There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in

Zeno’s Paradox and Jakarta traffic

Let’s say you’re standing 1 meter away from a door and you want to walk to the door. But before you arrive at the door, you must reach the halfway point. But to get to the halfway point you must first reach the quarterway point. And so on, ad infinitum. 

So to travel to the door you must travel these distances: ½ meter, ¼ meter, 1/8 meter, 1/16 meter, 1/32 meter, 1/64 meter etc etc. 

So Zeno argues that because the sequence goes on forever, you must cover an infinite number of finite distances (*). 

Meaning of course that you will never get anywhere. Bit like Jakarta really.

Jakarta traffic
(*) The paradox wasn’t exactly solved but a more streetwise fellow than Zeno simply got up and strode the 1 meter to the door before rubbishing the abilities of the erstwhile Greek philosopher.

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