Nagorno-Karabakh

So this just happened: https://eurasianet.org/nagorno-karabakh-surrenders-to-azerbaijan 

Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the first international geopolitical conflicts I became aware of in the post-Soviet early 1990s. It helped shape my interest in geopolitics along with HW’s Iraq War, the IRA/ETA insurgencies (and the coming-of-age European institutions), as well as a band of former Afghan mujahideen who would become Al Qaeda. I remember my PolSci 10 professor being surprised that enough of us in the class knew about Nagorno-Karabakh, where it was and why there was a conflict. That was in 1996.

Fast-forward to 2007 and I was in Baku for a project doing a household survey on poverty and remittances. While the local consultants—Vagif and Yashar—were touring me around the city, we passed by some poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, with people peeking out tenement housing and the car harangued by beggars. They said the neighbourhood was for internally displaced persons—refugees—from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict about a decade ago. These people, they said, were kicked out of their homes by the Armenian victors of that conflict who set up the Republic of Artsakh and its capital Stepanakert. Next on the tour were the natural gas plantations along the Caspian Sea.

Fast-forward again to 2020 and, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a renewed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This time, with a few decades’ worth of Azeri petrodollars going into military spending, plus a Turkey eager to bring back the days of the Ottomans in more ways than one, and a Russia more focussed on its Western flank than the Caucasus, Azerbaijan had the upper hand. A 6-week conflict with Armenia ended with newly (re)occupied territory in Artsakh and a Russia-brokered peace deal to keep Stepanakert connected to Yerevan through the Lachin Corridor.

Now comes 2023. Russia is distracted with a protracted war in Ukraine and couldn’t be bothered with a conflict in some Azeri-owned boondocks, if one goes by international recognition. Azerbaijan took the initiative, starving Artsakh for months by blockading the Lachin Corridor; any trade or aid going into Artsakh had to go through Azeri-controlled territory. With a weakened and hungry Artsakh, a distracted Russia, and an Armenia still hurting from 2020, it was only a matter of time before Azerbaijan got rid of a 3-decade pain in the neck. And so it did.

Let them be Billionaires

So I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations today. According to Forbes’ 37th Annual World’s Billionaires List for 2023, the world’s 2,640 billionaires are worth a total of $12.2 trillion (yes, with a T). Now it got me thinking: what if we could somehow redistribute all that wealth but—since we’re being nice and we assume all this wealth was somehow honestly and ethically earned through personal talent, grit, and kind luck—still allow each of the billionaires to keep $1 billion each?

Now, before you cry for all those 2,640 people whose wealth we’re redistributing, please remember that reducing their wealth to $1 billion each by no means makes them paupers: they literally remain billionaires. To put this in perspective, the net worth of the entire British royal family—that’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla down to those minor royals with funny hats—is about $500 million. Even after the wealth redistribution, each of our billionaires would still have double the net worth of the entire House of Windsor. So rather than making them paupers, our rather generous redistribution scheme leaves them with more than a kingly sum.

So, back to the envelope’s backside. If we do take that wealth and leave those 2,640 billionaires with $1 billion each, we will have $9.56 trillion for redistribution or redistributive social spending. So what can we do with this pot? Well, a lot:

·       Give about $1,200 to everyone currently alive on this planet
·       Provide $14,507 to each of the 659 million people living below the international poverty line of $2.15 per person per day
·       Fund the UNHCR ($9.1 billion in 2022) 100 times over and give refugees some proper living conditions
·       Feed the world’s 828 million people living in hunger
·       Close the estimated global healthcare financing gap of $176 billion per year for half a century
·       Build 82.4 million Singapore-style public housing flats, which is more than enough to house the more than 100 million estimated homeless people around the world
·       Eliminate the $1.75 trillion total accumulated student debt in the US as of 2023, and have enough left over for future generations of college students
·       Pay reparations for African American slavery ($4.7 trillion estimate) and Native American genocide ($3.4 billion settlement and counting) several times over
·       Match total charitable and philanthropic donations ($485 million in the US in 2022) many times over
·       Etc. What good for humanity can you do with $9,560,000,000,000?

Or the billionaires could turn them into gold coins, put them in a large vault, and swim in it just like Scrooge McDuck. That looked fun and not painful at all.

Online Publications

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PSU flagship publications

APEC Regional Trends Analysis: since 2016

• APEC’s Climate Change Challenge 
• Bolstering Supply Chains, Rebuilding Global Trade
• New Virus, Old Challenges and Rebuilding a Better Asia-Pacific
• What Goes Around Comes Around: Pivoting to a Circular Economy
• Counting What Counts
• APEC at 30: A Region in Constant Change
• The Digital Productivity Paradox
• Trade, Policy, and the Pursuit of Inclusion
• Declining Labour Share and the Challenge of Inclusion
• Globalisation: The Good, The Bad, and the Role of Policy
• Rethinking Skills Development in the Digital Age
• Reducing Trade Costs in the Asia-Pacific

APEC in Charts: since 2015

PSU reports and publications

2021

APEC Economic Policy Report 2021: Structural Reform and the Future of Work

Passports, Tickets and Face Masks: COVID-19 and Cross-Border Mobility in the APEC Region

Big Data for the Labor Market: Sources, Uses and Opportunities

2020

Implementing Inclusion: APEC Case Studies on Inclusive Policies 

APEC Strategy for Strengthening Quality Growth (ASSQG): Final Assessment

COVID-19, 4IR and the Future of Work

APEC in the Epicentre of COVID-19

2019

APEC Financial Inclusion Capacity Building Package - Synthesis Report

2018

Development and Integration of Remote Areas in the APEC Region

2017

APEC Economic Policy Report 2017: Structural Reform and Human Capital Development

Partnerships for the Sustainable Development of Cities in the APEC Region (co-published with Cities Alliance)

2016

Tourist Arrivals and Inclusive Growth

APEC and the Human Development Agenda

2015

Structural Reform for Resilient and Inclusive Growth

2014

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Labour mobility and labour market data: A baseline study of APEC economies (with the ILO)

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Global Data Standards 1

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Value Chain Resilience

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Out-of-office reply, 11 Dec 2020-4 Jan 2021

Email is unread
An inbox is untended
Swept on holiday
 
“Out-of-the-office,” the automaton writes back.
No sooner than January 4th will I unpack.
 
Letters will be read, but when? Not known.
Emails replied to when opportunity is shown.
   And if something needs my urgent look,
   Very dire matters about something mistook,
Email won’t do. Try my phone. 

Letse!

I always thought that letse -- as in the "letse ka!" vulgarity we love to use in the Philippines -- is derived from Spanish. After all, letse... leche... 333 years of Spanish occupation... just made sense. But then I heard of the Bahasa Melayu word leceh which is used exactly the way we use letse, and it got me rethinking my hypothesis. I am now inclined to think we got it from our Malayo-Austronesian roots rather than Spanish. Let me explain. 

Leche as a cuss word, I understand, is practically unheard of in modern Spain or Latin America. It's milk, and you're more likely to hear it in the context of desserts rather than their digested byproduct. Closest uses of leche as an expression I could find are me cago en la leche and con mala leche, which are used more like exasperations or idiomatic expressions.

The Malay leceh, on the other hand, is an accusative or insult directed at a person or situation. Meaning troublesome or annoying, leceh requires an object and is used in almost the exact same context we use letse. 

This will need more research and confirmation, but I am now inclined to think that letse is a pre-Hispanic cuss word. It may be more related to leceh than leche. Amazing how inverting two letters can change the entire history of this cuss word. 

I'm calling it: 4 more years

It's going to be four more years. He has a solid 30-40% base that won't budge and would almost surely vote. The other side has a solid 30-40% too (including anti-status quo independents), but they're concentrated in cities and already-blue states so in Electoral College terms they're a minority. Base-versus-base will surely go his way. The wavering independents and moderate conservatives need to be converted and vote against their party, but I don't see that happening at all. So it's 4 more years.

Prove me wrong in November.

ABS-CBN

I've always disliked ABS-CBN. It's a power peddler, using its privileged position as a broadcaster to lobby for the business interests of its controlling family. It has launched the political careers of several politicians, some more qualified than others, and relished in its ability to do so. More ethical broadcasters would reel at the suggestion of directly involving themselves with the first three estates.

But we need to put all that aside for now. What we have here is a state bent on controlling the media, trying to ensure that only its crafted narrative is heard. This is an existential threat to our democracy. We cannot let this happen. Congress should get off its ass, stop using the pandemic as an excuse, and immediately renew the broadcasting franchise. And I can go back to dissing ABS-CBN again.