Mandatory hardwired alarms and sprinklers

This weekend, there was a fatal fire in Montreal. The fact is that such events should be easily preventable in our 2010 society. We have so many ways to be connected to the things around us that something with so many warning signs as a fire should have raised alarms and let the inhabitants. It was said that the battery ran out but hardwired alarms exist. They should be relatively inexpensive to retrofit in existing houses, especially if you consider the amount of lives they would save. A push in this regard would go  along way.

In the same vein, mandatory sprinklers in newer constructions should be studied. Again, there is no reason, with the level of technology we have that people still die because an alarm didn’t go off.

Clip by “Le Cerveau”

Interesting clip, good message (In French though… can Google translate audio already?)

 

Le Cerveau - Réflexion feat. Boogat
envoyé par Le-Cerveau. - Clip, interview et concert.

The internet system

Today, the news were that Obama had managed to go through with his reform on Health Care. From our perspective here in Canada it seems like something that was a long time coming. For the past few weeks however, what has caught my attention was the growing support into providing broadband internet access anywhere. In the US, the FCC proposed a national broadband plan, something that would end up as something similar to the construction of the highway system in the past century. This post from Google’s Eric Schmidt pretty much transmits how exciting this plan is.

Obviously this is only for the US, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the strength of the internet in the future will not only be in the information it already contains but in the information that people are bringing in in real-time. For this, having millions more connected will benefit all of us.

With this being said, It’s also good to look at what is going on here in Canada. I think a lot of people will agree that our telecommunications system is a bit lacking. Our cell phone plans cost significantly more than elsewhere and, from my perspective at least, it seems like our CRTC is preventing a lot of innovations from ever finding themselves to this side of the border.

As for an internet plan, the government had announced about a year ago that they would invest to provide access to under-served communities. There doesn’t seem to be a well defined plan although this is a beginning. It should be noted that a broadband plan in Canada is much harder than in the US because of our population density and the huge territory to cover. This being said, if we do not want to create two classes of citizens (connected and unconnected), then we need to act. Because, I think that, very soon, we will not have a choice but to say that internet access IS a fundamental right.

FDA regulation of supplements

 

I haven’t been following US politics much lately so this is why I only recently found out about this issue: a John McCain back bill to have the FDA regulate dietary supplements.

 

This comes after there had been several complaints (even deaths) due to tainted supplements in US. For Senator McCain, i guess the thinking is that a regulatory agency could force supplement companies to implement procedures to ensure the public’s health. It seems however that a lot of people don’t see it that way.

A very vocal group of people opposing this bill states that the goal is the make help pharmaceuticals that feel threaten by the “natural health” industry.

 

Now, I have no doubt that lobbyists from the pharmaceutical industry would welcome such a bill, but saying that this would be McCain’s only reason for doing it is ludicrous. I’ve had to deal with the FDA and I can tell you that they are not in bed with pharmaceuticals. What I mean by that is that the agency does not favour a particular company over another. If Pfizer were to make drugs in a basement with no safety precautions whatsoever, the FDA would shut them down immediately. Similarly, a supplement company that follows FDA regulations will not have any problems. What is important however is that the people chosen to enact those regulations know the industry and its customers well. They need to have a good understanding of what is important and what is not to ensure that whoever takes those dietary supplements can do so safely.

 

Back to Canada, we are apparently in the process of regulating this industry. The bill has passed and natural health companies are getting registered (although the complaint here is that this process is very slow). It seems that there aren’t many advocates of no regulation here.

 

To finish, I just wanted to share an argument I’ve heard against regulation. It is the idea that a lot of small natural health companies will not be able to pass the inspections and will have to close, adding to unemployment. Now, if this is true, this shows a problem with the industry since such a statement is similar to saying that food regulations for restaurants are not good because they shut down a dirty diner.

Quote by James Macgregor Burns

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

Governments and CEOs

Last year, I wrote about CEO compensation packages. I didn’t specifically say that governments shouldn’t fix CEO remuneration but the idea was there. What I thought at the time was that a private venture was just that, private, and that the government had nothing to do with it (up to a point).

 

As I was thinking about this however I came to the realization that, for society as a whole, the difference between a CEO raise and an employee raise is not negligible. I just want to point out that, for argument’s sake, I’m considering that 1$ injected in the economy has the same social effect whether it comes from a rich person or a poor(er) person.

 

Now, let’s say you have Company A, that has the possibility of redistributing $1 million dollars to its employees or having this as a raise in remuneration for its CEO. Of course, the decisions are not often that simple but this is to give an example. Assuming that the employees would be going from a 35K yearly income to 40K with this raise, they would get taxed 15% by the federal government here in Canada and around 16% by the Quebec provincial government. This means that each employee would get and extra $3450 of disposable income. Now $1 000 000 in $5 000 slices means that 200 employees got to profit from this. Therefore, a total of $690 000 would get added to the local economy and go through the multiplier effects (again, this is simplified).

 

Looking at the other possibility, for a CEO making over a million dollars a year, the vast majority of his income will fall within the highest taxation bracket. This means 29% from the federal and 24% from the provincial government which leaves the CEO with $470 000 that he’s free to spend.

 

Now, you could argue that the government will spend our taxes to make everyone’s life better but one thing I didn’t include in my calculations was the savings rate. As you get more income, you devote a higher percentage of it to savings. That’s good for the individual, but for society, it is better to have the money circulating as much as possible. This means that the CEO solution will see less money in the hands of the population even if you don’t consider taxes.

 

From the above example however, it’s easy to see which solution the governments likes the most. In the short term, they are making more money with the CEO. The reason governments don’t issue a decree that only CEOs can get raise however is that, in our system at least, CEO votes are supposed to be equal to their employees. And it is the votes, not the money, that keep a government afloat.

 

At any rate, the above example shows that the way remuneration is distributed in the company affects society as a whole. The same way governments issue laws about environment, crime, etc. they have cause to issue laws about remuneration. Now, would a law saying that “CEO remuneration cannot be higher than X” be a good thing? At first glance, I think not. But that is another question…

Singularity quote

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months. – Vernor Vinge