The picture of the race to the bottom. All forms of competition increase costs, the purpose of economic competition is to raise and transfer costs on other sectors, the environment and the future. We can watch this every day in our lives.

As JK Galbraith wrote 30 or more years ago: "The purpose of economic competition is to eliminate competition", which we can see in the forms of mergers, acquisitions, conglomerates and oligopolies. Some corporations are now working under hundreds of names, while people think that they're dealing with individual "free enterprise" businesses.

If somebody steals a candybar in a supermarket, that's crime. If somebody steals the supermarket it is "growth".

When companies fire local workers and outsource to keep the local wages in their own pockets, it is theft. Period. There's no other name for it.

Besides, our prices are rising every day, the cost of living increases by the minute all over the spectrum, so where are the benefits of the neoclassical market economy for the public?

Ed Deak, Big lake.

Thanks, Ed, for your perspicacious analysis.

One of the flies in the ointment will continue to be energy and the carbon economy. It's fine to laud trade to the skies if you can movee things around the planet cheaply. However, all the unaccounted for costs of burning billions of barrels of oil to move manufactured trivia from China to North America are going to come to roost sooner or later. It's one thing to move ideas and data electronically. It's another to move cars and television sets (and on and on and on) on container ships.

A nearby environmental analyst/critic commented on the irony of spending vast sums of money to truck water (in the forms of soft drinks, beer, wine, etc.) around North America, renewable drinks that cost more than the non-renewable diesel and other fuels used to ship them.

In the not to distant future we'll be buying a lot more locally produced goods and services than we currently imagine.

As for Ed's comment about "benefits of the neoclassical economy for the public", that has rarely ever been the idea. The economy as currently constructed is an abstraction designed to protect certain kinds of privilege, particularly financial privilege.

There is no point looking longingly at Europe. The economies of Germany and France are stagnant and their unemployment rates are huge.

The rule of law, trade and free markets is what allowed the West to surge ahead of the rest of the world in economic development. Europeans have no inherent virtue to explain why Holland,for example, is rich and Indonesia, for example, is poor.

To listen to the lefties you would think that capitalism has made us poor when in fact it is what has made us rich compared with the rest of the world.

If you really want to address outsourcing ask yourself: why is the best job that an Indian university graduate can get answering a telephone in a call center; what is wrong with the Indian economy that has created such a situation?

I happen to be European born and am not looking longingly at Europe. In fact I never want to see the place again. Europe is a bloody mess, the EU is nothing more than a new form of colonization etc. etc.

What I would, however, like to know is, what exactly does a "lefty" mean? I have lived under every known ideology, have seen Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and Stalin's Worker's Paradise, Attlee's nationalizations and Churchill's denationalizations, have been reading history for over 60 years, but have yet to figure out what the political "right" and "left" mean?

North America became so called "rich" on account of the unpaid for resources that could be stolen, used and squandered. Wealth can not be created, only taken. The USA is going downhill rapidly, because its resources are diminishing and the only thing that keeps its economy afloat are the daily handouts from Japan and China, buying worthless US Dollars, to prolong its agony another day.

As far ideologies are concerned, capitalism had some good points and results as long as it was under strict government controls, encouraging private, as opposed "free" enterprise. Now it is committing suicide through deregulation and collectivization.

For the past 30 years, since the forced introduction of the neoclassical theory, capitalism has been rapidly becoming just another form of forced collectivization, the planned destruction of democracy and human rights. Neoclassical market capitalism is now destituting and killing more people on the long term, global scale than the death camps of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, plus both World Wars put together.

Mao is listed as the World Champion murderer with 28 million, Stalin with 22 and Hitler with 16. According to UN figures 25 million people starve to death every year globally, a child in every 5 seconds. This has been going on for years and will go on for more, ultimately killing billions.

Is this something to be proud of ? In short, neoclassical capitalism is rapidly becoming another form of Stalin's state capitalism, to glorify and enrich a special interest ruling class. What will happen when the resources are all squandered away on "wealth creating" schemes, or the peoples of the so called Third World wake up and demand their own property rights, by kicking out the colonizing multinationals? Will the US, or the EU have enough nuclear weapons to kill off everybody to steal their wealth ?

Ed Deak , Big Lake.

Some years ago, I was onboard a jet aircraft with a group of colleagues. We were on the way to Dallas, Texas to set up a sophisticated data-over-radio dispatch/communications system for the Dallas Police Department. The system was designed and manufactured by our mostly employee-owned, Vancouver area electronics company.

As we were about to touch-down at Dallas/Fort-Worth Airport, our project manager pointed to a large building at the edge of town. He said the building was the headquarters of one of our main competitors. The competitors were very choked-up about the fact that Canadians had "taken-away" a major multimillion dollar contract right out from under their noses in their own home town. They felt the City of Dallas should have been obligated to support their local industry by purchasing a local system.

The City of Dallas chose our emergency services dispatch/communications system because after very careful analysis, they found it was vastly superior to the locally-manufactured system. The City of Dallas believed their first obligation was to protect the lives of their citizens by providing their emergency services personnel with the very best technology available in the world. They didn't want to risk the lives of their citizens and act as a corporate welfare agency by giving the contract to a local supplier of an inferior system on the mere basis that it was local. Previously, the New York Police Department, the Boston Police Department, the Las Vegas Fire Department, and many other U.S. emergency departments chose our Canadian designed and manufactured system over domestically-manufactured systems for exactly the same reason.

Do the NDP-Union types really believe that Dallas, New York, Las Vegas, and many other major cities should have risked the lives of their citizens by purchasing inferior locally-manufactured emergency equipment purely on the basis of creating local jobs?

When B.C. hospitals are in the market for MRI machines, CAT Scan machines, and other sophisticated technologies, should their number one priority be to protect the lives of patients by buying the best technology in the world? Or should the patients' needs come last, with local corporate welfare protectionism and union jobs-for-life mentalities trumping the needs of patients?

The fact that our company was mostly employee-owned was a major contributor to our success. There was no union and therefore no union featherbedding. We didn't need a union. Management was reasonable because they were constantly aware that we, the employee-shareholders, were their ultimate bosses.

As employee-shareholders, we had to sacrifice short-term income in exchange for receiving long-term share value and control of management. The skills required to do our jobs were much higher than the relatively trivial skills required to wire-up residential telephones. Yet our upfront, guaranteed incomes were on average much lower than a typical Telus employee's wage. In order to gain the power of control, we shouldered the burden of risk by accepting a large part of our pay as long-term shares.

Telus's CEO may be overpaid. But if Telus union bosses put a big chunk of their Billion dollar pension money where their mouth is, they could start their own telephone company and hire a CEO who would accept a salary of a couple hundred thousand dollars per year. And the workers could be in the driver's seat when outsourcing issues are decided.

I fully agree with you, but the issue here is not the buying of necessary, or superior products from anywhere, which was well covered in the tariff laws long before the various so called "free trade agreements", but outsourcing, which is the taking the making of domestic products to so called "low wage" countries and pocketing the wage difference, which is theft under any ideology.

I have no way of proving it at this time, but I would suggest that if the manufacture of Product X costs $10. in Canada, but it can be imported for $1, or 2, the ultimate cost to the Canadian economy will still be $10. through a great number of hidden costs incurred by outsourcing, not calculated by economists, or even adding to the GDP.

What the GDP doesn't recognize is that service jobs and services are not assets, but liabilities. It is the same as firing the production workers in a factory, but increasing the office and maintenance jobs. The same applies at the national level.

In any case, the higher wages in Canad are the result of higher costs and prices. When we came to Canada in 1955, my first job paid me $1.35 an hour. Then I went into an apprenticeship for a starting wage of .75 cents. My wife was making about the same, or less, but we could survive, because we could buy a week's groceries for $15 to 20 and our rent was $30 a month. You could buy small bungalows in Burnaby for $1,400. and a very good house in Vancouver was about $5, or 6,000. We bought our first home at 3177 E. 47th for $6,500 in 1966. with monthly payments of $45. and one breadwinner per family was enough. Now even 2 can hardly make it.

In other words, if costs were the same, or as in India, or China, Canadians still could work
low wages, but how could they now ?

Ed Deak

Cycling Commuter, finished your little "NDP-union types" rant? Glad to hear there's actually one right-winger who competes to put food on the table. In my experience most are just a bunch of blow-hards sitting on their fat a** and bitching full-time about the union they're part of and saying how they would be just as well-off if there wasn't any union. That and those working in daddy's company pretty much account for 90% of the blow-hard set.

Fact : most union people don't vote NDP.

So why are you only selling your wares to the Americans? Why aren't you selling in New Delhi or Xiaoping?

Are you saying that you can't compete in Asia or just don't want to?

We sell all over the world but strangely enough about 99% of our sales are in North America or Europe. Wow, how is that? Gee, could it be because they're the only ones with enough money to buy?

Shipping jobs to India and China, among others, does not reduce final price to customer, it simply pads the bank accounts of those who wouldn't want to work in Bangalore themselves.

Not many executives of North American companies are replaced by members of the 3rd world and rarely ever is the head office moved from New York or London to Islamabad.

When that happens I'll have an easier time believing that outsourcing is not simply anti-labour.

I've said it here before and I'll say it here again.

Capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to the working-man.

But not what we have now in the form of today's free enterprise-destroying, monopolistic, partnering-with-gov't Fascistic system.

Some entrepreneurship will always outsmart these greedy buggers - for a while - then only to be devoured by hostile takeovers, patent infringements and bankruptcy from fighting off lawsuits in hostile courts.

I wish these "free enterprisers" would develop some political smarts.

fiat lux

I think that your despair about the economy ignores the facts that we see all around us. People driving better cars than their parents, living in bigger houses than their parents and consuming a wider range of products than their parents. You may disagree with the priorities that people are setting for themselves but there is no doubt that our standard of living is higher than our parents. The standard of living numbers in Canada are distorted over time in that during the 1970s the country had an artificially inflated standard of living paid for by borrowed money and now we have an artificially reduced standard of living as we continue to pay the costs of the 1970s excesses.

The wealth you see around you is not the result of a pillaging of natural resources. If that was true then Russia and Zimbabwe would be rich and Hong Kong and Holland would be poor.

Check the numbers, it was during Mulroney's reign that our debt exploded and it wasn't because Mulroney was pouring money into social programs.

Joesmith......I don't know where you're getting your figures, but all scientists in the environmental/sustainability field agree that the vastly increased destruction of natural resources, not to mention the oil economy is not only damaging, but could destroy humanity as we know it.

I don't know how old you are, but we were much better off 40 - 50 years ago, when life was slower, the selection of professions and occupations far more diversified, etc. etc.
9 days after we arrived in Vancouver in May 1955, I went looking for work, with lots of education, but no practical skills. I got 2 jobs on the first day. However, I learned my lesson and instead of a boring office job, I learned a trade, and then more trades, and have never been unemployed and now, 50 years later, we have achieved a high degree of self sufficiency that allows us to live very happily productively and comfortably on minimum income.

As far cars are concerned, I was in motorsports to the factory team captain level in the 60s, so I do know a bit about them. Look at the incredibly complicated and inefficient designs, no bumpers,compound curves, where the slightes dent costs a fortune to repair.Look at the completely stupid designs of the sculptured headlights. etc.

People can no longer can service their vehicles and can't afford the astronomical repair costs, that's why there are towing trucks standing by on the Coquihalla at all times, to pick up the broken down sculptured masterpieces.

By the way, has anybody driven the Coquihalla before it was a highway? I did 3 times on car rallies, at racing speeds, once in the night.

Look at the inefficient city houses, and so on and on, the unrepairable electronics and home appliances, all designed to waste materials and energy, because waste adds to the GDP. And to pollution, global warming and the landfills.

By the way, I'm not despairing at all, just pointing things out and laughing at human gullibility and stupidity.

Now take a look at this and let's see what you think, apart from the programmed neocon denials.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1813695,00.html

Ed Deak. Big Lake.

Wow, Joe Smith- you've got some blinders on! I'm "only" 35 and I can see plain as day my parents had a FAR better standard of living than my generation does.
To add to your materialistic nonsense of "we're driving better cars, living in bigger houses and consuming a wider range of products (aka garbage)"- we are also a lot sicker, less fit, have WAY more neuroses and live in a far dirtier natural environment. You are basing the idea of a "standard of living" on THINGS- possessions. That is the saddest thing about our modern society, that people are buying into this nonsense.

I'm with you, Ed; laughing at human gullibility and stupidity, laying low and keeping fit, enjoying long hikes on the North Shore with my dog- because feeding my spirit is my top priority, not all this waste and nonsense around me that society tries to brainwash me into believing is going to make me happy- or provide a high standard of living.

Good TIMES article, Ed- I'm going to use it for discussion in my ESL class!

We have a computer store in a small town, and hire local kids with training and skills. Right there down the street, someone you know who will help.
Then we get people who tell us they can pick up a phone and 24 hrs a day some Dell kid in India with a script will give them online support, and we just can't offer that level of service. Not only are the jobs leaving, the public is being brainwashed into thinking no service at all is 'good' service.

You said it correctly, "...the public is being brainwashed". This has been and is the key to the power of any special interest ruling sector, who have been persuading millions in history to climb scaling ladders and die in their service.

You can read the examples of this brainwash on this very site.

I keep coming back to the fact that as long as this garbage is being taught in our universities as good economics, there's no hope for change for the better.

Neoclassical market economics are not a science, but a pseudo religion and our economists its priesthood. The politicians are only following the advice and orders of these phonies, just as kings and emperors of the past have made their decisions from what their priests have read from the guts of sacrificial goats.

The problem is that we now are the sacrificial goats, piously lining up to be opened up, like thousands used to, to have their hearts ripped out by the obsidian knives of Aztec priests.

Just read the business sections of our daily papers to turn your stomach.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Great unknowns? Here is a known from personal experience:

When a family member passed payment of my BC Medical premiums back to me, a lapse in payment occurred. After being phoned by someone from, or on behalf of BCMSP, whose native tongue was not English and was extremely difficult to understand, I mailed a cancelled cheque in order to initiate automatic payments from my credit union.

I still got letters demanding payment. (Don't think this cannot effect your credit rating)

After ignoring these letters, my account started to be debited for the premium payments as the automatic function took hold.

Here's what I think happened. The BCMSP suspected that I was paying my arrears and establishing automatic payment because I had suffered, or anticipated, a medical emergency. Such was not the case.

Had this been the case, I don't doubt that I would have been dinged for the whole bill - regardless of the many years of payment before the short lapse.

'Wealth can not be created, only taken'

Now, that is not true. You put an acorn in the ground, or two, or fifty. Fifty, or 75 years later, you have an oak grove. Then you fell it, cut it and build ships. Ships can take you around the world on wind power. You have created wealth. Alternatively, you could have built houses for people. Same thing. Or, you herd cattle and protect it against predators, starvation, and winter cold, so you get a better survival rate that nature would afford. You slaughter the surplus and you have food, horns, hide, and bones for knife handles, fish hooks, etc. You have created wealth by your work.
What you cannot do is 'create' the level of wealth that it took many generations of hard work to build up, in just your own life time. There, you must become an entrepreneur. And indisputably, you pay your workers less that the value their work actually represents in market dollars, in order to make a 'profit', but drawing the line between reasonable payment for the risk and the intiative, and outright highway robbery, is where it becomes tricky. How much is enough? How much is too much? The only alternative which would deliver full 'economic justice' would be a cooperative or collective system, worker-owned, but this is a rarity, because often wise economic decisions are not arrived at in a democratic setting. There are followers and there are leaders, and never the twain shall meet (at least not in the same head!)
What we are missing in the equation today is an authority mighty enough to curb the most psychopathic traits of industry leaders and corporations, their yen for winning at all costs. In the old days it was the church, playing on the fear in even these people for their immortal soul. Now, we have nothing to equal that, so the 'secular' society must come in with rules and regs, but they lack the trump card, the great club. What's another fine? the cost of doing business.
I believe we must look for another kind of societal organization. We can go two ways, true democracy, or benevolent dictatorship, with automatic trips to the disintegrator for those who don't stay benevolent, this to be decided by councils selected the same way we now select juries.
It would seem to me, that a more constructive solution to the need to outsource would be to work on the creation of a well-educated, flexible-minded work force at home. Physically and intellectually, this country has all it needs to produce whatever it needs, and resource-wise, we are one of the countries best off in the world, if not the best. Selling our logs raw and everything else before it's even out of the ground is sheer stupidity in societal terms and can only happen, because psychopathic tendencies are considered legitimate. Now there is brainwashing for you. And none of these respectless scoundrels ever asked Brother Bear!

Take a good look at the outsourcing - particularly to India - and decide whether we can - or even want to compete.

When we were in India earlier this year, I read a story that said that the techies in Bangalore were complaining about their working conditions. These were their working conditions: Young people were hired, training was offered, but they signed an agreement that they would stay on the job for two years. Their paycheques were docked a certain amount to be held in trust until they left employment. But they worked from 7 am until midnight! I don't know how many days a week.
The longer they stayed, the more money was in their trust account. If they left it was forfeited. A spokesperson for the industry said that only a few techies were complaining,
but she couldn't see why/

This was not unsual. Our friend, a chartered accountant, worked for a bank for some 25 years, and he worked from 9 am to 9 pm,

Yes, joesmith, there are educated people in India working like slaves, but it is not where we want to go. And if anybody thinks we wouldn't go there, think again. We would, in a heartbeat! The only thing stopping this is the presence of unions. Can you name a country in the world that has a decent standard of living without unions? It wasn't our industries or our governments that made this a decent country; it was the fight unions made toward decent wages, toward safe working conditions, toward a saner society. And not just for their members, but for all workers and businesses as well.

I don't know why those in business can't see that when their customers, the people that live around them,have money they buy from local outlets.

The problem in India is over-population. They will have to deal with that before they can tackle other problems.

Dorothy, I'm an artist, tradesman and rancher. I take resources and convert them into other forms, but my work is not creation, only conversion.

The First Law of Thermodynamics: We can neither create, or destry anything, only convert them into other forms.

All forms of life exist by the conversion of resources through every second of their existence. Their growth and demise is neither creation, or destruction, only conversion.

If we could create wealth, we would not have crime, wars, economic theories expropriating the resource bases of others to divert the benefits into their own pockets.

The first law of democracy should be that we can not create anything, only take, and then work out a system living up to the claimed definition of economics as "The science for the management and distribution of scarce resources" and not some hokey ideo of wealth creation that can be distorted into legalized theft. Ed Deak.

Vera - you said "Yes, joesmith, there are educated people in India working like slaves, but it is not where we want to go" I understand perfectly that we do not want to go there. My rhetorical question was: what is wrong with those societies that such situations occur.

Fiat Lux: you are misquoting the first law of thermodynamics. If you want to paraphrase it a better summary would be "there is no free lunch".

Fii - what I see is a society so rich that we get to make choices like staying healthy and taking long walks with our dog while having a better material standard of living than our parents or grandparents. Most people do define their standard of living on "things".

So, what is the correct definition of the First law of Thermodynamics in your opinion? As I have no scientific background, when I was working on my Efficiency Principle, I had and still have top level, world class scientific advice by professionals not owned by corporations.

Here it is from the Dictionary of Scientific Literacy: "The first law simply states that "Energy is conserved"; that is, it is indestructible- there's always the same total amount of energy in the universe. Energy can neither be created, or destroyed; it just changes form, such as from chemical energy in fuel to heat, or to mechanical energy.,,,,etc."

The same rules apply to matter, or if you like resources as they are convertible. We have been discussing this with my advisers for 6 years before making the final definition in 1991.

The result is that economic efficiency must be the same as physical efficiency and monetary figures can not be used for economic calculations, because they are not realities, such as energy and matter, but often violence induced, infinitely variable, temporary perceptions. Now used to disempower and colonize people on the global scale.

Combine this with the human rights of survival
and we must come to the conclusion that human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy.

No special interest class has the legal claim of being, or representing the economy.

This in turn means that ruling classes in history who have claimed divine rights for the diversion of the benefits of resource conversion into their own pockets were lying, just as the "investor class" is lying now, while committing crimes to divert the benefits.

In the case of North America, the wealth was based on the theft of resources from the original owners, which is still going on. In other words, it wasn't created, but stolen and diverted under "divine laws" and screwball economic theories.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

The article quoted by Fiat Lux was interesting although I thought it tried to cover too much ground. As I understand the article it says:
1. we have more material wealth than ever before;
2. that wealth has been created by technological progress (personally I think we have also had huge insititutional progress and that the enlightment movement was as important as the invention of the steam engine)
3. we are dependent on oil and there is too little progress in finding an alternative
4. scientific progress seems to be slowing down and we don't quite know why
5. It may not all matter because we are nasty beasts at heart and we will probably destroy ourselves soon.

The first and foremost challenge facing the world is energy production and consumption. We have technologies available (wind, nuclear and solar) which are more expensive than oil but which when combined with the inevitable conservation that would come with higher prices will be affordable. If the world is not rushing out to invest in these now it is because some of these technologies are developing so rapidly you are better off to wait and invest later rather than sooner.

I am an optimist because there is no utility in being a pessimist and history shows the optimist is more often right. Having children is the ultimate expression of faith in the future and I have three.

Back to the globalization debate. I quite agree that it is wrong for governments to lower service levels by using call centres whose operators speak English so badly it is difficult to communicate. On the other hand, 15 years ago when I would try to call Federal government offices I had trouble connecting with anyone who spoke English well and now you cannot connect with a human being at all.

I believe we have to be optimistic too joesmith. I also have kids.

I read the article Ed posted and thought it was damn good. Could have been longer as he was covering a lot of ground but I think he got his point across. We're living unsustainably. And I would prefer we got our own house in order and kept it that way than help other countries inch us towards Armageddon. I see population expansion this century as being the overall problem, the elephant in the living room so to speak.

I certainly hope we run out of oil before we run out of fresh water because the "correction" (a euphemism of the right I get a kick out of) after the former will help us ward off the latter, perhaps indefinitely. A correction I would have preferred never to see as I'm sure it'll be heart-wrenching.

On a further note, I wonder if the US and Canada will even survive in their current states as this all slowly comes to pass. Pretty difficult to have two huge countries, sea to sea when energy for transport is at a premium if its there at all.

I read an article that said that the US was actually quite well situated for renewal energy because it has such a large area relative to its energy use.

I expect that as energy prices rise you will see a shift to rail from automobiles and airplanes.

Canada and the US will use all that space for windfarms, solar panels and bio fuel production.

So long as you have energy you can have clean water. The key resource is energy - with enough of that you can do almost anything.

Interesting points, thanks. The idea that Kansas and Saskatchewan will become wind-farms instead of wheat farms would take some getting used to but if transportation costs are going to soar it will probably be more profitable I guess.

And I love rail, in fact a 30-day Via Rail Pass is a great way to see the country :-)

But my point on Canada's survival is based more on looking at history. Empires such as Rome or even the history of Germany before it became a country lead me to believe that once transportation becomes very expensive the pulls of our different regions may become too much to bear.

Germany used to be split up into over 300 little countries in spite of the fact its geography is not overwhelming. The Roman empire was so large in terms of time to cross it that civil wars became the norm for a period.

In Canada, we have already had a North-West Rebellion in our history when the periphery was "too far" from the seat of power, In many ways the railroad and the highways have held our country together. The days of being able to fly to Toronto for $99 will never come again and I'm not sure about the implications.

I have to say I don't have a crystal ball and I just don't know how it'll all turn out and that makes me nervous. I guess that's what makes it interesting to discuss.

Frank

I think that Kansas and Saskatchewan can be both wheat fields and wind farms at the same time. Wind turbines have to be spaced apart and their foot print on the ground is small in comparison with the amount of space they need.

Physical travel may become more expensive but the cost of communication keeps falling. The Internet may save us.

joe, they can be both but will there be any money in wheat farming at all once transportation costs soar?

And I agree on the communication. I mentioned the same thing earlier. Almost-free. Lack of historical precedent for that leaves me unsure but interested in the long-term effect of being able to communicate as eaily with someone in Brazil as someone in Ontario and both being too expensive to visit.

Enjoyed your piece Dorothy, though actually I much agree with both yourself and Fait Lux. Surprisingly, I think, your views, other than about whether wealth can or cannot actually be created, are not that different. Odd as that may seem at first blush. :-)(There is a point at which your views reconcile, I think.)

Too late for me to get into this issue at great length, but where I think he is right, depending on the point of view you come at it from, on the issue about whether real wealth can actually be created, or whether economic activity merely transforms already existing total materiality from one form, in which it is not useful to our needs, into another that is.

On the other hand, I think you are more right on the solution side of the equation: Democracy redefined to include economic democracy and not mere "formal, elite controlled" political democracy, a more equitable/balanced distribution of the total product of economic activity, getting control of the fear and greed instincts that drive current capitalism, AND, MAYBE EVEN ESPECIALLY, a new focus on the importance of creating a more holistically educated, highly intellectually/politically evolved populace, much aware of natural/earth system needs as well as our own. (For to create the material "wealth" of which we tend to speak, it can only come from another form of it in the natural world-, to us for sure, an unuseable form of it. (Again, depending at what level we are talking about it.) Which unchecked by our excessive numbers and greed driven demands on it, depletes it and whittles away at the very natural pre-conditions necessary for our life to exist on the planet at all.

Fait Lux's point being, I think, that what you create and add to over here, as a consequence of your economic activity, can only come at the expense of "over there", in the forest, the earth, the air, the oceans etc. etc.

The issue is, how we husband and/or manage it, and I would say, ourselves. Only, as I've said, I think we have to do that, more or less, the way you suggest.

Frank said

That would not be so different from the situation before about 1968 or so. You could communicate relatively cheaply with someone in Europe by letter but a trip to Europe was out of reach of most people. I know some immigrants who came to Canada from Europe in the late 1950s and they did not expect to ever go back for visits. Ten years later airplanes made it possible.

Been awhile since I read you Fait Lux, but you are always interesting. And correct here, in my view of it. :-)

Which, when/if they read it, will drive our local Braunshirt populace completely Wingnut.

Off my back, KWD. :-)

"That would not be so different from the situation before about 1968 or so."

Well, except for the almost-free communications. Unlike 1967 they'll be able to pass pics and video and email etc back and forth instantly and chat as often as they like.

It'll be an interesting development if soaring transport costs do in fact come to pass in the age of the internet.

As for the article, it says says soaring transportation costs would wipe out about 5 bn people but that's impossible to predict because most of us do have faith that something will be done before then.

But the article's premise that we may in fact have no answer to our problems is a frightening one.

Except that we already have some technologies which can generate the necessary energy at prices which might drop our living standard back to that of our parents but will not reduce us to small groups engaged in subsistence farming. Remember that a fuel wood crisis in England led to the exploitation of coal as a fuel which led to steam engines etc. I expect that if we could go back 10,000 or so years we would find that agriculture started as a response to an environmental crisis of declining prey numbers.

Do you think wind, solar etc can support the food transportation needs of 6.5 billion people?

I'm having trouble believing that it can.

Even if somehow the energy and water needs of 6.5 bn are taken care of, what happens when its 10 bn, or 20 bn?

I'm not questioning man's ability to innovate but I think population growth and the accompanying pollution and environmental devastation will overwhelm any innovation.

Re Soaring transortation costs, transportation is so vital to an economy, you can be sure it will be the very last sector to feel the full brunt of any shortages. Subsidies are certain.

Another possibility is that if large windfarms become practical, the railroads will be electrified.

The consumer will carry the full costs of energy shortages in the form of higher gas`prices, home heating fuels, plastics and so on. Since all economies will be faced with this problem, the only real losers will those cut off from supplies, since oil and products have no value unless they can be sold. Still, you can be certain this scenario will be used to justify severly reduced wages - everywhere.

Obviously, I have no background in economics, but nonetheless, I'll dare venture the follolwing:

It has long puzzled me - brought up to believe that the only real economic value input to society came from capital and labour being invested in raw resources - how come service industries, such as Health, produce wealth and add to the GNP?

Then it dawned on me that the only luxuries we
enjoy come from things we can have others produce for us. The ultimate value of anything is it's labour content, whether that is in actual labour or implied in labour-saving devices.

We can't eat Gold or money, but boy, it's nice to have someone else grow our food and cut our wood. Has it ever been any different? So we trade our labour for someone else's, with money today being the means of doing so.

In our system, the Capitalist through his/her services provides means of facilitating this process. What has gone wrong is that these people tell us the system is supposed to be set up for THEIR benefit, not that of society at large. No longer are they rewarded just for providing expertise and risking money, but instead for outright stealing, and coercion of OUR gov't to provide a "favourable economic climate" in which they cannot lose.

In the end, it all boils down to them enjoying wasteful conspicuous consumption with the money OUR labour and resources have produced.

ALL HAIL TO THE MODERN NEROS!!!!!!! And they'll keep on fiddling too.....

Scylla, North America was never for the benefit of society at large. This was a pipe-dream courtesy of Washington, Jefferson and other hippies. As far as Canada goes, we had to embarassingly have a democratic constitution and our independence crammed down our throats by the Brits, who got tired of nursemaiding us. Some parties clung to the sycophantic relationship with the 'mother country', because they were Brits and thought it made them 'special'.
Read the story you can find on this web site:

http://gangsofamerica.com/read.html

And you will know how and why, and by whom, North America was colonized (Turned into a colon?), and for whose benefit it was intended.

Good hunting!

The situation is not as bad as described, provided people and politicians use their heads, instead of following pseudo religious economic theories.

There'll always be some energy, but its waste has to be curtailed. E.g. 90% of commercial flying today is a waste of energy, including the effort that goes into the building of the planes, the airports, the fuel consumption, the transferred plagues, etc. People'll just have to stay at home and learn to become creative human beings, instead of wasting their lives by being somewhere else and believing themselves being happy, because they "travel". I haven't been on a plane since 1969 and haven't missed a thing, but sure have built a lot of useful things.

Today, the vast majority of energy is wasted on forced urbanization and the replacement of human labour with automated machinery, which uses incredible amounts of energy for no practical ,except to divert the benefits of resource conversion into the pockets of a ruling class through artificial overcapitalization. In other words, our incredible energy waste serves no real economic purpose.

There will always be need for some large industries, but not at the present scale, because the real needs of humanity can be grown and made locally in small scale industries and production. 100 small businesses employing 10 people each are far more beneficial and sustainable, than 1 employing 1000.

This will reduce not only energy, but, which is most important, water waste. The per capita water use of city dwellers, which of course includes industrial use for the most part, is calculated at 1,400 US gallons. This is approx. 28 oil barrels of water a day, even for a baby. And our politicians want to jam more people into those overcrowded chickencoops ?

Then we have the feedlots, where the fattening of cattle uses 1,500 US gallons for 1 pound of weight gain, so that "marble" is put into the meat, which is nothing more than stinking, yellow tallow the North American public is addicted to. Absolutely no need. Cattle can be grown and fed on grass on land not suitable for any other agricultural use. We're doing it, as well as thousands of ranchers in Canada, but the crimes happen when we sell our animals and they end up in the feedlots.

When it comes to transportation, within the last 50 years thousands of km of railways have been torn up on the Praeries alone, because "road transport was more efficient". Well, they'll just have to be laid back again.

This list could go on and on. We've been working on the development of energy efficient production systems virtually all our lives and have a pretty good idea of what can be done, because we're doing it and live very comfortably on minimum income, and energy and water use.

As far the "return to subsistence farming" is concerned, millions would be far happier, than commuting to sit in highrise offices, wasting their lives, doing no purposeful work.

Finally, on the subject of new forms of energy.
The worst thing that could happen to humanity is the invention of unlimited "cheap" energy, as it would be used for more destruction and waste. In any case, it is an impossible dream, because all forms us energy use cause equal reactions that cancel out the benefits. There ain't no such thing as "win-win".

Therefore, the only saviour of humanity can be the supply of the needs of the largest number of sectors with the least amounts of energy and resource inputs. In other words, using our brains, instead of falling for screwball "wealth creating" ideologies.

Fortunately, there're no profits in such a system, so our "investors" will just have to learn to do some useful work with their heads and hands.

Ed Deak, Big Lake

That and or, more likely together with increasing human/hunter numbers predating upon that prey, along with other environmental changes occurring in the Nile Valley (also Iraq/Mesopotamia) where agriculture as we know it, first appreared. (If my memory serves.)

We always tend to rule ourselves out of the equation, as if we are somehow above material reality, separate and specially apart, or have until recently (reinforced by religion), as having a net withdrawl/ draw-down influence on the environment, as a result of our wealth creation pursuits. (Fait Lux's observation, I think, that "wealth" over here can only come at the cost expense of drawing down other forms of "wealth" over there, in the other natural systems of the planet.)

There is a material totality on the planet, which can only be changed in form from A to B, and over long periods of time presumably back again. (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.)It cannot be added to out of nothing however, or without a net effect on the whole somewhere.

Which makes the issue of the management of ourselves and our numbers, our demands on the natural world and how we husband it, the critical issue to our future on the planet, and whether/how long we have one. (Meaning, in this historical place, what are we going to do about a greed driven, Capitalist socio-economic arrangement of ourselves predicated upon never ending cheap labour/consumer, market/and product growth-, presumably into infinity? Or until we consume the entire self-sustaining planet, making it unfit for our continued habitation-, at which point we join the long line dinosaur parade into extinction?)

What is, is increasingly obvious socio-economic insanity. Our values have become skewed by a socio-economic system which we should be driving, being what a wide social and economic based democracy should be about, but increasingly renders the great mass of us effectively powerless, as the elite/ruling class controlled system becomes the cart that pulls the horse around.

scylla,

It is far from rocket science. Much of this stuff is so logical that the fact that it is not being utilized is because we are being victimized by deliberately withheld technology - or are acquiring it at a glacial pace.

The predictions of 40/50 years ago had us living happily having to work only three days weekly in order to support our necessities. Our biggest problems might have involved how to use our leisure time.

I you're old enough, you may remember the glorious predictions about the unlimited potentials of nuclear energy, which was supposed to be so "cheap that it won't be worth to read the meters". How about radioactive golfballs that could be found with Geiger counters in tall grass? I still have some of the magazines with such glorious predictions, all of which backfired in a big way.

I seem to remember that it was Sir Bertrand Russell who said "Nobody knows anything" and to a very great extent he was right.

Especially, in the case of neoclassical economics, the biggest cause of this bloody mess we find ourselves in, yet still being taught as a "science".

Ed Deak,

Well, now you really have gone too far, Fait. :-) I must 'fess up to a weakness for cattle "marble" finished on 6 weeks of grain supplement.

On the other hand, I have to agree with you about those disease breeding grounds and waste pits that are feedlots, belly deep, some of them, pools of faeces in which critters spend their final days, just before we consume them, and/or sleeping on great, piled up mounds of it to keep them "somewhat" dry and warm (from heat generated by its composting beneath them).

Creutzfeldt-Jakob is likely but the tip of the iceberg to yet be discovered coming out of these places.

May just have to get used to grass finished beef. :-)

But mmmmmmm, droool, yellow tallow fat. :-)

Being a "good guy" Coyote, you should consider how many starving people around the word could be fed on that 6 weeks of corn that is being pushed unnaturally down the throat of those calves, while all it does to human systems is making them sick with all kinds of problems. If I'd put corn in front of my cattle, they'd smell it and leave , because they don't know what it is.

Our organic calves are the tastiest and tenderest meat under the sun and I can prove it if you come over for dinner.

Ed.

Now, there's a thought. :-D

Coyote,

Wise person that you are, you have probably read it. If not, go to your library and pick up The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - the book reputed to have prompted the U.S.'s
Pure Food laws.

I'm not trying to turn you off of your next hotdog but you may look at it twice.

skeptkool, I have noted that book's title and will be sure never to read it as I love hotdogs :-)

ah, ignorance is bliss :-)

Ditto Frank's comment, Skeptikool.

Generally I'm very good about my choices of food, and we have a really good farmer's market here in town, (I don't garden anymore.) which has just finished in advance of the snow. (Which it feels could come anytime soon, today.) And as I've aged, my taste for meat does seem some diminished. Additionally, we do a lot of our own canning and freezing.

And like Frank, I do love what are called "European" style wieners, and on occassion, a well marbled prime rib-, though I do even know that Fait and yourself are correct-, in all likelihood. (We used to "finish" those cattle for our own consumption, on a straight fine milled oats & barley mix, and maybe occassionally, a very small amount of wheat mixed with the oats and barley from time to time. An ice cream bucket full, morning and evening, plus their alfalfa hay, and or oats/barley hay which we would cut green and bale up, for each animal. Meaning, we did pen them up during the finishing phase. Absolutely no additives. For, like I say, six weeks.) Other than that, all animals for our own consumption came to finishing, straight off grass, just short of their third year.

Those for market went to auction, of course. What we slaughtered and sold off the farm ourselves, got finished the same as our own, unless someone wanted beef straight off grass, which some did. (At a cheaper/pound price.)

The favourites days of my life, though I never did care for doing the slaughtering. It was just life, and the apparent way of nature, which I accepted.

Upton Sinclair! Has that book not been around for awhile.

Though, when one looks at round ups, castrations and branding, stockyards, finishing lots and the mass kill slaughterhouses of the commercial market, one understands out of what mind and experience came Buchenwald, Auschwitz and the rest.

Nicht Wahr?

If Ed and/or Coyote had come over to our house last evening and savoured the tasty spiced red bean dish (with rice) we had for dinner, you'd probably give up beef altogether.

BTW, a friend just bought two small beef tenderloin steaks at an organic butcher shop in Toronto. Small, he emphasizes. $28.00.

Beans cost about $2. for the same weight in protein. Just a thought, and the cows would appreciate it.

As far the "return to subsistence farming" is concerned, millions would be far happier, than commuting to sit in highrise offices, wasting their lives, doing no purposeful work.

Sorry. I hit the "post" button before finiahing.

Fiat Lux said

The problem is that a lot of the folks who are starving are the same "subsistence" farmers who you say are happier than office workers.

My grandfather lived his life as a small scale farmer in Europe. His whole life was lived on the edge. His children, of whom he had many, were expected to make their own way in the world from an early age (my father had to leave home and school to work for his living at age twelve. Only one of the children actually died as a result of the poverty but most of the rest were stunted.

I think he would have traded places with me in a heartbeat.

Subsistence farmers from around the world risk their lives to try to get into western countries to do our dirtiest, most unpleasant jobs rather than continue as subsistence farmers. When Mexicans get caught and deported they try to sneak back into the US.

I wrote "...agriculture started as a response to an environmental crisis of declining prey numbers."

Coyote responded; "That and or, more likely together with increasing human/hunter numbers predating upon that prey, along with other environmental changes occurring in the Nile Valley (also Iraq/Mesopotamia) where agriculture as we know it, first appreared. (If my memory serves.)"

As I understand the chronology, agriculture appeared independently in China, India, Egypt, the Middle East (Turkey) and Mesopotamia at pretty much the same time ten thousand years ago. Since Modern man came into existence 50,000 to 200,000 years ago it seems that the coincidence of timing for the introduction of agriculture must be because of one of the following factors:
1. global climate change;
2. spread of agriculture technology;
3. spread of new hunting technology (perhaps the bow) which allowed hunters to reduce prey numbers to the point where man had to shift to agriculture.

And no doubt I'd have loved your spiced bean and rice dish, Mary. :-) Both favoutite foods of mine.

Which is the other side of that argument on what I think as well, is the romance with subsistence farming. And I'm not against small scale farming. It works for some people, I know. I just question its usefulness as a model for future agriculture.

Though how much the failure of "that" European model of subsistence farming was a consequence of already over population on the land base, and an absence of birth control possibilities, is also a serious question. Though my own view is, while human population levels do need to be brought down, growing here only because of immigration, and urban growth reduced along with that, I don't think we are likely to turn away from the technologies we have and are developing. They have their place, under the control of some "scientific" reasoning and planning, along with "numbers", yet to be seen, of cities and towns, that similarly have their purposes, even in future "rational eco-harmonized" socio-economic models.

I think we are going to have to more "feel" our way into this future world, frankly, rather than rush into Pol Potish, Khymer Rouge type approaches and solutions.

There is still with us that great human tendency to go too far one way, only to suddenly pull back and go too far in the opposite direction. Which is also one of the features of the nature of Capitalist "free market" fear and greed driven development.

BC Mary.........You may be surprised to hear that we eat very little meat, although we could have organic steaks every night. Would have loved to try your red beans and rice as we eat very similar dishes most of the time.

As far paying $28. for 2 organic tenderloin steaks, it is daylight robbery and fraud. It doesn't cost any more to raise organic animals, rather even less. We have been selling the meat of our organic 5-6 month old calves for $3. per pound, butc hered in government inspected facility, cut to customers' specification and frozen, and there are hardly any takers.

Too much hassle and not worth it. So, next year, if the auction prices hold up we'll just sell them to the feedlots so they can be pumped full of corn, chemicals, steroids, hormones and antibiotics for the public to enjoy the marble and kids to grow to be fat pigs.

Ed Deak.

Says Dorothy re Exploitation by Elites:

Read A Short History of, Progress, Dorothy, and you’ll see we colonizers followed a course hallowed in time. If you read of those times of colonization, you (and First Nations) will thank your lucky stars North America was not colonized by the Dutch, the Spanish or the Portuguese, the French, the Germans and so on. Re the British, they were the first to ban slavery (by 30 years) the first to do “social justice” treaties with First Nations, and were world leaders in Democratic institutions. You may disparage these now as not enough, but in those days a great many thought they were far too much.
Says Frank, beginning an idea poorly explored here:

Said Ed, inadvertently pointing to too many children:

But then Ed also said:

Said joesmith:

I said (gotta get a plug in):

Those subsistence farmers of today, just as those in Ed’s grandfather’s time, lack(ed) access to markets, lack(ed) power in the marketplace (s/a Co ops). Today most cannot compete with commodities s/a grain and corn dumped in their home markets by Europe and the US, or agribusiness subsidized by their gov’ts, or crops deliberately made worthless as their gov’ts try to create exportable crops. There are plenty of demonstrable NGO examples where given a bit of capital for transportation, pumps for wells, cooperative effort, and so on, these “subsistence” farmers, fishermen etc, have bbecome self-sufficient. We have much the same problems here, inasmuch as the “System” is purposely slanted to benefit the Coporation.
Says Ed:

Read this. (but I think he’s wrong about subduction sequestration)
http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm
Said skepticool:

Those predictions were made in the early-mid Seventies – to cool us down after the Sixties. Whole weekend supplements were given over to it. Once they had us believing this BS, they told us they owed us nothing, and started investing offshore.
Says Coyote, sort of paraphrasing Ed:

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE. THAT’s how we get our labour content back in.

Sorry Scylla, but I didn't say those things. It was somebody else.
==========================================
I come from the penniless "privileged" class without any farming background, apart from the ownership of several villages with hundreds, or thousands, of serfs some hundreds of years ago, but never forgotten by the family. I was always a black sheep, from day one. My mother didn't speak to me for years and never forgave me for getting into farming. "My son the peasant....!"

On the subject of colonization. I grew up in a country that was destroyed by the Tartars in 1241, colonized by Turks in 1526, by the Austrians in 1686, became a German satellite around 1939 and of the Soviets in 1945, so I do hate any and every form of colonization either by other nations, or by big business, with a passion.

But now we come to the usual brainwash used by all: The nazis fought for "Freedom, Christianity and Western civilization", the communists for "Freedom etc." just as the capitalists are now fighting for the "Freedom of the globally competitive market place."

The promises are always the same , only the colour of the ropes is different. The Americas were also colonized in the name of freedom. Religious freedom, that killed millions and enslaved the rest while thumping the Bible.

My first contact with real personal freedom happened when I first saw the speakers at Hyde Park Corner in London in June 1948. I got hooked and then 7 years in the heady, post war atmosphere of Cambridge has done the rest. The academic and personal freedoms of that era couldn't have happened anywhere else and may never happen again. McCarthy was already rampaging in the USA and freedom has been going downhill, even in Britain, ever since. I haven't been back there for 50 years, but my old friends tell me that I wouldn't recognize the place.

I never took any economics and didn't care much about them at the time, but I know that if any professor had tried to teach neoclassical economics in that intellectual atmosphere, he, or she would have been laughed, or kicked out of the classroom. Today, they're hooked on it and when French and Belgian students rebelled against the teaching of the theory a few years back, some Cambridge students also supported them, but didn't dare to sign their names. So much for their freedom.

Having grown up under dictatorships, human freedon and the freedom of speech are very dear to me and I still hope for the Age of Enlightenment even if I'll never see it, for the sake of my grandchildren and for the world.

But it will never come as long as our universities are enslaved by corporations and their hired hacks in professorial positions.

Ed Deak.

"I am an optimist because there is no utility in being a pessimist and history shows the optimist is more often right." joesmith 323

Always nice being an "optimist" AFTER painful adjustments have been made by others. The real issue (as repeated in many ways by others on this thread) is how on earth do we "manage" our desires, our actions and ourselves to reduce the pain of adjustment -- or at a minimum, to distribute it equitably.

Frank2, you’ve nearly hit the nail on the head when you say, “The real issue (as repeated in many ways by others on this thread) is how on earth do we ‘"manage"’ our desires, our actions and ourselves to reduce the pain of adjustment …”

However, your question falls somewhat short. I don’t believe others have recognized the “real issue” so I’d like to take some liberties with your thought and rewrite it as follows:

The issue oft repeated and made “real” by many, in many ways, is how on earth do we manage the desires of others and the actions of others so that we may avoid the pain of adjustment to ourselves?

Cynical? Of course, but who will be the first to yield pleasure to pain? You? Other Tyee contributors? The distinct lack of follow-up comments to your post may, in fact, be the answer to your question.

The real issue likely has more to do with how we think and how we are trained to think. Those that want the populace to avoid thinking about thinking, and your question, are going to great lengths to prevent looking at cognitive changes that would expose the fictions societies create to control the distribution and abundance of energy/wealth/ power.

Joe Smith- I believe if, as you say, 'most people do define their standard of living on "things"', than most people are on the wrong path. That is not the true measure of a decent standard of living. If people are free to choose to be healthy, yet we have soaring obesity rates and skyrocketing costs of healthcare because people are making bad decisions, how is that a good standard of living? A good life?

I just watched a news clip online of stranded Canadian tourists in Cancun- it made me cringe with shame to be Canadian. I hope the rest of the world is spared the pathetic whines of "I haven't had clean water to wash with in a WEEK!" and "Our gov't (Canadian) has let us down- do you know how many of us are stranded here?" from spoiled suburban families whose dream vacations were cut short- CRY ME A RIVER!!!! It's about time we started experiencing what most of the world really lives like- how pathetic!!

Looks to me like our "higher standard of living" has just turned us into a bunch of crybabies who can't deal with any kind of struggle/hand that nature deals us. And by the way, the conditions of the shelters looked a lot less "deplorable" (news reporter's words) than what I've see people living in in foreign countries.

Great article and discussion. When India and China really get up to speed, the greed of Western capitalists for greater profits just might be the entropy in our economies, which as several have implied, are partly based on the manufacture and sale of things that no thoughtful human being needs to live a decent life. ("manufactured trivia" according to commentor, "Birch.") Of course, it will be good for India and China and possibly mean a better life for hundreds of millions. Personally, my total assets are less than 20 grand and I drive a twenty-year-old car, but I'm probably having as much fun as anyone else on the planet. I also know what it's like for people living in Quatemala City where the sewage ditches run a few feet from the back doors of the shanties--and the children play in them. (Not to mention Smokey Mountain in Manila) Or Kiberia (50% hiv infection rate) in Nairobi where 1,000,000 people live in one of the world's worst slums, where the latest sewage treatment innovation is putting human waste into plastic bags and tossing it into the air, kinda like throwing a discuss. Fiat Lux, loved your chocolate bar-grocery store analogy. Also, Ed Deak, you're no slouch, either. As for the zero-sumification of wealth, "taken but not created"--paraphrasing a commentor, I'm going with the first law of thermodynamics, better known as the law of the conservation of energy, which has so far served me well: Energy can be neither created gained, nor lost--just shuffled around. It is hopelessly counter intuitive to pretend that this is not also the case with wealth. The second law of thermodynamics, which says that everything is trying to gain a less-well-organized position, (air trying to get out of a tire, or avian viruses degenerating when they cross species' boundaries, c'est-a-dire, "Murphie's Law", is probably the real driving force in human endeavour, thus my allusion to entropy.

Hey, where'd everybody go?