The power of Rationales and Emotions - Agent behavior

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group

Human being’s brain is capable to explore through the chain of events to find CAUSE. The ability to search for causes has being improved over the course of the evolutionary process.  In the beginning of civilizations, human beings created the idea of gods to explain the prime cause of all events. This everlasting force, the cause seeking, inspires human beings with curiosity which accounts as the key source for scientific advances.
Beside the cause seeking ability, another capacity, so-called emotion, emerges. It also plays a key role in human being growths. No matter how far our rational power may go, it cannot stop us having emotions any more than we can stop thoughts. There are moments that we get short, temper, feel happiness or terror. Even though we find the cause of the shifts in our emotions, yet emotions dominate our behaviour. Emotions are powerful and strongly influence human being’s behavior. Social structure changes may be triggered by any cause; but the process of the changes could be amplified by a shift in the state of emotions.
What really generates these emotions? Research shows there are five concerns which are important to humans. By harassing them, emotions are stimulated. Here they are:
1.      Affiliation: You feel that you are needed and belonging to,
2.      Appreciation: Your thoughts, feelings, actions, attentions are acknowledged by others. You are valued,
3.      Autonomy: You are free to make your decisions, whatever may be their consequences. You feel the deep value and merit of being human, 
4.      Status: Your standing where deserved is given full recognition. You should not be treated as inferior to that of others,
5.      Function: In short, you find your role fulfilling.
So with shaking one of your concerns, emotions rise and you behave in a way, perhaps against what your rational mind wants. Watch them when you deal with behavioural functions.
For me, autonomy comes first. If it shakes, I show almost zero tolerance and irrationally respond to its cause.
What about you?

Tango Milonga – Thailand Where generations meet

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group

Elefin café sits on a fairly quiet street in central Bangkok.  The interior is large with a cozy mezzanine with a small outdoor terrace above part of the dining area. It is decorated in a unique style, fusion of modern art and contemporary Thai. It offers a panorama of a lively green yard, when you are drinking Elefin’s home-roasted coffee. It is fostering a relaxing and creatives atmosphere to wonder your imaginations and get away from your real life. 
Tango-Milonga is one of its scheduled events. It runs every Saturday nights. The classic Argentinean and Spanish music fills the air. Participants arrive while wear smiles and whose glees lend positive energy to the cafe. The event pulls together different generations, a variety of nations and backgrounds. Even with all differences, their souls resemble each other. The generation of the 50s – 60s feels a powerful nostalgia for the time they kicked the dance pitch to drain out stresses from their hard works, and they shared some times with their partners and imagined together a better future.
The event also makes young participants jump out, even for few hours, from the virtual internet life, and lively exchange ideas, happiness, friendship, in the real world, with others.
Our behaviors are strongly influenced by our cultural values and ideologies. The cultural values have been passing on by direct communication of generations.
It is good to see that the number of young participants increases. Thanks to Elefin that facilitate a direct contact of generations

Could Liberal Democracy be an absolute concept? Absolute does not exist

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
Hegel believed the contradictions that drive history, had existed initially in human consciousness as ideas. For Hegel, all human behavior in the material world is rooted in a prior state of consciousness. So history is evolved as long as the contradictions are around.  
“The end of history and the last man” 1992 by F. Fukuyama, argues  the end of history would be liberal democracy and it would recognize and protect a system of law, human right to freedom, and democratic universal homogenous state, prosperous, and self-satisfied. He explained democracy had moved through its evolutionary process and improved through the course of time and proved to be ethically, politically, and economically better system. We can conclude that the world will converge to a dynamic equilibrium so-called “liberal democracy” with possible small fluctuation around it.
It seems liberal democracy would be the terminal station, and the perfect fit. Upon it is achieved no contradiction exists to change history and no conflicts. Is it absolute model? 
Having said that no absolute exists and every social order is subject to decay, liberal democracy and capitalism are not exceptional and must reach their ends. Like communism which eventually hit its ultimate capacity and collapsed. However Karl Marx believed that the direction of historical development was purposefully determined by the interplay of material forces. He believed the history would come to its end when the communist would be achieved and all prior contradictions, the driving force of changes, would finally resolve. However this view has not been compelling any longer.

So now our world converges to liberal democracy and matured liberal democracy move along its evolutionary path. How and What would the end of democracy and capitalism look like?  What should we expect to replace democracy and capitalism?

Social change and its drivers - In past and post history

By Shahab Sabahi
Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group

According to decentralized economic theory that assumes as a fact that man as a rational profit-maximizer, raising the piece-work rate should increase labor productivity. However political economy has more insights to share. Max Weber, in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” notes that, in fact, in many traditional peasant communities, raising the piece-work rate actually had the opposite effect of lowering labor productivity: at the higher rate. A peasant accustomed to earning few dollars per day found he could earn the same amount by working less, and did so because he valued leisure more than income. The choices of leisure over income, cannot possibly be explained by the impersonal working of material forces, but it should come out of the consciousness sphere - what philosophers has labelled broadly as ideology .
It was Weber's view in contrary to Marx’s view. Weber argued that the emergence of modern capitalism and the profit motive had rooted in the past history and the realm of the spirit, world-view and culture.
Think of the current affairs of the world today, in one part of the world the ideological and value seeking struggle that in the past pulled forth courage, imagination, and idealism, is now replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.
Yet the other part, nations engage in the struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk their life for an abstract goal. There would still be a high and perhaps rising level of ethnic and nationalist violence, since those are impulses incompletely played out, even in parts of the post-historical world. They will continue to have their unresolved grievances.
It seems that in the post-historical period there will be neither art nor philosophy to fuel competition in the post-historical world for some time to come.
A powerful nostalgia may be felt for the time when history existed.

The crude oil price trend after IEA’s painkiller

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
On June 24th 2011, the Crude oil prices dropped by 5% today alone. It is affected by IEA’s 60 million supply. The trend will not continue and the IEA decision to release the oil reserve is just a quick fix for the high season.
In long term, it is not going to have a major impact. The chief driving force holding up the price of oil has been the fear that the unrest in the Middle East that has spread to other oil producing countries, especially Saudi Arabia, with its neighbour Bahrain. If that would have happened it could considerably cause a huge spike in the oil price. Although Libyan oil cut fuelled the fear and consequently pushed up temporally the prices high, the recent high price has not been so much a problem of oil supply shortage.
Nevertheless if it is expected that the Libyan production will come back on line over the next six months, it then happens that it will not need to seek continuing releases from the strategic reserve, and that probably will not go on for very long.
Long Term Issue: A couple of OPEC countries lack spare production capacities and in the same time suffer quite awful financial situation. They certainly favour the high prices. But they will not be able to keep up and increase their productions to meet the future demands increase. In top of that, the perception of the oil traders and their fears of a worse market condition in the future, influence the oil price too. This is now a bit more of concern about market manipulation. Like 1996, there is a fear that governments will try to influence the oil price in their favourable trajectory, which will not work out well now days. Nonlinear and dynamic interaction between the political decision and economic response of traders implies the trajectory which may not be as same as the governments’ favourable trajectory. The reality is that the west foreign policy objective, in the four decades, has remained unchanged. It is rather dogmatic and static and its effectiveness has faded in the past decade. The reality is the geopolitical balance has tremendously shifted while the foreign policy NOT.

New threat to communities: Acid test for Nuclear power plants

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was discussing a policy for frequently assuring the safety of nuclear power plants by third party inspection. It is too early what measures would be adopted. I hope the reactor stress test would not be set as one of mandatory inspection requirement. The Chernobyl meltdown memory is still fresh. A regular stress test led to that human catastrophe. The cause of the incident was announced (as usual, the simplest conclusion!!!!) the fault of the reactor operator, a young inexperienced engineer.
Hard to buy it!!

Superpower lifecycle and their ends – Entropy , Social structure and Global order change

By Shahab Sabahi
Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group

One of my quest was to study the causes and driving forces of society’s developments. Over the course of history, civilizations and empires emerged, developed and vanished or reshaped. The process resembles the human being life cycle. In fact it is.
We, human being, are the block of our societies. Not surprise, societies must behave in a way we do and desire. Societies are living systems and dynamically changed.    
Dynamic systems are always poised to adapt and change in response to their external forces. Their components respond directly to outside forces, but they also respond indirectly to internal processes that are controlled by the interactions of their components. Societies are kind of dynamic systems. Societies and ecosystem are dynamic systems. Socio-economic system and ecosystem are steadily interacting with each other. The stability of system interactions is often defined as an equilibrium condition that can rapidly recover from perturbation and return to an intact structure. The equilibrium condition can oscillate over time and space. Most dynamic systems can be characterized by some degree of stability when disturbed, particularly at the scale of time and space in which human being typically observe them. Some dynamic systems can exist in non-equilibrium and be in a persistent state of evolution to different states.
In short, like other systems, empires and societies are ruled by the entropy. They come to existence, grow efficient, develop, exercise powers, exploit surroundings, corrupt, loose control, and may be vanished.  Look below the four-step evolutionary story of empires  
Emergence: In this state, hero, nobles, superpower and opportunists colonize in places that were previously inhospitable or unattainable. This state usually follows some sort of threshold that allows for the introduction of new communities. It increases the cumulative efficiency
Development: Second step, the communities that have established footholds following colonisations have matured and exhibit efficient use of resources for the development. Social networks have been optimized and well-established and tend to function efficiently. It tends to make a complex system. Small perturbations and oscillations between states can occur; however, primary functions and communities are relatively in equilibrium.
Decline: Now the complexity of the system leads the whole system to a vulnerable state. Significant physical events result in an often catastrophic system alteration. These events include storms, disease, or invasion by other superpower or competing communities.
Reorganization: Finally, as a consequence of these significant perturbations, the system reorganizes. Entropy law implies its rule and pushes reorganization result in a different, simpler, flexible system (adaptation) or entirely replace the system and the new system may not look like its ancestor!!!!

Democratic movements, Social evolution

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
Joshua Kurlantzick in his article “Thailand: A democratic failure and its lesson for the Middle East” March 2011, Council on Foreign Relations gave his impressions about the threats that the infant Middle East democracy movements might face. To help his arguments, he lucidly explained the path of Thailand’s democracy and its afterward incidents. However the cultures and the causes of uprising in two regions are wholly different. Indeed he fails to profoundly look the key issues which dominate the emotional atmosphere of emerging democracies.
Here I add some lines. The emerging democracies, no matter where they occur, are at odd with the genuine process of the societal evolution process. It may describe as one of the fundamental issue. These movements lack a statement of “declaration of democracy”
As much as 10 years before drafting the US constitutions, the leaders of the US revolution, Jefferson, John Adams and Franklin had drafted “”the declaration of independence” based on the ideas of John Locke. Indeed it was a sober and pragmatic declaration in which they outlined a clear definition of “life, liberty, and happiness” in the cost of independence. The declaration was even at odd with the notion of the dominated orthodox Christians of those days. The declaration, indeed, implicitly helped the colonies to find out what they could “expect from the democracy” rather than any leaders.
Given this historical experience as a positive move,
The emerging democracies require a set of new philosophy before ratifying their constitutions (Not available),
Democratic process toward its fulfilment, is a dynamic process. it would take long time to emotion gives a way to logic in the Macro decision-making level,
Poors should understand why they are poor, and believe that there won’t be a supernatural hero (or government) out there for help.

It tells us, for every social change, there is a bumpy road ahead. Before complete democracy settlement, the US experienced civil war, while France’s revolution caused emerging of an autocrat. These incidents helped them to learn how it would be possible and necessary to live side by side where opposite thoughts were in place. They learnt how far dialogues could fix their problem instead of wars. Perhaps same faith would lay ahead for all the emerging democracies.
The existing democratic societies passed through hatreds, wars, alliances and competitions. Their changes claimed many lives and damages to eventually pacified when the pragmatic thoughts and passionate, competitions, alliances replaced dogma.

Society against nuclear energy .... Do not blame on FUKUSHIMA Nuclear power plant

By Shahab Sabahi

Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
How do human beings advance? What are the driving forces behind innovations?  Where do opportunities and progress come from?  Have they been around and waiting for someone to seize them?  
Schumpeter’s theory of economic development describes knowledgee stock, technology, and innovation are the key forces which propeller economies and fuel growth. It reformulates the classical model of economic growth.
But what generates knowledge!!!
The knowledge stock is built up by experience and lessons learnt. It then causes technology innovation and generates opportunities for the next generation. We know the technology opportunity set is endogenously created by time and money investments in new knowledge and unfortunately sometime with loss in life.
Inevitably the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe was by far the worst tragedy in our recent history after the WWII. However it is not fair to mark it as the failure of the nuclear safety regulations and disregard what this technology has given away to our societies. We should bear in mind; it was operated based on the best engineering practice and knowledge which had been available until the March 11th 2011 tsunami.

Nuclear Phase-out: It is not painless

By Shahab Sabahi
Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group
Fukushima nuclear disaster was a wake up call for the international community to review the safety issues of the nuclear power technology. People, all around the world, turned out and stage against nuclear power. Germany was the first who pressed its government to ultimate. The German government responded to the public wills with a positive move and planned for phasing out nuclear power by 2020.  
So far this move has not pushed up the electricity price. However key challenges lay ahead and Germany should well prepare to address the consequences of its move which are not painless.
Greenhouse Gas moves High
Nicholas Apergis in his analysis “On the causal dynamics between emission, nuclear energy, renewable energy and economic growth” July 2010, Ecological Economics argues a causal relationship between CO2 emissions, nuclear energy consumption, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth for a group of 19 developed and developing countries for the period 1984–2007. His analysis suggests in the short-run nuclear energy consumption plays an important role in reducing CO2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption does not contribute to reductions in emissions. Renewable energy is not available all the times, so it makes hard to overcome intermittent supply issues. So it requires power producers who employ renewable energy keep standby and using other sort of energy sources, like fossil energy, to avoid any disruptions droning peak load demand
Therefore an exit before 2020 will push up emissions of the greenhouse gas in the short term
Energy Security
Energy security can only be guaranteed if renewable energies and fossil power generation along with power grids are scaled up. Deploying power plants run by gas at an equal price to coal one, could ease emissions pressure and more competition

Energy Price
To set up a sustainable, efficient and practical energy system for society, many efforts should be made. Phasing out nuclear power in ten years would cost an average consumer’s household 90 cents per month (PIK study reads). An earlier exit would increase electricity costs for an average household by only an additional amount of 2 Euros per month. While the spot price for electricity o would rise 5 cents, in the case of a nuclear phase out date of 2020, to 5.9 cents in 2015 (PIK study reads). If energy efficiency and renewables development are amplified the price may decrease to 5 cents.
However, fuel price and emission permits value increase which might bear consumers higher costs.

A thought... May the earth subsurface activities cause Climate change?

By Shahab Sabahi
Energy and Environment - Policy analysis research group

In recent decades, it seems that the annual number of earthquakes has been increasing and earth has blown up more magmas than before. It was coincidence that climate change, since the early 90s, also drew the attention of the international community as one of the challenges of the twenty first century. It does not mean that i try to work out a correlation between earthquakes and climate change. It may only lead to a question “May the earth underground activities heat up the earth surface and it consequently causes the atmosphere temperature rise? “

Maybe!!…However the statistics from the US geological survey centre read earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have remained fairly constant since the 90s. The number of volcano eruptions world-wide has remained constant for decades. So it plays down the the sentiment of the earthquake number increase. The sentiment may be because of the recent increase in the numbers of the earthquake probe stations and the tremendous improvements in global communications. They allow more locations are monitored and their statistics reach people easily.
However the centre admits that there are still the remote locations where are not observed. If it could be possible to monitor all critical points such as the beneath glaciers and the deep-bed in the poles and the seabed surface temperature of the Artic ocean, the data could be used to describe a pattern distribution for characterizing the earth activities. It may help to conduct a statistical study on the earth heat, energy and ash release

May the earth ash and super hot gas cause ice melting? What is going on under glaciers? So it is hard to say the earth subsurface activities may affect climate change. Also we cannot dismiss the effect of these activities which are inevitably capable bring the atmosphere temperature change.

Bangladesh Energy and Environment Dilemma

By: Shahab Sabahi
        Energy and Environment – policy analysis research group
Reuters May 30, 2011 reported the Bangladesh government would need US$26 billion to develop its own Natural Gas resource. Only five days earlier, a Bangladeshi official had estimated some US$ 27 billion ought to invest in the climate change mitigation programs to tackle the environmental impacts of the Bangladesh socio-economic development.
Given the source of finance is scarce, so which one must come first? The energy investment which allows the Bangladeshi government addresses its energy security and consequently keeps up its economic growth rate positive OR the government funds the climate change mitigation program for precautionary reason.
This is another dynamic and complex system with feedbacks!

Climate change and Regional conflicts may bring benefits

By: Shahab Sabahi
        Energy and Environment – policy analysis research group
The book, “Exceptional People” by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron and Meera Balarajan, describes; one of few things that will affect our futures will be the migration phenomena. The book gives a guide to the costs and benefits of modern migration.
In this brief, I shall look into the book’s analysis through climate change and regional conflict lens. From this viewpoint, neither climate change nor regional conflicts are accounted threat; they could even benefit the globe!! Is it possible?
Climate change and regional conflicts are seen, at least by majority, among the big threats that will harm our societies for years to come. But a question poses “Would all societies be losers? “. According the book’s prediction, climate change will create 200 million refugees by mid-century. Global warming may cause more frequent floods, but most flood victims go home when the waters subsidize. The next big wave of migration will come from Africa. Today, most Africans are too poor to move far. A typical African peasant cannot afford the boat fare to Europe. But as the continent becomes less poor, more and more Africans will acquire the means to migrate.
The flip side may be bright. The book predicts a future of labour shortages in rich countries which only migration can solve. As Europe and America age, they will need more young and energetic nurses, care assistants, housekeepers and cleaners. Robots cannot do everything, even in Japan. The demand for highly skilled workers will grow too, and countries will start to compete more fiercely for mobile talent. Migration will define our future. Migration is the most effective tool yet devised for reducing global poverty. If rich countries were to admit enough migrants from poor countries to expand their own labour forces by a mere 3%, the world would be richer, according to one estimate, by $356 billion a year. Completely opening borders would add an astonishing $39 trillion over 25 years to the global economy. That is more than 500 times the amount the rich world spends on foreign aid each year. Poor countries may suffer when they lose their best brains to the West But the prospect of migrating spurs people in poor countries to acquire marketable skills. Some spend several years abroad but then return home with new skills, new contacts and a pot of savings to invest.
Given the book’s arguments and analysis, the benefits of “climate change and regional conflicts” may outweigh their costs. In general, it may be interpreted that these threats will benefit both rich and poor.
So, climate change and regional conflicts will cause an increase of migration flux to rich countries. The migration flux boosts the economies of both rich and poor countries. Eventually all societies benefit these threats.
However this is not easy to conclude that a system includes the human migration and climate change impact may yield benefits to the whole world. We should take into account
1.      the complexity and  dynamic of social system and its context
2.      the demographic change impact