Syria Towards the endgame The world should start preparing for what comes after Syrias President Bashar Assad Jul 21st 2012 | from the print editionIN EVERY revolution, there is a moment when the tide turns against the regime. In Egypt it came on January 28th last year, when protesters occupied Tahrir Square and torched the ruling-party headquarters. In Libya it happened on August 20th last year, when people in Tripoli rose against Qaddafi. In Syria it may have happened on July 18th, when a bomb struck at the heart of Syrias military command. 1 28 8 20 7 18 If the attack shifts the balance of power decisively against President Bashar Assad, that is greatly to be welcomed. But a year or so after their revolutions, both Egypt and Libya remain unstable; and Syria, which borders Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, is an exceptionally complex and pivotal part of the Middle East. Those who wish Syrians well now need to focus not just on how to bring about Mr Assads swift fall from power, but also on how to spare the post-Assad Syria from murder and chaos and how to prevent violence from spreading across a combustible region. Just go The bombing of the national security headquarters in Damascus is likely to weaken the regime in a number of ways (see article). It wounded many and killed the defence minister and a former military chief. Worse still for the president was the death of Assef Shawkat, his brother-in-law and one of the regimes most powerful figures. Mr Assad rapidly filled their positions, but in a country governed by a clique held together by personal loyalty, the dead men will not easily be replaced. That the bombing seems to have been an inside job, requiring intelligence and access deep inside the regime, will also damage the command structure of the armed forces and the security services. The loyalty of the armyin which the officers are largely from Mr Assads Alawite sect and the ranks are mostly Sunniwas anyway one of the regimes weaknesses. A blast from a huge bomb somehow smuggled into the inner sanctum will sow mistrust and suspicion at all levels. The attack is just the latest blow to Mr Assad: all over the country, turmoil is growing. The rate of killing is now roughly ten times greater than in Afghanistan. Swathes of the west and north-west have become no-go areas for government forces, who are being killed in greater numbers than even two months ago. The pace of defections is increasing: a score of generals have deserted. Especially in the borderlands, disaffection and dissent are palpable. Homs and Hama, the countrys third- and fourth-biggest cities, are hostile to Mr Assad. Damascus and Aleppo, the two main cities, have been less torrid because quite a lot of their people have taken the view that Mr Assad is a better guarantor of stability than the alternative. Now that rebel fighters have entered the city, that no longer looks clear. The attack will also be changing calculations abroad. For the past few months, diplomacy has focused on a plan, overseen by Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary-general, to negotiate an effective ceasefire under a team of monitors and to set up an interim unity government. But over the past few weeks the Annan plan, along with many thousands of Syrians, has died. The rebels, who can now smell victory, will not agree to a ceasefire. The monitors activities have been suspended because of the fighting. The country is ravaged by civil war, so there is no prospect of putting together a unity government. After this weeks bomb the danger is that a desperate Mr Assad will resort to ever more extreme tacticsflattening whole districts in Damascus with heavy artillery, say, or seeking to provoke a regional war, or even murdering his own people with chemical weapons. The enormity of that prospect makes it worth trying yet again to persuade Mr Assad to face up to the hopelessness of his position and to accept that flight from Syria is now his best option. The threat of international justiceespecially warnings about his pariah status if he uses chemical weaponsmight just have some force. But only Russia has much influence over him. The desire to protect an old ally, fear of its own restive Muslims and hostility to Western calls for regime change have led Russia to shelter Mr Assads regime from diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions. As it seems ever-likelier that Mr Assad will go, so the chances that Russia will abandon him in return for a role in a post-Assad Syria grow. But in the absence of a decisive diplomatic shift in the right direction, Western governments should try to give the military effort against Mr Assad a further push. The swiftest way of doing that would be to give aidsuch as money and communications gearto the main rebel force, the Free Syrian Army. It is already getting arms and cash from Qatar and Saudi Arabia with Turkish co-operation, but it needs more help; for, despite its recent setbacks, Mr Assads regime is heavily armed with the best Russian kit. The FSA is no band of angels. Some of its weapons will doubtless fall into the wrong hands, possibly including groups of jihadists. Flooding Syria with arms will make the country harder to govern once Mr Assad has gone. But backing the FSA is probably the quickest way to prise Mr Assad from power. What comes after Mr Assad may hang on for months, or the bombing may tip the regime into a swift decline. Either way, now is the time to start preparing for the day when Syria is at last rid of him. Syria after Mr Assad will be a danger to its own people and its neighbours. Sectarian bloodletting is one risk, loose chemical weapons another, tides of refugees a third. Syria could become the focus of rivalry between Iran, Turkey and the Arab world. Violence could suck in Israel or spill over into Lebanon. The world cannot eliminate these dangers, but it can mitigate them. Money and planning are essential to help found a new government. Regional diplomacy, with Turkey and the Arab League to the fore, will be needed to steady nerves. Peace-keepers and monitors may have a part. This calls above all for presidential diplomacy from America. In election season Barack Obamas thoughts may be elsewhere; but this dangerous place needs some attention. 2012 7 18 http://www.ecocn.org/thread-72226-1-1.html Yahoo! Googling a new boss Marissa Mayer takes on one of the toughest jobs in tech Jul 21st 2012 | SAN FRANCISCO| from the print editionSHORTLY after news broke on July 16th of her appointment as the new chief executive of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer revealed that she is expecting her first child later this year. Long-suffering shareholders are hoping that Ms Mayer, who left a senior job at Google to take up her new role, will produce a new Yahoo! as well. But that will not be easy. 7 16 Marissa Mayer 1CEO After losing their mojo, formerly high-flying tech firms rarely recover itwith a few notable exceptions, such as Apple after Steve Jobss second coming as boss in 1997. Often, ailing companies lurch from one leader and rescue plan to another while their fortunes fade. That has been the fate so far of Yahoo!, which is now on to its fifth chief executive, including two interim ones, in three years. 1997 Steve JobsCEOCEO The size of the challenge facing Ms Mayer was highlighted by the companys second-quarter results, published on July 17th. Overall revenue, at $1.2 billion, was stuck at last years level and net income fell slightly, to $227m. The firms share of online-ad revenues in America has also plummeted, falling from 15.7% in 2009 to 9.5% in 2011, according to eMarketer, a research firm. 7 17 12 2.27 eMarketer 2009 15.7%2011 9.5% Can Ms Mayer stop the rot? Her fans in Silicon Valley claim that the 37-year-old has the talent to do so. She brings know-how from Google, where she was the 20th employee and was involved in many areas, from its search engine to gmail and Google Maps. She is also a software engineer by training, which should lend her credibility among Yahoo!s geeks. Throw in that she is an ber-networker whose schmoozing skills can charm ad clients, and she seems a good fit. 37 20 2 But not a perfect one. Although Ms Mayer ran a sizeable team at Google, she has never had to turn round an ailing corporate juggernaut with 700m users. Nor has she overseen a huge ad-sales operation and managed a complex international alliance like the one Yahoo! has with Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce behemoth. This is in the process of being unwound, but still needs careful handling. 7 3 Small wonder, then, that Yahoo!-watchers were stunned by news of Ms Mayers recruitment. Many had expected Ross Levinsohn, the firms interim boss and global media head, to get the top job. Yahoo!s choice is perplexing, says Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group. He thinks Ms Mayer will try hard to keep the talented Mr Levinsohn on board. CEORoss LevinsohnPivotal Research Group Brian Wieser To have a hope of pulling off a Jobs-like turnaround, she will need to tackle three vital tasks fast. First, she must clarify what kind of company Yahoo! wants to be. Some of its former bosses, including Mr Levinsohn, emphasised its plentiful content in areas such as sports and finance. Others trumpeted its whizz-bang technology. This flip-flopping has confused customers and employees. CEO Second, Ms Mayer must show how Yahoo! can conquer promising new areas such as the mobile web. This could involve, say, snapping up firms such as Foursquare, which offer services based on a persons location, an area that Ms Mayer knows well from her time at Google. The third task is to restore battered morale while simultaneously boosting productivity. At Google Ms Mayer had a reputation for prickliness, but also for nurturing talent and helping staff to cope with heavy workloads. Earlier this year she even gave several public talks about the risks of burnout, urging people to discover the rhythm that helps them work hard for long periods without losing their drive. Yahoo!s employees will need to find their own rhythms fast. http://www.ecocn.org/thread-72405-1-1.html __ Buttonwood Capital gains American profits have been high but the trend may not last Jul 21st 2012 | from the print edition NEVER mind the divide between Main Street and Wall Street. The big gap at the moment is between workers and corporations. Although unemployment remains stubbornly high and wage rises are hard to come by, corporate profits are taking a larger share of American GDP than before the financial crisis (see chart). GDP America stands out from the pack, one reason why its stockmarket has been outperforming the rest of the developed world. In both continental Europe and Japan, earnings per share are well below their November 2007 levels. 2007 11 But even in America, the tide may be turning. Quarterly-results seasons tend to involve a ritual dance. In advance companies guide analysts forecasts down so they can beat the consensus on the day. But so far the second quarter has seen fewer companies beat expectations than in the first quarter. And forecasts for the rest of the year, and for 2013, are being steadily revised down. According to Socit Gnrale, only a third of profit-estimate changes were positive over the four weeks up to July 16th. 2013 Socit Gnrale7 16 There is plenty of scope for disappointment. Global profits growth is still expected to be 13.5% next year, compared with 6.3% in 2012. Adam Parker, a strategist at Morgan Stanley, is forecasting that S&P 500 companies will earn $99 per share next year, compared with a consensus expectation of $118. 2012 6.3%13.5%118 500 99 Why have profits been so high, despite the fragility of the economy? American firms were very quick to sack workers after the crisis started. But there is also a longer-term explanation, based on the weakened power of labour after the entry of countries like China into the global employment market. Companies have been able to move production offshore and to resist demands for wage increases from workers in their domestic market. But even if capital is lording it over labour, a second mechanism ought to bring corporate profits down. A high return on capital should encourage a wave of investment. The resulting expansion in capacity should increase competition and reduce returns. But that has yet to happen: companies are still hoarding cash. There are three potential explanations for this cash mountain. The first is that executives are worried about excessive regulation. American bosses in particular may be waiting for a possible change of administration after the presidential election in November. 11 The second is that firms are reluctant to invest in the face of weak demand. Domestic consumers have been under pressure from austerity and higher commodity prices; the euro-zone crisis and a slowdown in developing economies is weighing on export prospects. Companies may have milked all they can from productivity improvements. The irony here is that a high share of GDP for profits automatically results in a low share for wages and thus may eventually be self-limitinga positively Marxist outcome. GDP The third explanation for cash hoarding is the most intriguing. Andrew Smithers of Smithers & Co, a consultancy, suggests incentives may be to blame. Managers are motivated by share optionsand share prices are driven by changes in earnings per share. Spending cash on share buy-backsboosts earnings per share immediately, whereas a capital-investment programme may actually reduce earnings in the short term. Capital expenditure may have a pay-off in the long run but, given the ever-shortening career span of the average chief executive, few may be willing to take a chance that they will be around for the long term. A recent paper* from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that executive incentives may even be driving the business cycle by their effects on investment. The incentive problem may not apply just to executives. Shareholders too may prefer a share buy-back to the uncertain pay-off from an investment programme. Many shares are owned by professional fund managers, who are themselves judged by clients on their performance over the most recent quarters. It is surely far better for profits to fall because firms are indulging in an investment spree than for profits to fall because executives caution is sending the economy into the doldrums. Businesspeople are among the most vocal in their calls for government deficits to be cut, but if firms spent more, and hired new workers, deficits would fall of their own accord. http://www.ecocn.org/thread-72409-1-1.html childish Robots and psychology Mapping the uncanny valley Why androids are scary Jul 21st 2012 | from the print edition Who are you calling "inhuman"? ARTIFICIALLY created beings, whether they be drawn or sculpted, are warmly accepted by viewers when they are distinctively inhuman. As their appearances are made more real, however, acceptance turns to discomfort until the point where the similarity is almost perfect, when comfort returns. This effect, called the uncanny valley because of the dip in acceptance between clearly inhuman and clearly human forms, is well known, particularly to animators, but why it happens is a mystery. Some suggest it is all about outward appearance, but a study just published in Cognition by Kurt Gray at the University of North Carolina and Daniel Wegner at Harvard argues that there can be something else involved as well: the apparent presence of a mind where it ought not to be. ----shadowing ----lovewj1989 Kurt Gray Daniel Wegner According to some philosophers the mind is made up of two parts, agency (the capacity to plan and do things) and experience (the capacity to feel and sense things). Both set people apart from robots, but Dr Gray and Dr Wegner speculated that experience in particular was playing a crucial role in generating the uncanny-valley effect. They theorised that adding human-like eyes and facial expressions to robots conveys emotion where viewers do not expect emotion to be present. The resulting clash of expectations, they thought, might be where the unease was coming from. Gray Wegner To test this idea, the researchers presented 45 participants recruited from subway stations and campus dining halls in Massachusetts with a questionnaire about the Delta-Cray supercomputer. A third were told this machine was like a normal computer but much more powerful. Another third heard it was capable of experience, by being told it could feel hunger, fear and other emotions. The remainder were told it was capable of self-control and the capacity to plan ahead, thus suggesting it had agency. Participants were asked to rate how unnerved they were by the supercomputer on a scale where one was not at all and five was extremely. 45 Delta-Cray ---- Dr Gray and Dr Wegner found that those presented with the idea of a supercomputer that was much more powerful than other computers or was capable of planning ahead were not much unnerved. They gave it a score of 1.3 and 1.4 respectively. By contrast, those presented with the idea of a computer capable of experiencing emotions gave the machine an average of 3.4. These findings are consistent with the researchers hypothesis. There seems to be something about finding emotion in a place where it is not expected that upsets people. This led Dr Gray and Dr Wegner to wonder if the reverse, discovering a lack of experience in a place where it was expected, might prove just as upsetting. Gray Wegner 1.3 1.4 3.4 Gray Wegner To explore this, they presented a further 44 volunteers, recruited in the same manner as those in the earlier experiment, with a picture of a man. A third were told that he was normal; a third that he was unable to plan; and a third that he was unable to feel pain, pleasure or fear. As in the first experiment, participants rated how unnerved they were by the man on a five-point scale. 44 Those who were told the man was normal, or was incapable of planning, gave scores that averaged 1.8 and 1.9 respectively. Those told he could not feel pain, pleasure or fear were much more unnerved. They gave average scores of 3.0. 1.8 1.9 3.0 Dr Gray and Dr Wegner believe their findings argue that a big part of the uncanny-valley effect stems from expectations not being met. Robots are not expected to have feelings and when such feelings are found, it seems somehow wrong. Humans, by contrast, are expected to have feelingsand when such feelings are not found, the effect is equally frightening. Their conclusions will perhaps give pause to those who see the ultimate robot as something which physically resembles a human being. Gray Wegner http://www.ecocn.org/thread-72311-1-1.html Money and the markets Insatiable longing Two new books probe the limits of capitalism How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life. By Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky. Other Press; 243 pages; $24.95. Allen Lane; 20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk ..243 What Money Cant Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. By Michael Sandel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 244 pages; $27. Buy from Amazon.com .244 MOST policymakers, and the economists who advise them, believe that the rich Western economies have suffered a mechanical malfunction. With the right monetary, fiscal and regulatory tools, the growth machine will eventually whirr into life. Others think the Wests true malaise is not mechanical but moral: a love of money, markets and material things. How Much Is Enough? and What Money Cant Buy are well-argued versions of this second view. In the former, Robert and Edward Skidelsky, a father-and-son pair of British academics, take as their text an essay written in 1930 by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes (of whom the elder Skidelsky has written a three-volume biography) mused that within a century the economic problem would be solved: in rich countries people would be at least four times wealthier, on average, and have to work perhaps 15 hours a week. He looks right about living standards, but horribly wrong about working hours. .. ..1930 . 15 In the rich world the modern economic problem, the Skidelskys say, is how to live well amid plenty, not how to survive amid scarcity. Yet the West still chases slavishly after ever-higher gross domestic product, a purely material measure that takes no account of the blessings of nature or leisure. Humanity has become insatiable, in short. It is time to stop and rediscover the good life. This they identify with a list of basic goods: health, security, respect, personality (autonomy, if you prefer), harmony with nature, and leisure. GDPGDP You might expect the Skidelskys to make common cause with those economists who believe that maximising happiness should be the goal of public policy. Not a bit of it. What makes people happy, they argue, is not necessarily good. They have little time for statistical measures of happinessor the pursuit of any single metric. That would imply that the elements of the good life could be traded off against each other, which they deny. Nor do the Skidelskys ally themselves with environmentalists. Greens reject growth because they believe it cannot be sustained without wrecking the planet. But what if it can? Better, say the Skidelskys, to pursue the good life for its own sake. Capitalism, they note, has made possible vast improvements in material conditions, but it also fuels human insatiability. One way it does this is by increasingly monetising the economy. Monetisation is what vexes Michael Sandel, a Harvard political philosopher, in What Money Cant Buy. Mr Sandel poses a single question: has the role of markets spread too far? . He argues that it has, and packs his book with examples. Some, such as the sale of a poor mans kidney for transplanting into a rich mans body, will make many people squirm. Others, such as the sale of naming rights for sports stadiums, may yield only a resigned shrug. But almost all give pause for thought. Mr Sandel poses two objections consistently. One is inequality: the more things money can buy, the more the lack of it hurts. The other Mr Sandel calls corruption: buying and selling can change the way a good is perceived. Paying people to give blood does not work. Giving schoolchildren money as an incentive to read books may make reading a chore rather than a lifelong pleasure. Mr Sandel does not say precisely where he thinks the limit should lie. That should be left, he hopes, to public debate. The Skidelskys are bolder, proposing policies that would encourage the pursuit of the good life rather than endless growth: a basic income; a tax on consumption rather than income; and an end to the tax-deductibility of company spending on advertising. This would reduce the incentive to work and the temptation to consume. Does the rat race always detract from the good life? Only a few years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that whole libraries of books, music and information could be summoned to a phone in your palm; yet the pursuit of profit has helped to put them there. Nevertheless, How Much Is Enough? is a good question. Even if just now the West could do with more, not less, GDP, the pursuit of wealth for its own sake is folly. Anyone who sets store by capitalism and markets will find both books uncomfortable reading. They should be read all the same. ?GDP http://www.ecocn.org/thread-72412-1-1.html