I described this island as a thought experiment, in the hope of casting some light upon how we do organize ourselves in the world today. If the experiment was repeated many times, I believe it would turn out very differently depending on the specifics of who was on the island. The complete separation of the island allows us to keep things simple, but as John Donne noted, no man is an island. Our world is full of individuals and groups, sometimes acting together, sometimes acting against each other, often indifferent but unpredictable in when their efforts will reinforce or negate each other’s. Individuals interact with small groups, small groups interact with large groups, and ultimately every single person has some immeasurable impact on the whole word. Each person’s actions is like a butterfly’s wings; a single act or beat might precipitate a chain of cause and effect that leads to a storm on the other side of the world. The difficulty is being able to take a major outcome in the world and trace it back to its causal roots. Historians may look at the influences and upbringing of the key individuals that make decisions and shape events, but they usually, and wisely, take their research no further. In the island thought experiment, and in any history of any event, we see examples of the various options for how people can act, react, and hence organize themselves as people. The basis for how this world is organized is just an extrapolation from the same simple themes as prevalent on the hypothetical island: whether people are more or less productive, whether they are more or less selfless or selfish, whether they prefer to play a zero-sum game or want to add value to the world, whether they seek to impose on others, keep to themselves, or find a compromise within their community.

During part one, I noted that the economist J.M. Keynes had predicted increasing wealth and increasing leisure. Put simply, both would be the result of economic models that are non-zero-sum in nature. The world makes more wealth than required to satisfy immediate needs, the surplus is reinvested in making even more wealth, this makes it even easier for output to outstrip demand, an even larger surplus is generated, leading to even more reinvestment, and we have a virtuous circle. Keynes’ prediction of increasing wealth have been borne out, but not his prediction of increasing leisure. In fact, measures that show people are working are usually treated as a sign of political success and good government. Keynes predicted that we will be working 15 hours a week by 2030. For that to come true, governments will need to start regarding our traditional conception of ‘full’ employment as a failure.

Can we explain how Keynes was right, and that the economic wheels are turning to make the world wealthier, whilst he was also wrong, and not releasing us for more leisure? To give a complete answer is beyond my abilities in this post, but I think the clues can be drawn from the behaviour of the inhabitants of our imagined island, and from the analogues in the world around us. Perhaps Keynes made the understandable error of assuming that changes in the total of wealth would also lead to changes in the distribution of wealth. Many people considered to be ‘poor’ by modern standards are incontestably rich by historical standards. One sign of this is that life expectancy keeps improving. However, perception of wealth need not be aligned to the reality of wealth. If televisions were a rarity when Keynes wrote in the 1930’s, that does not mean people think themselves wealthy because they have one now. Telephones are far more ubiquitous now than they were in the 30’s, but people may not consider themselves rich because they have a mobile phone today. If people perceive themselves to be poor, they may continue to work hard even if they are a lot richer than their great-grandparents were. Changes in perception may be one cause of why people do not work shorter hours, but I think there is another more crucial reason: we need to work in order to maintain the basis for how our society is organized.

Is there evidence that the great wealth of the human race produces is being used to keep us busy, because we cannot find an alternative way to keep our society running? I believe so. More importantly, it does not have to be a conscious decision. Imagine the world was like our hypothetical island. If you only need 40% of the world to work in order to satisfy everyone’s needs, how do you keep that proportion motivated, and avoid demotivating the remainder? If 60% of the world decided to go on permanent holiday, and just took what they needed, there would be the risk that many of the other 40% would stop working too. We definitely produce more than we ever have before. Because of advances in science and technology, each single person can make more than they would have a hundred years ago. Machines mean that the output per person is more than it was. This was the basis for Henry Ford’s revolution in car manufacture, but it applies much more broadly than that. So why are we still so busy? The key is in finding customary forms of human behaviour that are universal and which sustain human needs. Exchange is universal. John Lennon asked if we could imagine a world without possessions. I do not think we can. We give, we take, we aim to get what we need, and what we want by giving others what they want or need. If that leads to over-production, we do not care, so long as we each get what we want.

One reason why we would all need to keep on working despite increasing wealth is that we use the world’s wealth to attempt things that were never tried before. An obvious example would be sending people to the moon, creating gigantic particle colliders and other expensive scientific projects that lack any obvious benefits to normal mankind. Whatever advances are made in applied science as a result of the investment, it is doubtful that you need to spend on those specific projects in order to get those advances. Great scientific leaps forward happen for all sorts of reasons, sometimes as a consequence of huge state-backed projects, often not. We are not just changing technology, but also trying to change the nature of our society through wealth. Throughout history, people at the margins of society have suffered. If you could not work, you went without. The human race, on a global level, seems set on ending that. Whilst that noble program keeps productive people busy, it also risks higher and higher numbers of people wanting to classify themselves as needing support, instead of giving support. For the good of our current basis of organization, this has to be reigned in. Both providing for people’s needs and reigning in criminality leads to a need for government intervention. This means employing people to do the work of government, whether it be in providing services that cannot be effectively provided any other way (roads, a system of welfare benefits) or applying and enforcing the will of the government (the legal system, the police). In the UK, income tax is still a ‘temporary’ tax that has to be renewed by Parliament each year. With roughly 40% of the nation’s income now taken for UK government spending, there is no sign that it will come to an end any time soon. When David Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he introduced the ‘people’s budget’ to pay for all the welfare reforms the Liberals had introduced, including meals for schoolchildren, pensions for the old, labour exchanges and national insurance to provide for healthcare and unemployment benefits. It caused a political crisis because of the extent to which it taxed wealthier citizens, and a constitutional crisis when the Lords, the second chamber in the UK Parliament, tried to block it. In the people’s budget, the very richest were expected to pay 11.25% of their income in taxes. As you can see, the business of being in government is now a lot bigger than it was when David Lloyd George was pushing his radical reforms.

Not only is government engaged in eliminating poverty, it is increasingly involved in eliminating all forms of suffering in a constant quest for perfection. Some government missions are of debatable worth. There are understandable disputes about how much we need to fight overseas wars to increase security at home, or enforce safety protocols because we cannot evaluate risk for ourselves. However, governments are, by and large, doing what large numbers of people expect them to do or, at least, are willing to tolerate. If governments make work, it is because people allow and encourage them to. There is also plenty of work outside of government that is not, strictly, necessary. Take the rise of the service sector. How can so many people be employed in the service sector? How did we cope before? Without wanting to be flippant, it seems unlikely that the world would stop turning if less people were employed to serve hot water and coffee beans at your local Starbucks. The service sector, more prominent in wealthier societies, keeps people busy in jobs that previously were not necessary. If that is the case, are the jobs created because time is freed up to do other things that we want to do, but did not have time? Or is it as much the case that people find ways to make themselves useful and engage in exchange, even if they cannot offer anything that is really needed?

You generally need government for laws, but people are versatile and can create laws and rules in all sorts of places. In that sense, they have a tendency to create new and additional forms of government. There is good reason for them to do so. As rules get more complicated, ways to exploit and abuse them get more complicated. Nathan Rothschild was a pioneer in the early 19th century bond market, and generated tremendous wealth as a result, but that market is of trivial simplicity compared to the financial instruments that are traded today. He made a lot of money from the novel practice of speculating on government bonds, but these days, that kind of speculation is at the simple end of spectrum. Finance has never been more complicated. The increase in complexity has lead some to gain fabulous wealth, whilst there have also been some spectacular failures and cheats. The Nobel prize-winners at Long Term Credit Management offer a good example of being too clever for your own good, and Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme is a great example of how greed can pervert the sense of even the most sophisticated investors in the world. Complexity in business affairs, like bureaucracy in government, is ultimately an overhead. It adds to the cost of doing things. Some people may believe that it can also generate value that offsets the cost. A simple example would be paying a manager to select the best stocks to invest in. However, the evidence that complexity has tended to bring value into the world, and not simply remove or redistribute it through some enormous zero-sum game, is mixed. If clever financial instruments help to make sure money is spent where the human race most needs it - on the assets that will generate most wealth overall - then the complexity they bring will be offset by the increased overall wealth of the human race. If, however, they are more like a greed-driven exercise in enriching some at the expense of others, then increasing complexity is a net drain on the world’s wealth. From that perspective, it is possible to imagine that the current financial crisis would have been best avoided by paying many bankers huge sums to stay at home and do nothing, instead of paying them huge sums to work diligently at making a pig’s ear of the world’s economy.

Not everyone can be rich, whether on the desert island or in real life. For some to be wealthy, others must have less. This is because wealth is as much relative as it is absolute. However, human perceptions about satisfaction - what is enough to be content - will vary from person to person. To some extent, those who have opted for Keynes’ leisure society already exist and are perfectly rational. They assess the income they can get from state benefits, compare it to what they can get from working, and conclude that the relatively low standard of living gained from benefits is good enough in absolute terms. Compared to the life of a normal person living a hundred years ago, they are perfectly right. They are fed, clothed, housed, entertained and have access to technology that was unimaginable to our grandparents’ generation. In contrast, slavery still exists, but it exists for quite different reasons to the economic factors that created the transatlantic slave trade or the slavery common to most ancient civilizations. Then, slavery was motivated by the need to have farm workers so others could be supported by the surplus created. This would free slave owners to take on other roles in society. These roles may well have included other kinds of work. The images of slavery are shrouded in stereotypes, with lazy slaves being beaten by greedy owners. However, this simple picture probably fails to provide enough nuance to the history of slavery. Slavery is ultimately a kind of economic relationship. Though some would have conformed to the personality stereotypes, others did not. Great pains are taken to present the slave-owners amongst America’s founding fathers as men who treated slaves well and regarded slavery as a kind of economic relationship with expectations on both sides. Otherwise, the words in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”

would ring rather hollow. In another example, when the conquering Italians abolished slavery in Ethiopia after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, many slaves reportedly complained that they had lost their station in life and hence their source of food. In contrast, and contrary to Andrea Dworkin’s analysis of the economic motivation for prostitution, modern sex slavery is not motivated by necessity, on either the part of the prostitute or their pimp. It is very debatable whether it is necessary for the customer either. At base, prostitution is another kind of exchange. The prostitute offers a service that people are prepared to pay for. That means there is enough wealth in the world to support people whose only contribution to the economy is providing sexual favours. The pimp’s motivation is obvious, but it would be naive to assume that the prostitute is mindless chattel, any more than it would be fair to apply a simple black-and-white analysis of slavers and slaves throughout history. Prostitutes are not brainless bodies under the controlled of a pimp/master. They live in a relatively enlightened time. Whether tricked into prostitution by the allure of illegal immigration to a wealthier nation, or encouraged to remain a prostitute in exchange for narcotics, the modern sex slave has rights and opportunities to act for themselves that were denied to the millions who were captured, or who were born into slavery when slavery was still legal. Even extremely exploitative economic relationships can, in this modern age, be based less on actual need and more on the perceived needs of everyone who enables it.

Looking at life’s underbelly is perhaps the worst place to look for evidence of the excess of wealth around us. There are gaudier examples, including the grotesque sums paid to Damien Hirst in exchange for pickled sheep, the flashy presenter/interviewer/reviewer Jonathan Ross reporting himself to be ‘worth’ a thousand BBC journalists, and the absurd amounts of oil and gas money offered by Russians and Arabs to their pet footballers. Paradoxically, we live at a time of great simplification of the world’s economy. All the middle men are being stripped out, as people increasingly buy direct from suppliers instead of retailers or brokers. Markets and information are getting more perfect and more international, allowing fewer opportunities to exploit customers because of where they are or how little they now. This will cause convulsions. Some jobs are not needed any more. But we still need jobs to give our society order and purpose. That is why politicians want to stimulate consumption during this downturn, instead of asking whether we really need the things being made and consumed. To my mind, this downturn is a symptom of a wider malaise: that it is getting harder to keep people motivated, because however greedy people are, and however they are motivated by relative perceptions of wealth, increasing the standard of living will eventually lead large numbers to be satisfied. There is only so much graphic design work the UK can sell to China, and only so many plastic toys that China can sell to the UK. This downturn may be the first sign that the human race is learning how much is enough.

I personally would like to work less, but earn at the same rate. From my experience, that is a very hard thing to do. Unless you are rich, or make money from accumulated capital, our society is just not designed like that. Instead of persecuting people for not working and rewarding people excessively who do work, we need to find better ways to permit people to adopt intermediate patterns of living. If I was to aim for Keynes’ prediction, and a job that employs me for 15 hours a week, I would probably end up in a low-paid unskilled job, or in a very well-paid job demanding high levels of experience and an established track record gained from previous work. The middle way is a route untrod. This means options for people to arrange and improve their lives through leisure, instead of consumption, are poorly realized. We have a binary model of success: work is good and leads to rewards, not working is bad. However, leisure is a kind of reward. Our community persists with outdated models for how people should live. Alternative models are ill-constructed for the real needs of our society. For example, having a child is now a mechanism to reduce work, whether it be taken through taking extended leave, justifying part-time employment in a professional job, or by becoming dependent on the state. However, if we are already producing more than enough to meet our needs materially, the one thing we do not need to specifically encourage is more children. In history, families needed children to support parents in their old age, but if Keynes was right, the need for children to become workers to generate wealth diminishes with each generation. Now, the problem is more one of conserving finite resources.

The obstacle to Keynes’ prediction of a leisure society is organization. We do not know, or trust ourselves, to reorder society so we consume less but still live a good, ordered and peaceful life. Economic production has dominated human history. Perhaps it is unsurprising that if it declines in importance we may not recognize that or know how to respond. There are no other island societies we can emulate and learn from. If there is a way for humans to be happy without endlessly consuming more and more each year, we will have to find the way for ourselves.

Suppose that you and ninety-nine other people are stranded on a desert island. You are lucky, in that the island has all the natural resources - water, food, materials to build shelter - that you will need to survive indefinitely. Between the stranded hundred, there is a sufficient range of skills to competently manage any task you may need to perform, whether it is treating ailments or hunting wild boar. Unfortunately, you know that rescuers will never come. You are too far from habitation, and for whatever reason, the rest of the world will never look for you or find you. Your only focus is living and not escaping. Now suppose there is enough necessary work - in terms of maintaining shelter, gathering food etc - to keep about forty people busy all the time, leaving the other sixty with nothing to do. Let us not quibble about what is considered necessary, why there is not more work or less work, and what it means for a person to be busy all the time. Let us just say that, if sixty of the island’s population acted like they were on vacation, the other forty, using whatever tools and equipment that washed ashore with them, would be consistently able to do the chores. Forty workers could keep one hundred people fed, watered, clothed, warm and dry. Ignore anything that might demand a short-lived burst of extra energy, such as building the first shelters, coping with a spell of bad weather like a monsoon season, or dealing with an epidemic. The island’s population needs forty full-time workers on average. My question for you is: how would the islanders split up the work between them? And what work, if any, would you want to do?

There are no demonic and wealthy social scientists who would round up a representative sample of people and parachute them on to an island to see what would happen. It would be a glorious experiment, but unless the participants are willing, it would be unethical. If they were willing, the sample would not be representative, and the results would not be a reliable basis for inference. Being willing at the outset does not guarantee they will continue to be willing, and an experiment like this might need to run for years as the community may reorganize itself many times before the division of work is finally settled. However, although we cannot perform these experiments, the human race is, in an indirect way, constantly exploring the answer.

The question of who does what work is about organization, or more specifically how people organize themselves when it comes to performing work. Our most basic survival instincts will always lead to some kind of work, for somebody or other. The inhabitants of a desert island are remote from prevailing law and government, and so are free to create their own laws and govern themselves in new ways. They will decide how work and resources are distributed amongst the population. They will decide who has what obligations, who has what rewards. How would they organize themselves? Would they be Marxists, with everybody working according to their ability, and everyone receiving according to their needs? Would there be a simple form of egalitarianism, with everybody expected to do an equal share of the work, and some rules about what is an equal share? Would the island society establish a Capitalist principle of private ownership and trade between the individuals, with people buying and selling their possessions and their labours? Would the island end up with a despot, telling people what to do? Would it divide into classes, with some doing more work, others doing more supervising?

History is not of great help in finding an answer. In the past, most people were kept very busy just feeding themselves. Subsistence farmers comprise the great majority of people who have ever lived. What we learn from history is often skewed. Histories tend to be written from the perspective of the privileged few. Those with privilege tend to be more concerned with each other than with the lot of the great mass, except in those rare cases where the great mass threatens to revolt and upset the status quo. Because the powerful tend to be preoccupied with the powerful, it may feel like little has ever changed in human affairs. Nevertheless, mankind has shown the capacity for change over the centuries. Slavery used to be the norm. Now it is outlawed by and large. The fourth article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”

Outlawing slavery is a basic step. Nevertheless, it is a significant step change in how humans organize themselves.

Sometimes people wrongly equate slavery with the enslavement of Africans for use as farming labour in the new world. Slavery has been around a lot longer than just that ignoble episode. Modern sensitivities about race and a disproportionate emphasis on modern American history means we may forget that slavery was common to many ancient cultures, long before the invention of technology to move large numbers of people across the continents. The word ’slave’ is derived from the word ‘Slav’ because so many Eastern European Slavs were sold in to slavery. The list of cultures which recognized some form of slavery is long: the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, the Aztecs… it goes on and on. The Bible sets expectations for the minimum treatment of slaves. Jews traded non-Jews as slaves. The Muslims had rules to govern slavery. The medieval Catholic Church sometimes tried to ban it, but usually made exceptions for non-Christians. Throughout history, the motivation for slavery has largely been economic. For a very few to be prosperous, many more had to toil.

There are many problems with analyzing slavery as a basis for meeting people’s needs. One problem is that you cannot devise a general-purpose definition of a person’s needs that can explain the needs of the slave and the slave owner without also coming to the conclusion that the slave owner gets more than they need (or that the slave gets less). On the other hand, just because slave owners get more than they need, that does not mean that society does not need slaves. Whether we look at agriculture for the ancient Romans or in 18th Century US, it could be argued that efficiently organizing large numbers of people to work on farms enables a surplus of production which in turn frees other parts of the population to do different work. If everyone is a subsistence farmer, then nobody can be a professional soldier or research scientist. Both Plato and George Washington owned slaves. The debate about the need for slavery hence revolves around the extent to which it is permissible to curtail the individual’s liberties in order to meet the perceived needs of society as a whole. This debate is not limited to slavery, as it would occur in any circumstances where people live together as a group. It is pivotal to our modern lives. Slavery is just one end of a spectrum, with the slave giving up most liberty and being most subordinated into becoming a tool for economic production. All of us give up liberty to some extent, and there is a relationship between the loss of liberty, how we contribute the economy and earn a living, and how much of a living we make.

Slavery still exists today. By some reports, far more people are illegally enslaved today than were legally trafficked from Africa to the Americas; take a look at this article in the UN Chronicle. Illegality makes it harder to track the real numbers. The motives remain economic, but the method of making money has changed. The prime slave is no longer a strong African man who would make a good farmhand. Today slavery is more oriented around the women of many races who are forced into prostitution. It is reported that most of these women are promised new lives as illegal immigrants in foreign countries, only to find out the truth when they arrive. Because of their precarious legal position, their choices are stark. The persistence of slavery today, despite legal sanctions to prevent it, and in the absence of any obvious need for it, tell us something about how people organize themselves for economic gain. It also tells us how demand and supply continues to determine human affairs, even as perceived needs change.

Human history is not a good guide to what our islanders will do, because human invention always changes the parameters of work and need. Advances in science, technology and equipment mean that Thomas Jefferson’s farm, including slaves, was less productive than Al Gore’s farm is without slaves. If you want to make the world a better place now, and forever more, then you should invent something. You may not profit from the invention, but so long as your invention is not lost or forgotten, the human race as a whole has a chance to gain from it. A good new invention may not change the world overnight, but it will proliferate over time. An invention represents a fundamental change in economic parameters. Something that used to be impossible is now possible. This is the root cause of why each generation tends to be more prosperous than the generation before. The driving force of invention, coupled with the accumulation of capital, was recognized by the economist J.M. Keynes. In 1930, in the midst of the great depression, he wrote an essay called “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” in which he painted an optimistic picture of the future. Keynes predicted that by 2030 people would be working 15-hour weeks, and that the greater motivation for their work would be the human desire to keep busy and, to a lesser extent, to acquire more wealth. To his mind, progress had essentially liberated man from hard graft. Keynes gave a comforting message that the depression was an anomaly, created by the speed of change and the novelty of the human situation. He asserted that the underlying dynamic of wealth creation would prevail in the long run. As a consequence, need would no longer be a significant source of human motivation. Whilst Keynes’ predictions about increases in the standard of living have proven right so far, there is no sign of the leisure society he imagined. If powerful forces are driving us towards a better life, why are they creating a higher standard of living, but not a shorter working week?

The desert island I introduced in my opening question is a metaphor for our planet, the island of Earth. I supposed an island where the stranded inhabitants, with the tools and knowledge they possess, could satisfy their needs whilst utilizing only 40% of the workforce. Choosing 40% was arbitrary. More primitive technology or knowledge would mean a larger proportion would need to work just to ensure all needs are satisfied. Improvements would mean less of the workforce has to be engaged to satisfy the islander’s needs. The exact figure is less important than the sense of a sliding scale, and that most of us can agree on a definition of human needs that could be satisfied with less than 100% of the workforce. If progress is driving us further and further towards a world where our needs are met more easily, how does this change our motivations and how we organize ourselves? Do we become indolent? Do we seek solutions to needs that are more personal than societal, such as treatments of infertility? Do we use the time made available and try to accumulate even greater, previously unimaginable wealth? Does our answer change, depending on whether we live in an existing society with established customs and practice, or if we imagine ourselves constructing a new society from scratch?

Nobody can parachute a random sample of one hundred people on to an island, to see how they behave over a period of years. However, we can perform a thought experiment. We can imagine the scenario, and try to identify how they would behave. Our estimations should be based on the evidence of how people have behaved in the past, and how they behave today. I am going to continue the thought experiment in the sequel to this post, to be published next week. In the continuation, I will look at the choices the islanders are faced with, and contrast them with the choices people make in the real world. That way, I hope to learn about the island society, and our own.

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It is a new year. What is so new about it? Anyone born before 2008 will have been here before, at least on a cosmic scale. We inhabitants of the Earth have completed one orbit of the Sun since the last bout of New Year’s parties. Presumably that is something worth celebrating, though I am not sure what contribution anyone made to this stellar achievement, except that even the thinnest and tiniest of us has a mass and hence adds to gravity’s sum. If going around the Sun is worth celebrating, that would seem to imply that the heaviest people deserve the most congratulation. Perhaps that would justify them eating and drinking a little bit more during the celebrations, and hence creating an oddly virtuous circle.

Although the Earth goes around the Sun, you could argue we are not back where we were. Our whole solar system is moving, as it spins around our Galaxy, the Milky Way. On that measure, it will be another 220 million years before we are back here again. I cannot imagine anyone is planning a party for that anniversary. On top of that, the entire Milky Way is moving towards something called the Great Attractor. The Great Attractor is not what you get if you advertise that the Beckhams, Brangelina, TomKat, Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson will be attending a wife-swapping party, though the respective influence on galaxies and paparazzi are similar. The Great Attractor is a superdense gravity anomaly about 250 million light years away. Although the Milky Way is heading for the Great Attractor at a rate of something over 500 km/s, we will not be getting there anytime soon, and when we do, it is not sure if this will be a cause for celebration.

Returning to our own cosmic backyard, Einstein showed we do not go around the Sun in a fixed elliptical orbit, as previously thought. His general theory of relatively explained that the route of the orbit is also turning through space, tracing a path like a celestial spirograph. Einstein’s theory correctly predicted that the perihelion, the point where a planet is closest to a star during its orbit, keeps changing. Each year, it arrives earlier than the year before. Earth’s perihelion now occurs in January. That is fortunate for everyone suffering the winter in the Northern hemisphere, as otherwise it would be even colder. However, the change in the Earth’s orbit is only very slight, meaning it will take about 21,000 revolutions before we are back where we began and start to retrace the same route.

The advancing perihelion may not be enough to poop a New Year’s party, but Einstein had plenty more reasons to undermine any annual festivity. To begin with, the changing perihelion is only one manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. Because time is not independent of space, it elapses at different rates depending on where you are and where you are going. Imagine three friends. One of them is going to blast off in a rocket that will take him as far and as fast as he can go into deepest space. The other two are less adventurous, and decide to stay at home. The astronaut launches at precisely midnight on New Year’s Eve; NASA are trying to save costs on fireworks displays. A year goes by, and the two homebodies are holding a party. They count down to the new year, and then send a goodwill ‘instant’ message to their pal in space. Thanks to magical technology, their message really does arrive an instant later. However, the atomic-powered chronometer on the astronaut’s spaceship will say that the year is not yet over. Because he has been moving at speed, his clock undergoes time dilation relative to the party-goers on Earth. This means that the clock on the rocket seems to run relatively slow if seen by people on Earth. This is one strange consequence of the measurement of time not being independent of location in space.

If you think time dilation sounds odd, you have only heard the half of it. If the roles were reversed, and the astronaut instead sent the ‘instant’ message back to his buddies on Earth, they would find that their Earth clocks were running slow, relative to the astronaut’s. How can the clocks on the rocket, and on Earth, both be slow relative to each other? Although we said the rocketman was moving away at high speed, all motion is only relative. From the perspective of the astronaut, he is stationary and it is the planet Earth, with all its inhabitants including his two friends, that is moving away at speed. It does not matter that he is alone and there are lots of people on Earth, it is just as meaningful to describe the Earth’s movement relative to the rocket as it is to describe the rocket’s movement relative to the Earth. From the astronaut’s point of view, the Earth has been moving at high speed, and hence clocks on Earth are all dilated. That way, he finds himself celebrating the new year before anyone else.

So where does that leave us? Well, it leaves us exactly where we began, not just at this moment or for today, but all year and every year. All motion is relative, so it is just as true to say the Sun goes around the Earth as it is to say the Earth goes around the Sun. From our perspective, the Earth is motionless. That is lucky, as otherwise we would fall off. When we celebrate going once around the Sun, we have not gone anywhere at all. New Year’s parties are less of a home-coming and more of a never-going-away-in-the-first-place. However, it does at least mean that the Earth, or more precisely the bit of it where you are, (or more precisely still, the bit of it where I am) really is the centre of the universe. What is more, it is not just the centre of the universe now. It always has been the centre of the universe, and always will be. Now that is something I can celebrate all the year round.