Ola. Today’s vodcast is not your typical headcrab zombie vodcast. Today, I’ll attempt to answer the Davos Question.

Here’s the video:

If you’re wondering why its so lame (with the headcrab so stiff and all), its because this is actually the longest video I’ve made so far - 4 and a half minutes as opposed to the typical 1 minute stuff. Also, if you’re wondering why it doesn’t feel like the older vodcasts, its because I was lazy and didn’t hand animate the whole thing. In fact, what you see is almost entirely machine generated.

Technical Information and Trivia:

• This is the first video to be completely computer tracked, and no hand animation involved. I did this because there were more than 7000 frames, and it’d be next year before I finish hand compositing it.
• The video took roughly 90 hours in total to render. It’s roughly 50 hours per render, and with 16 hours remaining, my 3DS Max crashed. So it took another round of rendering before I could get it done.
• I didn’t move much. For a reason. It was 3 a.m. when I made the video. I was quite tired
• I thought of just uploading it straight to YouTube, but there were these horrendous eyebags.
• So I rather wait 90 hours more to get it uploaded.
• The reason why the headcrab looks a bit different is because I was sitting quite close to the camera this time. Note to self: Get a 35mm lens camera.
• In total, I re-recorded my speech about 100+ times, because I had problems pronouncing ‘utilitarianism’ and ‘antiretroviral’, and ‘WTC’
• The video and audio went out of sync at 3:09, because I miscalculated my frame rates. Bugger that, my math.
• Mental Ray wasn’t used

You may download the transcript of the vodcast here:Davos Question Vodcast Transcript [PDF]

Here’s a longer version of what I wanted to say:

There are many things we can all do. I can name a few off my hand, free education for everyone, come up with some innovative development incentive schemes to help the poorer nations, and stuff like that. I’d put healthcare and education above anything else, in the Davos agenda, but some plans are frankly, unfeasible, as it requires huge sacrifices on many people’s part.

I believe that the system in the world now is still inefficient - meaning, more can be done without anyone losing out. Instead of focusing on the macro-level, nations, companies and individuals should be focusing on the micro-level of economics. That is to say, we should focus on things more like individual supply and demands, as opposed to aggregate supply and demand.

Indeed, ingenious microeconomic solutions can arise - like the example I used in the video, where pharmaceuticals pursue a more efficient method of price discrimination to benefit the poorer nations. Likewise, could be implemented for malaria (still rampant in Africa), financing (microfinancing, i.e. lending on a small scale) or even education (Patrick Awuah (sp?) started a liberal arts college in his home nation in Ghana).

If we keep looking at the big picture, we cannot see the details. But yet when we straighten the details, the big picture becomes complete, so why not straighten the details?

This doesn’t mean macro-economists do not have a role to play. Fiscal policies and et cetera is still important. I’ve seen some videos on YT that suggest that we either do away with money (WTF??) or stop using the debt-based monetary system. While the latter seems to be a fine idea (like going back to gold standard), it’s also quite silly, in modern contexts. Money has always been, at points in history, fiat. Money is just a concept, so whether you use the gold standard or fractional reserve banking, inflations are still bound to happen. This is where macro-economists come in, to study and control the system.

Anyways, back to the video. I mentioned in my video that it is good to have some arbitary anchors. An anchor is some absolute beliefs that should be made absolutely irrefutable.

I mentioned that not killing, and non-violence is a good anchor to hold on to, while ideologies like political or religious beliefs are not good anchors. Before anyone flare up at me for criticizing religious beliefs (or in some rare cases, political ideologies), think about what I said. Think of how many religions have been misused as a platform for genocide. Think of how many political ideologies that have been used as a platform for tyranny.

Not killing other people and non-violence are good anchors in the sense that even if you misuse it, you won’t harm people. Concepts like Nazism, or God, has been misused many times in history. Take some time to think this through.

Now that you’ve thought through my argument, I’ve always favored the in-between. For instance, I believe in a fine balance of the free market system and some form of control. By thinking this question: “Will my actions benefit me and others?” it forces a person, a company or even a nation, to think and walk in between selfless altruism and selfish egoism. Sometimes it is difficult to come up with a solution that is ‘fair’ to all parties, but there’s always time to be creative eh?

Sometimes, the solution is unfair to most of us, but is fair to the others. Take South-East Asian sweatshops for an example. If Nike didn’t open a sweatshop in SE Asia, the people there would be living in abject poverty. But the existence of Nike sweatshops provides the people there a chance to make a decent living by their standards.

Granted, it’s not fair (considering many fat American yobs get paid few thousand bucks per hour), and many people (me included) see this as a complete and total disregard for basic (workers’) rights, but consider the alternative. The people of poorer nations, without the power of globalization, will be even more destitute. And of course, many things can be done to prevent such disregard of rights, such as an ethics committee that regulates these sorts of activities, but this is rather unsophisticated thinking coming from me. Personally, I’d look at each case individually, before suggesting anything.

My suggestion in my video, is most certainly idealistic. I’ve been accused many times that I live in an idealized world, and not in the real world, but I shall remain optimistic. Maybe Osama bin Laden and the rest of the untamed, barbaric terrorist world might not find this an appealing solution (with a mindset that says, ‘Conquer or Die!’, it’s hard to find it appealing), but I remain optimistic, that if most of the world had asked the question before they take a step in action, the world, will most certainly be a better place in 2008.

Let’s try this, mmkay?

p/s: It’d really be cool if I get an invite to Davos. Really. And about unleashing the forces of Xen on Earth… we’ll let G-man handle that. ‘Headcrab’ and ‘Xen’ is a trademark of Valve Software Inc, please don’t sue me. The Nike sweatshop example was adapted from Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works, which is an awesome read. Now, someone give me an invite and a plane ticket to Davos!

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