TDDPirate’s Ideas

The following subject caused me to feel like a prophet who came before his time.  Some time after the upheavals in Israel started, I tried to interest several people in my economic ideas (links appear below).  I even joined a promising Facebook group of people, who want to preserve the sanity of economics in Israel.

However, it turned out that the leaders of that Facebook group have their own agenda, which is incompatible with discussions of novel economic ideas.  As a consequence, they asked me to stop posting there, and I left the group.  So I decided to just summarize links in a blog article and just refer any comers to it.

The subject of sane economics has been interesting me for several years.  Actually, it was the reason why I started to write this blog on May 2004.  As time passed, I switched to writing about other topics.  However, now, due to the upheavals in countries like Israel, USA, or England, it is necessary to develop a new way of thinking about economics.

I would like to solve problems like the following (in no particular order of importance):

1. Environmental pollution due to over-consumerism.
2. Joblessness in USA and several European countries (happily not a serious problem in Israel, at the moment).
3. Cost of living for the middle and lower classes (a problem in Israel).
4. Feeling of youths that no matter how much you try, you won’t be able to get ahead in life.

Following are links to relevant articles:

• Description of the problem.
• Buckminster Fuller defined the wealth of a person as the length of time he can survive without income.  I looked for a citation, but didn’t find one.  See Wikipedia article about Buckminster Fuller.
  I think that the keyword for finding people, who think along similar lines as me, is “Buckminster Fuller”.
• My thoughts about definition of wealth
• Another point of view
• Exploiting the welfare system to reorganize the economy and solve the problem of the need for makework to combat unemployment.
• Tangential to this discussion
• My proposal for another way to compete over social status, in lieu of conspicuous consumption
• Also other people complain about the problem of makework

Once the Israeli Cast Lead like military action against Gaza Strip starts, it is necessary to organize daily demonstrations next to the White House to get Obama to support the Israeli military operation and not to call for stopping it until the Hamas free Gilad Shalit in exchange for ceasefire and nothing else.

The demonstrators there should be all those silly crazies who demonstrate today next to the Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s house with the demand to release Gilad Shalit at the price of humiliating surrender to the Hamas.

הבן של מבצע עופרת יצוקה וגלעד שליט

ברגע שתתחיל הפעולה הצבאית הישראלית, בסגנון עופרת יצוקה, נגד רצועת עזה, יש לארגן הפגנות יומיות ליד הבית הלבן כדי לשכנע את אובמה לתמוך בפעולה הצבאית הישראלית ולהימנע מלדרוש מישראל להפסיקה באמצע עד שהחמאס ישחררו את גלעד שליט תמורת לכל היותר הפסקת אש.

מי שאמורים להפגין שם זה כל הטיפשים המשוגעים שהיום מפגינים ליד ביתו של ראש הממשלה ביבי נתניהו בתביעה שהוא ישחרר את גלעד שליט תמורת כניעה משפילה לחמאס.

אחת מהתיזות של סטף ורטהימר היא שהציונות נמצאת כעת בשלב השלישי שלה.  השלב הראשון היה הקמת החקלאות בארץ ישראל, והשלב השני הדגיש את הבטחון.  השלב השלישי, שפנחס ספיר וסטף ורטהימר היו בין מקדמיו, הינו תיעוש ישראל.  שלב זה עדיין לא הסתיים למרות שישראל זכתה כבר בעצמאות כלכלית.

עם זאת, נראה לי שכבר כדאי לחשוב על השלב הבא.  השלב הבא אמור לתת אתגר לצעירים ולמנוע התנוונות של מדינה שבעה גם אחרי שישראל תהיה בין המדינות העשירות ביותר בעולם.

השלב שאני מציע הינו פיתוח החלל, ויכלול הקמת תחנות חלל שיהוו מושבות ישראליות.

על פני כדור הארץ, ישראל תיהפך לתחנת מעבר.  פליטים מכל העולם ייכנסו לישראל, ישתקעו בה, ילדיהם יקבלו חינוך והכשרה ובסוף יהגרו לתחנות חלל.  בצורה כזו, ישראל תוכל לקלוט פליטים מכל העולם ובכל זאת על ידי מדיניות תיעדוף מתאימה, לשמר על רוב יהודי בטריטוריה שנמצאת על פני כדור הארץ ולמלא את תפקידה כמקלט לעם היהודי.

I do not understand how come I never saw any suggestion to solve the Sudanese refugees problem by resettling them in Gaza Strip.

I think it’s a simple idea with several advantages.

First of all, next time Hamas launch missiles at Israel, Israel will have the pretext to re-enter Gaza Strip and re-seize a part of it.

Then, the Sudanese refugees will be resettled in that part of Gaza Strip.  Plans for settling them will have been prepared beforehand.  Probably by rebuilding the Jewish settlements and following the same plans - even to the extent of building greenhouses to provide a living for the refugees.

Even if there are some subversive elements among them, most of the refugees probably just want to make a living and will be industrious workers - no need for Thai laborers there.  Therefore, it should be matter of a year or so before they are self-sufficient and after few years, they’ll be persperous enough to expose the lies of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas that the Palestinians need a lot of economic aid just to survive.  It may be possible to adopt a rotating door policy, which will allow Sudanese refugees to stay for few years, get persperous and then qualify by being persperous for immigration into other developed countries.

Another factor is that once the Palestinians see that the more genocide the Sudanese government commits, the more refugees from Sudan will arrive at Gaza strip and the more they’ll be squeezed out of parts of Gaza Strip, they’ll influence the Sudanese government to stop persecuting minorities in Sudan.

Once the Gaza Strip is full of Sudanese, it is possible to start settling them also in the West Bank and start squeezing Palestinians out of it.

And the best of all - the idea will eliminate the moral problem that we, as Israelis and descendants of Holocaust survivors, have with throwing out refugees from genocide.

תרגום לעברית נוסף בתאריך 1.1.2011:

אינני מבין איך זה שלא ראיתי אף הצעה לפתרון בעית הפליטים הסודניים על ידי יישובם-מחדש ברצועת עזה.

אני חושב שזה רעיון פשוט עם יתרונות רבים.

קודם כל, בפעם הבאה שהחמאס ישגרו טילים לישראל, יהיה לישראל תרוץ להכנס מחדש לרצועת עזה ולתפוס שליטה בחלק ממנה.

ואז יהיה אפשר ליישב מחדש את הפליטים הסודניים באותו חלק של רצועת עזה.  התוכניות ליישובם מחדש יהיו מוכנות מקודם.  קרוב לוודאי על ידי בנייה מחדש של היישובים היהודיים תוך שימוש באותן התוכניות - כולל בנייה מחדש של החממות כדי לפרנס את הפליטים.

אפילו אם יהיו אלמנטים חתרניים ביניהם, קרוב לוודאי שרובם רוצים פשוט לקיים את עצמם ויהיו עובדים חרוצים - אין צורך בעובדים תאילנדיים שם.  לכן בערך שנה אמורה להספיק עד שהם יוכלו לפרנס את עצמם ולאחר כמה שנים, הם ישגשגו די הצורך כדי לחשוף את השקרים של הרשות הפלשתינאית ושל החמאס, שהפלשתינאים זקוקים לסיוע כלכלי מסיבי רק כדי לשרוד.

גורם נוסף זה שברגע שהפלשתינאים יראו שככל שהממשלה הסודנית מבצעת יותר טבח עם, יותר פליטים מסודן יבואו לרצועת עזה ויותר פלשתינאים יידחקו מחלקים מרצועת עזה, הם ישפיעו על הממשלה הסודנית להפסיק לדרוף מיעוטים בסודן.

כשרצועת עזה תתמלא בפליטים סודניים, ניתן להתחיל ליישב אותם מחדש גם בגדה המערבית ולהתחיל לדחוק פלשתינאים משם.

והכי טוב - הרעיון ימנע את הבעיה המוסרית שיש לנו, בתור ישראלים וצאצאים של ניצולי השואה, עם גירוש פליטי ג’יינוסיד.

During the last several months, I noticed that the strongest voices in favor of accepting Hamas’ terms for release of Gilad Shalit, and against tough negotiations - belong to the Left.

The question, then is:  why does the Left press Bibi Netanyahu to surrender to Hamas in the negotiations over Gilad Shalit?

The Leftist movements in Israel, such as Peace Now, have an agenda of demonstrating against the Israeli leaders whenever they try to play tough in peace negotiations with the Arabs, as if playing tough is equivalent to wish for war - rather than wish for peace from better position.  They throw to the winds the maxim that negotiations which end in satisfactory results - start with tough-looking bargaining positions.

In the case of negotiations for Gilad Shalit’s release, I suspect that the Left knows that the key for Gilad Shalit’s release is to act tough and even be cruel toward Hamas activists in Israeli prisons.  However they do not want that the Israeli public be exposed to the experience of tough negotiations with successful outcome.

Therefore, the Leftists would sabotage the process of negotiations by blaming the Israeli leaders for “abandoning” Gilad Shalit only because they try to play tougher in negotiations with Hamas.  Nevermind the fact that true abandonment means that no one is giving attention to the abandoned person; rather than having to do with the specific kind of attention being given.  The Leftists demonstrate - not against Hamas or the International Red Cross - but against Bibi Netanyahu and the other Israeli leaders.  They try to persuade Netanyahu to release dangerous terrorists, whose release is sure to lead to tens and hundreds of Israeli victims.

Seems that for the Left, it is better to keep the Gilad Shalit problem unsolved, rather than risk the lesson that playing tough in negotiations pays huge dividends.

According to Michael J. Totten, the ruling class of Syria can never make peace with Israel on their own, as they are Alawites - a minority in Syria. If they make peace with Israel, they’ll be considered as traitors and the Sunni majority would revolt and drown the Alawites in blood.

In the following I’ll try to formulate how Salvor Hardin would have dealt with the problem of getting Bashar al-Assad to make peace with Israel.

Since it is Salvor Hardin, the following principles are relevant:

• “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right”
• “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”

The key is to save Assad’s face and convince the Sunni in Syria that by making peace with Israel, Assad really does them good rather than being a traitor.

The plan would be as follows.

1. A pretext for starting hostilities against Syria could be its hosting and supporting the Hamas leaders, who are opposed to release of Gilad Shalit for free.
2. Hostile action would be to demonstrate power and ruthlessness by bombing some critical infrastructure, such as irrigation dams or key bridges. However, the hostilities are to be sufficiently surgical that there’ll be no casualties or bodily harm to people.
3. The next step would be to prevent reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure as long as there is state of war between Syria and Israel.
4. Once Syria capitulates and agrees to make peace with Israel and has accepted the humiliation of peace without the Golan Heights returned to it, Israel would extend economic aid to Syria in order to repair and upgrade the infrastructure destroyed during the hostilities. See below.

The biggest problem in carrying out the above plan is international public opinion. One way to counter it is to earmark few billion dollars for rebuilding Syria once there is peace, and arrange for those companies (presumably, French ones) which currently have construction contracts in Syria and are in position to get reconstruction contracts (for rebuilding Syria) to pull ropes and arrange for public relations so that there’ll be support for Israel’s actions.

Recently an American Jew asked me the following question, in view of the news concerning recognition of conversions into Judaism carried out in the Israeli army (IDF):

Hey, let me ask you something. My wife told me that Israel is in the middle of redefining who is a Jew, and that Reform/secular/assimilated people like me wouldn’t be considered Jews any more. Is that going to affect the Law of Return?

My reply to him was:

The law of return won’t be affected, but ability to marry in Israel will be affected, because the Chief Rabbinate has legal monopoly over marriages of Jews (corresponding bodies have monopolies over Christians, Moslems and Druze) and the scandal over recognition of conversions into Judaism (the actual subject worrying your wife) is relevant to getting recognized as Jews by the Chief Rabbinate.

People, who cannot marry in Israel, usually fly to Cyprus to get married there, and then their marriage is recognized in Israel.  I have a cousin, who married in Cyprus, just because she was disgusted by the Chief Rabbinate.

The Law of Return explicitly covers non-Jews - if they have Jewish relatives (one Jewish grandparent or a Jewish spouse is enough).

As things look like, few years from now, civil marriages will be possible in Israel, because the group of people, covered by the Law of Return yet cannot marry in Israel, is growing each year (most of them are immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their descendants).

1. My accounting is simple:The terrorists, who were released in exchange for Elechanan Tanenbaum few years ago, have murdered 29 Israelis by now in terror attacks.

   There is no doubt that the terrorists, whose release is demanded by Hamas in exchange for freeing Gilad Shalit, will murder even more Israelis in the next few years.

   The only difference among Gilad Shalit and those Israelis is that today we know who is Gilad Shalit, and we can associate with him a photo, parents in distress and a life story.  Whereas those dead Israelis are today nameless and we have no way to associate with them a photo, grieving relatives or life story.  Only after they have lost their lives, we’ll know who they were.

2. Another aspect which no one seems to have thought about:Suppose Gilad Shalit is freed in exchange for all those terrorists and returns to live in Israel.  How will his life look like under the burden of Israelis who are killed or otherwise put at risk by those terrorists?  Won’t he feel obliged to live up to them as they sacrificed their lives to release him?  Won’t he be able to enjoy his life as a free man without onerous obligations?  Would he be able to live normal life under the weight of obligations to those who risked and sacrificed their lives to secure his release?

Let it be clear.  I believe that the Left-wing activists, who protest against the Israeli government’s handling of Gaza Strip in general and the flotilla in particular, are stupid, closed-minded, misguided and effectively are fifth column.

However, none of those attributes justify any form of attack on them by Right-wing activists.  Not the smoke grenade, not personal attack on Uri Avneri and his ilk, nothing except for counter-demonstration.

Freedom of expression counts the most when one wants to express highly annoying opinions.  Freedom of expression, in particular the freedom to question any of our sacred cows, is one of the foundations of our strength.

Let’s not deprive ourselves of real strength by threatening or silencing those misguided people!

Those days Turkey is rapidly transforming from an ally and friend of Israel into an enemy, to be almost as dangerous as Iran.

The Turkey-related news of the last few days never fail to remind me of the transformation of Anakin Skywalker in “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” into Darth Vader.

I wonder what will be NATO’s stand if war starts between Turkey and Israel due to Erdoğan’s plans to break through Gaza blockade by personally escorting ships and accompanying them by Turkish navy ships.

Addendum:
I don’t like the incitatory slant of the article, however it provides a possible explanation of the environment which allowed Turkey to make the transformation into an enemy of Israel:  Turkey-vs-Israel. ANOTHER War in the Middle East?

I am not as optimistic as the article’s author about Israeli chances of winning a war against Turkey, because Turkey has been provided over the years with Israeli military technology.  Even today, the relevant contracts haven’t been suspended yet as far as I know.

The only way I see to avoid a Turkish-Israeli war is for the Turkish army to get hold of its wits and overthrow Erdoğan in a military coup, similar to past coups, which happened in Turkey over the years.