Don’t give your teacher an apple; offer him a couple of basis points in your earnings instead.

Parent and students need some way of sorting through the reams of college information in order to make rational investments, but may I remind you that even when finding the absolute perfect college that you might benefit from aligning the incentives better.

In this respect what I am currently recommending my young friends when they take off for their MBA is that they offer a couple of basis points on their first 10 years earnings to those teachers they feel could best advance their careers…it makes wonders!

Aligning the incentives could in the long run also be the best way of getting information for the picking of a college to, as education should in fact be a joint venture between students, teachers, and colleges

Odious debt revisited

I must confess I was blown away when reading the Financial Times editorial “Young, gifted, poor”, June 9, in which Junior, with reference “to the old saying that rather than inheriting the planet from our ancestors, each generation borrows it from the children” now wants to see “some collateral on the loan”. I mean, it sort of puts the whole issue of “odious debt” in a totally new and frightful light.

Honestly, the more I see what we are up to, the more certain I become that sooner or later our whole generation of baby-boomers could be kindly invited to take a field trip to an “ättestupa”, meaning those steep cliffs where supposedly elderly Scandinavians ages ago threw themselves from when they became useless to society.

I repeat again my argument for an urgent revision of our governmental system so as to align them with the true shareholder’s interest. If the average life is eighty years a new born should have 80 votes (exercised by his mother or older brother) someone like me would have 23 votes left, and someone over eighty should count his blessings and be glad if he is allowed to keep one as a memento. I do not want to owe the world to my children, I want to assure their rights as stakeholders and make it all a joint venture.

Yeah "Go out there and raise hell!"

And so Barbara Ehrenreich told the class of '07: Go out there and raise hell!

Absolutely!

Well here is my proposal for a start!

“Cars should only be allowed between 18 and 38 years… from there on only public transport for the senior citizens.”

It is tragic-comic when you ask someone to go out there and raise hell under the strict premise that this will only be done according to your very particular perception of what that heavenly hell should be.

If we as the older or quasi older generation do not know what mess we are leaving (and this before the burst of the blissful ignorance bubble of the hedge funds) then we are just plain crazy.

As for myself I am already trying to ingratiate myself (or beg for mercy) with my one-child-one-vote movement. You are all welcome to join (I could tell them you have been in from the very beginning)

The ‛rights of children’ is anything but a juvenile concept.

Sir, if the average life length of a person in UK were 80 and our democracies had anything to do with representation of interests, as in companies, then a new born should have 80 votes, a middle age 56 year old like me 24 votes and someone over eighty should count his blessings if he is allowed to keep his single vote. Of course the previous is clearly just an exaggeration, but it serves to argue in favor of the one-child-one-vote concept, in which the votes of the children are to be exercised by their mother, father or older siblings.

I say this loudly protesting the title of grownup Christopher Caldwell’s “Why the ‛right of the children’ is a juvenile concept”, February 17 and some of it contents, among it his authoritarian conclusion that “Rights over to children will either belong to parents or to the state”.

Sir, with many of our current problems such as the climate change begging for longer perspectives than next quarter’s results, is it not high time that the children, who are the ones who could really have to live in the heat, should have their interests better represented in our societies? Also, the democracies that are now turning into baby-boomer dictatorships, it could truly behoove them to allow their young to have more say, before they all in frustration decide to carry out a coup and thereafter, hopefully politely, show their elders the way to the nearest “ättestupa”, those cliffs from were supposedly the Vikings threw themselves when they became burdens to the society.

Should not Higher Education be more of a joint venture?

Hearing so many young professionals in the USA describing their problems with debts they incurred while studying, I guess that soon some of them could be suing their Alma Maters for misrepresentation or plain failure in delivering the services offered.

Perhaps the incentive structure of the education system needs to be revised so that at least some of the higher education providers offer to collect a part of their fees through a profit participation scheme, like for instance by receiving a small percentage of the student’s future earned gross income that is above the level that the student could have been estimated to earn without further education, during his first 20 years of work.

How are then the universities going to pay for their professors now? Easy, that is what the financial markets are for. These participations in the future of our youngsters could be securitized and sold in the markets, perhaps even as a good investment for a professor’s retirement fund… of course, that is if the professor delivers on his promises.

For a university to show a willingness to invest in their own students, because they are sure of what they are giving them, might be a better marketing tool than outright grants and “we invest our money in your future” is my slogan. Also, for students, the question of what university offers to invests the most present dollars against the smallest percentage of the expected future earnings... should rank among the first when selecting an Alma Mater into which to invest their own future.

Parents should concentrate on giving their children the best pre-university preparation possible and thereby helping them to negotiate the best conditions possible with the universities. That there are careers needed for the society but where salaries might not be sufficient to pay off the university that is a different problem, and perhaps has to be solved by paying out specific amounts of subsidies or covering set percentages of the costs for different careers.

PS. If I owed a student loan I would ask for a debt to equity conversion, offering a percentage of my after tax earnings over a certain amount for a definite number of years.

Democracia Siglo XXI

No hemos logrado asegurar cuan cierto puede ser que el comando de Manuel Rosales esté analizando el convocar a un referendo para disminuir la edad de votar de 18 a 16 años y al mismo tiempo otorgar el derecho a voto a todos los menores de 16 años, para que éste sea ejercido por su madre o, en su ausencia, por su padre, abuela, hermana o hermano mayor de 16. No obstante, de lograr implementar tales reformas constitucionales junto al programa de "Mi Negra", estamos seguros que Venezuela se colocaría a la vanguardia de las democracias del siglo XXI.

Cada vez que vemos por televisión a una madre pobre contándonos desesperada cómo ha sido defraudada por enésima vez por los políticos, es evidencia de que su voz y voto no cuentan para mucho. Si esa madre, en lugar de hablar por sí sola, hablase en nombre de los votos de sus hijos, su voz tendría más poder.

Siendo los jóvenes los que más tiempo habrán de agradecer o padecer lo que hagan o no hagan los gobiernos, la verdad es que ellos, por principio, no solamente deberían tener voto, sino quizás hasta más votos que los adultos. En algunos países, especialmente aquellos que demográficamente se encuentran en vías de convertirse en unas dictaduras de viejos, la falta de representación de la juventud puede tener serias consecuencias.

En el mundo vemos cómo cada día reina más el interés en el corto-plazo y ya, por ejemplo, hasta oímos hablar de una contabilidad en tiempo real, mientras que los problemas, que se perciben como a más largo plazo, tales como la protección del ambiente, se acumulan como monte por doquier. El asignar representatividad a los intereses de un recién nacido, puede ser la manera más efectiva para recordarle a los electores que también existen a quienes les interesa lo que pueda pasar de aquí a ochenta años.

Por cuanto la democracia es ante nada un sistema que busca igualar las oportunidades, en un país petrolero, como el nuestro, necesariamente debe venir acompañada de una "Mi Negra". En Venezuela, hemos podido comprobar, durante más de cien años, que resulta imposible construir una verdadera democracia montados sobre un sistema, donde las riquezas petroleras le llegan directamente a la tesorería del Estado. Es por ello que necesitamos repartir primero los ingresos del petróleo entre todos los ciudadanos, para luego votar sobre cuánto impuesto nos van a cobrar, aprobarles en qué van a usar tales impuestos y saber quiénes serán los responsables de su uso correcto.

Por cierto, y para que se den cuenta de la importancia del concepto de "Mi Negra", ya en algunos "think tanks" de Washington se analiza la posibilidad de copiarse la idea para llevarla a Irak. Si cada ciudadano de Irak, independientemente de que sea sunita, chiíta o kurdo, recibiese unos miles de dólares, en efectivo, al año por su petróleo se estaría construyendo un ejército de mercenarios por la paz.

El Universal

A lean, not so mean, vote counting machine

Last week I read somewhere that the automatizations of 70% of the electoral process would cost the Nation some US$ 134 million without including the telecommunications network and the education of the voting age population. This brought back memories of the last election, when I left the “school” in which I exercised my obligation and right to vote, feeling depressed that it had been decided to use the shell, the mere physical installations of a school, without incorporating what would in essence be the perfect administration machinery for an electoral process, its student body.

When we look at the high levels of abstention registered in recent elections in Venezuela, it would not be rash to assume that the origins of our democracy’s real problems lie much deeper, and that the latter cannot be rectified simply by the implementation of a sophisticated electronic vote counting system. While the tendency of increasing abstention is not reverted, I find it difficult to accept that the current system has earned the right to receive such a considerable infusion of resources. Projections of voter turnout in future elections would indicate that a blackboard and a piece of chalk would suffice for the vote count.

It is necessary to put the magnitude of the funds being proposed in perspective. These resources would be sufficient to equip 250,000 Venezuelan students with up-to-date computers that would allow them to face the next century, better prepared and with considerably more confidence.

I feel intuitively that should we delegate the control and tabulation of vote results in our children, we would obtain, at a fraction of the cost, much quicker and reliable results than those produced today by our dilapidated electoral system. This would additionally insure the incorporation of our youngsters into our democratic system at an early age.

The implementation of this idea could take various tacks. Personally, I believe that universities and institutions such as IESA would be more than pleased to collaborate. Since the Church has always highlighted the importance of the family that prays together, and since this concept can easily be applied to democracy as well, it would be logical to incorporate the clergy in conjunction with parent associations as well. By the way, I would love to see a united effort by our armed forces and our youth to organize all that is relative to our elections. I suspect, however, that our politicians would not dare promote such an important joint deployment of forces.

What I really have no doubts about is whom we should be maintaining as far away from the process as possible. I am referring to those that consider, as is occurring with the reform of our judicial system, that all democratic reform must necessarily begin with the negotiation of new credit facilities with the World Bank.

It is very possible that there are people out there that will object to this proposal, basing their objections on arguments that our children are not sufficiently prepared or that unscrupulous political agents would simply corrupt them. I would simply counter that these detractors simply do not know our youth. “De que vuelan, vuelan”. Not only are they much too astute to be taken for a ride (a weakness that seems to be acquired by adults precisely at voting age), but they also seem to have a much better sense of democracy than we adults do. (We refer, obviously, to those children that are currently being educated and not those that regretfully have been abandoned by society, a faithful reflection of our own incapacity).

It could be that these young members of society will be too sharp, and as a consequence would play dirty and impose their own “agenda” on us. I don’t think this would occur, but should it indeed happen, I’m convinced it would not be at all bad. Remember that they must live much longer with the consequences of our electoral choices. A sixty year old that elects inept representatives to office will suffer the consequences for twenty years, his children for forty years and his grandchildren for a whopping sixty. And, while we are speaking of playing dirty, how about all this foreign debt we have passed on as a legacy to our children and grandchildren.

Today, our electoral system is totally discredited. Maybe an injection of enthusiasm and youthful idealism is exactly what it needs.

Daily Journal, Caracas July 10, 1997