Even the Elites Can’t Escape the Global Community, Living As It Does on One Small Planet
In response to my post: One’s Concern About Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Depends on Which End of the Boat One Occupies, frequent commenter Cameron Atwood writes:
It’s a classic mindset among shortsighted humans to expect that what doesn’t harm them personally and directly in this moment isn’t their problem. More enlightened humans know that issues affecting one population have ripple effects, and that our planet is a single organic whole. People who haven’t yet, have now to learn that when they throw things away, there really is no “away.”
Excellent point. That’s what’s so frustrating about talking to people like George Will, whom I see every time I’m back for our college reunion (he was in the class of ’62, I came along 15 years later). At each event, he gives a talk that could be called, “Here’s what’s good for rich, white Americans.” But, as I’ve pointed out to him, he systematically ignores the fact, that, even if one is so greedy, selfish and racist that one limits his concerns to the elites, those few lucky people do not live on an island; whether they like it or not, they’re part of a global community where their welfare is connected to that of everyone else.
Most obviously: We all breathe the same air and drink the same water. Oppressive conditions anywhere create hostilities that threaten the safety of all of us everywhere. I know there are people tragically born with a conscience, but even those who don’t care about others need to see that their own self-interests are at stake.
He doesn’t seem to get this. Oh well, I’ll see him again in June, 2017 (my 40th!). I’ll cover it with him again. He’s bound to come around. LOL.
You would think that people who haven’t yet learned that when they throw things away, there really is no “away,” would be very interested when someone comes along and declares that he/she has developed a novel new way to turn our cast offs of many and diverse types into valuable products that we all need would at least try to get their heads around what is being proposed but it never fails that they either ignore the new idea completely or assign someone else to try to get their heads around the proposed new concept. This has happened to me time and time again whenever I try to get people who I think are reasonable types to at least try to get it when I describe my new concept fuels processor which obtained every patent on it that I applied for.
You’re an optimist Craig. Some people never come around.
I was kidding. I could no more make him think like me than he could make me think like him. That said, I can’t resist engaging in the conversation.
Well said.
Craig,
There’s truth in what you say. The environment affects everyone, rich and poor alike. Societies which neglect the quality of life for the general populace, become corrupt and unpleasant for the elite, as well as every other sector of society.
Western industrialized civilizations are built on the principle of consumer based economies. Mechanization has eliminated the need for most low cost, once essential human labour. But this sector of the population still remains essential to the economy as consumers.
Modern societies realize the need to employ these people in the service sector . Here the former manual or semi-skilled worker can be retrained for employment which improves the quality of life. Ppositions which were once thought unessential, or unaffordable. Technology and automation may replace the old traditional low skilled employment, but allow redeployment into developing service industries which only a human can provide.
Economically, such a transformation requires a society producing enormous surpluses of wealth, which in turn requires an affluent elite with sufficient surplus wealth to invest in wealth creation and innovation.
The enemy of economic progress has been envy, and political ideologies which promote “class warfare”.
The demand for inappropriate, irrelevant and impractical government regulations, based on “moral” or philosophic concepts rooted in the time of industrial revolution, has promoted divisive ,counter productive political rhetoric, and sabotaged the ability of economies to progress.
Calling some people in society, greedy etc. Isn’t helpful. It’s that sort of divisive thinking that produced ” Gated Communities”, ” Tax Havens “, ” White Flight Suburbs” , and other social ills. It also produced the error of “Social or Project ” housing (tearing down one slum, to build another with even less soul”) , Urban decay, and ghettos.
Distribution of wealth is a growing problem as nation states have less control of economies due to economic globalization.
Unfortunately, our political ideologies haven’t caught up to the reality of global economics.
Well meaning people living in western nations, unintentionally cause social misery and bitter hatred from societies whose cultural and economic conditions are not suitable for western political “morality”.
The targets of admonition by well meaning critics like Cameron Atwood, are often the only people and institutions capable of lifting these societies out of poverty and despair.
It’s human nature to consume, and create waste. Over consumption, and waste, is inherent to human civilization, and essential to the the creative process and modern economies. Waste, creates equality, wealth redistribution, employment and creative variety !
It even creates a wonderful new opportunity for human creativity in making a profit from dealing with waste !
We are a truly inventive species….:)
While I strongly agree that labeling people “greedy” is divisive and does not solve our problems also blaming government intervention for poverty is as big a stretch as it being the source of “gated communities and other social ills” and calling Social Security an “entitlement” when it is based on individual investment into the future. While “waste” is an opportunity it only has sufficient return on investment for socially conscious NGO’s or local government investment on a small scale. What would be wrong to make that “waste” worth more to reduce by the producer through government countermeasures?
That is not to say that targeted government investment such as “social or project” works either; but progressive taxation does, in fact, redistribute wealth in a more intelligent fashion as it is the only countermeasure, other than revolutionary tactics of the populace, to corporate greed–which by its very nature in capitalism is to make a profit and ignore the social costs where they can. Enabling the “money changers” of the world to have a 20% capital gains tax initiated by Ronald Reagan was the direct start of the separation of the elites and the general populace including all the people who used to be “middle class.” America’s greatest growth years included a 70% tax rate, so why would 35% or 40% be so onerous? This puts it in line with the rest of the world. Rather than pay the government, corporations would even prefer to put it into future investment. Reagan made large government and taxation an “evil” through his communication capabilities but the only other thing that can put the fear of “morality” into large trans-national business is either government or a social uprising against their products or policies. An unfortunate turn of events allowing “corporations” to be considered “individual” by the supreme court only exacerbates this issue by allowing money to corrupt the government decisions even more in favor of the wealthy.
Until social uprisings occur, hopefully through more peaceful means such as “crowdinvesting” to counter the “money changers,” the government will not “bite the hand that feeds them” and play the counterbalance to “natural” corporate decision making. Yes, we are a truly inventive species, but there are tipping points from which only revolution can cause you to return to a more fair and balanced society.
Selfish, Greedy people like Will and all those extreme right wing nut jobs think when the shit hits the fan and the Earth begins to die they can get on a private Jet and fly to some far away place with their money and everything will be just fine.
For those whose ultimate faith lies in “The Market,” here’s just a little slice of the massive encyclopedia of corporate criminality:
• Barclays Bank and UBS and other financial institutions’ manipulation of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) of which Andrew Lo, MIT Professor of Finance, said, “This dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets.” …This scandal reportedly involved the participation of the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Bank, Bank of America, and Citibank
• The BP/Transocean debacle in the Gulf of Mexico (in violation of government regulations) resulting in the most massive release of oil in the history of human activity and a flood of toxins willfully deployed against EPA warnings in the corporate concealment of the total quantity of the spill, wreaking untold damages to the entire gulf environment in general, coastal wetlands, critical spawning grounds, fisheries, as well as seafood and numerous related businesses
• The Exxon disaster in Puget Sound (in violation of government regulations), with severe health and environmental effects persisting until the present day
• The Union Carbide massacre of innocents in Bhopal, India (because of conditions persisting in violation of government regulations) killing thousands of people and severely injuring tens of thousands more, with severe health and environmental effects persisting until the present day
• Beechnut’s willful sale of colored sugar-water labeled as “apple juice” to mothers for their infants (in violation of government regulations)
• Wyeth’s deadly debacle with Fen-Phen (despite of government warnings) …not to mention Big Pharma’s generalized and continual proclivity for harmful “medications” (like Thorazine, Thalidomide, Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, Crestor, Propulsid and Rezulin)
• The fraudulent accounting methods that led to the collapse of WorldCom, resulting in the largest bankruptcy filing in US history at the time (since overtaken by both Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual within eleven short days of each other during September 2008)
• The fraudulent concealment of losses and the manipulation of trade in the Enron energy trading scandal, in which massive sums were gouged from the People of the State of California, and thousands of investors were swindled
• Arthur Andersen’s willful obstruction of justice in its shredding of documents relating to the Enron trading scandal
• The massive overbilling by Kellogg, Brown and Root for the supply of food, water and laundry services to US Troops in Iraq
Does anyone still think “The Market” can be trusted to police itself? Is that a rational conclusion to draw from the evidence of history?
Oh yeah – government’s the problem alright – it’s the last thing standing between the greed of the elites who are bribing it, and the well-being of you and your family.
Good government is the only hope We the People have to defend our Public Commons and advance our Common Good. Good government won’t come from people who hate government.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others.
As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll be slaves to greed and cowardice.
Cameron,
Corporations and commerce in general, are by nature complex and competitive. Like the best and worst of human society, commerce represents human civilization at it’s most creative.
All social structures require a regulatory frame work to provide balance, and order. That’s the duty of governments. No society or government with ever be perfect, and have no instances of rule breaking, that’s the nature of human beings, we are imperfect beings.
Utopian systems based on unrealistic ideology, don’t work. In fact such societies become stagnant economically, and brutally totalitarian.
Keeping Government small, efficient and intrusive, is the best safeguard against public corruption. The problem for Legislators is the growing belief that passing inadequate, ill-conceived law for populist, simplistic reasons, can solve complex issues. The problem for governments, is the growing demand for increasing services, and public servants at a time when tax revenues are decreasing.
In your list of malfeasance, you failed to acknowledge the massive environmental damage, (far dwarfing anything by Exxon or any western corporation) wrought by the “People Governments” of tho old socialist nations who espoused economic philosophies you so admire !
Instead of worrying about the “greed” of others, look for the bigger picture. It takes 248 tradesmen to build a Rolls Royce, but only 0.8 to build a Toyota Camry.
That’s why the Rolls Royce costs 40 times as much ! Both cars are expressions of human aspiration and creativity, both vehicles provide the same basic service, but both are witness to the human passion for endless variety.
Calling some people greedy,selfish, money changes, isn’t helpful, it’s the politics of the small, envious, bitter, insecure puritan who feels left behind and personally inadequate.
Risk, creativity, adventurous curiosity, pride in individual achievement, aggressive competition, acquisitive prestige, these are all inherent human traits. They’re part of mankind’s resilient, restless nature. Because we are complex, our problems are complex.
I’m an optimist ! Environmental solutions are opportunities for human creativity, not hand-wringing and despair. Entirely new business, even industries will be created, with new technologies to clean and repair environmental damage.These enterprises will be created by entrepreneurs keen to make profits.
Governments have a role in provide adequate planning regulations and monitoring. Under regulation can be as harmful as over-regulation.
The ” market ” doesn’t require “faith” , it is, what it is, a cauldron of human ambition and creativity. The market represents human competitive nature.
Of course it has flaws and mishaps, the “market” doesn’t seek perfection, it’s run by flawed human beings who make errors !
Cameron, you may demand perfection in human affairs, but like the old puritans and late the socialists, you will not find perfection but institutionalized misery, stagnation, and the brutal crushing of the human spirit on the alter of mediocrity.
Those are not errors, they are willful crimes, and they illustrate the necessity of a democracy focused on the well-being of the whole people as it’s primary goal, which is strongly regulatory when it comes to businesses that hold the potential for massive harm.
Your mention of… “the massive environmental damage, (far dwarfing anything by Exxon or any western corporation) wrought by the ‘People Governments’ of tho old socialist nations who espoused economic philosophies you so admire” …is yet another straw-man defense that proves weightless to thinking people.
Since you’ve been so vaguely unspecific in your bland citation of “the massive environmental damage” I can only conclude you’re talking about the old Soviet Union, which was totalitarian state capitalism and a total fraud calling itself “socialist” – only a shallow political understanding would result in the choice of such an example.
Try an examination of the panoply of nations that truly have strong elements of democratic socialism – like those across northern Europe – and show me the level and the frequency of blatant criminality and callous disregard for populations and the environment exhibited by corporations in this country from the Triangle Shirtwaist factory to Wyeth and beyond.
Many corporations are in fact now larger than many nations – a fact that brings its own set of issues.
Multinational corporations have achieved vertical integration – from resource extraction through processing and manufacturing, and distribution to product vending. They’ve achieved horizontal integration – with dominant market share, powerful influence in government and society, and significant elimination of competition, while pulling a great many functions in-house that might have been provided by outside firms and contractors.
It’s a business model that the old soviet totalitarian state capitalists would envy – a business model that externalizes significant costs to those regions and societies whose natural resources and human capital it consumes and contaminates.
There is a delusion that prevails throughout the public discourse in our nation – that capitalism and democracy are compatible or complementary. They are even mythologized as being one and the same. You seem to be firmly under that spell.
In reality, capitalism has – by design – always favored those with great wealth, and it operates according to predatory principles by which cooperation for mutual benefit applies only to trusts and cartels as the convenience of maximizing short-term profit dictates.
Capitalism is perhaps best defined as people with money, using money, to make more money. Predictable features of the capitalist methodology include excessive mergers, hostile take-overs, technology buyouts, usurpation of the Public Commons, etc. This narrow value system consistently results in an elitist oligarchy. The elimination of competition leads to price fixing and gouging, and a hoarding of profits and wealth by an ever-shrinking circle of individuals.
It was precisely this economically and socially unacceptable concentration of wealth, and market control, that led to the sweeping anti-trust legislation enacted in this country, generations ago, over the fierce opposition of J. P. Morgan and those like him. It’s said that Morgan went as far as to walk unannounced into Theodore Roosevelt’s office and threaten the sitting President. …Teddy was not intimidated.
In recent decades, however – and largely because of a rising deluge of bribery capital drowning our capitols – government hasn’t been nearly so forceful in curbing the excesses of “big business”… quite the opposite, in fact.
Teddy observed, “Capital organizes.” So must we.
Cameron,
Like most leftists, you always deny responsibility when thing go wrong with your economic modeling. No matter how disastrous the outcome of attempting to apply principles of your political philosophy into reality, you always have an “out” when it fails, by claiming “oh but it wasn’t done right ” !
In fact, there’s a common theme in your (often entertaining) discourses. You just criticize what you believe to be wrong, without providing any practical alternatives. You have no real plan, just Utopian mumbo-jumbo, and kumbaya sentiments.
Maybe you are sincere in believing that there are simplistic solutions to highly complex problems, or maybe you just like advocating populist cliches, it’s a bit hard to tell.
J.P Mprgan and Theodore Roosevelt lived over 100 years ago. The world has moved on a bit since then !(Although, considering your socialist philosophy originated in that period, perhaps it’s understandable why you consider those events still relevant).
There is no “democratic socialism”, it always ends up neither democratic, nor socialist !
Norway touts it’s “green” credentials, yet the 67% government owned oil company, Statoil (eleventh largest oil and gas company and the twenty-sixth largest company, regardless of industry, by profit in the world.) has over the years been involved in a long list of cover-ups, acts of corruption, environmental disasters, including pleading guilty to breaches of the U.S Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, in addition both the UN and EU have proven charges of corrupt practices against Statoil and it’s subsidiaries, in over 40 underdeveloped nations.
Oh, yeah and last but not least, Statoil earns huge profits from investments in the Athabasca oil sands, and partners with the Russians in oil and gas exploitation of the Arctic.
(Hey, why aren’t you protesting on Norway’s Storseisundet Bridge? Why only on the Golden Gate, eh ?
Shall we move on to the highly successful Swedish Automobile industry, oh, yeah that’s right, it went bankrupt and is now owned by the Peoples Republic of China !
But none of that’s relevant. Not many economies or societies posses the same economic circumstances as Scandinavia.
Multi-national companies provide far more benefits to the world population, than the old highly nationalist companies they replaced. These corporations are probably the greatest influence for “peace ” in the world today.
We no longer live in simple agrarian villages. Bleating impotently about the evils of those more affluent, is pointless. They might not have much of plan, but you have none.
Instead of carping endlessly about what others are doing, why not invest your own (not taxpayer) money into just some of the exciting new opportunities and technologies developing to met a new epoch of human progress.
It’s never too late ! I’m entering the sixth decade of my life, but I am more than ever excited by the myriad of practical ways to make a difference with new technology, that doesn’t require massive political, economic or social disruption. it just takes a bit of hard work and risk with your own money.
Like the Puritans, the socialists lost favour, because they lifestyle they preached just wasn’t fun ! The kids grew up valuing rock and roll, Levi’s and Coca Cola. Today, leftist idealism is are just a cool phase kids go through, largely to upset their parents !
You will have to make it personal for him. He has to believe that perhaps a favorite place he loves will be damaged or destroyed.
I was kidding when I wrote this, but you’re 100%, of course. Thanks.
marcopolo…
Calling me a “lefty” is inaccurate and irrelevant. It’s also yet another example of your regrettable proclivity toward ad hominem attacks, straw-man tactics and false equivalencies.
Again and again on this site, you have resorted to personal attacks against those with whom you disagree. You have quite often employed what you apparently regard as political smears in an attempt to discredit people who hold positions different from your own.
Here are just a few examples of your words:
“The “consume less,” ”back to nature”, reductionist philosophy, is usually accompanied by a covert loathing of mankind, disingenuously presented as a love for mankind…”
“My frustration with mom and apple pie environmental statements is my suspicion that the authors have no real interest in the environment, but are using environmental rhetoric to advance old, failed socialist political ideology.”
“It’s only possible to sing Kumbaya in Oregon, because the rest of the nation deals with real economic problems affecting a complex modern industrial society.”
Your wayward use of labels tells perceptive readers far more about you than about your intended targets.
As people who know me are well aware, I’m politically independent. I like all my birthrights, thank you – not merely those that may be momentarily supported by one group or another.
Since I was old enough to vote, I’ve cast my ballot for every GOP candidate who ever won the Oval Office – with the proud and notable exception of George W. Bush.
In that time, I’ve also voted for every Democrat who won our highest office.
Every last “winner” on both sides, red and blue, has been a bitter disappointment to me.
I find your defense of greed quite telling. I also find quite curious your implication that mentions of Morgan and Roosevelt are not applicable to the present day, because of the passage of time.
Anthropologists have demonstrated that we humans evolved from a tenuous nomadic hunter-gatherer existence to most stable agrarian life as a result of innate drives toward sharing and cooperation, but there are highly healthy impulses as well and they remain with us today.
Two divides have been observed in advancing societies for millennia – they are divides that consistently produce appalling consequences whenever and wherever they become severe.
(It should be needless to point out that they are divides that are not generated or exacerbated by the plans and deeds of the least influential.)
The first of these is a divide in wealth, and the second is a divide in power.
For thousands of years, governments and rulers have often wisely sought to minimize both of these divisions – with varying degrees of durability and success. We see this from the early and longstanding pursuit of democracy by the Scandinavians and Greeks, to the revolutions against monarchies across Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Similarly, the leadership of many nations across human history has struggled to achieve a lasting measure of equality – egalitarianism, fairness, justice, domestic tranquility, general welfare – again succeeding to varying degrees.
The very first words that open the founding document of the United States read as follows:
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Indeed, the government – as conceived in this country – is intended to be an arm of, by, and for, the whole people – an arm by which they may defend their liberties from all enemies, foreign and domestic, who would subjugate them in serfdom. We the People have no real alternative to defend our liberties against greater powers – other than by the use and possession of our government. This value and worth of our government to the well-being of our population has been consistently assailed and undermined by those whose interests are solely in private gain.
So it is that we see both those divides growing again in our society today. A detailed study was published last year by respected professors at Princeton University and Northwest University, covering twenty years of data on legislation and the will of the people by economic segment.
Looking across those two decades, this study clearly and conclusively verified two realities. These realities have long been both keenly felt and generally understood, but rarely so sharply and undeniably illustrated…
The first reality: Our democratic republic has remained highly responsive to the wealthiest interests within our nation, and even to the wealthiest of foreign interests.
The second reality: For the least wealthy 80% of our citizenry, political influence upon the actions of our governing leadership over the last two decades has been statistically insignificant.
Given these facts, I think it’s high time to enforce major and long-term investment in the central needs of our population. Though there’s a continual strident flood of rhetoric against such measures, I’m strongly for them, and have been for some time. They stand out as an obvious and proven path to narrowing the gaps, repairing the decay, and lifting the population into a more general prosperity, deeper economic strength and political unity.
That’s not socialism, its pragmatism.
Here, for your edification, are genuine definitions of socialism:
A political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. The term “socialism” has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state communism, and social democracy; however, it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammeled workings of the economic market. The socialist parties that have arisen in most European countries from the late 19th century have generally tended toward social democracy.
– Oxford Dictionary, 2014
A social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work in isolation but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, everything that people produce is in some sense a social product, and everyone who contributes to the production of a good is entitled to a share in it. Society as a whole, therefore, should own or at least control property for the benefit of all its members.
– Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014
A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
– Random House Dictionary, 2014
I find it quite illustrative that the examples you chose of corruption in Norway and Sweden are both state capitalism, rather than socialism, and one is a fossil fuel business and the other is an oil dependent automobile business.
Incidentally, i can only hope that you’ll find the observations quoted here to be instructive:
http://2greenenergy.com/2011/07/29/energy-policy-needs-to-come/
Now, to your all too typically derisive straw-man/falsehood combo, where you say, “Bleating impotently about the evils of those more affluent, is pointless. They might not have much of plan, but you have none.”
Repeatedly on this site, I’ve posted and commented on my own perspectives on options for a way forward. Your lack of awareness of those posts and comments is merely that.
I’ve also shared the perspectives of highly credible people who are quite in alignment, not only with my perspectives, but also well in line with the entire continuing thrust of this site – which is to identify and promote workable technologies and strategies to move our species onto renewable energy and off of prehistoric carbon fuels.
Here are a few examples of where I’ve done exactly that:
http://2greenenergy.com/2013/07/14/dirty-fighters/
http://2greenenergy.com/2014/12/11/world-energy-chaos/