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There's a theory which suggests that humanity spent a period of it's evolution in an isolated community on an island off the coast of what is now Ethiopia. This band of early hominids, cut off from the mainland, turned to beachcombing at low tide for food.
As a theory, it explains a lot. Humans are the only great ape which can swim, we've got far less body hair (which would become waterlogged) and the body hair patterns we do have appear designed to channel water off the body. Moreover experimentation shows that given the chance people revert to a 25-hour sleep cycle, which would match the tides.
What's interesting is that this partial adaption to a semi-aquatic nature suggests that had the isolated group stayed there then humanity might have gone in a different direction and returned to the sea full time like whales and dolphins.
There are evolutionary advantages to an aquatic existence, especially for a large and otherwise fairly crap mammal. In the sea you tend to be bigger than most predators, and the speed advantage of, say, the tiger over a person is lost between a shark and a dolphin. From being a bit of a blundering loser and generally easy target for a hungry predator on land you can, like a whale or a dolphin, move sharply up the food chain in water.
Anyway, I got to thinking about this when I started hearing about Oil and Gas companies shifting to offshore refining. By offshore here I don't mean shipping refining to different countries, but instead building floating refineries. On the one hand, these behemoths can be easily shipped to the crude resource. On the other hand, unlike an onshore refinery, they can also easily be relocated should the taxation or regulatory regime in any given country become unwelcoming or even antagonistic (should the country start nationalising assets). The oil industry, like whales, is returning to the sea. Vast, slow moving, but ultimately mobile. If you look at countries - and their tax regimes - as predators and asset and cash-rich companies as their prey, then in evolutionary terms it makes complete sense for them to become more mobile.
It struck me again when I saw this article the other day about how national jurisdictions were powerless to require companies to cough up. The problem that nations have, as predators, is that they are not only immobile but actively inimical to any attempt to pursue interests onto each other's territory. However, and this is the important point, evolution is not a fixed process which leads to a defined end point and stops. The fact that the predators have actually noticed their prey are increasingly mobile means they're acting upon it in experimental ways.
We've seen nationalisation of strategic assets (Argentina seizing Spanish company Repsol's assets), which might be seen as an attempt to corral up animals and domesticate them. We're seeing the rise of supranational organisations and attempts to tax by them (The EU proposing their financial transaction tax - a badly designed blunt instrument, and doomed thereby, but it's a development) and we're also seeing countries trying to make themselves into places which attract business, reasoning that siphoning off a smaller share is better than none at all. A little like flowers giving honey to bees in return for a bit of pollen here and there.
What's certain is that as governments grow ever more desperate over their inability to pay for social entitlements they will become more aggressive in chasing tax revenues, and the mechanisms for doing so will be varied. Some will fail, others will succeed. When people decided they wanted whale oil in large quantities, they invented the harpoon gun - a change to which the whale has yet to evolve a defense.
I'm interested to see what happens next.
As a theory, it explains a lot. Humans are the only great ape which can swim, we've got far less body hair (which would become waterlogged) and the body hair patterns we do have appear designed to channel water off the body. Moreover experimentation shows that given the chance people revert to a 25-hour sleep cycle, which would match the tides.
What's interesting is that this partial adaption to a semi-aquatic nature suggests that had the isolated group stayed there then humanity might have gone in a different direction and returned to the sea full time like whales and dolphins.
There are evolutionary advantages to an aquatic existence, especially for a large and otherwise fairly crap mammal. In the sea you tend to be bigger than most predators, and the speed advantage of, say, the tiger over a person is lost between a shark and a dolphin. From being a bit of a blundering loser and generally easy target for a hungry predator on land you can, like a whale or a dolphin, move sharply up the food chain in water.
Anyway, I got to thinking about this when I started hearing about Oil and Gas companies shifting to offshore refining. By offshore here I don't mean shipping refining to different countries, but instead building floating refineries. On the one hand, these behemoths can be easily shipped to the crude resource. On the other hand, unlike an onshore refinery, they can also easily be relocated should the taxation or regulatory regime in any given country become unwelcoming or even antagonistic (should the country start nationalising assets). The oil industry, like whales, is returning to the sea. Vast, slow moving, but ultimately mobile. If you look at countries - and their tax regimes - as predators and asset and cash-rich companies as their prey, then in evolutionary terms it makes complete sense for them to become more mobile.
It struck me again when I saw this article the other day about how national jurisdictions were powerless to require companies to cough up. The problem that nations have, as predators, is that they are not only immobile but actively inimical to any attempt to pursue interests onto each other's territory. However, and this is the important point, evolution is not a fixed process which leads to a defined end point and stops. The fact that the predators have actually noticed their prey are increasingly mobile means they're acting upon it in experimental ways.
We've seen nationalisation of strategic assets (Argentina seizing Spanish company Repsol's assets), which might be seen as an attempt to corral up animals and domesticate them. We're seeing the rise of supranational organisations and attempts to tax by them (The EU proposing their financial transaction tax - a badly designed blunt instrument, and doomed thereby, but it's a development) and we're also seeing countries trying to make themselves into places which attract business, reasoning that siphoning off a smaller share is better than none at all. A little like flowers giving honey to bees in return for a bit of pollen here and there.
What's certain is that as governments grow ever more desperate over their inability to pay for social entitlements they will become more aggressive in chasing tax revenues, and the mechanisms for doing so will be varied. Some will fail, others will succeed. When people decided they wanted whale oil in large quantities, they invented the harpoon gun - a change to which the whale has yet to evolve a defense.
I'm interested to see what happens next.
