Miljenko's Blog

A 21km stretch of road in Mexico between Punta Mita and Puerto Vallarta airport has a total of 13 very nice, big Pemex gas stations. What is noticeable is not only their sheer number but that they are all Pemex. The state of Mexico is via Pemex managing its unemployment rate and providing employment for a lot of folks who spend most of the day doing nothing at all because none of these stations are very busy. No matter how non-sensical this is, I will bet any amount of money that there is some PowerPoint slide somewhere in Mexico that shows a graph of how with more gas stations you will sell more gasoline. This is a perfect example of why "state capitalism" does not work on that most fundamental of levels - return on capital. The country's collective savings are being spent to build infrastructure that is not needed and therefore produces very low return on investment because motivations of the owner - the State - are quite a bit more complex than the motivations ...

I don't quite understand why people seem to be so into Orcas and how those animals are in some way noble, special and in some way "spiritual". Based on what? If it were one fish one vote, Orcas would have been voted out of existence in the animal kingdom long ago (I know, I know - there is no voting in a "kingdom"...) They terrorize all the other species around them eating massive numbers of them daily from salmon to seals to anything else they can get their killer jaws into. And yet, people worship them almost and are all about his special they are because they whistle in some way we can actually record with our audio equipment. What about the sounds seals make when being devoured by Orcas? Orcas are superpower of animals, Hitlers of the sea so to speak. Please stop talking about them as something great and praiseworthy!