Advanced routing patterns for transit

Trips by mass transit often contain frequent stops, which makes them slow, often slower than travelling by car. They also incur high costs to operators for the energy required to accelerate trains again after the stop and for the amount of rolling stock and staff needed. Furthermore the uneven loads of a train between different pairs of stops along its route increases costs, too, as the capacity of the train needs to be customized for the maximum load section. Eventually, the costs for building stations are increased by having to customize the length of its stopping bays to the maximum train length along the route, even if most passengers don’t board or alight there.

As all these costs are passed on to the passenger by ticket prices, trips by mass transit would not only be faster, but cheaper, too, if the number of intermediate stops could be reduced. On the other hand, as will be seen, different routing patterns often cause higher waiting times due to reduced departure frequency, or requires the passenger to change trains more often. Furthermore, different routing patterns may also require changes to the ROW, like passing lanes at stations or additional stopping bays.

In order to improve transit, one needs to look at different routing patterns. The most widespread concept is that every train stops at every stop along its route. This scheme has the above-mentioned disadvantages. Another concept is the skip-stop service pattern, by which trains skip certain alternating low-utilized stops along the route. The pattern is described here in more detail. It slightly reduces the line capacity on ROWs without passing lane by increasing the minimum headway.

Another service pattern is „zonal operation“, which is particularly suitable for operation between center and periphery. In this pattern all stations along the route are grouped into certain zones, depending on their distance from the center. Routes are then designed to serve a certain zone only, by traveling without stop between the center and the first stop within their zone, and then stopping at every station within their zone. Usually stations located at the border between different zones are assigned to both zones at once in order to allow interchange between different routes, thus allowing to travel between zones without having to connect at the center.

Further routing patterns are possible if trains are capable of splitting and joining during revenue operation. This enables trains to travel one section jointly, thus occupying only one timetable path, which is particularly useful where the capacity of the ROW is limited, and saving costs for staff, too, if trains are operated in human-driven mode, then to split at a certain station and from there onwards to serve different stops or even possibly different lines. If train units are capable of opening a passage way to coupled adjoining units, passengers could also change trains en route instead of at a station.

The economic loss caused by emigrants and what to do against it

Many countries suffer from emigration. Many of their most capable and productive people leave, after having been raised, fed, protected and educated by their mother countries. A young person with a completed academic education and ready to begin his working life, can easily have caused his country costs of several hundred thousands €, before he contributed even a penny as a return of investment to his mother country. This problem needs to be addressed, a suitable policy needs to be devised and implemented.

It could be argued that countries would do better to make themselves more attractive as a permanent home. Of course they should do their best, however, there are limits to it which can’t be transgressed. Different locations, different amounts and quality of land, different climate, different population base and a different position within the international community set different countries into different situations, which can’t be changed at will, at least not easily. For example, some countries have dangerous enemies and therefore must spend more on national defence. Other countries must spend more in order to cope with a difficult climate while other countries again abound in natural ressources. By course of history some countries ended up with a less capable and productive population than others. Coming from different points of departure a country can try hard to do its best and still be less attractive as a permanent home than others. Therefore another policy addressing the problem of emigration must be devised.

I suggest to understand society like a family, giving support in times of need, but demanding contribution in better times, too. Therefore people can’t be allowed to emigrate without settling their incurred debt to society first. The state should be understood as a all-encompassing social security system, which raises premiums according to everyone’s individual capability and productivity and which keeps a financial account for every citizen. Onto this account shall be booked all paid premiums, but also all benefits which were received by the citizen, such as:

• Due share of national defence
• Due share of police and court system
• Due share of a transport system
• Child benefit
• School education
• University education
• Welfare
• etc…

Membership in this all-encompassing social security system would be mandatory for every citizen and for every permanent resident in the country. Citizens who emigrated would still remain members of the social security system and would still have to pay premiums according to their individual capability and productivity. For determining their individual capability, taxes and charges of their host country have to be subtracted from and social benefits added to their premium. Thus, every citizen would still be free to emigrate and not be drawn on harder than citizens who did not emigrate, but at the same time, they could not escape their liability by emigrating to a country offering them better conditions.

People who emigrated and handed back their citizenship, would be allowed to resign from the system, but not before they adjusted all imbalances on their account. To demand them to hand back their citizenship is necessary because someone could emigrate to another country in good times and return back home in times of need, thus taking unfair advantage of his home country. A non-citizen can always be denied entry to the country while a citizen can’t.

The perfect transit vehicle

The perfect transit vehicle runs on rubber tires, driverless on dedicated ROWs made of concrete or human-driven on ordinary roads, mixing with normal road traffic, and will therefore resemble a bus more than a train. However, it will be possible to couple and also decouple several units into a trackless train, even during revenue operation. Since all axles of all vehicles are steerable, a train consisting of several units will still retain the same small turning circle as a single unit and the latter units will follow exactly the traces of the unit in front, thus allowing for narrow lanes even in sharp curves.

Rubber on concrete is superior for passenger traffic compared to steel wheels on rails. Rubber-tired wheels are more lightweight and they dont require heavy bogies, either, because they don’t need rigid axles. For railway vehicles, the sine running requires this. Light weight saves energy particularly when vehicles have to stop frequently on their way, as is the case in transit. While it is true that today braking energy can be recovered, it is not possible to recover even near 100% of it.

Steel wheels on steel rails have the advantage of lower rolling friction. However, this is essential only for slow and heavy traffic over long distances. Over short distances, as between the stops of a transit line, the energy lost to rolling friction is outweighted by the kinetic energy of the vehicle, and for fast traffic, by the energy lost to wind resistance. Therefore steel wheels of steel rails are superior only for slow freight traffic over long distances which is heavy and doesn’t stop often on its route. Another, albeit minimal advantage of steel wheels on steel rails is the possibility to use the rails as return conductor for electric power supply by overhead wire or third rail. Rubber-tired vehicles can be powered electrically, too, but they require a double-pole power supply.

Steel wheels on rails exert a contact pressure per unit area orders of magnitudes higher than rubber tires on concrete. This causes higher maintenance costs for railways. The low adhesion of steel on steel makes railway vehicles unable to ascend very steep slopes. Rubber-tired vehicles can easily ascend steep slopes, even with only few of their axles being powered, and they can accelerate and decelerate slightly faster than railway vehicles. Furthermore, while the braking distance in normal operation is determined by the need of maintaining comfort and safety of the passengers, thus limiting acceleration and deceleration to approximately 1.3 m/s^2, the emergency braking distance is much shorter for rubber-tired vehicles. When coupling trains within revenue operation, this allows for the vehicle behind to approach the standing vehicle much swifter without compromising safety as there is always the possibility of braking harder should the approaching vehicle transgress its target speed for a given distance. Furthermore, a shorter emergency braking distance allows for a train following onto an occupied stopping bay to under-run the absolute braking distance for normal operation to the vehicle in front after the latter already departed, thus allowing to cut off another 8 seconds or so from the minimal possible headway through a station without passing lane.

On stations, ideally there should be at least a passing lane beside the stopping lane in order to maximize throughput of the exclusive ROW and in order to allow for trains to skip stops. Of course, the costs of providing a passing lane may be prohibitively expensive for underground sections although it allows for shorter platform areas at low-utilized stations, if these are to be served by short train consists only. At stations where several trains should be able to stop at the same time, stopping bays can be aligned either side by side or, length-wise, one after the other. The self-steering capability of the vehicles and the absence of rails allows vehicles to overtake each other at every location along the route, without requiring switches.

The possibility for coupling and decoupling vehicles within revenue operation allows to customize the capacity of the trains to the demands over different stretches of the route, without falling back to short-turning trips, which has the drawback of both reducing frequency at short-turned sections and causing uneven loads at the common sections of the route. Furthermore it allows for different routings of units within the same train consists, thus serving several areas at the end of a common line at once with a high frequency, as, for instance, at the end of a common ROW, and even for units to decouple from one train, serving exclusively a low-utilized station on a line and eventually coupling at the succeeding train on the same line, even if there is no passing lane at the low-utilized station. Ideally, after coupling vehicles in normal operation, the passage way between them should be automatically opened to allow for passengers to distribute themselves evenly over the whole length of the train. For this, both ends of each vehicle should be equipped with a roller shutter.

Ideally, the dedicated ROW for transit vehicles is equipped with electric power supply overhead wires or rails, thus allowing for vehicles to be powered electrically. For spur lines on ordinary roads, however, an electric power supply would be too expensive, therefore vehicles should be equipped with an energy storage, too, allowing to travel over short distances without electric power supply overhead wires or rails.

Transit systems running on customized ROWs only have the limitation of being unable to serve all areas without them. Since customized ROWs are expensive, such areas are plenty. By vehicles being able to drive on ordinary roads and mixing with normal street traffic, they can exploit the higher travel speed on dedicated ROWs while still serving areas away from them. In order to allow for driving on ordinary roads mixing with normal street traffic without taking away space for a driver cabin from the interior, the vehicles are equipped with comprehensive camera surveillance at both ends to supervise street traffic, thus allowing for drivers driving them with their visual input being communicated to them from the cameras to monitors in front of them at a remote office. Remote-controlled driving with visual input from cameras can’t be deemed to be any less safe than driving a tramway, since, in case of sudden failure of the cameras or of the communication link, the vehicle can still emergency brake, albeit only within its exact virtual track and therefore being incapable of evading obstacles. But neither can a tramway which drives on rails within street traffic and is still deemed reasonably safe.

Improvement to IRC

I used to think that the way, how Paltalk works, was the future of chatting, but when I experienced it myself, I changed my opinion. Permanently having a mic open is just too distracting and people abuse it by being too self-indulgent. They talk for overly long times, are very redundant in what they say etc. It would be better just to post one or several voice and/or video messages to the channel, for everybody to listen to or watch it, only if and when they want to. These can then spark a discussion about them. For that, however, one needs a pin board to every channel, with larger space than the current „topic“ feature of IRC, and with easier functionality. It should be possible to drag and drop links and objects onto the pin board.

Does there already exist a possibility to implement this indirectly? Like a pin board web service, which could be linked to at the topic. IRC-Galleria maybe? A bot could automatically send the IPs of all channel visitors to the web service, which could then restrict access to the pin board to these IPs. Unfortunately dragging and dropping objects into certain areas of web pages hasnt caught on yet.

Anyway it’s a shame that Chat and Instant Messenging haven’t yet been fully integrated. With IM it isn’t possible to operate channels, with more than two visitors and these should have a pin board, too.

Bose suspension

Is this the ultimate improvement in suspension? It would make a high-speed bus ultimately comfortable. Today there might be a disadvantage of road transportation compared to rail, particularly at high speeds, because roads are usually rougher than railways.

About this suspension is said on its website, that it consumes as much energy as an air condition. Naturally, lifting the vehicle up and down by linear motors consumes energy, and I presume the energy consumed increases with both the weight of the vehicle and the roughness of the road.

Furthermore, the German Wikipedia-Artikel about linear motors mentions a maximum achieved force of 30 kN. I don’t know if this figure is applicable for this case, but if it was, it might restrict the use of the Bose suspension to axles with a low weight and make it unsuitable for heavy-duty vehicles.

Improvement on electronic dating sites

Most dating sites are technologically from the stone age. Admittedly, most of them are capable to narrow your search on certain „hard“ criteria, like sex, age span, geographical location, type of interest etc. But then they expect you to email every single one of the found matches yourself, which is extremely time-consuming and carries the inconvenience of being rejected multiple times and thus „losing face“.

Orkut has a feature called the „crush list“. You enter every person whose profile you have checked and whom you are interested in, in the „crush list“, but this list is kept secret. Only when there is a match between two people having entered each other in their own „crush list“, i.e. both people have a mutual interest in each other, then both people get notified automatically. This way the risk of being rejected and losing face is reduced to a minimum.

I suggest a feature to present all people matching said certain „hard criteria“, like sex, age span, geographical location, type of interest etc., with those people having entered you in their crush list getting presented preferably, but still hidden between people not knowing you, thus not revealing indirectly their interest in you. People who have seen your profile and decided not being interested in you, should be excluded from the selection. The presentation should be executed like a dia show, while giving you the opportunity, after looking at the profile of one person, to express with a mouse click if you are interested in them or not.

Furthermore, you should be given opportunity to enter a price for how much money you would be willing to satisfy the other person’s interest in you, if he or she was interested in you. This would make both the work of prostitutes and the selection process of their customers easier and more convenient, as the prostitute could easily deselect certain customers without rejecting them openly and the customers would not risk getting rejected.

So what is needed to implement this idea in the real world? I propose setting up a new service, where you can enter a profile, like at so many others and where you can also enter the „hard criteria“ for the people you are looking for. Furthermore it stores your „crush status“ about any other person, which can be either „want“ or „not want“. You may also set as an option that other people can inspect your crush status on them on request. The service lets you search for „hard“ matches, with people having a crush on you mixed in preferably. Last, but not least, it sends out notifications about mutual crushes, but lets members decide if and how they want to receive this info, in order to avoid annoying particularly popular people and possibly drive them away.

But how do people from the real world ever come to use this site? By use of a small button to be placed on profiles of people anywhere else to click on if they have a crush on you. This web button could be placed on personal home pages or profiles in web communities like orkut, facebook etc. or anywhere else on the web. The button has written „I have a crush on this person“ on it and one can choose between a „secret“ crush, and an „open“ crush, the latter being revealed on request to all people who want to know if you had a crush on them or not. The button would then send the info to the above-mentioned service. If the clicker hasn’t registered yet, he or she would be invited, too, with the option of not supplying a full profile but merely one single piece of info allowing to identify them, like their email-address. Members without a profile would then never be included in a presentation.

The concept of „crush lists“ has also been implemented by the site „Crush space“, but very poorly. This site seems mostly deserted now. It is easy to understand why: There is no connection to the outer world, no support is being provided for people who want to lure web surfers from anywhere else to this service, with one mouse-click. Furthermore people whom others have had a crush on, get always notified by email, which can be prohibitively annoying to popular members.

How to found new states

In the era of colonialization, states used to trade colonies freely. Sometimes together with their population, sometimes their population was forced to relocate. Of course, it also happened that states were forced to cede their colonies to another state as a consequence of a war. Now people could associate and together become players in this game, too, possibly purchasing land from another state or form an army or rent a private army and force another state to cede certain chunks of land to them. By this way, new states could enter the game.

These days, sadly, states are less open about selling chunks of their territor, because they take an too absolute view of the property rights of their citizens. Of course, those citizens owning land in that area might be against it being sold, but such an unconditional right need not be guaranteed by the state in the first place. Think of it as being similar to an expropriation of property taking place when building a right of way, e.g. for a highway or an airport. Then people get expropriated for the common good but compensated for their losses.

We are witnessing the process of Islamization, this time in Europe, which will cause the indigenous population soon to become a minority in the lands which formerly had been theirs. Now I am not against them reconquering their lands by force, but another option would be to found an association, which would collect capital for a potential land purchase or in order to rent or financially support an army. (The latter, for instance, was done by the Albanian population of Kosovo to support the Kosovo Liberation Army.) As long as the capital is not needed for the land purchase, the association would just invest it like an ordinary investment fund. And the leadership of this association would be accountable for it as the association would be a legal corporation seated in a state with a functioning legal system. All this just like the Jews did when they aimed to found their own state of Israel

After the new state got founded, the capital investors would be alloted pieces of  land in the new territory, according to the amount of capital they contributed. This means that immigrants to the new state need not have been investors before, nor does it mean that people would invest only if they want to immigrate themselves. It might also be just an ordinary investment like any other, with the investor hoping to gain a high profit from later selling the land later to somebody else.

For examples, look at the investment funds and association which founded Jamestown and New England, from which the United States emerged.

On what common grounds would people associate with each other nowadays? The important factors are how well people get along with each other in common life and, most importantly, how they want their new state to look like, what legal system they want. It is similar to a political party, with its members sharing a lot of political views and ambitions, however, it need not be limited to it. Not only political views count, but also how well the people are able to abide by the required rules and meet the demands made to its citizens by the planned society.

How the state must carefully control immigration and procreation, I already clarified in an earlier post.

Why a procreation service is necessary

In almost all developed countries, and in large parts of the less developed world, too, the fertility rates have sunk below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman:

Table of the fertility rates of all countries

In spite of this fact mankind will not die out, because there are peoples and population parts, too, who continue to multiply and these will eventually prevail. If one analyzes which peoples and population parts procreate stronger and which weaker, then one finds, that in the developed and progressed countries the tendency for procreation is particularly weak and in these countries particularly among the educated, wealthy and enlightened population parts. This phenomenon can be observed everywhere in the world and is not new in the history of mankind, either. The ancient civilizations of the Greek and the Romans perished, because they lacked offspring, so that they were eventually defeated by the stronger procreating barbarian peoples. The widespread belief, that mankind procreated without restraint before the advent of modern chemical contraception in the 60s and that its progeny was only kept in check by diseases, wars and the supply of food, is wrong. After the great plague epidemia in the 14th century, in which Europe lost one third of its population, the population did not rebound immediately, because the people knew how to practice birth control und applied their knowledge, too. Not before abortion, infanticide, all contraception methods and even every sexual activity, which did not serve procreation purposes, incl. masturbation was prosecuted and strongly punished, the European population explosion began.

Whenever people have the option of birth control, they have children for certain reasons only. Although the wish for children for what they are, i.e. because they are liked as cute or thrilling, is widespread, this wish can be fulfilled by having one or two children only and competes with other important goals in life, particularly the professional career, in which one has to compete with people, who have no or fewer children than oneself. Nowadays children, which of all times get born in the time between the ages of 20 and 35, which is decisive for the career, are a great handicap. This factor, which inhibits the inclination for giving birth, is amplified by the fact that nowadays many women pursue a professional career of their own, too, and it explains, why particularly the educated and wealthy parts of the population, who pursue a more challenging career, have particularly few children. Furthermore children are always a considerable financial expense and risk, which is difficult to calculate. In some countries of the third world children may play a role as the only available form of provision for old age, but in safety and calculability they are far inferior to an old-age insurance backed by financial capital or a governmental pension insurance, so that the latter are preferred, wherever they are available. Together, all these factors cause people on average not to aim for having the 2.1 children per woman which are necessary for replacement. So where people do multiply, they do so, because methods of contraception are unknown, unavailable or forbidden by government or religion, or where children are the only possibility of an old-age provision. The Nigerian or Pakistani woman does not have so many children because, in comparison with the European or Japanese woman, she feels stronger inclined to, but because she does not have an option. Therefore one could say, that these women are indirectly coerced to give birth. Is mankind condemned to unlearn contraception again or to forbid it, in order not to die out?

About all developed countries already try, by any means, to make their population have children, but the success of these policies are yet by far insufficient. Many therefore conclude, that the peoples of the developed countries *want* to die out. However, it might be, that these peoples do not really want to die out and many people would indeed be willing to do their share of preventing this fate, but do not want to carry the burden and the risk of children alone, while being unable to counter the trend individually, as long as others get no or too few children at the same time and therefore enjoy financial advantages and advantages in the professional competition.  In order to overcome this dilemma, governmental sanctions were required, which would punish not having a sufficient number of children. Having children would have to be understood as a duty and other such duties, which are unwanted by the individual but necessary for the common good get enforced by the principle, too, that those get punished who disobey. At the same time, these duties and their enforcement enjoy are generally accepted because almost everybody understands that they are necessary. Examples are military service and taxation. Nobody would consider to leave payment of taxes to the discretion of the individual, because everybody understands that without an enforcement of this duty by punishments hardly anybody would pay them, while at the same time the state needs tax revenues.

Some argue against measures to increase the number of births, that they wouldnt object to an extinction of their own nations and that the world is already overpopulated anyway. But the overpopulation can be fought in the long run only by preventing those peoples and parts of the population who continue to multiply, because they continue to live on even after one’s own extinction. In order to accomplish this, it takes positiv and negative incentives, which can however be enforced by those willing to do so only, if they are numerous enough in the first place.

But even if one considers the countries with a fertility rate below replacement level in an isolated fashion, the population decline causes enormous economical problems. Because fewer young people reach productive age than old people retire, the burden of providing for the dependant old increases by a considerable degree, in extreme even multiplies. While today the strong age groups from the years after the war, the so-called baby-boomers, are still in productive age, but at the same time less children and youths have to be fed, raised and and educated, we still have an even particularly favorable proportion of productive and dependant parts of the population. However, this will massively worsen, as soon as the baby-boomer generation retires and because even after their death just merely less and less young people follow, the then very unfavorable proportion of productive and dependant parts of the population will then remain constant. It is not a transitional burden, but a permanent one, until the population has eventually died out or until the average number of children rises again, but not before these children have finished their education, so that they are able to contribute to the national economy.

It has not been considered yet, that because of the relative distribution of the children among different parts of the population a decline of the general educational level and of skills, and therefore of productivity, is to be feared. If children, after reaching their productive age, cant contribute to the national economy, they are a burden to society and the investment of raising and educating them was for nothing. As the PISA study proves, in all OECD countries success of young people in education and job continue to depend on the educational level and socioeconomic status of their parents, in spite of all attempts to create a pervious society and an education system with equal chances for everybody. At the same time however education and wealth correlate negatively with the number of children. Therefore the possibilities, to make top performers out of the children of poorer and less educated parts of the population, too, seem to be limited. It is uncertain, if this is caused by the genes, by cultural imprint or education by the parents or by indirect discrimination by society, but it remains a fact, whose consequences have to be taken into account.

This problem of a declining productivity of the population is being further aggravated by the fact, that a part of the best-educated and most skilled top performers emigrate after completion of their several hundreds of thousands euros worthy education. Of course, a country can at the same time win immigrants from other countries, too. In the process every county tries to allow only the best and most useful immigrants in, but keep those out, who are feared to rather become a burden to society than to contribute to the economy. This immigration policy, which functions like a selectively permeable membrane, resembles the policy of eugenics, which has fallen out of fashion today and which wanted to foster the prevalence of desired properties by systematic selection of offspring and prevention of procreation, while at the same time eliminating undesired properties. But a country can attract highly qualified immigrants only, if it can offer them an attractive standard of living at which it competes with all other countries of the world. Some suggest to resolve the demographic problems of developed countries by immigration, but often overlook that immigrants do not want to to immigrate to countries in order to provide for the retirees, but in order to improve their own situation. In doing so they will prefer those countries which offer them the best living conditions, but avoid those countries which burden their incomes with high taxes and charges in order to provide for their masses of dependant old people. Therefore a lack of own offspring is at the same time a disadvantage in the competition for highly qualified immigrants. Moreover, this worldwide competition doesnt change the fact that the total number of talents and highly qualified people decreases worldwide. It follows that only the countries with the best preconditions, like USA, Canada and Australia can win the top performers of this world, while at the same time the countries defeated in this competition lose many of their own top performers to said superior countries. It is therefore to be expected that the already extreme wealth gap between the richest and the poor nations will continue to grow, while large parts of the today wealthy world, most of all Europe and Japan, will impoverish and fall behind the leading countries, like USA, Canada and Australia. It is to be feared, that the productive parts of the population will not be able to supply for the dependant parts, so that they will have to die, if they dont have own funds or income.

In order to brighten these gloomy prospects, I suggest a policy of planful eugenical birth control together with an obligation to give birth for the educated and highly productive parts of the population. Both the intent to forbid procreation for certain parents and to oblige procreation for other parents, will be met by disbelieving horror, because this would mean a violation of basic human rights. Still most parents consider the future prospects of the potential children in their family planning on their own and avoid to have children, who would be disadvantaged in their lives. I don’t see a reason why the selfish wish of some unreasonable parents to have children in spite of them being predictably disadvantaged in their lives should be prioritized over the interest of the children and the common good.

The suggestion of an obligation to give birth will be countered, that many of the educated parts of the population obliged to procreate will try to avoid meeting their duty by emigrating. I reply, that today exactly the gloomy future of most countries without sufficient own offspring motivates many of their citizens to emigrate, if they can. If future prospects would be improved by a general obligation to give birth, this could even prevent emigration. According to my suggestion the duty would be enforced, that those citizens who refuse to procreate would be condemned to live at welfare level for the rest of their lives through excessive taxation of both their incomes and property. But compared to the living conditions of many people in the poorest countries of this world and compared to the gloomy future particularly for the dependant parts of the population this seems to be the more humane solution to me. Furthermore such duties, which are to be served by everyone without exception are nothing unsual: In the great wars of the past the general conscription forced all able-bodied men to risk their lives on the battlefields, because the existence of their nation depended on it. Today the existence of our nations depend on sufficient offspring und there it seems to be justifiable to enforce a general obligation here, too.

Furthermore it will be argued, that parents will not raise and educate children to healthy and performing adults, if they don’t have them out of love for children, but because they have to fulfill a duty. Indeed there is a danger, that parents don’t meet their child custody obligation properly. This danger must be met by punishments. However, it can be expected that most parents will accept the necessity for them to fulfill their duty and raise and educate their children properly on their own. At military service we found that soldiers, in spite of being forced to serve, still had a high fighting moral. Furthermore most of our ancestors were born under circumstances, in which their parents were forced to give birth to them because contraception was unavailable to them, but they still grew to healthy and performing people.

In order to facilitate the best possible education of the children, I want every child to have both father and mother. Studies show that children of single parents are on average more likely to become criminal then those from complete families. The PISA study also proves that children of single parents score worse in education on average. Therefore the contemporaty trend to single parents is to be fought.

About public debts and the monetary system

Just to set a few things straight about this subject. Most people plead for ignorance in this matter, the others just parrot the prevailing narrative and ridicule everybody who questions it, without being willing or capable at all of thinking about it on their own.

Public debts are supposed to be repaid at some time in the future. Their ever rising amount makes this rather unlikely, but okay. At the same time governments retain the monopoly of creating money, this means, that they could always just print any amount of money they want to, at will. Usually money is supposed to be backed by bonds, although this is not at all necessary, because the government’s currency is legal tender and taxes are collected in it, so it will always retain its value, if backed or not. If money is created only in exchange for bonds, this raises the question if the total amount of bonds has to increase forever and what to do in a shrinking economy. Deflation is harmful to the economy, because it leads to money hoarding which a creates positive feedback: The more the value of money increases, the more people will want to withhold instead of spending it, thus further reinforcing economic recession.

But back to public debt. Why don’t governments just print the money the need instead of borrowing it? Because that could cause inflation, as the potential lenders would still keep their money for potential spending. However, every government has the option of just taxing people instead of printing money. Presumably taxing is politically less popular. People don’t care about public debts as long as 1) the taxes are not going to raised and 2) there is no undue inflation. So just borrowing money does the trick to increase public expenditure while satisfying both conditions 1) and 2).

However, there is a catch: The government has to pay interests on its debt. The higher the public debt is, the higher the interest to paid, from tax revenues or from even more debts, because people want low taxation and high public expenditure at the same time and don’t care about the future.

Therefore eventually resolving the over-indebtedness by printing money or by not paying interests and/or repaying debts can’t be avoided. Now sane people would oppose making debts and public expenditures exceeding tax revenues in the first place, but then sanity is rare among human beings.

The right to strike

Curiously, the vast majority of people uphold the right for employees to strike. Somebody who puts this right into question, is quickly likened to Hitler.

Because I know at least a few people who don’t understand what the right to strike really means, I must explain it: It doesn’t have anything to do with the right to leave your job at any time, before your job contract ends or when your employer has unreasonable demands to you. You can always leave your job in violation of your job contract. Theoretically, your employer can sue you for damages, if he can prove that they were caused by your absence from work, but for most jobs this is most unlikely. You just get fired without previous notice.

The right to strike means the right not to work in violation of your job contract while your employer can’t fire you for it. This is the reason why in most legal environments strikes are judged as such only if labor unions have approved of them.

Now to maintain a right to strike doesn’t make an inch of sense for society. With every strike, wages are not being paid, deliveries not met, the economy gets damaged and economic creation of value is being prevented. There is always a net economic loss for the national economy as a whole. But furthermore, the outcome of the strike – the wages and work conditions to be negotiated between employers and employees – doesn’t depend on what’s just or what is best for the economy, but just by which party is stronger in this conflict.

Let’s imagine two parties were at odds and going to court against each other. Now the judge decides to have both parties literally fight against each other – with fists or guns or whatever – with the winnig party winning the trial, too. Does this make sense to you? Is there any justice in this kind of legal practice?

It doesn’t matter if you are on the side of the employers or of the employees. In neither case does a strike or the right to strike make any sense. If you want to decide about wages and labor conditions yourself or if you want only one of the concerning parties or anybody else deciding about it, then this could easily be implemented without the strike and without its economic damage.

However, most people always side with the employee, automatically and unconditionally, regardless of their demands. In their world view even highly paid employees, like air traffic controllers, are always the underdogs. It doesn’t matter to them that only some employees enjoy a position in which they can successfully defeat their employers by industrial action. These people refuse to understand that not their pay rise will not be paid from the employer’s profit, but from the prices the customers have to pay through increased prices. Employers can make a profit only by maintaining a winning margin over their competitors. But these very same people immediately understand this, when the increase of the production cost is not caused by a pay rise for the employees, but by a rise of VAT.

It just doesn’t make a sense that an organized group of people are given entitlement to hold a society at ransom. Of course, people with any sense left knew all this before. Still, the vast majority of people, as I said, liken anyone to Hitler who puts the right to strike into question. People…

Why Libertarianism is wrong – The welfare state is not to blame for Islamization

I have a friend who fell for this libertarian bullcaca. This is why I want to attack libertarianism here:

„If there was no welfare state, rich people would donate enough money to private charity organizations who would then take care of the needy. Human beings are good by nature. Therefore the welfare state is not necessary. Nowadays the welfare state takes care of them and rich people assume that further donations are not necessary. Thus the welfare state discourages voluntary charity.“

Why not the other way round? Instead of dismantling the welfare state before rich people render it unnecessary by their voluntary donations, let’s dismantle it after they rendered it unnecessary. It’s not as if today rich people didn’t exist or didn’t have enough money. You claim, the reason why rich people don’t donate enough, is, because the welfare state takes care of the needy already. You could argue the other way round just as well: The reason why the welfare state exists, is because rich people don’t donate enough. Which is actually even true.

The argument that people are good by nature is also used by communists to argue why communism would work. You know how stupid this argument is when it comes from communists, but when it comes from libertarians, it’s just as stupid. On other occasions libertarians assume people to be selfish, mostly when discussing economic policies. Make up your mind!

„A welfare state easily leads to Fascism and Hitler“

Prove this. Prove, that a welfare state leads to Fascism and Hitler any more likely than a minarchist or any other kind of state. You can’t.

„People die of hunger. That’s life“

You have the choice between two governmental policies. The welfare state, in which everybody’s needs are met. And the libertarian one, in which some people die of hunger. You choose the latter and even claim that it’s the more moral one. So, according to your morality, it’s better if people die of hunger than if they don’t. There is something seriously wrong with this morality.

„The welfare state attracts masses of muslims, freeloaders and other parasitic people as immigrants. With Libertarianism only the good people would come, who are able to make a living on their own.“

It’s the other way round: Libertarian ideology explicitly forbids the government to restrict immigration in any way. If you want a different policy in this matter, it’s not a libertarian one. Without such an ideology you can restrict immigration as you like. Which is another argument for common-sense instead of ideology.

Libertarians uphold the right of individuals and companies to forbid any intrusion on their real estate property. Curiously, if it’s not a company but a state who wants to restrict immigration, it is deemed immoral all of a sudden.

Libertarianism, just like Multiculturalism, doesn’t recognize that states are not institutions which govern over masses of unrelated people who don’t have anything in common with each other, but that they are the very association or „incorporation“ of people who do have something in common and who are related. Just like in business. And they have a common business to attend, which is, to live their lives as they see fit. To make this possible is the very purpose of the state.

„The welfare state makes productive people pay for the dependent, thus hampering the procreation of the former, while fostering the procreation of the latter. This causes demographics to shift in favor of the dependent, causing Islamization.“

In fact, Libertarianism forbids any kind of procreational policy of the state. The state is not permitted to foster or to contain procreation of different population groups. Once again, a welfare state, ruled by common sense rather than by ideology, has more liberty about its policies and can therefore implement any kind of policy about procreation that is seen fit.

In Europe, many of the rich, productive people, who attack the welfare state, have no children. How exactly is Islamization prevented by taxing childless wealthy yuppies less and allow them to spend more money on sports cars?

Trottoir roulant rapide

From the Wikipedia article:

„The trottoir roulant rapide was an experimental high speed moving sidewalk in Paris, France, moving at a speed of 9km/h. Users first entered a slower tape, than a faster one, the two have metal rollers in between. It has produced some injuries, and is not handicap compatible. Today it is converted into an ordinary walkway running at a slower speed.“

This was an interesting innovation in transportation. It’s somewhat disconcerting that it failed only because very few users were unable to keep their feet still when being accelerated by the metal rollers to a speed at which it was safe to step on the walkway.

Where does the oxygen come from?

Two formulations of the same question. I sent the latter one to the „Last Word“ column of the New Scientist magazine.

Why hasn’t the amount of O2 in the atmosphere decreased significantly by mankind burning large amounts of carbon hydrates in form of oil, coal and gas? The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is reported to have been greatly increased because of human activity. But for every molecule of CO2 to be created, a molecule of O2 must be taken out of the atmosphere. If the amount of O2 in the atmosphere is far too great for burning carbon and carbon hydrates having a significant influence on it, what geological process does the O2 originate from? Common theory has it that it got produced through photosynthesis in a massive environmental change known as the „Oxygen revolution“. But if the process of photosynthesis is responsible for most of the O2 currently located in the atmosphere, then a similar amount of carbon and carbon hydrates created by this process of photosynthesis must be found somewhere on earth. Where is it?

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Where does the molecular oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere come from?According to prevailing opinion, photosynthesis is the main source of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere. This reaction creates sugars and molecular oxygen (O2) from water and carbon dioxide (CO2). For every molecule of carbon dioxide (CO2) one molecule of oxygen (02) gets produced. The single atom of carbon is stored in sugars or other matter, which the sugars get processed into, like all kinds of carbon hydrates or coal. Only when the produced carbon-containing matter gets burned, the carbon will be processed back to carbon dioxide (CO2), but not without consuming the molecule of oxygen (O2), which got produced before in the photosynthetic process. Therefore, if photosynthesis is the main source of molecular oxygen in the atmosphere, then for almost every molecule of oxygen there must be a corresponding atom of carbon elsewhere, which could consume the oxygen by burning it.

This source lists all deposits of carbon on earth with their presumed amount of carbon in them measured in billions of tonnes. Those deposits which contain carbon which was produced by the photosynthetic process are terrestrial vegetation (610), soils and organic matter (1600), dissolved organic carbon (700), marine organisms (3), coal deposits (3000) and oil and gas deposits (300). Thus the total amount of bound carbon, produced from photosynthesis, can’t exceed 610+1600+700+3+3000+300=6213 Gigatons, according to this source. The mass of a carbon atom is approx. 12 u, therefore no more than 2*10^41 atoms of carbon can be bound in those deposits, which got produced by photosynthesis.

The mass of the earth’s atmosphere is estimated to be 5*10^18 kg, of which no less than one fifth is molecular oxygen. The molar mass of molecular oxygen is 32 g/mol, therefore one kg of oxygen contains 6*10^26/32 molecules, therefore there must be no less than 1.875*10^43 molecules of O2 in the atmosphere. So, there is far more molecular oxygen in the atmosphere than there is carbon-containing matter which got produced by photosynthesis. Where does the molecular oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere come from then, if not from photosynthesis?

High speed travel on roads

High speed railways are expensive to build and expensive to maintain. Maglev is cheap to maintain, but even more expensive to build than high speed railways. Both modes of transportation usually require high government subsidies at least for the construction of right of way, and their ticket prices are high, too. High speed rail is touted as a solution for travel distances in the range of up to 800 km, as an alternative to air travel. While in many real-world applications it succeeds to beat air travel in total journey time because stations are often closer to the exact origins and destinations of the passengers than airports and because less time is wasted for check-in, security, boarding and taxiing, high speed rail often can’t beat air travel on price or only by a very small margin.

On the other hand, buses do easily beat air travel on price, even on quite long distances. This would make them a very innovative mode of transportation if they weren’t so slow on today’s roads. This raises the question, why they are so slow and if they couldn’t be made faster without increasing costs by much. For ground-based high speed transportation railway and maglev shouldn’t be the only technologies to be considered, but self-steering, rubber-tired vehicles on roads should also be looked into and it should be assessed where their technologically feasible top speed is.

On the following video you can watch somebody driving his car for almost 10 minutes at a constant speed of 250 km/h over a German Autobahn. This ride looks both safe and smooth to me. In fact, much of high speed travel in Germany today doesn’t go by air or train, but by car on an Autobahn.

Unlike railway and maglev tracks, roads are cheap, both to build and to maintain. The contact pressure area of rubber tires on the road’s surface is orders of magnitudes lower than for the wheels of a train on rails. Unlike railway trains, rubber-tyred vehicles can easily climb grades of 10% or more without problems. Therefore roads have little need for tunnels, even in mountaineous terrain. Maglev has little need for track maintenance and can climb steep slopes, too, but their track is very expensive to build, because it requires a stationary linear motor for the whole way, together with separate power supply for every block. A road, however, is little more than a flat surface. Road surfaces made of concrete have been proven to be quite endurable even against heavy duty traffic and to require little maintenance.

Roads can be used more flexibly than rail tracks. Apart from collective passenger traffic, to be served by special, aerodynamically shaped high speed buses, there is also a big demand in fast, yet affordable freight traffic, which today, already goes almost exlusively on the road because for most origins and destinations, this is the only way to create a fast, direct transportation link, without any interruptions or transshipping, between them. And last, but certainly not least, individuals can drive with their own affordable, private cars on the roads. Therefore a road, tailor-made for high speed, can easily attract enough traffic to use up its capacity, and by that, ensuring profitability at low tolls. Another advantage of roads, compared to rail, is their very high flexibity in case of disruptions, accidents or failures. Vehicles are self-steering and can therefore go round obstacles, they are self-propelling and therefore unaffected by power line failures. Furthermore they have very short braking distances in case of emergency, which allows for shorter headways between them.

I suggest to build dedicated roads for high speed travel or to upgrade existing roads or lanes on existing roads for high speeds. Their lanes should be built wide and their curves should be superelevated to ensure a smoother and safer ride. Possibly the surface should be made of a draining material like drain concrete in order to make aquaplaning less likely. A high minimum speed should be enforced for all vehicles to use them, and a drip-feed system installed at the beginning of the road, in order to funnel the vehicles at determined headways through till the end of the road, fast. On dedicated high speed roads with only a single lane, all vehicles should be enforced to travel by the same speed in a determined distance from each other in order to maximize safety, travel speed and capacity. All vehicles should be required to be equipped with a Car2Car communication system which is an ad-hoc mobile network between the vehicles on the road, informing each other of their respective positions and speeds, thus preventing rear-end collisions even behind hilltops or in curves, when the vehicle in front is not visible. The very short braking distances of rubber-tired vehicles permits to fall back to driving on sight, should the Car2Car communication system fail. In that case the road could still be used like an ordinary road.

The following links point to sites about research projects about Car2Car communication system:

Fleetnet
Network on Wheels
Secure Vehicle Communication

Collective passenger transport should be served by wide, long, aerodynamically shaped buses with a low center of gravity by reducing their height compared to today’s buses in order to improve handling. The higher the passenger capacity, the better the economics, including fuel efficiency. Dedicated high speed roads and lanes should be customized for use with high speed buses, particularly in width. But even on today’s highways, like the German Autobahn, it would most probably be safe to raise the speed limit for such special high speed buses to 130 km/h, thus creating a faster, yet affordable transportation option.

It has to be noted, though, that present-day tires for heavy duty vehicles are capable of traveling at maximum speeds of 130 km/h only. I am currently in the process of finding out if tires for heavy-duty vehicles with higher maximum speeds can be produced with sufficient riding quality, safety properties and at an acceptable cost per kilometer.