Why are Dutch fish mongers so terrible?

For a country that controls a chunk of sea one and a half times its land mass, the Dutch are pathetic eaters of seafood. OK, granted - we're rightly proud of our slightly-cured herring (which is mostly caught by the Norwegians) and our kibbeling, fried chunks of cod (although many Dutch consumers think kibbeling is a fish species). But for the rest we export most of our mussels, sole, and oysters to people who know properly how to appreciate them, like the French and the Belgians. Instead, we import a tasteless excuse for a fish like tilapia.

But the fish mongers aren't helping either. Two weeks ago I was buying a tuna steak at the open market in Wageningen. (After my trip to The Philippines I had but one thing on my mind: I want to make that delicious ceviche with fresh ginger and coriander myself!) A youngish bloke for whom this must have been his way of earning his Saturday night drinks served me, and I asked him whether the tuna steak I was buying had been frozen. Silly question, I know - there is no way you can get tuna from its fishing grounds to a Wageningen market stall without freezing it somewhere along the way. "No, it's all fresh," he said. So where did it come from? That turned out to be a difficult question. "I don't know," he stumbled, looking at me as if I had just asked him about the sound of one hand clapping. "I should ask my boss." "Pacific ocean," said a colleague. OK, thanks. "Indian ocean," said another colleague who looked like she was in charge. "Is that OK with you?" Sure, I was only curious - I wasn't going to report you to Sea Shepherd or anything.

How can these people not know where their wares come from? I decided against asking the species, because I did not want to prolong their agony. I'm quite sure it was yellowfin anyway. But the limited information they had available was shocking. Even more shocking is the fact that they get away with it, because Dutch consumers just don't give a rodent's backside for quality when it comes to fish - let alone how it was caught, whether any other species had been caught in the process, and so on.

Last week I made this picture at the open market in Ede (just North of Wageningen):

This is what tong, or sole (solea solea) looks like; this is what schol, or plaice (pleuronectes platessa) looks like. You'd expect the orange spots should be a bit of a giveaway.

I guess every country gets the fish mongers it deserves.

Bumfights transactions

In 2002 a Las Vegas film maker came up with a hideous business model: pay homeless people a few dollars or a six pack of beer to conduct dangerous stunts, or to engage in fistfights with other homeless people, and film them. The movies, marketed under the insensitive brand name Bumfights, caused a storm of criticism, especially from advocacy organisations for homeless people, who argued the movies legitimized violence against homeless people, and were demeaning and dehumanizing to the people who participated.

The film makers responded that all homeless featured in the movies participated voluntarily. Surely they can make their own decisions? To which a professor responded

“Even if the homeless aren’t forced to perform, it’s inaccurate to describe people without adequate shelter, food or clothing as having choices.”

I hear the same argument in debates on international trade, Payments for Environmental Services, and other transactions between highly unequal parties: once an African lady reacted angrily to the concept of REDD+, arguing "it's not a free choice!" I believe it points towards a moral flaw in economic theory that many of my colleagues either do not see, do not want to see, or just don't care about. I call these transactions Bumfights transactions, after the movie series.

Forgive me for getting a bit theoretical here. Consider Rufus, the homeless man who featured prominently in Bumfights. Back then, Rufus had no home, no job, and he lived by what little he could earn by collecting empty cans. Let's call the situation he lived in A. Say the film maker offered Rufus $5 if he would ride a shopping cart down a flight of steps. In other words, the film maker offered Rufus a new situation B, which you could define as A + $5 + S, where S is the humiliation and risk of serious injury that goes with the stunt. If Rufus preferred B to A (A ≺ B in mathematical notation), he would participate in the movie; if A ≻ B he would not. Obviously the film maker preferred A ≺ B: for only $5 he would have a lot of fun filming Rufus putting his life at risk, and he would make a big buck selling the video. So they could move from A (no transaction) to B (after the transaction), which they both preferred to A. What's not to like? In economic terms this is called a Pareto improvement: a change that makes at least one person better off, and none worse off.

The objection to this logic is that Rufus "had no choice", but an economist would point out that he did: he could choose to refuse participation and stick with collecting cans for a living. No matter how bad this situation was (I surely don't envy him), obviously participating in Bumfights was better than not participating: after all, he participated, right? Not offering the choice would have left him in A, which is worse than B. The problem is not the transaction; the problem is poverty.

The flaw in this logic is that this may work in the sterile, utilitarian world of microeconomics, but in the real world the film maker also had a choice. He could have paid Rufus $100; he could have offered orange juice instead of alcohol (offering alcohol to somebody with a drinking problem is particularly nasty); he could have refrained from the transaction altogether and donate his $5 to the Salvation Army.

Another issue is that this line of reasoning only works if you care only about the consequences of an act: in other words, it follows a consequentialist ethic, where one could also follow a deontological ethic, or a virtues ethic. Many people consider making money in this way unethical, regardless of the consequences, just for its abusive nature.

Collecting up to 80 kg of sulphur in
a cloud of toxic volcanic fumes and
carrying it down the slope of
Mount Ijen, East Java: hey, it beats
starving to death!

Nevertheless, the line between an "equitable" transaction and a Bumfights transaction is blurry. To take the example of REDD+ again, many developing countries have come round to this idea, after initial opposition; it seems Costa Rica and Indonesia are quite keen on it. And how many people have jobs that are dangerous, or just mind-numbingly boring, just because the only alternative is starvation?

So next time you buy your clothes in a cheap clothes store, ask yourself: am I helping a poor Bangladeshi earn an income or am I taking advantage of his poverty? The question is more difficult than you might think.

Trash fishing in Pangandaran, Java

I visited the fishing village of Pangandaran, Java, during my holiday in Indonesia. It's a beautiful place, delicious fresh grilled fish (ikan bakar), and you can watch the local fishing traditions:

I was shocked, however, by the sheer amount of litter in the sea, especially plastics. The problem is, apparently, that a nearby river discharges a lot of litter from upriver villages and towns, and the shape of the coast makes it a natural garbage collector. The result is heartbreaking:

Memories of Holland, and Indonesia

It was Saturday and I felt a craving for nasi goreng, perhaps with some tempeh goreng or beef rendang. Luckily, Saturday is market day in Wageningen, and I had noticed earlier a small stall selling Indonesian food at the open market on the church square. I decided to check it out. There is something strange with Indonesian food in The Netherlands: the Dutch eat a lot of it (nasi goreng, babi panggang, krupuk, sambal, acam campur), but because the trade is dominated by Chinese restaurants selling their own poor imitation of it, a lot of people think they are eating Chinese food.

A Dutch man so tall he barely fitted in the small cramped minivan took my order. I thought he looked a bit silly in his traditional Indonesian batik shirt, but when I learned his wife was from Indonesia I could forgive him. I asked who his costumers usually were. Do many Indonesian students buy his food? Or perhaps residents of the home for Dutch-Indonesian elderly people, here in Wageningen? Yes, every now and again, but not many, he said.

The elderly home is called Rumah Kita: Indonesian for "our house." There is a small catch here, because in Indonesian the word for "us", "we", or "our" can be inclusive or exclusive. Kita is the inclusive form: it includes the person spoken to. The exclusive form is kami. If it were called "Rumah Kami" it would have sounded a bit like "You! Cheeseheads! Sod off, this is our house." But the name Rumah Kita sends a welcoming message to all elderly members of the Dutch-Indonesian community: come and join us, we have nasi campur on the menu today.

These are the people who were born in places that at the time were called Batavia, Buitenzorg, Weltevreden, Bandoeng, or Soerabaja. Their father might have been a Dutch clerk for the colonial government, who started a family with a Javanese woman and decided to stay in The Emerald Belt. Or perhaps their grandfather was a planter who went to the Dutch Indies to put his study at the Landbouwhogeschool Wageningen to practice on a plantation near Malabar or Kalibaru. Overwhelmed by the Japanese invasion in the Second World War, they would have gone through unspeakable hardships in Japanese concentration camps. After the war they would have sought refuge in those same camps during the Indonesian uprising, when many Dutch, Dutch-Indonesians and ethnic Chinese were killed by the insurgents. Eventually they would have migrated with their parents to The Netherlands, most of them after Indonesia became independent. A lifetime in a cold country they only knew from their schoolbooks awaited.

As a folk musician and traveller, I have been searching for songs in the Dutch musical tradition about homesickness. The only songs I found so far are written in the 1950s, by Dutch-Indonesian artists, about their homesickness for the Indies. I admit I have mixed emotions about these songs. We were never supposed to be there. The Dutch have been terrible overlords to the Indonesians: when the Brits handed back the Indies to the Dutch after Napoleon was defeated, the Javanese revolted because they would rather live under British rule than under the Dutch. But the emotions expressed in these songs are genuine, and intense. Whatever you think of the geopolitics, you can't deny their longing for the place that features in their earliest memories.

A small, fragile elderly lady with a walking stick came up to the stall with a long list of orders. Rendang, ketopak, some pisang goreng, and did you still have that delicious chicken curry with sereh? Yes, all frozen please, it's for the week. For now I would just like one lemper please. When she sat down next to me with her snack I noticed a slight trace of Asia in her features. I asked whether she was from the Indies. Yes, she said, born and raised in Surabaya. We munched away on our food and chatted a little with the batik-clad man's Indonesian wife. I watched as a group of Dutch students walked past on brightly painted wooden shoes - an initiation tradition of one of the local student societies. A group of Chinese students stared at them, giggling and taking pictures.

"I always get tears in my eyes when I eat this," the elderly lady said. The Indonesian woman replied by asking "Are those tears of joy or sorrow?" The elderly lady looked at her with a thoughtful smile and said "I think it's because of the tastiness."

10 Good things about Canberra

When I told the lady of my B&B in Brisbane that I was going to Canberra, she looked puzzled: why do you want to go there? I'm in Sydney now, and when I told the bloke at my hotel's reception that I had just come in from Canberra and all he said was: "I'm sorry." Today somebody even apologised for Canberra!
Come on guys, it's not that bad! Here is a list of good things about Canberra.

1. No Few distractions. It is the perfect place to work on your research vision and your Python modelling skills.
2. It's supposedly one of the best places to spot kangaroos. There are so many of them that there are culling programs in place.
3. It has four seasons, so you can enjoy Winter in July.
4. There is no Starbucks. The Evil Mermaid has laid her greedy claws on places as beautiful as Ubud on Bali, the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, and just about every street corner in downtown Santa Barbara, California, but so far Canberra has remained untainted by her presence.
5. When you feel homesick, the shops have kale and the pubs serve bangers & mash, which is a little bit like a Dutch stamppot met worst. (Why aren't Dutch pubs serving boerenkool met worst? It's the perfect pub food!)
6. There are a couple of decent Asian restaurants around, among which a vegetarian Vietnamese restaurant with delicious banh xeo.
7. It has the Wig & Pen: a traditional brewpub with some delicious homebrewn beers.
8. It might be just about the greenest city of Australia, with lots and lots of parks.
9. It's a good place to cycle: many bike paths, and reasonably good traffic. Sometimes it's difficult to see where you're supposed to cycle though.
10. Sydney is not that far either, and it's a beautiful train ride.

Judd and Guu's stochastic perturbation model in Python

I just uploaded a Python version of Judd and Guu's perturbation code to my website (code; notes).

If you happen to be a Python programmer, or a computational economist (even better: both!), then any feedback you can give on the code is highly appreciated. I'm fairly new to Python, so I'm sure I could have programmed some parts more efficiently.

Oh, and here is a picture of a bunch of Canberran kangaroos:

I thought you'd like to know.

In case you were wondering what I'm doing in the Australian winter

I'm here for two very interrelated goals.

I'm having another assessment meeting in September 2014; this time it's about a possible promotion to associate professor. So Goal #1 is to take a good look again at my research and education vision, and discuss it with whoever I can discuss it with. I got quite some inspiration from the keynotes and discussions at IIFET2014. Not that I went there with a blank slate, but it was good to see my ideas confirmed, in a way, and complemented by other people's ideas.

I have decided long ago that I will focus on the economics of coastal and marine ecosystems. My background is mainly in bioeconomic modelling, so it is logical to focus my research on the kind of questions that require such modelling. But then the question arises: aren't many other people doing that already? People have been doing theoretical fisheries economics since the 1950s (or longer, if you consider Jens Warming's work). And there are gigabytes of applied bioeconomic fisheries models like FishRent and Mefisto, and wholesale ecosystem models like Atlantis, where fishers are included as some sort of predators.

But that's it, actually: either the models are very abstract and qualitative, so that they can be analysed on paper, or they are very detailed and quantitative, so that they can be used for policy assessment or scenario analysis. The problem with the first is that they lack realism; the problem with the second is that they lack transparency. Either you can explain what drives your results, but then your results are close to useless for policy makers, or you can advise policy makers but you cannot explain where your advice comes from.

What has not yet happened much (I know there are people doing it, but not many), is to take the theoretical models, and make them more realistic to the point where you can maintain some intuition as to what drives your results, even though you cannot prove fancy theorems anymore. Macroeconomists and financial economists have reached that stage long ago: where their models get too complicated to be solved by some math magic, they use computation. This way you can add more realism, while maintaining a fair amount of insight into the mechanisms at work. My intention is to apply such computational methods to problems with coastal and marine ecosystems. This includes a lot of fisheries, but also other ecosystem uses, goods, and services.

Which brings me to Goal #2. The Crawford School of Public Policy of Australian National University has among its staff a number of people who have applied computational economic tools to fisheries problems, like Tom Kompas, Hoang Long Chu, and Quentin Grafton. I'm here to learn at least some of the methods they use. Originally I wanted to stay about two months, but for several reasons I only have about two weeks. But in the short time frame I have I'm trying to get the most out of it.

And lo and behold, I have a first result to show you. My first hurdle was writing a perturbation model in a program I can work with. Their models run in a combination of Matlab and Maple, but I don't have a license for either of them, and I'm not well-versed in Maple. Hoang Long Chu was so kind to give me a paper by Kenneth Judd and Sy-Ming Guu on writing perturbation models in Mathematica - another program I don't use, but luckily the paper explains the method well and it presents the entire Mathematica code for a simple optimal growth model. So I decided to write the same method in Python - my language of choice for its elegance, simplicity, and speed (ok, compared with R, which is neither elegant, nor simple, nor speedy). It took me a few days but here it is: the Python code and a pdf with some notes on the paper and the model.