Category Archives: Economy

How to Fix a Declining US Economy

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Corporations and the federal and state governments have trained us well. In the United States, it isn’t in good taste to mention progressive or socialist ideas about economics. This is not the case with conservative capitalism, which the media reports on daily; consider the love/hate relationship with the Tea Party. This imbalance in propriety is one of the signs that the US is in financial trouble. So are its citizens.

In 1936, the US had a 100% tax for any income over $25,000 (about $350,000 today); today, the highest tax rate is 36%. Only 11% of the US work force belongs to a union, down from 28% in 1954. Bankruptcy laws have been revised so they can be used as a tactic to close one business and open another identical business – leaving all the employee benefits behind. As corporations become multinational and with the advantage of computers and modern telecommunications, a corporation can now relocate to a country where the salaries, taxes and cost of living are less expensive. The American generation still in school will not have enough jobs to go around.

By its nature, capitalism accumulates profit. The news programs tell us that 1% of the population holds 37% of the nation’s wealth and 74% of all stock holdings. The rich are getting richer and simultaneously, the poor are getting poorer. These statistics are common knowledge – and still getting worse.

In the 1950’s credit cards were rare. Most worker salaries were sufficient to stay out of serious debt, buy the home and car, pay for insurance and taxes and even send children to college without the children carrying the cost. The last sixty years slowly forced the middle class into serious debt because they tried to continue the American standard of living. But they continued by using credit cards and home refinancing to sustain purchase power. The reason was that salaries were not keeping up with the cost of living. Salaries have, in real spending power fallen over the last 60 years while at the same time, business profits have climbed at a 45° angle. All this extra profit has been accumulated by the 1 percenters.

90% of US citizenry is suffering from dropping wages, being forced to take lower paying jobs, and leaving college with tuition debt that predicts never escaping serious indebtedness. Just because employment is dropping to a respectable 5% doesn’t mention the loss of benefits, hours, misplaced job skills and salaries that are well below their economic capability.

It is obvious to everyone that the Congress is dysfunctional – certainly not in line with the growing anxiety of American citizens. The Republican party, at this moment of severe financial vulnerability to citizens, wants to cut taxes, stop entitlement benefits and relieve corporations from oversight by the EPA, FAA, FDA and any other department that gets in the way of corporate profit – American health and the planet be damned.

We are not in sight of the end of the 2008 recession – not by years. Corporate plans and legislators bought by the corporations plan to abandon the US because it is an old market. The fast money is gone. The new trade agreements with BRIC and China’s new super bank will push the dollar aside. The dollar will not buy as much as it used to.

What can be done to turn away from slow depreciation of our country? Perhaps the one most dynamic act than can be taken is to remove the capital model from our businesses. Business should allow the workers – to the last man – to have a vote on how the company is run, what it makes, the quality, etc. In other words, let the workers do the job of the Board of Directors. It’s called Democratic Socialism. We take charge of our country’s gross national product. If the employees don’t want to move to Bangladesh, they don’t have to. Stopping the escape of corporations in their tracks will boost the economy immediately. The new model for businesses is called Employee Co-ops.

Ancient Mariner

 

Economic Warming

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The mariner has been posting www.iowa-mariner for a couple of years. If you are a regular reader, you know he sees impending chaos on all sides. The mariner will follow in the footsteps of his favorite prophet Amos (a country fellow who raised sheep and had fleas) and the prophet’s fictional counterpart, Chicken Little.

The storm clouds are visible on the horizon and bad economic weather is predicted by conservatives and liberals alike. When the solution from each side is redundant, that in itself suggests chaos.

The mariner has read books by two expert authors each of whom starts from a different premise and arrives at similar conclusions.

The first book, The Colder War by Marin Katusa, (John Wiley and Sons, 2015) follows along the line of economic prophets who fear the Brazil-Russia-India-China (BRIC) alliance and the use of non-US dollars in world trade. Katusa predicts a slow demise for the US because of its seventeen trillion dollars in bond debt and, more importantly, because BRIC production of fossil fuels easily will dominate the US Petrodollar market. What will happen slowly (Katusa uses the decline of the British pound over thirty short years, finally yielding to the American dollar at the end of the Second World War) is that holders of US treasury notes will cash them and buy rubles, reals, yuán or some worldwide derivative based on BRIC dominance. In simple terms, this means the US is headed for at least 15% inflation of the dollar and will lose the float advantage of using US dollars around the world.

Katusa spends a lot of his book on Vladimir Putin’s plans to encompass the entire Euro-Asian land mass in a “Common Economic Space.” In other words, replace the US dollar-supported euro, the oil-rich something-stan countries, the Middle East, Asia and most of Africa into a giant free trade zone – all without using US dollars.

Katusa suggests the following remedies – which he doesn’t guarantee will be successful:

  • “Stop runaway government spending. If the growth in government debt is held below the growth rate of the economy, the dollar’s ability to withstand attack will strengthen mightily.
  • Stop accepting everyone’s invitation to participate in everyone’s conflict.
  • Stop everything – especially tax rules and handouts.
  • Stop allowing superstition-based regulation to interfere with the development of domestic energy resources.”

For each of us, Matusa suggests:

  • “Trade some of your dollars for gold and silver and don’t store it in a bank.
  • Open an account with a non-US bank to make it easier to obtain cash in foreign currencies.”

Obviously, Marin Katusa is a fiscal conservative. His underlying strategy does not include economic transition away from fossil fuels but rather suggests ways to put sandbags around the US economy. His perspective can’t be totally faulted; he is one of the world’s top fossil fuel negotiators.

 Now on to the second book, This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein (Simon and Shuster, 2014). As prolific a writer and advocate as Katusa, Klein challenges the fossil fuel profit model. She suggests the greedy pursuit of oil-based economies will collapse under the hidden costs of global warming, costs related to health, fragility of depending on one economic resource, and the profound shift of weather patterns that will impact most temperate zone nations dependent on crops – the northerly ones like Canada and Russia will have improved crop opportunity while those in lower latitudes like the US and Southern Europe will have more extreme weather conditions, frequent droughts and flooding.

Similar to Matusa’s book, Klein spends the first third of her book identifying the antagonist: not Putin but the conservatives who deny global warming. The following quotes set the tone for the entire book, which is heavily footnoted:

“And for many conservatives, particularly religious ones, the challenge goes deeper still, threatening not just faith in [capital] markets but core cultural narratives about what humans are doing here on Earth. Are we masters, here to subdue and dominate, or are we one species among many, at the mercy of [geophysical] powers more complex and unpredictable than even our most powerful computers can model?”

The author cited a statement from Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project:

“The Yale researchers explain that people with strong egalitarian and communitarian worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept scientific consensus on climate change. Conversely, those with strong hierarchical and individualistic worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor, strong support for industry, and a belief that we all get pretty much what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus.”

Klein then moves her focus to the disastrous liaisons between “environmental” organizations and corporate partnerships. Many examples are cited not only in the United States but in virtually every country including the United Nations Environment Program. One example involved the Nature Conservancy (NC), the largest and richest environmental organization in the world and 2,303 acres along Galveston Bay in Texas. The acreage was donated to the NC by ExxonMobil in 1995.

This acreage was important to environmentalists because it was the last habitat for the Attwater Prairie Chicken. The bird population, estimated at over one million before the twentieth century, due to oil exploration had dropped to threatened extinction by 1965. The Nature Conservancy proclaimed recovery of the Attwater Prairie Chicken as its highest priority. Four years later the NC drilled its own oil well in an area that would have direct consequences on critical habitat. When this oil well was discovered by NC members, it attracted national press coverage. NC said they could drill without hurting the bird population.

By 2003 only sixteen birds remained. Still, when the first well ran dry, the NC drilled a second well. In 2012, the Attwater Prairie Chicken was extinct.

The Nature Conservancy had succumbed to the desire to make millions of dollars to be used in behalf of worldwide conservancy. Klein’s point is that the NC had good motives but capitalist solutions do not solve a global problem. In fact, capitalism accelerates climate change.

Klein makes this point across several similar examples. In every case, capitalist solutions failed. Cultures are so bound to profit as a solution for everything that global issues like carbon emission are a distant second and have no chance to transition to non-fossil fuel. Global warming is caused by fossil fuel profit. Any progress must be collective in nature and further must reduce the petro economy to a scant size of what it is today. In the US, petrodollars keep the wealthy growing wealthier and allow the US government to borrow 46% against its gross domestic product.

Benevolent billionaires offer little hope for a genuine shift in economic culture. Among others mentioned by Klein are Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson and T. Boone Pickens. In every case, these billionaires advocate solutions that will benefit their corporate investment in alternative solutions. Again, these endorsements use a capitalist model as a solution – first, there must be profit.

Global issues like carbon emissions and warming oceans are not part of any profit model. The expense must be covered but not by opportunistic means. This is a new phenomenon in economics: profit is not part of the financial model. Global warming is neither a national issue nor a GDP issue nor a profit versus loss corporate issue. It is pure overhead that must be dealt with collectively by 7 billion humans in 196 countries.

It is this very kind of solution, fraught with corporate restraint, government regulation and spending, and suppression of the largest profit sector in the world that frightens capitalists and advocates of individual freedom.

In the mariner’s opinion, Klein’s book roars like a lion until the part where solutions are offered. Klein cites a growing number of blockades where the local people literally stood in the way of fossil fuel operations. The author feels that growing civil interference will continue to have more influence with those who must deal with the overhead of fossil fuel extraction. An example to watch is the Keystone XL pipeline intending to move sand tar oil from Alberta to Texas. There have been several protests along the path of that pipeline; Obama does not support it. We will see how much influence blockading will affect a republican congress.

Naomi Klein is not an economist. Unlike Matusa, she does not provide financial detail about the impending crisis. Still, one can image what will happen to corporate profit and national GDP if the petrodollar is greatly diminished. On this point – the tremendous shift in priorities as well as economic models – Matusa and Klein agree: financial instability is something everyone will face in this century.

Finally, Klein cites a truism:

“It is often said that Mother Nature bats last, and this has been poignantly the case for some men who were most possessed by the ambition of conquering her.”

 Did someone mention that the sky is falling?

Ancient Mariner

Dismantling the Petro World

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The last post implied, if the reader did not take the content as factual, that the future for the western coalition of nations faced a collapse of its economies and would be fortunate to be called second tier nations. The reason that the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations will overwhelm the western economy is because they have the oil, gas, and the population growth to take over the world economy – somewhat like Walmart, Target and CVC moving into a neighborhood. Any local retail outlets that survive will be less than robust for sure.

Aside from nations, the petrochemical industry is the largest set of global organizations in the world. Asking them to go out of business or scale down to ten percent of what they were is not a winning strategy for global warming. Yet this is the fear that those who deny scientific information hear – that the petro economy is a common source of wealth and making the changes in corporate behavior, the way neighborhoods are built, the way every person consumes food, energy, space and nonrenewable minerals must undergo a transformation that challenges capitalism and suggests something more akin to socialism. So, global warming doesn’t exist.

While searching the Internet, the mariner came across an article in the Nation Magazine for November 2011. The article was written by Naomi Klein, a Canadian author who writes books on the climate and its confrontations with capitalism, human nature, and disappearing resources, including the disappearance of national economic policies. Klein’s current book, “This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate,” is on the best seller list at the moment.

The entire article is available at

http://www.thenation.com/article/164497/capitalism-vs-climate?page=0,2

 

In the Nation article, Klein makes a six point case that makes a reader think it is easier to climb a cliff covered in ice than to change the petro paradigm:

  1. Reviving and Reinventing the Public Sphere

…Traditionally, battles to protect the public sphere are cast as conflicts between irresponsible leftists who want to spend without limit and practical realists who understand that we are living beyond our economic means. But the gravity of the climate crisis cries out for a radically new conception of realism, as well as a very different understanding of limits. Government budget deficits are not nearly as dangerous as the deficits we have created in vital and complex natural systems. Changing our culture to respect those limits will require all of our collective muscle—to get ourselves off fossil fuels and to shore up communal infrastructure for the coming storms.

  1. Remembering How to Plan

…Every community in the world needs a plan for how it is going to transition away from fossil fuels, what the Transition Town movement calls an “energy descent action plan.” In the cities and towns that have taken this responsibility seriously, the process has opened rare spaces for participatory democracy, with neighbors packing consultation meetings at city halls to share ideas about how to reorganize their communities to lower emissions and build in resilience for tough times ahead.

  1. Reining in Corporations

…But we are also going to have to get back into the habit of barring outright dangerous and destructive behavior. That means getting in the way of corporations on multiple fronts, from imposing strict caps on the amount of carbon corporations can emit, to banning new coal-fired power plants, to cracking down on industrial feedlots, to shutting down dirty-energy extraction projects like the Alberta tar sands (starting with pipelines like Keystone XL that lock in expansion plans).

  1. Relocalizing Production

…Climate change does not demand an end to trade. But it does demand an end to the reckless form of “free trade” that governs every bilateral trade agreement as well as the World Trade Organization. This is more good news —for unemployed workers, for farmers unable to compete with cheap imports, for communities that have seen their manufacturers move offshore and their local businesses replaced with big boxes. But the challenge this poses to the capitalist project should not be underestimated: it represents the reversal of the thirty-year trend of removing every possible limit on corporate power.

  1. Ending the Cult of Shopping

…This growth imperative is why conventional economists reliably approach the climate crisis by asking the question, How can we reduce emissions while maintaining robust GDP growth? The usual answer is “decoupling”—the idea that renewable energy and greater efficiencies will allow us to sever economic growth from its environmental impact. And “green growth” advocates like Thomas Friedman tell us that the process of developing new green technologies and installing green infrastructure can provide a huge economic boost, sending GDP soaring and generating the wealth needed to “make America healthier, richer, more innovative, more productive, and more secure…”

The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume.

  1. Taxing the Rich and Filthy

…That means taxing carbon, as well as financial speculation. It means increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, cutting bloated military budgets and eliminating absurd subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. And governments will have to coordinate their responses so that corporations will have nowhere to hide (this kind of robust international regulatory architecture is what Heartlanders mean when they warn that climate change will usher in a sinister “world government”).

Most of all, however, we need to go after the profits of the corporations most responsible for getting us into this mess. The top five oil companies made $900 billion in profits in the past decade; ExxonMobil alone can clear $10 billion in profits in a single quarter…

Naomi Klein pulls no punches in this article in the Nation. The quotes provided here by the mariner provide an insight into her perspective but a great deal of reasoning remains in the article. He recommends that his readers go to the link provided above and discover the whole painting and all the colors in it.

Ancient Mariner

Oneness V

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Lacking Compassion, is there another way?

Measuring the Outcome

Mediation and Arbitration

Measuring the Outcome. Through the ages, many have negotiated deals that were worth good profit because they gave away something that the other party wanted and was willing to pay a price to acquire. Until money dominated commerce, buyers and sellers had a culture that allowed for barter, which is dickering about the comparative worth of two commodities. True, it was awkward to carry a sheep around or three bales of timothy hay, but everyone was in on setting the price. Those were the good old days. Today, a customer pays a price set by the seller. It is uncommon to dicker about dollars unless one is engaged in stocks, bonds and commodities – which is limited to those who do not need to barter for basic necessities. If a farmer wanted to sell a sheep on the open market today, much of the profit is already taken by a commodities trader who may never have seen a sheep.

It used to be that business and labor would sit down and dicker, each side knowing the financial status of the company. In one example, the business negotiating team was under severe orders not to grant more than a two cent per hour raise. The labor negotiating team had its members clamoring for ten cents an hour. After three weeks at the negotiating table, the final result was: the union received a two cent raise. However, labor also received a four-week vacation instead of two and was allowed to accumulate sick leave. The solution was a two cent raise to please the bosses and the equivalent of a ten cent raise for the union members. It’s all in how one measures things. There is no doubt the process improved oneness in the company.

Measuring the outcome requires that two elements be in place: those involved are using the same measuring stick – one of the big reasons money became a standard; the other is respect for the measuring process. With these two items in place, it is possible to reconcile differences even if there is no compassion. It may not be easy but it can be done.

In recent years, airline companies have received a bad reputation because some airlines did not want to measure the outcome with the union’s help. Some airlines declared bankruptcy, which negated labor contracts that were in place. Weeks later, when the bankruptcy court agreed to a method for emerging from bankruptcy, the employees were at the mercy of the airline if they wanted to keep their jobs. This is an example of not agreeing about how to measure outcomes. Another failure to use the same measures for outcome led to heated reactions by US citizenry when in 2008 banks that caused a severe recession were not allowed to fail and the citizenry was furious when large bonuses were paid to bank traders. Behind the scenes, the Federal Government and the banks were dickering and making deals about who would fail and who would pay fines. The Government actually ended up owning bank stock as a guarantee. For lack of agreed measuring, this situation is still unresolved in the citizens’ minds six years later.

Mediation and arbitration are controlled dickering. This is accomplished by using a third party to oversee the negotiation. A good example is when Egypt attempted to mediate a compromise between Gaza and Israel. The mediation will not work for two reasons: neither Gaza (Hamas) nor Israel want to use the same values by which to measure the outcome; neither Gaza nor Israel perceive a greater reality. Oneness, even by an uncompassionate process, is out of the question.

Having an arbiter or judge decide the outcome of a conflict inevitably leaves one party or the other, or both parties, unsatisfied. Granted there are times when two parties will never accept a common measure of outcome; neither will accept the arbiter’s measure of outcome. While forcing a conclusion to an unstable situation, the difficulty with mediation and arbitration is that the methods generally do not build oneness.

Conflicts that find themselves in court inevitably enter a win-lose environment. While negotiation may take place within the court process, the win-lose environment remains. Constricted by legal procedures, empathy and compassion are not players. One may make the case that courts expedite irresolvable situations, for example divorce or property conflicts. Still, these arrangements are self serving and do not encourage the union of lesser and greater realities based on compassion and oneness.

The question: You may be familiar with this situation and may already know the act of compassion. You and a friend have one doughnut to share. What is the best procedure to assure the doughnut is equally shared? Think about your combined feelings of trust and fairness that were necessary. Which feeling was stronger?

Ancient Mariner

Oneness – IV

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ONENESS – IV

Which lesser reality?

Which greater reality?

One need think only a moment before a conflict comes to mind: How does one select the appropriate lesser solution? The reader is reminded at this point that empathy is a tool with which to make the best decision. In the example of the owner of a small business, the owner actually has several options: Layoff? Sell the business? Go into debt? Restructure the business in a way that maximizes short term profit? How does one select a lesser solution that maximizes the opportunity to select a correct greater solution?

This is no easy consideration as any individual will attest. In the example, consideration begins deep in the philosophy of the owner. Is profit, his religion, his character, the definition of who he is? Is his measure of personal worth his obligation to others – if only to his kind or his business? Is his measure compassion? Have we come to a root that solves the dilemma? Is it the act of compassion?

Compassion deserves further investigation. It is not a strong objective in global awareness. The link between lesser and greater realities almost always is a compassionate consideration and suffers mightily from self interest and the predatory nature of the human species.

If one examines prejudicial behavior, particularly racism and religious prejudice, the smaller situation is a matter of conditioning rather than thoughtful consideration. Racist and religious behavior may be inculcated by parents. Perhaps peer pressure is the source of prejudice. It may be that people of color simply are a scapegoat for personal feelings of inadequacy. Confronted with an interracial or religious situation, how does the person find empathy required to select the appropriate lesser reality? Even if they found empathy, could they select the greater reality?

Many years ago, the mariner had a conversation with a racist man. His position was that African Americans, Latinos and Chinese all looked different than he did and, conversely, he looked different to them. This turned out to be a telling point. “What,” he said, “if they became the majority of the population? I would no longer be part of the majority and my normal white privileges would disappear.”

Is this man able to find sympathy or to act with compassion involving nonwhite individuals? If so, it will take a mighty wind of change.

Prejudice is not limited to race or religion. The author knows a number of individuals who are so opposed to smoking that friends and events first must be tobacco free. Then more compassionate behavior may arise. Confronted with a situation involving tobacco, how does the individual select the correct reality which will link to a greater, compassionate reality?

One solution is to ignore that which is offensive. It takes practice to hone one’s mind to accept the person first – despite the automatic rejections of race, alcoholism, smoking, or whether a person is neat and clean, has a job or makes as much money such that the person is a credible member of the human race. The 2012 presidential race caught candidate Romney admitting that forty-seven percent of the US population depended on government handouts. It was spoken with derision and contempt. Where was the seed of empathy that is necessary to link a lesser and greater reality? Without empathy, Romney was unable to perceive the dependency of banks and industries on government handouts, tax breaks and loopholes. The woes of a beaten middle class would not be an element of reconciliation between lesser and greater realities. There is no act of compassion. To Romney and the attendees in that room, people are Matrix batteries.

Science has a theory that all things in the universe are entropic. The mariner suggests that oneness can induce growth, depending on oneness as part of a resolution. In other words, an act of compassion expands orderliness, consciousness, and discovery while negative acts accelerate entropy.

The question: Pick one of the people you know that you have difficulty relating to because of your opinion of that person. Imagine that person without letting your opinion affect you. This takes a lot of practice. You know you are doing the right thing if you can feel a growing empathy. This is an exercise coined in the phrase “walk a mile in his shoes.” What are the good characteristics that you noticed? Can you separate your smaller situation and the person’s larger situation enough to reconcile the difference? What act of compassion will be required?

Ancient Mariner

The Wrong God

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The mariner is in the middle of a series suggesting oneness is a tool to help make good decisions. Even as he writes, retail giants and smaller chains alike have decided to extend black Friday back to the morning of Thanksgiving Day. This means workers will not enjoy a moment of celebration of family, a break from the stresses of a capitalist-driven world. Kudos to some corporations who will not intrude on the holiday. These companies deliberately stand for a culture that recognizes a world beyond pursuit of the almighty dollar.

In past posts, the mariner has touched on the subject of slavery as an evolutionary process. Splitting of parents and children is no longer de rigueur – if one doesn’t include immigration policy of the United States. Likewise, it is not legal to prevent employees from leaving their corporate family – or is it? With salaries that have been stagnant since the 1980’s, few families have the resources to move, sustain themselves long enough to find a decent job, or even attend night classes to improve their education.

As slaves were given minimal rations and poor housing, it is no better today. There are vast neighborhoods in American cities where joblessness is around 25% – 30%, the homes are in disrepair and, as in Detroit, utilities are shut off because the Detroit and Michigan governments have failed to represent these oppressed neighborhoods. The likely fault lies in racism, elitism, and especially gerrymandering. These neighborhoods are full of slaves, are mistreated like slaves and, ironically, even today separate parents and children because a whole family cannot live on food stamps or a meager income by the father which forces him to leave his family so that the family can qualify for welfare.

Still, there was an opportunity to glean even more from those who had poor paying jobs. Banks and mortgage companies misrepresented the cost of buying a home – such a basic need for the lower working class – knowing that later balloon payments would be beyond the income of the borrowers. This resulted in the economic collapse of 2008 and the ruin of financial security for millions of families. Still, the banks made billions of dollars and walked away from this crime on humanity without one prison sentence, not even one trial.

And now corporate greed is taking away the most sacrosanct holiday for families: Thanksgiving.

Is this the work of God?

Is this the work of greed?

Certainly oneness was not used to make decisions about the wellbeing of the greater reality – the need of millions of workers to be normal, family-based human beings.

Ancient Mariner

 

Oneness III

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ONENESS III

Oneness is overwhelmed

All religions have language that relates to morality and godliness. These words have been a mainstay for billions of people since the Egyptian pyramids were built. Slowly, exceptional writings were gathered to capture the wisdom of good works – works that improved a situation for all concerned but also improved reality in general, works that over time would sustain an ameliorative society. Ritual and theological differences aside, these works are the foundation of oneness. Often, however, these works lack the nature of a how-to book; how to get from slot A to Tab A may not be clear.

Throughout history, there are times when society suffers a wrenching change in values. These changes are caused by dramatic transitions in population, invention, and discovery that turn society topsy-turvy. Quick examples are gunpowder, the wheel, the sail, automobiles, airplanes, steam, nationalist conflict, television, financial opportunism, and the Internet. Today, the pressures of change erupt in every quarter from what to eat, to communications, to starving masses, to obsolete national boundaries to oligarchy – both governmental and corporate and exposure to unending wars around the globe.

Unlike the past, however, the eruption is world-wide. No country is exempt from global opportunism, global warming, global population growth and shrinking global resources of which physical space is one. Many countries still live by cultures created many centuries ago. Many countries are artificial – carved by war and politics instead of natural social development. Many still live primitively in deep jungles or on distant islands. All will feel the eruption of the twenty-first century. Our technological capabilities expose us to global awareness that overwhelms our personal, every day values.

Increasingly visible is the global reorganization of super powers and global economic contests – if not wars. The challenge is to find something that will work on any scale. By nature, oneness is personal. Can oneness become global?

Oneness is at the mercy of circumstance. One cannot mandate that selfishness is not permitted; one cannot use force to reduce forceful behavior; one cannot deny greed by redistribution of ill-gotten gains.

Alexander McCall Smith has written a series of books centered on the character Isabel Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a detective prone to philosophical thoughts. In The Careful Use of Compliments[1], there is a passage related to the examination of community oneness:

“Cat went off to prepare Isabel’s lunch, leaving her with The Guardian. She was reading an article on the Middle East and the prospects for peace, which were slim. What acres of newsprint, she thought, what lakes of ink, had been expended on that topic; and always it came back to the same thing, the sense of difference between people, the erection of barriers of religion, clothing, culture. And yet there were differences and it was naïve to imagine that people were all the same – they weren’t. And everybody needed space, physical space, to live their lives amongst those with whom they shared an outlook and values; which led to the depressing conclusion that the recipe for social justice was keeping people separate from one another, each in his own territory, each in the safety of fellows….The problem was that we could no longer have our own cultural spaces; everybody was now too mixed up for that and we had to share.”

Dalhousie makes the case for geographical space, common cultural values and common future and laments that, in the Middle East and across the planet that neighborhoods, geographical and economic groupings of people largely has collapsed as a natural environment. This makes it more difficult for oneness to flourish because of the clash of values and the competition for space and assets.

There are scant few efforts to create “whole town” cultures. Whole towns would be like the old days when a town had everything it needed including retail, medical, recreational and job opportunities. One notable example of trying to build an integrated town culture is the environment at Microsoft Corporation where there are facilities for babysitting, a fitness center, recreation, opportunity to bring the family for a day or two, a 24-hour restaurant and a work schedule that allows for frequent free time on the Microsoft campus. Microsoft has listened to sociologists who suggest Microsoft will experience more creativity, team effort and commitment to Microsoft if a town atmosphere were maintained.

A developer in Florida has designed neighborhoods with all the facilities a town would need and automobiles must be left at an external parking lot. Everything in the town is within walking or bicycle distance.

How do we recreate a town experience based on common geography, culture and viable economy? Any positive social changes made throughout man’s long history were made by only three processes that are effective.

The first is cause and effect. There is a direct correlation between behavior and a directly related outcome. The Microsoft solution is an example of cause and effect. The Ukrainian conflict also is an example of cause and effect. The second is crisis. Survival of the participants at hand can only survive if everyone survives. The Katrina Hurricane threatened tens of thousands of citizens and required a national response. The third is persuasion. Enough influence is applied to alter behavior.

Unfortunately, many issues cover all three, global warming among them. Allowed to continue with uncontrolled fossil fuel consumption, it is a race to see whether fossil fuels are depleted first or Earth becomes uninhabitable. It is likely that the world will approach a crisis that cannot be reversed and damage will be permanent. If the oceans rise nine feet as predicted, Florida will be a much smaller state. Persuasion will never be more tested as a process than when it disrupts global industries and shifts political power between nations.

Cause and effect can be mitigated by regulations and new profit models. When President Eisenhower authorized the Interstate highway system, trains lost their lock on interstate shipping. Trucking and especially big oil evolved quickly. Can regulations be created to move entrepreneurs to non fossil fuel solutions? Many palms in many governments may need to be greased. Many new international obligations must take place.

Crisis is not a deliberate circumstance. It is an act of nature similar to a plague or disruptive weather; it is a byproduct of war; it is an unintended collapse of an economy; a crisis can be personal as well when health and finances suddenly change. A crisis is so invasive that survival becomes the primary motivation and disrupts existing processes.

Persuasion has many forms: cajoling, payoff, rebellion and voting are examples. Each of these processes requires participation of a substantial population to affect culture. Persuasion can be as small as a sentence or two. As today’s American citizens look back in history, it is hard to believe that women could not vote until 1920 – and only then because of a persuasion that began in 1854!

There is one persuasion not mentioned that is important. It is persuasion by example. In the Christian New Testament, there is a popular story told by Jesus about a Samaritan. Samaritans were Jewish in faith but were considered outcasts by the Hebrew nation because Samaritans had mixed blood with Arabs. Nevertheless, a Samaritan comes across a beaten and robbed Jew. Despite the Samaritan’s awareness that the Jew holds him in disdain, he puts the Jew on his donkey, takes him to an inn and pays his expenses. By example, the Samaritan set a standard for oneness. Each reader easily can find moments where they can set an example that increases oneness.

War and forceful incursion do not lead to oneness; they do not consider the greater reality that affects the lives and cultural stability of the enemy. Similarly, corporations can disrupt stable communities by locating large operations without considering the greater situation of the community. Examples are coal mines, Walmart, and other numerous vertical corporations that eliminate community economies, for example Monsanto and hoof-to-store livestock operations.

Typically, oneness is not a goal in decision making today. Profit seems to be the goal in decision making. Profit is not intrinsically bad unless it forgets to reconcile with the greater reality of community.

The question: Relive a moment when you did something that made you feel you had helped someone in a direct way. Relive a moment when you felt you were at great risk along with other people but together the risk was reduced. Relive a moment when you persuaded someone to change their judgment about something. Did these experiences involve an act of compassion? Was oneness accomplished in each situation?

Ancient Mariner

1The Careful Use of Compliments, Alexander McCall Smith, Pantheon Books 2007, ISBN 978-0-375-42301-7

Homo sapiens: Reagent of Planet Earth

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Frequent readers are aware that one of mariner’s favorite subjects is “reality.” Reality, seemingly simple on the surface is a collection of facts representing a moment in time yet simultaneously a complex amalgam with nuances from the sciences to the arts to the senses of each individual. Reality is a conundrum to say the least.

Let us travel out into space, perhaps halfway to the moon and look back at Planet Earth. We see weather patterns floating about over land and water. We see Earth turning in its rotation every 23 hours and 56 minutes. It appears to be a blissful scene. It could last forever.

But it won’t. Did you know that 250 million years ago it took only 22.8 hours for Earth to complete one rotation? Each century, the rotation slows by 1.7 milliseconds. Avoiding a scientific treatise on the subject, the important element is that Planet Earth will not last forever. Further, a few million years down the road, the Sun will have an increasing role in the weather, radioactivity and axial tilt of the Earth. As spoken wisely by every generation, things never stay the same.

The numbers cited above are meaningless given the relatively short time it took for the first vertebrates to evolve into Homo sapiens. Still, it is obvious that nothing organic or living is forever and, in fact, is a bit unstable. To narrow the scope, consider the existence of vertebrates. Homo sapiens is wiping out dozens of species every day. This does not include disappearing insects and creatures that have no spine, for example, coral, bivalves and plant life.

Seven billion people cover Earth like a giant scrubbing pad, scraping the surface as if it were a dirty dish. The “soap” is carbon-based abuses of every kind mixed with chemical and radioactive byproducts of Homo sapiens, and the excessive space and food required to sustain each human. Note that every nonhuman vertebrate lives a balanced natural footprint, taking and returning to nature in a way that does not significantly disturb the status quo.

Why are humans selected to be a rapid reagent to life on Earth? Is this a good thing? Can human intelligence that will force change be attributed to evolution and processes of natural selection? Are humans the latest example in a series of evolutionary shifts? Must the world go through drastic transitions every million years or so? Is this a way of recycling Earth’s resources?

The questions beg a larger understanding of why we are a naturally occurring reagent that will change life on Earth.

Individuals often conjure a logical relationship between dinosaurs and people – both dominant in their time. The dinosaurs lost out to a meteorite that ended normal weather for a long time. Therefore, humans will be stopped only by extraterrestrial events. Nothing on Earth has enough effect to end the species. However, some claim radioactive poisoning from Sunbursts, excessive volcano and earthquake activity or a modern, unstoppable plague.

It is popular to say we are our own worst enemy and at some point Planet Earth will rebel and significantly reduce our number. Nevertheless, across Planet Earth’s lifespan, is destruction by humans a natural cycle? Is Homo sapiens the next “meteorite?” If Planet Earth were aware of human behavior, that behavior may be considered insignificant; we quite often assign ourselves too much importance with regard to geophysical reality.

Reality may be that Homo sapiens is indeed the peak of a long run of vertebrate existence. Scientists project that our population will top out at 12 billion – almost half again more than exist today. Numbers this large definitely will change the global ecosystem, including weather, species and topography.

Reality is that we are evolving faster and faster toward automatonic behavior. Key parts of our normal bodies will be electronic. Our manner of communication will be through electronic networks much more easily than if we had to speak or write. A tiny forerunner of this future world is the grocery card one uses at the grocery store. The store knows what you buy so it will be available to you; the store knows when you shop and how much you pay; the store knows you changed brand due to pricing changes; the store knows you have a new baby or a teenager. The store pharmacy has your health profile. With this information, the store sends you personal coupons, suggests magazine subscriptions, advises available neighborhood clinics and doctors, and may even make it not necessary to come to the store at all – your food is delivered to your door if not to your pantry and freezer. Neither you nor a grocery employee ever said a word to make all this happen.

Reality is that we are master of our own genome. We can alter Homo sapiens dramatically in one generation. It will be possible to change every feature of a fetus to have the perfect child. Medicine will modify genes to prevent genetic diseases and mental disorders. Homo sapiens will be freed from the slow, evolutionary process of achieving character traits through accidental changes generation to generation. Examples of all these evolutionary powers already exist. Only the process of making the changes available to the public need be added.

Reality is that the definition of “nation” will become less of an independent state and more like a consortium of producers.  Nations will retain traditional cultural values but will no longer require a complete Gross Domestic Product. The GDP will be comprised of economic output shared with other countries in an international marketplace (corporatism).

Given that Homo sapiens will not perish on a planet that is changing, our reality will never stand still and will be indefinable as we move into a new evolutionary phase – automatons. Our differences in appearance, freedom, and choice will be virtually controlled by electronic collaboration of banks, government, retail and presumed class. The mariner learned long ago that the opossum had a very stable genome because it was an ancient species that long ago stabilized any irregularities or inefficiencies. But, the mariner asks, “Can you tell one opossum from another?” As we evolve, we will be more like the opossum.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

The Bank Bubble

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As frequent readers may know, the mariner is at once a progressive dreamer, skeptical of human intelligence, a critic of politics in general and an alarmist about the ability of international cooperation to solve global issues. Angst should be a four-letter word.

This morning I read news about everything becoming more difficult, especially in the economic sector. Since about 2005, central banks around the world increasingly support national and international economies. Each year, pressure on the banks’ “finger in the dike” grows. Central, AKA government banks, AKA the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, are leaning against global debt, trying to prevent inflation, rising interest rates, shifts in monetary value between nations and waiting, waiting, waiting for someone’s economy to grow – anyone’s!

This morning, it was bad news about Europe. The European Union central bank has little influence over monetary exchange policies between member nations. Managing monetary policy in the EU is quite truly like herding cats. As a result, the EU GDP slipped noticeably. Add to this the unstable relationship with Russia, which supplies forty percent of Europe’s natural gas, and things don’t look good. Europe, combined with the US market is the largest international economy in the world – at the moment.

Real return on Treasury notes has been dropping steadily for twenty years; inflation, around 2+ percent, makes real return less than the 3% ceiling that has been held in place by the Federal Reserve. Each year’s inflation diminishes return value further. Consequently, several investment houses have begun dumping their Treasury holdings. PIMCO, the largest investment firm, is leading the way.

What this means to national economic policy is that the US is in no position to bail out the EU. If the EU economy continues to slow, the US can only slow with them. Further, suppose China decides the same thing and begins selling its vast investment in government bonds? Sooner or later, dumping large amounts of government securities has the effect of inflation – the US will have to cover the difference between real return and 3%.

What this means to you and the mariner is that our government, in fact many governments, are facing an inflation bubble. The situation is identical to you and the mariner extending our debt but at a higher interest rate. We may not be able to pay our debts because real income is not rising at the same time. Iowa farmers in the 1970’s know all about this. The small farm disappeared under thousands of foreclosures.

Even the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), competitors to the US-EU GDP, are having difficulty clearing the path to engage in rapid growth.

The mariner’s advice is to rid one’s debt held in credit cards and unsecured loans. This debt will prevent us from sustaining our discretionary spending as income remains static but interest rates rise. By no means extend your debt; pay it off the hard way, that is, pay down debt at a rate that is much greater than minimum payments. Spend cash as often as possible. If nothing else, it will frustrate Google and Experian, who know everything we do on our computers and smart phones.

The less we owe, the easier time we will have when our government must face the music and let the inflation dog off the leash.

Ancient Mariner

 

BRIC

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The following material is quoted from Globalsherpa.com.

“The BRIC countries label refers to a select group of four large, developing countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The four BRIC countries are distinguished from a host of other promising emerging markets by their demographic and economic potential to rank among the world’s largest and most influential economies in the 21st century (and by having a reasonable chance of realizing that potential).  Together, the four original BRIC countries comprise more than 2.8 billion people or 40 percent of the world’s population, cover more than a quarter of the world’s land area over three continents, and account for more than 25 percent of global GDP.

BRIC Countries’ Path to 2050

A country’s population and demographics, among other factors, directly affect the potential size of its economy and its capacity to function as an engine of global economic growth and development. As early as 2003, Goldman Sachs forecasted that China and India would become the first and third largest economies by 2050, with Brazil and Russia capturing the fifth and sixth spots.

Growing BRIC Middle Class

The rapid economic growth and demographics of China and India are expected to give rise to a large middle class whose consumption would help drive the BRICs’ economic development and expansion of the global economy.  The increase in the middle class population of the BRIC countries is forecasted to more than double that of the developed G7 economies.”

By 2050, China and India will surpass the United States and European Union by sixty-one percent, that is, the economic production will be $105 billion compared to $65 billion for the US and EU. Brazil and Russia will add another $25 billion to the BRIC economy.

The BRIC plans to base its financial standard on a different currency than the US dollar, which is the global standard today. Further, China and India are investing billions of dollars in science and technology. By 2050, China will invest $20 billion per year. Even if the US wanted to emphasize investment in science and technology, it cannot match these numbers.

It is likely that the US will not be the center of invention and innovation.

There is a danger that the US dollar will deflate in relative value when confronted by BRIC’s enormous growth. Travel and imported goods will be more expensive.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a massive trade agreement that will benefit corporate investment in the Pacific Rim with less expensive costs and unhindered by many human rights standards.  The trade agreement will bind the economies of most Pacific Rim countries to China’s economy – using a different financial standard than the US dollar.

The United States (and the European Union) cannot change the economic tidal wave representing forty percent of the world’s population. Further, the US is in a financial bind caused by the Federal Government’s poor management of the economy. The EU is struggling with a euro that does not have common value across Europe and has not established a powerful central bank to control the euro value.

Knowing all this, one is forced to realize that recovery from disparate income between the rich and poor, thereby reestablishing a strong middle class, will take much longer than we may envision. As the years go by, the dysfunctional Federal Government leaves the Country further behind each year it does nothing about education, investment in leading edge ideas and technology, and revising the tax laws – including corporate loopholes. Still today, the major banks control too much of the economy, earning billions in profit that do not enrich the US economy.

By 2050, there may be more opportunity for manufacturing in the US because the US dollar will have less value internationally. One looks for scraps of hope as the golden age of the United States begins to fade.

Ancient Mariner