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[ 18 minute read ]

mostly fiction

Harrari and Hakim

I think my abandoned alien friend, whom I call Harrari (‘Harraree’) doesn’t like me so much as I first thought she did. Actually, I don’t suppose it matters how it is spelt, because I don’t write to it or her, I am not entirely sure which.

Now I live in a house my life is somewhat suspended in the glutinous gel of physicalities and practical matters. I thought Harrari doesn’t like me because I found a plastic tiger in my back garden, the sort you find in a small child’s toy zoo, and set it up outside my front door to act as a psuedo warning that a weirdo lives here, and the caller should expect weirdness if the door is opened. You know, weirdness just falls out of its own accord. 

Anyway, no-one knocks on my front door, but I did once find my loft hatch open when I got up one morning. An intruder or another lonely alien practical joke perhaps, like knocking my glasses off when you found me living in your wood? ‘Not funny, Harrari’. My loft floors are insulated and the warm from the landing was going on holiday to what it might imagine to be a new place to inhabit. Not good. Warm air holds more moisture than cold air and that is why condensation forms on cold windows and walls.

I had, over the years I have spent living here, had an annual struggle with mildew forming on some of the far out of reach walls in the stair well. The previous occupants had allowed a nest of mildew to form in the upper corner where two exterior walls and the ceiling meet. Baby mildew spores would drop down and find comfortable places around my house; behind cupboards and other hidden places. There are two things you can do; empty your house of everything, including your lovely kitchen cabinets and get a plumber to stop your water and remove the toilet cistern, your bath and your toilet; or pay very, very close attention to controlling how much moisture is in the air and the temperatures of each room. Controlling the build up of moisture is easiest. Moving warm and wet air from rooms that have a temporarily higher temperature than normal to cooler areas of my home means I can let the cooler air with its condensing water vapour out into the wild through the front door. That is, if I am awake.

When in a dog eat dog world, be a cat

Harrari, is like a friendly labrador dog, but way, way, way more intelligent. Harrari has her own character. Harrari is funny and deliciously cruel and diverse in humour. Not at all hurtful though; and here is where I have a very good understanding of Harrari’s abilities to be deadly. Invisible, silent and almost undetectable, with an intelligence that would be off any chart we humans might invent in the next thousand years that measures intelligence (I have just been told, almost exactly two hundred years), Hararri, could if she wanted, be devastating. It is useful to remember that it was Harrari that guided dog-walkers away from my woodland camp, and guided me out of a ditch directly to my tent in a pitch-dark wood, around spiky bushes, holes, fallen trees and along unseen paths to my temporary home.

So when I discovered my loft hatch open I was immediately alarmed. The police would not climb in, after I told them that I didn’t want to go in because while passing through the hatch you can be stabbed in the neck, and any intruder would do that to avoid capture. It didn’t help when I showed the police officer my thirteen inch (34cm) kitchen knife with a one and a half inch (3.8cm) wide blade near the handle. This is what I proposed to protect myself with when the hoodlums jumped out of my attic, I told him. He stared at it on the kitchen counter for a full ten seconds. He then stood at the top of the stairs using MY torch and said, ‘There is no-one in there.’ After I had fetched him a mirror and showed him how to use it, which he bumbled, I had to climb in, he was too scared, into the attic to look behind the header tank (water tank found in older homes where water for heating is temporarily stored to refill the immersion tank in the unforeseen event that the water supply to the home is not available, to prevent the immersion heater setting light to the airing cupboard by overheating itself – the thermostat inside it tests water temperature only).

It was uncanny that he reminded me to look behind the header tank. Why did he think I was in there? I could have sworn he said that there was no-one there before. When I climbed out he asked me if I am crazy. 

       'Do you have mental problems?'

I secretly laughed at his naivety. So did Harrari, but even I didn’t hear her. I never even hear her laugh at me, she only hints at it later, when I am almost entirely asleep.

       ‘We all do.’ I said to the police officer.

He then instructed me to only call for help when I have been stabbed in the neck, and the culprit has escaped, like any frightened policeman would command. 

        'Only phone us when you actually see someone'

His female colleague saw him for what he was; Certainly Harrari did, Hakim did, and the policeman's own spirit was holding up a banner behind him that said 'I am scared!' It changed to 'Everything is your fault!' and then, once it saw me looking at it, 'Sorry!'

Harrari was, with her usual perspicacity, laughing at both the policeman and my naivety. She had opened the loft hatch, while I was asleep, to move warm and moist air from the top of the landing into the attic so it did not instead descend down to the bottom of the stairs.

She can pass through my locked front door with a good deal of effort but warm air cannot. Taking a key from a hook and manipulating it to fit the keyhole in order to be able to turn a stiff lock and then twist a handle to open the front door is, not outside her capabilities, but I suspect she would be exhausted by this, since it can only really be done with telekinesis; and such finite maneuvers are terribly tricky, even for her. However, a shove that comes from a slowly building storage of force, such as pushing up the loft hatch is quite do-able for her.

Very kindly, Harrari left the hatch turned forty-five degree over the opening so I could easily close it again without climbing in. She, of course, knew that I could not lock my left elbow to support my weight, because I had fallen off my bicycle and had swelling in that elbow.

You can see how I interpret Harrari as a faithful labrador; but she is not! A well-meaning creature would, like a dog, try to help its pack members. ‘I will let some air out, or in, for you!’. (Opening windows for Harrari is tricky too).

We, as arrogant creatures, that think we know best and better then mere cats and dogs, over-estimate our intelligence. Hararri was laughing at my naivety and sheer stupidness for not recognising that she was still there, with me, and had helped me while I was asleep. Similarly, I thought it was sweet that my cat of long ago, once brought in about a dozen live frogs from my neighbours pond; probably because, with raised eyebrows at the smells from my cooked food, he also thought I might like to eat the poisonous frogs. Maybe, and I prefer to think this, my cat had a wicked sense of humour; deliciously cruel but ultimately harmless. You wouldn’t want to be at the focus of its hunting and killing prowess though. I compare Harrari to a cat because they are both stealthy killers but choose not to attack.

A thought just struck me; I still don’t know what Harrari eats. I have just remembered it is for Harrari that I left out some food, in Tupperware containers, outside of my tent for the black human-like silhouette I saw in the woods I was living in. It was, of course, Harrari.

Fever had shifted my perception towards the spirit world where Harrari and her alien species are visible. Back then, with no fridge in my tent, I often accidentally poisoned myself. I couldn’t see any spirits, because they are even further away on the spectrum, but there, among the scintillating flashes of light in every direction, was a very, very sensuous movement, almost like a snake.

It is movement that attracts a predator’s eyes; and we humans are definitely predators, our forward facing, binocular eyes telegraph this to all animals. Because this is true, like all the advice we are given if we feel threatened by a predator, the black silhouette stopped moving. I could feel it looking at me, as I simultaneously felt myself half in and half out of the both the physical world and the spirit world. I now know I had crudely torn the veil between the worlds. Harrari was not expecting me to notice her, and alarmed, because humans can be exceedingly dangerous with stuff we do not understand, she ran away.

So scared was she, that on this one occasion, she broke some long ago fallen dry branches which cracked underfoot as she fled, panicked by my ability to see her. In seeing her, she possibly felt that perhaps humans have developed that ability across the world. Her safety as she saw it, was in a moment of, as it turns out, false realisation, swept from her. I let her go; I didn’t follow, she had a head start of probably forty metres, and she is a very fast and fit runner.

That evening I left some food out for her. Of course, she didn’t eat any; the effort to open the Tupperware containers probably outstripped the energy she might get from my strange food. There was however, the feathers of a pigeon nearby. That could have been a mink that ate that though. If it was, it would also explain where the cock pheasant that woke me every morning by shaking his wings went. I don’t know who ate it, or if it just ran away.

Where do 'Spirit Fish' come from?

Harrari later came back and changed the tunes in my head for me, you know those annoying ear-worms of music. Being half of this world but having an invisible influence in another is not something I have ever been able to fully understand, but this was where I currently found myself. Those dreams that seem so real when we wake but fade so quickly are like holding a spirit fish. Real fish are slippery and wriggle a lot; who wouldn’t wriggle when they find themselves suddenly outside of their safe environment where they can breathe. Spirit fish are slippery, wriggle and become invisible. Even if you haven’t lost it, you think you have. ‘Tricky little buggers!’

I am inclined to think that dreams are made of ‘spirit fish’ substance having a laugh and fooling around, then when we can see them from the perspective of our physical world they ‘swim’ away. Or if that metaphor doesn't work for you, try dicing onions with a blunt knife - good luck with that!

If you have ever woken from a dream that you are holding something and are surprised that you are not when you wake, you might, if you were really observant, notice that the objects you were trying to pick up, just before you wake became progressively more intangible. Clearing a picnic table of dishes and things is normal while dreaming, but as the real world and dream world begin to collide, our hands glide through the cake, but we can still lift the paper plate; then not the paper plate but only the napkin with an address scribbled on it is fine. Until eventually, we wake and all the things you have tried to salvage from the dream are not, after all, at the bottom of your bed with you. How frustrating and disappointing. That is what it is like spending most of your time being at the liminal place where worlds collide. I could show you, but I just can’t carry the ‘spirit fish’ across.

There is an invisible bridge right in front of you. Come on over!

Harrari and I, for a time, at my behest really, have tried to create a bridge between the physical world, what most people call the ‘real’ world; the spirit world; and the dream world. We, Hararri and I, know that a lucid being can have an effect in any of these places. Hararri, being an alien, is not of this world and has evolved to survive on her own world. It isn’t her fault that her brothers left her behind on earth after their intelligence-gathering trip here abruptly finished. She has had to adapt to our world from just a very young and scared lone alien, to a fully independent young ‘adult’ alien. I suppose I am lucky, that she sort of grew up here without the constraining and rigid thinking of her alien species to shape her into hating humans for their rigid stupidity. She thinks we are funny.

Alcoholics find it incredibly, hugely, almost impossible to wean themselves off alcohol when they monitor and control their own doses and have lots of money and a twenty-four hour service station within a ten minute walk. They just have to go ‘cold-turkey’ and clucking, listen to their brains shrinking and playing tunes to itself while it tries, like any highly functioning creature, to make sense of all the stimuli it is absorbing.

Making sense of twisting wires

When I was sixteen, I had a head-cold with a fever that would not let me sleep, just like an alcoholic going cold-turkey. Somehow, I had the ‘cure’ which I suppose also meant that I controlled the doses, and I had a twenty-four hour service station right there in my head. All I had to do was ‘go’ there. In a weird nightmare I had to connect thousands of wires together without a circuit diagram. Worse still, all these thousands of wires were either blue, yellow, or red, exactly the same hue and tint; identical except for three colours. I would then have to run a current through all the connected wires every now and again to see if any connections were correct. Worse still, they all wriggled around and kept changing place so if a connection was false and I disconnected it, and I tried to remember which wires they were, they moved.

Some time passed, maybe hours. Then, finally, I had it, all the wires were correctly connected. I fell into a deep sleep and the next morning I was so greatly improved that I got up. By the afternoon It was as though I had not been ill. I was just a little weak from not eating for a few days. Harrari thinks this is remarkable, and she tells me that is why she still stays with me. I suspect her scientific family background makes me interesting to her. But she is not a scientist. She was left behind long before she could adequately train.

The capital of Zimbabwe? No

Car tyres going over joints in a nearby road, make a repetitive sound for each car, and the cold-turkey brain (a hang-over for most of us); or one that is in liminal space; or is in an otherwise feverish state, eventually decides the repetitive noise is garbled speech that is really hard to decipher. But, as soon as it settles on something, that is all you can hear. Many of us have seen a comedian on the telly, showing us words that sound like something more humourous than the true words 0f songs; and then, that is all we can hear when we hear the song again.

Harrari got her name when I asked her for it, when she one day came to visit me. She stayed outside my tent. Neither of us wanted her inside. Because the cars nearby going over the same bumps made a ‘Ha raa ree’ noise, that was louder than her weird-sounding real name spoken with her super-soft voice, we settled on that. I don’t suppose all telepathic voices are soft, but certainly, hers was whenever she soothed my thoughts with just a few words. Of course, for weeks, she had passed right by my tent, unnoticed. One day, I was really suffering with ear-worms. If you can imagine two bars of a very simple melody repeated over and over and over again, you understand.

           ‘You had enough? She said, ‘I will change the tune for you. Hows that?’ Suddenly, there was no ear-worm, just a soothing melody.

Other times, sleep was also difficult, and sometimes Harrari would crouch outside my tent and reaching through the fabric telepathically brush my head with her hand. Tent fabric, is not too difficult for her thoughts to pass through. Magic sleep came in moments; like switching off a light. This is one thing that really frightens me about her; she can make humans sleep with a switch.

Truth, marry, or death

One time she asked if I wanted to marry her so all my problems would be eternally taken from me, and when her alien friends came back for her (in a few weeks), I could go with them, but I had to be completely free from wrong-doing for the few weeks before her family arrived. She, she told me could never go with them because she would have to be re-programmed somehow – she never explained how. I wasn’t sure what this really meant, and like I said, Harrari can be exceedingly dangerous if she puts her mind to it. I think, she is ruthless, though not savage. Maybe wild, describes her.

Alea Jacta Est and Post factum nullum consilium

I felt that this might mean dying. In fact she had said, that I would afterwards be fully in the spirit world. I didn’t want to upset her and then be savagely killed by her in the night; so I stole food from a homeless man the night before it was all going to happen. The next morning, my mobile phone, still with a charged battery, had, had all its stored numbers deleted. Harrari later told me that at the last minute, she had directed me to steal the same food I had given to the homeless man, from an undercover intelligence operative watching a kebab shop, posing as the homeless person. She, of course, knew I didn’t want to die; it was; at the time, very close, though. Thinking about it, she could have, and can, kill me any time she wants to.

She didn’t quite cause me to think that she made me buy food for the homeless man, when I actually needed food myself. Nor did she tell me that she had caused the homeless man to gently place the food away from him. We are never allowed to be sure that there is some other explanation for how things came about.

             ‘If there is a script for the future or a log of the past, all of you would instantaneously cease to exist.’ she once explained.

Of course, an undercover intelligence operative has back-up to remove trip hazards that are unintentionally left in their way.

Nonetheless, the intent to steal from a defenseless person was enacted, and far superseded any charitable act I had added to my spiritual record. Harrari told me I had been examined in the spirit world, my mobile phone numbers were deleted so I could not accidentally phone someone with my physical body rolling over in sleep, and I was rejected because my guilt led them to my insidious behaviour.

            ‘Once the order for examination is made, it cannot be cancelled’, she whispered to me.

            'Am I dead?'

Sometimes, when I open one of the firedoors in my home, Harrari crouching really low, still invisible and hoping I won’t notice, slips past my legs, in one direction or the other, I can’t tell. I think, from memory, she is actually about one metre sixty tall.

Hakim, whom I have mentioned in a previous blog, is the spirit-avatar-manifestation I conjured, when I was sixteen, to protect me from my violent brother when he was my guardian. Hakim, is still not friends with Harrari, but at least they don’t fight, or maybe Hakim is always running away from the feline Harrari, with her mischievous humour and suppressed deadliness.

She scares me a lot.

Blog address for all the posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

[ 18 minute read ]

This is a framework of a story I came up with which I used to explain three types of competition in economics. It begins with a family of weavers of fine wool carpets, who own their own sheep, in the 14th century Indus Valley, India. I had to learn about sheep to help me understand markets! Please help yourself to the ideas and the explanations.

The actual interaction between the characters, you will have to imagine for yourself.

Three types of competition: pure, imperfect, and monopoly.

If there were once four siblings who were all taught by their parents how to make fine carpets in the Indus valley, in 14^th century India, the same way, to the same design, and with the same dyed wool from their own sheep, and sold these carpets in the market place in the village square alongside their father and mother at such a low price that no-one else could make a profit selling carpets in the village, that family would have a monopoly selling carpets in that village. 

If, in the region in which their village lay, there were sixteen other carpet makers who were also sheep owners and wool spinners, and they produced carpets to designs that very closely resembled the designs of the two parents and their four offspring, and sold their carpets at a very close price to each other, and no-one else in the region could match their prices there would be perfect competition. Perfect or pure competition is when a firm producing near identical goods to its competitors, has some control over its prices. Since all these producers or families have vertically integrated businesses the barrier to entry into their market is high to carpet makers who own no sheep and cannot process wool. These new carpet markets wanting to enter the market would need to buy wool either locally or from further afield, and the original producers could sell their carpets at below the production costs, including the cost of wool, that new entrants to the market would necessarily have to pay. Most importantly here, is we must realise that no-one is getting rich in this regional community; they are only taking the opportunity to make sufficient money to feed the family members and care for their sheep (sustenance farming and production).

Two marriages and worrying times

If two daughters of one of the sixteen competitors married into our first described family there would be extra mouths to feed there, notwithstanding that a dowry would go along with the brides because they were considered to be a drain on resources in ancient civilisations, as in, take my hungry, weak and useless daughters away. This dowry could well be a bunch of sheep going along with each bride. What we have now is a larger flock of sheep owned by our first family AND two extra very capable shepherdesses with sticks, who are also wool carders, spinners, dyers, and weavers. Three outcomes can occur, 

a) the quantity of extra sheep provides only sufficient revenue to continue to live hand-to-mouth for a household of, now eight people;

b) each of these newly married brothers go off with their brides and their new sheep and produce carpets to the same design elsewhere in the region; or 

c) these two brothers and their wives go off, taking their sheep with them, and make carpets to a new design elsewhere in the region.

Solutions, but it won't be easy

a) despite there being a larger quantity of carpets available for sale by one whole larger family it only fills the gap left by the lessened production of the families from whence the brides came; and these families have less sheep to produce wool. There is no change to the market in terms of supply or demand, no riches made and no competitive edge is manifested. Nonetheless, this family of eight would have a larger share of the carpet market in their village.

b) the supply of carpets in the village is reduced as a result that our first family has lost key workers when the brothers depart, yet the quantity of raw material, being the original remaining sheep, stays the same (the same number as there were before the two brothers left, taking their hungry mouths with them – and their wives). Now, there is a surplus of sheep and not enough people to process their wool, or there is a surplus of wool and not enough people to process it into carpets. In any case, either the sheep are sold or the wool is sold. In the first case, there is an opportunity for a new entrant to the market to set up a virtually integrated business by purchasing sheep; or in the latter, a business buying wool to make carpets to a new and exciting design that competes in the same market square in the village as the plain and similar designs already sold there. Nothing has really changed by the entrance of a new design until the old carpet producers recognise that the demand for the new design is undermining the demand for their plain designs. At this time, some of the existing carpet makers may change their designs to represent their family history. This is product differentiation. Now, in the market square there are many different and exciting designs and the beginning of brand awareness and brand loyalty (initially through family connections with one or other family of carpets makers). This is monopolistic competition. Monopolistic because the designs represent individual families and their ancestors and no-one else will ever make the same designs; doing so would disparage their own family and ancestors. Yet there is still competition in the market sector.

c) the two brothers, their wives, with their dowry sheep, form a collective and farm the same area. They have to because they cannot care for the sheep, shear the sheep (actually primitive sheep had wool that could just be pulled off (by ‘rooing’), wash, card, spin, and weave the wool into carpets, and sell the carpets in their newly found village market square when they are existing only as two pairs of people. Such is the lack of labour, this band of carpet producers, recognising that a good design sells well in another market, weave carpets to a design that has vivid colours that deeply contrast, but due to time constraints and lack of labour settle on designs apropos to nothing; one that any carpet maker could easily copy or use as a design idea (deeply contrasting colours). When other carpet makers produce similar carpets to the brothers and their wives, there is perfect competition, where a large number of small firms supply an identical product. In this example, identical means vivid contrasting colours apropos to nothing in wool carpets.

Sibling Rivalry Aside

As yet, there is nothing to propel a producer into having an advantage; there are no real constraints in design, no recognised regulations, and no changes in efficiency or production costs.

However, when the two brother’s parents die, their two unmarried brothers who were living with their parents have, now surplus, sheep and wool that could be sold as carpets but would provide more than enough money for two mouths, if they could only process it and have the time to sell it. They could sell the sheep, sell the wool, or form a company with their married brothers and their wives to make only the new and exciting carpet designs, which sell really well but so far lack brand awareness and brand loyalty.

So far no change, you think, this is simply going back to six mouths to feed (four brothers and two wives instead of two parents and four brothers). Yet the dowry has swelled the flock in two distinct ways; by direct addition; and by husbandry.

Numbers in this example are kept to a value that is easily understood. Ten ewes and one ram will typically produce ten lambs per year, which can be sheared / (rooed) to keep them cool in hot weather. When the lambs are two thirds of their adult size/weight they can be tupped or mated. This could be when they are one year old to give birth when they are eighteen months old, but more likely on poor soil and with primitive sheep, tupped when they are two years old and birthing at two and a half. But let’s say there are lambs every year. (for ease of counting and multiplication)

Yet, by the addition of four more ewes as two dowries, two more female and two more male lambs could be born.

Without eating any, and with impressive shepherding and predator deterrents, and no other losses, the original flock of eleven in the year 1300, (ten ewes and one ram), with each ewe producing one lamb a year, could in six years time (1306 AD) be a flock of:

30 new ewes from the original ten ewes (and 30 male) Total 60 lambs were born

Born in 1301 AD and tupped in 1303 AD, five ewes being the first home generation would produce in 1304 – 1306 AD perhaps two or three female lambs in each year (total 7 of each sex over three years)

Born in 1305 AD to the first home generation two or three ewes in 1305 would be tupped and produce one or two lambs in 1306 AD

- making a total of 35 new ewes ready for tupping in 1306 AD and thirty nine male lambs that have been for the cooking pot over six years

plus the ten original ewes equals 45 ewes ready for tupping in 1306 AD

With four extra ewes (dowries) there is the immediate addition of four ?fleeces and then:

2 new female lambs from the dowry ewes (and 2 male) every year for six years (total of 12 lambs of each sex)

1 new female lamb born each year in 1303 AD to 1306 AD from the first dowry ewe’s offspring every year (total of 4 lambs of each sex over three years)

The flock size is now 69, including the original 11 and 4 dowry ewes. Unfortunately, a ram cannot service this many in a short period and it is preferable to have lambs born in safe seasonal weather so there needs to be three rams for this flock size (so a bit less to eat for the owners then) which makes the whole flock size 72 sheep, twenty one of these ewes are four dowry ewes and their seventeen descendants.

In reality, ewes about to give birth experience a reduction in immunity to internal parasites and die or give birth to stillborns. Increasing the size of a flock will not change the incidence of this type of death. However, increasing the size of a flock will reduce the percentage of losses to predators, yet, will require greater shepherding with big sticks. So, here, there is a human resource problem that could inhibit flock size. On top of that is the ground and area on which a flock feeds which may support a specific flock size but cannot also provide the extra nutrition that ewes need in the final month of gestation (Approximately 70 percent of fetal growth occurs during the last month of pregnancy). So, nutrition is a contributing factor in inhibiting flock size.

Time to say goodbye

The four brothers and the two wives cannot hope to increase their market share if they all live in the same village with the same pasture. So, their market share remains the same in their respective villages. However, we have a workforce of six young persons and a large area of grazing, separated into two, which was not available in the same quantity or quality as when there was two parents and four brothers. Furthermore, there are more sheep to breed from (dowry) and a larger quantity of lambs born per year on a wider pasture to the same number of people with hungry mouths; these mouths and stomachs are now better satiated by eating the respectively larger quantity of male lambs. Hence, there is a surplus of raw material (sheep as ewes) that will eventually be constrained by land and nutrition resources.

The 'Six'

We might look at this as the four brothers and two wives (‘The Six’) having a reduction of average costs; but since this is a vertically integrated business we are primarily considering the reduction in opportunity cost until we realise that already the six people are fully occupied in husbandry and wool processing, so there is no reduction of human interaction or no spare time. Or, we could consider an economy of scale; but there would now need to be employees to add to the already overwhelmed labour resource. Luckily for ‘The Six’, because no-one could enter the same perfect market as they and their competitors, there are available workers in both villages who could be paid to process wool, or the surplus wool can be sold off cheap to them to process for themselves. This is the stage at which sustenance farming changes into specialised jobs within an industry. The brothers may fight the sheep predators, grab handfuls of wool (rooing), and weave and sell carpets while the wives and workers process the wool and also weave carpets. As long as the production costs do not rise too significantly the rate at which ‘The Six’ can produce funky carpets will increase. This is an example of an economy of scale because the unit cost is reduced, but only in terms of opportunity cost. However, specialised focus on a single task brings about faster production and superior quality products as aptitude for a task is better utilised and experience grows more rapidly. However, there is an attendant cost of wages for extra workers in this example. Faster processing from developed skill-sets may cover the wage costs and result in higher carpet production rates, thereby reducing overall costs.

Where there is a competitive advantage, such as an economy of scale, a perfect market is destroyed and an imperfect market takes its place. An economy of scale that cannot be matched is a barrier to entry in the market.

In addition to declining costs, other barriers leading to imperfect competition are legal restrictions, (patents or government regulation), high entry costs, advertising, and product differentiation.

In this whole example, towards the beginning, we have a loyal customer base buying traditionally crafted carpets from separate families who design and make carpets specific to their family ancestors, with each family making a different design. This means that the producers could set their own price as their carpet is somewhat more or less desirable to a buyer than a competitor’s as the buyer’s loyalty wins out. A new design with a strong contrast of colours entered the market as a free-to-purchase item with no guilt attached to the buyer. Then ‘The Six’ produced the funky carpets in high volume in two villages. Because the same funky designs are available in two villages advertising at no financial cost is established. A buyer can buy a carpet made by ‘The Six’ closer to their home and more people, as visitors, will see those carpets, especially when the carpets are taken out of the home to be beaten outside. 

Of course, in 14^th century India not many people travelled beyond the next village. However, in a city, just like the prevalence of sheep in remote areas, the more incidences of something the greater the multiplication of reproduction. So, more incidences of funky carpets creates a wider reproduction of wondrous perception and experience in passers-by or home visitors.

Blog address for all the posts: https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/view.php?u=zw219551

A while ago, I was asked how I would portray a feeling of there being something else; something more than just being born, living for a while, and then dying; a life that is no better than the lives of intellectual animals.

Sixth Sense

Recently, I was fortunate to be party to an hour long telephone conversation, with someone I have great respect for. We discussed mental health; work environments; comprehension; and channels of communication. In a wonderful previous conversation, we had hovered around the notion of prescience and sixth sense, and I was keen to revisit this topic. I commented that her voice was different this time. Those of you who understand that when our primary sense (sight) is absent there is an idea that our other senses compensate, might also know that if we lose just a tiny part of our outer ear we find the location of a sound to be difficult. Eventually, if the new shape of the outer ear is permanent, we compensate sufficiently well to be almost entirely sure which direction a sound comes from. Our sense of hearing really is very sensitive and very special.

I explained that I had poor and uncorrected vision for decades and as a result listen for nuances in voices probably more than most people. We realised quite soon that we, as humans, pick up on other people’s emotions quite quickly. I suggested that in the absence of face-to-face meetings we are not distracted by body-language, which many psychologists regard as a figurative ‘shout’ of veracity. You can say yes and shake your head at the same time, and almost everyone perceives you ‘saying’, No.

I suggested that in the absence of hearing we have to use abilities of perception that we rarely pay attention to. In effect, we move towards a liminal position of understanding;  

        ‘Right on the threshold of physical and spiritual being’, I said.

        ‘Sixth sense’, she replied.

        ‘Rather like our spirits holding up a banner behind us that says something like, ‘Be gentle, I am hurting.’

I don’t read the Bible much any more, but I do recall that there are a few verses that, for me, speak of a realisation that the writer of those verses believes that he has discovered something beyond himself. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth.

From, 1 CORINTHIANS 13 v. 11 – 12 (NIV)

Available online at: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=NIV

¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

Love is patient

This is from the well-known piece on love, which is highly recommended to all. From the same source of 1 Corinthians 13:

³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

In answer to the question I was asked many years ago, on there being something else, I wrote:

Spirits with banners

- start -

This conversation was beginning to irritate me.

       ‘I rather think that I may inadvertently be bordering on trying to persuade you to change your views on morality and utilitarianism and nudging you towards an acceptance of a truth. Not unlike taking the red or blue pill in The Matrix. But whose truth?’, I pressed.

Mark’s face didn’t change from his usual mask of implacability, but he did look down for a while, then left and right at the fallen and dismembered bodies we had found. He paused for a while, his mouth open; long enough for one of the local flies to land on his lower lip. His sharp in-breath sucked it in. He rolled it with his tongue and spat, though somewhat languidly.

       ‘I also feel that there is no doubt that something or someone is, and has been, whispering so loudly and for so long that the constant susurration has become part of our background noise.’

       ‘Yet’, I offered, ‘if you found yourself suddenly on a planet on which all the people are born blind and only you could see, would you tell them about birds? The blind people might hear wing-beats as the birds fly away before the birds are touched by the people; so those people can never know the bird’s shape or how they move, because they cannot catch one, aside of accidentally, and it may take them millennia to understand the purpose of birds.'

Mark pondered my words. I went on.

        'I think you would not!' If they know about birds, they would fear their own shadows when someone might later tear away another veil that is a bar to comprehension. Being blind, all they can know of shadows is a cooler temperature where they lie.

I saw Mark had grasped my meaning. He slowly nodded as he finished my words for me.

        'Their simplest reasoning would have them living uncomplicated lives with thoughts of how, to perhaps, till the land and work together for their mutual survival. Who cares if an observer is a flock of birds, and the designers are shadows on a planet with a simple population?’

One or two of the spirits standing by their still-living charges stared at us. Their banners flickered 'Help' and nonsense; the letters changing like old analogue airport departure notices when an event has changed the timetable, except their letters were more like crude brushstrokes.  When the letters eventually faded to nothing they gave a final glance at the bodies and left to form a group where they fell into conversation. A few looked, wistfully, over their shoulders at us. I recognised one of them.

- end -

The point in the above written piece is that both the characters are aware of something else, and even the gore and violence of death is not sufficient to be considered to be greater in impact than that inherent feeling we have of there being something else we just cannot quite see or touch. The point is that they are ignoring their primary senses and are focusing only on thinking and communicating ideas.

Marketing and beavers

Producers are people, businesses and organisations that make things. In a supply chain these things are called goods. However, it is possible to produce a result without there being anything tangible such as by providing a service, which could even avoid a reciprocal service, monetary remuneration, or other recompense. Hence it is possible to produce an idea, concept, hypothesis or theory. It is possible to produce a flood that damages an area or property. These ideas and calamities are causes of an effect that are the kernels of demand in ‘the wild’.

Ideas and concepts can be innovations or disruptions. Beavers and pranking children can devastate lowlands by diverting or damming streams. Alternatively, beavers create good habitats for wildlife and are exceptionally good at maintaining a status quo once they have flooded an area. Maybe this tangent is a little obscure in its efficacy to be considered to be part of a supply chain but only if we consider the effect beavers solely have on human lives. The beaver collects wood after working as lumberjacks for a while. As a consequence of building a dam it supplies water to an area that previously had only rainfall. Flora and fauna that like wetlands come to the area, some birds arrive as tourists who regard the area as a second home until it gets too cold for them. These plants and animals leave detritus and excrement which adds to the desirability for other plants to settle there and consequently the animal and plant diversity rises. Each one of these plants and animals are stakeholders in the supply chain as producers in a wide and versatile environment.

Humans are much more direct in their nature and harvest materials to produce goods not only for their hungry digestive systems but also for their material enjoyment, comfort and ease. Worse still, they do this for profit. Nonetheless, we must allow this because if businesses and organisations make no profit then taxes collected by governments would have to be on revenue, which would likely put charities out of business.

Producers make tangible goods and conduct intangible services such as washing clean cars. (We can see them do it and sometimes see an improvement).

If we consider the balance of nature that is steadily built over time we can understand how any person can be a major disruptor; it only requires a careful presentation of a setting, circumstance or situation and its fallibility in the face of a determined person to show how there is a significant contrast between something that is valued by many and something else that is valued by a few, or even a single person.

Social Learning

Proposed by Albert Bandura in 1977, he said humans can delay gratification and dispense their own punishments and rewards. We can reflect on our own actions and change future behaviour. This led to the idea that humans learn not from how they respond to situations, but also from how other humans respond to situations. Bandura called this ‘modelling’. In social learning we learn by observing other’s behaviour.

For adolescents, role models include parents, athletes, and entertainers, but parents are the most influential (Martin and Bush, 2004). Parents socialise their children into purchasing and consuming the same brands that they buy, actively teaching them consumer skills – materialistic values and consumption attitudes in their teenage years. Interaction with peers also makes adolescents more aware of different offerings (Moschis and Churchill, 1978). Research indicates that those who read reviews are twice as likely to select a product compared with those who do not (Senecal and Nantal, 2004).

Some citing (above) can no longer be referenced to the original source I chose, some years ago; I didn't know how to properly cite and reference sources when I researched for the above piece. I think anyone can cut and paste the names and dates (above) and get an online source that signifies that the named people did research that I sourced and allude to here.

References

Martin and Bush, (2004), Sports Celebrity Influence on the behavioural intentions of Generation Y,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4733686_Sports_Celebrity_Influence_on_the_Behavioral_Intentions_of_Generation_Y

Reference for Albert Bandura 1977

McLeod, Saul, 'Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory', Simply Psychology, https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html