Delphi: Nothing in Excess

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, ‘n’ how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it’s washed to the sea?
Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?
Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn’t see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Dylan

Without warning
as a whirlwind
swoops on an oak
Love shakes my heart

Sappho

Further progress in global economic integration should not be taken for granted, however. Geopolitical concerns, including international tensions and the risks of terrorism, already constrain the pace of worldwide economic integration and may do so even more in the future. And, as in the past, the social and political opposition to openness can be strong. Although this opposition has many sources, I have suggested that much of it arises because changes in the patterns of production are likely to threaten the livelihoods of some workers and the profits of some firms, even when these changes lead to greater productivity and output overall. The natural reaction of those so affected is to resist change, for example, by seeking the passage of protectionist measures. The challenge for policymakers is to ensure that the benefits of global economic integration are sufficiently widely shared–for example, by helping displaced workers get the necessary training to take advantage of new opportunities–that a consensus for welfare-enhancing change can be obtained. Building such a consensus may be far from easy, at both the national and the global levels. However, the effort is well worth making, as the potential benefits of increased global economic integration are large indeed.

What the Bernanke’s concern about globalization should become our concern also if we want to ’save’ globalization. I wrote also a writing about globalization that reflect the possiblities of “de-globalization” in the future as the reversal of the current situation. Hopefully i still have the file that i could put in this blog. 

It seems that the Fed’s decision on the interest rate was affected by Mankiw’s opinion rather that Friedman. What Greenspan did in the past was actually affected by the view of Friedman.

Kami bangsa Indonesia dengan ini menjatakan kemerdekaan Indonesia.

Hal-hal jang mengenai pemindahan kekoeasaan d.l.l., diselenggarakan

dengan tjara seksama dan dalam tempo jang sesingkat-singkatnja.

Djakarta, hari 17 boelan 8 tahoen 05

Atas nama bangsa Indonesia.

Soekarno/Hatta

Each August 17th, we celebrate our national independence. Sometimes I ask my self what is the meaning of independence. Then I found that the independence means “declaration of independence” such as this, this, or this. However, I still do not understand what is independence. Help me please.

I watched this film in the 2001. My first thought on this film was “it must be the same oldies fairy tale: the love between the handsome and the beautiful one, but the ending of this film was shocked me”. Then I concluded that this film would be one of the best all of the time from all sides: especially on the its story and picture. 

“Shrek” is a computer-animated film adaptation, based on fairy tale picture of Steig (Wikipedia, 1990). It is consisted two parts: Shrek and Shrek 2. Those two films were directed by Adamson and produced by Dream Works.

Most important characters

The center of the story is focused on Shrek, “the lonely and ugly giant green ogre” which is presented by Mike Myers’s voice on Scottish accent. The lonely ogre is accompanied by donkey which was saved by him from the danger. Donkey’s voices were dubbed by Eddy Murphy that represent “funny, talkative, ridiculous, but lucky donkey”. The third most important character is Princess Fiona, “the beautiful, lively, but always have a problem with the curse of the darkness”.      

The Shrek combine both love and comedian film in a very unusual way: looks does not matter, but love make all the differences. This could be the opposite side of the most fairy tales which reflects love between the handsome prince and the beautiful princess. And this is what makes this film become unique among others.

In the Shrek 1, the story is started with the Shrek everyday lives. The story tells how the ogre Shrek is forced by Lord Farquaad (dubbed by John Lithgow) to rescue Princess Fiona from an amorous dragoness for Farquaad to marry.

The summary below is taken from www.wikipedia.com (2006)

“Shrek lives a quiet and lonely life in his small swamp, until his peace is disturbed by the arrival of a host of “fairytale creatures” (like the    Gingerbread man and Pinnochio), who were exiled by the nearby dominion of Duloc by its ruler, the vain (and exceedingly short) Lord Farquaad. One creature who escaped Farquaad’s purge is Donkey, an extremely talkative donkey; he and Shrek travel together to Duloc in an attempt to rid Shrek’s swamp of the intruders. After defeating many of Duloc’s knights in a tournament, Shrek and Farquaad reach a bargain wherein Farquaad agrees to remove the creatures if Shrek rescues and brings to him Princess Fiona, a princess who is imprisoned in a castle guarded by a dragon, awaiting the knight who will rescue her. Only if Farquaad is able to marry a princess may he assume the title of King.

After many (mis)adventures in which Shrek is consistently irritated by the friendly but overly talkative Donkey, Shrek and Donkey manage to reach the dragon’s castle (the dragon is a red-violet dragon with a pair of fin like ears, white spiked cheeks, and enormous folding wings). After Donkey runs out on a bridge and Dragon whips her tail out and knocks out most of the bridge, Donkey is cornered by Dragon. In an attempt to prevent himself from being eaten, Donkey sweet-talks Dragon (compliments her hygiene), causing her to fall in love with him. After listening to him say the relationship won’t work between them, she carries him by the tail in her teeth (after he turns around and calls for Shrek). Meanwhile, Shrek rescues Fiona from Dragon’s keep. She complains that he’s not doing it right, saying that he should charge in on a horse with a sword and banner, like a proper knight - like all the other knights who have attempted to rescue her did. “Yeah,” he says sarcastically, “right before they burst into flame!” As he opens the door, he sees Dragon with Donkey. The Dragon has brought Donkey to a private chamber and has wrapped him up in her long tail, and is now playing with him. Just as Dragon is about to kiss Donkey, Shrek knocks him out of her coils, and she kisses Shrek’s butt instead; in a rage, she chases them through the castle. Shrek, Fiona and Donkey then escape from Dragon’s lair. They make their escape and Dragon gets caught on a chain.

Shrek and Fiona initially dislike each other–Fiona is angered that her rescuer is an ogre and not the expected Prince Charming; however on the journey back they begin to like one another. Fiona reveals herself to be more than just a pretty face; when the trio is attacked by a French-speaking Robin Hood (who assumes that the ogre has kidnapped Fiona), Fiona proves herself to be a martial-arts expert and single-handedly defeats the attackers. Shrek, despite his tough and non-caring exterior, starts to develop romantic feelings for Fiona.

On the way back, Donkey discovers that Fiona is under a curse which causes her to turn into an ogre every night at sunset (and then turn back again the next morning). The only way to break the curse is to receive “true love’s first kiss”. While Fiona laments to Donkey that she is ugly, Shrek (who having finally made up his mind to propose is bringing flowers to her) partially overhears the conversation and thinks that Fiona is calling him ugly.

The misunderstanding causes a bitter split. Shrek and Donkey go back to the Swamp while Fiona and Farquaad make wedding arrangements, with Fiona desiring to be married before that evening’s sunset so that Farquaad will never see her in her ogre form. Donkey follows Shrek back to his swamp; after an argument, Donkey informs Shrek that she was not calling him a “hideous, ugly beast”. Together, they travel on the back of the beautiful Dragon they previously battled (who is now Donkey’s girlfriend) to Duloc and crash the wedding (though not in time to prevent the vows from being taken). Farquaad and the assembled guests laugh at the notion of the ogre marrying the lovely Fiona. At that moment, the sun sets, and Fiona reveals her curse to all assembled. Farquaad, repulsed at Fiona’s ogre form, orders her carried away. A struggle ensues, and Dragon crashes through the palace windows and devours Farquaad, spitting out his crown. Donkey makes the cheeky remark, “Celebrity marriages! They never last, do they?”

Shrek and Fiona then exchange proclamations of love, and he kisses her, but instead of this turning her back to a human being, she turns permanently into an ogre. When Fiona says that the kiss was supposed to turn her beautiful, Shrek says that she was beautiful. This ending stresses the relativity of beauty, thus lending the allegory its moral.

After the wedding, the song “I’m a Believer” is played while all the magical creatures visit.”

The moral of the story 

The relationship between a man and a woman usually based on the first impression on the looks; in the fairy tale, the writers usually use the beautiful and the handsome falling in love each other. Sometimes the writers use the combination of love story between the poor and the rich [Cinderella or Pretty Woman?] or the love between one from noble and common family [Titanic or most of old Indonesian love film?]. In the Shrek film, the love could be from the princess, who is the beautiful and the noble one, with the weird common ogre, who is ugly but kind. And the ending of the film is really unpredictable: the beauty of a woman does not have to depend on her looks, according to Shrek and Fiona’s view. The love of Shrek and Fiona make the look does not matter. And one of the best quotations from the Shrek is “never judge people from their appearance”

The conflict in lebanon could also be monitored through the “eye of bloggers”. BBC has a good report on the blogger’s influence in that war.

The statement of the Fed about keep the interest rate could be a good news for the Indonesia’s rupiah. The Bank Indonesia is doing the right thing by lowering interest rate.

After having critics from Odisseus’s mom about my blog’s performance, I will try this new one. Hopefully I will have time and will for another postings.

If we look back to the human history, poor people always exist and become the main attention of the leader both from government and society. This attention is institutionalized in both country’s law and religion’ principles. Both country and religion assume that the poor should be helped. For example, in our UUD 45 there are statement about “fakir miskin dan anak terlantar” and in Islam, the rich have to help the poor as it state in the Qur’an text.

The best example of government intervention in poverty was Johnson’s “War on Poverty” during the year 60’s. His anti poverty program was judged as one of the success story in fighting poverty in US. This achievement gave him a better performance against critics of anti Vietnam War. In the Indonesian election both in 1999 and 2004, poverty become the “main commodity” in each candidate’s speech.  Even though after the election, the poverty also become the tools both for supporting and against the incumbent government.

In Indonesia, anti poverty program has also become one of most complicated program in the world in facing poverty since the economic crises 1998. It is shown that each department has had its own program for the sake of poverty. International organization also has had a role in the anti poverty program. Indonesian’s society with the NGO has taken some part of it. Some people both individuals and organization have taken advantages of the program againts poverty of course, which is not the target of the programs.The result of the whole program in reducing poverty has not been released yet. However, some of the number below could give a broad picture of the poverty in Indonesia.

Table 1. Head Count Index Indonesia

Source: Adapted from CBS (2005)

Both absolute and share of poor people have been decreased during the year 2000 to 2005. If it is traced into urban and rural poor, the trend also shows the same pattern. 

Table 2. Poverty Gap and Severity Index Indonesia

Source: Adapted from CBS (2005)

From the depth and the severity of the poverty, the decline trend of the indicator also been shown. It seems that from the absolute poverty, there are some systematic explanations about the decreasing of the absolute poverty since 2000. One of the explanations could be the economic growth; the other probably from some policies and actions in facing poverty.

Table 3. Gini Coefficient and Theil Index Indonesia

Source: Adapted from CBS (2005) 

The picture from absolute poverty above is not “as good as relative poverty”. It could be seen from the fluctuations of the both gini coefficient and theil index in 2002 and 2005. It is shown that in the year 2005, the relative poverty getting worse compare to the year 2002. The explanation of the fluctuation still have to be seen further.

The story above is based on the statistics, which is only explaining some part of poverty during the crises. Could we conclude that the poor take advantage of the poverty based on the statistics above? This question is an eternal and debatable question to be answered.

One of the “blessings of the poverty” in Indonesia during the crises is the increasing papers and theses about poverty in Indonesia, both in measurement and policies. Those papers have been produced by some institutions and individuals. As it well known, some individual papers and PhD theses are produced in the middle of the high poverty level in Indonesia. To make sure, please check the “Indonesia Poverty” in the google’s scholar and figure out your self of those papers and theses. Furthermore, an interesting discussion of the scholar’s advantageous on poverty [inequality] could be read in “Samwick vs Krugman in equality”, or if you want to more please read from Samwick’s blog and Angry Bear’s blog.

Facing poverty according to economic theory is simple: just let the quantity and price of labor, capital, land, and other resources to be distributed; as simple as that. The problem is how to distribute it? The distribution is the political side and not the economic problem according to the economist. Then it could be said that facing poverty is not the economic problem but political and (probably) ethic problem. 

It is shown above that the scholars and the leaders have taken advantages of poverty, while for the poor still unclear; while the economic theory could not stand alone in facing poverty; it needs some help from politics and ethics. For some reasons, sometimes poverty is just seen as the statistics which imply the poor of the statistics.

Depok, August 9, 2006.