Fifteen is Fair

The city of Seattle recently announced that it was taking a unilateral move in the rather slow-moving war against poverty in the US by raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. This is quite an interesting move by itself, and will hopefully prove wrong all the legions of people who claim businesses will flee any country or city that institutes such a high wage. However, just as interesting is the chain reaction that the announcement has set off, with fast food workers across America now going on strike and increasingly agitating to be paid the same $15 an hour that their colleagues in Seattle will be getting.

Many on the right wing have criticized the striking workers, saying that flipping burgers and wiping down tables in McDonalds should only be an entry level job, a gateway to getting a 'real job' in the workforce and becoming increasingly well paid as you gain more and more experience. It's a job for teenagers and students, they say, people who don't need to be paid more than a few dollars an hour for pocket money. Anyone over a certain age, or with a family to support, who still finds themselves working in Burger King is there because of their own fault, they tell us – they need to work harder to better themselves and move up the economic food chain.

This is a very nice sentiment – it certainly would be wonderful if we could truly say that fast food work is the domain of teenagers only, who all move on to bigger and better things after a year or so. But this ignores the reality of contemporary American society. A number of barriers stand between many people and better employment – perhaps they can't speak English well enough, perhaps they are discriminated against for their ethnicity or gender, perhaps they are working illegally, perhaps they simply don't have the money to afford America's ridiculous university tuition fees. Whichever of those reasons might be true, there is an increasing segment of the workforce which has no immediate prospect of getting a better job outside of the fast food industry – these people have lives, children, and needs that should be catered for just as much as for anyone else, and this simply isn't happening on the exploitative wages they are currently being paid.

Strong minimum wage laws are not going to destroy America if passed – as Seattle will no doubt prove. The demand for fast food isn't going away any time soon, so McDonalds and Pizza Hut are not going to shut down if forced to pay their workers what they deserve. Equally, the fast food workers will now have more money to spend on food, clothing, and consumer items, putting more cash into the economy and leading to more jobs and higher wages for everyone else – so even if the price of a Big mac gets hiked by a dollar or two to pay for the minimum wage, we'll still be able to afford it. All a $15 minimum wage does is ensure that fast food workers are no longer exploited by companies that only truly care about profit, and makes sure that those workers can afford to feed themselves and their children. It might even help to break the cycle of poverty, by allowing fast food workers to save towards the university education of their own children – ensuring they don't have to spend their lives flipping burgers as well.

The $15 minimum wage campaign needs to extend beyond the fast food workers and become a national movement. It's time for the people of America to take notice that in the past decade wealth has been trickling upwards rather than downwards – with the rich getting richer, while everyone else loses out. It's time to reverse that trajectory and begin bringing some of those riches back down to the people who do the work.

[ war against poverty, nrglab, McDonalds, Burger King, American society, Pizza hut, national movement, tuition fees ]

A song of fire and ice

So it seems that yet another form of unconventional fossil fuels looms on the horizon, with the potential to be promoted by governments as the latest solution to our energy crisis, while at the same time destroying fragile environments through its extraction. The culprit this time is a form of gas known as ‘fire ice’, which is locked into the form of ice crystals under the Atlantic ocean, at the point where the seabed changes from shallow to deep. By lowering the pressure on these crystals, or upping the temperature, one cubic metre of fire ice can break down into 160 cubic metres of gas.

The amount of energy contained within fire ice deposits is thus huge – there is potentially more energy available from fire ice than from the rest of the world’s oil, coal, and natural gas supplies combined. And yet, with that energy comes a problem we have been trying to escape for decades now – carbon. There may also be as much carbon in the fire ice deposits as there is in every other organic carbon store in the entire world. Releasing this carbon into the atmosphere by using fire ice for energy would be an unmitigated disaster, completely destroying any attempts at sustainability and making an era of massive climate change a certainty.

The fire ice is also very difficult to extract due to its location far offshore. This means more money will be required to exploit it, and it also increases the dangers – both to those humans doing the extraction, and to the ecosystems of plants and animals that live in the Atlantic and would suffer from this extreme industrial process taking place in their homes. But none of this will likely stop governments and corporations from doing their best to exploit these large reserves of fossil fuel energy.

And that fact shows the madness of our current energy system. Even when fossil fuels are difficult, dangerous, and expensive to extract, we will prioritize them over cheaper, safer, and easier options – like renewable energy based on the bountiful systems the planet has dropped in our laps, wind, tides, the sun, and more. If we insist on digging things out of the ground in order to keep our economy running, then we are getting to the stage where even nuclear power is beginning to look like a better option than fossil fuels (although obviously it would still be a distant second to true renewables) – it is at least carbon free, and while we might complain that it is highly polluting and dangerous to human health, so are fossil fuels, with over 4,000 people a year estimated to be dying from air pollution in London alone.

Rather than creating a new dependence on fire ice or other forms of unconventional fossil fuels like fracked gas or tar sands oil, we need to be exploring how to put into place the radical change to our energy system that is necessary if we are going to live sustainable lives free from the worst impacts of climate change. It seems that a big shock to the system may be necessary before we really start to see any change, unfortunately. In the meantime, NRGLab will continue its own research into new technologies that make our energy use more efficient, more environmental, and – most importantly – cheaper for ordinary people. When people finally have access to cheap and clean electricity, we hope that it will prove to be the shock that is needed to kickstart a new era.

Atlantic ocean,bountiful systems, carbon free, clean electricity, climate change, coal, current energy system, destroying fragile environments,destroying sustainability, ecosystems of plants, energy crisis, energy from fire ice, expensive to extract, exploit fire ice, fire ice gas, form of unconventional fossil fuels, fossil fuel, fracked gas, ice crystals, industrial process, lowering the pressure, natural gas, nrglab, nuclear power, oil, organic carbon store, radical change to energy system, releasing carbon into atmosphere,renewable energy, research into new technologies, reserves of fossil fuel energy, solution to energy crisis, tar sands oil, true renewable, unconventional fossil fuel, upping the temperature

Time to Pop Political Bubbles

We've all heard a lot in the past few years about 'financial bubbles'. These are situations in which investors become extremely confident in a particular resource and invest more and more money into it. Prices inflate, and people become even more confident, which leads to more investment, and so on – the bubble inflates. There was a housing bubble before the 2008 financial crisis, and the famous 'dot com' tech bubble of the late 90s. In truth, the confidence was based on assumptions that proved not to be true – for example, the housing bubble was founded on the assumption that cheap credit would be available forever. When that stopped being true in 2008, people could no longer pay their mortgages, and the bubble popped. When bubbles pop, it's usually because investors start to panic, worried that the fundamentals of their investment are not as strong as they initially appeared to be. They withdraw their money, and the market comes crashing down. This happened to the dot coms, and also to the Southeast Asian bubble economy in 1997.

So financial bubbles are well known, but what about political bubbles? This is a term suggested in a recent book by the political scientists Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Political Bubbles: Financial Crises and the Failure of American Democracy. They suggest that behind every financial bubble, there is a political bubble – a collection of policies and ideologies that encourage certain market behaviours. Financial bubbles and the crises they lead to are enabled by the political bubbles that grow up before them. The comparison between the two seems obvious – political bubbles are ideologies that people put too much faith into, without examining the underlying truth. In this analogy, eventually people should realize the hollowness of their beliefs, and the political bubble should pop. However, it seems to me that this last element – the popping – does not actually happen to political bubbles with as much regularity as it does to financial ones. The political kind seems to be considerably more robust and able to withstand even the popping of its financial sibling. Let me give you some examples.

It is clear today that the belief that we have a free market in which everyone has equality of opportunity is blatantly false – every day governments intervene in the market through subsidies and tax breaks for corporations, and tariffs on the import of goods from other countries, and the barriers to entry in the economy get higher every day. But according to the political bubble of the free market, if Bill Gates and I were to each start a new business today, we would have an equal chance of success, and the winner would depend entirely on our personal qualities and the strength of our product. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that this is not true, because Bill Gates is starting the game with hundreds of billions of dollars, which gives him an inevitable advantage in our supposedly 'free' market. The idea that the free market will lead to a 'trickle down' of wealth and make us all rich is equally discredited by the increasing income gap we see in the world today. And yet, the political bubble around the 'free market' is so huge that even after the unregulated, free market system of the financial sector completely and utterly failed, we believe the solution is to keep doing more of the same.

This leads to another bubble – the public sector bubble. Instead of accepting the end of the free market and putting extra regulations on the banks to ensure the same problems don't arise again, we have become caught in a bubble which tells us that the problem is the public sector. In this bubble, the crash wasn't caused by the banks, it was caused by a bloated public sector that accumulated too much government debt. Government debt is, for sure, not the greatest thing in the world – but to suggest that it caused the 2008 crisis is idiocy of the first order. And yet, as a society, we believe it to such an extent that governments around the world have been given a mandate to cut health services, education services, benefits to the disabled, and other hallmarks of a civilized society – all while leaving the banks alone. This bubble is nothing new – it's been building for some time. You can see it in the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and World Bank in the 1990s and 2000s, where developing countries were told their problem was government spending on education rather than the crippling debts the rich countries had forced on them.

One more bubble before we finish, something a little more contemporary – the attacks on Russia that we have seen during the Winter Olympics. Certainly Russia has its problems of autocratic leadership and a lack of civil rights for minority groups, but much of the western coverage has been hysterical. Everything has been criticized, from the stray dogs to the hotel rooms being too small. The political bubble at work here also goes back a long way – to the Cold War, and even to the attacks on Bolsheviks that were common in western newspapers in 1917. It's a bubble that tells us that Russia is different, undeveloped, somewhat barbaric – and it's a narrative that we lap up, as it conveniently allows us to ignore the problems in our own societies by reverting to a simplified, fairytale version of the world.

These political bubbles hang around for a lot longer than the financial bubbles that often accompany them, and are more pernicious because they are often much harder to identify. It is easy to see when housing is overpriced, but not so easy for any of us to sit down and think deeply about the ideologies that lie behind our understanding of the economy or society. In many cases, these are ideologies that we are indoctrinated with every day – through newspapers, advertisements, universities, and so on. But it's something we need to start doing if we are ever going to pop these bubbles and allow ourselves to think freely.

[ political bubbles, financial bubbles, financial crisis, Noaln Mccarty, Bill Gates, Winter Olympics, Cold war, Bolsheviks, NRGLab ]

The cult of celebrity

I try to avoid spending too much time reading internet news sites these days, largely because each week seems to bring a focus on some new celebrity controversy, relegating topics of real importance to the bottom of the page. Some American football player rants about an opponent, the internet goes wild. Justin Beiber gets arrested for his latest idiocy, the internet goes wild. The Mayor of Toronto does anything, the internet goes wild (though admittedly, that's a special case since he's only a celebrity because of his continual bizarre behaviour). But luckily, the last week or two has seen the golden combination of celebrity controversy and serious political issues.

The actress Scarlett Johansson appeared in a commercial for Soda Stream during the halftime show of the Superbowl. Soda Stream is an Israeli soft drink company that has its main factory on settled land in the West Bank – that is, on land which has historically belonged to Palestinians, but which has been appropriated by the Israeli state, illegally according to international law. This is, not surprisingly, rather controversial, and Johansson has been criticized by many people who believe that settler businesses that use Palestinian land should be boycotted. Johansson disagrees, and claims that because Soda Stream hires some Palestinian workers, it is 'building a bridge of peace' in the conflict-torn region.

Soon, the anger over this issue turned on the international NGO Oxfam, for whom Johansson was an 'ambassador'. Oxfam seem to have fiddled while the crisis grew around them, until eventually Johansson quit her role with the NGO, citing a 'fundamental difference of opinion'. The issue rumbles on, and will probably continue to do so for a while, but it seems like Oxfam are off the hook for now, and the focus of the anger is firmly back on Johansson and Soda Stream. However, rather than focusing on the issue of the Jewish settlements – of which more than enough has already been written on the internet – I'd like to focus on a different aspect of this episode.

Oxfam were obviously very reluctant to get rid of Johansson, to the extent that it appears she had to quit rather than being kicked out, despite the fact that her actions and public statements obviously go against most of what Oxfam stands for. Clearly, the idea of losing a 'celebrity ambassador' for their brand was painful for the NGO – a rather embarrassing state of affairs, as it suggests that PR and media relations are taking priority over the actual message. This also raises the question of why exactly humanitarian causes like those Oxfam champions need these celebrity ambassadors – who have also been employed by various UN agencies for many years now.

It seems to say something rather unflattering about our contemporary culture that issues of famine, war, conflict, and natural disasters seemingly need to be filtered through the lens of celebrity in order for us to care about them. We have become so deferential to those who are richer and more powerful than ourselves that the plight of the poor and oppressed is of no importance to us until the star of We Bought A Zoo decides to tell us about it. This explains why Oxfam seemingly didn't want to let Johansson go – she might be saying the wrong thing, but at least she's saying something, and without the glossy sheen that celebrity provides to a cause, no-one will pay any attention. Let's hope that the plight of the Palestinians and the struggle to remove the Israeli settlements will be kept in the public eye from this point on, even after the gossip magazines have moved on to the next celebrity controversy.

[ mayor of Toronto, Scarlett Johansson, Superbowl, NGO Oxfam, UN agency, We bought a zoo, NRGLab, Soda stream ]

The hypocrisy of humanitarianism

A few days ago, the UN released a long-awaited report on human rights abuses in North Korea. It comes as little surprise to hear that the government of the Hermit Kingdom is abusing its own citizens, but the actual details of that abuse remain sobering. Collective punishment continues (though the report found it isn’t as widespread as initially believed), with entire families imprisoned for the crimes of a single member; freedom of speech is non-existent; hunger is rife, partially due to the poor state of the North Korean economy, but also because of the government reserving food for the most ‘useful’ citizens and the army; freedom of movement is severely constrained, with access to the relatively luxurious capital of Pyongyang only available to those who show loyalty to the party; and, of course, there are the labour camps – unimaginably grim places in which ‘enemies’ of the regime are worked to death, starved, beaten, tortured, and forced to kill their own children. The UN have even compared the crimes of the regime to those of the Nazis.

At the moment, and perhaps for the next week or two, there will be outrage in the western newspapers and the governments of Europe and North America will make statements condemning Kim Jong-un and his fellow leaders. The North Korean leaders are committing some of the gravest crimes against humanity ever seen, and the USA and others must be seen to stand up against them. But what will be done to actually change the situation for ordinary North Koreans? Despite continual claims by the west to humanitarian goals and a desire to spread democracy, nothing will be done to aid this slowly dying country.

Humanitarian intervention has, of course, happened before – some countries have been deemed to be behaving so badly towards their population that the west has no choice but to get involved and set things straight. Curiously, these countries always tend to be the ones with the most oil – Iraq, Libya, possibly Syria in the future – or the ones which crossed a line and attacked a superpower – such as Afghanistan. This is, of course, just a coincidence – there’s no way that decisions on humanitarian intervention would be based on the profit and benefits that could accrue to the west, because that wouldn’t be a very humanitarian way of looking at things, would it?

Truthfully, North Korea’s leaders know they can continue on their current path without facing the consequences of military attack or a withdrawal of food aid. Korea has no oil, and few major natural resources in general, so the west has no pressing need to bring it onside. It also has the backing of a superpower, China, and is at least tolerated by another member of the UN Security Council, Russia. Ultimately, intervening in North Korea would bring no benefits and a whole lot of hassle to the west, so I’m sure we’ll find that the lives of North Koreans are not as important as the lives of the Iraqis and Afghans we ‘liberated’ from their dictatorships.

Once again, this seems like an example of the hypocrisy of western governments – preaching humanitarian aims while really only considering the geopolitical economics of profit and loss for themselves. Those governments need to eventually decide what it is they really stand for – either the lives of the unprofitable North Koreans are as important as those of the oil-rich Iraqis, or they’re not. It’s time for the west to be honest about its values, and admit that they sometimes have to put ethics aside in the name of politics.

ana shell media, ana shell media press, behaving badly towards population, collective punishment continues, crimes against humanity, dictatorships, enemies of regime, entire families imprisoned, force to kill children, freedom of movement, freedom of speech, geopolitical economics, government of the Hermit Kingdom, governments of Europe, human rights, human rights abuses in North Korea, humanitarian aims, humanitarian goals,humanitarian intervention, hypocrisy of humanitarianism, hypocrisy of western governments, Kim Jong-un, labour camps, long-awaited report, military attack, natural resources, North America, North Korean economy, North Korean leaders, oil-rich Iraqis, Pyongyang, rife hunger, show loyalty to party, spread democracy, UN Security Council, western newspapers, withdrawal of food aid, work to death

Low-cost electricity and capital outflows

How much can be earned off of the global energy problems facing developing markets? It’s possible to earn a lot, and regularly.

“We’re providing countries with the unique opportunity to participate in integrating their companies into this new business,” says one Ana Shell Fund employee. “We are inviting developing markets to learn how generating electricity using syngas produced via the gasification of renewable resources like agricultural waste and city garbage can lower the cost of a kW/h to around $.02 USD. Sometimes less.”

Countries in South-East Asia are at a high risk of a “sudden stop” of foreign capital flows, and therefore need to obtain access to low-cost electricity as soon as possible. In the opinion of Morgan Stanley London office analysts Manoj Pradhan and Patrick Drozdzik, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Thailand may experience an exodus of capital investment because investors tend to shy away from developing markets.

Ana Shell Fund’s comments on reforming the energy industry have been made against the backdrop of Indian, Turkish and South African central banks raising their key interest rates in order to protect their currencies, the International Business Times writes. According to their economists, a “sudden stop” is defined as the termination or even outflow of capital from a country. It also includes restricting said country’s access to international financial markets for a determined period, which would weaken their national economies.

In order to implement affordable power generation projects in developing markets, the Ana Shell Fund has formed a work team. The fruit of their collaboration is an Eco-SV turbine with an efficiency factor (EF) of over 55%, and best of all – it’s cheap to manufacture! This turbine would enable electricity to be produced at the low cost of two cents per kW/h. The purpose for this project is to reduce developing countries’ dependencies upon capital inflows and loans, helping them balance current account deficits, establish monetary freedom, and lessen China’s influence over foreign economies. Under existing economic conditions, the countries at the highest risk must determine how they will finance their budgets and energy deficits, and whether they will explore new financial avenues. It is worth pointing out that Thailand, Turkey, and Ukraine have recently suffered from political upheaval. Who will step up and take responsibility for our future?

Capital outflows are at an all-time high. According to data gathered by the Societe Generale, the total cash inflow into developing markets’ stock funds reached a peak level of $220 billion USD in February of last year. Since then, over $60 billion USD have been allocated to foreign assets. According to analysts’ forecasts, in the nearest future, the migration rate will more than double. The same fate is expected for the EM-obligations fund. Among other things, the gradual tapering of the US Federal Reserve System’s quantitative easing program may become cause for concern. That is why it is so important to create a cheap power industry, Ana Shell Fund analysts claim.

We are inviting all developing markets to participate in this Consortium.

affordable power generation projects, agricultural waste, ana shell fund, ana shell media, ana shell media press, balance current account deficits, capital outflows, cheap power industry, city garbage,dependencies upon capital inflows, developing markets, Eco-SV turbine, efficiency factor, EM-obligations fund, energy deficits, establish monetary freedom, existing economic conditions, exodus of capital investment, explore new financial avenues, finance budgets, foreign capital flows, foreign economies, gasification of renewable resources, generating electricity,global energy problems, interest rates, International Business Times, international financial markets, lessen China's influence, low-cost electricity, Manoj Pradhan, migration rate, Morgan Stanley London office, national economies, participate in Consortium, Patrick Drozdzik, political upheaval, quantitative easing program, reach peak level, reforming the energy industry, Société Générale, South-East Asia, stock funds, total cash inflow, US Federal Reserve

A Not-So-Happy Birthday for NAFTA

In my last blog I talked about the issue of immigration across the EU trade zone, from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK, and how it has become a divisive issue – with much of the native British population wrongly blaming immigrants for their poor economic situation. Today I want to stick to the same theme, but shift to a different continent – specifically, North America, where this month marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of NAFTA.

NAFTA – or the North American Free Trade Agreement – was signed by the Clinton administration despite a lot of opposition from common people and some politicians in all three of the countries it affects, Canada, Mexico, and the US. The aim was to a create a free trade zone across North America, similar to the European Union itself. This, it was argued, would make the continent more competitive on the world market, while also providing cheaper goods to consumers in Canada and the US and helping Mexico catch up with its neighbours in terms of development and gross domestic product. Everyone would be a winner.

In reality, rather than bringing prosperity to all, NAFTA has worked to take money away from the poor and put it into the pockets of the rich, all while exacerbating a number of social and economic problems in America.

To begin with, many well-paid manufacturing jobs in the US have migrated to Mexico, where labour is considerably cheaper. The US-Mexico border regions have seen massive growth of 'maquiladoras' – factories where goods are produced for tariff-free export to the US. These factories often have sweatshop conditions, and workers are paid a pittance. Meanwhile, American cities that formerly relied on manufacturing have become hollowed-out shells – their inner city and downtown districts blighted by unemployment and urban decay, with buildings crumbling and no remaining tax base to fix the deeply entrenched problems.

At the same time as previously American jobs have travelled south, many Mexicans have begun to move north in search of a better life. Many of them are looking only to escape the poverty of Mexico (including those low-paid sweatshop jobs in the maquiladoras) and make a better life for themselves and their families. However, some of them have less positive motives, and drug smuggling has become a major problem. Of course, those drugs are being supplied to meet an increasing demand from...the same desperate, unemployed, hopeless people who live in the depressed American inner cities that were destroyed by NAFTA.

Despite the fact that many of the problems of urban decay, drugs, and immigration in the US can be traced to the desire of the corporations and their political allies to implement NAFTA and gain access to cheap Mexican labour, the average American is encouraged by the media and politicians to blame the poor Mexicans who cross the border to find work. No matter what their intentions – and the vast majority of them are honest, decent people – they are accused of drug smuggling, stealing jobs, and bleeding social security dry. In actual fact, as the story of NAFTA shows us, it is the rich who are bleeding the poor dry, through their thirst for profits and their disregard for the jobs and livelihoods of their fellow citizens.

NAFTA, Clinton administration, European Union, manufacturing jobs, poor economic situation, NRGLab 

Affluenza, and how the rich always win

A story from the tail end of last year, which ordinarily would have remained merely a local tragedy, has actually turned out to show us something broader and more disturbing about the society we live in. It begins with a 16 year old boy in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas taking his parents' car for a joyride with his friends, stealing a case of beer from a local WalMart, and eventually crashing into four people on the side of the road, killing them all.

A terrible tragedy for the victims and their families, for sure. But for the rest of us, the real story began later – when the judge sentenced the boy. The judge accepted the defence's argument that the boy was a victim of 'affluenza', and gave him a ten year suspended sentence – meaning he has essentially been set free, as long as he attends a rehab clinic for his alcohol and drug problems and doesn't commit any further crimes.

But what is affluenza? The judge argued that the teen had been sheltered from the effects of his action by his parents' money – basically, he had everything he could ever want, and was allowed to do anything without fear of the repercussions, all because his parents were so rich. Because of this, he couldn't be considered responsible for his actions on that fateful night.

Now ordinarily, I'm in favour of lenient sentences, and ones which focus on rehabilitation and forgiveness rather than mere punishment. But there's two particularly interesting aspects to this case. First, it's worth noting that the very same judge previously sentenced another teenager to ten years in jail for accidentally killing people while driving. The difference between those two boys? One was rich and white, the other was poor and black.

And second, this case makes it abundantly clear that in western society, and particularly in the US, your position at birth places you on a certain path in life. This is despite the claims of numerous (usually right-wing) commentators who will say that anyone can become rich and successful in America, no matter how they were born. In actual fact, if you're rich, you stay rich and you stay safe – you get paid more, you'll own a business, you'll get tax breaks from the government, and, as this case shows, the response to even your most violent and destructive behaviour will be leniency. But if you start poor, you stay poor – you go to a school with no funding, you get paid minimum wage, and you go to jail for the same crimes that rich people get away with.

This split between the winners and the losers in our society is obvious to almost everyone at this point. But this story also illustrates how it applies to the third path, those in the middle. This is the 'middle class', the not-quite-rich-but-not-quite-poor, the people who are just staying afloat like the four people who were killed. These people tend to consider themselves secure and hard-working. They think that if they just keep working for the rich people a little longer, one day they too will be rich. But as this story shows, they're ultimately as expendable as the poor. Their status in the middle of the pyramid won't help them when the rich decide to run them down.

In the end, all of these people were victims of 'affluenza' – the disease in our society which means the rich are considered untouchable, unimpeachable, and, as this story shows, unimprisonable.

affluenza, middle class, Dallas-Fort Worth area, Walmart, further crimes, nrglab, suspended sentence, repercussions

Shop 'Til You Drop – the Perils of Consumerism

While the Christmas and New Year season is supposed to be a time for community, family, love, friendship, and just generally taking it a bit easy for once, in recent years the week after Christmas has become known for one thing in particular – shopping. Stores start their sales on the morning of the 26th, and put on all sorts of offers to entice customers and their money through the doors. The scenes are similar to the so-called 'Black Friday' in the US – the day after Thanksgiving, when shoppers have been known to end up in stampedes and dangerous crushes while trying to grab a bargain.

I'm sure most of the people reading this blog won't be fighting with their fellow citizens over a discounted sweater in H&M, but even if we stay aloof from the mad scramble of the sales, they still provide an excellent opportunity for us to slow down, pull back, and think about how consumerism affects us throughout the whole year.

Particularly in highly developed countries like the US, Canada, and western Europe (but also increasingly in places like China, Singapore, and eastern Europe) we are continually bombarded with images and messages encouraging us to buy throwaway consumer goods. These last for a little while, then they break or go out of fashion, and we buy more. The world economy is now essentially dependent on this cycle of commodities.

The material effects of this system are well known. Around the world, many people are exploited in the process of manufacturing and selling commodities. We hear of Chinese workers committing suicide in the Foxconn factories that make Apple products; trade unionists being killed by paramilitaries in Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plants; Bangladeshi garment workers being paid a dollar an hour to stitch sports shoes; even migrants in Europe and North America who are paid less than minimum wage to work in warehouses or in transporting items around the continent. It's easy to see the exploitation, and the way in which poor people are kept down by this.

But there are also philosophical effects of rampant consumerism, and they affect even those of us who otherwise benefit from this system. Consumerism encourages us to value people in terms of the commodities they own, and leads to a 'keeping up with Joneses' mentality – the idea that we need to have more and more things in order to show our neighbours that we're just as good as they are. Our neighbours, in turn, buy more and more things to try and demonstrate their own wealth. And both of us look down on the poorer people in our community, those who don't have the money to buy as many commodities as we do – because we believe that buying things shows our superiority, we believe that those with nothing must be worse people. You don't have a car, a flatscreen tv, a new washing machine? Then stay over there, with the other poor people – you're not good enough for us.

This is terribly damaging for our society, encouraging the increasing division between rich and poor, worthy and unworthy, winners and losers, at a time when we should all be working together to make the world a better and fairer place. And it's also damaging to our own sense of self-esteem – if we judge our worth by the things we own, we'll always be looking for more and more, and never be able to rest, take stock of our lives, and be happy. So try to slow down this week and focus less on the instant pleasures of shopping and more on gentle and relaxed time spent with friends, family, and community – I promise you, it will be better than consumerism for your mind, body, and soul.

shop til you drop, black friday, Thanksgiving, h&m, Apple products, new year season, christmas, NRGLab

The healthcare crisis and the false American dream

As the year 2013 drew to a close, it’s a time for reflection and looking back at the major issues and debates of the past twelve months. And undoubtedly, one of the biggest controversies of the year in US politics (and, to an extent, world politics, due to the still massive influence of that country) was the Affordable Care Act – often known by its slightly silly nickname ‘Obamacare’.

The idea of the Affordable Care Act, in a nutshell, was to provide a kind of universal healthcare for Americans by insisting that every citizen purchase health insurance, and forcing insurance companies to provide reasonably-priced packages to make this possible (as well as providing subsidies for the poorest people). In theory, this seems like a good idea – ensuring that the US will no longer see the situation of people being unable to pay for their basic health needs.

According to its detractors, however, the program was plagued with problems. Most notably, the website for choosing new insurance policies had a number of bugs and often simply refused to work. Some people who previously had generous work-provided packages suddenly found themselves having to pay more than they expected. But in general, both of these complaints seem relatively small – minor problems that can be ironed out over time. Why then, was ‘Obamacare’ such a massive point of contention within the US? For the majority of opponents, the problems are not practical but ideological – they simply oppose the very concept of providing healthcare for everyone in the country.

There is an ideological belief in the US (and in many other places) that people’s lives are only the result of their own decisions and actions. This is the basis of the ‘American Dream’, the idea that anyone, no matter where they start in life, can make a success of themselves in America through hard work. This completely ignores the many structured power systems that are at work in any society – obvious problems like racism and sexism, but also the advantages that people from wealthier families have in terms of education, connections, and safety nets. However, despite being wholly unrealistic, this idea of the ‘American Dream’ is what makes many people think that they have no responsibility to help their fellow citizens through contributing to a healthcare system – they think that those without healthcare have caused their own problems through not working hard enough, and never stop to think that the problems may in fact be structural.

This is a mindset that we see on many issues across the US these days, and across the world. There are people who have been fortunate enough to be born into a system that gives them advantages, power, and wealth, and there are people who are unfortunate enough to have found themselves on the opposite side of the equation, without the opportunities and material advantages that many of us have. Ultimately, however, those who have everything and those who have nothing still have the same basic needs – healthcare, for example. A fairer and more just society, in which we help our fellow humans rather than trying to keep them down, will thus benefit us all – and spending a little extra on health insurance won’t really hurt us, but will immediately help other people live more fulfilling lives.

In the year 2014, we need to fight more than ever to make society more just, to make people more understanding, and to make life fairer and easier for all. At NRGLab and the Ana Shell Fund this is what we try to do every day, through developing cheaper alternative forms of energy and other projects, but there’s still much work to be done – and we hope you’ll be around to help us with is in 2014.

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