There’s a nice article on Dissident Voice that gets to some of the basics of why the world is so unbelievably screwed up.

Under capitalism, the only measure of success is how much is sold every day, every week, every year. It doesn’t matter that the sales include vast quantities of products that are directly harmful to both humans and nature, or that many commodities cannot be produced without spreading disease, destroying the forests that produce the oxygen we breathe, demolishing ecosystems, and treating our water, air and soil as sewers for the disposal of industrial waste…. In short, pollution is not an accident, and it is not a “market failure.” It is the way the system works…. The devastation is caused by the global capitalist system, and by the tiny class of exploiters that profits from capitalism’s continued growth. The great majority of people are victims, not perpetrators.

Yet the people who say these basic and obvious things seem like tiny voices in the wilderness. Even left leaning news and opinion blogs tend to expend all their energy battling minutia. Of course the mainstream press is reprehensible. Of course the openly right-wing press is even more so. Why bother to give them any importance by discussing them at all? The reason why billions of people are struggling and the earth is becoming despoiled is not because of something Rush Limbaugh, or someone else of his ilk, said or did. He’s monstrous, but if he and his blowhard cronies were somehow eliminated, the system would continue its path of destruction utterly unfazed. Those chattering people and the manufactured issues they bring up are just a distraction.

I don’t entirely agree with the premise of even this article, but I won’t go into a critique that would be in any case out of my depth. But I do want to mention something that is brought up in the brief quote I posted. Globally, the vast majority of people are undoubtedly victims of the capitalist system. In rich countries, it seems to me, it’s not as cut-and-dried. The relatively, moderately well-off are in the paradoxical position of being both victims and perpetrators. The planet is reeling from our own collective consumption. And while it’s true that we are all, except for the ruling class, living within a system not of our own making, the only people who can overturn that system are us. And as maligned as the idea of creating different, less consuming, lifestyles, individually and collectively, is, I still see it as a viable road. And I suppose I’ll keep on talking about it, as the tiniest of voices, even if I’m only talking to myself.

since I don’t think socialism is the solution, though it’s far and away preferable to what we have now. But its indictment of capitalism is, it seems to me, right on the money. The environmental destruction it brings is only its most tangible and quantifiable manifestation. The exploitation of not just nature but also of humans is perhaps harder to quantify. In wealthy nations, in particular, people are not only the exploited but also the exploiters.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that an economic system based on amassing wealth for the few by gambling with other people’s money, while at the same time producing less and less of tangible value, should eventually burst. And I suppose it should also come as no surprise that almost everywhere you look there are urgent calls to shore up the existing system, which a few still stand to benefit from, instead of taking the opportunity created by the current disaster to get to the root of the problem and replace a failed system with something more viable.

But it’s certainly dismaying and worrisome. In my own little head, it doesn’t seem to be all that complicated of an issue. I’m not even thinking of a possible solution that is politically radical, as in doing away with capitalism and replacing it with — gasp! — the fair exchange of goods and services at the local level. I’m thinking of a much milder form of radical change, like creating wealth through the actual production of goods and the provision of needed services (and sharing that wealth with some slight degree of fairness with the workers whose labor created it and with those unable to work), instead of by financial shenanigans and selling fake “products” — as the various ways of speculating in the stock market are now bizarrely called — that are merely parasitic.

Economy 101 teaches that wealth is created by adding value. You start out with a raw material, then manufacture it into something more useful. Or you start out with seeds and plant them and grow them so they turn into edible crops. It’s not exactly an unknown process. On the other hand, personal wealth that is generated by sleight of hand, or outright theft, through speculation or usurious interest rates that amount to thievery, does not add anything of value to the collective wealth, and is therefore unsustainable. Forgive me for stating the obvious, as I am wont to do. Perhaps I’m missing something?

I’m not qualified to posit my own economic theories, so I’m always looking for someone who can explain things to me in a way that makes sense. I came across an excellent article in the April 2009 issue of Harper’s: “Infinite debt: How unlimited interest rates destroyed the economy,” by Thomas Geoghegan. It’s not available online except to subscribers, so I’ll try to summarize.

Geoghegan looks at three core issues, all of them having to do with laws that were passed in recent decades to enrich the wealthy and disempower workers and the middle class: 1) the virtual elimination of usury laws, which allowed interest rates on credit cards to run amok and therefore created the potential for enormous profits by banks, which in turn made manufacturing far less profitable by comparison, and therefore eroded America’s manufacturing base by siphoning capital into banking; 2) the loss of enforceable labor contracts, which allowed companies to simply ditch any gains acquired by workers through collective bargaining; and 3) the loss of workers’ ability to organize in the first place, since laws against union busting have become weak and largely unenforceable.

We dismantled the most ancient of human laws, the law against usury, which had existed in some form in every civilization from the Babylonian Empire to the end of Jimmy Carter’s term…. With no law capping interest, the evil is not only that the banks prey on the poor (they have always done so) but that capital gushes out of manufacturing and into banking. When banks get 25 percent to 30 percent on credit cards, and 500 or more percent on payday loans, capital flees from honest pursuits, like auto manufacturing…. Think of GM, which, like GE, really makes its money by running a bank on the side. “After a while,” said a friend from Detroit, “the only reason they were making cars was so that they could make loans….”

With loans generating such high rates of return, banks had no incentive to keep money in reserve, since any money they loaned out instead was so profitable. They also had no incentive to seek out borrowers who would be able to repay the loans: at such high interest rates, banks make more money by keeping the interest payments coming than by getting back the principal. But when borrowers who had been extended unrealistic credit began defaulting, the banks went broke, “victims” of their own boundless greed.

None of this addresses the global crisis per se, or the issue of what will happen to the poorest people in the poorest countries, but reforming credit and bringing back usury laws, along with restoring some basic labor rights, seem like basic steps to put the US economy in order. (Incidentally, the mild changes in credit card laws recently proposed by Obama don’t come close to real reform, though I suppose they will be better than nothing, if implemented. It’s dismaying, once again, what we have to content ourselves with.)

I’m posting this wondering if there’s some obvious fallacy that I’ve failed to understand. If anyone is reading this, perhaps you can offer some insight?

I came across an article on the panic and sense of fear and loss that middle-to-upper-middle-class baby boomers are experiencing now that the rug has been pulled out from under them: their retirement funds that were invested in the stock market have shrunk, and the value of their homes, their most valuable asset, has also gone down considerably. It’s a good article, written with insight and nuance, but I couldn’t help thinking about the picture missing so glaringly from its analysis. Surely, counting on a comfortable retirement and then seeing it slip away must be hard, but what about not having ever had any possibility of one?

For most people who weren’t counting on a paycheck from Lehman Brothers, the central drama of the 2008 collapse has been the more personal matter of their retirement savings and their property value. And with it, the prospect of a non-penurious old age, the basic reward for a life of hard work suddenly seems embattled. So much for all those ideas of affluent freedom, all those TV ads featuring Harley-riding healthy seniors, after leaving the 9-to-5 behind. That rug has been yanked away. But how to say farewell?

And it’s not just one article. The mainstream news media has only one story to tell: people who had been living relatively comfortable lives now are threatened with losing their good-paying jobs, their stock portfolios, and their homes (or much of their home’s previous value). But what about the poor, who had none of those to begin with? They weren’t in the news before the current economic downturn, when they were struggling, and they’re not often in the news now, still struggling and the hardest hit: the loss of a job or a home is much greater catastrophe for someone who has no cushion to fall back on. The relatively wealthy are not the majority, yet the story of the poor and even of the median earner, who takes home about $25,000 a year, is not being told, at least not very widely.

According to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the poor in the US are worse off now that they were in past recessions, because the aid available to poor families and individuals at both the State and Federal levels has been reduced or eliminated over the last several decades. Not only are only 40% of eligible families receiving assistance through TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), which is half the percentage that received help from its predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, (which was eliminated during the Clinton administration), but unless they qualify for unemployment, adults who are not raising children don’t qualify for any type of cash assistance at all. Many are not even eligible for food stamps.

More people will fall into poverty and deep poverty as the recession grows. Yet government is focused on giving money to Wall Street firms and banks, which, even if one were to buy the argument that those institutions will then extend loans which will keep businesses going so they can continue to employ people, it’s an awfully indirect way to help the people who need help the most. And it will be of no benefit to those who already don’t have a job or were only partially or occasionally employed to begin with.

If the loss of a previous sense of security and prosperity creates, for relatively-affluent baby boomers “a kind of vertiginous feeling, like stepping out a window in your childhood home only to realize that the balcony that’s been there all your life is gone,” what feeling does the loss of the basic means of survival create for those who have been perennially on the edge of that open window with no balcony in sight?

The value of a given stock, and by extension of the stock market as whole, depends entirely on perception. If speculators perceive that a stock is likely to go up, they buy it, and if enough of them do the same, the price of that stock goes up. And if they believe the price of a given stock will go down, they sell it, which drives down the price if enough speculators also sell their shares. This is altogether obvious — it’s the way one might explain the stock market to a child — but you wouldn’t know it by listening to the ever-present news reports on the vagaries of the stock market, which insist on the fiction that the actual value and profitability of companies are what drives stock prices.

Sure, the price of a stock does reflect to some extent how well that company is actually doing, since that’s part of what shapes the perception of speculators, but unless a company is obviously tanking, it’s only a sideline in the way the stock market functions.

We hear so much about the need to boost “investor confidence.” Gee, is that because Wall Street analysts are so worried about our collective feelings of contentment? Of course, not, it’s because “confidence” will lead people to buy stocks, thus raising stock prices and increasing the wealth of the largest stockholders.

The notion that a healthy stock market is good for everyone is presented as a given. It’s even conflated to mean that if the stock market is up then the economy is doing well, and that should benefit everyone since most people need a job to survive, and if companies are doing well they are able to hire workers. But one thing has very little to do with the other. When companies announce layoffs their stocks usually go up, at least in the short term, which is the only term speculators are interested in..

This is from an article about hedge funds, which are especially pernicious (from what little I understand of them), but what the author says applies broadly to “short-selling,” the widespread practice engaged in by speculators of buying stocks to keep them only for a short time in order to turn a quick profit by taking advantage of the market’s constant up-and-down shifting:

Too much speculation turns the markets from an investment vehicle into a casino. Most commentators about the market ignore this. When the market suffers big losses on a single day, they find some small piece of bad economic news and attribute it to that. When the market gains a lot on a day, they look at the overall upward direction of the economy and attribute it to that. When the market stalls and seems to move aimlessly, they say the American economy is stagnating. The point is that even though the market is behaving in unfamiliar ways, it is explained as if it were behaving in traditional ways. Nowhere is the change in the players in the market recognized. The change in the means by which large players seek to profit and the greater role of the hedge funds and of speculation via short-selling is ignored.

And what about the notion that most average people have investments in the stock market and therefore bad performance hurts even the little guy? According to the Economic Policy Institute [pdf]:

Less than half of American households are invested in the stock market in any form –either directly or indirectly through mutual funds or 401(k)s. The percentage of households that own stock was 48.6% in 2004. The percentage of households with more than $5,000 in stock was 34.9% in 2004. The wealthiest 20% of households own over 90% of all stock value. For the top 1%, the average value of stock holdings was $3.3 million in 2004. The average value of stock holdings for the middle 20% was $7,500 in 2004.

No doubt it’s frightening for those who have 401(k)s invested in the stock market to see their retirement shrivel up. Yet the majority of Americans have very little or no investment in the stock market at all. So why is there so much emphasis placed on the stock market in the public discourse? Because it benefits the wealthy, of course. As long as people keep on buying stocks — and at the very least refrain from selling the ones they have — the wealth of the rich will continue to increase. At the same time, the little guy who has no insider information and is not savvy about stock market dynamics is the one who will get screwed by the shenanigans of speculators and large investors if he dips his toe in those shark-infested waters.

Every day when we listen to the news, we’re just being treated to more of the proven fallacy of trickle-down economics. When the rich get richer — surprise! — the poor and middle class don’t benefit at all.

The solutions to the world’s problems are known. This struck me recently when I was reading a scathing article on the folly of our collective inaction in the face of environmental destruction in Harper’s:

The general reaction to the apparent end of the era of cheap fossil fuel, as to other readily foreseeable curtailments, has been to delay any sort of reckoning. The strategies of delay, so far, have been a sort of willed oblivion. The dominant response, in short, is a dogged belief that what we call the American Way of Life will prove somehow indestructible. We will keep on consuming, spending, wasting, and driving, as before, at any cost to anything and everybody but ourselves. This belief was always indefensible—the real names of global warming are Waste and Greed—and by now it is manifestly foolish. But foolishness on this scale looks disturbingly like a sort of national insanity. We seem to have come to a collective delusion of grandeur, insisting that all of us are “free” to be as conspicuously greedy and wasteful as the most corrupt of kings and queens.

It’s no mystery that the degradation of the environment requires a massive realignment of our ways of consumption. We have to consume far less, waste far less, pollute far less. And to resist inequality and greed we have to also consume less, to turn over less of our money to the corporations that are perpetrating wholesale injustices. And we need to seek out and put into practice ways to function equitably and sustainably. Yes, of course governments and corporations are at fault, and the possibility of swaying them can seem like applying pressure to immovable objects, but that’s no reason not to try. The powerful bullies of the world hold most of the strings, but not only is there a lack of broad popular commitment to changing the fundamental conditions through grassroots mobilizing, but basic conservation and measures to foster equality are not widely acted on by even most individuals, in the spheres within which we each have direct control.

There’s a wide range of possible action and degrees of commitment. Shopping at eco-boutiques or buying only fair trade is well and good, but for most of us it’s not a useful option. We can’t afford it, and buying a few trinkets here and there is not much of an answer. A much more radical transformation of how we think and live is going to yield the most results.

But even for those who are not radicalized and don’t want to see ourselves as living an alternative way of life, there are possibilities for transformation, both big and small. Many will say that the public has given up, that we see ourselves as so powerless we’ve all just collectively thrown in the towel. That’s why we don’t vote, don’t show up for protests or community events, don’t even try to make our voices heard or alter how we live. Yet we make choices every day, and those choices have both harmful and useful consequences, and when multiplied by the hundreds of millions, even only counting those of us in America, they form the fabric of our world.

Given even the dismaying choices of voting for an awful or a more awful candidate, tens of millions go out to the polls to specifically choose the more awful option. And in our own lives? Why was the average home size in the United States 2,330 square feet in 2004, up from 1,400 square feet in 1970? A larger home is less affordable and consumes more energy, so why the folly of choosing to live in one? Of all the various types of available automobiles, why does anyone buy anything other than the cheapest or most efficient (which often go hand in hand)? Sure, there are many variables. A given community that is seen as the safest and offering the best schools may only have expensive housing. But then why do we not question the fear that leads us to assume that slums should be left to the desperate and poor and that those who can afford it, even if only just barely, should ensconce themselves in sheltered and sanitized communities?

I can see the furrowed brows of those who will say that the victims of the powerful ruling elites are not the culprits. Yes, those of us toward the bottom — or even middle, with the exception of only a few at the very top — of the economic ladder didn’t create the conditions that all of us are forced to exist under, yet just by looking around, there doesn’t seem to be any collective or individual will to change even what conditions are within our control. If you think environmental degradation is worrying, then conserve. If you deplore inequality and human suffering, then don’t support the companies that perpetuate both. Or withdraw your support to the extent that is feasible for you.

The ugly truth is that we are all complicit, unless we are at least trying. It’s important to care and to become informed, indeed those are necessary steps, but the next step, it seems to me, starts with the most basic: transforming our day-to-day.

MickeyZ writes, in No Innocent Bystanders: Riding Shotgun in the Land of Denial:

Their participation in the two party farce and their acceptance of lesser evilism, however, are not seen as the problem by those in the know. It’s all Bush’s fault. There are no innocent bystanders when our money and/or rhetoric support the world’s most powerful military and the corporate status quo. But if we just keep telling ourselves it’s all Bush’s fault, we can sleep better, our innocence wrapped around us like a big white SUV.

The heady promise of liberation of our very thoughts and assumptions, and the means to turn those thoughts into actions, is real and accessible. These perhaps controversial — a bit too dramatic? too optimistic? — quotes below are from Crimethinc. How to put them into practice is left up to us, but certainly we can each see a vision of ourselves that includes choosing to live, at the very least, with much less waste and material consumption, but without taking on the notion of giving something up or forgoing what we care about and love:

Look at the world around us; it is a world that we have created. We transformed the old world into this one—but why this one? Is this the world we would have chosen, if we had considered in advance the question of what the best of all possible worlds might be? But before you despair, think—we created this world, it is we who make it up. Could we not make another world out of it, then, if we chose?

But this is how the revolution begins: a few of us start chasing our dreams, breaking our old patterns, embracing what we love, daydreaming, questioning, acting outside the boundaries of routine and regularity. Once enough people embrace this new way of living, a point of critical mass is finally reached, and society itself begins to change. From that moment, the world will start to undergo a transformation: from the frightening, alien place that it is, into a place ripe with possibility, where our lives are in our own hands and any dream can come true.

A few months ago, the editors of Orion issued a challenge: what words and terminology does the environmental movement need to adopt in order to bring everyone, not just concerned environmentalists but everyone who lives on the planet, into its fold to become active stewards of the earth?

We need terminology that invites everyone into the effort to transform the way we live on the planet—people of all economic means, all political persuasions, all ethnicities, and all nationalities.

I would expand that challenge to not just protecting the environment but also freeing the people from the poverty, conflict, and misery brought about by the same forces — capitalism, greed, inequality, exploitation, and general thoughtlessness — that harm the planet. I think it’s an interesting idea, because sustainability and environmentalism, and social justice, are everyone’s concern, but the concepts themselves have been successfully marginalized in the mainstream as issues that only bleeding hearts and malcontents care about.

But I have to say I disagree with how the editors of Orion framed the issue:

More and more, morality is what the work of saving the planet is all about. For many of us, human morality and the survival of the planet are now one and the same. The only way to transcend the morass is through love of nature, love of our neighbors, love of family, and the recognition that the needs of all are one and the same. The fact is, we are only going to get serious about the challenges that lie ahead when each of us arrives at a deep and abiding understanding that to do anything else is downright wrong. And everyone needs to be invited to participate in that process.

I don’t think it’s a moral issue when human survival depends on it: it’s a practical issue that affects everyone. And as a practical issue, people are not going to be persuaded by being told their actions aren’t morally correct. You don’t have to have gone to Catholic school to bristle when some moral authority wags its finger at you. And if we have to rely on people’s love… yeah, the cynic in me says that pretty much gets trumped by hate, pettiness and selfishness every time.

I say frame the issue as a selfish one. Sustainability starts in one’s own pocketbook. Living unsustainably is not just bad for the environment and for the people of the world who support lifestyles in the developed world with their cheap labor and subtracted resources, it’s expensive.

The idea of living simply has been out there for a long time, but I agree with Orion that it has become too closely tied to terms and notions that people are suspicious of. The trend of shopping at eco-friendly boutiques is not the answer. Neither is seeking out technologies that are inconvenient to adopt or only available to the affluent. And neither is adopting the kind of moral dogma or enforced spirituality that runs through the voluntary simplicity movement. None of these have a universal appeal, because too many people either just can’t afford to take part or don’t see themselves in those terms and don’t want to.

There needs to be a recognized way of living simply that is something you can do without even thinking about it and that doesn’t require you to fly a flag. Living more sustainably in our culture is as simple as not buying or consuming what you don’t need to survive or reasonably enjoy your life. It doesn’t have to be a credo or moral philosophy. Yes, it also has to do with picking and choosing to some extent — buying items with less plastic and less packaging, or foregoing meat for vegetables, for instance — but for the most part it’s about refraining from consuming beyond what is needed, which is not only better for the environment and for social justice but better for our own strained pocketbooks as well. If the argument can be framed in terms of what’s better for you, not just better for the earth, then there doesn’t need to be a convincing moral thesis attached.

I’m not suggesting that everyone in the US or the rest of the developed world has a lavish lifestyle. The reality is far from that, of course. Most people live on a very modest income and many have trouble making ends meet. But in spite of that, the average lifestyle is unsustainable, partly because, as a result of globalization, the prices of consumer goods have fallen dramatically, which has increased unsustainable practices.

Between 1996 and 2002 the number of pieces of imported apparel purchased by each American consumer rose 83 percent and the average American bought 48 new items of clothing that year. The average American child is now acquiring 69 new toys per year. In 2001, 22.76 million computers were consumed domestically, just about 3 million more than were discarded three years earlier. Estimates are that next year a staggering 63 million personal computers will be “retired.” The trends are similar for other electronics, such as televisions and cell phones.

The issue has to be addressed from a public policy perspective and not just in terms of individual choices, of course, but individual choices are within our more immediate control, so I think they’re worth talking about.

The editors of Orion are right that there need to be terms to describe what it means to be an environmentalist — and, I would add a social egalitarian — so that the idea of living more sustainably can formulated in some way, even just as a means to talk about it, but it’s not an easy challenge.

I’ve been watching C-Span in the mornings, a program called the Washington Journal, in which newspaper articles on a given topic are read, and later on guests come on to speak on a specific subject, and viewers are invited to call in and give opinions, comments and questions.

Though it’s far from perfect, I find it much less distressing than watching news commentary on commercial TV stations, for obvious reasons. I don’t think I need to mention the alarming lack of truth or even common sense on CNN and the other news and opinion channels. But while C-Span attempts to be balanced by alternately taking calls from Democrat, Republican and Independent (which includes all other than Democrat or Republican) callers, and by inviting guests whose own positions are deemed right-leaning or left-leaning, it’s striking how far from a balanced sampling of political opinion this is. It’s the same problem that plagues all mainstream media: there’s an absence of truth in the very premise. Republicans and Democrats hold positions that range from the far right to the moderate center, and the political left is essentially entirely absent, even on C-Span, save the very occasional actually-left-leaning caller.

The Political Compass website has created an enlightening graph that places those who ran for the US presidency in the spot on the spectrum that represents their political leanings, according to their positions and public statements. It’s interesting to note, and obvious enough, except that almost no one seems to be aware of it, that none of the presidential candidates fall to the left of center, except Kucinch and Nader. The site notes that Hillary Clinton would be considered a conservative in Europe. Yet the American public seems to accept the lie that she and Obama are left-leaning, and the media obviously encourages that belief. And actively suppresses any possibility of anyone saying otherwise on the airwaves.

Granted that an absence of leftist opinion is probably representative of the US public in general, but I have lately been more and more disturbed by the simple lack of acknowledged fact on what constitutes political thought across the spectrum. Leftist ideas are not merely suppressed by the media, they are made nonexistent. Moderate centrists are decried as raving liberals by right wing hate-mongers, and we are asked to accept this view as a legitimate opinion. Calling out those who support or enact harmful policies is treated as bad table manners, and meek centrists, when they’re invited to speak on television, barely even dare to state their bland positions for fear of seeming impolite.

This is nothing new of course, but it seems to be getting worse.

The internet was supposed to free us from the monolithic viewpoint of mainstream media, but it has utterly failed to accomplish that goal as far as I can tell, and it too seems to be getting worse. Widely-read political blogs have become cemented within a particular clique of followers, and each site attracts only those who already agree with the authors’ positions, except for trolls who stop by just to stir up trouble. The internet is so fragmented that there isn’t room for any particular viewpoint to take any kind of hold. For every blogger who talks sense, there are hundreds of loudmouths who perpetuate misinformation, and the result is a spectacle.

This is the best explanation of consumerism that I’ve come across: Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society, by Michael Storper [pdf].

I’ve always been perplexed by the phenomenon of overspending in the United States, which seems to hurt the very people who engage in it. The explanations I’ve read have never felt satisfactory. The theories that are usually put forth are either that Americans are hopelessly vain and childish, and therefore can’t resist the lure of advertising and feel an overwhelming need to acquire the latest fashions and gadgets, or that items that in previous decades were considered luxuries are now necessities because society is harsher and more competitive, so that, for instance, living in the more expensive housing that is available in safer neighborhoods with better schools, or driving a luxury car with the latest safety features, have become the norm for middle class families if they want to retain a middle class standard of living and give themselves and their kids a chance to succeed.

I don’t buy the first explanation because I simply don’t believe that a majority of the public is fatuous and foolish, to the point of going deeply into debt simply because they can’t control themselves. And I find the second explanation condescending as well. It amounts to an apologist point of view that essentially says: Things are tough, the world is confusing and scary, so give the poor overspent middle class Americans a break if they sometimes make costly choices in order to try to provide the best possible life for themselves and their families.

I’m all for giving people a break. None of us always makes the best possible decisions and none of us should be crucified for not being perfect. But you’re not a giving someone a break when you justify, and therefore offer no possibility of breaking, a cycle that is screwing them over.

I also find it alarmingly classist. The subtext is that the middle class shouldn’t have to put up with crime ridden neighborhoods, unsafe cars, and substandard schools: those are for poor people.

Elizabeth Warren, who puts forth what I consider to be this apologist theory of consumerism — including explaining away why the middle class live in larger houses today than they did in the 70s, even though housing prices have since quadrupled — writes:

There are always options, but for families with children, these options signal that their middle-class lives are slipping away.

Somehow the implication is that if you’re middle class, you have the right to better life. What if instead we worked to create a society in which everyone can have a decent life? That goal is not going to be accomplished by clinging to and constantly trying to increase whatever privilege or status one can scrape together for oneself. That’s a zero-sum competition that no one can win and that ultimately harms everyone, whether they engage in it or not. Those who take part are going to find themselves stretched thinner and thinner, and will have to spend more and more money just to keep up, and those who don’t or can’t participate are just going to be left out.

Status seeking, as Storper explains, is the very mechanism that creates inequality. He writes:

A more powerful explanation for the stagnation of satisfaction, on average and at the top, comes from the notion of positionality in economics. A portion of the satisfaction we get from certain kinds of goods or services has been shown to depend on their position in a quality and status hierarchy…. The only way to slow down status consumption is collectively, with mechanisms that simultaneously limit what our status competitors are doing. This is a situation where rational individual choices lead to collective outcomes which most would not prefer…. Thus, even though the USA is awash in private wealth, it is very difficult to convince even the increasingly wealthy upper-middle-class to reallocate more of their income to public goods, because most of them do not feel rich enough.

It seems to me that the status seeking that Storper is referring to is literally the need to “keep up with the Joneses.” It’s not necessarily a desire to outdo the Joneses, but an effort to try to at least keep up, so one is not left out of the normal course of society. It doesn’t have to do just with saving face, it has practical implications as well. When everyone has a cell phone, being out of touch while you’re away from home because you don’t have one can mean missing out on opportunities. It could mean not getting a call for a job, for instance. Not having a computer or a car can have the same consequences.

But because humans are social animals, saving face is a major issue as well. Not having the same lifestyle as others in your social circles makes you a weirdo. And people can’t necessarily choose to just disassociate with status-seekers. Whether it’s the workplace or the children’s school, there are many areas where people have to maintain, to some degree, their position and social standing. But even if they could, people would generally not choose to opt out of social interactions. By definition, most people want to belong and be part of the mainstream and are not willing to be seen as eccentric oddballs.

So what’s the solution? One is political, of course. Storper writes that in Europe, where public goods are much more available, there is less jockeying for position in the acquisition of private goods than in the United States.

There is a variation of almost 20% between the USA (30%) and most of the high public expenditure Continental countries (50%). Considering that military expenditures account for a relatively high percentage of US public expenditure, there are big differences in the quantities of public goods provided to the citizens of these nations. Public goods are often distributed so as to equalize access to certain kinds of necessities and thus should offset some of the postionality effects of status consumption.

The privatization of public goods not only takes away income from citizens directly, because they have to shell out for basic necessities out of their own pockets, but it also increases inequality because those goods then become a source of status seeking, so people have to pay for increasingly better and costlier services in order to keep up with their socio-economic equals. College education is an obvious example.

But the other solution lies in the consumption patterns of individuals. If we were able to create social circles in which status seeking is not the norm and where choosing a more frugal lifestyle is accepted and no longer considered eccentric, then people who have access to those circles would be freed from having to keep up with the Joneses.

It seems so simple, but the caveat is that it has to be a collective effort. There needs to be a movement to create meaningful groups within which people can live frugally without shame or stigma. Many such movements have existed, but they are dying out, more and more. The hippie movement of the 60s is an obvious example. But even as recently as the 80s it was fashionable among some college students to wear thrift store outfits, and in the 90s there was the widespread grunge look of ripped jeans and old flannel shirts. Today even little kids wear designer clothes.

Part of the reason for this is also discussed by Storper. The same phenomenon that has resulted in the loss of jobs and lowering of wages in the United States — globalization — has also produced a surfeit of cheap consumer goods. The price of clothing, for instance, has declined since the 1970s, and so have the prices of electronics and household appliances. On the surface, that may seem like a bright spot in the gloomy economic situation of American low and middle income families. But its effects are pernicious.

Storper writes:

It is estimated that in the USA, a 3% direct decline in the real wages [of unskilled workers] has been compensated by a 3% consumer surplus for this particular income group. One of the reasons why there may have been less protest over the emerging income distribution than might be expected from the income figures per se, is that many of the same producers who are losing in relative — and even in absolute — terms, are still gaining as consumers in absolute, material terms.

In other words, even as low and middle income families are less able to afford basic necessities, they are better able than in past decades to secure positional goods like new clothing and appliances. The result is that poverty has become hidden, which only adds to its stigma. Since all anyone can see on the surface is that their neighbors have nice clothes and fancy appliances, but not that they can’t afford to see a doctor, how will we as a society ever get out from under the tyranny of status seeking and positionality?

I think the answer lies in initiatives like freeganism, which is too big a topic to undertake here. But I also think groups like these probably need to make more of an effort to become less off-putting to the average mainstream person. Even within the anarchist movement, squatters, punks, and assorted crusties are seen by some as offending more mainstream activists with their dirty and ragged clothes. I’m on the side of the crusties, who are at least trying to create real alternatives to rampant consumerism, and who live what they preach. I think the rest of us need to jump on board instead of decrying lifestylism, and create more nuanced choices. People should be able to choose what degree of thrift and nonconformity they are willing to adopt, and not be alone in those choices but part of larger societal movement that works to make frugality and poverty nothing to be ashamed of.

As many as three billion people are food-insecure, and of those, one billion routinely don’t get enough food. Fifty thousand die from poverty every day, including 18,000 children who die daily from lack of food or related issues. Global food prices have risen recently, making matters worse, but this is not a new problem.
[Sources: 1, 2.]

The Global Conference on Food Security was held in Rome this week, and the results don’t seem to warrant much optimism. There were pledges of aid to relieve the short term impact, but there doesn’t seem to be any will, among those who might be able to do so, to change in the conditions that contribute directly to chronic poverty and malnutrition.

Some of the reason for that is that there isn’t enough demand for change from the public in developed nations, in part, it seems, because the issue is not an easy one to explain. When people talk about the free market system, they seem to think the options are to either make the market freer or impose restrictions, and that those are the two dueling camps. But as I understand it, the issue is who controls the flow of goods and capital. The market is “free” and made freer when it’s useful to those who have the most power. They are then free to exploit developing nations for their resources and, at the same time, make it so poor nations have to accept their goods, services, and prices on their terms. When it’s convenient for rich nations to protect their own interests, then they impose restrictions in those areas.

So discussing whether trade should be free or regulated is not exactly hitting the mark. What needs to happen, and this has been proposed by people who are far more knowledgeable about these matters than I am, is for local producers and consumers of food in developing countries, where food insecurity is a pressing issue, to be able to work in the way they think is best, without being forced to accept conditions from the outside, a concept known as “food sovereignty,” if I’m understanding it correctly.

The goals are well summarized in this article about a community group in Sri Lanka: “Work with local farmers to develop sustainable farming techniques and regain control of production systems. Establish food sovereignty on the local level by coordinating the sharing of food produced by farmers, and selling surpluses locally.”

Two essays in The Guardian were enlightening on the issues:

Certainly the world would welcome an end to the EU and US farm subsidies which lead to the dumping of agricultural produce on developing country markets, yet anyone who still believes that the WTO is going to deliver this has not done the maths. More importantly, agriculture needs a radical reorientation away from the mess that globalisation has made of it. In the current crisis, the food sovereignty model that puts local producers and local markets first is winning over more and more followers.

The Associated Press, on the other hand, reported on the squabbling among world leaders at the conference without giving much of an indication of which statements might have been somewhat factual and which entirely self interested and misleading.

For example, the president of Brazil and the US representative disagreed about the effect each of their countries’ policies on biofuels have on the food market. The concern is that using food crops for energy may divert agricultural resources away from producing needed food. Brazil makes ethanol from sugar cane, which is an extremely efficient method of producing alcohol and which, the Brazilian government argues, does not undercut food production. In fact, no rise in the price of sugar has been reported as a result of using sugar cane to make fuel. In addition, sugar is arguably not a food staple, since it doesn’t offer much in the way of nutritional value. The US makes ethanol from corn, which is badly needed for food and is a very inefficient crop to convert to alcohol. So inefficient that if it were not for heavy government subsidies, the US production of ethanol would be unsustainable.

As it happens, I have first hand knowledge about this. I used to live in Brazil, and for several years in the mid 80s my parents lived right smack in the middle of sugar cane fields. I mean that quite literally. There was a low fence around the house and the yard, and on the other side of the fence, in front of the house, there was a small cow pasture, and, beyond that, sugar cane fields as far as the eye could see. We were on top of a hill overlooking a broad valley, so the eye could see for miles.

(We were nowhere near the Amazon, I might add. We lived in the state of Sao Paulo, about 200km from the city of Sao Paulo. I don’t know whether the push to grow sugar cane has encroached on the Amazon or not: Brazil has a great deal of usable land that is not in the rainforest, but that doesn’t seem to have halted the inexorable destruction of precious forest land, so my guess would be that, among many other factors, it probably has.)

Behind the house were the factory and headquarters of a company that manufactured steam turbines, which were primarily used in sugar cane processing plants. That was where my dad worked as an executive. Virtually everyone we knew was in the sugar cane business.

The processing plants were entirely energy self-sufficient, so they were often in remote locations. We took a trip once, the whole family, to visit one of these plants, which may seem odd, but it was marvelously interesting. The directions we had were along the lines of, “Follow the dirt road that crosses the coffee plantation. When you get to a mango tree, turn right.”

The sugar cane stalks were first unloaded from the trucks, which ran on 100% alcohol. These were trucks with gasoline engines, not diesel engines, that are easily converted to use ethanol. Cars that ran on 100% alcohol were very common in Brazil. They are essentially identical to cars that run on gasoline. I think that the only modifications needed are that some parts have to be replaced to keep them from rusting, because alcohol contains a small amount of water (I don’t feel like looking up the details). The cane juice was squeezed out of the stalks by a grinding machine and was then fermented and distilled into alcohol (a process that is possibly even simpler than crystallizing it into sugar), and the woody stalks were then set aside to be burned to produce steam, which ran the steam turbines, which in turn powered the generators that provided energy for the entire plant. It was wonderfully simple.

Producing ethanol from corn, on the other hand, is so inefficient that the process consumes more energy than it produces. A peer-reviewed scientific study proved this, debunking a USDA report that claimed a very small net gain in energy when corn is processed into ethanol, but only if the by-products that can be used as animal feed are included in the equation. The US corn-to-ethanol industry exists only because it is heavily subsidized by the US government. In addition, the US imposes tariffs on imported Brazilian ethanol — so essentially it is not imported into the US — in order to protect this unsustainable domestic industry.

In spite of these well-established facts, the biofuel debate rages on, without the mainstream media seemingly willing to shed some light on who is telling the truth and who is intentionally obfuscating it.

Not that sugar cane ethanol is a panacea. There was a recent article in The Guardian about converting the harvesting of sugar cane to mechanization because of concerns about human exploitation. The article worries about the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs. Having seen the sugar cane harvesters myself, I have to say their working conditions were very bleak. The sugar cane fields were set on fire prior to harvesting, which was quite spectacular. An entire field blazed, at nighttime. This was to burn off the excess foliage. After the field had cooled down for a couple days, trucks of people were brought in (news reports about truckloads of human beings being involved in accidents, with no seatbelts or protection of any kind, were not uncommon). They were covered in cloth from head to foot, I’m not sure if it was to protect themselves from insects or the heat. Then they proceeded to cut down the sugar cane stalks, which are tough and woody, like small trees, entirely by hand, with machetes. We were told at the time that the process could not be mechanized because most of the sugar is at the base of the stalk, and machines would cut too high and miss the most crucial part of the harvest. This explanation was probably disingenuous.

But as far as people standing to lose this terrible job, it’s an ongoing dilemma: whether it’s better for people to have access to some kind of job, exploitative and harsh as it is, or not have any means at all to survive. The answer of course lies in changing the conditions. But unless people in developed countries take the time to inform themselves, and agitate for change alongside those most affected, change will be slow to come.

It strikes me that every wrongheaded sentiment in society ultimately derives from the culture of inherent, unconditional rightness. As I grow older, I find myself less prone to have an opinion about anything, and to distrust just about anyone who does…. I refuse to discuss abortion with anyone who is pro-life or pro-choice; I refuse to discuss affirmative action with any unemployed white guy or any unemployed black guy. All the world’s stupidest people are either zealots or atheists. If you want to truly deduce how intelligent someone is, just ask this person how they feel about any issue that doesn’t have an answer; the more certainty they express, the less sense they have. This is because certainty only comes form dogma.

From the book, Chuck Klosterman IV.

I don’t mean to pick on Chuck Klosterman, who is a hip music critic and essayist on mundane cultural minutiae and doesn’t claim to be a political commentator. I wanted to write about this because it’s such a common sentiment, and this was the closest example at hand, since it’s a book I happen to be reading.

Certainty, though it isn’t the word I would choose, since I think it’s generally a good idea to remain open to the possibility that one could be wrong, doesn’t only come from dogma, it also comes from knowledge. Having an opinion is only foolish if it’s an uninformed opinion. And while abstaining from forming an opinion because one is insufficiently informed is laudable, and rare, taking the time to learn the facts underlying an issue so that one can come up with an educated opinion is much more laudable — and responsible, as a citizen of the world — than simply choosing ignorance.

I can’t count how many times I’ve come across the belief that a reasonable person’s duty is to consider both sides of a political or social issue — and the assumption is nearly always that every issue only has two sides — and then stop there, refraining from coming to any conclusion. Anyone who does otherwise is “biased.” Nowhere in this belief is there an acknowledgment that facts are involved, because facts are considered unknowable and therefore suspect. I was talking to someone not long ago who is training to become a social studies teacher, and this is what she said is expected of her in the classroom: teach “both sides” and step back.

Facts may not be easy to ascertain. It takes work to dig them up, and enough background knowledge and understanding of the issues to distinguish them from half-truths and propaganda. One can be misled by facts that are presented in a particular light, and one may have to revise one’s understanding as one learns more information. But facts do exist, bizarre as it is to have to say it.

Listening to self-interested lies coming from various corners, however, is not going to take one any closer to learning facts. Hearing both sides, or any of various sides, of an issue is only useful in trying to understand why different factions hold the positions that they do: it’s not a particularly useful way to figure out where the truth lies. Basing one’s opinion on someone else’s opinion is actually the wrong thing to do if one is interested in being fair-minded.

Yet opinion is virtually all of the media coverage that is available on important political issues. There’s the bombastic opinion of the right, which is delivered with a loudness that’s meant to drown out all other thought, and the apologetic, mildly worded opinion of the center-left, that’s always stumbling over itself in an effort not to offend. Politicians that are mildly left-leaning are accepted by the media, and by extension the public, only when they promise to build bridges and unite opposing viewpoints. Personally, I’m not interested in the building of bridges with liars and demagogues whose aims are to oppress the many and create prosperity for the few. Greed and self interest need to be exposed, not coddled. But if you start out with the premise that the fair-minded embrace all points of view equally, and that insisting on facts and forming strong opinions according to one’s knowledge of the facts makes one strident, that’s what you get: the politics of mildness and inoffensiveness, which are offered up as the only possible antidote to the politics of unbridled rapaciousness.