Gravity of the Situation

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 25 February, 2016.

A few weeks ago, scientists revealed an amazing discovery. 100 years after Albert Einstein had formulated his General Theory of Relativity, an experiment had confirmed the existence of one of the predictions of his theory – gravitational waves. Prof Karsten Danzmann, from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany said that "It is the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves; it's the first ever direct detection of black holes and it is a confirmation of General Relativity because the property of these black holes agrees exactly with what Einstein predicted almost exactly 100 years ago."

Of course, all this seems rather esoteric to the average man, whose only recollection of Einstein is his famous equation E = mc² and his letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt concerning the atomic bomb. Few know the implications of his work, and perhaps that is why the confirmation of his theories even a 100 years later don’t quite shake up the world as much as it should.

And while we may wonder what effect this could have on the average person, consider the following – in most cellphones these days, you have a GPS transceiver. This transceiver receives precise time signals for the up to 24 GPS satellites around earth, each with an atomic clock accurate to 1 nanosecond (1 billionth of a second). To determine your position, the transceiver compares the time signals from 4 different satellites, and trilaterates your position from the time difference in the satellite signals, and their known positions above the earth. 

These satellites are 20 000 km above the ground, orbiting the earth at 14 000 km/h. Special Relativity predicts that due to their speed, they’ll be slower than your clock by 7 microseconds per day. General Relativity predicts that because they’re further from a gravitational object, they’ll be faster than our clocks by 45 microseconds per day. For the navigational calculations to work, the clocks on all our devices should remain accurate within 30 nanoseconds. A microsecond is 1000 times longer than a nanosecond – if Einstein’s theories were not taken into account, the GPS system would be inaccurate in about 2 minutes, and off by 10km in a day. 

Because E = mc² is only the start of the story. It is part of a solution to a paradox Einstein encountered in formulating his Special Theory of Relativity. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was originally proposed to reconcile the Laws of Motion of Isaac Newton with electromagnetism as described by James Clerk Maxwell. 

Einstein started from the proposition the speed of light was constant regardless of the motion of the observer, and from that, a lot of what sounds counter-intuitive flowed. Einstein’s work on Special Relativity showed not only that mass and energy are equivalent (E = mc²), but also that space and time cannot be separated from one another – that time was a dimension just like any other. From this, a few other strange features emerged. 

Since the speed of light in a vacuum had to remain constant, something else happened when objects started travelling close to the speed of light. In order for light observed by such an object to remain at constant speed, time had to slow for such objects, since light could not. This is commonly known as time dilation. And in order for the speed of light to be constant, those observing an object travelling close to the speed of light would see its length shorten in the direction of travel. This is called a Lorentz contraction. 

But Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity only explained motion in bodies without the effect of gravity, hence the term ‘special.’ Even so, up to today, it is still the most accurate model of motion tested. But ultimately, all bodies are under the influence of gravity. And thus Einstein worked for 8 more years, and in 1915, he published his General Theory of Relativity. 

This General Theory of Relativity combined the Special Theory of Relativity with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, describing gravity as a property of the curvature of space and time, or spacetime. Einstein postulated that heavy objects curved spacetime in much the same way a heavy iron ball on a bed curves the surface of a bed. And in the same way a smaller ball would fall into the curve created by the heavy one, so too do all objects in space curve toward the heavier one. In fact, Einstein showed gravity bends even light. It predicts gravitational time dilation, to allow the speed of light to remain constant as it goes deeper into and then out of gravity (i.e. time passes slower the stronger gravity is), it predicts gravity can be used as a lens to focus light (gravitational lensing), it predicts gravity can be too strong for even light to escape (black holes), and then also predicts that when two spinning black holes collide, they’ll set off waves in spacetime similar to the effect that waves have on a puddle if you drop a stone in them.

This all sounds very counter intuitive, which is why Einstein’s theories have always been the subject of extensive testing. Thus, when on September 14, 2015 at 09:51 UTC, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, went off, the scientific community cheered. Einstein’s theories had their reliability to predict confirmed. 

As our technology advances, we become more and more dependent on them being built to model and anticipate the universe as it is, not as one wishes it would be. The confirmation of scientific theories not only provides us certainty about the universe we live in now, it also gives us hope that we can find answers in the future. After all, if simple theories on the progression of time was capable of providing us pinpoint navigation to the entire human race a mere few decades later, who knows where this one will take us?

Money’s Worth

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 18 February, 2016.

Yesterday, the Bank of Namibia raised its repo rate by 25 basis points, or 0.25%. This means that interest rates for loans across the board should rise by 0.25%, and borrowers across the country have to adjust their expectations based on this. But what is the Bank of Namibia? Why do they have the right to control money flowing out of our pockets?

The easy way to answer this, is simply to state that the Bank of Namibia is a central bank, and it derives its authority from our constitution – Chapter 17, Article 128. But that is what is called a mathematician’s answer – entirely accurate, but entirely useless.

As with most institutions in the modern age, central banks originated from the last great empire – the British Empire. Back in the 1690’s, the Kingdom of England was involved in a war with France, and King William III’s government found it difficult to procure funds for this war. Credit of a government, up until that point, was tied to the reigning monarch, and different ones had different levels of fiscal responsibility. Monarchs are notorious for not wanting to relinquish authority until they have no other choice, and so too here. 

Up until that point, the printing of currency was under the sole authority of the king, which is why he was having credit issues. Lenders did not want to lend money to a king who would just print more currency, and thus devalue the money they lent to him. Thus, the Bank of England was born, to which was entrusted not only the accounts of all of government, but also the exclusive right to issue bank notes. When the Bank of Namibia was established this was one of the responsibilities it gained.

Initially, all of the money printed by the bank was backed by gold, but the first cracks in this system appeared in 1797, when a bank run to convert paper money into gold occurred. The Bank of England suspended conversion into gold, and in the analysis of the bank run afterwards, it was resolved that the central bank should not only act to stabilize the currency, but also act as a lender of last resort for other banks. And so the final few functions normally attributed to central banks was born.

As wars proliferated, so did central banks, as kings and presidents were unable raise the necessary debt to sustain their war efforts. But central banks survived the wars, and in peacetime they grew to serve an important function. After all, stabilizing the currency is of great importance for economic development – and although it was originally meant in terms of foreign exchange, central banks increasingly saw the need to stabilize price levels, or inflation. 

Inflation, in a sense, is the result of the printing of money. After all, money is a claim to goods and services. If we have the same amount of goods and services available, but more money was printed, a greater ‘share’ of this money would be required to acquire the same goods and services. If money were printed recklessly and in excess of economic production, the value of money would fall rather quickly, and we’d have high inflation. In extreme cases, such as that of Zimbabwe, when the money printing reaches such levels that you get hyperinflation, people lose faith in their currency, and no longer transact in it.

This is quite important, because while as previously mentioned money could in the past only be printed provided it was backed by gold, that is no longer the case. Until 1971, this was still broadly true, but after US president Richard Nixon suspended the convertibility of the US dollar into gold, no country was willing to do so any more. 

Our money, right now, is backed by our faith in the money being able to be exchanged for goods and services. You trust that that N$10 note you have can buy goods and services to that value, and when you hand it over, it will be accepted. But without control, that faith could be shattered, and the Namibian Dollar could go the route of the Zimbabwean one.

That is why the Bank of Namibia has a mandate to ensure inflation remains in the range of 3% to 6%. Well enough above zero that we are not in danger of sliding into deflation, small enough that it can be reliably modelled for, and not disruptive to the general economy. It is also why the Bank of Namibia is independent from government, so that it can focus on this mandate without interference, and without the executive influencing policy. 

But where other central banks have a bit more policy options, the Bank of Namibia has only a few due to the currency peg to the South African Rand. And its main policy instrument is thus the Repo Rate. After all, most money creation these days happens via commercial banks, who extend credit. This is via fractional reserve banking, a topic for another day. But suffice it to say that by increasing the cost at which bank can lend from the central bank, the Bank of Namibia thus reduces the amount of credit commercial banks can extend, thus reducing the money in circulation. By reducing money in circulation, there is less money chasing the same amount of goods and services, and inflation subsides, ceteris paribus. 

With inflation in January having peaked at 5.3%, there is certainly currently upward pressure on inflation, and it seems a measure of inflation control is needed right now. After all, if you ‘spare the interest rate,’ you spoil the nation…

To Constitute A Nation

Originally published in the Informanté newspaper on Thursday, 11 February, 2016.

With Constitution Day just behind us, it is perhaps time that we examine the features of the document that not only defines our country and its government, but has come to define us as the individuals we are, and as the nation we’ve become. 

Our constitution was written in a time of strife, with the liberation struggle still fresh in the minds of the Constituent Assembly – and yet it was written in a language of peace. Starting with a blanket amnesty for both sides of the struggle to allow all exiles to return home, and thus create a representative Constituent Assembly, the Constitution was constructed as a forward looking document. One that would encourage unity and nation-building, rather than recrimination and division.

Yet to see what makes it special, it is necessary to look back, and see where it’s basic principles originated. After all, the constitution claims we have “the right of the individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of race, colour, ethnic origin, sex, religion, creed or social or economic status;” and that “said rights are most effectively maintained and protected in a democratic society, where the government is responsible to freely elected representatives of the people, operating under a sovereign constitution and a free and independent judiciary.” These ideas were not quite as prevalent even just a 100 years ago.

Democracy, in fact, started way back in 508 BCE, in Athens, Greece. But it was a bit different from our democracy today. As a direct democracy, all eligible Athenian citizens were members of the legislative assembly that made laws. Strangely, judicial and executive functions of the government were allocated to citizens by lottery.  And, of course, eligible citizens did not include women, slaves, foreigners, anyone who did not own land and of course, men under 20. Cleisthenes codified their laws into the first democratic constitution. 

It was in the subsequent Roman Republic that that our form of representative democracy first appeared. With representatives from the Patricians and the Plebeians becoming Senators and serving in the Senate, the first forms of representative democracy emerged. In 450 BCE the Romans codified their laws into a constitution known as the Twelve Tables, and formalized Roman law, which still influences our judicial system to this day.  

Democracy soldiered on, throughout the ages, constantly being usurped by those who would wield absolute power over a nation. But in 1776, a group of colonies declared independence from the British Empire, and to prevent the peoples of these colonies from losing their hard fought power to a ruler again, they enacted the first modern constitution in 1789. It is from the United States’ Declaration of Independence that our constitution referenced the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But still, not everyone could vote. Universal male suffrage, whereby all adult males could vote, came only a short while after the US constitution was ratified, but from a radically different place. The First French Republic, established in 1792, was the first example, though tragically short lived – replaced by Napoleon’s French Empire. His empire’s Napoleonic Code also influenced laws worldwide. Only in 1893, barely 123 years ago, did universal suffrage (men as well as women) saunter onto the world stage, when it was first implemented by New Zealand. It spread, slowly but surely, to other democracies, with the last to grant suffrage to female voters being Switzerland, in 1990. 

But as democracy took hold over the world, subjects under absolute rulers became restless. For example, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, from which our own parliament derives its name, was originally established as an advisory body to a king with absolute power. But over the years, it had expanded and restricted the king’s power – most notably first with the Magna Carta of 1215 CE. But after the English Civil War, and the restoration of the monarchy after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Parliament increasingly became the method whereby the legitimacy of a government of the king was determined. 

Throughout the 18^th and 19^th century, the power of the king was gradually diminished, and parliament emerged as the ultimate authority. And as the British Empire expanded across the world, the concept of representative democracy was spread as well. But since this form of democracy originated from an absolute rule regime, it had inherited a flaw from that regime as well. The concept of parliamentary sovereignty. 

In essence, this gives parliament absolute authority over all of government. Parliament can make laws concerning everything, and cannot bind future parliaments by its laws. No judge can overrule acts of parliament. This means that the current parliament of the United Kingdom can rescind any right or protection granted to its citizens by previous parliaments. I trust the danger of this is clear.

When the time therefore came for the Constituent Assembly to construct the basis of what would form our nation, they already had very clear examples to emulate and pitfalls to avoid. Instead of a sovereign parliament, we have a government split into executive, legislative and executive branches. Universal suffrage was implemented from day one. And while our constitution can be amended so as to enable it to remain a living document like the United States Constitution, we elected to entrench the basic rights of our citizens in Article 131, which states: “No repeal or amendment of any of the provisions of Chapter 3 hereof, in so far as such repeal or amendment diminishes or detracts from the fundamental rights and freedoms contained and defined in that Chapter, shall be permissible under this Constitution, and no such purported repeal or amendment shall be valid or have any force or effect.”

I highly recommend that every citizen at least once avails him or herself of the opportunity to read our constitution. If you need more background, there is no more informative work that details its construction than “State Formation in Namibia: Promoting Democracy and Good Governance” by His Excellency Dr Hage Geingob – his doctoral thesis. 

No structure built can stand for long if it does not have a solid foundation. The same is true for a nation. And as structural engineers will tell you, no one can extend and built atop an existing structure without first examining its foundations to see if it is strong enough to support it. The same is true of a nation. That is what Constitution Day is all about. If we want to continue to build a strong and proud nation, we need to know the foundations it is built upon, or we shall surely fail.