Monday 6 October 2014

fair-play or venue d’hiver

After having put the matter up to a popular vote, Norway—one of the top contenders to host the Winter Games—withdrew its bid for the 2022 Olympics.
Faced with the enormous costs for security, construction overruns, logistical demands, negative environmental impact and witnessing the hardships that the preceding host-nations have had to deal with, Oslo joined a slew of other candidates, due to public opposition, in pulling out of the competition. Now, instead of watching the Games played out in an enchanted snowy landscape of one of the Nordic countries (Stockholm was also in the running) or Krakรณw, St. Moritz or Mรผnchen, only two challengers remain: Almaty, Kazakstan and Beijing, China. To one unfortunate city go the spoils. Another major disillusioning factor is in terms of legacy and the boon that’s failed to materialize for local economies afterwards—it seems only oligarchs, cronies in capitalism, are beneficiaries of the sport—with construction, security firms and established sponsors seeing a lucrative profit out of a process that seems a bit tarnished all around. What do you think? Are big events becoming a liability rather than an honour and the stuff of shameless self-promotion and greed, for sale to the highest-bidder?

Sunday 5 October 2014

it happened on the way to the forum: command economy or endangered specie

After the comic-tragedy of of a succession of rulers elevated, blindsiding both the nominees—ambitious or inuring and the state with no forward-looking policies in place and only filling the power-vacuum by whatever pretender might be sucked in next with the sufficient gravitas to plug the hole for a few years and sometimes just for a few weeks, Diocletian from Illyria (modern-day Dalmatia in Croatia) came on the scene, having risen through the military ranks to command the cavalry during campaigns in Persia and on the Danube frontier and radically reformed the way the Empire was governed, by turning the state back to the role of state-craft.
In order to prevent any potential usurpers from raising a fighting force that could unseat the incumbent, during the reign of Aulerian, the Emperor had taken personal charge of the bulwark of the legions and when crises emerged, marched his private army to whatever new insurgency, domestic uprising or incursions on the borderlands, was presenting itself. The tacit seemed to bring a measure of stability to the Empire, with Aulerian's tenure exceptionally long and productive compared to other office-holders of the time, but was very taxing and inefficient, given how the troops had to rush to counter any and all threats, and threatened to endanger the Empire any time there was an attack on more than one front. Realising these risks, either sacrificing border-security for the safety of the regime or vice versa, Diocletian took the bold and ingenious move of sharing imperium—first with a trusted co-regent—and then splitting the Empire into four united regions, reasoning that no man could let his ambitions get the better of him ruling a quarter of the civilised world with virtually full autonomy. Tax havens were eliminated and no province, even what had formerly been the home province of Italy, was accorded especial treatment, with capitals established at Antioch (on the Syrian/Turkish border), Nicomedia (near the more famous Constantinople), Milan and Trier, and demarcating a division of skill-sets that was not distinguished before, created separate military and civil-service career tracks that put professional administrators in charge of tax-collecting, the courts, assessment and public-works projects.
The bureaucratic hierarchy established put the persons of the Emperors behind endless corridors of intermediaries, answerable to the next higher officer, and lent them an air of almost a demi-god and not the the aura of the First Citizen, a common-man brought up in the ranks of soldiering and fraternising with the people, putting forth the principal of rule by the grace of God, the divine right of kings. The Empire consisted of around one hundred small provinces, which were grouped into larger political units called diocese (of the same Greek root for administration as the cognomen Diocletian), under the governance of an ombudsman called a vicar. These vicars coordinated the larger federal policies among the regional powers, and this structure was preserved, with essentially the same borders, by the Catholic Church after the Fall in the West to the present day. Of course, this apparatus was not just put in place to shield the upper echelons of leadership or to protect personal and dynastic interests, but rather, there was a lot of business, civil-affairs and economic-recovery, to attend to. These matters had been neglected for years, with emperors expected to preside over decisions large and small in trials and policy and near continual debasement of coins, reducing the precious metal (specie) content which resulted in inflation. Diocletian knew that simply coining more money made it worthless and began to round the worthless coppers and slugs and minted new currency of nearly pure silver and gold content.  His attempt was a worthy one, but Diocletian and his ministers did not take nearly enough of the old coins out of circulation and his successors did not enforce all the elements of the recovery plan, as tradesmen and later governments did not understand the economic principles in play. Money was still not worth its face-value.

Because tax revenues were falling precipitously and pur- chasing- power was declining, Diocletian suggested another bold reform that simply removed the intermediary of money and instituted payment in-kind. Sending out his legion of bureaucrats to take stock of what non-liquid assets every one possessed and how much each family needed to live, they returned and constructed a comprehensive equivalency chart to, without the medium of money, show that so many hours of work in the fields or of tending the herds or of soldiering or of shuttling munitions or of arrow-making, etc. was equal to so many units of grains, bolts of fabric, jugs of wine, tableware, etc. This thoroughly researched commissariat determined the annual budget for all the land, and actually functioned pretty well, leading to a better and more equitable return of services in exchange for what the Empire doled out. Barter such as this was naturally not conducive to international trade, the rest of the world having been introduced and now hopelessly accustomed to the Roman coin, but helped to stabilise the economy and replenish state coffers with fiat money. Diocletian even anticipated what might happen if everyone went after the easy or glamourous jobs, like prospector or astrologer, instead of more menial and harder work in exchange for their stipends, like garbage-collector or butcher, and called for the formation of trade guilds which set quotas and applied standards for admissions. Though ultimately the Empire fell in the West over invasion, military coup and economic implosion, Rome did go on existing for another one hundred or so years, already moribund when Diocletian came to power, and chose co-regents that allowed the Empire in the East to survive for another millennium. Diocletian retired graciously, the first and only Emperor to abdicate, to his homeland.

Saturday 4 October 2014

market days

H and I had the chance to make our annual pilgrimage back to one of the best-attended Antikmรคrkte in the region, held on an earlier October date that forever seems enchanted with sunshine and good weather. Of course the hunt is more important than whatever treasures are found and we did find some nice keepsakes for this year's addition to the annual.
This gathering draws in dealers from all over Germany and the professionals know what prices that they can fetch, usually—experts from the German version of Antiques Roadshow, Kunst oder Krempel, also had a booth set up to offer on the spot appraisals.
We also had the chance to take a nice, long stroll around the beautiful city of Bamberg and spy some of its landmarks. There are an abundance of flea markets in Germany, with many of the same collections of items on tour, to explore but we are looking forward to the Bamberg show next year already.

Wednesday 1 October 2014

blue light special or lender of last resort

A major American retailer has finally managed to run rings around regulators and public-interest groups and is able to additionally bundle bank-like services for its patrons, many of whom belong to the demographic where they cannot avoid this particular discounter and are not of the means to be courted by other financial institutions.

The infamously miserly business-model of this company already enjoys the reputation of the destroyer of small businesses and Main Street, USA—long before on-line commerce was accused of demolishing brick-and-mortar, patronising suppliers of questionable ilk, and well as—being the employer of a large percentage of the workforce—pays workers so poorly that they could not get by without government assistance, supplemented by tax-payers at the expense of other public-good, and really the tithe and tax on the poor that the government tried to make less painful. The tithe is in the fine-print, as the banking-outreach seems rather harmless and even magnanimous at first, but there are transaction- and maintenance-fees that ensure a steady bleeding with hardly an infusion. The powerful lobbying arm of this corporation has additionally blocked any legislation that might award the same sort of bank-like powers to a lumbering US Postal Service, despite the system's obviously good geographical spread and the fact that post offices did exactly that until its charter was not renewed in the mid 1960s. What do you think? I have to ask, as I do not have the privilege of ever shopping there.

mauerfall or all and all, we're just another brick in the wand

After the metaphorical parting of the Iron Curtain, the very literal Wall was torn down, slabs were distributed to all corners of the world as monuments to this overcoming. It is a scary proposition to think that these pieces, in Berlin and here transplated to Wiesbaden, New York City and beyond could be recalled, cued to re-assemble like some polarising Voltron on some auspicious date.
Provided that nothing's, no sacrifice, forgot, however, I do not worry that there is a great deal to fear in looking forward.

baumbastik

Watching a documentary in search of Germany's most venerable trees—which featured such specimens as this tree in Salz, a community founded by Charlemagne (Karl der GroรŸe) and a suburb of our fair city, Bad Karma, I learned that there is no known tree to have surpassed the millennium mark (those whom might have been in serious contention were felled by Christian missionaries as pagan idolaltry), although at least one noble tree, per the practise of designating separate districts of forest where no one lives, has its own postal code and receives postcards.

This tree pictured is a linden and of advanced age, whose blooms in its boughs are important for the production of honey and was a choice material for wood- carving—the medium employed by Tilman Riemenschneider and other artists. I also learned that the word for beech (Buche, cf., Buch) is derived from the same Proto-Germanic root for book, as before the introduction of parchment and paper, the wood was used for tablets for northern European societies. A sooty pigment called bistre is also obtained by burning the wood and used by ancient people as a form of ink up to modern times with many of the Old Masters for using it for their sketches.

grandfather-clause

Recently in a special mass celebrated in honour of grandparents and the older generation, Pope Francis condemned the emerging culture of assisted-living, old-folks’ homes as a euphemism for a subtler and accepted form of euthanasia. A society that does not care for its past and respect its forbears, the Pontiff said, has no future, and warned of the poisons of institutionalising isolation, loneliness and neglect. The Papal Emeritus joined Pope Francis during the liturgy, as an example of the wisdom that seniors have to impart for the next generation, adding that he is quite happy that this grandfather figure is also residing in the Vatican.