Cigarettes: Freedom of choice?

In Australia cigarette-producers lost the case, trying to stop pictures from appearing on cigarette packs.

I really think that we are now crossing the line. In Holland we (for now) have the text ‘smoking will kill you’ on cigarette packs. But now that will change to pictures with green teeth or tumors, on the front of a package. It looks disgusting. Not that I hate people who have such diseases from smoking, but it shouldn’t appear on those packages. As if everyone smoking (maybe even a few) cigarettes will end up with a tumor, and die. A personal future is forced upon you when you buy cigarettes, ‘there’s no escaping this tumor, don’t buy cigarettes, for you will die’. Ofcourse people should be aware of health problems caused by smoking, but they should remain free to choose. I think 90% of the people who see such a picture will look away in disgust, when they see such a picture. That is taking away someone’s choice, it is too much. We all want to live our lives, experiencing as much freedom as possible. These pictures are like putting an electric charge on a beer bottle, he who tries to buy it will die. People should be advised not to buy cigarettes, not stopped from buying. Just to make things clear, I never smoked one cigarette in my whole life, I just saw this passing by in the newspaper. But this is wrong. Showing an improbable, terrible future of an innocent person trying to buy something of which he thinks makes him happy, is wrong. 

Key chain v. Magnum

This summer I went to St Tropez with my family. We’re the ones who watch the yachts and lie next to Club55 to watch the famous people.

In the afternoon I went to get a Magnum. It was 4,5€. A lot of money for such a small thing, but in St Ttropez at at Club55, it was ok. The guy behind the bar was doing the dishes. I thought he would ask me what I wanted but he didn’t pay any attention to me.   After a minute or so my ‘excusez-moi’ got him to look at me. He seemed irritated at the 10€ note I gave him, as if I should have given the 4,5€ exactly. He gave me the Magnum  which wasn’t a Magnum, some fake copy of it, which would have been 0,5€ in the SuperU.

The next day we went to Ramatuelle, a small village close to St Tropez. We entered a little shop; my sister searched for a souvenir. There was a guy behind the desk, about 25 years of age. He had glasses and his eyes were naturally a bit closed. He had curly hair, and a friendly, inquiring look on his face. He kept smiling at us, looking incofident, but very good natured. After a while my sister found a little key chain, for 4,5€. The guy smiled and asked us where we were from. We told him Holland and he asked us whether we lived in the north or the south there. When we answered he said he didn’t know anything about Holland, although it did interest him. We paid with a 20€ note. He typed 20-4.5 in his pocket calculator. He smiled again and put the change in my sisters hand. We left, he watched us go until we disappeared around the corner.

I still wonder why we didn’t get 2 key chains, instead of a fake Magnum.

When Norton becomes the virus

Last month I installed the trial version of Norton. I was quite happy about the anti-virus program. I think it did what it had to do. Now the trial period is over and if I want to keep using it I will have to purchase it. It is quite expensive so I decided not to, I’ll just go for a free anti-virus.

But what keeps happening now is a window popping up every day asking me to purchase Norton. I don’t want to purchase it but that is not an option in the window. There are 2 options, the buy now option, and the ‘ask me again in 24 hours option’.  The buy now option is expected, but since I don’t want to do that I have to go for the ‘ask me again’ option.

The thing is I don’t want to be asked again. I can decide now if I want to purchase or not. But there is no uninstall option. When talking about options, the two that are offered aren’t really different from each other.  If I keep clicking ask me again, the problem doesn’t go away. It is only postponing. If I don’t find another way there will be a moment when I click on buy now, only because I became depressive of the popping up, and just want to end this drama.

This just doesn’t seem fair of Norton. They force you to buy their product. Of course I can uninstall in a different way, but they should have put the option in the window too. This is just a miserable way of selling your product to people. It shows how desperate they probably are at Norton, if this is the only way of selling they can come up with. The result is that I will never buy anything from Norton again, I simply don’t like it anymore. I don’t understand how they could possibly think it would work. If they do, if force is the only way, then don’t beat about the bush and just make it ‘ask me again in 7 seconds’. That might even work better. It would highly increase the suicide-rate worldwide though.

 

The ideal democracy

Today’s democracy is much too indirect. The distance between the government and the people is too big. People vote not only because of good arguments of someone, but also because of his good looks or his smooth talk. And if a voter is not sure, he’ll just vote for the same person he did 4 years ago.

In order to improve the system, first there needs to be taken care of the ‘who’ you vote for. It should be ‘what’ you vote for. Everyone gets a list of things that can be changed, minimum wages, health care, financial support, public transport etc. On that list he can indicate what he likes to be different. He can select half of all the options. He selects for example (higher) financial support and (higher) minimum wages. When all lists are looked at, it can become clear that 90% of a nation wants higher minimum wages. This then becomes the most important thing that the government will have to change. If there were barely people who selected financial support to be higher, than the budget for it will decrease, so that the minimum wages can increase.

The government is always the same, unless someone quits or dies. Its only job is to do what the lists say there is to do, what the majority of the people wants.  It should be a group of about 50 people who are neutral. That is to say, there is no self-interest for them. They have a million they can spend every year and it stays that way. Their salary can’t be influenced by what they choose to change in a country. This is important because otherwise they would base decisions on their own interest, not that of the country.

All those 50 people should be anonymous. This is probably the most important part of the system. If they are anonymous no one will vote because a guy looks friendly, has the same nationality or promises things he won’t live up to. The other way around works the same, the politician won’t be influenced by/ convinced of what people tell him.

In this system there is no president who can stop changes, no money wasted on political campaigns. People vote for something solely because they want it, which is how democracy should be.

Vacation: escaping reality?

In the Netherlands it has been raining all summer. The result is that everyone is booking last-minute trips to places where the sun shines all day. The most popular countries to go to are France, Germany and Spain. Each one of those 3 has higher temperatures than the Netherlands.  We seem to like the countries opposites to us in terms of temperature. You don’t go to Spain because you particularly like it there, but because you don’t like your life in the Netherlands. It’s not just the temperatures ofcourse, also your surroundings, your work etc.

People spend one fifth of their annual income on for example a trip to Spain.  One fifth is for a considerable amount of people the part of their income they have left after paying for all the necessary stuff like food and rent. This means that people spend all the money they can spend, the money they really have, on escaping reality.

This makes the whole thing quite sad, the feeling that you can’t be happy where your home is. Apparently there’s always the need for change, if the Dutch would all go live in Spain they’d probably go to the Netherlands in their vacation. What we really need is a certain kind of amor fati, if it rains all day, so be it, soit. But this is impossible; we know that the sun shines in Spain, and that the economy in China is doing way better than ours. We wouldn’t care if it rained all day here, as long as we wouldn’t know there is such a thing as a sun.

Made in China

Why is it we so distrust products made in China/Japan?

For example cars. It isn’t cool to drive a Japanese car. Why? A Japanese car costs less, is more reliable, more innovative. Yet we don’t want those cars. A German car costs more, is less reliable, and looks like the German cars 20 years ago.

There are multiple eplanations I can think of. A car is no more just a means of transportation, it is a symbol of status. The bigger your Mercedes, the richer you are. This is logical, we (yes, ‘we’, the cool guys from the western world’) produce cars for the wealthy, they produce cars for transport. It is a different market, in which Japan conquers, who can afford a 50 000 dollar Mercedes and who just needs a means of transport, a car that fits a parking spot.

The other explanation is that we are afraid for change. Which is logical too, we like the old-fashioned expensive cars, they worked 20 years ago, we can’t say that of a Japanese car. And a car produced in Germany or the US sounds safe. The world that we know. China is too far away.

But what if Mercedes suddenly lets its cars be produced in China, because of the low wages. It won’t keep us from buying them. This seems strange. As long as the brand is western, it doesn’t matter where it really comes from. An iPhone is made in China, yet we buy it. The Meizu, a mobile bigger, faster and better than an iPhone, doesn’t sell in the US. We like the Chines wages, not the Chinese brand.

Overtaken by technology

If I’d give my grandmother a modern alarm clock she wouldn’t understand it. It would have a radio function and more, while she understands no more than a clock with an alarm. She is 80 years old.

My parents just bought a new television. It has an internet function, has a recorder inside, and it can be used as a screen for a computer. They already have problems with the recording part. They are 50 years old.

This means that by the time I’m 20 I won’t understand my computer anymore. Technology will by that time improve so fast, that when you buy a MacBook in the afternoon, there will be a new version on the market the next morning. This is not quite what we need, in a day your computer’s worth can decrease by half. This means no one can afford a omputer that is up to date. Will people still buy the MacBook in the afternoon or will they give up in the battle against technology, and stick with their windows 8?