What I like about Celsius as against Fahrenheit is its indication of how cold it actually gets when it really gets cold. Anything below minus is freezing, the larger the number after the minus sign, the more meaningful the severity of the cold sounds.
Last night it hit -14 in Frankfurt. Celsius! Read that as 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit, you do not quite get to envisage just how cold it is.
So when you hear that the temperature in the Ukraine in the last couple of weeks has hit -25, and over 130 people there as of last week had frozen to death ....
There are people who are homeless out there. In smaller numbers in Germany than in some other countries that I could name, but even one person living homeless (against their will) is an indication of a failed economy IMHO. This excludes the junkies and alkies who are responsible, to an extent at least, for their own fate.
If you are homeless and left out to freeze in this Siberian imported cold spell, your miserable life must hit its nadir. Being homeless is just about as bad as it can get anyway. And in temperatures which are best suited for refrigeration ....
So imagine in comparison someone serving 30 years or more in jail. Being in jail also sounds an extremely miserable existence, not least for the company that you have to keep. But think for a moment. You have a roof over your head, regular meals, a degree of warmth. Is it worse than living on the streets?
Walking back from the supermarket just now, the name "Bernie Madoff" went through my mind. One of the ultimate swindlers, he managed to live most of his life in exceptional luxury, and while in his declining years he has been condemned to spend the remainder of his life in very limited confinement behind bars, how much has he lost?
If he had been sentenced to have all his assets stripped away and forced to live on the streets like a vagrant for the rest of his days? For the rest of his life, without "parole" (and without help from the Salvation Army!). It does once in a while get very cold in New York City. Jail sounds a far better alternative when you think about it!
Following the usual digressions that permeate my brain cells, then arose the question - if you are an ultimate believer in (conservative) libertarian thinking, did Bernie Madoff actually deserve to be in jail at all?
If you do not have regulations (which unnecessarily impact trading), why should a Ponzi scheme be illegal? It is only another regulation!
If you stick the notice "caveat emptor" up on all trading, then a Ponzi trader is just as much a person to be questioned as anyone else. Surely by this thinking, the person who bought what Madoff was offering should have been more careful and checked it out before investing? If you want a free market without regulations, surely this is logical thinking????
So why aren't the free market advocates picketing the jail where Madoff, obviously an innocent man, is being held???? This is surely victimisation, not justice????
Taking my tongue out of my cheek and putting it back in its normal place, I will immediately state that the reason for Madoff being in jail is logical. There is no more a chance of a total "free market" working than there is of Communism working. Both assume a certain type of perfection in humanity that simply does not exist.
Eventually there have to be rules. That work - for everybody. In the public interest! My scepticism about the market economy is well recorded in the pages of this blog. If you have wealth to start off with, you can make it work, and if you fail, then there is nobody else to blame.
For everyone else it is a confused mess, a random, ramshackle, devil-take-the-hindmost culture that creates more poverty than wealth for the majority of the people out there, and encourages gambling and irresponsibility rather than intelligence and industry.
Not armed with the right tools, being born to the wrong family in the wrong place, stuck with an incompetent government which is only concerned about the well-being of the affluent in the mistaken belief that somehow the wealth will trickle down .... well you had better start getting used to living outside in temperatures of minus 14. Celsius!
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