Monday, March 24, 2008

Shifting gears

I would like to call attention to the first posting I made for this site defining my overall objective. From June of 2007:

I envision this blog to be a series of essays and commentaries on matters of grave importance affecting the present and future state of the economical machine America. I am fascinated with the concept of the American Dream in regards to the nightmare it has become for the ones who support it's existence, and furthermore for how real of a dream it may actually be for the ones who do currently prosper. I do not see our position as the leading global power lasting forever, and feel that our time at the top may be nearer than further to an end, especially with the abuses that occur globally and nationally to support the pursuit of the American Dream. I will delve into accepted thought and offer a revisionist's view on the current state of affairs, highlighting the wrongs that come from the unchecked pursuit of wealth and material gain. This blog will serve as a watchdog over the abuses that stem from the elite, and in general, as a watchdog over the under reported issues normally ignored by the rating inspired media conglomerates. I will hold those accountable whose pursuits encroach upon the personal liberties of others, and illustrate the interconnectivity of the seemingly separate issues affecting our society. I invite you to become a part of a revolution and help push money aside in pursuit of the truth. Education is our only hope.

I recognize the value of journalism, the process of informing the public what is occurring in the surrounding world through objective reporting, and when I began this site I envisioned this form of journalism as being a way to affect change by looking at issues from a revisionist perspective. But I have recently come to the conclusion that calling for change and making change happen are two entirely different things, and we are much more in need of the latter.

I will continue to post from time and again on here, when something strikes me as essential to revise, but for the time being my twice a week pace will more than likely be reduced to once per month. I am undertaking a new project, one involving a series of documentaries surrounding a revolutionary concept I will discuss on here once the project in further along.

I bring up my first posting because of the following line from above:

"I will hold those accountable whose pursuits encroach upon the personal liberties of others"

That is the overall plan.

Check back once per month. I'll shoot for the first.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Knowing this can't go on forever

What troubles me most about the world we live in, particularly in regards to consumerism and the driving force behind this of capitalism, is that we are on a one way road to our end in regards to what this planet can sustain, and we are doing it at breakneck speeds. Start crunching some numbers and it becomes painfully obvious that consumerist capitalism will bring about our end. To begin with scientists have estimated that the earth can sustainably support 1.5 billion people, and while we're at roughly 6.5 billion people worldwide today, the Earth's population will hit 7 billion people sometime around 2012. Doing some basic math we will be just under 5 times the sustainable limit come 2012, and that number will only continue to increase at a continually greater pace as more human beings are born and continue to breed. And with this increased population comes increased consumption.

So knowing that we're already overpopulating the planet and living beyond our means, you'd think the accepted wisdom would be to scale back our consumption and live sustainably, but the opposite is true and it's capitalism which is driving this. Look no further than the amount of aluminum cans consumed in this country. Americans consume 106,000 aluminum cans every 30 seconds, coming out to 305,280,000 every day, which taking it one step further equates to 111,427,200,000 aluminum cans every year. That's 111 billion per year, of which only a fraction of the aluminum used comes from recycling, and this is only counting the consumption in the United States. Currently less than 50% of aluminum cans are recycled after consumption.

http://www.container-recycling.org/images/alum/graphs/recrate-percent-96-06.gif

Now where does capitalism come into the equation? Not long ago mankind lived without Mountain Dew. We didn't have Pepsi and Coke invading our living rooms and intruding every second of the living day into our lives, urging us to buy and consume more and more, altering the markets demand. We didn't have marketing teams brainstorming ways into subliminally manipulating consumers into purchasing their products, brainwashing by another name, but business as usual in modern capitalist America. We once had a system that worked on supply and demand, though with the societal changes we have undergone through this wasteful consumerism we have culturally embraced, now, essentially, the market supplies the demand! And that is where wasteful products like soda, which make up most of the aluminum can consumption, conflicts with our better interests.

And why is it wasteful you ask? Soda isn't a beneficial product. Not to be the fun police but soda is one of the main reasons behind American obesity, which is mainly due to high fructose corn syrup used in producing it. I once saw a graph which showed the sharp increase in obesity in this country during the 1980's coincide perfectly with another line which charted the introduction of high fructose corn syrup into our diet. And while soda may be something to sip on, there are other alternatives which are not as commercially driven or commercially available, which do not come onto us as forcibly as socially acceptable. Soda is everywhere. It's what many people drink because it's what they always have, introduced to it early in childhood and used to it ever since. It's what they see other people drinking through images on TV and in print which create a sense of normalcy in the consumerist mindset, and it's this which pushes people to consume. People drink so much soda because there is so much soda available, as it's cheap and profitable, and therefor plentiful. They drink it not so much because they like it, but because they've been conditioned to use it. And the end effect is we wastefully consume this product, while mankind survived contented for ages on non-commercialized beverages.

My point isn't to outlaw soda but to point out how much of a consumerist product it is and why it's become that way. There is a very deceptive connection between over consumption and capitalism, and 106,000 cans every 30 seconds says enough. That's more than a soda per day for every American, though I recognize that not every aluminum can accounts for a soda, though not every American uses a can, meaning many are using more than one. That's excessive, not the way it was and not the way it should be, but is the result of commercial capitalism and the excessive amounts of products it produces. And just to tie it all together all those cans have to go somewhere, and aluminum cans are the tip of the capitalist landfill. We have a very serious garbage problem on this planet, and it's only going to get worse if we continue to embrace this consumerist capitalist system. This can't go on forever. Somebody is going to have to deal with it. That's why revolution is inevitable. The question is how long should we allow this to drag out?

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Bankruptcy law and the system which condones it

To say that I am opposed to the interests of Business and Industry is to phrase it lightly, that I'm in the favor of equality and justice would be to phrase it better. One mustn't look hard into the corporate world to find corruption and deception in action, to find rules that favor the interests of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest. Corruption is everywhere though in many cases what should be constituted as illegal is in fact legal on the books, and few places is this more apparent than in the world of bankruptcy.

I've been devoting a lot of my time recently to studying the W.R. Grace-Libby, Montana story, and the ways that the executives at W.R. Grace were able to divest their holdings into the pockets of shareholders and smaller companies they spun themselves off into is absolutely appalling. The year W.R. Grace declared bankruptcy Grace CEO Paul Norris earn $3.4 million. Before that Grace spun their assets off into two subsidiaries: the National Medical Care company and Cryovac, freeing themselves of assets that would be seized in the event of an expansive lawsuit, should they be found guilty. Thus what was left of Grace from the billions earned off the health of those miners amounted to a pittance to help clean up the town and aid the health of the victims they effectively assaulted. And then there's the millions bled to the shareholders, who put their own financial interests above the very families and town they used to profit off of, who as victims are the ones in real need of financial dividends.

These executives deserved to be jailed and all their assets sold to cover the destruction they wrought. The shareholders should be forced to repay what they bled, and if it means garnishing their assets then so be it. Don't forget W.R. Grace and all those involved at the management level knew exactly what they were doing and intentionally, deceptively exposed their workers and their workers' families to what they knew was a deadly substance, and there is a paper trail a mile long to confirm this, which is quite blatant throughout in how they went about discussing what they knew and what they could do to circumvent the law. My point is this is absurd! This company has ruined so many lives, brought billions of dollars in damage to a town they profited handsomely off of and their response has been to take the money and run. But to blame the company is shortsighted, it's the system which has allowed them to get away with this. If we lived in any type of a just society, bad businesses like this would be driven out of existence and the employees would be criminally held liable for intentionally disregarding public welfare in favor of profit, but here in the United States the accepted practice heralded by the elite is to do whatever is possible to keep such businesses in operation because they are capable of generating large amounts of cash. Thus money reigns supreme, which ultimately is the cause of our problems. The only solution is to completely overhaul the system through a more liberal economic stance. We'd have a little less money but a whole lot more.