Cows Deserve Freedom Too...

... or at least freedom for their remains to be consumed on either side of the border! The cattle ban imposed by the US is in the process of being lifted now, but why did it have to be this way? The U.S. Government did not need to ban the flow of beef to protect its citizens. No U.S. meatpacker would be willing to accept imports from Canada if they thought it was a serious risk to their customers.

Question: But they are evil corporations, don't they only care about profit?
Answer: Exactly! If Cargill sold tainted beef, customers will be much less likely to purchase their products. How do you think the share price for Cargill would fare after such a discovery?

Don't believe me? Well from this article, The American Meat Institute filed a lawsuit to take the restrictions off even further. This ban is not helping anyone.

Which leads to another question of why this ban was implemented in the first place. You can blame George W. Bush all you want (and I will too), but the truth is that Canada was hurt by this far more than our southern neighbors. The Liberal Party should be shouldering much of the blame. The Bush/U.S. bashing (which are not separte things since Americans elected Bush) has been happening before Carolyn Parish stepped on the Bush doll. It isn't hard to believe that the Bush Administration would be less inclined to come to a mutually beneficial agreement with Canada, despite Ralph Klein's best efforts, when the beef ban hurts Canadians exponentially more than Americans. Canadians, especially the ones leading our country, need to respect our best friend and biggest trading partner to avoid these future problems

2004 Music

I'm directly stealing this idea from Matthew's blog, but reading his top 5 list had me thinking about my top 5. I started to populate the list in my head, I have Green Day at #1, and then after that I have a blank. My traditional favourite bands haven't had a new album in 2004. I don't know if I can count the Nirvana box set or not, since Kurt Cobain has been resting in peace for over a decade now - the CD's are new, but the songs certainly are not. The Sum41 CD is catchy, I guess. Bad Religion has a new CD that sounds exactly the same as every other one they came out with - sounds really cool if you don't listen to how insanely stupid their lyrics are. Looking at the music I have accumulated on my computer this year (all by legal means, I swear it!), I notice a big trend.... as Tracy Byrd would say, "I'm from the country and I like it that way!" So here is a list of my favourite country albums of the year, but with Green Day taking the number 1 spot.

Green Day - American Idiot
Just an amazing CD from start to finish. You can tell it is a Green Day album still, but they really do go in a completely new direction than all their previous CD's. At first listen I thought it was ok, but the more I listen, the more I like it! This is creeping up the list to first place of my all time favourite CD's.
Favourite Song: The whole damn album - it can only be truly appreciated listening to it from start to finish.

Big and Rich – Horse of a Different Color (It annoys me to write colour without the u!)
Debut album which will hopefully be first of many. It does not have the feel of a traditional country album, with a lot of the songs being more of a cross with rock music. The opening song “Rollin' (The Ballad Of Big and Rich)” has some parts that would seem better suited for a Kid Rock album! This album was made famous for their hit “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”, which I even heard played at Philthy’s in Waterloo a couple months back (also wins award for best T&A in a country video). A less recognized part of their album is the opening rift from “Love Train” is used as the theme song for the new TV show “Blue Collar TV”. I can’t get enough of this CD!
Favourite Song: Kick My Ass

Paul Brandt – This Time Around
Put in for CRTC Canadian content laws. I respect this fine institution because without them, I would be losing my Canadian identity as the Liberal Party defines it (had to put politics in here somewhere!). This really is a great CD from a singer that should be bigger south of the border!
Favourite Song: Alberta Bound (Obviously!)

Alan Jackson - What I Do
Nice mellow CD that is great for relaxing or in the background for doing homework. Jackson seems to put out only great CD’s, as his first single says, “Too much of a good thing, is a good thing”.
Favourite Song: If Love Was a River

Kenny Chesney – When the Sun Goes Down
Title track of this CD is a duet with Uncle Cracker. I think this is his best CD yet without a bad song on it! I love the 3 live bonus song at the end of the album, especially “Please Come to Boston”.
Favourite Song: Being Drunk’s a Lot Like Loving You

Julie Roberts – Julie Roberts
If you can resist these pictures, you are a stronger man than I! This album does not sound very country’ish, and she has a great voice, I encourage all of you to at least try to listen to it!
Favourite Song: Break Down Here



Toby Keith – Greatest Hits 2
I wouldn’t usually put a greatest hits album in a list like this, but I needed to include the best country singer going in this list! There are 3 new songs on this album, including a duet with his daughter to the classic song “Mockingbird”. I’d love to marry her (when she becomes legal age) for no other reason than to get to sit down and have a beer with Toby Keith on a regular occasion!

[Aside]: All conservatives reading this will appreciate this anecdote if they haven’t heard it before. The Dixie Chicks made that statement about Bush in 2003 and got a ton of backlash. This should be expected since the highest concentration of country fans are in the red states. They were upset that Americans didn’t respect Natalie’s free speech… news flash, free speech goes two ways, and they have as much right to boycott your music as you do to make idiotic comments. So Toby Keith, being the patriotic American, took offense and took some shots at Natalie Maines. So the Country Music Awards rolled along, The Dixie Chicks got booed as expected, but the big news was Natalie’s shirt with the letters “FUTK” – she claims this stands for "Freedom, Understanding, Tolerance, Knowledge". She actually thought people were stupid enough to believe this. I will let you guess what FUTK could possibly stand for (hint for you slow readers: TK = Toby Keith). [/Aside]

The CD also contains the controversial song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)”, a song dedicated to his late father. One of the best live songs ever recorded “Should've Been a Cowboy” is also included.
Favourite Song: Go With Her

Jimmy Buffett – License to Chill
Littered with duets from some of the biggest names in country music. This album has a few great songs, but the biggest is a cover of Hank Williams’ classic “Hey Good Lookin’” that features Clint Black, Kenny Chesney, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith and George Strait!
Favourite Song: Hey Good Lookin’

NHL Lockout

I will not pretend that it's groundbreaking to write about the NHL lockout (at least for writers north of the 49th). However, I am the first that actually will get to the real problem. I am not going to say that the luxury tax should be at 50% on the dollar vs. 52%, those are just the minor issues. If the league signs a superficial deal with the NHLPA we can expect a play stoppage every few years. I originally wrote something similar to this a few days ago, but the lovely Windows XP OS and I do not get along (Linux looks better to me every day). So I re-wrote this quickly, so hoping I haven't forgot any of my key points! So without further rambling on, here is the definitive lockout column on the internet.

Problem: (all business students are groaning at this point)
The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NHL and NHLPA does not allow for many teams to be profitable.

Analysis:
The setup of the NHL ownership structure, and all pro sports leagues for that matter, is asking for trouble. Owners are competing against each other for market share, yet are in it together to grow the market. Usually these conflicting interests are what make free markets thrive. The NHLPA claims they want to have salaries operate under this "free market". One big problem with this: the NHL is not a free market. The NHL operates essentially as a single company; its competition is with leagues such as the Swedish Elite League. Each team within the NHL should be thought of as a division of a company, say IBM. IBM's Calgary division does not try to outbid IBM's Toronto division for a really great engineer. They already have this engineer in their company, sure it may help the Calgary division to lure the engineer away from Toronto, but IBM head office would not allow this since the company is artificially raising the salary of one of their employees. If Microsoft (the Swedish Elite League) tried to lure this employee away by offering more money, then this is the engineer's market value rising. So from this example, it is clearly in Calgary division's best interest to take on this amazing engineer from Toronto, but this is not what is best for IBM.

This leads into the question I hear often: "Why do the owners just not pay the players so much money?" A prisoner's dilemma forms between all the NHL teams. I will not attempt to draw a payoff matrix with 30 competitors since I would like to finish this post before I am 30 myself. Basically what ends up happening is that it is always better for teams to overpay players. If Montreal refuses to pay high prices, they lose lots of revenue from ticket sales, merchandise, and TV deals and lose a very large amount of money. If Montreal pays the higher price (with other teams doing the same), their revenue goes up, but their expenses go up higher, making them lose a smaller amount of money. If Montreal is the only one paying for star players, they will be extremely profitable. This leads to the conclusion that no matter what the other 29 teams do, Montreal should try to pay to get the star players. Aggregated over all 30 teams, the players' salaries artificially rise to the level that we see now.

Utopian Solution:
This solution will not happen, but describing a ideal ending can be useful in putting a realistic solution on the right track. The NHL should be a single entity, wich each team being a division. I do not care if it is a publicly traded company on a securities exchange or if it keeps the same 30 ownership groups, the key is that the NHL as a whole is one company. At this point, no salary cap is needed, just as how IBM does not need a salary cap. You can just have the central management not allow any team's payroll to increase too high. Management would be smart to not try to stack any specific team (New York or LA) to avoid fan backlash, but any issues like this should be handled by the management team.

Realistic Solution:
Basically just fold the whole NHL and have the same owners purchase the rights to all the old NHL franchises. A new radical structure is needed and since the union is too stubborn to allow for the company to be successful, this will initially eliminate them. I am not going to get into specifics of how such transactions will happen. In forming of the new NHL, have in place protections to guard against another prisoner's dilemma between teams. Have revenue sharing between teams, but the agreements have to be such that ownership of a single team cannot make profit without trying. Salary caps or a significant luxury tax are a must. These need to be put in place in the organizational charters. The NHL should still pay players more than any other league to ensure the best, but this can be adjusted. Ownership votes on salary cap level should happen at regular intervals, possibly every 2 years. This really does answer what the union claims to want; market price for salaries will be set because the NHL does not want a competition league to come in.

You may feel I am being too hard on the union, but I honestly feel they are 90% of the problem. I will go more in depth on problems with unions later, as I become a union member next week!

Sponsorship Scandal Backlash

Based on this article, Canadians are losing trust in the Liberal Party. This should come of no shock considering they stole millions of dollars from us, the taxpayers. 46% of Canadians now say the Grits are doing a poor job, which leads to my question... what are 54% of Canadians thinking? Unless 54% of this country are Bombardier stakeholders, thers is no logical answer for this! In that 54% that did not say the Liberals were doing a poor job, 25% went as far to say they "high trust". High trust? These must be very trusting people. 1 in 4 Canadians trust the party that admits to stealing. Words cannot express how much I was floored seeing this. Can a quarter of our population really be this blind? These people are the reason you can have professional scam artists. Imagine someone stole your money, admitting they took your money, and then asking for more of your money for a new business plan. 25% of Canadians would place "high trust" in this individual, and apparently be willing to give more of their money.

I am not saying it is impossible to vote for the Liberals, you may feel you trust the other choices less. I do not share this view, but at least I can respect it. Voting is not the same as trust however. If the Liberals are the best option in your eyes, vote for them, but do not extend your trust to them until they can do something to deserve it! Come on Canadians, get pissed off and demand better!

The Trouble With Christmas

This is an edited/improved version of a comment I made on Matthew Campbell's blog a day or so ago:

I prefer to refer to Christmas as capitalist appreciation day, where we can all rejoice in increased consumer spending. However, there is a slight problem that Christmas causes to the economy. It forces companies to stock up on goods for a very seasonal period for no real reason (there are seasonal reasons for stores to have more snow shovels in winter). This artificial seasonality causes inefficiencies for many companies. A company may have to increase its capacity for a short term by having some other type of temporary expansion. An example of this would be Canadian Tire having make an extra tent room off the side of their store. Per square foot, this extra tented area costs more to heat, not to mention employee cost of set up. Or instead of an temporary expansion, a company may just increase their fixed capacity. This creates a problem for other parts of the year where demand will be less. Some costs, such as staffing, can be reduced, but the fixed costs will persist all year. Without Christmas, people will still buy many of the consumber goods purchased, but they will be spread out throughout the year. This has the advantage of smoothing out the production scheduling (anyone that has taken an operations management course can explain some obvious benefits here!).

This can also benefit consumers in that they get their goods sooner. If I want something in October, I may hold off until Christmas to get this. If I could get it in October, there is extra time I have with the good. Free trade benefits both parties - or else why do you trade? So if I can do a transaction sooner, there is economic growth at an earlier point in time, which makes both parties richer. So this added wealth sooner leads to greater economic growth. Think of a transaction as in compound interest where the total economy grows by X. Now this X happens at an earlier time in the year, so it interest accumulation period. If a transaction happens on June 25th (my birthday!), this is exactly 6 months from Christmas.

Let i be the economic growth rate, P is total economy at Dec 25th 2003, X is amount of only purchase during year, so the economy at December 25th, 2004:

Without Christmas: P(1+i) + (X)(1+i)^1/2.
With Christmas: P(1+i) + X

I showed the 2 equations this way for easy comparison. The first term of each is equal, so of little interest to us. The 2nd term without Christmas allows for interest to accumulate for half a year on top of purchase X. This accumulated interest is economic growth that is sadly missed due to Christmas!

So to sum up, Christmas seems great for capitalism, but really hampers ecnomic growth. Next time you wish a libertarian "Merry Christmas", remember that they are really dying a little inside each December.

The New Great Blog

Well I now have a blog. I like ranting about stuff, this site is free, I created a blog. I think the logic follows nicely. Feel free to post comments after any and all posts. If you disagree with me, I can assure you that you must be wrong, but still free to comment away! [/cockyness]

Anyways, I hope to be posting on this at least once a day or so, maybe more if I have a lot to rant about. I have at least 10 good rants bundled up inside so the first few days may get lots of posts. Please enjoy!