US Aid to Africa

Policy in Africa. It's complicated, and so I'm going to try a quick cut at it. Let's start with some theory of political power. In order for a leader to gain and keep political power, she must assemble a winning coalition. This is a group of people who, together, have enough power to exclude rival coalitions. What does it take to form a winning coalition? How many people are needed to form a winning coalition? That depends on the political and social institutions in the society. For simplicity, consider democracy, vs dictatorship. In a true democracy, a winning coalition is formed by voters who get behind a leader. Depending on the specific rules (rules are one kind of institution) a winning coalition might need to be more than 50% of voters, or it just might need to be more voters than the next rival. In order to form a dictatorial winning coalition, the leader must attract a group of elites who can control armed forces and trade -- again, enough to be able to defeat rival coalitions.

Once a leader has formed a winning coalition and taken control of the commanding heights, then she must concern herself with maintaining the power she has won. Essentially, she must maintain her coalition, and prevent rival coalitions from gaining enough power to unseat her. Under democratic political institutions this means enacting policies that voters desire. Under dictatorial political institutions this means dispensing patronage to the group of elites who form the winning coalition. 

So right there, you can see already that political institutions matter, because those institutions will profoundly affect what kind of policy will be enacted by a successful leader. Even a good-hearted leader who rules under dictatorial political institutions must run a corrupt regime (using taxes to buy the continued support of coalition members), or face ouster as her coalition disintegrates with members fleeing to rival coalitions that promise more generous patronage. Conversely, even an evil-hearted and venal leader must embark on broad-based social welfare spending in order to maintain the support of large numbers of voters.

Now, assuming that you more or less accept the arguments I've made so far, consider the goals and impacts of western foreign aid in Africa. 

First the goals. From the point of view of the leader, the goal of ANY policy is the maintenance of political power. (There are exceptions, but I'm trying to be brief, so accept the simplification.) So, why should, for example, the American Congress choose to send foreign aid to nations in sub-Saharan Africa? How does giving away my money to aid people in Africa make me want to vote for you? Maybe because I'm altruistic. But even if I am, I don't need my Congress person sending my tax dollars to Africa for me. I can donate directly myself. So what's the real reason? The reason is that foreign aid is used to get African leaders to enact policies that are favorable to Americans. I'll vote for you because you made things better for me, and one of the ways you did that was by bribing foreign leaders so that they would, for example, open up trade with the U.S., or allow us to fly military planes over their country. 

Now, you have to remember that many sub-Saharan nations have dictatorial political institutions. That's important, because it tells us what strategies the leaders of those nations are using to maintain power. They are paying off the group of powerful elites who are their winning coalition. Foreign aid that enters the country doesn't just get dumped out on the street for the people to come pick up. It has to be distributed by someone, and it's usually distributed by agents of the government. So, some of the aid gets skimmed off to directly pay the members of the winning coalition. Some goes into the war chest of the leader. Some gets spent on military and police, in order to further strengthen the leader's power. And some does actually get distributed to the people -- but strategically in order to maintain the power of the winning coalition and to weaken rival coalitions.

Long story short, our government uses foreign aid to buy favorable policies from foreign nations. And those favors have to be bought because they are unpopular policies among the people in the nation where they will be enacted. The leaders of these foreign nations are willing to enact unpopular policies because they need the money to prop up their winning coalition. 

So, it should be fairly obvious why over the past 60 years foreign aid has failed to produce economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. That aid has gone toward propping up dictatorial and kleptocratic regimes, not toward building a brighter future for average Africans. 

An Appeal

Maragret Lavinia Anderson.

Can you make your lectures available again? Free is nice, but I'll pay for them if I have to.

And yes, I am reading Practicing Democracy.

Right and wrong

The following is from an email exchange between Robert and I regarding this article:

She's right to promote individual identity over stereotypes (whether or not the stereotypes apply statistically - individuals deserve to be treated as such). 

Her primary failure is in the assumption that women are not or have not been drivers of the culture to the same extent that men have. She assumes that men have been giving it to women and women have been taking it since...well forever. The truth is that women are powerful shapers of culture, much more so than the feminist movement has ever acknowledged. Only in severely dysfunctional societies (and I mean societies that quickly disintegrate because they are genuinely not functional) have women altogether been subjugated in the way that the feminist movement has described. In all societies that function, and persist, women inevitably wield powerful influence. And they do so for the obvious reasons that they compose half the population and have a monopoly on certain highly prized abilities - that is, they have something valuable that the other half of the population wants badly.

I'm not an expert, but I think that you will find that even in cultures that are outwardly repressive of women it won't take more than an up close glance to see how women are exercising influence throughout the society.

The other side to the coin is that women are clever about their own interests. Clever enough to fool men and even to fool Gloria Steinem. Consequently, a great many repressive practices against women are actually enforced BY women. Look at genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa. I hear that this practice is perpetuated by mothers and grandmothers, not by men at all. Why is this the case? Well, it's obvious really. And it's the same for practices that are aimed at repressing men and are enforced by men (e.g. rules about when a man is allowed to marry). These practices safeguard the interests of those who enforce them. So, it's not MEN repressing WOMEN. Instead it's one group of people (say, matriarchs) repressing another, competing group (say, young women who are approaching sexual maturity).

So, to sum up: Gloria Steinem should take her own advice about lumping people into static groups. There are many kinds of men and many kinds of women in the world. They should be protected as individuals, with individual protections that don't vary according to what groups we might wish to lump them into. From that perspective feminism IS (or ought to be) dead, because it doesn't - can't - give protection to individuals when it assumes that men repress and women submit.

More on Saving and Investment

This article is a much better exposition of some of the ideas I was trying to get at in my post titled Bad Investment.

Here's a related post by Eric Falkenstein that discusses how people and businesses behave when their performance on fundamental measures is not well correlated to their earnings.

Technology

From the point of view of society, technology is the reason for doing science.

Bad Investment

I kind of understand the reasons behind the dot-com bubble. The emergence of new, paradigm-shifting technology suggested that untold fortunes might be made by the fearless who got in on the ground floor. The real estate bubble is more mysterious.

Who really thought that housing prices were accurately reflecting a balance between the number of available units (supply) and the ability of consumers to pay (demand), circa January 2006? Or even a year earlier, for that matter. Even casual attention to the loan-making process during this time would suggest a problem with the direction of the investments that were being made. Hindsight is 20/20, but at the time I did decline to take on such a loan myself because it just all seemed so ridiculous (though I should have taken it, had I been a more rational actor). 

I'm clearly no economist, but I think that the bubbles during the last halves of the last two decades must have a common cause. In both cases enormous investment was made on a basis of careless speculation bordering on willful self-injury. Why?

Some people talk about interest rates being artificially low and blame Greenspan and Bernanke. I'm no expert on that one, but I do wonder whether interest rates were low only because of the actions of the Fed. My suspicion is that low interest rates alone didn't cause all that bad investment, but that both the low interest rates and the bad investment were caused by a third factor.

I'm not quite sure how to phrase it, but doesn't it seem like there was an awful lot of capital that needed someplace to go during both of these booms? I've heard the phrase global savings glut bandied about, but I'm not sure exactly how to evaluate that. One thing seems sure: typical due diligence prior to investing was not being practiced in 1996 or in 2006. Is it simply that there were not enough quality investment opportunities available during these periods? Too much money chasing too few opportunities? That story seems to fit the facts, but I can't quite make sense of it.

Under what circumstance is there too much money ready to be invested? It's not the kind of thing I've heard debated, but I can imagine a world where saving is happening at a higher rate than is consumption. In that world, each saved dollar 'wishes' to be put to use producing, but most production is giving slim returns because demand is weak (e.g. most needs are already satisfied, so there's not a strong incentive to buy more). That doesn't sound like the USA we know and love, and whose savings rate has been negative in very recent memory. But it might be a description of the world when evaluated on net. 

Don't look at me like I have data to support that argument, because I don't. But imagine how a world like the one I've described might behave. Because many, many people are choosing to postpone spending until a later date, there are many dollars available for investment. But they can't be profitably put to work building factories to make gadgets to sell to people, because people are saving instead of buying gadgets. So investment dollars are available cheap, chasing every opportunity to earn some kind of return. Consequently, interest rates fall (with or without Bernanke's say so). In such an environment risky investments that pay well look much more attractive than they usually do because investors are desperate. Investment schemes based on the promise of unproven new technology or the faulty hope of perennially rising home values almost make sense. Eventually this kind of bad investment gains a certain amount of respectability and even becomes an indispensable part of every portfolio, because no one wants to be left earning pennies on securities that give Treasury Bill-like returns while the stupid money (other banks, municipalities, and private investors) make relatively good returns and don't seem to be blowing up.

This story is so simple that it must be wrong. Please tell me how it's wrong.

But if we assume that it's right, what policy can fix it? Or should it be fixed?

What if the solution is for governments to tax and spend in order to forcibly lower the savings rate?

What if we believe that taxing and spending is the solution, but it turns out that taxing and spending in the US doesn't fix the problem because we don't save much anyway, and that the real savers are in China and India?

Discouraging Effort and Success

Why do we tax labor? We know that any tax on an activity discourages people from engaging in that activity by reducing the rewards for doing it. So why do we tax hard work, production, and wise investment? Do we really want less of those things?

We need to fund our government (some claim), so we need to tax something. Why not tax behaviors that we want less of? Wouldn't that be killing two birds with one stone?

What would happen if we ditched all income taxes (including capital gains, and corporate income taxes) in favor of taxation levied exclusively against consumption? How would our society change?

I imagine a system wherein my income is not monitored by the government, but the total amount of my consumptive spending is instead. It's easy enough to do - just give up cash and require banks to report the amount of spending. As long as my consumptive spending total for the tax period stays below a legally established minimum, I pay no tax. But when my total rises above that level, I begin to pay tax out of each additional dollar spent. So if I don't spend much beyond the limit, the taxation I experience will be very low.

There are many advantages to such a system. For one, we'd stop punishing smart and hardworking people for being so productive. Every dollar they earn would be theirs to keep. This would include dollars earned for good investments (capital gains). Similarly, we'd stop punishing businesses for competence in producing and selling products and services to people who need them. When a highly successful business has to pay a large amount of income tax while its less successful competitor pays no tax (due to writing off business losses) the playing field is being unfairly tipped to reward poor performance! Not only that, but why tax production at all when production is what gives us the things we need and desire?

Also very important is the fact that taxing consumption, instead of labor, production, and investment, allows individuals to adjust their tax liability to fit their circumstances and desires. If I don't want to pay so much in taxes this year, I can reduce my consumption and pay less. And, I bear no penalty for working extra hard to earn additional money to fund my future, or my children's future.

Under this kind of system saving would be strongly incentivized. For those who wished to avoid taxation, saving and wise investment would be the safest harbor for their money. Everyone would be faced with compelling reasons to defer spending to a later date. Government subsidized retirement could become unnecessary for average Americans.

It's possible to take this idea to a more extreme level and suggest that leisure (time spent not producing or learning) could be taxed when it exceeded a certain minimum amount. This could spur the indolent and chronically unemployed (whether poor or wealthy) to return to productivity, lending their efforts to the improvement of society.

Undoubtedly there are many weaknesses in such a plan, and opportunities for clever gaming of the system. But that is no different from our current system for taxation.

Are there structural problems with this proposition?

Quote of the Day - Me

'Human Dignity' seems like weak wording for the issue of who gets to summer in Provence and who gets to die of dysentery before reaching adulthood.


Look for me in the comments at http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2010/07/on-inequality.html

Quote of the Day - Popper

"Institutions are like fortresses. They must be well designed and manned."

Overly Simplistic

So, how would it change the nature of American government if every law came with a sunset clause, by default? In order to persist beyond, say, three years, they'd have to be re-adopted. I believe that the primary change would be to make governance more experimental and more fluid. Good thing? I don't know. I think most people are annoyed by the very slow pace of positive change in this country, but probably most are happy that the pace of negative change isn't any more rapid.

Would there be other significant unintended consequences? E.g. Regime uncertainty? Could those consequences be mitigated in some way?

Well-Off

Many economists build a case against policies that are aimed at reducing inequality in income and wealth. Their argument rests on two premises:

1. Societies should seek to be maximally productive, because this is the best way to provide for the needs of the members of the society, and
2. There is a trade-off between equality and efficiency - policies that promote equality tend to reduce productivity.

I'm not convinced. 

The first premise invokes Coase: well-defined property rights ensure that any redistribution (of wealth, property, or rights) that will increase societal welfare will happen through the mechanism of the market without the need for the intervention of the government - provided that transaction costs are negligible. 

Transaction costs are rarely negligible, but even if we set that aside there is still a problem. Arnold Kling gives an example that illustrates the problem with Coase. Prof. Kling considers the case of a biker who needs to use a bike path that crosses private land. Here's my retelling: The biker is willing to pay a heavy toll (a large percentage of his total wealth) in order to be allowed to use the path, because he wants to reach the hospital where his father is dying to see his father one last time. If he doesn't use the path then he has to take a much longer route and will not reach the hospital in time. The landowner wants to exclude the biker from using the path because the landowner doesn't like to have strangers on his land. Let's assume essentially zero transaction costs - the biker carries a transponder that automatically computes and pays his toll (with his agreement), according to the rate the landowner has set. The landowner sets the toll at a level that compensates him for the unpleasantness he experiences at having strangers cross his land. 

The problem is that the biker is very poor, and the landowner is very wealthy, and as a result, the price the landowner sets is much higher than what the biker can pay, even though the biker places a very high value on using the path. Under Coase, as long as the biker gets more value out of using the path than the landowner loses when the biker uses the path, then they should be able to agree on a price that compensates the landowner. Why doesn't that work in this case? Clearly, the biker places a very high intrinsic value on using the path - equal to a large percentage of his total wealth!

It doesn't work because the landowner and the biker value money, dollars, differently. Essentially the biker and the landowner are not using a common unit of exchange. You could say that the landowner sets the price in apples, but that the biker is paying in oranges. Or to highlight the difference in value, the landowner is setting the price in coal, but the biker must in diamonds. 

There is a further, even more radical implication to all of this, and that is that when there are differences in wealth among the members of a society, transfers from the wealthy to the poor INCREASE net societal welfare. This is because when a dollar is taken from a wealthy man and given to a poor man, the loss of intrinsic value experienced by the rich man is less than the gain in intrinsic value experienced by the poor man. Prices don't clear the market because prices are not established in units of intrinsic value.

As far as premise number two, I haven't seen any good measures of the magnitude of that trade-off. Is it significant? Is it significant at some degrees of intervention, but not significant at others? If you know where i can see data that describe this relationship I would be very interested.

PostScript: None of this addresses the libertarian arguments against policies that are aimed at reducing inequality. Nor does it address the question of whether governments are needed to effect redistribution (when it is desirable), or whether non-coercive institutions and norms could be a more optimal solution than government.

The Point Of This Blog

"Without new technologies, an economy might grow slowly. But without decent rules, an economy cannot even make use of the technologies that already exist."


-Sebastian Mallaby

Of mind control, paranoia, and secret government...

...I can't even finish the title. Are you still reading this, or have I already driven you away?

Beginning in the 1950s, something strange began in the US. It involved experimentation with powerful chemical compounds that had the ability to alter behavior and brain function. Documentation shows it lasted through the 1960s and may continue to this day.

No, it's not the hippie era, but that's a good guess. I'm referring to MK-ULTRA, the covert CIA program that studied how people responded to LSD and other drugs, presumably to determine how the agency could make use of the chemicals in other secret CIA settings.

The implications are far-reaching, the fodder of conspiracy theorists and mind control authorities (nearly all of whom seem to have their own blog, book, and following).

It's a lot to weed through, but here's what is certain:

• There really was a project named MK-ULTRA, and they really did do experimentation with dangerous drugs on unconsenting subjects.

To be honest, I was prepared to debunk the whole thing as ridiculous conjecture, but it isn't possible. Most of the documentation was destroyed in the 70s, but some it remains, and what it says doesn't bode well for the non-paranoid.

At least some of the research was applied to "unwitting subjects in normal life settings. It was noted earlier that the capabilities of MKULTRA substances to produce disabling or discrediting effects or to increase the effectiveness of interrogation of hostile subjects cannot be established solely through testing on volunteer populations." They freely admit that, regarding this controversial aspect, "No effective cover story appears to be available."

They weren't unaware of what might happen, but in paired sentences say that "possible sickness and attendant economic loss are inherent contingent effects of the testing" AND "that the program is not intended to harm test individuals." I guess hiding under the shelter of "intentions" is a fine justification.

At least one death is attributed to this program, that of Frank Olson, who was a specialist in biological warfare and had LSD slipped into his drink during a meeting with CIA personnel. Reading about that incident begins to sound like a Tom Clancy plot point, and the exact circumstances are difficult to find; so much of it is tangled up with speculation and wild leaps to bleak conclusions. That the CIA gave him LSD without his knowledge is documented. Under what circumstances he then fell from the 13th story window is not as clear.

Many people think that the program never ended. Its scope was certainly larger than the available papers describe.

In March 2010, the effects uncovered in this understated article give a better picture of the involuntary research. This is where I started to think that there are perhaps far more implications than I had considered.

What does it all mean? It's hard to add up all the facts, hard even to separate what we actually know from the ridiculous notions people are quick to invent.

On the other hand, knowing that something like this certainly existed, and that there is much we don't know, doesn't add to my confidence that government programs like this probably don't exist now, and that if they do they're tame little experiments that don't do anyone any harm.

It's nearly impossible to be a naive optimist anymore. But how much paranoia is appropriate?

Great links

I am completely endeared by this Lego street art. Using Lego for minor city repair work is brilliant. Here at Dispatchwork.

This is the scariest jewelry I have ever seen. There must be a better way to dispose of old Barbie dolls. (But, yes, baby limb coatrack is worse. Gah.)

More than you ever wanted to know about the giant sea creature that is leaving people startled and horrified.

Think you have a great gadget idea? Sorry, the Japanese already thought of it.

And, finally, why are we so grossed out by this and not the cheese we normally eat?

Roots of Government

Government is coercive. Concentrated application of force is what government is for.

I imagine two stories for how government arises. The first is government as the embodiment of the social contract, where the contract in question is not figurative or proverbial, but literal. According to this story, government is chartered through an agreement among parties to defer power to an enforcer. This is the process by which townships of the old west incorporated, and hired a mayor to attend to administer the activities of government and a sheriff to physically enforce law and order. The people of the town authorized the government explicitly, and explicitly agreed to be subject to the law and to the officers who carried it out. They further participated in government through town hall meetings and by bearing arms in the defense of the law as deputies.

This same kind of government can be found in clubs and private organizations, and in businesses. The fact that in this story government originates in an agreement among the parties to be governed should not obscure the fact that the government is adopted specifically for the purpose of exercising coercion over the governed. Consider the freelance labor crew who wishes to maximize their profit. They may choose to hire a foreman who is brutally forceful, in order to ensure that every member of the crew works hard and no one is allowed to free ride.

In the second story of the origin of government, government is imposed on local people from outside of their own community, and without their consent. This is the feudalistic story of government, where small farming villages are robbed repeatedly by regional bandits. Eventually the theft becomes routine, and competent leadership among the bandits leads to a sustainable level of pillaging that doesn't destroy the farmer's ability to continue producing each year. Full-fledged feudalism is justified as protection of the serf class by the bandits, who claim that the bandits of the next fiefdom over are far more brutal than they are. So, a social contract-like mantle legitimizes the theft and coercion.

In both of these stories, government exists for the purpose of exercising force.More particularly, it is for the purpose of imposing the will of a powerful coalition, who may be a majority or may simply be a sufficiently powerful elite, upon the rest of the society. The townsfolk impose law and morality upon the lawless and the eccentric, the crew of laborers impose hard work upon the lazy, and the bandits impose taxation upon the serfs. The difference is in what fraction of the population is represented by the government, and what fraction is victimized by it.

Pictures

Map of Christianity

Rob and I both loved this map of Christianity across the US, linked by Wehr in the World (with great discussion) from Floating Sheep (with more maps).

And the corresponding map of Europe:

I noted how much less diversity there is in Europe. Rob responded with this line of thinking:

You know, what you said about the Europe map showing less diversity supports the argument that the availability of religious choice in the US is part of the reason that religion has remained vital and satisfying to Americans while it hasn't for Europeans.

And that makes me wonder about the dynamics of religion in other parts of the world...Japan (low diversity, low interest in religion)...the middle east (high diversity mixed with religious violence maybe promotes interest in religion and in group identity)...Africa (see the middle east)...

I don't know much about religion in other parts of the world. I guess S. America is mostly Catholic? Are the native religions alive at all? How long has China been relatively irreligious? Probably since before the cultural revolution I'll bet. Otherwise the cultural revolution probably wouldn't have been possible. How do Indian Hindus feel about their religion? I just don't know.

I love how this man thinks.

Map bliss

Yesterday I became interested in cartography. It's a natural extension of my love for geographic scribbles and fonts. As a result, I ended up with a rich list of links and maps.

Most of you are already frequent visitors to Strange Maps, and I wanted to share some of the other things I've found during my mapping splurge:

I love xkcd and just found this awesome map (click to enlarge):

VerySpatial, which, along with a few other sites, led me to this gem:

It must be seen in its original full size to be fully appreciated.

Cartastrophe. The name says it all. Fantastic.

The Map Room. It won my heart with this 8-bit map of New York

but there is so much more. Fascinating. I could sink hours into that site.

Geographic Travels is slightly different from the others listed here. More factual, less amusing, but also much more integrated with archaeology and history.

For finding good color schemes, I love kuler and ColorBrewer.

Some great forums over at CartoTalk and inspiration over at Making Maps.

How change happens

It happens slowly, but it has a definite momentum.

And it first appears unrelated, but I don't believe it is. Childbirth in the US is changing.

First, the news that the maternal mortality rate in the US is rising dramatically. Maternal mortality is defined by the World Health Organization as ‘‘the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and the site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management, but not from accidental or incidental causes.’’

The US currently ranks 33rd out of 33 industrialized nations. The rate, which is measured in deaths per 100,000 births, rose from 17 in 2000 to 21 in 2005, and is still climbing.

A report commissioned by Amnesty International shows that in California, the maternal mortality rate in California has tripled in a decade, rising from 5.6 deaths per 100,000 to 16.9 per 100,000 in 2006 (these statistics are always a few years behind, so if the trend has continued, we can expect that the current rate has not improved and may be higher).

Why? The reasons range from hemorrhage to blood clots to "underlying heart disease," which is a surprise. I'm not sure if that essentially means lack of proper prenatal care, a health insurance coverage issue, or too many stops at McDonalds during pregnancy. Not sure how to explain that one. The report has not been officially released, though, so perhaps it will clarify these oddities. Others have suspected that the maternal mortality rate is correlated with the increase in cesarean sections in the US. Our most recent estimates place the c-section rate in this country around 33-37%, depending on which source you use. About one in three women have a cesarean instead of a vaginal birth. By any measure, that's far too high.

And then the quite sudden news about VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean), which had been officially decried by ACOG (American College of Ob-Gyns) as too risky for women who had an initial or a repeat cesarean, but VBACs are now being encouraged.

Many VBAC advocates have argued for years that vaginal births are safer for women than a repeat of the major abdominal surgery of a c-section, and all signs have shown that they were being ignored. Suddenly the NIH reviews the information and recommends VBACs.

I don't believe these two things are unrelated in their timing. Many women have been vying for change in childbirth in this country. So first we see evidence that our system hasn't been working as well as we had hoped, and immediately following that, we see adjustments being made with major implications for women everywhere (it follows that since more women are having/have had cesarean sections, more will be candidates for VBACs).

Change is (finally!) happening.

Balancing the bad news

There has been a deluge of bad news lately (for example, how those poor penguins from that terribly depressing movie can't get a break).

Honestly, I can't stand the news. I see very little purpose in it. The news paints the world as a scary, dangerous, heartless place. Sometimes it is, but when I start paying too much attention to the media's view, I become terrified and introverted. What does one gain by reading headlines, finding out what terrible things have happened in the world? It's all bad, in my mind.

And that's why I'm grateful for the internet. The best stuff out there is completely unrelated to the news.

Do you love Popcorn? Here's a link to 79 versions of it, all mixed together in a single 12-minute-long masterpiece.

This blog, Music Machinery, is a new discovery, and I'm enjoying it. He's got some great graphs and visualizations. My personal favorite is this one, which shows loudness as a function of time (to track the crescendo) for Muse's song 'Take a Bow':

I love good data visualizations. Which is why I can't stand this one (not created by the same person):

I can't even figure this out. At first I thought it was graphing music playlist classifications across Europe, but evidently the cloud isn't supposed to evoke a geographical image at all. It's just a...cloud.