There's No Tomorrow (Make sure you watch ALL of this video)

This is a long watch, but do watch it. Its illuminating, thought provoking, and sums things up really really well.

It must be screened at every school. They're the ones who'll have to face it. They're the ones who'll need to discard everything we've taught them to be true and right and relearn, rediscover, experiment. All the while burdened with a terrible terrible legacy that we would have left them with.

The energy, oil economy decided everything, and the monetary system that encouraged growth, has needed more and more and more of it. The bacteria-in-the-bottle analogy is chilling.

Growth (as currently pursued) indeed is a huge problem - its a brave thing to call that one out in the current madness for it as the panacea that can bring democracy, solve hunger, provide for all and solve anything at all. 

Alternative energy, conservation, recycling - these are all twigs we're trying to use to try and hold against the ground to stop the bus hurtling rapidly towards the cliff. Nothing will "solve" it unless we relook at - or are forced to relook at - how we continue to live, and how many of us do. 

Our lack of acknowledgement, our inability to understand and react appropriately to this fundamental truth is apalling, scary and frustrating. 

There's no way of continuing the current way we live and hope technology will solve it enough so we can get away without having to do anything.

Thankfully, the movie does suggest a few fixes, and they're all tough. I don't see many willing or able to adapt to live the better life, and we'll eventually do when forced to.

• Question growth, globalization : they're pure bad as practised, NOT good.
• Walk, cycle more since you'll have to. Drive less. Way lesser.
• Buy less. Please. Everything,
• Buy local, seasonal, unpackaged.
• Fight fears and imagined inconveniences - the big ones haven't hit yet.
• Doing "more physical work" is NOT a bad thing.
• Get out of banking/globalized currency - its tough but make a start
  • A few ideas 
    • Potlucks to substitute restaurants
    • Barter skills and services
    • Co-operate for manpower needs, don't always buy it
    • Use everything longer
    • Optimize the hell out of everything
    • Slower, less commercial forms of entertainment
    • Grow some food
• Learn more about the land, growing food, water
  • We've lost half the topsoil in the last couple of 100 years!
  • We've completely lost any understanding of the carrying capacity of a place
• Learn more about building homes from stuff around you
• Re-invest in community - time and effort, not money

The current financial economy and monetary system are indeed a ponzi scheme. Frustrating that we're so wedded to it and almost powerless to fiind a way out.

Sometimes I think our faith in technology is a mere betrayal of our conceit, but it might just be the stupid-filter masquerading as smartness and intelligence. Our total lack of ability to connect the dots is apalling.

Or maybe we're just too scared to ask questions, change lifestyles that deviate from the marketed/accepted status quo.

2048, I'd say, is the new doomsday. In less dramatic ways but figuratively, yes. I'll probably die before that but in a terrible state of mind.

We're soooooo screwed. Sorry, kids, that we couldn;t see this, couldn't behave ourselves and were too weak to improve things in the face of the instant pleasure.

 

Endgame

Each time your real estate yields more, or a technology investment helps cut costs, or you figure out an alternative source to source cheaper, remember its very often a win-lose game, and you're standing a little taller on someone's shoulders.

Keep in mind the reason the entire cycle of economy works (should work?) within the scope of society. Its aim was never to maximize a few variables for a few, but provide a good distribution across multiple variables for many.

The store next door shut because it couldn't afford the rentals anymore, not because it ran out of customers. Another store that had employed 7 earlier now makes do with 3, and worse service, again thanks to rentals. A whole set of professions suffers despite better education, skills, productivity, service levels, more demand because there's automation and laxer rules to keep profitability high for industry to maximize return on capital.

Some might say I'm turning socialist in thought, but its merely a reaction. And ironically, its happening as I get more into business.

Rethinking Growth

Had wondered about what "Growth" has come to mean. 

 

Since then - have read more about this. Chilean economist wonders whats gone wrong with it - and even why growth is a goal and not development.

 

 

Someone then shared the following infographics about how a handful of corporations consume most of what we consume - from http://frugaldad.com/2011/11/22/media-consolidation-infographic/) Dug a little more and here's more worrying stuff about their control over most of world food production and consumption as well.

 

It popped the question on its own - is the whole idea of the large corporation at the root of a lot of problems we face today? This is not a tirade against free markets. In fact  much freer markets can exist with smaller companies, retail etc. 

 

The smaller guy is more connected to the economy around him, to the people working for them. The smaller guy spends locally, and there's less "accumulation" of wealth which then gets more and more abstracted. There's more churn in players, and there's less of a need for 30% y-o-y growth which needs comparable growth in consumption, whether or not people at the other end really need it and totally not clued in to whether we can collectively afford it in terns of depletion of natural resources, pollution and social activity, welfare.

 

The large corporation is a being in its own right and does not relate to any for of humanity - or human needs. Its needs start to supercede everything else - and as long as its "legal" in a given context, its done. Social, moral, ethical questions are frequently suppressed for "shareholder value" (sounds very much like various other justifictions other extreme "isms" have forwarded for their actions over the centuries). It tends to appeal to the carnal, the base and the common denominator, because it needs scale and the easier path to profitability in the shortest time.

 

The smaller guy, the individual and the locally connected business has to factor in variables other than "shareholder value" into their choices. Their personal likes/dislikes, "what will people say", "is it good for the community" are all part of the landscape. Yes, those are "limitations" too - but hey - we're people with lives, not producers and consumers alone.

 

Its a question which is growing more significant in my head, at least, with each passing day. And I daresay the answer is moving towards the black and white from the earlier greys when I was "with it".

Sustainability : Needs, Possession and Sharing

The Story of Stuff video that I mentioned in my last post talks about how consumption was pretty much engineered to keep the ever higher production capacities going. It mentions that 99% of all stuff produced in the US gets discarded within 6 months! People are egged to buy, buy more and keep buying by messages that communicated the strategies of planned and perceived obsolescence to consumers.

Need ?

Some words thrown in this mix of marketing, messaging are cool, need, efficient, faster, cheaper, savings. Its either a sense of comparison with the rest of the world around you, and often a false sense of missing out on something thats started to define even what used to be basic "needs".

Brushes that tell you they're due for a change. Phones which are so out of date in year that you have not even used a small fraction of its features, but that new one is so much sleeker. Cars which drive perfectly alright, but hey we're not keeping parts available beyond 2010.

Water ? Yes, even good old h2o has gone aspirational with major lifestyle water brands!

Possess!

Even worse is stuff that we use maybe a couple of weeks in a year, but each of us must have!

We have a ladder at home that's needed once is a while. A couple of people asked how much it was, etc, and I suggested they could use ours since we didn't need it at that point. It now gets circulated a lot within our apartment complex and its saved a lot of people a lot of space, money and all of us a lot of needless products sold!

Sharing is a simple tool that will work for a lot many things like it worked for the ladder!

Kids, for instance, see a lot of toys with their friends, and there's an immediate follow-up at home with a demand that the same be mad available. Parents, especially those with busy schedules and decent disposable incomes, by and large give in to "not deny my kids simple pleasures". The alternative, which a few parents around where we live have started practicing, is to encourage kids to interact, and share whatever they have. Not only does it avoid unnecessary purchases (have you seen the number of toys that just live inside boxes and under beds once they're brought home?) - but also helps social interaction, negotiation skills, and a respect for valuation of considered needs and desires over every impulse to own this and have that.

What else can we share ?

Carpooling is a form of sharing as well. Taking a bus is sharing-nirvana!

I remember a whole bunch of us sitting around our neighbour's TV set during major cricket series when we were kids. It was actually a whole lot more fun than watching the matches alone, as is the norm now. Hand-me-downs still keep my daughter's wardrobe quite fresh and there's a minor freecycling movement of sorts in our apartment around kids prams, cots, clothes, shoes, etc!

Its sometimes economics that forces these choices. But I have increasingly felt a need for these choices driving our economics. Built it around services that work for sustainability, and not consumption.

The Story of Stuff, the Price of Things, Etc

Came across this awesomely done video that explains in brief what we've been doing wrong.

I'd written earlier about us not paying for the "real costs" and the need for building those into economic models so long term damage to the ecology, our health, our social structures is tougher to get away with. The video talks about that point, amongst other things. Its a very good way to understand what is really broken holistically.

The sad part is, the consumption led model and its associated economic, marketing theory was sold very aggresively through all the literature created around it, and all the institutions that sell it through multiple fora - both economic and social. Our world trade models, the basis of and assumptions for free trade, and even key economic indicators of growth, poverty and properity are influenced by these motivations and models. Its all pretty broken, and depressing. Modern economists are more or less at a loss when it comes to figuring out fixes that look beyond these problems that have led to ecological, social and more recently, even financial distress across the globe.

I think the solution is not top down, but bottom-up - like the video suggests as well. We need to move away from consumption at our individual levels, and stop identifying and defining our lives through the brands we own or consume and consumer choices we make all the time. It'll force a rethink and change at various levels, and best of all, will lower aspirational stress, improve our conenctions as producers and nourishers - not just consumers, and force the evolution of alternative models for economic success and growth.

Markets down ? Not for cycles...

Original Article Here

I guess it is a wonderful invention, and as the human race discovers more and more of it, it can only do us all a lot of good. Meanwhile, people have been putting in fabulous mileage on their bikes - and I'm totally awed/inspired.