Dave Pollard's essays on politics & economics.

	April 26, 2008

A Terrible and Silent Crisis: The Destruction of the American Working Class North American society prides itself on being classless. Almost no one in North America calls him/herself lower-class or upper-class, and people who describe themselves as 'middle-class' (a class which really no longer exists in North America) do so hesitantly. Few even describe themselves as 'working-class', since that seems to imply it's a place one resides for life (which is the case, but to acknowledge this fact would put the lie to the myth of social mobility). Despite the Great American (and Canadian) Dream (anyone can be President or Billionaire if they work long and hard at it), your chances of moving up even one quintile in the economic and social order are negligible, and dependent more on luck than intelligence, endeavour or education. My friend Joe Bageant's book Deer Hunting With Jesus explains through personal stories his brutal assessment of just how strong the class system in the US really is, why the classes are and always have been at war, and why that plays perfectly into the hands of the right-wing political and economic interests there. These are stories about the people Joe grew up with and calls friends, and to write about their lives so bluntly and candidly is an act of incredible courage and honesty. This is a society where poverty and illness are stigmatized as symptoms of laziness, ignorance and self-neglect, a society built on two-way class vs class fear of the unknown and misunderstood. The principal determinant of one's class in America, and the hermetic worldview that comes with it, is education. More than anything, Deer Hunting is a plea to those of progressive inclination to meet with their working-class peers, at a grass-roots level, to understand how they live, how they think, and why they think that way, and to find, as hard as it will be to do so, common cause with them against the corporatist exploiters and their right-wing political and religious handmaidens, and common cause for universal health care, quality education for all, a fair pension and a decent wage for a day's work -- the end of the "dead-end social construction that all but guarantees failure". I'd given away three copies of Joe's book before I'd ready anything beyond the brilliant introduction -- I just knew the people I gave them to needed to read the book more than I did. If you've read Lakoff, and kind of understand the huge divide between conservative and liberal worldviews, you have to read Bageant, so you really understand the chasm between the worldviews of the uneducated and educated. When you read Joe's astonishing stories, all of a sudden what George Lakoff says makes sense. And, just as astonishingly, so does Bush's 2004 win, and the terrifying prospect that Republican arch-conservatives could be poised to establish a dynasty in the US that will accelerate the Cheney-Bush regime's project for endless war, bankrupting and dismantling government, and ending the separation of church and state, and which will last until that country's final, ghastly unraveling occurs (I'm betting that will happen later this century). I picked up my fourth copy of Deer Hunting With Jesus in Australia, which includes a little orientation for Australians not familiar with current US culture. This orientation was probably unnecessary for two reasons: Educated Australians (and Canadians and Europeans) probably know as much about current US culture as their American counterparts. And uneducated people from these countries, I strongly suspect, think much like their US counterparts (though less fanatically) -- Joe's description of uneducated Americans sent shudders up my spine, as I recognized in their stories and attitudes those of many uneducated Canadians I thought I knew, or didn't care to know (and now understand much better). There is so much wisdom in this book, and it is so important to read to achieve an understanding of the current predicament of the US (and hence of the world), that I would not presume to précis it here. If you read only one book this year, please make it Deer Hunting With Jesus. Some of the key lessons for me: "Universal access to a decent education would lift the lives of millions over time...Never experiencing the life of the mind scars entire families for generations". After reading Joe's stories I have new respect for those who have taught themselves what they needed to learn to be informed, independent citizens, and an appreciation for how those without education are oppressed to an almost unimaginable degree. At least 60% of Americans are "working class", i.e. they do not have power over their work -- when they work, how much they get paid or whether they'll be "cut loose from their job [or self-employed labour dependent on big corporations] at the first shiver of Wall Street". The critical aspects of the "terrible and silent crisis" destroying working-class Americans are: (a) the working class' own passivity, antipathy to intellect, and belligerence towards the outside world, (b) an economic, corporatist system that benefits from keeping them uneducated, fearful and debt-ridden (and hence holders of low-wage, nonunion, disposable, part-time, noninsured jobs), (c) a health-care system that is especially dysfunctional in working-class areas and whose few quality services are unaffordable to the working class, (d) their dreadful, fat-laden diet (which is all that they can afford) and the toll it takes on their health, and (e) religious and political leaders who prey on their ignorance and exploit their fears. Almost as bad as the corporatists at exploiting the working class are the rich, uneducated entrepreneurial class who live in their neighbourhoods -- realtors, lawyers, brokers, gas retailers, "downtown pickle vendors" and other "middlemen who stand on the necks of the working poor". This "mob of Kiwanis and Rotarians" who dominate local politics help get tax breaks and regulation exemptions for big corporations, in return for financial favours.  As I read this book I realized that my book on Natural Enterprise, which was in part designed to help the chronically underemployed to find meaningful work, will be totally inaccessible to the working class -- they don't have the literacy or basis of understanding of how an economy works to even begin to understand its processes and messages. I can appreciate how working-class people, and their friends (like Joe) perceive "entrepreneurs" to be just the low-level agents of the corporatists, not a means for their liberation from wage slavery. "Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial free market economy does not make for optimism or open-mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink." Joe tells how scourges like Tyson Foods and Rubbermade belittle, abuse, threaten and browbeat their workers into obedience, and acceptance of their lot in life. As a result, "the intellectual lives of most working-class Americans consist of things that sound as if they might or should be true" (e.g. that we should all "support our troops"), and what is engendered as a result is a "tide of national meanness".  Rich Republicans still meet the working-class and small business class on their own turf, at community activities important to these people. Progressives don't even visit, so no other voice is ever heard in the 'red' communities, and as a result "the left understands not a thing about how this political and economic system has hammered the humanity of ordinary working people...letting them be worked cheap and farmed like a human crop for profit". As a consequence of this numbing existence, "it is [a huge myth] that small towns are thrown into deep mourning when one of their young is killed in Iraq...There is growing dissatisfaction with the war, but it is because we are not winning, not because of the dead." The mortgage and banking industries exploit workers' dreams of home ownership, supported by the corporatists who need continued growth and rising home prices to finance ever-increasing consumer spending, in the fragile house of cards which is now beginning to implode in the US. Gullible poor workers who buy mobile homes on rented property are essentially "buying large rapidly-depreciating vehicles and paying for space to park them", the absolute antithesis of real home ownership, and a recipe for bankruptcy. But as long as workers are taught that "they are not worthy of a traditional house or decent treatment in the labor market or a living wage", this is the best they can hope for and aspire to. Probably the most eye-opening chapter for me was the one where he explains Americans' zeal for gun ownership and fierce opposition to gun control (a view Joe himself shares). He provides credible data to support gun owners' claims that (at least in a country as violent as the US) the mere possession of a gun deters more crime than gun ownership precipits. Progressives should look at the facts and realize that their passion for gun control is alienating them, and the parties they support, from 70 million gun owners for whom the issue is a pivotal one at the ballot box.  At the same time, Joe is concerned about the propensity of many Americans (which he later ascribes in part to their belligerent Scots-Irish heritage) to carry their enthusiasm for guns to a degree that makes them "devotees to lethality". He worries about its explosive potential: "What happens when this country hits Peak Oil demand and the electrical grid starts browning down and even little things become desperately difficult or unaffordable? What happens if the wrong kind of president declares the wrong kind of national emergency? What will be the first reflex of those hundreds of thousands of devotees to lethality?" Joe is concerned that this belligerence and passion for religious fundamentalism is behind the passion for wars in the Mid-East and Asia and even a passion for a nuclear war. He analyzes the low-level perpetrators of Abu Ghraib like Lynddie England and finds their behaviour completely consistent with the pent-up anger, ignorance and willingness to follow orders that those of Scots-Irish ancestry, or influenced by that culture, exhibit around the world and especially in workng-class US communities. Joe describes the leaders of the fundamentalist churches in the US as poorly educated breakaways from the lower ranks of other churches. Their lack of "fancy learnin'" is unrecognized by their equally uneducated followers. Fundamentalists now make up a quarter of the electorate, a segment that has recently and cynically been politicized by corporatists, and is overwhelmingly white, with a high-school education or less, and working-class. A growing minority of evangelicals are believers in replacing secular government and laws with Christian ones, and support what can only be called Holy Wars against non-Christian nations, to accelerate the prophecy of the second coming and the Reign of Christ. A majority believe in the Rapture, which means they could care less about the future of their nation or the environment. Unlike public schools, and unlike health care and other civic organizations, fundamentalist congregations are still functioning, growing and open to all. And Christian education and Christian home-schooling are filling the void of a crumbling public education system, and helping to develop the cadres of right-wing believers in the future. They have already achieved astonishing penetration of the upper echelons of the Bush administration and many political establishments and educational institutions and NGOs. The product of this brainwashing by uneducated religious leaders is an electorate "with eyes, that is to say the camera to shoot what is all around them, but no intellectual software to edit or make sense of it all.", victims of "an extraordinarily dangerous mass psychosis" that Joe predicts will outlast any brief respite in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Joe points out the astonishing popularity of the most grotesque "entertainments" -- videos circulating on and off the Internet showing the grisly deaths of both Americans and Iraqis in the Bush War -- the ultimate reality shows. The former are used to whip up fury, indignation and xenophobia, and the latter are a spectacle of religious eye-for-an-eye retribution, applauded by Mel Gibson-style viewers as vengeance in God's name. Joe is not surprised at this, or at the probability that many more Abu Ghraib type atrocities are occurring worldwide in US secret prisons, directed by the CIA and perpetrated by working class, uneducated, Scots-Irish troops many with streaks of religious zealotry. And he was not surprised at the monstrous animal cruelty at the Pilgrims Pride plant (workers reveling in stomping chickens to death), where Lynddie England used to work until she quit because management didn't care about the atrocities that went on there. You come from violent stock, and get put down violently all your life, you tend to perpetuate the pattern. Violence, in the streets, in the workplace, in entertainment, and in theatres of war, defines the working class life experience. The rest of us would just rather not see it or acknowledge it. There is a complicated and ironic explanation why huge not-for-profit (but very profitable) hospitals centralized in affluent communities are starving out smaller, local hospitals in poorer areas, to the point that health-care facilities in poorer communities are mostly now just places exhausted working class Americans are "discarded when they can no longer work". Joe explains the perverse way many of these institutions are forced to operate, often treating long-term patients for illnesses they don't have and worsening their condition. These facilities are now the largest cause of bankruptcies in the US, even though 2/3 of these bankrupts have health insurance (thanks to high premiums and deductibles and uncovered costs), and half of uninsured Americans owe money to health-care institutions. Joe presents some alarming data on the health care and social security crisis looming especially for older women in the US. Two thirds of Social Security recipients are women, and 90% of them receive no other income, putting most of them below the poverty line at a time the Bushies are trying to cut, bankrupt and/or abolish the system entirely. Half of Americans depend entirely on the government for help when they get old. "Social security is the most important ongoing domestic story in America", Joe asserts bluntly, explaining that it is destroying the social fabric of working class families as many face the dread of regularly visiting elder family members in horrific institutions, elders who paid much into the system and now plead desperately and hopelessly for escape from these terrible places, escape that never comes. The bottom line of this vicious cycle is that half of Americans are functionally illiterate, and poor education, poor health care, poor nutrition, corporatist oppression and exploitation are creating a time bomb that, in the short run, vents itself in anger against pontificating liberals they never see and don't understand, and in the long run could explode into bloody and nationwide violence. These people, living right in our midst but whom we never reach out to, simply don't have the wherewithal to improve their own lot -- "they are too uneducated, too conditioned to the idea that being a consumer is the same thing as being a citizen." Joe laments the fact that both affluent and poor are now being brought up with neither the capacity nor the need for self-recognition -- for discovering who they are as individuals. Instead, they are given a 'menu' of lifestyles to choose from, each with its own defining brand names and ensembles. "Adult yokels and urban sophisticates can choose from a preselected array of possible selves based solely on what they like to eat, see, wear, hear and drive." None of us can, any longer, "make up his or her identity from scratch." The upper-middle and affluent suburban "catering classes", those who support the corporatist centre (orange band in my chart above), are more to blame for its excesses than the working class because the catering classes at least have the education and power to see and resist it. When I published this chart a couple of years ago, it never occurred to me, in my liberal affluent comfort, that many or most of those living on the Edge are not at all able to see the centre for what it is, or to have any inkling that they need to pull further away from it, not aspire to become part of it. We are all, Joe argues, prisoners of this corporatist political and economic system, caught, more or less, in its web. "America's much-ballyhood liberty is largely fictional. Three million of us are [in prisons or on parole]...The rest of us are captives of credit, our jobs, our need for health insurance, or our ceaseless quest for a decent retirement fund."  What's worse, "You never know you are in prison until you try the door". And America's working class in particular has been so systematically dumbed down that they can't even see the door. America, he says, cannot hope to stop messing up the rest of the world until it solves its own mess. "When social conscience extends no farther than ourselves, our friends, our families then Darfur and secret American prisons abroad are not [perceived to be] a problem". This book is about the horrific mess that is America in the 21st century, but there is nothing here for those of us living in other countries to be smug about. American culture is being embraced everywhere in the world (and not, for the most part, forced down anyone's throats). And our cultures already exhibit many of the same qualities and propensities that are so magnified in the US and portrayed in such terrifying light by Joe Bageant. So no matter where in the world you live, please buy several copies of Deer Hunting With Jesus and give them to people who do not understand why George Bush won the US election of 2004. This is important, and Joe has done all the hard work and research for us, in a courageous, personal and awesome portrait of the true nature of the most powerful country on the planet. We need everyone to hear this story, to understand what has been going on under our noses all along, that we never got quite close enough to see. Category: US Politics 11:33:33 AM  trackback []  comment []

	March 10, 2008

The Phone Company That Doesn't Answer the Phone I just have to pass this on. This is the typical "customer service" that we now get from all large corporations. This is the reason why we have to walk away from this crap, and not put up with it any more. I have not changed a word of this e-mail exchange with Rogers, Canada's second largest telecom conglomerate and part of the tight oligopoly that controls all the mainstream media in Canada except our beleaguered public broadcaster, the CBC. Here's the set-up: Fed up with lousy service from Bell, Canada's largest media conglomerate, I decided to switch to Rogers, which at least had a reputation for better cell tower coverage. I went to a "Rogers Plus" store not too far from my work, but a long way from where I live. They sold me a Sony phone with a built-in mp3 player and camera, and enough memory (8GB) for my music and photo collection. They ordered an FM transmitter that would allow me to play the mp3s on my car radio, from another Rogers store 'nearby'. They said I couldn't pick it up myself, but that it would probably be in the next day and they would call me when it was, to save an unnecessary trek over. No word from 'Adam' the next day or the next week or the week after that. Finally I phone the store...no answer. I phone again the next day and the next day and the next day, all at different times...no answer. No answering machine. This is a phone company, remember.  I phone customer service. They give me an alternate number. I dial it. It's the wrong one...for another store. I phone back. They tell me there is no alternate number. They try the number. No answer. Because their phone company won't answer the phone, they tell me, I will have to go there in person. They cannot take a message for me. I ask to speak to someone more senior. I'm put on hold for 30 minutes, then cut off. I decide to try e-mail. If the phone company doesn't answer the phone anymore, I decide, maybe they'll answer e-mail. Here's how it went: ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to dave.pollard  Mar 1 (9 days ago)     Thank you for your inquiry. Due to an increase in email volume, it may take us up to 5 business days to respond to your email. We apologize for this inconvenience. Your reference number is 34385356. Please keep this number for future reference. Over 2500 questions and answers at your fingertips. Find the answers to your questions today - visit www.rogers.com/FAQ. ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to dave.pollard  Mar 4 (6 days ago)     Dear Mr. Pollard, We apologize for the delay in responding to your email.  We are currently receiving higher email volume than normal, and are attempting to answer all email as quickly as possible in the order they arrive. You have reached our on line Customer Service Support Team.  We would be happy to assist you with any inquiries you may have.  Although we are not able to offer you assistance over the phone, we will do everything we can to assist you via email. Kindly provide us with the details of your inquiry, so that we may investigate and provide you with some options. If this email did not completely answer your concerns or you would like further assistance please feel free to visit our Help site at http://help.yahoo.com/rogers/ You can also fill out the online form provided on the site to contact our email department. If you need to contact us by phone, our number is 1-888-288-4663. Sincerely, Dwight S. Rogers Online Customer Service http://www.rogers.com Case ID: 34385356 customercare@shoprogers.com ------------------------ Dave Pollard to Rogers Mar 4 (6 days ago)     This is like a bad comedy. I DID provide you with the details in my initial e-mail. I ordered an FM transmitter for my Sony Ericson phone/mp3 player two weeks ago, from your King St W store (Adam). He said he would call me back in a day when it came in. Since then I have repeatedly called the store number and no one ever answers, and there is no answering machine. All I want to know is IS MY PART READY FOR PICKUP? Please call the store and find out and let me know, and then TELL THEM TO FIX THEIR PHONE. ROGERS -- THE PHONE COMPANY THAT DOESN'T ANSWER THE PHONE. (And doesn't read e-mails either). Dave Pollard very unhappy customer ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to Dave Mar 4 (6 days ago)     Thank you for your inquiry. Due to an increase in email volume, it may take us up to 5 business days to respond to your email. We apologize for this inconvenience. Your reference number is 34512887. Please keep this number for future ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to Dave Mar 7 (4 days ago) Dear Dave Pollard, We noticed that you recently contacted Rogers Communications, utilizing the 'Contact Us by Email' service on Rogers.com. Customer Service is very important to Rogers Communications. We continually strive to exceed our customers' expectations. The Email Team "Ecare" would like to acknowledge and apologize that we did not meet your expectations of receiving a response within 24 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience we caused you. Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service. In your recent email, you have informed us that you ordered an FM Transmitter for your wireless phone at one of our stores, and theyw ere suppose to contact you back.When you try to contact the store they will not answer the phone. We apologize for this inconveneince. Please reply back with the store name address and conatct number that you are trying to call. We appreciate your continuing patronage. Please contact us at your convenience if you have any further inquiries. For future email correspondence with respect to this e-mail, please quote reference number 34512887 Regards, Diane P. Rogers Online Customer Service http://www.rogers.com ------------------------ Dave Pollard to Rogers Mar 7 (4 days ago) Already told you -- Rogers Plus store on King St W in Toronto -- attn Adam. ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to Dave Mar 7 (4 days ago)     Thank you for your inquiry. Due to an increase in email volume, it may take us up to 5 business days to respond to your email. We apologize for this inconvenience. Your reference number is 34624849. Please keep this number for future ------------------------ Rogers Wireless Customer Service to Dave 7:33 PM (1 hour ago)         Dear Dave Pollard, We noticed that you recently contacted Rogers Communications, utilizing the 'Contact Us by Email' service on Rogers.com. Customer Service is very important to Rogers Communications. We continually strive to exceed our customers' expectations. The Email Team "Ecare" would like to acknowledge and apologize that we did not meet your expectations of receiving a response within 24 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience we caused you. In your recent email you have informed us of the store location where you are unable to contact anyone. We have tried contacting them on your behalf and had another Rogers Plus location confirm the phone number (416-603-7979) but there was no answer. We apologize for this inconvenience and we would recommend going directly to this location if you are still unable to get in contact with them by telephone. Should you have any further questions or require further assistance in this matter, please do not hesitate to contact us at your convenience. We hope you will try 'Contact Us by Email' again if any need arises, to allow us to show you our dedication to excellent customer service. For future email correspondence with respect to this e-mail, please quote reference number 34624849 Regards, Vanessa S. Rogers Online Customer Service http://www.rogers.com ------------------------ I swear I have not changed a single word of the 'excellent customer service' crap in any of these messages, Not one word. OK readers, I'm open to suggestions. 9:40:46 PM  trackback []  comment []

	March 7, 2008

Friday Flashback: Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Economics A lot of people are intimidated by the vocabulary and complexity of economics, so when many of the dangerous myths of traditional economics are espoused (e.g. economies of scale, that the market is democratic and nearly 'perfect', that 'free' trade benefits all, that wealth 'trickles down' etc.), they have no basis to counter them. There are several economists who have debunked the nonsense of traditional economics and sketched out alternative economic principles and methodologies that actually work to the benefit of people and the environment. I have written about three of these gurus of social and environmental economics, Herman Daly. Thomas Princen and Richard Douthwaite: An interview with Daly in the online journal Developing Ideas explains why conventional economics no longer works and why 'free' trade is in almost no one's interest,  My review of Princen's book The Logic of Sufficiency, which builds on Daly's economic theory, outlines the economic principles underlying a sustainable economy.  My articles on Douthwaite include this walk-through of Short Circuit, his (free online) book laying out a blueprint for a new community-based, sustainable economy. If you want to know how to debate with traditional economists and politicians who still spout GDP and official unemployment rates as the measures of a healthy society, you owe it to yourself to familiarize yourself with this subject, and the work of these three individuals will get you started. If you want to explore Douthwaite's ideas in more detail, consider Peter Brown's book The Commonwealth of Life, which lays out principles and duties for stewardship of Earth and its natural resources. And if you want to get a step ahead of me, pick up a copy of Canadian economist Mark Anielski's new book The Economics of Happiness (forward by Herman Daly). 7:55:09 PM  trackback []  comment []

	March 4, 2008

Peer Production and the Myth of Economies of Scale (chart is explained in more detail in this earlier Gift/Generosity Economy article) If you read the business press, you will find, just about every day, stories about acquisitions and takeovers of small companies by bigger companies. Some large corporations now brag that their business is taking over small companies. The studies by experts in corporate finance have repeatedly shown that in 70-90% of cases these transactions "destroy value" -- in other words, the value of the combined entity is less than the value of the two combining entities before the combination. Yet the share value of the combined entity is usually greater than that of the two combining entities. What's going on here? The corporations would have you believe that the combination promises "economies of scale" -- that redundant positions can be eliminated, duplicate processes eliminated, volume discounts obtained from suppliers, and efficiencies obtained by combining operations. Anyone who has ever been through a combination can tell you that this almost never occurs. In fact, costs rise after the combination because of diseconomies of scale -- the larger the organization, the greater the hierarchy, the more the bureaucracy, and the more infrastructure is needed to keep it all connected. Small is agile. Large is clumsy. There are no efficiencies of scale. So why do these transactions still occur? In a word, power. Consolidation isn't about the consolidation of resources, it's about the consolidation of power. Size gives you four types of power: Power over regulators: Oligopolies of three or four companies controlling an industry (and this is the case in most industries now -- check out the wonderful blog Oligopoly Watch if you doubt me) have the power (and money) to lobby governments to deregulate their industries, provide them with massive subsidies, introduce 'free' trade agreements to expand the oligopoly's reach globally, and introduce and enforce intellectual property laws that inhibit innovation and block new competitors from entering the market. We used to have 'anti-combines' laws to prevent this market distortion but the oligopolies have effectively had all such regulations eliminated, neutered, or rendered unenforceable. So now governments are effectively in the back pockets of the corporatist oligopolies. That's power, and it brings with it enormous profit. Power over consumers: Oligopolies can and do fix prices so that consumers have no choice but to pay these prices or do without. Those that try to find workarounds like file-sharing to circumvent oligopoly price-gouging are threatened with lawsuits and jail by the huge armies of lawyers that the oligopolies employ. These oligopolies also control the media and blanket the airwaves with their propaganda. The law of 'supply and demand' is hence subverted as the suppliers control the market. Power over suppliers: Oligopolies can and do bully suppliers to sell to them at prices just high enough to keep them solvent and dependent on the oligopolies (this type of oligopoly, more correctly called an oligopsony, essentially dictates ever-decreasing prices they will pay to manufacturers or wholesalers, à la Wal-Mart, since there are no significant alternative ways for manufacturers or wholesalers to get their products to the consumer marketplace). If you're both a supplier and a customer of oligopolies (like small farmers for example) you get squeezed at both ends. They have all the power. Power over employees: Oligopolies can and do bully employees to work for minimal wages and benefits or have their jobs offshored to struggling nations whose people are so desperate they'll work for almost nothing. And why are the people of struggling nations so desperate? Because these same oligopolies work in cahoots with despots and corrupt officials in those nations to steal the land and natural wealth of those nations and leave behind nothing but pollution, waste and destitution. Although the inequality between rich and poor has never been higher, the power of 'organized' labour has never been lower. The power rests with the oligopolies. This is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle. We aren't going to solve it through political means, or by trying to find ethical companies to buy from (there are few left, and those that are left cannot compete with slave labour wages of the oligopolies, so most consumers can't afford, on their slave labour wages, to buy ethical, quality, or healthy products). The only solution lies in walking away from the oligopoly economy and creating our own Peer Production / Generosity Economy. This alternative economy is based on maximizing well-being, not corporate profit. It is based on trust, not power. It is based on sharing and equalization, not on greed. To participate in this alternative economy, we each have to invest something instead of money: our time. The Generosity Economy is based on knowledge -- knowledge of who can and will do what, and who needs what. It is based on the liberating principle that instead of working 'for a living' doing something we hate so we can afford to buy what we need, we instead produce what we're good at producing (and like producing), put it on the table for others to take, and take back (from what others have produced) what we need. It's that simple. It's entirely economically viable, but it will require a major investment of time to set up and maintain the self-managed knowledge bases of what we have to offer, what we need, and who is available and interested in co-producing with us other stuff that's needed. We are already Peer Producing a lot of things: Open Source software, information and entertainment on the Internet (Creative Commons), scientific exchange, and social collaborations (e.g. community barn-raisings and community broadcasters, and volunteer work, which gives the 'donor' as much as the 'recipient'). Many non-Western cultures give without expectation of payment, because they know that an investment in social relationships always ultimately pays big dividends. The Net Neutrality champions are working hard to prevent the oligopolies from increasing the price paid for Internet bandwidth to producers, including Peer Producers. The oligopolies want to price uploading out of the reach of the rest of us, to preserve their oligopoly on production. They want us only to consume, to download, and of course they want us to be able to consume only what they produce, at their fixed price. The whole idea of Peer Production is to let us all become producers, let us all collaborate with others, ad hoc, where multiple skills, talents and resources are needed to produce something that's needed, and, because this production is shared, generously, to let us obtain what we need from others. In the case of needs that are material (physical goods and services that must be provided hands on), these Peer Production networks should generally be local, community-based. Sending goods and people long distances when more local sources are available is wasteful and dysfunctional (and remember, there are no economies of scale). In the case of needs that are not material (those that can be provided for virtually, or as bits instead of atoms) the Peer Production networks can be global, provided anytime from anywhere. Individually, and separately, we can't compete with the power of oligopolies. But together, working collaboratively as peers, we can have far more power over our own lives, our economy, our society, and the well-being of all-life-on-Earth, than oligopolies could ever dream of having. A century ago, to fight the corporatist oligopolies, we organized in labour unions. Peer Production and the Generosity Economy is the 21st century 'labour union', united this time not to negotiate with producers, but to render them obsolete, to replace them. Category: Alternative Gift Economies 10:15:05 PM  trackback []  comment []

	January 30, 2008

Ten Signs the US and Canada are Failing States Last year I reported on Jeff Vail's analysis of México as a 'failing state'. The signs he reported included the presence of independence groups (the Zapatistas) who have just given up on the dysfunctional government, the collapse of key economic resources (agriculture and oil), vast disparity of wealth, cynicism about the purpose of voting and other democratic behaviours, the use of 'manufactured' crises and fear to distract the people from government incompetence and impotence, and the growing prominence of organized crime and corruption. These same signs are prevalent in Belize, and I witnessed them all last week, since an election there is on the horizon. It confirmed my sense that the nation-state has largely outlived its usefulness and is on its last legs everywhere as our unsustainable civilization nears its inevitable collapse. Outside of Europe, which has problems of its own, the balanced-economy model that allows both government and individual enterprise to each do what they do best, seems to have been given up as hopelessly idealistic. And that got me thinking about whether the US and Canada are likely to follow México quite quickly into disintegration and anarchy as the central authority simply no longer offers enough to the people to warrant its continued support. Here are the ten reasons why this just might happen, and sooner than we think: Crushing debts and trade deficits: Argentina a few years ago was the latest textbook example of what happens when a country borrows vastly more money than it can ever hope to repay. The US has the largest national debt and largest trade deficit that the world has ever known, and both of these are still growing at an alarming rate. Canada is arguably even less self-sufficient than the US (when bad economic news is reported in the US, the $US rises in value relative to the Canadian dollar, because of Canada's total trade dependence on the US). Any collapse of the US currency and hence the US economy (rated even by the conservative Davos economists, last week, as the global threat with the highest combination of probability and severity) will be immediately followed by a similar collapse in Canada. It has just been far too easy for Canada to extract and export its raw materials to the US, adding little or no value to the natural wealth we inherited and are now stealing from future generations, destroying our environment in the process. Poor service: You know your economy is in trouble when: It becomes cheaper to throw things out and replace them than to repair and maintain them It makes sense to sell you car and house and buy a new one because repair costs exceed depreciation Health care reaches the point that the majority resort to alternative medicine and self-care Infant mortality is at third-world levels and the rates of chronic environmentally-caused diseases are soaring past the point of affordability to treat them People expect poor service both before and after they buy a product Public education has declined into a dysfunctional and expensive child care and unemployment deferral system. Lineups ('Queues'): Long lines are a symptom of demand greatly outstripping oligopoly-constrained supply, of systems that have grown too large to function, and of production and distribution systems that belie the myth of the 'efficient market'. Markets work when they respond to public needs affordably. Today's North American markets increasingly serve only the wants of the rich, and make the rest line up for manufactured scarcity. Choice among poor quality, undifferentiated Tweedledum and Tweedledee products is no choice at all -- it's just oligopoly brand propaganda. Zero 'value-added' production: Almost all of the cost of commercial breakfast cereal is advertising. Most of the cost of 'brand name' jeans is the markup that the brand owner applies without doing anything more than licensing the label to the Chinese manufacturer, and hyping the brand. Most of the cost of almost everything now is the exorbitant profit that shareholders and obscenely overpaid executives demand for their oligopoly goods and services, for virtually no value added. Oligopoly power and intellectual property 'rights', bought inexpensively from, and enforced by, compliant governments, prevents small and innovative competitors from entering their markets. Nothing of value is done: labour is all expended pushing paper, suing people, and trying to persuade people that products are worth far more than they actually are. Soaring inequality of wealth: The income disparity (Gini) index in the US, and increasingly in Canada as well, is comparable to that in the world's most corrupt struggling nations. Such wealth inequality can only be sustained by deliberate and ruthless means -- theft, bribery, corruption, cheating, lying, anti-competition conspiracy, relentless propaganda and suppression of dissent. The poor are made to feel guilty and ashamed of their poverty, their illness and their unemployment, when they should be angry.  An economy dominated by (in)security: Defense is now the #1 industry in the US (by a huge margin), and is moving up fast in Canada. A sign of a failing state is one that spends more protecting the property, security and interests of the rich than it spends on the health, education and welfare of the mainstream population. In most struggling nations, there is not enough money to do both. In Canada and the US there is, but there is a growing expectation that this will be short-lived. So those that already 'got theirs' are obsessed with security, as it becomes increasingly clear that there will soon not be enough of anything to go around, and as the inequality of income and wealth is increasingly seen not as enterprising, but as egregious.  Crumbling infrastructure: The soaring cost to repair and replace decaying infrastructure -- water and sewer systems, pipelines, utilities, roads, bridges, dikes, communications etc. -- has reached trillions of dollars, and governments and corporations have abandoned some of these and are waiting until others reach crisis situations, far beyond their intended useful lives. When the consequences of this negligence -- flooded cities, chronic blackouts, poisoned wells, collapsed bridges, exhausted reservoirs, ruptured pipelines -- wreak havoc, we are unlikely to have the funds to fix them or the preparations to mitigate their effects. Spending beyond the means of repayment: North Americans, encouraged by artificially low interest rates, fraudulent credit card promotions, and the ability to charge consumer purchases against their inflated home values, are now spending more than they earn. It's not enough that none of the externalities -- the cost of debt and waste and pollution we are pushing off on poorer nations and future generations -- are 'counted' in our extravagant spending. Now, even excluding these expenditures, our per capita net worth (other than that of the tiny rich elite), is plummeting. We are staggeringly vulnerable to a drop in housing values, or currency values, or a spike in interest rates or commodity prices. And the entire economy depends on increasing spending by already over-extended citizens. Hugely unpopular governments and cynicism about the value of government: In healthy nations, the role of governments as regulator in areas where the 'private' sector cannot be expected to self-regulate, and as investor in infrastructure and services in areas where corporations lack the motivation or competence to provide it, is appreciated and respected. Successful states have always been those that get the public-private balance right. And while everyone is skeptical about government, it usually only in failed states that that cynicism is so deep that citizens have given up on government's ability to do anything competently or honestly. We're moving quickly toward that stage in Canada and the US. Rampant corruption: The gerrymandering, crfiminally deceptive electioneering, pork-barreling and overt bribery that prevails in the US, and that country's inability to provide any assurance that its elections are free and fair and reflect the will of the people, are astonishing to us Canadians. But I fear we are not far behind. The ultra-conservative Harper government now governs through US-style propaganda press releases, and will no longer accept questions at press conferences unless there is a pre-scripted 'talking points' response for them. Harper, like Bush, believes he knows better than the voters what is good for them, and, to the dismay of many of us, most Canadians seem acquiescent to this arrogant style of government. The answers are obvious, but probably beyond the political will of our dumbed-down, disenfranchised, propagandized electorates. Like other failed states, we will wait for the collapse to occur before we act, belatedly and inadequately. Our biggest challenge in North America will be that, unlike most struggling nations, we lack the self-sufficiency to live without institutional education, employers, technology, experts to do all the basic things we've forgotten or never learned to do, doctors with their drugs, packaged, imported foods, and cheap oil. The Long Emergency is coming, and we're the least prepared people in the world to cope with it. Category: Why Civilization is Unsustainable 8:49:05 PM  trackback []  comment []

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